SLCSD Board Meeting, October 3, 2023, 5:30 PM

001time you go make sure give Sam a thumbs up to turn on the feed hey we are good all right thank you everybody for joining us this evening today is October 3rd 2023. um we are here for the purposes of a Salt Lake City School District Board of Education meeting our first agenda item is a closed session I'm willing to entertain a motion to enter close executive session right I moved it on October 3rd 2023 the board go into clothes session to discuss the character of professional competence or physical or mental health of an individual and pending or reasonably imminent litigation second you have a motion in a second is there any discussion to the motion seeing none we'll start with a roll call Vote with board member Seeker Jenny Sika yes Ashley Anderson yes

002that was our yes Brian Jensen yes Christy Bryce Williams yes we'll go ahead and have folks exit the room and we'll let you know when we're ready to start back up thank you thank you thank you and the shades go down so good I'm glad you caught that I'm like just talk I thought I'd explain why we were being so casual about the baby [Music] thumbs up from Sam all right thank you everybody for joining us this evening I'm sorry we spent a few extra minutes on getting out of our closed session so thank you for your patience as I mentioned earlier today is October 3rd 2023 here for the purposes of a school board meeting for the Salt Lake City School District Board of Education um before we jump into the pledge I just

003want to acknowledge a few uh folks who are always with us and do a lot to impact our schools and your students these are Association presidents so for building and grounds we have President Elio Ocampo I don't see her here today I'm sure she's watching I'm gonna have Tanya Slaughter hi Tanya um and then for our Salt Lake Education Office Personnel Association we have President Whitney father for transportation president Kris kroge the Salt Lake Education Association sleep James tobler and vice president Mike Harmon how's it going I see more friends there and then our Salt Lake Association for school administrator slosa president Brie de Leon and I don't know if there's a Slauson oh thank you we have Robert Guido with us from from slossa thank you for joining us this evening moving into the

004Pledge of Allegiance we're going to have vice president Williams lead us in the pledge thank you vice president Williams for leading Us in the pledge um we do have a couple of recognitions this evening so superintendent I'd like to turn over to you for our new administrators hello everybody one of the things we wanted to get started is the renewing a tradition of introducing our leadership team our new leadership new administrators to the board thank you for asking for the opportunity to meet with them when we talked at the board retreat we've talked about our goals one of them is that this is um the place to work for talent across the valley and I'm excited about the talent that is here tonight representing uh many different schools and our new administrators here a number

005of them from other districts that we've been able to pull into Salt Lake so very glad to have them here first off Ashley McKinney if you could Ashley is our new principal at Glendale Middle School and we're so excited to have her here with the experience that she brings and what she adds to to Glendale so I want you to know her and um and of course go visit Glendale and the program there [Applause] yeah you're not going to get get out of this uh very easy it's always fun to be the first one we'll test this out hi hi would you like to know a little bit about me or what can I what can I that'd be great yeah how can I support process my name is Ashley McKinney I've been with Canyon

006school district for the last seven years as an assistant principal and mtss specialist prior to that I was with the Utah education policy Center as a school Improvement coach um I am so excited to be at Glendale I am learning so much about the Salt Lake City Community but specifically the community of Glendale and and really enjoying the the staff the faculty and the families that I get to meet and work with there I'm also lucky to be joining admin with a lot of people that I've gotten to know from the University of Utah work that I've done there so it's been a nice transition for me and I'm glad to be here so thank you very much for the opportunity thank you Ashley thank you [Applause] Carter wolf is the assistant principal at Northwest

007Middle School and I don't believe he is here this evening from the empire thank you very much oh thank you thank you thank you Joey Ellis Joey is an assistant principal at two schools for us Banyan and Hawthorne Elementary little background um so my name is Joey Ellis I'm the assistant principal at benion elementary as well as Hawthorne Elementary I grew up in the district so it's fun to serve in the district that upgrades me I've spent the last nine years prior to this at Innovations Early College High School where I gotta and I was a pair there as well as a secondary math teacher so it's fun to continue on with the district thank you Joey [Applause] Katrina Kennedy come on up our assistant principal at Dilworth and it I come from Jordan District

008I was a high school language arts teacher with West Jordan high for several years and then a language teacher specialist for middle schools in the district so I'm happy to be here and working with other many people I know from my program at the U so it's really great thank you thank you so much thank you we also have as a new assistant principal at West High School Kenneth ald who is not here this evening good evening I'm Kenny ald and um I guess my background I had the opportunity to be an assistant principal at Hunter high school at Kearns High School it was a principal for five years up at up in Logan and I had the opportunity to be a director over the office of equal opportunity in Davis School District and feel

009very fortunate to be at West High School it's been an amazing experience the students are phenomenal and I just feel very fortunate and lucky to be there and it's a great team there and uh and it's been awesome every day has just been awesome so thank you for this opportunity [Applause] I do have a shout out Ken I used to work with Lindsay at Cottonwood so tell her I say hi there you go yeah Marcella Marcel gerstenberger come on up Marcella is not new to you um been in the district but is working now at Edison Elementary as the assistant principal hi yeah I'm Marcella gerstenberger um assistant principal at Edison and before this I was a literacy coach at several elementary schools in Salt Lake but super excited to be at Edison and meeting

010everyone in the community and learning so much every day and so excited to have this group of people to bounce ideas off of So yeah thank you for the opportunity thank you [Applause] Mary Hibbing come on up Mary is the assistant principal at Bonneville and at Uinta elementary schools hi I'm Mary heaving I am the assistant principal of Bonneville anyway I am so I call myself the unicat nice but just you are aware unicorn and bobcats so previously I was down in Canyon school district and before that was down in Texas as an assistant principal and also as a curriculum writer and developer with our district so I'm really excited for this opportunity and thank you for being here tonight that's so great [Applause] foreign Rob doll Rob doll is our latest assistant principal at

011Glendale Middle School so Rob Dahl I'm a product of Salt Lake City School District I've been at Northwest Middle School for 12 years I did my student teaching at Highland High School and Brian Conley actually hired me to be a science teacher of our Northwest when they were going through turnaround and I I loved my time at Northwest and decided to jump into Administration and I've been so impressed with Glendale the neighborhood there the families the community the teachers it's such an amazing place to be and I'm super excited to have Ashley with us now and it's super energizing to have her on our team so very exciting things happening at Glendale and thanks for having me it's good to be here with you thank you Bob did a great job helping fill in in

012the interim as we were placing a principal there um Sarah Olson Sarah is our new assistant principal at Hillside Middle School I feel like I'm on trial or something um Sarah Olson Hillside Middle School love it there um I actually came from Granite School District I worked at Granger for nine years Granger High School I was an assistant principal last year there and prior to that I was a resource teacher um I have an interesting background I worked for the State office prior to that in a the updc which is now the updn all the acronyms and then prior to that I worked at Canyon's District when it first opened but I was a corporate trainer for over 15 years prior to that so I kind of come with a varied background in education terms

013but I'm excited to be here and loving my time in Salt Lake districts welcome thank you have two other administrators who are not able to be here tonight Natasha Washington was recently named an assistant principal at East High School and Craig Pitts was named the principal of the open classroom and he isn't able to join us here tonight but I I want to just thank our new administrators for taking on the task and for bringing such ability and expertise to our schools thank you very much thank you for coming tonight [Applause] superintendent thank you to all of our new administrators for standing on trial I'm just kidding thank you for being with us this evening all right of the next item on our on our welcome and opening items is observances and so I would

014like to turn that over to superintendo's yandere Leading Us in that as well or yeah she just left the room yes could you grab her April there thank you do you mind taking the picture Dr bundier would you oh yes oh you have the observance I do but I for some reason I misunderstood and I thought you were reading it oh yeah I do not have it I have the statement I guess I just I wasn't sure I wasn't sure either okay I'll read it if you'd like me to yeah so do you need more yandere I don't think we need yandere oh my gosh I'm so sorry about that everybody um so no worries thank you Dr buendia um so the observance for this evening um is around Hispanic Heritage Month um a month

015that means a lot to me and to a lot of our students in the Salt Lake City School District in our community so I'll just read this brief little statement here Salt Lake City School District recognizes and honor honors the rich diversity represented in our school Community this evening we would like to highlight the following observances for the month of October along with Hispanic Heritage Month so obviously National Hispanic Heritage Month ADHD Awareness Month also near and dear to my heart as your ADHD board president um disability History Month Down syndrome Awareness Month National dyslexia Awareness Month the Rhett syndrome awareness month and the spinal bifida awareness month so we wanted to just honor and recognize all of our students who have connections to these communities either a part of them or have siblings or

016kiddos that are identifying with these these different groups and communities so thank you so much for for hearing that with us tonight and then moving along to our consent agenda um is there a motion from the board regarding the consent agenda I move that we accept the consent agenda as written second if you have a motion in a second is there any discussion to the motion seeing none will start with a role called vote uh with vice president Williams Bryce Williams yes Jenny Sika yes Ashley Anderson yes Nate Salazar yes Mohamed yes Ryan chenson yes that motion passes and we'll move on to the next agenda item which is our request to speak so the board has asked me to read a statement that outlines our public comment period for speaker guidelines um speaker guidelines

017for public comment the board enjoys the opportunity to hear from the public during the comment portion of its meetings before we begin I would like to take a moment to remind you of our board rules governing your comments one the total time reserved for public comment is not to exceed 15 minutes with all speakers or groups limited to three minutes two the board will not allow public comments during board meetings that are slanderous obscene or otherwise violate state or federal law three 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 negotiations 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

018items 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 thank you our first Speaker of this ebook is Paula Novak Paul are you with us please join us thank you I didn't realize how many people are going to be here I can pass those out for you okay foreign hello my name is Paula Novak a parent of a first grader at Wasatch elements thanks for having us tonight recently the U.S Department of Education designated Wasatch as an exemplary high-performing National Blue Ribbon School to be selected by the Utah Board of Education as one of the three schools out of the 900 Plus in the state of Utah to serve as its nominee for this national

019award is a testament to wasatch's achievements but then also to have the U.S department choose Wasatch as one of its schools for the nation to look to as an exam an example of an exemplary school they should be reason enough to keep Wasatch open the materials you have in hand demonstrate that due to the hard work of the Wasatch employees and an invaluable support of the school's Community it's not hard to understand how we receive this reward page one the second slide shows wasatch's low-income student population has increased over the past two years by 29 with the most recent year at 31. if this trajectory continues this would set Wasatch to become a title one school calling qualifying it for Title One Federal funding on page two the third slide shows wasatch's student proficiency compared

020to Bonneville as you can see the scores are comparative however there's a stark difference between the two the two schools bonneville's low income population is at eight percent which is on the slide below research has shown that low-income students are faced with an increase of at-home hardships interfering with their education yet Wasatch with 31 percent of its population facing this increase in adversity are able to perform at a proficiency level of schools whose majority population may not have seen these additional challenges this is due to the high quality of Education our students receive from the Wasatch Administration and educators equals to that of the hard work of wasatch's administration was actually success can be attributed to the strength of its Community despite having the largest low-income student population of the district's non-title one schools which

021we've recognize faces additional challenges the students and families of Wasatch are able to come together to Foster such an environment that enables all students in the school to success I believe that because of wasatch's diversity and welcoming in families of different ethnicities and socioeconomic backgrounds this environment is able to be fostered as a chinese-american daughter of non-english speaking refugees I can speak to the importance of having an ethically diverse community pause my time um no I'm just kidding uh not just in the sense of why it's in non-white students but a diverse subset of ethnicity sorry within the minority population can I get we just just five seconds um take your time good breath yeah um this obvious part is very dear to me as I'm an ethnic minority okay I can speak to the

022importance of having an ethically diverse Community not just in the sense of why it's a non-whites but a diverse set of diverse subset of ethnicities within the minority population the imitation on the last page is an imitation that shows a potluck being organized by a group of first grade parents to see the text from appearance from Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia China Ukraine Japan Guatemala exuding such GLI clinches up my heart because the excitement doesn't stem from our joy of sharing our you know Wonderful Cuisines it's because we have hope that by having our child see his classmates and families Embraces ethnicity that soon he won't wish his skin to be white so that the white kids can touch him without getting around people's germs this invitation shows our community at Wasatch is helping us out

023to be fulfilled um so this is all to say taking the percentages that I've given to you that despite what some see is a challenge and without the additional Title One funding our Educators and Community were able to rise together to create some to create this a hikes in Prairie School sorry goodness yeah say thank you for having me thank you thank you [Applause] next to speak and and thank you so much Paula for sharing sharing your thoughts and your words and your emotions with us this evening next to speak is Gabrielle La presto Joey you're not Gabrielle I know kidding I'm subbing for my pal who has a migraine so is that acceptable the board's okay with it we're good sure okay I look like Joey McNamee I am Joey McNamee and I'm here

024for uh Gabi La Presto and I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today thank you for letting me Sub in here that's not a bait and switch I think you would have let me come if I'd signed up um am I going is it time to go okay thank you uh I want to thank Brian for his presentation to the school board last month about the schools listed for uh further study and after seeing the reasons that Emerson was on the list we want to flesh out a few of those ideas a little bit further um one of the concerns noted and I know it's not a primary concern is uh limited parking but a lot of Emerson families bike and walk and there's plenty of neighborhood parking for the school to be able

025to achieve what it needs to do without inhibiting traffic or safe commute we know it's a small campus footprint but it's an urban School located in an urban neighborhood and we don't have as much space as some of the bigger Suburban schools but we have enough to for our kids to play and our kids to learn we also know it's an older building and that weighed heavily in the recommendations for school closures but we really hope that that is not the ultimate deciding factor because it was Emerson was built with sustainability and efficiency in mind it's seismically sturdy built to withstand a significant earthquake and is not near the end of its lifespan consistently rating in the lowest 10 percent for operating cost and is the sixth lowest costs per pupil in utility costs in

