Board Meeting 4/1/2025

001at this point. Um, welcome everyone to the meeting of the Canyons Board of Education. Today is April 1st, 2025 and we're meeting at the district office located at 9361 South 397. First item on the agenda is a policy update and I will turn the time over to Jeffson, assistant legal counsel. Thank you, President Shield. So I can learn a lot from picked Gonzac for so you know uh just a couple of policy updates this evening. Um of course we're going through two legislative updates and we'll have quite a our next upcoming meetings but this is where we were finishing up with some work in the student section. Um the first one uh we we discussed this in board meeting already but this is just to bring forward the school fees updates. So um at a

002previous um study session and in board meeting we talked about the updates to the fee policy um in terms of our fee schedule. So, this is just updating um our board policy, adding all of the updates from those two bills. Um updating definitions, the fee schedule, um actually adding a date, and then um the fee provisions. Um as the red line is um on board docs, you can go in and look and and take a look at that. Uh I anticipate we'll get a USB board rule related to fees soon. And it's my understanding that's kind of been in draft form and I heard yesterday that's something they're looking at. So if that comes in and we have some materials to add, we'll do so. But this um updates the fee um the school fee

003policy. Some of the main um elements that um you know fees in secondary schools. We may not charge a fee for specific items outlined um for a service or a good that does not have a direct benefit to the student. Um then we also have the provisions about credit towards graduation without fees that will begin next school year. So we have that language outlined in the policy and the attached red line just goes through all of those updates to the fee policy that we discussed in meeting. Uh then as we were looking at our uh student uh kind of our student section of policies, there have been some questions about um just animals in general on school campuses. And so we we have updated um with some provisions in our service animals in schools. And

004this is under uh the ADA and IDEIDA. Um not a lot of updates, but more just some clarity in terms of where service animals can go. and guidance for staff members interacting with service animals and then the ownership responsibilities for service animals. So, not a lot of new language, but just some clarity in terms of how we handle service animals. Hey Jeff, real quick on that. So, there's a process people go through, right? State to get a license for a service animal, right? Because I hear I'm out in schools once in a while. hear somebody say, "Well, I've got a service dog." But I don't ever hear anyone say, "This is what I had." I mean, anyone can say, "I've got a service dog," right? They define that very clearly. Is that the difference? So,

005so yeah, in our service dog and support. Yeah. So, in primarily when we're dealing with service animals, it's under the Department of Justice and the ADA. So, if we have an employer, a student comes in and says, "Hey, I have this disability and I need a service animal." Here's the process. We discussed that through that. Now, there are what's referred to a therapy dog and and an emotional support dog and an animal, which we'll get into in just a moment. So, our service animals really deals with dogs and specifically the ADA. So, in reviewing this policy, there was some discussion that generated in cabinet about what are we doing with animals throughout the district. Um, and so we want to provide some additional guidance beyond just service animals where that is. Um, and so we're

006proposing a new policy um to not make my PowerPoint 25 slides. I I would encourage you to look at the document on board docs because there's more to it, but I'm going to go through some highlights with this policy. So we again, we've got our service animals that deals with kind of ADA. They have a disability. Now we're going to talk about animals in schools. Now the state um recently in the last two or three years um provided language where schools and under the state law you can have a therapy animal provided your district has a policy. So we want to move from just having service animals being available to open the door for therapy dogs and that specifically uh is outlined in the policy what qualifies. It's a dog that gets a specific registration

007and it's limited to a dog with a specific registration that they will go through and it outlines the entities that in which they could do so. Uh the district in the policy does not own the dog. It would be someone that's an employee or a volunteer that would own it and then they could bring it to the school provided they adhere to the policy. And the policy outlines, scheduling notice, very specific so that it would only be available for students that would like to go engage with this therapy animal at the school during those notice time frames. And so that would allow them to be able to avoid issues with a parent doesn't want their student a therapy animal for allergies or other reasons. Got it. There's a lot of kind of forethought in how

008that would be introduced moving forward. Uh so that's that's really the therapy piece. Um if you look in the policy like there's a section for defining it and there's a section for under state statute what's considered animal assisted intervention where they can engage with a therapy dog and then the provisions for scheduling. And the last piece of this policy deals with animals outside of both of those two sets. service animals, therapy animals, and then a final set if we have classroom related animals which deal with um small animals like a a lizard, fish, but not livestock, cattle. So, it's kind of outlining that with the small animal, which we have not I don't think we've had clarity on that previously. And so, this is to really kind of clarify the age it has to be.

009Yeah. So, we've updated that. Can't use the floor as a boundary for the animal. And so, um, lively discussion in the policy committee. So, I'm giving you the nuts and bolts. You're missing out. Let me tell you. I just want to know what we're going to do. And it says on here, are we posting dogs are not allowed on school property at all times? Because after school, they come in and they let their dogs run and then they poop all over and we have problems the next morning. That was the big discussion again in the pause is communication and so we thought in looking at this there's going to be a process over time of one getting clarity and then messaging. Okay. So, that's kind of the intent in favor of that, but I'm just

010going um So, that's the real takeaway in terms of animals that aren't service animals or therapy animals, which are both dogs, but this would try to eliminate specifically for hygiene related issues on our campuses, that we're not cleaning up feces from animals and having that be an issue on our campuses. So, that was the real discussion in our policy committee. Again, this is again, these are all for your consideration. This is first reading. you have questions, I can try to answer them. Yeah. I mean, as far as the dogs, is there going to be um anybody after hours that would do random checks on schools and talk to people? Because the problem is you can put sign, but they know if nobody's enforcing they're going to keep their dog. And so, I don't know that

011we dog police. No, I think it will be we're just going to post the signage and they'll be aware but during school hours is there'll be opportunities where we I mean a principal can go talk to them but a lot of times our after school people don't have kids in school and so whether they do go around and check the security of each of our buildings and if they happen to see somebody they could talk to them. I don't know what time they're at, what school, but that maybe that would be feedback they see just, hey, by the way, you I'm supposed to have a dog here. That may be enough to enter it. But the sign this is not a dog park and this is our policy. Probably let our cities know is there,

012you know, like police department, right? Yeah. We can have a communication and outreach once we move forward and get it approved and signage we can work with. I think I don't know the status of our signs, but I've heard that in some schools we have it, others we don't. But we can uniform that across our schools as this becomes our policy so that we can speak to it and reference it and and help every understand. So may not be, you know, there obviously with any policy there may be some that aren't excited about this, but for the health and safety issues, sanity, and small children seems like the right way to go. At least that's what the policy committee discussed. Yeah. I just really want to point out like I'm super sympathetic to like the

013dogs after hours and especially the poo they leave in the lawns, but I've mentioned it before. We're not a very good law enforcement agency. We just have to remember that it's a nice all we can do is ask people and then Yeah. And before you go too far in the school fees policy, I noticed that you had for elementary schools notice the items on this list will be used during the regular school day. They may be brought from home on a voluntary basis otherwise they will be furnished by the school. Is that a requirement that we're thinking of putting on every single we put that list for school when they Well, that's that's in the law. I know. So, we do put we want it to be obvious and blatant and I wouldn't care if

014it had to be on every one of them. It wouldn't bother me at all. Seen it in recent years as teachers have put it. It's it's been didn't when I was doing it it's been very clear like we'll provide it but if you want to donate say that yeah that language is right out of the okay right out of the statute checking certain why when I slides it means I need to be done soon so thank the slides. So uh the other two are clean up as we're looking at our travel policy. So we have been spending and had some lively again discussions in the policy committee about looking at looking at travel. So I'm not certain why that's doing it, but at least I I think I have sufficient text to address the issue.

015So, we're we're working on a revision of the travel policy, but to make that simpler, we're pulling out some sections of that policy that had been combined over time to really separate out elementary field trips and activity disclosure statements which really belong in other places. So, that when we bring the policy back for travel, um both of these statements have already been approved by the board. So, we're just a little bit of housekeeping and then those will end up being standalone. So, again, all for first reading. Um, bring these back future meeting for approval. There's feedback after the policy committee, let us know. And then just anticipate in May, we'll have a very big presentation on legislation. We work through those. Thank you. Thank you. That's great. Okay. The next item on our agenda is

016the 202526 bell schedule. This is the first reading. Leon Wilcox administrator will present this. Thank you, Eric. Eric, President Shill. Uh, this is not part of necessarily a bail schedule, but I wanted to bring this to your attention. I think you're already aware of this. This House Bill 161 that passed into effect. Uh what it does is it moves the eligibility for reimbursement from the state for back for sixth graders if they're in middle school back to the two mile mark rather than 1.5 miles. So uh that of course would apply to us similar to the school fees. You know sixth graders are we can charge the fees but so this is this could be a big deal. We have over a thousand kids who live within a that mile and a half to two

017miles. That's thous we have to pick up the sixth graders but that in that range there uh we still will be doing space available permit process. Okay. However, we will no longer be doing any bus stops in a mile and a half, two mile radius. All the bus stops will be outside the two miles going forward starting next year. So, people can still apply for space available have to walk out. So, say the bus stops 2.3 miles from the school and somebody lives 1.8 miles, you know, they're probably used to having a closer bus stop, but they Yep. can apply if they want and they'd have to get walk out or drive out or however to the 2.3 bus stop or they can go right to the school. So that there's that option. But uh

018I think we'll get call we're starting to communicate that out. I don't know what schools are. Hope I get calls here and you guys will probably get calls encouraging forward them to us. Again, this is a legislative home day here. So but it's Yeah. will alleviate some of the confusion. You know, kids get to ride the bus in sixth grade but not seventh grade or siblings being not space available for the siblings, you know, so some of that will maybe help but that be an issue. Questions on that? And as Jeff just mentioned, we'll have to update our own policy there, but we'll have to update that for that change. Okay. Uh then just on the bell schedule itself, we actually don't have any changes this year. We'd like to keep everything the same uh

019next year as this year. Only one change that we're looking at is Corner Canyon starts 10 minutes later than all the other high schools. They start at 7:55 instead of 7:45. They do not have an advisory period, okay, like some of the other schools do. So that's somewhat of their issue of use starting a little bit later. I have to get up early and take my boy tomorrow for his advisory stuff so he can meet with his teacher. Uh but that's that's something they're going to look at. I don't think when I talked to Dena, she says we probably won't do it next year, but we may look at it for the 26 27th year changing that. We'd like to once we get the innovation center going, we like all the schools on the same

020schedule best as possible. So a little bit earlier that way. Yeah. Katie question. Um I get this a lot from my schools because they have the last the latest uh checkout at the end or finishing at the end of the day with the 3:45 time um with the 10 minutes was added on. Was has that been looked at because that's been a huge impact on some of these classrooms. They've got five, seven kids leaving early because they're trying to get to 4:00 activities. Um, because busing worked before at 3:35. So, we knew when we added the prep time that that was a consequence. I mean, but but they don't have to have those 10 minutes is what I understand as far as instructional time, do they? It's a bus issue. It's But is it really

021a bus issue? Because we had didn't have a bus issue at 3:35. It's a it's a instruction issue, right? So we so we added the 10 minutes on the issue is on so so we pushed all schools back 10 minutes just you know so everybody went and that's hard for those who were at 335 and went to so the ones that have the earlier the 305 or whatever 3:15 those who went to you know the uh ala view al wasn't 255 now 30 I mean so So it's the earlier schools push it back. It is a bus issue that we just can't but you move one and all these routes are double and triple stacked. So that's the problem. Just can't get to it just pushed it back on. Okay. that that's the although although

022we did talk about revisiting it for the ones that are the very latest and that's an issue with my schools too and it it's not only is it a strain on the office staff with so many kids checking out but teachers like when I've gone and just met with teachers that's one of their big things too they said it's hard because if you have three or four kids checking out early then you have to make up that time with them later as well as it can be difficult for them um to to get to their family obligations as well. So that is something actually that I was asked to provide feedback for as well in my community. It's both Okalo and Miller Springs. But it it is something that we did talk about that we

023could possibly look at just those schools that are at the 345 dismissal as doing something different originally. I think the problem is again there the double and triple stacking that doing a single bus runs where well we actually looked at that didn't we said if we if we ran single routes to address that very thing I don't remember the number but it was quite a few have enough drivers yeah but we also talked about didn't we talk about maybe just re-evaluating the bus routes in general to see if we could do a more efficient route that could possibly help it that's what we talked about and you know we start We started a new routing software this year. So, I'm hoping we can try that. But I'll I'll be honest, I don't think it's going

024to get where we want to be unless we add more single route buses or do away with the 10 minutes, but everybody'd have to do away with the 10 minutes. Does that make sense? which maybe it just you know we don't want transportation to be the tail that wags a dog but sometimes it's the tails you know they actually Okay. Just take off the So that's what we have. Uh if it's okay, we may to look at their schedule. No, it's not all home room. We could either wait till the May 6 meeting and bring it back or put on a consent agenda for the teacher of the year. Hey, are you okay if we just put this on consent? I'm okay with consent. We'll have to look at some options. Okay. It sounds like

025we for when? No, not this meeting. 15th. Yeah. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Wilcox. So, the next thing on the agenda is updates to the 202526 school calendars first reading and Steve Diamond, director of human resources will lead this discussion up. So based upon there are a couple of changes that have occurred. Previously kindergarten has always started a few days later. This this current year that was taken away as an option that's now been reinstated. So Oh wow. This is not the right way. That's way that's actually the slide itself. Thought I didn't let double slides. I think if I can get over to Well, let's talk. So, so it's basically it's taking kindergarten and starting two days later, providing time to be able to do testing and evaluation uh to be able to support our

026kindergarten students coming in. Um the other the other two pieces uh this year we piloted the threeday parent teacher conferences. Um the school performance sought feedback from the principles and the schools and predominantly it was positive. With every any change you're going to have positives and you're going to have negatives. Um, so looking at that one of the So we've created the three-day and then the rotation. So you have a Monday, Tuesday, a Tuesday, Wednesday, and a Monday, Wednesday, but that would rotate through levels. So not every level um kind or not has to be the first day. That's the one they complain about is having to be ready first ready on that that first piece. So that's the that one. And then the other part was the need for professional development for our teachers.

027And so by state law and code, we are allowed to do four instructional days that we can convert to professional development. We had two that were already in the system and we're proposing two additional one September 29th Let me just speak to that Monday September just just to add to that and we'll talk more when we get to listening tour but on the additional days we've talked a lot about obviously behavior intervention I is huge um Amanda mentioned arts integration that's something that we still want to work on we need more training there early literacy letters and wonders um as you recall in our our board report our indicator kind of flatlined there. So, we're still heavy on implementation there, PLC's and then curriculum adoption. Um, still and and that doesn't include AVID if we

028end up adopting AVID. So, there's a huge need for these two. But yeah, so just to throw out there, too, just uh tech usage. Yeah. because a lot of our teachers don't really understand some and then outs of land school and some of those things. Right. Right. So that's basically the K12 change and you do have hard copies large size because even in the PowerPoint they're too small for me to be able to truly see. There they are. Thank you. So Monday, September 29th would be one that would be added and Friday, February the 13th. We'd also put an early out on the Thursday, February the 12th to make certain that we still keep that piece there. Um so that would be kindergarten shifting to the Wednesday going to the three days and then those

029two additional uh teacher professional development days that also will give us we've been dialoguing about our ESP professional development days being able to access some of those as well to be able to do similar to what we did on the 24th for Brian High School. A couple of the things that they would like to do, they would like to shift their first parent teacher conferences to October 2nd. It's basically because of extracurricular activities and homecoming that there's conflicts that direction to be able to shift that a little bit later. And then converting uh two additional instructional days for a total of four. So the shift to the second and it was right it was the 25th September. So it's basically a week later than what it was originally scheduled and then having the 26 their

030day those same days align so that families would be out at the same time. So it isn't that we have writen separate than the K12. It allows for elementary and the high school and middle school students to be out on the same time. But the 20 September 29th would not be a teacher development day for Is that correct? Because it I thought that that's what it was on the other calendar. On the other calendar it So hang on. 26 26 was the comp compensatory day. Yes. But then there's 29th was professional development day. There was so you had uh parent teacher conferences on the 25th and it was for Brighton that was a teacher professional development day. It wasn't a compensatory because they do three parent teacher conferences. The second and third one have been

031the compensatory in Well, I'm just saying like so there will be one day difference between the Brighton high school kids versus all the rest kids on September 29th. Yes. Right. But that's a question. Should Brighton if they're doing PLC's between I mean if they're doing anything between high schools or is that just development day? Would they do anything with other high schools? Would it be better to have their professional development day on the 29th to align with the rest of the district? Because the 26th is the compensatory day for everybody else. So teachers are off. All the other teachers will have the 29th that they'll have their professional development. Right. But the the families though on the if are we talking this one right here? Yeah. It doesn't matter for the families because the families

032are out 26th and 29th. Yes. Yeah. I'm just saying do do we want to align that between Brighton and the rest of the district on that PD day? Yes. We've always kind of gone to the school community council for Brighton on their calendar. So I'll also comment and I were just discussing that it's going to be all school based not. Having it on the same day doesn't necessarily matter if that helps. Does it impact it though with it being an early out day that they lose their PLC time that day? So I mean would you get better professional development doing it Monday so they could still do PLC on Friday? Thursday. No. Are they doing the early out on Thursday or not? Not on the there's two. Not on the 25th because the the K12

033have two of those. Brian didn't want to add additional because of disparity. They wanted to keep it simpler for the number of early out days. So right now there's the two January 15 and October second. He said, "No, they don't have their PLC time." Do you want me to go back to You go back and just Yeah. Ask them if I'm sure they don't want the Monday because because otherwise they are losing their PLC time. They're losing that Friday. The 25th because it's parent teacher conference day. The rest of the district is not having PLC. So, which month are you? September. Well, September. Yeah, we're still There's no PLC that day anyway for anybody. Well, the 26th is teacher professional development day. Yeah, but everyone else is getting half day on Thursday. Karen, that's true.

034The Brighton doesn't have a half day. So, they're they're losing their PLC that week and gaining. So, they're really only gaining a half day of professional development. I mean, if that's really what they want, it's fine. But we're just saying it's Yeah. I'm happy to go back to them and say, is this really what you would like? It's a little bit time. Yeah. And if that is what they want, then I guess it's fine. Okay. Any other questions? So, I'll visit with them, bring it back the 15th. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. The next item is 202526 land cost and TSSP reports. Alice Meredith, director of elementary principal. Thank you. The good news is I don't have a presentation. And Leon, congratulations on your bracket. I have to tell you, my 84year-old mom picked the

035final four for the men's bracket. So it's it's a good year for her, too. I want to thank um President Scha for letting me put this on the agenda last minute. Um on April 15th, our next meeting, I will put on the consent agenda for the approval of these plans, but we already have, I believe, close to 15 plans that are complete that you can go ahead and start reading. So, I wanted just to get in front of you, make sure that you don't have any questions about the process for approving plans as in years past you have between now and May to approve those plans. And when you go into the um folder that I provided you, there's a list of schools that you're responsible for approving. If you'll just simply put your initials

036on that sheet next to the school, once we get to initials, that's considered approved. So, and then also just for the new board members, there's a document on there of all the stuff that we should be looking at as board members to make sure they have the plans. And I reached out uh to both of our new board members and I'm more than happy if you guys have any questions. Yeah, if you have any questions, yeah, just call or text and if you have feedback, she's also great. Yes, taking care of that with this because we can make note and we you can make notes on the document. But should we also let you know though if we have made comments? It's it's helpful. It's not necessary. I can get Susan, my assistant, to help

037me keep track of when those come in. Um but if if you want to let me know proactively, that's fine, too. It's completely up to you. Any other questions? I have a question. You mentioned April 15th being on the consent agenda. We don't have but they're not our date of when we need to have them read by is not until May. So why is it on the consent agenda? Well, we have to put it on the consent that the plans. What I'm trying not to do is is corner you into a very short amount of time to approve those plans. So what we did last year is we said on the 15th um plans would be approved with two initials or two with two signatures. So it won't be Yeah. We're just saying that on

038the 15th we're just saying once we get those two initials those plans will be considered approved by the fourth. Oh yes yes yes. And I do remember we did that but just for clarification it's just to give you more time to look at the plans. Yeah. not have a short window. More time. Good. Yeah, we we appreciate that. Okay, thank you. This is shocking, but anyway. Okay, so board um the student advisory council, they will come in here at 6:30 and we're going to have a couple of them in front of us just like they usually do and then we have donuts out there for them. So, Just take a little break, but make sure to be there. Rare that you're not wearing Nikes. I know that is true. I didn't even like those shoes.

