2023-04-12 Board of Education Regular Meeting

001I don't know if she's all up there. Well, I would like to tell them I'm wondering if she's in there or something. I don't know if she's in there. Yeah. I think she's in there. Let me just share something. No, no, no. Let me just share something. OK. OK. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. good evening welcome to the St. Frame Valley Schools Board of Education meeting of April 12th 2023 please stand if you are able and join me for the pledge Christy would you please call the roll yes mr. Berthold present mrs. Brooks present mr. Garcia absent mrs. Horanek here dr. Martyr present mrs. Ragland present ms. Segrist here and Chris here you were of any changes to the agenda tonight

002no I'm not welcome this meeting is being live streamed on our website where a recording will also be available if the live audience would please be sure that device notifications are off to preserve our sound quality tonight we would greatly appreciate it this meeting is also being translated into Spanish and headsets are available for anyone who would need them I'll begin tonight by welcoming those who have joined us and preface our meeting by restating the district's mission statement to educate each student in a safe learning environment so that they may develop to their highest potential and become contributing citizens it is my pleasure to welcome our first visitors tonight from with chase madam president board thank you for having us tonight to allow us to celebrate some of our winter sport and activity and fine

003arts accomplishments we have a rather large group with us tonight which is always a good thing that's because we had so much achievement within our district so for starters I'd like to call up Chad Cooper administrator from Erie High School to enter introduce his guest thank you guys thanks for having us here tonight madam president members of the board dr. Hedad and distinguished guests is my pleasure to speak to you tonight on behalf the Erie High School cheerleading team thank you for allowing us the opportunity to gather here tonight and celebrate our outstanding achievements I would like to also thank Josh Griffin Chase McBride Dina Perfetti Dini and their and their contributes to support of Erie High School their contributions have been invaluable to the success of our schools extracurricular programs I stand here tonight

004to recognize these accomplishments of two groups I know you only see one group in front of you but we have two groups our Erie High School cheerleading squad and we also have Ramon Salzar who was unable to be here tonight this year Ramon Salzar successfully defended his 126 pound state title which he won the previous year his final season with the Tigers resulted in a remarkable 27 and 3 record due to his exceptional performance and commanding presence in the high school wrestling arena in the past few years Ramon was awarded the title of daily camera wrestler of the year unfortunately Ramon is in Austria right now wrestling in Europe so he's unable to attend with his family moving next to our Erie High School cheer team that has once again proven to be the best

005in the state for the fifth year in a row our cheer team has become state champions it is a yes absolutely I was honored to recognize the leadership and guidance of also our head coach Nora Roth who has pushed the team to strive for excellence Nora has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the success of our team she has inspired and motivated our cheerleaders and pushed them to great heights her leadership has been instrumental in building a team that not only exceeds in cheerleading but also in character this team has an understanding of the small details which is crucial for for a championship team the focus and little things to help develop a good technique and muscle memory has led to their consecutive championships but specifically this year each EHS cheerleading is about the entire group

006and you will see that in front of you tonight in conclusion madam president members of the board dr. Haddad and distinguished guests please join me in congratulating the Erie High School cheerleading team on their exceptional achievements their hard work dedication and commitment to excellence as they inspire us all thank you I'm gonna pass it to Nora so speaking isn't my first favorite thing to do obviously and so we meet again every year I feel like I end with see you next year but this really has become quite the tradition at this point this tradition has a great deal to do with the tremendous efforts put forth by first and foremost the athletes standing in front of you today it also has a great deal to do with the parents you see sitting behind us taking

007up the majority of the seating here today and most of the seating at every event we attend we travel in a large group which I love and it also has a great deal to do with the support of our athletic department at EHS mr. Carpenter and Courtney Stadessa this is also my first time to put together a full speech so I hope you will bear with me I figured after fights five state championships I could take a couple extra minutes I know everyone here knows that our sport is unique a lot of people in here probably wouldn't know what a competition routine looked like and that's okay maybe next year I can add on five extra minutes and roll in a projector for a quick routine review what I do want to get across today

008is the unique aspect of the perfection and performance the sport takes we get all year to work on elite skills to compete them once at a competition there are no redos there is literally zero room for error I played multiple sports in my life and there and there was never a sport that had this unique aspect you missed a free throw you played tough defense you got the ball back and you moved on in cheer you miss your grip your flyer drops they give you a deduction and you hope the rest of your team was good enough to overcome you don't get to just go again or move on now add on that they want you to look happy doing all of this not just happy they want you to look ecstatic like you are

009not throwing humans in the air flipping your body over backwards while spinning and then yell about how much you love your school in the middle of all of it now I want to come back to that whole zero mistakes thing can you imagine the amount of trust you have to have in one another as a teammates to compete knowing that everyone is going to put the same amount of effort in to have zero mistakes I'm an adult and I'm gonna be honest I would have a hard time believing that everyone at my job comes to work every day with the intent of having zero mistakes obviously that's not real and as a coach and a teammate we all know that the chances of us having zero mistakes always is slim to none which is why

010our goal is just to be proud of the routine we put on the floor but even to know that as a team of high school athletes every person on the floors intent is to have zero mistakes is something bigger than any trophy ever could be intent is everything and the lessons these ladies learn from the intent we put forth at practice and on the competition floor have shaped them into strong confident women that will change the world the last thing I want to wrap up on and I promise this is it is the growth of the program I think it is awesome to come in every year and stand in front of you and for everyone to say congratulations but ultimately I hope that when we leave it is something that is talked about for

011longer than just these 15 minutes Erie is growing our program is growing and we want our support to continue to grow as well Erie has won 26 state championships since opening its doors out of those 26 state championships 20 of those have been won by female sports now that is no shade to my male sport can counterparts I love all of them coaching with the area high school and all of my friends every single program fights to provide an atmosphere for growth and we each push each other to the next level which I love in 2019 our score at state was at 91.21 in 2021 our score at state was a 91.5 our score at state in the other 2021 round two because of covid our score was 91.45 that was the first year we

012had the highest overall score out of every division then in 2022 this last year we had a 95.95 which was the highest overall score once again in any division by 1.85 points that's a huge jump in score from 2021 to 2022 that is drive that is every single one of these kids wanting to be the best and not just Colorado but the nation this is our program's fifth consecutive state championship and we have placed in the top three at the national level making us nationally recognized putting our juniors and seniors on college weight watch lists things like this are changing our students athletes lives we are student first we are students first and athletes second but these things are important to our kids they change the trajectory of their time in high school and their

013time in college they help pay for their college educations and for some make college a reality as always thank you for your time to recognize these ladies today they are truly some of the most phenomenal humans I have met and I am lucky to not only know them but coach them thank you for giving me the time to dive deeper into who we are as a program and what it means to us to represent Erie High School and the world of cheerleading if we gained one new fan in this room today I would call that a win and if any of you show up to a competition there might even be an Erie cheer shirt in it for you we do have some of the best gear in the game and I promise you you

014will be entertained we did turn Matt Buckler into a hardcore cheer fan so anything is possible thank you very much remarkable congratulations ladies that's incredible do board members have questions comments wow I'll just say this is my home district area school so I'm so proud of you all and I the last almost two years that I've been sitting here you've been here every year so to say that you five years and then I noted that of the 26 championships 20 have been female champions so that's amazing and that means you're doing great things and we're so proud of you thank you okay our next guests are from Meade High School and I'd like to call up Meade athletic director assistant principal Chad Iden Strauger to introduce his guests madam president board of education dr. dad

015and council thank you again it's always a pleasure when I get to come represent Meade High School meet athletics and meet activities today I get to introduce two different groups of human beings that both represent Meade High School the exact way we'd want them to our first representative helped restart our speech and debate program we've had a trouble finding a sponsor for that program but with the support of this student we were able to restart our speech and debate program this year and under the guidance of mr. Ryan Campbell this student helped us claim our second state championship in Meade High School speech and debate history the first one being I believe 12 years ago so it's been some time since we've had a chassis state champion within our speech and debate program Ren Pritchett

016is a senior this year at Meade High School what separates him like I said but besides helping restart our speech and debate program Ren also sports a 4.4 GPA I will try and say the word of which he won his state championship in and you guys are free to ask him when he comes back out but he won his state championship in extinct extemporaneous speaking which really means that means off the cuff I googled that and Wikipedia it and did a couple other things to make sure I fully understood what that meant and I'll let him explain what goes into that whole process of being prepared and then answering questions off of what he prepared for and handling those conversations in another way but Ren has been such a proponent of everything that we want

