06/10/2015 - Board of Education Regular Meeting

001with 27 other students, and I feel kind of bad that my story has overshadowed their accomplishments. And so I would like to honor them by reading their names, I guess, just to be nice, because they're my friends. So we've got Kalen, Anne, Hyen, Kindle, Grace, Melissa, Megan, Tyler, Sam, Abigail, Robert, Michael, Eric, Rachel, Noah, another Rachel, Emily, Chris, Brittany, Mitchell, Hannah, Seth, Claudia, Amanda, Kaitlyn, Zach, and Caroline. Thank you. Good job, guys, for finishing high school, and thank you for being such wonderful friends. That's all I have to say. Evan, no one gets away without introducing their parents. Oh, yeah. My mom and dad are right there. My dad's name is Don. My mom's name is Elise. Say hi to everyone, parents. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Congratulations. One of

002the things that we like to do in St. Brain is we have Superintendent's Excellence in Education, and people get nominated for outstanding achievement. And just one of the things that I was, over many, many years of having done this, a 4.5 grade point average is a stellar accomplishment over a long period of time. So congratulations. All right. Very good. Thank you, Don. And then the Red Hawk Elementary, would that be Mr. Mills? Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, I'd like to call up Cyrus and the community from Red Hawk. I had the honor this morning, actually, let me start back with last week, Cyrus and John Arons accompanied them with a teacher and parent went to Washington, DC to receive one of 35 awards given to elementary schools throughout the United States for their efforts in the

003Green Ribbon area. And then this morning, I had the honor to accompany Cyrus down to the state board meeting where they honored Red Hawk also. So tonight, it's kind of like being American Pharaoh. So we've won the trifecta here. So I'm going to bring up Cyrus and I'll let him talk to you a little bit about what the award's about. Well, first, it's a pleasure to be here tonight with great enthusiasm and just general thank you for sending us to Washington, DC. It's been a real pleasure to get to know John Arons and was especially great to be able to represent Red Hawk and St. Brain Valley School District down in Denver today and in Washington, DC. The award itself is really around three pillars. So it's around reducing resources and supporting the environment through

004policy. It's also around health and wellness as well as STEM education. And so I think this award is really symbolic of the creativity and the innovations that we see here in Red Hawk, but also in St. Brain Valley School District with a focus on STEM education, with environmental health and wellness, as well as just reducing resources with the environment. So with that, you know, I'd like to bring up I have a couple parents and kids here that like to talk about their experience, but it's been an absolute pleasure and thank you very much. Hi, I'm Debbie Schoen-Schofer. I am a parent at Red Hawk. I have two students there and I worked on the application for this award with Cyrus and it was really a collaborative effort with other district employees, of course. And John

005had suggested that I tell you briefly about the application process that you might find that interesting. It started last September, we began the application. It was extremely technical and tedious and Cyrus immediately set me up with Dara Ward, St. Brain's energy sustainability manager. She was excited that Red Hawk was spearheading the application process for this. It had been on her radar for the three years that the ribbon award had been in existence, but it's a lot of work. So she pulled in Kerry Jensen, the environmental compliance manager, and the three of us split up the application. I worked on all things specific to Red Hawk with Cyrus and curriculum. We called in Michael O'Dell at the ninth hour for some STEM verbiage for the application and of course we received the nomination from the Colorado

006Department of Education. I wanted to thank the district very much for sending me to Washington D.C. to be at the award ceremony last week. It was very gratifying for me to be there representing Red Hawk and to see the application through the entire process. Thank you. Hi, I'm Clara Schoenjofer and I'm going to be a fifth grader at Red Hawk this year. One thing I really like about Red Hawk is the movement breaks. I really enjoy them and I've come to appreciate them. This year I'm in the innovation camp and it's really fun and neat, but we just sit there and at Red Hawk we have movement breaks that help us really stay focused and it's really fun there. Thank you. Hi, I'm Christina Haid. I'm next year's PTO president at Red Hawk Elementary. I

007want to talk a little bit about some of the things that we love about Red Hawk. I think children learn best by seeing and doing. Red Hawk has broken the mold by adding amenities to help teach environmental education and healthier living. Some of the amenities include the recycling program, the garden, and the nutrition program. The building was designed to conserve energy and reduce environmental impact. We love that it can be used for a hands-on teaching tool for our kids. My favorite features are the tubular skylights and the recycled building materials. Another amenity at Red Hawk is the movement program, as Clara said. As a mom of two very active boys, it's very important that they burn energy before every hard subject. My son Noah, who's in second grade, would like to say a few things

008about this program. Hi. Hello, my name is Noah Haid. Movement is very healthy for you and me. Some things we do in movement are dancing, circus, and the Red Hawk Walk. Movement helps me learn. Please be healthy and active. Thank you. We are very honored to be part of such an innovative school that is setting goals and examples for all other elementary schools. Say thank you. Thank you. Hello, my name is Cody Kemp, and I'm a fourth grade teacher. I would like to personally thank you for the opportunity to visit Washington, D.C. last week as a representative of Red Hawk Elementary and St. Vrain School District to receive the Green Ribbon Award from the Department of Education. It was truly an honor, and I will never forget the experience. As a teacher at Red Hawk,

009I'm tremendously excited to go to work each day. There are many features that are energizing about being at Red Hawk, but I'll speak of two. The first is our movement program. What excites me the most is how this affects the students academically. I get to see firsthand how they achieve more with the program in place. It has actually helped with the focus and retention of content we are engaged in at the time. For example, I've had students reading comprehension scores increase dramatically over the course of the year. I certainly would attribute this to our daily 35 to 40 minutes of movement. Our ability to involve students in science is another uplifting part of my job. We all have grow stations within our classrooms. With this, the students have the ability to have an upfront view

010of plant systems and then connect this to our own garden. Every student, K through 5, is able to plant and harvest produce during the growing season. Working at Red Hawk is an amazing experience. I would like to thank you so much for your time. Thank you, Cody. So, again, you can see that it's just been an amazing experience. I would say that we are just really blessed to be able to have worked for such a school district that allows the latitude there. I would say our story is also very compelling in that we started as a school with our movement program. We then began a summit where 250 people came from 13 different states. We began a Kaiser grant to train 75 teachers within the district. And then that's in the backdrop of a $1.4

011million Colorado Health Foundation grant. So really, I think what's done is allowed us to really set the tone for the state and beyond in terms of how to increase academic support through physical activity. So thank you again. All right. Questions? Anyone have any questions? Cyrus? No, just at the risk of feathering the nest, this is another recognition of your efforts and the kids mentioned movement and the recognition you receive for that program from D.C. Those are terrific opportunities for our district and for the students at Red Hawk. I know that one was a pretty amazing recognition as well. It was great. Yeah. Absolutely. And it was amazing to hear what all the other schools around the country are doing, so we'll be able to take some of those ideas back to them. So you recommend

012movement for boards of education? Would that be a good idea? Even works for Alzheimer's patients. All right. For all ages, right? All right. Very good. All right. That's enough. Thank you, Cyrus, for that comment. And now you can – hey, Cyrus, just really congratulations for all of the efforts, because I know this is just one in many things that you've accomplished, so thank you for your leadership. All right. So with that, then, I will – as I mentioned, I will ask that we move the Niwot High School Athletic Director update to Agenda Item 6 reports. So then I'll ask Superintendent Haddad to give his report, and then we'll move on to Action Item 8.9. So, Don, if you would, please. You know, just a couple of things that I want to highlight. There's a lot.

013We've got a lot going on and a lot of very positive. But a couple things. I had a chance to visit the Innovation Academy this past week, and it started with our youngest kids in K through 2, and then this most recent round of 3 through 5 grades. Some amazing work happening at the IBM campus with Solutions for a Smarter Planet, and we have several hundred of our children involved with that. I also had an opportunity to attend at Longmont High School the iPad Mini Training Program for our teachers, and we have about 300 teachers at the high school level and some others at the middle level that have been engaged highly with this activity, and it's really impressive. And then most recently at Trail Ridge, some of the leadership is going through the training,

014this partnership with Apple and the work that Joe McBreen and Michelle Bourgeois and everybody that they're doing is really impressive and very, very appreciative of that. And they're just representative of two wonderful things that are happening in the district right now. So I'll leave it at that. Great. Thank you very much. And as I mentioned, we'll do board reports then. I think it's a June 24th meeting. That would then bring us to Action Item 8.9, which is approval of letter to the Twin Peaks Charter Academy recommending an external investigation. The way I'd like to proceed with this is Dr. Haddad, having made a recommendation for the board to review and vote on this letter, I'd like to have him make comment. Then we have had four folks sign up to make public comment, and so

015we'll have comments from the public, and then I'll make some statements and we'll have board discussion. So done. And if there's anyone in the audience that has not signed up and intends to, please, this would be your opportunity to do that. Don? Sure. I appreciate that. Just to kind of a recap, there's a letter that I'm recommending that our board send to the Twin Peaks Charter Academy Board of Directors that states full support for an external investigation and review of a matter that took place involving the valedictorian at the graduation ceremony. And within the letter, it speaks to communication that we've had and people that have shared their concerns. There's also a piece in the letter that speaks to strengths and needs inventory that we administer and will be administering in the fall with secondary

