Board of Education Meeting: April 28, 2026 (Spanish Captions)

001Turn my mic. All right, we'll call our meeting to order. Thank you for joining the board of education this evening. Please mute your cell phones as we begin this meeting. Today is Tuesday, April 28th, 2026, and this meeting is now called to order at 5:41 p.m. For those attending this meeting in person, live captions are available on a TV in the boardroom and in the lobby. To access the live captions in a language other than English on your own device, please scan the QR code on the screen or on the table near the entrance and select the language of your choice. The live stream of this meeting is also available in English and Spanish on YouTube. For links to these live streams, please visit the board of education page of the PSD website or PSD

002TV on demand on YouTube. All right. Next, we have approval of agenda. Would any board members like to make a changes to the agenda? Yes, Connor. >> I move that the board amend the agenda to include a second executive session regarding specialized details on security arrangements. >> Thank you, Connor. Do I have a second? Thank you, Kevin. And Jill, please call the vote. Carla Ba >> I >> Connor Duffy >> hi >> Kevin Havda >> hi >> Scott Shoenbower >> hi >> Jessica Zamora >> I >> Dr. Kuranda Ziggler. >> Motion passes 6. >> Thank you. All right. Next we have our resolutions and action items. So we have a resolution in support of mental health awareness month. Can I get a motion? >> Thank you Ka. I don't know if your mic is on.

003It is. Yeah. I feel like these are a little late. Maybe. Can you do it one more time? >> Uh I move that the board approve the resolution and support mental health awareness month for May 2026. >> Thank you very much. Can I have a second? Thank you, Carla. All right, Brian. >> Good evening, everyone. Tonight, we are honored to be joined by mental health and prevention coordinator Sarah Mouter Wilkins, who will present the resolution. Welcome, Sarah. Thank you. Tonight we are asking you to recognize mental health awareness month for the month of May in Cter school district. NAMI is a national organization supporting mental health and the following is some information from NAMI about mental health awareness month. Mental Health Awareness Month provides a chance to stand with your community and show that no

004one struggles alone. NAMI's 2026 Mental Health Awareness Month theme invites everyone to join in speaking up against mental health stigma. By turning silence into connection by sharing our lived experiences, learning from each other's experiences, and building stronger connections, we can challenge stigma and create spaces where people are supported, understood, and find healing. Every story shared turns silence into connection and connection into healing. Together, we can strengthen communities and create opportunities for empathy, understanding, and meaningful change. At PSD, we are proud to center mental health and belonging as a key pillar of our strategic plan. Our staff are deeply committed to supporting the well-being and sense of belonging for every student every day. Strong family, school, and community partnerships are essential to help the health of our PSD community, and we are truly grateful for the

005opportunity to work together in support of our students. Tonight, I have the honor of introducing you to Ana Lisa, a parent at PSD, to share her story and help create connection towards breaking stigma. Thank you so much, Ana Lisa, for sharing your story, which in turn can spark healing. Hi, thank you Sarah and the board for letting me speak tonight. I'd like to focus on resolution number seven. Whereas staff and school are often among the first to recognize changes in mental and physical health among students, staff need to feel empowered to recognize and take appropriate action when needed, including partnering with families to support student well-being. My son is an eighth grader at Tenmouth Middle High School. I was contacted in early September by Miss Virginia, the mental health counselor there, that Cooper had been

006reported to Safe to Tell regarding some concerning comments. At that point, she said we needed to keep a close eye on him. I'm a family nurse practitioner and I'm trained and watching for the signs and symptoms of depression, but I thought he was just an irritable 13-year-old. He was playing football for the first time in his life, starting varsity, and uh playing both sides of the ball. Over the next several weeks, he was able to touch base frequently with his school counselor, Mrs. Wells and Miss Virginia, and they got to know him and his personality. I offered to get a counselor outside of that, and he declined. On October 31st, I got a call from Miss Virginia that they were worried about a change in his demeanor and comments he was making. When he got

007home, I found out he'd been cutting since August. And in the two weeks prior to Halloween, it had ele escalated to the point that I fear we were within days of losing him. There is no doubt in my mind that those two women saved my son's life. There are several things that came into play here. Number one, the student who reported my son was educated in what to watch for and when to contact safe to tell. And also, my son had gotten the education to call 98, which he had done two days prior to Halloween. Number two, Miss Virginia being on site a couple of days a week made it possible for her and Mrs. Wells to get to know my son better and be able to identify when he was in crisis. Number three,

008the staff had the support to reach out to me as a parent early on to result in the best outcome. He just had his 14th birthday. >> [applause] >> Thank you for sharing your story. Um, with a 14-year-old and an eighth grader myself and having not gone through that level by any means, but definitely observing the changes and the struggles that middle school can provide is very real. And like you, I appreciate that our educators are exceptionally good and our students are exceptionally good at watching out for each other and being supportive. So, thank you so much for sharing your story though because I think it reminds us how important these services are. We all know it, but having the story articulated to us really helps. So, thank you for being here. Are there any

009other comments at this time? I think we're getting teeyed to be honest. All right. Do you have any comments? No. Jill, can you please call the vote? Carla Baz. >> Hi. >> Connor Duffy. >> Hi. >> Kevin Havda. >> Hi. >> Scott Shoenbower. >> Hi. >> Jessica Zamora. >> Hi. >> Dr. Karanda Ziggler. >> Hi. >> Motion passes 6. Thank you. All right. Next, we have our resolution support of military appreciation month. Can I get a motion? Thank you, Scott. I move that the board approve a resolution in support of Military Appreciation Month, May 2026. >> Thank you. Can I get a second? Thank you, Kevin. >> Brian, >> joining us this evening to speak to the resolution in support of Military Appreciation Month are Captain Roby and Student Garrison Wear. Welcome both. [applause] Good

010evening, superintendent, board members, and special guests. My name is Garrison Wear, and I am the cadet battalion commander of the JOTC program housed at Pter High School. I'd like to begin by thanking you for inviting me back to this board meeting to discuss a topic I'm so passionate about. I'm honored to stand before you this evening to deliver a resolution on the importance of military appreciation month. When reflecting on the lasting impact and legacy of our country's extensive history of military service, it becomes clear that our nation is nothing short of indebted to the men and women who have answered the call of duty. These service members who so valiantly stepped up in our country's time of need were just like you and I. They had families, aspirations, personal objectives, and bright futures. These people,

011regardless of their different cultural backgrounds or lifestyles, were all unified in their ability to recognize the importance of service and standing in defense of our nation and its principles. And they chose to prioritize that defense above their own interests. Every one of these noble and courageous individuals sacrificed. They sacrificed their time. They sacrificed their futures. And some even sacrificed their lives upon the altar of freedom. That freedom born of their sacrifice means that we do not go to bed each night afraid of foreign attacks. We feel safe and secure in our country. That freedom born of their sacrifice means our nation has been able to flourish. that we as individuals have the privilege to pursue our dreams to create and innovate to strive to solve the world's problems rather than struggle to survive dayto-day. That

012freedom born of their sacrifice means that we get to see the world as a place of plenty and seek to expand that abundance to others rather than live in a place of fear, selfishness, and scarcity. The sacrifices of yesterday and continued service of the military today ensures we we may enjoy the freedoms we so easily take for granted. Because for so many of us, we've never known another reality. But we can never forget that freedom that this freedom was not easily won or has been effortlessly retained or is invulnerable to future threat. Regardless of how veimately we wish to honor the gifts these many brave individuals have bestowed upon us, we must acknowledge that as a nation, we can never fully repay the debt we owe to those who gave to us so much without

013asking. for anything in return. It appears then the only way to honor their sacrifice is first to remember our service members and recognize the connection between their service and the freedoms we enjoy today. The second and I believe one of the most meaningful and powerful ways we can honor the lasting sacrifice of our service members is by ensuring that we use the gift of freedom we have been given to pay forward the selfless service they dedicated their lives to demonstrate. We should all seek to uphold the tradition of service and contribution these individuals have set into motion. It does not have to be in uniform. It does not have to be in combat. And it does not have to be a career commitment. We have the freedom to decide what is important to us, what

014causes we champion, what wrongs we can write. We have the freedom to decide if we decide to exercise it. As John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of our nation, famously stated during his inaugural address, "My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country." It is through observing this call to action that we can honor the sacrifices of our service members by using the gift of freedom to live meaningful, impactful, and useful lives. This May, regardless of whether or not we've ever spent a day in uniform, we can all choose to serve something greater than ourselves, just as the noble service members of our country have. This May, we should endeavor to give back to our communities, our country, and our fellow citizens. By making

015a deliberate effort to practice selfless service, we are keeping alive the tenants and principles of military service, and we fully utilize the freedoms these service members gave their lives to uphold. Thank you so much for being here. Are there any comments the board members would like to make? >> Okay, I Oh, please. >> I was writing down some of the things you said because it spurred some thoughts of my own. um indebted to answer the call to duty, sacrifice, freedom. Our [clears throat] obligation to repay the sacrifices that you mentioned is to ensure that the gift of freedom is more or less not squandered. That really resonated with me. Um I gave remarks recently to a school on what it means to pursue justice and there was a quote that I used I thought was

016appropriate based on what you said. Um, [clears throat] this comes from Benjamin Franklin who said, "Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are." I thought that was poignant based on what you said. I want to thank you for that reminder and for that charge for all of us to serve our community, serve our schools, and serve our nation and honor that in the month of May. Thank you so much. Okay. I just want to I had my own notes as well and I will not say it as nicely and as eloquently as uh Kevin just did, but I appreciated that you talked a lot about the sacrifice, but that sacrifice in my own family and my own friends, it's often so quiet and without any expectation

017of appreciation. And I think the very least we can do and I appreciated most of all like your invitation for us to serve our communities while many of us either can't or haven't had the opportunity or have made the choice not to be in our military still inviting us to be part of an act of service as a as a way of honoring the service that's been so generously given to us. So thank you so much for being here and I really appreciate you. Um with that I think Joe can call the vote. Carla Bass. >> I >> Connor Duffy. >> Hi. >> Kevin Havda. >> Hi. >> Scott Shoenbower. >> Hi. >> Jessica Zamora. >> I >> Dr. Kuronda Ziggler. >> I. >> Motion passes. 6. [applause] >> Yep. All right. We'll take a

018picture with our resolution guests. Thanks for coming. much better. >> [applause] >> Right. Next on our agenda, we have our superintendent report. I do not envy your followup to that, but please. >> No, that is an impossible act to follow. So, I'm not even going to try. I'll just be myself and hope for the best here. I don't know if it was intentional or by accident that mental health awareness and military appreciation month fall in the same month. I'm going to just hope that it was by design because it's hard not to see the intersectionality between the two. We all know and recognize that mental health is much bigger than the military, but we also realize that the military is much bigger than oneself. Um, so I'm just super proud uh to represent a school

019system that prioritizes mental health and belonging and continues to show the honor and dignity for those who are brave and courageous to choose a life commitment and dedication to service through the military. For those of you that are in the community or on our board that are interested, we uh on an annual basis have a military celebration and a formal national signing day for those high school seniors who are committing their life to one of the branches of the armed forces. And that is tomorrow night from 6:00 to 7:15 at our future ready center. And I look forward to celebrating not just with our uh leadership from the JOTC, but many students and many staff members and community members. It is a very proud moment for all of those families, especially those young adults. Um,

020and so if anybody has an opportunity, I certainly will relay gratitude on behalf of all of us. But just a special invitation to all involved. Since I've last been at a board meeting for the last two weeks, I've had the honor of being in seven of our schools. I want to thank President Zamora for joining me at Cash La Elementary School yesterday. Uh, as the superintendent of this school system, I continue to be impressed by our school leadership in partnership with their entire faculty and community on their dedication and hard work to committing to a strong finish of this school year. And they are straddling the thoughts around how to make sure that next school year has a very very good and solid start. Um, and that's no easy task in the midst of the

021changes that we are all grappling, but they continue to show up and show out and I'm very very proud of that. uh another uh week of celebrations on May 4th. Just a recognition. I think this might be the third annual PSD celebrates uh function that will be happening at the Lincoln Center on Monday night to celebrate the achievements and dedication of all of our colleagues across the school system. There are more and more people that get recognized and more and more people that attend each and every year. Uh so for members of the board who are having an opportunity to attend and celebrate with our labor groups and our respective other employees across the system who will be honored, thank you uh for just elevating our our best and brightest uh each and every year.

