001All right. Good evening. Thank you for joining the board of education this evening. Please go ahead and mute your cell phone or anything else that might um beep or buzz as we begin this meeting. Today is Tuesday, September 9th, 2025. And this meeting is now called to order at 5:30 p.m. And if we could go ahead and stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, please join me. All right. Thank you. Would any board members like to make changes to the agenda? Okay. Seeing none, we will move on to recognitions and reports. So, and just to let everybody know, those individuals being recognized tonight are invited to stay for a group photo at the conclusion of the last recognition. So, thank you. And to hear to introduce him is Dr. Oh, Superintendent Kingsley. Sorry. >> That's it's
002okay. Thank you. Good evening, everybody. This evening, we are super excited to recognize distinction in student athletics as well as the performing arts. Leading the celebration tonight is John Cop, our executive director of communications. Welcome, John. >> Good evening, President Draper, Superintendent Kingsley, board directors, and everyone who has joined us tonight in the room and online. We will have two recognitions this evening as we celebrate the incredible accomplishments of our students and staff. We'll kick off tonight's recognition with Fossil Ridge High School. Fossil has been racking up state championships and we couldn't be more proud. Brennan O'Neal is the two-time 5A boys 200 yard individual medley champion. Addison Smith and Ellie Anderson 5A 4x100 meter relay state champions. Lily Well, 5A girls soccer and girls state track and field champion. And the girls soccer and
003track and field champions. Here to introduce all of these amazing athletes is Dave Wal. Lily had Lily join us and Addison might be coming. She's stuck in traffic. But uh uh good evening. Thank you board, staff, families, and the PSD community. My name is Dave Walk and I have the honor of being the athletic director and assistant principal at Fossil Ridge High School. And as uh Mr. Cop said, we've got some great honors coming to our kids. We've got graduates. Brennan O'Neal, he was a two-time state champion. Um, he couldn't be here tonight, unfortunately. But, uh, we wanted to congratulate our teams. A lot of these kids are so good in all these other things, they couldn't be here tonight, so I apologize that they're not here. We do have some of the coaching staff.
004And we want to celebrate, uh, the um, the relay, Ava Hurlbut, Katie Feldman, they are graduates as well, off to college, and that relay, the 4x100. And then also the our head soccer coach is Hy Cyrus CE. He's coaching college in Virginia right now. He'll be back for the spring girls season, but he was named 5A coach of the year. The girls track and field coach, Ray Boseman, was coach of the year for the conference. He was coach of the year for the state of Colorado. And then he was the United States track and field and cross country coach associate girls track coach of the year. So, a lot of honors and distinctions and we believe uh these achievements reflect the dedication of our student athletes, unwavering support of their families, and the pride of
005our entire community. Fossil Ridge has once again set the standard for excellence and we could not be more proud. I'm going to turn this over to Lily. A rare occasion when you have an athlete that has won a state title on the same team. Um so she's going to speak on behalf of the two state champion teams. Lily, [Applause] >> good afternoon. My name is Lily Whale and I'm a very proud member of the Fossil Ridge and track and field teams. Last spring I had the incredible honor of being part of two state championship winning teams. Winning a state championship is what I've always dreamed of. Winning two is an experience I will cherish forever. I was fortunate enough to be surrounded by talented, dedicated teammates whose hard work and commitment were truly inspiring. It
006was not just the victories that made the journey memorable, but the support my teammates offered me throughout the season. I know I will have friends for a lifetime. I will always remember the guidance of coaches who truly care for their athletes is an essential for reaching team goals. Our success is a testament to the passion of our coaches. Their unwavering support and genuine interest in my well-being as a multisport athlete made all the difference, encouraging me every step of the way. It was clear that our coaches were committed to win, but even more committed to all of us. They did more than just coach. They were truly a mentor in my experience. It is important to me that I mentioned our Fossil Ridge athletic director, Mr. Dave Wal. It felt like he was at every
007event cheering us on. Mr. Walk is a constant reminder of the support we receive at Fossil Ridge. I'm grateful for the way he often checks in with me and recognizes all of our hard work. Winning two state championships in the same week, actually four days, is an indescribable feeling. I am so thankful for my teammates, coaches, and the administration at Fossil Ridge for providing me with this opportunity. The moments and memories we created together will stay with me for a lifetime. Thank you for allowing me to share my experience. Excellent. Excellence in PSD continues in the arts and we'd like to congratulate the visual arts program. the extraordinary achievements of Leanne Griffy and Canard Core Knowledge Middle School Symphony Orchestra for selection as a 2025 National Orchestra Festival Performing Ensemble and Shawn Murphy for Colorado
008ASA outsting string teacher of the year award. I'd like to invo to the podium. [Applause] >> Thank you and thank you all for having us here tonight. We're always happy to be able to celebrate the performing arts and um we're also grateful for your support, the support of the community as well. Um the first recognition that I would like to do is for Lean Griffy and the Canard Symphony Orchestra. So if Leanne and her students would come up. Um, [Applause] this ensemble was chosen uh in a very competitive field by audition, a recorded audition to perform at the National Orchestra Festival which took place last March in Atlanta. And um, Mrs. Griffy is going to introduce her students who are going to say a word about the experience. >> Good evening. It is an honor
009to be recognized for this, but I couldn't do it without the support of my wonderful administrators, including Principal Lindseay Matkin, my colleagues, um, the parents of course, and also the students who inspire me and are enthusiastic and committed. So, I'd like to introduce to you Adeline and Kinley, who are both now in high school, but went on this trip last March. They're going to tell you a little bit about it. >> Hi, I'm Kinley Thomas and I was a viola in the Canard Orchestra when we went to NOF. The NOF we took the NOF trip that we took to Atlanta in the spring was amazing for many reasons. Preparing for the trip, we got to talk to a lot of different people who gave us amazing feedback on the music that we were playing, learning
010a lot along the way. We worked with some of the composers of our music, including Doug Speda and the Colorado composer Susan H. Day. It was also a bonding experience for everyone in the orchestra. I got closer to a lot of my peers and have lots of fun memories from the class. Everyone who went to that trip is an amazing musician because of it. We heard performances from some of the best high school and middle school orchestras in the nation. Then got to play on the same stage. While we were there, we visited the Olympic Park, the Georgia Aquarium, and the MLK Birthplace. We also got to hear an incredible performance by the Atlanta Symphony. Overall, it was an eye-opening experience for everybody who was a part of it, and we're glad to have gotten
011to work towards the goal of performing on a national stage. Thank you. [Applause] And we're also fortunate that not only do we have amazing students and um families and friends that support them in their musical studies, we also have really amazing teachers, one of which is Leanne, um but also we have teachers being recognized um for their work. So, at last year's Colorado Music Educators Association conference, um, at one of the very last things of the conference, the American String Teachers Association Colorado chapter recognized Rocky Mountain High School Orchestra teacher Shawn Murphy as the outstanding string teacher of the year. So, if Mr. Murphy, a student, would come on up. I think it's very fitting that our teachers are are so interested in having their students speak and listening to their students voices. because I
012know that's a huge part of their success and the connections that they have. So Aaliyah Daring is going to say a few words. Hello, my name is Aaliyah Daring. I'm a violist uh at Rocky Mountain High School in Shawn Murphy's um orchestra and I'm here to say a few words on behalf of my entire orchestra. Shawn Murphy is truly a remarkable educator. Yes, he teaches music, but teaching music means helping each and every one of us learn ways to express ourselves freely and safely. With every rehearsal, every lesson, and every gentle correction, he instills discipline and creativity. This is proof of his deep commitment not only to his students as people, but to our futures. So this award is not only a recognition of his incredible teacher and teaching skills but also the countless hours
013he spends behind the scenes and the many lives he has already touched and influenced. For example, he has given us the opportunities to play beautiful music. For example, last year we played Rapsidian Blue and had the uh ability to play it in Italy. We worked alongside with our own student solists, Ian Rose. And thi through this experience, we were taught the importance of flexibility and collaboration. For so many of his students, including myself, he is more than a teacher. He is a mentor, a father figure, and a friend. He is there when you need a shoulder to cry on, and then there when you need to laugh. He has gone above and beyond, not only as a teacher, but as a human being. And this is why he so greatly deserves this honor. Thank you.
014[Applause] >> Congratulations once again to all of tonight's honores. Your hard work, talent, and dedication inspires us, and you represent the very best of Pter School District. At this time, I'd like to invite our honores, board directors, and superintendent Kingsley to gather at the front for a group All right. Well, thank you all for um sharing those accomplishments with us. It's truly amazing and shows you just how uh much PSD cares about the well-rounded student. So, just want to thank everybody for that. Um, next up we have the resolution in support of Hispanic Latinx Heritage Month. Um, could I get a motion? Go ahead, Connor. >> I move that the board approved the resolution in support of Hispanic Latinx Heritage Month, September 15 through October 15, 2025. >> Can I get a second? All right.
015Thank you, Kevin. And then we have action. So joining us evening to speak to Hispanic Latinx exheritage month is Jenna Altoar, our coordinator of language, culture and equity and Maria Elena Thomas, lang language, culture and equity family liaison. Welcome to you both. Oh, it was off. I'll start over. Yes, as you can see, I'm new to the district. My name is Jenna Altoar, coordinator of language, culture, and equity. Uh, and I'm super excited to be here. Um, as I just started out, I wanted to just acknowledge how awesome it is that we allow student voices to be heard in such beautiful ways. So, I think taking taking this a step back being that I'm new as an opportunity to learn, to grow, and to really listen to what the students have to say so we
016can better ourselves and support them even more than we already do. So, with that being said, I'm super excited to be here for Hispanic Heritage Month. And to help me celebrate, I have these beautiful people next to me. Uh, and so Mar uh Maria Elena Thomas is going to introduce these students from Bouter Elementary. Thank you. [Applause] Good afternoon, members of the board. My name is Marielena Thomas. I'm a family liaison within the district. Principal Steven Bose from Bouter Elementary School sends his regrets. As we celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month and as proud Hispanic representative myself, it brings me great joy to honor two of our remarkable Hispanic students from Bouter Elementary and to lift up their stories and recognize the ways they enrich our school community. First, I'd like to introduce Rosario right here. Rosario
017is known among her classmates as a wonderful friend, someone who is kind, supportive, and always willing to help others. She's also a talented artist and she brings creativity and joy into everything she does. Next, we have Diego right there. Uh Diego takes great pride in his bilingualism, and he is an excellent example of how language and culture can be a source of strength and identity. He's also a passionate soccer fan, and he brings that same enthusiasm into his daily life at school. Both Rosario and Diego remind us of the many gifts our Hispanic students bring. Not just academic skills, but also friendship, creativity, pride, and passion. They are role models for their peers, and I am so proud to introduce them to you today. First, Rosario. Here we go. Hola. Hello. My name is Rosaring
018Gail and I'm a fourth grade student at Batter Elementary. I'm happy to be Hispanic because all the different cultures and the food that we have in common. My family is from Mexico and I was born here in Colorado. I am proud that we could speak Spanish and that I am bilingual. I also love the foods from other countries. For example, my favorite foods from Mexico are tamales and pole. I also like sushi. Personally, I like spending time with my friends. I also love art, sculpting with clay, sketching, and drawing. Hispanic artist. I love free color. Hispanic Heritage Month is important because I like celebrating Mexican culture and holidays here. Thank you for listening and being here. [Applause] Elementary. [Music] Good afternoon everyone. My name is Diego Romero. I'm in fourth grade at B Elementary. My
019mom is from Honduras and my stepfather is from Mexico. I am proud of the traditions, music, food, and history that unite Hispanic communities. I am proud of the humanity, family, and friendship that characterize the Hispanic community. I am proud of my roots and the language that we speak at home. I also have the ability to be a positive person in society. For me, being Hispanic is a true treasure. Thank you. [Applause] Can I just say Rosario Diego, thank you so much for sharing with us your stories and your pride. I really appreciate it and I just want to say to your families too, you should be very very proud. So, thank you for for sharing them with us. Um before we take the vote, um does anybody have anything they would like to share? Okay.
