Board of Education Meeting: February 11, 2025 (Spanish Captions)

001e e e all right thanks for your patience as we get started so thank you for joining the Board of Education this evening please go ahead and mute your cell phones as we begin this meeting today is Tuesday February 11th 2025 and this meeting is now called to order at 6:35 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 live captions in a language other than English on your own device please scan the QR code on the screen or on the table near the entrance and select the language of your choice the live stream of this meeting is also available in English and Spanish on YouTube for links to these live streams please visit the Board of Education page of

002the PSD website or PSD TV on demand on YouTube so now please join me in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance okay moving on to the approval of agenda would any board members like to make changes to the agenda Carolyn thank you I move that the board switch items 11.2 and 11.3 making 11.2 supporting students with dyslexia in PSD and 11.3 update on 2024 debt free Mill Levy spending plan can I get a second all right thanks Jess all right Andel can you call the vote Jim brokish I Kristen Draper hi Connor Duffy hi Kevin Hava hi Carolyn Reed hi Scott Shen bow hi Jessica Z hi motion passes 70 okay thank you so we will just go ahead and switch those so that um those who are here for the dyslexia update will'll be able

003to leave earlier due to weather and um all the other things that are happening right now um so next we will go ahead and do uh recognitions and reports um so those being recognized tonight I'm invited to stay for a group photo at the conclusion of the final recognition so if you all would wouldn't mind staying we can do a picture afterwards um and I believe we have a special guest yeah I do good evening everybody it's great to be with all of you tonight uh tonight we are honored to celebrate Excellence across our district in music teaching and Community Action leading this celebration is our executive director of communications John cop welcome John good evening president Draper superintendent Kingsley and board directors we welcome everyone in our audience including those watching online tonight I'm

004excited to introduce our first recognition Carol cat golden for an outstanding Community Action by PFA I'd like to invite di coaches to the [Applause] podium hello good evening I'm Dina coaches assistant principal at ler middle school and this evening it's a privilege to be celebrating and honoring cat golden right here she's wonderful yay cat yay cat in the headlines you may have seen the news and in the and how the social media May read bravery knows no age which couldn't be more true you see Carol is a sixth grader at ler middle school and just last summer Carol heard a neighbor yell fire and without hesitation she ran to her apartment and grabbed her family's fire extinguisher her dad had taught her how to use and he's here too s with her sister yay her

005dad had taught her how to use the fire extinguisher she successfully extinguished the fire her neighbor and our community have heard to thank for stopping the fire and protecting the lives and the property who live there in December pter Fire Authority presented her with the Community Action award during our school assembly and today we once again praise her for her roic actions so thank you so much Carol and for being here tonight that's all right [Applause] next I'd like to congratulate Dr yahayra Fuentes tabber for winning the presidential award for excellence in Mathematics and Science teaching Dr he is one of just six teachers in the state and 311 in the US to earn the nation's highest honor for K12 science and math Educators in 2025 the White House announced this this year's recipients of

006the presidential award for excellence in Math and Science teaching on January 13 the award recognizes Educators for their teaching skills deep knowledge of the content they teach and commitment to continual Improvement of stem education Award nominees complete a thorough application process and are vetted by a panel of scientists mathematicians and Educators this is far from Dr T's first award she earned the pmst state secondary science award in 2023 and was a finalist for the National Honor that same year in 2024 she was one of two teachers in a six-state region selected by the National Association of biology teachers for an outstanding biology teacher award she was selected for the national science teacher associations Robert E Jagger exemplary teaching award for a region covering Colorado Arizona and Utah in 2023 and the Colorado Association of science

007teachers ABS teaching award for excellence in secondary Science Education in 2021 PSD is proud to have dedicated teachers like Dr E who help students uncover the magic of learning and reach their full potential at this time I'd like to invite Dr T to the podium thank you good evening so I just want to take a moment to thank everyone who has contrib Ed to my journey as an educator it goes without saying that this wouldn't be possible without the support of my family my husband my son are here tonight uh my parents and my brother um also the amazing colleagues that I get to work with in day in and out at Rocky and our supportive Administration you Tyler for being here tonight uh the journey hasn't always been easy I still find uh myself

008trying to identify which um version of my identity to express any given day adapting through code switching and it can sometimes be exhausting this is why uh receiving this presidential award means um it's basically the ultimate glass ceiling to shatter um last night when I talked to my son about coming here tonight he said if my mom can do science I can do science too so it is my hope that as I get to an opportunity to share my story being an awarde that I'll be able to empower others around me thank you our final recognition for the evening will be cmea winners at this time Alissa FL will explain a little more about the cmea winners and their incredible achievements good evening my name is Melissa flail and I work in the department of

009curriculum and instruction and I'm the curriculum facilitator for the Performing Arts um most of my work is with music because we have so many music teachers and such amazing music programs so um first I want to thank everyone the board the district our leadership and the community for your ongoing support of the Arts we really appreciate and need that um I want to just give a little highlight of what cmea is so cmea stands for the Colorado music educators Association and they have their clinic and Conference every January at the Broadmore in Colorado Springs and numerous ensembles choir band Orchestra and other types of ensembles audition um via recording in the spring in hopes of being selected to to perform at the conference in the um in the following January and so it's kind of

010like a sports team winning a state championship really um because the selections are limited um it's very competitive and we are always very well represented and that's reflective of the support that we receive from our district and our community and the hard work from our amazing teachers so you should directors and cabinet members have this beautiful program that Brad Randall in Communications always helps us design you'll notice there are QR codes listed with each performing Ensemble and when you have a little time I would encourage you to scan that and check it out for a little bit more information um so that is something just to to check out when you have a chance I'm going to call up each person in the order that they were um either recognized or performed at the conference

011so if Dr Jennifer Roth would come up [Applause] please this is obviously not a performing Ensemble but Dr Jennifer Roth oh you don't know I don't know but not at cmea but um cmea recognizes one or two um outstanding um honored administrators every year sometimes that's a superintendent sometimes it's a principal and this year um Dr Jennifer Roth was one of those two to receive that award from cmea and I just want to recognize um for all of our principles um but especially our high schools and and what's really um recognized here is the support for the performing arts program and this is at Fort Collins High School where all of the Performing Arts are are very excellent um you support your staff and your students in every way whether that's through Staffing Resources funding

012um event attendance I know you're at everything that they perform at including the performances in Colorado Springs um but additionally something that Fort Collins High School has been really good at over the years is finding ways to include more students through different types of ensembles and music classes that are not even performing ensembles so um you deserve a lot of recognition and a lot of credit and I know your staff appreciates you thank you they all want to run away before their awards they're not in it for the money if I could call up Drew mble from Tim nith Middle High [Applause] School I see we have a couple of Cub Orchestra members here with us as well so the symphonic orchestra from Tim nith Middle High School was selected to perform at the conference

013um when the group was introduced it was mentioned that they have so much um teaching exper at Tim middle high school but this is just Drew's fourth year as a teacher and he achieved this amazing honor with his students and their hard work um and his leadership so I want to recognize the significance of that um when I watched your Orchestra perform at the conference you and they were so poised um and the musical Excellence was on display completely and I also thought that your program was very engaging the pieces were enjoyable it was really wonderful to be in the audience and um I know we have Jesse moral principal from Tim neth Middle High School here I know that's a very supportive Administration as well um so congratulations to Drew and to the Timnath

014Middle High School symphonic orchestra and while they're taking their seats if John frisky would come up John frisky is from Rocky Mountain High School is this your second year there so second year educator yes so we have a lot of Bright Young talent in our music educators here in PSD um John fris is one of the coral directors at Rocky Mountain High School another place where we have an amazingly supportive Administration in fact um years ago Tom Lopez who was principal at Rocky Mountain High School at the time received that honored administrator award so um a long history of excellence and support there as well um but John brought the Rocky Mountain High School low bow so low BOS right that's their mascot but low bow um because it is a tenor based choir and

015so they sing with their low voices um and they were just amazing and um when I I want to mention two things about the introduction so when Craig Woodall introduced the group he always um gives credit to all of our music teachers our Elementary programs our middle school programs and I I want to mention that because that's so important and often goes overlooked um but the other thing that he mentioned is that this group just has 70 minutes a week to rehearse and they were amazing so they had you know all of these male mostly male but low-voiced singers up there and they were performing just as if they rehearse every day it was a really wonderful concert a lot of great musical selection um a lot of collaboration with other teachers from our district

016Emanuel Bonia who teaches at Lincoln performed as an instrumentalist so a lot of wonderful things it was just a really enjoyable performance so congratulations [Applause] and also from Rocky Logan Dodd if you'd come [Applause] up and you might say this is in no particular order but I'm actually going in order of the conference so that's the reason for the order but um Logan I I just I made some notes but I'm not even going to look at them I was so amazed by your group um and um we also we do have Tyler niichel who's an assistant principal on the activities director at Rocky here and I know she spoke as well um when the concert began this was Rocky Mountain High School Jazz one Logan was sitting in the back row of the audience

017he was just cool as a cucumber and the students led the entire performance they introduced every single piece they I mean the the music was awesome jazz is always a pleasure to listen to but it was performed very well they took solos they um they just I just sat there thinking these students will be the most amazing members of society whether they go into music they are ready to graduate with options as a music professional but they are also ready to graduate with options for any field that they should choose to be in because they were leaders I mean they were young adult professionals up on that stage in every way so um and it was mentioned too that of course Logan works very hard with them in the classroom and so him being able

018to sit back and just let them perform is a testament to the student agency the student ownership but also your hard work and your amazing relationships with your students so congratulations and last but certainly not least John Hermanson from Fort cullins High School John Hermanson is an amazing music educator he um his uh Symphony Orchestra from Fort Collins High School was selected to perform and John told me right from the beginning our theme is going to be what ins spires us and the students are going to pick all of the repertoire and they did and it was amazing it was very diverse um and it was very high quality you know it's it wasn't like I want to hear this song from Star Wars it it was traditional orchestral repertoire not that Star Wars is

019not high quality don't get me wrong but it wasn't what you might think if you say a bunch of high schoolers are going to choose what music we're going going to play but it was from a lot of different cultures we had women composers represented and um the really nice thing about that the concert was amazing um the students and John stayed very well focused even when they had a little Jazz drum set accompaniment from the room next door but anyway uh it was an amazing performance but John also went straight to a session um right after that in which he was a panelist talking about kind of keys to success and talked about how in his classroom um music isn't a class it's a culture the students own the classroom the students planned the

020entire trip to cmea um they decided you know where they would eat they made all of the decisions of course I'm sure he provided wonderful guidance and and all of that but um that's just something that I think a lot of our teachers obviously with my mention of Logan as well are so good at doing is is teaching the students to take that leadership and that ownership and to really allow the students to blossome and um so congratulations [Applause] and again a thank you to our district leaders to all of our um District staff and our community and our teachers for allowing our Performing Arts to be spaces of belonging to be places where students can graduate with options and most certainly from these performances they are musically very literate so we are working on

021literacy in our field as well so thank you all [Applause] PSD congratulates all of those who were honored here tonight this concludes our recognitions and I'd like to invite everyone recognized and our board directors and superintendent to please join us for a group photo okay con [Applause] [Music] all right thank you all and congratulations we are going to move on to 5.0 action items um 5.1 we have a resolution and support of classified employee week can I get a motion okay go ahead Kevin I moved at the board approve a resolution in support of classified Employee appreci Appreciation Week February 13 through 17 2025 can I get a second thanks Carolyn all right and I believe we have a special guest as well yes we do joining us this evening to speak about classified employee

022week is Joanie Baker the president of the association of classified employees Joanie welcome thank you um good evening superintendent Kingsley board of directors and our cabinet it's my honor to be with you tonight to celebrate our classified appreciation week I'd like to share a short video with you Matt will you please share the video [Music] w [Applause] thank you Matt and Phil for putting video together I really appreciate that classified staff do incredible things every day and we serve such a vital role in our students and staff's success to make PSD a place to be great every day our PA professional staff go to Great Links to assure our students are receiving the critical support they need to be successful not only as current students but that they also have success in their Futures these

023exceptional employees deal with emotional and a physical abuse every day but always remain calm and supportive of the students during a time of Crisis our transportation department is the first point of contact for our students every day and they do it all with a smile and a good morning they navigate the intense traffic of for for Collins Wellington timoth and our Mountain routes to assure our students arrive safely and tomorrow morning is going to be another challenge that they will do wonders with um and so they dedicate their time to our students who have fi trips during the week and deliver our students who attend events on the weekends safely while dealing with behaviors as well and again the fun conditions that we all get to drive in um our Child Nutrition team has the

024task of assuring our students have a nutritious breakfast and lunch every day they have the responsibility to assure that our students with dietary needs are taken care of and have the appropriate meals to eat the care that they show every day to our students is incredible they know the students by name and show so much compassion our custodial staff is topnotch they always make sure that our buildings are ready to go every day whether it's opening the building shoveling snow um or setting up for an event and everything in between this group of amazing individuals are always willing and ready to help the family Liaisons that work um and the work that they do with our families is so inspiring it's a beautiful thing to witness if you have a a chance to see them

025at work they're not only there for the students and staff but the families as well the amount of patience and understanding that they provide to our students and family is above and beyond beautiful the IT department has the patience of a saint what they deal with every day with panic staff is nothing short of incredible they are so willing to go above the to go the extra mile to get the project done or fixed whatever the task may be they also often offer incredible trainings to help all employees and students better their technical skills our operations team which includes our Outdoor Services who again will be very busy in the morning um Department leads customer service And Trades provide an extremely vital role with making sure that our facilities are up and running and that

