2021-05-12 Board of Education Regular Meeting

001okay good evening and welcome to the st. brain Valley schools Board of Education meeting please join us in standing for the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Good evening Christy. Good evening. It's nice to have you with us this evening. We are ready for the roll please. Mr. Aarons? Present. Mr. Berthold? Here. Mr. Garcia? absent. Dr. Marder? Present. Ms. Pierce? Here. Mrs. Ragland? Absent. Ms. Sechrist? Here. Thanks Christy. And were there any addendums or changes to the agenda this evening? No. And to my knowledge nobody signed up for public participation is that correct? That is correct. Great, thank you. We don't have any visitors this evening so that very quickly

002brings us to our superintendent report. Dr. Haddad is not with us this evening but we do have Dr. Capuchin our deputy superintendent who will provide an update for us. Hi Jackie. Hi, thank you Ms. Sechrist. So I will give just a brief COVID update and let you know where we are with our numbers this week in our county. I'll also give you just a brief overview of some really great things that happened in our district last week and some upcoming events that you might want to hear about. So in Boulder County the one-week cumulative incident rate is 78.9. The one-week average is three percent, three percent positivity. We've had nine straight days of declining or stable hospitalizations. In Weld County we have a one-week cumulative incident rate of 169, a one-week average positivity rate of

0036.7 percent and eight days of declining or stable hospitalizations. In Boulder County 69.2 percent of all eligible residents have received at least one vaccine so that's moving in the right direction. In St. Vrain we have 47 current active student cases and two current active state staff cases. We have 556 student quarantines and six current staff members who are quarantined. So that's less than we had at the height of quarantines but we're still managing those in schools as well. So some of the things that took place last week we had a just a great week last week. We had some really really fun events. One of those was our Day of Champions in which our students with disabilities had really a very large field day at Longmont High School. Our principals and some of our athletic

004directors were in the dunk tank and our students had a blast putting them underwater. I'd like to thank Chase McBride and all of our high school athletic directors for their support as well as our special education team for their support of that event. It was really really positive and such a great thing for our parents to be able to do with their students. Also at the Innovation Center we had students do a presentation on the hospital room of the future and they have been doing that work with UC Health for a number of months and had a just a great presentation to provide. They had an audience that was able to ask some questions and see their presentation. So that's a positive partnership as well. We are wrapping up season C for sports. Mead High

005School volleyball has made it to the semi-finals. They play tomorrow at two o'clock in Colorado Springs at the World Event Center down there arena and we are starting season D baseball track and field lacrosse a lot of our outdoor activities and we're able to have more spectators in for those activities so that's been really refreshing and fun to see the students in the community gathering back for those events. We celebrated a couple of weeks ago our tribute to teachers and it was just very touching to be able to recognize our teachers and some of our top teachers at every school this this year. This this was a year like no other and they did what they were called to do and they did it beautifully and so it that was just a great virtual event.

006We look forward to that being in person next year and then also this Thursday or tomorrow evening we'll celebrate our retirees. Again that will be virtual but we invite the community and all of you to join us for that virtual event so that we can recognize those who have given a lot of their lives to this profession in St. Brayne. This weekend we have proms on Saturday evening and we also have car parades for each of the high schools. I believe Miss Sechrist is going to get those dates out to you so that you can see when the schools will have the car parades and we invite you to attend those on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and I believe Skylines is on Tuesday evening in conjunction with their senior sunset. And then we are busy over

007in learning services doing a lot of planning for our summer programming project launch. We'll start on June 7th and go to July 1st and that's for the middle school and the elementary school students. We'll have e-credit for high school algebra 1 launch for our 8th to 9th graders and many of our transition days for students transitioning into kindergarten from 5th to 6th or from 8th to 9th grade. So we're we're busy planning that work and excited to keep our schools open in June for most of the most of the month. And then also we have been working very closely with Boulder County Public Health to expand our graduations a little bit further. We are now able and have been approved for six guests per graduate. That will cause us to have to take up we

008still have to follow the distancing. We're under school guidelines and so we'll have to follow the distancing protocols between pods of families and by expanding to six guests per per graduate we are really using the entire length of the football field but we're also very excited for our students that they get to have more guests watch them graduate and we'll also have those graduations streamlined live through the web. And then the last thing is we gave an update to our parents yesterday who are part of our COVID parent advisory group and we let them know that unless something really drastic changes over the summer that we look forward to having our students back in person five days a week for the next school year. And we do well we will also have the launched ed

009option for any family that wants to remain fully online but we are really really excited about having our teachers and our students back in buildings five days a week for the start of the school year. And that's my update. Thanks Jackie. You know I have one question for you and I wonder if you can cover a common theme. I signed on for the a portion of the parent meeting yesterday and certainly parents are very appreciative but a question came up there and then I've also received a couple emails. Can you talk about masks next year and how the district is approaching that please? Yes that is a great question. We've been getting questions about both quarantines and masks for next for the start of next school year. We don't know the answer to that. Many

010of the guidelines that are being loosened up for the general public, the schools are exempt from that loosening up for schools through the remainder of this school year. We have not received notification as to whether masks or quarantines will be required for schools in August but we will stay in very close communication with our local health departments and CDPHE as well as the governor's office and Dawn will be communicating with families throughout the summer as we know more. Great thank you. So it's safe to say that the district will communicate with with parents as soon as as they have more information and as we get closer to the school year. That's exactly right and that is not a district decision. We are under the guidelines of CDPHE and our local health departments around masks and

011quarantining. Thank you. I appreciate that clarification. All right agenda item six brings us to our reports. We have one report this evening 6.1 which is an equity update and Jackie I believe that you're introducing this as well and that we have some student visitors which is fantastic. We do. We're excited to share this information with you. So good evening again President Seacrest and members of the board. This evening I'm pleased to present to you three of our groups here in St. Vrain who have been working to ensure that equity, diversity, and inclusion DEI as it's becoming is is being known now as DEI because we have to have an acronym for everything in education. Diversity, equity, and inclusion in many facets of our work across the district and our schools. Each of these groups and

012many others in our system attend to our DEI priority in slightly different ways but all with one goal to educate each student in a safe and accepting learning environment so that they may develop to their highest potential become contributing citizens and graduate with a strong competitive advantage. Tonight you will hear from educators in our departments of curriculum and instruction and student services and you will also hear from a group of high school students who began working with our curriculum and instruction team in January to learn more about the long-term and ongoing work that our team does to ensure that our curriculum is representative of our community and our nation and these students have will also provide some have also provided some suggestions from their perspectives. So with that I'll turn it over to Mr. Charles

013who will introduce his team. Thank you Jackie. Welcome Cale. It's nice to see you. It's nice to see you. Thanks for being here. Thank you. Yes it is. I actually we're going to introduce Mr. Johnny Turrell assistant superintendent and his team is going to be going first to give their report on out of the office of equity and community engagement. Fantastic great thanks. Hi Johnny. You're just keeping me on my toes right? Yes. Hi Olga and Lulu. It's good to see you. So first of all I want to make sure that I'm going to be the primary speaker but I want to make sure that you have to put your eyes on the individuals that really on a day-to-day basis makes it happen in the office of equity and community engagement and that's Olga Cordero

014and Lourdes Buck. Okay and so we're going to start off with a bit of a presentation here. I am the assistant superintendent of student services and just as a brief reminder for some and introductions of others and our office our sole mission or in our department our sole mission is to serve students and families and community and support schools. You've often heard me say strong schools equals strong students and strong communities and all to an end to ensure academic success and so to that end we have an office several offices 14 offices and processes in our department and that department is under the division of our learning services and one of those offices that seeks to remove barriers that impede students from being successful in their school experience is the office of equity and community

