Board of Education Meeting: December 9, 2025

001Thank you for joining the board of education this evening. Please mute your cell phone as we begin this meeting. Today is Tuesday, December 9th, 2025, and this meeting is now called to order at 5:46 p.m. For those attending this meeting in person, 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 PSC website or PSDTV on demand on YouTube. Right, please join me in reciting the pledge

002of allegiance. Thank you. Would any board members like to make changes to the agenda? No. Okay. Uh Okay. This evening we are excited to recognize excellence in both student and staff achievements. Leading the celebration is Oh, sorry. Is that your part? Leading the celebration is John Cop, executive director of communications. Welcome, John. >> Good evening, President Zamora, Superintendent Ke Kingsley, board director, and everyone joining us tonight. This evening, we're proud to celebrate an incredible group of students and three outstanding individuals whose accomplishments reflect the dedication and commitment to excellence that define our students and staff here in Pter School District. Our first recognition is for our very own Fossil High School marching band. We're thrilled to celebrate the remarkable achievement, a fourth consecutive state title. Here to introduce the marching band is Brad Nye, assistant

003principal at Fossil Ridge High School. [applause] Good evening. My name is Brad Nye, one of the assistant principles and activities director of Fossil Ridge High School. I'm honored tonight to recognize the Fosteridge High School marching band for winning their 2025 state championship, their fourth row in class 5A under Colorado Band Masters Association. What makes this achievement remarkable is that it is the fourth consecutive in a row. And this is a demonstration of their sustained excellence, dedication, and hard work from the students, directors, and family alike. I also want to highlight something many may not know. Although the marching band is housed at Fossil Ridge High School, it is the only competitive marching band in the Pter School District. So students from other PSD schools are allowed to participate. This year we had students from Canard

004Middle School, Preston Middle School, Timothith Middle High School, and Fort Collins High School all compete with Fossil Ridge High School's marching band. This championship is a celebration not only of Fossil, but of the collective talent and commitment across our entire district. To give a context of what state champion means under the CBA system, bands are evaluated by panels of judges using detailed adjudication sheets. The judges assess multiple captions including music both individual and ensemble, visual performance, marching and movement, overall musical and visual effect, percussion and color guard. What this means is that success doesn't come from one strong soloist or section. It comes from the band functioning as an integrated whole with every student contributing in all elements working together seamlessly. The marching band's victories attribute not only to the skill of the students but

005to their determination. Beginning in mid July, students devoted three weeks of their summer break to learning the fundamentals of music and marching. Students rehearsed three days per week after school along with Saturdays until competitions began in late September. By the end of the season, our students put in over 200 hours of extracurricular time to make this championship reality. It's a credit to the support of their families and the wider community as a whole and reminds us what highquality public education, music education specifically, can build discipline, pride, artistry, and community service. Please join me in congratulating the Fossil Ridge High School marching band and all the PSD students who make it possible on their four straight state championship and in thanking them for representing Pter School District with such pride and excellence. Thank you. [applause] I

006think we should do a picture at the end with all of you. Thank you so much for being here. I can't I don't know if anybody else in here was I was not expecting you guys to be like the whole crew and just it was very impressive. Thank you so much for all of you being here and congratulations. >> Yeah. >> Uh and when you win the fifth consecutive state championship, I expect the performance to celebrate this time next year. >> Going to need a bigger boat. Can you are you able to please wait >> for a picture after all of the No, please sit and then >> all of our Sorry, I'm being unclear. I apologize. >> I think we should do our what we've been doing consistently. >> Congratulations again to the Fossil

007Ridge High School marching band. Our [applause] next honore is Dave Walk, also from Fossil Ridge High School. Dave is the winner of the Colorado Athletic Directors Association State Award of Merit. Here tonight to say a few words about this amazing honor is Fossil Ridge Principal Mark Bry. [applause] Good [clears throat] evening, board president Zamora, Vice President Havda, board directors, and by the way, welcome to our new board directors here tonight. Superintendent Kingsley, cabinet, community members, and those of you watching from home. My name is Mark Barry, and I am the principal of Fossil Rich High School. You just heard from Mr. Nye about our amazing students, and he spoke about representing not only Fossil Ridge High School, but Pter School District with pride and excellence. I'd like to add to that list and articulate our

008ridge values of respect, integrity, determination, gratitude, and excellence. One of the people who embodies all of these values is our assistant principal and athletic director, Mr. Dave Walk, sitting here in the front row. [clears throat] Excuse me. Um, I want to read a clip, an excerpt for you because it can sum this up better than I could say it. So from a national selection committee, Dave Walk, athletic director and assistant principal at Foster Ridge High School, is a 2025 National Intercolastic Athletic Administrators Association State Award of Merit recipient. Walk holds 20 years of experience as an assistant principal and athletic director. He's also coached volleyball and track as well as served the Front Range League as vice president and president and the Northern League as their secretary. At the state level, Walk is involved with

009the Colorado High School Activities Association. We know that as CHASSA, where he's served on committees including volleyball, playoff finance, and equity. Walk is also a Chassa Legislative Council member. This award is provided by the NIAA to only one deserving member in each state for recognition of their meritorious dedication to high school and middle school athletics. That's the end of the excerpt, but I would like to say how proud I am of my colleague, Mr. Walk. Um, he he does represent Ridge values, not just at school, but in his life, and our student athletes benefit from this every day. I've never seen, and this is not uh I'm not embellishing, I have never worked with or seen an athletic director work as hard as Mr. Walk, not only for athletics and academics, but for an equitable

010system that supports athletics, academics, and activities and celebrates actively all three. The collaboration that takes place between our football program, for example, and our marching band makes for an awesome student experience and everyone benefits. And the two APs that you see here collaborate to provide that leadership. But the real story are the students that you already heard about. So, I'm here to celebrate Dave, but tie that together and say it's super super a privilege and I'm proud to be a Sabrecat and a member of PSD. Dave, congratulations to you, my friend. [applause] Thank you [applause] very much. Appreciate it. Thank you. >> Our final recognitions of the night are both from Polaris Expeditionary Learning School. Alicia Ernest was awarded the 2025 Charles Red Center teaching Western History Award and Sarah Bayer was named a finalist

011for the Colorado Teacher of the Year. At this time, I'd like to invite Polaris Principal Star Hill to the podium to tell us a little more about these amazing educators. [applause] >> All right, thank you. Um, well, as John said, I am Star Hill, the principal at Polaris Expeditionary Learning School. uh Superintendent Kingsley, PSD cabinet, members of the board. Tonight, I am excited to be here to celebrate two teachers from Polaris. I think it's particularly exciting um because these teachers, the awards that they're being recognized for really represent um the expeditionary learning process, but also we're a K12 school, one of two K12 schools in the system. And so Alicia being an elementary teacher and Sarah being a high school teacher, there there are these incaps to what our K12 program provides um to families.

012And um so first off, I am excited to honor Alicia uh Alicia Ernest as an elementary teacher and she has been awarded one of the highest honors in her academic field, the 2025 Charles Red uh teaching western history award. It does highlight her exceptional curriculum design and her commitment to intellectual rigor. Her award-winning National Day of Morning resource is a prime example of culturally responsive teaching. Uh, the lesson decentralizes romanticized narratives, inviting students as young as fourth grade, in this case, to engage in critical discourse in complex issues like decolonization and indigenous resilience. These collaborative collaborative experiences linked her students at Polaris to local leaders, CSU students, and community leaders as she created this traveling discourse model. Um it is designed for easy use across K12 and recently actually is looking at publication. Um it

013is going to be used at other schools in the area. It promotes broader literacy and citizenship goals and supports teachers districtwide. Um if you know Alicia, you know she is um also an advocate and a district support for both math and social studies adoptions um as well as literacy adoptions. and she is a powerful force for curriculum excellence and we are very proud to celebrate your achievement and proud to have you on the crew at Polaris. [applause] Um and the innovation again if you know Sarah she's been with the district for a long time as well. The innovation of Sarah Bayer um she was recently named as a semi-finalist for Colorado teacher of the year. Um if you're aware that um that's the top 52 teachers in the state of Colorado. So, it's pretty awesome

014um that she is a part of Pter School District. Um she holds that honor as we would both agree among among many fantastic educators throughout the state and she is a humble lifelong learner. In the 12 years that I've worked with her, um she has been transforming student potential in our building, but has been doing it for over 20 years. Um recently, her development of the natural resource and outdoor leadership CTE pathway, the career and technical education pathway at Polaris Expeditionary Learning, it is the only one of its kind in our district. Um, for her, these aren't just classes. For the students, they aren't just classes. They are a launchpad to the future. Um, in fact, I just learned this evening from Sarah that one of her seniors that has followed that pathway all the

015way through has been accepted into Montana State next year in the honors program on scholarship. So, nice job, Mama Bear. Um, so in this process, through her leadership class, students gain first wilderness responder certification, leave no trace principles, and they develop leadership skills directly relevant to Colorado's multi-billion billion dollar outdoor recreation industry. So really, again, that launchpad to the the future. Um, the courses that Sarah teaches are also credited through PSD and through Front Range Community College through that concurrent enrollment collaboration. So students are also um able to graduate with a substantial amount of college credit and that is due to Sarah going back and getting a second master's degree so that she can earn um or teach front- range college classes. So she blends together this academic rigor with pra with really practical fieldwork

016every single week. Um if you would like to go to Lorie State Park, look at Elkscat, just let us know. We'll get you right on the bus. Um Sarah ensures her students are not just learning about Nater, but are prepared to be informed leaders and professional. and we're looking towards that work workforce readiness goal. So, we at Polaris are so grateful and proud to have both of these teachers and all the educators in Polaris as part of our crew. So, thank you for celebrating them tonight. I appreciate the time. [applause] Thank you so much. All right. Should we take a picture? Can we all Yeah. Oh, yeah. Let's do it in front again. Thank over there. >> Oh, we're over here. We'll do it. >> [applause] >> Congratulations. I want to congratulate you. All right.

017Thank you so much for being here. It's very good to see you all. Have an amazing evening. All right. So, next we have 5.0 is our superintendent report. Superintendent Kingsley will now make remarks to the board of education and to the community. >> Thank you, President Samora. That kind just, you know, just rolls off the tongue. It's really nice to see that. Congratulations to you and director Havda. Uh good evening everybody. It's wonderful to be with all of you tonight. I want to start our evening by giving a very special thank you to and congratulations and welcome to Dr. Ziggler um director Ba as well as Dr. Spain. This is I think for the two of you your first televised meeting. My mom and many others want to say hi right now. Uh but welcome.

018I know this is going to be the first of many important but also very productive meeting. So I just want to congratulate you on a very well-deserved opportunity to be a part of this team. Uh tonight's PSD highlight video is a really special one because it talks about uh and elevates our kindergarten students. For parents and students who are just becoming a part of the PSD family, we are so excited to welcome you to our school system in the fall. There's going to be more information regarding kindergarten choices that are available on our Choose PSD website. But as always, our communications team does an amazing job elevating various aspects of our system, and I can't think of anything more important than elevating 5-year-olds. So, let's let's learn a little bit more about our kindergarten class.

019>> Welcome to kindergarten in Pter School District. My name is Caitlyn Cher and I am a kindergarten teacher. We are so happy you're joining us. You have many schools to choose from in Pter School District. [music] Our motto here in PSD is to educate every child every single day. And our teachers are ready with heart and [music] caring to take care of your children. >> Good job. Try that one. All of our schools focus on the Colorado academic standards. Teach your child. Your child will come to school every single day and learn math, learn how to read, and learn how to write. They will attend special classes where they can do technology, PE, art, and music. All kinds of things are waiting for your child at our school district. When your child walks in the

020door in the morning, they may find a beautiful morning meeting for them to start their day. We greet each other and say hello. We check the calendar and learn about the and then we move into different subjects. Each subject can be broken up into different [music] ways. Sometimes our students will encounter a whole class lesson where all students are learning together. Sometimes children will go into small groups and work based on their individual needs. We're so happy you and your child are joining our school district. For more information about registering your child for kindergarten or information about any of our amazing schools you have to choose from, please visit our school district's website. >> Huge special thanks to our communications team for once again putting together another really quick win video to elevate the incredible

021work that's happening in our system. And as a superintendent now for about four and a half years, I'll tell you there's nothing that brings me more joy than going into a kindergarten class on the most difficult of difficult days. Going and spending time with 5-year-olds and amazing, incredible rockstar teachers is a highlight of of all of our uh employees opportunities to be a part of this great system. And just in the past week, I had a chance to visit firsthand Estone Elementary School, Rice Elementary School, was at Tveli Elementary School yesterday, and just continue to be so impressed around how they're tending to the academic needs of our students, but also the social emotional well-being of our students. It's a both and not an eitheror MPSD. And I think that's one of the reasons amongst

022many others that makes our district really special. Uh tonight, uh members of our board and members of our community, we have a really important meeting this evening for a lot of different reasons. We're going to be joined and have presentations from two really important partners. One is our state demographers's office. I want to welcome you as well as our leader uh Annne Hutchinson from our local chamber of commerce who's just been an incredible thought partner to this district for quite some time. Uh today those both presentations are going to be important to help us kind of ground ourselves as a school district community in data and trends around what our future may look like today as well as what it might look like in the near future. uh we as a governance team have collectively

023shared messages with our community around how we are shifting our landscape is shifting locally at the state level and at the federal level and I think today is an opportunity for us to learn and lean into what are some of those changes uh it's surprise that we as a school system are continuing to regress in our school enrollment there's just simply not as many school age children in our community as there were uh we have 500 fewer students in our school system this year that represents 500 00 children represents the fifth largest elementary school district and we are losing an entire school's worth of children in academic year. So that's something that we need to tend to. Um we'll also learn and you'll hear from uh an from the chamber talking about you know birth

024rates are kind of an interesting uh data point to unpack. You know, the city of Fort Collins, when you look at the northern Colorado region, the city of Fort Collins has the fewest married households and is only yielding approximately 23% of the households in the city of Fort Collins actually have school age children in it. And so that's a data point that we need to continue to unpack and think about. So I'm really excited. Well, and I take that back. It's a sobering reality. So excitement is not the appropriate word to use as we talk about the data. But it is important for us to have alignment around what we're learning about what's happening in our local community and we're learning each and every day what's happening in Denver regarding state policy shifts, how they're

025looking to balance a billion dollar shortfall in their budget. We'll talk a little bit later about our budget process around how we're approaching that. and all of us across our community know that we have already experienced reductions in federal funding both at the grant level as well as a reduction in some of our other entitlement programs across the school system. So it is an important meeting for us to level set. I welcome all of you to ask as many questions as you have because it is important that we calibrate around this information and continue to be vulnerable and open to our community as we learn around all of these data points together. So I look forward to a very productive meeting. Thank you for the time. Thank you so much, Superintendent Kingsley. All right, 6.0

026is next with our community comment. This is an opportunity for public comment or sorry, 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 board. First up, we have Amy Healey and welcome. >> Yeah. Ready? Okay, can you hear me? All right. Hi. Um, my name is Amy Healey and I am a German teacher here in the district. I'm at Fossil Ridge High School. Very proud of our kiddos over there. Um, and I came to speak because I want to draw attention to the proposed calendar for next school year. I do not know all the details about the calendar committee.

027Um, we've heard a mix about disbanding the group, then quickly bringing it together and voting on the proposed calendar tonight. My concern predominantly impacts the thousands of high school students in PSD. It's vitally important that the school board is aware of the constraint this calendar will have on high school students, including those enrolled in AP and college level courses. The majority of the high schools in PSD are currently on the block schedule. Meaning what is accomplished in an academic course over a school year is now accomplished in a semester. As such, 10 school days on the block schedule is equivalent to a month of content on in a normal school schedule. Um the proposed calendar for next school year has a difference of 14 more school days in fir in second semester than in first.

028meaning courses will have a difference of a month and a half of material depending on which term they take the class automatically. This means classes will be inequitable in the same building, let alone across the district. How can there be alignment between schools and courses when there is such a massive difference in the contact time between semesters? Now, what does this kind of imbalance mean for our student experiences in PSD? Not only are there fewer days, but that translates into teachers having to cut entire units or have less time for students to review, less time for additional learning opportunities, less time for reinforcement of concepts. That makes for an entirely inequitable and vastly different experience for students with little choice for alignment due to lack of time. This will carry over to second semester courses

029having larger numbers of students in them, creating more inequity in teacher workload. In addition, having almost all of teacher work days during the first week defeats the purpose of work days. I need time to grade and I can't grade before my students arrive. It will be impossible for many students to give or many teachers to give students timely and meaningful feedback when work days are not there throughout the year. Please consider taking more time to finalize our district calendar. On a completely other note, I wanted to also thank you guys for implementing the school phone policy at the high school level. This has made a massive, massive improvement to student relationships in my classroom. Uh not all students are really taking the opportunity to talk, but they're at least not pulling out their phones as

030soon as they're done with their work. They may choose to write or read instead. but it has been an incredibly positive shift in our school. Thank you very much and have a great night. >> Thank you much for being here. Right, next up we have Laura Whitehead. >> Thank you for coming. >> Hello. I'm here today to speak about something essential, safety. We practice for the possibility of danger entering our schools, but the truth is violence has already crossed our thresholds and entered our classrooms. I have lived every side of this issue. I've had a child whose instruction was interrupted because of unsafe behavior. I've gone into a classroom myself to hold my own neurody divergent child accountable when safety was at risk. I've been the person staff call when they need help managing behavior

031crisis because I have lived it personally and professionally. I feel compelled to speak plainly. Inclusion cannot outweigh safety. When one child's behavior consistently jeopardizes the learning and safety of 25 others, those 25 children must take priority. That is not exclusion. It is responsible stewardship of every student's right to a safe learning environment. For our most behavioral, complex, and violent students, early and appropriate programming is critical. We have small windows to help them develop the skills they need because the world outside of school is far less forgiving. Assaults, destruction of property, and dangerous behavior have real consequences. This work is possible, but only when adults hold consistent boundaries. Growth happens when expectations are firm, even when it's difficult. Walking on eggshells teaches a child nothing except that they hold the power and calling that building trust

032is misleading. In fact, it often communicates the opposite that we do not care enough to hold them accountable. That's what happened at CLE. A child was harmed by the system intended to support them. And to the day, no one has publicly taken accountability for that. Behind the scenes, there has been damage control, but not honesty. The recommendations made by the team were ignored until they quietly became the very steps taken later. Let me be clear. Three staff members quit because they refused to participate in a practice they believe were harmful. That alone should have been an alarm loud enough for an action. Now it is time for PSD to take accountability. A situation that could have been handled responsibly became a big deal when it could have been a little one. avoidance and refusal to

033acknowledge that what went wrong. So when we know better, we must do better. I am asking this board firmly and respectfully to take this issue seriously at last. Our students, our staff, and our community deserve nothing less. Thank you for being here. All right, next up we have Lonnie Williams. Welcome. Hi, I am here today because I think it's important to recognize, celebrate, and show appreciation for people in our community that run for office and lead with integrity, intelligence, and kindness. I have known our new president, Jessica Zamora, for many, many years. I've had the honor of working side by side with her and seeing her leadership in action. Jess is brilliant. She does her research, makes data informed decisions, and is a collaborative leader. I am proud and grateful to have Jessica Zamora as