039You're not quite black from here. It almost looks black. They call each other stripes today. He has a stripe tie, so that's fair. Feel great. Feeling great. The same You're on your own. Get here. You miss class. Sometimes you have to make up work and you know the only benefit you really got out of it was a a letter and free lunch. So hopefully you gave us something during your life experience and it sounds like you know the two people that had that on your behalf. though I I hope it's for all of you. Just a comment. I'm not going to put you on the spot, but you help us make better decisions for the district by your feedback. And so, we really appreciate you taking your time out of your classes and schools to

040come and have these discussions with us because it helps inform us as board members that we can, you know, together make make things better for our district overall. So, thank you for your time. Yeah, thank you. Um, I also just want to say I was sad because I could only come one time, but I I did hear from other people and even the time I attended that you guys were all really not afraid to speak up and we're so grateful for that because that is what it takes you to give us like your honest feedback. So, we do really appreciate you taking your time. Are there any other board members that want to say something? Um, Jackson, uh, I want to say I mean to connect to something Tyler said, like I mean there there's

041it feels as a student it feels like a lot of the time there are decisions that are made that you don't feel like you're involved in. That's why I ran for this position. And so I'm glad that there are more kids that want to take an active role in their community. So I'm really grateful that you guys were participated and it's very important. So, I also want to echo everything everyone else has said. Your your input makes us better board members. I mean, I was a student three years ago almost. Yeah. Just about it's the further I go, the the goes way too fast. Yeah. The more I go, the further it time passes, the more I'm removed from the experience. So, having your guys' perspective is really really important. So, I really appreciate you

042guys bringing that in. And the one meeting I did sit on in on uh you guys were really really opinionated. So, I really appreciate that. Not in a bad way opinion. No, that's a good thing. That's a really really good thing. That's that's why we want you guys here. So, thank you. I miss I was going to say too, I only was able to join the group once this year, which was sad for me because this is actually one of my very favorite things to do as a board member is get your feedback and interact with the students. But I actually felt the level of engagement with this group was so awesome. Like you guys kind of set a standard of higher than than you know this has always been a very um really awesome

043opportunity like Jackson said and a very important part of the process to get your feedback. But what what I really enjoyed the meeting I came to is every single person spoke and engaged with us. And I love that because you all have little different perspective. you come from different schools and that's so important. So, please keep sharing your voice and as you go on to do other things. Um, I think all of you will be wonderful leaders because you've done a great job with this and you have you've led out for your peers. So, thank you Mrs. Person. I don't know if this question was asked because I wasn't at the last meeting. Um, what advice, if any, could would you give either us as board members on how we could do things differently when

044we engage with students or what advice do you have for the future members for next year? We can write it down and then we can share. Dr. Sherwood, did you guys ask that at the last meeting? No, but I'll I'll provide them an opportunity to give us some feedback. I'll send you guys a Oh, yeah. So, I was going to say um thank you for opportunity again. Um I was just wanted to say that maybe um I just think that maybe getting kind of like a representative from each grade instead of seniors like seniors have like more experience or like how high school is like but maybe getting a representative from each grade could work because maybe like my freshman experience is not the same as a freshman now like like junior like a great

045idea. Maybe just an idea to give out is maybe get like a student from each grade represent. Great idea. Thank you. See, they're still doing it. This is Oh, so I I agree with everything that's been said. I only got to attend the last one and it was fantastic. And I I don't know where the gentleman is from Brighton who talked about secret parenting tricks by really great teachers. Sean, that's not here. Was supposed to talk. It was hilarious that I went home a changed woman and changed a few things in my household. I'm just gonna say, but it was it was so great. I loved your perspective of what creates a really engaging classroom and how to achieve the the portrait of a Canyon Scholar. That was helpful to flesh that out with you

046guys and get some different perspective. Um our hope is that in a few years from now if you were to come back to Canyons and see one of our high schools that reflect part of the feedback you give us and in the past we really have sometimes like even within a few months implemented some of the things that we've learned from you. So just know sometimes public education works a little slowly because we have to have committees and there's a lot and there's a lot of students but your input is there and we will be going back and looking on it and using it quite meaningfully. So thank you Mr. Adam. So I just want to echo what's been said like I wish I could have taken everyone else's slot hang out with you guys.

047Um, we're competitive about those, but we fight over it. We do have to duke it out with each other. Terrible. Uh, and so for people who know me too, having to schedule around me for the other committee meetings, um, I don't do it during work hours. Um, because I have to take take leave in the middle of the day, right, which is my vacation time. Um, but I don't hesitate to do it for the student advisory. Uh, because your input is so important. Uh, and you guys especially have been absolutely fantastic. Um, I think I was there for the first one. Um, and I think I was there for the last one which was fun. Uh, and so you guys have spoken up and I wish you could know what your impact will be but

048just know that um, your impact is going to be rippled across many many thousands of students. Um and you know what you've done is is true like service before itself. Um as you've taken your own time with no benefit really to you. Um but thousands upon thousands of students will benefit just because you came and talked to us. Thank you. Y superintendent. Do you want to say just to echo thank you and and we really mean it. If there's ever anything that we can do to help you future, if you need a letter of recommendation or a phone call, we're we're here for you to support you. You guys are you're great leaders and just excited for next steps in your life. So, it's why it's why we do what we do, right, is for

049moments like this. So, just good luck to you. I just want to add my thanks, final thanks, and say I know you guys are going to go on to do great things and love to hear about that. So, you can always email us. We're always around here. Anyway, and we got some there's some crispy cream donuts over out right out here. And I did come go out and like people were eating them. I like those are from We had to bite the adults away. Testing. I think there's still some blood. And there's some candy over here if you want it. But just go ahead and have a donut and just um please we're just so happy that you could participate in this and we want to say thank you. Now for Okay, thank you. Welcome

050to the business meeting of the Canyons Board of Education. Today is April 1st, 2025 and we're meeting at the district office located at 9361 South 300 East in Sandy, Utah. The first item on the agenda is to approve the agenda for tonight. So I will now entertain a motion. I move that we approve the agenda for tonight, April 1st, 2025. Okay. Thank you. We have a motion. Is there a second to that motion? I'll second. Okay. Thank you, Karen. Okay. Okay, we have a motion in the second. Is there any discussion to that motion? Okay, seeing none, I will call for a vote. All in favor say I. I. I. Any opposed? Okay, that motion passes unanimously. Okay, we will now be led in the pledge of allegiance by Sprucewood Elementary Principal Kathy Shino. And

051then after that, she will give us highlights from her school. Good evening. If everyone would stand and join us as we say the pledge together. Ready? Begin. I pledge alce to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all. All right. Well, good evening. Uh, thank you all for taking the time to allow us to share some Sprucewood Elementary School highlights. I have invited our assistant principal, Dr. Lennox, here to join me, uh, because we are a strong team and that's how we roll. So, um, I want to just start with a quick announcement that this is a full circle moment for me. Uh, it will be my last opportunity to present to you all before I retire. And I

052shared with Ashley before we started, I wore this exact same outfit 12 years ago when I was invited um when I was given my principal ship. So, super fun moment. All right. Well, we are excited to share some highlights about Sprucewood. All right. Sprucewood is the epitome of small but mighty. We are a building of culture and caring. Our school rules are simple but powerful. Take care of yourself. Take care of others. And take care of our school. Our students have been recognized over 75,000 times for demonstrating behaviors that align with these school rules. Students have earned various whole school rewards along the way, including our upcoming reward scheduled this Friday, where students from Alta High School's peer leadership team are surprising each classroom as special guest readers. So, don't tell them. We do pride

053ourselves on fostering essential values in our students and we have an acronym CARES and that stands for creativity, assertiveness, resiliency, effort and safety. And our high-f flyier program allows every single student the chance to be recognized every single year. Um they earn a high-f flyier ticket which is displayed in our main hallway along with a positive phone call home from me and a selfie that gets shared on our award-winning Falcon Report weekly newscast. Sprucewood's professional learning community practices our systematic approach and our strong commitment to collaboration which has allowed our school to shine. For example, our kindergarten teachers are masterful math instructors with a 100% of our students mastering next number fluency skills. First grade is implementing datadriven SBI groups in our walkto-read model. In second grade, classroom engagement is at its highest levels. Our

054third grade teachers have excelled at backwards designing instruction. Fourth grade has taken a hands-on approach by organizing several field trips that directly tied to the standards. And fifth grade has demonstrated the highest growth in both reading and math benchmark skills. Our EEC team is new to our building this year, but they have jelled very strongly vertically uh with vertical alignment. They've ensured that all students and all needs are being supported and as a result, we have a buddy program that's a huge success this year. Our booster team has been meeting twice a month to plan meaningful learning. Our speech language pathologists are providing invaluable services uh with efficiency of seasoned educators and they're both provisional. Outstanding. Our social worker has created a kindness wall which has been featured on multiple news channels this year. Our

055psychologist provides cognitive assessment results to families with compassion and thoughtfulness that is unmatched in all of my years. Our instructional coach has excelled at completing coaching cycles. Our custodian is outstanding. He's frequently visited by district trainees to learn from his exemplary work. And our ESPs are some of the most dedicated, caring, and hardworking staff members that I've had the pleasure of working with in my career. Additionally, our junior coach program is flourishing and we've been recognized as a model school for this initiative. Our PTA hosted their very first literacy night which was held in tandem with our schoolwide readathon fundraiser to support steam learning initiatives with over a hundred students attending. PTA's screenfree challenge was a huge success. Our maker space has impressive participation with a quarter of the school signed up to attend. Our

056choir and orchestra programs are booming. Our Beverly Taylor Saen music program continues to be a favorite booster where students are playing instruments and composing songs every other week. On April 29th, we will host our big community steam night celebration featuring STEM and art art make and take activities for families. We will also present our fulllength musical Cinderella if the shoe fits led by Christina Vanam at 6:30 p.m. And yes, that is your official invitation. We know that Rick and Amanda have come and Jeff as well. So, we're hoping to see some of you come. It's just a wonderful tradition at our school. And in closing, I want to share some exciting news that shows just how far our sto school can really go. Uh two days ago, we recently received confirmation from NASA that we

057are being considered as a finalist from one uh 1,300 applicants to receive the Aremis 1 moon tree. This tree, which was grown from a seed that flew aboard Artemis 1 in 2022, traveled farther than any human-made spacecraft has ever gone during their 25 and a half day journey beyond the moon and back. So, we'll let you know if we do get selected. So, the sky is truly the limit for Sprucewood Elementary. And thank you for giving us a few minutes to give a shout out to our community, our faculty, staff, and our students. They truly deserve it. Okay. Thank you so much. We love to hear about our schools and please pass on our thanks to your faculty and staff for all they do for students in the community. So the next item on the

058agenda is the Canyon Strong recognitions and Jeff Haney, director and Kirsten Stewart, associate director of communications will present this. Thank you, President Schill, for this time to recognize students and employees in the Canyon School District. Those who have gone above and beyond in their pursuit of excellence. Those who are mentioned tonight will receive a letter of commendation from both the board and the superintendent. But before we start naming the honores, I want to mention the assemblies and celebrations being held all across canyons to announce the winners of the school teacher of the year awards. You can see some photographs there of some of the school announcements. Photos like these are being prof profiled on our social media pages. And as of tonight, we have identified our three finalists. One from an elementary school, one from

059middle school, and one from a high school. From those, we pick one overall teacher of the year. And that teacher gets gifts and prizes from the Canyon's Education Foundation, including a thousand gift prize. Please join us April 15th at Midville Middle School for this ceremony where we will be honoring all of our teachers of the year from schools and programs throughout Canyon School District as well as announcing our overall Canyon's district teacher of the year and the district's nominee in the state teacher of the year selection process. A reception is at 6:15. The ceremony is at 7. We hope to see everybody in the community there. Our first honore already has been celebrated at district events, but we've yet to announce his big win in board meeting yet. Last time we were together, we announced

060that Draper Park AFM Andy Marcus was one of five finalists for the National Education Support Professional of the Year. There was a drum roll and at a Kentucky conference for education support professionals, he was announced as the national winner. He is Canyon's district's first national ESP of the year. We were at Jordan High School for a professional development for all education support professionals last Monday and the Alahh High drum line came in. They bang their drums to that rousing number. Andy was called to the stage. The Canyons Education Foundation presented him with some gifts and prizes. Dr. Robbins said that he would gift him some Raiders gear. Andy is a Kansas City Chiefs fan, so that didn't go over well with Andy. He said he'd accept it, though. Now, tomorrow morning, we will be at

061Draper Park Middle School early. The Draper Park Middle is the cool school of the week on Fox 13. So, about 7 o'clock, we'll start the segments. Andy will be one of those people highlighted during the five segments that will be shown throughout the morning, showing the world that Draper Park is indeed a cool school. So, congratulations to Andy. Tune in tomorrow to see more from Andy and the Draper Park Vikings. Our next honores are state champions from Alta High School. Congratulations to the Ala High Color Guard. They won the state title in this season's Wintergard Competition. This is a color guard competition held during the winter months as part of the Utah Color Guard Circuit. The Hawks won the Scholastic DoubleA division at a after a competition at Roy High School. Teams are judged on

062equipment, movement, design, analysis, and general effect. Now, it's the first time that Alah High's color guard has won first place in this competition. And it's worth noting that Ala High School started the season in a lower division, but throughout the season, they were so good they bumped them up to this division and they ended up at the end of the season taking the trophy. So, congratulations to Ala High School with the win. And with the drum lines big win earlier this year, the band program at Alta High has contributed to Alta's state titles so far this year. And we like to brag about this. So far this year, even with a lot of spring sports left to go, all of Canyon's district high schools have won at least one state championship this year. So, congratulations

063to the Alahigh color guard and best of luck to all of our teams as they continue with uh spring sports and activities including debate and theater. Our next honores are the state UTA PTA reflection winners from Canyon School District. The students who rose to the top in the state contest are now headed to nationals. Accepting imperfection is the state theme this year and following award of excellence winners. These folks are living proof that there is beauty in every snapshot and in every brush stroke. Congratulations to Henry Slabbert from Albian Middle School in the 3D visual arts. Piper Bremer from Willow Canyon Elementary School in the 3D arts. Lucy Denzer from Ala High School in photography. Kiier Monson from Albian Middle School in photography. And Zachary Ants Canyon View Elementary School in photography. Best of luck

064to all of these students in the National PTA Reflections Contest. Now, as the final slide in Canyons, we continue to be ranked among the best in Utah. We claimed a dis disproportionate share of Utah's top ranked schools. 24 of Canyon School District's Kate schools topped the charts and the latest US News and World Report rankings earning best schools badges for displays on their website. So, please go check those out in the coming days. Two Canyons elementary schools are in Utah's top five and eight are in the state's top 25. In addition, three Canyons middle schools are in Utah's top five according to the 2025 rankings. Now, to put that in context, Canyons is home to just 4.5% of the state's elementary schools and 4.4% of the state's middle schools, but we account for 40% of

065the state's top five elementary schools and 60% of the state's top five middle schools on the rankings. That's certainly worthy of celebration in our community for sure. So, thank you so much, President Schill, for this time that you grant us to celebrate those who have gone above and beyond and proven that they are indeed canyons strong. We turn the time back to you. Okay. Thank you. We have now come to the patron comment portion of our meeting. The board often designates time in meetings to listen to patrons of the district. Patron comment time is limited to residents and taxpayers of Kenya's district, students and parents of students, and current employees of the district. The board of education thanks those in attendance tonight. As you arrived, you may have seen the patron comment guidelines. One guideline

066gives the board discretion to ask patrons to not address the same topic more than once within a three-month period. Starting next meeting, we will ask patrons to follow this guideline at board meeting. The guideline was put into place so that we can get input from many different people during patron comment. Please be assured that patron comment is not the only time we're gathering input on issues facing the district. At any time, parents can send us emails or messages through your school's your voice portal on our website. We thank you in advance for understanding and your cooperate cooperation. Patrons may provide the board members with written documents and these documents must be submitted to the board secretary at the meeting or emailed to the office of public administration by noon of the day following the board

067meeting. The board secretary is right over there if you do want to give her documents. Tonight, individuals will be given three minutes. Those representing groups will be given five minutes. Comments made during patron comment are part of the public record. It is the board's practice to listen and take notes during patron comments. The board of education does not discuss matters that are not on the meeting's agenda nor engage in public comment on individ individual students to protect their privacy or employee issues. If a patron wants to comment on a district employees character, professional competence, or mental or physical health, the board requests that those comments be submitted to the board in writing. However, if the patron determines to verbally comment on those personal issues, the comments need to be civil and refrain from personal attacks,

068insults, defamatory, or slanderous comments about an individual. The board of education values input on all sides of issues. To maintain decorum and respect, we ask that those in attendance refrain from applause or other types of demonstration during patron comment time as well as throughout the meeting. Comments must be age appropriate considering children who may be present or viewing online. Okay, we have four patrons um that have signed up today. First is Ally Weaver and then Megan uh oh Men, sorry. Okay, good. Alli Weaver, then Megan Men. Good evening, superintendent and board members. My name is Ally Weaver. I am both a parent and a teacher here in Kenyan School District for one more year. My son will graduate in two months. Um, this is my 16th year teaching in the district and my 13th year

069at my current school. When I became a Sandy Shark, I was excited because I got to be at the school where my own mother, her brothers, her nine brothers and sisters all attended. Then, um, After I had been teaching there a year, I got married and found out my husband's family also all attended Sandy Elementary. I am proud to be a Shark and I love my school. I first want to thank Andrew for coming out and meeting with our teachers on a regular basis. Anytime we have a question or concern, he immediately answers with a text, an email, or shows up in person um at our school. He's had some great follow-through with questions and concerns and is always willing to listen. So, we appreciate that. I've also be appreciated being able to have the

070superintendent come to our our school's listening tour and having that opportunity to have that conversation. I do want to bring some concerns that many at our school have. The heating and air conditioning at our school is very outdated. While I know we had a heat wave last week, this is not the first or the last time that I'm sure we will have this problem. Last week, my little first graders were tired, had very little stamina, and just plain didn't want to do anything. I too felt the same. Um, many were still wearing long sleeves as it was slightly cool outside. Um, and the morning was cooler as some of our students get dropped off at 7:30 for morning club. Several classes had to take students into the hallway where the district had provided some air

071conditioners because our classrooms were in the high 80s. My classroom at one point reached a high of 87 degrees for at least three hours of the day. We were then told by our facilities manager who was working tirelessly and his told by his boss that the small error that we do have usually can't be turned on until later April. We received the same memo that the district got all of the facilities managers got saying that we start with high schools, we go to middle schools, then the newer buildings that have this certain kind of air conditioning and then we'll get your school. This seems a little scary when in the first week of or the last week of March we are at 86 and our upstairs classrooms reached highs of 89 and even over 90.

072I think some history needs to be given two of our school again. I've been at Sandy for 13 years. I've had four different classrooms while there at and at this point only one of them has had semi-normal temperature control. My first year at Sandy was the year of the flood, which happened because a damper froze open and froze a fire line, which resulted in bursting and could not be shut off until the fire department came. I was lucky enough to then teach in the gym for a few days with another teacher and 48 of our little fourth graders. My point in telling you this is that it's been a problem since I have been at Sandy, but we have yet to be listed on the school improvement or rebuild list. We also know from past

073years that the air conditioning doesn't always cool things. We're in this situation in August and September of this school year where my classroom sat at a balmy 78 to 82 degrees on most days when the air was on. So it isn't going to just be magically fixed when they turn it on in the next few weeks. I hope that you can look at some different things and like I said, I appreciate the facilities teams bringing in air conditioners and trying to work on it, but it is a concern that we have. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Megan Men. Hello. Um, my name is Megan Men and I am a fifth grade teacher at Sandy Elementary in those upstairs classrooms that we just talked about. Um, I also want to thank Andrew for reaching out and

074talking with us. We've talked at length. He is very open about what's happening and listening um to help us, but we wanted to make the whole board aware aware in hopes that we can maybe make our temperatures a little cooler. So um over the last several weeks, my class has been studying civil rights activists from our wonders curriculum and that ended last week in a writing project where we asked students to speak up for something they feel strongly about. So, I'm here today on behalf of some of those students who have asked that we speak up about the temperatures in our classrooms. They also made some really cute posters. They're on our Sandy Facebook page if you want to go look at them. But there's a melting Olaf that is very accurate for how we're

075feeling right now. Um, I've taught at Sandy for the past three years, and if there's one thing that has remained consistent, it's been that the temperature is a serious problem. Our upstairs classrooms are consistently overheating, even in the middle of winter. We were watching the snow fall as we were all melting today. Um, and every time we put in a ticket or request help, we're told that they've done what they can do and it's just the way the system works. I don't fault anyone for that answer, but when the thermostat in my room was over 86 degrees last week and is consistently between 75 and 80°, I do think there needs to be a better answer. Um, I asked my students how they felt in our classroom last week, um, when we did have that

076temperature over 80 degrees most of our afternoons. And they mentioned things like their heads were hurting, they were dizzy and lightheaded, it was uncomfortable, and the thing I heard the most from them was that they couldn't focus and learn. In a school that's already highly impacted, we can't lose an extra minute of instruction time. The heat issue in our school has now caused several days this year where we're doing what we can, but it's truly impossible for our kids to learn. I would also like to point out that the timing of the temperatures last week lined up with Ramadan. So, we had students fasting all day without water in these 80 plus degree temperatures. And it just isn't fair to them. Um, since we are the Sandy Sharks, I decided to throw in a little

077research and found out that when sharks are in water that's too warm, they slow down, lose focus, and struggle to survive. Our sandy sharks are no different. So, I'm just coming to you to ask you to please make this a priority so our sharks can be in the best learning environment possible and be successful at school. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Um, Jen Archeletta, then Jessica Smith. Hi, I'm Jen Archeletta and I am from Sandy Elementary. And so I'm sure you're on pins and needles wondering what I'm going to discuss, but I want to take off my teacher hat for just a moment and put on my mom hat. So I'm a mom of a very precocious, very amazing, very bright little girl who also happens to have type 1 diabetes. She has a factor

078in her type 1 diabetes that when she gets overheated, her glucose skyrockets, jumps up at least 100 points, which if you're at all familiar with diabetics, you know that that impacts vision, impacts heart, impacts cognitive function, and we had her in a classroom of 86°. Her glucose went from a steady 120 to 300. If we treat with insulin to bring that down, once she's cooled, she plummets. So, needless to say, we had her in an environment that was unfit for learning. My child is an exception with regards to her medical diagnosis, but she's not an exception for how that heat impacts educator education in those classrooms. My own students in my K1 ACC classroom spent oral language blocks starfished on the rug saying, "I can't, Miss Jen. It's too hot. I want to go home."

