Board Meeting 6/17/2025

001uh by Tom Sherwood and I will turn the time over to so um it was in April I think I shared with the board some PLC data right um they had actually started implementation kind of a self-evaluation tool where the PLC's would get together and kind of evaluate themselves on where they're where they were um in different aspects of the PLC process, where they had strengths, where they had weaknesses. Brian's actually been tracking this since spring of 203, no 24, excuse me. Um and I showed it with the board just as a hey, look at this. And you guys said, "Hey, why don't we have everybody do this?" And I think it was a good idea. So, in the first iteration of the the self assessment, we had varying degrees of participation by the different

002five traditional high schools. Um, Ala, Jordan, and Corner Canyon all used the uh digital tool that we sent them. And Bren from Hillrest just uh didn't see the digital one and she sent it out on a paper and and uh compiled all the data on her own. Um but the benefit of the data that I've shared with you is um it gives the principles and the administration at those schools an opportunity to see where their strengths are, where their weaknesses lie, and how to focus their PLC efforts and helping them move their PLC's forward. Um, high schools are definitely the most challenging arena for professional learning community simply because so many teachers teach so many various subjects. It's hard to get into one box and and and stay there. And and another issue is we

003have about 25% of the faculties of high schools are the only person in the building that teaches that subject. And so one of the things when one of the benefits of having the Fridays is we allow for that crosspollination. between our high schools where you know choir teachers get together, woodshop teachers or you know all those different singletons are able to collaborate and talk about best practices. Um I don't know if you had a chance to look through this. I really like the free response at the end of the um uh surveys from Corner Jordan and Ala as a principal. I think those would be my um first place I would look to to seeing how I could get the most bang for my buck in helping my teachers to find more um resources and

004success in their professional learning. You have any questions for me? My question is a number of the responses in all of the schools said they didn't have enough time. What do you account what does that in involve? I realize that's big title for a lot of things. You know, it's it's I don't want to speculate too much, but I do think that um sometimes, especially in education, I think in a lot of rooms, we we try to do everything all at once. Um so, for example, we may go to our math department say, "Hey, we want you to use all of your common assessments. sit down and review those common formative assessments and and and and discuss how you can um you know do better teaching these these concepts moving forward. And the math teachers

005would say we don't we don't have common assessments. We haven't sat down and even developed our common assessments yet. So they're like well when are we going to have the time to develop our assessments if we're supposed to be talking about curriculum and whether or not the students are learning the curriculum we already have when we got to build the assessments. And I think some of it is is making teachers feel like all of it is part of the PLC process. As a principal, I would be 100% fine with them using a big chunk of that PLC time to develop those assessments and to refine those assessments and and then you know even if they are just reviewing data once in a while and they're spending a lot of their time the assessments, excuse me,

006making the assessments it would be worthwhile effort. So I just think there's so many aspects of creating effective professional learning communities that they just feel overwhelmed sometimes about got that impression from Yeah. about getting accomplished in you know a couple hours in an afternoon on Friday and I think a lot of them are tempted to use the time for other things which is also a challenge you know whether it's grading or getting ready for Monday or um planning periods. Yeah. No I I don't I don't disagree. No, they do. It's for that. No, they definitely do. And and I think the principles doing a good job of helping their teachers focus on the PLC's. We have a lot of schools going to this summer. And I know sometimes those seem like a good chunk of

007money to invest, but they they're very valuable. They are very valuable. It really helps teachers to learn more about the process and to get on the same page and camaraderie. And it I can tell you it was one of the most valuable things I did as a principal is taking advantage of the learning tree conferences. So solution trees. Okay. So I'm the one who asked for this because how how many years are we into doing PLC's at the high school now? So our full second full second year it's the end of the second year. Okay. Which is helpful to consider in context. I would I wish we could have seen an overall summary comparing apples to apples. This was a little bit hard to be able to synthesize the information. And so my my wish

008would be that um in the future like we could have something like that that it shows what's happening in the district overall and also perhaps having communications help fair it out some of the comments kind of like they do when we get like surveys from parents. Um, it seems like there's a wide variation of faculty that are responding at the different high schools. Like I I can't tell how many at Hillrest responded because she haven't listed. Okay. Kristen, couldn't we run the same analytics like we do on superintendent listening tour on this? Not having it. I agree because it was like they were all five reported very differently and having a common self evaluation. So the data all comes in right so it's comparable right I mean I'll be honest as a board member I

009was part of the board that approved PLC's and there was some public push back about how much school time you know that was impacting for kids and also it changed the things that the middle school middle schools were doing and a lot of the middle school communities were upset about that so I just I think it's and well the alta community so that's my high school They really were upset about the fact that they lo lost out on their late start Tuesday. They had their own, right? Yeah, they had their own and it was working really well. And so there's this part of me that's like, okay, if we're going to do this, we need to make sure it's really working. Like, so when I look at this, um, you know, I'm I'm curious, you

010know, when we do kind of the data analytics, I'd love to see what percentage of faculty are filling this out in each of the high schools. And, um, it seems like there is a common though that their short-term and long-term goals are really weak um like compared to what they could be like that's one of their weaker areas and that professional learning is also not strong. A lot of the teachers talked about how much they wish they had more support from the district or had more um you know professional learning opportunities to understand what a PLC should look like. The part that concerned me the most and and this is a little bit Part of why I wanted to see what was going on is that one of their weakest areas is using student data

011to really inform what they're doing. In my mind, part of why we have PLC's is to be able to figure out how to um personalize learning for kids or understand not let them fall through the cracks. I mean, Rick and I had this conversation after Entrada's graduation the other night where a lot of the kids end up there in part because they just fell through the cracks somewhere. And in my mind, if we're spending the time and resources for PLC's, that shouldn't be happening as much. And so, when there isn't, you know, a significant enough gap where that's not being addressed, I'm wondering, are we really getting it? And what do we need to do to fix that to make sure? Um, I thought it was shocking that some teachers said that there's a perception

012that PLC's are not required for everyone. I'm like, what's what's happening there? And um, and also like this is another thing I care a lot about is making sure that we're using leader exemplary teachers to train other teachers like that we're using our stars. And I've been told many times and I believe it that it exists, but I'm trying to figure out what can like that the culture exists that teachers in high school really like their own kingdom. They don't like to necessarily collaborate with other teachers. They don't like to necessarily say like have someone hold up an example and say, "Here's something you should change." But at some level as a district, we we've got to figure out like how can we make a difference in that cultural mindset. Um especially if we're going

013to hold on to PLC's. Um, and let's see what were the other things. And I'm I'm also wondering what we can do to provide them better support from the district level as it seemed like that was again that was a very common theme. One of the other things that was said is that it sounds like for the singletons, one of the complaints is that principles are not only on the not always on the same page and so it becomes difficult for some of them to collaborate with each other, which again that doesn't make sense to me. Like there's got to be way to address that. And then the vertical alignment piece, this is the other reason why as a board member, I was excited about the idea of PLC's. We've got to figure out how

014to better vertically align. I mean, and it's not just elementary to middle and middle high school like I'm finding like as a parent even sometimes the vertical alignment between a ninth nth 11th and 12th grade programs are not always as smooth as you would expect and so I don't know as a board member not only would I love to see the data in a way that's a little bit more um digestible or understandable and what it is we're looking at and because I think we need to talk as a board about like what is it we need to do to make sure that these are really functioning in the way that they need to, the way we promised the public they would. So, um, we didn't write the survey for you. I mean, that I'm

015not trying to be like, you know, it was it was done for the PLC teams to get together and to self-evaluate, say, hey, how are we doing? Where can we improve? And these were really supposed to be used at the school level. And this was really kind of developed at one school in particular. And then and you're like, "Hey, do we have any evidence of where you know how our PLC is doing?" I said, "Well, I have this school that has some evidence." And so and then I didn't really send it to the schools until late April, early May. And by then it was really late in the game for them. You can try to get it out and have everybody do it. Ideally, it should have been done collaboratively with the PLC teams talking

016together. How are we doing on this? How can we do better? And the schools that did it was done independently. So it was really done trying to check a box, you know, and I feel like but the information the principles got back was beneficial. I thought like yeah, this is something we want to do. This is something we want to moving forward. Um and I think uh the idea of PLC's is um self-evident to me as a as a teacher for you know it's been almost 25 years now since I left the class but the We we did this without being encouraged, you know. We got together as teachers. Hey, how are you teaching this? You know, how what do you do that I'm not doing? What were your test scores like? We gave the

017same test without being forced to. It was just we just arrived there on our own. One of the things so so I'd like to comment on two things you mentioned. One is we really have not had a lot of time over the past two years to do a lot of professional development with our teachers during the school year and you guys have done an exceptional job of proving that for next year. And I do see that as moving moving in a really positive direction. It's really hard to help the people know where it is they need to make improvements when we don't have a lot of time during the school year to do that. I think the changes we made to the counter next year really help with that. Um and the second thing is

018is we spent a lot of time this year working on the business chemistry. One of the biggest barriers to PLC's working well together is just people um getting along with each other, liking each other, respecting each other as professionals, you know, and and getting over some of those barriers. And I think it really was a good decision as we're trying to work through PLC's as a district to focus on that aspect. We all have things we bring to the table. We all have different ways we communicate and express our emotions. And the more we can understand that, the better we can work together to to accommodate it. So, I think we are making progress. Um I think did all of the high school teachers read that book or is it we all we all all

019the high school principles working on it here and they all took it back to their schools and implemented in their videos. So it was kind of a teach the teacher model. So but Oh go ahead Rick. No you guys I just had Well the last thing I was going to say is that the the the tool that we that Brighton has been using everybody's going to use next year and they're all going to do this periodically throughout the year and I think we can have good comprehensive data that we can share. Um, so Mastery Connect, whatever. I mean, that was a I'm you guys, Amanda was here. I don't know who else was here when we purchased that, but the assessment piece is really central, right? Like using formative assessments within their departments. Are maybe

020this is a bigger question to evaluate, you know, is that are they developing their own? Are we using Mastery Connect? Is it Is that a That's a That's a That's a loaded question. It's a fair question. Um the uh it is not being used abundantly in the high schools. Um the some of that has to do with initially when we rolled out Master Connect kind of the bill of goods that we were sold in terms of how well it would align with Canvas with. So I have these assessments that I'm writing that I'm using and I'd like to just you know translate transfer these into master connect and assign them to their state core standards their their stranded standards and then I can you know look at different standards and be very specific in in

021my learning outcomes and the amount of time it was taking teachers to simply do that with their assessments was was astronomical. who just want assessment to put it in master connect put all of the standards in was just the amount of labor involved did not merit the in outcome. So, I think if there's a way that we could simplify that and help them to put some of those I mean I you know just calling it out for what it is like I I think the survey is great if we're talking about qualitative a qualitative look at culture right and that's important right like you said teachers working together teachers being able to be vulnerable share but to me I mean that's kind of PLC light and we all know I mean when you get schools

022that really do PLC's the way they should. It's it's resultsoriented, right? They can show you here's how our assessments, here's how all of that works and how that drives and improves instruction. That that to me is what we got to get at. And it's hard. I'm with you. I've been a high school principal. It's it's like hurting cats sometimes. But it but where it can be done, especially in the core areas, right? I mean, I think we got to get to that place that it's, hey, this isn't negotiable. These are the this is how we do CFAs and this is how it informs instruction. Every high school has certain PLC's there, schools that are bright shiny stars. Well, the data and I mean I'm looking at other than just like one of the schools, most

023of them it demonstrates that, you know, most of them Yeah. are saying, you know, between 60 and 70% are saying they they are using data to inform instruction. But it it just feels kind of fuzzy about what that, you know, actually means. And it and to me it relates even to a bigger picture with our grade distribution issues with failing grades and because it's that's all left to chance by individual teachers and their own silo kingdom of how they determine that. So, I mean, I think it all kind of runs together, but I I just, you know, I want us to kind of push that envelope and what are the non-negotiables when it comes to PLC's and then what where is the flexibility and then you guys figure that out. But, but I think if

024we just leave it to, hey, does it does it feel good and are you meeting yet and not getting at the root of what real PLC work is, then I think we're missing. Well, I think the biggest challenge might be overcoming the idea that PLC is a meeting, right? It's not it's not it's not a meeting. It's a it's a way of approaching a profession where you recognize that as a as a group of professionals, we have a lot more to offer our students in isolation. Yeah. And everything you do informing your instruction through that lens. Huge mindset change for it's a big mindset change. Mission. Um, so I agree with Amanda. I think and and it sounds like what Brighton's been using, we're going to try to incorporate it all of them. I think

025this is good. I it the sense I got from a lot of it is it's the first time people had even thought about some of these questions. Are we even doing these things in our PLC? And so the evaluation piece I think is good because it helps people inform them of like, hey, this is something we really need to be working on. You know, as we evaluate, it gives us a chance to see where we can improve. Um, a couple things I noticed is just it sounds like and part of it it's a work in progress, but just better guidance, maybe even a schedule of like, hey, these are things you can work on at certain periods of time. Yes. And even something across like schools of like this is a singleton uh PLC day

026and it needs to be protected. Is that um the schools are the schools are actually really good at trying to protect their days. Um they uh they're pretty adamant about it. the teachers do too. They advocate for themselves. So, something I want to mention about PLC's and why it's more challenging to move a whole high school forward is you probably have, you know, 40 50 PLC's in a building and um all of them are in different places in terms of their progress on the spectrum of of of how well they're functioning to get up and give one PD to the whole faculty about, you know, next steps. I'm talking about my hands too much. open um to get them to get one PD, you know, about next steps is ineffective because everybody's next step is