034our new board of education president. And now, if this were a romcom, this would be my grand gesture because I think it's important to show up for people that show up for you. So, I'm nervous, but I'm going to do it. Here we go. Jess with your thoughtful leadership and skills. You put our minds at rest. Educate every child without pay and with a smile. Your courage and commitment contagious and terrific. You research before you vote. Your decisions steer our boat. It's a hard job that comes with a lot of stress. We're so grateful for all you give to us. Thank you, Jess. You're the best. Here's to Jess. So, I want to say [applause] cheers to you, Madame President, and cheers to our new board of education. May you all lead with open hearts,

035open minds, and open ears. Thank you, Lonnie. That was a first for sure. I don't really know what to say. [laughter] Was not expecting that. Thank you. It's very kind. Um, okay. Next, uh, we have Michelle Finchum. Yep. Uh, Corey Pierce is not here. Sorry. Thank you for being willing to step in to follow that. >> Yeah, do not [clears throat] have a song prepared. Uh, good evening everyone, community members, school staff, parents, board members, and everybody online. My name is Michelle Fenchum and I want to take a moment to congratulate Jessica Zamora on her election as president of the PSD Board of Education. This is a milestone not only for Jessica but for our entire district. Jessica brings to this leadership role a deep and proven commitment to our schools. As a former educator

036and a PSD parent, she understands our students, families, staff, and teachers from the inside out. She's voted for and supported initiatives that lift student voices, promote equity, and ensure stability and quality in staffing and services. Her work to champion access, whether it's through early childhood programs, our district-wide support systems, reflects a vision that centers the well-being and potential of every student, as well as helping to accomplish the district ends. As Jessica steps into this role of board president, I am confident she will lead with integrity, empathy, and a strong commitment for collaboration and fairness across the district district. Jessica, thank you for your willingness to serve, for your dedication, and for putting students and community first. I look forward to supporting in your leadership. Congratulations. Thank you. Really wasn't expecting this this evening, so I

037appreciate you guys. Thank you very much. All right, next up we have Charles Stone. Welcome. >> Um, dear board of educators, thank you for hearing my voice tonight and um hopefully as we said, we'll open you'll listen with open ears. My name is Charles Stone and I am a science teacher at Fossil Ridge High School. I am part of an educational team uh a team of educators in earth system sciences for example among many classes. Uh, one thing that we pride ourselves in is that we are aligned as a common course. We sacrifice one duty-free lunch each week with the goal of aligning our curriculum to create an equitable experience regardless of teacher. Fossil is now on the block schedule, which might be just an issue for those of the Fossil people who have been

038there for a while. Okay? And this is where one year-long class is completed in a single semester. And so our team actually makes two calendars, one for fall semester and another for spring. Uh sometimes I lose the thread a little bit when we meet and um I say don't we teach e endo and exothermic chemical reactions in this unit and my colleagues look at me and they say oh yeah we teach that in the spring when we have time we don't have time in the fall. Okay. Um, and this has always seemed inequitable that I would be teaching the same course but not have the same information. Um, but I but we that's what it was. And the difference this year between fall and between spring is eight working days. Okay. So the issue at

039hand is that the as I understand it the board has asked for and the calendar committee has given you and presented a calendar that will exacerbate this problem. In the proposed calendar there are 14 days more education in the spring than in the fall. So that equates to,200 educational minutes. 1,200. Okay, so now we teach an AP chemistry, an AP biology or any course at this point really with nearly three weeks fewer contact days in the spring and the fall, 1,200 minutes less. And then we will tell students that they have taken the same course. Um, so next I would really like to point out that teachers really value our work days, especially those at the end of the quarter when work piles up and grades are due. And I should not have to tell

040you um, as somebody pointed out earlier in their wonderful song, um, that teachers often give up time and their own time at home outside of work hours. And what you're asking us to do and what the current proposed calendar does is that it um let's see um that's going to be done not on our own time. So, I believe that you should take the time to reconsider this decision and this calendar and make it equitable and give teachers the work time that they need at the end of the semester, not at the beginning when we have our grading. Okay. Um, >> I'm your time has expired. I need you to >> Thank you for your time. >> Thank you so much. All right. Next up, we have Sabrina Heric. book. Excuse me. We do not.

041All right. Next up, we have Danny Lawrence. Welcome, Danny. >> [clears throat] >> Following the November 4th discussion about graduation rates for disabled students and our district's lack of implementation nearly 14 years after the state of Colorado enacted EEOs for disabled students. I have some observations with a graduating senior with a disability that I think might help you as a current board. You can't create a policy 14 years after the fact without adequate training for all staff and administrators and hope that it's going to work out. PSC's sitebased policies are the ultimate barrier to these modifications being allowed for the students that they're intended for. Even when disabled students don't need modification, I wanted to share how difficult the district and our school side has made graduating with options for a student like my son.

042Recently, he applied to 11 colleges. He's been accepted to 10 so far. In the application process, he wrote an essay that described the 420 hours of Braille literacy instruction and the 670 hours of assisted technology instruction he received outside of the general education classroom in his K- through2 education. His essay went on to convey that he didn't receive a single graduation credit for any of it. No elective, no independent study, not a single literacy or computer science credit toward graduation. Not one. Conversely, if he were deaf in this state receiving ASL, he would have received language credit. But for my son, nothing. all while being pulled out of the general education setting and being expected to maintain his classwork while using that same curriculum and his braille education studies. Additionally, PE was a huge risk

043for my child with balls flying around his face. There were real dangers for his remaining eye and the only solution that could was found was that he could take culinary arts classes. So, handing a visually impaired child with no depth perception and knife sounded like a safer bet than having him in PE. He faced nothing but rigidity here. There's no flexibility. There's no care. No attempt to try to be anything other. No attempt to try by anyone other than Scott Nielsen who left our district years ago. Don't let them tell you this is a CDE problem because talks with them and other visually impaired high schoolers around the state have proven otherwise. Other districts found a way to give credit. He did three educations creditwise to his general education peers while fighting accessible educational materials

044with non-compliant teachers every single day while the systems designed to ensure his civil rights were crumbling around him. So before you start handing out diplomas like participation trophies to satisfy the 14 years that we didn't implement those EEOs that would have helped disabled children graduate with their peers in real time, maybe you should do a little research about the current messages that your high school and IEP teams are sending to disabled students and their families. Graduation with options and every child every day only if you're willing to do the work of three high school diplomas and manage your disability at the same time. So, when you want to know why I'm so pissed off, maybe watching your medically ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch

045ch ch ch challenged child fight this hard for the past 5 years while you're told to be patient is something you could all find to muster a little empathy for. Because 164 days can't come soon enough for this senior mom in a place where no one is willing to help or find solutions. No amount of policym is going to change the mindset or the culture here. It I can't wait until my son is free from the hostility he's experienced in the school district. Thank you. Next we have Eric Sutherland. Welcome. Hello y'all. I'm here for the very same reason that I sent y'all a lengthy email. Let's make sure that there's no question that this board is contemplating taking an action that would be in violation of the Colorado Constitution setting mil levy rates. I'm

046also here mostly primarily because I really think the greater community in Fort Collins that funds its school district deserves far more respect than it's ever seen from this administration or board going back for decades. Uh takes a lot to pay those taxes, guys. Um Ryan Kingsley, superintendent, he sure likes to say thank you to the voters. He also likes to mislead the voters and rip off the taxpayers. What am I talking about? Prior to 4A being placed on the ballot in 2024, PSD said that if the ballot measure passes, $49 million, X amount of dollars will be taxed. And just about a month and a half after the ballot measure passed, the board set the tax at 52 million. 49 million is not 52 million, guys. Now, one could get really lost. um trying to

047trace down the rabbit hole as to whether or not that's legally allowable, whether or not the taxpayers have recourse in this situation, but forgetting and they don't. Yeah, they do. It's kind of a slam dunk lawsuit, guys. But more importantly is the ethics that this shows. How many times in our life do we end up in a situation where we all of a sudden end up paying more money than we thought we had contracted to pay for something? That's reprehensible. When it happens in our society, it's decrieded because it's just far outside the norms of ethical behavior. But that is PSD. PSD is the walking model of exactly why voters approved the Taber Amendment. a long time ago. And it is the Taber Amendment that provides us protections here with significant penalties with significant liabilities

048for the school district going forward simply because you can't live up to your promises. And in this particular case, there was absolutely no reason. 4A was an enormous tax increase passed at a time when no other school district our size had anything chance of passing something. And that this is what you do. to say to the community, "Yeah, don't worry about what we what we said. We're going to tax what we want, you know, and that's really the problem up here. That's really the problem." Yeah. The legal things that's going to get worked out. Guarantee you. And the taxpayers will be made whole in this whole situation. The district now is in a position to afford to do just that. But you really ought to think about the ethics involved. >> Thank you. Next, we

049have Jeff Afterhale. Nope, we do not. Next, we have Janet Wright. Welcome. Hello. Um, thank you for allowing me to speak and I want to pass on my congratulations to President Samora and the new board members. Um, thank you all for everything you do. These are my notes. I'm not really prepared, but uh per usual, I'm Janet Wright and I live in Fort Collins. I have three kids in the school district and I'm on the board of directors for P Flag Fort Collins. And I just want to thank you for your continued support of the LGBTQ plus community and the inclusion. And um I would just like to suggest more continuing education for the teachers and for the counselors. Um we'll have a parent at some other time speak to her recent experience, but a

050a little bit goes a long ways. But you guys are behind the kids and that matters. But the teachers and counselors need that as well and the education. But like I said, um these were my notes. So I've I've gone over everything. I just wanted to thank you for everything as usual and welcome you guys to the the board. >> Thank you very much. Uh next we have Christopher Kendall. Welcome. Good evening. Can you hear me? Okay. Thanks for having me. Uh I'm Chris Kendall. I have uh three daughters uh in Pter School District in sixth grade, 9th grade, and 11th grade. Uh my purpose for speaking tonight is just to raise some concern about some questions contained in the Healthy Kids Colorado survey that will be administered uh in the district in the middle

051of January. Uh the middle school survey consists of 72 questions. The high school survey has a hundred. All questions are provided by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. survey was last administered in 2023 with approximately 120,000 respondents, roughly 25% of the estimated 450,000 Colorado middle and high school students. While most of the survey questions are benign and may even provide beneficial information to the district, I fear that several have potential to expose students to agendas, thoughts, questions, and ideas that are not relevant to their education and have potential to negatively influence students. The district correspondents regarding the survey notes that survey topics include mental health, suicide, bullying, diet, exercise, physical health, alcohol, tobacco, and drug use, school safety, and trusted adult relationships. But the correspondence fails to note that the survey also includes

052questions about gender identity and sexual preference. It's also interesting to note that the summarized results from 2023 do not show uh the answers to those questions. My expectation is that the board is aware of the questions in the survey, but I thought I'd share a few um and follow those with my own rhetorical questions. Middle school students ages 11 to 14 are asked the following questions in the demographic section of the survey. What is your gender identity? girl, woman, boy, man, non-binary. I describe my gender identity another way. Fill in the blank. This language of this question seems curious to me. It relates to gender identity, which is expression rather than biological sex, which is physiology. Uh, question four, some people describe themselves as transgender when their sex does not match the way they think

053or feel about their gender. Are you transgender? My translation to this is, are you sure you're not transgender? I don't think that question is appropriate for an 11-year-old student. Um, I don't understand why the district believes uh it's beneficial to present questions about sexual sexuality, including terms like bisexual, pansexual, questioning, etc. to children as young as 11, many of whom are dealing with the physiological, hormonal, and emotional changes of puberty. I also don't feel that these questions have anything to do with education and academics. Thank you. >> Thank you. That concludes our community comment for the evening. Our next section is board topics and 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 they would

054like to report? >> I've got two uh updates, announcements. Uh the first concerns the upcoming board of education engagement sessions. Uh Dr. Hooton, I think the sites have or sites have been confirmed. Is she here? >> Quit and see if >> okay so I can I can announce them. All right. Uh I'll just read these dates. Uh so the first one of the next year will be February 19th. That's from 5:30 to 7. The two host schools, host sites will be Laurel and Tveli. The next one will be March 5th from 5:30 to 7 p.m. The host schools are Bouter and Zach. And then April 16th, 5:30 to 7, the host schools will be Bamford and Rice. And we also want to thank our host schools for uh for putting these on. it does create

055a little bit of extra work for the staff to stay late and uh make sure that we're there as well as our security. So, thank you for that. Um we're also contemplating tweaking the format ever so slightly and trying to solicit some topics from our community the week before um that they may want to address. Uh typically these are completely informal, unscripted agendas. People come and they want to talk about what they want to talk about, which is certainly what we want to continue to honor. Um, but we some of the things that we keep hearing are requesting updates on how the board is discussing bell schedules or instructional time conversations. So, I think it's nice to have maybe a 5- 10 minute um, hey, here's here's what we're here's where we are in the

056process of the decisions. Here's what the milestones are coming up. Um, you know, please let us know your thoughts, etc. Um, without taking over the meeting, but also just kind of presenting some information the horse's mouth. We thought might helpful. Second update is the screenaggers final screening uh will be January 28th at Rocky Mountain High School at 6 PM. Um I'm not sure if you're allowed to bring your own popcorn, but snacks encouraged. >> Thank you. Anyone else? >> Moving on to our consent agenda. Would any board members like to pull an item from consent? >> I'd like to pull 811. adoption of the 2026 2027 school year calendar for an item, please. >> All right, I will move this to 9.4. >> All right, any other actions? All right. Uh, can I get a

057motion? >> I move that the board approve and adopt the recommended actions um actions for the items on the remaining consent agenda. >> Thank you. Can I get a second? Thank you. Andrew Jill, will you please call the vote? >> Carla Bates, >> I. Connor Duffy, >> I. >> Kevin Havda, >> I >> Scott Shoenbower. >> Hi, >> Andrew Spain. >> Hi, >> Jessica Zamora. >> I >> Karanda Ziggler, >> I. >> Motion passes 70. >> All right, moving on to our action items. 9.1 monitoring policy review EL 2.3. Can I get a motion? >> I move that the board determine that the superintendent has reasonably interpreted board of education policy EL 2.3 is internal monitoring reported and that the evidence presented supports the superintendent's conclusion stated in the internal monitoring report. >> Uh thank

058you Kevin for the second. Uh, do any board members have any questions about this item? Seeing none, Jill, please call the vote. >> Carla Bes, >> I. >> Connor Duffy, >> I. >> Kevin Havda, >> I. >> Scott Shoenbower, >> I. >> Andrew Spain, >> I. >> Jessica Zamora, >> I Ziggler, >> I. >> Motion passes. 70. >> All right. 9.2 Internal Monitoring Report and Policy Review EL2.7. Can I get a motion? >> I move that the board determine that the superintendent has recently interpreted board of education policy EL2.7 and his internal monitoring report dated December 9th, 2025 and that the evidence presented supports the superintendent's conclusions stated in the internal monitoring report. >> Can I get a second? Thank you, Connor. Uh, do any board members have any questions about this item? All right.

059Jill, please call the vote. >> Carla, >> I. >> Connor Duffy, >> I. >> Kevin Havda, >> I. >> Scott Shoenbower, >> I. >> Andrew Spain, >> I. >> Jessica Zamora, >> I. >> Kuronda Ziggler, >> I. >> Motion passes. 70. >> All right. 9.3. Annual mill levy certification. Can I get a motion? >> I move that the board certify the mill levy by the following resolution. Be it resolved by the board of education of Pter School District R1 that the secretary of the board of education formally certify to the board of Laramar County Commissioners the mill levy as presented in the board packet in the following manner for the tax year 2025 collectible in 2026. The governing board of the Pter School District R1 hereby certify a total [clears throat] levy of 54.090 090

060mills to be extended by you upon the total net assessed valuation of 5 bill651,413 and 13,399 to produce 33,737,710 in revenue. Excuse me. >> Thank you, Kevin, for the second. >> Just quickly, um, he reversed two of the numbers in the first valuation. So, I just want to make sure we're clear that it was the 5 bill615 million, not 651 million. >> Thank you, Andrew. >> Joining us this evening to speak about the annual mill levy certification is our chief finance officer, Dave Mononttoya. Welcome, Dave. Good evening board. Um, tonight we are here to certify our uh levy for the uh for the for the year and this is something we do annually this time of year. So um I apologize ahead of time as we go through this material. Sometimes this feels like it

061just happens really fast and that's because we're getting information from the county late in November running those through and and actually doing the calculations. So, um, so just to start off the the presentation here, um, just a little background. Uh, no later than December 15th, the board of education is required to certify a malevy to the county commissioners. Um, and and so that's what we're here to do tonight. Um, we're going to walk through the resolution that is uh prepared to uh to do this as well as some of the calculations so that um, you understand how this is all working. Um, so let's get into just briefly some key terms that we have in the presentation. Assessed valuation. Um assessed valuation is the value of the property that is taxed. So um that is

062determined by the county and um and if you hold property, you get an assessed valuation every year in the mail that tells you what the county thinks your property is worth. Um then we take that that value or we take the assessment rate and multiply it times the assessed valuation and that's how or I'm sorry we take the assessment rate and we multiply against the actual value and that's how we come up with the assessed valuation. So think about this. You have an actual value of your property. The county is going to tax you at the assessed valuation. So there is a calculation and we're going to see this in a sec. There's a calculation that goes from actual value down to assessed valuation. Um there is a mill levy um that is going to

063be in this conversation tonight and and for this purposes tonight. The mill levy is simply a tax rate that is going to be multiplied up against that assessed valuation. Um you're going to see some terms in the packet tonight as well uh like tax increment financing. We'll see that in the resolution. I'll explain how that that is working. But this is basically um property tax that is not available to the district and it is diverted directly to uh urban renewal or downtown uh downtown development or DDAS. Um another key term that uh that is in this packet, we don't hit on this a whole lot. It's a pretty small number, but there is also an abatement um that we use to set the the tax rate. Um and this is a little more complicated. This

064is more uh like when people protest their property taxes, they're kind of put on sidelines for a little bit and then it turns out that they have to pay those. We are allowed by statute to set an abasement abatement levy. And so that's what that is. It's pretty small, but it is something that we have to do. Um so just to basically break this down, this is what I was trying to stumble through in the last slide was um this is how we get to your taxes owed. And it's really the these simple formulas and it doesn't get much more complicated than that. Um you first take an actual value and again I alluded to that that is determined by the K Lmer county. So so each year um you will get a notice in

065your mail if you hold property and it'll tell you what they think the value of your property is. You then multiply that times that assessment rate and for residential this year it's 7.05%. And for commercial it's 27% generally depends on the class of commercial but most commercial is 27%. Um and so when you multiply these two you come up with an assessed valuation. So you take your actual value times the rate comes up with an assessed valuation. Then we take the assessed valuation and we apply the tax rate which is the mill levy I was talking about. And to get to in the term mill is um means that it's mills. So to be able to convert that into the the right rate you have to divide that by a thousand. Um and when you

066do that calculation you come up with taxes owed. And so we're going to see this same calculation over again as we go through materials tonight. Um to start off with and kind of just following along with the calculation, first thing we need is an assessed valuation from the county. And so the county does provide us a preliminary assessed valuation in August. Um but what we're really waiting for, and I've lighted it in green here. I think I can show my cursor here. Um and you'll see there's a date of 11:2425 on this. um that is when the county finalized their assessed valuation. Now, if you look at the uh information I have under the title, um there is a note that says the county can change uh these these amounts up until December 10th, which

067is not today, it's tomorrow. Um and so in some weird situation, I will get back on the county's website, make sure they haven't changed any numbers. Um but if that were to happen, we would have to probably reconvene and and figure that out. um that has not been since I've been doing this for 19 years. Um but I have heard in the past that did happen a long time ago. So I do pay attention to that um after the board meeting. So taking this information and this is a an image directly out of the uh out of the assessed valuation that we get as a school district. I'm really looking for a couple numbers on here because there's a lot of information on here. Um and the numbers I'm looking for are really number four.