026our buildings are well taken care of with the mill passing their work will be enormous but they are more than ready for the task and PSD is fortunate to have such dedication our health Tech responsibilities is enormous every day they assist our students with their medical needs whether it's giving medication checking glucose numbers helping with feed eating tubes just the name a few and assisting with injuries at recess or calling 911 for severe accidents they're always ready to assure that our students are safe at school there's not a location in the district that not that does not depend on their office staff this group of office managers attendance clerks bookkeepers secretaries security are all the first lines of Defense for all staff and students all staff go to the office for answers and this is

027true if the office doesn't know it's not happening um this is the Hub and the glue of all schools and departments the district would not function without them all I can say is that I'm very biased we cannot function as a dist District without our incredible classified staff that do whatever it takes every day to get the job done I'm so overwhelmed and proud of this amazing group of individuals every day and I want to make a huge shout out to two of my board members that are here tonight Brian lamro and Deb Tucker they volunteer their time an enormous amount of time along with our other board members to help support our classified staff so thank you all very much for honoring our classified staff thank you so much Joanie does anybody have anything

028they'd like to to say go ahead Jess you kind of covered all of our bases I I try not to leave anybody out it's hard when you got so many wonderful classified that was a% but I think you said it best we you guys greet our students from the beginning of the day we start our day we end our day with classified stuff and our school district I think we say it every year but we honest to goodness would not run without the support of classified stuff so I think Joanie I thank you for being their you know leader and the person coming here and speaking to us and speaking on their behalf but I also for any classified watching thank you so much for what you do day and day out good ahead Conor

029thanks Joanie um one specific group that I'd like to highlight is our transportation department often we don't think about them however for the community to know that this year they have performed miraculous Feats with a very large transition and they've done a fantastic job so thank you very much thank you for saying that any others okay yeah go ahead Brian Joanie you're such a great leader and I want to thank you we all share in your pride and I want to thank Brian and Deb for being here in the rest of the ace classified board for your exemplary leadership your advocacy um we know we have more work to do to improve working conditions uh for our classified staff but I just want to articulate something that we continue to say over and over this

030District would not run for a second without you you're so valuable as a collective not just individually and you think of the broad range of talents from trades people to kitchen workers chefs magicians in the kitchen right um people who are I want to affirm the smiles that are greeting our children is is as powerful as the vehicles that are actually transporting them and all of the people in between whether they're running uh work at the front office they're working across every one of our central office divisions they're helping instruct uh the magic of our teachers in our class rooms as pair of professionals and I know our school and District leaders are just so proud and I just want to say thank you again for your leadership uh in your advocacy you make the

031entire group stronger as a result of how you show up in this space so thank you and congratulations to all of our classified employees thank you very [Applause] much Brian well said and and I just want to um reiterate Joanie it's such a pleasure to work with you and I'm so proud of the classified staff um you know it it is it's the first thing in the morning last thing in the day and what you bring is not just your hard work and your ethics it's it's your love and it's your love for those students and whether you're working directly with students or not um you know we we all know that you could go elsewhere and probably the booby prized on that would be to make more money and yet you choose to stay

032here you choose to stay with our kids and you choose to bring them joy every day and for that I want to say thank you so much so Jill can you call the vote Jim brokish I Kristen Draper hi Connor Duffy hi Kevin havala hi Carolyn Reed I Scott shanower I Jessica Zamora hi motion passes 70 [Applause] can we go ahead and do a quick picture or do we want to do it at the end okay we'll do it after the next resolution that sounds great moving on to resolution U sorry 5.2 resolution and support of Black History Month can I get a motion go ahead Jess I move the board approve a resolution in support of Black History Month can I get a second okay thanks Caroline all right and we have yet another

033special guest yeah we have a few here I think uh joining us this evening is to speak to Black History Month is Delia mahany our diversity equity and inclusion coordinator I want to welcome Delia and ask her kindly to introduce some of our other special guests that are here to celebrate this very special month thank you welcome Delia oh well thank you to kick off black history month or thank you superintendent Kingsley Board of Education and cabinet to kick off Black History Month I am thrilled to have the community mural I mentioned last month on display over there in the corner it's beautiful PSD students had input on the design and our MLK March leader from Rocky Mountain High School Julieta team is quoted on the piece the community artist imanii Samuel is who brought

034the mural to life will actually talk more about it during Community comment and I don't want to steal her Thunder what I will say is that the mural exudes black Echo Excellence just like our student speaker for tonight so without further Ado I'm going to turn it over to Zack Elementary School principal Angel herck to introduce an amazing young man thank you so much for having us um I'm gonna let our student introduce he wants to say his own name so we're gonna let him do that but I will introduce him by saying that he um is a very hard worker is very kind it has an environmentalist heart him and his teacher I heard about Silly String we can't have that at school anymore so he's taking care of us one thing at a

035time um and he's got a very awesome sense of humor and so we're very proud that he not only represents Zach but he represents our PSD community and our Fort Collins Community this [Applause] evening hi hi my name is El Nathan npal I'm a fourth grade student at Zach elementary school today I'm here to talk to you about Black History Month and why it is important to celebrate it yearly someone may ask is Black History Month still important is it not time to put it away is it still relevant in the absence of slavery there's an African saying that it is the unwise that does not know where they come from this simply mean means that the total identity of a person includes knowing their past knowing our background and origin helps us to know

036the past struggles the obstacles and the discriminations that our africanamerican ancestors had to overcome it also helps us to know the progress we have made and encourages us to keep making more strides although the physical chains of slavery are no more we we can still see disparity in how African-Americans are treated in at the workplace in the community on the street or at school like the time a student poured water on my sister's hair because it looked different or like the time a boy told me he does not like playing soccer with a black person black history M his way to teach africanamerican students to be resilient and use their voice it also teaches other students to appreciate and advocate for Equity I want to tell you a personal story to sum up this paragraph

037in the summer of 2024 my parents took me and my sisters to visit our relatives in Ghana we went to two slave castles the elmin slave castle and the cape Co slave Castle the tour guide took us to the female dungeon and the male dungeon and spoke to us about the history and the conditions that the slaves were subjected to at first it made me sad but I also realized that the slaves never stopped fighting for their freedom and today we enjoy some privileges because of what they did it made me believe that although I'm only a fourth grader I can be courageous too and use my voice to make things right another another reason why we have to continue continue to recognize Black History Month is the fact that over the centuries African-Americans have

038made incredible contributions across various sectors like promoting economic prosperity in the United States through Labor in arts and entertainment in sports and politics it is important for students to learn about these positive contributions we can talk about people like Dr Carter Woodson whose efforts led to creating the first negro history week in 1926 which was adopted to become Black History Month we can also talk about Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr or artists like Aaron Douglas poets like Maya Angelo musicians like Lis Armstrong in sports we can talk of Wilman Rudolph an American Sprinter who overcame childhood polio to become a world record holder in conclusion Black History Month is not only for African-Americans but for all Americans and needs to be part of our everyday learning thank you for listening [Applause] yeah when anybody

039like to speak I'm speechless go ahead Scott he promised me he didn't use jack chat G he's back of a writer I'm not Kidd you're only in fourth grade that's amazing you put we adults to shame that's uh an amazing speech thank you so much for sharing that with us that was powerful go ahead Kevin um thank you I didn't get your first name though can you say that one more time El naan L Nathan am I saying right okay thank you I'm a little hard at hearing um well L Nathan I was in the car recently with my first grader um who's at PSD and I asked him what he knew about Black History Month and I asked him you know what you're being taught and so we started talking about um Dr Martin

040Luther King we had about 10 minutes to get to him from school so I was quizzing him and seeing what he knew and uh what the moment was um so we discussed who he was in the context of what he did and the work that he did but not just him but others and uh true to form my first grader has now been announcing these lessons publicly without provocation um loudly and proudly he was um which I'm very proud of by the way but we were ordering at LaMar's Donuts and um he was asked what donnut he wanted and he just yelled out it's never fair for people or government to treat people badly because because of the skull of their the color of their skin and everyone agreed vigorously and nodded but then asked

041him what kind of donnut he wanted um I think you hit the nail on the head and I think that I'm proud that recognizing the contributions of our black brothers and sisters throughout history is a Paramount lesson that we are teaching in our schools here at PSD I'm proud that my son is learning about racism not from experiencing it or witnessing it in our schools but from the example of Dr Martin Luther King and the hundreds of thousands of dedicated Advocates activists and community members who have come before and after him so he is ready to confront it when he sees it in his time that's a value that my wife and I instill in him and I'm proud that his school and our community does as well I'm proud to live in a place

042that still calls this part of our education of value and further sanctions it both in our curriculum and with a resolution here tonight I'm proud to be a part of this community for these reasons and more so because the moment we find ourselves in and you spoke to that moment which I appreciate you did the the hard work for me thank you for that uh I'm proud to work for a district that prioritizes diversity equity and inclusion in our curriculum in our core values systems to educate our students about the kind of world that we want to live in I'm proud that my son gets to live in a community and attends a schools that values the importance and significance of our black brothers and sisters in making the world a little more equal a

043little fair and a little bit brighter each and every day thank you for your role in that and for being Brave tonight to speak to that to our board and to our community and truly it's worth recognizing honoring and dare I say fighting for we still have work to do as you mentioned but I honored to play some small some small part in this important work and thank you young man for that very important reminder yeah Carolyn and I would like to thank you for sharing your personal stories and your experiences with us and that has really helped I think all of us in the room to connect to you personally and to to understand what you what you go through and what's important to you and you've helped this whole board understand what needs

044to be important to this District thank you so much for coming and talking to us anyone else yes go ahead El Nathan my day got better the moment that you started to speak to us today we're so proud of you and your proud principal introduced you as somebody that's hardworking and kind-hearted do you agree too honest no I I I I know she's right I know she's right I love your sense of humor too yeah yeah I you know there El Nathan I I want to speak to your big kind heart for a quick second because there's one thing in your entire speech your speech was so eloquent so so beautiful but when you said to us that you're only a fourth grader I want to tell you that you're more than a regular human

045being on this planet every single day that you choose to speak truth to power to speak about the cruelty that you've both learned about that you've personally experienced alongside your family and to have the bravery and the courage to lift people up and to educate others we couldn't be more proud to have you in the school district I drive by your school two times a day every day and I will always when I see that big blue beautiful ribbon because you're a National Blue Ribbon School I'm always going to think of your name when I see that ribbon every time driving forward so I want to say thank you for representing not only Zach Elementary but your family and all of us so well congratulations to [Applause] you and we're going to do a picture

046but before we do El Nathan I just have to say wow I I I I just don't have words um parents you've got to be so proud I I just what an amazing kiddo and we are so proud and I just want to say thank you um for sharing your story I want to say thank you for being willing to come and talk to us um and for reminding us why we do this um and your smile says it all it really does so thank you we got to oh Jill can we call the vote and then we'll do the picture got make it official first Jim brokish I Kristen Draper hi Connor Duffy hi Kevin havelda hi Carolyn Reed I Scott shanower I Jessica Zamora I motion passes [Applause] 70 Mur you [Applause] PE

047good AB all right well thank you all for joining us for the resolutions we're going to now move on to the superintendent report so superintendent Kingsley will now make remarks to the board of education and to the community welcome thank you so much um just trying to Center and ground myself in not only all of the emotion but just surrounded by so much gratitude I feel like I have the best job on the planet it's a hard job but I am so grateful to be in community with people like El Nathan and his family our proud principles who represent not just individual students but Collective to make some of that magic happen and whether it's our cmea award winners or our classified staff and students saving lives based upon lessons they're being taught by their

048parents that's just a a day in the life of being in PSD and how lucky are we uh over the last couple of weeks members of the board in our community I've had the luxury of being across many of our schools I won't have a chance to speak about all of them but was that Bower and Polaris and blevens and Weber and oh my and bolts and uh all sorts of different schools and continue to see really strong high levels of instruction I would invite you b elementary school has one of our strongest Elementary literacy implementations that's happening across the district I'm really proud of both the classified staff and instructional staff that are working in tandem to make magic happen in that school had a chance last week to go to Polaris Expeditionary Learning

049school and what was cool is I think they were celebrating their kindergarteners the 100th day of school and their students these five and six year olds were dressed like they were if you could imagine 100 years old so I had a picture taken with them but it was you know not just a symbolic gesture of dressing up like you may be a hundred years old but it was learning and giving gratitude to our history to their family's history to things that have changed over the last century and things that they hope will change in The Next Century in front of us I thought that was really beautiful I had probably the best taco of my life served to me by a student in a pbl lesson at blevens middle school last week and what made

050it magical is his mother not only taught him how to cook the beef to perfection but she surprised him by waking up very early that same morning and preparing all of her special secret seasonings in a jar we couldn't figure out the measurements and all of the ratios but the that he was willing to share see a family's tradition come to to life in that school and then had a chance to spend some time after school with many of the staff members in an informal chat really proud of the Outreach that the bevens community continues to do to uplift not just its uh School brand but it has more students that are coming to it school next year than they had anticipated and it's really a result of their leadership Collective leadership and Outreach to

051all of the local elementary schools I was at Weber middle school yesterday and what was really fascinating is the front office staff really sometimes in a lot of instances and Joanie talked about this in her beautiful speech sets the tone like a bus driver right you walk into the front door of a building and you're knowing you're either going to feel Joy or something else is going on you can do a temperature read in about 3 seconds I've never once walked into Weber Elementary School and not felt an over sense overwhelming sense of just I'm so glad you're here and it's not just because I'm the superintendent I see them extend that to every single person as I had an opportunity to learn about the front office staff whether it's the registra and the office