022It just continues to be an event that I'm very very proud to be a part of. Uh this evening's meeting uh has a very important finance team update that will share the preliminary budget for the 2627 school year. Please note this is the first of a three-step formal process to adopt to adopt a budget for next school year that will conclude in June. What the community will see this evening is simply a draft and it will continue to evolve as the state legislature continues its work to set a budget for the next school year. Uh I want to close uh with a special video, but before I do that, I just had the opportunity earlier today to be in Denver. I was allowed three principal attendees to join me in Amy Smith from McGra Elementary

023School, James Garcia, the principal at Laurel Elementary School, and Lindseay Mackin, the proud principal of Canard Middle School, had the opportunity to join me as their superintendent in Denver as our school district along many other school districts recognized some award-winning schools for exceptional growth, exceptional academic achievement. And Pter school district continues to be one of the school systems. There's only, I think, 63 school systems that were recognized. There were just under 293 schools and 20 of them are in our backyard. So, I continue to be super impressed by our leadership, our teachers, our community members who are volunteering, our pair of professionals, everybody. It's all hands- on deck all the time. And the rewards that we're reaping in terms of advancing outcomes for kids continues to be super impressive. Uh but this is also a

024special way of entering since I spent the day this afternoon with three of our principles. Uh we are about to also acknowledge that school's principal day uh is here. And before I play the video, I just want to take a moment to recognize the dedication and commitment of all of our exceptional principles in PSD. You matter. Hi, my name is and I'm here with >> Alyssa Kendall, principal at Troutcore [music] Knolled School. >> Hi, I'm Dacon. I'm in eighth grade at Cash Pluto Middle School and I'm here with our principal, Matt Ellis. >> Hi, my name is Henrik. >> Hi, I'm Cedar. Hello, my name is Logan >> and I'm here with the principal at Polaris [music] Star. >> I've got a few questions for you. What's a hidden talent that you have that most

025people don't know about? You know, I I think a lot of people know that I was an athletic director for many years, but uh many people may not realize that I was a three sport athlete and I can still kind of put the ball in the hoop, so I can play basketball pretty decently. And uh I'm an avid off-roader. >> I recently learned how to [music] play the banjo. >> That's a great talent. >> My hidden talent is um if you needed to get across the Yukon, [music] I could harness and run a sled dog team for you. >> Wow. I didn't know you could do that. >> Tell us about a proud moment from this school year. >> It largely has to do with um our eighth graders taking some leadership roles, right? Um

026so, for instance, we had u many girls on our girls wrestling team. Um [music] yourself included, which was awesome. Um you know, we had us we had students help with a uh a bus emergency with one of our drivers, a medical emergency. Um and that just speaks to um you know, how wonderful and community centered our kids [music] are. our students leading tours or any way that we really um welcome the community into our space. I'm I'm really prideful in in that and how you all um represent our school. >> I [music] just went through all of our seniors transcripts and um almost every single one [music] of them has earned Front Range Community College Credit um or Ames Community College Credit, which means uh not only did they have a college experience, they got

027to [music] save their families lots of money on college. >> That's awesome. the work that our teachers and [music] kiddos have done with our new writing program. We took on the writing revolution and everyone has been working really hard at it and I'm so so proud of of the growth that I've seen. >> How and why do you do it? >> Well, the how is simple. Um it involves where we are right now in our coffee shop. I'm a frequent buyer and I do it with lots and lots and lots of coffee. Um, as far as the why, I became a teacher because I struggled as a student myself. And after being a teacher for a decade or so, um, I decided I wanted to improve conditions and make space for teachers [music] to do

028their best work. And so that is the why of why I became an administrator. Um, and part of that is seeing students like yourself walk across the stage in [music] a couple weeks. So that's pretty exciting, too. >> You know, I was the I was the student uh who struggled early on. um I did not love school and it took me a while to build momentum and uh eventually I became a high achiever but it took me quite some time and so I decided when I um was [music] figuring out my path that I wanted to um help provide a better experience to not only students and teachers and the community than what I experienced um growing up. So that was really my why and um kind of what jump started me into this line

029of work. [music] I knew that I wanted to be a teacher when I was a little girl and that motivated me [music] to go on to get my teaching degree. I do it every day because I absolutely love working with students like you. You make my heart happy [music] and I love being here. >> Thank you, kiddo. [applause] >> Man, I love that our kids are so cool. Our principles are so cool, our staff. That warms my heart every time. All right. Uh we'll move right along into our community comment. This opportunity for public comment is for members of the community who registered to speak by the designated deadline. Those people will be called on to make remarks in the order that they signed up. Each speaker will be allowed three minutes to address the

030board. First up, we have Derek France. Welcome. Good evening, members of the board of education. I am here to formally demand an immediate stay of the administrative hearing scheduled for May 4th, 2026. I am handing you a packet containing a formal grievance and evidence of a procedural crisis that requires your intervention tonight. to proceed next Monday without counsel and while vital records are being withheld is a bad faith violation of due process. As of yesterday, April 27th, 2026, we are unrepresented. Unrepresented. The Colorado Education Association attorneys withdrew because we exercised our legal rights to a 21 stay 21-day stay consideration period on the district leadership and administration council's settlement offer. This is a right mandated by federal law. Yet, it is a right district leadership and administration council would not tolerate. They have successfully isolated

031a 22-year veteran teacher less than 7 days before a lifealtering hearing. Furthermore, the district has yet to fulfill an emergency core request I filed on April 24th, 2026. You can't you cannot outsource your due diligence to an administration that has engineered an ambush. We demand a stay and a thorough independent investigation. Our family has over 40 years of combined teaching experience, including 18 years in PSD. We are both K through 12 PSD graduates. Yet, of the 14 staff members involved in this matter, she is the only one being uniquely targeted for a formal termination hearing. This is a direct retaliation for our advocacy for our son's 504 rights after he was severely injured in a school activity. I sat in an HR office on June 3rd, 2025 and witnessed scripted interrogations designed to intimidate and

032coersse predetermination. The scripted agenda nearly cost me my life. Last August, I spent eight days in a hospital bed. Six of those tubefed due to a perforated ulcer in my small intestine. My wife now requires daily medication for severe anxiety to function daily. To stay afloat on a single teacher income, we had to take our take out a home equity loan to help pay our bills and mortgage. Furthermore, the district seized almost 300 hours of her earned sick leave, time she spent in the classroom with her students, not at home. Do not allow this administration to define your legacy. Stay the May 4th, 2026 hearing and choose the truth. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, we have Grace Turnbull. Good evening. Um, I had a drawing, but I learned that I wasn't allowed to show

033it. So, if you want to see it after the fact, let me know. I'll send it to you. Um, it's called the cycle of consolidation, and it begins with stage one, ground zero. The conclusion is clear. Consolidation is the path forward. The next phase is shock. In miday 2026 when 28,000 students and their families hear the criteria that will determine whether their schools stay open or close. After that comes stage three which I call denial, betrayal, anger or the hell storm. Emails, phone calls, packed community comments, strong emotions in every direction. Stage four is sadness. October 26, decisions will be announced. We will be naming which schools are closing. It's unavoidable. But once decisions are made, they need to be carried forward with thoughtfulness and transparency. Next stage five is identity crisis. Students, parents, and

034community members will speak why their schools should remain open. Some will threaten to leave the district. Some will withdraw support. The voices will be loud. But before the next stage, this is the most important part of the cycle. This is where we must lead with positive, clear, and consistent messaging, not reminders of why this is happening. We need to look forward. We need a new hope. People need to hear about opportunities, about resources, about what will be stronger, better, and more sustainable. On the other side of these decisions, this is the moment where trust is either rebuilt or lost. With that, we move to stage six, acceptance and understanding. This is where I'm at because there is evidence there are districts that have been consolidated and come out stronger academically, financially, and as communities. Then

035August 27th or 2027, sorry, schools close. The change becomes real. However, don't mistake the pain of change for failure. Next, we have the final stage. Stage Oh, wait. Second to last. Forgiveness and healing. stage seven because even if it's the right decision to consolidate it's going to suck and talking about that is important and eventually we reach the final stage the new normal so I've lived through this cycle it's not theoretical it's experiential to me and many others and one final point is that the mental health that has been cut in order to balance the budget this was a mistake especially at this time. As we move through consolidation, restoring these supports quickly and meaningfully must be a priority. If we expect our community to navigate this cycle, we need to give them the tools

036to do so. Thank you for your time and let me know if you want to see my drawing. Thank you. All right. Next up, we have Anna Labetta. Welcome. >> Good evening. This evening, I want to talk to you about larger, well-resourced schools. I've heard it said a number of times in consolidation engagements that an ideal school tends to be around 400 for an elementary school and 700 for a middle school. I think that many people in our district assume that this also means that services for struggling students will naturally be available if a school hits these numbers and isn't contending with a tight budget due to low enrollment. I have come before you multiple times asking you to charge the sup our superintendent with the work of prioritizing discoverable pathways for struggling learners who

037have historically inconsistently fallen below the state averages in PSD. I want to share my family's experience with trying to find a middle school for my child in PSD just a couple of years ago. I reached out to integrated services and explained that my child is dyslexic and had a difficult road to finding support around dyslexia and PSD. As a result, my child experienced three different schools in elementary school. The first actually being our neighborhood school, which had 400 students. My goal was to get her to a middle school where she could find adequate support and be successful and not need to jump from school to school. I was told that I would need to get on the phone and call each school I was interested in and see what they offered and that it was

038always best to start with my neighborhood school. I attended the open house for my thriving neighborhood school where enrollment is just shy of 800 students. actually. Wow, what a school. They have three full-time music teachers, one for band, one for orchestra, and one for choir. They had five foreign language teachers and a jaw-dropping array of STEM resources. But at the end of the evening, when engaging in a thoughtful conversation with a knowledgeable staff member around whether or not my child would be appropriately supported, I was encouraged to maybe consider a specific charter school in another district because they couldn't think of a school that would meet her needs in PSD. I genuinely believe that this person's intentions were good, but it's a cautionary tale that we can't assume that needs will be met if there