015engagement. This is our team here. Our team of the office of equity and community engagement is comprised of Olga Cordero. She's our director of equity and community engagement. Lourdes, we affectionately call her Lulu Buck. She's our coordinator of equity and community engagement. Savannah Bingaman who's one of our family outreach liaisons and then also Alberto Rodriguez Jimenez who's our bilingual family outreach liaison. Overview not only do we work specifically on the issues of equity we also they also support in a variety of ways. Family engagement liaison team provides help to provide housing assistance and basic needs medical assistance. They do a variety of referrals. They help families connect to resources especially during this time of covid. We saw a lot of families in need of of those those resources. They're also members of our district threat

016assessment team. We meet each Wednesday as a team of about 14 on a on a bad day and 20 on a good day of professionals who come together to evaluate and analyze threats throughout throughout the district so we have a strand of equity that's looking at those those threats or potential threats from that lens and then we all they're also members of our interventionist and crisis teams and so anytime there's a crisis out of the school we call on often Olga Cordero and then also Tenisa Henra I'd be remiss if I didn't mention her name to help lead that and support the schools and then they also are now certified Title IX district investigators and so they were just certified this past summer and they helped us with that Title IX so you can see

017that equity lens is pervasive throughout a variety of processes and throughout our district very proud of the fact that we've put together a definition of equity with a group of our stakeholders a comprehensive group of our stakeholders throughout our district and just wanted to give everyone an opportunity to sort of read that instead of reading it to yourself there's some words that I've highlighted here I'll give you a brief second to read and the words that stand out at least for me is this this concept of every student okay every student has the opportunity we use the words encompass but you can also replace their word with surround are surrounded by a wide variety of resources spaces models programs strategies and highly skilled staff that they need in order to graduate prepared for success after

018school and that's regardless of the race ethnicity gender socioeconomic status and so many school districts around the state in the metro area actually don't have a statement like this and so we're very proud of the fact that we have this statement and really looking at this as our anchor as a definition of how we support students in our in our school district a brief overview of the work we provide district-wide support equity collaborations within our district and specific offices we provide district-wide training as a matter of fact our department I entire department this past Friday went through level one training level one equity training and we're proud of that school support many of our schools have reached out to receive that specific training we provide training we've provided training for our preschool team our student

019services department several schools throughout our district have reached out to receive that training also and I believe there's a training coming up this fall okay so so the training is going to take place next Wednesday with the Innovation Center staff okay and then community and family and student partnerships we're very proud of the partnerships that that we've bolstered over these past few years and we'll talk about that a little bit later this this is not an exhaustive list of our community partners but these are the groups and some of the individuals that are really become thought partners with us and walking alongside of us with this work with equity ranging from a queer endeavor CSU the Salud Clinic and we meet with them on a regular basis to talk about talk about these issues related

020to to equity and I just talk about the issues but to really think about what our next steps are as a as a community and as a school district as it relates to the topic we're proud of the website that we have now that's on our outward-facing web page so there as I'm going through this pretty quick here if you want to know a few more details a lot of that work that we're engaged in as you can find here on that equity page and then some specific examples of some of the work that we've done this year as we've highlighted the commitment to equity by way of training some of the tools that we use and what we've communicated specifically new teachers orientation we partnered with the Office of Professional Development to really look

021at new teacher orientation so as teachers new teachers come into our system they understand that that is truly a foundational piece of what we believe in in St. Brain Valley as soon as they walk into the door that equity is a concept that we not just a concept but a principle that we hold near and dear school district and then collaboration with community organizations we talked about that earlier great deal of partnerships that we have strong partnerships that we have throughout our district great deal of teacher training that we initiated this year and intend to continue next year and years to come and then in terms of evaluating and problem solving often we'll get questions from schools questions from administrators about a particular issue and how to handle that issue and Olga and Lulu do

022a fantastic job of consulting with those schools and our team they do a fantastic job of that and then I think I shared some of this in an earlier board meeting some of our successes and challenges very proud of that definition of equity as I mentioned before we love the fact that this concept of equity is not just an event right it is a concept that is embedded in the fiber of what we do on a daily basis everything from our board policies to how we treat our how we treat our students how we treat our personnel even to the point of how we recruit and look for personnel when we couldn't find individuals out there that really fit that mode of equity and diversity we went ahead and started looking at our own and

023developing our own through our p-teach program and that's an example of how those concepts are embedded and that value is embedded in what we do on a daily basis one of the challenges like many of the challenges that our schools and all of our departments have is how do you engage in the conversation and training in a virtual setting during the pandemic right and so we've been very creative with that and now as things are beginning to loosen up we're able to stand up a lot of that training in person that was fast and furious but if you have questions please let us know we'll answer those questions collectively right thanks johnny board member questions or comments this evening on on this portion of the report dick thank you thank you mrs president mrs president

024that works for me john i just wanted to say how important it is that equity is as you are doing is integrated as part of really part of what we do and how we go about our work and it's tremendously encouraging to see the organization and support that under your leadership we're building in a way that will have an impact on all of our students whether they are regardless of the programs they're in regardless of the locations of their schools that it's a systemic determined progressive focus on providing for equitable education outcomes for each and every student and that i also would say that inclusion of the every student is is is tremendously important for us to embrace that and to be very clear that this is what we're about so i really appreciate the

025the fast report i am happy that the equity program is on the cover page of our website and i've enjoyed reading through that and and really appreciate the work of you and your staff thank you thank you and please view that work as a river and not a lake and what we mean by that is constantly evolving we are constantly adding material to it and probably will add a lot of the material that you hear tonight to to that site right thanks johnny and and olga and lulu thank you also for all of your work olga please if i may i just want to thank you all for this conversation i know we were here a year ago i think it was last summer and we began a very emotional conversation i think and we

026ran over to have an opportunity to highlight pieces of our work is really really important and this couldn't happen without our community partners and the work that we have collaboratively collaboratively done together and also with with our our leaders here we have a dynamic team we are committed we don't always agree but we can agree to disagree because we are doing what is right for students and so thank you for this opportunity if you have any questions please feel free to reach out to me to lulu or to johnny we want to be as transparent and as thorough in this work as we can to make sure that equity is embedded in every single one of our departments like you said johnny you said it well it's it's the river it's it's not a lake

027so we know that this is fluid work and it evolves and it changes and we're excited to embrace embrace this work so thank you and the time is getting short here and so i want to turn it over to our assistant superintendent of assessment curriculum instruction that's mr kayle charles great thanks johnny appreciate it thank you for all of your work so following along with the themes of diversity equity and inclusion we for many years in st brain have been working to include these themes and associated themes to embed them in our curriculum that's something that i reported to the board over the summer and we've made strides from them as johnny trell said that we this is a river it's constantly evolving and we're continuing with the work so that embedment embedding in our

028curriculum that's a very important part of what we do in st frame the other one is is alignment with state standards and statutes is something that we really look at as well one of the key requirements of our standards for reading is that all students must be able to comprehend texts of steadily increasing complexity and by the time they complete their schooling in st brain students must be able to read and comprehend independently and proficiently the kind of complex text that they would need to go into either to post-secondary education or into the workforce so we see a lot of the reading and the writing piece as something that we want our kids our students to be able to do at a very high level and so let me give you one example of a

029standard this is a 10th grade standard determine two or more themes of central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text including how they interact and build on one another to produce a complex account and provide an objective summary of that text we also know that our students have a lot of interests and they do want the various you'll hear in a little bit they're very impassioned about these subjects and they also want to see persons that they can relate to in these texts not only the authors but the characters the plot the setting problems with this and so we use these materials to build students who are problem solvers complex thinkers along with the inclusion of diversity equity and inclusion i have we have two coordinators here that

030will talk about their work one you heard a couple of board meetings ago mr zach chase our secondary language arts coordinator and he's going to give a taste of what we're doing in elementary language arts and then jenny pennant has some exciting work that she's doing along these things as well so mr chase i'll let you go first hi zach welcome hello thank you everyone it's nice to see you again yeah thanks for joining us again um as caleb said i'm going to give a brief overview about uh diversity equity and inclusion look in our k5 ele curriculum first and then touch a little bit more oh sure um and then touch a little bit more on the secondary piece that i spoke to last board meeting as well within the elementary ele curriculum it's