052manager one of the office managers and I went to college together didn't know that another one ended up living in North Carolina and the same time I was there and just sharing life stories and trajectories of being in community with each other that's really the Legacy Brian Davis has uh continues to lead and will leave there at the end of this year Brian intends on retiring as the proud principle of Weber middle school I'm going to miss working with him every day uh but he definitely is leaving that school with its incredible faculty better than he inherited it and it's because he's done all of the work there with the people um and I'm really really proud of that uh I had an opportunity to meet with uh all of our employee assistance counselors over

053the past week who've continued to work around the clock with an extended network of uh people who help our employees um get well and be well so they can be the best for those that they serve and just had an opportunity to touch base with some of the insights and the things that they're experiencing I was just so grateful for the time and their vulnerability and the lessons that I learned from that and last week I had of this particular semester My First Community engagement session at Boltz middle school and I was really grateful not only for the public press to help get the Community to become more aware of these particular engagement sessions to have more Outreach and more visibility but we had almost 50 people uh show up and had a very thoughtful

054engaging dialogue um and I think we learned from each other and there's opportunities to continue to get better as a result of us just holding space and having two-way dialogue and listening with each other one another and I want to thank you all as board members because you're doing that too and that's just one time you're doing that over and over again so I think shared commitment from us a as a governance team really makes a difference and I've received a lot of positive praise for doing that uh for those of you that might be interested in engaging with me again or uh for the first time uh I am having another Community engagement session as the superintendent this Thursday night from 5:30 to 6:30 at blevens middle school so I really am excited about

055that and look forward to uh some great conversation also have a great opportunity to share the incredible success of our district and the things that are happening uh as a result of 4 a so it's a it's a great opportunity for everybody involved members of the board members of the community uh you know in closing tonight we have a a great board meeting set up where we are going to talk uh about how we are supporting our students with dyslexia how we're helping families coming alongside them identifying students that might have dyslexia or another um you know opportunity to deal with neurode divergency in a way that we can be supportive and compassionate I want to thank one of our parents who's in attendance here tonight and has been here uh for a long time

056being a very you know vulnerable Champion Anna leetta I want to thank you for your courage for your persistence and I working alongside us in a dignified way to come you know try to push us to be more accountable to this work but also try to make sure that we can continue to partner with you as a family it means a lot to come alongside you and be here in this space and I want to thank our staff for being the professionals that you are and working on this very important topic and we'll close tonight by educating the community on our m Levy spending and all of the things around how we're holding ourselves accountable to our taxpayers how the work is going to be divided as promised prior to the election and we want

057to make sure we continue to have that robust conversation to make sure that people don't think that we forgot uh what we talked about prior to November and we just want to continue to thank our taxpayers and continue to take on a stance of being educational informative and communicative in this space so I look forward to a terrific meeting tonight and thank you for having me thank you so much um we will now go ahead over to community comment uh there we go that's much better 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

058and 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 age or disagree with what was said or with the description or interpretation of events as presented by any speaker further even if some remarks may be factually inaccurate we generally choose not to respond or correct the record here because formal board meetings are not the time or place for back and forth dialogue as we begin this community comment 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 interests at heart and this opportunity for public comment is for members of the community who

059registered to speak by the designated deadline those people will be called on to make remarks in the order that they signed up and each speaker will be allowed 3 minutes to address the board so first up we have Delia mahani welcome okay thank you for this opportunity in the last few weeks I've been asked by many amazing people how I'm doing and they have let me know I am in their thoughts as a person of color black by racial I am grateful for their allyship and caring I tell them I must always remember the ways in which I hold privilege which includes my citizenship status and say gender identity folks might be wondering why are people worried about me they're worried because my passion my livelihood my ability to be an advocate for students staff

060and families we have traditionally underserved is being attacked pretty much all day every day and while I might might be preaching to the choir here I still going to talk about what diversity equity and inclusion Dei is and is not as idab well said the way to write the wrongs is to shed the light of the truth upon them what is happening nationally is wrong and I plan on Shining a very bright light Dei is not about white guilt it is about learning from our past Dei is not about erasing history it is about expanding the history we teach to include more than a single story Dei is not about changing the rules of the game to give an unfair Advantage it is about everyone having what they need to take the field and be

061successful Dei is not about indoctrination and grooming it is about allowing people to be who they are openly authentically and safely being a trans student is not harming anyone or interfering with anyone's ability to learn finally Dei is not about forcing beliefs on other people it is about treating others with dignity and respect and following the golden rule for real having Dei and all we do in PSD will help us allow students to go to school without having to hear the nword without listening to their peers say that ice is coming they are going to hell Hitler got it right you must be a terrorist I bet you like rice Columbus discovered America and don't be so autistic all real things that have been reported to me that actually do interfere with learning in closing

062I have to say to my allies and accomplices in the work especially in language culture and Equity student and staff equity coalitions and edac thank you for being my inspiration and motivation to leadership in PSD stay the course I feel supported by you by you all but it's going to get tough be steadfast in your conviction that every student deserves to have Equitable experiences and outcomes that every student deserves to be provided with mirrors windows and sliding glass does so they may see the greatness in themselves and others while they are under our care and that every trans undocumented bipo Jewish Muslim Christian differently abled student is valued for the diversity they bring to bstd because our diversity makes us stronger thank you thank you next up we have Danny Lawrence welcome thank you for

063the opportunity and thanks to each of you individually for the community outreach last week I attended Mr kingsley's talk and something hit me like a ton of bricks and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it you stated Mr Kingsley that dignity was a PSC cultural value and I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone I'm left grappling with how we can have continued graduation rates declining for disabled students more office of civil rights investigations than this district has ever had more reports of racism and bullying than I have ever heard in the district and a leadership talking about ideals that aren't being experienced by students and staffs in your school and so what more does it take to hear that some students aren't experiencing the cultural values you claim exist in the

064school district just because you say it it doesn't make it true how long will the gaslighting continue because four years feels like an eternity tonight I have been making public comments in this boardroom for 4 Years Happy Anniversary it's Madness because I feel like I've accomplished nothing my son graduates next year and every year that he's been here you make him sign a legally binding document that he agrees with the terms of a student handbook that he can't physically see PSD never honored his dignity by providing him with a screen reader accessible document not one time ever and you've been asked too many times to count PSD refuses to do it it does doesn't matter what his IEP or his 504 says the healthy Colorado kids survey results that you all use to indicate that

065you feel like there's an improvement in mental health and belonging my son can't even participate in as well as many students with disabilities because you don't provide accessible surveys and you don't allow adults to help students fill them out these are two of the numerous ways that PSD negates my son's dignity my list is actually three pages long but I'll spare you guys and let's not utter the reality of how despicably we all treated the zanella victims and their family so concerned with their safety after that experience that you now collect less video footage on buses to protect disabled students now this isn't dignity you guys it's dehumanizing it's isolation it's districtwide intentional rejection you don't see what's wrong with your actions because you surround yourself with people who normalize it and the apathy of

066doing nothing about it is simply cruel at this point so last week when families were begging for comforting words After experiencing a million meaningless resolutions in this room over the past four years the rejected insistence of not giving them what they needed made me finally feel less isolated the leadership of this organization including the board is one-dimensional you think that you only represent one ideology one mindset and time and time again I think this is where PSC makes its big mistake I saw a lot of pain last week and those people deserve the Dignity of your response we'll get back to you and let me process your pain doesn't offer them what they need to feel safer and the lack of leadership in general care right now is appalling and people never forget how you

067make them feel ever you're going to need the vote of these people that you're blowing off and so I hope you find a heart somewhere soon and you realize that you represent more people than you're offering dignity to thank you thank you next up we have Victoria papus welcome hi I'm Tori papis it's my understanding that School boundary room reviews and updates will be prioritized by the comprehensive planning committee and I'm hopeful to see those updates soon I'm here tonight to ask that you wait to make any more Bell and bus schedule changes until after the boundaries are updated I think that changing our schedules again before the critically necessary and inevitable boundary updates risks unnecessary disruptions that could have been avoided with a more strategic approach I understand that budgeting or whatever may require

068changes to take place and so if it has to happen I'm curious about the community feedback that you've received around scheduling and how it affects their schools and daily lives here's what I've heard from my community keep start times reasonable for students this means considering their Lifestyles sleep patterns levels of dependence for example elementary students are typically awake earlier and by midafternoon from my experience over half of them are melting struggling to keep it together because they've been on for so long they also have bed times elementary students are also more dependent on their grown-ups starting elementary schools before 9:00 a.m. creates a real barrier for Working Families who can't wait until midm morning to drop their students off and yes there's alphab best but not everyone can afford those options even including the discounts

069any proposed changes that include meaningful any proposed changes should include meaningful Community feedback and take into account the diverse needs of our families particularly those already facing financial and logistical challenges Equity must be Central to this conversation on the topic of equity regarding the mill Levy I'd like to express some gratitude to you all for adhering to the ballot language and how the funds that and how the funds will support small neighborhood schools those with a boundary uh thank you you for listening to principles of those small schools I know these decisions come with nuance and challenges but seriously thank you for listening to them and finally I encourage you to prioritize regaining our exclusive chartering Authority this application deadline is uh coming up fast as you all know and I believe that this is

070really important for PSD to get this back um last thing I think that Community comment should be available remotely thank you thank you and next up we have sorry ammani Samuel welcome hello thank you for having me today my name is Amani and I am the one that painted the miror over here um I don't have a ton of time today to give you all of the details of what this all means but I do want to give you guys a brief explanation of the piece and what it means to me and you're welcome to uh look at it while I explain it as well so our mission as people should always be peace love freedom and justice for all this Mission an idea of a Justice is symbolized by a flower and that is

071still in the process of blooming this is showing that we are not quite there yet but we're on the way towards his schal and then we're all doing this together as a collective no matter your gender race nationality or the language that speak and that is symbolized by the hands you see on the bottom that is reaching up to stand to take a stand and put in the work to grow as together excuse me to put in the work to grow the idea together and then as you get closer to the miral you'll notice that there are quotes these quotes are from influential leaders who stand for these principles and many of these quotes were actually handpicked by some of the PSD students which is really awesome finally the woman that you see is meant

072to be very inviting and very friendly she not only represents myself but a celebration of all black women and men who deserve their flowers literally so to me this isn't just a painting this is part of me who grew up loving the city for 25 years over 25 years at this point but still sometimes feeling out of place this is a part of me who relaxed my hair for 13 years so I would feel beautiful at school but as an adult de to go natural and embrace all of myself to me it's watching the kiddos at the MLK Day celebration at CSU painting the mural with me and thinking to myself wow I didn't I didn't get this growing up but I'm so so glad that you do and I'm here to share this with

073you to me it's feeling like I always need to be the strong resilient black woman but just wanting to be soft and care for friendly inviting to me this isn't just a pretty painting it's my journey and a journey that I hope we can all share in together so I hope that we can not only invest in our children's future but also continue to invest in the Arts as well because it will always be important to invest in things that give people hope and love I would also like to thank Ain and Nicole fromel Central at CSU and the fort Colin spal project as well for giving me this awesome task of creating this miral thank you guys so much [Applause] thank you all so much for um sharing with us and I just want

074to say thank you so much for the beautiful mural it is absolutely astounding it's just so gorgeous so can we leave it here in the boardroom excellent excellent all right well I just I want to be to look at that all the time it's just so beautiful we get like a picture all right thank you all right we're going to move on to board topics and committee reports um yes yes absolutely can we do that absolutely let's do that is that okay do a picture with you with with the painting AB fantastic [Music] than thank you for indulging us okay now we'll move on to board topics and committee reports so this agenda item is an opportunity for board members to provide an update on committee work or speak to board topics do any board

075members have something they would like to report Conor so uh um as you can see some glasses here in front of you as well as this nice fleece vest comes from the pter foundation U they're celebrating 25 years this year they are doing a very robust campaign to raise money to help kids and families within the district um they do amazing amazing work it's often um not publicized but this year they're trying to get the word out of what they do and and they're going to be holding events every month um going forward yeah um so there will be a lot of stuff I'm sure you'll see some Communications about it and if you can attend one that would be great thank you very much and Conor sounds like we might have a little video

076to yeah I know this is board member reports and I'm not trying to steal anybody's Thunder but to build off of the great work of the PSD Foundation that director Duffy just articulated they do a lot of work to help support our teachers advancing our district strategic plan and if it would be okay with the members of the board and the community I'd love to show a really brief video of what that's looking like at one of our schools thank you so I wanted an opportunity for my students to be able to participate in language activities and not just read the book I wanted them to be able to interact with the book but also participate in all the other parts of literacy that they typically don't get to feel his wings oh they're so

077soft what do you feel you oh what are those My Hope with this literacy Grant was to provide an opportunity for them to read the books by having all of our books brailed and then having some kind of interactive activity where they could answer questions about the book with the textured characters and then have a fun interactive game to end the activity that way every kid with every type of ability could participate in the literacy activity no matter what their skills are so soft so soft it is so soft you're right while literacy is really important it's important for my students to know what it is to be in the role of a student and so if I can teach them in my sessions and work on all the other goals of what it is

078to be a student then they can take those skills into the classroom and participate more and have more access to their General education classroom so the reason that this is really important to me is I want people to realize that kids with special needs we're not a place in our building we're not a program we're part of the bigger community and allowing my kids to learn the skills they need to be a part of that bigger community and teaching kids in General Ed what it means to accept everyone in our community is so important to me we're not a place where we're not a classroom we're not a program we're part of your community and we deserve to be there get ready nice good job thank you PSD foundation for this impact Grant this allows

