Board of Education Meeting: May 13, 2025

001Okay, thank you so much for joining the board of education this evening. Please go ahead and mute your cell phones. Anything else that beeps or buzzes as we begin this meeting. Today is Tuesday, May 13, 2025, and the meeting is now now called to order at 5:32 p.m. For those attending this meeting in person, live captions are available on the TV in the boardroom and in the lobby. To access the live captions in a language other than English on your own device, please scan the QR code on the screen or on the table near the entrance and select the language of your choice. The live stream of this meeting is also available in English and in Spanish on YouTube. For links to these live streams, please visit the board of education page of the PSD

002website or PSDTV on demand on YouTube. Now, would you please join me in reciting the pledge of allegiance? All right. Thank you. Would any board members like to make changes to the agenda? Okay. Seeing none, we will head into recognitions and reports. Um, those being recognized tonight are invited to stay for a group photo at the conclusion of the recognition. So, we hope you will all stay so we can get a big group photo. And tonight we have a a special guest. Correct. Yes. Yes. Good evening everybody. It's great to be here with all of you tonight. Tonight we're here to honor and celebrate excellence across our district and two things that I've never said in the same breath. Wrestling and spelling. Yes. So leading our celebration in this area is executive director of communications

003Mr. John Cop. Welcome John. Good evening President Draper, Superintendent Kingsley, board directors, and everyone joining us in person or online. Each board meeting gives us the opportunity to celebrate the remarkable achievements of students and staff across PSD. Tonight is no exception. We have five recognitions and we'll begin with two accomplished athletes. Billy Greenwood has earned back-to-back state championships in wrestling and Mariah Gonzalez capped off a perfect 30 and0 season to become the state champion in the girls 235 pound weight class. I'd like to invite Will Kwell to the [Applause] podium. Hello. Hello. Uh, good evening everyone. My name is Will Canwell. I'm the athletic director and assistant principal at Pter High School. And I just want to thank the board of education for your continued support of athletics and for giving us the opportunity to

004recognize a few of our state champions here this evening. And I am going to hand it over to their coaches at this time. And I believe we're going to start with uh our girls wrestling head coach Desiree Kendall um who has built an incredible program. It's actually a Pter school district stars team. So it's a collection of student athletes from all of our comprehensive schools. Um I know a little bit about this challenge. Um it is one in terms of bringing the team together and Desiree does an incredible job of this and she's built this girls wrestling program up in a short amount of time and uh we have our very first state champion. So I'm going to allow Desiree to speak about Mariah. [Applause] You have to come with me. [Applause] Uh good evening

005and thank you for this opportunity. Um this season was extremely exciting. Um and myself and my two wonderful co- coaches, extra coaches, other coaches, uh coach Josh and Chandra Engel. Um we all just want to say how proud we are of you. Um and just how exciting it is to see an athlete like Mariah get to be our very first state champion. Um, Mariah encompasses everything that we are trying to do with our program. Um, because we are a district-wide program, it is so important that when athletes come into our room, they feel like they are at home, they feel safe, they feel comfortable, um, and they are able to cross their school lines and make really great friends. And Mariah has been an absolute champion at that in our program. Um, she actually attends

006Pter and so it is her home school. And so I think she takes advantage of that and really brings in the athletes from the other schools. Um she came in as a friend coming from an ex program at Cash Lauder Middle School um where they really love girls wrestling and they're doing a great job there um encouraging girls to wrestle and so she got to come from a great program and I think she got to bring a lot of that excitement with her into our room which been just really fantastic. Um Mariah's an excellent student. She participates in other clubs and activities at Pter. Um, and she manages to make it work so that she can do all of her activities. Um, and she puts in the work. She puts in the work to have

007injuries. She puts in the work to get better in the off season. Um, she is a, let's see, voracious learner. I feel like I said that wrong. Um, but she's constantly wanting to get better um, both on the mat and off mat. And so she is an incredible representation of our program and all of us coaches are so incredibly proud of you and thank you for the experience of being in the corner um for the very first time in a state championship match. That is a moment that I will absolutely never forget and something that will probably never be topped. So thank you so much. You're amazing. Would you like to say a few words? Okay. Hi everybody. Winning state is a dream come true, but I couldn't have done it alone. Mom, dad, and

008aunt at Kristen, thank you for coming to every tournament, no matter how far. To my coaches, thank you for pushing me through my injuries and tough matches. Girls wrestling has taught me so much, not only how to be independent, tough, and proud, but it builds athletes and strong, independent people. I'm so honored just to be a part of this sport. Thank you. to give you. Is that true? Were you all season? Okay. I just wanted to point out to everybody, I see here on Mariah's certificate that it says she was undefeated all season long. So, congratulations. Congrats, Mariah. Yeah, Mariah was 30 and0. Um and and now I have have the honor to introduce our boys wrestling coach Barrett Gallier. This has kind of become old hat for Barrett. He's been here many times before.

009He's kind of built Pter wrestling into a you know a state powerhouse and that's a testament to to all of his hard work, dedication, and commitment. And uh Billy Greenwood also has quite a resume as well as one of the better wrestlers to come through here in a while. So, um, looking forward to you all hearing from them. And, uh, Barrett Gallier, again, thank you board for doing this recognition. Um, Superintendent Kingsley, I made it to the fourth round of the sixth grade spelling bee. Okay, so spelling and wrestling. Um anyway, I want to talk about uh Billy Greenwood for just uh a few moments here and it's really a a privilege um to speak on behalf of one of the most remarkable student athletes I've I've had the honor to coach. He's going to

010go on and wrestle at in in um Little Rock out in Arkansas um Pack 10 Championship team and and division one program. Billy's a two-time state wrestling champion, but his impact stretches far beyond the mat. and he has set the standard in our program, not just with his accomplishments, but with the way he carries himself every single day. He has taught me and his teammates to be serious about their work, um, but light about who they are. Billy is someone who brings the stress level down. He is a fierce competitor, disciplined, I'd say clutch under pressure and incredibly intelligent. In fact, his singing IQ is the highest I've ever seen in all my years of coaching. He wrestled like a college wrestler already, breaking down positions, being dynamic in the flow of the match, creating

011opportunities to score and also he he helps others to learn the same thing. Um he sets he's apart because he lifts other people up and that's really important. Even as a champion, Billy has never acted like he's above anyone. He treats every teammate with dignity and respect, whether it's a first year wrestler or just learning the basics or or another state finalist. He treats them um with respect and he leads with humility. He's got a relentless work ethic and a quiet confidence. Make others believe they can achieve more. And I think that's ultimately what we're looking at doing and installing and instilling in with athletes is how do they raise other people up? It's not about wins and losses because I think Billy be the same same guy even if if he wasn't uh on

012the top of the podium. Um, but it's just been an honor and I I want um on the Billy on behalf of your coaches, your teammates, and entire school community, congratulations. We're so proud of you. We're excited to see what the future holds. Congratulations. Congratulations. We're so proud of you. So, two years in a row. How did that sound? Okay. All right. Thank you, Billy, for being a back-to-back state champion. [Applause] Our next honores represented two of our amazing elementary schools in the state Spanish spelling bee. Uh we'll begin with honoring Vanna Sakiraa who placed fourth in the state Spanish spelling bee, Valyria Fierro Sto who took third place in the state Spanish spelling bee and Andrea Quuto who claimed the title of state Spanish spelling be champion. I'd like to invite Norma Huerta Kelly

013and Lindseay Moser to the podium. [Applause] Uh well I have to say my husband was a wrestler, my son was a wrestler and I was a spelling be champ. So yes, they both go [Laughter] together. burden. Good afternoon everyone and thank you for this recogn recognition of our bilingual students um and this invit in invitation. It's a it's an honor. I'd like to introduce our teacher and coach Miss Burton who has a few words to share about our students. So I'm not how sure how to do this but [Applause] Uh good afternoon and it is an honor to introduce these amazing bilingual students that we have at Harris. Um, first one is Andrea Gonzalez Quutoto who was our fifth grade state Spanish spelling bee champion and Vanna Lope Sea who was our fourth place. She

014placed fourth place for the fourth grade Spanish spelling B section. Andrea Gonzalez Harris. and Timnes. Hello, my name is Andrea Gonzalees Quto and I am a fifth grade student at Harris Bilingual Merchant School. I want to thank my parents, Miss Burden and Miss Wertake Kelly for supporting me in the Cabab Spanish spelling be in Denver. I am very proud to be bilingual like my parents and hopefully I will be able to continue to participate in this fing when I attend Timnith next year. Thank you. [Music] participas school district. Good afternoon. Thank you for this invitation and the recognition. But none of this would be possible without the support of my parents, my teacher, and my school. My mother supported me a lot and my sister was with me, always with me. My teacher, Senor Fontes,

015motivated me to do better. And my bilingual school with my principal, Senora Werta, who will miss a lot. It was an honor to represent my school, my language, and my family. I hope to continue participating. Thank you, Pur School District. [Applause] Wow. Thank you. [Applause] Hello, my name is Lindsay Moer. I'm the principal at Irish Elementary. Irish. in nostroa. Um, I'm here representing two teachers um that uh that were really made this um possible for our school. Um Isel Cvantes and um uh uh Freda Muika. But first, I would like to introduce Valeria Pierro Sto. Come on up. Okay. Okay. Okay. Forego. Gracias. Um, Valeria's dedication is truly inspiring. With unwavering support from her mother, Suhei, who went above and beyond to help her study, Valeria practiced diligently and consistently. What stood out most was

016Valyria's unwavering grit and dedication. She competed against students all the way up to 8th grade and proved that strength in Spanish is something to be celebrated and uplifted. Thank you, Valeria, for representing Irish Vilingu. We are proud to be a part of your mult multilingual educational journey. [Applause] See? Okay. Okay. No. [Music] [Applause] Okay. To all of tonight's honores, congratulations. We're proud of your hard work, your passion, and the way you represent PSD. This concludes tonight's recognitions. I now invite everyone who was recognized along with our board directors and superintendent to join us at the front of the room for a group photo. Do you think that would be better? I know [Applause] All right. Thank you all for joining us for those recognitions. I just wanted to I really want to thank everybody um

017for being such both fierce con fierce competitors and having such gentle hearts and being able to throw down while lifting each other up. So I think that's that's pretty good. So yeah, um we're going to move on to 5.1 resolutions. Um and uh we have a resolution in support of Asian-American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Can I get a motion? I'll go. I move the board approve the resolution in support of Asian-American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, May 2025. Do I have a second? Thank you, Jess. All right. And yeah, thank you. Uh, joining us this evening to introduce this resolution is our diversity, equity, and inclusion coordinator, Miss Delia Mahaney. Welcome, Delia. [Applause] Thank you, Superintendent Kingsley, members of cabinet and board of education. I am very excited to introduce

018our introducer of the speaker this evening because not only is she a great colleague to have, but she has been a champion of this work at Laurel Elementary School and a good friend in this work for me. So, thank you. Amanda Powski, assistant principal of Laurel Elementary. [Applause] Good evening, members of the board, Dr. Kingsley, directors, and members of our community. I first met our next speaker when he entered Laurel Elementary School of Arts and Technology as a second grader. And when I met him, I immediately noticed his strong sense of awareness, his high level of thinking around his observations of the world around him. Over the next few years, I've had the pleasure of watching Jace continue to grow into the student he is today. A very intentional, thoughtful fifth grade student with a

019strong sense of justice and a desire to watch out for others and stand up for others. When Delia Mahanei visited our school earlier this year, I was not surprised at all at his excitement at realizing her important role in our school district, he was quick to ask to speak with her and to schedule a meeting with her so that he could share his observations, experiences, and thinking. And so, it is really special to see him take this the stage here tonight to speak about the significance of this resolution. and I look forward to seeing what he continues to accomplish as he moves on to middle school and beyond. This kid is going to go places, so keep an eye out for him. Thank you very much to his parents for all that you have done

020and your strong support and advocacy for Jace. And to all here in attendance tonight or tuning in from home, I introduce to you Mr. Jace Butler. Hello, I am Jayce Butler and I will be making my presentation about the Asian-American Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month at the Asian-Americans, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islanders are very important communities in Colorado. These communities have helped shape what we are today and helped make Colorado. Without these very important communities, Colorado would not be the same. Maybe it wouldn't even have been founded because they helped construct our railroads. Asianameans also worked on our sugarbeat fields along the front range and a large section of the original shops in Oldtown Fort Collins were Asian-Americanowned businesses. All of these groups are people are unique in their own ways and no

021matter what we should find ways to include others and to fight against racism and prejudice in our community. Some students in our community experience unfairness at school and they are treated differently because of their culture or their background. People in the Asian-American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander community might experience insults and slurs meant to target them because of their background. People may make fun of their language and the nature of how they speak within their native languages. Our languages are, I'd love to say, very beautiful and important parts of our culture because they help represent us and they are a foundational part of our cultures. to help students. Schools could have units about racial inequality, such as information about the um unfortunate internment camps that held AsianAmericans during World War II. And and the student

022community can help repair this harmful past by gaining more respect for others and by changing their views and actions. When people in our community face bullying or other problems, we can help them by supporting them when they confront their treatment so they can feel encouraged to stand up for themselves. This would help everyone feel like they can be proud of who they are and feel safer in school. As an Asian-American myself, I am proud of my background because the community is rich in culture and has many special things I can enjoy. We should help people embrace their backgrounds because it is very important to the fabric of who they are in their to their greater community. When I see Asian-Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders being celebrated, I feel like we've really have started to

023make it. I'm very proud that I was chosen to do this speech because I love my heritage and want to speak out against potential prejudices prejudices and help grow and improve our educational system. and I want to help students learn about themselves so they can feel proud of their backgrounds as well. Thank you to the Pewer School District board for allowing me to make this speech. It has been an honor and I've loved doing this because I want to encourage more people to reduce prejudice in our community and help celebrate each other instead. I hope that when more people hear my speech that maybe it could help them feel better about themselves and feel more included and even proud through celebrations of our backgrounds. Thank you for this resolution to celebrate our community. So you

024should be so proud. Come on over here and talk to me. Yeah, we're supposed to speak now. So um I'm not quite sure what to say because that was absolutely amazing, Jayce. That was just phenomenal. And I hope people do listen to your words and just how how strongly you're speaking them in with such heart. I just love it. Um and so keep speaking. Keep speaking up and keep speaking out. Does anybody else have anything they want to say? Go ahead, Jim. Just just the only thing I heard when your speech ended was members of the board going, "Wow." So wonderful job. Thank you. Anyone else? Go ahead, Justin. I be short, but I hope you are as proud as everybody in this room as your assistant principal. I'm sure your principal, the board, like

025we are all so incredibly proud of you. I hope you are feeling that and that you are equally, if not more proud of yourself. Go ahead, Kevin. Uh Jason, I want to thank you for your comments and I really your message really resonated with me personally. um you are in fact at our business meeting and so I think it's a helpful reminder that we are in the business of inclusivity and that's a helpful reminder today. Thank you so much. [Applause] Chase, may I ask how old you are? Um 11. Well, you you are wise beyond your years. I'm Brian. I'm your superintendent and I'm so glad that you were chosen to celebrate your culture. I want to take a couple seconds to celebrate you. You are an exceptional young person. The way that you represented

026your culture, your identity, your intellect, and your desire to not just educate our community, but to invite us to take action to reduce prejudice was really inspiring tonight. I'm so grateful that you are a part of the Pter School District. So, thank you for being here. Job well done. All right, Joe, can you call the vote? Jim Brokish, hi. Kristen Draper, I. Connor Duffy, I. Kevin Havlla, I. Carolyn Reed, I. Scott Shoenbower, I. Jessica Zamora, I. Motion passes 70. [Applause] Thank you so much. We're going to move on to resolution in support of teacher appreciation week 5.2. Can I get a motion? Go ahead, Jess. Okay. I move that the board approve of the resolution in support of National Teacher Appreciation Week May 5th through 9th, 2025. Can I get a second Connor? Thank you.

