SLCSD Board Meeting, April 15 2025 5:30 PM

001All right. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for uh joining us this evening and for giving us a few extra minutes to get our boardroom situated after our closed executive session. Again, today is April 15th, 2025. We're here for the purposes of a public school board meeting. Um I just want to welcome everybody. Thank you again for being here and giving us extra time. Um, board member Bade is excused and student board member Helina Techladin uh will be joining us just a little late who's coming from a school event that she has a commitment to. Um, first I'd also like to recognize our association presidents who are with us this evening. Uh, first from buildings and ground we have President Aaliyah Compo. Uh, child nutrition we have President Tanya Slaughter. Uh, from SLEA we have President

002Mike Harmon and Chelsea A Costa who are with us. Um, Slassa is represented by President Adrienne Loato and I believe Ashley McKinley is here with us this evening. Hi Ashley. Thank you for joining us tonight. Um, next we'll move on to the pledge of allegiance and I'll go ahead and lead us in the pledge. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right, we're moving on to some recognitions this evening. I do want to note that we had a slight change in the agenda. Uh item number B under our recognitions, math counts, state competition winners, uh has been moved to May 6th. And so we will move on to um the

003first item there, which is battle of the books. Uh Dr. Hall, if you don't mind presenting this to us. Thank you. I would be glad to. We did not bring students with us, but I am going to recognize our students. Every year, as you know, we have a battle of the books for our elementary kids, and they participate in a rigorous reading of 20 different books that are selected by Beehive or by um other lists that identify the year's best books for students in grades about 3 to six. And then our fifth and sixth graders or fourth and fifth graders come together to create this battle team. They compete at their home school for the honor of being the district battle team. We have three different divisions. And so we had three sets of winners

004this year. Um Washington, I'd like to recognize Washington Elementary School. Their librarian is Liz Gleason and the members of their team were Ella Leonard, Dylan Song, Greer Alder, Arthur Garnet, Garrett, sorry, and their alternate was Seth RP. They had four different um four people that were leads and then one that's an alternate. Our second winning team was Newman. Their librarian is Christa Anderson and that was Key Brown, Olivia Joe Stzeneigger, Robert Wood. I think this was a competition to make me go crazy with their names. Ruby Wolf Dinden, Alex Penaharia, and Christopher Stock was their alternate. and Indian Hills was our third winning team. Dana Savage is their librarian and Ian Chow, Claire Kim, Hannah Isacson, Esther Webb, and their alternate was Otto Lee Alt. The There are a lot of people that go in

005every year to put the work in to make this event happen. So, in addition to all of our elementary librarians who run these competitions at their schools, they do them before or after school or at lunch different times. Um, they all work together to create the questions so that we have um 40 or 80 different questions that we can use at all of the different levels. Also, Emily Dong, who is the librarian at Beacon Heights, she uh runs this for us every year. This year, we had Mr. Jason Finch read our questions. He's the principal at Mountain View. And every year we put together a little bookmark with next year's battle books. So these books, uh, you have this on your table, are our competition books for next year. We do have them in our

006libraries and also in our electronic library, Sora, if you are interested in checking them out and taking a look at those. So, I just like to congratulate these young people who have read these books and they are so excited to be readers to be able to answer these questions to be able to um know how many people are in the room with them that are enjoying books and enjoying this process. So, it's a terrific thing that we see every year. So, thank you for your support. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. All right, moving along on our agenda. Uh, we're at the consent agenda and I'll entertain a motion. I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda. Is there a second to the motion? Second. All right. Any discussion? Ashley, I have two questions and

007then one comment I wanted to make um before we vote, which is Alan, there's an unusual item in the 50k purchases which a constituent pointed out to me, which is a newella order order for the Meline Choir School. Could you explain why we made a purchase for the choir school? I I'm I want to guess to see if I get it right. So, some of our federal programs we have to allocate out to private schools by law and we have to make the purchase for them. Um, and so that's what that would be. Okay. Inter news to me. This has been very edifying. And then my next question, which might be for President Salzar, but might also go back to Alan, is I see that C4, which is the fee schedule, is not listed with

008the policy other line items. So, was that item directed to the policy committee before coming to the agenda or can we get some background on how that came to appear here? Yeah, so the C4 has never really gone to the policy committee. uh Isaac or whoever is our um over our rentals usually updates those. It hasn't been updated for a couple years I believe. Um so he he brings forth those updates um based on market rates and so forth. Okay. Thank you so much. And then I just wanted to raise one concern which I'm still willing to approve this particular item but that the HR report on this particular consent agenda doesn't include some of the jobs that have already been announced to our community. So, I always get a little concerned if we don't

009clearly follow our procedures for HR decisions to be ratified to the board. And sometimes I think that if we post them so late after they've already been announced, it gives undue pressure to ratify decisions and it's not very clear to me as a board member. Um, in the same vein, I notice we're again a little bit behind our peer districts in announcing our placements for next year. So, I'd love to see our district get ahead of this process in the next cycle so we could find oursel on pace with our peers when we make these announcements. Um, I additionally have one correction, which is in the minutes we need to correct the spelling of Mike Cameron's name two times. Thank you. I object. Nate, may I Ashley or Amanda? Excuse me. No. Um, so I

010had two things. I did email out the individuals. Um, I will let you guys speak to them. So, Isaac, I'm going to kind of have you explain on the whole Brook Service. Um, ask as to why we're replacing um the boiler for West High School when we're rebuilding the school. You did a great job of explaining it to me, but I think it would be worthwhile to explain to the community. I just yell it. Depends on if they can hear it online. So, a lot of the mechanical equipment at West, we're doing the best we can to limp it along until we get done with the phase one of the new build. Um, unfortunately the inner liner of that boiling system failed and ruptured and it's irreparable. Thank you. Uh, I will, if I can

011mention real quick, that equipment won't go, it won't be used in the new west, but we will hold on to that equipment to utilize at another facility in the future once we're done with it where it'll be the new purchase that'll be repurposed somewhere else. Yes. Thank you. Um, and then I had three other items that um, I had messaged Sam about. So Sam, I'm going to put you up there. Um, one was regarding Parent Square where there was ask for monies um, to utilize it for the new website provider. Um, one was for the SHI International um, the school budget planning software and then card integrators for the consolidated um, cards. And my general ask were um what are they replacing? Because the the cost um is that like uh in addition to what

012we're paying is it um replacing something that we're already paying. So actually the the the cost the net cost is not increasing that amount. Um and I can't remember my other question. if you can I can look it up but if you want to comment on those to enlighten that would be lovely. Yeah. So to give you some feedback on that so parent square we went through an RFP process. Our current website provider final site the end of our five-year contract was up and we went through a review and parent square won that RFP. Our cost will actually once we're through the implementation process our cost will actually go down significantly each year. So that one is replacing that. our website will be hosted now on parent square starting August 1st is our go live

013date. Um and then the SHI quote is for a product called gravity which is budgeting and forecasting software. Um we currently do not have um a good robust system like that. Um things are being run out of reports out of our financial system and on spreadsheets which becomes really cumbersome. So this is to facilitate um a better budgeting process and forecasting for our schools and for our administrative offices. Um the one card is a newer project as well based upon requests that we've received to allow students to be able to badge into schools as well as consolidating the number of cards that they have. So that one is a little bit of an ad at this point. we're paying for um like student ID cards. This will replace that. So, the schools aren't going to

014need to purchase student ID cards. That'll all be provided out of this one card solution. Thank you for that. Any other questions or comments, Charlotte? Um yeah, I had a question about um computer program software for various schools. We had talked about in your presentation a few board meetings ago, we talked about how you can um bring down the cost by coordinating with all the schools about which software they would like to purchase. Have you encountered any of that for next year or had any of that coordination go on? So what we're doing in our process right now, we're rolling out a piece of software called uh light speeded insights that is going to let us more accurately discover what software schools are running. We have it in some locations, but there's a lot of

015software that is um kind of in one classroom alone or whatever. So, we're going to gather the reports and then start working on the consolidation process. Okay. Thank you. Seeing no other questions, we'll go ahead and call it for a roll call vote starting uh with Charlotte. Charlotte Fe Jefferson. Yes. Ashley Anderson, yes. Nate Salazar, yes. Ryan Jensen, yes. I'm Amanda Longwell. Yes. Rice Williams. Yes. All right, that motion passes. Uh we'll move on to our request to speak section of the agenda. Um there is a brief statement uh that the board has asked me to read before each public comment period um outlining the guidelines for your public comment. The board enjoys the opportunity to hear from the public during the comment portion of its meetings. Before we begin, I'd like to take a

016moment just to remind you of what those rules are governing your comments. The total time reserved for public comment is not to exceed 15 minutes with all speakers or groups limited to three minutes. The board will not allow public comments during board meetings that are slanderous, obscene, or otherwise violate state or federal law. Employees and/or their representatives may not use the public comment period to address issues that should be raised through existing formal communication channels or established grievance or negotiation procedures. I'd also like to explain that unless the speaker's topic is already on the agenda, state law prohibits the board from taking action on items raised during the public comment period. However, if it seems appropriate to the circumstances, I may direct district staff to follow up with a speaker on the topic discussed. Our

017first speaker this evening is Nelly Levit. She's not here quite yet. Okay, I'll move on to number two, which is Courtney Lee. That is me. Okay, come on up. Hello, my name is Courtney Lee. I am a teacher at Bonavville Elementary. Um, last week, last Friday, we got an email about our end times changing next year. Um, so we're now going to be going till 2:15 on Fridays. Um, this year our end time is at 1:15 and last year our end time was at 12:50 on Fridays. Um, Friday is our guaranteed uh, planning time. And so next year we're going to be losing an hour of that um, every week. So uh, I teach kindergarten and that is our only planning time that we have um, guaranteed for us every week. Um, and during the

018week our planning times that we have during specials, we sometimes have our PLC's. Um, we sometimes have behavior issues. We sometimes have people out sick. We sometimes have kids that have issues that come up. Um we sometimes have meetings that come up. So we don't have that stuff, that kind of stuff that's guaranteed for us each week. Um, so I am coming to you guys with hope that you guys will look at our guaranteed planning time in elementary and be thoughtful when you look at elementary school teachers and look at us and think about our planning and think about what secondary teachers get versus what elementary teachers get guaranteed um each week. Um uh sometimes teachers can feel as though more and more is expected every year and we have less and less time to

019prepare that. Um, I feel as though sometimes in the summer I'm there more and more and every week I'm there more and more. And I think that sometimes it feels like there's more and more pressure and there's more and more tests and there's more and more things that are kind of demanded um on a state level, not necessarily a district level, but as a state level that we have to uh have more lesson plans for and more things that we have to prepare for. and to take away more planning time feels kind of like a gut punch. Um, so when you when you're looking at the end times for next year, uh, think about our planning and think about where we can incorporate that planning time. Um, and think about if there's a place that

020you could put that. Um, and just think about elementary teachers and think about us and our time. That would be great. Thanks, Our next speaker this evening is Emma Russell. Hi. Um, my colleague signed up for the slot after me just because I might be a couple little bit over, but I just want to be respectful of time. So, if you want to, if you're tired of hearing my voice, you can switch to her, but I'll just keep reading if not. Um, good evening board members and members of Salt Lake City School District community. My name is Emma Russell. I'm a teacher at Backman Elementary. Um, I'm also a resident of the neighborhood and my future children will attend the school where I work. Um, I want to begin by sincerely saying thank you um

021for taking the time and consideration to reach out and ask how we can best be supported in title one schools. Um, I know that supporting public education is becoming increasingly difficult and so your intentions are felt and appreciated. Um, I'm here tonight to speak to this specifically with regards to two of the three special education hub schools that are title one, Backman and Franklin. Um, I'm asking us to consider title one funding and needs specifically with these schools in mind. Um during the 2019 during 2019, um the district drastically changed, as you probably know, the way our special education programs work by putting both the full day behavior support units and the full day academic support units into just three elementary schools. Um I was a special education teacher at in an academic support co-eing

022classroom at the time. And I truly believe that the intention was to um fully support schools with this transition. However, as we all know, um shortly after the district was faced with COVID and that served as a catalyst for like an immediate shift in priorities. Um so now that we're on the other side of that, I'm just asking that we we can revisit maybe some of this special education model and most importantly how we're resourcing these schools. Um politicians often like to repeat the research that class size has no bearing on teacher effectiveness and student learning. And I'm here to tell you that that is not true. Um, and I believe that research cited is not really done in title one schools. And I know for a fact it's not done in schools like my

023school or our school where um, a third of the students have IEPs. Um, in my grade level alone this year, 21 of our 55 students have IEPs. These needs are split across just two classrooms. Um, we also have approximately 60% of our grade that are MLS, including four to five students in each of our classrooms that are brand new to the country. As a district, we're placing students who have not had their needs met in a traditional special education model, and we're placing into them them into the classrooms that already have the highest needs without providing the additional resources right now. I believe to ensure success. While research on co-eing classrooms is still limited, studies widely recognize that collaborative classrooms should not exceed 30% of students with special needs. The Council for Exceptional Children um

024even goes so far to say that it should be no more than eight students per class or ideally less if the students have higher support needs, which is not only true for our special education students, but it's also true for our general education population without IEPs. Furthermore, much of this research that's been done um has been done with classrooms of students with mild learning disabilities and resource services and not the high needs of the students that we serve at Bachman and Franklin. Um, and in our grade, for example, nearly half of the students in the co-eing classroom right now have IEPs. Um, um, my classroom is not the designated collaborative classroom, and while my co-workers have more extreme academic needs, my numbers for sped students also exceed the CEC's recommendations um, for best practices, and

025I have neither a co-teer or a pair in my classroom to support that. In some grade levels at our school, teachers surpass 30 students in their classrooms. This absolutely plays a role in student success as especially with needs as great as ours. Um, I can have exceptional tier one instruction, but I can't tier one my way out of a tier two and three problem. Meaning like if a third of twothirds of my students came in reading a first grade or below level, I can have exceptional fourth grade ELA instruction, but it doesn't miraculously rub off on them. I need to have time um and resources to pull small groups. Smaller class sizes could help me meet those needs. Paras could help me meet those needs. um and that doesn't yet consider the implications of meeting

026the needs of our MLL students with with CH who have very specifically outlined groupings and legal service minutes that need to be provided. Um many states across the country provide additional FTEEs based on the MLL case load to provide students with equitable education and allow schools to ensure that legal compliance compliance and that's something that like a PD can't fix. Um my fourth grade colleagues and I have over 40 years of collective teaching experience. We each have our masters plus over 100 additional USB hours. All three of us are certified in both special education and general education because we knew that was what was best for our kids. Um, we've all been trained on the science of reading. I've been Wilson certified for over 10 years. But no summation of our expertise training or the

027amount of hours we spend prepping or tutoring after school matters when we don't have the opportunity to use these skills because our needs are too great for one single classroom. I used to work at Edison. I was really happy to hear about the ELP magnet program there. It shows our district is consistently working towards equity. I've also heard that um the ideas being discussed are putting a cap on amp classroom sizes. So my request is that we just take those same careful considerations for our students who have the highest needs in the district um and who learning doesn't come as easily. Um I love this district. I have tremendous respect for the leadership we have especially now. I think things are moving forward in such a positive direction. Um but most of all I love

028the children that we serve. They deserve an equitable education. many of their families who have sacrificed and continue to sacrifice everything to give them these opportunities um deserve h to have us match that energy and we're on a journey to become a flagship district. But that means I think we need to think outside of the box to support our students better. I think the Utah box limits us to being the state that fluctuates annually for last or second to last for per pupil spending does not put caps on special education case load sizes. For example, our resource teacher now has over 30 students which is nearly twice a lot of states. I have a background from the east coast like twice states legal limit for a lot of teachers in other states. Um if we

029truly want to be a flagship district I think we need to look for examples in districts outside of Utah and how to resource our schools intentional or not. I think by placing these hubsped programs in two of the highest need schools in the districts we're sending the message that we can do this here because maybe parents won't push back as much. Maybe they don't speak English fluently yet. Maybe they're not yet familiar with the education system enough to know that they have a right to advocate for these inequities that their children are facing right now. I think this mod model has significantly overburdened the these two schools and the students are the paying the price. Um I don't want to place blame. So I'll just summarize this last paragraph. I don't want to place blame

030or pro promote negativity. Um I wouldn't believe here if I didn't believe that everyone really cared. Um so it's not about dismantling these schools. I just think that I as we look at title one funding, I hope you can keep these two schools at the forefront. And um my main goal was to be solutions based and just open this dialogue because 3 minutes isn't enough time to really bring everything to the table, but I just wanted to put it on everyone's radar. So, thank you for your time. Thank you. And Peggy, I'm assuming that you were next and Yes. All right. So, we're good. Used your time. Okay. I was gonna switch halfway through. All right. Um and then Nelly Levit, have have you arrived yet? Okay. I'm not seeing her here. Board, if you're

031immunable to it in the past, um when this has happened, if they do show up, we have taken a break to go ahead and hear from that. If everybody's good with that, we can take that practice on again. Okay. Excellent. Thank you everybody for for bringing your comments to us. Um we really appreciate the feedback and all the hard work that you're doing in our classrooms and in our communities as well. Um moving on to our reports agenda. Uh the first item we have the capital projects fund and debt service fund budgets. Alan just spoke. Uh the first item we have the capital projects fund and debt service fund budgets. Alan So, all right. We we know this is what everybody's been waiting for when the first item we have the capital projects fund and

032debt service fund budget. We know this is what everybody. Don't say we didn't. your very fun. Okay. Thank you. We all love hearing ourselves again. All right. Just one second. Okay. I think that might have been my fault. Sorry. You wanted to hear what you sound like. All right. Uh today, our next step in the budget process, we're going to review the capital projects uh and also the debt service fund. Uh we'll start with the capital projects fund. I just want to note the purpose of the project of the capital projects fund is to account for resources and expenditures related to the building remodeling and renovation of district buildings. A couple highlights for uh next year's budget. Uh the Rosland Heights athletic fields scheduled to be completed in July of 2025. Uh we'll continue through

033our sustainability projects uh phase two and I think even moving into the next phase uh during the next year. And in addition, the design of both Highland High School and West High School rebuilding projects will be some of our major um expenditures for next year. Uh in addition, we will um we're going out for bond. Uh we've got an item on our uh discussion agenda about bonding. Uh by the end of May, we uh plan on going out and selling um not to exceed $155 million worth of bonds. that will be the first of our bond issuance uh from our bond election in November. Uh and also then in 2026 we will uh go for our our second series and and sell the next piece of bonds um next year as well. So we we're

034going to hear a lot about bonds over the next couple years. Um so this is it's attached to the agenda so you can see it easier. So, this is the capital projects um budget and you see it's got uh some actuals for comparison there. Uh this is the actual schedule that will be in the budget when we uh get through that. So, we've got actuals from 21 22 23 23 23 24. So, part of what we'll be doing when we um approve the next budget is revise the current year budget and then the next year's original budget. So, you can see we um plan on bringing in uh $26 million of revenue up there at the top in the revised for current year spending $67 million. Uh in addition, you see there in the other

035financing sources, that's where our bond money will come in. Um, so, uh, I'm we're estimating, we won't know exactly what that looks like until we actually sell the bonds and how much we we end up selling and what our interest rates are, etc. But we're we're making some best estimates for our our our budget process. So, you can see our fund balance for the capital projects fund will have a big increase, but then we'll be spending that money over the next years as as we we infuse it with bond money, then we spend it, then we infuse it with some more bond money and spend it. Um, so you can see for the next two years, I've got that bond sale um of 146 million. And you see our expenditures are going to continue to

036go up as we um go through these rebuild projects. And then this is just projecting into the future. We've got again five years. We're we're taking our bond and we're going to sell it over the next five years. So you see that um that bond sale keep coming in. The actual rebuild projects will continue a little beyond that. Um, and that is reflected in the budget. As you can see in this chart, you got your revenues in blue, expenditures in orange, and then your fund balance. Uh, everything goes up and then as we um considerably because these are um some significant projects, the rebuilds of the high schools, and then we complete those projects and we come back down to maybe a more normalized level. uh this a pie chart reflecting the the activity. You

037can see 85.9% of the expenditures are construction projects uh in that capital projects fund. And then we've got a few other things in there. Uh moving on to the debt service. So when we issue bonds the re the money we get for the bonds will go into the capital fund but then as we pay the the debt over the next several years that will go into the debt service fund. Um the purpose of this fund is account for the accumulation of resources and the payment of general obligation bond principal and interest which is due annually. Couple highlights from the debt service fund. uh um this current year we we have made our final payment on our uh any old debt and then we will in 2526 start making payments on the new debt. Uh this

038is the debt fund budget. You can see um you're going to see that grow considerably as we sell these bonds and then uh start making payments on them. Uh and those those payment schedules will be approximately a 20-year payment schedule. It'll be five years ramping up pay on 20 and then ramp back down. Um so you can see there our current revised budget total expendenture is 2.2 million and then next year up to 10.4 million uh as reflected u because we'll start making payments on those new bonds and then projected you see that continue to increase as we sell those bonds and and get to our our maximum bonding capacity. There you can see from our our line. Um everything just kind of goes linear linearly linearly up uh as we uh go through these

039projects and pay for them with with the with the bonds. Um here you can see for next year uh they're in the gray interest on bonds and agent fees uh principal down there in blue and then um that orange piece bond issuance cost. Um, so I I just want to since we talked about in a previous meeting the um property tax because the governor vetoed uh Senate Bill 37 which was going to take the basic rate and move it to the state general fund. I just want to update one graph that we had seen previously. Um so basically what's happened now is the status quo the same way we've been giving getting our taxes over the last several years, right? Um if if you're you I'm sure you all remember from my stellar presentation on

040property tax uh that green line in 2025 the green area which is special revenue which is largely our um um tax tax increment financing fund was significantly larger and now that that basic rate actually will come to the district as it always has been it kind of normalizes as you can see that uh next budgets next steps for the the budget. Um during uh April and May, um I'll start sending out requests for when board members may want to come in and do small group kind of deep dives. We'll have the executive summary on May 6, final budget review on May 20th, and then on June 30th, uh the entire budget will be uh we'll have a public hearing on the budget, and then uh it'll be up for approval by the board. Any questions?