079my students to not only reach their literacy goals but also participate in Opportunities within their special education classroom and the general education environment without this grant we wouldn't have had this opportunity what does a horse say he thank you so much thank you does anybody else have anything that they wanted to share go ahead Kevin bear with me um I thought a little bit about thought a long time about not saying what I'm about to say and I've been kind of thinking about it so um to stick to the script though Brian because I know you're you're on your seats edge here I will stick to my topic of what I'm going to consider role Clarity bear with me and this is a little bit Delia's fault too um she said you may she may

080be preaching to the choir but I'll remind her that that's how you get them to sing um I've been thinking a lot too about the moment we find ourselves in National a as a uh as a father as an attorney as a school board director I wear a lot of hats I know you all do too um and I've heard I've had a lot of questions from friends from allies from community members what are you doing at the school board what are you doing at the district district and the weight of that question has been weigh Weighing on me a lot um understanding my own role of privilege being up here being a white male um but seeing the world in chaos um so I want to talk a little bit about where I stand

081and where I've come to terms with this and that's why I brought my truste school laws book the first thing my point of entry is as a school board director what can I do what what should I do what are my Powers I'll direct everyone to article n section 15 of the Colorado Constitution school districts Boards of Education General Assembly shall by law provide for organization of school districts of convenient size in each of which shall be established a board of education to consist of three or more directors to be elected by the qualified electors of the district said directors shall have control of instruction in public schools of their of their respective districts there are a couple of statutes that I think are important that we should be reminding ourselves of as we're wrestling

082with the difficult conversations that Delia alluded to and that we're going to have to face uh CRS 32103 Board of Education General powers and duties subpart one each School District shall be governed by a board of education consisting of the number of school directors prescribed by law such Board of Education shall possess all powers delegated to a Board of Education or to a school district by law and shall perform all duties required by law there's a companion section that actually goes before this in the statute which I think is important to note 22 this is CRS 22 31125 I'm wrapping up I promise um and that's the oath of the directors each director shall no later than 10 days after he or she receives a c certificate certificate of election pursuant to section 1 11103

083CRS or appointment pursuant to section 22311 129 subpart two appear before some officer authorized to administer oats or before the president of the Board of Education and take an oath that the director will Faithfully perform the duties of the office as required by law and will support the Constitution of the United States Constitution of the state of Colorado and laws made pursuant thereto those shall be filed with the designate election official for the school district I remind everyone of that because that was one required by law but um as far as what we are expected to do we have to uphold the law um that said and as a federal judge at least in Seattle and judges being the people that tell us what the laws mean when there's a conflict um the president cannot

084change limit or qualify this constitutional right via an ex an executive order talk about a helpful reminder of role Clarity um so I took a oath of office as did everyone else on the board and I intend to keep that oath um as a member of this community has been honored with the incredible responsibilities laid out out above in the statutory and constitutional um where do I stand I choose to be hopeful I choose to be hopeful in this moment for a lot of reasons why because cat golden the sixth grader put out a fire I'm hopeful because my son is learning each and every day to combat racism through role models who are current and past public servants and civil rights activists one of whom I consider to be El Nathan who reminded us

085of that lesson tonight and reminded us that we've got some work to do there's there's so much to be hopeful about in this District in our community in our nation if you know where to look our students continue to make us proud each and every day and every time we get to have a a board meeting where we can recognize the important work that our students are doing and the work that we are doing in furtherance of that gives me reason to remain hopeful and committed to the fight and so that's where I stand um because ultimately in the final analysis our kids are going to be the ones that putting out all the world's fires and so we have a pretty important job to do as instructional leaders to make sure that they are

086well educated going into that world so they can put it out so in conclusion I'll say as far as my own role and where do I stand commun thank you Scott did you have something yeah Kevin that was that was great thank you for sharing that um I just wanted to kind of reiterate the uh the importance of community feedback um Brian talked about his experience last week he's going to have another meeting this week and I think it it it's really important for people to know that it makes a difference we hear you uh we can't always respond even though we'd like to um I think tonight's a a great example of the wherewithal of people here uh Anna specifically uh on a on a subject that we're about to uh to learn more

087about um um it's been over three years I think for you coming here talking about this I met you the first time at a daab event about our new literacy program and you were the only parent that showed up and there were two of us from dab and then staff um and you've been hammering home this message and we're hearing you and we're finally doing something about it um it made a huge impact on me and this is not the end of that Journey this is just the beginning uh we want to hear more what you think of what we' come up with um next week on the 20th there is a chance to have feedback with the rest of us uh in a more informal way where we can actually give you feedback uh

088we're having our own Community session uh at Dunn and Cruz so not everybody will be at both but it's from 5:30 to 7: so I just wanted to put that out there um and keep keep bringing up these issues as as they come up cuz there's a whole bunch of them and we have a lot of work to do we're not perfect we know that but we want to we want to help we want to get our kids all of our kids up to speed so thank you for your work and and hopefully uh we've done some good work here thank you go ahead Conor Kristen to add on to that really quickly if you go to psdschools.org on the first page there um the um February 13th meeting at blevens is one of the

089um events that you can click on I'm looking at it right now if you go in there there's another link there that says see other scheduled sessions you can go on there and list the other ones where where we'll be speaking thank you other comments go ahead Jess so just to give you an update uh the stack or the student advisory committee is still working on potentially having board leison student board leison um they're coming to our dinner session I leave March 11th and they're going to put together their kind of proposal or what their kind of first thinking is we should get that before then so you have a chance to look at it I'm hopeful that we will all look at it and be ready to have a conversation with them then um

090I think the other thing that I want to talk about is we have legislative sessions each week and I don't I'm I'm curious if that's a good time for everyone I don't I know that I can't make every week at noon on Friday but I'm trying my best so I don't know if we want to consider moving it I don't have answers for tonight but I do want to put it in everyone's mind if like we need to consider alternative options or also what are we most interested in looking into so that we're kind of focusing our attention um just food for thought thank you yeah and if you are interested in changing the time on that just let us know via email just send an email directly um to us and and we can

091go ahead and see if we can change that up okay other thoughts okay thank you um moving on to consent agenda would board members like to pull any items from Kent okay seeing none can I get a motion I'm I move that the board approve adopt the recommended oh yeah the recommended action for the items on the consent agenda no that's okay can I get a second yeah thanks Kevin all right angel can you call the vote Jim brokish hi Kristen Draper I Connor Duffy hi Kevin havalda I Carolyn Reed I Scott shanower I Jessica Zamora hi motion passes 70 thank you you sorry for the confusion up here we're just hearing this buzzing sound I'm not quite sure where it's coming from so point of order M president sorry before we move on um

092I didn't want to comment on consent but I think there's a couple things are worth highlighting as far as the partnership of what some of the items that we're doing with um the city to make it a more navigable and safer routes to school sometimes things get buried in consent there was a couple items that I thought were great we have a very loaded agenda tonight so I understand why we're trying to be as sufficient as possible but I encourage the public to go and look through some of those things um because I think there are some really great opportunities to make our schools more accessible um to make them safer to get to um not via car so I just want to highlight those because they could easily fly under the radar thank you

093appreciate that all right uh so moving on to um yes 10 action items 10.1 monitoring policy review El 2.4 Financial Planning and budgeting uh can I get a motion good thank you I move the board determine the superintendent has reasonably interpreted Board of Education policy El 2.4 is internal monitoring report dated February 11th 2025 that the evidence presented supports superintendent conclusion stated in the internal monitoring report can I get a second thanks Conor all right and is there any discussion no seeing none then Jill can you call the vote Jim brokish I Kristen Draper I Connor Duffy hi Kevin havalda I Carolyn Reed I Scott shanower I Jessica Zamora I motion passes 70 okay thank you uh moving on to 11.0 informational reports and discussion items uh 11.1 one board superintendent relationship policies uh would

094any board members like to discuss the policies so I got Kevin no you go I've heard a lot from and that's gonna change all right I'm trying to channel my Scott for you um I don't have any particulars over the policies I really just want to focus Us in I feel like these are things that come up and that we read and we you know agree with generally but I do encourage us to get to a point where we are really focusing in on these policies and we're aware of how the work that we do each and every time we have a meeting actually relates to our role so that we can further get more role Clarity and we're really living within our um role and we're listening to staff so as we're making decisions

095we're leaning into their expertise as appropriate but also when it's our decision we kind of know the difference I think we can do that best if we actually live our policies not simply read them and say yeah that sounds good so great thank you um Kevin did you have I I'm GNA save mine for the informational report on the board superintendent relationships policy because I was going to segue somewhat into that so I'll save that a collective side of relief goes over the crowd okay all right anything else okay um in this case we're going to move we're going to switch around so that we should have um 11.2 is now supporting students with dyslexia and PSD okay may I ince thank you yeah no thank you so providing an update on supporting students with

096dyslexia tonight are Shauna stall curriculum teaching and learning facilitator and Nora love integrated Services assistant director of teaching and learning accompanied by Ellen Hunter from the Colorado Department of Education welcome to all of you let's see if this okay that's it yeah all right how we go uh good evening um president Draper superintendent Kingsley board directors and Community thank you for having us here this evening as Mr Kingsley said my name is Nora love sh Shonda stall from curriculum and instruction um we were going to have Ellen Hunter join us from the CDE this evening but unfortunately due to the weather she was not able to make it um we are excited to discuss dyslexia supports and PSD with you this evening one of the things that we will learn about this evening is that

097dyslexia impacts people on a Continuum from more mild to more profound impacts and to some degree dyslexia impacts about 20% of our population 20% of the students sitting in our classrooms with increased understanding through the science of reading of how students learn to read and with psd's adoption of Elementary highquality instructional materials PSD educators are able to provide explicit and targeted instruction for all students who are struggling to learn how to read and we are excited to share with you how we are working to increase our systems knowledge and understanding to best support students with dyslexia this evening this is the agenda that we will be going over with you this evening we will discuss what is the science of reading and what is dyslexia we will discuss dyslexia and the multi-tiered system of supports

098our screening processes we will talk about our dyslexia professional learning plan in PSD along with our threeyear our three plus year timeline um even though Ellen Hunter was not able to join us we will speak a little bit about what she was going to share with you this evening and we will wrap up with a feedback and questions from the board this is the PSD dyslexia core team you can notice that it is made up of people that represents many different teams across PSD we all occupy specific roles without the without within the system and we all bring our specific expertise and experience with us when we come together to work on issues considering dyslexia um this was going to be where I introduced Ellen Hunter she is an expert in literacy and dyslexia from

099the CDE and even though she's not able to join us this evening we have worked in a alignment with Ellen several times throughout the year and we'll continue for this year okay oh sorry okay so before we dig into dyslexia we wanted to just start with a larger umbrella of what is the science of reading so the science of reading real is really is a colle of a larger body of research across multiple disciplines from education to neuroscience and psychology really just saying this is how people learn to read and our brains based on language and specifically how that looks at Word level reading right so our brains um as are innately wired on the left side of our brains for language it's not innately wired for reading and so we have repurposed our brains

100from language to literacy and so the science of reading really talks about um how all of these uh language to literacy rewiring works but then it breaks it down into structured literacy so the what and the how right and so it talks about on the circle on the left these are the what we teach the semantics the meaning the vocabulary the phonological awareness the comprehension oral language the circle in the middle really is the how we teach that that's just as important it's explicit it's diagnostic it's multi sensory it's cumulative it's sequential these two circles work in tandem with one another to equate to the structured literacy under the science of reading umbrella for structured literacy one cannot exist without the other so on the left side it's the what we're teaching right the components

101the elements on the right side it's the principles of how we're delivering that instruction both of these come together for this beautiful circle on the end over here for what we are called what is is called structured literacy it's important to point out for both elements on the what and the how um that these are now embedded in our newly adopted curricular materials at the elementary level which is going to get us into how that looks at the universal level so this was also going to be where Ellen kind of stepped in but um I'm just going to read this because I think it's really important it's going to connect to other points later so this is the actual adopted definition of Dyslexia um made from the international dyslexia Association adopt Ed by CDE dyslexia

102is a specific learning disability that is neurobiological in origin it is characterized by difficulties with accurate Andor fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities these difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language that is often unexpected in relation to other cognitive abilities and provision of effective classroom instruction secondary consequ quences may include problems in reading comprehension and reduced reading experience that can impede growth of vocabulary and background knowledge so there's some key elements that we're going to come back to and what that the implications for how that was rolled out in the professional development so we need to first start talking about when we're supporting students with dyslexia and PSD what does that look like within the PSD framework for that we follow from ctss right so you'll

103notice on the screen a triangle and you'll see the words Universal all you'll see the words targeted some and you'll see the words intensive few we follow this same model for how we support students with dyslexia with our new highly adopted materials particularly at the elementary level all students are now receiving best first Universal instruction with structured literacy the what and the how those two circles coming together not down the hall but in their classrooms so that's a huge shift right then you'll see kind of layers like a cake then you'll see where it says targeted In Sum if there are still students that are needing additional support Based on data and we'll talk about what that data looks like in just a minute Based on data then we'll look at aligning and providing another

104layer of support not taking away not supplanting but adding an additional layer of support So a student who might receive targeted support would still receive first best instruction with structured literacy materials in the Universal uh with UN in the Universal setting and additional layers of support in the targeted with whether that's inside the classroom or outside the classroom in a small group in a larger group that's going to be made best in the students plan and it will be aligned to what's happening happening universally so they're not two different plans happening and then for a few students who need more intensive instruction they will still also receive best first Universal instruction in addition to the Target Ed very targeted based on their data the additional layers of support and the way that it's intensified is

