001Thank you. Those of you who are here to join us. >> We appreciate it. If you could find your seats and we'll get ready to start. Hopefully everybody gets comfortably. Um, thank you for being here. It is February 3rd, 2026. Time is 7:03. We're going to begin by indicating board members are here. We're start with Clark and hope Oh, wait. Julie is here. Go ahead, Julie. Julie Jackson, Kim Chandler, >> Chris W, Karen Wender, >> Clark Nelson, Todd Hober, >> and Nicole McDerman. And Ben, of course, is on his way. All right, we're going to begin by uh inviting Michelle Steam up to lead us in our p pledge of allegiance. I'll arise. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation
002under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Thank you. We're going to turn the time over to Principal Brett Boden to introduce our reverence. all the way across. And >> we're going to invite the board members to go sit down at the same time. Is that okay? >> Oh, yeah. Of course. >> Um, my students are coming in in the back and I just wanted to apologize for the way I'm dressed. It's very unbecoming of a principal at a board meeting. Um, I came straight from the airport, been traveling all day, but this is a performance not to be missed. This is the William Penn school play and we are doing Lion King Jr. This is a very small contingent contingency of students. There's over 130 students participating in the play. 160, excuse
003me. Yes, of course. So, it's a it's an incredible production. Uh they will be performing two performances um on the evening of February 27th and 8th. Did I get those dates? 26th and 7th. Thank you. So, Thursday and Friday. So, one at 5:30, one at 7 if any of you will join us. And I just wanted to thank the parents for bringing them and our William Penn art booster organization that funds this um incredible program we have in school play and all the um students for participating and all the directors. We have a few of our school directors here as well. But thank you board and superintendent Horsesley for allowing us to perform and take it away students. Break a leg. Yikes. IT'S A LION FROM RUN BUM. MOVE IT. >> A tuma. Look it.
004He's so cute and all alone. Can we keep it? >> Puma, are you not talking about a lion? Lions eat guys like us. >> You okay, kid? I guess so. So, where are you from? >> It doesn't matter. I can't go back. So, you're an outcast. That's Are we? >> What' you do? >> Something terrible, but I don't want to talk about it. >> Then just repeat after me. Hakuna mata. What? >> Hakuna mata. >> It means no words. Akuna mata, what a wonderful praise. >> Hakuna mata may no passing phase >> and leave no worries for the rest of your day. It's our problemata. A mata. Yeah, it's a motto. What's a motto? Nothing. What's the motto with you? >> Who knows what's these two words will solve all your problems. >> That's right.
005Take familiar when he was a young boy. >> When I was A YOUNG BOY. >> VERY NICE. He found a rob and it hurt that my friends never stood down AND ALL THE SAME. >> IT was a shame for CHANGING MY NAME. OH, WHAT'S YOUR NAME? >> How did it feel? >> Not in front of the parents. What a wonderful praise. Ain't no passing gra. It's our philosophy. Welcome to our humble abode. >> Gee, I'm a star. >> I'm so hungry. I NEED A WHOLE ZEBRA. >> LISTEN, KID. If you're going to live with us, you got to eat like us. >> Ew. What's that? >> A gross. >> Gross. >> Slimy yet satisfying. >> I'm telling you, kid. This is the great life. No rules, no responsibilities, and best of all, no worries. one
006for you. Enjoy. >> All right, here it goes. Slimy but yet satisfying. That's it. Hakuna mata hakuna matauna MATAUNA MATA huna matada. Please don't worry for the rest of your days. It's our dream of you. We say we SAY We're here. Is it awesome? >> All right. Thank you so much, William Penn Elementary and the parents for supporting them and and bringing them today. We're going to go ahead and move on to our good news minute. Um, and Julie might come back. We've lost Julie. Okay, Kim, go ahead. All right. Well, it's been a a busy month. There lots of things going on in January. Um, USBA conference, family meetings at Plymouth, Day on the Hill. Lots of us have participated in a lot of those things. I wanted to focus on uh the STEM
007fair actually that I was able to go to. Um it was really fun to see the different projects there that kids have been doing. Things like an air powered train, best ways to mummify things, best toothpaste ingredients, the effect of leaf size on survival after temporary water deprivation, which sunglasses do the best job at filtering UV light, and hint it was the ones I was wearing. So I was very happy about that. My personal favorite though was um um a girl who decided to test the 5-second myth, the 5-second rule. Testing of gummy bears that had been dropped on the floor in like a bowling alley and then somewhere else. I don't remember the second place. >> Do we want to know the results? >> That's that's what I'm getting to. So, so for your
008reference, even those dropped less than 1 second on the floor had more bacterial growth or the same bacterial growth as those that sat there for 10 seconds. So, >> can you cut her mic, please? >> So, what I hear you saying, Kim, is that we can eat things that have been on the floor longer than 10 seconds. >> Well, what I am saying is if you had a 5-second rule and someone else had a 10-second rule, you might as well go to the 10 seconds because it's not going to be any better. Um, but that was just really fun, really creative. Um, enjoyed seeing those kids. Um, talk to several of them and they were just, you know, really impressive. So, that was my minute this month. >> Thanks, Julie. We'll come back to you
009if that's okay. >> No. Oh, sorry. Yeah. >> Yeah. We're sorry. My apologies. We're coming back to Julie right now. >> I also um have had a couple of great moments um being a judge at the STEM fair. The best thing that I learned is that if you have eat something spicy, you drink chocolate milk. By far, it's the best thing. And I've already used that knowledge since then. Um I have had an incredible um opportunity this month to just be an advocate for our for us on the federal level um in Washington DC as well as in the state level. And uh it's really exciting to see so many people with many different ideas coming together to figure out how to help kids learn. And um many of those people do not have the
010same ideas I have about how it's best to do that. But um it's it's a privilege to get to work with so many people to try to figure out if we can solve for learning. you know, um I wanted to especially point out rather than talk about my school visits, I want to talk about a couple of teacher visits. Um I I don't want to talk about specifics because they're, you know, personal to the teacher, but just want to recognize that uh January is a time for real resilience for our teachers. They go, they have it's a really hard time. And when I was a teacher, January was the worst. Like it was just get through it, honestly. And uh uh lots of teachers who are struggling, showing up, putting a smile on their face,
011loving their students, teaching their students, using great instructional methods. And then when 3:30 or whenever the bell rings, it's like exhaustion. And so I just want to tell our teachers that we see you. We appreciate you. We um want to do things to help you. We're trying to figure out how to make systems that support you. And um uh even when you have setbacks, uh we want to show up to support you. So that's it. >> Thanks. I was able um to go to the CTE openhouse which is at the GTI just behind us. And um it was wonderful to see they have five floors at the GTI and every floor had students um talking about what they specifically are learning in their different fields. And um I was lucky enough to take a couple
012of grandchildren and have them see that it's real life that these classes can prepare them while they're in high school to go on and get a job or even to um specialize more in college. Um, so I I think that's a good news minute and I'm grateful that the GTI does th that open house every year that our students and it was full. It was amazing how many people were there. So thanks to them. Um Kim was correct in saying January is busy. This was a really busy month for us board members and um I tried to attend as many things as I could and I just want to highlight three things that haven't been mentioned yet. Um the first one is the region PTA 5 did their awards night and recognize so many of
013our students um almost every every network was covered and I want to say 80 plus winners that from our district are going on to represent at the state level. So congratul winners that from our district are going on to compete at the state level for the reflections and those kids were so excited and it was such a great put together um night awards night. So thank you PTA. Um the second one is I got to ride the Excel Awards bus for the Excel winners and I rode the afternoon only. I couldn't do the morning and afternoon because mostly it's really exhausting but it's so much fun. Um, Jen Bodell has music and games on the bus and we had treats and then um, the foundation does such a fantastic job of honoring our our nine
014teachers and one admin and um, I just want to thank them. Thank you so much for doing that. It's such a highlight of the year. And um those award-winning teachers and principal are just they're so well, they're surprised for one, but they they're just so full of gratitude. You can tell what makes them an Excel award winner. They're fantastic. And then the last one, I just want to um I'm so excited Cypress High finally got to do their fall musical in January. um you know they have a new school and there was some delays in getting that production ready and um it was Freaky Friday. Um they did a phenomenal job and you could hear every single word and note that was played and that's a first for Cypress. So I was so happy to
015be able to be there, listen to them, hear them perform. They did a fantastic job and I want to just thank everyone who is involved in that production because it was um a long time coming and they were just so thrilled to finally be able to perform. Okay, Chris kind of stole my thunder. Thanks, Chris. But the Excel bus um award, I I didn't ride the bus, but I was Can my microphone really weird? Okay, there we go. Um, I was super excited that out of the 10 winners, three of them were in precinct six, many in West Valley and Karns. And so, I was so happy when I saw that list. So, out of the um 10 winners, I had uh two teachers and then the administrator of the year. And it was so
016much fun to visit those three schools. Um, just for those who know, not only is there a bus, but we have a jazz bear. Um, we get the bear at all of them and he has a good time. He does what he wants and however he wants it and has a lot of fun. But he gets those kids just really super excited about honoring their teachers and honoring the principal and it is fantastic partnership we have with them. JD does an amazing job. you're going to hear a presentation later about how awesome our foundation is, but this is one of the absolute highlights of the year for me is to go around and honor those those Excel award winners. Um especially when it's super close to home and it's in one of my schools and
017so and I claim them as mine. Um the most common reaction as they round the corner is just shock and then tears in that order. They're surprised and then they cry and that's just how much it means to them. And so this happened particularly with the administrator of the year, Kyle Schoffen from West Karns Elementary. And I know him well and he just was they had done an assembly without his knowledge. And so he walks in and all the kids are in the gym. All the teachers are in the gym, the Jazz Bear staring him down. And and it's just it's fantastic. It's such a special way to to be able to honor our outstanding educators and administrators. Um, USBA conference was already mentioned. Board members go to conferences too to learn how to be
018better board members and that always happens the first weekend in January. Um, the last thing is just um swim season's been winding down. I've been able to attend some meets and cheer on and it's fun. I love when they're district, you know, the schools, the competitors are within district because then you kind of get to cheer both teams on um there. So, it's been it's been fun to see swim season come to an end. Also, last thing is just as I visit schools in their community councils, one of my favorite parts is just to hear the awesome questions from parents who serve on those and volunteer and that they have good questions and that they care and that they want answers and how can we help and what difference can we make and how can
019we make that difference happen. And so, just to all those who serve either on PTAs or community councils, those are the parents who just are in it for the right reasons. They love their kids, they love their schools, and they just want to make a difference. So shout out to them and keep your questions coming because that's the best way to learn. >> Thanks Clerk. >> Thank you. Um it has been said u many many times that our schools uh should be and are the centerpieces of our community. And last night at Cottonwood High School um that was very evident um to the Cottonwood network and its its community. uh the school and uh its community came together to honor Greg Southwick who is the former uh athletic director uh coach and CYMC teacher uh
020for a very long time at the school. Greg retired last year at the end of last school year uh a little bit less than two weeks ago. Greg very suddenly and unexpectedly passed away. And we were able to honor his uh family um his wife and his his adult children that came to the school to be honored and to honor uh Greg for his contributions to our community. And uh I think in our world uh more than anything, we all need to belong to a community. Um, and I was particularly um impressed last night with the opportunity to to belong to such a community, to honor someone that's contributed so much to our students and our children. Um, and it was a great night and a great opportunity to honor a very, very good man.