020All right. So, Jill, can you please call the vote? >> Kristen Draper, >> I. >> Connor Duffy, >> I. >> Kevin Havda. >> I. >> Scott Shoenbower. >> Hi. >> Andrew Spain. >> I. >> Jessica Zamora. >> Hi. >> Motion passes. 6. [Applause] Excellent. Thank you so much. And I'll go to 5.2. Resolution in support of National Suicide Prevention Month. Can I get a motion, please? >> I move that the board approve the resolution in support of National Suicide Prevention Month. Can I get a second? Thank you, Connor. All right. And we have an introduction for this one as well, right? >> Yes. Uh, speaking to the National Suicide Prevention Month resolution is Amy Martonus, Larammer County Behavioral Health Director, as well as I believe she's joined by Sarah Mouter Wilkins, our mental health and
021prevention coordinator. Welcome both of you. [Applause] >> Good evening, Superintendent Kingsley, directors of the PSD Board of Education, members of the cabinet, and all here this evening, both in the room and joining us online. My name is Amy Martonis. She her. I'm proud to serve as the director of behavioral health for Lur County Behavioral Health Services and I'm also a PSD parent. In 2018, Lmer County voters made a bold and forwardthinking decision to invest in expanded behavioral health care for our community by approving a dedicated sales tax. One of the most significant outcomes of this investment is the 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year behavioral health urgent care that's available at the Long View campus. This resource is available to everyone in our community, younger or older, whether you
022have private insurance, Medicaid, Medicare, or no insurance at all. It provides immediate crisis support and a safe place for people to turn when they need support most. Tonight, as we acknowledge the profound impact of suicide on our community and within Pter School District, we reaffirm our shared commitment to teaching both young people and adults that suicide is preventable. And in Lmer County, no one has to navigate crisis alone because support is always available. Recently, Colorado's adolescent suicide rate dropped to its lowest since 2007. Lur County also saw the lowest two-year average in suicides in more than a decade. This is tremendous progress. And still in 2024, we lost 80 of our community members to suicide in Lur County. This tells us that our work is not finished. We have a lot more to do. This
023can feel overwhelming, especially we when we consider all that's at stake. That's when we can lean into something that I heard recently that we're successful when we infuse hope and healing into our homes, our neighborhoods, our workplaces, and our classrooms. Hope and healing. We are successful. We strengthen collaborations like those among the youth mental health task force, Pter school district, the alliance for suicide prevention, and among so many other community partners that support this work. and when we deepen our understanding of the signs to look for and the resources that are available to provide support when crisis occurs. If you are ever in the place of supporting someone experiencing suicidal thoughts, a mental health crisis, a substance use crisis, please remember that the acute care facility at the Long View campus is open to people
024of all ages for crisis assessment and care. No one in our community needs to navigate crisis alone because of the decision we made together to care about one another. Thank you to all the thousands of staff members in Puerto school districts who see our students every day, support them for who they are, and in partnership with parents and guardians, nurture their well-being. And thank you, Porter School District, for making mental health and belonging such a priority. It matters. Thank you very much. [Applause] And I just want to reiterate Amy which you had spoken to which is the lowest numbers we have seen since 2007. That is incredible and a testament to the work that you are doing and we are doing as a community for each other. So thank you for that. It is very
025much appreciated. Um, and to all of our um, healthcare providers in PSD, um, thank you so much for the work that you do uh, on the daily basis. Um, I know that it's not always easy and that sometimes it goes home with you. Um, but it is the most important work that can possibly be done for our students. So, thank you for that. With that, is there anything that um, anybody would like to um, discuss or have questions on? Okay. So, Jill, could you please call the >> Kristen Draper? >> I. >> Connor Duffy. >> Hi. >> Kevin Havda. >> I. >> Scott Shoenbower. >> I. >> Andrew Spain. >> I. >> Jessica Zamora. >> I. >> Motion passes. 6. >> Thank you. All right. And we can move on to 5.3. Resolution in support
026of attendance awareness month. Can I get a motion? Go ahead, Kevin. I move that the board approve the resolution in support of attendance awareness month. >> Can I get a second? All right. Thank you, Scott. >> Yeah, it's okay. Joining us this evening to speak to attendance awareness month is Leah Hager, our student services coordinator. Welcome, Leah. [Applause] Thank you. um to the board members, superintendent Kingsley, cabinet, and the greater community um present here and online for elevating the importance of attendance. Um maybe it doesn't sound glamorous, but it is foundational. There is a great deal of importance in being present and being engaged and experiencing belonging for all students. And that is what is wrapped into attendance. And we know the challenge is clear when we look at the resolution, right? One in three
027Colorado students are chronically absent. That is a call for action. And we know that students who attend school regularly build important relationships, relationships with classmates, coaches, staff, and sometimes these are lifelong relationships. They perform better academically. They're more likely to graduate with options from high school. And to answer that challenge to meet the need, um PSD has made some lofty goals. Um, we are participating in an effort across the state to reduce chronic absenteeism rates overall by 50% and we are making gains toward that goal. And we're hoping and working to reach a 95% average daily attendance rate to help all students stay on track with school work, positively impact literacy skills, social, emotional, behavioral health, and access to that goal of graduation. And so we recognize that it's going to take all of us.
028We understand that this is a community effort and we recognize that that partnership with families with all PSD staff across the district, across all of our schools is important. Keep them informed of their child's attendance records help all students know that they belong in PSD and provide the support to overcome the barriers to attendance when necessary. So again, thank you for taking the time to recognize the importance of attendance and support this resolution. Thank you so much. And yes, I mean we hear that, you know, showing up is half the battle and we need to make sure that we get to that first half. Uh so, you know, it's extremely important to make sure that we are able to see our students um and then be able to help them feel like they belong. So,
029any other thoughts that people want to share? All right, Jill, can we call the vote? >> Kristen Draper, >> I. >> Connor, >> I. >> Kevin Havda, >> hi. >> Scott Shoenbower, >> hi. >> Andrew Spain, >> I >> Jessica Zamora, >> I. >> Motion passes 6. >> If we could get out gather um to get a picture in the front here, that'd be wonderful. Thank you. Oh yeah. Thank you all for joining us this evening. It was such a pleasure having you. We will now move on to the superintendent report where superintendent Kingsley will make remarks to the board of education and to the community. Welcome. >> Thank you. I'm happy to be here. You know, I really love our resolutions and recognitions because it's a gentle reminder that PSD is an academic and
030extracurricular powerhouse. And on the heels of this morning having the nation's report card on public education be released, it was a sobering report that really should remind us as a community how lucky we are to have our school district be available to provide services to our students. We truly are an outlier. You know, over the last week, I had an opportunity to spend time with all of the leaders in our district at the school and district level, and they did a deep dive on a research study on what makes schools great in terms of becoming opportunity makers for students who may be on the margins. And those from a research standpoint, uh those schools do three things really well. And we have so many of our schools that are thriving in these areas, and I've
031visited them uh over the past couple of days, but they do three things well. One, they don't negotiate belonging. Both in terms of the feeling of being affirmed and seen for exactly who you are, but also feeling and experiencing academic belonging to have students be able to develop their own self-efficacy and be able to describe what they're learning, what they're passionate about. And we measure those things here. Schools that are also opportunity makers double down on consistency across the school, across the district, making sure the teachers are working in collaboration with each other to have well-defined educational experiences. carved out where we learn from our students and we learn from each other as educators and peers and PSD thrives in that area as well. And the other area is probably one of the most difficult
032that we focus deeply last Thursday as a director is building instructional coherence. You've heard me talk from the day every single year that every second counts. So really making sure that we're mapping out the instructional day, the extracurricular experiences of our students in a way that not only helps us understand those students, but we as adults are all using the same academic language to make sure that we're teaching to grade level standards and the scaffolds and the interventions that we have are appropriate for each and every student. I was really proud to visit Trout Elementary, Linton Elementary School, Canard Middle School, Zach Elementary, Bacon Elementary, and Fossil Ridge High School over the past week. And just seeing some of the work that all of their staff are doing to elevate their game for all of
033our students, not just on the ball field, uh, but in the classroom and in the orchestra pit as well just continues to make me really proud. As we heard one of our thought partners from Lmer County Behavioral Health tonight talking about really praising our system for focusing on hope and healing. The quick win video that I want to share with you as a superintendent tonight focuses on the importance of mental health and belonging and how we're getting that message out into our field. I'd like to turn over to our confine to show that video. Now, >> I think this month to me it means making sure that everyone feels loved and feels like their life is worth living. can be a pretty hard time right now, especially in school. And so I think just taking
034care of everyone around you is really important. >> You know, it's important to think about people's mental health and how everybody is doing all year. Um, but this is a month where we have an opportunity to kind of highlight that and make sure that we're really paying attention. >> It's important to raise awareness throughout this month because everyone goes through something and is pretty much almost always going through something. And knowing that we're not alone and we're all in some sort of boat is really important, especially around this time of year when school starts up. you never know what people are going through. >> So, we think it's just important to to have that awareness, recognize, you know, how you're feeling um every day and it's important to talk to somebody about that. >> Want
035to thank the leadership and students at Timoth Middle School. What you heard from them is what really a shared priority across this district and it will continue to remain a priority in this district for quite some time. In fact, I would suggest that we focus on this in perpetuity. It's it's a life skill. Uh, another one of our district strategic priorities is graduating with options. And over the course of the last couple of weeks, we had an opportunity to have a ribbon cutting ceremony for our transition pathways academy that's at our former partnership center. Uh, and providing a program that is really equipped and designed to help students with disabilities to enter the workforce, to focus on independent uh, both work and living skills. Uh, I think that was a major move for the system
036to put all of those good young people, young adults with all of the plethora of supports under one roof so they can work in partnership with each other and our respective partners in the community. And I want to thank everybody who was able to attend. Tomorrow we have another ribbon cutting ceremony at 8 o'clock am behind Pter High School in our new state-of-the-art advanced manufacturing lab that would not be po be made possible without a significant financial contribution from Lammer County, the Bohemian Foundation as well as Woodward uh and Ames Community College. And I want to thank all of the CTE staff in PSD who's worked around the clock to have that level of outreach to build these healthy partnerships where we're actually focusing on not just PSD but the region. Thompson school district students
037are able to attend programming there. And as they're building out their programming, we're figuring out ways to drop our boundaries and barriers and be able to think thoughtfully around how to expand these types of opportunities for our students. And I couldn't be more proud. On our agenda tonight, uh the board will hear about results of a recent enrollment survey that happened a year ago. So I want to just contextualize when we had an opportunity to engage many of our families. It circulated to gather feedback of what key drivers motivate enrollment for families across our system. That's something as a governance team we talk quite a lot about. This is paired with discussion of our choose PSD strategic marketing campaign that aims to tell the story of how great things are that we do here in
038PSD. But let me be clear, we also have challenges and we need to be honest and direct about how we're overcoming those too. We also hear about uh tonight the movement analysis which tracks about where students attend schools in our system as well as our five-year enrollment projection as well. We look forward to a robust conversation and look forward to entertaining your questions this evening. So, thank you for allowing me to address the community. >> Thank you so much and we will get into that in just a moment here. Um before that though we will have community comment. So welcome to the community comment section of the board meeting. The board desires to hear the viewpoints of all stakeholders including students, employees, parents, guardians and community members. Public comment is designed to address issues not
039personalities or personnel matters. Please keep your concerns and comments focused upon the district and appropriate for a K12 audience. Please note that the board does not generally generally respond marks made during community comment. Our lack of response should not be construed to mean that we agree or disagree with what is said or with the description or interpretation of events as presented by any speaker. Further, even if some remarks may be factually inaccurate, we generally choose not to respond or correct the record here because formal board meetings are not the time or place for back and forth dialogue. As we begin this community comment session, let us model for our entire community how to listen and how to interact respectfully, even with those with whom we disagree. For we all have the students best interests at
040heart. So 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 make remarks in the order that they signed up and each speaker will be allowed three minutes to address the board. And first up we have Eric Sutherland. Not here. Okay. Uh next up we have Reggie Johnson. Welcome. Hello. My name is Reggie Johnson and my pronouns are she, her. I'm the proud mother and grandmother of transgender and LGBTQ loved ones. Let me ask each one of you here, which hand do you use to write a letter or brush your teeth or swing a baseball bat? Okay. Now, when did you decide to be left-handed or right-handed? Likely, it was not a decision. Which hand you use is
041an innate characteristic simply part of who you are. And so it is with being transgender. It's not a decision and it's not a choice. Some of you may actually be ambidextrous using either or both hands. And so it is with being binary. I'm also the president of P Flag Fort Collins whose mission is to create a caring, just, and affirming world for LGBTQ folks and those who love them. I represent numerous families with kids in Pter school district, specifically families with transgender and non-binary youth. More than a few of these families discovered that their loved one was transgender or non-binary at a mental health facility or an emergency room after their child had tried to end their life. As the LGBTQ students head back to classrooms this fall, there's an existential threat hovering over them
042more than ever. They're carrying huge weight of having their very existence questioned in critical areas of their everyday life. They live in a reality of discrimination, harassment, and non-acceptance of who they are. Sometimes this is intentional, other times due to lack of understanding. The bottom line, it is really tough to be transgender or non-binary in today's world. P Flag families greatly appreciate the gender affirming policies and procedures that are in place here at PSD. The work that Pter School District board members, teachers, and staff are doing to affirm each and every LGBTQ student and particularly trans and non-binary students. Literally life-saving. It's an imperative that students, all students, exist in an environment where they're safe, supported, and celebrated. When a student doesn't have to worry about who they are, they're able to focus on who
043they can become. For students who are affirmed at school, surviving is a reality and thriving becomes an option. On behalf of P Flag, thank you for caring about our LGBTQ LGBTQ students here in Pter School District. >> Thank you. Next up, we have Anna Labetta. Welcome. >> Good evening. I can't shake the fact that our four-year graduation rates for students on IEPs are below state averages for five consecutive years. Why is this important to me? I have a child on an IEP and I also know that it wouldn't be sustainable at all for her to be in PSD if it weren't for the support that she receives with her IEP. before we returned to the district for sixth grade, knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that my child needed to be supported by an
044IEP in order to be successful in school. Especially when it comes to school attendance and accessing her learning environment. Despite trying to be proactive before the school year started, I was told we needed to wait until the school year started to see how things went. Our district's wait to fail model led to the loss of almost an entire academic school year last year. It took watching her crash and burn for months, then enduring a lengthy IEP enduring a lengthy IEP eligibility process that was not finalized until January. Then she had to work hard the remainder of the year to fight her way back to where she had started the year regard to confidence and consistency in school attendance. I am incredibly grateful that we landed with a highly skilled sped teacher who happened to have
045a special personal interest in dyslexia. But I am well aware that that is the role of the das in this district. I know this because I have friends in the district of children with dyslexia who are in the same grade in different schools who are having a very different experience this current school year. So what are we going to do about it? How are we going to throw intention at these kids with the same kind of gusto that we throw at our typically performing students instead of patiently making them wait their turn while their literal lives depend on it? Given the historical data presented in the packet to the board of education for the UIP, progress isn't likely to be made if separate, specific, and explicit explicit district ends aren't directed and focused at students
046on IEPs. The stated goal of helping students with disabilities gain more than an academic year's worth of learning is completely out of touch with reality without more intentionality on the part of this board. This is a public school district. Generally speaking, 15% of any given school district's population will need to access special education. These are services that your taxpayers desperately need available in their school district. Later this evening, you will see enrollment projections and enrollment data. And I want to say again that when a district loses the trust of a family because one child isn't served well, you often lose the rest of the children in that family, high performers included. I believe very strongly that students serve poorly through their IEPs or students being denied access to special education altogether play a significant part
047in falling enrollment. I'm calling for the board to initiate a disabilities audit to find out where the IEP breakdown is occurring across the district. Is it sitebased policy or lack thereof? Is it the culture within the bed department or the gened department? Is it the PSD's nationally recognized music programs and other extracurriculars that are forcing kids to choose between IEP minutes and or participation? Is it lack of board policy? Is it because sightbased administrators are allowed to choose whether kids with disabilities are worth the investment or not? Is it because the district would rather push families to have to take legal actions in some cases to reserve receive services? I believe these are questions that desperately need to be asked by the PSD board and as long as you as a board are willing to