027going to be a little different depending on where they're at the process. So, one of that that's one of the biggest reasons schools are using these is so the the the the administrators can see, okay, this these are the things this PLC is doing well and these are the areas where they are struggling and this is where we can go in and focus and help them take the next step in moving their PLC forward. It's really the purpose of these is to be more and to give the the groups of teachers that are that are meeting together meet them where they are and help them get get further along the path. Right. Yeah. I think it just haven't it seemed like some PLC's are certainly struggling not trying they don't just don't know what best

028practices look like and so I think some of the PD can be around this is best practices. Let's have this PLC show how they're doing this that they're really excelling at and maybe they're struggling in another area another PLC is doing well. But I think just helping you know what are those expectations of what we're trying to look at within our PLC and and I think we see that in that evaluation form but maybe even focusing on in September we really want to focus on CFAs or whatever it is so there's a little bit more structure and what the expectations are with some of it. Um and examples of best practice may be helpful based on that was what I sort of gained from some of those comments. Well I mean it it's pretty universal

029I mean it's really guided by those four questions right so clear standards and your curriculum and then assessment knowing how our kids are learning or not and then intervention and enrichment I mean so those are the I mean that that's what we should see right in in all those conversations and if it's not there then it's PLC light it's hey we're meeting it feels good but we're not really doing anything so yeah I guess leads to my next question. What professional learning opportunities are they going to have that is going to achieve what Molly is talking about? Because I'm a big believer what you measure is what people will might work toward, right? if we're not measuring anything, if we don't have any, if this is the first time in two years they received, you

030know, and it sounds like Brighton has is well ahead of the game on that, but that some of these high schools haven't even thought to ruminate on those questions until now. Like I think we're not maximizing this as the opportunity. I just had a question too. I think they are focusing on CFAs and I think that it's a little too exclusively on test results because I'm getting there's this comment from Jordan that says common formative assessments are useless for special ed. None of us have the opportunity to teach the same subject and when I do get to general ed PLC's CFAs aren't always applicable to my kids. I wish we had a focus literally on anything else in PLC's. So scores are great, but but I think the focus that you're talking about making sure

031that we know where they're at, those four areas more. Yes, those four things are the things that we're emphasizing and not the test scores, which test scores are just a sample. But we even saw though with the data though that they were using those scores then to inform instruction. So it was like they were focusing on it but not necessarily basing instruction on those outcomes. No, they're just trying to was right. So, it's like we're not connecting all the pieces, but we're sort of, you know, yeah, I'm not saying don't look at them, but I'm just saying this particular person said it's useless for their for this person because when she does go to those PLC's and special ed does do everybody's everything and so they have to move around a bit. Well, and some

032of the arts teachers would face the same challenge, right? Where like the measurement is fundamentally different. And I think we should I don't know if at the district we develop a rubric that adapts for that so that each of those respective types of PLC's are adequately reflected in the way that we're measuring. Right. Well, and just I'll add this caveat too. We're still at about 40% chronic absenteeism. So we got a lot of kids that are not in school a lot of the time and we can't teach them if they're not class. So there's there's whammies that just have unfolded through the pandemic that are still a challenge, but yeah, it doesn't it doesn't excuse us from doing the work. Well, and this is just one, you know, one snapshot. Well, this is just one

033snapshot. I think the tools that the most of the high school principles use to to measure PLC's are are the week are the weekly minutes. Every time they meet, they keep minutes and they and they have notes of what they discussed and and and they share with their administrators and they're able to kind of track their conversations and see where they're at, see how the meetings are going. And it it is a um this is this is just one way that the principles are able to see into that. And this is more of them to evaluate themselves where they are because the accountability is really coming from the minutes. And um something that is pretty common among areas where these where these content conversations become more challenging is is focusing the conversations on pedigogy. So

034if if we can all agree, you know, as as performing arts teachers that these are the best approaches, you know, you know, reducing the amount of teacher talk, increasing student talk, increasing, you know, opportunities to respond and and and and and increasing feedback cycles, those are very impactful in in in teaching all all classes, especially performing arts classes. And if we can focus our PLC's on pedigogy versus content, then that makes it a much easier conversation we can have as a group and move our practice forward. And That's also pretty last comment. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you. Next item on the agenda is elementary tech advisory committee report uh by Superintendent Robbins and Assistant Superintendent Robinson. Dr. Robins, go ahead. Fair enough. Just a big thanks to McKay for doing this by

035the way. Yeah, huge huge. Um, so yeah, first I guess thanks for the opportunity. I can happily report that I think everything went as about as well as it could have. Um, we had a lot of great feedback. Scott and I spent about an hour, hour and a half after the meeting ended and stuck around with a couple parents that just had some additional questions and so um there weren't any additional um pieces of feedback that anyway it was it was all very positive. So we're happy about that. So just wanted to quickly remind us of the timeline of where things have been where they're going um and everything leading up until this point. And I figure as as long as we continue this discussion wise for us to continue to put this up there

036so that everyone can see and know and understand what we've been doing and and how we've been going about. From the time between March 19th and April 30th is when originally we were asking the questions of our BLTs, our principles and our school community councils. And then we took that information as one set of data or piece of information there. Dr. Robins presented on that and then I shared with all of you the plan for this uh advisory committee and then it too would be another piece of data and then met um and from the time that we met on May 28th from May 30th to June 13th roughly um we just kind of continued some of that communication and then here we are presenting on a summary of everything that took place. So when

037we first met with the committee, these were the two main bulleted items that we made sure um everyone that was a part of the committee fully understood. When this was originally discussed with Dr. Robbins and you as the full board, um I made sure I went back and listened to every little piece and pulled little nuggets out and took them back to Dr. Robbins to make sure and then when I spoke with all of you, it was very clear that we needed to make sure that this was just again another piece of information or data that we could collect and use on top of the other stuff that we already had. and that this committee was not a decision makingaking body. It was truly to collect information and and provide some ideas. To let you

038know, the committee members consisted of 10 parents, 11 teachers, four principles, three strategic plan leads, two elementary directors, external relations had two individuals there as well. Um, and the parents just to I think this is an important piece of information to also remember, especially with a later point. Of the 10 parents, nine of them were from Draper, Cottonwood Heights, and East. So, just keep that in mind as we're talking about all of these things. So, the format of the meeting, as we had originally explained, brief overview of the tasks, what we were doing, we talked about our current filtering system. Scott took a few minutes and just explained things that we have done and how the system works and uh what we can do to improve upon it. Then, um Amber took a few minutes

039and talked about the purpose of technology and what we've been using it for in our classrooms. And then we broke into four different groups and talked about um you'll see the topics here in just a minute. Um and those four groups were led by our committee members like Leon was one of our leads, Scott led another one, um Brian McIll and Amber Rodri was in another. Um and then we just had everyone kind of spread out and make sure that they were evenly divided and had equal representation in the different groups. Um they shared at the very end of their discussion they then shared out to the larger group so all groups could hear what they were talking about as well as answer any questions that say Dr. Robbins was in group A, he would

040a be able to ask questions of group B just to see if he wanted to understand further what was there. Um and so that is essentially how that all went about. Um these were the four main topic um topics that we split into the four groups. So what ended up happening is following that meeting I compiled all the minutes from each of the groups and the discussion that we had afterwards and then tried to summarize those into a comprehensive as well as um very clear uh message if you will of what we all discussed and talked about. And then I sent that back out to the entire committee and said, "Here's the summary. What do we think? Am I did I miss anything? Are we misrepresenting any group?" Um, we took a few pieces of

041feedback, added those back, sent them back out, and continued to take additions and or clarifications up until I submitted this to you on the 12th. So, there's been a lot of ongoing communication with all the different families and members that were part of the committee itself. So what ended up happening is you were summarizing all of this when I was summarizing this um it fell into five main areas if you will and you can see what they are here and we'll jump into each one of these and break them down so that you can see the different u thoughts that were shared and how they align in these particular areas. So starting off first and foremost the families had talked quite a bit about just strengthening transparency training and communication. I sorry I said families

042but I'm going to just keep the committee continued to refer to um these these points because it did consist of a lot of our teachers and principles as well but they did say that they are feeling a lot more informed about the strengths and limitations of our filtering system. However, they do see still see an opportunity to learn more and or be more transparent with that tool and everything that we have there. So, um we'll see here on how they want that to be done. So, we then took that and here are some of the recommendations that they shared with us on how we might be able to improve that communication. Um they did talk about making sure that when we start notifying the families, um there's another recommendation coming. Sorry, lots of thoughts going

043on. But those notifications when we reach out to the family and say, "Hey, your son or your daughter has been um doing these searches, they're coming from this particular email address, that they're aware of what that email addresses so it doesn't end up in their spam or some other random folder. They wanted to make sure that was very clear that they should be looking for this particular email." They also mentioned using parent square as that central communication platform which you know we do which is fantastic. Um but just wanted to also have social media and websites there for just support not the main form of communication. Um, they also wanted us to make sure that any updates that come about or policy changes in regards to technology that they are out in a very clear

044and simple way and avoiding that mass here's three-page document that says here here are all the different things that we've done or as time goes on and keeping it very timely. Another one was um encouraged us to continue to share things during the parent teacher conferences. We had a visual that was provided and I think I gave that to you in the last board meeting as well. It's the it looks like a dinner plate and it has it's kind of broken up. It suggested using something like that um in our parent teacher conferences as well. And then also providing a summary um of content keeper content keeper keeper and everything that is blocked or flagged on that keeping our teachers aware because they're not always fully made aware of what that is. Um, so those

045were some of the suggestions that they made in regards to how we can improve on the communication side. They also talked about the importance of having a parent signed tech agreement at the start of the school year. Um, I believe you all are very much aware of, but if not, I do have a copy of one here. It's our um, referred to as the responsible access and use conduct guidelines. And it's something that is part of registration at the very beginning of the year that parents all sign. Um, it's been around for some time. I was even talking to Scott about it today where we didn't at my school, we didn't have any students use computers and or go to the computer lab or anything until we had this physical copy in our hands. So,

046it's a practice that is in place. We feel pretty good about that. But just making sure parents are aware of it, reminding them of that would be great. Um, ensuring clarity on what triggers those inappropriate searches or flags. um that some had asked for the specific lists of all the different words that have been blocked or the different areas. Something we could certainly consider sharing. But one of the key things that they shared that I thought was not a terrible idea in any way, shape, or form is changing our default setting to an opt out rather than an opt in of notifying families when their child is making inappropriate searches. So if they don't care or they don't want their that information coming, then they can opt out of it. But aside from that, they'll

047be receiving it. So that was one piece of information that I thought was a great idea. Um so moving on, it ended up uh one of the other categories that we ended up having a lot of conversation around was just improving the filtering, monitoring, and the access protocols. Um, so you can see all the different areas that they talked about here. I just barely mentioned that where they um asked for having access to the restricted content list and the the filtering logic essentially wanting to know why or how that became blocked. Um, ex exploring the whitelisting. We've had a lot of question about whitelisting and trying to better understand what that means. And just to clarify, whitelisting the way it currently is set up is it's more whitelist categories rather than whitelisted site specific. Is

048that is that probably the easiest way of saying that, Scott? You might have the category of TV or music or AI services or AI services, whatever, and some of those have been blocked. some of those have been opened up rather than saying um google.com is whitelisted or you know getting very granular specific there. So there was some conversation about that and then talked about a lot of the parents have expressed and that has been an ongoing communication to me as well of just looking at whitelisting specific sites rather than categories. Um consider blocking high-risisk terms. We this one is already taken care of as well, but that is something that we do every Wednesday where we're looking at new phrases and terms and workarounds and we're trying to do everything that we've done there. This

049was news to me. This very next bullet um teacher had mentioned hoping that we could consider getting the premium YouTube account for our teachers and the reason for that is we once had the ability to embed videos within Canvas and that prevented any andor all advertising or those popups that come up that you hope to avoid. Um YouTube and whomever has since found a way to work around that. Um, and so we're no longer able to do that. The only way we can is obviously paying YouTube more money. So So if it's embedded in Canvas, is it live now? Where before it was not, right? We could embed it and it would only be the video but not all the ads. Yeah, occasionally it's it's not consistent. It's inconsistent. We have not been able to

050find a trigger for it. But occasionally it does come up with the ads even when it is embedded into canvas which is recent. It's pretty new. So like I said that was news to me and surprising. Um continuing on with the improving of the filtering um prioritizing land school training for teachers and substitute teachers. Um we had quite a few teachers that were um excited about some of their resour not resources but the um the abilities of land school that they weren't originally aware of and so we talked about just enhancing the training there and making sure that they're aware of it. the substitute teachers, that's a whole another challenge. Um, getting them trained and I maybe recommend something an alternative to that. But, um, that I'm just I'm going to remain as neutral as

051possible and just share the information that they provided. And then teachers need just better support understanding and responding to student attempts or hacks or override filters. So, there's just some ongoing training that we can continue to provide our teachers. While we're on that subject, um, and before we move on to the next slide, is there way for teachers to receive a report similar to parents when a child packs or tries to look up certain terms in their classroom. Yeah. And that's one of the things that we have been talking about as well as came up in this committee. Um currently the administration can go in and access that information and then provide it to teachers. Um and ultimately the request has come from teachers now saying hey I'd like to know as well especially if

