Board Meeting 10/18/2022

001go ahead and get started I think we're ready all right good evening everyone I'd like to welcome you to the meeting of the canyon sport of Education today is October 18 2022 and we are meeting at the district office located at 9361 South 300 East in Sandy Utah this is the study session portion of the meeting and so the first item on this agenda is the long-range planning committee update and this will I'll turn the time over to Mr Leon Wilcox business administrator thank you good afternoon everyone uh last week we had a long-range planning top date just appreciate the board members of the committee holy Amber and Mark and other staff members who attended uh we had a good discussion on some many upcoming things that we're going to come to focus on and

002hold on over the next few months and even the next few years as well never stop planning here first thing we want to go over is the big thing that really drives all planting and that is our enrollments on board docs I have a document out there by enrolled by school so you can see for the last five years the changing enrollments of everybody's in school they're on that document and on this graph we have started to drink in enrollment we dis foresee this coming based on a couple of main factors we'll get to here shortly but based on the I always like to use our October 1 count because that's how we get our funding thanks so let's see October 1 counts in 18 and 19 fairly consistent and then Corbett hit and we

003started to drop and then dropping more since we're down under the 33 000 Mark we expect to keep and the bad news is we do or see us to keep dropping as well uh over the next several years so that's a big big concern as we start moving forward okay here are the students by grades and so you can see the biggest change you know we're fairly consistent up around that 26 2700 which is so great seven through twelve it's your lower grades your uh to go over here on the 2022 2300 you know less or going out and coming in uh kindergarten always a little bit about a little bit of a wild card because we hope so parents keep the kids but you know not dramatically changing so last year we had 21

004138 kindergartners 60 or so here but so there lies the the realities that we do feel like we're going to keep shrinking kind of medium forecast out we did put the numbers together today and it shows us continuing to drop we'll share those numbers with it and come back to you but I do think that was our high point 34 138 was the high point you know of the quality within the district was that right right we'll see by schools we put up little schools here that are dropped by at least throughout the district as a whole uh I think the biggest hit would probably be this feeder system here at work toward High Eastmont news again these were just the 15 percent there were three other schools but we're just below that in the

00514th later again on combining so that's quite a drop in several of those schools just in the last communities in the last five years um right and now I'm sure there's programs going in there it's awesome awesome increases overall of the 48 traditional schools 33 have had a drop in the last five years so that's a time again we detect long-term planning that's going to become yeah I think that I think it can be boiled down why we're going to see this continuing increase in two things I don't know which one's more they both are interrelated heavily and that is we know the cost of housing in this District you know the 2017 and calendar year 2017 this is coming from this uh County assessor's office our average value is 373 000. see it's almost

006doubled the 650 000 this year in five years that's that's you know that's the average home and you're above average some will be below about average uh it was a huge job just from 21 to 22. everybody saw their home value grew up 30 right everyone else who live in Salt Lake County and see that our own appropriate tax statements on average 30 percent ah so that's a big problem this came from a seminar I went to last week or excuse me two weeks ago affordability is a concern you know as a second quarter this year 76 percent of utahns can't afford we didn't Ice House in the state whereas a few years ago it surprising so many people out of our United States the second problem would be and I think it's these are

007extra related it's the birth rate we know that that's gone down nationally and in the state for the last decade plus this is just raw numbers but not first per thousand or even just straight verse in our ZIP codes they're the six zip codes see 20 2007 so they would be roughly our 15 year old so they'd be roughly our sophomore and flavors you see how many we have 89th graders here in 2008 and fairly consistent the easier but there you can see it start dropping dropping and then covered right there they're about a year delayed so we won't get the 2021 numbers until December we'll see if there but you can see 659 from this point [Music] you know we know that through the Census Data yeah you know we actually have 15 000

008between the 2010 census and the 2020 census in the district but fewer children well that's a big concern you know for all these I think interplay into each other housing and motivates yeah you can look here you can see easier to go back to our enrollments you don't need to be excuse me in the range here you know grades five through February 11. you can see it's running Raw if you go back two and three rates Mr bear so and this is just plotted this power uh graphically you can see okay [Music] so we're going to turn to more happy news now uh the next thing that's a big thing that we've got to watch the early that's the point they know that's coming uh so I was at uh again the same conference Alan

009mass of Matheson spoke and he gave a presentation so I took a couple of his life put it here that his whole presentation I asked him if I could just share it with him any presentations on their own board 2025's last there the copied I copied or Alive here so this is the Point president old present as it looks now right here would be 146 515 going there great McDonald's right over here uh but this would be 146 again perverse over excuse me 600 plus acres right here right now and they're doing a basement uh this is how good luck in some couple decades out from now this whole anything right here so this would be again I-15 this would be 146 right here right here that's the McDonald's along the way please a few

010Parcels here that are are privately owned not owned by the state so this one this one these are not developed but I'm sure it will hold there to get past here you get into Levi and then the Alpine District you can see the river you know where these trees are right here which isn't the front runner it was either pretty easy right here that would be the River on the edge of the western edge so this whole thing is so this would be the middle point that we call this Central Park where it is right here again having a little move on there very nice that's beautiful what's that tonight we're going to focus on two main things one is uh transportation the other one is uh water taking water here's another one so this

011would be going looking South one point of the mountain again plenty more commercial here as we get closer to the freeway possibly some residential in the back off to this will be multi unit housing our houses may not be a whole lot of people but uh department phone devices in there with Council building out there here's a timeline here of how they're doing now so in 2022 again you know they've moved the prison out into Salt Lake City so right now they're in there doing uh abatement mitigation uh basically in around February March they expected to start demoing the old buildings that will take some time and then they'll build a new infrastructure get in water our sewer gloves and starting some new development could be 20 25 26 you know what Junior creates how

012they are today we'll play right and pause that uh you know but as we talked about he says you know this is a this is a one to two decade process you know it's not going to look like this in 2029. 36 it might get close based on what we have a meeting with him a couple weeks based on our calculations we're looking at somewhere in the range of 600 to 900 a12 students or 50 to 70 per grade maybe a few more on the lower grades as in these were younger families with younger children there but we're looking at those types of numbers once it gets built out so yeah um including the projections with that land that's all we're doing there because we don't know what yeah yeah so there's a good possibility

013we can talk to them for the makers yeah good questionnaire uh so again not until that's looking again it's very exciting we want to be a play be a partner in that of course how that looks as we go forward our magnet schools tech school wants to be determined that way is there any discussion I heard they may be giving tax exemptions in other words we may get the 600 kids that get no money with them or what's the discussion coming from that it's state property right now pass the bill this last session that if the state continues to own the ground they can charge the tenant equivalent amount of a property tax what they can use to develop they're going to use that for the parking structures and the roads and the infrastructure if

014they do sell the ground or change the ground title of the ground change its hands then it automatically Works to basically a CDA where the state captures all the money so yeah we can get into it in a local agreement where we can share some of that but yeah I mean it's not I mean great if we're getting 600 kids probably getting 600 kids we have to do it free so uh especially in tight times yeah so yeah it's my understanding that bill it's um the state could choose to retain ownership and just lease the land as well so that kind of creates another layer of complexity but but there is a provision in there that the Development Authority whatever the official name is of who would capture that taxes can enter into local agreements

015so I think we we would probably it would serve us well if we could at least have some conversations well and that's a conversation that's still emerging I mean Draper City has the same concerns because they're police they're they're fired yeah they're going to yeah and they have to reach up for something too so the state everyone at the state level keeps reassuring if you understand that this is their we're going to get to it we get it so it's a great issue that's quickly will become a local issue moving off to this uh you know I will always say on or as we start looking at some facilities I'm always going to be grateful we are where we are with our facilities mainly our secondary schools you know as we've seen price is just

016go up about the same percentage as housing prices so I'm glad we're where we're at with our high schools right now as a 170 to 190 million is what we're hearing right now so we're going to doors are done and uh the middle school over here on the roads are going to start approaching 100 million so we're glad we're finishing up the union but we still have work to do we'll always have work to do you know 40 plus buildings they're going into you know uh depreciate it different values so we're always going to have to try and keep up with our our infrastructure uh a couple of the big ones so we will have our eyes on is Entrada diamond ridge we love being in that new building there so thank you for allowing

017that to happen we've started phase ones almost done starting phase two we can do that while the kids are in school they're modeling the science labs and a Pax lab and a daycare uh we have a cap one-time Capital funding that we're using for that we may use a little Excellence money that we have left over to finish out this project here big one that we've heard about is you know at the Bands but we have gotten some initial costs we've gone through and done a design on how to move that building out we went out towards the West if you know where the north of Building and the gym and where the old drivers ended uh room is move that out to the West and basically Lincoln building to put in a bigger convertment

018to a much bigger battery that's going to be pretty costly we're looking at around 3.75 including the architect fees for that again we don't have a hard bit on that we're we've asked cues or a contractor just work on that and bring us a hard number that we could present back to you but it works a few close to that uh there's other issues we have at corner candy mainly the fields buildings in great shape love this uh 16 classrooms that we put on we both making a cafeteria but we do where the water table is there we have drainage but mainly the soccer field but also the softball field we're looking at an engineer on what we can do there as far as you can have to build up the Earth there to make

019that happen Jordan hi there's some improvements we'd like to look at again again one of the feeder systems in the Roman issues we'd like to see if we can't get more High enrollment of how can we do that it makes it a great idea about a auto shop there where the old restaurant was uh you know where you can work on diesel electric gas vehicles and we have all kinds of dealerships Murray down to auto mall where these kids can go in there get an apprenticeship and go right into a career very very well Eastmont the once secondary school that hasn't gotten much remodel we have gone in there and converted the from a electrical Heat and and basically no AC into uh put in a boiler a cooling system but it has lots of

020needs it was open in 1973 it's a big building 180 000 square feet one of the things that has helped us immensely let this year with the out of baseball fields saw and saw hope builds as Roslyn Charter was a 250 million death well was it that but that one time Capital funding we got from the legislature we got about four million dollars again the GLC is asking for 250 million I don't know where that'll shake out I do think there's going to be some one-time money this year I don't know if not next year though so they may hold back some but hopefully they can get some of that that would be very very helpful to get some of these projects here uh another one yeah just a question for you on East one

021um these months got several things we're starting to work on but I'm getting some people that are concerned that we haven't done much at Eastmont that we may be thinking about closing it there's no discussion about that in this committee because I I hear rumors every so often we have a discipline the last ones that hasn't been done and I've not heard anything myself so the problem is the enrollment there and the aroma afterwards as far as anything uh ctec we know there's issues at ctet uh you know what do we want to do there long term did we want to look at remodeling off the current site we want to look at another location again if we do that all that equals the funding source of how it can be paid for that the

022remaining slides also the Crescent View property of course that will be big here in a few months we are scheduled to get into Peruvian Park a week before Thanksgiving we're excited to be out of Crescent View you know the kids and teachers in the new building that'll be great we also what do we want to do there on the return as well as we do have East Draper property again with our decline enrollment we have about 11 and a half acres you should know where I think everybody knows where it is on the east side of Draper 17th East about 130 seconds thousand uh what do we want to do with that do we want to look at selling that or something like that and finally the last slide you know the last project we

023had on our 2017 Bond was a West Draper element right so we just pulled on our October 1 counts we just pulled elementary students West by 15. I'm not saying that's where the boundary blows is just west of I-15 so we had 369 students 153 residing between 114th and 120 their boundary to Crescent attend their 145 resigning South of 123rd their boundary to Willow Springs and attend there then we have another 71 left permit other CSD schools uh so last year this time we had almost the same amount of kids 358 so a few more now we've kind of hovered in that 350 range 340 range 350 rubbed up a few each year World Cups do we have any idea I guess it would be hard to quantify but how many kids in that area

024are permitting into Jordan School District last year thanks there's not a school one were siblings and so why we've countless they all went to five different Jordan schools so there's not really this to one everything okay five kids so what's the capacity on the schools that these kids are coming from if we start getting more people at over a period of time at what point would we probably have to build this new school and then the question runs into what we've done now will it be four times as much as if we build it now uh right here right Springs if you look at that chart we're down plus 30 or 40 kids over the last five years I just just concerned that we it'll be fine I mean another 10 years that we decided

025to build it and maybe twice as much as it currently is right now uh to build yeah yeah I have just a couple of thoughts these are the people I represent and I my largest concern is that that was passed on a bond and so you know that's been promised to them for a long time and I understand with the numbers and we have to be accountable for the spending but the difficulty is that is one thing that they've kind of been able to hang their hat on as well we are getting an elementary school whatever the solution is I would really like to clean up their feeder pattern they don't have a good feeder pattern they they're best to Mount Jordan Middle and then you know um you know elementary school they're split between

026Willow Springs and crescent and so they're leaving their friends to go to middle school and then leaving their friends to go to high school so if we could whatever part of the solution I just would really like to fix their feeder pattern so that they can their kids can be you know a little more adapted to their higher schools uh any other questions well that's what I had we appreciate we had a good thoughts on lots of things you can see we've got lots of things coming so we'll be trying to meet nearly monthly every six weeks recommendations this was more of an introductory of some of the issues that we're facing uh we've got to go about the hard work no Nancy the moment yeah just a question property um have you looked into

027class you would need to incur to upgrade it so if you see those are kind of equivalent to another well you looked at what we spent upgraded to what well you know just repurposed it's the same building as Albion but what are you going to use yeah right well yeah for kind of a to be used as a comprehensive Middle School we did look at something like that to do Indian Hills about 25 years we did a lot of site work at Indian Hills that we not have to do as much there but I would put it over that 25 to 30 million with completion shooting costs now 16 foreign was what keep in mind we didn't do as much site work which can get extremely pricey at Halloween a lot more with a retaining

028fall and parking and we also had to add four classrooms on to Indian Hills because um but you know I guess it's all relative a new high school costs 290 million different than a whole new building yes no I listened to Steve talk about building now compared to building in 10 years just like we don't know where costs are going to be in 10 years and I hate I really hope we don't project what's happened the last year and a half forward as far as inflation is concerned but you also painted a fairly Grim picture about growth in the district is there any reason to believe that the population will increase in that area to justify because I believe in our committee meeting the optimal number for an elementary school is somewhere around 600 yeah

029and you know I think it's I agree with you 100 we have been so darn good about building what we promised we build but then there comes a fiscal responsibility in there it says if we just go out and spend money to spend money and we can't justify putting another school in there when our current elementary schools may not be functioning at capacity already at the time that's a tough one it's lunch is kind of like to know what the projections are for I think long term I think you're going to struggle to get for K-5 kids I think they're going to struggle to get four out of 25 there I think there's about two another 150 to 200 homes going but the birth rate those homes are well it's all close to a million

030dollars from what I hear so how many younger families just along those lines Leon and I talked it might be worth bringing in a third party eventually to look at demographics um if you're like a University of Utah is an economist that kind of does this work to and I don't know if it's feasibility or what exactly it would look like but just to have an independent look at projections in the future and just inform that very question so yeah just a just a tough dilemma that you're in between make a promise that turns out to be not a real feasible promise or may not be and you know God that's hard the positive thing is is we'll probably have a lot of kids moving back in with their parents because they can't afford housing