026the district so uh natural light was another stated concern and we know it has the school has a limited number of windows but it has a well thought out design uh with light Wells installed throughout the building and recently received significant investments in solar panels and LED lighting which is exceptional uh throughout the school we also know that neighborhood enrollment was a concern but we have 468 students with 355 neighborhood kids and the capacity of the schools listed at 550 students we also knowed that the population is one of the five most stable local populations in the district with enrollment only predicted to drop four percent over the next 10 years so there's kids in the neighborhood and they're staying in the neighborhood and you know that if you came there and saw all those

027kids in their strollers it's going to be a big kindergarten class in three years um and we heard the school board and share the school board's concerns about putting the people back into this process and this analysis Emerson is a welcoming place for all our neurodivergent Learners our lgbtq students and their families gifted Learners and neighborhood kids and Emerson has demonstrated success helping all students succeed academically we know this because Emerson like our friends at Wasatch congratulations how did the Blue Ribbon designation a couple of years ago um putting the people back and learning is what Emerson does best and we know that part of the legislative recommendations is to take your best schools and replicate them and we think that's Emerson and we don't know what this process holds but we are worried that

028it's going to end with an up down vote from the school board on a single set of recommendations from the district uh we hope that you will take a nuanced approach and be provided with multiple options for your thoughtful consideration thank you thank you thank you and thanks on behalf of Gabi thank you okay thank you [Applause] all right our third speaker this evening is Lucy Hansen Lucy are you with us perfect thank you for joining us this evening looks like you're just coming from work and then I'm the parent of two kids at Emerson my husband is actually a teacher at East High so we are very invested in Salt Lake Public Schools we are also very invested in our community choosing to move here years ago as it was known for being accepting

029accepting and welcoming to all we have personally found that to be true both of our neighborhood and of Emerson in particular a school that welcomes every student and every family and especially makes those in the lgbtq community feel loved and supported we love our community and want both our children and our neighborhood to thrive I know you do as well which is why I am baffled by The District's choice to include four schools in the center of the city for closure doing this would create a disincentive for future families to live in this part of the city school closures should be dispersed so they don't disproportionately affect one area of the city it's important to understand that Urban schools might be a bit smaller have fewer parking spots or less land than their more Suburban

030counterparts Urban schools should not be penalized for these characteristics and this should not be used as a basis for school closure I also want to address two of the reasons given by last two meetings ago about Emerson and why it should not be selected for closure one proximity to nearby schools as an alternative site if you close the core 4 schools in the Central City they'll be limited to no walkable schools for families living from the lower Avenues all the way to SugarHouse we live near 9th and 9th a one mile door-to-door walk from Emerson we bike and walk our kids to school every morning even in Winter and they walk home in the afternoon both the walk and the bike feel safe and our kids are thriving with that Independence if the core four

031or even just Emerson were to close the next closest schools are Liberty and Uinta Liberty is a 1.2 miles away and to get there kids would have to cross seventh and walk through Liberty Park Uinta is almost two miles up the fault line hill Crossing 13th these distances field and streets are too busy for us to feel comfortable letting our kids walk alone many damers and families are in a similar situation we left without feasible options other than driving to the lower general education enrollment that enrollment is large part due to the other special programs at Emerson including Spanish Immersion and special education in order to increase the number of residential students the Spanish program could be moved to make room for Emerson to absorb students from nearby schools my daughter is in the Spanish

032program but only because it is housed at Emerson even the Spanish Immersion has been a wonderful program for her we would rather be moved if it meant Emerson could remain open lastly at the board meeting September 5th the board tasked the district with bringing the human face into this decision we are worried that still isn't happening we are here trying to give you that perspective and we plead with you to listen and use it to inform your decision the district said they were taking Community input into account in this final evaluation by using our input and applying it to other schools while I understand and applaud the sentiment the sentiment behind that statement we also want to include those parents who have not been able to comment saying this devalues the effort we had been

033putting into getting our voices heard and effectively negates school specific feedback from the community ever since we found out about possible school closures last spring we have been rallying loudly and passionately for Emerson this was driven by us the parents the Emerson community we have been trying to show you the district the board the impact Emerson has had on our families and our neighborhood please don't turn our community into an elementary school desert please keep Emerson open thank you Lucy our fourth speaker this evening is Rob Durham welcome Rob I am not Rob oh it's cool um activities afterwards so they asked me to speak on behalf of my name is Bryce Ward I have two children also attend Emerson a third grader kindergartner and I will just to kind of start about me Emerson's

034been part of my family's life before our kids even started attending we live in approximate area of the neighborhood ninth and 9th attended the cultural activities that were there The Day of the Dead is a big one and so what I want to talk about today is is from a kind of higher urban planning perspective of reason to reconsider the schools that are on your list it was talked about with the the central core kind of all kind of being on The Chopping Block so to say so the negative impacts from the urban planning perspective I guess I guess before I really dive into that too I just want to say I don't envy you and your positions right now right it's it's a it's a hard position to be in you have funding challenges

035that you know the state could always spend more on children and don't uh we have demographics that are changing those are always a big challenge um in any aspect of of of cities and schools and education and then we have parents that you know they are very passionate about their children and where they are attending school in the in this season the decisions that impact those families and then we've also have have children that have gone through the global pandemic so it's just it's not a favorable position today my daughter started at Whittier had to do online school for the first half of the of the of that semester and it was it was definitely challenging and this year I have a new kindergarten and it's a whole different experience so um so that said

036I personally am a landscape architect by profession uh I've worked with several communities along the Wasatch Front I've worked in spaces that you probably are all familiar with and have visited and the the aspects of those of spaces is as a centered around these ideas of planning which is community Gathering democracy equity and then specifically when we're talking about these schools I want to talk about the importance of proximity right we've we've looked at these Central core schools and if we are eliminating a significant amount you've created a void and proximity of people being able to achieve specifically the city uh sustainability goals of resiliency having a place where people to uh share ideas of cultures and values the act of the schools act as social hubs institutional knowledge economic growth and and the physical

037aspect I also teach or not teach I also coach my son's soccer team at Emerson and plays an important aspect for children and for adults right we need to have a space to do that and if we start losing these schools I don't know what the plans are once they're gone um but if you start taking away that institution and that core you you create a void within a community it's time so I will just end with that it's proximity and Equity I would strongly urge you to reconsider those core schools and maybe look at some of the schools to the East and other places to more equitably disperse this challenge thank you all right our final speaker for this evening is Jen oscarson Jen welcome thank you [Music] hi I'm Jen oscarson and thank

038you for acknowledging our teachers students families and Community for our huge honor of the National Blue Ribbon winner Wasatch stands out as one of the state's highest performing schools as measured by state assessments or nationally Norm tests that's what that means pretty big accomplishment which brings me back to the Dark Cloud that you as a district have cast on our school and our community by putting us on a list to be studied for further closure you have given us seven reasons or seven reasons our school is on that list six of those reasons our age of building design and deferred maintenance which ultimately you're responsible for um the other is that we're among the lowest residential population of of student population yet number one Wasatch has a Mobility rate of six percent Which is less

039than 12.9 percent which is the state average over 95 percent daily attendance average over the last five years sixteen percent of our students are English language Learners that includes Dari Arabic Spanish Russian Mongolian Mandarin Bengali Japanese Somali Hindi Tamil French Ukrainian German and Navajo I think I pronounced everything okay 32 are eligible for free reduced price lunch meals and 12 percent of our our students are receiving special education services through an IEP we are more than a neighborhood School Jen to apply to attend our school if they live outside our School boundaries we regularly have over 10 percent of our student population that comes from outside our School boundaries and the district due to our reputation within Salt Lake City um there this is without any specialized program sponsored by the district this is uh

040just us and very few schools if any could help that statistic the dichotomy and thought it leaves me so saddened so angry but I hope not bitter because the National Blue Ribbon Schools recognition ceremony is held each year in November in Washington DC and at that ceremony School representatives and supporters have an opportunity to network share ideas and Converse with usde officials about excellent in education and really showcase Salt Lake City's a wonderful achievement as in adding another school to this but what will we be sharing what message does it send to parents students Educators it's time to close down our 2023 National Blue Ribbon School I would ask that at a minimum you immediately remove Wasatch from this list and let people celebrate and enjoy the hard work and the dedication and the improvements

041that that school has made thank you Jen and all of our speakers this evening I will move on now to our action agenda or excuse me our reports agenda and the first topic under reports is a excuse me a boundary and planning study update superintendent would you like to introduce this please Brian Connolly is our director of The Boundary and population study will provide this update good evening board thank you for having me here tonight you're good okay uh first of all uh I want to uh frame our discussion as we start our this presentation to let you know that uh what we continue to do in our district is focus on students across our district we have in particular right now uh about 9 300 elementary students that we're focused on right now and

042uh 9 300 students is a lot of students but we know that they deserve the best we can give and that's the work that we're trying to do we appreciate the opportu opportunity that we've had over this last month and with about another month to go or so of learning both in the numbers and the data the hard data and through Community feedback some of which you just heard tonight some which you also received in your packets as well as the community feedback that you've been getting on a regular basis and had a chance to read through as we go the combination of both of these means we're going to make the best recommendation possible so our objectives for uh the next few minutes here is to review the aims of the population and Boundary

043study review our actions taken since I came here about a month ago and review our current work so we'll start with our population and Boundary study and what we aim to do we want to maintain and strengthen high quality learning environments for all students we want to build on our commitment to ensure that every Elementary student has the opportunity to learn in an appropriate and engaging setting we do want to exercise fiduciary responsibility and allocate our resources that we have effectively and we also want to establish School boundaries that support thriving neighborhood schools and ex those experiences for our student population at each of our elementary schools the five the five cat iteration as we move forward in the process and the critical principles we're looking at and these were this is a review of

044last time very quickly is just student enrollment and residential population proximity and availability of neighborhood schools building and learning environment quality strategic placement of district-wide programs for Equitable access and of course Community input and state stakeholder feedback some of the actions that we have taken since last time I was here we have had an area information meeting at slick C Bryant one evening we've got others set up we'll show you those dates as a reminder we've had numerous meetings to dive deeper into the data we've we've had we've had meetings discussions and talks with transportation and teaching and learning we've met with city planners we've met with UDOT and crossing guards the city crossing guard supervisor as well we've had site-specific question and answer sessions and we also have had HR meetings specific to HR

045concerns at three of our schools for our School Employees we've added data to our population and Boundary study page we've added some frequently asked questions with responses and we tried to group those better so they're easier to find maybe the question you're looking for and we continue to provide weekly social media highlights on Mondays to bring our attention to those frequently asked questions our area information meetings we're going to in the in the area information meetings we have coming up we're going to tweak the format a little bit so we can start to track similar questions and also have District leadership from more departments there to provide input on responses so we're learning as we go as well the graphic on the left shows the page that when you uh go to slcschools.org you'll see

046this is one of the scrolling pages and the reason I wanted to point to that page and uh in particular the red button down at the bottom is when you click on that the next page that shows up is uh some of what you see is what's on the right of this screen and on the right of this screen is it's also on the right of that page that pops up you'll see some of those updates and information and for example District data is one that I wanted to highlight just as one example of what we've done when you click on District data and District Maps one of the possible Maps you'll see is this this it's really hard to capture on a picture what it really does but this is an interactive map you

047can zoom in and zoom out when you click on it on your computer the bigger the screen you have the better I'll tell you that it works much better on a on a on a laptop or a full screen monitor than it does on your phone but it is an interactive map with uh Elementary boundaries and it does have our October 1 2022 student count of course October 1 2023 just passed and we're now really been working hard on the numbers so in the next couple weeks we'll have that information loaded on there instead of the 2022 information but it does show a one mile radius in this particular map and when we're a radius Circle and visuals of where students live now the individual houses it shows them by the block but you can

048zoom in on that and really get an idea of where our students K through six were last year it'll be interesting to see with our new numbers over the next week or two um if if that's very similar how much has shifted on that but will give us some good data to move forward in our work our current work going on right now is primarily in two data groups but there's always conversation going on one-on-one and in different contexts where we're always trying to learn a little bit more we have our data group we're collecting and analyzing student-focused data on those uh Henry is like enrollment building and learning environment quality some Community considerations and strategic placement of those programs and we also have a transition group including District right now where we're strategizing and

049creating potential plans for smooth transitions of students families and employees if schools close and boundaries change so that's the work that's going on now in addition to those other meetings the meetings that we do have coming up that are uh for our communities and I don't not only the site specific question and answer sessions of which we've had a couple of and I believe we have one more one this week as well but coming up this weekend we do have information meetings uh Saturday this Saturday at Glendale Middle School again we've tweaked that format just a little we think it's going to make things work a little more efficiently and also help us gather data better we do have a language translation at all of these and child care is going to be provided at

050these meetings as well I'd entertain any comments or questions you might have um yeah you see when you start zooming in and out you can go down that rabbit hole and spend hours and hours on that one right there there are also pop-up boxes for those when you click on the school that gives some more data about the school and that'll be populated with the 2023 count when we finalize those numbers yeah we're just working to get more and more on there and more and more that's usable for you all the public for ourselves as we move forward in in the work over the next month or two board members any questions I'll just this is an idea when that data will be finalized the October one counts Sam a couple weeks all right and

051just for the folks listening at home the answer from Sam Quan's District employee is that we have to report the final numbers to the state by October 10th and there'll be a report to the board on October 17th thank you Sam Christy slide that has the information on who you've been meeting with yes I would be really interested in knowing what are the topics that you talk about you know with Transportation teaching and learning city planners UDOT crossing guard I mean what around what and what are are you talking about well I just I'm interested in to know what what's the subject matter of each of those groups sure and as we as we uh continue to collect this data we'll be able to share with you in a more succinct form than than those

052discussions have been but I'll give you an example I went to one school a few weeks ago and one of their concerns was um was whether or not we had contacted and and talked with UDOT about uh work that's uh going on for pedestrian access to and traffic calming going on along 700 East and so for me to talk to you talk to the supervisor over that particular project and we were able to discuss questions and collect information on when that project was going to happen what the goals were of that project where like what would it you know a couple Renditions of what that would um a couple pictures of what they're anticipating that look like and be able to share that along with so not only to hear his talk but we also