039isn't a clear directive and a focused priority to do so. I want to leave you with a quote that I read this week by Kareem Weaver, an outspoken contemporary civil rights and literacy advocate. No social emotional program fully masks the smell of rotting potential. potential crushed by the functional weight of low expectations, inadequate planning, inconsistent instruction, and ineffective leadership. Rotting potential, that is exactly what we have when we do not actively address supporting students struggling with learning gaps. A gap between their grade level expectations and their present levels. These are often students who are capable of learning yet need additional supports to learn to read, write, or learn the functional math skills required for every navigating everyday life. Please consider when you're doing your criteria and when we're doing next steps forward to consider these

040kids who need the help who are not helped by PSD currently. Thank you. >> Thank you. Next, we have Danny Lawrence. Welcome. Okay, thank you for the opportunity. A couple of weeks ago, I watched a PSC presentation before the state board of education to gain chartering authority back, and I thought it was a worthwhile fight. Thank you. And then I saw a director speaking at a charter school recently regarding justice. So, I thought tonight I would share my family's experiences with charter school of choice and educational justice in Fort Collins. When we moved here in 2021, we came from a small public charter school after leaving the only public school district in our community. We were forced out of public school because they wanted to institutionalize my son in a state-run facility for deaf and

041blind children that was 250 mi from my home. And it meant separating siblings and living without our child. So we enrolled in an art school and had an amazing two years in the most the most inclusive when I look back in a place where he was embraced and educators had the license to experiment. Charter school saved my son's life and it gave him a place to belong during a medical nightmare. Initially I tried to enroll in Fort Collins charter schools avoiding entirely public school and it was a yes in on paper and transcripts and a we no longer have room when they met him in person. You see at the time my son had an IEP and he used a white cane. Uh, one charter changed their mind in 11th grade after seeing his PSAT

042score and his National Honor Society involvement. I'm sure you can guess which one. Charter schools discriminate in this community openly, defiantly, and proudly. So, with chartering authority comes the watchful eye of a parent like me who is going to be holding PSC responsible for not allowing that selective discrimination to continue with new authorizations. So, this is my word of warning to create the system now to prevent charter schools from prohibiting the enrollment of special needs students. We didn't want to fight PSD, Mr. Kingsley. This is our childhood home, but some of us are held hostage here, held against our will without a school of choice. And I hope you all keep that in mind as a board and as an administration because school of choice is a luxury for parents with financial resources and healthy

043children in this community. In your email tonight is a sample of that discrimination. Please take time to ponder the sheer arrogance and lawlessness of those words. In the coming months when you are considering equity and disproportionality, I hope that those words will continue to haunt you. More than a graduation, my son is awaiting freedom from ignorance, from a system that he had to drag like an 8,000b backpack with him while he was just trying to be a kid, face a medical condition, and get an equitable education. Because that is the reality in our community from a white middle-class family. and I still haven't found the justice you speak of, Mr. Hovlda, 13 years later and 25 days before graduation. But I hope that you use my vote and your awareness to create that opportunity for

044justice for all kids in Fort Collins. And I hope the school of choice becomes a reality for all someday. My favorite quote about justice is from Plato. The worst form of injustice is pretended justice. And based on evidence in five years in this room, I question whether that isn't what we're doing here when we're turning our eyes away. Integrated services students need your help and are so worthy of the conversation of this board. Thank you for listening. >> Thank you, Danny. Uh, next we have ML Johnson. Welcome. >> Good evening, [clears throat] board, superintendent, and audience. I [clears throat] have a call, but I'm recovering. I have three items in one issue. First, and this is a metaphor. Let's say I need some money to build my house. So, I find a plan in which

045you can pay the mortgage. What a deal. Thus, I get a new residence and you get to stay in your old homes. However, some of you get to regularly visit my house and others by invitation only. That I get a new residence and you pay for the mortgage sounds fine with me. But it seem But does it seem fair that you have to pay for something for someone else to enjoy? Probably not. The metaphor is number one. Number two is and this is a normal process for building schools. When we considered building the elementary school on the Besky site, it was only a big bare field. No people. There was not enough assessed property value in the attendance area. even in the attendance area to build the9 $9 million in 2008 uh school construction. So

046we asked the voters in the entire pu puda school district if they would pay for construction of the elementary school from Windsor to Esters Park, from Loveland to Wyoming and they said yes. I was there at the Bethki school dedication and there were still few homes built. Although we have validated the concept of if you build it they will come. There still probably is not enough assessed property value to pay the bond issue monthly or annually for that particular school. The third item in the three in the in the tree. A bond issue functions the same as a mortgage in which there is a borrowing and a pledge to repay. Although it is changing, the property value assessment that funds the annual bond payment for Bethki is paid for by property owners and voters west

047of the Timberline Road. This is the area in which we are evaluating older schools. Basically what we have here is that property value property and voters west of Timberline Road are paying for bond issue for the new schools. >> Your time has expired. If you could wrap up, please. >> Okay. In conclusion, consider that considering the metaphor, you probably thought it was unfair for you to pay for my building. Therefore, remember who is paying for the new schools when you think about closing the older neighborhood schools. Thank you. Uh and next up we have Joanie Baker. Welcome. Uh, good evening, President Zamora, members of the board, and Superintendent Kingsley. My name is Joanie Baker, and I'm the proud president of our Association of Classified Employees. I'm here tonight to speak about awareness and grace. On

048April 14th, it was announced that the district avoided a reduction in force for licensed staff, and that was wonderful news. However, it came with a significant, often overlooked impact on our classified staff. The reality is stark. 139 of our colleagues will not be returning next year. Additionally, 59 staff members are facing reduced hours or days, many losing some of their health benefits in the process. Next year will be challenging. We are asking a dedicated team to do more with less in our classrooms. This means fewer hands for interventions and less support for our most vulnerable learners. Our pair professionals will always give their best. Their passion for their students is why they do this work. But we cannot ignore that morale is low. Despite these hardships, I want to lead with the message of grace

049and unity. We are entering unchartered waters and the only way through is together. As we enter these unchartered waters, we must support one another, offer grace and patience. Most importantly, we must remain focused on our students. Our students success should always remain in the forefront. Now is the time to show our community that we can navigate these challenges together. Thank you. >> Thank you. That concludes our community comment for the evening. Next up, we have board topics and uh committee reports. This agenda item is an opportunity for board members to provide an update on committee work or speak to board topics. Do any board members have something to report? Yeah, please. Connor, >> just a quick report out from legislative committee. Um, Director Spain and I attended and hosted the call um Friday. Um, to

050my account, we've got 15 or 14 days left in the session. Um, it's becoming action-packed. Some of the um biggest things is looks like the school finance act um is going over to the house um either later this week or early next week. Um and there was to my understanding just one small amendment to that. Um and it was um immaterial in nature. So it wasn't any kind of big change to the to the way that we're funded. Um the other thing is Senate Bill 135. This is the Taber reform bill. Um on May 1st, there will be a um day at the Capitol. That's this Friday. Um if anybody is interested in this, please shoot me an email um and I will direct you to the right people to get in touch with um

051about how to lobby your legislators. Um and I will leave it at that. Um yeah, >> thank you, Connor. Does anyone else Yeah, please. Scott. Yeah, I just wanted to recognize uh the student advisory committee is in the in the house. Uh we got I think it's Jordan over there and Lucas if you guys want to just wave. Uh they are here to observe our uh our board meeting and uh um I've been really happy to uh along with Jess to be uh and Carla as well to be able to uh to join them for their committee meetings and uh they're doing good work. I believe they added seven new members just last night. Uh we'll have an announcement about that coming up, so I won't go into too many more details, [laughter] but thank

052you guys for being here. >> Great. Yeah, please. >> Quick ones. Um Brian already got ahead of me for the PSC celebrates. That'll be this coming Monday, May 4th at the Lincoln Center. I think it's a six o'clock start. 5:30. 6 5:30 start. Thank you. um [clears throat] great kind of launch into celebration season with graduations. Um before that, this Thursday, April 30th, uh we have, I believe, our last board of engagement session for this period. There'll be others later. Um this one is at Fort Collins High School at 5:30. Um, at this point I did want to express my thanks to all the district staff who have been make making these possible. Um, who are getting logistics set up, uh, thanking the security who are there. Um, we just did one um, at Timoth

053High on a weekend. So, people dedicating their weekends to help get those set up. Um, the principles, the host schools, and most importantly, the folks that are actually showing up and coming. Um, we can only give you the opportunity to come and talk to us in these sessions. Um, and for those that are unaware, sort of curious is what they are. They're slightly different from the regular board of engagement sessions that are really informal, unscripted, um, these are more targeted um, with the consolidation and closure process that we're moving into. Uh, there are five questions that are that are they're specific discreet questions for our community to answer in small groups. We've had um, some groups that have had like 30 or 50 people at Rocky. The one at Tim Middle High, we had about

05420 17ish. Um, so we had smaller discussions, but it's it's a really good opportunity for our community to pick each other's brains and to get some things on the table. The board is there to listen, to get some data, to get some input. Um, and I do want to thank those that have come and and been brave and expressing some really candid thoughts about what they need from this process, about what values our district should stand for. um we'll continue doing our work and hitting the pavement and reaching out to those that may not be able to come um due to childcare, other reasons, but I do want to express thanks to those who are who are dedicated and showing up to trying to make this process um improved. Uh finally, on 56, Jess and

055I will be at the city county PSD liazison uh committee. The next one, I think it's being hosted by the county. Um there's I don't know what's on the agenda for that, but we've had some really good substantive meaningful discussions with our city lead city leaders and city planners. um about this process that we're in. So, we look forward to furthering those conversations and being very productive. That's all I got. >> Thank you. Any other uh reports? Yeah, please. K. >> I just want to highlight the fabulous theater programs we have in our district. Um I had a lovely opportunity to see the Wizard of Oz. Um was it last week? Yeah. At Collins and let me tell y'all, it was amazing. um just so impressed with all the students on the stage and whatnot.

