001Okay. It is Monday, March 24th, 2025. I call this special meeting of the Elizabeth School District Board of Education to order at 6:01 p.m. Can I get a roll call, please? Director Callahan, here. Director Fletcher here. Director Olsen, here. Director Pal here. and patroller here. Okay, let's stand for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay. I move that the board approve an amended agenda for this meeting um special meeting March 24th. I move that we remove communication item 6.2. Second. Okay. Any discussion? Okay. Can I get a roll call? Director Callingham. I. Director Fletcher. Hi. Director Olsen. I. Director Pal. I. And Dr. Waller. I. Okay.
002Motion to approve the amended agenda. Our motion is approved. Um, next up, approval of minutes. I move that we approve the minutes from the board meeting on March 10th, 2025 as presented. Second. Any discussion on that? Okay. Can I get a roll call? Director Callahan, hi. Director Fletcher, I. Director Olsen, hi. Director Powell, I. And Director Waller. Hi. Okay. Motion approved. Uh, next up we have communications and we're excited to have Legacy Academy here. Um, we've got the principal Tony. He's going to present their midyear data. Tony, would you like to introduce Merlin as well? Yes. Is your mic on? I pressed the button. Hold it down. There we go. You got numbers at front here. 558. Maybe just turned it off. I guess they're not all 596. Yeah, I think I still have I'm
003Tony Vjink. I'm the principal at Legacy Academy. I have with me tonight our executive director Merlin Holmes. Um so I was asked to come show you our um data as I guess you were reviewing the data with Kim for the rest of the district. So was happy to come and show you where we're at. Um you use I Ready for the district. We use NWA map which is what also a lot of schools use. So when we look at it, one of the things we wanted to focus on um is still connecting. I hear it, but I don't see it. Do we need the HDMI or Apple TV or Oh, there it's gone. Now we just need HDMI. How am I screen? Do we need connection on your computer? I have a dongle thing if
004you need. Oh, okay. It's trying to connect. Okay. Thinking about it. It's swirling. It's the uh admin ATV, right? Yeah. Yeah. Still to go get the little Still not connecting. It's not a regular US. But I can not the HDMI. Okay. I have like a this says could not connect. Well, while while she's doing that, I just take the opportunity to let this board know how much we appreciate your partnership with us as a charter school and how much we how much we see your support for parents choosing the best education that they want for their children. Superintendent Snow Barker has also been a very good partner and has a history of supporting charter schools. He's known for that in the state of Colorado. We just really appreciate the partnership that is here. Some of
005you may not know, but I used to be principal of Legacy Academy a long time ago when the building was built. I was here for about a year and a half during a fairly turbulent time, but we got a building built and got things moving forward and that was when Dr. Blanc was here. you know, Dr. Rod Blunt that was here many years ago, probably 15, 20 years ago, but appreciate the support and partnership that this board has always shown towards Legacy Academy. Just thank you very much for that. Great. Thank you. And I I'll just add to to Merlin's statements. We certainly appreciate your partnership as well. I feel like we have come a long way in in really trying to make sure that we're working together to make sure that again all of
006our kids are important to us and and kids who have chosen Legacy are are equally as important and um we really are are pleased with the work that that Legacy has been doing and obviously just like our schools when you you know you look at your data and you're always looking to improve and really congratulate Tony and Merlin for their leadership and looking at areas that they can always improve. improve and really proud to have them as part of our district. So, thank you both. Right. Yeah. When we were looking at we knew we had to kind of change direction. So, we we came up with an instructional framework. We came up with some goals for our staff, some expectations um changing curriculum, moving away from the digital stuff that Legacy has been known for
007because I think that has um kind of we've suffered in the direct instruction realm and I know you guys are looking at that as a district too, more direct and explicit instruction. So, we've already started that process in our building and trying to get back to less reliance on digital. We still use the digital because we think it's important and innovative for kids to be able to use that. But at the same time, we kind of want to get back to to basics and and learning. So what I have here is our NWA report. This is directly from them. Um so um we look at growth and achievement. It's based on RIT scores. So RIT score to you know give the most simple explanation it compares apples to apples. So it'll take a snapshot of
008all the kids in the nation who have taken NWA which is a lot. Um a lot of schools use it and it groups kids together in the same ability level, age group, grade level, everything. So when you look at growth scores, it compares kids of equal footing to each other. So you get an apples to apples comparison. So, one of the things we wanted to focus on this year was looking at growth scores because we want our achievement to go higher. But first, we need to stabilize. So, what I have up here right now is the last year from our fall to our spring. This is where we ended um as far as mathematics. So, you can see we wanted to do improvement. We made our goal 68th percentile growth for math and reading. Um,
009so this was where we ended the entire year last year from year beginning to year end. So what I have here now is this is from this what's going to come up here is this is from beginning of the year to January now. So you can see We made substantial growth gains there in just a half a year versus the whole year. So our goal is 68th percentile. By the end of the year, we're at 67th percentile. And you can see that's brought our achievement up as well. The green. So we have a lot of kids celebrating um because we had a lot of kids who are struggling who saw growth in the 80th percentile or higher. Wow. who have been struggling for quite a few years. Um we've had a we had um couple
010of classrooms around the 80th percentile for growth and mid70s for achievement, mid to upper 70s for achievement. So this is the quad chart. We um when we look at this, we want people to be um high growth and high achievement. So we do want to be up in this area. And I didn't show you the previous one, but it was all like down here on the other one. So, we're moving up in the right direction. Did you When did you start the the implementation of direct instruction? When did you start? That that was just this year. Yeah. I was principal. Last year was my first year as principal. So, we kind of looked at what changes need to be made. Maryland came on in November of last year. So, we started talking about looking at
011our data, talking about the direction we needed the school to go. And there we with it. I mean, would you can you kind of summarize top three things that you changed in order to achieve that? Um, well, right now for math we I'm not trying to we kind ofated math with Sachs and math right now. We're looking for a permanent replacement for math. Um, the reading we saw big changes in. We we changed again from the Savas all digital curriculum to um a more comprehensive you know um higher expectation or more rigor as they would say in in education but a higher expectation curriculum. We went with benchmark advanced and we've seen a lot of growth in our reading because of that. So, and in our instructional framework with our expectations in teacher planning and
012um coming up with learning objectives and progress monitoring and checks for understanding and things like that. So, um yeah, I think that was about that was about uh about it as far as the academic. We also um started capturing kids hearts in our school. So that has led to um getting us on a direction for more self-managing classroom um there. So um it really builds towards students taking responsibility for their learning using their Excel model. So we're coming up with classrooms that are more self-managed and less, you know, teacher managed and things becoming more organized in in that realm as well. So for reading, I'm sorry. What level like how much interaction electrically electronically would you say they still use a mat? Well, every kid still has an iPad and they use them daily. It's
013just we've kind of shifted what tasks they're being used for, okay, and where the learning is taking place. So the problems that they have to do for homework or whatever still on the on the iPad, it depends on the the class and the grade level. For the younger grades, we're definitely going back to more pencil and paper things. You know, we and again since state testing is on electronic devices and they have to use their iPads and stuff, we don't want to scrub it completely. Want to make sure we're mixing it well. Yeah. The biggest I think the biggest component there that I was seeing was the the lack of direct instruction and too much o overreiance on the digital stuff for the teaching. So yeah, but we still believe it's really important that kids
014have those digital skills as well. We just need to establish the the skills that they can transfer back and forth. Right. So all right. So for reading I'll take you to where we ended last year just like before. So this is where we ended last year um with reading. So last year we already started to implement some goals in reading which is why you see some high achievement but that that achievement from beginning of the year to the spring didn't change right because look at the growth. The growth wasn't there to push the achievement levels up. So that's what it looked like on the chart. This year again, we're shooting for by the end of the year um 68th percentile and I'd like it to be a little bit higher, but we got to kind
015of start somewhere and I wanted to make it realistic and achievable the first year. So, And so here's where we are at with reading right now. So again, that was the previous one was beginning of the year to end of year last year. This is beginning of year to mid year. So this we still have our spring data to go. So, we got the growth up. So, now we can see our achievement starting to grow go up as well and grow. And so, we got to try to get these these grade levels here, these dots up in here with everybody else. Well, at least you moved out of the third quadrant there. Yeah. Yep. Well, yep. You want high high growth and high achievement. So, you want to move up this way. But again, reading
016is where we had the most growth. I think of individuals. We met with each teacher, myself and the assistant principles. We met with every single teacher and we looked at every single student. We went through their map data. And um when you look at each student, it has a little graph. It shows where the students at and it has a little narrative of things they can work on and it even projects where they're going to um go on CMAS. It kind of gives if they're going to meet expectations or not. And then we have So this is our language usage from last year and we actually dropped in that because again there's not enough growth there to sustain beginning to the end of the year and then where we're at right now. So, we we've
017still got to boost this up a little bit, language usage, but we think that's going to come around because our reading scores are going up and we're working a lot on vocabulary. We knew that was kind of a a area we needed to work on schoolwide. So, have you seen any correlary between increased reading and better math? Um, that was why we kind of started with some of the reading stuff last year immediate. We didn't have a new reading curriculum, but we kind of made some changes with intervention and things last year. It's kind of like what we're doing with math this year. We kind of bandated it a little bit. Um because we were we were thinking from what we were looking at in our data, some of the the reading was holding kids
018back on like story problems or real life applications. They didn't understand what it might be asking them to do. So we had to increase vocabulary and reading comprehension to kind of hopefully turn that around. So that was one of one of our guesses anyway as to what was happening. So I I think that that with the data we're seeing now that that was some of the problem is there the reading comprehension wasn't there. And then we have science. And then science we also know we kind of need to to revamp. That's just not um we're not as far off on that as other things. Oh, in the language usage that's only two through eight. That doesn't include K or first in language usage. So this is our science um last year. So again, we got
019low growth, but we have high achievement in science. That's been pretty traditional for us. So um we need to look at how we can get growth because we think we can get that achievement even higher and then here's where we were from beginning of the year this year um to January. So again, our growth isn't high. So we expected to see the achievement level drop that it did. So but we are going to start looking at how we do science. Science curriculum is a little trickier because it's not quite as all-encompassing um to try to find something that meets all the needs of the students. So, we're we're we've had discussions about what we want to do to address some of the science gaps and how we're going to get those fixed in the future
020here. But reading and math, we're trying to get those on track first. So, that's that's all I got. Any questions or Thank you, Tony. Thank you for coming in. I appreciate it. It's great to have you. Well, thanks for having me. Yeah. Thank you. I'm an electrical engineer, but I truly do not believe electronics are the way to teach math. You just got to put pen to paper. Yeah. That's the only way to get there. Right. All right. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Appreciate it. Do I turn this off or leave it on? Go ahead and turn it off. Yeah. Thank you, sir. Okay. Thanks very much. Thank you. So, next up is board member reports. Um, I'll kick it off. I don't have too much, but I did enjoy the presentation by uh, Zach
021Roshelle today. I hope others did as well. Um, and I got a chance to look at some of the feedback from our recent survey. And I do want to say thank you to the parents who participated in providing feedback. That's how we make decisions and I know that it takes time and it is appreciated. I don't have anything. We have a fact meeting tomorrow. Um, so a couple weeks ago I went to my first CAC meeting, the um, classified accountability council. I have to always think about it really hard what that means. But anyway, so it was I was very, first of all, I was very impressed how engaged and on it everybody was in that meeting. It was pretty astounding. um and later on we'll be talking about a policy that was kind of
022addressed in there. So tried to address some of the concerns in there, but that was very helpful to me uh to hear that and to hear their input. So um I I was I was pleased to do that. And then um just again on behalf of Elizabeth Education Foundation, couple things coming up. Um number one, we talked about it last time, but um we've got notifications out now to all of our stars awards winners. And so that's exciting. So that's uh the banquet is going to be on April 12th and um so hopefully all of the board members can come to that and and it will be a fun time and it's just an amazing time for the kids. There's honestly there's so many people who as adults have said, you know, when we talk
023about it from the EF tent or whatever and they're go, "Yeah, I was a stars award winner." And they they I mean they're you know like 20 years ago and they are very pleased to I don't know if it was 20 years ago but at least 18 years ago. Yeah. It's been going on for a while. So it's a very amazing thing. And um we have um a couple of upcoming things. First of all, uh just a reminder to everybody that American Furniture Warehouse is an ongoing yearround fundraiser for Elizabeth Education Foundation. And so if you uh are going to buy some furniture from American Furniture Warehouse for spring cleaning and you know just for the new springtime or your patio furniture, whatever you got to do, um they provide um a donation back. If
024you buy a mattress, we get a little bit more certain mattresses. Don't ask me why, but whatever. And um so anyway, just don't forget to mention EF or Elizabeth schools when you make that purchase. And then I I think it's on the 15th, but I'm not going to swear to that, of April. Um, we're gonna have a fundraiser at Jack's Pizza. So, information will be coming out more specifically on that soon. So, that's all. I have nothing to say. Okay. All right. My turn. Um, so I just want to follow up on the training today. Zach Rishelle is a is a um instructional expert that we are partnering with. We met him six weeks ago I guess it was at our class conference and um he came today to do an overview with our staff.
