001Yes, of course. My name is Shiva Garuda. I am a junior at Niwot High School. I'm really interested in engineering related activities. I am the captain of our school's Science Olympiad team and our district robotics team. And I definitely want to be either an electrical or biomedical engineer when I'm older. Great. Thank you so much for sharing your evening with us. And please let us know if you have any questions. And we'll return to you at the end so you can share some of your feedback. We'll begin with our visitors tonight. We have the Education Foundation here to discuss the and to present about the Eleanor Venture Travel Grant presentation. So I will call the Ed Foundation up. Tammy and Mark. Good evening, Dr. Haddad, President Reichlin, and the Board of Education. Tammy Palumbo, program
002manager at St. Brim Valley Schools Education Foundation. Thanks for having us tonight to share with you about our Eleanor Venture Travel Grant. Each year, the Education Foundation awards a travel grant in honor of our founder Eleanor Flanders. This year, the Education Foundation will celebrate our 40th year. Eleanor founded the foundation with the goal of supporting teachers and students within St. Brim Valley Schools. When she served as a volunteer in her time at the Education Foundation, when she retired, she was, we were trying to find a way to honor her and she decided that she wanted to establish the Eleanor Venture Travel Grant. She believed that teachers could learn through the experience of travel, that it would re-energize them and allow them to bring things from the world back to their students that they may not
003have the opportunity to share. Last year, we were fortunate enough to award two grants, so we are going to present about both of those grants tonight. Up first will be Andrea Helmus and Jen Lamay from Meade High School, and they went to Spain. Okay. Hi, I'm Andrea Helmus. Hello, I'm Jen Lamay. We are both teachers at Meade High School. I've been teaching Spanish there for 14 years, and I had actually never been to Spain until this trip. I've been at Meade High School five years. I teach yearbook animation and video production. I've been to many places in the Navy, but not Spain. So we decided to go to Spain to explore the art and architecture and be able to bring back some of our experiences for our students. We planned a route starting in Madrid.
004We went to Avila, which is a medieval town, Salamanca, the university town, ended up in the Basque Country in San Sebastian, and then finished in Barcelona. So that was our route that we took. Instead of coming back with a thousand photos, we decided to take a modern approach, and we made bilingual video vlogs, vlogs for our students. Unfortunately, our luggage did not accompany us to Spain, according to the airtime. It's somewhere in Morocco, and we never saw it again, but that added sort of a new layer to our trip. We ended up wearing the same clothes the entire time, but we made the most of it. So we were both art nerds, and my favorite thing was that we got to see stuff you see in art history books in person, and my favorite artists
005happen to be Goya and Caravaggio, so we got to go see that in person breathtaking. We also planned some tapas routes through Madrid, going from restaurant to restaurant, trying all the local delicacies. The cathedrals were really interesting because we had the old, ancient, intimidating cathedrals, and you saw Gaudi's amazing cathedral of light and color that no photograph can capture. You have to see it in person. We at the last minute decided not to rent a car, so we got all around the country, walking, busing, subways, metro, you name it, we did it. So we wanted just to show you a couple short excerpts from the videos that we made and are using with our students. One of our first stops is Barcelona's famous market. It's been around since the 13th century and has a huge
006variety of fresh produce, seafood. We check the map before we dive in and easily spend all day here. At a charcuterie, we watch the connoisseurs of Spanish jamon carve paper-thin slices. The jamon serrano is cheaper. Opt for the jamon hiborico. It's cured longer, made from pigs raised on an acorn diet, and it's truly spectacular, almost creamy. And so, we'll see if that'll work. ...understand why the Spaniards love their ham so much and put it on literally everything. This market also sells other Spanish staples like salted cod or bacalao, which has been eaten for centuries. It has a long shelf life and can be made into dozens of tasty dishes. We have one other one to show you. We're eating ham, friends. I'm eating something with squid ink on it, and we're going to try it.