105by increasing duration decreasing group size increasing the quantity so then we look at how we intensify those layers so it's really important to know that there is a big shift that we were able to make with our highquality materials with structured literacy happening best ver instruction so with that being said then we pair that with data right we can't make our best instructional decisions without a body of evidence what is that body of evidence it first starts with screening so we still see we're following this Colorado multi- systems of support model specifically the comprehensive screening and assessment plan starting with screening all students kindergarten K through three are screened with the state approved Dibbles assessment which is intended to look for indicators of reading risk including dyslexia and that would be Universal think green and

106that bottom l there for some students who are still coming up with indicators of um needing support but maybe we don't know what that looks like yet or where that is or how to Target then for some and I'm going to keep using all some and few for some those students are given a group of Diagnostics it might be phonological awareness Diagnostics it might be phonics Diagnostics it might be a couple of those different ones based on what the screening results are but it's tailored to what their needs are after the Diagnostics are given the Diagnostics are administered to determine two things one what are the student strengths what are they really really good at and two what are the students areas of needs so that we can use the strengths and whatever comprehensive plan

107we're building to support that student after we have a clear picture of what are the student strengths and where do we really need to Target to begin to close that Gap and to really increase access to rigorous Word level reading and I say Word level reading because often you saw in the definition that it's U dyslexia is indic is indicative of difficulties of poor reading and spelling that can often be overcompensated in a passage because students often have higher students with dyslexia or indicators of Dyslexia often have higher vocabulary background knowledge and so that they they can work around that and so we really want to get and drill down to that word level reading and spelling after we have a clear picture of the students strengths and needs we have now built uh we

108have started building our larger body of evidence starting for all at the universal level with that screening for some who need deeper Diagnostics added on top of that and then for those who need a deeper um intensity then we put together with the educational team whoever is working with that child um and invite the families in for what that will um they know their students they know their kiddos the best and then help look at what does that short-term cycle look like right usually four to six weeks closer to six weeks and then we review that data that progress monitoring which is a different type of data but can often be related to the diagnostic so we'll look at a formative type of data and we'll look at a informative so one that's Norm reference

109and one that the teaching can collect also informally both of those types of progress monitoring will be reviewed every four to six weeks the students educational team will look at that to guide instructional decision making for what are the next steps for this student keeping in mind that the universal all some targeted few is fluid if that student is making the progress that was set for them then we can be fluid and how we're supporting that student when we're looking at screening to identification kind of talked about how all students are screened at the kinder and through third level um and for students who are already identified as um supported by a read plan in fourth and fifth grade that's that Universal screening right that typically takes about 1 to three minutes a screener is

110intended to be quick and tended to filter out who we need to look at for deeper deeper digging right after that we look at our students who need more supports through are multi systems multi-tier systems layer support comprehensive problem solving and decision-making knowing that all students are receiving that Universal best first support and knowing that dyslexia um Nora said this dyslexia exists on a Continuum could be mild to profound where a student um where a student shows up with with their strengths and their areas of needs and coexisting conditions is going to be different for every individual who has dyslexia no one individual with dyslexia is similar to the next core core variabilities differ from one individual to the next which is why that diagnostic piece for every single person who is coming up as

111an indicator of risk is so critical if a student um is still needing additional support after receiving intensive targeted and universal cycles those four to six week cycles and the student is is still struggling to make growth or still struggling to meet the intended Benchmark a referral to special education can be made first the student would need to qualify for special education a student eligible to receive Services through special education if so in Colorado we are one of the I believe 11 states that does not have an eligibility category that is named dyslexia the eligibility category that a team may look at if there is um indicators of risk if our body of uh data starting from Universal screeners Diagnostics progress monitoring what a team would look at is called specific learning disability in that

112category there are three reading areas that we could look at for where a student may may best fit for their um for their lack of better term identific ification for reading needs the reason I say identification is because it's it's important to know what those strengths and needs are so remember from the definition reading comprehension is secondary that is not a first primary indication of Dyslexia dyslexia at the heart is a word level reading difficulty that manifests with language first phonological awareness right after um a student has difficult time reading lifting the words off the page for so long access to print and access to vocabulary and access to background knowledge is impacted therefore that's the secondary implications of Dyslexia and so when we would look at if a student would qualify for services under

113special education it would be in the two highlighted areas kind of hard to see there um it would be in basic reading skills which is are the foundational reading skills which would be phonological awareness in phonics a student needs to be able to read accurately first right then the next one that's kind of covered up there says reading fluency we can't read fluently we can't do any complex skill fast dribble a basketball down the court playing an instrument we can't do that fast until we can first be accurate and so first a student would need to be accurate that's the basic reading skills second they would need to do that with fluency fluency is the bridge that connects basic reading Foundation foundational skills phonological awareness and phonics to comprehension it is that bridge comprehension is

114the secondary impact which is why it's not highlighted for a student with dyslexia could they be impacted yes if they were to qualify for special education services that it would not be their root cause if we wanted to really drill down and impact reading comprehension we would need to go back and impact fluency and go back and impact accuracy which is reading Foundation uh so let's spend some time now with that foundational knowledge that Shonda shared with us let's spend some time looking at psd's efforts um to increase our District's knowledge of evidence-based practices to support students with dyslexia um the current plan for training and supports around dyslexia began with the implementation of highquality instructional materials at the elementary level for literacy in the fall of 2023 as Sha mentioned earlier the adoption of

115these materials allows us to provide best first instruction for all students in the general education setting instead of having students who are struggling to read rely solely on Intervention that happens down the hallway or in a separate setting then in the spring of 2024 the central office met to re-evaluate dyslexia supports in the district that was when the dyslexia Court team was formed and we created a three-year professional learning plan this year starting in the fall of 2024 we have used the district's professional learning days to provide targeted professional learning around dyslexia for many many of the Educators in our system and we'll give you those numbers in just a minute um this year we have focused primarily on our elementary Educators and next year we will focus primarily on our secondary Educators we have

116also worked this year in collaboration with our 504 District leads to ensure that we have alignment in the um recommendations that we make to support students in with accommodations who are struggling with dyslexia then and starting this semester January of 2025 we have begun to build our family and community outreach plan part of that was updating you can't see it underneath the little box there but that says updating the PSD dyslexia website we um made that more easily to find on the PSD website web website and it also has up upd ated information we were also able to meet with the family um with the district accountability committee and the special education advisory committee so that they were able to give us feedback as we are building our family and community outreach plan around dyslexia

117and of course throughout the rest of this year we are continuing to provide extra um additional professional learning to many different groups of Educators in our system then looking into next year we are continuing to provide targeted professional learning opportunities next year focusing primarily on our secondary education Educators uh but we will also provide professional learning with our early childhood Educators and our elementary Educators who are new to PSD we will also begin in the fall of 2025 to have our family and community outreach um opportunities so that more people in our community can learn about dyslexia and how PSD is supporting students with dyslexia of course throughout all of next year we will continue to offer professional learning to all of the Educators across our system and we will create an asynchronous professional learning

118class on dyslexia that will provide us a little bit more flexibility to provide professional learning when um an in-person class maybe isn't possible then looking into the third year of our plan 2026 and 27 um we will align our practices with guidance State and National guidance around disc calcula and disg graphia and then we will reflect on the outcomes and our practices from the first two years and um work on developing sustainable systems so that as we go forward into the future we are continuing to provide professional learning on evidence-based practices to support students with dyslexia um as Shonda mentioned earlier the mtss framework is how schools provide layered supports to meet the needs of all students we use the same mtss framework to design our professional learning um for our Educators in the district

119at the core we have our Universal professional learning class contains the knowledge and understanding about dyslexia that everyone in our system needs to have in order to support the academic and the social emotional needs of students with RIS risk indicators of Dyslexia then for um our Educators who support students who have increased needs around dyslexia and for educators who have targeted roles within our system we build on extra knowledge that they need to know in order to support their students um for example we are doing a professional learning opportunity with our speech language Pathologists in a couple of weeks so for that group we will start with our Universal class and then we will build on the extra uh essential understanding that speech language pathologist need to have in order to best need the needs

120of their students that they serve um who are um who have dyslexia so though we do differentiate our professional learning to Target our audien's specific needs and roles we do have common objectives that are at the center of all of our professional learning opportunities in all of our professional learning opportunities we Foster a deep understanding of Dyslexia including its neurological basis characteristics and impact on learning and student social emotional health we equip Educators with the knowledge and strategies necessary to effectively identify accommodate and teach students with dyslexia particip partipants learn evidence-based instructional methods and interventions rooted in the science of reading and that includes recognizing Orton Gillingham multi-sensory approaches that are embedded within our adopted literacy curriculum we enable Educators to create inclusive and supportive classroom environments ultimately our goal is to empower PSD Educators

121to ensure that all students regardless of their reading challenges have the opportunity to to achieve their full academic potential so I'm sorry I got to stay here um so we did develop a three-year plan but we recognized the timeliness and the importance of this work and so we were able to develop um a pretty deliberative and systematic way to provide differentiated professional learning for all of the different instructional groups across our district so you can see here on the slide although I know it's pretty small but um what it's showing us is that through the 24 and 25 school year these are all of the groups of Educators in our system that we will provide professional learning around dyslexia 4 and then looking into 25 and 26 those are the other groups of um PSD

122Educators who will be able to learn about dyslexia and the best way to support our students oh okay um we actually updated the slide to have the percentages of these groups so I um I can just read it we can just read it yes we can so these are the numbers to date of PSD instructional staff that have been provided with professional learning about dyslexia so far this year and keep in mind that we are just a little bit over halfway through the first year of our plan so for our general education staff our sorry our elementary general education staff we have provided professional learning about dyslexia to 91% of them um for our reading interventionists and specialists at the elementary level 43% for our integrated Services um multic categorical teachers and our effective needs

123teachers 75% our school psychologists 81% and 214 of our classified staff have had the opportunity to learn about dyslexia then of course we're not done yet right we still have many months left of school so ongoing throughout the rest of this year we will provide professional learning for approximately 200 more of our Educators including our mtss coordinators our elementary counselors our English language development staff our speech language Pathologists and we have more opportunities for our reading interventionists and our Integrated Service staff so um actually on March 11 we want to get much closer to that 100% that's right for both of those subgroups they'll have another opportunity on March 11th yeah go ahead uh by the end of the year for our Elementary staff we are planning to be very close to 100% of our

124um of our instructional staff will have had the opportunity to learn about dyslexia sorry we updated a slide that looks less wordy we were trying to keep less wordy so sorry about that um but as I mentioned earlier we were able to meet with our district accountability committee and our special education advisory committee and through those feedback sessions we noticed a lot of common themes they were able to provide us feedback about um how we can best meet the needs of our community and our families around dyslexia um they identified that amilies in the community want to learn more about the process for dyslexia screening identification intervention and evaluation they identified that families want to learn more about how to support students about the social and emotional impacts of Dyslexia and they want to encourage

125us across the system to use communication that is more accessible by using family Centric language and multimedia formats using diverse communication methods and so um that was a synthesis of the feedback that is more wordy here on this SL from both groups very interesting that there was um sorry we found it very interesting that there was an overlap from both groups um about what their needs and wants were and that will help drive us forward in our next steps so that was helpful for us yeah um and this was the slide that Ellen Hunter put put together for us and we are really sad that she won't be able to join us this evening but we are glad that she's safe and not braving I25 right now um so I'm going to read her slide

126if that's okay with you this is what she wanted to share with you this evening she says at CDE we carefully follow the ongoing research on reading acquisition reading development and instructional practices in reading the most important important factor in Reading achievement is each and every student having access to a highly effective teacher teachers who are knowledgeable about how students learn to read knowledgeable about their resources and materials and their alignment to the science of reading knowledgeable about how to implement evidence-based instructional strategies in the classroom teachers who are knowledgeable about how to use formative and formal assessment data and on ongoing progress monitoring to inform and adjust instruction to meet the needs of each student so we wish that Ellen could have been here with us this evening to share more about this in

127her own words um about the impact of Highly having highly knowledgeable teachers have on students but we are encouraged to know that our work in PSD is in alignment with CD's focus on the importance of growing Educators knowledge skills and Effectiveness to support all of psd's students questions thank you so much yeah this is great I know that there's probably a lot of questions so I want to kick that off if I can um who would like to start go ahead Scott thank you guys very much for the presentation um I'm kind of impatient on this subject so one you know see the timeline with the professional development the one thing that's kind of glaring is when do we start seeing this implemented with the students when can we start to see screenings uh and

128I had two other questions in related relation to that so let me know so two questions one about when will the instructional strategies be implemented and when will the screening be implemented is that correct yeah I see those as hand inand but yeah yeah screening is happening right now already it's happening three times a year there's already a diagnostic system that our PSD team and now dyslexia team built before there were high quality materials because we knew that was a need so that's already happening three times a year and what we're using now is how to start that at the universal level and not waiting until a student is already at risk in those targeted or intensive tiers so that's already happening three times a year the strategies are already being embedded right now because

129many of the oron Gillingham approaches it's an approach it's not a program so it's it's um diagnostic systematic cumulative um sequential that is what our high quality materials are however um many of our staff have also been trained in that and so what we're doing now for example tomorrow one of my classes tomorrow is how to use our highquality adopted materials with the strategies that they know for example from Orton Gillingham for multi-sensory to keep the Integrity of the scope and sequence because that needs to align throughout the tiers we can't have three different scope and sequences for a student who's receiving different layers of support we have to be cohesive but how to align those tools they already have in their Bucket from that Orton Gillingham approach and how that actually lives in the