025Um very wellreceived uh according to our leadership team's follow-ups afterwards. Um direct instruction is is what the way I learned and probably the way most of us learned is you know teachers had knowledge and we needed to learn it. Um unfortunately our education uh colleges today have really shifted away from teaching to facilitating learning and and to engage students and and productive struggle. Um which is obviously why we're no longer fourth in the world. We're at 40th in the world. And so, um, I just believe very strongly as a as a district that we can defy the odds. We can change our pathway and we can be a district that can see our students achieve at at rates that are more appropriate than the 40% of reading uh on grade level that we're seeing right
026now. And that's exceeding the state. So, um, we're excited about it. Um, again, today was our first day with Zach. Zach is meeting with our principles every month um to continue to train them and prep them and and guide them in their instructional leadership. So, it's not just a teacher only training. It's our instructional leaders that are being trained on a regular basis as well. And so, um we're really excited about the direction of of um uh ensuring that our classrooms are more engaging. I I truly believe that part of our challenges and behavior in our classrooms has a is a result of our not having students engaged um within our classrooms. Not 100% but certainly a large portion when kids aren't engaged in learning um they have plenty of time to do other things
027and obviously sometimes that can be disruptive. Um I do want to apologize that I do need to cancel my forum that was scheduled for Wednesday this week. Um we will be rescheduling. Unfortunately, we've had another district commitment that I need to fulfill surface that will not let me be here in the boardroom on Wednesday night. Um, so again, um, I look forward to the opportunity to engage parents again in a forum and we'll let you know as soon as I have that date. Do want to give people kind of a heads up on the state budget um, outlook. Um, Colorado is experiencing another shortfall. Um there is strong commitment not to return to a budget stabilization factor which is how they balanced the budget in the past on the back of public education. Um many
028of you know that we were very active in in uh uh the work to adopt a new school finance formula. There are triggers within that formula that will prevent it from being implemented based upon where the state is financially. Right now that is not being looked at. Um uh this year um the new finance formula uh brought about a new investment of about $500 million in education by the state of Colorado and that was to be implemented over a six-year period with 18% of that being funded this year. That is unlikely to happen. Um right now they are hoping um certainly Speaker McCcluskey is hoping that they could do a 10% investment uh this year into the new formula which would still be very good for us. Um but um the other interesting news that
029came is that part of the uh funding work that we did last year included some adequacy studies. Um is Colorado adequately f funding education? um the two studies or two different studies done so that they could be compared um it came back that Colorado needs to invest anywhere between 3.5 to 4.1 billion more dollars in education to adequately fund education based upon the needs of students. Um you can agree or disagree with that but needless to say the 500 million that was agreed to with the new formula is well be below that. So the likelihood of that happening is not um within the the the horizon. However, there is talk um about a potential ballot initiative. Um we all know that there have been numerous ballot initiatives for K12 education that have failed over the
030last 10 years. Um but there is talk about considering another one now that we have this adequacy study and can present more factual data. Um so we are watching our budget very carefully for next year. Um we will be very conservative in our budget projections um and make sure that um we don't face a a recision or a um a fiscal exigency next year. Um and so need the other thing I do want the community to know is we typically don't get a final budget from the state until more likely this year the last or the first week in May. And so obviously school is pretty close to wrapping up and so we'll be doing a lot of planning and and work with our finance advisory council. We'll begin that work tomorrow at our our
031meeting. Um but um we will we will really be kind of on pens and needles until the state determines their their final outcome uh in the budget. So unfortunately that's not great news. Uh could be worse. It could be a budget stabilization factor where they're writing us an IOU again. And right now, knock on wood, that doesn't appear to be the case. Uh just a quick legal update. I sent out a a community uh superintendent update uh this afternoon at 3:00 and that included a lot of information about our our legal case. Uh the ACLU uh case filed on behalf of a couple of parents in our community. Um uh we did receive a ruling last week from the judge that uh we have been uh at preliminary injunction has been uh ordered um that
032would require the return of of the books. Our biggest challenge is those books don't exist. They were thrown away. Um and so we're working through that. Um needless to say we don't agree and while we respect the legal process, there is an appellet process for a reason. uh when you get a a a ruling from a single judge who you may disagree with. Obviously, there's always that process to take it higher. Um and we are in the process of doing so. We have filed a motion to stay and appeal. Um we have notified the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals of our position. Um, and we are currently awaiting a response from the circuit court judge as to whether she will stay her motion pending the appeal or whether we have to go to the 10th
033circuit uh to get their um ruling on a stay in the motion. Um again, um this was not unexpected. Unfortunately, when you go to the courts, um when you get a single judge, you get a single judge with a point of view. Um and when you get a single judge with a point of view um that may be different um you always run that risk of a judge feeling differently than than maybe uh what we believe the law says. Um but again we respect the process and we'll continue to to pursue uh that that particular case. Um we believe very much that it's been lost that the the content of the books is the problem. Um there's a lot of trying to twist um the facts into making it appear as if those books were
034removed for political reasons. Um I shared in my superintendent's update the excerpts from those books. Um and we did provide that in our response uh filing to the judge because we felt like she needs to read what she's ordering us to put back on the shelves. um she needs to squirm a little and realize she's asking us to put filthy content back on the shelves in our libraries and um we don't believe obviously that she she took the time to understand that. So anyways um we will keep uh the community posted on future rulings. Um we do have a website that is um uh in place for all of our filings to be reviewed by our community. Um and again I intend to continue to issue updates um to our community as we have more
035information. So then final we are in the final quarter of the year. Um this is a long run between now and the end of the year. A very busy time. I had a lot of teachers comment today as great as spring break was. Now we enter this long grueling run with testing and and very little breaks and and lots of content uh that needs to be delivered in this last quarter. So, um, we do encourage our parents and students to realize school isn't over yet. Senioritis is not it's not time for it yet. We still have some time. Um, and so again, we're really proud of our staff and excited at the the uh energy that we saw in the room today at our professional development. So, I think with that, I think that's all
036the updates I have. Okay. Any public comment? All right. So, next up we have our discussion section. And our first discussion item is about executive sessions. People often wonder what they are, um why they're needed. So, we've invited our legal counsel, Brad Miller, here to talk about executive sessions, why they occur, and the rules that are applied. I think you're turned off. You have to hold it down. Yeah, there I see it. Hi. Hello. Brad Miller. I'm a outside legal counsel. I work with a number of districts and charter schools and uh it's h good to be with you. So, I've had some opportunities to be with you over the years or the last couple of years. Um so when when a group like you has the audacity, the timmerity, the the just the the
037the to be candid to have the courage to take stands against what people that do my job kind of conceive of as the blob, sort of the the sort of the standard bureaucracy and education that has has really taken hold in Colorado. Uh it's it's inevitable that you're going to face um some form of resistance. It takes the course of of challenges around the way that you interact as a board because you're subject to this broad thing called the open meetings law and then the open records act. And so it it's in a way timely, but it's it's the sort of thing that I feel that is really um important to do on a pretty consistent basis is to just take some reminders around what um what our constraints are so that we can be
038really effective in the work that we do. I'm undeniably proud to work with this group. And Jamie is amazing, just amazing. and Dan has been superb, particularly in the course of some uh recent litigation and so forth. But we're going to continue to see these sorts of things um when we work in the public and and uh every district, every school district and and most local public bodies in Colorado have been sort of lawfared around this to use a term a colloquialism that you know speaks to the idea of using um administrative rules and different things to to to just sort of slow down the process of change. and and you guys are undeniably change agents doing some good things that are just parent oriented and traditional in a sense and and trying to reflect
039the values of your community. So with all that sort of predicate said I I did provide Jamie a little outline if you don't have it available to you now. Okay, it's in your binders and and we're not going to go through it like a PowerPoint. I'm not going to sort of walk you through all the elements, but I thought it might be a handy document for you to utilize or as a reference sort of material in the future and I'm cognizant of your time. I don't want to take too much of it. you can stop me or or bring me back to some of the topics that are included here, but I'm just going to broadly swoop through what is an open and noticed meeting. What is what is your ability to interact with each
040other outside of this u room look like a little bit about email and then mostly executive session and then I'll pop into open records just briefly. Does that sound good? Director Wilson. Okay, thanks. So we're we're a board of five which means a quorum is three which means under the open meetings uh law that if three of you are together for the purpose of discussing or or moving any sort of topic that might be a board topic forward whether that's by action or or just by conversation and building consensus so to speak that is a meeting that has to be noticed under the open meetings law. means we have to post it. Jamie would put it on our website, we might put it on our front door, however you guys um do that. And so
041we got to be really careful about that. U and that includes things like email communications where you might have a an exchange of ideas and and it might feel like it's just sort of, you know, aspirational ideas, things that you're you're kind of topics you might want to deal with, but all of that could constitute a meeting if there's a back and forth with at least three of you. So, all of those things are open meetings. Um, doesn't mean you can't be humans. You can all go to a graduation. You can all go to a football game. Um, lose to my kids at the classical academy if you want in football. Do what you want to do. But, uh, those social sorts of events are ex explicitly excluded from this. But, when you're talking about
042school business, just be cognizant. We're we're not going to meet as a group of three. And by the way, we're not going to meet serially in one and one and then one and one and one and one to build consensus. You can all meet individually as as pairs, but we're not going to do it with a purpose to develop some sort of consensus or or a plan. Okay. Um the the thing that we're going to most focus on is a thing called an executive session. And this is where the what I characterize as lawfare um comes into play quite often. People will watch as you gather you um make sure that your meeting has been properly noticed with as much of the agenda as possible on it in advance. If you're going to amend the
043agenda as we did tonight, it's it's going to be because of late breaking information. is going to be because of um you know some some meat that came up after the posting time and then you have to do it at a special meeting. All five of you unanimously have to vote at a regular meeting. Just a majority of you have to vote to change your agenda. But typically we got it out there probably the weekend, you know, the Friday prior to Monday meeting is your standard at least. And and that's what we're going to do with an executive session. We have to have that posted and we have to have it in writing ideally or almost necessarily in writing on your posting with a few things in in mind. One that it has to site
044chapter and verse specifically CRS24-6-42 PN 4 and then PN with one of the five or six exceptions to um open meetings that are out there. uh legal advice, personnel matters on a specific personnel performance issues, uh negotiations and advice to negotiators, discussions around children that if exposed would impact them negatively. So that might be for an expulsion or something like this. Um and and on down the road, there's just a handful of things that we can uh security issues. Um so where where do we put our security cameras? We don't want to tell somebody in the world what the capacity is of our security. So we're going to do that in private. So those things can be done and we and so it we have that 264024 B E F whatever we have that cited
045and then we say with particularity and this is what's really critical what the topic is going to be in as much depth as we can without you know revealing our secrets. So, um, personnel matters to discuss the performance of the superintendent. That's pretty clear. We know who was going to be talked about. We know what we're talking about. That's pretty good. Legal advice on specific legal matters related to next steps in the uh, ACLU case. Pretty clear. That's enough to say uh, negotiations and advice to negotiators. period. That's not enough. We need to give some more specificity. It's related to whether or not we're going to build a facility on XYZ plat. We're going to try to give some more particularity. We vote in by roll call vote. Needs to have a two-thirds majority. That
046means four of you. And and then we go into the session. that session's recorded except if we're talking about a particular student or if I'm there and I advise or one of my peers is there and we advise that this is going to be legal advice and related legal dialogue and then we turn the recorder off for that period of time, but then we'll turn it back on to have like Q&A and stuff at the end. Then we vote to come out of executive session. we've taken no action in an executive session and if there's any action to be considered we might have within the session said does somebody want to make a motion David says I never get to make motions I want to do that I'm going to make a motion and he
047comes out and and he says based on what we talked about in executive session I move to terminate Dan Snowberger you know based on the performance that we discussed and and and and whatever the thing but but but that's not been prepared it's not been sort of prevoted on. It's it's it's we're not just rubber stamping something we decided in there. We're going to actually come out and do that separate. So, we don't know what the votes going to be necessarily coming out. That's executive session questions about any of that. When was the last time, Brad, that they updated the categories? Has that been updated anytime recently like the ABCDE EF or have they been that way for a while? Um, I hope not because I've had them long memorized and I don't think that