052it's happening you know during class like that. So, um, oftentimes it's not real time and I think that's where some of the teachers concerns come from of wanting to have it at real time because administration has to check it that night or the next morning or you see what I'm it's not kind of that immediate. I would imagine though like if that's followed up on that sends a real chilling effect on a student who's been doing that especially when not only their parents are informed but the teachers too. Yeah. And one of the items that we we're going to be talking about here in just a minute is the three strike piece as well and some of the warnings that might be popping up and I think that only adds to the chilling effect um

053as you go through that process. Um so again um now this one jumps into kind of the device access um but it's still in the improving the filtering monitoring and access protocols. Um, and there were a few parents that had stressed and asked for the op option for families to opt out of Chromebooks altogether. Um, and then if a student, one of the other pieces that came up in a different group, um, I was making my way around, they had talked about because they had heard some of our previous discussions about the possibility of maybe shutting down access when school is out and if we were to go that route, they wanted to have the ability, meaning parents and teachers to work together to have access to that student if they were traveling and or

054out sick or whatever the case may be. So again, that was only if we decided we were going to limit access when it was after hours that they wanted. That was option there. Um, getting into the instructional balance and student well-being. Um, there was a lot of um time um spent on just the balance of tech use and um emphasizing that it's a learning tool, not entertainment, especially in our early grades. So then it got into that group in particular talked a lot about K2 and then 35 and in K2 suggested or asked that we consider removing gamified instructional software. Um, and one had came back as you, as you recall, I said that I've been continuing to get more and more feedback from the time we had the meeting until then, and one parent

055just came back and said, "I would like to see that across K5, not just K2." Um, and the suggestion that was made is that the money that's going toward those programs be used for certified teachers and that they could use that money that way. Um, just to clarify, since we're on this at this point, rather than waiting for any questions here at the end, the software that is being purchased are based off of grants that come from the state. It's not money that we've just pulled out of our budget to pay for program that we thought would be great. So, I'm talking about things like I Ready, um, gosh, Lexia. Yes, thank you. um overall programs the the state basically came forward and then they provide grant money to to cover those. And then another

056um ask was that we consider eliminating onetoone devices for our K to5 students. Um and one parent had suggested that suggested that um it become more of just a computer class like our brain booster technology um class itself rather than working on devices in the class. become kind of like what we used to do with going to a lab. Um, continuing on in this particular area, um, again considering limiting the Chromebook carts in fourth and fifth grades for only grade specific projects that are led by the teacher and then consider, as we mentioned a little bit earlier, that true white list um rather than categories doing very specific granular sites. and um just wanted to make sure that represented this parent well. We spoke at length. Um she just wanted to make sure that everyone

057understood that finding it and addressing inappropriate sites after they are found is simply not good enough and that the parents stressed that her student and all students deserve better. So basically referring to stumbling across something and then us trying to go in and fix it. Why not fix it by just having a very granular white list is really what the point was. Okay. Um, another recommendation or suggestion that they provided was to create and communicate grade specific expectations of technology use. Very again almost granular in kindergarten. This is what we would use it for and much time would be appropriate or acceptable. Here are programs that you could use. Here are a whit listed list of websites or whatever and do that for every single grade. So that was another thing they asked for us

058to consider. Um uh I already mentioned this one using certified teachers instead of the software itself. That would just really come down to quite a bit of money. Um as well as um we basically have to turn away some of those grants which is totally fine and just it's not money that we're pulling from a budget that we can reallocate toward certified teachers. It's grant money specific to those programs. and then allowing optouts from certain intervention programs or classroom technologies based on student needs and family preference. So some of those programs are used for interventions and if the family chose that they didn't want that intervention for their child, they would ask that they might have the opportunity to opt out of that. Um they did express that they appreciate and thought that the programs

059like our morning meetings lifetime lessons are moving forward. They're great. They just want to continue to see that um not only celebrated but enhanced and continue to be improved upon as we go along. So that was a nice little celebration there. um moving beyond that basic instruction um teaching the students to develop develop that philosophy of technology. What's the purpose of it just like we do with all of our instruction just going deeper and helping them to have a better understanding of it um of responsible use and having it be an ongoing thing rather than maybe it's just some of this digital citizenship that happens occasionally but they are I believe once a month if I remember correctly right time. Um and then moving on again coming down to the the uh okay so now

060we're on the restrike. So this is something that has been talked about. This is an ongoing work in progress I would say. Um and it's really just trying to figure out who is communicated with how it's going to be communicated. Um there are thing that pops up on the student screen all those different types of things. when it came down to the clear consequences, those are already outlined within our levels of behavior document, which is great. So, that's already in place. And then the communication protocols, um, we would clarify, get those cleaned up as well. But I think the key word here that we want to make sure that we really address is the consistent implementation of that it's very consistent across all of our schools and all of our students K through five. And

061then allowing teachers access to tools such as the search history flag reports and we had already talked about that as well with your question Amanda. They too felt like that would be very beneficial. Um communication equity um they talked again about back to school, how we can readress policies, providing very short bulleted items, resources that help them to know and understand what's all taking place. Um, and then having it just go out through the digital platforms like our parent square just to make sure everyone's fully aware of what's happening and how it might impact them. And earlier when I was talking about the specific parents that were represented, this is this is one of the main reasons why I wanted to um make sure that that was on the forefront of our minds because parent

062actually had a really important comment that was made that I would love to share with you all as well this conversation. But um really stressed the importance of actively engaging diverse communities communities across the district to ensure that all of our families have a voice in this process. Um, one parent said, "If you were to take a look around this room right now, we are we all come from very priv privileged backgrounds and our kids are going to be just fine. Put these things away. We'll be fine." But we don't necessarily know and understand the direct impact it will have on other communities and would encourage, I think she used the word encourage implore the district to dive deep, especially with our title one communities and other areas that to see how this might impact

063them. these larger decisions. So, thought that was a pretty powerful um statement and a nice reflective comment from from this mom. Um so, then moving on um kind of overall they were very thankful for all the efforts that are there for the adjustments that are being made. Um we all agreed that there are some areas that we can refine and tweak and modify. And uh Scott and I, as I mentioned earlier, as we were talking with a couple of these moms, both of us kept encouraging them and saying, you know, let's keep this communication going. As soon as we see something, we're on the same team. This isn't about, you know, we'll let this one slide. We too want to know. And the amount of time and effort that's already being put into this is

064it's pretty overwhelming. It makes me quite proud of the team for all of their work. and um the parents were very responsive to that. I think ultimately there's a hope that we will move to a tech-free environment and or an option to be tech-free and I believe that this will be an ongoing narrative until a decision is ultimately made by us as a district of are we going to offer that or are we going to move away from tech altogether are we going to limit it to this or this and I think we're just going to have to be very mindful of that all together parents parents did ask and suggest this conversation continue with our secondary um we had to kind of keep navigating that throughout and reminding them that this was a K

065through five conversation at the time but that um I would stress to all of you that they would love to see this continue on in our second year. Then we went through all the adjustments that have already been made or currently are in progress. Um I don't know if you want me to keep going through these. You've all had a chance to look at this. and they were presented by Dr. Robbins in our last board meeting as well. These are just a few of those. Um here's the other list. Um I know the RFP's gone out implementing the three strike. We're currently working ongoing communication ARC. It's all been either already in place or is continuing to be addressed. You all know what the technology connect portal is, right? The TCP portal. That's where a

066teacher or a parent can suggest or make a recommendation for something to be blocked or removed. That communication always goes to that person after whatever action is taken. And I think the overall going back to the communication at the beginning, they're hoping that that can be a more broad message as well, not just to the family that's reaching out. So, make sure that that was clear again. Um, so any questions that you might have before questions, um, I want to point out that we will be bringing this back again in the fall. So, so we know like there's no decision points tonight. There's going to be an opportunity for us to get clarification, honor this, get in touch with uh, people in our areas. Uh, so I just wanted to throw that out before Go

067ahead. Um, a couple comments. First of all, thank you because I know this is immense amount of work and thank you to Scott and your team for all the things that have already been done up to this point. I I think it's fantastic and I think the feedback we received has been great and in line with sort of where we're trying to go with this more mindful tech. I think understanding that technology is a tool but it shouldn't be a babysitter whatever in our classrooms that we're using it mindfully for for what um for the uses we're relating to your questions I don't think we can go to a no tech model I think that's doing a disservice to our students plain and simple I mean we talk about the information we're getting from our

068focus groups the innovation center and they're saying kids need to know even more stuff about tech and and not less so Um I personally I don't think we can go to a no tech model. Do we offer the option to allow people to opt out? It makes it really hard for our teachers. It's I um it's like among you know having to make multiple meals for each of their kids and and that's tricky particularly because of what's coming from their state with some of our curriculum and things that you know we have science curriculum and they're doing simulations online. The assessments give the teachers immediate feedback being able to do their assessments. Now, I know in some classes they're still doing an assessment on paper so they can show all their work and then they'll

069put it into the computer, but it just helps a teacher quickly pinpoint where there's issues. And so, I'm not sure that's the best option for our teachers um for allowing that opt out. Um we we do have school choice. So, if that is the model, you know, it's that's what's hard. That's what's hard. I mean, you got to do what's best for your kids. I think it's, you know, really working on this mindful tech and I think what this committee identified is just some of it is better training, you know, helping our teachers, there's been a lot thrown at them, helping them to better understand what tools they have access to and what may be appropriate expectations and tech use are for per grade level and and and looking at those things. So, some things

070are hard even with whitelist. um you know maybe the younger grades can be a totally white list but as your kids start doing research it's really hard to be in a full white list kind of model and so I think we have to look at those that you know elementary maybe is even two separate models and then middle and then high school as far as when we're looking at filtering and and those kinds of things but uh to a point I had a teacher I've been talking to about what does tech look like in your classroom to really understand what is sort of mandatory related to the curriculum and what is more of a supportive role uh but she did come back and she said, "Let the board know how amazing the learning summit was

071this year." Um, it was phenomenal. She's really excited for next year. She learned some things that will help her even be a better teacher and to help free up her time with some of the tech that is available. So, thank you for everybody who did that. And I think as we can keep I think teach our teachers want to learn. They want the professional development. They're just it's overwhelming during the school year to try to figure it all out. And when they have some of that free time, I think if we can provide that support. So I again, thank you. This is a lot. It was a lot. Heavy lifts. I know there were very strong feelings. It sounds like you guys had an incredibly productive I thought so. Awesome. And I'm really happy to

072see some of the ideas and things that came out of it. Um I've just been sitting here ruminating about the fact that I think phones came out in 2008. Um, a lot of our teachers were came out of their professional learning like out of college before then and so they came out onto this stage where this is very new technology myself as a parent with smartphones. I think our teachers have very much felt that way in many ways about technology. I I don't think it was ever ill intended to have some of these difficulties, but similar to how we're finally figuring things out and now cell phones aren't allowed in high schools and I think that that's a good move. I think we're figuring out along the way some of these changes too. Um, I

073will say, um, I I'm curious whether or not the conversation specifically around Google and Google products ever came up because I know, well, maybe that's more of a conversation for middle and high school. Um, some of the most consistent complaints or concerns from parents are surrounding like Google Docs or file sharing. Yeah. File sharing and and even it just I don't know why Google like doesn't provide an educational platform that allows some of that. I mean, in my mind, should take more responsibility that you have had this conversation and the YouTube thing like that's a total bummer. Like I was I'm like so sad to hear about that tonight. So, um yeah, I think that we probably ought to look at how we can make sure because YouTube can be an excellent re like learning

074resource. Um there's so much on there that kids like and a lot of kids that are visual learners, they need to be able to see like scientific principles demonstrated in a visual way sometimes, right? And so if we can figure out what the cost would be on that um for those licenses, um I I would not be opposed to the idea of having a survey that could go districtwide just to ask how many parents would want a tech-free model. And the reason I'm asking that is because in mine and Holly's area, there are a lot of parents who keep asking for this. And the thought is rather than asking a teacher to divide themselves between those two things, maybe we just gauge and see if there is a strong desire of parents like collectively to

075have a magnet school. I mean, I know we have elementary schools that in large measure have a lot of empty space because of enrollment. Maybe we provide some classrooms like that. I don't but I don't think that they're going to let go of this or allow this to go to bed until they know whether or not that is a viable option. and they will walk and go to other places. A lot of them have and so why not ask? Like maybe there's more pockets of parents that want that than we realize. I would agree with Katie. I personally would not put my child in in one of those models because similar to the iPhone, similar to some of the other technologies that have come to us in recent years, she is absolutely right. AI is

076is here. It's barreling like a freight train and the kids have got to learn how to use it. With that said, um when I was at the pre-delegate assembly for Utah School Board Association last week, I saw um our new state superintendent, Molly Hart, who has been over Summit schools, over those charter schools, and we were having a conversation about tech and I said, "How have you guys done it at Summit? I'm just curious because, you know, they're right in my community. They're right in my area." and she said, um, up until recently, we have only allowed Chromebooks for fourth and fifth graders, but recently we've disallowed it for all of elementary, but we still have Chromebook carts that the teachers are allowed to use for specific educational purposes. And so, I'm not opposed to

077that idea um of just making sure I mean, I think it's not altogether that different from what we have. And again, this goes back to what Katie was saying about, you know, training our teachers better about how to use it mindfully. Um, and so in that respect, I think a white list could work. I mean, I I guess I don't really I would be interested in hearing more from teachers how unwieldy a white list splitter would not be for them at elementary level. Um anyway, so those are kind of my general thoughts and thank you again and I appreciate whoever's listening, the parents and others who were willing to participate and give their voice. It's important. I agree. I I wish I would have said that at the very beginning. I actually had it in