130materials now so that's we've started that work on when you we saw when we talked about that 91% that was that first stage of um these are early indicators these are signs these are symptoms and now it's and now what does that look like for embedding that instruction within our high quality materials um just as a followup so when we're screening are we two things are we actually naming dyslexia in the classroom I know we've avoided that as a district in the past so I'd be curious about that and then how how young are we identifying I think we're waiting till third grade right now if we can go earlier I know you can as early as kindergarten um that would be fantastic because then you really get over that moment where the the child

131realiz or understands that everybody's looking at difficult yeah really so the social impact so I'm curious about the time so two questions so um in the past there was some um some thoughts beliefs wonderings feelings like I can't say the dword right we can say the dword and actually we're very proud and very um elated that we can say that openly and proudly right and it's in that CDE handbook that we can name that but we need to name it with data and to be able to speak to is it phonological awareness is it rapid automatic naming is it phonological memory is it a combination of those two is it a combination of the three so in order to be able to name that we have to be knowledgeable about it so it's also not

132a word that we're going to just say every child has indicators of that because we have to have that full comprehensive body of data right which is why we're starting at that Universal but we can say that um it's not a word that we're saying don't say anymore which is why we are openly having this very Broad and open systematic PD within our system um yes we don't want to wait till third grade um early signs and symptoms of Dyslexia show before a student can even um access word reading right it's language based so we can see early signs and symptoms in prek so we are working with early childhood and they are on our schedule for next year to also be part of this so it's actually early childhood to um high school so

133yes not waiting third grade is too late and when I say too late never too late but harder to close the gap as the student gets older and just to piggyback on that so in Shonda talked about the mtss process and how we provide layered supports for students that starts in kindergarten students are receiving targeted intervention in kindergarten so there's no there's no waiting until third grade thank you you had yeah so um you had talked earlier on about dibles and for people in in the community who might not know what Dibbles is it would be really nice if you could explain what dibles is and why it's so helpful and then how is dibles used to identify or maybe at least get us to start looking at at maybe this kid might have a

134have reading dis uh reading difficulty because it's my understanding that Dibbles is not a diagnostic tool for dyslexia but it might get us onto the right path is that correct scre yes it's a screener so dibles um dibles a is a screener um and it's it is made to identify or screen for several types of reading difficulties dyslexia being one of them what it starts with um identifying or looking for before students even get to print or how does a student manipulate hear phonological awareness so how does a student hear language and manipulate it at all level levels and sounds from the phoning level that smallest unit of language to syllables because that's the basis hearing sounds hearing the sounds act hearing them using our phonological memory to keep them in that order and then

135to be able to attach the print the C the A and the T in that same order they're very different skills that have to come together so dible starts clear back at the phonological awareness level um one of the largest um areas of need that you might see to dyslexia is rapid automatic naming which is directly tied to fluency um alphabet naming fluency and Dibbles is made and intended to gather information on rapid automatic naming so that's one of the things that that tool which every kindergartner gets right away so it looks at rapid automatic naming it looks at phonological awareness it looks at phonics at the word level in unknown words so many students might memorize words like cat or dog or mom or dad because they're Environmental words we want to assess with

136pseudo words because it measures non-real words it measures a student's ability to apply the letter sound relationship when given any text and so dibles assesses for that it then goes through an assesses for a combination of those real words and those irregular words that don't follow like the wordthe right thth and then the E doesn't make that e sound it assesses for those types of words then it builds up and tests at the passage level and the comprehension level where we would see dyslexia living in that would be red flagging or indicators of risk at the phonological awareness and the word level reading particularly in the nonsense word fluency and that would move was on to other testing then after that right right so based on how a student so what we're really um working

137towards is going beyond that that number that says 27 38 right that doesn't tell us the students strengths and needs so really opening up the student's response pattern to look at what type of diagnostic do I need to give if a student has um mastered the measures and Dibbles for phonological awareness I don't need to give the phonological awareness Diagnostics I've already identified a strength that I can use then in my instruction but if they haven't mastered those identified benchmarks for let's say letter sound correspondence and alphabetic principle I need to give some Diagnostics to know where in the scope and sequence to start with that Hey Kevin that was actually a partial answer of one of the questions I was going to ask so I appreciate and also we're just going to go down

138the line apparently um but on the on the the subject of of diagnosing this is where I'm a little confused you need to clarify sort of where we were as a district and where we are growing to and I'm also encouraged that we're evolving our thinking in this my question though is that you spoke to the different sort of tiered levels of diagnoses that you can provide my question is have we been providing those are we providing them now what is our plan for providing them in the future that's where I need a little help so we have not been saying your student has dyslexia in the past because it was the bigness no of oh we can't say that word we can say that word but if we're going to say that word it

139is saying that a kid has significant difficulties now it says a student is on a Continuum right no student who has know two students who have dyslexia have the same core um variabilities however if we're going to say that then we need to be able to speak to the data innately meaning to have a conversation with the family not talking at them but with them and saying here's what I'm seeing based on the data these indicators based on the data are the indicators of Dyslexia do you have concerns what are you seeing and it's a conversation there if you're talking about specific learning disability particularly that's specifically for special educ um special education um but it doesn't mean that a student can not have dyslexia and still receive supports all throughout those layers of support

140next up Connor did you have any questions well that was unexpected um can you give us just some ideas or examples of what a targeted support would look like intensive support might look like just so we can get a better picture of that you um so the first thing that we're really really really trying to align on is that it has to align with universal really starting with the scope and sequence and that's that's a shift because it was maybe down the hall and we were doing this and but now everything is cohesive so that's the first big shift um depending on the students needs it's probably going to be because students who needed um support in Reading 70 to 80% are in phonics or PA 10 to 15% are in fluency 10 to 15%

141are in reading comprehension so that means of our students needing reading support 70 to 80% should be in phonic and Pa so in that targeted support we should see 70 to 80% looking at phonics and Pa Pa is a skill and a means to access phonics it's not uh phonological awareness it's not to just PA all day long for 45 minutes it's it might be a warm-up right manipul in phonological Awareness pa um it's not a skill to just um practice for 45 minutes it would be your oral warmup then that might look like Word level re um reviewing your previously learned sounds your new sounds breaking it down very systematically from sounds to Word level word to phrase level phrase to sentence level sentence to multiple sentence level then we start to get to

142control decodable which is not an open-ended text yet and then we move from control decodables to open-ended texts we do that all the way through the phonic scope and sequence which is why we need to give a diagnostic because there's 44 sounds or phones but 250 different ways we I don't want to say we that's bias in English those sounds are represented so we have to move through that scope and sequence systematically so it would start with a A phonological awareness warmup print from word all the way down to that connected text that I talked about and some type of um dictation multi-sensory dictation at the word level phrase level or sentence level depending on where the student is followed by an authentic application of text reading with that targeted skill when we talk about

143intensive it's the same type of um skill it's just intensified so your group size gets smaller your repetition increases so that you can get corrective feedback on the spot with more um automaticity right um your your duration of your instruction gets longer you you get to have access to that longer not that you get to but that's built in now so it's not so much that we're changing and trying a whole different method we're very strategic about those interventions the first time which is why we're Gathering data all the way through from the screener it's just intensified as we moved up but it's aligned with what the classroom teacher is doing and aligned with that scope and sequence so if a student is on oi and o y then that's what they're working on at

144all levels of support very impressive I could talk about this for a long time yeah kind of just like BW my mind yeah can can you tell me how School psychologists play a role in identifying dyslexia like in um and identifying kids like what what kind of role would the school psychologist have yeah jump in on the um so Shonda mentioned the body of evidence right so as a student is receiving multi-tiered Services of support the school team is putting together a body of evidence that shows the students strengths and needs and the rate of progress and so if we get to the point where um a Special Education team is doing an evaluation to determine if the child will receive special education services the school psychologist will be a part of that team and

145they will between the team they will determine what evaluations are most appropriate for that student um and they will conduct those evaluations those assessments and create kind of a a full evaluation for that student that then the team meets together to decide if or to determine if the student meets criteria for receiving special education services and what would you add to that I feel like Cas um I think with our trainings with psychologists this year and our and our professional development it was also about guiding what specific tools the the tools for data collection intensify they take longer the more support um throughout the layers um and that's strategic because you're Gathering more in-depth information and so our school psychologists in the in the trainings this year we're just very direct that if we're at

146this level for for all ibility these are the tools that we need to use if you're suspecting dyslexia so just called that out the other thing that a school psychologist has often um a team lead on is compiling not just the speech language results or the special education results but compiling that learning profile so the special education teacher might get a result from one of the dyslexia tests about it's called rapid automatic naming but it's called um like uh processing speed and assessment but it's looking at similar it's working it's looking at how similar parts of the same part of the brain right and so the school psychologist often brings together I'm you're seeing it and I'm seeing it this is an indication then of either a strength or a need I'm gonna let um

147Jim ask his question I don't know where have too much for questions I wanted to thank the board for an excellent set of questions a few of which I had which were answered and I just wanted to say I love the work I love the plan and I wanted to say thanks also to the elementary teachers who I think many of them received some of this kind of training when they were working on their degree program I would guess but uh to have n over 90% of them now trained uh by the district I think is great so thanks to that uh group of folks as well that was it thank you thanks Jim go ahead Scott I'm kind of piggybacking on that I did notice something kind of glaring the uh the reading interventionists

148only at 43% I would think those would be the number one priority what's the plan with them what why is it not there yet um that's a great question we were ready for that one actually um the dyslexia PD for Universal so all classroom teachers was uh so widely um accepted and received that classroom teachers wanted to take the intervention training they wanted more knowledge for themselves and so um there was about 50% of classroom teachers and or admin in that session and literally the room was at wall toall capacity um and so the good part is that classroom teachers wanted more the bad part is that we were at literal capacity and so that's why there is a plan that on U March 3rd for both um uh special education multicategorical teachers and interventionists

149those are both being offered again but only for them that makes sense U one other question sorry I kind of keep jumping in here um you talked about on the screening uh that family communication is embedded throughout the screening assessment process Dibbles is something I'm sure my wife knows a lot about it I have no idea as a as a parent um how much uh communication and EXP explation of Dibbles is that going to be kind of uh elevated more than what you've been doing um just so people understand how the assessments are done yes and that's also feedback we got specifically from DAC so for example there's a print off right that Dibbles will give you and it's not necessarily parent friendly right and so that's one thing that we're talking about as a

150dyslexia team is how do we truly make that bilateral communication for True understanding and building a plan instead of sending the paper home um and so that is something that we have come to reflect upon as we have received feedback from our two Community groups and something that we do need to work to change moving through so Conor you have a question great work um glad to see we're making progress on this for a parent in our district um who believes that their kids may have dyslexia no matter what grade they are in um what can they do who should they contact um how do they get the ball this is a lot of work how do they get the ball rolling with your team you want to take them I'll start okay um so

151families should be involved from the get-go right from kindergarten on up having these conversations with their educational team at school especially if they suspect that if they have concerns about their child's progress with reading and it should be just like Shonda mentioned bilateral communication between the school team and the parent both parties discussing their concerns um if a parent has a specific concern that I think my child may have dyslexia then that parent should start by talking with the schools with the um child's teacher sharing their concerns seeing what concerns the teacher has looking in that body of evidence looking at the data about the child's rate of progress with their reading skills um I think there was a second part of your question though it would start with yeah with the classroom teacher because

152that's where that first level of screening and data starts with so all we want all of our conversations to be based on data right and so it would start with the classroom teacher then whoever else would need to pull in for that educational team we can do that as well sounds good thank you absolutely yeah Shonda and Nora I wanted to say thank you for the work work in all this has been a collective effort for a long time and we're putting all the pieces together to have a more instructionally coherent ecosystem in PSD which I think is the reason why we're getting better results yes to build off of director Duffy's question about how can families access help right I think you were astute to acknowledge we want to do that directly with teachers

153we want to do that directly with school-based leaders I want to also just recognize as we've had this conversation across the community for the last year you know our curriculum and our curriculum curricula ecosystem is more coherent today than it was 3 years ago yes right we've put over $15 million in the last three years into this space but sadly there are secondary students that are in middle schools and high schools that didn't benefit from those early Investments and they may have not been matriculated through an mtss system in the way that we now Aspire in our train to do so if I can ask as a you know to go back to the core team to build off of this great work over the you know as we're building this three plus year plan

154I'd really like for us to think about some targeted Outreach for those families in particular at the secondary level who are really just uncertain and are looking for more information and even their teachers may be kind of struggling with that because they didn't have the earlier Investments at the elementary level so anything that you can do specific to that subgroup of our systems pop population I think would be well received by everybody involved so I just want to say thank you for continuing to be open-minded and just doing really great work you yes so my question builds off of yours um and my question was going to be or is so at the elementary level they have a Home Room teacher that seems pretty obvious that's kind of like their first line of support at

155the secondary level what does training Educators look like what do they how does that differ because they're probably not consistently teaching reading the way you would in those early grades so how is that training different um well our secondary teachers do teach reading yeah um so that's just important to put out there right that more like but they don't teach like the those early like foundational yeah skills the K3 is I'm imagining different than the six through eight or 912 and even students who need supports at that level it looks a little bit different right because the child is older um the mtss process exists across grade levels right the mtss system is in secondary schools as well it does look a little bit different R because there isn't The Home Room teacher um but

156the child still has an educational team where there're still we have Universal screening practices and intervention through mtss where they're collecting data um and students are receiving intervention but it does look a little bit different at the secondary level and we are excited to really dig into that professional learning with that secondary group next year that's going to be very powerful um what would you add um we kind of started in August with secondary with where we were maybe four or five years ago with priming the pump with Elementary a little bit what is structured literacy and so one of the things that we need to think about SEC uh differently is for readers who need additional support and honoring that their high school learners right that looks different but the approach doesn't change right