041Can we go back to the last slide, please? this. Okay. On the revised 20 242 it acknowledged Ashley. No, Charlotte can go ahead. I'm so sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead. I should have asked you first. Um I just wanted to see what we are going to be approving. So so for for so last year at this time last year in June the board approved an original budget for 2425 but during the year we get new grants we get you know employees move change so we we make budget adjustments throughout the year. So the board will approve a revised current year budget and the proposed original budget for next year. So you'll be approving two budgets in in June. Um again revised current year and then the original. Thank you, Ashley. Yes. Sorry, I was distracted

042by the sneeze over there. Um, so in the other local revenue section for 2526, the line was zero. And I'm wondering if you could speak to how much we received in our request for implementation of the school safety bill and if that amount because it's on a capital expense mostly would appear in that line in capital or if it would appear in another line depending on the funds we received. So of the of the school safety bill um so they had us go through and do the assessment for all of our our schools. uh we requested or said you know in order to become compliant with all the requirements of that rule that we would need over uh 100 it was was it 1 billion or 100 million 100 million it's what's three decimal spots

043so over hund00 million to accomplish everything which uh is required in the safety bill. Uh we've been granted 700,000 700,000 uh which largely is going which is to cover uh locks on the doors. Um so it's it's something but as you can see it's nowhere near what we're going to need in the future to fulfill all the requirements of the safety bill. And since they're locks on the doors that probably won't be recorded in the capital fund. will um most likely will choose to record that in the general fund. Um so does that answer your question? Yeah. So in other words, door locks are not capital. Like I was thinking many of the expenses you would have in that like one of the requirements is and and we can put anything we want in the

044general fund because the general fund is kind of like the hold everything else. So, when we um get to a point where we're putting glazing on windows and that expense uh is significant, uh we'll make a determination how we're going to pay for those um improvements and what fund we'll choose to use because it that's something that it could potentially go out of the capital fund. It could potentially come out of the general fund. Um when we get to that point, we'll make those decisions. Okay. Um, and I also have a hope for a future budget presentation that I think could help us make some good decisions this year. There have been a lot of changes in the last couple of years to the flexible allocation and I know we have two new board members

045who may or may not understand totally, I may not even understand totally as it changes pretty frequently what the flexible allocation is or how it works. So, I'm hoping before June, one of your updates could explain the trend of state funds and the changes between last year and this year in the funding that we receive. And I wonder if that could also include, you know, property tax growth even though we know much is diverted to development, like what growth we do have um that we're working with. And I'm especially hopeful we can do this because uh as the governor makes an announcement that, you know, state agencies need to prepare for a recession. I'm wondering if that trend could even include how we responded to the last recession under Governor Huntsman. Um because I recognize

046we're going to need to make some real strategic predictions about reducing costs in the event there was an immediate recession. And I recall um that the last recession there was no growth for several years. We had to even return money one of the years or WPU is just now back at pre-recession levels. If you take out inflation like do you think such a report of trends of state changes as possible to report on. Right? So, what we'll a lot of that's most of our state revenues is report in the general fund. So, when we go over the general fund, we'll cover a lot of that. We may not have time to to go over in detail what you're asking for and that may be a separate uh discussion item in a in a future board

047meeting, but we we will cover state revenue when we go over the general fund, which probably isn't going to be next board meeting, but the board meeting after that. Thank you. Any other questions for Alan? Amanda can sorry just a broad question given everything that you're reviewing. Are there any areas that we should be um aware of as to concern or what we need to be focusing on to ensure we don't um trend in a negative direction. Right. I I think you know we we've we've had the issue for years of student you know our student population continues to decrease which then generates fewer state dollars through the the weight of people unit. So that's something we always need to be aware of and looking at uh you know our our class sizes our school

048sizes etc. Um, you know, we the safety bill, which has been brought up a little bit, um, there are going to be requirements that we have to fund sooner than later. Um, the the glazing on the glass is something that's been pushed back quite a bit, but the, um, the guardians or the armed security guards in schools is something that is anticipated that gets probably uh, put together by next year. Um, we're still working on a presentation on what that is going to look like because there are several different options of how we can handle that. Uh, and then once we have that, we need to determine how we're going to fund it. Um, because an armed security guard in every school is a going to be a good chunk of money, but again, it's

049the law, so we kind of have to I mean, maybe I'm just holding out hope that the legislature funds more of those pieces of the law. Um, but probably not, at least not this year. I mean, legislation legislative session's over. So, we do have to make sure we uh hold enough money back that we can be in compliance with those safety bills. Thank you, Alan. Any other questions, Brian? So, Alan, could we just look at that pie chart that you pulled up? the capital projects budgeted expendure expenditures by object. Can you explain contracted services and salaries and benefits? Yeah. So contracted services are we hire a contractor to rebuild the building, right? Um our architects for the the two high schools will be included in that category and we're not doing the work. Our employees

050aren't doing the work. we're going to hire a company to do it. That's included in that big orange piece. But we do have some employees that are overseas that are in in the capital fund because largely their their purpose of their job is to oversee capital projects. So you do see some employees in there, but the bulk, you know, we don't have our own employees rebuilding schools. We we contract that out. I just thought that would be a helpful explanation. Thank you. Thanks, Aling. No other comments. We'll go ahead and move on um to item number two. But before I do that, I just want to check in and see if Nelly Levit is with us. Nelly, uh we we moved on in the agenda, but the board agreed to to hear you out and

051to hear what you have to say. Um so you've got three minutes. Perfect. Okay. Come on up to the the table or the podium, whatever is best for you. No problem. Okay. Sorry I'm late. Um, I'm a mom of four. My kids, uh, three of my kids go to Bonavville Elementary. Um, the reason I'm late is because I was running three different carpools today. And that actually leads into, uh, what I wanted to address, which was it's come to my understanding that there is a proposal to change our early release at Bonavville next um, year on Fridays to 2:15 instead of uh, what we currently have, which is 1:15. Um, my recommendation would be to not do that. uh getting out one hour early actually just kind of feels like a slap in the face.

052We'd rather maybe extend it and have just a regular school hours all week and then just have extra time off versus just having one hour early out of school. Um a big part of that is because with four kids, even if each of my children is only involved in one extracurricular per season, I'm just running all over the place. Friday is one of our only days as a family and I know that's true for many of other Bonavville parents. Um we understand that there are other schools in the district that get out at separate times. Um however, this is something that we really love and value about our school is that it's very unique in that many families choose to um get out of school and go up the mountain and go skiing or head

053out to go do something hiking or whatever as a family. and that just pushing it just one hour later makes that less feasible for families um in our neighborhood. And the other thing I want to address, which I'm not even sure if this is the right platform for this, um but this year the schools have decreased the amount of recess time, which I think um is a mistake because I've got four children, all have ADHD, all are very busy. that is the time where their little minds are able to you release some of that excess energy and be able to focus back in class. And even for children who aren't ADHD, but maybe have a harder time sitting still, I think that that is a time where they are able to get some of that

054out. Especially for my sixth grader, he's now down to one recess and they say, "Oh, we're prepping you for middle school." But I think middle school comes very fast and I don't necessarily feel like we need to be doing so much prep to get them there. They do just fine when they get there. But it's nice for them to have opportunities in the day where they can wiggle and move around and not have to fear getting reprimanded by their teacher because that's not what you're supposed to be doing in class. So those would be my two recommendations and I really appreciate you guys taking the time to hear me out. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Our second item on the report's agenda is the strategic plan for student achievement pillar for update. Superintendent. So

055I'm going to invite up a crowd here. Um Dr. Lisson Taylor, Isaac Ael, and Logan Hall are representatives on this pillar. Oh, and Alli's gonna join. Ally, Dr. Ally Martin's gonna join. You just keep inviting him up. Laura Dezo, our CT director, is going to join as well. Good evening everyone. This is our presentation in regards to pillar four learning environment stewardship and sustainability. That's part of our strategic plan for student success. The purpose of this presentation is to provide the board with an overview of pillar 4. Deal with what successes we've had, what are our ongoing uh procedures and processes, as well as what are some some of our desired outcomes. Uh the first part of of the goal is safe and efficient facilities across the district. Um we look at this in in

056a myriad of uh aspects to make sure that it's safe aesthetic that it provides a good healthy teaching atmosphere in the building. Um and then also the sustainability of of the facilities. Um this last year uh we've we've seen some great successes in phase two of our uh sustainability and solar installations. Uh we've added eight additional facilities that currently all of the um systems are installed. Uh all but one is actually plugged in and running right now. Um the great thing of this is that we'll produce somewhere between 2.2 two megawws and three megawws per year which will reduce our our uh our reliance on uh coal provided power. Uh 13.2% progress towards the 100% renewable. Uh so that takes us to 20 nearly 22% um for all the phases right now. That's a uh

0572200 tons of CO2 avoided. And then um we uh you can move on to the next one. The the next part of the of the phase that was part of phase two was that we went through every facility um and we weatherized and crack sealed windows, entrances, all those things. Um we're we this was part of the TLP and we uh were guaranteed a no less than a 76,000 savings in our utilities uh for the year by doing this project. Um so kudos to everyone who voted for this and has approved us to move forward on that. um the power ed people engagement. Um we've had great success with Mckinstry actually going into the elementary schools and h uh allowing Mckinstry to work with the teachers and the children and show them the different aspects

058of what our sustainability efforts are making. Um we've had u so far we've held a few of the classes. We'll have to hold several more this this year, but we've already reached over 200 students and 50 staff in these presentations and discussions. And it's pretty exciting to go and watch them talk about these things of um you know how solar works, what they what they can do in their school and at their homes to make a difference. Isaac, could you pull the mic a little closer to you just so listening from afar can hear? Yep. Thank you. Um, we also, uh, we did an evaluation with Mckinstry and their engineers. Uh, Rocky Mountain Power. Their, uh, fee schedule isn't the easiest thing to read, but, uh, we we have gotten confirmation and we've opted to

059change from rate six to 6A. That allows us some savings, which it doesn't sound like a lot, but that's another $33,000 a year in uh, utility savings by going from the one to the other. Um, and again, that was part of the Mckinstry recommendation. So, it's part of the TELP and and uh if we don't see those savings, we actually have a backup plan that Mckinstry gets to pay the difference. So, um we are working on uh we're calling it phase three right now, but this is the bond money that was set aside for sustainability projects. The first we're we're going to phase this over the next five years. It's a lot of projects and a lot of money that is going into this, the nearly $80 million uh from the bond. Um the first

060phase of that is we will be uh installing another there's three canopies at transportation. One of them is active solar. We're going to be uh installing on the second one. Um and then Bryant Middle School, Dworth, Indian Hills, Northwest, and Zion and Escalani are all uh on this year's this next phase of this. Um when we talk about the phase, this this portion will be about a year and a half from the time that we start design until until completion. Um but along with this uh we have been able to identify several older schools that their uh mechanical systems are are uh end of life and uh for example Whittier right now we're doing soil sampling to uh consider ground source heat pumps for that facility which is the most efficient way we can maintain

061a facility. Um but these these are the next steps in what we're doing over the next five years. Um we will continue to talk about phase four, five, six uh for the next few years. Um but again, we've made tremendous uh strides forward. We're seeing the progress. Um we're seeing the savings or at least we're seeing the usage drop even though the fees are going up. So we're still paying about the same as we were before. But if you looked at had we not dropped that, our uh utility costs would be tremendously higher. Um along with uh the the rest of the sustainability projects over the next five years, we are making huge strides at the two new high schools that are proposed or that we're work moving forward on. Um both will have solar

062installations and we have confirmed that we can do crource heat pumps at Highland and that will provide about 50% um of the heating and cooling for the facility. Uh the good news is that that'll take us to nearly 40% uh after phase four um of the 100% goal that we have. Yes, it's your turn. All right. Can I read off yours? I should stop. Um, goal number one is for students will be provided with facilities that are designated are designed, excuse me, to effectively deliver college and career pathways and learning experiences. Um, we are consistently collaborating with the district and our UI system of higher education to ensure there's alignment with community and industry needs. And then, uh, we solicit input and feedback. And I can say that we've done this a lot with our

063development of our new schools. and um with alongside Isaac with the projects that he talks about working on to just ensure that we are aligned with what is needed in the designing of these new classrooms. Um we have multi-purpose learning spaces that are um in the development in the two new high school builds which will help support a collaborative effort in the community amongst our industry partners. and um they're really unique spaces that can eb and flow with the evolution of college and curve pathway learning experiences for students. So some of the outcomes and I think things that should be highlighted on this part of um student achievement is that we are working with um higher education partners monthly. Um, we've had opportunities to go out and visit the West Point campus for Salt Lake

064Community College and it has been enlightening to see some really great facilities and what can we can use as a Yushi institution partner with Salt Lake School District. Uh, we have quarterly meetings with uh the statewide Yushi boards and our uh USB partners that help guide and give us direction on changes that are coming. um new and future classrooms, they are going to be designed with industry standard in mind. So if there is an industry standard in a welding shop, we will be using those guidelines as we develop out these lab spaces for students. Um we have done new or visits to these new high schools that are coming along and and picked the good things that we'd like to adopt and then also some things that might not work necessarily for Salt Lake City

065School District students and we're building those into our new lab spaces. Um, and then there's program implementation of high-tech curriculum, and we're using collaborative engagement with industry partners just to make sure that we're designing things that help expand the college and career pathway opportunities for students. Uh, one example is our um virtual reality implementation that went out into all of our middle schools this year. It's been an exciting space to see the growth in students in their math and science and um programming concepts that they might not necessarily get in a uh traditional classroom environment. So, it's been really awesome to have an engaging instruction opportunity for students. [Music] So, another part of this pillar is the second goal for high quality staff. That's a big part of having uh safe, efficient, wonderfully run buildings.

066And so that's where I come into play is that uh in the this pillar, part of this goal is that we will staff our schools with well-trained and capable employees ready to provide exemplary learning environments for all students and responsive to evolving district needs. I'm happy to report that we are on target with our goals uh specifically in these three areas of our grow your own educator program, teaching as a profession pathway, and our hiring procedures. and I have a highlight for each of them. Um, first I want to thank Mr. Shazo for helping uh get our teaching as a profession pathway participation going. Uh, and we're definitely on target for meeting our goals. Uh, this last year was the first year in uh, many years that we've been able to offer that program successfully

067and we had 10 students in that program. this year with eight students uh with eight additional students doing the second year program where they are getting concurrent enrollment uh credit through the Salt Lake Community College uh in the aspiring educator program. This next school year we're slated to have 33 students in the program with a with an additional eight students doing the concurrent enrollment course which I fully intend on hopefully hiring them as teachers one day. So that's that's really good and positive information. Um, in regard to the grow your own educator program, that would be my intention is that these students who are currently taking these high school courses join our grow your own educator program or move on to the university uh development program so that they can get their full professional license

068in time. Uh the last couple years we've had the benefit with our grow your own educator program of having state grant funds to provide funding uh to pay for college education uh you know including books, tuition fees uh all the things for a select group of u eligible candidates and that money has run out this year. But even despite the money running out from the legislative grants, we have still been able to uh help support and mentor uh a cadre of teachers through the program, helping them develop their skills and complete the coursework required so that they can get professional lensure. So I am happy to report that we had several employ uh several candidates graduate through that program last year who we were able to hire uh this school year. And so I'm hopeful

069that we will continue doing this programs because we've been doing it for multiple years now. And it's always the dep the dependent variable really is whether or not we have additional funding to provide these candidates. But we have ongoing support and that happens through our human resource office and has been a good success. And the third success story I want to talk about is our hiring protocols and timelines. our office has created uh very specific um and consistent hiring practices for each of our different um employee types. And so we have thankfully reduce the amount of time it takes to hire once our office receives a request to hire. We have an average rate of less than 48 hours for turnaround time on being able to process the hiring paperwork once we get the request

070to hire from our hiring managers across the district. So these are big uh improvements to increase efficiency, make sure that we have fewer vacancies and uh get our openings filled as quickly as possible. So positive things in that regard. So with this next slide, you'll see it's no longer me. All right. Hey, that's what slide is this Ally? This is an A1 cat, by the way. An A1 cat. You got to Google the new Secretary of Education. Um All right. So, um, yeah. So, uh, I'm here to talk about student conduct and their disciplinary process. Um, we can forward. Oh, yeah. You got to move it too, I guess. Sorry, we're not all synced up. Um, so the first the first component of this goal was that um, all schools will use a threat assessment

071team. And um currently every school has a trained schools safety and spe and security specialist. Call them SASes because they're a little sassy. Um but but we do have those folks in all of our buildings. And um our SASes are leading our SEAG teams. So they they are a little bit more trained than the average SeaG um administrator trained administrator. We also have two Sea Stag trainers in house. So, uh, Mr. Yantu Barber and I can conduct SeaG trainings for anybody in our district free of charge. And 90% of our building administrators are SEAG trained. Um, as far as how timely we're able to process um, our safe school disciplinary referrals, we have, as of yesterday, processed 66 cases. We did two this morning. Um the average days that a student misses for a safe

072schools violation is eight. So um that's less than our our goal at 10 days out. So like we're doing a really good job keeping our kids in school. Um of those 66 cases, eight of those were board referrals. That's where we get our longer time out because it takes a little bit longer for, you know, to go through that extra step. So the average days that a student misses school as a result of a board level safe school meeting is 15. And um the other part of this goal is that we will um provide postvention uh processes to ensure that our students who go through um the safe schools process um have a seamless transition back to an appropriate educational set setting. Um, thus far only three students who have had a safe schools meeting

073this year have reaffended after that safe schools meeting, meaning that they've had a second or or more um district level safe school. So, those are those are good numbers. Um, no student who has exited our reset program this year has returned to our safe school meeting or our reset program. So although we do have some students who take some time to get through that program, it seems to be improving um their their behaviors once they do finally complete it. And we think that that's that's really good. And um another change that we've made this year is that the grading terms have changed in our reset program in order to accommodate transition. So instead of following the horizonte term schedule, they're following the traditional high school and middle school term schedule. So that as students transition

074in and out, their grades are um not as strongly impacted. Any questions? Any questions, Amanda? Um so this is to Logan. Um, and I know this has been discussed in prior board meetings before I came into the seat. You guys do a grow your own for uh general education teachers. You do not do a grow your own for special education teachers. I do understand um that that at least at that time unless something has changed that that program is um basically um supported through USB um or driven through. But I guess um my ask it's loose because it's not a board directive. It'll be a future goal of mine. Um but figuring out a way that we can um um partner with USB, the data exists to be able to tie that together. Um because

075we obviously know special education has its own shortages and its own challenges and we have a lot of paras that have a passion for this as well. Um, and so I think it's untapped talent and we really should be looking at a greater for our special education teams. So not a question but more of a please. Sure. I can provide some clarification. Uh there is a difference between our grow your own program and the Apple program which is the alternative pathway to professional uh educator lensure. Um the state does not allow us to do anything with the special education pathway to professional lensure. Um but that doesn't mean that we don't also support individuals going through that pathway. And so we have several individuals in our district who are current teachers or current parapros who

076are working toward uh a special education license. Um, and so they do receive support through our office um, as needed, but we just aren't the ones that are sponsoring their Apple program per se. And so there there is a partnership. Can there there's always room for improvement, of course, but but there is a partnership there to the extent that I got an email earlier uh, this evening about a teacher of ours that's completed the requirements for that and will soon be recommended for full special education lensure. And that's great. I I I'm guessing, correct me if I'm wrong, it's a very loose relationship, an organic um support, so to speak, versus a very intentional um identifying talent and connecting them with it and a very intentional like let's help you along to really make sure

077that that like talent can be fostered and developed. You know what I mean? So, makes sense. Thanks. Any other questions? Ashley, I have a question. Um, that's actually just for the superintendent about the memo before this presentation. It said we would get some suggested amendments in June to the strategic plan. So, I'm wondering how would you like us to reflect on the presentations we've received to date when we can't anticipate, we're hearing updates, but we can't anticipate what changes you're going to planning to recommend. Um, so you're asking how you give feedback on what you'd like to see. Just how would you like us to reflect upon the updates we've had so far? Are these does this have things you would recommend changing in it? Like what's what's the timeline between now and June that

078will result in those changes being brought to us? Um, so right now we have one more pillar. We're going to circle back to pillar one. Excuse me. So we'll do that in May. That's on our agendas in May to do and then we would bring to you a draft or some changes for June. Um, we could put that on the first meeting in June for a conversation and then a vote on the second meeting in June or something like that if if that gives you time then to think about it and square it with what you've seen over these presentations something like that. Does that kind of capture it for what you're thinking? I think it does. I mean my question is are we planning to make changes to the type of work that have

079been presented to us pillar by pillar or are we planning to say um hey in safe schools we did X it says by 2028 we need to do Y actually we would like until 2030. Is it that type of change or is it very substantive? We're actually looking at a little bit of substantial ones in terms of making sure that we're clear about the outcomes we're after and trying to whittle some things down to be more targeted um in the approach for each of the pillars. Um so they're linked to outcomes that we can measure and present to the board in those presentations. So that's one of the things we're looking at just generally holistically at the whole strategic plan. what can we narrow down? What can we make sure needs to be have an

080outcome oriented focus and a measurable metric um at the end. So those are some of the broad things we're looking at as well as some and some I believe we may have somewhat met a few of the what we did in the strategic plan is it lists a lot of actions we'll take um and so trying to get out of a list of actions and more into a list of outcomes about what we want. So that's our orientation and looking at it and what we would bring forward to you to consider in June. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you all. Thank you. Thanks for the time. Except for Dr. Taylor who gets to stay up for round two of his presentations today. Oh, my birthday. Oh, that's right. We should have started the meeting with

081that. Happy birthday, Dr. T. Thank you. Should we sing? Yeah. Should we sing? Do you want to sing for you? There's a fast version. I don't know it. You want to lead us in that? No, I don't think Dr. I embarrassed myself the other day. Now, uh actually this presentation will cover a question that came from the board study session. We're looking at national trends for title one funding. what are we currently doing with family school collaborations as well as a summation of the survey that was issued. So you might see me look back and refer to Dr. Hall because she provided assistance when we looked at the survey and how we summarized that information. But like I said, what we're looking at is an overview of how title fund title one funds are utilized

082nationally and to highlight additional resources that can support title one schools in improving educational outcomes. We recognize that when we talk about title one, we're referring to part A of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act on the federal level. The purpose of those funds is are to support schools with high percentages of lowincome students and to ensure that all students meet challenging state academic standards. What's the national primary use of those funds? instructional support, academic intervention, professional development for educators, family and community engagement, and support for our special populations. When we're just looking at instructional support and academic intervention, we're talking about reading and math intervention programs, small groupoup tutoring and extended learning opportunities, evidence-based strategies that show improved outcomes. In the area of professional development, we're referring to researchbased instructional strategies, trauma-informed education. How

083do you build enhanced teacher capacity as well as improve student engagement? In the area of family community engagement, we see funds being expended for family workshops, literacy programs, events that promote school home connections, and events that increase academic performance and attendance. You see layering it takes place according to some to some district's respective plans for students with disabilities, ELELLL, homeless students, tailored interventions and equitable access. When we look at additional resources that have been aligned to partner with title one schools or for title one schools, school improvement grants have been offered on the state level. Community eligibility provisions are in place on the state level. You have various partnerships with partner organizations, local state and local grants and private gifting and supports. And some of this is redundant when you look at the fact that

084these things have taken place over years. School improvement grants have been provided by by states and these are federal funds that are increased for lowest performing schools used for comprehensive reform strategies. They complement title one efforts. When you hear us talk about CIS CSI schools, when we say CSI school, that's an example of a school improvement grant, the funds that flow with that. the community eligibility provision, the C, that's free meals to all students in high poverty schools. It reduces administrative burden and improves student nutrition and academic readiness and has them prepared to meet the things that they need to do in school. Organizational and community partnerships covered. We talk about mentoring, counseling, after school programs, financial volunteer support, uh, national and local partnerships with state and local grants supporting literacy, STEM, social emotional learning.

