001Good evening and welcome to St. William Valley Schools Board of Education meeting. Please join us in standing for the Pledge of Allegiance Welcome everyone, it's wonderful to see you Barb. Could you please call the roll for us this evening? Mr. Aaron's absent. Mr. Berthold here. Mr. Garcia here. Dr. Martyr present Here Mrs. Ragland here. I'm a secret here. Thanks Barb Were there any addendums or changes to the agenda this evening? There were no changes wonderful. Thank you I do have one small change this evening Barb. This will be your last Board of Education meeting and So we do want to recognize you and thank you for your many years of service not just to the district but to the board Karen Thanks, Joey. I just wanted to share a little bit about Barb So everybody
002gets to know her a little bit better Barb was born in Minnesota and spent her childhood there and in Chicago. She moved to Colorado in 1981 She's been married to Brian for 40 years and they have three children five grandchildren and two grand dogs Barb's been with the district for 26 and a half years in various roles and as secretary Secretary to the Board of Education since 2008 She's touched the lives of many students indirectly in this role But also at the CDC where she worked for many years Her funniest memory was taking care of a giant tub of tilapia fish in the CDC horticulture One summer while his teacher was on a 110 Barb loves hiking biking Caribbean cruising snorkeling birdwatching sewing embroidery crocheting gardening kids Animals and old people and we are so
003glad that she'll now have more time to enjoy all these things Barb you've kept us organized. You are always so kind and professional You've made our experience on the board more enjoyable and we can't thank you enough for all you've done over these many years On behalf of the current and former board members and the entire st. Brain Valley School District, we wish you the very best in your entire in your retirement and please keep in touch Thank you Karen. Thank you Barb. Congratulations. Enjoy retirement well deserved Yes Right that brings us to audience participation this evening Did we have anybody Barb sign up? I know Dan Maloit is here. Yeah, no one else signed up Okay, would you like to sign up here, please? That would be great. Yeah, if you'd like to sign
004up perfect while you're signing up Dan Would you like to go ahead and come up, please? Thank you You'll be you'll be the first one and Dan you already know the routine But please state your address your name and your address and then we will start timing and you have three minutes for your comments I appreciate it so my name is Dan Maloit, I live on poppy view lane in Erie and I believe that is everything that we needed. Am I missing anything? Cool. Okay now we can get started So I'm here tonight again, I wanted to talk about Keeping schools a neutral place for education tonight, but we still haven't solved the quarantine issue So I'm here to ask the board and the leadership for two things the first thing that I'm asking again
005is that we push back on state and County health guidelines that are at odds with reality and Are harmful to children The other thing is that I'm asking the elected members of this board in their future elections to turn down any donations from the Education Association and its national and local affiliates and there's reasons for this course fields bars the Broncos Mile High Stadium or capacity and yet our children and parents who have no choice, but to use public schools Who have no choice but to follow the rules when they're in the schools are being held by their toenails So that state and county officials can save face Why are they doing this to our children? Because they can't do it to the Broncos and the Rockies and bars and restaurants because they'd be voted
006out of office and they Have billions of dollars to advocate for themselves, but our children can't advocate for themselves The reason I'm asking you to turn back any donations to future campaigns from the Education Association Is that they are gaslighting parents and saying learning loss didn't happen yet The district is putting on summer school and extended learning and doing everything they can to help overcome something that didn't happen And it's being called fake science. This is not educational halitosis as they say. This is real learning loss This is real emotional trauma for our children cult Children's Hospital of Colorado has declared a mental health emergency and again, we're being gaslit by this organization saying no No, the mental health emergency started before kovat. It has nothing to do with it. No, it does They've gone
007up two to three times the mental health visits at these hospitals. Our children are suffering There are parents that cannot get an appointment for a psychologist or psychiatrist for their child for what's happening in the state right now And yet we're still going to continue to punish children into the future and into the fall where they don't know if they're going to school They don't know if we're gonna be shut down. It is not It is not morally right for these agencies to save face and protect their futures Electorally by forcing districts and district leadership to go ahead and implement guidelines that they will not publicly implement themselves They call it guidelines instead of laws because it wasn't passed by the legislature They call it guidelines because they don't want to come down and enforce