027Oh, go ahead. Yeah. So, this evening we look forward to hearing about teacher appreciation week from the Pter Education Association President, Miss Candace Moser. Candace, welcome. Candace is not okay. I'm not sure. Yeah, let's go ahead and we will we will come back to 5.2 unless they find her quickly. Um but let's do 5.3. Resolution in support of National School Nurse Day. Can I get a motion? I move that the board approve the resolution in support of National School Nurse Day, May 7th, 2025. And can I get a second? Thank you, Carolyn. All right. And hopefully somebody's joining us for this one. Yes. Uh joining us this evening to speak about National School Nurse Day is our health services coordinator, Miss Kim Low. Kim, welcome. [Applause] Thank you very much. I really appreciate the support

028of school nurses day. I don't think it's coincidental that it falls in May, mental health awareness month, along with teacher appreciation week. So, um, thanks for inviting us specifically to speak. I wanted to mention that this is the fourth year that I have represented school nurses. Although I'm not a school nurse myself, I always tend to bring someone with me. Um, if you recall when we started four years ago, there were 13 school nurses supporting 50 plus programs. This year, I'm happy to announce that we've added our 20th nurse to our team. Yay. Thank you to Medicaid dollars, and thank you to the board of education, the superintendent, our our um cabinet, our school leaders, our mental health teams, 504 teams, IEP teams, everybody that really wraps their arms around school nurses and the work

029that they do every day. Um, but rather than my telling you all about it, I'd like to introduce Elizabeth Stafle. She is our very first integrated services nurse for students with special medical needs. Without further ado, Elizabeth. Hi. Thank you, Kim. Hello, my name is Elizabeth Stafle and like Kim said, I am the ILS nurse that was hired to help this year. The ILS school nursing position includes supporting the medically complex students by tending to their daily medical needs so they're able to attend and engage in their education. I'm incredibly grateful for this opportunity to learn and grow with the students, families, and staff at PSD. I currently travel to different schools within the district to provide special medical attentions attention to stu students in need. Some of the medical skills performed are suctioning, TRA

030and respiratory care, O2 and cardiac monitoring, G2 venting and feeding, complex transfers and positioning, AFO placement, safety monitoring and toileting. The families have been welcoming, patient and beyond supportive to allow me to walk with them and their child not only in their school experience but also into the intimacy of their personal lives. I'm amazed at the strength and love they demonstrate on a daily basis. The ILS staff and administration have been incredibly welcoming and supportive and helpful to embrace me as part of their team. By being able to care for these students, it has helped fill a gap so medically complex students can obtain their education on a more regular basis and continue to feel safe in their school environment. Thank you so much for having me. [Applause] And thank you all so much for

031being here. I know it's it's been a a long haul to get to 20, so it's exciting. Yes, very exciting. Um, does anybody else have anything they would like to share? Go ahead, Scott. Yeah, thank you guys for being here. Um, my grandmother back in Meredith, New Hampshire was our school nurse, and I'll tell you, I was the cool kid because I knew the nurse, and uh, it was pretty special. So I know all the things you guys go through very complex and uh thank you for everything you do. Thank you. Okay. Yes, please go ahead. So it's Elizabeth, correct? I had an opportunity to meet you at Oander earlier this school year and both getting a chance to collaborate with you and see you in action. Uh our district is in really great hands

032with you and your respective colleagues doing the incredible work that you do. Uh and Kim, I want to thank you for your leadership. That program uh is not growing by accident. It's growing by design as a result of your thought processes, your collaboration, your ability to be creative with the limited dollars that we have. So, I want to say thank you, too. No problem. Thank you. [Applause] All right, Jill, can you call the vote? Jim Brokish. Hi. Kristen Draper. I. Connor Duffy. I Kevin Havda. Hi. Carolyn Reed. Hi. Scott Shoenbower. Hi. Jessica Zamora. I. Motion passes 70. Okay. We going to move on to 5.4. Resolution in support of Jewish American Heritage Month. Can I get a motion? Go ahead, Connor. I move that the board approve the resolution in support of Jewish American Heritage

033Month, May 2025. Can I get a second, Kevin? Thank you. All right. And we have a special guest again. We do. Uh, back with us again this evening is to introduce introduce this resolution. It excuse me. Back with us this evening to introduce this resolution in support of Jewish American Heritage Month is our diversity, equity, and inclusion coordinator, Miss Delia Mahaney, and some guests. Welcome all of you. Thank you. Thanks again, everyone. I am so pleased to introduce this evening speakers from Lincoln Middle School. They are both seventh graders and I was very fortunate. Um, Amanda connected me with them because she knew Elliot from when Elliot was a student at Laurel and then Elliot has a good friend David sorry Davi who is going to speak with her. And the other connection is I

034have I've learned so much about the Jewish experience in my three years in this role. And Elliot's mom, Holly, really helped me learn a lot over the last couple of years about those experiences, especially in light of not just the religious piece of being a Jewish American, but the ethnic piece of being a Jewish American. So, I'm very grateful to Elliot's mom. And without further ado, I would like to introduce Davi Morton and Elliot Woodard. [Applause] Hello, I'm Elliot. And I'm Davi. Thank you for letting us talk today about Jewish American Appreciation Month and our views as being part of the Jewish community at the Pter School in the Pter School District. First, we would like to show our appreciation towards Har Shalom, our synagogue. From before I can remember, I have been going to

035religious school at Harsh Shalom on Sundays and Wednesdays. Harsh Shalom is basically my second home, literally. Every week I spend around six hours there, not including my hour and a and a half of bot mitzvah tutoring. Well, I just started religious school in sixth grade, and it seems as if I've been there my whole life. They have welcomed me with open arms, and now I'm even having my bot mitzvah in this summer. I've learned so much about our culture traditions and the Jewish uh life values in it's only been two years. There are so many celebrations like Roshashana, the Jewish New Year, Pum, Passover, and the Jewish coming of age, Abot or Bar Mitzvah. Though these traditions are heavily talked about in our synagogue, the things we hear at school in school are solely about

036Hanukkah or the Holocaust. This kind of ideation can create a very stereotypical view of the Jewish community and religion. But we are here today to show that there is so much more to our community and our culture. Jewish Americans ever since we started coming to the USA have made a difference in its growth as a country, especially in the entertainment industry. Starting a new life in a new country was hard, especially when the culture and language was different. But being in the entertainment industry meant that Jewish people could thrive through entrepreneurial success. I bet you didn't know that some of the first comics were made by Jews. Though not one of the first comic makers, Stan Lee started making comics about superheroes and went on to create the biggest and best superhero franchise known to

037USA. Did you Did you also know that multiple Broadway sho shows and musicals were written and directed by Jewish Americans like Westside Story, Annie, Chicago, and more. Jewish Americans have even written Christmas/winter songs like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and White Christmas. Speaking of White Christmas, White Christmas was written by Irving Berlin, who is who happened to write God Bless America, a song about the appreciation of America giving its citizens a home. It's easy to say that Jewish Americans have made a large impact on America's culture. In my home, we listen to all sorts of famous music, including two hugely popular groups made up of Jewish people that you may have heard of. Beasty Boys and him. Who doesn't know the song you got to fight for your right to party? With all this, you would

038think that there are plenty of Jews in America. Actually, American Jews only make up 2.3% of the US population. These kind of facts are not something you would hear at school. We only hear them from our amazing religious school teacher, Michelle. We value everyone's beliefs and believe it is important to educate people on all aspects of religion. We think the resolution in support of Jewish American Heritage Month is important to celebrate the culture that Jewish people bring across PSD for Collins and beyond. And with that, maybe the Pewer School District could bring more attention to our traditions and holidays we celebrate, not just mentioning them in a school planner. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was also a Jewish American. She was so smart, thoughtful, and open-minded. I think by celebrating different cultures like we are tonight is

039following in her footsteps by being a thoughtful and inclusive leader. Thank you. Shalom and have a good night. [Applause] Oh, you did so good. Thank you so much. That was fantastic. And yes, I I again I hope people are hearing what you are saying. um not only in this boardroom and in this uh on TV here but throughout. I hope people are taking your message to heart and making sure that we are being inclusive everywhere that we go. And so thank you so much for being willing to stand up and and share your experiences. Really appreciate it. Anybody else have anything they would like to add? Go ahead, Jessica. I just appreciate that you guys are quite the dynamic duo. This is amazing. Thank you so much for sharing more of your culture and your

040heritage and helping us, you know, understand how we can do better in a very light-hearted and lovely way. I really appreciate you coming and sharing with us. Brian, uh, one, as your superintendent, I want to say that referencing the Beasty Boys was a strong move. Well done. Um, all joking aside, Elliot and David, I want to just say that there's so much more to PSD because we have Jewish Americans like you and other staff members and other students in it. And I want to say thank you for representing us so well. And we are committed to continuing to figure out how to uphold not just your traditions, but your culture, your identity. Uh, so thank you for being exactly who you are. Angel, can you call the vote? Jim Brogish. Hi. Kristen Draper. I. Connor

041Duffy. Hi. Kevin Havlla. I. Carolyn Reed. I. Scott Shoenbower. I. Jessica Zamora. I. Motion passes. 70. Pictures. Thank you. And I don't believe we have found uh Candace K yet. Is that correct? Okay. So, what we can do is um if we can let's get another motion for uh do we need to get a second motion for passing um the teacher appreciation or we consider that I can say something for you about teacher appreciation if you need it otherwise just yeah I'll go ahead and so what what we'll do is we'll ask for the vote. Um, so can get can we get a motion um for teacher appreciation week? I move that the board approve the resolution in support of National Teacher Appreciation Week May 5th through 9th 20125. And can we get a second?

042Thank you, Jessica. And then I will go ahead and read the resolution. And Delia, if you want to go ahead and say something afterwards, that would be fantastic. So in support of National Teacher Appreciation Week, whereas teachers build the foundation of our society in every walk of life, every single successful person is where they are today. in thanks part in part to their teachers. None of us would be where we are today if a teacher along our journey didn't finish first teach us how to read, how to resolve conflict or how to think critically. And whereas teachers are really good at hiding all the work they do behind the scenes. From a student's perspective, everything is magically organized and ready to go at the beginning of the day. Classrooms are decorated, name tags are laminated

043and carefully placed. Crafts are prepared. Supplies are organized. Class pets are fed and taken care of. Seating charts are strategically arranged. Lessons are planned. Tablets and laptops are charged. Tests are created and modified for students with a variety of needs. Essays are graded. Teachers are smiling and ready to tackle a day with our students. And whereas our community realizes and appreciates all the formative work teachers do in making sure our community is equipped to handle life's challenges and celebrate our achievements. We have set aside this week for honoring teachers and recognizing the lasting contributions they make to our lives. Now therefore, be it resolved by the Pru School District Board of Education that Pru School District supports the week of May 5th through May 9th, 2025 as National Teacher Appreciation Week. The Board of Education

044strongly encourages all members of our community to join in personally expressing appreciation to our teachers for their dedication and devotion to their work in our community. Approved and adopted this 13th day of May, 2025. All right, shooting from the hip, but I just want to say I have spent the last several months in schools almost all day every day working with people around our strategic plan and how we work with students on being upstanders in our community across our differences. And sometimes I teach lessons back to backto back and I have been out of a classroom for 10 years full-time and by the last lesson of the day I am exhausted and I insist that the students clap for the last teacher that I'm with for the day to remind them how hard their teachers

045work because when I go home on those nights after teaching back to back to back I am so tired and I think I'm a bed at like 8:15. And so I want to say to and I've said this numerous times to teachers and to leadership at central office. Sometimes we forget how hard it is to be a teacher. And I know we keep that all in mind and we do our best to do that. But I also want to say my worst day sometimes is not as hard as a teacher's best day because no matter what's happening and what's going on, when I'm up here, I can walk away. I am not leaving 30 children unsupervised. And having been now in every elementary school but one and almost every middle or every middle school now

046this year, I can say that we do our teachers in PSD do a phenomenal job. They are creating children. They are creating a future that isn't just college and career ready, but it's community ready. And they are providing students like Jace and Elliot and Davi mirrors, windows, sliding glass doors so they can see themselves and others and the greatness in themselves and others. And we couldn't ask for a better group of people to be celebrating this evening. See, this is what teachers do. being asked to speak, you know, uh, extemporaneously. And look at that. It was actually actually very beautiful. Thank you so much. Um, I'm sure that we have a lot to say about teachers. Who wants to go first? Not everybody all at once. Go ahead, Kevin. I'll go. Um, thank you for

047our teachers who are in the room and those who are in our schools. One thought that I had when I was preparing my thoughts for this resolution was that a week is not enough. and words are hopelessly inadequate. I'm reminded of my favorite teacher of all time, Miss Mack, who in high school she was my humanities teacher, English AP teacher. And um when we were going through English AP, you know, she was a tough grader, really, really tough and really demanded the most from her her students. And so her rubric was a lot higher than what the state would require for the AP test. So we know if we got a nine from MAC, that was a big deal. Um, and when I was a senior in high school, I got a a tiny little

048plaque to that she got that she gave me that that signified that I'd received a distinguish on my writing portfolio, which I keep on my desk at work to this day. And when I submit something at work to the court or an important email, I do have a second thought every now and then. Would Mac think this is a nine? So, I I say that because in my own very brief uh teaching career, I shared a note with the the board a couple weeks back. I got a a note from a fifth grader I taught over almost 15 years ago now and it was a very similar kind of feeling um and she expressed how much I'd meant to her and I'd pushed her in her writing and now she was uh pursuing a JD

049MBA and that was not what she thought she would be when she started out and you know I'm not going to read it because the tears will come and so that's sort of those are just those tiny little instances and so I was thinking about some of the numbers we have at PhD and we have more or less 28,000 kids students in our district. Um, and uh, Candace would hopefully support me when I say we got I think 2,200 licensed teachers in our district, too. I text her today, so I hope that that's correct. Um, so just running some really, really rough numbers and bear with me. Um, if each of our teachers on average sees 50 new students a year, and high school and elementary are going to be different, but just play along

050with me, please, for the moment. 50 50 new students for each teacher. An average teacher may have a career of 20 years more or less. That's over a thousand students that they interact with. A thousand lives that those people can carry with them. And you may not get the thanks. You may not get the plaques. You may not get the texts, but it's a thousand lives that were made better because of our teachers here at PSD. Um, so again, I'll just wrap up and say a week is not enough. words are hopelessly inadequate to convey our thanks for all you do in our students lives. But please accept this director's heartfelt thanks for the thousands of lives that you will be that you will make better over the course of your career. Uh and your