085Also, you look at examples where you might see modifications in local control of funding via formulas, weighted formulas for schools that have higher percentages of kids that come from low soio economic backgrounds or English language learners. And then you look at t augmenting title one funds that are impacted with targeted resources. We know what private and and philanthropic support means. foundations like the Gates Foundations, donor's shoes, grants for innovations, materials, equity initiatives, uh supports that you find also from things like the Wallace Foundation. What are challenges that those schools that are title one funding faces, insufficient funding in high poverty areas, cuts that we face every year? We normally you look at a substantial cut of about 15% on an annual basis. I think this year we're looking uh Oh, I was looking for Dr.

086Marriott. She's not behind me though. Uh roughly a 28 27 to 28% cut that we could be anticipating. What about opportunities looking at blended funding models, holistic student man, student centered strategies and in terms of the conclusion? We know that title one funds are crucial in supporting lowincome students. Additional resources aligned with that would strengthen school efforts and strategic partnerships and funding alignment drive success. Part one. Now moving to part two which is the title one survey summary. The intended audience for this was title one schools in terms of elementary and middle school teachers as well as administrators. One of the one of the major responses we we got, what would most improve your ability to support highquality instruction at your school? Teacher said more planning time with grade content teams, more access to high

087quality curricular material materials, co-eing or a push in support, that means job embedded support. Our administrators said additional increased academic coaching supports, centralized professional development aligned to school goals, more time to visit classrooms and give feedback, and training for supporting teachers in high needs settings. What student centered supports would most impact your ability to teach more effectively? Teachers responded increased attendance support, consistent access to paraprofessionals or aids, more more social workers. Administrator responded additional behavior specialists, more support for building strong co-eing and inclusion models, greater access to pair professionals or aids. What are some of our strong practices noted across schools? Family nights and events. Many schools hosted multiple academic or cultural events such as STEM night, literacy night, steam day, college and career night, etc. Regular communication, frequent updates are shared via parent square,

088new newsletters, websites, and counseling updates. School community councils and committees. Schools maintain active SEC's, PTAs, and community action committees to increase collaboration. We have regular second cup of coffee sessions which are used to engage families in conversations or provide resources and then home visits within a realist realistic budget. What would you add to your school to impact teacher effectiveness and student outcomes? What would it be? The responses we got was additional speed resource teachers to better serve student needs, instructional coaching, a full-time behavior specialist at the sites, reading interventionists, a strong need for designated EL teachers and ESL coordinators were also identified. Transitioning to the last portion which is our family school collaboration overview. We continue to prioritize student and family support. Our efforts focus on removing barriers, enhancing equity, and strengthening school community collaboration.

089You'll see focus throughout all our schools on basic needs assistance. That's our food pantries, our emergency gift cards, vouchers for clothing, food, furniture that we partner with the foundation. You know what I mean? In terms of student and family support, we have high school teen centers. We provide bus passes. We have computers onetoone. We have internet access. In the areas of health and wellness supports, we have CLC's, vision referrals, dental referrals. We have a clinic at West High School. In terms of engagement tools and communication tools, the foundation has an app peace jar. We use digital for digital communication and we have volunteer opportunities with community partners that's coordinated via the schools as well as the foundation. And in terms of family school collaboration, our next steps in terms of strengthening that is we encourage

090use of the foundation app for access to support services. We're scheduling inerson meetings with support staff and stakeholders and developing a focus and alignment and streamlined access to improve communication. Thank you. Any questions? Yeah. Um, thank you Dr. Taylor. Having um kind of an update and reminder of some of the things that are already going on is super helpful. Um, I wrote some things down um that I would just like to read and then there may be one question in there. you may not have the answer, but I'm hoping somebody in the room um does. Um so, thank you again for this information. One thing I did want to do was express my gratitude to Japas and the Salt Lake Education Foundation uh for the work that they do to provide resources and supports to

091students and families. Uh for me, the work doesn't go unnoticed and I know that many uh families in precinct one especially appreciate it. Um however, I do believe there's more that needs to be done by the district outside of the foundation. Um, as of this weekend, I recently learned about a bill that was passed in the 2024 legislative session, SB164 titled family outreach amendments. Um, this bill allows a school to create a family outreach program with their local LEA governing board, which is us, and an oversight of such program by the local local governing board. Um, I'm curious if the district knew about this law and what has and if so, what has done to be to inform um, schools about this option to approach the board about this? And that's my question. Is anyone

092aware of that? Yes. Okay. Um we raised it in a board meeting um when that law was passed when we talked through the legislative updates. Um Okay. That might be just something that I missed, but Okay. Yeah. That it's unique because it allows schools to ask for that position. Okay. I'm just not aware. I'm not sure that schools actually do know about it, but I'll just move on. Um so I do appreciate um the conversation and the updates tonight u and want to acknowledge that we had a study session uh where we studied uh family school collaboration in title one. Um I appreciated the opportunity to um hear from teachers uh specifically in precinct one as well as our um uh SLEA uh leaders as well. Um the primary thing during that study session a

093month ago that was shared with us is that more staff are needed to help provide the essential services to our students and schools. Um, so we did see uh tonight that uh a survey went out to our faculty and staff um and administrators. Um I wasn't aware that that went out, but I'm happy that it did. Um one of the things that was shared with me from some teachers um in precinct one is that a lot of the um survey uh talked a lot about increased professional development uh increased um training and things of that nature. And while all of that is great and I totally support training and and professional development, um we are already asking a lot of our teachers. Um so it is my belief and belief of many in my precinct

094that no amount of extended training can make up for systemic issue of underresourcing in our schools. Um, while I know we're not in a place to take action on anything tonight, I would really encourage the board as we move forward over time to think about increased funding or prioritize prioritize hiring additional folks in um, four areas in no particular order. Uh, PAR prof and you talked about some of this in your presentation. U, in no particular order, PAR professionals, school counselors, social workers, and behavioral specialists. Um, staff who can provide in-class and pull out literacy interventions. And one that's really um that I feel passionate about is bringing back the family school collaboration specialists uh like we had until a couple of years ago. Um as we've heard tonight, teachers are feeling that they're being

095asked for more that they are being asked for more and more. Uh with each year that goes on, uh I believe that with adequate staffing in these areas, um our schools, especially those that are most have the most vulnerable, students can not only survive but also thrive. Um just wanted to share those are some thoughts I've had over the last um several months. Thank you. Amanda, um, a couple of things. Um, one, the survey that you did in the results, I don't see it in any of the materials that we have. So, if you could forward that to us, I would love that. Um and then uh along with what Bryce was saying um on these resources for this family school collaboration and everything that's um in there if we could do a more regular

096uh district blast of those resources and who can access them and how um because if we leave it to just the schools, it's a it's a very small community that might receive it. Um, are you speaking about the supports for families for different things? Yeah. Whether you're talking about food pantries or whether you're talking about like the CLC, the dental, the vision, like all of those things because I think unless you live around that area where it might be a more concentrated conversation, then you really don't know that that exists. Even if you're in a school that may not be a title one school, but you have students um that or families that could really um use the help. So figuring out how to really get that conversation out there so more people can know

097that it's there and it's okay to use. Um does go ahead. Um one of the things that Sleff has done under James Yakius's leadership in these last months is to do more professional development sessions with school leadership and those teams counselors and social workers so they know what's available through SLF and have more an idea. The challenge always is with the turnover of people in staff positions, some loss of knowledge trying to get up on sharing with schools. Look, you can access these and this is how to do it. And that's one of the reasons being able to access that app so families can do it. So, we're trying to get the word out particularly to those who are close to the families um within the schools and have a better sense of their needs

098and can direct them to what supports we can offer. Definitely one of the good ways that that can happen for sure. Um and then the other question I had was um regarding the title one school um funding. Uh you covered how [Music] um state students with disabilities, ELL students, homo students um that that's the different groups that it's intended um for. Um and uh in general students with disabilities are funded through um IDA funds and state special education allocation dollars. Um, so I'm curious, uh, I guess how to phrase it, but is there intentional allocations of Title One monies directly towards special education students and their needs under Title One versus looking at special education dollars only or the general fund and not really considering Title One dollars for our special education students. Does that

099make sense? I think so. And Dr. Taylor can correct me if I'm wrong. Um I don't So when schools put together their their I believe it's part of their school improvement plan, um is what they're going to spend their title one funds on. So they put together their plan. Um there's no requirement or or there's no specific uh issues that you address. you take title one funds address students with disabilities specifically, but that's always an option for a school to do if they chose to do so. I and I don't know if I've necessarily seen that uh in in the plans, but but also keep in mind that some of our children with special needs fit multiple categories. They're a child with special needs, but they're also from a low soio economic background. So those

100interventions and strategies put in place to impact kids from a low socio economic background would impact them in addition because they are part of that group on the I agree with you to an extent. Um, I once a child has an IEP, um, generally, um, the, uh, special education dollars are what's driving that child's supports and services. And so, um, I wonder if there needs to be more education. like when I was working or when I was on the SEC at uh my child's elementary, one of the things that we started talking uh more intentionally about um as we were working on lands trust goals and such was how do we um not just mirror the district's um goals and objectives for essentially our higher learners, 80 80% of our students, etc., but then wrap

101in our lower performers and these goals which doesn't encompass our students with disabilities typically. Well, yeah. Anyway, um and so it was kind of a mind shift on how these goals could be approached for the land's trust purpose that was never discussed before. So, I'm curious if we could be more intentional about um when these SIP plans are put together that uh those that are part of that and really driving that conversation could be educated on um thinking outside of the box to really wrap in all these students and not just lean on special education to take care of students with disabilities. Thanks, Ashley. And then Brian, unless Amanda, did you feel like you got an answer to your question? I'm sorry. Did you feel like you got an answer to your question? Pretty much.

102Most of us just think about it. Actually, thank you. Actually, I have um a couple of questions. The first is just could we speak a little bit more to board member Williams question? I'm confused that the response was we got an S update to the board on SB 164. Um because that was over a year ago. Have we only promoted this law by way of a single board meeting? and by extension is the suggestion that board members are supposed to tell our schools directly that they are allowed to petition us for family collaboration support funds. No, no, that's just for the schools to ask. We have not spent time advertising that. I mean the board we will have to think about how we fund it if asked for a large number of family school collaborations

103because actually the board ended the funding for that program two years ago. So that's not that's not accurate. Ended the program. That's not accurate. That's not accurate. It wasn't. It didn't come to the board. Okay. I thought it came to this was pre my time. It was. Yeah. That wasn't a board decision. Okay. In that case, I mean, I would suggest that given that it is a law that passed and that it was raised now, in addition to the update we originally received about, you know, the hundreds of bills that passed in 2024, I think it's important that we do promote that program to schools and that we have a conversation in our budget or in finance committee about how we would fund those things because normalizing title one staffing has been a dialogue that's

104been ongoing in that committee. Um, the next thing I want to clarify is that I had a few teachers reach out to me about this survey before your presentation um because they assumed that the board had seen the final content of the survey or been notified that it went out. Um, can you clarify, Dr. Taylor, a little bit about what the what the response size of the survey was and how it was designed? I'm asking my partner to come down. Yeah. Um, we were asked to put a survey together based on some questions that we had had around Title One schools and the um, sorry, I have too many tabs open. There it is. And the support that teachers and administrators would want. We put out the same survey to both elementary and middle school

105teachers asking them for questions about what kinds of things that they would like to see in their classroom or um what support or what um opportunities they would like to have for their students. We had over 400 responses from elementary teachers in title one schools. We had over a hundred responses from middle school teachers. We then took the same questions but put them um from an administrator's perspective. So instead of what would you like to see in your classroom, what do you feel like if you could put something in that classroom, what do you see as being the the biggest needs in your school or in your classrooms? And we had 17 responses from uh Title One administrators to that part of the survey. Thank you. How does that measure up to the total that

106we have? Like I'm not sure how many title one teachers we have in the district overall. Um that would cover just about all of our elementary teachers. It is a pretty good chunk of our middle school teachers, probably about 65%. I'd have to run the exact numbers. Um and it's probably about 50% of our administrators. Thank you so much. That's really helpful. Um, with that background in mind, when I did get the message about the survey, there was a little bit of frustration I think about the number of questions about professional development. Um, because I think as was alluded a little bit to in the public comment, like we have many teachers who are very skilled in specific pedigogy such as, you know, trauma-informed practice, but they don't feel they have the resources they need

107to implement the things they've learned in PD. So, can you speak a little bit to the objectives of those professional development questions in the survey? Yeah, I'm a little confused about what they were to be honest. So, um we we asked a question about instructional supports. Uh is that planning time? Is that um support with implementing strategies? Um is it co-eing? Is it push-in support? And then we asked with that same question for people to to say first um you know what what are the things that would you would most want and then to rank them in order of importance. So they did have the same question twice but asked in two different ways. Um we did ask a question about implementing the science of reading and how comfortable they felt with that both from

108a teacher or an administrator point of view. um we didn't report back out to you necessarily on that, but um because we have focused so much work on the science of reading, we wanted to see how that had um helped build teachers confidence and efficacy around reading as well as administrators. We asked about um training or support in things like student engagement or trauma informed. So training or support, whichever that would be. um we asked them how long they had or how often they had meaningful time to collaborate with their colleagues. We know that one of the things that we have heard over and over again is that that collaboration time with their colleagues is important and we asked what would make that collaboration time more effective. Um is it that it's protected in the

109schedule? Is it that um we have cross grade or cross discipline or we have time to observe peers? What is it that they would like to see in that collaboration time? We asked what student centered supports would most impact their ability to teach effectively um answers or or to that. And I would like to point out that for these we also had options always for other you know if there was something we had not included that they wanted to add they could certainly do that but what student centered supports would mo most impact their ability to teach effectively and um some choices were behavioral specialists or social workers counselors consistent access to paraprofessionals or aids mental health resources smaller class sides um community family community liaison increased attendance support a greater understanding of inclusion strategies.

110And then we asked about the challenges that frequently impact their ability to focus on instruction. Um things like is it student behavior? Is it planning time? Is it inconsistent attendance? Um emotional exhaustion or burnout, any of those things. And then um we asked if they could add something to their teaching environment, what would it be? Great. Thank you so much. I think your discussion about collaboration time is a segue to my last question which has come to many of our inboxes and also a little bit the public comment period which is about planning time which is a non resource-based thing that teachers really were asking for. Dr. Taylor, can you speak to how planning time will be addressed in response to this survey while also also considering those changes to the school day? And before

111you answer, I did just want to clarify for the people commenting too, a lot of those changes are not board directed. they were directed by the legislative audit in terms of unifying our times for busing. So recognizing that like we wouldn't make a decision right now to change the school workday but acknowledging there are there's some fallout from um that announcement. How would you speak to those things in tandem? Well, I would say that we exceed the standard in terms of regards for planning time when you look at the written agreement and uh what's embedded in the written agreement for the elementary schools 90 minutes. Most schools run what we call a 45 minute special sk. So that's 45 minutes time five days plus even with the change that we made it would still allow

112for 90 minutes on that Friday early release day of planning time. So when you look at that over encompassing time period you still would have in excess much more than the 90 minutes that's allowed through the written agreement. If I could comment on that I just think that I is my time up. Is that what you were saying? 27. Oh, that I would just say I don't know that specials are actually protected planning time because often if there's no sub, there's no planning time. So, I think that early day is something that we need to maybe discuss more as a group how not to change that we need to normalize our busing and we need to address that, but we do need to respond I think to that big concern about planning time and not

113just for title one schools either. Thanks. There any other questions for um I I just want to address a little bit of board member Anderson's first comments. Um if you remember our very first budget presentation was about school allocations. We allocate a lot of revenue out to our schools that is purely discretionary that they should be prioritizing what their needs are. We've also talked extensively about carryovers uh and large amounts of carryovers that schools are holding. So, you know, if a school has these needs, we we're providing and I don't I don't want to minimize that schools are are are adequately fundable by any of that, but they have those resources that are allocated that they should be addressing their priorities with. And if a priority is a family school collaboration specialist, then they should

114prioritize that in their discretionary money uh first and then if there's other things that fall under, then we can discuss uh you know, additional resources. So, it's how are you using the resources you have first before we're requesting additional resources? Helpful. Thank you. Okay. I I appreciate this conversation and u Bryce in your comments when you were talking about precinct one. I think I probably was one of those teachers that was in precinct one and it was um gratifying for me to hear Dr. Taylor, when you said that 400 teachers were responding to this, I mean, to me, this suggests that teachers want to be heard on this. And if we have a survey like this, I hope that we're looking at this and that it isn't something that just goes out and because I

115have to say there have been times in the past as a teacher when I've done a survey and I've thought, why did I do that survey? Um, I want it to be that when we do these sorts of things that there is a response. And for me, when I look at Well, I wasn't in the presentation, we don't have that part of the survey. And I understand how that isn't in there because you were probably still gathering the results of the survey. But as um Amanda requested, I think that it would be really helpful for all board members to receive a copy of that survey. Um I would like to go back to a couple of the slides that were related to the survey. Can you go to the slides that were based on the

116survey? Because I heard Dr. Hall say that we were also asking them to prioritize um what they felt was the most critical thing. And to me, that's a really important part of this because I think teachers probably have the best gauge on what we need in the classroom. So, um let's see. What would most what would most improve your ability to support high quality? Okay. More planning time. Um Ashley, when you made that comment about specials and things like that, I can attest to that. We talk about how yes, there are specials, but frequently things happen and you don't get the time that was designated in your specials. And I'm not saying, you know, but it's someone's fault. I'm just saying that that happens and when it happens, we have to figure out how to

117address that. That they're getting the time that they need. When you put it like that, are you saying that that was their number one? Yes. Those were the priorities. Those Yes. Yes. One, two, three. And the administrators had a tied one. It wasn't a typo. It was one, two, three,3. Okay. I think that we need to look at it in that when they are prioritizing it. Well, there's my time. I'll figure out how to turn me on. It's hard to do the timer and do this. You got three of us here that have been there. There we go. Bryce, can I make this turn on? Yeah, I just want to comment on the specials at the elementary level and uh Logan and Mike can correct me if I'm remembering wrong, but we have in the

118written agreement that if they if due to absences of of who's ever teaching the specials, the teacher doesn't get their planning time that there is additional compensation for that because in theory then they have to do their planning time outside of the regular contract. Um so I just want to make you know um there is a method to get those 90 minutes if a person's uh someone that does the special is as is absent through those additional compensation that's in the written agreement. Um I'll chime in use my first round. Um one Bryce I just want to thank you and I echo um all the things that you said. I think as you know you and I were pretty passionate about family school collaboration specialists back in the day. Um, and I agree that we