016students that we would like to have administered there as well. And it's similar to what we used to know as the YRBS survey. It's a comprehensive survey that looks at climate and culture, and it asks students a variety of questions. And so you'll see that. But just a brief recap, a few days, I think it was a few days following the Twin Peaks Charter Academy graduation ceremony, I was notified of a situation where the valedictorian was not permitted to present his speech at the ceremony. And following that notification, I had an opportunity to meet with the principal, with several folks from groups within the community, and Regina Rinaldi, our assistant superintendent, and had a good conversation, learned more about the situation that took place, was able to follow up with a meeting with the student

017and both of the student's parents, and had further discussion. I've had a number of conversations with various elected officials, and I've had a number of conversations with various community members, and I've had a number of conversations with various members of our board, as well as the principal at Twin Peaks Charter Academy and the some of the board of directors of Twin Peaks Charter Academy. And so I think that it's important to recognize our full support for conducting this external investigation and review, and that's what the letter speaks to. And so you'll have a minute in just a minute to discuss that and hopefully act on it this evening. The other thing that I want to say, just as a global statement regarding our district, and this is across the board in every one of our

018schools, every one of our departments, my strong expectation, and it's very consistent with school board policy, is that every single student and every single adult in this district be treated fairly and with respect. And that's regardless of your race or your religion or your ethnicity or whether you are lesbian or gay or bisexual or transgender, that every single student and every single adult be treated with full respect. And that's a global statement because I want to just be clear on my expectation, which is in complete alignment with the board of directors' policies. So thank you. Thank you, Don. Now before I open up the mic to the public, I'd like to make just a couple of comments. We really do appreciate and we desire to hear various viewpoints from all citizens throughout the district. We

019not only appreciate the opportunity to do so, but we need to in order to fulfill our responsibilities. So for that reason, we appreciate and we welcome comment. I believe we have five folks signed up to speak tonight. Please understand, however, that we also need to conduct the business of the district in a timely and efficient manner. So in order to do that, we do have a board policy, and I just highlight a couple of the provisions of that policy. We ask that any individuals, as I've mentioned, who wish to speak on an agenda item, please sign up first. We ask that remarks by the individual be limited to three minutes, and we do have a timer and we'll ask Brian to do the timing. We would point out, we would ask the speakers to give

020their name and their address for the record. I would also point out that we typically, the board does typically not address or engage in discussion with any of the speakers, although on occasion we will ask a question. Finally, if we were to, and I don't anticipate this happening, if we were to reach where we had 30 minutes of comment on the same agenda item, the policy does call for a board vote in order to extend that time frame. I don't expect that we will do that. So with that introduction, I will then turn the mic over to the first of the folks who have signed up to speak, and I believe that's Sadie Roberts. Hello. Good evening. My name is Sadie Roberts. I live in Longmont. I was a student at Twin Peaks this year.

021I go by female pronouns. So what I wanted to talk about, about this letter, is that we need to open up the basic subject of it to more than just one person. We need to open it up to all of the students at Twin Peaks and in the district who are LGBTQ+. I, for one, this year I came out as gay, and I have gone through so much bullying and harassment, and not much has really been done about it. I've been called numerous derogatory terms, which I don't want to say because I don't really feel comfortable saying them. I've been told that I will go to hell and that who I love is a sin more times than I can even count. I've been said these things in front of authority figures, and the authority

022figures did nothing. I brought the issues to the dean of students. I was told that they would do nothing about it because the other students can have their opinion. So I would like for something to happen on that, for some authority figure, for some teacher or anything to just take a stand about it, to make sure that this doesn't happen to anyone else in my position that may come in the future. I mean, I've done my best, but there's really only so much I can do because I'm only a student. So I would like the letter to address all LGBTQ+, students, and possibly more than that. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. The second speaker would be Marty Moore. My name is Marty Moore. I live at 4870 Meredith Way, number 101, Boulder, 80303, but I'm

023not here from Boulder. My grandfather was a four-time mayor of Dakota. My parents were both Frederick warriors, class of 1956. So I am not an outsider. I grew up in this community. I will say that Dr. Haddad has been nothing but professional, and one of the things I think about a good leader is somebody who listens well, and you have that in the person we have as superintendent. So Dawn, thank you for your respect and for your time. Boulder is the Boulder County LGBT Advocacy Education and Service Provider. So lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people. We have a youth group. I've been aware of what's been going on at Twin Peaks for a while because Sadie is somebody that I have known. So we work at Out Boulder to ensure that all schools provide

024a safe, welcoming, and accepting environment for all kids. And as I sit here listening to all the awards given out, there are good things happening in this district. I'm not standing here saying everything's bad in this district at all. My eyes are full and my heart is full from the celebrations that we've already done thus far. But we want to make sure that all schools are safe for LGBT kids. I urge you to follow Dawn's lead. I urge the board to do that, to look at what actually has been going on at Twin Peaks. The issue is larger than the valedictorian. There are many LGBT kids in this district, and we need to make sure that every one of them is safe and is an environment where they can learn and be the best they

025can be. I appreciate your time and I appreciate your service to the community. Thank you. The next speaker would be Luke. Is it Grobe? Or Grobe? Just Grobe. Grobe. Thank you. Yes, sir. My name is Luke Grobe. I'm the pastor at the church at 1500 9th Avenue. That's the United Church of Christ of Longmont. And I'm also the chairperson of the St. Vrain Valley Safe Schools Coalition. We've met with you, Bob, before and John as well. It's a pleasure to see you both again. And I want to echo Marty's statements about Dr. Haddad, about the amazing support that he's shown to the LGBT community in the After Effects and the publicity that has surrounded the events at Twin Peaks Charter Academy. So thank you, Don, for that support. I'm here today knowing what it's like

026to sit in your shoes. My dad was a school board member and president of the school board for seven years in the town I grew up in. So I know the dynamics that you are subjected to in your local community, particularly that I grew up in a community that is rather conservative, just like Longmont. But I wanted to recommend to you and urge you this evening to take action that can do honor to all the neighbors in our community, all the people that we walk the streets with. We don't know the battles that they're wrestling with under their skin, in their heads, with their families. And I was disturbed and embarrassed by the way that the leadership at Twin Peaks Charter Academy dealt with the issues initially. But I have hope that with community support

027that we can together move forward into the brighter future that we see around us every day in the St. Frank Valley School District. There are great things happening, and I want to see that for every single student at every single school. Thank you for your time. Thank you. And then Eric, and I'm, if I blew his name, I'm going to even do worse on yours. So I. Music. Oh. My dad used to say. Well, there you go. Thank you. And 18 years ago, our family moved from Utah to Boulder for my work. My wife, who was LDS, and myself, a Lutheran, are both pretty conservative, and we are shocked at the visibility of LGBT issues in Boulder. So we felt much more comfortable in Longmont, where we now live. Our two oldest kids, both graduated

028from St. Frank Valley School District from Lines High. But a few years ago, a change in our family caused us to rethink our views on everything LGBT. You can call it karma. You can call it what goes around comes around. I call it God having a sense of humor and teaching our family a valuable lesson in learning compassion for LGBT people. Our youngest came out as being transgender, something we thought at the time was impossible when Christian parents provide good models of both gender roles to their kids and only raise their child as their biological sex. This was a huge crisis in our family, but a crisis is an opportunity for growth. Many and perhaps most parents, especially conservative Christians like us, reject their LGBT children and disown them. When parents reject their LGBT kids,

029it's something that has tremendous negative consequences for them in terms of homelessness, suicide rates, drug abuse, and other at risk behaviors. Principal Buchanan's not checking with Evan if he was out with his parents before he talked with the parents was potentially a disastrous move. I don't believe he did it out of spite, but out of ignorance of LGBT issues. But it is obviously something he needs to learn about in order to be effective at providing for all of the students at Twin Peaks Charter Academy. As a parent of a transgender child, I now drive my child into what I used to call crazy liberal boulder every day so she can go to a school that is accepting and safe for her as a transgender person. The lack of acceptance and ignorance on LGBT issues in

030St. Rain Valley School District that we once viewed as positive, we now realize is a negative for our family and our community. To support my child, I am now also a member of PFLAG, whose mission is to support students and educate community members about gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender persons and their issues. I move the page down. So my computer froze, so I guess I'll shut. So the bottom line is LGBT people come from all different backgrounds, all different families. And so I want to support Marty Moore and Al Boulder in saying that what we need to do is have a full, open investigation for Twin Peaks Charter Academy and for all of St. Rain to help us to be a place that is welcoming to LGBT people, their parents, and their families. Thank you.