031so we made it I'm always looking for the positives I'm about to throw this remote at you Amanda can you point out for us on the map right there Leon where the land that we have currently set aside for the ministry for Illinois yes it's not on there it's not on there that's not on there it's further north right further north so if you go down the best way if you went down 114 okay frosting on the bridge uh past the Walmart and turn left used to and then it's right in that development there it's a pumpkin patch dish used to be the Hayfield it's a pumpkin patch this year I've been there but I'm just curious of how far it is from the point to the point because that's it actually about fifth West

032yeah just off the just west of the front runner this is has come up in conversations with those um development board and stuff about how close is our closest elementary site in case we had to have kids from The Point area go there and I think that that's a big not something we I mean when we're talking about what we want to do with the space that they've set aside for a school point we need to ask ourselves very seriously do we want to make sure K5 is routed to a West Draper Elementary location in which case it would probably be worth living something I mean like yeah I thought about that a lot you know because you have all this again when I say 425 so I'm just talking about the boundaries now I'm

033not including you know yeah three or four hundred kids K-5 kids in this area right right well the plan is the plan is for you to be able to walk from one end of of the point to the other within 15 minutes right I mean any Direction they want it to be a 15-minute City and then so beyond that if they were to be picked up by a bus or however that works I mean how far are we talking so it's hard for me to get yeah and that's a good point uh you know it's almost I would almost wonder if Willow Springs is a closer than uh that's what a 10 minute drive it's about I would probably say to the property probably a 10 minute drive little Springs may be at eight yeah

034[Music] yeah it's a lot coming you know sorry oh oh I I was just actually going to make a point too about the point that when you're looking at housing that's attractive for people to come in and buy what schools they're tied to really matter yeah and so providing a good K-5 option especially when you look at the points plans and how it's going to be a lot of apartments up above and things they'll probably would have young children as opposed to older children because it looks like possibly the cost of those it's they're going to be nicer Apartments it may not necessarily be single families with a teenage kid you know it would maybe be younger families that are in the tech industry with younger kids so when you look at that price point

035I think it is really important that we're looking at how to serve that community and make sure and that's going to be important for Draper City because that will help their values and you know the marketability of selling those properties or renting them or whatever they're doing if we have that so I do think we do and then also those two sections that you said that are privately owned you know those could very easily be sold to a developer and have neighborhoods and have single family dwellings so I do think we kind of have a lot to think about although when you're saying the 10 minutes too bad we don't have property right in here for an elementary school and then we could just have property that they've they've promised more or less yeah roughly

036about until they sign that promise there's a lot well believe me they started out with two and a half dollars and then it got to four and then we yeah we had to do a lot of work together well and so much of it is dependent upon which who ends up developing the property right what to do with it I mean the the state has certain priorities that through the Committees and the feedback from the community they are going to stick to but as far as the exact specifics there's going to be some flex and change right so but a lot of these walking walking communities these 15-minute cities around the country they do have schools right in yeah in it and they have the grocery store and they have everything so you can physically

037not leave your neighborhood to do anything you know and so so that would be uh no cost area um yeah my understanding is through the commercial so you know how again how many years and then the last thing I just wanted to say is thank you for including the fields that's been one of my concerns for many years and I know that we have athletes that sustain injuries and teams that don't want to play on our Fields because of the danger so I'm grateful that that's on our list of things we're going to look at addressing so thank you for that well can I just say one thing and we also talked about I mean we're just obviously just and starting to talk about this but maybe like doing some really Innovative thing yeah there

038that's what I see so we'll we'll work on that but just so you guys know yes and on that note okay that dovetails into the discussion about C-Tech so really that whole discussion of what we want to do with SeaTac that land in of itself is worth would it be worth it to take it and sell that and like build some on some of the land we have by Mount Jordan or you know and use part of it for a magnet over there they they do really want an innovation Center out there at the point and they want it to be able to have some sort of a cooperative Arrangement between the schools and the industries we think there could be two you know a tech center here with more of our or or some

039of our current programs but out there be something like cyber security uh under programming bioscience we'll be trying to see maybe a two there's two different campuses we're walking elementary is not really where you want to go well that's the thing I mean that was part of the conversation when we were talking to them about it is if you want to focus on an Innovative magnet program that addresses high school that's any sort of college high school or is working with industry do you want to use your precious 10 acres like 4k5 when you have the West Draper Elementary land I I mean that's just a conversation we needed to work it out so and we've talked a little bit about both of those because it would be great to harness the tech industry and

040all this Innovation that is really in the point committee's purview right like that that's very attractive but then also feasibility is you know as far as the families that are actually living there we're talking about a walking Community a lot of them will probably be younger kids so there's two so any other questions I I have one question that as as the committee keeps meeting and talking about kind of enrollment because there's all these moving that's right we don't know but is there any way to track to go um some of this current and will Olympic decline is tied to increase an expansion of some charter schools and private schools the charter school data I be honest with you we don't have the right schools and we we capture more students last year we captured

041about 90 percent the public and students Charter she then another thing I think we need to keep in mind for the committee to keep in mind as you continue is that as the point develops as you mentioned kind of the first developments are going to be more commercial corporate office space things like that which is likely to draw employees are going to look for housing in our area so we could see a bump in enrollment kind of in the whole general area not just within the boundaries foreign out there eight ball stadium right there would be really happy to hear you yeah so anyway we'll look forward to more reports upcoming we'll bring some more we're going to meet regularly and bring some more games it's okay I'd really like to do this wiggle I've

042kind of been waiting all day go for it yeah so thank you thank you very much Mr Wilcox so next on the agenda is the c-test report and I will turn time over to Mr Steve Diamond Director of Human Resources and I believe the PowerPoint is on here so thank you so much uh Shonda Moss will be helping me present Shada is our our evaluation slash Apple licensing specialist for the district we have approximately 70 Apple teachers at the moment and trying to track all of those different components of Licensing it's basically a university program to help teachers become licensed as a professional teacher so she's been working on that as well as our evaluation system thank you so much so in 2019 and 20 we had a revised c-test that previous year we had

043a major change to it so the evaluation system was implemented in 2019 career and professional evaluations were then suspended in April of 2020 because of covet and hopefully we never have to go back to anything like that again Educators were automatically Advanced to their next evaluation phase that was just part of what had taken place 2000 2021 career Educators were formally evaluated pursuant to Utah State Board rule there were some adaptations that they gave to us because of covid provisional Educators were summatively evaluated with coveted 19 modifications and then the Educators were Advanced to the next evaluation phase according to what their recent overall rating was this past year career and provisional Educators were evaluated using the USB approved system so that took us up to that point where changes were made the next year

044completely different because of covid and then shifting to there so this year we are using C tests without modifications without covered restrictions so we're sticking with our Utah core code and board rule with our instructional quality rating student growth rating and stakeholder input rating as well as the code rule for what the ratings are highly effective effective merging effects or generally effective and not effective and so you continue with career Educators who are rated minimally effective or not effective are put on a plan of assistance and HR as well as the school support systems kick in and work and to release them back up to effective during that plan of assistance as we continue forward we look ahead USB has updated Utah effective Teaching Standards the U.S just recently August fairly recently um USB is

045currently seeking input in looking at revising evaluation from the state level and we've listed there the proposed evaluation system that they are seeking input on is based on goals classroom observations and an educator portfolio sound really similar to us to what we already have but it is focused on creating smart goals and the observations would be the administrator coming in to observe the educator and giving them feedback on those smart goals and then documentation portion of the portfolio showing progress towards the goal attainment so the goals really become the main focus of the new evaluation system the way that they are sending it out for feedback is that it would be for reflection only and could not be used for any job action okay what their plan is is to take draft code to the

046education interim Committee in November as well as gather input from stakeholders across the state and then potentially go into The Next Step Beyond that to be able to go where the state is looking at their significant state code that would have to be changed that currently drives what a valuation looks like plan of assistance what has to be included in evaluation also including um I stay coded states that you have to have the four different levels and so they've told us that they are going to be going in November to the evaluation interim committee to start making proposals uh Malia today in one of our meetings talked about that they have support from some of the members of the team for the legislature the problem is going to be is you have to get the

047legislature to approve the changes before you can really make any additional changes so right now until the Utah code and USB board rule providing clear expectations and directives regarding the educator evaluation system what those changes will be we're recommending that we continue to use the uspe approved c-tests remaining compliant with current Utah code and usbe Rule if they change it then I think we need to go at that point and then start looking at what we need to do but until they actually tell us you need to change and they've changed the code I think we need to stay consistent with what we're would be our recommendation so that's kind of where we are at the moment and it'll be interesting to see what happens at the state legislature to see what changes they make

048as well as what happens with USB board rule let's see but Clarence is here she probably asked us so what is Jordan doing because that's the biggest issue that sort of brought this to Forefront we are compliant with state code and USB board rules I don't know what Jordan is doing and if they have gone back through an audit to reaffirm that they are compliant they can't speak for Jordan so I I wish I knew but I don't we're not exactly sure what exemption they may have or may not have but we're following rule at this point yes and if we don't follow a rule we could probably be cited for it at some point if they'd shine if the committee goes to community says no we're not going to go for that then we

049they'll come back and wonder why we're not doing what we're doing yeah I can never second guess the state the usbe I just figure that if it's in writing that we try to do our best to meet the what's stated how do they do for performance or if they're not using this test what do we use if the person's underperforming is there another thing that they're going to come up with don't know I asked a similar question to the state to um Jennifer thoronson who's and her comment was well you could use something else that your district has or develops but it was real Broad and vague in the response there was no answer yeah but we'd have to talk about the second system to use well if you're going to use it for job

050action the question when you're looking at the iPod you give specifics to things for you to improve on uh this is good practice these are some things that you can provide provides feedback I'm not certain exactly how the when they when they're saying that you create a some goals and then how do you go in to observe those specific goals and provide feedback and then a portfolio we're not quite certain what it's going to look like so we're hoping that their committee who's working on this can provide us something but as mentioned the goal is not to have it be anything with job action so if there's a concern regarding a performance of a teacher it would have to be addressed in a different way what I was told Nancy so a question um you

051mentioned that they have modified the effective Teaching Standards yeah I don't think of a change was that because I know c-test is based um those standards right yes uh depending on who you ask it's hardly changed at all and it's drastically different um what what we're actually looking at because they've changed them but but it hasn't come out with directives of you must meet this now because they've just barely came out our plan is to look at the new standards and compare with c-tests and see is it is it truly nothing is it just a matter of re-aligning our framework and our crosswalk to the new standard numbers or is it more in depth than that and we don't know yet because we just received the new U.S and so we're not bound to those

052new U.S right now current school year and we're waiting for the directive of when that does come into play and we will be held to that that was kind of a follow-up question I had was okay does it will it affect this year's not this year six years now and currently our valuation system connects to the U.S standards as well as our empty our Canyon school district mtss standards so they kind of you know interlock together but so we'll it'll be interesting um I tried to find them because I was told that they were out there couldn't find them I have searched scrubbed the website everything that I could find was 2013. so I finally emailed Jennifer and she sent me a link to the actual document so I don't know how much it has

053been actually publicized uh that it's out there but which is why we're not bound to it this year any other questions or questions or comments so it sounds like we'll be hearing more later right so stay tuned as soon as we find out what's going on with the state legislature and board rule we need to be in compliance and we'll do whatever we need to do and we'll so there's what's called geek which is the joint evaluation education committee that helps Drive what those changes would look like and that's made up of teachers and parents administrators that we would look at all of those different pieces and see what we could do so is that that committee that g committee is would just need to reconvene right be reconstituted any other questions or comments anymore

054thank you thank you very much just starting yeah we're just getting going all right thank you um so next on the agenda is a Civics curriculum instruction report I will turn time over to Dr Amber Roderick land Work Director of instructional supports and welcome thank you wow Julie is calling this up I just want to introduce our fantastic social studies leaders in the district so joining me today we have Scott Lambert who many of you have met he's been a social studies specialist for a long time and he is currently leading out all efforts Elementary Jody I or middle school sorry I'm just thinking elementary middle high in my head Isn't that cool thank you Scott he's done K-12 um at lots of junctures so he's done it all Jody IDE is leading out for

055high school and then Ashley Lennox who will be here momentarily is leading out for elementary so we wanted to give you today kind of an overview of civics education and what that looks like in our district so we want to first walk you through beginning with our board rule which was updated in the last legislative session sorry about that and so the board code actually specifies the definition of what Civics education is this is really a summary I have Linked In the actual code from that was updated like I said in the last legislative session that gets a lot more detailed but essentially can be summed up um by really talking about the purpose of civic education is developing that Civic competencies and is a huge responsibility of our Public School System though the board

056rule does also recognize of course that primary responsibility of the families but then also talks at length throughout the board rule that it's the cultivation of informed responsible participation in political Life by competent citizens committed to those fundamental values and principles that are representative of democracy both in Utah but also that bigger landscape of the United States and I'm going to have Scott and Jody jump in and interrupt at any time because they truly are the experts here and are working with our teachers every single day so when we think about Civics education knowing that that big umbrella is the board rule that really guides a lot of our work usbe then also translates that into how we set the vision or how they I should say set the vision for civics education through social

057studies and so this is kind of some of their um translation of what that looks like and kind of their Cornerstone or anchors I would say in all social studies uh core standards would you add to that okay so again just highlighting specific skills and then from there as you know usve identifies specific standards or competencies that are to be taught in every single course and social studies uh what they have organized in their framework for teaching social studies is it all social studies courses are centered around four key disciplines and we have former Social Studies teachers here with Bob and Rick and Krista in the back as well and so those disciplines um highlight really focusing on history geography civics and economics so you can see out of the gate that in every social

058studies course that's going to be a lens in which usbe is writing standards and guiding a lot of the work in our schools so once we have those disciplines the state and the writing team then organize these specific strands for each course and those strands focus on the significant areas of learning so those can be themes those can be time periods I've got an example there for you so um in the U.S history course one of the strands is the U.S Constitution from those strands we then have specific standards and objectives that highlight the actual competencies and skills that students are expected to master over that particular course so that just kind of gives you that bigger picture anything that you would add um well no I was just lucky enough to participate in the

059the group that helped write the standards the last time around and we were super conscientious about including elements of all four of those areas including Civics piece was a key component we looked at different ways to include how we can get kids to talk and interact and interact with their local communities from those and so for example in seventh grade there's a there's a whole section where they're encouraged to write to a local representative and to interact with them and to work with them so as the state standards themselves Civics and all oh the state standard Civics and all four of those those little key areas are embedded specifically and um in depth in each unit that we study so just wanted to reiterate that part of the department that writing process it was a

060very thoughtful process to include Civics especially on there and if you are interested um you can certainly look at all of the standards for the courses and you'll see that intentionality that Scott has just described so again just highlighting that Civics education the the primary place that it takes place is through the teaching of those standards across all of our grade levels and our social studies courses so here I've just summarized what we're teaching at each level so you can see at the elementary that bigger Focus or umbrella that gets into those four disciplines uh K3 is around the community moved into Utah studies in the fourth grade and then U.S history in the fifth grade we then continue on in middle school where the focus is on world history in sixth grade and again

061remember all of these are connected to those four disciplines and then seventh grade and eighth grade is again a re I shouldn't say repeat but a continuation of the Utah studies in U.S history as our students move into high school what you have here is a large sampling of what our course catalog includes which is all of the courses that our social studies either required or electives includes AP and concurrent and some of these courses are currently being taught some of them have been taught in the past but they are all part of our general Canyons course catalog and this is not even all of them but we wanted to highlight the portion of courses that really are focused in those particular disciplines any questions about just kind of the makeup of the standards and