021Thanks. >> Thanks, Clark. Um, the USBA conference has already been mentioned, um, as have the Excel Awards also delightful. Um, I do want to highlight Day on the Hill. Um many of us were able to attend and and visit with our some many of our elected officials, not all of them, but we did visit with several of them and we appreciate the time that they took and um the work that they do. This is a busy time of year for them and so for them to take the time to to visit with us and make us feel like what we have to say is important. I really do appreciate that. Um I also do want to just take part of my time um to highlight something that I don't I I realize this today. I
022don't think people know that we do evaluate our superintendent and we evaluate our business administrator. These two gentlemen, they are they are our employees and they are the ones that we directly oversee and we do a an evaluation of them. Um and it happens once a year and we have to do it in in a timely manner according to their contract. But um they go through an evaluation and they go through setting goals and they go through um comments from us as we look at what what a job they're doing. And um it it's it I think that's valuable for everybody to know and understand because our teachers go through this, our administrators go through this. Um we actually do a board evaluation as well and um it was just something that we did we
023did just in December. uh we did um superintendent horse le and so I think it's just important for people to understand and know that we all go through this and we all try to make goals to improve and to get better. So um that is I just wanted to make sure people were aware of that. Um I apologize I missed recognizing our visitors the people who were visiting with us. So I want to go back really quick and recognize our PTA. Will you guys stand and introduce yourselves? >> I'm Liz Shaw region 5 chair. I'm Amy Warren, your council president Jones, reflection advisor, and Michelle with >> Thank you. Um, GA Michelle Jones, president. >> I'm Karen Burns. I'm on the GA board of directors and I represent Granite at the Utah Education Association. >>
024I'm Shannon. I'm just a member. >> Just a member. I'm a member. >> All right. Thank you. Granite office professionals. I don't know if I saw Gina. Uh middle managers. Do we have any representing middle managers? Gaspa. Oh, did we did we have one? Um I know we have JD here from the Grant Education Foundation. Were any of your other folks here? I didn't see anybody. Um and then do we have any elected officials, but I did not see any. And then they're all up on the hill. And then um I I would invite all of our admin, we have a lot in our audience today. Any administrators that are here, will you stand up and be recognized as well? >> Wow. Thank you. All right, we're going to go ahead and move on. I'm
025going to invite Dr. Joan Bramble to come up. She has some recognitions for our highest proficiency gain schools. >> All right, we're going to continue in the vein of uh good news. So, thank you um board and superintendency for the opportunity to present tonight to you. Uh we are recognizing our um performance of a few of our schools that stand out for their academic gains and the percent of students achieving proficiency from last year's end of level assessment. So we're we're kind of late in this this year. The uh results came out a little bit later than usual. So we're looking at 2425 results compared to their 23 24 results. Uh earlier uh I was presenting how a lot of our schools set some really high goals. I think this is a great example of
026when some of our schools meet those really audacious goals. So, they are to be commended. So, I'm going to be reading the names of um our schools that are being recognized. We have five elementary schools, two junior highs, and one high school tonight. And I'm going to have um Dr. Nerden come on over and he will be handing you your trophy. Um we'll have you come up and shake hands with the board. and then you're going to remain up here uh for a group picture. So, we're going to start with elementary and let's start with Truman who um increased their percentage by 3.6%. Come on up, TRUMAN. HEAT. HEAT. And remember, you're going to stand up here for a picture. So, hold on just a moment. Really representing Oh, and I think they brought their
027whole school. It takes a whole school. >> One, two, three. Yeah, she's out of here. >> All right, let's give them a round of applause. Next, we're going to rec recognize Monroe Elementary. They increased by 3.85%. They increased by 3.85%. All right. And next we're going to recognize Beehive Elementary. And as they come up, they had a 6.13% INCREASE. HEAT. HEAT. CONGRATS. ONE, TWO, THREE. >> And we'll remind you to take care of those trophies. They are traveling trophies. They're supposed to be filled with candy. >> Uhhuh. >> Our next school, elementary school, Whittier Elementary. And they increased by 7.17%. Nice job. I forgot the excitement. Nobody's wearing the mask. And now she highest school, Academy Park Elementary. Come on. >> And they increased by 10.78 percentage points. And as they were coming up, a
028little clarity. I put in all of the subject areas to calculate their change in percent. So it's not just one subject area, not just ELA, math, it's the whole thing. Takes a lot of work and these schools have worked hard. All right. And next we have two junior highs. We're going to recognize the first junior high, Hunter Jr. They increased by 2.39%. Nice job. Congratulations. >> I was here. >> Not you. And our second junior high with the highest of all of our junior highs was Granite Park Junior High. They increased by 3.32% POINTS. I really like this. Sarah is she was a grand. >> Yeah. SHOW YOUR SHIRT, BECKY. SHOW YOUR SHIRT. PART. And lastly, our very highest high school with an increase in 10.53 percentage points. >> Holy cow. >> OLYMPUS HIGH SCHOOL.
029YOU THINK I wish you You guys, will you make sure you make sure I donuts. I think And so thank you to all of our administrators, teachers, uh our par educators who work tirelessly to help our students in their pursuit of academic excellence. Congratulations to all of you continue the hard work. Well done. It's super impressive. I just want you to know I am a Granite Park grizzly. Thank you. Um, patron participation is actually granite elected officials participation, but I didn't see any, so unless I'm missing some, we're going to move on to patron participation. We're going to invite Shannon Gardner to come up um for patron participation. Come on up. Introduce yourself. Say your name, please, for the record. And you've got three minutes. I didn't know there'd be this many people. >> Um,
030so my name is Shannon Garner. I'm uh a teacher in Granite. Um, but I'm here as a parent in Granite. Um, I live in the Granger network. I have a fifth, third, and a preschooler at Rolling Meadows Elementary. Um, and I'm just here to really just say thank you to um, two people um, who I serve on the community council for Rolling Meadows and I was invited well I was able I mean I came to the district community council meeting cuz that's what you do and I am just here to say thank you to your board. Um, I've been very impressed of how you guys handle things and how you support and how dedicated you are to the students and parents in all of Granite School District. Um, so with my fifth grader, I've been
031at Rolling Meadows for 7 years now cuz he did preschool and um, I've been able to see just the growth, the positive positive change, um, the resilience and inclusive community that's at Rolling Meadows. Um, and that, you know, it starts at the top. So, from your example and supporting principles and parents. But I'm here to say thank you to Dr. Mitch Deran and Dr. Tyler How because um I'm just very impressed and I know I say impressed a lot, but um that interact the interaction at the district community council meeting was amazing and um Julie attended I mean and you were there but just it's so easy for a parent meeting to go negative or south. you know, you have all these parents with different views and it could have gone differently, but the way
032that they set it up and like it was like we were in a classroom. They had us get in groups and they were moving from group to group and they just were interacting with us. And um I'm just thankful for that because they communicated with us. They even said, "We are stepping back. We're not here to give you feedback. We're not here to correct you. We are here just to listen to you." and um they allowed for parent input without feedback or correction. You sat with us. You took turns with each of our groups. You took notes and really took notes. Um Dr. How, you are an amazing noteaker. He like listened and wrote down what everybody was saying, which didn't miss anybody's feedback or input. And so I think that's actually really as a
033parent, it's really important to know that you're listening and you're not there to be like, "Oh, you're wrong." you like you you you were there with us as parents. So, I just really appreciate um you both and I just wanted to point out like it's obviously why you were chosen for these positions and I'm just as representing you know parents across the district. I'm just really appreciative of you both. SO SHANNON and Shannon is an amazing amazing special ed teacher. So thank you Shannon for what you do too. Um we're going to go ahead and go on to our consent items. These things we have been able to look over for the last few days and ask any questions. So if there are no further questions about it, I will entertain a motion. I move
034we accept the consent agenda. Second. >> We have a motion and a second to approve the consent agenda. Is there any further discussion on this? >> I just again given the concerns I've previously shared and still have. I have some concerns with the curriculum on the agenda. So, it will be a no today. >> Okay. Thank you, Kim. All right. Any other comments? Those in favor, please say I. >> I. Any opposed? >> Nay. >> Great. Motion passes. Um we're going to go ahead and move on to our action items. The first item on our um agenda for the action items is our administrative appointments. Again, this is something that we've had for a few days, been able to ask questions and and uh talk about it. So, if there are no other questions, I
035will entertain a motion. >> I move that we approve the administrative appointments. >> I'll second it. We have a motion and a second, excuse me, to approve the administrative appointments. Is there any further discussion on this? Right. All in favor, please say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? >> All right. That motion carries. We're going to invite. >> Oh, okay. We're going to invite invite assistant superintendent to come up and share. >> All right. Good evening, President McDermott, board, and superintendent Horsley. I am very excited to introduce two new directors this evening for the teaching and learning division. First, the career and technical education director is Mandy Chapel. Mandy began her career in Granite School District as a teacher at Granite Technical Institute and she served as an assistant principal at Jefferson Junior High, Benyan
036Junior High, and Valley. And I think at some point along there, she left us for a district up north, but then saw the light and came on back to us here as principal of Valley Junior High School. and then later she became um she was assistant principal at Valley and then later became principal. Mandy's currently the principal at Granite Technical Institute and will be the new director for career and technical education. YAY. >> All right, Mandy, will you introduce who you have here with you today? >> Sorry about this side. uh my husband Brad and then my son Dax and then of course my great support system of friends and family. >> Yay. Thanks Randy. >> And there's there's somebody missing. Like it feels like there should be another mean girl. A taller boulder one.