031All right. We have one final speaker, and if you would introduce yourself and state your address, please. My name is Tesla Royal Zumhoff. The facade I wore for four years and plus was Nicholas Royal Zumhoff. I have seen a lot. I have seen much pain, much grief, and a lot, a lot of pain. When I, by the way, I should introduce myself. My name is Tesla Royal Zumhoff. I live at 9100 Rogers Road, Longmont, Colorado. And I went to Eagle Crest Elementary, Altona High School, or sorry, Altona Middle School, and then Silver Creek High School. I graduated there with a 3.6 GPA, and then I later went on to graduate with a 4.0 at Front Range Community College with a multimedia degree. However, when I was in St. Rain Valley, I was not transgender at

032the time. I was not out about it. I had to keep it under wraps, so therefore I wasn't. I held myself. I did not feel comfortable knowing my peers and knowing the hate and the, just the pain I would feel from those around me. I had a couple friends, and no one even felt comfortable going to the LBGT. At Silver Creek, we had, we tried to start a LBGT community there, and no one showed up because all the people I talked to said they were too, were too afraid to show up because of the ridicule and the pain they would feel. It's a lot worse than people think. People, I come from a very Christian family, and my mother took her years to accept it. It took her all of my college time, all of

033the time I spent in college to finally be okay with it, and this mindset has to change. It is horrible, some of the things that, I mean, I wasn't out then, but I've seen friends. I actually know three transgender women, and they're Maddie, Mihael, and Sam, and they were, they went to my school at different times. The abuse, I've had friends literally had their hair grabbed and thrown in the dirt because of this stuff. It's not a game, it's not fun, it needs to change, and as a transgender woman who went to this school not more than two years ago, and had to conceal who I was for fear of being, basically, pardon my French, been beaten the crap out of. So I asked for change, I asked that we actually get off our tuchus

034and do something, please, for all of those who are struggling and had to go through the torture that I and my friends went through. Can you imagine if you had to hide who you were because you were afraid your head was going to get thrown in the dirt? It's a horrible thing. So with that, I ask for change, and I humbly say please help those who really are too afraid to do anything. Thank you for your time, and I please, I beg of you for change. Thank you very much. Appreciate particularly the comments of those of you who spoke from personal experience. I also want to thank Don. Don has put an awful lot of time into this matter, and Don, I appreciate your recommendation. I also want to thank the leadership of Twin Peaks

035Charter Academy. Don and I did meet with the board president and another board member to have a conversation about our letter. We let them know what we would be voting upon tonight, and so with that, I'll make a couple of comments if I could, and then I'll ask for a motion, and we'll have a board discussion. We've heard not only tonight, but over the last several days, this board has received a good deal of input from across the community. As I stated, we not only appreciate such feedback, but we needed to better serve our community. Please know that we, and I speak for both district staff and the members of this board, take the concerns that we've heard and this matter most seriously. In order to have a good learning environment, in order to have

036an excellent educational experience, everything depends upon students having a sense of well-being, and that's just Maslow's hierarchy. In regard to the comments that we've heard tonight and the emails and the calls that we've received, this is obviously a most sensitive issue. It is sometimes divisive for many people. We've heard from various folks completely opposing opinions and recommendations as to what their perceptions of the events were. We appreciate and we consider those various perspectives, though I do want to emphasize that this is an independent board. We have not reached any conclusions, nor have we taken any positions or actions, and we will not do so without benefit of knowing what all the facts are. While some of the facts are known to some people, we think there are potentially key facts that remain unclear or may

037not be known at all. Given that, I want to make three statements. First, the purpose of tonight's agenda item has one purpose and one purpose only. To determine whether or not to send the enclosed letter, either as is or with suggested amendments, to the Twin Peaks Charter Academy. This letter, and I won't read it in its entirety, but it does contain two very different but complementary requests. First, it calls for an independent investigation by someone with appropriate experience, and the letter asks that that investigation be sufficiently broad as to determine if there are any patterns or practices of discrimination at the school. The second request that it makes is, as Don mentioned, it requests that the Twin Peaks Charter Academy participate, along with other St. Vrain Valley schools, in a systematic school-wide environmental assessment on

038student well-being. Don mentioned the YRBS, which stands for Youth Risk Behavior Survey, and we opted out of that some time ago because we feel that we can do better in a more timely manner. And so with this letter, we are asking Twin Peaks to participate in that, which we think then will give us a two-pronged complementary evaluation, which we then, on which we may or we may not, determine that additional measures, as the letter states, additional measures, procedures, or remedial actions should be implemented or considered. Second comment is with regard to the independent nature of the investigation, and the letter does give them the opportunity to pick someone, we would point out that we would expect that there will be two parts to that investigation, a review of the facts and then conclusions and recommendations.

039We will reserve the right to separately consider the facts that would come forth out of the investigation and come to our own conclusions and make our own recommendations, so we would not necessarily be bound by those of the investigator. We may or may not take those actions, if any were taken, until both the investigation and the survey were complete so as to have a full picture. Finally, I'd state this. Third, in deciding what, if any, action to take, this district, the board members and our staff, will be guided first and foremost by our mission statement. We take that statement very seriously. It is, if you will, the North Star with which we use to navigate such matters, and it has three parts. Our stated and primary goal is to help every student realize their fullest

040potential. To be 100 percent clear, we mean absolutely every student without any qualification. To achieve that goal, our mission must be to do both our best and to provide the best education possible, and we will do that in the safest environment possible, by which we mean physically and psychologically safe. We have no other purpose, no other mission, no other value set, no agenda or ideology than promoting well-being among our students. With those statements, then, I would ask for a motion to approve or disapprove the superintendent's letter, after which then I would ask the board if they have any discussion or comments before we call for the vote. So do I hear a motion for approval? Bob, I would like to move for approval of Don's recommendation, Dr. Haddad's recommendation, to send the letter to Twin

041Peaks. Okay. I'd like to second. Seconded by Debbie. Any additional comments or discussion? Go ahead. I'd like to, I'd like us, or I'd like, Bob, if you wouldn't mind relaying to our audience and our stakeholders a timeframe for our requests to Twin Peaks Charter Academy. I think it's important for all of us to have a sense of the timeframe that we have in mind. It's not spelled out in the letter, but I think the timeframe is important for our community, our district, and our stakeholders to know if we do vote to approve the sending of this letter over your signature, that there is a timeframe we have in mind that would lead the process that we've put in place with the letter. Debbie is politely pointing out that I'm getting old and forgetful because she

042mentioned that to me and I forgot to bring it up. Don, did we have a timeframe in mind for this? Well, my understanding is that the Twin Peaks Charter Academy leadership has estimated somewhere in July that they would have, they had talked about a certain number of days. I don't want to pin them down to a specific number, but that's what they've said to me. And we, so, that's right, thank you for pointing it out. They did indicate that it would be done sometime in July, and we will follow up with them on that. Completed by July. To be completed by July. And then the student survey, of course, can't take place until students come back and school is in session, and we won't do it the first or second week. I can't say what,

043if anything, we would do based on the letter of investigation. This board will consider it and look at it, and then we may or may not take action on that, or that alone, or frankly, my strong feeling is that I'd really like to see both the result of the investigation and the broader environmental assessment because I think it allows us a deeper understanding of what's going on, even though we've asked that this not be focused on one student and look at practices and policies, so we don't want to rush this. And I agree with that. I can imagine, though, if we get results back in July, I mean, just in terms of setting expectations, our first board meeting is the second week of August. Well, that's a good point, John. Then what action, if any,

044we take the second week of August will be driven by what we learn and if there is action prior to having the additional information. And we have committed to Twin Peaks that we will stay engaged with them this entire time. Anything else? I would hope that we'll have an opportunity, obviously, after our July break to provide the needs and strengths assessment for our community to see the information that that will engender from our district, from our schools around the district. And I believe that'll be an important piece of the progress we hope to make and that we will be making in terms of supporting our students and their education opportunities. Can I make a comment about that? Absolutely. Condi Seifert has done excellent work using a variety of resources to create the needs and strengths

045assessment, and we have it in its final stages right now. One thing I want to say is the reason why we have moved, again, to this particular approach, the YRBS provided a lot of really good information. The concern is that the amount of time that would pass between the time we would get information and our ability to intervene, because it was administered every two years, and then you would wait, I think we waited like six to eight months for the results, so you're talking about a period of two years and eight months before you can really get another round of data. And we also found that 180-plus questions exceeds the attention and the time that people will give to create really reliable data. And what we want to do is administer a survey every single

046year, and it has all of the same topics included, and then we will get the data back within a week, and then we will be having meetings with our partners in the community and our administrators and our teachers to assess the data and really begin to intervene quickly with support and resources. So I want to be clear that we're not moving away from an assessment, we're moving to what we feel will be a better way to provide support and intervene for our students and our staff. Thank you for clarifying that, and I'll make one other comment, and that would be that we're requesting this of Twin Peaks, but we would invite the other charters, over whom we have limited authority, we would invite the other charters to participate because we think it would be good