078my notes to make sure I thanked everyone that was a part of it because it I truly felt it was very beneficial. Brought light to several things that we've been thinking about, but also things that we're like, "Oh, that's we can easily address that. You know, like the communication side of things. I think there's a lot of good came from it and I'm just grateful to everyone that was willing to participate. See, I feel like it for as heavy as a lift as it was, it couldn't gone more smoothly. I Well, as a followup to part of what was mentioned, I absolutely think that we should plan on having a discussion surrounding middle school specifically and high school specifically. I don't even think we should group those two together because developmentally there's a lot of

079difference between those two age groupings. Um, and I I agree with whoever the parent was that that said that we need to consider how this will impact other communities. I think some of their suggestions if we are going to move forward with that, we need to get feedback from other communities that because for sure there's a lot of I mean supports particularly these kids that are multil- language learners. I mean, I've seen Chromebooks be fantastic in the schools is that kids are still able to participate in a discussion because they're they're able to translate stuff using their computer and device and and get stuff at their level. So, I think there's a lot of things that we have to be we really be mindful of how this can be a great educational tool for kids

080that are coming from other backgrounds and situations. But do we have I mean, I think we this was discussed before. Do we have a rubric of what constitutes a good use of technology? be I'll be honest. I mean, this is my other artistic side. If you're going to ask me about whether or not I'd want a child on a Chromebook to learn about certain things versus whether or not I would like them to use an arts integrative model that's hands-on, I would prefer the second. And so, there's this part of me, it's like I think sometimes we've developed so much of a dependence on tech that we don't think about what other options we can use to teach a child something hands-on way. I think a lot of that even stems from how exciting it

081gets and we even are doing that right with the idea of the innovation center and all these things do there watching like the Sparos or the Kaibons and all these things being program like kids doing coding in elementary school. Holy crap. I mean that's that's pretty amazing. And so I think it comes down to this mindful tech. I love that phrase. I think it's just how do we best utilize it to our advantage and help kids advance and learn and grow while maintaining great instruction across the board, you know, and it's a tool. It's really a tool. It's not a babysitter or the teacher. Hammer, I miss show. That's fine. Um, thank you. I just want to start by saying thank you to Dr. Robinson and thank you to the parents and all the teachers.

082I mean and just I mean that whole committee. I really appreciate them coming in. It was the end of school when it was really crazy busy I'm sure. But um we just got a lot of good information from that. And I do really agree I think with what not I think I do agree with what Katie said. um just that you know it could be hard to get rid of it um but also you know for teachers and I don't know if it's the best for students. I am curious how the rest of the board feels about Amanda's suggestion of um surveying parents like do you guys want to do that? I mean that's something obviously we would have to do in the fall like we can't do it right now. Um, so maybe if

083you guys can weigh in on that and then also just kind of to summarize I feel like you know um maybe McKay when you bring this back if you guys could the administration can you guys make recommendations to the board and kind of summarize and do like tell us what you guys think you can actually do and implement right and kind of summarize because there's a lot of great there's a lot of great information there but I mean there's you know what, 20 or 30 um things. So, if you guys can do all those, great. But I think Oh, go ahead. Sorry. Sorry. It would just be helpful for the board to if you could bring that back. And then I'm in my mind, I'm just trying to think like what would the board actually

084vote on because I don't know if actually any of these things are board policies, right? But I do think we can give direction, but I'm Let's just be thinking about that. So, anyway, go ahead, Superintendent. Well, I I was just going to say to start with maybe to just ponder on this over the summer is um right now we have many teachers that are accommodating parents requests to not use tech and that's that divide is starting to occur in a place where the lift is getting heavier and heavier and heavier because that you know the expectation is is that we meet students needs where they're at in their own learning right and to do that if you have five students that are multi-ening five students that are sped, five students that are accelerated without these

085tools with technology and you have 25 plus kids in a class, it's impossible. And so we've kind of been loose on not giving real clear guidance to principles and teachers about, you know, if you can accommodate. I mean, I think a lot of teachers have done that, but I think kind of to Amanda's point, we got to get to a place where I don't think we're saying that, hey, within our current model, we're saying there's going to be a tech-free option, you know, in my classroom at Willow Canyon or one of our schools. But the option would be that we develop a model that maybe it is outside or a magnet that's that is built around those principles. But I think saying to our teachers, hey, you know, Karen, you got to you got to

086teach 10 kids with no technology and 20 with that that's just that's impossible. I mean, and and we're trying to meet needs of students that are so diverse and that's the expectation. I mean, when I hear things like, well, that worked for us when we were kids. What we didn't have technology, but you think about our experience, teachers taught to the middle. I mean, you you weren't, you know, there wasn't an expectation that the teacher met all of our needs in the room. It was I throw the instruction out. If you get it, great. If you don't, then someone else has to pick up the pieces to try and support and supplement that. But now, the expectation is you meet my students needs where they're at in their learning regardless of what's happening with everybody

087else in the classroom. So, that I mean, that's why technology is so important right there. So let's just go around and answer uh physique's question starting with I think if we had an explanation written in all other than English language to some of our areas I think a survey would be helpful and they need some background because obviously your two groups didn't get a chance to um engage or didn't choose to engage in the committ So, we need to reach out to them and help them engage to make sure that their voice is heard because I really think that that's a very important factor that we're not addressing at all. If the parent hadn't said anything at all, it would have been completely ignored. And I think I know who the parent was, but she's

088amazing. Um, I really really feel that we need to make sure that whatever it is we decide that the entire district gets some input. So, yes, I think a survey would be um appropriate. Um I don't know if it would be just exclusively do you want to be home taught or not? Do we want to include any of the other variables or just keep it simple? We're not putting together the survey yet. I know. Well, I'm just saying yes. I think we need to I I I feel like we need to check with the district but make sure that we reach out and include those communities that did not participate. Do you mind if I clarify something really or just seek clarification for myself? We're talking about the survey. Are we talking about what I

089heard President Schill talk about was a survey for whether or not we want a techfree option. Techfree magnet school I think was the question. Well, he threw in magnet school, but well magnet school. And the other piece like Karen starts to talk about also making sure the rest of the communities are involved. So, are we surveying them something as well? So, that's I just want to make sure we're all if I can talk, but you can talk. I uh I just want I don't have all the answers with technology, but I wonder if we would consider a survey where we surveyed our community if they want a school without math or school without social studies or school without science. And if we think that technology is any less important than any of those things, they're

090going to live a successful life in the 21st century. Um I think as a public educational institution, I think I think pro providing variety and responding to is important. I also think we have to look at the greater good of society. I don't I don't think technology can be seen as a as an out as just a it's not just a tool. It's an essential skill to live a functional life in the 21st century and I just I just feel passionate about that. So So we have uh seven minutes. So let's just go around and answers to that question. I might retract that if if you're not going to reach out to that community about whether you wanna it would be everyone. So you would or you would not. So it's not a technological survey.

091It's a it's a do you want an option without technology whether that's in a magnet school or whether that's something else. And to to be clear this isn't a giving direction. This is a what do we think so that we can have further discussions on it if we think it's a good idea. So support that. All right. So I have a couple of thoughts. I completely agree with what Tom said. We cannot be taking technology out of our classrooms just like we can't take math or science or anything else. I am against doing a survey if we're just talking about creating a new strand and pathway that's technology. Yeah, it I'm only okay with a survey if we do if we're looking at studying a new school. Otherwise, I don't think I don't think that

092there's point you're just giving false hopes, right? And that's again I I don't think we should be doing a survey altogether. I mean, unless we're doing a gonna be doing one for a school because I think we're going to be creating an expectation that we're not going to be able to meet at all. Um there's just no way that that I think we're going to be able to create a technology free space whether it's at a magnet school or in a traditional school. It's just I don't think it's possible and I don't think it's a good service for our kids. I don't think it's good for our kids. So I I'm against doing a survey. I think we need to figure it out interest and if at the end of the day it's an overwhelming

093majority that has no interest and there's not enough to justify that then that's important for me I would like Katie then we'll go back to you. I'm on the fence. I mean, it's part of it is what are we going to do with actions in the survey and you know, if we're not really looking at wanting to do a full magnet score or whatever, does it matter? But I agree with Amanda, it's important to know this information, but I think it would have to be presented in the right way of why, you know, the why. I think a lot of um where this is coming from is a lack of understanding about how tech is used in the classrooms that all they see are the supportive programs that come home that the kids can do

094after school on their programs, but they're not seeing how things are integrated in the curriculum, the things that they're using that way. Parents are not seeing that. So, I think part of it is we could do a better job of communicating, teachers, communicating how they're using tech in their class each and every day. And so they don't understand they're not on I Ready or St Math all day long and these things that are maybe some of them a little bit more gamified um or you know where the free time. I think that was an issue that we've addressed. So I think part of it is just having teachers maybe at the beginning of the school year communicate better exactly how tech is used in their classroom and how much time kids are on tech. There's

095this assumption that they're just on tech all day long and they're just playing games all day long on their computer. If you spend a day in a classroom, that's not the case. I think if we give them information, head back to school. I know uh I think that we don't have the bandwidth to start a charter school and so survey is pointless. There's nothing can come of it. We're not going to we're not going to have a classroom in a school without technology. And maybe someday in the future we'll have the bandwidth to start a charter school. But with the innovation center and with everything else that we're going on, um I mean if we want to if we want to truly burn out administration, I think that's a path to go down. But otherwise

096that it I just don't see a way that it could happen. So I I would be opposed to it for that reason because can't do anything with it right now. Uh President Sh. Okay. I I mean I do understand your point, Amanda, but I actually think that's a super small percentage of parents. So I even think if we survey the overwhelming majority would not agree. So I'm I mean I am going to say I'm against the survey um just for the reasons um Jackson and Andrew just said. Um but are we three three? Like Karen, did you say yes? And then I'm not sure really where Katie landed. That was on the fence. Um, I would I would probably say no on the survey right now. I don't think it's going to change drastically change

097what we're going to do and I agree. It's a lot of pressure on our administration to have to put it together and manage it. Yeah. Okay. I would agree. What What um So, I think we don't want a survey, but I like what you said, Katie. I actually think it would be important for the board to understand exactly how technology is used. I think that's information that would be helpful to us to bring back maybe at the next meeting. I mean, I know that's adding something else, but but really that's important for our parents to know as well like how are they using it? The one thing I think we could talk about which I don't know it's opening another thing is maybe we do something K2 is technology free. I don't know. At least

098I mean that's just an idea. We could talk about that. Okay. Oh, we're almost out of time. I'm aware of time, so I'm going to stop talking. Thanks, everyone. Is why she would say that we are out of time. We do have some great subject matter experts that we can still reach out to to clarify items as well as speaking with our constituencies. Um, and again, we're going to bring this back. So, it's not the end of the technology conversation. It's just the end of the technology conversation tonight. Um, so with that, we'll take a short break and then we'll be back for our business meeting at 7. I did reach out to this All right. Welcome to the business meeting of the Canyon's Board of Education. Today is Tuesday, June 17, 2025. We are

099meeting at the district office located at 9361 South 300 East in Sandy, Utah. We do have President Schill joining us remotely. First item is to approve the agenda for tonight uh June 17, 2025. Can I have a motion to approve the agenda? I'll move that we approve the agenda for tonight, June 17, 2025. Okay. Do we have a second? I'll second that motion. All right. Is there any discussion? Okay. All in favor say I. I. I. All opposed. All right. We will now be led in the pledge of allegiance by Danny Davis, director of accounting. All right. Next item on the agenda is patron comments. We do not have any patron comments for tonight. So, we will go ahead uh to the consent agenda. If I can have a motion to approve the consent agenda

100and please read each of the items. I move that we approve the consent agenda which comprises A approval of minutes for June 3rd, 2025. B approval of hire and termination reports, C approval of student overnight travel, D approval of purchasing bids. E approval of May financial reports. and F, approval of administrative appointments. Okay, we have a motion. Is there a second? I'll second that motion. All right, we have a motion and a second. Is there any discussion? All right, we'll go ahead and take a vote. All in favor say I. I. I. All opposed? Motion passes. All right. Next item on the agenda is new business item A, Canyon's Innovation Center update and naming and branding discussion. So this is a third reading, but just so we're all aware, we don't have to do something

101tonight uh with our process. We like to target that third reading for action. However, that's three readings for transparency as opposed to three meetings now we're at a wall and we have to make a decision. So, uh this is one of those things that we need to make sure we get right. Uh and so I will turn the time over uh to is it Kirsten Stewart, associate director of communications. Thank you, Vice President Edel, members of the board. Um, happy to be here again talking about our progress with the naming and branding of the high-tech learning center that will soon occupy the former Draper headquarters of tech giant eBay. Um, as you're aware, the board of education has the authority to name all buildings, all building remodels or other facilities within the district. Um, as

102a point of information, the board doesn't necessarily have to take formal action. I think some of you were here with Glacier Hills Elementary, so you'll remember that the board didn't take a formal vote to approve the name, but directed the administration to move forward with it. Um, so tonight, we're going to briefly review four final contenders um that we have up for consideration tonight and discuss next steps. Before we review um those names though, I wanted to briefly remind everyone of the process kind of leading up to today, you know, in a lot of ways naming an organization or a program is a little bit like naming a child, right? Feels like the stakes are pretty high. You know, you want the name to be modern but timeless, edgy, but you know, safe and um