037>> I'm sure he's got, you know, legislative important stuff to do. >> Sure. Sure. Busy, right? >> All right. The next new director is for our preschool. Um, I'd like to introduce Emily Ripco. All right. Emily began her career in Granite School District in preschool services. She served as a speech language pathologist and later a coordinator. She's currently an assistant director in preschool services and will be the new associate director of preschool services. WELCOME. >> And will you introduce who's with you this evening? >> Hi Rob, my husband Ted, my son, and Matt, and my incredible support and mentor. >> Thank you. board president, members of the board, it's my privilege to announce a few more appointments. Um although this was associated with some midyear movement, we're very excited that these appointments will actually be
038able to move into their new position mid year and get associated with their new schools, their new staffs, and their communities. I'd like to ask Kimberly Hill to stand up if she could give a round of applause. KIMBERLY HAS WORKED in Granite School District for 18 years as a sixth grade teacher at Monroe Elementary where she later served as instructional coach. She's currently an administrative intern at Hartland and Jordan School District. She will be joining Upland Terrace and Silver Hills Elementary as an assistant principal. Kimberly, you got to stay standing one more moment. Can you introduce who you brought with you? Yes, my husband Gerald and my two daughters and Candy. >> Cute. Thank you. I'd >> like to recognize Grace Morell. If you could stand. Grace was an elementary teacher at South Karns Elementary
039for seven years, teaching fifth and sixth grade. She was also an administrative intern at Monroe Elementary. She's currently the assistant principal at Armstrong Academy, near and dear to my heart. And she will now step into the role of the principal of Armstrong Academy. >> Grace, can you let us know who you brought? >> These are my parents and you guys. >> She's also at Monroe right now. So, Um, can we ask Terrell Terrell Richards to stand? >> Terrell has served Grant School District in a variety of roles, including physical education teacher and head track coach at Cottonwood High School, physical education teacher at Granite Connection High School, and head football coach and physical education teacher at Hunter High School. He was also an administrative intern at Granite Park Junior High. Terrell is currently beloved and
040assistant principal at Taylor'sville High School and will now be the new principal at Lakeidge Elementary School. Congratulations. Can you introduce who you brought with you? >> Yes. Over here, this is my wife Sabrina and three of our four children. This is Zia, Javari, Jade, and our oldest is currently playing a basketball. >> Go Granger. Thank you. Congratulations to each of you. >> I am uh so excited to be able to present to all of you Miss Valerie Bergera. Please stand. >> Granite was very lucky to steal Valerie from Salt Lake City back in 2018. She is currently the principal of Oakidge Elementary. Prior to that, she was the principal of Oolen Walker, previously Roosevelt Elementary. Valerie brings 24 years of valuable experience in school administration at schools with gifted magnet programs, dual immersion schools, title
041one schools, and turnaround schools. Her dedication to identifying instructional strategies, targeted professional development, and weekly coaching with her teachers helped to make double-digit gains in English language arts and science in one year. while a principal in Salt Lake City School District. This growth mindset and collective efficacy with her staff, students, and community helped them to be named as the two 201617 top performing title one school in that district. During a state audit of that same school, the auditor reported that they had demonstrated the ability to consistency consistently outperform academic expectations and should be looked to for guidance on implementing successful practices. in 2020. While here in Ros at Roosevelt, her school was among the top three in mo in MGP as well as had significant growth and improvement with the lowest 25%. Valerie brings a
042wealth of expertise and proven strategies needed to enhance student achievement in every school and that's why we have selected her and we welcome her to her no new role as our director of student assessment. Valerie, will you introduce your folks who come with you? >> This is my daughter McKenna, my husband Paul, and my dear friend and her Miller. >> Thank you. >> We're gonna um turn the time over to Dr. How. is going to uh relate the transfers that have happened because of the dominoes of online >> movement. Yes. By way of information and um just to to keep you up to speed, Eric Bailey is being um moved to Cypress High School as an assistant principal replacing Josh Moore there. Heather Backram Miller is moving to Oakidge Elementary has just spoken replacing Valerie
043there. Andrea McMillan, um the assistant principal at Granger High School, is moving to be an assistant principal at Taithersville High School, replacing Terrell. Um Josh Moore, assistant principal at Cypress, is moving to be an assistant principal at Granger High School, replacing Andre McMillan. Anna Pendleton, who has been full-time at Dos Mundo right now, will split her time as an assistant principal at Dos Mundo and at um Monroe Elementary. Sorry about that. and John Paul Sornson, a principal at Armstrong Academy, will be an assistant principal at Taylor'sville High School. >> Effective what date? >> That's effective on February 9th. So, next >> February 9th. Yeah. >> Thank you. Thank you all for being here. We really appreciate it and we're excited for your new adventure ahead. All right. We're going to go ahead and move on
044and invite um Luke Allen to come up along with I think Jen Bodell for our calendar options. You guys don't want to hear about the calendar. I'm not as nervous anymore. They're all gone. >> All right. Good evening, board. We're very happy to be back to present uh the second round of our calendar feedback survey for the 2027 2028 calendar. For our viewing audience, I'm just going to take 30 seconds and give the history of how we get to this point each year. So, if you all remember back in September until October, we had our initial calendar preference survey out. To that survey, we had 7,000 responses. And this chart here kind of shows the uh priorities that people had for their calendar preferences with a long winter break being the top priority and then
045starting labor in August or ending by Memorial Day kind of tied for a second. Some of the other key takeaways from the calendar survey were that people strongly prefer to have term 2 end before winter break and kind of an overall philosophical concept of people prefer um a longer summer with shorter breaks during the school year. We then met with the calendar committee in early November to create two draft calendar options. We presented here to the board in December on those two options and received your approval to move forward with sending those out to the the community for a survey. We sent that survey out from January 9th until January 25th. And we received 6,145 responses uh to that survey. Um quick overview of who responded to that survey. We had around 3,200 parents, 1,300
046uh employees, a little over a thousand students, and 527 people who are both parents and employees. Here's our responses by network. Similar to the last time, we had Olympus and Skyline leading the way with over a,000 responses. Taylor'sville with uh 866, and then the rest of our networks were between four and 600 responses. Uh in a in a moment, Jen will go over uh what the calendar drafts were, but I'll just uh go over what the overall preferences were. So, we had basically 40 56% of respondents prefer calendar B compared to 43.7 for calendar A. Um that broken down by response by relationship to Granite. You see that parents preferred calendar B over calendar A by about 53% to 46%. For employees, they preferred calendar B 58% to 41. For our parent and employee group,
047they preferred calendar B 53.9% to 46.1. And students preferred calendar B 64.9% to 35.1%. Responses by network. I won't take the time to read every one of these. You'll see all but one of the networks preferred calendar B, usually in the 50 to 60% range. The one exception being Olympus that the Olympus network that preferred calendar A 57% over calendar B of 43%. So I will turn it to Jen who's going to give us a quick overview of what those two calendar options were that people provided their feedback on. >> Okay. So we have calendar A and 43.7% chose that one and option B 56.3. The summaries are right on this page. So, calendar B was the chosen pick with teachers returning on August 9th. School beginning on August 16th, ending before Memorial Day on
048May 25th. Fall break, 2 days. Winter break starting on December 23rd and ending on January 3rd. Semester 1, which was a big priority, ending before winter break on December 22nd. Spring break is 5 days, and the number of days of each term are listed underneath. So, that was the the top choice. Calendar A, I'll go over it, but teachers return on August 16th, school begins on August 23rd, and it ends on June 2nd. Fall break is the same with 2 days. Winter break starting on December 18th, ending on January 2nd. One of the big differences was the semester 1 ending on January 21st. plenty into January, spring break, April 6th and 7th, so only being two days, but the preference was B. Uh, and very quickly, I just wanted to acknowledge and thank everyone who
049left a free response to the survey. We had about 300 3,000 people leave a written comment to that survey. All of those comments are available on the on our website. If you click on this the live stream of this meeting, there's another link to the agenda where you can see all of those comments. But here's just a quick summary of what those trends were. Um people who left a written comment, would you take a minute and just go through all those comments for us really quick? >> Well, if you got uh 10 days for me to read them all, we can definitely do that. Um but the people who chose to leave a written response, there was a trend that preferred a later start date in August. Um people commented on the variations of winter
050and spring break that we had in these um with many wanting both. Um many people also preferred ending school before Memorial Day. Uh a lot of people as we know from the the survey data prioritized ending semester 1 before winter break. There was a a desire among many for fewer scattered single days off and more predictable longer breaks for families. And then many people commented about aligning schedules with other districts or college can calendar calendars etc. That is all we have prepared for you. We'll open it up to any questions and or discussion. >> Just a reminder, this is an action item. So, we will need to make a decision on which one is a first reading, right? That we're doing or is it is this a final? >> This is first, >> right? So,
051>> are there two readings? That's her question. >> Okay, there are two readings on this. So we have a first reading on this and this will be our So we need to decide today. >> So can I get a motion on the table so you can open it up for discussion? I move that we approve calendar B. >> Second. We have a motion in a second to approve calendar B. Uh is there any discussion on this? I feel like there is. Julie, I just I mean I just feel for my community of Olympus High and I think that they need to be paid attention to that they overwhelmingly did not like the calendar that everyone else overwhelmingly did. And um so I will be um in honor of trying to just symbolically give them a
052voice. I will not be voting in favor of this. I just think they need recognition. You know what I mean? Sometimes you just need to know that somebody noted that you did not agree with this even if you know you're not going to win. So >> I need to clarify as a first reading added to my motion. >> Okay. So Karen's motion is we >> approve calendar B as a first reading. I forgot that part. >> And Kim seconds that. All right. Kim, go ahead. I just was going to comment to me and I I didn't feel like super warm and fuzzy about either calendar this year. It just seemed to have some challenges whichever way you went, right? So, pros and cons both ways. So, I'm just going with the majority opinion on this
053one. Connie, did you have any thoughts you wanted to share? Well, I always always want to start on a Wednesday for teachers because I think that that is a good spot for teachers as well as students to have that first week shorter. And um so I'm I yeah I'm not in favor of being so >> both of us start on Monday. Just point out >> I know >> Chris did I'm I'm kind of with Connie. I I really feel like our teachers love starting a Tuesday or Wednesday because it's a a great get your feet wet kind of week and they can go over a lot of the procedure type stuff and where to line up and do all those things. So, it's hard when they start on a Monday and then they have that
054full week and it's so draining. Um, but neither calendar gave that option. Just maybe note for the future we can try to have one of the calendars do that. I don't know if there's a reason. Do you guys have a reason? >> The calendaring committee that was a discussion point for sure and the calendaring committee >> went with both for Mondays. I I'm not saying um that anything is already fixed or could but in the past like this last year um that Monday and Tuesday have been used historically as legislative days to accomplish what you're saying given the constraints of what the calendar committee had to come up with >> that and that's what we did discuss because that was part of negotiations. It was not written into the calendar, but it is very possible
055that that may be negotiated again that that will be a legislative day or maybe it wasn't. No, it wasn't. Sorry, it was not negotiated. We just said we'd like to give that to teachers. >> I apologize. So, yeah. Karen, >> two comments about the calendar. What everybody really wants is to start after Labor Day. They want their full fall break. They want two weeks of Christmas break, a week of spring break. They want their three-day Thanksgiving break and then they want to wrap it all up before Memorial Day. And so, so I just say that because yes, just a minute. I just say that because in reality that's what everybody wants, but we have to meet certain criteria at the state for certain amount of days and seat time and instructional learning and all those
056good things. And so calendar committee, we know you have a tall task. I appreciated that the calendars were very different, which also gave us a number of very different numbers. My second comment is it's great that 56.3% of people like that B and they're going to be happy that we vote B and then fully recognizing there's 43.7% of the people out there who are going to be disappointed with our vote. And so no matter what you do with a calendar, about half the people are going to be mad at you anyway. So it's just one of the realities. So, those are my two comments. I'm still supporting B. >> Actually, only 42% will be about it. 40 40 44 40%. >> I'm just kidding. >> I'm sorry. >> Go ahead, Clark. >> I don't have
057any comments. Thank you. >> I Yeah, I'll just say Hakuna Matata. Sorry. >> I I may also say call the question, but I'm not going to say it yet in case there's somebody else that wanted to say something >> in with Clark every time we have >> every time we're going to do this. Okay. Great. You know, and I I was there. It's true. I was there and I I totally agree, Karen. I, as I read the responses, many prefer ending school before Memorial Day, but they also want to start later in August and they want a long spring break and they want a long winter break and they but they want the semester to end before. So, here's the thing, and I think I don't I don't remember if we discussed it here, but
058I know we discussed it in the calendar committee. I think the question next year needs to be would you prefer to start earlier in August and get out and end the semester before Christmas or would you prefer to start later get out later in June and end the semester because those things are contingent upon each other and as a calendaring committee we could not make it work in well we could but you would have no breaks. at all. So that is the that's the question. Would you like to have absolutely no breaks? And I just want to point out, Julie, I appreciate you representing your community, but I do want to point out I think sometimes our parents are like, "Oh, my poor children." But I want you to look at what the children said.