047for everyone, and it allows us to benchmark results of the various schools. So is there any other discussion? I'd only add I think this is a good path to pursue. I think it's in everyone's best interest, and I think as we move forward, I think the hardest kind of learning to do is about yourself. So I'm pleased that we're implementing the survey and look forward to the investigation and hope that we're all prepared to learn about ourselves. All right, very good. So if there's no other discussion, we had a motion by Joey and second by Debbie. And Barb, would you call for the vote, please? Mr. Creighton? Aye. Mrs. Lammers? Aye. Ms. Pierce? Aye. Ms. Segrist? Aye. Mr. Smith? Yes. All right. With that, the motion carries. Thank you very much, and thank you for

048allowing us to move the agenda around. And so we will then resume with our reports, and we'll go to report. And if you don't want to stay for the rest of the meeting, well, okay. I guess you can go. Thank you very much for being here. And the letter, by the way, for all of you who would like to see the letter in particular, it will be posted on the website. All right. So agenda item 6.1, the athletic fine arts report and or the Niwata, well, not or, and the Niwata High School athletic director report, Mr. Berry. Well, thank you once again. It's hard to believe that it's only been three months since we were standing up here talking about the success we had in winter, and now we get to talk about the success

049we had in the spring season. So it's very exciting. Excuse me. I have several guests here this evening. So I do want to introduce them and have them come up and talk about what's going on at their school. I didn't see Mrs. Lighting. Is she here? Okay, well, we'll we'll come back to that one in a minute. But I do Mr. Tonjes, who is the assistant principal at Silver Creek, could not be here. He is with his family in the Black Hills camping and wanted to know if I would fill in. So I just have a few things about Silver Creek that I will and then I have a guest from there. Their boys team finished fourth at state. They had several state placers. Let me find that real quick. Then we had an all-American

050time for consideration. Mr. Valette, I think, oh, you're not coaching that team this year, are you? You're doing the girls. Sorry. Okay. As Ty Liz, who was third at state, would be an all-American consideration for that. But the reason we're here is Mrs. Barb Keith, who is the head track coach, had a nice run at the state meet. And I'd like to introduce her and let her come up and talk about her success of her program. Good evening. First, I'd like to thank the school board for inviting us to speak this evening, as well as Dr. Adad. It's a pleasure to introduce this young lady. The name Amy Anderson may be a name that you remember in the past, because she was a high jumper at Niwot High School. And she set many records, went

051on to college, and also set records in high jump. And now we have her daughter Riley, who is one of our high jumpers at Silver Creek High School. She came into this season as a freshman, ready to break an eight-year record that was held by Christina Gould in high jump. And she succeeded her first day out at the very first meet, the RE1J. She has broken her record consecutively. She has placed first in the 10 meets that she attended. And I'd like to recognize Riley Anderson and her coach, Amy Anderson. So would you please come up? Well, this whole experience was just pretty cool for, like, a freshman. It was just really fun. Especially state was just a great experience. And I just have to say it's a whole lot more fun watching her win

052than it ever was for myself. Well said. Riley now has a record at 5 feet, 5 inches. She'll start competing again next week with some USA track and field competitions. And then hopefully by June 20th, we'll send her into the junior Olympic qualifications in Denver this spring, or not spring, summer, and see what she can do there. Thank you. Very good. Thank you. I have a few other things about Silver Creek that I'll bring up at a point when I conclude this. One of our other guests is the assistant principal from Longmont High. It's his first year. Jeremy Burmeister. If you'd come up, Jeremy. Good evening. First of all, I'd just like to thank the school board, Dr. Haddad and Mr. Berry, for the opportunity to come and speak with you tonight. You know, we've

053had a phenomenal year of athletics and activities at Longmont High School. And I'd probably far exceed my time limit if I attempted to speak to all of them. So I'll limit to the spring sports here. But you know, we won our first league baseball title since 2003. We qualified for the state playoffs in girls' soccer. We qualified five events in girls' swimming this year. And so it was just a fantastic spring sports season that we had at Longmont High School. That said, you know, I've got our head track coach, Kevin Akers, if you'd like to come up and speak a little bit more about our track program. The track team, both boys and girls, finished eighth at the state track meet this past season. And the team standings, and we had a four by one

054state championship that'll let him speak a little bit more specifically of. So thank you. What's up, everybody? How you guys doing? Okay. All right. Hey, my name is Kevin Akers. For three months in the spring, I live at 1040 Sunset Street in the track shed. I think Coach Roberts can attest to that. That's what it seems like. You're living at the track day in, day out. You never leave. You never see your families. But it's all worth it. So I want to talk about four young men today, and I want you guys to go ahead and come up here. So I want to talk about Gianni Espinoza, Logan Goodner, Conlin Berger, and Trevor Cook. Make sure you guys get on TV. All right. Yeah. Get the camera on them. Not me. I'm bald. So this

055is our four by one team here. They were the first team in, I believe, 12 years to win a four by one state title at Longmont High School. Throughout the year, we were seeded fifth, sixth throughout the state, and then they really brought it when the state meat rolled around. So we had to run 43-2 about a month out. And considering that there were two teams that had run a full second faster than that, we were not necessarily the favorite in the four by one, but that's a testament to these guys showing up and really putting down some really Herculean efforts at the state meat. So going into the prelim, it was awesome, because we were right next to Valor Christian, and there's nothing that's more exciting to some people than there is beating a

056private school with millions and millions of dollars. And so they were on our inside, and we were running with them pretty well. And then on the anchor leg, we actually ran them down to win the prelims. And then we had the number one seed time going into the finals, and in the finals, it wasn't even close. We ended up winning by about a half second. We ran 42-08, which was the number two time in school history. And I'm really thankful and really proud that I had the opportunity to coach these guys. So if you guys want to say anything, just step forward. My name is Trevor Cook, and my mom, Melissa Cook, she's in the back. My name's Collin Berger, and my parents aren't here. My name's Logan Goodner, and my dad's in the back.

057It's an honor to represent the St. Frank Valley School District in Longmont. My name's Gianni Espinosa, and I'm just like Collin, my parents aren't here. Gentlemen, thank you for being here tonight. We appreciate it. And that's just a little bit of what we have. The other one, this coach has been here several times now, and he's always got plenty to say. And so I don't want to steal any of his thunder, but we're going to ask Mark Roberts from the Lions to come up, please. Hello, everybody. I thought I'd come in my track attire. I got to do a lot of announcing over the course of the season with Mr. Akers. And I actually, just another side note, Amy and I rehaged when she was in school. We went to school together, graduated from Niwata

058in 84. So I got to watch her jump 5.9, 5.10, I remember, back in high school. Pretty impressive. I think that's still the Niwata record. We took two teams, two good groups of kids down, two state, and our boys were in a head-to-head battle with Cedar Edge all year in the virtual meets. Our girls, we knew Paonia was heads and shoulders above the other girls' teams in 2A, but our girls were in a really good battle for that runner-up trophy, and they brought that trophy home again. We have Brenna Cusky here. She's a sophomore on our team, and she was the state champion. Go ahead, Brenna, I'll let you stand up right now. She's with her dad, Troy, who helps us out at a lot of meets. Just a sophomore, and she is just a

059couple inches off our school record, so she's got some good goals, but she's already a state champion in the pole vault. Our other four girls are all out of town, are working. Jenna Anderson, Faith Myers, Kate Berryman, and Sierra Tucker, they won the 3200 relay, and then Jenna also won the 800 and the 1600, won the 800 by almost 8 seconds, and the 1600 by, gosh, I think it was 16 seconds, and we actually had a runner-up in that race as well. So really proud of the girls' team. Our boys, as I mentioned, went down to the meet with Cedar Edge in our sights. It was, we thought, going to be a race to 100 points, and if I could get the young men who are here, come on up, guys, and stand up here

060with me. I don't have all of them, but I have, line up, and then I'll introduce them. So this is Joel Such. He's going to be a senior. Matt and Dylan just graduated. Paul Roberts is my son. He will be a senior. Ryan Smith is a, just graduated. Owen George is going to be a senior. And Tulluf Rudlong just graduated. Tulluf won the 100-meter dash this year and also medaled in the 200 and the 4 by 1 and 4 by 2. I'm going to save Owen for last, actually. Joel Such placed in the 1600, the 3200, was part of our 3200 relay state championship team, as was Matt Dylan. Same story, placed in those two distance races, part of our 3200 relay. Paul won the 16, the 32, the 3200 relay, placed in the 800.