062how it leads into the courses go ahead the high school programs do they have those four quarters people often ask what are you teach in Civics I want to see a civics class and you're saying we don't really have a civics class it's embedded in each one fourth grade is government and Civics and there's over 50 standards so but in in the variety of those standards for the state in geography in world history and in U.S there are also the Civics was also embedded in each of those four areas and we have we have we just we applied for a grant this year that we went through every single standard and picked out all the Civics um standards and there's multiple standards in every single group experiences highlighted would it be possible to give us

063an idea about how many hours total Civics we'll be getting through all these courses I if you did all of you've been followed it I just wonder because people say we're not interested because it's so embedded and integrated I don't know and even though there's there's standards that are embedded so uh one teacher might take two or three days on that one standard another teacher might take a little less or a little more time so it's hard to say each student will get x amount of hours but each student is taught to Mastery of those of those standards so no matter how many how much seat time they get they're exposed and are expected to to uh achieve Mastery to meet what's expected from that standard let's see Amanda and Holly so the subject's really

064important to me this all violent vote and I'm excited we're having this conversation so thank you for Gathering all of this information um I love the definition at the beginning of the cultivated cultivation of informed responsible participation and political Life by competent citizens committed to the fundamental value and principles representative democracy in Utah and the U.S when I look at that lenses that should be our primary lens right part of the difficulty I'm having a little bit is when I look at some of the coursework I can see how some of those directly relate to that lens and others that seem to fall a little bit outside of it so I don't feel like I mean just to distinguish like when I'm looking like for instance I've had three kids now that have taken AP

065human geography and it was an awesome class and they learned a lot but I don't know how much it's really addressing things like civics or promoting democracy promoting some of those principles does that make sense like I have some some questions about some of these like you know even model um there's a focus on the United Nations but it might not necessarily be promoting the Constitution and the constitution of the state of Utah does that make sense so I think there's anyway we're just trying to figure out the distinction of where we're getting pure Civics according to the lens that was set forth in the second slide well not every course is going to focus on Utah because again writing the broad Civic piece and then keep in mind for our AP and our concurrent

066courses we are held to um outside organization standards so the College Board sets those standards for our AP courses the Institutes of higher ed that we partner with to offer our concerned versus set those syllabi so it even said with that said I think there's still quite a bit of integration and Scott you taught AP yeah geography so you can speak specifically with classes like that I love I love anybody that brings up AP geography that's kind of my baby actually so um I love that started teaching that um like right before the district split anyway but anyway the uh in AP geography it's it's true we might not go into the depth as some of the other classes but even those classes have very specific strands that are tied to politics and to to

067governments around the world and what sets ours apart from from different countries and why ours is so functioning for such a long period of time where other governments come and go so frequently and so even in classes like AP geography you're going to get a pretty good um look at what democracy is what it means in this country and how it affects us as citizens of this country and then if you look at the other courses even in world history in Jonestown European history you look look at the comparison between governments of what's happening in different parts of the world and what's happening in the U.S and so even if even if it's not an explicit AP standard I think we do a pretty good job as teachers in our district to work in those

068principles of democracy and principles of the Constitution and what we're doing if you look at geography world history European history apus and the AP government classes those classes are like 65 percent of all AP tests given in our district so there's hundreds and hundreds of kids taking those every year and they're getting great exposure to those and I have to look up the exact numbers but when I looked at it before the AP social studies class does make up a huge portion of the AP participation and we agree well and part of just to help you understand where I'm coming from so the very first year I was on the board I remember hearing Governor Herbert talk about um statistically what they're finding out with the generation that's coming and starting a university how many

069of them are increasingly starting to support ideals of socialism rather than different like capitalism or democracy and um he was alarmed by that and he put ought to plea to us as as board members and say please we need your help we need to make sure that the kids are learning this in the last month I've been approached by two different sets of parents at their graduating seniors or kids that are currently in high school are now telling their parents that communism is the ideal form of government and they don't understand where in the world this is coming from and so you know there's this part of me as a board member I'm like you really need to be talking about this like and I know know a big part of it is you know

070kind of like the Arts I recognize that social studies as part of the common core of the state of Utah and we have standards but it doesn't always get enforced in the same way that science math and reading do because of the rise test right so I guess part of the conversation needs to be how are we making sure that we're doing our job that you need to and in accomplishing what's listed on slide number two does that make sense so I'm I'm all for increasing social studies credits going to touch me for that but but I I think I think it's hard to say from from a kind of a select audience like that or the parents are coming out and saying this because I think from my experience what we're seeing them with

071our standards and what I've seen from a teacher and what I've seen in practice it's very very um teaching the Constitution and teaching the advantage of democracy and teaching the benefits of our society what kids get from social media far outweighs what happens in our classrooms sometimes and I don't think we can counter I think we try to counteract that with what we're teaching but I don't think they're getting those ideas from what we're teaching and I don't think the lack of information about our democracy um is happening with our students I think they're getting a lot of exposure from really kindergarten on but I think they're getting multiple multiple multiple years of exposure in all the different courses whether they take AP classes whether it's concur enrollment or the standard the standard pathway I

072think the the ideals of the Constitution and democracy are better than those so heavily they're not getting those ideas from what's happening in their in their school classes so then I'm gonna just put one more thing so because I had a I had a town hall meeting and last night there was a gentleman who's a retired teacher from her District that is now substituting other places and one of the things he said um that he frequently when he substitute teaching and I I don't know whether this is happening in Canyons or not but he said um we persisted consistently told by the teachers now if they run out of time the thing that they need to drop from the lesson plan is social studies and and part of that is because is that Elementary on

073Elementary level yes and and part of that really is because they're concerned about making sure that they're they're demonstrating things and testing right and so I guess like my my what I'm trying to put out to the other members of my board is is what do we want to see happen what do we want to make sure is is taking place and how what kind of accountability measures are we going to have in place to make sure that Civics is being appropriate yeah I'll leave that discussion um our elementary specialist is not with us and we've talked quite a bit about some of those things but I don't think it's quite nice to say right now exactly what that is so and I actually have a question about that with k-33 talking about community for

074all those grades we're really just talking about Community we aren't I know we have constitutional disciplines and so they're taking those four disciplines and then the just the bigger umbrella is community and so you might see in um like a third grade standard um why do it why is it important to have elected officials I think is one of those 15 counties are included in that so I mean there is some things just wondering you know why why you know when I was in Granite school district and in first grade you know we were learning about the founding fathers and learning a little more American history and it seems like waiting until fifth grade to really focus on U.S history just you know I think that there should be some patriotism and what's great about

075America I know we have Constitution Day but you know a little more in those earlier grades you know I remember a report on Abraham Lincoln when I was in second grade you know those those types of things and and you know as to what Amanda's saying you know I'd love to see a little more of that incorporated in the earlier years because I you know it's sad to think that maybe a kid is in fifth grade before they understand who Thomas Jefferson is yet they've had social studies for years right right and I think that again um they're building the foundation with the standards to be able to understand the basics of those four disciplines as they then head in and can start thinking critically remember K3 is also where they're learning to read and

076so anything that they're getting related to science and social studies it's very very heavily uh modeled and scaffold because they don't necessarily have the language to dive in on their own and then as they move into that heading into third really more in the fourth grade they're reading to learn so then they have the opportunity to really start um sure owning what it is that they want to dive into and and reading into more of those complex texts around some of those Concepts but I would say that for most of our K3 and and even though um reading streets is is in the past reading streets was one of the first programs that also started a lot of um our teachers moving towards non-fiction text and then fast forward now to wonders the high majority

077of the text in wonders is non-fiction and is centered all around social studies Concepts and so again even if the standards aren't highlighting maybe explicitly and I don't know all of the K3 standards off the top of my head if it's not highlighting specifically the founding fathers chances are within each of those grades they're reading about democracy they're reading about past presidents and political figures I would love to I would love to see that pulled out with wonders like where it is because I know for decades we do have simplified texts for K through three to talk about the founding of America and the flag and why the Star-Spangled Banner was written and all of these things you know I mean you know that's definitely at that younger level text you know that's we have

078a lot of of that and we've been teaching it there in those grades for years and years and I think we we've kind of come away from that yeah you know we used to we used to have a section where we would talk about history every day right and now we don't it's not a daily thing you know over the years we've had a lot of change you know as far as the structure of that so just um yeah I think it'd be great to see pull out and say whereas I think every child when they're in second grade should have a basic understanding of how America was born and who the founding fathers are would you agreement I think the the K3 Community is a little bit misleading because the standards themselves do include

079things like that so for instance the Strand one of kindergarten is um will understand the history is the study of events people and places and of um but then some of the some of the they kind of organize them with some guiding questions for teachers so some of the guiding questions for teachers are who are the people we honor and so they can get into those discussions of some of the founding fathers even in kindergarten so even though it says Community the standards themselves have embedded a lot of information about history and the founding fathers and Civics and those things it's just house under the here's how you interact with you right I have young elementary school children I have a lot of children and my younger ones I have actually had to tell them

080who important people are like Abraham Lincoln and they're in third grade and they still haven't been taught so I do think you know whatever we can do to show that we're teaching some of those things would be great and I think reassuring for those concerns that parents have at town halls for concerns I have as a parent I feel like what you haven't learned this yet well let's sit down let's look at this so I think we I want to look into that thanks Ma you know in the world we live in today the term American exceptionalism has almost become a negative concept and if you step back and look at it the form of government we have how the nation was founded is absolutely exceptional and the results that come from that system are

081and should be exceptional as I listen to ever ever Amanda taught about the AP classes that's great I'm glad they've got all that extra stuff in the AP but I'm really really concerned about the kids going through our system that don't take AP classes and you know one of my big concerns is I would like to have the kids come out of high school every kid come out of high school and have a basic understanding of what the Constitution is if they were asked what are the branches of government to actually be able to tell me if I ask them about checks and balances in the system they'd be able to discuss that in an intelligent way and also have a basic understanding of the Bill of Rights yeah the Civics test we give in

082eighth grade which is basically 50 questions from the the citizenship test for naturalized citizens and so they have there's 50 questions and most of those things that you mentioned are included in those questions but sometimes that sneaks up into high school would it be possible to get a copy of that Civics test the Civics test is available just on the U.S website as the Civics test that citizens have okay our version of it is only 50 questions rather than 100 but what we did is we took the 50 questions that applied directly to the Constitution and forms of government and that fit into our our eighth grade curriculum really well and it's what the state recommended actually and every year our kids in eighth grade we have about oh some schools have 100 of their

083kids pass it and most schools get about between 85 and 90 percent pass rate in eighth grade and then the kids that don't pass it are then flagged they take it again in high school and they have to pass they have to pass it in state law it's a state law that they have to pass that test for graduation and you know just so you'll know I'm not real negative I am I'm kind of positive it's good that you bring these up but I'll make sure I'll give you that test I shared this with the board I think at our last meeting that on Constitution Day I made arrangements with Greg Webb at the principle that I want to come up and I want to sit in a class and listen to a discussion on

084the Constitution I said in two different classes and I will tell you I would absolutely Blown Away by the knowledge those kids have don't ask me what class it was I don't know what an AP I don't know what classes they were but I was blown away at the knowledge those kids had in the way they could discuss in the K-12 perspective from the USB and how they wrote the standards it's that spiral exposure as well so they get their first exposure that the constitution in U.S history in elementary and they did it again in middle school and then they get it again in high school in the required courses not the elective AP courses so in those pieces and then they can continue to take more so um just question can you remind us

085what is required to graduate I know I like the high school I know that there's like some required courses as well as some required credits for which they can choose so 9th grade is is geography 10th grade is world history 11th grade is U.S history and 12th grade is government and Civics so every year of high school they have a class for that and and it's not an opportunity to learn about Civics the state um we actually really push that kids get a whole year of human geography a whole year of world history and then U.S history is for sure a full year and then um government is in the semester but they have kind of fewer standards because it's so concentrated just on government um because we want our kids to to really get

086the the depth of those standards so you are correct each year they have a social studies requirement for The Graduate Steve so when we put new curriculum on we usually run up past over the board we run up past the community they have an opportunity I've had some people asking questions regarding can they see our curriculum to make sure that things are not sneaking into it how is that do we if that possible how does that work in our system really good question so every teacher highlights on their disclosure what it is that they are using in terms of instructional materials not every course has come through a primary adoption so we do have a mix of resources but every release required course and then the majority of the elective courses as well have instructional

087guides that have materials that have been vetted that align to the standards and that we encourage teachers to use so if somebody was concerned about that they would call the district office they can absolutely all of those things are available I wouldn't probably wouldn't bother the teacher maybe but yeah it's I'm guessing um if the teachers a heavy canvas user they'd be able to access the disclosure and all of the resources that the teachers release the primary resources that the teachers are using or they can certainly access our instructional Guides Online or they're more than welcome to call our office and we can walk them through those things stickers are concerned that things may be creeping into our instruction and we want to be sure we're going to say this foreign okay we wanted to

088just highlight a couple of things in addition to the day-to-day teaching of those competencies again that we um are expecting students to master related to the Civics education that is embedded again in all of those grade levels and courses for all of our social studies in addition to those things we have a lot of really great things going on at every level and so we just highlighted um a smattering of them at each level knowing that this is not encompassing all the incredible things that are going on in our schools and these three individuals have been in the high majority of our teachers classrooms uh Jody and Scott I know you've been with every single Department already this year and have been in the high majority of your Social Studies teachers classrooms as well and

089then Ashley has met with all of our principals and continues to work with teachers as well obviously Elementary is a little hyper focused on Ela right now and so um doing a lot of work there as well but in elementary you can see that we've got a lot of great things happening and this these are we tried to capture things that we know are happening in um a number of schools not just one-offs but things that are a little bit more common as well as some of the things that we just wanted to highlight so you're all aware of the Constitution Day activities we have a number of our teachers that annually take students on field trips to tour the capital particularly during a legislative session to be able to highlight how government works if

090you have a lot of guest speakers and assemblies that are occurring in our elementary schools connections to our fifth grade we still have a number of schools that support their fifth grades and working towards that great American award that has been around for a while we have a lot of our elementary schools are heavily involved in debate BizTown Junior achievements we have a number of our schools participating in mock voting scenarios to highlight just that process of voting and then of course as Scott mentioned this happened I think you mentioned it specifically for middle school but you'll notice this is something that happens across all of our levels where our teachers engage our students in writing letters to our elected officials and decision makers Middle School we have similar activities happening but we have the

091addition of student government young ambassadors the junior National Honor Society we have a very involved History Day that involves a lot of our students again the writing to elected officials as I mentioned uh debate and then as Scott highlighted the state required Civic test that we administer in eighth grade that is required for graduation and then of course the high school highlights we have a lot of very impressive things happening outside of our classrooms as well that are Civic opportunities for our students to be able to engage in so our face-to-face program We the People competition naturalization ceremonies political campaign volunteers uh we a number of our students attend Constitution Day at UVU our civil engagement paper and volunteer hours mock trial while the U.N a lot of you're familiar with those the initiative project

092uh a lot of kids involved in debate of course uh we have a number of clubs that support Civic engagement so diggers for change Club is one they wanted to highlight from Jordan they do incredible things and then um I think most of our schools have young Democratic and Republican clubs at this point foreign we also wanted to highlight just some broader District components to our efforts in supporting Civics education Scott mentioned already a little bit the Innovations grant that we received this year these were legislatively appropriated funds and Canyon's got quite a big share of them so we got um two and a half or 263 thousand dollars I was gonna put two and a half million don't I wish wish you will keep applying and um in fact we just heard that they