103kind of unique but not too weird, right? Um and I think that's where we are and and The board though however in its wisdom gave us sort of some guidelines right to sort of guide this process. So when we started initially um the board made clear that you wanted two things. One stakeholder engagement and two engaging students in the process of coming up with a name and we've really worked I think to fulfill both those goals. Um as you know we have engaged students um in the name ideiation and then in some of some of the research leading up to our development of a brand uh guide. So we've performed stakeholder surveys as you know where we had all of CDC's high school students and middle school students and parents actually uh give us feedback

104on what they'd like to see from this kind of learning center. We actually also asked them to provide some naming ideas. Um we did the industry focus groups. Uh Susan did that, performed that with Senator Pat Jones. Um you know, the creative team here at Canyons District has worked really hard. Um fierce brainstorming sessions as I've discussed uh but in previous board meetings. Um of course the staff and faculty at CEK have been uh very involved in brainstorming sessions and actually kind of informal focus groups. And of course the students, right? They've performed a competitive analysis of nearby tech centers and a SWAT analysis to kind of understand what makes us different, what makes us tick, what get what makes us stand apart from other schools that are uh in this market. And then most

105recently they participated in a branding activity with gardener design. That's the company that is works with MHTN, our architects to kind of bring this brand to life visually. Those are the students you can see there. Um they good representation from all of our high schools. Um on the left there, that picture on the high left, you can see those are the students standing with their word clouds. Those were as part of that second activity that we did with Gardener Design where we kind of challenged them to think about what the different brand names that were on the table meant to them. Um and they the two names that resonated most for them I think were Nexus and Synergy. Those are also the two names that we have before us today that were advanced by the

106steering committee to the board. At the last board meeting uh and during the board round table, we discussed some additional names submitted by gardener design. Um those were the kind of the outgrowth of a visual metaphor that the architects brought to us as sort of their way of it was a way of them anchoring their their ideas for or plans for the interior design of the building. Um we kind of talked about this idea of you know students being on this journey or path of discovery. Um as illustrated you know moving from the what's visible or what they can see to what they can't see what they don't quite know yet as illustrated by kind of like this visible and invisible life light wave spectrum. Um we also kind of talked about you know waves

107colliding like ideas, disciplines and talents that will be converging at this new school. And that discussion brought forth two additional names for consideration confluence and the wave. So the light metaphor is really powerful um because as we've discussed brands aren't just an image or a logo. They're not a texture. They're not even like what the inside of the school is going to look like. They're a story. Um and I think we know what our story is. I you know because we're writing it. Um this is a story about how what you get when you combine you know the former headquarters of eBay and a forward thinking school board. It's the symbol of a.com It's the symbol of a dotcom boom in the digital age being reborn as a launchpad for generations of innovators. It's kind

108of the story of what you get when you get young curious people in the same room. A kind of living lab with business leaders. Um, so I think while we want this brand to differentiate us from the crowd and be just like a little bit unexpected, what I'm also hearing from you is that you want it to be grounded in what the board's vision is for this learning center. It is at the end of the day a school. Um, so of course these are kind of our key differentiators that we've identified and below there are the durable skills or habits that we want students leaving the school with. Um, and of course we have many stakeholders that we're responding to and we want our brand to resonate with these stakeholders. So per the board's request,

109we've added um some modifiers to some of our names um for your consideration today. We've also looked for some ways to kind of slightly modify the spelling of some of our name these names so that um to kind of create a bit more brand ownability um or distinction. For example, with Nexus, right? You can see Nexus. It's kind of a play on Nexus with Next kind of invoking this forward orientation. Nexus with the XUS is kind of a very visual first variation, right? It kind of forces you to engage with it and ask yourself what it means and how to pronounce it. Um with the modifiers we've uh tried to either explicitly tie if in this for this example nexus to canyons district um or pair it with something like works which is a very

110active word. It kind of gives it an impactful feeling. Um nexus point or nexus point nexus are pretty self-explanatory. It right ties explicitly to the innovation point where this building will be adjacent that growing tech sector. Synergy is the uh next name. So, we've kind of done the same thing with synergy. Um pairing it with the point or the slopes. Um I kind of like synergy at the slopes or synergy slopes. Um it kind of has that nice double meaning. And then we gave you an alternate spelling, Canyon Synergy Center, Synergy with the C, which kind of canyonizes the word a little bit. I know there was some concern that it's a maybe too wellused word. It doesn't have a lot of meaning. the wave. Um, so this was kind of a a late comer.

111It's a really provocative name word to be sure. Um, I think it's a little bit more abstract too than the other names and so probably will need some concrete modifiers and taglines to kind of help it people explain or to to help explain to people what it is. Um, so Wave Academy or the Wave at Canyons are kind of attempts to do that. I'm going to move fast through these because I know you have all had time to digest them. Um, confluence. Finally, confluence is something we felt maybe needed to be paired with something shorter like a one syllable or two syllable modifier because it is a little hard. You know, it's a three syllable confluence, so it needed to have something short paired with it. So, here they all are. um just for ease

112of reference along with some of the modifier options. These aren't the full list um of options that of course we have in our repertoire. We can always come up with more. But um I mean I'd love to hear what you're all thinking. Even if you feel we need to take another run at this with the steering committee um I know as Edel uh vice president Dr. Mr. Edel suggested that you know we want to get this right. I want to get this right. I think it's important that we get this right, but I think we also need to remember that no name ever really feels fully right until it's brought to life right through a visual context, but more than that through an identity that unites everyone who's a part of it, right? So this

113brand is going to come to life in the climate and culture of the school. And that story will evolve and we will continue to tell the story. So just food for thought, but I'd love to hear what you're all thinking. Miss Dolly, thank you one for all your work on this. Um, it's tricky trying to to get this name right, but we really want it to represent what this center is going to be all about. And so my comment is I'm curious as to why, you know, we've been using the name Canyon's Innovation Center sort of as a a placeholder name, but I think innovation is really what we're targeting at. you know, it's one of the things that we're really trying to to achieve and make happen here. And so, I'm just curious as

114to why we're sort of stepping away from using innovation. Now, maybe it's using one of these and then in like a subtitle, you know, Canyon Center of Innovation or something like that that we're still keeping that focus and that goal that we're working towards um front and center with this this center did uh so innovation center I think you know it's a viable option. It's been what we've been referring to as for many weeks now, many months now. Um I think the reason that we didn't go that route and we did have some ideas initially on the table like center point or um the innovation point, you know, and um I think one of the ways that we chose not to go that route is we didn't want something too descriptive. We wanted something a

115little bit more associative, something that kind of challenged people to think a little bit more, reach a little higher. So, I I don't think it's outside, you know. I mean, we could certainly bring it back and consider it. Miss Oaks, thank you for your presentation and for your patience, Kirsten. You've been extraordinarily patient with all of us during this process. Um I think to what Malle's question was, one of the conversations we had when we spoke with the branding firm is how powerful it is to have um a center where the name speaks for itself. And Catalyst up in Davis um school district is very much like that. They don't have to say the Catalyst Innovation Center. Catalyst they immediately know and how know how to recognize what it's about. Um so I think that's

116actually really solid and really powerful. But to give a little bit of feedback for me like I love the idea of Nexus and XUS it's cool like I don't know like seeing it like that I was like oh I kind of think of that word differently now. Um if Synergy were to be chosen I like Synergy Slopes since we're close to Silicon Slopes. I actually think it's pretty cool and we're going to be working with a lot of those companies. Um as you know I like the Wave. I think the wave academy, the wave exchange, wave works. I don't know. There's a lot of fun iterations. So, those are would probably be my preference at this point. Confluence to me feels a little wordy and hard to say. And I think when Convergence Hall comes

117out, I think it will be easy for the public kind of to mix up those two words. So, Mr. Lewis. All right. Um, my preference still lies in confluence just based on the the uniqueness and the it's it's a very unique word. If we're looking for a name that is very much going to invoke a sense of uniqueness like Catalyst did, I think Confluence does a really good job at that. Um, I still have this this issue with synergy where it just doesn't mean a whole lot. Like what Andrew spoke to to the last meeting at the last board meeting. I just I'm really having a hard time getting over that even with the the additives at the end. I just I don't feel like it's special to us. I don't feel like it's the

118name of a school as well. And I I don't know the I I feel the same kind of thing about Nexus as well. It just doesn't feel like us. It doesn't feel like specific to us to canyons, you know, just just that specific to canyons or education specifically at all. But that those are my thoughts. I also really like the wave because it's very Utah theme and it also kind of invokes a sense of like ripple effect like kind of what the images that we saw at the last uh meeting. I thought the wave kind of fit well with those as well. Um, those are my thoughts. Miss Patterson, I don't have one that I love the very very very most, but having the adjectives attached to them does help change change the Do you

119have cute pictures? Anyway, change um how I think about it. Um, I know I'm weird, but when I see the word collaborative with something, wave collaborative, is that like the Borg collaborative? I'm just just weird science fiction kind of thing. But I do kind of like the wave collaborative is that we're going to work together and we're going to be building on a wave. So, that's actually not not bad. Um, not so big on synergy still. Um, with the new playing with the spelling of Nexus is kind of interesting. I don't know if I like NXUS or just Nexus, but that's a little harder to say. So, NXUS is kind of interesting. So, Nexus at Canyons or Nexus Works. Anyway, um so I like and Confluence. I do wonder about it being confused with the

120point eventually when they build their part. If we were standalone and they weren't going to be anywhere around us, that would probably be my number one. So, I'm probably narrowing it down to the wave or nexus. Nexus. Yeah, Dr. Robbins. Yeah, to give my input on what is presented there already. I I do like that uh NX US. I think that's sort of cool. I think it would still need to have a kind of some kind of subtitle to it. Canyon's Innovation Center, whatever it is. Um, the one question I have though is will people be like, "You guys are in education. Do you not know how to spell?" That's just my only concern with that. But, um, I like the wave. I I did like Confluence. I do agree it is a little bit

121more of a mouthful. Synergy is probably my least favorite of those four. So, I'm going to play a little bit of devil's advocate on this. Um, so when you think about some of the most powerful brands in the world that have stood the test of time, a lot of them are more simple than they are complex. And that's for a reason, right? Yeah. And and how people connect. I think Kirsten makes a really good point. it it's not necessarily the name that is going to create this brand. It's going to be the people, the experience, the culture, how it feels when you go there that will end up determining how this goes. I I think in some ways just you know being a former high school principal um when you think about branding and I'm

122I mean from my background in sports those names are usually a lot more simple than they are complex. Um and sometimes in that simplicity brings great power and strength. So just to throw that out there I'm I'm not leaning one way to any of them. I I do like I think the modifiers, you know, help with that. Um, but I think it's also, you know, just to think about, you know, how how does some of the more simple terms or names, you know, in the end, I mean, as a high school principal, what comes to my mind instantly is or, you know, through a a 17-year-old view and brain and lens, what's going to go out on TikTok and every meme that, you know, and so there might be something to think about when it

123comes A maybe less is more. Thank you, President Shell. Okay. Um I I don't know. I'm kind of like Amanda where I I like some of the ones Amanda said, like the synergy slips. I like that. I know people like Cath were really divided on this. So, um I'm a little worried with Nexus to be honest because it's similar. I'm sorry to say this in a public meeting, but sex I like when I saw that I'm a little I just don't know what high school kids will do with that. But anyway, maybe maybe I'm overthinking that. Um I do like the wave too. The thing about the wave or confluence, you guys, is we did have those students that have literally worked on the names for a year. I mean, think about that. And I

124feel like in a way we should honor their work, but um I don't know. I mean, maybe we don't care about But I I do feel a little bad if we just throw out the two names they put forward to us, but but if we feel strongly, then we have to, you know, do what we think is best. Um, and as far as what Katie said, I mean, I don't know. Canyon's Innovation Center, if we really can't decide, I mean, there we go. So, I'm not much help, but um maybe even today if we could narrow it to two. I don't know. Maybe we can decide. Anyway, that's all I have for now. Thank you. And it says everything. Uh, Miss Oaks. She's walking where? Somewhere with boats. Okay. So, one thought that I had,

125I shared this with the superintendent prior to this study session. Um, I was with a a group of college friends over the weekend, one of whom is a professor down at Snow College and the other is a counselor at Wasatch Academy, private school down there. And when they were asking me about the innovation center and we were I was sharing with them the plans for it, they got so excited and they said, "We're only 90 minutes away. We would totally bring students up back and forth for that." And I was like, "Wow." I kind of like it blew my mind. They said, "We we were looking for something like that." I really believe, here's my prediction, um that this is going to cause a ripple effect throughout the state of Utah. When other districts see

126what it is we have created, they're going to have very little choice but to start and adapt and innovate themselves. And in some ways, we are the beginning of a wave. So, there's kind of like in that sense, I think the name could be really cool because I do think it's going it's going to change education in the state of Utah. That's my prediction. But can can I say one thing really quick? There is another um name that I like. If we're going to go toward the wave, what about Wave Point? Anyway, just I just want to throw that out. Miss Dolly, I think as we're talking about with the students, would it be worthwhile to send this back to our committee of students, even by email, and just see what their feelings are as

127we've narrowed it down to these items? I like that idea. I think actually going forward, my suggestion would be to so we we know sort of how the students feel, right? They sort of coalesed around those two options, synergy and nexus. Um I mean they haven't seen confluence in the wave so we can take it back to them. Um we know how the administrators right we kind of did informal straw poll of administrators that were in the room and we know where they feel. We've surveyed parents we surveyed students. We asked initially just for naming ideas not that to give us feedback on a naming suggestion but I wonder if what we need to do is just some small focus groups like maybe with some students maybe with um some business leaders. We've got that

128business advisory group right in the wings. maybe with um some faculty and staff and get and just get qualitative data, not survey data, and bring that back to all of you so that you can get a sense how how others are responding to the different names on the table. And then maybe we bring that back to the steering committee and the steering committee will like maybe they'll have enough, right, to be able to say, "Okay, this is the one." And we can bring that to the full board. That's my hope. And maybe we need to bring more names to the table. I'm not opposed to that as well. Miss Nyar, I agree with that. I think that's a great suggestion by Kirsten. I think we should take it back to the students, especially since they

129haven't seen some of these other options. I like that idea. President Shell, um I would actually really like that idea, that idea. And what if we take it to our business um those business leaders too? Even if we just take it to one of the cohorts, we don't have to involve all of them, but what if we take it to one of them with these four names and get their feedback? I I like that idea, too. True. Faculty and staff as well, or just the business and students? All three. Okay. And then the next Do we want to do this in time for the next when what are the next two innovation steering committee meetings? There's one next week, right? Which is probably a little too soon for us. Yeah, you can give it a

130couple weeks or even a month, right? We're not meeting in July. So, okay. I guess we could bring it back that first August meeting unless there's some urgency. No, I think that still gives us ample time to get um start working on the visualization and time for, you know, some kind of a fall unveiling so that we can start to build the the brand throughout the building as well because we want to give the architects some and construction team some heads up as well so that they have time to do what they need to do. So yeah, I think that it's a good plan. Okay. Any opposition to that plan? Okay. Any final comments before we move on? Um, President Shell or uh Miss Nibbar, just speak up if you have any last closing comments.