051impact doesn't last a week, it lasts a lifetime. So, thank you to our teachers. [Applause] Carolyn, did you want to say something? Okay. Anybody else? All right. I think Kevin pretty much took care of it for us. Yeah. Yeah. So, thank you so much. So, Jill, can you call the vote? Jim Brokish. Hi. Kristen Draper. I. Connor Duffy. I. Kevin Havda. I. Carolyn Reed. I. Scott Shoenbower. Hi. Jessica Zamora. I. Motion passes 70. And Kristen, before we move on, could I have just a second? Absolutely. Go ahead. Um, even though we don't have a resolution for tonight, I'd like to take a moment to recognize National Police Week and National Peace Officer Memorial Day. Um, I guess we don't often think about um our SRO's who's and our SRO is in the back of the

052room here with us, Meg Savage, about um the safety and security and the friendships that um they bring to our students. And so Meg, I wanted to recognize National Police Week and National Officers Peace Officers Memorial Day. Um, and thank you for your service to the community and to our students. Thank you for everything you do for our kids. Okay. Thank you so much. And we will now move on to 6.0 superintendent report. So Oh. Oh, we Oh, pictures. Yes, pictures. Let's go ahead and do pictures. My apologies. We know you're not Congratulations. [Applause] Okay, thank you all and thanks for our patience with switching some things around there. And now we will move on to our superintendent report. So, um, Superintendent Kingsley will now make remarks to the board of education and to the

053community. Welcome. Yes. Well, thank you. I appreciate it. And good evening, everybody. I think before I get started, I just it's not lost on me that the only reason that I have the luxury and the honor of sitting in this chair is because of teachers. So, I just think it's really really important that we continue to express gratitude to the people who invest in others and that is definitely our teachers and other staff and I'm really grateful for the resolution that you passed uh to signify that not just moment but really it's our core business of what we do every day. Um it's an incredible time uh of the year to be a part of a school district. It's when we get reminded almost on a daily basis that we're a part of something bigger

054than ourselves, whether it's celebrating our teachers. We just had our third annual PSD celebration or celebrates uh awards ceremony over at the Lincoln Center where we named the teachers of the year and principles of the year and classified staff of the year. Uh I've had over the last two weeks the the honor to meet with our upcoming seniors who are getting ready to graduate. I will tell you and John Cop, our executive director of communications who was a part of those meetings with me, this group is strong. Um they all were experiencing middle school life during COVID seventh and eighth grade learning from home uh and had an opportunity to come back into our school system in ninth grade and that was messy. Uh but what is really incredible and you'll see this through our

055upcoming graduations is their adversity that messiness turned into their resilience, their strength, their unity. Um, I want to get a chance to the communications team always does an amazing job of highlighting many of our graduates across the system. I'd love our quick win video to be shown now where you have an opportunity to meet Morgan from Polaris and Hagar from Rocky Mountain High School. Hi, Morgan. Thank you. So are you. I love your overalls. You're so cute. How's your day? Good. Good. Hi, I'm Hadar. Um, I'm a senior at Rocky Mountain High School. Hi, I'm Morgan. I'm a senior at Polaris Expeditionary Learning School. Cool. What did you want to be when you were little? So, when I was little, both my parents are nurses and I always heard stories of them like in the

056hospital and helping people. So, I wanted to follow in their footsteps and be a nurse. I wanted to be a dancer cuz I always took like dance classes growing up and stuff and just like loved singing, dancing, acting. Tell us about your high school experience. It's been like really honestly amazing. Um, at my school we've made like I've made a lot of friends. It's since it's like a small community. It's very close-knit. And I think that like with such like a close community and um everything like that like um you really get connected with your peers and it's like really helped me to make like lifelong connections. So I'm like in this peer counseling group at my school. We're just like called the peers. So this is like us after the back to school assembly.

057To recap, I just like all the connections I've made, um, all the people I've met. Um, yeah, that's awesome. That's so cool. The first question, what is one thing that you learned outside of the classroom? Uh, probably confidence. I What is your favorite class sub class or subject? Definitely music. Awesome. What is your favorite memory with friends? Probably either homecoming or prom, but like not the actual prom, like the getting ready before. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What is one thing that you're looking forward to after graduation? Definitely like getting my own pet. So maybe like a turtle, but something cute. So cute. That's awesome. Yeah. I did it. Okay, perfect. Now you're lightning round. Okay. Um, what is one thing you'll miss about high school? Probably all of my friends and even the teachers. What's

058your favorite school tradition? Polaris games. It's like the last day of the year. Everybody plays cookies against each other. That's cute. Um, what's one piece of advice you'd give to incoming freshmen? I think be yourself and do your homework. That's so real. Um, and then what's a song that reminds you of high school? Um, please. Um, got this. Uh, we're gonna be friends by the White Stripes. What advice do you have for me? I think um just like continuing in your passion and if you like with majoring in psychology and you find something new, be open to finding new things and new pathways because I think that's really important. Always stay authentic to yourself. Like you're literally beautiful and you're so kind and I just think like always continue to be yourself cuz there's going

059to be like so many times where you might like question it or like be like maybe I should like be different or do this or do that. But just like stay true to you cuz you're so cool. Thank you so much. And it was really nice meeting you. It was so nice meeting you too. Love each other. Yeah. That was awesome. [Music] And yeah, I want to thank the communications team for their creative thought process to to put some of these really awesome videos together. For those of you who are in the community uh and and or here in person and may want to watch a little bit more and learn more about some of our graduates, please go to our PSD YouTube channel, uh Morgan and and Hagar actually have a seven minute video

060and and I'll share it with you because what they all they alluded to at a high level here, but if you watch them for another five minutes, they went on and on and on to talk about how significant their teachers were. I cannot say enough about how exceptional the teachers in our school district are and the services that they provide to our students each and every day. We are so lucky to have all of them. Uh this Friday I will have the opportunity as the superintendent to go to Denver to receive recognitions because 14 of our schools, 14 of our 54 schools, that's 26% of every school in our school district is getting a state level award for exceptional student outcomes across all grade levels both in proficiency as well as making sure that not

061only our students are learning a year's worth of material in a year's worth of time because we do better than that and the work that we're doing is quite incredible. But the reason why we are able to celebrate our school system and our schools are because of our teachers. And I'd like to give us another warm like give our teachers another round of applause for everything that they do. While we're uh giving gratitudes, you know, I want to acknowledge that the landscape that is around surrounding our teachers is continuing to shift both at the local level, the state level, and the national level. and why we continue to be a pioneer outlier as a district. Uh I continue to try to figure out creative ways in partnership with our teachers and our principles and our

062classified staff around making sure that we can clear the way for them to do the work that they've been hired to do and give our students and them the supports that are necessary uh to do this work. And that's why we have really distinct system priorities around literacy and mental health and belonging and ensuring our students not just graduate uh but graduate with options. And it's, you know, recently I just, you know, not to take the oxygen out of the room, but we, you know, received some really unfortunate news that a $9.75 million grant that we were awarded two years ago by the federal government to not only bring in internships and fellowships to make sure we have future social workers who are serving some of our most marginalized students, and I think some of

063those incredible people are in our boardroom here today. Um that money was discontinued after next December which is going to negatively impact up to 10 interns and 17 fellowships. I share that with you because they support students so teachers can support students as well. It's a partnership. It's a collaboration. And as this landscape is shifting, I want us to like one remind ourselves as a community that we continue to stay true to our values around what we care about in our system. While this news is incredibly unfortunate, we are going to continue to be committed to exploring creative ways to continue that work. Um, but we have to continue to figure out ways to bring more financial resources because we have needs in this community uh that are in some instances significant. And I want

064to thank all of those interns and fellows um for all of the things that they do each and every day, the things that are seen, but also the things that are unseen to create the relationships and the partnerships with our students as well as your colleagues uh to keep this work moving forward. I believe many members of our system believe that the results that we are seeing with improvements in belonging, improvements in connection, the improvement in our students mental health and well-being that didn't happen by accident. it's happening because we've invested in it and that lose some of those resources is a difficult pill to swallow. I also think we have as a system a commitment to continue to figure out how to nurture and cultivate the next generation of teachers and support staff. Uh

065I had the pleasure week ago of meeting with the very first cohort of PSD become a teacher program which is approximately between 25 and 30 pair of professionals who are currently working in PSD that we have paid for them to go back to school at the University of Northern Colorado to receive their lure in one of our most hardto-fill areas which is our integrated services division and having an opportunity to listen to those people uh talked to me firsthand not only about the gratitude that they have for the work that they're able to pay forward and getting teaching jobs in PSD as a result of that investment. What surprised me most was how significant it was to their own family dynamic that it changed who the bread winner was in their family as a result

066of that investment. And many of them when they were learning about this process thought it was a gimmick. Like what's the catch? You mean to tell me that my employer is investing in me so I can invest in myself and invest in other people in this community? It's something that is super significant and we're looking for grant opportunities to expand uh that opportunity. But I want to thank uh Deborah Meyer uh who is our director of talent acquisition who's taken on an extraordinary leadership role and partnership with UNCC and UNCC is telling us that that is now a marquee program for them that they are having other school districts across the country want to expand and think creatively of. Um so I'm just really really proud of that. But while we're innovating, we also have

067fragility at the same time. And I think it's really important to continue to educate the community on that multiple things can be true at the same time, but there is still a lot to celebrate. Uh I'm grateful that we're all here tonight. We have a very important meeting this evening. As you all know, we are going to be talking about policy discussions. We're going to be making financial decisions. We're also going to be talking about our high school cell phone policy and the implementation uh plans moving forward. And I look forward to a great uh modeling of governance in partnership with all of you tonight. So, thank you for allowing me to address the community. I'm grateful. Thank you very much. And I did notice that Candace Mojo, you are here and would love to

068invite you up to the podium to give your speech for the teachers and we know how important this is and so want to give you that that time. Um, so please welcome Candace Moer, president of PEA. Point of order. Um, point of order. Um, Madam President, the resolution's already passed, so just to take some heat off your shoulders. Thank you for that. Uh, I don't know if you're familiar with the expression it's Mayber, but it is Maycember. So, I'm just loading up my Thank you for allowing me to come back and speak. For those of you who don't know the term Maysecember, it's also the hund days of May or the silly season as it's known in uh teaching the teaching world. So, you all set there, Candace? I got it. All right. Okay. Um,

069good evening. My name is Candace Moer and I am the mom of two PSD students, a 23-year teacher veteran, and the current president of Pter Education Association. Um, and I'm honored to be here to speak on behalf of the resolution which you passed in support of teacher appreciation week. First, I would like to thank the board and board of education and superintendent Kingsley for inviting me to speak and for the collaborative relationship this year to support teachers locally with the 4A mill levy override and at the state level when you joined pea educators to lobby as we succeeded in stopping cuts to K12 funding. I'd also like to thank the community members who advocated for the passing of the mill levy, which will directly impact their children, schools, and teachers. Tonight, I'd like to start

070by taking us back in time to learn the true history of teacher appreciation. It started with a teacher in Arkansas named Maddie May White Woodridge. Mattie was a black teacher at a school in the segregated South. At some point during the early 1940s, Mattie White Woodridge decided that educators should be recognized for the contributions they make to society, and she would make that happen. Woodridge wrote to every governor in the United States. She corresponded with a host of politicians and leaders in education stressing the need for a national day to honor teachers. In 1944, one of the many letters she wrote landed on the desk of First Lady Elanor Roosevelt. with support from the National Education Association. Decades later, teacher Appreciation Day was celebrated on the first Tuesday of March. Finally, in May of 1999,

071Teacher Appreciation Week was established by Congress. Much like the previous decades and no doubt Maddie Whitewood, teachers have worn many hats aside from that of educator. Mother, nurse, friend, counselor, advocate, confidant, cheerleader, tutor, life coach. I'm sure you could think of at least several adjectives to describe a teacher who's impacted your life. Teachers show up every single day ready to dawn one or many of those hats, and they do it with pride. They have the masterful skill set to turn egg cartons into caterpillars and milk crates into flexible seating for their classrooms. I don't hesitate for one second in saying that teachers are determined, skilled humans. And even if it takes decades, like Maddie Woodridge, we fight for what we deserve. As we wrap up another school year, I hope that our teachers take the

072time to fill their buckets back up, to rest and restore, and celebrate all they have accomplished. Congratulations, [Applause] Thank you so much. And now we will turn over to 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 personalities 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 respond to remarks 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

073remarks may be factually inaccurate, we generally choose not to respond or correct the record here because formal formal board meetings are not the time or place for back and forth dialogue. As we begin this community comment section, 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 interest at heart. 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 remarks in the order that they signed up. Each speaker will be allowed three minutes to address the board. And first up, we have Tom Griggs. Welcome. Good evening, Superintendent Kingsley and board members and the people who've come tonight to

074the meeting and people who are listening in. I'm Dr. Tom Griggs. I'm seeking the district D seat on the Pter school board in November's election. I'm running because I believe the board could use the wide range and number of perspectives I would bring to bear on my role as a board member. As a systems thinker, a Fulbright scholar, an international scholar who continues actively in the field of education, it would be valuable for the board to see what I have seen in our schools and learn what I have learned about best teaching and learning practices. I played many roles in education both inside and outside PSD. I've been a resident of Fort Collins for the last 25 years. I raised my two kids from young ages. I served in many volunteer roles while Sarah and

075Bo were attending PSD schools. I have also been involved in state level education policy and politics for over 20 years now. While all this was going on, I was building my career as a teacher educator at the University of Northern Colorado. I taught teachers about teaching. as I explain it to the kids I substitute teach for during these days. I need to take a moment to tell Mr. Brokish that I'm sorry about the misunderstanding that occurred between us during the 2021 election. As an historian, I suppose it really shouldn't surprise me how differently we each understood the outcome of a phone conversation we had early in the 2021 election. But it is my hope that we will focus more keenly on the issues facing the district and help the people of the Pter school district

076wrestle with the difficult challenges we face currently. If the alternative is to operate on the basis of rumors or reported conversations, I hope we can focus instead on the issues and on the kinds of leadership and decision making we need right now. I trust we will find to avoid those 2021 distractions and misdirection in 2025. The school closure and con consolidation plan proposed by the superintendent delayed for adoption by the current board is a pivotally important issue for the new board members who will be elected in November. Uh but whose predictions and statistical analysis about enrollment are we to rely on? The Colorado state demographers flow analytics. These are just some of the tough issues that we face. I can't help but be reminded about Mark Twain's famous comments about lies, damn lies, and statistics

077at this point. It's a challenge. It's a challenge. It's going to take both. My name is Tom Griggs. I look forward to sharing more about my background and my uh desire to serve on the school board. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next up, we have Susette Burroughs. Welcome. I'm reading this for my daughter, Alyssa Brown. Good evening board members. Let's call this what it is, a disgrace. This is about my child, a disabled child. And yet here we are watching his teacher press criminal charges against him for disability related behavior. His teacher isn't just one teacher. She works with disabled any teacher. She works with disabled students. This is her job. She knows my son's diagnosis. She knew his IEP. And instead of following the behavioral plan, instead of calling in his mentor, instead

078of notifying his parent, she chose to press charges. That's just that's not just wrong, it's harmful. It's a betrayal of her role as an educator. He didn't commit a crime. He had a disability related episode and was failed by adults who should have known better. Let's be clear, he didn't assault a teacher. She physically grabbed and cornered him while he was visibly overwhelmed. She did not deescalate. Instead, she laid hands on him, slammed his body in a door, and triggered the panic response of a terrified 13-year-old boy with autism. In fear, he scratched her hand. The reaction wasn't aggression. It was the terrified reflex of a child in crisis. Instead of supporting him, she pressed criminal charges. My son was not the aggressor. He was a child failed, ignored, and retraumatized by the same the

079very people entrusted to help him. And now he's being punished for having a disability. This wasn't a violent attack. It was the predictable result of an adult ignoring the legally mandated behavioral plan and mishandling a vulnerable child. And now she's pressing charges. That's not accountability. That's gross abuse of power. So I asked you where do we draw the line? Is it my son today? Is it a child with Down syndrome tomorrow? Several pausy next week, a non-verbal child who panics when touched? Are we criminalizing disabilities now? At what point did we stop seeing a disability and start level stop seeing a disability and start labeling it as a threat? Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, students with disabilities are guaranteed equal access and protection from discrimination, including here in your schools. He had a legal

080right to to support. He had a right to non-discrimination. But he didn't get that. Instead of protecting him, PSD violated his rights. They le they illegally removed his assigned mentor, the one adult who helped him feel safe with no warning and no transition. his mother, a disabled parents, disabled parent, was excluded, ignored his IEP. They ignored every protocol meant to protect him and how the district is allowing to publicly frame herself as a victim. This isn't just bad policy. This is discrimination and it violates federal law. The criminalization of a disability is a national crisis today. It's happening right here in your district. So I ask again, what message are you sending? That a child's meltdown belongs in a courtroom? That every disabled student is one overwhelmed adult away from being treated like a criminal?

