001evening everyone welcome to a special board of education meeting with the commerce city city um council and mayor um first of all we will have our interpretation statement for our people listening to us out in youtube education closed captioning not available youtube thank you um again welcome to this special meeting with the city of commerce city we do these um every once in a while on the fifth monday when there's a fifth monday we do a joint meeting just to update each other on the happenings in the district as well as this city and any projects that we may be doing together so i'd like to go around the table this evening and have everybody introduce themselves so if we could start here with director estrada hola hi everybody my name is jenna estrada hope
002you can hear me i was appointed in march and we've been doing a lot of great work for anything [Music] good evening i'm erica garcia and i'm the executive director of elementary schools here at adamus14 i am sam schneider i'm the executive director of high schools here at adams 14. good evening i'm jeremy jimenez and i'm the executive director of middle schools good evening i'm jennifer allen thomas on commerce city council ward 2. susan noble commerce city city council of ward 4. roger tinkenberg city manager for commerce city megan grimes at large council member for commerce city jose guardiola city council at large oscar moderato city council award one nicole frank city council mayor protem robin smith city council at large benjamin huizman benjamin huzman mayor of commerce city maria gonzalez founder and executive director
003of adelante community development sheila burke chief academic officer for adams14 mario marquez chief business officer for arms 14. renee lovato board of education vice president i was elected in november 2019. maria zubia secretary of the board and i was appointed february 2020 connie quintana treasurer and this is my last year hello i'm carla lauria superintendent for almost 14. and i'm ramona lewis the president and i was also elected in 2019 so we thank all of you for being here it's great seeing you in person we've had a couple of these meetings virtually but this is the first time we've had it in person so we're excited to to welcome you to our district so the first report that we have this evening is an enrollment update from the district so if i could pass it
004over to dr lorea she will take it from here good evening so um thank you madam president and thank you board members from the city of commerce for joining today we do have exciting news actually about enrollment we have and if you click there you go so we have a slide with four data points here uh top left you see here the total enrollment and we are happy to report that the projection was to have 5660 students however we have surpassed that number uh we are as of today to uh we have six thousand two hundred and seventy five i can yes seventy five i cannot see far very well now this includes some of our no shows that we are still trying to find so in reality we have 6035 students coming in but
005that is over our projection by 375 students so that's a good problem to have a problem because we're now trying to find teachers we're looking for how to fund and where to place the the students and maybe even divide in some classrooms but those are good problems to have the next one top right is the enrollment range by school so our smallest classroom is in a pre-k class with 55 or in a school 55 students in the school at sun ville preschool and our largest enrollment is at the high school with 17 82 i should be reading from here that i can see the numbers better the next one is the enrollments by level so we have pre-k students i am seriously going to turn here because i cannot read those oops so we have
006our preschool students um preschool and pre-k are 411 students k5 we have a total of 2439 students six eight uh grades three six through eight we have one thousand four hundred and two students in our students in uh nine through twelve we have two thousand and twenty three students and then um ranges uh enrollment is in the pre-k our smallest group we have 411 and um our largest group is our 12th grade with 527 students so we're excited that our enrollment continues to grow actually by the day we have been increasing a few students each day and we expect to see that as you uh probably know we have been having a campaign to attract students not only those that live in our in our area that we may have lost to home school or
007any other options they have to come back but also we are trying to attract students from other districts so that we can offer the great things that we have here in the district so i don't know if there's any questions about enrollment if not we can go to the next slide monika so no questions um so i just wanted to mention a little bit of our priorities as a district we are really focusing on instruction and that includes union unit planning professional learning communities and acceleration and interventions what that means really is we are setting aside days professional days we're working with our administrators and our teachers to work on planning lessons in the units of study we know great instruction starts with great planning and we have been dedicating a great deal of time
008supporting our administrators and our teachers develop great lessons so that we can engage our students and then start seeing the results in our student growth and student achievement we are doing that for through professional learning communities this is basically teachers meeting with teachers and discussing their the lessons that are coming up may be hard to teach concepts and how to better teach those during these meetings we also do data analysis but we do not state with data analysis we know that we can actually have a data overload we focus as well on action plannings based on what the data is telling us and from that we then trickle down to acceleration and intervention opportunities after covet i know that we talk a lot about learning laws and i do the quote mark because i really
009do not like that term um very much i think our students and us as adults and community have learned a great deal of things during this hard time so we want to see it as an opportunity for us to learn uh how to accelerate the learning of our students um you know to serve them better so those are the three key priorities around instruction we're also working as a team and one of my priorities in the board of education goals is to be more transparent and to have more opportunities like this where we can share the great things that are happening in the district and uh and share what are some of the wins and what are the challenges that we have as a district we know that um our district has um a great
010ways to go as far as instruction as far as student growth and achievement but we are up to the challenge and we're working hard to make uh to making sure that our students receive the best education that that that we can offer and that they that they deserve so we have been working tirelessly i i want to commend the team the academic team in in operations in our executive directors here they're here they're long hours we start the day early in the mornings but we do what we need to do for our students and i am very proud of the work that they do i am very proud of the focus of the board of education and how much they have pushed me to do what is right and in the trust that they have
011put in us to to lead the district so um i'm gonna stop here and pause for any questions that you may have yes thank you um this is amazing and um you know it's great what are you guys doing about the culture you know as as educator we know we have to build a culture before this works um many of the complaints and stuff we get is kids hate going to the schools and that's culture based right transforming school culture is key what are we doing as a district um to build that culture of our kids going to school because you can have the perfect instructor structural priorities practices bring in the best people but if the kids don't want to go because the culture is a negative culture or whatever it is so could
012you talk about what practices you guys are doing to build a culture of from pre-k all the way to the high school so thank you mr guardiola that's actually a great question because one of the things that i have told the staff and i honestly believe is especially in turnaround situations we are in turn around because of the adults not because of the students so us adults we need to start working on that culture and uh starting with the week that we had our principals back in sometime mid july i had been in the job for probably ten days uh we brought them in in one of the areas that we worked on was the culture how to set up culture for the schools for the um in the classroom and as a school but
013more importantly how do we work you know as adults to support students and uh part the culture that we are trying to promote and we are working hard on it is it's really by modeling uh having high expectations having clarity on those expectations because um in my case personal case when i do not know what is expected of me there's confusion in me and then i try one thing and i try to read the cues and you know if there's a smile or not and with a mask it's even harder now so i believe in in having clear expectations and modeling i will not ask anyone to do something that i am not willing to do myself so just last week i was delivering professional development around observation and feedback and ensuring that our principals
014in our administrators have clear structures in clear expectations on how to provide feedback to our teachers and it is not to provide feedback for an evaluation but to provide weekly feedback little things that teachers can can change from one day to another from one class to another uh and feel success and see the small wins that they can have day after day so we are working on ensuring that we provide that level of support that teachers feel that level of support as they are supporting the students but at the same time that we are providing from central office that level of support for administrators and our principals so i think that is one of the a couple of the main things that we have been working on um actually uh we were on cabinet today
015and we were discussing um that culture is actually built every 30 seconds right so you can say or we can say or i can say all we want or all i want uh it is my actions you know minute after minute that will actually build or break a culture so we are being very cognizant of that and holding each other accountable for um for doing uh and behaving in ways that we say we want to behave any other questions and uh so i'm just going to go ahead and move on to another item that i wanted to share with you yes actually yes thank you for reminding me because one of the things and some of you were at the allsup school as far as supporting students so that they can feel excited and they