008it themselves Yet they're gonna trust the teachers and the district and parents will follow these rules so that they can save face and that's not right That's morally corrupt and wrong. I know you guys know better I know you guys are doing everything you can and we all need to stand up and help you to get past this I appreciate your time once again, and I hope that we can still get 11 seconds talk in the future About keeping schools focused on education and keeping dogma out of school buildings. I appreciate your time. Thanks, Dan. Take care Our next speaker this evening and Natalie you're gonna have to help me Natalie Abtian I'm sorry what Abshire great. Thank you. My apologies and Natalie if you could please just like mr Malloy's if you could please
009state your name and Address and then you'll get three minutes for your comment And the time will start as soon as you state complete stating your address Before I state that I practice this three minutes Michael couple seconds over just give me a heads up Okay, but I will do my best. My name is Natalie. I'm sure I live at 125 hunters Cove Road in me And I'm here tonight to talk about this Ready? Okay During the May 26 school board meeting the parents and the NAACP called for more District wide critical race theory anti-racist curriculum training and policy changes using the innocuous words Diversity equity and inclusion this was called for from an incident meet high school where the students stupidly Reenacted the George Floyd tragedy on a video that went viral without a
010doubt the actions of these students were very wrong But critical race theory is born out of Marxism and has become a national religion within Academia corporations and even our military public schools should not be indoctrinating CRT any more than they should be indoctrinating Catholicism or Scientology with unchecked implementation Parents students and faculty and public schools who disagree have little ability to opt out of this curriculum and training This is also wrong and two wrongs don't make a right CRT teaches people to view and group each other based on skin color gender sexual orientation or other minority groups These groups are further defined as oppressor or victim hierarchy oppressors are indoctrinated to feel guilt because of their white skin gender or perceived privilege and Minorities are indoctrinated to believe their victims who can't succeed because of
011the oppressors This is a lose-lose situation that causes division and hate among all people 41 years ago on August 14th 1980 a police officer shot and killed two Hispanic residents during a traffic stop in Longmont This tragedy forced community members to come together and recognize social issues Which ultimately led to improvements in police training and race relations guess what? This was done without adopting Marxism and or undermining the achievements of nine 1964 68 civil rights acts acts I've lived in this area since I was five years old and I've seen the area grow and change the building Next door was once the Parkway movie theater where I watched the original Star Wars movie I've raised my children who all attended Meade Elementary Meade Middle Skyline and Longmont high schools I'm now watching my grandchildren both
012white and brown Attend schools in the district at no other time have I been more frightened for what children will be taught in public schools Than I am right now our community doesn't condone the actions of the Meade students and we can But we should be able to address social issues without adopting CRT Which only teaches racism rather than helping to abolish it our schools outperform the state averages on standardized tests We have high graduation rates low dropout rates and a high percentage of students go on to higher education And training regardless of the color of their of their color gender or ethnicity Like Hester print from the scarlet letter the meat students will be forced to endure the shame of their poor decision as anything Uploaded to the internet stays forever their families are
013shamed colleges employers and others will be able to find the video for years any person or Organization calling for CRT implementation must recognize their own willingness to inflict the evils of racism on Students and faculty of our schools the school board must have the courage to reject and cancel Existing and future CRT curriculum and policies that will thank you. Natalie We appreciate you being here this evening in our future. Thank you. Thank you And there were no other visitors that were commenting this evening, correct? Thank you. Thanks Richard. All right, that brings us to agenda item 4 which is Visitors and Don 4.1 is a superintendent excellence in education award Thank you, and we actually have three of them Okay, I'm gonna go through the first one Brian Lamar I want to share with you
014and your entire team now you gave me a list of 90 plus people so rather than read them all I know you've got a Another event planned for them to share with them and some information and communication But I want to thank you and your entire team for many things, but I'm gonna highlight two one For the last almost year and a half your team has worked on facilities in unprecedented ways from HVAC systems to cleaning to supplies really doing double and triple duty for the last year and a half and I Appreciate that and I know that our children do and I know that our parents do and I know that our teachers and staff do So thank you and I'm gonna present this to you But I'd also like at some point an
015opportunity and I know I see a lot of your folks when I go across the street and stuff, but at some point an opportunity to Sit down and just have lunch with them and and make sure they understand how much we appreciate what they've done for all of us Thank you. Thank you. I want to follow up Jackie with our learning services department You know, I remember before spring break a year ago we were told really with last-minute notice that our schools would be Basically closing in-person learning. I don't know how many hours notice we had to do that, but within Really within an unprecedented time you were able to create curriculum for our teachers both Virtually and then hard copies for thousands of families to pick up from our Resource Center and I know