053linked in our transportation department so Transportation could talk to that person about hey when buses come down street number you know or Street X um sometimes a traffic calming strategy is to narrow the the lane for a student to walk across and would that narrow it too much with a bus turning on and off of that street to cause problems and being able to have those conversations with UDOT and some in some of those so as we're compiling that data and those nodes those will be shared as well and I mean that's one example the city planners we've looked at um we we know that traditionally homes that for every 100 homes in our city we get 22 students that's been shifting some now that we've had more different kinds of housing built now than

054we had built 20 years ago typically so we'll dig in deeper into our three bedroom units which tend to have more of an opportunity for students versus our studio apartments one bedroom apartments things like that so we're getting more information debt on where those have been built over the last uh I believe that it was from the last eight years 2015 on and where those are and that'll be posted as well a city planner report on on recent where recent builds and licenses have been given for building over the last few years in Salt Lake that gives us a picture of where the building's happening and also the size of the housing units one two or three bedroom so we have a picture of that across the district yeah crossing guard discussions are um what

055do we have enough everything from how many cars and guards do we still need in the city where do we need them what are our hot spots what are the places that are um are more of a challenge than others what do we need to um what are some other things we need to know in regards to the streets that students are crossing and where we do and do not have crossing guards so that's all been part of this deeper dive into the further study so assuming because you haven't actually said that when you have these conversations as specific seven schools yes so I think what's interesting and I think that this should also be I don't mean to interrupt I'm sorry when we do have the talk it is it when we have for

056example crossing guards we talk about more than those seven okay um we certainly talk about the schools because we're having that bigger Global look and picture and then um after we get that overview and okay what are the hot spots which some of them are around those schools some of them aren't then we start to narrow it down if we want more specific information about our schools on further study but we have been uh We've yeah having discussions that give us insight to all of our schools because boundaries will change as well sorry to interrupt that's okay so now I'm gonna like I'll go back to what I'm if I can remember let me write myself a note so I don't forget to go back to that to the demographic thing I want to say

057but specifically when you're talking about crossing guards and you're talking about that global view one of the due diligence that our schools have always done for as long as I've been on the sport is have walking route discussions and and they do snap and they look at those planning so that should be something that we already have that data because it's something that the schools do every single year looking at what's the hazard what are the things you know that we need to pay attention to where do we need to have stripes so I think that the global view is important but hopefully you're also pulling in all that data that the schools have been providing for years you know about those yes we have so back to when I look at when I'm when

058I'm hearing you talk about the city planners superintendent one other thing I think is really important that our communities need to also have information and and that this committee has information to is the demographic study that we did um that Sam organized for us because one of the things they talked about specifically was the development and he gave us a specific area in the city and said here's this development and we should expect at least 500 kids that would come from this development and what we garnered from that development was 45. and so I think it's important you know that we connect those dots you know that when we're looking at that at that planning and with the city that you know it's it's a it's a real hard conversation to have but it's a

059combination you know of both you know people not living in the city but also the availability of housing so I appreciate that you're looking at that and how it's impacted our schools and and it's impacted the seven schools you know that are on that District are on that list and especially in the corridor you know of that you know that we've already been talking about so I I appreciate that you're having the conversations I think what would be helpful superintendent is that at going forward as you said to just have a little bit more of that meat of what we're talking about so that we understand you know that when um the committee is going out and talking specifically about certain things that would be helpful to me as a board member to know what

060that information is as we go and work through you know the process that we're working through thank you thank you board member Smith remember Jensen can you tell me the two site specific q a sessions that you what schools were you at uh I have been to Hawthorne and to Newman okay for those and we have another one this week all of them are scheduled right what was the community response is there a significant turnout or um I don't have my notes in front of me but one school between zoom and in person one school with about 60 participants between 50 and 16 another one with about 40. so uh so yeah yeah you can look at that how how you wish on if you think that's a great turnout or a a poor turnout

061or somewhere in between but um it did provide many questions we had um we just we just had a whole lot of uh questions that were thoughtful there was some insight that I again when we talked to communities then it also helps us put us on some Paths of oh we got to look deeper into that they brought this up that Community input is important because it's going to lead us to learning more about uh the traffic on and uh the number of cars passing on Six North versus 10th and north and um you know some of those kind of things and where they're doing traffic calming in different areas so it has led us to some good conversation that way and uh um it's it's a somber meeting in a lot of ways um

062it's um there's some high emotions at time at it in it but the important piece is our community members getting to share that leads us to some of our work if it's something that's uh new or different that we hadn't that we hadn't considered yet or that we're digging further into the study of and uh helps us do our job better as well so it's been good okay I appreciate your saying that you are getting insights from those communities when you're there yes yeah some of what people share is yes you know it's something that maybe we're already aware of and there's a you know uh there's they want to share their perspective on how important that is or isn't and that's important to hear as well and uh so sometimes it's sharing that but

063sometimes uh we get a little bit of information that you know that little bread trail of breadcrumbs that helps us do our job better well it would seem like some of what you would get when you're in the actual building is giving you some insights too when they can refer to things [Music] so another question that I had along that same line was you you mentioned that they're having Zoom connections because I think it's hard for people sometimes to get to the meeting are they able to access the meeting are you able to get questions answered through those Zoom meetings is that working uh at one of our sites um what I've asked I should back up and say what I've asked our principals to do because many of these are either added on to

064an already existing School community council meeting or in place of a school community council meeting at least the um I think all about one of them that we have set up is going to be that way and so I have reminded principals however you run those SEC meetings we want this to be something that's authentic and helpful and workable for them so if they typically have a translator at their school have a translator there just as Jackson OH Jackson was our other one whoops that was our other one sorry it was that one as well so you know to have Arabic Spanish and English there that's something that the principles set up if you typically do it on Zoom keep doing it on Zoom so we can do it that way we did have some

065sound issues at one of our schools because I think a few factors that played into that not doing it in the normal spot in the in the account or in the library moving it to the gym sound problems in there so we're trying to iron those out so they don't happen at other places but we were able to um take notes share those notes with the community answers to the 25 to 30 questions that they had submitted beforehand as well as well so um so if not in being able to hear it clearly all the time on all of it there were notes that they can read and link to on as a school that the principal had sent out okay so hopefully we're learning from these how to make sure that the next meeting

066the zoom is even you know more workable or whatever yes and and I am putting a lot of that back on the principles and really trying to get our principles to um because it is typically an SEC meeting or in place of that so trying to keep that consistency and honor how that's working instead of and be part of the meeting myself instead of the outside guy coming in telling them what they you know doing them my way and then leaving I wanted to really be what works for them and has worked for them over the years but it the sound quality on one spot needed to be better and we'll learn from that and keep moving forward well I just I appreciate your working on that because for me this community input is really

067critical and we have these board meetings every two weeks and there's 15 minutes for individuals to speak and I want it to be that the others have the opportunity to express their or share their insights yes and keep watching for the notes from those meetings um and and I think that that those capture much of what the community input has been as well okay and are you having that same sort of uh dialogue at the HR meetings HR meetings have been run by HR so a lot of that is uh so far has been done uh Logan Hall presenting and answering questions to staff talking with them mostly teachers but we've heard from classified employees as well and uh so I'm I'm there in case the once in a while question comes up specific to

068our Focus really is about what happens with employees that's what we've really tried to keep the focus on and I've made it to uh one I haven't made it to the other two I have and um and so Logan and I continue to sometimes uh if I'm if I'm too much front and center the questions aren't about the employee side of things they're more about just the bigger boundary study piece and that that in our first meeting it kind of took away from some people who wanted to be able to ask more questions they were still able to email Logan get those answers hear from them but we want the focus in those HR meetings to really be about here's the process and how it'll play out and here's what we're trying to plan transition

069wise here's what we're doing you know trying to be ready for uh whether it's this many or this many schools that we have to do something with and the people that are in them so it's really been more of a focus on that then than uh the greater boundary study piece that we're talking about right now thank you board member Jensen I recognize you board member Anderson but I wanted to check out other board members that haven't had a chance to ask a question yet Seeker board member Bay do you have any questions still Brian storeman still brainstorming vice president Williams thank you um exactly what you were just leading toward which is just the larger boundary studies so of course most of what we're hearing about is the attributes of specific schools recommended for

070potential long-term closure but with 20 schools having their boundaries studied that's an you know an equally large if not larger Endeavor to review every single Elementary School boundary in the district so I'm wondering if those updates would only come to us in December regarding School boundaries and until we hear how are we soliciting feedback from the boundary study portion because what I found surprising is families in Precinct 3 who don't know what's the boundaries are being studied do you know what I'm saying like they would recognize that potentially a school would close but not that it may have any impact on their Community whatsoever so do we feel that one families are aware generally of what could happen and then how are we getting that feedback from them if their school is not one recommended

071for closure uh certainly we've gotten some of that feedback through our population boundaries the link here um those are among the multi many many comments and questions and um that you all have received there some of them are in that uh we have communicated um that bigger piece of boundary study from the springtime going into summer to all of our schools but when you communicate once twice three times that just means you need to do it 10 more times after that so we can up that and be more be more aware of really trying to solicit that information from uh from the other 20 schools as well we don't know it's a little bit it's a little bit tricky with whether you know the number of schools that um that are recommended and then said

072yeah we're going to we're not close the school this school this school of course that's going to impact whether it's 20 schools that get affected 10 schools however many but yes we'll work on that and we need to work on that so thank you for that reminder to that end as I look at someone going through the comments if it's possible in the future to collate perhaps the purpose of someone's comment obviously the greatest number is like I said going to be about the attributes of a specific school on the list of seven but there are lots of other significant comments in here I mean that are run the whole Spectrum including like closed now and closed swiftly to close nothing right but if it collates the purpose we may be able to get some

073of those things that get a little bit buried that are effective for the boundary study overall I think that are in there I don't know if that's possible on the form to give some options about why you're commenting beforehand like I'm making comments about a specific category because right now it's where your student is zoned right and so I'll see someone's like if I personally as a parent was to make a comment it would show up under Washington and west but it doesn't say why I would be making the comment which is maybe more useful than knowing I have a kid at Washington and west on some level but remember Anderson if I can just say thank you for raising again the topic of boundary changes um we have said from the beginning and that

074seven schools were identified for further study foreclosure and all schools are identified for possible boundary changes so many of those boundary changes would Cascade from the decision about which schools to close and so it's difficult at this moment to even set out a scenario that people can react to because it's contingent on those recommendations that the district will make about closure but putting that out there in a more clear way I think is really important to make sure that people understand that the boundaries will change around the schools that would be closed certainly and then there would be other changes as well if programs had to move and and what that would mean for different schools as we we work to balance this out across the district um so thank you for the raising that

075and and the idea of um trying to figure out how to receive meaningful input on boundaries without having put out scenarios of boundaries we'll try and piece through as a district internally and figure some things out and see if we can do that that's a little bit tougher at this stage to do but there will be time for public comment on that as well thank you thank you foreign so superintendent I appreciate what you're saying and and I am trying to wrap my head around that it's a little difficult because of just past history and so this is where I would caution is that the reason I think that board member Anderson is rising is raising a good point about the importance of whether or not families know that they're going to be impacted the

076longer that we wait and and in the past what happened was a decision was made and then you tell the community the communities oh your boundaries going to change or you know your kids are going to have to go hear the transportation is going to change and if it's not beforehand or a part of the conversation then that's just going to help that that's going to contribute to the deterioration of trust and so I understand what you're saying I do that it's difficult to put some of those scenarios together but I don't think we should be afraid of doing that I think it's important that we allow our communities to know what some of those scenarios are going to look like and it's not that we're saying these are set in stone but I do

077think it's important you know to have some sort of plan out in front so that that our communities know what's going to happen so I can just tell you that you know when a school is closed and you have no idea what's going to happen the next day with your child because you've got a school that a school year that you have to plan for and you're not sure where they're going to draw that line and you're not sure where you're going to catch your bus or you're not even sure what teachers are going to be in that building for your child you know in a brand new school it it causes contention and distrust and sadness and it does not start your school off your school year off well so whatever we can put

078on the front end let's try and do that as much as we possibly can because I just I've lived through the other part of it and it's not a good scenario to do thank you for that and I think we have to take those things into consideration as we build that transition plan particularly yeah thanks for raising those on our bed um thank you I know we are I'm just thinking ahead based on the questions that I received from the community because right now the community is looking at it okay uh if school if school is to close the big question is what's going to happen with that space and that is I know it is you know something that probably we're not thinking about yet or something but it would be great if we

079could like in our next update meeting it'll be great to have an idea of like what are the things that the district have been thinking about that those spaces you know will be used for so that they will not stay vacant because that is a big fear for a lot of families right now and of course you know uh the other one that I have a question about is um okay so neighborhoods are very fluid right now so there are families moving in and out and sometimes families that move in they have new kids are we getting some like uh most recent updates from this city in terms of like like the county for example you know babies born they go they register the baby there and do we have like some information like that

080or like oh these are the number of kids that you know been added since January to now for example when when our student when a a student is added who's already school-aged and a growing number even that are preschool-aged because our preschool um our preschool numbers have grown quite a bit over the last 10 years so the three four five six year old not not all the three-year-olds not all the four-year-olds but more now than we used to definitely our five-year-old six-year-olds that move in because they enroll in school um those numbers come to us um we don't we are not getting numbers of a newborn a newborn in our district because five years out from when they start school is not a real reliable measure of whether they're still going to be living in

081our city as I mean we saw some of that play out with how when we took a look at our census numbers when we've talked to city planners about those numbers that they use um that's been a real challenge because five years where you might raise a one-year-old might be a whole lot different than where you want to raise your nine-year-old right and people will move so um yeah that's that's that part we have had um the new numbers with uh with our October one counts those will really give us a a real strong you know that that we can say okay have our projections been pretty darn close or are they way off um I think they're going to be pretty darn close um to what we thought the projections would be which means

082that the between the um the projection studies that have been done before along with the work that our information systems team has done so far has been our best way to really know how many that we have coming and and how many we have here okay okay thank you and and I trust that you know all the comments that come in uh are like you know placed in some form of a spreadsheet or somewhere you know where it's good okay this is about the safety it is our Dominic comments we have this is about you know the specialized kids these are how many comments we have things like that because that will help a lot you know as a comment coming because a lot of people as well that I heard are like okay well