016want to come to school going back to the culture we have partnered with the aldrin foundation for space exploration for a space exploration program and also are partnering with the space foundation in colorado springs and we purchased through the aldrin foundation we purchased a giant map uh a mars map giant like the size of probably this uh area here and we have another one that is a little smaller it's the moon map but with it comes little rovers that are remote and they walk through the students can maneuver them and walk through the maps and the maps have this sensors and now we're using all these technical words that i do not know how to explain you know maybe we need a third grader to come and explain it one day uh but they have
017these sensors and they can actually see uh mars and they can actually learn you know outer space now this is one of the things that we're bringing um to the schools also has it ltps is a steam school but we are making it available for other schools as well next week we're going to be meeting with the principals of other schools we're going to allow them to go and see the the the map uh the maps these two maps that also and uh and have them say okay do is this something that you can integrate because this is not only to show or to be teaching space exploration it is through space exploration that we're going to be teaching the standards and this is something that is exciting for the students they were actually learning
018we have experts from the aldrin foundation flying here to provide professional development to the teachers and we have through the academics office we have our science department working on bringing the teachers together and developing lessons um to to teach the standards through this engaging activities so uh that's something else that we're trying to bring for students some excitement and um and really a message that maybe i can use this to send a little message out to you and everyone in the community to ensure that the kids are coming to school because we do have a student attendance problem uh our attendance in general is low and like you said mr guardiola you know if things are not interesting why would you come i i was one of them that i was fighting my mom if
019i felt the school was not exciting so it starts with us so we're working hard on our end and we want to send a message to our parents to also send their kids uh and then we'll uh will open that means of communication with our parents because if we think we are doing things to engage in but it's not happening we want to hear why or what could we do differently to engage our students so that's one of the the things we're doing at the elementary uh we're having discussions with them to bring a program also for middle and in high school um with them um so and again just to use it as a means i believe technology should not be you know only in uh tech schools or steam schools i think i
020think that that's our world right now so it should be something that is offered to all of our students because it's what we said was the futures are present now so yes thank you for reminding me um of that and um one last thing in means in an effort to be completely transparent as you know two years ago or you may know two years ago the the state board of education ordered or required the district to have a manager's group um and there was a managers and managers group that was selected at the time it is adams 14 schools succeed also known as mgt has been referred as mgt most of the time and the district followed the mandate and actually passed on all the managerial authority to this group it was an expectation that
021after two years there was going to be a midpoint where we were going to be looking the district was going to be looking at how that work is going and um and i would say that based on my experience and what i have learned the district the board of education and the district at large has worked in good faith with the managers group or the lead partner you know to abide to the state board to the state board order and uh most recently there has been discussions uh we are asked to appear in front of the board the state board next week and um and really talk about some of the concerns that we have brought up based on an external evaluation the contract as i said there was expected to be a midpoint we
022brought in somebody external the individuals from cde from the turnaround office individuals from uh a14 ss or mdt known as well and i we agreed on a individual to come in external person to come in and do an evaluation there were some findings that are uh somewhat serious for us and and then now we are in that process where we are coming to to the state board next week to you know to explain a few things that are are happening i think that um at the end of the day what i can say is me personally and i know this the board of education for adam's 14 we expect the very high standards and high quality of work of anybody coming to support our students i would say that is true for external consultants external
023managers or internal employees i think it's a high level of standards for everyone because our students deserve the very best and that is what we are committed to to doing so um and that is happening i know there's a lot of noise or you know uh you know things going around uh that but that is in in in the spirit of being fully transparent where we are and um and then you know we'll be taking it day by day because things change uh quite rapidly but again what i can say is that is our commitment from me personally and from our board of education to abide to the state board order we are okay having managers and we are okay following their orders because we have been in turn around for quite a while and
024i understand that we are just not okay with having managers or external individuals coming in and not offering or not giving what they promised they would give because i believe and we believe our students deserve the best so that's where we are with that so you'll probably continue hearing uh more in in our frequent updates how could we support you guys in that um because there is a lot of noise there's choppy you know there's a bunch of news articles out there and that is concerning residents come to us and ask us are they going to shut down our district now or so as the other elected body of this area in the core city how do we support adam's 14 while you guys go through this process um and and i think you know
025i've been around for a long time and you guys have been in good faith doing what you're supposed to be doing and and from the reports they didn't hold up their end um so now you guys go back to the state board so how do we support you all in this new uh adventure you guys are going to go through uh thank you mr guardiola and i'm gonna start and i'm gonna pass it on to any of the uh board members if they want to add anything but i would say um you know seek to be informed uh and try to find out exactly what happened uh you know when when things like this uh come to light um most of the time people hear from one side and uh so i would encourage everyone
026everyone here and everyone you know who is listening or maybe listening on youtube to get informed of exactly what happened asking the questions i came here on july 1st was my first day and i asked a lot of questions i asked for evidence when i heard a response i'm like okay so how would that work and how does it look in the school and i kept asking for questions because i believe um i truly believe that's that's why i'm here for to ask the questions and to hold everyone accountable we talk a lot about holding students accountable into high standards but we forget that we need to start with the adults we will have a meeting tomorrow a board meeting a special board meeting we have invited a14ss also known as mgt to come in
027and present so i would encourage everyone to continue asking questions to to get informed to look at the reports uh maybe even look at um probably some old uh board meetings that are out there because i believe uh in youtube because i believe it actually it will actually start helping everyone see and hear what what things were said and um and done in the past and um and we're here to answer any any questions you know us we're going to be sharing as much as we can you know when lawyers are involved sometimes we cannot say much but i can i can assure and repeat over and over we have high expectations for anyone who comes to the district whether they are external or internal we have paid over seven million dollars to this group
028in two years and um i believe we should see you know great improvement uh not everything was horrible i think that there were some things that were uh that started having some traction is it you know to that level of um ticket i don't know in my opinion again i will ask for evidence that they lived up to what they said they were going to do for our students because external individuals they come and go we stay here and our students most importantly stay here i keep saying we all adults we have a life and we'll be fine whether we're here or somewhere else you know we'll find our way because we're grown-ups our students do not have that chance yet and we owe it to them so um i just want our community to
029know that you know this is an adult problem between a14ss the district and the state board we're here for the kids and that's who matters and whether this is going on here with the adults we're still going to be here for the kids and making sure that we're doing the very best that we can for them and that's why we hired dr lorea because she has the experience and turnaround that perhaps the management team didn't have so um so i just think that's the important thing that we need to let our community know is that you know that's an adult problem but we're still here for the kids and making sure that they're being educated the best that they possibly can um councilman guardiola thank you for um for offering uh other solutions or how
030we can possibly work together i think that there are a lot of intersections between your work as councilman councilwoman mayor and what we do as a board and i think that the more that we can authentically collaborate i think the better off our students will be i'm glad that this happens this is the first time that i see faces for our council men and women and so i think that the more we can do stuff like this and share ideas talk about different things that are going on and how we can improve all sectors of our city i think the better off we'll be you thank you um thank you councilman guardiola i really welcome that question because i know you guys are basically our eyes and ears and i'm sure there's lots of talk
