BOE Special Meeting / Work Session 6-11-25

001Heat [Music] up here. [Music] Down. Hey. Hey. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Hey. Hey. Hey. [Music] Come. Hey. Hey. Come. [Music] Hey. Okay. Good afternoon. We'll call the special board meeting for Wednesday, June 11th, 2025 to order at 3:30 p.m. Roll call, please. Miss Director Bis here. Director Kerry here. Director Hinckley, here. Director Jorgensson. Uh, Director Jorgensson is supposed to join us remotely. Is he present? He's not. Not yet. Okay. Uh, he should be joining us remotely. Director Mal Pekkham here. Director Nelson here. Director here. So, we have six board directors in person and director Jurgensson should be joining us remotely. Um, please join me as we observe a moment of silence. Thank you. Director Nelson, can you please make the motion to adopt the agenda? I move that the board of education

002convenes into executive session to discuss negotiations. Just the agenda. Oh, adoption of the agenda. Sorry. Okay. Okay. Adoption of I move that the board of education adopts the agenda as presented. Second. Sorry about that. Moved and seconded. Roll call, please. Miss Olson. Director Benis. I. Director Kerry. I. Director Hley. I. Director Mal Packham. I. Director Nelson. I. Director. I. The board has adopted the agenda as presented. We do have executive session for a little over two hours this afternoon. Um, Director Bankers, can you please make the motion to move into executive session? I move that the board of education convenes into executive session to discuss negotiations per CRS 24-6-424E particular matter superintendent contract renewal and strategies regarding bond contracts and personnel per CRS 24-6-424F particular matter superintendent evaluation and contract Direct renewal. Second. Moved and

003seconded. Roll call, please. Director Bis. I. Director Kerry. I. Director Hayley. I. Director Melam. I. Director Nelson. I. Dr. A. I. The I have it. We will enter into executive session at this point in time and reconvene for the rest of our special board meeting at the conclusion of our executive session. Thank you. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. N. [Music] Hey. Hey. Hey. [Music] Heat. Heat. N. [Music] Heat. Heat. N. [Music] Heat. Heat. N. [Music] Black. [Music] Hey. Hey. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Good evening everybody. We will just get started momentarily. I'm waiting for the board directors to join me. I appreciate your patience. Uh we were in executive session and exhibitive session ran a little bit longer than anticipated, but thank you all for being here. Okay. And direct Are

004we good? Okay, thank you. Let's get started. Good evening to all of you again. Great to see you. Even though we are in the midst of the summer break, uh it's always good to see community members engaging with the board and the district and uh thank you for your presence uh here today. Um uh before we get to the items on the agenda in the interest of full transparency, I would like like to share this update with the community. Uh earlier this evening, the board in executive session completed our comprehensive end of the year evaluation of the superintendent's performance. This conversation initially started in executive session on May 21st. We had a two-hour meeting on May 21st and tied up some loose ends earlier this evening. The board's one employee is the superintendent and the

005board collectively takes that responsibility seriously. We have cons consistently stressed the importance of evaluating the superintendent's performance objectively based on data and his body of work throughout this past year. As an elected body, accountability is central to everything that we do and it starts with this evaluation and feedback to the superintendent from the board. And through this process, the board is promoting a culture of accountability throughout the district. A culture of high high expectations, no excuses, and putting students and their outcomes as the number one priority. Any employee evaluation is an opportunity to spotlight accomplishments and also identify areas for growth and development. And in that spirit, the board with the help of the rubric uh that we had uh was able to accomplish that objective. Uh vice president Hafley and I on behalf of

006the entire board will present the final report to superintendent Gaul in the next couple of weeks before the end of this month. I do want to commend and thank uh my fellow board members for investing time and going through this process diligently through the completion of this rubric and the protective conversations we've had in two uh executive sessions. Um, superintendent Gaul, on behalf behalf of the board, I do want to share our appreciation and thank you for your commitment, hard work, and dedication to district 11, especially your student-driven focus and priority prioritizing staff supports, teachers at the building level. We continue to make significant strides in improving student opportunities and outcomes. When we started this journey three years back and welcomed you into the district, the destination was excellence through increased achievement, engagement, and enrollment.

007That work does not stop. Even though that mission has not been fully accomplished, we are continuing to make progress towards the stated objective of excellence under your leadership. I do want to take this opportunity and publicly acknowledge that the board is appreciative of your leadership and singular focus on the board priorities which are captured on that uh um on the wall up there. I will end by reading this statement from your final evaluation for the record and the community's a awareness. This will be part of your official uh board evaluation. The board appreciate Mr. Gaul's student-driven focus and datadriven strategies to improve academic outcomes. He has continued to deliver on board priorities through innovative solutions to long-standing district 11 challenges in achievement and enrollment. The board recognizes Mr. Gaul's comprehensive body of work over the

008past three years as a transformational change agent and appreciates this operational day-to-day leadership in building accountability under challenging circumstances. So, thank you on behalf of the board. The board looks forward to continuing our partnership as we move forward in our stated goal towards excellence. Excellence in education, excellence in operations and excellence in uh service. That is my update to the community. So we are reconvening in public session after executive session and there is a need to modify the agenda after executive session. Um, Vice President Hayley, I'm going to come to you. Thank you. Thank you. I move to modify the agenda by moving public comments. Can y'all hear me? Yes. Okay, let's just do it that. I move to modify the agenda by moving public comments ahead of the superintendent's report. Second. Moved and seconded.

009Uh the reason uh that the board has uh made this uh um modification to the uh agenda is that several of you have been waiting here to make your public comments uh taking your time into consideration. Superintendent Gaul graciously offered to push his superintendent report after public comments. With that roll call, please. Director Mis I. Director Kerry I. Director Hayley. Hi, Director Jorgensson. He can't hear. Yeah, he just he just sent me a message. Um, director Mel Pekham I director Nelson I director I So the agenda has been adopted with the modification um moving public comments in front of the superintendent report. Um the next item on the agenda, could I have uh area superintendent Darren Joiner? He's going to lead us in the pledge of allegiance today. To the flag of the United States

010of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. So, we move straight into public comments. Uh, Miss Zen. Okay, we do have several public comments. Uh, as a reminder, so we have a stack of them. Um, as a reminder to the people in the audience, um, today is a special board meeting. At special meetings, the board may be interested in listening to public comments, but public comments are limited to the items on the agenda. So, at regular board meetings, the board accepts general public comments on any subject matter pertaining to the district. Today, it's solely on the items on the agenda. So, that's the difference. I do want to um point that out to you at the very beginning. So as

011I call your name, please approach the podium. I will identify the subject matter on today's agenda that will be the focus of your public comment. And I would really appreciate it if you keep your public comment uh on that um agenda item. Uh you have 3 minutes to deliver your remarks. Please monitor the clock that is on display and complete your comments in the allotted time. Uh board meetings are primarily business meetings for the orderly and efficient conduct of the business of the district. Keeping that in mind, the clear expectation is that your feedback is provided in a civil, professional and courteous manner without resorting to disparaging or defamatory remarks. Students are often in attendance or watching our broadcast. Speakers remarks therefore should be suitable for an audience that includes minor students, including no use

012of profanities or obscinities. to adhere to board policy and accomplish the work already on the agenda. The board will not respond to comments during this portion of the meeting, but can but I can assure you that your comments will be taken into consideration as we discuss pertinent agenda items. To maintain the flow of the meeting and not have prolonged interruptions, please refrain from clapping. If you want to show support to a speaker, please stand as the speaker is talking or use a silent applause. Lastly, the statements made by the public do not reflect the views of the board or the district. Thank you. With that, the first comment uh Julia McKay and uh you have your item as educational systems are for contributing the wholeness of children. Uh is this specific to the policies that

013are on the agenda? Ma'am, it is specific to policy and policy. Perfect. Thank you. The floor is yours. All right. Thank you so much. My name is Julia McCay. I'm a former teacher in D11 in the mid 80s and mid 90s. And I've also served this community as a psychotherapist and a congregational minister. And I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you today. I've been working in human services for 40 years. And in those 40 years, I've learned a lot about what makes people healthy and productive in society and what makes people not healthy and not productive in society. And as a teacher, I believe that school and my classroom was about providing a learning environment that allows each student to find and develop their gifts and grow their intelligence and their character. What hurts

014one child hurts them all. Because you see, when one child is told that they cannot be fully themselves, the other children around them automatically question, "What part of me is unwanted?" This is the reason we have anti-discrimination laws and protected status to stop dehuman dehumanization. Not allowing the displaying of identity flags perpetuates harmful myths about certain identities not being okay. It's Pride week here in Colorado Springs. Some people ask, why don't we have straight pride? And the reason that we don't have straight pride is no one has to come out as straight. No one got kicked out for coming out as straight. No one asked if being straight is a phase. No one else straight kids. Straight handholding is safe. There's no straight conversion therapy. Straight history is not being erased. And no one is

015killed or kills themselves for being straight. Wouldn't it be a tragedy if that child who would have discovered the cure to cancer didn't get to because they suicided instead? Yet when a child is courageous enough to be fully themselves, guess what? It gives permission for other children to have the courage to be themselves fully. Queer or not queer. How much healthier would the world be if we all if we each were allowed to ask formative questions about the nature of our being without such horrible repercussions. Courage, my friends, is at the center of all character. And I see you. Being around a trans kid or competing against one just gives other kids permission to be greater and stronger. Are you telling me that the female Olympians could not outperform just about every regular man on

016the planet? Of course they can. Because they have a gift. For decades now, science has demonstrated that we have multiple combinations of sex chromosomes. Thank you. Not just XX and XY. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome to uh email the rest of your comments to Okay. Thank you so much. Thanks. And uh I do want to remind the audience as well that um if you have anything that you want to hand to the board, please take it to Miss Olsen as appro as opposed to approaching the board. DAS that was uh discussed as a security issue. uh anytime during the board meeting or after the board meeting um uh security has advised us um not to have the audience approach the board dire and I appreciate that um if the audience can respect that those accommodations.

017Uh the next comment is going to be Kelly Vivian. Kelly Vivian, thank you ma'am. And you're going to be talking about fairness in women's sports. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. I'm a proud graduate of Dhy High School. My son graduated from Palmer from Palmer and I choose to be a homeowner in D11. I played school sports in D11. School sports taught me important life skills about teamwork and fairness, being a gracious winner, and being an even more gracious loser. What D11 also taught me was logic and critical thinking. As I read your resolution, I'm struck by the faulty logic and lack of evidence. You say transgender women athletes have an unfair biological advantage, but no academic studies prove this. In fact, trans women may have a disadvantage because hormone blockers reduce the

018level of testosterone in their bodies, which may even the hormone playing field that you think gives them an advantage. Studies do show that money to purchase coaching and training time is the key factor for athletic competitive edge, not gender identity. D11 could could support all women athletes by investing more in our training equipment and facilities through fairness in school sports. The resolution also says that cisgender women need protection in locker rooms and hotels from trans women. Again, there is no known or documented case of sexual assault perpetrated by a trans woman against a sis woman in sports. Several reputable academic studies show no empirical evidence of safety and privacy violations when trans women use the same restrooms as cis women. However, statistics from the FBI show that 99% of sexual assaults are committed by cisgender

019heterosexual men. That's who you should be protecting student athletes from. The resolution also says that trans women in sports demeans all women in general. However, your resolution is what demeans women in general by perpetuating stereotypes that we are physically inferior and can't handle sports. When we are good at sports, you call us too manly or you question our femininity. This resolution simply insults women athletes at every turn. When we overcome our fear of different people and allow students to compete together, we improve academics, graduation rates, and resiliency skills that make us better adults and citizens of this community. In fact, D11's graduation rates improve from 68% to 74% in the last four years under your current rules. I respectfully request that this resolution be withdrawn is unnecessary, unhelpful, and illogical. It's harmful to all student

020athletes. Thank you. Thank you, Ali Klein. Thank you. And you're going to be talking about the anti-trans and anti-Q queer policies. Thank you. I'm I'm doing whatever. What is it? IMD and JBA. G. Yep. Thank you. Okay. Hi everyone. It's great to see you again. I've been up here before, but I'll reintroduce myself. My name is Ally Klene. I'm a mother of four kids in D11. I am the vice president of their PTA. I'm a substitute teacher here, a member of the Palmer Steering Committee, and currently I'm a doctoral student working towards my doctorate in leadership and educational equity. I will always begin with a thank you for all of you. Um, I do not envy your position up there as a public servant. Um, and I am really grateful to be able to do

021public comment tonight. I love this district and I deeply care about its future. I will always speak up when you guys enact policies that positively impact our students and staff like being the first district to do the cell phone policy or implementation and success of IB in our schools, our summer lunch program, the Palmer innovation project. There's many things you do well and I will happily celebrate those. But I am also not afraid to speak when I believe an action item is detrimental to our students and staff and that's why I'm here tonight. I've already spoken out about our name change policy and how it undermines the safety of our students that they feel at school. However, it seems that action item JBA discussing trans students in sport and action item IMD only allowing for

022American flags, presumably excluding inclusionary flags, that this board is intent on attacking the trans and queer community in multiple ways and to add salt to the wound during Pride Month. This is not the D11 I know and love. The D11 I know and love stands for inclusion, acceptance, and tolerance of all students. If safety is the concern of this board, as it claims, know that statistically speaking, trans kids are one of the most targeted demographics in our country. According to the Trevor Project, in the last year, one in three transgender youth reported attempting suicide. Almost onethird reported being a victim of sexual violence and more than half reported a two-week period of depression. That is not because of who they are. That is because of the way our society has marginalized them and put a

023target on their backs through policies like the ones on our agenda tonight. Excluding these children from sport, requiring staff to report their name changes to parents, or controlling what our staff can put in their classrooms does not create safety. These policies remove it. Our schools provide some of the only safe spaces for students who cannot always find that safety at home or in their family life. Our staff works hard every day to build relationships of trust with kids. If they are required to break that trust by reporting name changes to parents, especially when a child has said they don't feel safe in their home, then what is our obligation as educators? If we as a district create barriers for student who wish to wishes to participate in the community through sport, then how can we

024say that we support community engagement? If we don't allow teachers to hang items that show students they are welcome, accepted and seen for exactly who they are, then is love of our country through a symbolic flag the only thing we stand for? I am disappointed that our district has taken a blatantly political and religious stance in what is supposed to be an a-olitical and public environment. Thank you guys very much. I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you. Um Jackson Hoskinson. Oh, his car broke down. Okay. Can't be here tonight. Okay. He's not here. So, I'm going to move on to the next one. Ali Heron Saft. Good evening. My name is Ally Erin Saft. I use she her pronouns and I'm the program manager at Inside Out Youth Services. I'm also a former high school teacher

025and women's athletic coach. And through all of these roles, I've had direct experience with the damaging impacts of policies like IMD and JBA that you're proposing, which is why I urge you to vote against them today. As a competitive athlete growing up, I played with and against many different people in high school and college. Playing women's high school basketball, we often scrimmaged against the men's team, and we often won. Playing college softball, baseball players would come in to hit and run bases. Want to know who can't hit a rise ball? Baseball players. Our coaches didn't hold lesser expectations for us because we were women. They expected us to utilize our skills and collective efforts strategically. We will always face players that are bigger or stronger or faster than we are. And you want to know

026what that makes us stronger and faster and more strategic. A person's gender doesn't change their abilities as a competitor. Our abilities change how we compete. Aside from this board's blatant disrespect of female athletes within this policy, you are subsequently targeting, bullying, and emboldening harm against gender expansive students in your district. By functionally banning pride pride flags and targeting transgender student athletes, you are creating the conditions for bigotry and allowing it to flourish. And through policy, you're encouraging enforcement from those emboldened by transphobic policies. If you are all in positions of power uphold banning symbolic representation that make you uncomfortable, then you wield your influence in ways that invoke uncalculable action. For example, a man from Colorado Springs emboldened by anti-semitism upheld by people in positions of power thought it his responsibility to light Jewish people

027on fire in the name of the eraser of Jews. A Jewish couple was shot and killed in DC in the name of the eraser of Jews. These are just two of the stories that made national news and there are many more. And I recognize that trans people are attacked and murdered all the time simply for being trans. But you've demonstrated time and time again that you don't really care about trans people. So perhaps making trans issues analogous with Jewish identities will help you connect the dots. People emboldened by those in positions of power who share similar views often feel it is their responsibility to uphold the wishes of those people in power. Cisgender people profiled as transgender people are being dragged out of bathrooms simply because they are perceived as trans. Trans people are being

028dragged out of bathrooms and arrested even when following discriminatory laws that require them to use bathrooms in alignment with their sex assigned at birth. You, District 11 school board, are creating policies that embolden transphobia. By building discrimination into your policies, you're systematizing and operationalizing harm to students in your district. So, if this is what you intend to do, then you need to revise your value statement because your first one states, and I quote, "We believe in the inherent worth of every individual and the power of equitable practices to unleash potential." End quote. If you can't see the irony here, I certainly can't help you find it. Thank you, Robin Lamaro. And if I got your name wrong, please uh introduce yourself. Okay, thank you. You're talking about the policies as well. Yes. To the school

029board, my name is Robin Lamro. My pronouns are he, him, his, and I'm here to speak to you today about policies JBA and IMD. And I do not know what to say to you. I'm sorry. My mom once wisely told me that an idea put into someone's head with fear and confusion cannot be removed with logic and reason. And over the years that I have spoken to you, that we have spoken to you, this board has demonstrated that there are no amount of studies or statistics which will convince you. I find myself tempted to find some way to appeal to your emotions, a perfectly arranged sequence of words which will change your mind. But if there is one thing that I have learned in doing this work since I was 14 years old. I'm 24

030now, is that I do not owe anything to you. I do not owe the pains of my childhood to the kinds of people who would have sooner seen me picked clean to the bone than lick my wounds. and neither do any of the countless LGBTQIA2 plus young people who have laid bare the beauty of their exposed hearts to you over and over and over again. I refuse to continue to indulge the idea that I must dulge my trauma to you just for the slight chance of earning mere crumbs of dignity and respect and connection. So instead of speaking to the board members, I will directly address the people who are here to listen to their hearts, not just their ears. I do not know that the school Colorado Springs School Board District 11 school board

031hates transgender, non-binary, and gender diverse young people. I can't prove that. I'm not a mind readader. I'm not a wizard. I'm not clairvoyant. However, their words and their actions both on and off the board have made it clear to me that this board considers the harassment of LGBTQIA2 plus students by their peers and teachers to be tolerable. The increased rates of suicidality, homelessness, and depression in students who do not live in accepting school and home environments to be ignorable. their physical, mental, emotional, and academic safety and well-being to be easy to disregard. Discrimination need not be hateful in order to be harmful, only careless and apathetic and negligent. This complete lack of care, consideration, foresight, and self-reflection from a school board should be deeply concerning to every single person in this room, regardless of your

032age, background, political, or religious beliefs. Nothing about this is acceptable. This is not normal. Do not let this be normal. Thank you, Jen Canelier. Thank you. Good evening. I didn't come prepared because I had no idea how to approach you. Um, I just knew as a white woman who's sis needed to use her voice to stand in front of you tonight. I recently got done reading the book Everything Tuberculosis. Alan Hart was an American physician, radiologist, tuberculosis researcher, writer, and novelist. They were the first trans individual to help stop tuberculosis and the spread in Colorado here in this state back in 18 or I'm sorry in the 1900s. I want you to think about what you're doing tonight because your decision is going to smother an Allen Hart. mother another doctor to find the cure

033for cancer. You are stopping any opportunity that these students have. This is on your shoulders. Every single one of your shoulders. I'm shaken to the fact that this is even something I need to use my voice for. For the ones that you're muting tonight, understand the weight that you are putting on these children, all of them. Think about the impact this will have. Thank you, Ali Lesner. Thank you. really short walk to this podium. Hello again. Uh my name is Ali Glesner and uh as always I am the communications and advocacy director of Inside Out Youth Services. When I was a student, then briefly an educator and for a much longer period of time a journalist, I attended more board of education meetings than I can count. I remember one board talking about a contentious

034plan to build a new announcer booth on a football field. Uh, I another hosted a controversial meeting about HVAC improvements needed in their elementary school. I believed over all these years that that was the purpose of boards of education, that they were stewards of the district's finances, oversight for district infrastructure, and a line of communication between the community and administration. So, parents and families knew that the school district that served their children was detail-oriented and interested, even in the things most of us find boring. and ideally so those parents and families could make their voices heard and even influence district decisions. It's only recently in the grand scheme of things that boards of education like yourselves have routinely and consistently taken up these cultural issues that do nothing to positively impact your district and in

035most cases actively harm your district. I wish as someone who lives and works in D11 that I could attend your meetings to speak on the importance of teacher pay or weigh in on structural improvements to your schools or just listen to the accomplishments of your students and educators so I feel closer to my community, the community that I live in. I wish even that we could influence your decisions because they were based on logic and fact and not how you personally feel. Instead, every time I'm here, every time my colleagues are here, we have to hope that you'll hear us when we say these policies will cause harm. All of this, while we are actively being harmed by the way you talk about trans people in this room. And it's become clear over the years

036that your purpose as a board of education has changed. Instead of stewarding the district's finances, you're voting on policies that will cause costly lawsuits. Instead of overseeing district infrastructure, you are banning students from using that infrastructure in a safe way. Instead of hearing the voices of your students, parents, families, and community, you've made up your minds before we even have the chance to speak. I urge you to remember what your role is. You are not medical experts. You are not sociologists. And as a nonpartisan body of public servants, you're not even politicians. You are a board of education. Your own purpose statement says you are a unified team of elective leaders providing effective governance. Please tell me is that what you're doing tonight? If there is even a shadow of doubt in your mind that

037this is not right for D11, vote no on these policies tonight. We've brought a gift for each of you that we will be uh giving over there. Um it is a copy of Gender-Inclusive Schools by Dave Edwards. This is a gift. It is a homework assignment. It's a summer reading program. Whatever you want to call it. Please, before you propose any more policies about trans students, read that book. Thank you. Thank you, Angela Reer. Thank you. Good evening, members of the board. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. My name is Angie Reer. My pronouns are she, her, and I'm the executive director of Inside Out Youth Services. I want to start by addressing what I heard from two of you just a week ago. Dr. Milakham, Hugh said, "Bullying is not allowed on

038any one of our campuses and every child is welcome." But what this policy JBA actually says is every child is welcome as long as they conform to the gender they were assigned at birth. That is not inclusion. That is exclusion disguised as protection. Policy JBA is not neutral. It institutionalizes harassment. It bans trans girls from girls teams, locker rooms, and travel accommodations. It forcibly outs them, denies their identity, and paints them as threats. This policy would also punish cisgender girls who don't conform to stereotypical gender norms. A girl with short hair or a masculine presentation could be questioned or barred from her own team. This isn't safety. This is gender policing. This is gender harassment. Dr. Director Bakus, you said this policy allows for individual consideration, but the language tells a different story. It states,