017in Meade High School so when you read his article about winning the state championship he was ecstatic that he won but what he was super excited about was that the program started back over he was excited that the team finished 9th he was excited that the program was going to continue and live on once he graduates this year and gets to go to an Ivy League school hopefully of his choosing so that's what separates him and makes him such a spectacular student and representative of Meade High School so with that I'm gonna let him talk to you about what extemporaneous speaking is because I will make a I will not do it do it justice so with that I'd like to introduce senior from Meade High School Ren Pritchett. Hello I just like to first

018off thank everybody for being here and thank the board for having me here Mr. Eisen Trugger did say it right it is extemporaneous speaking basically what happens is I get a I do United States extemporaneous speaking so I get a US political topic or economic topic or environmental topic I get a question and then I have 30 minutes to write a seven-minute speech on it and then perform it so it is very stressful I compare it to when you procrastinate and then write your essay the night before it's due which I'm good at both things so it's just it like Mr. Eisen Trugger said I'm very proud that we were able to restart our program and I'm glad that along with the ninth place we get a plaque to put up in the hallway so

019that people can see that our speech and debate program is here that we have it and hopefully that attracts more students to participate in it because I truly believe speech debate is such a good just activity to build life skills my public speaking ability has been improved greatly due to speech debate my confidence has improved greatly due to speech debate and I feel like many students can take advantage of speech debate and find the same skill sets and improve themselves excellent job thank you Fran as noted he's a wonderful speaker and handles this like a 35 year old adult when he comes and speaks in front of you so like I said it's super proud of him on this next group this is my first time in seven years getting to welcome the Mead wrestlers

020to the Board of Education to introduce some state champions and I couldn't be more proud this group in this program has changed the culture within and as a result of changing the culture within their wrestling program in that wrestling room they've seen success both on the mat and in the community and and I fear saying this at times but I wasn't a big wrestler coming into this job as the athletic director and with the leadership of Ty Tatum and getting to go to these events and see the work that these student-athletes put in there is no sport that is more difficult than what these people put themselves through I had the the joy of going with them to Chadron Nebraska for two nights and to see how they take care of their bodies and they

021support one another they get the proper rest and they prepare a match ends they just go get ready for the next match and to see the success that this program had this year next year we come back with the third highest points in the state of Colorado for the class for a which is a testament to the program that coach Tatum has built I'll introduce coach Tatum in a second to introduce our two wrestlers but behind me our wrestlers Jake Glade and Dalton Berg both juniors at Meade High School Jake Glade was the 144 pound state champion this year and I'll just give a brief little run of what he did they're both regional champs in the state tournament which is the best of the best Jake won his matches by pin major decision major

022decision and then he pinned his guy in the championship match as well so going against the best in the state of Colorado Jake he didn't make light work of them because he worked very hard at that but he put in a performance that wasn't seen in a lot of weight classes in Colorado and then Dalton at 175 pounds won by fall major decision fall and then he got a takedown in overtime in the state championship match against a wrestler who had beat him previously in the year it was such an exciting time to see the Meade community and the wrestling community and there's experiences but like I said it wouldn't be it wouldn't be possible without the leadership of the man I'll introduce next to for the seven years I've been at me and for

023the 14 years of mead high school he's been the wrestling coach he's been in the St. Rain Valley schools for 28 years as a PE teacher wrestling coach as a mentor as a dad he fills all roles as a community and I couldn't be more proud to have him as my wrestling coach and that is mr. Ty Tatum if I would have known Wren was gonna be here I would have spoke with him earlier and have him do the talking for me so Jake and Dalton have both been outstanding for us Jake this was actually his third time placing placed as a freshman during the COVID year tore his cartilage in one of his knees last year wrestled on torn cartilage at the state tournament and placed decided that that wasn't enough of a challenge

024and did it again this year two weeks before the state tournament and wrestled again in the state tournament with torn cartilage having surgery afterwards so in addition to winning a state championship it was a pretty big accomplishment for him Dalton this is his second time placing and I think he probably would have placed as a freshman but because of the COVID stuff didn't quite work out besides their accomplishments on the mat they're both high-character leaders within our program within our community the conversations that we've had postseason is is not only the kids in our program look up to them but the kids in our community and so it's great to have two kids that that are so exceptional both on and off the mat represent Meade High School. Dalton is also a three-sport athlete so

025he stays busy hello I'm Sarah and I represent the Meade area and I'm very proud of everyone standing up here tonight first of all I don't know a whole lot about wrestling I learn more every time that you all are here and I appreciate that but I was watching the news for updates all the time they just weren't updating me fast enough but I do remember your pictures and a little interview with Ty there later after the season and congratulations to all of your hard work may ask what your other sports are yeah so I wrestle I play soccer and I also play baseball all for me so you're really bored right yeah yeah I try to stay busy somehow right congratulations on all your hard work I'd love to come to a wrestling match

026some time and learn a little bit more I have a lot to learn though a lot of pressure there all right and Ren thank you you know I in this district students have many opportunities and to hear that we have students bringing back and creating more opportunities to leave behind when you're when you've moved on is just absolutely wonderful and I'm gonna try it one time extemporaneous yes I've learned a new word today and I've successfully pronounced it well I thank you for that and I just feel that school should be an opportunity for people to pursue whatever passion they have and it should build the skills that they want to build and that set them up for success in the future and I feel like speech and debate was crucial for me because I

027did it through Holy Family my freshman and sophomore year because we didn't have it at Meade and I recognized you know that it improves so many skills and it brought such value to my life like why can't we have that for everybody else and thanks to the work of mr. Eisenhower and dr. young at Meade high school we brought it back it's absolutely wonderful please come back and let us know how it's working out for you and everything that you do that's awesome thank you absolutely do you all have parents in the audience they do all the parents have made the journey as they do every event for these guys thank you parents for being here and for your support okay thank you our next group is from Longmont High School and I'd like to

028call up their athletic director and assistant principal Pete Sheck to introduce his guest I want to thank the board for having us having us out tonight and being able to take part in this opportunity to celebrate all the great things going on in Saint Bryan School District and it's you know it's amazing to see them all out there and all the the awesome things that have happened over the winter Trojan Nation had a great winter and these guys were definitely the the highlight of of that winter I promised the coaches I wouldn't steal any of their thunder so I won't I won't go into too much detail about the students but I do want to recognize the coaches I'm gonna start with mr. Jim Dornan he is our speech and debate coach he's been at

029Longmont High School for 29 years he's been our speech and debate coach for 25 years he believed yes last year maybe was a year before received a lifetime achievement award so just does an amazing job with our speech and debate program and it always has good numbers and it's always performs very very well and we're very very proud of that so with that I'm going to turn it over to mr. Dornan and let him thank you Pete I have to introduce you tonight Greta Weedle and Ben Howard they were in the last 50 years we have the St. Mary district has three debate champs you're looking at two of them right now the other one clerked for the Supreme Court and is a professor at the University of Chicago Law School so we're hoping for

030big things from these guys as well and Ben's a junior so he's got another one but Greta will leave me next year so I believe we're supposed to introduce ourselves my name is Greta Weedle I've been on the Longmont High speech and debate team for three years I've been a captain for the past two and this year I took a state championship obviously as Dornan said in Lincoln Douglas which is one-on-one style debate it was a co-championship between me and the person next to me out of a pool of what I think was about 53 kids both of us managed to work our way on opposing sides of a bracket to a co-championship and that really rarely happens on a state level with debate because of the just like sheer level of competition so it

031was pretty cool yeah I'm Ben Howard I've been on the debate team also for three years I also do Lincoln Douglas debate which is Greta said is a one-on-one style of debate and as Greta also said we both got co-championship the co-state championship at the state tournament by being on opposite sides of the bracket and going through on a pose we were told we might be asked some questions so we're open to that now thank you so much and I'll ask the first question which is is there anybody in this room more proud of you than we are maybe your parents or fans that is my parents John and Laura Weedle and then my dad is back there hit the phone he is also proud I hope you think you'd imagine what yeah so the

032topic was justice requires open borders for human migration so we have to do both sides of it in our event you get a randomized side drawn right before the round and so you have to have both sides of the topic prepped out and this one was especially about like migratory justice and essentially if we didn't have border restrictions would that lead to a more just world gives me hope for the future absolutely incredible achievements so congratulations do you have plans for next year yeah so I'm a senior obviously and I am going to the University of Arizona in the Honors College on scholarship to study law excellent hello I also have a next year actually too since I'm a junior I'm gonna still be on the debate team my goal is hopefully to do this