031lots of questions um i i think to support us i think as our superintendent said you know if you can keep a prize and let us know how we can keep you more informed about what's going on and also sending those folks on to us i think the more folks are involved and the more we hear directly from our parents our community members the more we'll be able to keep them involved along the way so i just want to say thank you and echo what everybody else said up here and once again um really appreciate that the offer because i think in all the years it's it's very difficult to gauge where city council is compared to where we are and um just putting it out there and all transparency um the majority of you
032do not live in the core city and so the school district that you're most familiar with is 27j so it's a very different makeup down here so um like our superintendent said you know just keeping informed and really doing some of that research on uh and asking those tough questions really does help from you as well um because i know it's kind of like a learning curve if you haven't lived in this area um to actually understand what's going on with our community but you know i think for the longest time um we have felt at least i personally we feel like the stepchildren that's our inside joke we're the stepchildren of commerce city because we're overlooked we stay in the shadows we don't have the um the voice that everybody else has and we
033are trying to change that as a board that our kids need to be the focus and it needs to be student-centered student-focused whatever we do and so we appreciate that you guys are looking at that as well because it is in the end it's not it's like our president says the adult issues here but in the end um we want to make sure that we're doing right by our children and the students because that's 6 000 and some little lives out there i keep saying this about data anybody who knows me i keep saying humanize the data so when you look at that data make sure you're humanizing it and putting faces to those numbers because they're not just numbers so thank you just a quick follow-up um is there a way you guys could
034send information to roger and he could send it out to us and for those of us that want to keep up with that um because often we're hearing from the residents or chalkbeat if you subscribe to them and uh you know what better way to get information is coming from you guys right especially if we're trying to collaborate more and keep him keeping us informed so if you guys could work something out with roger and then he could disseminate that information to us um that would be helpful absolutely absolutely yes there are some documents that have been posted already to the website most recently i know there are more to come but we're gonna make sure that you know through monica we send them to roger um so that and we can say you know
035they are available but here it is you know for easy access uh so that um that might be you know um something that we can for sure do uh to ensure that you are um you know up to date with things and and you know i'm available if any of you want you know to call me i passed on my card uh actually before we started um so i'm available for answering any questions or clarifying anything because sometimes those documents are long and sometimes i feel they go in circles and not this in particular that any you know legal document you look at long documents and you're trying to make sense of it so i will be available to any phone call or any you know quick meeting over coffee or anything any other questions
036i don't i don't have a specific question i just wanted to respond to some of maria's comments if that's okay um and a lot of us don't live in the core city um but i and i i don't either what i want to say is i don't have a kid in either district and both are equally important to me and and i really i advocate for education across the board and so i hope you guys feel that support and know that i'm interested and invested in in all of the kids in commerce city yes thank you thank you for that because actually um sometimes you know i have been in education 32 years um and i say one day i'm going to retire my husband my husband says no you're never going to retire and
037i said no i really i will retire one day and as such i need to make sure that i leave you know the schools and the system a better place that i found it because when i leave i want to know that they're better than when i i was there um but i have been you know throughout those 32 years in different states in different districts and in two different countries and um so i am the very last one who can say oh i'm from here i actually have you know i've been here like since july 1st and um in the way that i see it uh because i have i've had this experience especially when there are districts so close my students are going to be your students one day and then your students
038are going to be mine and the way that i have seen education as an individual is these are our students not this district students that district students these are our students these are our future and i believe that we have a national problem with the way that we are educating all of our students and some of them some of our students are just falling behind in ways that we hate to admit uh but these are our students so i do feel that support since i met all of you and and of course i go out and you know introduce myself and i i've learned that that is the best way for people to get to know me for me to say hey i'm carla and this is a little bit of what i think but
039i do welcome the support and we have felt it and this is not by no means i think that again it's an adult issue but i think that we can all agree that we want the best for our students your children my children and uh and we can find a common ground there and we can find ways for us to collaborate to make to to make sure that our students get the best end of it not the short end and uh in this case i do appreciate the support because you know this is not about you know one group being victorious here is about will our students be victorious after all this noise comes down and that's that's my main goal to make sure that they are okay whether they're our kids they will jump
040to the other district and then some of them will jump back here and that's okay that's okay it's at the end of the day our our students in our our future so thank you for that [Music] first of all welcome you've only been here 60 days and you're already very immersed and knowledgeable so thank you very much thank you um you mentioned that there is an absentee problem and i wondered if you're getting feedback from your students as to what is causing the problem is it higher than usual what is it related to and is that something specific that city resources could help with could help the parents in some fashion that we aren't aware of that's an excellent question and thank you for that um yes we well when i go to schools i
041talk to kids right and especially at the middle school what i hear is uh well we don't like the bullies and the bullies here and they you know they they do feel that um that peer pressure uh from other students so uh we actually during cabinet we talked about that today and we introduced our new director of security because the individual left he took another job as an administrator in a school so we had that vacancy and one of the things we talked about was how can we use now this resource and maybe partner now that you say with community resources to bring some of this social and emotional support that students need other rodeos like i say i would have groups coming in and with parent permissions we had social groups and students just
042talked about their social challenges that as teenagers they needed to cope with and part of that was bullying or feeling rejected or not feeling belonging so i believe there's a lot of opportunity there for us to partner i don't believe it's actually well without counting covet period in in this pandemic i don't believe it's uh very different uh of course covid as i said is an outlier but very different from years before and i think part of that has been because our system operational system has not focused on when a kid comes in late we mark them from absent to late and then that student remains absent in other states because uh the state looks at attendance for funding uh we have been on top of that right because our funding depends on are we
043marking our students present when they are present so we make sure that not one child comes into the door and stays absent right in the in the system but we don't do that here so i think that it's a way okay well you were absent now you're not good for you right but we did not did not have that care or that step in the in the process to go back and mark the student presence so that alone i know that has already yielded some results mr mario marquez he is our chief of business operations and he is actually supporting with um providing a system and instructors for attendance and for actually all of our student information platform but mr marquez is an expert six sigma black belt if i said it right meaning that
044he is an expert in systems and in structures between organizations so he is taking a close look at all of our systems to make sure that we are marking students present when they're present or late if they're late or absent if they remain absent right but also that we are providing professional development for adults to make sure that they know how to navigate the system and aside that i believe that it has been also important for us uh to make sure that we communicate with our families just like mr guardiola mr guardiola said communicating with our families why they do not want to come we hired full-time parent liaisons for the schools before we had part-time people at the elementary now we have a full-time person we paid we're paying this positions with our sr
045funding and we're going to be transferring that to the additional at-risk funding that we received from the state recently and and mr marquez's team is working on the structures to in professional development to help them reach out to the families and find out a little bit more of why is it that they're not coming uh and then the next step to that will be reaching out to to uh the the uh businesses the community uh the city for additional resources based on the needs that we see are happening so i think it's a combination of things this is much different maybe not but one thing i know we need our students to come here so that they can learn and we can turn around the district so that is definitely one of our priorities [Music]
