001e e e aind so yes all right good evening everyone and thank you for joining the Board of Education um go ahead and please M mute your cellones um watches anything else that dings or buzzes uh today is Tuesday April 23rd 24 and this meeting is now called to order at 6:41 p.m. thank you for your patience would any board members like to make changes to the agenda yes I move that the board remove action item 3.1 resolution in support of national volunteer appreciation week and place it on the May 14th 2024 meeting agenda do I have a second Jim thank you all right Jo can you call the vote Jim bookish hi Kristen Draper hi Conor Duffy hi Kevin havalda hi Carolyn Reed hi Scott Shen Bower hi Jessica Zamora I motion passes 70
002thank you all right on to action item 3.1 a resolution and support I had one more I wanted sorry I had one more item for your agenda uh enough for consent we we're going to do consent in a moment okay yeah that's fine that's what I was say Okay um so this is a 3.1 resolution and support of Arab American heritage month can I get a motion got it I miss that the board approved the resolution in support of Arab American heritage month April 2024 can I get a second uh Carolin for the second thank you and would anyone like to read the resolution Kevin you want to read it fantastic thank you sorry I had a thing in my throat that's why I wasn't initially volunteering resolution in support of Arab American Heritage Month
003whereas in 2021 after several years of adequacy for such designation the House of Representatives proclaimed April to be federally recognized as National Arab American heritage month and whereas 3.7 million Americans can trace their roots to 22 countries in the Middle East North Africa including Algeria Bahrain the karos islands jibuti Egypt Iraq Jordan Kuwait Lebanon Libya Morocco marania Oman Palestine Qatar Saudi Arabia Somalia Sudan Syria Tunisia the United Arab Emirates and Yemen and whereas the first Arab arabic speaking person in our country zamurai arrived from Morocco as an enslaved person in 1528 and whereas Arab Americans have made valuable contributions to all areas of the United States Society including Medicine Science business technology government the Arts and popular culture it is true and whereas despite these contributions arab-americans including those who are members of our pter
004school district Community continue to face systemic discrimination Prejudice stereotypes and hate crimes which have impacts on their health socioeconomic standing and well-being and there is a need for greater education and awareness in these issues and whereas the pter School District Board of Education Administration and staff are committed to making pter School District an equitable and inclusive community for students families and staff who identify as arab-american and who recognize there is more work ahead of us diversity equity and inclusion are fundamental values in pter school district and we are committed to ensuring that arab-american students families and staff are valued seen heard and empowered now if there now therefore be it resolved the pter School District board of education does hereby proclaim the month of April 2024 as Arab American Heritage Month in pter school district
005we recognize the importance of Arab American heritage month as an opportunity to reflect and learn more about our diverse arab-american community and to ensure they are included in our curriculum and instructional programs the Board of Education encourages staff students staff and the community to celebrate the Excellence and enriching contributions made from our Arab American community of the past and present thank you very much and superintendent Kingsley believe we have someone to speak to this tonight right yes I think we have uh several people here tonight we look forward to hearing about Arab American heritage month uh from our Johnson Elementary School assistant principal uh Mr Matt Hughes our Dei coordinator Delia mahaney is here and I believe we have a second grade student from Johnson Elementary muhamed kamise welcome to all of you to introduce
006one of our amazing Johnson students to you today this young man is a second grade student in Miss crr's class hi Miss crudder every day he brings joy to our school through his bright personality contagious smile and eagerness to learn get ready for your hearts to be connected to Muhammad kamise [Applause] alayum that means hi my name is Muhammad Kam I am a Sudanese American who was born in the capital of Sudan Kum where the two major tributaries of n the longest river in the world meet I am a second grader at Johnson Elementary School I arrived at the United States with my parents Muhammad and Sama when I was 10 months old my my youngest brother Ahmed was born in Fort Collins Colorado this evening is special for me because we are celebrating Arab
007American Heritage in this peaceful town I really appreciate the fact that Arab Arab American heritage month is recognized by pter School District it means for me that I have the right to be different and I am respected by people who I respect that is why my I am always eager to show people around me our culture particularly our tradition food and clothes and of course our Islamic values as you may know members of the Arab Arab American Community are mostly Muslim but did you know that to say all people who are from Arabic countries or or are Arab American would be incorrect just like our our Christian America are diversity in countries we have diversity and faiths there are Arab Americans who are Christian and Jewish the story of my parents who imig immigrated to
008the United States shows how the American dream has been a fact more than two centuries my family Story shows that we are a nation of immigrants and that that is what makes us a great nation I believe that no matter when you arrive as long as you are here pursuing your American Dream you belong the idea of of being a nation of immigrants is it is what makes my home country Sudan unique too the roots of sudanes go back both to African Arabian immigrants to to whom vanal was their Sudanese dream H dreams hundreds of years ago today we are today there are 3.7 million Arab Americans who have been contributing to make our home in America great you can see their achievements across the country in many different fields and of course I am
009so proud of being one of them thank you [Applause] thank you so much Muhammad we're gonna does anybody want to say anything yes Jess go thank you so much for being here you have absolutely every right to be different and I am so unbelievably grateful that your family chose to belong here with us you are an amazing human thank you for choosing to be in for Collins thank you for choosing to be part of our community you're amazing that's all you're just phenomenal thank you thank you for my school for choosing me you could chosen a third grader for araban American Arab American month but instead you chose a second grader vote Mohammad I think we made the right choice so I'm just so proud that you are here in PSD as a second grader
010thank you so much and so let's go ahead and call the vote and then do a picture if that's okay all right Jim brokish hi Kristen Draper I Connor Duffy hi Kevin havalda hi Carolyn Reed hi Scott shanower hi Jessica Zamora hi motion passes 70 hey CL [Applause] congratulations thank you great job great job that's amazing here you're going to be in the front of this you made us really proud you did make me smile you think you might want to be a teacher someday yeah go for that you're really really spectacular so much how many ready [Music] [Applause] [Music] okay next on our um action items 3.2 resolution and support of national bilingual multilingual learner advocacy month can I get a motion I'll go resolution in support of national bilingual multilingual learner advocacy month
011I move the board approve the resolution in support of national bilingual multilingual learner advocacy month can I get a second all right looks like Connor and would somebody like to read the resolution all right Jim thank you all right I'll go in support of national bilingual multilingual learner advocacy month whereas in April 2016 due to efforts by the National Association for bilingual education to advance educational equity and Excellence for multilingual bilingual students the House of Representatives proclaimed April to be recognized as the first national multilingual bilingual learner advocacy month whereas National bilingual multilingual learner advocacy month recognizes that bilingual multilingual Learners are one of the fastest growing student populations in the US schools whereas puter School District serves students and families speaking over 60 languages and recognizes the significant linguistic and cultural assets that bilingual
012multilingual Learners bring to schools whereas National bilingual multilingual learner advocacy month highlights puter School District's commitment to ensure educational equity and access leading these Learners to thrive academically and become productive biliterate multiliterate Global Citizens whereas National bilingual multilingual learner advocacy month is an opportunity for pter school district to draw attention to the persistent gap between multilingual multi bilingual Learners and Native English-speaking students and to intentionally work to eliminate this Gap whereas the pter School District Board of Education Administration and staff are committed to examining the diverse needs of bilingual multilingual Learners and to building an inclusive and respectful Culture by adopting best practices and policies that value and use students languages and cultural assets to learn High academic content promote long-term academic achievement and increased graduation rates now therefore be it resolved that the pter
013School District board of education does hereby proclaim the month of April 2024 as National bilingual multilingual learner and advocacy month in pter school district we recognize the importance as an opportunity to celebrate our bilingual multilingual Learners and their families for the incredible assets they bring to our community thank you very much Jim and I believe we have a guest for this one as well yes we do uh joining us this evening to speak about bilingual multilingual learner advocacy month is our director of language culture and Equity Mr David auton David welcome welcome thank you and oh I'll try to figure this out um and I'll repeat this message in English in one moment I'll do it in Spanish first IL VI PSD in instant um give me one second I'll do that all in English
014Okay so I wanted to just say thank you superintendent Kingsley and members of the board we are honored to uh be here tonight to recognize the first ever uh resolution in support of National bilingual multilingual learner advocacy month in pter school district currently we have exactly 79 languages represented in the homes of 3,146 multilingual Learners of those multilingual Learners 1, 159 are actively in our English language development program continuing their acquisition of English on top of their native languages 338 of these students are newcomers to our country and to our education system of our multilingual Learners 75% speak Spanish 5% speak Arabic 4% 4% speak Mandarin Chinese uh telu Vietnamese and Portuguese are all nearly tied at 2% of our multilingual Learners we have a strong community of multilingual Learners here in Fort Collins and
015in PSD uh a wise person once told me if one is not fortunate enough to travel the world open your heart and mind and you'll find that the world comes to you for this reason I'm so proud to be part of our Global community that is PSD our multilingual Learners bring us so much culture and diversity for which I'm very grateful and I feel very honored to serve this amazing community of Learners and here to speak tonight on the importance of this resolution is Alex zumara tag fifth grader at Irish Elementary esing my name you can say your name again yeah go for it Alex National bilingual multilingual learner advocacy month is Irish Elementary [Music] [Applause] recogniz recognizing National B lingual multilingual learner advocacy month is an important honor for me my family my school
016and and for all of us being bilingual and multilingual allows us to communicate with people from other cultures and languages because people who are bilingual and multilingual understand languages and how they work being bilingual and multilingual is also valuable because we get to develop empathy and understanding for other people's experiences PE bilingual and multilingual Learners also have an opportunity to open doors to different life experiences such as traveling and building Community with others more job opportunities allowed bilingual multilingual Learners to serve and help other people who speak other languages at my school Irish Elementary schola bingu we appreciate all types of cultures and languages we get to learn alongside each other in two languages and learn about experiences that have happened to each other it is an honor for me my family and for all
017of us to be bilingual and multilingual in our world thank you all [Applause] thank you very much Alex does anybody have anything they want to say no all right Alex I just want to say thank you so much for coming and spending the evening with us um thank you for um what you had to say there in both languages and um I just also want to let you know that I am I'm a SM jealous because I am not bilingual and I wish I were and it's something that I hope you cherish and um that you can let the world know that as a bilingual person a multilingual person um that that is something special and so I just I want you to to know that so um with that if we could oh Brian
018did you want to say something absolutely Alex as your superintendent like Muhammad I we are just incredibly proud that you are a part of pstd you belong and if I'm not mistaken uh maybe a month or two months ago I was at your school on a Friday afternoon and it was snowing outside and you and your classmates were lining up in the gymnasium to make sure that you didn't get snowed on as you were waiting for your bus and I remember you coming up to me exciting excited to talk to me about research you were doing about different countries in their education does that resonate with you do you remember that uh yes can you can you share with the community what you were researching cuz I think it was education in Japan man and
019it was education in our country and maybe in other country is that right mhm um I was studying um how math is saw around the world um one of my cres was Japan um the US and Mexico I want you to know I haven't forgotten that moment and how you lit up just in telling me about your story and it's not only Unforgettable for what I experienced now the entire Community is aware of just how smart you are and how dedicated you are to your own learning and to research ways that we can better our education so just job well done proud of you thank you very much go ahead Kevin I want to say thank you one more time and also since you gave two presentations essentially I was going to insist that we
020do at least a second round of applause because I think he deserve so all right if J can we call the vote and then do a picture Jim brokish hi Kristen Draper hi Connor Duffy I Kevin havalda hi Carolyn Reed hi Scott shanower hi Jessica Zamora I motion passes 7 [Applause] Z e e all right we're going to move on to 4.0 the superintendent report I'm going to hand it off to you thank you very much uh good evening everybody it is uh wonderful to have the opportunity to address our uh Beloved Community tonight I want to First and start off by acknowledging that for any of our members of our PSD Community or around the world who are celebrating Passover I just want to wish all of you a happy Passover and I just
021have to acknowledge that Muhammad and Alex are a really act to follow uh they are Unforgettable human beings which remind us so eloquently of the reason why we do this work and that we prioritize our students in trying to figure out how we can continue to offer so many amazing programs uh to students like Alex and Muhammad and their peers across the district uh I want to thank many members of the board who have spent uh some of their time this week getting out into schools interacting with students interacting with teachers teachers and interacting with principles I've had opportunities whether it's with Mr Duffy Mr Shen Bower uh or Miss straper to get out to schools like batty Elementary McGraw Elementary olander elementary and Fossil Ridge High School and having these opportunities to connect uh
022with members of our community in the midst in the context of some really hard uh collaboration and decision-making processes that are ongoing it does give us a firsthand opportunity to empathize and understand the realities of what many of our employees and members of our community are going through but also what they're also advocating for uh which is incredible highquality programming I also want to say to members of the community that came out to puter High School to our Board of education's listening session uh last week thank you um to have the opportunity to sit and listen to how people were feeling and experiencing potential changes is no easy task um but we were here for that and I think I walked away way uh not only understanding the emotions that are involved with the potential
023scenarios that are starting to uh be communicated across our community but just how much people are advocating to keep what we have which is strong highquality schools in every one of our neighborhoods um you know I think as I continue to engage across the community in various types of different listening sessions what has become abundantly clear in my opinion is that what makes PSD such an incredibly strong district and unique and meaningful to this community is that we offer robust personalized learning experiences for all of our children at every single one of our schools not some not the majority but at every single one of our schools and it reminds me of the luxury of those choices and how lucky we are to have such a strong school system where regardless of where you live
024you have access to a high high quality education for many members of our community access to that high quality education is right in their backyard right in their neighborhood and they have the luxury of not just walking to school but taking advantage of the incredible school facilities and its assets after school and on the weekends we also recognize that we have many high demand choice schools and choice offerings that in most instances are in such popular demand that they have waiting lists how lucky are we we also recogniz that while we may be struggling with declining enrollment we offer large schools moderately sized schools and small schools that in the event that a student and their family doesn't experience high quality success at any one of those schools there is another secondary in some instances
025a tertiary option that allows us to make sure we don't walk away from investing in a human being that lives in this community I think that's what makes a special in fact one of our district ends outlines that as what we call above and beyond it is not the school system that provides that it's the human beings that bring those schools to life there's magic that's happening in our schools where we are ensuring that all of our staff are taking care of all of our children every single day and to be honest I know that I'm incredibly biased as the superintendent of PSD but I'm not really sure that you will find this level of quality of a school system anywhere else in this state I say that boldly I say it not just in
026terms of from a qualitative sense but I think we have the data to back it up both in terms of high academic success and some life-saving improvements that I'm really proud to talk about over the course of last month just in this boardroom we've talked through the lens of our mon monitoring report Dr Dwayne schmidtz has given a midl a midnight presentation on two different instances about how we are fairing in terms of student outcomes I want to share with you proudly that currently today we have about 87% of our students graduating on time which is the highest that this system has achieved in more than a decade in the second highest in two years I'm really proud that as we talk about the different types of Investments and whether these Investments are worth it
027is it the right time right now there are questions that are coming up organically throughout the course of the system should we have invested in high quality literacy instructional materials over the past two years and I'm really proud not as a result of the curriculum but as a result of the magic that teachers have used with their time with their energy and the investment of bringing that curriculum to life from fall to winter we have seen an advancement in our literacy scores over 133% on average we see about a 3 to 5% increase from fall to winter this year we saw 133% when we should expect an implementation dip it is no secret that across the Front Range not only are our graduates graduating with high marks but our diploma has Integrity our many of
028our college or excuse me high school graduates who go on to pursue two or foure degrees are experiencing some of the highest first year gpas in their college experience and some of the highest persistent rates across the Front Range and thousands of those students have already graduated high school with college courses for free in the bank and many of those students over a thousand are also experiencing work-based learning experiences just last year alone 1,00 students experienced work-based learning in our district our district in our strategic plan has three fundamental priorities literacy ensuring students graduate with options and then we ensure not some but all students feel that their mental health is tended to and that they all feel like they belong and we've made investments in that space and I shared some of the academic
029achievements but I want to share some of the life-saving achievements that I'm very proud to talk about and these achievements belong to this entire Community it's families and their trust it's families who are willing to be vulnerable and talk about some of their life circumstances that they may be going through that may be impacting their children it is nonprofits and other behavioral and social and emotional Partners who are in our community who are coming alongside of us to extend the number of people that are trying to provide types of Lev different types of level of care to the human beings which are our our children our young adults in our community and as people are in our schools from our Mental Health Specialists our social workers our school counselors our principles and assistant principles our
030teachers our bus drivers I can go on and on every single PE every single employee in this district has a part of these results but our students in the past two years are self- reporting at the secondary level that 36% of them have decreased in the number of students planning a suicide attempt a 36% reduction in two years that's life- saving in this community our students rep are reporting a 42% decrease in the number of students who are wanting to hurt themselves without wanting to die in the past 12 months 80% of our students four out of five not only can tell you that if they have a problem but they have a trusted adult to confide in to help solve that problem we have seen a decrease in the number of students over the
031past year who have attempted suicide students are reporting a 41% decrease in the number of students who feel sad or hopeless there is a 48% decrease in the number of students who have seriously considered attempting suicide over the past two years the work is not finished not academically not from a space of belonging but there's a lot to be proud of and as I listen to members of our community talk about the challenge that we are all grappling with I believe what's at the center is we're all fighting to ensure that our children continue to be seen that our children continue to be successful and I'm very proud of that one of the greatest experiences that I have every single year is having a chance in partnership with this community is attending our graduation ceremonies
032and I've made it a point of Pride to never give the same graduation speech twice and my secret to doing that is I meet with seniors and I ask them to tell me about their experience tell me what makes their school special some of them have been in multiple schools in PSD and they can tell that story and they realize that we've been able in partnership with many members of our school district to help find ways for them to achieve success but the question that I centered my conversation with them on this year is what's their legacy how will their graduating class be remembered and as I continue to engage with the community I want us as a governance team as a school dist year to continue to ask ourselves that very same question did