033year but slightly better I'd like to try and take the state championship next year we'll see if that happens so that's what I'm gonna be shooting for next year we're really hoping at some point Greta will come out of her shell and really try to show her true colors with that our other celebration tonight our swim coach Carly day Ellie I'm working on getting her pronounce her name correctly I screwed up every time she's done an amazing job she's been our swim coach for five years and you know she's top level in terms of coaching swim and you know the X's and O's of swim but the thing that always oppresses me about her and how she works with her girls she does such a great job of building team and creating a sisterhood with

034the girls so that they they can rely on each other and depend on each other and hold each other up and it's it's always impressive to see those those young ladies be there for each other in their swim meets and that's always something impressed me so with that I will bring Carly to the mic hi thanks Pete for having me go after this speech people so I just want to say I'm honored to be here to tell you about Jordan she's been swimming for about eight years so like all amazing accomplishments she's definitely put in the work from early morning practices to two days to spending many weekends at swim meets she's definitely dedicated a tremendous amount of time to swimming and over the past few years she's been dedicating herself to all the other

035aspects that make a champion so I've never seen Jordan have a bad race and that's not to say that she always goes in and swims her best time ever but she takes each race as it comes and she doesn't let the last one bother her and then she reflects upon it as an athlete who truly wants to improve every time she's in the water so Jordan also really loves to race so it's really fun to watch her and she was really ready to win that event at state and before she even won like I knew it was gonna happen just because of her attitude and the way she went into that race but even after she did that and she went a best time and she won she just kept saying I can't believe it

036I can't believe I won so and that really just tells you how humble she is and what an amazing swimmer and athlete she is she was just as excited for her friend swims at state as she was about her win so it's such a pleasure to coach Jordan and it's really amazing to watch her swim and along with her family and her friends and her club coaches her teammates and her fellow Trojans we're all really proud of her accomplishments so congratulations Jordan so she's gonna come up and answer any questions you have hi Jordan congratulations amazing accomplishment and what year you again I'm sorry I'm a junior okay okay so no plans for next year other than more championships probably well thank you so much for being here what's your favorite event probably the 50

037or the 100 free favorites so and do you have parents here congratulations board members have any more questions can we get a picture with all of you okay and our next school is from Niwata High School and I'd like to introduce Joe Brown athletic director assistant principal from Niwata to interview introduce his guest awesome madam president members of the board dr. Adad thank you for the opportunity to be here again tonight to recognize some of the outstanding student-athletes at Niwata High School also thanks to our principal mr. Eric Rochkoff for his continued support and mr. Chase McBride or district athletic director for the amazing job that he does to to support our student-athletes so tonight we have an opportunity to recognize one of our swimmers and I'll bring out coach Treyman here in a moment

038this is Ella's first year as our head coach at Niwata High School and she's actually a Niwata High School alumni so it was really excited to bring her back as part of the program and and she's already made a great impact on our program and continuing to build it and and I'll have her introduce Jamie our outstanding student-athlete that was able to win two state championships in swimming this year and will be going on to swim at Dartmouth later this year so with that I'll introduce coach Treyman hi I'm coach Treyman this is my first year coaching at Niwata and I had the pleasure of coaching Jamie this season Jamie's just a phenomenal person all around she's an amazing swimmer she's just an amazing friend she's an amazing teammate going into it I was kind

039of scared just because I'm young and the girls are young and I was just nervous about that but Jameson made me feel right at home and she made sure everything was in place and then I knew what was going on in the new program but she got first in the hundred fly in the hundred back at state she took off quite a few seconds so that was amazing to watch her succeed in that she also was an anchor for one of our relays at state and she got us from seventh place to second place so that was so exciting to just watch her below it out of the water she'll be attending Dartmouth next year and I'm just incredibly grateful that I got to coach her for my first year and just see how an

040amazing swimmer she is so my name is Jamie I think that the specialist part about this whole experience has been I started swimming and I was six years old and competitively when I turned 10 and then I didn't swim my freshman year because I was at Lyons High School but then I at the beginning of my sophomore year and it just completely changed my whole perspective of swimming it added an entire new dimension to swimming and being able to have my teammates as my best friends also at my school was something that was really special and then having Ella as a coach this year was amazing and another really special thing was my dad was able to be the assistant coach so having him on the pool deck was something that was so special to

041have him at State and then the constant support from Mr. Brown and Mr. Roshkoff has just been amazing so I'm just very thankful to Nile High School and my whole experience there as a student and an athlete. And Jameson are your parents here tonight? Yes they are they're standing back there in the corner. Thank you so much for your support and what an amazing accomplishment and good luck next year have you heard of the Polar Bear Club? No I have not. It's a thing in New Hampshire jumping into ice water. We actually do have one of those I live in Lyons and we have one of those there so I'll have to partake in both. That's great well congratulations. Thank you. Can we get a picture? Can we get a picture with you? Before I

042introduce Janae Bird to give a rundown of how our fall and winter fine arts and performing arts have gone I just want to thank the board and Dr. Haddad and Brian Lamar for your team especially for for all the support that you've given our department over the first two seasons we we certainly couldn't do it without you and we certainly appreciate everything that you that you do for our community and our kids and and our department especially so without further ado before before we are done with our portion I'd like to introduce Janae Bird our fine arts coordinator to give an update on our our district's fine arts performing arts. Hello President Ragland, board and Dr. Haddad. I wrote everything down so that I don't miss anything important but thank you so much for having

043me here tonight I'm really proud to speak about all of our fine arts programs. Tonight I'll start with art because we're in the middle of our district art show and basically we have about 10,000 pieces of student artwork there right now and it's created by students at every grade level we're representing most of our schools and I think what's awesome is it's just a tiny snapshot of what's happening daily in our art classrooms so we'd love you to stop by if you haven't already and that's for everybody it's at the Boulder County Fairgrounds exhibit hall and it's open from 9 a.m. to 8 through Saturday and then 9 to 2 on Sunday and we do have a special event the artist open house that's tomorrow night from 5 to 6 30 and all of our

044student artists have been invited to attend alongside their teachers and it's just a really fun event so that's our update for art. Moving on to theater our theater programs are still in the thick of performance season we have plays and one acts and musicals all happening this week actually Longmont High School has Wizard of Oz going on as their musical and Mead High School has curtains their musical. In December we had our six high schools with curricular theater programs attend the thes con which is basically this big Colorado theater event for all high schools and both students and teachers can attend workshops with professionals from for every aspect of theater whether it's the technical side or the performance side and they also get to compete and so all of our schools that attended that had

045some students that were received the highest rating and were invited to compete at the national event so that's pretty exciting and then one big highlight is we had our second annual theater day in February that's an event we created where our high school students that have theater programs they are creating workshops for middle school students to attend and kind of get a taste of what theater looks like at the next level so all of our middle schools are invited to bring students and they select workshops based on their interests so it could be anything from makeup to stage combat to improvisation to costuming lights and sound and I think an amazing part is that our high school students are learning leadership through that and and not just partaking in it but now they are teaching

046it to younger students and just showing them why they're passionate about theater so that was awesome and we'll continue that and then last but not least as you know at my last board meeting visit music is just doing some really amazing things this year our presence at CMEA was outstanding between our presenters our performances that was really neat and then we had an outstanding number of students representing us at all state choir band and orchestra including we had the most students for a district statewide for middle school all-state choir so that was some bragging rights for us let's see here our own district honor events are planned by our music educators and we brought in a variety of guest clinicians that are nationally recognized to work with our kids so that was really valuable as

047well so during this fine arts report I typically rattle off lots of numbers and lists if you've heard me give give one before and while we have certainly an outstanding number in all of our areas this year I thought I'd share something a little bit different I've been able to connect with some visitors at our art show about our fine arts programs and their impact and so I just wanted to quickly share that with you the first group that I met yesterday was a mom who was visiting with her two students or her two children and one was in kindergarten and one was in first grade and I asked them you know why they were there what they were there to see and both of the students had artwork selected for their school so I

048said how does that make you feel to have your artwork selected and the kindergartener said it feels happy and good at the same time because it got hung up and then the the first grader chimed in well mine got hung up too it's a caterpillar and then the kinder said I have so much fun in art class and this is my friend's artwork and they started showing me all of their friends creations and then the mom chimed in and she just said you know before kindergarten on their free time my kids love to play games on the iPad and you know watch shows on TV and after they started art class this fall both of them love to come home and draw and I just thought that was really cool and that that had impacted