081You don't just owe Connor better. You owe every disabled student in this district better. You owe them safety. You owe them dignity. You owe them adults who are willing to follow the law and do their jobs. I'm sorry, but you're going to have to wrap up. Should never happen to another child. Thank you. [Applause] Okay. And next up we have um I don't know if Stephanie Watson Lewis, are you planning on speaking? Okay. Thank you. Um Maxfield Maxfield Martinez is next up. Maxfield, if I could ask a favor, um we don't want to have the signs up there to for it to be distracting, but if you could take a picture of it and send it to the board as a whole, that would be great. Great. I know we want to see it. We

082just It's going to be awfully hard to reach. Perfect. Thank you. I appreciate that so much. Uh good evening board me board members. My name is Maxfield Martinez. Um I am one of the interns who is unfortunately losing his position at Bout Elementary. Uh, but I love my job here as a mental health intern. I'm also a former PSD student. Um, I just want to take the opportunity tonight to share some of my research findings uh that I believe might have some implications for PSD strategic goals. um in accordance with my uh masters of social work program which I just finished at uh Colorado State University. I really wanted to find um some sort of avenue to take a big uh more specific look at some of the strategic goals that Pter School District has.

083Especially I'm really passionate about graduating with options and um uh mental health and belonging and it's something that I care about with my students every day. uh and especially noticing continual patterns of some students that were feeling like they didn't belong at school. Uh this research is near and dear to my heart. So um basically I took uh did a secondary data analysis of our student connection surveys that are publicly available. Um and from the publicly available items, I uh took the answers uh to these publicly available items um from students uh middle schoolers and high schools who have experienced exclusionary discipline discipline within the district and students who had not experienced discipline discip uh exclusionary discipline within the district. Um, and between these two subgroups, I completed an independent samples tea test to see

084if there's significant differences in the self-report of these students on key items regarding uh PSD strategic goals. Uh for each item there is extreme statistical significance um with students who have experienced exclusionary discipline within the district reporting um that they are 10% less likely to feel safe in school, 11 or 13% less likely to feel safe, cared about and helped and or 11% less likely to feel connected with adults at school. Um and also students who have experienced like exclusionary discipline such as out school suspension are 18% less likely to report they feel like they will graduate uh from pter school district. Um these numbers have an even greater precedent when considering that in pter school district uh black students are suspended at three times the rate of white students. Uh, Latina students like myself

085in Pter School District are um suspended at two times the rate of white students and 13% of all students with an IEP are suspended in Pter School District currently. Um this is uh really alarming data and the these reports aren't conclusive because I didn't have access to the raw data. But I believe that these findings uh are really important for showing greater transparency data and looking for greater creative solutions to bring more equity and disrupting disproportionality within it. the use of exclusionary discipline within the district and the extreme impacts that is having on students beliefs that they will graduate and um uh their belonging at school. Thank you. Thank you so much. And next up we have Blake Mclaclin. Welcome. Hello. My name is Blake Mclofflin. I am a school social worker in the district

086as well as a repres representative of the mental health in schools fellowship grant. Um this is my third time attending a board meeting. first time speaking at it. I was here the first two times joining my colleagues Holly Reberts and Heidi Thompson as they spoke about the initial impacts that our fellowship has had last year as well as impacts of the men's mental health group that I run at Rocky. I this has been my second year running it, facilitating it this year and last. um as well as just a couple months ago here supporting a student, a Rocky student as she gave a speech before this board of education um during the week of the exceptional child. Um here to talk about the fellowship and what's going to be lost from as of December 2025

087should this funding loss go into effect. Um, Kelly Lyle of the Colorado in wrote an article in June of 2023, uh, citing data from the Col PSSE Healthy Kids survey. Um, in the survey, there were four 5,425 PSSE high school students that responded to it. Um, that was a response rate of 70.1 high school students. 21.4% of these students seriously considered attempting suicide in the past 12 months. 15.2% of those students reported they had a plan they had made a plan to die by suicide. 8.1% of these high school students reported that they had attempted to had make attempted to make an attempt on their own life. For students within LGBTQI plus community, this number rises to 55.6% who seriously considered suicide. 37.4% 4% of these students made a plan to die by suicide and

08822.1% of them attempted to die by suicide. Around the impact that we have had as interns and fellows, there are 17 of us. There are another 10 that were set to begin as interns this next year. I received data from eight of those of the 17. For the eight of us that contributed to this data there, we spent 3,626 hours directly supporting students in the forms of groups, academic support, supporting them with peer relationships, suicidal ideiation, family dynamics. I can go on and on. We spent 271 indirect hours supporting them, collaborating with teachers, collaborating with other PSD staff, connecting with their parents, providing resources. For those eight of us, we have supported 615 different students. There are six of us here tonight, Max, Dylan, Meline, Rachel, and Ness, and myself. Um, and I wonder how

089different this room would feel if the 614 students that we support were doing the speaking instead of Max, Dylan, and myself. What they would have to say. I'm sorry, but you're going to have to wrap up. What they would have Yeah. Um, I just want to reiterate that this is an important thing and as Max shared, just what we say about the mental health, belonging, and success of our students is something that's incredibly important to me and I'm grateful for the opportunity to speak. Thank you. [Applause] Next up, we have Anna Labetta. Welcome. Good evening. Um, a little different tonight. I'm not going to be racing through my three minutes. That's really five minutes that's packed down. Um, I have I'm going off script tonight. And part of it is I never get to look

090you guys in the eyes. And the other reason is because it's mayhem for me. It's not Mayber. It's just mayhem and there's been no time to get everything where it needs to be. But um looking back for those of you in this room who don't know me, my name is Anna and I have dyslexic children. And dyslexia is something that is not supported well in pter school district. And for those of you who deal with the mental health stuff, you probably understand that from a different angle as well. So, um, this year I wanted to take a chance to say thank you for the little for the movement that there that there has been and the movement that is for the conversations that have taken place. Last year, there were two people around here who

091had taken the time to have a conversation with me and try to understand why I kept showing up, why I keep showing up. Tonight, there are a lot more of you. There's a lot of work to be done. This is a real issue. I know kids who have not been supported, who are in secondary school, who are trying to take their lives. It is not like this is I'm going to try to not say like and um a lot because that's what I do when I go off script. This is urgent and I know you guys have heard this from me a lot. And I I looked up today because I've heard the term several times that PSD is a model district or a model district. I like what does a model district mean? It

092means that the board comes up with a broad idea and the superintendent gets to be charged with how that plays out. And the districts in Colorado who have made really cool growth in this area, the superintendent and the boards are on they're working together on this and I'm asking you guys to continue to try to wrap your mind around it like not reflexively push it away because it's like we've never done dyslexia in this in this district. You know, we have people in our our midst who went to school in PSD, who are dyslexic, who never had their needs met, who have kids who are dyslexic, who are still not having their needs met. It's a real thing. And you guys can change this. Like, we have really innovative people in this district. I believe

093that and I keep showing up because I do believe that if you wrap your mind around the real risk, the fact that kids are really really trying to exit this world because they can't read and they can't write and they're asked to show up at school every day. They there's some movement that can happen if we get innovative and we think around the groups of people that are harder to move. like I believe that you guys can move this and I thank you for those of you who have had any conversations with me. Even if it hasn't ended the way that we had hoped, I appreciate any conversations. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And next up we have Dylan Khan. Welcome. Hi everyone. Uh thank you for giving the opportunity to speak board and

094hello everyone else in the community. Uh my name is Dylan Khan. I am a mental health fellow at Weber Middle School. Uh for whom the grant has just been rescended as we have discussed. Um, but I'm pretty fortunate because I have a job in this district next year. Um, 14 of the 17 of us don't though. And uh, going forward next year, there were 10 interns, incoming interns who had were promised an internship, a paid internship and help with college. Um, and made the decision to attend grad school with that understanding. um two of them will no longer be attending grad school because of that because of the rescending of the grant. Um a lot of impacts for a lot of people uh perhaps no probably nobody more so than the children that we serve.

095Um I'm going to briefly go through some of the tasks that I do on a daily basis. Um so I support 15 students uh with complex social and emotional and behavioral disabilities in a classroom, a multicat plus classroom for one uh an hour and 15 minutes every single day. Um, we have three counselors at Weber Middle School. I've taken the burden off of them by seeing some of the ones who do not have uh perhaps therapy resources outside of school. I meet with 20 students either weekly uh or every other week for 30 minutes and we talk about building resiliency, building connection. Um, and I help them access support outside of the school district. Um, I run a boys group, uh, similar to Blake's men's group that he was talking about with nine kids that's

096been incredibly successful. I run a lunch bunch with sixth graders. Um, I refer students regularly to therapy and other resources in the community. Um, I make DHS reports and I uh conduct suicide risk screenings uh with students on essentially a weekly basis. Uh on top of that uh I work with the journey program which assists uh provides a space for students who have been expelled in our district and I work with them on a weekly basis for one hour this week for four hours because I am subbing. Um I run a social skills group for students who are neurody divergent and most of whom are on the autism spectrum uh who are in high school and post-graduates. I do other work with transition pathways uh which is that uh again students who who have cognitive

097disabilities who have graduated from PSD schools. Um I say all of this not to brag um but to say that these are all things that will not be here next year um or at least will be greatly diminished. Um I'm really really sad to be leaving Weber. Um I'm really angry. Frankly, I'm not angry at you all. I'm happy that this was implemented. Um, I just wish there were some way to continue doing this because it was so beautiful and it provided so much I think hope for a lot of students and a lot a a pathway into an incredible career uh for so many of us. Um, and yeah, with that I I just I urge you to do what you can. And I understand that your resources are limited. Um, but yeah, thanks

098for letting me speak. Thank you, Dylan. Next up, we have Kate Bedford. Welcome. Familiar faces. Hi, good evening. My name is Kate Bedford. Um I have two kids in the school pter school district. Um I'm speaking again tonight about tax increment financing or tiff districts um and the public education funding associated with it. So within the PSD boundary there's a tiff district called the Timnith Development Authority. We'll just call it TDA the initials for it. Um, so as a tiff district, the TDA is allowed to divert a substantial amount of residents and business owners property tax away from t typical beneficiaries such as a school district. Um, so just as an example, let's say the property tax collected on a $700,000 home, typically that's so annually typically about $2,400 of that goes to fund the

099school district. However, a resident um property tax collected from a resident living within that boundary, only $60 annually is collected. Um these figures are confirmed by the town manager and finance director at the town of Timnith. The authority also benefits from new schools being built within that boundary. Um, in discussing this gap in school funding with the town manager, he suggested that PSD should put in a formal request to the Timnestown Council. Um, I've had discussions about this matter with Director Duffy, Director Zamora. Thank you for speaking with me about it. Also with Director Reid uh just two weeks ago given school funding is on the chopping block at the state level. Director Reid present expressed real concern that state backfill payments to cover these funds um might be lost to the district that might

100be cut too and honestly we don't know if all those backfill payments are actually coming. So this speaks to the fragility that Superintendent Kingsley was talking about um previously tonight. So I what I would like is for the board and staff to take action on this to outline their argument and then to go to the town council to put in a formal request to negotiate a rebate because there are four or five years of this left and just for perspective I think the fellowship and internships was 10 million. So that's what we lose to the tim to the TDA um each year over the next five years. Thank you very much for listening. Um, and I hope we can do something about this. Thank you, Kate. And Eric Sloin is not here. Okay. Okay. Thank

101you. All right. Well, thank you all for coming out and speaking tonight. Um, for those of you who did have um posters and and such, um, please do go ahead and and take pictures of those and send them along to the board. BOEPSdschools.org. Thank you. Um, and now we will move on to uh board topics and committee reports. Um, sorry. This agenda item is an opportunity for board members to provide an update on committee work or speak to board topics. Do any board members have something they would like to report? Go ahead, Scott. I just had a few things. Um, I wanted to recognize uh Rocky had a uh very cool arts carnival uh the other night from the ads uh partnership with the Adset Foundation uh music uh in multiple venues in there. It

102was kind of like the Foco MX actually, but the high school version. Um no BC boys cover band though, which is a thing. Um but it was it was a fantastic event. It raises money for uh musical instruments and uh giving kids access to lessons and things like that. So great event. Uh the other thing um you know I'm a big sports guy so I want to recognize in May there's a lot going on in this district. A lot of excellence. Um first off the uh the swimming is incredible. Um Rocky Mountain High School for the first time since 1994 has a state champion in Sam Loftstrom. Uh Brennan O'Neal for Fossil is his second second year in a row he's a state champion. Uh Micah Moore for PHS, first time in 20 years is

103a state champion in swimming. We also have a uh state recognized coach of the year in Kirk uh Wilt Tusky I think is how you say his name. Uh Fort Collins High School swim coach 5A coach of the year. Um Timnit our one of our newest high schools. They have uh in tennis uh state champions in doubles with Natalie Herby and Mia Dixon. And then the PSD stars lacrosse team, the boys have made it to the quarterfinals tomorrow night where I will be. So congratulations. Uh amazing athletics going on here and and something I think the whole district should be proud of. Excellent. Thank you so much. Go ahead, Connor. quickly. Uh on Friday, this last Friday, our legislative call was cancelled due to other things. Um we actually had a great event during the

104same time with the governor at Putnham um signing bills that passed the legislature. But for everybody who's watching online and here, we are going to reschedule that call for this Friday, same time, noon. Um and we'll get that posted online within the next day or two. We'll provide it's going to be the recap meeting as well for everything that kind of came through now that has been either signed or vetoed. Okay. Anything else? Go ahead, Jim. Let's do a quick one. On April 26, I got to attend the the Lopez fair and it was just a real community event. It was awesome. They had a human slot machine. I crapped out on that one, but I scored on the cakewalk. So, I was uh I was pretty thrilled. It was It was a great day.