083we have this uh update meeting um but there is no one out there taking notes you know that's one of the uh concerns that was raised you know in some of the meetings this is just like from some parents so they would like to uh to see when they are asking questions questions are written down and if there is an answer will be given now if there is no answer follow up with that parent or that Resident to make sure that they get an answer so that's one of the uh concerns that I received from a community can I speak briefly to that the one area information we've had it is recorded I really encourage people I know sometimes that's knowledge as handy as a written piece of our three q and a site specific

084I believe we had eight or nine pages of notes that were sent back along with the PowerPoint to Hawthorne to the principal I believe that's on their website um at least that's where it was going and I'll double check to make sure it was posted there eight or nine pages of notes someone was taking notes um at Jackson someone was taking notes so those have been on their website along with the PowerPoint the Newman ones what that meeting was just last week and those will be coming out this week just was texting with the principal there saying expect them soon and uh we've got we've got those notes too from that meeting so those are the only three and those are all coming to you all as well um it's important for me and the

085data group and the transition group they're seeing those um because that's where recommendations are coming from obviously and discussions are happening but it's also going to the board so there are a lot of people getting getting those and seeing those and we're having deeper discussions when we say boy this is a real tough question these two questions right here we got to answer those in a little in more detail so people really understand this or that whether it be about HR teaching and learning whatever so it is driving a lot of our conversation sounds great thank you thank you yes superintendent Grand if you want to respond to one of the questions that board member babe raised I just wanted to speak to property use so there's a couple things one we're working with the

086Roslyn Heights property now and making sure that that's secure because it's now vacant and um so we would put those measures into place but also the the discussion of property use is very separate from any discussion of closure so um uh business administrator currently is working on some of that working with experts on those sorts of things so we're just keeping those as two very separate conversations but also putting in part putting into our transition plan questions about what we would do if when properties might become vacant or what would be done right away or in a later time and we can bring those things to the board after the decision is made about closure okay okay thank you thank you did you have any um just uh I'd just like to add on to

087uh Christy and um sorry Christy and Ashley's uh suggestions or recommendation because I'd be really mindful director Brian Conley on our verbiage and language of you know things that we you know address as scenarios because me sitting here as a board member and you you know just just throwing out an example of oh we went over on 700 East what schools are on 700 East as a board member I'm like okay is that the school that's being closed or is that the school that's remaining open the reasoning and the suggestion for being transparent is so that we don't have these assumptions or we don't have these panic attacks or anxiety where we might be you know that school that you are just so casually throwing out there because you had only been to that one

088school so um I suggest that I don't know our committee ties it brings it in a little bit tighter and be and be becomes more transparent with how we are processing a lot of things I know that the the information we have may be limited but any information is is valuable to a community who is on you know the the seven schools that are being you know studied um also to that of um to to add also I have some complaints from my community that um Saturdays you know we're having this meeting on Saturday and Saturdays a lot of the members in my community are complaining because they play football on Saturdays and so they won't be here at this you know at these meetings and and there's another meeting out in Franklin and once

089it once again it's on Saturday which is you know I I have voiced and shared that hey there's all these other meetings but um if we could I don't know how we decided when we were going to have those meetings on Saturday or who came up with the meeting on Saturday for for that particular Community to attend because we will be affected and impacted if Riley is closed and all of that so it is pertinent and very important for the for the community to be in attendance and so not everybody will be there is is what I'm saying thank you board member Seeker I do think that um the feedback that we got in the spring was you need to have some weekend meetings you need to have some morning meetings you need to and

090and that wasn't that wasn't at any one site we we heard people uh trying to find that's why he tried to respect it around between uh Tuesday night Wednesday night Thursday and different nights of the week as well as on the weekend before the youths game I know there are other football games besides that yeah little league having yeah my own boys go through that those little league games yeah but we do hope that parents can uh can come to uh Northwest for example when it's in the evening or one of the other uh one of the other sites as well and uh and yeah we just tried to spread it around based on what we heard in the spring thank you yes thank you are there any other questions or comments remember Jensen yeah

091I appreciated superintendent Grant when you were talking about the boundary aspect and what um board member sweat has raised I'm hoping that at these meetings we're also and I think I have mentioned this before but having those of course those seven schools understand that the dynamic of that school itself can change depending on where programs end up and the programs as well as boundaries can be changed and I think that that's really important for the other 20 schools in the district to understand that this isn't just a boundary change or just closing and when I say just I mean I don't mean to minimize that but it's also that programs are also in this mix and that that's going to I believe change the Dynamics of the elementary schools as well as the boundaries in

092which schools are closed so I hope that in those meetings that we're sending that well not sending that message but having a conversation about that aspect of it as well I think student board member Evans do you have anything you wanted to add no I have the same color as okay all right vice president Williams any comments or questions about it this time okay so one more thing I think I have a little time left you do I didn't plan this but I am looking at the map of where we also draw people from out of district and I wanted to just share as a comment um in the last meeting I talked about going over in the community meetings again some of the benefits of why we're even considering consolidation not just why we

093have to do it but why it's good for kids to be in a school with stable FTE and looking at you know the numbers we have in the one mile radius and what we draw from out of District I did get a text from a constituent earlier in the week who at the beginning of this year had transferred to Jordan District and she said she really didn't know what a full Elementary School was like and that actually there are significantly more special education services for her child for example because they're simply more staff to operate the school building because it's operating at what we're calling the right size right and so I think it can't go unsaid again looking at just on the map these adjacent districts to us that are operating schools at this

094size that there are real benefits to trying to reach that goal and and getting updates from you on how we're doing it and that you know we do get feedback from the community of course predominantly about schools recommended foreclosure but also a lot of positive feedback about being in schools that are full and how you know maybe people didn't recognize that before and they're experiencing it now so I wanted to pass that on while it came to mind looking at this tool thank you Sam it's a pretty cool tool thank you if there's no other comments or questions I would just one superintendent I think you've heard a lot from the board this evening and then from the report um you know just more info about boundaries and and demographic studies and and things how

095we can incorporate that into into our work moving forward um and then also just for the community from my own perspective is this is a really delicate fine line that we're walking in and I appreciate your patience I appreciate your engagement with us but I think some of what we're hearing this evening is that things that need to be considered you know things like usage of land or what do the boundaries look like ahead of time and I think one of the things that really worries me in all this I don't disagree that we we should we should try to do what we can but there is also the reality of forecasting decisions that we're not going to make you know we don't want to put anything out there into the community this is just

096me speaking I don't want to put anything out there in the community that gives any kind of false notion that your school is going to be closed I don't want to do that until we have a final list or lists presented by the district to the board so I think that's the caution that I'm feeling that I'm hearing from you superintendent and I know that's also some of the caution that um you know ultimately became a really tough reality for other school districts that have been dealing with school closure as well and I don't want to put our district or our students our community in a position that other school districts have had some significant challenges with so I just wanted to to put that out there from my own perspective I'm seeing some head

097nods from folks in the community and in the audience and here on the board as well that um this is just a really hard thing that we are endeavoring in and I really appreciate again the engagement and the acknowledgment from the parents in particular about this difficult spot that this school board is in um and I think superintendent you you've you know kind of touched on that and some of your responses to the board tonight but I just want to emphasize that with the community that we don't want to put anybody in a position where there's a false pretense or notion about what schools will be closed and so that's some of the hesitation that you might be feeling or hearing so please continue to to work with us and exercise your patients and and

098acknowledgment of how difficult and challenging this really is for all of us that are that are engaged in it so I just wanted to put that out there the last comment that I'd want to leave maybe a potential item for for a report the next time that we we have you with us Brian um I know I mentioned previously um and to board member Anderson's comment as well what are the benefits of consolidation and what does that really mean for students what does it mean to have um you know the right size school with the particular you know grade level teachers and the importance and significance of um of teaming um you know Dr Hall I've been on this board for almost five years now and you know how much I love plcs and teaming

099and the impact that they can have on student learning but in schools that we're not able to do that where our students are missing out and so those are some of the things that I really want us to highlight moving forward about the benefits to consolidation where we're at right now so thank you thank you thank you Brian thank you Brian all right up next on our reports agenda is a sustainability update business administrator Kearsley I believe this is you and Greg well my part of Misses to invite Isaac as still our executive director of auxiliary Services up and he can introduce his team all right Isaac two meetings in a row look at you you're gonna get tired of seeing this face never never thank you board members we appreciate you giving us a

100few minutes tonight um to to my right is Greg lebecki he is our uh energy and sustainability manager he's been working on this project from the get-go uh with Alan and my predecessor we also have Lynn Alder and Jeff Hare with us from mckinstry they're both uh expert ma or matter experts within the industry and we're excited to have them here with us to answer any questions that you may have as we go um we do have quite a few slides I hope that you will be patient with us allow us to get through it and then we'll give you plenty of time to ask questions the first thing that I would like to say again as I said last week or two weeks ago I get credit for things that a great team are

101doing when I interviewed for this job I was very excited to hear about the sustainability action plan I was very honest with Alan that I was supportive of it as long as we can fund it appropriately because that's the biggest challenge we have with sustainability efforts is just making sure we have the funding behind it to make sure that it can be done correctly and in the time frame that's appropriate with that uh this is a big uh project there's multiple aspects to it I'm going to turn the time over to Greg here in just a minute to go through each of these but I just want to point out on this uh pendulum that I'm sorry on this wheel that these every one of these aspects is a different aspect of the sustainability plan

102that we are have made efforts towards and are continuing to make efforts towards meeting the goals that this board has set for us obviously the biggest thing we're going to talk about tonight is the phase one project but there are quite a few other integral pieces of this that other teams within auxiliary services and education have taken on and are running with those to make sure that every aspect of this is moving forward not just one so with that I'm going to turn the time over to Greg well good evening members of the board I actually I want to go back one yeah I'm happy to be here it's been very exciting time this last year it's gone by it seems like in a heartbeat with all that we have had going but I first

103want to really thank you for for all your support and let you know I'm proud to work at the school district you know one that's concerned about demonstrating responsible stewardship for the environment and being fiscally responsible while doing it there there's not a lot excuse me a lot of that happening and really does I make my uh my job rewarding my recent interview with the national public radio folks uh reacquainted me with one of the students who was a senior at West High and was instrumental in creating that sustainability resolution that was presented and adopted by the board during the era of covid uh Andy Madsen she's now attending law school and plans to become an Environmental Lawyer she announced on National radio how very impressed she is with what Salt Lake City School District

104is doing and making strides toward the goals set forth in her resolution so that was pretty cool sharing that interview with her so while all 10 of these areas of focus have seen progress I'll just be sharing highlights with uh with some of them so sustainability education is an exciting component of this uh Candace Penrod is actively engaged and has several programs which directly involve equity and integration of sustainability Concepts in the curriculum and District culture she's created a sustainability Education and Leadership group otherwise known as the Seal team and I'm happy to be on this team along with Ricky Martinez and James appius and others and stay tuned for more to come from from that Candace is also reallocated some of her resources to create a new position Carlin Christian is the brand new

105sustainability coach and has been meeting with green teams throughout the district and I'm sure you'll be hearing more about that as well and I'll be working closely with her to cross pollinate um okay on to recycling all in the past I've been very involved with all that's recycling at the district that's been handed off more so to the custodial folks and now Sam Mills is uh managing these efforts well in the past we've paid less for single stream uh then we pay for landfill it's flipped we now pay more for single stream than for landfill we've trimmed the number of yards we're using in single stream but we are still providing it at an at an additional cost essentially we're approaching the end of our contract with the current hauler as we go out and

106review bids we'll take a closer look at this and decide whether or not we can actually be fiscally responsible and keep it on the bright side metal recycling still pays you know the larger metal components are are being re was sent to a metal recycling outfit and it helps us avoid tipping fees to the landfill and we get the metal back out there and we get some money for it so it's a good deal paper recycling that used to be like my main thing a paper cardboard we were recycling 40 tons a month we were great now we're being charged for we we would avoid tipping fees and get money for it now it's coming at a cost but at a lesser cost than the landfill tipping fees so I recommend we continue on with

107that because it it's fiscally reasonable and that paper does get repurposed um all right green cleaning and integrated Pest Management otherwise known as IPM the district has always been sort of say at The Head of the Class with regards to this that was my attempt at a joke uh Travis Olson's custodial team continues to make improvements like a new green process for cleaning carpets and new web based tracking system for IPM and IPM is you know treating pests in a responsible way not using pesticides so both of these areas have a positive impact on indoor air quality which we currently monitor regularly Transportation under the leadership of Ken Martinez has continued to make strides toward converting District bus fleet to Electric we now have 12 electric buses and charging infrastructure to go up to 16.