049her as well I met a freshman who was there just checking it out and I said oh do you are you an artist you have art here and he said no but I have friends that are and I said well what are you involved in and he said choir and theater and I was like oh tell me about that and so he said to me choir and theater have provided a family of peers who share the same interest as me and it's led to so many friendships choir and theater is the place where I can safely step away from the stresses of school and express my love for all the things that I do and the very last one is there were two seniors visiting they came on their planning period or that not their

050planning period they came on their off-block today and same thing I said you know what are you here to see so one of them was the artist and he had brought his friend to come check out his work and I said you know why what are you proud of that's presented here he had four photos and he said I just love communicating my ideas to others through photos and telling stories even if they're simple and his friend was also involved in performing arts so she said let me find it she said I've been really lucky to be involved in choir orchestra and theater at my school it's been really exciting to be able to grow my music knowledge in multiple areas because of all the offerings at my school and they were seniors so I

051just thought it was really cool how at this one event we have a big myriad of ways that all the the fine arts that we have in our district kind of popped up naturally and I just want to conclude by thanking each of you for your continued support for fine arts and st. brain we have a really special thing going and I'm really appreciative of everything that everyone does to support those programs so thank you thank you for your time tonight and letting us share some of our successes from the winter and fall thus far and up next we have Alex Downing and some of our robotics teams that have shared some recent success as well thank you everyone for having us like Chase said my name is Alexandra Downing and I am the competitive

052robotics program manager at the Innovation Center and I just want to say thank you to Dr. Haddad and Dr. Capuchin for your support of our robotics program all these years we've been hosting tournaments for the last ten years and in December we actually hosted our hundredth tournament in our district and we ended the year with a hundred and fifteen tournaments in ten years that we've hosted for robotics we had 235 teams and around 850 students that were involved and today we have some of those teams here that have had some amazing accomplishment throughout their year this is our elementary teams we have the first team is what just happened from Central Elementary and we have robotics rats from Mead Elementary these two teams won the tournament champion award and then we have our last elementary

053is radioactive reachers and they won the skills award at state and the excellence award at state these three teams along with some other elementary schools will be attending worlds at the first week in May so they've worked really hard and we just appreciate all your guys's work that you've done this year so thank you do you want them today okay they're gonna be bringing middle school in do you want a picture yeah okay you guys are gonna take a picture okay yes we have all their parents that came and supported them for their long robotic season so can you guys come up here in the middle so next we have our VRC middle school teams and they we have two teams from Eltona and the mechanical mountains and mechanical chaos they both won the tournament

054championship at their state tournament so congratulations and we have mechanical mountains they also won skills and excellence award so they won three state awards at their tournament we're gonna have you guys take a picture too okay so can you guys get in the middle oh you might have to stand up here we have our high school teams coming in we have two teams here that have won some awards we have rock lobsters and pronounce this they won together the tournament championship so they both say brain teams and we at their tournament they really excelled and one of the things about these high schoolers if you look at them some of them have been doing robotics in second grade some of them since elementary school so their accomplishment the last couple years have been wonderful to

055see and pronounce this from Longmont High and rock lobsters from Erie like I said they won the tournament champion and pronounced this one skills and excellence so they also won three awards at their state tournament as well so congratulations you guys we're gonna take a picture I appreciate you guys having us let them honor our students in a couple weeks we'll be headed to worlds we have from our district 33 teams going to be participating in the world robotics tournament in Dallas starting April 26th with no April 25th with high school and then we're gonna move on down there so it's very exciting for us to have your support and I just love robotics and what it does for our kids so I really appreciate you guys supporting all of us thank you yes we

056just keep increasing those kids keep doing an awesome job so thank you so much I appreciate it thank you for your leadership thank you okay next up Todd yes you know problem that's okay and they actually Parker was just here but I do want to highlight I'm one of the Erie community teams under the leadership of Sophia Si I think she was in here she may have stepped out with the with the high schoolers but she has done a phenomenal job leading these young young young students in robotics she started at Erie High School with a community team because at the time they didn't have a team at the high school so that's the rock lobsters that I think they were in the black shirts that you saw there and under that better with butter

057I like that I like the name but you know because I love butter so so the pancake pounders also and then also with another one of her co-leads Mitch glaze they also have a team called unknown error so you know you got to love the names and they have great great students on those teams several of them are from Erie High School a couple of them are from Mead High School and then we have a student who came out of district to be on those that team so those teams so it's pretty amazing and as you heard one of the teams the the rock lobsters are going to worlds in a couple of weeks here and they've won several awards and I'll just highlight some of the ones that they've won the create award they've

058won the state championships along with pronounced this as we just talked about along with the the state champion so you'll see them in worlds and if you haven't been a world it's amazing you got to go we went last year with my middle schooler and again I can't say more as an engineer by trade I know how robotics is changing our workforce not only in the engineering field but in the medical field in the service industry for that matter so what these students are learning is very important and one of the things I probably forgot to mention is that Parker he helps our Innovation Center with a lot of the the tournaments that we have as a judge and announcer but on top of that he started that team rock the rock lobsters so we

059see our students not only competing but leading as well so something to be proud of for all of our students in the district so thanks thank you good evening president Raglan members of the board superintendent had dad I have three administrative folks here to introduce today I'm going to start out with the record the to introduce you to dr. Felicia Reimer as dean of students in Iowa high school so if you can come up Felicia and you can come up to Eric join her as a principal Eric so as she comes up dr. Reimer graduated with a bachelor's degree in Spanish from Texas Christian University and obtained a master's degree in Spanish from Middlebury College in Vermont dr. Reimer received a doctorate degree in foreign language education from the University of Texas Austin and obtained

060a principal's licensure focusing on administrative leadership and policy studies from the University of Colorado at Denver from 2007 to 2014 dr. Reimer served as a Spanish teacher at Dakota Ridge High School in Jeffco Public Schools and since 2014 dr. Reimer has served as the assistant principal at Pomona High School Jeffco schools so I'd like to introduce dr. Reimer to you and you can say a few words I would just like to thank the board and superintendent and mr. Roscoe for this opportunity and I'm super grateful to be joining such a vibrant community both as a district and at 9 watt so thank you for having me I'd next like to introduce to you miss Julia Cooper as the principal of Columbine Elementary School so as Julie makes the way up here miss Cooper graduated with

061a bachelor's degree in English and master's degree in reading and language arts from Sonoma State University in California she obtained her administrative services credentials in California in 2019 and will be seeking a transfer of that administrative credential to Colorado from 2006 to 2016 miss Cooper taught English at Maria Cario High School in Santa Rosa California from 2016 to 2018 she served as a teacher on special assignment supporting professional development for the district's collaborative curriculum design teams for Santa Rosa City School District in Santa Rosa California then followed that by serving as in the same role part-time from 2018 to 2019 while also serving part-time as an assistant principal at Helen Lehman Elementary School in Santa Rosa California and then miss Cooper was then promoted to serve as principal of Helen Lehman Elementary School from 2019

062to 2021 so if I can introduce miss Cooper to you. Thank you so much President Raglin, Dr. Haddad and Dr. Kaputian and board members I'm so excited to be here and to be welcomed into this community I have lived here for two years and my kids go to st. brain and I knew after seeing their experiences that this was a district that I wanted to be a part of and so when the position at Columbine came up that was my first choice that's exactly where I wanted to be so I am honored to have the opportunity to work with the community and be a part of this team. And then finally I'm going to introduce miss Anna Mills as Dean of Students at Sorin Heights PK 8 so if you want to make your way

063up and joining Anna is her boyfriend Dan and here you can wave is Danny Dan you wave and then parents Mark and Mary Mills so good to see you guys again and then joining her also is her principal Cyrus Weinberger so miss Mills graduated with a bachelor's degree in biological science natural sciences with a minor in Spanish and secondary education licensure from Colorado State University she obtained a master's degree in leadership of educational organizations with principal licensure from the University of Colorado Denver from 2011 to 2012 miss Mills served as a Spanish teacher and technology teacher at Trail Ridge Middle School from 2012 to 13 she served a science teacher at Eaton Middle School in the Eaton School District from 2013 to 16 miss Mills served as a science and STEM teacher at Trail Ridge

064Middle School and then from 2016 to 2018 served as a science teacher at Altona Middle School since 2018 miss Mills has been serving as an innovation coordinator at Sorin Heights PK 8 so again welcome miss Mills as the Dean of Students at Sorin Heights. So I'd just like to start off expressing my heartfelt gratitude to Dr. Haddad and also the school board for entrusting me with this great responsibility. I am so humbled honored and excited to be the new Dean at Sorin Heights PK 8. I would also like to extend my thanks to Dr. Kapushin, Dr. Profetti Dini, Mr. Weinberger, my parents and also Dan. Their invaluable support and guidance not only throughout my teaching career but also my master's program that I completed here in the district with CU Denver was truly so supportive.

