March 11th 2025 - Alpine School District Board Meeting

001e e you're not going to split signs and I said there's a ton of nuances with e e e go ahead get started superintendent thank you president Julie King appreciate that ask um we are excited today to uh be in study session to uh share with the board some thoughts about our alternative online programs it will be both uh kind of an awareness of what is presently in place and the great outcomes that we achieve as a result of that and then some possible considerations uh that we might want to consider and be aware of for future reconfiguration so they uh team has put together presentation we reviewed it given some feedback they' come back and represented so we'll turn over to Scott and have you introduce the team and we'll go from in that's

002great um thank you this is exciting we um there's been a lot of hours put into this and you have and I you guys already know this but uh the level of dedication of of our alternative school leaders that I'll introduce in just a second is is a top tier they're amazing people that care about kids they care about the programs uh they run and they really have a strong belief in what they do makes a difference and they work very hard at it and you see uh numbers of growth and success that they've had over the years that's attribute to their their work and their staff's work um I'm confident that although you're going to see the the leadership here I'm pretty sure your staffs are probably watching as well they're there as well

003so gather just Gathering but this has been this has been a bit a bit of a labor of love to put this together because although uh Blain's been involved in a number of presentations sharing information um technology was a big one and I think that was a lot of details a lot of recommendations a lot of things that each district needs to consider um it's it's surpassed greatly by the complexity of the alternative school world because it involves so many kids it involves so many uh uh people employees and it involves just a lot of heart and emotion of of progress towards helping support kids and individual needs so hours and hours and hours have been spent put putting this together um Lynn and Blaine um Dr Edmund you um he's the supervisor over the

004alternative schools um ly Garrett is the director over the alternative schools we have spent countless hours as us going over this report um take this out put this in what about that take it out wait put it back in that kind of stuff to make sure that we're thorough of covering all points of the alternative world to make sure it's a fair analysis of what's happening but also give you a couple of good recommendations or options that could be supportive of the three configurations and possibilities there so um that being said you've also got Gina wit off online raise your hand over there um Matt R and his mustache is from East Ando you promis that would be gone now I'm full of regret if you mustach a question feel free it's it's open season

005um Hannah is over Polaris um figuro right Figo yes like braan like in America Dan biolo is our director over Summit um kit bronley is over Adult Ed and then of course mentioned Lynn director of V schools and then Dr bla Ed our supervisor so that in mind blae and Lynn okay great we are so grateful for the time um there are so many things uh to be considered right now in the district and there's lots of of different groups who would love time to present to you so we're really grateful for this time um we have worked hard to try to gather accurate information and much of what we've done is just to try to think through different options uh that we could present to you of ways that in a reconfiguration um we

006can move forward uh please know that we've gone into this with our eyes open trying to say what are all the possible options that are available and we've considered a lot of different things there's really been two main uh driving factors as we've considered these options one is how can we uh create or maintain options for our students our alternative um schools and programs and online schools and programs serve uh students that need different Services than our Traditional School and how can we how can we maintain those services or create new services for students that is by far the driving Factor we've also considered how can we best take care of our Educators that are do such a great job in these schools um and that's a that's a second consideration as we've talked to

007our Educators they have all told us we are appreciative that you were considering us but please put number one number one take care of the kids first and then worry about us after and it's been heartwarming to see their attitude as we've talked to them about these things most of all really appreciate the team here and really appreciate Lynn he uh does such a great job leading this team and so I'm going to turn uh some time over to Lynn to kind of start talking through well thank you we appreciate the opportunity to be here with you today we're going to talk about first the online auctions and then towards the end we'll talk about the alternative schools to Summit players and we would like to trying to have most time spent with Summit players

008so we're going to go through these um thoroughly but uh somewhat quickly so we're going to talk about eore doad out online and explore and if you think of a Continuum of services these online options are the most flexible options we have in the in the district really we have students who can't go to school because of mental or physical um issues and all sorts of issues that they they need these online options and then when we talked later today about the schools sum and pl those are more structured and and most supported schools so first um going to talk about U eore to begin with most most of our um online options have some connection be sure not all but most do so there's several reasons why students take out U excuse me online

009options um sometimes sometimes they missed a credit or they didn't do well in a class so they're remediating or sometimes they want an extra band class so they want to free up their schedule so they take an online class or sometimes they just don't like that teacher the only teacher that offers that in their school so they take an online class there's a lot of reasons this last year we had between seven and 8,000 students in outline take online courses um most of those were high school students considered this we have about 6,100 graduates in our last year so we had more students take online stuff that we had to graduated last year raise your hand if you know someone that's taken an online class okay so they we're familiar with with those some of

010those are our kids some of our neighbors um lots of reasons think I skipped it did oh well this is a just a partial list of some of the districts around us you'll notice that most districts around us have an online option down at the bottom there's a few that we've listed that don't some of our neighbors to the South Neo don't anymore they used to but most districts have an online option for their kids so eore um is an asynchronous option so students can pick it up win everything start a class over a break over a weekend they can start at any time open entry open exit there's no deadlines and they serve students 9 through 12 that's what most of our online options are focused on 44 courses are offered at e Shore

011and amongst those courses lots of separate units so students could graduate just do a shorted Again original remediation or additional credit offered and one of the things that makes our online option isore so unique is that the teachers who are teaching it created the courses and they wanted to make sure they had courses that were engaging and interactive so a student who's taken a a course gets a lot of opportunities through that course to get feedback from the teachers assignments are graded remember way back years ago when they had this was the packet remember and we had programs like well Target and other programs that had paper packets the only opt the only feedback they got was when they were finished unless they went and S it up well now along the way several assignments

012are graded along the way and they're getting feedback all along the way and they can get on and send a message to the teacher get on a chat with teacher they get a lot of help here's an example of a science course just a snapshot science course it's interactive trying to engage students um make it more interesting and get them involved in the in the curricul some of the the programs that we have in in Alpine that depend on eore is adulted which we'll talk about in a minute and explore explore we'll talk about also and even though our state auctions s soap continues our involvement inop gets larger and larger every year our East Shore involvement gets larger and larger every year it seems like we had a a really Peak during Co of

013online use then we went down and now we're we're growing again dramatically okay I want you to look at these stats if you would 50% of all ASD graduates have East Short credit on their diploma on their transcript and one in six graduates in the month of May of their senior year have credit earned through eore I just like just point out the procrastinators we are very involved in our district this is very much part of our district to have students get involved in in East Shore so you see that and see how how entrenched that is in our culture um okay we're going to we're going to talk a little bit about how eore operates and the finances and how how that all works because that's key to thinking about how we might be

014able to move forward in this area one of the things to to point out as we talked about the programs in our district there is another program that's significant in our district it's just not run by us uh our state online education program and and Lynn referred to that that is a there's six or seven different providers in the state that that work with the state our students are able to sign up for State online education credit do work it's free to them uh and then what happens is the students are enrolled at our school and then we pay uh that the state bills US every year for the the amount of credit and the amount of effort that the students have put into those and so that is another big player and we have

015a lot of students uh doing not as much as eore but that is another big player so when we show that other districts don't have an online program what that generally means is what they have is a state online education program and they're just relying on that to provide uh online education for their students so uh a couple things to remember eore is not a school it's a it's a program so it's not funded like a school students remain enrolled at their home school so uh students have to time at eore and halftime at their home school their home school keeps that student in enrollment fulltime because we want that school to still provide counseling and other services for the student but East Shore is not funded through any wpu or any kind of account

016like that don't receive trust L tssa sped CT funding through eore um East Shore has collected fees $100 registration fee and then $5 per eighth of a credit and that's waved if they finish it within 30 days so if we get somebody in and they keep moving along then they don't have to keep paying the fees um those fees have covered approximately 30% of the operational costs so 70% are funded from District funds so that's a that is a big cost um but we try to be as efficient as possible and you can we'll show a little bit how that works out eastshore has one admin Matt have one and a half teacher FTE a secretary um we have a developer that works with eore and then the other 16 teachers are non-contract positions and

017we compensate them based on a block which is basically anticipation of how many students they're going to work with throughout the year and and then some compensation for them to continue to develop their courses and make better um we also have a number of hourly employees help desk employees we have uh virtual digital curriculum coordinators and others that just help stud along the way to get enrolled and to keep them moving along can you describe virtual digital sure so we have in every high school we have digital curriculum classes where a student can go to a class they take it for say B4 or B8 and in that class they're working on eore credit in that class we have what's called a digital curriculum coordinator we have some students who are taking most of their

018credit through eore and they can't fit one of those classes in their schedule or they can't go to school and so then we have we call virtual DC coordinators so we assign them to somebody they work under Math's Direction and they are contacting the parents and the students frequently and saying you need to test on this packet how are you doing there making sure that we're keeping them up and moving so on site they're onsite at eore but they're doing most of their work virtually with um parents and students it fills some of the Gap that we lost when the Focus Center went away because the Focus Center was helping some of these students in that role um you said we have um DC coordinators at each school is that each high school or is

019that include Junior High School we have some Junior highs with DC classes um they generally the ones that have those will open those up second semester because you don't have any students really behind towards graduation till second semester but then we do have a number of Junior highs that have DC class classes second semester and then all of our high schools have some form of a DC class and we we generate a lot of of the credit aty short by having students in those DC classes where they have an adult that's that's really mentoring them and helping them a well so this slide kind of goes through some of the the finance I'm not going to go through line by line that first group is e Shore it shows you how many credits what our