056But don't worry, there are some more upcoming productions that's showing up. Um a personal favorite of mine. I might be a little biased. Um but my son, [laughter] but either way, Pter High School this weekend is going to do much do much ado about nothing. I have a hard time saying that. Um so that productions this week and the other school that I'm aware of um and I please forgive me any other school not um but um I think it's Fossil Ridge also has their production. It's on the weekend of May 8th and 9th and um I'm g try I think it's called Kimberly Kimbo Kimbo. Um so that's another thing. So if that's your thing or if it's not I encourage you to support our students because they are doing a fabulous job. And

057the reason I say this is because I love theater. I will go to Bule um and have been going I don't know I think since I was like 12 and when I see these productions sometimes these productions are equivalent to the things that I see on these national shows in our high school theater programs. And so um if you like theater I recommend that you check out what we have in our district. Thanks. >> You're a good hype for our music groups and our theater groups. All right. Are there any other things at the moment? Okay, seeing none, we'll move along. We uh next have our consent agenda. Would any board members like to pull anything from our consent agenda? Okay, seeing none, can I get a motion? >> I move that the board approve

058and adopt the recommended actions for the items on the consent agenda. >> Thank you, Connor. Can I get a second? Thank you, Kevin. All right, Jill, can you please call the vote? >> Carla Bay, I Connor Duffy, >> I. Kevin Havda. >> Hi. >> Scott Shoenbower. >> Hi. >> Jessica Zamora. >> Hi. >> Dr. Kuronda Ziggler. >> I. >> Motion passes. 6. >> Thank you. Next, we're moving into our action items. Our first action item is IMR2.6. Can I please get a motion? >> I move the board determine that the superintendent has reasonably interpreted board of education policy EL2.6 6 in his internal monitoring report dated April 28th, 2026. And that the evidence presented supports the superintendent's conclusion stated in the internal monitoring report. >> Can I get a second? Thank you, Connor. And is

059there any discussion? Yes, please. >> Like always, I'm going to cherrypick one of the things on these ELS because they're important um for our community, kind of give you a 10-second crash course. This is an [clears throat] executive limitation policy. These are the things the superintendent shall not and the board has to hold the superintendent accountable if he violates uh one of these policies. So this one being asset protection, I think it's worth pointing out the second uh policy of this uh EL uh 2.6 and I think it's a little unfair personally. Among other things, the superintendent shall not allow facilities and equipment to be subject to improper wear and tear or insufficient maintenance. Now, it's not exactly superintendent's job to go out and um look at every single building, every single school. We have

060incredible staff that does that and monitors these things, but I think it is somewhat unfair that it's it's up to the superintendent to make sure that these maintenance issues uh go addressed and not go unadressed, especially if we don't have the resources to do it. So in the report that we that we've reviewed the evidence um suggests that the debt fill debtfree mill levby uh that was passed uh will support these are the numbers from the following and this is an annual recurrence 22.9 million in facilities maintenance 21.5 million towards existing staffing and maintenance budgets and per the statute the debtree mill levy funding is to be used specifically for facilities which is what we're doing now more than 30 facilities projects are to be completed completed in the summer of 2026. That's not a

061typo, right? >> 30 facility projects are be completed in the summer of 2026. Installation of new rooftop units are to use in air conditioning, boiler plate, boiler, excuse me, boiler replacements, roofing replacements, fire alarm systems, building automation systems, which we've had updates about, carpet flooring projects, athletic facilities such as tracks, tennis courts, and gym floors, generator replacements. Debree mill levy also frees up 21.5 million for the following uses in the district's general fund as we all know from the ballot language 4 million in support of our small schools and programming 2.5 million in high quality instruction replacement cycles. 15 million in competitive wages for all staff. It'd be easy for me to give Superintendent Kingsley the credit for not violating this policy, but I think it's behooves us all to yet again thank our community

062for their overwhelming support and for the incredible staff that we have to that can execute and implement these plays to make our district better, healthier, and safer. And with that, I yield the floor. >> I really appreciate that call because your list of items in our agenda, not one of those 30 items is small. Not one. And so to have staff being able to tackle 30 massive projects across our system is really impressive. Is there any other discussion on this item? All right, seeing none, Jill, can you please call the vote? >> Carla Bay, >> I. >> Connor Duffy, >> I. >> Kevin Havda, >> I. >> Scott Shelonower, >> I. >> Jessica Zamora, >> I. >> Dr. Kuronda Ziggler, >> I. >> Motion passes 6. >> Thank you. All right. Next, we have 8.2.

063our 2627 student staff device refresh. Can I get a motion? >> I move that the board approve expenditures in excess of $250,000 authorizing staff to issue purchase orders to DH Computer Systems and Dell Marketing LP and expend funds to support implementation of the 2026 student and staff device refresh program. >> Thank you, Connor. Can I get a second? Any takers? Thank you, Kiranda. All right. So, tonight we look forward to hearing about the divi device refresh from our chief technology officer, Bud Hunt. Welcome, >> Bud and um want to give you a brief overview about our student device refresh program as we are up for renewal this evening. Uh I I remember when my daughter was five and about to enter kindergarten, I voted for the funds that are still provisioning this work right now.

064So throughout our investment uh as a family and as voters in the community, I just I have a tremendous amount. It's almost ineffable uh effable and effable effable gratitude towards uh the the voters at that time and the staff who have before me and and supported and stewarded that and have allowed me to do the same thing. Um the money from our refresh program does come from the 2010 mill. So it's it's budgeted and scheduled funds. Uh we provision currently a K12 uh set of devices. We we begin that in kindergarten. That was the last addition to our K12 uh model that happened during COVID. We began to deploy a onetoone model for our K2 students. That's a Chromebook device. And 3 through 12, we are a Windows laptop uh environment. That that uh investment

065now also supports our staff technology refresh in many in most cases. Um while the refresh of our fleet takes four years, the life cycle of our computers is not four years. Four years is when we begin to refresh them. As you might imagine in education, all of our devices have a second, sometimes a third, a fourth, a fifth life. We do try to retire devices for security reasons as they reach year six or seven. However, in many instances that is a gentle let us come and take this thing that you have come to care for. And on the other end of that, we also see a four years can't get here fast enough. So, we have a lot of users in the district. Uh but we work very closely with contracting and sourcing to ensure

066pricing, warranty uh and and thoughtfulness in the stewardship of those funds. Uh we've been asked to to frame and remind folks why these uh expenses are important when we don't uh continue to invest in our fleet. It does create instructional and operational interruptions, potential degradations of service. More and more we have security concerns related to old or uh not kept up devices. They impact teaching, learning, assessment, and day-to-day school and business operations. Uh, in this particular moment, as outlined in the packet materials, uh, a delay we believe due to, as Dr. Zeler and I were talking about just before the meeting started, uh, everybody in the world would like all of the RAM that is available in the world for I don't know if you've heard of this AI. Um, it's a thing people are

067talking about it. Um, we're seeing, uh, we're seeing some very significant cost movement. So a failure right now is likely an increase in costs even in the very short term. Um that said, we have a lot of uh intentionality and and desire to be good stewards of that resource both in terms of how we spend time with our students and in how we spend the dollars that have been trusted to us. And so wanted to name for you tonight as we continue to talk about what's the right use of technology. We're experiencing several school districts across the country. You're experiencing conversations. I am eager to have those with parents who want to make sure that the 180 days that we have with our children are the best possible 180 days. They're focused on the right

068experiences. That's the work of our curriculum team. You'll hear some some things about curriculum tonight. That's the work of our educators. It's the work of our IT team to be good stewards in that space and we want to be very intentional about that. So we are in the process of doing some work around uh relooking at two elements of our K5 deployment. Want to name that for you tonight. uh should we be one to one K5 is an open question for us right now. Uh we are adopting more and more digital resources and we have more and more physical items that we want our students to use. We need to get tighter on our expectations for for technology K5. K2 is a very interesting place for us in terms of where we think there's likely

069a difference between what we provision currently and what makes the most sense to provision. But we're going to explore that in the year ahead. There more details in your in your packet. uh and we continue to wonder if elementary school is right for a dual platform environment. That Chromebook decision was a co decision. We want to look at that. We want to take a look at it for all the reasons that you should on a regular basis challenge assumptions and think through things. So uh want to name that uh with you tonight. Uh I could read aloud to you. In fact, I will. A change in the device ratio andor that platform choice could result in an improvement in our ability to hold costs while still achieving our core mission. So, we have a primary

070need to make sure we're creating the right best experiences for children. We also need to make sure we're being the right best stewards of the dollars that we're using to provision that. Uh, and we we think that it's a good moment as a district to reorient and realign around how we are asking students and families and teachers to spend time in front of technology, which is as as a technologist and a teacher and a dad, something that I think is always a part of the conversation about how we take up our tools and what we use them for. So, uh, this last bullet in the slide is a little confusing. We couldn't make a decision until 26 or 27, which wouldn't take impact until 27 or 28. I just want to forecast for you what

071that means in terms of timeline. These are conversations. Some of the explorations that we've been doing, as outlined in your packet, are are in flight now. Many will take flight in the fall, and we will be uh having some conversations in the new school year ahead about what that looks like in terms of instruction. So, I'll pause and see if you have any questions before we move forward. Thank you. Please. >> Thanks for this presentation, but uh we talked a little before the the meeting and really glad to see that you guys are looking at revisiting um the needs and and maybe looking at a a refresh on on policy. I think CO changed a lot of things. I remember when my kids were going through elementary school, they started I think they didn't get

072anything until second grade. got a ThinkPad and then um Chromebooks just on a cart in uh third and fifth grade, never took them home. And then in middle school was I think when they first got their their laptop. So that seemed to work back then. I don't know if that's with curriculum. That's a question I'll have for you in a second. Um I did talk to a volunteer um this week who volunteers in the elementary school classroom and he actually brought up uh something about tech. He said he's noticing, and he helps a lot with math classes, he's noticing that teachers are um having trouble getting started with their lesson plans because there's uh delays um as kids are trying to boot up their computers or or get to the right um the right spot.

073And so he says it's it seems to be a struggle sometimes with the kids, which that's always going to happen. You want kids to learn how to troubleshoot that. But, you know, he says, "I'm old school. Can we just do paper and pencil?" And I said, "Yeah, that's probably true." But um but that is something that's something that to keep in mind when you guys are talking about the the needs for these these devices. Um the question I have is does our new curriculum in math um or literacy require a laptop that can be taken home um or needs to be taken home in elementary school for homework or any other other things? >> I I appreciate the question. I'd also love to talk to that volunteer more if you want to connect me to

074make sure that we're meeting that startup need because I have I have a couple of questions for you there that I don't think are for right now. Um the the answer to that question is it depends on how we implement that curriculum and our team of of staff and and our director of curriculum is here tonight. They're working through as they figure out what that deployment and imple implementation looks like uh what the actual answers to that will be. And as we put together our pilot committee, we're working with our uh curriculum coordinators. We don't currently have a math person in place for next year. So, we're we're working through that piece. But, uh, answering those questions is a big piece of what we're trying to get tight handles on. How much screen time, you

075you probably heard a lot about screen time in your emails, and it's a question we should be asking. Uh, where those screens are, when they're engaged, those are all open questions for us. >> Yep. >> Other questions? Yeah, please. >> Me? >> I've got a few. Um, I don't want to get into a big philosophical debate or conversation, but I wonder if there's a way you could give us a summary in your view or the district's view. What is the virtue of a 1:1 ratio of devices for K through two? >> I I would tell you that the the initial virtue for this organization was to support an immediate deployment of remote learning during CO. We have come to this board and I believe you you were on the board when we've discussed how long

076should those Chromebooks last? What is the refresh cycle for those? That was an important question for us. Do we need to maintain? A couple of years ago, we looked at that question. Are they four-year computers? Are they six-year computers? We determined they're not five-year computers. The costs got silly for us, but um what is the role of screens in K1 and two are open questions. By second grade, we do start to see a lot more assessment requirements and regular use of functionality. Uh K1, Bud Hunt's opinion, that's a place where I'd like for us to look very close. And we are seeing in terms of utilization, those machines are being powered up and utilized throughout the day in schools. So they're not sitting quietly in the corner all the time. So we know there's use

077and we want to get tighter on that. >> Okay. Follow-up question. I've got a few. I'm sorry if everyone has you can jump in but I guess I've had a lot of conversations with parents as well and myself being one of them in this age range. Um are you aware whether the district has any policies on restricting use of devices from K through two and if not is that a sightby-sight decision and if so what are the parameters there? >> We we deploy devices K12 for every student in our system. So, the first level of control, we have district policy around some basic functions that anybody who's using a district device would use. I'd refer you to Oh gosh, I'm going to need to refer you back to the policy, which is up for revision