108going Beyond 16 will require an additional investment in infrastructure but there are grants out there and ways that we can get help we're also looking at another roadmap for how to get to 100 electric buses and so according to Ken this is really cool he just sent this to me electric buses require according his estimations around five thousand dollars uh to operate annually while diesel is more like sixteen thousand so a seventy percent reduced overall cost per year assuming the buses are working properly [Laughter] um and that's tongue-in-cheek but there are the potential is that each one of these buses could remove twelve hundred and fifty gallons of diesel fuel combustion and that improves the air quality for our students and for the communities we serve so it's a nice to see movement in that

109direction with all the bumps along the road all right now it comes the really fun stuff uh thanks to the Forward Thinking ways of this school board and especially actions taken by Alan kearsely to uh move forward with some funding options we are on track and on budget to reduce our CO2 footprint by 24 percent while reducing annual annual utility bills by 1.3 million or roughly 21 percent after careful vetting the district selected mckinstry to be our Energy Service Company or Esco they provided a guaranteed energy saving performance contract which will allow the construction costs of this phase of work to be paid for mostly with the guaranteed utility savings if we don't meet those savings they write us a check thank you we'll be we hope you don't have to well we know I

110know where you live especially so the story started with the students and has grown to this 29.5 million dollar construction project and it's caught the attention of national public radio and PR and as well as local Utah Public Broadcasting PBS both have interviewed me and have highlighted the work of our that Salt Lake City School District is doing a curb its emissions save water and improve the the learning environment all right these next few slides are mckinstry slides and they are part of a 60-page decarbonization roadmap that they've created and we're currently kicking around a bit uh so decarbonization basically means eliminating fossil fuel as a source of energy in our buildings you can't get to carbon neutral with burning natural gas in boilers so the goal was set to reach Zero by 2040 while

111adding renewable sources to produce our own electricity and meet that goal by 2030. very ambitious and aggressive goals I must say I'll work with mckinstry thus far has included water conservation these are the phase one measures uh water conservation solar installations building control optimization and a very large light LED lighting retrofit to achieve the ambitious goal set and the resolution the district has chosen to engage in developing renewable electricity by taking advantage of the abundance of flat roof available on our schools and installing solar systems electrification entails eliminating the burning of natural gas in our buildings and that's what we if we want to meet these goals we we have to work toward that that end efficiency accomplished by replacing energy Hogs like replacing fluorescent lighting with LED and one of the things worth mentioning

112is we are reusing the buildings we have we're not looking to knock and knock down elementary schools and and build the perfect energy efficient buildings so there's a a positive to uh to to the re-retrofitting of existing now getting to zero means eliminating our combined 33 000 tons of CO2 which is our 18 fiscal 1819 Baseline uh and this is the way it splits up between the gas and electric components so um this graph depicts our progress to zero over time by reducing natural gas use and increasing Renewables at the same time while also continuing to increase efficiency it's important to note that Rocky Mountain Power has plans to increase the amount of electricity it actually produces from renewable sources and that will help us change the equation if you will for as we look

113at the amount of electricity we use the more of it they're providing us through renewable the better we are heading toward our goals and now I'll quickly go through the measures implemented by mckinstry and the many subcontractors that we Chase around like cats so a major project associated with this contract has involved electrifying oh wait a minute I'm ahead of myself um the okay missions the greatest amount of emission reduction in cost savings has come from upgrading lighting and all our remaining k through eight schools that did not already have it because guess what all our new schools are getting LED throughout and providing the teachers in their classrooms with controls so now every K-8 school every classroom equity for all classrooms is all now led with controls East High School also received the LED

114upgrade this is projected to reduce our electric use by 6 million kilowatt hours just the LED upgrade alone and reduce our cost of utilities by 500 000 a year we've also already received 1.3 million dollars from Rocky Mountain Power and when these big checks come in I like coming over here and handing them the hell and uh sure he does he says smile right there so it makes my day and it's part of their what smart program which provides incentives for organizations to reduce their electricity use but a main point here is that now teachers are enjoying the ability to set the scene in their in their classroom they have scene selection buttons they can dim it's it's a it's a good thing and it's it's better lighting okay domestic water and HVAC a through

115Implement implementations of faucet aerators and toileting urinal adjustments say that twice we expect to reduce water usage you see 12 million gallons this will reduce expenses related to water sewer and natural gas consumption because we're no longer heating out that water by around 120 000 a year in utility savings Heating and heating ventilation and air conditioning known as HVAC involves many mechanical components all which need to be managed and controlled by fine-tuning and repairing broken equipment combined with managing schedules and set points mckinstry is guaranteed an additional savings of greater than three hundred thousand dollars thank you very much so we're working closely with our folks in in the maintenance department so we're all on the same page with this a major project associated with this performance contract involves electrifying two of our elementary schools

116Uinta is now 100 percent electric where ties to the gas company have been disconnected I know I think we might be the only Elementary School in the country that did such a thing but maybe there's one or two others that's how ambitious this is but we believe that the technology is there what you see on the screen right now is 10 air source heat pumps these now sit in the parking lot that very large parking lot we have at Uinta and um and that is there to serve as a replacement of the gas-fired boilers we are at backman which is the other school we went with a hybrid approach where we still have gas flowing and the recently purchased efficient gas boilers are being kept to meet Peak load as at Uinta we have electric

117boilers to meet that Peak load old schools hot water kitchen equipment has been converted to Electric uh we'll be monitoring these systems closely evaluating their performance during the heating season which is knocking on the door we expect we also do expect improved air quality both inside and outside of the school that is my favorite part of this project is if you can't imagine there's more to it we have large solar arrays installed on six of our elementary schools we're producing enough electricity with the 2500 panels to power more than 200 homes they are on track in my estimation to supply eight percent of the power needed by our newly improved efficient schools and if we include the solar that we already have we're up to 10 percent of our electricity coming from her own produced

118elect renewable we anticipate in incentives from the inflation reduction act to Bringing around a million dollars uh utility bills to drop by an additional 80 to 100 000 based on this production from these panels Lessons Learned are are many actually but I think the most important one to point out is that we can get 80 percent of the carbon reduction from the hybrid model as opposed to the full electric model at about 50 percent of the cost so that's what we'll be looking at more closely for the upcoming phase that mckinstry is happy to uh recommend um and supply chain issues as well it takes it takes more time than you think when you start ordering this equipment that's in strong demand all right um this is another uh work of art graph from mckinstry

119found in their roadmap and it depicts a waterfall chart of our path to Zero by looking at solar efficiency electrification and grouped projects over time you can see the greatest impact came from efficiency that's that big orange I'm colorblind I think it's orange that is the LED retrofit that we did you'll notice in the group two the the biggest chunk is projected to come from additional solar implementation which you'll hear about in in a minute and then it it goes along and uh definitely gets expensive as we move out away from things that actually produce and reduce our utility bills so proposed fiscal 25 projects um include these eight schools for uh for solar as well as getting some evaluating battery for our transportation Depot and we'd also do additional efficiency work including air sealing

120plug load management and McKinsey also offers an education module called powered this is designed to educate students faculty and staff with behavior-based Energy Efficiency and stem education with Career Development as well Candace will evaluate this program and see how it might enhance our efforts finally included in this mckinstry fiscal year proposal is providing engineering and pricing for what could be our next to hybrid electrification projects and schools identified have been Whittier and enzyme uh fiscal year 26 they're proposing to include an additional seven solar installations and the actual implementation of the electrification hybrid systems that those two schools uh that were mentioned the mckinstry slide this mid-kine street slide provides estimated phase two costs and benefits including the projects from both fiscal year 25 and fiscal year 26 so lumping the two together uh well

121it's not all to get altogether accurate it does give the sense that adding another 17 percent to our emissions reduction Target will be expensive upfront costs are high but there will be large utility savings and important to highlight the IRA incentives estimated to be greater than five million dollars and this might not be around for as long as promised by the government uh another attempted to joke however it's on the table right now your kids are laughing at home group [Laughter] looking at this from a life cycle analysis point of view mckinstry is suggesting that we actually wind up three million dollars in the plaque a big part of this is attributed to the avoided equipment replacement costs which over the life of these two buildings adds up to 6.8 million dollars that would not

122happen in over the two years we're looking at but over their lifetime so when you look at the big picture and consider all of the other elements utility incentives life the utility savings we could very well be positive uh on on this it sure would be nice to Come Away with an additional 17 percent in emissions reduction bring in District to 41 percent almost halfway there mckinstry's summary slide is just a reiteration of what we just reviewed financing financing options can be considered once we have real cost to look at if mckinstry will guarantee these savings once again we can entertain potentially another tax exempt lease purchase or or telp method of funding where the savings are directed towards paying off the loan to get the work done during fiscal year 25 and 26. Isaac

123back to you see I told you I had a good team um I know you guys have questions obviously this is the time to do that we do have I failed to mention these guys are some of the smartest people I've ever met um and they they know and they love this program so it's uh it's exciting to hear this uh there's some scary numbers in front of it there are ways to get over that with some alternative funding options but we do there is a time frame that we have that I do want to go back to the IRA for just a second that that ends right now as of 2032 and that reduces our cost somewhere between 25 and 30 percent that that uh the government incentives cover that for us so there

124is there are some time frames involved Greg mentioned that we have a lot of planning we have to get ahead of we have to place orders a year in advance before we'll even see the equipment to actually start doing the work that's just some of the uh issues that have come up over covid and everybody wanting to do exciting things like this but um questions and concerns important what Number bed all right um so as we are within uh the new building of the district you know new District building I mean are we looking into having I mean still using boilers with gas or we're just going staying away from gas at all so so the the district office obviously has been in process for a while yeah um so there there are some uh

125emissions emission equip mechanical equipment in there but there were other things that based on uh on performance and pricing we did like the smart glass on the building so uh in the morning it'll you know when the sun's on it it'll darken keep a lot of the heat out and then as the day goes on it'll adjust to to allow light in and and the seasons but based on that that was um unfortunately there over the years there's been this disconnect between the functioning facility side and the sustainability side but we're really working as a team to pull that together um I uh we've had a myriad of meetings with us us five and uh all of our facility staff a lot of the conversations we're having is okay here's our Five-Year Plan of equipment

126and mckinstry's helped us identify areas where we can adjust or say okay well instead of doing this here maybe we ought to look at another option the the hard thing is is our budget has always been we you know we have a limited amount of money that we go and say okay we're going to replace this boiler because the boiler's bad well the boiler is not the only part of the HVAC system it's more appropriate that if you're going to change that into a hybrid or a low emission system is that you need to replace that entire system so looking at the numbers that we showed you of 28 million dollars in a year uh over the years it's been somewhere between 8 and 12 million dollars a year for maintenance for 40 buildings to

127Electrify one building we're looking between four and eight million dollars just for that one building so it's a different way of thinking it's a different way of prioritizing and trying to do all we can with what we have okay thank you [Laughter] well I made note when you got to the lighting retrofit um I'm thinking of it as a teacher in the classroom and I I thought it was nice to hear that they have these controls and that they can you know direct lighting and that sort of thing but my one question is when it goes out when there's a problem with it is District Personnel trained and how to fix these things because what I'm thinking of is the lights start flicking and for some students that's a really difficult thing and you're trying

128to get someone in there to fix the light bulb for a simple term I'm just hoping that I mean I think this is wonderful but I'm just thinking of the practicality is this something that if it goes wrong it can be addressed quickly because you need that sort of response when you're teaching your children yes yes for their explanation so their teacher I'd want a little bit more all of our electricians are licensed electricians so they have a great broad spectrum of knowledge but we are doing also doing some training with mckinstry and their staff of walking through okay here's the system this is how things work um but the short answer is yes and just to the point of the existing lighting all fluorescent flickers all the time and has a negative impact on

129many people who aren't even aware that they're being impacted by that pulsing of the fluorescent technology so we and And Then There are a myriad of issues with the the electronic ballasts that drive the fluorescent lighting so there's all sorts of distractions already in the classrooms that we've virtually eliminated on like almost a hundred percent right now uh with the idea that there's a potentially a 20-year life on these led fixtures and like Isaac mentioned we we have it a trained electrical sales level electrical team and that's what they do is address uh issues well yes like I said I was really excited to hear that okay the flickering hope I mean I don't know how many times I've been told about ballast and you know all of this stuff uh what your you're faced

130with is okay you've got to put a work order in for this and then they got to do this and then it's got to go to this and you're in your classroom and you're going can the janitor come over and do something so that you know there are lights for my children do you see what I'm saying yeah [Music] so our custodial crew as well has the ability to change the light out when it comes to an actual issue with the controls then that requires an electrician to be involved okay thank you Barbara Jensen yeah um thank you so much for this presentation I'm really celebrating these achievements but I didn't want to acknowledge how I would feel in this room as a parent seeing specific schools named for future projects um just in relationship

131to our prior discussion regarding School closure so I have two questions and the big picture question is simply how are we identifying schools for specific projects that are upcoming and the small picture question would be are there any situations or scenarios in our current situation of needing a long-term facilities plan where we wouldn't do a small prop like does it ever make sense to drive the car Until It Breaks rather than get a new electric car today do you know what I mean knowing our district has a range of Ages of buildings types of buildings and needs for our buildings so the the biggest portion of that is uh mckinstry did a study on every one of our buildings um all 40 buildings and every one of those has a breakdown of a five expected

132five-year cost a 10-year cost and a life a 30-year cost basically that's where we have looked at the um the possibility of where these which projects will work best at certain schools for example Uinta is the the school that was found to be the the the best option to try out the full electrification now but we're not going to be putting solar panels on that roof for several years because that roof got changed about seven years seven or eight years ago so it doesn't make sense to put solar panels that will be there for 25 years on a on a roof that's going to go bad and you know less time than that so we're we're balancing those needs based on the buildings and the capability of those buildings but it's a look at all

133of our buildings not specific buildings or ones that are on the cons iteration list this is something that started well before we started the boundary review process is that what you were going to add well I just want to add that these these goals and these plans are set forth to meet the goals in the sustainability resolution so you know to hit the 2030 and the 2040 goals that's how these these plans are laid out so you know if you drive it till it's till it dies and then fix it then those those deadlines can't really come into play I would just add to that as my opinion as a single board member would be those are goals are good that they exist and we all want to meet them and we are appreciative of

134this I would say and I do think in some of our context of needing a long-term facilities plan and some of the other issues we're facing in some situations it may make sense to adjust the goals to match some of the other scenarios we find ourselves in if that makes sense that's just my opinion thank you Barbara Anderson so Ashley I appreciate you saying that because I think that one of the things we did talk about when we initiated the resolution was that we had to have flexibility right I mean we knew that within that plan that there was probably going to have to be some changes as we go along so you know it might look as though some of it's written in stone but I think that there's some flexibility that's built in

135you know with that because we don't always know what's going to happen I for me personally I feel as though um Greg like you do I just want to really celebrate some of those moments that you had because the significant savings you know makes a difference you know in how we move forward through this plan and so because of that I think that it's important Alan if you would just take a minute and just talk a little bit about for those that are new and maybe who are listening how we're paying for this well all I can talk about is how we're paying for phase one yeah for phase one that's right how we're going to pay for phase two through six is a future discussion that's right so with phase one uh we basically