007Yum. It tastes like dirt with bread. Dirt on the bread. So you can see we have a lot of fun just going around trying all the new things and filming our experiences for our students. So as far as for me, the takeaways for my students, I'm working on some little mini units that pair with our existing curriculum. I want to do one this spring about tapas and just kind of expose students to the tradition, all the typical customs, and make some cultural comparisons with the United States. And then to end the year, we're going to plan like a mock trip to Barcelona where they have seven days to plan a trip, and then they'll use the target language to navigate the city and visit some monuments and things, and we'll use the videos that we
008made as well. So for my students, I started a new video production class this semester, and it was nice to actually have the practice. So just so you guys know, what you see on Instagram takes hours and hours and hours. So it was nice for me to go through that process and be able to share that with my students. And then I'm mainly a photography teacher, so I kind of focus for my students more on street photography to kind of show them a slice of life that's not just like the touristy pictures. So it really helped me connect with my students, particularly as they were struggling with editing because we have discovered it takes a really long time. So we just want to say thank you. Thank you so much to the Education Foundation. This
009truly was a trip of a lifetime, and I don't think either one of us would have been able to afford to do what we did in other ways. And I returned really renewed and refreshed and with so much ideas and inspiration that I want to share with my students. Yes, and thank you, Education Foundation. They've helped fund so much technology for my class. I never would have thought I would be in a district where I could have this opportunity. So thank you guys so much. And if you want to watch more videos, we put our QR code up there to our YouTube channel if you have nothing else to do. Thank you so much. Thank you. Great presentation. Thank you. Thank you, Andrea and Jen. I did Brian Crim from Skyline High School was our
010other recipient, and he went to Mexico City. Had some students with him. They're going to perform for you tonight. Before I let Brian come up, I did also just want to mention that tonight with me, I have our executive director, and then Steve Payne, who is a former member of our board of directors, and Steve serves as our chair for the Eleanor Venture Committee. So Brian. Hello. As Tammy said, I'm Brian Crim. I teach orchestra mariachi at Skyline High School. I was super, super fortunate to be able to do this trip to Mexico City through the foundations grant. The target of my trip was to go and study mariachi education. It was also to study Spanish language to help my newcomer and bilingual students that I have, or students who are still currently learning English,
011so it's helped my abilities to teach my classes in both English and Spanish. I spent every day that I was there in the mornings, like taking five hours of language immersion classes where we'd walk the city and talk Spanish culture and Mexican culture. And then in the afternoons, I did various other cultural things. So for example, I went and spent several days at the Mariachi Plaza, which is on Plaza Garibaldi, which is pretty cool. And it's really neat to see the differences between what we see here in the United States as mariachi and what we have as far as expectations and stereotypes versus what's actually happening. And I think that it's really easy. Has anyone heard Mariachi High? I think that's what it's called, a video that's pretty popular right now. And like the whole
012Texas competition mariachi scene, Colorado is really developing. And St. Brian has really been like a driving force in Colorado is the state. And it's fun to kind of be at the forefront of that. So I was able to kind of establish some connections and get some resources to like our instruments that we play are specific to Mexico. And I have guitarron over here as well. And we have a couple resources in the United States where we can get these, but it's super, super, super limited. And being able to go down there and talk to some vendors and get some connections was like really helpful. Like armonios that we're wearing are part of our traditional outfits that we wear are made in Aguascalientes in Mexico. The instruments that we have, not the ones tonight, but we
013have this and Audrey's are also made in Mexico. And we normally when we perform wear a traditional outfit that we bought from Mexico City. And I was able to go visit the vendor as well while I was down there. For St. Brian, we continue to grow mariachi, I've been doing professional development stuff. The exciting one was this year was we had the first ever in the state of Colorado honor mariachi that we did here in St. Brian. We had three high schools represented. The kids got to perform at the district honor orchestra event and it's hopefully it's going to grow and continue. So instead of me talking, I thought we would just play a song for you if that's all right. Where would you like us to stand? You want us just back here? Is
014that okay? Yeah. If you need more room, feel free to come up here or if you're if you're okay there, that's fine. And do you mind if I have them introduce themselves? Yes, please. And we'd love to get a picture with everybody after the music presentation. And that song where you played the piano mariachi. That was awesome. Yeah, bravo. Gracias. That was beautiful. Thank you so much. I was going to ask how many hours a day are you guys practicing? Wow. So on our B days, we meet for the last hour and a half of the day. That's impressive because having lived in the FAA for a little bit, that's very authentic. And for you to come back and teach the way you taught that song, I mean, if you know anything about the Spanish
015culture, that's very authentic. And bravo, man. That was great. Great. Can we get a picture with our awardees and grant awardees as well? Well, that was a great way to start our meeting. Next up, we have audience participation. Do we have any members of our audience that would like to address the board this evening? Seeing none, we'll move on to our superintendent's report. Don? All right. Well, that was a wonderful performance, you know, and I think about it, the entire system, and I know you know this, but just for our community members who are watching on TV, for four years in a row, St. Brain has been identified as one of the top 15% of all music program communities in the entire nation, and it's the only school district that has done that for four