048there's any categories that have actually been sub substantively changed. There's been um there's probably just some I've never used so that might be what I've seen here. Yeah. Uh so so some of the categories are are very rarely utilized. uh you know uh so for example the the conf the matters to be kept confidential that would be it's it's even hard for me to come up with a something to as an example um but uh E is is that's these are kind of shorthand so it's not determining negotiation it's advice to negotiate you know it's got a long sort of chapter or verse to it um And so they've been pretty these are the these are the ones these are the okay the current ones um good reminder we we I always advise that we
049we want to minimize the number of times that we go into executive session sometimes I've I've worked with schools that have been in sort of a a period of flux and there's an executive session almost every meeting. It may be very legal. It may be very right but it builds an aura of non-transparency. it it it it diminishes the trust your public has in what you're doing because they think you're being secretive whether or not it's appropriate. And so we try to we try to avoid doing it really often. And then we try to do it very efficiently. And I I will say this one last piece is when you're in this session, to the extent that you veer off path and start to dialogue about something that wasn't the call to the session, that
050necessarily renders it um a violation of of the executive session law. And under the right circumstances, the entire tape of that could then be provided to the public. it it would expose the entire conversation if you take part of the conversation out of the context of what you called to be in there for. Even if it's another legitimate secret thing, you should have come out and and and called for additional um part of the session or or do something different, not just meander into something else. Okay. Can you go into executive s for multiple things that you've announced? Yes. And and what we would do is Jamie or whoever is managing the recording will actually within the minutes of that the the the record of that say you know at 6:48 we move from this
051topic to that topic and and sort of separate them sort of you know transparently within the session. It's still okay to do one motion that go in for A B C whatever maybe. Yes. Okay. But you have to site the statute for that, right? So it could be 246 4024 B E and F for legal advice regarding this thing for negotiation advice to negotiators regarding that thing and personnel matters regarding that thing. Yeah. You would say all those words all in the front. Yeah. Um, it is not a topic to say we're mad at Mike for the way he's been and so we're going to go in and scold him. We We can't deal with board frictions or or anything like that. We That's not a There's a lot of things you can't go into
052executive session for that you just got to sit out here and do. um the the um the the structure of the of the organization or some sort of strategic thing that we want to do. We want to cut back on, you know, uh uh cabinet level salaries. We can't do something that's like that that in secret. We got to do that out here. Um I I just wanted to touch base on uh Kora. You've heard the acronym for Colorado Open Records Act. Uh feels like uh Jeff and I talk every day and I do that with people in his role in a lot of places because Kora has been highly accessed recently in the last postcoid really. And so to that end, the the board thing I want to make sure that we're clear on
053and I've said this to most of the board, but I haven't said it to you probably. uh we don't want to use our personal emails, email accounts for district business. That can become a little bit of a an a fudgy area because then it could open the door to what else is he doing with or she doing with that personal account and could open some access through Kora into, you know, places we don't want them to go. So we're going to try to use our our district accounts and and just be aware that all email traffic amongst you unless it is absolutely clearly privileged by virtue of being engagement with me around legal matters or being something about a particular student. Um it is kora a bull. it can it can be um asked for
054and most likely we're going to provide it and it's going to show things that uh we hope would demonstrate your professionalism and your you know your your all of those sorts of things. Just be aware that as you engage in writing with each other or with Dan or whomever that that's that could be in the newspaper next week. And and so then the final thing I want to say is I am I'm aware that people will send coral requests here and then be outraged that we're trying to charge them something for uh the resulting documentation. And it's oftenimes because they'll send something like I want all emails amongst the board members on the topic of charter schools. What do we do with that? We have to do a total deep dive into all emails from
055all times because there was no time frame and there was no specific words and there was all these things and and we might say, you know what, 60 hours of work at $41.37 an hour and we're not going to start until you pay us for that because in good faith we want to make sure you're going to pay us for putting Jeff and everybody and your lawyers into um into that um amount of work. And then people will say, "Well, no, no. I just want the words charter and or school or you know they they'll they'll they'll think that they've re reduced it but they haven't really and and and on down the road and so we'll sometimes have back and forth and you'll find sometimes constituents are are finger wagging saying you guys are
056just you're cheating us and I will promise you I cost more than $41.37 an hour and frankly so does our staff and so that is the amount that statutoily we can charge. We are not gouging anybody when we say we need 250 bucks to get this done. We really thoughtfully and your team really thoughtfully decides what does it really take to to download this and then to review it because we can't put a kid's name or directory information out there and what if there's a legal, you know, thing. So, we've got to review it. It's not like we can just abjectly just throw things out. So we you this district does it in a very fair manner, a very thoughtful manner, almost to the point of giving away more than it we are never cheating
057anybody and I just wanted to say that with great confidence to you guys in public. Those are all the things I wanted to cover. All right, good. Thank you. Thank you. Anything else, Dan? Not that I can think of. I think you covered it all. Thank you. Appreciate you. Thanks. Thanks. Okay, next up we have our district CFO Rebecca to review our budget to actual since our adoption um of the revised budget in January. Trying to make this a little more readable. It's a lot of numbers on a small screen. Can you guys hear me? Yes. Okay. And just if I could real quick just to set this up when we did our revised budget, we want to be able to from this month forward actually provide you a report of how are we doing
058on that budget. So that's really the intent of this. We did quarterly financials I think did last month. Last month. Yeah. So we did quarterly financials last month. So, this is something we've added to our reporting just so that we can monitor that we are on track to to adhere to the the amended budget that we approved in January. Just Sorry. Thank you, Rebecca. So, um since this is kind of off of the traditional reporting, um I pulled this while we were um on spring break last week. So, I just kind of it's an unusual kind of dividing line, but it's year-to- date as of the 18th of March. The only exception to that is I did get notice of what our property taxes this month would be that we haven't actually received, but I
059got notice of what they were. So, I did include that. That's the only caveat that that kind of deviates from the March 18th date. Um, that being said, that means we did not include any um revenues through the rest of this month or our payroll had not been processed for the month of March yet. So, we'll kind of talk about that here in a minute. Um, I'm trying to be consistent and show you guys and kind of stick to similar layout um with what our budget is. So, I utilize the same budget document that the midyear budget revision uh came to you as. However, when we get a little further down, we are kind of making some efforts to break out salary and benefits in some different ways to kind of be more transparent in
060the different categories. And I'll go into more detail about that as well. Um, starting at the top on our general fund, our revenues here. Um, we it's pretty common with the way things come through to us for our big section of our money, which is our bucket of property tax, state equalization, and the specific ownership tax. Um, those are the top three and those are our largest percentage of our budget. um property tax is always late in the year. We have gotten one big payment in March and then we will continue to get more in um April and June. Um and then the way they've changed the state equalization payments this year is that they front-loaded us and so now we will not get any more state equalization payments except for one in the month
061of May when we do not receive property taxes. So you'll see on the percentages on the state equalization line, we have received almost 100% there. We're at 87.4%. We will receive one more large payment, but that piece is just about done. The way that that happened, I've I kind of I'm going to repeat myself a little bit from other meetings, but because of that shift that kept us from having to borrow from the interest free loan until February. Um, and so that should hopefully be the only month that we will have to borrow with property taxes coming in strong, but we'll keep an eye on that. Everything else, um, we are a little low on improvement fees, but it is typically picks up in the spring. So, I am hopeful that we will still recognize
062the 450,000, but we did drop that down um, from what we received last year. Um, and then everything else we will exceed on our investments because we've already hit our budget and we still have a few more months. That is because of high interest rates. Um, which is a good thing. Everything else is kind of coming in in line. Some of the grants, you'll see we've already received all the funding for those, so they're at 100%. Um, we should still continue to receive facility rental monies and infant toddler monies um as tuition and facility rental monies are paid. Any questions on the revenue section for the general fund? When does the MLO generally the bulk of it generally come in? That's usually paid along with property taxes. So that's also late in the year. Okay.
063Yeah. That kind of goes along then with the timing of when property taxes are paid. Yes. Yes. Like we had to go in and pay ours. I only paid half. So I had to pay it in February. The next half isn't due till June. Yes. If you paid in full, I think it's in April that it's due. So it just that timeline. Yes. And I don't know why. We kind of did an little brief analysis, but last year we received a really large second payment in March. Last year that we did are not on track to receive this year. So it'll just be spread out over the other remaining months to still get to our total bucket. And typically the property tax amount, there's always a few people that don't pay their property taxes. So,
064we don't always, but there's also people that it comes in from prior years that's overdue. So, it kind of ends up washing most of the time. Um, but that's what we're supposed to get from property tax. We may not quite realize all 100% of that, but it'll be pretty close. Okay, cool. Thank you. Yep. Any other questions on the revenue? All right. I'm going to go down to the allocation section. This is where we pass Whoops, too far. This is where we pass through our funding to Legacy and Aerrol Lab. Um they're we have two different kinds of arrangements with them, but they're both essentially charter schools. Um and so that's the funding that we've passed through to each of them. Um, Legacy is always a little bit further behind as far as we don't
065pay them until the end of the month when we get our funding from the state typically. So, this would not have included the March payment to legacy yet for their um per pupil revenue that we passed through to them. So, we get on the charter schools, we get the payment for the whole payment and then we keep we send them 95% of it. Is that correct? So, we actually send them more than Well, It's more complicated than that, but figures, but um I knew I had closer to 97, but actually it's even less than that in some cases. Yeah, we have a calculation where we estimate services that they purchase from us built into their monthly transfer. So, if you would like more information on that, it's it's a pretty detailed spreadsheet. Oh, that's okay.
066I guess I just assume that they got paid directly, but they do not. They do not. It still comes through us. It does. Oh, that's interesting. I didn't know that. We count them as our students. Um and then so we get the PPR and then that piece is passed through to them. Okay. Interesting. Learn something new. Yeah. Um and then we've uh got a little bit more going to our fund 23 which is our basically our athletics and activities fund. Um so we have 550,000 going there. Um, note that everything on these next four lines here, all the transfers I do at the end of the year. And that's very strategic because if for some reason we don't need the full 550, we can save money uh and put that to overall fund balance. So,
067I kind of wait and see what we need and then do an adjustment um and transfer at the end. If it ends up being more, then I come back to you guys with a supplemental budget in June. Um fund 26 um is our that's like the the pupil activity where we kind of have all the fund raise dollars. Um and there are some things that got charged in error to fund 10 that we can reimburse out of fund 26. So it's very um interesting with all of these funds that are non- taxpayer money. we cannot transfer money to them. Uh meaning a fund 26 um but they can transfer money to us. So we are kind of repurposing some things from that fund 26 to help us with our overall budget. So that's why it's
068shown as a credit in here. Um and then that fund 64 um that is our old self- insurance fund that um we had some acred balances out there when we transferred last year. I thought we were done. Um, but we had some acred balances out there that we're able to finalize the rest of it. So, um, we're working with our new auditors to figure out how to close the rest of that out, but that's the total amount that we can close out and pull back over. Any questions on allocations? All right. Now, to the the meat of the salary and benefits. So, I'm going to kind of talk a little bit about how we're breaking these out now and the reason why. So, um, in the past, we kind of just had each of the
069schools and then we lumped in everything as district salaries. And I think that that gets a little confusing because a lot of people when you look at that big number, they're like, "Oh man, they're district, right? it's district heavy of of leaders and not at the school. I think this shows a lot more detail because even though they may be at the district level um we can kind of talk about what some of these are um in more detail because they really are studentbased or they're at multiple schools. So that's why they're at a district level. So um obviously anybody at Running Creek Singing Hills EMS or the high school are obviously in front of a student or the leadership of the school curriculum and instruction that's going to be the your it's Kim Kim
070Moore essentially along with some other um staff in there making sure that we've got everything we need as far as the curriculum ordered um and the b associated benefits special services, special services, that's our occupational therapists, that's our social workers, that's all of the psychologists, some all of those types of people that need to help with the students that may not be assigned to a specific school. Early learning, that's obviously our preschool and infant toddler um employees. And then kind of that's when it starts getting into more of your traditional district level for the next few. And then safety and security that is definitely going to be in your schools. Um but they are categorized under safety and security. Um even though they're protecting each school technology, they also have someone assigned to each school.