033we have the courage to do what was necessary to sustain the high quality program not just today not just for next year but for the future generations of PSD so they receive an above and beyond experience just like our students are today and not a fraction of that how do we collectively have the courage to identify efficiencies across this system not just in our schools that lead to ensuring that all of our students are continuing to receive the same level of connection and academic Excellence a conversation that is really unsettling this work is really hard is people are not seeing significant financial Savings in school consolidations enclosure and I think from a messaging standpoint we need to do a better job of the health that is actually breathe into its neighboring schools as a result
034of us not having a scarcity of resource but an abundance of resources we've talked courageously across this community about a size Factor adjustment for schools that have a declining enrollment that today is about $6.6 million and tomorrow is most likely to be at least 7 million that dollar amount could very well be invested in other schools to have a robust more robust set of resources more elective teachers more counselors more Mental Health Specialists more instructional literacy coaches more assistant principal we are spreading our resources so so thin that in some instances they're on life support so I want to challenge us that this conversation that we're having today every day across the community and on weekends is not trying to find money in school closures it's trying to ensure that all of our schools are
035sustainable and vibrant for decades to come in realizing there are policy and process decisions that if we don't make those things are not at risk in the future they're at risk now Mr Duffy and I sat in olander elementary school after school yesterday that school is a two trck school which means there are two classes for every grade level there is not an elective teacher I believe at olander elementary today that is at a 100% contract that's not sustainable and it's not because olander isn't amazing it is an amazing school but trying to figure out how do we breathe Health into all of our schools like old Lander so elective teachers aren't having to make a choice of whether they go work in a neighboring School District or stay here there has been lots of
036thoughtful questions around the Integrity of our data and whether none of us have a magic ball to know what the future holds in terms of our demographics and our enrollment none of us but what I can tell you is I'd like for us to reenter our problem in acknowledging that we have over 3,000 empty seats across every one of our elementary schools today that we have across every one of our middle schools about 2500 empty seats today when you look at our high schools our middle school high schools and our K12 comprehensive schools we have approximately another 2500 empty seats today now whether our enrollment declines by 10% in the next 5 years or 4% or 1% the problem is at our doorstep and it is impacting our people and another data point that I
037want to share with you members of the board and members of the community is that this time last year and we all know that we have about 500 students Less in our kindergarten class today than the number that we're about to shake hands graduating as seniors last year to at this point in time we had 1,798 kindergarteners enrolled in PSD schools for the for this current school year as of today going into next year we have 1,26 now I don't want to create any conspiracies we may all be wondering are those people just waiting to see what happens with some of these decisions maybe I don't know if that's 500 families waiting on those particular things I share that data point not to be an alarmist but to recognize that we do have an experience
038our continuing experience declining enrollment at an alarming rate and it will require us to be bold and with take courageous action and I want to just in close acknowledge that what makes all of this even more difficult even more challenging is that when there are misconceptions introduced that may in some instances all become rumors and they begin to gain traction not really understanding what's real and what's not real and I want to take a brief moment if it's okay with members of the board to address a couple of those misconceptions one of those misconceptions is my personal and professional involvement with a bipartisan nonprofit organization named Chiefs for change Chiefs for change is a network for superintendent and aspiring superintendent that I'm incredibly proud that I was recruited to be a part of four years
039ago as a result of having professional executive experiences in three of the largest metropolitan school districts in America we focus on conversations as a network of superintendant focused on safety ensuring all students have access to high quality education we spend lots of time talking about teacher preparation high quality instructional materials Career and Technical education opportunities and today as I collaborate with members of that Network quarterly we're very focused on artificial intelligence and the future implications that it has on School District policy process and ways of work I enjoy being a part of a network of superintendents because in this District I'm the only superintendent and I believe that that you have charged me as my seven supervisors to continue to Benchmark this District across other districts across the country to make sure that we're learning
040about best practice to make sure that we're incredibly efficient with we're resources and we learn from other people's mistakes I continue to do that I want to make abundantly clear that I make absolutely no pledges or promises to Chiefs for change for my work in PSD I want to be super clear that I am not paid by any organization like Chiefs for change the only paycheck that I receive and I'm proud of this is from PSD and I also want to ackowledge that our district as a member of PSD two years ago was awarded approximately $167,000 from that Organization for a grant to help improve our safety processes in this District leveraging Technologies and working with other school districts to see from a policy standpoint what measures can we be taken knowing every single year
041there are casualties and mass tragedies that exist across school systems what can we be doing to optimize our processes and our way of that work we realized after two years of participating with that grant that we didn't learn what we thought we were going to and so we walked away from the grant opportunity but I want to be really clear money that came in from this school system from Chiefs for change was to participate in that effort and that money then went back out into the system with a technology company called Eagle ey Ed and seven of our schools I believe participated in that pilot and I'm grateful for the principles and assistant principles who stepped outside of the box to try to figure out how to leverage those Technologies in new and innovative ways
042a part of and I'm going to go to a secondary misconception and I promise this will be the last one that I'll address this evening is that many be people believe that as a result of my membership with Chiefs for change is that I am also an advocate for expanding Charter Schools I have said in this boardroom before that I am a pro-charter Advocate which I believe as a superintendent of 54 schools five which are district sponsored Charter Schools I should be an advocate for not just some schools but all being pro-charter does not mean you're anti-traditional public school so I want to be very clear about that and my association with Chiefs for change also includes colleagues from our superintendent uh in Boulder Valley our superintendent in gy our current Comm Commissioner of CDE
043and our former Commissioner of CDE we are not secretly conspiring to try to figure out how to Charter eyesee the state of Colorado in fact I want you to be very clear with my intentions and this would be a board level decision but it is not my intentions to offload any of our properties to charter schools in fact we have a tremendous amount of internal need for facilities in fact we have a school less than a half a mile down the road PCA that deserves a facility upgrade and if we're not considering prioritizing that in that process that would be in my opinion respectfully a mistake we have transition programs for some of our marginalized students who are working on Workforce Development skills who are housed in a facility outside of Rocky Mountain High School
044that is not fit for those students or for any students for that matter and so prioritizing space for those students should be a priority we have early childhood development needs we have transition pathway needs we have professional development needs the expansion of our Career and Technical education is and the expansion of the trades is going to require us to be incredibly thoughtful around how we use our facilities moving forward and would be my intent for any facility that becomes available for us to consider as a governance team prioritizing our internal needs to not exacerbate an enrollment issue with other types of schools so I want to be fundamentally clear about that the issues that we're grappling and I'll say this in closing are both emot emotional and we're trying to find logic and reason and
045I believe wisdom lies at the center and wherever you are in that Continuum please know that it's okay I live on that Continuum every single day and I'm trying to F find myself in a you Center myself of trying to find wisdom in what we're hearing trying to find wisdom in what we're learning from each other and I really believe that there's a bright future for this District because we do want to seek wisdom wisdom together we do want to build hard solutions that are necess necessary to ensure that our programs and schools are sustainable in the future together and I'm excited that as a member of this District that we're going to have a very thoughtful conversation around that tonight so thank you thank you very much superintendent Kingsley at this point in time
046we will go um to the community comment section of the board meeting that would be perfect thank you we're just going to take a two-minute pause while we fill the refill the gallery here for those who are watching e e all right are we set just going to fill five more chairs okay we'll just thank you all right we're going to have a few more people coming in as we speak all right welcome to the community comment section of the board meeting the board desires to hear the viewpoints of all stakeholders including students employees parents Guardians and community members public comment is designed to address issues not personalities or Personnel matters please keep your concerns and comments focused upon the district and appropriate for a K12 audience please note that the board does not generally
047respond to remarks made during Community comment our lack of response should not be construed to mean that we agree or disagree with what is said or with the description or interpretation of events as presented by any speaker further even if some remarks may be factually inaccurate we generally choose not to respond to correct the record here because formal board meetings are not the time or place for a back and forth dialogue as we begin this community comment session let us model for our entire Community how to listen and how to interact respectfully even with those with whom we disagree for we all have the students best interests at heart so this opportunity uh for public comment is for members of the community who registered to speak by the designated deadline those people will be called
048on to make remarks in the order that they signed up and each speaker will be allowed 3 minutes to address the board so we are going to start off by welcoming Danny Lawrence welcome to the podium thank you for the opportunity over the course of the consolidation conversation something continues to baffle me and I think it needs to be said special education was never intended to be a destination the ideology behind federal law is for inclusion to exist in all places in all schools so no doubt psd's strategy of segregation and the manipulation of ILS programs is causing huge complications when the school that you are speaking of consolidating are the places that you sold to parents as the best program for their child it's a massive bait and switch the places with specialized better
049trained staff and from the sounds of it dun Lopez and olander have made intentional efforts to help educate children to to empathize with their disabled peers you can bet then that those parents facing consolidation have every right to be panicking at the thought of their kids in school populations that are unprepared to receive them the students of the integrated Services Department are an afterthought to this district and to you as a board it's evident in the declining graduation rates and your lack of action if you aren't actively including then you are passively excluding and we need something more than a statement of the obvious but thank you for saying it Mr Shen Bower This is BS with the knowledge of a looming consolidation effort the board short of its newly elected members used its time
050and personal email addresses to create legislation to decrease public access to information house bill 24296 is an attack specifically on the disability Community because in time-bound complaint systems access to Kora information is the only opportunity for defending a student's civil rights why pursue that when you're circumventing Kora anyway as I have been traveling around the state making public comments and opposition to this legislation we have picked up support from all 15 chapters of the Ark co- kids Colorado seak committee and Copa the Council of parent attorneys and Advocates and I want to offer a word of caution people are noticing and reputations are taking a hit and consolidation conversations aren't helping and finally I wanted to offer you my congratulations your attorneys were successful in removing my son's IEP eligibility with no cure or change
051in his medical diagnosis for the first time since he was 3 years old he no longer has an IEP no brail instruction or orientational Mobility Services and you did it in front of him in fact demanding his presence a 16-year-old child who is now profoundly traumatized and distrustful of all the adults at a school going against the office of special education programming guidance while we had no lawyer for 4 hours with your attorney at the table what a proud moment for everybody must be great to know that you gutted my family right before my son's junior year and arguably the most important year for post-secondary educational success the constant in this District that I can always count on is the rampant retaliation clearly something that this Administration values and the board supports thank you thank
052you next up we have Kate green welcome hi there my name is Kate green a senior at Rocky with exactly 29 days until my final class in this District I've gotten into all nine schools I've applied to this year and I've accumulated almost $200,000 worth of scholarship money I moved here 3 years ago so none of the schools um I've attended over my long educational Journey or on any of the closure lists but I do know how much these schools here mean to the communities they serve for example when I started meeting people here the first question that was always asked of me was what middle school I went to and to be honest that isn't like anywhere else I've ever lived I also feel compelled to say that this board isn't like any other
053school board I've ever seen two weeks ago superintendent Kingsley stated that there raises given to cabinet members were to promote gender equality to shrink the pay gap between men and women you all practically bragged about it not realizing how offensive it was um in the face of the hundreds of female teachers who see to lose their jobs under consolidation at the same time you all are in my opinion responsible for what I understand to be a $40 million deficit two members of this board have served for the past eight years and quite frankly both of you in light of this statement if not all of you should be ashamed you should be ashamed to use this situation as a deflection you should most importantly though be ashamed that it happened and I presume is still
054happening on a districtwide level for as long as it has 8 years if you've been on this District on this board for 8 years and didn't foresee a $40 million deficit if you couldn't have done your due diligence up until last year to make sure employees were being fairly compensated within your own cabinet if you like Rob peton were comfortable kicking the metaphorical can of these students Futures down the road you should be ashamed I never been under a school district with such a lack of Integrity within its own board my arrival at this conclusion however isn't a new one I assume each of you are familiar with my mother who spoke previous to me for the past 3 years I've watched this board ignore my family which is why I would like you all
055to know what happened on March 26th because your in action will affect my entire family for the foreseeable future on March 26th I received a $124,000 scholarship from my dream School the George Washington University in DC that was the same day that you insured my brother Sawyer would have to work 10 times as hard to reach his dreams that same day you took away his entire IEP you took away the reward of how truly hard I had worked throughout my educational journey and how hard he has worked to get scraps from all of you in one single day today I'm here to remind you all that whether through direct action or in action this board creates all of its own problems it seems and it seems hard pressed for actual Solutions I'm here today to
056remind you that you have 29 days left and you all were complicit in failing me my brother and my brother in action has consequences and your apathy continues to fail students thank you you thank you next app we have Jeff after Heidi welcome can you restart the clock please thanks my name is Jeff off Heidi from Wellington Colorado tonight I want to raise a critical issue about conduct of our school board we're currently confronted with a troubling Prospect of hb1 1296 introduced by representative Kathy Kip which proposes to amend Kora our primary tool to hold elected officials accountable this bill threatens to curtail public access to records and label individuals as vexatious to harm those who depend on transparency to assert their rights it has come to public knowledge that actions by this board may
057have compromised the Integrity of our community's right to transparency and I don't say that lightly such misconduct is particularly egregious as it directly affects the most vulnerable Among Us namely the disabled Community my research into this bill's Origins has uncovered disturbing practices for example I discovered indications of board members using applications like signal for communicating with legislators or legislator Kathy Kip sidest stepping the scrutiny of public records requests I also discovered board members blatantly using personal email addresses to operate outside of Kora one particular board member emailed the Colorado Association of school boards and wrote quote I try to use my Gmail for casby Communications in case any Kora issues arise since the current view is that casby Communications are not subject to Kora unquote on August 16 2023 discussions about a COR resolution involving
058Kip PSD legal councel PSD lobbyist Ann barcas and multiple board members had plans via email for the lobbyist to draft the resolution these actions suggest a concealed agenda and a breach of the Public's Trust on August 22nd all board members unanimously voted for casby res the casby resolution to amend the core law this is despite the fact that two of our board members had known affiliations and conflicts of interest with casby and didn't recuse himself of the vote and they also didn't uh read off the uh the casby resolutions at that meeting on September 4th uh 2023 casby resolutions were circulated among a select few including representative Cath Kip prior to any public disclosure or discussion their actions undermine Democratic processes and then moreover the day after HB 1296 was introduced Anne barcus invited psd's
059legal council to a stakeholder meeting led by Kip such a selection process reeks of exclusivity and privilege the sequence of events paints a clear picture it's highly likely the board's conduct set the stage for H hb1 1296 not through transparent public engagement but through covert operations and selective communication this isn't about policy or procedure this is about the people it serves and effects and your actions risk eroding trust that we place in our institutions and threaten the well-being of our students my final message is to Mr Duffy havalda and Shen Bower it might seem obvious but if the board president instructs you to do so I implore you not to use messaging applications or your personal email addresses to conduct the people's business thank you thank you next up we have Priscilla Mueller thank you
060welcome NOP okay Priscilla's not here thank you uh next up we have Sarah Olen welcome I'm Sarah Olen mother of two children in the district I've been to several listening sessions and I'd like to synthesize some of the themes overwhelmingly parents have transitioned from clawing at a spot in the lifeboats to realizing that we all need to row together in other words what happens in this process matters to all of us no matter where our children attend school you've heard this process is rushed opaque and has neither the tools and information including objective reproducible data a transportation analysis projected Exodus to the Charter network and cost benefit analysis of each School in each scenario necessary for a good outcome nor even a definition of what a good outcome might be beyond the modest Savings of
0611.5% of the overall budget perhaps consider what one District special educator said last Tuesday that the district exists in service of student outcomes can you guarantee this process will produce a plan that betters student outcomes one parent called this process a stress test for children's resilience another cautioned that we should try to solve more problems than we create what you're hearing is that process matters as a supply chain expert stated last Tuesday in puts matter for the outputs this relationship is the foundation of Education an appropriate environment equipped with the right tools helmed by a responsive teacher who matches children's needs with meaningful resources all this matters to outcomes simply repeating that the problem we're trying to address is quote thorny doesn't mean you abdicate responsibility for a poor outcome time resources and expertise ought
062to be allocated in relation to the difficulty of the problem let's look through an educational lens you expect your teachers to match process you expect your teachers match process to desired outcome that they teach with a clear objective in mind and assess the success of their teaching by a measurable outcome with evidence-based metrics this is good teaching the steering committee's rubric does not reflect these requirements the programming rub rubric says for example that scenarios should quote maintain educational program continuity how are you going to Define and measure continuity and for whom Equity considerations must expand Beyond free and reduced lunch numbers which is just one way to identify atrisk students how will you systematically identify and take into account in measurable ways our ILS students English language Learners students of color and newcomers to this
063country the equity guidelines include vague descriptions but not definitions or ways of measuring the proposed goal the rubric needs to be built around clearly defined objective measurable outcomes Guided by cited research and based on evidence a word on the teachers and staff we love our schools because we love the teachers and staff who create a community in which our children are known and loved ultimately we are a community by definition our actions affect one another this is the power and burden of existing in relationship to One Another We're United in our desire for you to do everything you can to protect public education for our children are you here in the service of public education thank [Applause] you next up we have Kelsey suti welcome thank you can before the time starts can they introduce
064their first names or no um okay okay so they're not not not giving us permission we're just going to start that side side oh you're going to right here sh thank you and welcome thank you thank you hi I'm Kelsey sliff I'm a proud parent and teacher at olander school for Project based learning who stood in front of a patent attorney to present a sales pitch all of you okay um who gave tours at our living organism Museum all of you hey who performed original poetry on stage at Oldtown Square sure was who sneeze makes sof cheer who participates in circles who leads brain boosts who would pretend to fall asleep in his bean bag only to grin when we asked who was snoozing who gives instructions to our class this is what the integration
065of Project based learning and social emotional learning in an inclusive environment olander's ILS program integrated learning report is 30 years in the making dedicated classified and certified teachers have worked tirelessly to get our program to where it is today our olander team has been specifically hired for this Talent of blending social emotional learning project based learning and inclusion in this opportunity for anti- ableism for our kids increasing complex medical and behavioral needs could have given easy reason to exclude and self-contain not us we welcomed every bit of training to ensure all kids feel included valued and safe my fourth grade class readed novel titled out of my mind the main character was cerebral paly had her first experience in a general education classroom with typical peers in fifth grade my class was appalled and disgusted