105perfect weather and uh a real neighborhood community event. It was great. Wonderful. Anyone else? All right. Thank you so much. We will move on to consent. Um 9.0. Would any board members like to pull any item from consent? Okay. Seeing none, can I get a motion? I move the board approve and adopt the recommended actions for the items on the consent agenda. Can I get a second? Thanks, Connor. And Jill, will you call the vote? Jim Brogish. Hi. Kristen Draper. Hi. Connor Duffy. Hi. Kevin Havda. Excuse me. I need to recuse. Carolyn Reed. I. Scott Shoenbower. Hi. Jessica Zamora. I. Motion passes. 6. All right. Thank you. And now we will move on to action items 10.0. 10.1 Consideration of a resolution approving a proposed settlement agreement. Can I get a motion? Go ahead, Jim.

106I move that the board approve the resolution authorizing the use of Board of Education contingency reserves in settlement of claims as presented to individual board members by legal counsel at tonight's meeting. Can I get a second? Thank you, Kevin. All right. And I will go ahead and read the Resolution of the Pter School District Board of Education authorizing the use of board of education contingency reserves and settlement of claims. Whereas claims have been made on behalf of 10 students including current and former students at Pter School District PSD or the district and that they suffered damages as a result of the misconduct of Tyler Zanella CLC at AL v. Peter Pter School District R1 at AL United States District Court for the District of Colorado Civil Action number 123-C-02546-RMR- NRN consolidation consolidated for all purposes

107with civil action number 24-C2723- KAS and whereas to avoid the uncertainties of litigation and for the purpose of compromise the parties participated in a confidential mediation during which a global resolution of the claims in the amount of $16,200,000 was mutually agreed by the parties subject to the BSD board of education approval. And whereas the proposed $16,200,000 settlement will be funded jointly by the district and the insur insurance carrier for the district, the Colorado school district self- insurance pool, SIDSIP, with SIDSP contributing $10 million to the proposed settlement and the district contributing $6,200,000. And whereas a proposed full and final release and settlement agreement agreement has been drafted by the parties and approved by legal council for the parties including general counsel for the district and outside legal counsel for the district from the law firms

108of Tyson and Mendes LLP and Kaplan and Earnest and whereas PSD's board has had an opportunity to review the terms of the proposed agreement and whereas to effectuate this proposed settlement PSD's Board of Education will need to authorize the use of PSD Board of Education contingency reserves in the amount of $6,200,000 to account for this unbudgeted expense. And now therefore, PSD's board of education, having considered all factors it deems necessary and prudent in connection with the approval of this proposed settlement, hereby approves the terms of the settlement as documented in the agreement, including specifically the global monetary portion of the settlement of $16,200,000. PSD's Board of Education further approves the use of PSD Board of Education contingency reserves in the amount of $6,200,000 to account for this unbudgeted expense. It is therefore resolved that PSD's

109board of education hereby approves the proposed settlement in its entirety, including the global monetary portion of the settlement of the $16,200,000. PSD's board president is hereby authorized to execute the proposed agreement on behalf of the district. The district administration is directed to affffectuate the district's $6,200,000 portion of the settlement payment pursuant to the terms of the agreement. And if this passes, it will be approved and adopted this 13th day of May, 2025. So Jill, can I get a vote? Jim Bro, I. Kristen Draper, I. Connor Duffy, I. Kevin Havda I. Carolyn Reed I. Scott Shoenbower I. Jessica Zamora I. Motion passes 70. Thank you. Um I would like to go ahead and make a statement on behalf of the entire board and our district superintendent. Um so I'd like to share this statement with the

110community. The Prud School District and the families of the 10 students affected by the criminal actions of a former district employee who is convicted of his crimes have reached a final settlement of all claims. This resolution represents our collective commitment to addressing the harm caused and to supporting the ongoing recovery and well-being of these students and their families. The agreement includes a total financial settlement of $6.2 2 million which includes funds from the board's reserves as well as non-monetary funds terms. Since 2023, when the district became aware of the actions of the former employee, PSD has invested almost $2 million and hundreds of hours of staff time to improve our processes, protocols, and training. These include implementing robust safety measures, enhancing employee training programs, and revising policies and protocols to provide additional layers of accountability

111and oversight. Key changes include revised hiring practices that exceed industry and state standards, installation of advanced bus camera systems across the entire fleet, hiring a dedicated transportation manager for students with disabilities to oversee and support bus operations. Improved comprehensive staff training on trauma-informed care, behavior management, and mandatory reporting. and improved communication and collaboration between transportation, schools, and families. These measures are only a part of our unwavering commitment to student safety and well-being. While these incidents are a painful chapter in our history, they are also a catalyst for important and necessary improvements. We are mindful that our next chapter must include increased efforts centered on healing, repairing the harm done, and rebuilding trust. PSD remains steadfast in our dedication to fostering a safe, inclusive, and supportive environment for all students. We thank the families, staff, and

112broader community for their trust and partnership as we continue to grow stronger together. Thank you. And with that, we are going to take a five minute recess. Uh we will be back here. It is now 7:19. and we'll be back here at 7:25. Thank you. Welcome back. Okay, we're going to start off with 10.0 action items. 10.1 consideration of a resolution approving a proposed Oh, nope, sorry. 10.2 - network switching IFB25-680- 06. Can I get a motion? I move that the board approves the estimated cumulative expenditures in excess of $250,000. And can I get a second? Thank you, Jess. All right. And then we're going to look forward to hearing about networks, right? Yeah, sure. Do uh tonight we look forward to hearing about network switching from our CTO, uh Bud. Welcome Bud. Oh, there

113you are. Hey, bud. Thank you, uh, Superintendent Kingsley and the board. Glad to be with you tonight. Uh, I'm joined in the audience by our director of infrastructure, Don Campbell, and our, uh, IT asset manager, uh, Tyson Burgerer, who will be available to answer questions should I not be able to as we move through our presentation. I do have a short one for you, which we'll get up here on the screen. Oops. Um, real quickly, uh, what we intend to do in the next few minutes do a brief overview of the program, give you some reasons for why we've brought this particular item in front of you tonight, situate that in the context of other things we're doing with in the district and take time for your questions before hopefully we move into approval. So,

114uh, the -ate program is part of the FCC's universal service program. It's often called the schools and libraries program from universal service. It has a rich history which I will not go into this evening. Uh but it's a program that that did begin its life in some form or fashion with long-distance telephone service in the early 1930s. Um it currently provides discounts for telecommunications, internet access, and internet internal connections to eligible schools and libraries across the country. Those discounts are offered in two big and broad categories. The information that we're going to talk mostly about tonight is internal connections or switches. We'll talk more about that in a second. Internet circuits is more what people think of when they think of -ate. That's how do we get internet connectivity to schools and during co to

115families to households to all of the places we need to get it to go so that our teachers and students and staff are connected to the things that they need to do uh teaching and learning and the business operations of the district. uh those discounts are determined by a combination of geography and demographics for a particular school district or geographical area. And one of the uh things that we're uh eager to talk about tonight, as Superintendent Kingsley reminds us, we have to continually balance innovation and fragility is some neat opportunities that have presented themselves through uh geographic geog geography demographics and innovation here in the in the district. uh specifically in PSD we've used date uh for quite some time the to discount our internet circuits our internal connections and related and appropriate services uh

116four of our five internet service providers do provide discounted service to PSD via you might be wondering why not the fifth one it has to do with the number of requirements and qualifications to who gets service to where and that fifth service provider provides some internal connections that aren't subject to the subsidy which is why it's not 100% of our internet connections that get that uh discount. We do h we have also begun to use -ate to discount internet filting filtering and firewall services to the district. Those are items and expenditures that we are moving forward with. They did not meet the board threshold. It felt appropriate to tell you that we are doing that as well as we talk about the other work that we do uh with here tonight. Tonight's request is is

117a combination of several factors. One is that category two which are those internal discount categories that we talked about earlier has a recurring budget mechanism. Every five years the uh FCC through USA the universal services administrative company. The federal government is very good at naming things. Uh provides a budget to schools based on a a formula which is rooted in the number of students variety of factors. That budget resets every five years. It's not a gift budget to schools. It's an eligibility budget of investment that we can apply against our discounts. We're in year five of that uh category 2 budget. And a year ago when we were talking internally about how we would choose to use that uh budget or think about that investment, we did not have some things that I'm about to

118name. And so we weren't intending to use that uh budget in this fifth year in the way that I'm about to name. Uh but then some things happened. The first is that our discount rate, which was when I arrived here 60% against investment or 60 cents on the dollar returned to the district, rose to 80%. The first time I saw that, I was confused, concerned, and I believe I said something like, "We better not use that. It can't be true." I'll say more about it uh in just a second. Um, but as that happened, we did some research and I learned that that increase is because remember I mentioned earlier the demographics of the district uh play a factor here. Our child nutrition services team has been working incredibly hard to make sure that all

119of the children that come into our schools have access to the nutritional things that they need to get their day started and to help them in the middle of the day uh in our in our cafeteriums throughout the district. And I want to name that the mathematical change in our discount is a result of their hard work. All but two of our schools instead of relying on the free and reduced school lunch program which is an individual form provided to families. It requires it to be returned from the family. It is a onetoone. It is not a fun form to fill out. Colorado made it less fun when they started providing for free meals to students or healthy nutrition in Colorado. I do the asterisk because everyone in this room knows that that free meal

120is certainly fragile. It may or may not be innovative and it's definitely not free. Um those events have caused our child nutrition team to shift towards this community eligibility provision which is an alternative way of licensing our schools based on the work of the USDA. That program basically allows you to compile a bunch of demographic data that you already know about the children in your school. are they receiving other services like SNAP, Medicaid, some things that our district has worked very hard to provide across the district and then uses that data plus I would say a healthier way of calculating it which is we still know there are children who would apply if they could or would qualify. There's a multiplier attached to that ser to that particular qualifier. So the school is able to

121offer at discount school lunches to everybody without asking a lot of questions or additional questions. That means that our participation has gone up. Therefore, in the eyes of - or universal service, our discount qualifier has gone up. So eight cent 80 cents on the dollar are now returned to the district through these investments. I just want to name again our child nutrition team does boring paperwork, clerical things every day for the benefit of making sure that our children have uh delightful things to eat and in this case a little bit better internet uh subsidy. And so thank you child nutrition team and thank you uh Dave, our chief operations officer. Please pass the thanks along to all of the folks who make that happen because I don't think you get a lot of high fives

122for we've upped our enrollment in the C. We should high-five for that. It's a big deal. Um, the last piece of this is the initial capital that we would need to front the investment. Remember, it's a return on an investment. It's not a grant. Uh, did not exist a year ago. So, the other thanks tonight are the thanks of our voters for approving our debtfree mill levy in November, which gave us a little more capital freedom and some opportunity to leverage that freedom through programs like this. So, those uh three things uh came out three things. I forgot to say the the third thing. We bid network equipment at a time where we're nervous about the cost of electronic things. And our expectation as we did that bid was it was not going to be

123good. It was better than we expected. And so less pricing right now, we do not believe that's a permanent uh moment. That's a moment in our current economic environment that we are glad to have. our increased discount rate and that opportunity with the capital from 4A has led us to tonight's uh request. Uh this is the boring part of this presentation for those of you who don't know. Network switches are the things that exist in the closets that many of us aren't allowed to go into that connect our classrooms to our central uh networking equipment, our networks back to each other throughout the district and to the internet through our various internet circuits and connections. So these are the these are the things that make more and more of the stuff in our buildings talk

124to each other. And as if you think about the internet of 10 years ago and the internet of 10 years from now, more and more devices require power across that network connection. They require faster data transfers across that data or across that connection and they require just more throughput firepower and opportunity for for stuff to flow. So, as we look at switches across the district that are approaching end of life, we're trying to think about 10 years into the future for what those needs are. And there are other investments in 4A that we'll talk about at different times that we need to get the buildings ready for so that we can uh be thinking about the next generation of data transfer across our schools and networks. Um, we think we'll see that that power management

125is one of the things we're really excited about. And as computer equipment continues to get smaller, we have some very tight closets that we're going to get some room back in. So, it's solving some practical issues. It's solving some future problems, and it's allowing us to to continue to refresh our equipment, uh, which is something you want to do before it breaks, not after. Um, our bid went out as it does through our processes with Rocky Mountain Bidnet. We had eight biders respond to this particular request after we've reviewed those. You have both the bid tabs in your packet as well as the school by school site by-sight breakdowns uh, in your packet to show you what that pricing. There was a wide range of pricing. I would encourage you to if you haven't take

126a take a look at the numbers on the high end are what we expected. The numbers that we're that we are seeking approval for tonight were not. We're very excited about those numbers. Uh but we will uh request roughly $2 million uh in hardware costs, about 40 grand in labor uh to refresh our networking hardware across 40 district sites. I'm calling out that labor number tonight, not to say we will pay PSD staff full-time uh that wage. We pay wages to our staff currently. Many of that most, excuse me, almost all of that labor will be supervised by our full-time staff, but will be conducted by our students, which as we've talked about before is a priority. We want to find real opportunities for our students to do work that is real in our system.

127This supports that work as well. Um, that's important to say. Uh, 1.9 million of that hardware request is eligible. If you take 80% of that, depending on final expenditures, we're looking at a discount or a return to the district of roughly $ 1.5 million against that investment. So, uh, that's our ask tonight. Uh, I'll pause and see what questions you might have. If they're really juicy technical questions, then Don or Tyson will get involved. Uh, and we'll see where we are. Jamie, it looks like you have a question. Hey, bud. Uh, thanks. This is awesome. Uh, I think you said it's the service providers that are providing the discount. is that so the way that -ate works is that we there's two ways you can get the reimbursement. One way is you work with the

128service provider at time of purchase to get a discounted price at time of sale. The other way is to invest the money and to submit a reimbursement from the vendor. the money that provides the discount in either case is coming from the pool of USA, which if you've looked at your phone bill recently, and I'd encourage you all to do that every month for a bunch of reasons, particularly if you have children, um there's a universal service fee tied to that, and that universal service fee is pulled and collected by the FCC and then distributed to do the facility uh the facilitation of the discount. Thank you. That gets to my question of I saw in some of your slides FCC and I saw USDA. Yes. And with the current climate in Washington, is there

129any chance that this rebate winds up going away? That's another reason that we're doing this and we're excited that we're doing this right now. So, the Supreme Court did actually hear a case earlier this this session around the future of universal service itself. Uh that gets into some very particular details that I won't go into tonight. But as I listened to those oral arguments, because who wouldn't? Um, obviously, uh, what I'm hearing is that there's likely to be changes to no matter which way the case is to be decided. I do not believe that it is as fragile as some of the other investments that we've heard from the federal government tonight. But we are always paying attention and we like to be able to get discounts while we can. And in the case of

130-ate, I can't say what the future holds, but I can tell you that the money that would provide that discount is sitting in a coffer to be spent this next fiscal year. It is not money to be collected at some future time. Did I answer your question? You did. Thanks. Yeah. Go ahead, Caroline. And so I I know the application process for this can be kind of confusing and hard to do and I don't know if you maybe answered it a second go a second ago when you were saying about applying for it but do we use a consultant for those applications? We do. We work with a company called oh my goodness u irate portal forgive me. We've worked with them longer than I've been here. Many of my colleagues across the front range