016I remember seeing cars lined up in the droves picking up all of those along with over 1.5 million Meals were provided to our families that would not otherwise have had opportunities for food in the way in which they were used to coming into our schools and I remember You had you know adding a about 800 additional iPads to make sure families every child had an iPad and then I also Remember making sure that every family that did not have internet connection that we provided hot spots for them So that they could maintain access To doing that and then all of the professional development with our teachers for blended learning to be able to teach Both the kids who are at home and then when we went to a hybrid coming in and teaching with them
017So we were asking our teachers to do a double and triple duty and in order to do that We ordered microphones and stands and wide-angle lenses for the classroom so kids at home could log in We also our bandwidth was increased to make sure we could have everyone online without crashing the System and then new grading policies were created new attendance policies were created a new school with 3,400 students was created in a matter of months and Hired for and all kinds of things I could go on and on and on and on And I just you know I don't know if people understand The monumental lift that took place for our children and our community and our teachers and our staff I know a lot of people express their gratitude, but sometimes it all
018happens We just did a thank you to our teachers and staff and our parents and everything When you started to see the list of everything that was done you just it's overwhelming and I think that It just it's something I wanted to recognize for your team, and thank you very much for it The last one I have is Carrie McDermott Carrie Want to thank you and your communications team? I think it was you know every every week at least and sometimes more we were sending out communications to over 33,000 families and getting all that communication translated because things were changing so fast Sometimes things would change within a matter of hours from the state level and we had to get that communication whether it was our safe with 7 campaign or all of the different
019resources that were available or the processes and procedures and I know that you probably within a month's period of time we're doing as much communication out to communities that we would normally do in a year and no matter what communication would go out there would still be questions and Clarification because that's the nature of communication when you're communicating out to you know tens of thousands of people But I appreciate it and I appreciate All of the feedback and all of the opportunities that we scheduled town hall meetings and meetings with the health departments and everyone else involved Constantly trying to keep everybody in the loop I know we weren't able to do leadership same brain this year but we did schedule those virtual meetings with about 150 parents to start with and then it slowly
020dwindled after we were getting a You know closer to what we hope is the end of the pandemic but again, you know, it's one of those things where communication is is hard to do on a good day and The way in which you and your team managed it. I'm very grateful for that So thank you and I'd like to present you and your team with this as well. I want to Jump right into the superintendent's report if I can At the next thing. I'm actually I was going to give Todd an opportunity just to introduce our guests That will be our new hires. Yeah, the only thing I was gonna say Joey's there's a couple things relevant in terms of I think that Boulder County health that I just wanted to make sure and get
021out but as long as people that are interested in that Sounds great. Why don't you do your superintendent report and then Todd will jump right into into those introducing our guests. Okay, sounds great Thanks, Tom. All right Last night. I had an opportunity to meet again with Boulder County Health and some of the members of our team and I was able to share with them my deep concerns once again regarding the mask issue and also regarding the quarantining of students and In essence, you know, I appreciate our partnership I appreciate the difficult situation that people find themselves in with an unprecedented pandemic, but I also was able to express that it's my understanding that the Curve has been flattened so to speak the hospitals are not full and the positivity rate is down at 1%
022and Much of society is wide open When I go into the malls when I go into the grocery stores when I go I know that there's full seating now at the athletic events the major sporting events professional and otherwise and I expressed significant concerns about continuing to quarantine our children and I asked specifically for it to stop because we're not seeing that transmission and We are trying to give students the benefit now of additional instructional time and other things and we've heard from other major organizations the difficulties that our children are facing with Anxiety and stress and things like that. And so I asked for a concrete answer as to why this practice continues and I am waiting for that response now what I did here today just about 20 minutes ago is that we'll
023be getting an update with the The mask order on the 10th and tomorrow, maybe tomorrow actually as soon as tomorrow the other issue is we need to have Clarity around the quarantining because if you're not wearing a mask and I'm talking about our students Then you Have a 12-foot radius where you would be quarantined and so we would be quarantining large groups of students and so having a mask makes that radius smaller and Limits more quarantining. So it's kind of a little bit of a catch-22 and I am 100% committed to the safety of our children. So I would never advocate for this if there were consistent Implication of this policy and these whatever they are called but it is very difficult to watch a packed arena and packed malls and packed restaurants and packed