020operational costs were what our fees collected were what our net cost was if you set uh uh subtract out the fees so what our cost per credit is just under $300 if you took away the fees so if next year we decide we don't want to have any fees um which is probably something to consider because s so doesn't have any fees would be around $430 this was 2324 so it's our last full year that we can pull credit um that next group was s so they they awarded 1,600 credits or so to ASD students their cost per credit was $846 um per credit so we feel great about the efficiency with which we're running e short to be able to provide credit uh just as another comparison summer school awarded about 1,600 credits about

021the same as s so and their cost was about 550 that might vary a little bit it's the little apples to oranges because we do have some gray changes that took place in summer school that might not have been fully counted there uh but our summer school and our East Shore considerably um more efficient than the S so not that s so is not a great option for some kids and and where that works well we want to make sure we continue to have that as an option that last line is if if isore wasn't there and all of that isore credit was through S soap what that cost would be so just to kind of give you those uh ideas so there is a significant financial picture here to understand when it comes to

022the short it's a lot of information any questions about any of that really quick way how do we compare with other districts I know you linked a bunch of different ones but as far as our cost per credit how do we compare to other online programs that is a great question and I don't have all of those answers um I I don't know if they all count their costs exactly the same and the programs are very different so for example Jordan District theirs is not an open entry open exit asynchronous program they run online schools so you sign up for online classes you have a first quarter class everything's due by the end of the quarter you an hour a week you're in a synchronous kind of Google meet setting um but they also don't

023allow some of the uh Above and Beyond credit that that we allow so um it's a little bit hard to to count we can try to find out some of that information but it's not uh it's not necessarily ready I mean it took us a while to even figure out our own so we we can try to get some of that I have compared cost per credit I I've talked to a vendor um that just will come into districts and say we'll either provide the curriculum and you provide the teachers or we'll provide the whole thing and they were around $900 a unit um as well when you when you go third party vendors so is that similar to like when we did the thing through BYU So when you say vendor do you mean

024I'm I'm talking about a company that comes in and says we'll just become your vendor we did that with BYU independent study I don't have the financials on that I know we didn't have as many but it wasn't successful right like people didn't use that the way we thought it would I don't think we had as many people taking BYU independent study as we thought might take that do you have a breakdown of like the person of classes that are remediation versus taking it as an alternative I guess number of credits Matt probably has a better sense of that than I do I don't know if we have the exact numbers but yeah uh yeah without the exact numbers we're about in a 55% 45% okay 55 meaning kind of categorize a few things as

025accelerators that doesn't always mean they're trying to graduate early but they're usually uh either getting ahead or replacing a cred that they would normally take in person but about 45% of them remediating their course so just a little bit above celebration thank you thanks Matt s you mentioned nonsynchronous meaning students work in isolation not with a coworker yeah asynchronous means I can get on at midnight and I work on it and then I submit it and the teacher gets on 12 hours later and grades it and synchronous would mean with the teach synchronous would mean at 2:00 we're both getting on a call and we're we're actually synchron talking synchronously um this is a breakdown of East Shore Credit by uh new uh District areas so you can see that Central uh is the the

026group that has the most credit from last year and that this is a similar pattern to what we're seeing this year so far but it is used extensively in all three areas where we have had more I think there are well I don't know the exact reasons for that so um okay so we're going to talk a little bit about options um with all that background um option one would be that we try to support as three districts together we sure to continue to serve all three districts for a period of time so one of the three districts could likely be Central because that's where they're physically located um would run eastshore but it serves other districts based on a Sher service agreement um we would Envision that probably till at least 2030 that gives

027three years of the new districts uh with a one-year deadline so wherever we put that end point we'd say at least a year in advance districts would have to declare do we want to continue this or are we going to go our own way um operational costs We Believe could remain Fair fairly consistent each year the overall costs and credit would be calculated just like we did before total cost total credit it's cost per credit and then the the hosting District would could just build the other districts um that is very similar to what s does we do all this credit through seop and at the end of the year they send a bill to business services and say the you us 1.3 million their formula is a little bit more complex they charge when

028students enroll in the course a certain amount and then when they finish the course another amount uh because we're eighth of a pack credit I think it would just be simple to say we'll just charge for completing credit um but that that could all be you know negotiated but this would be one option that we could contend it would give all of the districts till at least 2030 to get on their feet and kind of develop their own philosophies for online education without seeing this dip where we have so many students that are depending on eore credit and the worries about if that were taken away what that might do as far as graduation rate and cost and all these other things a question yes as far as the curriculum that's been developed in house

029in a district division who who do you say owns things like that that's uh a great I mean the the curriculum could be shared and it's actually this the first point here in the next option you just led into that perfectly so thank you the the next option is each each district could create their own online high school program um they could share the existing curriculum but that is much more complex than it sounds like it it might be because our our teachers have created that content and are the ones that are teaching it and they put so much interactive it's not as easy as just copying a course and sending it into the new uh LMS system there's a lot of connections there that have to be rebuilt there's a lot of work um

030that would have to do so some of the online like I talked about a vendor they've built their curriculum for really Any teacher to be able to teach this is not how we sure has been built that's not to say you couldn't have other teachers teach it it just wouldn't be uh out of the box plug- andplay simpol it would take some work to copy those courses and to establish all of those tools and connections and work across districts so because there are 16 teachers that work with East Shore I'm anticipating at any given time one teacher flows out and another teacher Flows In how do we handle that transition of curriculum when that happens so that is a situation where a new teacher comes in and uses the curriculum of the old teacher um

031generally in our courses there is only one or two teachers at East Shore that are are teaching those courses so there is a learning curve when they first come in um some of the online programs we see they'll have um a number of teachers and maybe it's teachers that are teaching full-time in the day and they just want to earn a little extra money at night so we're paying them uh x amount of dollars for every kid that they get through and they're not really doing this as their main this is kind of a side gig our current curriculum would be very difficult to run as a psychic because of the complexity a little bit it's a little bit easier if you have dedicated teachers that are using that full time it's probably the best

032way to describe it it doesn't mean it couldn't be done it just means that our curriculum wasn't really made to scale cross many teachers and I apologize cuz my my experience with it was Alpine life and learning years and years ago and at that point the teachers just came in the evening and they also had contract positions throughout the district during that is no longer that is no longer the case these are 16 teachers but they're not allocated in FTE when we allocate FTE correct so they're um they're on a little bit different Compensation Plan um where they are we compensate them through blocks it's it's probably a whole another presentation um but they get some flexibility in their teaching I mean they they often they're they're they have families they're taking care of during

033the day and they do this in the evenings but they are dedicating the significant portion of time none of them are teaching uh in a traditional classroom fulltime and then doing this on the side so and they are a dedicated group and what is the turnover rate on those 16 teachers it's probably um I've been here as ending or not ending finishing a third year uh I've hired uh four new teachers and just expand on one thing grading portion was a science teacher and the grading portion of what we hired for was given to another teacher to grade during that time while we on board a new teacher and learn the curriculum and learn Woodward so that they get familiar with that part of it first rather than just diving into the the grading because

034that's a that's a significant portion of what we do is developing the curriculum so we we gave them about six months to do that first before we add students to them so they devel new curriculum or took them six months to learn the existing curriculum uh learn the existing and develop one unit of their of what an old unit that they would have redone themselves so there's kind of an ongoing uh curriculum development plan for each one of these so as we look at old older things we're just trying to continually R um that because of that there's some great things about Easter but obviously that has pluses and minuses um so bla really quick you have a option where we like all three districts use the same program and then one where we each

035do our own have you considered an option where one of the districts chooses their own and the other two stay together that obviously is an option there are so many permutations of of options so you could say two of the districts want to stay together we could we could do that and keep that and then another District would go off on their own and use another whole service they could hire it out they could build their own they could U do a number of different things so that's all going to depend of course on the districts and what they decide one of the things to remember is that our instructors are offered based on the scale that that what we have so if it was each district doing their own there'd be significantly smaller programs

036those teachers would be difficult to work for three places at once and those so it we would lose many of our instructors and we'd lose some of the efficiency and we would probably lose some of the course offerings if we kept two of the three together then we wouldn't lose as much of the but we would still lose some so so the 16 teachers that we have that are non- contract are all of them certified in the area in which they're teaching Yes W so yeah there there clearly are other options we're presenting these two um because uh you know for for time these are two that we could consider but there's certainly other um other options we're going to give you a recommendation know that we're giving you options and we we don't present

037options that we don't think are viable but uh it would be disingenuous of us not to say well this is what that what we think is we've talked as a team um I'm not speaking for anybody else except for me and and and some of the people over here our option would our recommendation would be to support eore and serve all three districts we believe that will provide the most benefit for students and would keep the costs the lowest and would give all three districts uh you know a period of time for them to really get on their feet and then to to figure out what they want to do I have question um you were saying that they're they're paid differently and so you've got teachers is it a range of like some of

038them are part-time and some of them are full-time or are they all full-time or how so none of them are 40 hour a week full-time okay um so different ones do work different amount of hours based on on their load and that's kind of we give them uh different courses and based on the amount of students that we can anticipate will come and the amount of work that we need them to put in to redo courses that's kind of the allocation or resources that M go go through every year so some of them are working uh significantly less than others for those that are working uh the most that we allow you know it's probably uh around a half to 2third of what a full-time 40 employe one of the great benefits that you have