059They said students said overwhelmingly that they prefer to be. And if our students are saying that they are okay going earlier in August, I feel like we also need to honor that. >> I I agree. Every year I go with what the overall district likes. >> Yeah. >> Because I feel like I'm really voting for the whole district. Um my community knows needs to know that they've been heard >> and and I totally respect that. >> So I'm going to still do that. I just I think it's interesting that our students probably I I think there's some parents out there that are like oh my student can't go that's too early or that you know but I think our students have also spoken and said no we're okay with this and we would prefer to
060get out before before the winter break. So anyway that's just my two cents on there. So all right we have a motion and a second before us. If there's no further discussion all in favor please say I. I. Those opposed. Right. One. Um, so one from Julie. Everybody else, it is um it go it does pass. Sorry. All right. Thank you. Thank you. We'll see you next month for the second reading. All right. We're going to bring up JD Talbot, our director for the Granite Education Foundation to get a a report from him. Good evening, board. Happy to be here. I'm not going to start until Jen gives me a little pom pom, though. Thank you. >> What is going on? >> Hey, sometimes you got to ask for it. I'm super excited to be
061here to to talk about the foundation. I do feel like this is preaching to the choir cuz you all know what we do and and have been involved in so much. So, uh, I got to start by recognizing and and putting it out there that none of the stuff I'm about to share happens without being surrounded by completely amazing people on my foundation team that show up every day and go above and beyond for the students and teachers here in Granite. So, huge shout out to them, but also huge shout out and thank you to you all because we could not do anything that we do without the support. And and I've said this before and I want to reiterate that as I meet with my education foundation colleagues across the state, I am definitely
062in a very very small minority of the of the support that we get from the district school board. So, thank you really sincerely for all of that. Um, we still are operating with our four the same four pillars that we were a year ago. Uh, I do want to highlight that last year was the the the top year we've ever had in the Grant Education Foundation for both donations and volunteer hours. So, we're coming off of a huge huge year and super excited to continue to build off of that momentum. Um, to just highlight a few of the things that we do in here. So, our our access to opportunity pillar, this is uh one that you've all participated in, building literacy kits, but also last year we were able to secure a a huge
063donation for our absolutely incredible kid award. And that that donor gave a $40,000 scholarship to the winner of that. So, that's a huge thing. So 10,000 a year for four years. Uh to a kid that really, you know, had been been through it and and and grinded out to get to graduation and they were setting them up for for uh future success. So that that's super exciting. Our bus passes program continues to grow. Um again, I'm not going to belabor all of this stuff, but and you all have been a huge part of this, the educator support and recognition with the Excel Awards just coming fresh off that. That's always a re-energizer. When I talk earlier about the the grind of January, I think it's such a good month for us to get out and
064do that and celebrate not just the winners, but to to give kudos to all of our teachers here in Granite. Uh we continue to do Thank you Thursday. Uh with our teacher grants. Last year we gave out over $1,200 $250 teacher grants in the district and this year that total number of of funding we have in our Apple grant program is up to $330,000. So, that's a huge thing to be able to just get that out. And it's and what's so awesome about that is that particular donor wants this to be no strings attached grants for our teachers because he knows that they go and use so much of their own funding to fund things in their classroom that he wants if they if they want to use it on whatever to support what they
065do. So, I think it's such a huge awesome thing. our food assistance program. We're still doing these the these three um core programs there where the student the school snack pickup has really picked up. This is again a double win program because kids are getting snacks and teachers aren't buying them. And so that to me I I really love it when we can we can impact both sides of it. And then our student weekend kits we had obviously had Vivant come up again huge fund 50,000 of those for us and build those. So huge thanks to them and their team. And then our emergency food box program. Uh this this program has continued to grow as the needs in our district have grown. So the emergency food box program is um we have it's really
066awesome because we have some post high students that come over and they build these boxes. But then these are on hand for when a social worker hits an unfortunate situation where there's no food in a home or they just know that a family's really struggling. This partnership is with uh United Way and Door Dash where that a social worker could put in that order and then Door Dash would deliver a food box to that home. Uh which is really awesome because it's a lot more food than a student could carry home, but it also um really saves the dignity of the kid, right? Because they don't they don't have to be labeled as the poor kid carrying a box of food home. It's just delivered straight to their home. So, we we really love that
067one. Can I also say I love that one because um a lot of some of our um grandparents and other people raising these students don't have transportation. So I think that's such a great service for them. So thank you. >> Yeah, >> JD. These are the items in those kits. Sometimes we see these kits and they're more just, you know, easy to prepare foods cuz it's the kids going home and doing the mac and cheese or whatever. But that food box, if I'm not mistaken, is more staples that will last far longer than a just a prepared one single prepared meal, right? >> 100%. Yep. More complete meals. Uh still high in calories. We want, you know, we want it to be some just some dense meals for kids, but but yeah, it to that's
068a great point that it is it's not just the prepare fast for a kid. It's it's a meal for the the family can can have and and hopefully have leftovers and enjoy for a while. our student aid program. Uh you're all familiar with the Santaac portion of this and they were recognized for a second year in a row. Uh this time with the outstanding volunteer award from at Utah Philanthropy Day, which was a huge honor for them. So they're they're on backto-back years of of being mad at me for being recognized, but they're really awesome and they deserve that recognition. And so but and and you all have been there and supported all that stuff. And so our need across the board in all of these programs continues to just increase. And so people are
069like, "Well, are we solving the problem?" And and in a district our size, we're we're not trying to solve the problem. What we're trying to do is make sure that the that the impact of poverty isn't hitting kids in the classroom so that when they're there, they can worry about learning and and feeling like they're they're safe and that their needs are taken care of. Uh here's just some some highlights that I wanted to put on here. Um, we're still we're still doing the the fun stuff with the new teacher store and again the Apple grants. Last year was at 280 and again this year we're up to that 330,000. Um, the literacy kits has been a huge success. We're we're kind of um I know we've talked a little bit in in my in
070my other hat in the family engagement world about what do we do with parent teacher conferences, but these literacy kits are having a positive unintended consequence of really driving data uh to put data in front of parents and and we're seeing the impact in the schools that are doing it doing it the right way by involving parents and showing the data. We're seeing huge gains and huge progress that way. Uh so they're they're doing what what um the goddess of family engagement, Karen Map, says is is you got to link everything to learning and our schools that are doing that, it's really uh making huge strides. So we're we're super excited about our partners that have come in and been willing to fund these literacy kits and it's been a a huge deal uh across
071the board for them. And here's just a a year-to-ate total of again we're tracking our volunteer hours. Uh this is huge for us and and last year I I did a big thank you for Twin Peaks. But again, this sets us apart. Twin Peaks sets us apart from any other edition because we can host volunteers and have them and that it's just such a big big deal. So I hope that you always feel that gratitude from our end for for the opportunity to be there because it is a gamecher for us and it and it allows us to do things that that most nonprofits our size cannot do. So, it's just a it's a big deal for us to be there and to have these volunteers and put all these hours. I think last year
072at the end of the year, I think it the volunteer total made it so we had the equivalent of like 47 extra full-time employees. So, that just speaks to how many hours are getting put in to our kids and teachers, which is which is really awesome. Um, here's here's our year to date of of funding coming in. Again, that's of as of of mid January, and we're continuing to to do what we can to to keep bringing in more. I mean, that's I guess that's the the the blessing and the curse of of running the foundation is that you you have goals, but you never really hit the mark, if you will, cuz there's just always more that we can do. Uh so, it's super exciting. just to want to make sure if we're gonna
073publicly say thanks that we hit some of our biggest donors here and people that are playing a major role in this the fun stuff that we're able to do. So, just a shout out to all these these folks that that from these companies that both give of of financially, but also so many of these companies show up and volunteer and come to bat for our kids and teachers. Um, here's the the list and the same ways to get involved. And again, you all know these because you've been at so many of these. Uh, right now is a super fun time of year and highlight how we have a growing number of schools doing the Super Bowl caring and in and being creative and doing fun fun things to and really it's awesome to see them
074number one support kids in their and teachers in their own district, but also start to realize and have that empathy that they they may go to school with kids that have these needs and they and they don't know it. And so it's it's been really awesome to see the leadership in these schools uh take a take a big role in in again raising funds and and and getting food to be able to put in some of our pantries and then our packs and that kind of stuff. That's all I have. So appreciate again your time and and for your support for all that we do. >> Thank you JD. >> Um I just want to say we pass on to your folks as well. I think a lot of the times that we've been able
075to go have been after hours or on a Saturday or something. And the fact that you guys are willing to do that so that we can come and help or that we can have some of our volunteers come and help is very appreciative. That's I think going above and beyond what your job is and you guys really truly have the vision of what this does for our kids. So, thank you. Thank you for taking care of our kids. >> I will pass that on. Thank you. >> Thanks, Jie. All right. Um, our next information item, we're going to, um, invite up Dr. Patrick Flanigan, who is our human resource director, and he has a stirring report about our FTE location allocation and comparative staffing. >> Are there jokes, Patrick? >> We're like Hong Kong. >>
076I don't know. earlier this morning. >> I'll do my best. Uh board members, uh it's a pleasure to be with you uh this evening and members of the superintendency. Uh it is a pleasure. I will do my best to keep it as engaging as possible. Uh President McDerman set a high standard and so we'll I'll try to attain that. I was asked uh a few weeks back uh to prepare a thousand foot view. This is a taste of FTE allocation and staffing processes. And so that began by me actually reaching out to a lot of my colleagues uh from around the Salt Lake Valley and uh fortunately I've got some good uh relationships with them. They're willing to share some of the information. So we'll eventually where we're going to talk a little bit about
077what that looks like here in Granite School District and timeline. uh and then uh share how other districts do that and then kind of point out what we see as far as themes go. So let's start with uh >> okay there we go let's start with granite district and the genesis of how we get those FTE numbers uh so all FT allocations are are rooted in student enrollment projections and that's overseen by Steve Hogan in planning and boundaries department and so that that that process begins fairly early on in December when we start looking at open enrollment, he starts looking at those numbers. Some of the variables that they look at as uh that he looks at as he's getting those projections together are historical enrollment. So, he'll look at these cohort survival train trends.