066and imagine their stunned Expressions when I told them that this is a common practice in our educational system and even in PSD olander students don't know any different than inclusivity it's at the elementary level when Young Learners are absorbing the values and character traits of the humans they will grow to be it's at this critical stage when we can teach them that all people have strengths and all people have value we are Crea the community we hope the world will emulate and it starts with these kids ILS is woven into the fabric of olander pulling one thread will disassemble the entire strand do you want your consolidation decisions to retrograde opportunities until she's 40 until he's 50 IAM kendi teaches anti-racism olander teaches anti- abolism it lives in our hearts transfers to our community and
067it changes the lives of us all fly high ospre thank you say thank you than [Applause] you high play all right thank you everyone next up we have Shelley Wells welcome my name is Shelly and I stand before you today as a concerned PSD parent educator and a staunch advocate for the well-being and future success of all students the proposal for school consol consolidations in our district has undoubtedly sparked a firestorm of apprehension and discontent and rightfully so as we na navigate this tumultuous TR terrain is it is imperative that we address the plethora of valid concerns that have been raised regarding this rushed and flawed process first and foremost the entire process has been undeniably rushed the haste with which decisions are being made leaves little room for thorough evaluation and consideration of Alternatives
068more over moreover the data used from flow analytics has been called into question particularly when contrasted with the comprehensive insights provided by our state demographer such discrepancies raise serious doubts about the validity and right reliability of information guiding these very pivotal decisions this isn't the first time Flo analytics has given skewed data Jeff Co used flow analytics and instead of saving money through consolidations it actually cost them $45 million equally distressing are potential repercussions on our most vulner vulnerable populations including special education students and English language Learners these students rely on consistency and stability yet they stand to Bear the brunt of any school closures or upheavals furthermore it is disconcerting that consolidations are being considered before exploring cuts at the administrative level the substantial increases in Pay of our superintendent and cabinet members alongside
069the creation of so many new administrative positions over the past few years ra rais valid questions about fiscal responsibility especially in the face of declining enrollment and comp and proposed school closures also the justification for these pay raises under the guise of competitive competitiveness with wealthier districts like Boulder Valley and Cherry Creek does not hold up under scrutiny these districts are not contemplating school closures and the additional perks and benefits bestowed upon administrative positions only serve to hide the true extent of their comp compensation in conclusion the repercussions of hasty and ill-conceived school consolidations are profound we must pause re-evaluate and explore Alternatives that prioritize the well-being and success of all students at the very least I ask you to pause such Monumental decisions for one more year give the community time to say yes
070to a mill or Bond let's give it a chance I also ask the the board take a hard look at expend expenditures using outside firms with the hu huge additions to the administration why should we be spending money using outside folks look carefully at who benefits from these expenditures let us not sacrifice the soul of our education system system on the altar of expediency and misguided priorities thank you for your time and consideration thank you next up we have Liz R Schneider not here okay uh next up we have Sarah Bartell welcome hi I'm Sarah Bartell and like many PSD parents my partner and I have tried to understand the decisions facing the district and I appreciate the work that lies ahead we don't have all the information we don't have access to the experts
071that will contribute data to measure these options and identify the best solutions for our communities now and future thank you for sharing that power with us in this way I'm here in my personal capacity but I work in public health and Equity including how resources like good jobs access to care Civic cic engagement and schools work together to create opportunities for all people to live their healthiest lives I've supported cross- sector teams in dozens of us communities to infuse their work with the full range of factors touching the issues they're addressing I've witnessed how essential it is to balance investments in Direct Services with longer term investments farther Upstream which provide as yet unmeasured yet valuable benefits to the quality and potential poal of our district for example cutting back our best educational opportunities which
072may have narrow short-term but broad long-term benefits in favor of having the most seats at the lowest cost does an injustice not only to current participants but to the long-term health and sustainability of the district so I'd Ur urge the district to better strike the balance between current costs and long-term benefits and long-term success by gathering turn on investment data for example one neighborhood schools as hubs for Community activation with measurable Civic engagement benefits community and neighborly care supports especially for younger children of Working Families safety and natural space resources housing stability and cultural richness and diversity two long-term gains when high achieving schools can share learnings pilot programming improve Workforce pipelines and confer reputation benefits districtwide three shared use opportunities including large contracts to generate income from underutilized spaces while providing for example community
073and local industry connections Workforce training food system efficiencies and summer care and nutrition opportunities for kids among others and any educational consultant worth their salt will have their own to add if asked for their inclusion in their calculus uh benefits like these might be overshadowed by immediate financials but over a longer trajectory we owe it to our students now and future to weigh these Community factors with their full weight thank you thank you next up we have Lisa trimmer welcome good evening uh my name is Lisa trimmer I'm a parent of four children in PSD um I want to say uh give us the numbers we want line by line item by item how much will each of these individual consolidations or moves or closures save and how much better yet what will they cost
074transportation teacher training for new programs what jobs will we lose what programs will we lose and where will they go we and by we I mean all of us the board the steering committee and the public have so little information in the real scope of this situation there is so so much to consider that has not yet been considered why the rush on this process you proposed plans in October changed course almost completely after push back tasked a 37 person volunteer committee to address the issue do you not remember how cumbersome group projects can be they they gave the public new proposals in March we jammed Community feedback into a few weeks and we expect a viable wellth thought out solution in May most ill-fated reality show relationships last longer than this process has taken
075so far to be clear that's not a long time the lack of consideration of children in the ILS program in this process is quite frankly appalling do you know how long it takes a family to go through the IEP process much longer than this march to June timeline that this current consolidation process is operating on and that's only if things go smoothly these children and their families deserve the utmost care and consideration in any and all plans moving forward and right now they appear to be an afterthought please allow for more time in the very important work of making the best decisions for this District this is not a brand new problem this is not a right now emergency and it need not be rushed thank you thank you next up we have Casey riling
076welcome hello my name is Casey ring and I thank you for the opportunity to address you tonight I've so far attended three separate listening sessions as well as the board listening session last week at those four sessions I came in as a concerned citizen with facts figures that show consolidating any neighborhood school would have long-term negative effects that would do direct harm to our public school system and the children it serves tonight I come to you as a mother a mother of a kindergartener who loves her classmates and teacher and every day still stops by her preschool classroom to give her previous teacher a hug a kindergarten who made a comment that she can't wait until her kids can go to Lopez so she can still see Miss bird every day I come to you
077as a mother of a second grader who started preschool in the middle of covid at a different School in the district a kindergardener who was bullied in kindergarten but has found a new safe home at Lopez a home where his friends respect each other and his teachers push him to be the best kid he can be I come to you as a mother who lives within a 10-minute walk from her Children's School when I pick up my kids in the afternoon they take turns with my headphones and sing Taylor Swift so loud everyone in the neighborhood can probably hear them they can hear them singing because we are enveloped in the neighborhood as we walk home a neighborhood School allows for this we see our friends and Neighbors on the sidewalk at the park in
078their yards we stop and chat and watch each other's kids we meet up for playdates at the school playground on the weekends neighborhood schools like Lopez are more than buildings filled with numbers it is the lifeblood of a neighborhood it Fosters a community that reaches far beyond fifth grade my neighbors all sent their kids to Lopez they are all grown and out of the house now but several of them came to the listening session on Tuesday and filled out the survey because even though they haven't had a direct connection to Lopez in many years they understand what neighborhood schools do to the community and what Lopez does for ours every day when my children leave me for school we say two things to each other I love you with my heart and make good choices
079as stewards of our school as our elected leaders and as their chosen superintendent when it comes to the schools we all love with our hearts please make good choices thank you next up we have Jenny lutk welcome when plans for school consolidation was first announced I couldn't believe it I love Lopez I love the neighborhood community around it I know that typically when we have reached these sta this stage these talks are just or formality however I want to model for my children what good Civic engagement is highlight my own concerns and learn what others have to say about this difficult subject as a concerned parent I attended the listening session at Rocky Mountain High and heard the fear and frustration from so many parents and teachers throughout the district disbelief turned to anger as
080I saw schools being pitted against each other due to previous poor planning I heard so many viable alternative Solutions budget cuts for bloated executive salaries moving away from physical textbooks at the secondary school level putting HVAC updates to a special vote to offload costs there was also a discussion about what would happen down the road as the population west of town changed we are currently an aging population but these things have a tendency to move in Cycles taking us snapshot right now and planning for 10 years down the road is my opic the most concerning piece of information I learned is that there has been a push at the school board level and with the superintendent for greater collaboration with a charter school model because of this I do not trust their motives for closing
081these elementary schools my concern for these schools does not come from Fear of the unknown as a healthcare worker I see strong correlations that it's to what has already happened in our Health Care system and is now coming to pter I'm sure everyone here has been frustrated at some point by Rising costs and difficulty receiving the care and resources that is needed for yourself or your loved ones this is due to healthcare opening the door to outside interests corporations and hedge funds in order to streamline and become more efficient or more profitable I ask everyone here to reflect on this if we Outsource management of our children's education we are giving our hard-earned money to a middleman who will then decide how it is used of course they will take a fee for doing this
082we also don't need to understand all the costs involved either just trust that they have our children's best interest at heart can the school board guarantee that these schools on The Chopping Block won't be handed over to Charter Schools as a cost-saving measure I'm not okay with this thank you thank you next up we have Corey cineo welcome good evening I'm an sinabro and I'm here with my husband Corey sinabro we've come to this board meeting because Liberty common school has requested a renewal of their Charter and we seek to make PSD board aware of our concerns on Friday dur on a Friday during April of 2019 a rumor spread through the Liberty 8th grade claiming that our son was threat threatening violence toward the school with reports of an un with reports of an
083unsubstantiated third or fourth hand rumor the Liberty common security director csed a false confession out of our eighth grade son the security director told our son the exact confession he was requesting our son assured the security director he didn't make these statements or any such threat the security director lied to our son and threatened him our son was told that his confession would never leave the four walls of the room and the security director claimed that he had three Witnesses who heard him make this threat both of these are blatant lies our son was told that if he just confessed he could go home but he refused to confess the police and and if he refused to confess the police would be called the security director then pressured and intimidated my husband and I to
084leave him alone with our son regretfully we cave to this pressure and he got our son to make a confession for something he didn't do the SEC security director immediately called the police and filed a defamatory and slanderous police report on our eighth grader the following Monday Tuesday the security director and the principal interviewed more than 20 kids finding no substance to the rumor the Liberty Administration chose not to share the results of these interviews with the police or the da we only found out about them four months later when the principal told us in September the da and the police did their own investigations which validated our son's innocence and the court dropped the charges we need the PSD board to understand due to the Liberty's unethical staff lack of policy and un willingness
085to follow their own core values and an un substantiated rumor led to a criminal prosecution of an eighth grade boy as our son told the Headmaster directly during our meeting with him it's great that Liberty has these capstones of prudence Justice and Temperance but the staff needs to be held to those standards we presented our grievance to the principal also with the Headmaster twice during Liberty board meetings they chose not to take any action on our case however shortly after our second meeting with the board during their presentation the security director was no longer employed by Liberty we are not here to rebuke the teachers or families at Liberty we love Liberty for N9 years and are thankful for our time there however if this is character to be Charter been renewed it needs to
086be included more boundaries and oversight from the PSD board we Advocate that Liberty have a clear plan of action when threat of violence is reported this plan needs to be approved by the PST Behavioral Health Team and the local police staff members should never be allowed alone with students and police tactics should never be used on students Liberty board meetings need PSD oversight in closing we are here because we don't want to see another student or family go through what we endured at liberty no one is above the law not even Liberty administrators Liberty needs more oversight and the administrators need to practice what they preach thank you for your time thank [Applause] you next we have Dr Mary beath regali Oiler welcome thank you I'm here as a mother of two children in PSD
087and I'm also a child psychologist in the community and I serve families at all kinds of schools and PSD I've had some concerns for the past few years about cell phone policy in our district and cell phone use that we are seeing in schools I reviewed the PSD policy that was adopted in 2010 and to be honest the language is quite strong however in my experience I've seen that it's not consistently implemented across schools the policy actually gives the authority to each principal to decide how they're going to implement and enforce the policy the PSD has adopted I can test that between schools it varies widely about how students use uh technology in the schools how cell phones are used and how teachers within that school actually enforce rules a student in one school might
088have a teacher that requires all students to turn in their cell phones when they enter the door and they might go to a The Next Period and be able to have their cell phone in hand the research is clear and we've actually had a great number of research studies has come out since 2010 and I think that the writing is on the wall in terms of how cell phone technology is impacting learning and attention cell phone use um some Studies have actually shown that cell phone use in school can actually mimic symptoms of ADHD including inattention distractability restlessness this impact is actually greater for those students who are already identified as having ADHD or students who have already been experiencing depression or students who have been having trouble in school with their behaviors already Common
089Sense Media came out with a research study in 2023 that found that that teens in cell phone use is on the rise with teens receiving 240 notifications on average a day with one4 of those occurring during the school day on average students spend about 43 minutes on their phone with some students spending as much as 6 hours on their phone during the school day the United Nations educational and cultural agency conducted a study that found that responding to an emoji can take 10 seconds and yet redirecting sustained attention to learning takes up to 20 minutes so if you think about 60 notifications during the school day and it takes 20 minutes to be able to redirect your attention that is significant loss of learning my concern is that there is a policy in place but
090it's not being implemented consistently across schools I'm imploring that the board and superintendent Kings be able to revisit the the current policy and how it's implemented across schools thank you thank you next up we have Heather S uh CLE forgive me for that welcome hi my name is Heather silty I've lived and worked in this community for the last 15 years today I stand before for you to advocate for the preservation of Lopez Elementary a Cornerstone of our community Lopez isn't just a school it's a beacon of diversity and inclusivity where every child regardless and these might just be what buzzwords to some but they're not listen to this every child regardless of financial status ethnicity background or ability is not just a number but a valued member of a tight community this didn't happen
091overnight y'all we can't put all these kids together and think that this Magic's going to happen right away this is a lot of professionals working together through a lot of time to figure out how to make this work for this kind of diversity Lopez is is very different and a lot of these other schools that I've got up here to talk they are the same I'm here for all the little faces I've come to love the each individual face that isn't here to speak for themselves today because what they are doing is being kids but some of these kids are up against a lot and Lopez has done a wonderful job showing up for them let's not fix what isn't broken growing up in a private school I was wary of sending my little girl
092to a public school having experienced the impersonal nature of overcrowded institutions however Lopez shattered my preconceptions of public schools here children are not lost in the crowd they thrive in an environment that Fosters individual growth and celebrates diversity I've watched highly esteemed colleagues move to this community and Rave about the education their kids are receiving in this public school this makes me proud PSD and this should board should be proud as well will our schools become overcrowded if we do this will my child become just a number will Valu be taught at our new school the way Lopez does it so well it makes me proud that all kids in our community are getting this opportunity due to our phenomenal Public School System closing Lopez would be more than just shuttering a building it would
093be extinguishing a vital flame in our community dimming a the beacon of inclusivity and opportunity that defines Fort Collins let us stand together to ensure that Lopez Elementary along with all other neighboring schools continues to thrive not overpopulating schools and dispersing communities today we are truly educating every child every day and I'm proud will this be our future if we make this change and I'm really trusting in you guys to think about all of the details here let's not make a fast move on this it's really great to say I grew up in a private school and I was super proud of the values I had and the fact that my parents could afford to send me to that school but all these kids that my daughter is learning from that are coming from all
094these different walks of life and are getting the same opportunity that she has had that I had growing up I'm super impressed by what you all have done what this community has done and it has changed the way that I feel about public schools but let's not be like some of the public schools that we see and we could easily change what we have grown in do that thank you thank you so much next up we have Aon Grace Turnbull welcome can I wait for good good evening my name is Grace Turnbull I am a mom of a second grader and soon to be preschooler at our neighborhood school I went to 10 different schools in my K through 12 education when my partner and I decided to settle down we decided on the neighborhood
095with the school right across the park for the first time in my life I have a community a safety Network and stability I have chosen this we have chosen this for our children I understand there's a budget crisis I get that but when there's an imbalance in a budget you look at the source of the problem and come up with multiple Solutions you also must account for all other Associated costs for example when you close a school what are going to be the new traffic patterns you need a traffic engineer for that what are the costs of refitting an elementary school for young adults well a contractor will need to be hired to price that out and then be paid to replace the tiny toilets how much does it cost to pave a playground to
096build a parking lot a civil engineer could price that out for you what are the costs to add more bus routes and drivers to shuttle students to another school there's already a bus driver shortage are you guys going to drive the buses and then what are the environmental impacts does city council know that you want to transport children outside of their safe routes to school zones last I heard city council and the city manager have no idea what PSD is up to I understand that they're a separate entity Etc but we're still part of the city I don't have time to mention the implications of the social emotional mental trauma of everyone involved that has not been considered isn't mental health and belonging one of the board's priorities in Strat strategic planning the school I
097represent has a culture of leader and me a world-renowned program it teaches our leaders goal setting collaboration and emotional maturity the building is designed for ILS thus for inclusivity and Equity the playground has been specially designed for our students with special needs 44% of the students qualify for free and reduced lunch we only bust 10% and we also host global leaders Inc which is a food pantry as service members to the taxpayer of the district you are elected with an obligation to best serve your school community and we are telling you loudly and repeatedly to slow your rooll there are so many other things to consider and you've only come up with one solution to close schools if there's a budgetary crisis then consider dipping into the reserve fund if the funds are being prop