048accept the IEP graduation rates declined last year and continue to accept the line that yes disproportion I'm on the last sentence. >> Perfect. Um, yes, disproportionately exists, disproportionality exists, and yes, there's still work to be done. Without actively providing a vision to the superintendent, then I see no change in sight for our kids who desperately need your specific engagement. Thank you. >> Thank you so much. >> Next up, we have Danny Lawrence. Welcome, Thank you for the opportunity. Uh, just recently I discovered that the Colorado Department of Education compiles and keeps district profile reports and these reports examine everything from absenteeism to student discipline and behavior to law enforcement involvement in school districts. And I have uh included the link in your email tonight and I would encourage you to spend a little time researching
049these statistics on your own. Presentations that I've witnessed here in the boardroom regarding monitoring reports or district ends don't show the data that I'm seeing there. And what I saw there made me cry. Particularly the data related to law enforcement referrals. In 2324 school year, students with IEPs and 504s made up 68% of the law enforcement referrals district. That would be 68% of the law enforcement referrals in our district went to kids that had 504s and IEPs. This is at least 35% higher than any school district that we compare ourselves with, specifically with regard to IEP and 504 students. Last year, it was uh the one statistic that PSD didn't report to CDE, which is strange. If you haven't heard the term schoolto prison pipeline, I think we should get familiar with it because our
050inaction here might be supporting that. Additionally, on this site, I learned that despite our 6% underification rate that we have in the school district regarding children even being able to qualify for an IEP, that we are actually adding less IEPs than we did two years ago. Significantly less. I'm talking like a hundred less than the year before. And then I asked myself, how's that even possible in a time when rates for autism are skyrocketing that we are qualifying a hundred less students for an IEP? And even with less kids qualifying and a district being underidentified, our graduation rate is still sliding and the district has 17 open investigations with the Office of Civil Rights, most all of them for disability rights related issues. So something is wrong. You guys, you can't put numbers up that
051like like that and think otherwise. The way I see it, you have one employee and that employee has the power to change the course if he has given that as a priority for you from you. And so I'm here tonight to beg you to please give Brian the directive that we need an audit of the integrated services department and a task force to work with the information that follows that. I sit in this space and I listen to all of us patting ourselves on the back um about mental health and belonging and that's welld deserved. It's well earned. You've proven that if we make an intentional and thoughtful effort, we can change and course correct. And that is what I'm asking you to do for the thousands of students whose graduation rates are continuing to
052decline. The evidence is overwhelming and damning. And now is the time we can multitask. But please, let's at least start the work of examining the problem. Four years is a long time to wait for a sign of life. And right now, all the signs I see are continued decline. Please try anything. I see this as a five alarm fire. And PSD is better than this. These kids deserve a whole lot better than this. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So, I just want to thank you all for um taking the time to share your thoughts during community comment tonight. Um we appreciate your engagement and feedback. Uh and we look forward to further discussions at our next engagement session. And the next one is going to be on September 18th, I believe. um Warner and
053Oander. Thank you. I could not remember. So, yeah. So, hopefully you'll join us and we can have a great discussion. Thank you. Very much appreciate it. >> We will now move on to 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 topic. Do any board members have anything they would like to report? Kevin, go ahead. I do. Uh unfortunately, this isn't a a cheerful one. Uh a couple board meetings ago, um I had we had actually we were getting a presentation on um some of the students discipline um updates from uh Jared Sergeant who had just assumed his post that night. And so I had said I was interested in the the city's citation or traffic citations um around
054school areas for both pickup and drop off and th those had an uptick which as a parent I was actually appreciative of. Well, I got another an email from a constituent and friend yesterday who had a very near miss uh at Oander um coming across a a crosswalk and a car almost took out his uh his family. So, um I know there's very little I can do from the deis and I can't direct um for Con's police department and I I I don't direct the SRO's, but I would appreciate a uh you know, any collaboration we could work towards with the city as far as having a higher police visibility during drop off and pickup. Um I mean, anecdotally, I used to drive Malberry every day and there's a a stoplight that allows folks to
055get across Malbury to Dunn. Cars would blow by it all the time. I implore our community, if you live in or are commutes to and from a school zone, which is a vast majority of our city in some points, please slow down. Please, please pay attention to not only the little humans, but the the uh parents, the volunteers, the crossuards who are there doing their job. It's not worth it. Get to work a little late if you have to. Um, but I I just want to remind everyone as a more of a PSA that um school's back in session and we need to be very mindful and to be very careful as we're driving and navigating uh throughout our city. Thank you. >> Thank you very much for that reminder. I think that goes for
056anybody who's listening is we can we can slow down. It's okay if I get there a minute or two late. It's okay. Anyone else? Okay. Um, so let's move on to consent agenda. Would any board members like to pull an item from consent? Okay, seeing none, can I get a motion? >> I move that the board approve and adopt the recommended actions um for the items in the consent agenda. >> Okay. Can I get a second? Thank you, Jess. And Jill, can you call the vote? >> Kristen Draper, >> I. >> Connor Duffy, >> I. >> Kevin Havda, >> hi. Scott Shelon. >> Hi, >> Andrew Spain. >> I >> Jessica Zamora. >> Hi. >> Motion passes. 6. >> Wonderful. Thank you. >> All right. We're moving on now to 10.0formational reports and discussion items.
057So 10.1 is enrollment survey and PSD marketing data over overview. >> Thank you. Presenting the enrollment survey and PSD marketing data overview, our chief of staff, Dr. Lauren Hootton and Chief Institutional Effectiveness Officer Dr. Dwayne Schmidz. Welcome. >> Board members, Superintendent Kingsley. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to these topics this evening. We're going to kind of divide these three topics into two parts. So, we'll be starting out this evening with an update on the enrollment survey that Superintendent Kingsley referenced in his remarks, which Dr. Schmidz will provide here in a moment. then move on to an update on the PSC marketing campaign that has been running since March. We'll take a break at that point to answer any questions on those two topics and then we'll be joined by Bud Hunt who will
058speak to the movement analysis five-year projections and then we'll have another opportunity for questions and discussion at that point. So, I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Schmidz. >> Thank you, Dr. Hooton. Okay, I want to say also thank you for having us tonight. What a pleasure to give voice to this important topic. I want to let the board and the viewing odds know that the survey the enrollment survey we're going to talk and superintendent Kingsley mentioned this earlier tonight. It occurred um last spring, early spring, so January 13th to January 26. That's a 13-day window. It was delivered in English, Spanish, and Arabic, which is our standard uh three languages we deliver lots of communications in. Um I also want to mention so as far as responses we had 802 responses from the
059elementary level families we had 424 responses from the middle middle school families and we had 378 from the high families. So that's like 1,604 you know responses. And just to set the table a little bit, when you think of how big our district is, um, this is a perception survey that's a representation of the voice of the parents and the families who took the time to answer it. It's not a census, if you will. It's not the same as if we got like all of the parents in the district to answer. There's lots of good information in here. as we walk through this, I think a lot of it will resonate with our with everyone in this room that these things the the themes that we're hearing make sense. All right. So, with that upfront,
060that was the the nature of the survey and it provides a very important voice uh in this room tonight for us to consider. Okay. So, first of all, how do families learn about PSD schools to help inform their choices? Okay. The first big theme. Oh, that's funny. I didn't catch that. One, two, and three. There's a one, one, and two. So, look past that. It's one, two, and three. Okay. Sorry about that. Um, so anyways, the um interpersonal connections, right? When people have friends and connections in the community who have experiences at our schools, that carries a lot of weight. So, we that should resonate with us. So that's a a really important network of communication that informs parents to inform their choices on which schools might be the best fit for them and their
061families. Okay. We found in the survey that some evidence that the families that are newer to the PSD community and and the greater Fort Collins community are a little bit more reliant on the digital resources, the platforms, right? And so Dr. Dr. Lauren Hootton. Later we'll be talking a little bit about some of our campaigns in that space around communication and advertising and what have you to make sure that uh you know we're informing our community about our different schools. And so that that's especially important for families that are newer to our community. Okay. The third uh um kind of theme that popped out of that is that where parents get information and what they're being attracted to to decide which school want to choose is the right option for themselves. shifts with age. And
062we'll see in the next slide a kind of a progression of how that shifts. But it's especially true that as students come into the middle school, high school level, they begin to really think about those college preparation, graduating with options, the extracurricular options and things like that. And so, not to get in front of myself um because we'll talk in a little more depth about how those prior priorities shift with time. Okay. So, what drives the family choices? Um, we've known this for a long time, I think, as a district and a board of education and a leadership team that archers matter. You know, a lot of studies in the country have shown teachers matter most. Um, people care more about having a great teacher in a mediocre mediocre school than they would take a
063mediocre teacher in a great school. Teachers matter. And so that came through in the survey results that our community signals to us that they want us to invest in quality teachers. and those teachers professional development and training over time which I think we have made a commitment to that as a district. The second theme that kind of emerged um now going by level basically for elementary the strongest driver is you know summed up here as close and capable. So logistics matter there is a preference even though we know about a third of our students choice into schools that aren't necessarily their neighborhood schools and those could be charter or non-charter. I just mean they're not their neighborhood school when I say that. Um, so but but for many of us, twothirds of the families, you
064know, logistics matters and being in the neighborhood where your kids are going to meet the other kids in the neighborhood, there's going to be birthday parties that are close at home, all those things that that has an impact. I think that probably resonates with us and that those elementarymentaries are capable of setting up those young people for success as they walk through their whole educational journey. So the the rigor, frankly, of the programming and the the instruction matters. >> Dr. Schmidz. Yes. >> May I just ask a question about data that you just mentioned just to make sure I heard it correctly? >> I think when we look at our data of those who are in students who are in our traditional public schools, it's one out of three families choosing a different school that's
065in their neighborhood school. That's not 30% choosing a charter school. >> That's correct. >> So, I just wanted to clarify that. >> Yeah. I hope that came across clear and if not, I appreciate that um clarification. >> Thank you, Dr. Smith. >> Yeah. And I want to mention I guess um since I took a pause here on the elementary priorities close and capable. If you look at um our data dashboards which are very make all of our data very transparent you can really quickly ascertain like what are the achievement outcomes and various outcomes for our different elementary schools. And I can tell you as a parent in Pter school district of three kids there is not an elementary school in this district I wouldn't be proud to send my kid to. Right. And that data
066backs that up. So you can look at the data on all our different elementary schools and they are very capable of producing great results for our kids with our kids really. Okay, moving on to point number three here. The third thing rose up for middle school which I kind of mentioned I think earlier. Belonging matters a lot in middle school. If you think of the stage of development kids are in as far as what we're talking about tonight is families deciding and students deciding which schools are the right fit for them. This belonging, inclusivity, you know, social network and connection is very very important. Academics is always important, right? When you think about students entering middle school, it's the first time really they're going to level up in a big way in athletics. They're going
067to level up in the number of courses that they get to select and pick from at relative to elementary I'm talking about. And so there's a lot of different choices. And so family engagement kind of goes on the rise a little bit sometimes too as far as families needing to get engaged in that transportation those choices which sports which clubs which courses are you taking and so on and so forth. So all of this network which I believe is not limited to just studentto student networks if we were in that mindset of just like the friends network for kids that's true. It's also true that the parent networks matter quite a bit at the middle school too because of those things I just mentioned those different changes and decisions and options that people are experiencing
068as a family as students as families are thinking about high school enrollment. It really was clear in the data that that becomes like a future ready focus. And that probably makes sense to the board. Parents and families are thinking about concurrent enrollment and dual enrollment. Those are two different options for getting college credit while you're in high school. They're thinking about those again leveling up in those athletic um competitions and athletic kind of experiences. They're thinking beyond just athletics to clubs and activities like band and theater and these things. Those matter quite a bit. So, it's that whole menu of activities and the robust extracurriculars PSD has. I've always just termed it as an a menu of awesomeness, frankly. And so, like I said, I've got three kids that have gone through the system. They're
069three completely different kids and they all were able to customize what they experienced in this system that fit their personalities perfectly. And so I really believe that like PSD high schools there's really a menu um that is quite rich and robust and our academics are strong as well. Those that always matters. Anyways, speaking for the survey, these are the kind of the themes that rose up across those three different levels. Okay, charter versus non-charter decisions. Okay, some school some insights that this data may have elevated for us. Okay, keeping in mind this is perception data. Okay, and perception matters because people make decisions based on their perceptions. Um, why do charter schools draw families? Often, you know, we all hear a focused learning environment is the perception. Smaller class sizes, individualized instruction, structured core knowledge
070programs are all listed here as things that emerged in the survey. Keeping in mind, of course, school district um and charter schools also have core knowledge as a curriculum um at several of our elementaryaries and one of our middle schools. Um at any rate, this parent involvement um is another piece and and other special BAM features like dual immersion programming. So like all schools in the system, they often have some special programming. all of the PSD schools, charter and non-school charter, that type of specialized programming can be attractive to families for those purposes. The return route uh theme number two that kind of rose up. Um you know, families come back to non-charters from charters and when we ask those parents specifically about those decisions, they cite things such as strong student support programs, broader
071social networks, and a sense of community and belonging. Okay. So, everything PSD does to build community within our schools and all of the energy, time, money, training that we put into serving students with different needs is what pulls many parents back into the non-charter schools when they see that set of options. Three, convenience matters. So whether you're talking charter or non-charter, walkability, dis, you know, transportation, these types of things matter. You know, director Havalda brought up today, you know, one of these pieces around transportation, walking and biking. It's it's um it's a value our community has and it brings its own set of challenges and such you have to navigate, right, as a community, but people do value that that kind of like proximity. The fourth uh theme that kind of emerged, high school families
072favor college and balance. It's the balance part that's new. On the last slide, I talked a little bit about, you know, the internships, the apprenticeships, the career tech center, the athletics, all of those things. And I think we all understand there's a huge menu of options for kids at every single one of our high school options, right? But the balance part is important, too, because these are young people. They're becoming young adults. Several like most of you have been parents through this age group. And so you see that you see this beautiful transition from a student leaving middle school to a student leaving high school. Wow. Those four years, right? So that balance and the Schmidz family's in the midst of that where you've got a kid that wants to take athletics and he wants
073to take calculus and all this, but he wants to have his friendships. And so it's that's the balance we're talking about kind of what we adults would call the work life balance. So hitting that right and our staff helping students through that is one of the pieces that our community finds valuable. That's what that that was signaled in the survey. Okay. What do they want from our schools? And when I when I say this, what do they want from our schools? I'm not distinguishing between charter and non-charter, right? We want as a leadership team, every kid and every family to find the right place for them for their journey, their educational journey, no matter which school that is. And PSD is super proud of all of our schools, charter and noncharter, all of them. We
074have great schools in this community to be proud of. So, what do families want? No surprises here. Number one, push for an academic powerhouse outcome for our kids. I mean, I've been in PSD here in front of you and with you all for 18 years now, maybe 19. That has never changed. Pter school district has always prided themselves unlike just and being an academic powerhouse, frankly, and always pushing to be stronger in that space. That matters to our community. Um, the way that shows up for us is in a lot of different ways. You know, we mentioned core knowledge again here, IB, GT, AP dual enrollment, all of these pieces. The future ready work that we're doing, helping make sure that families are more aware of what those options are and how to get their
075students involved in those different pathways and such is huge work. So, we're engaged in this. Number two, and by the way, number one fits in perfectly if you think about the strategic plan in UIP, the literacy piece and the graduate with options, those first two big priorities fit in perfectly with number one, pushing to be academic, an academic powerhouse. Number two, safety and behavior in the spotlight, which fits in perfectly with number three, mental health and belonging on our strategic plan. So, I feel like our plan is in alignment with what the community is asking for and continuing to signal this is what they value. So, bullying, vaping, and classroom disruptions topped the list of concerns that came up through the survey. No surprise there. Families demand clear behavioral expectations and staff that foster empathy,
076safety, and a supportive school environment. So, the way I read the survey results um and and actually this work was done by Ranch Shei, Dr. Ransi, who was with us as our coordinator, research evaluation coordinator, and Dr. Lauren Hooton was involved in this work as well. And it's real clear that our community wants students to be safe and for there to be clear, like it says, behavioral expectations that are enforced. And we want an inclusive environment where all kids feel welcome, seen, and included. We want both of those things. That's what number two is indicating. The third theme that um emerged from the these data, equity and belonging matter more than ever. Now, Superintendent Kingsley did a nice job reminding us and I I mentioned the dates. I'm just going to mention one more time.