078uh looking at birth rate data. Uh you know the kindergarten and first grade sometimes is a is a difficult one to is a tough nut to crack when he's looking at that uh data. he actually uh you see those uh kindergarten first grade populations uh we don't have the prior attendance rates there and so they do their very best to get as close as possible but that's kind of a variable that's difficult to nail down and be right spot on and then looking at community development as well. Human resources plays a role in this. In fact, there's kind of three main roles that are played. So we have the student enrollment projections that are put together by Steve in his department and HR acts as a gatekeeper if you will. So they take those uh
079numbers that are provided by Steve and then we take the uh teacher to student ratios and that's how we then find out how many FTE are allocated to each of the uh schools. And this all takes place as we lead up into what's known as the spring surplus in in beginning of March. and HR uh ensures that no additional FTE is granted or used outside of uh the parameters are given without some sort of formal review. Now, there are definitely uh unique school needs that need to be addressed uh that a spreadsheet can't really uh address all the time. And that's where the slits step in. Uh there strategic guides. These are experienced school leaders or school principles that have have been through the the staffing process multiple times. They've got wisdom. They're able to
080meet with a principal, sit down side by side if there's unique issues that need to be looked at, give a a second look. And if there are some uh issues that aren't taken into account or they feel like, hey, we've missed this, they actually will uh work with the principal to then appeal what that student projection number is. Um the student enrollment staffing committee is that body which is uh that that receives the appeal. It takes that in consideration. You might say this is where the data meets the human element with this committee. Um if a school requires a deviation from what is uh officially given to them uh meaning more or less of that FTE because based off of student enrollment that appeal is made and you can see the committee members are met
081made up of uh a various group of district leadership that are able to bring a lens to uh the appeal process and help uh address all the particular needs. If we look at context, what's the student population makeup? Uh there are times that you don't see in the numbers or a spreadsheet DLI program needs or title one challenges. uh and and so it's with this committee uh makeup that we try to use all that context to then determine hey what will that what will be the end uh decision on on the appeal from the principal and the slate. So this uh committee, the student enrollment staffing committee acts as a final check and balance uh making sure that we meet uh we we keep from having staffing creep but also we address the individual needs
082at each school. Now, our current negotiated staffing ratios uh that are in our uh professional agreement with GEA are are right there. We have a K2, so one FTE for every 24 students as uh the allocation rate. And then our 3 through 8, so elementary through junior high, it's one FTE for every 27 and a quarter. And then high school it's uh 9 through 12 being 150 for every 28.25 students. And that's what uh HR uses when we get the official student enrollment numbers or projection numbers in the spring from uh Steve. Uh manage managing that FTE accurately in the spring and fall is is vital. uh we try to balance that so that we're fiscally responsible. Um I my mind goes back to 2018 when we in the spring we saw some immediate needs
083based off the student enrollment projections and we uh saw that there were certain schools that uh had more FTE than needed based off those projections and other schools where there was uh hot spots of needs. And so we were able to shift during spring surplus those assignments uh following the the process and the professional agreement. And uh by doing so uh we were able to avoid as a district about $975,000 in additional cost is rather than just uh going and and getting additional uh teachers and leaving uh schools uh overstaffed if you will. And then in the fall uh we do conduct uh this is generally just focused at the elementary level of fall staffing adjustment. uh the the goal is to not have to uh change anything and so this last year we tried
084to uh Steve tried to be very conservative in the student enrollment projections uh and the goal is to be spot-on. Now, there are times when uh what's projected in the spring doesn't necessarily pan out in the fall. And so, at that point, it it behooves us as a district. And kind of the path that we've taken is uh trying to identify those hot spots and then make those uh change changes in staffing assignments uh as quickly as possible to meet those uh student needs. in in doing this of course then uh allows us to save money and put that elsewhere as a district and historically that's what we've done. You're going to see in some of this though some districts have taken maybe a different approach to that fall staffing adjustment. Um so I do
085have in the next two slides uh a comparison and I asked four questions of my colleagues and again uh we we cooperate with each other we work with each other we have these uh wonderful relationships but also recognizing that we're competitors for the same valuable commodity which are uh uh you know dynamite teachers and so I feel so lucky that they were willing to share this information. I reassured them that this was not for uh competitive advantage in recruiting and that I wouldn't use it for those purposes, but it was more to help give a broader picture for our board members on how staffing works across the board. And it helps put Granite's place or perspective on how we operate versus some of the neighboring districts. Uh I asked the following four questions. What what
086do your staffing allocations and protection timelines look like? Uh, and then if there's a a a disagreement in what the projected student enrollment numbers are, what does that look like in your district? How do you uh how how do you address that? And then I do ask in there as well, what happens in the fall if there is a discrepancy from the spring projection and then we get to the fall and it does it's not it's not right on. And then I I thought it would be interesting for for everybody here as well to be able to look at the staffing ratio. So teachers to students and what that looks like across the board. Well, I say across the board, these are mainly uh yeah in the valley here. So uh I think there were
087two main things that I kind of come out of here. The methodology does vary depending on the district, but uh there were a couple trends that I saw. number one, every one of these districts. So, we're talking uh Granite Canyon, Salt Lake City, Jordan, Alpine, Murray, and Tilla. Of course, all these districts vary a little bit in size, but we all, if you look at that timeline and methodology, every one of them use this datadriven projection model. And it's by March that we have these numbers out to the student projections out to school principles which then gives uh uh away how many FTE they're going to be given to each of the schools. So that's the first trend that I saw. Uh second and this was a little bit of a difference. There is a
088need to have a solution when the stu the spring student enrollments don't match up with the students that arrive in the fall. Uh there is a there's a difference though depending on the district as to how they address that. Uh it's either through movement like a fall staffing adjustment like like Granite has done historically or planned financial cushioning meaning you set aside money in the budget for uh ghost students if you will ones that you want to anticipate knowing that there may be a difference so that you rather than having to move uh teachers around and having that uncomfortable situation in the fall, you would use some of that money that you set aside to be able to address hot spots and not have to change uh teaching assignments and um and or you look
089at a couple of them like canyons that does a little bit of both. It kind of set aside some money uh but also uh they look to to move uh Salt Lake District thought was interesting. uh they build a cushion and uh I I can see Logan, my good friend that's the HR director there. Uh they've they've not had to uh move in 20 years. So they they use this cushion as a way to avoid that fall staffing adjustment. And and it really I I'm not here to say there's a right or a wrong way to that approach. It could be philosophical historically and I've not been in the conversations as we as a district have decided the way we have done it. But I have to imagine there's this conversation that takes place or
090that took place. Uh do do we take that money could be a million even up to $2 million cushion that we set aside and use that uh to avoid the pain of moving teachers in the fall? or do we take that money and put it towards cola or other district priorities? And and I I think if you were to look at our practice, it's fall like the district leadership in years past said, "Hey, we feel like it is difficult, but we can guarantee these teachers have a job in the fall. they may have to go through that uh difficult process to have a change in assignment, but there was a value in taking money that we would have saved by not doing that and putting it somewhere else in the district. And so those are
091some thoughts that I've had as to how Granite has historically uh had the practice that we have had, but this gives some ideas as to uh how other districts have chosen to address that. Just really quick, I just want to make sure that I'm understanding this under the fall staffing adjustments. I saw that it says it uses like for Kenyons uses the sixth and 11th day. Is that the sixth day of school and this 11th day of school? >> Yeah. >> Okay. I just wanted to make sure cuz I was like the 10th of September. What? I >> Yeah. In in here in uh Granite, we take a count every Monday and we do that from the start of school all the way up to the 1st of October. So, it's kind of the same
092idea. Uh we we take a a a a temperature more often in Granite than some of the other districts, >> but we historically until we did this last year, we were the latest it looks like from anybody like we moved cuz we waited till October 1 to move >> actually. So actually that typically if you look historically when we've done that um at least as long as I've been in HR which started in 2015 and even before that when I was a principal it would be midepptember. You are correct though president McDerman there was a time in the mid uh 2000s to you know early to mid 2000s uh uh where I remember Donette talking about how it used to take place later in so in October after that final count. Uh but there was
093a time where there were there was a desire to start school earlier. Speaking of the calendaring uh and so you started to have these uh uh contracts and teachers starting earlier with teach with students starting classes earlier and then principles were giving feedback at that time. And this is really elementary because you don't you you find in junior high and high school they have the funds to be able to even if the counts are a little bit off. They've historically been able to save themselves and pay for those additional FE. But in elementary doesn't have that same luxury. And so elementary principles are given feedback saying we have these poor kindergarteners and first graders. You could even make the case all the way up to fifth and sixth grade uh that uh they'd now been
094in school uh since August and they they'd come to love their teacher and the routine and to disrupt them now all the way in October was difficult. And so it was around that time frame that they pushed it up just a little bit because the start of school had been pushed up and you started to see us do the fall staffing adjustment midepptember and when I stepped into my role as associate director over elementaryaries each year that that I was in that role that's when we would do it about that second week in September. Again, bumping it up two weeks, you could argue helps a little bit, but it was still very it's very difficult. Yeah. >> All right. Um this this is a gives you a little taste of where the numbers come from
095when we uh look at staffing when that timeline begins uh at least here in Granite in December. what that looks like in spring surplus, the role that HR plays in that as gatekeeper, the role slids play in that to help add context and be able to appeal those appeals that happen in the spring and all the way through the summer. Uh when something needs to be adjusted, and then into the fall, how we adjust when those numbers come in and students uh take their seats. Um I open it up to any questions that you might have. Uh >> I think some of the reason just board members just to remind you that we asked for this was because we wanted to see what the FTE allocations were compared to other districts. So I hope that
096was one of the things that you guys all looked at um as we're moving forward as we as we talk about FTE and about um the number of kids that we have >> the staffing ratios. >> Staffing ratios. >> Is there any other questions? Um just when you get an appeal to the committee, how long does it take before there's a decision made on for that school so that that that principal knows what they're looking at for their FT? >> Yeah, great question. So I have uh this last year to base it on. We we made a slight change. It used the appeals used to go to one person before Steve. It was Keith Bradshaw and then it was Steve. There was some conversation though about uh having one person responsible make the call and
097maybe not having all the uh lenses to be able to look through. And so last spring uh under uh the direction of Ben uh and district leadership, we looked to set up a committee that would be an appeal committee. And so it was very intentional as to who was included in on that. Uh so going now to answer your question uh from based off last year when that came in, we met we had a scheduled time to meet once a week at at the very least to review those appeals and then get back to the administrators that had sent the appeals in. Our our goal is to be as quick turnaround as possible. Now, I said we had a a a scheduled meeting time, but I remember uh and those that were on that will
098remember this, too. We met multiple times a week uh when those new ones came up to try to be able to be as responsible as possible. And then throughout the summer, uh we would check and make sure if there were any appeals that we stayed on top of those as well. Um, I'm just asking because I'm I know a lot of my schools have had changes and have had to adjust and so um I just wanted to know like the turnaround time so that they could either get somebody hired or you know maybe moved where they needed to be moved in time for them to set up their classroom. So, thank you. >> Yeah. Yeah, no problem. >> I'm so thankful for I wanted this information so bad. I'm very thrilled to look at it.
099It's really interesting to be able to look at what other districts are doing and understand the tradeoffs that they are making and um so that is really good data. Thank you. I'm sure this took a long time to gather and I I just think it's phenomenal. Um it is a very interesting question the question of putting setting aside a cushion or you know putting that into a cola and taking the risk a little bit. Yeah. >> You know I I do think that's a really great question slashdilemma to think through. I I really appreciate that you've brought us some alternatives like you can do it this way or you can do it this way and you get you know what do you prefer. I I I really appreciate that >> and it's interesting to see
100like I said some that have said hey let's thread the needle maybe a little bit of both a combination of the two and is there a possibility that there's something out there that other districts haven't thought of or we haven't thought of? Absolutely. and we're always open to look at that. Um, but at least for now, you've got uh what other districts are doing. And until I got the feedback, I had a a hunch, but I didn't know for sure what they uh were doing. So, this is kind of cool for us in our department as well to look at that. And it's nice. It's it's a little bit reassuring that we're here in Granite. Uh we're not far off the mark of what other uh districts are doing. Um I've had both parents and
101students and teachers especially it feels like last year there were a lot of people who were affected by this in my circles and um it was it it felt very much like traumatic. I I don't know. I mean, they're all fine now, but in the moment, it's like major trauma. Um, so much so that I know one teacher who is making a study of this their capstone project in their PhD. Wow. And, uh, I told her to share her capstone with us. She said, "Oh, you better believe it's coming to you." Anyway, um uh so I I think that it is a really important question for us to be asking. I I wonder about two things. Uh do we see more variability and it's more difficult to predict in the smaller school situation? You know,
102I I feel like I'd be stepping out of my wheelhouse and I'd be guessing >> because I uh I'm not over the student uh projections. >> The boundary. You're not Steve Hogan. >> Yeah. And he he's got it's I'm sure that it's a science and a little bit of an art. >> Yeah. >> Uh and so I gave you the best I could describe as what he takes into consideration his little black box. Uh but if I say black box meaning that he knows what he's >> crystal ball >> for the record there is no black box. I just want to be really clear about that. >> And Steve always tells us he does not have a crystal ball. Like he is adamant there is no crystal ball. >> I I think there is an
103assumption from the public that we are getting up-to-date information. We're getting um we know where everybody lives and we know how many children you have. um and we know when your your preschoolers are going to be coming up into kindergarten and >> it's just not accurate. So we've actually been trying to work under state law to obtain additional information from our charter partners so we can better predict data has been not forthcoming. There's there's a number of challenges and I don't think it's just associated with small schools, although >> Oh, okay. So, if I'm a small school and I make an FTE projection, I I'm not like at greater risk of having that be inaccurate. >> Correct. >> You don't think so? >> I think it's when when we're looking at the false stuff staffing
104adjustments, they were made at large schools and they were made at small schools. >> Okay, that's good to understand. It feels it feels that way because uh losing one teacher at a small school is could be detrimental as opposed to losing one teacher at a large school. >> I'll give you two examples. Uh in 20 two years two falls ago, we were expecting a large development at one of our elementary schools that didn't come to fruition. We ended up moving three teachers from one school 6 weeks into the school year. And that's actually what initiated this new process because that was severely detrimental. but we did not have funding to maintain those teachers at that school and we needed them in other places. Um so and then last year we were expecting the homeless shelter
105to produce uh b certain numbers based on what the state projected. We have no formula or math that could accurately predict that the families didn't come and we had extra staff here at Wilson Elementary and we needed them in other locations. >> Um, >> so we usually have something to that it in a declining enrollment area, a mature district like ours, I think the challenge is getting more severe. If I'm high growth district, then it's always easy to just add an FTE. Oh, that is real. >> Yes. >> That's the reason that this feels painful now and I don't remember it in past I mean and I'm talking about like 10 years ago. >> Correct. >> Now it feels like it gets exacerbated every year and especially this year because we saw uh a little
106more of a dip than usual. Okay. And one last question is, you know, with uh open enrollment, um how are we managing making sure that we don't think a kid is we're counting a kid at two schools because they applied to both schools? Can you just address that? >> Yeah, Jared Reynolds does a good job. Um we have a a Google Doc system where we can actually track multiple um applications now. So just as opposed to a few years ago, we wouldn't know until the day of, now we can see where where the the applications have all been streamlined to one location so that we can actually see when a family's applied to multiple locations and it enhances the communication process. >> Good job, Jared. But in that case, how do we know which school
107they're going to go to? We call them >> when they show up. So the FTE prediction is impossible for them because we're predicting in the spring, they show up in the fall, we've already allocated a teacher. >> Correct. But what used to happen is we'd be in a situation where a principal would apply in the spring and go, I've got all these permits. And now we're going, yeah, but they've also permitted at three other locations, so let's see who shows up. But why don't we say, "Oh, I I see that you applied at Driggs. I'm sorry. It looks like you're going there, or you can unenroll there and come here." >> I mean, why can't we? Is there a statute against us doing that? >> Under state law, uh, we are an open enrollment state.