098unproperly allocated demand an audit thank you for your time thank you next up we have neie mdom welcome okay my name is NE ver mcdom my nickname is neie I am the parent of a second grader at Lopez I am the daughter of an immigrant I'm Middle Eastern I a single mother and I make well below the area median income I know that you have been inundated with data so I am going to share my perspective instead so several years ago we were living in Douglas County this was not good a good fit for our family um my son was not happy at the program and dreaded going and um it was not a welcoming and inclusive community there was a very large socioeconomic disparity between our family and the rest of the school and
099this is um a place where I knew I did not want to raise my child I made the decision to uproot our lives and move back to Fort Collins I chose to move to this neighborhood in particular for its walkability its friendly and warm neighbors and it's good schools and it has delivered in Spades Lopez has been amazing we fit in here it is diverse both both racially and socioeconomically this uh neighborhood and the school are the center of our Lives we have built a close-nit community with fellow students teachers and parents and I'm so grateful to call this place home so when it was announced that Lopez may be on the choing chopping block it was devastating I know that the other schools that he may go to are very good schools but this
100situation is less than ideal I have been grieving the potential last of our school and our community we have worked so hard to get to where we are and now it is out of my control and in your hands so I want to ask you know there just questions and I know this has been brought up but like you know can we consider all the information and not just the financial costs you know how will this impact our teachers and our staff what is transportation going to look like how is this going to affect traffic you know there's already busing shortages how is this expected to be done in such a short timeline how will blending different communities with children from different socioeconomic backgrounds look like what are the impacts to mental health especially post
101pandemic before you alter our schools our communities and our lives please consider all the data and all the impacts thank you thank you next up we have Sabrina herck welcome a week and a half ago Kingsly put out a public announcement about Tyler's Anella that was visible only to the parts of the public that yall wanted to see it let's talk about it quote a year ago our community was shaken by the actions of a former employee unquote okay cool we're a year in and we're finally getting public announcements prior to the public demanding answers we're improving quote first and foremost I want to expressed our deepest sympathies to the victims and our families unquote I mean you could have told us that two hours earlier when you were at the sentencing hearing with us
102instead of avoiding eye contact but okay quote a decisive ruling was made today on quote I wouldn't call it decisive but I guess you could call me bias since I was one of the people asking the judge to throw out the insult to my daughter that was that plead deal but moving on quote I want to be clear our priority is our students unquote it's certainly Wayne thorns and Jennifer Randall's priority I'm not sure about the rest of you quote we have implemented additional measures to ensure our district is a safe haven for Learning and growth unquote too bad they aren't functioning is designed and your chief operations officer trash talks them to District committees quote The District's Human Resources protocols prohibit the hiring of individuals with any con conviction related to child abuse or
103neglect unquote well that's news when exactly did that become policy back in May you were saying you had no reason not to hire Zella in August you claimed that you were forced to hire him inquiring minds would like to know if Common Sense became District policy before or after judge McDonald called you out to your face quote we recognize trust has been broken and we're dedicated to earning back your trust unquote you've spent a year hearing from me about how about continued broken trust so here's some starting places to regain trust that you haven't had a chance to ignore yet one give blind kids their IEPs back enough said there two make sure that whatever happens with this consolidation that buildings with good disability programs are taken off the chopping block disabled kids have spent
104the last year learning that Fort Collins justice system thinks that they deserve less than 10% of Justice don't let their next lesson be that PSD thinks they deserve less than 10% of an education thank you next up we have uh Kate Bedford welcome hi thank you for having me um so my name is Kate Bedford I'm an architect and an instructor at CSU and I'm here again to talk about the consolidation scenarios uh I'm proud to be a part of a community that's looking beyond the effects to our individual lives now um but focusing on questions about the good of the greater District Community um I would argue that Equity is the most important issue relating to that greater good uh though it's also the most in inadequately addressed I think right now I understand
105that Equity can be a complicated subject and that it can be a struggle to understand what makes an equitable solution here are some things that I don't think are Equitable um first one is focusing on preserving what are called high demand programs that require Choice applications or an application process or require families driving students across the district um though they're are great fit for some families they these programs may not be accessible to all socio economic classes however neighborhood schools by Nature are accessible they're also high demand given that um almost 70% of PSD students attend neighborhood schools I think ignoring the intersection of geography and socioeconomics is also not Equitable so in other words removing neighborhood schools and areas areas where lower income families live is not equ Equitable uh something else it's not
106also not Equitable solutions that might seem beneficial at first to the public at large while the result if we look more closely disadvantages less affluent populations who simply do not speak as loudly the district's longrange planning website assures us of Equitable Solutions but I've not been able to find justification of equity with the scenario proposals thus far it also states that the superintendent and PSD staff have provided information and resources to the steering committee and to the board um things like the equity index free and reduced lunch statistics there's a mention of household income also but it's not clear how these have been taken into account I think that the community would appreciate having Equity justifications uh for both the current scenarios and any future scenarios giving planning and GIS vacancies in the district uh
107the absence of collaboration with our cities and towns it's not clear to me how the superintendent staff would know where our most vulnerable families live or how they could have provided information on um Equity of access so lastly I just want to thank those of you around this table sorry I'll be quick um who are taking action in response to our community's concerns questioning the data scrutinizing the budget and smartly thinking about Creative Solutions a few weeks ago in a meeting with an unnamed director I expressed my concerns about the lack of focus on Equity saying but what about the kids of lower socioeconomic status in neighborhood schools whose parents can't be present for this process um who don't have a voice how do we protect them and that director said that's who I ran
108for it gave me hope and I hope you all can join thank you [Applause] and last lastly we have Aaron McGrew oh I'm sorry Laura my my apologies Laura Ray I know apologies about that Laura no problem welcome thank you hello everybody thanks for listening to me I was at one of your previous sessions um I'll try to make this quick so you know I think we've tried to establish that um you know a lot of the data that we're making these projections on are are based on sort of the covid years well what does that mean um you know to your operating budget you know that's I I recognize that that's not incredibly helpful so you know I've gone through your financial report it's pretty extensive um and I do have some suggestions on
109how to uh increase your operating cost um and reduce some of the spending and expenditures so and absolutely nothing personal any body but uh you know uh I I have the uh salary schedule here um and what I can see is that you know we're pretty much talking about a 5.5 million um annual deficit right we know that's probably going to be for two years uh based on the covid data so you know how do we lessen that um and then also probably cover any excess with the mill Levy so I can argue I think pretty confidently that every sing school can stay open um with a few adjustments to the operating cost so um the first is you know that you have about four or five positions at the top of your salary structure
110and account for that can account for almost 1 million of that 5.5 so you know if you can reduce some of the admin costs somehow um there could make up a shortfall there um secondly I think that it's important to note that um you know Charter Schools as of last year receiving full funding as public schools which is which is fine um the problem is and this is sort of what I I've recently learned is that you know everyone's calling the charter schools um you know with teachers the problem is they aren't licensed teachers and you know we don't even know who some of these people potentially could be a part of the licensing structure in the state of Colorado is that they perform uh significant background checks on these people who have um who
111are in a position of trust that's built into the licensure of Licensing um Educators in this state so I mean I think it's I think it really does fall under your uh Mission mandate educate every child every day um to justify uh requiring immediate licensure for all educated um or for all teachers and Charters and so with that you'll also capture a background check which is a safety check and I think that that's critically important um on top of that um um there's likely going to be some classroom closures there those kids would then be recaptured into the public school system um and you know if you'd like I also did a sample amendment of what that could look like for you guys um moving on I recognize that there's limited revenue streams here so
112one of the things that could be done oh no uh I'm sorry you're GNA have to wrap up okay thank you can the papers that you have that you uh sure sure you uh well I didn't yeah if you could email it to us that' be fantastic I would be happy to thank you for your time everyone all right and I'm sorry but now lastly we have Aaron McGrew welcome evening dear School Board I uh wanted to thank you for your attention and your time I hope that in your final decision and decision-making that no schools are to be closed however as you know dun is a school of choice and I fear that the effects of closing it will be neither effective nor efficient it will only have your intended impact on 35% of
113the students that don't choice in but 100% of the employees will be impacted no one wants a volunteer to endure the wrath of angry members of the community as you have U but if you must close a school and endure the emotional repercussions at least make sure it has the intended impact as a parent on a different note as a parent at dun Elementary IB World School a son of a PSD teacher a brother of a PSD teacher a husband of a teacher a father of two fourth generation four Collins Natives and is an Alum of four PSD schools I wanted to let you know know what I'm thankful for I'm thankful for the ability to live in Fort Collins and to have access to drinking water electricity and waste removal I and for the
114ability to stand here with an Able Body and speak to you in a language you understand I am thankful to have 20 year 25y old roller blades with which I can use to skate to work and skate with my kids when they bike to done I'm thankful for the opportunity to buy duct tape which we use to keep the front the bumper on our family's car from falling off I'm also thankful for the opportunity my kids have to attend a school in which most of its diverse population choices in people re representing diverse groups choice or choose to go to Dun and the school is an accurate reflection of the diversity that exists in Fort Collins I am thankful for the teachers I am thankful for the teachers for the teachers that provide an education
115in which we diver group of students can feel comfortable to learn in and perform in a safe and caring environment and despite the visal funding and underpaid teachers that PSD is still able to provide such an outstanding education for our children I am thankful to you as a group of volunteers on the PSD board that you have the ability to realize that we are all only human and with that comes the understanding that no matter how how carefully we may have planned or thought out our decisions or how well- intended those decisions may have seemed when we made them that we have the hindsight and the foresight to listen and lift our foot off the accelerator and not to close schools in haste may we have the superpower of hindsight patience and humility and the
116foresight and bravery to say I'm sorry I hear you I have listened to you and I am corporate ating your feedback and I'm willing to work with you in an equal and honest and polite environment as we move forward in this journey with hope thank you thank you all right thank you very much to all of our speakers this evening um we are now moving to sorry board yes board topics and committee reports uh this agenda item is an opportunity for board members to provide an upate on committee work or speak to board topics do any board members have anything they wish to report oh go ahead sorry Kevin uh quickly I know we got a packed agenda um director Shon Bower and myself had the privilege of attending a school visit at Lopez it
117sounds like it was a very busy school visit um agenda for a lot of us um I think that's probably the my favorite part of this job um so I wanted to say thank you to the incredible Comm Comm at Lopez um and gave us a lot to think about most importantly as we frame some of our conversation and some of the things that we're doing later tonight we do have a very busy very packed agenda um I'd be remiss if I didn't tell you one of my favorite Parts the entire day was being L around by a fourth grader named Kendall who showed us uh very eloquently all the hallways and all the things that they're doing um discussed the leader and me program at Lopez and what it meant to her um that
118she has a Kinder partner that they select which is an incredible mentoring program that they do um and there was one quote that I want to share and then I'll get off this little Lopez Soap Box because I I it just really touched me um hanging above the banner of one of the hallways there's a quote and it says if it is to be it is up to me and so I want everyone to internalize that and process that in their own way and all the work that we're doing tonight I think that's a helpful framer to have and I wanted to thank the Lopez Community for being such gracious hosts thank you very much anyone else have anything they want to share anybody all right I just wanted to take a moment here um
119to be able to thank everybody who did come out last week to our listening session um we were there um from 5:30 to 10: and it was fantastic um we had so many people um sharing their thoughts ideas um suggestions on what we can do um and I just want to share our appreciation for your willingness to come out and connect with us um you took the entire evening to make sure that your voice was heard um so thank you for that um and I just wanted to reiterate that yes your voice was heard we are still reading every email I do apologize if we haven't gotten back to your emails yet we are still we are reading them though um I just want to take a moment to just reiterate a few of the
120comments that um superintendent Kingsley had made earlier um in 2022 the community asked the board and the district to focus on on three things those were literacy mental health and belonging and graduating with options in August of 2023 um The Coloradoan wrote an article entitled PSD students outpace Colorado in recovery assessments show and just a month ago we had a uh um presentation that showed that literacy had jumped up to 133% since August um which is really unheard of um since we just implemented a new curriculum typically see dips before you see Rises so um I just wanted to share that uh mental health uh and and belonging we heard about that um Mr Kingsley shared what the statistics were on that I also wanted to throw out that uh we have received a $10
121million Grant um and with that $10 million Grant we have had um both Channel 4 and channel 9 have come to uh one of our schools to discuss how that is impacting their the kids um and you can see that um positive um and really insightful um showing tomorrow I believe tomorrow evening um that that shows just what an impact this is having right graduating with options um we've had the highest graduation rate that we've had in in 80 years and as one of our emails um people who wrote into our emails uh and I'm going to quote the academic rating is in the top four school districts with over 25,000 students some 380 PSD students received Awards on their National AP test results at the end of the 2223 school year this argument was
122made to say that we are doing just fine and we don't have to change anything okay um I also want to remind people that during covid we had 70 meal distribution sites we put Wi-Fi in where there wasn't Wi-Fi we gave out myi units to families we give out free covid tests we gave free food on weekends and this was for the state funded free meals PSD and the community are one we are nothing without you but we need you we need each other right and none of this changes the fact that we have thousands of empty seats in our school district right now nearly 4,000 seats are empty in elementary schools nearly 2500 Middle School seats are empty right now with these empty seats comes a decrease in funding this is fact this is
123something that we cannot change and we cannot save our way out of 4,000 empty Elementary School seats boundary shifts do not decrease the number of empty seats it just moves the the chairs on the deck of the Titanic while we're looking everywhere for cuts and reductions that do not impact schools directly and as an example we have a $2.1 million Central uh cut in central office coming there is no way to save our to save out of the position that we are in there is not enough money out there for us to save for this right now as you heard earlier uh we were hoping to have about 1,500 kindergarteners signed up we have 1,200 we have a graduating class of close to 2,000 so those numbers do not add up and I keep hearing
124about the large and oversized uh classrooms that are going to be too large what we're talking about is about 22 kids per student per classroom and I think what gets lost a lot of times is that in those smaller schools we actually have a safety concern there aren't enough adults to be working with all of those kids and so sometimes that means that a principal is running a recess for 2 hours which some might say is great it gives the principal time to work with to be with the kids and while that's true that means it's 2 hours of not doing principal work and what happens when an emergency pops up I want people to be thinking of those things as well I want people to be thinking about the schools that have 50% electives
125right now we went to a school yesterday that fantastic um they're doing a concert for their fifth graders on a Monday afternoon because that's when the music teacher is there so these things are these are these are issues that are going to be on our plate now these are not things that are coming down the pike in two years these are here now okay so we need to do something um which is why we're here and it is what we have charged the superintendent to do as a board and it's what the cabinet and superintendent are doing right now I understand and want to acknowledge that this causes great anxiety I understand that I know I would be um anxious as well if it were my child's school um I just want to let people
126know that we are doing this with the utmost consideration we were doing this with the utmost empathy and just want to thank you for contributing to this and I want to thank also the steering committee who has put forth I unimaginable hours over the last um numbers of weeks and are doing a phenomenal job and I I am very appreciative of all those who have spoken tonight um and showed empathy and kindness to those who are having um to work on this committee as well so with that um we can go ahead and move on to our next topic thank you so moving on to the consent agenda would any board members like to pull anything from consent Kevin uh I would move that the board pull uh consent agenda item 7.6 applicant verification form
127for Liberty common school from the consent to the discussion or action item following do I have a second KR okay you don't need to do a second thank you all right we'll just pull that then fantastic um can I get a motion then no motion either is required to pull something from consent to put it on action okay um so we will put that on action but we still need a motion for the cons the rest of the consent agenda yeah so if I can get a motion for the rest of the the consent agenda go ahead Connor I move that the board approve and adopt the recommended actions for the items on the consent agenda excluding Kevin what number was that 7.6 can I get a second on that okay Jess is the second
128Jill can you call the vote Jim broish hi Kristen Draper hi Connor Duffy hi Kevin havalda hi Carolyn Reed hi Scott shanower hi Jessica Zamora I motion pass 70 thank you and I just want to make sure that we put that as item 8.3 correct yes it could either be um you can move it to the first action item or we can put it at the end whichever one you'd prefer okay um let's actually put it as 8.3 if we could so we're going to move on to action item 8.1 approval of agreement of purchase and sale of real property between the pr School District R1 and city of Fort Collins and as we go ahead and do this I just want to let people know that I am going to recuse myself from this
129vote um I am an employee of the pter River Public Library District and this uh approval and agreement involves the library as well so can I get a motion I can go okay thanks jtim um approve 8.1 approval of agreement of purchase and sale of real property between the pter school district R1 and the City of Collins I move that the board authorized staff to finalize negotiations on the agreement of purchase and sale of real property between the pter school district R1 and the City of Fort Collins and authorize the ward president or vice president to execute the agreement as long as the agreement is in substantially the same form attached in this agenda item with such additional items and conditions as District administ administration determined to be necessary and appropriate to protect the interest
130of the district and only after final review by The District's General councel can I get a second all right Connor Thank you is there any discussion seeing none Jill can you call the vote thank you Jim broish hi Kristen Draper I recuse myself my apologies Connor Duffy hi Kevin havalda hi Carolyn Reed hi Scott Shan bow hi Jessica Zamora hi motion passes 60 thank you all right moving on to action uh item 8.2 monitoring policy review El 2.6 asset protection can I get a motion go ahead Scott I move that the board determined that the superintendent has reasonably interpreted Board of Education policy El 2.6 in his internal monitor report dated April 9th 2024 and that the evidence presented support the superintendent's conclusions stated in the internal monitoring report can I get a second all
131right Jim the second is there any discussion here go ahead Kevin thank you madam president um uh I believe this one has been um somewhat addressed in the community but um I'm I'm on a quote theme tonight so for those that don't watch Ted lasso I apologize for those that do maybe this will resonate one of my favorite themes in Ted or scenes in the Ted lasso series I'm not going to give any spoilers is he gives a talk in a in a bar about being curious and not judgmental which he cribbed off Walt Whitman but so I'm going to choose to do that tonight I want to be curious and not judgmental um one of the policies that was interpreted and provided uh evidence which I find credible and I would vote for uh