031a strong tie it's one of the the pieces that first attracted us to the curricular resources a strong tie to social studies so throughout the k5 experience we have a strong embedded component of building background knowledge because we know that as literacy skills develop including background knowledge is is so deeply important and so that speaks to kind of all of the topics that we've talked about so everything um from ethnic understanding to historical understandings of famous figures to also touching on some pieces of science that have some better understanding of inclusion and equity as well and then as a piece of moving into secondary all of our students are expected to read at least one extended text each nine weeks an extended text it would be to jackie's words we also like jargon so it's

032not an acronym but an extended text would be anything that you would think of as novel length so it could be an anthology a collection of poems those kinds of things but that's what we think of and then as well two to three short literary texts and one to two informational texts each quarter as well as conducting a piece of research and analytical writing that's kind of an overview of the tasks but to go back to as we were crafting that curriculum we wanted to look very deeply into the perspectives that were included in the texts so making sure that historically marginalized and historically underrepresented underrepresented populations were included from an authorial and a protagonist standpoint so that includes everything from gender gender identity ethnicity sexual orientation ability and age religious representation all of those

033pieces to really kind of combat what was a very monolithic experience that we found in our previous curricula and i would imagine in the curricula each of us experienced as we were in school as well to pull those pieces in and so as it stands remember there is quite a bit of teacher choice in these components as to which pieces get activated but there is at least one experience in each of the categories i named earlier short literary short informational and extended that touches on many of those marginalized pieces so it wasn't a an attempt to just kind of check boxes but to say how do we make sure that this is inclusive and representative so that it's not we wanted to make it as unlikely as possible for a student to make it through

034any year of our secondary ela curriculum and not have experiences with diverse perspectives and inclusive perspectives as well so with that and the danger of going into too much of what i talked about last time i'm going to hand it over to my colleague jenny pettit hi jenny hello good evening i'm jenny pettit the social studies coordinator and we'd just like to share with you what the work we've been doing this year highlighting diversity equity and inclusion so in 2019 colorado passed a law which was house bill 1192 and its title is inclusion of american minorities and teaching civil government and it calls for the teaching of the history culture and social contributions of specific minority groups including religious minorities so cde is starting the process of revising our state standards in social studies to

035address this bill among other pieces of legislation i will be co-chairing this committee and we start our work actually this saturday and we'll go to the state board of education in june of 2022 for adoption of these new standards this year we've had an initial internal audit of our district adopted resources to identify the teaching of minorities and marginalized groups using texts written by these populations our goal is to create a sustainable and equitable system where teachers staff and administrators feel supported and have access to high quality resources that are inclusive diverse and accessible to all so to do this we put together a leadership team of 20 teachers who will begin this work this summer this leadership team will curate a list of texts in k-12 that will be linked to the unit plans

036they will refer to the list generated by our diverse by our narrative student group as well as other resources and the goal is to have these resources available and linked to the unit plans by august 2021 so we have specific criteria that we're going to use to choose these texts and resources first of all they have to address the standards for example in history this includes analyzing events from multiple perspectives we are using the national council for the social studies c3 framework as a guide we have several rubrics and tools to identify bias as well as evaluate diversity we are looking for age-appropriate texts as well not just for reading level but also for content and we really want to focus on a balanced approach by including positive and uplifting stories along with stories highlighting

037struggles and for courses that are taught regionally in the social studies we want to include texts that are written by authors from that region of study so this leadership team will also begin creating model lesson plans this summer that will include diverse narratives as well as inclusive pedagogy that will be linked to the unit plans for all teachers to use in the fall this leadership team also will then start leading professional development starting in the fall open to all social studies teachers who want to participate and the professional development will focus on how to best teach these diverse narratives so that's just a quick overview of what we've been working on this year and our continued work for the next several years so thank you for for this time thanks uh do board members have

038any any questions or comments for jenny zack or kale dick thank you madam president i like madam or mrs i'm good with you i just had a question about the social studies piece is is this a an opportunity for the district to identify kind of one from column a one from column b and that addresses each of the areas and the teachers will choose between them or is this a a set of a list that every teacher will do yeah great question this is this will be a list of diverse texts that teachers can choose from so there's a lot of choice in there for teachers and for students um that will align with the standards and also the content in the unit plans so every every book or source on the list would meet

039the criterion that teachers would choose among them that's exactly right and each unit will have a list associated with it thank you that's wonderful yeah great thanks jenny i want to thank you for serving on or for co-chairing actually that committee i appreciate it um and then i have a question i guess for all three of you um and and this is going to show my my ignorance a little bit i understand but but how does somebody in your position with your responsibilities how do you make sure that you're your current right and your understanding um you just have this how do you how do you make sure you're an expert well part of it is we have a great team behind us and you heard from ogah and johnny and lulu we uh we

040lean on them a lot to keep us uh current on what's going along too we also this is a very something that's important to us as well so we uh we study we uh work with groups uh the list of groups that johnny put up on his slide we also work with those groups and we also are going to start some more community forums in the fall so we hear from our community too about this as well we think that's very important in these groups and so in that way we stay current with it um both zach and jenny have served on these state boards for many years zach was a co-chair of the english language arts standards uh for the state of colorado as well so and that goes across the board greg george

041we so we want our our people involved in these state level committees to know what's going on and not only to know what's going on but help lead those as well great can i just add also with this work that we're doing um we have partnered with uh several professors at metro state university um to help you think partners throughout this whole process as well so we're trying to find expertise outside of what we're reading and and know ourselves great thank you very much um did you have a comment zach i'm not putting you on the spot and don't feel like you have to have one either now i don't know what to genuinely yes so as i talked about last meeting we've built review and revision into the curriculum this year so starting next

042year we'll have two grade levels that go through and we'll be asking the teachers of those grade levels what are some other texts um so if i tried to read every young adult and adult novel that came my way we would never have anything in the curriculum and so we'll be leaning on the teachers to say what have we read and how do we evaluate it and what do we look for and to a piece of that we'll be looking working closely with jenny's team but also looking at the national council of teachers of english for their standards and recommendations on how to evaluate those texts to ensure that we're we're meeting our own our own goals right thank you you know um yeah absolutely after when i'm yeah i'm not done yet no no

043i just get your attention not in prison yeah no i i think you know as you all were talking my wheels are are turning and this is yet another example of st brain and we don't have silos in st brain each department you know works with every other department and if equity and and and you know if dei is going to be embedded into a system right then you must collaborate with partners you can't have silos and you must make sure that you have experts at the table and so thank you for being our experts and for collaborating and bringing in outside groups as well i appreciate that thanks john thank you very much you kind of danced around the question i was thinking um i know this is a a conversation that we're having

044within st brain and i and i think we do a good job of nurturing and really embedding it into our fabric but i'm just curious do you believe that this is a conversation outside of st brain and you're drawing in in terms of outside support and is it pervasive in other school districts as well it uh well the work that jenny's going to be doing is statewide and this is the that house bill that passes the law so all the districts and that's why i'm so proud of the work she's doing is she she will be leading that for all the districts in the state of colorado that will start this not only start the conversation but then provide resources and you heard the the level of complexity she's getting they're going to get down

045to the lesson level and provide examples uh and we'll share those examples with districts across the state in fact we do that already um you know all of our stuff is front facing and we we love to share with other districts paula thank you yeah thank thank you for the the presentation um i really just had a couple of comments and and one is just um olga kind of touched on it when uh last summer we came together and started talking about this um because it was you know we were at the point of almost a national crisis talking about equity um and even at that time in a year later the fact that we were not caught flat-footed or surprised is very impressive to me like this has been ongoing work for years the