039we have to recognize though is because of this push in May our teachers are all you know if you ask them in May they're working 80 hour weeks they are they are up at two in the morning grading so the kids can graduate if you talk to them in November they're not working very many so it kind of evens out throughout the year and they're great with that but that is also a great benefit to us because we get that flexibility yes go ahead um so I I was not able to make the calculation from your cost uh earlier but is this like if if we get the wpu uh for one of these districts got the wpu for a a student then that student took fulltime at East Shore would the wpu pay for

040that or they have to supplement so our our current model is the school keeps the wpu so if we continue to do it like this Central District sponsored East Shore and a student from the West District they could get the wpu on the West District go to East Shore and take the courses and then East sure would just charge the actual cost back to the school so is the actual cost going to be less or than the actual cost is less yes okay oh I was going to ask when you update classes are you talking about Innovation are you talking about keeping up with State Standards or both all of the above State Standards Innovation new methodology just just you know every every teacher I know that's in a traditional class the greatest ones don't

041you know haven't laminated their lesson FS they are constantly tweaking and trying to get better that's exactly what are short teach just to clarify these are past fail classes generally right um no they're they're graded they're are a few that I think are past fail uh the no the uh it's grad just on a on a grading scale the P fail sometimes comes from the digital curriculum class that they might take in person and not all students are required to take that but that's the past fail class if they're taking it after high school um where they have the class to go in and work on each Shore but there is no there actually is no failure in this it's uh if you don't finish it doesn't go on any transcript it's either credit or

042no and then these also are the ones where like NCAA we can't use these because it disqualifies athletes correct we are not currently NCAA okay um because NCAA wants some of that synchronous and we don't have that in so that we do lose some students to other options like seop because some of the seop providers are all right we're gonna talk about a do that and Lyn's gonna talk about so we've got till nine tonight right yes okay but that will only be Julie and Stacy L I will listen to you for as long as you need all right well adult ad is one of the one of our programs that relies heavily on eore and Kip here is our director of Adult Ed has been there for decades and we appreciate what he's done

043there over at Adult Ed we have three main focuses one is to help students prepare for and earn their adult diploma so they just continue wherever they were with traditional high school and go over there and finish up we had 34 of those last year that graduated with an adult diploma they also help prepare students for a GED if if it looks like they they don't want to stay till they're 50 years old they just want to get their GED so they helped give them a preest helped teach whatever they deficient in and we had 211 geds last year from from Adult Ed the third function over there is to to help adults learn English so Kip hires uh teachers he's got a program going at warm junior high school and one go on at

044Frontier Middle School and those Frontier middles mainly at night orm junor goes all day long and the the citizens in that area just come and take English classes and Kip's program pays for much of that some of that comes from Title One funding and other funding as well so those are the the main functions of ad doed um because ad doad is so tied into e Shore organizationally they share some staff uh they use the same curriculum um we really think that uh whatever happens with e Shore probably ought to happen with the D dead they probably ought to go hand in hand here's a this bottom bullet here is they're funding for this last year so they get 6 600,000 from the state and 165,000 from the feds and they get that on a

045each year and then they apply for another Grant every three years and really depends on how well they did whether or not they get that fund next year and kid's been running a great program and continue to get funded um here's our recommendation that whatever we do with like I just said eore we do the same with doad with one uh caveat that uh if we keep each sure and it serves all three districts we want doed to serve all three districts but the English uh learn language learning classes we think that ought to be split off and let each district do that on their own it doesn't make a lot of sense to for one District to run an English class in another District when other funds are being used to help that L

046can you clarify how much TI wanted Grant money um you've talked about how that's used to enhance the adult yell do you know how much money that is no but anast might do close to 300,000 thank you so I should say yeah I'm sorry the question yeah it said that title one in grant money is used to enhance the adult elll classes and I asked how much and anal said it was around $300,000 but only at the orm location we don't contribute to the Eagle Mountain location I think that's years a little bit so from from Kip's budget about 165,000 the that goes towards the adult English learning and over at the the orm location they even have a daycare for people so parents can come drop up their daycare go to class keep up

047the kids anyway actually a preschool it's a preschool sorry I used the wrong word they don't like me I said that okay is that adult elll once a week or is it every day what is it three times a week and they have several CL several different levels anyway go ahead stay can we get the break and not to now like when you have a minute of the 34 graduate in the 2011 geds can you break it down by area so we know what we potentially I'm going to ask Kip to do that Kip did you hearer if you will do that been break down by by District okay and do we know where the participation level is in those those two locations at Frontier and orm Jr as far as the English language uhhuh

048it's huge but I don't know the 250 in or about 200 in Eagle Mountain just this is the second year of Eagle Mountain if they do it they did last year they're going to overtake our long run for to do things in and there was a waiting list out Frontier is there still um no so you got them on okay so that's Adult Ed any other questions about adulted before we move on okay appreciate Kip doing this for so many years thank you okay we're going to talk about Al online Alon online is one of our most versatile uh schools we have they are a school they do um have a director Gina wit is here she's the director and they were they were form to originally to help our homeschool parents get curriculum and

049help with teaching their students homeschool and they still do that but they they're much more than that um a lot of their students aren't just full-time H home school some of them are part-time at their neighborhood School whether that be Elementary or Junior High and some of them um come and go I mean you might have a student who needs uh to be out of school for health reasons they're going to be out for several months will that a lot of those students jump on up on online and get help while they're out then come back we also have this year we've had students go in for discipline reasons so sometimes uh even the K through 8 student will be on long-term suspension and Al online has been helping with those students as well so

050they're serving a lot of different roles which we appreciate um G as I pointed out is the the director of alant online she has four and a half teachers and one secretary and they let's see what we got I think we've already talked about some of this but they do Help U students with IEPs the home school the neighborhood school does serve the IEP but those students do uh get help in their other courses throughout online been hard to uh kind of keep track of their numbers because the the home school if they if they have an IP takes their full wpu and if they're part-time they take the full wpu so that's been a little hard to to keep track so Gina has been we're going to show you in just a moment actually

051we'll go right right now here's a snapshot of this last week last Friday this is the students that they had in Alpine online uh you'll know noce the different categories ongoing those are students that are there for at least half of the Year temporary those are students that are on Behavior or long-term suspension looks like we have one and enrolled process there and then Gina has started a Flex track just recently trying to be much more flexible and letting students take either just one class if they want um to see if we've got a market out there for those students the other students take at least three classes so our document is is this is an is this updated from this is updated the one you have on Friday was last week's numbers and I

052yeah look at the top of the one you have it has a different date on there I apologize we wanted to give you the most recent the other the table next to it though shows the breakdown of districts um and we do have a few that are not that out of District or are in a like a private school or something like that that's in our district but not in not in one of our schools did you have a questions I I have like four um are we shocker right are we still using the K12 program to support outline online the yes the K12 program is for K5 students we use a different curriculum for six and if I remember correctly it used to be with the K12 platform that if you had a student

053who was even like let's say they come in kind of mid year you still had to buy the full license for the full year is that still accurate K12 does not offer different options okay so one of my so one of my concerns is just the cost associated with the program um because the expenditures are more than our brick and mortar schools so like for example when we have 24 students that are out of District um my understanding is that we're subsidizing Alpine online and that we're essentially additionally subsidizing any students who are out of District or from non-district schools I don't have a good answer I'll address that so I think one of the questions that has been so difficult is for us to get an actual cost of what it's costing us in

054that F online we can get the cost of what we're paying the teachers and what the curriculum casses but to divide it by the number of students is difficult because that counting of number of students has has not been super clean because we have uh for years done it a certain way like when a student is on a a special ed they stay enrolled at their home school 100% if they're dual enrolled with alpine online but they get 0% enrollment um I'll be completely honest this is LIN and I's first year working with alpine online it's Gina's first year working on without pine online as the Director as the Director we we need to figure out how that actually needs to work and should work it hasn't been um it's all going to the district

055so it hasn't been as big of an issue but it's a really big issue for us right now so we've already started to have conversations like with Paul Lewis and Dava Services who does our reporting to the state uh with sped to say how is this the way we should be counting that so that we can get this cleaned up so that in the future we're going to have a better count because I don't believe that if we're counting the the students correctly that we're going to see that this is uh significantly more I think we'll actually see that it's costing less but we'll we have to we have to do those numbers so I'm I'm standing here telling you this is one that we still have to get our heads wrapped around a little

056bit because it's a very complex gen if I could add to that this year k.com changed their model so that all materials are available online they've also changed the way that we pay for courses it used to be one student have as many courses as you want so you can imagine they would charge us a maximum amount for kids taking three or five or six classes now we pay by the class we offer hardbound materials to kids but we don't not all of them take us St on that and so we're really picky about who gets and what they need so I think after this year everybody will see a significant reduction in costs simply because K12 has changed the model of how they offered that to us and that's been one of the reasons

057we wanted to stay because we believe in their curriculum knowing that it's been expensive but we are trying to mitigate costs a little bit that way I totally appreciate that I'm just concerned about like the ADM numbers that I'm seeing I still think it's significantly higher than what were in encountering in our brick and mortar and I understand that like we have to work with like the limitations which is why I kind of confirmed that like K12 was still doing the full like year um model piece so I totally get what you're saying but I do have significant concerns about the cost associated with it based on our amm so do we they they are serving about 52 to 55 students each though you back to the wpn for thatan right say that again each