068And I've I've highlighted all the green here because basically what they're showing is you got a gross uh taxable assessed valuation minus the t tax increment financing coming up with a net total taxable assessed valuation. The total net taxable assessed assessed valuation is important to us because that's what we apply all the calculations against. And then way down at the bottom on line 11, you're going to see taxes abated and refunded. Um and so that number is also provided by the county. Um I'm not going to repeat those big numbers for the assessed valuation. Talking in billions is hard sometimes. Um but uh but yes, there are very large numbers when we look at the assessed valuation. Okay. So step two, we get the assessed valuation. Then what we do is we start calculating the

069overrides or the the tax rates. And and what I do I I do this two different ways because I like to have kind of double checks is I have my own spreadsheets that I've developed over the years that actually calculate the the mill levy and then CDE provides districts a template of which they can use to plug in information to calculate the mill levy. So I'm doing it in two different ways and then they come up to the same answer. Hopefully that's always happened. Um but that's just a double check there. So um if we have questions as we're going through this CD is around to help. um it's been pretty basic, so we haven't had to uh ask CD for a lot of help on this recently. And then at times, uh CD may

070help us recalculate the levies if necessary. That was not necessary this year. Um so then step three is we take all of this information and we combine it and we draft a resolution. And so we use the final assessed valuation from the county um and then calculated with the C uh with the information from the CDE template um to create a resolution for the board to certify the mill levy. We have four types of levies that are used in the district. Currently um and we're going to go through each one of these. Uh we have statutory levies which is like our our school finance levy that's driven by state statute. Um we have voter approved overrides of which are where we've gone to our voters and have asked for additional revenue to do additional things.

071Um we have another override that is a unique override and that's a debtree um debtree mill levy override. And so that is also a category that we have. And then the last category we have is our bond redemption fund. And so bond redemption is simply um where in the past we have taken out bonds to do buildings. Think about like the building at Timnith uh Timoth Middle High School, Wellington Middle High School, Bamford Elementary. Um those were built with bond dollars. And so when we issue bonds, our obligation is to pay those back in principle and interest. And so that's what we're setting the levy to do is just pay the principle and interest on those bonds. Okay. So, um we're going to go through this and I'm going to try to pick it up

072a little bit here. Um because these are all going to look very similar as we go through the slides. The first one I want to talk about and I've highlighted it for you is the statutory levies. And so in the school finance um act itself um there is a levy that we are required to assess and that is 27 mills. It has been 27 mills for quite a long time. Um I was here when they changed it. It's a long time ago and I can't even remember when it was now tell you the truth. Um but it's been 27 mills for Pter school district for a good amount of time now and that was that was due to some changes under Governor Ritterder I believe was uh the governor at that time. Um, we have

073an abatement levy that is also part of our statutory levies. And then I just make the statement here that these are required by state law. So if we did not set these, the state would assume we did and they wouldn't we wouldn't get this money and we would have a real problem. So you can see that the general fund levy is the one of the largest levies in there. It is $151 million, $151.6 million. Um, and then that tax is abated and refund is a smaller amount, but again that kind of fluctuates from year to year. Um these calculations are still the same. They are driven off of assessed valuation times the mill levy divided by a thousand to generate tax. Um this this slide and the resolution um goes into some detail so that

074you can see the gross tax generated minus the tiff um to come up with the net tax generated of which is what we are allowed to generate taxes on. Um, so the next slide here we have our voter approved overrides. And I want to call out that I'm going to exclude the debtfree schools act for a second because I've got a separate slide for that one. Um, and as uh as we heard um this is always a good time to stop and thank the voters um because as you look at this sheet um and you can see the dollar amounts that we're collecting from the items I've highlighted in green and then the next slide as well when we get to it. Um and without this revenue, we would be a very very different district.

075And so you can see um we have a a long history of having overrides with our voters and having these agreements. Um so it started back in 1988, long time ago. And our most recent ones are are the 20 uh 2019 and the 2016 overrides. Um those are kind of more current time. If you think about that, it's within the last 10 years. Um and so those are really malevy overrides that our voters have approved through a ballot. Um the 2019 milvy override is it's really important to understand this all our historical overrides 2016 all the way back to uh 1988 are static dollar amounts. So they don't change every year. So like the 20 the 2000 override you can see it's calculated out to just about $10 million. That was what was on the

076ballot questionnaire. Um, and so when we when we have these overrides, they don't change the dollar amounts. Um, and so the only exception to that is the 2019 override and the 2024 override that or the debtree schools act that's on the next slide. And the the difference here is the 2019 override does grow by inflation. And so when we when I looked at that um to calculate that we had a an amount of 20 just let's call it 22 million and then you're applying a 2.3% inflation rate to come up with the the new amount of 22.5 million as an example for the for the 2019 override. Okay. Um and then we get into the debtfree schools act. It is also a milly override. Um but it is a millivvy override that is a separate

077category. And actually when we report these uh taxes to the uh to the CDE um this is one category that we actually report separately. The other overrides are kind of combined together and reported as a group. Um so the debtfree schools act is the most recent um election that we passed. It was passed last November 2024 and it is specifically designed to help with um salaries um small neighborhood school support as well as curricular replacements. But the biggest part of the debtree override and that was all done in general fund by by uh funds that we were able to free up there. What the debtree mill levy is really doing is handling our preventative and our deferred maintenance. And so that is exactly what it's doing. And in this example, you can see that the

078number um that we are taxing to is 50.1 million. And the way we get to that is you take $49 million from last year and you multiply it by 2.3% inflation again. And that's how you get to the 50.1 million that we are levying tonight. Okay, getting into the bond levy. I kind of alluded to what this is. Again, this is purely to pay our principal and interest payments. Sorry for the way that slid off the screen there. Um, and so what this is doing is uh we're just setting a levy so that we make our principal and interest payments. We we pay principal uh or we pay interest in June. So that'll come up in June 26. And then in December, we have a bigger payment that includes both principal and interest for our

079bonds. And so that that levy is designed to support those payments when that happens. Um, so one of the things I like to talk about when I'm doing this is the changes and and one of the things I'd like to do is separate it between statutory and things our voters have approved. So, the first thing you're going to see is that in the statutory levies, um, and we're going to see why this is when we get to the tax the tax impacts, but the or or the how the assessed valuations are being calculated, but what you're going to see is that the actual general fund levy had has increased quite a bit. And so, what you're going to see is it's gone from 132 million to 151 million now. Okay? And um so that is

080a change that uh we we kind of anticipated that was going to happen. We're going to see it when we really look at the assessment rates and what happened there in the tax impact. Um but really the point of the that the takeaway from this is that about $20 million of the increased revenue that we're getting is statutoily required. So we don't have a choice on it. We have to set the 27 mills. We don't have a choice. Um the voter approved overrides um again they don't the majority of them the 88 through the through the 2016 do not grow um by inflation or anything. So there's static dollar amounts and you'll see they haven't changed greatly. There is rounding allowed there because we can go out to you know three three decimals on our

081mill levies. Um and then what you're going to see is that the the both the 19 and the 24 overrides um have grown. And again, this is purely based on the inflation rate that we're talking about of 2.3%. Um, and the bond levy has not changed drastically. We try to keep level debt service, so I don't anticipate that changing any in the next couple years at least. Um, so so really the takeaway on this slide or this bottom part is that the um voter approved overrides are generating about $2 million more than they were last year. The majority of that is coming from those inflationary increases of um 2019 and 2024 millise. And so the tax impact is something I also include in your packet. Um this is a very basic attempt to describe tax

082impacts. I will I always say this every year. It will depend on your unique situation. So you want to do your own numbers. Don't don't take this away thinking that this is going to apply to you. But what I what it does is give you the information to think about it. And so what I'm doing is I'm comparing the 25 total levy of 57.37 to the new uh the new levy for 26 of 54.09. Okay. So you see there's an actual 3 mil difference and we're going to I'm going to kind of tease out what that why that is in a second here. So now let's get into kind of the calculation of how you calculate a tax. So the first line under resident and I'm going to focus on residential at the top. I

083do have some commercial multipliers down below um that are helpful for people that might might be in the the commercial business, but let's go through the residential in a little bit of detail. So, there's been some changes to how assessed valuation is determined. And this is really part and the note is at the bottom. It was part of House Bill 24B um 1001 of which was um I tried to forget this that had happened but there was a special session um last year where they actually tried to fix some of the issues that they had with assessments and property taxes. It was a big effort at the state and what it did is it actually changed how we calculate the the the value that we're going to apply the assessment rate against. So in 25

084what we had was let's and I have not changed the value of the home intentionally on this so that we can see the changes. Um so 700,000 last year I'm going to assume that that has not changed in the next year. Again that may be a poor assumption if you're trying to calculate your own taxes at home. Um but last year 25 we started with 700,000 there was an exemption of 55,000 that was taken off. Then the what was left was multiplied by 7%. And so last year um the estimated tax on a median home would be about two uh 2,479. So roll forward to 26 where the the impacts of House Bill 24B are now being applied and what you have is you no longer have the exemption coming off. So you have 700,000

085the residential assessment rate and this is this is interesting from this interim committee. Right now it is 7.05%. 5% but it will actually fluctuate between 0.05% or 6.85% I believe um depending on how much growth is in the state from assessed valuation. So this year we had the the growth that in assessed valuation and I'm saying assessed valuation intentionally talking about value of property. Um there was there was enough of an increase in that that um that it was applied. So, so as we look at this, um, you take the 700,000, you multiply that to times the 7.05%. And you get to two, uh, 2,669. Um, if we were not, if the assessed valuation was not growing statewide, um, that number would have been a little bit lower. But when you compare those two numbers,

08625 and 26 together, um, what you're seeing is really the impact of the change in how they're calculating the assessed valuation on the property. Um down in the commercial, I'll hit this lightly down below. Um in the commercial multiplier, um it's the exact opposite. Um what the interim committee had done in that time was that the commercial was going to go from 27.9% down to 27%. And so similar to the residential, what we've done is calculated that. So in 25 at 27.9% was $1,61. in 26. Now with the new assessed uh rate for commercial at 27% it comes out to be 1460. So again this is a very simple approach to look at this but I think it kind of puts in context the changing or the moving pieces from year to year. Um so

087this the timeline that we have is is pretty um is pretty fast here. So uh we we got a preliminary AB from the county back in August. We don't put too much stock into that one. There's a lot of work that has to go into the final. Um then November 24th is when we got the actual final assessed valuation from the county. Um if we needed to revise any calculations with CDE, we we've done that. We did not need to do that this year. In December 9th tonight, um the board is going to consider the approval of the mill levy. And then once the board has approved the millie, I have a very short timeline to get it over to the county by the 15th. Um and actually we upload it now and I don't

088go to the county anymore. I actually put it in the computer. Um I used to go to the county and hand it over. Um but uh so that that will have need to happen before the 15th. That is a statutory deadline that we must meet. Um we also have a deadline to provide uh the final millie to CDE. It's a couple days after that. I believe that December 20th is when that one is. But those are really the timelines. So tonight uh we we are asking the board to consider um the resolution um that was read uh by director Duffy. And um that's the end of the presentation. Thank you so much, Dave. Is there any discussion? >> Yes. Go ahead, >> Dave. Just some quick uh rapid fire questions to clarify. Um but just

089so that the public knows um what is the inflation rate based upon? >> So the inflation rate is based on I don't remember the exact basket of goods. It is it is driven by the Department of Labor and Statistics. It's a federal number that we get. Um it's changed. It's Lakewood, Gley, Denver. I think I'm getting that wrong. It used to be something else that I remember a long ago, but it's basically three major cities in this in the state that they take a basket of goods for. They look at the the dollar value of what it was in the past, what it is now, and then they calculate what the inflation rate is. >> It's got it's got like groceries, housing, all of that stuff. >> And just for clarification on that, we don't

090set that rate. >> We we do not set that rate, but it it does come from the Department of Labor and Statistics, and that's something I want to pay attention to. And then another one was, correct me if I'm wrong, but there was an there was an actual change at the state about the month in which we received the funding this last year, the the actual um dispersement of funds to the school district because in the resolution, you know, it's collectible in 2026. >> Yeah. >> But don't we wasn't there a change there in the last year 18? >> There was You're thinking of a different change though. Um, and so what that change was is um a way that they were out because we're going to get into cash flow for a second. >>

091So when we're getting money from the state, think about property taxes don't come in until the spring, right? And so we're getting money from the state and what the state is doing is doing a division of here's your pot and we're going to divide it by they used to divide it by 12 now they divide it by some other number to get more state funding up front but we're really relying on that state funding the first couple months and if you think about it we don't get the t the cash from the property taxes till later. So barring no reserves and no ability to borrow from the state of which you just approved the interest free loan program um we would not be able to make cash flow because property taxes haven't come in yet.

092>> And that's exactly what the um the tax uh the um the tax interest free loan program is is it's a program that the state provides that we can actually borrow from the state once we get our property taxes we have to immediately pay it back to the state >> and so that is it's a cash flow issue. >> Perfect. And then the last one that I have, you were you were touching on this this residential assessment rate and it's a range. >> Yeah. >> And you said it was 6.8 to 7.05 something. I think it's slide 14 there. >> Yeah. >> Um >> Yes. 6.85. >> And what what sets that rate? And you had just mentioned if assessed value is down then they apply a smaller tax rate or a higher tax rate.

093>> So it's based on 5% growth. And my my understanding of this is it's based on a calculation of 5% growth across the state. So the assessed valuation grew enough that it was above 5%. That kicked us up into the 7.05% range. If that growth would have been less for school districts, our mill or our assessment rate would actually drop to 6.8 5%. 6.85%. Yes. And that's what that House bill did in the interim committee. And so school districts actually have two assessed valuations depending on what's happening in the state. And it's interesting as I started thinking about this when I was putting it together. What that means is we're going to probably see ups and downs depending on what's happening with the state assess valuation and the state is going to have to backfill

094on those. Remember the water glasses. So they're going to have to backfill that um if if that happens. And so so yeah, that's that's we're paying attention to is that assessed debt debt in the house bill that basically gives us two answers depending on what happens at the state. Um yeah, >> thank you. >> Go ahead, Andrew. Um, first of all, thank you for going into the detail on different things and even sharing some of the information about how we have it's pretty easy to see why the ballot language was one thing and the actual amount is a different thing related to things like inflation and so forth. Um, just wanted to add a few things uh based on we we've gotten some feedback as you via email and things like that just requests about

095how we're using things and and I know many in the community have concerns about how milby funds are used and how the amounts are set for what is collected and so I you know as ask for for some information and first thank you for for to all those who shared their concerns. This is an an example of how we should be working together to build a better district. The amount seen in the presentation are embedded in many quality components that should give us all confidence in the outcomes. Notably, the Colorado Constitution itself, which has a number of uh pieces of information about levies, TABER, and other related components, our external legal assistance that guides us with what the Constitution says, reviews all of our proposals, and benchmarks to known case law that have been tested,

096what with what is in the Colorado Constitution, how that has been interpreted. We have checks and balances within the county that must approve what has been submitted. So, what we send in, they're going to have to validate and verify. And of course we have our own series of internal processes that lead to what has been created and you've seen today. And finally earlier on you saw that we approved what the audit committee had gone through. And that's obviously postfact work that gets run through by not just the audit committee but an external audit firm. Our audit is complete and we've received the output of response of unmodified the highest level that can be achieved. As such, I am confident that we have many layers of protection to ensure we are legally in order. And I

097share this that the community sees the parts of the process and the multiple checks that are in place. I also want to say thank you to our community for the mill levies you have approved and to your desire to ensure that we use those approved funds appropriately. I ask that you continue to keep us sharp by asking the questions. And thank you to the audit committee, the mill levy committee, and the comprehensive planning committee who are most closely aligned to the output of the mill levies. I appreciate your work and diligence and request that you ask questions and guidance of us to help you. Together, we will work to maximize what we do for the district. >> Thank you. Are there any other discussions or questions? >> All right. Seeing none, Jill, can you call

098a vote? Vote. >> Carla Ba, [clears throat] >> I. >> Connor Duffy, >> hi. >> Kevin Havlla, >> I. >> Shoenbower, >> I. >> Andrew Spain, >> I >> Jessica Zamora, >> I. >> Kuronda Ziggler, >> I. >> Motion passes 70. >> Thank you. >> Uh, thank you. So, now we have 9.4. uh our adoption of the 2627 school year calendar. Can I get a motion? >> I move that the board approve the 2026 2027 school year calendar as submitted. >> Can I get a second? >> Thank you, Connor. All right. Is there I don't think there's a presentation. Correct. >> Uh President Zamora. We don't have a presentation prepared, but we do have our two co-chairs of the calendar committee. Our principal from Lopez Elementary School, Cheryl Day, and one of our assistant principles

099at Pter High School, Brian Keiel, are in attendance here tonight and prepared to answer any questions that the board may have regarding the proposed calendar. >> Thank you. And is there any discussion we'd like or questions? Yeah, I uh definitely am curious about some of the uh um community comment we've heard from email and tonight. Um obviously there's a lot of concern in the high schools about losing um losing time in the fall and the uh the equity of of that. Um at the same time, just so everybody knows, we've been wrestling with the heat day concern uh at the beginning of every year for the last several years. Um that disproportionately affects the elementary schools and middle schools. High schools are already they have AC. Um so I'd like to hear from you guys

100what you think uh you know or what were thoughts that went into those types of things. Was that considered in terms of um instructional minutes for the high schools um when when this proposal was put together? Um I would say the top priority which we were given was to create a calendar that started the school year later and so that was the primary consideration creating the calendar which then of course has impacts on other aspects of it. We did look at um other potential options, but they were taking away from um Thanksgiving break or fall break or um you know adjusting the winter break to either to lose days uh in order to uh have everything work out with numbers um and keep that start date later. Um, >> if you wanted to keep the

101start date later and try to even out the semester, a couple things you could consider would be reducing the number of days for the fall break. You could consider moving days um the beginning of winter break to the end of winter break. you could consider ending the first semester after winter break to add days. Um those are some of the options that we've come up with if you were trying to accomplish both of those priorities. >> Yeah, that's one thing I would I literally wrote. It may be crazy, but um have we ever or have schools ever ended first semester in January? not as long as I've been in the district. Uh the the issue that I can see with that is our concurrent enrollment classes, they end today essentially, right? So students in those

102classes according to Front Range can't have any grade changes. The grades must match between Front Range and PSD. So if we were to extend the first semester into January, those students in those concurrent enrollment classes, what are they doing? Um so that that is the biggest issue that I can see uh impacting that for for a non-concurrent enrollment class. It could be possible for sure. Um but there are a lot of of concurrent enrollment classes across all the high schools. >> To answer your question, we used to go into January way back when, having lived through that. >> Yeah. But I also recognize uh you had mentioned previously that there was a strong community preference to have the first semester done prior to the winter break. Exceedingly strong if the results from the 23 survey.