079We're asking very small students to work in spaces that we as adults are not comfortable functioning in. Um, I am extremely grateful for the very diligent and thought out process that Canyons has taken technology in our district because while my daughter was unable to access her classroom due to the severe temperature she was able to keep up through the use of her Chromebook while being away from her peers still being able to access her education. So, while I ask you to one address the temperature at not just Sandy Elementary, but all of our schools so that our kids are in an environment conducive to learning, to also take a step back and look at what putting stricter restrictions on technology in our elementary classrooms does for some of the kids that that is their only

080access. And I think we've got to make sure we're being mindful and including all learners in decisions that we are making before laying down. This is the expectation. There is no deviant. Because if we withhold technology from some students, we deny my daughter access to any education in an environment that she cannot access physically due to temperature or remotely due to technology restrictions. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, uh, Jessica Smith. Thanks so much for letting me talk. I know I spoke last time, so I appreciate that. Okay. Before addressing my main points, I want to take a moment and thank Katie and Holly for bringing up the additional 10 minutes added to the elementary school schedules last year. At the time of its approval, it was stated that this change will be or this yeah,

081that change will be revisited again this year. Simply put, we do not need this additional time. As a district, we are already exceeding the state's required instructional hours. A previous suggestion to remove five minutes from the math block and five minutes from the literacy block to offset this extra time was both reasonable and practical. Given that we also exceed the recommended time allocations for these subjects, this adjustment makes perfect sense. I encourage you to refer back to the email I sent last year outlining all the details what the state guidelines are and what we do in all of our grades um to look at that and then please give cons serious consideration to restoring the elementary school schedules to their original length without the additional 10 minutes. Okay. Now I have several serious concerns that

082need to be addressed and my first one is regarding the email that was sent out regarding Chromebook filtering. I'm frankly appalled by the options presented. None of them are adequate. Canyon School District has access to ample information to recognize that these so-called choices are neither realistic nor sufficient. Additionally, the email provided no context. Most parents are unaware that this is even an issue because Canyon School District has failed to inform them. As it stands, parents are only notified after their child has been exposed to explicit contact content 40 times unless they proactively opt into a different notification system, which most parents don't even know exists. I cannot comprehend the logic behind these options. Why does Canyon School District continue to neglect its responsibility to protect our children? A follow-up email with full transparency and detailed

083information is urgently needed. Parents deserve to know the risks involved. No one consented to their children being exposed to explicit material. And I love the last patron's comment because I wanted to address that too. Teachers deserve to understand the risk they face when students use Chromebooks in their classrooms. And I feel like Canyon School District um needs a lack of transparency or Canyon School District's lack of transparency has caused confusion and unnecessary defensiveness. Many teachers believe that parents are anti-tech, which is not true, and that parents are upset with them or questioning their dedication to student safety, which is simply untrue as well. The issue lies with Canyon School District's in inadequate filtering system. Teachers need to be informed that the filters are failing and that at present, the only true way for parents to

084protect their children is to opt them out of using using district provided devices. Lastly, school community councils must be given the full picture when reviewing the filtering system. Per HB213 of 2016 and HB303 of 2019, SEC's are required to evaluate the effectiveness of content filtering annually. However, I fear that many have simply taken the district's word and assumed everything is functioning properly. To make an informed determination, SEC's need full transparency. They need to be aware of what happened at Brookwood Elementary, what is happening daily across the district, and the fact that these incidents occur even under the highest restriction settings. Um, anyways, my time's up. Thanks so much you guys. Thank you. Okay, thank you all for being here and your comments tonight. Okay, the next item on the agenda is the consent agenda. So,

085I will now ask for a motion and please read all of the items on that agenda. I move that we approve the consent agenda with items A, approval of minutes for March 18, 2025. Item B, approval of higher and termination reports. Item C, approval of student overnight travel. Item D, approval of purchasing bids. Item E, approval of lease agreement with Cottonwood Heights Parks and Recreation Service Area. Item F, approval of administrative appointments. And item G, approval of TSSP, amendment for Willow Canyon Elementary. Okay. Thank you. Is there a second to that motion? I'll second that. Okay. Is there any discussion to the motion? Okay. Seeing none, I'll call for a vote. All in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Okay. That motion passes unanimously. The next item on the agenda is new business. Item A,

086the long range planning update, study of boundary enrollment, school consolidation, and potential school closure. This is the first reading by Leon Wilcox, business administrator. Thank you, President Chill. Uh, want to start going over a topic that we know we've been talking about for some time. uh and seeing how we want to proceed going forward. It's not an easy topic as as many of you know, but something that we feel like we need to discuss and we have been discussing in our long range planning over the last couple years. You can see the members of the committee there. Appreciate all their support as we work through this presentation and the data behind it. uh we want to just talk about our elementary and we're just going to focus tonight on our elementary schools and the enrollment

087declines that we have experienced there. So uh on my left you can see our enrollment back in the 201819 school year and we actually had higher enrollments a couple years prior to this. I did not list those but uh you can see we've had this steady drop in in enrollment. we uh not much from 19 to 20 but of course in the 2021 is when we had co you know coming back from COVID when it hit in March of 2020 and we had about a 600 nearly a 600 student elementary student decrease there. We thought a lot of it was COVID related but then the numbers but we also knew the birth rate and other factors were contributing that the numbers kept falling uh to the point where this year over on my right in

088the kind of the brownish color there you know you can see our elementary enrollment of 13226 that's n that's over 1,700 students decrease in those uh six well seven years there measuring that and you You can see our forecast for next year and the next couple years after that again just steadily decreasing in enrollments. We are not alone. Kenya's district in this in this area. Most of the districts in Utah are experience a declining enrollment. So it's just not us. But uh trying to look at options on how we want to proceed going forward. We do see this going into the into the 2030s. this two to 300 student elementary drop each year. Uh and you know there's multiple reasons why I still think the two biggest ones are the top two ones there. The

089housing price is just so so expensive to afford a home in our district boundaries and then the of course the interest rates go along with that being high and the birth rate you know has been declining. It started in the great recession in 2008 to 2010 and has really never recovered from then and co impacted that further as well. We just have limited growth in in in our district. We're pretty much built out except for the Jordan Bluffs area and then the former prison site in Draper once they get going on that. Those are the only two areas left with big big plots of land. charter schools is a problem even though you know I'll say this the charter schools have been here for the for the most part except for beehive has have been

090here you know since we started in 2009 so that's uh but they did start a K6 model they were 712 but did start a K6 model I believe three years ago home school private and home school challenger going up there on 7th east and then the voucher program has certainly impacted us as well we don't have unfortunately with the voucher program We don't know the numbers of of students there, but uh we do look at our secondary schools being a little bit more stable going forward as we draw some of those students back. Uh we talked mainly again the two big things, housing and birth rate. You can see the housing prices, you know, from 2017 to 2024 nearly doubling. uh you know just it's hard to fathom back in 2017 that a h average

091house in our district would b be 700,000 and that's for 2024 once we get we'll get in May the 2025 numbers and I suspect it'll be 3 to 5% higher once we get those numbers so you can see just just you know so unaffordable you can see the big jump was in 21 to 22 over 150,000 that year when inflation really took off at roughly 8 n% and that was a big hit. Uh showed this slide a while ago on our birth rate analysis. You can see our birth rate you know we were on that 3,200 you know in 20145 and just steadily decreased you know co has impacted that uh those numbers there. So you can see as our expected kindergarten enrollments will do expect to continue to drop. We we do we're hearing

092from the state level that this is starting to stabilize but uh again probably not going to get back up in our zip codes to where it was you know 10 12 years ago. Uh, one of the things that we talked about last time in our our presentation was what is the preferred size of an elementary school. So, we talked about that as a committee and we really feel like the preferred size would be at least three classes per grade level. So, that'd be 18, you know, counting kindergarten, but preferably four or even more per grade level. So if you look at our st that's our staffing ratios there. So we staff at 22 kids for every kind for every uh kindergarten teacher. Of course we never get exactly 22. So we'll always be off and

093that's leads to some of our large class sizes and some of our small class sizes. And same with grades one, two, and three. Grades four and five we do staff at higher at 26. And then our DLI classes we try to get 28. Some of the languages, we'll get to this later, don't always get there, but if you had three class, three grades, you'd have 425 uh school enrollment. But if you went to the four, you'd be up in that 567 range. Okay? So, you know, based on our October one counts, we had those six schools, Butler, Draper, Glacier Hills, Midvil, Mid Valley, and Sunrise all over that 567. Ironically, we had another five more out of view. Alterara, Provian Park, Silver Mesa, Willow Springs, just under that, but still, you know, big big schools

094with roughly the four at least the four grades per four classes per grade. Some of the ones above would have five classes per grade, but uh so that's what we thought would be, you know, an ideal situation. Now, we'll never get to that's what we'd like to look at. So, we pulled data for 10 elementary schools that were at least 50 under that 425 mark, that minimum mark there. And so, we have 10 elementary schools who are in that range there. And so, I went back and I looked at I thought it'd be interesting to see in the 2012 2013 year how many students we had in in uh those schools. The issue is you got to remember that year was the last year before our grade reconfiguration. So our sixth graders were still in

095elementary schools at that time. Then the fall of 2013 they went to sixth graders went to middle school, nth graders to high school. And we also did some excuse me some boundary adjustments at that time as well. And so they went into effect the 2013 14 year. But you can see a lot of those schools had you know had large populations. Now things have changed dramatically how we do brain boosters, how we you know place our our special education self-contained units. So that affects that. But you know see at one time these schools had lots of lots of you know some of them had lots of students in them and that has shrunk over the the years due to the things I said and you can see the projections. Some of them are still projected

096to decrease. Some have kind of stabling out a couple may even increase a few students here and there. So, but uh just to pro provide some context of the trends that we're seeing in these schools with this also what I wanted to do is take the enrollment this year's actual enrollment. I'm as I always do try to use the October one enrollment so we have a consistency comparison and take the actual what we project next year then the capacity of the school and capacity is always a tough number because you have brain boosters you have the self-contained units you have you know the the coach in the building all these areas take space the social worker the psychologist ologist how you know how do they fit in the building and so you have to adjust

097capacity all the time based on the programs and the needs of that building. So so it's always can always be a moving target. You also see the year some of these buildings were bu all these buildings were built all back in the 60s and the 70s when there was a booming population in this area and also what we call the the last column over there is the facility in condition index we'll use the term FCI FCI is going through so what we've had is Ryan and his team go through each of the these buildings and go give them a score on the condition of the building at this time and it's a little bit like golf. So the lower the score the better. The higher the score the more needs in the in the building

098exists. So you can see some with higher FCI scores than others. Copper interesting two there with the lowest Bella and Copper View you know had a pretty extensive remodel done on each of them just right at the end of the district split just before under Jordan school district. So back in around 200 seven and eight but uh you know so a lot done with those buildings but you can see all those buildings you know getting in that 50 years or older if they're not already. It's always harder to maintain these older buildings and you can see with the uh projected enrollment as well the issues that we have. Uh here is a map and I put the map on board docks because maybe blows up a little bit better. But you know it's I don't

099think it's any secret where this area seems to be located in the east part of our district up uh the east Sandy and getting into the east you know Cottonwood Heights and areas like that. But we do have a Sprucewood. Uh appreciate uh Principal Skino coming tonight and speaking with us. But you know that's that area as well. Copper View is a smaller school as well. So they're not connected, but the other eight schools are all connected some way or another, but you can see the how it's, you know, the decreasing areas and that we're experiencing. Should be noted that we do expect other schools to also decrease as well as you know the next five to seven years in as we continue to struggle with this enrollment issues that we have. Uh some of

100the challenges with these smaller schools one is that we've hear this a lot especially on Rick's listening towards the class size fluctuation. We'll have very small classes sizes, you know, this 16 18 students. Then some we get into that 30 plus and that's hard on a school and who gets, you know, which teachers get the larger class sizes and which don't. Uh, and that's hard to do that with these smaller schools. You know, we're doing the best we can to try to supplement more FTEEs to these smaller schools. There's always a cost to that. uh does you know we only have two teachers per grade. It kind of cuts down on your collaboration opportunities that and we have fewer teachers for duties whether it's bus duty or you know serving on the BLT or SEC

101or things like that that teachers need to need to do. So there's just you know fewer to spread that around. They get less money for supplies and equipment, less land trust and TSSA because they have it's on a per student basis. The overhead operating costs, we'll get to that. And now, you know, we have all this school the school safety requirements with fencing and and guardians and and uh notifications as well. So, all that brings its own challenges is with these smaller schools. Uh again the biggest cost to operating uh uh elementary school and any school is people but it's what we call more the overhead the supervisory positions the principal the coach the S slp or psych or admin admin assistant or AFM you know we have hourly sweepers and hourly assistants so it's

102about a million dollars that you in salaries that we pay to operate a school and it could whether it's could be a larger school or a smaller school. It's roughly the same. Those are also nonoperating costs. They're much smaller but you know things to keep the building going like garbage service, uh cleaning the asphalt, sweeping the asphalt, custodial supplies, the utilities, of course utilities just keep going up. So we're in the neighborhood about a 1.2 2 million to operate whether it's a large elementary school or a small elementary school in that in that range there. Uh there's also some additional cost, you know, for to operate the lunch program at a smaller school versus at a large school as well. But if you ever closed a school or consolidated a school, you'd probably have more

103transportation costs, you know, just to bust the students from one place to another. Uh switch gonna switch gears a little bit here and we talked about this as part of it. Uh the impact of dual immersion we talked about this as part of the operating system subcommittee a while back but uh it was actually a month ago at the March 4th meeting. Uh some of the things on DLI that we're seeing you know Spanish is still a very popular option. uh all five of the elementary schools that offer Spanish over that 550 students. We are struggling a little bit with the Chinese and French as we've noted in the past. I don't think it's because the program is not popular. It's just the enrollments are decreasing primarily at Red Crest and Oak and now in

104Lone Peak as well and Lone Peak as well. So that just again adds more challenges in staffing with that. Uh DLI is a it's a great program. My boys have gone through it, but it's also our most expensive program. We're looking at, you know, 15 FTEEs every year for DLI. So it's a expensive one that way. Again, I've shown this chart before. I won't show it. won't go into much detail, but again, you look at the capacity of our DLI programs and how full they are. again uh the Spanish is quite high but we start getting down into the you know into the lower 80s with some of the French you know Oako is about 80% when you look at the capacity of having 56 students in each in each grade uh I'd also point

105out Lone Peak again around 83% of what I call the capacity there and the supplement that we have to make for uh uh to keep these programs going. And then went over this again a month ago, but you can see the uh the f uh the ex the Spanish programs on top, the accepted and those on the wait list versus, you know, again, we want the 56. So, Draper may get there and I we'd have to update the numbers, but uh as of a month ago, we were still short in our our uh Chinese program and Okalo and French. We were still short again trying to get that 56 that we like there. And that also impacts the neighborhood classes. And so, sometimes we'll have uh uh have to have larger neighborhoodsized classes in these

106programs. because you know of the FTE issues there. So again, I've highlighted some of those. I thought Silver Mesa is an interesting one. You know, very popular. The Spanish, you know, they only have one neighborhood first grade class again uh of just 22. Uh so there's the Spanish and then going to the French and first and then the Chinese on the bottom. You can see all the same. They only have one neighborhood uh first grade and third grade class, but uh you can see in the fourth grade their numbers are a little bit bigger than the dual immersion programs because of that. I mean again because trying to even everything out. Same with the Chinese at uh at Ridgerest, you know. I mean, the neighborhood schools are much smaller, but then you get up into

107well, I'm actually going to look at neighborhood to Lone Peak, you know, you have 32 and 31 in their fifth grade classes, but the DLI classes in fifth grade much smaller there. So, there was a little bit of a supplement there as we try to keep class sizes smaller. uh one of the you know as a lot of districts as I mentioned are going through this process of looking at how how do we you know do they consolidate schools move boundaries change programs and so the state in the 2024 legislature legislature or session made a came up with a a bill and this is the code here and I placed the whole code on board docs it's if you look on page I believe it's page five and section 24 is where the all this

108but these are just the highlights. Again, the state wants to make sure and deservely so that make sure there's plenty of notification if you go down this route what you have to do. So again, in a board meeting under an action item, you would have to look if you're going to look at either one changing what they call a special enrollment program and they define that as DLI. You have to say that and you have or if you're going to look at closing a school, consolidating schools, changing boundaries, you have to name those schools in a public meeting. That has to occur at least 90 days before you go through the actual vote. And then a after you declare that you need to send out notifications via your communication method that for us it would

109be parent square or and not an or but and you also have to notify the parents via postal service. You also have to talk with the mayor and city council of each of these respective cities. You have to have public comment and we do that. Uh then you also have to have public a public hearing once you get to that point where you're going to looks like you're going to go down that road to gather all the input you can. Uh and it's preferred if you're going to close a school to have that hearing at that school so you can try to draw more attendance. If you're going to look at two or three schools, then you probably then you should just have it at a more central location. But this whole process needs to

110be done by December 31 for the following fall. So, uh, so if you're going to do that process, you know, that has to be done again, you don't want to you can't tell parents in April, May that their school or boundary could be changing. So, I mean, again, I I think a good change by the legislature to make sure everybody's on the same same uh timeline with that. Uh, also, if you're going to close a school and then have a subsequent boundary change, you have 60 days after you announce that school closure, I'd probably recommend you do it all at once so everybody's on notice when that happens. But, you do have an extra extra time for that. uh one of the and again we could have our committee members vice president Edel and uh

111board member Peterson and board member Dolly speak to this of being on the committee but it's our recommendation at the May 6th meeting we won't have a uh with next meeting being teacher of the year that we actually do go through the process and approve a boundary review of school consol possible boundary reviews These would all be possibilities, boundary reviews, school consolidations, potential school closures, and begin that notification process to parents at that meeting. We also show you the communications plan that we plan to put out there so everybody knows what we're looking at. there probably need and if you want to do this it would be a different study but you could look at a special enrollment program any consolidations with that and that would of course be the DLI program again you'd have

112to make this a motion in a board meeting if we went down that route to looking at boundary changes or school closures or consolidations there a whole laundry list of things we'd want to look at the first first thing the top item is always going to be our student academic performance, our student success, our student achievement, our student safety, all those that's going to always be top the top item. But other things keeping neighborhoods together, the feeder system, the capacity of the school that's we're looking at closing or consolidating, but also the neighboring schools because, you know, we got to have the kids housed somewhere. FTE impact permits support needs the units most of these of the 10 schools we looked we noted earlier seven of them house a self-contained unit future projection enrollments possible

113growth again we just really see that in two areas but you also want to look at the building condition that the FCI score uh the long the projected needs now but also the projected needs in four to six years. Is the roof going to need replaced? We've heard from Sandy and the issues with their HVAC system. Is that going to need a major over overhaul or replacement as well? Uh some transportation impacts. You know, we would not want to do pocket busing. We did that at one time when we started as a district. We have got rid of that in this when we did the grade reconfiguration in 2013. but also the safe walking routes, making sure we have adequate and proper ADA compliance, our fields and our playgrounds and all the safety requirements there.

