001{Music} Good afternoon. Welcome back. We will call this regular board meeting for Wednesday, August 6th, 2025 to order at 400 p.m. And here we go. Welcome back uh to the start of a new school year. Uh we do have executive session on top of the agenda today. Uh when we reconvene after executive session, I'll share a brief welcome back message to our community. With that, roll call, please. Melissa. Director Bis here. Director Kerry here. Director Hley here. Director Jorgensson here. Director Malpam here. Director Nelson. Um, Director Nelson, just for the community's awareness as well, and we'll be discussing this later on the agenda, submitted her letter of resignation to the board of education at the end of July. That resignation is effective as of July 23rd after the board discusses and accepts it formally later
002this evening. I will share more about the vacancy later this evening. Director Mel Packen. Oh, wait. Director here. Thank you. So, six board members are present in person in the boardroom. Director Nelson is excused. Moving on to the next item in the agenda. It's moment of silence. Please join me as we observe a moment of silence. Thank you. Adoption of agenda. Director Hay, can you please make the motion to adopt the agenda? Yes. I Yes. I move that the board of education adopts the agenda as presented with the addition of approval of the district-wide closure on Thursday, July 3rd, 2025 to the consent agenda. Second. Moved and seconded. Roll call, please. Director Bankis, I. Director Kerry, I. Director Hayley, I. Director Jorgensson, I. Director Malpa, I. Director, I. The agenda has been adopted with the
003um addition uh that director Hayley um um stated at the in her motion. So we do have executive session scheduled for roughly 90 minutes. Director Jurgensson, can you please make the motion to move into executive session? Yes. I move that the board of education convenes into executive session to discuss legal advice per CRS 24-6-424B particular matter Colorado Springs Education Association CSEA strike related issues negotiations per CRS 246424E particular matter superintendent contract and personnel per CRS 246424F particular matter superintendent contract second moved and seconded. Roll call, please. Director Mus, I. Director Kerry, I. Director Hley, hi. Director Jorgensson, I. Director Malpa, I. Director, I. The I Sabit, we will enter into executive session now and reconvene for a regularly scheduled board meeting at approximately 5:30 p.m. Thank you. I feel you. Hey, dance. Hey, hey, hey.
004Heat. Heat. Hey, hey, hey. Heat. Heat. All right. Hey, hey, hey. Heat. Heat. N. Hey. Hey. Hey. Heat. Heat. Hello. Hey, hey, hey. Hey. Hey, hey, hey. I'm sorry. Do we have a name? What's the name of the student? Um Austin and Amelia. Um Austin and Amelia from study abroad. Uh Amelia is not study abroad. So they were both there and both are. So you both are made You heard that? We're ready. Okay, board members. Good evening. Good evening. Is it How do I increase this volume a little bit? Okay. Good evening. Thank you. Um, appreciate your patience. Executive session ran a little bit longer. Um, so we are reconvening in public sessions a few minutes late. I apologize for the um uh tardiness but uh here we are. Um, we are uh reconvening in
005public session and there is no need to modify the agenda after the executive session. Welcome back. I want to start by welcoming everyone for the 2025 26 school year. Hope all of you uh are doing well and had a relaxing and rejuvenating summer break with friends and family. Um, personally, it just seems like summer break went by really fast and here we are with uh schools starting next week and most of our staff returning to work already. Um, so there were several district events uh last week and this week uh new teacher orientation uh professional development for our returning teachers and the kickoff event earlier this morning at Robson Arena. It was great to see and engage with several of the D11 staff at these events. Uh several familiar faces and lot of new faces
006as well. The excitement and enthusiasm for the start of the school year was palpable. So s I want to start by thanking Superendal and his administration team. Thanks for all your hard work over the summer. Several of us get a little bit of break over the summer, but the administration team, especially those at facilities, were busy renovating and sprucing up our buildings for the start of the school year and probably are putting up the final touches as we speak. So, um there is amazing progress to share uh both at Palmer and Jenkins and we will get to those updates later this evening. So, uh thank you to the facilities team, especially Jen Hotelling. I see her at the back and uh Brandon and uh everybody else uh that uh are instrumental in making sure our
007schools are up and running. And I'll uh end with this uh little bit of statement. Um uh earlier this morning we had that kickoff event at Robes and Arena for all D1 schools. Again, thanks for all the schools, teachers and principles and leaders participating. There was great energy. Well done to everyone that organized that event. um uh in his address uh Superintendent Gaul shared the visual of wild flowers in Colorado and how each of those wildflower plant is unique but find a way to adapt to the situation and grow and thrive and eventually bloom and blossom and when they bloom in the summer it's a spectacular site. The analogy being our students are just like those wild flowers. Each student is unique, talented, and gifted. It's up to the adults in the system to unlock
008their full potential. Most of our students are growing, but the numbers indicate that they are not all blooming and achieving, but they are growing, which is um good to um the first step in the process. As Superintendent G mentioned, this is his fourth year starting in district 11. And speaking for the board, we are excited uh to have Superintendent Gaul leading the Colorado Springs School District 11. So, thank you for your service, Superintendent Gaul. Lots of changes in the prior three years, especially to the culture of the school district and as an organization when we have the right culture in place, then we can employ strategies so our students can blossom and thrive. The past three years we have collectively writed the ship, invested resources closest to students and classrooms and set the conditions for
009our staff and students to succeed. When Superintendent Gaul accepted this job three years back, the destination was excellence. It has taken three years of journey and there is more work to be done. But I sincerely believe this that this year we are going to reap the benefits and watch every child grow and achieve. And that is going to happen because of the energy we witnessed this morning at Robes and Arena. Thanks to all the amazing leaders, principles, teachers and support staff we have in our schools. I confident that they are going to push our students to achieve and to grow and to succeed. So we start the school year with high expectations and I will reiterate again to our community high expectations and no excuses. Looking forward to an exciting year of growth and achievement
010and seeing every child grow and blossom in their unique uh own unique way. And uh board members as always we will be visible presence in our schools. Please feel free to engage with us as an when you see us in our community. Thank you. Moving forward to um the items on the agenda. Pledge of allegiance. Uh could I have Austin Coleman and Amelia Coleman? Austin is um a Palmer student and he participated in the study abroad program um and is returning from Beijing, China. China. And then uh Amelia is uh his sister and a student at North. Please lead us in the pledge of allegiance if you can stand up. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you guys. And uh I also want to give a shout out to
011uh board director who used to serve on this board, Mary Coleman. She's in the audience and the proud parent of Austin and Amelia. Moving on to the next item in the uh agenda, awards and recognitions. Uh several staff and student awards and recognitions from the summer to celebrate. I'm going to turn it over to Superintendent Call. Go ahead. International The Thespian Festival. In June, District 11 sent four thespians from Mitchell and Coronado high schools to the International Thespian Festival, the national conference and competition for theater. They qualified to travel to the University of Indiana with their top superior ratings at the state thespian confern conference thecon in December. They showed leadership, courage, poise, creativity, and an upbeat mindset the entire trip. Theyworked with schools from around the country and industry professionals learned a tremendous amount
012in theater while developing real skills and becoming a tight-knit mini D11 thespian troop. Mitchell's Jacob Miler brought home the top rating of superior for his lighting presentation, while Coronado's Nathan Zuk and Michael Alzando scored an honorable excellent in their individual events in lighting and sound. Additionally, the Coronado team teamed up with another troop and competed in the six-part tech challenge. Congratulations. Round of applause for our tests. There's a small backstory uh that I want to share for those who haven't been coming to all of our meetings. Some months ago, you all were being awarded for your state level wins. Is that right? And I actually think Jacob, was it you? Yeah. Jacob, you want to remind people what you did that day? Um, very kindly asked everyone on the board to give us money after
013they promised so kindly last year. And so we gave them the money. They went to nationals and they came back and made it rain. So, thank you all. And I'll let the two of you tell us a little bit about your program and what makes uh this uh our theme this year is agency. How does uh being in drama and a thesian help you activate your learning? Go ahead. Tell us who you are and what school again. Hi, I'm Nath. Okay. Hi, I'm Nathan Zuk from Coronado. Our trip to the international thespian festival granted us numerous opportunities to develop real world skills for our futures including lessons we brought back to district 11 college preparation and career building in adjudication rooms. We de we observed presentations by other thesp qualifiers that demonstrated how to build
014a superior portfolio by with with other with proper research organization and presentation. We learned to better understand our roles in theater and in our future education and careers through one-of-a-kind workshops and events directed by professionals in our field. We plan to return to the students in our district and teach them our gained knowledge and skills, creating a ripple effect of passing the torch onto our peers and apprentices. Our experience on the Indiana University campus gave us a glimpse of college life that better prepares us for the transition from high school to college. The unfamiliarity and size of the co campus forced us to rely on our navigation and time management. We made choices on which workshops to attend, how we traveled there, and scheduled time for all of the available events and venues. We also
015had the opportunity to meet with representatives of colleges to further develop our understanding of life and university and increase our options for college. Futures in and out of the performing arts require us to prep for interviews, auditions, propositions, and presentations of which we had training through workshops and experience through adjudication. Not only are we able to prepare in an excellent presentation with clear organization, structure, extensive research, and a clear throughine, but we also greatly improved our confidence and presentation. Students with our experiences easily compile their achievements and value into résumés, which makes them stand out among among their peers in the prof professional and educational realms. We want to express our eternal gratitude for the opportunity to attend the international thespian festival and for the district 11 board's decision to fund the trip. We hope
016they will consider funding future trips for thesp qualifiers in order to grant them this the same wonderful experience to learn beyond what we have. Thank you. Hi, my name is Jacob Miler. I am a three-time superior winning student at these events. Most recently, as I mentioned, I was one of the few students who got a superior ranking at the national level. This meant I got a very unique insight into what different lifestyles were in the national in sorry in the theater world. I apologize. Um at thecon we were both able to learn things from professionals and students alike. Many students have different sorts of learning aspects. Many students we got to commune with after they presented on stage did not have a stage to rehearse on. We are very blessed in D11 to be given
017stages with beautiful lights and amazing sounds when students that we worked with had to work in gymnasiums and had to work from behind the stage behind their gym stage. This really brought a major insight into how beneficial it is for us to be here and how blessed we are. We also got to talk to many professionals in the Broadway field and how they got in there and how they started from low lower levels of learning like where we're at. We also got to experience their level of skill. As they mentioned, Nathan and one of our students, Maley, got to participate in what they called the technical challenge. I forgot. In the technical challenge, they were taking different levels of technical skills where they did lighting, sorry, lighting design, sound design, sound array, costume changes, and
018many more and had to compete in a time challenge against different students from different schools. This meant that we got to not only experience life with other students, but with professionals in a professional field rather than just hearing their stories. Awesome. Great. Thank you, Lyn. Why don't you bring us on? So going to the state competition is a really big deal. That's we do that festcon in December and then the creme de la creme gets to then qualify for nationals. And so to be we were one of the 23 Colorado schools that that got to go to this national competition. Um, and it was amazing in so many different ways and to watch the students grow as individuals um, and in their skills was an amazing opportunity. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you all.
019And thank you for the students for reminding us the importance of investing in the arts. This is a district that will continue to put money into the arts. It is a way for our children to clearly demonstrate their knowledge and the skills that we teach them all day long. These are two children that are ready to graduate and are easily hirable into a very large career field. But we have to continue to invest in the arts for our children to be able to express themselves in ways that rows and columns and worksheets just don't work anymore. So, thank you both. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Thanks again, Lyn. So congratulations to the students. Um uh to the both of you. You keep doing what you guys are doing, succeeding in what you're doing, and we
020as a board will promise to find you the resources for your uh trips that are necessary. So go on, have a great day. That's good. Are we done with awards and Okay. Thank you. So the spotlight. Thank you. Next item on the agenda is spotlight. Uh and today we are going to be spotlighting the talent management team who have been really busy over the summer. So uh I just asked superintendent Gaul usually from my vantage point out here there are red shirts and blue shirts in the uh audience and today I come in and there are green shirts and I wasn't sure what the green shirts were if there is another group that's organizing in the community and he said the green shirts are the talent management team. So, it's good to have the talent
021management team with your green shirts in the audience. Superintendent G. Green shirts and a green dress. So, to the sea of green, Dr. Comfort, uh, Miss Harris, please come. Uh, it's just been a tremendous hiring season. We've turned a corner in District 11. We're the destination district and we are soon on our way to being the exemplary performance district. Dr. Comfort, good evening. Welcome back. It didn't feel like that long ago I was at the DIAS. So, here we go again. Uh, I'm going to talk for a few slides and then we're gonna um bring up Miss Harris who who leads our talent management division. Um, I'm really excited that the team decided to show up. You're going to be really proud in what you hear tonight. Uh, this is not easy work. This is
022quick transformation. And so, I'm going to ask that that the talent management team uh just stand up real quick so you kind of see who's all there. It's all of the green shirts really. I mean, So there's a there's a few things I want to point out. Um we have seen the talent management former HR team transform over the last two years largely with the same people. Many of those people have worked in the district for years and years. Uh that's possible. We're doing that. Um we're going to show you some data that that that highlights that. Okay. Uh in our district, we have gotten way more focused on our hiring practices. Teaching and learning is what matters most. And so when we're focusing on hiring, we focus on the hiring that is closest to
023that, which is teachers. When you look at total teacher vacancies across the system in comparison on the last three years, this data is always fluid. Uh in terms of this year, remember we are actively hiring um and replacing employees all year long. There are 4,500 employees in this system. So that that number will continue to move. on August 1st, two years ago, we brought to you 133 vacancies when we started the school year. We also saved a lot of money that year because we had 133 vacancies. Um, last year we made a really big uh impact on that and we got all the way down to 53 teacher vacancies. This year um as of August 1st, today it would be 34, but we are at 33 vacancies um across our teacher force. To take that
024one step further, we are even more focused on the teachers who are the the closest to the the daily instruction, the primary teacher for our students. So, our core teachers. Um, we are down I know that says three, it is now four. We are down to four core teacher vacancies in this district. Uh, what you see in that background of that picture are all of the teachers at new teacher orientation. Those are all of the people that HR has processed and managed to get into the system, make it to new teacher orientation so that they can participate in that wonderful training. Our goal was zero. I'll be honest, when we set that goal three or four months ago, if we would have got to 30, I would have been happy. I had no idea that
025HR would get there. And that wasn't um by accident or happen stance. That's by those people in green shirts grinding every single day for schools. You're going to see some data in a second on a few specific schools. And again, that only happened because of wonderful work at the school, but because somebody in that back row uh wouldn't let a school go without getting a job filled. Okay, even more focused, we had our three staffing stability schools that the board approved um extra funding to go to. Here's an incredible stat. All three of those schools are 100% fully staffed with their certified positions. Miss Harris gets up and talks about the strategy. She's going to show you what we told you we would do and what we actually have done. This is unbelievable. Mitchell High
026School, if you remember two years ago, we sat at this dice and we said 16 openings. They started that school year with 16 openings and you challenged us. You said that's not good enough. Go fix that. Now we have a fully staffed Mitchell High School as well as Galileo Middle School and Adams Elementary. Now we have to develop those teachers to make sure that they're doing great uh things for kids. Okay. Uh now that's my I get all the fun stuff. Now Jen's going to come up and talk about the actual work. Good evening board. Um it's wonderful to be here this evening, especially the first board meeting of the year. It is such an honor to be able to be recognized and celebrate these wonderful achievements. Um that to Dr. Comfort's um statement that
027really is from the backbone of my team doing the great work. It starts with um having strategic initiatives. And so in talent management we play chess. We do not play hungry hungry hippos. and we are constantly um talking about new and inventive things to continue our work. So the strategic invest in investments that we have been working on over the past two years have resulted in us moving the needle to the data that Dr. Comfort spoke to. We have a talent acquisition focus where we worked on early recruitment initiatives with our job fairs. We strategically thought about how are we going to be the first district to get out there and get all of our candidates, the highly qualified candidates. And so we really worked hard at making sure we were at um some of
028the fairs that began in early March. And we set our specific fair date for a date in which um no other district in El Paso County um had that specific date. and we beat we beat people to it. We have an enhanced candidate experience um where we really looked at if we were a candidate trying to apply for our positions, what do we need to make sure that we correct and refine within our system and we have strategic partnerships with universities for our um parah toteer pathway and also our alt lensure. We then move to re refining the hiring process, making sure we have priority postings aligned to student-based budgeting. Our school leaders all have the opportunity to actually look at their job postings and give us some different language that really targets their specific
029school community. And this summer, we focused on hiring positions closest to schools first, ensuring teachers are ready for new teacher orientation while might I say we were still able to meet our metrics for all other positions. So, super excited about that. We also really took a look at our website and thought about how can we make sure to redesign our re our website um to focus on what makes D11 different and when they reach our website, what will they find that's different to what they're finding on other school district sites? I'm really excited to announce the following statistics. Um D11 is the place to be. People are coming back to D11. You'll notice that um we have one ESP that decided she he or she wanted to be a counselor and so that person is
030staying within D11 and utilizing the career ladder which is excellent. We have 36 of our guest teachers who chose to move into full-time teaching positions. We have 47 rehires, so people that left the district that actually wanted to come back. 207 transfers employees that wanted to stay in D11. They didn't want to leave, but they wanted to maybe go to a different school for a different experience, 267 new hires, which we're super excited to bring on board, and um 564 interested people who completed our talent interest pool online. So, it's just a quick link that they fill out telling us that they're interested. We then reach out to them and um start engaging with them as a recruitment strategy. Super exciting piece of data is our job fairs. So we really looked at our candidate
031experience. Um and I have to um just give credit where credit's due to my director Tanya Nash who directs our talent acquisition and development team. Wave Tanya. There she is. Get ready the rest of you. um she along with um the rest of the team really looked at the candidate experience and we increased to 669 candidates attending the job fairs the D11 specific job fairs this year compared to 379 from last year so that's huge um and all because of Tanya and the team's work um specifically we looked at what's the candidate con uh connection so candidates received a personalized welcome and a a package when they came in through the doors for the job fairs. School connection candidates had engagement with our schools with principles and teachers that had openings. They led interview committees
032there. Um, as you can tell by the pictures, our schools really brought the engagement and the excitement to these job fairs and um, they're having some healthy competition at our job fairs. The schools are. So, if you haven't been to one, you got to come this year. It's it's pretty fun to see. And the the next piece that we looked at was what does the on-site processing look like? So, if candidates come to a job fair, can they actually receive um an offer, a contingent offer? And so, yes, they can. And we were able to um ensure that our system supported that. And then we had a talent management connection with our candidates. We guaranteed that they would get a 48 hour response time and clear next steps um regarding their experience and their engagement
033with the job fair. So what are what are our next steps? Again, we play chess, not hungry hippos. And so we we are constantly thinking of what is next. So we hit our benchmarks. Great. We're excited about that. we want to continue to heat to hit those benchmarks and think about um the future. So, some of the things that we'll be focusing on is continuing to collaborate with the employee engagement group. This year, we're going to be specifically focusing on the employee engagement piece and additional retention strategies because really we want to make sure that we are not constantly churning with resignations and new hires. We want to now move to making sure that we're keeping um our employees. We are going to be doing a deep dive into ta title two data to determine
034the strategic recruiting um opportunities that we have from universities. So we'll be really looking at who's coming out of the universities and what is the data telling us that we could start doing some strategic recruiting and we are working on expanding leadership development opportunities. Um Sarah Scott, are you here? Yes. Where is she? Right there. Okay. Sarah Scott and I started working on what does it look like for our principles and our assistant principles. And so um we're starting to get some pieces into place for their um expanded leadership development opportunities. Then this winter um we are doing a job description overhaul. Thankfully, with the help of AI, we have 1,500 job descriptions which and they're all written all kinds of different ways. We need to do an overhaul. So, we will be doing that.