132as on policy number seven which says among other things the superintendent shall not endanger The District's Public Image or credibility particularly in ways that would hinder its accomplishments of District ends um I find personally that the superintendent has reasonably interpreted that based on the report that was submitted to us and I do find the evidence that he has submitted um compelling however I do think that there is some discussion that is warranted um that it's been addressed in pieces but I think that the public deserves a little bit of discussion around this issue as far as um cabinet pay superintendent pay and expenditures um this is also a nice plug for the district website they've got um a really good section on uh debunking submits and facts and things like that so I think they've
133done a really nice job however myself I've still got some questions as to some of the categories of extra pay uh that seem to have been absorbed by cabinet and again this may be an uncomfortable conversation but I do think we need to be honest among friends um and so my questions are essentially because this has been precipitated Now by a couple of new stories that have picked this up so quite frankly it's not going away and I would like to kill this dead so we can move on to other District business that I find far more important than um people's take-home salaries um that said I do think the the the district uh has owed some explanations as to again and I as I said last board meeting every expenditure that we're making in
134a category above $250,000 that's my own parameter um so I'd welcome superintendent Kingsley and uh whomever May chime in about some of these um pay practices that may have been inherited is what I understand um so if we could just elaborate on that a b then I think we can dispense of this kill it in the room once for all and then move on let's see um is anybody who would like to Brian would you like to speak to that or Dave HR so I'm I'm happy to speak to it I think I tried my best to address this at our last board meeting as well the history of the cabinet contract uh in terms of the benefits above and beyond the Bas salary have existed in this District's history and since 2002 um we
135have documentation I believe that documents that so it is something a practice that I inherited when I came to the school system two and a half almost three years ago um and as I've participated as a Cabinet member in other Metropolitan communities and have an understanding of how this uh practice Works across the state of Colorado it is not uncommon for these types of contracts to be in place for cabinet level EX Executives to keep them at a market rate uh I think important context to uh raises in you know there's a conversation that's out there in the community that I have provided bonuses uh I want to demystify that that I have not offered any bonuses uh to any cabinet members as we were looking at Market adjustments um it was important to note
136that we were looking at and I think achieved Market adjustments for every employee in the school system really with the exception of principles um when we look at providing an average 10.28% raise uh to all of our employees last year the one group uh that had not been able to fully benefit from that percent increase uh was our principal group so I want to make sure that we acknowledge that because there's a lot of conversation about reducing admin um but we you know I think did a really good job of making sure that the majority of our employees benefited from the greatest raise in 80 years in this District's history and if you look at prior to that I think on average our bless you on average our classified staff the year prior received a
1379% increase in their total compensation and our administrators excuse me our licensed staff received a 6% interest so the values of the school system are to not have our Executives or administratives benefit at the expense of other employees uh inflation rates in this school system and how the school Finance act works is it's a lagging indicator in the following Year's budget and so when you think about how inflation impacted this uh community and our nation post pandemic a lot of those salary increases were aligned to that and we seek to try to Aspire to continuing to provide uh all of our employees with healthy increases in compensation so they can continue to try to move closer to being able to afford in the community in which they work and serve and at this point in
138time we have not yet achieved that I also want to publicly acknowledge that it's the Board of Education it is not at my discretion in terms of what any salary increase or my contract entails uh that has been negotiated and then is Revisited annually through my evaluation process um but I also want to acknowledge that my conversations and collaboration with the former board president around the adjustments to Cabinet was very much in align with what all other employee groups received um I am a part of a team I am not one person acting independent of this District I have 11 cabinet members that are in extension of this work that represent every important aspect of this system from our operation side of the house Human Resources Finance our school operations our data informed leadership our
139technology systems General Council um our Comm Communications the extension uh I understand from a community standpoint uh in terms of the Dynamics of this um but these people are underpaid as well as every other employee in the school system and we need to continue to think about how do we stay at market and never fall behind because this conversation it's a warranted one and I appreciate you bringing it up director havelda but it's an uncomfortable one as well uh recognizing uh the needs of this system um but I understand that that's a part of the conversation um when we look at El 2.6 and its entirety and I'm not trying to move the conversation away from number seven as director havelda suggested but I also want to say I think it's important that we acknowledge
140the important needs of the wear and tear in the needs of this system's infrastructure we also have $1 billion dollar in infrastructure needed in this system and this policy also encompasses my responsibility as the leader to not let the wear and tear in the shelf life and the life cycle of those things to go beyond uh what's expected I inherited that so I think all important aspects of the financial challenges that are represented that there are no easy solutions compensation is a key component to ensure people want and can work in this community but as we talk about school cond consolidation we talk about the reduction of the budget stabilization Factor the increase in benefits in terms of the cost in our community all these things are competing interests and competing factors with limited resources
141that deserve real conversation that's not me as the superint superintendent taking a defensive stance uh but it's the result of the scenario and the problem of practice as a governance team that we are all exercising so again uh the cabinet contracts uh that are in place that are being again talked about across this community have been in place since 2002 they are industry standard for those level of positions uh their level of experiences in the system um and I'm really appreciative of this board's support that when I got hired a couple of years ago um the two charges that I received at that particular time and I'm hopeful that they're still the same is one to help create systemness in this District that we may have historically practiced a way of work that we were
142system of schools in not yet a school system that requires system leadership to work in partnership with our schools to work in partnership with our departments to move that very work important work forward and the second charge was rightsize this District recognizing that the financial challenges and the implications both past present and future are we not going to go away um that challenge requires bold leadership courageous leadership and it's tremendously emotional not just logical and sequential in terms of how we approach that and I'm very sensitive and empathetic to all of our families across this community who are experiencing this and the people who are volunteering their time to help us solve these courageous problems uh I'm hopeful director Rell that provides some context uh as I shared the only other part about cabinet compensation
143that I shared at the last meeting that I will reiterate is that four out of our five cabinet members uh were out of market and I made a decision in partnership with the former board president to make a market adjustment and four of those five people uh were female employees um and three of them were not even on a cabinet contract when I first got here but doing cabinet level work um and I re reiterate that that's an unacceptable practice that I will not participate in with this leadership team they deserve honor and dignity the same way all of our employees do and I appreciate your time if you have any further questions I'm happy to answer them I just want to say thank you super Kingsley um we're going to keep having uncomfortable conversations
144and hopefully they're not going to be just personel matters but um I realize that was uncomfortable I realize it's uncomfortable for everyone in the room um ex well maybe not for me I'm an attorney I talk money all the time but um what I would say is that the community is also feeling a great sense of discomfort we're hearing it it's palpable all of us in this room are feeling it from cabinet to our fell directors to everyone else in the room and so I just want to honor that discomfort by saying that we should share in that discomfort and having tough conversations in public um and not hoping them away so I'm satisfied I really appreciate that explanation thank you go ahead go ahead Connor pertaining to number seven I had a question for
145Eric I think some of the consternation in in the community is around this term or category that people are calling bonuses um per the uh cabinet contracts are there elements in there categories in there that in the future the board can look at to collapse and just make sure that it is in base salary um I think that some people read some of the financial statements and say oh well why are they getting an allowance for this and for that and that and and then it gets termed as bonuses is it even available to the board for us to be able to compress those categories and make it base salary so that we can say with 100% certainty that our cabinet officials have gotten the same inflation increases as uh Rank and file teachers so
146there's a possibility that we could certainly look at all of those um items um compensation and the total compensation packages are done in a variety of different ways with your executive and your cabinet level positions so we can certainly look at some of those items and um adjust them in a different manner um but we'd want to do that with some thought thoughtful process quick follow when could we kind of take that up as a board I think I think that's something that we can discuss and probably do a um subcommittee on something like that so yeah we can go ahead and I would um let's talk about that at our either dinner session or if we have time um or our Retreat coming up go ahead Caroline so um so I've been on the
147board for 10 years and I have to tell you that um I guess maybe I knew maybe I didn't know that um cabinet was negotiated outside of the contract and I I I believe you about it being being moved in 2002 because when I asked somebody they said yeah they thought it had been like that for at least 15 years so I don't even know going back to what was the thought process back then why was that done what was the SOP for that going forward you know who was going to be approving those how does how was all of that happening you know I guess I just want some clarification around that around how that's happening why it was removed and you know and what what are we doing now like how is that
148all working now I just I need some clarification around the process just did you have something as well I mean part of it's just ditto okay but yeah I I think I I second Connor's charge that we should be aware right we should have um compensation oversight for all of our employees not just those in the employee agreement I do have also the same wonderings as Carolyn wondering when did this change and were there assumptions made by people who are no longer Even in our system um I think it's our image and credibility for some of our community have been challenged and I think we can regain some of that by being transparent by providing oversight by authentically looking at every piece of our budget thanks okay we can put that down for our Retreat
149um I think that might be the best place to go ahead and and uh do that next because it's going to take some significant discussion as to um what uh probably probably a subcommittee to go ahead and do that so let's go ahead and do that um oh yeah I'm sorry Jim no it's fine I didn't know whether to get into this or not but since we're in the middle of having uncomfortable convers ations let me just take a few data points since I've been on the board okay I joined the board two and a half years ago I was introduced to our head of it and I asked him about cyber security and he really didn't have a good answer for me okay he just didn't Brian replaced that person with Bud hunt Bud
150comes and gives presentations to the board all the time about cyber security this is something that's really important there was a school district in Minneapolis I think it was the guy hacked School District in LA got that got hacked the all you know the children's information was released became public it's a big big deal and I can tell you I I'm not saying nothing bad can ever happen because no no system is perfect but I can tell you I sleep a lot better knowing that bud is in charge of IIT okay and Bud was one of the bigger raises but I feel like that was totally justified people in the it area there's a lot of competition for those jobs out there let's take Autumn Aspen um she was also one of the bigger increases
151Autumn does a great job she is a she is an excellent Council for us and do I really want advice from some from a lawyer that I'm going to skimp on the salary on I do not I mean these cabinet level positions are really important influential big dollar impact positions okay so when someone tells me Jim you're stealing money away from teachers to put put with cabinet I say two of my kids are teachers in the district I'm totally on board with the increases that's it thank you Jim go ahead sorry thank you Kristen so Jim I hear you and you're talking about individ ual people which I think are phenomenal people and I think it is our job to set the district up for long-term success by having long-term oversight policy and procedure as
152we go I don't argue with the Jess I'm I'm good with that I'm just y given some examples thanks so yes Caroline go ahead yeah and I think it this conversation is a lot about the procedures right and the policies about how this is done I think that we all agree we have great great cabinet level members like that none of us would like to go without but I think what our community is asking us is like you know what was the process for this what was how were these DEC decisions made you know and I I don't have answers for them about that so I think that we need to educate ourselves okay yes go ahead Connor Christen really really quickly um when we discuss this as well I first and foremost Jim I
153concur with you 100% I think in these type of roles you get what you pay for can we go out and find other people less qualified but you're going to get that level of service and I'm not comfortable with that in all areas um on cabinet level speaking of that one of the things that I think we should also address when we have this discussion about process and potentially collapsing some of these other categories into BAS s like to see us develop a transparent and open secession planning um it's uncomfortable we got a lot of people in cabinet who are close to retirement and when they leave they walk out with that institutional knowledge uh I I think about it you know if we Le if we lose Dave Montoya tomorrow Brian Gustaf can step
154in but he's going to have to go up a steep learning curve and and I I think that we need to do that for all the positions um and say Hey you know where are some of these moves that are going to happen in the 5 to 10 year time frame because uncomfortable um conversations there's some people here who are going to be hitting the door go ahead Scott yeah Conor that's excellent point that's really great practice in the in the private world and I think we need that here as well that Su secession plan uh I would just reiterate that as a board we have one employee and that's superintendent Kingsley and so um we're not as a board making those decisions on compensation it's just I always see it like a a board
155of directors at a corporation they hire the uh the CEO and the CEO is able to run the company as he sees fit or she sees fit so that's how I see it I do think it's a good idea though that we we have more collaboration and discussion about that so we're aware of it because right now the the community perception as Kevin brought up is a negative one and I can't defend it because I don't know anything about it and so I think we should have that we should also trust our superintendent that's that's part of our uh our deal and but I think this is part of keeping him accountable uh is having us review it so I would just ask when we do discuss this that that be part of it that
156sounds great thank you anyone else yeah Kevin I was just going to call the question but I want to make sure everyone had the opportunity I think everyone actually if before you call the question and I would like to go ahead and yeah because I I just I just want to yeah no I I think the discussion is a good healthy discussion um I want to reiterate what Jim has said um we need while we need processes I also want to make sure that we understand that um this is this is a cabinet that is doing phenomenal work that is working 80 hours a week that is is making sure that everything that we do in this district is done for our students um and I I want to go back to something that Brian
157had said um market rate I know for a long for a lot of people Mark market rate it is what the market demands um I'm just going to go through a very brief story where where I work we did not hit market rate we had a flood of people leave we couldn't rehire we were stuck for a very long time with very mediocre positions um fortunately that job is in the past um and the place I am now um that is not the case but that can happen when we you know private or public if you are not at market rate there's no reason to stay there's no incentive there is nothing um you may be doing it for you know for the good of the the kids but you can do it for the
158good of the kids in a different district for $20,000 more so I just want people to understand that this is not these are not exorbitant uh rates that they're getting these are Market rates this is what has been gone out and been tested in the market um throughout Colorado so I just want to leave that there and now uh let's go ahead and call the vote oh sorry sorry it's not about this anymore so in District ends and I think this definitely relates to our image our credibility our um our value to our Community the district ends call out transitions for students and it's more a charge for next year because that typically would relate to transitioning from elementary to middle school or middle school to high school Etc but we have potentially different transitions
159on our Horizon and so This I Promise is not about this year but I do want us to consider and be aware that we this is going to be a major part of el 2.6 going forward in the next couple of years as students transition making sure that they are taking care of making sure that we are doing our due diligence and in their transition to wherever that school may be if those are the decisions that we make I just wanted to make sure I put it in the room before we have to make this decision yet again next year thank you thank you absolutely I thank you very much collectively all of you thank you for the feedback and and I want to reiterate what director Zamora just said I think collectively when we
160had a shared governance experience at the Colorado Association of school boards listening to Jeff Co superintendent and former board president talk about what was really really important in their transition from consolidation to healthy school system healthier budgets and I'm not trying to get into the politics of Jeffco but one of the conversations was really being clear to staff supports to support not just our families in transitioning from potentially one school to another but also supporting our employees to make sure that they also have a white glove approach to making sure that they understand what options are available to them in the event that they have some disruption to their service uh all of our association groups have been working really hard in our interest interest based bargaining around looking at our employee agreement making sure
161that we Shore up language but it is an unpopular conversation that I want to name in the spirit of transparency that to staff that in the midst of a budget challenge people are unsettled by that and I understand that but I think not doing it is not an option either and so we have many people that are working on ideas we have a budget development team meeting this Friday where I'm interested in their ideas around what some of that white glove service that I don't believe would need be needed in perpetuity but to not take care of our people and assume they will just figure that out is not acceptable as an option either so I just want to say thank you for lifting that up while also naming the challenges around how we're navigating
162that and the potential Optics of what adding supports to our families and to our staff looks like okay and with that I think we will go ahead and call the vote Jim brokish hi Kristen Draper hi Connor Duffy hi Kevin havalda hi Carolyn Reed hi Scott showen bow hi Jessica Zamora hi motion passes 70 okay now moving on to it it's going to be 8.3 which is the 2024 25 renewal applications for alternative education campus designation uh nope that is not it sorry it is the 7 point what was 7.6 correct application verification form for Liberty common School Colorado charter schools program C CSP Grant 2024 performance incentive year do I have a motion or can I get a motion sure I'll go I move that the board approve Liberty common schools ccsp incentive year
163assurances form as presented do I have a second Scott okay and let's open up to discussion who would like to lead it's so fun um so I think there's a few things about this that I've really struggled to Grapple with as I read this very thorough checklist of things um that are in this Grant and at the end of it I come to the conclusion that we're not the deciders of whether or not they get the grant we are not the ones who have to prove that they meet the goals or expectations that is under the purview of the Colorado charter schools program Grant um what I struggle with are some of the pieces in here about timeliness in particular considering we still don't have their renewal contract and that is a requirement of the
164grant um I think what I struggle most with is actually that I don't feel as a as a board we are consistently set up for Success from our state chartering sorry the Colorado charter schools program in general we are responsible for ensuring that they meet the guidelines we are responsible for approving their Charter we are responsible as a pass through through for their monetary grants and their per pupil funding and yet we there's no teeth for us to actually hold account to did you actually meet deadlines appropriately and I really struggle with that now I understand that we are not the people who get to make the decision on whether or not they get grants nor do I think that Liberty has done anything wrong I think that they have fulfilled their requirements based on
165how the state has continued to allow operations to go um with that said as somebody who values deadlines and as somebody who values timeliness I very much struggle um that we're that we're collectively allowed to kind of ignore them so I just needed to say that thank you yeah Kevin um thank you and I think I Echo a lot of the sentiments I will not repeat them but I do want to kind of I want to give some framing I got some feedback from someone that was watching our board meetings and um some explanation might be helpful so we'll kind of do this in peac Mill fashion so for the community members watching for those in the room um I'd like to start with some a little bit of a framing inquiry um and again
166we heard from some Community commenters tonight uh charging this board with uh asking for more oversight of our Charter Schools specifically Liberty um there's also some some comments that superintendent Kingsley made in in his eloquent report uh asking us as a community to examine the role of choice in our communities um not just in the context of consolidations but also um from an equity lens but also from a value lens um this is the only Community I've ever been in that has quite this abundance of choice and I think you said it eloquently when you said how lucky we are to be able to navigate to be able to send my kid to a school that has such an inclusive ILS program and I can buy a house that is in proximity to effectuate that