136got a loan to pay for the upgrades up front and then it's a 15-year loan that we're paying off with savings so we're taking those savings from the um Energy payments electricity gas water and applying those to the loan so kind of a a net zero but we had to come we had to come up with a mechanism to get the money up front to be able to do that that's that the loan was that mechanism and so in a sense you know that pay as we go you know is kind of placed into that a little bit you know and I appreciate that we're being fiscally responsible with our dollars you know for our taxpayers that they understand that we're looking at here's this debt that we have but also with the savings we

137can pay off the debt you know and then move to look towards what we do for phase two at this point right now um really it's the savings that's going towards the debt payment and not any of our money from capital is that right correct so I think that that's significant too you know that we're looking at that our Capital monies are being spent on the current buildings that we have but the resources that we're using is from the you know from the savings and from from the loan and I think that's significant that I will tell you that that was one of the components that when Salt Lake City School District um presented at National School boards Association last year that that was really something that business administrators and Greg knows this you know

138that they were just blown away by the plan that we had put together and how aggressive it was but yet how smart it was and as I sat in that workshop last year and at the end of it and not in a very long time have I ever seen people stand up and clap because it was really amazing you know the things that that we this goal you know these things that we've said we want to do we live in a bowl here in the valley and our air is terrible and I think that hats off to us and to be able to say that we have 12 buses now that we could have 16 and that we're learning how to make life go with them and and be able to transport students you know

139across our Valley and know that we're not contributing you know a little bit less to the to the bad air that we have in the valley so I um it's hard sometimes when we're going through difficult times to look at the celebrations but this is a celebration and I just really wanted to say that out loud thank you for the work that's been done and going forward I I will be a taxpayer looking at what Salt Lake City is doing to help make our air clean in our Valley board members what board member Seeker vice president Williams I just I just want to add to the the celebration I think kudos to those students they they made this happen you know I was I was present in that presentation and I couldn't be more proud

140of these young students who are now to all these prestigious Ivy League schools but they came up with this and this I think this is a the true gem that Liz is talking about the Salt Lake City School District this is their product that they brought forth and you know we get to be a part of that recognition but these students need a huge round of applause for what they what they found in went forth and did and so if I could add the reason for those two interviews it was predicated on the fact that it was student initiated and student involvement okay so um on the list of seven schools that are being studied um a couple of them do already have solar panels in place so what happens with those solar panels if

141they are closed down so they can be moved but it's not uh it's not the best practice um but there's also conversations of how are these buildings going to be used in the future it's still going to be a benefit to the community so those are you know there's several options there that we can look at foreign thank you um I have a question um maybe more towards directed more towards our our business administrator and I totally agree that um it is a celebration but you know um work and initiatives um student driven or District driven it does require some some funding and I guess Alan my question to you is how do we continue to move forward with a project like this knowing that there are some significant Investments that need to be made

142um and I'm sure that's a a topic or maybe even answer for another discussion at some point relative to this but how do we continue to honor the work that our students have really presented with us yeah I think you're going to get different answers on every different phase looking I mean right now the immediate question is how do we move on to phase two um and I'll tell you I don't have 28 million dollars sitting around to upfront this so top drawer of your desk it's not in the top drawer come on man it's in the box it's in his bottom drawer Isaac nice so um we'll need to look at different funding availabilities is a telp loan another uh possible way to go about this you know will the savings of phase two

143pay off a telp loan uh again interest rates are a lot higher now than they were when we did the first help loan but so we need to analyze all that and probably come up with a couple options and bring them back to the board in the near future to say you know we've studied phase two this is how we want to go about funding it and and get board feedback on that thank you for that and I guess just my last thought is you know the yes the student driven but I think the target dates are years for us in the resolution are really significant because they correlate with what the city and the University of Utah I believe has set out for their own sustainability goals and knowing that we are somewhat Cutting

144Edge as a school district in the country but certainly here in the state of Utah what advantages do we have with maybe even state grants I know like the buses were something that we got through some opportunities that the state had available but are there other things coming down the pipeline or things that we can continue to take advantage of before other school districts start jumping on the sustainability initiatives like we have yeah like with the buses we have Ken he he's always looking for ways to help offset the additional costs and and often these grants just offset the additional cost of an electric bus versus you know we don't get them for free um but new opportunities are coming up all the time and we're constantly looking for those opportunities Greg and even even

145our mckinstry folks looking for opportunities to apply for uh grant funding or rebates that help us cover the cost of these okay thank you any other thoughts questions comments from the board uh well speaking of sustainability um we all know we are one of the greenest deserts newest side of the US so what are we going to be doing or doing right now to convert the grass space into xerascaping and also when we convert a space into a Zero Escape in are we planning on planting trees to make up for the loss of greenery I would say so the biggest Focus right now has been the water use inside the facilities okay we will go we will be working further ahead on some other options outside the building the biggest challenge is a lot of

146our properties you've heard from many tonight that aren't as big as others so we have to be careful about what we choose and where where those where the biggest bang for the buck will be for those but that's also something I think we can work with my kids three on to find additional options well some of the trick too so all of our elementary schools have recess recess on xeriscaping doesn't work very well no no no let me let me go back to that hold on hold on hold on no I want my kid to play on the grass still I'm more like you know the uh parking strips you know and all of those areas so we've got one other mckinster gentleman here that has some answers for you right now actually yes so

147one of the things we're looking at in regards to that is eventually we're going to run out of roofs that are appropriate for solar panels at this time we're going to start looking at either ground mounted solar arrays in a way that will you know provide shade for both teachers or potentially even over the student play areas over the blacktops so in a sense that will kind of reduce the urban heat island effect so you won't have that really hot steamy asphalt that'll make those play areas a little bit nicer we're not looking at you know converting play fields and recess areas into solar arrays no no I open them we're gonna eventually have to move off of the roofs of the buildings and into parking lots and right for some of the asphalt that

148will make those play areas nicer okay thank you thank you and and now we're grounds folks are currently looking at certain options you know Space by space for what is possible to convert like flip the strip you know we have a lot of flipping we could do quite frankly and uh so it is already being reviewed okay because I know the city has a uh was that flipping this strip or something like that yeah well I sent him a photo of my you know uh parking strip but they've never responded so so yeah so um but I really really appreciate that because you know water has been an issue and I'm hoping we'll have a good snow you know Season again um and I like what I'm seeing over at East right now the front

149side of East because I do see that like there is a shrinking of a grass space putting more parking lots and then also I'm seeing like there are some plants in there to make more of you know uh local type of plants and so and I think that is so fantastic actually to see so that should be like a model that we could you know look up to as we go in the future and we do have a relationship with tree Utah yes where we're planting trees in appropriate places working closely with our grounds folks so there's that going on too sounds great thank you thank you well there's nothing else thank you Greg Isaac mckinstry folks and I just you know one last Kudo is you know know what we've learned throughout this process

150is that this wasn't just a resolution that we stamped and said and talked about and highlighted it something that's lived on and you know it was really cool you know being at nsba with you last year Greg and um one seeing students again that we all got to engage with and interact with and learn about where they're at in their lives but to know that the various committees and the committee work that's taken place it's making this this all possible has sustained itself there's a little joke for your kids Greg since we adopted this you know a number of years ago and I know it will continue and I just really appreciate your efforts in coordinating all this for us thank you [Applause] right um moving to our discussion agenda before we get started I

151just want to remind the board that in our Retreat um we had a really um won a great retreat but we also made the decision um to change the way we've been doing business relative to our agendas and our meetings um so for tonight is just a reminder if there is an item from the discussion agenda that we want to move to action we will do that and then we will continue on with the next subsequent discussion agenda item and then move to a finalized agenda or action agenda at the at the appropriate time so just keep that in mind moving forward the first discussion agenda item is a follow-up to The Retreat as well you'll notice that there's a handout that superintendent Grant from vice president Williams and I gave everybody it's titled slcsd

152Board of Education follow up to calendaring discussion at the board retreat so we just wanna give a second to that one yeah could you have that one papers yeah I'm sure I got it yeah okay it's somewhere all right okay [Laughter] so what um what I proposed excuse me in our conversations that I've had with um with Bryson with a superintendent Grant and business administrator Kearsley um is kind of a bold move compared to what we've done in the past which is really focus our study sessions our remaining study sessions between now and June of next year um it's really focus on the measured goals that we have adopted as a board or measured initiatives like our student achievement our strategic plan for student achievement excuse me so what we said we would do is

153we'd come back with um with some kind of a document or a calendar of the things that we discussed and present that back to the board hopefully to to earn your approval this evening about how we move forward we also talked a lot about making sure that study session topics are specific to things that are measurable and move the needle relative to student achievement and that there are a lot of really cool topics that come up from the board or from our community that fit better or make more sense to be either a report or a discussion topic or things that are outside of our realm of responsibility potentially um that really rests with the superintendent and her leadership team on the cabinet so what you'll see is just a draft schedule so this isn't

154set in stone by any means but I think it's a good reference point for us to be thinking about you have our meeting starting in October um through a summer of next year in June of 2024 there's a little typo there sorry about that but again so there's really specific to things like fall enrollment the review of end-of-year testing data and how that's really beneficial to our work Esser funds was a topic that that Alan brought up to us business Commander curiously brought to us and what we do after that and then the list just kind of goes on and on relative to sel dignity index career Pathways that's that superintendent Grant presented to us and then down you'll see more headers relative to future board reports many of which were talked about and brought

155to us from from you all on the board like the school budget allocations in District Vision that's you know we felt like is a potential really good topic for a report that's something that you brought up Christy our district Innovations I can't remember who brought that up I think we all did in some way shape or form future discussion topics this is one that you brought up Brian relative to the use of technology and cell phones in our classrooms and it sounds like there's already been some some movement and some discussion happening in policy subcommittee about that particular topic committee assignments are ongoing so we want to continue to talk about that survey results regarding a fourth High School another topic that you brought up Brian and then a couple of of items that we

156felt really fit in with the the role and responsibility of the superintendent in the cabinet the administrative turnover and placement and then program and review program reviews and board reports and I think that one's really specific to you Ashley relative to what kinds of programming we have going on in our schools and how we acknowledge what we have and where it fits best and how we either move forward and maintain and sustain or do we want to take a different direction relative to where we're at superintendent is there anything that you wanted to add to that before we open it up for a little discussion it's been okay any thoughts or questions or do you want to let this sink in a little bit it is a shift from how we've we've done things in

157my experience and would really love to hear what you have to say I think it looks really good it responds to everything we talked about in the retreat in my opinion and I would feel comfortable moving it to action but I don't want to preclude any discussion from others yeah I'm not sure we need to vote but we could always do that it doesn't hurt board members what so I think that I agree I mean I think that the topics are great you know and they they hit a lot of the things that we had talked about I think that well we have flexibility like for instance I'm just going to give an example on the October 17th you know we have a citization around the fall enrollment so let's say we don't get to

158everything that we want to can we move it also you know to the next study session you know and expand that conversation and if we need to have more time so I just want to hear us be able to say yes we're going to have flexibility within what we have here so that as you said it's not set in stone but things will come up that we feel like maybe we need to have a little bit more further discussion on absolutely and that a lot of time yeah that's definitely the intent that I feel like we all talked about and as a leadership team okay could you tell me and I'm sorry I just don't know what it restorative education for student empowerment transformation what is that I'm sorry it's on February 20th uh Reese

159what is that I don't even know what that is it's Dr Boone do you want to explain some of that sure yes please not that I think it's bad I just don't know what it is tell me what I'm going to be studying here and I'm following uh yandere's recommendation to minimize the acronyms that we use because we like that we affectionately call it reset okay so reset uh is a proposal that started um under the leadership of Emily Sutherland when she was mtss an SEL director and Ellie Martin was the safe School specialist the two of them became aware of some of the um educational practices that were being delivered to our students who are placed in an alternative school setting for a safe School violation and so this proposal and initiative is our

160intent and approach to improving and assuring as well as ensuring that our students in the alternative placement educational placement are receiving a high quality um access to high quality education grade level support for addressing the root cause of what had them led to their placement there at Horizonte and so they'll be learning more about it we I believe we enter this year we have an intro measure and we're gonna fully implement the entire proposal next year but it's already significantly improved the students experiences while they are temporarily in this educational setting and I mean one of the immediate wins that we had is these the students are in school in a classroom or a full day Monday through Friday which hadn't been happening before and so that's nice and they're also receiving educational direct Educational

161Services in the content areas by teachers at Horizonte who are certified to deliver that instruction to them so huge win thank you that's really helpful I appreciate that okay so there's just maybe two things that I would like us to consider maybe interlacing into this I think that one of the concerns I have right now is when I'm when I'm going to my parent to my school community councils there is um there's been a drop in parent participation and I think all of us are saying that and I'm concerned about that highly concerned about it I think that you can't move forward an agenda or really a school plan with just a couple of parents you know in attendance and I think that we need to talk about that as a board you know the

162school Community Council training you know supporting the superintendent and putting together you know that quarterly or by court or bi-monthly whatever we want to do but also the parent component maybe it's it's something that we discuss or talk to have the let me what I'm trying to say is maybe have the superintendent talk to our principals about not having Zoom being the only option for our parents that maybe we need to get them back into the schools you know I mean we have the kids there we have our teachers there but a lot of our Zoom meetings are still on and I know it's for convenience so I'm not saying do away with zoom but also open the door to have it as an in-person you know meeting too um I just I don't know

163what the components are I don't know why we're having this parent drop off but I think we need to look we need to talk about it and figure out what it is in hand with that for me I feel like what I've also seen drop off and maybe we set a parameter Nate at the beginning of talking about the the setup of our study sessions is how do we interlace shared governance into our conversation because I think that that's another piece that I'm not seen as prevalent in our conversations the way that it used to be and I think it I think it needs to be it worries me that that is a Cornerstone of our of our district it's a gem of our district and I just I'm wondering how we do that you

164know as we talk about these study sessions because so many of these great topics involve parents and we need to have parent input and also our faculty I mean our employees our teachers we need to have input so I don't know how you how we really want to talk about that but how do we start to interlace that and I think that for my last soap up soapbox is that I really do think that the training for school community councils and for shared governance has got to be brought back to our schools and maybe that's part of it is that they don't understand how important those components are in our schools as a parent as a teacher as an administrator you know that we're working together you know to provide the best quality education that