046fact that you guys are all in these positions that you are subject matter experts in your in your field you working at the state level so i just i just want to thank our leadership jackie you and don about building a system that has had an eye on this for i want to say a decade or more so we were you know when the national spotlight was was put on it we we were ready we were we were ready ready to talk about it um and continue working working through it um so i appreciate that as part of our system and then also the the comprehensive nature of your work and that it's so multi-dimensional everything you know top down from the state level we obviously have to comply with with state standards bottom up

047from the community level um who you know who are we locally what is happening here let's identify our issues and identify our our specific problems um what is the experience of our students the experience of our parents and then all the the resources like who who are valid influences who are not you know like there's there's so much out there that um i really appreciate you guys being those eyes and ears and professionals that can and essentially do that filtering for us and then we can really develop it and hone it to fit our community which you've done through just last month when we approved the high school language art curriculum that you developed that you developed from our experience and from the needs of of our community and the pete teach program that was

048mentioned so it's just so incredibly impressive the work that's been sort of silently been done all this time and then like now it's it's we're talking about it a little more publicly but it's always been there and we've always been um prepared to to deal with it and listen the key to the whole thing is is listening is listening i think that's primarily what you guys do and then you actually create a product out of that so um this was quick but uh i we've you know we've been sort of evaluating it in my eight years on the board so um i just so much appreciate all the work that's that's gone into it thanks all right thank you appreciate you being here can you say uh president secrets you made a great point about

049bringing in expert groups and i would like to um introduce an a expert group that we've been working with through the uh throughout this year it's been part of our students and they have been a group that has uh offered a lot of suggestions to us um they are very talented group of students uh very passionate about what they do um rocky would you like to bring your team up here this is a group that we've been working with uh with olga with dr kaputian uh myself and uh principal finnestad um has been uh part of this as well and they've provided some invaluable suggestions on this topic uh not only to about techs but down to lesson levels as well and so i'm going to have them introduce themselves and i'll clean off the

050clicker for you guys and um they have a presentation of the work that they've been doing in the same brain it's really quite remarkable wonderful thanks kale and welcome we're excited to have you join us this evening thank you so much for the introduction hello everyone i'm rocky pataria my pronouns are she her and i'm a junior at silver Creek high school i'm the founder and district lead for diversifier narrative sbbsd outside of school i'm an intern for the diversifier narrative national team i'm involved in many environmental and social justice related organizations and i'm passionate about stem i i'm rese ranzweiler and i use she her pronouns i'm a junior in the ib diploma program at naiwat high school and i'm the communications lead and outreach lead for dawn i dance pre-professionally and i try

051to find time to read and write whenever i'm free hi everyone i'm lillia elizadeh and i'm a junior at silver Creek high school and i'm a member of the curriculum committee at dawn sbbsd aside from dawn i am an intern through the social justice art organization at the boulder museum of contemporary art and the longmont firehouse studio thank you guys so much for having us here we're really excited to be doing this and we really appreciate all of the time you're taking out of your days according to the oxford dictionary diversity is defined as the practice or quality including or involving people from a range of different social and ethnic backgrounds and of different genders sexual orientations etc our definition of diversity is similarly aligned with the dictionary definition we believe that diversity is an

052essential part of society because it's important to celebrate our differences while creating a unity within them diversify our narrative or dawn for short is a national organization committed to changing school curriculums and the education system to promote a diverse and anti-racist narrative currently we have over 800 different district chapters 6 000 students participating in our cause 76 000 signatures on the national petition in an ever-going social media presence all with the intent of improving the american education system starting but certainly not stopping at the high school level the sbbsd dawn chapter has 14 members with four different committees one team which works with our district to help diversify the curriculum one which manages our social media accounts one for outreach and one for internal communication we're here today to discuss the changes being made in

053sbbsd's high school english curriculum as well as go over specifics why and how this curriculum should be implemented diversify our narrative's mission statement is to be anti-racist and to encourage a productive dialogue on race and identity among our student bodies through the inclusion of racially diverse anti-racist texts in usa schools to work towards racial justice educational equity and community power in light of recent events across america there have been multiple instances of police brutality against black communities yet the main issues facing society today are not a topic of discussion in st. frame valley school classrooms this problem is directly rooted in a history of anti-blackness in america so the question is how can we all work together to be anti-racist and encourage a productive dialogue on race and identity among the student sbbsd body the

054foundation of a student's mindset is shaped through the educational process the education system is an essential factor in the lives of sbbsd students and while the curriculum in our district has been very very successful in many of its endeavors it has also been drastically underutilized as a tool to combat racism oftentimes within classrooms students are misled including myself to believe that racism is either non-existent or scarce within our country however racism is still incredibly prevalent not only in many individuals day-to-day lives but on a systemic level this type of generalized ignorance became even more evident to me this summer during the blm protests and then again before the presidential election many students within our district that i've spoken to regarding these issues were completely clueless and relatively insensitive about important and pressing issues in our

055country including racial discrimination lgbtq plus rights trans rights health care and more pressing issues such as police brutality and violence against black americans are becoming more and more prevalent each day as we actively try to combat these disparities if our students aren't equipped with the right knowledge and history for more than one perspective the future of our country will be uninformed in relevance to decisions that can hold not only the foundation of our country but the lives of many minority groups this is why it's incredibly important to give students an accurate impression of current and past events regarding diverse groups many of our members have seen the lack of representation in our curriculum firsthand the main reason i started the spvsc don chapter is due to the hateful stereotypes and misconceptions surrounding my culture as

056an indian the majority of our representation is through the stereotypical smart kid or a whitewashed representation through things like yoga and ayurveda but in the classroom we have virtually no representation this lack of representation has dismal effects on the classroom i've always learned about our world from literature and when the world or more importantly the people i see every day in my school isn't reflected through our curriculum it's easy for misconceptions and stereotypes about groups of people to form these stereotypes have negative effects on fully accepting one identity and true self being a member of the lgbtq community i know how important it is for people to see themselves represented in the classroom not only on not only on an educational level but also because it provides a sense of identity and inclusion that is

057so often difficult to obtain this is why don chapters across the nation are fighting for representation and diversity in their education systems many chapters haven't had the acceptance we've had in spvst we are truly grateful to have been welcomed in with open arms and are overwhelmed by the support from educators the equity department and the curriculum department spvst's demographics show an overwhelming majority white population with 62.6 students this means that bipoc black indigenous and people of color students only make up 37.4 percent of the student body in a predominantly white school district many students are unexposed to the harsh realities many minorities face students need to learn about racism from bipoc authors from bipoc lenses instead of the current texts which are mainly written by white authors additionally there are many achievement gaps between minority

058students in comparison to other white students in this district for example although there has been a decreasing dropout rate among latina students which is wonderful and a great example of how the efforts already being executed have been extremely effective there is still a significant difference in dropout rates between latina students and white students in order to combat these disparities rather than placing the blame on students themselves we must reflect on the issue of the on the issue of the matter curriculum is one of the key aspects in implementing progress positive and progressive change both within our society and our educational system diversifying curriculum will not only benefit society as a whole but will help students with their own educational achievements and mindset we have been working with the equity and curriculum departments these past few

059months to help diversify the curriculum in our district as well as having a student perspective in the english and social studies curriculums we are being taught we've classified our goals for curriculum in two different categories diversity and anti-racist literature starting out with the goal of diversity for years educators have acknowledged that representation is essential for students individual self-acceptance and love of learning even though we've seen an expansion of inclusivity with advocacy for female heroines literature simple gender inclusivity isn't enough there have been many instances in which the progressive nature of our district has already served us especially in terms of literature for instance thus far in my high school career i have read books written by black authors like the color purple by alice walker i know why the caged bird sings by maya angelo