071So that's a little different there. Um, facilities is districtwide, but that has custodians at each school. Actually, that's not true. Custodians are not in there. They are included at the school level. And then transportation, that is definitely student interaction as well. While it may not be instructional, we thought it was important to kind of break these out to kind of show it's not all super topheavy. Just one clarification people may see on here. 623 Board of Education salaries and benefits. We're not paid. Yeah. No, no, no, no. So, what is that? You could elect, you could choose to be, but you It's your board board executive assistant. Okay. Well, that's okay then. So, thank you. You can't do without pay. And that is inclusive like the it's inclusive of benefits and salary. So it's even
072like the parapiece and and all of the extra things that have to be paid as an expense behind the scenes. Um so that being said, some of these categories should be around 67% if they are annualized. So some of the district level ones should be around 67% because we're salary that are paid July through June. But for all of those that are majority either classified or teaching staff, licensed staff, we should be somewhere between 58 and 60%. Um, our average overall is 65.7. So, we're still trending high. We're definitely trending high in subs. Um, so I I I'm hopeful that some of the adjustments that have been made going forward will help us realize where we need to be, but we're still too new in some of those adjustments to see the full ramific or
073the savings in the percentages. So people who we cut in the oxygen, their salary that was paid is still reflected in the beginning part of the year. just not being replicated, but it still shows as salary paid out. Yeah. And we did have some overtime and things that we've since kind of curbed. So hopefully these numbers start looking a little better as we get closer to the end of the year. How many employees do we have in the early learning? I don't know off of the top of my head, but I could probably get that to you before I leave tonight. I think there's I think there's seven uh three and four year old classrooms if I'm correct. Three at one and four at the other. I don't know off the top. And then there's
074an infant toddler room and a and a or an infant room and a toddler room. Um and each of those rooms have two two staff members. And you'll also need to realize that we had kids club for half of the year that's also included into these numbers at one of our schools. So that inflates it a little bit. that has since become part of EPR, but we do have a partial year of salaries in one of the kids clubs um included in the number. Thank you. Any questions about the salaries and benefits? This format is how we will be presenting to you our budget for next year. Um, and I think to your point, Mike, it might be helpful for us to indicate maybe the number of staff included just so that you have kind
075of that overview of here's the staff members that are included in that budget. So, I think that's a good question to do you want categories or just overall staff in each category because like at Running Creek that's going to be so many teachers, so many paras like do you want the classifications or do you just want a total in that category? will be able to do either. So, whatever would work for you, we're break detail is better, I think. And we're breaking it down by the position that much harder to do. So, we can certainly say you have this many grade level teachers, you have this many pair of professionals, you have this many lunch room aids. So, so we'll be able to give you as much detail as you'd like. Yeah, I think that's
076okay. So, the fact that we're six to 7% high, we shouldn't worry about that. So that's where kind of remains to be seen as to if we will stay within budget or not. Yeah. So we again we've got this we've got the salaries of the people we cut that are still reflected in this number. So those won't be repeated moving on. So we should see that number come closer. But certainly something we have to be careful of. We have to monitor closely. That is part of why we're doing this so much more frequently because we were just going to do quarterly financials, but it needs to be watched closely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Doing after March payroll would be helpful. We just obviously March payroll went out today. Today? Yeah. So, we couldn't include that in
077here. think if we include March payroll um then we would have four months left of of pay and we would be able to see probably the changes. Many of the staff members that we cut in exigency were paid through November and so you know those staff members that we cut we still are showing that their pay that was paid out from the beginning of the year through November. So it inflates those percentages. However, we're still trending high. So, it's it's it it should keep coming closer and closer as the year ends, but we don't want to wait until year end to really be paying attention to it either. I might ask that we that we do this before our next board meeting so that we have March payroll included in here. Um, and that way
078we we can see if that 71 is coming closer to the target or not. Okay. And then we are on to the next page which is um we we are keeping similar breakdown here [Music] um as we did on the salaries. There's a little extra breakout on a couple of departments that were combined in salaries above. Um but for the most part this is a very similar breakout. Um we're pretty much on track. There are some kind of caveats here. We do have a couple departments that have revenue um to offset expenses. So um the elementary schools and the middle school have a um consumable fee that they charge parents. And so the consumables that is a reimbursement to help offset the cost of those consumables. and the consumable expenses are reflected in their expenditures
079here. So, while it looks like Running Creek only has $1,000 left, they actually have the revenue offset for the money collected from parents as well. Um, so that's a little deceiving the way this is. I think in future years we should include the consumables in the planned budget amount. Um, so that that's a little clearer. That would be a tweak I would do next year. um the preschools, those um those have a offset by grant funding as well. So that's another one we need to capture what grant money's in that budget as well and just maybe break it out separately. So the those top four kind of look worse than they are. Um and then everything else is pretty well on track other than legal expenses are are really high this year. And in addition
080to that, we've had um one settlement that's been paid and is reflected in here and another one that has not yet been paid but will be reflected in here. So that will definitely be above what we have budgeted and we will need to do a supplemental budget I'm sure for whatever overages unless we're able to have some offset. Just to be clear, that settlement was from the case that stemmed before this board before myself that we had to settle in July. So, and that was a $70,000 payment that we had to make. But we are highest legal expenses, not even counting the ACLU lawsuit. We are still at our highest level of legal expenses that I have history of. So, um, unprecedented amount of legal expenses so far this year. Hence, hence Brad talking about
081the $44 doesn't cover Yeah. you know, the Kora the Kora barrage that we've had throughout the year, it absolutely does, which seems to have stemmed. I shouldn't have said that. Um, if anybody can find a lawyer for $41.34 per hour, I would kind of run away from that. Probably not worth it. So, any questions on the overall expenses section? Um, really, no, but can I go back to revenue now that Dan brought up core? Where does the core revenue head? So that just goes into our other tuition. It's such a small amount. Well, I'm sure it is. I just Yeah, I just didn't know. It's just in the other Okay. If there's other things that you would like broken out specifically on here, that's another thing. You can send me a note and I can
082I can break those out. But that's kind of the catchall of what doesn't fit in these other bigger categories. Got it. Okay. Um and then the end here, this is this is where the midyear budget ended of of where our revenue or fund balances and reserves would be. Um this is just kind of a live total based on what our expenses are. It calculates those. Um so it it really does that part doesn't really matter till we get to the end of the year because it's kind of just a moment in time. And then I'm going to briefly, unless you guys have any fun 10 questions, I'll go over the remainder of the remainder of the funds. Um, but they're in much much better shape overall. So, food service food service is looking good. Um,
083our food service revenues, they are all very much reimbursement based now that we are getting the state and federal aid. So, it's very delayed in getting the funding. So, the fact that we're threequarters of the way through the year, but we're only 50 and 64% on our funding on those two lines of state and federal aid, that's pretty normal because it it is delayed. Um, salaries and benefits, we're pretty much right on track there. Um, and those also we annualize pay, but we kind of lose any extra overages um, pretty early in the year because our food service staff is one of the first to no longer have to work in in the calendar year. Um, but we're pretty much right on track in good shape. We're we're looking to still have a decent fund
084balance at the end of the year and that's with doing some steamer replacements and equipment replacements still even after we did the spin down plan. So, any questions on future? Okay. Grant fund. So, um our grant fund essentially it has to zero out um at the end of the year. So, we will bring in whatever revenue of what we spend. Most of them are reimbursementbased. We do have a couple that are upfront. So, that's why we do have a decent amount of revenue that's already been received. Um, but we're trending well um on on our grants, but that's basically we just moved them over into their own fund for the most part so that it tracks differently and doesn't muck up our fund 10 or general fund. Any questions about grants? I think you guys
085all got a copy of the grant listing recently. Thank you. Yeah, pupil activity. So, this is the one that I was talking about. This is athletics and activities. Um, so this is the one that is funded from the general fund. So, um, right now we're planning to send over 550,000, but that will remain to be seen based on the actual expenditures. We are trending a little lower on expenditures right now. I know that we have had um all of our athletics directors and and their athletic secretaries have really been trying to pinch pennies this year and utilize as much fundraising as they can. Um and so we're starting to turn that around. We've also put in some structured coach pay um and limited the amount of coaches that they can have based on the number
086of students in the sport. And so we're starting to see kind of a little more reasonable number in our sports um and activities fund here. We are going to kind of shift a few things going forward that might bump that back up again but give you kind of more transparency in this fund because we currently do not charge for the use of transportation. So think future years that this may look a little different. We really feel like we need to reflect the total cost. Right now, transportation costs cover all costs for sports and athletics. And so, you look at that $ 1.6 million um uh budget for transportation, that actually includes sports and activities. And and and my belief is we should be transparent about what does it cost to operate our athletics program. And
087that would include anytime we need to send a bus and a driver to a location, what the cost of that is. Many districts do that, some don't. We're going to move to doing that next year just so we can be very transparent. And I know this shows currently a very negative fund balance, but that's just because we haven't done the transfer. So, we will basically make it whole for whatever it needs to be. Any questions on this one? All right. And then this is our um fundraising fund, non taxpayer dollars. Um, we did change at the midy year to try to funnel some more spend down. So, we instead of my traditional $600,000 in revenue, $600,000 in expenditures still carrying a $400,000 fund balance, we need to spend that down. So, um, we are on
088track to spend it down some, but we've got to I'm sure we will really kick into high gear with a lot of the end of the year activities when a lot of that is purchased out of this fund. Um, so we'll we'll keep an eye on that. So, why wasn't that being spent down? I mean, this is money for that the students pay, but So, we we briefly talked about this, I think, at the quarterlys. Um because some of these are things that it's a club that was opened and then they didn't quite spend it all and it just then the club doesn't exist anymore. It just hangs out there. We have some really old scholarship money that we spent all down except for a few hundred dollars like and there's just not enough to
089give another full fund uh scholarship. So it's a lot of little things like that. But it's also your book club, book fairs, your the money goes in there. It's your principal's discretionary. It's your run for funds. It's your different clubs like your Lego clubs, the different boosters that we that we manage versus like an outside booster club. So, it's all of those funds in one huge conglomerate. Okay? So they should in theory be spent the year that whoever is fundraising for it and and that's part of why we're encouraging them to spend those down. This year we did have some club sponsors that traditionally the district had paid out of general fund yet they had a huge fund balance sitting here that was raised by their club. And so you know the expense of the
090club is having a sponsor to ensure that the their supervision. And so this year we did shift some of those club sponsors to those funds and that's how we've spent some of those down as well. That's good. Yeah. So the this the club sponsors are aware of their personal amounts. Yeah. Yeah. We put into place a structured system of how those are determined, what's reasonable. Um, I think we've talked about uh earlier prior to to to Rebecca and I being here there there were club stipens that were from here to here. Yeah. And the ones that were less were not always because they did less. It's because they thought that's all they needed. And yet you had others that did less and had larger stipens. And it truly had been a that feels like a
091a good number. And so we we put into place this year a system of what is what what's a reasonable club stipen based upon the time commitment. And so now it's consistent. That's good. Okay. Where is band is that? So it depends on if you're talking about the class or if you're talking about the activity itself. So there are monies brought in if it's the class fee that comes into fund 10 under our our class fee revenue, our course fee revenue. Um if it is for the additional things that they need for marching band, then that falls under the fund 23 which is the one above which is athletics and activities. And then they also have fundraising in the one we're talking about now. So they're kind of in three different buckets depending on which
092piece you're talking about. I would say that's the other reason why some of these funds haven't been spent because they've used the other funds first. Yeah. And then these sometimes are forgotten. Yeah. Yeah. It it's um it's tricky and it's confusing for those that aren't money people to keep track of the different buckets of money sometimes. So a lot of times they utilize their bookkeepers at the schools to or or office managers to help track that. Yeah. So, at the beginning of every year or of every club activity stuff, um I assume they get a report. They know what they've got supposedly. They do. And they just I guess we just need to be sure that they are getting it a little better or something. Yes. Yes. It's a hard problem to have to have
093money to spend if you don't. I mean, what's the deal? Well, especially I mean drones, French horns, these things are cheap, right? Right. No, they're not. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Any other questions on this fund? All right. Almost done. Capital reserve fund. We prefunded this last year with a million dollars. Um and we we have spent it. Um we have had so many capital reserve projects um that are high dollar um and it's just the tip of the iceberg. So we have so many more to come but as of right now be based on our budget restrictions we are not transferring any more money into fund 10 this year or from fund 10 this year. I'm sorry I misspoke. Um so we just are spending the monies that we have in there at this time. It
094will be an area that we'll have to look at for next year. So we'll have to look at funding some capital projects. We've been able to take care of some major ones, but there's plenty others on the Oh, yeah. So, this will be an area we'll need to have in our budget for next year to transfer money to. Yeah. Is the water tower and EMS fire system just not paid? We haven't paid all the invoices or did we over budget? No, we have not paid all of the invoices. So, the fire system got put on hold because there were some issues with that. And I don't know if Tyler wants to speak to that any more than than I am aware of, but I know that there's an additional piece where they have to come
095back in and finish. So, we will still get more billing on the fire system and then the water tower. We got a we paid everything up until it still has not been it had not been painted last I knew, but I'm not sure. I need to schedule to be done. It's scheduled to be done now. The the interior coating, if you remember, that was delayed. We had to to purchase city water last year to water the fields when when it started getting warm. Um, when they finally finished the project, we did go ahead and have them fill the tank so we could begin watering. And they committed to come back and coat the tank. As a result, we retained the cost of coating the tank until they actually completed it um through an agreement with
096the company. And so that 19,000, I think it is, is what they will get when they finish the job of coating the tank. That's painting the interior of the tank with the rubberized paint uh that will keep it from rusting and and make it last long. April 15th. Okay. April 15th is the date we have the weekend. April 15th is when they'll be here to and hopefully get it done before we have to start our regular watering cycle. Dan, what do you not know? I know. Do you fix the buses when they break? I change your oil. Oh dear. So, any other This is the last of it. Any other questions on where we're at? I am glad we saved $4 on the SH one. That was great. Stood out to you. Yeah, those other
097three lines I over budged it, but I mean it's it's it's a little bit. I rounded up. All right. Well, thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. All right. Next up, um there is a draft of our board schedule for next year, the 2526 schedule. Notes on that that I'll remove when we finalize it, but it kind of let you know that why I did what I did when I created it. Okay. I glanced at it. I don't see it here, but they're just next to the Mondays. So you know why it wasn't the first or the second or the fourth question. You know I wouldn't be adverse to those notes staying in if there was what those notes staying in. I know you were saying about taking them out but I mean it because this
098is public. Yeah. Right. It makes it helps people understand why it's not the second because when it is a little off schedule it helps them understand. The web page does say typically second or fourth. Yeah. But it does I mean if we don't have school that day, we're not going to have a board meeting. So it does but I've heard you know general comments about well I'm really confused. It seems like it's you know not the same schedule. It's like well you know so you want to keep the notes in there as explanations. I think so. I think it's good. It's good for us to remember and it's good for people to know. I'll just try to make it look better. I mean, you're obviously trying to screw up by having it on different Exactly.
099You know, it was all We were just joking. It was And we're just We're just trying to keep it all, you know, we got a special, right? Nope. No. And this is just discussion. Yep. Yeah. If anyone sees anything that they want us to consider changing, this will be brought back to you for formal approval, but we wanted to at least give you the the draft of what it looks like. We do not have a July board meeting. We have the last two years scheduled one which has been more of a retreat. So we haven't put that date on here but that's typically one we'll we'll ask availability in July recognizing that sometimes people are on vacation. So any anything else on there? Okay. All right. So now we're moving on to action items. Um
100so first up we've got the second reading of replacement policy GB GH sickly bank. Um so this policy is basically being revised to combine all sickly policies into one. Um it has been approved by or it has been reviewed by both TAC and CAC. um both agree with it and there was some discussion um maternity leave and paternity leave was not in the classified sick leave bank. It was in the licensed bank and ultimately CAC felt like it would be inappropriate to to try to separate that out and they they certainly saw some value in leaving it in. So um so right now this will be a common policy across all uh classifications of employees. We still maintain two leave banks. One for classified, one for licensed administrators may fall in one or the other.