077This is about a date at one year ago. So, if you just think about what was going on about one year ago when uh families were responding to these items, okay, families emphas emphasize inclusivity, especially for students with special needs. that has been a focus in PSD. We we have a lot of data indicating a lot of room for improvement in that space and we also have some data for some specific places where we're proud of what's happening and how we're moving certain things in that space. Both of those things are true at the same time. But this survey is indicating that matters to our community. So that is true. Gifted learners, some people might say, I don't get that one. like if if it's gifted learners as a group don't they aren't they just
078kind of like you know isn't everything just happening quite well for them and the answer is not always you know uh students who are identified as GT actually have their own set of unique um I don't know issues is a strong word but they're unique exceptionalities that we as a school district thoughtfully support them with. So that's true. And that I just realized that one may not sound as uh as familiar to some people. And then English language learners, which we also phrase as multil- language learners, right? Those specific groups. And if you remember the UIP and the strategic plan presentation, those are a couple of the groups that we specifically identified that we're focused on in supporting through that work in our plan. Okay. Creating a deep sense of belonging while providing rigorous academic
079experience. So there it is again like the community is super clear. They want that support for every kid in a in an inclusive environment and they want academic rigor. We want both. Okay. Number four, teacher um support comes up strong again in a set of these items on the survey and that that resonates with me also as a person who works with the district accountability committee. That committee is always very supportive of like our teacher professional development and support structures to help our teachers help our students. So that's a a priority that rose up in this survey. And then logistics and we're well aware that matters a lot. The air conditioning comes up, facilities, safety, these types of things. So logistics matter too. And I know the board's invested a lot of time over multiple
080years now working on various things to do with logistics including belt times and start times and so on. So that came out from this survey too from the community voice. Okay, we're not going to take questions right right now. We're not going to break up the the presentation, but I'm going to hand the mic over to my colleague Dr. Lauren Hooton to talk about the PSD marketing campaign. Thanks. All right. So, as Dwayne mentioned, we gathered a lot of information from that enrollment survey and we used Whoa. We used that information to inform the development of the choose PSD marketing campaign which launched in March of 2025. So, this is intended to be a comp uh comprehensive marketing campaign that really promotes the entire district. Uh we are focused on encouraging engagement with information about
081PSD across a variety of different platforms using a variety of different tactics. and we'll talk about some of the data that are associated with those uh here in a moment. Overarchingly, we are really striving to continue to reinforce that PSD is the top choice for preK12 education in Northern Colorado. So, that is the theme that runs through all of our choose PSD marketing. Uh, as I mentioned, we're really focused on promoting the entire district, but we are also doing campus specific marketing as well. So, there's a blend of campus specific promotion with promotion of the entire district. So whenever we're putting together a marketing campaign, it's really important for us to think about the audiences that we are trying to reach. So our primary audiences as the district are current families as well as prospective
082families. And when I say perspective families, I'm talking about families that are new to this region or are considering moving into this region as well as families with students entering preK or kindergarten. So they're really starting to think about becoming a part of PSD at that point in time. So that's really where we're dedicating a lot of our focus from a marketing perspective. We're also dedicating focus on families that have students in fifth grade and students in eighth grade because those are points at which there's possible transition and enrollment patterns that we're currently seeing. Uh in terms of our primary audience more broadly, we're also trying to reach our students. We're working on reaching staff, faculty, and at the moment, we're also spending a lot of time focusing on our non-English-speaking families and making sure
083that we are providing communication in multiple languages and particularly in Spanish. So, if you've been monitoring our Instagram, for example, you'll see our Instagram posts now appear in both English and Spanish consistently so that we are providing that accessibility to our families. When we think about the audience that we are reaching more broadly, there's also a secondary set of audiences that we're connecting with with this campaign, we're communicating with that set of audiences a little bit differently than than we are with our primary audiences. But our secondary audience members include our community, our taxpayers, particularly taxpayers without children. It's important for us to be connecting with them about what the district offers to our community as well. uh we also engage with the media, local business, uh local partners, our alumni and local elected officials
084as well. So the the core messaging that underlies what we are putting out in the choose PSD campaign really centers around the notion that you have excellent choices in PSD. We talk about that a lot in this room. There is a lot of option and a lot of opportunity for any family who's seeking different things for their students across our system. So, we really emphasize this idea that there there are good choices here. Um, and we're trying to make it easier also as we're promoting those choices for families to navigate all of the options that they have. Sometimes it's a little bit like information overload, right? I have so many options, it's difficult to choose. So, some of the work that we're doing as part of this campaign and also with the content that's on
085our website is streamlining it so it's a little bit easier to process and hopefully makes it more accessible to families that are looking for the options that best suit them. As we communicate to, we're really emphasizing being clear and transparent in our communication and we're really focused on making it clear that every single student success in our system matters. So that's a message that will continue to be a common thread across all of the choose PSD materials that we put out. So at this point I'm going to shift into some of the more specific statistics. Uh what we'll start with is digital information or digital advertising information. And as we look at this I want us to kind of think about the fact that it's important as we're as we're marketing to try to meet
086audiences where they are. So a lot of our audiences are engaging in digital spaces. Uh we're starting here with our Google search ad campaign. So Google search ads are ads that would pop up when you're using an internet browser. Um what you're seeing here is a a few different metrics and I'll define some of these just so that we're on the same page. So impressions are essentially the number of instances in which an ad could be seen by an audience member. A click is an actual engagement with that ad. So they're they're clicking on it or they're engaging it in some way. And then the click-through rate brings those two things together. So that gives us a metric of engagement. So what you're seeing here with Google search ads, since the campaign has been running,
087we have more than 70,000 impressions, 19,000 clicks, and a 27% clickthrough rate, which is really a remarkably high click-through rate when we have a benchmark average of about 3%. So the folks that are seeing our content are engaging with that content. So that's a good sign for us. Uh our top performing content tends to focus on choice enrollment, the options that are available to students in our system and the data tells us that we are reaching our target age group of individuals between 25 and 54 which are likely to have school-aged children. One note that I want to make as we're looking at this slide is that click-through rates and conversions are not the same thing. So what I mean by that is just because we have a 27% click-through rate, that does not necessarily
088mean that we should expect a 27% increase in enrollment. Okay? So the the the goal of marketing and public relations is really to raise awareness of the system and what it offers. It's not necessarily a direct correlation between views, clicks, and students enrolling in our system. So I just want to be clear about as we look at the rest of this data. Okay. Uh so continuing in the digital space we are also running ads on meta. So these are the Facebook companies fa Facebook Instagram. As you can see here we have more than 700,000 audience members. We are reaching in this space almost 800,000 impressions 23,000 clicks and a 2.9% clickthrough rate which also exceeds the benchmark average. So we're doing well in this space in terms of engaging with our audiences. Um the audiences
089that we tend to reach the most effectively in this particular space are those who have recently moved to this region and those who have younger children. So again we're we're really on target in terms with the group of the group that we are trying to reach here. Uh we've also invested in Spanish language advertising here and as you can see we're we are having some engagement at SP as well. The Google Display Network which you see on the slide here at the bottom. The Google Display Network is a collection of about two million websites, apps, um, video platforms on which ads can also appear. So, we have engagement here as well, over 500,000 impressions. You'll see a lower click number here, uh, and just a one 0.1% click-through rate. What I'll note though is that
090click-through rates on a Google Display Network tend to be quite a bit lower. So, this is a pretty normal number for us to be seeing here. Uh speaking of meeting audiences where they are, we also know that we have audiences in other spaces beyond the internet. So we have tried to launch some new marketing efforts in different physical spaces in our community. So that has included ads that we placed on the Oldtown Trolley that runs out of city park. Uh we also placed a couple of billboards uh in the fall. So, this was uh highway 287 north uh and of 65th Street near the southern border of PSD and highway 257 out near Bamford. Uh as you can see here, we have more than 90,000 and60,000 weekly impressions on those billboards during their two-month campaign
091campaign. So, there were a lot of eyes essentially that were on those over time. Uh we've done some direct mail marketing as well. We sent a kindergarten mailer to about 6,000 residential addresses within our boundaries and a choose PSD mailer to almost uh 9,900 households with school-aged children in our community as well. Uh we are also pushing content about PSD specifically out to individuals who do not have children on digital platforms as well. So really building in that space of connecting with our secondary audiences and talking about why PSD is good for the broader community. Okay. Uh we've done some other unique advertising campaigns. We did a couple of movie theater ads. There was a 15-second spot uh that ran before movies and in the lobby at CineArk. And we did a graduation video as
092well. Uh we did a Valpac mailer also for the first time that reached 20,000 households over about a three-month period. and that included a QR code on it uh and information in both English and Spanish that took individuals to the PSD website so that they could learn more about the options that are available. Uh we have also created choose PSD banners which are located outdoors at our campus sites. Those have QR codes on them as well. So those who see them can use that to access more information about the district. Um, and then I would just note too that we are in the process of making some yard signs that are school specific but also PSD branded. So you will start to see those pop up around town. We're providing a certain number of those
093to schools and some schools PTAs I believe are selling them as well. Um, and we will be doing some more grassroots style marketing here at community events. So, we'll be at Hero Fest on September 13th, which is this weekend, and also at Treat Sylvania where we'll have information to share with those who tend to go to those kind of events with their young children. So, that is the overview of our marketing campaign and I'll invite Dr. Schmidtz to join me and we can answer any questions. Thank you so much. That was there's a lot of information in here that we probably have some questions on. And if it's okay, I'm actually going to start off with one of them. Um, and so Dwayne, this is more going to you. Um, so I'm looking at all
094of these the five survey results and what says um, PS Family speak out, what we want from our schools. And the great news is is that within all five of those, we're seeing those overlay with our top three priorities. Um and and the numbers four and five where they're asking um about teachers need support to say and buildings to bell schedules. Um the community has literally put their money where their mouth is on this and has given us the funding to make sure that this happens. So this we know is you know is is legit. It's good stuff here. Um my question really comes down to is is this do we know first of all do we know is this what people um are saying they want from the school from their schools and or
095is it something that they think they are already getting from their schools and do we know the difference? >> Yeah. So this is reflecting what they want from their schools. They're not telling us they're not having this from their schools. They're indicating this matters to us. And I read it the way you read it, which is when I look through those five things, I can see things in our UIP, our strategic plan, and in our recent funding that the community supported PSD with as being in 100% align in alignment with this. >> Yeah, I see. I mean, I I see the the 100% alignment in it. Um I think to me it it shows that we need to keep the focus where it's at because that is what the community is looking for. So, you
096know, our our top three priorities need to stay our top three priorities. Um and you know we need to be using the money that we have been given from the public um wisely. Um is there a way then to um without further saying or I'm not quite sure how to do it but to ask people this is what you say you want this is what we are doing do you feel that you are getting it >> thanks so let me talk on this for just a moment because I think this is so important that we have this continuous two-way communication with our community right and surveys are just one mechanism so we certainly use surveys and um Lauren has done a great job over the years in doing some of the big ones as well.