061Ryan Smith is a great story. He came into the season as one of our top guys and dealt with an ankle injury all year. High jumped 510, the first meet, off his right foot, and then really struggled to get that leg healthy. Qualified in the 300 hurdles with an early meet time, was on our key relays, and then just really was sort of on the shelf, did what he could, but was a great teammate, coached up some of our younger runners. We actually had a young lady who placed fifth in the high jump at the state meet going in unseated, and Ryan was sort of out there helping her get ready. So it was just a great teammate. It wasn't the year that we had hoped for with him, obviously, performance-wise, but in terms of

062the life lessons that I think he learned just being a great teammate in those situations. He was a key part of our team all year. So I really appreciate his contributions. I mentioned Tulliff. Owen George was second in the pole vault, set a new school record. Also was on our 4x1 and 4x2, but really the meet kind of came down. Everything sort of was falling in place with both schools. It kind of came down to the long jump on Saturday. And Owen had qualified with the 18th position. They take the top 18. There were a few scratches, so I think he went in seeded about 14th going into the meet. The team that we were going up against had the 5th and 8th seed. They finished 9th and 10th. Owen had a PR, went 20

063feet, 1 inch, placed 5th. It was an 11-point swing. We won 111.5 to 100 points at the end of the meet. And it wasn't his favorite event all year, but he persevered. He hung in there, and it was when we needed him to really step up at the end of the meet, he did a great job doing that. So my assistant coaches couldn't be here. They're on the road traveling. But Jeff Bollet, Gib Dozel, Jason McGuire, Amber Boyington. Troy helps us a little bit with some of the vault stuff. It's truly a team effort out there. So thank you to you guys for all the support we get. I want to thank Jeremy Burmeister. I mean, he was the new AD at Longmont this year, and obviously we run a lot of meets there. He

064did a tremendous job supporting us and stepping in. And that's a facility that gets a lot of use. And obviously Rob Berry has just been a tremendous supporter of track and field. We're changing him slowly from a soccer guy into a track and field guy. In fact, we had a meeting in his office for the Boulder County, and he had a track town organ book on his desk. And I don't think it was just for show. I think he actually maybe looked at a few pictures in there. All right, good luck, because I had to take the soccer ball out of his office when I was in high school. That's the problem. That's right. And I love soccer, too. He can love both, but no, he's been fantastic as well. So thank you very much.

065We appreciate the opportunity to come down and appreciate the recognition. And these guys, it was a great season. They worked really hard, and it was neat to see it all come together at the end. So thank you. All right. Thank you, gentlemen, for all being here. It does take a lot of work. John? I just wanted to add with the coaches, I've been to a whole lot of track meets in my life. And some of the very best track meets in terms of how they're run are at the St. Rain track meets. And really appreciate that. I can be at work. I can head over to the field for the event that I want to see. And I know it's going to start on time. And I can get back to work without people noticing

066I was gone. We appreciate that. Very good. Well, we still have one more guest to come up and talk to us. And that'd be the assistant principal at Niwata High. He's going to kind of combine several things that they were able to accomplish this year. And also brag about his track program. Chase McBride? Before I get to what I was originally going to do tonight, I want to talk about our spring sports, as we've had some success this year as well. Soccer, we were able to have four all-conference players. And baseball, we had a couple more as well. Girls' golf this year was our first year hosting it at Niwata. And we actually had quite some success. We sent two girls to state, one finished in 12th. And Adara Paulino finished sixth at state and

067signed a scholarship to play golf at Boise State University. Tennis had another traditional run that they normally do, winning the Northern League and regional champs as well, finishing top ten at state. We had two freshmen, our one singles, Julia Pence, made it to the semifinals. And our two singles, Taylor Tholson, got third place at two singles. And to talk a little bit about track, I don't really know where to start. We could never do it justice. And it starts with the leadership in the track program. We were contacted earlier this last month, excuse me, and then I was contacted earlier by the National High School Track Association. And our head coach, Maurice Hendricks, is a finalist for the National High School Track Coach of the Year. He has the ability to motivate young men and

068women unlike anybody I've seen. And he walks the halls and people flock to him. And he does it all while managing for 17 years now. He's been a probation officer in Boulder County, so he's got quite the caseload. And I think that track is a nice release for him and his endeavors. But I'd like to call it mo to talk about his track season. Our girls team won their third consecutive state title in this year, scoring more points than they have in any of their state titles. So he seems to be getting better and better. Paid by Chase a lot of money to say those nice things. Just one request for the board, if you graduate from a high school, your kids need to come to the high school that you graduated. So Coach Roberts,

069kids should be at NYWAT. Like Chase said, I have a difficult job. It's a fun job being a track coach, because in my daily work, as a probation officer, I don't know what I like better. I just love being around kids. And these kids are unbelievable. And I'll try not to get choked up because I get emotional. And this theme this year was resilience. And so we didn't talk about winning a third state title. We talked about being resilient. And so every day after practice, each kid had to come up. We'll choose somebody, coaches included. And you have to talk about somebody in your life that's been resilient. And it's a way that we bond together. And so these girls have been a blessing to coach. The whole track team, even our guys, our goal

070is to win a state title on the guys' side. But just to talk a little bit about state, about a month. Everybody, all the track kids are on miles split. And we were labeled as a second tier team a month before the state meet. And it really got our girls fired up because they had a chip on their shoulder. And we had a meet down in Cherry Creek, and they really went after it. And since then, it was just, it was contagious. And I gotta tell you this, that these girls, they train 11 months out of the year. So the only month that we take off is August, and they're committed. It's voluntarily, and they show up, and they train hard. And just to talk a little bit about the state meet and how things

071unfolded. And I have to say that I told our hurdlers, we obviously this year if you watched our program, we had a hurdle crew. I think, Coach Roberts, you can correct me because you know every stat. I think was it BoCo, we went one, two, three? Okay, one, two, three in the hurdles, which is pretty remarkable. I think we even placed another girl. But anyways, at the state meet Alexis Carroll, who's here got beat by her teammate in the prelims, and she was upset. And we have a new policy going into next year is that you can only cry three times a year. Cuz our girls will finish second to their teammate and they'll cry. And so Alexis was pretty upset, but she had to go over in long jump. Going into the season, she

072was ranked 15th going into the state meet. And her best jump was 16, 7 and a half. Alexis Carroll jumped 18 feet at the state meet. Cuz she was upset cuz she lost her teammate. But it really, I don't stand by the long jump because our kids get nervous when I'm there and so one of our coaches text us and I said, text me if Alexis jumps 17.5. And he text me 18 feet and I was like, you're lying, you know? And so I went around and told everybody what Alexis did. And it just really united us and we kinda exploded. So I'll let them come up and talk about the events that they were in and we'll start with Lauren Sharp. Yeah, we have twins on our team, Lauren and Rachel, and Rachel couldn't

073make it, so. So I'm Lauren Sharp, I was a senior this year. And at state, I ran the 4 by 200, the 4 by 400, the sprint med, and the high jump. Talk about the 4. The 4 by 2. So I guess the 4 by 2, our first day going in, we kinda had some very rough handoffs, to say the least. And so we had a really great team, this entire team, like in the coaching staff and the environment that they've created has been absolutely incredible. And so we're just really excited going into state. And so after having that first race and things not going as well, when we went into the finals, I guess you could say we were fired up. And we won a state title in that and broke a record as

074well. So yeah. She left out, it's a state record. So we now have, now it has the state record all time in the 4 by 2 and 4A. So pretty big accomplishment. So Kayla. My name is Kayla Fetters and I'll be senior next year. And I ran the 4 by 2. So we won the state title in that event. I was the anchor leg on the sprint medley and we placed third. I was on the 4 by 4 and we placed second in state. And I ran the 300 hurdles and I just beat my teammate by like half a second. And I won the state title in that event. I'm Alexis and I ran the 100 hurdles. I ran the, I pop, I was popping for the sprint med. I triple jumped and I long

075jumped. I long jump, I surprisingly got third. And triple jump, I got 11th and sprint med got third. And I won the 100 hurdles, beating Kenzie by 0.003. So that was pretty good and it was really exciting. I'm Gabby Casey and I just pole vaulted at state and I got sixth. So that's it. Another thing about Kayla, I was just teasing her. She took her test score and she scored 34. And on their ACT, which is pretty good. But according to her, she was like, coach, I gotta get better. Cuz we have Katie Gillette on our team who scored 36. And so that's the kind of standard that we have over there at the NIWAT with these girls. They're always trying to raise the bar in every area. And so Mackenzie is not here, unbelievable

076freshman. She could have won two individual state titles. And I tell you what, for a girl that she was Boko, preps athlete of the year, she scored the most points for our team. She is probably one of the most humble kids that you can be around. I know earlier this season, she came back from a volleyball tournament. And she got back at three o'clock in the morning. And she showed up for school and showed up for practice. And I told her, I wouldn't expect you to come to practice. I mean, you need to go home and get some sleep. And she was like, no coach, I just wanna get better. And so she couldn't be here cuz she plays club volleyball at a high level. And she's at practice. But I really definitely wanna recognize

077cuz not just her athletic ability, just the type of person she is and the maturity she shows as a freshman. She was just excited to see her teammates both beat her. And for us to win a third state title, we just got back from a meet in Albuquerque. And she was like, coach, let's get number four. And so just so you know, these girls are already working for number four. They took a week off and they're bugging me like, coach, when are we gonna get started? And I was like, can we just take some time off? But I love it. They inspire me, this new administration has been unbelievable. And sometimes change is different, you get used to the people. And the two men that are in charge now, Eric and Chase are unbelievable men