093are opening up a bigger pocket of money that we can apply for even more funds for these next three years that's exciting we'll definitely go for that we also we're a recipient of the news literacy project Fellowship Grant we were only one of five states that were awarded this Grant and it went to us here in Canyons we also hosted usbe last spring they were doing a Civics listening tour to gather feedback uh much around what you are bringing up wanting to hear from principals and teachers um their perspective on Civics education what it looks like what are some of the barriers that might be occurring for teachers to be able to do this effectively and so we hosted every level of principals was able to give feedback to the state Specialists who were asking

094questions and then we hosted events for teachers to be able to do the same Scott mentioned his participation in the writing committees for the 7 to 12 standards that were released a few years ago Leslie Morris was actually one of our Ela Specialists but she was named the news literacy Ambassador for Utah so that's a pretty big deal and exciting and then Jody eyed currently serves on The Advisory board for the Utah Civic learning collaborative so we're heavily involved in what's happening around the state and the country so that we can make sure that we're really um putting in on those pieces particularly as they're outlined in standards so that we can make sure we're meeting that broader definition we shared on the slide so with that I'll just turn the time back over to

095you president tingey and any questions that the board might have for my fabulous team okay uh there probably are some more questions and comments um Amanda so a couple of things just real quick I want to I want to just Express gratitude for what you guys are doing with our kids my youngest just barely went up to the state legislature like a week or two ago he informed me it was excessively boring for you yeah I know right I was like well yeah there's some truth to that so no but um I really appreciate every piece of what we're doing I know there are other things that you know I wonder if that should also be present I mean do we ever take field trips to for our kids to visit the military bases that

096we have here in the state I don't know if that's something that's ever been considered um I I know also I was approached by um Jenny Taylor the the Widow of um Brent Taylor who was killed in Afghanistan and she created something of um further north in Utah to honor um those whose lives were lost and and those heroic figures on for 9 11 and she essentially and she said that she's creating something similar out here on the south end of the valley at The Equestrian Park in South Jordan where the kids will be able to go and it's like almost like a Living Museum where they can go through and kind of relive what happened that day and understand it better I mean some of these things that you know I hear bits and

097pieces I'm wondering where the best place for Clearinghouse like you know pushing some of these things um is I know that we've talked about making sure that you know people like um those who are entry military academies and are being honored that way if we're going to take the time in our senior Awards nights to be able to recognize that I do think it's an opportunity for the community to recognize the sacrifice being made by these kids and I think is it's really important are we honoring those that are winning Civic speech contests you know like these kids that are going above and beyond I want to make sure that as a district we're honoring and rewarding that and so my question is partially for for Jody and for Scott um knowing that you know

098some of the leadership capacities you've served in with regard to Civics education when you look at what we're doing with Canyons what can we do as a board to support that this is more consistently taught across the board that it's not falling to the floor because it's not tested in rice do you know what I mean like I'm curious if you have any ideas and it's letting me down let's go first go ahead are you sure you know um well you know I I taught history for 17 years at Brighton High School so history is something I'm so passionate about and I love that that you guys are so passionate about it as well unfortunately one of the dilemmas we do face is it is an estate tested do you know subject and and even

099though we kind of acknowledge that it it does that is tricky right because I mean it doesn't get put on the back burner I think in secondary as much because these kids have to take these courses and our teachers are doing the work but I think just in general sometimes it's easier to look at you know our literacy rights right or how are the kiddos doing you know in math and you know what about science and and then you know to funnel funnel the resources and attention into that and so just knowing that we have so much board support for what we're trying to do is is wonderful and I and I think it's going to take more collaboration and knowing your vision and making sure we know the state's vision and creating something really

100wonderful at Canyons that really is you know dedicated um I want to say our teachers are for sure dedicated but you know what I mean holistically dedicated well then it's supported it's important right yes I mean one of the things I think about is some of my earliest memories of learning about our country in patriotism had to do with musical programs I mean we would sing to see patriotic songs yeah and but I know like in in the process of trying to again like do well on the rice that a lot of teachers like that's getting pushed out do our do our elementary school principals feel right now like they have permission to be able to have a program like that with the kids it goes back to what Amber said earlier about trying to

101find these beautiful ways to to embed both right where how can we take some really great strong non-fiction texts which we do have within wonders we brought that up probably of some of those places where we can find both and that's also again the beauty of like our brain boosters system and what that can offer in some of those ways to once again to just weave it throughout well I mean even I'm just thinking like Elementary School choirs for instance right some of those come even before school and do do they feel like they have permission to say like we're gonna do like four or three patriotic songs I don't know I mean I just I'm lying the future yes yeah I think at the elementary it's not so much about permission it's about capacity

102remember you've got one individual responsible for all core areas as well as um every standard so an elementary teacher is not just responsible for English language arts math science and social studies but they're also responsible for all of the standards in health and PE in art in all aspects of art as well as computer science and technology and digital citizenship as well it is a lot it's a mouthful but then there is this part of me that thinks even if we produce students that are excellent in math science and reading if they don't know how to be good citizens of this country I feel like we've failed and so I I don't know there's this I get that I mean I don't know like here's another thought that comes to mind is I know that

103once the rice testing is done at the beginning of May is it possible that the last two or three weeks of school when when things shift because that test is not looming over their head anymore that that provides a blossoming opportunity for them to do something like this you know what I mean I know you know I've talked too much almost go ahead no I was just going to say as far as far as getting um information out to teachers about opportunities and things like that with field trips or places to visit I think we all do a pretty good job of communicating with teachers but even as much as we try to gather all which we possibly can if there's something that you see and are passionate about or want us to know about

104it shoot us an email we send out information to our teachers twice a month and provide opportunities and send out information about essay contests and then you send a contests and whatever it might be and so um if there's something you feel is as big missed or not seen send it to us and we'll get it in print Future's eyes and then then encourage them to participate in whatever well I'm even thinking too if you have school community council members or members of the community I don't know if there's a place that shows the Clearinghouse of potential opportunities because I think the best thing would be for a parent to come to a principal and say I'd really like my child to participate in something like this what can I do to support that um

105but sometimes they don't know what exists or what's even possible and sometimes Subs that's tricky with field trips in the secondary level right because you may might not teach a full schedule of a certain you know and so that's that on a high school level has made those kinds of things a little procure right the last couple years but I thought that I just had and we've actually talked about this we can do a better job communicating to Amber the amazing things that are happening so she can communicate those things to you because you know sometimes social studies does just fly under the radar and as we build capacity for these teachers and we showcase the wonderful things that are happening that will help too um as we work together to to Really prioritize social

106studies more thanks I'm just gonna highlight um we had a number of schools really looking innovatively about um cross-curricular collaboration with annealing and social studies particularly at the middle school and the schools that were successful in doing that um really saw massive gains in terms of their overall literacy and their competencies in social studies standards as well and so I think coming back and continuing our supports with plcs are going to further help those pieces I also think what you've outlined in the Strategic plan in terms of personalized learning will give us those opportunities to really outline those Pathways for our students that they can continue to walk down the paths of Interest Beyond just what's required and how we can look at what that means for them exiting our system and what's required with

107graduation there's a focus groups going on right now with USB around the requirements for graduation and I think anytime we can influence those conversations ends around things like this it's helpful because that's what allows us more opportunities to uh open up for our students because right now some of our students do get bounded into what is required when they might have an interest in taking more than what's required and for whatever reason because of the graduation requirements may not have that opportunity so I think we can look at creative ways that we're identifying course taking patterns and Pathways for students as well schools are going to serve on that particular committee so Daryl Jensen Tom Sherwood with Ashley oh just kidding our high school Specialists and Jesse are also serving we've got a lot of

108probably a lot of influence on those as well yeah that's great okay okay Holly as we're talking about different opportunities in elementary school something I mentioned at our Round Table in our board a few years ago was the Great American that we do and we at that time we did it in some elementary schools but not all I know since then we've added some more elementary schools to that but that's an amazing program if we could have that offered in all of our elementary schools I think it's it's so fantastic and I've sent my kids to three different elementary schools in this district and I know which ones do it and which don't and it's it's an amazing opportunity for these kids so I would love to see that expanded to all our elementary schools

109uh the other thing is um I know we have certain elementary schools that do those patriotic assemblies they do a big veterans assembly you know Sunrise Elementary does some amazing patriotic uh assemblies and and they have kids participating in second grade and singing those songs and things so it would be wonderful to have a sharing space for some of these elementary schools that are doing it to help these other elementary schools do it because you know that's we'd like that access for all kids to be able to have those opportunities so so I'd love to see I'd love to have you come back and say guess what the Great American is now in all our elementary schools it's PR yeah it should be district-wide that is an incredible program you know they they get to

110memorize the Preamble they get to you know look at a founding father and do a report they do that wax museum they sing the patriotic songs they get the medal at the end it's fantastic and they've everyone should do it so thank you hi Holly thanks for bringing up the Great American I love that program um my kids didn't do it when they were growing up my grandkids are doing it and it's amazing yes I love that Amanda you've said your son was born oh yeah the legislative session wasn't going [Laughter] to tell you that when I was in high school my most disliked I was going to say hated but I thought that might be a little strong that's right my most disliked classes were the social studies classes and the thing that is

111so interesting is now that I'm a few years out of high school that's my favorite stuff to get into now and so it's very important um you can probably guess just by looking at me that I'm a baby boomer uh product of uh post World War II and which would mean that I uh came of age in the late 60s yeah November 11th I think it's so interesting it's a the 11th month the 11th day of the 11th Hour when they signed uh to end World War II um I have received one invitation from one Elementary School to attend a Veterans Day program yeah entry wide because you know I look at that you know you talked about having the kids that are going to military school being recognized I probably have a different perspective

112on that than most because I'm older than most but I remember seeing the lucky number 26 come out of the hat and knew that was my draft number I knew they were drafting well into the 200s and I shared this with the board a couple weeks ago the people that volunteered to serve and are in our military now are making it so that my kids and your kids don't need to serve if they choose not to and we owe such a debt of gratitude to the people that are willing to go out and serve I would really like to see something happen with Veterans Day I would really like to see something happen to recognize those who not only go to a military academy but those that choose to serve our nation in the military

113in a lot of our schools so that's all I need to say right now so I'll just share my experience with Veterans Day programs I the majority of the schools in the area I represent regularly have programs and they I mean I'll be in without the facts day before day of the day after and that just kind of a reminder that we as a board um we have a lot of veterans that are employed by the district police award we send them a letter of appreciation and recognition every year not going for me what put out the flag means have you not been by Albion no no on Veterans Day they lined the perimeter of the campus with a little flag as plural Flags Okay yeah hundreds and Butler has they have a big assembly

114over here yeah I'm just guessing I would think a big majority of our schools do something I don't know as many Elementary though I think our middle schools all do but Elementary they don't I mean I've only had one of the three that my kids have attended did anything for Veterans Day and I think our elementary schools I think it would be more the exception rather than the rule and then I think our middle schools do I guess well my area is unique then Elementary I think we do and it would be interesting I guess to get that report yes um any other comments or so just as we kind of threw out a few ideas and this is just something for the board and I'm just going to throw it out because you know

115we also as a board um as a district we have uh the differentiated diplomas right and students have to meet certain criteria standards to get that recognition on their diploma I think in conjunction with our strategic plan with the the idea of creating a Canyon's portrait of a graduate we could highlight something and put out there a little bit of a carrot for students to kind of go above and beyond what's actually required and have it be recognized on their transcript in a way or on their diploma or something like that where they've done more than what's just required so I'm just throwing that out there to those of you that are serving on that um committee looking at that just as an idea any other thoughts on this topic thank you so much thank

116you for being here to highlight an important topic and please um if you're wondering what's happening in our schools like I said don't hesitate to content contact us these three are living alongside the teachers and so they are the ones that can really represent what's happening in our schools and as you can see they love to talk about it so please reach out and let us know how we can answer any other questions that might come up okay thank you so much thanks for being here fear thinking well we could we get a report then most people is doing the Great American and who's doing veterans president emails yeah superintendents oh great we're also um partnering with Sandy City to do what it means to be an American essay contest this spring so great we'll

117have a presentation there so that'll be honest and I'm let me just say like before we as a board say everyone has to do it I think we need a report on what that is like what what does that mean what to expect like I think we just can't throw stuff out like hey we want everyone to do this we want everyone to do that for everyone because schools may be doing something different right but doing their own unique thing that their Community Values so anyways feel good yeah and and and to be specific that great Americans the kids elect into there's all these requirements and so the schools that do them there are certain things they accomplish throughout the year but the kids have to do stuff on their own at home too to

118get it so it's kind of an opt-in it's not okay and still someone has to administer it's your point it's hard to kind of mandate some of these things but it's it's really great to make available and yeah and exactly because that's what it is it's an option because that's there they do US history and so like I said some of those things that are on the checklist they do just by attending to school but they have to do some stuff at home it would be neat as a as a board to reward kids to do something like that like we have some sort of a carrot like they received like I don't know like a letter from the board and maybe a small gifts or like and I don't know like a little metal

119they do get a medal but to have but to have it supported by the board like and whether it's you know if the elementary school chooses to do something different that's fine but something along the way because I hesitate with the graduation piece they get to high school and it's like drinking from a fire hose at least qualify for certain things for that diploma along the way that might be better I don't know it's not too much to ask that every school honored Veterans Day so I've just given these guys a directive to make sure that happens great I'm not sure what that looks like but you know I mean to not it's not an option I agree great great good discussion thank you okay next on the agenda is a policy update and there's

120a new policy and a and a few policies couple of policies that are being revised uh this is a first reading I'll turn the time over to Jeff Christensen assistant legal counsel thank you presenting so tonight we have two policies that are based in both statute and USB e-board rule that are just updates so that we're compliant with State Statute and code and the other one is more of a discussion not really law based but more internal to the district that we'll discuss so the first one is a new policy in our HR section this deals with an employee that will be working but also have children that may still be breastfeeding and so in State Statute were required as a public employer to accommodate an employee's request if they are breastfeeding or expressing milk

121at the school during their employment and so for a time period of one year after the birth of a child we reasonably accommodate that employee's request and then the statute also provides that the public employer provide a room or other location to breastfeed or stress milk and that is handled through the HR department and their employees supervisor where that location will be typically Steve you can speak to it typically we were able to find either a space in the school if there's sufficient space and the room's not being used or it can be the individual instructor's classroom as they lock the door and provide signage so what this policy will do is want to align us with the Utah Labor code and then also just have the parameters on how an employee would make the

122request how they would work with HR and their supervisor to address the issue again this is for first reading and it would make us compliant with state statute I'll just add in we're actually our practices in compliance we just needed the policy in place okay then the next policy is our protection of athlete and student head injuries for a number of years we've had this policy that deals with traumatic concussions and head injuries during athletic events the State Board rule USB e-rule was updated to add the definition of a what is probably a more mild head injury as part of the rule and what we're required to do if a student experiences that head injury is we can't have someone who's not a licensed medical provider do the diagnosis and so there's a form that