039"Athletic teams shall not be open to participation by biologically male students. No biological male student shall enter a locker room designated as a female. No biological male student shall be lodged with a team designated as female. These are categorial bans. There is no process for case-byase assessment. No room for nuance, no appeal. This policy treats all students outside a narrow biological binary as identical threats. It erases trans and interex youth and opens the door for anyone who doesn't look right to be surveiled and excluded. A truly fair and safe policy would be rooted in equity, evidence, and dignity, not fear. It would allow for individualized review. Policy JBA does none of this. Knowing this, ask yourselves, Dr. Mil Pacham and Director Beccus, what is your measure of truth? You state zero tolerance for bullying and

040you tout wanting individual considerations. However, your support of this policy does neither. There is no urgency to this policy. You can wait. You can be better. If you want to be considered in the future as illustrious, then make illustrious decisions. Uphold human dignity. Model courageous leadership. align with the right side of history. Signal allyship. Vote no on policy JBA. Vote in opposition to this policy, not because it's easy, but because it's right. And right now, that's exactly what young people in this community need to see. Thank you. Thank you, Jeffrey Yokam. Yeah. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Jeffrey Jawham and I want to provide some facts to the school board that directly relate to the proposed policies JBA and IMD. The Trevor Project's 2024 US National Survey on the mental health of LGBTQ

041plus young people shows some alarming data that uh regarding the mental health of LGBTQ plus kids and schools that implement harmful school policies directly targeting them like the two that we're talking about tonight. Schools that implement at least one of these policies see a 27% rise in the verbal harassment of these students due to their identity. There is a 63% rise of these students being physically attacked due to their identity, a 32% rise in in unwanted sexual contact, a 50% rise of these students being disciplined for fighting back against bullies, and a 120% rise in these students leaving school due to their mistreatment. The stats get worse as more and more anti-LGBTQ plus policies get implemented. This district has already passed two this year. There are two more being voted on tonight. Knowing this, what

042is gained with these policies? Who does it help? As far as I can tell, these policies help no one. There are zero trans students trying to compete in women's sports. From what I've learned, there are zero students who are negatively impacted by seeing a pride flag or sticker on a locker or a teacher's desk. So, what is the point? Well, the point is to send a message to tell trans and gender expansive students that they are on notice. That any trans student entering a locker room of their gender must be doing so for some sort of nefarious reason. That any trans student wishing to compete in sports of their gender must be because they wish to gain some sort of unfair advantage. And by banning pride flags is to make sure these students feel even

043more isolated than they already do. Last week, it was stated that it is this school board's position that there is zero tolerance towards bullying of any student for any reason. Well, actions speak louder than words. These policies are the very definition of bullying to bully some of the most dis stigmatized kids in the district. And what's worse, this is coming from adults in positions of authority in these students' schools. What kind of message does that send to other kids? I implore you all to reflect on the harm these policies will do. Reverse course for the sake of these children's well-being and vote against these policies. Thank you. Thank you. Mia means. Okay. I don't see Mia up here. Olivia Compton. Thank you members of the board. My name is Dr. Olivia Compton and I am

044a board member at Inside Out Youth Services and I am also a social scientist. I emailed my comments earlier today and got a response from Miss Hathley. So I would like to respond to her response. She says in quote, "The purpose of policy JBA is not to demean or erase any student. You repeatedly misgender trans girls and trans boys and you completely erase the very real effects of testosterone and estradiol reducing everyone to unobservable chromosomes. You also claim the policy is centered on preserving fairness and safety in competitive athletics, particularly in sex segregated sports. You are literally requiring sis girls to compete against trans boys who are going to be experiencing the effects of male puberty. So, you are introducing fairness and safety concerns through this policy. You also claim we understand that the topic

045of transgender participation in athletics is d deeply personal and complex and we do not take these decisions lightly. If it is so complex then why not leave it up to individual sporting bodies who have the subject area expertise rather than instituting a binary policy. You also say, "We also acknowledge the frustration and pain voiced by members of the community who feel unseen or excluded. That is never the intent and remain committed to ensuring all students are treated with dignity and respect. You routinely disrespect and demean trans and non-binary students. The unspoken assumption underlying policies like JBA is that trans students should not exist that they are a figment of this cultural moment. It's the humanizing. We have been here for millennia and we will be here after you are gone. Finally, you say open dialogue

046and differing perspectives are an important part of the democratic process and every voice whether whether in agreement or in dissent deserves to be heard. Three of you have PhDs. If you learned anything from getting your PhD, you would not pass this policy because this policy is built on fallacies. I'm embarrassed to share the title of doctor with you. Thank you, Joseph Shelton. I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully perform the duties of the office of school district director of Colorado Springs School District 11 in the county of El Paso to the best of my ability. I do solemnly swear that I will hold in strict confidence privilege information and confidential information will carefully keep and preserve all records, books and other property of the said district. Mr. Is this relevant to policy? It is.

047Okay. Uh property of said district that may come into my hands and deliver the same to my lawful successor in office that I will support the Constitution of the United States, the Constitution of the State of Colorado, and the laws made pursuance thereof. I'm sure you recognize these words, at least I hope you do, as these are the oaths to office upon which each of you took when you were sworn into your positions. That final sentence, I will support the Constitution of the United States, the Constitution of the State of Colorado, and the laws made pursuance thereof, is not a suggestion. It is not optional. It is a binding commitment you made publicly and with honor. Yet tonight, you are voting on two policies, policy IMD and JBA, that clearly and dangerously undermine that very

048oath. policy IMD violates a student's first amendment rights as affirmed in Tinker versus De Moine. The Supreme Court made it clear students do not shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate. Policy JBA goes even further violating title 9 of the education amendments of 1972, the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment and the president set in Grim v. Glaucaster County School Board. It also runs directly counter to the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act. To vote in favor of these policies is not simply a bad decision. It is a willful violation of your sworn duty. And worse, some of you acknowledge that these policies are likely illegal. That admission turns this from a policy debate into a breach of legal and ethical responsibility. Let me be very clear. This is not

049a threat. It is a statement of consequence. If you cast a vote tonight to pass these policies, you will be breaking the law and betraying your oath. And we, the community, the parents, the voters will respond. If you choose to ignore your duty to uphold the Constitution, we will hold you accountable at the ballot box through recall if necessary through every legal and democratic avenue available. Starting with you, Jason. This is a moment to test. This is not a moment to test your limits of power. This is a moment to remember why you were elected. to serve, to protect, and to uphold the rights of every student in this district. The choice is yours, but the consequences are ours to deliver. Before I end, I just want to make it clear that I find it

050ironic that this is the first board years ago who was taking part in a pride parade in the state of Colorado, and now you're turning away from the LGBTQ plus community. Thank you, Michael David. He's not here. Okay, thank you. Elanor Skelton. Hello again. My name is Eleanor Skelton and I have taught secondary English and journalism in both Texas and Colorado for the last five years. I just finished teaching 8th grade English in Harrison School District 2. I am here again to ask you not to vote for policies JBA and IMD, which will affect both trans and LGBT students and staff and will have a chilling effect on freedom of speech in your school district. About a week after the 2024 election, several of my eighth grade students at Panorama Middle School asked me if

051our next president was going to make it illegal to be gay. Those students also all told me they are under the LGBT umbrella. Two of them, both trans, sought my help when dealing with targeted bullying and discriminatory behavior from their classmates. Please consider the harm that you will do to students in your school district if you pass policies JBD and IMD. Last week, I mentioned that I'm concerned that a policy only allowing the United States and Colorado flags in the classroom with the intention of banning rainbow pride flags would limit freedom of speech and expression and does not allow for nuance. I understand that certain flags can be controversial. A social studies teacher needs to be sensitive when teaching about the history of flags that became hate symbols. Some social studies teachers at the school

052where I previously taught in Texas put Trump science in their classroom and said that it was part of history. Although this made many students in their classroom feel unsafe. Other flags like don't tread on me had one meaning during the American Revolution but is now associated with the alt-right. Those should not be a permanent classroom decoration but history still needs to be taught and deserves to be taught so that we do not repeat it. geography teachers that I taught beside in Texas hung up strings full of flags from around the world all over their classroom which made our students born in other countries feel welcome. This would also not be allowed under the proposed policy. There are two court decisions that every journalism teacher knows. The Supreme Court's 1969 ruling, Tinker versus De Moine, solidified

053students rights to free speech in public schools when a 13-year-old middle school student and her friends wore black armbbrands to protest the Vietnam War. Another Supreme Court decision, Hazel Ward versus Koulmier, said that administrators could exercise editorial control if the speech constitutes a legitimate disruption to the educational environment. I am concerned that banning pride flags in teacher classrooms would lead to banning student use of pride flags which would directly suppress freedom of speech. Thank you for hearing me. Thank you Stacy. And you're going to be talking about the flag policy. Hi, my name is Stacy Adair. I'm a teacher in district 11 and I'm here tonight to thank you for the flag policy. As an ESL teacher, I do have decorative flags. Um, but I've seen that we need to keep politics out of the

054classroom. And so, I understand and I'm not upset about not having those up. I uh thank you for standing up to protect girls safety and privacy. And I really appreciate you taking a stand and standing up for the right things in this day and age. I know it's not easy. And I just also want to say I represent a group, a large group of teachers who agree with me. I also represent a large amount of your community that appreciates what you're doing tonight and they are watching. They are thinking of you. They are texting me. And although they're not here in mass, you are not alone. and we appreciate what you're doing. So, thank you so much. Thank you, Sharon Tonsen. You're talking about policy JBA. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Sharon McDonald

055Tonsen. I was born in Colorado Springs. My parents were born in Colorado Springs. We are all products of district 11 schools. My daughter is also a product of district 11 schools. I was a teacher in district 11 for 32 years. I am here tonight to speak on JBA because of the experiences that my family has being the other. My uncle Jean McDonald was a member of the Colorado Springs High School band. He was not allowed to go on a trip to Chicago because he was black and there was no place for him to stay. He missed out on that opportunity. My father also was on the track team at uh Colorado Springs High School and could not travel because he was black the other. So, I am here to say that any policy that you

056would pass tonight that keeps students from reaching the peak experience because they are not allowed to experience their high school completely and everything that they want to do is not available to them is a big mistake. And like Kendrick Lamar said, is it because they not like us? That's the way I was made to feel most of my uh school time, that I was not like the rest of the kids. And I don't agree with you making a decision that makes any student feel like they're not like us. And so they are denied the opportunities to do what it is they need to do. I am not trans. I don't have a trans student, but I am a teacher. I am a person who grew up in this city and I do not want us

057going back and that makes me think we're going backwards. I can't put a Junth uh flag in my classroom either. That's going backwards. Everybody should be allowed to be who they are and not be afraid to talk about their experiences. So, please don't go take us backwards. Every student in this district in order to have this peak experience needs to be able to have every experience available to every single student. Thank you. Izzy Nunes. Izzy Nunes. You're talking about the policies again. Thank you everyone. Um, my name is Izzy. I was a D11 student when I was young. Um, I think the people who are here in mass are really important. I'm so grateful for the other D11 community members who have stepped up today in support of queer and and trans trans children. um

058these people are the heart of your district, not the performative political displays like these two policies that we're talking about. Um I think it takes a special kind of hatred to ban a rainbow flag in a classroom, especially in Colorado Springs. Um yeah, after the Club Q shooting, I think seeing pride flags in our public spaces, in our streets, um that and even now in Pride Month, that is a crucial, really crucial sign for young queer people like myself and like even younger children, um to know that somebody cares about us and somebody believes that we deserve to live. Um, so this these policies are really wanting to take that last bit of hope away from the most vulnerable group of people, which is children. Um, I don't know why I have to spell this

059out, but a a pride flag does not mean that you have to be gay. It says, "I value your existence. You deserve to be alive and to be whoever you turn out to be." Um, people will continue to be queer and trans from now until the end of time. Um, we will not be going extinct. But for kids in our classrooms, this is still a matter of life and death. Um, too many young people in our city and in our nation have suffered and have died from being in institutions that tell them their identity does not exist. You have the opportunity today to prevent some of that suffering by rejecting this these two very hateful and unnecessary policies. Um, I've heard a really sad impression from people before me that many of you have like

060already made up your minds entirely about this issue. Um, I have to say this is my first my first schoolboard meeting and I hope that that's not the case, right? I really really ask and implore each of you to put defensiveness aside and when you go home and when you go away from this meeting, turn off the TV and get off the Facebook and go and look a young queer person in the eye. Um, I would hope that you might see our humanity and see that you have an opportunity to make a decision out of care and understanding, not hate and fear-mongering. Please vote no on IMD and JBA. Thank you, Devin Chatron. Hi, just one minute. Okay. Okay. So, I'd like to start off by saying I want justice for Jax and Jonathan. Um,

061we're going to start with that because policies like these lead to those situations, unjustified murders. Um, so hello, my name is Devin Chetron. I'm 24 and I am the class of 2019 from D11 school board or from a D11 school and I'm a college student. Um, this policy could easily be used to bully kids, including kids that aren't trans. Um, do you guys really think that kids won't take advantage of this policy to go and claim that kids that they hate are trans, to get them attacked by teachers, harassed, and have them kicked off of sports teams? Do you really think that that's not going to happen? Let's be honest here. It will see, Mr. H or Miss Halfley, excuse me. Um, you've been working with Moms for Liberty. that's been classified a hate organization

062by the Southern Poverty Lost uh Center. So, how are you working with trans kids? How are you supporting us? How are you supporting anybody that's queer? You're not. You've already got your mind made up. You're just putting on a performative show for everyone to make it seem like you care. Jorgensson, resign. You've shown us all that you're not caring for all D11 students. You were called out by local news stations like KOAA and KRDO for your transmisic views three years ago. These policies show that you didn't learn from that situation. You don't care. None of you do. If you did, you would show it by voting no on this. Both of them. I'd like to show point out how Mr. Parth just pointed out that these are anti-trans and anti-quer policies. When the other person

063came up, he mentioned that. He said that verbatim. That's what this is. He said the quiet part out loud. All of us know what this is. Lastly, the timing of this is clear. This shows Jorgensson's hate for queer people. He didn't learn. He didn't care about anything. He doesn't. Neither do you people if you vote yes on this. Students and staff, please, for God's sake, defy this. draw flags on stuff. They cannot tell you no if they vote yes on this. Wear clothes that are pride related. You don't have to follow this at all. You have the power in the schools to defy all of this. Teachers, do not follow the name change policy that these members approved. It's illegal. So is the ban on kids going to the bathroom in the right restroom. So

064is the ban on kids going and staying in their friends rooms with them. Trans girls are girls, trans boys or boys, deal with it. Also, I want to point this out with my last few seconds. You guys don't even understand basic biology. I'm a medical assistant. I went to school for it. There's not XXXY. There are so many other ones. Go look up people with ooot testes and tell them that they're not human because that's what you're saying. Thank you. Um, the last public comment, Reverend Ron Feres, good evening. Thanks for hearing all these folks offer their testimony to you. I hope you're taking it to heart. I'm here out of a sense of love and a duty to justice, a love of freedom, fairness, and unconditional compassion. Also, I'm here because my kid insisted

065that I come speak to you out of reasons that should not need to be as discreet as they are given the threat that IMD policy presents. Pride flags are uncomplicated. They are resolute and uncompro uncompromising in their declaration of freedom and compassion and safety and joy. They harm no one and they save many particularly marginalized people. It feels good to feel safe. You all feel safe right now. That enables you to do your job to the best of your ability. When you don't feel safe, that becomes compromised. And that's just the first loss. My tradition, I'm a Unitarian Universalist minister. My tradition, and not just my tradition, saves lives because we are welcoming and celebratory of all that the pride flag represents. But saving lives should not be limited to religious institutions. Schools save lives.

066But this proposed policy actually puts lives at risk. And as I said, it's difficult to learn under threat. And I think your job is to fment a uh or or or create conditions beneficial to learning. Right? So I don't mean to make you feel threatened. I want you to feel loved here. And I want my kids and all kids to feel loved where they are, where they perform their work at school. So you have in your hands harm or help. That seems like a pretty easy and clear distinction. So, thank you for your time and your consideration, your work, and please vote with love. Thank you. So, that's the end of public comments. We were able to get through all the people that signed up for public comments and thank you for being here again

067this evening and sharing your thoughts. The board appreciates your feedback. And if you checked the box asking for a district administration, somebody from the district to contact you, uh there will be followup and they will contact you. Moving on to the next item on the agenda. It is the superintendent report. Uh superintendent G, I'm going to turn it over to you. Uh thank community. Want to owe the board an update on our middle school plan for next year. I have area superintendent Darren Joiner who's going to come forward comes forward. Darren will go through it. We'll take a couple of questions. Uh we have a lot of work to do to operationalize this next year. Um the piece that you'll hear that we didn't really communicate well on the slide is we will be starting

068the year with very clear communications to our families on what our expectations are going to be for our children at middle school and their experience. We have seen a great passivity in the system. Uh many of the rhetorical data points that we collected were students and family members acknowledging that a grade didn't matter because a student would just automatically progress to high school. And that's really what we're trying to solve. Uh we'll go can you go to the next slide for Aaron? Just hit it right for him to that area superintendent Joiner. One slide too fast. There they all go. All right. Good evening board. Thank you for your time. This is a continuation of our conversation in a previous work session. And since that time, uh, I've met with Vice President Hayley and Director

069Kerry along with middle school principles, uh, specifically, uh, Stephanie Leisure from North. What's that? Thank you for acknowledging Stephanie for Oh, yes, you bet. And Ray Cochrell from Swigert Middle School. Um, and they've helped us to uh, get feedback on our standard operating procedures. You heard the superintendent mention that we will have a clear communication plan about detailing exactly uh what we are looking to do with the middle school accountability system. We currently have a third of our students uh roughly with an SGP a student growth percentile of 35 or less in ELA and math. That is our why. The mission is very clear which is to reduce the number of students earning failing grades in core subjects and increase overall academic achievement. This will be done through earlier and strategic interventions, personalized supports, and

070a stronger and more frequent partnership with all of our families. We've met with education insights on the metric tool that our schools will use to catch students up uh and and wrap supports around them each mid-carter and end of quarter cycle for the accountability system. So this will then trigger a response from the school to wrap supports around the students such as goal planning, weekly staff check-ins with those students and family communication to make them aware of the plan and the progress of those interventions. This will also have area superintendent oversight to ensure accountability and consistency for the system being implemented. We do appreciate the insights from directors Hafley and Carrie that came from our conversation. Ideas around a principal sharing master schedule suggestions, increased parent communication, and the need for more common formative assessments

071to master or excuse me to measure mastery of standards came out of that meeting. One of the main ideas coming from the accountability system is the idea of a middle school academy for students who remain in the accountability system for an entire school year. This will be built out for implementation during the 2627 school year. We'll be working on that uh with a group of folks throughout this upcoming school year. The middle school academy would be used as an intensive learning environment with develop or with tight structures, mental health support, and a focus on executive functioning development with the goal of sending students back to their previous school once on track. The first step of building out the middle school academy is intervening sooner for students when they show that they need support. We will

072also update student handbooks at the beginning of the school year and clearly communicate that to our families and to our students and staff um to make sure that everyone understands what we're trying to do. Questions from the board. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for um and I do have some comments or questions from the board. Uh Director Kerry, you're up first. You and I have talked about this before, so I'll just be very brief. Just be careful with the phrasing of the goal. Reducing the number of students earning failing grades. There are some very easy ways to do that that do not accomplish the mission. And having grades as a key indicator becomes less useful in a world where we saw this in our data update earlier this year. We don't have confidence

073that grades correlate to measures of achievement. You and I have talked about this. I know you're tracking that. Just wanted to re-emphasize. Thank you. Thank you. Dr. Bankers. Um my question is will the middle school academy take the place of AVID? Will it be uh supplemental? Will a child enrolled in the AVID program automatically not be eligible for the academy? How does it work with other supports that we have in place? Yeah, that's the work of the team that we need to put together throughout the ne upcoming school year. Um, is it an academy that is housed at each middle school? Is it an academy, one east side, one west side, or is it one per area? And then what does that staffing model look like? What does the programming look like? So, those are

074all questions that we uh will be using this upcoming school year to work on. You have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do. Thank you. Okay. And there's also a need for discernment between the reason and the successes at Tesla Middle School and is that part of the solution or is it a standalone and does it have a separate service? Uh so we're reviewing that data right now. Tesla Middle School has most often been a place where students with behavioral challenges have landed. uh but we do see that there can often be a direct correlation between a lack of academic achievement and associated behavioral issues whether which one leads or manifests the other is some of the data that we're trying to discover uh and uncover particularly on

075the early indicators and particularly to the and you get an F now we're watching and so the the passivity piece that has existed for some time will immediately stop in this first quarter of this first semester when we turn. Um, but we also know that we're likely to be overwhelmed by some of that data because the as we track the number of FS, if there is a direct correlation to that being a lack of learning objective met, um, they can be a lot larger than I think any system is really willing to recognize. So, um, that is a noted point from Dr. Kerry and a point of interest for us going forward. Dr. Nelson, can you repeat the statistic you shared at the beginning about a third of the middle schoolers in their MGP? Yeah,

076and it's roughly but the exact number 34% of uh students right now in district 11 middle schools have an uh student growth percentile of 35 or below which is not on track. And 38% of students in math have a student growth percentile of 35 or below. Okay. And 50 would be their um on track for where they need to be learning to maintain grade level proficiency. That's correct. 50 uh SGP, right? Student growth percentile uh is the minimum standard that we're we're shooting for for all of our students. So, a third of our students are well below where they need to be for just growing at the level they need to maintain being on grade level. They're not on track for growth uh for for the standard that we have in our system. Okay. Um

077just let us know how we can support you in this work and thank you for the team taking this on. It's really important that we set all of the students up for success because we hear stories such as the students um entering Mitchell High School or more like a fifth or sixth grade level academically when they come into nth grade. And so um we just need to figure out how we can get them on track. So thank you and let us know we can support. You bet. and we'll be providing an update um by the uh October break to where the original data that we see in that first uh month and a half of school. Great. Thank you. One thing I was going to mention is that word accountability isn't just for students. That's

078for the adults in the system, myself included, at our area superintendent level, right? We have a duty to respond for our students. Yeah. Um I remember when you presented initially there being conversation around there not being standards of grading and that is that going to be a part of this work looking at how we can standardize grading across our classrooms and then across the district. It is that conversation has already been initiated with our middle school principles group. We are looking to bring uh together a collection of teachers for math and ELA as a starting point. great to talk about how do we standardize our grading practices across our system. Yeah, I think that will um help just in putting more definition to the expectations we have of our teachers and then for our students

079to also know that when I walk into this classroom, the expectations are the same as when I walk into that classroom. So, um that's only fair. All right. Thank you. We're going to use it as a criteria. We need to make sure that it's a metric that means something, right? Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. director. Thank you. I was curious an F in math or ELA and how many students if we were to institute this today, how many would that have been in the fourth quarter for example? If you know I I do know uh the answer is in one school we had 80 students who had an F in both math and ELA. So I don't have the or data but I do have the and data. And then in every 80 80 80 y

080for one of our schools and all of our other schools um it was 48 students or less had a an F in math and ELA for fourth quarter. Thank you for asking a question I know the answer to. Sure. Well, then the followup even as I was contemplating that I mean the next question in a way because we have the percentages you take an F in math or ELA low growth on STAR assessments star proficiency below expectations. How many students are we talking about? Yeah, that number grows into the couple hundred students possibly per school. This is also where this is also why the need to intervene sooner though comes into play where we can't wait until the end of a quarter and that's why we're working with our ed insights office to get those

081reports at midquarter quarter midquarter quarter and have that cadence throughout the year. If you think about that those are eight checkpoints then throughout the year. Another point worth noting is that we don't have to wait for midquarter to start this system with our uh upcoming seventh and eighth grade students as we have that data from their sixth grade year last year. So will we do anything next fall then? I mean that's that's phase one, sorry, is next fall. Uh this upcoming fall is where we're going to start uh implementing the actual middle school accountability system with the weekly check-ins, smart goals u and the family communication. Okay. Yeah, we don't have to wait for that. The middle school academy is a different piece uh for students who are not showing that they're responding to the

082the interventions that we put in place. So fa phase one is individual school-based response based upon the data of which we will report. Here are the number of children. Here is what that is happening in both advisory and/or before and after school opportunities as well as pullouts were appropriate. And then the middle school academy on those where students have not been responsive at the individual school level. We do by policy have the right to tell uh folks where the best school solution is for their child. Um the challenge that we're having right now is what does that look like? Because there are lots of obstacles for families. our city is much bigger than are the means for people to transport across it. Uh and so the idea of now is it one middle school per

083region because that is easily doable within our own transportation system or is it a north south east west we're we're contemplating that. I I think the real challenge is the size of the data is is going to be the place that is going to drive a lot of that. Again, the the hope of course is that the earlier we intervene and identify and get the right supports in place that students families will be responsive to that. However, time has proven over many decades that I don't think there have ever been bad interventions or bad MTSS's. But NWA data is flat across our country regardless of strategy to date. And so I I don't expect this to be a quick fix. I think this is a much longer conversation that will be really rooted mostly in

084Dr. K's initial statement which is how do we match our grades to our learning standards even much earlier than middle school which is where we really get to this first idea of ABC D and andor F. But you know we have to be more accountable to the data that the state reports upon learning for us to understand what does on track mean and what are our interventions when we are not on track. Okay. Thank you. I I think the numbers are concerning. I can see where the investment up front is going to be much more important. to director Nelson's comment about resources um there I'm sure there will be a demand but the earlier the investment obviously to your point transportation um and making space in another school it seems like the way to go.