065Their instrumental mentorship has truly shaped my professional journey and I am so grateful for your unwavering support. As a graduate of this district I have personally experienced the power of systems within our district and now I have the privilege of helping to contribute to our systems as well. I started out my career here as a science and Spanish teacher and my goal becoming the innovation coordinator was to spark that curiosity within design thinking and science. Now as a woman in leadership I am aspiring to empower all of our students to become agents of change and leaders in our district and also beyond. So once again thank you so much for this opportunity for me to serve as the new Dean at Sorin Heights PK 8. I was just going to say and as a teacher

066in St. Brain congratulations but also congratulations on being an Apple certified teacher which recognizes you as not only one of the best teachers in St. Brain in Colorado but across the entire nation and we're all very very proud of you. You're outstanding so good job. Thanks Tom. Next up we have our audience participation and we have a number of people that have signed up in advance if you need to if you'd like to address the board tonight we don't have too much time but and you haven't signed up we have a sign-up sheet up here. So thank you for joining us and the Board of Education greatly values feedback from our community. We will hear up to 30 minutes of non-agenda topics and we don't have any agenda topics to hear about tonight that we

067know of and each speaker will be limited to three minutes and it's also a long-standing practice of the board not to respond or address the public comment section of the agenda but please know that we are actively listening to you. So I'll just call in order of the sign-up the people's name and you can step up to the podium and state your name and address for the record. First we have Alice Lister. Welcome. Thank you for having us. Hello my name is Alice Lister and I am in eighth grade at Altona Middle School and my name is Emerson Laughlin and I am also in eighth grade at Altona Middle School. It has recently come to our attention that the student code of conduct contains frequent use of gendered language. We are here to propose that

068terms like his or her and other use of gendered language be changed to gender neutral language in order to include all students. One example of this language is on page 57. It was the quote it was determined that he or she is which could be changed to it was determined that they are. Yes in order for students to feel accepted and safe in their community we need to change how schools approach gendered language altogether and the changes is in little baby steps so one step even if it might be small is important to take and this is why we think this is an important change that needs to be made. Without this it might not seem important but without this students cannot fully feel accepted and the first thing parents see when they look at

069our school is what they have written their policies and what is said about them and this is what they will foresee so we do not show and present our schools as a place that's fully accepting and how can we know that students who come there will feel accepted. I have personally looked through the dress code and student code of conduct to find examples of this language. Some examples I have compiled an incomplete list of some of these examples. Some of these examples are on page 29, 30, 32, 47, 55, 57, again 57, 59, 61, 64, 65, 65, 66, 69, 70, 71, 98 and in the dress code. Students would feel, I would feel that it would be far more appropriate than she, her, and he, and pronouns to describe students, parents, guardians, and staff. If

070you would like a copy of the list that I've made I have a few. Thank you and thank you for having us and letting us speak. Thank you. And next up we have Cory Bouck. Cory, okay Sarah Harriman. Hi I'm Sarah Harriman and I have two students at St. Rain, sorry obviously St. Rain and Sunset Middle School. We've been very happy with our experience there. Really appreciate everyone's hard work. Could you state your, sorry, your address for the record? Yeah, 1945 Diamond Drive. My children inform me that their school starts the earliest in the district which is at 730 in the morning. My kids who are normally energetic in elementary school are now tired every day and I know the first thought people have is like we should put your kids to bed sooner and

071teenagers need eight to ten hours of sleep so to wake up at 7 they would need to go to bed at 9. We take a little bit longer to walk to school so my kids actually go to bed at 830. It's really weird putting your 14 year old to sleep at 830 at night and I doubt that too many other parents are doing this. And so why is this an important issue for the school board? It's because sleep is the other half of learning. So our teachers work really hard during the day stimulating their brains, challenging them in new ways every day and they need sleep in order to process that information and to store it. It's also important because it helps with mental health, depression, anxiety, reducing illnesses, obesity, blood pressure, blood sugar, school

072attendance goes up, reduced car accidents involving teenagers and importantly they say it's not just in the morning it's actually all day long in counties where schools start later there are fewer teenage car accidents. Also one that both teachers and parents would really appreciate is better emotional regulation which we definitely want for our teenagers. A later start time would reduce unsupervised time after school when teens are most likely to get in trouble and teachers of our middle school and I'm assuming also the high school who have elementary school students have to make special arrangements to get their children to school sometimes an hour after they have to start work. The American Academy of Pediatrics says that teenage school start time should be after 830 a.m. in our district all the high schools start at 745 a.m.

073so it's a 45 minute difference which adds up over the week. Elementary school students are not adversely affected by early start times in fact in my experience they are awake at sunrise every single day ready to go so I'm asking the district to consider switching the schedule so that the elementary school start earlier and the high schools start later. This would require some adjustments to busing and after-school activities but St. Rain wouldn't need to be a leader in this. Already districts nearby do this Adams Boulder Brighton Cherry Creek Denver Lilleton Thompson and Weld and this fall Jeff Coe will be switching to the new schedule as well. Thank you. And next up is Tanya Frerichs-Peterson. Good evening I am Tanya Frerichs-Peterson I'm at 8452 Firethorn Court in Niwot. So my family moved to this district

074specifically last year because I was so delighted by the reports that I read the things that I saw on great schools and the district I was in previously had a four-day school week and you know that's maybe not so great but anyway what I wanted to just talk a little bit about for the next couple of minutes is books. So I believe that ensuring children have access to a wide variety of books and other reading materials is a great way to enhance their access to learning. So diverse books help develop critical thinking skills. Reading gives children such a wonderful outlet to explore and develop their imaginations. I will never forget my own childhood glee at finding a fantastic new series to read even now as an adult. I experienced joy, laughter, and grief along with

075characters in the books that I read. My children love to read. I have six of them but only three of them are going to be St. Vrain kids. I have two at Niwot Elementary and then I have one that will be going to Niwot Elementary. So by the way love that robotics program. That's one of the reasons that one of my kids is going to Westview. Anyway so my kids love to read and they have a wide diversity of topics in which they're interested. They like fiction books. They like nonfiction books. They like science fiction. They like my fifth grader. I don't want to hear any more about the Titanic. But anyway so curbing access to books might solve a specific family's concerns about their exposure to a particular topic but limiting those books or

076topics in libraries removes those learning opportunities from other children. Reading allows children to learn about foreign or uncomfortable situations or experiences in a safe environment. Reading also allows children to learn about history and the world at large from the words of authors that may not look like them, that may not think like them, and kids deserve representation in their books. In our libraries we need to continue to have positive depictions of a large range of cultures, races, religions, and customs. So after speaking with Superintendent Haddad last week I was assured that while St. Wayne Valley School District does take feedback from individual families regarding their children's access to books that they feel may be sensitive for their family, they do safeguard access to those books to other families and children. So I just want to

077say that I believe that our St. Wayne Valley School District teachers and librarians are trained and equipped to determine which books are suitable for their libraries and their classrooms and I want to thank the board for continuing to support our children in their quest for a love of learning. Thank you so much. Bye. Thank you. Next up we have Scott McLean. All right, nice choices. I like that. Hi, I'm Scott McLean at 750 Lincoln Street here in Longmont. I'm actually like to follow that up with saying that I also moved to Longmont not too long ago. I have a child in preschool and part of what brought us here was taking a look at some of what's going on with the schools and you know just kind of a level of education that some of

078the schools out here have and you know to follow up on what we just heard a little bit of. I was actually born overseas. I travel a lot and in that time I did get to experience lots of different cultures, lots of different people, lots of different ideas and kind of hearing what's going on throughout the country it does worry me at times because I got to experience a lot of things firsthand and I know a lot of kids don't because they're restricted in how they can travel, where they can go to, whether it's financial, whether it's personal. So again I'm here to just say that my goal as a parent is to provide my child with as much exposure as much possibility and you know sometimes it can't be done the same way that