108So, they are required to consider the application in as many school locations. Um, >> but you're not if if you want me to make a if you want a desk, you got to enroll. >> That's what I >> If only I knew a legislator who would uh clarify that question. >> You know what? I'm going to find you one. >> Okay. >> I'm going to get you a legislator's name on that bill. Right. I I think you'll find that any at least in the modern era, it's been difficult to uh pull back the reins a little bit to make it easier for predictions in terms of restricting open enrollment practices or regulating that a little bit more. We've just not found success. >> Okay. So there is no wiggle room in the law for us
109to really get a commitment from a parent so that our FTE allocations can be >> So do you remember more accurate? >> One of our elementaryaries closed that had a DLI program a few years ago and we actually went back and said >> which school are you going to? We're going to prioritize you. >> We had them fill out an application. >> Even through that process, I think our accuracy rate was only about 80%. >> Wow. That is just so problematic for kids. That's too bad. >> Okay. I was going to say I think it's hard because this is why we did the big kindergarten push just a couple weeks ago, right? Because it's really hard to make that prediction. Also, a lot of parents don't understand the the need to have those numbers early.
110And I know like people in my neighborhood would, oh well, I'll just go enroll her later after I get the shots so I can take the And I'm like, no, go enroll them now so that you can you can bring the shots in later. You can't. But it's so hard to make that prediction when parents just don't understand and they don't know, oh, this is why we need the numbers because this is the this is the problem. And until we get a little bit more teeth behind it, what do we do? How can we do it? So, >> I think that's spot on. And I it's a parent's problem, but it's not their problem, right? Um because ultimately they're the ones impacted by it. >> Yeah. Not until their teachers rip from them at 6
111weeks in >> or they're in a kindergarten class with 36 in it >> and we don't have the resource to move that over until 2 weeks into the >> the school year. >> And it's because we didn't know those kids were going to show up. >> Yeah. One thing that I do want to point out just because for people who are listening or or watching um if you go to those general education staffing ratios um people are going to look at that and go well there's more than 28 kids in my high school class um this is an average across the entire school and so that 28.25 25 that we have for our 9 through 12. That is an average across all the teachers with the exception of special ed, right? Am I correct on
112that? So that means that there might be a class that only carries 15 kids in it, an AP class or something that's a specialty class, but the choir class might have 80, but it's all how it averages out. So, right. And at the high school, and Mitch can probably speak to this a little bit better, but you also have your prep period that >> Yeah. At any one time, 25% at a high school, 25% of the teachers are not teaching. And so, while we allocate teachers to the school on this ratio, 28.25, we then take 25% out of the of the teachers out in one period to create the the class size. So, really 27.25 25 on our AB block schedule is on average 38. >> And that's that's exacerbated more because when you're on
113the block schedule, most of the high school all of the high schools have chosen to have a larger class size in order to have two prep periods, one each day, because it was originally allocated to have one prep period every other day. So that you would be teaching seven classes and have one prep. But that so that is why I just want people to understand that because like I say they're going to look at that and go there's more than 28 in my kids class and that is why that is is happening. So did you have comment question? Just on that same topic, um, as we made the move to change our K to2 ratio last year, a question came up about, okay, so how is that going to work? Um, so is it true
114that we when we fund the school based on their their projections for enrollment, but then the principal can determine how to allocate those funds. So it doesn't necessarily mean because we funded more for K through2 that they'll actually have a smaller class. >> So our committee worked really hard through that process once the budget was approved with this this piece. And so as as Patrick's mentioned, he's kind of the gatekeeper in terms of making sure the FTE gets allocated appropriately. So do you want to take 30 seconds and walk them through how uh the shortest version of how we worked through that after the budget was approved? So working with the slides to look over those staffing ratios and then as a committee too when they would come our way that was one of the
115first things we'd look at what do those uh K2 staffing ratios look like and are they in alignment with what's there uh and giving direction to those slids to to ensure that we're meeting or trying to get as close as we can to those ratios K2 and then 35. So, because we'd already gone through the the staffing process prior to the budget being approved, this did require some staffing plans to get adjusted. A school might have gotten an additional half FTE or a full FTE based on that formula, uh, that new formula. And so, they might have had to gone back and and make some adjustments to their actual plan. >> Thank you. I know you answered that for me before. I just wanted to make sure it's on public record, too, for other people
116who are wondering the same thing. But but to Nicole's point, that doesn't mean that every K2 class is an average of 24, right? Some of them are 26 and some of them are 22 and kindergarten might be only 18. That is going to be up to the local school to the school community council to provide feedback um on what the staffing plan looks like. Um, Ben or maybe Todd or Patrick, whoever wants to answer. I have had a lot of people in my community say to me, "You guys just need to cap the classes at 30." Can you talk about why we cannot just say, "Oh, when you reach 30 kids, you get a new teacher. That's what they are asking for." if we were a higher growth district with a little more fluidity in
117our revenue. I don't know if that's the right term. Um I'm looking at Todd, he's probably giving a weird expression on his face now. I I think there might be a little more flexibility towards something like that, but at the end of the day, it's important for people to understand under state law when a kid moves into a school boundary, they get to come to that school no matter what. So at 31, we don't suddenly have $100,000 in extra revenue because one new student showed up. We have $8,000 more revenue based on the WPU. And so it it would require the district to come over the top and subsidize um what that looks like. And if you never get back up to if you have 31 kids and you never get up to 59, that
118would be a different challenge and problem which is addressed in our current process. But there's just no way to cap size uh cap class sizes uh under the current funding mechanism. Is that fair to say, Todd? >> Do you guys know if there are are states that allocate money that way? >> I'm not familiar with that. >> I Okay. I think there are cuz I had a friend who went and taught at one. >> I'm hearing people say, "Oh, when I lived wherever this happened and I'm like, really? It sounds like a terribly unsustainable uh you know budget situation to me. >> And they also have different funding mechanisms for their schools. >> So so it's not driven by a WP formula. >> Yeah. >> It would be nice. I don't want to sound like
119I'm not >> for it. >> Yeah. I'm also for that calendar that Karen mentioned earlier, too. But that's not going to happen either. >> We're going to have >> a dreamy calendar. >> We're going to have Karen do it next year. >> We should always have a plan. That's like the dream calendar that's not up for vote. >> And then we'll say this is not the one that's going to happen. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Patrick. Any other questions? >> Thank you, Patrick. Thanks, Patrick. >> All right, we're gonna invite Dr. Brown back up. >> We should have just had you go all at the same time. >> She's not saying anything. She agrees. >> I thought you probably saved the best, too. >> We saved the best for last. >> You want to talk?
120>> That is not true. Thanks for being here. Thanks for being back. >> Hi again. Yeah, thanks for having me again. Board and uh superintendency. I am going to be presenting the annual assessment report. Usually um I guess when I looked last year, it was also in February. It seems a little bit later this year because our data as I mentioned came in a little later. So, um, what I'll present to you follows the state accountability indicators, which I think is nice because as you're looking at your schools too, you can take a look at these same indicators. And so, I'm going to show you how we did as a district um, related to these indicators and they are the following. So we have 150 points in our elementary and middle schools um associated in
121those areas of um proficiency growth, growth of the lowest uh 25% and English learner progress. At the high school level, there's uh 225 points using uh those same categories, but then they add a portion that includes um high school graduation, ACT performance, and advanced coursework. I have a link on this um slide for you to look at the school report cards that is um um completed now and available to you through USB. So you can see how every school did related to these um areas. So we're going to start with high school. They have some unique um indicators of graduation ACT and advanced coursework. So beginning with high school rates um here we see that um the um dark blue is granite district and the lighter blue color is the state. So you can see
122the trend line across uh several years here. I think last month I reported to you that we had increased and made that goal of 1% gain in our graduation rate. So that's good news here. Um the state also increased. This looks like a nice trend line for us. And then we also have graduation rates by school. Uh we pointed out I think last month as well that we have some schools that um did really well here that um we were um recognizing and um taking a look at some of the things that they maybe are doing to increase those graduation rates. I'm also breaking this down for you uh by groups. So here you can see all students in purple and then I've um plotted the economically disadvantaged English language learners and students with disabilities.