157and so that's something that we have been actually very much grappling with and also knowing that once you get into uh third grade actually the words that we learn for vocabulary and background knowledge are through text and those words are based on Advanced phonics patterns so it all comes together so one of the things that we started in August with secondary um as kind of a professional development class to to prime the pump is what does that look like for readers needing additional support in AP Chemistry in World language in oh we had a collection um all over the board and really the the one main first we talked about myths myths right because there's a there's a different background for secondary and Elementary we just need to name that um and what are signs

158and symptoms what are accommodations that that should be across kindergarten through through uh high school but also what are the what's the the biggest bang for your buck strategy for teaching multi-sensory words in the context of your Advanced AP class for a student who has dyslexia so we pulled we had our uh we cross-curricular the curricular team the um curriculum and instruction team I asked all of our leads social studies science um adapted PE Health all of the leads to pull four to six vocabulary words from those level 9th to 12th grade to use those words as an example for if a student has dyslexia here's how you would still teach your content and here's how you would break it up by identifying the vowel sounds you underline it you Circle the prefix you Circle

159the suffix and then both of those hold meaning because that's what morphins are they hold meaning and then that teaches your your your content as well so we started by kind of priming the pump um and that's going to need to be where we kind of pick up because they're already into advanced reading so we can't take out of that but we need to step into it a little bit more Caroline goe just one last comment I'd like to thank you for all the training and all of the thought that you put into this and I think one important thing that's going to come out of this is that our our teachers are going to now become advocates for our students around dyslexia and I think that that's the biggest change that I'm hearing and

160that I'm seeing is that we're going we're changing our teachers into Advocates around dyslexia and I'm so thankful for that so thank you for all the training you've done it's empowering for our teachers and I can see how why that room is packed I was just say I mean that's why we have to really cap it and this training is going to be just for our specialist so yeah yeah very people wanting more it's great I mean I'm I'm I'm loving that staff are wanting more and I can see that you're very engaging in the way that you're teaching it and I I agree with you Caroline I think this is really going to um bring advocacy um you know for the students that need it so I love that uh it's thank you so

161much for all the work that you've been doing that you're continuing to do and that will be done in the future for our students it's just wonderful thank you also to our system and our support from all of our different leaders in the district for really leading this work and for elevating it that's huge for S so thank you thank you thank you so much before we move on to our next um we're going go ahead and take a 10-minute break so we will be back here at 9:10 e e e we still missing Scott okay oh my God social butterfly all right well Scott will join us in a second we will go ahead and get started on 11.3 update on 2024 debt free mil Levy spending plan and I believe we have a

162special guest for us we have lots of special guests here tonight uh for our last presentation of the evening presenting on the mil Levy spending Plan update tonight are Dave Montoya our District's Chief finance officer Dr Tracy guile our lead assistant superintendent and they're also joined by two of our incredible principles Kristen stti the proud principal at Laurel Elementary School and Steve opaka lint oh I said Laurel didn't I I'm sorry it's late please forgive me the Linton community uh I'll cons I am so sorry I am so sorry and Steve opaka the proud principal of putam elementary school thank you all right great yes um so yes we're here to talk about the uh debt free mevy update tonight and uh I'll go ahead and get started with this presentation um tonight just an

163overview of what we're going to be doing we're going to review the promise to the voters um so we'll look at the ballot language we're going to update on the first collection of the debt free Mill and how that was used um we'll also update uh spending plan for the 25 26 and the years Beyond so kind of keep in mind that this was the first year of collection and then the full plan goes into effect next year um and when that full plan goes into effect we're looking at facilities maintenance small school support and programming high quality instruction and replacement Cycles as well as competitive wages for all staff um so grounding ourselves in the ballot language um let's just go through it so that uh so that we have it and and the

164in the recording and so that um so that we slow down and just think about what it says so bout language attracting and retaining high quality qualified teachers and staff by maintaining competitive salaries and providing necessary classroom materials next one was providing the education that today's students need for tomorrow's jobs and careers including classrooms for career technology and skilled trades that provide students with real world job skills and provide and providing books technology facilities and other materials needed for students to these skills the third uh focus of the ballot language was supporting small neighborhood schools to provide students individual attention and greater sense of community that they need to learn and Thrive the fourth uh Focus area was maintaining and improving schools and Facilities to ensure secure healthy and comprehensive learning environments by replacing outdated

165electrical plumbing and HVAC systems and addressing repairs and renovations to the extend to the extend the useful life of the buildings to extend the use full life of the building sorry about that the last Focus was providing art music library and physical education supplies and Facilities so that students receive a well-rounded education so again that was what was in the ballot and it's it's good to just direct ourselves back to the ballot language because this really was our commitment to the voters and what they voted on and what they approved so uh so it's good to just always ground ourselves in the ballot language and we get to my favorite graphic of all um the debt free m of spending plan um every time I see this I keep saying I'm not going to see

166that ever again and it keeps popping up so um so let's let's just go through this briefly I know we've talked about this a lot as we were leading up to the election but I'll I'll want run through this quickly because it does describe how we're how we're doing this and how we're implementing and how we're actually getting things um Beyond just operation and maintenance so so the first piece is this chart is broken down into two sections the on the left we have our general fund and on the right we have our debt free mevy the $49 million for operation and maintenance the first step that we're that we're going to do with this is we're going to move our existing operating and existing staff that meet that operations and maintenance criteria so we've

167identified 21.5 million of both Staffing and operating budgets that we're in the process of transferring over now to the new mevy fund the the the debt-free mevy fund is going to be called fund M for mevy um so we're we're in the process of moving those those folks over now and the operating budgets and and what happens when we do that is it frees up that $21.5 million to do some things that would not be provided directly by the debt free Levy um and those are really that small school support down in this lower leftand corner about $4 million we have $15 million dedicated to competitive wages um and uh in and in this box we actually uh go a little bit further to State how they will be divided up amongst our employee groups

168both licensed or all licensed classified and administrative and professional um the allocation of the $15 million is based on their PR share so we looked at what the what the salary cost is for each group and then we calculated a percentage and then applied that 15 million so that each each employee group got a an equal PR a share of that the last piece that're doing with the repurposing and general fund is $2.5 million for high quality instruction replacement Cycles instruments curriculum Athletics and Etc we're going to have a lot more detail on on some of that later so once this is general fund and that's once we move the existing staff and the operating budgets over we're able to free up budget to do those other things but now let's focus on the debt

169free mevy on the right hand side so the first step was we're taking what we're currently doing and moving it into there um so we're again we're looking at the staff that meet that criteria um mostly trades people like HVAC plumbers electricians um custodial people doing actual custodial work are also included in that movement um and and so they're going to be added to the debt free mevy but that that's not all that the debt free Mev is doing because that would just be doing what we're doing now um the debt free m has more capacity and is intended to go deeper into the maintenance category so you see that green box we have um a maintenance for updated outdated electrical and plumbing HVAC pieces as well as like bus fleet replacement software and hardware

170and even down at this building level we're talking about sound systems gem systems digital scoreboards those things that need to be replaced over time the debt free mevy will provide an additional $22.9 million that we currently are not spending toward that effort and that's going to be transformational for this District as we as we move forward with those uh with those Replacements um and and these were like we don't usually get a lot of complaints about the Electrical Plumbing in HVAC unless they're not working right um and when they're not working we we got to fix them but we do get a lot of requests around the other things like the sound systems the theater systems and and the reality prior to 4A we were not able to entertain any of that so so this

171is really again I I really mean it it's going to be transformational once we really start applying this and seeing how it's going to start changing what we're doing the last part of the debt free M Levy will be the charter school prata allocation uh currently they are getting 95% of the Prat share based on our enrollment that may change over time as our prata share changes over time with kids um but uh currently it's about $4.6 million that we're calculating there moving on to the first collection so this is the first collection and uh we haven't even received the money for the mevy yet so just keep in mind and this this is something I don't think people realize is that our cash flow is such that we don't even get our property taxes

172until we're almost done with the fiscal year the school year so so we will start getting property taxes in next month we're going to get our first big chunk in and then there will be another layer that comes in April and May mostly in May when we get the other piece of it um but so so we're a little Limited in what we were able to do immediately um because of that that cash flow situation um but we were able to accommodate a one-time payment for all staff of 5% and going back to that other chart that had the compensation uh compensation piece the idea of that $15 million is that it is equivalent to 5% um of a 5% equivalent now how those are applied um ongoing is is a conversation that has not

173happened but this one time payment for all of our staff was distributed January 31 um and got a lot of great feedback from that from a lot of people that really made a big difference to them um so so that was a good move and I'm I'm glad we were able to accommodate that and work the cash flow situation out um the other pieces and we we did have a report on this so I'll go through this quickly um we do have a number of projects that we're trying to complete this summer 25 again I'm going to put the cavat that some of these may need to move to 26 we're still going full steam ahead until we're told by the contractor tractor we can't um and so so we're going to keep pursuing that

174I I will tell you some of the larger Roofing Replacements well most likely need to move the next summer um but we're going to work through that and continue to push our vendors until we we get that answer from them but we're looking at rooftop units um we're looking at air conditioning we're looking at boiler Replacements the roofing Replacements is what I just mentioned um those those take a little bit more design so we we're probably not going to be able to get that constructed this summer but we're going to start working on it uh fire alarm systems building automation systems there's a big building automation system that we're uh that we're going to be doing over at Fort Collins High School um Carpeting and Flooring projects at at various different schools uh parking lot

175projects uh track and field replacement that's going to be primarily French is what we're talking about and French was one of those fields that really didn't get a big update last Bond and so it's definitely due for it and so fora is jumping right in and helping us get going on that we also have a number of playground projects that we're going to try to accomplish with this with this money and we're going to aggressively start looking at what is the condition like our inventory of playgrounds what is our order of which we would want to go about that because these are projects that are really great to fill in when we move something to a later date so we're not quite poised with all of that in this first round but next year that's

176exactly how we're going to be approaching that so that's a a a taste of at least the projects we're trying to accomplish this first round with the the Deb freemail Levy so now getting into next year so talking about the full budget year in 2526 um that's when the the debt free meil Levy really goes fully into into place and so that's where again we're looking at facilities and maintenance small school support and programming high quality instruction and replacement cycles and then competitive wages for staff um the facilities maintenance is again is that green box that we looked at in the chart the $22.9 million annually um and we had a a list and it's still out on the website uh there's kind of like a little graphic of what over from the right side

177side and what it did is it listed all of our schools and the projects that we contemplated that would likely need to be done in the first five years um that was our first pass at that fiveyear that fiveyear Mark of what those projects were but those projects that were on the previous list came from this list that's that's where they they were generated this list really was a product of the engineering study we had with mckinstry as well as our trades working with that data to identify where where priorities would be so it's it's a very robust kind of approach to it and it's it's looking with various different professionals looking at what are our needs um and then the last bullet point is uh down below as opportunities arise to complete projects um

178we'll evaluate feasibility and make determinations of what might be be able to be added um as we go through this initial fiveyear plan there's going to be times where there's something that we were thinking we're going to need to do 5 years from now but it failed and now we're doing it now so we're going to constantly it's going to be a living project list right and so if something fails it moves up if it's critical and things will just slide back and and we'll accommodate that but that's how we're approaching it and I would encourage folks that are interested that are watching this at home uh that list is still on our website I'm G to turn it over to Dr guile to take the next two slides or introduce the next two slides

179thank you Dave so the small school support and programming was just a tremendous benefit to our schools and our system to have that specifically in the mil Levy and in the process of Designing how um we would approach this $4 million we started meeting with um a group of principles who represented our small schools in the district um we started meeting before the um mil Levy past just to get some ideas of what were some of the things that they were really noticing as they were de veloping their um student-based budget about um what they weren't able to do and then that fed forward into um another feedback loop where we started to design what the model would be and then we really started to meet intensively in the month of January to solidify what

180that process would look like going into this next school year throughout that we had a couple of different feedback loops to the entire principal group as well as a small subset of our principal Advisory Group and so we contined to process and determine like what would be the best approach and so um principal Steve abadaka and principal Kristen stty were two members of that committee and they're going to talk to you about what we landed on as far as that approach goes good good evening directors I'm Steve aaka principal at putam elementary and I'm here with Kristen staly and we participated on the small um schools committee I just one of us just fli it and so as Tracy said we've been meeting the last um few months here to and dis discuss our small

181schools uh support um puam is a small school and one of the smallest schools and so um we will benefit from the support of the mill so I really appreciate the public um with supporting the mill and small schools um the $4 million what that we discussed was broken into three groups and so the first group was um the smallest of schools which were less than 200 students and that would be $1 million fund to fund those schools um this would be in addition to the um existing size factor and there would be seven schools in the next five years that would be benefiting from this funding um this funding in this funding model for this first group there would be a zerob based um model with a budget and in that zerob based model

182the principles would work directly with um the assistant superintendence um to create a foundational funding plan that would be based on student count and support the needs of that school in the second group there's a $2 million dedicated to a foundation F foundational funding model um and this establishes a minimum amount of funding um for schools that would needed to operate uh that was established by a group of principles who um looked to uh to have uh essential services and safe supervision U and ensure that safe supervision would not be compromised in this model so in this model even though the um enrollment would fluctuate they would create a foundational um budget that would be um limit the variability for those schools in that model I'm hello I'm going to talk about the last piece

183of that puzzle the um million dollars for additional classified licensed Staffing in schools with less than 400 students um and less than 700 at the secondary level by increasing centrally funded assistant principal support and I'm going to explain that just a little bit because I know that can sound confusing we already have a funding model in place to support support assistant principles in our schools um schools that are under 400 in student count receive a 50% assistant principal and the vast majority of our schools supplement the other 50% with out ofv and so the smaller the school is the harder that is to supplement that 50% out of our own budget so by adding some of the for a money into that supplement at the district level that will allow the small schools to shift