167choice how lucky we are but that's not the choice of everyone and so as we're going through these big conversations I'm interested in the the conversations we're going to have next I know everyone is is very interested in that I want to ask the community for input on that exact notion as sort of a lingering question what are the role of charter schools in our community and what are the role of school choice in our community and I think until we have grappled with those we cannot solve all the problems so procedural history in December uh we received the application for for Liberty common as well as Fort Collins monori to renew their Charters which are typically renewed for a 5-year term statutorily I believe uh we can go no lower than a fouryear fouryear
168term so it has to be somewhere above four um in their application uh and again I'm new so this this got my attention uh Liberty common requested that their Charter be renewed for a 25-year term um so that was uh interesting to me and so I I examined that in their cover letter and I'm quoting to accomplish the school's expanding enrollment Liberty common School will execute another Bond issuance in the coming two to four years imposing another quote arbitrary 5-year renewal term as PSD unilaterally executed from 2019 to 2024 will explicitly detrimentally impact the interest rate of the impending Bond end quote this is from their cover letter and so again being curious I I wanted to understand what was the nature of that that that implication of an arbitrary and unilateral decision from PSD
169um after some discussion and understanding some of the history between Liberty commment previous renewals and the districts um all which I believe are public record um it was this was the only charter school that was asking for a quarter of a century renewal term um so um what the board did with that information um which I think is a prudent course of action on January 3rd we passed a resolution and I'm going to uh read this resolution or parts of it to the community because I think it's helpful again for framing for our context in some of the Clauses and some of the recitals we said whereas the National Association of Charter School authorizers likewise recommends 5year operating years per Charter term whereas the state board of education standards for Charter School authorizers call for
1705-year contract terms and so I'm left with a question of well was this either unilateral or arbitrary when these institutions that are bastions of Charter School authorizers in our state and our nation are recommending a five-year term and so I'm left with the conclusion that I don't find evidence that the 5-year term is either arbitrary nor was it unilaterally decided nonetheless the resolution that we passed as a board on January 23rd and I'm going to read this now therefore be it resolved by the Board of Education that Liberty Commons Charter is renewed for a term to be negotiated and mutually accepted by the board and Liberty common commencing July 1 2024 subject to and pending satisfaction of the requirement that a charter school contract mutually acceptable to the board and Liberty common is negotiated and
171signed on or before April 23rd 2024 there is some wiggle room mind you that if the requirement in immed preceding sentence is not satisfied Liberty common shall be prohibited from operating at charter school after June 30th 2024 until a mutually acceptable Charter School contract is negotiated and signed um that to me presents somewhat of an ambiguous Clause but I think the intent was to allow the parties to negotiate in good faith what this contract term renewal ought to be um and I want to to honor that um negotiation however as director is more eloquently stated I'm also driven by deadlines both in my current uh profession and in my former profession as an educator and I do not in my teaching days accept late work um so therefore the the item that we were discussing
172the reason it was pulled from consent seemed like a very perun uh item uh to the unsuspecting eye which is this board is being asked to approve a Grant application that Liberty common has already been awarded in the previous year but to accept additional funds in the to the tune I think 200,000 is that correct so $200,000 and so again I'm wrestling with this question of I think we're putting the cart a little bit before the for Year and that it presupposes that an application has been accepted and as of 9:21 p.m. on April 23rd 2024 I have not received an application for my review from Liberty common Charter um again I think that the timely communication is also one of the the uh timely communication with the authorizer I.E the board of education is
173um also uh one of the conditions of approving this grant um and so with that I'd like to Avail myself of this oversight opportunity again as the community has charged us to tonight and do a little bit of a talk about numbers and again with the context of what role Charter Schools ought to to occupy in our in our in our community um from the budget year of 2023 to 2024 please Dave quote me correct me if I'm incorrect um the district allocated roughly $33.3 million in total program funding for our district authorized Charters so that's that's a normal that's based on the per people count that's their slice of our particular pie based on their student count um of which Liberty common received $17.3 million so more than half of the entire amount allocated
174and again that's based on um and again I'm looking at the application of their Rising numbers and demand and I understand that our community is fluctuating both in its enrollment Trends between District Charters and public schools and so I think this is the precient moment to have this conversation with the community and again at this point tonight I'm only asking questions and um I make no final judgment I would invite and encourage Liberty to um serve all of our children in its Mission with this Grant and again I think the the language of the Grant and its objectives are also important to note for the record because I think they're honorable objetives the objective one of the grant that for which it received funding was to increase the number of high quality Charter School options
175and the number of students who attend them and that's fine that such as their prerogative objective two however I'm not sure if if I if I can find evidence that supports this tonight with the information we've been provided objective two states is to raise educational outcomes for all Charter School students by increasing capacity among authorizers and Charter School leaders to increase quality charter school programs and to successfully address access and Equity gaps among educationally disadvantaged students if you do a deep dive in some of the the the the metric sees that they have submitted in this Grand application I commend them they are meeting or exceeding nearly all categorical uh categories of academic performance and that's laudable and there are lessons to be gleaned from best practices from our Charter School uh Companions and as
176a former Charter School Ed educator I want to name that and say that I think there are there are certain things to be gleaned from all different types all different models and so my um my rebuke if there is one tonight is not with the pedagogy it's not with the teachers or the the instructional staff it's yet with some of the numbers that I'm looking at that I don't believe align with that second objective and I'm looking at particular at a CMS CMAs English language arts student group all students students the median growth percentile rate I'm looking at minority students that were 36 students of a count of 198 multilingual Learners are less than 20 of that entire 198 count students with disabilities account for less than 20 of the 198 count and so I
177would I would again in the spirit of being um not judgmental but curious I would invite Liberty to substantiate some of those Trends and what they're doing for that subpopulation of students um and I do look forward to receiving their application with interest and at that time I believe I will reexamine my vote tonight for approving the Grant and with that I will um Avail myself of that opportunity and open it up for other discussion Caroline go ahead okay I don't think I can beat Kevin there so I'm just going to say ditto um those are exactly some of the concerns I had going through the application um um about um how equitable the community is that they're serving and so I think that this is something that um maybe requires a little bit deeper
178dive in asking some questions and understanding um how things work um I was really struck tonight by when we had um somebody asking about why weren't Charter School teachers licensed and I don't know if a lot of people realize that that's that's the law they can do that it's not something that's up to us or that we can do anything about that's that's how the law is right now so I I think um as people start to understand more about our role in overseeing charter schools it's probably not um as extensive as you would think it would be um and there's only so much that we have oversight of but I think it it is does bear us asking some questions and getting deeper understanding other thoughts okay maybe I just want to be clear
179are you proposing to push this to the Future and not approve tonight two of you I'm just I just want to be clear what your position is I believe that thetion to use Le Le's the condition predent was that it had to have uh an approved Charter application prior to this and so I don't know if I can vote in good conscience to um vote to approve a grant for which we don't know if the charter will be approved I presume it will but until we've seen that I I I don't know if I can vote in that out of sequence manner Scott you had something oh yeah oh I'm sorry did you want to I was going to say technically we have approved it but we don't have a contract right I mean we
180said we would approve it pending negotiations but we still don't have a contract okay yeah so I I actually looked into this a little bit too because I was curious about the the 25 year thing I I mean that's not the question at hand but it was brought up so um my understanding is back in I don't know what year it was 2001 2002 something like that when they so they they've had a fiveyear that's what's expiring now right so that's 2019 so between 2019 and I think 2001 they had an 18-year Charter that was not their idea that was this school board's idea there was uh there were a couple people serving on the board that understood the bond market and what it takes to finance growth and at that time they were going
181to be building some buildings and so um they came and asked for a standard I don't even know how many years uh but somebody on the board suggested hey why don't you ask for more you'll get a better rate for the bond so that argument has come up now twice from them in their application hey someone told us this and it has helped them you know build and so that's that's where that's coming from uh uniquely that's around the same time that our cabinet uh uh HR policies were also passed so I want to meet those people because that's kind of an interesting board I'm sure anyhow um I don't want to go down this road of creating a straw man for all the focus of the community's anxiety and anger about consolidation to to
182go after the charter schools in our district that are part of of our district they are part of our districts I am all for public education all my my three kids all went through uh these schools the public schools um but at the same time part of the the things we should be proud or we are proud of I think you said 380 of our uh graduates were were recognized with national awards a lot of those are coming from these Charter Schools Liberty by itself they have uh they they are what second in the state in terms of performance and there are reasons for that they they do have a random Lottery to to have uh students get in um but some students self- select out so the cream of the crop argument is true
183but it's not from their selection process it's from the rigor of their academics and I think like Kevin said that that is something laudable is their academic achievement and it's something that we should learn from they're to me the engines of innovation again I'm a business guy I don't know Public Schools as well as maybe I should but to me those are places we should look at and find out what programs are being successful and helping those kids achieve those those great grades by the way some of the national awards are coming from fossil and pter and Rocky you know we're getting great results in all our schools but I just I just want to caution us from creating a like I said a straw man so um that's my my background on it um
184we that's the last thing we need is another fight yeah and if if I can I just I want to bring this back because um this is not about their Charter this is about the um sorry uh um I'm losing the actual name of it here the veric verification for for the Liberty common Colorado charter schools program and I just want to remind people that the charter is in good standing right now right um they are currently in contract uh their current contract goes in until June 30th of 2024 um and that this is um the Char of school is in good standing uh and terms of its current contract and is independently managing the grant we are simply here as the pass through this is not this is not a decision as far as
185granting 5 25 years for Liberty this is saying they have checked all of the correct boxes and we see that they have correct have correctly checked all of the boxes that's what this is about and so uh legally I think we have a an obligation to go ahead and go through it to go ahead and pass this um because really there is no legal standing they are currently uh in in a current contract with us so I just want to bring it back to the you know I understand we have some feelings about the 25e contract we have some feelings about um the community that is served with that and I think there's a great discussion sessions to be had but it does not really pertain to what is this item is about so I'd
186like to bring it back and call the question um to the seven uh sorry not 7.6 it would be 8.3 Madam Madam Draper before the question can I can I ask a clarifying question sure so per director hda's statement this application that they're asking us to vote on tonight is they are in legal standing they are but isn't tonight's application dependent upon them having a new contract in place yes or no yes which they do we do not have a new contract in place correct we have signed a resolution that we there will be but there's not but there's not I I understand that we're that we're working through that and and that and I will I will say publicly I think that that is just a matter of time yes I think Liberty common
187will will come in and and we will have questions pertaining to duration and all of that however the way that I understand it is there or is there not a clause in this application before us tonight that they need to have a new contract in place prior to us approving it Autumn can you answer that um I'd have to look into all the different requirements on there but I don't believe it says that they need to have a contract moving forward in the future but they need to be in good standing with us which they currently are and have a current contract if you look at the if you look at the final verification number two and three specifically call out their need for an approved Charter but it says that the recipient school is
188responsible for certifying that they have that they understand that they have to have an approved Charter application and a second yeah sorry number just number two so it's their responsibility to ensure that they have a charter contract not ours from what I read if that again I I am not the board's counsel I am not the district's councel make no mistake about that I that's why utumn has three brains and I have one um that said my own interpretation aligns with that and so if asked to vote tonight I again just on that very technical basis I don't think I can extend a a vote um I would that's why I would encourage the board to examine tabling this until after we've received that so at least in my mind and if we don't want
189to do that that's entirely fine but that I just want to explain my reasoning by my own thought process and also wanted sorry in the spirit of also being a former educator I'd like to positively reinforce those that did turn in their homework on time and so I want to say on the consent agenda uh thank you to Fort Collins monor for acing that application I thought they did an excellent job um as well as our two alternative schools which are also for Renewal uh PCA and Centennial kudos to you madam president I call the question thank you can you call the vote thanks Jo Jim brokish yes Kristen Draper yes Connor Duffy no Kevin havalda nay Carolyn Reed I Scott shanower I Jessica Zamora I have to say no motion passes 43 thank you
190all right moving on yes let's go ahead and uh before we get started at 9:35 um let's go ahead and take a break um I'm so sorry um who knew that item 9.0 meant that it was going to start after 900 p.m. I apologize but we're going to go take a uh we'll take a 10minute break so we start at 9:45 e e e all right we're going to bring it back back at 9:45 p.m. and on 42324 um so as my watch tells me that it's my bedtime reminder we're going to go ahead and start the next facilities planning session so um let's go ahead and um so we'll do the facilities planning steering committee update um and Brian would you like to introduce this item yeah absolutely thank you this evening we look
191forward to hearing an update from our facilities planning steering committee leading the presentation is Josie plot from csu's Institute for the built environment I want to say welcome to you Josie and she is joined by Micah neelon and Amy hoseth I want to thank collectively all of you and the rest of the steering committee for your volunteer Spirit your dedication to helping us solve a wicked problem and really grateful on behalf of the entire governance team to hear what you have to share with us tonight thank you superintendent Kingsley and thank you board for having us um we are going to share with you tonight the uh the results from the community engagement that we've been doing around um School consolidations boundary changes and school closures um so without further Ado we'll jump in we'll
192be sharing the presentation this evening uh between us and as a reminder uh Micah and Amy are Liaisons that were nominated by their peers uh to serve as intermediaries between the board and and the committee's work so they're here to represent the collective work of the committee not anything necessarily that they personally are uh trying to reflect or bring forward so we'll do a quick engagement summary we'll talk about the universal themes and key perspectives that were offered we'll share the results from the questionnaire and then uh also share a little bit about how the committee is moving forward in applying what we learned and what we heard so uh and then we'll open it up for discussion with the board so we had over 3600 almost 3,700 points of community engagement those happened across
193um a variety of medium mostly through the listening sessions we had 1255 people participate in the listening sessions and about 1797 responses to the questionnaire that total um for the listening sessions was over 200 hours of listening when you consider uh how many people were listening at the sessions and how long they were engaged with the community that's taking out the time for the presentation so that was actually not just time that people spent listening to me give the presentation over and over again um but actually time spent with the with the steering committee members um we also uh spent over 60 hours of time in analysis really you know looking through every open-ended question in the questionnaire looking through all of the the community listening session reports that were developed by the steering committee
194members after they had participated in listening sessions so that's how they reported their uh feedback back to the committee um for further analysis there were 16 student engagement sessions and we also looked at about 164 emails that were directed to the board and to the steering committee that were sent by community members so all of that was taken into account in what we're presenting this evening uh here's a breakdown there were eight listening sessions total and you can see participation by listening session here uh so just a reminder of the process uh last time we were here we presented exam example scenarios for the purpose of engaging the community in better understanding their values and concerns as it Rel relates to school closures and consolidations and Boundary changes um we opened a community questionnaire it
195was both multiple choice and had open-ended uh questions we again hosted uh student listening sessions there were 16 reports from the steering committee for those um in a particular effort to bring student voice into this and you'll see later that that was really important as students didn't participate as heavily in the questionnaire as their parents um and teachers uh and then as mentioned eight listening sessions we had 90 indiv idual reports from steering committee members from those listening sessions and then uh there was a subcommittee who did the qualitative analysis so looking at all those open-ended responses and um and we did uh basically we used some uh qualitative analysis we brought in a couple of researchers from CSU to help guide the group we did use chat GPT as an initial way to identify
196um preliminary themes I will say it was a very quick way to and and did a reasonable job when when they came back with those results we were like oh well that isn't far from the truth and then we went through every single um open-ended comment and we um looked for ways to expound on ideas uh also to um you know refine language and and understanding based on our lived experiences as well as what was written uh for language access um just to make that clear a recording of the board meeting was made available in close caption for all languages so that's available on Zoom um there's also dual screen Ila devices or Isa devices these are uh a Nifty technology that allows um someone to speak in one language and it automatically translates visually
197into written into another language and vice versa those were available at all listening sessions um the questionnaires and listening session present ations were translated into Spanish and Arabic by native bilingual speakers and shared at those listening sessions in their native languages um Spanish and language Arabic specific listening sessions had live translation primarily for the purposes of steering committee members to be able to hear directly from uh participants what their uh concerns were and then uh translation of notes and open-ended questions was done by native speakers in Spanish and Arabic so I wanted to take a moment and have um Amy and Micah share a little bit about their experiences as members of the steering committee listening to the community and the impact that that's had on them and how they're bringing that experience into the
198work of developing um future scenarios with the rest of the committee so I don't know who wants to go first alphabetically apparently we're going alphabetically so Amy's up hi so I'm Amy hoseth um I'm a member of the the facilities planning steering committee and a parent of a Fossil Ridge SaberCat um I attended three of the listening sessions um I think pretty much everyone on the steering committee attended at least two um and and many folks more than that I think for me um it was interesting to hear the stories behind the data so we've just been swimming in lots and lots of data since we began this whole process um and obviously each of us us is bringing our own experiences to the work that we're doing but I know I had really meaningful
199conversations with um staff members and lots and lots of parents and even some students um at all of those sessions and it just sort of added additional depth and texture to um a lot of the the information that we're looking at as a as a steering committee already so Micah can add yeah I would Echo a lot of that I attended the um Collins listening session which was the day after the announce ment and then the week later I was at the rocky session um and so it was very interesting personally to see the difference in kind of the questioning that the community brought to us after having several days to kind of sit and absorb that information um the Colin session was very much just kind of asking questions about the process and all
200those things and then when Rocky came around it was more asking about rationale and explaining through that piece um and it was it was eye opening we're going to get to it it I know that I love the schools that I attended in this District I went Lopez Weber Rocky um I love the school that I teach at I teach at bolts I didn't truly understand how much every single person in this District loves the building that they're a part of whether it's their kids are in it their kids used to be in it they used to work there we saw every possible way that somebody was with a building in those listing sessions and it was just truly awesome to see how much of a community we actually have so thanks Micah the other