085So thanks for the report. Thank you. We will continue to innovate to provide uh the opportunity to support our students. Thank you. Any further comments or questions from the board at this time? I don't see any at this time. Superintendent Gaul. Um this is something the board has uh undertaken as a clear initiative. Um the current proficiency levels at middle school whatever standard that we are using to evaluate is unacceptable. um our student proficiency rate rates. Uh the board has said that we want to clearly draw a line in the sand uh to ensure our students are not falling behind and as they enter high school if they're falling further and further behind that contributes to dropout rate and lack of graduation uh the graduation rates falling as well. So we look forward to the

086updates that you bring to the board in the fall and let us know how the board can support in this uh initiative. Um uh part of it is communicating the I expectations to the students right up front. Uh right now knowing that there are no accountability standards to hold them accountable. Most of them know that they can get an F and still move on to the next grade and that's kind of what is unacceptable. So there is no student engagement at the classroom level at the middle school. So that's what we would like to see change. Thank you. And then uh just to close the uh evaluation and I am proud and humbled to continue to serve the board in this capacity. So thank you. Okay. Thank you. Jenkins update. Uh this is the last

087board meeting, but everything at Jenkins is going as expected on the timeline. Yes, sir. Okay. Thank you. Moving on to the action agenda items. Um contract award, charter school contract with Colorado Military Academy for a 5-year term. Dr. Kerry, can you please make the motion for action item D1? Uh, yes. I move that the board of education approves resolution 2025-48, thus approving contract C 2026-000010 to approve the Colorado Military Academy as a district authorized charter school. The contract performance will commence on July 1st, 2025 and has a 5-year term ending on June 30th, 2030, subject to any earned contract extensions through the annual performance report process in accordance with policy LBD. Second. Okay, moved and seconded. Um, the board approved the Colorado Colorado Military Academy Charter School transfer application during the regular board meeting on

088May 7th, 2025. Uh, Superintendent Gaul, what new information do you have for the board to consider at this time? Uh, I have no new information, but I wish the two recent graduates from CMA on their way to Annapolis and the Air Force Academy the best of luck in the next 10 days before they go. Okay. So, um, that was a comprehensive review of the charter school transfer application by the board in earlier work sessions and board meetings. We also got the district accountability committee uh feedback previously. Um this is just finalizing the um finalizing the contract with the CMA Charter School. Uh board members, before I call for a vote, uh any questions or comments on this item? Seeing none, roll call, please. Director Davis. Hi. Director Kerry. Hi. Director Hley. Hi. Director Jordansson. I.

089Director. I. Director Nelson. I. Director. I I the Sabbath contract for a 5-year term has been approved. Uh, and the board wishes the very best to CMH Charter School. The next item on the agenda is the JSD workers compensation pool. Dr. Rod, can you please make the motion for action item B? I move that the board of education approves the agreement between Colorado Springs School District 11 and the joint school district workers compensation self- insurance pool JSD pool to join the pool effective July 1st 2025. Second moved and seconded and this information was presented to the board during the regular meeting of the board last Wednesday. Uh superintendent call any additional information? We have nothing new. Okay. Um, again, this was discussed last week and questions were asked by the board when it came as

090a non- action item. Um, comments or questions from the board at this time? Seeing none, roll call, please. Director Bus, I, Director Kerry, I. Director Hasley, I. Director Jorgensson, I director Malpacam. I Director Nelson I Director I I the eyes have it. The motion has been approved. Uh the next item on the agenda is district property insurance policy renewal. Director Hayley, can you please make the motion for action item D3? I can. I move that the board of education approves the renewal of the district's property insurance policy with federal insurance company. You want me to read the parenthesis? CH U B C H U BB for the period of July 1, 2025 through June 30, 2026. Second. Moved and seconded. Uh again, this information was presented during the board meeting uh last week. Uh superintendent

091Gaul, any additional information? No, thank you. Okay, board. Uh, any additional comments or questions before roll call? Seeing none, roll call, please. Director Bis, I. Director Kerry, I. Director Beley, I. Director Jorgensson, I. Director Malpek, I. Director Nelson, I. Director I I the eyes have that the motion has been approved. Uh moving on to the next item on the agenda which is policy IMD. Director Nelson, can you please make the motion for action item D4? I move that the board of education adopts the revised policy IMD observances school ceremonies and display of flags. Second. Okay. Sorry. Thank you. Uh moved and seconded. Um this information was presented to the board um uh last week as a non-action item, but we've also had a work session discussion. Uh Superintendent Gaul, uh any additional updates at this

092time? No. Okay. Uh Dr. X is here as well. um comments from the board or questions and I have director art first. Director, thank you uh for both this and policy JVA. I want to say thank you to everyone who stood up and spoke today about the two policies. Um this particular policy, well, I appreciate the comment that Pride flags save people. I I I think that's probably accurate, especially for students who may not be accepted at home. This policy I completely disagree with. I don't think it helps anyone. That comment was also made. Um and even in our academic circles, teachers are now going to have to get permission to have flags like Junth was mentioned. Um join or die flags that was mentioned to me today. um they're going to have to go

093out of their way. They're gonna it's gonna create more red tape, if you will, for our teachers and our administration. Um but I'm guessing it will pass. Sorry, everyone. And to that again, I will repeat my comment from last time. Bring on the bunting. Wear the flags. Wear your rainbow items. Wear your pink, white, and blue items. Um students are not restricted. Have rainbows on every every thing you want. Um there was a young lady wearing ge guaotine earrings here this evening I learned and I have to say um that is kind of amusing. So re you can resist this policy to the comments that were made. bring it on. And um if that makes someone uncomfortable, I I think they can ask what the rainbows mean and the answer is going to be acceptance

094and love and caring and love is greater than hate. I'll leave it at that. Thanks. Okay. And I I will address some of the things that you brought up, Director, but I'll go to Director Bankers first. Dr. Banks, I want to thank the um clarity that this um policy puts forward and I also want to thank the recognition of our uh country as the flag that is going to be flown. It is within this country in the confines of the opportunity for the representative democracy in which we all live that we can have varying opinions and those opinions can be freely expressed expressed within context. I think I also was very concerned when this initially came up as a conversation um about milit flags that represented the branches of the military and u I want

095to say that we are a military family. My husband was prior marine then an air force. My son is navy. My daughter-in-law is Navy and um I regret the day when u they allowed women into pilot training at I think the cuto off age was 27 and I was 28. So there was no way. Um I think that when we provide for our students a neutral um teaching environment that allows free discussion then we are embodying those principles that this country was based on. I also think that with recognition of the service that our military community provides for our freedoms for which we speak and I've lived through my share of wars. I'm grateful that my family came back sound of body and mind. It is a commitment. It is necessary for us to be

096able to have the opinions that have been expressed today and all through the tenure that I've had on this school board. So to work Mr. X and Dr. X and committee that you you put together in order to provide for the guidelines that we are voting on tonight, I thank you. I thank them for all the time and effort that they put into it. And I appreciate the fact that we recognize that this is the country in which we live. And it is with the opportunity that we have here to be able to express ourselves freely as we have here as we have on the uh as we have on uh the street corner as well as in other public forums. So thank you again. Any other uh I see director Jurgensson your hand is

097up. Director Jurgensson. Yes, thank you. Just to um kind of summarize after a couple weeks of comments, this policy is directed at our district properties. It's not directed at um personal appearance or effects. It's again in aligning with our partnership on parents and our policy AKB and our goals to have neutral and effective learning environments. So, I just wanted to make sure that we iterated that uh and that I was clear on that as we were voting on this policy tonight. Okay. Thank you, Director Jorgensson. That was um I don't Oh, Director Nelson. Yeah, I will be voting in support of this policy. for all students to feel welcome in our schools, we must maintain neutrality on district property for our students to learn. So, sort of echoing what Director Jorgensson just shared, that's the

098purpose behind all of this. Okay. Um, thank you. And, uh, uh, I will echo, uh, what Director Art said at the very beginning, uh, about thanking all the people that showed up today to share your comments with the board. uh we have received several emails on this subject matter as well. Uh part of the democ democratic process is for people to speak up and share their thoughts. So u thank you uh for all that engaged on that topic. Uh uh board policies are adopted by the majority of the board and um the policies have to be abided by in our school property as it is written. If pol if there is going to be um violation of the policies that's what the superintendent is there for to operational operationalize those policies and ensure compliance with

099policy. So um as long as you abide by the um wording in the policy then uh I would be cautious um to students and staff members who are going to intentionally violate this policy. Um and this was another subject matter that uh or this was reiterating what director Jurgensson said. Uh policy AKB was adopted which is the parent partnership policy was adopted um um in uh uh a year or so back. And when that policy was adopted, there is a a verdict in there. The board and the district will provide impartial learning environment environments free of ideological and political advocacy. Uh that is the um this policy is just abiding by policy AKB and policy AKB was unanimously adopted by this board at that time. So I just want to remind that that was adopted

100unanimously and it also goes on to state that treat every parent and child with dignity, honor and respect and prioritize student safety and security in our school environment. None of that has changed going forth. With that, if there are no further comments, roll call, please. Director Bankis, I. Director Kerry, I. Director Hayley. I Director Jorgensson. I Director Malpath. I. Director Nelson. I. Director I. No. The I7. Uh, the policy JBA has been adopted by the policy a policy IMD. I'm sorry. The policy IMD was adopted by the board as uh presented today. The next item is policy JBA, preserving fairness and safety in sports. Director Bankers, can you please make the motion for action item D5? I move that the board of education adopts policy JBA, protecting fairness and safety in sports. Second. Moved and

101seconded. Uh again, this information has been discussed at the work session and also at the uh board meeting past week. Um um any further updates on this? No. No. Okay. Um opportunity for the board to discuss this and director, you are up first. Thank you. You spoke about policy AKB. Sure. We voted on that. Sure. It was unanimous. These policies, they don't help anyone. They are not respectful of every parent. There are parents who are not here tonight because the parents don't want to out their own children. They cannot stand up for their own children because of the child doesn't want to be outed. The child wants to go by their own pronouns, the proper pronouns. They want to go by the name that they've chosen. Parents are asking for that. We already took away

102a pol or we already you all voted majority that that policy means they have to jump through many hoops rather than just saying please call this kid by this name. And now we are disrespecting parents and students again with this policy. I'm going to repeat some of the things we heard. By the way, majority of emails completely in support of our LGBTQIA2 plus kids and against these policies. One comment, courage of children being themselves. And some of these you're going to hear because you said them. I already mentioned some parents, some kids aren't here because they are trying to be courageous in their own space, but they don't want to be outed. The policy insults women athletes. Absolutely agree with that. It's disrespectful and dehumanizing to trans athletes. It's faulty logic. From one email, this

103policy is not traumainformed. It is not based on clinical research and it is counter to the fundamental rights of students to express themselves based on immutable characteristics central to their identity as human beings. Questions abound. Who will police the children's gender? Children will be outed against their will and against their parents will. So much for those dignity and respect. The policies again I mentioned and was mentioned out here help no one. They're based on fallacies. This policy is frankly illegal. It creates an unwelcoming and unsafe environment for our students. I agree with the people who said that. It's hateful. Absolutely. Thank you for Sharon's comments that we're going back. There are so many similarities here along the race lines, along religion lines. It's creating isolation. And for the students, I'm sorry if you are feeling

104isolated. Remember, we need you and stay with us and there um are organizations out there to help and if you need to, suicide came up tonight. Uh 988 is the suicide and crisis lifeline. So, I hope someone will join me in voting no against this policy. Thank you. Dr. Bankers, I want to thank those folks who have sent um links to uh research material. I want to thank folks who have sent links to conferences and over the last couple of years I have attended conferences through Zoom. I have read the links that you that have been sent to me both um against this kind of a policy and for this kind of a policy. Excuse me. And as um one of the public speakers said tonight, um my comments about accommodating students in school comes

105from the people who are actually in schools who are running or sponsoring the uh sports programs and they have worked it out. But I also think that we need to take advantage of the opportunity to discuss this in public to be able to air our um views on this. And I agree, every one of us here, I think, will agree that we all speak to the basic humanity of folks. And no one wants to see harassment. No one wants to see um someone take what we have said here as hateful speech because I'm not certainly operating from a basis of hate. I'm trying to operate from a basis of what um actually what the information that you've all sent that whether it is uh supporting your ideas here as prescribed from your personal experiences as

106well as research and also from those folks who um have an opposing view. And when I look at all of that, my decision tonight and I will be voting in support is not coming from hate. It is not coming from fear. It is not coming from any of those negatives. I want to be fair. And to be able to be fair, maybe we need to change the conversation to where it is. What are the accommodations? How are we to adapt? How it is that we can recognize the individuality of each person and at the same time respect the individuality and the privacy of other folks. It's a and we've already said it's a complex someone also spoke to this. It's a complex situation. Um there are people who are very learned on the topic and

107again thank you to those folks who have sent the links. Thank you for um sending the opportunity to attend conferences so that you it broadens the opportunity to make a a learned uh decision. I'll stop there. Thank you. Director Hayley. Um, thank you. Uh, first I would like to echo Dr. Banks Bankis' comments. Thank you for that. Uh that being said, the state of Colorado and Colorado High School Activities Association have proactively implemented policies that require discrimination against female student athletes and jeopardize federal funding to our school district as a result of these policies conflicting with Title 9 requirements and the equal protection clause of the United States Constitution. As members of the District 11 Board of Education, it's our responsibility to ensure biological females have access to a safe and fair playing field that

108ensures equal opportunities for women to compete. The discriminary discriminatory policies in place at various levels of governance in co in Colorado have put district 11 in a position where we have no choice but to clearly align our local policies with federal title 9 requirements, the equal protection clause of the US Constitution and to join the ongoing lawsuit initiated by district 49 to protect female student athletes. Thank you. So you do bring up um um another subject matter which um uh the board should direct the superintendent which was uh the lawsuit uh that was fi filed by an adjacent school district. Uh and this was discussed by the board at a earlier work session as well. Um if the board adopts this policy this evening, is the board um uh supportive of um or directing the

109superintendent to uh ensure or to uh join the current lawsuit with district 49. I just need feedback on that. and director art. We have not had any presentation on anything regarding the lawsuit from the administration, what it would cost us, the chances of winning, the cost of participating, and what that would mean for any other program or project in this district. So, I I don't think we are in a position this evening to even begin to discuss that. Okay. Um all we received was the memorandum from legal council that was shared with the board on this subject matter. Um and the lawsuit might have been addressed in that memorandum. Not the cost of the lawsuit, not the um all the information. That is something that uh until we decide to take that step, we will

110not know what the cost is going to be. From my understanding um and director Jurgensson, you can talk to this. I think uh director Jurgensson, your hand is up. You had shared something about this information earlier, Director Jurgensson. Yeah, I'll just provide a a brief overview. Um, so if we move forward with the lawsuit after passing this policy tonight, we will be part of a coalition of districts like D49 and schools that will work together as joint plaintiffs. That the team that is handling this lawsuit is confident that the case is legitimate and that the federal courts will ultimately um agree with our arguments. It may need to get to the 10th Circuit of the Supreme Court though for full clarity really just due to the fact that Colorado has adopted laws that are contrary

111to the traditional and the current federal view on the 14th amendment and title 9. So um it may take us I mean up to two to three years for us to finally see um have full access to um um a resolution on this. But during that time u based on the briefing that Deb Min's got that she shared with us we'll have full access to the litigation team and related assets as this case progresses and then the director a mentioned costs the cost would be um you know to to go that far would be a pretty big chunk as a whole but because there's multiple plaintiffs and districts the the amounts were reasonable is what Deb Menkins was counseledled led on um the ballpark that I received when I pressed Deb a little bit further

112on that was anywhere from 45,000 to 150,000 over the course of 3 years. So that would be our chunk. Um even though it sounds like the the overall cost might be anywhere from half million to a million dollars as a whole. Um, so we would pay a chunk of that based on being one of the multiple plaintiffs in this case to get clarity. Uh, and to really lean on the federal level of law as the contrary state law um is not helping us in our current view with this policy should have passed tonight. Does that help? Yeah. And uh um the other point uh director Jurgensson and elaborate on this. Um by adopting this policy and not joining the lawsuit, it uh potentially subjects the district uh to other lawsuits in state courts. Yeah, it

113could potentially do that. Again, we we're pressing the hand like D49 has started in seeking clarity because there's a juiposition between what state law is saying and what federal law is stating. Uh as director Hafley mentioned, you know, what's going on at the state level uh versus what what has been the tradition and what has been now reaffirmed under the current presidency uh at the federal level. So, this is really just pushing to get clarity on this once and for all because we've got that difference in view points between state and federal levels. Okay. Thank you, Director Mangus. Oh. Um I want to echo what um Director Jorgensson just had mentioned and that is if this should pass this evening uh it puts us in a position where we are crosswise with federal government and

114federal government dollars and the state of Colorado and all that entails. Um, our priorities have been stated and revised over the time that we've all worked together. And it really is about students in the classroom and carrying this forward. Uh, I see no other course of action other than to get the clarity that we need that Dr. uh, Director Jorgensson talked about. Okay. Seeing no further comments, I'm going to call for a roll call first on this uh policy item and then ask if the board is in support of uh directing the superintendent uh to engage uh in joining that lawsuit if the policy passes. Okay. Roll call, please. Director Bis. Hi. Director Kerry. Hi. Director Hayley. Hi. Director Jorgensson. I director Malpachham I director Nelson I director no okay the policy uh uh is

115adopted and now um going back to the initial question which was discussed joining the current lawsuit that is there um is the board supportive of joining the current lawsuit by shows okay by show thumbs oh director I'm sorry no Thank you. I just wanted to state again that we have very little information about this. Yeah, you are focusing this. This does not help with academic achievement. This does not help any of your priorities, our priorities improve student outcomes. You are directing money to a vague lawsuit with very uncertain outcomes. Yes, you can talk about federal dollars. The state funding is where we get most of our funding. And this could put us eventually with this legislature in a possibly precarious situation. So, I suspect I know how this is going to go again, but please

116do not go for this. Thank you. It it just there's no to me there's it doesn't help us. Dr. Bankers. Oh, my thumbs up is that I want the information. You're absolutely right. We don't have enough information. I want more information. I want to know what this means because as you drop the rock into the pond and the ripples start to um go toward the shore, I want to know what those ripples are. So, this is not a confirmation that we are going to sign up for, in my estimation, I'm not voting to sign up to uh go forward with a a lawsuit. What I'm signing up for is I want more information to know if this is the course of action that we should take. Do I have the right idea on what our

117thumbs up is about? Um I think there is a timeline by which we need to join the lawsuit. So the information that you are asking for uh since we do not have any further board meetings before that timeline timeline expires what we are asking for right now is we can provide you that information but the thumbs up right now is to join the lawsuit. Okay. Uh I think there is a um Director Jurgensson. Yeah, I just wanted to um you know I might have lost my train of thought now after that wait time. Let me see if it comes back to me. I apologize everyone. Okay. Um so as far as I know again to answer your question there is a timeline by which we need to join that. Um, and the information that we

118have right now is what Director Jurgensson shared. That would be approximately a $50,000 to $100,000 cost over the period of uh 3 years. Um, Director Jurgensson, you have your hand up again. Yeah, I apologize. Um, so I think that we what we should do is if if the we have the thumbs for moving with the lawsuit that we should look at having access to the legal team, then if we join, we'll have access to that legal team. Uh, and then they can give the briefing on timeline, next steps, all those things. But I believe there is a pretty approaching deadline uh for joining the the lawsuit as one of the multiple multiple plaintiffs that are already on this uh case. So yeah, which is echoes what I said that there is a timeline associated with

119this. So um and we can get the information that you requested director bankers. Um but the decision right now is whether uh the board is interested in joining the lawsuit. Um I don't see any further comments by the board members. So, Dr. Nelson, I I see the dilemma that we are at risk with federal funding. There is a lawsuit that we could potentially join, but yet it feels like some board members, and myself included, don't have all of the information or context of what that really means for the district. I my instinct is to join the lawsuit but recognizing that we we need to be informed in making these sorts of decisions. So how can we move forward and gather the information we need? Is there a pathway for us to as much as I