165we can for our kids so I I think this is really great I really do I think this format's wonderful but how do we interlace those things a little bit because it is a concern you know about the share Governor's part and also the parent component thank you thank you board members what board member Sika or bade thoughts comments suggestions okay will you say that no I was kidding yeah for me I really thank you Chrissy for bringing that you know share the governance you know uh it's one of the things um that I ask myself you know any time we're having a meeting or the agenda is developed how much of an input has the stakeholders you know made into that agenda I mean they are representing our community our teachers our staffs and

166so and I think you know I personally would love to know more about how much of an involvement we have you know in our processes here in District thank you vice president Williams or board member Jensen any thoughts comments concerns the more accuracy for bringing it up um I think we talked about this a little bit uh well shortly after I became a member of the board because I have been anxious about the SCC and how it functions and at that point I mean we briefly just mentioned and I mean that ship is now sailed but at back to school night having an opportunity where um parents were informed about SCC and the tool that they have to really help their school and I mean we've missed that but I think that we can still

167I would like to see us have a plan for how we can have parents understand how to use that but then I guess for me um board member big you said you would like to understand shared governance more well if you don't understand it I mean parents they really don't understand this and I think we do need to figure out how we help our parents understand this and how to use it thank you board member Jensen vice president Williams yeah I just um we'll second a lot of what Christy had said I have been on the board a little over two years now and I've heard a lot of the about this uh SCC training and development piece and don't really know what that is I'm I'm hoping we can implement it um sooner than

168later I know um that his um kind of landed in the the lap of the superintendent in the past and so now that Dr Grant has been here for a little while I'd like to see that move forward as well um in terms of um board mem yeah in terms of board members um trying to seek um more understanding around shared governance I could be wrong on this and I was looking through my bag here and I think I left it at home but I um we actually have a little not a pamphlet but a booklet about shared governance and if um folks don't have that let's work on on getting that but that's something I carry with me um quite frequently and and look into from time to time but I'm just wanted to

169mention that that is a resource that's available to to board members um student board member Evans anything that you'd want to add to the conversation okay are you looking for a motion um we don't necessarily need it but we can totally go that direction since we're kind of looking towards October 17th okay I move that we accept the um the study topic um calendar that we have been discussing and I would second it and add that there's of course the one correction to make that we're accepting and that maybe we spell out some of the department acronyms um the same way we've spelled out the program acronyms when we accept it can you second and say all those things I I did and boy remember sweat just to to clarify this is to move to

170the action agenda oh sorry yes um I move that we moved this to the action agenda Ellen has something I think and you can do this in the action agenda when you approve it add with flexibility because we don't want emotion to make it seem like this we have to do this but that's right right oh I mean essentially what we could or yes okay I mean I can withdraw my motion and say another one yes we'll see that okay so I would draw the first motion and I motion that we move the draft um schedule of study session topics to our action agenda knowing that we will have flexibility built into the draft and minor edits and Ashley's acronyms second all right we have a motion and a second on the table is there

171any further discussion to the motion all right seeing none we'll start with a roll call Vote with board member Anderson Ashley Anderson is Nate Salazar yes muhammadius Ryan Jensen yes Christy sweat yes Bryce Williams yes Jenny Sika yes excellent that motion carries and we'll revisit this um on the action agenda thank you board the next topic is B1 Board of Education legal status responsibilities and ethics uh policy and legal services director Christina Kindle thank you foreign hey everyone um so uh board policy subcommittee Matt and most of the policies were approved on your consent agenda tonight as the board knows um any B policy be standing for board comes before the board on a discussion agenda regardless of whether or not there are substantive changes or not simply because the board owns all of these

172policies and procedures so board policy subcommittee discussed B1 in the two documents relating to student board member applications and appointments um really there were just very minor tweaks and as I explained to the subcommittee since the board owns this it's it's typically any suggestions come from the entire board related to these documents but the one change that we did make was the in the financial audit request portion we had hired an independent internal auditor pursuant to the legislative audit recommendations and so the old language was before we had that person as our independent internal auditor so the new language within the financial audit request section reflects that change and how the board can make requests to the finance subcommittee and how the independent internal auditor will work through that process in terms of reporting back

173to the finance committee and the entire board and how those reports will go so I don't know if any board members have any additional changes they would like to suggest to any of the three B1 documents or if you have any questions I'm happy to answer those as well I think before questions would somebody from the policy subcommittee like to give their perspective on how that discussion went and any potential recommendations to the board I'm happy to do so I think we had a fairly substantial conversation around the policy I don't think there was much um argument or disagreement with those minor tweaks we feel confident bringing that recommendation forward to the whole board thank you vice president Williams um any other discussion points or questions your board might have seeing none student board member

174Evans you get a chance to review well sweet um I think are we talking about p13 as well the next one okay yeah um so with that um I believe we would need approval for this so I would look for a motion to move this to the action agenda move B1 Board of Education legal status responsibilities and ethics in the attached exhibit to action we have a motion a second on the table is there any further discussion can we just clarify that it's all three documents just not the board policy but it's also the student board member application and and all the application guidelines all of the items noted in the attachment perfect thank you for the clarification if there's no further discussion we'll start with a roll call Vote with myself Nate Salazar yes

175Mohamed yes and Jensen yes Christy sweat yes Bryce Williams yes Jenny Sika yes she Anderson yes so that motion passes um don't have to go anywhere Christina so you're still with us for our third discussion agenda topic which is board policy p13 hiring which is a new policy that you're you and the policy subcommittee are introducing to the board for new board members and anyone listening how new board policies come about are sometimes the boards suggest a new board policy that they would like to see or the subcommittee or community members bring this up and sometimes I just take the prerogative of bringing forward a new board policy so board policy p13 hiring is something that I brought to the board policy subcommittee it was something that I had discussed with executive director Logan Hall

176who's over Human Resource Services and I had also discussed it with superintendent Grant um most of our well I would say the vast majority of school districts have a hiring board policy it's a way to ensure a consistent fair and transparent hiring process it's a way to hold hiring managers accountable for engaging in a fair and Equitable and transparent hiring process our district has not had the actual board policy on hiring so this was something that I thought would be very helpful for the district and for people who are applying to our district to understand how we would go about doing this it also clarifies the role of the board in approving all contract hires while giving delegating to the superintendent and the Executive Director of Human Resource Services other authority so I thought that

177was um would be beneficial this board policy if it were to be approved by the board would have accompanying administrative procedures those have not yet been drafted there was no um real point in drafting those until I understood whether or not the board was willing to move forward with a board policy on hiring but how that process would work would be if the board approved this board policy then I would work with executive director Hall not Dr Hall but Logan to create those administrative procedures and then um the administrative procedures would come before the entire board any new administrative procedures are required to be approved by the entire board just to make sure that the district is implementing the vision of the board as it relates to that policy so um I did bring this

178to the board policy subcommittee um and I think that the um it was received now thank you board members I think the subcommittee felt like that this would be a good addition to the board policies and that this would be something we would need not only for the community but also just to ensure consistent practices within the district and as you'll see in the references it has references to state law as well as administrative rules as well as all the districts agreements with its employee groups so those would be the things that we would be tracking ensuring compliance with but I'm happy to take feedback and for anyone from the any board member from the subcommittee to adjust it as well great and in addition to what board member Sika already brought to the table

179anybody from the subcommittee that would like to speak to it just as a perspective or context well we did have a we had a conversation about this and I really um want to thank Christina for bringing this um I had also talked to the superintendent a little bit about hiring and how I felt that we needed to address this and to me this is the beginning of how we address it we've now created a policy but I think it's really essential in that last sentence says the district will set forth its specific processes for implementing so to me that's where we will now have our administrative procedures because I think there has been confusion um with hiring committees and how those operate um are there deadlines for when you can submit because we have that

180domino effect that you know when we lose an administrator in one school because they've moved to another when then I mean we saw that this year so it seems to me like this will really be helpful for us to have an administrative procedure that we can refer to thank you board member Jensen any other questions or comments remember babe um so my question is um okay so HR their job is to manage you know the hiring on firing and so and so so with this does that mean us as a board we're going to be like an oversight over like who is being hired and how they're hired or because there are already policies out there managing you know the the issue of like making sure we hire without discrimination and so on so so

181I'm just still trying to wrap my mind what brought this change uh what has led to this change is there something that you know thoughts have happened like um equal employment opportunity uh policies that require us to not discriminate um in terms of our hiring practices and in terms of when people need to apply to be in certain like pools to become an administrator or um sort of rubrics that hiring managers should be using or questions that should be asking um I think we could provide a lot more guidance and and that's what Logan Hall feels as well to those hiring managers as to how to go about more um the individual specifics of how to hire someone right how you how you move through that process how long we should be expecting um you

182know people to review applications you know when applicants can expect to be hearing back and when you know after you've made the decision um who has the responsibility of notifying people who didn't get the job that you know the position's been filled I mean those types of specifics is sort of what we would be addressing in the administrative procedures from the board perspective this would not change at all how the board functions in terms of you would still receive a human resources report and you would still be approving all contract hires um it's just I know that when Mr Hall presented at the last board meeting in terms of explaining some of the processes and clarifying that email that you got what the board's role was versus what the district's role was this would sort

183of formalize that as well okay does that make sense yep that makes sense thank you so much of course thank you board member babe remember sweat this is great I think that we've needed something like this for quite some time I think having administrative procedures you know there's been like countless conversations at the sport table about our hiring practices and so I think that this is is needed and I appreciate the question that you know Muhammad asked because I think that it's important for us to know that we have policies in place that help guide those hiring practices so thank you for bringing that forward I just have like a little thing because I really like the word that you use in the second to the last paragraph where you talk about the board's Authority

184and you say you know that with the recognition that the hiring of any contract in place shall be subject to ratification by the board ratification is a new word that you're using because usually it says approval instead and I like that ratification and I would say look at our policies and where it says approval put ratification because I think that that is that has teeth in it you know and I think that's important so but really thanks to the policy committee and I think this is a great start thank you um Miss Kendall would you mind just kind of recapping our process for adopting of new policy right like oftentimes in my experience on the board we if it's something new like this we kind of want to digest it and sit with it for

185maybe another meeting or two and um you know but if the board's comfortable we can obviously approve it if we'd like or send it to action but I don't think we have a specific process laid out I mean we we have in the past on some things that are more um concerns about or want to digest we have done like a first and second reading and clearly I think that typically happens with administrative procedures which are much longer and much more detailed um so you certain we can certainly bring it back you can certainly direct me to put it on consent for the next agenda or you can just move it to action now but there's no requirement for it to be done either way you have plenty of flexibility in that regard okay and

186so say in the chance that we do approve this tonight the administrative procedures would be presented next and right and like that like I just want to set up a reasonable expectation so writing administrative procedures takes a bit of time and I would probably email the subcommittee to see whether or not they would like to review them first before they come to the board because I think that would be helpful to have the subcommittee's perspective on that and that subcommittee next one would would be like in November in November so so I wouldn't be expecting to bring um administrative procedures back to the board before December and and to be clear um this probably I could I could change some of it it says the district will set forth so I could still put this

187policy online without administrative procedures and indicate that the administrative procedures are pending or if the board would prefer that I hold and put it on online together once we have approved administrative procedures I could do that as well too great thank you board members what so Christina kind of answered my question but yet I still feel like um it's probably something that we should now ask ourselves because I think that um although I don't see this as a as a policy that creates any controversy you know I think that it's a new policy um I think that I appreciate the question that you ask because usually we do at least bring it back for another reading you know to make sure that we all feel good about it and I don't think that it's in

188a time crunch correct superintendent and so for me I'm fine either way a you know if the majority of the board wants to put it forward and and pass it into action tonight that's fine I would probably be more inclined to do the first reading of it and then go ahead and and do it the next time but I appreciate what she just outlined about the administrative procedures because that really is the guts of what this is and so it's nice to know what the timeline is I agree with you they're complicated you know to be able to get that quickly to us but if we are if we are going to put this up on the website if the majority wants to put it Forward tonight then I would definitely like to have something

189bolded or notice on there that the administrative procedures are being worked on and that in a sense this is a draft you know so that well not the policy is it okay exactly yeah okay thank you Christy said what I was going to say just essentially that you know this is doing a first and second reading makes the most sense because while it's attached on the agenda people who may have wished to comment about it or message us may not have heard about it until tonight and now they can review that attachment and give us their feedback so I think that's prudent additionally I think a lot of people have been specifically asking for a policy such as this yeah so what may be additionally prudent is to say if we haven't heard any feedback

190we could recommend that Christina put it on consent like if we find there are no additional items to discuss it's reasonable to put on consent in my opinion I don't know if we have to move that formally but that's my opinion so I'm seeing some head knots from the board that will will support a second reading or potentially a consent agenda item pending feedback we get from the community and internally from our employees and staff perfect thanks so much thank you thank you right well that moves us to the action agenda we have two items on the action Agenda One Is The Board calendar and the second is the B1 Board of Education legal status responsibilities and ethics topic so I will entertain a motion for the board calendar move to approve the board calendar

191second second all right we got a motion and a second on the table can you clarify the second clarify this I heard two seconds I won it was me I I put my two next to Ashley so I think she did win sorry Muhammad Mohammed you could do the next one yeah I'm just so tired you know I was gonna say uh you know second in Arabic for a second there but you need more coffee sir I don't know all right um any further discussion to the motion on the table just all the things we noted in the original promotion exactly I know we have that recorded and noted thank you board members what um sorry April but nonetheless we'll start with a roll call Vote with board member babe Mohammed yes Brian Jensen yes

192Christy sweat yes Bryce William Jess Jenny seeker yes Ashley Anderson yes Nate Salazar yes perfect that motion passes um if I could just take a moment of personal privilege as the board president and getting this particular item ready for our Retreat and and talking about it with the superintendent and Alan Boardman Kearsley and vice president Williams I also had the chance to talk about this Vision with Richard Stoll from usba and he was so enthused that we are working on something like this and I'm going to call him tomorrow and say you know the board moved forward with that vision and I think what he was so excited about is that um knowing that the troubles that we've had in the past in the audit he said Nate there might not be another board in