119should really look at what it would take to bring back. I know that superintendent, you're mentioning that there's obviously some financial responsibilities that we would have to do that. Um, but I also think that on top of that or with it, there's a need for how do we manage and supervise and how do we make sure that these folks are doing the jobs that they were intended to do. Um, I've never been a teacher. I have spent a few years in schools um mostly working on data but um even as somebody that was working on data and helping teachers differentiate their classrooms um being in an elementary school for me the experience was an all hands-on deck type of experience you know so if there was an issue in the school um being an extra

120body in that school I was there to help with recess or I was there to help in the lunchroom or I was there to sit with a kiddo in the sick you know office room while uh their parents showed up. So, I understand that that things happen in schools and um I'm sure that at times um a family school collaboration specialist could be pulled into anything. Um so, I echo um your your sentiment on that there, Bryce. Um I think the thing that I would really like to do is just tie this back together um just to where we are and I mentioned a couple of different things. Obviously, the funding allocations um but this is also a board directive, right? It's a board kind of initiated um study. It was a a board initiated

121survey in a lot of different ways. Um, and I think we're hearing all of this information coming back to us and I really think it's incumbent on us to to carry this forward in coordination with the district. And so my question is really kind of back to you, Bryce, um, not to put you on the spot, but but just to kind of as you've thought about this, as you've laid this out, as you've proposed this, um, seeing all of the information that you're gathering, um, where would you like to take this next? Yeah, that's that's a really great question. Um, knowing that money doesn't grow in trees and we have limited resources, my priority and I'm trying to think of what's fair across the board. Um, I guess I'll speak for myself first and then

122the board can decide if that's what they would like to do. And I know we can't right now, but I think my priority would be to look at what it would um what what it would take to fund some of these family school collaboration specialists, what the costs were. I also know that um it might involve having to look at other things that we're not funding. So, if we could have some sort of report of costs, where things would come from that piece, I'd potentially want to start there. And I'd say that only as a start because I think this particular topic has so many different elements to it that it's not going to be solved in one study session or you know one um report or anything of that nature but maybe to look

123at what it would be to bring those resources back. Okay. I think my next question Thank you. My next question would be kind of for Liz and for Allen. Um you know kind of hearing this hearing the sentiments um you know overwhelming sentiments of teachers um in this process. What are some of the things that are sparking up in your brains and and how we might address some of these issues and what you might propose or what's realistic? What's unrealistic? What we need to seek funds for? Um what are things that we're doing that that we might be able to sunset in order to achieve some of these goals? Um how do we tie these things all back in the strategic plan into our budget? And I'm just those are some of the things that

124are on my brain on my mind. Um, just want to hear from you how you might and if we take into account the context we're in where we um know that resources, they called this at the legislative session a socks and underwear year that that's all you're going to get for Christmas because that's all the money we have. Um, you know, we can argue how much was actually spent on education and what wasn't spent, but we know that we're in constrained resource time. So all of these requests can't be meet met. That's the first piece. The other is then saying which ones can be met and how can they be met. Alan and I have talked often about um and I about the possibility of working with the board and bringing in more resources, possibly

125raising taxes to do some additional things that we can't cover right now. um that we don't have that right now on the schedule because of this huge bond that we just asked Salt Lake people to fund and they generously did so. Um and so our idea is not to come to November and raise it again but to speak about in the next year what are the things that are rising up as the most important things to look at and this is a first glance of that and I think a really effective one. Um I appreciate um Dr. Hall for putting this together together and getting it out and for the teachers and administrators who provided that response. So we we have a good starting point. Um I don't think any of these are particularly new

126in terms of requests that have come to us before. It's just thinking about how do we get them in place. I think your question too, Nate, about what do we stop doing, which is going to be awfully hard um to look I mean that's a that's always the hardest question, right? How do you how do you reallocate resources within a school? Um to change the dynamics it affects which positions we're funding and which we're not. um and it's why we've we've given that latitude with principles to be able to try and meet their needs um with some discretionary funding rather than determining that at the district level. The other piece and I appreciate Dr. Taylor for um leading our start on this is to look at what is the base program, what is the what

127are the base resources that we are offering every elementary school or every middle school or every high school and looking at what are they right now and what should they be. The the district at one time the board decided to fund counselors at every school. So that became a base allocation for all of the schools. Um are there others that we want to look at as base allocations that the district just provides to schools, behavior specialists and that kind of support come to mind because that's what I keep hearing about pretty consistently. So thinking about those sort of things, working with teachers and administrators on what those are, I think that needs to be the work of the board over the next year. So appreciate that you're thinking in that direction and what we should

128do. Brian, how much time do I have? 1 minute 18 seconds. And I'm wondering um and this is kind of just a question to everybody our team up here at the DAS and of course all of um you know the folks that have been engaged in this this study Dr. grant and board is I I think that it would be worth having an additional study session and dedicating more time to discussing these varied things. Um do we need to prioritize? Do we need to to really look at what those base funding sources and allocations might be? Um just so that we're we're not losing traction on on this because it is really super important um and what those funding mechanisms might be. Um, so I'm wondering if the board is amanable to scheduling another study

129session to kind of talk about these very things in a little more detail. And are you thinking I'm surmising from what you just said after what I just said, so I might be wrong. Um, that this would be so we concentrated on title one schools in this report particularly. Um, and I'm think when we're looking at resource allocation across schools, we're thinking all schools that way like what is our middle school program? what are we offering in terms of resources that way? What are we missing? That sort of thing. So, we're we're looking at it that way. I'm assuming you're thinking more broadly across schools than just the title one focus specifically as well. You know, because I think some of what we also talked about in our previous study session is, you know, that

130each school is different and unique and there might be different needs within each individual school. And I think it warrants us a little extra time to I think we got a good kind of baseline of where our our title one schools are at. Um and being that was the purpose of the original intent behind the request is that you know let's let's keep it to to title one schools. That's where we see the most risk. It's where we see um the biggest disparities when it comes to education and behavioral um data. And uh I think it would it would be good to continue to kind of have that focus. That's just me. And maybe we Charlotte, we are still in round one and then we can go to round two. Okay. Um, I like that

131idea, but I am also wanting to um be responsive to some of the things we heard today about having title one schools and um the sped hub schools and multiple language learners all put together that that concentration of high needs that that we need to look at that I think. um our resource allocation around that. Yes. Okay. Okay. Let's jump into round two of discussion. I saw a bunch of hands. I'm sorry I didn't see who was was first. Ashley. Um my followup to that would be of course it is important to focus on title one schools. And that's why again in those conversations in finance we talked about what would normalize staffing be at a title one school and why might that be different than a non-title one school. But I want to acknowledge

132that if you're like me and you represent a school like Wasach Elementary that is really right there on the cusp of being title one, that's why in a situation where we had our assistant principal allocations, we have a formula that calculates that. So we don't actually need to say we're only talking about this for title one schools. We can talk about it based on need and then qualify what those needs are, which may be a little bit different every place. Um, and I think, you know, it could even be a good time to look at that calculation for assistant principles. As Dr. Taylor knows, there's always appetite for some schools to be asking for. Um, I think it's important too that actually we consider if the study session is going to be more topical discussion

133or if it's going to be a financial report of like a real study of what it would cost. Like I know our business administrator has prepared a cost estimated of what it would be for X at a title one school. that would be discretionary. Would that be the same? What what would be some options for that that we could consider? And I think rather than having um a study session where we mole around the merits of different ideas, we really need a report or a discussion item that is very specific to costs of resources. Especially acknowledging that we've talked about capital today, which is onetime money. Once you spend it up, it's gone. We can't have the same conversation about capital that we're having about people because as we know from Esser, we fund people

134with onetime money and then those people have to leave, we get into real problems. And so I think it needs to be very specific to funding personnel that that discussion happens rather than kind of banding around some more ideas. And I think such a funding formula is very primed for ways that it could support many schools with high needs whether or not they may be labeled as title one. Amanda. Um, mine kind of expands on Ashley. I I if we're a lot of the discussions of the district has been consistency across the district. Um, title one schools do have more unique needs. However, I feel if we um isolate this conversation where we're pushing into um u professional development and all these different areas, those aren't unique to title one. Um, so I think depending

135on like I guess what the specific study session is going to be about, it would actually um we're we're then um siloing the conversation which could feed into lack of uniformity in the district. So I guess we got to really figure out what our core um systems and focuses etc are like districtwide and then uh it expands from there. So I think to me there's there's there's two there's a lot of different pieces that we're talking about tonight. Um, so I think we need to figure out really what we're we're we're really going to focus on and then is it specific to Title One or is it something that really is applicable beyond that that we really need to make sure that we're uniform on what we're doing? Other comments, questions? All right. Can I

136summarize a little bit please? If I can take board direction from this or do you want to summarize that what you're hearing? I I think we're hearing the same thing. Okay. I'm thinking that we're hearing um the desire for additional conversation related to this survey and the questions that were asked and the previous conversations about title one funding. Um I think we can do two things which is look at the program as a whole across different schools and not just do title one but also then focus on title one right because we know the needs are different and so um we can do both that way I think if if I'm taking that as board direction on where we want to go with a study session and things do you have something to add there?

137Well, and I see kind of taken from what board member Williams has said, modeling different scenarios. How much does it cost to add an additional FTE? Whether we tell the schools it's this FT for this or it's discretionary, you decide how much does that cost if it's all title one schools, how much does it cost if it's all schools, you know, what is the cost of one FTE per school? What's the cost of one parapro per school? and let's just kind of model some different things so we can start having the cost conversation of what can we afford today and what do we want to look at afford affording possibly in the future. I was just going to say I feel good about that. Okay. Um and Bryce maybe it would work for um if

138it works for you to connect with Brian and I and let's map out how and what structure if it's a study session, if it's a discussion item. Um, and we can map that out, Brian and I, with you and and uh, Liz and Allan. Well, if you're going to do that though, can you create whatever your broad Absolutely. approaches and then let us all provide some additional feedback. Of course, that's great. Everybody, can I just interject? I just really want to thank um, Dr. Taylor and Dr. Hall for putting together the presentation, but the survey, I didn't get the chance to thank you. I think that the questions that you were asking were the questions that needed to be answered. And now that the questions have been answered, I think that we need to study

139the answers. Thank you everybody. Thank you Dr. Taylor. I think Dr. Hall and board for a really good discussion. Uh moving on into our agenda. We're at the discussion agenda. Um item number one is consideration of a resolution authorizing the issuance and sale of up to 155 million of general obligation bonds and providing for related matters. Al. Yes. So this is our next uh step before we issue bonds. Uh we did a resolution uh last time that looks very similar to the resolution this time. Uh we have with us in the audience our our bond counselor Jüki and our financial adviser Alex Buckston. They're here to make sure I tell the truth and and and guide you properly. So, what's on the agenda? If you look, it's like 260 pages long. There's a lot of

140attachments. It's a lot of legal ease that was those documents were put together by our bond council and by our financial adviser. Um really, it's the resolution. It's it's the board saying, "Yes, we are going to authorize the sale of these bonds." Um kind of lays out some parameters in in the documents. Um so uh with board approval of that today that will I believe that's the last step that the board needs to do to um authorize the sale of these bonds. Now, next week, President Salazar, superintendent and I will be traveling to San Francisco to meet with two bond uh rating agencies, Moody's and Fitch, uh where we'll do a presentation with each of them, about an hourlong presentation where we talk about the the district, um our financial stability, and we're really trying

141to um tell them that yes, we're we're a good credit risk that um hopefully we get the highest bond uh rating uh AAA on on our bond issues. uh which will help you know keep our borrowing costs as low as possible. Um so that'll happen next week on Monday and Tuesday. And with that, if I've not missed anything, are there any questions about this item on the uh discussion? Bryce, so board member Longwell had to step out so she asked me to ask her question. Um, so the question is, uh, what is different in this, like what you're talking about in this board meeting as opposed to last board meeting or is this just information to to move on? Yeah. Ryan, do you want to tell us what's different between this resolution and the one

142from last board meeting? Yeah, because it's a good question. Uh, thank you, board. Uh, my name is Ryan Berkkey. with the law firm of Chapman and Cutler. The last resolution that you did that well, first I'll start with the similarities. Both resolutions set certain parameters for the issuance of the bonds. The last resolution basically set up a notice that you needed to do um that started a 30-day contest period so people could come in and challenge the issuance of the bonds. Now, we're getting past that. This resolution um again sets forth those parameters. It delegates certain pricing provisions to certain designated officers and provides all of the contractual terms that you'll have with the bond holders. So, it basically is the contract with the bond holders going forward. So, it's the final piece that contains

143all of the legal information that was not in that previous resolution. Any questions? That was my question. Ask him why he's here because I probably can't answer. Alex, is there anything you wanted to add? Well, maybe I'll just add one thing. Um, and and the only thing I would add to that is, as Alan kind of alluded to, it it's accompanied by the preliminary official statement that our office put together. Most of this stuff Ryan's office uh puts together as far as all the legal uh documents go, but um we did put together the preliminary official statement that is uh was part of the attachment to this document. Um we've had a due diligence meeting that Ryan and Allan and myself and uh Dr. grant were a part of going over that document which is

144essentially the offering document that we're going to be sending uh when it comes time to selling the bonds in uh toward the latter part of May. Uh one of the key elements to that document as Allan mentioned is the bond rating that we're going to be getting or ratings I should say. We're going to be getting to like Allan mentioned uh which is why next week is so important and uh we've been working with uh President Salazar, Dr. Grant and Allen in preparing that presentation. Um I do a lot of the helping prepare it and they're the ones that do the presenting of it. And so we are hoping for that AAA rating. We'll find that out here in a few weeks. And uh we'll we'll get the we have also I will mention uh

145that Allan has also applied for and received the certificate of eligibility for the school bond guarantee program which also gives us the enhanced AAA rating of the state of Utah. So we're hoping to get the AAA enhanced rating as well as the underlying standalone AAA rating. And um anyway, we we're excited to have our competitive bond sale uh about a month from now. We're hoping that rates stabilize that. We've had a we've seen a lot of up and down this past week. Um but uh we're hopeful that here in about five weeks time when it comes time to sell these bonds, we feel comfortable with where the market is. Um we can always postpone this. This document, as Ryan mentioned, delegates uh the authority to the business administrator and the superintendent in in his, you

146know, if he's unable to do it and then transfers over to President Salazar if neither of them are a able to to uh you know, move ahead with that bond sale. But it doesn't it doesn't um what uh require us to sell bonds in May if if we decide we want to postpone the sale. So we're we're hoping that everything will go well and that we'll sell bonds in May. Anyway, little little more color to what we're what we're doing, but uh happy to answer any questions on the calendar side of things as well if if necessary. I do have a question. it does uh relate to our political environment and this bond issue. So you've alluded a little bit to it, but um what should be concerned about in regard to um the sale

147of these bonds and um for lack of better words, the mess that's occurring right now? Yeah. Well, I think we just we want to sell bonds in a in a stable interest rate environment. Last week the the uh bond market moved well and and all markets generally moved. Um you saw the stock market and everything that went uh kind of crazy last week. Um mostly having to do with tariffs and things like that. But as long as we see kind of a stable market where things aren't just every day going way up or way down, then I think it's a comfortable time to to sell bonds again because we've got the AAA guarantee from the state and hopefully a standalone AAA, which is what we're aiming for. But even if we ended up with a

148a double A plus or a double A1, it's still really really high credit rating. So, we know we're going to sell bonds at the very lowest possible uh interest rate available that day. Um, but we just we also, you know, we don't want to go in a in a time where it's just really really volatile. So, we should know within several weeks if uh you know, if if we're there and uh if we feel like we're not, we'll have discussions with Allan and and Dr. Grant and others. And if we decide we want to postpone the sale, we can. But um we just we just want to see things just stabilize to where it's just not such an up and down type environment. So um and and we're hopeful that's going to happen here in

149in about five weeks. I think right now we have May 21st is uh the time that we have scheduled to to sell bonds and we should get our rating back after we meet next week. We should get our rating back uh around the 5th or 6th of May and uh then we'll start to really focus in the resolution with its provision of delegation of authority and certain parameters also gives you flexibility to respond to the market and adjust things you may or may not want to do. You could downsize if you needed to. You could change certain redemption provisions if needed. Um, that's one of the the the good things that these resolutions do at this point is it allows you some flexibility. So, thank you, Brent. Well, I appreciate a little bit of explanation

150on this because I I picked up on designated officers as I was looking at this and fortunately I'm the last man standing. But, um, I think it's important for you. I mean, I'm relying on you, Alan, but I think that it's important for the rest of us to understand, you know, what what happens and what our responsibilities are. Thanks. So, is that looking for clarification on the designated officers or was Alex's explanation sufficient? I mean, I think that I I mean, I started looking through figuring that out, but I think that it's important that we understand what this process is. Yeah. Any other questions? Seeing none, um I know we have to vote to approve this resolution and our first step in our governance structure is to move this to the action agenda and I

151would look for a motion to do that. I will make the motion to move the um consideration of a resolution authorizing the issuance and sale of up to 155 million of a general obligation bonds and providing for related matters to the action agenda. Is there a second to the motion? I'll second. Any further discussion? All right, seeing none, we'll start with a roll call vote with board member Anderson. Ashley Anderson, yes. Nate Salazar, yes. Brian Jensen, yes. Amanda Longwell, yes. Bryce Williams, yes. Charlotte Fe Jefferson, yes. All right, that motion passes. Uh, thank you board. Uh, we'll revisit this in a few minutes hopefully. Thanks, guys. Um, the next um item on our discussion agenda is the kick up contract. Superintendent, are you introducing this one to us tonight? Yes. So, at a previous board

152meeting, um it was requested by board members that we have additional information about the kickup contract and how this management tool is used. Um Dr. Hall presented to the board, sent a memo out describing the uses of that. Um it's a management software for professional development for getting feedback on the professional development managing those sessions and assignments within sessions and then also can be used as a feedback tool about classrooms and what's happening in those. So um she described that in the memo. So we're bringing it back um to place it on uh to get a vote from the board to approve this Thank you, Dr. Grant. Is there any discussion? I Yeah, I have a few questions for Dr. Hall about it. I um Sorry. I have heard from a few faculty who really

153want to avoid what many of us may colloally colloquially refer to as the class wallet debacle, which is an example of when the district funds a new program that doesn't necessarily end up more helpful than the original operation. And so the big question I heard from teachers about funding kickup when I originally asked was why can't we just use MIDAS year round and place those two school days prior to the school year of PD directly onto Midas instead of kickup. So I'm wondering if you could speak to that. Sure. Um and first we we put as you saw in the report many many other things than just the first two days in August on this in in this system. So, when we use Kickup, we're able to control how we're putting things in, what the

154feedback surveys look like. Um, we have access and we own our own data. When the state office moved from Northstar, which was its previous professional development program, to Midas, many teachers lost all of their data, even though we sent out notifications and pleas for them to download all of that data and to store it for their own professional use. Teachers have to use those hours every three, five, or seven years to continue their licenses. And in fact even last week we received a call from somebody saying did you save that someplace for me because I am coming back into teaching and I would like to you know have those hours back but we didn't own any of that data because it all was up at the state level. So that is that is one of

155the modules of kickup and and so um you know as you as you see in the memo there are two modules and so the reason that we like that module is it allows us to control the the data and the who and the when as well as um it being a more sensitive and responsive system. That's great. I just have two more quick questions. Um, a second concern that they mentioned in relationship was that sometimes those two days before school starts, kickup offerings rolled out really close to the start time of that PD. And so I know we have a heat map of users, but do we have a similar understanding of how many faculty don't use the tool as intended? Like how many teachers don't use it during those two days of school or

156two days before school? If they don't use it, then we have them on an attendance list. So yes, but we do have most of the teachers using it. So the first year we did have a late roll out because we didn't get the software until the spring. Usually however the roll out is late as we're putting schedules together and confirming the facilitators and the speakers. Again, the focus on the first two days of August. Um it it is those are two days that we use it but we do use it for significant numbers of ongoing highquality professional development which we know is very difficult in those first two days where everything is you know in a very tight time frame. Yeah that's really helpful. Um the last concern that I heard is that in Midas

157courses are tied to catalog numbers and in kickup there are these names that can be really cute but very hard to find and so especially at the beginning of school some faculty said it was really hard to find their school specific sessions and by the time they did they were full so they couldn't attend. So assuming we move this contract forward is there any way we can respond to teacher concerns more generally but also to this use of like clear numbers rather than names? Sure. So, that's a very interesting um statement. We do send out clear instructions on how to register for things and that includes using the use of tags and those tags are the things that people would use to be able to search more efficiently and effectively when they're looking for things

158by. So, I mean, I'm assuming when you're thinking about a cute name, it would be, you know, something like lemons and lollipops, how to use coefficients and calculus. I you know I'm making this up but the tag for that would be secondary math or the tag for that would be um courses related to calculus you would search calculus um so so even if and that is a very common strategy and it happens in Midas it happens in every conference that you go to we're all trying to create a sense of excitement for people who are attending our sessions and we figure if we can make them laugh before they come in, maybe that will help. But that is why we use the tag system. And so in the instructions, it says, you know, here are

159ways to search for the classes if you're an elementary teacher or if you're a middle school teacher, if you're a math teacher, if you're a science teacher, so that you can get to those more effectively. That's great. That's really helpful. I'm going to assume that other people did not have questions about this unless you were raising your hand because to ask a question. Yes. Oh, Brian, I was just going to move it for you, but go ahead. Good. Thank you, Dr. Hall. Okay, we talked about the um the first foundation I think that you were taught. Well, I'm trying to remember what those two different things were. there was the um taking the place of Midas, but then there's the other one where it's kick up foundations and thank you for the explanation about Midas.