123usbe has provided that the school is supposed to use to help look and check for signs and symptoms and as the the exhibit on board docs shows you what that document looks like and the intent is is that when a student experiences comes in with a head injury staff will look and check those signs and symptoms and then after a half hour time period if there is still concerned then they would release back to the parent or in a severe situation call emergency personnel so the policy itself so to our existing policy that deals with athlete and head injuries we're adding the definition as outlined in the usbe rule or head injury and then we're also adding new language as consistent which uspe rule to report to parents using the form provided by usbe for

124head injuries in the school in our policy committee we had our head nurse join us and discuss [Music] this requirement to add to our policies so that they can monitor students that may experience in you know free play Recess or other PE classes head injuries I can answer any questions on these these two policies you can see the problem here right the mining mild bump yeah again good question the question that we had on those was a mild bump recesses during Elementary School I think there was over two thousand twenty three editors I like that that occur every year I guess you had a document but but this is this is crazy trying to pick up when it's a petty dream what isn't it what is above but it isn't does a kid fall down

125and get up and go flying and you still have to report it it's sort of a slip and fall and not filing it for workers comp uh yeah almost every time if you might as well so it'll be interesting to see how we enforce it and really how much time it takes to deal with us but it's a real takeout so I mean on the chart you know it says notify parent in each instance we're going to notify parents but when when do we notify parents so that there too at what point yeah in in the in the uh like are you calling them right when it happens are you just sending a paper home oh your kid had a head injury today here's the chart so I think the the issue with the form

126is it's really for a dialogue if there's further issues so we're typically when we have a head injury or other injuries at school we have a responsibility to talk with the parent if they come into the office we've always had as part of our district like our injuries at school where we refer to State risk management but this is specific to a head injury where we're not diagnosing we're looking for signs and symptoms for that half hour period there's a chart I thought Jen said there's a yeah and the flow chart yeah well that's what I'm saying are we just sending that paper home or do we call it yes the paper will go with them and they communicate with them to report and provide them it's not a mixture I think too let's make

127sure we're sending home other questions again these are both for first reading and then the last policy in this update is our student educational travel policy and we're specifically looking at revising uh some of the criteria for student overnight travel so this came about through requests from some of our principles and also with some changes in what sports have been added in Utah High School Activities Association in recent years they've added cheer boys and girls lacrosse girls wrestling boys volleyball all being sanctioned by Utah High School Activities Association so a few of the principles requested that we just look at the student overnight travel criteria where we've typically had it's been in policy where we've had 15 overnight travel um trips available per school and so the request they made was to look at that

128number and determine whether or not an increase was appropriate uh very likely and also substantive discussions in our policy committee really when we addressed this policy last we were looking at the period of when usbe and our state legislature looked at fees and so we did some reduction and some measures in our policy to address those issues we're looking at potentially modifying along these lines and again this is for first reading where other members of the board that haven't seen it can can look at it and provide feedback to the policy committee in looking at the factors that were most concerned for the principles one is the number of trips per school and the other concern was really trying to balance the issue of a 425 mile radius with the differing groups at school whether

129it's an academic group or it's one of our ctsos or dealing with uh or ctec groups and then also looking at our sporting groups in reviewing and establishing some potential changes for looking at the overnight travel criteria the first one we looked at was expanding the window for overnight travel applications to 150 days in advance and looking at that right now it's currently 150 and the rationale behind that is just to allow them opportunities to look for travel to reduce cost again with that just in order to book some of the places we're just at a time period now where to look out that far in advance this just facilitates that uh and moving the number of trips from 15 to 20 um and Dr dowdle isn't here but in our discussions he said there

130were several high schools three that really brush up against that 15 maximum it's not the case at all our schools but this would help alleviate that and allow some of these other groups that are now being sanctioned by Utah High School Activities Association to travel um in our discussion we discussed the concern about administrators having to accompany students on these additional trips and so we've always had in our chaperone Provisions that they need a criminal background check but we made that more explicit so that if chaperones were to travel and we wouldn't want to put an administrative burden on the school you have to have that to be able to be able to monitor the students on some of those uh with the 425 mile radius and then we added specific language that when we're

131talking about educational travel non-curricular groups um or clubs have a Time reserved at the school where they can meet but they're not considered groups that would be entitled to educational travel and looking at the 425 mile radius the the rationale initially there was to at least look at eliminating the cost of traveling to a distance farther away than within primarily the Wasatch Front and Las Vegas and north and some spots in Idaho we have had over the years some other events that are just outside that in Arizona as well as in California and they're typically events that we may have either academic draws or sporting events that are in those areas so rather than a mile distance what we're proposing is and every other year gross expense cap rule is outlined in the policy where

132the board has to set a fee for each expenditure per student and we would allow it every other year where if a group traveled at the full cost one year then the next year they would only be able to travel up to half of that cost which would help to alleviate the concern of going a far distance and accruing that cost multiple years in a row and then it would eliminate really looking at groups in terms of either an academic group or another competition um yeah question sure yeah are you okay with questions right now yeah okay I don't know who's first oh okay who did you guys just if you average those two years and it equals out screw the 700 plus the 1500. dude we attack did you talk about that idea at

133all no no not at this point what we discussed is about the cost I mean the issue is cost not not really the location but the cost in our discussions we were looking at a way to really look at we a way to balance you've traveled to this distance at this cost how do you then look at reducing that for a subsequent year and it was the every other no I think it's good because it was all about with the whole school fees and it was all about us trying to save money and and also let let parents not spend as much money right yeah on everything and I don't know if this helps but Bob also said that there was a big percentage of our trips that are actually lower than that yeah they

134are at least you know that's what I'm saying I think those trips are lower yes and he did say that which is what made me feel comfortable what was the cap right now so this is saying 1500 and the second one 750 and and and Dr Doddle was saying that he looked at all our trips and he said hey 75 of them were even less than 750 which is what made me feel comfortable with this yeah okay that's it's good I think it's a good change you want me to go now well and family are you finished yeah my question is on that of a hypothetically that school travels and they hit the 1450 mark they didn't hit the cap and they go next year and still use 14.50 no 750 every other year because

135this says if they hit the cap then they have to go half the next year if they go yeah at this point we drafted that's in our discussions we came up with a proposed rule I think we could potentially set a a limit or a threshold of this one yeah because this one to me I I wouldn't perform at 9.99 and next year 14 99.99 right the intent here was to establish in every other is what was the intent was the 425 it almost feels to me like you need to establish a two-year Gap well and initially as this came to our last policy committee meeting Bob was still looking at the figures and I didn't get the data to determine where that middle range for the second trip would be perhaps in looking at

136this maybe half isn't the right Mark maybe we need to have a dollar threshold that would just accelerator go up as we get the events established by the board and to me I would look at that and see you've got a 2250 cap for two years yeah and that was wonderful and and an alternative to that was instead of the 425 all the adjoining States plus Arizona and California for the other year so right now we've only been joining State though isn't it what's that in Arizona an adjoining state get it down in Four Corners you're right okay all of our joining States well I'm gonna hit send you a prior discussion you're going back to geography is that geography to include California because that is often you know the one state that is very

137affordable because it's nearby and so expanding that 425 to include all those States regardless of where in the state and uh California instead of so these were the two two options that we discussed yeah and but you bring up a really good point maybe it's just how it's worded we need to do a better job wording it so that the idea is that you can take a more expensive bigger trip every other year and still have the opportunity to travel on the other years without the mileage restriction so like an example is our the cross-country teams they can travel more than 425 miles for well under the 750 so so it's you know but it's the mileage thing was where they were just kind of bumping up against some issues so well you maybe we

138can just word it differently so I mean that was our intent right so we just need to word it so what it says is you travel the full amount like most trips are not going to be at the full amount so you need to say travel more than the 750 I mean if that I think they're in reviewing it I think we have a lot to do go at the full amount which would be allowed and then so yeah but we can look at revising that language it sure is clear yeah oh Steve yeah as I pointed out when this policy came out last year and important in our policy community meeting it's not a very fair policy for middle class families are speed waiver kids get Go free or kids that have money get

139to go free I'm really concerned about the center so if you're talking about twenty five hundred dollars or a cap in two years you're gonna be locking out more kids that can't go if they have to pay on their own plugin but Oliver all of the groups have tons of fundraisers exactly the kids can earn the money I have never I've never just so you know I I know currently kids that are subsidized in groups for travel that my kids participate in there's fundraisers and you know what the coaches keep balances in their accounts and they will subsidize I've never seen a child actually turned away from a trip so that's the one thing is if they go with a club they can't use those fundraised amounts you know if you look if you go

140and actually look at our different you know like like I know I know how much money our our basketball program has at one of our high schools that's just there in reserve so for any trips like this they kick in a certain amount and they subsidize it and so but the question I have I would like to see on our form right now our Forum says how many people are going I would like to see of that class how many people decided I don't want to go and how many people can't go so it gives us some kind of idea the impact of this we don't really know how many kids because that was pretty typical in choirs that my kids have been all involved in the Arts and there would always be five or

141ten kids or 11 more so kids that couldn't go because they couldn't afford it and they got laid Left Behind the kids are done they didn't have a teacher during that time so they got a sub but also but at the same time they came back and the kids bragged about what they did that they couldn't go and it was really hard on me as a parent because I have five kids and you know he had three of them and saw your space that's a lot of money to fill out so I don't know it'd be interesting to find out that effect I know we've we've got the the feed kids down the state says we're you know the waiver kids but that middle area but that's a real difficult when you're talking about two

142thousand dollars or this or that or because their their parents are already paying a huge amount of money just to give them the uniforms and everything else that they have to have which is waived on the other end too so anyway so it's I don't know uh it's just it just sort of hits me wrong so maybe it would be interesting to see on that form just if we have a problem we can't nobody can tell me how big it is other than my past experience over the years with my kids in school um really can't go because you know my daughter went well my oldest daughter went one time and she had to she cut a CD that was her because because I hate fundraisers because if I ask for you your kid's gonna

143ask me so I might as well just pay the darn thing because I'm going to end up paying it anyway uh that's how if the fundraisers learn so um anyway so I might say my PhD so just just to add context to it all true right high schools have asked for more trips we're adding men's volleyball um you know I don't think anyone questions the value but just timely as it is today we had to turn in our Assurance our fee schedule Assurance form so I actually signed off on the document that has the numbers and as you mentioned Steve the district has to equalize those fee waivers and what was our well now this doesn't this is inclusive of all fee waivers but just to give you some idea so we go into this

144Eyes Wide Open how much did we so yeah last practice 520 000 you know we went over the feast the review the policy last board meetings so we put those numbers out there so listen 520 000 we waived it was split somewhat equally between the general fee the curricular fees and the extracurricular fees about 170 000 each so that's that's how much we do have we did have to as we go into budget cuts and stuff like that there's a lot of ftes it comes out of the same pot well it's just yeah I mean when you're thinking about how programs are supporting it or not that numbers and and and that's kind of I mean that's what we're trying to do we're trying to create a balance that we're balancing burden on the district

145and burden on families and the burden on Administration but also balancing with opportunity yeah and experience for students so so you know we're just trying to to balance all of that and um there's not there it is tricky it was tricky and and you talk about fundraising there are some students and and probably every High School Community but then some communities that where there's more concentration of these students who in their circle of influence people that they would approach with the fundraising request or some something they're pretty Limited in in what their options are versus other High School individuals and communities there's a lot more available and open to them on that and so and fundraising in itself it takes time and energy it takes kids away from their studies from their families from their

146other activities as well so all of those things we kind of really have to balance and so this this was you know what we kind of came up with is this idea of focusing on costs somewhere in there parents also need to take personal responsibility and become self-reliant well if you look at the numbers you know we we applied the percentage of fee waivers with the amount waived we're thinking around 5 000 students were affected by or were able to you know take advantage of that yeah so that line above I think to your point Steve so that's the number of kids that actually qualified that we we subsidized so there's then that next group right that we don't really know what that number yeah and I think too it's important to note that it's

147not only all of those groups that were sanctioned by the uhsaa we have a lot of other clubs since this policy was written right products we have so many yes so there's so many other organizations that have been added to when this policy was first created that the 15 to 20 is pretty appropriate for how much has been added so I'm all in favor of allowing our students to travel I think it's a great experience for them and they learn education yeah and the nice thing is a lot of this overnight travel with the high schools the kids are at working age two where if it means that much to them you know they could possibly get a part-time job and help in their way too and they'd have to get time off to travel

148that's true but remember we don't have that long it's only it can only be what how many days five days or less so yeah we're trying like I said we're trying to kind of create some boundaries some fences while still providing our providing opportunities I ever told you how glad I am your own policy committee and I'm not and it's a it's a hard one but it doesn't sound like a walk in the park does it so but it's actually one of my favorites um just to kind of wrap up oh I guess there's one other point too yeah the the last point was they took the the multi-school exception which was really designed for some of our athletes cross country where if it's a smaller group they could combine schools which I think would

149reduce cost we originally drafted that for three schools to join together and feedback from that's a little bit we just reduced that to two and then increase the number of students that may be participating to help alleviate that um if you have feedback as you've mentioned or other feedback please send it to us and thanks Jeff so I just want to just what I heard for feedback was primarily on the wording about the every other two-tier expense cap thing to clarify that is that yeah are we going to look at all about the pizza later I'm telling is that feasible or can we tell well that wouldn't be policy I don't think I don't know it could be nice to put on the form I don't know if it's policy but the form tells us

150how many people are going but it doesn't tell many family people are being left behind somebody's got to pay for it one way or another the question you're asking is who's going to pay well I just want to know how many kids aren't going I think we could ask there's a it asks for some reason information see we have 125 Kids Go 24 school we have five kids that don't want to join we have 20 kids that can't afford to go as we approve this we give somebody to do over time is if it's an issue if it's not an issue I think I think kind of the issue there they'll Steve is rewind the clock a lot of years and I'm in high school if I can't afford to go as far as my

151friends are concerned I had a conflict and I couldn't go I would never tell anybody and the other probably true yeah the other thing is the timing of the process so when we get those forms that we approve at board meeting that's yeah or they've even had a parent meeting before they even know who all is actually planning or wanting to go so I think it would be more just some information from principals oh that was another thing we put in the policy and I don't know if you had it in there but before the start of every school year every High School principal will give a list of groups that qualify to travel to the student school performance department so um so with that list maybe you could ask them to say you know

152potential number of students that are members of that group and then I don't know there may not be an issue but I just it was emotionally very hard on me as a parent when my kids had asked for that I would go I'm sorry I don't have enough money this year to pay for it yeah we could get some information just generally what principles are seeing percentage of participants actually travel yeah yeah anyways okay anything else thank you okay all right thank you very much that concludes our study session for this evening and we will reconvene in about 10 minutes for the business meeting thank you because they're going all over the country because their families you know the thing that I look at I really didn't Target would love to come to my mind

153to do that really interesting it's just I'll come back together every year she wins the auction also believe me now leaving out a large amount of groups well the problem was is they were supposed to we weren't taking care of people by the time okay um we are ready to begin about I think we're ready to begin yeah okay we've got everyone here so I'd like to welcome you all to the business meeting of the Canyons Board of Education um today is October 18 2022 and we're meeting at the district office located at 9361 South 300 East in Sandy Utah I'd like to excuse Mrs clarine Arnold from the meeting tonight um the first item on the agenda is to approve the agenda for tonight's meeting I will ask for a motion I'll make a