101But at least the rules for when you contribute, how you join, when you can join are all consistent now. So we can promote that regardless of who we're hiring. We don't have to remember, oh, you're classified, you have to get this one. It will be the same. So we're we're very comfortable that this is the right um policy for you to um adopt. So, has CAC seen this? Yes. Including the the couple of additional things I did from the meeting. Okay. Um because there's on section E paragraph sub paragraph 4 and then in J a couple of additional things because you had said would come or Adam would come. Yeah, we did talk about Thank you, Mary. Mary was our CAC representatives. We did talk about Adam coming to explain the rationale even though I
102think Kath was leaning towards so I think we're looking for a second reading not a second and final so this won't be a final because I think they should look at it and because I guess this number four that I kind of suggested to add in on section E was because of a question that I asked and really the the response was it's not come up so I don't know how it would deal with that but that is the way it's written. Yeah, a pregnancy related sickness or illness gets X, but then a pregnancy leave that's not related to illness is an additional thing and it could be technically two requests. So I asked about that. So I thought that would clarify it. And then um Thank you. Ro uh um Mr. Roger had had
103talked about that he would monitor all the balances and stuff and report to everybody. So that's kind of why I put that in there. So Um I think I think that'd be good for Adam to come back to Yeah. So we'll So so TAC and CAC will meet before our next meeting. So we'll bring it back to you for third and final. So this is just second. Yeah. Thank you very much. Okay. I move that the board approve the second reading of replacement policy GBGH sickle bank. I'll second that. Okay. So uh discussion. One question I had that was a little confusing to me and maybe it's when I was reading it, but it says when the bank when the bank is between 500 and 749 days, my question is does everybody have to donate
104a discretionary day except those with seniority who can then donate sick days? Um so 0 to 49 4.99 all members donate one day um until the balance rises above 500. Um 500 to 749 the donation schedule. Members with four or more years seniority may donate one day from their accumulated personal sick leave. And I think the rationale was that somebody who's been here that long probably has more sick days to donate. Okay. So, but they don't they don't donate a discretionary. They don't they they didn't they donate from their sick leave. So, we have discretionary leave which is issued to employees every year. Whatever is carried forward is then called sick leave. So, they would donate from their sick leave bank, not their discretionary leave. So, it wouldn't impact their leave this year. It would
105be believed that they've saved up overtime that they would then contribute to help boost that balance because they could have a lot more days than someone who's just been here a year and doesn't have anything in sick leave. Yeah. And and that's that's just what was confusing to me was I didn't quite understand the the the donation overall. Yeah. Okay. So that's a good distinction because I didn't realize that. So discretionary leave is your current sick leave basically. It's what you what you're giving have any rollover. becomes sick personal sick leave. Yeah, sick leave has restrictions on how you may use it. Okay. Um, so it's not you can't you can't take a cruise and use your sick leave. You typically use it because you're ill. You you're What if you get sick on the
106boats? I'm sick. Honestly, I'm on the boat and it's nice. But or if it's related to pregnancy, that's probably not to be a problem for me. All those people with co Yeah. stuck on the Yeah. Oh dear. All right. Any further discussion? Okay. Can I get a roll? Director Callingham. Hi. Director Fletcher. Hi. Director Olsen. I. Director Pal. I. Director Waller. I motion approved. So that's the third. This is a second reading. We'll bring it back for third and final. Third and final. So my question is, do you want to repeal that if we're not I think I think you'll want to skip 9.2 table 9.2. Yeah. So just do you want to table it? Move to table it. I think we move to table. Okay. I move that the board repeal table. I move
107that the board table the repeal of policy GDCA classified sick bank. Second. All right. Any further discussion on that one? This one, we just don't want to have the other one go away until this finaliz. We We originally thought we were on track to adopt one and cancel the other. Sorry. And I didn't think about that. So, I was like that. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for catching that. Okay. Can you get a roll call? Director Callahan. Hi. Director Fletcher. Hi. Director Olsen. Hi. Director Powell. Hi. Director Wall. Hi. Okay. So, we're tableabling that one until after we deal with GBGH sickly. Okay. Next up is the second reading of replacement policy JICJ, student use of cell phones and other personal technology devices. So again, this is the policy that was recommended to us by the
108TAC with edits based on their feedback and then discussions in our last board meeting. So, um, before we go into discussion, I move that the board approve the second reading of replacement policy JICJ, student use of cell phones and other personal technology devices. Second. Okay. Now, let's let's go into discussion. Um, first up, again, I would like to thank the parents who gave their feedback. Um, it it really helped. And if there was several things I pulled out of the feedback when I read the comments. Um, so I did sense some confusion regarding the policy. Like some of the some of them kind of implied that, you know, the student would not be able to have the phone in their possession, which isn't the purpose of the policy. The purpose of the policy is you
109can have your phone in your possession. It's just in your backpack and not in use. Um and and again there were questions about implications um if they repeatedly violate the rules and at that point then consequences would have to be enforced. Um the feedback was really interesting. It was very enlightening. Um the majority agreed with the policy the need to get rid of distractions in the classrooms. Um, the majority agreed with not using cell phones during passing periods. However, many still desired that their child be able to use the cell phone over lunch. Um, one thing I noted after I started getting some feedback was we didn't specify schools. Yeah. So, um, you know, school, it was it was an overall. So, I don't I can't pull this was middle school, this was high school,
110this was elementary school. I can't I can't decipher that. Yeah, some parents would have children at multiple schools but only answer it once. So, yeah. Yeah. Um most agree there should be consequences when the students do not follow the rules. And um one of the things is a few felt more comfortable that the phone were silenced versus turned off. um they were concerned that it may take uh more time to turn it on during the event of an emergency and I have mixed feelings on that because does it distract when it vibrates? I mean granted it could be in your bag but and the other thing about it if it's not turned off it's still going to go onto your smartwatch and all that stuff and it's still going to be there as a distraction
111on the smartwatch. Um, and then I I do question if there's an emergency situation, do we want kids paying attention and getting out of harm's way or do we want them texting and calling, you know, do we want them to wait until they're given the direction to when is it safe to use your phone, right, in an emergency? So, I mean, there was really a lot of a lot of good feedback. Mhm. There was and I I was having uh I had a discussion with the teacher today, but a couple of people have said this about in the event of an emergency. I mean, we they absolutely we do actually absolutely have the card out for, you know, in an emergency as directed by a staff member, you can use them. You they can turn
112them on and you know, so people can do that. But um the reason that we want a staff member to direct that is um my understanding is the protocol in the event of an intruder in the school, of course, the doors are locked down, right? The doors are locked down, the kids kind of get into a corner or something so that hopefully not in view if the intruder tries to go by and look in the window of the door. So if a phone is on and is ringing or the kid is talking on the phone, guess what? that sort of gives away that there are some people in the room. So, that's a danger about that. I mean, there's really no absolutely perfect process in this whole thing. But, that's something to consider about the
113I want my kid to I want to text them and make sure they're okay. And we understand that. I understand that. Understand completely. But, uh the first priority is making sure the kids are safe to begin with. And, um you know, unfortunately, that's probably going to mean you might have to wait a little bit longer than you would like to know for sure. until we know what's going on. So, I went through and um kind of made some modifications. First off, I don't like the first paragraph or the p, excuse me, the first sentence. Um, the board of education recognizes the importance of promoting responsible digital digital citizenship and empowering students to make thoughtful and reflective decisions and develop a positive presence online. I think it kind of steps out of our role. Um, I
114think that's a parents responsibility. That's a big burden to put on the teachers and the schools and it's one less thing that pulls away from the focus on academics. I liked our old um you know the board of education also believes that person the board of education scratch out also believes that personal technology device may be useful tools for students in the educational environment and you know there's no doubt that they can play a vital role in monitoring health and during emergency situations um but they do need to be regulated um I changed assure to ensure that the presence does not disrupt or interfere with the educational process. Um, second paragraph it says building administration shall develop procedures for staff concerning confiscating personal technology devices in accordance with this policy. I have concerns over school
115setting the procedures as I think it contributes to inconsistencies. I think that the overall what we're what we're trying to get to is consistency um in practice. Um another thing about that sentence I think is the way it's for con uh concerning confiscating them and that sort of leaps to the conclusion that we're taking them all away. I mean that's kind of like second and third level. Uh, and it's kind of like you have to turn it into the office. It's not like we're ripping it out of your hands. Well, and we specify that in here. We do, but I mean having it up front like that with that word confiscating makes it sound different than it is later in in the consequences section. So, um, I kind of don't like the confiscating word because
116that sounds harsher than our in than our practice will be. And I do think so. Would it would it say managing PTD's violations in accordance with this policy? Would that be better? Yeah, I like that. Managing PTD violations. I like that. Violation remediation. And then again to your point Rhonda, I think it might, you know, honestly the policy kind of dictates how it's going to be. Now I guess the thing is when they're turned in in the case of a violation, I guess who's going to decide how they are put away. And I I would like because I know there's concerns over phones getting stolen, phones getting damaged. Um, a cell phone locker was brought up before and I like the idea of if if it's a repeated violation, you know, like first time you
117have your warning, the second time, um, if it has to be confiscated, I don't I don't want us to have to put our hands on it. I would like they have to go turn it in. They put it in the locker. It's locked and then at the end of the day they come and uncheck it. I don't even mind if the locker is under a camera. And that way we can look and say, you know, no one touched that phone. You can see it being put in. You can see it being taken out. Um that kind of puts a little bit of the burden on the child too or the student should I say. They walk away with the key, right? Mhm. But it isn't the third level that the parent has to come in
118with the kid to get it. Yeah. So, and they can take care of Does there need to be a couple of different levels of locking and securing like the first time they have to turn it into the office, they can the kid can go get it themselves at the end of the day. But I want parent notification on that. Pardon me. I want parent notification on that one. Yeah, we're jumping ahead, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a good idea. But then um do we want any kind of administrative level of kind of a double code so to speak that the administrator I'm sure there's a master there would be a master code or some way that you could override it override. But I'm not sure if it's electronic or if it's padlock, whatever.