201thing that I'll say before we move on is that as the committee has continued to meet and have discussions they bring up every time what I heard in the community I heard in the community what I heard right so these I I I just want you all and everyone who's listening and watching and paying attention to this conversation to know that those listening sessions deep affected and impacted the people who are there and that we're carrying those thoughts and themes and ideas forward as we are considering really difficult um topics and moving through that so um it was very it's very much something that has been taken to Heart by the steering committee members and continues to be very alive in the conversations and it's brought as Amy was saying a very visceral human um
202experience to those conversations and we just want to thank everyone who took the time to come to the listening sessions we know that was your precious time your evenings um you know to be there and and to share with us um that it was hard in many cases to to share your thoughts and anxieties and and fears with the committee and so we just want really want to thank the community for showing up um to the conversation and for you all to know that that is um informing and impacting the way that we're working and moving forward and then I'm going to turn it over to Mah to talk a little bit more about the um Universal themes and this is the clicker so if you want to click it yourself you can so exciting
203okay you're really moving up in the world I know right okay so big takeaway wise um I think that a lot of the people on the steering committee through these listening sessions we just again learned that we have the same values as the community does um I said it to my listening session at Rocky everything that they told me I heard from various members of the community whether they're my building my neighbors whoever it is we all have the same concerns and that just shows me that we're we all love our buildings and so like I said before it it was so apparent to every single member of the steering committee that people care so much which is why it's such an emotional topic for everybody um Universal themes are here um things that came
204up a lot impacts on students and staff as a staff member that warmed my heart a little bit to know that they're not just concerned about their building they're asking about me personally how this is going to impact me continuity of school culture transportation and urban fabric came up a lot access to continuity of diverse programs and integrated Services came up impacts of atrisk and historically marginalized groups school and class sizes districtwide budget and process concerns were kind of the big things that we got from listening sessions as well as feedback from the um forms that were submitted and then I'm going to go ahead and share um what we heard specifically from the Spanish and Arabic communities is um these two particular steering committee members were not present at those uh meetings there were
205other steering committee members present um so more than any other group the spanishs speaking Community was very um opposed to the idea of closing any schools and really wanted the district to look for for funding elsewhere um and then there was fear of what in a of what moving um Spanish speaking students between schools might mean so they talked about fear being perceived as Invaders um of not being accepted and that their their preference would bring would be to bring non-hispanic students into their schools so um we as I think we all know in this community we have some schools with much higher proportions of Spanish-speaking students than others and their preference was to um try to bring people into their schools and that they would welcome them with open arms but that their fear
206was that if they are sent to other schools that they will not be accepted and embraced into those schools um they had concerns about behavioral and mental health outcomes again that's something that we heard fairly universally um but they were also worried that the stress would lead to disciplinary actions and those are especially impactful on uh on Hispanic students and they um wanted to share with the board that they would ask that you prioritize resources for culturally diverse students to navigate any changes and understand that the changes that they would have to go through um are uh potentially greater than what other students might experience and then regarding dual language programming um they would like to see additional dual language options Beyond fifth grade uh we know that there is a program at bolts um
207but their sentiment was that there could be stronger programming uh past fifth grade and then the arabic speaking Community um we met we had about 16 folks show up they were mostly uh from dun and Bower um and they had fears that their students also would be isolated and not integrated into new schools um and then they were um talking about the community that they have where they feel um part of a global Community uh both at both of the schools that they primarily attend um as as families they talked a lot about proximity to CSU and how that's relevant they don't all have vehicles um sometimes uh folks aren't driving and so having that proximity was important to them um and then um they they feel like the schools that they're in currently have
208really fostered a sense of respect and belonging for international students um and it's really important for them to maintain that all right and then student perspectives I think M back to you yeah so student perspective wise we didn't get as many students filling out feedback forms as we did like parents or staff um but the the big things that came from these from students was that they were worried about being separated from their friend groups and kids that they had historically been going to school with maybe from elementary into middle and if things change do they get broken up going into high school um other things that came up were also access to extracurricular activities just because now their school's so much farther away maybe they can't walk home after school like they normally do
209and there's no vehicle for their parents to come get them uh students who rely on special programming for diverse needs were worried they were going to lose access to those things students from alternative schools voice concerns about sharing buildings with others not in their program and part of that is due to previous experiences that they've had in other buildings which might be why they're in an alternative program to start with um and so students who attended those schools with diverse populations again worrying about other kids not just themselves again that piece where they were worried about staff members they're expressing concern about their classmates and their peers being impacted and the negative potential impacts on the community outside of that um students particularly in choice and Specialty schools whether they're IB pbl DL are worried
210about program continuity what's going to happen to my DL program if this building closes what's going to happen to pbl if this closes um and then again students like their teachers and they have concerns for what's going to happen to the staff members of schools if they do close so some information to share from the questionnaire um again we had almost 1,800 respondents that that provided information through that questionnaire um and we'll we'll try to keep our presentation moving but you can see demographic information um on the PowerPoint so the majority of those respondents were parents but we did have a good number of responses from students and staff as well uh we were able to gather some information on questionary respondents by income so you can get a sense for that here and similarly
211we were able to get some information from them um related to race and ethnicity um the next couple of slides will look at participation by school so basically um respondents and how they identified what schools they identified that they are affiliated with and so I know the text here is really small so um the attachments and the agenda might be useful here but um if you look at the the two pages we definitely had the highest number of respondents representing trout Elementary School um by quite a long shot but we also had a a really high number um of respondents representing um dun Canard olander I think we had at least one if not a number a handful of respondents for pretty much every every school in the district so um we we really got
212a lot of great feedback from from individuals through that survey I think one of the really important bits of data that we got out of that survey is why people chose their school um and so if you look at the primary reasons why people said that they are attending their current School the number one reason or the highest um number of respondents identified that they're attending a neighborhood school so that's a little over 27% and the next highest number of respondents indicated that it's because of the educational philosophy of the school um where they're at and then you can see things like schol School culture distance from their home um and and providing a school that responds to what they feel like their child wants or needs um we're also represented there if I could
213uh I I want to remind us all that we asked folks to pick their one top reason so this was not a multiple choice te uh test this was not a multiple choice question uh it was pick your top the one top reason for why you attend your school so just briefly as we head into the next section um we did ask questions of respondents specifically about some of the scenarios that were presented so you can see here um just a quick overview of the scenarios that were presented again these are the ones that were shared with the Board of Education back on March 19th so um there's no change to what you're seeing here on the screen but we wanted to sort of Orient the next set of of slides by reminding individuals of
214what was in each scenario so um I won't read all of these just to keep us moving along um but you can see scenario A1 and then A2 which was sort of a variation on A1 and then scenarios B and C as well so again these are the original scenarios that were presented with the board back in March that and we were sharing those with the um survey respondents so that they could provide feedback on how they felt about those scenarios and I'll kick it over to Micah for that oops I to there we go okay so we asked respondents to rank their scenarios um in order of preference first second third and fourth when we group these together we do see some important differences and the first couple that are on here um you'll
215see them when we get to the graphs people associated with Westside schools went with scenarios B and C those showed the least amount of disruption on the West Side similar thing going on with scenarios A1 A2 where people from the East side of town preferred those because they had the least amount of disruption on the east side of town and so respondents affiliated with Central Schools also did prefer A1 and A2 um with b as their least overall favorite um it's very important I think as we look at this to just remember when you're seeing oh here's here's how they're ranking when people saw their school on a scenario that was pretty much the one they hated the most and that's the data that we got from this it's expected it's I'm not looking at
216it being like you're crazy for not liking that scenario your schools on it you're not going to want that can I ask just a quick clarifying question about that that point I don't want to barrage you because I want you to get through the presentation but Micah are those conclusions what you guys glean from the data or was there a you chose this because is that a fair do you understand the question so you're saying they selected this scenario because they were associated with this school and they preferred it so like somebody on the West Side preferred scenario B because it didn't include their school in it is that well I'm asking how you know that point the conclusion that you got so I'm looking at the aggregate data how did you draw those conclusions
217so we can identify um and I'm trying to see here um we can see what school they were affiliated with and we can group it by the scenarios that they selected that they liked and so there there was a correlation um between when we grouped the schools that were within that area so we presented scenarios as West Central and East and then we asked people to say which school they were affiliate school or schools they were able to choose more than one say you have kids in more than one school um and then we were able to group those schools together and as you'll see we uh looked at what was the difference in and we looked at number of different factors so we cross tabbed it a bunch of different ways this was the
218only one that came out clear um so you know we looked at race ethnicity income level um students versus parents versus teachers um and this was the one that had a correlation that was different than the others it was the defining um affiliation so here we have the full sample just taking everybody's rankings putting them in this graph and seeing which ones were preferred overall with all respondents and we can see that A1 comes out first followed by A2 followed by um where we at sorry I lost my page okay and then we get into scenario B with pretty much most people saying hey scenario B is not the one that I'm going to go with and C is pretty close there too so um when we break it down again by respondents in the
219west looking at their stuff pretty much what I said said in an earlier slide I'm not going to sit here and explain the whole thing and drag this out for you guys anymore it just points us to that piece where if you're associated with a school on the West Side you picked one that affected schools on the west as your least liked scenario we say see the same thing on the east side okay where they overwhelmingly select a and a and A1 and A2 Central Schools as we said before also select A1 and A2 do you want to throw something in there uh the one difference between the East and the Central Schools was the difference between B and C um in the East uh folks ranked B higher than c um and uh we
220did include trout and Canard in the East not in the alternatives schools um and I we think that the defining Factor there was that Harris um was included in the central numbers um and that was the move where we uh had Tim nith uh to a high school only so um moving timus to high school only and Linton to dual language um that ranked higher for Central Schools than it did for um for East Side school so there was a slight difference between B and C in the central and East Side schools perfect thank you and then the last one we have here is um alternative schools and so this includes Centennial PCA PGA Polaris and transition Pathways um again they ranked A1 as their first choice followed by A2 um scenario B did have
221Canard going to a neighborhood school ranked higher than scenario C which was Tim Middle High to high school only and then Linton to DL um most of the alternative school respondents were from Polaris and PGA in that data which is significant because if you recall scenario a and A2 was the combination of Centennial and P putter Community Academy but we did not have high participation from those schools in the in the questionnaire and so we're going to move on here to really looking at the feedback that we got about what people liked most about their preferred scenario and then on the other hand what they like least about it even though it's their favorite of the four and so the big the ones that are bolded on these slides are kind of the the ones
222that we really looked at as to hey I like this scenario here's three things I still like the scenario but here's three things that I don't really like about it so when we're looking at um the most preferred piece it was maintaining uh educational programming and then it's also maintaining access to diversity educational programming and then balancing building utilization and enrollment Trends and then again when we're talking about these least preferred pieces balancing building UTI utilization to address enrollment Trends was 16% some version of nothing was there as well um and then best meets The District's financial goals director Draper I see a question on your face yeah I'm just trying to figure out what some version of nothing transes to so we we asked people what did you like about your least preferred scenario
223so if you ranked a scenario fourth what did you like about that scenario and we didn't have an option for nothing but in the in the open-ended responses um there were at least 16% who said I don't like anything about that scenario at all sorry that's my fault my brain's like shutting down I don't know how you guys do this every two weeks so a couple hours ago oh boy can't wait so when we move to the next slide we're looking at concerns about scenarios and so we have concerns for their most preferred and then concerns again about their least preferred and there is a slight difference in here um when we're looking at their least preferred piece and we'll get to that in just a second the concerns for the most preferred scenario was
224again just disruptions to students for schools closing um and you can see that's a that's a huge number 57% compared to some of the other things that we were we're getting um continuity of school culture is there again the overcrowding and or large class sizes piece was on there too um I think that some of these conversations have led us as the steering committee to talk about that we aren't sure that the community understands I it was brought up earlier that these classes aren't going to be 40 kids we're talking about getting 22 25 students in a room and it's not going to get huge and so I think there was some misunderstanding there with that piece when we get to the concerns for their least preferred scenario um the two that are bolded on
225here is again that we're we're worried about the access to education options for me and my family and then the geography piece comes up and that is just it's an inconvenient School location for me and my family now and then the last piece here I tried to skip page um and I think this is some of our most useful learnings from these questionnaires is just overall what people liked um the scenarios still did their best to provide access to programs and continue some type of continuity within those programs um balancing building utilization and enrollment Trends convenient School locations did come up from time to time obviously when you're closing schools in some places people are going to say oh I have to go farther now but overall we we did see that people were okay
226with the locations of schools keeping the highest number of students in the best buildings meeting the district's financial goals and then maintaining or improving facilities and or programming for alternative schools was the last one on there and strongest concerns again is disruption for students and I think that everybody in the community has that concern um it's not unique to just these pieces of feedback continuity of school culture again it was just discussed by all of you that it needs to be thought about how do we intentionally combine programs and find the best outcomes for kids and staff and all of this overcrowding Andor large class sizes is on there as a concern reducing access to education options came up a couple times and then again geography and convenient School locations so you have people liked
227convenient School locations but then some people were inconvenienced so I just want to note here that there's a lot of alignment between what we're seeing here and what the guiding principles were that were provided by the board um and that's what we started with in terms of we have a lot of the same values as a community we don't necessarily agree on the best ways to get there but we want the same things and we share the same concerns so I think this slide in particular is the biggest takeaway from the survey in many ways or the questionnaire I'm sorry um and and it's that you know what people want out of their schools is very much what you all said that you want and PE this shows awareness as well about um building utilization
228and enrollment Trends right and these are ranked by by how they came up so um there is some shared you know understanding within the community that there is a need certainly that's not Universal um but I think it's just worth pointing out that what is shared here is very much I think what we all share in this room and the guiding principles that were offered to the steering committee in the beginning so that's something to work from that's a strength to work from um and then I'm going to turn it back over to Amy so again mountains of data from um Community feedback um that the the steering committee has looked at and out of that we can identify some some sort of broader suggestions and priorities that the community um has shared with us
229so we've kind of grouped them here and then um my goal in these next few slides is to sort of share these and also talk a little bit about how the steering committee is using these sort of broader Concepts to inform the work that we're doing as we go forward and continue to refine um scenarios so one thing that we heard was maintain Community continuity and feeder patterns so things like keeping neighborhoods and communities together were possible so the steering committee um in the work that we're doing then we're really carefully considering the locations of schools in relationship to neighborhoods and communities and prioritizing keeping those neighborhoods and communities intact and and together as much as possible um we're also continuing to work to avoid split feeders so a situation where maybe one elementary school
230feeds into multiple middle schools as much as possible um that already exists in PSD so I don't think we can guarantee that we will not be able to do that it may not be 100% voidable but we're certainly working to avoid that wherever we can oh back one back yeah yeah um maintaining diverse educational programming was a really clear theme that we heard from the community so that's things like um access to IB or core knowledge or um dual language programming from elementary through middle school and also up into High School we're relevant and then certainly as we've heard tonight um protecting integrated Services programs and specialized facilities for students who rely on those Services as well in light of that the search committee again we're considering um our focus on educational programs which is
231part of our guiding principles from the start so program continuity by both geography and level and carefully considering the placement of those integrated Services as we look at options so where can we continue to house integrated services in ways that make sense and take advantage of locations um equity and access was another huge theme that that came out of all of this feedback so um primarily in terms of avoiding harm and supporting our atrisk students throughout the community um I can't stress enough how much this has been a significant focus of the committee's work um it's in almost every conversation that we have um in fact I'm not sure that Equity was originally in The Guiding principles as presented by the board and and we felt that we needed to explicitly add it um even
232if we understood that implicitly we would be considering that um so as far as the ser committee here we're really carefully considering options for schools that have a high enrollment of atrisk students and then we've been I think wrestling is a good word here really wrestling with understanding options and outcomes for both shorter term and longer term impacts um for the communities that would be affected here and then I think last among the themes was this idea of optimizing for transportation and accessibility so we heard a lot about um community members Desiring to have a 15 minute neighborhood so you can walk bike or roll to a a school within 15 minutes um avoiding Major Street Crossings and minimizing busing impacts for students and families so the committee again we're really carefully considering proximity of
233schools to other nearby schools when we're looking at closures and consolidation so how what would the impact be on families and how they are getting to their their closest school um we've paid a fair amount of attention to Safe routes to schools in fact I think there was an email on that just earlier today um that the committee was sharing and then again trying to avoid boundaries that don't cross major roads again I think this is an area where this isn't 100% happening now um I'm not sure we can get to that um guaranteed 100% but we are working to do that as well we did get some additional feedback um that is sort of outside the scope of what our committee is tasked with looking at we wanted to share that back with the