035We are getting an applicant tracking system. Um applicant tracking systems exist in most organizations. This is something that's not existed in D11. And so, we are going to be getting one one of those in our partnership with P school. And we will be uh Tanya actually will be exploring best practices around defining and measuring performance development and growth. She'll be working with a group of um our colleagues on what does it look like for Randa and for perform and all of those pieces. So our long-term vision is to actually do exactly what I said. How are we going to retain employees and build a sustainable talent pop pipeline um to make sure that we are um reaching the goals of the strategic plan and then spring February, March, April, May um we are going to
036be working on strategic planning for new employee launches, specifically our ESP and Exec Pro launch. We're going to meet need to do some work around those pieces and um we will be likely partnering with our academics team on the new teacher and um orientation and what that looks like um so that we can have it ready for um August. I want to focus really quickly on the importance of the talent management team in regards to ensuring that students are always kept first and really thinking about that employee engagement and retention piece that I spoke briefly about. If we are really focusing on employee engagement and retention, these is this screen tells you exactly how it impacts students. It always 100% increases student success. That's the bottom line. And so my team is dedicated to um
037ensuring that we are um helping students succeed. And last but not least, this is my wonderful team, the green shirt team. And so um as Dr. Dr. Comfort said, they re they deserve all the credit. Um, my team will tell you, no comments from the peanut gallery, that I have very high expectations. Sometimes I know that I can maybe be a little overbearing for them, but they have they just exceeded all of my expectations tenfold. They rose to the occasion. And the biggest thing I can say about my team is when you walk into our department, there's a lot of levity and laughter as they're doing the hard work. And so, um, all credit goes to them. Super excited for the year ahead and, um, for meeting our next goals that we'll have. Thank you.
038Questions, comments from the board. Good looking group. They are a good-looking group. Yes. You have something? Oh, back to Bankas. Yes. I attended um the uh job fair there at DHY High School and I was thrilled to find so many I was only a half an hour after the opening doors and it was already crowded with folks who were eager and folks who were standing there from the district who said can I help you where would you like to start you have a question I can answer that for you there was no confusion it was really well done I thought I'd have a chance to visit with principles as they sat at their tables know they were all engaged talking to prospective hires. So, thank you. Thank you to the whole team for all that
039you've done. It doesn't come easily. It means that you have heart in what you do and your work is deeply appreciated. Thank you all. Looking at no further comments from the board, thank you. Thank you for all your hard work. Uh it's amazing that we now have the core teacher vacancy at three or four uh from where we were at previously. So um um and attending some of the new teacher orientation, the pictures were there up there, the excitement in the uh classrooms and the engagement from our staff. Um it's night and day. So uh we've come a long way. So thank you for all your hard work. keep doing what you guys are doing and uh we wish you success. Um um thank you green team all of you that are there in the
040back out there. Yeah. I just going to ask uh Dr. Comfort uh he shared a piece with me. Uh yeah, we've hired 220 plus new to the district teachers. I'd like for you to share a little bit about that mix because sometimes when you hear the word new teacher, you think that means that we've now just added 200 people to the system who've never taught a day in education. Bren, you want to talk about the diversity? Yeah. Um I Superintendent Gave me the honor of opening new teacher orientation this year and so uh it's the first time I've done that. So I worked on my speech and I'm like, "Okay, I'm talking to firstear teachers." If you were there, you got to see that I I had pictures of executive cabinet all as first year
041teachers. And then I said, "Raise your hand if if you're a brand new teacher." And like 15% raised their hand. And raise your hand if you're an experienced teacher. And there there came the rest of the group. So I think what we're seeing is it's not 250 brand new baby teachers. We love having them. We welcome them. We will grow you and and and help you grow into a wonderful teacher, but we have experienced teachers who want to be a part of the district. Uh and so that with with that comes um all of the wonderful things that we know about having experience as a teacher. Thank you. Thank you. That concludes our program spotlight. Go get them. Four to go. Four more days. Four to go. And thank you all for being here. The
042green team. The green team. Here we go. So, Superintendent Gaul, I'm going to come back to you. It's your superintendent report. Yes. Uh I've got uh 700 slides and promised to do it in less than 30 minutes. Uh but uh really the the big piece here is we're going to sneak in another major update which our study abroad families and students and staff are here. That'll end my superintendence report. So as I go quickly, it's not that I don't want to focus on the things that I have to share. It's that I want to make sure that we give uh due time for the folks who have committed their time to come here and talk about um their incredible experience. Uh what do we do all summer? We we had playgroup in the park. If
043if you can't get excited about playgroup in the park, let's try this again. We played with prek kids in five different parks one time every week and probably increased our prek enrollment by 15%. I just so appreciate the initiative of Sarah Carlson and her team that said enrollment is not Chris Kilroyy's job in the downtown enrollment office. If you want to find little children and get them to come to school, you go to the park in the summertime. These were tremendous events. I got the chance to share in one of them and you couldn't get me out of there at Boulder Park. So much fun to see District 11 and of course we have these tiny little shirts that say D11 preschool and they're just and you know I couldn't fit in one. They got
044me the large but it was a little kid large and so my arms were sticking out. But I wanted to start to say that yes, people get time off in the summertime, but no, we don't ever take our mind off what our number one mission is, which is how do we get kids achievement by getting them access to high quality instruction. It starts in preK. We don't ask for kindergarten readiness standards in prek. We ask for kids to be socially, emotionally ready to enter kindergarten. It is a playgroup in the park in the summertime, and it's a wonderful playgroup in the classroom as an experience when kids come in. So, we're super excited about that. Thanks to Sarah. I've got a couple of uh leader announce leader and teacher shoutouts that have been recognized uh
045nationally. I want to start with Aaron Ford and his work in leading Autobon. Aaron had the great opportunity to be a keynote speaker at a national conference for uh building expertise with our instructional partner instructional empowerment. Aaron took on the partnership of bringing agency to life as one of our first schools and in the two years he has grown, we call this growing the head for achievement. He has increased the number of students meeting or exceeding grade level standard in ELA by 9%. And he has increased the number of students meeting or exceeding math standards by 21%. 21%. Aaron is busy getting his school ready for students next week. And Aaron would say that because I've heard him say it when he said it there. He just had to take the leap of faith that
046said, "Nobody's telling me what to do. They're giving me an opportunity to do this differently. Public education is not broken in district 11. It's broken across America. We keep putting kids in rows and columns and giving them worksheets. Aaron and Autobon are the exemplary school if you want to really see what agency looks like in our school district. And so hats off to Aaron and all the team at Autobon. We're super excited for where they'll go next year. Round of applause for Aaron. Well, we're not allowed to clap, right? It's only no clapping for public comment. So I also get the great honor of uh admiring and thanking Stacy Derek. Stacy, please stand up because I see that you're here. Stacy is a staunch advocate for teachers rights and she shares her values on her
047sleeve. She doesn't hold back. And she was recognized by a national organization, the teacher freedom alliance as the first ever teacher freedom alliance teacher of the year for the United States of America in Washington DC. So again, as our thesian stood forward, we have another national award winner. Thank you, Stacy. And please come forward so you can take my coin. I can change slides while I walk. Now, President Malpachham and other board members talked already about what an incredible week we've had. I cannot do it justice and I cannot give enough thanks to all the members of the team along the wall and behind them that made these events go off. I've never been prouder to see such an incredible intentional, coherent, and aligned kickoff in a school district or any organization I've been a
048part of. We started with new leader launch. Uh Brandon and I bookended that. He started it uh on uh uh well, we I'm sorry, I'm confusing with teachers. We took our new leaders, which are all our new administrators, and we actually did something completely different. We started them at the World War II aviation museum and we said these are all airplanes but no two of them are alike. You are all leaders of schools and no two of your schools are alike. Figure out how form follows function. Think about design. What do you need in your school in order to ensure that every student can get access to highest quality instruction. It was a great couple hours. We all learned a lot and we actually got to learn a lot of really deep and rich connections
049to Colorado Springs. A selfless plug, if you're looking for a couple hours to learn, head on over to the airport and go to the World War II aviation museum. It is a singularly the premier World War II aviation museum that I've ever been to, and I've been to several of them. So, thanks to that. We did new teacher launch on August 1st and 4th. Dr. Comfort kicked it off. I We all loved finding original pictures of us as teachers. Uh I'm sure they still got a laugh. Did you make a matching with the real ones? Right. I lost all my hair. I don't know where it went. Uh but maybe it's growing back in my ears is what they tell me. Uh and then we closed that out on uh August 4th at Tesla. The
050room was packed. The energy was high. The lines of people coming up afterwards and saying, "I am so proud to be in this organization. Go to our social media. Go to our Instagram and Facebook. We've got a couple of pieces where we interview about a dozen different teachers. Why D11?" And you know why. They grew up in D11. Their mom and dad taught in D11. They graduated from D11. They heard great things about the energy in D11. People are coming here because they want to be here. When that's what your workforce is, you can do anything. And so we are right on that cusp right now. And this year we did something different. Normally we kick off our Exec Pro, our senior administrator meeting at one of the things that is super rich about Colorado
051Springs. One year we did it at the uh at the Olympic Museum and the other year we did it at UCCCs uh performing arts center. This year we decided to find another part that was rich about our city which was we kicked it off at Mitchell High School. And I could see that a good half of our own senior administrators had never really been inside Mitchell High School. And they got to see that the most money we've put against any capital improvement minus the large Palmer project that we're doing over the last three years is Mitchell High School. And they got to see that because the students led them. The thesians who you saw earlier and the junior ROC waited for all of us adults to talk in jibberjabber to then take every administrator in
052that room in the cafeteria and give them a half an hour tour and show them the new courtyard, the new future center, the new blackbox theater, and the soontobe opened new and digitally renovated planetarium at Mitchell High School. And we challenged ourselves and said if every one of the hundred of us in this room could help solve one problem at Mitchell or for the larger community at the Citadel Mall area or for feeder school in Mitchell. Think about how much faster we can get to student achievement. So it was a great kickoff. It was super focused. I appreciate the team for being there. And then this morning we uh overtook Robeson Arena. We do it twice a year. We do it for graduation to end the year and we do it for our kickoff to
053start the year. It's cold on the ice. I'll tell you that when you stand down there. But thank you to my team for bringing a vision to life. You can see a picture there that we spelt out D11 through a little facilitated exercise and we also had the word student agency in cards written up on either side of it. Some of I matter of fact I see Shay here and she's going to get a chance to talk. Sheay is now infamous and famous to all the staff members because Sheay did a video about her study abroad experience that we played for every teacher and every administrator for them to see the value of getting children outside the classroom to demonstrate the knowledge that they've gained. Thank you Shay and I'm look forward to hearing you
054talk in a little bit. Uh it was a great year. We're super excit nowhere to go but up and we're really excited about it. We have the right team uh and we are at the right time. Okay, with that, we've hired a couple of new people. Kyle, come on forward. Introduce yourself. Tell people two great things that you want to do at Homes. Thank you. I am Kyle Chamberlain. I am the new principal at Holmes Middle School. Uh, super excited. I'm coming back to District 11. I started my career here as an elementary school teacher at Columbia Elementary School. Uh, taught for 10 years in District 11. spent the last 14 in another school district here in the Pikes Peak region. Uh my kids uh I've got one over at North Middle School right now
055at a cross country camp. I've got one at Palmer High School. It's a junior in high school and he is at Nancy Lewis Park right now with student council getting it together. And my wife has worked here in District 11 for 24 years. She's a counselor at Palmer High School as well. We live here in District 11. Um, I've always had an eye and a heart on returning, um, and looking for the right place at the right time. And Holmes Middle School emerged this summer as an incredible opportunity, um, to continue to grow that school and, um, and continue to push the great things that are happening there. So, thank you to the board. Um, what I'd say is, uh, school district 11, when they say they're going to do something, they don't just say
056it. In district 11, they do it. they show this community that they're committed to the students. Um whether it was through the the compensation packages or through the commitments to the facilities. So I'm proud. I live here in district 11 and I'm proud to return. So thank you. Welcome home, Kyle. Thank you. Dan Olsen, come on down. Our new athletic director. Uh we we took a different tact here. If you can't beat them, steal them. So we uh we took Dan from arguably one of the highest performing high schools in the state. Dan, tell us a little bit about your time and your journey here to D11. Yeah, absolutely. First of all, I want to thank everybody for this opportunity to the board. Superintendent Gaul, uh Dr. Comfort, I am thrilled to be here, thrilled
057to continue my my educational journey in district 11 going into my 32nd year in education. Um the gray hairs might uh give it away a little bit, but this is my life's passion. Working with students and seeing them grow and achieve is what I live for. Um you know, I'm I'm coming out of the academic side of things. I've been a building leader for the past 16 years. Um but I am thrilled to be working with academics in another setting and that is with our athletes and our activity participants. To me, athletics and activities are the front porch of a school and they get kids excited. That is where they buy in a lot of times and that is where we see the student achievement and the growth start to come from because they want
058to be a part of the community. They want to be a part of the school and that is all tied together. So, I am thrilled to be here. A few things that I'm looking forward to accomplishing. One, I've been made very clear. We need to start hanging banners. So, we need to start bringing championships back to District 11. And I I guarantee you we're going to do that very very soon. Another thing I really am excited about is to make sure that students have great experiences at every level. Whether it's kindergarten or whether it's that senior year, that student that's going on to a 4-year university or college, we want to make sure that they're all having perfect great experiences here in District 11. So, thank you all so much for having me. I can't
059wait to serve for the next hopefully 10 or 12 years in this role. I'm not retiring anytime soon. So, thank you all so much. Great. Welcome, Dan. Excited to have you. Uh Dr. Mel Pacham talked about the great work happening around schools. I've got a couple of summary slides. This was our focus. Safe, secure entrances, update furniture, modernize classrooms. And here's a couple of examples away. We kind of did this by our area superintendence model. And I'll save the biggies for the last. It makes perfect sense that Colombia uh who I should also announce was one of the award winners for the most spirit at our kickoff event today and Sabin was the award winner uh in the in the later session as well. So I appreciate that. But we've got a new mural on
060the side of our visual and performing arts school at Colombia. We've upgraded the uh playground at Steel. Uh it might not seem exciting, but certainly in our compliance related world, we have new ladders on the side of the building at North to make sure that we stay compliant in a very old building. You can see here over in the west, we completely redid the front entry to homes. So, it is now safe, it is secure, it is modernized. Uh we finally delivered on the completion of our pathway school at Halbert to have an outdoor learning space in an outdoor school. So, as you approach Albert now, you can see what you're getting at face value. You walk in and it says, "Well, I bet this is an outdoor outdoor learning school." If you saw our
061principal, Toby today, he was walking around with a tree and he's just advertising all day long that he's an outdoor learning school. Uh over in the southeast side at Autobond, we've had to uh actually add storage for the prek program and so we've modernized that space there. Henry also got the new safety vestibule, that new front office. And at Galileo, we uh resanded and finished and painted the gym so our students in middle school can participate in sports there. Some of the larger projects, thanks again to the Willil Fong family donation uh for the groundbreaking for a fieldhouse at DHY High School. It is super exciting that uh well, I don't think what the stu the student athletes realized is that means practice is never canceled due to weather. So now we're just moving inside
062the fieldhouse. I'm not sure that the academic team has realized yet that it also means now that we can have glider competitions and we could build uh you know remote control cars that have to drive the length of the fieldhouse. And so we're going to use that fieldhouse not just for athletics. The marching band will practice there. We'll be doing academic exercises in that vast space. And we're super excited and due to actually ribbon cut right around Christmas time. Thank you again for a generous donation from uh Mr. Wolfong and his family foundation. A dory grad just a good guy wants to give back to a community that helped make a difference for him when he was younger. CSST is ready for ribbon cutting this Friday. Come to the back of the cyber security lab