078and Niwot is in good hands. And so I appreciate having the opportunity to celebrate the good things that happens in this community. And I'll probably just end with this. I told the girls in the beginning of the year that it's gonna be a tough year. I had a young man that I work with as a probation officer, got sentenced to 36 years. No, he got life plus 36. He killed two people at a party in Longmont, it's all over the news. And so anytime I get to use those chance of drugs and alcohol, and so it's great to see young people that are doing the right thing. And engaging in their community, because I get to see the other side of it too. And so they inspire me to be their coach. And so I

079wanna thank you all for, it was great to listen to the dialogue earlier today, and I trust that this district will do the right things. So everybody is safe when they go to school. And once again, last but not least, I gotta thank our team mom, Ms. Casey. To have a championship team, you gotta have championship parents. And this lady did a phenomenal job. And so she's the most important person on our team, our team mom. And so I just wanna recognize Ms. Heather Casey, and thank you. Earlier on the agenda, Don and I were talking earlier this week, or earlier this week, and kinda just wanted to wrap up some year-end celebrations that happened at Niwot, and what a thankful year it was for me. Being an assistant principal, and especially being an athletic

080director, you sometimes run into late nights. And your career is kinda depicted on the person above you. So I'm certainly thankful to have worked for Eric, and Mark, and Rob under their leadership. And it certainly is a good team at Niwot, and we're excited moving forward. I wanted to thank and mention some things about the Ed Foundation and the wonderful things that happened there. We had our first ever student film festival. I don't know how many of you were able to stop by and see that, but it was quite the treat. We were hoping for 10 to 15 skits or films, and we had to cap it due to time restraints at about 60. We had a baseball game, a soccer game, and a tennis match all the same day. So you had to park,

081there's people that told me they parked a half hour away from Niwot, so things like that. And also the help from the Ed Foundation with heading the sound system in the auditorium, Shrek the Musical, and a few things we did this fall were just amazing, and I hope that you can make it out this fall to see some more of that stuff. The help with the World Language Lab was amazing. And mostly for me, with the Ed Foundation is the sign out in front of Niwot that was much needed, mostly because I think Debbie saw me once on top of the 25 foot ladder changing the marquee, which is not my favorite thing. So to have it out on the road, on Niwot Road, really helps us, and it's a good publicity for our town

082and staff. We also had help from the parents to revamp our sound system in the gymnasium. So between the gymnasium and the auditorium, we've got state of the art systems. Just want to touch on a little bit of student accomplishments real quick. While the athletes are here, we had 17 athletes sign some type of scholarship to attend school on an athletic scholarship. So that's quite the accomplishment. With that being said, we had $7 million in scholarships at Niwot for our senior class. Our ACT went up by 0.4, so we have some good things going at Niwot. Our orchestra played at Carnegie Hall. Our choir was able to sing in New York as well with the help and the guidance of some Broadway vets. So it was a great experience for them. And the one thing

083that when Eric and I took over, the one thing that we heard from our interviews from about this time last year to the before school was that they wanted a boost in school spirit. And we heard that from top to bottom, from meeting with our feeder systems, to talking with teachers, to talking with community members, sending surveys and doing all that. And I think that we have some numbers that show that those are up immensely. Just from sporting events alone, we're up about 35% in attendance rate to our sporting events, and a lot of that has to do with what we've done. To promote them, Eric using Twitter and myself with two separate Twitter accounts. And incorporating Niwot people to do more Niwot things. So we never leave a half time blank. We always have

084a half time performance, be it band, be it cheer, be it dance. Youth night, middle school nights, the YMCA. We made double headers out of our basketball games this year. So the girls played first, boys played second. So that kind of leaves it for standing room only in our home gyms. And we've really increased the amount of celebrations and publicize them more. It's not that they didn't happen before, but getting them out there and advertising them was part of our goal. And that certainly helped our school spirit immensely. And I've never really been a part of a community that's like Niwot. And I grew up in Broomfield, so I grew up in a tight community. My first administration job was in Berthoud, so it was a tight community. But Niwot has its own special niche.

085And the support and the strive for excellence in Niwot is next to none. So just want to thank you for a great year. And we've got lots of things to build on and we'll move forward. Now I have to tell you the real reason Niwot track won. November, I get a phone call and I hear, Rob, this is Maurice, Niwot. Hey Mo, what's up? If you buy me a pole vault cover, we'll win a third state championship for you. Guess who got a pole vault cover? Yes, they did. We'll see what he needs for the fourth one. But that's the real reason they won. All that training for 11 months, just a pole vault cover. And I know seven other schools who are going to want one now. I just want to wrap up very

086quickly. We talk a lot about student athletes. The NCAA, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, just sent out their newest stats. Eight million high school students participate in athletics. This is why it's so important, and our coaches understand this, for students to do well in the classroom. Out of 8,460,000 of them will go on to participate in college. In baseball, 6.9% of that 8 million will play college baseball. And only 8% of that 6.9 go on to the major league, almost impossible. With basketball, it'll be over 500,000 students that go on to play in college. But only 3.4% of that will go on to play the NBA. Again, almost impossible. Women's basketball, 3.8% will go to college. 0.4 will play in the WNBA. Football, 1 million students will go on to play in college, but are

087playing football, only 6.5 of them will go on to play somewhere in college. And only 1.6 will make it into the NFL. Our coaches, our assistant principals, our principals, our staff, our board, our superintendent, our assistant suits understand the education goes along with athletics. If students are engaged, they perform well in the classroom also. And so St. Rain has been excellent about that. And again, it is always my pleasure to stand up here and talk about all of the things that we do well. And so it's an honor for the coaches to come, the assistant principals, students. I want to thank you so much for giving up a Wednesday evening on your summer vacation to come and do that so that they can hear, the board can hear what you all do and what amazing

088athletes and students you really are. Just so that you know, there are more than this. But student athletes again, Meade, their girls track, received all state team with an average of GPA of 3.5. Girls soccer, again, academic all state, GPA 376. There are more, not everyone turned that in for me, but I will just go over Silver Creek's as well. Girls golf, academic all state, dance, academic all state, recognized by chance of having the highest GPA in the 4A. Boys swimming, academic all state. Did I say girls soccer? Academic all state, once again, recognizes having the highest GPA. Track and field, academic all state, having the highest GPA for boys and girls combined. Again, St. Rain is the place to be. Thank you all very much. Rob, thank you very much. Thanks for all the

089student athletes that were here tonight. We really appreciate your presentations. It's a lot of hard work and great accomplishment. Thank you. Parents too. And a lot of parents. A lot of parents, good. And grandparents, I see grandparents out there too. Oh really, okay. Yeah. All right. Don't take this personal. Move on. Which I don't. We have a board question. Yeah. I don't know if he keeps her fashion, I don't, I never mind. It's nice to change. Yes. All right, very good. All right. Well, it's a little emptier than it was an hour and a half ago. But we'll keep moving along. I'm just surprised that all those folks didn't want to stick around for our action items. Right. All right, so we have, oh, well, we can't actually, we've got another report. And that's the

090public hearing of the superintendent's proposed budget. Tony, are you going to take over? Yes, I'll be brief here. Please do. Just wanted to have Greg and I make ourselves available for any questions for the board, as well as to assist the board in conducting a public hearing regarding the FY16 proposed budget that was presented two weeks ago at the last board meeting and was made available for public inspection here at the district offices, as well as on our website. Since then, there have been no changes to that proposal since it was introduced. And just a quick recap. As you know, this is the annual budget comprehensive spending plan for the district for the upcoming school year. And the formal adoption of this budget is scheduled for the June 24th board meeting in two weeks. OK,

091any board members have any questions to Tony? I don't think so. You're going to get off easy. OK. All right. Thank you, sir. All right, with that, then, we go to consent items. We have a number of consent items. Sorry, we probably need to ask whether or not there are any public hearing. Yeah, you're right. No one had signed up, I don't believe. Did anyone want to comment on the budget? All right, very good. Well, you had the opportunity. All right, very good. So now we have a number of consent items. They include approval of staff termination and leaves, approval of staff appointments, approval of the minutes for May 13th meeting, May 27th meeting, approval of the appointment of the designated election official for the 2015 elections. First reading and adoption of board policy regulation

092exhibits EHF, technology access, digital communication, EHCR, St. Varenne Valley School District terms, conditions, and responsible use guidelines. HCE1, responsible use guidelines for technology, access and digital communication staff, and EHCE2, student responsible for use guidelines for technology access and digital communication. 7.6 is approval of the fee schedule for adjustments for facility audit project, approval of the purchase of the middle school security camera installation project. 7.8 is approval of change order. Number four, an increase of the guaranteed maximum price within the CMGC contract for the portable classroom site and utilities. Nine is approval of the waiver of liability insurance requirement for the Frederick High School Education Association. 7.10, approval of the waiver of liability insurance requirement for the Longmont High School Education Association, approval of the waiver for a liability insurance requirement for the Silver Creek High