119Didn't somebody buy a locker or something and we're talking about Yeah. somebody was going to move move it potentially into the office and maybe that would be the way to do it. But yeah. Yeah. So kind of not necessarily building administration, but is is that what you're saying? You don't want I I don't want the teachers I don't want one teacher to say, you know, right when they come in the room, you're throwing it in a basket. No. No. This is this says you can keep it on your keep it in your backpack. But this, you know, or if you know they they catch a kid, it's you know, they take away their phone and stick it in a drawer. Yeah. Um no we we want a the policy itself should dictate how this is
120going to happen and then uh in the case of violations so that in the office there is a policy that covers how they're handled and this this would kind of be it. I mean what are your what are your thoughts? Is that reasonable is that put too much would that cause more distraction than I don't know. I'd love to get I'd love to get tax feedback. We'll meet with TAC next week. So, it might be good to get them to weigh in on that. Well, and it's important to to know what you know what's manageable and what's not. Yeah. No, agreed. Agreed. I think they want consistency. I think that was what they had shared with us is they really want they don't want the ability of you can do this and I'll do that
121because that's exactly where we are right now which has led to the confusion. Yeah. But otherwise, they're going to send the kid down to the office. Office kids coming probably. Is that how it works? If it gets to that because first time it's a warning. Yeah. So, yeah, that's true. First time. That's right. Over at the middle school where they kind of semi-implemented a policy. Um, have there been a lot of repeated violations? Not a lot. It's a handful. Um, and typically those are handled by calling the parent. Um, And more often than not, the parent has come to pick up the phone themselves. So in some cases because a parent couldn't, it's been returned to the student at the end of the day. So that's been worked out with the parent. Now, one thing
122that we had in our policy, we had prek through 12. So, I think that the high schools I think the high schools we need to they we need to graduate into a little bit more freedom. So, there were a lot of parents that said they they're fine with it not in the classroom. They're fine with it not passing period, but they wanted it over their free time at lunch. And I would my vote on that personally would be yeah high school gets to have it at lunch and I think it is sort of like a a high school privilege and and then the earlier levels can it's kind of a learning time to you know control you know have reasonable use of of this technology which is an important technology to have and use and
123have available but it's not going to and and as soon as this last bell is done. They can turn it on. They can find out if they have a message to do something different about getting home or whatever. Um, and I I my personal vote would be okay in the high school to have it on at lunch, but definitely no on the passing periods anywhere. That would be my vote on that. I'm not willing to die on the hill for all or for school. I wouldn't be going down the hill for any of them for for lunch across the board, but I mean if if we want we want to restrict it, I I I can go either way. Yeah. I just I know that you you said it's been just very nice at the
124middle school to see the kids actually talking to each other more and I would kind of hate to lose that momentum that we've got in the middle school. And um I I don't know. I just think it's a good training ground for one of a better word um for the earlier grades and then just approach to look forward to once you're like kind of like the older kids in high school can leave campus for lunch. They're like I get to leave campus now or now. The number of parents who have also indicated the pressure they feel to get their child a cell phone in middle school because every other kid has it. Yeah. True. So, I think I think you know there's one you could argue that that would be a reason why not having
125them out at lunch may help some parents who otherwise are having a challenge and telling their child no you can't have one when everyone else is out at lunch with Yeah. with them. So, yeah, that's one way to look at it. And how long are lunch periods? They're not They're like half an hour at most, aren't they? Half hour at most. Yeah. Yeah. So, it's not like I mean they need to eat and they need to get it done and then they need to get their stuff ready and go to the next class. How much can you do in a half an hour for crying out loud? You can do all that while you're What' you say? You can eat while you're Yeah. As an 8-year-old boy. So, Rhonda, I'm reading right here. Um, no
126use of the phone on school or district premises K through 12. Yep. And this is what we're going to revise that a filter we'd have to do on each of the schools. I'm thinking um I mean if you're saying on premises filters is that include after school's done and they're in the parking lot? Well, no because it says uh well during the school day starting and ending of the time of the school day is defined by the school. Yeah. So parking lots typically for most of except for the high school. And again, if we say high school is permitted at lunch typically is when a student might be on the parking lot. Yeah. Or should the only time they should be, but doesn't mean that's the only time. And maybe it should say students in
127grades preK through 12 are prohibited from using PTDs on school promise premises during the school day as defined above or something. Mhm. And then uh exception is if we decide this um you know high school students can can have their phones on. You're going to revise that better than that. What I did was I changed under prohibited uses, I changed one back to preK through 8. And then um and then I I added back in two, which says secondary students um are prohibited from using PTDs during classroom instructional time or passing periods. One of the questions I have was upon entry into the classroom, well, if it's supposed to be off during passing period, it should just be should just be off if we're going to stick with that. Um, and um it says students
128must turn off or and and again, another question was silence their PTD and stored away in the student's backpack, locker, or school designated location. And that's question um may be used during lunch period, school sponsored programs, events or activities happening outside of classroom or instructional time except that headphones, earbuds, or any other PTD that interferes with or diminishes a student's ability to hear communications from school staff or emergency alarms are prohibited at all times. So you want to add in back in that paragraph to amended. Yeah, I I think it needs to be it needs to be clarified for the high school. And what's the consensus on buses? Buses, you know what I mean? Some of those rides are about a half an hour long. Yeah. More. Yeah. Keep the kid quiet. Our recommendation was
129that we allow them on buses. Yeah. The policy that we came from did not did not recommend that but but our even our TAC agreed that and I think bus rides to your point definition of school day means starting and ending time of school day. I think that excludes clarify those clearly so I can I listen to my Walkman on the way to school every day. There you go. Who put these Tootsie Rolls on the table? Are they reading them? Down to six. And then down below, it's a little it's a little confusing, but you have to read more into it in order for it to become clear, but that's when it talks about students should not use PTDs on school or district premises when being transported in vehicles. Yeah. Yeah. That But then it's
130it's four one through seven to do this, that, this, that. I think we need a subtitle in there. I something like additional privacy and safety restrictions on use of PT PTDs or something. So that because that is that has been confused by people I think seeing this and I have to say that I had to kind of read it two or three times like wait a minute I thought we weren't going to do that. Then I realized it was the no taken movies no you know no so it should be so like a subtitle another subtitle additional restrictions section. Yeah. On and and I at first I was thinking just additional restrictions, but I think you know most of them are related to uh privacy and safety. Um well and yeah and something or taking
131pictures of other kids without their permission if the subtitle I think that will go a long way to clarifying that section that's all that's about. Um, so I mean, so we're saying if the kids are on their way to a field on a field trip, they're all polling the bus, they can't move their phones there. Well, you know, I was thinking about that about field trips and things. No, we I think it's really I think it was in the beginning we said uh let me see because that's kind of way I read that they may be used during lunch school sponsored programs events or activities happening outside of instructional time. It says cannot uh when being transported when the conduct has a nexus to school or anycurricular or non-curricular event and then it lists those.
132So it says they can't be used when the conduct conduct has a nexus to okay and then it lists that but that's probably not very clear. So the fact that it and also some of these things are you can't take photographs and stuff without permission of the of the kid. So like if they're on a field trip and that's that's tough to take a picture of a a sculpture or something. Yeah. A sculpture or you know the group of the kids you know in front of whatever they're there to see or something. You can see that they might want to do that. Um, I'm just going to say something silly about this word nexus. I hate that word. Can we change that to connection, too? That that was Yeah, that that was the original policy.
133So, we Yeah, but we're fine changing it. I know that's a silly one, but every time I read that, it just makes me So, what you know, one of the there were a lot of parents that talked about having it on But there were some that, you know, having it on that was that was a concern. But being silenced, that's not going to take care of the problem. Well, and as far as I'm concerned, the watch is a cell phone. It should be in the backpack, too. I'm sorry. I mean, it's a distraction. It can still receive communications. Yeah. So, I don't know. I It's a PTD. It's a wearable. This is going to be harder to get somebody to take off than just putting away a phone, you know. Uh and I I still
134don't understand the earbuds and all that stuff how that gets connected. But um but watches are basically a phone on your wrist. Well, they are, but if you need to know what time it is, you don't have your phone and you don't have your watch. So, well, if the phone's off, the watch doesn't work. Yeah. Is that how it works? But if it's if it's off, it It's on in your backpack, it's going to work. Unless you have one connected, but if it's Yeah. If it's just silenced, it'll still do everything. So So then you want to take out the wearables. No, I don't want to take out the wearables. I want I want to have the phone off. I get it that it takes a little bit to power up, but I like I
135said, there's no perfect answer to this whole thing, but um you're still going to have the wearables problem. I don't want to take that out, but I think that's going to be a harder battle than the phone to just say take off your watch, too. So, call me not techsavvy when it comes to those. He just got a call. It comes to these. But can these not be connected directly to cellular without having a phone? Depends on the watch. They can if you buy the one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Nowadays they do have a backup that if your phone is off, it will ring your watch. So So it's there's an override to that. Is is that what you're saying for you can get them with you can't you would have to differentiate. Okay. And there's
136no way they can go around and say, "Well, that one's got cell service and that one doesn't." Well, we have a lot of people doing Dick Tracy stuff, you know, that we know they've got something going on, but they still ring. They they can still be a distraction. Yeah. Well, I know mine even when though my my phone is usually silenced, my phone will buzz a little bit when I get a text or when I get a an email because pretty much unless you get rid of the wearable, all the kids are going to do is they'll just keep going. Switched. Yeah. Well, this is like Yeah. Don't they start trying to chase gun laws? I think there's a ring now, too. That's Yeah. wearable category. Although that's typically monitoring your health. I don't think
137it rings. I don't know if it does. It just monitors health. Oldfashioned ring. Red. Yeah. And there there are I mean if you're talking about the glucose monitors and things that is an app on a phone and but we have that exception you know for IEPs or health conditions that need monitoring on phones we have those that exception built into this to the phone not allowed situation. So um I feel like we we are trying really hard address everyone's concerns and we need to do that. Um, but there's just a couple of things. It's like if you're not going to do a couple things specifically, you've lost the benefit that you're looking for, which is, you know, classroom management, less classroom distraction, and, you know, getting to class on time. Um, so I don't know.
138That one's important. That's medical. Okay, turn. I don't where is the medical? It's uh back under exceptions. So, page the top of page three, the very first. Students may possess and use PTDs during classroom instructional time or during times when PTDs are otherwise prohibited when specifically authorized under a current individual education plan, a section 504 or healthcare plan enforce. So, if a student has to monitor blood Yeah. blood sugars. Is that on a health plan that that they've I mean is that registered with the uh whoever the as a health plan? Is that monitoring? Yeah. Health it's it's documented in some plan whether it's a health plan or their IEP. Okay. It could be an either. So So that would fall under this exception then if they had to monitor it. Yeah. Absolutely. And they
139probably wouldn't have that thing if they didn't have to monitor. So correct. How many people did you send the surveys to? It went out to all all families. I'm thinking we should resend the link before spring break. 290 responses on this. Yeah. And it actually they all came in almost immediately. Yeah, it's actually a pretty good response compared to prior years. But but I but I do think it would be wise for us to send it send out the link. If you haven't responded, please do. Um because obviously this isn't a final reading. We're still working on this. So, see if we can't increase the response rate. Yeah. A couple of chances is always good. Attorneys communicating with me. So, okay. We won't make you turn it into this. Do you know how many families
140it is? Like, um, we probably have, I would guess, 1,600 families in the district. Well, we have almost 15. We have 2600 students counting chart counting the charter school. Many of those families have and this actually apparently went to legacy students too. It went to legacy. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I I'm happy to I was just sitting here thinking, yeah, I meant to actually include that in my superintendent update today, but it had lots of other stuff. So I'll send out another one in the morning. I'll resend the the link and just encourage people who haven't responded that that critical information for the board to Yeah. No. Will we know if we if we get duplicates that that would be the thing out again? Are they going to fill it out? It's still it's I
141believe it's still set to one per IP address. Okay. So, I want to make sure. So, one per device. So, okay. Unless they go to the computer or other, you know, I need I need solid solid solid data data. Um, one thing it does in the exceptions, it does reference students um, accessing their phones during emergency situations to initiate communication with their parent, other family members and um, such permission will be directed by a staff member in charge during that incident. Then it talks about violations. Um, so first offense, the student will be given a verbal warning and directed to turn off and or store the device in an appropriate location and staff will enter a behavior referral into impendent campus, which is our student information system to document the verbal warning. Um the second
142offense um the personal device um the PTD will be I I scratched out confiscated and said taken to and stored in the main office and a behavior referral will be entered into infant campus. The PTD will be returned to the student at the end of the day and I'd like to add the parents will be notified. And then the third offense, again, it will be taken to and stored in the main office. A behavior referral will be entered into infinite campus. The student's parent legal guardian will be contacted to arrange to pick up the technology device. Staff, the student, and the students parent legal guardian will develop a plan to have the student check in the PTD at the main office before school and pick it up at the end of the day. Um the
143plan will be reviewed each semester and continued for any reason deemed necessary by the administration and their sole discretion and then subsequent offenses it will be taken and stored in the main office and a behavior referral will be entered into infinite campus. The student's parent legal guardian will be contacted to arrange to pick up the device and the student will be subject to discipline in accordance with board policy. And somewhere in there is where we need to put in how the office will store because we've gotten a lot of comments about that. Well, I don't want, you know, you know, it's going to get damaged. It's going to be and we don't want that liability either. So, we want to have something pretty secure. Um, do we have anything now? Is it something we're going
144to have to buy? In some cases, we have, in others, we'd have to buy. I know District 11, um I just heard this on a on a Zoom the other day. Um District 11, they have a policy in place and I don't really want to do this, but they have those pouches, those lockable pouches. For one thing, I think that's I mean, I like the fact that we are letting the students still have it with them. It's in their backpack or it's in their purse or whatever and it's with them and they it's off, but they can get to it if they have to. um they have it so that the and this I'm assuming this has to be per classroom that they've got these pouches. I think what they do is when the student
145walks in the door they have them put their phone in a pouch and they activate the the so it's kind of and it's locked at the main so it's just that all day it's not like get it and then go to the next class and do it again. Okay. I wasn't sure how they did it but those are not those are pretty pricey I understand. I think there's grants. Okay. which maybe a grant would be an option. Yeah, we could see if there's a grant option. I'm not sure if there's a We did have We did apply for a grant um that was being offered for districts who were implementing a cell phone policy. We were not selected for it. It just had a pot of money that you could use however you wished, but
146we were not selected. Well, the thing that I don't like about the pouch idea is um again, it's not with the student if they, you know, if we have an emergency situation, they don't have it with them. Um number two, those I mean I I'm not going to be able to say facts that this is a problem, but I've I thought I'd heard issues where sometimes they are difficult to open. And so, especially in an emergency, anything that makes it tricky is not a good plan uh to get that open and get your phone out if you had to. And then can can you get to wherever that those pouches are? Um it takes about two weeks to get around it. Yep. To figure out how to demagnetize it. Oh, well, so you spend all
147this money in there, put a calculator in there. So, yeah. So, I mean, honestly, I just think the the absolute solution is that is that they most of the kids are going to comply and keep it in their backpack and keep it away and we'll have some. But, I mean, even at the middle school, we're not having that much problem with it, it sounds like. I agree. We're good with it. Yeah. Yeah. Or we could take a basket with a pulley and just tie a string in it. Hoist it up. So, um, but the these locker things or whatever, but just for storage in the case that there's been a violation and it's really more attention for Yeah. in the office for the student protection of the phone for the students purposes, for the parents,
148and for us too to make sure that it is protected. Um, I don't know. I think I think that's a good idea. The only thing I can see with the key lock is handing a key to a six-year-old boy. Yeah. I think I think elementary would hand be handled differently. Yeah. Yeah. Luckily, while we have phones at the elementary, it's not nearly as prevalent. Yeah. I would hope not. And I and I haven't seen the lockers. I mean, you have some that have the RFID where if they have a badge, they can hold it up and check it in and out. It monitors it. We'll look at we'll look at We know ordered for a classroom that we figured it could be moved to the office and we don't think we have the specifics on
149that, but no. And we waited to find out what we decided in our policy. Yeah. I just want that consistency for the for the students, for the parents, and for the teachers. Great. All right. Will you send me any changes you had? I don't know if I caught them all. And we'll we'll go ahead and push the survey again um and encourage people who haven't responded to please respond that their feedback is urgent. But yeah, so far again I mean people were Yeah, people were the link you have will continue to give you updated results. So if we send that out tomorrow, you can click on that link and it will give you it will give you current results as to how many have responded. So that's good. The fact that we had almost I
150think the 290 responded probably within the first two days. Well, yeah, you said the first link you sent to us it was at least 250 responded like within the first day. So we may get another 200 if we send it out again. So Okay. So, um, do we need to Did we do a roll call? No, not yet. We have a second that. Yeah, we have that. So, can I get a roll call? Director Callahan. Hi, Director Fletcher. Hi, Director Olsen. Hi, Director Powell. Hi, Director Waller. Hi. So, this is just this isn't this is going to third, but not final. Yeah, it's far from final. I think we'd still want more feedback. I'd be on six weeks. So, send me your changes. That way, those are reflected. Okay. For TAC or whatever else, too.