063at North Nevada and find a brand new high school. We're super excited in partnership with UCCCs and the National Cyber Center for the work that's happening there. You can see we said we were going to put a rocket on it and we're painting a rocket right there. You can see that bottom picture right there. So, we can only paint it right now, but I'm pretty sure the kids are going to want to build a rocket their first year that they're there. Palmer update. It is super exciting. I just as of today, the uh tech building uh is uh that demo is completed. We'll now be removing that debris. If you pay attention to way those wreckers work, they are actually recycling as they wreck. And what they do is they take the tin and they
064take the aluminum and they take the steel and they take the brick and they kind of force separate it at the same time. And to the right of it is what that will now uh look like. We hope to have that building open now in two years time. We'll start as soon as we clean up, we'll start building it up right there. That is phase one of the much larger uh uh vision that we have for Palmer. Super excited about our community's energy. I can see we have our principal Christa Burke here and we have one of our lead architects in Doug Abernathy with RTA and I also see our alumni rep in Tom Hes. Thank you all for your support. Palmer is the future of not just District 11, it's the future of our
065downtown. Marrying those two together is just a natural opportunity and I drive by it every day and my smile gets wider and wider. I can't wait to see the first steel beam go up so people can start seeing us building instead of the challenges and the feelings that come with some of the things that have been torn down. Uh we are we are keeping the core of the original 1939 building. I think again go up and down our hallway here when you leave and see how we are going to bring that building to life in a way that will last for another 100 plus years for our uh alumni, our current and our future Palmer students. Very exciting. Also at Jenkins, uh we've had another big week at Jenkins. Uh we were out there uh
066to see the demolition of the uh cryptic seventh and eighth grade wing. Please go out there, take a look as a part of this uh partial occupancy for school this year and sixth and seventh graders returning. You can see that we've recarpeted, we have retiled, we have refreshed the inside of that six original sixth grade area such that Jenkins is rebirthing itself from within. I really appreciate the team uh uh hoteling Miss Hotelling and Miss Odum and their ability to procure and lease brand new modular spaces. I get it. Nobody wants to go to a classroom in a modular, but you walk inside that modular and they are nicer than a lot of classrooms throughout the rest of El Paso County. So, we are super excited. We have cordoned off all of that space as
067academic space. Your children will be safe. It'll be a no car zone. We've kind of shortened up the kiss and ride. Kids safety going in and out of the building is our priority. Uh, and we are in the final uh throws there in progress. Staff is moving back in. The mandatory fire watch was lifted today. We're in the final throws of our occupancy. Should have that tomorrow or Friday from the city. Uh super excited for that return. I know our eighth graders from Jenkins will still be at Dohy. That uh does still present a challenge, but we know how resilient they are are. They did half of their seventh grade year at Doerty and you talk to those Jaguars and half of them think that they're already half Spartan on their way into Doherty. really
068appreciate the patience of both the Russell community, the Doherty community for having to house Jenkins last year and all of our northeastern quadrant for their patience and their commitment and their belief. We will rebirth Jenkins into the premier building in the northeast part of our town. So, give us that one more year for us to get that wing up and open. Take a look at the renderings of what we're doing to that media center. And if you've left because you weren't sure if we can deliver, I appreciate uh Mr. uh Kyle, our new principal at homes, actually confirming we deliver on what we say we're going to do. We will get that building open. We are moving everything we can, heaven and earth, to make sure that we prioritize the safety and thea education of
069your children. I can take responsibility for anything that's happened up until the time that this board and this administration has sat. We will fix it. I understand that not everything's been right for a long time. give us a list, we'll assign it, we'll get it done. That's what we do. That was uh the original first year award, the GSD, get stuff done. We like to get stuff done and it's super exciting. Okay, I'm going to transition to study abroad. I'm going to talk slowly because I know that uh Claudette's hurt foot and it's going to take her a minute to get up here. Uh this is an incredible program. I I I led with study abroad is a peak experience because we're talking about peak experiences in how we get our kids out of the
070classroom. This was the first of these programs. We will be developing programs for every discipline for every kid in every grade to get a chance to not be evaluated just by the CMASS or the SAT. When you hear these students talk about their experience, nobody's looking at their transcript and saying, "Well, would they get on the SAT?" Everybody, if you see Sha's video or hear what she says today, will say that is a student that is ready to graduate and enter the world. Claudette, over to you. Thank you. All right. Um, pull the mic down. I'm gonna do a quick introduction because I really want to spend the time um allowing you time to visit with the kids that went. And um so just very quickly, we um started study abroad two years ago. This
071is our third year. And we had um 28 students go to France and Mexico. And this year we had over 50 students go on study abroad. So I'll give you a quick rundown of those programs. Um, I decided that the theme tonight is storytelling because who doesn't love a good story, right? Um, the really good thing about this story is it is it's a f it's not a a non-fiction story. It's real. And so these students are here with their real experiences and the story does not have an ending yet for them because of course they're going to be continuing their uh growth and their academic experience and hopefully study abroad and I know study abroad has changed that for them and their futures. Um so we started um well this year first of all
072we had four groups go. We had our Wajaka Mexico group go uh for two weeks and we had students from all of our high schools Palmer Odyssey Mitchell Cornado and Doherty attend. Um and then we had a group go to um German Gap and German Gap is a little bit of a different program because we actually had the Germans come here for three weeks this spring and then our students went to Germany. So it's actually a true exchange program. Germany is one of the few countries in the world that supports that type of model. And so that was a very powerful experience for the Germans that came here and then for our kids to go there. Um Palmer High School participated in that. We're hoping to get some kids now. We have a German program
073rebuilding at Dherty. So I can see in the future adding Dherty back to that as well. And then we had our two-eek program in southern France and we added to that this year. Um Sean Wybrrent, he's a teacher at Palmer High School. he's going to talk to you a little bit about tonight about the video production um project that went on on that trip. And then this year we um launched a a um opportunity in Beijing, China. And we had students from Palmer and Mitchell. They just got back Sunday, so they probably have a little bit of jet lag still happening there. Um so I am going to turn it over to Camila and she's going to talk to you a little bit about her experiences in Waka. Do you want me to sit up
074here with you or are you okay? Okay. This is my Hi. Um, my name is Camila de Santiago. I'm 15 years old and I am a student of a city early college and career options. Um, the reason why I chose to go to the trip to Wajaka was because it has strong ties with not only me myself but my culture culture and a lot of some of my family still lives there. Um and I have never gone in my 15 years of life. I have never been to Mexico. And finally once this um opportunity of going to Wajaka came up, I had to go for it. And on my weeks, two weeks there in Wajaka, Mexico, we went to we did various activities. Some of the my favorite activities was one going to lo me
075mercados which were the benitoes mecados where we saw so many people selling dresses, shoes, foods which Waka is very known for the delicious food. Um if you ever go to Mexico, you should go there. Um um we also went to print making where we saw various art pieces that were beautiful and had many beautiful meanings behind it. As an artist myself, I loved going there. The last one of my favorite activities there was painting Alriquez. We went to go meet the son of Don Manuel Himenez who had made Alriz as a a cultural icon in Waka. They're like um wooden figures of animals painted with uh beautiful colors and patterns and those were the activities that I loved having there. and we did so many other activities with the group with my roommates. Um, but
076another major thing that I was able to witness or like have in Waka was the connections to the people there, to the people of Aros who helped us, who were with us on every activity, who were there, who who speak Spanish to us so we can learn Spanish better. Um, the family, the host family that welcomed us into their home, that treated us like family. As someone who's lived in a Mexican household, I felt right at home. Um, and I love there. We had so many late nights where we would just talk to Senora Norma, which was our host mom. But another connection and relationship that we had in Waka was the local people. We were able to go and walk around Wajaka, walk around the central, and I had a very nice um conversation
077with a man that was selling some stuff, and I'll remember it forever. Um, but the real the real good thing about this trip, about study abroad, was the way it changed my life. The fact that I grew up here for 15 years but never been to a place that that I've heard so many stories of. It gave me another perspective on life. It gave me a view that we are more alike than we are unlike and to see people that are of my uh ethnicity to hear Spanish um talked every day instead of only English or like half Spanish. To have a teacher that knew Spanish to to be around the community to come home like I do here and be greeted in Spanish. ask when do I want to eat when and have so
078many amazing experiences and the memories I made over there were phenomenal. I had two roommates in my host family. They were both my friends. Uh but I got to know them better. We got to go out. We went to the Mercados. We went to the oko, which is like a gas station, and we ate we bought some snacks and we would go to a bakery and eat bun when it's like 8:00 a.m. 8:00 p.m., I mean, and it was late, but we had to go home. And I would recommend this trip to anyone who wants to go and see a different perspective of life. Um, we do not remember days, we remember memories. Um, and this is a memory that I'll always remember in my life. My first time to Mexico. Thank you. All right,
079I'm going to do introduce Audrey and Sylvia. Sylvia is from Dherty and Audrey is from uh Palmer and they're going to talk to you about the experience that they had in France for two weeks studying Hi. Um, my name is Audrey. I'm from Palmer. Hi, I'm Sylvia. I'm from DHY High School. And well, what I can say is that I'm also a exchange student right now. So, traveling to another country to be another exchange student was also interesting. I would say this is the best experience of my life. It was such a joy to go. I've never been out of the country and going to France and Spain was such a culture shock and it was wonderful to get there to go there and learn the language. Yeah, we went for two weeks, two days
080in Paris and 12 days in Bets also. Um I would say like surfing was pretty cool like the first time you know like Colorado there's no water at all. So like surfing was pretty good. Um what also I can say about Barretts is just like so calm, so relaxing. So if you're more like um relaxed person, more like a chill vibe thing, I would recommend Bits a lot. Beitz is such a small town that when I was walking with my host family, they would recognize everyone on the street and it's very easy to walk everywhere. everything is super close and by the busing system which I've never taken a public bus so that was like a new experience too using that around the town that was wonderful. Yeah. I think one of the like the
081major like cultural shocks for me was like saying bonjou to everybody like not saying bonjour into walking into a place it was like considered rude and like just it's not very common just to be silent like in America is usually respectful to be silent. Yes. I would say some of the biggest culture shocks I saw were that the sort of stereotype you imagine is true. I saw people greet each other on the beach like doing the thing and um they eat a lot of bread. After every meal, our host family would have us take a piece of a baguette and wipe our plate clean and eat it. Um oh, and your laundry you have to hang outside in front of your house. That was definitely a bit alarming to me. No dryers at all, but
082it was pretty fun. Um, also, yeah, like bread, like baguettes was like my main meal, like just cheese and baguette, and it was like, yeah, I'm good with this. I did not eat like at all outside. I ate with my host mom. Um, she sometimes like prepared some what is it called? Ratatil. Ratatil. Yeah, Ratatouille. Yeah, it was I don't know what was it like a sauce. I don't remember like with peppers. But it was really good. The food is so amazing. Um the specific region we were staying in is called the Basque area and it's kind of got its own identity, the southern west region of France with that Spanish border. And they have some really delicious food there such as Basque Gateau, right? Um, and they have it both a sweet version and
083a savory version and I got to try both. Um, and ice cream. Very cheap. Very good. Yeah. Um, I'm also with the um the filming crew, the the whole you you you know what is a 360 camera? Have seen all of those pictures in Google Maps. Yeah. Well, I was working with the 360 and also with a GoPro. So, we have like a couple of pictures and videos that I think you can see in the next slide and see like the experience. Rafting. Rafting was amazing, more outdoorsy. Um, well, almost all activities were outdoors, so that was pretty nice. Classes, threehour classes. We had the same teacher. Mhm. We had class together. It was so different than any class I've ever been because they only speak to you in French and like don't speak English
084whatsoever. And we were in level A2, which is strictly grammar. And so we were learning a lot of things we'd never known. But by the end of week two, we both got certified and moved up to B1. So we learned a little bit of something while we were there. Yeah, it was pretty good. It It's hard to take French in French. It's not in English or or something to relate it with. It was so hard. Um, when you touched on the outdoors, uh, Beeritz itself is both beach and mountain town because it's right at the base of the Pyrenees Mountains and you're right on the beach. My house was right on a Kodasque which is this big surf beach and that was just such a cool experience cuz we live very far from the beach
085and every day we'd go down to the beach, hang out, have lunch and it was awesome. Yeah. I'm just going to say one more tip. eat a lot because you're gonna walk a lot. 3,000 steps daily minimum. Yeah. Well, that's that's it. Thank you so much. Thank you. Have a great day. All right. U we're going to move over to Germany now. You're looks like you're getting a tour of the world or at least Europe so far and uh south and of course Mexico. So, I'm going to introduce Shay and Rowan if you guys want to come up and share some of your story in Germany. Hello, I'm Rowan. Uh, I'm 16 years old and I was one of the students that had the honor of participating in the GAP program this year. It was
086honestly incredible. I would not have changed anything that got me to be able to do this. Uh, it was awesome from a language learning perspective for sure because you don't there's nothing really that compares to actually being in a country and practicing the language with other natives was just really incredible. And also from a culture perspective because you can read about a country and learn a lot through reading about it and learning about it otherwise, but being there is really just super immersive, incredible just to learn about all the different things, even if they're just small differences. I know one thing that I really loved when I was over there was there was a lot um of an emphasis on environmental protection and the environment. For example, all of the trash cans um were sort
087of separated into different categories. So, there would be a different bin for uh plastics and a different bin for glass bottles and paper stuff. It was all different. And I was there was a lot of other things also pertaining to the environment and it was really cool and interesting to just see. Um I also really love history personally. I'm a history nerd and so it was really cool to be there and there's so many places that we could like you could see go into and read about and look at pictures and actual documents and items from actual things that happened. So much history stuff. Uh, which sort of ties into my favorite excursion. We went on a lot of really incredible excursions in different towns and whatnot. I think my favorite was probably uh we
088went to a place called Beckis Gaden which was really awesome. There was um sort of a museum area. It all had to with a bunch of history about World War II and specifically the leaders of the third and sort of their the inner workings there. And it was really interesting. And I remember at the end of the museum there was the actual bunker that we got to walk through um that those people live that the leaders sort of lived in uh near the end of World War II. Uh and it was just super fascinating to walk through and see all of the actual see it all in like real life. Uh read about read about it while we were walking through and it it was just incredible. I know um while I was there, I
089for sure think I related or really connected with a part of the uh grad profile, which was being a continuous learner because being there, you really living with a new family uh in general, but especially in a new culture, you're really just sort of shoved into all these new things. And so really, I think if I feel that it really helped me build up uh being able to sort of adapt to entirely new things, new culture, new language, all sorts of things. And it was really really a great experience for me. Uh yeah, I would just like to say thank you for everybody that helped make this possible. Teachers, uh Miss Murtha, the board for funding it. Thank you very much. Hi, I'm Shay. I was also on the GAP trip. For me, it was
090just so much fun having the different experiences at home cuz like yes, we were in the same like towns and everything, but no one had the same home environment. Some of us lived right in the city right by school. Some of us lived on farms 30 minutes from the school. And just those different after school and morning experiences being able to just wake up and either bike to school, drive to school, take the bus. And then also just after school be able to sit with your host family or go traveling or drive somewhere or just truly get to sink into their lives and just to see the other cultures. And then in school getting to see how their school worked with how they learned differently and just being able to see how the teachers worked
091the classrooms, how they took notes and just seeing how different they it was and how much they soaked up the learning there. And then also not just learning the language, but also for us learning like in that different language while learning the classwork was amazing. And also like Rowan said, I can't thank the district enough for this opportunity and for our amazing teachers and just everyone, our parents, everyone who could make this possible for us. So, thank you. All right, I have uh two we have two students here tonight. Um Ari is from Mitchell High School and Austin's from Palmer. And they're going to share a little bit about the new one that we had this year to Beijing, China. again. They just got back Sunday night, so they might be a little bit jet-lagged.