103Is that correct? That was more input I would say from staff for the reasons that Brian mentioned. >> Thank you. >> Other questions, discussion? >> Go ahead, Kevin. >> I have thoughts. Um, I want to clarify a little bit about how we got here because I do think it's the end of the year when we're having this discussion about the vote. Um, it was a BOE push. There was the it was a directive that we gave and I know it's colder now. It's warmer today, but it's colder now than it was when we started this discussion. And if I can remind everyone the emails that we got, the um the data we received from teachers, um our classrooms are too hot for a long part of of the first part of the year. They're too

104hot. Um I don't envy the two of you and um the the brave souls that are on the calendar committee. It feels, the more I learn about it, a little bit of chess meets mind sweeper at every iteration. And it's it is impossible to make a system change of this magnitude and not have um disruption to some subset of our district that it's not going to be a fan of the work that we do. So, I just want to at least validate that and say thank you for the work and thank you for the proposals that you've done, especially with the stop start that we had to do with the uh bill schedule conversation instructional time. The one thing I'd say having learned a little bit about this work on the counter committee and the

105the conversations we've had is to make sure that we don't let perfect be the enemy of good in our in our discussions. Um we could go back to the drawing board. You can give us iteration after iteration after iteration and I can promise something will happen which will be we'll hear from a different category of of our community that will have a tremendous push back or issue with that. That's not to say we shouldn't examine and that's not to invalidate the concerns we had. I think the ones that that we listen to tonight, that's a really compelling concern about an it will explain inequity in our system um from academic learning that AP teachers and some other high school folks are going to have to wrestle with and that's something that we should examine. Um

106I I one of the things that I learned whenever I was teaching in New York, I had a great principal who's not watching, but um I'm going to give him a shout out, Eric Green. He had us read a passage from Tina Fay's Bossy Pants before we started the year. And it's about improv. And the point of this little parable was that if you want the the the stage to continue, if you want the act to continue in improv, you have to say yes to things. You can't just shut things down and say no because the idea goes and the comedy goes and then kind of over. There's a lot of reasons in this job to say no to a lot of things. I could find a reason to say no to this. I could

107find a reason to say no to everything we picked out on consent. It's it's it it is our job to scrutinize, but sometimes it's our job to try to get to a yes. And so my case for this for this calendar because I don't I can't wave a wand and do a year- round school which is what I would rather do. We're not there yet and I don't think we're going to be there for some time although I'd like to have that conversation but this is this is in my view as good as it's going to get right now to give us the reprieve that we need for the beginning of the year. Um we as directors don't have the luxury of looking at things in a vacuum or isolation. We have to look at

108what it's going to do for our district on scale. And so I I do think that if I'm looking at the elementary schools that are don't have air conditioning that are not going to have air conditioning, those classrooms are too hot. And if this calendar offers just a slight reprieve from that so that students can learn because they're not learning when it's this hot, um then I think that that's that's enough to justify my yay vote tonight. It's also presents terrible working conditions for our teachers and our staff who are in those buildings that have no end in sight as far as getting air conditioning the next calendar year or the year after or the year after that. So, I this is a it's a tough call as far as changing a system like this

109and and moving dates. And I know it's it's going to require adjustments, but for those reasons, I'm I'm voting yay tonight on this one. >> To follow up on that quickly, >> um yeah, the calendar is never going to be perfect for everybody. Um that's just the inherent nature of it. The other thing is that the heat is affecting a lot more students than block scheduling or concurrent enrollment. The amount of schools that do not have air conditioning far exceed the amount of kids in concurrent enrollment. So we have to address the heat issue first. Now hopefully the small switch that was proposed um um in tonight's um packet hopefully that will give us some reprieve. The other thing is, and I think we've heard it maybe a little bit more last year than this

110year, is why can't we just have different start times for those concurrent enrollment kids and to tie that to the budget? That comes at a cost. That is an option that the calendar committee has looked at in the past, but if we do that [clears throat] um and we and we want to kind of give everybody their perfect schedule, it comes at a cost. Go ahead, Karanda. >> I think I just want to say it's important that what I'm hearing is is an eitheror conversation versus what is an inclusive conversation. What are all the considerations? Not whether high schoolers have concurrent enrollment versus elementary school heat days versus teachers in the classroom. It's how do we um consider all of these and be inclusive in that conversation. And so for me the question I have

111for you all whether it's now or throughout this process how are we including the multiple voices of our community have we done that have beyond folks who can participate have we worked hard to make accessible um outlets for people to participate whether that's forum multiple um questionnaire listening sessions whatever that might include the voices of students of teachers of community members of staff etc etc so that we don't arrive at this place where now voices voices are being or questions are being asked could have been encountered in the future. Can you speak a little bit about the inclusiveness of that process? >> So this should have been uh a survey year. Uh so we were working on that uh creating a survey to ask those questions. Um but because of the instructional minute conversation uh

112we were put on pause for the calendar committee. So the the goal was you know once that was solved we would finish our service send that out to uh staff parents the community to get that feedback in order to make adjustments to the following year. And I would say some of the conversations we've had as a committee around making things more accessible are things like providing actual copies of the proposed calendars as opposed to just asking questions about which would you prefer. Um we talked about having videos to try to explain um some of the rationale behind those things. Um and we were working with the district as far as like having translations. I think the possibility of like some in-person feedback um is a great one and it just takes a longer timeline than

113what we had for this particular proposal. >> I just want to say thank you. It does sound like there was a lot that y'all had to consider and incorporating in the process and taking place and um I just want to say thank you for your work. And then one additional comment if that's okay. Um to really think about a broad base of who this impact. I think that tonight we heard teachers speak to the differences in the semester and when I hear that I think about differences for our students. I think about who we are picturing in our mind. For me as a student maybe it's a higher achiever that would like some extra time to make certain that their grades is as best as they want it to be. Maybe it's um someone who

114had obligations the previous night and have time to go to class and ask the teacher a question. So, it's extra days in the semester matters. Maybe those students who can take that class in the spring and get that additional educational opportunity and matters greatly for them. And those students who can't take the spring semester because of conditions in life that requires them to take that fall semester, they don't get access to that opportunity. And I believe if our focus is on an equitable and inclusive district, then we have to make things accessible to and um a difference in those states actually in my opinion impacts that mission. Thank you. >> Thanks, Grand. Scott, did you have a question or comment. Okay, Carla, thank you. >> Principal Key, my question is for you. I have an

115impala and kind of leading into what Kurando was saying, my question to you would be, what is your take on our kids not having as much access in the fall semester as spring? Do you think that it's as impactful as it as it feels like it is? I mean, I Zoe's in AP classes. She's done today, so it doesn't feel like the fall really affected her. >> But for students that need more instruction or need more help, it feels like they're being let down in the fall. >> It's kind of a loaded question. Um, just because Pter High School has a vastly different schedule than the other high schools. So, not only do we have a block schedule, but we have an alternating block schedule. Those classes go for the year. Um, so, so that

116impacts things. I think the biggest thing and I think why I uh was asked to be on the calendar committee is because if you look at the breakdown from quarter to quarter, right? So, some classes are two quarters, right? And that would be a year-long class, but in a block schedule, that's a semester long, right? 10 credit class. [snorts] We also have classes that are five credits, and that's just a quarter. If you look at the breakdown per quarter, right, this year, quarter 1 is 45 days, quarter two is 39 days, quarter three is 46, and quarter four is 45. Right? So, quarter two is always short. always semester one is always short. I think our teachers it is hard and I'm not going to dismiss that. It is really difficult and like like they

117said tonight they have to cut units um or just modify the way they teach. You know, I like the idea of of what you're saying that second semester kids have more opportunity, more time to to get help, more time to learn. Um, it's it's hard, right? I don't know if there's a a benefit. I don't know if there's a a cost. If I look at grades for students, I I wouldn't say there's a difference. Um, but I've never actually pulled that data. That's just my gut, right? >> And and does that make them ready? I mean, are they missing out on things that other kids are getting that make them more >> for the college class? They have to teach the college curriculum. >> Right. So, they are getting the college curriculum first semester and

118second semester. They can't cut things out. So that stuff is taught exactly the same. >> But for kids who aren't in the early colleges, for them >> it's different. >> Yeah. So they're missing stuff like exothermic ending. >> Yes. Like like Mr. Stone. Yeah. Yeah. Dr. Stone actually. >> Yeah. >> Did you Okay. >> Yeah. I did have one question for clarity. Um, in October, I I think you guys might have uh heard this already, but would like to talk about it in the public. Um, there are a couple days. I think it's the 15th and 16th of October. Um, and there was a question about uh one was listed as an uh conference day versus elementary exchange day. Do you want to clarify that? >> Sure. Um, the employee agreement specifies two exchange days

119in the fall for elementary. Traditionally, the Thursday has been used by many buildings for conferences. Um, when we labeled them both as exchange days, that led to some confusion because people then thought conferences were not being held that day. Um, so the there are the correct number of exchange days. It really comes down to how we choose to label it and communicate it on the calendar. >> Go ahead. >> Um, sorry Dave, I got some rapid fire questions for you. I think you'll be able to answer. >> Um, >> I think he's got I think he's got this. I'm putting on the spot. First question. How many of our high schools have air conditioning currently? >> All of our high schools have air conditioning currently. Out of >> the comprehensive high schools >> out of

120how many? >> The six comprehensive high schools are the ones I'm talking about. Um, Centennial, I believe, is partially airond conditioned. >> How many middle schools have air conditioning currently? >> I don't know that right off the top of my head. Sorry. >> Um, do you know how many elementary schools have air conditioning currently? >> No, I don't have that in front of me either. Um, I can go find out if you I just don't have it in front of me. >> At the elementary school level, it's less than a handful. Yeah. So, of our 49 traditional public schools, I think we have 32 of the 49 that no longer have air conditioning. >> 30. >> Is it 30 now? It's 30 now because Batty and Odre. So, coming at it the other side, yes,

121we have 30 schools that are not air conditioned at the elementary school. >> Okay. I I appreciate it. um sorry it was going to have the same result for me regardless of where I was going is that I've said it before I'll say it again we're talking about access we're talking about equity but I also want to bring to the rooms before blooms Maslo's hierarchy of needs before Bloom's taxonomy if kids are in a situation where they're not going to learn because of physical barriers then they can't focus on the Bloom's taxonomy and so I also want to remind our board and our community that we had to have early release for an entire week of the first week of school where there was no learning and let's talk about the disruption to families that

122that causes too. And one of the things that we heard from our board of engagement sessions to give another plug for that. I'm going to amplify this was not my idea or my thought. Uh but one of our community members said as a single working parent that is a tremendously difficult thing to have to navigate on a whim. And it's it's similar to a snow day but it's something that the ask was from the district. Maybe we contemplate doing an early release for the first week of school if we're going to maintain the calendar where it is. So, we're talking about instructional time. We're talking about these bleed days that we may have to carry over to get the the quota. I I see a solution. It's not perfect and it's not the best solution

123in the world, but that one week may give us a little bit of reprieve to that problem that was very urgent in August, September when we're having those conversations. Leave it at that. >> Go ahead, Scott. >> Yeah, I I agree with Kevin on that. Um did as as administrators, you guys are both administrators, the concern about work days came up um all being front-loaded. Is there is that going to be productive time even though it's not going to be used for grading? Is that um you know, what are alternatives that those teachers are going to be able to use that for where they'll feel like it's productive and and makes sense and later in the semester they're not resenting that? Tough question. Sorry. >> Can I give an opinion? >> Honestly, after hearing the

124feedback, I do think it would be valuable to look at how we could move one of the work days to the second semester. However, right, like everything we've talked about, then there are ripple effects of that. So, we were kind of over there consulting like what what would be some ways you could do that because if you add a day, right, where the where the work days currently are before students come back, they have no impact on the total number of days in the school year. If we move one into the school year, we're now impacting the number of student contact days and we have to get one back from somewhere. So again, there's different ways you could do that. You could get one back by having students come the day after Memorial Day for

125the last day of school. Probably not a great choice. You remove one day from fall break or winter break. You could remove one other holiday. Um, those are just some like quick off the top of the head ways that you could take a work that's not currently a student day and not impacting the number of days, place it somewhere else, but we have to figure out then where we get that day back or you could move the star the start day one day earlier. Any other qu discussion or questions? >> Yeah. >> When's the last what's the last possible day we would need to make a decision on the calendar in order for it to go into effect? >> I Dr. Hooton, I believe the board's current policy calls for an approval of next year's

126calendar by the end of this >> by the end of this calendar year. So, you would need to make a decision by December 31st. >> Thank you. All right. Are we prepared to call the question? Can I get a motion? Or did we already do the motion? We did the motion. Jill, can we call the vote? Thank you. >> Carla Baze. >> I Connor Duffy. >> I >> Kevin Havda. >> Hi. >> Scott Shoenbower. >> Hi. >> Andrew Spain. >> Hi. >> Jessica Zamora. >> Hi. Kuronda Ziggler. >> Motion passes 61. >> At this time, we're going to take a five minute break and then we will come back for ourformational reports and discussions. I will see you guys at 7:40. Friday night. >> All right, >> we are going to get started again. >>

127Okay, >> so continuing our meeting, we have our nextformational report. Brian, I believe we have some guests. Thank you. I'm so sorry. It is 7:45 and we are continuing our meeting. >> All right. So, with us this evening to present information about the demographic trends in the state of Colorado is the Colorado state demographer Kate Watkins. Kate, I want to both welcome you and thank you. I met with Kate uh last week to have an idea of what might be presented here tonight. If you remember, members of the board, members of the community, I think it was the 22 2022 2023 school year was the last time we as a school district invited the state demographers's office. Um, and after spending some time with Kate, the demographers's office has since downgraded their expectations for this

128region regarding school age children. Uh and I think it's an important data point that as you're listening to Kate present uh the various modes of different data and lenses in which we should be breaking down these data points. I just invite you to kind of center on the school age children aspect of that knowing that that has what what I would say has the greatest set of implications for us as a governance team moving forward. Kate, I'm really glad that you're here. Thank you. Welcome. >> Thank you so much. Uh wonderful to be here and I today I'll I'll be presenting kind of our latest and greatest uh when it comes to population projections specifically for Lamur County and do want to acknowledge right from the get-go that of course the Booter School District is

129is a portion of Lur County uh but is not all of Lur County and so some of the trends you know there's a little bit of a disconnect there where some of the district specific trends might differ a little bit from the presentation that I'm sharing today. Uh, but these are the latest and greatest that I'll be sharing. We just about a month ago released um our latest projections. So, so you are you're getting it hot off the presses. Want to acknowledge a a couple of kind of key themes that you'll hear throughout the presentation. And one is this interplay between people and the economy. When we're talking about jobs, we're actually talking about humans. And uh even things like housing, there's this interplay here. So supply and demand for housing. It takes people to

130build those houses. it takes people to demand those houses uh and to kind of necessitate that additional building. So there's always this inherent interplay between people in the economy. Some other key trends and key trends that I want to acknowledge are not just specific to Lmer County or Colorado, but are things that we're seeing across the globe, across the US and across the globe. First, we're seeing fairly dramatically lower fertility rates than we saw even a decade or two ago. and that translates to fewer births. We are aging which translates to more deaths and the combination of those two factors results in slower population growth. Again, something that we're seeing globally. When we have fewer births, more deaths, net migration becomes even more consequential for population growth. And lastly, we're increasingly more diverse. Our younger

131populations are more diverse when it comes to race and ethnicity. So simply by aging we come be we will become a more diverse society and economy. So some key trends that you'll see kind of playing out in the slides uh moving forward. But I want to zoom out a little bit and give you a bit more of a global perspective because again when we're talking about populations these are there are global dynamics here. Uh so snapshot in time 2023 and what you're seeing here are fertility rates across countries and any country in pink is below the replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman. What that means is over the course of multiple generations the countries in pink would decline if not for international migration. So pretty amazing that already in 2023 so much of the

132globe is in pink. When we look at population projections for the globe, we can break this down into kind of three age cohorts. Let's say roughly the school age population 0 to 19, the traditional working age population 20 to 20 to 64 and our traditional retirement population 65 plus. So looking at these global population projections and this is from the latest United Nations world population prospects report. Um school age population perhaps has already peaked and will decline moving into the future. The working age population expected to see some growth but leveling off come the 2050s and eventually declining and the 65 plus year old population expected to see ongoing growth over time. If we look at US population projections, this is the latest from the the Congressional Budget Office, we see that the school age

133population has perhaps already peaked and been in decline for over a decade and will continue to decline moving forward. Uh traditional working age expected to continue to grow, but if anything, perhaps peak in the 2040s before declining and nowhere to grow but up when it comes to our 65 plus year old population. So I mentioned this again as the backdrop in that Colorado and Lurmer County we bring in a lot of folks from other states and other countries and so what happens globally and nationally matters for state level growth. So to focus more squarely on Colorado and Lurmer County specific trends. Um Brian had done a great job of sort of te kicking off this and and uh teeing up the downgrade in our population expectations. So here showing Lur County's total population, not the

134school districts or the the school age specific population. And you can see the the change in our vintages 2023 our expectations from last year relative to what we're expecting now with that vintage 2024 estimate. So this is a downgrade of about uh 35,900 or 7.5 uh% fewer people through 2050. If if you want to kind of wrap your head around that, the uh town of of Bertha is around 11,000 people. So three times the town plus t times the town of Bertha. That's how much we've downgraded our expectations. We have we've downgraded them uh largely across the state and on a couple of different factors. One is that fertility rates continue to be lower than expected. Um secondly, we've seen labor mobility and just mobility generally be much weaker than what we've expected. We're now

135five years out uh from the COVID pandemic and what we found is that people just aren't moving around as much as as they were historically. And so we're kind of changing our our expectations for what the future brings when it comes to both expectations for net migration and uh fertility rates. The other element here also is a change in immigration policies which also will produce uh lower net migration when it comes to the international net migration to the state. So looking at uh percent change, we can look at our our annual population percent change and compare Colorado relative to the US. Colorado historically has outpaced the nation when it comes to population growth and we're projecting that it will continue to do so moving in future. But that's not a guarantee and this is a

136kind of a key risk to the forecast that I will continue to highlight throughout. Um so anytime that blue line is above above the gray line that means Colorado is picking up share in the national uh in when it comes to the national population. Uh so no guarantee that that Colorado will continue to outpace the nation. Uh historically, Colorado's been really good at attracting kind of younger folks to the state given our housing affordability issues. Um that in particular, I think is is is the key downside risk and the key thing to watch moving forward. So adding Lmer County into into the mix here uh to compare growth, Lur County has largely kept pace with the state as a whole. It's actually quite remarkable how how closely it's been tied to that state level growth

137and projecting that it continues to to kind of match that state level pattern. But again, some downside risk in particular when it comes to housing affordability and net migration to the area. When we're talking about population growth, we're really only talking about a couple of things. It's births minus deaths or natural change and it's our insus our outs or our net migration. And this chart is one of my favorite charts is showing those components of population change for the state of Colorado. In the next slide, I'll show you Lammer County specifically. So, a couple of key things to tease out. One, when we look at natural change, it's made up, it's been a much stronger population growth driver historically relative to what we're projecting moving forward. And again, that's because we are having fewer children,

138fewer births, and more of us are dying because we are more of us are are aging. Uh we are for the first time in our forecast horizon projecting natural decline for the state's population. We're expecting that to happen in in 2047 based on our our latest population projections. Net migration for the state has largely been tied to the business cycle in Colorado. So when we go into a recession, we tend to see net out migration or really weak net migration to the state. Uh we can see that in the late 1980s oil and gas bust uh the early 2000s dotcom recession and the COVID recession in 2020. Uh the great recession bucked the trend and part of the story there I think that there are lots of pieces to that story but one big part

139of it was that that was when Colorado believe it or not was relatively more affordable when it comes to housing. So looking to the future, we are expecting fairly weak net migration over the course of the next years. And that's on kind of two main factors. One, changes to immigration policy, so very weak international net migration. And also a a fairly slow growth economy, a slow expectations for jobs growth, which also will kind of dampen that both international and domestic migration to to the state. We expect a ramp up and to basically get up to our historical average net migration levels of about 38,000 per year uh over the long run. Looking to Lurmer County, we see we see a bit of a different uh trajectory here where that natural decline is expected much sooner.