160I think I'm understanding that it's going to be as easy or easier than Midas. Okay. Um, as a teacher, you really want to be able to make sure that you have that rellure all documented. But the other part that I'm concerned about is the foundations part. And that's where you were talking about, oh, coaching and teacher support and how you can do walkthroughs and make observations and that sort of a thing. Um, can you help me understand because in there it said it was a non-evaluative nature. I just get anxious that when I see some of these things, it's one more thing that creates pressure for a teacher where okay, here's another tool where I'm being monitored or do you understand where I'm absolutely absolutely and that's that's exactly why we wanted to split that

161away from ECAP or away from from any tool that looked at that because what we want to be able to do here it it's back to my question about are we imple implementing the science of reading correctly. Um, well, how do we know that? And how do we how do we know that in a way that doesn't tie it specifically to a teacher? So, we could use an observation tool and go through 15 classrooms and the data would come back by grade level, but not tied to a teacher. And so we can look at that and say in second grade across the district, these are the things that are in place and they're working well and these are the things that we need to to put some more attention to to make sure that we're

162having enough time in the schedule to teach them or that we have in provided the equipment or we have provided the materials to make sure that those things can happen in the classroom. Thank you. Um, could you just explain to me what job embedded professional development? Yeah, absolutely. So job embedded professional development happens during the school day and we have talked about this probably at nauseium with the board and with other people and you know in the business world if you are going to go to a conference and keep up your license you go on a cruise for five days and you get your continuing ed I'm not looking at you Mr. curiously as a CPA, but I know those things exist and um and so that's how you get your hours. But for teachers,

163we we don't have that structure. And so professional development happens after school after you've dealt with if you're a high school teacher, 210 kids that day or um it happens over the summer when you also really need some time to recoup and relax. And we really do attempt to be very sensitive to that and um leave July completely alone and and offer things to teachers if they want to in June or offer um off-c contract things in August. But if we're going to be able to have professional development for teachers at a time that isn't before or after the school day, it has to be job embedded. And so that is coming, you know, into your planning time and looking at your data with you. It is coming into the classroom and co-eing something with

164you and then talking about what worked and what didn't work with your students. Um, those things happen while you're in the classroom so that it isn't outside or after the school day. Okay. I thought that would be the explanation and I appreciate that we've just because I think some people don't understand that. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? Otherwise, I'll look for a motion to move to the action agenda desired. I move that we place kick up contract on the action agenda. Is there I second. A second to Charlotte. Thank you. Um any further discussion? Seeing none, uh, we'll do a roll call vote starting with myself. Nate Salazar, yes. Ryan Jensen, yes. Amanda Longwell, yes. Bryce Williams, yes. Charlotte Fe, Jefferson, yes. Ashley Anderson, yes. That motion passes. Thank you, board. We'll revisit

165that in just a few minutes. Uh, item number three, property use, determining immediate district needs. Um, item A, field space for high school rebuilds, and B, career and technical center superintendent. Yes. And I'll ask that um you put up the policy slides from DeAndre Chatwin. Hang out a minute there for a sec. Isaac, I wanted to um we are entering a new process actually as a board as outlined in previous changes to our G5 policy on um boundaries and school closures and property use. I wanted to just review quickly what that policy is so that people know. um wisely. President Salazar asked for a graphic that we could share with the public about what that policy is and so wanted to go through this and then present the actual items that we have on the

166agenda. So this is the whole graphic which just says based on our G5 administrative procedures, this is how we manage with unused properties. So we're just beginning the the steps that are outlined in G5. Um so could you show the next slide there? I'm only part let's see there we go. Okay, it goes through each step. So this is just taking close-ups of each piece which is the first thing we do is determine if there's a district need. So we have four elementary school properties that are unused currently. We have some uses in them but essentially for the long term we designate them as unused. The first step then in our process is determine is there an immediate district need um for one of those properties and if not then we would move to deciding

167what different things we would do with that property. But this first step is determining the district need and so we're starting that this evening in the board meeting. Next one there. Um so these are the steps we try to simplify the G5 policy so it has um so people could understand that that we make a the district makes a recommendation to the board. So tonight we're making a recommendation to the board. The next step in this to um look at immediate needs is we hold a public comment period and then the board um looks at putting on on a meeting agenda for a vote. So upon board approval, the site would be used to address a district need. So then our next step is if there's no immediate need, what would we do? And as

168we've described in the policy, we have two options here. The first is that we would repurpose the site, meaning we would change the nature of the site from a school into something else, whatever that is. Um, we could repurpose the site into housing. That's a big demand right now. We could repurpose it for teacher housing, um, which some districts are doing. We could repurpose it into, which we won't do, into a strip mall. Right? You can, we can do all of those things with, well, with these properties within um, just a few constraints, but not many about what we do. Um, the other thing we can do is surplus the property. So, to surplus the property means we put it up for sale. if you could throw the next one up there. So to repurpose

169um we would come back to you first. We would do an analysis. So any property not used for an immediate district need, we'll do a feasibility study for what should be done with those properties. We'll get some financial analysis done. We'll do a real estate analysis that will give us a sense of this is what's happening in this neighborhood. Here's the good uses of this property. Um and any repurposing is meant to do two things and that is to fulfill to serve community needs and district objectives. So um we would be looking at repurposing and so this is down the road once we've looked at the district need then we take all the rest of the properties we'll conduct the feasibility studies. We'll hire people to do that for us. Then we'll bring that information

170back to the board as well as a recommendation or two about what we might want to do that way. Then as the board looks at that, we look at community feedback and public comment. The vote the board would then vote and then we would begin to repurpose. Now this gets kind of complicated because we are not going to build teacher housing. Meaning Isaac in buildings and grounds is not going to build it. If we choose to use a site for teacher housing, we have to get a contractor, a partner to do it. So then we would follow all the procurement processes and things to get a contractor. We'd look at leasing the propert, all those sorts of so it's a it's rather long process um and determining getting to the point where we would repurpose

171per the recommendation. So we have a lot of pieces to go through that way once the board has determined how we're going to use the property. Um, and then Allan takes over on all the financial aspects and partner aspects on that. The other option is to surplus the policy, the property, which means the board would say, "Nope, we want to sell it." And then we'd go about following Utah code and board policy in order to sell it. So, I just wanted to give you a sense of what we're entering tonight into this conversation. And again, this is just about the district need. Once we've determined that um then we look at these options of repurposing and surplusing. Thank you for that. I think that's the last slide on there. Okay. And we'll put this up

172on the web. Um one of the things we need to do in this process per our G5 policy is keep the public informed. And so we'll be putting together a website about about those properties and how to keep people informed. Given that, Isaac, the first thing up is the need for field space as we rebuild our high schools and we take away the current field space to build buildings. And so, where are we going to put all the athletic pieces? So, Isaac's bringing that forward. Thank you for the opportunity to bring this back to you again. Um, if I can just real quick, uh, I want to thank everyone for the input that we've received on this, both, uh, from the board members, community members. Um, the references that I've received from many of you

173and, uh, community members and teachers about others who may have expertise in this. Um, just to name a few, uh, we've reached out to other district contacts. Uh, we've talked to the city both public services department, the public parks and public lands, and I Oh, they've got a new name now, but it was the redevelopment agency, community reinvestment agency. Okay, there there you go. Um, I've met with the University of Utah auxiliary services and athletic departments. Uh we've sent out emails and surveys to the athletic directors of all three of our high schools uh to ask what their needs would be and uh what is preferred uh for them. Um and then also we I've received a lot of feedback from community members and especially parents of current athletes uh concerned about what we've been

174talking about and what the what their pre preferred options are. So with that, um, a lot of this is, uh, repetitive of what I've shown before, but just to remind everybody, this is this is the current concept of West High School, uh, based on programming and space availability along with the, um, communications with the Eldest Church at where their facility and their properties are. Um, this is Highland. similar uh you can see uh the lighter gray uh represents where the existing building is. The darker gray represents where the uh building is and then the others that aren't fielding gray but outlined are those are the proposed fields and other facilities. Um but this represents really broad so you can see what's going to be affected during the construction of of both of these. Let me

175go back to west real quick. So, just to remind you, east uh Capitol Campus, which is uh east of Third West, um those are where the majority of our fields are right now. And the first phase is that building, the upper quadrant on the right side, that's phase one. And then the lower bu the lower quadrant of that building, that's phase two. And then the other side of the street would be phase three. And then uh Highland High School again uh you can see the overlap of the existing building and the proposed building uh that we're designing this in a way that will build both the west and east sides of Highland and then right at the end we'll uh demolish the D-wing of the current high school and then finish the commons area. But

176that will allow us to move the students over into the classroom areas of the existing building while that happens. Um here here's a good representation of what's going to be affected. Highland High School. Uh the track uh we're um well all the sports are on the left. The projected number of years that we will need the spaces is the far right. So track around the Highland football field will have to be redone. There's a lot of uh piping that'll have to come from the ground source heat pumps through the baseball and softball field across the track area along the backside and into the building. Uh so that track area will be under construction. The football field itself will never be under construction. We just completed that this last summer, so it's a brand new field.

177Um soccer, lacrosse, we're looking at a four-year impact. Baseball and softball, two years. And I have gotten a lot of requests of when when is that expected to happen. My best guess gues gueststimate at this time is that would probably be 2027 through 2029, but that could fluctuate quite a bit either way. I don't see it being much earlier, but definitely could be pushed down the road a year. So, um football again is not being affected and tennis is four years. um soccer, lacrosse, and tennis. If you remember a little over a year ago, we talked about Rosland Heights and the need of getting rid of the old building. Um we are under construction and that's going to be an amazing facility that will accommodate all three of those sports. Uh and those obviously are

178the ones that are impacted for the longest period of time. West High School, uh it's a lot bigger project and much more complex. Um we from the beginning we've said that this could potentially take seven to eight years to complete. Um because we're moving everything from the west side of third west to the east side initially. The track, soccer, lacrosse uh for sure will be impacted for six years, potentially seven years. baseball and softball potentially five years or longer depending on how quickly we can demolish the other side once the the main phase is completed. Um football is a very difficult one. Um but again that that would be the shortest impact because it's it will remain in place during the duration of phases one and two and then during phase three that's when that

179would be u a portion of the building would be demolished and things would be moved around a little bit too. Uh so that football field will be affected and then tennis um again that's on currently on the east side of third west and so we're estimating five plus years for that. Um before I go well so here's some other options that I'll talk about but uh one of the questions that was presented during the last conversation was h um can we not how can we not utilize what we have already um talking with other entities that have done similar um when you look at you know a a district that has say four or six or nine high schools and they're doing one con one project it It's it's not easy, but it it's definitely

180much more flexible to say, okay, you're going to your home games are this day and your home games are the next week and offset. We're doing double time with three total uh schools. So we would have three schools demanding the same space which there just physically isn't the the ability to absorb that uh with one facility for football in in particular but um many of these other sports included because track, soccer, lacrosse um they all utilize the football field on game day. Um, and so there's some challenges there. And then when you try to factor in practice time for all of those sports, it's very difficult. But with that said, uh, other options that I found, uh, with talking with all these groups, track, soccer, lacrosse, you the U View has a track. Um, they

181have very limited availability on that right now. Um, it's not for sure yet. Um uh the athletic ath athletic departments have use of that facility up until a certain time and then there's a small break of an hour and a half two hours and then uh the um the rec center and their intramural sports utilize them at night. Um now they were very supportive and said look we we can see if we can free up some time but it would be a very limited time and it isn't particularly during the times that it would benefit our ours. Um I've put an an approximate cost to rent that or to provide you know a good a way to incentivize the you to do that at about $100,000 per year which is very low. Um but again

182it's a very limited resource. Um and again it'll take a lot more coordination to see if that's doable. Um talking with the city um the University of Utah's been using the Smith ballpark. Uh they've now vacated that as of July this year. Um and that facility will be available for no more than three years. Um it's a it's a an ideal place to play baseball. It is. But uh there are some definite challenges there. Uh in discussions with the city uh they're they're very aminable to us doing this. Um but again the constraint of they they have a plan that three years from now they're going to start do start their development of that space. Um, one of the accommodations they would ask that is that we would maintain the facility, cover the utilities, and

183uh, deal with the security on site. Um, which is very, if you remember any of our conversations about what happened at Rosen Heights, as soon as we closed it, uh, almost the first night we had people breaking in and, uh, doing in, uh, drugs and other inappropriate behavior there. Um, but again with that I'm estimating that it'll be about a million dollars a year based on their current utility costs to water the facility, maintenance, and then security. Um, it's a great resource. It's somewhere that could, you know, allow all three of the teams to play games there. Um, but, uh, the fac when you think of the ballpark, I I would caution you to understand that it's not in the condition it was when the bees left last year. um they're doing they're keeping it

184up, but it's not at a professional level now. Um and then that there will also be other uh activities that would be uh being operated here. So on the days that we didn't have games or practices, they would uh the city's looking at other ways to bring in other activities to liven up the community and support that area. Um but again, it is an option uh for both baseball and softball. it would be pretty diffic well not difficult but it it would be cumbersome to play both teams both sports there but it is an option um soft softball and baseball also at Herman Frank's Park uh on 7th east it's a great park um there's one baseball field and two softball fields there uh the challenge there is that's where all the little leagues play

185um so we would impact that greatly um and it's not an ideal location uh for either school. It's kind of midway. Um and then tennis. Uh the only place I've been able to find for tennis is that uh Liberty Park or another uh tennis facility where we could get on get on their schedule to rent those facilities for the time being. Um before I go off of this, I just want to uh you know reiterate baseball and softball at at Highlands very uh very short period. Um but West High School it's five plus years. Um the track, soccer, and lacrosse, there are some facilities that can be utilized outside of our facilities. Um but again, it's for a long period of time. And one of the one of the things that we've looked at from

186the beginning of of how we're going to implement these projects, uh, two of those things were that we're going to try to not impact the stu students as much as possible and um try and give them the most appropriate high school experience as possible during this. Um, we're looking at five to six generations of people that are going to go through their careers of construction. Um, and having a daughter who graduated the first year of uh, COVID, I can tell you it's impactful um, to this day. That's still what we talk about. Um, with that said, um, we still do have our facilities. Um, the facil the facilities that I've talked about, um, I've I've shared already about sharing the existing facilities and the challenges we have there. We do we can have we can

187rent other facilities but uh most of those are a temporary or won't get us through the entire length of the projects that we're working on and potentially expensive for the use of something for a short period of time. Um the the third one which I harped on last time and I apologize but um you know we do have resources in on site that we can make investment uh for it is a it is a high cost. Um but it provides us a resource not only for the sports but also for those local schools that these resources are put at. And then it will also it would also allow us to provide resources to the community. Um I I I can attest to the fact that there is a need for parks and sports facilities throughout

188the city. Um and the some of the proposals that I'll show you here again just highlight some of those. But um th those are that's what we're getting at. Uh again, we talked about Glendel. Um we already have a track there. Um it's six lane. Uh it wouldn't take a lot to get that to a high school level. Um we could invest in a small facility similar to Rosland Park which would be equitable to what the Highlands teams have gotten at high uh Rosland Heights. Um we've worked with the Salt Lake Education Foundation and several entities including Ron McBride who sponsored the original build of this track. um and improve improved that. They're supportive of helping to raise funds to help offset a portion of these costs. Um but they their number one question was

189is the district willing to help out on this because it's a big expense. Um but again uh it would it would this facility would allow us to provide all three sports for the entirety of this of this uh seven-year conquest. And um that that's a an ideal location on a resource that we can maintain and provide in the future. Um the the one caveat here is that the estimate I said four to five million. The difference between those is the one is a grass field, the other one is a turf field. Um there we you've all heard many complaints and comments and concerns about the condition of many of our facilities right now. And um in this case, I think it would be appropriate to look at doing turf similar to what uh Rosland Park,

190Rosland Heights has. And to that as well, um I think there's a a possibility of making an improvement at the third school with our bond funds to help assist that to make it equitable across the district. Um, Bachmann. Uh, we we I provided some other options last time talking about Riley and some other facilities. Uh, talking with the with our cabinet and and teams. Backman is a little bit farther away from the high school, but it would provide a space that would allow them to practice, that would allow games to happen, would not impact where the students of the school play, um, but still utilize the space that we have on that property. and it would save us quite a bit in the interrogation. Uh Mary Jackson is much closer to West High School, but

191it's a prime location uh for a softball field. Um a lot of it's already there. Uh it wouldn't take a lot other than to create an infield uh do some improvements to the lawn to level it and then put in dugouts and and items needed for it. I will mention on each one of these I put out a scoreboard because that's what our current facilities have. Some of the input I've gotten from people is we don't need that. We use a software now that we can do that. But when you look at the overall cost, a scoreboard's pretty insignificant in this cost. Talking less than $80,000 to do something like for that portion of it. But again, if that's what's decided, we can definitely look at removing a lot of that. Uh Clayton again uh

192ideal for a softball for Highland. Um we this slide shows a change of in the location of where the field would be. So it didn't impact the students of the school. Um so it's farther away. Uh but it still gives us the measurements that would be needed and it still stays within that estimate just to make it infield for them to have practicing games. uh Dworth. We already have a baseball field there, but it's in really bad shape. Um really bad shape. I I can't express that enough. Um if you've if you've never slid in on a goat heads Oh. Um I promise you every person will remember this field. Um anyway, uh this one would require a little more work. Um but it we do have existing facility there. it would provide an improved

193benefit to the community and to the students of that school as well as the high school team. with that. Um before I ask if you have any questions, um I sorry I grew up playing sports. And there are so many options that we can provide that would benefit all three of our schools in an investment for the west side as well as what we've done for the east side. I know it's not ideal. I know it's additional money that hasn't been planned, but I've been racking my brain of a better way to do this and I can't find one. Sorry with that. Do you have any questions? Amanda. Um, first off, Isaac, I just thank you and I appreciate the um I guess the emotion that you're showing because it shows how much you've put

194into really dissecting this and trying to figure out a hard a solution to a hard issue. Um just so thank you. Um I do have one question. I I was while you were um talking and I apologize if I missed it. I was kind of charting out on the district map where um the proposed um alternate solutions are for these two different uh rebuild locations and Highland High School. The suggested locations are all quite close to Highland High School, which is awesome because as a parent um who has a student who plays sports, doesn't play sports, then she changes her mind. Having that that close factor is huge. um on the West High School options. Um knowing that things are limited and you want to really um give good um properties to the west side.