120don't want to ask for this have another meeting where we can get that information that the fellow board members are requesting um so that we can move forward and potentially join this lawsuit and what is the deadline that we need to make this decision by and is it something that we could even host like a 30 minute online session for us to hear from the individuals that are involved in the current situation to help us make an informed decision. Is is there a possibility to gather more information and before we actually make a decision? Okay. So, uh I have an understanding what is the information that the board requires specifically? Is it just the cost associated with the lawsuit? I I think for my part it's it's the cost and then um hearing from legal

121counsel on the potential impacts or expectations. Um and maybe that that is in the memorandum that I I did not see leading up to this. So if it is, I'll do my due diligence and go look at that. But I'm just recognizing that publicly we have not really gathered this information. Um so so the cost and hearing from the legal council about so I have clarity on it. Could you repeat that please? Thank you. Can you hit me the cost and then um you know director Jorgensson sharing that it could be a three-year process. What what would be expected of our staff to participate? Are there expectations just um what are we signing up for? Okay, that's basically what I'm asking as well. How much staff time is this going to involve? Um, I want

122to know when we talk about their other school districts, what other school districts are they are there? I want to know um something about those school districts and how committed they are in doing what they're doing. Um, and I agree that it could be a Zoom meeting. It doesn't have to be in in person, but to be able to get more information to make a learned decision. Okay. Uh, Director Jurgensson, you have your hand up again. Yeah, just to, um, try to answer a couple of those questions, uh, as somebody who's been talking to some of the legal counsel for this piece, um, we we have a couple weeks, uh, to really have to decide. Uh, and they mentioned that they could come to an executive session very soon. I realize that we don't want

123any more meetings, but um if this is being asked, then by all means, we want to have that clarity and and confidence before we step into this. Uh but we can have the legal counsel of this uh of this lawsuit come and speak to the board. Uh there's no staff commitments that I I'm I'm conversing with the legal counsel via text while you guys are chatting because I'm away, but um yeah, no staff commitments on our on our part. So, we're literally joining the c the lawsuit and then we're letting legal counsel handle all of the um all the processes and and purposes of this uh because we're we're fighting for the policy that we just voted on. So, we voted on a policy and now we're saying we want legal counsel as well as

124other districts that we know and schools at least we know D49, our neighboring district, uh to go out and start getting clarity on this. And we know it's going to take a couple years because it's going to work from local courts, state courts, all the way up to probably the Supreme Court. Uh, and we know that's going to be the process. So, no staff commitments, just uh our portion of uh the share of the cost over the course of the next couple years as we are one of many plaintiffs. So if the board would be willing to have that briefing in a ver virtual meeting or or whatever it might be that you need for clarity but we do have a couple weeks but it the deadline is probably approaching by the end of the

125month for sure. Okay. Thank you for that feedback director Jensson. Um the alternative is if the board adopts this policy as director Hayley said the policy is contrary to current state laws and CHASSA. So that could potentially subject the district to other lawsuits at the state state court's level for which we would have to endure costs as a single plaintiff in that or a single uh person single district um in that matter. So uh either way there is going to be possibly a cost involved. Dr. Ro, thank you. I I think that is very important. I don't I'm not sure I quite understand how us joining a lawsuit shields us from other lawsuits. So that's what you just spoke to. If we're breaking state law, then we are boom, the plaintiffs. And that is more

126money and that is more staff time. And we didn't budget for that. We didn't budget for this proposed lawsuit. There's public relations nightmares involved here that we're spending taxpayer dollars. Yes, some are going to cheer it. I know. But I look around right now and the majority of people in the room are here supporting our queer kids and we're against this policy. I also want to know what the possibilities are for dropping out this if if a new board comes along and says heck no. Are there penalties for us as a a district that would be leaving the lawsuit? What are the agreements? I assume we have to sign a paper. So to again to the comments made up here, there are many unknowns. um are in legal counsel that one board member has been

127having conversations with. If that were me having that individual legal counsel conversation, none of you would be jumping in on this lawsuit. So just realize that you are trusting one person and a lawyer that we haven't been we haven't met, we haven't contracted with for advice. So just and and normally we'd also ask our superintendent if this is how he wants to spend his staff time and energy and and if this would support our improved student outcomes. Okay. just this is a really bad idea. Thank you, Director Rod. Just to clarify, uh Director Jurgensson is not talking to the district's legal council. He's talking to the legal council that is attached with this um lawsuit outside. Right now, we haven't engaged them in any capacity. So uh just to clarify that uh if the board

128wants further information before making this decision then we can arrange a virtual meeting at uh a later point in time next week. Is that the board's uh ask at this time or is the board um so first is the board interested in another virtual meeting uh to discuss this topic at a later point in time. We got to make that decision and move on. We have other items on the agenda today. Director Nelson, I just wanted to clarify that the alternative to scheduling another meeting is us giving thumbs right now and if we were to give thumbs to join the lawsuit right now that that could then could potentially still be gain that information um whether it's through email or an additional meeting. Is that also an option? I think uh yeah um one of

129the questions director Jurgensson already answered apparently there is no staff commitment required from our staff part the only other question is going to be the cost associated with this and the cost would be shared and I don't know if there would be a definitive cost that can be even provided at this time but it is a cost that will be shared by several districts whoever joins that lawsuit but if that's the will of the board we can schedule that okay my for for where I'm currently thinking is um I I would give thumbs to joining at this time with understanding that we would gain more information um that that would come. Yes. Yes. Okay. Going back Okay. Going back then to the original question. Is the board supportive of directing the superintendent to go through

130the appropriate sources, appropriate steps to join the current lawsuit that is in federal law federal courts by show of thumbs. Um, Director Jurgensson. Yes. And that's we have enough thumbs up on this matter. So, we will not have another virtual meeting at this point in time. The board will get the information that you requested pertinent to cost and any other additional information uh uh through an email at this point in time and an update when we reconvene back in August. Thank you. So uh we are at the end of our special meeting. Seeing no further business, if there are no objections, this meeting will adjourn at at 8 7:58 7:58 p.m. Thank you. I'm going to do the [Music] Hey, hey, hey. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] feel. Hey [Music] Hey. Hey. Hey.

131[Music] Heat. Hey, Heat. [Music] Uh, and I'm going to hand it over to Superintendent Gaul right away. Uh, Superintendent Gaul, uh, could you set up this conversation and provide the board an update? Uh, thank you, Dr. Mil Pakam. And as board members make their way over, uh, I'm super excited for this follow-on conversation. Uh, over the course of the last 6 months, uh, District 11 has embarked on really putting our money where our mouth is and our attention to the challenges and the board priorities that you all have made so clear. Uh, I could not be prouder for the work that has come over the last three years in district 11, but we have so much further to go. You heard some of the middle school statistics today. You have seen our end of year

132data. You see even our district SPF still lagging against our near peers of district 2, district 49 and district 20. We are moving with great intentionality, but it has been a multi-year design to get oursel to a team of teams concept where we have more focus and attention on the academic side of the house than we do on I can't hear the boardroom. If you started, we have we just started audio. Hey, there we go. Can you hear it? Thanks. And so, so with that, I'm excited to introduce our these three chiefs, as we like to call them, as is the three wise people. Um, Miss Crystal, Russ Muc, Dr. Fry and Dear Draure uh two of which have been parts of the district for a couple of years now and Crystal uh newly joined.

133I'm going to hand this over to them. This is an update to the board. There is no action here. These are um uh organizational decisions that we have made. But we want the board to understand why we made these decisions and where we are headed with this. But I could not be more excited to get the clarity of what is going to now be the D11 way with a positive vernacular instead of some of the negative connotations that that phrase has brought to bear in the past. These chiefs, before you jump in, I just want to for the record, there are six board members in attendance in person. Director Nelson will join us momentarily. Director Jurgensson is joining us remotely and superintendent call you mentioned to me that at some point in time during this

134work session you will have to step out because of a prior commitment. So but your team is there to lead us through the rest of the conversation. Back to you. Um good evening. Thank you so much for joining us. Um tonight we would just wanted to provide a brief update on the academic um redesign and your name Crystal Rasmmanson. Um I'm chief of curriculum and I um I'm just excited to be here to give you this update. So um one of the reasons we were looking at redesigning is we really um strongly believe that students are our why and we really need them at the focus um of all the work we do. And so we felt by redesigning um it really helps streamline and really puts the focus on students. So another focus area

135we had was align our focus areas with our strategy and our resources. Um and so we ended up on the left you'll see we have three buckets. What we teach, how we teach and who we teach. Um and so our focus is on that content, the teachers and the students. And then how do we align to um our strategy? And so the D11 roadmap is familiar to all of you. You've probably seen it numerous times. Um and one of the things that we were when we were looking at these idea of aligning the three um they really fit into every single one of those five. There's a lot of overlap in all of the areas. Um just to highlight a few um I think you know earlier this year you ended up adopting a K12

136ELA curriculum. One of the I think first time we've ever had a K12 aligned resource. um which is obviously huge as far as just um facilitating text planning but also ensuring rigorous materials. Um and so that's that's one of the things that we are really proud of. Um high quality instruction preK through 14. Um increasing our opportunities for student agency and then providing differentiated instructional coaching um is an area that we are really excited about as well. I could go on about more um but I think it's it's obvious to see how those three kind of fit throughout that road map um as well. So visually this is another way to think about how we have um aligned to our commitment. And so when I look at this I kind of think of the triangle

137as a three-legged stool. And so each of those legs is equally important. And if you lose one of them um it's broken, right? It's not functional. And so much like our strategy um those students contents and and content and teachers um works together really tightly and we align um if we end up focusing on one of those areas or lose them. So for example, if we focus on the how or the what um we really risk disengaged students if we just focus on our students we risk losing rigor and relevance which is important to us as well. And so um really wanting to keep those tight so that students content and teachers work together um believing that learning becomes really powerful when all three of those elements are in alignment and supporting each other. So

138in the academic design we continue to be focused on a team of teams approach. However, we know it's helpful to see um the organization in a little bit more linear format um and to see how all of these teams will be aligned. So many of these departments still will work cross collaborative collaboratively with all three chiefs. And so again, I'm Dr. Carol Fry. I'm the chief of instruction. Um, and I'm here just to speak a little bit about some of the ways that in our design thinking, we brought our strategy to bear by really thinking about the resources that we had and really how our structure needs to follow our strategy. So in building what you see here, we started again with that strategy in mind around student agency and the student experience in the

139classroom. So what I'm excited to share on this slide is really this vision of of kind of desiloing some of the departments that we've had, right? Really thinking about if we're putting the student in the center, the students going to have needs that cross from curriculum to instruction to their experience in a D11 classroom. And so what you'll see that's kind of the largest change on this slide is really the shift in the chief of instructions department to regionalized support. So instead of having a singular department for math, what we've done is break that department into spaces that say we have four different directors who can specialize in math, who can specialize in literacy, who can bring to bear our strategy in individualized education. So, as a school leader, instead of being kind of beholdened

140to one resource for 56 schools, we have regionalized support that you can reach out to that will work collaboratively with your area superintendent to bring the strategy to bear much closer to the classroom. So, that vision of instead of you as a school leader or you as a teacher having to wait till it's your time to come to us, we're going to come to you. The other big shift that I'm excited to share on this slide is really that vision for cross functional teaming. I know Deerra just shared sort of the traditional org chart, but when we think about this vision of professional development through all of our conversations with teachers and with students and with our departments downtown, what came out of those conversations is really this understanding that professional development transcends a silo,

141right? We can't talk about professional development through the lens of curriculum only. We can't talk about it through the lens of only instructional practice. And so, as we build our strategy, professional development will live in each of these three areas. as we think about bringing that strategy to light another go back one slide I do I do want to highlight especially a name that's very familiar to the board and the work that we've done we had long hard conversations of many of us have thought of Dwayne and his work as CTE only and last year CTE belonged to curriculum in and instruction because it was just a different class and what we found particularly in engaging with our students and our staff is that that is where learning really comes to life and So we

142wanted to move that into a place a place where it was more reflective of the students experience and the board earlier this year actually approved the change in how we will count our credits towards graduation requirements to allow for those pathways to expand such that children aren't just navigating their way to graduation but using graduation as that launch pad to what happens next. And so that is a very significant intentional move that says Dwayne and his team don't just own what the state says of how you get a CTE credit or a dual or a concurrent enrollment credit. It's how does a student experience the world of which they are in. And I'll make you go back two more slides to the triangulation which is that's the way we want our students to connect to

143the work. We think that we're on to something that most districts are not on to, which is yes, we want highquality instruction, but high-quality instruction is not just how it is that we teach to the curriculum that we deliver. It's how our students are engaged in that process. And no place does that come to fruition sooner and faster for us to learn from. If you go forward to the the last slide we were on been in that previous CTE and pathway experience you hear it and you see when you're in the schools the governor has come many people come we are celebrated through the state we have paid apprenticeships we pay you to graduate in district 11 that is the goal where learning comes to life such the student is the one that we just

144have to point in the right direction instead of drag them to the space and so this crossf functional way that we'll operate is really best represented by Yep. Dwayne and have to meet every one of those state requirements to get those credits and to make sure that we get reimbursed for those dollars. But it's got to be how the student and the family experience it that we know that it can stick and it can actually change outcomes for children. Now I'm going to be quiet again. I told him I was going to be quiet. Can you go back one slide? Uh so Ash is director of education and stakeholder development. What does that mean? It's really an opportunity for us to first think about the teacher, right? The role of the the classroom educator who's

145providing that high quality instruction, but then beyond just the role of the educator, really thinking about how do we involve other stakeholders? How do we think about connecting with community partners who engage in professional development opportunities? Just really thinking about kind of a cross functional approach to professional development. Thank you. and that individualized education that is special education. It is special education but also encompasses CLLDE in gifted. So the idea being that these are three um currently three separate areas that do very similar work and have very similar legal and um compliance related activities. And so bringing them all together under one will allow us to streamline some of those pieces so that we can be really focused on the instructional practices we know that work for students who whether or not they're special education

146or CLLDE and then the extension work needed for for students who are gifted and then take some of the compliance pieces into one person who can really um hone in on those skills. And the title that she has which says interim is because we are still looking or um we uh we decided to do an interim if because we know the hiring season for that particular position is a challenging one and so we did an interim to keep some stability on that team while we look for um filling that role more permanently. So as we think about what this really looks like on the ground, I think it's the easiest way to sort of operationalize what our strategy is is really what's the impact on the teacher, right? Through the lens of how does this

147change actually get to the classroom. And so for us, this shift to the instructional team support model is really going to allow us to have a much different support model for teachers. So a specific example of that, these directors of academics will actually not be housed in central office. They will be housed in regional hubs in our four network sites at various middle schools and high schools where their teams will collaborate within the school setting. That'll give us the opportunity to really ensure that the professional development we're providing is directly connected to the needs that we're hearing on the ground within the region. The other thing it will allow us to do that has been a challenge in our system. Wait till you're done. Okay. is really connect this idea of on-site implementation support, right?

148We all know the experience of being able to go to an incredible PD, but coming back to your building and actually being able to live that experience with your own students. Sometimes there's a gap in implementation there and having our academic support teams housed in schools being ready to teachers when they come back with that learning on the on the ground support in their classroom. So is there no more professional development office in Tesla? There's actually both. So in this moment where we're creating sort of cross functional teaming, what we've done is create permanent housing sites regionally and then we have what we like to call hoteling suites or um co-working spaces within Tesla. So that the teams depending on which team is doing the work, you're in the space where that team's work makes

149the most sense. So if you're doing the work of collaborating around supporting the west area schools, you're on the west side of town in those schools hearing the bells, working with teachers. But when you're doing the work of building coach development, right, that may be that you're in Tesla and then moving into buildings to do walkthroughs together. Okay. Thank you. Can you give an example of the retired teacher initiative as a new teacher development and support? Absolutely. So, one of the things and I was just going to get to new teacher development because I think that continues it just it continues to be a need in our system, right? Is really how do we support our newest folks and so what we've done in the redesign effort is really think about first ensuring that there's

150high quality tier one coaching in all of our schools. So, we know through an investment here in FTE for the high schools and the middle schools that next year we'll be able to realize that K12. The other thing that we're doing is shifting our district coaches to really being kind of a second layer of support, right? So those regional models where the west side would have what we call district embedded coaches to support our coaches. But the third tier would say if those two things are not enough, what else could we try? And so we're really excited next year to launch a three-week mini cycle where we're going to bring back retired educators into D11 classrooms to teach alongside teachers who really need more intensive support. So that teacher would step in. They'll be trained

151in all of our curricular programs. They'll step in, they'll teach alongside that teacher for a week, then they'll share the classroom 5050 and gradually release back to a teacher who needs that kind of support. So really thinking differently about if we say every classroom, we have to have a different strategy that ensures a different outcome for every classroom. Is that just for you teachers or It is not. Okay. It is really, you know, it's it's really about individualizing professional development and coaching based on the needs of a teacher. And so if that's a need someone has years later in the profession, we want to be able to support that too. Okay. So continuing kind of that thread of what this means across our system, just the things that I would add here that we haven't

152spoken about is just this idea of being much more responsive, right? We believe when our system people in our system can wear multiple hats and sort of we can centralize expertise but deploy folks who have multiple layers of expertise we're going to be able to meet the needs of students and of teachers at a much higher rate and that they won't be waiting in line quite like they were before. The other opportunity here is I think just that coherence and alignment. We've made a huge financial investment in high quality resources in the classroom and now it's our opportunity to ensure that we have the implementation on the ground to make that happen in our classrooms. So because we believe that every student deserves access to high quality instruction to achieve this we're this design is

153really intentionally down the barriers between department silos. So, as we talked about these spaces where teams will be coming together, that team will include not just our content area experts, but also our individualized education folks, our individual um or CLLDE, our gifted so that all of those teams are working together to make sure that students have that increased access to intervention and that we are able to proactively respond to the data through our emphasis on data-driven instruction that is going to be across all of our um initiatives throughout about the department. Um, and I think that that is we are what we've seen is that there historically has been a long time that has gone by before a student can access that support. So really this is about streamlining the support so that as soon

154as we see that a student is not meeting the expectations, we have a a very high cross functional team that can get in there and support and make um impact on the student. Um the other piece is the increased on um student agency. Um and we know that empowering students with agency in their learning is not just is not optional. This is a big strategic initiative for us. Um student agency develops critical thinking, engagement, adds deeper connection to their learning and it's not only driving academic achievement but also future planning and making sure that every student upon graduation has a plan for what comes next for them. And so what will success look like? how will we know if this restructure is successful? Um, and in in this evolution of the academic support model, we

155want to see success in all of these areas. So, we're we have invested in the K12 literacy curriculum and we are rolling that out with very targeted professional learning that that is tiered for the level of where teachers are at so that we can get the teachers the right support they need to implement. Um, we want to make sure that high-quality instruction is delivered through the coaching models that we've talked about, these innovative ways of getting coaching to teachers who need that support the most. And then within within students, we want to have make sure they have access to relevant experiences through the peak experiences, through pathway schools, making sure all students are connected to their learning. And that that summarizes it. Okay. Uh just so the board is aware, we have about 12 minutes

156left for this discussion. So let's keep it to the priority questions. Director Bank as you are the first. Um so the teachers, the retired teachers who are coming back, are they permanent employees? Are they just on assignment? Um what's their employment status? They're on assignment as temporary workers. Okay. And I will just put a plug out there that if anyone's listening to this and they're interested in being considered for that opportunity, there's feel free to reach out to our office, me directly. Um, our office is screening for those folks right now. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions at this time? Seeing none, that's great. I'd like to just add a big shout out to the uh talent management team for uh the help in this process making sure that everything was clear and

157was transparent and the number of interviews and the amount of highly highly qualified resumes and interviews that we've gone through. There are a couple of interim positions because we want to make sure that we hold the bar uh to what we need in the long run, but we have the right folks to be able to fill in that space in between. But uh there's a lot of behindthe-scenes work that has gone in. Um uh I heard uh uh all three of the members talk about the design process. This again as we consider change in the district, we constantly go back to the design lab and we use our design thinking process that allows not this to be a one-way only solution, but how it is that we set a vision and then we allow for

158collaboration and uh what we call yes and opportunities for people to be able to build on that. And so the goal was for us to be able to get who we teach, how we teach, and what we teach. And then this is the product that the team with dozens and dozens of other collaborators has brought forward that we are excited to bring to bear for next academic year and actually this summer. Dr. Kerry, sorry that I'm out of order. Can I make a very quick comment, not a question? Um, I like a lot of these ideas. I'm really excited with what you're working with. Uh, I would encourage you to be bold and try new things. One of my favorite sayings is you can't do anything better until you do it differently. And you would

159make me a very happy director if you came back early next year and told us how things were going. Good luck. Yes. Um please keep the board updated as uh we go along on this journey and uh we wish you the best. I think there is one more position that I saw that has not filled the student services position. I'm guessing that you are going through that interview. We just had the final interview used yesterday and we're in the process right now. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. And keep the board informed about it as you go along. Thank you. Thanks. The next item on the agenda is um capital improvement summer projects and energy audit. Um um super I'm transitioning to Dr. comfort in the rest of the evening. Thank you. Okay.