140Uh based on our latest population projections, expecting natural decline to start in 2029. uh when that happens, the only way to grow the population within the region is through net migration. Um you're seeing fairly healthy projections here when it comes to that net migration to the area. But again, downside risk both for Colorado as a whole and for Lore County given some of the affordability challenges that might be facing moving forward. So want to break down some of the components here uh fert fertility rates, birth stats, and net migration. And I'll start with fertility rates. Um so here the total fertility rate again replacement rate would be 2.1 births per woman. Um they peaked both nationally and for Colorado roughly around uh 2007 and some since we've seen this very precipitous decline in fertility rates.

141Uh we're projecting that Colorado will to some degree start to level off but we'll continue to kind of see an inbound in fertility rates over time. So those are our underlying assumptions for our population projections when it comes to births. We can com also compare uh some counties here comparing Welds because it's a bit of an outlier relative to and our next door neighbor here and Lmer County to Colorado. We can see that Lamur County's fertility rates have been historically lower than the state as a whole. Uh and we're largely projecting that they just kind of remain constant at at roughly about zero or 1.08. 08 births per per female per woman uh over time. There's certainly some downside risk to that, but Lmer County uh already a fairly low fertility rate and so we're

142kind of holding steady in our assumptions. Looking at the levels, so number of births compared to number of deaths, uh we've seen a decline in births in Lur County for quite some time. We're projecting that that essentially births level off and grow uh starting in the 2030s even. But that rebound is high contingent upon net migration to the area. So kind of your younger adults who move in, start families and uh and and age in place. Uh when it comes to deaths, again, we're we're an aging population and so we'll continue to see a growing number of deaths. And we can compare that to the state level trends where similarly births have been in decline for quite some time now. Uh and here again you see that crossover happening much sooner for Lammer County relative

143to the state as a whole. All right. So net migration Colorado I think I already mentioned this. Colorado has been really good at bringing in 20 and 30omes. So this is the level of net migration the balance of ins minus outs across age fiveyear age cohorts. And so lots of 20 and 30omes coming into the state and this was over the period of 2010 to 2020. Um couple of kind of key things to tease out or key things to think about are given some of the affordability challenges can we continue to bring in 20 and 30omes who come into the state maybe for a job opportunity maybe move around the state find themselves in Lmer County uh start a family that child enters the school system. Can we count on those same trends moving forward?

144I think that that's kind of the the key question to ask. Lurmer County has a slightly different distribution when it comes to net migration by age. Here we're seeing that strong college contingent coming in uh attending CSU. They age out of of the college system. Many of them move out, but many of them also stay in the area and perhaps form families. Weld County, again, a bit of an outlier. one of our highest growth areas in the state. Here you're seeing a lot of growth basically 40 and below uh population in particular but with a lot of growth in in your school age population. Weld County relatively speaking a more affordable part of the the state. So combining all of the components of change, our births, our deaths, our net migration, here's a 10-year outlook

145for total population growth across counties in the state uh Lur County. So think of this as a heat map. Anything yellow, orange, red is is growth. The brighter the red or the I guess darker the red in this case, uh the the higher the growth. Anything in blue is in decline over that 10-year period. So most of the growth are along kind of that I25 corridor, Front Range area. Uh Lmer among the higher growth uh regions, but not the highest growth county. All right. Right. So now I want to focus in on age and uh first just show Lur County's population uh distribution by single year of age and by generation. And if you uh go to this QR code, it'll take you to this animation on our website. Um, you can look at statewide

146trends or county level trends, go back to 1990, play it forward as an animation, uh, up to the the most current estimate, which is 2024, and into the future to see how we've evolved when it comes to our age distribution and how we're projecting that that age distribution continues to evolve. So, a couple key takeaways. If you were to go to that QR code of that website, you'd see not a lot of growth in the school age population, quite a bit of growth in the working age population, and quite a bit of growth in our traditional retirement age population. And uh I think some key things to highlight there. The school-aged and the working age population highly contingent upon net migration. The 65 plus year old population is largely us simply aging in place. Uh

147so I'll kind of walk through some of those trends in in a higher level of of detail in the uh in the in the slides ahead. But first just to acknowledge that every county has a unique age distribution and some are are frankly outliers. So looking at some of the variation and and when we think about this age distribution and why it matters certainly it matters for enrollment uh K- through2 enrollment. It also matters for our economies, our economic base, uh how state and local governments get their revenue and um and then also certainly matters when it comes to our our retiree population, those needing perhaps more assistance moving into the future. So age absolutely matters. Um Lmer County clearly an outlier when it comes to the college age component or cohort. All right. So,

148breaking down the population across some of these cohorts uh a bit more. So, the next several slides will show the level of the population across a couple of key cohorts. This first one and and projected going back to 1990 and projected through60. Um so, population levels in this case for those most likely to work, those 25 to 54. As I'd mentioned already, this is a population that is highly dependent upon net migration. And so our projections do assume a healthy level of net migration among those that are this age into the area. Uh the growth here is is a little less than 1% on average uh per year. And that is, you know, great when it comes to growing growing an economy. It's not robust growth per se, but it is ongoing growth that's expected.

149but again reliant on net migration to the area. When it comes to our 65 plus year old population, we've come off of a period of really strong growth, a real strong ramp up in our 65 plus year old and projecting quite a bit of growth moving forward. So three if not more percent or three or more uh times that of our population that's most likely to work. Uh so as we age, as more and more of us move into the 65 plus year old cohort, our needs and wants will evolve. Our economy will evolve, our tax base will evolve over time. Uh across the state, we're seeing growth in the 65 plus year old population. Again, think of this as a heat map. Yellow, orange, red is growth. Blue is decline. The only reason we're

150really seeing declines or projecting declines in uh some of our our more rural areas of the state is that they have less access to health care. And so we've seen some out net out migration of 65 plus year olds among those areas. Um also many of them are smaller counties and so we're talking just a few people kind of coming and going. So most of the the growth in 65 plus year olds in our most populated areas of the state including uh Lmer Weld County uh kind of that front range region and all along the I25 corridor. Uh I also want to highlight one additional uh kind of key cohort and that's our population age 65 plus. This is a population that we're just on the cusp of seeing fairly dramatic growth in. This is

151a population that it's right around the age when our older adults start to need more assistance, be it healthcare assistance or inhome assistance. And why this might be relevant to to you all is that when it comes to uh state and local government services uh there may be additional need for funds that go towards these populations. So when we we can think about the state budget situation uh general fund now some of the highest share going towards Medicaid costs or healthare costs. When we think about growth in our 80 plus year old population, um those who maybe kind of uh spend down their retirement savings, become el eligible for Medicaid and seeing this type of rapid growth, uh inevitably it will put some pressure on the state budget. Um so mention it in that context

152as well. Uh all right. And then focusing kind of I think what you all expected me to talk about why why we're here uh perhaps today talking squarely about the school age population. And I'm starting with Colorado and then I'll I'll show you uh Lmer counties because again thinking about that state budget situation uh looking across across districts when it comes to uh enrollment. This might give us a bit of a feel for what those pressures might look like across the board. So Colorado's school age population and that defined as those aged 5 to 17. We've seen several years of decline already in that school age population and we're projecting a an ongoing decline at least for the next five-ish years uh across the state before seeing stabilization and growth. Uh the growth is reliant

153heavily reliant on net motion again not a guarantee. So if anything, I would say downside risk to this forecast, meaning a likelihood, if anything, of fewer people that are 5 to 17 moving into the future. Looking at uh Lurmer County, we are projecting basically 15 plus years of decline moving forward uh into the future before stabilization and growth. But that stabilization and growth again highly contingent upon net migration to the area. So over the course of the next 10 years projecting about a 2.8% decline in that uh school age population we are seeing. So there's a lot of variation across counties when it comes to uh the school age population and and here we're showing uh those aged 5 to 19. So, it's a little bit outside of the bounds of of those actually in

154K through 12. Um, and and that's because we map doing five-year increments instead of one-year increments. So, this map showing the change in that population between 2020 and 2030. So, we're smack dab in the middle of that decade. Anything in blue is decline. And we're seeing a lot of declines in some of our most populated areas of the state. um Lammer County based on on this map and again it touches on on the 18 and 19 year olds and so the college population being kind of a a big component of of what's happening when it comes to CSU and Lmer County might be skewing this a little bit. Um so that's why we're seeing a roughly stable at least in part why we're seeing roughly stable um population growth in Lmer County. Um, but I

155mentioned this also to highlight the variation that exists even within our counties. So, subcounty level, we see fairly dramatic uh variation. And so, within Lammer County, you might see more or less blue within certain areas of of the county itself. All right, want to highlight the downside risks to the forecast of the school age population. And so, I want to run you through two different scenarios. Uh we've just recently started um producing some scenario analysis to to help people understand what what the what kind of the alternative futures might bring and um to help people wrap their heads around kind of what the risks are, what the magnitude of those risks might be. So here's one of them and uh and so comparing our baseline. So the the gray is that's our latest and greatest

156when it comes to population projections. The blue or the teal color is a low net migration scenario that basically assumes that the state and LMER County don't pick up a share of of the national population, but instead just grow at rates consistent with national population projections. Uh so I'll show you kind of what that looks like. Basically, your orange line would match the gray line when it comes to projected US population growth. And so we're balancing this out with our net migration assumptions to get to that uh that kind of closer to zero% growth in population. That's a very possible scenario. And I say that in part because over the course of the last couple of years, we've tracked really closely with the nation when it comes to population growth. So if we can if

157we can believe these population projections moving forward into the future certainly it is a a possibility that we would see much lower uh population growth in Lur County. So under that scenario ongoing decline in the school age population over time. So that's one scenario I want to run by you. Another one is tied to fertility rates. So, Lammer County uh currently or as of 2024 at 1.19 births per per woman uh projecting that we roughly tick down to zero or 1.08 and stay there. Certainly, we could see ongoing declines in fertility rates. Uh we can compare relative to kind of what we've seen in countries elsewhere. And one country that's an outlier on the low side is South Korea. So South Korea is at 0.75 births per woman. Uh and so if we assumed that

158we ticked down in Lmer County to that fertility rate uh by the end of our forecast period, this is what the population uh projections would look like for that school age population. This is an unlikely scenario, but I think what it helps to communicate is the bounds of possibilities when it comes to fertility rates. Could fertility rates rise? Yes. Though based on what we've seen globally, it's it's an unlikely scenario even with policy u implemented to try to increase fertility rates. Um so if anything, maybe take this as the range of possibilities baseline versus downside uh kind of risk when it comes to fertility rates. Uh here a slide just kind of capturing what the assumptions behind those uh those various alternative scenarios in case you want to take a peek later. And uh winding

159down want to talk a little bit about affordability and and why why we're talking more about this than than perhaps we have in the past. There are a number of different metrics that we can look at. And so here comparing median home prices across counties uh across the US. And so anything in in red is basically higher than your your national average. Um and Lurmer certainly among among those kind of higher cost areas uh across countries. So if you're kind of a young family trying to figure out where where you want to locate, where you want to raise a family, uh Lmer County might not be affordable. And so that could put some downward pressure on on certainly that migration, but also the types of people moving to Lammer County. They might be kind of

160higher income, want to have fewer children, uh, etc. We can also look at this uh, basically factoring in higher pay. So Colorado tends to pay its employees more than other states. uh when we kind of factor in the the that combination of housing costs and and income, this map communicates a lot of information, but it kind of helps us get a feel for that as well. So, what this is doing is is comparing the years of median income needed to buy a median value home as of 2023. And uh again, anything kind of in that yellow, orange, red is higher than the national average and um and more expensive. Uh Lmer County number 57 among counties that has a population that have a population above 65,000. Um so a fairly high ranking when it comes

161to uh kind of relative lack of affordability uh relative to other areas. Uh because this is a forecast, I I do want to highlight the risks and I've I think hopefully I've driven home the housing affordability piece. Um some other risks to think about are competition for labor relative to other states. Certainly things like natural disaster or even water availability can uh constrain population growth or displaced populations. Certainly want to think about national population growth drivers. So immigration policy and even geopolitical events. I'd mentioned that Colorado's net migration is heavily tied to the business cycle. So, if we were to enter a recession or have weaker economic activity, we would expect net migration to weaken. And even things like hybrid versus remote remote work requirements or automation and AI can affect our populations in that

162they affect our labor markets. Um, so just acknowledging many of the risks, but I would say on across the board, um, we're viewing those risks as skewed to the downside, meaning if anything lower population growth than what we're projecting. So as I as we wrap up, I want to return to kind of a key point which is that these projections are at the county level and and pter district uh is school district is you know different than than the county. Uh so there are some tools out there that might be of interest in exploring. Uh one is the Census Bureau housing unit change viewer and there's a a link at the bottom of this slide that can take you to it. Um, this is kind of a cool tool that gives you a more regional

163feel for where housing development is happening, which can be an indicator of population growth. What it's not telling you, it's telling you the number of the change in the housing units, but it's not telling you who's living there. So, are is it is it a family moving in? Are these units affordable? Uh, it's not going to give you that information, but it will tell you kind of magnitude of of change and both at the percentage uh level and then also the number of housing units. So perhaps something to to take a peek at um and to supplement some of the information that I've provided today. And with that, uh please don't hesitate to uh to reach out. We're we are here for answering questions and helping people understand what our population estimates and projections mean.

164Uh we love doing presentations like this. So please um we are a resource and we'd love to to hear from you. But uh otherwise, we'd love to take any questions that you might have. >> Thank Thank you so much for being here. Um, are there any questions? >> I'm just curious because I I believe like those migrations like the district is impacted by business being able to curious if you had any insight on what you're hearing in business in terms of how they're able to age 254 in terms of professional Yeah. Um, some some of the anecd in kind of being at presentations where at various kind of uh business chambers, if you will, across the state, um, what I've heard is that a lot of businesses are are attracted to Colorado because we already

165have kind of a lot of young talent, if you will, already here. Um and so so it's it's been an attractive place to relocate to because uh we have a lot of kind of that for lack of a better wordquote prime working age population uh highly educated and um and Colorado is an attractive place for for folks to to come to. Uh what I heard actually just this week is that some companies are that relocated here because it was kind of more relatively more affordable than say places like San Francisco or California generally. Um some of them are going back to those higher cost areas because Colorado has kind of become comparable and so and it's not necessarily for well to some degree it's for the talent and so for some of the other infrastructure

166that that they might have um in those areas. So, that was kind of an interesting new wrinkle that that I've heard just this week uh in balancing that affordability versus talent piece. >> Other questions? >> I I probably have quite a few, so I'll limit them. Um because I I guess I' I'd like to Do you have any graphs, visualizations that show uh the stochcastic variance given that there's a number of assumptions and I'd love to see the full list of assumptions and what those numbers look like which I don't know if you also have on the website and if all those things are there and I just need to go and look around just tell me that. That's fine. Um because of course the reality is we we're seeing a single line and that's

167based on a number of assumptions. So I just want and that's that's our best guess. I totally get it. But I also want to have an idea of the the range of variations and to what standard deviations that we're looking at when if it's a cone of uncertainty for a hurricane. Same thing with population graphics. Just wondering if you can give some insight. >> Yeah, it's a great question and it's something that we're we're starting to explore a bit more. Um it's historically we have not published that kind of cone of uncertainty so to speak. Um and and we're starting to kind of play with it a little bit with some of the scenario analysis to just to kind of give people a feel for that. Um but it is not something that we've published

168in the past and um and it's we just hired a new uh projections demographer who is able to do that and um historically it's not been something that we've even explored but it is something that we'll likely explore moving forward. So that that cone we don't currently have that it's not something on our website. What we can provide are the underlying assumptions for mortality mortal life expectancy which kind of leads to the projections of of deaths uh fertility rates which I showed those projections here those underlying assumptions and then our net migration assumptions are kind of explicit just in in that they're right out there in terms of the levels expected. So those are your three main drivers and three main underlying assumptions. Um, yeah, and I I think I would what I would say

169with the Yeah, I'll back up a little bit. So, by statute, we're required to produce population estimates and projections. Um, and we do we're also required to solicit feedback on our methodologies. And so we're we we like that kind of feedback and and want to be as transparent as possible when it comes to kind of how we how we come up with these projections. Um so welcome kind of the feedback on on those levels. So it's yeah it's a great it's a great question >> and again if you have even the the sources of of things like the fertility rates and and the projections that clearly is one of your indent variables and you tweak that one and it goes wildly different. Um there's no doubt about that one. And so just understanding where those

170sources are, whether it's the CDC or etc. Um all those things would be super useful. >> Sure. Yeah, happy to follow up. >> Thanks. >> Oh, your plethora of question your plethora of questions was one [laughter] other questions. >> Yeah, please. You showed the growth of housing units. Do you have anything that shows the turnover rate of housing units? Because we keep hearing this is a an aging in place um community at least Fort Collins. I recognize Wellington and Timothith and everything might be different, but even that would be really interesting and and and difference. I know we're supposed to focus on the school age group, but if we can't move out, if if if we have an aging in place, then then there's nobody that can move in, right? I mean, and just trying