114And there's there could be other items there. So, with that, that's the presentation that we have. Uh, I just want to before we turn it back to any discussion or questions, I just want to say, you know, this is a, you know, this is a sad day. It's a sad topic. Anytime you look at closing a school, consolidating a school, it's it's it's a it's a sad and it's a hard thing. And uh you know, when I was looking at our numbers in 2018 19, I thought, you know, I knew our birth rate was going down. We were starting to have a small dip. I thought we'd be able to withstand be okay because we'd have enough uh fluidity in the system with people moving in and out. But uh then COVID hit and you

115know the housing prices just really skyrocketed on us and really impacted younger families potential of moving in here. And then the birth rate has also declined even more since CO we're just starting to this first year this fall we'll have the first impacts of that birth rate is kids born in 2020 will start kindergarten this fall. And so that's all this has played into it. We sometimes across the nation it's been the great cliff. You know the esser funds running out declining enrollments and all this hitting at once. So but it you know it's a hard these are hard conversations and it's a and it's it's a sad situation that we've got to this point but it's something that we feel like we need to address. So with that, the president shall turn it back

116to you for any questions, comments, or any more instruction to the committee. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Edel wanted to make a comment. So this is a hard topic uh as you mentioned, but I do want to point out um that it is a important fiscal decision that we make here as well. Um it's fiscally responsible to ensure that uh we don't have unnecessary facilities that we need to keep up. Um but then more importantly this is about student achievement and academics. Uh this directly impacts positive student achievement, positive academics. It helps uh to maintain the class sizes as was clarified in there so that we don't have huge classrooms. Um that doesn't do do anyone any good at the same time. It supports teachers by allowing them to have uh their uh grade level peers

117within the building. Um so while this is this is a really hard topic um the outcomes of this once it's finished once everyone gets settled uh will be very positive um both fiscally and uh academically for our students and then I wanted to point out one other item which is the runway that we have for discussing this uh as a committee we've deliberately extended the runway well beyond what's required of us by law. We don't want anyone to be caught off guard. Uh we want to make sure that there's plenty of time for uh input from parents, input from our staff, input from the community. Uh which is why we have really such a long runway that we're looking at this. Uh and as we move forward or if we move forward as the board

118hasn't directed us to do that yet, but but if we were to move forward uh there would be there would be meetings and there would be a lot of opportunities to have community input because I think that that's absolutely essential as we go through this process as well as transparency. As a parent that's gone through a school merger before, I know how important it is to have transparency. uh and from my end I pledge to be uh 100% transparent um anytime someone comes and communicates with me. So I appreciate us um even addressing this topic because I know that it's it's a sensitive issue for a lot of people out there. Okay. Thank you. Any other comments? U Mrs. Person, as Mr. Edel said, we're just addressing the issue. There have literally been no identification

119of any specific schools that we need to do something to. We just simply looked at data and said if something is to happen, these are the schools that are having a harder time. They have unbalanced classrooms. They don't have enough students to provide pro uh programs. And we need to and the buildings may be getting quite old. We need to just look at those. So there are 10 schools on the list, but we're not going to necessarily do something to all 10, but we have to put them on notice that we're looking. Okay? And we're literally just looking. There is a very long um runway, as you call it. Um we're not doing anything for next year. This is going to be a process for the next while. We're going to be letting you know

120as we go through each step, um what parts we're looking at. Today we let you know all of the factors. And if you look very carefully back at Oh, our criteria. Where's that? The things that we look at. Oh, last page, not front page. Anyway, there. Yes, it was the last one that that's a lot of issues and we're going to have to put conversation and data with every single one of those for every single one of the schools that we're looking at. So, this is not going to be a quick and easy process, but I I really feel like the community can feel it coming. We know we've had schools asking us, is there something going to happen? Do is there something we're going to do? I've had people ask, can we change the

121boundaries so we can get more kids in our schools? These have been requests for the last year or two at least. And so I think we're just being responsible and saying yes, we need to look at this and we're looking at it now and we're letting you know all the factors and all the variables that we have to take into consideration. So is this going to be a very quick um decision? No. And is it going to be an easy one? Not likely. We'll never be able to make everyone happy. We want to be able to give the best education we can to our students with the least amount of disruption that we can and still be fiscally responsible. Every time we go down a student, you're losing one FTE. That's $8,000 for every kid.

122And if we're losing 300 a year, multiply that by eight. That's quite a bit of money that we're losing every single year. And that's just from enrollment. We also have money that the district, not district, legislature, our favorite people, um, keep taking away from our schools. They sound, they're very good at the shell game. They like to sound like they're helping us in a great deal, but when they say they're going to give you a bonus, they took away some transportation money. They take away programs. And you don't see that as a public, but we have to deal with that as a district. So for every positive that they say they're doing for education, you're not seeing what's happening behind the scenes, they're literally taking when they're going to take away taxes, reduce taxes for

123the public, that's money that should have come to education, should have come to schools when they're giving vouchers that should have come to schools. And that's one of the reasons why we're having such a difficult time financing keeping all these schools open. So, we just wanted to be open and honest with you. We're not happy about having to look at this process, but we feel like it's a an absolute necessity and that we would not be doing our jobs if we were not addressing this issue. Okay, Mrs. Dolly, thank you. Uh, before I was elected onto the board, I went and met with the principles at all the schools in my area, and most of them when I asked them, "What questions do you have for me?" They said, "Why is nobody addressing the elephant

124in the room, which is this issue of decreasing enrollment?" And they talked to me about a lot of the struggles that they're having in their their schools as these enrollments are decreasing. And so, we really want to provide what is best for our teachers and for our students to give them the best education possible and at the same time be physically responsible. And so, that's why we are looking at that at this time. and also understand maybe if your school's not highlighted as one that's been looked at, there definitely can be impacts for neighboring schools with boundaries. And so, um, but like, uh, Karen and Andrew have said that we will, um, be transparent in this whole process. We're seeking feedback and lots of factors that have to take into consideration with this. Thank you,

125Leon, for all your work on this. Okay, board. Um, any other comments? Mrs. Nymar, I want to thank the long range planning committee. This is excellent and this is just a very um although it's difficult, a very welcomed uh response um from your committee and recommendation. I for one I'm very grateful. you know, the the decreasing enrollment in these elementary schools is significant and any of these elementary schools that are running on less than 300 students. Um, you know, another thing that that is right here on the slide that hasn't been talked about, but our program offerings, that's another big thing. It really impacts what programs we can offer. Um, also, um, I appreciate the analysis with three or more classes per grade. There's something really important with the whole child as far as their

126socialization when their classes are mixed up every year and learning to get along with new students. And you know, that's something I've spoke um I've spoke about before here that that uh we used to have Salta spread out to more elementary schools and I I was in one of the ones in favor of consolidating so that we could have more um classes in an elementary school that way because I was seeing negative impacts with socialization when there was only one class and they just kept moving up. So um I think that's so very important too. Um, I appreciate the committee's recommendation. I really appreciate the fact that we're going to give a lot of communication and transparency, and I think that's paramount, but I I for one just would like to say that I am

127very much in favor of both these recommendations to go ahead and study this. So, okay. Thank you, Mrs. Oaks. I agree with a lot of what Miss had to say and and as well as the other board members. Thank you for taking the time on this. It's reiterating the fact that we didn't need to have long range planning be long range planning and then have a separate innovation committee right so um yeah this is a hard subject really really difficult but you guys have done excellent work and I appreciate you taking a look at the hard things and I'm also supportive of the idea of having those two committees look a little deeper. I do want to just say something and I don't know how many people will actually hear this in our community, but

128uh we had a lot of people from Granite Elementary who came and talked to us about the concern of losing one teacher this year and how that m how much that impacts their local school community and is very painful. Right? We heard it in live living color from the teachers perspective, from the parents perspective. Um, but I have to say that's happening across a lot of our schools. Um, it was only a few days later after the most recent board member board meeting where that was discussed that I ran into some teachers from Lone Peak Elementary who told me that two of their FTEEs were gone and they're losing two teachers there. And parents were very confused about why that was happening. and they explained to them enrollment and they said well what's contributing to

129enrollment and of course we know the birth rate is a piece but they pointed out the voucher bill and that had not occurred to these patrons at all in fact they I think most Utons kind of approached some of these things in a live and let live sort of thing like oh that's great that they can have money over there and I still have my public school I'm happy with the truth is when our legislators make those choices it does directly impact your own child's classroom. It does eventually trickle down and I would highly encourage any parents who are concerned about to please email your legislators. It's critically important. Email or call them or contact them however you need to and say, "Hey, I understand that you gave more funding to the bill, the voucher

130bill that by the way does not have great accountability, but that's a whole separate other thing." They did tighten up a few things, but you gave more money to it, and that's impacting my kids' classroom. We're losing two teachers at my child's school, and I am one of your constituents. Please take the time to communicate with your legislators. I cannot overemphasize that enough. We try every year to communicate this to them, but there is no substitution for a parent picking up the phone and saying, "I'm being impacted by your vote." Just to comment on that, we will be down 18 to 20 elementary teachers this upcoming year. Well, and Leon, correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that in terms of lost enrollment, and Kirsten would probably know this, too. In terms of

131lost enrollment, we lose the most number of students at the elementary level. Am I correct in saying that? So, when we're talking about losing 18 elementary teachers across the district, that is pretty directly impacted by that bill. Okay. Thank you, board members. Um, I do want to say a few things. I I want to thank the committee and I know this is necessary even though I am the only board member that has been here for boundary changes. You guys have not been here. It is not a picnic. Anyway, we also I want to remind the board the whole reason why we have Canyons District is because Jordan School District closed two schools in Conwood Heights. So, I'm just saying I I just want to make sure we proceed like cautiously. I'm not against doing it

132because I think we have to. Um I do want to make sure that we have a lot of parent input. Like I want to have like some options for parents to see like have open houses. Um, I do appreciate like the year and a half kind of one runway we have now. I think that'll be good. Um, also like one thing that's kind of not on here is just like all the special programs because even though you're showing that enrollment, does that include the special programs students? It does include It does. Okay. Okay. Great. Um, then also I have a question. Does that mean you said that you would be um sending something to all parents like when will that go out and it does it go to all 10 elementary school? Yeah, under the

133law once you guys as the board approved the study formally approve it we have to notify the parents and so it it will go to all the parents two ways parent square and US mail. We also have to notify those adjoining schools where they could be impacted. Now maybe they won't be but they could be. So we have to send a notice to them as well. So you know if you think so it'll be all basically basically almost 28 schools almost the whole district will be notified. Not quite but yeah. So, you know, if you're going to oops notify do something, so say Granite or Sprucewood and it affects Lone Peak or Sunrise, you got to notify those parents as well because their school will be impacted. So, pretty much just we may just we

134may just may bless everybody that this and say, "Hey, these are the schools we're looking at." But all your your school could be impacted as well because just about every school has an adjoining blue if you will. It pretty much looks and if you throw on DLI and if you throw on DLI Yeah, it'll be everyone. Yeah. Um I I do want to um maybe ask about Oh, I just lost my train of thought. Um anyone else have anything? Okay, Mrs. Nyar, maybe I can remember. Okay, I understand the thought process about um the committee recommendation says May 6th because of the three readings thing, but when I it says at the May 6 board meeting, approve the study of boundary reviews. And I believe probably the genesis behind that was because we like to

135have three readings and this is a first read. Well, it's teacher of the year. It's teacher of the year next year. Okay. Or the 15th, not next year. Next board meeting. But my question is, do we need to wait until May 6? Because this is not a determination. We're just approving that there will be a study of boundary reviews and a study, right? So, we may we may we maybe could consider because it's a study. I think our concern is we're not ready for the communications plan going out and so we wanted to for that May. I was just thinking maybe it's good to I'm really want a lot of community input. So, and we do too. We want to uh for that reason, we wanted to wait till the May 6th. We really didn't

136want to wait till the May 20th for the reason being we're right up against the end of school, right? So, we we really wanted just to look at the May 6th meeting as target and spend April uh working on the communications plan. And that is my one concern. My one concern about waiting till May 6th is I think that May is kind of Maycember and there's so many end of year events and families are so busy that I kind of do love the idea of thinking that maybe some communication could get sent out before but you realize that spring break is next week. So I actually think it's better to wait until May because everyone's going to be gone next week. Yeah, I wouldn't do it I wouldn't do it next week. I'm saying then

137communication could roll it out maybe April 20th or it just gives it gives us a couple weeks before May. I just feel like the feedback we have always gotten unanimously is whenever we send out stuff in May parents are like that was crazy. I missed it. So I don't I don't think they're going to miss this. I'm just saying when we're announcing this they everyone will be talking. Mrs. Oaks I do agree with Miss Sniper. I think even just a few days before for May would make a difference honestly. I mean I I yeah it is the Maysecember thing is real. It's real for teachers, real for parents. I think you know if they come back from spring break they're a bit refreshed and having the communication come out sometime before the end of April.

138That would be my preference but I know I'm only one Mr. Edel wanted to comment. Okay. So to go along with this thought process and I was I was one of the people who kind of advocated for this first meeting and then the next one um once we did this is there a timeline for how long we would have to notify people like so once we made the determination so if we voted for this or direct I don't know how it works if we direct tonight we're not obligated to send information out next week we would be able to still deter determine our own communication plan, but perhaps do it before May. And the only date, again, I'm going to go back and read the law. You all have the law there. It's on I

139think it's section 24. The only time is the 90 days that you have by the time you authorize the study, if you will, till you vote, you know, on the final action, you have to give at least 90 days. So, plays. So, from communications, how long do we need? Yeah. Yeah. Come up to the microphone. So, obviously, we want to pull out of the stop all the stops out to make sure that we're adequately informing the community. So, um ideally we'll have a landing page. Um we'll have um a mechanism where people can complete a form to provide input on that page. Um we'd like to have some videos kind of describing some of um what we're proposing or looking at the different scenarios. Um and then you know postcards, mailings about open houses. We'd

140like to would need to schedule out a lot of those in advance and they need some time to do that. Um, so ideally, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, Leon, but a lot of this conversation will continue in throughout the summer and the fall. Correct. So, we'll continue to be banging that drum and reminding parents to provide input and we can continue that when we get back to school, too. I think that's when we'll be holding a lot of the open houses. So, I think we'll have a pretty captive audience for back to school. Just to remind folks, we don't see us holding any open houses this school year. Yes. Uh but we'd want to kick that right off in August and September once school starts. So the committee would be developing some options.

141You know, we'll have to have lots of op, you know, lots but four or five options and different areas of course and then vet those with the community and these open houses and see take their input then come back report to you and refine them and take them back and refine them again and see if there's some type if we want to try to hit that December date that would go into effect for the 26 27 school year or do we push it further back or something like that. But that's that's our idea. Yeah. Okay. Mr. Edel, so uh for the original date that we had for the original communication, how feasible would it be to move that up about two weeks? That's that's my real question because if if you can't do it, you

142can't do it, right? Yeah, I I think we can do anything that you've asked us to do and and but the reality is is it's not going to be maybe as robust or as planned out or as mapped out right when we make that initial push. So, I'd like to have as much time as possible, but I understand if there's some sense of urgency just knowing that we're going to be continuing to tweak it and make improvements to it and adding more information as it, you know, we schedule the meetings and that kind of thing. Part of me is that first bullet there, you taking the action first. And so that's that's that's well that's what the law says. So we've got to follow the law. Yeah. You know, now whether or not you want

143to just do a quick reading at teacher of the year and on the 15th and gave us permission to go or put it on the consent agenda. Well, you guys, we have to remember that spring break employees too, you guys. They're not going to be here for a week of the next two weeks. Yeah, we won't be here. Most of us will not be here next week. asking a lot, I think. Anyway, Mrs. Person wanted to just say I feel like we're This is so loud. I feel like that we're you're you're pushing it, guys. You're really starting to make as a member of the committee. We literally You saw everything we've said. There is no more. We have not discussed and divi divided up or even put any of the data with each of

144those schools yet. And if you start announcing things to the public, they're going to want to know the details. The minute you know, they're going to come, okay, is it my school? What are you going to do? Where are we going to go? They will have all those questions that I know they're going to have. We have no answers. I hate it when we look. I don't want to be unprepared. I want to be able to answer those questions for our community. I do not want us to push it earlier. I side with communications that I would really rather have the time as a committee to work out. We haven't fleshed out any anything. We don't know. Okay, you're pushing us guys. I'm just saying that I just don't think we can do it. I'm

145not even talking about them. I don't know that we as a committee can can effectively meet and discuss and give adequate thought to the ramifications of all that all the criterias that we had on that list. We can't do it sooner. At least that's my opinion. Okay, just me. I can't say that. It depends on what you're going to tell them. But I minute I promise the minute you tell them that we're looking, this is the us telling them that we're looking and that we have no more ready. right now and that we will release more. I think in May 6 we'll have a little more we can say and that we will not be doing any open houses until the beginning of school next year. And we tell them that because that's the truth

146and we will be able to answer many of their questions later. We're giving it a a year and a half runway. Yet you're pushing the notification to two weeks and we still have a year and a half. I realize half of that is just, you know, time to get it implemented. But I I just feel really pushed, guys. I'm sorry, but my anxiety level is going really high because I don't think it's realistic. I know it would be ideal, but it's not possible. We need to relax. Don't get in a Don't us get all upset because I don't want our communities to get all upset because there's no point. It's not imminent. It's just an awareness that the thing that you knew was in the room, that elephant, we've brought it into the building and

147we petted it a little and we're feeding it. We're we're we just don't know what to do with our elephant yet. So, but we knew where he is. I I just really hesitate that we push faster than what's been suggested at this point. Okay. Mrs. Nmar, I appreciate your comment and I think that there's some good thought there as far as once people hear looking at doing a boundary change, there's going to be a lot of questions and I understand that completely. However, the thought process I have and I love the robust robust communications would be that it would be something that you're going to add to overtime and that what that this communication would be say for example we said by April 25th you have two weeks after spring break to get it ready.

148The communication would just be that we are we've made a motion and it's been approved to study boundary reviews and then all the ways that they're studying it just so that it's out there and that just we've started it. And the reason why I like that is because I also have lived through a boundary change actually in Tennessee and the amount of firestorm um was I mean I can't even begin to explain but lots of news stations, lots of extra meetings. it when it when people feel like, oh yeah, we got some email in May and we're in Mayber and it's the end of the school year. We didn't notice it. Then they're already upset. And then when fall time comes and they're start starting to do the open houses and we would be starting

149to do the open houses, you kind of start already with people frustrated because they're like the I just heard about this at back to school night. And so I I love the idea of okay, we're telling you we're looking at it now. We're going to tell you again we're looking at it now. Just I think the more communication, the more runway, the more transparency, it just it it helps I think people digest, okay, they're looking at it, but we don't have the answers. It's just would say we we have a committee that's reviewing and then these are the ways and the bullet points that are actually on there, the considerations. That's kind of what I was thinking. What are we thinking of that? And Kristen, what are your thoughts? We can certainly do that. I

150mean, we'll plan on reporting out from this board meeting anyway, right? We'll have the infographic. We'll have the board summary that Jeff prepares. So, um, and then so we can layer on some additional communications with that just and let families know that more information is forthcoming. Stay tuned. I do like that because I do think some people really do watch these board meetings or see the little infographic. So, I think some of those questions were will already come and it just gives that little extra measure of, hey, we're trying to we're trying to be as communicative as possible. So, if you didn't catch it on there, you got it somewhere else, too. Okay. Thanks, Mr. Edel. Uh, so I feel like I'm caught between two almost insignificant worlds, but they're they're pretty big, right? So,

151on one hand, I really like things to be pretty robust and good as they go out. But on the other hand, um I have been a consistent advocate on full transparency and early communication on this um with with not holding back anything. Um because when you hold back anything or people think that you're holding back, then now you're being shady and you're not being transparent. And it's for that reason um that I wholeheartedly agree um with Holly that uh I think a message is better than no message. You said you're sending out a message as well, just in general off this board meeting. Um, and then we don't have you work over spring break, but continue the more robust communications plan on the schedule that it was going to be. Um, that would be my

152preferred option. I mean, I'm just going to say, Andrew, I know you are parents through the last process, but we were being transparent because we didn't know the answers. like we were giving the public the answers as they came and I feel like that's what's going to happen this time. So I'm just saying I mean I don't know. So I feel like we need to see a consensus from the board on what you guys want to do. So yeah. So who wants So I'm just going to go down the road. Please just say the April the next meeting versus the May is it May 7th one May 6th. Okay. Just say which one you prefer for a more a robust communication plan. Uh we'll start with Karen clarification. So are you asking that we are

153going to make a motion to start this process today? No. Okay. Just that's a clarification. No, it's a first reading. We cannot do this on our first reading. No, that is way out of our process. We're not going out of our process for this. Okay. You guys make this so hard. No, I already know what she's going to say. She's going to say, "Do it now." Um If that's all we say, it's really a recap of what we're saying tonight because this is that meeting. This is us in inter um sending that. But we don't have to have a meeting to go with it, guys. We just make sure that we have a separate message. Then I can support that doing it in at the end of April. Just it's not the end of April.