060and the hate you give by angie thomas even books written by white authors such as to kill a mockingbird by hyper lee that reflect on such segregation in america can be extremely educational about the dynamic of race and the history of america however books such as the latter can only be beneficial to a student's education of major problematic aspects of the many novels like the white savior narrative throughout to kill a mockingbird are thoroughly reflected on and thought about by students and teachers throughout the lessons during and after reading the book no matter their age it's imperative that students see people like themselves in a non-historical context as a majority of history taught surrounding bipoc is filled with brutality and oppression by attempting to understand more about diverse characters characters differing from the reader in

061race gender sexual orientation or socioeconomic status students may be exposed to narratives and gain positive insight that help create a more inclusive and accepting environment within sbbsd schools these texts can also help students find something to connect with which is rare with most of the books currently in our curriculum our second curriculum category is anti-racist literature which is much more direct not only are we encouraging schools to implement diverse literature but also use literature that questions the systemic and systematic racism that has been built into our country a system that has been existed since america was founded we hope to combat current bias and racism in schools while simultaneously combating future racism we would like to foster an actively anti-racist classroom environment focused on understanding the perspectives of others we are hopeful that with more

062and more exposure to diverse to the diverse literature stated in our curriculum our country will truly reach the standards of acceptance and equality we've always aimed for by implementing these texts and lessons students will hopefully be less prone to racial bias and become more educated in surrounding the areas surrounding the BIPOC experience specifically in the u.s and to reiterate diversifier narratives overall mission statement is to work towards racial justice educational equity and community power some of our first steps when our district's don group was created was to gain support through the national petition calling for schools to implement diversified texts through the use of our instagram we were able to reach a total amount of 333 signatures as of april these current and former students parents and faculty signed our petition to show support for

063our causes including the importance of acknowledging the recent instances of police brutality against black communities the issue of anti-blackness in america and to move forward with anti-racist practices as stated in the overview of our petition the impact education has on a student's mindset is crucial hence it is important to encourage productive and progressive dialogue our instagram account has near 500 followers and we plan to expand our reach even further every week multiple educational posts are shared to spread awareness educate and gain support for our goals presently we hope to move forward with your help to implement a more diverse curriculum and educate both students and teachers creating a more inclusive and safe space for all our subcommittee for curriculum planning has been working for weeks to produce a list of state approved texts for social

064studies grades 6 through 12 along with refining the provided book list from don national these members compiled a list of literacy and learning requirements for each grade level found sources for students to analyze and learn from these texts coincide with grade units essential questions and overall requirements by the colorado standards each approved text has important content regarding diverse characters settings and messaging or is written by bipoc authors not only are these texts educational but they include important values which correspond to the content for each grade level for example certain grades emphasize the importance of building on the scale of analyzing primary documents hence these texts reflect that and are primarily firsthand sources each text also includes variances and other literary elements such as vocabulary complex language poetry and literary devices the don national team has

065also created a lesson many lesson plans to aid educators in the process of anti-racist teaching the link to our recommendations will be shared at the end of this presentation our next steps are to lead in a session at the district's equity summit this summer we have proposed to do a lesson on the importance of representation in the classroom as well as a small etiquette training we also hope to see our text recommendations in action by reaching out to teachers to pilot these texts in their classrooms in the upcoming school years teachers within our district have already come forward often in order to ensure the comfort safety and inclusion of all students we simply find it important that this type of positive and respectful approach be mandated as a community we should constantly be working to

066improve our awareness inclusivity and sensitivity to both the way we implement our education and the content we and the content we provide our student body our district's equity and curriculum staff has already done an incredible job implementing diversity into the district website and has a detailed plan to accomplish these goals again we would like to reiterate our profound acceptance we've had thus far from teachers the equity staff and the curriculum staff not only have they been incredibly supportive but they've created an environment where we as students do not need to fight for equality within our curriculum but rather get to work and collaborate with those in our community in order to achieve it thank you to the board of education and all of those who have supported us in this endeavor thank you for giving

067us an opportunity to have our voices heard there's still work to be done but in diversifying our narratives we will take a monumental step forward we deeply thank you for your time and continued support for our goals and hope to move forward with a diverse anti-racist curriculum and teachings within SUVC's future we're very proud to be part of such an inclusive and progressive district you can scan this qr code with your phone's camera to access all of our contact information social media text recommendations petition and link to a feedback form the feedback form is optional but we would greatly appreciate it if you could fill it out we will also be sending all of this out in an email in case you would prefer to access the document that way we would like to use

068the we would like to use the remainder of our time to answer any questions you may have thank you thank you very much that was a very informative presentation and before i open up to questions you were gracious enough to recognize all of the district's hard work on equity and and their acceptance of you coming along you know joining them but i really want to appreciate the three of you and say thank you for being passionate about something reaching out getting involved and being a part of the process thank you very much i appreciate that i think since i i have my mask down if it's all right with everyone i'm going to start with a couple of questions rocky one of the things that you touched on and i'm curious what what brought this

069to to your attention personally was it something that the three of you experienced in st vrain in the classroom did you have friends that experienced this conversations was it what you know what was happening across the nation we just just curious what you led you to don i've been following the national instagram account for a while and they had a series of posts discussing experiences other people have had with um the lack of representation in curriculum and i really resonated with those experiences and i was like what can i do in my community to help make sure that other students don't feel that way so i reached out to the organization they were like oh we have all these chapters across the nation and we're hoping to expand at first they were only based in

070california but then they began expanding nationally so it's like maybe i'll get started and then it's become this amazing program with all wonderful students and amazing support in our district for me it was a combination of things it was a lot um seeing things that my peers had been posting about this and also conversations i'd have with other peers who had differing views from me but i realized that a lot of their views stemmed from a place of ignorance and i wanted to find the root of that problem and that's from the education system and that's how i got involved with don when i saw rocky had started our chapter i was really excited because um this is something that i'm very passionate about and i just found a place that perfectly fit in with

071those values so i found out about don through social media and then when i applied over the summer and then when our chapter started getting up and running i joined this chapter i really initially joined after and just started thinking about this conversation in general after i came out a few years ago or like a year and a half ago um i realized that there was no representation of my experience in the classroom and uh through our education system and i know a lot of people had a lot of fear around coming out because of the lack of representation they saw in their everyday life and so i think anything we could do to change that would be wonderful thank you for sharing your individual stories i appreciate that and i do want to open

072it up for for board members for comments or questions and and i think you found through your experience and we've heard tonight that that equity is absolutely embedded in throughout st brain and we don't view it as an event it is is something that's a part of the fabric in the everyday life but that that also means that that the district is continually striving for for better and for more each and every day and so i want to recognize you and thank you for your part in playing the part you played in in striving for that better and more and sharing your individual perspectives and and bringing your knowledge to the table thank you very much any other board members have comments or questions this evening john thank you very much you are representing exactly

073what education is about and that is using your heart your head your voice and also your ears and i couldn't be more proud of what you've brought to the table the equity is a national conversation that we've been listening to for quite some time i do think saint brain has kind of wrapped itself around equity and this might not have been represented as well as it should have so thank you very much for bringing it forward and i i appreciated you sharing your stories so thank you thank you madam president our country was founded on a dream that no other nation in the world has successfully achieved and that dream was that we were a place where that could become truly a multicultural society and our definition of multicultural is pretty narrow and i i

074think that it remains the existential threat to our democracy if we are not successful in embracing diversity in all its forms and helping to transform through our education system first but also our governmental structures the experience of our citizens to be both informed and open to the experiences of others i think that the work that you are starting so early and and joining becoming part of is i believe it's critically important to the survival of our country and i applaud your both your focus and your passion but also your intellect and commitment to the cause it's one that you'll find many allies as you lead the way will join your parade as you help us see ourselves for what we are and what we can become so thank you thanks dick paula thank you all