193the state that is exercising their role as a board member or as a collective board with the Fidelity that this process could bring our school board and so I just wanted to highlight that not to throw any other school board under the bus in the state they're all doing a fine job as as far as as we know but nonetheless I just want to applaud our board for taking this on in the way that that we have tonight and moving student outcomes to the Forefront of our study in our practice so thank you for that Borden and I'm going to call Richard in the morning and and tell them the good news um thank you for letting me take that that Personal Privilege there um the next item on our action agenda is B1 uh

194Board of Education legal status responsibilities and ethics I remember Jensen moved to approve board policy B1 second [Music] Muhammad you're there I got you down legal status responsibilities and ethics to action perfect thank you so much um any further discussion okay seeing none we'll start with the roll call Vote with with you Brian Jensen yes Christy sweat yes Bryce Williams yes Jenny Sika yes Ashley Anderson yes Nate Salazar yes perfect that motion passes uh thank you board for that um our next agenda items are a superintendent report great I have um some great news to report about progress in our schools and what we're accomplishing in the classroom this is where we want our Focus over the next years right is is on this work and recently the Utah State Board of Education put out

195a report on reading achievement and growth across the state and some of our schools figured highly in that report and I just want to read some of this and make sure I capture this right Edison Elementary was recognized by the state for having the second largest increase in the state in kindergarten achievement against the grade level Benchmark for 22-23 so an impressive that's great an impressive achievement there Mary W Jackson was on the top three schools in the state for third grade English Learners meeting The Benchmark Riley was tied for first for students in third grade meeting that Benchmark who were Hispanic or Latino 26 new teachers have completed letters training K3 teachers have completed that training which means we're constantly adding to the number in our Workforce who are well trained in Reading instruction

196and beginning to implement that this year we have more than 160 Educators working on their ESL endorsement to improve instruction in that area there are a couple of high school things to note too we have two high schools adding the State's new data science class for the 2023-24 school year so these educators are uh are qualified to teach the course um and it'll it'll be an important component of our College and Career Pathways also West high is finishing their IB accreditation visit and we were on a call today with the international IB team on that West was out there are now about 6 000 IB programs in the country west high was number 345. in that list in getting started in IB so the Salt Lake District is leading across the country among across the

197world I just need to say I was um when I was again working at George Washington University I worked in the program in Azerbaijan Azerbaijan has an IB program and West High School has an IB program so this is truly a worldwide project that we're involved in and we were one of the Front Runners that way um and this is a an amazing showing of The District support and and the board support for these kinds of things the last thing I want to mention is that again we're holding the area information meetings about school closure and on Saturday we'll hold one from 9 to 11 at Glendale High School so encourage the public to attend or Glendale Middle School wow um at Glendale Middle School and then um there will be three other meetings after

198that to finish out in the coming weeks right all right we moved on to our board member reports I'll start on this end of the the table with board member Sika if you have a report she's looking at me like Nate why'd you do that actually I I just want to say thank you for um you know the superintendent's report because I have talked to some of my um schools in my in my precinct and and they have voiced many a times of those recognitions that haven't been shared and so thank you thank you so much because those are huge Feats too of accomplishments and um it's something to be celebrated so thank you I don't I I have a report but Brian's going to do the report hi Brian remember our report USP yeah

199yes I'm doing that I am doing that report okay when you get to me thank you board member Sika board member Bate before Brian just got valentold um yeah first I would like to um extend a sincere thanks to um Miss uh Shelton she is a teacher at East and she is the one who is running AVID program at a high Scott hour is high school and she worked tirelessly actually in making sure that this event happens we moved on from the fact of like having and having like a meeting in in the buildings of our schools to like take in the meetings to our community and that turned out like an amazing turnout because you know students from all walks of life parents as well and really really such a great turnout because people

200were wondering what is AVID you know and it is this program that is so amazing from 1980 that started by a teacher you know and her dream was if there are still students who are ready to learn and put in the work we're going to make sure that that happens and as a result of that it started from 34 students in the classroom from 1980 to 2 million students just here in the US and that is big you know that's like almost 70 percent of the population of Utah that's like that's a big deal and so and the purpose of this program of course is you know focused a lot on students who come from you know rough backgrounds or who come from a marginalized communities and the whole purpose of it is to pave

201the path for them to be able to continue and go to college and universities and so and I just want to say it was an awesome event and listening to those students share their experience and how they ended up in Avid and how it helped them and they were also former Avid students who are currently in University sharing their experiences and it was just like such an amazing experience yeah and I just want to say that was fantastic thank you board member thank you vice president yes uh Brian's going to give a big part of what I was also going to report on um but there is one piece I know Brian has a lot to report back on but there's one piece just in case it's not on his radar for tonight I really

202wanted to encourage the whole board to uh finish the master board certification process so I think there's three of us now that have completed um it'd just be really cool to see our board have 100 participation I've learned a lot through the process and I'd also say that a lot of what's on that checklist or certification are things that we're already doing you just need to go in and click it off so and our board means superintendent and businessman I was just going to say that next so thank you what are you doing tonight [Laughter] you want to say something um I just wanted to say it was great to welcome all the new administrators today that was amazing and it was great to see Joey Ellis shout out Joey Ellis I joke that he's

203going to be my new weightlifting partner long I'm just prepare um because I have a finance committee update to start and then some pleasantries but from the finance committee one of the recommendations of the legislative audit was to amplify an existing internal audit function and after our RFP process the finance committee met with staff from ID Bailey to discuss their scope of work in auditing District programs and departments so Additionally the committee looked at ways to identify specific accounts in the budget more clearly as an example a K3 reading fund was made more clear in the budget so it was you know findable and trackable and last we found it mutually agreeable to bring our rainy day fund into alignment with other districts which brings the amount to approximately two weeks of payroll and I'm

204sure myself Christy or Muhammad could answer more questions and Alan as well about this committee work if anything came up outside of committee service it is banned books week and so I've been reading and sharing some of my reviews from Battle of the books selections on social media if any of you would like to join me in some of the books that I'm reading the best one is called American murderer it's from the Middle School list and it's about hookworm and it's one of the best books that I've ever read American murder American it's like from the medical maladies series or something so follow me like And subscribe so um it's also lgbtq history month and I want I know the West High queer student Alliance is having upcoming meetings this week so I'd encourage

205anyone interested to check those out and thank the students in my generation who really pushed for those gsas to be permitted in our buildings and then right before I came to the meeting I was able to celebrate the initial work of the clinic at West High School that will increase Healthcare access for students and families it's been fully funded by the foundation and Community Partners including the University of Utah and this is a huge Boon for the district West also has an ongoing series of updates from Sports and clubs and I just wanted to share one because I did not know we had an ultimate frisbee team but we do and they were the D1 open fall tournament winners nice thank you for the pleasantries board member Jensen sounds like you have a lot to

206report on the three reports I hope I can talk as fast as Ashley Okay so first of all from the used house school boards Association there are some dates that you need to be aware of okay January 4th that will be the annual conference okay and Bryce he talked about the master board award okay it's nice because in that conference they recognize that if you don't know how to find that Master board award I'm just going to quickly tell you you go to usba on the home page it's going to tell you resources you're going to click on resources right underneath resources there are these delightful icons and one of them is masterboard I'm working on mine as well okay um you need to have that done there is a deadline December okay so beginning

207yeah December 1st okay so we're getting close okay then there are three jlc dates that I'll tell you about that you could at least be putting down the first one well it goes along with the annual conference there's a jlc that day okay on January 4th and there's one on the 19th and there's one on the 26th and there will be others but I'll report that later um Bryce and Jenny and I attended the regional usba meeting last Wednesday night okay we were there with probably five other school districts um Granite Murray those that are more in this Canyons Jordan those that are Tooele those that are in this geographic area okay in that meeting they asked us to look at what they had entitled a legislative engagement called for the 2024 session there were

208I'm glad that there were three of us there but it's hard for us to like make a commitment for the board because there were only three of us and we did our best okay we picked up the Baton okay and what we came up with and you can now take this home and consider it I have you know passed this out first read second read third reading like to do with that they did ask us to hand this in um so when you look at it and I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this but at the top there's like an overall goal for how we would want to approach the legislative engagement in this 2024 session and what we thought was appropriate was each board member will know or develop a

209relationship with their specific Representatives I'm not going to read the whole thing okay but underneath that there are different ways that we could meet that overall goal I have already heard from board member Anderson that the first one hosting the legislative breakfast might be a little problematic because there are some Representatives that are saying it's hard to get to all of these because we get invited to other things but the thing that I will say is the other school boards they thought that is remarkable that you are having those breakfasts and that those representatives are attending um several of them had created a goal that they were going to have one breakfast a year or something like that so for me I think that we should think about how we can maintain something there because

210they do seem to have it in their psyche they are attending those and I think that that is an opportunity for us to advocate for our school district you can look at the rest of them and get feedback to me on how you feel about that okay um and Brandon I know we kind of jokingly talked about first or second readings is there a timeline that you would like the board to approve that something like this is a goal or is this just something that we need to keep well I think that it would be nice when I go back to the next board of directors meeting which will be in December oh that's right there is one in October yeah when I go back but I don't know if I can get that back

211in time for the so I would guess I was thinking that December 1 but when I go back in December that I could say you know what we did look at this and you know this is something that we feel um that we can support they did ask me to hand this in so they do have it okay so Brian thank you this is such a good job you know it's uh I think that one of the things I was thinking about when you were talking is um I think the legislative breakfast has been great that we've done that maybe looking at I I don't know if yandere was with us then but when we set meetings up at the Capitol with them those seem to work really well too you know so maybe that's

212what they have a caucus luncheon right yandere they have a caucus luncheon so that might also be something where we could get on their agenda superintendent you know instead of trying to do a breakfast that we go to the caucus the Democratic caucus because that's where most far sit it's in their credit caucus and um so I think that we can think outside the box now that they don't have that government meeting place up there usba's really had to change how they're doing their day on the hill and the student day and because there isn't one big area where we can meet that's why they have the jlc meetings at Granite so yeah yeah it's a granite it's it's yeah it's holding that so thank you to you and Jenny and Bryce appreciate you being

213there as our baton carriers just to respond to that one of the things that we did put as part of the intermediate goals to meet was all board members would find a date during the legislative session to attend a day at the I mean there's the day on the hill and if you can't be there then another day and one of the things that they spoke about in this regional meeting was they are going to have um individuals from usba that will be there every day that the legislatures in session so that if you went up you know on the day that worked for you that you're going I don't know what to do up there you can contact them and I specifically asked the usba president if she could give us a calendar of

214who's going to be there so that when you went up you would know who you could contact to help you be efficient in how you used your time when you were up there so I know this is going to be sound like a little bit of a sickness but it really I mean for the past 20 years I've lived up at the so many hours up at the legislature I actually enjoy it so that's the sickness part right and it is and I would be happy if anybody wanted to go I would go that was I know all the nooks and crannies up there and maybe sometimes the you know how to get a good parking spot so are we bring Tums cough drops what are we exactly every question that the district offered transportation

215and you know what can I tell you we actually used to do that and Ellen you're just gonna hate that I said this but there were times when we would say can we get a write-up and you know our business administration sure and they would help us get up there and then come pick us up and so we could park you know where we were and that was really nice so Alan do I have to put seats in the back of your truck but we'll figure it out I'm gonna need to get a bigger vehicle you know yeah we did talk about that but I would be happy to thank you for offering that resource that's a great resource it is it's a sickness thank you Chris and was that your board report or do

216you know I'm sorry it is okay I always feel just a little guilty but yeah really lucky that I get to have these amazing experiences you know in the position that I'm in right now but I do want to say that this past when I was in Chicago in the middle of the month at our Cube conference which Cube stands for Council of urban Boards of Education um that I had multiple people say to me is your board here is your board here and I always felt a little sad saying no they're not they're not members of cube and so this is my pitch to you that I would really like us to look at cute because there are so many parts of it that fit us and every speaker every Workshop you would have

217thoroughly enjoyed and the other part is that you would have met people from across the United States that look exactly like us and have the same issues decline enrollment closing schools have diverse populations free and I mean everything the gamut we have and I just want to leave you with a little thing that our Cube chair Gil Garrett I wrote about him in our my usba newsletter this year or this month is a police officer of 25 years in Pontiac Michigan and he is an amazing individual and he stood up um on the stage at the beginning and he did a call to action and he said you need to be members of Cube and the reason you do is because school members need to own the role that you have in an urban School

218District you are the leaders of leaders and that you need to stand in the Gap and fight for kids and this is how you do it and I love that he used that stand in the Gap because we talk about it but we need to do that and fight for our kids so the conference next year I believe it looks like is going to be in Las Vegas so that's next door to us and for us to really talk about it this this year if we want to be members of cube I just don't want to have another year of cube saying where's your District because we really do belong there and it will be a lifelong experience for you to be a part of you so that is my report thank you board member

219sweat I'm going to forego my board member report in the interest of time mostly because I hate to say it Jen I know you packed your bag but we still need to revisit our closed session we did not have the opportunity to finish our closed session so um I'm going to entertain a motion to re-enter our closed session because we didn't have that specific language in the original moment and I will do that for you I move that the board returned to a close executive session to resume its discussion of character professional confidence and physical and mental health of an individual and that the board adjourned immediately upon the conclusion of the closed session second thank you all right um knowing that there's an immediate adjournment I don't think there's much more discussion so we'll

220start with a roll call oh sorry holy goodness Ashley Jenny you're going to start with me in a long time Christy sweat yes Jenny Sika yes Ashley Anderson yes Ryan Jensen yes perfect thank you that motion passes and we'll go ahead and have folks leave the room and thank you we'll go ahead and get that too thank you all thank you thank you okay bye thank you goodbye goodbye I hope that you're not here when we leave no it's so cool too red milk