160So, I'm going to come to you Dr. Comfort. You are going to introduce this conversation. Uh and if there are others that need to join this conversation as well, please. Okay. To you, Dr. Comfort. I think this might be the latest in a long time where I've said my good evening board. I'm usually about four hours earlier than this. So, good evening board. Um really excited with what we're going to bring you tonight. Uh my capital programs team I think is uh hiding out in my office, but they should be joining us here shortly as well. Um we're going to bring you kind of a couple of things that that the board has been waiting on. Uh number one, we're going to talk a little bit about our ongoing summer projects. Uh once again, we

161will hit close to a hundred projects completed between kind of second semester and the summer. Um so that's what we kind of hit last year. We're going to do that again at the same time managing the two largest capital projects in the district's history in the Palmer renovation as well as the Jenkins um renovation. And so the capital program team will be very busy. We'll go over some of those details tonight. Secondly, we're going to talk to you about our five-year capital plan. I promised the board at the very beginning of the school year that we were actively working with every single school in this district to develop a five-year capital plan. Uh we will bring you examples of that tonight. That document is ready and ready to be shared with the public. Very excited

162about that. And then the third part of tonight will be uh the energy performance um assessment and now potential next steps that uh the board allocated funding towards. We're going to talk to you about a few possible uh ideas. One is going with a company that runs an energy performance um system and the pros and cons related to that. We will also talk to you about if we were to run that internally and the pros and cons related to that. Um most of what we're going to talk to you about though tonight is really going to blend nicely with the board's ongoing consideration for the bond. Um and so that's what we're most excited about. Okay, I'm going to turn it over to Jen. She's going to get us started. Uh, I think when we

163get to the energy performance part, if that's okay with you, President Wakam, we can do introductions or would you prefer that we do those now? Is that okay? Okay. Thank you guys. It's a pleasure to be here tonight and go through the great things that are um happening both this summer that's uh going on right now in D11 and things that we have planned for the future. Um, this summer of the highlighted projects are provided here. We're continuing to finish the safety and security projects throughout the district. So we have the major projects happening in the summertime that started over a year and a half ago. Um so that's been an ongoing effort, but we are buttoning those up here in the next um three to four months or so um a little bit into

164the fall to finish some of the bigger ones. Um so that's been a really exciting effort and the schools have worked really well through the construction. So they have been able to have front entrances relocated while construction is going on. Um, so the schools have just been really accommodating and supporting that happening and it's not something that we're used to. So, it's been great to see that that support there. Um, we have HVAC work um that's going on throughout a couple of areas. Mostly we're working on designs for HVAC improvements at Henry's um South Admin and Sabin that'll be actual construction starting next summer. So, we're just finishing up designs and we're doing some um pre-tab work now. So, we're understanding how the systems are not doing the right things currently so we can make

165sure that the designs are is right as rain and incorporate fixes for all of those things in the coming year. Um structure and core, you know, we have things going on at Jenkins. We have a couple things going on um in other places that are more foundational repairs. So, Keller Elementary has a little bit of work this summer that's just to shore up um one of the corners with a little bit of foundational supports there. Um site and ground improvements. We're continue to make playground and landscape and drainage improvements in different places around the district and we'll get into more of the specific locations for these in the coming slides. But this is a general overall breakdown of how um funding is being utilized in the different categories provided here. So, for the Palmer COP,

166you probably or Palmer's renovation project, you've probably seen Boulder is temporarily closed right on track June 3rd. Um, so the traffic is rerouted. The lanes are pulled away from the side of the building. Um, they're in Palmer right now doing heavy abatement, so they've got all kinds of things set up. Unfortunately, you can't tear a building down if it has asbestous in it. You have to abate it first. So, we're taking it step by step. So, we have a big crew of abatement contractors in there right now and they're working through that and then they'll be ready to move on to continuing to safe off that building, the utilities, rerouting things so that the staff can come back and operate in the side of the building that's not under construction. When they come back in

167the summer or after the summer, the staff has already been relocated. So, they're already into the new rooms that they're going to be teaching from when they return. And then and then there's some additional things like getting the cafeteria equipment to the ox gym and those things running as part of the enabling work and that's going on over the summer. Jenkins um that's on track. There's it's a very fastmoving train for us. Um they're doing a little bit of abatement at Jenkins as well surprisingly enough even though it's a newer building um that was around the parapit of the roof before they tear down the seventh and eighth grade wing. Um, but we are taking all the a lot of the HVAC equipment that we just put in last summer. We're taking it off of

168Jenkins and we're working on redesigning that equipment into the new wing so that we have that to just be reutilized in the new wing rather than bringing in all new equipment. So they're in there taking all the VA boxes out of the ceilings, the thermostats, the fire alarm equipment, all the pieces and parts that we can I call it cannibalize that we can cannibalize and take and put into the new wing. That's the plan. So thank you. They're working through that. Yep. Um we like to save money. So there's big savings to be had there. And then we have um um they're demoing the wall paper and all of those things in the sixth grade wing, getting that ready for um a fresh coat of paint. Um they're getting the fire suppression system put in

169place. They're moving really, really quickly. Um and they've already got the walls going up around the media center to safe off the media center and have that ready for um inspection and for students to come back to that building. So, yep, it's all moving very quickly. Real quick, we were hoping this would be ready. We got it emailed to us tonight at 7:42. We do have some renderings of Jenkins that we will absolutely get to the board um here shortly. So, you can start to see some of the visuals of what the inside of the building uh will look like because we know that's been a really powerful part of the Palmer project is when you get to see what it will look like, not just in schematic view, but actual uh rendering. So, we'll

170get that to the board um as soon as we can. So, here's more of a breakout of all the different areas and the work that's going on this summer or finishing up. So, Colombia have the exterior. They have a mural going up. Not the same as the mural that went up at Martinez. It's art that's more um representative of Colombia and the community there, but it's going to be similar in size. So, it'll take up the exterior of the gym. Um, and then the wall above that and wrap around one side of the building. So, it'll be very visible as you drive by on Boulder. So, it's going to be a beautiful, beautiful piece of art with the Colombia cougar on one side, which is really neat. Um, they have interior painting going on at

171Columbia as well. So, they've got a wave design with several different colors. You've probably seen that some of our other schools um as part of their amp improvements. They have a dance floor going in. Um, so just more things that are related to improving them as part of one of the BAPA schools at Steel. They're going to have some exterior work with the playground that's been um largely coordinated with the PTA at Steel there. Um, they do a great job of fundraising for things that are going on at their school. Um, so they have had a lot of um, meetings and support of different ways to make that playground better. Um, so they're going to have a big um play field, sports field instead of all the dirt. That'll be synthetic turf. So it's not

172not um needing water and constant maintenance. Um a synthetic turf field. And they're going to have a track that goes around the outside of that. So just kind of a walking path, not a full it's not full size by any stretch of the imagination, but they'll just have a walking path around steel. Um Edison, we have some um abatement and flooring that needs to be done. There were a couple projects that we put on hold um while we worked through the price for Jenkins. So that one may be a little bit further in the summer or next summer before we can get it fully executed so we don't have to move furniture in and out multiple times. Um so we're working through that on availability, but that's on the dock which is very exciting. Um,

173Rogers, they have new furniture. They're getting a new front entrance. Again, the ones that are more major are happening over the summer that are more major, like walls are being moved and things have to be adjusted more heavily or more abatements required to get the project done. So, they're working through those things over the summer. Man, if you've driven by it, you've probably seen the plywood up in front of the school. So, it's another more major front entrance change, but the front entrance of man will actually be off of the parking lot for man, which will be a great change instead of having to walk through down and around. Um, so they finished the concrete work and ramps recently. Um, and they're working through getting the framing and walls done and that'll be opened up

174and ready for summer or ready for fall. It's going to be for summer because it's summer for us. But to make sure you guys have plenty of time, um, uh, obviously we will share with the board like we had before a capital projects update that we'll have kind of color coding to let you know as summer progresses where projects are tracking. Uh, obviously we're much early in the in the construction season now. So these are all green and good. Um, but as we encounter things over the summer, we'll make sure and keep the board updated. Uh, a number we want to draw your attention to, and you'll see this in the ensuing slides, is you'll see really good dispersement of money across the four regions of the district. So, yes, we are doing a giant

175project at Palmer and another really large project at Jenkins. Outside of those two projects, you'll see that our our capital project funding is being really evenly distributed um across the four regions to make sure that uh every part of our district is is seeing good capital investment. Yeah. So, West area has um similarly big um amp improvements going on that have happened at Bristol um and Howard. You guys have seen the front gardens and the exterior um places for students learning at Howard Elementary that were finished uh last summer. There's a couple other things they're finishing this summer and adding to that. Um the roofing will finish this summer. Gav Vista doing some asphalt replacement on the northeast side um on their exterior playground asphalt and at home some landscape improvement and curb appeal. So,

176all of the middle schools were working on doing landscape improvement and curb appeal projects um for a couple of reasons. One, for um the curb appeal necessary, like to help for the community to see those schools a little bit better and make them a little more attractive when you're driving by, but also it's a project that'll be in coordination with the school and the students like Mitchell's Courtyards was. So, they have some investment in say in how that looks. And then we know that learning outside is great for cognitive retention and for students to do better and breathe more and just being outside in sunlight is good for everyone. So good to have those those changes. So I feel like for a long time there's been not a ton of studies on the environment that

177students learn in and how that matters. But as of recent in our our trip to DC, we learned that there is a lot more research being done and a lot more results coming in that say the environment students learn in absolutely matters. The amount of times the air changes um that's been known for a while, but the daylighting, the just being in different environments that are more welcoming for different purposes absolutely matters. So that's going to be part of all of our projects going forward. So, Northeast Martinez, you've probably seen the mural on the exterior there. They're working on a couple other minor improvements with signage and things on around the front of the building. Carver, they have um playground improvements being planned for there. And again, Russell, they'll have and s and Saven, they'll

178have landscape and exterior curb appeal improvements that we're going to work with the schools on. at Sabin. We've already met with their PTA um about that and they were pretty excited about it and we'll continue that work with students come next year which is right in line with their centennial which will be fun. Um so um Freedom they're going to be doing just some ADA improvements um and working at getting the north end of the playground. If you've ever seen the ice buildup um at Freedom, they have some pretty significant drainage issues around their kinder playground. So, we're going to improve those issues so they can um have less ice build up around there. It's just not facing well and tends to get slippery. So, southeast area, um I will say too for my team

179tonight, we have leaders from each region and Dan Rangis is our southeast area leader. is here as well. Um he's been doing great work there. Makoliff is getting their steam door put in which is a custom STEM door and it provides learning opportunities as well as being a door for students to use. So it's going to be really quite amazing when it's done. It's taken quite a bit of work to get it designed and then quite a bit to get it built because it's custom built. Um, so it's going to be a neat feature at Mcola and they're also going to have u more intervention breakout spaces just outside of that for them to do more of that type of work there as well. Um, they're also getting some playground upgrades there. McAuliffe has an

180awful lot of students and their playground doesn't necessarily support very well the amount of kids they have um even with multiple lunches and recesses. So, they're getting some additional playground equipment also in line with the um their STEM theme so that they can use it for learning as well as play. So, in everything we do, we're trying to incorporate both an academic aspect and an aspect that supports the school's needs. So, Aottabon, we have a big win in the extra work that Dan did on the southeast area for figuring out that some of the places have had a building addition and we have some underground areas where we can do um an easier way of putting in some additional bottle fillers there. Currently, the kids have to walk a pretty long distance. There's not very

181many bottle fillers available. So, he found a way to get them through tunnels and into places um for less cost, which is fantastic because I'm again, we're a big fan of more money to classrooms as humanly possible. So, finding ways to help do that is always welcome. Um CSST is a big deal for our central admin and opportunity schools. Um that one is right on track. It's doing really well. We have a partner in office scapes, um, OS schools, I believe is their name now, and they've been, um, helping refernish some of our schools for quite a while. They are, I just want to give a shout out to them. They are donating $150,000 worth of furniture for CSST. We have a manufacturer that's building a different kind of furniture and they're going to just

182provide it to that location and let them use it and we'll um, support with some evaluations on what we think of the furniture. But otherwise, that's a pretty big supportive thing for partnerships to do. And we continue to see that as we go through projects. We continue to see a lot of businesses and folks that we're working with showing up um like they did to support us at Jenkins and helping people move out just coming in with support for different things and projects. So, I'm not going to go through them all, but there is certainly a good list of that that we'll provide at the end of the summer as well. So the next thing is moving more towards our uh five-year plans and some of the information. Just take a minute out there and

183then see if the board has any questions so we can go this on this one. The only request that I would make is if the board can get an update in August as to how all this turned out pictures, visuals. We'll bring you all the fun. Yep. Great. Already working on it. So, um, with the completion of the, um, HVAC, um, projects, will that mean how many more schools need, um, upgrades or replacement for their HVAC? We will. We're still, uh, we're still, we still need some help, right? Coronado High School still needs uh, to be fully aironditioned. Wasan still needs to be fully air. Now, the difference is those are 2025 million projects. Uh and so as we've discussed before, that's where a bond is going to be really beneficial because then we can

184guarantee. Otherwise, we're saying that's the capital budget for the next four years. We're doing nothing other than completing air conditioning at at two of our our high school campuses. But we're we're I'm sorry, I apologize, but we are ticking off some of those smaller spaces. And uh one of the projects that Jen brought up earlier is the Sabin project. Sabin has air conditioning. And if we allow it to continue, it's going to require a complete rehaul and it's going to be a $15 million project. We have the opportunity to intervene at a much lower cost and have a pro and have a air conditioning system that will maintain for years to come. Um, and so we're going to try to to handle some of those smaller case ones while we can with the funding we

185can or with the funding we have. Um, because some of those larger projects obviously are going to require a different funding mechanism. And with saving, you know, when because it used to be open format and then they put the walls in, the air conditioning, the vents that to me have never matched the configuration. So, are you saying the work that's going to get done this summer is going to remedy that? So, they're still in design right now. So, they're working through designing the replacement or the fix of that system in a way that is um utili, you know, better suiting the way the building is built now. Okay. One of the things that we've even talked about, not just the way the building is built now, but we sin is one of the great examples

186of a box that has no windows, right? It's just a brick box, and that's not great for student learning. So, we also want the HVAC system to be able to accomplish what it does under the um under some changes to the building, hopefully in the future, to add windows to the exterior of that building so the students have more daylighting and the staff has more daylighting in that building. So, that's a consideration for the design team as well. And that leads to a question about the CSST uh location. Are there going to be windows in there? Because right now, when we were there, it was just a box. Yes, there are going to be windows only on one side. So, the um the back part of that, um there won't be, but there's going to

187be windows on one side and then the inside of the building is going to have quite a bit of glass between like the walls and they're going to have the garage doors. So, they'll have quite a bit of glass um and less wall. So, they'll be able to get the daylighting through that way. Um that building is a little harder um to add daylight to just by its construction and because UCCCs won't let us put um any roof penetrations in to add skylights. Yes. What doesn't um need doesn't want skylights added. they added skylights on another side that they renovated and it had some negative impacts on their roof system um that they're still dealing with. So, they just don't want to continue that type of thing. Um so, we're just going to be adding

188it on one wall and then trying to carry it through with see-through glass. My last question is about the longevity of artificial turf um for athletic fields. How long does that stuff last? So, if it's cared for, I believe it's got a 15-year life. Um, so there's there's things we can do to help help support that. But I will tell you what we are doing as a district is making sure that the foundation that we're putting underneath it and the crush vines and all that is the right spec and the right equipment and the right groundwork is being done. So, when it comes to having to replace the turf, um, we just take a layer of turf off and we put a layer of turf down. And that's a lot less costly than having to

189redo all the underground work. Um, Gary Barry was a great example of having to redo all the underground work because the drainage and things weren't correct. Um, so it costs significantly more to have to redo that work than it does to just take a layer off and for later layer down. Thank you. So, yeah, you're welcome. Okay. Any other questions? just a I had I had emailed about this um and and forwarded the email. Sorry everybody tonight at 6 o'clock to you all. Um just I want to make the note Thomas McLaren is listed here for HVAC major renovation fall or winter project and the feedback was that they had a major project ready to go. Um, but charters, I mean, we have so many needs in our schools and they get what I think

190is a fair amount of money from the MLO fund and from our budget. And so to be, you know, the reply to me basically suggests to me that, hey, every charter school, if you have a project aligned at just the right time, we got a deal for you. And that's great for the charter, but we have traditional district schools to support with the funds. And so I'm concerned that we're setting a precedent here into the future. I can respond. Uh yeah, we've had a a ve a very varied relationship with charters over the last decade. Um in terms of and I don't know if this was in the response to you or not, director. Um in terms of we have done projects for charters before because remember we have some charters in district owned buildings.

191We have some charters in district previous district buildings that they bought and now they own. We have a varied relationship. So, as an example, uh a few of our charters uh financed their own coops, but Jen's team served as project management to save them hundreds of thousands of dollars on having to manage that project over four or five years, right? Um and so the related to the HVAC project at Thomas McLaren, as as Jen was just mentioning, the HVAC project at Sabin, it's going to take a year to design. Um, and so that that project is it's multiple years out. Thomas McLaren had a project that uh was is now able to be done in the fall because it was it had already gone through so many phases. And so, yes, we were able to

192step in and help in a much lower cost. I I respect that $400,000 is a lot of money. I just mentioned that a similar school of a thousand kids were going to pay $25 million for an HVAC project. Um, and so I think it was a reasonable thing to to offer them as a relatively large part of the portfolio. And I think it connects to the board's portfolio approach. We're not trying to take accountability or responsibility for all charter school projects. And we're also not trying to say, hey, that's on you guys. Figure it out on your own. We are a partner. We are their authorizer. As we discussed earlier, if we're in a bond, um, they will be a part of that of that conversation. And so it's the only project in this year's

193capital budget, but if you go back, there are capital projects we have done for charters. We just don't do them frequently. Um I think it will be up to the board on if that is a continued belief or relationship that we want to have with our district authorized charters, but we did feel like it was a project in time and space that made a lot of sense for relatively low cost where we're able to help a relatively large um percentage of our overall portfolio. I guess in the future then maybe we could have a heads up on such things because I know we did for Roosevelt Elementary and Academy for Advanced and Creative Learning. We had arrangements the board was aware that we were supporting through their coops and that they were still responsible for

194that. So just a thought. Thank you. Yeah, I'll echo that. It um going forward should be a board conversation and decision uh being a part of that um for the future. I my question is regarding when I'm looking at the different quadrants, uh it looks to me just really rough math, we're around $22 million, um that we're investing in our schools. Can you summarize where the funding stream is? How much of that is MLO? How much of that is general fund capital budget? I'm just curious at the breakout. I could pull that together for you guys and send it out for us too. This is it's crossing over years. So, we're always reporting essentially what was started FY25 um FY24 essentially sometimes reporting that rolling into 2526. Well, I can break that down. I don't

195off the top of my head. I don't have it. Okay. But I can break it down by by um funding type. Okay. I have a spreadsheet that's pretty amazing that has all of that data in it. So, I've got an email to the vote on the subject. Suffice. The other thing just as a funding source is we do still have when you see those secure entrances, those are still fund balance projects. So, um, so yes, the capital budget is tricky because in its general allocation, it's about $20 million, but when you look at it in the budget process, it's about $45 million because we're still capturing this year's projects that haven't happened and next year's budget. Um, and we have the fund balance money that, as Jen said, will be spent down in the next

196four to five months as those projects finalize. Just a quick question for me and Superintendent G already said that Jenkins is proceeding on the timeline as far as securing uh portables and stuff like that. That's also going on timeline for Jenkins. That's going really well. They're actually manufacturing ahead of schedule. Okay. Which is great. Yeah. All indications are that those portables should be in place so that the schools can open on time in August. Yes. That answers my question. Fours and seventh graders. The incoming sixth graders will be in the sixth grade. Correct. For the public. Yep. Yes. Thank you. And the portables, are they being designed just for Jenkins to our specifications? Are they being mass-produced and we're buying what comes close to what we want? We are renting them. They are educationally permitted.

197So, they're for schools use. And they're just the typical um two classroom portables about 800 square ftish on either side. Wet or dry? Uh they are dry. Thank you. Okay, back back to you. We still have 40 40 or so slides to go. Sorry. Um so an aging portfolio, it's no surprise that we have uh most of our schools were constructed mid-century and they're a little bit outdated in design. Sin's a great example of that. Coronado even center of the building for most of the classrooms instead of around the outside where the windows are. Um, so a lot of our schools just aren't as cutting edge as they could be to meet um, educational standards and with an emphasis on academics. Um, we need to have the same um, way of thinking for how we're

198building or how we're modifying space to improve academic performance, improve places that staff wants to teach, students want to be. I heard from a district recently that has passed and finished um upgrading their schools from a bond that they're seeing the kids come dressed better to school which I thought was a really interesting result of having a better building. Um but it just does amazing things for for helping students. We have schools that are easier to modify like McCullaf Scott Freedom that are newer builds um that tend to be um in better shape from an educational adequacy standpoint. And then we have our beloved norths and others that are our hundred-year-old centurions uh west ele west middle and elementary that have beautiful facades and just need a lot of love on the inside. Just a

199very quick Yeah. We got to keep moving. I I know that that um when you're in a in a classroom that has no windows, that has no air conditioning, and you're in there with 30 to 35 teenagers and the room is 85, 88, 90 plus degrees in there, little to no learning is happening and the kids just sit there and it just drips down their face. And I know this because I sat in it for many years at at Coronado. Um, which is a great building and I just love that school. But if people don't get there when at the height of the heat in August and September, they really don't know. They really can't understand what teachers and what kids are having to deal with without air conditioning. And I know all schools are

200hot. I know. I get it. Houses are hot. I I get HVAC costs a lot of money. I'm I'm just throwing out there that it might be a good idea for people that think that kids Oh, they can handle it because just another year they can handle it. Okay. And that's great. Go sit in their rooms. Yeah. For a class period. Not even a full block period. A h a half a block would be good and see what they have to deal with because it's it's not pleasant. And if we're all about um the learning capacity for kids and a high quality education, and I know they're getting a high quality education, the amount of learning though in August and September when it's that hot is just not happening. You make a good promotion for

201the having to go Yeah. to the community for a bar. Yeah. I'm going to use it as a segue. It's a wonderful segue. Thank you. I'm happy to. Uh so, we're going to talk a little bit about our five-year plan. Um and and what uh Director Hafley just spoke to is exactly what we're talking about. We used to talk about deferred maintenance. We're trying to move away from deferred maintenance to recapitalization possibilities. Um frame it in a positive way, but it's still $700 million. I mean, that's that's true, right? Uh and so that's what you'll see on this slide. Um the capital plan that we want to address over the next 5 years is about $350 million. Now, to the statement we just had, we don't have $350 million over the next 5 years unless

202um we have some other funding sources, but we know we need to do some significant work. We've started that work. We started it with semester money. We did some quality bathroom renovations. We did some HVAC work. Um we're continuing that with our fund balance projects that we talked about. The certificate of participation is a big project, but um we are now in a place where when I tell you we're ready for a bond, we're ready for a bond. We have um I'm going to keep going just to help with time. We have now identified um five-year capital plans for every single school. And so this is an example. I'm going to show you a few quick examples of what this has. You'll see on the left a couple of um data sets. We have done

203so many assessments over the last five years of our facilities. We know everything from facility condition to educational adequacy to energy usage. Um, and so you'll see on everybody's capital to safety, that's that SEP septed score. Um, we now have this for every school. And what you'll see up here is Adams. Other than school performance, Adam's facility is in a really good is in really good shape. That's because the board a board a number of years ago made really significant investment to renovate Adams. Um, and so what you'll see is not only do we have that data, but for every school, we're going to showcase the projects that have happened since 2017 because that's when the MLO was passed to what the plan would be for the next 5 years. So when we think about

204what's a capital plan for a bond, we have the project lists ready. It doesn't mean that the discussion is done. It doesn't mean that we won't go to every single school community, but we've done that as a part of this work. We've taken all of those data sources, including conversations with each school community to decide what do you want to see happen at this school over the next five years. So, this is what Adams looks like. I'll keep going on. Here's Grant. Here's a school that's kind of in the middle. It has some green in terms of school performance um and some condition, but you'll see it educational adequacy and its safety is yellow and its energy use is orange. Uh you'll see we've done a lot of projects at Grant over the last number

205of years and we plan to continue to do projects there because Grant could use some some meaningful investment. Homes is another example. Homes is over or outperforming the facility that it is in. You'll see uh I don't know how the energy use is only 46 at homes but other than that geothermal they have geothermal that's why that makes sense. Other than that the facility condition at homes is not great. Remember I shared with the board whenever you filter this data in a variety of ways and you reshake it out a couple of schools always pop to the tops and Palmer are always two of the top right um but regardless of the conditions is still performing that's wonderful and what we can see is that that student success could be strengthened by a largecale facility