092So, come on. Hello. My name is Ariana. Um, I'm a senior um at Mitchell High School and I'm 17 years old. Um, during my time in Beijing, I had an incredible cultural experience, educational experience. Each day started with language classes from 9:00 a.m. to 12:30 where we focused on learning the basics of Mandarin. It was It was definitely challenging at first, but also really fun and rewarding. I picked up simple phrases and learned how to introduce myself and even practice ordering food in Chinese. After a class, our group would head out for lunch together. We tried a variety of local dishes from dumplings and noodles to authentic ping duck. Eating with way one of my highlights of the trip was exploring the city, visiting markets, visiting markets, temples, and historic neighborhoods. But my favorite But
093my favorite excursion by far was hiking the Great Wall of China. Standing on such a massive iconic piece of history with incredible views stretching for miles was unforgettable. It was a great mix of adventure, exercise, and cultural appre appreciation allinone. Overall, my time in Beijing helped me grow academically and personally. I gained a new appreciation for a Chinese language and culture and made memories I'll never forget. Um, as I continue through my education, whether it be military or 4-year university or a community college, I would like to continue to study the language. Um, thank you, District 11. I couldn't be more blessed to experience this opportunity. Uh, my name is Austin Coleman. I am a senior at Palmer High School and I uh am so grateful for this opportunity to have studied in Beijing. Not
094only to further my education in Chinese language but also to see uh the new culture and gain more context about the world as a whole which I think was a very valuable takeaway from this experience. We got to experience foods and cultures and traditions that I would not have been able to otherwise. I got to see beautiful places such as the Temple of Heaven and the Great Wall of China and also be fully immersed into Chinese culture with my host family which was a very very cool experience. If I had to uh connect this trip to one of the district 11 graduate traits, it would be the innovative problem solver. I think that's such a important element of traveling and learning a new language. just to be able to problem solve like on navigating the
095Beijing subway and the challenges that come with being in a new culture and it's was an unforgettable experience that I am very grateful to have had. Thank you. So, you saw a lot of heard from students and you saw a lot of pictures from lighouses to robots that deliver food and and all kinds of things and you're welcome to go back through and see if you can figure out what some of those things are in those pictures that the kids sent um for tonight. Um so, we're going to end with um Mr. Wybrant um from Palmer High School and then I have a couple of parents here that I would like to share the parent perspective on what it's like to have a student go on a study abroad experience. So, uh, Mr. Brighten come
096up and talk about Yeah. So, hello. Um, first off, I'd just like to say thank you to all of you for sending all these students on all these trips. It is a life-changing experience for for uh everybody who gets to go on them. I did not get to go on. Uh, but we talk a lot about student agency. One of the things that uh Claudet and I have been working on for years is trying to figure out how can we take kids that have filming skills and technology skills and maybe give them experiences like this as well. Not just uh you know sending kids who are in language classes, but can we send kids to do behind the scenes uh filming and can we get kids to go and do 360°ree tour creation and stuff
097like that for the trips? Uh because having sent my own kids on trips in the past, I asked them, "So what did you do?" and they're like, "We did stuff and like that's all that we get back." And so we thought that it would be really good to have uh some video footage behind the scenes stuff and uh to send kids with equipment. So we talk about student agency. Uh one of the cool things about this was that we took $50,000 worth of equipment and we handed it to Audrey and to Becket and we were like, "All right, y'all are production crew now. Like go do things." And so uh they went and they took uh 360°ree pictures. They took videos. They took time-lapses. They did interviews with students on the trips. They uh took
098a scanner with them so that we could do scanning of 3D objects that were in these other cultural uh environments. And we gave them a little nifty handbook that had things in it like um what does it mean to be a student ambassador and how do you ask for permission if you're going to try to film in somebody else's cultural spaces to try and do some of that cultural um uh exploration with people without treading on other people's culture. Uh if you look at the pictures that are up there, they were tasked with trying to get action shots. So, the picture that you see where it says action shots and it has the picture of the raft, the kids actually, one of the kids strapped a GoPro to their chest and you actually get a
099video of them actually going down the the river and stuff. They did the same thing when they were doing the the surfing lesson. They did student interviews like you see up there. We gave them press passes, but we also asked them to capture things that maybe kids don't always think about, like, can you capture the screens that show the travel path that your airplane is taking? and we gave them a shot list that was over 300 shots long and said, "You figure out the best way to do it. You use the right equipment." Um, we trained them before they went on all of the equipment by having them try to capture the Palmer renovation as it was happening and capture some of the spaces that were not going to be around after the after the
100renovation. And so they used all of that equipment and we use that as a workbased learning opportunity for them to go off and and do this. And uh what Claudette and I would like um probably I'm going to say I probably wanted even more than she does is to send kids from video production programs and other CTE programs on these trips for every trip that we do. So I would love if we could figure out a way to to budget for that because capturing the experience is just as important as having it because then we can bring it back. the kids that are in my work based learning classes are going to be taking all the footage and all the pictures and videos and they're going to be uh going through it and actually putting
101together some different media things that we'll be able to share out. So even kids who didn't go on the trip are going to get benefit of being able to see the media. So huge shout out to Claudet for for uh working so hard to make that happen. Huge shout out for you all to to put the the money aside so that we could do it. Huge shout out for my kids who uh neither of them had ever been to France. And Audrey, actually, I just want to shout out her, too. Audrey is uh, like she said, an exchange student from Mexico. And when she found out that this was potentially an opportunity for her to apply to go on this trip, she actually changed her schedule to get into a French class so that she
102would know enough French to be able to be prepared to go on the trip. Um, but she did all of the stuff that she was doing in a second language herself. And so, like, she was learning in a second language to be able to do stuff in a third language, which is pretty darn awesome. and then she was our production leader when she was on the trip. So, huge shout out to her, too. Uh, shout out as well to our risk management for saying yes, we could give kids all that equipment to send it and to my principal, Mrs. Burke, for uh for approving us sending all of that stuff off site as well. So, thank you. So, like I said, the story does not end. There's more to come with all of this um
103content that we're going to be putting together. Um so real quick we have um Mrs. Lisa Phillips and Mr. Michael Smith. Um two parents here tonight to share um quickly their parent experience. Of course there's an impact when the kids come back. Um they really do come back change students and children and so I'll call them up to share their experience. All right. I'm Lisa Phillips and I kind of want to go back to high school after hearing all of this. It's amazing. Wow. Thank you. So, I had to write notes so that I would stay on topic, but um this experience and District 11's support has meant so much to our family on so many levels. Um from a growth perspective, huge financially uh and in terms of just knowing how that the district
104supports international experiences and open minds. I mean, that's amazing. Um, we had the privilege actually of participating in GAP twice, my family. Um, we, uh, two years ago when Rowan's older sister, Hana, was a sophomore. Um, uh, so I have a little bit of a longer perspective and I can say, actually, if you I have like a 30 plus year perspective because I got to do something similar in high school. And if you look at my international family, my career as a translator, I think it had a small impact, maybe. But I digress. The GAP program was incredibly well organized. Thank you, Suzanne and Sue Keller, who's not here, and Miss Martha. Uh, I was super impressed from a parent perspective how well organized everything was. Um, and just it's given so many kids such
105great opportunities to learn and grow. Um, it was great to see Hana's a couple years ago and this year Rowan's growth through this experience in terms of their independence, um, and their ability to advocate for themselves, to problem solve, and to see the world through a wider lens. Um, and to just move outside their comfort zone into something much bigger. Um, in fact, as Hana prepares to leave for college on the East Coast in less than two weeks, it's partly thanks to Gap that I feel confident that she's going to be okay. She's going to be more than okay. She's going to thrive and she's going to um, you know, just be ready to open to meet new people, have new experiences, and just welcome embrace the world. And um, that's so exciting. And I
106can see that in Rowan as well. Um uh these days it's so easy for kids to or people all of us to just quietly stick to what you know to stick to the perspectives that you know the op the people who share your mindset your opinions um and you know to do whatever is within your version of normal um but uh during GAP I saw Rowan get to step outside of that in a big way uh with a family and with just doing a lot more activities all the time just being out and it was fantastic. Fantastic. Um, and while Rowan's exchange partner was here was we had the benefit of getting to do both parts. Um, having having a German twice come and stay in our little downtown home was great. It was, you
107know, hey, our little house, there's no way we could do a year-long exchange program. Um, but three weeks we could do. And it was fantastic for all of us to to really have that experience. and we feel enriched in um in every way. Uh and uh like I said, I could see throughout the whole process, I could see both of my kids just really growing into great problem solvers and showing more curiosity about Germany and Austria too than they had necessarily. I mean, um so, uh yeah, that's great. And um it's exciting to see Rowan now as Hana gets ready to go to college. Rowan's talking about thinking about college too and talking about hey I think I want to study abroad or maybe I even want to go abroad for college or that's exciting
108for for me as a parent to see that. Um and I feel like it's this experience has helped Rowan feel confident making a decision like that. Okay, I'm almost done in terms of language acquisition. So Rowan grew up speaking and hearing German um but has ever since starting school and being in a monilingual environment really been a reluctant speaker. Um even with Germanspeaking family members. Um but this summer we got to actually go and pick Rowan up from their host family which was fabulous to get to know the family. Um, and uh, it was so exciting with to see Rowan just speaking fluently with their host family and then later on with Opa and Ma and our family. Uh, and frankly it was like someone flipped a switch. So, so valuable um, from that perspective.
109So, um, yeah. So, thank you. And of course, the financial piece. Um, District 11's support was immensely helpful for our family and I'm sure for all the other families that were involved and maybe even made it possible in the first place. Um, so thank you. Thank you Claudette. Thank you Suzanne and Sue Keller and um your counterparts in Germany. Um, and thank you again to the board for making this possible um, and for supporting it. It's fantastic. I hope you keep doing it. Sorry. I want to start by thanking you guys for making this possible. Um, I was at the last French meeting and Michael G was walking out and he was so excited about the program. I think I echo that that I want to get on a plane and go. Um, I have
110younger kids that are now waiting their turn to go. So, um, keep supporting this. Uh my son Isaac is the fourth of six kids. We have kids all throughout D11 schools. I've been really excited about the things happening uh in D11. Isaac really loves two subjects and struggles with the rest. He loves French and he loves history and he was able to um experience both of those on the trip. Um the host family he was with that they could speak a little English but he was forced to with the kids that were there. they were little, they don't speak any English yet. So, it was that process and the same the language school all in French. So, working on it and he comes back and says, I got to get to know more of this
111grammar. Um, so I don't know the verb tenses in French anymore. That was more than 30 years ago that I did verb tenses in French. But yeah, the whole program setup helped. I think there's a theme here from all the students and everybody about food. I kept hearing food, food, food. And we were told an approximate budget and Isaac came back having over spent that budget entirely on food. So, uh, from a parents perspective to let him go and spread his wings. Um, I actually had to go on a business trip before. I didn't get to talk to him about how to budget carefully. So, he overspent his budget. Um, but it's still that kind of safe environment. Um, to do things with some control, with somebody making sure you're coming home at night that
112you have to go out with a partner. Um, but to be in a small town that's safe, people thinking about that, it's a great to get those wings flapping in preparation um for the future. Uh we had some preconceived ideas of what might be important for Isaac. He came back and it was again the food and all the different people that were famous in the little towns that they visited. So they may be irrelevant on the grand scheme of things, but he came back all excited. I learned about this person and that person and that person. Um so we look forward to how this will impact him. He's a little bit like Wybrant's children. Isaac, what was so fun? And one thing comes out. One thing comes out. So I got to go look at
113these videos to see actually what he did. Um I got you. But yeah, I'm very excited about this and I think it's going to be a great opportunity um for students in the future. Please keep supporting things like this. Thank you. All right, just real quick thank yous and then I'm going to turn it over to Superintendent Gaul. Um, just we this takes a army to launch with four groups going. We had over 50 kids go. So just Kim Weber and Rosa Garcia, Katrina Dodd and Anna Diaz helped with notorizing paperwork. There's a lot of paperwork involved in this. Um, Amanda Amanda Asdo was welcoming to the families as they came into the building here for meetings. um Mark Caps in procurement and Shauna Curts uh Jennifer Chapel and then the CLLDE department helps vet
114the applications that come in and help make decisions on who's going and then we have amazing chaperrons. These are people that we trust our students to um for this time period and um they're called out here. Brent Urban, I think, um, and Jackie Arthur Dear aren't here tonight, but Sue Keller's not here, but Suzanne Tyler's here, um, from Palmer. And then Christine Hawinson just got back with the group from Beijing, so they deserve a round of applause for sure. So, thank you guys so much. I I can't say anything that you haven't heard other than a giant thank you to Claudette. We've been building this vision for years. Uh we did this this year amidst all kinds of stress around national travel and around visas and around passports. And Claudette, you never skip a beat.
115Uh you uh exemplify exactly what we're trying to do as a district. If you just take a look at this then and the number of people that need to be thanked is hundreds more than this, but that is hundreds of adults supporting dozens of children. That's what we do different in district 11. We realign our budgets to match our strategy, not limit what we know is beneficial for kids because there isn't budget availability. We have to continue to think not just about study abroad, but how is it that we get this rich experience to the podium and I'm at 90 minutes. That's always my goal, less than 90 minutes to celebrate the incredible richness of what it means to be in the Colorado Springs School District 11. Thank you, Claudette. You're a true a true
116uh martyr for the cause. I appreciate it. And I'm going to take us to the end here. Jump start for kindergarten, 6th grade, 9th grade, August 12th. All students, August 13th. Can't wait to see you. That concludes the superintendent report. Okay. Uh I just want to give a thank you to all the students and their families and parents who were here as well to share your experiences. I know that some of you have other things in the evening agenda. So, please feel free to leave when you uh need to, but thank you for coming and sharing your experiences. It's always wonderful to hear about your experiences and how this has richly benefited each and every one of you. It's uh my daughter went on this trip last year and um as a parent you're always
117worried about the safety of your kids and the amazing work that uh Claudet and her team uh puts together out here to ensure that each and every one of our students goes to the right home environment host families and they kept safe through all the travels and uh um bringing them back safely as well. And this year we went to Beijing. I don't know where we are going to go next year. Superintendent Gaul and uh one thing you know no Jeopardy game this year. No, you know we always try and change up how we communicate with the board. Um but thank you uh amazing experience board. Uh you have any comments on especially on the uh study abroad program at this time. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for all of you who were Thanks. Thank
118you. And please uh spread the word around in your communities as well. There are a lot of families that don't know about this program. So ask students to take a foreign language program for 3 years and take advantage of this opportunity. We plan on continuing this program. Uh any other feedback on the superintendent's report today? Uh I will add just one thing about the Jenkins um renovation and I saw you director. Um um I'll go to you first. Go ahead director. I would have been happy to have listened to you talk about the Jenkins um event. That was fine. Um I just wanted to note with all of the back to school launches and kickoffs and things um ESP is tomorrow and I think we need to make sure we recognize that they're part of
119the team here. I don't want them to feel left out just because their day isn't until tomorrow. So absolutely, I'll be there to cheer them on. 8:00 at Tesla starts their day and happy to report on uh the success of that event tomorrow after it completes. Great. Thank you. And Director Art mentioned about a lot of the open houses. I'm encourage all our families, our community members. Even if you don't have a child in our schools, these are your neighborhood schools. So, please take advantage of this opportunity. Our schools are community hubs. So, uh find out about your um open houses in your neighborhood schools and go and visit them. uh at this time it's all going to happen in the next 3 weeks. You will see board members at several of these open houses
120as well. And then I want to finish up with the Jenkins conversation. And I know we've come a long way with Jenkins. The transition that took place in January was not ideal. Asking our teachers uh to be displaced from Jenkins to u and our students as well to Doy and Russell was not the ideal situation. Uh and several of his board members and superintendent Gaul participated in town hall sessions. Um and there was a lot of uh questions about whether Jenkins would be where it is at this point in time. Um uh several of us uh director art director bankers and I got to visit Jenkins couple of days back see the progress that has been done and also saw that big claw go and uh uh rip up the u uh seventh and eighth
121grade being out there. Uh but just walking inside the building, the um amount of work that has transpired out there, the um uh sixth grade wing that has received uh uplift, uh new carpets, new furniture, new tiles. Uh it just looks like a brand new building out there. uh and the work that is going in the media room at this point in time uh uh the media room is not yet ready to open but by the time it's completed 6 months a year down the road uh it's going to have a mezzanine level and then there is going to be a brand new academic wing when opened will welcome the eighth grade students back into Jenkins as well so that's a lot of work that was accomplished uh the structural issues at Jenkins um has
122been there uh from the time that building opened And uh uh we collectively as a board and superintendent decided right in January we are not pointing the fingers at anyone. This board and superintendent G you heard from him took responsibility for what transpired at Jenkins last winter. But this administration and board is also responsible for Jen for fixing Jenkins once and for all and making it a safe place for our staff and students to return. So thank you for all the hard work uh that went into that. I want to give a shout out to Brian Construction and CRP architects at Jenkins Adulson and Peterson and Perkins Eastman and Palmer. We are right revitalizing district 11 and we are doing it without any additional tax burden on our citizens. Thank you. Moving on to public
123comments. Uh Miss Olsen, public comments. Okay. Okay. We have one public comment. Um um so going over the board protocol for public comments. I'll be brief. You got 3 minutes. When your name is called, please come and uh deliver your remarks, monitor the clock uh and uh uh keep your public comments as professional and civil and courteous as possible without any disparaging or defamatory remarks or obscinities as well. Um to uh adhere to the board policy and the work already on the agenda, the board will not respond to your public comment at this point in time, but it'll be taken into consideration. Uh and please uh no uh refrain from clapping or so that we don't have any prolonged interruptions. Um with that uh and lastly the statements made by the public do not reflect
124the views of this board. Since we have just one public comment I'm going to jump right into it. Uh Miss Green, Candace Green. Hello. Thank you for allowing me this time to come up here as we kick off this school year. Um, this is a really exciting time for everyone, especially teachers and and kids. And I just wanted to take this moment to bring up the fact that anyone who might be listening, whether they're here in person or um online, that um at all times we just need to remember to be kind. and professional and um and I can say that from true experience because this summer I've spent a lot of time reflecting and I've decided to make some very positive changes in my life and um and in doing so I am a
125feel like I am a much um better individual, a stronger teacher for this last year of my teaching experience and I just want to encourage others to think it think about it the same way. Um professionalism, collaboration, cooperation and teamwork all require kindness. Uh without it we are expelling a great deal of uh unnecessary energy as it takes less energy to smile um at someone than it does to not not be kind. Um, we also waste a lot of time in doing those things and we're not setting good examples for our students. So, um, with kindness, we can plant seeds and I'm changing this slightly based on today. It was wonderful. Thank you, by the way. Um, we can plant seeds that'll grow beautiful flowers. And as a former fifth grade teacher, I can tell
126you some of them are a little wild. Mhm. Um and but they're all beautiful no matter what. And um we can also be a team working together instead of tearing things apart or tearing things down. We can cooperate and be collaborative working together for a common goal. And that common goal of course is student success leading to the development of thriving children and contributing well-rounded citizens. And no matter the age of the student that I teach, I have always expressed that to my children that um I want you to grow up to be all that you can possibly be. Um I witnessed true teamwork at the new teacher organization or uh orientation this past week. It was such a delight to be there and um see human resources just really knock it out of the
127park, so to speak. Um but admin, teachers, organizations, we all need to work as a team to achieve great things. To do so requires professionalism to do so enables outstanding things to happen. Thank you. Thank you. So that is the end of public comments. Thank you again. Appreciate public comments. Moving on to the next item on the agenda. It's board member reports. Uh board. Uh do any of you have any comments at this time or a report to make? Director Bankers, you're up first. Oh, thank you. Um, first of all, I want to thank Brian Kelly and his group for the wonderful flowers and the outside landscaping coming into the building. Um, the fragrance and the beauty of those flowers kind of set the tone uh when walking into this building to conduct your business.