097So, it's it's we're well represented in that space. On top of that, we do focus groups, right? And um we do uh community engagement. The board of education has been really diligent about community engagement in different types of venues. We do community engagement through committees. So, we run the DAB and the DAC and the student advisory committee and what we did call the equity coalition. You know, these are the reasons for all those efforts. So, we don't just use surveys. And I think it's the answer to why what we're hearing in this survey that we did resonates or is aligned with what we have put forward and we've collectively landed on in our UIP, in our strategic plan, in where we've put our funding priorities. Dave Montoya and his group deserves a shout out because
098they do some engagement around this too, so that we're making sure that we're always in alignment around how we're spending our resources and what we're prioritizing with our staff time. But I think it's that's the answer is it's not just surveys. It's never over, never will be over. It's just a continuous cycle of listening, noticing, wondering, and engaging, which I do believe PSD does on so many levels. >> Thank you. And I I agree with that. Um, and I just, you know, it just to me just reiterates then the importance of sharing our good news, right? sharing the good news of what we are doing, what we are accomplishing, and how that fits into what um is the stated need of our community. So, how can we make those things um really just work together
099um and become integral with each other? Um so, yes, I think the the marketing campaign is extremely important to you know side of that and and question on the marketing campaign actually. Do we know the QR click-through rate from the Valpac? I do not know that off the top of my head, but I can get you that. >> No, no worries. No worry. I was just more curious than anything else. And um the one thing before I'll let others speak was the um when we do the yard signs um is that specific to like graduating seniors or is that for everybody? And if not, can we have it also for graduating seniors? >> So, it is for everybody. So, it'll celebrate, for example, I'm a done dolphin kind of thing and have that branding on
100the sign, but also choose PSD branding on sign. But we can take the feedback that graduating seniors might like something special and we'll take that back to our team. So, >> thank you. All right, Kevin, go ahead. >> Dr. Schmidz, I've got some numbers questions. >> Um, >> so when you gave us the breakdown of the participants of the survey, I wrote down 862 elementary school families, 424 middle school families, 378 high school families. Is that track? >> 802, 424, and 378. Okay. Yeah. >> So that's roughly 1,600 participants to a survey. So let me stop there. In your view is do you believe that's a a fairly good response rate for a survey of this kind? >> Such a tricky question. So yeah. So it's hard to say, you know, when when you do
101surveys and you know exactly what number of people you've put the survey out to, you can do a response. Right. >> Right. And that's what we'd like to get. The reason we like response rate obviously is it gives us a much better idea of like how close did we get to the full population? And then you can talk about bias that might be there and things like that, right? When you think of how large our our population is and the way we send the survey, not we're not calculating our response rate here. We know that's not clearly not all of our families. So I think the real question just becomes this. Do you believe that that's enough? Normally if this was a student survey, I'd say student voice, but in this case family voice for
102a signal to come through, right? That's meaningful. And that's really the question. And so because when we look at when we look at through those um responses the themes really it's about themes because it was all very open-ended or much of it was open-ended and so what are the themes that converged and do they feel valid to you like do they pass the smell test so to say and so I hate to be so loose in my language but it's not it's not like we did when we do the connection survey we know exactly how many kids we surveyed I can give you the exact response rates and I always do, right? And this isn't quite like that. So, I think the real question is, do we believe there's enough information in here to give
103us a valid read on some of the community's feedback to us on what matters most, >> right? Let me stop you there. I by no means am I criticizing those that did or how we're using it. I'm just in my own head I'm trying to calibrate what importance and again I don't have the the each question and the you know how people kind of responded but to your point these themes feel good to me intrinsically and it's like yes I've heard these in conversations and engagement sessions so I appreciate your point on that so they I guess I my bigger question is I don't know a better way to go about it of polling our community to determine what these themes are other than to look at the 1600s that that did participate extrapolate what
104we can from them because we have to start somewhere. I mean, we have to use some sort of data to guide this discussion. Um, but of 30,000 students in our our community, you know, that's >> 6%. >> Yeah. >> Which is tough. You know what I'm saying? Scratching my head between how much fidelity should I give these numbers and how much is it just these are kind of things I want to hear because I'm up here doing this work every day. >> Okay. So, I think a good phrase right now or word is triangulate. So if we triangulate, we think about what did the survey tell us, what are the engagement sessions tell us, what are the input that we get from the DAC and the DAB and such tell us, um, do those things
105triangulate? Do they land in the same space, right? Because to the extent that they do, we feel more confident that we're hearing that signal from the community because those are different ways of gathering. And we also get exit survey information from seniors when they leave. But that's students, that's not the families, but that's the students. So we get that kind of information back also. So really the question is when you triangulate across these different sources, one of which is a little bit muddy and not super clear. Collectively, are they giving us some consistent themes? >> Yeah. >> And that's the part where I think you and I both would land on I Yes. >> Yeah. And and again, again, I'm not being hyperritical. Um, but I guess one of my bigger concerns and I don't
106want to belver the point is just that that number that you that you that you shared also suggests a lot more engagement from those families. The folks that are showing up at our community engagement sessions have a higher level of active engagement in our community. I guess I'm concerned and always am concerned with us missing the voice of the person that isn't going to be in the room tonight, >> that isn't going to show up on the the survey results, etc. And so to not miss some of those other insalient points and what we can do and I think we're doing a great job. I think we're doing all the all the data gathering points that we we can muster but I want to constantly be mindful of those voices that may not be here
107tonight or show up in the survey. >> So I want to finish with this piece also not to blabber but I think this is an important topic you're bringing up director Heralda. What could we do moving into the future beyond what we currently do? What are the possibilities? Right? We could think about and revisit what are those exit survey items for students potentially for families, something we're not currently doing as much, right? Do we standardize that across schools? What might that instrument and process look like? We could put some energy behind something like that. What type of focus groups would we want to pull together to capture the voice of um the folks that we know we might be missing in these other strategies we've talked about tonight? Right? Could we put some energy in
108that direction? That's a possibility. as well, right? So, there are a couple techniques if PSD wanted to delve deeper into this going, you know, forward that we could consider. >> Yeah. >> Can I also respond because I think when we have these kinds of surveys, they're I think a launch point, right? I wouldn't want to do anything only with this data, right? But it gives us something to say, okay, they said this or these 1600 families said this. Let's go take it back to our community and have either focus group or when we're going to DAB say, what do you guys think of this idea or our community sessions, right? So, this gives us targeted conversations rather than this telling us explicitly you should do XYZ. Okay, Scott, did you want to go? >> Thanks
109so much for this information. This is this is great stuff. Um, I would just caution us on and I don't think Director Halda was saying we can't listen to this uh this group of responses because it's less than we'd hope for. I think any marketer worth their salt if we get a 6% um survey result is a big deal actually. Um, everybody's familiar with the Neielson ratings. That's at one time it was only 2,000 households and that was that were doing those surveys. This is like in the 60s and 70s, but that represented, you know, millions of people just statistically. And I think I think a lot of this stuff, you know, they're reflecting other people that they talk to. You know, we've talked about how parents listen to each other and are influenced by
110each other. This is coming out in this survey. So I I do feel and and we do hear this too a lot but I I do appreciate the caution because it can be swayed. Um looking at these five topics uh academics jumps out. I hear that all the time. Uh we want to focus on academics. Um so that's not a surprise. Uh the safety and behavior. This is something I hear from teachers a lot. Teachers and staff. The classroom disruptions are a huge issue and they've only gotten worse. uh in recent years and and there's a whole bunch of reasons. COVID is probably the main one where kids just kind of got lost a little bit in terms of how to behave. I think that's something we need to pay attention to. I've heard that's
111a reason people are choosing to leave PSD to other schools that have the smaller classrooms and things like that. Um this was interesting to me. Number three, the equity and belonging. There's, you know, I had expectations of, you know, I don't want to call the usual suspects, but like the people They're the groups that we typically see, but the ones that were named here, uh, I think it's important for given the context of some of the things we've been hearing lately, um, especially students with special needs. Families want to emphasize inclusivity of students with special needs, gifted learners. Don't talk about gifted learn that often. And then, of course, English language learners, which I think is a big deal. So, I think we need to pay attention to that. I think that's that's coming up
112more and more. um where we want to talk about inclusivity and include uh the in the I is kids. Um retaining high quality teachers. I think about this all the time. I was really happy to see this one pop up. I want to foster an environment where they feel supported, they feel they can speak up, their opinion matters. Um, and at the same time, you know, the professional development, which I think we've done a good job of, uh, including that and adding days and things like that. So, I I like to see that. And then lastly, um, the facility upgrades, we all know about air conditioning and all that sort of. I'm going to beat a dead horse, but bell schedules and start times are coming right up. And I had a reminder, this is
113amazing timing. I had a reminder pop up in my phone that I set last spring. Make sure we get on bell schedules starting now. And it's going to be every weeks. So, sorry, but I'm going to be sorry, not sorry. I really think we need to talk about that because this point about middle schools aligning with adolescent sleep cycles. We had this debate about eight years ago. We looked at the science and it tracks and so we need to find a solution that. So, I'm just ranting. I apologize, but um I did I did have some positive stuff. My last thing um I love the choose P PSD campaign. John, your your team is doing a great job on that. Um there was a the cinear theater ads is such a great idea. Did you
114see when I saw you nodding? So, I'm assuming you're picking family movies and things like that to put them right before and that's just marketing. Love that kind of stuff and that is impactful. It's a great idea. And I love the uh the yard signs too. I think that's an awesome awesome thing and giving people that sense of pride for their school and um you know and their mascots and that type of thing. So, I will get off my high horse. Thank you. Okay, >> others. Go ahead, Andrew. I guess I probably have just one question at the point which not having taken the survey. Um, so I don't know what demographic questions you asked with it, how did the data come back to show where we don't have enough to really be useful statistically?
115So, I'm going to pick on right off the bat. What about our ELS group? What about our th those those students that are in the IEP and 504 group? We collect that kind of demographic data to then even know whether we have anything that is even remotely close to approaching come some kind of statistical hey there's something there for us to then lean into more of the qualitative understanding you know story by story or whatever we need to do because if we're already saying we only had 6% overall or whatever the number was. I'm just wondering if you're confident that we're getting enough feedback from those groups when we've heard that they often uh don't necessarily have the same kind of access to respond to surveys. >> Okay. Thank you. Excellent question. So, we do
116not gather the same type of depth of demographic information on this type of survey. We send it to families to get this kind of feedback to delve into that as deeply as you would like to. And just to compare it real quickly to like the student connection survey where we deliver with the student email accounts and then we've got all of those demographics and we look at that and we look at that carefully like who are we missing and by what and and data visualization tool even displays all that to see how closely the population matched the survey respondents. And so it's like we can go to town but in this kind of survey we're really limited because we ask just a couple questions of parents and we want to get right to the meat
117of the surve. that we cannot retroactively going into that and and connected to that though in in alignment with um director Havalda and Shon Bower's comments I want to share this real quick this is a statistician professor part of me that wants to just I think the board will find a lot of value in this like over time okay what Scott said is true that if you had 200 respondents from a population of even 10,000 it gives you just as much information as if you had 200 responses from a population of 2 million under the assumption that they were randomly selected responses from that population. That's the key assumption, right? So, you're both right and all three of you are right where your concerns could be and where you're kind of saying, yeah, that it
118feels like the responses are valid and useful for their purpose. And we don't know that these numbers of responses, whatever they were that I read off, were randomly sampled from among the possible population, right? So there could be a selection bias kind of thing going on. So I'm just validating like you're correct. Like all of your instincts, which you're in alignment with this, your instincts are who didn't we hear from? Who does this represent? And so on and so forth. That's valid. And the triangulation idea is also valid that we're hearing it resonates because you're hearing the same things when you engage in community comment and and community engagement opportunities. We're hearing the same thing when we work with the DAB and DAC and so on. We see those themes emerging in the survey. So
119that triangulation idea is real important and we cannot do the kind of depth of analysis that you're asking about. So there you go. Can I make a comment on that too which is I think just um to point out that even with the non-randomization and the low feedback rate what we're seeing especially in three with um equity belonging matter more than ever. I mean the fact that special needs gifted learners and English language learners were lifted up um shows that it that is important to the entire community. And so even if we did not specifically get responses for from families with um of special needs or from students of uh families of students of English language learners or gifted uh learners that we're noticing that the community is is lifting that up. And so um
120while it may not be a randomized response and we may not be able to um extrapolate perfectly, I think the fact that the community has responded in such a way that that is important to them regardless of what the background is um really states something as well. >> Good point. >> No, agree. I just I think we have is a lot of good data. We just have to keep in mind where >> absolutely where it comes from. might have concerns and and how we can draw from it appropriately. Of course, >> absolutely. >> That's just >> so I think we got some good understanding of where it has some solid pieces and so on. >> Perfect. Anything else? Other questions? >> All right, Jess. >> A couple uh some of them are quick. Um so
121we did billboards for like two-month campaigns. Are we going to do that again? Did we think that was valuable or is that kind of like a oneoff? >> So we are currently envisioning Choose PSD 2.0. So, to be determined on billboards. >> Cool. I love that there's a 2.0. Thank you. >> So, I'll like kind of go over that part. Um, so then my one other question is you mentioned focus groups, rain, and I'm wondering is that something where we're going to lean into the groups that we already have like DAB, DAC, stack. Are we going to just stick there or do we also envision possibly having focus groups that are more of like a oneoff where we invite folks and say okay this is what we heard from a big crew like let's dig
122into this and what does that mean to those folks? So we're the painters of the painting, right? And we can do it any number of ways. And so we can have conversation to decide what is the best way to move forward. But all those options you just laid out make sense. And I I could definitely envision some specific focus groups for this purpose. But it's up to us. >> All right. >> Collectively. >> Any others? >> All right. Thank you so much. This was fantastic. Really appreciate it. Those are great questions. >> Thanks. As always, >> I didn't assume you were cynical. I think you were so defensive. My perception was not that you were cynical. >> Okay, we're going to move on to 10.2. 2024 2025 movement analysis and fiveyear projections overview. >> Yes.