024grocery stores and Then have our children quarantined for long periods of time in the absence of all of the things that we were made aware of that would warrant this type of quarantine So I appreciated their response. They are setting up. Hopefully I have requested a meeting with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment So that I can get a very clear answer to communicate with our community Not simply that that's what we say. I need to hear an answer and so that's what I'm asking for now I appreciate members of the community who reach out to me and say why are you doing this? Why are you doing? I want to state clearly that this is an order from the Boulder County Health Department and it is shared with me that it is
025an order from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and We are working very hard and very closely with them to try to get some clarity around these requirements That's what we're in the process of doing right now and we will communicate as soon as we have that clarity around The mask rule the quarantining the isolation and other things and I want to repeat there is nobody Who is more focused on the safety and well-being of our children? so if the answer is if the answer is that our children are at risk and This is a necessity Then we can have that conversation and I also need to see consistency of that concern Day to day because the other thing that I know about quarantining is that Oftentimes when our children are quarantined, they
026don't stay at home They go to the parks and the swimming pools and other places and so I'm not sure if the quarantining is actually Achieving what it's intended to otherwise achieve now. I want to be clear. I am very appreciative of The health departments for their expressed concern for our children's safety and our teachers safety and our teachers and staff And I don't want there to be any doubt about that. I also Need clarity in the explanations that I am given so that I can clearly communicate with our community other than simply saying Because we said so so that's the update and I will share that with You once I receive that clarity on the 10th where the masks are concerned Once a meeting is set up with CDPHE at my request if it's
027honored and then also any adjustments to the quarantining process So that's one update the other is We are full of students this summer We have elementary school students middle school students high school students literally hundreds of thousands of students that are engaged in what we believe are really meaningful learning opportunities and therein lies another challenge for us because for example project launches 20 days of instruction and The federal government is releasing millions and millions of dollars in ESSER funds to support that initiative But if we have to quarantine our children for 14 days Then we've got conflicting interests there So I need some clarity around that so that I can be a good steward of our dollars and our children's education the other thing That I would tell you is we're getting ready to pilot
028a telecommunications project Which would allow us to have students at one school take classes Virtually from another school if the class was not necessarily offered in their school So if you had a world language for example That wasn't offered at one high school But it was offered at another the students could then take that class through a telecommunications Network and we're working with our system to do that and we're very excited about that and then finally You know in the last several years we have passed Approximately 16 bills into law that have been initiated out of st. Rain In terms of education bills and this year we put four forward one was around internet access for all students Another one was around safe to tell and making it a more effective and efficient process and
029a third one Was to look at our accreditation system, which has not been reviewed for at least a decade That looks at perhaps Auditing is it doing what it's supposed to do Does it disadvantage certain students and do we need to make a broader more comprehensive system of accrediting the quality of schools? And how well our students are doing I think that it's imperative in this 21st century when we know how fast things are changing That while we would keep standardized tests as a part of our system Standardized tests can't represent our system as a state or as a country So my hope is that we will be able to broaden our look at how schools are accredited So those are some things that I wanted to share with you and see if you have
030any questions or thoughts comments Just John done a clarification with regard to the legislation Could you give us an update on the status of those initiatives? Yeah, two have been passed into law and then there are two I'll tell you exactly Two have made it through the house and Senate the ones that we're waiting on to see if the governor will sign them Are safe to tell and our education accountability system? But they have both made it now through The majority of the process and so we're very optimistic that those two will be signed the first two on the internet service and the child Care centers have been signed by the governor into law Thank you very much and congratulations on the success of you and your staff and in pursuing those initiatives and really