078later this year. I'm blanking on the uh the reference right now, but our student use of technology policy does articulate behaviors and not an age of like it's okay to do these things until you're eight, but then you have to really buckle down. It's a a common set of expectations. Okay. As a district, we've not set uh nor would I necessarily want to set in policy some of the requirements of do this and don't do that because we really work with our staff and our teachers and our our administrators and in some cases our uh special service providers around what that experience for a child should look like in the day-to-day classroom and we provision with the safety parameters uh that make sense universally. Am I answering your question? >> Yeah. Uh yeah, I got

079another question related. I just want to comment on what you're relating to but having kids in a district I will say that's those first level district controls are pretty good. [laughter] I can give you some examples even sometimes in terms of like I've experienced right even trying to do homework right because there's certain guidelines right so if you take a site like um I don't know if this is an example but like YouTube right a kid could have access to a variety of things so there's certain um guidelines and restrictions that doesn't even allow for certain things I just wanted to you're commenting on it and I just wanted to share a lived experience of me seeing the effectiveness of those controls in terms of limiting what students do and do not have access related

080to their classroom instruction. I >> I appreciate that. I will tell you that different families experience those controls differently and one thing not up for discussion tonight, but we want to look at in the new year as well is how can we continue to refine that conversation so that the home use of technology is appropriate. But thank you. I really do appreciate it. >> Yeah, I [clears throat] I appreciate the point. I think mine was earlier down the age group, the K through two, the level of autonomy we're presuming those kids should have and the level of sophistication without appropriate supervision or help. I I still question some of the virtue there. Um, third question is, can parents opt out of our use of screens >> at this time? No. And and I would name

081that explicitly in the sense that it would in many cases it's akin to opting out of I would prefer not to have this textbook in the classroom. We do have some policy that allows for some discussion and some room. That's best handled at the school and in the classroom level. We have arranged some and and you'll sometimes see students who have different arrangements when it comes to if the device goes home or not related to some very specific circumstances at the school level. But as a I as an option to not engage with all technology that isn't a choice that's necessarily an appropriate or meaningful one. Um am I answering your question >> a little bit? Um and I think there's a value just to be clear. I think there's a value in providing resources

082especially to students who may not have that resource at home and so they'll get the opportunity um I do I'm going to press back and be a little concerned about whether we're allowing our parents to have any decision-m whatsoever and allowing a kindergartenner to have unfettered un unassisted access to a screen. >> Let me I completely agree with you. Let me nuance that a little bit. >> In our K5 environments, those screens are not necessarily provisioned to a child. They're provisioned to a cart in the room and the teacher is very involved in when that cart is opened, when it is on, when machines are taken out and what a routine or experience for the child or the children in the room might look like. >> Okay. >> There's also a level of lab management

083that is available to a teacher in the room to lock a machine down extremely far up to the level of let's all look at my screen together. Let's look at one screen. Let's look at a screen and not engage with the technology. So, it is not the case that in kindergarten we're saying, "Please enjoy this Chromebook. We'll check on you in six months. It's a much more graduated release of responsibility." And I would agree with I would certainly agree with the idea. And all of all of the educators I work with would say we we have to be very attentive to the experiences that we're setting up for our children in those domains. >> Okay. I appreciate it. Um the last one is so I think we're you're you're talking about a a conversation that

084we're going to have about um informing the Trinity of Education PSD the right device in the right situation etc. So can you give us an idea of what that looks like? Are we going to have a committee stand up or is it going to be more board presentations or what can we expect? >> At this moment in time we have and there's some specifics in your packet. There are other things that are still being developed. We've got multiple experiments in a district this large. There are frequently experiments going on in terms of let's try this model, let's try this mode, let's try this software. In the case of the ratios, we are putting together a pilot group to explicitly look at in K5 some screen time expectations and recommendations, some uh platform or environment conversations.

085So, I'll go back to the math example. Does the math curriculum, my answer is no right now, but does it require a Windows device to do what it needs to do? that that curricular material is primarily provided through the browser, but we need to have our arms around all of the experiences that we are provisioning for students to have in K5 and make sure that there aren't window specific requirements there. And so that's an active pilot that we're looking at. We're also looking at assessment windows and time and expectations because assessments are a place where we frequently get stuck in how many screens do we need with how much time and some very mundane things like and how much battery do we have to make through the testing window and the number of children that

086need to test so that we can prioritize our staff time to teaching children and administering assessments and not managing batteries and then hopefully administering assessments and then hopefully attending to children. Does that make sense? So, we'll be looking at that very intentionally, very specifically with a tighter eye towards that in K5. >> Yeah. >> Thank you. Other questions or comments? >> Yeah, please. Scott, >> I just have a comment. I think we all know Bud is one of the uh the more well- read um members of our staff and therefore his vocabulary is pretty strong. So, for those keeping score at home, it's ineffable. uh when he was talking that's the only thing I focus on in this whole presentation. >> I'm so sorry. >> Um >> and thank you >> when he was talking

087about his appreciation for the devices for his kids while in school. It means too great or extreme to be expressed or described in words. So very well used word and thank you bud for continuing to educate us. >> Thank you. [laughter] >> Always a good time. All right. Um did you have any Oh yeah, please. I just wanted to make a request in relation to this whether it be I don't know whoever's watching or whatever I would love to know like what are the concerns with technology that's like a broad concern screen time so like um if those concerns are up if we could be specific around that it could I I just feel like maybe some of those questions could be answered I think Bud did an excellent job in saying how that's managed

088in the classroom how there's carts how teachers can manage those different things and so if we know specifics we potentially, I don't want to put none on nobody's back. Don't have me up here lying, but uh answer those questions versus making an assumption that technology is used in the classroom. Students are on the screens all the time, right? And it's taken away from their education and learning. So, that's just kind of a call out to folks of can we be specific? Um because when we have spec specifics, we can then actually address the concern because we'll know what the need is. I just wanted to state that. Thanks. >> I really appreciate that. >> I think your slides were done. So good. >> Quite content. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. All right. If

089there are no no other big words for us, bud. >> Yes, please. >> Sorry. Real quick, bud. Thank you for all this. Um, in relation to what uh Dr. Ziggler was saying, I think that um potentially a concern of parents could be that because we're lacking facilitators in classrooms that kids are spending more time on screens. And I don't know how we would make an assessment of that. Um, but maybe that's something that we hear from our parents and educators themselves. >> Thank you for the comment. All right, I think we're ready to take the vote. Jill, >> Carla Ba, >> I. >> Connor Duffy, >> I. >> Kevin Havda, >> nay. >> Scott Shoenbower, >> hi. >> Jessica Zamora, >> I. >> Dr. Karanda Ziggler, >> I. Motion passes 51. >> Thank you. Okay.

090Uh, next up we have our ELD curriculum. Can I get a motion? >> I move that the board approve the K12 and newcomers English language development ELD curriculum 7-year digital and one-year print from Senage. Am I saying or Sengage? Am I saying that right? send gauge for $362,283. >> Can I get a second? Thank you very much, Carla. And I believe we have a presentation. >> Yeah. So, with with us this evening to present the English language development curriculum is one of our assistant superintendents, Dr. Ensun Olsen. Ensun, welcome. >> Good evening, President Zamora, um, board directors, and superintendent Kingsley. I am very honored and excited to bring this curriculum to you. I want you to take a moment and [clears throat] think about in any of your um schooling experience, whether it was in

091elementary, middle, or high, or college, and think about when you got a book that um had pages torn, had holes in it, had highlighting in it, um may have something fall out of it when they shake it, all the things, right? And then think about a time when you got a brand spanking new textbook. Maybe it was college because you were forced to buy it. I don't know. That's an experience I had. But um there's some there's something that comes with new materials for students who may not always have had access to concrete materials in the past. And so with that and a personal story, um I don't know if you know, but um English is not my first language. Um I came to the United States in uh right before kindergarten and um began

092my journey of language acquisition in public education. I was the only minority student in my K8 school and we did not have curriculum like I'm getting ready to present to you today. I I'm sure if you hear me now, you may not realize that English is my second language, but I had to work really really hard to shift my accent and to assimilate into our culture and our language. And one thing I'm super proud of with the work that our staff have done in conjunction with the language culture and equity department and our curriculum and instruction department is to really find a curriculum that not only honors who they are as a person but amplifies their skill set in their own language so that they can now access and gain skills and confidence and competence

093in the ling English language. arts component of our school. And so this is a direct connection to our strategic plan under literacy, our highquality instructional materials. We have explicit instruction that is now going to come in and ensure that our students are learning not only academic vocabulary, but also social vocabulary. And as you know, there are multiple ways that we communicate in schools. And our job is to help our students not only be literate but also be confident citizens within our own community. They will be um supported in the four domains of language which is listening, speaking, reading and writing. And it absolutely is a direct through line to disrupting our disproportionality. And so I'm very excited that not only are we going to be honing in on um language acquisition for our students, but

094this is going to give our students who are coming in um not at the proficiency level and or first time in our country that they will be able to not only leverage their own language, but then also be engaged and be able to have access to all of the amazing options that we have here in Pter School District. And just a friendly reminder that the funds for this has been earmarked through our regular general funds of curriculum and instruction. Um so that we were prepared for a adoption I think first time in 15 to 20 years possibly. >> Oh, I was being nice. Over 25 years, we have not adopted a highquality instructional materials for our multilingual learners. And we are super proud of the fact that we went through a rigorous process. It was

095identified, it was piloted, and here is the proposal from the staff who would be teaching these courses within our schools. Oh, the other piece I wanted to say is um the reason there is a discrepancy of seven-year software but one-year materials is that we did hear you and we wanted to ensure that we were able to adjust our purchases every year based on exact student enrollment or the best that we can get as our ML population can fluctuate throughout the year. Um but that is why you see a discrepancy of years is so that we can really meet the needs of our students and ensure that every year we have really good quality materials in front of our students. >> That's it for me. Any questions from you? >> Questions? >> Yeah. Um, I [clears

096throat] just want to point out that in reviewing the contract, there was what I thought was a really nice provision about um, safeguarding of confidential student information. Yes, >> I was really encouraged by that. Given other things we've heard in the news, this is pretty good. And also, there is a I'm looking over Autumn and Dave. There is a choice of law and choice of venue that selects Colorado Law and Lmer County. That's nice. Thank you. It's a good cause since you were very concerned about that for previous things. Um, out of curiosity, the cost of this is for the full seven years or is that a Okay, thank you. I just wanted to affirm based on your comment, are there any other questions or comments at this time? All right. I would simply like

097to say let's not go another 25 years. >> That would be wonderful. Thank you so much. >> All right, Jill, can you please call the vote? Carla Ba. >> Hi. >> Connor Duffy. >> Hi. >> Kevin Havda. >> Hi. >> Scott Shoenbower. >> Hi. >> Jessica Zamora. >> Hi. >> Dr. Kuronda Ziggler. >> Hi. >> Motion passes. 6. >> Thank you. All right. Next up, we have Frenchfield track and turf replacement. Can I get a motion? I move that the board approve expenditures for the French field track and turf replacement in excess of $250,000 authorizing staff to execute a contract for $2,45,877 with Rener to provide construction services. >> Thank you, Connor. Can I get a second? Thank you, Scott. >> Great. So tonight, uh we are here to uh get board approval for the

098uh for board consideration for approval for the Rocky Mountain High School French Field uh track and field. Um the track the French field is actually located close to Rocky Mountain High School, but it's actually shared by many of our high schools. So this is actually a facility that is not just for one high school, but many high schools across the district and and other programs. Um, this project is actually one that we wanted to do last summer. Um, because the condition of the field was such that we felt like that was important to do last summer, but given the short timeline we had to get everything ready, we just didn't feel like that was going to be accomplishable last summer. So, we are bringing it forward this summer um to be completed summer of 26.