016years in a row, and most school districts in Colorado, there's only a couple that have even done it one year in a row, and it's for the amount of participation and the quality of the programs from the all-state choirs to the bands to the orchestras to children like we saw tonight in our mariachi programs, and so it's really a tribute to our teachers and what you see right now in many school districts around the state and beyond our cutting music programs, and St. Brain's continues to grow exponentially, so really proud of that. The other thing that I wanted to share with you is for the fifth year in a row, we won the math counts program competition, and that is in the region, and so we had five of our students that qualified for the
017state championships at DU, but for five years in a row, as a team we've won, and we had the first place student and the fourth place student at the competition, so we're very excited about that. I also had an opportunity to participate in the regional talent pipeline summit hosted by the Governor's Opportunity Now grant, and I spent a lot of time with members of the healthcare industry and construction management and public partnerships, and we spent the entire day talking about ways in which we can increase the number of internships and apprenticeships and opportunities for our students to get on the job, so to speak, training in the workplace while they're going to school simultaneously so they can pursue some of these career pathways, so it was a great meeting, and I appreciated being asked to
018participate. We also had 20 middle schools qualify for the upcoming state championships for robotics, and the robotics state championships will be held at Trail Ridge Middle School this year, and as you know, we have now 260 robotics teams pre-K through 12, but to have 20 middle school teams qualify for out of St. Vrain for the championships is really amazing. Our kids are just, you know, between state, national, and world championships, they're really doing some amazing things. We also were selected to do the drone show in April at the Space Foundation Conference in Colorado Springs. I may have shared that with you, but if not, wanted to let you know because that's the largest conference for aerospace and the space industry in the entire nation and beyond, and so we're very proud of the fact that
019our students who have the only high school drone performance team in the country were selected as their show, so that'll be a really exciting time for us to go down to Colorado Springs and watch our students do that amazing drone show. The other thing is, is you know, oftentimes we think of state championships in the area of athletics, but as you know, we have them in music and other places, but we had the state championship first place in EMT, in sports medicine, and in 3D medical visualization, and we had students who finished first place, we had the first place student finish in EMT and also 3D medical visualization, and then we had a second student finish first place in sports medicine and second place in medical terminology, and a lot of our other students, we
020had another one that won first place in the community awareness, and then another one won first place in the health career, photography, and then a number of second and third places, but you know, overall our program won the state championship in that category, so we're seeing a lot of that outside of the traditional what you might otherwise see. And beyond that, there's a lot going on, and you know, most of it's positive. We are still watching the state's budget closely. They had recently announced that they thought there was going to be a $700-800 million shortfall at the state level, but then they did not calculate the $350 million that the voters approved to increase law enforcement, and I think that that takes it up to about $1.1 billion shortfall, and that coupled with the potential
021for eliminating the averaging formula could hit districts pretty hard financially. The good news is is we're in really strong financial shape, and so we will be able to move through that. We've planned for the worst. We've got a very, very healthy reserve, and we're not in a declining enrollment pattern, which most districts are, so we're in very strong shape, but it still is going to be interesting to see, you know, how the state navigates this and the impact that it will have, and we're also paying attention to some of the potential changes in grant funding at the federal level and some of the programs that we receive federal funding for, whether it's Title I, Title II, Title III, or special education and those types of things. So there's a lot of unknowns, but we budget
022conservatively, and we have a solid base, so we're in good shape there. Other than that, I probably will stop there. There's much more I could share, but we'll do that at the next meeting, so thank you. Thank you. Okay, next up we have reports. Tony. Hi, good evening, members of the board. I'm pleased to present the first quarter financials report to the board tonight. I did want to disclose that the Finance and Audit Committee was able to meet on Monday at 4 p.m. over at the Business Service Center and was able to go over these financial statements a little bit more in depth, and in addition, just before this meeting tonight at 5.15, we had a board study session where, again, we went through those same financial statements and had a little bit of discussion
023and had a few questions. The financials as well as the summary dashboard are in the board packet, and we were able to go through and speak to mostly the general fund activity where we spoke about the timing of equalization payments and how they're affecting the district's cash flow by accelerating those amounts, talked a little bit about arbitrage impacts and our interest earnings in our building fund, as well as being able to answer some comments and questions that the board had, and so happy to also review anything or answer any of the questions that the board might have tonight as well. Any questions? Thank you so much, Tony. Thank you. Okay, next up we have consent items. Would any board members like to pull any items from the consent? Then I would ask for a motion
024to approve all consent items as listed in our agenda by Mioccia. Second. Second. By Gino, the loudest. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay. We have no action items. We have no discussion items, so at this time I'd like to turn it back over to our Student Advisory Council member, Shiva Garuda. Shiva Garuda, sorry. And please let us know if you have any questions. You have all the ears and eyes of the board and the superintendent. What would you like to share with us this evening, or do you have any questions? I have no questions. I wanted to thank you for the opportunity of allowing me to listen in on the process that goes behind a lot of what happens in the district, so yeah. Well, thank you so much for spending your evening with us,
025and please reach out any time if you'd like to get any more information from us, and good luck with all of your engineering pursuits in the future and being a senior next year at NIWOT, right? Yeah. That's great. Okay. Our next meetings in March are on the 12th and the 26th, so with nothing else to cover I would ask for a motion to adjourn by Mioccia and Jackie. All in favor?