154motion to approve the agenda for tonight October 18 2022. thank you is there a second to the motion I'll second that thank you any discussion to this motion see none I'll ask for a vote all in favor please say aye aye aye any opposed that motion passes thank you next we will be led in the Pledge of Allegiance um by Lori Reynolds Midbell Elementary principal and then principal Reynolds will share afterwards she'll share with us some school highlights from Midvale Elementary thank you please rise for the pledge ready begin I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all members of the board and Dr Robbins good evening Canyon school district has many amazing

155schools I've been fortunate in my career to have worked as a teacher coach and principal and five of them Midvale Elementary it's a special place we have wonderful changing diverse student body of around 700 students there are 11 languages spoken in our school and you can hear that in the hallways and the classrooms in the past Midbell has seen its shares of ups and downs from being identified as a turnaround school to being recognized as a school of excellence in 2020 by the Utah State Board of Education for the Groves that we have made in our multilingual learners with this strong emphasis on growth for several years our recent school accountability report showed a commendable rating in this area earning 31 out of the 56 possible points we are also showing great gains in the

156growth of our students performing in the lowest 25 percent with us earning 15 out of those 20.25 points respectively while we are still working towards increased proficiency we did increase in each subject area in rise from our 2021 score there's still much work to be done at our school after sharing the complete results with our staff A Renewed sense of purpose excitement rigor and commitment washed over everyone in the room midvale's letter grade was a d thumb May question you're celebrating a d you're celebrating that the answer is absolutely especially when the report shows that we are 2.4 percentage points away from a c let me repeat that 2.4 percentage points away from a c and we were once a failing school that is also coming out of a pandemic a pandemic That Shook the

157entire education system we gifted this book together is better to our faculty this year and we refer to it often a quote that resonates with my leadership team here with me today is this a leader must be inspired by the people before a leader can Inspire the people the following sentiments that my colleagues here are about to share come from our staff at Midvale that Inspire each and every one of us every day about our community I see so much love in the halls and classrooms of this building this is the safe place in so many of our students lives I love the sense of community at Midvale I have felt like a member of the community the moment I stepped through the door all children and families are served regardless of their social status

158my colleagues are inclusive and friendly to me our community is so positive kids and parents are happy and appreciative there's a lot of hard work sweat and tears that go into working at Midvale but the family I have here and the lessons I'm learning will be with me for life about our students being here at Midvale makes me feel proud because of all the achievements our students make every day I love that our students have grit and don't give up when challenges are tough I love to see how quickly our students from other countries learn the language I love working with our students the first day of school almost always brings me to tears parents proudly hold their children's hands imagining a brighter future than that of their own they deliver those babies their pride

159and joy to us I realize that the future of our students is in our hands they are my motivation to be a better person I hope I'm making a positive impact on them like they do to me I choose to be at Midvale because this is where I feel I am needed I can really feel the difference that every one of us can make in the students lives and lastly the one thought that a faculty member shared with us Rings true to many of us who choose to be at Midvale Midvale people often say that word with a slight hint of pity in their voice like they feel bad you work there and they're happy they don't but to these folks I say come spend a day with us and you will see why Midvale

160Elementary is one of the best places to be Midvale has a community unlike any other there are kids and parents and teachers from all over the world every day I get to teach kids that want to learn and who teach me a little bit about the world we live in some come from trauma others come from wonderfully stable homes but they all come to Midvale to learn to make friends and find the joy in our world Midvale Elementary is truly a magical place to be we would like to gift the board with this book that we have shared with our faculty and our district slogan this year better together so there's stickers for everyone thank you for your time thank you oh thank you so much that was wonderful we appreciate hearing all the great

161things that are happening there will you please extend our appreciation to your faculty and the students and parents and the whole Community there we appreciate all the great things that are happening thank you okay next we will turn time over to Jeff Haney and Kirsten Stewart from the Communications Department for some recognitions president Chingy it's so nice to hear about the accomplishments of the Midbell Mustangs my son Jaden went there in fact there's a brick outside the school that says once a Mustang always a Mustang Jaden and he actually helped us pay for that with money that he earned from mowing the lawn yes exactly monsters in there too so it's really good to hear all of the amazing things that are happening at Midvale Elementary School I truly enjoyed having my son there uh

162president thank you so much for giving us this opportunity to recognize the achievements of students faculty and staff in the canyons District those who are mentioned tonight will receive a letter of commendation from the board and the superintendent our first honorees tonight are the student athletes from Corner Canyon Brighton and Alta High Schools they have fought their way into the 6A and 5A football playoffs Brighton and Corner Canyon finished their Seasons as region Champions two of our schools one region the Chargers of the Region 4 Champs and the Bengals of the region six title holders as such they both earned buys the first week of the playoffs which start this week we'll be cheering for Alta High they face a Bonneville in the first round so good luck to the Chargers the Bengals and the

163Hawks in the upcoming state playoffs now we remain with our student athletes for the next honorees these are the students who have gone above and beyond and the playing field and the classroom in recent days the Utah High School Activities Association has released the names of the students who are academic All-State winners for the fall Sports see that number up there a whopping of 47 students from Canyons District high schools Hillcrest Corner Canyon Alta Jordan Brighton all of our high schools are represented on the list of the students who have earned those academic Allstate honors now this honor is reserved for senior athletes who have a 4.0 cumulative GPA or meet an index score that takes into account a student's grades and college entrance scores a student with a 3.9 GPA for example would need

164to score a 30 or higher on the ACT in order to qualify to be on academic All-State teams so congratulations to all of those students if you go to our website you'll see the list of all of our Huskies our chargers our Hawks our beat diggers and our Bengals who are members of the academic All-State teams for fall Sports we also want to congratulate The Corner Canyon Chargers boys golf team for finished second in state this year we also wish luck to the cross country Runners from all five of our comprehensive Traditional High Schools who have qualified fight to compete in a State 6A and 5A cross-country meet that is on October 25th so good luck to that and speaking of cross country the next honorees are the Albion middle Knights both the boys and

165the girls teams won the overall first place trophies at the Canyons District Middle School intramurals cross-country race and that is the first event of the season for Middle School intramurals program you can see here Dr Robbins is pictured with the Albion team he was there with Dr dowdle to hand out all of the medals and the trophies at the event this was such a fun day if you've never been to the Middle School intramurals cross-country race I encourage you to go next year in fact all of the events in our intramurals programs are really really fun to watch these students no matter where they were going to school stood at the finish line and gave high fives to everyone who crossed that finish line so congratulations to all of the runners Albion Butler or Draper

166Park Eastmont Indian Hills Mount Jordan Midvale and Union they all fielded teams the best boys and girls from the 6th 7th and 8th grades ran that race and we saw here that the Albion girls and boys walked away from the with the first place overall trophies we also give a special thanks to Eastmont middle principle East Eastmont Middle's assistant principal Taylor Hansen he is the guy who spearheads all of our intramural programs he does a fantastic job so thank you to Mr Hansen for all he does for our Middle School intramurals program our next honoree is Kayla slack from Sunrise Elementary School and she was named by the Utah science teachers Association as the outstanding science Elementary educator for region 4. now if you remember Nicole Sean from Brighton High School also won the outstanding

167chemistry educator for the same Association these were announced at the association's recent conference so congratulations to Kayla for that honor also you can see here that Mr Jameson went to Washington Mr Scott Jameson who is the principal of the Alta View Elementary School recently went to DC to be honored as Utah's top elementary school principle as you remember last spring he was announced as Utah's National Distinguished principle and he went to DC to be honored as the state's top Elementary School principal here are some of the photographs of his trip Moore is in a photo album on our Facebook page and our Instagram page congratulations to Mr Jameson once again again and we are so proud that he's part of the Canyons team as you know here it today is celeb we're celebrating Utah college

168application month that's a change from previous years when it was Utah college application week this is a time when all Canyon school districts seniors are encouraged to submit at least one viable college application we also do a full court press to get our students to complete the FAFSA those documentation that's necessary for students to complete before they can qualify for financial aid these two efforts lead our students to post-secondary education and Dr McGill and Mrs Baker we'll talk later about all of our efforts at our high schools to ensure that our students our College and Career ready and open up the door for them to pursue that post-secondary education so president tingi thank you so much for the time that you grant for us to Wrecking recognize those folks in the Canyon school district thank

169you for sharing all these great things with us we really it's just so nice to hear all the these achievements and we appreciate that okay we have now come to the patron comment portion of our meeting while not required by law the board often designates time and meetings to listen to the patrons of the district Patron comment time is limited to Residents and taxpayers of canyons District students and parents of students and current employees of the district patrons May provide board members with written documents these documents should be submitted to the board secretary at the meeting or emailed to the office of public Communications by noon of the day following the board meeting time allotted tonight will be three minutes for individual in four minutes for those representing a group it is the board's practice

170to listen and take notes during Patron comments the board of education does not discuss matters which are not on the meetings agenda or engage in public comment on individual students to protect their privacy or individual employee issues if a patron wants to comment on a district employee's character professional competence or mental or physical health the board requests that these comments be submitted to the board in writing however if a patron determines to verbally comment on those Personnel issues the comments need to be civil and refrained from personal attacks insults defamatory or slanderous comments about an individual the Board of Education would like to make it clear that critical race theory is not part of their curriculum being used by Canyon school district there are no plans to incorporate it into the curriculum or instruction in

171Canyon schools 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 demonstrations during the patron comment time as well as throughout the meeting okay um thank you for your patience with that um this evening we have two individuals that have signed up to address the board Michelle greiman and then Christina Stenton Lee stently so please if I've mispronounced your name please um correct it when you come to the microphone Michelle 's not here okay um if that's okay um yes because Michelle had signed up to as a group and will you please state your name my name is Kathy Collins um tonight the group is the esps that I'm representing but Michelle what she really wanted

172to do was thank the board for coming out to her school which was the Jordan um Jordan Valley Jordan Valley school and she really appreciated you all coming out and participating I'm not exactly sure what you participated in but whatever it was she was really really appreciative and obviously she wasn't able to make it tonight so just to thank you and her behalf great thank you very much uh Christina Stenton Lee hello thank you members of the board and Dr Robbins um I am here so my name is Christina sentley and I'm currently a middle school science teacher at Deborah Park Middle School and I'm actually here to speak about the current maternity leave policy um I hope you've had a chance to read my letter I emailed this week um I won't read it

173in its entire week I'll just hit on a few main points I'm currently pregnant with my second child and um I've worked with my sister for 14 years so I have saved I've accrued quite a few days um I actually have 85 total personal and sick days and with the changes that were announced last year with the board approving the paid maternity leave for six weeks I was very excited going into the second pregnancy to be able to have the 12 weeks and have the 12 weeks paid however I went to turn in my paperwork and I found out that it is now being interpreted as I get six weeks paid and I'm unable to use any of my own days after that so I have a stipulation and a policy since I'm on maternity

174that only six weeks are needed for recovery and any additional time is considered bonding time and it's not a sick day I was told by HR that this means I can use personal days which would be no issue I have 25 personal days saved which is five weeks however there is another policy that states that employees can only use five personal days in a contract year so for me that means that I will get the six weeks pay leave which is amazing from the district and I can use five additional personal days and then any additional weeks up to 12 weeks I have to go unpaid and that pay gets deducted for me while my 85 days sit on a Shelf um and was very disappointed in this interpretation I was very sad to find

175this out um obviously hormones make it even worse but um I went so far as to ask HR if a note from the doctor would suffice as um allowing me additional time and I was told no not unless there are particular special circumstances um per the policy interpretation at this point right now this feels to me like I'm being punished for being pregnant and having a child I know that's not the intention of the board and I hope that we can find something out that we can remedy this I love teaching I love teaching middle schoolers which you probably I mean you hear sometimes but not as often um they're so funny I for 14 years have loved being with them cheering them on supporting them pushing them to do their best always being you

176know there for them and I love seeing their passion and joy for Science and I want to continue to do this job I love that I can be a mom and work at the same time I'm just asking that with those thousands of children that I've worked with that I can now use my own days beyond the 12 the six weeks and get paid to bond with my own child and not have to go unpaid for that so what I'm asking is that you either as quickly as possible on lock sick days and or personal days so that I can use them and I guarantee that teachers when they come back will be so grateful and will be emotionally mentally and physically ready to take on being a teacher and be so proud to continue

177working for Canton School District thank you thank you okay um that concludes our Patron comments for this evening and we appreciate those that have addressed the board and have been here to share their thoughts with us all right board next on the agenda is the consent agenda and I will ask for a motion I ask for a motion to approve those items listed and in making the motion please read off each one of the items listed there I like to make a motion to approve the consent agenda which includes item a approval of minutes for October 4th 2022 IMB approval of higher and termination reports item C approval of student overnight travel IMD approval of September Financial reports and item e approval of tssp amendment for Indian Hills Middle thank you is there a second

178I'll second that thank you any discussion to this motion seeing none I'll ask for a vote all in favor please say aye aye aye any opposed that motion passes all right thank you next under new business is um Utah college application month information for us I'll turn the time over to Brian McGill director of student services and Melissa Baker counselor specialist thank you president TV and members of the school board Dr Robbins thank you for this opportunity uh to express our gratitude and appreciation to all of our high school counselors they're going to be working so diligently this month helping our students with advising uh wasn't too too long ago that I can recall my experience going through this um I was one of the first of my family to go to college and as

179Melissa and I were actually preparing this presentation we found out that she was as well so it was kind of fun for us to get to know each other as we combined efforts but I can remember being at Alta High School as a junior and a senior and walking through such things as the Act and the FAFSA and college admissions process um so we're excited about that I also want to make mention and Melissa's going to expand on this too just our thanks and gratitude to the foundation who have supported this initiative over the number of years here in Canyons as well foreign at a blank screen we'll get we'll get that changed it's time for the jokes yeah Leon what you got for me he doesn't want me to steal his Thunder I don't

180have any jokes I'm a school administrator he specializes in Tick-Tock videos that go viral or something maybe some Facebook uh videos like you know hip-hop dancing some weightlifting stuff you could probably find some stuff out there yeah but now this this is an opportunity for us tonight to talk about just the importance of higher education um something I'm very passionate about just personally as well as professionally what it's what it's meant to me in my life um it really is a promotional effort to really get our seniors and our parents involved in the college growing process you know which we're going to discuss here tonight and then Melissa's going to dive a little bit more deeper into the uh individual efforts of each of our high schools and what they're intending to do as part

181of the Utah college application month so I'll just kind of remind folks that yeah this used to be college application week and now it's month and which gives a lot more opportunity for students and schools to to participate and and also isn't it um kind of Statewide it's not just it is yep yep it's a Statewide initiative so the nice thing about expanding to a month is it gives each of our high schools an opportunity to dedicate a week uh within that given month and then continue to help students outside that week that they do their actual nights so I could hand hold it up here and you guys can see what I'm presenting I'll put my doc camera on and we'll start going to town how's that you can start because we have it

182on our computer all right yeah you guys have got it so uh for starters um you know our mission statement here in Kansas School Districts is that every student who attends uh will graduate college and career ready which obviously this advising piece certainly supports that also as we've rolled out and unveiled our new strategic plan as you look at the access and opportunity component of that and the success criteria that we also want to help our students and parents prepare and transition uh from one grade level to the next so Elementary to middle school middle school to high school and then we have an obligation to help obviously our seniors make that transition to higher education as well um our counselors do a tremendous amount of efforts with regards to this month um having been