079it was done for me growing up. So access to library books, access to school books, all those things I think are just hugely important for his development and the development of all kids and I'll echo the last statement that was made which is I trust you know part of the reason I move here is I trust the educators to know what they feel is appropriate for you know children both my child's age older as well as our librarians and I hope that we can continue to trust them you know despite like I said there are some other folks that you know might not feel that their kids need that same exposure but I think that again we should continue to maintain that and facilitate that exposure for for those kids so thank you guys very

080much for the time today. Thank you and next up we have Elizabeth Bailey. Thank you Madam President, esteemed board members, Dr. Haddad. I too picked this district for my kiddos. I have two Saint Bryan kiddos that have been in this system for nine years now. I have some very strong concerns about our school safety. I know that things are moving kind of rapidly and we have made the decision to store long guns in two of our schools. When that vote was passed by the board I attempted to access this building and was not able to get in so I was not able to speak so even though it's been passed I just want to go on record that I absolutely oppose to that decision. I think something that we are missing in our district is

081focusing on the mental health. I have a report here from Every Town Research between the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association. One of the top five things we can do to keep our students safe is to foster a safe and trusting school climate and I think we may be missing the mark here. I got more emails about after prom than I received about the decision that was being made to store long guns in two of our schools. I find that very disturbing. I was part of leadership Saint Bryan. I served on the PTO at hygiene for four years. I'm a very involved mom and when I talk to friends, I talk to colleagues, their response is why didn't I hear anything about this? I would love to implore the board to open

082these discussions up. Talk with gun safety experts, bring in mental health experts, talk to your community about what's happening, how it's happening and show us the data where this is actually going to keep our kids safer instead of you know policing our schools which are you know really going to affect disproportionately black and brown kids in our school. We already see it happening in other places. I don't want to see it happen here. I would like to see us focus on the mental health, get more counselors and start some of these age-appropriate drills that we do. There is lots of data out there that says we are traumatizing our kids with this. We've been going through this in Sandy Hook. I'm tired. I just want my kids to be safe when they go to school

083and I implore you to open these discussions so we can talk about this as a community. It's too important to just check a box and move on. Thank you. Thank you and next up we have Valerie Bartel. All right good evening Madam President, Dr. Haddad, honorable board members. Thanks for giving us the opportunity to speak. What I'm going to say tonight I may sound a little overly braggadocious of my child and yes I am a proud mother. However what I'm really trying to say is yes I want more of this from St. Varene Valley School District. He's a first grader. Oh and I should tell you my address. It's 1009 Alder Way in Longmont. He's a first grader in the St. Varene Valley School District and I would say that his teachers have played an

084integral role in his success. He originally attended Eagle Crest Elementary in preschool and then during COVID he switched over to Launch Ed and if you think that a kid cannot learn online in preschool or kindergarten you are sorely mistaken due to the rigorous efforts of his educators. He was testing in the above the 90th percentile in reading and writing and math when he get when he went back to school in person for first grade this year. And speaking of his time at Eagle Crest what I've enjoyed even more than his academic achievements is the commitment to honing strong citizenship and leadership skills. Through their leadership program at the school my son has taken upon himself to articulate and demonstrate what it takes to be a good leader. He always tells me about this program it's

085called RISE and it's an acronym for Responsible, Inclusive, Safe and Empathetic. And just as an aside I was in middle school before somebody told me what empathetic meant so I think that's great that the first grader is learning this. So anyhow he's demonstrating these skills daily. Most recently the school started a drive for recycling of silverware and he took it upon himself to start having me help ask and gather items from the community which is really great. He was able to donate 20 pieces to the school which is not bad for a six-year-old. I also wanted to express gratitude for open and timely communications from the administration. Earlier in the year we had a concern about not receiving timely school notifications for urgent matters such as secure status. Not only was that concern escalated to

086our principal but Mrs. Holden stuck with us until that issue was resolved. We're so used to people telling us that they'll get back to us and then we just never hear from them again. So it was really reassuring how seriously she took our concerns and followed them through to the resolution. And I would just encourage anyone who has concerns with their school how their education is being handled to become involved as a parent and you know make sure that I just want them to know that their parental involvement is important and welcomed. I haven't witnessed my child's education following any particular agenda political agenda unless that agenda is a commitment to a high-quality education. But as involved parents we're really happy with the education that he's being provided and not only is his academic success

087demonstrably high but his character has been strengthened by the curriculum as well. So thank you. Thank you and next up we have Annie Christopherson. Good evening my name is Annie Christopherson and I live at 3577 Larkspur Circle in Longmont. I am here as a parent of three St. Frane students one current and two who are already out and graduated. I would like to thank our staff and administrators this evening for their support of equity and inclusion for all students in this district. Your support and facilitation of the GSA groups in the district is such important work. For those of you who may not know GSA stands for Genders and Sexualities Alliances and Spaces of Acceptance. The clubs welcome LGBTQIA plus students and their allies. My gratefulness comes from our family's experience with our now 22

088year old daughter when she was 15 years old and a sophomore her attendance to her high school's GSA made a critical difference in her mental health and empowered her to be a successful confident young woman that she is today. Our daughter learned the language for what had been haunting her for years and helped her garner the courage to speak to her parents about the possibility that she might be transgender. She had already changed her pronouns with friends and with teachers at school. I have heard a few folks lately talking negatively about using a child's chosen pronouns without parents permission and I hear they think these groups are giving our kids ideas that they didn't already have. You cannot turn someone gay or transgender. We say it again you cannot turn someone gay. The information provided

089by the St. Frame Valley School District schools through GSA through literature about a variety of families and by following a child's desired pronouns can save their life. These groups provide a resource for parents should they decide to respectfully engage with the leaders. My husband and I did just that. We met with the leaders of the group and admittedly we were in a panic but we did not have an ounce of unnecessary moral outrage. We did not know what we did not know so we sought out information and caught up with our child as quickly as we could. Our daughter describes unidentified gender dysphoria as being intensely lonely and profoundly alienating. We've since learned that 82% of transgender youth consider suicide at some point. When our daughter first encountered the GSA she was struggling scholastically and

090unable to keep up with the activities she was passionate about. By her senior year she felt empowered, proud of who she was, and intensely loved and supported by her teachers and classmates. She topped off her senior year with the lead in her high school musical. When our children are loved and supported they can learn and thrive. I truly believe that the current fear surrounding the inclusion of language and stories about LGBTQIA plus individuals is an adult problem but our youth know better and are learning to value their peers. Thank you SBVSD for providing the safe spaces for our children and their peers to learn about one more type of person in the world and for normalizing diverse experiences. Thank you. And next up we have Jordan Wolfsbane. Sorry, Jordan. My name is Jordan Wolfsbane. I

091live at 115 Emory Street here in Longmont and I'm talking about a similar topic to the last. I am a community member here in Longmont. I moved here recently. I am a former neuroscientist and a machine learning engineer and my career allowed me to choose to live pretty much anywhere in the Western Hemisphere and out of everywhere I looked and my husband and I looked around. We visited Longmont and fell in love with it and decided to move here. I'm also a transgender woman. I grew up and went to school in the 90s in Texas and all of the things that you were thanked for just now were not at all true. I was a prolific reader. I read probably half the books in my elementary school and middle school libraries. Not a single book

092had a single character or a single person like me. This mere like mention of people like me was considered obscene and honestly for many people still seems to be but one of the reasons I wanted to be here one of the reasons I moved here is and to get away from Texas is that I wanted to be somewhere where you know the next generation of people like me isn't going through what I went through and I want to thank y'all for I know so I've read all the research I know how important school policies can be. I thank you all for getting like supportive school policies. I also know that trans and non-binary youth still need help. Not being discriminated against is great. Actually having their identities respected is great but there's a lot of

093hostility flying around even if it's not directed at them they still see it. It still scares them. It still impacts their mental health. I'm 35 it's seeing it impacts my mental health. I know I understand like that there is a wellness survey. It's not looking at all that y'all do that Dr. Haddad has access to that looks at that you know records how well students are doing and mental health stuff and including gender identity and sexual orientation. I like to ask or implore some of y'all to maybe ask the people that have that data how is that population doing in your schools. They're not doing well see what you can do about that. More counseling. Honestly y'all are the experts. I'm not gonna tell y'all what to do but I want to thank y'all and