131use them. They charge us a flat fee to help and assist with paperwork. I've done that paperwork as the only person doing that work in other organizations. We're very glad to have that relationship and that opportunity to work with a consultant to make sure everything gets turned in on time. Internally in PSD, we also rely on both our finance team to help us with the procurement pieces as well as our grants team to actually help us with some of that uh back and forth with the -ate consultant. And and so we have some really rural schools, our mountain schools. Did they qualify for special funding? There's not a separate designation. So, it's a good question because I know we've talked in this room a lot about mountain schools and urban and suburban. The district in

132the in the case of - counted as one geographical entity. We count as urban. However, the demographics of the children across the district uh land in some separate ways. So, the geography of our district plays a role in the way discounting is is happening but not at the school by school level. Does that make sense? Go ahead, Govern. I got two questions. Um, so I was trying to understand, but is this a a fixed one-time cost? Is it going to be a variable cost? Is it once every five years we can anticipate something like this? Like what's the what's the actual investment? The investment tonight is the initial outlay for the hardware that's outlined at the $2 million mark. We anticipate that our switching equipment lasts roughly eight or nine years. We have historically snuck

133this uh refresh in on our category 2 budgets. Snuck sounds like the wrong word I want to use to the school board. Let me revise that. We have treated this as a when we have capacity in our ongoing investments, we slip switching in. This became an opportunity to think differently about that due to the culmination of the discount increase, the category 2 budget, which we had not intended to spend because a discount's great, but it only works if you have the money to go to the store in the first place. You can't use a coupon if you can't pay for the for the original item, which our 4A funds did free up the capacity for us to think differently about that investment right now along with the discount increase. Okay. My second question is, as

134I'm kind of weighing this, in your view, and this is going to be an indelicate question, but I'm gonna ask it anyway. Um, does this strike you as a want versus a need? And another way of saying it is what happens if we don't approve this tonight? The refresh of our network equipment is a need. Doing it right now is a really wise and innovative move against a fragile system. If it weren't to happen now, we would certainly see different pricing. We could not guarantee the discount rate and we would have to make the purchase in either at 40 sites at one time or five to 10 sites per year over the next several years. Um, I'm not trying to say it can't be done later, but it is not going to be as fortuitously

135done later from a stewardship of resource perspective. So, another way of putting it, thank you for that. Yeah. Is it in your assessment having been with this problem is it more fiscally prudent to do this now? It is more responsible to get the larger investment against this lower pricing today. Absolutely. Thank you. Yes. Sorry. Go ahead, Scott. Um yes, thank you very much. This is a really good discussion. Um, just so I'm clear on the math, $2 million we authorize now, Ben, 1.5 will come back. Correct. Where does that 1.5 go? Historically, we budget that the discount won't come back to it at all and it was returned to the district uh in a variety. It comes back to the general fund depending on the project and the investment next. Then we work with our

136partners in finance to allocate that returning resource to the most pressing need in the district at the time. We don't bank it for later if that's what you're asking. Right. Exactly. So about $800,000. Is that the net that we're looking at? Is it two? I might No, the the the total outlay is about $2 million and we would look at about 1.5 in terms of the discount based on today's pricing based on today's uh discount. My wife will tell me I need to start wearing my new glasses. That's going to be fun because I was seeing 2.3 million, not two million. So crap, I'm not qualified to speak to marital issues. So I will moving on. Moving on. Any other [Laughter] questions? So doesn't sound like it. So thanks so much. But this is -ate

137is just one of those things that um take advantage of it while we can. Uh libraries have been doing this and school districts have been doing this for years. Um, and it's it's definitely something that um we are very grateful that it's there and we will keep our fingers crossed that it stays there for the next few years. I think we've got time in the next year or so. As you said, it's um the Supreme Court's listening to that argument, but hasn't made any rulings. So, yeah. Quite right. Thank you. Thank you. With that, Jill, can you call the vote? Jim Brokish. Hi. Kristen Draper. I. Connor Duffy. I Kevin Havda. I Carolyn Reed. I Scott Shoenbower. Hi Jessica Zamora. Hi. Motion passes. 70. Thank you very much. And if I could just very briefly

138say uh we do a lot of work through our procurement team, but most of the infrastructure procurement comes through Tyson Berger's hands at some point. And I just want to name while he's here that we spend money more responsibly because of the work that he and his team uh does to support us. Stalin is his boss on our infrastructure team. But if you'd be willing to just look at them and and say thank you, I would appreciate it. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for all you do. We really appreciate it. All right. And now we will move on to 11 informal reports and discussion items. We have an update on cell phone policy implementation at high schools. And we have a special guest for this. Yeah, we have several uh special guests

139this evening. So, to provide an update on our cell phone policy implementation at the high school level uh is our assistant superintendent, Dr. Julie Chaplain, Fossil Ridge High School assistant principal, Dr. Sonia Getty, and Fort Collins High School assistant principal Justin Stevens. Welcome to the team. Come on up. I'm going to have and they are coming on camera with me. They are not sitting in the audience. They've been so wonderful. Well, they've been here almost all the board meeting and so we definitely um want them to get their 15 minutes of fame. Um so yes, of course. Can't wait. Okay, I just need to slideshow. And there we go. Okay, great. So, uh thank you for letting me be with you this evening. Um I have uh two two of my wonderful colleagues here um

140that were a part of the work that we're going to share with you. Um and so as you have some questions that might be specific to um different schools or processes that have currently happening, they're going to help me answer some of those questions. So as we dive in tonight, um I'm going to share with you just a very highlevel um overview of the impacts of cell phone use and social media. Uh then we will talk about our processes and our feedback loops that we used um to determine which practices we are going to align on. We will then explain that alignment of practices in high schools and then I will share a timeline for communication and then we'll be glad to answer any questions that you have. So, as we start digging into some

141of the research, um so some of the cell phone um research that uh that I'm just going to very high level point to comes from um um the anxious generation. Um if you haven't read that book, it's a very interesting read and it has um specific information around cell phone usage. And so height in his book really cites several pieces um that are impacts that are correlated to cell phone usage. Those are distraction from learning in the classroom. Not only distraction for kids in the moment, but distraction for teachers as they need to maybe stop instruction, redirect students and get their attention back to the learning. Um, also there's a correlation with lower engagement with peers socially, physic one- on-one um actually interacting in person. We also um we know that research says that there

142is a correlation um in mental health and social emotional learning impacts. Um sleep deprivation uh staying up being on your screen um whether you're staying up late on your screen or just having a lot of screen time during the day um impacts your ability to um sort of deregulate shut down uh and get some good sleep for the night. Uh we also know that it has a reduction of attention span as we are becoming trained to the like and the click and the auto um constant news feed coming over and over again. And so um some of the things that um that are noted are the inability for them to um really focus for long periods of time um or even just 10 15 minute chunks of time. Uh and when we are working with

143uh classroom course times um can be up to 90 minutes in high school. Um you know the attention spans are something we want to we want to try to build resilience for. Um and then we also know there's a high correlation with um that teenage social comparison and negative self-image. So they're comparing their lives with what they may see um on their screens or through social media or they may be comparing themselves physically, personally. um all sorts of different interactions. Then if we think about in 2023 the US surgeon general's report um really bringing to light specifically social media um some of the statistics referenced are um that teens are on social media that if they're on there for more than three hours a day uh they're two times as likely to uh be at

144risk of mental health problems. And then uh they reported that 95% of the students who were surveyed ages 13 to 17 reported uh that they are on social media and this is a direct quote almost constantly that was the report that they came and so why now we also have had practices aligned in our middle schools um and I do want to focus on this being a practice um focused conversation. We have had a cell phone policy since 2014. I believe in PSD is a personal communication device policy. While there may be some outdated language, it references pagers, cell phones. I think we heard that in community comment one um a little while back, it is still very applicable to the general um use. And we have always outlined that cell phones would not be

145um would not be in classrooms unless designated by the principal or um or how who they designated for that. So we're really focusing on how we align the practices. So in middle schools um and really K8 um we have no cell phones throughout the day. And so um what we have seen from that is that students have followed uh those uh expectations. um they have had increases with engagement at lunch periods with each other. Um and um parents have been very positive. They have been supportive and the feedback um has been really um really really um you know just useful and I think it's helped build uh trust relationships between the families in the school. Some of our high schools also this year have implemented cell phone practices. Um specifically we have middle high schools.

146So they made the decision to ma to put in uh practices in middle school and high school. It's a little differentiated which will go into our um differentiated process for high school. Um but we also um know that there's been other high schools um Rocky Mountain High School, Fort Collins High School um where Mr. Stevens is um we've had Pter High School started with ninth grade. So we have pockets where they have we have had practices um regarding not using cell phones during the school day. And what we want to do is move to alignment of those practices and also balancing how we protect instructional time and from a high school perspective how we also build in this ability and muscle memory of how you navigate when do I use my cell phone and when

147don't I use my cell phone which is a real world real adult life um skill right we all practice that whether I'm in a meeting and I may need to say, "I'm so sorry. I might need to take a call." There are these nuances that we as adults need to navigate, whether it's in our work settings, could be in our military, future career settings, college settings, what have you. So, we do want to think of, we do want to balance that. There are times when it's appropriate for you to use your phone and there's times where it's not appropriate for you to use your phone. And that's really the context of the practices that we came to alignment on. Um, and then, uh, we also know several districts, not only around the nation, but in

148Colorado, some of our neighboring districts have, um, looked at their cell phone practices and when they're allowed to be used and when they're not. And then the National Education Association actually um, they are in support of this as well. They report that 90% of the teachers in um, their membership support prohibiting cell phone use during instruction. So all of those culminating pieces, the research um and all the things that we've observed happening in our district um this year um are what brought us to bringing together a high high school cell phone committee. So we brought in administrators from all of our high schools, our middle high schools, our alternative education campuses, and um also our K12 and our K12 campuses of Polaris and Pter Global Academy. We had three different meetings and collaborated on the

149site as well. We started with a current crosswalk of where is everybody where what are the practices as they currently stand in everyone's building and asked them to go back to their schools and their teams. Some of them did surveys to their community. Some of their surveys happened last year um before they implemented things this year. Some of them talked with their school accountability committees, their staff, small groups of students. Um, so really gave them the charge of going back to their communities and getting some feedback if they hadn't already. Then we decided to look at all those practices and align on what we're going to describe as tight and loose practices. And so for definition, our tight practices are those which we would say would be district-wide. Um, they would be at all high

150schools. And then the loose practices would allow for that little flexibility and nuance of the specific school community. An example might be Centennial High School. They might have a practice that is a little bit different in how they address the cell phone violations than the other comprehensive high schools. They use a discovery model. They use a verbal redirect process. So for them, their first step might look different than some of the others, but then we have tight expectations around the rest of that. We then um I had various various um members from the committee join me at a special education advisory committee presented this to them and got feedback. Student advisory committee, district advisory board, district advisory committee and now I'm here with you fine folks this evening um sharing that work as well. So

151let's move into it. What's tight and what's loose? So the first thing we had to discuss was when will we ask students to um silence their cell phones and have them out of sight. And we landed on that it would be the full class period. So from the time the bell rings until the end of the class cell phones would be silenced out of sight. Smartwatches silenced as well, iPads silenced. Um, we do not want to allow the use of ear um, airpods or wireless headphones or earbuds, however you want to call them, um, because they are tied to those phones. And so we again are trying to eliminate the distraction and if they get a text notification or what have you, they would get that they would get that in their ear. However, we

152they can use headphones and plug into their laptops. Um, as we know, music is one of the probably um, biggest things that the students report that they like to do with their cell phones. Um, now this is all on the caveat that if a student has an identified accommodation in an individual education plan for a student with disabilities, a 504 plan or a healthcare action plan that if there are specific accommodations for cell phones um for students to access their education, those would be exceptions to um that cell phone being silenced and out of sight. We also then talked about what happens when a student takes a break during class. maybe they have to go to the restroom and aligned on that that we would not allow them to take their cell phones with them.

153Um if they go to the restroom, go for a walk, um go need to see a counselor, whatever that might be. Again, unless it's part of an active specifically identified part of a plan in their individualized education program, their 504 as an accommodation, or maybe a healthcare action plan. cell phones will would be allowed um for specific activities approved um by with uh curriculum that's approved by the administrator. An example of this would be we have a social marketing social media marketing class in our high schools. Part of their tools um that they are using they are using their cell phones as they are learning how to um in enter into the world of social social media marketing. Another might be in a life skills class. It may uh the cell phone may serve as

154a communication device for a student. And so it's appropriate that we are teaching them how to use their cell phone in that space in order to be um as independent as they can while in school and after high school. We would also allow cell phones during passing periods, during lunch, during off periods, before and after school. And this really comes into that point of how do we balance protecting instructional time and also letting them um help help navigate these spaces where they don't have instructional demands on them. And so how can they learn that when do I use my phone and when don't I use my phone and hey I can't in class but I've got a break or I've got an off period lunch what have you. We then talked about parent communication um

155because we know parents want to communicate with their students and have the need um in certain situations to communicate with their students while at school. And so the first uh option is to call the front office and if it's something that this the student has to answer right away or is um something that's critical and they can't wait for a response um from the student until a passing period or lunch break um we would have the messages taken up to the classroom from the front office and delivered to the student. We also know um just like I had referenced before when I'm in a meeting if I have something going on I may say I'm so sorry if I have to step out I may be expecting a call um you know I I've had

156my own family issues where I've had to monitor my personal cell phone. Our students are going to have the same circumstances. So when there's a time of need communication um that parent and student communication would be allowed and here is where we would teach students to be advocates for themsel. they are going to simply say to their teacher, I really need to step outside of the classroom into the hallway. I need to make a very quick phone call. Um, and we will we will guide teachers to allow that to happen. They don't need to get into the nitty-gritty of who are you calling, why are you calling, what is the reason, why can't it wait? We're going to honor that they're advocating for that um and allow them to make that brief phone call and

157then come back into the classroom. And then of course students can always use um phones throughout the building. There's always a student phone for use in the front office. Um and um there will be other designated areas in the building where cell phones could be used. Um and we'll talk a little bit about that. Then we looked at what sort of documentation would we need as we track cell phone violations. And so we all agreed that um when we uh take a student's cell phone um a parent should be notified that the cell phone was taken and held until the end of the day um at the front office. The student can pick that up at the end of the day. uh we do not want to enter those violations into as a discipline response

158into our student information system unless we've gone past three steps and we're going into you've had more than three instances within the school year. We're going to make a specific technology plan for you. it'll be co-created. Um, and so that we would then log into the system and have that technology plan or in the rare instances that we have a student who is refusal repeated multiple multiple offenses and we're crossing into a willful disobedience um, disciplinary code of conduct offense um, more than it's just a cell phone piece. Those would be documented in synergy. Okay. Um, and So also tight every school will develop a three step three tiered response system and um the two the steps for number two and three violations are the same across the page. If it's the second violation and

159the third violation, the cell phones will be taken uh from the student. They will be uh held down at the front office until the end of the day until the student can then pick that up. violations exceeding three, as I just referenced, um would result in a co-created technology plan and potential code of conduct violations if it's continued or um willful disobedience is falling into that area. Um and then teaching and modeling, we want that to be tight across the system. So each school will need to publish their three- tiered response um for students and families uh in their student handbooks, in newsletters, websites. they can create flyers. We have different models from schools that currently have cell phone practices in place. Um and then we start school this year, next year um on a

160Thursday. So taking the first two days in every class period to teach the expectations to students in high school across the district um to then that's sort of your grace period, your two days and then that next week is where here we go, you shouldn't have your cell phone out and we're going to start then implementing the cell phone response if you do have your cell phone out and you're violating that practice. We also um want to make sure we're really focusing on the why with students. Um and so that's part of the communication. And then teacher modeling. So, um, it's important that we as adults model what we ask students to do. Um, and so helping teachers understand the same thing. You might I might have something personally in my life, so I may

161need to say to my class today, I might have to grab this phone call. Um, but asking them also not to be on their cell phones during class time um to model that that they align with those student expectations. So the flexibility or the loose um per site is really with the first step. So I referenced there's a three tiered response. The first response, the first tier, that's what can be loose between the high schools and it can either start with a warning or taking the phone right away. Um Centennial, as I said, they would start and following their current um current process of how they do verbal redirects. Um, but we do have Timoth High School um that they started right away. It is you don't you we're teaching you the first two days.