171to get a feel for that as well. >> Yeah, the Census Bureau puts out information on on mobility uh through the American uh community survey and some of those mobility data do give us a feel for kind of the extent to which at least people are moving. Uh and so so for example 65 plus year olds statewide 94% remain in their homes year year after year. uh so not a not a ton of turnover and that's you know the shares and American service gives us g gives us a good feel of for the composition of a population but doesn't give us a great feel for estim point estimates because of the nature of it being a survey >> and that would be a better question for our realy friends honestly I understand that as well

172because I'm sure they have >> yeah and lots of variation even at the neighborhood level Other questions. Okay, I know I'm [clears throat] a little >> com. >> Yes, please. >> So, Kate, I want to thank you again for your thoughtful presentation. I think as Kate, Dr. Hooton, and myself spent some time together last Friday. I think one of the takeaways I just want to put into the room is that there are so many intersections here between these various data points and I can't see a silver bullet that we pull this one lever and we fix the challenges that we're grappling with. And when you think about the data points that you did see here, I also want us to be mindful of what we didn't see here, which is policy change that's happening to

173K12 education in the state of Colorado and across this country. Like right now we're in the same week of talking about what this forecast might be. But it doesn't take into consideration that the ecosystem of the number of schools, the types of schools, whether they're private, charter, parochial may change as our governor is opting us into a statewide voucher program or a federal voucher program. >> [snorts] >> So, I just want us to be mindful of that in regarding our kind of financial stability of what we're planning for, what we can currently do in terms of the level of service, the number of schools, and what that looks like in the near future. Um, you also maybe as we're kind of wrestling with what our state legislature is wrestling with, uh, they're introducing a concept

174right now around a potential way of reducing monies from K12 education to balance the budget deficit at the state called a specific ownership tax. And if you think about the famous water glass slide that Dave Mononttoya shared across this community in spirit of helping people understand how schools and our districts are funded between local share and state share, right? Based on assessed property value and then the state backfills the rest depending upon the state legislaturator's amount of what they dedicate towards a per pupil allocation. The mill levy overrides and the debt overrides that we have in this district which are significant according to Dave's presentation. And I think it's actually almost double the amount of mills that every other uh district at a minimum at the floor would be. They've always lived above the water

175glass. They're a supplement. Well, what our state legislature is wrestling with now is actually considering that to be part of our local share. So the state share actually reduces. That's millions of dollars of impact to not just PSD but to many many large school systems across the front range especially who have a voting base who support me levy overrides and debt levies. So I share that with you as context that's not in you know none of those data points are being taken into consideration through the state demographers's office yet. Um but I do appreciate their willingness to continue to look at the data in real time. Um, I do think it's significant that where we were two years ago was, you know, we we were in a spot, we're in a different spot now. And

176to see the the downgrading and the expectations align to the narrative that's not just happening within our system, it's happening within our city. It's happening within our county, it's happening with the university. Uh, the workforce analysis presentation that you're about to hear is only going to talk a lot. You there's intersections uh that we'll just need to continue to pull back the layers to help create shared understanding. But I would invite as a governance team for us to think about how do we help educate not just ourselves but the broader community on these particular sets of data. I think that's really really important. We have a well educated community that wants to know uh this information but there's so many other pieces of information that are out there sometimes uh it's easy to cherrypick. Um,

177I'm curious like we don't need to answer this tonight, but I just think it's going to be really incumbent upon us as a governance team to figure out how we can get a data set that we align, believe, and make decisions about moving forward in the next several years. But Kate, I just want to say thank you on behalf of the entire district and our community. That information is incredibly helpful and I just want to say thank you again. >> My pleasure. Thanks for having me. >> Thank you so much for being here. I'm sure we'll have more questions. Might be getting emails. Thank you very much in here. All right. Uh I believe we have a secondformational report from our Fort Collins Chamber of Commerce. >> Yeah. So when you think about the presentation

178that you just heard regarding the state of the state and what that means for a region in terms of population demographics, uh we have key partners here that are talking to us tonight around a workforce analysis specific to how to build and sustain economic vitality in our region, not just in our school district. So tonight, we look forward to hearing a presentation about the Northern Colorado Workforce Analysis from Anne Hutchinson, our president CEO of the Fort Collins Area Chamber of Commerce, Mark Johnston of Lammer County Economic and Workforce Development, and Sana Kendall from the city of Fort Collins. I want to welcome the three of you, but I also want to say thank you since I've arrived here four and a half years ago. your collect thought partnership around how to come alongside the school

179system for us to be in partners with each other. It has had huge implications and a benefit uh in my opinion around our curricular offerings to align to the local economy and to help our economy grow and be more attractive from all standpoint. So I just want to say thank you for your partnership and thank you here for being here for this presentation. >> Fantastic. Thank you. Uh again, good evening uh board members. We're we're thrilled to provide a bit of a snapshot in town in in time. You have Kate with the the wherewithal in order to do the projections. We collectively have worked together with a company called TIP Strategies to really begin to understand what is our workforce today and what are the what are the things that are impacting that ability to

180either grow, maintain or lose workforce here in Northern Colorado. um already mentioned it's the three organizations working together in order to bring this information to our community. We're really fortunate to be working under before this report data that that SA Kindle and the city of Fort Collins created in in order for us to understand our workforce. And that um data however is very much out of date. 2017 was the last time that we did an update. And so the three partners came together at the end of last year to find the funding in order to make this report possible. So um really want to acknowledge that this is a team sport. We none of us do this work individually and um we're we're very pleased to be able to share that with you today. Let

181me turn it over to Sonnet to talk a little bit through statistics. All right. Um Ann already kind of gave the baseline. I think one of the biggest conversations that we've been having um specifically as economic developers is that this really is one economy. When we think about Lur and Weld, most of our labor shed actually commutes in and from Lur and Weld. We have the oneoffs like Caler Springs, El Paso County or the Boulder Broomfields, but about 80% of our actual workforce commute in and out from Lamar and Weld County. So really wanting to share that with you. Um the other piece is it's not just Fort Collins, it's not just Gley, there are 36 communities in this um real large kind of component of it. So really wanting to share that with you.

182Um wanting to really get to actually though the dashboard and the workforce analysis, but before we get there, it was why now, right? Um I think that's the real big piece and why this work. And so as Ann an Ann mentioned, we actually did this data in 2014 just to really say what's the baseline, what's the foundation of what this looks like for Fort Collins. What we ended up doing is saying this is great information, but what next? So in 2017, we actually lifted up and said, what does that look like for Lmer County as a whole? And that was actually what formed an action plan called Talent 2.0 you know, that was led by the chamber and uh the county and the city as well as city of Loveland really came involved into that

183portion of it. And then um obviously after co things have shifted and we like why are we still using 2017 data at that point? And so we really said we're talking about sunsetting talent 2.0 and really looking at this from a twocount region. What does that look like and how do we really update that information? So this is actually an interactive dashboard that I could geek out on all the time and have been told not to. So I will share that with you. Um there is so much in terms of this and we'll send you the link. Um so the first portion is around the baseline. So the blue is all the population trends and information in that baseline. Then we actually have what does that talent supply look like? What do we actually have

184in our communities? What is coming up through our educational system? um and how many talent are we actually being able to retain and then um this grayish blue is really our talent demand. So tip strategies actually looked at two years of job postings and really looked at what is it that the companies in Northern Colorado are really looking for in those spaces. So that's kind of how we kind of looked at this dashboard. It is an interactive one. You can hover over it. There's even this um at the bottom whatif scenario and that was really for conversations we're having around business attraction. So for city of Fort Collins, we actually were not allowed to do business attraction. We were allowed to do great customer service if the company came to us, right? Um but now

185um the city of Fort Collins has said, you know what, we're no longer the regional hub. This is not where all the jobs are. How do we really sustain ourselves as a community? And one of those is around business attraction, but being very mindful and very specific in two industries, life sciences and in clean and um clean tech. So those are kind of the areas that we're focused on in those spaces. So then um I believe Ann, we're going back to you >> for sure. And um my slide is super easy because it's ditto. [laughter] You you just had the indepth um college level presentation from Kate. So rather than going too far here, I will simply say uh pay attention to that super dark group blue line on the slide that shows that Fort

186Collins is flattening when it comes to population growth. This is um a surprise for many of our community members. Um I think lots of people wake up every day and they maybe drive over Fort Collins and they see this increased traffic. So there's an assumption that we have increased population that's creating that traffic. What our data will show you is that we're bringing people into our community to work. So, we are remaining a hub for work, but most of our population that is working in Fort Collins on a daily basis is living somewhere else and commuting in. So, that's what you're seeing when when we talk about increased vehicle miles traveled, increased cars on the road, that's not growth here that's creating that. That's that commute in and that commute out. So, um, yeah, ditto

187it is. And let me turn it over to my colleagues for some other conversation. >> Yeah, that's right. Hi everybody. Um, I was going to say the same thing. Kate Watkins really really stole the thunder um here as well because this is um a chart that uh is part of a part of the population drivers of change. It's that net um migration. So, she spent quite a bit of time here. Um to dissect the slide, uh this is northern Colorado. So imagine you could get on that dashboard and you could toggle Lur County, you could toggle Weld County, you could toggle northern Colorado. I don't I don't think the data goes deep enough um uh for Fort Collins for this particular set of information. But if we look at the slide bottom, dark blue, um

188Kate talked about natural change. That's that birth and death rate. Um so you can see um from left to right 1991 to uh 2023. that middle um large volume that's that domestic net migration. These are folks who are choosing to move um they're from another area of the United States and then that tops that international migration. So migrants um refugees as students that that makes up that upper um quadrant. So um you know what you can see here uh is it ends in 23. So I don't think frankly the chart represents um the current uh shifts happening at at our federal um level and uh our population and labor force continues to dep depend on um attracting people to uh Colorado not just our residents. So moving to the next slide. Um this digs into

189uh again Kate spoke about some age distribution um in her slides but to the left uh on the margin you can see for Collins Gley uh next then it goes into Weld northern Colorado Lmer County Colorado and the United States and um uh so so essentially the the top left 0 to 19 years of age. So here in Fort Collins we can see a 22.7% makeup of uh our uh residents in the community uh 0 to 19 interesting you can uh juxtapose that to the United States 24.8 eight, Colorado 24%. Um, and then of course the outlier uh Gley, we've learned um Greley's attracting more uh 0 to 19 year olds. I think that theory in part I heard um from Kate was housing costs. Um no doubt. Um what else stands out here? I

190think I think we're good on that. Okay. And then number eight or excuse me. Oh >> total employ. Okay. So total employment here. Yes. So this is measure. >> Hold on here. Sorry. >> Yeah. Last one here. So this this kind of drills into then houses with children. Um and again um left you can see Weld County is that outlier 37.4%. And then we come to the far right margin the second second from um the right LM county 25.3% for Collins 23.3%. Why? again housing affordability um more experienced uh people attracted um to Fort Collins um Lamur County likely then less children in households but you can see uh that um difference uh between city of Gley uh and for co Fort Collins something I think uh that's important for the board to to keep

191in mind >> all right so now I am going to talk total employment um so um The interesting thing um as mentioned is Fort Collins really is starting to lose its kind of stronghold on being that hub, right? But however, we are still seeing that at least one out of every three jobs are still can be traced back to Fort Collins, meaning those jobs are still here and there are people commuting in. And we'll talk a little bit about that in a bit. Um the other piece is Gley is um one in six regional jobs can be traced to Gley. So people are going into Gley for those jobs. But in Fort Collins specifically, I I just wanted to share where's kind of that um cluster of work in in terms of employment. Uh professional

192services, arts, entertainment, outdoor wreck, education, information, and media. And when you think about who are the companies that we have in the Fort Collins area, you can really kind of understand that Fort Collins today is the fourth largest city in the state of Colorado. Gley obviously has been um really kind of coming up there and so we anticipate Gley will become the fourth largest and we will probably take a back seat to them probably at five or six depending on how big Lakewood grows in that space as well and I think that's you. >> Yeah. So um I would be a very bad chamber exec if I didn't remind all of you that you are creating product. You are training product for the economy to grow. And so we want to make sure you understand

193uh again a snapshot in time relative to job counts that we are seeing in in northern Colorado at this point in time. So you can see healthc care continues to be one of our single largest employers across that twocount region. Education again neither one of these are a surprise. Um, with four higher ed institutions here in uh, northern Colorado, it's not surprising education then sits in that second seat as far as pure number of jobs. And then retail trade ends up in number three. Again, we've built economies around this idea of a quality of life with amenities that follow that. It makes sense that we have that many jobs that are attached to that. I do think it's interesting as we come down that list relative to number of jobs attached to specific industries. Um

194we talk a lot about government and the number of government jobs that we actually have here in Lmer County and specifically Fort Collins. Um from a pure number count, it's actually further down if you pull out education and health care. Um but certainly still an important part of our economy. And then this slide takes into account that percentage of jobs that are located within a specific community. So the darkest blue is Fort Collins. The next color is Gley and then the last one is the rest of the region. Again, you see this sizable impact of jobs and percentage of jobs being in Fort Collins, but you also see this growing percentage with our other community members over time. All right, this one's me. Um, for Northern Colorado, again, when we're talking Larur Weld, um, Northern

195Colorado is a net exporter. So, residents are leaving their city or town to go and get their um, go to work every day. Sorry. [cough] So, more than twothirds of Well County working residents actually commute out. But when you think about their proximity and their affordability of housing um those aspects there is a rationale as to why that is happening. However, Fort Collins is a net importer. So almost 50,000 workers come into Fort Collins daily. So um to work um so we are a net importer. Sorry, I've got something in my throat. Um but so but they're usually commuting from nearby communities. So the Timnith, the Wellingtons, the Greley's of the worlds. One thing I would also mention is one in five Fort Collins residents are work from home. So when we start talking about

196AI and the implications of that as well as commuting, that will be something the labor force study will be looking at as well. >> Oh, thanks. Well, I'm done. [laughter] >> Thank you. >> Okay. Hi everyone again. Um this uh this slide um gosh is one I love talking about education attainment in 2023. So couple couple things here to ground us on what we're looking at here. This is a five-year sample from uh American Community Ser uh survey and it's um it's uh surveying the population 25 and over. So, I think that's important to note because I think we've had some some um folks in different audiences wonder is this any indication of our K12 system? It's 25 plus. Um so, um with that said, again, left of the margin, you can see the key

197there starting with Fort Collins, Lmer County, ending uh with Weld and Gley. And then as we go left or light blue, um we start with no diploma. Um so, these are 25 plus uh folks who do not have uh a high school diploma um or alternative diploma then moves into high school diploma um some college but no degree uh the uh associates degree the bachelor's degree and then graduate degree and I [clears throat] think what you can really see here in Fort Collins is a is a pretty high concentration bachelor's and master's degrees um when you look at that um which uh you uh as uh Son and Ant kind of talked about maybe not surprising um based on um some some of the workers that uh we're attracting we head across the interstate um

198uh into Weld and Gley higher concentration of high school diploma um some college a a degree that's more of that labor um shed of uh technical and applied industries um so for me what I think uh I I like to illustrate here is workforce solutions. This district, all districts really need to um consider the full continuum um because again we have people um traveling in between regions, staying in one area, uh living in one area, um commuting to another region. Um, so the work that you're continuing to do to support work-based learning, um, you know, the career and technical education programming, uh, is critical for for for your students and I feel like this education attainment, uh, rate shows up. So, >> so that is, um, a an entire 70 page document that we have

199available for you boiled down to a couple of highlights that we felt like you would want to see today. Uh as SA mentioned, there's an amazing tool that we u will give you all access to that you can do every whatif scenario and uh the deepest of data diving that you would like and we certainly encourage it. Our hope in releasing this report and releasing these tools was to inspire then the conversation about so what and that certainly is already beginning to happen in the 2count region. We have peers that have now come alongside us to say we need to come together as LMER and Weld counties to begin to build a new talent plan that does consider the fact that um there are no walls when it comes to being a family or a

200worker. Uh those lines that we all like to draw on maps really don't matter when it comes to the economy. They also don't matter when it comes to families. and how can we work together as a twocount area to continue to grow our economy. I thought Kate did a great job of of really pointing out yes, we need to be keeping an eye on birth rates. Yes, we need to be looking at this aging in place, which I do believe is is a key challenge for us in Fort Collins. But we also need to be keeping an eye on that economy knowing that it can have a very direct impact on our ability to um keep that migration number up in order to keep this self-fulfilling prophecy occur. So, we're happy to answer any questions,

201but also let you get on with your conversation. >> Thank you so much for being here. Do we have questions? >> Just really quick, um, of course, thanks for coming. Really appreciate the information. Have you heard from any of the business leaders in the community about the talents that they want to see our students have come out of our schools? >> Well, there absolutely um you know sector partnerships I think are one one area where businesses are rallying uh driving conversations. Um your um your educators are in the room listening hearing uh adapting curriculum. Um we have an active manufacturing, construction, healthc care, financial, nonprofit and hospitality >> hospitality um all industry businessled. Um, additionally through this partnership and and um and others um we'll be launching a regional um action committee that has a

202two and fiveyear tactical plan um that businesses uh have influenced and essentially guided in manufacturing, construction and healthcare. it it's essentially a bit of a playbook from from the business community and again school district leaders um not only here in Pter uh but others were at the table listening to to to businesses and uh we're going to roll that plan out through our workforce development boards and through our regional action committees one of one of uh Ann's leaders will be on that um so that that's a couple of ways >> and and maybe to put a finer point on it we're needing skill set across industry. So, we need everything from the the guy or gal who can show up at 5:00 a.m. and turn on that next computer system that makes things happen in

203a building all day all the way up to the individual that can dream the next solution. So, it's it it is across the skill set continuum and all of our industries are saying we need more of everything. Um, and and I think that's an important part of the conversation. others. >> Go ahead, Andrew. >> You talked a lot about people driving in. >> As we drive around, there's loads of construction, >> people moving into it and staying. So, do you have any insight into what we're seeing there with the populations that are actually moving in >> and and hitting those places? I mean there's a lot of growth going on with that and even if they're inter you know migrating internally in Fort Collins that leaves where are people filling in etc. >> For sure

204and so I I'll provide maybe a bit of residential perspective and then ask s to provide that more business-based perspective. Uh when it comes to residents, we're behind. Uh we are we are somewhere between 500 to a thousand home units behind when it comes to creating supply and we've been 500 to a thousand units behind for a number of years. Two 2008 truly did impact Fort Collins in a way when it comes to that supply of housing that we still have not caught up with. Um, in my role, I would then offer the observation that we, in addition to crashing our supply chain, we've now made it harder to build that supply in Fort Collins in comparison to other locations. So, that added regulation, those added expectations, those added costs are causing us to not

205be able to catch up to the demand that we have when it comes to our residential demand. But I'll have S to talk about the spaces that are filled with workers. >> Um yeah, you know, I would say so I typically have conversations with a lot of the larger employers and they've really been talking about how do they find um and be able to retain their employees. So we are seeing obviously growth in the northeast side, but there's also then the challenges of transportation back into town as well as the amenities that they're looking for in in terms of that. So I do think that is something we're hearing a lot from our employers and our employers are saying tap us into the conversations as we try to figure out what type of solutions there