058teacher's got about 52 to 55 students and so if all the wpu came to out online I think we'd be actually making money well so we're going to give you a couple options but then we're going to put an aster on our recommendation for this one um just because there's still some unknown here and we recognize there's unknown so one of the options here is uh one of the districts would pick it up and we continue to serve by doing that we'd hope to continue to serve about the same number of kids or more kids we could keep a robust faculty of you know uh I went and spent some time with this faculty yesterday they were meeting during our professional development day and the the five teachers plus Gina that was a powerful collaboration

059experience so there is some value to keeping that together um an option two would be each district could develop their own program this is purchase curriculum could do that there could be a um you you would have much smaller schools where you'd have one or two teachers instead of four or five teachers in each district um and there would probably you would lose some duplication of services so our recommendation is we want to look at at the feasibility of keeping that together but we recognize and you can see the needs at the bottom we need added Clarity for the enrollment uh how that works for sped students for part-time students how we're counting all that so that we we can accurately uh figure out how that might work across districts and how we would accurately

060show the enrollment fairly to the home school in a different district and Alpine online and make sure that that model Works um without significant cost so this is one where this is our recommendation but it has a little bit of a um an aster there because we know we have more for that needs to go into this and we just hav able to get all those answers yes have we looked at how many students that reside within Alan School District that are actually attending um Utah online which is Washington District's online school do we know we losing students we have that for the S so which is sixth grade and up but I don't have any information below sixth grade um I just curious because their numbers are super high in comparison and their district

061is relatively small in comparison so I was wondering if we're duplicating Services it's a great question the way we can get that is if Washington District sends us a bill saying these are your students enrolled with us we need to BU property tax they'll send the addresses and we'll verify but that's the way we have they sent Bill I don't I don't know we we do that between districts on everything but I haven't seen one recently that's called Utah all right I'm going to let Lynn talk quickly about explore so explore explore is new this year and it's it's a meant to be temporary for students so students are on long-term suspension or through the student services or if the school just needs a extended timeout with the students so they can get some services

062we serve them and explore they use um eore curriculum the teachers get online with them have appointments with them almost daily these kids trying to work their way through the the curriculum then on Wednesday afternoons they come in and meet um it is part of the old Focus Center the the discipline part of the the old Focus Center is explored we have two teachers there plus halftime special ed teacher to help with those students we are recommending that uh when the district splits that we don't continue with explore that uh because it's so tied to student services that uh it wouldn't seem very wise to have students temporarily coming across district lines to get counseling in one district and then go back just I think uh we think that those districts all need to come

063up with their own own option to help students who that are on long-term suspension any questions about Explorer okay okay um so we're going to now transition we talked about online and there's a lot of information and I apologize as we've done this tried to pair it down and every time people say but I need this information so we've just tried to put it in and and be efficient um but we're excited to talk to you a little bit about alternative and youth and Care schools Lynn talked about online is often built for um flexibility where we can serve kids depending on their needs they can do work wherever they are from home in the middle of the night they can work around you know we have students doing online that are uh preparing for

064the Olympics or doing all sorts of have different needs our alternative in Youth and Care is kind of the other end of the Spectrum where these students often need more support they need more structure they need more adult intervention they need face-to-face um help and so that's uh we're talking about Polaris and Summit uh we create those specifically um because there are students that need those kind of services that we just aren't able to offer in our Traditional School settings um online options are usually built for flexibility talk about that but our alternative more for support uh we do this through lower staff to student ratios uh these schools don't offer all the course offerings a traditional High School does they don't have the extracurricular activities and some of those other options but they do

065have uh that adult to student connection and that is the the secret sauce that makes it all work with these schools U but it is expensive and we we recognize that these schools are a significant investment um we look at it as we're investing in their lives now to help them to have a great experience to graduate and that's going to pay off greatly uh for society as a whole we would rather invest a little bit more money now to help them so that they can have full and productive lives and not have all the problems that that might come with with failure at this level um we often hear in alternative schools from our students they didn't feel like they belonged and they they're they're at our they're poison Summit and now they feel

066like they're belonged so it's a it's a great way to explain those schools I'm going to let Lynn talk a little bit he's been involved with alternative schools for his whole career so let give him just thank you um he says thank you and that's sincere I started with all um alternative schools over 30 years ago my first job in Alpine District was to teach at Summit in an isolated class I was the teacher and some of those courses I was very well prepared to teach and others I was just one day ahead of those students um so as I look at what Su and plis are doing now and I compare that with what I was providing then I was given them I was it was a disservice to those students to be isolated

067like I was but the thank you part comes in to the board through the years and administration continued to improve our facilities continued to say what's best for these kids and we kept consolidating until we had some high school and later on we had Polaris High School um to serve students better they have an incredible experience of these schools I I'm in them almost daily okay I don't go in on Saturdays but the other days I'm there and I see dedicated teachers years and I see students I it was interesting before coming to get this experience I was at orm high school and my my love for alternative world is throughout I mean 17 years of my career have been in alternative schools so at Oram I tried to do what I could for those

068kids and then I came to this job and I saw students at Polaris and Su that I knew at or high and they weren't going to graduate at or high and I've seen them graduate at flis High School SCH summer high school you know Mike Matos you all have heard of him educational Guru he goes on and on about all students all students need an education and a lot of those students get that in alternative schools we as a district could not claim that we serve all students if we forgot about our alternative schools um I remember just a few years ago when I was over Summit as the principal there was a little daycare kid a toddler we had a lot of them but this one now I see it Polaris every day so

069I saw him when he was a one or twoy old toddling around his his mom was a summit student lots of difficulties now he just needs a little bit more help in math he's on track to graduate he'll graduate on time and that's a product of alternative schools getting kids ready to go his mom believes in education enough to get her son to school and he's going to he's going to succeed uh blae mentioned that these schools are a little bit more expensive than the other schools that's absolutely true the other day though I spent about five minutes on Google and just typed in cost of high school dropouts lots of studies came up the conservative figure is 250,000 per for Dropout now other studies had that much higher we're going to be asking for

070more money than other schools are asking for but we still think it's an investment in our students that they're productive and and can help in society so thank you for the support so far in Al turn Bo yes Mark no I just wanted to chime in uh every time I attend a graduation I am inspired and I get the distinct impression that for most of these students this is their last chance you know what I mean if they don't if we don't catch them they are going into a life of crime a lot of them their families are in drugs and it's like it's it's a rescue uh operation that um you can't underestimate the impact it has on the student's lives thank you um I appreciate that and thank you all for coming to

071graduations thank you for coming to the schools during Associates or the teen center openhouse coming and supporting I appreciate you being invested in those schools I told you I've been involved with alter schools 17 years so a lot of my career I have not been it's been 16 years I haven't been in alternative schools I still go I've been to every one of exter one of their graduations because it reminded me every year here why I'm an educator whether I was in that school or not I went to their graduation and I came away thinking I can do better I can make a bigger difference than I am now anyway it's something we need to invest in alternative school is just a snapshot of some of them around us uh we we are surrounded by

072districts with alternative schools because it's important a few years ago as you all know Jordan District split and so as we are cont play splitting I know a lot of our thoughts go to Jordan District and what was their experience um for several years the new District Canyons did not have an alternative school but those students continued to go to Valley High School in Jordan until until Canyons developed an alternative school in 2015 we believe that that could happen here too that students can cross District Lance to continue to get service okay so how might that happen uh we're going to give some more facts and figures and uh try to answer questions just to give you an idea of enrollment so this top one is all the students last year uh this is total

073number of students sered we know that students come and go a little bit especially from uh at Summit that's a much more uh transient school and so we never at any time have 496 students in those schools to give and I did this was a snapshot enrollment uh right at the beginning of of the term um after Christmas break so is the acronym why I see youth in court youth in care it used to be you youth in custody but it's Now Youth and care that's a great question sorry for not that's all right um so one of the great things uh Summit is largely funded and we'll talk about this but is largely funded through uh a grant from the state to take care of our youth and Care students students that are in

074state custody in foster care or in group homes uh the state allows us to educate other students that aren't youth in care along with those students because it's a benefit to our youth in care they benefit from having other students at the school because that population is a little more stable they don't come and go as fast uh if you've ever been to Summit you just know the the culture there of caring and these other um non- youthin care students that go to Summit are really carry that culture so it's a benefit and the state is aware of this and knows and are great as long as we it continues to be a win-win yes so I remember a couple years ago they said that the state does pay but it's like we subsidize more

075as a district than what they were giving is that true so the state pays for for us to educate the youth and custody kids at any given time um well I'll go to this one and then I'll come back we have about a 100 students at Summit that's kind of been the average about half of them maybe a little less than half are youth in custody around half are non- youth in custody uh about 85% of the funding for Summit comes from uh the state through this Youth and care so really the that youth and Care Grant Is subsidizing Us educating are the non- youth in care so we're actually getting a great deal for for that thank you board member Lincoln had a question oh sorry thank you um I'm looking when I look