031improving education for all Colorado public education system students and then one last clarification I was asked the question about somebody had been informed that masks were no longer required in schools back in May That's not accurate. They are still required in schools and that is a Boulder County order So I just wanted to make sure that people understand. We're not imposing something Subjectively, thank you Don appreciate it Todd We have a couple of new hires this evening on the consent agenda if you would like to Introduce them This is it's my pleasure to introduce Sarah Coniglio who Is going to be the new dean of students for Centennial Elementary School and joining Sarah today are her husband Matt and Kristen Neil her principal, so Well back there Sorry, miss Coniglio graduated from Colorado State University
032with a bachelor's degree in human development and family studies She continued her education at Colorado State University where she received a master's degree in educational leadership and human resources For the past three years miss Coniglio has been a first grade teacher at Grandview Elementary School Where she implemented the four components of a blended learning classroom and assisted the principal in planning for the project launch program from 2014 to 2018 Miss Coniglio served as a second grade teacher at Rice Elementary School in the Poudre School District Prior to that, she served as a fifth grade and second grade teacher at Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic School in Boulder So Hi, thank you so much. I just want to say thank you so much for this opportunity I'm very excited to work with the Centennial community partner
033with them and continue the awesome work of st Rain Valley schools. I feel I very much appreciate how much we work very hard towards things of equity inclusion and innovation with the school district and I just really really love working with students and I just am so excited To continue that passion in this new role. Thank you. Thank you, Sarah. Congratulations on your new role It's also my pleasure to introduce to you miss Lindsay Cheney who has the Dean of Students for Eucrest Elementary School and joining Lindsay today are her colleagues Alexander Downing and Jodie Gardner. So thank you for the support Miss Cheney graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder with a bachelor's degree in humanities She continued her education at the University of Colorado at Boulder where she received her master's degree
034in curriculum and instruction Literacy miss Cheney also received a principal's licensure from Colorado State University for the past four years miss Cheney has been an instructional coach and stem coordinator at Columbine Elementary School and The Innovation Center where she collaboratively planned school improvement strategies guided grade level teams through targeted professional learning communities and impact teamwork and worked with Teammates to unify a district stem model and create sustained sustainable programming for students at all levels prior to that miss Cheney served as a stem coordinator on the race to the top grant from 2013 to 2017 and miss Cheney also served as a first grade teacher at Alpine Elementary School from 2009 to 2013 Thank you. I feel very fortunate to have this opportunity to continue my career in St. Frank's schools I'm very proud to be
035a part of the system and what we stand for and what we do I've received a very warm welcome from the Eaglcrest community and parents and so I look forward and partnering with them in the upcoming school year Thanks, Lindsey. Congratulations. Welcome to Eaglcrest Todd, thank you and congratulations to both of you again And thanks to your your cheering section who came this evening to to welcome you to those no new roles Agenda item 6 this evening begins our reports 6.1 is a finance and audit committee update Hi, Greg Hi, so Heather parish who is our chairperson is not here yet I haven't been able to confirm that she could make it today So if we could move it to later in the meeting, that would be great Or if we need to move it
036to the June 23rd meeting, I would appreciate that. Okay, great Is that alright with the rest of the board? Well, why don't you just keep an eye out and I can I can keep an eye for Heather as well and if we see her we'll jump back to it and otherwise, we'll just ask Barb to move it to the the June 26 meeting the committee is just a Tremendous amount of work and I would like for her to be here as we go through it It is a lot of work Absolutely, and I would like to be able to have an opportunity to thank her for all the time that she volunteers for many years now Great. Thanks, Greg. All right Then Tony that brings us to agenda item 6.2, which is the public hearing
037of the superintendent's proposed fiscal year 2022 budget all funds. Hi, Tony. Good evening So two weeks ago I had the privilege of introducing the superintendent's proposed budget for st. Rain Valley schools for the 2021-22 fiscal year in Compliance with state statute and in the spirit of transparency and community engagement I'd like to assist the board tonight with conducting a public hearing on this budget and in doing so bring forward any comments or questions Received by the finance office and make myself available to answer any questions by the board or community members who may be present Pending any changes the budget will then be brought forward to the June 23rd board meeting in two weeks formal adoption Typically, there are few to no changes between when the budget is proposed at the end of May to