093School Education Foundation. 7.12, approval of waiver liability insurance requirement for the Skyline High School Education Foundation, 7.13, Approval of Purchase of Janitorial Chemicals and Supplies, and finally, Approval of Purchase of Microsoft Software Licenses. Please don't make me read all that again. All right, any, does any board member, would any board member wish to pull any of those items? Brian has stepped out, so his timing is good, so no, making a, no suggestions. You can always ask them. All right. All right. Then I would ask for a motion of approval, please. So moved. By Debbie, seconded by John, and Barb, would you call for the vote, please? Mr. Creighton. Aye. Mrs. Lammers. Aye. Ms. Pierce. Aye. Ms. Segrist. Aye. Mr. Smith. Yes. All right. Very good. Thank you. Approval of Recommendation to Hire the Mead High

094School Dean of Students. Ella. Well, I can tell you that brought back memories hearing from Niwet High School in the athletics, and so it's ironic that I'm introducing Alon Valette tonight because as the former athletic director of Niwet, Alon was the former coach at Niwet. So Alon, if you want to come on up. So Alon, we're recommending Alon for the Dean of Students for Mead High School and I'm excited about that. Alon graduated from the University of Illinois with a Bachelor of Science in General Engineering. He then went on to Northern Illinois University where he completed his Masters of Science in Education. He also received his license and administration from the University of Colorado in Denver. For the last two years, he has been the math teacher and department chair at Mead High School and

095as I said prior to that, he was at Niwet High School as the math teacher, department chair, swim coach for the district. Just an amazing individual and I'm just so excited that he has this opportunity at Mead High School. Actually, I have someone else here I'd like to introduce and that's Linda Rawlings. Linda Rawlings is the new principal at Mead High School and she is here now in Colorado and so she just wants to say a few words on Alon. Oh, great. Thank you. So nice to be here with you this evening. I want to introduce my husband, Pat, as well, who's back there. You'll see him at a lot of Mead and district events, I know. We've been in Colorado a month and I want to take this opportunity first to thank you for

096approving Alon tonight. I am so excited to have my team rounded out and appreciate very much your support of that. Thank you as well to Dr. Haddad and to all the assistance that I've received in welcoming me to this community. So it's great to be here. Thank you. All right. Well, good evening. My name is Alon Valette. First and foremost, thank you for this opportunity. I'd like to thank the board and Dr. Haddad and principal Rawlings and all other decision makers. I'm very excited about this. I've spent my 21 years in education here in St. Vrain in various positions, mostly at Niwet High School, wearing different hats. And I'm very excited to put this hat on and join Linda in helping Mead High become all that it can be. It's a great school. I've only

097been there two years, but immediately felt like this is the place where I want to be and potentially finish my career. And this opportunity is something I've wanted for a long time, and I'm just grateful to have it. I'd let it happen and excited to get to work. Very good. Dad? Well, you may or may not remember, but I'll remind you that our oldest daughter was in one of your freshman math classes. She's now 29 years old. Oh, geez. You're trying to make him feel bad, is that the idea? But I also want to sort of recognize the experience that you had at Niwet, and obviously it's a real plus for the Mead High community as well. And do you remember who your student teacher was that first year? Was that Mr. George? It was.

098Indeed. Greg George. That's right. Our math coordinators. This is terrific. Very glad to see you, and congratulations in a few minutes. I am really happy that there's someone from Northern Illinois University here because that's where I started in 65. No kidding. Yeah, it is. But I hadn't met anybody else, and Principal Rawlings, welcome, and we appreciate you being here. All right. Don? I was just going to say very quickly, Linda, thank you for all of the work that you've done in transitioning. It's been great. And I told Alon, you don't always get to pick your mentors. You're either lucky or you're not, and in this case, you are very lucky. I also want to say to Alon, when he was at NIWOT, he also coached swimming and coached several state champions, girls swimming, and did

099an amazing job. And I remember when we were kind of wrestling with CSAP and trying to figure out ways to reach higher levels. Wrestling? Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's right. It's kind of, but I asked Alon if he would lead a task force, and I don't know if you remember that. Sure. Some work around math and things, and that year, our math scores went up by 10 percent. And so, strong leader all the way around, and just very proud of you. So. Thank you, Don. All right. Thank you, everyone. Joey? I just really, Mr. Villette, my oldest son, AJ, had an opportunity for Mr. Villette to be his Algebra II teacher. And if you're patient enough to teach AJ Algebra II, no doubt you are going to excel in your new role. Congratulations to you. Well

100deserved. And welcome, Principal Rawlings. Yes. I appreciate that. Thank you, everyone. All right. And so, with that, I'd ask for a motion of approval, please. So moved. By Paula. Second. By Joey. And Barb, would you call for the vote, please? Mr. Creighton? Aye. Mrs. Lammers? Aye. Ms. Pierce? Aye. Ms. Segrist? Aye. Mr. Smith? Yes. Welcome. Congratulations. Thank you for the opportunity. Action Item 8.2, approval of the joint understanding of agreement with the town of Mead. And who's going to cover that? Brian Lamer? Can we move on? Can we come back to it? Yeah, sure. We can come back. Yeah, we can. Sure, we'll come back to that. So Action Item 8.3, approval to accept No Child Left Behind grant funds for 2015-2016. You're going to ask us to accept money? Is that what you're here

101to do tonight? Yes, I am. All right. Actually, we're asking you to authorize us to apply for and accept, if it's approved by CDE, to accept a total not to exceed $4.5 million in No Child Left Behind grant funds for next year. They've notified us, and right now the preliminary allocation is $4 million. About $3.3 million of that is for Title I, the basic Title I. Another almost half a million dollars is for Title IIa, which is teacher quality. And then about $280,000 for Title III, which is English language learner. So again, this is just asking, authorizing us to apply for and accept it. It does not obligate us to funds or personnel beyond the terms of the agreement. Okay. Comments or questions by any board members? No? All right. If I could get a

102motion for approval, please. So moved. By Joey. Second by- Second. By Paula. And Barb, would you call for the vote, please? Mr. Creighton. Aye. Mrs. Lammers. Aye. Ms. Pierce. Aye. Ms. Segrist. Aye. Mr. Smith. Yes. Thank you, Greg. Brian, if we could, we'd like you to address Action Item 8.2, approval of joint understanding of agreement with the Town of Mead, please. Right. And this is just a continuation of an agreement that we've had in the past. And it basically just celebrates really our continuing allowance of allowing the different cities to use our facilities. And so, yeah, that's kind of what this agreement is, and in a nutshell, that's it. Deb, did you have a question? How long is this one? We do them every- In the past, we've been redoing them every three years. But

103this one, as well as the rest of them, I was going to redo every year. Okay. And why that change? Really I felt like there were some changes that were occurring. Specifically with this one, the Town of Mead was, or the old agreement, the Town of Mead was mowing our lawns for us, and then we would pay for all the custodial oversight. And that agreement didn't work out so well. And so I wanted to shorten them up a little bit so I could make sure that they are correct. Once we really get them solid, then, yeah, we'll extend them out. Does this provide some flexibility if it's annual or something like that? Pretty much, yes. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah, very good. Any other questions of Brian? No. That answered my question. Yeah. Yeah. No,

104thanks very much. Appreciate that explanation. Appreciate you staying on top of it like that. Thanks, Brian. So if I could, I'd like a motion of approval, please. So moved. By John. Second. Second. Okay. Paula and Barb, if you would call the vote, please. Mr. Creighton. Aye. Mrs. Lammers. Aye. Ms. Pierce. Aye. Ms. Segrist. Aye. Mr. Smith. Yes. Thank you very much. And action item 8.4, approval of adoption of the resolution to accept the Colorado State Model Evaluation System. And Ella, if you would explain a little bit to us about this, please. Well, each year we have to provide annual assurance that we're either going to select the Colorado State Model for supervision and evaluation or implement our own evaluation. And so we're recommending that we adopt the Colorado State Model Evaluation System. We think that

105it's effective at this point in time. We are looking at moving from Bloomberg to Randa for next year using the system. But even though the Senate Bill 191 does not legally require a resolution, it's being recommended that the Board take public action annually to confirm the intent of the district to serve as a direction for the required annual assurance. Okay. Makes sense. Comments? Questions? All right. Not hearing any. Then I would ask for a motion of approval. So moved. By Debbie. Second. By Paula. Barb, would you call for the vote, please? Mr. Creighton. Aye. Mrs. Lammers. Aye. Ms. Pierce. Aye. Ms. Segrist. Aye. Mr. Smith. Yes. All right. And now we will discuss approval of the Notice of Intent to Participate in the 2015 Coordinated Election. Greg. Yes. So earlier this evening in the consent

106agenda, you designated me as the official election – school designated election official for the – We noted that. All right. All right. So based on that, what this is, is this allows us to send an official Notice of Intent to the four counties, Boulder, Broomfield, Larimer, and Welds. We will participate in a consolidated election between those four counties, and this allows us to go post the Notice of Intent that that will occur and also allows us to go out and intergovernmental agreements with the counties to coordinate for the election. Okay. And this is a routine, really, we've been through this every couple of years. Any questions or comments? No. Not hearing anything. Then I'd ask for a motion. So moved. By Joey. Second by? Second. Paula. And Barb, would you call for the vote, please?