195Um the one concern that I have is transportation for these West High School um families because um Mary Jackson's quite close to West High. Um Backman's not too bad. Glendale's quite far. Um, and so, uh, if it's the only solutions, it's the only solutions, but figuring out how to help these families access it. Obviously, we've got bus passes, like figuring out what the bus routes are so we can get that information to those students, fortunately, it's high school level, um, students that are able to use public transportation and such. Go ahead. just so we would transport students after school to the fields. Okay. So, their high school, but families who come for games would have to figure out how to get there, right? And that's typical anyways, right? Um my I guess when you're looking

196at transportation after school, um what's been a consistent um issue is transportation. So, you know, while you're throw while that's being thrown out there, um, and we have a lot of other things we're looking at because if we if we do whatever consolidations and we're constantly offering busing as a solution, we're constantly causing the problem to get worse. We're going to have to spend more money on transportation with but we also if we can't find bus drivers too, right? Um, and so it's it's money can't fix that problem necessarily. Um, so I guess that's just my my biggest concern is as we're navigating this, um, it seems like Highland High School uh is in a good situation, West High School, I'd really like us to look at figuring out how to ensure we are um,

197not creating access issues. If if I may, we we did look at a lot of other schools that were closer to West. The challenges were Glendel, we've already made a large investment and received some donations that have made that the prime location for there. Um, transportation is the biggest challenge. You're right. Um, but it I we're also trying to do it in a way that we're not coming to you saying we need to build an entire facility again. Um, you weren't here at the time, but the original budget was just under $7 million to do Rosland Heights. Um, and when the bids actually came in, we were closer to nine nine million. Um, I did my best to overshoot on these ones. So, I'm not doing that again. Um, but again, uh, that was a

198big consideration because if you look at, um, Rose Park, which also has a track, but that track is only four four lanes instead of six. Um, there's a lot more activities that happen there uh, after after school. Um, and there are different sports that are utilized at that one. And it's really the same transportation challenge that we're going to have at either of those locations, right? And I don't necessarily have a problem with the location, per se. Um, it's more um making sure we figure out uh reasonable logistics um to help the kids get to and fro and such. And that was one of the that was one of the asks of the athletic directors. Justin Thompson of West was very concerned about that. Um but again that's really the the crux of it is

199we we will have to provide the transportation and we'll find a way to do it. Um uh whether that means uh having making arrangements with coaches to be able to trans transport students on a bus um if that's the last option. Um, I know there's a lot of other community members that maybe we can work out a way to do that. Um, but it is something that we're willing to take on. Transportation is one of the divisions that I'm responsible for and I'll work really closely with them to make sure that's prioritized along with all the other transportation needs. Well, and obviously we want to be there to support you through that process. Thanks, Amanda. So, for baseball, for for West High baseball, um you were looking at what were the options? Backman. Originally, we

200looked at Riley. Mhm. Um but with uh some other conversations we're going to have tonight and some challenges there. Uh Bman was our other option that the two of them both have pluses and minuses to them. Um but Backman provided an easy access, extra parking after hours. um and didn't conflict with the other uh activities that we have going on at Riley right now. Some of that is the uh teacher trainings that Dr. Hall talked about. Um are are the students currently using this big lawn? Is it is it's going to be in the lawn area? That's where those yellow marks are. Yeah, the the yellow marks designate where the dugouts would be. Okay. But yeah, the if you watch these schools, uh the kids congregate ma mainly to the east side of the this

201area. There's always somebody walking that back fence line during recess. Um but this would also help with our challenges that we have with the river right there and the um transient population that moves along there. So it would kind of give us another barrier between our fence line and the river to have this baseball diamond there. Okay. I I was wondering um also if you had looked at partnerships with the city um like at Rosewood. Did you talk about that? Yeah. So or at um Sherwood Park. Sherwood. Yeah. So Sherwood Park, there's some great fields there, but they're all pony or smaller fields. Um, from my from my measurements, I got on Google and measured everything. For a baseball field, you need at least 260 270 ft um, from home plate to outfield. Um, and

202most of those measure around 200 to 210 ft from home plate to their outfield. So, they're more they're closer to a softball field or a pony pony league with the plates being shorter and they can't be there's not room for expansion uh at that park specifically. Um the two uh fences that they're about 30 feet apart from each other. So, you couldn't extend one far enough without impacting the other fields. And again, uh the city fields, the challenge we have is we already have clubs and other entities you utilizing those. the the city's great in having a a reservation system for those, but we're we're competing against the same resources. Okay. At the same time, what about Rosewood? Are they using They're not using those, are they? I'm I apologize. I'm There's so many of

203them. I Rosewood. What? What's the location? That's like around 18th north, kind of over by the Guadalupe School. Oh, okay. Um, so those again, well, they might be smaller. Yeah, they they are smaller, but they're not they they close like 230 240 ft. Okay. All right. Yeah. I I would like to minimize disruption to this kids at at Bman if they are utilizing that. You know, I know you're saying that would give a barrier so they wouldn't use that space, but we should really work on eliminating the criminal activity that's going on and not having to put a barrier there, you know. So, anyway, yeah, it it is an underutilized space there. I mean, other than field day and some other big activities that the whole school's out there, most everything that I've seen when

204I've gone and checked on it is closer to the school side. Okay, thank you, Bryce. Yeah, I had my um own questions about Bachman, which I'm not gonna follow up with right now. I think Charlotte asked some of those. Um but can we go back to the uh slide with Mary W. Jackson. I just have a quick question. Um so, I'm looking at it. Um and I think Isaac, I may have asked you this question before, so I apologize if I'm asking it for a second or third time. Um but with this uh proposal here that doesn't impact the physical standing building at the moment, right? No. Uh we'd basically have to take the corner of that asphalt out to have the measurement for outfilled. Um but everything else that we're not impacting the building

205at all. Okay. Thank you. Um yeah, I too am going to try not to repeat questions and the first thing you talked about of course is how difficult this has been. So I just want to acknowledge like no one's asking questions right now to be more difficult. It's because, you know, this is difficult and we have to work through it somehow. And I too am concerned about losing the play space at Bachman. I know you've kind of spoken to it's not the whole thing, but baseball is not just the field. Like once we get into all the equipment, storage, the other things that are there, I'm really concerned also that it actually is an incentive in some of our city fields for um encampments to exist around a lot of this baseball infrastructure. And so

206I'm really very concerned about the move from Riley to Backman specifically. Um especially when Riverside Park is a stones throw away and there are lights and I do know there are some fields at least that are suitable for practice if not for games. So I'm hoping we can reach some kind of consensus where we're able to maybe share fields for games that are we can afford and that do meet the requirements but we can practice in a more flexible way. And one example of that is I think you said Herman Franks was being used by the little league which isn't totally accurate because the city is investing in redoing all of Herman Franks. And I know that the league president that utilizes that field as part of the rental system like you agree is not

207the only one. Um is interested in the districts being able to effectively collaborate and partner to see if we could make an investment and then have no long-term maintenance costs for those fields. So, I do think when it comes to um baseball, we have a lot of wiggle room at least for practice fields um if not game fields and that we really need to continue those conversations in favor of elementary school students losing their play space for what is, you know, almost their whole time with elementary school. And one of the ways we may also be able to do that is looking at eliminating extraneous costs like scoreboards when we really score most of our things digitally and um a lot of temporary alternatives. The thing I'm really concerned about is some of these teams

208have fewer than 50 students and I know that some you know every student wants to play sports and every student matters. So, I hesitate to say this as a parent of a child who will play one of these sports that we're looking at like an investment of, you know, in some cases more than $400,000 per student who will be using it. And I'm really concerned about how that's going to play out even though, as you've pointed out, there is this real difficulty of what to do. Cancel sports, you know, that's not available. So I think what is the appetite to be able to go back to um some of these partners in relationship to at least the practice space and investing in some game space that could be shared between two schools and really considering

209if practice could be taken off the table in terms of both cost but also impact to elementary schools. So again, there there's a hundred different ways we could do this. Um, and I don't disagree with everything that you've said. The challenge is is the time frame that we have to do this and the commitment that we that's required. I I I don't want to I appreciate everything that everybody that I've talked to has done, but this isn't a this isn't a fastmoving process. I I reached out to many of them months ago and I gave them a deadline of April 9th that I needed answers back and I got emails on the 15th saying, "Yeah, when do you want to meet?" I mean, it's just it's a matter of time, resources, and the timeline we

210have to get this done. Um, you know, Salt, I'm sorry, West High School. Um we're planning on putting out to bid um this next spring to break ground early spring or mid-spring. Um in a year. Yeah. So 2026, spring of 2026. Um we were able to do that with the Rosland Heights field because we knew we needed to do something with that building right away and we didn't want to just have a blight in the community. Um and that's some of the challenge that I'm dealing with. Um, and I I apologize for getting emotional. I don't do that very often. Um, but it's it's really just a matter of there's a hund different ways we could do this. This is what I suggest would be in my perspective the the one that's going to hit

211five of the eight items that we need to meet. I haven't found anything that's perfect. I haven't found anything that's going to fix it and get it done in the time frame that we need. If I could follow up on that, I think that acknowledging that is true, I think perhaps between now and the next time, you know, the public maybe comments on this or we decide exactly what to do. I think it would be specifically useful to for board members to talk about any kind of like personal non-negotiables here. Like I don't love the cost of all of these, but if you tell me it would work, Backman losing their play space is not negotiable to me. Okay. Any other comments? That's an individual. Any other comments before we move to second round particular

212matter? Oh, I've already spoken. Um, do we have time? We move to Let's move to second round. Okay. Um, I am curious about back when in the play space issue because I've got a kiddo in elementary school and during the day um the play area is obviously occupied, but um when school's dismissed um maybe not necessarily. So I'm curious like what is the usage after school? Um and um which most likely is whenever the need will be. So is what's how how much interference is there actually to the elementary students play space? Does that make sense? I mean you guys keep bringing it up. I'm curious. I would say that the impact is that it's going to look different there. There would be an outfield fence that would uh you know it could be a

213temporary thing that we roll in and out for the games. Um there would be dugouts and a a back stop that would have a fence to make sure it doesn't go into the crowd. But um other than that, my intent was that this was an open similar to Dworth. You know that I mean it's a baseball field for the kids to go play baseball on during recess. the high school teams, they practice early early in the morning after school generally and on the weekends and that was kind of what I was assuming during during school during elementary school time that that there really wouldn't be an impact other than that the space looks different. Yeah. And so that's the part that I was trying I'm trying to process is um three board members have mentioned

214that concern about um elementary school disruption to their play space but will it would the kids be able to play on the field? Do you guys know I mean are you aware of when they're accessing it? Is are they accessing it from 8:00 a.m. to when they go to bed at 8:00 p.m. or is it more of whenever school's out they're pretty much done other than random occurrences? First sure. Yeah, I think I mean maybe they could utilize the grass on the field if the team's going to let them, but probably not the dirt. So again, when I talked about there's eight things we're that I would like to check off, every team would love to keep everybody else off their field. It's their use only. Nobody else gets gets it, even the But again,

215there's going to be some growing pains with this for everyone. We're all still going to fill it. Um, but it would have to be that that's still I mean, that's the elementaryar's property. It's their their use number one. We're making an accommodation for them to come and use it. you know, we'll have to talk with the athletic directors and say, "Look, when we schedule these things, we got to make sure that we're comparing it to the elementary school schedule. So, we're not planning, you know, a practice game during their field day, things of that nature. Um, that's different wrong time of season for that comparison, but um there's going to be growing pains. The you know, currently the the coaches are responsible to maintain their infields. our grounds crew does the lawn mowing and and

216treatment of the lawns. Um, so I think I would expect there'd be a little, you know, there'd have to be a little more uh input and help from the team players themselves to go out there and help prep the field at times with the coaches. But again, that was always a team building activity for our teams that I participated with. accept that. Well, I really like the idea of having um the West High team near the like the Rose Park Little League or you know, it's getting those kids um to to feed into the high school program. You know, they could do more collaboration. Um and I I think that that's a great thing. I mean, sorry I'm getting off topic here, but we, you know, there's there's there's club sports that are interested. I

217I have conversations with groups and uh reser reserving other facilities for other sports all the time that they're like, it's important for us to have this facility because we're the feeder into your program. And I'll be blunt, our our teams aren't the strongest right now, you know, so the more the more feeders we can find and the more opportunities to work with these other organizations is it's great. Yeah. Um but again looking at time constraint facility use and you know how we impact one another. Okay. Unfortunately we could study this for 5 years and I don't know if we'd still have an answer but it it comes back to you know we've got a time constraint. Um but again I'm willing to keep going and try and hit six or seven of those checkpoints. And

218Bryce, before I get to you, Amanda, did you feel like you got all your questions answer? I'm sorry if I cut you off too soon. Um, I covered what I wanted, but I actually just had one more question if it's okay. I was just gonna see if Bryce would fit it in his I can give you some of my time. Mine's going to be really quick. You still have some time, Amanda. And then Bryce, sorry, I feel like I cut you off, Amanda. Sorry. Um, my my question is if it's $15 million price tag, Allan, you knowing the our money situation, would you say yes or no? Funny you should ask. So, what am I going to pull up? I want to pull up um last year's budget that we approved for capital because I

219want to pull the high schools out because it kind of muddies what we're looking at. So, this shows our projected capital budget um before we added all the high school rebuilds. You can see down there on the fund balance. I just want to say you see we're in a period of growing fund balance as we save up resources for future needs. Um so you see there what these projects would do is slow that growth. Um but the funds are there are available. Um just knowing that it would slow the growth of that fund balance for future rebuilds. So you're basically projecting from this year to 2029 without this 14 million piece in the equation that it would be a $20 million growth. But then we minus the 14 million we still have a positive outside

220the other unknowns that happen. So that is correct. Strong positive projection regardless of the 14 mil. Correct. Thank you. Yeah, I wanted to respond to um something Charlotte said and then Amanda as well. Um, Charlotte asked the question about um, would it be available for the elementary uh, the baseball field be amanable to elementary students playing on it? My question would be, are there any concerns about uh, safety or liability with that? Um, but I want to ask my or say my second thing first before that's answered. Um, you know, anything that we do is going to be a change to the space or like how the community uses it. Um, you asked the question whether or not that space is used by the community. Backman is in my precinct. I do see people um

221using that space out there. Um people even though Riverside Park is across the street, they play soccer. I see activity regularly happening there. I'm not placing a judgment on that. I just wanted to answer your question. So then my question about any issues about safety or liability with that you have an answer to that Isaac? Um, as far as the risk side of it, there during the sports, obviously, we'd have to make sure we have the this the appropriate uh fencing and things. Um, but as far as like day-to-day use for the kids, I don't I mean, other than there being a fence that they would have to go around for activities on the baseball field, I I don't see how it would change or increase risk at that school with everything else that's going

222on. Ashley I do a little bit and I'll get to that, but I just want to say what I think is like quietly being summarized here, which is we're sort of being passively told that because there's a proposal for a career and technical center at Riley, what was feasible a few months ago is no longer feasible. So, I just think that's a false dichotomy, not least of all because of what you're pointing out, which is that one item has a lot of urgency tied to a huge taxpayer investment, and the other does not have that same level of urgency, nor the same taxpayer investment. So, I'm leaving it unclear why we can't have a baseball field and a career and technical center in one space, even if both ideas moved forward. And I think what's

223being misunderstood is not the idea that kids can't play on the field or touch it or use the grass. it's that there are real storage needs associated with this sport and that without any storage on site as there is on the traditional field we're talking about like potentially hazardous equipment um that is also at risk of vandalism and I don't know that there's a way to lock it the way that there is at the current field and I think it's this issue of more than just the field that is inviting these questions that that ask make me ask would it be usable so I asked a lot in there but It's basically like why is this no longer feasible even if both projects were to move forward and then you know if there's no reason

224why that's true I don't know why we wouldn't consider what was told to us to be feasible a while ago. So there were three facilities that I looked at that potentially could provide us the space for base an appropriate size baseball field. Riley and Bachmann were the only two that didn't require major changes. Uh the other one was Mary Jackson, which means we'd have to tear down a portion of the building to put that there. Um the the other uh challenge there is Ri Riley has a large asphalt area out back and it uh we'd end up taking out a very large portion of that. Um, and again just talking about what the current needs are and knowing that we're looking at, you know, a six to eight year time frame of use. Uh, that

225that was why I changed to Bman rather than to Riley for the original recommendation. So to use the rest of my time, I think I would be substantially more comfortable using a space that like Mary Jackson is a property that we're not being that we're not using that risks no impact to elementary school students for such a duration. that makes me feel a lot more comfortable even though it comes with these other negotiations which I think is I mean the taxpayers have invested $750 million into this and so I think putting the needs of those rebuilds come should come before other items in terms of what what we've asked the taxpayers to do what we're asking our kids to do and then adding to that the list of sacrifices that ideally should not trickle down

226to elementary school students if they don't have to. Okay. I would like to make a motion for the sake of time. We actually don't need a motion. Based on our G5 policy, this will come back at our next meeting, not for discussion necessarily, but for open public comment. Okay. Um and then it would come back to a subsequent meeting u where we would have another discussion, a formal vote. I think just based on the time constraints that we're in right now, and I think we're all getting a little sleepy. Yeah. Um we should probably move on to item number B um associated with this particular agenda item. Thank you. Thank you Isaac. What? Sorry. Thank you Isaac. Thanks Isaac. Are are you good? I was just going to say just a suggestion of it seems

227like the Bman is kind of a hangup. So, that one seems to be the one that um um you know, let's just shove it because I think that the CTE conversations are next. Yeah. Like to it's going to wrap into it. So, we get that one done and then we'll see how these things play out over a bit of time. Thank you. Thanks. So, let me be pretty quick with this because you have a memo that describes all of these pieces that are on um the presentation here. I wanted to do this for the public quickly. Um I the first step in all of this like Isaac made a recommendation to the board on the fields. I want to make a recommendation to the board for a district use that um we as a district

228see as a really important move for our district and that would be to designate Riley Elementary School for a larger updated career and technical center. Um I'm not going to go over this in detail. I'm just um when we looked at space needs in the district um we looked across the district. So we were looking at what not what individual schools may need like if a teacher needs an extra room that's within their individual school but rather what programmatic needs are there across the district. We brought those to you at the February 18th meeting. Um some of those needs can be taken up in existing buildings. So they don't require a whole building and a whole site to do. Um so we're we're going to deal with those in just the other process of finding

229space within current schools that are under occupied um maybe underused right now with lower enrollment and are looking instead at meeting a demand for career and technical education. and the desire to grow what we're offering our students in terms of opportunities. Um we make that case to the board in the memo. So what we're saying now is that there is a demand for CTE from our students. Um there is a demand from our community to have students who have these kinds of skills and can enter the workforce with more than a high school diploma to support them. that we have incredible opportunity here in Salt Lake City to take advantage of what opportunities we can offer our kids and our current space at Slick's campus there um is just is preventing us from being able

230to expand to meet needs um with this enrollment demand. We chose Riley over the other three options. So, um, in terms of Jackson, Benyan, and, um, sorry, Mary W. Jackson, Ben, and Hawthorne, um, for a number of reasons. Riley is the most modern building there. Um, it's a good site to build from. It's a good site just right now in its current state. Um, it serves some immediate needs. It also, it's modern. It has parking available. has room for expansion, which some of the other sites don't have. It has um the electrical, modern stuff that we need and the plumbing needs. And um in looking at the buildings uh and our needs, uh we came to Riley as the best site that would serve um as a new career and technical center. Uh we drew

231this map to show that it's kind of equidistant from the high schools a little bit. um the the transportation times change by a couple of minutes uh to go to Riley just from a quick Google map search, but um so this is and we lay out more of that. Um I'm not doing the best job, but I'm trying to go fast because I know you already have this stuff in hand. Um our vision for the CTC center is just again the amount of opportunity we can share with our kids. We've got 45% of our kids who don't enter post-secary education from high school. By the time six years have passed, only 70% of our kids have ever enrolled in post-secary. And so what we're looking at are providing other options as well as options like

232in these STEM careers to get started in a hands-on field and then continue your education into a four-year degree and more. Um, this is uh the presentation. I know the board has been wondering, hey, wait a minute, we're doing these rebuilds and we have CTE classes already in our high schools. This will remain in terms of um having programs at East, West, and Highland that are the CTE program similar to what we do now where we have some intro courses there. We have like auto mechanics across all three high schools. We would continue automechanics across all three high schools now because we see some value in that as an engagement strategy as well as a training um for students that you know it encourages them to come to school and engage. So there's some double

233benefits in this. The CTC center has typically and will continue to offer the more advanced programming. So that's what we're trying to capture in this is the red shows what we would like to add over time to our offerings um given more space to grow this out. Um so the programs within the schools at the comprehensive high schools are more introductory. Uh the tech center is more advanced and requires more specialized equipment that's more expensive. So you wouldn't want to buy it three times for each high school. Um that's the value of a centralized space. So attending to cost is important to grow. A big CTC center will cost some money. What we're looking at is um just putting out the start of an implementation plan for this and trying to designate three different phases

234for what we would do. Um, if we were able to re relocate the CTC center to Riley, uh, we could do that right now because Riley is ready to house a CTC center and it addresses some of the space um and expectation needs that we already have with our programs that are hampered um, in terms of what they can offer right now at the um, Slick campus. Then in phase two, we would look to start to tailor some spaces with some infusion of funds. Um and then in phase three, look at building some larger pieces. One of the reasons we wanted to keep the field open was not only for parking as an option for the um this, but building out a large construction um center. Uh I know you've seen the catalyst center and

235that construction piece, what we'd like to offer students that way. um and trying to get that built out. We'd need some space again. Riley offers us that. So, that would be put off until we have the funding actually before we'd move forward with something like that. Then, we have two funding options on the next slide. Uh well, actually three. One is that we have current CTE funds that come to us from the state. um as we grow the program uh we get additional funding um it doesn't so we get that in addition there is this bill that passed just this year to create um more catalyst style centers around at the different districts for right now it's one-time grant funding it was um supported by speaker Schultz this is his bill and um he's thinking

236about at least in the press release that talked about um maybe more money coming later for something like this. But this would be money we expect the state board to put out applications for this grant in the coming months within the next two to four months and then we'd be ready immediately to repi apply because we meet the expectations of the grant um and have strategies built in already for that. The other is that we would ask and the Salt Lake Education Foundation has already agreed to um start a fundraising campaign where we would look at bringing in funds. One of the things that happens when you partner with industry is the industry themselves will pay for equipment or some building because they have a vested interest in in seeing some of this. So we

237think we can really raise um money. In order to understand though the funding needs, we we need to get in an architect and we haven't spent any money on that yet. Um to take a look at the building and what would be required to build out in some different ways and some different phases. So, um, given the thumbs up on this, one of our first steps would be to get an architect in and it would give us more of a sense of what kind of, um, financial pieces we have here. um really to build a really worldclass one. We don't think and I'm going to quote Isaac if I may. Um his ballpark analysis is maybe up to 30 million, but we can we can look at that based on what the architect says. So,

238we'd be trying to raise that money or get that money from grants or things like that. So, um leave it to you for questions and discussions. And again, just to reiterate what we said with Isaac's, our next step is to bring this to the to allow public comment in a time certain at our next board meeting and then it would be again on the board's agenda to discuss just because I know we're curtailed with time a little bit tonight. Right. And then Ashley. Okay. First of all, superintendent, I appreciate the memo that you put together. I thought that it was I mean, I have different portions of it highlighted. I think that you make a very compelling um presentation on a CTC center. Um in that memo you have that table and you did have

239it up where it was showing what's in the local schools and then yes this one right here. Okay. So the career cluster the then the high schools and the tech center. So if I'm looking at this, the way that I understand this is the tech center. It's kind of building on the career clusters and the other high schools. These are going to be classes that would probably be difficult to incorporate in some of those other settings. Is that Yeah, some of them we could do, but it's not a very good use of resources. If we look like at virtual production there. So we already have some production studios but there's this whole other level of virtual production like they had at the Catalyst Center with the big studio green screen all that bigger stuff. That's

240a different level of opportunity and and class. So we could put those in high schools. It would just be expensive. So we'd maybe just make one. The next line has investment and wealth management classes. Those could be at each high school. But one of the challenges we have is getting teachers for some of those. So, it's hard to get teachers at each site. Um the the ones in black on that far right column are the ones we're already offering at the CTC center. So, you'll see a mix of things that require more equipment like fire science and the robot there's some robotics work there. Um and then well actually we have some tech center courses like we have robotics currently at West, we have biotechnology currently at Highland and welding only at Highland. Those we