162We're not warning after that. And so after that, your cell phone um and I'll discuss some how they do that here in a minute, but cell phones taken and you pick it up at the end of the day. The schools will determine their own designated areas for cell phone use. So that could be a media center, the commons, hallways, they'll determine that for their own specific school. They will also determine what resources they would want to provide uh their teachers. So some of our schools have provided cell phone caddies which are nothing more than fancy shoe caddy plastic shoe caddy with pockets um and then or pouches such as the case at Timnithth Middle School. It's a p pencil pouch with a zipper. Um and in this case the student when it's it is just

163a the teacher holds open the pouch and says here put your phone in here. the phone goes in, the name goes on the phone. Um, and then I'll talk a little bit more about how that gets down to the front office, but that procedure for turning over the phone and getting it down um, and documenting um, and tracking those one, two, and three step internally because we're not going to have it in the student information system that will be tracked individually and that will be on the school to track because we don't want that housed in our student information system. Um, some schools have built into a second or third offense where a parent would be requested to come pick up the cell phone. Um, we'll allow that to be a sightbased decision. However, um,

164with the caveat that at the end of the day, if a parent cannot pick up that phone, we are returning it to the student at the end of the day um, and having a conversation with a parent because there may be barriers beyond their control. We're not going to keep that phone um, from them. And then um one of the other pieces is um team development of um IEPs and accommodations. Um and specifically when we were at special ed advisory committee, a couple of things. First of all, of course, making sure that if students have accommodations uh that they're allowed to use those cell phones. And then the other piece that um that they wondered about was what what sort of um attention might be drawn on my student because they get to use their

165cell phone as an accommodation versus others. Those are very real questions. Um and those are very real questions that students are faced with of accommodations across the board. Some of the accommodations will require them to leave class or be with a small group or have extended time for testing. So, we navigate all of those situations in the IEP team meetings um and having conversations with students first of all to deter to determine is the cell phone the only option for an accommodation. If the answer is yes, then that's where that stands and talking to the student and saying how's this how how can we support you? How is this going to make you feel if you are using your cell phone and everyone else isn't? Um, another piece um would be um in looking at

166um you know as the the teams are then um creating you know the time for maybe we look at an option for an accommodation that has an assisted technology device through our SWAT department or could they use their laptops? Some of our students use their phones as a planner or an organizer or calendar feature. So could that be a Google calendar that they can still access on their laptop? So just trying to think through the accommodations and if the cell phone is really the only way they can receive the access to their education or not and then looking and rewriting or revising accommodations as they're reviewed annually if it's appropriate. So as we also um were meeting with um some of our feedback loops um we got some good tips and some good discussion items

167even between schools who had been implementing practices and then from parents or other um other vested partners that we who we met with. So the first thing is that we want to um really encourage schools to create these systems for taking cell phones and removing them from students um and creating systems that that do not require teachers to handle or excessively handle the phones. One of the fears from teachers is what if I break it? Am I liable? The answer for that is no. However, we also we also don't want this to be a power struggle between a student and a teacher, which is why having a buildingwide expectation, having that taught to across the system um will help support teachers so that it is just an unspoken you have your cell phone out. Here's

168what here's what happens. Um and so again, an example might be at Timnith, they use that pouching system. The student puts that in a zipper pouch and the teacher just sends an email. There's like a general Timnith safety team email. They say, "Hey, cell phone pickup in room 202." That person comes up, the campus monitor comes up, grabs the cell phone, takes it down to the front office, they log that into their debt, their little spreadsheet, uh, and then that's how they track, and then they return that at the end of the day. So, those are examples that we want to share with schools. The second would be be being explicit about modeling um, cell phone usage during class times as a teacher and having adults model those. And then also being explicit um with

169staff that they don't need to factf find. If a student asks, "Can I step out in the hallway and make a phone call?" That they can just say, "Yep, go ahead. Take care of what you need to come right back in." And if there's multiple or excessive requests from a student, that's a separate scenario. That's handled differently and that's handled in collaboration with administration and a family member or a parent. So, if you know I have a student in my class who's done it every day this week and they keep asking, that's a different scenario. That's a different conversation for a different setting and a time, but not during class. Another recommendation is that when students take a break to go to the restroom, um, a lot of schools have a restroom pass or a

170break pass or office pass that the student leaves their cell phone and takes the pass. So, they don't have their cell phone with them. Um, another recommendation from some of our families was to have some video messaging from schools. So, it wasn't just all verbal, um, whether it's playing on monitors or screens or TV programs in high school, um, but also available for families. Um, I already had said, um, you know, really focusing on the why behind cell phone free um, classrooms. And then the last thing that came up was this idea that there are some of our clubs and sports and activities who actually use social media accounts for communicating with students to say, "Hey, the time changed for practice." And so we want to we want to help think of another way to

171communicate with students using texts. Um, we've had some text apps that can work, but it doesn't encourage them to set up a social media account if they haven't had a social and media account. Um, and so we're looking for that alternate way there. And also our um, wonderful IT department is looking at what other tools can teachers use um, as they're trying to communicate with students who are in clubs and activities. And so, um, our communication timeline in mid, uh, July, we will be doing district-wide communication. And I've been curating parent resources as well. So, we've had parents asking, um, you know, how should I set limits on cell phone usage? And this is these this is these were middle school parents. I mean, the our district advisory boards has parents from all grade levels.

172So, um, you know, looking at providing some resources to parents as they're trying to navigate all of these, um, new dimensions for some of them. Um, that will be part of that communication. And then as the school um, this year before the end of the year, we want, uh, the administrative teams to communicate with their staff before the end of the year so that they're aware what's going to be happening. And then over the summer, schools communicating with their families in their summer newsletters um throughout the year in email updates or monthly newsletters, school websites, and then making sure it's in the student handbooks. And then those two days of in-person communication every every period of the day that the student has um when school starts. So that is what that is um what we're

173look that's what we're planning and we have we'd love to answer questions. Um I know Justin from Fort Collins they have been implementing cell phone um practices this year and so if you have questions um Fossil Ridge has not yet but I think had um you know has good feedback from um you know some of their school community in terms of parent concerns um and things of that nature. But I'll just open it up to you all. Thank you so much. I know that Scott, you got to start us off with the questions, right? This is your baby. Yes, that's right. I'm the cell phone band guy. But, uh, no, I think this is this is fantastic. I'm really excited. Um, I want to give you guys a chance to talk about your experiences at

174both Fossil and Front or sorry, Fort Collins High and just let me know, let us know what you're what you're seeing, good and bad. um student complaints, parent complaints, or um are they all positive? I I'd love to hear some testimony. Justin, you want to come over to the mic? Yeah, you got to come over. So, I think I would start with a story. Um one of the roles that I have at Collins is I uh get to rah a little bit when the eighth graders come over and visit for that eighth grade um transition day or preview day. Um, and one of the most stark moments I had was last year at that time. Um, we had students from Leer. It was Leer is obviously one of our big feeders. So, a lot of

175Leer kids, a few others sprinkled in. Um, and I'm talking to the group and we have about a hundred um, link leaders, peer counselors, so on and so forth, high school, upper classmen basically that are leaders in our school. Um, and so I'm presenting in front of this group and I had 400 sets of middle school eyes on me and I had zero high school eyes on me. As soon as it turned over from what they were doing with the students to what I was doing in front of students, cell phones went up and the upper classmen were doing their thing. And it I I wish I had taken a picture to be honest because it was it was stark. Um the difference between our middle schoolers who were living in that world with a

176cell phone policy versus our high school students who at that point did not have any sort of policy. Um the feedback process that we went through to get the policy going at Fort Collins or the practices going at Fort Collins, um we started with a staff feedback uh loop that just was what are the two biggest hindrances to educating kids in your classroom and cell phones were by far and away the number one. And so it was like okay, we're going to do something about that. And so we solicited feedback from um families and honestly we drafted and reddrafted that uh document. It was a Google form that we sent out to uh guardians because we were honestly a little bit afraid of the things that might be on there, right? Like you can't take

177my kid's phone over my dead body. Um and there was no feedback to that level. There was a lot of good questions actually. You know what would an emergency look like? How would my student access their phone? Um, a piece of feedback that we received through there was parents were communicating with their kids via cell phones because they weren't reaching anybody at the front desk. And so we hired two workbased learning students um who help our front desk secretary. And now that phone gets answered every time it rings basically. And so that was just actionable feedback that we put in straight away. Um, and the parent feedback about with that piece since we've started that has been fantastic. We don't hear that nobody answers the phone anymore. The phone always gets answered. people appreciate that.

178Um the but the feedback on the whole was was was largely positive. It was over 90% that said yes, we need something and obviously as you would imagine what they've envisioned as something varied pretty widely and so we were working with that. Um does that answer that question? Next. So the Fossil Ridge experience is quite different. We intentionally did not set forth any new guidelines this last year anticipating that the district was moving in the direction of creating unified guidelines and not wanting to have to retract or revise something. So, we're appreciative of Julie's invitation into the work group and I just want to express my appreciation to our colleagues at the other high schools that have been quite generous in sharing their verbiage and their thinking with us so that we can model some

179of our materials after their materials. We really appreciate that collaboration. We also conducted a fairly invested survey among all of our stakeholders and our responses were a bit different than what Justin experienced. There was a stronger expression from our parent community um about some hesitation with regard to these guidelines, which is fair and understandable. some people expressing some of the concerns Justin alluded to, but also concerns over um really wanting to protect the autonomy of the device that they had purchased and felt that they had some rights to uh for lack of a better term, kind of controlling what happens to or with that device. And that's fair feedback that we understand. Um our best hope is that after some some grace and some working together, we'll all see as a community that this is

180quite a beneficial move and we're really excited about what it's going to do for our school culture. kind of hearkens me back to maybe like more of an old school feel for what school was like um when many of us were in high school. And I just am really excited about the potential for creating a culture that's based in a stronger sense of community. So that's where we're at. I could also share um some uh some actual data from uh Timnith Middle High. They they are tracking, you know, the first, second, third offenses. And so, um, the last stats were through February and they had pouched, um, I think over 700 phones, um, until then. Um, but, um, only 20 students had more than two cell phone violations. So, that was echoed by um, Rocky

181Mountain High School and I think Fort Collins High School. Um if you know the role of our deans in our high schools, they are the ones that are engaging with some of or most of the behavioral um sorts of processes. And so I think there was this real like hold on, are we going to be able to survive the amount of cell phones that are going to be coming our way? Um and and that amount of you know workload for that and that really is not what happened. Um students have been compliant and um they've actually even seen during lunch students having more face-toface conversations and using their cell phone um less just than they had previously. So while they could use their cell phones, they are seeing a lot more personal studentto student engagement.

182So those are some pieces there to add. Good. Yeah, that's that's great feedback. I like I said, I've been I've been really uh focused on this for a long time. Not only because of seeing it with my own kids, but even see it with myself. I think we all are kind of addicted to our cell phones. And so, and and you see the damage it can do in your own life. It's like, think about kids who grew up with this their whole life. And so, I think it's really important. Um, we got we got a bunch of emails about this over the last month or so. Uh, but I think there's a powerful one that I'm going to read real quick if you guys don't mind. Um, this is actually from one of our students.

183This is Isabelle from Fossil. Um, and it kind of speaks to I think the students are looking for boundaries and I think they, you know, the anxious generation talks about that, you know, let them be free but also kind of know the know the boundaries. So, uh, this is what Isabelle had to say. As a junior at Fossil Ridge High School, I urge the board to enforce the new cell phone policy in all district schools. While this policy currently applies to K through 8th grade, it hasn't officially reached every high school classroom. I have personally seen how my peers clutch their cell phones like a comfort blanket, never daring to let them out of their sight. However, these devices demand our attention and diminish the quality of our education. Some teachers at Fossil have tried

184to completely remove these devices from their classrooms, but have faced resistance and even resentment. A district-wide policy that applies to all schools would allow teachers to avoid choosing between their students learning and being wellreceived. I understand that if the board passes this policy, you may encounter backlash from the community. This is awesome. However, it is the school board's responsibility to make decisions that are in the students best interest. While it is vital that we, as young adults, be given opportunities to make choices, we need someone to push us forward and encourage us to put our education and futures first. I acknowledge that the board is in the final stages of passing this policy and strongly encourage on behalf of my peers that you vote in favor. And I thought that was pretty articulate and better

185than anything I could say. So I'll leave it at that. Great. Hey Caroline. So, um I'm struck by the one, um slide that you put up that said 95% of kids say that they are on the surgeon general constantly and that it said that kids who were on their phones are two times more likely to risk mental health problems. And so I wonder about like how we track that in the district like like how do we know like if we put this phone policy in place if we're getting better mental health outcomes? How will we know? Is there anything in the healthy kids survey or is there any kind of tracking that we are planning to do to see if we're getting good outcomes from our phone policy? It's a great question. I think we

186we know that we implement the healthy kids Colorado survey every other year. I think we would want to look at multiple data points. I think that would be one of them. I would want to look at our connections data uh as another one. Uh our student outcome academics uh would be a third. I think we're making lots of system improvements. this would be one one improvement that I think we're collectively believing that we should make uh going into next year. I think what I'm wrestling with with your really good question is how to extract the direct impact of one move when we're implementing a thousand different moves. Um and I say that not to overwhelm people, but there's a lot of really great things that are happening in our schools every day that lead to

187great instruction, that lead to deeper belonging. I think this is more of an accelerator in my opinion uh to move faster and deeper in those spaces. But I would want to go back and take a look at the questions in the Healthy Kids Colorado survey uh to see if there's any specific that are tied to cell phone usage. I'm not aware of that, but would invite my colleagues. I don't think it asks them to report how how many hours they're on their cell phone a day. Yeah. Um and so it's a great question and even in um you know the anxious generation it's it's correlation but it's really hard to say that all of that is just isolated to cell phone. I think that that's that's where it's much more difficult to answer your question.