151Yeah, we'll want to take it to TAC and and CAC with your changes. So, if you can send those, that would be good. Well, and can we I mean I know we finished, but at some point can we get official somebody some feedback from like once this is instituted like within the first few months of it being instituted like get some feedback from the schools and maybe some parents and say you can actually put it in the policy that the board requests a quarterly update on what implementation. I mean if it's working I don't care but just within the first few months just to say hey how's this going because you know what we can just bring back some changes. The other thing we can do too is once you have your final of here's
152going to be the stipulations is we could send it out also in another survey to parents just so you have we've worked we've added this we've added that okay how do you feel about this now? So we could do that too just to make sure because I I think you have feed parents who say I want this, I don't want that and who knows what combination. So once you have a final, we could certainly send it out and ask for final feedback. Yeah. I'm I'm just more worried like not worried but more about how it's working. Yeah. Is it work? That's why I'm asked about the middle school like how's it working? You got single digits of of kids violating this in a day. So yeah, it's it's it's been very minimal in the whole
153school. So it's probably it's it's easily managed. Kids are obeying like it sounds good. So yeah, and I'd like to see its effect on academic performance. Mhm. Yeah, I think that I would love to see that as part of the report because the people who are the teachers who are very excited about it, I think they I think they are very excited to see how this affects their classroom behavior and the effect on the education process. Well, and it's it's hard to say like, you know, in the last meeting there were there was talk of, well, a teacher needs to work on their classroom management skills, but then you you say that and then you turn around and say, but you can't enforce this. It's it, you know, it just it's kind of tough. It's
154it's a hard policy and we're not going to make everybody happy. There's always going to be someone that's unhappy, but just try and do the best that we can to get the focus and keep the focus on education. All right. So, with that, next up, we have the second reading of revised policy HAM, health education. So, the name of this policy has been changed to exclude sex education since we've chosen not to participate in comprehensive sex ed and we're only focusing on health education. So, I move that the board approve the second reading of revised policy IHM health education. Second. Okay. Discussion. Um, one of the questions I had was um, line five. It talks about let me read it verbatim. So people that the students shall be provided with alternative alternate educational assignments or
155activities. Let me bring this up here. [Music] Um, in addition, it should inform students about potential physical and mental health hazards they are likely to encounter in various life situations and help them make sound, intelligent decisions when they are confronted with choices that could affect their health or the health of others. This in the first paragraph. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so what would those mental health hazards be? Um, who determines what is considered a mental health hazard? And is the advice that we are giving a reflection of perhaps what the parents would want or um it could be in contrast to. So any and all discussion of you know with any mental health topic or or anything that's kind of verbed like this. Um I know that we want it to be transparent to the parents.
156Um so it'll be in the curriculum it'll be in the curriculum review and it'll you know all the parents will will be able to get input on that. the committee will look at it. Um, yeah, the way I read that is obviously physical health hazards, mental health hazards, stress, you know, when you experience stress. Um, so I think I think that's what it's referring to, but you're right, it is vague and so it does lead a lot to interpretation. So, anything that anything would be transparent in the curriculum to where it could be looked at by the parents and Um, okay. That was that was one of my that was just the big thing that stood out. I was going to suggest we just eliminate mental health, but I I think I mean the reality
157is is people do feel stress and stress is brought on by a number of things and that's mental health. So, I don't know that that's something we want to exclude, but I understand the concern of other Yeah. other things that could creep into there, but I do think it should be covered in the syllabus and the curriculum that's being used. So, that may be the best way to address that. And that you don't want an enterprising teacher to view. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Way off, right? Yeah. Could you just call it end health concerts? It could be. Do you have about potential health hazards? A health hazard would be and even give an example for example stress you know uh stress coping mechanisms or something. I don't know if we say that or not but I
158don't know. Yeah, I mean if you took out physical and mental and just said it should inform students about potential health hazards that they are likely to encounter in various life situations and help them make sound intelligent decisions when they are confronted with choices that could affect their health of others. I like that better. I like that. Just get rid of physical and mental limits. Just potential health hazards. I like that. Yep. And then that whole second paragraph kind of goes back to the teaching about family life and sex education and any curriculum that includes human sexuality. And so yeah, I think it's I think it's referring to we don't teach it separately. We haven't subscribed to the comprehensive sex education where it is a separate standalone curriculum. Um again we talk about um uh
159body systems and anatomy, physiology, um health. Um so that does to some degree you could say touch on sex education. Um and that would be in accordance with the biblical law. So we're not saying we're not covering the reproductive systems or the digestive systems or any of the body systems. um and that that is not a separate course that it's covered within those curriculums which again to I think we're on this point those curriculums eventually should be reviewed by the curriculum review committee and should should be curriculum that we have adopted but the the sentence that says we will teach about family life um I think that's dangerous territory okay and then and then the sex education we we were talk I I think that should come out and then in the in the in
160regular courses on human anatomy, phys physiology, science, health, consumer and family studies. Again, we've got the family studies thing. I mean, there's just so many iterations of family. Consumer and family studies is home, is it? That's Yeah, that's what it's that's Yeah. Family and consumer studies at fax. I think you had asked one time, what is fax? Fax is family consumer studies. It's it's homeck. Okay. It's cooking. It's sewing. Okay. So, what's wrong with just calling it home, right? Do we have to have an acronym for everything that mucks everything up? Um, yeah. I don't know. Anyway, um, you know, I mean, we if you want to another time that would all be great. We could strike that whole paragraph in my opinion if you wanted to just remove it. Um, I think it's a
161dangerous paragraph. Well, I mean, you could just say the district shall teach regular courses on anatomy, physiology, science, health, consumer, and family studies. You could just take out about family life and sex education. And that last sentence, I'd be okay with that. I think just to I don't know. I just I just think there's so many iterations of a family today, you know, and that's that's good and that's fine, but we that's really not our place to cover all of those iterations. And I'm with you. I just take out the whole paragraph. Drop the whole paragraph. Drop the whole paragraph. Yep. There we go. I was also to me and I know this kind of came from the fact that this originally had like two options. One for you can opt out with a reason
162or without a reason, but I think we ended up with kind of a dual thing here going on. I thought we had clarified that, did we not? Well, the purple one, which is three. We said no reason is required at the end. We added that. Yeah, except that in the middle of the paragraph it says this notice shall also inform parents that they can exempt their kid on the grounds that it is contrary to religious beliefs and teachings or closely held personal beliefs. Now to me that's a reason and we are assuming the reason there. And then number four kind of says again, the notice shall also inform parents that they can exempt their kid from any just generally from any portion of the district's comprehensive health education curriculum without stating a reason. Personally, I
163think all we need is I think the problem is we have a CRS 22251064 and it's probably specifically stated in that. So, we probably should look at that before we strike that because I I believe that the law requires exemption procedures um based on that and we can ask them to state specifically what they're looking for or not and we've chosen to not. So I'm not sure if if we take that out if we're going to be in violation of so it might be worth us doing some checking with Brad and make sure there's not a reason we have to state that. If not, I agree we could take it out. But yeah, I mean, why couldn't you just say from a specific portion or portions of the instruction on any grounds without and no
164reason is required. Sometimes the law will say the district must have a policy that states X. Yeah. And and so I just not not having a law book in front of me, I'd say, we can look at that, come back to you with whether it's stated or not. And if it's not, we can drop it. I think to your point, it shall include a procedure to exempt a student upon request of the parent or guardian of such student from a specific portion of the program on the grounds that is contrary to the religious beliefs and teachings. So that's directly from the statute. So which statute is that? 22251064. Okay. Well, okay. So now we're back to But again, we are saying you don't have to state what your reason is. So we we we're still
165sticking with you're exempting your student, you don't have to tell us why. Yeah. And maybe it's just clarifying the verbiage of no reason is required. So then, so then the So then I I'm gonna make that we could state a parent does not need to state the specifics to their reason. I mean, if we want to be more clear instead of no reason is required, we could say in sets request a parent is not required to state the reason. So maybe be a little clearer in that sentence. Yeah. I mean, if the language says on the grounds that it is contrary to their religious beliefs, I mean, that would be apparent saying yes, that's the reason. But if they have some other reason, then we might need both of those paragraphs because which is I
166think is redundant. But then the number four that is currently the number four is basically for any reason uh you know without stating reason at all. True. And it's not I mean it just is so maybe we take out no reason as required. So you can do it on the top one. You can do it on number three which is statute or you can just we're letting you exempt without giving any reason. So well this was cases or post class class there's too many too many so that's probably why they included I guess they did that and they actually included more than what this says. Yeah. Yeah. So, so we can strike no reason is required under number three since number four says you can't accept without any reason without stating reason. Yeah. I mean,
167I think if we're going to keep them both, which sounds like we need to, um, they can say yes, this is for religious reasons if they want to, or they can just say just no, I don't want it to. And either way is okay. Yeah. So, I had a question on the regulation, which I might as well just ask it now because it It's applicable. Is it just for portions? Is the class mandated and they can only exempt from portions or can they exempt from the whole class? Well, it's a graduation requirement. It's a graduation. It's in your graduation requirement. So, you'd have to change your graduation requirements. Okay. They they can exempt from the course, but it does create that conflict within graduation requirements. So what would happen then? We have situations where students
168come in halfway through their high school career and and we do have to exempt some of our graduation requirements because they were complying with graduation requirements from their prior district. So we don't make them take a ton of additional courses and stay an extra year and a half because of that. So I would say would be handled the same way. you you've exempted we've given you through policy the right to exempt from a part or whole. So technically your policy would say that your other policy really isn't necessary. Your policies conflict. If you say you have to take but then you say you can exempt, we probably should modify the grant requirements. At the high school I never had anybody that I know of. I mean, health is so much health is so much more
169than just I mean, honestly, it would be very sad if someone exempted. I know. I mean, it would be crazy. There's so much more to like a Christian science person. I'm thinking, you know, maybe they just want to handle all that themselves, you know. I guess that's I don't know that it's ever happened. I can certainly check, but Well, hopefully it won't. I have them do portions of when I was in the library of language arts where a book their family didn't agree with for religious reasons. Yeah. So, they would come and do it. Look, they would do other things. Well, maybe it won't be as much of an issue for transparent. Yeah. With the curriculum comfortable with everything. Keep in mind that it does state the notice to parents shall include a detailed substantive
170outline of topics and materials to be presented. So on the whole health education course, we are required to provide notice to parents that has a detail of outline of topics and materials to be presented. So we're giving them lots of detail. So that happens automatically. That's if your policy says it must. So when we adopt this, has that not? I believe it's probably applied to this the sex education or the human growth and development portion. This is actually changing it where technically it's going to be the whole health class. It's going to be a syllabus basically provided because now we're talking about nutrition, talking about nutrition, exercise, Yeah. Okay. They should go do that. Some say long-term illness, Alzheimer's, comparative neurosis. Wow. That's going to be a detailed class. Okay. Okay. Got some changes to
171make. Yep. I didn't get it. I got all Can I get a roll call? Director Callahan. Hi. Director Fletcher. Hi. Director Olsen. Hi. Director Powell. Hi. Director Waller. Hi. Okay. Motion approved. Next up, second reading of revised regulation IHM-R Health Education. So, we just kind of talked about this. So, I move that the board approve the second reading of revised regulation IHM-R Health Education. This is not a policy we've ever had. This is something class has recommended and it basically provides a parent a very easy to use exemption form. Okay. Okay. Any discussion on the form? No. He's making fun of me. Here we go. I think we talked about it all with the other one. So, yeah. Z. Okay. Is there anything the same like sorry angry rolled out? You want to say no
172reason must be given. Okay. Roll call. All right. If no further discussion, can I get a roll call? Director Callahan. Hi. Director Fletcher. Hi. Director Olsen. Hi. Director Powell. Hi. Director Waller. Oh, I Okay, motion approve. Only three more. All right. So, next up, um the first reading of revised policy Ike, ensuring all students meet standards. So, we've been discussing setting academic performance expectations for promoting students to the next grade level. And this is the first revision of policy Ike to address those expectations. So I move that the board approve the first reading of revised policy Ike ensuring all students meet standards. Second. Okay. Discussion. So I know Mary has a couple of recommendations. We talked ahead of time and I agree with them. Um I don't know Mary if you want to go over
173those. Sure. Um so in the first paragraph it says um teachers shall identify students early in the school year who are not making adequate progress toward achieving the district's academic standards. And the way it currently reads it says and may choose to implement um an individual learning plan for each student. So we I was concerned about the may choose to like it's all up to the teacher uh to do but it's it's more like the teacher will recommend it. But yeah, we have MTSS committees at all of our schools. So if if a student is struggling, typically that student is recommended to the MTSS process, multi-tered system of support. Um and so really should read uh will recommend um a student uh for consideration of an of an individual learning plan. So it's a very
174first paragraph the last second to last sentence and instead of may choose shall shall shall shall recommend. Okay shall the student is it the year shall or will which one do you want? Yeah I don't know whatever. All right. So, what else did you have, Mary? Um, let's see. So, there was Let's see. I think I think the rest of it we got worked out in when we talked. Let me think. Yeah. And I I I think the key I had a great conversation with the teacher this afternoon after a training about this. Our plan is not to retain a ton of students. Our plan is to provide expectations that will support um our not only clearly signify to our staff. We expect students to learn grade or to achieve grade level standards, but it'll