241would place in a more centralized place kind of thing. But um those are part of the tech center offerings. They're just placed at a high school. But as we rebuild the high schools um we'd want to try and keep the ones in gray there in the high schools at least for now. one we're creating um flexible space so we could use for a bunch of different things over time. Hopefully they can be you know moved around depending on our needs and then the ones in the tech center would um build on those early courses within high schools. Okay, I think that's a really helpful explanation of that part and I know that you were trying to consolidate but I think that it's important for us to understand that. That leads me to my next thought

242and that is so when we look at these and we're trying to you mentioned that 3,400 students or something or well it's a weird number. Okay. They asked for enrollment slots. So one student can ask for three different CTE classes. So then that's counted as three. Okay. Does that make sense? So that the students asked for and I can get the number right 3400 slots. Am I getting that right from Yes, that's what I remember. Okay. And currently with the classroom space we have at Slick right now, we can only offer 1,600 slots. So again, it would just be we could offer more to students if we had more room to offer more to students. Okay. So with that in mind, I what my question is is are we certain that these are meeting the

243needs of what those 3,400 students are? And I guess I'm do we know that those are the things that they want or that they're looking for? And it it goes beyond just the students. It would be um like their parents or their parents thinking, okay, this is something that will be valuable to my student or and it even extends further to the community because you're talking about buyin from um community investors and I would think that some and I'm trying to say this really quickly because I'm going to be out of time but I think that some of those contributions would come because oh this is something that will help our perceived need, whatever that is in business. Yeah. Like we've had a construction a large local construction company come to us and say, "We

244would love to build a program with you." I would expect they would love to build it so much that they'd help us build it. Uh that kind of thing. Let me mention on CTE because it's an interesting aspect of funding and expectations with the federal dollars and the state dollars. um when we're looking at what we're offering it is in order to qualify for the money it must be related to labor market needs. Okay. So as we're looking at these pieces um our CTE program has done the analysis about local labor market needs. Um what are they? How can we best um build to suit those? So we want to keep you know parents want to keep kids close. they want to have them grow up and have jobs here and families here. So, we're

245looking locally at what the labor market needs are. And then, and some of these are sort of general things like marketing, you could do anywhere in the world. Um, but that's what we're building is it must be based and related to labor market needs and that kind of understanding. Okay. So with my last five seconds or whatever, I guess what I would be saying is that we're just keeping in mind the needs of those four groups, the students, the parent, and I think the teachers. I mean, teachers have a pretty, you know, they see what students need as well and then the community. And I'm hoping that with this process that we're initiating that they'll be able to give us feedback on that on what the needs are. Thank you. Um yeah, I have a

246series of questions. Um keeping in mind that three conversations on just this agenda have talked about funding cuts on the tales of $25.6 $6 million of shortfalls we've been talking about and also on the tales of the capital projects bond $750 million all while the governor is saying plan for a recession and the state gave us less than 10% of our school safety request I just find this like a very heavy ask admittedly and I'm wondering with that in mind can you tell us the earliest that we would have actual costs for a project of this scope I just want to say so the if you can you go to the phase schedule so phase Phase one is very minimal cost. It's move the program from where it is to the school and maybe buy

247new furniture slides there. Buy new furniture for the kids. So, it's not really re redoing much of anything. Uh, and before you get too far in that, I think we learned the hard way that when Roslin was converted for spa, one of the most time-sensitive components was that we had to remove every single toilet, stall, sink, all the things that are designed in those buildings for young children to retrofit. So when would we have the actual costs for even just the retrofit? Yeah. So step one, we would want to hire an architect which would give us those. So it's after the architect did their work. That's when we'd have those ideas. Okay. So again, that's a really good example just that Rosland spa of like we think we can move in, but actually we don't

248have a lot of the infrastructure we need for teenagers in a retrofit. Um and we do have those numbers from Rosland, which I'd be curious about before our next meeting. Um, when the district built this office, we ended up substantially overcost. I'm curious, how did we cover that increase and are we in the same cashrich position as when that office is being built? Right. So, we covered the increase through fund balance um our fund balance, you know, it's tightening. I'm not I mean things are more expensive. Uh we haven't we haven't addressed increasing taxes for those particular items. So, we're we're um taking a lot of the the hit in the fund balance. As you can see from the budget, there's still there's still positive and positive growth in the fund balance, but yeah, we

249we do get tighter each year. Um, as I've also shared with the superintendent this morning, I feel like we missed the mark a little bit on a needs assessment and the long range capital plan that the board asked for in February 2024 and a few other times since then, which would have had a needs assessment where stakeholders were part of identifying like what was this need and how should it be shaped. So I'm curious, superintendent, what effort we made to survey families and students about things like their commute to the existing CTC or other experiences that have been raised in multiple meetings. Um we did not and one of the reasons why is we were looking purely at space. So um with the constraints we currently have um we are unable to grow the program

250in some ways that I think are going to be really productive for students. So, as we did a needs assessment, our needs assessment was just based on where are our space needs? What programs need additional space in our district and the two that we've brought to you or we need fields and space and we need um space to grow a CTE program. So, um, this wasn't about serving kind of more individual needs that way about what people thought that way about space needs because those are decisions that our programs offer from their understanding of what's happening within the district. I would interject that a needs assessment as a term of art is about identifying all stakeholder needs and finding the gap between what's offered in the objective. And I think there there's always room for

251stakeholder feedback. And as context for that ask, when I was invited by Yandre Chatwin to attend some CTE classes at East, all but one student I spoke to was taking the class because it was a way to get a credit. And the students said they don't go to the CTC because it was too far away. And so this location specifically for East is further away. I drove the Bell schedule yesterday for many of our schools. And uh when I was driving east, the bell schedule commute was 15 minutes at the shortest and 27 minutes at the longest because you can't take the freeway. So I do think that when we don't talk to our stakeholders, but we think about space absent people, it'd be really easy to run a district with no people in it.

252And I think considering the needs of the the people matters. Um, a couple of other questions I have are the documents circulated by Superintendent Dixon in our weekly update from you last week specifically about leveraging funds with higher ed partners almost like that would be preferred in the application. What attempts have we made to collaborate with Slick to follow that state directive to leverage partnerships? because I'm I don't really understand why the South Campus specifically with our substantially declining enrollment and all of the resources of a community college couldn't help us partner defay costs and make our application more enticing. One of the challenges with that Slick campus is Slick has chosen to place a certain subsection of their courses there that tend to be more around arts and humanities. Um so they're not offering

253the wide array of Slick opportunities there at that campus. They're just offering a slice, which doesn't fit a lot of these CTE categories. There are places like the West Point campus. Um, they have a welding lab that's beautiful and huge, except it's going to be used. So, we can't use it for introductory courses because it's already used during the times that we would want to use it. Though, if our kids did advance some other advanced work, they could go there and use it. So we um Laura and the CTE team are working with Slick. They're talking with um our partner to the University of Utah as we look at these things. Um the University of Utah's offered to build a robotics lab for one of the districts. Um I've already hit up the president asking

254for a robotics lab for our district and um I didn't get a yes, but I didn't get a no either. So, um, that kind of thing we try and and partner with that way. Um, it's interesting you bring up welding because that's my next question. I wanted to clear up a misconception that West High can't offer welding because the same teacher who's currently teaching at Highland used to teach at West the same welding program. So, I think that shows that some of our issue with CTE offerings is a lack of willingness to staff the role by administrators rather than space or materials. So, Highland, for instance, lacks the range of business courses offered at East and West where infrastructure definitely isn't the issue. And to use staffing as kind of a segue, I'm a little

255bit concerned that this process has happened out of order because it's my understanding that CTE faculty at some of our schools were already told a restructuring was coming. And I I'm hoping you could speak to why an announcement would be made to faculty before the board was informed about the suggested space use and what we can do to kind of stop that misinformation or misstep from guiding our decisions. Let me qualify restructuring. We have talked when I've talked with CTE faculty, I've said our our district goal is to grow some CTE programs. that we want to make this more robust and we're going to rely on the quality of their work and their teaching and their contributions that way to what our students offer. So, it wasn't a conversation about restructuring, but actually about district

256goals and and where we're headed and that the CTE program um would to have a different kind of space within the opportunity structure we currently see um within our district. So speaking of it in those terms, in light of all the unknowns about cost, I'm hopeful that before the next meeting, Alan could give us a refresher on how much we invested in the space next to Slick, what the rental agreements are in that space, and also what even the time frame of the catalyst funds are. I'm a little bit concerned about the time frame we were to invest in something by fall when the ink on the grant application might not even be dry, let alone the check, especially when the school safety bill is not the answer I was getting. So I don't expect

257an answer to that today. I don't think that's reasonable. We actually can give a little of that. Um, we built that building um with $7 million in CTE funds to build the building site. We rent the property. We lease the property underneath the site for a dollar a year. Oh. Um, but we've value added to Slick with the building of that building. It's a 50-year lease for that building. and we can go into more details on the contract or share that with you all if you're interested. Thank you. Any other questions, Charlotte? Um would so would we give up that lease or would we retain? No. What would happen with that space? I think we could still consider that a valuable space. It's a lovely space for things like professional development and training. One of

258the problems with this space is you can have a training, but we need it for board meetings. So we have to take everything out and put board meeting in. Then we take all board meeting out and have to put training back in. And already these spaces are highly used. Um using a space dedicated to training would be great. And those are nice spaces for that kind of work. Um also for a testing center that our high schools of Austin asked for. We'd have to solve um a parking problem that exists a bit. So we'd have to work with Slick on that. I think that's the biggest challenge to repurposing. if we had that for a lot of different uses that required parking. We may have to do shuttles or something like that with some of

259that. So there wouldn't be it wouldn't be lay empty. Okay, I gave Dr. Grant a heads up on this one. This one is um I'm not tired to talk fast. You guys hit some of the issues already. Um, I do have concerns with busing. Much like Ashley talked about, East um is substantially further away and doesn't have freeway access like Highland High School does. Um, and West High and my stupid thing just blocked my thing. Hold on a second. Um, so I think that's probably going to be more complicated than um is being alluded to. Um I do agree that the current CTC center is highly inadequate and I did was asking on the owning thing. So you've answered that. I think that because it's a lease situation for us to hang on to a

260space that and my opinion is I mean is it pretty? Yeah. Is it a large useful space? No. Um we've got other buildings in the district that are not being used that um I feel would be more useful for the type of things that you're talking about and could really be expanded upon. So, um I I can't wrap my head around holding on to that if that CTC senator is moved. Um and then the cost breakdown, you know, through that. Um I have to say that like and I'm just going to kind of read through this as quickly as I can. I strongly strongly strongly strongly struggle with Riley um being the location for the CTC center for the reasons I mentioned. um it is not central to the comprehensive high schools or the district

261as a whole. It will most likely will increase the busing demands due to the distance buses will need to travel to and from the high schools. If it is set up like RCTC now, if I understand it correctly, students arrive at their comprehensive high schools, then our bus back and forth from the CTC center and depart from their comprehensive high school. So other than access to westside business partners, the equity statement doesn't seem accurate in this piece. It makes it more complicated. Um further away from the comprehensive high school, special education, teachers, expertise, etc. Um, so that decreases the possibility of easily supporting access for our students with disabilities, especially our more complex students who could really benefit from CTC education given a lot of it's hands-on and visual. So this has a high potential

262of not being an accessible option for our students with disabilities. Additionally, if they can access C this CCT center and their programs, they have extra busing needs. That's extra busing demand. So high potential of being denied access as well as access to fate because it longer drives to and from it's uh depriving them of their academic time. Um this could be something our students with disabilities in the transition pro transition program could also access us again if it were actually centralized. Um that would be a better environment for that program versus where it currently is housed. Um I'm confused on how that location would give better access to the West Valley Hospital that looks like it is located at 3650 South 5600 West. Maybe I'm missing something. Um, but that's pretty that's on the other

263side of the valley. Um, I know we need to expand our CTC program. I love the idea of all of our comprehensive programs housing the same introductory exploratory programs for consistency and access. Um, it may be a great great let me finish just one sentence. A great property but is not equitable location for all students to access especially given the historical concerns with allocating resources and special education to sport accesses for access for all of our students with disabilities not just our mild moderate students. Thank you. Can I respond to just a couple of those and I won't take very long. Um, so again when we looked at the sites and someone with Isaac's ability, the Riley campus is the most useful campus, the most um appropriate campus to build out this kind of thing.

264There are challenges with parking at Benyan and Hawthorne. Hawthorne is in a neighborhood. It would increase the traffic a lot to get to Hawthorne. Jackson's behind the trains, which could slow down transportation. You're right that East High is the one that may have the most difficult time getting to the center. I think it increased travel time. I'm going to make these up. Um, from West High, it was how much? West High, it decreases by one minute. Oh, okay. Decreases by one minute. Highland High, it increases by five minutes. East High, it increases by Apologize, it's the other high minutes. Highland High was two minutes. So really they're within the ballpark. East High is a little a little longer to get there. One of the things we'd look at in doing this is what the Catalyst

265Center has done where they've got much longer travel times across Davis. They double block CTE. So you're not there for just 90 minutes minus the travel time, but you're there for 180 minutes minus the travel time. So you come in and you do a longer block, then it's more valuable for you to have spent that time in travel. So those are some of the ways that districts are managing that kind of transportation need. The other piece on special education, there's a couple of this and I might get this wrong, Amanda, but we have CTE within each of the high schools. So, um, for a lot of special education students that would be doing if they were choosing to do just the introductory, that's all available in the same way without the transportation needs. One of

266the things Catalyst has done is they have special educators on site in order to make sure the kids are fulfilling their IEPs while they're doing the CTE work. So, they they have that. Um, most of our students don't need special transportation. most of our special education students don't. So that they would take the regular bus with everybody else that way to get to the center. Um and those with more complex needs that would require more complex transportation, then we would just deal with that on kind of a casebyase basis. CTE funds have been used to purchase vans um because we needed that extra transportation during the day and things like that. So, there's some ways to address those transportation needs as well as I think the special education needs. And we would just have to

267figure out what's the best way to serve kids that way. And I I know I'm out of time, but I may I please just go quickly? I mean, we we got to move on. We're we're pushing 9:30. Amanda, we're going to have a whole public comment period. I'm actually going to end the conversation for tonight on this particular topic knowing that we also need to hear from the community and they might have either similar or or um or different opinions about either of these topics tonight both field space and are you ending all comments? Yeah, we got to move on to to item number four. Okay, get to No, I did not. I just want to say that um I I appreciate you considering the the driving time and all of that and the cost.

268Um but this is an investment that is needed for the west side of the city that has been ignored for far too long and has borne the brunt of having to cross town to get to high school. Um, we need to do this for our kids, for the kids that are not graduating, that are not thriving, that are that that need a better better futures, you know. Um, I'm very excited about this and I know that my predecessor Jenny Sika is very in support of this and our community wants college and career pathways for Westside students who are not being served like they should. So, I'm just speaking in in support of this. Thank you, Sher. Let's move on to item number four. Um, board policy S11, um, student electronic devices in schools. It was

269my understanding that the policy subcommittee wanted to bring this back to the board uh for additional considerations or potential feedback. Um would the policy subcommittee like to take this on and introduce it? Yeah, I'm happy to um just speak briefly to it. I know time concerns right now. Um the uh policy subcommittee met last week. Um we very much um support the revisions of the policy that have been made because they do align uh with Senate Bill 178. I think one of the things that we were looking at um and maybe some feedback or guidance um from the board is how we would like to implement this. So would it be something along the lines of um with the uh law that's in place? Would it be you know cell phones are allowed during passing

270periods? Are they not during lunch? Different things like that. That's kind of why we wanted to bring it forward not necessarily to uh go in depth with the revisions um that have been made. Charlotte, if you have anything else you might want to say with that. Yeah, I think it was about um do we want to go further, you know, do we want to go further and have a bell to bell um ban on cell phones, you know, have the cell phones put away from bell to bell. That's what the governor said that the bill didn't go far enough. He thought that that was I mean that and they they're looking to revisit it in the future. So, but it's up to school districts to how we implement it. And to add to that, so

271then the policy subcommittee wanted to bring this forward for approval now because it then aligns with state law and then raised the question of do we want to have a longer public process with the community that would look at um possibly going tighter with the restrictions on cell phones. So, just to say this was put this way so that it could be approved, but also to note there's room to change it in the next few months or years or whatever we want to do that way and and go tighter. So, it doesn't need to be decided tonight whether or not you want to go tighter, but just to raise that to the board as an opportunity should the board want to take that up and and set up a long a longer, more public process

272about what's best for our community. Exactly. That I get that any follow-up discussion to that? I'm confused. I mean, we didn't have time for the second round of the other item. So, are we actually intending to discuss all the remaining items on this? I wouldn't want to move things forward or talk about them if we're not going to be able to commit our full discussion time. You know, we take a lot of pressure for the timing of our meetings um from a lot of different perspectives and including folks on this board. Um there's a lot of different options that we can do, but being that we there is an initial need for state compliance with this. Um we can take up or we can handle the discussion quickly, but um but it is getting late

273and and Brian and I are under some pressures to to move this meeting along quickly. I understand we need to move the meeting along. I'm not comfortable making decisions when we can't discuss the decisions that we're making. So, I guess when we get to S11, my question is I'm happy to make my comments about S11, but are we going to move through are we going to postpone any items on our agenda? That's up to the board. Um, and being that, um, item number three, there wasn't a need for any potential decisions this evening or any specific ones, knowing that we have a process of policy that we're following, um, I elected as your president to to move and and end the discussion there. So, um, item number four, if we would like to approve that

274tonight, I think we should do that. That's that's not at all what I'm saying. I'm saying we won't be able to talk about it if you don't allow us our discussion time. Um, I'll give my questions about S11 now. Um, I'm a little bit concerned that the policy language talks about uh research when we know new research comes out every day and that screen use in some research has really plateaued among teens. So, I say this because when I'm reading the policy, I know that policy language generally endeavors to strive for longevity rather than being reactive to what's happening in time. And so I would be curious if the policy committee considered longevity in that language to avoid making value claims about screens and instead identifying the purpose of our policy which is about instructional

275time and compliance. Any further comments or questions regarding board policy S1? Was that a question to the policy committee? Um yeah, I don't I think we were thinking more about complying with the law with the law change. Um but it does it's all about learning and student um focus and you know instructional time and focus on on academics. So Christine, you can maybe speak to some more of that. I don't actually have it in front of me. Um, but what I will say is in drafting the policy language, I think we as a committee had a conversation about the language being very specific to that we acknowledge that research exists, right? It wasn't a value judgment on the nature of the research or that you were approving or adopting that. And so I wasn't at

276this point in time and because of our cyclical nature of this and because um in in reviewing board policies that they come up every 18 months and that we can always um like change a policy if the board decides it's not implementing their vision and that there would be no problem with that. Um this is the current language that's actually in the bill. Um and we sort of tried to have language that was value neutral and just acknowledging that research. So, I will say that was the conversation we had and that was why I used the that specific terminology in that sentence. Does that answer your question somewhat? Yeah, it it definitely does answer my question. I think the current draft just is a little bit confusing. I do think it risks value judgment for

277kids who do use our devices for translation services and who need accommodations in their IEP to use their devices. I think that it makes it seem like screens are negative when in fact we know our procedures allow kids to use personal devices for all kinds of reasons that are academically good and just. Right. And I will say that state law actually um when I put that sentence in there about is except as provided in state law, they obviously have exceptions for emergency circumstances, translation, IEPs, 504s, those are all in there and um so those are specifically called out in state law. So those would still be permissible. Um and um if you would like me to add those in specifically I could. That's one of the reasons why I say in accordance with state law

278as you indicated state law can change and those exceptions or exclusions can change and it's easier just to have that more neutral language that covers that piece. Yeah. With oh sorry with that in mind to answer Charlotte's question rather than just ask my own question about what do we want to do. I think my opinion is different than many people here. I think we talk out of both sides of our mouth on screens. I watch everybody here check their phone and handle their business constantly on their screen and then we tell kids not to do it. It's the adults are the problem. And I think even Jonathan hate acknowledges a full societal shift is required for this. So I think because our school district cannot overhaul the stat social status quo, the the more we

279try to fine-tune this to be more specific or rigid, the less success we will have engaging in reality. And that's my opinion. Um um you know perhaps I don't know if we could amend this right now. I mean, we have it in front of us to, you know, to um maybe take some of the the value opinion statements out of there. And but I do I don't know. And me personally, when I'm teaching piano, I put my phone away. I do because I know it's addictive. I know it is and distracting and I want to have full focus on my students and what I'm engaging in. And so, but I mean, yeah, I'm addicted in other ways. And so anyway, um but I think we want to have a public input on this, you know,

280public input on it and and and hear from families and parents and students and, you know, hear about I mean there's safety concerns, there are translation, but but those are exceptions. um I mean the translation right and some of those um appropriate uses of phones but as a teacher also I so many kids were trying to use their phones and their earbuds and it's just such a distraction. So anyway, but we have to apply we have to um comply to the law bottom line and then we can discuss it further as a board and I think the idea was that this policy complies with state law and the idea would be in drafting administrative procedures that need to be changed um to reflect this whether how much public input we should get regarding and and