076at your 23 24 school year and then the snapshot in January 25 it's significantly lower is that a typical Trend that those schools will grow between January and the end of the year or is this year and so this one is the total students serve throughout the year so 322 different students came through Polaris at any given time during the year but at any single time it's around 200 um so at our in January there was about 200 we anticipate we would serve over 300 kids but about 200 in any given time because we're getting new kids throughout the year and we graduate just last week we had 10 students graduate from Polaris where they graduated early so we celebrate them and had a graduation ceremony and but now we have 10 students less then

077we added new students today um so we have a number you anticipate the end of the 2425 those numbers will look like the 23 24 yeah they'll probably be we're down just a little bit this year so it'll be similar but maybe not quite the same so just two ways to look at it to kind of give you an idea we tried to give you an idea by uh areas as well Central South and West so the snapshot of January 2025 if I was look like a snapshot of January 2024 they would be very simil similar yeah and if I can just say one thing I think we're coming from referral schools one of the reasons we're requesting this is the sophomores this year um that are being referred um will finish and I think

078there is hesitation to send students to a school that they won't graduate from so Clarity does matter to continue enrollment or not for schools because they do their refering and they want you know families have questions about what this looks like in the next few years for student so I'm sorry can I just ask you a question yeah so are you are you saying that like parents because they know the districts are splitting they not refer their kids they're concerned um we have parents requesting but they're they want Clarity right they they don't want to move a kid at risk and then moving another kid at risk cuz where would they go leave you know their home school come here for two years then go back to their home school for their last year that

079feels confusing so that that clar unclarity is so and students that are sophomores this year would finish so they wouldn't have that unclarity or that unclarity depends on what the board does with the program between now and then I think that's why there's some uncertainty as well it's not just when the new District start it's what what is the continuity of that program over the next coup and we know we won't have answers until New boards but part of what we would ask is that uh I know there's going to be a lot on new boards plates right off the bat but this is will be a significant decision that will impact um our students and we'll need to have plans for them to transition in or transition out depending on how this looks um

080yeah go ahead just a little data on the enrollment at Polaris so for FY 24 the October one count was like at 200 um and then the average daily membership when you do that and then divide by 180 it was 209 but the cumulative count was 318 so there's that many but on average it stays about there yep um I broke it down by high school at Polaris we don't have this number yet for summer we can work on getting that but you can see there are different schools that seem to identify students that are good fits for cl um more than more than others but we do have IP ation from all of our schools and uh all of our schools are sending students this was not in the uh previous slide deck I

081shared with you this was a late edition this is surprising to me is yes is that so there's a couple different things when I look at this day one point that I wonder One does like the principal's previous placement have an impa for instance um Dr Smith out at Westlake used to be over CL so is it because he's more aware of those resources um and then the other question I wonder is like West Lake looks like it's leading on not completely leaning out but it's towards no it is towards the high end but then if I also compare Westlake student count to say that of choga or mountain or even like Mountain View it's almost double right so if you looked at um compared to their student count I don't think weslake and sear

082Valley are much different than than the norm um couple that would stand out Mountain View and Pleasant Grove I think those have traditionally B schools I don't think it necessarily ties back to a single person or principal at those schools I think um there are cultures that build up often within counseling departments uh where they have seen success and they they um maybe just believe in that a little bit more or identify kids a little bit different Hannah is taking calls from our schools do you have anything to add as far as why some schools might you know I think in Al we have we traditionally move around I've been out west I've been at Frontier I've been at Lei I've been at Summit I've been at Claire's um and I do think um we

083talk about M uh the multi-tier system of support and it is true when you get a new counselor or a different admin who have had who know how to do the tiered systems right we know 3 to 5% will show up in tier three and it's can we identify those students and I've been at schools that don't identify tier three before tier three doesn't exist in a school anymore right their dropouts because they haven't been able to catch them in time to give them the supports and so I have seen even in the last two years that I've been at feris trends of schools where you have new administrators new counselors who who know how to when to catch a student when to refer them to get them to that spot um and you do

084have people um who have had touches of success and recognize that a program can serve and it when I'm at Lehi it was easier for me to identify students who would be successful because I had worked with them and so I could say hey you know I could I see kids differently because I had been in an alternative setting before one thing I would also add is we you we have worried that okay maybe some schools um know better than others or we just aren't getting the information out and so our team has said what can we do to try to to make sure that everybody has that information so like for one thing we did last summer we sponsored during the summer two different occasions so that administrator from across the district could come

085and spend a half a day they tour suit and players we talk them about each one of our programs uh we gave them uh information we've created a whole website with information about all of our programs to try to just help make sure that it's a Level Playing Field and that everybody has an equal opportunity to use these programs and because we we've worried that maybe it's word of mouth or something and so we've tried to really take on that challenge of making sure that everybody knows about our programs in you going to talk about their graduation rates um graduation rate Polaris is knocking it out of the park they uh 85% last year is that correct Anna y um so we in just three or four years ago was down in the 60% range

086and so uh this started before Hannah came but Hannah has continued that onward Trend and we just are doing great things uh getting students prepared I think we have over 1100 graduates that have come through Polaris or is it even higher than that yeah Polaris has existed for about 13 years and I think it's just over 1100 and they're rolling you're rolling off atsi right uh CSI yeah CSI yeah coming off yes this next year they should release us when we graduate this year in October when the countless finalized we should be released awesome and then I have another question so this is like a 3 years ago my brain so you can just tell so it used to be that like every school had x amount of spots yes um these numbers are clearly

087more than what the spots were so is it just you have expanded your capacity of teachers and what they can handle and so now you're taking everyone are there still a waiting list of like these kids could really use it like how do you so we in general we accept all students um even within our rubric we' worked really well with the schools I have said no to zero students this year wanting to come even those who don't quite fit in the rubric because if we can contain everyone in the rubric then we have we have some room to have some gra um what has the only thing we have ever restricted is special ed spots because we only have one specialized teacher and so we have that kind of ratio so Cedar Valley Westlake

088they get well Westlake for sure gets the most students down to I think you know or gets two special students um once again I've said zero no to zero students this year so some students um because not every school has filled all their spots so I kind of I tell I tell admin call me just call me so I can look at my total and then see yes we can come because these ones are going to graduate so we try to keep it fair um but once again when people call and ask we've been able to accommodate for that and and not overload you know the ratio of special ed to I Know Dan covers a different set of kids but and talk about your graduation rate and just uh our graduation rate um has

089consistently trended upward it's a little trickier in that we get so many students that leave or come to us in March or April of their senior year with four credits but we take them all because they are y so it's a little bit more challenging but uh I like to look at our numbers more than even our percentage because each year we're graduating average 35 students each year uh those are 100% students that wouldn't have graduated without without without theam yes I'm sorry I just have to provide some testimonials I have talked to so many students that had never passed a class before because they could not sustain more than like a week of ATT one week of attendance before they would have something else gone in their life and so the fact that you

090can you can kind of do one class for a week and and get a credit all of a sudden they they're successful and then they're successful in graduating and in life and I just I just feel like this is so critical for students uh the students that have that trouble sustaining attendance uh there's no way they could ever succeed in a normal high school yeah those mini term setup really does help um this population quite a bit so um sorry we are grateful and like Lynn said we're so grateful for the support but we have a hard you know decision on how we can continue to have these services for all the great students that currently are in Alpine and we'll be in three great new districts um here's a little bit of reality we

091talked about it Summit gets most of their funding from the state yic Grant even though about half of their students are not y Polaris gets very little specialized funding um and we've gotten a little bit of teen center money we've gotten some CSI money the normal things like trust lands and tssa and sped and CTE um so one of them is a really great deal for our nony kids and another one costs uh quite a bit we've got four options the last line you said that they have worked at Cost cutting we have worked so Polaris has uh there's been so much change in Polaris we had Polaris and then we had Polaris West and Polaris and then we put them back together then we moved locations and through all that over the last several

092years um we've asked uh Hannah and Corey before that to say how can we try to bring down the cost per student and they have cut some teaching positions we cut an administrative position cut counseling positions and so we are trying to to be as lean as possible at pois because we're we are aware of the cost for sure okay I can ask a side question and we can maybe talk about this later but um with the reduction in admin and I know we're looking for an increase in SRO but have you felt like your load has gotten like is it sustainable without that other Adent piece and if you want to talk about it later just tell me we'll talk about it later we can talk about it later okay so we have some

093options and we're we we're aware of the time so I'm going to try to go fast I'm going to put a bunch of things but please know I've tried to do some calculations to just show a general idea I am not Jason and I don't want to be Jason he is great at this he is so awesome at this and he would uh but I did sit down with la le and with b and try to check some of my numbers to make sure my thinking was at least right and so I have some confidence that we're in the ballpark but probably not exact when it comes to kind of what this would cost for different options so we're going to talk about option one maintaining summoned players as separate entities to serve on three

094districts so what we would Envision a central district that's where it resides currently would run summon Polaris but serve uh students from the other districts based on a shared service agreement again we would probably ask until a commitment till 2030 um my understanding is that the lease on the building that they're currently in goes until 2030 so that will necessarily be a pivot point where some decisions will have to be made by Central District and by all the districts um and so we think it would be great to try to make some decisions up until that time um we believe that if we can keep the students coming the operational cost will remain fairly consistent we can continue to run these programs largely like they are But continuing to try to improve them like we