154It's mid April. Mid April. Well, whatever. It's midpr. So you guys want to vote. So we will have to have a business meeting in order to vote at the next April meeting because right now we're only going to have study because we have teacher of the year. I mean we can do it. I'm just saying we do have a consent. There will be a business meeting because we'll have consent agenda. So we could do it. So we could do it. I would, you know, just I think we could send out general really general general information, you know, using the board infographic to everyone saying, "Hey, this is something we'll look at." And the board will take that up on May 6 so everybody's aware. Yes, but uh we I think from our perspective, we'd really

155like to follow you know our process of of you know you guys formally approving the a study before we start sending out uh really more detailed information. Okay. So, I'm going to change my question. Is there anyone who is opposed to what Leon just said? I know. I think Holly is because she already said she was Well, wait. I I thought Karen had already said yes. We haven't gone down the row. Like I'm I'm just in favor. He We're going to listen to the administration and he is he thinks we need to hold to it. So, are there four people who disagree with what Leon just said? Well, can I have clarification? Yeah, sure. I actually thought Leon was saying what we just said. General information is fine and we could do a business we

156already are doing a business meeting on the 15th. No, he just said he doesn't want us to vote until May 6 because that is what is on the that is what is on that PowerPoint that's been in public. Yes, Mr. So for clarification, what's what what's being proposed and correct me if I'm wrong is we send out general information about what happened tonight. Yes. And then um as we had in the slides for the timeline, we'll have a business meeting on May 6th where we'll formally vote on the process. Um but the initial communication will go out before then and we won't hold um an additional vote during teacher of the year. Yes. Yes, that is I support that version. Um yes, Mrs. Dolly, I'm just concerned about putting too much pressure on our uh

157communications and administration. There's no reason we can't talk about it this now. This presentation's been made. Most of these schools are in my area. I'm already planning to get a copy of the presentation that's made and I'm visiting PTAs and SEC's and making them aware that this is even being discussed now. So just because we haven't formally voted on it, we can talk about the recommend when sorry recommendation has been made and a vote will happen to start the study in May. Okay, good point. Um, okay. Is everyone okay with that? Yes. Okay, great. I think we have a plan then. We'll uh get something out here. May not be till the week of uh the 14th when we're back. But sure, we'll send out the infographic for this one, but uh yeah, more information

158coming on that. Okay, I I have a couple questions now. Sorry. never get to ask my questions till the end. Um, I'm wondering if the committee I know you have all those things you want to look at, but can we come up with like a rubric because maybe some of those things you actually can't put a number to, but some you can. Um, I think it'd be really helpful if we had a set thing we're looking at for every school. And I I think that's where you're going with this. But to me, that's that's just a lot. I think that's a good suggestion. Yeah. Okay. And then my second thing is, do we really need to list all 10 of those schools? Do you understand what I'm saying? Would you rather narrow could the committee

159narrow it down further? Are you already talked about that? And that's really what you guys feel that's my last question that I couldn't think of earlier. I think you guys Well, we talked. Yeah, that's a really good question. Uh some of them I'm concerned with that I you know, as I just think through my accountant head, you know, how would how would it consolidate with another school or what would happen there? I'll be honest, you know, I know carpus is one of the smaller schools, but I you know, if you look at all the growth out on the bluffs, I don't see how we can really do anything with that right now. I think that's Well, so maybe there's some things like that that you guys can discuss and take a few schools off. I

160don't know. you know, we could you you to me you have a as I looked at the map here. There's two major, you know, one of the things would be the major roads and that's kind of how our boundaries are. So, you have a major road going up 94 south here, you know, up to the mouth of Canyon that divide Well and Park Lane and Granite. I know granite does go over uh north of big cottonwood or 94 south once you get up around 2700 east right does go across but that's that's a main road so that's kind of one area there and the second area would be so that'd be north and south of 94 south and the other one would be on Highland so you have uh quail and Brookwood and Bella Vista

161on that east side of Highland land. And then on the west side you have Oakdale. Even though there is a piece of Oakdale that does go on the east side of Highland. You can see that little square up there. Right. Right. I don't know if my pointer's working. Oops. A lot of those parents um they permit into Brookwood. I'm just telling you that pocket permits into Brookwood because that's in my area. Yeah. That little pocket there. And then you have that. So you have Birkwood and I mean you have east of Sandy and Oak Oak Dell on the west side of Highlands. So you know you kind of have little natural boundaries breaking areas if you will with those schools yet. Katie, you have to remember that all of these schools are under 375. We're

162not going to close all of these schools, but to do it correctly, we have to be able to look at the boundaries for all of those and even the adjoining schools. So we by law we have to name all these schools if we're going to be making a change to a program to a boundary or potential school closure. And so they have to be named regardless and notified. So I don't think it helps to because to remove a school off of it we have to make some kind of decision consolidation decision before we've actually put it to the committee. So yeah it's not awesome but because they're all adjoining you have to look at it holistically. You can't look pull one off and say, "Oh, we're not going to consider them." Okay, I get it.

163I just wanted to ask that question. Um, so everyone, every parent in our district is going to be upset, but okay, great. Um, you guys, I'm not kidding. People do not like uncertainty. They do not like change, but I know this is necessary. So, anyway, okay. Thank you, Mr. Wilcox. I think that Yes, that is the end. Unless you have anything else for us. I have one. I have one. I was gonna say this is just April Fools, but I won't say that. Not cool. I wish it was. Anyway, Mrs. Nyar, I just wanted to thank I want to thank the committee. I want to thank Leon and Kirsten and I want to thank our president. I really appreciate that we just had that discussion and that we were able to kind of discuss back

164and forth because I think we came up with the best solution with communication and it was really valuable input. what everyone shared. So, and then just lastly, really quick, I love Miss Stall that you're doing all of that with communicating to your area. I think they'll be so appreciative. I also really appreciate that we are going to have the communication from the administrative end because I think that's just best practice to always have so um you know, communication transparency. So, thank you. Okay. Thank you, Mrs. Nybar. Okay, we're gonna go on. We're not making great time tonight, you guys. It's okay. Okay. Item B, emergency management team update. Jeff Haney, director of communications, will present this to us. Thank you, President Schill. If you want to take a seat right there, looks like everybody stood

165up and left for the update on the emergency management team. So, I guess we'll just have to say our schools are safe and then we'll sit down and call it good. They are feeling very confident in you. Exactly. President Schill, thank you for extending the opportunity for the emergency management team to give an update on the work that we've been completing over the past several years. You'll know that we are the district security team. The emergency management team is made up of members of the board of education, district administrators, and we have representatives from the elementary, middle, and high school levels. They bring a an amazing uh perspective to discussions about safety and security and how the rubber hits the road on some of the plans that we have on making sure that our schools

166are as safe and secure as possible. You can see there that the members of the EMT for 2025 are include myself, Ryan Jakeman, who's our risk management coordinator and the co-chair of EMT, my colleague Kirsten Stewart, the assistant superintendent Dr. McKay Robinson, business administrator Leanne Wilcox, legal counsel Dan Harper, student wellness services director Dr. Brian McIll, program administrator, Shereice Hilton, who is also our leaison with our school resource officers, board members, President Amber Schill, vice President Andrew Edel, a new board member Jackson Lewis, and Susan Edwards, public engagement coordinator, and our school representatives Jared Tucker from Diamond Ridge, Connie Trew Simons from Midell Middle School, and Hi Nelson, who is the new principal of Willow Canyon Elementary School. Miss Nyar just cycled off her time. We valued her input when she was a member of

167EMT. We do a lot of work on a monthly basis now to make sure that we are putting into place the measures to keep our schools as safe as possible. It was a challenging day on October 25th of 2016. That's when we got the word that there was a active shooter situation at Union Middle School. I will tell you that my heart dropped when I received a phone call from Sandy Police telling me that they were headed there. All cars, sirens wailing, the lights flashing because there was a report of an act active shooter situation on the campus. Uh Kirsten and I immediately went to work and trying to get information about what had happened. Well, we were fortunate. It was not a fatality, but we did have the accused shooter who eventually pleaded guilty

168to first-degree felony attempted murder and other weapons charges. But one of the things that stuck out to us is that in the debriefs following that situation, we found out that our incident command manual for a district of 34,000 students, 6,000 employees, 50 schools and programs, it had not been updated and we had not practiced our drills in several years. At that time, then Superintendent Jim Brisco tasked a small group of us to evaluate our incident command manual and identify the ways that we could improve our security measures. You know, federal data will tell us that schools in America have never been safer, but the perception is that there are violent incidents just ready to happen at any time. We know this. Our schools are safe places. Still, in Canyon School District in Sandy, Utah, we

169had an incident that came close to a fatality. So, while we know our community values safety and our district has put a premium on making sure that we have safe and secure and welcoming schools, we always want to be prepared and that's the good work of the EMT. Our first revision of the incident command manual had us identify the ways that we can coordinate with our local law enforcement agencies to make sure that what we had in our our incident command manual was what they would like to see in their response and so they could train appropriately. We also wanted to make it easy on all of our administrators who would be responding with their faculties and staffs to any emergencies on their campuses. That's why we built checklists into every emergency that we would

170possibly face as a school system. The thing that one of the things that I'm incredibly proud of is the drill schedule that we put into place. Muscle memory matters when you have to go into a secure. Muscle memory matters when you have to do an evacuation. That's why we put into place this drill schedule that's reviewed by our SEC's so parents have a role in reviewing the results and the debrief of all of our drills that are conducted in our schools. Also, EMT at all of our meetings review which schools have completed the required drills as established in the incident command manual. We also work handin glove with our schools to create the sightsp specific safety plans. Now, in 2016, this was required as part of legislation, but we were ahead of the curve. In

171our first incident command revision following the 2016 incident at Union Middle School, we identified that every school needed to work with risk management and local law enforcement on evacuation destinations repository of all of the blueprints of the schools and identify for our local police agencies where they could enter in the event of an emergency that they had to respond to. Those were kind of the four tenants that we built that first incident command manual on. And since that time, groups, members of EMT on a yearly basis, update incident command, get it ready for the coming school year and then work with school performance to provide training to our principles and assistant principles. The board of education has played a massive role in how we provide welcoming, safe, and prepared schools to our community. The board

172of education embraced two bond proposals that led to the reconstruction and the improvement of schools all across this district. We have built not just beautiful schools, but schools with safety in mind. They are seismically safe. They have state-of-the-art surveillance systems. We have automatic locks that require our employees to have ID badges to gain entry and those security vestibules. Our schools have these safety measures because we saw we needed them to make sure that our students, faculty, and staff remained safe, but also gave the appearance to our community that we had schools that were safe, but they weren't like prisons. The plans that we worked on with the architects, they made these schools safe, but they didn't make people feel unwelcome and that was valuable. We also value our school resource officers and our partners in

173law enforcement. Detective Boots is standing back there and I feel so safe every time he is here. The other school resource officers who are here during board meeting. But our SRO's aren't just people who provide law enforcement at our schools. They are the people who connect with our students, that connect with parents, with teachers, with faculty, encourage students to be at school and feel safe and secure while they are there. They are an integral part of our school communities. They're postcertified personnels whose salaries are co-unded by the district. Another way, and it's not necessarily about the fortification of our schools, but Canyon School District has invested in ways that we can make sure our students have access to clinicians who can help them through difficult times and have immediate access to a tipline that gives

174instant information to our administrators about incidents that could be happening in our hallways. I'm one of the few people here. Dr. Robins, I know the Dr. McIll, Kirsten, Ryan, every day 7 o'clock, all those safe UT tips come right on in. And we follow up on them. If we receive a message on a Sunday about social media posts that are saying, "Hey, so and so said this was going to happen at school tomorrow." We don't just wait till Monday. We act on it. Those processes were put into place as a result of the work that we do in ENT. SAFE UT is that tip line that our students can use at any time to not only tell us what's happening in the hallways, meaning if you see something, say something. But if they're just feeling

175that like they need to reach out to a counselor because their own personal safety is at risk, 247 365, there's a licensed clinician who can help them. And then we have a record of them reaching out and our wellness staff can help them as well. Canyon's district as part of our incident command and EMT plans was the first district to roll this out. Elementary, middle, and high school. As part of the drill schedule, we want to make sure that that muscle memory is in place. You can see here the months that we've identified as the when we would like our schools to do those drills. When they're done, the school debriefs and they report to Ryan um that they conducted it and how and what they said afterwards, how they could get better, what they

176could do different. You can see also there what we've identified for our secondary schools. EMT. Also, following the passage of HB61 in two years ago after the legislative session, a standard response protocol was put into place statewide. What this does is ensure that every parent knows what a secure is, what a hold is, what a lockdown, evacuation, and shelter is. So there's no confusion in the public that when we do have an emergency protocol, what it means and what's happening at the school, our law enforcement partners can create training so that's specific to all of those SRP emergency statuses. One of the big roles of EMT was to make sure that across the district we had not only provided information about the drill schedule, but our SRPs. And as we noted a few months ago

177on our teacher satisfaction survey, 81% of our teachers said that they feel safe, which was an increase of an 8% from the previous year and seven we had a 7% increase in the number of percentage of teachers that said that they knew what to do in an emergency. Again, that was one of the emphases of EMT to make sure across the district, people in the schools and district office knew what to do in the event of an emergency. EMT also was instrumental in creating the communications plan because we know that when something happens at a school, people are texting, they're posting on social, the cell phones are going crazy everywhere. We put into place a moving communication strategy so that we can get information to the board, cabinet and district operations teams within moments of

178something happening that we dispatch immediately following that a team and most of the time it's Ryan to go to the scene to serve as a liazison with our law enforcement partners and our first responders and provide information to the incident commanders and to us so that we communicate to the rest of the district because we know that say for example if Altahigh is insecure Alterara feels the feels the consequences parents in that community regardless of whether or not they have kids at that school want to know what's happening in that community. We try to communicate across the district with the information that we have because we know that parents call their child's school to find out what is happening. student wellness services. Dr. McIll's team is then looped in and we can evaluate the need

179for crisis counseling at a scene. We also prepare information that goes out immediately on Parent Square 12 the parents. As we know, Parent Square will translate into the language that's used at home. So, parents receive immediately information about what's happening at their child's school in the language that they speak. Afterwards, we send a communication back to parents and to our internal audiences, letting them know what happened, following up, and then Ryan has a debrief with the school administrators and perhaps with the staff. A recent decision we made on EMT is to get the debrief notes from Ryan and then share them with the members of EMT so the next time we meet, we can evaluate the incident, the debrief plans, and what we could possibly do better. want to brag on CSDTV for a second.

180We're broadcasting live right now thanks to the good work of the students who are back there working with Mr. Anderson. But we were nominated for a regional Emmy for some of the videos that we did as part of our awareness campaign on school safety. The CSDTV video run hide fight which is found on our website. That's part of our communication strategy, informing our community about what we do for emergency protocols was up for that Emmy. I wish we would have won, but like they always say, it's an honor to be nominated. Right now, we are working on legislas. HB61 put into place the SRP plus the school safety specialist program where there's a school safety specialist that receives $2,275 every year to be that school's safety specialist. They communicate with Ryan who then works with

181us through EMT to develop training for each one of those safety specialists. We also have been working tirelessly on HB84 that puts into place the guardian program and also calls for us to put into place a panic button program. We've done two pilots, one at Crescent and one at Mid Valley, and then a concept that's been unveiled at another school so that we can move forward on the requirement through 84 of having a panic button available that's wearable for every teacher. We're we are gathering the data right now on the pilots so that we can put together an RFP or go with one of the models that we have used in our pilot so far. HB40 was the school safety amendments that was passed during the most recent legislative session. just kind of follows up

182on some of the issues that are related to the guardian program, the panic buttons, some of the other safety measures that the state law requires. And then Ryan has been putting into place systematically the TCU alert notification system. This is so that if there's an incident at a school, within seconds, we have an automatic notification throughout the school that something is happening. It alerts us at here at the district office so we can then put into place our response strategy and our communication plan. Ryan, would you talk for us a few seconds about what TCU is and where we stand right now in the implementation across the district? Absolutely. TCU is a um schoolwide PA system that also has an emergency notification system attached with it. Um, if a school were to go into a

183secure, it would automatically send out a pre-recorded message over the PA system ducting the current volume that was in the school. If they were playing music or they were talking, it would suppress that sound so that everybody can hear it in the classrooms and in the hallways as well. Um and it repeats it twice because in it has been proven throughout uh experiences that everybody catches the tail end of the first recording and then they catch up with the second one. So that is automatically done when a school goes into any one of those SRP notifications. Uh we also integrate it with our card access system which is integral into securing the the outside doors. Um and it also ties into the fire systems and and all of those emergency systems to help relieve the

184uh administration from having to manually do those things and be able to attend to the emergency at hand. Ryan really has been at the forefront of making sure that this is happening. This is so like he said, our principles and assistant principles can immediately attend to students, faculty, and staff and they don't have to manually do all this. Within seconds, TCU will put into place communications to us as well as reach out to our law enforcement partners and first responders. And then of course something that I like to do every month we assign an EMT member to to go to a random selection of schools and see if the doors are locked. See if all of our emergency protocols are in place. See if anybody stops them when they're walking around the building looking to

185see if any doors are held open with garbage cans or rocks. And I have been so pleased in all of my check assignments to note that very few doors have been propped open and that almost always somebody will say, "Hey, what are you?" Oh, yes, Jeff, come on in here. Let's take a look at what's happening. Somebody will stop you. Somebody will say, "Why are you here and why are you checking on the doors?" It's been a good practice for every member of EMT to get out of the district office, go to the schools, talk to the people at the schools, and see what we can do to help them improve some of their safety and security measures. This has also helped us in identifying surveillance cameras that needed to be replaced or fixed. they

186had somebody there from EMT that they could talk to and they could say, "Please help me with this." EMT is a vital part of Canyon School District. It's a lot of hard work and there's a lot of moving parts and we've got legislation that is asking us to put into place very expensive things in our schools. However, long ago, we decided that we would put an emphasis on safety and security in the Canyon School District. We see this as a continuation of that. We don't plan to stop. President Shield, do you have any questions? Okay. Thank you, Jeff. Are there any questions, board? Uh, Mrs. Nybar. Um, first off, I just want to say thank you. You guys are amazing. This is a lot of work. Thank you, Ryan. uh he works so very hard.

187I'm grateful for all of the efforts with this and this safety bill has so many parts to it. That is exactly right. So, thank you. It is a big task and I know it's a big task having been on the committee for a little bit. So, um one thing I did want to ask a question about is I know Jeff you and I had a great conversation about the importance of early intervention and um something I know Brian McIll when he was Dr. Miguel when he was at the safety conference that's something he presented in our EMT committee how you know statistically one of the biggest um you know uh factors is that early intervention and being able to see how that's such a link to what happens with safety in schools. So just wanted

188to um ask you about that with ideas about early intervention and something we've we've been hearing from elementary schools too with behavior. Absolutely. That's one of the reasons why Dr. McIll has been such a vital part of EMT. This is not just about the hardening or the fortification of schools. As Miss Nyau said, it's about ensuring that we have an early intervention in helping students who need our help. The MTSS framework is one way that we're doing that. You know, we have social workers and psychologists in our schools and they are fantastic resources that we have used when our administrators here of any student that needs a little bit of help or when we receive that safe UT tip from a friend who says, "I'm just worried about my friend soando. Is there a way

189that somebody could touch bases with them?" Early intervention is important. We have invested in our schools in the those staff members who can help us with that. Dr. McIll comes to EMT and provides us the insight of how we can continue to provide students, faculty, and staff with those supports. Okay, thank you. Anyone else? U Mrs. Folks, I do want to just highlight that piece about the safe UT app and thank um Representative Elison again for all of his work in making sure that that was possible for our state. It's it's gone um so far in making a huge difference to school communities. And it's interesting because it came up as a topic of conversation on the Hill this year. And I just want to reiterate, I know we've had conversations individually with principles who

190have received phone calls in the middle of the night, late nights and weekends. They take a heavy toll with that app, but it has saved the lives of a lot of kids. And so anyone that happens to hear this, I hope they recognize that that has been a great blessing to our state and that we're very lucky to have it. Um especially the fact that it's anonymous and kids feel safe being able to report is a huge huge bonus. So, it certainly is and um I'm proud of the fact that Canyon School District was one of the first school districts to roll out across the district and we've had it now available for student use for nearly 10 years. So, it's a part of our community conversation about safety and security and student well-being. Okay.