099Uh just a little background. Uh the last time that the the field was um was worked on is in in 2012 and it was resurfaced and the turf was replaced replaced. That was roughly 14 years ago. And typically for these type surfaces, you're getting anywhere from 8 to 12 years. So um so that's why we were talking about it last summer because it was in poor uh poor disarray at that deterioration at that point. um the uh the replacement is necessary because of safety, the functional service and and and that supports student athletes. So, the way it's described to me is that the the field has been compacted such that it no longer has the cushion that's necessary. And I I've learned a lot about this to actually come and test this to see is

100there enough cushion when people fall on the fields and and our athletic director has been concerned that it may not pass that test for a while. Um that's just one example of some of the things that are starting to deteriorate on on such a big level that we felt that we needed to bring this forward for the board's consideration tonight. Um this the summer uh 26 work would be completed this summer and um and again it's uh made possible because of the debt free levy. >> Great. Are there any questions or concerns? Yes, please. >> I just want to affirm and support this. Um I don't know if anyone knew but I ran track u for a long time and I never knew that that would actually come into play on school board but um

101it does make a difference in terms of the quality of that track. I can recall times of running on not so great tracks and the damage and the impact that it has on your body. There's also a consequence of spikes not landing and grounding correctly causing trip ups and falls and different things and stuff like that. Um, so yeah, also the way it's taken care of, it also makes it more resistant to weather because when you do have things that need to be repaired, it could wear out over time and stuff. So, I just wanted to add that extra piece of having had that experience that um this is a good purchase to have as we support our students and all their activities. >> Great. And I and I continue to learn more even tonight

102about our tracks and fields. So, thank you very much. >> Great. Other comments? Yeah. Yeah, I'd second uh Dr. Ziggler on those comments. I think uh the fact that this uh is a you know wellused facility for a lot of different schools in the district, including our our middle schools, sometimes our elementary schools, it's really important to have this as a >> safe facility. The cushioning is really important. Um I've I've seen it with my kids and their friends and uh it's it's a big deal when you play on a poor field. So, we want to be proud of of what we offer. So, thank you. So, is the field getting replaced with turf as I understand? My my it wasn't loading yesterday and today. >> Yeah. So, so we're actually doing both the track

103and the turf. [clears throat] So, it's a pretty substantial retrofit of the field. >> Is the district looking to replace a lot of our natural grass with turf? And if not, could we look into that to save on water cost? I would like to come back to you with some further discussion with staff to see what we're talking about there and and to actually see what our inventory looks like with with what is natural gas and grass and turf. Um, and we're actually talking about it right now in real time because we're expecting that water is going to be a precious resource this summer and that we may have to put some drought considerations in as to what we're watering and what we're not. So that that also is something that we're looking at >>

104and the I appreciate that. And then the one other caution I'd give is I was also a former athlete and a former life, Dr. Ziegler, playing a lot of soccer in my life. The quality of the turf matters and I don't want our kids to get injured. Um there's there's research that suggests uh our teenage girls soccer is more susceptible to ACL tears um on certain kinds of turf. And so I want to make sure that we're not going cheap on certain things if we can do it right. So if we have any kind of studies or anything that would would help. I I I know we had the right experts in the room having that conversation, specifically our athletic director. Um and and he was very instrumental in making sure that we got what

105the right value for the district is and not going with the cheapest and and as you said, there's actually cases in Colorado where that's been an issue. Um and people putting in turf that was unsubpar and then injuries happening, having to replace it again. It's not a good situation. So, >> I figured you guys had it covered. I just want to put it out in the room to >> that's another reason why when we do good procurement we have the right experts in there to actually create a good scope that we're thinking through all those things. >> Appreciate. Yeah, please. >> Just last thing since everybody's bragging about their athletic uh experience uh you know as a player spent a lot of time on the bench I think the sideline condition is also important. So

106thank you. >> [laughter] >> I think we're all feeling that we're heading towards the end of the school year [laughter] >> on the field. >> Uh yeah, but our field isn't until June, so we've got some time left. We have two months left of board me meetings. Let's keep it going. [laughter] But I do think we're ready to call the vote. Yes. Yes. Joe. >> Carla Ba. >> I Connor Duffy. >> Hi. >> Kevin Havda. >> Hi. >> Scott Shoenbower. >> Hi. Jessica Zamora. >> I, >> Dr. Karanda Ziggler, >> I. >> Motion passes 6. >> Thank you so much. >> Thank you, Dave. All right. Next, we have a bus purchase agreement. Can I get a motion? >> I move that the board approve expenditures in excess of $250,000 authorizing staff to execute a

107purchase order totaling 2,169,86 for bus fleet replacement with Macandless Truck Center. >> Can I believe? Oh, can I get a second? I'm sorry. Thank you, Kanda. All right. >> All right. So, joining us this evening to present information about the bus purchase item is our transportation director, Mr. Dan Weaver. Dan, welcome. Thank you and welcome. It's always lovely to see you. Um, are there any comments on our potential bus purchase? >> No. All right. I >> I don't have no comments. I just All right. I'm going just joke because I'm in the mood. Um, but I support this and so, um, I didn't realize serving on the board bring back so many childhood memories, but, um, I can recall buses breaking down and being stuck on the side of the road. Um, and it takes

108a very long time for that to be repaired. Um, so I just want to say that we should always support the replacement of buses because it's a very harmful experience and decades later kids remember that experience. So I support Yeah. Yeah. >> Sorry, I was looking at the materials. How what's the sourcing fund of this? I think you covered it, Dan, but it was this a bid or what was this? >> It was Yeah. I apologize. I just found out my mic was off, so I'm I'm a loud gentleman, so that's how I heard me. Anyway, yes, we did set it out for public bid. Uh there was an IFB done through uh bidnet and we did receive bids back. This was the lowest bidder and the time scope is also on par with the

109other ones as well. >> I just wanted that for the record because in my packet I didn't think anything was checked. So just it did go out to bid. This was the lowest cost. >> Correct. >> Lowest cost. Um yeah, comparatively to everybody and all of the manufacturing are about the same time to get them. We'd be anticipating a delivery in September or October. So shortly after next school year starts >> of this year. >> Wow. That's that that is impressive considering we've had some long lead times in the past. >> Yeah. And part of that in the past was that uh International which is the company we are going with for these. They were actually redesigning their buses and so they were going they were between generations and so they were short on inventory

110and unable to supply some of the stuff plus then supply chain crisis stuff. Um, so yeah, they've they've significantly increased the turnaround time. >> That's great. >> Yeah. >> Are there any other questions? Yeah, please. >> I just have a quick comment. I also rode the Tin Twinkie to school and um as we lovingly called it and I have just um in the last nine months become aware of how much you all do and um that your techs also are drivers and that you're covering all of the bases with many fewer drivers than you need. I just want to have that on the record and make sure that our community knows how amazing you all are and the incredible um trust that we all have in you to get our kids safely to school. Thank

111you. >> Thank you. I I really appreciate that I get to be part of a fantastic team >> here. Here. Um, just because I've been around a minute, like I think you I appreciate you calling out that we have historically had an average age that was substantially higher than the nine year old. And the fact that 11 years gets us within reach of it is a huge achievement. Like that is it makes me just feel safer like for our students. It just makes me feel more confident that our fleet can we're not going to have to worry about will there be a bus. So I appreciate the work and the diligence. Um, and just thank you so much for making this happen. Thank you to our voters for obviously helping us financially make it happen,

112but also thank you to your team for your diligence in getting us the best price, making sure we're getting quality buses over and over. So, thank you so much. >> It's our pleasure. Thank you. >> All right, I think we're ready. Yeah, vote. Thank you, Joe. Carla Ba, >> hi. >> Connor Duffy, >> hi. >> Kevin Havda, >> hi. >> Scott Shoenbower. Hi, >> Jessica Zamora. >> I, >> Dr. Kuronda Ziggler, >> I. >> Motion passes. 6. >> We're a lively bunch today. Thank you so much, Dan. >> You want to take a break? >> I'm going to. >> Does anyone else need a break or are we ready to keep going? You want the two-minut break? Two-minut break. All right, we'll come back at 78ish. Let's get as close to that as possible. Okay.

113All right. We're going to rain it back in. [laughter] We are professionals. Um, and now we have ourformational item for our preliminary budget for fiscal year 2627. >> Yeah. Brian, welcome. Uh Brian Gusson, our budget director, is here to present our preliminary budget for fiscal year 2026 2027. Glad you're here, Brian. >> Good evening. It's good to be back with you all again this this week to uh talk about the preliminary budget that's in your packet. And as was mentioned earlier, this is the first of three budget submissions. And a couple weeks ago, we talked about what this budget would entail. And so we're going to build off that conversation and understand that uh while doing this I'm going to talk about numbers but also give you a little bit of a brief tour of

114the budget document. And so walk through both of those things simultaneously. Now just to set the stage a little bit. Uh what's on the screen is a visual of a summary sheet that we like to use when we get together and we we talk about uh what's available in the budget. And that's what the the purpose of this preliminary budget is is to identify what's available for ongoing recurring needs. So I'm not going to go through this slide specifically line by line, but what the presentation does is it addresses each of these lines. And so we'll go through this. I'll show this again at the end. But the bottom line down there at the right bottom right corner is that this preliminary budget identifies a difference between the revenues and beginning balances versus the expenditures

115and ending fund balances of about a little over $5 million about $5.1 million. That's going to be available for ontime recurring uses. Now I will tell you as uh was mentioned earlier this is a draft and things will change. we we will have some changes and I anticipate even in the the few days since submitting this to board packets uh going through some different analyses that some changes have been already uh starting to to pop up. But we'll we'll uh talk through this budget with that number in the back of our minds. Again, I'll reiterate as was already mentioned, this is a draft. This is a draft and we're going to keep coming back to this is a draft. I think I mentioned last time uh the budget guy's default is always hey uh I'm

116going to be wrong. I'm going to be wrong. Hey, but there will there will be changes here. We feel pretty confident uh despite the uncertainties that we're experiencing as we've been talking about with uh state funding and other things. We feel fairly confident about where this will end up and and I'll guide you through that a little bit here this evening. Primarily, we're going to focus on the general fund. in fact almost exclusively on the the general fund but primarily on the revenue portion of it and touch a little bit on expenditure um assumptions and what's what's not in there. So, in the document, if you you've got hopefully the document in front of you and uh I'll talk about pages so you can kind of follow along. You're going to see comparisons, four columns

117in there. You're going to see three years. Last year, last year was fiscal year 2425. We call that fiscal year 25. This year is fiscal year 2526. We call that fiscal year 26. And then next year, fiscal year 2627. So you'll see a comparison of last year's actual numbers compared to uh this year's budget and this year's estimated actuals through three quarters of the year through the end of March and then next year's budget figures as a preliminary look. What do we have in this document? Well, we've got various funds, primarily the general fund. A but all of our other funds are represented here as well and they have separate pages in pages 7 through 14 of the document. Not going to get into those really tonight, but if you have questions, certainly welcome uh

118those later on and understand that those are still being worked through just like the general fund. We we've got um adjustments and and um some things to dial in with the other funds. So, let's turn to page two in the budget. And page two starts us off into our operational uh budget revenue summary. And we've talked multiple times in in board meetings about program funding or the total program. That's the formula, right? We keep going back to the formula. Funded pupil count times number of funded pupils. And this number represents about three quarters of our general fund budget. That's why we focus so heavily in this area. I I've got a a graphic on the screen that has those four columns of fiscal year 25 versus 26 and a budget column for operational budget revenue

119for fiscal year 27. We're going to talk about the formula a little bit that will generate what we expect to be about $325.2 million. Just quickly stepping backwards, what goes into that $325.2 million? It's different now than it used to be. Hey, we're in that situation, if you recall from a few weeks back, where we're in the crossover of two school finance acts and so we are assigned basically a funding dollar right now and then uh we we know our estimates for funded pupils and we back into that per pupil rate. It didn't always used to be like that and then that will change down the road as well. But as we look on the right side of this screen, the table that's there, fiscal year 2627, uh the total program estimate of 325.2 million.