128And again, my heartfelt thanks to all of those who started the year with a fresh attitude and the motivation to really enjoy their children as they help build the future citizens of this society in which we live. So thank you to all the teachers, all the staff, the custodians, the bus drivers, central office, the superintendent and all of them. The children that presented this evening are the product of the efforts that we are making each and every day and the decisions that we make so that we can raise them in a way that they can grow and blossom. And those flowers out in front just reminds me how fragrant, how lovely a place in which we all live and contribute. So thank you Thank you, Director. Thank you. Uh, welcome back to everyone who is
129teacher, student, um, ESP and executives and everyone else. Um, I'm sure parents are also looking forward to having students back in school again. Um, I wanted to share with fellow board members as well, uh, the Colorado Association of School Boards is also gearing up for fall. Uh, just so you know, there's a regional meeting coming up August 28th. It's close by in Harrison District 2 if you'd like to attend. And the fall regional conference is September 5th and 6th up in Loveland. They'll have a state demographer presentation and um a speaker on on boarding new members. And um the other thing to know about that one, oh now I'm even forgetting it. Um just we it's also the delegate assembly. So we need to decide as a board if we want to be represented. In
130the past it's been director Jorgensson and before that myself just to have somebody there to vote on resolutions on the direction of CASBY and elect u additional officers and sorry not officers um board members. Thank you Director Jurgensson. Oh there you go. Good evening. Welcome to the new school year. Uh we heard we feel the energy being different this year and I think that's just so exciting uh exciting to see open houses coming up, school visits, uh be going to those and also had some great time talking with principles and executive professionals earlier this week. So u but amid some of this excitement, I did hear some disturbing information from new staff trainings at Tesla that I wanted to briefly address. This wasn't D11 though. It was some other organizations. As you all know, the
131master agreement with the CSEA, the Colorado Springs Educators Association, officially ended on June 30th this year. When this agreement ended, it also extended excessive it ended ex excessive privileges the union had, including a half-day captive audience at our new staff trainings and the union's ability to use taxpayer services and systems provided by D1 from henceforth. I assumed the US the CSEA would have a table at the Tesla building during new staff trainings, and they did. But I was appalled at the level of unprofessionalism and bullying that occurred. CSEA representatives were lying to new staff and other attendees regarding PACE, another vendor who rightly paid to have a table at the new staff trainings as well. They were harassing the PACE volunteers, escorting people past the PACE table to prevent them from engaging. This made for
132juvenile behavior that was frustrating. Starting the school year, new staff had an additional benefit of a PACE membership at no cost for the first year. So, the district is offering PACE for one year, at least for the first year, for new staff. It's liability insurance. Uh, and the CSEA was saying that we weren't going to pay for that. Uh, and I don't know why we would be spreading that lie. Anyway, so for those who don't know, PACE is a $2 million in liability insurance for just $19 a month. It's not a union. Why would anyone not want teachers, especially new teachers, to our district, to have this insurance? Yes, CSA also offers liability insurance. And if you want less coverage and to pay $93 a month with $75 of that monthly premium going to the
133CE and the NEA each month, you have that choice. We're not stopping that choice. Don't hear me on saying that. We as a school board are offering that choice for representation and liability insurance and believe in this investment for our new teachers. The harassment has not been limited to the new teacher orientation. It's been spread as far as cars in the district parking lots with these nice things. uh unions going even to new teachers doortodoor uh to their front doors to ask for membership. This creates unnecessary division when we're trying to move forward with choice and professionalism for all staff here in D11. As educators, we teach students to stand up to bullying and yet we have teachers bullying other teachers as they're just trying to start here. This is absolutely no way to welcome
134new staff, nor an ethical method to add to CSA's membership. New staff, if you witnessed any of these egregious behaviors recently, I want to apologize on behalf of the CSEA and D11. It's not how we do things here, and we do want to welcome you to our professional, courteous environment, and we uh are glad that you're on our team. Thank you, Director Hay Fleet. Hi, everybody. Thank you. Felt like I was back in class for a minute. Um, teenagers. Yes, I miss the teenagers. Um, so welcome back. And, uh, I was at the new teacher orientation on Friday. Friday, right? Friday. Um, it was summertime. All my days are mixed up. Uh, as well as the principal and assistant principal kickoff, both at Tesla. Um, y'all, this is an amazing experience for our new teachers.
135Uh, I thought last year's effort for the new teacher orientation was something, but this year's event really raised the bar. Had a different feel to it this year. It was much more electric and it let you know that D11 is on the rise and people are taking notice. Uh, this morning I was at the district kickoff at Robson Arena and I have to say that the energy felt completely different this year. Much more vibrant and dynamic. Um there were there were people dressed in their in their school mascot costumes. There were people with fire on their heads and people brought beach balls and the school spirit was was palpable. Um there was a sense of excitement uh momentum in the room. Felt like everybody was ready to jump into the new year with purpose and
136enthusiasm. In years past, District 11 has often faced tripledigit teacher vacancies at this point in the school year. Uh, that's no longer the case. It's going to be a little repetitive, but that's good for you. Um, today, three of our schools that historically struggled to start the year fully staffed are now 100% staffed. That's huge. Across the district, we have just four core teacher positions left to fill and 33 total teacher openings. This is a remarkable shift from what we've seen in previous years. It's the proof. What do they say? The proof is in the pudding. It's the proof. This tells us something important. Teachers want to come to D11. And for our current staff, this is a gamecher because they no longer have to give up their planning time in order to cover other
137people's classes or unfilled classrooms. This is real progress and it's making a difference in our buildings every day. We're addressing challenges head-on. Um, some that have may been have have may been over some that may have been overlooked in the past. Jenkins is on the men. Palmer is undergoing major renovations and CSST is ready to open its doors. And those are just a few examples. D11 is moving forward. We're no longer operating under the mindset of how things have always been done. They called that the D11 way. Well, we're embracing a new way of thinking, a new D11. And it's exciting to be a part of this transformation and to see it taking shape, the new D11 way. I want to thank you all for your continued support as we move boldly into the future.
138It's looking pretty good. Thank you. Thank you. appreciate your message. Uh any other report at this time? I don't see any other report. Thank you. Um board members will be present at open houses uh in the next three two three weeks um across our schools. So uh please feel free to engage with us as we visit your schools. Moving on uh the consent items on the agenda. Director Bankers, can you please make the motion to adopt the consent items? I move that the board of education adopts all consent items as designated in the agenda. The consent items are approval of regular board meeting minutes June 4, 2025, approval of special board meeting minutes June 11th, 2025. Approval of a district-wide closure on Thursday, July 3rd, 2025. Second. Moved and seconded. Roll call, please. Director Bankis,
139I. Director Kerry, I. Director Hayley I Director Jorgensson I Director Malpacam I director I I the consent items have been adopted as presented. Moving on to the action items on the agenda. The first one is acceptance of resignation. Um and I'll first uh director Kerry can you please make the motion for action item G1? I move that the board of education accepts the resignation of board director Lauren Nelson. Second. Moved and seconded. Uh I will provide some context out here and then open it up for board discussion if necessary. Uh earlier on the summer, director Nelson informed the board and superintendent Gaul of desire to resign from her position as a district 11 board member. Director Nelson's letter of resignation is attached to the board agenda. All the pertinent information is contained in that letter
140and I ask our community if you are curious as to the rationale behind her decision please refer to that letter. According to the legal statutes and the board operating manual the board has to formally accept a director's resignation. At the first meeting when we assemble as a body collectively as a board we are undertaking that responsibility at this time. At a future meeting, the board will formally acknowledge and recognize Director Nelson's contribution and service to the school board. As that date is finalized, we will let the community know and the board will also be aware of it at that time. With that, any discussions on this, the motion has been made and seconded. Okay, seeing none, roll call, please. Director Bankis, I. Director Kerry, I. Director Hayley. Hi. Director Jorgensson. Hi. Director Malpeka. Hi. Director
141A. Hi. The I7 the resolution uh the acceptance of resignation has been approved of director Lauren Nelson has been approved by this board. The next item on the agenda is resolution 2026-02 declaration of board vacancy. Director Art, can you please make the motion for action item G2? I move that the board of education approves resolution 20262 declaration of a board vacancy. Second. Moved and seconded. Uh and uh I will briefly talk about the uh process out here and then the board can also discuss this open it up for board discussion. Um, and I am going through this timeline from my recollection from my conversations at the board agenda meeting with the superintendent and uh uh director Hayley and Miss Olsson. If I get anything wrong, please feel free to correct me at this time. Uh
142the uh window is going to open tomorrow uh when interested candidates to fill this board vacancy can come and pick up the uh packet from Miss Olsson. I think there is some links also available online if I remember right. Yes. Okay. online links are available so you can access that and uh uh fill out the necessary information and you may have to sign an affidavit uh for which you may have to come to Miss Olsen's office to turn in that um um turn in the necessary applications and the affidavit um August 14th which is going to be one week from tomorrow and closing of business closing of business that day 5:00 p.m. is going to be the um deadline for turning in your application. So the window is open for about 1 week. So interested
143candidates that meet the required qualifications, please take a look at what is necessary and fill out that application form by August 14th. August 15th, which is going to be the next day, which is Friday. uh the names of the applicants who were qualified uh through that process will be publicly posted and the following week on August 20th which is going to be the Wednesday the board will hold public interviews if necessary to identify who the final uh candidate is going to be who the board is going to be choosing to fill that vacancy. See, did I miss out on anything, Miss Olsson? Okay. Yeah. So, I was going to come to that as well with the um November elections. Um there is going to be a orientation meeting for board candidates and I will discuss
144that at the agenda item that is coming further down the agenda. Um anything else I missed out on? Okay. Uh so I encourage anybody that is interested. Now this vacancy is only going to be for the next 3 months approximately. After the November elections, the candidates that run in the November elections, the community is going to make that choice through that ballot to replace. So this vacancy appointment is only going to be until the November elections are certified and the new elected duly elected officials D11 school board members take the oath of office board. Do you have any questions at this time or concerns? Okay. Uh one other thing that I would like to run by the board and uh make sure that this is okay. Um this is going to be a quick turnaround
145time in terms of getting these applications and um interviewing candidates um considering all the items that are there on the board agenda when we were discussing the board agenda about it about this and I'll go share more information about this with the board as we finalize this process. If we get an excessive number of applicants, say more than eight applicants, then is the board okay with Vice President Hayley and I narrowing that application pool? Three questions are being asked of every candidate that is interested in filling this application. We would like to narrow that pool down to eight possible candidates that show up for that interview. If the board wants to interview all the candidates, that that's an option as well. If we get more than eight, director bankers, so these interviews are going to
146be in person. It is going to be public. It the the interviews has to be a public process. It is going to be at a Wednesday work session two weeks from today. Okay. So, it's going to be in person. Yeah. Okay. Two weeks from today. And we got to finalize the amount of time that we are going to give to each candidate. Possibly 15 minutes to each candidate. And we'll be asking the same set of questions for every candidate even at 15 minutes for each candidate. For eight candidates, it's two hours. What I'm asking is if it is going to be 15 candidates, can we narrow down that pool to eight candidates based on the application package? Okay, thank you. Um, I've been through one of these before and we interviewed everybody who was interested
147in being interviewed. What's that? I have been through this before as have you. Right. And we interviewed everyone who was interested in the job to my recollection. Yes, we did. So, I do not um think it's a good idea for the two of you to just um select a handful of people. Okay, sounds good. Any other feedback from the board at this time? Okay, so we'll go with that. uh uh it doesn't matter how many candidates apply as long as they qualify and meet the criteria we'll bring all the candidates along and go through that process and that process is going to take place on August 20th and then possibly by August 27th we will have the final candidate chosen who's going to fill that vacancy See, director Bankers. So, um, we'll get a packet
148um with information about the candidates before we meet on the 20th. Okay. Yes. Uh, on August 15th when August 14th is the deadline. August 15th. uh when Miss Olsen has all that information what is being asked of the candidates is to provide a portfolio or a resume um and then each candidate is being asked to answer three questions and all that information will be forwarded to the board. Excellent. So you can look at that information over the weekend and be ready for August 20th conversation. In addition to that, we will narrow down with three or four other questions that we may ask on that specific evening and I can work with the board on figuring out what those questions are. Thank you. Thank you. Roll call, please. Miss Soulsson. Oh, one more. Director, thank you.
149I just wanted to note that anything that people um share with us their their nomination paperwork, resume that will be available to the public and that I think people need to know that as well before they apply just this is very public role and that is something that I assume is going to be public. It is my understanding and uh I think we talked to legal council about it. It's a similar process as we do with um the uh November election candidates. Uh any information that they submit is uh public information. So what Miss Olson said is their name, contact information will be shared. As far as their resume, um she and the affidavit, we don't share that information for November candidates. The affidavit Okay. Okay. Can we double check then? I think you were
150saying maybe check with legal. That would be good information for us and for them. Thanks. So candidates potentially all the information that you submit is going to be public information. U even if it is not posted on our website it is subject to kora at the very least I would think so uh just for your understanding. Seeing no further comments roll call please. Miss Olson. Director Benis, Director Kerry, Director, Hi, Director Jorgensson. Hi, Director. Hi, Director. Hi. The eyes have it. Uh, so the resolution declaration of the board vacancy has been adopted by the board. The next item on the agenda is election of board officer. As uh the board is aware, we have a vacancy in the um board um and the community is aware of it as well and uh director Nelson had
151the officer of treasurer. So at this time we will move through the necessary reorganization business of the board to ensure the ro role of the treasurer is filled. The floor is now open for nominations for the officer of treasurer. Hang on a minute. Director Hayley, I would like to nominate Director Bankis for treasurer. Okay. Director Bankis is nominated. Director Bankis, do you accept the nomination? Yes. Okay. So, Director Bankis has accepted the nomination. Are there any other nominations at this point in time? Seeing none, the nominations are now closed. The uh only nomination at this time for the role of for the officer of treasurer is director bankas. We will uh we will vote on this at this point in time. So roll call please. uh Miss Olsson for um uh the role of treasurer.
152Now the nomination is director bankers and the only nomination is so ice means the board accepts um director bankers as the treasurer. Director Bankis, do I vote on my own? Yes. Um I Director Kerry I. Director Hayley. Hi. Director Jorgensson. Hi. Director I director I sav uh congratulations uh director bankers uh I think you have to move once one to your right okay uh that can wait to a future board meeting but welcome um you've got the responsibility and I think uh Dr. Comfort has got the key, the treasurer key for the safe for the district where all the dollars are kept. He will hand that key over to you. So, kings to the kingdom. Resolution 2026-1, call for nominations. Director Hley, can you please make the motion for action items G4? Press the mic.