131Otherwise, we'll move on. Thank you. Okay. She's gone. All right. Next on the agenda, we have item eight, which is our budget hearing. With you going down to the front, there's nobody over here. Yeah, I guess I could switch it. Uh, thank you, Vice President Edto. We'll go through our budget hearing uh right here. So, so we'll start by opening our hearing right now. Uh, we'll go over the budget, what the highlights of it, allow public comment. I don't know if there's a whole lot uh here, but uh then then you can have the discussion and then we'll ask you to vote both on the revised budget for this current year that's just ending and our budget for next year. Okay, so be two different motions. Uh and I'm going to go through this pretty

132quickly if it's all right. A lot of these slides I've shown you before. Uh I may This is the budget that we've printed on put online. It's on boards. It's been out there since the end of May of which it had to be under state law uh for any public inspection. So I may show that. Uh also once we get going, there's also page numbers where I uh where you can reference the budget here. But just quickly hitting the current year, the 2425 budget where we're asking you to change here. uh asking you to just move up our revenues and expenses by about a little over 1% for each. Uh some of the revenues, you know, we had unspent carryovers in land trust and TSSA and also IDA and Title One funds that were not

133spent last year that we can carry forward and put in the budget this year. The reason our expenses go up is because we have some carryovers that for schools that we added back into the budget for, you know, supplies, textbooks, uh, technology, equipment. Also, our electricity has gone up. So, we also have a fewer unfilled positions, you know, partly because our wages are up there higher. So, we have people, you know, somewhat coming to us to work. So, all that being said, not much of a change. And as we've always done the last several years, you know, we're looking at being under budget around 2%. Once everything's said and done, you can see our other funds there, our capital funds. The main one that changed again, we we spent 50 million on the innovation center

134that we did plan on a year ago at this time. Then also we had school carryovers there and equipment uh that that got added back in. Uh the other is pretty much consistent in the nutrition fund that went up because we bought quite a bit of new equipment. We needed to spend down some of that balance. So we spent about oh 600,000 in equipment. Also our food costs have gone up too as well as everybody has seen that at the store. So that's our budget, our revised budget for uh this past year that we're asking to approve. Here's our budget going forward. Again, the page numbers on the actual budget are shown on on most of the screens where we got this data. Uh just accumulating it there. So, you can see all our revenues,

135all our expenses. You see lots of deficits in that far right column. Uh we'll go through that in just a moment. Keep in mind again, we always budget heavy on the expenses, but try to try to get our revenues as close as we can, but go, you know, expect to be two to 3% under budget on our expense side. But we do have beginning balances or fund balances to start with that we figure into the budget as well. So again, when you look at the ending balances, we still looking to have an ending balance of 110 million once next year is complete and all our funds. Uh a lot of that will be drawn down in our capital fund as we look to make some big imp uh ongoing items at Jordan High and the

136innovation center in particular. Uh just hitting our general fund. Our revenues by source going around the blue. Blue is property taxes. That's our you know we get 40% from that. We get about 62% from the state. We're getting more and more restricted than unrestricted from the state. Always a concern. Our federal has dropping because we don't have ers as anymore that way. So that's where our money coming in is coming from. Again, looking at the function or the purpose of the money going out. Again, we want we're education. We want all as much money going to instruction as possible in that blue area. So, that's our teachers or our assistants. You know, we want most of the money as much as we can going to the classroom. Facilities is our our custodians. Also, our utilities.

137You know, there's 10 million we pay in utilities every year. going around the staff would be the 32 hours also be our instructional coaches, our librarians. School admin is going up because we have hired 13 new elementary APS and our student services are you know our counselors, social worker, psychologists, then central's accounting, payroll, uh it transportations are busing and just a little bit there in district and community. So again, what the object is is is the detail and of course education. You can talk all you want about AI and everything. It's still a teacher in front of our kids and that's what it's all about. And so it's people that's why 90% of our budget is people expense in our general fund for salaries and benefits. Uh and the other for utilities and supplies and

138whatnot, but again it's always That's why negotiations are big in there. Our budget's made up of some 12,000 XL lines. And just to, you know, give you a brief overview of what's in including in here is a bit is, you know, the state money we got 4% and they did give each teacher, you know, a $1,400 increase, but they also took away money, you know, to make it all balanced in transportation, DTL, software grants, and other places as well. Uh we are proposing another a tax increase in our general fund of about 4.1 million. Get to that towards the end here. The biggest one would be the negotiation agreements with all our association groups. And then as I mentioned adding the elementary APs, we kept class sizes the same in middle elementary and middle school.

139We did raise them by a half in the uh high school to help offset those elementary APs. We have a cushion of 29 teachers still with about 10 remaining right now if we needed those. Then we have increases in supplies, utilities, teachers will still get paid their hourly rate and again mentioned that education educator salary adjustment moving up. Here's the expenses. I mean here's how our balance looks. Again, we were budgeting on being over uh, you know, being under budget, excuse me, by about that two 3% for our expenses. So, we do feel like once everything is balanced out, we will come basically even with that in mind. Keep in mind, last several years, we the law allows us to move unspent money from our debt service fund into our general fund for any technology

140purposes. We plan to keep doing that transfer as well. So at the end, you know, we're showing a $62 million fund balance. We do expect that to be in the 70 range. We're at about 72 right now. We expect to be about that moving forward. Uh here's how it's classified. Again, the two big ones there are committed, which is what we've, you know, the legislature allows us to set aside 5% of our budget for what they call stabilization. Uh then we also have money set aside for our retirees under our policy that came over from Jordan School District and open POS and whatnot. And the other is the assigned that's school carryovers, billing costs, insurance costs, things of that nature that we can assign money to there. So that's how again we do expect that

141to be higher but that's what we're budgeting here for. Couple things that I just wanted to note u you know a big thing is our starting teacher salary again. So here's our salary com and I will call these some our major competitors for teachers along the wallatch front. You can see where we stack up versus they their sal starting salary from next year. So we are have still maintained I think we've even actually increased it a little bit. So big thank you to the school board for approving what you did in negotiations there. So uh still ahead of those around us again as we compete for teachers. Uh last six years this would be about a $14,200 increase in our starting teacher pay. Our big concern that we have is our enrollments. Talked about this

142at length and we'll continue to do so. Uh still just seeing that enrollment decrease, birth rate, housing costs, the main driving factor. We do have some some proposals uh in the long range planning that we're working on that we'll bring to you uh later this summer and early fall. I put this one in. I just wanted to show you this one. A couple meetings ago I showed you our out of district students. So that those would be students who live in canyons who attend school in another district or vice versa live in say Granite or Jordan but come to one of our schools. This is looking at charter school students. So in the middle one there where it says charter school boundaries students. Those are students who live in Canyon's boundaries or Davis or Salt

143Lake boundaries. but attend a charter school. It may not be a charter school within those boundaries. So for instance, you know, we may have kids who live here but attend a charter in Grand or Jordan, but they do live in our boundaries. That's how the how part of the equalization tax is calculated. But you can see if you add the October one enrollment plus the kids who reside in who attend charters but reside in our boundaries. You add those two numbers together, you can see the percent that you know I'll call it somewhat of a capture rate that attend our schools. We're about 90% which is better than our other neighbors. You can see there. So that's a that's a good thing for us. Again, we haven't been highly impacted since our we started by

144by charter schools, which is good. We have had some pop up. We know that. But overall, I don't think those numbers would change over the last several years by that much. So, I just wanted to put that one out there. Um, we're going to move on to our capital fund. Again, we're looking at spending 72 million on buildings and remodelings. Here's some of the highlights. We went over this last meeting or excuse me, two meetings ago, the innovation center once we get going there, we'll begin heavy construction. Uh hopefully in September on maybe the out building, then maybe in February, March on the interior side there. Just a timeline. And then Jordan High would be the next big one with the their uh fieldhouse and their uh secure vestibial and their uh uh interior theater

145uh a little blackbox theater that we're building for them. So those were looking at 14 million there. East Martin Corner, we hope to have those done by the end of this calendar year in 2025. making good progress on both those some of the small capital things were again we're moving underway on all these the Indian Hills band room teen centers at Brighton and Hillrest we got grants for both those albian auditorium Jordan Valley cheerers so some of these will go into next school year I know Indian Hills and Albian will probably go until October time frame to get those completed and the Jordan Valley chiller will probably go most of next year to get the controls all balanced out in the building there. We'll have money for districtwide improvements for plumbing, carpeting, electrical, three and

146a half million for IT projects, and then another 2 million for school equipment. Here's our lease revenue bonds. The blue is the initial bonds we issued in 2021. That was for Glacier Hills and Peruvian Park. Uh the red is for uh Jordan. we did about just over a year ago for Jordan Corner, Hill, Christristen, Eastmont, and the kind of the turquoise would be the innovation center. You can see paying them all off in 2040. Uh, as of right now, we still owe about 124 and you can see what our payment would be next year. Again, keep in mind the budget does include a 2.5, almost a 2.6 six if I round uh tax increase to fund the bonds for the innovation center. Okay, so that's get to that here in just a moment as well.

147Here one of the things we always look at our capital fund is going out three years seeing where our balances be and how much we can do. So again, balance is still fairly on the low side, but uh we do have, you know, four and a.5 million for each year for we'll complete the lease revenue bomb payments, the ongoing district-wide capital mainten ongoing maintenance, five million for small capital projects each year. Uh so we can still do some good things, I think, to keep our schools going in the state till we can get to the point where we can start looking at rebuilding some new schools there. Uh we'll talk about our debt fund. Here's our current debt. Uh we just made our payment for 25 this past week. So once uh we're about 334

148million in GEO bonds with the payment due this upcoming year that will bring us down close to that 300 million mark there. So again, we're starting to try to give that a more rapid payown again. And then here's it is in a graphical form. This is assuming we're still looking to refund bonds issued in 2015. You I know you you gave us your approval back a few months ago. We're still waiting for interest rates to to even out for us. Uh it looks like they will here in the next month. So we're looking to do that then. But uh once that done, this is how it we feel like this will look. Uh what's you know, it's nice that we'll have a rapid payown that 67% is due within the next six years. Uh and

149then you know it does taper down quite a bit once the blue is paid off. That would be the 2010 bonds. So all bonds paid off in 13 years in 2038. You see the chart there. uh nutrition lunch prices remain the same. Our balance will be about five million at the end of next year. Again, those C schools, uh Midville, Mid Midville Middle, then Midville, Mid Valley, Carper View, East Midville, and Sandy will still all receive free breakfast and lunch as they have this year. other funds. Uh I think the biggest is just that bottom one there, the self- insurance fund in health in you know insurance costs just continue to go up. That's a big cost there. We're going to cover 2.1 million in premiums on the district side, but employees will have about

150$850,000 increase in deductibles on their side. So splitting that cost of about three million increase in insurance cost. next year. Okay. So, now we're going to talk about tax rates uh for this upcoming what we're proposing for this upcoming year. We do not have the final tax rate set by the state, but we're they are getting close. Uh so, we're looking at, as I said, increasing the voted rate by 4.1 million in the rounding and the capital rate by 2.6 million. And again rounding so you can see where the rates are there. Again rates are fairly consistent but again values have gone up there but that is our what we are proposing. So it would be a total of about 6.633 200,000 I mean $200 in revenue over last year. This is how an average

151tax statement would look. So, this is for the average home. I want to just spend a few minutes with this. Uh, I told you last time I thought the average home would go up seven 3% or up to around 740 thou I mean 24,000. It went up about 5% up to 740,000. That is the average home in Canyon School District is that amount. So, that's again that's about a 5.3% increase or $37,000 from last year. You can see that in that green box there. Here is the top line is what we are proposing. It's about just under $70 uh on the average home in that tax increase there. Again, that top line that $6960. So about 5.9% increase. Uh this our debt stays pretty consistent. Again, the rate went down, but the values of the