120To do the math to get there, we expect our funded pupil count to be 27,786.1 students. This does include our district charters. To get to that 325 million, that per pupil rate would be about $11,75. a a 3% increase from what the rate is this year. Okay, comparing year-over-year fiscal year 27 to 26, it's pretty similar. Pretty similar. And that's because we're in this hold harmless situation. Hey, it is about $715,000 more based on this calculation. Uh but what I'm illustrating below that table is we do expect that our charter uh indistrict charter enrollments are growing. Not quite to the same level as maybe we thought initially. Uh but we do know that uh a portion of this will go to fund their growth. Right? About a million dollars is the estimate right now. Okay.

121Now if you're doing the math you go well gosh how many charter kids is that? Hey, that million dollars includes not only program funding, but charter um allocations of mill levy funding, special education funding. It's the whole the whole formula that's in there. Hey, we expect having having seen uh the preliminary charter budget start to come in in the last couple weeks, charter growth at about 1% when initially we were thinking about 2% pupil growth. right now in talking with some of those folks uh that they're strategizing intentionally to kind of undersshoot a little bit where where maybe this year they overshot some estimates and then had some um some negative true up. So just that that's some information for you. So really when you take that out, we're looking at uh $285,000 decline in

122program funding when you um remove those those charter allocations. Hey, we talked about this a little bit last time as well and trying to get to that idea of trying to conceptualize this whole hold harmless thing. And so, uh, what I've what I've done here is in hopes to simplify a little bit is really just reduce this down to the three years that are included in in the budget. Hey, the previous year 25, the current year 26, next year 27. These three bars, hey, represent uh from the range of 300 million up, hey, where the hold harmless line was established. Hey, we've got stack bar charts there with these these uh levels right about $355 million all across the board. Hey, that calculation was identified last year as our hold harmless calculation for the entire

123district. What's in here? The the tops of these bars are the charter school institute amounts that come out before we even get to that 325 million I was just talking about. Hey, the calculation starts there. Hey, that's the horizontal line right at the top of this this bar chart. Hey, those get peeled out and then the formula that I've been talking about is really below that gold line that's in the middle. Okay, that's the allocation line that starts in with our 2024 school finance act. Okay. So when we peel out that the charter school institute amounts and that initial hold harmless calculation, we get to look at our program funding in a little more of a realistic manner for what's in district here. Hey, where we have a line of a funding allocation going from

124fiscal year 25 up to 26 and across the 27. That's the new school finance act and what it's providing for our district. And that's that $325 million I was just referencing. The dark blue bars in these stack bars represent the calculation of funded pupils times per pupil rate in the previous school finance act 1994. That number for next year would be about $317 million. We're going to be funded at 325ish. There's a difference. Hey, that difference is what we're calling the hold harmless and what's being referred to across the state as the hold harmless. That includes a lot of things. That's a lot of one-time dollars like we talked about uh from the state level that's propping that up. We believe that includes part of a phase in of the new school finance act. But

125in that in that fiscal year 27 bar, the gap that's shaded and u got a little texture there. That's the hold harmless that we feel are one-time dollars in our formula. Hey, I paused you last time and I'll pause again if we've got some questions for for clarification. Brian, would you mind? Thank you for the gentle pause. Would you mind going back one slide? So many of us, I think, and many members of the community are visual learners. And so one of the things that took me a second for my eyes to calibrate on this slide, I think Brian did an amazing job explaining it. When you look at peeling out the yellow parts of the each of those bars for CSI schools, it's visually looking like, well, that's a lot of money. And I

126just want all of us to orient our eyes to where the yaxis on this grid starts at 300 million. So when you think about our total share of the contribution of like what we're retaining, it it doesn't start at zero there. So there's a lot more depth to those bluer bars. And I just think for those of us that are visual learners, it's just important to call that out. >> Yeah. Thank you. We're we're zooming in so you can see that detail. >> Okay. So we've talked a lot about that total program. Where does that stand right now? Well, as was mentioned earlier, the school finance act is is still going. I think uh was in the second reading with the Senate today and and still proceeding. Uh we don't anticipate really significant changes uh

127based on what we've been hearing so far. In fact, we received a communication from CDE last week that basically was like, "Stop asking for runs. Stop. You're not going to get it. Use the January 14th data and keep plugging along." And when the school finance act comes out with with some numbers, then uh the the folks that generate that that data for us will will start to plug it in. So I don't have uh any additional information besides what we've had as far as the numbers. So we're continuing on uh with the assumptions that we've been working off of. So again, back to page two in the document. We talked about the state formula about $700,000 more than last year. The big middle section of that page is other local revenue. And you can see

128that we we have in the budget various local revenue items. Primarily that the bulk of local revenue are mill levy override dollars. A and we have a handful of them in there. Six of them in there from 1988 all the way through 2019. And that revenue is budgeted to be about $66 million next year. a significant chunk. The general fund total program is about threequarters of our our general fund. Hey, this is a really large large bucket that MIL levy override that's been approved over over different years. Of those mil levy override dollars from different elections, one grows annually by the rate of inflation. The others remain stagnant. They were um passed on set dollar amounts. Okay. But the 2019 mill grows by the the established rate of inflation in the school finance act at

1292.3%. We we expect that to be about 500,000 and that drives the change in what we see in other local revenue for next year. Below that we've got other state revenue categories and we talk about categorical funding. These are specific uh streams of dollars to address specific needs in school districts. for instance, transportation reimbursements, special education, state funding, uh vocational funding, various uh other ones. These are scheduled to also increase by the rate of inflation. And when you start to factor those in, we feel like that section, that state section will grow by about a million dollars next year. So, we see some some revenue growth, not not really huge growth because we're talking about 2.3% inflation, but some growth in those those sources. Below the state revenue, we've got a federal revenue section, and

130right now, we're leaving that unchanged. That's primarily our Medicaid reimbursement dollars. and federal revenue as we've talked about over the the last year or so. We've got some uncertainties there, instabilities here, and we also work on a much different fiscal year when we're talking about federal federal dollars that we have to integrate into our school fiscal year. So, we'll learn more about federal dollars hopefully a little later on in the year. And that's something that if there are significant changes, we can address with a mid-year budget uh revision if necessary. But I don't anticipate right now making many changes to the federal revenue lines. If you turn to page three, hey, that also a revenue summary, but basically condenses what we went through in page two. So it takes all those sections, reduces them down,

131and it adds in a key component down at the end in line 16, that of the beginning balance. Beginning balance is what we anticipate will be the ending fund balance from this year moving into next year. We've got two more two more months of activity obviously and things, you know, I'm knocking on wood. I'm doing all the things you got to do to bring some good mojo, but things are looking pretty good. But you never know, right? You never know. And so we're we're hoping that that's where the the beginning balance comes in. And when you combine that beginning balance of 75 just about $9 million with what we anticipate to be about $444.5 million of revenue, we've got a grand total of $520 million in the the general fund budget. At the end, when

132we compare this to expenditures plus reserves, those $2 amounts should match. In the preliminary budget, they don't. And that's intentional because of this availability that I've been talking about for ongoing uses. So, we'll jump in and talk a little bit about expenditures. Pages four and six of the document uh look at the the general fund expenditures. Here at PSD, page four is a good illustration of this. We really kind of carve it out differently than a lot of places. And we look at expenditures by location type. So you can look and you can see well elementary schools what do we spend at elementary schools and that includes all kinds of things that's compensation that's books that's whatever that gets assigned to elementary school locations okay same thing as you go down through the list of

133those locations uh finance you know that's what we spend in the finance operation so it's not quite by program and object that maybe uh would be in different formats this a little more of the kind of the the userfriendly sort of um general look at at expenditures. We do however compare it to a different slice that's on page six and that's more of a compensation focus where we lump some things together but we break out how we spend the dollars on on licensed staff versus administrative staff and classified staff. So you can see where the compensation chunk of the budget falls and how we spend those across the the classifications. Okay. So, as you explore the budget th those are always interesting things to compare. Pages four, pages six. Um, we'll talk about what's what's

134in these in or we'll stay on page four. That budget column is based initially on fiscal year 26 estimated actuals. So through three quarters of the year we analyze all right where are we at what do we know about these locations how are they trending with expenditures and then we try to project what will the end of the year look like that then becomes the basis for establishing the budget for fiscal year 27 then we make some additions and subtractions okay based on some known uh variables that that we've got in front of us some projected cost increases that we're we know we're going to be facing. We know our health benefits, the district portion of premiums is going to go up by about 5%. That's about $1.6 million. Additionally, we have have been monitoring

135leaves of absence and what we spend on leaves of absence over the past few years and acknowledge that we need to increase what we budget on those to the tune of about $700,000 uh to get us more in line with with how we spend there. Uh we're all feeling the pain at the pump and the the buses as Mr. Weaver talked about earlier are going to be feeling that for a while too, right? And so fuel is the big driver of what we see are some increases when we're talking about fuel, insurance, and utilities. And then I've already talked about uh how we flow through dollars to the charters. What else is hitting that that uh budget column? Well, our schools and our departments have been working hard to adjust the budget and make reductions

136as well. And when we deployed the school-based or student-based budgets out here in uh February for the declining enrollment impact, if you were to compare fiscal year 26 with 27 studentbased budgets, a 27 will be about $8.2 million less. So that is also um reflected in this fiscal year 27 budget column. Additionally, our central departments are are going through processes and and finalizing those to evaluate their budgets and have identified to this point about $2.9 million of reductions there. So those are also reflected across the location types that you see in the expenditure columns. Okay. So what's missing? Well, what's missing is changes in compensation besides the health benefits, right? That's that's considered some compensation. We know that one. We know that driver is set. Uh what's what's missing is okay, the difference uh in