075for coming i i definitely appreciate hearing your experience as my comments when the when the staff members closed i think their job is so multi-dimensional but really the key to the whole thing is is listening and then building a product out of that building a system out of that so my my question for you is when you were involved in don and you already answered for joey kind of why you were brought to that and kind of the research you did through that that avenue and then you approached the district in meeting with the staff what did you learn from that like were you were you pleasantly surprised were you disappointed like like where you once we the curtain was pulled back for you and you kind of saw the mechanics behind what it takes

076to build an education system and you know implement curriculum and lessons plans and hire teachers and train them when you kind of learned more of those mechanics and what it takes what was what was your reaction to that and then the second part of my question is is there a feedback loop in don where you can share your experience good bad or ugly with your other chapters around around the country and kind of compare where we are we first started by distributing our petition and we got emails from some principals that were like we can't share this you have to get approval and we were honestly kind of scared we're like what will happen will we get in like big trouble will we get suspended or something and then we met with the equity and

077curriculum departments as well mr finn instead in i want to say january of this year and surprisingly they were so accepting of what we were doing and were willing to work with us to help have our voices heard in our curriculum as well as expanding the reach of our curriculum and including representation and diversity to use curriculum as a tool to expand students' knowledges and their diverse perspectives of the world around them which was a pleasant surprise and would you mind repeating the second part of your question well i'm i'm happy to hear i'm i'm surprised you were surprised you shouldn't be surprised like we're all i mean they're always willing to um to to listen that's the name of the game like that's that's how we're going to create a system that can deliver

078the best education to our students but um so i'm glad that was a positive experience for you but my second my second question was are you able to turn around and share that experience with your other national chapters of dawn like because i'm because i'm sure there there are some kids that are running into brick walls there's some that are having a lot of success is there a way that you guys can kind of share your experiences with the other chapters yeah i'm an intern for the communications team and diversifier narrative and we have like a discord chat where we talk about what we're doing and it's like a place for supports not only like business related i'd say and then as a communications intern we work together with other chapters provide them support and

079then connect them with other chapters that are having successful experiences such as our chapter which is clearly having an amazing support system within the district so in doing that we help provide other chapters who are just starting or are not having as much of a momentum as we've had and like other interns are also helping with that so just creating an inclusive space not only in our own districts and communities but across the nation and in different districts and even in private schools and we're recently expanded internationally so we have some chapters in japan and canada and we hope to get more a global reach thank you i mean i'm glad to hear i mean i think whenever you're approaching a really complex issue like this you have to do the best you can to

080identify the problem and again it's complicated it's complex it's historical it's we all bring biases to the table every single one of us every single organization so we need to do the best we can to focus to focus the problem and it sounds like your input and then the input of our our staff through our equity people through our curriculum people are really doing a good job of that is really trying to harness the problem as best we can because that's always the first step from there you grow we can't just keep spinning around you know kind of trying not identifying what our baseline is so so again thank you thank you for coming thank you for the months of work that you've put into this thank you to our staff for for giving it

081the attention it deserves and i really look forward to the continued productivity from from all this conversation thanks thanks paula rocky reese and lilia i do want to give dr kaputian a chance to have some closing comments also to to wrap things up but before dr kaputian comments i saw uh what i believe assume is a family member taking pictures so do you have any important people in your life that are with you this evening that you would like to introduce that i i have a a second hunter probably very proud of you it's nice to see you welcome nope i think that's yes that's perfect that's exactly what we're anticipating anybody else have have visitors oh great we'll say hi family all right hello yeah wonderful all right jackie any closing comments yeah i

082i really just want to thank our students as well as our staff who really have put their heart into this work for for quite a while our students are wise beyond their years we pride ourselves on having avenues for student voice and this is what it yields when we take the time to really listen to what our students are hoping to achieve and rocky and lilia and reese i'd like to just thank you very much for reaching out to us earlier in the year for coming alongside us to do this work and and really being very very honest in your perspectives we will grow from your perspective and i hope that you'll grow from ours and that we continue to do this work into next year as well so thank you thank you for being

083here we appreciate it yes principal finnestead thank you for joining us as well and once again you surprised us uh you didn't surprise us but you proved to us that you have fantastic students at silver creek high school kale did you have any closing comment you're getting your computer great we we want to give everybody who wants to talk an opportunity to speak right so all right yes uh all right that brings us to our consent items this evening and todd i believe you have three special guests to introduce i do thank you president seacrest members of the board tonight they do have three guests joining us our our new administrative hires i'm going to start with our first administrative hire um i want to introduce to you mr christopher shoo who will be joining

084us as a area superintendent to join uh dr pushen's team alongside with uh dina profedidini and uh brian krauss so if you want to come up and i'll read a little bit about you uh christopher um mr shoo graduated from the university of minnesota twin cities go go first with a bachelor's degree in history and spanish he continued his education at the university of phoenix where he received his master's degree in educational counseling mr shoo also received his principal license from the university of phoenix for the past eight months mr shoo has been the interim superintendent for jefferson county public schools where he is responsible for the in-person and remote education mental health safety and inspiration of 80 000 students prior to that also in jefferson county public schools mr shoo was a deputy superintendent

085for eight months uh in 2020 the chief of schools for secondary from 2017 to 2019 the achievement director community superintendent from 2013 to 2017 and the principal of evergreen middle school from uh 2008 uh to 2013 and i also understand he was a spanish teacher correct so mr shoo this is the board of education and i'll turn it over to you hello everyone nice to meet you it's nice to meet you welcome thank you for the introduction i appreciate it i just wanted to say thank you for this opportunity and i also just wanted to let you know how incredibly welcome i've felt here in saint brain and the process started a couple weeks ago when i applied and nearly every day since i applied i've gotten an email or a phone call from some

086wonderful individual here in saint brain and i i wanted to come here and tell you that and i will be thanking i just i've met olga she was on my interview committee an email back and forth i just met her in person and this is kind of what's been happening to me in saint brain i spent two days last week one visiting a number of schools that i'm going to be working with and supporting and then met a number of people in all the district offices and one after another felt incredibly welcomed and you need to know people are so excited to be working here at saint brain supporting students and been so exciting and to meet me and gracious and i am covered with gear from all the different schools going to be supporting

087and if you walk into my house right now the when you walk in the front door i'll just aligned along the door is stuff from not the nine watt area in the long one area so i've i'm covered with gear believe me it's going to be good to go which is good because you can imagine i'm covered gear in jefko so i'm going to have to make some room with all that but that's why i wanted to come in and just say hello to all of you and meet all of you and thank you for having such an incredible school district i've gotten to know don headad over the past years he's been my primary mentor as i was the interim superintendent jefko public school so learned a lot from him i've learned a great

088deal about jackie capuchin and i've gotten to spend some time with her as well as along with other great people so thank you for this opportunity once again but i wanted you to know most of all what an incredible school district this is and how welcomed i felt on a daily basis and once again people reaching out phone my my phone number is out there now so i'm getting phone calls which is great too but thank you for this opportunity i'm excited to become a member of saint valley school district thank you welcome next i want to introduce to you uh miss carol olefant as the principal for prairie ridge elementary school in dr capuchin's feeder area uh miss olefant graduated from the from regis university with a bachelor's degree in liberal arts she continued

089her education at the university of northern colorado where she received her master's degree in educational leadership for the past year four years miss olefant has been the dean of students at centennial elementary school where she assisted with the development of systems and structures to enhance student safety and well-being and led the design and implementation of numerous initiatives from 2012 to 2017 miss olefant served as an instructional coach in thompson the thompson school district prior to that she had a principal internship at prairie ridge elementary school from 2010 to 2011 and miss olefant also served as a reading specialist summer school administrator and second grade teacher in arizona so hi carol thank you so much i just wanted to say what an honor it is to be able to join this strong visionary leadership at saint