183a former school counselor myself I know the efforts that go hand in hand into this process um as part of their four-prong approach of their practices individual planning is a part of that and so a significant uh portion of their job is simply advising and helping students make these transitional decisions from year to year they also help them create a four-year plan so that the students can take the right classes during high school and Beyond to help prepare them for the admissions requirements in each of the schools that a student is looking to attend um also in Camden School District we have our high quality learning component um and I thought it'd be kind of fun to just highlight some of those things that we do to help kids plan and prepare for college academically

184speaking so we have the advanced placement program which just in taking a look at some numbers we've had over 2 400 students participate in that in almost 4 000 exams and we have about a 72 percent pass rate with all of our students at take AP which is pretty exceptional uh with concurrent enrollment we have a very similar number about 2 400 students that participate and 4 800 courses enrolled with those 2 400 students our IB Program uh as validated by Mr Levitt today we have 160 IB students that participate in junior uh in senior years at Hillcrest High and um the step to the youth program which I had a hand in creating here a few years back it's been a lot of fun to be able to see the students that have transitioned

185through the step to the youth program with the six cohorts we've offered to date we've had 280 students that have participated in a step to the youth program like I said over to six cohorts and collectively they've saved about 4.2 million dollars in University tuition savings which is just absolutely incredible and it's something that obviously is unique to Canyon school district we're the only District in the state to offer up this unique Early College pathway for students we've offered it out to high school go figure as to why but we are going to be expanding that to Jordan High School for this fall so I've been working with Dr eschler and we're putting things in motion to expand that out and get students at Jordan High School participating in that which we're pretty excited about

186but the eventual goal of getting all of our high schools on board also as part of this uh we have several staff that help support this process right so our guidance counselors I think we also need to make reference admissions or CTE coordinators our College access advisors uh they're at Jordan and Hillcrest and then we also have scholarships FAFSA advisors at many of our high schools as well they all play a very pivotal role in that process um I thought it'd be good to just walk through the benefits of post-secondary Education this is second hand to most of us uh that is as I would always counsel and advise kids there's extrinsic benefits that come from uh pursuing a higher education degree but there's also bless you there's also several intrinsic benefits that students earn

187and obtain as well and I want to kind of highlight those so I pulled some data from the Utah system of higher education uh colleague of mine uh share these with me and again um it's you know we've seen these time over time but you know individuals that pursue higher education it's higher wages higher salary uh retirement uh benefits generally speaking uh better opportunities for health insurance life insurance things of that nature um as we talk about post-secondary education I think it's critically important to make sure that we encapsulate those students that are part of the Career and Technical education program so students pursuing certificated programs associate degrees uh in each degree thereafter just in sharing some salary data looking at one year before graduation and after you can see the median rate for certificated

188individuals there and then associate degrees a pretty significant jump in median salaries for gold um and looking at this particular table this crosswalks associate degrees and certificates looking at the Department of Workforce Services high-wage high demand jobs and as I was doing a little bit further data analysis and research looking at DWS most of these are pretty parallel with each of the different degree seeking levels so for example computer at nit tend to be a big one construction management nursing medical Automotive Finance business management specialized Health tech programs as you can see in the list there such things as Radiology occupational therapists respiratory therapists engineers and legal and if you look at our currency Tech campus and the programs that we're offering again very parallel programs with uh with those high-wage high demand job earnings

189and as part of this is in our conversation on the point development in our board study session I think there's there's an exciting opportunity ahead of us in terms of being able to maybe expand some of those stem-based approaches in looking at C-Tech for Canyon school district so let's talk a little bit about intrinsic benefits and this is kind of a fun part of the presentation for me um so students walk away you know being able to critically think and analyze right effectively communicate serve their Community they're more educated informed and they're contributing citizens one of the fun things for me being at Alta High School and actually having pursued a doctorate degree at the same time I was leading and guiding Alta High was I often have students that would come up to me

190and they would complain about their homework and I just give him a little smile let him talk a little bit and then he would engage in the conversation about just how many pages they had to read in a given week and just how much writing and how many pages in an essay they had to put together as well um so it made for some fun conversation but lifelong learning is obviously a critical element to higher education as well and the most exciting thing for me as a guidance counselor and me personally professionally speaking and choosing a different career path that my father did and my grandfather and my uncles which is more on the construction trades I always knew I wanted to make a positive impact and difference in the lives of Youth and working

191with kids and advocating for them and so as I got into plts I've shared with you many times over it kind of helped springboard that particular career and I never would have guessed but 14 years in higher education and five degrees later it's allowed me that very opportunity to have a positive impact influence and difference in kids lives which to me is the most meaningful part of my higher education and then lastly just talking a little bit about Admissions and affordability so as part of Utah college application month we've got all the UC schools that are waiving their admissions fees as well as Westminster BYU and inside do not this is obviously a huge cost savings to students and parents so we're helping them with that affordability aspect to transitioning to higher ed I'm counselors

192assist every senior in filling out one application during the school day and Melissa is going to dive a little bit further into the depth as to what those high schools are doing specifically and then another big part of our recent conversation and our access and opportunity focus group is just the emphasis on a free application for federal student aid having worked myself at the Board of Regents office for five years this was always and still is a huge you know promotional campaign effort that we've got to get out to parents because I think a lot of parents you know at times they they feel like it might be a waste of time or their kids may not qualify for particular funding but that's not the case so some priority items there first off it's required

193for several scholarships several institutions across Utah so we want to encourage students to apply so that they can qualify for those there's federal and state grants in fact Utah leads the nation in that we received more grants for students in higher education than any other state big part of the reason is as to that is we have have a lot of individuals that get married young and uh and qualify for those grant-based opportunities so important to to notice that work study options so students can actually get tuition uh reimbursement or reduced tuition now the other thing that works study allows students to do is work on campus so they're close to their classes close to studies that interconnectedness that experience of being you know on a college campus and then student loans any and all

194students despite what parents might make could qualify for an either subsidized or unsubsidized Stafford Loan those are generally lower interest than a lot of your private Banks and credit unions and they allow for deferred interest while students are in school for the subsidized loans and then there's other rewards and incentives like public loan forgiveness which of students are you know graduates pay back on that loan for 10 years they can actually get the rest of it waived if they're in the public service sector and then also as part of FAFSA is the repayment flexibility into the department options that come with student loans so a whole host of needs and ways to be able to help students and our parents so the two goals as they turn it over to Melissa first off complete at

195least one College University application during the school day and then obviously complete the FAFSA so without any further Ado I may turn some time over to Melissa who's one of our counselor extraordinaire and I say that because she's going to share a little bit about the great work that Jordan High School where she came from did with FAFSA participation rates so without any further Ado I'll turn some time over Melissa I'm excited to speak to you today the last time I spoke to a school board was when I was 10 years old I was advocating for some change in California and so now I'm back um so I just want to highlight some of the different things that the high schools are doing um through college application week and you'll see on the next slide

196just a couple of the different pictures that the high schools have with the different students and then there's one of Mr Spears at Jordan High School and you'll see a giant pile of different swag and different things that they bought as incentives to get students to fill out those applications and fill out those um the FAFSA during the week that they were doing Utah college application month um so it's really exciting the students have not only the opportunity to fill out those applications but you know earn some prizes also on the side so um Alta actually already had their college application week at the beginning of October and they started out with a wonderful kickoff assembly where they had different College reps talking about their different universities and colleges and kind of just that you

197know why why go to University of Utah or why go to BYU and then each of those counselors at Alto went into English classes throughout that entire week and helped students fill out applications kind of based on what college they were wanting to attend and so um that whole week has just really dedicated to that time to help those seniors and then at Alta specifically what was really cool is they stayed after school to help those seniors that maybe didn't have an English class on campus maybe they were taking some online classes or home and hospital just different kinds of you know situations that students are in and so offering that availability after school was um I just think really important for those students and those families and then obviously wearing that college gear and

198promoting the schools that they want to represent so um and then Brighton they actually already did their Utah college application week as well um they actually went in to their Flex periods that they had every um day which is just kind of a shorter time and separated those students by college um perfect appreciate it so um also they had a kind of outside of their building um a banner like a Yukon um now we're changing it to you Cam I guess um Banner where once the students applied for school they got to sign um as they applied to school or to colleges um Swig also donated a bunch of drink cards and food cards so it was just you know another incentive for school or for the students and then you'll see Corner Canyon um

199actually the only school that is left um that has Utah college application week is um Hillcrest and theirs is next week when we get back from fall break um but Corner Canyon kind of the same thing as some of the other high schools that we've highlighted um but they also had a lot of parent volunteers coming in and Helping Seniors fill out applications which is always necessary there's an app if you're familiar with it it's called keys to success that has a lot of scholarship opportunities there's um they have like the different colleges listed and kind of the steps and procedures that a student might need in order to apply and it kind of gives them career Pathways as well so keys of success app if you don't have it and you have a student

200It's a Wonderful app to download and it's free and then a really cool thing you'll see their picture um in the top right is each of the teachers had and asked me about college poster so like listing where they went to school maybe a fun activity that they had or they remember from when they were in college um what their major was and it just gives that conversation going with the students and the teachers in the building and then diamond ridge also did Utah college application week and they actually had College reps as well come in and present to the students and each of the counselors just like all the other schools are helping with those applications all week and then what I think was really cool about um diamond ridge specifically is they gave

201them tasks each day to do and it was for all students not just for seniors so to get all students involved um so downloading that app and that keys of success so they could have it um at the younger grades and then helping them apply for scholarships that are available they did a college bingo game you know just getting them interested and you know what information do they know about the different schools that are in Utah um so I love that they did different activities for all the grade levels and then like I said Hillcrest actually Dr Robbins is going to be speaking next week on Monday so if you have time Monday morning you can go hear him speak and then Sean Newell who is a UC board member will also be speaking about

202their college experience so I'm excited I'm going to that on Monday morning um but then they do um kind of like I mentioned with diamond ridge they do a preparing for college newsletter and um they're 9th through to 11th grade classes which just gives information about college the college application process um and different steps that the students should be taking to prepare for college so then it's not only kind of linking that English class to the Utah college application week but it's also involving those other students which is really great um and they actually do a door decorating contest um where different teachers and counselors decorate their doors based off the college that they're representing again it's just hyping up you know the week so and then lastly Jordan they had theirs the first week

203of October um same kind of thing counselors and college reps going into the different classes helping to fill out applications what I thought was really cool is they also had different breakout sessions based on maybe a student didn't want or wasn't thinking they wanted to go to college right away um so they had military breakout sessions they had resume building job fair at the same time um so if a student was kind of feeling like maybe I'm not quite ready for this here's another option um and then even with that some students were like okay maybe I do want to go to college it's just in maybe a different way are you doing like a certificate program and so that was really helpful for the students of Jordan and then like I said they did

204their college swag and prizes and they did some student Raffles as they filled out those applications so what's the data um telling us so this is from Yushi Utah system of higher education so you'll see um our district percentage um of the percentage of students enrolled in first year college is actually almost 54 based off of our state average of about 50 or 45 so we're about eight percent higher than State average of students enrolling at the college after that first year of high school which I think is pretty awesome and then you'll see over there on the left just the different schools that our seniors are applying to so um the majority are applying to the University of Utah and enrolling into the University of Utah and Salt Lake Community College you know and

205we always have those students that we don't know um what happens so FAFSA completion night I wish I would have had a counselor in high school that told me about the FAFSA I had no clue until I went to grad school that it even existed and I know for a fact that I would have qualified and so this is near and dear to my heart because there's a lot of grant money especially that goes untapped and so each if you're not aware each of our high schools offers and FAFSA completion right um for the seniors and their families and specifically Hillcrest and Jordan also offer sessions for Spanish-speaking families where interpreters are there um and helping them through that FAFSA process what I love is um that there's that opportunity to get those specific questions

206answered for families that they maybe get a little more one-on-one help versus like sitting at home trying to figure out a federal application that could sometimes just be a little overwhelming and confusing so those nights are imperative for helping those families throughout the FAFSA and you'll see that quote at the bottom 91.5 percent of students who completed the FAFSA enrolled in post-secondary education as of that 2013 compared to 49.7 that didn't complete the FAFSA that's a huge difference and so when students and families understand that there is that grant funding and there is that financial assistance to get that higher education they're more likely to actually attend so um Dr McGill had mentioned that I worked at Jordan as a high school counselor and something that I'm really proud of is while we were there

207or while I was there we won the FAFSA cup and that's a state award which means that Jordan high had the highest rate of FAFSA completions in the entire city of Utah and I attribute that to the FAFSA specialist um Karen Barnhill who meets with students you'll see there like holds in-person meetings with those families and those students throughout the day after work hours so she'll kind of adjust her hours and maybe work you know until five o'clock to where families can come in she'll hold Zoom meetings as well for those families and then she's also following up throughout the school year so instead of just having that one night and hoping that they attend um that actual FAFSA specialist is there throughout the year following up with those students um and so um with

208this presentation you also got um a piece of data that I hope you have in front of you um and it just talks about um how the rates for let me see if it's well I'll show you this one first but this one shows that Canyon school district passed a completion rate is about 45 to actually completed through that year and then in comparison to other districts that are surrounding us we're either on par with our other Wasatch districts or above like Alpine Murray and Tooele so I don't know I think we're did it get shared with you the um Jordan High um data um but before while that's being um put up I do want to thank the Canyons Education Foundation foundation for funding the Utah college application month um like Dr McGill had

209mentioned a lot of the colleges have started waiving their fees now throughout the month of October but even still they're finding funding to fund those applications even maybe for students who want to apply out of state or to those specific schools that don't waive those fees so we are so appreciative because a lot of our students couldn't apply to our schools that are still charging so thank you to the foundation um but that last supporting document um it shows and I do you all have it in front of you okay so you'll see at the bottom that before Jordan high got the FAFSA specialist the FAFSA completion rate was in the 30 range and then since they had um or since they hired Mrs Barnhill the FAFSA completion rates are mainly in the 60 range

210which even compared to our district um completion rates is about 20 higher so um just encouraging there it is um other schools and that support of getting that college access advisor FAFSA specialist FAFSA specialists at each of the high schools um and just how much it increases that that's the completion rate the numbers I I mean they speak for themselves so and hopefully Jordan wins another award um and then the other high schools can just start passing that trophy along so thank you for allowing Dr McGill and I to present on Utah college application month question thank you any comments or questions or sniper Mrs chill and I were looking at the difference after the FAFSA specialist was hired that looks like that was a really appropriate use of funds yes it's paying a lot

211of dividends so that's just great to see that dramatic increase yeah thank you thank you any other comments or questions yeah I'd really like to thank our staff I know they go an extra mile on this every year uh putting in a lot of extra time uh and they make a big difference if they can get a kid through college that's never been through college and I joined that group I'm the first kid in my family the only kid in the family that's going to college it changes history it really changes history so that's exciting to see them do that especially with FAFSA things so thank you so much for doing what you're doing yes thank you it it it's exciting and I think one of the secret sauce elements is the excitement that the

212counselors and the um the those that are assigned to help the students I mean their enthusiasm is contagious and I think for many students the first time they might catch a glimpse of something that they'd never thought of before could be possible in their lives and it's it is really exciting so thank you and please extend our appreciation to all those that are helping out at the schools and helping students not only this month but throughout the year thank you okay that concludes the items under new business uh we'll next turn to staff comments we'll hear from superintendent Robbins first and then Mr Leon Wilcox business administrator thank you president t uh first up just want to share our condolences with Denise haycock our foundation director and her family she her mother passed recently as