191Thank you. Um Dr. Robin, just real quick on on the uh early intervention piece that Holly mentioned and we can talk about this later. uh Brian can address it, but uh elementary APs I think is a huge role in this. Uh we've also really ramped up our levels of discipline and how our principles respond to that. And I know um we've had more cases come to DCMT for more extreme behaviors than ever before, but you know, maybe those were happening, but not as reported. So I think that's another um layer to this. And then just continuing to embed thrive time uh in our elementary schools. I mean, that's more on the prevention side more than the discipline side, but we know that, you know, that can be effective. And then just I appreciate uh our

192coaches and Amber's work there. We're really trying to, you know, increase their support uh as instructional coaches, but not just on the academic side, but also on the behavior side. So those are just some other strategies that we're employing. Okay. Thank you, Superintendent. Um, so I think that was great. Thank you, Jeff, for your presentation and we really appreciate all your work and I am really proud of our district, even the safety best rules, everything we've been doing. I mean, a lot of districts were kind of behind and hadn't done that, but I really feel like our schools are in a good place, so we can always work on it. But thank you. And thank you to board members for serving on EMT with us. Thank you. Okay, now we're going to go on to

193item C and it is um the update on the superintendent listening tours and superintendent Rick Robbins will present this. Okay, a late night on April Fools. Uh thank you, President Schill. Um so one of the reasons that we're we're presenting on reporting on superintendent listen listening tour a little bit earlier this year. Usually we do this in May, but uh with our acceleration with collective bargaining to get in front of uh Mayuh 7th before that law takes effect, we felt like it'd be uh important and appropriate to get this data in front of the board uh as we head into negotiations and into budget season. And um as we've said before and we'll highlight some of these at the end, just really appreciate the board's uh support uh of a lot of the recommendations and

194suggestions that have come from from listening tour. And I I'll just point out uh Karen and I were just making the point that a lot of the listening tours stops are getting shorter and shorter and shorter in some ways. And uh in a recent uh listening tour stop at one of our elementaryaries, a teacher said that there wasn't very many comments. It was kind of quiet and she said, "Well, we know that the board's listening and and you're taking our suggestions to heart and making some changes." And like like okay, maybe maybe we are making a difference. So before I go on too, I don't know if she's still here. I think maybe she left, but I just wanted to recognize our new sped director, Terry Mitchell. So, she's been here tonight. Um, that information

195and news has gone public, so I don't know if she was here. Is she still here? Okay. Uh, just and I know she'll we'll have her address the board at a later time, but we had some great candidates for that position and she really rose to the top. And I think uh one of the hallmarks about Terry's leadership that I know you've all felt and I certainly have is she has just an uncanny amazing relationship to parents and you know when you think about the start of life and little preschoolers, you know, when it's the most sensitive of all, right? Uh she's amazing. I mean, the way that she builds those relationships and works with parents. Um, and it and it's such a sensitive kind of combustible time of life. Uh, she just is is

196superior and so skilled. So, not to mention her depth of knowledge with special ed law uh and procedural um protocols is just off the charts. So, we're super excited for her to to join us on cabinet as our sped director. And we're going to miss Nate. Uh obviously that's that's tough for us to lose him, but he's going to be closer to home. Okay, so on to the listening tour. Um here's just uh some data to look at. You know, uh really proud of the fact that we got a very wide uh diverse group this year. Um 33 locations. We still have one more to go. uh we have Indian Hills Middle School left at the end of the month, but you can see um just a wide representation of employee groups uh from different

197departments as well as uh different uh schools throughout the district. And I just want to say thank you to all of you and our admin team. Uh I know it's one more thing on everybody's plate, but it's just, you know, it's really important and it's part of our strategic vision. uh you when you look at our success criteria uh in that operations focus committee that Leon runs um providing feedback loops uh is is uh critical and something that you know we want to measure for success in the district. So uh big thanks to Kirsten as she really worked this data. You can see uh some of the strategies there and protocols that we use to analyze the the data um trying to kind of filter through and find the themes and the trend lines that

198come from this. Um Leon already touched on this. Don't want to spend a lot of time on this, but but class sizes, especially in our elementary schools, uh has been a very hot topic in almost every single uh listening tour stop. And we know that there's different factors that have kind of created the perfect storm. you know, whether it's declining enrollment, uh it's permitting, uh it's it's DLI, it's Salta, um all of these things uh are happening at the same time. So, I I think it's very timely that we have the discussion about our schools that are lower in enrollment. And I think everyone was very poignant in their comments about moving that discussion forward as difficult as it is because it is creating these fluctuations uh in our FTE and our and our uh

199schools in class size and you know what what do we do with that? And and I still think it probably calls for us to until we get to some of these, you know, longer term solutions to really look at more immediate and just keeping those tools in the toolkit. Uh, you know, whether it's additional uh funds from a tax increase to help uh address this or it's uh obligatory transfers possibly in the fall. I mean, none of these are popular and none of these are easy or split uh classes. You know, we know that these are all difficult, but Leon made the point about, you know, how challenging that is to have some classes that are approaching 30, others, you know, half of that size. Facility, uh, investments. Um, you know, we heard from teachers

200tonight that the challenges that we have with with many of our buildings. I I really appreciate, you know, uh, Leon's leadership in our uh, long range planning and our board members that participate. I feel like from where we were to now the clarity just in our spreadsheet and how we're prioritizing that and and how we're looking at facilities uh in in a much more kind of a intentional more data driven way to make those decisions. Um you know every everybody's needs are important right there's not anyone that's going to say hey put somebody else you know in front of the line before our our needs. So, uh I I think it has really kind of helped with just bringing some more objectivity instead of less subjectivity, right? So, that this is still a big issue

201in the district that people want to talk about. Uh special ed. Um this is, you know, a major uh concern across the district for a lot of different reasons. Um and you can see uh many of those are there. Uh, and I know this isn't something we're going to solve uh tonight, but uh embedded in that, you know, the sense that I get out on listening tour is uh many of the behaviors of our students um that are most vulnerable. Uh a lot of those behaviors have become increasingly uh extreme and how that impacts the classroom. And so uh this is not uh a one-prong approach. I mean, you're talking about supporting whole child and and students from lots of different aspects. That includes really ramping up and increasing training uh for our our teachers,

202our coaches, as I mentioned, uh our para educators. We've done a lot to increase pareducator pay. Um but if we want to really attract the best teachers and para educators, this is still an area of concern that needs uh some serious investment and attention on our part because it does affect uh so many parts of the district. And and most of all uh I you know I think our commitment to a real inclusive model that we get kids in their neighborhood schools as close as we can is what I think we want to do. But you know that that's a process as you know um support staff again continuing to look at our ESP compensation and rec uh recognition. Um I here you know this is really and I I think we continue to do

203with Canyon Strong and all the recognitions that we we do. Um we know and understand the power of being seen right of just how important that is. it. I mean, is compensation a big part? Absolutely. You know, that's how people pay the bills and take care of their families, but but so many people um sometimes feel like that they're they're not valued or they're they're not seen. And so, I just appreciate all of our efforts. I mention this often on the listening toward that it's never going to be perfect. you know, it it's it's it's never going to be that panacea that everybody gets the recognition they deserve, but it's not because we're not thinking about that or that we're not trying to pay attention to making sure that our our people are recognized for

204the great work that that they do. Um, one of the things too I I would mention with support staff is and Leon and I talked a little bit about this, but we probably ought to start thinking about and with Stephen HR, but really thinking about, you know, how does that look with ESPs, especially with a job study, maybe that's on some type of, you know, plan or index or or schedule that maybe it's every two years or three years, but I feel like we're a little bit inconsistent in just how we look at that. um you know in comparing to other districts and does this you know does does an AFM in canyons how does that look compared to an AFM in Jordan or in Granite or in Salt Lake? So that's something maybe to

205to think about. Um continued uh concerns about our ML students. Uh I don't think we're growing I haven't looked at this data in a while. I don't think we're growing at the same rate that we were over the last couple of years. But there's still, you know, a lot of concern about what does that look like? Whether it's onboarding and providing supports, you know, from point of entry into the school to supporting our teachers with with uh instructional supports as well as that wraparound service to help uh families understand how, you know, how do I how do I get health services, how do I get dental, how do I get, you know, vision. I mean, all of these things uh uh play out um in in our students really being successful as they as they

206try to assimilate and and um into into our schools. And then just some miscellaneous uh feed uh back. Um, one thing that has been very very well noted is uh appreciation from many many teachers to the board uh for the additional prep time and I I get the sense that everyone understands that it's not perfect. Uh we are planning to do the study this summer uh May June on brain boosters and BTS to to get those people back together to understand how it impacted them. We know for many of them that it it wasn't a positive experience. For others it was but overwhelmingly uh I would say that we had many many teachers um very emotional about it too like you know for some of them it it was life-changing. I mean as a game

207changer that additional time uh each day has made the difference for them being you know in their minds a much better teacher and just being able to kind of survive all the pressures that our teachers are feeling. Uh and then there's you know this is more probably in recent weeks in the tour but just a lot of questions and uncertainty about what's happening uh with our administration at the federal level and you know what what's going to happen with department of education what where does special ed go where does school lunch go what you know what about title schools how does how is all of that impacted um we have not got frankly little to no guidance uh from USB at this point. Uh I'm hopeful that you know uh we'll be able to maintain

208uh the services and things that we provide. But you know I'd be lying if I didn't say I'm not concerned about where this is all at. It's just left a lot of uncertainty and change. So we'll keep we'll keep working on that. And then tech in schools, you know, I I don't think this is this isn't anything new. We we're still uh dealing uh with these issues with our filtering system, with screen time, and trying to find the balance in how we engage our students. And then a couple other uh key points that come up a lot is uh uh paid time off and really looking at, you know, how do we shift more control and autonomy to employees and how they manage their time. Now, there's there's pluses and minuses to that, right? um

209in how we can staff substitute teachers and and how what does that cost look like, you know, for loss of instructional time in front of a a certified teacher. But we also know we're in a different age and era that if we don't rethink and start to, you know, be creative in how we support our employees and our young teachers and uh staff that they'll go somewhere else. You know, Karen and I were talking about when we all started, I mean, this was a commitment, a 30, 40-year commitment. We didn't really even have any thoughts about working in a different industry, but our teachers today do. Uh, and they expect uh flexibility. They expect to be treated different um maybe than we were treated when we started out. So, I think just keeping an eye

210on the ball on that and and continuing maybe to try to find a balance or move more uh time uh toward uh our our teachers and their autonomy. I I think it comes down to a level of trust. Um you know, I I don't I think yes, will there be people that would take advantage of the system? Likely. Um but I think most uh of our teachers and staff if we have the great trust that we say we do then you know I think we should look more to provide them the autonomy to make those decisions. Rising health care costs still issues uh there with our insurance plans. Um I I feel like PHP has done much better ever since we kind of raised uh the flag and the and the bar with them. They've

211been more responsive than than ever before. But I think we want to continue to to look at at that. And then daycare been amazing. Just much appreciation to Steve and our HR team. Um, everywhere we go, you know, everybody comments how great that's been. And, you know, that's a great great retention strategy for our young teachers where the majority of our our teachers and staff are female. And then not much time on this, but just wanted to point out just how much you've all done. board has really when you look at over the last couple of years um and I mention this everywhere we go on listening tour um you really have taken to heart uh so much of the input that our employees have have provided and you've made some really hard uh decisions

212um that uh cost money and resources to make happen. But you're committed to their success, you're committed to their well-being. uh you know, you know what it takes uh to retain our very best and and you're willing to make those investments and make those uh decisions. And so you can see uh some of those, you know, including prep time uh that I remember that very discussion. You know, that was a $1.2 million cost. We've talked about APs and elementaryaries. We know that's needed and that's taken a collective effort uh to pull those resources uh together. uh moving from the moving the two additional days to personal leave. That's you know that's you know showing our employees that there is there is trust and you're listening to their their needs. So okay that's the final slide.

213Any thoughts or questions? Then we'll go on to the next topic. Okay board any um questions or comments? Okay. Well, I think um I just want to say thank you from the whole board. I know we really appreciate you doing this listening tour, doing meeting with teachers and it really helps us get feedback obviously what you just presented and I know we all enjoy um trying to be there and also listen to our patrons and teachers and everyone. So, okay, let's go on to item D, which is the IT committee update and discussion. And superintendent will keep talking. That's what everybody likes to hear me keep talking. Okay, let's Can we pull up the slide deck? Wait, is it on the back? Where did we put that, Kirsten? Maybe. I didn't know we had a

214slide deck. Yeah, it's just it's like one slide is all or two slides. Sorry. It's okay. We can get it up here real quick. While you're getting it up, can I just say really quickly out of turn? Sorry. But um it's really awesome that Dr. Robbins does that listening tour. Not every in fact he's amongst I don't know of any other superintendent that that have taken that on to this extent and level. And so I just wanted to just thank you sincerely and I'm I'm sure all of us it's a really big deal and just a great way for us to get the feedback and for our employees to feel valued and listened to. So thank you so very much. I know it's a big part of your schedule. And I I think just to

215add on to that um I really do think it helps us hear from everyone in the district. So even with this new law, the HV267, if it stays in place, I feel like we do get feedback from all our employees because you're doing this. So this is a key thing that will help us in the future as well. Yeah. I, you know, I've always said that you the further you get into administration, the further you get disconnected, you know, from what's happening in the classroom. And I think, you know, hopefully it feels like, you know, this has been a really positive strategy to keep the board uh informed and on top of those, you know, those issues because I think if if people don't have that venue to tell the people at the top what's

216going on, then they're still going to talk about it, right? But it's just how, you know, they feel heard and how how decisions are are made. And sometimes, you know, I I think a lot of times they might be surprised that actually, you know, you guys do talk about it. We talk about it in committee and it's it's very important. Okay. Uh so this is just a followup from our uh conversation uh at last board meeting. Um and just kind of some things that that we're doing and have occurred and then I would love to get some direction from you all. uh one of the uh you know main points of the last meeting was to constitute a elementary technology committee and I'll have give you some recommendations uh for that but I wanted to

217just start out with a little bit about some of the things that that we are doing. Um I you know this some of the narrative that the district you know isn't doing anything or isn't responding you know is is just not true in my opinion. Um I I feel like our team, our schools, you can see uh we're a common sense district. This is kind of our our digital citizenship platform. We have coordinators in every school. They share out tips um which amazing is aligns with what our district team communicates out even more. And since our last board meeting, we've talked at length about um how can we educate even more? How can we get, you know, the water to the end of the rope? Uh, and embed that even more in our culture, you

218know, with our our youngest students to to understand. Um, and I I last night uh listened to a gentleman talk a little bit about this about, you know, how do we educate our youngest students to really embolden them and help them or empower them in understanding what some of the dangers are with uh the internet and being online that, you know, there are people out there who intentionally try to take your data and use it against you or to sell it. Or there are people out there that may be trying to create a way whether it's through ads or you know your behaviors online so that that information can then be used to market uh to you uh to try to capitalize on your uh behaviors and it was it's called persuasive design right it's

219this happens intentionally so so there's a lot we can continue to do but I'm also very proud of the fact that um we are we are doing a lot and I just want to mention so on the request to seek input. Um, as this message went out, soliciting input from our uh stakeholders, it went out to 632 elementary teachers and then 16,226 K6 parent and guardian accounts and by uh 2:30 today, we had over a 100red responses. So, we are getting some good feedback and we'll continue to do that up through April 30th and then we'll have more of a comprehensive report uh for the board. Um, but you can see embedded throughout our uh site at the district. This is on uh four different pages. These are all um QR codes where uh parents

220can engage with us uh on these uh different issues with technology. And that this also wouldn't include our uh technology uh connect parent connect portal that parents can also uh register for and receive notifications uh from the district when their students are are searching things inappropriate or they're they're using maybe self harm messages. And they can also check usage time. And then you can see some of the other uh methodologies that we use to communicate uh with our communities about technology in the district. So thinking about the um technology uh committee. So I sent you just and I I'm sure you already looked at you've already seen the context that was emailed to SEC's and building level principles to talk with their teams. it did have in there uh very clear u messaging about the

221concerns that we have with the filtering system. So the idea that, you know, everybody's in the dark or doesn't know what's going on, I think that's kind of a misnarrative of what's actually being communicated. That the day that I met with our principles to talk about this very issue. Um, I was very clear about what was happening and that I expected them to have conversations within their school about these issues uh with our filtering system. So before we get to the advisory committee, which I'm sure we'll have more input, I I would just and these are just administrative recommendations. You can give me feedback as we talk about the um committee. And some of these are probably a little more aggressive, but I I think they would help as I look at some of the

222issues. One, I would recommend that we look at a an RFP uh on our filtering system. Um, I I'm not saying that Content Keeper wouldn't be the the company that we stay with. Um, but I think we do need to have take a hard look at potentially uh others. And, you know, in my mind, if it allows some of our best and brightest companies to compete for our contract to really show us that, you know, they can do more, maybe it's Content Keeper, maybe it's not. But I think right now, and I'm actually going to speak about this at our superintendent meeting in St. George over spring break, but um I I think this is something that, you know, there's a lot of these companies and vendors that have very very bright people just like

223our people, right? And so maybe if we get these minds together, you know, maybe there is something bit better. Maybe maybe there's not, but it's something to look at. Um, I also think uh really having our IT department do a deep dive on our third-party agreements. Um, thinking about, you know, the potential uh for student data to be sold or traded. Um, which I know is a major concern for all of us, right? There have been breaches as we know uh with some of these platforms. Um, I'm not aware of any in Canyons at this point, but and and we do sign thirdparty agreements uh with any app or anyone that uh wants to uh work with us. But I think a deep dive into really looking at their protocols and their processes about how

224they do that. I mean, just for me, I'd like to understand that better myself. And I I don't know how the board feels but you know really looking at our apps and the process that we go about in in one uh acquiring or you know cultivating those agreements but then you know how do we follow up on that? What if there's a change in the software or an update? You know what happens with that? We know we, you know, we ran ran into some issues with Second Steps when we had the whole fiasco with their website uh updating and it was just simply, you know, an email and obviously that's probably not enough notification. We probably need to strengthen maybe we have we need to talk about that, but how do how do we ensure

225that when those updates occur that the right people are getting notified in our IT department with our engineers? Um, next I I would recommend that we look at a three strike uh suspension on any student account that searches three inappropriate websites uh that it's flagged and suspended until uh that account is reconciled with an administrator. Period. So you do you do three inappropriate searches uh it's automatically suspended. Now, that's challenging because the breadth of words that can be searched means that it may be flagged and it's not an inappropriate word. So, it may be more of a human touch um high touch for our engineers to look at. I've talked with Scott with this a little bit. So, um, they're working on that on what that protocol might look like. But I would love if

226a vendor or company, um, or our engineers could develop a system that that automatically flags that. It suspends it. It sends it an email to the account that it's been suspended as well as the principal that that account's been suspended pending a meeting to reconcile that. And then, um, and I think finally uh, well, two things. one is working with our system to uh make email the default notification. Uh so yes, we have parent uh the parent portal where parents can opt in. They can receive those notifications. But I do think it's possible and I know enough to be dangerous. So I I can't like just say, "Hey, we can do this tomorrow." But but when an inappropriate search is confirmed um through the system, can an email be sent as the default to the

227parent? And that so that's what I would recommend that we uh consider doing. And then I think with the three strike suspension um just working with our principles to continue to develop uh a consistent discipline response, you know, and maybe that's through we work with Brian's team on levels of discipline depending on the severity uh of the you know of the search. Obviously um some are going to be more severe than others. So, I kind of look at it like, you know, felony on classes of felonies on down to misdemeanors, but what does that look like in our administrators response uh using our levels of discipline? So, those are some ideas. Okay. Advisory Committee. So, uh I've talked with Scott about this. Um you can see just some recommendations there. I would recommend that this

228is a temporary uh committee that is constituted. Um thinking about past committees that we've created. Our our focus area committees in our strategic plan have been consistent and ongoing with board members, but anytime that there's been an issue that's risen like this in the past, we've created an ad hoc committee to study it and make recommendations to the board. So this committee would not be decision making but they would make the recommendation to you uh to make any final decisions on any changes that we might make uh with our with our system. So having said that the committee itself I would say we we start and try to get one meeting uh before school uh lets out uh you know just to to get on top of this before we get too far. And then

229I would also recommend that, you know, that is followed up with probably one or two more meetings in the summer, maybe one in the fall, but really getting to kind of the heart of the issues with what what is working um but but what's not right. So I think a deep dive into our system of how it works. Uh and then I would propose that we do f some focus groups within that committee. Maybe we do dinner in the evening like kind of follow the same pattern. Uh Scott and I talked with Brian at length about what that looked like with our Thrive Time and it would basically mirror kind of that same uh pathway. So uh in that you can see recommendation there board members would recommend two to three parents. Uh we have

230talked a little bit about you know would that constitute SEC parents or could it be parents on SEC that you also recommend? I mean that's up to you to to decide. Uh I would also recommend our strategic planning uh leads. There are four of them as you know. Uh just because I think having them involved helps crosswalk the information that comes out of that committee so that they can report to each committee about how that is affecting whether it's access and opportunity or human- centered supports. There's a lot there that I think you know really um crosswalks and and kind of we want to make it as seamless as possible. And then we would also uh ask our principles to recommend teachers from their their BLT, their building leadership teams uh as well as principles.