153Press again. Uh, yes. I move that the board of education approves resolution 2026-01. Call for nominations for the coordinated election to be held on November 4th, 2025. Second. Moved and seconded. So this is uh the call for nominations for the November elections that are going to take place um uh a few months from now and the date for candidates to pick up the application packets opened as of today. The board is formally um approving this resolution at this time. The motion has been made and seconded. any other um discussions at this time at at this point and I will share with the community uh that next week August 13th is going to be an orientation session. Um is that what it's called or a candidate session? What is it called? School board orientation. Schoolboard orientation
154session. So this is for interested candidates that want to run in the November elections, but also applicants that who are interested in filling the board vacancy, the vacancy for the next 3 months, they can also attend that meeting to get a basic idea as to what is required, whether it's going to be um on a short-term basis or a long-term basis for the next four years. So if you are a candidate who uh wants that information, Superintendent Gaul will be there. Several of the board members will be here so we can share with you what the expectations are and um what is it that you should be prepared for as you undertake this journey. Uh thank you for wanting to serve on the school board. It's sometimes a thankless job. So, uh, thank you for
155stepping up to this, uh, public service, um, role, uh, and we look forward to engaging with you on August 13th. Seeing no further questions, roll call, please. Director Mis, I, Director Ky, I, Director Haley, hi. Director Jorgensson, hi. Director Malpa, I. Director, hi. the I have it the uh resolution call for nominations has been approved by the board uh and it's August uh 13th at 4 p.m. Right? This okay so that orientation meeting is at 400 p.m. that evening. The next item on the agenda action item agenda is contract modification instructional empowerment contract. Director Bankis can you please make the motion for action item G5? I move that the board of education approves the contract modification to contract C2023-000058 in the amount of 1,214,51768 with a ceiling spent limit of $1,900,000 within a period of
156performance of August 1, 2025 through June 30th, 2026. physics second moved and seconded this is new information superintendent call I'm going to turn it over to you uh yeah I'll let the team talk about it but just the frame here instructional empowerment has been our main strategic partner on the changes that you've seen happening instructionally this is uh not new news this is us bringing Mitchell High School as approved by the state under part academic management into Mitchell High School this is the followon of what we saw at Ottabbon as we expanded that into other schools. And so you see the first number and then the upper limit for us to be able to put monies at midyear against uh changes and shifts in strategy. So if I could have the team come forward and
157present and answer any further questions to the board. Good evening board. While they get the slides up, I just want to say thank you. I know I saw many of you at the events over the last week and it's been great. Um we're really grateful for your support and I know our team has really appreciated hearing from you. So tonight we're here um really excited to talk about instructional empowerment. As the superintendent mentioned, this is not new. This is really continuing and strengthening our efforts around highquality instruction in every classroom. So you can see here sort of the primary investments really lie in professional development. continuing to bring teachers um to a space of being demonstration classrooms in models of student agency, providing district-wide professional development, ensuring that we have enough opportunity for teachers who
158want to engage, creating a deeper investment for our schools who are on the state watch list, and then we're excited to also be creating some additional pipelines of early adopters in our district who are interested in kind of getting in front of this movement. Um, and then finally, just really focusing on developing our internal capacity. I know I've spoken to you before about our investment internally and making sure that when we have um outside partners that we're leveraging their expertise to build and strengthen our own. And so they're going to be working really closely with our instructional team on the academic side to ensure that the folks who are in our schools coaching and supporting our teachers have that cutting edge training so that they're providing it on our campuses every day. I'll just add
159really briefly too that you know last year we came to you with additional investment in instructional empowerment when we went to CDE and we had some leftover capital dollars that were not used in ESSER and we reinvested them in instructional strategy because we were starting to see outcomes from instructional empowerment then we continue to see that our teachers that have badged through 2011 which is two levels of learning and then implementation where we follow up and do look and learns in classroom observations are closing gaps for kids. We're seeing MGPS in the 60s in in classrooms where they've had those. So, we know that 53 or above is gap closing. We're up in the 60s. We're also seeing them um do better with students that are already at their the top of their game. They're
160growing um that head a lot more that when we talk about data in that way. So, we are seeing those payoffs and we want more demonstration classrooms and classrooms to engage up to 2011. So those outcomes are in more of our classrooms that we're guaranteeing will grow your kids that way. Um as we've seen in the schools who are deeply invested in this work. Thank you. Any questions from the board? Director Jurgensson. Just to clarify and summarize I think what you said. We've we have in we piloted in a few schools. Now we're spending this money to bring it to seven new schools which are then going to be hubs of excellence to help train other schools after that. So beginning two years ago we had it in five schools. We added the accelerated agency
161schools. So an additional five schools through the contract last year. Okay. This is really strengthening those efforts to continue the work that's happening in those 10 schools. In the addition, Mitchell as an addition, but then also providing pathways of professional development across our entire system and ensuring that our internal team is getting the training and support that they need so that we can have it at 56 campuses. That vision of agency for students. Okay. So, we're using this money to actually help get to all of our campuses now. And it may not be schoolwide adoption. So the lever that we're pulling on this year that we haven't previously is early adopter cohorts. So it's spread across the district and not just within a school, but you've got those demonstration classrooms spread throughout the entire district
162within schools. Okay. It's a good start. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Um, I know we got to see the contract and I just wanted to ask where can we see the entire list because there was like the additional TBA school in this it says entire list of the schools. Yes. So there was Are you talking about the 10 schools? Yes, I believe so. There's um director. Would it be helpful if I named them? Yes. Okay. I may need a little support. It's been a very long day, but Well, I could read the ones I see to you if you like. What ones do you see? And I can add on. Uh classroom level supports will continue for Ottabon, Adams, Fremont, Freedom, Galileo, Jackson, Madison, Rudy, Holmes, Queen Palmer West, and an additional TBD school. Um
163the moderate school services were continuing for Ottabon, Fremont, Freedom, Jackson, Madison, Rudy Holmes, and Queen Palmer because Mitchell is separate, right? Mitchell is built in as Mitchell Adams and Galileo are built in as well to this effort, but Mitchell's Mitchell's um investment is much deeper because there is that external management partner. So the depth of support at their school and the resources are concentrated and the schools that you just listed are getting supports too. It's just what depth they're getting. So Mitchell has more visits than the other schools, but all of them are getting supports still. So So Mitchell isn't named here, but that's it. Mitchell is part of the contract. Um it's through the external management that was approved by CD. Mhm. Okay. So, additional TBD school, I guess I was just curious what
164that is, but it's a great question. We are waiting on the state results coming back um to have growth data along with an SPF to make that decision. Okay, that's what I needed to know. Thank you. Uh one question, I don't know if this is to Superintendent Gaul or uh the team up there. So, this contract is for this year. Do we anticipate this partnership with instructional empowerment to continue in in subsequent years after that or are we going to be self-sufficient at that point in time? We will not be completely self-sufficient in one year. Even the growth that we've seen at Autobond, we have reduced services at Autobond and we have not changed the leadership team at Autobon. Um I I I know I'm preaching the choir. It takes time to turn around a
165school. It takes even more time to sustain that turnaround. Uh we are very careful with these budgeted dollars. This is our main strategy from a consultancy. If you play back several years ago and how we had many many more dollars spread across different consultancies, we have much narrowed our supports and focuses to schools in now different ways that we deliver and through the intensive supports through these moderate supports and to this idea of a cohort of early adopters that then builds our ability over time to be self- sustaining. We are not trying to build a contract that will then have um intensive supports of instructional empowerment at every one of our schools. That is not sustainable. It is not our goal. We are in the market for about how much that we can budget for
166every year. These are dollars that have been budgeted that we have been prepared for. These are just the manifestations of how we have to bring large budgets to the board of education for actual approval. Okay. Thank you. Seeing no further questions, roll call, please. Director Mis, hi. Director Kerry, I director. Hi, Director Jorgensson. Hi, Director Packer. Hi, Director. Hi. the ISA the contract modification has for the instructional empowerment has been approved by the board. Thank you. The next action item agenda is a contract award school resource officer services. It's an intergo intergovernmental agreement. Director Jensen, can you please make the motion for action item G6? Yes. Yes. I move that the board of education approves the school resource officer intergovernmental agreement G2026-00001 for police officers to be in our district's middle and high schools. The
167period of performance begins school year 2025 2026 and has 10 one-year annually renewable terms. If fully executed, the 10-year term will end June 30th, 2036. Additionally, the board authorizes the district contracting officer to execute modifications for the district's cost sharing increases that are strictly based on city council approved payraises for police officers without further board approval. I need a second. Second. Second. Moved and seconded. Uh, and I see our contract team, superintendent. Yeah, I'll I'll have the contract team come up and answer any questions. David Allison's here as well. We have a critical and essential partnership with CSPD that is really seen and felt through this intergovernmental contract. Um I hate the fact that we have to have armed uh service members particularly in our secondary schools. I love the fact that we have partnership
168with CSP CSPD to be able to do that. They've been ultra responsive on any times that we've had either uh any concerns of any external threats or intruders in the building. We have done a lot to better secure our own buildings, but my recommendation as board is for us to continue this long proven and essential relationship in our city. So, our families, our students, and our staff do feel safe in our schools. Um I know that people feel a lot of way about things like that, but when the going gets tough, everybody runs to the security guard or the SRO. So, we're happy to bring this contract to you, uh, Miss ODM, Miss Garcia. So, I'll just cut to the bottom line. PD is trying to get all the contracts aligned with all their district
169partners. So, they're asking for 10-year contracts. There's no changes to the cost sharing arrangement. uh our annual cost will only increase based on um city council approved police officer pay raises. So that's pretty much we have annual renewable options and all the other terms and conditions remained the same as in previous IGA agreements. The one thing that I am seeking I am seeking in this um motion is the ability for a district contracting officer to approve any budget increases that are solely based on city council um payraises for police officers. If you approve that, then I don't have to keep coming back to get your approval for a pay raise that was approved by city council. and then any questions you might have. Thank you. Any questions from the group? Seeing none. Roll call, please.
170Director Bis, I. Director Kerry, I. Director Hayley. Hi. Director Jorgensson. Hi. Director. Hi. Director. Hi. The eyes have it and um I see David Allison here too. Thank you for all your team does along with uh the SRO's to keep our building safe and ensuring student and staff safety is a priority in our schools. Thank you. Moving on to the next item on the action agenda item. um general fund contingency transfer to support the issuance of an RFP for strategic communication services. Dr. Kerry, can you please make the motion for action item G7? I move that the board of education approves this general fund contingency transfer in the amount of $500,000 to secure a contract with an agency to support strategic communications services. Second. Moved and seconded. Again, this is new information. I'm going to
171turn it over to the superintendent. Yeah, I want to frame uh what we're trying to do here for the board. Uh first and foremost, we're asking for the authority to explore this opportunity. If you give us this guidance tonight, that gives us the ability to issue an RFP to see if we can find the type of services that we're looking for. We are not asking for cart blanch blanket to spend this money. This type of contract we would have to bring back to the board for your review and your final approval. So, first and foremost, we're asking you to think differently about a problem not that district 11 has, a problem that all school systems have. We know how to do teaching and learning. We just are really not good at large organization marketing and
172advertising. And I have come to now my fourth year to say I'm not going to be able to hire and staff for building brand and acknowledging what every board member has shared in their own reports about this feels different. So we're asking for the authority to go externally and treat this like an organization of $400 million. Brennan always says I add 50 or 70 to that total budget and 4500 employees that represent 23,000 plus customers in how we want to position ourselves in a market space. I'm not talking about buying ads on the radio. I'm not talking about putting a little screen saver on the front end of a local movie theater. I'm talking about engaging with professionalized advertising and marketing companies that say how is it that you ensure that your community trusts in
173the product that you provide. We are trying to turn the ship of many many decades of people not believing in district 11 and we have the data to prove it. Enrollment has been down, particularly in traditional schools, for 20 plus years. At the same time that the population in this city has doubled, many of us live outside of the boundary of this district and find our way to drive to work because the city's just not that big. Which meant if you love that school, you'd be able to drive your kid there. We have got to invest. And I give you the number. It's $11,000 per pupil. We've tried this in in in little microcosms twice. We did a bit of a northeastern uh push uh with a local ad agency two years ago and we
174saw a 60 child increase in enrollment in the northeastern ban that paid for that investment. It was still too small. This year we've had our enrollment office really try and close the gap into some areas that we saw that we were losing metriculation. Again, as of this date, we have lost zero kids from that elementary school that we targeted, and they all stayed inside the district. We will not be able to get to the larger lift of having some 8,000 families who wake up every day inside a district 11 boundaries to rebelieve in district 11 with those smallcale options. So, we're asking and I'm going to try and extend a little bit of professional capital. For the third year now, we have delivered on every new crazy idea. If I were to have said to
175you in July of 2022, what you all saw this morning was possible in District 11, you would say to me, impossible. So, I'm asking for a little bit of political capital. We will not enter into a contract that we don't believe can get us there. Let us see what the market responds to. Does somebody want to actually get into this space that says we are the Colorado Springs School District 11? We need to do it more than the way we do. Nobody listens to Wednesday night. Nobody does. Not all of our staff members were at Robersonson Arena today. We have got to get in front of believing in ourselves more than the decades of people not believing in us. So, we're asking for the authority to explore an RFP. This does not obligate funds. The
176board still has that ultimate decision. If you don't like that strategy, but we would love to have the grace period. Dr. Comfort, anything to add. I do not have anything to add. That was pretty comprehensive. So, I didn't expect Dr. Comfort to add anything more. Um, you're good. You're good. So, I'll open it up for board discussion. Dr. Bankis, when I first um looked at um at this coming in front of the board, um I had some serious reservations with the uh cost amount. And yet, one of the things that strikes me in um considering to move forward on this as an idea is when we went up to Denver to present Mitchell's uh strategy for improvement. I remember one of the state school board members saying was very interested in how do you change
177a reputation? that school board member at the state level also had a school in their community that was trying that had made a difference had turned the ship around and yet the reputation prevailed. I'm willing to vote in the affirmative on this because I think that there still is an untapped resource within our community that doesn't realize how well we are moving forward to the benefit of the kids that we serve. So I am interested in and I agree with you. Everything that that has been presented has been followed through and has been successful and you can tell it by the gains that we have made from the time that I decided to run for the school board to where we are today in such a short time. And for those of us who lived
178who have lived in uh under other uh superintendent and in other school districts, we know that school districts traditionally did not move this quickly. And look at where we are and what we've done with a combination of this board, with our superintendent, with all of the executive branch and the people who believe that we are here for kids. So, thank you to the teachers who are doing the hard work and I think that this is something that um I can see that we should be exploring to to broaden our message to a greater extent not only within the D11 community but to the city as well as we rise to the top. So, I will be voting affirmative. Thank you, Director Kerry. Thanks. I just have two questions. Um uh the first one is I
179think what you were in your introduction you got to some of this but I just want to ask it explicitly. What niche do you see this filling that you can't currently do with the combination of Dr. Weise's team and ATPRO? Yeah. I I think as Superintendent Gaul mentioned uh we love our internal communications team and the extension of that with some external partners. We're talking about tapping into a market that nobody is is tapping into. There's not a school system in the country that has gone through the challenges that our district has gone through and has found a way to director Bankus' point to re-engage in a new reputation based on evidence and data. Um, and so I don't think what I think it would be unwise of us to think that we can do
180that ourselves. I think we're uncertain if there even is a partner who can do this who's willing to get into this space because this is a unique space which is why superintendent G said look we don't we don't have a company we don't even know if there is a company but we do know we need to go after this in a way to make sure that our community really understands what we're doing beyond what we put on Facebook beyond what we say in this room but an actual meaningful campaign that once and for all can reassert the district that we are and make sure that every single member of this community, even if they're not one of our 23,000 students, understands where we're headed. Thank you. My second question is one of the things that
181this board started to talk about towards the end of last academic year was the potential for potentially going for a bond and asking our community to help fund major capital projects. This is something we talked about at the end of the year where we have capital funds that we can invest in various ways, but it's not really up to the task of tackling, you know, huge major renovations such as HVAC improvements and things of that nature. Um, and we have discussed that that's that's a pretty big lift going to the community and asking for money in that fashion. Is this the kind of communications project that you that we could use towards some of those efforts down the road? I I think the obvious answer is yes. I mean um the opportunity to ask for
182hundreds of millions of dollars from your community probably needs a lot of prep work in making sure your community understands both that need and your accountability to that deliverable. Um so I think the obvious answer there is yes. And to reaffirm uh Dr. Comfort's uh position statement, we are all in on our team. Look at our social media. It's getting tighter. It's getting better. We are working very hard to communicate, but at the same time, we miss thousands of our own current families. We had a conversation just this week of printing and sending report cards home because we still don't have more than 50% of our parents in the parent portal. and the 50% that are in there in the parent portal, I'm pretty sure I can draw a straight line that says their kids
183are doing just aokay on their report cards. So, we have to rethink instead of get more people into the parent portal. It's not the accessibility of the parent portal, it's that we're missing the entirety of some of our own market set. And because we live in this really, really tight microcosm, I always appreciate everybody that shows up for a board meeting, but I feel like I almost know every one of you intimately because it's the same three, four dozen people that show up and engage. That doesn't mean people aren't listening. Doesn't mean that people aren't active in our schools. I'm not trying to suggest that. But there's an opportunity here for us to communicate that part of living in a city is believing that education, public education, is an infrastructure requirement that comes to the
184city, not my kids done and therefore I'm no longer interested in a tax dollar ending up in that school or I chose to not go to that school. Everybody wins when the school system is stronger. So, I think it's an opportunity for us and maybe to start a trend, at least locally, that says maybe Colorado Springs as a city is a number one destination for public education. Anybody who's traveled, my military families out there, you know exactly what your spouse says when you say, "We're going to city X, Y, or Z." They either go, "Great, they got a great public school system." Or they go, "Oh my god, what are we gonna do for the kids?" Right now, at least District 11, there's still too many realators who want to sell you property not inside
185District 11 boundaries without engaging with any of us. And yes, I could call ReMax and Century 21 and I can create a couple of lunches and coffees and that's never going to get us there. We need massive ways of rethinking how do people feel about education. We still have community members who think that charter schools are not public schools. We are internally fighting the choice that parents actively make every day instead of communicating. Anybody here who's a first or second generation uh immigrant, our families and families still today come to this country for access to public education and yet we don't think or believe in the quality of our own public education. So again, we're asking for the approval to explore the opportunity, but you can see I feel pretty passionate about this. We've had
186comm community uh uh communications directors before. We will continue to have them. We will do all those internal things, but what are we missing? And why is it that people still scoff one way or another at either district 11 or any other school system in America? This is the foundation of our democracy, which is everybody can enter into a public school and the sky's is the limit. We've got to recommunicate that. Director Kerry, if I may, um expand, uh you you mentioned the bond. Um the board is considering a a generational opportunity there, one in which the the city has never seen. Uh and that obviously I believe can transform the district um for a long time. And so my greatest fear if if the taxpayers say no, we don't believe in that. We don't
187believe in you. We don't think that's right. Okay. My greatest fear is that because they don't know, they say no. And so we need to make sure that they know the truth about what District 11 is about. And so that's why I think this is a wise decision. Thank you. Thank you, D. Thank you. Um, like previously mentioned by another director, the the amount is significant. Um, you know, it could hire, I'm guessing, three or four people for a year just to do this work. So that makes me wonder how long you are anticipating this work would happen. Would it be just one year or are we looking at two or three years or longer? You know, we we honestly we don't know. when we tested the market and we saw about $100,000 wasn't going
188to get us anything outside of the local area. And so we, you know, we asked some questions to other industries and say, "What is your advertising and marketing budget for a similar size company?" And people said, "Oh yeah, we spend three, four, $500,000 a year, right?" And so we are going to enter into that to run an RFP to see what people will come back with. It is ultimately the board's decision. Uh there is always negotiation. There are things that we could look at that they say that they offer. Remember, there's nothing quite like an RFI or an RFP to use as a consultancy for your own work that says, "Oh, here's exactly what we should be doing." So, this is exploratory. Um you can see that we're passionate about making sure people see the
189great things that are happening for our students, for our staff, and for our families. Uh, but right now this is an ask for an RFP to see and I would anticipate that if somebody were to come in it would be several hundred,000 a year and I would imagine if I ran that company I would say I need two or three years to be able to deliver on that because people don't change their mind on one flyer or one mailer that comes, you know, in in your mailbox. It takes time. It's multiaceted. It's multi-tiered. um as are you know whether you're an Apple or an iPhone an Android or an iPhone user people feel very strongly about things um we're interested in exploring what that would look like but the direct answer is is I would
190anticipate several hundred thousand a year for probably a two to threeyear contract would be my guess on what somebody would ask for okay and accountabilitywise do we if we put this money forward and maybe for two years or Three, your expected outcome is it sounds like maybe maybe increased enrollment and retention. So I want I want us to be clear on what our expectations are and we would put that in the scope of work that would be part of the RFP. We would be asking for a return on investment with a measurable number of touch points, number of increase in uh I hate to sound businessy but net promoter score. How is it that we are increasing the value in the same uh set of customers and potential customers and what type of feedback they're
191giving us? Is there value in that? You know, I'm going to ask the folks that have been sitting on this dis longer than I have. How is it that we lost 800 and 900 kids the two years prior to CO? Not during CO, prior to CO. Nobody's ever asked that question out loud. and we ask ourselves and we have a rock star in Chris Kilroy at enrollment and we have a rockstar and Dr. Jessica Weise and leading our engagement team and there's no way the two of them are ever going to be able to put together the poll to find those eight and 900 families and where they are and really get the answer because most of us are just way too kind in this space. We're way too kind. I was at a panel
192uh uh two weeks ago in Nashville and somebody asked me a question about well why do people go to charters and I said did you go visit the charter and this was a CFO from another district and they said yes and I said what did you think and I said they had a lot more clarity of what they were offering in their value proposition and I said there you have it but most people won't say that most people won't say why does Thomas McLaren outperform a school that we had to close because people couldn't go to because they're super specific about what they're going to offer you there. And we have a tendency to want to please everybody. So, a lot of times the feedback we get is everybody just wants to please us and
193they say, "Oh, no, you know, it just it's more convenient for us to go to a neighboring district and and then that leaves us nothing actionable." So, I do think that there's a lot of data that has to be mined to understand and I I'm not going to put him on the spot, but his doctorate is in school choice and he will tell you, Bren and I have talked about this for several weeks. People choose where they believe that they're going to get better value. So, how are we communicating this better value? Wednesdays doesn't work, folks. It doesn't work. Nobody's watching. We've tried newsletters. We send them to staff. We've tried video snippets. We have a contract for the board specifically and yet the same thing happens over and over again. People say they have
194a belief system. So we have to fundamentally listen to what it is that they want to hear and then see are we providing that maybe we're in our own you know self-licking ice cream cone here and maybe we're think we're doing great and the actual market says we aren't. That is important for us to know and I so yes there has to be measures and metrics associated with that. It can't just be straight enrollment. You saw the demographic study from two years ago. Most of the gain that we're finding is us just recapturing loss market. We are having less children per household. So I would not like to say that you would do $300,000 to get $10 million in new enrollment. What you might do is $300,000 to not lose $15 more million in enrollment
195as people continue to flee. But we would definitely uh have those type of measures in the contract. Thank you. Thank you. Looks like the board is um got no further questions. I don't see any other board members. Couple of clarifying questions from my side. Um superintendent call. I've had this conversation with you when you brought this up first uh to my attention. And um the RFP is going to be targeted nationally to national companies, not just locally. Yes. And I don't want to say that there's anything wrong with local, but we're not looking just locally. We're looking to make this a national casting a wide net to find the best qualified applicant for this position. Okay. Um I will echo some of the comments that came and you have already answered the questions about this.