038when it is adopted at the end of June however, as I mentioned at the last board meeting due to the pandemic There has been a delay by the state legislature and finalizing the budget for k-12 education in Colorado There was also a subsequent postponement the finalization of any compensation changes for next year Therefore we have been updating the budget as new developments occur At this time the legislature has indeed made progress and just yesterday wrapped up their session for this year They have passed the k-12 public school finance act But they introduced some changes that have yet to be implemented by the Colorado Department of Education And so we do not have yet solid revenue adjustments as a result of that I do not believe they will be extremely large changes However compared to the
039current estimated amounts that we have in this version of the budget In addition as I mentioned at our previous meeting the compensation agreement with the st. Fray and Valley Education Association has been finalized and those Increased expenditure amounts have been incorporated into this new budget version So to give a recap I had previously brought forward a proposed budget for FY 22 containing a general fund spend down of 16.3 million Compared to the 19.9 million dollar spend down in the budget that we are currently operating in the current FY 21 year The budget version that has been brought before the board tonight contains the change as a result of increases in compensation Thus we are adding another nine point one million in salary and benefit expenditures Which increases our budgeted fund balance spend down for FY
04022 to twenty five point four million dollars No changes were made to any of the other funds This document will be published on the financial transparency section of our website at svbsd.org For public inspection and a physical copy is printed out and available at the district office As for the public hearing the district posted the public notice on the proposed budget in the Times call on May 27th 28th and 29th Inviting comments on the budget and participation in the hearing today at this time We have not received any comments or questions from the public regarding the proposed budget But it would be my pleasure today to address any questions or comments by the board or any communities Community members who may be present at this time Thank you, Tony. Appreciate it. Are any community members
041present this evening that would like to comment on the budget Any board member questions or comments? We've seen the budget many times And talked about it in great detail. All right, Tony I think that's it. Thank you. If people want to reach out and ask questions, they can contact you through the website, correct? Yeah, that's probably the best option There's a number there that they can call at the bottom and there's also I think a form that they can complete to provide some input or questions Great. Thank you and I guess I would just remind the public that the Board of Education as well as you and Greg discussed the budget at great length during a study session We discussed it again at our regular meeting our just our last regular meeting and then the
042Finance and Audit Committee has reviewed it multiple times as well All right, great. Then we'll see you for the final time for the budget Not really the final time but the final time for what we have next on our list of tasks at the June 23rd meeting Great. Thanks, Tony. Appreciate it Agenda item 7 is the beginning of our consent items. Do board members wish to pull any of those items this evening? All right, then I would entertain a motion for approval of agenda items 7.1 staff terminations leaves 7.2 staff appointments 7.3 minutes for the May 12 2021 regular meeting May 29 2021 study session and the May 26 2021 regular meeting 7.4 2021 2022 fuel purchases 7.5 recommendation to hire Dean of Students for Centennial Elementary School and 7.6 recommendation to hire Dean of
043Students for Eagle Crest Elementary School So moved by Jim and Karen Mr. Aarons absent. Mr. Berthold. Yes, mr. Garcia. Yes, mr. Dr. Martyr. Yes, mr. Pierce. Aye. Mrs. Ragland Aye Hi, Greg 8.1 is a recommendation for approval of those SR 2 supplemental funds for special education Yes, good evening. So if you remember back in December, we did a approval and transmittal form for SR 1 We did SR 2 and SR 3 beginning of May This is SR 2 supplemental and what that means is SR 2 Went to the state and the state allocated 90% how as SR 2 funds They were able to hold 10% for whatever the state wanted to do with it This is part of the 10% where they're allocating out to students with disabilities So administrative units and so the same
044brains administrative unit Was awarded three hundred and six thousand dollars. And so this form is similar to that It's just making sure that you the board are aware and Provide assurances to the fact that we're gonna spend the funds appropriately Thanks, Greg Any board member comments or questions for clarification pretty straightforward. All right. Thanks, Greg I would entertain a motion then for approval of action item 8.1, which is the SR 2 supplemental funds for special education so moved by Chico and Karen Mr. Aaron's absent. Mr. Berthold. Yes, mr. Garcia. Yes, dr. Martin. Yes, mr. Pierce. Aye. Mrs. Raglan Aye, I'm a secret. Aye 8.2 is the recommendation for approval of the 2021 2020 2022 Negotiated agreement with the st. Vrain Valley Education Association. Hello Todd. Good evening again President secrets and members of board and
045superintendent Superintendent dad It's my pleasure to be here with C. Valerial Who's the president of the st. Vrain Valley Education Association and want to talk on behalf of us for a little bit and then? See if you can add any color commentary. Yeah along with it but I want to thank actually all teams for for the work in Their the negotiation session this year, we have great collaboration And work together well and and presenting ideas and and understanding each other's viewpoints The district and the association have a great working relationship and both recognize its importance of providing opportunities to demonstrate Value for employees and positively contribute to a continued committed student success The negotiation teams for the district and the Education Association met for several months this spring Discussed regarding proposed language to the existing