046and i was really excited to hear about your partnerships with uh aerospace and um i had the wonderful opportunity to work at uh metro state for a few years and i hope that you're having those conversations with the aviation department too because there would be lots of great opportunities for students wonderful thanks uh thank you really quick i just wanted to thank you guys um i know i think the past couple of years this is the first time um your parks and rec staff have been amazing they've reached out to me numerous times i think they've reached out to administration just to coordinate something as simple as when our breaks are or when we're having a big conference or something just to involve our students more so i just wanted to put that out there
047and thank your staff because that's been awesome in one last comment um you know after your just your remarks yes we are in connection with them we already have a partnership and through the aldrin foundation we're looking to extend that partnership last month maybe three weeks ago we met at the city manager and roger and you know the team there met with our team in the cte program and um the understanding that we have is as part of the commitment um you know to to bring a third-party partner to us into the building that you are granting us to use we are looking into metro state so yes we already have them as a partner and we are looking for avenues to actually extend that and they will become our official uh partner probably or
048potentially if it works out so that we can bring programs to the building that you're allowing us to use as part of your development with them as partners so so i just wanted to say going back to your original question as to the absenteeism rate it's not anything that's unusual i think for a lot of school districts i think the difference is that this school district seems to have more people willing to help out in the community a lot of community-based organizations in the past would be willing to help but now we actually hopefully will have a structure on how to be able to do that in a way that makes sense so that the families could get what they need because i i do believe that a lot of it is at least in
049this area has to do with a lot of those basics that our kids are lacking um and uh just very basic things that they're lacking and so we just want to make sure that we're doing a better job of connecting what's already existing out in the community with what the need is and i think that once that's done in a good way then that should help so i'm very pleased to hear that and to know that our apparent liaisons are now full-time because that's part of what we were hoping they would be doing is actually connecting people to what the resources are depending on what the need is and so um just putting it out there that for years we've had really good partnerships with community-based organizations and we want to continue growing that so
050thank you in just one last example of how we are changing our structures and our systems to support students with attendance one of the high schools actually that is serving lester arnold serves students from all across the um our area and i learned in my first visit uh you know when i am asking questions because again i ask a lot of questions i get that we're talking about students in the attendance and what time they come in and i learned that we do not we were not offering bus transportation for students and my first question is like why aren't we offering that and uh i charged uh mr marquez with okay find out why and by day one we had buses uh that would offer that so that will ensure that our students will have
051that mean those means of transportation because sometimes it's not at a walking distance for some of our students because we serve a larger area at this school they they are far away from the school and so now we want to make sure that they have that transportation option if they choose to use it so those are the kind of things and um structures that we're looking at um to ensure that they have those basics because transportation would be one of them [Music] thank you very much for the uh the update as well as the conversation and i cannot figure out this microphone um i uh echo the comments from our council members as far as support and uh you know i think um two years ago i think the relationship between the school board and
052the city council hit a low and uh maybe three years ago but but some point in there it definitely hit a low and i appreciate all the work on both sides of the aisle in order to get that relationship back so that we can have meaningful meetings like this you know the in the end it's the the students in our community that benefit from that and uh to coin your phrase if it's an adult problem allowing our two boards to not see eye to eye is adults not working towards common goal so i greatly appreciate the fact that everybody is working towards that goal to get education for all of our residents no matter where they live to be of the same high quality that we expect for everybody so greatly appreciate that if you
053are ready for us to take over i will uh introduce our next part great thanks um so we have an update on projects and things that are going on in commerce city and i will actually turn it over to our city manager mr tinkenberg to provide this update since uh the information comes primarily out of his office and uh he knows it better than me just to read slides and can provide some color commentary to it as well as providing the actual information as well good evening thank you for this opportunity to get together figure out this clicker all right so uh just to give you a quick overview of what's going on in the historic part of the city overall we're seeing a huge amount of development activity of course a lot of that
054is in the northern area where there's open land to to be developed and uh that takes the form of both residential and uh industrial type of activity so i'll get into that in just a little bit but the biggest project that we have in the historic part of the city is mile high greyhound park redevelopment project and that's going to provide a significant level of residential housing of all types so you'll see single-family standalone homes you'll see duplexes you'll see townhomes you'll see condominiums as well as apartment buildings and the big four-story building that's already under construction and all the way built up to the top that's that's the uh it's called litec it's uh low-income uh housing tax credits and uh so what that means is that it's uh basically income qualified to live
055there now some people have a concept of oh low income housing but the sad reality is it's the type of housing that a teacher can afford and so hopefully this is an asset to our community and provides workforce housing for people that are starting out and you know it's a sad commentary that we pay our teachers that low it's not the fault of the school board it's it's a an american society problem and so hopefully this helps in terms of housing those who are finding it difficult to find housing and we know that's a metro wide problem not just commerce city problem another uh opportunity that we had was to apply for a grant for renovating monaco park monaco park has been a historic part in the in the city for a long long time
056and this is an opportunity to completely renovate it and and we're assisted by adams county open space grant that comes through the county uh tax revenues that that they collect for open space so uh that's a tremendous uh help to getting that park renovated that's in the rfp for design currently so we we expect proposals to be coming in shortly and as you mentioned at the very beginning you're showing slides of the gymnasium improvements again great opportunity for us to work together and and be able to find uh funding for a project some of those gym floors were in terrible shape and uh so it's good to have that for the students now this is a spanish version of what i just said i can't read it [Laughter] uh in terms of development activity we're
057expecting to see 2 500 additional residential lots in the entire city over the next three to five years again tremendous growth happening each year our staff is very busy we have a 185 active land use cases that jumps up to 195 and bounces back and forth in that amount and to give you a perspective we're a city of about 65 000 currently cities that are 275 000 have that number of land use cases so that's just the volume activity that that's happening uh building permits we issued 362 just in the month of july again just huge amount of activity we expected things to slow down during covet 19 instead it ramped up and we're not seeing a slowdown this year as well over 3.2 million square feet of industrial facilities has been built uh we
058have additional in the pipeline so overall it's approaching 7 million square feet of industrial warehousing type of facilities that are being built or in the design permitting phase right now we're also conducting a study for a new urban renewal area that would be up around the uh rtd station area so that would include the area of of the old also school so in that general area and as we move forward with that we'll be in contact to talk to you about that project and how it can benefit the school district as well and then up in the north stead school will open this fall and that will be for primarily agricultural related training so i i don't know what opportunity that provides for your students but again it's an opportunity for for enhancing the educational
059availability my high greyhound park as i mentioned is underway the infrastructure is nearly complete it will offer close to 500 housing units and the first group of single-family homes are under contract right now they'll be available for move-in at the end of this year into 2022 and the duplex units are under constru are under uh permit review right now so they'll be cons starting construction shortly mentioned all the different types of homes that that are available again as i mentioned single-family duplex condos town homes apartments all of all the different types of housing will be available one of those that's under contract uh i just signed today so i'll be a resident in terms of capital projects 88th avenue widening that's ongoing that's all the way from i-76 to highway 2. that is in final