184that funding that they were using for the assistant principle and put that toward our classified and licensed Staffing with all of the needs that you saw in the promise to our voters for the Safety and Security the mental health supports we we hear that behaviors are increasing all the things that we know to be true in our small schools too we can now put that money which is about $67,000 um toward licensed or classified staff members just to put some dollars with that that is approximately two pair of professionals that we can use to push into those classrooms or about two-thirds of a licensed teacher which could be some extra counseling support it could be some extra specialist support um so that's kind of a little more of an explanation about that third bullet with

185assistant principles you taking questions we're going to do one more and then so within this this model this is something that would go into place for next school year so principes are going to start to receive their um SBB plan on Friday and so this is a model that you know schools will realize the benefit of that in immediately starting to design their plans for next year and then the next piece I'm going to talk about is the high quality instruction and replacement Cycles also a benefit and a service to our schools and our teachers in our schools um one of the pieces that Steve and Kristen um kind of talked about is how at those smaller schools those resources for things are tight one of those things that are tight is being able to

186access you know additional materials for like PE and art and music a lot of this resource in this $2.5 million will help provision the materials that those staff need that may have been funded out of the um student-based budget but we're going to create some Central replacement cycles for those really necessary curricular materials in particularly those areas and so the curricular materials go beyond just art music PE think about all of our curriculum adoptions and so we're in the process of really prioritizing the list of needs within that area and that also includes Career and Technical education and so we've done some early surveying of our budget managers in the district and the academic department so all of our principles assistant principles all all of our directors and assistant directors anyone who oversees an academic

187budget and then we also surveyed our teachers who are part of what we call the district curriculum teams and so there is a district curriculum team representative for language arts for social studies for science um world languages PE Etc at each one of our schools and so that group was surveyed also with their feedback and input on what was really essential and what was needed we also surveyed our English language development teachers because we've had some areas of our system that haven't been part of that curriculum adoption cycle that we want to evaluate whether they need to be included and that has been elevated as an area of need so those early feedback loops indicate the most favorable support for high quality instruction materials and instruction across all content areas and trying to include in

188this next process English language development materials um both for our services for our students who are non-english proficient limited English proficient as well as our newcomer students and also including um curriculum materials for social emotional learning in that adoption cycle also staff has requested um replacement of books if you think about our soft copy books like Shonda um and Norah were talking about today our new literacy curriculum has a lot of paperback books that we call decodables those are going to wear out um shortly and so we need to have a funding source to make sure we can replace those items and those consumables so if you think about consumables as being workbooks and things that go along with an Associated curriculum we need to make sure we have a fund to provision those things

189also the request request for inclusion of Tex and consumables for dual credit courses and CTE courses so some of our CTE courses have some fees that are associated with them to have the materials that are necessary for teaching the curriculum and content for those courses we want to try and start to um reduce some of those Fe that we've needed to ask families to support in order to provide those highquality experiences in CTE as well as in that last bullet prioritizing music and musical instrument replacement cycles first because that's been a fee that we've had to engage families and supporting and we want to start to prioritize some of those areas for addressing those fees while um continuing to create a replacement cycle for essential equipment and materials related to our curriculum and then is

190going to close us out okay so the last uh Focus area on the debt free mevy is competitive wages for all staff and so we we kind of saw a peek at this earlier um $15 million will be applied to salary schedules um of all groups beginning of 25 26 school year and will continue to be included in the schedule going forward so once we put this money into ongoing salaries those salaries increase and then we have to support that increase going forward um so the onetime payment happened this year Next Step will be for the employee groups to actually decide how they want to apply these to their salary schedules and then we will we will actually add the $15 million as part of the negotiations process but the $15 million is guaranteed as

191part of that um and again we have the pr shares that I talked about earlier there um so then the last piece that we have for you tonight is uh just a brief discussion of the debt free m ofy oversight committee um the oversight committee uh will be convened this spring 2025 um just a reminder it's not a decision-making committee but they are going to be monitoring the use of the funds um we will be posting a listing of all members uh that are selected to serve on the committee um will be posted at the mevy web page so that'll be available for folks to see um they are currently scheduled to meet twice annually to review expenditures from the debt-free mevy um and information about this spending will also not only be going to

192this committee but we will be posting very robust information on the PSD website so that people can see how we're using the taxpayer dollars that brings our our uh presentation to a conclusion and we can take any questions does anybody have any questions I actually may start out with one if that's okay I just want to clarify um the the third bullet on the slide that's small schools support in program programming excuse me the 1 million for additional classified license Staffing so essentially we're talking about $67,000 um to going to the schools to cover the yeah there you go um to cover the other half of the assistant principal how many schools is that and does that take care of pretty much that 1 million right there can I get that answer back to you

193let's go to another question I'll look it up absolutely so and while I'm at it I'll just say thank you for making sure to include um those musical instruments and curricular fee support um that is something that has been asked for for a long long time and is in desperate need so I just want to say thank you for that um I'm going to look back and get you an exact number but we think that's going to be somewhere in the vicinity of at least 18 of our elementaries that will um increase that um have that access to that $67,000 and then I need to go back and look at middle school but it's a substantial number of our middle schools as well I think nearly all of them yeah that's great though thank you

194yes goe I just have a quick comment while if you guys are continuing to look at that I'm looking at slide seven and I just in case anyone else Lo looked at this the first time the way I looked at it the first time until I dug a little deeper there is a table on there Dave you did a great job making the point that it's on the website but this is not all the schools there is a long list of things when I first looked at this I was like why just these schools and then I realized they were alphabetical order so I just want to make sure in case anybody else is having the same brain fog moment that they go look at the actual website with the full list go ahead Kevin

195I have two questions I'll stick with small schools just for a moment um so in this sort of prioritization of which small school understand the threshold being under 200 has there been any examination or any uh inquiry about prioritizing schools that had accelerated declining enrollment as a result of the process of last year and I'm thinking of the schools that got named a lot and Steve I'm not putting you on the spot but I'm also curious as to whether the data is is suggesting that there is some correlation that we should be examining and if so how are you guys going to address that that's question one so I think that's a really good question so we one of the things that we need I think in order to draw some better conclusions about whether

196that was you know uh something that was a symptom of what was happening last year in the conversations or whether that is a true demographic decline in that region is we're going to need our five-year projections and so the five-year projections typically um are aggregated by Our IT department and we received them late May first part of June and so a lot of the forecasting of that we tried to do in how long the $4 million would last when we put it into these three tiers is based on the five-year projections that we had from from this um June of 2024 okay and so those need to be updated as we see the new numbers from our October count from this year to have a better idea of like was that just a you know

197one-time thing or is this a true Trend that we're going to see across multiple years we didn't specifically um look at leveraging and addressing schools who maybe were more significantly impacted with the exception of a lot of the schools that fell in that two 200 to um 299 which is that second bullet is sort of that tier that we're looking to address that one is a really feel really good about that tier because it's a stabilization tier that one is not going to be affected by fluctuations up or down and enrollment and so essentially those schools will get a stable funding plan if they go down 10 kids and maybe bounce back up five more kids it's going to allow them to just kind of have a minute to be stable and foundational anything you

198want to add Christ Steve to that I I think I would add um Dr guile did an excellent job kind of building it out so taking um a model school and building out what might be foundational so the committee could look at it and say yeah we that that's great support for kids we can survive on and Thrive with one full-time counselor with two or three Paras already built in so I think that really helped us wrap our minds around is this a real doable for three to five years impacting our most impacted schools those that are under 400 one of the reasons I asked I think you touched on it Dr gu is that there is the risk too that if we're not looking at data and Trends but we're looking at spikes then

199there could be the tension to over allocate for a certain year and then you've exacerbated the problem elsewhere so I just want to be as long as we're being mindful that sounds like we are um and again I'm I'm encouraged to learn that we're going to use sort of fiveyear projections instead of that blip for that reason um because we've we've heard anecdotally oh my enrollment is down because of this and because doesn't always equal correlation but I just want to be mindful that um the second question and this may be a Dr hooton Dave question as far as the oversight committee um I understand they're not a decision maker um and they're going to be monitoring but I'm wondering what teeth they have so let's say that there is let's play this out let's

200say there is some scrutiny as to one or two expenditures what is the mechanism that they can employ to challenge or question or scrutinize both for transparency but also to push back is or is there mechanism so I think one mechanism for that is that there's built-in reporting to the board every year so it is their responsibility to report out on their activities to all of you also as an oversight entity for the district I don't know if you want to add yeah no I that's exactly what I was going to say so um it it I I see it as being that if there's something in that committee that they're feeling is not right it needs to be reported to the board and then that's when we would be need to be actionable around

201that um yeah I I also don't want to invite a conversation every time we're asked to vote on something either on consent that exceeds $250,000 to now we have to open it up and have discussion so I wondered if there is some internal processes that we could explore to bring forward challenges resolve it before it even gets to the board I don't know if if that's possible I I think that like as I think about what what challenges we're going to have a lot of it's going to be around the projects and so I think keeping of very robust list available for people to see where they're at in the projects when when they might occur um so that way they have some confidence as to what's coming and we're also telegraphing like what is

202our plan for the next five years um so there shouldn't be any big surprises in projects when we're looking at those type of expenditures because they're probably on that five-year list we probably talked about them already they're coming from data um we talked about maybe there's a project that needs to accelerate but it's still going to be on the list so so I think that that covers at least that piece of it um the existing staff and existing budget that's just currently doing what we're doing and then the charter school piece is going to the Charter Schools I think the other side of it is the monitoring of the compensation the other things that we do with the freed up general fund but really once the $15 million is put in place in salaries that's

203kind of done that we don't we can't do it again um and so we're really kind of whittling down to projects um and then the other two pieces that we talked about with the um with the small school support and then the replacement Cycles I just want to conclude by saying thank you for the extra work that you guys have put into this I really appreciate the thoughtfulness and the discussion tonight go ahead Conor thanks for presenting on this this is uh exactly I think what the board is looking for and what I envisioned uh um from the M Levy for the hundreds of thousands of people working watching online um also want to say to them thanks for the generosity of the voters um I I always think about this that in 20 years

204there will be another board other people in this room and they'll have this same conversation because of the generosity of our voters um so thank you very much a question for you Dave we rely a lot on mckinstry data on there do we have an ongoing contract with them or do we just have somebody who's kind of using the system that they created for us yeah we we do not have an ongoing contract with mckinstry I don't think that was our intention to do that they they set us up with a good base this is what your assets are and the condition that they're in um really it's our job to take over that and to make it better um so like a good example is um the mckinstry data might have called out like

205some kind of a pump or something like that but our folks internally know that if they do some preventative maintenance on that that that they can extend the engineering life maybe another 10 years so so we've gone in and we're modifying Things based on what we know and and what we see we'll also need to be adding things because this is not static right so needs will be generated they need to get into that list somehow and they need to be prioritized so there's a lot of work that's being done in the process of getting that list prioritized but um that's that's the work ahead of us one quick followup to that and maybe it's a little too geeky but in the mckinstry data there was the cost escalation for replacement and then there was

206also an escalation in cost for for lack of a better term the new model because we had deferred maintenance on some parts for so long that that part is no longer made right are you guys tracking the difference between just regular kind of inflation but also that increased cost for the new model that we're getting um I believe that I'm going to answer for the folks that are doing it I believe that they are I I know that um that a lot of that is being discussed um but I I don't know exactly all the details and how they're going about doing the um the adjustment there um but we do have some staff that is that is involved in that right now one more sorry um it's getting late um it is on that

207the the newer models that are coming out are we tracking the efficiency of that so I would assume Bott you know a boiler now is a lot more efficient on gas usage than it was 30 years ago and and yes I think that we we are tracking that so that's a thank you for kind of getting the Log Jam free in my head um we are looking at efficiencies so like when we bring the designers in we're not just doing like for like we're looking at new models and and sometimes that they're just necessitated because they're the like for like doesn't exist anymore but we are trying to capture the efficiencies um we're not quite to the point where we're going to be able to report out on that quite yet we got to get

208the assets established and and all of that but that's some of that work that we were talking about with um with the the ticketing system and some of those other systems were're that that's part of that process and so we're we're kind of in the middle of that discussion now but that's where we're going is that it'll live in that system that system will do the cost escalations the all that different stuff that but we need to work through it still a little bit bud and I have been talking about that on a regular basis well thank you so much um really appreciate all the work on this and um and I think Conor you said it um thanks to the voters for making it happen so um thanks for letting us be able to

209do all this work yeah yeah I really appreciate it I want to throw it I I really appreciate you saying thanks to the voters I was remiss in not starting the presentation off like that because because this is the these elections these M ofies are what make pter School District different than a floor fund District we talk about floor funding and how the state's funding is terrible for us we're not a terrible District because our voters support us and so thanking them all the time for the support is is is very necessary thank you for that yeah yes go ahead just a Clos loop on that too my questions about oversight are that this is also I think a really great accomplishment that as a thank you to the voters we're also being as transparent

210humanly possible both with the expenditures the upcoming allowing voices to be come into that process I mean that that's part of the ongoing dialogue and so that that didn't have to happen and so that that's extra work it's extra time it's extra resource allocation but I think it's a really important one that our communities asked for so to credit everyone in the room too that had their hand in that so all right well thank you and uh yeah we're g tojin this meeting I know Anna and Victoria thank you for hanging out with us tonight till the very end thank you so we're g to goad Kelly yeah we're going to go ahead andour this meeting at 9:49 p.m. e e