123Uh I think here it looks like most of our groups have gone up and I think of note here over the years that gap has um decreased between uh those groups. We can also look at those graduation rates um by race. And here uh this again we're we're showing all students and then um comparatively the other groups of students. And here I think I'm noting everybody all of our groups went up in their graduation rates with the exception of one of these lines which I believe is African-American group that went down. And the the table is below too so you can see exactly which of those we're looking at. The ACT administration uh for student accountability. What we're looking at here is all of our 11th graders take the ACT in the spring and um
124the points are awarded for students who score 18 or above on the ACT. Um our several of our students take this multiple times. Uh this is just that 11th grade administration. And here I'm showing uh the state percent of students um compared to uh Granite District percent and then each of the schools and where they've um fallen in terms of uh their percent of students who are scoring 18 or above. Uh Tyler and I have been working a little bit with our uh high school principles, noting that uh these are decreasing in several of our schools. And so we're trying to uh work on some creative ways that we can work with our schools to maybe um look at improving this number so we can have more of our students that are are scoring at
125um a higher level in the ACT. >> I have a question. Um, is do you could some of the lower numbers be that some of our college or higher education are requiring some ACT? I think there was a gap where they didn't require that for a little while. Is that accurate or not accurate? So maybe it wasn't. >> You are correct. There have have been some changes in which uh colleges are requiring ACT. Uh this particular u piece is not impacted by that. However, because all of our 11th graders take this as part of our our state testing and so every 11th grader takes it. Now, what could impact it is if we have some students that are more motivated to take the ACT multiple times so that they are um getting a better score
126to uh take with them to a college in a college application, then yes, we might have this um decrease slightly. I don't that would be pretty difficult to tease out but it it's a possibility. Yeah. I just I mean just having my kids are a little bit older now, but I know that was for a little while they talked about how well it doesn't matter because I don't really need this score and so maybe some >> I'm wondering if that's came over. >> I think what what Chris is referring to is years ago when the ACT was not required by high schools. It was those who wanted to take the ACT. So, if you're gearing up for college and you want to take that ACT, your score is tending to it's going to tend to
127be a little bit maybe average or above average, right? And then when the high schools came through and we said, "No, no, no. All 11th graders are going to take it, we saw a little dip in the ACT scores because it's kids who are there and don't necessarily want to be there taking that test." So, I think is that maybe what you're referring to? That was several years ago. I don't remember how many years ago when we imp when they implemented the the ACT was going to be taken by all 11th graders. >> I'm not sure. I'm just wondering if that's just that trend of it doesn't matter as much, but it used to have more weight to it. So, I don't know. >> I I have a kid in all of those colors who
128graduated each of those colors. And the purple year um >> was the year I know it's really rough. And the purple year, that was the year that they said, "You no longer need this to get into college." And that year, she had already studied because she was serious. And then, um, her brothers who came after were like, "I mean, I guess I have to go take this." They didn't care at all. So, I do think there is something to this. the only reason that you care to do well on this is for a scholarship at this point because it doesn't impact they don't ask for it on the on the admissions at least to our public universities. >> So I I have a question because I know the law changed and we can no longer
129take the tests and make them part of the grade. But could we just as an incentive say if you get this enough of a score on here we can replace your your your ELA grade or your for you know for this quarter or whatever. Can you do an incentive like that which would help maybe >> because I think it's true. There's there's a ton of kids that are like I'm not going to college. Why do I even care? I'm coming and I'm hitting the numbers and then leaving. So how how do we help these kids take it more serious? Yeah. How do we What's your What's your solution? I want to know. >> Well, you know what? I think maybe um I would I would say we work with some of our our high school
130principles to talk about how do we motivate kids to do well on any test, right? Because I think it happens, you know, on our um Utah Spire Plus test as well. Uh so, Tyler, I don't know, you maybe have some insight into this in terms of being at a school and motivating students to do their their test. Jones hit it right on that this conversation does affect ACT, but it's across the board on all of our assessment and there are certain things that just create an intentionality for kids that shift it or frame it a little bit so that they have some reason for why they care about it. And it's going to be a different reason for everybody. And you know, schools have have been pretty effective as well at at trying to make
131it very clear where are you at and what does this data mean and what can you use this for? That can be highly motivating. But our high school principal group of our PLC on that group, this has been the big conversation we've been having because we think of the seven pieces of the state accountability system, this is an area we think we could really see some gains. Um, one of the takeaways from one of our higher achieving um, schools there said, "You know what? At our school, very rarely are our kids taking the ACT for their first time when the one they take during March that counts is is happening." And that was eye opening for the group to say, what could we do so that it's not the very first time they're seeing this
132because some of it is just getting familiar with test endurance and going through that whole process. So, those are active discussions amongst the high school principles right now. >> But also, if what we're doing is getting good at giving the test, then I mean, I don't really care if they do well on this because I don't care if they're good at the ACT. What I care about is are they literate, you know? And if this is a reflection of are they literate, okay, then I care about this score. But if it's a reflection on how well they take the test, I >> Well, what I would add to that is if they're blowing off the test, then we got we don't have data to tell us anything. >> If we can find their ceiling, what's
133the best you can possibly do, then that data means something. And that's what sometimes we lose on standardized testing is is this a reflection of their ability or is this a reflection of their effort? And we just want them to maximize their effort. >> Yeah. So maybe have a better measuring mechanism. >> I mean to me it sounds like for anybody who may be in the legislature or the state board in the future that maybe we don't need the ACT as a measure because I'm not hearing like any purpose unless you want a scholarship then you choose to take it. I'm not even following why as a state we even are pushing this so hard. I think they they just they wanted to have a metric and they said, "Well, we have a lot of
134kids who already take the ACT. Let's just use the ACT for everybody." But is it a that's I guess the question. Is this really a good metric? It might be time to still it's a good measure of of how successful students going to be in college. And as we're looking at preparing kids for being successful um in college and career, uh we do want a measure of this, I think, in terms of of how we're what's the health of our our district? How are we doing to prepare kids for that? >> But if they see no value in it, they're not going to try. And so it becomes a useless measure. That's what where I'm going. I I think that it's out of our hands. I'm just saying if the state and higher levels could
135reconsider a different that is a a piece that we can control a little bit more in in our realm of schools and teachers and principles to work on the motivation piece and giving a good why for why it's important. Um so I I think we do have some good control over that or that we could exercise more control to help that why. Just wondering because I mean it is it is 11% of our score and when you have kids who are like I'm not I'm not going to college why do I care? I think it's that's a hard thing. So and it's hard. I I'll admit I sat there last year a student brought a sample question and they were an ML learner and I was like I I read English perfectly and I don't
136understand this. I don't know how you're ever going to pass this test because it it was hard. Yeah, >> granted I've been out of high school for a little bit, couple years, >> special ed, they're all taking it. >> Yeah, they're all taking it. So, anyway, >> okay, sorry. Go ahead. >> All right, we're going to move to the next uh next indicator is also uh getting at this idea of how well are we preparing our students um with advanced coursework and this indicator. So here we're looking at the percent of students who are earning a C or better in advanced courses um APIB or uh continuing education or completing a CTE pathway. Um here I'm showing for you the uh percent of our students and this is a cohort base. So this would be
137the the students the percent that you're seeing in 2025 is representing our graduating cohort 2024 group. So it's a delayed indicator. Uh the black um dot is uh to help us put it in context a little bit with how the state is doing relative to our performance in this area. Uh we're we're looking at different ways to collect this uh within our academic subcommittee to that um helps us look at leading indicators to see um how are we doing with getting kids enrolled? um how are we doing with getting them to um continue to be successful in some of these courses too uh to be able to impact this number. Uh the next set we're going to tackle um are the the areas that are in um in common with both elementary, middle school um
138student accountability and high school. So we'll look at uh rise performance Utah Aspire plus performance and the performance on WEDA access test which gives us the English learner progress. So, beginning with English uh learner progress, this is based on um the WEDA access test. And here we're looking at um each of the students who takes the WEDA test has a target. And so if that student's target is met or they um become proficient um based on their score on WEDA, uh they are in this percent. Um and so here we break this apart between K8 and high school. What I think is notable here is our high school uh percentage has gone up over the last few years from 2023 to 2024 and 2025. We've had um a some unique things that I think are
139happening in our high schools to be able to um provide that why for our students. And I think uh Tyler um was also spearheading this at Granger and then it it spread to other schools where he was really trying to celebrate those those students who are English language learners and help them understand why they're taking this test again and how cool it is that they speak another language and um that I think has impacted our ability to increase this number. Um it is concerning that our uh K through 8 student percent is uh has been decreasing at that same time. So it's something we'll have to tease in tease out a little bit more and see what we want to do to impact that in a different way. Next we'll look at um the three
140subject areas that go into the proficiency area. So, one of those is ELA. This is based on rise in Utah's Fire Plus. So, here I've broken this apart so you can see by grade level and then by year for the last three years. So, we can see a little bit of a trend. So, the darkest um bar is showing you the 2025 results um for each of the grade levels as you move across here. Again, I have the state as the black dot on top so you can see how that compares. And here I think notable is our ninth and tth grade increased but we also want to take into account that the Utah spire or sorry yeah the Utah fire plus test that's given um changed a bit in terms of what we were
141looking at um for that ELA test score. it became more of a reading comprehension, reading complex texts and being able to understand what you read. Um, that also was a change in our rise testing as we looked at a better match to the standards that were being taught. So, that may have impacted what we're looking at between 24 and 25 with our 9th and 10th grade. So, there no longer were um editing passages or things that had to do with um more of a language piece of it. It's really um more of those reading standards that we're looking at now. And this is our math piece which is um the other another portion of uh that proficiency. And here again the darkest blue represents uh the most recent test result here. I think notable is
142that our um sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and tth grade are all increasing in um their math proficiencies. And these are some of the questions that I think we wrestle with in our um in our salt committee as we look at um where we see trends and patterns. And then also uh we look at schools that might be breaking some of those trends and patterns to see what they may be doing. Oh, I also wanted to note that on ELA, um, and I guess on math for that matter, this is the this year will be the last year that our nth and tth graders will be taking the Utah Aspire Plus test. Beginning the following year, they will be taking the RISE test. Uh, the difference here will be RISE testing will be an end of
143course test rather than an end of grade level test. So, our ninth and tth graders have been taking a general test at the end of 9th grade. Um, when we move to RISE, it will be more um specific to the course that they're taking. Um, so that will give us different information and we'll we'll see what that looks like. We've been really happy with the RISE platform and what we're getting from Rise. So, I think it will be a good move. uh we've had I think uh teachers who have been less um motivated to look at this data too as you taught Aspire Plus because in the ninth and tth grades because um it's not necessarily their students particularly in science where our students are taking multiple um science courses but um you might be
144taking biology but that biology teacher has a hard time seeing themselves in that science um result. So, our science tests are here. Here we've got um we we follow a trend in ninth grade, too, where there's a gradual uphill um in science results. And in addition to proficiency, we also look at growth using um Rise and Utah Spire Plus. compare students performance from one year to the next. So the same student uh we look at how they performed relative to other kids that were just like them and each student is given what's called a student growth percentile and then those are weighted to give us a a percent here. The SGP um or then this this growth measure um is given in ELA math and science. Um here um I've got bands from 4 to
1458 and you can look at uh 2024 and 2025 in terms of that growth and also in our high schools that lowest 25% also looks at SGP but in a different way. Here we're looking at um any of our students who are lowest 25% who have a 40 or above that 40 threshold is uh what we are typically looking at to say they're making good growth. um that the SGPS um below that would indicate that um those students aren't making the growth that we would like to see. And lastly, I'm showing you early literacy measures here. Um these are not included in the uh school accountability but we do look at these as measures of um how our early learners are doing in terms of uh learning how to read. Um we've got two metrics
146here that we look at. One is the percent of students that are in first through third grade that are reading at grade level. at grade level as defined by the uh Utah legislature is they are scoring above benchmark on their cadence reading test. I think this becomes a little confusing because frequently we talk about students who are at benchmark or above um that is a lower bar than what is set to say that they are reading at grade level. So this above benchmark um is what's displayed here. So 38.4% 4% uh for our 2025 group and then the typical or above progress at the end of the year for 2025 and that dipped for us in the last few years. We are seeing really good results though in kindergarten. So, I think some of this
147work that we're doing with Milestones and helping our um our teachers use um some good techniques in reading, uh we hopefully will see um some of those results as as some of our um kindergarters and first graders um come up through some of that great instruction and reading. And lastly, I have some resources here for you. Um I think last time there was a request to see all of the the district's ELA math and science um for proficiencies and MGPS. So I have a link um at the bottom of here so you can see that in a single um PDF. And then data gateway has a lot of really great um visualizations uh for a lot of these uh pieces that we talked about as well as there's a public Tableau site that USB puts
148out. >> Questions? >> Any other question? >> No, but thank you for putting all those in one place for us to look at. That's super helpful. Thank you. >> Thank you. I hear your name in a lot of different schools, Joan, and it's always good. So, everybody knows we love Joan. So, thank you. Thank you for giving a 5:00 presentation and a 9:23 presentation. So, >> and celebrating our schools at 7:30. >> So, thank you. Thank you. >> All right. Thanks. >> Thank you. All right. Um, next up on our agenda is Doug. Bring us home, Doug. This is going to be >> breeze, right? >> What's that? >> This is going to be a breeze, right? Cuz these are all second readings. >> Yeah. Thanks for saving the best for last. Appreciate that. Um,
149we do have three policies, three second readings tonight. Um the first one uh the board had actually suggested a couple of changes and so uh I've the first policy that I sent out on board book um was not the one that included the changes. So this one now has the changes that have been requested. Um the changes to that policy you'll recall um the uh the first one was in sorry starting off this is article 7c2 and this is our gr our school grounds access and safety policy. Uh the changes that we that we discussed last time during first reading was under C1. Uh the request was that principles after consultation rather than with their leadership and improvement director, it was going to be with district leadership. Uh we also included that in a second
150uh spot um in the policy as well. Trying to find it. Hang on. uh in 4C4 and then in G uh under the prohibited uses, we also added a couple of items um regarding prohibited um uh like presence on on school campuses um for folks that have no reason to be there. Um and then under H um we did include under H1 um we had discussed um the possibility of other animals that may be allowed on campus for a variety of reasons. Um and so we included some exceptions to that paragraph as well. So, with those changes from the first policy um uh for the from the first reading last month, I'm happy to respond to any further questions that the board may have. >> Are there any questions? Otherwise, I will entertain a motion.