060design at this point it's gone through preliminary design and environmental review and all of that type of thing that's always a long process and they're starting some of the right-of-way acquisition that has to happen with that as well same thing with rosemary street if you've ever been up in that area at say 4 30 to 6 o'clock it it's almost a parking lot so this will greatly improve that that area in terms of the corridor traffic conveyance and then we're also acquiring land in irondale for drainage we need approximately four to five different parcels to accommodate storm drainage there that was never planned because the area wasn't planned it just grew up and definitely needs to to prevent flooding uh dahlia street is in final design that's an adams county project we're contributing money to
061it but they'll lead the project and that will occur in and then derby area lighting improvements are coming that is being done in cooperation with not only excel but also the south adams county water and sanitation district because they're putting in new water mains in anticipation of us doing not only the street lighting project but also future street improvements so uh that's ongoing and then comprehensive plan for the city is being updated and that's been in outreach during this summer getting input from citizens and so again the outreaches the concerts in the park have been really helpful in getting people to provide comments and that's been both in english and spanish so greatly appreciate that any questions i ripped through that pretty fast but oh okay go ahead sure just wanted to mention a couple
062things on monaco park we're trying to get it all inclusive park just like the one behind us so our staff and roger working with the design to have another all-inclusive park in in carmel city just like veterans park and then we passed the owners giving every school the opportunity to apply for twenty five hundred dollars in the city of calmer city roger staff is working on that how do they apply for that it's a sponsorship through the city so every school could get up to twenty five hundred dollars from the city so uh look for that information when rogers staff is getting the or the sponsorship or the proposal for that okay so thank you that's good information to have um i actually and i'm just gonna put this out there in the spirit of
063true collaboration um you know both school districts in our county or in our city and all of them in our county have a high percentage of homeless students and families and with some of the new builds or the the new low-income or income-based housing that's out there what we at least what my experience has been when i'm trying to help a family is that um there's usually like a waiting list there's a lottery there's always something some type of barrier but there's never been really that collaboration and i know that we still have to talk a little bit more because i had talked to the mayor the other day just having an idea of how we can all collaborate and help some of these families with the actual housing piece of it because we keep
064referring them and they keep going in circles and circles because there's nothing out there there's just when it comes to housing and low-income housing especially it's sad to have families who've been living in motels for two years paying you know 60 70 percent of their income just so that they're not on the streets they're still considered homeless because they can't find a place i mean even if they got a voucher it's really hard to find a place so is there a way that um that's something that could be looked at at some type of level of how we can do this for both school districts and help some of those most in need families that are struggling and have been struggling for years now thank you for that question we just had a meeting last
065week with adams county staff as well as staff members from other cities in adams county and starting discussion and work on a regional collaboration to address that you know denver is certainly a component as well it's a bigger issue than just adams county so you know there's going to have to be some type of collaboration with city and county of denver as well but back to adams county what we talked about is you know pooling our american rescue plan act money to address the issue and and work on a comprehensive solution and the reason i had the freedom to speak up at that meeting and and you know offer our collaboration is the city council set that as the primary focus of the use of our arp money american rescue plan act money and so
066given the leadership of our city council i was able to tell them our council wants a bold plan and that needs to be addressing comprehensively the whole issue of homelessness you know you have you have subcultures of homelessness you know there's the drug addicts that people usually think of there's the alcoholics there are those that just simply have a a terrible home or family situation that put them into homelessness there are those that it's a chosen lifestyle it's like okay you know it's going to take a whole thought out comprehensive approach to address those different types of situations and needs and we need to be thinking upstream in other words you know let's let's not just treat the symptoms but let's go to the sources of these problems and you know some of that is
067mental uh you know so that that takes you know mental health approach uh you know there's many different causes as i said so again uh we've started that conversation and and hope to be able to pull that together fairly soon well i appreciate that and um you know the the matter i guess here and and i get that there are the subcultures and um the way i just see them you know every human being has some type of need and those are just needs that have not been met for the chronic homeless but in this case i'm just thinking you know something low-hanging fruit type of plan to really help those families that are you know income eligible they are able to they're staying in the hotels with their kiddos is there something that we
068can that we can all partner on where we are addressing some of that um homelessness and in that definition as it uh goes under the school definition of mckinney-vento um and not really because yeah the chronic homeless issue um that is much bigger than just adams county and commerce city that is that's going to take everybody and we need to address that you're right but i think right now um i'm thinking ahead as to if if we do that now for our youth and they're not growing up homeless it's going to really help the community in the end because you're doing something now for them as opposed to interventions later so that's where i was coming with that question thank you see if i have any better luck talking in this one um the challenge
069that you brought up as far as a waiting list and as far as how long will it take for somebody to get into an income controlled apartment that's always going to be present and and the reality is is you know this is going to have what 220 low-income housing apartments there roughly 220. they'll be full you know and a lot of people are going to be shut out because it's not enough you know the bigger issue that i see whenever i think of that is you know it was actually that portion of the project that almost derailed it you know the ability of the developers to get the bonds and the financing forward to be able to construct that project was delayed for an extended period of time the bond market dropped out challenges with
070you know getting approval through authorities and through banks and everything else and it makes it very difficult and so while we would all love to say let's put up another project that is going to help more families as long as that red tape process is out there as long as the difficulties in getting financing and getting these projects on board continue it's going to be that much harder to be able to get these projects move forward and you know so by the time you figure in where are we going to put it how do we finance it how do we get everything else in line to make it happen it's a problem that goes beyond anything that anybody truthfully at the local level is going to be able to solve and it's going to require
071solutions at the state and the federal level to figure out how do we free up funding for these projects to allow families to have an affordable place to live and and it is sad that you know yeah we have people who are living in apartments we've got people who are living in that apartment excuse me motels and people that are living in you know facilities that were never designed for long-term occupation like that but as much as we would want to go and continue to put up projects like this that are going to be able to support the community we're going to need support at the state and national level to change how it is these projects can be financed and that is going to require a level of advocacy that everybody needs to team
072up together to say hey let's make it easier to get these this money flowing you know we want to talk about 4 billion dollars in infrastructure 4 trillion dollars in infrastructure going here's a need here's a specific need that we truly need to put some of this money into to make it easier for developers to put these projects up and allow people an affordable place to live and right now the way this country is i just don't know how we get there when i think about one of our priorities it's recruitment and retention so i can see that the income-based housing could be a really good incentive for teachers younger teachers coming into our district and and being able to afford some place near where they work so i mean that's an exciting thing but
073as you said i mean there's going to be people competing for those those apartments like crazy so but it could assist with our recruitment and retention so and i would just like to add that i think that if we're only looking at this issue um through the lens of trying to get more affordable housing we are going to refill our most marginalized and oppressed communities already um i feel like as commerce city we can also be looking at this issue proactively and what can we do to stop this from happening opposed to getting it at the tail end and saying let's do more affordable housing what systems of oppression are operating right now in our city that we can begin to analyze and look at and change so that's just another option as well if
074there's no other questions we'll turn it back to you for wrap up i did just want to say something about the monaco park that's great because about the accessible playground this one over here is just absolutely wonderful and i know it's been touted in other communities so i think that's great that you're thinking about that for that monaco park as well because rose hill is right there and it's just it's absolutely fabulous so um we have one more presentation i believe is that correct yeah okay sorry sorry about that [Music] good evening thank you so much for allowing us to be here this is a power room this is impressive and i'm so uh proud and honored to be here uh with all of you amazing leaders uh that are moving our community forward thank