175also will provide support to our staff um in conversations with parents because sometimes some of our students who are struggling the most, we get the least amount of support from parents who are willing to have them attend summer programs, have them attend after school programs, take additional supports, accept the plan. Um, and so this really our our plan is not let's let's retain the 59% of our kids who didn't achieve proficiency in reading, but really to provide another tool in the toolbox so that conversations with parents can be serious about, you know, we we need to work together. You know, if if a child we've had children who miss 60 days of school, why aren't they learning? Gosh, 60 days of school out of the 160ome days of school, you know. So, this will provide
176some some uh a stick, if you will, um for us to have those conversations that, you know, if if your child is not progressing, if your child is not achieving, um we may need to consider retention. Um because the bottom line is we cannot continue to just move kids forward. And so the intent again in Florida, I think I shared with you, I was in Florida when Jeb Bush passed or or proposed and it was passed in the legislature a barrier at third grade for children who weren't proficient in reading. It did not lead to mass retention. It led to increasing expectations and children actually meeting them meeting them. And so our goal and just to be very public with community is not to retain a mass. We're not putting student parking at our elementary
177schools. We are we are intending to make sure that we set expectations and and that we help children achieve that and that's our goal and in the rare occasion where where a child needs additional time retention becomes a possibility. Yeah. I think my other worry but after we kind of talked about it's kind of related to the ILBC and the regulation um because I was confused about it's it's actually up to the building principal to recommend a student for retention Colorado statute but then if a and that's by Colorado statute yes and then um so that so Dan was explaining that to me but then if um if a student seems like they should be retained but the decision is made to promote the child. Actually, then it comes and the superintendent makes the final
178decision. If they are determined in spite of being way behind that they're going to still be promoted anyway, it will come to the superintendent for decision. As you saw with Kim's presentation of data, we know how many students are more than two grade levels below. Those are students we'd be monitoring. And so through our followup with schools, we'd be saying, "Okay, what's your plan on these students?" and and obviously if one of those students is not being retained or there's not a plan that shows that there's an active you know achievement progress being made then um then it would come to me or my design to review and and make a decision as to whether we support that. Yeah. So now one note I had and Dave you're gonna love this policy references reading but
179what about me? How did you know that I had that on my I was just reading through it and I'm like everything's reading. Yeah, we don't have a separate policy on that. We only have a policy and literacy. So I think our intention here is um that it's all subject areas. We have two policies that are next that we're going to talk about that are specifically literacy, but we do not have a policy on math. Well, you know, say in the math where I'm going to reference back to your question to the legacy principle and that is do you do you find a correlation between the reading and the math scores? Because because research is very specific research I I haven't found a research study that says a student behind in math is six times
180more likely to to drop out. Doesn't mean it's not there. I haven't I haven't found it. So that this specific Sorry, thank you for pointing that out. this specific paragraph is citing research so that it backs up why yeah are we strongly considering this but I do think too that you know I mean to his point earlier in in your question um they are correlated I don't think it's a real direct study or thing but you can see that if a if a student can't read a word problem that's going to be a problem on the math but if they can learn to read it they're going to do better on it so hopey ity will follow through but you know we need to monitor this and if we need a math policy then we'll
181do it reading is a foundation to continued learning I mean once you can read you you open the doors to lots of additional learning opportunities um it says uh where was it parents will be notified by spring break if their child's at risk of retention you've got a third grader who's not Well, spring break. I mean, we just had spring break there, so they have like two months left. Are they going to Yeah, the key would be parents are also notified um uh at the end of the first quarter. So, they they would be notified that they're below if we're considering retention, they have to be notified. So, they they would be notified that their child's below multiple grade levels in advance of third grade. But third grade at spring break is when parents need
182to know before spring break that your child is at risk. Meaning we haven't made a final decision, but based upon the growth we're seeing. Yeah. I mean, we need to have this serious conversation. If they're two grade levels, you're not fixing that in two. Yes. So that's basically kind of a followup, right? But that but they would have been notified within the first quarter. They would have been notified the year prior in second grade, the first quarter of second grade. I mean, it's not going to be a surprise if we're notifying parents at least twice a year that their children currently meet this criteria. Okay. And I think that's that's that's the intent. If it needs to be worded differently, we can. But no, I was just, you know, the by spring break. I mean,
183that's at that point it's kind of a done deal. Well, my my trouble my trouble that led to this statement is we've had parents when we implemented our takeflight groups and we talked to parents about their children's reading scores. We had a number of parents who said when we told them that we considered I ready performance as to as to which students we needed to screen further. We had multiple parents tell us, "Well, my teachers told me I ready doesn't matter." And that's that's why we felt this had to be in here because parents need to know. We shouldn't mask it. We shouldn't say don't worry that I already showing your child's behind. They're really not. We need to be very explicit. And so that's that's why that made it in here because hearing that
184from children who are significantly behind and we've spent extended resources now on take flight therapy for dyslexia. That was troubling to us. That's why we felt like that had to be in. So this is I mean this isn't a necessarily a literacy policy. This is ensuring all students meet standards. Correct. So we can put math. You could put math if you want. Like I said, I just don't have research to site. So, I mean, we could add a paragraph about, you know, students likewise performing significantly below in the area of math sha. I mean, we could do that. I I was citing research, which is why I'm not opposed. So, are we going to make the watching out for retention thing be in the area of reading and or math that they're two years behind?
185It could be. Yeah, that's your call. I I would agree with you that typically they're parallel. A student who's behind in math is also behind in reading. I've seen very few students who who read on grade level and are not progressing in math. That would be two two or more grade levels below a grade level below maybe. And sometimes you hit math skills that are challenging and but I've seen very few situations but we can clarify that this is all this is this policy is not literacy in particular it's meeting standards and that would be science social studies standards too for that matter because that's really going to be affected by reading social studies comes down to very very very direct. Okay. So any further discussion? Do you want us to work on something else?
186We can. I mean, I'm happy to to work on how to include that just to emphasize that math is important to us. That would be great. Okay. Find some research. Okay. Yep. I I'll find research. I know. Okay. Can I get a roll call? Dr. Callahan. Hi. Director Fletcher. Hi. Director Olsen. Hi. Dr. How I Okay, so that'll go to second reading then. Yeah. Okay. Next up, we have the first reading of revised policy ILBC, early literacy and reading comprehension. So, the revision of this policy is another opportunity to address our academic expectations for promoting students to the next level, next grade level. So I move that the board approve the first reading of revised policy ILBC early literacy and reading comprehension. Second. So this most of the changes here are actually legal changes based
187upon the read act changes that were made um I believe in 20 I want to say 2023. So yeah I think it was 2023 might have been 2022. Um but um so so this already outlined the consideration of retention. Um and so the red you'll see some additional information. Um uh and we did add reference to board policy concerning promotion and retention. So that second is clearly um something we've added to reference our other policy. Um but most of the changes here are from um CASBY and so one note I had and and you kind of touched on it. So you know studies show that up to one in five children can be diagnosed with some level of dyslexia and we have this policy but how will that potential be taken into account when diagnosing
188a reading deficiency? because typically a student with um with dyslexia will have a plan potentially an IEP and so that plan would then govern the expectations of that student. So once a once a student is on an IEP or a 504 plan. Um it does to some degree outline a set of expectations based upon the student's disability. Um, so with dyslexia, we know that take flight is a two to threeyear process for a student to actually achieve grade level expectations. Um, so that would then be documented in an IEP. So that would then exempt a student from from potential retention. And you said you're looking at we're piloting the the take flight. Piloting it. This year we've actually identified um and making an offer to a certified academic language therapist who is also a qualified
189instructor who can train others to become certified academic language therapists. Originally we were thinking about contracting with a trainer who would train staff and then have to fly in to observe. We actually have identified someone um who we will likely bring to you as a recommended hire who will actually work for us and be able to train additional counts and they will provide increased daily dyslexia therapy next year. It won't be twice a week. This this year what we've been able to start with the resources we've been able to identify has been two days a week. Next year we will have students no less than four days a week, potentially five days a week and take them. Okay. And and and one of the angles I was coming at on this was so we have
190a teacher and they have a student and they're like well this student is you know deficient in reading but and they could put them on a put them on a plan or or look at you know maybe they need to be held back this that but they don't realize that this student has dyslexia. I think because of our putting our our our count will likely be our literacy specialist in the district, meaning that any student uh on a read plan, any student who's not achieving grade level status will be students that they will be digging into and potentially screening. So, we'll have the ability to screen for dyslexia uh with this new hire um on a regular basis. So, as we identify a student who's falling behind in reading, the key is catching it early.
191Most stu most schools, the two schools that I've referenced before, um, Orton Academy and Allies in District 49, those schools start at second grade. Typically, you're not jumping to the conclusion that a kindergartener who may be having initial challenges in learning letters is dyslexic. It may just be a developmental issue. Typically after first grade, it's not uncommon to say, "Okay, that student clearly is showing signs of of dyslexia. Um, at that point, then you can diagnose and you can begin treatment." So, our ideal situation would be that students at the elementary level um would receive TakeFlight therapy if they're identified as having significant dyslexia and that would allow them to leave elementary school on grade level. In the meantime, we have middle schoolers next year and we will have take flight therapy for those kids
192who have moved beyond because our system didn't catch them. So, we will have all levels uh next year. I don't know that we'll have high school students, but we will definitely have middle school students who are in take flight next year um with the intention of after three years being able to catch students before they leave elementary school. Okay. Any further discussion on this one? I answered my questions earlier on this and I kind of just described it before about promoting and who get who decides. Okay. Can I get a roll call? Director Callahan. Hi. Director Fletcher. Hi. Director Olsen. Hi. Director Powell. Hi. Director Waller. I. Okay. Motion approved. Last one. So this one is actually approved. approved then ready to go on right no it this was first reading so we'll bring it
193back one more time okay so next up we have the first reading of revised regulation ILBC-R early literacy and reading comprehension again another chance to discuss our expectations moving forward for promoting students to the next grade level so I move that the board approve the first reading of revised regulation ILBC- R early literacy and reading comprehension and I will say I'm just double checking to make sure I'm not overstating all of these changes are legal changes um from CASBY and and so all of them align with our other policies. So there was no additional um insertion of language into here. Um it was all recommended from the ReadAct change that occurred a few years ago that we've just never looked at this policy. Can I get a second? Second. Okay. I'm sorry I jumped in
194again. That's okay. It's getting late. Okay. Was really excited about that. Yeah, I know. Um I loved it. Um, I like how it talks about um compet competency in the areas of phenomic awareness, phonics, vocabulary development, reading fluency, including oral skills and reading comprehension. Um, do we need to specify no queuing or whole word teaching methodologies in there? I think because we're mentioning the five components, we we indicate that that's not the way we're going to teach. So okay those would be in contradiction and this would be no exceptions. Can you put no exceptions in there? You can if you want. All right. It's your policy. Okay. Any other discussion? Um Dan and I discussed earlier kind of again part of the process of me trying to understand you know when the principal can can
195recommends and it is by law it is the principal who recommends retention. Yeah. and it's the superintendent who then steps in if people are trying to promote the child. Anyway, so at the the last paragraph that's in red on page five, the second last paper, we talked about just adding at the end of that, it's it's like if the parent guardian does not attend a meeting to discuss this, the decision to promote or retain the student is is due due to the student's significant reading deficiency shall be made in accordance with board policy. And I think it should also say and according to applicable law. Yeah, we can do that. So a comma and board policy with board policy and applicable law. Yeah, it probably doesn't need a comma. President, it has always kind of
196sat wrong, especially when we talk parental rights, that that retention is not the right of a parent to deny. Yeah. So that's where I was like, yeah, and honestly, the basis of that is, you know, there there have been school districts who have been sued for educational malpractice when parents have refused retention and then children graduate and they don't have the skills and then they come back and basically say, "Well, you're the educators, you should have known." Yeah. Um so I think I think there's most states that law is rooted in that you know, you're you're the educator. you know what the child needs to learn and if they're not then you should make the appropriate decisions. So yeah, I think there was was it on the news today, yesterday, this weekend about um there
197was a student not in our district but a student a validictorian somewhere in this country that couldn't rear right and a validictorian and a validator. Yeah, that's that's quite frightening. Thank God not in our district. But that's why that's why you put these things in place to help put in the guard rails and safeguards to make sure that doesn't happen. Okay. So, can I get a roll call? Director Callahan. I. Director Fletcher. I. Director Olsen. I. Director Pal. I. Director Waller. I. Okay. Motion approved. Uh, our next boarding meeting is on April 7th here in the boardroom. district office 6 pm. And with that, I any other new business? I will just say you have in your email box the official appeal to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals that was filed this evening. Good.
198What time does Summit close? Okay. With that, I adjourn this meeting at 9:53. 8:53. Just like 95. It does feel like No wonder I feel uh Yeah, I was I was looking at got minutes out. Got a sign.