107Mr. Creighton. Aye. Mrs. Lammers. Aye. Ms. Pierce. Yes. That will then pave the way for the approval of the call for nominations. Yes, so I guess I'll be reading a little bit right now. Okay. The recommendation is that the Board of Education approve the call for nominations as follows. Call for nominations for School Directors, St. Rain Valley School District RE1J, Boulder, Larimer, Weld Counties, and the City and County of Broomfield, Colorado. The Board of Education of the St. Rain Valley School District in the counties of Boulder, Larimer, Weld, and the City and County of Broomfield, State of Colorado, calls for nominations of candidates for School Directors to be placed on the ballot for the regular biennial school election to be held Tuesday, November 3rd, 2015. So this will go out and this will be posted

108between August 5th and August 15th, but just a reminder that at this election we will have four Directors elected representing Director Districts A, C, E, and G for four-year terms. Candidates to be qualified, they must be a registered elector and a resident of the school district for at least 12 consecutive months before the election. The rest of the information will be out there. If you're wondering where those different Director Districts are, on the website there is a map showing the Director Districts, and so we will get that posted in the August timeframe as required by law. Great, and I would only point out, I think it's probably well understood that even though we have to reside in those respective districts, we represent the school district as a whole. Yes, and the election is you vote

109for, you don't vote specifically for your area, you vote for the district, Director Districts. Very good, any comments, questions of Greg, otherwise I'd ask for a motion of approval please. So moved. Moved by Debbie. Second. By John. Barb, would you call for the vote please? Mr. Creighton. Aye. Mrs. Lammers. Aye. Ms. Pierce. Aye. Ms. Segrist. Aye. Mr. Smith. Yes. Okay. Approval of the superintendent's contract, and this is the, I guess, second addendum. We had earlier approved the terms of the agreement and revised and updated those. This has to do primarily with Dr. Haddad's annual salary. It specifically, as noted in the board packet, recommends an increase from 215,000 to 250,000. I would like to elaborate on this for just a couple of minutes for anyone who may be listening, and I invite any other board

110members to make a comment as well. I believe this increase to be justified for three reasons. First, the market survey that Mr. Feath had done for us of superintendents of larger districts on the front range suggested that Don was somewhere in the range of 15 to 20 percent below if you allow for the various benefits that different folks have in their packages. Some folks are entitled to bonuses, some folks get in para, some folks get use of cars and various sundry things. But all in all, we've known that Don's been below market and he has been for several years, and while the difference in any given year is in and of itself notable and the difference is anywhere from $10,000 to $20,000 or more a year, when that's cumulative, we're probably talking $100,000 over the

111last several years, and that's significant. So it's time to leave and it's time to fix this. Clearly if Don were to leave, we would have no choice but to bring this salary to at least this level, and my personal philosophy is why wait till somebody leaves to give them the pay that they deserve. Another reason is Don's performance. I think this board has unanimously rated his performance as excellent. By any measure, he's exceeded our goals and expectations. His performance and leadership has resulted in numerous state and national awards, and I would make this personal statement. I genuinely don't believe in 40 years in business that I've ever worked with an executive who has effectively worked on an organization's mission with the integrity and the energy that Dr. Haddad does, and I mean that in all

112sincerity. Finally, we're in a financial position where we can do this, largely because of Don's performance over the last several years and his team, and I don't mean to slight the team. I know it is a team effort and I know that the folks have all pulled on the oars, but the truth is we are in a good position. We are able to make this change now financially, and I think that's the third reason why we should do it. Very high level of morale within the district. There's an exceptional level of trust for the district and this team and Don's leadership externally. It seems to be a good time to stop with the incremental adjustments and bring the superintendent's salary to where it should be. So that was the reason for my recommendation. Reasons, comments,

113questions? John? No, I would just say that this is some of the best dollars that we spent as a school district. By any objective measures, Bob noted, this district's been transformed over the last several years, and the number of people in the community, even beyond those, beyond our students, beyond our teachers and our other employees who benefit from Don's leadership is tremendous. The business community benefits tremendously from the success of the school district. You can just go up and down the board. We really have become the schools of first choice in the region, and so thank you, Don, for your leadership, and this is, again, dollars very well spent. Paula? Yeah, I would agree with their recommendation, Bob, and I think it's interesting how it aligned with our agenda tonight because we potentially had an

114issue on the agenda that could have been the most controversial or perhaps the most controversial since I've been on the board. And just how Dr. Haddad handled that since the news broke and how the media has been involved and politicians have been involved, you just brought all the stakeholders together, including us, the charter school board, parents, community groups, the list goes on and on. But the way that, to date, that that situation has been managed, I think has been really, really impressive and just a prime example of just the comprehensive and advanced level of leadership that we get from you. And the agenda being, or the budget being included on the agenda, just that those two things are there tonight and that we're considering Don's salary just aligns for me because we have just had

115really an incredible financial performance in the last couple of years. We are in a position to do it, and the evidence is just in front of us tonight to support this decision. All right. Thank you. Debbie? Well, given my CASB experience over the last three or four years, I can unequivocally say that Don's reputation for integrity and leadership and excellence around the state is next to none. His leadership in the groups that he's involved himself with in terms of statewide issues, in terms of school funding and policy, et cetera, from a state of Colorado perspective, whether it's working with the State Board of Education or the CDE or his own organization case and reputation among our state leaders and our state school board folks at the various associations, it's next to none. I take that

116as an incredible opportunity for us to make this change for Don's contract, long overdue, I agree with you, Bob, long overdue and very appropriate at this time. I feel that statewide, given Don's leadership and his reputation around the state with various superintendent groups and school board groups, et cetera, school executives, and our state legislators and the leaders of our state legislature, we have to do the right thing and this is it. Joey? Thank you, Bob. I agree with everything my fellow board members have said and I know you and I were talking at the Life Skills ACE graduation and I looked over at you and I said it really is remarkable what goes into educating the kids of St. Vrain when you think about what happens on an annual basis, on a monthly basis, on

117a daily basis, just what it takes to execute all of that and you take on that responsibility just with so much grace and so much success and thank you very much for all of that and so when I look at that, I take into account everything all of you have said. I think about the partnerships that you have established and worked on, the grants, if you look at the list of goals and accomplishments, priorities, absolutely well deserved and the right thing to do. I agree with your recommendation, Bob. Thank you. All right. And thank you, Don. And I know educators in general, teachers and anybody in administration, folks don't go into education for the money and I know Don didn't. I would guess in any other sector of our economy, someone running a school, an

118organization of this complexity with this number of employees, this number of locations would be paid well above what we're paying our superintendent and I think this is the only fair thing to do. So with that, then I'll ask for a motion of approval. So moved. By Paula. Second. By Joey and Bob, would you please call for the vote. Mr. Creighton. Aye. Ms. Slammers. Aye. Ms. Pierce. Aye. Ms. Segrist. Aye. Mr. Smith. Yes. All right. Motion carried. Thank you. Very good. So having then addressed action item, oh, let's see, we have approval of adoption of resolution to appropriate a fund. Well, now that we've given them a raise, I guess we have to put the money aside, right? To be able to do that. So to appropriate the fund. So Greg, would you address that, please?

119Well, now that you locked him into a multi-year contract, you can take the franchise tag off of him. Okay. Actually, because it is a multi-year contract and because of Tabor, it does require either voter approval or board-approved committed funds to meet the future obligation. And so what that obligation is, is if the board were to buy out his remaining term of employment, it would be up to a maximum of two-year salaries and benefits. So that is what we're asking you to approve a resolution that would commit those funds over in, out of unassigned fund balance and into a committed reserve. And then as the year goes by, it would be shifting back to unassigned as we kept him on board. So does that make sense? It does. And it would be hard to not approve

120this, having just approved what we did. So I'd ask for a motion of approval by John. Second. By Paula. And Barb, would you call for the vote, please? Mr. Creighton. Aye. Ms. Peers. Aye. Ms. Segers. Aye. Mr. Smith. Yes. All right. Thanks very much, Greg. I believe then that brings us, having taken action on 8.9, I believe that brings us to the end of the action items. I don't see any discussion items. Was there anything else, Don, that needed to come before the board tonight? I don't think so. We're good. All right. In that event, I will ask for a motion to adjourn. So moved. By Debbie. Second. By both Paula and John, and Barb can record whomever she'd like. And all in favor? Aye. Thank you all very much for attending, and have a

121good evening.