095have um Summit would serve all the youth and Care students from all three districts regardless of numbers so if a student's youth in care and they come to Summit they're in um Central District could continue to provide busing uh we have talked we can even if Central District takes a bus route to another district and picks up students and brings them that can be reimbursable from the state so a large portion of that cost could be reimbursed have to make sure that all of those routes have 10 students on them so that that um those can remain reimbursable there would be a little additional cost and we could add a little bit into Central into that calculation um but I have not done that in the calculations you see so but where you're talking you

096know um 15 cents a mile or 18 cents a mile it's not that's not going to add up to huge amounts of money um so here's a Poss funding uh agreement that could one way you could do it is you could just say um Polaris and Summit cost this much and uh we're going to subtract out all the specialized money we get and then say well Central District has 41% of the kids so they're going to take 41% of the cost and they get 41% of the slots they get 41% of the the spaces um as you've heard us talk th those numbers fluctuate so we're a little hesitant to say we want to have slots because there are certain times where there would be more Central kids than we have slots for and two

097months later there might be room in central but not in the South so we're a little hesitant on the slot so we we've come up with a potential other way that you could do this you could take the per pupal cost so calculate the per puple cost subtract out the specialized funding that's money that comes with the student or for a specialized purpose so that's your Youth and care money that's your um CSI money it's your sped money that comes with the student it's your trust lands and tssa that were given per student and then you would subtract out the wpu um and that would be what we would charge for a student that is enrolled for all 180 days if you have a student who enrolled less we'd use that percentage so there'd have

098to be some bookkeeping here to make this happen so those specialized funding sources we went through through line by line on the budgets for Summit players and subtracted out Youth and custody money sped money CT money trust Sons money tssa money CSI money t so we took that out so when you see where we say this is the specialized funding that's what it is is it's those sources so here's if we were doing this a year ago so if this was fy2 24 we just took so FY 27 or 28's numbers would be different but this would be the the the rationale or how you could do it the methodology per pupil we would use ADM as the and add the average facility cost which is how they do it now using ADM and the

099average facility cost sum it cost about 33,000 per pupil Blair's cost about 30,000 per pupil the specialized funding sources by the way I have link to a spreadsheet that has a whole bunch of stuff on there um and I'm happy to sit down with you any time and go through that if you like spreadsheets so of the 33,000 Plus at Summit 28594 comes from uh yic sped CTE for the non yic students so if you say the yic students are paid 100% the non yic students 28,000 of their 33,000 comes from those specialized sources and Polaris of their 30,000 3500 comes per people so a much smaller number the wpu $44.95 that's actually this year's I made a mistake there um I didn't go back and recalculate but last year would have been like 4470

100so $25 difference um so here's what it would look like if um so say Central is running that for every non yic student at Summit you take the 33,000 you subtract out 28,000 you subtract out the wpu other districts would actually reimburse only $410 for every student that goes to Summit that's a nony student Polaris on the other hand 30,000 per pupil you take out the specialized funding of 354 the wpu of$ 44.95 and so the other District would have to reimburse Central 22,4 for every student that comes so if you went back and said well what would that look like in um 23 24 so taking our my best estimate of the average daily membership the South would pay would have paid the central if this was in place last year about $1.6 million

101the West would have paid the central about 1.3 the Central's contribution would be about 1.5 the rest of the cost in add addition to those would all be those specialized funding sources the wpmu money and U the other sources of funding playing on the summit one so if that's based on the grant does that mean if you had more students on that number go upright because it's a f number so that Grant they're given money for next year based on about how many students they've had in the past year and our numbers in at Summit have been fairly consistent over the last several years because we have several um youth homes in our area and so that kind of those youth homes have so many people in them and so that that number of YC

102students is not very widely so we kind of know how much you we going to get that's been a fairly consistent number is that correct Dan that's how they fund us per bed not so we know how many beds are okay um option two we're going to go fast this would be one where we could conceivably take Polaris Summit and combine them into one school and say instead of two separate schools we're going to have one school serves all the nony kids that currently are serving in Summit and the YC kids and the kids in it would be a much bigger school um we would have the same kind of agreement where all three districts participate we could save a little bit of money um because there would be some uh com there would be

103some overhead costs that we could consolidate some of the teaching positions we have are so that we can have enough courses to offer and so you know we have three teacher three Math teachers at that school and three at that school if we combine them we might need five instead of six some of those kind of situations um we would still do the the busing uh we would still try to have day cartin Center and so forth um we would use a similar formula we could probably eliminate 8 to 10 positions We Believe out of the total of those two schools one thing that needs to be said here is that it's not as easy to just combine two schools as it sounds like I some in Polaris are are fantastic places but they have

104unique cultures and they have unique programs and they run different differently stomach gets new kids every day and students leave every day poers gets kids at the quarter breaks and they leave at graduation time that just changes the way that schools run so we would lose if we combined we would lose some of the services but we could save a little bit of money and we wanted to give you all the options so uh based on that the combined school cost would be about 177,000 instead of some kids at 410 and some kids at 22 every kid would be about 177,000 subtract the 44.95 would be about 12,000 per student that would come to that school so just to to go ahead the cost for this last year would be those numbers so in each

105of those cases it's about $400,000 less so the question would be is that amount of money worth combining those schools and especially combining them only for probably three years because in 2030 there's probably going to be uh some few future decisions made so there's a lot of up people to close a school combine them reculture them potentially rename them just to to then have another big decision point in three years but that's a that's an option that could be considered can I say sorry I swear I wasn't going to say but a parent did bring this up and just one thing um there is cultural impact combining Youth and care with alternative parents do have opinions about a student who is anxious depressed going to an alter to a school with you think care now

106we can kind of parse you know look at the complete picture but that is a concern for parents um to just merge them together we got two minutes and and two options and they're going to go fast so option three would be there would be a scenario where you could say we'll keep Summit to serve the youth and Care students across all three districts they largely are funded from the state and each district could then take their alternative students and create their own programs um option four would be that everybody just does their their own thing they take all their youth and Care students and all their alternative and they create all new programs for each um I think one of the questions you'd have to ask is that cost of 1.6 or 1.3 million

107a year sufficient to to go on your own as a new District I think this is something new boards will have to wrestle with and say could we create an a quality program for our students using um that amount of money so uh those are all the options I'm going to give our recommendation and again just reminder this is my recommendation as I've talked to LY think he say his recommendation and our team I don't want to speak for everybody in the district or everyone at the table but but this is ours and ours would be option we believe that it's very viable to keep them together we also believe that there is some benefit to having that stability through the reconfiguration for our communities to know that these uh services are in place and

108within three years then new districts can can decide what they're going to do but that would help us in uh and we can plan for what's going to happen after 2030 that will help us not have a lag and have graduations that should have happened that won't and all of those kind of things it will also help us to avoid a school closure and will I think will help us to signal to our communities that uh we are continuing to take care of all of our students so that's that is would be our recommendation and belief but but we've given you others because we want to give you all the viable options a lot to give you thank you for your attention we're happy to talk if you have any other questions any questions from

109the board okay a lot of information I appreciate you breaking the complexity down of that the the nature that these are schools actually within the central district which has some ramifications as well board's aware of that and some of the challenges associated with that so lots of cress through so thank you very much okay so we're on break until board meeting at 6 thank you everybody e e e to our school board meeting this evening um we're going to call the meeting to order um our Pledge of Allegiance will be led by Scott suner and then our inspirational thought will be given by Julie price e as I was given this assignment um I thought a little bit about what I should say and I landed on this uh why did teachers administrators District Personnel

110board members classified employees choose to work with students in education why do we pour our hearts into classrooms into lesson plans into sometimes CH the challenging work of guiding and inspiring young minds the answer lies in the profound truth of the late read a Pearson's words every child deserves a champion an adult who will never give up on them who understands the power of connection and insists that they become the best they can possibly be education is not merely about imparting knowledge it's about building Champions it's about recognizing the inherent potential within each student and fostering it with unwavering belief we educate to forge connections that illuminate Pathways to success we educate to instill the confidence needed to overcome obstacles we educate to empower individuals to discover and unleash their unique Brilliance the why of

111education is to create a world where every child regardless of their circumstance has the opportunity to thrive to contribute and to become the best version of themselves championed by those who believe in them wholeheartedly [Applause] thank you so much for that next up we are going to do some recognitions um first up board member Peterson all right we invite hiy and principal Jenny Moore to come forward can stand right there Hy Rowan a second grade student at Windsor Elementary was one of eight Utah students selected to win a $2,000 College savings scholarship in the 2024 Make Your Mark bookmark contest the cont that's amazing the contest sponsored by my 529 and the Utah Board of higher education invited students throughout the state to create an original bookmark design good job congratul [Applause] it's [Applause] we

112would like to now now invite um Matt Matt uh and his principal Matthew and his principal is Julie here I didn't see Julie or Carrie sorry Carrie I see Julie I see Carrie oh Matt we're so glad you're here tonight the State Board of Education recently announced that Matthew wooly a science teacher at Mountain Ridge Junior High has been selected as a finalist for the presidential Awards of excellence and Mathematics and Science teaching this is the highest honor bestowed by the United States government speciic specifically for K through 12 science technology engineering mathematics and or Computer Science teaching finalists serve as models for their colleagues inspiration to their communities and leaders in the Improvement of stem education Matt congratulations and way to represent [Applause] ready [Applause] Alpine School District is thankful for so many teachers