206investment so here's the project plan for homes high school we are in transition metro high school we've been spending lots of capital funding to bring that building up to the quality that that community deserves. Uh new track and field, new HVAC equipment, student designed um what do we call student design courtyards. Courtyards. Thank you. I was going to say atriums. They're not atriums. Uh and a whole lot of other projects. And you'll see that there's still uh growth that needs to happen at Mitchell. But so we have this um five-year look back and fiveyear look forward for every single school in the district. now. Um, and so that can adjust over time, but we no longer wondering, well, what needs to happen at Henry Elementary? We can tell you exactly what needs to happen, not

207only from the facility side, but also what does that community want? What does the Henry community want? That is really evident at Halbert. If you go, if you've been to Halbert and you see the front school, that's not a facility person who said, "Yeah, this makes sense." That's a neighborhood community saying, "We want the front of our school to look like this." and then we brought funding in to match that. So, we have that five-year capital plan for now every single school in the district. Um, we have good funding to continue to execute on projects and we're really hopeful and excited for potential significant increases in funding to fully recapitalize our district. That's the five-year plans. Questions on those? A lot of work went into this. So, thank you. Yeah. M I mean if you

208have engaged with each one of the community to get feedback and putting together what that community's feedback is as far as what the school needs that's a lot of work and lot of engagement that's happening. So thank you. Okay we're going to transition to our um energy performance contract conversation or operational cost efficiency program. So I'm just going to frame it real quick then we'll do introductions and I'm going to let the Snyder Electric team take it over. Uh the board asked that we do an audit. What's the term for the audit? Investment grade audit. Investment grade audit. That sounds like a finance term. Um, we've conducted that lots of data. You saw a lot of that data represented in the five-year capital plans and in the projects that we're doing. And basically the board

209has two options in front of it. I guess three options. You could decide to not do anything. Um, but the other two options are uh going with a program and and Snyder's going to go through great detail detailing their program. Um, a couple of things. They can do it faster than we can. Absolutely. They can do larger scale projects more than we can. And it comes with some obligations for from us over years. We would have to take on some debt. We would have to ensure some certain conditions continue in schools. We would have to ensure that uh some buildings are not messed with in the future potentially. Right. So, there's some pros there in terms of the ability to do big projects fast, make some um really meaningful impact on the cost to the

210district for utilities. Uh and there's some things to consider. We also internally could design something very similar. Um we can't do it as quickly as Snyder. We don't have the the facility or manpower to to do that. We also are not going to do the same scale of project. But what we could do is over time we could handpick certain projects, LED lighting, some things with water that I don't understand. Um, we can decide some specific things that we can allocate specific funding to that don't require us to enter into any long-term relationship either with a company but also uh with a financing um system. Okay. So, I'm gonna let Snyder jump in and kind of go through their uh project. Thank you. Introduce your team. Perfect. Uh yeah, I'm Caleb Shin. I'm with Schneider

211Electric. I'm our program manager. I might be a familiar face from attending board meetings for the past couple years. We have two pages with us. Paige Spur on the right. She is our she's the director of Colorado. She runs our team out here. Um and Paige Blekeley is one of the project development engineers that led the development of uh the project that we'll be talking about today. We also have Josh Chisum. Yep. Josh Chisum with Capital AE, former D11 employee. Um, happy to see a lot of familiar faces tonight. My role in this project um, uh, was to help Schneider get on board quickly, understand the buildings. Um, I was fortunate enough to understand the buildings and their needs very well. And so that's part of my role. The other part of my role is

212was to help get Schneider to uh get connected with the D11 ecosystem to the right people to make sure that we can develop a project that maximizes Savians invests in the right places. Perfect. Yeah, thank you for having us here this evening. Um and just quickly obviously the capital program has a lot of great projects going on right now and over the next 5 years and really this enter this operational cost efficiency program is uh a tool the district can use to get more done and to Dr. Comfort's point quicker. So we're going to get into how all that works. We might jump a few slides just in interest of time. I do want to camp on this I do want to camp out on this slide for a moment. Uh throughout this partnership, we

213have had the opportunity to get together with your students and staff and we've had some amazing experiences. Um so just thank you to district leadership. I know we have a few board members that have been a part of those events. Those have been terrific. So just thank you for allowing us to do that. I'll jump into the state program. So this is a this is a state program. Um it goes through the Colorado Energy Office. the state at the state reviews all of our calculations and the project cost and the savings and the scope of work. So it runs through the state and it's been popular, right? So 88 different Colorado K12 entities have gone through this process. Um it's not just here in the state. It's also a federal program. You'll see that the

214federal government has used this type of contracting vehicle to get $9 billion worth of energy efficiency and capital improvements done. Uh, and lastly, Schneider's been around for some time doing this type of work. So, what is this program? What is EPC or energy performance contracting? That's the acronym that we use. Again, it's a state program that provides school districts a way to fund capital improvements without impacting any of their existing budgets. As we all know, schools are strapped for cash and need to find creative ways to fund lots of different projects or priorities, not even necessarily just capital projects, right? So, this is a tool that lots of schools have used to fund things like, you might not like this word, deferred maintenance, building automation, electrical work, HVAC, um because the more money you put

215towards those things, the less money you're putting towards the classroom, right? So, this is a self-funded tool that can pay for those types of projects and free up money for other things. Okay. So, why did the district go down this path? This was referenced a moment ago during the capital programs presentation. the district has old facilities with aging and antiquated equipment. Um when that happens, things tend to become inefficient and uh as we've gone through our auditing process, we've identified lots of areas to gain efficiencies, which means savings for the school district. In addition to having aging infrastructure, uh the district has a a recurring, excuse me, $10 million on an annual basis from the capital program to put towards capital projects. So, this essentially is a one-time shot at getting more work done, and

216we'll get into the details of how that works later. Uh, lastly, quick and seamless construction process. The district has a ton of irons in the fire. There's a lot of amazing work going on right now. Design build projects with guaranteed savings require that one company designs, manages the entire project, and then they're on the hook for the performance of what's installed. So, we have to go get quality labor with reputable equipment, excuse me, from reputable manufacturers. What we go install has to go work. We have a financial guarantee behind all of the projects. So, you don't have change orders. You don't have cost overruns. Schneider has to manage all of that. And it makes it a easier project to manage for a project management team. And that is how we've done over a billion dollars

217in repeat work with our K12 clients because it's such an easy way to go get work done. So, I did want to touch on that. How will this benefit the district? First and foremost, this is $25 million in school improvements that'll get done in the next 12 months. So, we're talking about HVAC and lighting in classrooms, in learning environments. Um, so a significant impact on those spaces. The next bullet point, it preserves district funding to be focused on other priorities. Back to why school districts do this. If we can fund $25 million in lighting and HVAC, well, now the capital program fund or the general fund or the fund balance doesn't need to fund those projects. It basically frees up funds to go towards other projects that may exist. And I'll just touch on this

218third bullet point before I jump. $50 million in taxpayer savings. Um, that is that's a huge win, right? And that's an amazing thing to be able to communicate to your community. Um, and I will move on from $50 million in what time? 3 years? $50 million over the course of the project. And we have that kind of the slide later, but over the course of 20 years. So, you install this equipment and then saves money over time. Great question. Okay. So, how did we get to where we are today? We were um initially selected through a competitive procurement against about 10 other firms to begin the investment grade audit process. I agree that is not a the name is a bit of a misnomer. It's less of an audit and more of a design phase.

219Yes, we are surveying your facilities. We are conducting field audits. Um there's a lot of data collection but that is much more of a design effort. Once we get all of that information and understand where the savings opportunities are, we are then working with the CAPA program team um department heads, school district with guidance from district leadership to really design a construction project. And so where we are today, we have a fully developed construction project um and it's it's shovel ready. The uh the only remaining piece is getting the funding lined up for the project and Dr. comfort alluded to what that um is a moment ago. So with the with the board support, the only piece is going out getting funding and then this thing would be ready to go in the fall. And

220as I mentioned earlier, after the project's approved, we can get this this whole thing installed in about 12 months. Sorry, I'm lagging on the clicker here. Okay. Um last piece uh on the audit. So there's a tons of data collection and really that data collection allows us to understand which abilities or excuse me which schools have the most efficiency gain opportunity. This table on the left represents um where schools are efficient or inefficient gas, water, electricity. So red means inefficient, green means efficient. And um after a comprehensive energy efficiency project, this whole table is green, which means that you're spending less money on gas, water, and electricity at every one of these sites. That's where your savings come from. And uh the savings that we're estimating are about $1.5 million a year. That's in year

221one. Um in year 20, that's a little over $3 million a year because these costs escalate. Uh I am going to hand this over to Paige um to speak to speak to these scope items that would generate these savings. Yeah. Thanks, Hale. Um, in the interest of time, I'm not going to go through every one of these bullets, but something I'd really like to hit on pretty hard is that these projects are meant to be self-funding in the state of Colorado. They're meant to be bud budget neutral or budget positive. And we have to build these projects with district priorities to meet those standards. So when we met with district staff to understand what the priorities are and where your problem problems were, uh we also have to balance those things with high savings items

222that are going to fund the items that have lower savings. So for example, the lighting is a very high savings item with lower cost and those savings are going to help fund HBAC improvements that cost more upfront and don't save quite as much energy on the back end. So, this really is a comprehensive project that works together to pay for itself. Um, another thing I'd like to hit on is this EMASS or energy manager as a service. And what happens a lot of times with these projects is they focus on the equipment only and less on the behavioral and operational changes that need to happen to make it buildings more efficient. So, we partner with we partner with you through this service with an energy manager that you can use as a resource in order

223to help ensure that moving forward you continue to meet your facility and energy needs. Oh, and then the green highlighted um we did evaluate solar at Palmer and uh it there is good opportunity for that. Obviously, it doesn't make sense right now. So, that that would be opportunity for the future. So, we talk about the finances, we talk about turning wrenches, all these things, but really it's about what happens in the classroom, how we're impacting your students and your staff. So, you know, we think about changing out lighting. Jen hit on this earlier, too. You know, in enhancing your learning environment is huge for academic performance with your lighting. When we do our lighting audits, we took pre-ereadings of they're called foot candles. So at desk level, at task level. So at desks, at whiteboards,

224at at screens, we're taking all the lighting levels and seeing if they meet the illumination engineering society standards. Say that three times fast. Um, so we're making sure they make meet IEES standards. And when we're doing our lighting retrofits, we ensure that all those standards are met post retrofit. So your students are learning in environments that are that lighting levels are set for the tasks at their desks. Uh additionally with HVAC improvements and building automation improvements, we can improve indoor air quality, temperature control in classrooms, all the things that students need to have the best academic environment to learn in. And then you know some other things we're doing future proofing lighting systems. If we do all the lighting at once, we're able to ensure standardization of manufacturers, which helps with reputable suppliers. So, and

225that includes your attic stock. So, anywhere in the district that a light might go out, there's no question about who installed it, when, where, why, how, what kind of light is it, what year did it go in. It's all the same. It makes it really simple for district staff to make those improvements. And then you also have Schneider Electric on the back end for warranty support. Like Caleb mentioned, one company accountability. So Jen doesn't have to know ask who she's calling about the lighting. She calls us and we help we help fix the problems. Um so how does where's the rubber meet the road? How do we actually pay for this? How does it work? Um we have a quote there from Superintendent Gaul. Access to high quality instruction drives student achievement. You've all heard

226it. Um so we're going to help ensure that your dollars go into your classrooms. So, it's not a new operational expense that we're talking about. This allows us to reduce current expenses and then reinvest them into schools. So, currently your annual utility expenditure is $6 million. We implement these efficiency upgrades, which then saves us $1.5 million that Caleb alluded to earlier, which puts your post annual utility expenditure at $4.5 million. So, we take that $ 1.5 million currently that's going to CSU, Colorado Springs Utility District, and we're going to reroute it into the project. So, right now, the benefits of sending $1.5 million in annual payments to CSU. Not great. We're going to take that $ 1.5 million. We're going to redirect it as a payment towards this project, your energy program financing, which will

227result in $25 million in classroom improvements today. It'll be done within a year. Questions? That was a lot really fast. I know we're running out of time. Didn't we didn't we have this discussion about a year ago? Um and so where how is this discussion today different from what we talked about uh when you first brought this whole idea to us? A couple of things. Uh so now the audit is completely done. Right. So so the first time we approved doing the audit is that it that's correct. Yeah. So you you guys approved the contract of of going and doing the work and that was a very long project. It was on their timeline a little bit ago. Um, and then in full transparency, they were ready to come uh a while ago and we

228were in the middle of the cop and we were in the middle of defining our 5-year capital plan. Um, and so we wanted to bring it to you as a part of the as a part of the capital program um, planning idea, right? Because it's not really separate. It is, like I said, right now, Jen could do some of these projects as a part of her capital budget in different ways, in different scopes at different times, but it really is a part of the overall capital strategy of the district. So, we wanted to kind of bring it to you all at once. This is also what I've been asking for since October is this report. So, I'm glad we finally have it. It sounds promising, but okay. Sorry. So, if I understand it right, and

229correct me uh if I'm wrong, what you're talking about is $25 million. That's going to be paid out in $1.5 million every year, but $25 million is something that we are going to borrow up front. Yes. Would that be a right term to use? Correct. Okay. Yep. And what what are the what's the term of like is it 25 years or Thanks. That takes me right into my next slide. That's great. Um so this is a cash flow example. These are rounded and you know we tried to simplify it for the purposes of tonight to get through it. um we're talking about a 20-year term. So, if you look at this bottom blue bar, $25 million borrowed over 20 years with interest results in about $41 million to the district with interest. Our guaranteed savings

230in the state of Colorado must meet or exceed th those payments. So, in this scenario, our guaranteed savings would be $46 million at the end of 20 years. Our projected savings would be 51 million. The guarantee is less than the projected because of behavioral, you know, we we don't want to be the iron fist of performance contracting. We want you to use your classrooms the way they should be used. Um, so the guarantee is 46 million. We expect $51 million in savings, which results in the $25 million in improvements plus $10 million back into the district's budget over those 20 years. That answered my questions. My follow-up question would be how guaranteed is these guaranteed savings? Guaranteed. So, we we guarantee the energy units um that we save and if we fall short of that

231guarantee, we write you a check for the difference. Any other questions here on this cash up? And I'm going to turn it back over to Caleb who's going to talk about how to leverage the energy performance contract in order to maximize your capital program. Just to tack on to that too, I think one of the reasons why that guaranteed savings is less than than the projected is because they're not they're not excited about writing checks, right? So, they'll project something and then peel it back to say we're going to guarantee this much, not not the full 100% of what but we have written and do write checks. Yeah. Okay. Uh thank you, Paige. So, um, the district has done an amazing job at stretching resources further. I do regularly attend board meetings and listen to

232what you guys have been doing and really, uh, amazing work at getting more done with less. And this project, again, I mentioned this earlier. It allows you to do that. So, let's just talk about the district. I talk about capital, right? So, if the district has $10 million in annual capital funding, um, you could put $10 million towards capital improvements. Obviously, there are other funding sources that exist out there, but let's just talk about the capital program. This by leveraging the EPC kind of uh in conjunction with the capital program, you get an additional $25 million in projects that you can do today, right? So, it's a grand total of $35 million in work. Important to note that the EPC, the $25 million, that is a onetime shot. That is not a an annual recurring

233thing. So this is a snapshot of what um capital program funding plus EPC funding could look like in 2026 um for example. And now I want to talk about so um maximizing capital right if you use the energy performance contract the EPC to address some of those things that I've listed below the electrical the building automation the energy efficiency because it's those are the only things that an energy performance contract can fund as Paige mentioned were required by state law to fully fund the project with energy savings. Well, the roof doesn't have a lot of energy savings. So, the energy the EPC can only fund projects like that and um if by funding those projects, the fund balance, the capital program fund or the general fund or a bond no longer has to fund those

234things, then that allows those um excuse me, funding sources to go towards thing like critical infrastructure, academic support, coops. Um, so I know we talk about there being savings, but I think the bigger savings are the is the cost avoidance piece. We can tackle these less exciting things so you can focus your money on the classroom on these bigger, more important projects, frankly. Can I ask a quick question? Yeah. So the the HVAC and the air conditioning that are mentioned up at the top, that's not something the EPC does then or as a result of the EPC. So and it um I guess it depends if it's smaller EP if it's small scale HVAC projects, you can fit it inside of an EPC, but if it's like the HVAC at Coronado, there's not enough savings

235to fund that much um that much scope essentially. with the electrical, all of that there on the bottom is stuff that you would do. That would be Yeah. So long as we have enough savings to go fund those projects. And an important point to make, um, because the projects are so dependent on the savings, if you were to pull, for example, lighting out of the project, that is the biggest savings driver. Um, so you pull the lightning out and now all of a sudden you can't pay for the building automation system, which means you don't get the savings from the building automation system that you need to pay for like the HVAC and some of the other scope items. So the project kind of scaffolds but certainly relies on the savings drivers. Thanks. Yeah, I'm

236going to try to motor through here. Um, so uh let's let's talk about how an EPC can complement a bond. I've seen this go two different ways. You can use a bond to fund the energy performance contract. That's the scenario that we have on the left. If you were to do that, that means that you're sacrificing $25 million of bond scope to go towards electrical work, deferred maintenance, transformers, not super exciting projects, right? So, what I found to be a more popular approach to pairing an energy performance contract with a bond is to do the energy performance contract in advance of the bond as that allows you to get more work done and it allows you to build a more compelling bond project. And I'm going to show you what I'm what I mean here.

237So, the $25 million in additional funding that you can now put towards projects could go towards things like targeted investments, um modernizations that motivate voters. for example, voters probably aren't going to get super excited about a new building automation system, but if you're saying you're getting new air conditioning in their school or you're doing more safety upgrades, that might make that bond package more compelling. Um, and another uh powerful piece of doing an energy performance contract in advance of a bond is you've got a good news story to tell to your community, right? It's a project that saves 50 million in taxpayer dollars. There are guaranteed savings. It improves classrooms across the entire district without hitting the district's budget. It's a really positive story. And I've gone through this process working with school districts that

238are interested in pursuing bonds or um driving community support for something. And this is a tool that's often used to get community backing. Um when it comes to when it comes to a bond campaign, trust is the number one thing that you're after. And if you're able to demonstrate, look, we got $25 million in work done without hitting our budget. It's a great demonstration of fiscal responsibility. And um this is just a mock road map, but we have a marketing team that does help school districts kind of navigate this process. And we recently did this with Canyon City and they had a successful bond ask a few November ago or excuse me, a few November ago. And I know we're getting really close on time, so I'm going to just motor through these cost of

239So, if the district doesn't do this project, what does that mean? Um, you spent a good chunk of money on design for no improvements. You've invested lots of man-hour in this project, and you're foregoing $25 million in improvements. That $50 million in utility savings could continue to go could continue going to CSU. Um, and as I mentioned earlier, that's $4,000 a day. And the other slide we have here is kind of the converse of that. If you do this, you're able to make $25 million in upgrades, avoid 20, excuse, excuse me, avoid $40 million on utility and RM spend. Um, and do all of this at no additional burden to uh taxpayers or to the capital fund. And I apologize for going over. You're okay. Uh, this is Yeah, this is real quick. This is

240so they're they're talking about their version uh internally. Again, we can we can mock up our own version. This is kind of a mocked up plan. Um like Caleb said, one of the challenges of an EPC is that the project as a whole in in a good way has to save money. So, you can't take bits and pieces of it out, right? Where we have the ability to do that internally. We could just do the LED lighting um or just do certain projects. we we're not we're not obligated to an entire uh project list. Uh now again there's there's pros and cons to that. The the other things that I do want to uh be transparent about about an energy performance contract is um there are some and this isn't not overcomeable. There are some

241requirements to what happens in a building. Again, Snyder would be on contract with us for five years to make sure that all of those systems are functioning and that we're doing the right things in schools. We're not setting temperatures too high or too low, all of those things, all within reason. But also the other part of this is we're going to be doing significant work in buildings without fully understanding the future of all of those buildings, right? Um and so uh that that's if I'm being transparent, that's my larger concern in this is we're going to make significant investment in a building not understanding if we're going to rebuild that building in three or four or five years. And so if we rebuild that building, we can't like we can't do what Jen said necessarily

242and take the equipment from Jenkins and reput it on Jenkins. There's some complications there. Um so pros and cons to both. Again, we could do scopes of this internally. No way could we do $25 million of work worth in a year. Uh but also we wouldn't have that long-term obligation. And I think that's kind of it. any do you have more? No, I mean uh this I I did promise John that I would give him a shout out. He's been here for the entire uh process. He's the district's energy manager and uh he couldn't be here this evening because of the bowling injury, but he wanted to share a few words, which ended up being a lot of words, but um just thank you guys for your time and for the partnership. So, Dr. Comfort,

243what is there any specific guidance or action do you need from the board tonight? Well, I I understand the board is not is not going to to vote, but I think we would be um it would be beneficial to hear the the potential thought process of the board. Are we interested in moving forward with work such as this? If so, is the board interested in again, we would bring this back in the fall for a formal vote. Are they interested in moving forward with an energy performance contract? that would give me time to look at financing to work with banks to do all of those things. Um, or is the board interested in trying to address some of those projects internally with the budget we have over time? Okay, Dr. Nelson, I have a few

244questions. Can you go back to slide 33, which is the numbers slide? That's animations. Yeah. That is my bad. I um interpreting this correctly that the total cost to the district is 41 million over the 20 years with interest. Yes, the $25 million plus interest. So we are investing at this time $25 million into our schools, but long run that cost to the district is $41 million due to the interest. Correct. With a guaranteed savings of 46 where they would cut us a check if they short. So you say 51 which is Yeah. The guarantee offsets the payments similar to the cop. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. This is very similar to the cop which is what we came to the board with is we're never going to do this year-over-year. We need a big investment. And

245so now on now on the other side we're saying we can go big and do the investment in one year. um or we can try and do smaller projects over time. And when we get for example financing proposals from banks and we work through that process, we align the savings with the payments. So to ensure that that's happening um that the energy savings that's currently going to your utility provider will get rerouted to the bank to fund these improvements. So it's money that's already in your budget, it's just going to the utility currently. So then what is the bottom line cost to the district? Maybe that's you're going to make $10 million. Yeah, positive10 million. Positive. It's positive cash flow currently in year one. You know, these are round numbers, but positive cash flow year-over-year

246for the district. How come all school districts don't do this? You asked that question. Yeah, that's exactly director Nelson. I I've asked the exact like this makes so much sense. Why wouldn't everybody do this? I do think again on paper we're saving a lot of money, but there are some obligations. Again, this is assuming that we follow the protocol over 20 years, and it is assuming that we don't jeopardize any of those facilities, right? So, if if we do what Snyder tells us to do for 20 years and none of our buildings change, we're going to save $10 million. I mean, that that's true. Because if we don't then we are committed to this 41 million essentially like we totally screw this up. There's thresholds. So in the contract that you know number one it's