075you for everything that you do every single day your commitment and your dedication to a better city my name is maria gonzalez and today um i also want to welcome dr laudia to commerce city we haven't formally introduced ourselves but i've heard so many wonderful things about you and all the work that you've done and i'm really looking forward to helping our community together so well today we are giving you a presentation and it will be in english and spanish on this slide as well again my name is maria gonzalez i'm the founder and executive director of adelanto community development a commerce city adams county nonprofit organization serving our latino growing latino population and today with me i have whitney connor she is most of you already know her executive director of kids first and
076also part of the rocky mountain partnerships health and mental health champion and becky she is our ceo of rocky mountain partnership and the backbone team and also we have kaia swanson she is on part of the backbone team and the senior director of the policy and advocacy for the rocky mountain today is with the spirit of collaboration as i see everybody willing to really devote some time about what can we do better to serve and move our community forward i want us to take us to understand more about growing this coalition of community leaders across our region who have embarked to the ultimate diversity equity and inclusion effort by working together to close disparity gaps and improve economic and social mobility which include a data score card that we have developed that will hold the
077accountability to the impact that we want to create and with these there's five areas that are collective work that are currently happening and we want to understand and find out ways and opportunities that we cannot collaborate both the city of commerce city elected officials in adams county school districts so that we can further engage in this community work let me tell you a little bit about our partnership who we are and what we do basically the rocky mountain partnership is made up with a cross-sector of leaders such as city and county managers school district superintendents and other leaders higher education leaders foundations business sector leaders and a selected number of nonprofit executives who are leading this critical work health care leaders mental health leaders chiefs of police and district attorney as you know all of
078these individuals are absolutely important to get a work done and we represent the region of adams county specifically these six municipalities as you can see here brighton commerce city federal heights northland florida and westminster city of aurora and sydney county of broomfield and this is such an important thing because we continue to grow and we continue to seek more leaders that are willing to step up to the plate and really make a difference as you can see both whitney and i you know we come we're part of the steering committee and this is basically it serves like an executive committee as a board and this group is responsible for driving the strategy of this partnership uh you can see and these are so many other uh leaders that are really showing up and being accountable
079to the work and we're made up of these champions and co-champions over strategic areas of the collective work that are set for strategic priorities for the network and we provide strategic leadership and guidance to the entire network this is absolutely amazing group that i get to have the pleasure working with and i hope that you know them all and if you don't it will be a great opportunity for you to get to know the work that they're doing and how do we build this collaboration they're amazing you'll get a list of everybody's names here in a little bit as well and of course you have the presentation and there's important information about the different individuals on each one of these committees and partnerships because we are accountable and when we are accountable we want to
080make sure that uh that we follow the same direction of what is that needs to get done in order for that we are responsible for setting shared targets towards social and economic mobility which is a theme that i've been hearing all night from each one of you and this com and this leadership table and on behalf of this network and we hold them accountable for meeting these targets uh the pan is composed of a cross-sector c suite level executives including champions from investing partner organizations and the pen drives the implementation of the strategic plan it supports removing barriers to the collective work and communicate out calls to action in this room we have included our new city manager roger and we're very excited to connect with superintendent lauria to officially welcome you to our board
081thank you thank you for wanting to serve and you got the accountability members so please check them out and reach out if you have any questions or need additional information or if there's any opportunities to engage and right now i'm going to pass it back to becky and she's going to go through some of these conversations as well thanks maria i just wanted to say thank you for having us for those of you who have been around the table for a long time we are formerly known as the adams county youth initiative we changed our name we have expanded to the city and county of broomfield last year and the city of aurora this year so that adams county student survey that your kiddos took for about a decade that was our organization but post
082covid and navigating racial unrest in our community the partnership accountability network the leaders of our community knew that it was time to really double down on this idea of collaborative work and so that's really what we wanted to talk about a little bit today is we've always been about keeping kids in school and out of the justice system and we've just really refined that and taking it to the next level around social and economic mobility so really i only have one slide tonight and i'm just really excited about kaya and myself and our team we are really here to support the convening navigating holding the partners accountable facilitation strategic operations project management that really takes to have a regional touch point on making connecting the dots between cities and school districts and not for profits
083and so um just really on behalf of your neutral backbone team we're really here to work for you and to support everything you've been talking about tonight there's a lot of overlaps and i'm really excited about this next level of collaboration here in this particular region thank you becky and what is our why as every every time we create this positive impact we got to go to our y and we want to make sure that we're ensuring that people are economically and socially mobile at the highest level this group of leaders agree that economic and social mobility is really about ensuring that the community members can provide for themselves and for their families and this is the truth of the matters you know people need to be earning an income that really reflects the quality
084of life that we want for them that they want for their children and their families so in order for that uh to earn the income education and training and life skills are absolutely necessary and that is why you know our community members are basically uh helping um with this what the work that you guys are doing today is really going to be part of that economic sustainability that we need the current state the north metro denver region is one of the fastest growing regions in colorado this is nothing new we've seen it we've seen our neighbors we've seen the community grown you know we just talked about how many new homes are coming into commerce city and across the region it just continues to grow so according to this report released by the bureau of
085labor statistics in march 2020 adams county has ranked second out of 356 counties as one of the largest and fastest growing counties in employment growth and what are we really doing how does that really translate you know i was listening to maria about really making humanizing the data because when we look at numbers you know sometimes we get so uh scared about the numbers but what about the families that we know you know the last year and a half our organization adelante has been working directly with these people that we're talking about in numbers people that continue to be left behind people that have lost jobs that were not able to get into paying their bills looking for basic human needs and trying to figure out how to make ends meet at the end of
086the day you know with the families with the loss of opportunity that they had at a job and what we're trying to do here is remove these barriers making sure that nobody is left behind and that people's basic human needs are met and that the resource and referral continues to grow and that we continue to advocate for what is most important for our families as you can see these numbers you know i won't read those numbers but i'm sure you you're very familiar with a lot of these data and your day to day to work and also the opportunities that we have to ch to make those changes in the areas that we represent from education business government and everything else that goes around to make sure that we enjoy that better quality of life
087the ability to pay the rent and losing a job and losing that stability it's it's continued even though a year and a half already passed the pandemic we continue to see those these numbers high and there's got to be something that we can make sure that we work together on to improve the quality of life of these individuals something that we were able to see as well was small entrepreneurs that were not able to get any funding that were not able to get any support or not much support for what they needed so i think it's also very important for us to look at how do we help home-based businesses uh entrepreneurs that might not have the education level that it's needed for them to really have a thrive and successful business and understanding how