090brain i've been you know in the fringes of it as a dean for the last four years and gotten to know a lot of the the principals and the district leaders and been to several board meetings and and so i know all your faces and it's just a wonderful privilege to join these ranks and to to join in this work i'm thrilled to still be in the frederick theater and to be um actually prairie ridge is my neighborhood school and so i already know lots of the families and i am so excited to be able to continue to help the rising generation to have that really great foundational start as they grow into be those type of young ladies that were just here speaking to us and so i'm excited to have that impact on

091our community and i'm very grateful for this opportunity so thank you very much congratulations and amanda if you want to come up um i'd like to introduce to you miss amanda ferguson as an area special education coordinator and she is joined uh today by executive director laura has of special ed so if you want to come stand next to amanda let me read a little bit about you miss ferguson graduated from the university of northern colorado with the bachelor's degree in biology education she continued her education at western governor's university where she received her master's degree in special education miss ferguson also received her eds degree in educational leadership and special education administration from the university of northern colorado for the past two years miss ferguson has been a special education department lead teacher and

092a coach at erie high school where she collaborated with building administration district leadership and the special education team to advocate develop and implement inclusive programs that maximize student learning through innovative and strength-based opportunities from 2011 to 2013 miss ferguson served as a special education department lead teacher and school-wide intervention specialist and coach at wellington middle school in the pooter school district prior to that she served as a special education teacher and science teacher at cedar uh cedar edge high school in the delta county school district from 2006 to 2011 miss ferguson also served as the athletics intermural and recreation program coordinator at the university of northern colorado from 2001 to 2006 so amanda thank you very much that was a mouthful nice job just making my way across the state over here um i just

093want to thank everybody the board and the leadership team of st rain valley schools it is a true honor to be here um i am very excited to get started in my leadership quest especially with having such amazing mentors in the in the district and honestly learning from the students um especially those that we had here tonight amongst others but i was listening to a podcast recently that talked about creating opportunities for our students to be victorious and i truly believe that this opportunity is our next step in in making that happen for our kids and that's why i'm here at student first and that is very clear across st rain so thank you very much for that opportunity i am excited to get started thank you congratulations all right todd i can't help it

094but think uh we were talking earlier with kale in the previous discussion about experts and as you were reading the information about each one of the new hires this evening clearly they're experts and clearly they are dedicated to what's best for children and public education so thank you for your the part you play in in bringing those amazing people to st rain absolutely what's a team offer i know we uh they went through a long process and rigorous process to be selected and we really do um as we put positions out there um really wait and patiently patiently for the uh the right person to come along when i think we got some good teammates coming and colleagues to our leadership team so we're excited that's certainly how it appears so welcome to all three

095of you congratulations on on your new role in st frame all right and with that we will make it official do any board members wish to pull any consent items this evening i just have a general comment about consent items that uh particularly the uh material that we got from brian so is now the time um is it going to change how you vote no so why don't we go ahead and vote and then we'll we'll discuss okay great all right with that then i would entertain a motion for approval for agenda items 7.1 staff termination sleeves 7.2 staff appointments 7.3 approval of minutes for the april 14 2021 regular meeting the april 21 2021 study session and april 28 2021 regular meeting 7.4 approval of recommendation to hire area assistant superintendent 7.5 approval of

096recommendation to hire principal of prairie ridge elementary school 7.6 approval of recommendation to hire area special education coordinator 7.7 approval of quick claim deed to the town of frederick 7.8 approval of change order two to construction manager general contractor contract for centennial elementary school renovation project 7.9 approval of amendment to design builder contract for mead high school artificial turf field and track replacement project 7.10 approval of water tap fees at highlands elementary school and 7.11 approval of purchase of microsoft software licenses so moved by jim in a second by john uh oh my gosh christy barb just about came out of my mouth but it's christy mr erin's yay mr berthold yes mr garcia absent dr martyr yes miss pierce aye mrs raglan absent miss secrets aye thank you christy and apologies for that my

097brain went blank a moment um dick thank you madam president just the i just wanted to make a general comment about the um our uh consent items although we passed them in one vote i i wanted to express my appreciation to uh staff and in particular the information we get about the various property transactions from brian and the use of the bond money the information provided in that in your documents gives me great confidence that you have crossed every t dotted every i and it's sufficient for us to make good decisions based on the comprehensive information you've provided and responsiveness to questions so although we don't we spend like a heartbeat approving it which is appropriate it it it is possible for us to spend a heartbeat doing it because the staff is spending so

098much time ensuring that the work is well done before it ever comes to us so i just wanted to say thanks particularly to brian but really to the entire staff with the care in which they uh vet the items that are in the consent agenda and their responsiveness to questions before and after the meeting great that's a good point dick i appreciate you bringing that up thank you um all right agenda item 8.1 is an action item and it is a recommendation for the adoption of the resolution accepting the fiscal year 21 2022 student fees which is also board exhibit jqe hi diane madam president welcome dr capuchin members of the board thank you so much for having me here tonight i am seeking a your recommendation to approve this resolution of student fees for

099the 21 22 school year and as you can see from the memo with the extension of one-to-one ipads and our elementary schools would like to extend that optional miscellaneous fee for insurance to our elementary families we also would like to include a new instrumental fee for rental this will help us be able to maintain the instruments that are rented out and clean them and make certain that they are in tip-top condition and then finally the last fee that we have going along with our new pool we will be able to have a course in life guarding and there is an 85 dollar fee for students who are seeking that life guarding certification that will go directly to that organization so they can get that life guarding card pretty awesome any questions diana i i have

100one question and i i believe i already know the answer and i'm going to ask it anyway you've added the the fee for the lifeguard course as well as the instrument rental fee how do you handle those situations we have we have other fees and if if finances are an issue for any student will it prohibit them being able to participate in the life the life guarding course or in playing an instrument it's a great question we have different categories of fees and so the life guarding is a course fee so anyone who is free or reduced lunch that course is completely waived for our miscellaneous fees we have an internal process where we have a pro rated fee and so it goes on down on a reduction base so that will apply to our

101instrumental rental and also our technology fee great thank you so just like all of the other fees it will in no way prohibit a student from participating that's absolutely true and our school principals are always willing and desiring to work with students and families to help accommodate any of these fees to make sure that every child who would like to participate in extracurricular or or athletics or other programs and accessing the technology we're here to make that happen right and it's been my experience that the principals really are experts in in in knowing the students in their building and knowing what teachers to go to to get additional information and ensuring all children have access to those opportunities so thanks i appreciate it thank you any other board questions or comments dick did you have

102something yes thank you but you've addressed one of my comments already that the that there now exists and has for some time provisions that allow students to participate in all of our fee-based activities regardless of their ability to regardless of whether the fees would become a a hindrance for them to participate so that's that's fundamentally important i think that it not only be working from classroom to classroom and building to building but really a systematic directive that all of us are eager to apply so that that's very helpful i am more i'm also interested in a sort of a strategic overview of the role that these course assorted fees play in the work of the district and the degree to which if if there is a if it does have an impact even an impact

103in discouraging participation in those experiences although the financial piece might be accommodated but presenting a potential disproportionate enrollment in it for example advanced courses or arts and music programs or athletics if if there is a unintended bias that is part of the way in which we approach those offerings i would just be interested in in exploring that as an organization and possibly as a future study session topic yeah let's start with a conversation you and i can have a conversation with don and and see how it evolves from there thank you yeah absolutely and i also wanted to say thank you for the fees that we have now are really based on substantial reductions that we made you made your staff made across the board two years ago and you have held the line on

104those reductions which i was happy to see and i certainly understand the rationale for the new fees that are are present absolutely i would agree and that actually piggybacked on i i don't see any increases just additions because of increased opportunities for children right yeah yeah okay and i'm going to you know in all honesty pretty excited to see the the lifeguard certification we're same brain has a pool almost yeah so that's wonderful all right diane any closing comments no additional board member comments oh just john yeah thank you um i'm really glad to see that our instruments are following the same sort of plan that we have with our technology there was talk of reducing the cost of the technology i'm just wondering if the um full implementation of having every student having an