247the projected versus guaranteed savings that allows for some of that. We set the temperature ranges with the district. So within your current standards um if you were making changes we call those baseline adjustments. So, if you're adding a wing onto a building, um, we would want to account for that energy increase to our baseline. So, it doesn't just make it go away. We make adjustments based on the adjustments you make to our calculations. So, we can still create an applesto apples comparison on the energy use we can affect. So we will track that with you over time to ensure that any changes the district makes fit within our understanding of what we can the change we can affect which we believe to be starting in year one at $ 1.5 million a year. So like

248for example the security vests that we are modifying in our schools like some of those schools it's a major like annual school they're flipping the entrance to the building. Is that something that we would no longer be able to pursue in the future under this contract? No, we're not going to tell you you can or can't do anything. A security vestibule, in fact, typically saves more energy because of the thresholds that are involved and that usually a door has closed before another one has opened. Um, we also don't want to account for those savings. So, you know, we you would say we've increased we added a security festival. So, we're not going to say, "Oh, we saved you more money because we didn't do that improvement." So, it works both ways. We would just want

249to stay in communication about the changes the district's making. We're not we don't tell you what you can or cannot do. We just need to be informed about all the changes. What about um the potential that we have schools that the the board needs to have a very candid conversation at some point about our enrollment and potential closing of schools. So, how does that come into play? Sure. Um, I would suggest that before we move forward with the project, if should the board be say pursuing a bond or thinking about those types of decisions that we would have an understanding of that, if a school is going to be closing within the next 5 years or so, I would say probably we should leave it off our project list. You should probably what? Maybe leave

250it off our list or make, you know, talk about what we're doing in those facilities and how the ROI makes sense versus the life of the building, that kind of thing. Dr. Comfort address that to that being his biggest concern in a way. Yeah. And I I'm not projecting anything obviously, but I'm it's also just unknown. And regardless, as the person in charge of finance, we're going to owe the $41 million regardless, right? Um because that that's debt. It is going to be debt that that the district takes on. Again, assuming that these things happen, it is a very positive uh move for the district. and I've never gone through it to really know in 19 years are we still in this doing the same thing in the same buildings earning all of that savings

251or does it become more complicated over time so that's just my my um hesitancy at most some planning is required in this before we if we are going in this direction with the EPC some planning is required as far as how does this coordinate with the bond that the board could consider going forth sometime in the future. And to Dr. Nelson's point, if there are schools that are under utilized and then we should take them off the list. So, um, so I I would like to come back to my question and hear from you why school districts don't pursue this more. Okay, just measure one thing that if you go to 25 slide 25, it lists 11 of the projects there listed are school districts. So, and and they mentioned K12 projects. So, the number

252of but knowing that we have 178 school districts in Colorado been doing this for what was it 30 years why isn't that bigger? like what what are the things that hold school districts back? If you'll give me the candid answers from my perspective, the candid answer is you guys have a lot of different important things going on. Um, and there's also sometimes and the there's administrative turnover. There's changes in priorities. We know that energy efficiency and capital improvements are important, but there are other things that sometimes take the place of that. So, if we're all the way through the development process and maybe the person that was leading the charge or the board or the superintendent or the admin team that understood how this all worked, um maybe they move on somewhere else and someone

253else inherits this project and they're like, I don't want to go do an energy efficiency project. I want my focus to be on the classroom right now. So, in my candid experience, once you sit down and a group understands how this works and you get to the stage that we're at today, um they're typically supportive. You're improving classrooms, you're saving money, right? But it's they're it's a long process to get here and it's it loses sometimes steam along the way for reasons like that. I don't know if you Well, I'd also like to point out like especially in a state like Colorado, there's a lot of smaller districts that don't have the square footage, that don't have the energy spend. Even when they're inefficient, their energy spend, if we could save them 50% isn't enough

254to fund a lot of these types of projects at this scale. So, a lot of times, you know, we'll evaluate those schools and have to walk away because it just can't make sense according to the program. So we run into that a lot especially in states like Colorado where there's so many rural small rural schools. I would also add that for D11 in the early 2000s the 111 was cutting edge energy efficiency sustainability um lot of work happened and then we went 20 years without reinvesting. So, like when fluorescent light bulbs were highly energy efficient, we got them installed everywhere. Um, and and now they're, you know, three, four times burning three or four times the wattage that an LED would. So, not only is that like these things happening, but also like it may

255not be as lucrative for every school district as it is for the 11 just because of how things have shaken out over the last 20 years. I was going to make just one more point I think to Dr. Comfort's concern is that the 1.5 million in energy savings is spread across 51 schools of improvements. Multiple improvements are contributing to the energy savings. And so in the aggregate you would have to make a lot of huge changes to multiple campuses or even closures of schools to significantly reduce the amount of savings that's guaranteed. So, one of the reasons that that typically doesn't have a long-term effect is because uh you know, one small change, even a new addition or a small closure or revamping of a vestibule is a very tiny fraction of the overall guarantee.

256That's why we have such a big gap between the projected savings and the guarantee. Um Schneider is uh and this was one of the reasons I think that we were likely selected by the district 11 team. Schneider's as conservative as it comes when building out the guarantee and the projected savings because we don't want to to monitor the district or to be the energy police. The guarantee being at 1.35 and our energy team saying you're going to be saving 1.5. You have um $150,000 of wiggle room. So, if you if a teacher wants to come in um if you have a new basketball coach and he wants to have 6 a.m. workouts, like you don't need to come into us, like there's plenty of wiggle room within the savings and and the contract so that

257we're not policing. Other companies will guarantee like 99% of what they're projecting and they handcuff the way that you can run your operation and that's not what we're here to do. That's why you see kind of that difference the numbers. Thanks. I think we had a productive discussion. Well, can I can I to make a comment? So this and and to the point of what we have to decide by when I'm wondering if this would this is essentially a self-funding opportunity. We would free up money for capital projects because that's 10 million a year. This gets and it would take a while. I assume this is going to help us fund basically in addition to that project and we save $50 million. I just as I as I consider all of the things um oh

258and and just the improvements in classrooms. So, we're talking about a year you would have this done. And I mean, not by this time exactly next year, but by the time we get it all everything in writing and the students, even if we have to close the school in a couple of years, the students are going to have improved classrooms sooner and also free up more money for other classroom projects because I'm sure we have some because we have maintenance to do deferred. So, what have any districts been truly unhappy with their projects that you know of? I can't speak to any of our projects and I would be happy to introduce anyone here to any of our references. I have heard uh I've spoke to folks gone through this process and aren't happy and

259that's usually due to the project implementation, the construction. Um, you can have a project that's well designed and has all the savings in the world if you don't go out and execute construction. Um, but that's on you, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's on right. We guarantee the savings and the performance. And as Caleb mentioned earlier, we have nationwide almost $1.5 billion in repeat business. Tell me a construction project that you're so happy you want to go do it again with with the same company. We get that all the time. it, you know, clients want to work with us again because we do what we say we're going to do and when things go wrong because they do in construction, we make it right. So if a if in 10 years there's a board that they have

260to make that hard decision to close a school that we are in a contract how like I guess I just want to understand the ramifications for 10 years down the road and a board have we locked them into you can't close that school. Sure. No. To Paige's point, that would be a small impact to the overall project. And then we would look at how that would affect your baseline adjustments, that kind of thing. Like what impact would it actually have to the project and you know, how can we, you know, by that time you might be so far ahead on your energy savings, it doesn't impact your financials at all. You know, we'd have to evaluate it at that time, but no is the short answer. I would assume that if you close the school,

261if we made all these energy efficiencies to it and we are going to sell that building, that is potentially going to add value to that building and get us more capital money without all those energy efficiencies. Unless we are going to completely demo that building, then everything that we put in there is out of this. No, that was a good point. I hadn't thought about that. I forgot what I was going to say. Okay. I saw director Kerry first and then I'll come to you. Director Kerry, you can do a job. Okay, director. I'll take Director Bankis's spot. Um, what happens if not if, what happens when technology changes in that 20 years? That's exactly where we are today. When Josh said this was cutting edge, January 2000, the technology, you now have you don't

262have LED lighting. Um, those weird water things that you were talking about. Um, the technology continues to improve then. It keeps people like us with an opportunity to work hopefully. Hopefully the technology keeps improving, but it it just it gives you another opportunity to become more efficient. With something like lighting though, you've kind of maxed out how efficient lighting can get. Like you're running out of watts to shave down, right? Um so maybe there will be new technologies. There seems to be, but yeah, you're you're not locked in from continuing to improve those campuses that were part of the EPC project, right? So if in 10 years you wanted to do a comprehensive remodel at another campus, you could do that and that school could then become even more efficient, more green on the chart.

263But to Paige's point earlier, you we wouldn't take credit for the savings that resulted from the district doing even more efficient work. So essentially, it would be a constant chase, right? You're kind of for the lighting is 25 year lighting, right? So you're set with the lighting for the next 25 years, right? So the excuse me, so the million and a half in annual savings, it is that a board decision on what we're going to do with that savings so we can pay down the debt. That's what we would have to do. We would have to pay down the But you're saying no. The the million and a half go the the million and a half goes to pay off pay down the that is what it's basically. Okay. I guess I mean the board

264could decide something different but yeah like the way the project is designed is that savings is what pays off the that that [Music] thank you director Kerry we need to wrap this up we still have a couple of agenda items. Director Kerry didn't skip me. I'm good. Are are you sure? Yeah. Okay. So uh the timeline for this is this something that we can as a board say hey this is if the board is in agreement and that's the direction investigate this and bring this up with the um in fall to revisit this topic at that time uh at least do some of the work and come back in the fall. I I'm not sure if this is the time at 10:00 in the night on uh June 11th before we break up for the

265summer. We got to be making this decision. Okay. Can I just Okay. It's been very comprehensive. Yep. We have put this off all this time. I mean, I I would I was sus suspicious that this is too good to be true. But as we look at this, I feel like we've dragged our feet since October and we if we continue to put it off much longer. I I basically I hope you will all be in agreement that we will go ahead and say yes, please do this because we're saving money. It's better for our kids. It frees up our other budget. The efficiencies begin in the next year. I don't see any downside. So well, there is another option that Dr. comes talked about that is internally the district taking on this responsibility and we

266may not be as comprehensive with the energy efficiency. So there is another option that the district can do some of these things on their own without having to do this type of EPC contract which is more comprehensive from what I understand and those are the two options that are there. So um what I'm if the board is in agreement with this what I'm asking is let's investigate this EPC and also the other option that is there and maybe there is a cost comparison that can come to the board in early August as soon as possible in addition to you may have to do we talked about going for a future bond at some point in time. How does that impact some of the projects that relates to if it goes to Schneider Electric? All that

267put together, I just don't know if we have all that information. What are the schools that are going to be improved as a result of the bond? If that is an investment that is part of the bond investment and we may have a better idea in August with that we wouldn't want to invest in those schools with the EPC at this point in time. So that's my take on the whole I understand your point, but when we have $750 million uh backlog, uh it seems like it seems like this is not to embark upon taking on this additional debt that we are going to anticipate the savings going in to pay down that debt. that um it's not going to impact goingly impact the 700 $700 million um that we are potentially looking at to

268accomplish through floating a bond that's going to be approved if the taxpayers agree. I I see it as a very I understand your question but it's such a small portion of the overall picture that I don't see that it has a undue influence on what we are going to come to as a conclusion. I'm happy to bring back to the board a financing plan. If if I'm tracking how we did the cop, we had multiple financing conversations after we discussed potential projects. Obviously, this is a smaller dollar amount, but I'm happy to bring back a more uh built out version of of what a financing plan will will entail. um because you know I I'll need some time again to start to dig in with lenders and and understand uh the process for so director's

269question if the board makes a decision today as opposed to in August is there any benefit in making the decision today is this going to start the project right away or can we get a more comprehensive the financing plan all of that by August I personally I don't see a risk in waiting until an early board meeting to better understand the the financing obl obligation. Um, we would have to anyways, right? Because this would need to come as a vote. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. So, yeah, I I I think that's fine. It sounds like there is energy behind exploring further the EPC and the financing. We will also build out internally, just for your awareness, what our more developed plan would be internally and then uh but I will have more financing information when the board

270comes back from recess. Perfect. That's what I'm saying. One thing I would be curious about is that we're comparing apples to apples with the with the products and projects the quality and and what else we could be doing with the funds. If we have all this money to invest, it frees up, I presume, your $10 million in capital projects budget every year that you don't have. Is that $10 million every year? No, I I I think that the $10 million is basically saying our budget right now is about $10 million when you take out the COP payment, right? And so if if Snyder were to do this work, we would have our entire capital budget remaining to do work other than this work. Um but it's we it doesn't it doesn't add it doesn't add

271money to our capital budget. It just obviously uh it's a different funding source for a set of projects that we would or would not do in our in our normal kind of sequence of capital projects. And personally, I don't need you to build out a payment plan like you did for the coops. My understanding is should we embark on this theund the I was going to say 150,000 the 1.5 million goes right back into payment on the loan. It's clean. It's simple for me. You don't have to build out anything. Okay, back to I know we've been talking about this for a while. Do you mind if I just repeat everything back to Brandon and have him tell me if I'm understanding this right? Okay, two options. Option number so the the central issue is

272that we've identified a series of kind of efficiencies that could be gained in our utilities through electrical improvements and the like. Option number one is we do these things in house. We're not specialists at this necessarily, but we're, you know, good at what we do. We could identify a series of projects that would come out of our capital improvement budget. We'd recoup some savings presumably. We're not idiots. We know how to fix things. That's option number one. That's correct. Option number two is we contract with them. That puts us into debt right away that we would then have to figure out how to finance. They would then do a whole scope of projects over a year or however fast you think you can put all that together. And we would start to see savings over

273time in much the same way for much the same reasons. And they have a estimation based on the audit that they did that those savings at the end of a would 20 years ago. Yeah. 20 years ago would be $51 million. Uh the total cost debt plus interest is 41. And they guarantee of their work, not if we do other things on the side, but of their work in particular, 46 million of savings. And they cut us a check if they fall short of that amount. Is that all accurate? Did I miss anything? Nope. I don't see the reason to not do it. Except the one thing I would kind of say is just because you have other things you want to be doing as part of your 5-year plan. Like my own opinion would

274be when you come back in August, you kind of, this is just my opinion, that you work with them and say, "Here are the schools that we have x, y, and z projects at would not necessarily make them amenable to these kinds of improvements." So, I I I just don't see the reason to not do it. If we do it on our own, number one, we're not specialists. Number two, there's not the the guarantee of savings, assuming that's as good as assuming that you're as good for it as you claim you are. Well, it's in the contract. In the contract, it's plain language. The plain language in the contract. So, if we do it ourselves, number one, we're not specialists. And number two, there's no guarantee of savings. There would be in this contract. I

275think as long as we just, you know, don't step on h have projects stepping on each other's toes, it seems like a straightforwardly good idea to me. And I'll add to your point that when we discussed the cop, part of that decision was by investing now, construction costs only increase over time. And so if we were to do option one of us doing all this ourselves, we wouldn't be able to do it in 12 months and costs would go up. And so I do see the benefit of investing at this time and knowing that in the future it just costs more to to implement these kinds of things. Is that true? Is that true that energy savings doesn't necessarily get cheaper to implement or do you do you Okay. So the board is interested in

276pursuing this. So bring I I will bring stuff back in the in the return for research. This has to be approved by the board itself. So let's pursue this conversation as early as possible in August time frame. Thank you. Appreciate all of you being here. Sorry. It's not okay. Going to a hotel. Thank you so much. Okay, moving on. Uh uh we have a couple of items we can uh uh try to get through this as quickly as possible. Uh end of the year tax report. So I'm going to invite the T committee chairs uh the subcommittee chairs and again I want to apologize that this is at the end of the evening and you've had a long evening to be uh waiting um to come here. So thank you. [Music] Thank you. I'm going

277to straight away turn it over to Marian. Marian, you can uh you being the tax chair, you can drive this conversation and then um hand it to your subcomers to as necessary. We stole your Thank you for having us. Um I'm sorry we don't have $10 million to save you. We can't help but we have enough for your but we do have exactly we have maybe lots of value in manpower. So, thank you to all of our volunteers that are serving on the deck and on our on all of our committees. And um I really want to take this moment to thank him for their passion and their advocacy. And um and we we as Sedak, we really thrive to welcome all voices and to create an understanding with curiosity and an open mind. The

278DAC really focuses on students. That's our main focus in all we do. Um the last year we have spent a lot of energy into building connections to our D11 school parents and community. And so I just um we send you a lengthy report and I know you're busy and um feel free to send us any questions that come up any later that you didn't bring for today's conversations. Um um we'll get them answered for you. Um a couple highlights. So from the full DACK, one of the things we really proud of this year is the way we are made the connections with our community. Um we had DAC representatives visited over 30 schools to create connections with the community to visit Sachs directly and we also worked um with principles on specific supports in their

279building. Um, we have also explored ways to solicit SAC feedback and elevate it to the district. Um, we publicized opportunities for parents and community to serve on the DAC by posting an online application on the DAC website. Um, we have fostered communication about district initiatives as they support student achievement. Um the charter school committee has received multiple applications and provided quality feedback to the board and those are just a few of the highlights of the report. There's more um as the next steps in this section. Um we really want to continue to build on the insights we have gained on family community engagement with focus and intention as we move on next year. Um when we think about community the district had has very been very successful in his portfolio approach and it leads that

280we have more D1 students in charter schools. So we're asking the board for guidance on how the DAC can help to support charter schools as it connects to the board priorities, the district improvement plan and to their family community engagement and having sex. So we would like to hear from you what you what we can do to support this. Um the D budget subcommittee has supported the sitebased budgeting implementation process and the planning and they effectively supported the midyear budget as built as well as the budget build process. Um as next step in that committee they want to continue to participate in the sitebased budgeting task force. They want to figure out a way or work with socks to support an understanding of sightbased budgeting and how to give quality input to the principles. Um

281the budget subcommittee also wants to provide and support the proposed bond issue process. We don't know what that looks like but if you have we would love to support you with that. Um the accreditation subcommittee um they improved collaboration with the district on the involvement of Sachs in their um unified improvement plan process. Um the DAC feedback supported a smoother rollout process and the power school attendance intervention three and we've reviewed all m or the major data points as they relate to the district improvement plan. part of our monitoring charges. Um the recommendations from that committee include continue to build on SAC involvement in the school's improvement plan. Um we have asked to move the testing window to support student achievement and avoid testing fatigue. And we asked to include charter schools that are on

282priority and turn priority improvement or turnaround in the DAC review process. um greater involvement in the unified district improvement plan with a task force over the summer is planned. Um sack training has been really successful this year. It started off strong with an with the area superintendent that brought their sacks and the principles. Um we train sachs on IAP and Redact um use process for schools and newly designed UIP tool that is being used by the CDE. So we showed the community what that looks um on family and community engagement. We worked on sidebased budgeting and information for that for our sacks and um we would like to extend this support and sack training to our charter schools. We would like to invite them to join us and overall we noticed that when the district

283works closely with the DAC we can support each other and our community more. That was less than 5 minutes. Okay. Is there anything else? That's just a little summarization that we thought like what are little points that we can bring forward when we're only been given the small amount of time to provide this to you guys. Any questions? Yeah, what you put together was comprehensive. Before we get to the questions, could that the subcommittee chairs also introduce themselves for the record? Sure. I'm Courtney Hartner and I'm the DAC accreditation chair. I'm Rachel Johnson and I'll be taking over for Carl next year for the budget subcommittee. For the which one? The budget subcommittee. And I'm the outgoing chair of the budget sub but you will still serve on the budget subcommittee next year. You intend

284to. Uh maybe a little bit in support of Rachel. Okay. Uh do you have anything else to add the subcommittee chairs at this point in time? with that uh questions, comments from the board at this time. I want to thank you all for the work that you do. Um when we are asked to um review applications that come to us, when we are asked to um when we're asked to make a decision, it's like and what does the DAC say? You know, what is the community input that says this is what we're thinking out in the field? uh and we want to make sure that the board has this information so that they're well informed and I have to say for me personally that the information that comes out of the DAC and your subcommittees

285um has been reliable and comprehensive and I appreciate the work that you do um and and then to top it off you're all volunteers so thank you um it's good work it's comprehensive and your report was comprehensive so thank you data data from just to the moon on um any particular uh feedback uh other than um that we are appreciative of the work that they are doing comments specifically. Yeah, I I made a couple of notes. Um I just especially the outreach effort that was done uh to the sacks at the specific schools and you even it sounds like you even took on like regions like our area superintendent and their quadrants and sounds like you assign people and and thank you that sounds like great outreach. Um and the sack trainings that sounds as

286well you were very busy to the point already made it's like wow you know for volunteers you were sounds like you were everywhere. Um personally I'm going to have to revisit the academic report and the feedback there. Um, and there was a mention about the future centers and how they're giving IAP related parent training and the DAC recommended expanding that effort to middle schools to begin the planning process earlier. Thought that was a really good idea so that parents understand so much earlier and maybe that can also add to our student engagement and accountability. So, I appreciate that um along with so many other things. So um how much you mentioned the the UDIP the reviewing let's see there was a recommendation to increase meaningful DAC involvement in monitoring and reviewing the UDIP implementation. How

287much input do you feel you did have and I'm sorry it's like kind of springing that on you. You can follow up in your email if you remember. Well the question is like what is being done with the input we're doing? That is always a question. But we do see it and I saw it at several points tonight where I was like, "Oh, look, these are things we have. There are if you look at past act reports things that like for the middle school conversation today there's things that we have brought forward in the last couple of years that not exactly as we're saying it is being done but just putting it into people's mind and bringing it forward sometimes really helps to to keep the focus on the kids and what is necessary to

288go forward and I do feel like those moments we do see that our work goes somewhere without someone saying, "Oh, the deck brought this. We don't need that recognition, but we see it." And so that that already helps. And when it comes to the district improvement plan, we just have to take that this year as our guidance for our meetings into like how can we learn over that implementation process. And that's always a very challenging situation because we we're like how much backward back knowledge do we need to get good input? And then we noticed, oh, this didn't become really clear. Do we need to come back and visit a certain topic? And there were definitely some things that we have on the we want to talk about when it comes to agenda plan setting

289for next year. I will also just add to that that um the accreditation and the DAC gave a a number of points of um feedback into the development of the district improvement plan and Dr. Calake actually put together um some a document for us that was like here is what the DAC recommended was added and here is it reflected in the district improvement plan. So our feedback was definitely um taken. That's great. Okay. Thank you. I'll send them anything else. Okay. Anything else from the board? Uh a couple of things uh you said about the family community engagement and you would partner with the district. Do you have any specific suggestions as to how you would um recommend that happens? Um so the district has a family and community engagement collaborative that needs and they

290are h they're looking into specific items they want to do next year and um me and also Velvet we have been part of that committee and um we I did bring forward in our latest meeting as we go into the next year we would love for them to support us so that we can support the schools. So kind of there there's this piece to work with the D1 attorney office. Okay. Thank you. Thanks for the feedback. Um appreciate all the work. I don't see any other questions from the board members. As you said, this is a comprehensive report. Board members, if you have any followup questions uh as you go through this report uh in the next couple of weeks or over the summer, please feel free to reach out to Mariel and have that