113and staff members who excel in making a difference for students parents colleagues and others tonight we would like to recognize nominees who have been elected to receive the Alpine School District rise award which stands for remarkable inspiring selfless encouraging board member Bon uh we'd like to invite up Mike Jones who's a teacher at Timberline Middle School and Mike you're you are here we're so glad you're here tonight and also Julie price his principal um Mike has been nominated Mr Jones has been nominated by Courtney rasband uh Courtney wrote Mr Jones has been encouraging uh in the rise acronym in December while teachers had so many responsibilities with the end of the term Mr Jones took the time to write an encouraging email about our daughter he addressed it to me my husband and even copied

114the school administration Mr Jones had observed specific positive qualities in our daughter in our daughter and wanted to make sure that they were recognized he went above and beyond to encourage her to continue working on these great qualities and to make us aware of what he saw in her thank you Mr Jones for exemplifying the encouraging part of [Applause] Rise sorry I think I started a thing okay next we're very excited to welcome up Mrs Jorgenson yay and then I'm not sure is Lacy here by chance no do you see is Lacy here no okay oh I didn't even see you there okay yep please come forward the person who nominated you okay we've got we've got it together now we're we're all ready Lacy wrote Mrs jensson is such an amazing teacher she makes

115learning a fun engaging experience every day for the students going over and Beyond to make it a fun learning experience I've loved having my daughter in her class and always hearing the exciting stories of what they are learning in class my daughter has never wanted to read more and has grown this year because of Mrs Jorgenson she loves her students and we appreciate her very much for all of her hard work congratulations Mrs Jorgenson next we'd like to invite Natasha Tracy to come forward with principal Lori B from Vineyard Elementary Natasha is a teacher re U who was nominated by Megan Rodriguez an employee at Vineyard Megan wrote Natasha goes above and beyond to create a loving and supportive environment for her students making each one feel valued and capable her dedication is unwavering she

116works tirelessly overcoming challenges with perseverance and Grace she is deeply invested in the success of all her students consistently finding ways to help them grow academically and personally Natasha is an amazing asset to Vineyard Elementary and her F fifth grade team next we'd like to invite Mrs McLaren and principal b car from Frontier to come forward so Mrs McLaren was nominated by Ryland Levy who's a student Ryland wrote Mary McLaren will always have a special place in my heart I came to her classroom as a shy little seven grader who didn't understand ASL or its impact on the world and me I developed a love and passion for the language through her many of the concepts she taught me have stuck with me I love the laughable moments and the memories they've been given I

117learned about different stories how to interpret songs and how to sword fight with pool noodle swords she helped me in so many ways she truly is a fantastic person and teacher thank you Mrs McLaren [Applause] see e [Applause] TR thank you for for those that have come tonight to be recognized and for family and friends we appreciate you thank you for being here this evening we also wanted to congratulate Lone Peak High School the 2024 2025 6A girls State basketball champions this is their fourth consecutive year in winning award certificates have been sent to the school and will be given to the student athletes during their own recognition ceremony so let's just give a hand to the Lone Peak girls basketball team okay so we now have up to 30 minutes set aside for public

118comment this opportunity is allocated for patrons living with the Alpine School District boundary a signup sheet was available prior to this meeting allowing up to 10 patrons the opportunity to speak those living outside of Alpine School District and those who were unable to sign it before all slots were full can submit written comments at alpineschools.org Schoolboard scanning the QR code in Lobby will also direct you to that form as you were called up please introduce yourself by stating your name you'll be given up to 3 minutes to speak while the board does not engage in a discussion during the public comment period they may arrange for a staff member to communicate with you later Personnel issues are not appropriate discussion items for an open meeting environment if you have a Personnel concern please contact a

119member of administration or put your concerns in writing and address it to the board of education so we have Molly barington who is signed up to give public comment this evening so Molly hello I'm Molly barington and I live in Lehigh and um I have no concerns at the moment I just wanted to thank you guys I know that since November has not been an easy time for you guys and I know that it increased your workload by at least double and I just wanted S I appreciate you guys so much in how much you care for our kids and for what a good example you set and for how hard you're willing to work to make sure things go well even if it's not your particular preference you always put in 100% And I

120truly truly appreciate that and I appreciate especially the administration who have taken suggestions to heart and really really truly in care for our kids and I just wanted to thank you for that and thanks for letting us hang out with you on Tuesdays thank you Molly okay um okay um do we need to approve the minutes do we have a motion to approve the minutes I motion that we approve the minutes second okay we have a motion by board member Peterson and a second by board member Wilson any discussion seeing none all in favor please say I I I next the claims uh doc Dr fernworth I was goingon to say Dr superintendent and that wasn't right and so I had to pause thank you president King so you have received the routine business for

121this month this board meeting and I recommend you accept the routine business are we doing claims first yeah let's do claims first I you've received the claims recommend you accept the claims okay do we have a motion I move that we accept the claims second a motion okay we have a motion by board member b and a second by board member Clement any discussion seeing none all in favor please say I I Dr Farnsworth yes the routine business you have received that as well and I recommend you accept the routine business kti we have a motion I move that we approve the routine business do we have a second a second okay we have a motion by board member Wilson and a second by board member Peterson any discussion may I just mentioned that we

122are approving the renewal of our business administrators uh contract and we just really super are super appreciative of Jason sunberg and all that he does he and his team thank you very much congratulations okay we have uh motion by board member Wilson a second by board member Peterson all in favor please say I I I any opposed that passes unanimously okay if we can move on to the action items we have two both addressing calendars we invite uh Dr Joel Perkins to come forward his chief of staff who has overseen the calendar committees and we recommend that you approve the 2627 school calendar and then we'll we'll proceed to that one and then we will address the recommendation for future calendar adoptions you have in front of you the uh 2627 draft it's the single

123calendar like this the only changes that have been made since our last discussion was the question about minimal days we met with the committee the committee was very supportive of placing those so you can see that those are designated on December 18th and on May 28th and that's that half slash that you can see uh representative of the minimal day placement everything else about this calendar is I don't want to say practically perfect in every way but it is a fairly nice calendar any questions that I can entertain okay um since this is an action item I will entertain a motion I move that we approve the 26 27 school year calendar a second okay so we have a motion by board member Lincoln and a second by board member baitman do we have any

124discussion I just want to thank the calendar committee they did a great job on this and it really is practically perfect thank you okay all in favor of approving the 2026 20207 School Calendar please say I I any opposed that passes unanimously thank you just to remind the public the board had asked the calendar committee to also look at three future year calendars with the uh expectation that if we could find a calendar we could possibly make a recommendation to Future boards that all three districts adopt those similar calendars for those subsequent years so we appreciate the calendar committee the extra load that they took on to not only create the 2627 but also three addition additional calendars and we recommend that the board recommend to Future boards to consider those similar calendars across all

125three districts I move that we recommend the following um calendar drafts uh 2728 28 29 and second okay so we have a motion by board member Wilson and a second by board member Lincoln any discussion I just want to also say thank you for all of the Practically Perfect calendars I just can I interrupt quickly just one say I want to just indicate uh again with these calendars the changes were the placement of the minimal days and we did we had two bits of feedback that came from our last board meeting uh there was a request or to look at and discuss with the community do we look at that teacher work day on that first Monday back for those last two calendars the committee as we discussed it preferred the option of making the

126Thursday a minimal day and then recommending that the two Fridays be a flexible teacher workday similar to what we've done in the past in which though the employee works with their supervisor to determine when they would work that day during the course of the break I just want to yeah reiterate thank you for all of the additional work I think one of the things that we heard repeatedly from teacher was were concerns about you know what if I teach in one District but reside in another how will that work with you know um being able to be on the same schedule as my own child also being able to support plc's and professional development especially in our secondary schools where so many Singletons are working you know across across schools and so really appreciate the

127additional work that went into this I know it was a lot more work to go from one to four but just highly appreciative of how I think this will be beneficial for for for our staff so thank you for that investment Dr Perkins absolutely have a tremendous committee I do also want to call the attention to the back page that was the request of the board last time to explain the rationale and reasoning to Future staff and board members so that will be included in that recommendation perfect thank you so much any other comments okay I just saw the back so thanks for pointing that out um and thank you for the layout on this that it I just this is fantastic FC and I love that we'll be able to hand those to new

128boards and say this is the work and this is why so thank you for putting this to end so quickly thank you okay so we have a motion by board member Wilson and a second by board member Lincoln to recommend the adoption of the calendars for the 2027 28 2028 29 and 2029 30 school years all in favor please say I I any opposed that passes unanimously superintendent thank you Dr Perkins thank you for your work and the committee's work on that that will benefit many students parents and employees in years to come next item we have is policy 5185 sexual harassment the student section version of that we invite our legal councel Craig Brinkerhoff to come forward to answer any questions that the board has we appreciate the work of the policy committee on

129combining and retiring and updating our policies and if the board feels um so moved then we would recommend that after your discussion that you move this to an action item and retire policy 5185 this is uh number three of four that we plan to retire dealing with sexual harassment and then we will keep one which is the 7150 um so any questions I move that we uh move policy 5185 to an action item to retire point of clarification since it's listed as an action item do we need a motion to make it an action item probably not I just did good point but if you want to do if you want to do it Sarah you can make the motion okay I thank you I move that we uh I move that we approve the