152homes went up. So about a $5 increase there. And they have not I want to emphasize they have not set the state basic rate yet. That's the one we're waiting on. Again, that is showing uh about a $50 increase. I hope it's not that high once they set it. So we'll hope that when that brings that down, but everybody's home is going to change different. It's all going to change in how your value changed in to that to the certified rate. So we could have homes that go up seven, eight, 10% and their tax statement will look a lot different. We will have homes that go up two or 3%. And theirs will look different. Their tax increase will not be as much. Uh commercial, we've talked about commercial property continues to kind of home

153values go up, but commercial property kind of stays stagnant. It's even some places even went down. The one of the big tax areas is over at the old mill center. A lot of those buildings actually went down in value this year. Uh we have others along the State Street I-15 corridor that went up uh quite a bit which uh so it's how you know the value of the property goes up as well. So but that's what we're looking at. You can see it'd be a total, you know, a total $140 if they don't change the certifi I mean they don't change the basic rate, but our share is that $70 on the uh on the top line there. So, just to keep you aware of that. So, that's what homeowners will get when they receive

154their tax notices. It will be around July 22nd. they opt for that electronic notice that's around July 10th. We will send you the final once they get this basic rate sent and send you the final how this will look but that top number of that 6960 we don't expect to change again that will generate us that 6 point uh oops let me go back here that would generate us that six million that $6.6 $6 million right there using this uh using these rates. So, uh here's the just some little historical context. Uh since 2019, you know, homes were before the pandemic 421,000. That's the average. You can see how much they've gone up 70 almost 76%. Uh the tax rates gone down. The amount of taxes owed has gone up 34%. A lot some of

155that is because we have gone above the certified rate and others is because again business corporate uh corporate values have gone down. That pushes more of the of the amount owed on to homeowners when when they do that. Keep in mind the certified tax rate does not allow for increases in inflation. So that's why we have to go out and raise taxes to cover that cost of inflation for that we experience here. Uh just one of the reasons, you know, I just put in a CPI chart. If we had a $100 in 2018, that's that bought us a basket full of goods. That same $100 would I mean that we could only that same basket. Uh we'd have to take out a quarter of the stuff in the basket now because you know inflation has

156gone up 25% in that time. So that just you can see our buying power has just decreased. We recognize that with homes, but uh that is the issue that local governments face. A couple slides that we'll show at our tax hearing is, you know, if you don't feel like the the value of your property is not correct, you should appeal it with the uh board of equalization at the at the county. That is due by the 25th. And if you looking for tax relief, there are six programs there that uh help those over 65 or those with lower income and but you need to apply by September 2nd. I want to emphasize a couple things on our tax notice just before we wind up here that uh we're proposing that to be on uh August

1575th. That is when the county has asked us to have it. We will have it at 7 o'clock. The past couple years, we've had it at 6. Since we're not having a board meeting in July, we will have a board meeting before, but it will need to end about 6:45 because it has to end before this 7 o'clock as this can be the only topic on the agenda for the tax hearing. Also, a new law that was passed this past session is you have to allow some type of virtual option for your tax hearing. How that looks, we'll talk about that as a staff and talk about board leadership or whether or not they can comment online or or or just view online. We'll we'll talk about that. But you do have to allow a

158virtual option uh moving forward. So with that, I'll turn it back to you. Just want to give a big shout out to Danny for all his work help putting this together. It's again those 12,000 lines of Excel. It's a lot. 400 again, we're about 500 million plus budget. So it's a it's a big big operation. So here's the two motions. be re we'll uh uh leave these up here but the first one is to approve our revenues and expenses I'll be showing you in the budget for this current year then adopt the budget for revenues and expenses on a tenative basis as as presented and then final approval will be at our tax hearing in August. then be authorized to have a tax hearing on August 5th at seven to set the following rates. And

159again, the voted rate would go up to to generate 4.1 million. The capital rate would go up to generate just under 2.6 million and the debt rate to service our debt there. So with that, see if there's any public comment. Uh President, Vice President, I don't there is. Okay. Okay. Did anyone in the public wish to comment? Great. Then, uh, I'll turn it over to the rest of the board, uh, if you have any questions, comments, or if you would like to make a motion. Miss Oaks, thanks so much, Leon. Um, one of the thoughts I have, you do a masterful job, by the way. I am convinced we have the best business administrator in the state and don't say that though it's true and though you're extraordinarily thorough and I don't think that like

160even a penny gets p by you which is saying a lot um one of the thoughts I have with regard to this and it it has nothing to do with the budget itself it's how we are presenting things so at the pre-delegate assembly week and a half ago Um, Senator Peruchi and Representative Baldery were there. Or is it Senator Baldery? Is she a senator? She's a senator. They were both senators. Okay. Excuse me, my mistake. They were there speaking with us and made a very interesting comment that puzzled me. And that was they said, "We don't know where why you guys keep raising taxes." They said, you know, here we're giving you all of this additional money and yet you're going and raising property taxes and what do you have to show for it and

161where are you spending it? And I was really puzzled by that because I thought, we give them your book every year that accounts for all of the things. And when I started asking some questions after they spoke to get a better idea of where that perception was coming from, the feedback was that, and this is not necessarily our fault, right? Because public education funding is very complex, but that it's the reports that we have are so complex and so thick that they don't know how to get through that and easily perceive what's going on. And so they just don't look at it, right? And um I'm just wondering and and I'm glad we have Kirsten in the room. I'm wondering what we can do as a district to better inform our legislators about where the

162money is going in a way that is more simple and straightforward. I mean, of course, we're going to have to have some asterisks on there like look at the fine print if you have additional questions, but they are inundated with so much information even over the interim sessions that I think we need to really develop whether it's an infographic, but something that is more easily digestible for them and for also probably members of our public to get a snapshot a snapshot idea of where it's going. And then on the other side of that, we need to um do a better job actively communicating that with them and getting it to our legislators. I I was blown away that that was their perception and it was like they didn't they weren't aware of the cost of

163the safety bill and they weren't aware of what's happened as a result of school fees. I I know that Murray School District sent that letter months ago um trying to help them understand the death by a thousand paper cuts that we're experiencing and why we're forced to pay property taxes. But I I was shocked to hear people like that, especially now in leadership, that their perception is that we're just randomly raising taxes for no reason. I want to make it very clear to the public here. We don't feel like we have any other choice if we're going to stay competitive with teacher salaries and keep up with the basic expenses, particularly the ones that have been compelled upon us by the legislature in recent years. We have very little choice in the matter. Am I

164saying that correctly or what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, it's always that, you know, how do you take these 12,000 Excel lines and right summarize it just in a few charts, graphs, you know, a little almost like a 3x5 card type thing and and so people can understand and that's something I've always I'll be honest, I struggle with how to present that. But yeah, that that's, you know, it's a you know, it's a it's a three-legged stool that we're funded on. One is state money, one is property taxes, and one is fees. And so, and you know, also keeping up with inflation. You know, we've long advocated if they would have put in a in the certified rate, an inflationary factor, that would help, which is, you know, that is built in the the

165gas tax that is built into income tax because as more people move here, as wages go up, they keep the rate the same, but they generate more money. We do not they do not do that for property taxes and so that is a tough and that's a tough thing to explain. Well, and to that point, I mean, sometimes you know the ins and outs of the finances of this district better than anyone. I think even providing some talking points, I think for our external relations team would be extraordinarily helpful. That same night that I'm mentioning, Alpine School District board members went and spoke with Senator Bald Baldry and Peruchi about the fact that Alpine School District has had to spend $11,000 on ammunition for the school safety guardians or you know, whoever is going to

166be in those schools like and that kind of got their attention a little bit like they were like uh well wait a minute what and so this is what I'm saying it's it's all conceptual for them. So, we need to figure out a way how to effectively con communicate some of these things. President Shell, so just kind of building on what Amanda said at that delegate assembly. Um, yeah, I was shocked because they kind of act acted like they didn't like us raising taxes and I felt the same way. I was like, "What do you expect us to do?" Because we're at the point where if we're going to still maintain all of our programs, you know, all these programs that are super expensive and the service level that we want to give to our

167parents, we have to raise taxes, right? We all know that. And also to take care of our teachers and employees. So, I feel like just Yeah, exactly what Amanda said. We need to communicate that more broadly. And I'm wondering if we should actually invite leadership, you guys, because I do think leadership are the people who need to understand this. We could we could send them a letter. We could send them if we come up with some easy slides. Like I really like Leon's pie charts. I think those are really easy to understand. Um but we let's talk about this further when we meet with our own legislators because yeah, I was shocked that they don't I don't think they realize how much money they cut out of our budgets. They really don't. They really don't.

168And then of course they're raising the basic rate. I bet they don't even know they're raising the basic rate. They gave everyone the income tax cut, but then they are raising property taxes. Yeah. Sorry, I'm like pointing. Um, okay. But Leon, I wanted to see if we could I just wanted to point something out for the public or for anyone. Um, I have been hearing rumors about like, oh, there's so much administration and there's just, you know, people are saying that again. So, can you um go to slide 12 where um it's the general fund expenditures by function. So, I don't know if you guys can pull that up. Yeah, it's pulled up here. Okay, great. I can't see that. Um but I just want to point out here that the central district office is

1694.7%. That's how much of our budget is spent on Kenya's district administration. And I bet if you go to any company any company that is doing well, it's more than 4% that they are spending on their top administrators. So, I just wanted to point that out. I mean, the other piece is school admin is I think it's 7.5. It's kind of blurry on my screen. Yeah, 7.5. So even that, I mean, of course, everyone knows how important a principal is, and now we're adding all these assistant principles to help out our principles, but I just wanted to point that out because I think it's it's just something out there that is not not a true narrative. So that's all. And I want to say thank you to Leon and Danny for all their work. Um,

170yeah, it's amazing. You guys you guys do great things with our budget. So, thank you, Miss Patterson. Yes. Thank you for all the extra work you guys are have been doing for us. Um, I just wanted to ask that it was brought up in USBA a while ago that there was going to be a spreadsheet created by every district to send to the legislators identifying the bill and then how much it costs to implement that for just this year's bills, which is a lot anyway. Um, has that come across your desk? Is that something we're working on? Yeah, I filled that out probably back before the USBA uh back in May before delegate assembly. Is there a way we can get a copy of that as well? Sure, I can send because the link I

171think they're compiling it into a docket that they can hand document that they can hand to everyone, but I think it would be very helpful for us again with our talking points to be able to see what it is we're exactly, you know, what our district is spending because every district is different. Yeah. So yeah, we we were negative just like of course you were. Yeah, that's not a surprise. This is supposed to be as informative to our our legislator. So thank you very much. Send you that link. Maybe by the end of the day I'll send that out. Molly, I was just going to make a motion. Are we ready for that? Okay. I move to adopt the 202425 final budget for revenues and expenditures for each fund as presented. Do we have a

172second? I'll make that second. All right, we have a motion and it has been seconded. Is there any discussion? All right, all in favor say I. I. I. I. All opposed. The motion passes. I move to adopt the 202526 budget revenues and expenditures on a tenative basis for each fund as presented as final approval will be at the truth in taxation hearing. I also move, did we? Sorry. Okay. And two, authorize a truth in taxation hearing on August 5th at 7 p.m. to set the property tax rates as follows. A, basic school levy, certified rate as determined by the tax commission and Utah State Board of Education. B voted levy, a rate to yield an additional 4,78,200 above the certified rate. These funds will be used for operational expenses, primarily increases to teachers and support

173staffs. C. Capital levy, a rate to yield an additional 2,555,000 above the certified rate to fund lease revenue bond payments for innovation center. D. debt levy sufficient to service debt requirements not to exceed 0001565. Do we have a second? I'll second it. All right, we have a motion and it's been seconded. Is there any discussion? With no discussion, we'll go ahead and take a vote. All in favor say I. I. I. All opposed. The motion passes. All right, that brings us on to staff comments. So, we'll start with Dr. Robbins. Just real quick, um, thank you to everybody that went up to the Davis dignity symposium, leadership symposium. It was great again and we had board members there as well as administrators. and um Kyle Reyes was the keynote the uh vice president of student

174affairs at Utah Valley. He was awesome. And so just hopefully we can continue to support the symposium. It's I think it's been really helpful to the district. So thanks to everybody that went. Mr. Wilcox, uh last time I mentioned a few administrators who were leaving us. I forgot to note one and that would be Nate Edson, our great special ed. He's done so much for us over the last four or five years since he's been in that position moving to Provo City School District. So, wish Nate and his family the best as he moves on. Excited for Terry Mitchell and what she'll bring to us as well. Um, but with that, uh, just hope everybody has a is having a good summer so far. That's all I got. All right, so we'll move on to

175board comments tonight. I was gonna start with uh President Shell, but she had said she had no comments. I thought that that was going to be really fun, but dang. So, we'll go ahead and start with Mr. Lewis. All right. Uh I want to say I went to the symposium this last week. It was super awesome. Thank you for for Davis School District for hosting that uh symposium. It was some great information. I I'm very grateful to have been able to attend. Um I want to just condemn the acts of violence that this nation saw over this last weekend in Salt Lake City and in Minneapolis. Uh just a quick simple condemnation. Political violence will not change the balance of power in Utah or anywhere else in this country. There are now children left without