188I could speak to one thing. Yeah. Okay. Um just to speak to that for a moment. As a former dean and someone who supports and mentors our current deans, we do have quite a bit of tangible evidence in our discipline data around cell phone related discipline incidences. So my best hope would be that we would see a dramatic decrease in the number of those reported incidences in our schools. We have a lot of students that report um bullying that's occurring during the school day via social media. um inappropriate behavior online that's occurring on cell phones during class, things of that nature. Right? So, I think that might be a starting point for some really concrete specific information about each site and if these particular guidelines are having efficacy, go ahead, Kevin. I'm going to shift

189gears a bit. I'm going to make a comment and then I'm going to ask a pretty technical question. So, I'll I'll do the comment first. beyond what we're talking about with mental health um which is a very compelling case to make. One other thing that I want to push the board to consider too and this will bleed into one of my questions is um this could also be viewed as a risk mitigation policy. And what I mean by that is that there's been some fairly disturbing instances that are not hypotheticals about students having access to their phones in bathrooms, in locker rooms, taking pictures of other students, unbeknownst to uh to deans, to school leadership. Um, and that is another form of cyber bullying that we're we need to think through that's very real. Um

190it also you know my my legal brain goes straight up to title n compliance and that this this creates unmitigated risk in my view if the um access point stays on the person of the student. So this is the first question I have is that and I think I'm following you as far as the the policies for out of sight. But I'm wondering go back to old school. I remember putting my phone when I was in was in high school which they we just had and not everyone had cell phones but we were required to put them in lockers throughout the day. And so I wonder what the feasibility of something like that would be because I do worry that even with the policies that we're considering and adopting, it may not mitigate some of

191those unforeseen uh just daily interactions that students may have. So I don't know if you could speak to that. Yes, I can. We talked we talked about that of Absolutely. Um number one, not all of our um high schools have enough lockers for every student to have a locker. So that is a that's a barrier. Um and um there's that. The I think what we heard from parents is a concern that they don't have their cell phone on them and when there's an emergency um that happens in the school um that they're not able to communicate with their student because it is not on their person and somewhere else. And so it it really um this was the balance of it'll be on your person and um you know so that if there was an

192unfortunate lockdown situation um they can yes mom I'm okay um you know things that are happening in that in that moment piece. Um so that that we did talk through that. Um and that is also then why at least during the class times um looking at you know hey if you're going to use a restroom leave your cell phone so you're not taking it with you to the restroom on your break and in the hallway. Um and um but I think we'll learn as we go and if we all are seeing a common you know thread in some of what you're describing as discipline incidents um that are related to cell phone use then that's something we can continue to revisit and work on as a collaborative high school group with deans. Thank you. I

193appreciate that. Um, in the hyper technical question, I was at that SEAK meeting where it was discussed. I appreciate it. And one hyper specific question I had, I don't know if we got an answer to it, but in the event that a student has uh a requirement in an IEP 504 or healthy plan that requires their use of a cell phone, but they do not personally own one, what is the obligation of the district to provide a cell phone? Is there a legal one? Is that uncharterable waters that we need to think about or is it such a small subset that it's for a later day? It's a great question. We did look into that a little bit more after the special ed advisory committee conversation and um integrated services feels very confident that if

194it is written in there it is more the student will students per personal cell phone will be used and that if it is something that um that is an assisted technology device that would be provided um by the district SWAC which is our assistive technology department. um we could look at that if they couldn't have a if they didn't have a cell phone available but they needed technology it wouldn't you know we would try to find alternate ways but most of those accommodations are written as the students cell phone is being used for that purpose um and then it was also really great to have a couple of the committee members from special ed advisory committee talk about the ARC um talk about some of our local um DVR sorry me division of oak rehab

195that they actually have programs So if families don't have the means of getting cell phones for their students to use as an accommodation, those agencies have grant funding and are able to provide some of those. So, we'll continue to work with case managers and our assisted technology um support staff within the district to make sure if that is a situation that we're helping connect families to those community resources um for a cell phone if that really is what's needed and they cannot um they can't they just can't afford that uh from them from their own income. Yep. Other questions. I only have one and that is what do we do when the adults don't follow the and be good models? Yeah, in school suspension. Is that what you said, Justin? No, I don't think so.

196It's a really good question. Um, you know, I think that is to be to be honest, we're really going to have to be really transparent and have those direct conversations with our teachers and and or pair of professionals, classifi, you know, whomever that is and try to and try to have that conversation of tell us what the barrier is, tell us what's going on, what what's what's what's getting in the way of you also complying with these issues. Um, and then again, when there needs to be advocacy from a teacher that they have to have their cell phone, that that we're doing that and we're modeling that and we're having that in there. So, um, I'm sure we will hear from students when teachers aren't following those expectations. Um, because it it doesn't appear like

197a fair just expectation that is only of students in the instructional environment. So, um, and we want we want our teachers and the teachers I I you know, I don't I don't know that I've been in classrooms ever where I've seen teachers on their phones all day and not focusing on students. So, um, so I think there's a little grace there, too. I think our teachers do a really good job of focusing on students and instruction. Um, and if they are on their cell phones, it's probably like, "Oh my gosh, my kids soccer and I need to schedule something." And so again, as an as as we do in our environments, we we we communicate and we talk to the people in our teams and in our classes with what our needs are, and we

198want to model that, too. So, thank you for that. I just I'm thinking back to, you know, Kevin said when he had a cell phone in high school, and I'm thinking, you know what I had? I had plans and we had to follow them because if we didn't follow them, then then we didn't get the ride home that we were expecting. So, so I understand it's it's a whole different world now and you have to, you know, plans change on an instant and so I know that that's going to be um something that we'll have to work through both with staff and with students. Um but I think this is a great start. So, thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. And there's not really a vote tonight. So, this is more just presentation

199and this is what we'll be doing. So, thank you so much and appreciate all your time. Thank you, Dr. Getty, Mr. Stevens. Um, and to everybody else, we had deans and assistant principles again really from all the high schools, K12, middle high schools. It was a great team. They're super collaborative. Um, and they'll they'll continue to work together. So, okay. Thanks. All right. Yes, absolutely. I'm telling you, it was called plans. And if you didn't stick to them, you didn't get the ride home. So, next up, we have 11.2. to revisions to students rights and code of conduct policies the first reading and yeah thank you. So tonight we look forward to hearing about revisions to the student rights and code of conduct policies from our general counsel Autumn Aspen. Autumn, welcome. Right. Let me

200just pull up the presentation. down here. Right. Yeah, there we go. There you go. All right. All right. Um, good evening. So, today I'm bringing six policies to the board for first reading uh for some proposed revisions. And around this time of the year, around May is when we'll bring policies that are part of the student rights and code of conduct every year so that those changes can be incorporated into next year's code of conduct. And tonight's purpose is to discuss the intent of the revisions at this first reading and then highlight some of the major proposed changes for each policy and answer any questions and discuss any potential changes from the board. So the policies that we'll be reviewing tonight are JKD JKE which is on suspension expulsion of students, JKD JKER which is

201procedures regarding suspension expulsion of students. JKDA, JKEA, grounds for suspension expulsion of students and then ECAF, electronic monitoring and surveillance. EAC, student conduct on school buses, and EAC, student conduct on school buses, the regulation of that policy. So at a high level, the intent of the revisions for the discipline policies, which is that first group, the J policies, is to revise those policies to align with the current language from Colorado state law, and to clean up some language to hopefully provide some additional clarity in what those policies are and the process for if a student is going through a suspension or expulsion. And then for the other support services policies, the e policies, the intent there is to align the policy to current practice and also just to do some clean up of the language

202to provide some additional clarity. So I'll go through each of these policies at somewhat of a high level. The policies are in the board packet in full with the red lines of the changes there for anyone who wants to to see what those proposed changes are. And then here I'll just discuss high level what the purpose of the policy is the reason for the changes for each one and then highlight some of the major changes in each of those policies. So for this first one in the three discipline policies JKD JKE and suspension expulsion of students. The purpose of this policy is to provide an overview of the rights expectations and procedures for suspension or expulsion of students and then to provide information on alternatives suspension and to delegate certain staff authority to suspend or

203expel a student. and for the delegation that's generally delegated by the board to either the school principal or the superintendent depending on whether it's a suspension or an expulsion and the length of that suspension. The reason for changes to this policy that are being brought to the board tonight is to align with the current state law language and then also to just clean up some of that language to hopefully provide some more clarity into what the policy is saying. So, just to highlight some changes that are within the policy red lines, uh, the language adds the factors from Colorado Revised Statute 22-33-1061.2 that must be considered in determining whether to suspend or expel a student. Uh, these factors have been in state law and there's I think there's six factors and now those are now

204incorporated into the language within the policy. The changes also include a list of possible interventions that could be used as an alternative to suspension. This section was included in the policy previously, but the changes add a bulleted list of some of those alternatives or interventions and what those would be. And another change is the language has been added regarding required training for hearing officers. Again, this is something that has been changed in Colorado state law. So, wanted to ensure that we have it in our policy. That training uh is something from the CDE. I think it's around a five-hour training that hearing officers would have to undergo before they can act as a hearing officer for an expulsion hearing. So I'll pause there and just see if if there's any questions on this first policy

205before moving on to the next one. Right. The next policy is actually it's regulation JKD JKER which is the procedures for suspension expulsion of students. Purpose of this regulation is to really to establish the procedures that are used when a student is going through the suspension or expulsion process. And uh the policy includes the hearing and appeal process for expulsions as well. Uh in addition, it also establishes the procedures used when the district receives notice that a student's been charged with either crime of violence or unlawful sexual behavior. This is included within state law and is an alternative process that can be done while a student has those charges pending, but is still going through the court system. So, uh that language has been added to this part of the policy. And then the reason

206for the changes here is to provide more information regarding the process for suspension and expulsion and then also to again align with the language that's in state law. Some of the changes that are included within this regulation is uh the bullets have been reformatted to add headings for ease of reading. The intent here was just to ensure that it's a little clear as far as what part of the process a student may be going through for a suspension or an expulsion. Language has also been updated to revise the makeup work section to allow for a student to receive full credit during a suspension period instead of full or partial partial credit which was what the language had before. Under state law, it permits either full or partial credit but our policy now is just allowing

207for full credit to be obtained by a student. Uh the changes also add language regarding the expulsion hearing process which is from Colorado law. Some of those are requirement to provide records to a family who's going through an expulsion process at least two business days before the hearing is to occur. So the family has time to look at the evidence that will be presented by the school. And also a requirement that the hearing officer does not have a conflict of interest regarding a student or any of the alleged victim. And that's just to ensure that there is impartiality with the hearing process for an expulsion. And the section regarding the process for students charged with a crime of violence or unlawful sexual behav behavior has also been revised. Uh really just to add more of

208a a process feel to it. The the par paragraphs have been shortened and then also organized differently. So it feels more like a process because this is the procedure section. So with that any questions or proposed edits from the board on the regulation? All right. Let's move on to the last of the discipline policies that we're bringing to the board tonight and that is JKDA JKEA which is the grounds for suspension or expulsion of students. The purpose of this policy is just that it just specifies that the grounds that exist for that would exist for a student to be suspended or expelled from PSD. And then the reason for changes here is to streamline those grounds in alignment with the language in Colorado law. So the this policy has been revised to include just the

209broader grounds that are specified in Colorado law. Uh the policy if you look at the red lines have quite a number of grounds listed and the intent behind these revisions is to include the ones that are specifically from Colorado law and then the other ones that have been struck are ones that would fall under one of those larger umbrellas. So it's just been revised to reflect that. Uh the definition for habitually disruptive students has also been added and that language is defined in state law. And then the last change to highlight is uh the policy specifies conduct for students in preschool through 2 grade um and have only grounds for suspension expulsion are if the failure to remove the student would create a safety threat that cannot otherwise be addressed. So in the policy it

210addresses that students in the preschool through second grade only have very specific grounds for when a suspension or expulsion may occur. And then along with that there's also the requirement to consider if failure to move the student would then um create a safety risk and if not then the student would be kept in school. So with that before moving on to the next policies any questions edits on this one. All right. Uh so moving on to the kind of support services policies. This first one is ECAF on electronic monitoring and surveillance. This policy specifies the requirements regarding the use, storage and viewing of video and audiovisisual recordings in the district and on our buses. The reason for change here is to update the language to align with our current practice and also clean up the

211language regarding job titles. So the proposed changes here updates the retention of video and audiovisisual recordings from district transportation vehicles from three school days to seven calendar days which is then in alignment with what our video surveillance is for school grounds and also adds a statement that subpoenas and other legal records requesting video or audiovisisual recordings would be sent to the records department. The intent behind this change is just to uh provide some clarity to streamline the process to ensure that those uh requests or legal documents are going to the right place to get them processed more efficiently. Uh any questions, comments on this policy. All right, moving right along. Uh this next one, E AEC on student conduct on school buses. This policy specifies the expectations for student conduct on school buses, specifically the

212adherence to the student code of conduct. And the reason for the changes here is just to align with our current practice. So this policy, the proposed changes update language to reflect that the transportation department or school administrator may suspend a student's bus use privilege instead of the current language has bus operator. So it's expanding it to include the school administrator in that language. And then also the the proposed changes add language to clarify that parents or guardians are responsible for this their child's supervision while waiting at the school bus stop before coming to school. and clarifies that principles or site managers and the transportation department will collaborate to address student conduct on buses. Questions, it is on this one. Move right along to the last policy and this the regulation that's underneath the student conduct

213on school buses. This one provides some further information regarding the rules for students riding school buses. And again, the reason for changes here is similar to the other policies to align with current practice and then to make other edits, just some language or grammatical changes for clarity. So to highlight some changes here, uh the language has been updated to refer to student conduct in violation of the student code of conduct rather than framing it as either misconduct or inappropriate behavior or misbehavior just to align it more with um the the language that it should be it's in violation of the student rights or code of conduct. and language has been updated regarding consequences for violating student code of conduct to include the school administrator in that process and includes the expectation that students are required

214to provide the appropriate identification through whatever is the current approved system with the district which right now is in the form of an ID and uh includes in the list of items that are prohibited to be brought on the bus scooters, skateboards, longboards, vape pens and alcohol in addition to other things that have already been listed in the regulation. So, with that, any questions, edits on this regulation or any of the other ones that have been presented tonight? Anybody have any questions? All right. All right. Thank you so much for all your work on this. I would maybe I'd just say even though we didn't have a lot of questions, this was important work getting us aligned with state standards and I really appreciate it, Autumn. Thank you for that. Thank you. and we'll bring

215it back uh to the board at the next board meeting for the second reading and then it'll be incorporated into the next year's student rights and code of conduct booklet. Perfect. And Scott, did you have something? Yeah, I just wanted to kind of reiterate what Jim was saying. We just so the public knows, we've gone over these policies in separate meetings in detail and so this is kind of a review for us, but it was important to have it out in public. And my overall understanding of this is that this is going to uh clarify and strengthen I think the discipline policies which I think there has been a clamoring for from staff uh parents and even students. So I I think it's all good work. So thank you. Thank you. Go ahead Kevin. Sorry

216one quick question. So understand these are going to be incorporated in the student handbook and I think you had mentioned notice to be given to families of changes. How do we do that? How do we communicate changes to handbook um to families so that they are aware? Um that's a good question. So I think in the past we have around the time that the code of conduct is available on the website and I think parents or students sign an acknowledgement of that yearly there's a communication that's gone out that highlights the policies that have been updated and then I think with um just kind of reviewing that now we can maybe look at some other ways just to ensure that it is transparent. On our website, we also have on the policies page just um

217highlight either if a policy is new or been revised so that you could look and see which policies have been updated recently and which ones haven't been, but also um just looking at some other ways to make sure that we're getting that out to know so people know which ones have been changed, what those changes are. All right. Anything else? Fantastic. Thanks so much for all your work on this, Autumn. Really appreciate it. Okay. And with that, we are now adjourned at 8:49 p.m. Thank you so much for coming.