196Uh the first question that came to me when you shared this with me was the return on the investment and as long as we attach clear expectations in the RFP and some type of metrics and measures whereby we can measure progress in 6 months time a year's time couple of years time that is important from my personal point of view. Um secondly you asked the question about where are these students going uh even before co and that has always been a concern to me. Um over the last 3 years we have introduced a number of um uh wonderful student programs some of which were discussed earlier this evening. the study abroad program uh the Mitchell promise which turned into the D11 promise when I engage with the citizens in the community several of them are
197still not aware of these programs and that's the message that we need to carry over to our community and if this type of communication coming from a company a reput reputable company with um with experience in this area is going to accomplish that and this is going to translate into roughly 40 to 50 students increase in enrollment that is going to end up paying for this contract which is what we are talking about out here. Um when the RFP is written I would assume that it's going to be written for a one-year contract with additional components along with it. Okay. Um I am supportive of it. Please keep the board informed about this the process and uh where the sense up um and then I'm sure it'll come back when the contract has to be
198formally approved at that point in time. And and what we'll do is as this advances, if the board would like to nominate two board members, similarly to we did like with some of the very large contracts for the Palmer renovation, um that we can keep you all through that RFP process such that when we get to presenting a contract, we're not in the space again where it feels really new. when we were able to present uh Adolfson and Peterson for Palmer, we had several board members who had been through that whole RFP process to be able to say, "Yes, this was rigorous. Yes, we did consider that. Yes, we did consider this." So, I think following that type of model for this significant different type of an investment or strategy would be worthwhile uh for
199the board to nominate a couple of folks to kind of flight follow that. Sure. Please keep me informed about that process and when you need um the two board members to be nominated to be part of the process. I'm certainly interested in it. Um I see director Hayley, you have a comment. Question. Okay. Um Dr. Comfort, you made a comment. I'm going put you on the spot. I'd like you to repeat it if you can. You said people and refresh me here. People don't know what was the rest of that comment cuz what you said this how powerful it was. I can't remember exactly what you said but it's in my head. This happens all the time. I might say something good but it never comes back again. So I apologize for that. Um I
200if I could paraphrase I I was thinking about this as Superintendent Gaul was speaking. Um the really active people in our community understand the leaders you saw get announced tonight are are two of the most respected leaders in this region. Um so the people who are really engaged, they know what we're doing and they want to be a part of it. That's not what the general community is, right? They just send their kids to the school they send their kids to. They hope that things are great. We're trying to get to that group, the group that really matters, why we're here, right? Um, and so and right now we have no evidence that what we're doing they know about. In fact, you guys deal with the counter evidence of that all of the time, whether
201that's misinformation or misunderstandings. Um, and so we got to make sure again that they know what's actually happening in the district directly from us. So that's powerful. So then I want to break it down. If every student brings in $11,000 from the state, if you break that down, that's a total of 45.45 kids. Just a little over 45 kids enrolling in D11 would pay for that $500,000. I just want to make sure I was clear. Thank you. Yep. Well, that's the return on the investment that we were talking about. we need 40 to 50 students to come back at there. If we can increase it by that amount, it's often really difficult to know where these students are coming from, if it is directly related to this marketing campaign itself or if they are coming
202from other sectors, word of mouth, whatever might be the case. about having positive impact stories about the district when the board is considering going for a future bond at some point in time. That's a board discussion that's going to happen in the next couple of weeks about a future bond uh and going for a future bond. So, um that is always beneficial. So, um I don't see any other comments at this time. So, roll call, please. Call a question. Oh, you have a question? No. Call a question. Let's vote. Roll call, please. None. Director Mis, I. Director Gary, I. Director Hley. Hi. Director J. I. Director Hack. Hi. Director. Hi. The eyes have it. The general fund contingency transfer to support the issuance of an RFP is approved by the board. Okay. Non-action items. Resolution.
203um 2026-3 authorized district staff legislative leaison and this information is it uh Dr. Comfort that is going to be talking about this this information comes before the board uh annually for review and approval and Dr. comfort. Yeah. Uh board policy requires that the board approve any district staff that will serve as legislative liaison. And so this is that yearly list for the potential that they might uh speak on behalf of the district. Any questions at this time? Seeing none, um this is a non- action items. So uh board can this be moved to consent? Okay, this item moves to consent. Okay, we have several um DAC committees and subcommittee um membership and charges that is coming as non-action at this point in time. Um starting with the Miller override and uh benefits insurance committee. I'm
204going to look to Superintendent Gaul and looks like Chief Artmer is up here. So, I'm going to turn it over to you, Chief Artmer. Are you going to present all of them at one time and then we can have a discussion about it? I think we should go committee by committee because there's some nuances to some. Um, Mr. X just stepped out, but he's here for the MLO committee. So, I'll start with one document that will kind of pull a thread throughout all of the committees. Okay. Um, first thing you'll notice when you're looking at charges today and non-action, we will bring those action in September where um, membership will be firmed up. Right now, we have our first committee meeting scheduled for August 21st. We know that the board has moved to one committee
205meeting per month. We're really excited about that. All of the committees will convene at Tesla. We invite every community member to come attend, get involved, and hear about these committees. Whether you're interested in financial pieces, you could join the DAC budget subcommittee or the MLLO oversight override oversight committee. Or if you're interested in school accountability, there's the DAC accountability committee. So everyone should come to Thursday, August 21st and see all of these committees in action. For MLO oversight, all board committees, we have asked, you asked us to create a code of conduct. So you'll see that attached to every committee item here. It did go through legal review. Um, and so I'd like to talk about that code of conduct kind of first and then we'll go into the specific charges of the committee. As
206you had time to review that, you asked us to take it from draft form that we had it in, run it through legal, and that's what's in front of you today. So, looking at that in draft form before we go to action, are there any questions or things you'd like me to follow up with on that piece in particular? Are you asking the code of conduct? Could we pull that document on the screen? So um Miss Hartm while um Miss Olsson is pulling up that uh code of contact. This went through legal and legal was the one that suggested this language. Yes. Okay. When I look at this code of conduct, some of the language resembles exactly what I see in the board operating manual. So, um, uh, the requirements for board members have been
207replaced as requirements for committee members. That's my first take on it. And I did confirm with legal. Uh, Miss Meins mentioned that she did pull some of the exact verbiage from uh, the board operating manual in there and uh, her feedback to her her feedback to me was that um, she wanted to throw everything in this document and allow the board to discuss it and narrow it down. Would that be a fair? That's exactly what she told me as well. Okay, perfect. Okay. Uh, the document is in front of you, Director Art. Thank you. Um, I have several concerns and in a way I just feel like this needs to go away and come back to us without maybe some of the higher I don't want to say higher expectations. We absolutely expect everyone to
208have professional and respectful conduct. Um, maybe we do address conflicts of interest. Um although again going to the board operating manual seems a little extreme to me. I don't know that we've had any problems with any you know given how big some of the and well and small how how big the committees are. um they don't I feel like they don't have that much influence that you have to worry about one person having quite so much um influence on that those decisions. So I wonder about if we could have maybe committee chairs that are currently serving give us some alternate language. Um we've operated without a code of conduct. I think we should have one. Sure. But we've operated without one quite so extensively written as this one for so long as long as the
209districts existed presumably that maybe we could take a little time to feel out some key volunteers and run that language by the attorneys as well. I again I I'm glad we've had her look at it, but I also come back to what the expectations are for us, what they are for other folks, and they have their role as a committee member and the role as parents. I know we're trying to balance some of that. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's understood. So, I'll just repeat back what I'm hearing. The ask would be to take this back to committee chairs or probably work with the committee chairs. Say what what seems right in here and what maybe seems like too much legal ease or moving into the lane of board member conduct versus board committee member conduct.
210See if we can find those nuances and find some middle ground. I think you summarized it fabulously. I don't know if the the others would agree with me, but I think that would be wonderful because they are we have expectations absolutely professionalism, like I said, respect. Um, but they're living they've been some of them living as committee members and President Mal Pakam would have some feedback on that too, I think. But we everyone has rights to, you know, social media. And so I don't want us to set it up so that someone who disagrees with us or a staff member gets kicked off a committee. And as I read this, it's like we can get rid of you for anything, even a single incident. And and it's like we can make up what we have
211for expectations and then just ask someone to step away. Um, and that's always been the case, I think, but we have to be very careful once we put that in writing, I think. So, thank you. Thanks. So, I think your ask was captured by Chief Art. Great, director Kerry. Um, I just I agree with uh, director here. the the role of a elected official is not really very similar to a volunteer community member at all. Um, and I think going to board documents as a starting place is a poor fit for a document of this nature. I'd also just remind everybody of the context here. There is a single person with egregiously unprofessional conduct that this was a potential solution. We don't need to overengineer this to fix a problem that does not exist. Yep.
212So we I I fear that we are making this far more complicated than it needs to be. And thank you for providing that context. Um so we got to figure out a way where we expect professional contact from our committee members without going overboard. Uh and when they are speaking as individuals, they still have the ability to speak as individuals, but they make it clear that they are not speaking on behalf of the committee, but as an individual member. Absolutely. We'll take it through committee chairs and rework it. I I think I'm starting to hear that's the will of the board, but I'll wait for that direction. Director Hley, you had a comment. I did. Okay. Okay. Perfect. Um so this is going to come back at least the entire membership and charge along with
213this code of conduct is going to come back as an action item in September meeting. So you have about a week a month's time to refine this and bring this back right and if we can get a draft before the September meeting I'll try to put that on an agenda a work session before then so that you can see where we got it to move to and then take any other feedback before we get to that final iteration. Thank you. Go go go ahead. There are other things that we still need to discuss other than the code of conduct. You want to come up? Okay. So, code of conduct. We know what we're going to rework. So, now we are in the mill levy override oversight committee. This is the committee chair, Mr. X. Hello,
214everybody. And uh I think we have uh the proposed charges up there, right? And there wasn't much of a change except I asked um Nicole to change one word in the charge and that that was down where it says in three district goals since we're a board committee which should be board goals like those over there for the committee and then the district they decide what their goals are going to be to meet this to meet those same areas. So, I asked that that one word be changed. And um we also have three new members that will be adding after they meet with the committee on August 21st. Tom, where'd he go? Yeah, there he is. Tom is one of them. Charlie Bobbit, who sat up there on the dis before, is another. and Noah
215Leb better who worked with the school and community uh utilization study way back when is also going to join. Plus they sent out a push to get some people back and we have about six or seven more people that we'll contact to see if they're interested and invite them to come and see the the the committee in action on August 21st. So that's where the MLC is and uh we're happy to come to the meetings on Thursdays or third Thursday and we're ready to go uh as soon as um the 21st gets here. Okay. Thank you. Any questions about this committee while um Mr. X is up here and the charges that Oh, you did director. I'm sorry. I was looking at you. Go ahead. Thank you. So the we don't have the full membership
216list there. So I just wondered if really we'll I'm assuming this will come back to us. When I say we don't have it, we don't have it in our door packet information just yet. So well, so remember this is how the charges were presented last year to and in every agenda item for committees right now. It names that they're all working on membership lists and that will be finalized when it comes action. But they need to get to the 21st in order to do that. Thank you. Because that that was essentially going to be the follow-up question like this. Um yes, August 21st. I realize you've mentioned some names, but people can still attend as you were saying it sounds like and potentially join then. Oh yeah, after Oh yeah, after that. Yeah. if we
217should be allowed to over the year between the coming to the board to add new members and I don't think that has to come to the board or does it I don't know but um you know we will be adding members because we were down to like four members in the committee at the end of last school year so with three members back we're back up we're moving up and you know we we we don't have a upper limit on the number of members but As you all know, if committees get too big, then you don't get a whole lot done. All right. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. All right. The next two committees, I'll go one by one, but the insurance benefits committee, just so you know, um the charges are the
218exact same as last year. The only thing that changed on this is at the membership at the top of the list. What used to guide how the membership composition was made was actually written into the master agreement. And so it's now noticed in there that it's written in the employee handbook. So that's the only change you'll notice on their document. They are also actively recruiting members right now. And so we'll finalize that list when we bring that to you in September. Otherwise, the charges are the same as what you approved last year. Okay. Okay. If there is no change, you can move on. I don't see any board members. Okay. Great. The next one is the pack, the personnel advisory committee. Same thing. The charges are exactly the same. They are working on membership as
219well and we'll bring that to you in September. Okay. No changes to the charges. Nope. Okay. Go ahead. Okay. And then the DAC and the DAC subcommittees are the next um listing that you'll see. And I'll invite we have here they are. No, you're good. Um this is Marian Classen. I know you're all familiar with her. her introduce herself in just a second, but she is the DAC chair and we also do it the subcommittee chair still here. Yeah, come on up. Rachel's here for the DAC budget subcommittee. All of their charges are in one document, but they're separated out. Um, one of the changes that we did make in the document, you have two that we'll look at today for DACK, but is we reduced the charges this year down to everything that was
220statutoily required because there's a lot of statutoily required charges for the DAC. Our district also delegates some of those charges to subcommittees, which is the DAC budget subcommittee and the DAC accreditation subcommittee. So you'll see that we've met statute when all of those committees are combined to to complete their charges. Last year there were additional pieces in here um related to district strategy type of things. We did eliminate in the proposal of for this year for now because we have a little bit less time by meeting once a month um and we wanted to ensure it's really important that we meet those statutory requirements first. And with that I'll yield the floor to Marian. Well, hello. Welcome back. Um, good to see you guys. So, I'm Marian Classen. Thank you. I'm not as tall. I
221know I'm tall. Yeah. So, I'm I'm Marian class. I'm the D chair. One more year. Um, maybe. We'll see. Um, and so I'm very excited to have Rachel here with me today. The rest of my crew is still vacationing, you know, so they say hello and still enjoying their summer. So, um, but we have been working with Nicole over the summer and looked at these judges and I we had sent you a DAC report at the end of the year last year and there were a couple things in there as well that we would like to see and um it's in the DAC bylaws. It basically says like together with the board we determine twice a year if there's any additional things that we would like to look at. So, we bring something to the
222table, you can bring to the table whatever you want for us to do. And that's what I just did. So, I sent you an email earlier this week to just be a reminder on what was in the report or the key elements and I am excited to hear what your thoughts on this are or if you want how you want to address those. Any questions or did you just want me to recap real quick why we're bringing this forward? So the document that is in front of us or displayed on the screen is this the request that you are asking at this time to add to the DAC charges. I think in the email I mentioned two more things that were on there, but this is the the main part that is new this year
223because we um the district has expanded it portfolio and added charter schools on to this and it's more than just a few and we feel like we're all part of this district community and we want to work with our charter schools especially when it comes to like family engagement and we also feel like we have some expertise in our DAC that might be helpful also to reach out and we want to learn from each other and that's what we hope for because for me we're all D11 students. We're all the D11 families and I feel like this is something we would like you guys to charge us to explore on your behalf. Okay. Um anything else? There was one other request that one of the things is that we have um new and or sidebased
224budgeting allows for schools now to actually have a conversation of where they want to spend their money and ask their community of how can they spend their money. This is new for all of our parents. This has never been the case, at least not since I was involved. And this is something where we need to train our schools on. And this allows us for the very first time to really bring forward um hopefully a quality input to you guys. This is what we see arise from Sachs and if we put this in charge in the charge that holds us accountable to really deliver this to you. Okay. I just want to name that there is a task force already associated with the DAC budget subcommittee around school-based budgeting that you'll see on the other document
225if Melissa toggles back to that. Um the DAC budget subcommittee had a task force it's down Melissa on the left hand side last year that worked on school-based budgeting or sitebased budgeting and we would continue that task force this year as well was the intent. Could you talk back down Is it down below out here? If you can go back a little bit below so we can look at what Yeah, there you go. Number three. Correct. Okay. Um I have several board members with questions and comments and I'll start with Dr. Kerry first. Can you go back to the charges document or the the suggested? Oh, we just lost everything. It's going to be a while. That's fine. So, um I because I can remember what they are. So, I'm I'm interested in three and
226four, which I believe was family engagement and the Sachs. I'm not sold on the first two, right? The DAC has statutory requirements to evaluate charter school applications, but part of the structure of public charter schools is they have a certain amount of autonomy in their governance, in their operations. And Superintendent G can correct me if I'm wrong, but we generally leave charter schools alone in a lot of respects. And so I'm not certain that charges one and two are really appropriate things for the DAC to be doing. Can Can you What is the question again? Sorry about that. I It's not so much a question. I'm happy with three and four. I'm less happy with one and two because I don't think investigations into charter school impacts are things that the DAC needs to be
227doing. Your statutory request is to evaluate charter school applications, but once they're part of our system and we have authorized them, the purpose of public charter schools is that they get to operate with a certain amount of autonomy. Um so where we come from the line of thinking is that charter schools still impact the district's um um district's performance framework. So they're still included as this as any other school is and we want to know does so the question for us at that was it how big is that impact good or bad there's no judgment to it it's just is there an impact when you have a larger number of charter schools than you had before and then the other part of it is that if there is a charter school that would like us
228to support them in like when we if maybe there's a charter school that's on priority improvement or turnaround and their community has never looked at a plan at this. I have looked at almost three digits of plans. I know a lot of them over the years and so have other members, DAC members. So we could maybe offer this community something they can say no thank you that is absolutely okay if they don't want that. But we can still also go and look at the plan as they posted and then come back to you guys and say we have a concern about this charter school. What would you like to do about this as their authorizer? Because you are their authorizer. What do you think your role could be here? That's where this is coming from.