105ipad did that impact our ideas of maybe being able to reduce that and then secondly the lifeguards are great i'm just hoping that we're going to be able to hire some of those students to be lifeguards at our pool that's a great question the first one is yes we are very fortunate um and i appreciate michelle bourgeois work in technology she's always looking at that we have made a reduction already once originally it was in the 40 range and so we've we've almost cut that in half and i think we'll continue to look at that our students truly take care of their technology we have very low rates of breakage or loss and so with their continued care i know that that department will continue to look at this fee this uh as they have

106done in the past and yes i do think that is the intent that we will grow our own lifeguards um in sane brain just like p teach there you go all right uh thanks diane i appreciate it um and and with that uh wrap up of that discussion i would entertain a motion for approval of action item 8.1 please by john in a second second by jim mr erin's aye mr berthold yes mr garcia absent dr martyr yes miss pierce aye mrs ragland absent miss seacrest aye thank you christy action item 8.2 is a recommendation for the approval of a request to grant an exception to board policy gbea staff ethics conflict of interest fitzpatrick hi greg hi welcome thank you um so we're here i'm recommending that the board of education allow an exception

107to the current board policy which is um which states that no district employee or firm owned by a school district employee shall be allowed to sell to the district or at schools or staff goods or services of any kind without the express written prior consent of the board of education we have um an employee she's currently a substitute teacher in the district but she also works um doing yoga and mindfulness enrichment and she's been a contract with had a contract with the district prior to this through her the company that she works for um through our community schools program and so they have a separate contract for that in this case she wasn't on the conflict of interest before because she was not a substitute teacher so now she's moved into the substitute added on

108as a substitute teacher um we believe that she will continue to just work through the contract with the community schools we'll ensure that um she's not trying to hand out flyers or do any of those kinds of things um that she's just really there to support the enrichment of the community schools program great thank you uh comments or questions anybody no all right with that then i would entertain a motion for approval for action item 8.2 so moved by dick in a second by john mr erin's mr borthold yes mr garcia absent dr martyr yes miss pierce aye mrs ragland absent miss segrest aye action item 8.2 is a record pardon me 8.3 is a recommendation for approval of the sale of surplus technology products good evening so i'm going to introduce this but then

109i'm going to turn it over to tim wellman who's our um purchasing manager and michelle who's in our technology cto chief technology officer all things technology yeah exactly um and this is related to the sale of the ipads that we are we are decommissioning as we as we put on the new apple lease and so this is the sale of those and kind of deciding who who we're going to use as our vendor so i'll let them go through the process and and what they have hi michelle hi tim hi good evening um i want to give you an update too on where we are with the the ipad refresh project because it was just march that you guys approved for us the the purchase of our new fleet of ipads with keyboards uh and

110i'm excited to say that that as of today all of our high school ipads have been delivered and our schools are starting to actively refresh those i had a high school student that i saw in my neighborhood and she said it's a game changer was her was her statement to me by this friday all of our middle school ipads will be delivered and so then they can begin refreshing so apple has been working really aggressively to help us get those those ipads here so we can get them out to students which is really exciting is really a pretty rapid timeline for us to get those in that's very quick so yeah so while our team's been working on the new tim wellman has been helping us think about how we can get the best value

111for the ones that we're exchanging if you recall dr haddad shared that we anticipated getting about four million dollars uh in in revenue back to the district for that sale i'm i'm proud to say that because of the hard work uh that tim has done we think that that's a minimum number that we'll receive as a result of the sale so tim has been working hard first to pre-qualify vendors that we know are responsible recyclers for any equipment that we provide them that isn't resellable as well as companies who will take care of our data so do they have the right policies in place and then to give us the best value in terms of price and so we had four vendors who submitted a bid to purchase this set of 22 000 ipads and

112our highest bidder came back higher than either i think tim or i expected because of the work he did to to pre-qualify most districts have a vendor partner that they work with tim in his foresight set up a process where we have multiple vendors who can bid because of that we actually gain revenue as a district in a way that other districts don't necessarily see so it's because of his hard work that i'm proud to tell you that that that number that you see in the board memo is the least that would mean that no ipads had gotten here this fall i mean this spring and that 15 percent of our ipads were broken when they were returned that's a that's a pretty aggressive minimum we're expecting our return will be probably closer to 4.6

113million because we know our kids take great care of their devices and we've gotten over half of them in to the district so that we can do that exchange before the summer so because of that i'm really proud to say that we've selected a partner in second life mac who's given us a great price they've proven already to to be great partners i would say just in the pre-planning that we've started to talk to them about and they're offering us to come and be hand in hand with our team to make this happen as as quickly as easily as efficiently as possible so anything tim did you like to add sure good evening madam president and board i didn't think this would be a compliment session so so thank you michelle truly it wouldn't be

114successful like dr martyred stated earlier without the commitment the dedication the collaboration of all of the departments and the foresight by dts and not understanding but doing discovery work to figure out new and innovative ways to do these things allowed this to be possible and then working collaboratively and putting all those tools together really made it except a successful project so um i think that's about all that i had she she went over the bid process and the proposals so thank you great thank you uh comments or questions from the board poland sure john thank you very much um i just want to say uh technology really showed its presence this year and so i want to thank you for all you've done my son got his ipad and he's a going to re-enroll as

115a freshman because he was so excited about it but um you know it's amazing to hear the um the robust um strength of our technology program but the devices are certainly a big part of that and here are the low rates of breakage and i just want to share you know i don't really congratulate congratulate um vendors but i think our partnership in technology is really a north star and have apple as a partner to replace the products in 24 hours to have such a low breakage rate and then to have them bought back at such a great financial gain for our district is just phenomenal so i thank you for the hard work you've done just did want to recognize um the strength of our technology program which really was a game changer this

116year and allowed our students to continue on the road to excellence so thank you thank you right uh yeah thanks to both of you and and you know this expands it is about you know technology of course but it's also about fiscal responsibility responsibility these are taxpayer dollars and a commitment that the district has made to to the taxpayers in st brain valley school district so thank you uh tim and michelle for helping the district fulfill that responsibility uh and clearly very successfully um so exciting that kids have their ipads already and i'm got to be honest it never occurred to me that it's a good idea to swap them out before the end of the school year because then you have a higher return rate and this is why you all are the experts

117and i'm not in charge of those day-to-day details but at the end of the day thank you for for your commitment and uh and dedication it's going to be an exciting school next school year next year isn't it new ipads no pandemic we hope it's going to be you know and our teachers have gotten so good at using the technology that i just can't wait to see what they do when they and the kids are back in person it really is going to be a game changer won't that be fun you know five days a week right yeah yeah and we'll have a pool and lifeguards not with the ipads but not with the ipads no ipads in the pools yeah no it's um we are very fortunate in st brain we have a lot

118to look forward to and um in large part due to the dedication by by people like you thank you appreciate it all right so with that i would entertain a motion for approval of agenda item 8.3 by john second uh by jim mr erin's aye mr berthold yes mr garcia absent dr martyr yes miss pierce aye mrs raglan absent miss secrets aye thank you christy appreciate it all right uh we don't have any discussion items this evening so that does bring us to adjournment the board of education will be meeting again here in the boardroom for a study session on may 19th from 6 to 8 p.m we do welcome public participation at each of those meetings we will also have our next regular meeting on wednesday may 26th beginning at 5 30 p.m with

119the april financials i do want to remind everyone that there is the retirement dinner tomorrow tomorrow night and celebration retirement dinner old habits die hard right but a retirement celebration uh virtually tomorrow night please tune into that and then we have prompts coming up and parades uh barb i'll leave the parade schedule with you and if you could get that out to board members that would be that would be great uh with that i will ask for a motion for adjournment please so moved by jim i was going to say somebody has to vote all right by jim and a second by john all in favor aye good night everyone be safe thank you