137compensation. So, as we start to get towards the end of the budget, we turn to page five and take a look at the reserves. Okay, the fund balances. The series of stack bar charts on the screen is a reflection of 10 years of reserve levels. And this is something that you've seen a portion of in in a previous monitoring report. But this compares uh ending fund balances from June 2017 through June 2026. And the the trend is pretty obvious, right? You you can identify that fund balance and reserves grew through 2020 2021 2022 pandemic times as we had other sources come in and and stabilize the budget and then as those sources were spent a reserve levels have then dropped what the office of state auditor and those that would be monitoring these what they

138would look for are trends like increasing trends decreasing trends and we're at that spot where we need to start to see a stabilizing trend if not probably a little bit of an increase as we move through uh the next few years. What's uh stacked up in these these bars are various forms of reserves. From the bottom is the most restrictive. The bottom sections, right? We can't we can't spend the non-spendable reserves which is a very very very small amount. You can't even see it on these bar charts. It's so small. That's inventory. Followed by uh restricted levels of reserves which are things like our Taber reserve. That's a statutory 3% we can't touch and and multi-year obligations. And as we move up these charts, we get to a little bit more flexibility with how we

139can uh utilize these reserves. Committed reserves is that that's an amount that really helps us transition with a an overlap of our payroll calendar versus our fiscal year calendar. They don't quite line up by a month. So that reserve helps us make an an audit transition, a gap transition there. And then we've got assigned reserves. That's where we see a lot of our carryovers and budgets and more things that have identified uses in our budget. This year, and I'm going to show you these numbers here in here in a moment. This year as a group coming into this year, we identified a portion of this year's hold harmless to assign in the event of future funding uncertainty. about $4.3 million. That's part of that green middle section in June of 26. And then the top

140is the unassigned reserve section. That's where there's the most discretion. And we have two unassigned reserve categories. If you were to look on page five, lines 61 and 62. Those are the unassigned reserve lines. We have a required that and this is district requirement board of education contingency reserves. We would really like that to be a much higher number than what you see right there. Okay, that's uh a number we would like to get into the 2% range. And at the end of this year, it's probably about a half of a percent. And so I'm going to talk about what are what's our strategy to address this. That number combined with the number below it of the appropriated reserve, that's that's sort of the what's left that's there for emergencies. We appropriate the dollars, things

141come up, we have that available to address challenges that occur during the year, whether that be a mid-year recision, we had that question last last time, or other things that that come up. Those two amounts combined, and this is reflected in the estimated actuals on the screen in fiscal year 26 are about three and a half%. Our target there that we're working to get to and we feel like we need to get back towards is like seven 8%. For those two items combined. >> Yes, sir. >> Get to it, but how does the district acrue unassigned reserves? >> Can I jump forward to that because that's a question that's been percolating unless you want to build a suspense in your presentation. >> [snorts] >> the the unassigned reserves. Um really it it's kind of like

142I I'm trying to think of it simply. It's it's a little bit of what's not already spoken for, right? So if we haven't spoken for them in other areas of the reserves or expenditures, then that's how they get here. And then when we have an established level, for instance, in the the required board of education contingency reserve, we have an established level that's going to be modified annually and try and held at about 2% of the budgeted expenditures unless there's a significant event that reduces them. We had a significant event that reduced those and so now we actually have to make some adjustments to then start to replenish those. Does that help a little bit? Okay. So, as we look at next year, what's the strategy uh that we're putting into this preliminary budget to

143start addressing this this uh need to start to replenish reserves? Line 60 has the reserve for funding uncertainty and in this year we carve that out as part of the hold harmless about $4.3 million. All hopes are that we don't have to address or or utilize those those dollars here in the next couple months to address any uncertainties. And then uh to address that question, the the process would be move or reallocate that out of assigned reserves and more into that required board of board of ed contingency reserves for next year. Starting to replenish that portion of the fund balance. that would start to to get that moving back toward the 2% target in that particular line that we'd be looking for. The appropriated reserve line that illustration of uh $13.3 million that is simply

144a multiplier right now comparing um that to the the budgeted expenditure so far. So that will change as we add more expenditures in and what we try and peel out there. But those two combined would then be more at a 5% level. We're we're starting to head in the direction of getting getting a little higher, but still some work to do there. Now, I'll take your attention back to line 60, the addition of u another reserve for funding uncertainty. If you think back to the the stack bar charts where we showed the hold harmless, that $7 million is the difference between the 1994 and the expected 2024 levels. Again, could change. We we've got to see these numbers come out. But that gap, that $7 million is the the plan in this budget would be

145to put that into that reserve funding uncertainty. So then you kind of see how this flow starts to work. If we can get into fiscal year 28 and not have to utilize those dollars, then we've got that to start to build our unassigned reserves as we think about things down the road. Um, you know, we've we've even received emails from lobbyists, case, others that say, gosh, with this state budget being propped up on a lot of one-time funds, wouldn't be surprised by a recision in early 2027. Well, how would we address that? And this would be our how. We don't we have no idea what those levels would be, but this would be the strategy towards how. And thinking even uh further down the road, we've talked about specific ownership tax sweeps fiscal year 28

146and beyond. How would we address those changes? You know, this is where we're trying to get into a system to to address those and think into the future um for those those things so we can maintain some agility to address those. and then continuing the the impacts of enrollment and what is that going to do with our school portfolio throughout the district. How are we going to address any changes that occur there? We've got to continue to think about strategically using these assigned and unassigned reserves to to probably get into those spaces. So, we'll add one more line down at the bottom. It's on that same page, line 65. You do all that math, you compare the expenditures and reserves combined versus the operating revenues and the beginning balance and we've got a difference of

147$5.1 million. That's what's different in this budget. When it when we come back with a proposed budget in a few weeks, then the hope would be uh any compensation changes have been identified, other changes have been identified that we've plugged into the budget that would balance this out. But that's what's different and available as of right now. And that takes us back to this summary summary uh page. Again, I'm not going to go through it, but those are the items I hit on as as we went through the presentation that you know and we're constantly looking at, okay, if we had to to walk through the math of these things, how would these uh be adjusted? Then we try and use this to check check the budget numbers. So, what's next? Uh, we've talked about

148the school finance act. We've got the negotiations process and and compensation decisions to make and any final department adjustments and budget priorities that that arise have to be addressed. Uh, we've got scheduled anyway, I believe I have the dates right, uh, fiscal year proposed budget here on May 26th where we'll show you the the next and closer iteration of where we think this should land. and then budget adoption scheduled, I believe, for June 9th with uh the requirement of having it adopted by June 30th. All right, with that, what questions do you have, >> questions, comments? It's a lot to take in. >> Yes. >> Even though you just did this two weeks ago, still never ceases to amaze me. Yeah, please. Brian, quickly on the expenditure side for health insurance costs um driving that

149increase, are we seeing um a higher rate or are we seeing what we saw coming out of CO of uh more of our employees utilizing those services? Um, boy, I'd have to I'd have to think back to the benefits committee for some specific answers, but I can I can say just generally the rate increases we've seen over the past few years have really resulted from utilization, right? and in particular shock claims and and so the benefits committee does a lot of lot of work with AON um a broker to monitor and analyze those and try and mitigate any increases as as they arise and and this year has been a little better year than what we've seen recently and and nobody c wants to celebrate a 5% increase but uh I know our HR department

150is tracking what others are experiencing in some of these realms and there there's some high numbers Speaking of those other realms in insurance, has our rates for um building insurance, asset insurance gone through the roof like it has for residential. >> Not yet. Last year, yeah, but but we're not anticipating really big changes so far this year. But I don't know, maybe if Dave you know of others, but fingers crossed. All right. I did have a question while see people seem to be contemplating on slide 12. Can you tell me why does it seem like our restricted reserves are highest when our funds are lowest? Maybe I'm just now I'm trying to open it. Oh, so many slides. Okay, there we go. It's the red bars at the bottom. >> Sure. That's a good question.

151I'd have to look into that. >> Yeah, I'll have to look into that because so many of those are going to be 3% >> of u >> what our expenditures are. So, you would see some fluctuation there. >> I would have to look back at June 2017 through 2020 to see what else was in those restricted. >> Okay. >> Categories at that time. >> Yeah. >> But yeah, good question. I'll take a look. >> Considering we had the 3%, I'm expecting it to go the other direction. And I have curiosities with COVID maybe there was an exception. So, >> sure. I just have a wondering on what would cause that to be um so I'd appreciate a followup if you don't mind. Thanks. >> Other questions or comments at this time? Yeah, please Scott. >>

152Um yeah, I just wanted to comment that I'm really happy to see the focus on getting our reserves back up to that higher number. Um it's just there's so much uncertainty going on. I'm seeing it on on the business side of things and uh so I think it's really good stewardship to to get going. So, I commend you guys for pushing for that. >> Thanks. Lot lot of things got to go well, but we're going to keep working hard at that. >> I don't know. I feel like there's just like trepidation on I can't honestly imagine what your day-to-day looks like right now without more firm hard numbers. Um, but I really appreciate the the presentation and getting us kind of settled into what our budget is hopefully going to look like. Going once, going

153twice. Comments, questions. Okay, I think we're good for the evening. Thank you very much for being here. >> Thank you. >> All right. Um, next we have board forecasting. So, this is an opportunity for board members to discuss topics of interest for future board me board meetings. So, something you'd like to put in consideration for our next year um to discuss in June. Yeah, please. I had a question, [clears throat] Brian. We'd had an update. Um I can't remember if this last year, the year before, it was an SRO update on our numbers and expulsion numbers, uh student contact numbers. Do we anticipate having one in this calendar year? >> We normally align that with the contract renewal. So, I need to go back and check in with staff and we can work together through

154board agenda setting to to discuss that. >> I just remember it being a really good presentation. We should probably be looking at what those what that data is telling us, what we're doing right, what we're doing, what we could do better, >> and then in addition to that sort of the next step is what happens and what are the options for students who have been touched by that disciplinary process. >> Happy to. >> Thanks. >> Okay. Other topics for consideration. All right. None at this time. Then that leads us into our 11th item for executive session. Can I get a motion? >> I move the board enter executive session with the following purposes. One, to provide the board with specialized details of security arrangements related to security protocols for board meetings and related events as

155authorized by CRS 24-6-424D and two to develop the strategy of the school district for negotiations relating to the 2026 2027 collective bargaining agreement or employment contracts as authorized by CRS section 24-6-424E3. Individuals invited to join the board and all were part of the executive session are superintendent Brian Kingsley, chief of staff Dr. Lauren Hooton, lead assistant superintendent Dr. Tracy Gal, chief finance officer Dave Mononttoya, director of student safety and emergency management Jared Sergeant, budget director Brian Gustaf Gustafson. I always butcher his name. Sorry, Brian. Where are Gustiffson, school resource officer Mike Natsia, and general counsel. >> Thank you, Kevin. Can I get a second, please? Thank you, Kar. Uh Jill, can you please call the vote? Carla Baze >> I >> Connor Duffy >> I >> Kevin Havda >> I >> Scott Shenbower >> I

156>> Jessica Zamora >> I >> Dr. Kuronda Ziggler >> hi. >> Motion passes 6. >> Thank you. We will now convene in close session. This will be the last agenda item before adjournment and at the conclusion of the executive session we will end the meeting and the adjournment will be recorded. They never started it off. >> Oh, >> if I'm in a meeting update. >> Oh, no. It's like >> this is the second time this week that a computer has updated.