088do these community members become homeowners eventually and changing those systems right that we all have access to we cannot transform systems without addressing the racial inequalities that exist at a systematic level and you know you were so right in regards to this issue but what do we have to do now how do we really dream about a better community you know uh something that i when i work for the city of commerce city i remember when all of us got together and we thought we dreamed about quality of life what does that really mean and i am a product of that i'm a commerce city kid i've been able to have a business i've been able to you know do so many amazing things for my community but not everybody has the same opportunity so
089how do we make sure that we collaborate and bring this community forward people that really want to you know grow and have a better quality of life so if we can imagine about you know having a community where everybody is able to support themselves right in their families just with the money that they make and that we're happy healthy and thriving and that we enjoy the vibrancy and abundancy of art and cultural and recreation and that we can you know look at regional poverty rates that are on the decline in the generational cycle cycles of poverty come to a halt our economic thrives more spending less reliance on social support and workforce with the talent is needed to attract and retain the growth of businesses in industry we can do this you know as a
090partnership we are committed to coming together to really imagine and make a reality a community where all of this can happen right and the vision that we have today is this network is economic is an economic and social mobility for all community members across our region this is specifically for those who are marginalized because of race ethnicity gender ace age disability zip code or their circumstances it is important for us to unite and that is why our mission today is to achieve this economic and social mobility by working collectively today using this data that sets targets and measure the progress towards those targets that we need to advocate for aligning policies and funding so that we can remove those barriers and better to coordinate and improve the good work that is already happening in the
091group this work with diversity equity and inclusion is everything everything that we need in these systems that need to be changed to produce inequity and disparity gaps that exist within our community that we many of us have lived and will continue to leave if we don't decide to do something about it sooner than later this is more than just building programs so i'm going to pass it over to whitney so that we can continue and share this data that we are going to be using for the accountability thank you so much thank you maria and thank you so much for hosting us tonight um to be with community leaders it's a real privilege for us and as we move forward to share this work with you and invite you to be a part of this
092movement i know when i first joined the group felt pretty big you know it sometimes feels like you're boiling the ocean when you're bringing all of this work along and with this big massive goal of economic and social mobility but the backbone team helps us break it down brings us along helps us understand uses data to move us forward yeah i know that i started my work at kids first and the history of working in non-profit and public sector health care because i'm passionate about helping kids so i can bring that voice to the table each one of us has a passion about this community and educating our kiddos and bringing the city along as city leaders yeah these kiddos get a great education they get debris future city council members as we move forward
093with this data we break it down and we use it to monitor our progress and we look at trends over time this is one of the ways that we break it down um so i think maria mentioned that i'm one of the champions in that health and mental health area constant schmidt who's the ceo of saint anthony's north she and i are co-champions there basic needs when we talk about basic needs it means housing and food with social and criminal justice these are folks who are involved in this criminal justice system we look at recidivism even engagement in voting because we know how important that is education and training this is a high school diploma this is a credential apprenticeships and even engagement in the armed forces economics and workforce development so we're talking about
094uh the proportion of our community who are involved in the labor force earning a livable wage and even seeing the job growth in our communities where are those opportunities for a livable wage so these are areas where we have co-champions and these are our five area of areas of priorities because we know they roll up to that big hairy audacious goal okay so you've heard us talk a lot about accountability already um that passion holds us accountable this partnership and working with other leaders in our community holds us accountable and the data is important too so we watch things like poverty rates that credential attainment self-sufficient or a livable wage and that overall um employment rate um so again these are measures that we use to roll up to that hairy audacious goal these are
095data points that we found are available and relevant not everything that we think of and want to learn about is available out there but we chose what we felt were really reliable and relevant data points for us and the scorecard so this is something that's in the works for us as we think about um becoming more and more focused with these co-champions these five areas of priorities these data points this is sort of a dashboard this is how we're going to watch ourselves again keeping ourselves accountable setting those goals targets along the ways milestones and then that that date or that those trends we want to see them going in the right direction if they're not then we make different plans we remain nimble and responsive to the learnings that we have and the direction
096that we want to go in you know most importantly i think we've said it but it's worth saying again we're looking at equity gaps we know not all of our kids and young adults have the same opportunity and that's a big area of focus so we make sure we bring all of our community members along as we lead this group so before i uh turn it over to kaya who will lead our conversation from here um i just want to encourage you to become involved in our group um there are lots of opportunities to stay informed to be a voice for your community for the kids for the city all those things that we're passionate about we would love your voices at the table so thank you again for letting us have the chance to
097talk with you tonight thank you and good evening everybody oh sorry that was loud my name is kaia swanson and as they have shared i am the senior director of policy and advocacy for rocky mountain partnerships backbone team um and myself and becky and the other backbone team members support people like whitney and maria and all the other incredible names on that sheet in front of you which i do want to mention is double-sided to do the work that they're doing together and so we've told you a lot tonight already about how the work happens what we're tracking what the method of partnership and collective work is now i'd like to share with you a little bit about the actual work that's underway um and so what you see on the screen in front of
098you are the five identified areas for collective work that the partnership is currently engaging in as a coalition of the committed um i'm going to dig into each of these five areas here in just a moment but first i want to share that in each of these five areas there's a very rigorous process that our partners follow in order to make sure that the impacts of the work underway are as bold as they need to be in order to make this community move toward improved social and economic mobility for all community members so in each of these areas they do a lot of work to first of course understand what the data looks like as whitney so wonderfully brought to life and make sure that we establish a baseline so that we know as we
099move forward whether or not what we're doing is working then they work together to set an initial target for where the community needs to move and what that target population should be we can we know that we cannot apply one solution to every single community member and think that it's going to work for every single community member because of the different things that people come to the table with the different resources that individuals need to be successful then they work together to identify the factors that are most impacting the target understand what programs currently exist what's currently working what can we scale what should we scale back and then based on what they determine they build out the work and they determine what's working as they work collectively and really just scale that work and
100continue to find ways to improve it make it better again so that they are running toward that all-important social and economic mobility so as promised i am going to dig into each of these five areas of work to round us around third and head toward home this evening but again just wanted to share with you a little bit about what the partners are actively doing together right now the first area of work that they identified to engage in together is around credential attainment and work based learning so the opportunity here that they have identified is to close equity gaps for community members when it comes to attaining needed education or training we know the research shows a post-secondary credential whether it's a traditional degree a license a certificate that makes it so much more likely
101that you are going to be able to provide for yourself and your family so the partners set a goal by 2025 they want to see the number increase to 50 percent of adults and atoms in broomfield counties earning a post-high school certificate credential or degree that is an increase of nearly 46 000 people so how are we going to get there right now the work that is underway is that a navigation and wraparound supports action team is launched they've held several meetings and are starting to design the actions that they are going to take together in order to reach that target and so the call to action that i have for you this evening is any staff within your organizations who are supporting community members with navigation case management wrap around services anything pertaining to
102credential attainment and work-based learning we welcome them to participate in the navigation and wrap around services action team uh in order to make sure that we have the right people at the table moving this forward really to achieve that that collective impact that is needed the second area of work underway is around equitable hiring and retention so really where this was born out of is partners saying we are doing all of this diversity equity and inclusion work in the community are we turning internally to see where we could do better as well and so right now uh we are working to develop a resource toolkit to help organizations go along that journey of improving the equity of your hiring practices job interview practices and then creating a culture of authentic inclusive um an authentic inclusive