231And then I would recommend to members of our external relations uh just to help us with communications after each of those meetings kind of going back to some of the points made about just being transparent about what that you know what's being what's what are in the notes, what what's happening. Maybe we can put that up on our website so people can can follow along. Um, as far as the chair, uh, I I mentioned, you know, in my email, uh, I think Scott would be, uh, a great chair. Uh, I could also chair it. Uh, one of the issues with me chairing it, uh, or and you guys can, you know, you can discuss this, having superintendent or board members serve can be challenging because once you go there, then people automatically turn to the

232decision maker. Uh, instead of, you know, really having a robust debate or discussion, it's usually, well, you're the decision maker. What do you tell us what you want to do? That's not always a bad thing either. Um, but I think where we're searching for points of view from all corners of the district, um, that may be something to think about. So, you can give me some direction uh on on that. We, as I mentioned, we, my understanding is we did not have board members serve on the Thrive Time committee. However, uh board members were very involved as observers and giving input and and following up um like the same as I was through the whole process. So, all right, we're getting close to 10. Okay, board. We have 20 minutes. Um and if you want

233to make comments and we got to make this quick. Um okay, so let me just say so the superintendent is proposing this structure. So maybe just if we can um lend your comments to whether you agree with this or you don't agree with it that and comment on those other things that I suggested. Yes. Yes. And comment but that is the information we need to know to move forward. Okay. Mrs. Nybar. Okay. So one thing I want to talk about the framework is last board meeting all of the board members did agree that we did want board members to serve on this committee and that was part of the meeting that everyone decided vocally. So, I think that should be on here just because that's what we did decide as a board. I know that,

234you know, now you're looking back and saying, "Oh, with Thrive Time, we didn't have board members." But I, you know, I believe that that was very different because Thrive Time we were writing a curriculum, whereas board members don't really um wouldn't participate in the writing of a curriculum. But I do believe that it's significant to have us here on that committee. Um, when you look at the Canyon School District Board of Education policies for board members, we're to cover governance, ethical conduct, student records, privacy, and ensure the district's operations align um with student success. And we're we are um you know, we are it we are in charge of making sure that there's a safe atmosphere for students as well. And so I think because one, we all decided that in our last board meeting

235that we should go with that because that was the board's directive. And then two, I really do feel like it fulfills our responsibility. Um that's my first comment. um with the with looking at the review, technology is obviously going to be a big underpinning of our educational process and always will be. And so I think determining whether this is a um this is a committee that's just going to meet for a short amount of time and then be dissembled. I think that remains to be seen. I think some of these things we can address, you know, through this committee immediately, but there may be there may be reason to have this committee either fold into another committee or be something that we review often because there are going to be changes with technology and continuing

236changes. And I think we need to really look at that when we're looking at children's safety. Um, with your other things, I just want to actually thank Susan Edwards with the Common Sense Media. In 2020 in a board meeting, I asked that our district look at common sense media and Susan Edwards was do you remember that Susan? She was the one that took that and ran with that. And so I appreciate that first slide. Uh one thing though is I do believe we aren't using all the lesson plans. Um they have them K through five and they have several lesson plans even like in fifth grade teaching kids what a clickbait is. There's a awesome amazing lesson plans that I think we need to really evaluate. So, here's some things I'm hoping from the advisory

237committee. Um, I think it's um talking about this is what I would love to see come out of that committee. I love that you talked about levels of discipline. I love what you said, Dr. Robbins, about um misdemeanor versus um different types of things. Um, I think that I think that, you know, there would be a different consequence if you share inappropriate with other students versus search. And that's something that's been a real problem for all of our grade levels, elementary through high school. And I think we need to get serious about consequences when we're sharing, especially when we're sharing um images that are of other students. So I think that's really important. Um so I think the disciplinary levels of discipline I think um reviewing what is age appropriate with our introduction of technology.

238um and how much and how often for example there is a certain amount of funds we use for the onetoone technology that we did with COVID but as but we need to replace it over time as it gets outdated and we may want to look at the fact in that committee we may not need maybe we need a classroom set maybe we don't need one to one maybe there's you know there's some things we need to look at so I think reviewing age appropriateness and looking at perhaps if if you know if it's necessary neessary um to start at kindergarten or maybe it's necessary to start in third or fourth grade. Not for assessments, not that there isn't technology in the classroom. I want to be really clear, but just looking at do we actually

239want a screen available for every desk for every student starting in kindergarten. I think that's something we need to look at. Um the educating of kids, educating parents and communication. And then um I just I there's this quote that I think is really important that I really appreciated from this book, The Anxious Generation. And it says um it says that we need to teach we need to teach I can't find it now, but we need to teach our children about Earth before we send them to Mars. And the idea is that we're I loved that quote. And the idea is that we're making sure, you know, that that um that we have the necessary it's the point of the book is that one of the points is that right now it's like we're too overprotective

240with their real life experiences and they they have so much um you know even with organized sports and all their different activities that they have so much adult surveillance of real life experiences but then very little surveillance of online experiences. And I you know and it talks about how in today's day and age they don't have as much free play time and time to just explore that you know out and I think that's really true and I think we need to look at those levels in our classroom to make sure we have an appropriate level of exploration especially at the early elementary age when um you know manipulatives and fine motor skills and the way they learn math. I think we have amazing tools with technology and assessments that we can't get any other way.

241But I also want to ensure that we're not doing too many math lessons online, that we're still and and I and I know we're doing a fantastic job. I'm not saying that we're not, but I just think we need to review that. Um, having said that, um, I also would be really interested. I think um Scott's voice is going to be key with the filtering and that would be another part of this committee. But I kind of see this committee as overarching more than filters more than safety and technology but also kind of a philosophical how much technology and when and how we introduce it. So with that I I would think that like ISD would be a very important voice and then um superintendent as well. So, I just wanted to share those things.

242Thanks. Okay. Thank you, Mrs. Peterson. I appreciate the details that Holly was presenting with us. Um, I also want to point out that I don't think school board members should be on this committee because we do have the judicial represent. we make the final decision. And if we're involved in in the discussions and what's going on, it's hard to be above that and hear the discussion. I'm not saying we shouldn't be aware of what's going on, but I do not think we need to be there. I think we need to be like the Supreme Court that the lower courts work it out, they talk about it, they make a presentation, and then deliberation comes from us separate from that. So, I do not think we need to be involved in that. Um, I'm not saying

243we can't go sit and listen, but I don't think we need to be exactly be members of that. I think we need to keep ourselves in our position, which is to supervise, to look over and decide what would be best for our district. If we're too imshed in the problem, in the situation, and all the details and who's saying what, and what parents are doing this, I think it it colors our opinion. I really think we need to keep ourselves a little bit separate from um the emotion that may or may not be be involved in the conversations. Um I also am concerned that you um propose that this group should micromanage exactly how we're going to use our technology. We do have ISD. We have departments that work on curriculum. Again, we are not

244supposed to be curriculum directors and designers. We make decision decisions about what they have done and what we would like to see them do, but we don't design that. And I do not want to give that power to a committee. I think that they can make an um there are suggestions, but if we have an ongoing committee, I think that gives them too much power. I think we can call intermittent meetings um committee future if future meet uh if future committees need to be formed, we should do that um as needed. I don't think it should be an ongoing situation set up right now. I think after this one, we go through and then we evaluate is this something that we need to continue or is this something that we do not. But I'm I'm

245very concerned that a small group of people are going to feel like they can make a decision for the board. I really am. So I would like to suggest that we do not have board members there. We have our input by picking the parents that we want to represent our area and we have diff the heads of each of our committees that are going to be there and that they would be able to help with the curriculum questions that may be there. But that's not our responsibility. That's not our lane. We don't direct curriculum and we we need to supervise curriculum and what we'd like to see. We can set goals. We can ask requests, but I don't think we need to be involved in the actual creation. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Edel. Uh, I'm

246going to just comment quickly on the easy ones. First, I think it's a great idea to do the RFP for the filtering system. And while I don't think that this is a bad filtering system, technologies changed over time. Um, and so it's always good to uh have our systems evolve with the latest technology as well. Um, and as you mentioned, there's a lot of smart people out there working on things. I think Barkc is one of those great examples that that we're um adopting into some of our systems um that's innovative, uses AI to um analyze things um that older systems just couldn't even dream of doing. So, uh I think that that's fantastic. Uh there was something else I wanted to say. Imagine it was good. I don't know what it was. Um and

247then for the advisory committee, um first thank you both uh for your comments uh on that. Um I was a parent on the Thrive Time, uh advisory committee and that was a fantastic experience. Um, and so, uh, I am in agreeance with Miss Person that I do not believe board members should be on this committee, um, for the reason that, um, we tend to drive things. Um, because that's literally our job. Uh, same thing with you mentioned concern about the superintendent um, and that it tends to muddy the water. This committee shouldn't be here to dictate how we're going to operate in the future. We have four strategic focus group committees to do that um and to shape our future education and to prepare propel us into the future. Um which we have been doing

248and we've been doing a fantastic job at it. Uh but this committee is to get um parent and stakeholder feedback on the um best practices for the and and use of technology right it's that additional avenue that we have to get feedback which is absolutely vital but with that um I believe that it needs to be um untainted um by the senior leaders and it's been mentioned you know board members can can observe um I believe Steve Wrigley visited um Thrive Time while that was going on. Uh but didn't drive it, right? He was just there sometimes and then he wasn't. Uh and that's what it needs to be is that silent observer. Um because ultimately we do have the responsibility at all times to drive and we're going to continue to do that. Uh

249but why put an advisory committee if you don't want to hear from them? Okay. Thank you, Mr. Edel. Mr. Lewis. All right. So, I have two separate sections to my comment here. Uh the first half is about the advisory committee. Uh I do believe that uh at least one board member should be involved to keep uh the vision and the path that I think we all have just to keep us on track. Especially I think it's valuable if this committee it's meant to be advisory. Whatever comes out of this committee will have to be approved by this board. I think having someone on the board on this committee to drive kind of not to drive but like help keep a guard rail or just to help keep our vision involved I think would be helpful.

250Um my second uh part of my comment uh and it's a little bit to what Holly said about to get philosophical about tech and schools. Um I think this committee needs to be a committee to evaluate postcoid tech use. Um I think uh especially since we were handed so our kids Chromebooks for co as a means of survival as a means for continuing education. Uh I think it is now time and I think it's appropriate for us to evaluate the long-term psychological effects it has on our kids. Um, and this is a quote that I've been struggling with recently, uh, just kind of with my own perspective on the digital world. The internet used to be a place that you went to, a physical place, a room that you went to. It didn't used to

251be a place where it was with you constantly. And I think that switch to when you you are constantly have having access to the internet versus when you just go to your a space in your home or space in your school like a computer lab or you have a in my elementary school we had a cow a computer on wheels that would come to your classroom. I think that made it a lot more special and especially for our younger kids where you're not taking a Chromebook home anyway. I think I think we need to be a little bit more philosophical about how we handle technology with our kids. That's that's my thought. Okay. Thank you. Um Mrs. Dolly to second Andrew's uh point about RFP. I think doing RFP even on a regular schedule is

252a good thing to do because it requires companies to sharpen their saw. even with the insurance regardless of whether you change or not it everybody has to sort of raise the bar to to try to win that uh proposal and so I think it's a great practice to do on a fairly regular basis with that as far as the advisory committee it is an advisory committee that they will send recommendations they're not making any decisions I I agree we need to trust our administration and let them work with parents on this and not have board members be involved As part of this, some of the issues I think we have with technology is perception. There's a perception that kids are on on their Chromebooks eight hours a day at school that they're just constantly looking

253at a screen, but our data that was presented doesn't show that that when you look at login times and it is not showing that the kids are on there. Now, it's always good to do an assessment of how are we using these as tools and making sure it's appropriate use of the devices that they're not on their gaming and watching videos and and doing whatever else. You know, looking at settings to make sure they're not going to VPNs or other things. Um, so the valuation is good, but I think sometimes the perception is is incorrect for what is actually happening. And so, we have to be careful um with that. And and also sometimes it goes too far. Like I'm hearing experiences of math and they're trying to measure angles on a computer with a

254you know their protractor and things and some of that stuff really we need to stay hands-on with a few things that not everything needs to go full tech as we're learning concepts. You need that kinesthetic hands-on learning opportunities that don't translate to online and with tech and things to look at. Okay. Thank you. Mrs. Oaks, do you want to say something? You're the last one. So, yeah, I want to reiterate for sure an RFP makes a lot of sense. I do have a question. Um, with the parent portal, does that still work when a student is not on our Wi-Fi? Do we know? I believe if they're logged in under their account, it's still Yeah, it there's still a notification. Okay. And I agree with the idea of um you know a three strike rule

255and similar to what Miss Nyar was saying I think it's a very smart idea that if they are sharing inappropriate content with other students that that's an additional consideration in terms of how serious the offense is. Um okay so a few questions. One is um are we proposing I don't see it on here making sure that it is rec is represented. Yeah, for sure. All right. Yeah, I should have just wanted to make sure. Yeah. No, in fact, Scott, when we talked about it, like our thought was probably three or four of their engineers would would be present. We want to make sure that what we're asking is possible, right? Y um also we talked previously about the idea of having responsible students, upper classmen. that can kind of give you an idea what they

256are seeing on the ground. I don't know if anyone else has thoughts about that, but I think it would be wise to include some students. I mean, I look at our student advisory council kids and last year they were so helpful in helping us better understand how much Chromebook use was being relied on in the classroom and we based a lot of our choices about having principles kind of crack down on that off of their comments, right? And so I think maybe having some kids like that on the committee would be useful. A great idea. Um the other thing is um I do love the idea of incorporating lesson plans from common sense media. I think that that's a really really good idea. I've also received um and again this is something that can be

257addressed later in the committee, but I had a middle school teacher um reach out to me after our last board meeting and say, you know, sometimes just even having classroom sets rather than allowing a child a Chromebook from class to class to class because sometimes it's really difficult on the teachers to close that or encourage the student to be done with it or even not allowing them during lunch um I think can make a difference. But um as an an overall broad um thing that I'd like to say, I I recognize that this has been a really hard issue. There's a lot of passionate feelings, but I do want to thank parents for bringing this to your attention. And if anything, I'm very grateful for the larger conversation this is bringing forward. Um, for as

258painful as the whole thing that happened with Second Step was, I think we landed in a much better place. And for as painful as this is, I think we're going to land in a much, much better place. And rather than talking past each other and accusing one direction or another, I think it's so important that we have people that can get on the same page page. We all want what is best for kids. We all want that. Um I don't um one of the things I want to point out is that um technology is a privilege should be treated like one actually having access to that and part of that is the superintendent and all of the board members and the superintendent and assistant superintendent in ISD were invited to go visit a private school

259that is known for approaching technology in a way that is very interactive and hands-on and appropriate in my opinion. And we went down and they had something up on the wall that I took a picture of. It says tuck guard rails. And this is what I would hope that this committee discusses. I'm just going to kind of mention it. They have two guiding principles with regard to the use of technology. One is at what point? Oh well before that uh they say does what creates a deep flow state and and great learning experiences right so technology should not be used unless it's actually creating an opportunity for this student to be actively learning I'm really I feel strongly about that and the second does it promote meaningful human interactions if it meets those two thresholds

260then they actually will use the technology ology in question. But then they also set up other guard rails. Um I'm going to read some of those. And I think a lot of the parents who have come in to um talk to us would also probably agree with this. Stay safe on the internet. Use my computer only for learning. Computer should not be left on the ground. That's a good one. Tell a guide immediately if I see something I shouldn't or a teacher. Keep my computer in the cabinet if not in use. only download programs with teacher approval. Never have food or drink around my computer. Take responsibility for my computer if I break it. And they even restrict um gab or Apple watches. They have to keep them in a basket out of the way

261and unless they have teacher approval to communicate with the parent. I just think that there are certain things that we could do better and zero in about learning like the deep flow state that they talk about that would be really amazing to that point. Um at this last week Scala event that we had at the Zans um building where we fund we're were trying to fund raise for um the foundation. When I walked in, I was so excited because um some of our folks from ISTD, Cynthia Lloyd, Emma Moss, Jonathan Stewart, and others were there at the table of examples of how they're using technology meaningfully and creatively in brain boosters. They had examples of things that they used with kindergarteners, with our second graders, with fifth graders, teaching them how to meaningfully use AI,

262like even to create recipes that um blended cuisines from different countries. I mean, it was it was amazing how to like program robots. I looked at them and I I actually filmed all of it. I said, "This is amazing. I'm so excited because I would have loved any of my children to participate with any of the activities that were there. It was extremely engaging, taught a lot, and it was extraordinarily creative in nature. Those are the sorts of things that I would love to see emerge as top practices in our district and used more often. Um and in the same same moment, Cynthia also mentioned to me and I hugged her for this. She said that they have been applying for grants to do um robotics teams in the elementary and middle schools, all of

263them. Um I I know that we can land in a place that is better than where we're starting out. And for that opportunity, I'm extremely grateful. I recognize it's going to be difficult and be labored at times and there's going to be a lot of opinions on either side. Now, getting to that point, in that respect, I do think it's better for us as board members to stay on the outside periphery while these different parties work things out and then as we get the reports that come back or we can even offer I mean, I'm going to give you all of my information from this private school and hope that it's considered. I I do hope also another thing for us to discuss at what point is introduction to tech um developmentally appropriate and what

264kinds of introduction and I think that that like the child development piece needs to really be looked into. But back again to the composition of the committee, I do think thrive time was such an amazing thing and again Brian thank you so much for all of the work that you did. was not easy. And who else? Amber. And Amber. Yes, you guys. And also, you guys are in large measure for and I understand responsible for common sense media, right? Like you applied for the grant. Like, thank you. Um but I I have full confidence that another committee can work successfully at this and that we can remain in our role of approving things from a a larger 50,000 foot view. But of course that we have the opportunity like I have a few things that

265have even come in via email from parents sharing with me websites that need to be blocked and stuff like that. I mean, I'm going to continue giving you stuff what I'm hearing and receiving from my constituents, but um that's those are my thoughts. I I think in terms of composition of the committee, that's what makes the most sense to me personally. So, okay. Um so, let me make a few comments. I will be fast because it is after 10. Um I do really like the RFP like that's been said. I like the idea of it doing the deep dive into agreements. We need to make sure um that our privacy for our students is kept. I do also agree with the three strike suspension and then also just the consistent discipline response. Like I think

266all those things are great. I'm really excited that you are going to work on those. Um I do think that I do not also think the board members should be on the committee. I think it's important for us to like remain in our role for the committee to work and bring back um suggestions and recommendations to the board and then we will decide that I also think it's important for probably uh superintendent and Scott Mcomes to lead that group like maybe both of you because Scott is the IT expert and I do think it's important for probably for Scott to mostly lead it because we really do need these parents and our employees to see Scott in his role. And I think that will help build trust once they get to know him and see

267what he does and see his expertise. Um, so I think that is I mean I I think that's a majority of what everyone has said. So um, Mrs. Nybar, so I have a question. So if if we're going and I have two questions. So I view all our committees as their advisory and then they bring them to the board, right? That's how I view all the committee work that we do. It's not that committee making the decision, you know, long range, high quality learning, whatever it may be, those ones that we serve on. So, um, but maybe I'm So, that's that's one thing that seems a little disconnected to me. Just like we were involved in the strategic plan, we weren't driving it. We were just we were working with parents and admin. And I

268thought actually the the connective piece and building relationships was pretty amazing. So I I'm totally in support since the majority of the board doesn't want that. But I do think it can be done in a way where we're not driving it but where we're there in the advisory role and working together. Um the second question that I have is if we I've heard a lot of people saying yes we want to look at and evaluate when is it age appropriate to introduce the technology how much of a rule role is it going to play but then I also hear other people saying we don't want that to be part of the committee so I'm not and if and if tech if Scott is chairing the committee and he's technology you know Um obviously his role