123So, tonight we look forward to hearing about the 2024 2025 movement analysis as well as our five-year projections overview from our chief technology officer, Bud Hunt. Welcome, Bud. >> Thank you. Good evening, uh, board, Superintendent Kingsley, colleagues, and, uh, public friends. Uh, now we get to the fun part. We get to look at large bodies of data and talk about that. Um, and I'm I'm glad to have the opportunity to celebrate a little bit of my team's work, tell you a little bit about that team as we do the work and take your questions and conversation about something that is, I think, fascinating, but also complex and nuanced. And I hope it will be uh a useful conversation for ourselves and we'll continue as I heard uh some of the board name in the last
124presentation, we have a lot of good data. How do we make sure we're drawing the right conclusions from that data? So, uh, we'll we'll move into this, uh, to say that we're going to look at two collections of numbers tonight. We're going to look at the movement analysis. That's a historical, uh, collection of data. We'll talk more about what that information is in a sentent. This is a report that we've provided to the board annually. Uh, prior since before I was here, we've sometimes asked third parties to do that. Our team right now, there are four data analysts who work for me. All have backgrounds in mathematics and statistics to a level I do not have. I like working with smart people who teach me things and they teach me teach me a lot in
125this space. But that's historical data that is based on uh previous year's October count. The second set of data that we're going to look at starts with current data but it moves into projection. It is not yet fact. It is statistically derived uh to use a word that DLDA might use conjecture but it's informed conjecture. Uh and I would name that it's uh it's appropriate to to treat those numbers slightly differently. One is a look backwards. The other is a look forward. And a five-year projection is a lot like driving at night. The closer you are to the headlights, the it is, the more accurate it is, the more likely you are to see. And the further you are from the lights, the easier it is to see a Bigfoot that may or may not
126actually be in the road uh down the street. But as you get closer to what you thought was a Bigfoot, it might just be uh the uh deer that is in the road, or perhaps it was just a bit of fog. So, we'll talk more about that in a second, and then we'll certainly move into conversation. Um before I give the uh parameters around the data, I need to tell you a quick story. I know that uh at least and and director, I'm going to come back to you. You're you're a Westwing fan. And I say that because I am as well. And I there's a scene in the third second season where Oliver Platt's paying an attorney and he asks the press secretary, do you know what time it is? And so I'm going
127to ask this room, do you know what time it is? >> Yes. >> Oh, so you went right to the end, right? What time is it? There we go. There are two questions there and you get two different answers. And when we look at large data sets like this, it's really important to know what question did you ask and what parameters did you use when you do it. Much like when you're talking or or typing into a chat GPT or or a line tool engine, you have to ask the question that you're seeking to answer. And sometimes you have to fiddle with the ask because it might not return uh what you were looking for. And so it's an opportunity for us to be curious uh together as we move into this. Here comes some
128disclaimers. Uh the data that's in the presentation that the team put together comes from last year's October count which is the snapshot that we use to determine enrollment in PSD. Uh all quantities listed are student counts. They're not enrollment counts. So these are actual headc counts. The large collection of numbers that we look at we will look at here represent individual children who their families have all made decisions. They've all made choices. We've talked a lot about the word choice. I'm going to say more about that in a second. Uh I love choices. Sometimes choices when you have too many can be uh as Barry Schwarz reminds us a paradox. You get stuck or paralysis is the title of his book which if you haven't read I urge you to read it but in this
129case we're excited about that. Last of the caveats we're going to show you some tables tonight and I promise I'm not going to read all of the data in all of the tables. I'm also going to promise you that the totals won't all add up because of some of the constraints in the data that I'll I'll talk about later too. Um, before I do that, let me tell you that 80% of the children that live within the boundaries of the Pter School District choose a PSD uh, neighborhood or choice school. Sorry. No, no, that's a different statistic than the one that's on the slide. I cheated. I said something that I didn't have written down. Uh, roughly one in 10 students who live in in uh, PSD and go to a public school choose a
130PSD charter school. And about one in 10 families who live in PSD with kids who go to public school choose a school that isn't located in PSD technically, even though it might. And we're going to come back to those things. But I just want to say we have a lot of choices to be proud of in our community. And as we've heard tonight, we have a lot of work to do to improve and make sure that every kid has access to every choice that makes sense for their families and leads to an outcome that is a healthy and right and good outcome for families. So, as we get into the numbers, I don't want to forget about choices. Now, I will name that 30% of the children or the families living within boundaries attend a
131school that is not their neighborhood school. That doesn't mean they've all chosen a school that's not their neighborhood school. Sometimes there are programs that they need to be in that only exist in some schools. So, it's it but that is a percentage that's important to keep in mind. Uh choice is also it's a value in our community, but it's also a state law. Right? In the state of Colorado, the law allows a a school a family to choose a school for their child outside any boundary they might be zoned into, provided spaces available. And spaces available is is a phrase that different schools define different ways in different spaces. But it is the law in Colorado that people can make choices and we have a lot of good choices uh here in the district for
132families to choose. Um, if you live inside of the PSD boundaries, you have three choices as a family. And you have more than that, but if you if you choose a public school, these are those three. You can choose to attend a PSD neighborhood choice or charter school. You can choose a nonPSD school within PSD boundaries, which is in most cases a charter school institute school, which is a chartered school that is technically not of PSD, but exists here. And the third choice is you might could choose a non-PSD school outside of PSD boundaries. We'll talk about that in a second. It's important for me to define all these terms with choice because now I have to do it again and a little more detailed so that the data we're about to look at makes
133sense. Choicing into PSD, as we're about to see in some data, means children and families who live outside PSD boundaries and choose to attend a PSD neighborhood choice or charter school. Right? So, you don't live in PSD, but you choose to come in. Choicing out means that you live inside the PSD boundaries and choose to attend a nonPSD school within PSD boundaries again charter school or a nonPSD school outside of boundaries. And as we'll talk about in a second, you may or may not physically travel outside of the boundaries to go to an in district or an out of district school. So when we talk about choicing in and choicing out tonight, and I promise that we will not get to semantic satiation with the word choice, there's a lot in what we're talking about,
134but defining these terms will help sort of frame uh the data we're about to look uh at next. And then the last caveat before we look at data, and I want to explain this one a little bit, is all the data that is derived here, again, it's October count data, which means it is public school kid data. That means it does not include homeschool or private school enrollment. That's not because we're not interested in that data. It's not because it's not important to look at that data. It's because we can't longitudinally track a child who does not have what the state of Colorado calls a SAID. I can't remember what that SA SID stands for. Forgive me, I can look that up. But that's the unique identifier we assigned to a child to allow us
135to do longitudinal tracking that makes the data you're about to see make sense. There are families who might elect into homeschool never having attended a public school. There might be families who elected into a private school from a public school, but we cease that data relationship when they make that choice. And the cleanliness from a a nerd a data nerd standard of homeschool and private school reporting is a little bit messy. In fact, the private school data that is reported to the state of Colorado frequently is gathered by our team who works FSD at the behest of the state. We're required to do it, but we have no authority to pull that data from schools that may or may not wish to comply other than incessant emailing and phone calls and hey, do you mind?
136So, that data gets messy. That's why we're not talking about it in this presentation. It's not because it's not important and we don't think it matters. By the way, sometime uh in a different presentation, we can talk about the ch the people who choose not to go to a PSD school, but have chosen a PSD options enrichment experience for their families. So, these are homeschooled children who live inside and outside of our district. I'm selfishly proud of some of the children because I am their nephew or excuse me, I am their uncle. They are my niece and nephew. Uh they do not live within our boundaries. They are homeschooled by their mother and they travel into the district once a week to receive enrichment. And we do receive funding for that service that we provide.
137So, that is to say that there are a lot of reasons families make and they're not going to show up in this data. Now that I've explained an awful lot, let's look at some numbers. Everybody ready to go? We track this data longitudinally and we look at it two ways. The blue line in this uh table represents choicing out. So students have chosen the way we described earlier. The red line represents choice in and this is a a 10-year uh report of that data. And we're curious about two things. The raw numbers, but the data that I think is most relevant for us this evening is the differential between the two. So if you look in the year 2025 uh we saw a net uh impact of choice to the district of 22 fewer students
138or 22 more choicing out than choicing in if that makes sense. And you can see that that data uh shifts and moves and grows a little bit if you think longitudinally about the last 10 years in Colorado. There are more choices than there were 10 years ago. online schools uh were are continue to grow and you you might notice that the dip at the bottom of the data when everybody chose to stay home for a while and some people didn't get a choice at all. Um that was the biggest sort of choice out uh and we saw some recovery over the last three years. So the 2024 data represents a net choice out of 739 students. Okay. Uh I'm going to show you these next tables. We're not going to spend a ton of time
139on them, but historically the board has been curious about when people choice out, where do they go? And you can look at this to show sort of the complexity of this issue. Many of the people who have choiced out of the PSD school district haven't left the district at all. They are attending charter school institute schools that are located in the district, but for the purposes of this conversation are not uh PSD students. uh to grow a little bigger. The top 15 choice out schools in the district, you can again see several northern Colorado schools. You can see some geographically contiguous schools, which makes sense when we look at the districts in a moment. And then you'll see some schools that are far away geographically from us, but they're online uh programs. And that'll be
140clearer in this next slide. So here are the the top five choice in districts. You'll note that those districts are all geographically contiguous here. It makes sense. people are moving based on the convenience of their families. There are some families who live in Thompson that live closer to a PSD school and vice versa. The same is true of Weld 4 uh and the other districts named here. And then the top five choice out districts if you look that starts to be much more um while the charter school institute is the largest. The others that make this list are are mostly online programs with the exception of Weld R4 or excuse me Windsor RE4 which is our geographically uh adjacent neighbor. Um the the charter school institute itself is worth naming here uh just to say
141here are uh schools that are represented in this set. Remember that if it's under 15, the state won't give us the data. So it we we can't tell you exactly how many. It's a smaller number than 15. That uh less than or equal to 15 really could less than could less than or equal 15. It might be one. It might be 15. We don't know because the state doesn't tell us for the privacy of the family. uh but you can still get a rough sense there. Uh it's worth uh looking at education reinvisioned because that is a collection of online schools that is geographically south of us located physically in monument cutter headquartered in monument and in the surrounding area. Um and I will pause there uh to say that that is uh the quick
142look at the movement an analysis of people who have choiced in and choiced out. I'm going to ask us that we go to the end to do the discussion just as we did in the previous but I wanted to pause here and say now we're going to look at the movement across PSD charter schools and PSD neighborhood and choice schools. So that is a different uh movement analysis but it is showing all PSD schools charter neighborhood and choice and movement back and forth. And what you'll notice here is that it's it's it's grown over time, but it's it's remained relatively stable, although you will see bumps in years where new schools have opened, new campuses has opened. Um, and we'll also look at that movement back and forth. And uh board members asked a question
143uh prior to this meeting as I was preparing for this. Hey, do you have this data by grade? We do. And we've shared that data, but to name it here in this slide because I didn't update the slides. uh we see move more movement into charters in the early grades and a lot more movement back into neighborhood and choice schools in the higher grades. Uh secondary is is where that movement comes back. Uh and these are the specific schools themselves. That large spike uh in the Liberty Common numbers is aligned with when they put the second elementary school campus on Taft and Horste in 2022 I believe. And so we track this data to pay attention to where are folks moving and and how does that work and where are they? Um so that's that
144look you've got the you've had the data and we want the data to be in public so everybody has that. We'll come back around for questions but I'm going to pause here and say everything we've looked at previously was factual historical data. What we're going to look at now is statistical modeling and adjustment based on statist or sorry historical data applied to some statistical modeling. And I do not have a master's or PhD in statistical modeling, but I do we did provide you some of that background prior to the meeting. It's it's located in the packet and we will certainly talk about some of the modeling that we do. But let's talk first and ground ourselves in what is the process by which we do projections and why do we do them. So if I
145may read a little bit, student enrollment projections are forecasts that estimate the number of students expected to enroll over a future period, typically one to five years. uh projections here are broken down by individual school, by grade level, and aggregated district-wide. They're broke. They provide a data-informed outlook on future enrollment patterns based on historical trends and local factors. We use a variety of methods and data sources and tools to start that. But some of the ones to mention are uh historical enrollment data, which is what we always start with. We look at birth rates, which are on the decline in Northern Colorado and have been for a while. Although we did see a blip last year, so our fingers are crossed for kindergarten and four years out, but that's later, not today. And it's a
146small blip, only about 200 uh births. But anyway, we won't get into those weeks tonight. But we do look a lot at this data. I want you to know that. Um, and we do this to help us with planning, ensure that resources, staffing, and facilities align. Specifically to the projections report in the packet and included online tonight is what's used to set our student base along with some uh financial factors that you've heard uh Dave Mononttoya talk about previously and probably will again as we get into budget season. That's the foundational number that's used for studentbased budgeting. So it's an important for us to end up a number because we build some budgets and models around that. um roughly it takes us it takes us a year to do five years worth of projections because