206might be opportunities for in those spaces. But when you know we were talking to Annheiser Bush I think um around a project about 60% of their employees live in Fort Collins the rest are commuting in. And so when you think about these uh 12 am to 12 pm shifts or this actually it's usually 6 am to 6 pm shifts right we are seeing that and actually broadcom made the concerted effort to say we don't want our employees then to leave to go get higher education to actually give opportunity for economic mobility uh to the Boulder Longmont area where you're driving another hour each way after a 12-h hour shift. So they've actually worked with Lair Mur County Workforce as well as Front Range Community College to have that training actually on site. So we're seeing

207that more creative ways to really help their workforce with upward mobility in those spaces too. >> So I have two questions but I have an assumption. So I think the first question is probably more >> I was just curious why you all are targeting um attracting life science and clean tech versus other other industries they call for that. Yeah. So >> um again so our office actually was formed in 2011. So economic health which is economic development in other communities. Um we do a lot around business retention and expansion. When we proposed actually those two industries specifically, the conversation was around we're really targeting high quality paying jobs where there's economic mobility opportunities but also to help and support and really be um not supplemental but very like kind to what is already happening in

208our region. So Colorado State University being an R1 school with a lot of research, it's an opportunity to really leverage the assets you already have. And then in terms of the clean tech, um obviously the city of Fort Collins has um climate goals and how do we really leverage the talent that's in our community, but also the talent that wants to be in our community to help um really solve those big hairy audacious goals. So that's why those two were um the first two to be proposed. We are going to be talking to council about obviously with softening sales tax. Is there going to be other types of businesses that we to attract? But one of the biggest criterias was around quality of jobs and leveraging the assets in the likeminded set of uh the

209businesses to the community. So not bringing in something that is completely different than what the community is interested in our community. >> Thank you. That um makes sense. So then I think the reason I was like too far I'm trying to make sense of it. So, I'm trying to understand like like you've spoke a lot about Well County and Greley and whatnot and their growth rate, but then I'm also conflicting in my head when I'm thinking about the industries that we are focusing and targeting and the limitation in terms of maybe how many jobs are available. And then going back to what Kate shared, I'm also thinking about education level in child birth, right? And so, you know, more education making assumptions in this statement, right? Um impacts fertility rates. And so I think I'm

210kind of confused as the industries were targeting while also talking about growth. And it feels like there's an inverse relationship there somehow. Um didn't know if you had any thoughts on that. No, I I I think your observation is a very thoughtful one and that is um as long as we do pursue a knowledgebased economy, which is our primary focus here in Lammer County, but specifically in Fort Collins, um the reality is we will most likely continue to see that decreased growth rate. Um, does that mean we throw out all of the work that we've done to date and we pursue less knowledgebased jobs? I don't think so. But I do the conversation that I've certainly been having with our city council members is how do we make it easier to build things in Fort

211Collins? And when I say build things, that's housing. How do we build commercial properties? How do we build stuff? Um, we've we've not necessarily been a community that has put our arms around manufacturing at a high level in Fort Collins. I I think it's time for us to have the conversation about do we want to lean more heavily on a manufacturing perspective for our city limits or not? Uh, I don't know that I have the magic answer, but I I am very curious about the question. Can we make it easier to build things in Fort Collins? Thank you so much. I really appreciate your response to that question. >> I I would add a couple of things. Uh when we were talking about those um industries specifically, it was also about what we're seeing coming

212out of the educational systems and making sure that there was economic mobility opportunities for those folks so that they don't have to leave our community to have a good quality job and then come back after they've succeeded. So, that was one of the really big targets that we were looking at. Um, I can tell you we're working with a company that's in clean energy right now um with Colorado State University. They're talking about potentially a thousand jobs, right? And not all of those will be brand new jobs coming in. It will be from people um in our community. So what we're doing now is pulling all the skill sets of those jobs to say here's what we have in our community thus far that you could tap into that would also help them in terms

213of um quality of e economic mobility reports. Right? So um the other piece I wanted to mention is we do have this dashboard the northern Colorado workforce analysis. We also have a job quality and access tool dashboard that you can actually click onto from here and you can look at how many jobs in 80524 in uh let's say restaurant retail and it will tell you the demographics of those folks as well as what is the educational requirements and the educational attainments of those folks as well. So wanting to make sure you're aware that there's an additional resource on that dashboard. Um, so we really try to look at it from both kind of components. >> Um, yeah, I want to thank you all for being here and staying late and [clears throat] maybe you're may

214or may not be missing a CSU game that you all [laughter] >> we're all very >> maybe coordinated the dress for. Um, I want to pick up on one one thought that Ann said and it was partnership and I think what what uh Dr. Ziggler is talking about bleeds right into this is that we are in our locus of control here at the school board. I can't create jobs. I can't create migration patterns from the state demographer. I can't force people to move into LMER County any quicker because I can't make housing more affordable. That's not in the purview of this deis. What I can do is prepare the kids that we have for any kind of environment they got. But also, what I would like to be able to do is have the jobs

215that wouldn't force that reverse migration out to your point >> about it's being too expensive to live here for the kids that we are graduating and so we've graduated with options and your option is to leave Lair County. And so I think we need to have that continued focus and partnership between being intentional with our strategic partnerships throughout the region and attracting that workforce in to say, "Hey, we've got a willing and able workforce, not just in the higher ed, life sciences and the professional services categories, but in manufacturing. Look at what we're doing in our CCT classes." Because I think we we are one of the beacons in the state as far as our programming and we're continuing to put investment in it as you all know. And so I we we we're chomping

216at the bit. We'd love to be able to send them and release them out into our own backyard. >> Yeah. >> So, that's my pitch. Sorry, spirit moved me a little bit. [laughter] >> Uh certainly. And uh I I certainly want to appreciate those comments because um I don't do a single presentation in the community without reminding people that we need raw product in order to drive this economy. the kids that you are seeing every day are exactly that for our economy and partnership is key. Um, and we're looking forward to continuing to work with Pter School District and others in order to to grow that opportunity for the kids today to be the leaders of tomorrow. >> Yeah. >> Go ahead, T. >> Thanks. Echo a lot of what everybody's saying up here and

217thank you very much for being here and for that in-depth study. Actually, I want to dig into into that a lot further. Um, I would kind of like to add on to that, like do you feel like you're getting enough support or input from PSD when making pitches to u potential businesses? It feels like that that's changed for the positive. >> Agreed. >> And I'd just like to learn more about that. And what else can we do to help to help support that? Um the example I would give is um obviously there was an announcement about the USDA regional hub, right? And a big conversation about that was the potential of moving anywhere from they said 50 to a,000 2,000. We're we're most likely going to be in the 500 to 800 jobs. Um pter

218school district coming in and talking with us and in talking with the USDA decision makers in that I think was a huge component of that. um the sector partnership model works right um I remember the first time standing up with the manufacturing sector partnership and they were like we've done that before right and I think it really is the um everyone down the line right really listening and hearing industry and having that opportunity I think has been one but I know Brian and I were texting about USDA and and really making sure that they knew they were welcome in our community but that we and that we wanted to see them succeed in in the moves that are going to happen. >> So, keep saying yes. Keep keep giving your leaders enough of a leash

219in order to the things they need to do in order to be good partners. Ple please continue to support that work. >> Other questions or comments? >> To end the game, >> but it was a win. [laughter] I think it was a win. I'm looking Okay. >> Well, half the battle's there. You shouldn't get to be there to see it. Um, thank you so much for being here. I don't know that you have the answer to this question, but I did have one question. Do we know a percent of households with children that are needed to maintain our population? >> No, but we'll get it. >> No, but we'll we'll make a we'll make we'll phone a friend and see if we can't get that back to you. >> Awesome. I had one other and

220it was slide nine and it just you were commenting like that this was um big shifts happening but I'm having a hard time just because there's so many of those bars on the far side I see 2001 and it looks like Fort Collins is at just over 60%. On the far other side do you have what that kind of percentage is for Fort Collins right now? >> Is this the slide you're talking about? I don't do you have that number on your on your documents on >> I do not have that one. Um are you asking how many jobs that is? >> No, I'm just asking for the percent because it looks this percent is pretty flat. >> Oh, actually let's see here. So if we just kind of reverse engineer that, it looks like

221a little bit um under 40%. So it's that look sounds pretty comparable to where it was in 2001, but when you were talking about it, it sounded like these shifts were >> large. This is the 100% rate and as our population has doubled since 1990, you're seeing that um gley is starting to even a little shift in that will actually pop them up um higher. So uh we're still at 170,000. and I believe they're at like 100 110,000. They're going to be moving more towards the west. We're moving more towards the east in terms of growth. And I think that's where we're going to see a lot of those employment hubs starting to really pop up, too. >> Great. Thank you. I just want to thank for the clarity. >> All right. Seeing >> Thank

222you so much for being here. >> All right. Okay. Uh last agenda item we have our district annual budget process priorities and updates. >> Yes. So with us this evening to present the district annual budget process is our budget director Brian Gustoson. Brian I want to welcome you. >> Thank you for having me. See this is what happens. All right. Now, clear the room. >> All right. Thanks. I'm Brian Gustoson. Uh, thanks for the introduction. Look forward to meeting Dr. Ziggler and Dr. Spain and Miss Bla, Miss Bae, uh, down the road here. Um, doing some introductions and doing some budget onboarding, um talking about school finance, those kinds of things in the future. But it's budget season now and kind of like a professional sports season, it's really long and really long and there's

223a lot of momentum and energy at the beginning and then at the end and in the middle, it can be pretty tough. Uh but but my purpose tonight is to hopefully kind of lay out what does the process look like? um set the stage for the fiscal year 27 budget. Uh we're in current fiscal year is fiscical year 26, 2025-26. We call it fiscal year 26. Next year will be fiscal year 27. And that's what we're starting to plan now. We're in the middle of revising our current budget, but we're already getting into next year. And that'll be the focus what I talk about. But what I'm I'm excited about with this presentation this evening is that we have now some additional perspective from the previous two presenters to really consider as we think about

224our process and as as you think about some of the the information I discuss. It's not going to be as detailed as it later in the in the year or as certainly as what we've seen earlier. Uh but I think those perspectives are are going to impact a lot of maybe the priorities that go into the the budget this year. So the the hope is we can come away with uh thinking about the challenges we've got, the processes we use and the initial components going into our planning. So let's just jump right into challenges and take a look at it really from three perspectives right now. the local perspective, the state perspective, and the federal perspective. A lot of this has been touched on. Again, refer to to those previous presentations and think about some

225of those things that have been brought up already tonight. And the very first bullet there has been addressed multiple times over the last hour, hour and a half. A local challenge of declining enrollment trends in the district. Not only in the district, but statewide as well. and and that impacts the next bullet, the the state formula. Hey, but in our in our local budget, the local district, declining enrollment trends certainly are impacting how we fund schools. We'll talk about how that formula works as we get more in depth into the budget process and and really that's that's a huge driver of of what we're going to be faced with as we go forward, not only in fiscal year 27, but beyond. We're awaiting updated projections for next year. Those will be coming in January to

226really start to put meat on the bones of our projections as when it comes to dollars. Uh but we've got some a little bit uh of data to work with and we've got an early projection on on funding at least proposals from the state level uh that will impact us locally. That state budget challenge. We're currently in the process of a ramp up of a new school finance formula. So concurrently, this is the first year of two finance formulas working simultaneously and the phase out of one from 1994, the phase in of a new one starting this year. That is a little bit mind-blowing to start with. Uh but as that proceeds, our funding and our mechanisms are going to change and there's some significant impacts I think uh that will will be hitting PSD

227as well as other districts but in different ways. On top of that implementation of a new school finance formula well as as part of it uh there's a significant component that is a reduction of averaging. What does that mean? That means we are funded on an average pupil count as a declining enrollment district. That mechanism of the formula is starting to go away. It's being phased out. And as we see that phase out proceed over a series of years, we're going to experience student funding declines that are accelerate. Okay? Even ahead of our actual enrollment declines. and and that's a lot to digest and and it'll take a little bit more time to get into some of the the in-depth nuances of how that works, but that is a significant challenge that we face from

228the from the state perspective. Additionally, just just listening earlier um discussion about potential additional changes to the finance formula structures of how does the state manage to figure out its budget um by adjusting its pieces of the pie. There was talk earlier about specific ownership tax and how that could potentially change, right? shifting of dollars in in one pot that would impact certainly the K12 education pot as well. So, we're going to be navigating those things of course as best as we can and and um trying to get up to to speed with the dynamics of those things, the timing of those those mechanisms if they are to uh to proceed. And then overall there's the challenge that uh that Kate talked about earlier really of the fewer statewide resources for the state budget and

229how it impacts school budgeting. Uh public schools K12 portion of the budget is the largest section of the the state of Colorado budget. And I I thought the uh the the illustration of the aging population here in Colorado and thinking about that impact it it it feels like it's it's far removed from, you know, those kindergarteners or those third graders, but that impact of that aging population on a finite pot of resource uh will certainly impact school funding down the road. And so considering that we've got significant challenges ahead of us and that's just local and state. There are also federal challenges and that that's also been referred to tonight whether it's um funding for special education, funding for early childhood uh programs. There is a lot of impact that that we feel from federal

230dollars. Even though we don't see a lot of federal dollars directly in our general fund, we see those in other funds like our grants fund um and and even a little bit in our child nutrition fund, although that's that's dynamic shifts a little bit with our our healthy meals programming. So, we've got a lot ahead of us, a lot of things that we have to think about navigating as we work through our process here. Let's talk a little bit more about that local challenge. And while I don't have the nice bar graphs that you've seen earlier and and this graphic is extremely hard to read, I believe you do have this in your packets. You uh had this earlier tonight. This is uh the comparison of the fiscal year 26. That's the current year October

231count versus last year's October count. And if nothing else, I what you may notice if you're able to see colors there is that that reddish shade is pretty prevalent. which indicates declines year-over-year of enrollment. October of 2025 compared to October of 2024. And if you were to look more closely at that that U chart and that table of information, you see a lot of negative numbers that generate that as shade of color. A very few schools uh in the the span of the the last year experiencing growth of enrollment population. When comparing last year to this year, okay, PSD is recognizing 513 fewer district non-charter students. And that that's is exclusive of those five charter schools. So that's just our our um basically our our core schools that we talk most regularly about. So that's

232the big challenge, KE, is that dynamic as we uh move forward into fiscal year 27. So, jumping a little more toward the statewide challenges and statewide uh projections, at the end of October, early November of each year, the governor kicks off this budget season by proposing a a budget to uh the legislature. And usually uh that well I I would instead of usually I would say often times that kind of sets the tone for what things um will happen throughout the actual public school finance act. Every once in a while it's variable um as far as large changes that could occur at the end of the budget season compared to the beginning. Sometimes it starts at one place, has various fluctuations throughout the season and ends up back where the governor proposes it. We're really

233unsure right now what that will look like at the end of this season, but the governor came out with that request uh actually on Halloween and declared in this proposal a total program increase across the state of about $413 more per pupil of per pupil revenue. Okay. So, that's a significant increase in public school funding. Now, total program is this this um phrase that I'll use a lot. That's basically the the formula. That's the formula of kids times a per pupil rate that generates threequarters of our general fund revenue. And when you take that per pupil rate times whatever number of kids you have, you generate, you know, in our in our case, hundreds of millions of dollars uh for operating your school system. That's largely based on the inflation rate. And Dave talked about

234that inflation rate. The Denver Lakewood Aurora consumer price index is what gets used to to standardize that rate in the school finance formula. It's projected to be 2.6%. 6% when the formula gets put together for next fiscal year. That is part of this $413 per pupil increase. It's important to remember as I mentioned that we're going to continue reducing the pupil count averaging and that will go from four years of averaging this year to three next year. So that's part of this phase out of being funded for average pupils in a declining enrollment scenario. categorical programs. The uh cate categorical programs are a little bit outside of that formula, but they are specific buckets targeted uh for specific types of funding like special education, transportation, vocational education. Those those items uh come into our general

235fund revenue and usually grow at about that rate of inflation when all is worked out in the in this finance act. And that's the projection for next year as well. However, what does that mean for us? Because that's the first thing we all look at. The governor releases his budget request and then we all are clamoring for what are the runs? Where are the runs? Where are all the calculations? We want to see them for our districts. And as we got that information and we scrolled, I had to do a double take because I got to Lur County Pter School District and it's there proposed to be an increase of $126 per pupil which is about a 1.1% increase. And immediately the question is why so different? Why so different? Why would the per pupil

236rate increase here be less than half of that rate of inflation driving the the school finance formula? And really, it's a really hard question to answer, but it's really embedded in this this new formula. The differences are beyond or they come above a base level of funding. Every district is going to receive a base level of purple funding all the same. And then it's all these what we call factors that get piled on top of that that create changes and differences across the districts. Districts are start are are measured then at what kind of atrisisk population uh are in the district. How many of the students are are determined to be at risk? In this case, free and reduced lunch um eligible families. that for for PSD we're always just kind of on the sort

237of middle to low end compared to other districts as far as our atrisisk population. A now that's not to to discount our our specific population when looked at it at from a state perspective. Our rates just aren't the same level as some of the other rates especially cities this size or or larger. And so that's not a big differentiator for us. We do receive some atrisisk funding and will in the formula next year. The cost of living rate is another calculation that's differentiated from district to district. And we just saw some information that was pretty interesting that showed Lur County and Fort Collins is pretty high and and we've experienced that. Uh it's, you know, it's probably part of the reason why we just heard um conversations about, well, Fort Collins is growing to the

238northeast and Weld County is growing toward the west and and trying to find affordable places. Folks in Weld County migrate out to work, those kinds of things due to cost of cost of living. Well, unfortunately for gosh, and Dave could talk to this for hours, for years and years and years, the cost of living factor for our district is quite low relative to what we experience in cost of living daily. We received some and and will continue to receive some cost of living funding, but relative out of the cost of living bucket of the school finance formula, it's just not a huge differentiator again for us. Then we get into some other other factors. A newer one is this local factor that's based on a federal designation of like rural or distant um communities, urban

239communities. We're a midsize city. uh is is our designation and that generates exactly zero dollars in the new formula for us in the local factor. Again, other districts, especially rural are benefiting in the new the new formula from this local factor and that was a lot of um the push to update the school finance formula was to address some of those changes and you know for us at least we're not receiving that funding. Can I interrupt and ask a question on that because this always fascinated me. >> What's the criteria by which a rural county is uh designated >> and how come we don't make the cut? So this particular factor again I it's it's tied to a federal designation and I couldn't give you the exact specific uh nomenclature for that that specifies certain

240population ranges um for lur r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r rural distant um midsize towns. I I'd have to look through all the various ones and then I could get the ranges. >> So it's tethered more to population than it would be geographic sprawler. Okay. So, and it looks at the district in its entirety as opposed to portions of the district. We're we're somewhat unique in that we have a a pretty heavy population center in parts of our district and then some real rural um maybe borderline remote portions of the district as well. And unfortunately, those don't carry enough I guess weight in the district as a whole to generate funds in the local factor. Now, there is a small segment