229Okay. Director Hley. Yes. Um, so I I want to I kind of want to reiterate what do uh director Kerry was saying. Given that charter schools maintain their own governor and are an option within district 11, it's not within the deck scope to assume this additional responsibility and doing so is not warranted. So at this time I don't see a compelling or reason to go beyond what the state requires and I would ask that we go to thumbs to determine whether or not these additional charges are warranted. Okay. emphasis. Can I ask for clarification? So when they do go into some kind of improvement plan because they are not performing, what is your role in that process? Um do you want me to go questions? Okay. Um so they've got an internal board. Charter schools
230have an internal board that is responsible for the governance of that school. So they would have to go through that school improvement plan and authorize that school improvement plan. Ultimately we as a board get to um approve their application on a periodic term every 3 years or four years or 5 years when they come up for renewal. At that time we um do a comprehensive evaluation of that school and where they stand and if the board is not satisfied with the progress of that school. Mhm. Then the board can certainly discuss about options removing that authority that we give to that charter that they are no longer part of district 11 and fall under the umbrella. Is there anything else that you would add, Miss Harper? No, I just think it's it the nuance is
231that it's annually reviewed by the alternative governance by their board and then trienually or wherever it comes up for the authorizer, that's when it comes back to the to you as the board. It looks like Dr. Comfort is Yeah, sorry. We do a yearly review, the annual the APR annual performance framework or review goes through Dr. Koki's office of all charter schools in which we review their academic performance, their financial stability, some governance things. It all of those things come to the board in a re-evaluation, but we do review their status on a yearly basis. And if there are anything that is of concern, do you inform this board at that time? Absolutely. That annual report. I apologize for interrupting. Yes. Yeah. Yes, we do. In addition, um if if uh Director Kilroy were here,
232we do participate in if if CDE is worried about their USIP, we join them in those conversations as well, just like we would with another school. So it there is more review than just the uh when it comes for for board contract adoption. I I think the the point that needs to be clarified is the review is there but the action arm does not exist within this board until that contract is for renewal or that they have crossed a different threshold in the state clock for then that larger review from the state to be able to continue that authorization. There's a real fine line between how this board operates our own internal USPS and acts as an authorizer to be um aware of the challenge that exists in a charter usip or if they have
233more than one school in their UDIP. That's correct. And there yeah there's that yearly information that's always available. Okay. Um director, do you have anything to add on to this conversation? Director Hayley asked for a thumbs up to talk about these additional charges that are there. I think director Kerry talked about his support over the third and the fourth one. Uh overall when we are dealing with charters what you are asking as a DAC is that you want to collaborate with them. They are not obligated to attend any of your uh DAC meetings or training sessions. You can certainly extend the invitation to them to attend but it's up to them. Just as it is with our own sacks, a lot of them don't turn up to the DAC training session. Uh some of them
234do and some of them don't. Okay. I'm talking about the internal sack committee members themselves. Okay. Uh director, do you have something to add? Okay. Go ahead. That's why the mic was light was on. Um I just I understand there's um less interest in this particular part and absolutely we can't control the charter school accountability committees but it does seem absolutely reasonable that that would not preclude the invitation to them and whenever I have gone to a DAC meeting and a train any trainings there are absolutely learning just happens around that table um regardless of where you're from. So I I don't hear absolute objection to the invitation of the charter schools because we can all I mean one of the things when we we have charter groups come here and they want to have
235they want to be authorized by D11 they are often talking about how much they can share with us and then sometimes how much we can share with them and this seems absolutely an example of that kind of learning. So I I understand the con the concern and yet um I think we can be open to this invitation as well. Is that are you all comfortable with the invitation if Dak makes it because there's they're all there anyway. I think it's unnecessary the it might not be necessary but it's welcoming. It's it is building that in theory district 11 RA all students of D11 team with no obligation attached exactly with the charter school to attend said invite whatever event that is I think what the board has to consider is your committees are an extension
236of your board authority charter schools have their own alternative governance ports period dot it's it is as simple is that I have spoken to many of the transfer charters and the new application charters and there is always great hesitancy to want to get local authorization due to overreach and mission creep of this elected board for this traditional system. The state statute gives you local authorization of public charter schools. It does not in any way, sense, shape or form give you uh uh voted or elected operations of those charter schools. There are we have board members who have been board members of charter boards. It is a different experience. It is a different role. It is a much smaller system. You are solving for singular buildings and singular problems. Your task here in your relationship with
237your committees is how is your relationship with committees an extension of your work as operators not as authorizers. I think that's the question that's on the table. And I I I would forecast that you will see push back from charters. Not that there isn't valuable opportunity to continue to engage, but this will be seen as encroachment of an extension of our board as operators trying to creep into alternative governance models that says, "Well, we have a DACK and we think that you should listen to our DAC." Um, could I? Yeah, go ahead. Thank you. Um, I'm just going to note I again welcoming inclusivity. I don't think we have to be directive. Um, if you had a member of CDE willing to come and talk to the DAC, it seems reasonable we could invite other
238community members, including charter school sachs. And I know certainly on the district level, we offer opportunities to their team leaders, including principles. So I I'm all for leaving that up to the charters and their boards if they if they want to kick if the sack wants to kick that to their board and say opportunity. We do that again with their admin. So I I I'm guessing we're not going to agree on that. So I don't want to belabor the point. I I don't think we're agreeing or disagreeing. I think it's so whether or not it's a charge. I don't think anybody is going to be angry that an invite shows up in their inbox. I think the idea of a charge says we made a public decision that says we think our DAC should be
239monitoring and influencing existing charters that have an alternative governance model. I think that's the question that uh Vice President Haveley has asked for thumbs on. This is a charge question. We do operate completely open. We do crosswalk all the time. Sometimes charter leaders show up, sometimes they don't. and and never is the ask to principal managers or any of my team they need to be here because this is an important meeting. So my proposal was essentially and and my understanding is director hatefully thinks it's unnecessary but I'm not talking about the charge anymore either. I am saying we can keep a an open door policy even if we don't put it at the charge and you are shaking your head no. So I understand we disagree. We're I mean in response to your comment, we're
240we're already inclusive. Going beyond that isn't warranted. They are under their own governance. Let's let them govern. And I'm just asking to go to thumbs on that. Okay. Director Kerry, um after your comment, u I will also add something and then go ahead, you have. Yeah, I was just going to re reiterate really what Superintendent Gaul said. We I am quite certain that any charter school that wanted to talk shop would be able to do so. And one of the reasons I know this is because I have been at and facilitated several such conversations between people at charter schools and people on district staff. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about a charge to the DAC to review and provide feedback on improvement plans in a way that is not actionable in
241any way whatsoever. and I cannot see this as a valuable use of anybody's time. Okay. Any other comments at this time? So, what I hear from the board at this time and I'll take a thumbs up is that this doesn't need to be a formal charge at this time. Now, if you want to invite the uh charter sachs to participate in your training sessions, feel free to invite them and they are not obligated to attend. This doesn't need to be a charge from the board. You can extend the invites just as superintendent Gaul invites the principles of charter schools to participate in his uh address to the principles or professional development that happens. Some charter schools may take him up on this offer but it's not a formal charge that's coming from the pool. So
242feel free to invite. On that uh note, can we take a thumbs up that these are not going to be part of the current charges? Director, you have Yes, thank you. I wanted to um address the student based budgeting ask that they have. Okay. Can can we first finalize this one and then move to the studentbased budgeting? as far as what is on the screen at this point in time is the board by a show of thumbs that this is not going to be part of the charge request. Okay, by show of thumbs I need a show of thumbs not going to be not going to be that these requests are not going to be part of the DAC official charges. I Yes, that that would be a thumbs up. Okay, I need a thumbs
243up at this time. One, two, three. Director Bankers, Director Art. Okay. Okay. We have I'll go with the Okay. We have four thumb. We have five thumbs up. Okay. So, let's move on to the studentbased budgeting part of it that you wanted to talk about. The floor is yours. Thank you. So, I um I appreciate that we had a task force. Um, again, this seems reasonable that the DAC would be able to train our school accountability committee members on the studentbased budgeting and as part of that collect feedback whether formally or informally or feedback or input as part of that and I could see where that would be valuable to a task force. So I support that particular request of the DAC. I think I'm going to ask the DAC to expand a little bit.
244Um as we rolled out aliv that is an internal uh decision and how we budget our traditional run schools. We manage as a pass through for dollars for budgeting for charter schools. So some of them might use an abacus uh for their sitebased budgeting. Is that we're talking is this a charter sitebased budgeting? That's not my understanding. No, it's not. I don't think we saw the email with the ask on this one. So I think that's part of the confusion. We're in the dark about the email you received with the ask for this charge. Okay. Dr. Comfort is copied in on that email just so you are aware of it and he's probably got it completely memorized. I'm looking at the email. Memorized it completely. Here here's what I would say. I think uh we've
245we've discussed uh over the last year as we transitioned into sitebased budgeting school sacks are a incredibly integral part of that. Um because of how we transitioned it last year, we got them to see the tool and participate in some of the process but not really understand it. So, if the email that I should have read um said that we should be training Sachs to make sure that they're informed on how to support their school leadership team in making decisions. Absolutely. Okay. Happy to do that. So, the email does say that you know the charge includes the continuation of the training of Sachs on the subject to provide quality input in terms of spending priorities. And it goes on to say that the DAC will create a process to solicit their feedback and report to
246the board. So the DAC will take feedback from the SAC and provide that feedback to the board on how that uh sitebased budgeting process is going on in schools. I think the open question is then what is the DAC budget committee's role in reviewing the budget? Is the DAC budget committee going to be doing the same thing as well? Is the DAC budget subcommittee going to be reviewing the district budget as they have in the past? Is that is that the question you asked, President Meka? No, I think what is Well, it's my question. I'm sensing redundancy. I think that's the purpose of the DAC budget subcommittee is to be working with line by line and schools. So, I think that it charge should transfer to the DAC budget subcommittee to work that sitebased budgeting.
247If I may, I if if the request is for there to be a feedback mechanism from Sachs to the DAC about the priorities they are seeing um schools take in their budgeting process and then ensuring that we are aligning. I think that makes a ton of sense. If the request is that the DAC is reviewing sitebased process, then that's obviously counter to sitebased budgeting. Um I don't believe that's the that that's the ask. I believe the the ask is to make sure that sacks know what they're doing around sitebased budgeting and that that information to help in district budget strategy the DAC is a part of. I I think that that can make a lot of sense. I think that's what I hear from Miss Claus and she's nodding her head. So is that makes
248sense. Okay. So any other comment by the board at this time on that number one charge? So um I think what I'm hearing is what is in the budget subcommittee charge is a little bit different than what the DAC is requesting. What the DAC is requesting is that we continue and maybe that can be put in the DAC budget subcommittee charge itself as opposed to the DAC charge. Maybe that can be expounded to basically say that school accountability committees which is happening right now are appropriately trained in sightbased budgeting and feedback is gathered by either the DAC budget subcommittee or the DAC and that report is provided to the board. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Perfect. Do I need to say anything? I think I think the request came from we have a we have people
249that do training and then we have people that do budget and I think the request was just to kind of make it clarified. So our our group that meets primarily and holds sack training that that could be their charge. So even though we might at the studentbased budgeting task force provide them all the details they have, they're the ones actually going to be training the sacks. I think that's the clarification that needs to be made. So if we scroll up in the document, Alyssa, it goes into the sack uh training, which is where I think the ask is for it to be added as a sub bullet potentially. Um it's that last one. It's number eight. um provide assistance to school accountability committees. There's already ABC. We would just add a D what I'm hearing
250that would focus on a feedback mechanism of students budgeting. Yes. Okay. Okay. So, the confusion came because there were two separate documents that were submitted. One went to the uh diligent community and then a separate email came to the board with some of those requests and they didn't uh align exactly with each other. So in the future just to avoid this um uh confusion if you can just submit one document that would make it simple. Okay. Thank you guys. Um I just want to say thank you to um sending out the interest form and getting us lots more people interested in being on the D. So you've seen the membership. There's we still have a lot of new names already that completed to it last year, but we still are in the process of selecting
251new members. So, we're still connect um connecting everybody and everybody is welcome even if they are not going to end up on the official roster for the DAC. So, but we want to make sure that people know that there's not final decisions yet made. If they read this and say like, "But I wasn't selected that we're still working on that because it's for us parents, we're still a little bit in summer break." Yeah. And that argument was put together by Chief Artmer and uh kudos because that's seems to have generated interest and people who haven't and the communication that happened from the district level distributing it to the community out there people who haven't expressed interest in the past are because I see a lot of new names on that list. So thank you for
252putting that and many said they didn't know how to get involved and they appreciated this opportunity. So thank you so much. One of the priorities is that we don't get the same group of people engaged in the committees. We get diverse voices from various quadrants of our uh district. And this seems to have solved that problem. And maybe the same thing will happen when all the committees move to one day as well. Yep. Thursday, August 21st. Come join us. 5 5:30 starts at Tesla. Yes. So does that take care of I think that took care of everything right with the committees. Great. So I think that's the end of non-action items future agenda item request from the board members at this point. I'm sorry you got to say that again. Uh we are done future
253agenda items. We are at the last thing future. Okay. I see director Heafley, you are up first. Uh I would like to request a discipline update from the superintendent and team. Thank you. And this would be a comprehensive update on uh the ABC policy, the B part of it, the behavior policy. Um thumbs up from the board regarding that. Okay, I've got thumbs up on that. So, we will um uh try to schedule it um as the agenda opens up for the work session as soon as possible. Director Jurgensson, uh to piggyback on Director Hayley's request, you look at you're going to pull data. Can we look at places where behavior is winning, where they're doing the right things and see about crowd sourcing those people to come to that work session to offer what's
254working? Um potentially have that as part of the discussion if there's any adjustments that we choose to make as a board. I'd ask that we have some of good deal of people there to show us the way. Okay. Best practices um that is happening in our schools. You can bring that up. Yes, sir. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Anything else from the board at this time? I don't see anything else at this time. So, thank you. Doing a good uh quick calendar review. August 13th, 4 p.m. we will have the uh school board orientation meeting. This is for uh both candidates that are interested in applying for the temporary vacancy on the board and also for uh candidates who want to run in the November election. August 13th soon after that school board orientation meeting roughly
255at 5:00 p.m. would be a special meeting. I think there is a couple of election issues that are could not be brought up in this meeting. um but has to be addressed by the board and uh it requires board approval in a timely manner. That's why we need that special meeting and the same evening we'll also have a work session following that quick special meeting and the agenda for the work session as soon as I find out you will you will be informed about it. Um, with that, if there are no objections by the board, the um, first board meeting of the year is officially adjourned at 9:20 p.m. Yes.