147we're doing a combination of things throughout. So October count which feels like a day in October and let me remind you that it's always good to go to school. Uh I know we talked about attendance awareness month but please come to school every day not just the first of October. We like it if you come to school all of the days of the school year. I'm going to say it one more time because even though it's an October count we want you to come every day. Um, but it takes the state and our schools a couple of months to configure the and compare the October count of enrollments versus kids who say they're in two schools versus kids who have moved during that time and making sure all that number is good. So once we
148have those real numbers in December, that's when we start our one-year projection analysis. Uh, in mid January, we're providing that data to schools for them to say, "Yep, this makes sense." Or, "No, this doesn't." Hey, did you know about because principles telling us things is a really important piece of our projections in the one year. Um, hey, this family left. That might not mean much at a large high school, but at a mountain school that could represent 12% of the population of the school. So, those things are really important in that early projections conversation. We look and review at those and then in beginning of February, we distribute those because those are budgetary numbers at that point. We'll be building student-based budgets around that. Uh then we start to look at once we've got the
149one year sort of tightened down, we start to look ahead and project and forecast into the future. And so usually around the end of the school year is when this data is produced, uh we provided this data to the district at the end of the school year and we're here tonight talking about it. So um that's our rough timeline. Bless you. Uh there's a lot of factors that go into that. You saw a few in a previous slide, but we do look at historical enrollment and trends. There's birth rate data. We look at county and state demographer information. We're looking at Lmer County data around uh where where are people born, where are people moving from. We do look at housing growth. Our team or excuse me, housing growth. Our team is finding a tighter
150alignment with housing prices and uh children in the area than we are housing building right now. the the price house is a pretty good indicator of whether or not a family with young children can afford to move into this area, which is one of the wonderful challenges and problems of choice in Northern Colorado right now. And then we also look at uh other things related to housing and movement and water. We continue to pay attention to water which is an important thing as we all know. Uh and then we do a lot of statistical modeling and by a lot uh this is me saying that our team uses a model called the cohort survival model which is to take a look historically at how many of our kindergarteners are with us in first grade. So
151we start with a data set and say and I'm making up this percentage because I do not do this calculation but hey historically we know that about 85% of our kindergarteners go to first grade in the district. So we can apply 85% to last year's kindergarten number and that's a starting place for what first grade might look like. And we do that up both across the district and the grade levels to do some of that modeling along with the data sets. Um we look uh at that both from a school lens, a grade lens, and a district lens. And we we generate a bunch of numbers. You're only seeing the one number because we're sharing the data set tonight that is the one that we use in in the budgeting process. But we uh look
152at a bunch of those numbers to figure out uh does it make sense from each of those lenses. We also are paying attention to school of choice and seed offer data because that's a new piece of fact that we can bring in. Hey, families are making a new choice. That's a signal. Uh and then we look at that history as well because we have years and years of choice. I was going to say choice choices, but I think I think it stands. I'm going to stick with choice choices. We know what choice choices are and so we use that in the factor too. Um, we do work with our operations and other teams in the district uh to to figure out uh some of the other pieces of this puzzle too. And then we're paying
153attention to what are we doing to buildings in the district because that impacts families make choices based on that as well. Um, as I told you earlier, our five-year projections are fuzzier than our one-year projection. This is just a a data table that shows you what that looks like. Uh, our accuracy gets better as we get closer. Um, that's I think that's a Captain Obvious statement, but I I just want to say it again. Uh, a five-year projection is not as good as a one-year projection in terms of tight accuracy, but historically they've been pretty good. And I want to pause here to name that as our our team has has jumped in and been in a lot of community conversations, a question we're asked a lot is, "Yeah, but where did these numbers come
154from and are they any good?" and our team at my request put this slide together to articulate the accuracy of their work over the last decade. If you take COVID out, I can say with certainty that they hit it within 1% every year. But because COVID happened, I can't say it. But I am going to say that if you take CO out, they're within 1% accuracy over the last decade. Now, that's a combination of our team. There's four data analysts on our team, our ops uh colleagues and some of these years we did use an external partner. I do not have tonight the external versus our team, but I did want to name our team has worked both internally and externally. I feel pretty good about these numbers and how tight they are. And as
155I think some of you have have said previously from the DAS, we also want to make sure those are conservative estimates. We want to underp project not overp project because as we're doing budgeting if we owe if we miss it high that's real impact to site budgets to school budgets and impact. So we want to be one to 2% wrong conservatively. Does that make sense? That's better from a budgeting perspective. Um I could continue. I have lots more stories about data collection but I think it would be a good moment to see what questions and ideas you might have. Fantastic. Thank you so much, bud. Um, anybody have any questions that want to kick it off with? Kevin, go ahead. >> Um, I I just I appreciate that, especially the West Wing quote. Um, I
156I do my um deposition prep position preparation sessions beginning with that question. >> Oh, nice. >> I don't want the witness to overshare. Um, I just note that in 2020 to 2021, it looks like the aberration was 4.4 43%. I just want to let that sit there a little bit longer. Um, >> but if you took that out, you're >> if co again I will name if you look at every data point that year that that is the one that I'm giving you. >> Oh no, it's I'm cool with it. >> Um, legit serious question. So, in the very beginning of this migration or the the the movement, you talked about 30% of families don't attend a neighborhood school. I'm trying to find the slide. >> Yep. >> It's right here on the screen. >>
157So, I think we've kind of answered it in a roundabout way, but do we have any idea of that 30% how many are choicing out and how many are just choicing in within PSD? Let me be clear. That data represents students who have choiced within the district. Those are PSD students and families who have chosen a PSD school. >> That's just not their neighborhood. >> Correct. >> That's what I was going to ask. Okay. So then the next question is, do we have any understanding of where they're going? >> We we do. I don't that data prepared for you tonight, but we have a matrix that actually I think the team finalized earlier today and I'm looking at Lauren because I think she got the email. So we can share that data with you tonight.
158It was finalized earlier this afternoon. It's a matrix that looks annually at are you, you know, where do you live, where do you go to school, or where are you zone for and where do you go to school? I'll be happy to provide the board that data. >> That's my first ask. I'd really appreciate if it's not too much burden. The second the second ask is there's a reason I'm going to ask this, but let me just ask to see if it exists first. Is there any such report that gives a breakdown of a school's total enrollment based on October counts alone? not projections, but I'm just interested in the hard numbers for October count that also includes a category or a column for the academic programming offered at that school. That seems pretty simple,
159but I don't know. >> It is simple. It crosses the data analysis and moves into marketing a little bit, but we can provide that information. >> I'm I'm interested in that based on the conversation we had um earlier, not with you, but with um >> Sure. >> the enrollment survey. >> And I'll stop there for now. Okay. Okay. If that's available, I mean, I'm but I'm literally looking thinking of like a cell. >> Oh, yeah. No, I'm tracking. Right. You you want to take our annual enrollment report and there'd be a fields on the side that say uh some of the options at that school. >> Correct. >> Yeah, I got you. I might even ask to throw into there how many or what percentage of students um in that school are um neighborhood based
160versus opted in from >> PSD boundaries and um outside of PSD boundaries and I think what we would find is like a Bamford you would probably have a lot of people who have um opted in from outside of PSD boundaries. >> You'll see that in your email boxes as soon as I can get back to my computer unless Dr. Hooton Dr. already have beaten you beaten me to it. Excuse me. >> I think we just did. Um, and I'm going to mute that. And >> I can pause if you would like to check your email real quick. >> No, it's okay. Okay. >> I think just having the information is good. I don't know it's not going to affect anything tonight. Um, but a question I do have is um, you know, in looking at
161that that COVID bump that we that we have where we are a little unsure of what was what was happening at that point um, in the world, let alone anywhere else. Um, but do we have that type of question coming up with immigration status? I know that for a long time, you know, the immigration um status for Colorado was very high. People coming into the state quite a bit and that was helping with our um our student enrollment and I don't know that we're going to have that necessarily anymore. >> When you say immigration status, can you say a little bit more about what you mean? Because I >> Sorry, I don't mean immigration status. What I mean is people who are coming in um immigrating from Colorado. Sorry. Status was not meant to be
162whether or not we're tracking or not. That apologies. That's a that's a touchy subject and touchy word. I I apologize for using that. >> You're talking about migration and and I think the state demographer will talk a lot more about that in December. We're here. I would als I would name in the interim there are there are both people still moving around and those that those family compositions might be different than they were 5 to 10 years ago. And I would encourage us to be curious uh with the state demographer when when she joins us to to talk about there is still movement. That movement looks different than it did uh even five and 10 years ago. >> Thank you. I appreciate that. And thank you for checking my language because I I want to
163make sure that I'm not um using incorrect language and I I appreciate that. Yeah. Thank you. >> Can I just add on just just for the community to um awareness, we don't track immigration status. United States. It's really important to uh reiterate that with our community. >> Yes, thank you. And and again, apologize for the poor word choice there, but migration status was more what I was thinking of. Migration, >> who's coming into Colorado, who's landing in Northern Colorado? Yep. I I think that's a great democracy. >> Exactly. Um just to so that we know um because we we've heard that it's different than it was. So that that's all I'm asking. Um so again, please forgive me for the >> No, no. I I I think that's fine. >> Yeah. Other questions? Kevin, >>
164can I pose a larger one to the governance team? As I'm thinking about the intersectionality of the last three presentations we've just had, the questions that come to my mind are um and I appreciate the again the the comment about five-year projections of enrollment and birth rate. There, as I'm looking at these issues, there are things that are beyond our control, right? Um I you know we can do everything we can to have people choose PSD. We can't have any effect on people having more kids in our in our county, right? Um we can attract those families that are coming to our district and we can and I think that the the marketing campaign, John, and with the choose PSD and what we've talked about is exceptional and I'm very pleased with work that you've
165done and and I think we're we're having momentum of momentum. The other thing I think that's interesting the questions that that the reason I asked you for those reports and those kind of questions are I really want to examine the the patterns of families that are choosing also just to within PSD where are they going and why and are there patterns that track families moving from their neighborhood schools to other schools for the programming that they're offering is is the first thing that comes to mind. We should examine that, should be thinking about that and be thinking, well, if we are going to have a birth rate decline, if we are losing students both in and out then what can we do within our locus of control as a governance team to keep families within,
166right? I think that's a big fundamental question. But I also think we need to start looking at which programs are in neighborhood schools where people are choicing out of altogether. Um, and again, these are not I'm not making suggestions or any conclusions tonight. I think these are the questions that I'm interested in. Hopefully some of these numbers will will show some trends if they haven't already and I don't know if you could speak to those. >> I can't speak off top of my head to those movement trends. I will tell you we track it every year because we pay attention to it to see how that will impact a site and our sites work pretty well. I mean, I said this before, I'll say it again. We have a really unfortunate problem in our district
167in that we have a lot of good choices. A lot of good choices. And so people make those choices for a variety of reasons. Some of them are related to programming, some of them are related to geography, some of them are related for means and ability. To your earlier question, uh, director Spain about who's participating in these spaces and things like movement is is in some ways a choice that is easier for some than others for a variety of reasons that I don't think that particular data will show you, but the trends are there. I can uh take a look at the matrix. Absolutely. >> I appreciate that response. I also appreciate the question. I think another piece of this when we do provide that data set is to professionally interrogate that with the lens
168of who actually has access for choice. Knowing socioeconomics has a big role to play in those decisions because we need to be frank about this. Not every family has a choice even though they do. and we need to name that. >> Go ahead, Scott. >> I just had a a quick comment. Um, so I do understand what you're saying about the homeschool and the private school enrollment not having those trackable students. I'm looking mainly though I feel like that's a blind spot for us as a district. Um, so I'm looking for just a simple number of and I feel like this should be in like census data or something of school age children in our boundaries. What percentage that are choosing PSD and what's the trend? >> I understand the question. >> You know what
169I mean? Like like we're getting what do we have 25 25,500 kids >> last year. Are there 30,000 pot, you know, potential kids in our district? I I want to know that number like that's driving me crazy. >> I I would refer you back to the comprehensive planning uh resources that we shared uh in June, I believe. And if you recall, there was a slide and we'll provide it to the board tonight because it's it's all public data, but um the number of children who live in the area and then the number of children who attend PSD schools in the area. What I what I think you're seeking and I wish I could give you and I want it too are the private schools on the fringe that are drawing children in and out and
170away for a variety of reasons and that I'm not sure we can statistically provide to you because the data doesn't exist in a consistent format. >> But the one thing I would I would counter that is you mentioned that your team actually collects the data >> as much as you can >> when it's provided. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. We have the raw data. it's provided to the state. It's not consistent and it it isn't >> we have no way to verify the accuracy of it. >> Okay. >> We we our children in PSD, we know who they are. We know that we have enrollment verifications and we have that longitudinal tracking. >> Um there is a trust piece to um some of that reporting because the state requirement is actually pretty minimal for a
171private school. >> No, it makes sense. And I'm just saying I I personally and I think other board members would be curious to see that. We don't need to dive into it if it's not something we can stand behind. But I'm just curious anecotal. >> It's available on the on the CDE website. It's called non-public pupil membership and it's it's an annual reporting of spreadsheets. It there's two sort of big pieces of data in it. One is private prek or or early childhood sers that we don't have uh relationships with. And the second set is private schools that don't uh have a a public school uh tracking requirement. >> Are you down on it? >> Um I'm sorry. Keep jumping in. Uh there was something that I saw. I was looking the numbers and this