046agreement, which is the MOA that you have and SV the Education Association has Notified me or Steve has notified me that they have passed the ratification of that that Members of number of agreement I'd like to give you a little bit of the highlights and stuff like that to the negotiated agreement I know that you have copies of it, but one of the the the big things I think is important for us is that this added $1,000 to the base bringing our staff starting starting salaries up to 45,250 which makes us very competitive in today's Teaching market as well as the addition of steps and lanes the continuing contributions of to insurance premiums as well as money in some of our longevity steps We did some clarification of some languages in article one. You'll see
047some definitions to what? SSP is our special service provider. Those are a little bit different. They have a different designation than teachers at the state level They've separated those out in in Actually licensure so a little clarification there Article 10 is that clarified? Screening of interviews for screening interviews for transfers so to clean up a little bit of language of how we will go through our transfer process Article 16 clarified some language for ensuring planning time for special ed We we did have discussions that in some cases it's not a set time because they have some flexible scheduling and to work together with principal and special ed teacher to ensure that they get the proper amount of planning time and The lunch hour also added language in for the special ed advisory committee which we
048call CAC and CAC will be meeting again this year to continue to work on and Talk about workload and the special ed realm and then we have a couple of mo use special ed mo you Which we clarified some beginning of the year targets That that caused us to actually take a look at at possible workload and and Some things that we might do so we really focused actually and around the center based program For elementary and secondary we kind of separated that out because it didn't make sense In in our target ranges and then article 21 we clarified language to meet requirements of the healthy families work law So that law was put into place by the past of Colorado legislature legislator Legislature sorry that caused us to that need to clarify some of
049our language to make sure we were meeting and adhering to that law Appendix B. We added some positions That were added by chassis. So chassis added some sports like unified bowling and things like that So we needed to add those into language. We had an mo you on early childhood And really this is around professional giving some options around professional development for early childhood And then an mo you Regarding early childhood as well as early childhood special education and really coming up with some discussions about how to Increase the number of early childhood special education teachers that we have that's a struggle across the state It's a it's something that what's interesting is you can have a special ed license and you can have an early childhood Special license and you can hold both but
050you're not qualified to teach early childhood special ed You have to have a special designation and special classes to go to teach early childhood special ed And I what I understand is one of our major universities just dropped the program in early childhood special ed So it's gonna make it even tougher But we want to increase those because again the impact in the students and stuff like that So that's kind of general summary of what's in the MOA Steve I don't know if you had anything to add to that Just a couple quick items first of all, thank you for you know having me here tonight It's always a pleasure to you know Actually be in front of a board instead of being at virtual and everything else that we've had to do over the
051last year I think we had a it was an exciting You know discussion that we had as far as negotiations went this year. I think we really covered a lot of things We got some solid language that's gonna help our teachers, but also help our students at the same time You know one of the areas I think we've been really working on over the last couple of years has been Special education and I know what we're doing is we're you know putting band-aids on shotgun wounds because unfortunately the federal government is not fully funding Special education and until we can get that accomplished I just don't foresee us really being able to move too far in that direction, but it is tremendously encouraging to be able to have these Conversations and to be able to
052really begin to look at you know the workload issues But again also making sure that each of our students are taken care of during you know when it comes to special education When it came to salary, I think you know we have you know what was it 2015? We went to the new salary schedule And I think the goal and objective of that was to get as many educators to career earnings as soon as possible that's advantageous for all of us because You know we want to retain our teachers And you know one of the flaws that we did see in that was at the top with our veteran teachers. They were seeing You know barely above You know inflation you know increases, and we were able to address that this year, and I think