269in filters and all sorts of things is going to be paramount paramount and same with his um you know the people that work in it. However, are we going to discuss that like how important it is because I think that one thing we need to really recognize is that's something that really needs to be considered and if it if we need to move it over to high quality learning then let's move it over to high quality learning. But that is something that's really important that we need to address. Um I was just in a a little conference two weekends ago um with a a guy that has a PhD and they've done all this research about technology and its effects with children and its effects with adolescence and adults. And he was saying it's very

270important and crucial that we look at at technology what it is. It's like a pickaxe. It can be used as a tool or it can be used as a weapon. And anyone that is involved with technology with children need to recognize that and make sure that you have age appropriate safety precautions. So you know and developmentally about when to introduce it. So board what are we wanting to do? Do we want to move that discussion to highquality learning? Is that a better place for it? Do we want it to stay at this committee? Because I I think if it is the chair of this committee or are they going to be looking at that? I'm just that's why the strategic planning chairs are there. They are the experts in child development and curriculum and I

271think that they would be able to put in that information and we just if we request that that's an item that we'd like them to look at, we can ask them to do that. But I don't think we need to be mandating superintendent. Yeah, that's just I was just going to make that point that I mean between Amber, Brian, Paula, and Leon, I think that's the very perspective that that they can bring is, you know, not only the maybe looking at it from the age appropriateness and adolescent development on the instruction side and ISD's done a lot of work around that model, right? you I hope you all had a chance to look at our TAC model that we already do that really embeds you know what what is appropriate on that plate right how

272do you divide that up to make sure that it's it's done right but I think to your point Holly it is important in with this committee that all aspects obviously Brian would bring that psychological point of discussion to the group about and maybe we have our own experts come and just talk about what that means and what you know what that what what is is the appropriate age or what does that look like as we spoon feed kids and how do we make sure that it's appropriate and used correctly. So that sounds great. I and I think that um I think Scott's expertise with the filtering and other parts of it is important. But I look at this a lot of this is going to be student discipline, levels of discipline, teaching technology safety and

273what's age appropriate in curriculum. So that's well I and just to the other side of that coin which you know that's I think we heard from the parent tonight like in Paulo's perspective from access and opportunity that very those points that were made by that parent tonight is that perspective of okay we start talking about limitations then what does that mean for a kid that's diabetic and home all the time or what does that mean for a student that has learning disabilities that really rely on the technology and then Leon comes in with the emphas infrastructure and the discussion about costs and how we're cycling, you know, all the technology. And so I I mean I think that kind of blends it in a way that helps will help inform the group. So yeah, and

274I do think it needs to be Rick and Scott together depending on the topic. Like I I agree with you like Rick should definitely probably leave part of it, Scott part of it. Um I also I I also have a question and that is is this committee in your mind focusing on elementary and then we'll have another committee? Well that's I mean I'm just you guys give me the direction I my thinking was from the last meeting was it was focused on elementary at least for now to start for now but I mean obviously it that can be changed or okay Mrs. folks. I don't know if it's right away, but I for sure think that we need to address it at the secondary level, too. Middle middle middle school, I think some of the

275most egregious problems that we're dealing with are coming from the middle school level. And um and high school, I think it also needs to be addressed. Now, does that make a lot of sense to do that right away? It's like you're already drinking from a fire hose. Maybe we narrow part of the fire hose initially for elementaryaries and then move on to middle and high school. I don't know from your perspective as an administrator like what's approachable, but I do think it needs to be addressed. Yeah, I I mean I would agree and I think the board said that at our last meeting that we want like we want a review of middle school and high school, but I do think the parents may be different because these parents we recommend may be elementary parents,

276right? And then they will be we really probably do need middle school and high school parents for the for looking at the other things. So maybe this is going to be well it also ties into you know the challenge in my mind a little bit with this about just the the overarching kind of in order of things usually. I mean, thinking about backward design and thinking about outcomes first and then mapping it all the way down. Um, you know, that has a lot to do with our own strategic plan. I mean, when we think about, you know, and I know there's debate about what personalized learning actually means. But, you know, the realities are that our classrooms are large. we have multiple diverse learners in the room that really bend the airframe for teachers, right?

277And that's where technology leverage comes into play to to meet their needs. Uh so you know maybe it's maybe it's a duel where I think we're we're kind of more at at that point with our elementarymentaries to get this going but at the same time you know maybe at least at the leadership level we start talking about how you know we're already talking about it but thinking about our portrait of a scholar our strategic plan I mean how do how does that look with outcomes and backward mapping that back to elementary yeah Right. But I think if we try to attempt that all at once, too much. Yeah. What about this? Like what if this committee focuses on elementary? When you present this presentation, you'll have a plan for the next phase, which would be

278middle school or secondary. You present to us. Okay. Is that does that sound good? Good. I have one other thing to Okay. Um Mrs. Patterson instead of um I am suggesting that we if you're going to have um some leadership there if you want to instead of having the superintendent I was thinking that Dr. McKay Robinson is also very familiar with what's going on and yet especially elementary as having been an elementary director and he's not engaged with the parents directly as we have in board meetings. So, I am uh suggesting that we release you from that responsibility and see if if you support us asking Dr. McKay Robinson to help head that up because he can give you give a superintendent's point of view, an administrative, you know, leadership point of view if needed.

279Yeah. And just to that point, McKay has been very involved with our IT engineers every He goes to that meeting every Wednesday. Yeah. and then reports to me like what you know what they're doing. So, okay, I think that's a great suggestion. Seems like the board is okay with that. Okay. Um I I do have one request. So, if board members are going to go visit this committee, would you just let me know because and please be a silent observer, but we just don't want four board members to show up and then we've got a meeting that needs Yeah. So, that's my only and just I mean to highlight too I kind of back to Amanda's point. I I do also really appreciate all the feedback from our parents. It it's not easy to hear.

280We we know that it's the system's not perfect. I've said before there's no filtering system that's infallible. I do think an RFP and making the best and brightest compete for a contract like Canyons. I mean, that does give us a chance to kind of lead out with that. And maybe there's companies out there that are thinking about what's next and how do we, you know, maybe AI plays a role in this. Who knows? But um that competition really ramps up you know the scalability and the kind of the threshold for our expectations. But that also doesn't stop you know even though the committee is functioning you're all I we are all still going to be responsive to you know as things come up as parents give us feedback positive negative good bad ugly we're still

281you know we're going to listen and be responsive and if we need to you know create that communication with the committee that hey here's something new that's come up I mean technology changes by the day right so we we want to continue to to hear our our parents, our teachers, and our principles and staff, you know, their their voice. It's this isn't this isn't an indictment on anyone. It's an opportunity for us. So, okay. Thank you, Superintendent. I think this is a really good discussion. So, thank you, board, too. Uh, Mrs. Nymar, I'm sorry this but this has been a really good discussion and I'm grateful what Miss Patterson just uh that was a great suggestion and takes one thing off of superintendent's plate. I think that was great. So I think with all this

282discussion we're really fine-tuning. So even though it's a lot of time I think it's super important. I think we can't place enough emphasis on how important this is. I know we all think right now it's a temporary committee. I don't think so. I think technology is a a pinnacle of our education. And I think we've got a backwards map for an AI tech CEK thing. I think I think you know mapping around and figuring out how AI is going to play into our classrooms. I can see this as a committee that's long-standing. Honestly, I just wanted to very quickly the one concern I have is we we published this feedback wanted I read the feedback. I thought the feedback was excellent but then I read what we sent out. I am a little nervous about

283it because I feel like it makes it seem like parents are voting between options when really it's our responsibility. We've had incidences that have occurred and continue to occur and have been occurring for years and years at every level, high school, middle, and elementary. And so we need to take it upon ourselves how to best, you know, and we've talked about all the things tonight. I didn't don't need to enumerate them with consequences and discipline and teaching, but my concern is that it kind of if I was a parent, I would be thinking I'm voting because it's got option one through three of what you think and hopefully they know that we're just soliciting feedback, but in the end, we're going to try to keep kids safe and do what we feel is best practice.

284Can that be communicated out? Because I actually got some emails today like, "What is this? This feels like it's just going to be a vote to the people instead of Yeah. I mean, there's we hear it both ways. I mean, not, you know, is it too aggressive? Is it not aggressive? I mean, these these guys I think they're amazing in how they Oh, totally amazing. I think that the the feedback was is it is whatever is voted the most of options is what the district's going to do. That was I mean, I didn't read it that way, but I I don't Okay. It's just to gather feedback, but I do I mean I read I read some of it. I didn't read all of it because I didn't have time. But yeah, there are people

285that are saying like one, two or three and others that are just giving their opinions. So there is a mix out there. But okay, that's I mean the challenge too if you if it's open-ended then we get it's all over the place, right? So, I I think trying to be as intentional as we can, helping people to understand with context what we're talking about, you know, at the same time, not making it a poll or just, hey, here's your vote and then we're going to keep do whatever the, you know, majority votes for. That's not that wasn't the intent. So, but we can we can continue to as we message it out. I mean, this is just one part to a much bigger, you know, plan. So, great. Okay. So, thank you, superintendent. This was

286really great. Thank you, board. Good discussion. Um, so we are at 10:20, but we didn't have board comments last time. So, I do want to give the board a chance to do comments, but please just keep them to like one minute, please, because it's already 10:20 and we do have a meeting tomorrow night as well. So, it's a lot for the administration, you guys. And we are starting with Karen tonight. Mrs. Peterson, board comment. Oh, I skipped. Wait, Rick and Leon. Leon, do you have comments? I just want to thank uh Jeff, Steve, everyone who helped with our first ever ESP day on Monday. Huge success. Probably close to a thousand of our employees there. We got lots of positive feedback. So, big thank you to them. Jordan High for hosting. If you noticed, our

287two first two bathrooms were completed at Jordan High, one upstairs, one downstairs, and the unisex one that we're doing hopefully will be done here within a month or so. So exciting progress there. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Wilcox. Mrs. Person, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who did presentations today. The amount of time that was put into the detailed information and be able to share that with our community and with us is phenomenal. These people spend hours and hours and hours and I want them to know that I appreciate all those extra hours and sleepless nights and occasional misspelled words and yeah, it's okay. We fixed it. Um, I just really appreciate all that all that work. Also wanted to thank Dr. Robbins for being the leader that he is. He is so

288open to listening to everything that comes and helping to direct and look ahead. He's very forward thinking and helps direct where we need to be. There's a lot of times that we're already addressing something that comes up later in in conversations or in a listening tour and we're already starting to work on it because he he looks ahead and I want to compliment him on being such a fantastic leader. He he doesn't sleep. So, I know he spends a lot of time thinking about what's going on and what's happening, and he always says he takes responsibility for it, but I'd like to hope that he knows he can share that responsibility with the board because we really do stand behind him and appreciate everything that he does. Okay. Thank you, Mrs. Dolly. Just want to

289thank uh just before this meeting we had our final student council with um we've had students come in as an advisory committee this year and they have done a great job coming in and giving us feed feedback on decisions we're making and helping us to make better decisions and giving us feedback from that student uh perspective and so wanted to thank them for the efforts they put in. Also for our BTS and our other arts teachers that are out there doing great things. Um I've been to a couple art shows. There's some more coming up. the plays, the musicals. I know those are a lot of extra work for our teachers, uh, but it really makes a difference for the kids because they remember those things for. So, thank you for the effort you're putting

290in there. And then echoing Karen's comments. So, um, I was just telling my husband the other day that I'm like, I love doing what I do here on the school board because of the people I get to work with with the my fellow board members and the administrators, our teachers. Um, it's been an excellent experience and so thank you for who you are and what you're doing each and every day. Thank you, Mrs. Oaks. Thank you. I echo what you were saying about the art shows. I was just at Lone Peaks last night. It was awesome. Um, what those BTS teachers do is magical. Actually makes me wish I could be little again. real quick. Um, last week, uh, we were able to go and visit the Lan Center up at the University of Utah

291and check out what they're doing there at the entrepreneur center. I don't know how many people are familiar with it. The Lan Center is named after a very well-known, wellrespected entrepreneur that gave a large um, endowment to the university to create a center that would focus on creating student entrepreneurs. They have had enormous success. It's one of the best entrepreneurship centers in the country. It's open campus. Anyone from campus can come in and they offer free cups of coffee on the campus. So, lots of kids come and go. But, um, we've had a previous report about the innovation center and the feedback that we received from companies from around the state. Um, uh, many of whom represent the largest contri contributions of GDP to our state. And um I I'm passionate about this subject. I'm

292very very interested in understanding what it is we need to do in order to prepare our students for the jobs that are here and those that are coming. So I did a deep dive and I listened to all 12 hours of the interviews. And they were fascinating and shockingly consistent regardless of what industry each of those people were coming from. that what they communicated with us about what they need to see coming out of K12 was pretty pretty consistent. And in every single one of those six sessions, they all said, "Have you visited the Lance Center yet?" And so it was a wonderful like full circle moment to be there and we had a wonderful conversation at the end and we're very excited about um creating something truly unique for not only our district but

293for the state. I truly believe this is going to be a once in a-lifetime opportunity for Canyons and we are not going to or at least we'll start to hear less from employers in the future that they have to go outside of the state to find the kind of workers they're looking for. I predict that many of them will come searching for our students, especially those that go through our innovation center. So, I I'm looking forward to having another long meeting tomorrow and discussing this. I I do think it's going to be awesome. One of the things I will say is we're going to have to prepare ourselves um to build a runway with our legislators and with our state school board in order to provide a path for us to have um leaders from

294industry come and teach our students and so we can discuss that further as a board. But I'm really excited for what lies ahead. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Edel. So, we had several teachers come out tonight uh on their night off to speak to us about Sandy Elementary. And I wanted to provide some broader context as to what's been happening at Sandy Elementary so that you're aware of the whole picture. Uh so, just this school year, uh they've had two secures uh during school hours where we had police vehicles going through the property as well as police officers running through long uh running with long guns through the property at Sandy Elementary. uh with that they don't have blinds that work that can close. Um and so they're unable to close the windows. Um there's there's

295no way for them to make it so the students can't see out. And if there if there was a threat that was toward the school, there's no way for them to have prevented the threat from seeing into the school. Um so as we move into the heat issue, uh this has been a perpetual issue for a long time and it's my understanding that it's just fairly recently that there've been some technology improvements um in the chiller systems that we may be able to explore to help solve the problem. But the solution they were given are these portable air conditioners and to have the doors propped open and blow the air out. at the school that's had two secures just this year. Um, so huge huge issue. Uh, the teachers also didn't mention the kids throwing

296up due to the heat. Um, and it's it's a pretty a pretty dire situation that they have there. Um, however, we have had discussions about uh about blinds and about um looking at the chiller. So for the blinds, they have done measuring now. I think it was on Friday, they measured for our new blinds. Um, and so that's going to get taken care of. And then at our operations committee meeting, we did discuss about the air situation. Uh, and so the district is going to be getting um, uh, a quote on what a new chiller system would cost, one that they're able to use um, during the spring and fall time, which are where the big issues come when you have the temperature fluctuations. Um, and so we'll be able to get the quote on

297that. Uh, and then, uh, hopefully move forward with prioritizing it so that, um, so that a school can be safe. Um, so it's it's not just an uncomfortableness that the students have. Um, but it's a it's a real safety issue that they have. And uh I appreciate uh the teachers speaking up for their students. And I also really appreciate our district administration uh in stepping up uh when we've had these discussions to make sure that uh the school's safety needs are taken care of. Thank you, Mr. And Mr. Lewis. All right. Uh, I also I want to start with saying I also went to ESP day. That was awesome. That was uh I got to help serve sandwiches and that was super cool. There was a lot of people there. Uh, I also want to

298recognize Andy Marcus and the entire Draper Park community. That's an incredible recognition that we're all very, very proud of. Um, I also wanted to mention the Land visit. Uh, if I if there was a Land in Midvil, I would live there, but unfortunately it's up at the U. Um, and to close out my comments, I want to just talk about the internet just briefly. Um, I on my own I deleted TikTok within the last month. I think that we need to all just take a lot more responsibility for the way that we all individually approach tech. just not even at the the district level. But uh from my own perspective, from not only my my my family members, my friends who are young people, um I think parents need to really really watch what their

299kids are watching on the internet. Uh, I would implore you to look up the term brain rot. Uh, to just to understand that some of these kids, including myself at times, are intentionally looking for content that rots your brain that that's just numbing, that's just kind of you should, please look into this. the kind of content that your kids are watching and consuming on the internet because it's especially over the last year, year and a half, it's becoming extremely concerning and they're not accessing it on our Chromebooks. They're accessing it on their iPads and on their phones. So, please, it's an all of the above solution. We It's not just the district that can be solving this problem. We all have to take some responsibility and take some initiative here. Um, but yeah, that's that's

300that's all I have to say. Have a good night. Thank you, Mr. Lewis. Mrs. Nyber, first off, I want to really thank all of our amazing administrators for the colossal amount of work for tonight's presentations. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm very grateful for it. Um, I'm also just want to thank President Schill and our board members. I think we had really great discussion tonight. Um, and I'm I'm really grateful that we allowed that process to happen. And I know it's a late hour, but it's only by hearing from all of us that we come up with the best solutions. And I really think everyone has a pivotal role and I'm really happy with where it ended up tonight. So, thank you for taking the time to do that. I think with our most

301important topics, we do need to have that discussion because it takes all of our minds thinking about how to do how to accomplish it best. So, thank you for that. Um, I've been reading this book and I just there's this this part about cognitive distortion and um where it where um especially children and adolescents can be at risk with black and white thinking that's void of emotional reasoning. And that just really um permeated with me because I definitely believe that that's something that we all, you know, face. Um the world I'm raising my seven and nineyear-old is so very different than the world I raised my 24 and 21year-old when they were seven and nine. And so this is a very vital topic. I also wanted to thank um Jessica Smith who came and spoke.

302Um she's a parent but she's also actually a substitute teacher and she actually works at Willow Springs nearly every day. and also the amount of hours she spends in PTA. She is such a valuable resource for that community. So, she never says that in her comments, but she actually is giving daily instruction every day. She's helped sub in as a PAR educator with behavior issues, and we're very lucky to have her in that community. So, I'm grateful that that she was able to come and speak. Um uh I just wanted to um in closing I wanted I I told the teachers that I would mention this. Um the I have elementary school teachers that are saying, you know, the one thing that we feel is we feel that we we notice that behavior issues are

303on the rise and we see that there's more things going on at the middle and high school and the district is probably very busy at that and taking care of those issues. And of course, those are bigger issues because they're older kids and so the behaviors are are worse that they're trying to deal with. But in the meantime, at the elementary school level, we feel like because they're younger, we we don't get the same amount of attention be but but they're significant enough that we feel like they said, "Where's the emergency room help?" Sometimes we feel like we're in the emergency room and we need help. Can we have some sort of intervention with some triage? And and I know that we're working on on different ways of training and building capacity and all those

304things. But I definitely wanted to bring that up because I do think that we're going to continue to see this as we see um our student populations um shifting and changing. So I I just wanted to mention that to represent that voice and thank you so much. That's it. Okay. Thank you, Mrs. Nybar. Okay. Board, a couple things. Don't be asleep yet. Um first first of all board meeting the round table will be not here tomorrow night but at the eBay make sure no one goes to the wrong place. Also casual address um also an update. So I wanted to update you on this letter to the governor and legislature. So, um, Amanda and I and Susan, Susan did a draft, then we were working on a draft, then we were talking to Charlie, then

305we were talking Anyway, we kind of decided it might be better if this is okay with you guys. We do have a draft, but we thought it might be better if we actually meet with our legislators in like May and we can actually invite the governor's office, so Rich and I or someone from the governor's office to come because we kind of just want it more to be a discussion because right now we're not asking for anything, right? It's done. It's over. But we still want to understand like what they just passed and the impact on us. So, are you guys okay with that? Okay. We just thought that might go over better. When? In May sometime. May second week of May before it gets too crazy at the end or first part of May.

306I don't know. Okay. Well, we can work on a date, but I just want to make sure the board because our last meeting we said we're going to write this letter and then just had to like let you guys know about that. Okay. I'm not going to repeat anything anyone has said, but I did do many of the same events. Um, I do want to say I went to Willy Wonka that was by Oakdale Elementary and it was adorable. Like really the acting was so good. Like I'm excited for Union and Hillrest. We got some really good actors and actresses coming up and it was adorable. And then also no one has mentioned the Gayla. No one has mentioned the Gayla. The Gayla. Okay. The Gayla was amazing. I just want to thank Denise the

307foundation board. It was great. I'm sure we all feel this way but we don't need to all see it. So I just want to thank them and it was amazing and we appreciate their work and I will now call our meeting to a close. Thank you all.