172is the the five-year summary projections. Uh the second PDF that's in our packet. I was curious, um, again, I'm looking at the 2025 to 2028 5-year difference with the red notation being the delta of how many they're projected to lose. Again, >> and c can I can I use a do a language moment as you ask your question? >> Yeah, please. >> Lose implies that we had them and they don't and they're not here anymore. Some of this is that children aren't here. Like, you can't lose something that wasn't there to begin with. as there are fewer children entering the system, we see declining enrollment. And I I just want to name that as like we we aren't I'm trying not lose in this conversation. Yeah. >> I I think of it as well if
173we're looking at differences that the >> differences make sense. Yeah. The difference is that that amount of and again I I get that it tracks grade levels that that go on and so so I think we're saying the same thing but the the red number denotes fewer students than were there yes >> in five years ago. So let's% >> so I'm curious because I remember the conversation about doing uh some feeder changes to Fossil Ridge that we had and we had great input from our principles and etc. that there's I understand why Rocky Mountains for instance on the west side given some of the trends we're seeing on the west side and it trickling through in five years. I get that. I guess c do you or maybe this is a Brian question. I'm sorry
174I didn't ask this earlier. Um, can you explain at least why that projection for Fossil Ridge looks so significant and looking at the 213 delta? >> And if you can, that's fine. >> Well, I think a I appreciate the question. I'm thinking on my feet just based upon >> You're fine. And I I was just I had a curiosity earlier and I didn't I couldn't figure it out. A couple of things play a role. And again, I'm not speaking from a space of expertise right now, but as I look at some of the moves that were impacted by changing Bamford into the Preston boundary, you look at over five years, Bamford and Preston, while there may be a difference in the negative, they're relatively stable, >> right? So, I just think that's a noticing. The
175other part of this story that I have wonderings about is we have, you know, a thousand more seniors than we do kindergarten, first and second graders as a cohort. And so I would want to know when those students over the next several years now seeping into our middle schools right now when those are going to start to enter into ninth and tth grade. So that's a that's a wondering that I have. I'm not saying I'm speaking from a space of fact. That's when it's going to happen. But I do wonder if that ninth grade cohort at Fossil five years from now is projected to be significantly fewer students than what they're serving right now. I don't know if any staff members want to add context. And again, I'm not trying to put you on the
176spot, but there's anybody else that has a perspective on that. I would let you into the conversation. It's a really good question. >> I do have a perspective. I um you know when we opened Timnith Middle High School the projections for Fossil Ridge were always a pretty severe decline and so while we did adjust that Bamford cohort it's a very small cohort it is it is right now a two track only approximately 60 kids that would be moving into that potential fossil ridge. So that decline is still going to happen as um it was predicted before and that is that has happened with the result of opening up Timothy to have that continued decline down as well as just the enrollment changes over the district um in general. So >> thank you. Yeah, other thoughts
177or questions? Good. So that I'm I'm definitely a numbers guy. >> I'm I'm going to bring Missouri back into it and and I'm I'm a show me the data kind of guy. >> I'm I know I put a long list of questions in because there's so many different pieces of data out there that are really difficult to reconcile in my brain. >> Yeah, I agree with you. >> And I'm going to I'm going to just point out a few of them. So, first of all, your your five-year projection has us going from 25,59 students down to 23,50. That's a almost 2500 drop, 10%. >> It's a 7.78% drop. >> 25509, school year 24 to school year 2029, 2350. So, that's 500 my break. Okay. So, just >> we're cool. >> That's where I am. Okay.
178I look at Lar County growth, 2% per year and accelerating. That doesn't reconcile. I struggle with birth rate, the uh uh fertility rate because we're actually up this year. And so that's great. We had the COVID dip. We're actually right now roughly at the level that we were in the mid 1970s. We got up through the 2000s and the 2.1 things like that which we were right around 2.0 for the feeder of approximately 5-year delay to 2014. And here we are uh the feeder number for 2024 if we look at 2019 for the for the class and I'm just trying to see where these things might line up because in theory we can target what do births tell us that might help us predict as an example. So we went from 2.0 to 1.71, but
179we have over 10 years about a 2% difference down. Admittedly, that's a much different picture than 10% in five years as as you would agree. >> And so I think I I look at all this data and and you know what are the Lur County fertility rates? I don't know. I don't have that data source. And so I think that's the type of thing that we can say this is where we're pulling our data from and make it public. So that way when I as a board member want to see how we're where that data input is coming in and how that uh accesses what we're looking at then I'm using the same data set as you because it probably doesn't match national numbers. That's our statement, right? >> No, we get it from Larur
180County annually and I'd be happy to provide >> right and that's the whole thing. I mean but see I think that's that's again part of I think we have a lot of really smart people in this community that would like to see where the data comes from and you have that cohort model. What does that look like? you know, in terms of the different date horses and things like that because that helps us all have understanding. So, we're all take talking the same thing. The school view numbers clearly don't match. >> No, they don't. >> And that doesn't help. And and that's that's a data set that's not ours. But it it creates that confusion because there's that difference of 4,000 students enrolled. Wait, how come they have over 29,000 students showing enrolled this year?
181You know, we're at >> for for this last year. >> Are you asking a question? I'm just I'm just stating again about how how I'd love to see us move to a different model of sharing the data that helps build the trust with the community. Are are you following what I'm saying? So that way they can see how we make our calculations. >> Yes. >> Because and and I know some of the other board members talked about let's make sure we just have all the lines. What is actually a PSD school? PSD charters PSD charters estimates on homeschooling that's fine. estimates on total number of I mean again just so we can see what that looks like and we're sharing the data as transparently as possible that feels like that's to our benefit and of
182course then generating that highline the low line and then how we're budgeting because we're going to be conservative we need to share that as well that's that's absolutely great the modeling side of me says I'd love to see some of the stoastic calculations behind it how we let that levels of uncertainty come in that might help again spaghetti model hurricanes fantastic modeling. They have those variable things in there and we can share those things with the community potentially if it comes up graphically and makes sense. So I'm just wondering what your thoughts are on how we can better share how we're doing our data from which sources uh and then walk it through that analysis process because we need to build that trust as we're talking about hopefully expansion at some point. We know that
183if things are are shifting, well, we may have to expand a school, but that may mean that we're leaving one behind. If there's an area that absolutely is not growing, where's the data to actually share that and be and be open with the community so we have that trust and we don't surprise them with anything? I I I don't know that we're ever going to get there, which we I mean, at some point, we have to think there's going to be more schools. We can't add 2% more people every year in Lurma County without thinking we're we're gonna have to add something at some point. >> If I can though I I think I think part of the problem that we're we're seeing is that we are aging in place. And so while more people
184are coming, other people are not leaving, people are not dying. Um the data to share though. So where what what is our K12 population actually looking like in terms of the rates of growth compared to the other portions of the population? >> Right. I think what we have to very much say is that those are different things, right? The population growth overall in Lammer County is very different than the population growth rate in PSD because we are very specific to an age limit. Whereas >> and and we know that our K12 population grows from K all the way through 12 if you use the same cohort. That's an important piece of data to also be wrapping our brains around because that means in theory we need an arbitrarily high number of high schools compared to
185elementary schools with districts that just have the same size classes all the way through. That's part of that transparency that I'm I'm saying we need to really be engaging in. When you say director Spain, if I can ask a clarifying and maybe slightly probing question, >> when you name that our cohorts are growing through that trajectory kindergarten, can you clarify what you mean by that, >> please? >> The data that was shared with me on the steering committee last year showed kindergarten classes starting at a certain number of students and if you traced it all the way through to when they graduated, there's more students graduating than started in kindergarten. That's that's an important piece to understand because I think it's very reasonable to say that it's probably older parents bringing their older students into
186our district and they're enrolling as of third grade, seventh grade, whatever it is. That was my story. >> Yeah. If I could just offer this, I I actually think that's I don't know where I've seen this, but that was a part of our discussions throughout is that >> adding another layer of com uh complexity. Thank you. I can't speak tonight. complexity of this whole thing. The dynamic is multiple things can be true at the same time. We can have declining birth rates across the nation and in Lurmer County and yet we still have a higher percentage of migratory, you know, transitory behavior up from Denver, other places. And and then when does that happen? And to your I think you said the point arbitrarily, but I I do think there is a a pull for
187Lur County in general has been historically to to pull families that have older kids. And so I think both of those things can be true at the same time, which is also why I go back to our choose PSD campaign. I think they're looking at the data and hopefully we're looking at some of these trends too and and determining what we can capture and what we're trying to bring in. I I don't want to but I think that's what I was trying to suggest earlier too. But to Director Spain's point, where does this all live? >> Connor, go ahead. So just for clarification, all of these questions are being tackled within the comprehensive planning committee. We've had three sessions on numbers already. Our full three sessions been dedicated to this. We will get to one
188version of the truth. There will be one version of the truth because I share in your consternation about having a very intelligent community bring in numbers from different data sets, different locations, whether they be CDE or they're not October count. You know, we have people who can put things together. Um we will have one version of the truth because we're going to work off of that playbook. um that time frame that time frame on that is three to five years. >> Yeah. And I agree a a solid consistent set going back to even what you're talking about high performing schools. We need to have consistency. Our data has to be consistent and we need to be comfortable with it. I absolutely agree that it's going to take time and I and and again we get
189lots of data points that school districts are dealing with the same things that we are nationally when you're talking about birth rates. Yet Wel County RE6 has increasing enrollment. Okay. So they have a different situation. Absolutely. That county has a higher rate of growth in Laram County. We know that. So it probably describes it, right? It's just wrapping our brains around those things which the committee is already doing which I absolutely that's fabulous to hear. I'm very glad to hear that because they're the ones that really should be doing it. It involves the community in identifying this is the data set you're going to see. So that's that actually right there probably answers most of my questions in terms of process and we wait for the outcome. and and and I can throw things Connor's
190way and say, "Have we thought about I'm sure other people will too, but they're getting it from lots of people already." And that's the place where it probably, you know, again, you got a community key members within the district looking at all data and that's what we really need to be wrapping our brains around. So, we have that consistent message that shows this is how we pulled the data, how we got past the noise. Because I it one could argue that some of the things I'm bringing tonight are noise, but they're things that are out there and it create confusion especially when people are concerned when you know it's been brought up since the consolidation we may have to consider closing schools. That makes people really nervous when they see negative 10%. I I I
191mean that I don't I'm not sure I I can agree with those numbers because I can't reconci reconcile them in my brain without really good explanations. and that's >> um presented from that committee and we the timeline for having those numbers um publicly available. Do we have an idea? >> Well, what what you're looking in the packet here is the stuff that we've been working on. Actually, this is the second time that I've heard this presentation from Bud and the data analysts in there. It went into a little more depth. My conservative estimate on that would be to really get that playbook where we work through the noise by the end of this school year. Right. And then we can start, you know, not only providing transparency, but I think more important for the community,
192more visibility to let everybody know in stark terms, these are the data sets that we're using to make decisions. >> Great. Thank you. Anything else? >> All right. Oh, wait. Jess has a question. >> I wasn't going to, but I have to wait. the CDE numbers come up all the time and it I on the one hand I appreciate that the CDE but it's collecting all of the children and when we're talking about our enrollment data for PSD we're talking kindergarten to 12th and the CD come with prek numbers which is an entirely different funding source they come with our charter schools which we've already dispersed within our numbers and how we're tracking our values so >> ascent thank you yes so while I appreciate like the CD numbers is a great number just to
193know and but we need to contextualize it every time we say it because otherwise we're giving credence to something that doesn't quite tell the story that we're trying to get at when we talk about enrollment >> and and I would say even that's probably part of what we need to share because on the CDE website it doesn't really clearly list it and so you you're left with the impression they're saying this was in PSD >> and it doesn't have the clarity that we might like creating some of that noise >> plug again within our locus of control looking at migratory patterns inside our own district to see if if that is a core tenant of what people are saying that they need in their PSD schools is strong academics or strong this which is that
194could be anywhere in the United States but if that is a core tenant and we're listening to that data of the 1600 or so that responded then we need to analyze what that means in our own footprint so I I don't want to be shrill about this but I do think we need to start examining instead of just letting the forces that be carry us to decision two three years once we get to a truth. There are things there are levers that we can press internally if we scrutinize and we examine them within our locus of control and having conversations with our community is something I'm way more interested in than just trying to keep people coming up from Denver and and coming to our schools. I'll do that too. But that's a conversation I
195think we should be having and I'll just leave it there. >> Perhaps that's a conversation we can have on September 18th at our engagement sessions. >> That for a wrap-up. Bud, thank you so much. Um, this has been an excellent presentation and um, as you can see, we we have lots of questions. Um, and always just making sure that, you know, that we're focusing on the right things. So, uh, thank you for that. And with that, um, it is 8:05 p.m. on, uh, 9925 and we are adjourned. Have a wonderful night. Thanks, everybody.