151These are second and final readings. >> I move we accept article 7 C2, school grounds access and safety as a second and final reading. >> I'll second. We have a motion and a second to accept article 7c2 school grounds access and safety is a second final reading. Are there any comments? >> I just am curious the the dogs or other animals. >> What scenarios are we >> an alligator >> have we experienced or are we talking about with other >> like an alligator? Yeah. >> When the principal comes as a pig for the fundraiser. >> You'd be surprised. We've had a we we did have a uh uh a comfort animal uh that was a python that was brought to school that was um supposedly a a >> that was >> emotional support animal. So
152we have had a few things but other animals is also um referring to animals that we do bring uh to campus for for educational purposes for um assemblies um for the terrarium in in the second grade classroom those kinds of things. >> Okay. Did the python wear a vest? >> Python didn't have a vest. >> No vest. No comfort. >> No. >> Sorry. Apparently, it was a beautiful python, though. >> I'm just thinking of the scenario where, you know, someone is a carrying their pet hamster across school grounds and now they're breaking our policy or something like that. We're >> as long as it's not really a negative >> educational. As long as they don't poop on the ground, we're going to be >> as long as they pick up after their hamster. >> As
153long as they But in this language, we're saying even the hamster is not allowed on the property. Right. Well, it says other than an educational purpose, >> right? But reading it there for an educational purpose, but I'm just like on a Saturday, >> you know, someone's taking their little harmless pet out. But we're we're going to say no petal. I'm just making sure I understand that. >> Could I could I speak to that just briefly? I think it's a good question. I think we're trying to give local law enforcement a tool for citing for reasonable uh it would obviously have to be a violation of not just our policy but also uh the local city ordinance or the county ordinance. So we're just giving teeth to law enforcement to be able to enforce off leash
154dogs or dogs on school property. Now, if there was another animal that was causing a potential hazard, that would be up to local law enforcement to determine if there was an actual threat, they would not uh they would obviously take it in consideration our policy, but it wouldn't be have legal bearing if uh Harry the rat was hanging out with his owner. But the superintendent is correct that that that law enforcement wanted us to put in writing what our prohibitions were um so that they had more to to to to work with when they were actually uh addressing u patrons on on school property. >> Sure. And I understand that and the reasons would do that. I'm just trying to make sure cuz in the past I'd been thinking this applied to dogs and now
155I'm thinking oh it's any animal at all. Um, so our signs are literally going to say like no animals. >> Yeah. We'll be updating signage over the next several months. >> Yeah. >> And working on a public education campaign. >> I mean, I could see somebody take their horse onto school property. Or um my my grandfather does birds of prey that are injured and he takes them out places and helps them fly and they come back and like you don't I don't think they should be at a elementary school. So, I I see. And the python. I don't want the python there. Comfort or not. >> I thought you were making like a Zootopia reference or something at first. I really have no idea what there are many animals. >> It wasn't a service animal.
156Just Just to clarify, it wasn't. >> Oh, I thought you said it was a service. >> No, it was an emotional support animal, not a service animal. Remember, we we make a distinction. >> We did make that supports their emotions. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Where are we in this conversation? Have we had a motion? We've had a motion in a second. Clark, did you have anything to add to this conversation? I'm just wondering. >> I do have one comment. I call the question. >> All right. We've had a motion in a second. >> I think you have to vote on the caller question. I'm just I'm just saying. >> And that's the most serious comment that's been made in some time in this room. >> Hey, I was trying to bring us around. serious. >>
157Without objection to the call the question, we'll go ahead and vote. Any all in favor, please say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? >> All right. Question carries. >> I'm not taking responsibility for that last one. On the next one, we have high school graduation standards and requirements. This is the policy. You'll recall that we added a portion of the policy right at the end that allows for our Sorry. um allows for our new program which is the the transfer credit program and that's the program where students are able to um uh use uh scores from uh ex uh the uh GED exam to be able to uh achieve credit for the class. There was no changes that were made to this policy um from the first reading and so I present it to you
158for a second reading. >> There any questions otherwise? >> I move that we accept article 10 A4 high school graduation standards and requirements as a second and final reading. I'll second. >> Right. We have a motion and a second to approve article 10 A4 senior high school graduation standards and requirements as a second and final reading. Is there any further discussion on this clerk? I can see it in your eyes. All those in favor please say I. >> I. Any opposed? Perfect. >> Okay. Uh the final policy it it will take some uh explanation fiscal policy manual manual section 7. You recall that we are upping increasing um the limit on purchase that purchase that can be made um uh without bids and that could be made with a purchase card. we we're upping that
159amount from $499 to $999. Um there was one other cleanup that needed to be made in section 7 of the fiscal policy manual as well. And so we have uh made that cleanup. It was simply removing a reference to the payments by checks which we don't accept anymore. We did also find that there was a a similar um provision in section 16 uh of the fiscal policy manual. And so we've also made the change to up that from $499 to $999. Those are the policies that are before you tonight. And I'm happy to take any questions on those. But before I do, I did want to mention that in article 6C2, which is our PECART policy, um we also have a similar provision that we're going to have to fix. Um and I will bring
160that to you next month. >> All right. Any questions? >> So is this >> so this would just read >> second reading on section seven and section se 16. >> And what are you bringing next month? >> I'll be bringing article 7 or excuse me 6C2 >> separate policy. >> Oh separate thing policy. >> Just want to make sure. Are you ready for a motion? >> All right. I move that we approve fiscal policy manual section seven sections seven and 16 as a second and final reading. Second. >> We have a motion and a second to approve the fiscal policy manual section seven and section 16 as a second and final reading. Are there is there any further discussion? >> All in favor please say I. >> I. Any opposed? I may mention just one
161more thing um board members that now that we have um adopted section 7 and section 16 and we've increased that amount that we will be uh training under article 6C2 over the next couple months as we go through the process on the increase so that pecards can be used for the higher um purchases. We just need to be able to make up for that uh in our two readings of our policy. But just so you know that we will be um we will be implementing um the the increase in the spending amount under section 7 and section 16. Okay. >> And I'm assuming that this will go out also to inform our admin ASAP so that they understand that this has been approved. >> We're working on some communication. It needs to go to uh
162school secretaries to some of our bookkeepers and other folks who make purchases. So >> thank you board. Thanks, Doug. Superintendent, >> since I thought this report was going to be given an hour ago, I'll go ahead and uh shorten my report. I wanted to I thought Clark was going to make some snarky comment. Um I wanted to explain why we don't have a boundary study report tonight. Uh we typically have uh and Steve Hogan present on what this year's studies will be. Uh we just wanted to let the public know that there are still some outstanding legislation, HB241, that has caused us great constrnation in terms of the disposition of of properties. Um and uh we're still working through some of the pieces of that bill and gathering information as requested by the board. Uh
163we hope to have some additional information, but at this point in time, it's it's not looking good in terms of uh we need to come together in terms of what studies look like moving into the future, and I'm not anticipating a study this year. Uh with respect to that, I wanted to give a shout out to JD and his folks. It was uh great to be on the Excel bus tour. Uh we've been uh re-uping our second round of site visits uh to our schools. We're starting again with boost schools and secondary schools. Uh we'll finish off with elementary schools. Last uh yesterday, we were in three Magna Area elementary schools, and it's good to get around to visit classrooms and and visit with students. So, uh thanks to our leadership team and our Slids
164for participating in that. Um Todd and I have been busy up the legislature. Wanted to give a shout out to our intern Mary Sheets. She's doing a great job with our tracker. If you're not familiar with legislation the district is concerned about we have already set a record this year, almost 200 bills education related. That's more than was totally published in the entirety of the session last year. So we've already hit that going into the third week of the session. So um yes, I am being very sarcastic right now. Uh but uh we are working on a number of pieces. Uh so if you do have questions, please let us know. Um we did something unique tonight. I wanted to point out and uh we started last year with a mid-year transfer of of two
165appointments. And uh what that has allowed us to do is to get some of these new administrative appointments into schools sooner and to start learning and understanding what's happening in those school environments. Um, we've obviously had a need to do that again this year and I would expect that we will do this a little bit more in the future uh potentially with retirees. Um, sticking a new principle into finish out the year if we have the ability to do so. We we can see some tremendous benefits for getting those administrators into their buildings as soon as possible. um so that there's no slide and uh we can continue uh the momentum um of whatever that instructional leader is working to pursue. So, if you have questions about that, uh, talk to Tyler. Um, I wanted
166to give a shout out to Lesley's efforts, uh, with respect to our principal professional learning, our principal PLC's, and our professional learning committee that she has been housing. We have been doing a tremendous amount of uh, changes in the way that we support our schools. and it's a direct result of her efforts that we're able to align a lot of these pieces through our PD. And um one thing that I've been hearing consistently from principles is how much uh they're appreciating and enjoying their cadres at at our principal professional learning and how that's aligning with their work in their in their schools. And so I've never had a principal say they were they got something they were so glad they came to a meeting today uh until this year. So, uh, thanks to Lesie. Um,
167again, her leadership is helping to develop the capacity of our principles to be more effective instructional leaders, and this will help us, uh, work through some of the changes and, uh, help us achieve our goals. So, with that, that's my report. >> Thank you, Superintendent Julie. >> We had a great district community council meeting. Um, I can't remember when that was recently. And uh uh the parents, as you already heard, um just gave feedback about proficiency based learning and our administrators listened and it was really great. They did a really good job. Salt Lake County and Parks and Rec did meet this month. Um it was mostly administrative and just um updates. So nothing significant to share other than that they're reducing their meeting schedule this year to every other month with the option of
168adding as needed. So I will have fewer reports to provide in the future um legislature. So USBA is up there and on Fridays um we have a JLC meeting. You're welcome to come and hear and see what they talk about and who what legislators are doing what um and that's all pretty much for this month. We they do have a meeting that uh we need to you know I need to go to just you can tell that >> so anyway come to the legislature if you can >> um budget and finance did not meet this month so I have nothing to report in >> I have nothing from the benefits committee. >> I have two things tonight. First, uh Todd and I participated in the taxing entity uh committee with Taylor'sville city this past month,
169which resulted in a an extension uh of uh it's it's utilizing still some past terms, but it's it's in essence a redevelopment type of a of an effort and and partnership with Taylorville City. And I just want to particularly express thanks to Todd for his leadership with the county and the state school board and leading out uh in making it a very um successful uh process um for the district and a successful outcome uh for us as a as a district and in partnering with Taylorville City in that regard. And then secondly, I want to report to the board and to this robust audience tonight that I've been unfairly targeted um with some suggestion that I have been snarky or otherwise sarcastic in this meeting, which I have not expressed anything of that nature in
170this microphone since 7 p.m. >> Hakuna. All right. Um our 8 hour workday, uh we actually have shared a report with you on that. um our our task force and I think it has been very productive and we've had a really good experience with that. So um we are heading into next week with some trying to um form some recommendations. That has not happened yet. So nobody panic yet. Um but we're looking at what we can share and and put together as we go forward into negotiations. uh we did not have long policy this month and so that's why we didn't have any first readings but we will definitely have some next month. So that is all I've got. Um, having reached