103culture to improve retention for uh especially women and people of color within organizations and so the call to action here is executive hr staff and city managers and superintendents and anyone sitting in in that seat who has something to do with the the hiring process job interview process and the retention practices within organizations we will be issuing a call to action and you can take the pledge in september just here in a few weeks to join the other employers in our region who are committed to doing this to looking internally and seeing where they can improve those practices for themselves the third area of work underway is within housing and education so really the opportunity here is to close equity gaps for youth in their academic success i don't need to tell the people around
104this table that housing insecurity has a huge impact on a child's educational journey it can impact attendance reading and math proficiency and then overall impacts on mobility from poverty which is a huge focus of the partnership the mission of the partnership and so we are receiving technical assistance as a partnership to engage in this work through enterprise community partners which is a national organization working in this space and determining how there is an opportunity to work collectively within the housing and education spaces to again reduce that housing and security and so the call to action is any mckinney-vento housing authority homelessness and housing services staff are welcome to connect with the backbone team specifically right now we're looking for data um just to make sure that we're getting an accurate baseline and understanding of what
105the situation is in the region this work will be ramping up rather quickly fourth out of five so we're almost there is uh the work underway in youth mental health so i'm sure many of you around the table are aware that children's hospital colorado has actually issued a state of emergency for the state of colorado because the amount of youth suicide is so high it's the leading cause of death for youth in colorado and children's hospital colorado has especially during the pandemic scene just an incredible increase in requests for mental health care for their clientele and so our partners have issued somewhat of an internal state of emergency of our own and are quickly ramping up work in this area to amplify and draw awareness to existing resources scale existing mental health resources where possible
106and identify additional strategies really to bolster our youth in the state to make sure that we're addressing this crisis and so any of your staff who are leading efforts connecting with youth parks and recs to have school counselors anyone working in that space is welcome to participate in the youth mental health collaborative action team again to make sure that we have the right people around the table to move this work where it needs to go in order to address this crisis and then finally uh the last area of work that we're engaging in is the one that i am the most familiar with as the director of policy and advocacy so we're doing a lot of work in the state policy and legislative space in order to identify and actionize policy change where needed to
107improve economic and social mobility as you all know there are a number of policy barriers that exist that can can really keep individuals from being able to achieve that economic and social mobility and so very proud of the work that the plan the policy and legislative advisory network within the partnership has done over the last year they engaged in the legislative session for the first time in 2021 all nine bills that they supported passed at the state house uh and right now they are working on ramping up for the 2022 session devising their policy priorities within each of those um areas that whitney brought to life basic needs health and mental health social and criminal justice education and training and economics and workforce development and we'll walk into the state capitol with a really strong
108list of things that we know need to take place in this region from a policy standpoint in order to move the needle toward social and economic mobility um and so the call to action here is the plan is made up of people like yourselves elected officials who work in our region and make the change happen where it needs to happen and we are better for the voices we currently have i know we would be better for having your voices around the table as well um and all of the perspective that we can get get in that room ensures that the work that's happening in the state policy space is what it needs to be to move toward improved economic and social mobility and so with that those are the five areas in which uh the
109work is currently underway and here i will not uh make you listen while i read all of these names but this is who currently sits on the policy and legislative advisory network as you can see we have four of the adams county commissioners we've got adam's twelve five star schools uh representative we've got a number of policy folks from the agencies and the municipalities and the counties throughout the region some city council folks and so it's a a really incredible group that's just very committed to seeing this work move forward where it needs to go so um with that i am going to hand it back over to whitney to close us out this evening thanks for your time okay you know i'll just add one thing with the policy piece uh i actually was
110a legislative staffer for a bunch of years um and the state capitol is a busy busy place um you know there are school groups coming through i remember every year we had a mariachi band come in and even a band of trumpeters they're of course lobbyists there are staff members there are nonpartisan staff there are budget staff but you know what the people who got the legislators attention when they came in the capital were the constituents so don't ever feel as though your voice doesn't matter in that big beautiful building that's what really matters so as you think about being a part of our group or advocating on behalf of the district the city where your passion lies again don't doubt how impactful that can be at that state legislative level so again thank you
111so much for hosting us we're of course here to answer questions um but mostly wanted to share our work with you engage you in it welcome our new members and always be available for you thanks so much [Laughter] so do we have any questions for this group thanks roger as i'm sure you all know um the supreme court uh vacated the cdc's uh ruling to and uh were to extend uh more the moratorium on evictions and i'm just curious if you have any community data to kind of to maybe speak to what we might expect to see in the coming months um related to that that is a great question and actually something that we're actively working on so our partnership joined um dozens of other signers from the region in um submitting a letter
112to governor polis a few weeks ago to ask him to extend it at the state level um and and that was successful for a short time um and and now as you know we're looking toward um a large number of evictions so what we are currently doing is having our data team um within the backbone team dig into that because we frankly don't know the answer um as to how many evictions we can expect to see um but it is something that's very much top of mind for us so thank you for asking as a follow-up to that i wanted to make sure that you are aware that we have rental assistance that's available so and i know adams county does as well and about half of the money that we have been allocated has
113been you know already committed so there's still a significant amount of money that's available that is great to know one of the other things we're doing for the community is compiling a list of resources so that we can help community members navigate what may be impending for them and so we'll ensure that we have that on the list if we don't already thank you so i was just going to say thank you ladies for your great presentation this work as you know is near and dear to my heart because it's what i do on my day job is helping families connect to resources and so anything that we can do to help support so i appreciate the city that when you did the um the uh the daycare um you know the child care assistance
114that you guys have provided during this um pandemic as well as the the housing the rental assistance i should say uh it has been helpful i just think that anytime the need goes up the resources go down so just i'm a realist and i know that um there's going to be a high percentage of people facing evictions all across the metro denver area that's going to create all kinds of other issues for our families and then around the same time i know that we're also looking as advocates at the the renewals for the medicaid and the chp the health insurance program and that's looking at affecting i think the last number i had heard from someone was like half a million um citizens across the state would be impacted by that because during the pandemic
115they were auto renewing people and just giving them the program um now they're gonna have to go back and do redeterminations and a lot of people might not know how to do that so it's going to be quite an interesting few months coming up that are going to impact a lot of our residents and our kiddos so thank you for all the work that you do and i recommend that if anybody is interested in attending any of their groups i highly recommend it so thank you yes thank you very much for that presentation i recognized so many names on this list as well as the other list that you shared that um i've worked with or or known and you've got some great partners here you really do so um that's that's absolutely wonderful any
116other questions or okay so well thank you for your attendance thank you for your attendance we greatly appreciate it um these opportunities to get together are um wonderful for both sides um the district and the city and we look forward to the next one as i said they're always on the fifth monday of a month so um our viewers can keep watching our websites and we will have the next one on our website um both of our websites so that they'll know when to tune in so um with that i will go ahead and and close this meeting again thank you for your time you