053a lot of our teachers We're very thankful For the ability you know for us to be able to tweak with that a little bit And that's one of the glories of this new salary schedule is it's really easy to fix but again I want to extend my you know Thank you to the negotiation team our negotiation team and of course the district negotiation team It was it was definitely an interesting bargain You know being that it was actually live you know live streamed And I don't think you know as the first time we've ever done anything like that And I think it opened the eyes of a lot of people to see you know what exactly goes on in these sessions We're truly excited about what we have here and 97% of our members would
054agree that this was you know a good bargain and a good outcome so again We appreciate the support of the association and the district bargaining team as well as our superintendent and our cabinet people that As they've answered questions and helped you know clarify things as we negotiated And we would be happy to answer any questions that you might have great Thank you any board member questions or comments this evening took thank you Todd and Steve. It's it's Not well, it's unusual But expected in a st. Rain that we develop and maintain good working relationships with our association, and I'm pleased to hear the way that You have both characterized that I'm particularly Happy that the special ed Approach is being was the topic this year and this as I read through the master agreement
055it Seems like very constructive progress is being made so I have I'm happy about the progress We're making with regard to our salaries. I think it's a significant step in the right direction and It really continues the trend that we've established a number of years ago in terms of progressively elevating our Early career teachers to Well The pay level for first-year teachers and the whole schedule. I guess just as a miscellaneous item I noted with great pleasure the See ten point seven on new hires Eliminating that provision That it required automatic termination of those that were hired late. I know it's something that hasn't Significantly affected us in the last year or so, but in fact It was in the master agreement, and I was really happy to see that that was eliminated. I think
056that's a Positive step forward and it allows us to Hold those great teachers that we just happened to hire late, so Thank you again for your good work and the tough negotiations that you've gone through I think this is a very positive step forward. Thank you for pointing that out We actually stopped that in practice I mean it was as language we needed to remove because you're right exactly right We have some good teachers that if you're hired late, you know, there should be a choice to that So thank you for putting them out and it was a common-sense thing to do. Thanks, Dick. Anyone else? No Steve I was glad that you mentioned the that the new salary schedule came out in 2015 one of the things that Don and I have talked about
057several times over the past couple years is when we got together and we had a conversation about a commitment to bring that base salary to 40,000 and The district has made significant progress since that time Thank you for your your role in that and I think really the only thing that's left to say is thank you to everyone on The negotiating team Steve. It's been a challenging year I hope that you get to spend some time with family and take a little break this summer We're gonna try. I mean we have a trip to Hawaii scheduled. So great Well gonna take me I was just going to say I was thinking if you had trouble I could go long It's funny. I've been getting a lot of friend requests lately. So yeah a trip to
058Hawaii might do that So yeah, but truly sincerely, thank you very much. And I do hope you have some time to rest this summer It's been a challenging year. Great. Thank you Yeah, sure. All right. Thank you. All right with that then I would entertain a motion for approval of action item 8.2 Which is the 2021 2022 negotiated agreement with the st. Vrain Valley Education Association So moved by dick second by Jim Mr. Aaron's absent. Mr. Berthold. Yes, mr. Garcia I'm gonna recuse myself from voting do the Okay teacher. All right. Dr. Marder. Yes Miss Pierce. I miss this Franklin. I am a secret. I Thank you, Barb. Appreciate it All right, so that brings us to the end of our agenda this evening. We will be back in session on Wednesday June 23rd at
0595 30 p.m For May financials and then a regular meeting at 6 p.m And then we will not meet in the month of July which And so we'll be back here in the boardroom on August 11th, believe it or not. That'll go by quickly That's it. I feel like I'm forgetting something Anybody know? Alright, I would entertain a motion for Paula. Sorry. I just wanted to jump in because I I don't think Heather's here Yeah, that's what I wanted to come back to. Thank you So I just wanted to I'm sure we can defer the report and I agree it would be nice to have her here But there was a memo in our packet that we all read that outlined a lot of the work that they've done all year long So I would
060I know you've all read it But I just wanted to bring it to everyone's attention how helpful they are That group of people and just bringing in that level of expertise from the public sector from the private sector Karen I sit in on those meetings. I learned something every single time and just to hear that sort of institutional conversation around financial management is tremendously helpful so I Thought the memo covered a lot of it So I'm glad everybody got a chance to see that and hopefully we can see Heather here, but I get it We already take a lot of their time So I kind of get it and we might have to just be okay with the memo. Yeah, thanks and they do volunteer I mean it is the experts from the community that
061volunteer their time. Thanks Paula All right, then we'll look forward to Having Heather report at the next meeting Thanks, Greg. Appreciate it. All right with that. I would entertain a motion for adjournment, please By Karen second Chico all in favor. I Good night, everyone drive safe