291conversations with her. um as to feedback or questions or concerns that may come up from your side. If we wrote something and it doesn't isn't as clear on paper as we thought it is, then please feel free to reach out and ask. We're happy to answer. Yeah. And um we will keep in touch. Uh as you are aware um every board director uh gets a set of schools uh at the beginning of the year that are essentially their schools and if you put us in those board directors in touch with the sack chairs then maybe board directors when they have time available can also attend the sack meeting um at the school level. uh that way there is a little bit more connection with the board of the with the sacks that are happening and

292uh they can see um at the ground level what is happening at the school. Okay. Can I just add one more thing if someone wanted to join the deck or was interested in a subcommittee very commercial. So actually funny I got another application today. So there's still an application out there on the website and you just scroll down and say click yes to apply to it. We do ask stack members that apply that they get involved in in schools. Um for community members that sometimes is a different situation but we if it's parents we want them to be involved in their school sack. um we will actively recruit um soon because we had a way to how the committee meetings unfolds before we recruit people to something that we don't know what time frame we're

293recruiting them for. So once that is all settled, we will actively start emailing the SAC chairs that we have and have them email their SAC members and then really start pushing when um when school back to school nights are coming. And we do um will since we have a new vice chair who's by default then the membership committee chair, we will have to talk about the processes because we do have several positions this year where we have more applications than slots. That's a new situation for us and we have to figure out how to handle this. But we always have space for parents if not on the DAC and in the DAC slots since they're limited. The subcommittees do not have any restrictions for parents. So they can always join and everybody can join the

294DAC meeting and [Music] Okay. Nice job. Good. Thank you guys again. Thank you for taking the time to join us uh at this late hour. We can certainly uh go back home. You don't need to stay here for the rest of the board meeting. Uh there is one more agenda on the item. I'm going to invite uh chief and if you can you know u stay in the audience if you wanted to listen to that conversation that uh certainly is appreciated. So the board uh couple of weeks back when we talked about this uh requested a uh committee code of contact and u also uh the changes that are happening to the tax scheduling what are some metrics that we can monitor I'm going to turn it over to you chief partner um you will

295be best uh you know equipped to talk about this So, uh, go ahead. So, on May 28th when we talked about the committee proposal, there were three components that we went back and worked with committee chairs on, um, as director Malpacam alluded to. There was metrics, there was a calendar hold, kind of a save the date. We know that you agreed to one meeting a month and there may be limited times where there's a a necessity to have a second meeting a month if the workflow is such that that's necessary. So we looked at some dates for that. And then we also looked at some ideas for code of conduct but really landed in a place that that definitely needs legal counsel involved. So you'll see ideas in the document, but we need to double

296check with them and make sure that it's aligned to um policies that are currently in place and we thought about using like the board code of conduct in there. Um but we just that's clear. So I'll work backwards from what I just said. At the bottom of page one in the document that's included, there were two proposals for date. So that um your board committee chairs is DAC but is also other committees that work for you like MLO oversight committee um and the pack and the um benefits insurance committee and so as they um came together in a document and then we did have a subsequent meeting two proposals were put forward one is the first Tuesday after the regular Thursday meeting would be a standing hold that doesn't mean we will use every single

297one um it would just be a hold in case for example DAC accreditation in the fall has a lot of work depending on how many USIP plans they need to review if they couldn't fi finish all of those in the regular Thursday meeting that's the third week they could also schedule one of these times to work on that specific workflow um the other proposal was the third Tuesday um week of meeting day so again that would be the same week that the committee meeting is happening on the Thursday but it would happen ahead on on the Tuesday. Um the DAC did prefer that one. Um just out of the two options. So the whole premise here is that if we have a hold on calendars, people would know if a subsequent meeting is needing scheduled,

298that's when it would be doesn't mean we would use it every month. That way they can circle it. Does the board do you need any board guidance on this or is this I have a preference because there's two proposals. I know, but it says the note out there survey of committee members could determine the preferred day. It could. Okay. I mean, uh I don't know. Uh so it's it's a Tuesday either way. It's either Tuesday after the meeting or the Tuesday of the meeting. Yeah. Will they know if they need the meeting if it's before the Thursday? I wonder I I wonder that as well because it should the workflow should be what determines that. Like for accreditation, that'd be pretty obvious because if we have multiple uses to review, they'll know how long that

299takes and if they can fit all of them in, it might be um more questions on other items that aren't as defined. I I prefer the second one because it gives me more time to schedule other things and a little more time. Yes. just to to get organized for follow-up work versus two business three business days if I'm understanding this correctly. But they have to plan in advance and know that they need that extra time before they even have their first meeting versus the So the first bullet would be occurring after the Thursday meeting that happens the third week and it could be more reactionary to oh we didn't get through everything we need to now we do need to meet. The second bullet is saying it would occur before the regular Thursday once a

300month meeting and their preference is and the DAX preference is the second but that the reason there's two is because that wasn't unanimous across all chairs. Okay. Um does the board want to at this time I mean I would say we'll figure it. Yeah. You know I mean I don't know. I mean it both works. You know, I would think that uh in the DAC agenda setting meeting, just like we do with the board agenda setting meeting, you would have to have a pretty good idea that if on a th Thursday after the DAC meeting that you are going to have a subsequent meeting on a Tuesday, I think would have an idea that if that subsequent meeting is going to be needed even before the Thursday meeting, that's what I'm saying. Either way, it

301doesn't uh you know, whatever is best for the staff and the DAC committee. I I just don't know if the board has any preference. Are you looking for us to weigh in or are you just letting us know that you're still figuring it out? We're still figuring it out. We have another meeting with all committee chairs to decide how we're going to agenda. I think the concern right now would be that when you move to a change it it feels like a big change right now. So if we keep doing current state of course we can't fit everything in one meeting night potentially but what I heard from the board last time we were here was we are moving to one meeting a night and these are only if absolutely necessary and so I think

302we are going to need to establish a process with committee chairs of what deems absolutely necessary. I think that's something that we're still going to have to work through and how we determine to set agendas. Let us know how we can support you in that. Okay? Because we're still holding to that. It's, you know, a lot of times a lot of these committees were already operating once a month. It's just now they're all in the same day. So yeah, just putting that out there as well. The second piece was metrics. So that's at the top of page two in this. Um when we had conversation about this, one of the pieces was some committees are more prepared to be able to compare attendance to last year and then some didn't weren't able to get attendance

303by every meeting and so it's going to be hard to have comparisons to is it increased or is it different from last year. For example, there's meeting minutes from the DAC budget subcommittee. There's meeting minutes from DAC accreditation where they're really clear on who attended. But the full DAC, it's not always clear who attended because I'm not exactly sure why, but attendance got a little bit messy in some of those. So, where we can compare to last year, we absolutely will. Um, where we can't make comparisons, we will just track by group. So, parents, staff, board members in attendance. Um, we'll also look at committee membership numbers on the whole um and progress toward charges. And then DAC wants to survey their participants every meeting. Some of the other committees like MLO oversight committee said

304they didn't feel like that's necessary every single meeting, but they're willing to give a survey at points in time when it makes sense in their workflow. So, we'll be doing all of those things and then we said we'd revisit this in December um taking into account those metrics. Yeah. Um any board feedback on this? just that trying to take attendance of deck meetings probably wasn't for lack of trying. I mean, they had the signup sheet and I think you all had QR codes and yeah, there's some staff turnover in there, too. But thank you. Okay. I'll just comment that the u progress towards charges, we as a board and as the DAC and the committees need to take a look at the charges and make sure that they still make sense. So, um, you know,

305I think there possibly could be some updating that needs done in those charges as well. We do that in the fall every year. Yeah. Okay. So, we will have that conversation. But, so it's not necessarily going to be like exactly comparing to last year, but just Yeah. And then the proposed uh code of conduct, again, there's ideas in here. The main thought here is that we need to bring this to legal counsel and just double check what that looks like. Um, and determine whether we want to add that as an exhibit or a piece within BDF or bring it with committee charges so that when you approve charges, you're also approving the code of conduct that then could be used in committees. Um, I talked with Dr. X. That's what we think makes most sense

306is to approve it alongside charges. would just be subsequent pages that when we're giving you this charge as the board in approving that, we're also saying this code of conduct goes alongside that. That makes sense. On on this one, the social media reference, I think that's overstepping our bounds. Which one? I'm trying to think of it. Is this page? Oh, maybe it's on the next page. Um, Melissa, can you scroll down a touch? Yeah, thank you. There we go. So, it's the top bullet here. Clearly distinguish personal opinions from official committee positions when posting on social media or other written platforms. Members retain the right to freedom of speech. Well, of course they do. Um, the I have it personally because I am a publicly, you know, elected official. I have a personal page and

307I have a district page. I'm not if I have an observation though on my personal page. I'm not going to distinguish my personal opinion from I'm basically not I don't know how we control that. I don't know who polices that. I think that's not necessary in general and infringement. So I think it's fair to say that we expect respectful communication with the district with district staff but social media part I I think that seems a bit much I have to say. Well, I read it as though if you're um on your official um platform, if you're on your on a platform as an official, as a member of, as um an officer of, then you have criteria by which you need to be respectful and whatever else. I mean, you can that's the way I

308read it, but you're reading it differently. It's it's for to all the committee members. So if somebody on the MLO well and and so if somebody on the mil override oversight committee says u posts on social media that they disagree with a board decision and they think we should all go pound sand. I mean, do they need to distinguish that that's not their they're not representing the MLO oversight committee? No, because they they're not in general so visible as as rep representatives of the district. They're not representatives of the district. They're representing themselves on our committee. And I understand that we want to have I'm okay with a code of conduct and respectful interactions free of vulgar language in I would say in written and verbal communications. Yes. Well, while serving on board committees, but

309then we get into while serving on the board committee. So, if I serve on a board committee for a year, do I have to police myself or and if not, who is for that year? Nobody's going to look at their social media accounts to guarantee that they're being respectful of us. I know people make fun of No, it usually rises to the level of action when somebody complains about what they've read as opposed to policing it in order to make sure that um someone hasn't violated it. Usually rises from like I said some egregious posting. I don't know. Well, I wouldn't want anybody to think that like criticism of us as a board, which probably is happening a whole bunch tonight, um, in my opinion, um, is something that can't be stated by someone just

310because they serve on the committee and it just can't be disparaging, isn't that what we're saying? Why can't it be like it's their first what is also being added uh out there is not that they cannot post it but make it clear if you are the DAC chair that you are not speaking on behalf of the DAC when you are posting this but okay to be clear I don't think we've had any problems with our DAC chair I'm not I'm just hypothetically I'm saying randomly I'm just saying hypothetically saying if you are whether it's a that chair or anybody else I'm just hypothetically saying well let's let's pick on Okay, let's pick up point to the name. Okay, you don't need to be, you know, uh just take it as an hypothetical thing that I

311mentioned. So, interactions to staff members, direct communications, that's one thing. But again, first amendment can't be infringing. Like, can I give an example? Like if somebody says, I'm on the MLO committee and I don't like this decision. Is that like what we're talking about here? I'm just trying I'm trying to even understand what this bullet point is and what your concern is. They have that right. I mean, I can say that. And what if they say something that's completely disparaging and egregious and people are up in arms about it? Are you still okay with that? That's the first amendment right. I think when you serve and if you uh apply and and attach to that as a code of conduct where we will treat uh members of the committee and the work that we do

312respectfully. You can respectfully disagree. Absolutely. And I think that's the intent of this, isn't it? Is that you can respectfully uh disagree um whether you're a committee member or a visitor for that particular uh meeting. What what hypothetically what if a board member posted a meme that was just disgusting as um hypothetically I'm talking hypothetically you're telling me that it's you're perfectly fine with people I am not perfectly fine not doing that but in recent I mean in the last few years yes somebody did that I thought it was cruel I thought it was horrible and I criticized them from the dis but did they have a first amendment right? Absolutely right because or absolutely yes because that was the the personal page. So although I have significant criticisms that I think that was a

313bad decision but I will come back to first amendment right. Okay. So first amendment right. You're okay with first amendment right but you criticized from the dis. So I understand what you're saying but they aren't matching up to me. So that person was also elected. I totally get that. But you're saying it's okay for him to say whatever he wants and he's still paying the price three years later. Even though like you, I was not happy with that. I wasn't on the board. I was still in the classroom. I never met any board member at that time. And yet that's when I started writing letters to the board with that very with that very one. And my concern is is that yes, we are elected. Yes. Committee chairs are are chairs are are members. Certainly.

314Certainly. But they are people know them. That's right. And so when people write things, I don't post anything that my mother can't see. It's just not who I am. But the idea though, if you're for the First Amendment, right, but then you're upset that they say something that doesn't jive to me. So if you're if you're saying this uh where is it the professional would clear clearly distinguish personal opinions from official committee positions I when posting on social media or other written platforms because you retain the right to freedom of speech which I totally agree with. I may not like everything somebody says, but they have absolutely the right to say it and I will fight for that. But as a person leading a committee or as a person on a school board or any

315other leadership role, my personal opinion is that they should clearly distinguish their own personal opinion from their official from their official title. And don't we do that? Don't we? we have said before um for me personally blah blah blah blah blah uh I'm not speaking for the board this is my personal opinion or um yes I sit on the committee and yet my personal opinion is or it's just my opinion I thought I thought that was a just a practice that we have come to expect is what the way in which we all operate when we take on these uh opportunities to sit on committees to be elected to um be public facing. That way if we say something stupid, it doesn't bring the hole down. It just brings that person that person down. Yeah.

316I I think so. It really my concern is yes. First amendment rights. I I think social media is not where our focus should be. I think it needs to be on the respectful interactions and the written and verbal communications with district 11, their fellow volunteers and staff. And yet social media makes up the vast majority of a person's day. Okay. Well, you and I are never going to agree on it. Well, and and we should just agree to disagree. I I think there's probably more agreement than you might expect. But do the district have a expectation for employees in this regard? Yes. Can I try to reframe this somewhat? I don't want to trot out the I absolutely hate this phrase for many reasons, but it has been repeated much over the last 15 years.

317Freedom from speech does not mean freedom from consequences. Nobody is saying that you can't post whatever you want on social media. The question we're trying to answer is can you post whatever you want on social media and still serve on a committee. Those are not the same thing. This is not a question of first amendment rights. What are the expectations we have for employees as for social media? Is that something that if they are posting uh as a D1 employee that they differentiate? So yes, if a if if a staff member is posting uh as a D11 employee, there are accountability to if they are uh saying stating writing things that are inappropriate. And we've had many of these circumstances where a staff member will say because like in their title on Facebook, it'll say

318uh deputy superintendent for Colorado Springs and then they would say not speaking on behalf of the district. Me personally, I think the deputy superintendent's done. Um and so, so we do have that expectation for staff. Yes. Okay. We've had this discussion. Where does the board land on it? Um um you heard director, you heard, um director Hley, you also heard feedback as far as this bullet point goes. Um do you want revision? Do you want this to stay? I think it's in the world in which I live, I think it's common practice. Okay. Could we ask Oh, you already know how I feel. The legal is going to take a look at it. Okay. Yes. Right. And maybe you could just be rewarded that that committee members are reminded that their comments on social media

319about the district uh you know, or critical comments or something. maybe negatively impact the district. I don't know there I think none of this is final wording. Thank you. Great. That's encouraging. Then you could probably find something that Director Hayley and I could agree on and be like, "Woo, we'll we'll make our best efforts and bring it back in August." Your best efforts. Thank you. Okay. Anything else on this vote? Yeah. Can I take a side step here? This is a good thing. I think I'm glad we're doing it. The original reason this was proposed, and this is a very awkward conversation to have in public because we don't really end up saying names. The original reason that this was proposed was because there was someone on one of our committees who was repeatedly and

320blatantly vulgar, disrespectful, and rude to staff. So I then this was Lauren's concern all those months ago. I'd like to circle back to that original concern because I have zero interest in basically saying, "We'll hammer out the code of conduct in August. At some point, we'll pass it and then we'll see if this person slips up and then we'll figure out how to get rid of this person." Zero interest in that. So, this is great. I like this. We can figure out the specifics, but I would also like to think about what is the protocol and what is the assurance that this person is not on our committee in the future and is not interacting with staff in the future. So in that uh and Chief Art can talk about that the second bullet point.

321No, no, but I I that's what I said. I I'm not interested in talking about this, finalizing it, passing it, and then waiting for him this to retroactively. I'm concerned that we implement this and then retroactively say based on your past behavior and now we've adopted this, we're going to like that's not fair. You can't make new rules. I think we have to flag that based on your behavior that was unprofessional, disrespectful, rude, cursing at staff uh in email. You no longer get the privilege to have voice on our committees. You are an extension of the board and that was not appropriate. And then now going forward, we are going to have this code of conduct. But I think we will get into trouble if we try to retroactively apply a code of conduct to

322past behavior without having set that rule to begin with. Well, I think uh going back there, the language that I see up there, what it says is any ongoing patterns of behavior and communication that do not meet our committee standards can be grounds for denial of committee membership. Chief, um can you address the concern that came from a couple of board members? That's the best language we have for right now, which is why we need to go to legal to understand some of those exact pieces. And the intent would be not necessarily that it's retroactively applied, but if there is an ongoing pattern already, you can you can assume that that pattern might continue. And when you go to approve members, you can deny members at that time as well based on the patterns that

323we've already seen. Yeah. Yeah. We definitely want to get legal counsel that that is okay. Right. I see it as two different issues. Someone has acted um given what you've said, someone has acted inappropriately. Um, I think part of our leadership responsibilities is to maintain the decorum of the uh of the committee and to to respond and I'm sorry it's taking so long to get to that point, but to respond to say um and give specifics about um behavior that was unbecoming to someone who is um on a on this committee and therefore you have lost your opportunity to participate. Okay. Um and finish it. This is a separate thing going forward. I all of us have a point that we can agree on. It's just a matter to me. It's a matter of separating

324them out. Somebody has behaved inappropriately. There are consequences for behaving inappropriately. This is the consequence. Now, going forward, we want to clear it up so everyone's real clear about our future. And our future says this is what we're going to follow. And because obviously everybody didn't understand it when it was unwritten. Now it's written and we're done. I'm done. Okay. Let's run this by legal. Okay. And uh uh all DAC or any committee members the board committees stand I mean serve at the discretion of the school board. Um so uh ultimately if uh after talking with legal if this needs to be addressed from the board dis let me know okay and this can be addressed promptly in August so that it's a proactive measure right now all committee meetings have ended for the year

325and so the next committee meeting is on August. So what I'm hearing from the board is uh the individual that is being referenced not serve on that committee starting in August. Can we develop this code of conduct and uh if that person is interested in serving on a committee say that the ongoing pattern of conduct that has been exhibited previously is grounds for not serving on that committee? If not, does that require board action from the board dest? Absolutely. We'll check. But aren't committee members serving at the will of the board? Does it need to go into that much. I mean, I feel like we're making a bigger hole than we That's what I'm saying. If if this was the middle of the year and the membership has already been approved, then it would have

326had to come to the boards as a formal action item for that board member to be for that committee member to be removed from that committee. But all the committee memberships have ended right for this year and new committees are being formed for next year. So any individual can apply to serve on that committee and the board or the district can step in and then the district would step in on behalf of the board. Okay. Could we just like send an email to the individual and notice that based on like we we will not approve your membership on the committee for this next year like and that's an option as well. Um let's go through legal and follow the legal advice on this but you heard the will of the board in this and so

327how do we proceed in a manner uh that checks the legal boxes. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Good. Are we done? I guess so. Let me make sure. Is there anything that I haven't addressed Chief Art? Um, great. Okay. This has been a great productive year and other Okay. Um, okay. Let's have a go ahead. So, this is like it. I requested this a long time ago and it's too late now, but I official for us to do money. It was $90 million. And I think us communicating and presenting on how we spent that would we can entertain a bond conversation that as people in the community say what' you do with all that COVID money we would be able to answer that and I know the staff have prepared a presentation and it just never

328came on an agenda. Um so I don't know how to resolve that. I mean, August seems like, okay, it's a year later now, but uh I just wanted to point out that I think that was a missed opportunity to share with the community how we spent $90 million. Was that captured on the board uh calendar as a board request? because when I um to do so because when I I mean I ask every time is there any request outstanding request and this has never come up in any one of those meetings. Um I know we got thumbs on it a long time ago and so maybe it somehow just got slipped off and I did not remember to bring it again and now here we are at the end of the year. But I so

329I don't know if there's another way to do it. Like if it's in a newsletter and hey are you this is what we did with that $90 million of co money. And if staff have the presentation, can they just send it to the board? Yeah. Yeah, we have a presentation. We have a website that that's live. So like we we can we can message message it in a way that makes sense for the board. Also happy to bring it back at any point. But yeah, we we are prepared uh with a presentation whenever we want that to go. Well, I mean, there could be a bond conversation in August and maybe just ties to the bond conversation in August as um I'm assuming this information has been presented in the budget subcommittee meetings. Yeah, we

330did go over some Esther Esther spendown. Director Nelson uh sat with our grants director and actually kind of helped develop the presentation as well as the website. So, it is far advanced of what we were presenting to the budget subcommittee. it's a much more um engaging look at at esser and the outcomes and money and so I think it's a valuable thing to share with the community in one way or another at some point. Okay, thanks for the feedback and um whether it has to come in a Mars report uh and then a newsletter um link that is provided in the newsletter to the community or um early August uh sometime with the bond conversation. There are different options to consider out there. Um should we do a thumbs up that we actually want to

331hear it or we did according to director Nelson? Yes, but maybe we need another one to make sure we do. Okay. Is does the board want to as far as getting the report through any one of those means? I guess so. $90 million. I know. I'm I'm interested in definitely learning about it. I think if it's in a work session, even if it's just 10 or 15 minutes, it's much more public than putting it in our Mars report and in our newsletter, which you know, we definitely hope people are reading, but it it wouldn't hurt to have it here, especially as part of the launch for additional bond conversations. It's just one of the options that is I know, but I just want to make sure cuz it was sound like an email. Okay, we

332have 13 minutes, folks. Keep going. Yeah. any more things that uh you want to wrap up? Okay, thank you. I appreciate I mean this has been a long year. Uh the board now um uh unless some type of emergency comes up which I hope it doesn't. uh we uh are not going to meet. We'll let uh the board know but I anticipate sometime in early August would be the first meeting. Um maybe the first week in August if there is uh any other reason to meet uh prior to that uh I will let the board know. Um and uh in the meantime uh thank you. This is I hope all the district staff also gets an opportunity to uh breathe a little bit. I know that sometimes you're going from week to week. As soon

333as the next one board meeting ends, you are kind of uh on the runway preparing for the next board meeting and so forth. Uh uh wish all the teachers, all our staff uh u uh relaxing summer and the same thing to the board. Thank you. All right, we are officially adjourned at 108 48 p.m. Okay. All right, let's end on a high note.