094Thank you. And next up we have Emily Karlocheck. Emily? Okay then next up we have Andrew Parliament. Hi I'm Drew Parliament. I live at 225 East 8th Avenue here in Longmont. Apartment A4. I am a teacher here in the district. Currently my contract is split between two schools. New Meridian the alternative high school in town and St. Frame virtual school the alternative online school and between those two schools I host the GSA equivalent one we call it glow. The kids came up with it gay lesbian or whatever. I personally find it a bit more clever and then I help out with the GSA at the other school. This is my seventh year teaching overall and in my last my last school I was very much involved with the GSA there as well and I came

095at the encouragement of my friend Scott McLean who you heard from earlier under similar concerns about kind of nationwide sentiments about both student access to reading material related to LGBTQ plus individuals as well as teachers ability to communicate with students about those issues and I would like to say two things as someone who has been involved with GSA is for seven years. One is that not only is the mother we heard from earlier said no teacher is capable of turning a student trans or gay through a simple conversation I would also like to share that I have not encountered one teacher who has tried to. The conversations are always Nucleated from the student them talking about concerns sharing their story and as someone working for the first time my career at alternative high schools I

096would like to share that I have a number of students who have been open to me about being trans or gay or lesbian or whatever that have shared with excuse me shared with me that they felt academically well equipped to be successful at their neighborhood high school but left because of issues with bullying and I personally find the idea unconscionable that we should restrict students or teachers ability to engage with students when they bring those topics up themselves when many of them have been driven out of their home high schools for their identity and what they choose to share. Thank you. Thank you next we have Pauline Christian I'm I may not be reading it correctly Pauline Christiansen Christiansen and then we have Miguel Valdez good evening school board my name is Miguel Valdez I

097reside at 1520 Stewart Street I'm here to speak in support of educators that promote inclusion I have all children and students and speaking in opposition of efforts and groups that are for removing books and educational materials discussing gender identity and sexual orientation I speak in support of it because this support and information that a teacher or an educator can provide these students can save lives as a team grows through the and goes through the journey of figuring themselves out of those that are beginning to realize they are a gay lesbian transgender non-binary or whatever are going to go ahead and spear experience fear in isolation those that are bold enough to know who they are and come out publicly are obviously going to be targets of harassment however efforts by supportive educators that have access

098to educational material on LGBTQ people and their contributions to society as a whole can help those young individuals come out of isolation and become and work towards getting on a path to feeling accepted for who they are to become at peace with whom they are and allow them to contribute to society I was never educated on my community's contributions to the world as a previous speaker had gone ahead and made mention and it took me till I was 30 to learn about Alan Turing an English mathematician who was gay whose intelligence helped crack the coded messages of the Axis powers given the US and the Allies a valuable edge that contributed towards the Allies victory in World War two Mr. Turing as a gay man also can help develop theoretical computer science paving the way

099for the personal computer everyone's cell phone and laptop and computer owes a great debt of gratitude to this individual but again he was tried all right there was attempts to go ahead and erase them from history my concern is that there is a part of a coordinate that the effort to go ahead and restrict educators from providing information on LGBTQ people is part of a larger coordinated effort to erase LGBTQ people especially in regard to the transgender community what starts in the schools can quickly snowball towards greater censorship in the education and knowledge such as what we've seen in Missouri where their state assembly has voted to remove funding from their state's libraries I hold libraries in high regard because thanks to them my mother was able to understand who I was when I came

100out to her at 19 she had no clue about gay people because that's not what you're taught in a Guatemalan convent however she was able to go ahead and read about people read about the two spirits in the Native American culture and she and I were able to go ahead and have a relationship with each other something that I truly do treasure in closing I do feel that this is a discussion can go ahead and be fruitful and as long as we provide educators the support that they need we can see our children thrive thank you thank you do we have time for we have two more with the same last name on the list are we up are we done with our 30 minutes okay well that concludes our audience participation segment for this

101evening thank you so much we tremendously value your opinions next up we have the superintendent's report all right I'll try to get through this I have a slight cough as you all know the state can you guys hear yeah the state requires all 11th graders to take the SAT college entrance exam and then also 9th and 10th graders the PSAT and today we had our students take that first round of SATs and we had close to 90% of the students take the test we also had somewhere around 140 students opt out and we have a remaining number of students that will take the test on the makeup day and so that will be coming here I'm not sure that can't remember the exact date but the various high schools are contacting the students who either

102didn't take the test or didn't formally opt out which they're required to do if they're not going to take the test and they will let us know exactly how many students end up and our goal is to get every student who wants to take the test to take the test and then be able to provide them with helpful information the other update and you've seen a little bit of it with our hiring today we were able to offer the job at skyline high schools athletic director and eight slash AP and so we're very excited about that you'll have an opportunity to meet that individual in the near future we also as you saw the Columbine principal and a dean of students right now from an administrative perspective we have the principal's position at Long's Peak

103and an assistant principal's position which was upgraded from a Dean's position to an assistant principal's position as they continue to grow as a high school so those are our two and they've both been posted and we'll be finalizing the Long's Peak job here in the very near future and then we will be probably a few weeks down the road looking at the Frederick AP and we should be we should be good which is outstanding to think of how little the turnover has been I'm really also excited as we hire you'll see a pattern that there are some people from outside of our district and there are also some people from inside of our district and there's a balance there so very excited about the people that are being hired you heard a lot about the

104art show I had a chance to visit the art show the other day we actually moved our leadership cabinet meeting over to a room over there so that we could all take a look at it it's outstanding and I would encourage you all to go you saw enough about sports and robotics so I won't get into any of that but to tell you that the spring sports are really rivaling the success that we experienced in the fall and the winter and our music and drama and theater and all of our co-curricular programs are outstanding and our students and our teachers and staff are doing wonderful work there I did have a chance you know as you know I'm on the board of directors for the Colorado business roundtable and several other boards but this one

105in particular I really enjoy I enjoy them all but this one in particular I find really unique in that my colleagues who are on the board are all CEOs from large corporations in Colorado and today I had a chance to present to them the work that we're doing with the accreditation system and how the accreditation system works and how it doesn't work and what we're learning and what we're not learning and made it clear we're not interested in removing standardized testing from the equation we're just interested in making sure that the way in which the assessments are administered will yield accurate data number one and number two that we're looking as you've seen the students in robotics the students in athletics the students in music there's so many ways to demonstrate that you are prepared

106to be successful in life and it's important that we look at the input in schools versus the output and the one thing that really there were many things that caught their eye indicating that they had just no idea of all of these inconsistencies in the way in which the assessment was being administered but one of the things that really started a robust conversation when you look at the schools that are being rated the highest and you look at the schools that are being rated the lowest there is absolutely no difference in the performance of the students when you're looking at students who are living in poverty so if you have a school that is rated with distinction and a school that is rated with turnaround the only difference is the percentage of students that they

107have living in poverty because when you look at the performance of students with similar socioeconomic realities and in fact when you do see a difference you see the lower rated school perform higher with the same student and this is compelling because the question begs itself is is the rating as a result of the school and what they are doing or not doing or is the rating a result of something else we recently testified I had the opportunity to testify to the House of Representatives Education Committee and one of the members they were all outstanding they were all very welcoming one of the members said are you telling me that there's no difference between schools that there aren't good schools and bad schools he said because I adamantly disagree with you and I said no that's

108not what I'm telling you what I'm telling you is you will never know based on this system because you don't know what the school is actually doing or not doing all you're measuring is the test score but you don't have any interest in knowing what's leading to that test score and until you know that you can't in good faith give a school a rating you have to know what the inputs are in order to measure whether or not the output is a result of what you're doing or simply as a result of something outside of your influence so no I'm not telling you there aren't good schools or bad schools or better schools or worse schools I'm telling you this system will never let you know and until we have a system that lets us

109know it's going to be very difficult to make the changes that are needed to be made in terms of a statewide vision the other thing that was interesting is the Washington Post recently put forward a pretty significant study where they looked at multiple states and they drew a trend line of the annual testing results for state testing across these different states and you basically saw a flat line little up little down little up little down because you're dealing with different students all the time and then they attached a dollar amount to how much is being spent each year over 20 billion dollars each year on testing and you're not seeing much movement and so the question begs itself if you took all that money and you put it into teacher salaries and you put it

110into lower class sizes and you put it into programs such as some of the programs you've seen today and you put it into school safety etc etc etc would you not have a better chance of influencing that flat line of test scores over the last 20 years again I'm not saying you remove the testing I'm saying that maybe you do it once every other year maybe you do it once every third year maybe you do a legitimate sampling size to get some data the other thing that I don't think people oftentimes recognize is that we assess our students as part of our day-to-day work we have interim assessments all the time we have chapter reviews we have final exams we have midterm exams we it's not as if we're not testing our students now this