213we know so just as sweet we're showing appreciation I think uh that was in order as well um so uh last week I got an email from Richard Stoll from USPA requesting that CSD present on our strategic vision and process at the winter conference so I thought that was very flattering and uh pretty awesome the usba Amber your team would would think of us so that's terrific um so I guess I I told him I'd respond tomorrow I have a few different ideas if you're interested I don't know if you know that might be a panel type of setting or if you all want to participate and we can do something like that or if you want to assign it somehow but I I think it's a great opportunity you think about the process that

214we went through there's really a lot to learn right some districts may or may not choose to music consultant especially if they're smaller but I think the foundation and the process of stakeholder feedback and really developing those priorities in that in that Vision can you know could be done really by any District so um I'll just any thoughts or comments on that and what what you'd like me to do I've seen some heads nodding like they agree with you that it's a good idea I don't know um if there's any specific suggestions um anyone so I'm okay to commit that we'll do something and yeah mid-winter conference so yeah I I think I I mean one I don't know how you all feel I think there's tremendous value in other State uh and local board

215members being able to ask questions of you as fellow award members I think you know that you you learn best many times your peers and I think that might be something that we'd want to do so but I we can put some other ideas together I just if you guys are okay with it I'll I'll let Richard know that we'll commit to presenting that yeah yeah we don't need to give him we don't need to have our slideshow done by tomorrow just give him a commitment right thank you for uh looking into that um I think especially some of the smaller districts to have somebody sit down with them and explain what we went through would be most meaningful and helpful for them and you know the best term I can think of the leader

216leads and I think Canyon is a leader and if we can help others become better and cut through some of the stuff we had to learn the hard way it would be most beneficial okay Mrs Oaks has some feedback and then Mrs Shield yeah I think it's a great idea I would especially appreciate the conversation with other districts who've also created a strategic plan of how they implemented it and I mean I feel like having that discussion getting all those that um using the same room would be really beneficial for all of us we'll learn a lot okay Mrs shield and Mrs nybar so I've I just wanted to give a little history on how this came about um so our board of directors which months is on that board of directors at our last

217meeting we went through and asked them to come up with ideas on what they wanted to have breakouts on for the session and the number three things and then we got to vote on the different classes but the third thing that board members wanted from the board of directors was talking about vision mission and strategic plan so anyway so it's it's something that boards are interested in and then I think that Rick has a really good perspective because he did it in juab and then with our district so he he does have the experience of doing a rural district and then a larger District so I think that'll be great and I think it also would be good if um the superintendent's there and then maybe a couple board members and there's two classes so

218you could do two different groups yeah so there's two sessions so just maybe be thinking about that and let him know if he would if you'd want to help with that yeah so that would be great so thank you okay this is my bar I was just thinking along with that it might be neat to have it be a little thinking out of the box and more Workshop where you put present at the beginning but then there's an opportunity for those smaller districts to sit around at a table with questions and do more Workshop then just a thought I had because I think you're such a good facilitator of that and they could come away with a lot of a real takeaway you know to to their District's needs less of me the better oh

219no that was not my thought but I was just thinking you presented the beginning but then there's a couple different tables and districts talking and they can come away with kind of some tailored ideas towards their needs because you've done small and big so that might be neat okay any other comments okay uh I do just want to thank uh principal Reynolds at Midvale Elementary um and her teachers and staff just thought was great to hear from her uh also just want to give a shout out to external relations for Apex awards that was awesome um that was a very emotional night and uh just to all our all of our award winners congratulations very well deserved so awesome there and I just want to give a shout out to our Middle School student I

220don't know their name but the kid in the shark pajamas at the cross country meet they're all lined up to get ready to run and this kid's in shark pajamas so you could see Mom said get up you're running in a cross-country meet no I'm not get up yes you are you sure on shark pajamas I mean that kid you know he gets the best dress award for the meat but it was pretty awesome and there were hundreds of people there and to support our student athletes so uh congratulations to all of them that's all thank you Mr Wilcox now thank you just a couple things I just my boy last night reminded me that tomorrow is the end of the first quarter so it's gone by very fast so thank you to all our

221employees who've gotten us through the start of this first year it's gone very well so thank you to them uh that October being principal's month I just want to give a big shout out to all the principals we have Laura here who's tremendous and we have another 40 plus who are there I've been uh talking with several of those the last couple days trying to get our school fees surveys done and they're just so passionate about that school accountability grades came out we had several you know grades will go with the grades in a future meeting but some great grades but they're also passionate about what they they do and you know we saw it tonight from Lori so big thank you to all of our principals out there for all they do that's how

222I got it thank you okay um we'll have um board comments let's this evening let's start with Mrs Shield okay so I just want to congratulate all of our Apex winners that was just a really special night and also thank you to Communications and everyone who helped with that I know that is a ton of work and we really do appreciate it and you guys are just experts at putting on these events so thank you so much um I I was able to go um on Friday the Brighton football team we didn't have a game because our game was earlier in the week and they had a service project and they went to East Midville Elementary and they needed parent so I I love to go to the schools so I'm like I'll go anyway

223um I was just so proud of them because they were they did oh they did so much work we were there for two hours and they washed down on the walls and they put together bookcases and they put together a soccer goal and they um yeah they want to know all the walls in the hall all the walls in the cafeteria and they had ladders and we're going way high they had some music they were dancing while they were cleaning and so I was with the group that um they wanted to re-well spray paint dinosaur footprints going out from the cafeteria for The Kindergartners but go down and tell them where to go for the playground and I will tell you I was a little worried and a little skeptical because I'm like this could

224go so wrong this could go so wrong anyway it they were just amazing they they worked hard they got it all done it turned out really cute and then um the well Shelly sent me the videos of all the kindergartners that went out on Monday morning they were so excited and they were like jumping and the boys were smart they're like you know what when I was little I would want to jump for one to another so we so we did a whole bunch of different different colors but she did send me videos and they were all like following the footprints it was really cute and um the best part of it though is I wanted to share is at the very end um they got the whole team together in the cafeteria at the

225gym slash gym and um so they talk to him for a little bit and then their coach coach saterra got up and he actually started crying and he said he told them he said I've never been more proud of you boys than right now so more than winning a game was them like participating in the service project and there were like 73 of them and so it was it was a lot they were they were a lot but they did great they also did chalk on the outside the school which also could have gone very wrong but they did a great deal and I went back there and one of the coaches was like this is terrible and he was washing them down he like wanted it to be perfect and it did end up

226really good but he he made sure that it was not only up there and it's just said East Midvale Eagles and but he made sure the part that didn't look good was Perfections so anyway I'm just really appreciate coaches that care more and give an example of like it's not just about football it's about learning great characteristics it's about helping others and serving your community so thank you Mrs neibar thank you I loved that um I was able to participate in Willow Springs chagathon and it was so fun to see this relationship that actually the custodian had with the kids they had two dunk booths and his line was by far the longest and those kids just loved trying to dunk Kim and interaction with him and it it and then you know of course

227last week we went and did the Apex Awards and we had that custodian there that just really touched me just his story and him singing with the kids and how he was just so gracious and humbled and excited to be getting that award I was so touched by that evening that evening was fantastic I wish every I wish all our parents could go to that Apex Awards night just a beautiful night I feel so inspired the parent volunteers that were highlighted everything about that night you just come away feeling lifted and and lighter than when you walked in what an amazing evening and thank you to our Communications Department and all of of those that helped with that event what a special event um I I was able to help volunteer with some concessions with

228a tournament at Corner Canyon and and go to a football game and at the end of the football game I watched a bunch of our student body officers picking up trash and one kid that went over to someone that was there by himself and just being a friend and I just felt inspired by our youth you know that they're there it's a school night these are the same kids that maintain an awesome GPA and they're picking up trash and looking out for the kid that's sitting alone so I thought that was pretty inspiring um lastly I just wanted to highlight uh a golf coach at Corner Canyon Derek box um he a mother came to me and shared with me the the things that he sends out to his kids before the tournament I know

229they were recognized tonight by Jeff Haney and boy you want someone to build up your kids that golf coach every time before they compete tells those kids I don't care win or loss I love you guys put it all out there and is the most building and amazing individual with these texts I can't even I I was very touched by that and this mom's sharing and and they've had a player that that has been had an injury and he goes and visits that player every day and I just want to thank all of those individuals that are making a difference in our kids lives because what a difference and I'm just grateful to be a part of canyons thank you Mr Wrigley yes uh this last week Miss tingy and I had the opportunity to

230do a town hall meeting sometimes it takes True Grit to do that uh but it's really exciting to be able to meet with the individuals you never know what's going to be asked of you or the questions and sometimes I don't know well all the buses pick people up but anyway it's just and so I appreciate the parents that come out for that and the opportunities we have um the other thing that came out this week I just hate the grading of our schools uh boy because like Midville they have kids that are very transient and they may actually double their educational level and still have a d it's not reflecting anything so when they come out I don't look at the Grays the grades are irrelevant to me what I look at is the

231growth levels and every single one of our schools has significant growth levels and that's what I'm looking for that what whatever the child comes in at the end of the year they're farther ahead and not falling behind so it doesn't matter if there's a sea school or a B school or an a school or D school they're making growth in every school in our district and that's reflected from our growth levels and so that's the exciting thing and then I had an opportunity to attend the superintendent's cabinet meeting this week and we had a really exciting uh speaker on employee Wellness presentation I'm excited to see the district really move forward on employee Wellness as we now get out of the coven and everything just start really focusing on our most value able resources and

232it was exciting to see in fact it made me think maybe as a board member there's a certain thing I shouldn't do or ask or something because of the time is taking you our staff uh so it was a it was a good thing and I talked with one or two principals this week and said don't worry anyway so thank you so much thank you Mrs Oaks thank you I want to Echo what was said about the Apex Awards I don't know how Jeff and Kirsten do it you guys are amazing um I also really enjoyed the USB Regional meetings and um I want to thank Amber for that I always find a lot of wisdom and insight from meeting with the other members of usba and getting their perspective it's there's a lot of

233strength in that room um I have real I enjoyed being able to have a town hall meeting last night and between that and knocking doors recently I really find actually that's the best part of a campaign is getting to know people and understanding what their specific concerns are and sometimes it surprises you think that you understand everything that's out there as a concern as you any other pulse Summit and then someone comes in and shares something that you hadn't considered before and I really appreciate that I appreciate how responsive and open superintendent references to the concerns that we share with him from the public and how that process all works so um I want to Echo some of what was said about some of our our great coaches in Mentor foreign the golf coach that

234Mr bear mentioned he really is a remarkable human being and I don't know a close friend of mine her son has been in ICU for amount that we have um with some major issues with his brain he he's had some strokes and um seizures connected to um infection that began with a sinus infection and he was on the golf team and Derek was was up there and him saying to this kiddo come back and play golf with me was one of the first times he responded coming out of what was akin to a coma and after brain surgery so I really have profound respect for his teachers and coaches that consider what they do as more than just a job there's thousands of them in our district and I'm so grateful for them and how

235they impact my children so thank you Mr millerberg foreign by going back to the beginning of the meeting um when principal uh Reynolds was speaking to us uh to me I don't know if anybody out who's pretty obvious that she was becoming pretty emotional about Midvale Elementary and I want you to know that even though it's October I made suffer from some allergies and you may confuse it with being emotional but when I think of Midvale um at home that's home and I spent my time I spent my seven years at Midvale Elementary I don't think they were the Mustangs then I don't think we had a mascot for the school but that's still that's still my place um Lori made mention that they are proud of their degrade Nancy you remember you and I

236chip Watt uh Dr Briscoe and I don't know who else was there probably Leon was there but I can't remember for sure we sat in front of the uh Utah School State Board of Education and pleaded with them to give us additional time to bring that school out of turnaround status and they granted us the extension of the school board we allocated additional funds to bring that out of turnaround status that is a school that has a whole bunch of challenges as Laurie mentioned 11 languages that are spoken in the school highly transient area to where the likelihood of having a child start kindergarten finish fifth grade is a very low percentage and you have teachers that are there because they want to be there because they know they can make a difference and they

237are making it different yeah so just 2.4 short of a c grade darn rights were proud of what's happening at Midvale Elementary it's just an amazing place to be um Dr Robinson and I were there on the first day of school they rolled out the red carpet and we stood there and handed out pencils we slapped hands the excitement of the kids the feeling of the school was really really good um and so I think we have a lot to be proud of for people that are working their rear end off re I chose a different word but you know what I mean uh they're doing a great job there um since we last met I've been I was able to attend the Hillcrest uh School community council meeting uh things are going well at

238Hillcrest they were happy about where they finished up with their grade as well uh before this meeting I was over at Mid Valley for their Community Council um they're excited they increased their grade level by one so they're exciting good things are happening there um I don't know if uh this is what the lady meant when they were talking about saying thank for what happens at Jordan Valley School uh Kirsten and I know what happened uh last weekend at uh Jordan Valley school they had their homecoming dance that is just such a fun thing it is amazing um I'm going to mix religion with politics maybe a little bit here but uh a uh an LDS stake from the Willow Creek area add two Awards that came and provided uh dance partners and entertainment for

239the students at Jordan Valley kudos to those kids they came ready to dance they came ready to play they came to engage with the students at Jordan Valley and they did an absolute great job it was amazing um Nancy you probably know who Jarvis is I don't know how many other people know who Jarvis is but a few years back Jordan Valley rebranded themselves Jarvis is their mascot Jarvis is a chameleon and uh principal the taking offinger gave me a uh a Jarvis and the idea with Jarvis kind of like Flat Stanley if you're familiar with the children's book Flat Stanley he goes everywhere with them Jarvis goes with me and I had jar with that and I captured a few photos of Jarvis uh with the students dancing and uh a principal mouth singer

240is off on medical leave because of the stroke that she'd had and I was able to take those pictures and forward those to her and I hope she enjoyed them uh haven't heard anything I don't know if she'd even checked and get the email but uh that is a great place to be and final thing I have is uh don't forget we have an October challenge for uh usba we won in September yes it was uh you didn't read the email then yeah we won yes I doubt we can win it again well done I didn't know that yeah yeah we did win but I haven't seen the the the prize or whatever but we'll be looking in the mail okay okay yeah and thank you board and you know beyond beyond the prize incentive

241it really it really is helpful in getting us to the point where we've all completed all of the requirements for the Master board certificate yeah so thank you and thank you board members I appreciate all the reports that you give it just is gives a snapshot of all the wonderful things that are happening and um I just I won't repeat any of that but just say ditto to all the great things um but I I do um want to share just kind of a thought I had following up from our study session um discussion about Civics and um I was thinking you know the same when you're I learned everything I need to know about getting along with people in kindergarten well it I was thinking that a lot of what we need to know

242about being a good citizen we can learn by not littering and by picking up trash and it I've been thinking about that and then when you mentioned it seeing the students and I just thought you know that that really is if we could just maybe district-wide just kind of be committed to making our environment a little bit cleaner paying attention to what we do how it affects others and just making that little extra effort to bend down and pick up something or to walk the extra 10 feet to the to the trash receptacle and and just um start there with our quest to be really good citizens anyway just a just a thought and and unless there's anything else one all right I think that concludes our business for tonight's meeting thank you for all

243that have participated and the meeting is now adjourned