130retirement of policy 5185 sexual harassment have a second okay so we have a motion by board member be and a second by board member Lincoln any discussion we had a great discussion today Kimberly Moore from the district came in and gave us an indepth um we had an in-depth discussion on sexual harassment and as we went through the policy I think members of our policy team could agree that we all felt really comfortable because it has part of that has been through the office of civil rights that has worked with us and helped us better the policy and we feel comfortable I think I can speak for all three of us but we feel comfortable at the heftiness of the policy and we feel that by retiring this it's not going to do anything but

131it's our next policy is going to be very robust and it and very clear and succinct as far as the sexual harassment policy of what the district will have in the future I'll just comment that one of one of our weaknesses actually in uh the audit by OCR was that we' had so many policies and so this is a strengthening of the policy not a weakening and also I just feel like U this we talked a lot about the reporting process and the follow-up process um has been strengthened um and we just appreciate Craig's work and also how he incorporates the people who know about all these things and um just appreciated our our meeting today uh with Kim and point of clarification when I mentioned that the OCR was involved it's not because we

132have so many sexual harassment issues in the district I probably should clarify that it is because that we were we could do better with our reportings our findings and making sure that we're keeping track of that did you want to add anything to that Craig so the the main things that we bolster in the in the policy that uh we'll redo with the 7150 is our record keeping is a big piece of that as well as our supportive measures um going forward um in the audit that they did with us there was there was some gaps in both of those areas and so we've tried to shore those up and also put in to practice some additional ways that we can report especially when it comes to um staff related sexual harassment and I I

133just also comment that um one of the recommendations is that there be greater visibility or access to our public and so on our website if you look under families it's under Title Nine um this is where you can find um forms whatever you need information about any problems that may occur okay so we have a motion by uh board member b and a second by board member Lincoln to approve policy 5185 retire the sexual harassment policy all in favor please say I I any opposed okay that passes unanimously superintendent yes we have the uh discussion item the fiscal year 2026 school fees and spend plans those were reviewed this morning in our financial meeting uh is a discussion item only tonight we'll bring that back in a future board meeting meing for approval I appreciate

134Jason and his team for their work on that and would direct any questions you have with respect to the school fees and spend plans for fiscal year 2026 to Jason yeah in review of the things I think does it work on the links there to bring that up but the school fees uh there are no changes in the school proposed School fee maximums this year we were a little unsure what was going to happen with HB 345 for um now that that's passed we were reading that earlier and that it's it's going to take place those restrictions not this coming school year but the following so FY 27 so there may be some things that between this board meeting and in two weeks there may be a few minor changes but the the fees should

135stay the same on the Max and then the other link is for the spend plans um again there may be need to be some um edits that happen in the next two weeks but those are there for for the review the elementary is all on one sheet and then the secondaries have their own tab for that I I do want to make note that you said these are maximums um and as I looked at um in the secondary schools the fees in my area anyway some of them seemed a little high to me when you're just paying fees and buying a t-shirt but um anyway in conversation with my principal he did assure me that these were maximums and not necessarily Norms um so anyway I'm I'm probably going to get a little further information

136about that what the reality is compared to what the um the fee plan is yeah and in practice the so that maximum fee allows it so a certain program couldn't say well we're going to do all these things and the actual cost um what should happen on all the fees is what the actual cost is if it's a Max of 50 but the project is a $20 then they should charge those $20 for for reimbursement of them yeah they're not charging the maximum yeah okay Jason I had a question about the I notice that the um parking violations tickets that kids sometimes get in high school that's part of the the fees that they can charge do we still allow high schools to have their own polic policies where kids can um I don't want

137to say work off the ticket but work with their Administration to not pay the ticket practice of that I'm not I'm not aware of what that the practice of that is yeah I would assume that's still the case they'll work with those students and so there is a way to an appeal process but to not pay the ticket if they I don't know what I guess every High School does it differently is that okay okay so that was um a discussion item so we will move on to our next agenda item superintendent our membership report yes you've received the membership report for the month um I just call your attention to that uh those trends that we have seen throughout the year continue to be the case growth in some areas and declining enrollment in

138others so thank you okay it's now time for board member and superintendent reports and information items I just wanted to take a minute to thank all those that were involved with the legislative session especially our legislators who reached out and consulted with us um trying to understand the impact of bills that they were um researching and studying and voting on and what that impact was to students and I really appreciate that collaborative um experience through the legislative session maybe I could just follow up um this session we tried to emphasize the burden that having so many bills was on school districts and we talked with leadership and uh in many committee meetings we heard legislators mention that they were holding back on a bill because they realized that they uh were're trying to press pause

139on the number of bills and I really appreciate I think we had uh According to some counts maybe half the number of bills we had last year in education which I think is very helpful so I appreciate appreciate that I appreciate the uh presentation that was given during study session we didn't have a whole lot of time to uh come to a recommendation by the board of education on that I think we will need to bring that back for discussion um one to decide what if any action will be taken between now and the reconfiguration with respect to alternative schools and two what would be our recommendation for those future boards with respect to those alternative schools so that is something the information was presented you have that but we will need a future discussion

140um by the board to determine the will of the board with respect to again any changes that would take place between now and the reconfiguration and then any recommendations for future consideration recommendations for future boards to consider how they will address I appreciate the work done by those uh that presented in study session I move that we adjourn no sorry I thought you gave me the look of go ahead so I did misre okay I have a few things um so I think some of us spent more time at the capital in the last three weeks than in anywhere else um and i' kind of forgotten how much I don't want to say this how much fun it is really to be up with the people who represent us um chatting about the things that

141impact us um I very appreciative joyn has this very organized brain and we had a process and here's how we're gonna how we're going to get to people how many people we're going to get to the information we're going to share with them um also all your work day at the hill amazing um and we got FaceTime with nearly every single one of our representatives and um I think probably for me the best part of the interaction was that they were all very aware of SB 188 and um what that impact impact would be to our district and so um while they represent a lot of people um it is fun when you're standing outside the chamber and it's us with 500,000 other lobbyists um and I appreciate that they were willing to come out

142and to make us a priority and to talk to us about the implications of this and so it is I think we're all very aware that the world is watching right we have one chance to get reconfiguration right and so just hearing from um the representatives in their spaces and you know that that they're rooting for us um was kind of a lovely thing also it's just she's not going to like this but I'm gonna say it anyway um my colleague Julie King over here has spent probably eight eight months is that fair of her life um working on this bill with Senator Grover and um just working with all of the municipalities the Mayors the city council people City administrators like it was not a small lift even a little bit I think it

143was probably as accurate to say it was a full-time job for Julie um and nobody looks out for every single kid districtwide the way she does and so I appreciate her time and attention and working with all of these city leaders to be able to come up with something um that would allow us to move forward we say that we want three strong districts and the reality is we not have three St districts if we are not doing things between now and then to set everybody up so even though I had just this teeny tiny part of this legislative piece just want to say thank you to Julie for her efforts and thank you to Senator Grover um one of the things I appreciate most about Senator Grover is he puts his bills out early

144which means that everybody and their brother and their cousin can input uh their thoughts on that and he really does listen to everybody and so sometimes there are things that maybe we'd like to see that don't end up happening um but I appreciate that he is mindful of what there is um what there is an appetite for for people to support it doesn't do us any good to have a bill if we can't get the support to get it through the house and the Senate and so um I want to thank him for his efforts um to give us something that we can really use also thank you to representative Gus who's the floor sponsor um I don't know the last time we saw a sub five on an education Bill and I've been following

145things for for a while so um it it a little I don't know touch and go for a little while not sure how this was going to end up and I know that it is not what everybody wanted but I do feel like there are a number of things like being able to geobond in the transition being able to start some things um that will be ready by the time the new districts open um that are going to be hugely helpful to us uh also want to say oh back up I also want to say thank you to representative Hawkins I know that he um I mean we feel it to a much lesser degree but it is a challenging thing when you have constituents some people are for it some people are against it

146and you know you're going to disappoint somebody no matter where you vote and so um we had a rather long involved conversation with him just talking about some different possibilities in the South and what they can do and I think sometimes we forget that a lot of our legislators also have students in our schools and these are their communities and so um they are very invested and and helping us get this right so just thank you to representative Hawkins I know it was a it was a tough call for him to but I appreciate his willingness to trust us with this to move forward get it done um also want to say thank you to Julie and representative teser for hb1 191 um when he was giving his rationale for it he did a very

147specific shout out to albine school district and a request for one less thing so um thank you Julie on your quest to get rid of the 900,000 things that felt like a really big one uh and then also thank you to representative Malloy SB 330 um it was about our cosmetology students anyways there was a line about that you couldn't do mtech for us unless you were a high school graduate and um we have a significant amount of students who utilize mtech while they are ASD students and they don't pay tuition they only pay fees and at 9:48 p.m on Friday night that got fixed so um thank you to representative uh Malloy for that so um cheers to the end of the session we look forward to Governor Cox signing all the things and

148just thank you to all the people across the state uh that are cheering us on okay so we do have need of a closed session do we have um a motion for that um I move that we enter close session per Utah code 52425 to discuss Personnel property or litigation matters second okay so we have a motion by board member Lincoln to go into closed session second by board member baitman I'll in oh we have to are we doing roll call or no we're not doing that anymore yes we're doing roll call okay so if you could roll call uh starting with board member Wilson board member Wilson I board member Lincoln I board member Clement I board member bitman I board member King I board member Peterson I board member b i okay so

149we are adjourned in a close session thank you all for attending today