176parents because of an act of grotesque violence. So that let's let's just all try to be better going forward. Miss Oaks, thank you for that. I agree with you, Jackson. It's been really sobering. Um, okay. So, there are a couple things I got to do. I mentioned the pre-delegate assembly, which was a a great experience. And also um last week Karen and I attended the BYU arts express conference that focuses on um arts integration particularly in K through six but um also those principles extend beyond. That is always my favorite conference to attend every year. It's so joyful and it's incredible. I learn a lot. I I learned so much about what it's like to be in the students shoes for a minute and how vulnerable um they are often especially when they're being asked

177to create things. But um there is something that I've come to realize um over the last few months I've in an effort to better understand design thinking and preparation for the innovation center and what we want to do there. I decided to um look up the Stanford uh design school and better understand what kind of opportunities there are for me to get engaged in design thinking. And I came across a couple of courses. They've been amazing. And what I've learned more than anything is that creativity is a muscle. It's a skill set. And it's not something that people are either born with or they're not. It's something that they develop and they practice and get better at. And sometimes you have to let go of your pride a little bit. But as you start to

178lean into it and work at it more and more and more, it's incredible what emerges. I feel very strongly that that process, the design thinking process and innovation begins early or it should begin early. And we see it a lot with our Beverly Taylor Sorenson teachers who receive a a lot of additional training and expertise in knowing how to apply those principles and art mediums to um the core subjects that the kids are learning and it is an incredible experience and quite magical. Um and I just want to express my verbal and public support for that program. I think it it makes a huge difference in the lives of so many of our students. Um I also would like to encourage all of us to kind of look a little bit deeper at design thinking

179if if you have the opportunity even if there's some articles or maybe I'll share some of them with you guys. But um those principles are really what lead to the entrepreneurship mindset and the ability to problem solve and work with um project-based learning. It's amazing. That brings me to another subject. And I know this is to my right, the resident expert on AI. I used to kind of like not fully appreciate how important it is. I'm leaning hard into it, Andrew. And I have to say I have come full circle and have come to realize that the use of it can be highly creative and and it can be an extraordinarily powerful tool. Um, in one of the podcasts I listen to, one of the u foremost experts on AI and creativity, um, he's a

180professor, Jeremy Utley, at Stanford, and he teaches in the D school as well. He's they actually surveyed over 31,000 leaders in Fortune 100, Fortune 500, like all sorts of companies around the world. and they got back an astounding statistic. 71% of those leaders said they would hire a less experienced candidate with AI aptitude over an experienced candidate without it. That's really sobering and to me it means that we have a profound responsibility to really figure this out and how to embed this early on in a way that's responsible and appropriate and ethical. I know that there are other districts that have started AI committees. I think we have one here somewhat at the district. I would personally like to see a report um come forward on that and maybe discuss how much you know how

181we as a district maybe flesh that out a bit and expand it a bit. Personally, I I don't know if that falls under strategic which strategic planning committee maybe high quality learning. Um, I don't know. But I'd be interested in knowing if my other board members have any appetite for that at all, but I just the the more I'm digging deep into some of these principles where I'm realizing we need to teach these kids how to use this effectively as a tool. So, Miss Dolly, thank you. Well, as as Leon said, I'm really been trying to take uh full advantage of my summer so far. But uh thank you, Leon, to you and your team for being a wise steward of uh our taxpayer funds and and in providing the best best education possible for

182our students. Also, just want to thank our staff across the district that are spending time sharpening their saws this summer and and participating in continuing education. Uh particularly all those staff members that helped put on the learning summit for our teachers. uh that was very wellreceived and and just help teachers be excited about what's coming for the next school year, which is really exciting just as they finish the school year and they're they're tired and maybe burned out a little bit, but to to have that excitement for what they're looking forward to. So, u thank you for the time you're putting into your summer and preparing for the next school year that some people say, "Oh, teachers have the whole summer off." But I know we have awesome teachers that are doing so much work

183and in improving who they are as a educator and in preparing for their incoming students next year. So, thank you for for the spending that time and doing that work. Miss Patterson, I'd like to build on what Miss Dolly just Mrs. Dolly just said that it is truly the time of the year when teachers can tr can have the time to really plan and integrate what they can do to make themselves better teachers and how they can help our students. So, yeah, teachers don't just lay around on the beach. They probably would like to, but they they know the value of the training that they can get during the summer. So, they'll take a few weeks off, but for the most part, they're working on their classes and their classrooms. Um, and that's kind of

184true for us, too. The work continues even as summer has begun. Um, I'm just going to kind of list some of the things that I've been able to get to. Um, USBA delegate assembly was phenomenal, partly because we were able to use technology to vote, which was so smooth and and um informative. I think that will help us move through our Well, it did. We we finished an hour early because we weren't bogged down by dinosaur methods. So, it was great. It you what I really loved about it for the first time is we had a panel of legislators that happen to come and it was very insightful to hear what their points of view are for next year. What are their goals? Because they're in interim meetings now. They are planning what they're going

185to introduce as soon as this legislative session opens. So, now is the time when they're making plans. So this is actually the best time to contact your legislator because they're not bogged down with actual meetings that they have to be with. So this is the very best time to contact and get to know your legislator and tell them how you feel about some of these topics that are floating around. Um so USBA delegate assembly was awesome. And then um that night I was able to um um attend the Entrada High graduation and administer the oaths for them. Um the best part about Entra High is that they are increasing numbers of students who have finally been able to get their um their degrees despite all the obstacles that they face. And I think one of

186the cutest ones or the funnest one was that there was a daughter and a grandmother who graduated together. They they walked together and they worked on this together and it it was just very touching to know that it meant that much to the grandmother to join her granddaughter. So that was and she was so proud. She was so proud. It was great. Um I did go to the Art Express conference. It was amazing and fun. I haven't played with my art nearly as much as that. Um, made me wanted to go back and have a classroom. I'm going, "Ah, I need to do a classroom. I have grandkids. That'll work." But what was really the amazing thing was is watching these leaders show us all the different ways that without changing timing or instruction, they

187were touching concepts and integrating science, math, music, and art in and it was just seamlessly integrated. And all of them, they weren't coaches on the in the front at all. They were guides on the side. And they were letting us make, we got to be the kids. We got to exp had the opportunity to experience doing those things and the bonding that we made. It was fun by the second day and we only we only had two fun days but the second day I actually saw people I felt connections with because of the activities that we had done together in class and we were only there we only did that one time. So if our classrooms could get more of those skills interwoven and not silo everything we're teaching. here's reading, here's math, but mix

188those all through the day. The kids would be so motivated and the teachers would have so much fun. Um, it's it was just an amazing process. So, I really appreciate the hands-on model of learning. We need to loosen up the the rules and give people a little more freedom to to be creative. We need to do that. That t put the joy back in school. Then I was able to go the next day to the dignity symposium by from Davis district and it's fascinating to me to see the things that they've been able to accomplish to make sure that when children feel discriminated against that they have a process that they can speak up and how the school is going to consistently and uniformly handle these these problems. Discrimination comes in a lot of forms

189and it's not just race. There's just all sorts of ways that people are discriminated against. And it was really fun to get some more tips and and guidance from Davis district who were required to change their program and yet they're stepping up and saying, "Hey, we've learned from this. We enjoy this. We want to share this with you." So, they invite districts from all over this all over the state to come up for this symposium. And then, of course, we've had um a few district committee meetings. Um, one thing I did want to say about AI, just while I'm thinking about it, is that before we can teach the kids to use AI, I think we really need to work on teaching our teachers so that they feel comfortable because you're right, this isn't something

190that we were taught anywhere in our training. Has anyone? We're all learn on the same learning curve. But I think one of the things that will take the stress out of education is letting the computer do the grunt work. and then you'll have time to do those creative, innovative, fun kinds of things. So, we really need to focus on how can we do PD with our our teachers so that they feel comfortable using it. And we're not saying that it's going to cheat. We're going to use them as it's meant to be, which is a tool and not a way around things. Um, let's see. And I do want to say from all of the committee meetings that I've been on that I really appreciate community input and how many times I don't think the

191community understands how many times an email or a phone call or a conversation at the grocery store or formally um we get input from our communities and that we actually take that information and talk about it. We share those ideas and it's been very very helpful. So, I'm looking forward to because I know we have some difficult conversations that we may have to have, but I'm kind of looking forward to working with our communities to talk about what are we going to do to strengthen our schools and use our money the most, you know, most efficiently, be be prudent in the way that we're applying our money. So, I'm looking forward to the town halls that are going to happen after August. I mean, as soon as the summer's over, we're going to be hitting

192those and coming to the different communities in fall in the fall months. And we want you to know that we are going to be discussing with you. Right now, we're just throwing around a bunch of ideas and we need to hear some of your ideas as well. So, I look forward to that. Um, one of the reasons why we're waiting till that long is that we need to have our employees and our staff able to comment as well. They're off for the summer and this impacts them as much as it I didn't say they were off playing, but this impacts them as much as it does our parents and our community. So, we need to make sure that all parties that are going to be impacted will be able to contribute to those conversations. So,

193I'm kind of looking forward to being able to do that. And I hope that our communities are enjoying the summer and getting their wreck passes so they can go swimming for free. that's again been offered by Salt Lake County and uh that they're read doing their 20 minutes of reading, right? No. Yeah. 20 minutes reading, 10 minutes math. Let's see if we can keep that that up so that we don't have our summer slide. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Person. President Shell. Okay. After hearing everyone talk, I'm like, I gotta say something. Plus, we have a lot of time. We're really early tonight. Um so I was able to attend um the delegate assembly and I think for all of us that were there it was just really interesting to hear the perspective of the

194legislators because we have our own perspective and I think sometimes we don't we just don't realize what their shoes are like and um I do think it was very interesting and I do um think just like we talked about earlier that we need to communicate more even more and better to them so they understand our side as well. Um the second thing is I was able to attend that Davis s um dignity symposium and um that was just really informative to me too. I wasn't able to go last year and I I am happy because just some of the stuff they were going over I know um that we are already implementing like we've already done um some of this work. Um, the one thing that kind of stood out to me was that they

195said they try to educate parents all the time, parents, students, um, about the discipline and, um, just their student handbook. And I would like us to kind of emphasize those things if we can too. I know we have it and you have to sign that you read it um, registration, but I don't think parents really read it. I think they just cross that off. So, that's something to think about. Um, the second thing was, um, I was able to go to the RSL game, I think, and several board members were there when they recognized our teachers of the year, and that was just really fun. Um, the teachers were super excited. They were all wearing their Real jerseys that they were given and that was just very generous of Real to do that. So, I

196appreciate um I appreciate them, and it was just fun to see their excitement and getting recognized. and the crowd did give them a good cheer and clapping. So then the last thing is I just want to also tell Nate Edilson like thank you for all his work um in special ed. He has been great and I'm just sad that he's leaving and I wish a district to the south would stop stealing our people. Anyway, um we just have really good administrators and so other districts do try I mean they do steal them from us but anyway we have great people. So, that is all my comments. Thank you. All right. I've got a couple things. First, thank you Amanda and Karen for speaking on AI. Uh, I absolutely think we need to focus on AI

197within our districts, uh, both teachers and students. Similarly, I did submit proposals to teach AI for board members at both the USBA and NSBA conferences. Um, so maybe those can come and we can have some some actual AI classes with that. Uh, for my next one, I did prepare a statement. So, I'm going to read my statement that I have. Uh, I want to begin by offering my heartfelt condolences to the family of Arthur Faza Afa Aloo. Over the weekend, he was killed, shot by a safety volunteer while attending a public event in Salt Lake City. He was an innocent bystander. This was not a fluke. It was the predictable result of placing firearms into the hands of unqualified individuals under the banner of public safety. And it mirrors exactly the danger we are inviting

198into our schools. The Utah legislature mandate mandated that every school have armed guardians. While they technically allow us to contract with law enforcement, they have provided zero funding to do so. When districts point out the cost of hiring real police officers, the only option that provides legitimate training and accountability. We are chastised for choosing the most expensive route. Instead, we're steered toward volunteers and lowcost contract security guards, many of whom lack the qualifications to serve in law enforcement. Let's be clear, the state knows these options are cheaper because they're less trained. And still, they insist we move forward. Despite the risks, despite the warnings, the state's own school security chief has said he will not wait for law enforcement to ramp up. The program must be implemented now, even if it means placing unqualified, underprepared

199people as the first responders inside our schools. This is not caution. This is willful negligence and it will get kids killed. Let me be absolutely clear. Hobbyists are not law enforcement. A veteran is not automatically a trained responder. Being skilled at a gun range does not mean you are prepared to make a split-second decision in a crowded hallway full of children. Active shooter incidents are chaotic, fast, and terrifying. In that chaos, it is not only possible, but likely that an untrained person will miss. And when they miss, a child will die. This isn't hypothetical. It already happened. The school guardian program is dangerously flawed. The legislaturator's decision to offload school safety onto unqualified volunteers and undertrained contract guards is reckless. Children will be shot. Kids will die. We must not wait for the tragedy to

200happen in our own district before we ask. I'm calling on the Utah legislature to immediately revise the law. School security must be the responsibility of trained law enforcement, not educators, not volunteers, and not the school district. I urge every parent, teacher, and community member listening tonight, contact your state legislators, demand accountability, demand reform, because right now, the guardian law will not keep our children safe. It will put them directly in the line of fire. Well, that's kind of heavy to end on, but the board has finished its work and I now adjourn the