241of funding that we do receive called small attendance centers. It's outside of the um the formula uh for I guess distance with or recognition of um those more uh remote schools in our district, but it it's a relatively small amount when we're talking about the formula. Similarly, there are still size factors in the formula. size of district, not just a geographic location, but more of population size. And again, we're just kind of in that spot where we're in the middle. And this is really targeted toward uh providing assistance to greater funding for more rural locations uh to assist with funding places that have a harder time with transportation, attracting staff, those kinds of things. And we don't see any size factor um funding in the the formula either. So there we start to get that

242differentiation the why of 413 versus $126 in per people increase. Will that be the number 126 additional for us when this is all said and done? No, it won't. That that'll change. We expect u changes to come throughout the the legislative process that'll start in January. But that's at least where things are are being kicked off. So acknowledging those challenges, um thinking about okay, what's ahead of us, what does our budget process look like? And and really to break it down into pretty big categories right here, four, well, three really primary areas. One that we're already starting into is our studentbased budget or SBB process. And you probably uh newer newer directors have probably heard about this a lot. I know we've discussed this uh a lot over the last year with with returners and

243talking about how does the SPB formula work, but really this is a collaboration between administration centrally at schools, uh the school communities and school staffs to work on allocating their funds that are that are u submitted to the schools through our process and and building their staffing, their operations uh from those allocations. We we almost mirror sort of the the U Colorado school finance approach and that we allocate dollars on a per student basis with some additional factors based on um student characteristics at each school that then turn into an allocation of X amount of dollars. goes to the the school, the principal and that community work on okay based on our goals and the focus of the district and and the strategic plan, how do we allocate these dollars each year? Hey, that process

244is we're in the middle of the current year's process. I'll talk a little bit more about that and we're getting ready to kick that process off for next year already with um looking at enrollment projections and then this data from um the governor's budget proposal as well. So that's that's the the first push and that takes uh a lot of effort early here in January, February, March so that schools can build their plans and address their staffing needs for the next year, right? Get their staffing lined up, attract staff, address retirements, whatever it is they have to do. Hey, but as that's going on, we also have operational um budgets. So if you think of academic departments or facilities departments, those kinds of things, those groups are also starting to review budgets and think about

245plan for the next year. When those things are occurring, uh we start to to convene different review teams. One, the budget design team. Uh that group I'll talk a little bit more about here in a moment. the district accountability committee for which I believe you reviewed their recommendation uh earlier this evening. Um they provide some feedback about the budget and how how dollars should be utilized uh in planning for the next year. The district advisory board is also a group uh as and we're we're starting to try and tie in more and more with these committees uh that's giving us a lens on community perspective on the budget and and thoughts on um how it's utilized feedback those kinds of things. Then ultimately you all uh not only have the burden of approving adopting budgets

246but provide feedback and input on priorities. And that's kind of what tonight's about, too, is how do we prioritize things with your lens as well. So, I'll step back to that first step, the studentbased budget cycle. And if if you take a look at this this um chart that's on the screen, it's basically a clock. We start right up at 12:00, right at the top, December 2025, we're in the middle of the current year's trueups. What that means is we started a budget process last year with protections in January of last year to fund schools for this year and we allocated budgets and they were distributed and and managed and staff were hired and then we have to get to October to see how close those projections came and then we true them up. So,

247let's say just pick a school, Bacon Elementary School. Uh, I believe they were projected to have 378 students last January and October 1st they ended up with 378 students. So, not a lot of true up there. True up means if Bacon were to come in at 370, we funded them for 378, we'd be taking some money back. but also if they came in at 388 and we funded them for 378, we would be forwarding on more funds to address the needs of that change of population. That's the process we're in right now, calculating that this week and and hope to have those numbers finalized by the end of the week and those transfers out to schools next week before the break. So, as we move clockwise here, that happens and then we move into January.

248And I mentioned earlier that we get enrollment projections in January that we start building next year's budgets with. We take those projections, we start to plug them into our formula, and we determine allocations that go to schools by about Valentine's Day. So, schools get these allocations middle of February, then they've got a couple weeks to work through their planning. We call that the comp planning process that happens in late February to early March. And they each go through a presentation with uh myself um HR folks, assistant superintendents on here's what our plan looks like based on the resources that have been allocated. That happens in early March. And by right after or right around spring break, the budgets for the schools are set, barring some really significant um changes, whether it's in the school finance

249formula or or enrollments, those kinds of things that that schools are seeing that they're going to be set in March. And then it's that that game of all right, we got to see what uh the whites of the eyes show up in August and then stay through October 1st and and what we really get funded at and the cycle continues back in in December next year. We'll be trueing up next year's budget for the schools. On that other side of things, the departmental side. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Let me stick with SBB, the studentbased budget, real quick just to to illustrate that we are taking our enrollment projections with that school finance formula information to generate dollars that go to the schools and then into those comp plan meetings. So, as I mentioned earlier, pretty similar

250to the way the state formula works in many regards. But concurrently, our departments are analyzing their staffing. They're looking at what are their budgetary objectives, what are their objectives within the system, what are they um charged to achieve, what are they trying to achieve uh with long-term projects, whatever it is, and then analyzing their financial data to plan their budgets for next year. And that process has already begun as well, especially with our academic groups and our uh our facilities and operational groups. Any proposals that come out of there will go to what we call that budget design team. And that budget design team uh really is just a group of of uh various staff representatives that will review pro provide feedback, ask questions about these these um recommendations, provide suggestions on the formula or

251the um whatever it is we've we've got that's maybe a pressing topic budgetarily each year. that the BDT is made up of licensed classified administrative um staff members and includes employee association representatives and that group reviews budget recommendations that may come from cabinet or the negotiations process uh as I mentioned earlier the district accountability committee or the board of education and and ultimately those perspectives and feedback help determine what's in the budget each year. This again, uh, lots of stuff there for you to look at in your packet. Really, this is just a budget process timeline that shows that, hey, budget season began and it's off and we're running. And and some things to note as you look through that as um sort of some checkpoints, whether it's for negotiations when those things occur. From

252my my lens as the budget director, I look at uh like in January, we're going to submit a revised budget for this current year to you all by the end of January. We have until January 31st to do that to change this year's budget. And that's one that's kind of the next point checkpoint that you all have to to look at the budget uh for approval or adoption. Then you'll see a a variety of iterations of the budget in the spring in April, May, and then in June, a preliminary budget. Uh that's really kind of just sort of the starting point for what does that document look like? Uh a proposed budget like here's where we think it should be and then if there are any changes, uh updates for a budget for adoption in

253June. So that that's what you can glean out of this timeline. Just to summarize those next steps, we're in that fiscal year 26 studentbased budget trueup. We're getting ready to revise this current year's budget and you'll see that in January. I already talked about enrollment projections and allocations to schools as well as the departmental analysis and planning that's ongoing. Additionally, on top of these things, we usually see and we'll probably see I can't speak for Mr. hunt in the back. But I think I heard him mention earlier we may see some adjusted multi-year projections. Um I don't I don't know exactly when I under promise and overd deliver. I gave spring of 2026. Um but we'll we'll see there because that that takes a lot of work to try and figure out what does that

254look like for five years. We have a current year or current set of uh multi-year projections that we work with and and they've been pretty dang close. If you look at what the enrollment overall was this year uh compared to what was projected, pretty spot-on. So all that to think about what are our priorities? We've got challenges. Uh we we're undertaking our process. These are the priorities we communicated coming into this current budget season or fiscal year 26, the one we're currently in. That was to address and align to the strategic plan to address literacy, to address mental health and belonging needs and graduating with options. Additional priorities were a continued evaluation of enrollment trends and then of course to address safety and competitive compensation and benefits within the lens of all right how how

255does the budget everything we budget um really stay focused on these priorities. Hey, these really uh thinking about the challenges are are probably becoming more and more challenging to address as we go on as we think about declining enrollment, as we think about scarcity and resources and providing not only compliance related services, but addressing the needs and and wants of our district as well. kind of this the sobering real reality is that uh right we've got to address these priorities with either limited or stagnant resources. If you look at a lot of the data that was presented earlier would love some feedback on priorities but also uh your questions or thoughts as we are kicking off the budget season. Brian, just really quickly, has your department looked at um the financial impact if we have

256a complete and total erase of averaging this year instead of the draw down. >> I do have that modeled somewhere and I I don't know that number off the top of my head. Uh but I >> I can certainly get that for you. Can I weigh in on that? So this year under the four-year averaging, not including where Brian's suggesting we're going, which is a three-year averaging, we benefited this year approximately 595 students of additional funding. So when you think about the loss of enrollment at an average of 500 I think it was 513 students and then the elimination of the averaging piece which right now we benefited this year of upwards of funding for almost 600 students that's like two school two elementary well it's actually more than when you have elementary schools that

257are hovering in the 300s you're talking about three or four schools of funding so it's it's pretty significant >> I I again I I can get that exact uh projection, but I think with uh averaging just an early look at the next year of averaging decline that would be in the mid 500s of funded pupils and that's not the projected enrollment decline that exceeds the projected enrollment decline. Compound that with taking away averaging in general, it'd be pretty high. >> Thank you. Any other uh questions? >> Yes, please. >> I just real have a quick question. You said 513 non-charter students, so it doesn't include our charter students. >> That number does not. The handout you have does have the charter schools at the bottom. And so the subtotal right above just so I can

258see it a little bit >> the the subtotal above the charters is that change of 513. If you include the district charters the five district charters that's a 493 student overall enrollment decline. >> So they went up slightly. >> They got 96. Okay. That's what I was curious about. Thank you. >> Other question comments. >> It's okay, Andrew. You can ask questions. >> Yes, of course. You just >> I know I' I've had some good conversations with Bud about some of the data and things like that. and f you know when when we're looking at lost this year. What's the breakdown by grades? Because that wasn't in this pres presentation of course. So you may not know that and logically it can't be all at the kindergarten level because that has a very finite how

259many years you can keep losing that many at kindergarten etc. that then begs why are students why do we have a net net movement out at different grades and things like that. So I'm wondering what we have compiled in terms of the of any kind of survey or other qualitative data to get an understanding of what is causing changes. >> Sure. Um, while I wouldn't have that information uh beyond the the really helpful information earlier about the the natural changes, that is that how she put it the natural change and the net migration for for the other various reasons. I have to reference our data as well as those folks diving into the the burst rates, the the really specific local data >> to look at. >> Keep talking to Bud. That's right. first grade,

260second grade. It is interesting to look at that chart and see how each grade you you can kind of see bands of how each grade are sort of sized similarly. You you've got your kindergarten and first grade in one sort of same size and then your second and third in kind of a same size and then your fourth and fifth are a little little bit bigger. They're they're somewhat similar. That that's kind of fascinating. It would makes me ask the same question as well. Do you mind if I weigh in just a little bit too? So, just I know this slide is really difficult to read, but if you can ground yourselves in what's in your packet, if you look at the right hand side of the screen and you see that wave of green

261in the middle, I I want to explain that a little bit because green is a there's more kids than we had expected, right? And that is roughly our middle schools. Um, and so we as like kind of unpacking why why are we getting more students in our middle schools compared to our elementary and our high, we really see two things that are at play. Uh, many of you have um elementary age children that historically were a fourtrack school, may have went to a three and now a two-track school. So they're like the fourth and fifth grade students which are larger cohorts of kids compared to our kindergarten, first and second grade. those students are migrating into our middle schools. So that is accounting for some of the bump that's happening there. I would also say

262when you look at the total K12 ecosystem, not just our traditional schools, but a lot of our charter schools are elementary only. And so we see students come back from charter into our middle school. So we believe those are the two primary reasons why we're seeing a bump at the middle school level. I would also say you probably through other net migration you think about the the presentation we heard heard earlier the people who are moving here maybe a little bit further along in their career and have middle to high school age students that's accounting for some of that waves too. Um but there's no question about it. I mean it's really hard to see but our kindergarten cohort this year is under 1500 and that's by far it's the only cohort of students that

263we have that's under 1500. Um and so as we have to really pay attention in my opinion to how our ecosystem of schools shift either contracting or expanding with some of the state policy changes that are happening. I just think that's really really important. But uh I I really appreciate the question. >> Can I ask you with the middle schools >> if I hear you saying correctly? I mean every year we're going to get that bump coming out of from charter schools. They're they're they're already just through fifth grade. they're coming to middle school. That's been there for a while. >> So, this data would show that more have migrated. Actually, no, that doesn't make sense because they still stop. So, that doesn't explain the growth in middle schools because that for year to year,

264I mean, they left they they left charter schools at fifth grade coming into this year just as they will and the year before and the year before and the year before. So, he still had a bump this year that that wouldn't explain. because because they they're the variable didn't change for charter schools ending mid fifth grade that that hasn't changed. >> So the it's a really good question. I think I'm tracking with you. So if you look at our elementary schools in totality, the number of students who are in the grade bands three, four, and five, that's a larger amount of students in those grade bands compared to K1 and two. And as those students continue to metriculate through the system, we anticipate that there's this little a little wave. It's not a tsunami by

265any means. It's a bump more than anything else. Is still, you know, elevating itself through the system. And it will take some time for those smaller cohorts who are in K1 and two to get into our middle schools where we'll see probably at some level some contraction. I would also say that our charter school footprint uh it's not really captured here but at some level at the middle school level we have one of our district sponsored charter schools that expanded in the junior high area this um year. So that is something that we need to be mindful around what impact that has uh on our footprint there too. Um, so just a couple data points there >> and and just to add to that, this this does not capture all of the charter schools that

266impact the district. These are district charter schools. So we are the authorizer for these particular five charters, but there are other charters in the district. Yeah. That that have populations that move in and out of the district schools as well. So, and this the comprehensive planning committee is looking at this data eight ways come to Sunday, right? As they as they're looking at their work over the next few years. >> Yeah. We we just had a meeting earlier this week. Um it was really productive. We again went into depth on this and it's a lot of the same questions. I can't say it's the most uh uplifting topic because we've looked at this for, you know, many years and it's more than just a projection now. It's a it's a trend and we're going to

267address it. The comprehensive planning commission is on the schedule for a report out in I think the second meeting in January where we'll get Yeah. And to ground everybody in the community, we've gone very slow and deliberate on the numbers. Um, we said that when we first started that we were going to take a lot of time so that we are all reading from the same playbook and that we understand what numbers we're looking at because the last iteration of this I think um there was many data sets that we were using and mingling together and it was not communicated well to the community. So we want to level set and say here's the playbook of numbers that we're going off of. This is what we'll make decisions off of and going forward we're going

268to start coming up with some recommendations for the board. >> Okay. And they'll have how they came up with that final data set what they used create the aggregate etc etc. >> Yes. >> As part of their report. >> It's going to be October numbers. >> I think we're getting that presentation in January. K if I'm not mistake. I think it's the next I think it's the next uh board meeting. >> K want to get into >> it's the second one. >> January, >> the second meeting. Okay. >> Well, I wanted to make a comment. I'm just going to ditto what director Spain said. Um and I have a question and I'm going to say my real comment. Um I'm also I'm just curious and gathering. Um I often ask questions is where I generate.

269I keep hearing us talk about a district and I'm wondering if we need to start looking at at our district in blocks, right? So, what is our um hearing um Superintendent Kingsley, what is our district in terms of three, third, fourth, and fifth grade? What is our district in terms of K through second, which you may already do this amazing work, but it's just something that popped up in my head to kind of consider. And I'll just say maybe some of that's coming from my own work in terms of how you know I look at student success in a different area of education. But um I have found that when we're looking at that hole, right, we miss the details. And maybe because it's complicated, we might need to start looking at the details because

270then if we could look at what that is, we could have particular strategies, maybe we need a choose PSD strategy for K through second, a choose PhD strategy from three to five, high school, so on and so forth versus a comprehensive district choose PSD strategy. So that's what's popping and circulating in my head right now. And to my comment, I just wanted to comment and say my heart goes out to you and your team and the work that you all have ahead of you. There's already a lot of instability that's taking place and there will be consistently a lot of changes. You will only be working with what you have, but you'll be working with new things and be also learning new skills along the way with things that you already have to do. And

271I just want to acknowledge in this moment I think acknowledgement and thanks can come later but I want to acknowledge and thank you all for the work that you are planning to do ahead um despite what this world may be giving you. So thank you. >> Thank you. We're we have a few of our teammates in here actually and so sure that they would express their gratitude as well and and yeah we learn something new it feels like daily for sure. Yeah. >> All right. Are there any other questions or comments? >> All right. Of course. >> So, just a closing comment because as and Brian, thank you for your presentation. He he closed out by talking a little bit about what we know to be true about our district priorities. Uh our strategic plan

272around literacy, mental health and belonging, graduation with options. We also know that, you know, we continue to prioritize safety and compensation and benefits. I think one of the things that I will respectfully and gently ask for all of our collective help and individual help with is we're going to need to manage our expectations uh in our system right now. And for those of you that were on the board prior uh to the recent election, you know, there's a there's a feeling amongst our employees that everything feels urgent, everything feels important. Um and that's real for a lot of people, including myself. Um, but we are in a current financial state where we're going to need to flip that paradigm and have courageous conversations of what are we going to stop doing? And what's going to

273be painful about that is it's going to be even things that are aligned to our district priorities that we're going to no we will no longer be able to financially continue to do. Uh, and that's not me wanting to be an alarmist. Um, it's just wanting me to be real. Um, when you think about us being a floor funded district and in traditionally just compensation and benefits has been driven by inflation and I think a step increase which many of our employees have come to expect on average I think costs about 3%. Is that correct Dave? >> 2.1%. So, so when you think about our initial run of us actually getting a 1.1% bump just based on the students we have, which will be fewer and it will be a lesser amount of funding because

274the averaging is going to go away. You pay attention to the specific ownership tax and the the shell game of is the state share going to be what we can count on or something different. um we're talking about some pretty significant levels of cuts that will need to be made to do anything in our system and or maybe even to just maintain our current reality which is when I say current reality it's just kind of keeping departments moving with less people keeping schools moving with fewer people knowing that 85% of every dollar that we have is going towards employees and so I share that with you again not to bring the room down and to take the oxygen out of the room, but just to level set on expectations because the work in front of

275us that will probably and I've talked with board leadership last week through, you know, retreats of really getting tight around what's most important, what's most urgent and be able to make hard decisions uh in partnership with our employee groups, in partnership with staff, in partnership with our community. We have really brilliant people at every level of this organization that can come up with solutions to these things. I'm super hopeful and confident in that. So, hear that, too. Um, but it is going to be challenging and I know that we can get through it together. But I just think managing our expectations as a collective governance team is going to be really important in setting the tone of what that looks like in negotiations of what that looks like in the budget development process and I

276look forward to having uh conversations with you as a collective as well as individually in the days, weeks and and months ahead. So thank you for listening. >> No, thank you very much. I think that was great. All right. Barring any other uh conversation, thank you so much for the presentation. Uh we look forward to seeing you more in the spring. And that's it. This meeting is now adjourned. Adjourn. Wow. Adjourned, man. At 9:51. I was so close. I was doing so good. Thank you so much. Do I have to do the thing? Done.