281the scope of that public input and maybe uh board direction and approval to engage in significant public input to decide um within the parameters that were allowed by state law the types and times that we can allow students to use their phones during the day end to end bellto and Bryce did that cover your Yeah, that's exactly okay. And then I had Amanda's hand and then Brian. So I know it's late and I think there's a level of frustration right now. I would suggest we just I'm not making a mo official motion if people want to continue on this, but I will if we're all most of us are on the same page. we table this and we bring it back to the next board meeting so that we can have a quality conversation about

282it because I think it's um I think we've exhausted um I'm not in a place to have a quality conversation on it tonight. Brian, I hesitate about tableabling it. It seems like that has put us in challenging situations with other board policies that have come back to bite us. Um, I think G5 is a very good example of that and I think that right now we are in a situation where we do do need to show that we are in compliance with state law and I appreciate um Christina's explanation that the policy is reflecting the state requirement and the way that we can address this and the way that we have done it many times in the policy committee is through the administrative procedures. So, I don't see why we can't go forward with approving

283this and then we can go back as Charlotte was suggesting and look at how we're going to address questions in the procedures. Um, President Salzar, I would make a motion that we move board policy S11 student electronic devices in schools to the action agenda with further direction that administrative procedures can be discussed by the committee based on the conversation. But I would also simultaneously move that we postpone administrator and special assignment to the subsequent meeting for the reasons that board member Longwell stated. It's an official motion. Is there a second? That's two. I'll second that. Okay. Any further discussion to the motion? Can I ask a clarifying question? Sure. Okay. You're It's two different things, so I'm a little confused. I said that we would move S11 to the action agenda. Okay. giving room to

284discuss the APS with the policy committee clarifying that that was the board's direction given Brian's discussion and that the last item on our agenda item five administrator on special assignment would be not tabled but postponed to the next regular business meeting given the time constraints outlined by the board the time constraints tonight's time constraints you mean yes discussionwise if if I may. Yes. Um if we're going to keep S um S11, then we should keep the other one and let's finish tonight's agenda out and I I think we can all reflect our opinion with that in the in the vote that we have on the table. Let's call it to a vote. Um we'll start with board member Williams. Bryce Williams, yes. Charlotte Fe Jefferson, no. Asherson, yes. Salazar, no. Brian Jensen half and half

285maybe. Would you like a cup of coffee? I know. I would like to see that policy taken care of, but I do think that we need to discuss the position. So, um, no. Amanda, Amanda Long will know. Is there a new motion regarding S11? I make a motion that we move S11, board policy S11, student electronic devices and schools to the action agenda. Second. We got a motion in a second. Any discussion? Seeing none, we'll start with a roll call vote with Charlotte. Charlotte Ferson, yes. Ashley Anderson, yes. Nate Salazar, yes. Brian Jensen, yes. Amanda Longwell, yes. Bryce Williams, yes. All right, that motion passes. Let's move on to the final agenda item number five, administrator on special assignment, superintendent. So, Logan will present this for us and I'm happy to answer questions. Thank you

286for taking this up tonight. One reason why is just that if we move forward with this, then we create some openings in the district. Um, and the further we push that back, the more challenging it becomes as we're looking to fill positions. So, I appreciate that. um we're continuing this and um have this discussion so that should we be able to go forward we we can get those wheels moving that that we need to in terms of hiring and placement of things. So terrific. Thank you for the opportunity to come back this evening. I just want to provide a brief summary of the proposal uh to initiate the discussion. Uh we are requesting a temporary administrator on special assignment positions to support school administrators in developing new practices and a deeper understanding of inclusive practices

287with a focus on co-eing between general education and special education teachers. This position is intended to build leadership capacity, improve implementation of inclusive models and ensure compliance with federal and state expectations regarding to access to the general education curriculum for students. Um by building this capacity in our educational leaders, we will transform culture and practice moving forward. It's expected that this position would provide targeted c coaching and professional learning for principles and leadership teams on the co-eing and inclusive uh models that we expect in our classrooms. Model effective strategies for supporting collaboration between general and special education staff and assist with problem solving around scheduling and service delivery at the school level. and help schools align their practices with IDA requirements in district goals for inclusion. So this evening we are requesting approval for this

288temporary position not to exceed three years that be open to questions discussion. Ashley superintendent, can you explain why if this job was a critical change, it wasn't included in the reorganization that was approved a few weeks ago? Um because that original proposal, there are two pieces to that. One is that it's not part of restructuring because it's a temporary position. Um the other is um that that proposal for the district reorganization came to the board and the second meeting in January I believe was the first time we raised that. So things have changed that way. There is um as I've discussed with board members, there's kind of a unique opportunity here um that we wanted to take advantage of and that came up um later and helps us fill a need that we have. Um

289I'm a little I asked because I'm a little concerned that some of the remarks I made about reorganization feel like they're already coming to pass where we shifted workloads into departments that created the need for ongoing administrative roles. So, I just wanted to voice that concern, especially when we've heard from a number of teachers about the ongoing need for people in their building rather than additional administrators. Um, my next question is actually for Alan, which is where does the funding for this proposed role come from? And if the answer is the general fund, which I would guess it would be, could you give a precise line item where it comes from? Right. So, this come from the general fund and ultimately the savings when we closed four high schools, we eliminated four uh principal positions.

290uh those resources haven't been allocated to other specific projects. So, it would be coming from those school closure savings funds when we closed elementary school. Correct. Use of high schools. Did I? That's that's really helpful. Um because we're already backfilling special education needs up to $3 million in the departmental deficit. What you're saying is this will not contribute to the existing deficit of this department because it would not uh diminish those funds by the end of the term of right even though you know kind of working with special ed will not be charged to special education funds. So you say it's not charged to special education funds but that's my big question because it does still in the description that um Logan shared with us and that we can see online it talks about special

291education and the fulfillment of IDEIDA several times. So, I'm concerned that this could be categorized as service delivery at a school, which would be recognized as maintenance of effort. And I give that background because if it qualified as maintenance of effort, it would disqualify this from being a temporary job. So, have we reached out to either our general counsel or our board attorney to confirm that this job does not qualify as maintenance of effort as written? Christina, do you mind being able to um explain that? I um this is not service delivery to students. This is building capacity of leaders within the district. So that's where the focus of it is. Pull up the job description on the link the attachment. There isn't a specific uh job description to go with this. This is an

292administrator that would be akin to our um job descriptions for building administrators with the specific tasks and expectations laid out in the board memo that's before you. So in the board memo there's only a a copy of the So if you scroll down and I it says service delivery at the school level and schools aligning their practice for IDEIDA requirements. So it is it's service delivery at the school level the way this is written. So I'd be concerned if we as a board set a precedent where we approve a special education job as temporary without understanding if it's maintenance of effort which just qualifies it from being temporary. So I'm going to interpret that sentence differently in which I believe we meant it that they're going to assist with problem solving around issues of scheduling

293and service delivery. So at the administrative level, how do we how do we get how do how do you run your school in a way that's most effective for providing services um for dealing with schedules and getting those co-eing and pushin models happening within which takes some a plum to kind of figure out within a school. So trying to figure out it that way rather than actual service delivery to students So, I'm going to ask my question again, which is, have we asked our general counsel or our board attorney about whether or not this job as described to us could qualify as maintenance of effort? Christina, are you able to give a response to that right now? Has anyone asked me? Board member Vice Jefferson asked me earlier today description. It would be very and

294I haven't been in the conversations really about this. It would be very hard for me to give an answer about whether this is maintenance of effort. I I I don't in terms of what the actual duties are. May I comment on the maintenance of effort piece? Um I off the cuff I'm not quite sure if it does as far as qualify. However, the thing with maintenance of effort that um has been frustrating in the past that when people get hung up on it is um it has this implication that it's a forever and always funding piece once you start it. However, um there are three to four ways that that um cannot be the case and one of them um is declining enrollment. And so um it's it's something that we should be looking at

295for certain. that in talking with the state board of education um and a lot of research regarding this when you're declining enrollment happens it doesn't mean that you still need to continue to pay like for example $100 million forever and for always you're allowed to make changes based on that. So, um, it may or may not be, but it's also not a critical hangup because on the flip side, there's ways to manage that and move away from it. And it al already is identified that it's not meant for the long haul and we already know that we are seeing significant declining enrollment. So not knowing the answer to that, I think that the concern for me is that I know our enrollment is declining, but I don't know the number of special education students who

296are declining and I don't know what the USB would say. I think it would be a really dangerous precedent to set to pass a role that could be classified as maintenance of effort under the law um under federal law that we haven't talked to our attorney or board counsel about and that we don't have a job description for. So, it would be a little bit like we've gotten into problems in the past of approving something thinking it's going to be one way and then actually it turns out that it doesn't go the way that we thought. So I think it would be quite dangerous to move a job forward without understanding the legal ramifications of the job and associated co costs. Thanks Ashley. Are there any comments or questions? Can can I talk a little

297bit about maintenance of effort please? Um so there's no actual specific requirement that says if they provide any service at all it has to be recorded as maintenance of effort. Uh it is common practice uh among the state that how other school districts address their their negative uh balance in in special ed is they take those expenditures and they put them in the general fund. Um the state knows it. Uh we had a discussion about it at USSA just just the other day. Um so there's no requirement that just because they provide some services that you have to report it as a a in the special education program. it can re be reported over in your general fund. And I see this I if if someone were saying that we're going to charge this person

298to special ed, I probably have bigger concerns about that because they're not 100% providing services to special ed students. It's more um capacity building amongst teachers and principles and not so much instructional uh services to students. So in my opinion, which isn't I mean I'm I'm not I respect your opinion. I respect board member Longwell's opinion. I think this is a legal matter on some level that we don't have a job description. So, this says position description, but Logan Hall just told us this isn't the job description. I think it is of course safest and the most conservative budgeting and our duty to the taxpayer to have someone look at a real job description to make a determination about whether this qualifies. Thanks, Ashley. Any other comments or questions, Bryce? Yeah, I'm hearing that there

299are lots of unknowns, a lot of concerns. This is also the first time that we've discussed this in a public meeting and so I would honestly feel uncomfortable making a decision tonight. I think getting some of those questions answered would be the right thing to do. Okay. Any other comments or questions? Amanda, aside from the maintenance of effort and I think that um Ashley's concerns are very valid and um um I can't argue against that at all. Very sound reasoning. Um, I do want to say that I absolutely love this concept because um, having a professional in place to be able to support administrators and uh, the general education and special education collaboration to really help um, our complex students um, be able to access things meaningfully and um, just I I could go on

300for a really really long time. This is a priceless opportunity. It's something that is very much needed. Um, and there are administrators that have even reached out to me since even being on the board for my input on as they're trying to navigate how to um, implement programs in their building because they don't have that they don't have a this person. So, um I think that um I don't think this is going to pass tonight obviously because that's a pretty significant request and an important one. Um but I think that being surprised by the question. I don't know if it was posed to like the players at being to know that they could should research it in preparation for tonight's discussion based on all the I don't knows. um that we should respectfully um submit

301all of our questions around this u proposal by a certain timeline, define that timeline so that um everyone has the opportunity to research the uh important topics um and preparation for the next discussion versus all of a sudden bringing it up and then we don't know and then we're kicking the can down the street again. So that's my big S so that we're not just continuing to have the same punt of I don't know following up with that if we could have board questions that way beyond the ones that have been voiced tonight which I think we've got figured out. So um within the next week week and a half that would be helpful if there are additional questions you'd like to raise. So by next Friday um the I'm thinking because I would have

302to look at a calendar but May 6th is our next meeting. Um and we try and provide you of course the agenda. Wait a minute. Did I get May 6. So we try and give you the agenda by by the first. So the Friday before that would be the 25th. And then it gives you guys Yes. three to four business days to prep. So we since April 25th regarding this topic. Thank you. Yes. Okay. Is the board in agreement? Okay. Let's move on um to the action agenda. We have three items. We have the consideration of res resolution for the bond resolution. We have the kickup and S11. Um let's go ahead and call for a motion regarding May I ask a parliamentary question, please? Um to our parliamentarian, can we approve all three of

303these simultaneously by acclamation or do we have to name them all out? We can. I would move that we approve all three items on the discussion agenda by acclamation on the action agenda. Yes. Correct. There second. I second that. We got a motion in the second. Any discussion? Uh wait one to the third one. SL1. So the vol resolution kick up and SL. Okay. Okay. Any discussion? Seeing none, we'll start with a roll call vote with Brian. Brian Jensen. Yes. I know. I'm I'm contemplating because we have on the action agenda. Let me go back. The bond resolution, the kickup contract contract and S11 and the S11. The question that I have there is um Amanda, I think we've already moved into the voting phase. Okay. No. Okay. Bryce Williams. Yes. Charlotte Fe Jefferson. Yes.

304Ash Anderson. Yes. Nate Salazar. Yes. That motion passes. Uh we'll move on to uh reports. Superintendent, do you have a report for us? I do. got just two things to bring up that are business items if I may. Um, in a previous meeting on the Nibbly Park reconfiguration, the motion was made to bring up the reconfiguration again in the next meeting. We have not done that. This is the next meeting. We don't have that motion on the table. Um, if I may, I believed it was prudent to go through the G5 approval process. Um there was no need to rush the reconfiguration conversation about Nibbi Park. Um because in my mind as superintendent, it was at this point kind of late to make that change. So I would prefer to bring that back to an

305August or September meeting um for consideration and follow the new G5 policy that you just approved. So I wanted to give a followup to where we are with that. we will bring it back. It's just now we'll follow the new G5 policy and then I will bring that to you on an August or September um meeting, but it will be the same question that we took up previously about that reconfiguration. Um the second thing is just that there is a lot of misinformation going around about the high school rebuilds. Um, there's been some social media posts that we've seen just briefly, but I wanted to say really clearly that nobody has blueprints for the new buildings right now. They have not been produced for district leaders or for anybody in schools. Um, the second thing

306I want to say is that we are not building a windowless building at Highland. So there was concern that somehow in looking at a previous picture on an early slide where the architects were showing the volume of the building, it didn't have windows, it didn't have doors. Um, people have surmised that we are building some sort of prison-like high school. It will be a beautiful glass, metal, concrete structure with lots of light and all those sorts of things. But those decisions are still down the road for our architects. To follow up on that, we will be we are working to schedule with the architects right now some community meetings for the community to see some presentations of what those buildings would look like. The West High architects are moving at a little faster pace. We're

307looking at early May for community meetings about West High School and later May for community meetings about Highland High School. So, I just wanted to dispel some of the information that's out there. We'll try and get more information to the community that's actually accurate about where we are and what the decisions so far that have been made. Um, but the look of the building is not a decision that has been made. Thank you, Charlotte. You have a woman pres or report tonight. Yes. I just wanted to say that I um appreciated uh and I feel really grateful for the opportunity to go to the national school board um convention. uh I learned a lot and I was able to already um apply what I've learned to our policy committee. So, in looking at the student

308conduct and discipline and the dress code and um some of the other policies, we we rewarded them to have a more positive tone and more of a teaching tone instead of a punitive tone. And um it was just really cool to apply that just a few days after I had gotten back, you know, and um I anyway um will we have an opportunity to share some of our Okay. Another opportunity for that. Okay. I also wanted to say that I I um really enjoyed a going to a presentation at West High School by the US government um one of the classes there. They were talking about school safety and I'm just so impressed at the level of questions and research and everything that they did. And uh and then I had a great talk with

309um the principal and anyway I really enjoyed that. Thanks Charlotte. Bren Charlotte I agree with you. I thought it was a great opportunity to be at the NSBA um conference and I I would just encourage those of us that attended to fill out the form that we put together because I think we can learn from each other. We're not all able to go to the same classes. Um, I just wanted to report on an event that I attended and it was called One Table Together and it was at Highland High um, last Wednesday. Um, this came about because there were some Highland High students that were at a student unity summit at the state capital last November and they saw this one table together as an opportunity to focus on unity. And I thought that

310it was really wonderful to be able to attend and to see um the students that were engaged, but the facilitators, I mean, there were several legislators that were there participating um community members and leaders. It was really wonderful to watch these students have um individual conversations at their tables about challenging questions and how we can work together on addressing them. Thank you, Highland. Ashley, you said um so I have a lot of committee updates. I'll try to get through it as quickly as possible. The HTRZ committee I referenced several meetings ago still has not reconvened, but a new iteration of the HTRZ called the CCRZ or convention center reinvestment zone did convene. And as you may have seen in um the news, despite a request to delay by myself and Allan, the city and the

311library representatives, in other words, all of the taxing entities impacted by the decision, every single one that's in the city that's impacted by the decision. Um we are now locked into a $300 million investment over 30 years to reinvest in the Salt Palace. Um one of the frustrating aspects of this is that most of the area is not subject to property tax. So eventually you may see um that while cities and counties start to collect returns on sales tax revenue, we will not see any increased revenue from this project despite our substantial decade long investment. Wrong. You have you were giving me a look like I said something bad. Well, so the properties w that are going to generate the 300 million from property tax will at some point come back to us. that block

312that they added uh in the last hour of this conversation, but a majority of the project area is not something we collect property tax on. Yeah, we're only going to collect on that that new block they added and then fringe areas. Correct. So, um this sort of grim reality continues to color my request that as a board we really take financing the requests that come to us very seriously because we are just not a cashrich district anymore and we need to respond accordingly. um given especially the political climate. Um the finance committee also had a really full agenda which I'll update you on quickly. We discussed the internal audit w which we contract a group called ID Bailey. They gave us a report on grant management and our finance director Christy Hart shared that department's

313efforts to take feedback to streamline processes. At the same time we were made aware that the external audit we recently completed with Squiring Company is out for RFP again. So we'll hear about um what company that is in our next meeting presumably. Um, we received a request from board member Longwell to add clarifying statements to our finance report. Um, and when we received notices on our consent agenda, I understand that's being further considered by finance director Christy Hart. We also reviewed a request from board member Bade about subsidizing school lunch costs. It was determined by the committee that we cannot absorb that cost at the same time we're absorbing other curricular and co-curricular fees. So, we did ask staff to pursue meaningful ways to encourage sign up at registration for free and reduced lunch and

314options to continue to destigmatize completing the required forms um for those services. The committee also was updated on esser funds not being reimbursed by the federal government. We had submitted capital fund reimbursements totaling $330,000 and we submitted them by the deadline. So, our business administrator will be following up with us on the options. As a reminder again, it's just an alert about how incredibly mindful we need to be about new spend spending. Federal funds make up 10% of our total budget and this uncertain climate requires us to be cautious and flexible. Um, we were also informed about the need for an office professional salary study to ensure our secretarial jobs receive sufficient pay and do not have time to list all of my typical pleasantries. So, I do just want to let everybody know I

315enjoy getting out to many events to celebrate student achievements and would like to encourage community members to please sign up to Proctor West High AP and IB exams if you are looking for a way to volunteer. Yeah. Um, two things really quick. One is I had the opportunity to meet with uh interim principal Wayne Coley at West um just kind of for a personal get to know you. um really uh appreciated that and I'm excited for um his leadership of West High moving forward. And the second is also echoing many folks um excitement and um appreciation to attend the National School Board Association conference um many of the sessions that I attended which will not come as a surprise around family school collaboration um and also things with um student voice and student board member

316participation on boards. Um, I have about 22 pages of notes that I took. So, I will work on condensing those and putting them in the spreadsheet that Brian mentioned. Short and sweet. Um, went and absorbed Bryant Middle School. I had a chance to uh meet their administration and uh visit some of the classrooms. Uh, we'll be visiting Beacon Heights tomorrow. Um, I did also have the opportunity to attend the one table together. Didn't have any students at my table, but the adults at the table. It was really fun to um hear each other's stories because a lot of the discussion was, you know, getting to know each other one story at a time kind of thing. Um which kind of goes to one of the seminars I went to at NSBA on the student voice

317piece was if we don't know a person's story, we don't know um how to I know I'll slaughter it. I better get my notes done, too. But without understanding a child's story, it's hard to actually support them properly. So, um, it's a piece that I'm I'm really excited about and really ties into a lot of this discussion that we've come up with. We we circled around quite a bit and really engaging our students and this is another way we can engage our students. I heard the food was good, too. The cooked by students. Yeah, that was really Yes, they I've got I just wanted to give a shout out to that that the students prepared the meal and they prepared a lot of it. It was. Yes, it was. It was wonderful. And they were

318so excited to be doing it. It was the fun part. Like all the smiles on the kids' faces as they were going around expressing their different um meals and items that they were dispersing in their drinks. And did you taste this? I made this one. That's awesome. I have a quick corre correction. I did not go to West. I misspoke. I went to East High School and had a presentation from students and met with Principal Oaks and some of the counseling staff to get an overview of what they're doing to help engage Westside students there. So, just a an an introductory um meeting. Thanks, Charlotte. Um I'll be really quick as well. Also enjoyed my time at NSBA. I can, you know, chime in on that when we discuss it later. I also attended uh

319the SLF board meeting as part of my one of my committees that I attend. Um we talked about a number of things. I think the things that I would highlight are unified sports requests and potentially partnering with the parolympics. Um we also talked about, you know, loosely this you know um the West High and Highland school um clinics um family support spaces. Um, and this is kind of where Sleff introduced the potential of working with Ron McBride on track and field improvements as well, which is probably where we got the update that we did tonight from Isaac. So, a lot of good stuff coming out of SLF. Um, and then I also attended finance committee with um, uh, with the committee. And, uh, the one thing that I'd add that Ashley didn't mention is we

320also talked about a few positions, uh, two of which we approved tonight. Um, and, uh, I will leave it at that and call the meeting adjourned. Thank you. Wait, Kelly, our student board member Oh, okay. Okay. I just always do something that people don't want. Okay. Yeah. You know, are you trying to help me?