111is a controversial topic but what I find is the more that the public begins to understand it the more they scratch their head and wonder could that really be and the answer the question is yes that's the way it is the other thing that is unique about this debate the term reform indicates that you're going to transform something for the better it's going to change and I've never heard somebody use the word reform and interpret that word to mean I want the status quo that would be inconsistent with logic and so then the question is why do the reformers insist on the status quo of the very thing that drives education at the same time that they're saying we want to reform education it's inconsistent it's illogical it's incongruent I was glad that we made

112it past this first step we also have executives from Apple and other large corporations that have agreed to support our efforts because they too are telling us that this measure is not measuring whether a student will be successful in their organization and or beyond now the other thing that's really important is not to misinterpret what I'm saying as to be math science reading writing not being important those are critical critical skills and so we're not talking about reducing rigor we're not talking that's why we have such high graduation requirements in St. Brain we're talking about extremely rigorous core subject matter and all of the other things that we know around innovation and creativity so it's not an either or it's a combination and until this system respects both it's going to be hard to incentivize

113school districts to move their students in that direction I I was really grateful to hear the response from the Colorado Business Roundtable and I've been really pleased with the response from legislators to this point and we're going to keep moving forward because this is I believe one of the most pressing issues in our education system because what you measure is what people focus on getting done so it was it was a very positive meeting and then the last thing you know we always have visitors that come to St. Brain and this last week we had a large group from Denver Public Schools come up here and I I know their superintendent he they met with a number of our folks at the Innovation Center and it's great to see the partnerships develop we also had

114a the foundation for the Denver Broncos come up with career-wise and look at some of our programs and we're having conversations with these folks around STEM in some ways that the foundation for the Denver Broncos might be able to support St. Brain Valley schools in our efforts there are a lot of other things that I could talk about about and I will just stop here because it's probably I've already overstayed my welcome with this report so thank you and I would just say Dawn it wouldn't you gave the presentation to the Education Committee that was Republicans and Democrats some of the reform community as well and you were successful in getting unanimous support from that committee so thank you for representing us so well and being a leader on this important topic and that was

115our only report for this evening so next up we have consent items do board members have any questions or any items they'd like to pull okay with that I would ask for approval of seven point one staff terminations and leaves seven point two staff appointments seven point three minutes for the March 8th regular meeting and March 15th study session seven point four recommendation to hire principal at Combine Elementary School seven point five recommendation to hire Dean at Coleridge Middle School seven point six recommendation to hire Dean at Niwot High School seven point seven recommendation to hire Dean at Soaring Heights PK through eight seven point eight approval amendment to a construction manager general contractor contract for the Niwot High School sewer line replacement project seven point nine amendment to CMGC contract for Trail Ridge Middle

116School wall repair project seven point ten change order to the Sunset Middle School renovation project seven point eleven contract award for Erie High School Fieldhouse Edition project seven point twelve amendment to construction manager general contractor CMGC for the Eagle Crest Elementary School preschool upgrades project seven point thirteen amendment to construction manager general contractor for the Red Hawk Elementary School preschool upgrades project seven point fourteen purchase of Epson projectors seven point fifteen purchase of Lenovo computer products so moved by Jim in a second by Sarah mr. Berthold yes mrs. Brooks yes mr. Garcia absent mrs. Horanek yes dr. Marder yes mrs. Ragland aye mrs. Segrist aye thanks Christy and next we have action items the first one is eight point one recommendation adoption of resolution proclaiming tribute to teachers day April 29th 2023 so I'm gonna

117give an intro to the tribute to teachers tribute to teachers is scheduled on April 29th 2023 it's a Saturday and I believe it's in Loveland but there is a proclamation for a tribute to teachers that I believe that you have to be read for the board so sorry thank you Todd yeah okay resolution tribute to teachers day April 29th 2023 whereas the St. Wayne Valley Schools Education Foundation supports St. Wayne Valley strategic plan and provides supplemental funding to enhance teaching and learning in our classrooms and whereas since 1984 the National PTA parent teacher association has designated the full week of May May 8 through 12 2023 as teacher appreciation week and whereas the St. Wayne Valley Schools Education Foundation is presenting the 16th annual tribute to teachers event on April 29th 2023 that pays tribute

118to St. Wayne Valley School District's teachers for the week of recognition and whereas communities and schools will unite to celebrate the educational profession of teaching and show appreciation to teachers for inspiring a thirst for learning in our youth that will last a lifetime and whereas the foundation 16th tribute to teachers program which includes recognizing a teacher of the year from every school and a teacher of the year for the district provides the opportunity for students parents community members and business partners to show appreciation to teachers who exemplify excellence in teaching and whereas schools businesses and communities play a vital role to ensure the success of the tribute to teachers program now therefore be it resolved that the St. Wayne Valley School District Board of Education proclaims April 29th 2023 as tribute to teachers day in

119our school district and we urge all staff students parents and community members to support this event or take some time to show appreciation to a teacher for providing our youth with the gift of learning adopted and approved April 12th 2023 or may have a motion to approve so moved a second mr. Berthold yes mrs. Brooks yes mr. Garcia absent mrs. Horanek yes dr. Marder yes mrs. Ragland aye mrs. Segrist aye now it has been adopted and approved April 12th 2023 it is a wonderful event and I know Josh Atherton and the Education Foundation have worked hard to do planning around it and we look forward to the evening to celebrate teachers from all over the district so it's an exciting event as well as that reveal of teacher of the year so thank you for

120the the proclamation approval along with that and I know that the property the Tribute to Teacher Proclamation alluded to it but as we approach the end of the school year it's time to recognize and celebrate the hard work of our teachers and substitute teachers and from May 8th to May 12th we'll be honoring their dedication commitment and tireless efforts during teacher and substitute appreciation week teachers and substitutes play a critical role in shaping the minds and future of our children they go above and beyond to make sure that every student receives a support and guidance they need to thrive academically and personally this week is an opportunity to show our gratitude and appreciation for all they do so I know that board members Segrist and Horanek will read the two proclamations one for the teachers

121and one for the substitutes I'm gonna go first okay thanks Todd teacher appreciation week proclamation whereas today's teachers mold future citizens through their guidance and education and whereas today's teachers encounter students of widely differing backgrounds and abilities and whereas society expects public education to provide quality services to all children no matter what their backgrounds or abilities and whereas the country's future depends in large measure upon the education youth received today and whereas teachers are charged with the daunting task of ensuring that no child is left behind by public schools and whereas teachers spend countless hours outside their classrooms preparing lessons evaluating progress counseling and coaching students and performing community service and whereas the St. Rain Valley School District recognizes that its teachers are providing quality service quality educational services to our children now therefore be

122it proclaimed the week of May 8th through 12th 2023 is teacher appreciation week in our communities the St. Rain Valley School District urges all citizens to join in recognizing the dedication and hard work of our teachers by expressing appreciation for a job well done proclamation proclaimed Wednesday April 12th 2023 board of education and superintendent of schools thank you Sarah substitute teacher appreciation week proclamation whereas the St. Rain Valley School District joins the nation in recognizing substitute teachers as an excellent essential part of the district's education system and whereas substitute teachers are dedicated to providing quality instruction for the students of this district and demonstrate their commitment to giving time energy effort and talents in the best interest of all students and whereas the substitute teachers of the district provide an invaluable service of teaching students

123in the absence of their regular teacher in a most professional manner and play a vital role to ensure the quality of students education now therefore be it proclaimed the week of May 8 through 12 2023 is substitute teacher appreciation week in our communities the St. Rain Valley School District urges all citizens to join us in saluting these dedicated men and women proclaimed Wednesday April 12 2023 board of ed and superintendent of schools and they are not only essential but they are also excellent thank you may I have a motion to approve 8.2 move motion okay by Dick and Sarah mr. Berthold yes mrs. Brooks yes mr. Garcia absent mrs. Horanek yes dr. Martyr yes mrs. Ragland aye ms. Sechrist aye thank you we look forward to celebrating them thank you Todd and we have no

124discussion items on the agenda tonight so that brings us to adjournment and our next study session is next week April 19th at 6 p.m. at Highlands Elementary School and then our next regular meeting will be starting with financials at 5 30 p.m. as a study session on April 26th and with that I will ask for a motion to adjourn so moved by Miya chef by Joey all in favor aye