234district as well um there were questions um or suggestions that the the district should address these questions about projections budget cost and benefits we've heard some of that even this evening um suggestions to improve District Communications concerns around making sure that there's effective change management and implementation plans to address the disruption that will happen with any scenario that we might accept re-evaluating the district's approach approach to Choice and then collaborating closely with local government so good partnership between PSD and the City of for Collins um some additional ideas that were shared from the community and and we wanted to make sure that we passed these on to the district so there was General suggestions just to find savings elsewhere or to secure additional funding I think that came up earlier as well so things like
235grants or increasing taxes and then some folks recommended things like considering alternative alternative grade configuration or even a 4day school week so kind of some creative suggestions there from the community as Welling I think this one's for you too I think it's me okay yeah I I was jumping ahead go ahead so moving forward so here's here's kind of where we are and then I think I kick it back to to Josie so um what the steering committee has has done we now have all this community feedback that we're holding at the same time that we're continuing to really um refocus on School enrollment as the primary factor for making sure that we have whole school budgets that can support our students but again the the work of our committee um we started out just
236really crunching a whole lot of data bringing our own experiences to the table as well and now we're also really holding the space for all this community feedback that we've got and it is sort of soaked into every conversation that we have as well um we've also heard that schools that are already at sort of that optal enrollment level so which is again 400 for an elementary school and about 700 in the Middle School environment are doing very well um so that was kind of a a optimization level that was directed To Us by the board and we're hearing that schools that are at those levels are fully staffed with specials and support um that they can support diverse student needs and that they are not overcrowded so that's a good level for a school
237to operate at a at a good amount of capacity so committee members are have sort of reground and focused on that charge of um School enrollment and maximizing School enrollment where we can while also holding space for that Community feedback and considering all those different suggestions that the community shared with us at all the listing sessions and through the questionnaire yeah and then just to wrap us up um I wanted to talk about the next steps um so so uh where we're headed is that um early uh the week of May 6 7 uh probably May 7th will be the day um we will release a recording that shares the new scenarios that are being developed by the committee um we couldn't wait to do that until a board meeting on May 14th due to
238the overall timeline and we wanted to make sure that the questionnaire was open for more than a few days um and so uh this was the approach to um make sure that the community had time to hear um the second round of scenarios and give their responses um so that'll be open from May 7th through May 19th um and then uh I think my I'm not sure if that's in the wrong box or it's just the week of right so I think the week of May 14th will share and then the um the questioner will close that Friday so um we'll share scenarios with apologies the technolog is about to shut down so that's sad walk of how late it is they scheduled to shut down at 10:30 so got it yeah sorry about that
239carry on great and we Saed um so again that would be the week of May 13th uh we will have uh a discussion with the board on that Tuesday and then the survey will close that Friday or Sunday I'm sorry I don't have the days on here and I apologize for that um the dates are correct um and then um and then we have some time in between to share the steering committee recommendations so that gives us time to synthesize the questionnaire and to come back together as a committee and make a final recommendations report there will be a final board listening session on June 4th and then you all are scheduled to make a decision on June 11th so that concludes our presentation and we're happy to take questions thank you so much um
240I'm just G to open it up to questions go ahead Kevin softball general question well not softball given the circumstances but um what do you need from us we had a two-hour meeting before we came over here this afternoon um and it was actually brought up that we would like to have the board join us in some capacity to ask some questions of you around some of the expectations of what you're hoping to get from us trying to remember other things that were discussed because my brain like I said just um we may send you some questions I don't know that we can draw them at um at Demand right now but we were talking about that earlier this evening and the reason I asked to I'm looking at the next step in this process
241of May 7th is two weeks from today and that's when you're going to have drawn up recommendations that's when we will have the next round of scenarios so um we have worked between we've been working um for the past couple of weeks to uh basically take what we've learned from the community engagement um regrounding in the objective around the 400 700 enrollment district-wide enrollment numbers um and develop screening criteria and uh like refined screening criteria basically and have developed um new scenarios that are currently out for analysis right now um the committee is going to um get the analysis back that's going to include Financial analysis uh boundary and uh modifications and modeling from flow and then uh transportation is going to be looking at those as well and then we're going to come back
242with a scoring rubric and have the entire committee look at those preliminary results we want to do that before those are made public so that we know that we're not putting ideas forward that uh don't make sense in some form or fashion um and then that's how we will get to those so those are already in the works um and in analysis right now so I'm looking at my other board directors I'm looking at next week on the 30th um I'm available other questions go ahead Scott I'm glad you brought up the scoring rubric that was something I I was very curious about I think that's an important way to not only analyze things but also explain things to the community in a transparent way so I'm glad GL you are looking at that um
243one thing is the condition of the buildings the mckinster report um that I'm assuming is going to be part of that scoring rubric it it will be there um part of our meeting this afternoon we actually discussed how the report has recommendations pretty much in it like hey a boiler will be need need to be replaced in 8 years the problem with that is that's a guess right it could go out next week and so looking at that report it is in the rubric it will be there we're right now discussing how much weight we want to give certain aspects of those expectations that you gave us those guiding principles or if we're going to let you all assign weights to those categories on those um but we do I think all of us want
244to make this as transparent as possible for everyone so that we have rationale behind every decision and every grading scale and rubric that we come up with um I don't want anyone to feel like they didn't get enough information as to why decisions were recommended or scenarios were recommended not decisions but yeah go ahead Carolyn so on that note of you talking about the transparency and making sure people have their information that they need there's been some concern expressed by the community about the data and about how accurate the data is and that they have mixed data and so have you gotten the data you need and data that might seem conflicting have you been able to reconcile it um and is there anything that we need to to do um to get you more
245data or help you to to rectify any data I guess I'm just want to make sure that the community has confidence in in the data that we're given to you yeah I can speak to that um I I will say that we've had an amazing response from PSD staff to providing data um again we're swimming in data we have so much access to data at this point it's it's been great and also overwhelming frankly um I'll speak for myself I don't M or Josie may have different comments but I feel confident in the data that we're looking at um our committee has had questions around that data as well and we've had many follow-up conversations with um some of our PSD staff who've been helping us to navigate like all right so we're looking at
246five-year projections which fiveyear projections right do we want to look at this column or this column and every time we've had questions I think they've been able to help us narrow in on that best set of data um I understand there's lots of different data out there and people are right to question the data I think those are valid things to to ask about um my feeling is that we've had really great conversations with PSD staff and among the committee to understand that the we're looking at the best data that we can to make these decisions so feel free to argue with that but that's that's where I've come and I I would say that um I think I'm I'm a data driven decision maker but having access to so much information um and then
247having to figure out which which pieces to give the most weight to or you know how to focus in on some of that has been a challenge for the committee but I feel like we're arriving at a very good place where we have we have good data yeah I'll just add to that that again it's been overwhelming my computer pretty much freezes up sometimes if I have two of the spreadsheets open at the same time um sorry I think part of the data piece with us is we all kind of came to the understanding of you can sit and look at the data that's been provided that people are not trusting or you can look at the CDE data regardless of looking at the projections schools right now are under enrolled and so if you
248just look at that we need to solve something and it it doesn't feel like as a committee that we truly understand what that means for buildings because that size adjustment is subsidizing those schools so we don't truly know what it means to have a building at 270 kids because the district is pouring money into that building to make sure that those kids still have access to the education they deserve um but I think datawise we we have everything that we need to make an informed decision it's just taking us time to comb through it and really make those decisions well informed Med with Equity at the top of our mind and making sure that we're taking into account all these diverse perspectives and desires from everybody so actually I I have a question for um
249on the equity aspect of it um I just noticed that it was only 3% of the Hispanic response rate on the survey um how many individuals came to the Spanish speaking group 60 60 um because one of the questions that I have is in the report that was put out um there's a a page nine of the report was focus on equity and access and I have two questions on that and that is um what is being asked on that and then who's doing the asking on that so um and I can read it it's the community called for ensuring that all students have access to Quality education and resources regardless of reorganization outcomes including by maintaining the Integrity of alternative schools programs including integrated learning services and supporting atrisk student populations um the question
250I'm really getting to is here to support the Hispanic student Community recommendations were made to have high population Spanish-speaking schools absorb students rather than shifting these students to other schools so my my question is what um I think you had answered that previously but I wanted to know who was making those recommendations so there are um a couple of of sources for that um so first coming from our Spanish speaking community that was a request that they made directly um we have also um reviewed literature on Equity practices and um including Consulting with your clle Director D uh David oton reath who was here earlier um who also suggested that that is the preferred direction of movement of students um and then we have a number of people on the committee who are uh affiliated
251with and working with high atrisk populations um including uh not only our Spanish speaking communities and High um you know we have our all our alternative high schools um who deal with very atrisk students uh we we're looking at mcken vento and um as well as folks on the committee who work directly with um integrated Services um so all of those voices and perspectives have been brought forward and when we think about the impact of the potential impacts an immediate and personal impacts of disruption those impacts are Amplified when um when we look at vulnerable populations and so um there's been a flurry of research articles flying around the stering committee so it's been a a variety of sources that that's coming from okay thank you I I I'm just that you know my major
252concern on that is I see to support the his Hispanic Community student Community um and going to Spanish speaking so that I feel like there's there's an assumption being made that all Hispanic students speak Spanish so I just want thee okay yeah I just wanted to make sure that that was being taken into consideration too when we're talking about Equity we need to make sure that we're talking about all of it so I just thank you I just wanted to make sure that was being discussed and there may be some opportunity to uh refine the wording here um I I will note that the survey just closed on April 17 19 and today is April 23rd and it's it's very late so no problem at all we can clarify the language and yes um that
253is a clear understanding that uh those are not necessarily one and the same and we did use specifically Spanish speaking Community because some of our um participants in the Spanish language session were dual language or multilingual um but but native English speakers and uh Caucasian folks so um those are not the same communities and and we understand that and I just want to be very careful that here it's not coming off as um something that we don't intend y thank you for that we'll flag that I'll go ahead go ahead Jim so I've got a voice in my head saying Jim stay at the process level stay at the process level but because if we starts talking about specific schools I'm worried we'll be here all night but I have to talk about one and
254so sorry for that if I look at the Northeast side I sorry Northwest side not the Northeast side if I look at the northwest side um there's three schools there Irish putam and CP Elementary those are the elementary schools there um I wouldn't mess with Irish person I I'll just give my views here I wouldn't mess with Irish personally dual language I think that's great that we have that school there um between putam and CLP in alternative one what you laid out was um CLP would be the one that we would discuss more okay and I okay um the board is actually in a funny position here because the first time I saw your proposals was probably was it three board meetings ago and I haven't felt like I could go to a communication session
255and talk to you or I've tried to stay away right and and it's hard for me because I I have a concern but I don't know how to get it to you so I feel like I need to get it to you right now in the public okay okay so um for me it seems like if I mean If I Were King it seems like I would close putam as opposed to CLP East and why CLP Elementary and why would I do that um three reasons first lowest enrollment in PSD it has 200 students second it has 20% more choosing out than in and third it has um the facility condition index is at 50 it's the worst of all the schools okay it's and and related to that is the 5e maintenance cost is
2563.3 million higher than CLP Elementary you know 3.3 million that that speaks to me so um before I turn the question over to you I think what I what I would expect you to sit back is well it's an equity issue because there's 82% free and reduced lunch at putam right so so I get that but on I don't know for me that cuts both ways right because I I want an economic diversity in all of my schools is what I would love right and 82% there in a building that's not so great it just doesn't feel right to me right so so I I guess maybe there there's two questions one is if you give me any more information about YP versus putham and second maybe just if you could think about that as
257you're going through your analysis and you don't have to talk about it now if you don't want I can try and give you just something real quick when we're looking at some of these schools we are looking at the neighborhood population and putnam's neighborhood population is not the 200 students that are there um there are multiple schools in this District that their neighborhood population would put them at our desired 400 700 level and there are huge numbers of choice out and for whatever the reason is is part of what we're struggling with is what is equity for those kids is it closing down their school and pushing them out to somewhere else is it closing down another school and trying to bring kids into that building to create some economic diversity for them and it's
258it is incredibly difficult um I'm trying to think of what I want to say because I don't want to speak for the whole I think what you I think what you said was perfect I mean that and I get totally that that is a very complex issue which way you play that so thank you for I was emailing somebody at 11:00 last night laying in bed about this this struggle it is on our minds constantly thank you thank you thank you thank you for that yeah go ahead Kevin um I was surprised candidly about the somewhat low results of the questionnaire response rate in general I mean I think we got a robust I think you did a great job breaking down the data that was available but I just want to call the board's
259attention too that there was 1,700 respondents um almost 1,800 and there were 1,200 that attended listening sessions but we got roughly 30,000 kids in our district so that is a 30th of the people that are going to be affected by this decision so I just want to calibrate that as well um and speaking of data and this one's been on Fresh in my mind there's a lot on my mind as well but I'll stick with this one and this this was a theme that I've heard at the listening sessions at um at the board listening session last week is that if we're going to do X it should equal y do we have a good understanding at least at the steering committee level of if we do scenario X and I saw the ranges of
260potential savings presented a couple weeks ago but that doesn't tell the whole picture the whole picture which is important for my vote is if we do this the budget Factor will be this but again the lessons glean from Jeffco I think are also important here those unintended consequences of what it's going to take to renovate a building that's designed for little kids it's now going to be housing high schoolers that's tremendous cost what about Transportation getting these kids to these things and I know there's way too much for the steering committee to tackle already but that's something that's important to me because in order to have an educated vote I need to see the full picture as far as what are the potential savings what are the ramifications to the best of our knowledge so
261that we can make an informed decision that's how I'm thinking about it I I would just say welcome to the work of the committee this is why it's been really challenging um I think what what I've certainly found and I think all of us is that there's not one super easy answer if there was we probably would have already figured it out and we'd be home by now um I think that um when we get the modeling from flow sometimes that can help us look at sort of those unintended consequences um so the you know we can we can brainstorm scenarios and then as we model and refine those we get a little bit closer to understanding what some of those impacts might be but we understand I think that that's a that's an imperfect
262science so I don't know what others would add to that go ahead Brian I want to just uh try to also respond to director Havel's question and I want to thank you again just for all of your work I just I'm really really proud to be in partnership with the entire committee in this very very complex and transformative type change that our community is going through uh for members of the board as new scenarios begin to get shared in the community uh the assistant superintendant have taken a leadership role within cabinet to ensure that there is a lens on the facilities any child uh impact around Early Childhood integrated Services Child Nutrition transportation that will have to come alongside the steering committee and provide them some guidance around what we believe are the intended impacts
263Andor potential costs associated with those things we'll need to do that in incredibly short order uh but like you said director havala it's really important that you have as much information as possible to make an informed decision and our cabinet and extended leadership's commitment is to provide as much information to the steering committee uh for you all to be able to do that comment on that go Jim I'm feeling your spirit but the reason I bring that up too is that is one D but one data point another really compelling one again which is not maybe the purview of the steering committee but I think I saw in some of the responses is that we're looking at some of the trends and some of the things that are important to people and overwhelmingly I'm seeing
264neighborhood schools are important they're the fabric and the Bedrock of our community at least of our non-traditional or excuse me our traditional public schools non-charter schools and so the more I visit and the more you see the these neighborhood schools envelop in the community and they are I think someone put eloquently last Tuesday I'm not going to take credit for this but they're microcosms of our neighborhood and our schools I don't know how to daify that I don't know how to get a good read on that that I can extrapolate on a spreadsheet and say this and that so I don't know what weight or how you're doing those sort of non-objective themes and I don't want to keep you here all night but that's also really important to me it's clearly important to our
265community this is this was part of probably I'd say 45 minutes of our meeting earlier today was how to find a way to include culture of a building in our rubric in our recommendations in our decision making and like we said everybody loves their school there's no one saying hey close that building no one likes it everybody's saying don't close my school I love my school and so finding a way to objectively include that information is incredibly difficult for us and we are not at a point where we're at any kind of a agement really on that yet and we want to include it but we want to be able to include something that's meaningful and doesn't look good for this school versus this school just due to things that are out of their control
266so yeah go ahead Scott um yeah I kind of um following up on what Kevin was just saying I I saw in the data that the reason they chose this is in an earlier slide 27% because it's my neighborhood school but another Choice was distance from home to me that's the same answer so between those two that's 41% of people are saying the location neighborhood I think that's important to the city I've talked about this before home values in these neighborhoods are tied to having a convenient School located to them that's where I think the city should chime in they don't have governance I get that but that's I I feel like we do need some input from the city um I too would like to see actual numbers and it doesn't have to be
267everything factored in but just what is where are you coming up with the on the scenarios you came up with you know 2 million if we did this or 1.2 if we did this where are those numbers coming from I'd like to see the specifics tied to each School in those savings scenarios so that's that's something in terms of like a scoreboard so to speak that I'd be interested in Dave can speak to that and as well as um our more comprehensive approach for this round I want to remind us all and I know this is um hard to recall at this point but the reason that we put examples in schools out to begin with last round was so that we had a meaningful way to understand Community priorities it quickly turned into individual
268School conversations and we didn't have the comprehensive analysis because that was not the full intention that was not a decisionmaking analysis that was presented it was what happens when we try to look at different possibilities and how does that reveal what our community cares most about um and I don't say that lightly because I know that the process of having someone School listed was whether you're a parent a student a teacher at that school has been extremely disruptive and painful so that's not to diminish that in any way and we needed to put something forward so that we could better understand the True Values and needs within our community um as we move into this next round there will be a much more rigorous and transparent evaluation starting with um Dave in the size Factor
269adjustment being that was those primary numbers those numbers did not include full Staffing consideration so that did not include reduced administrative costs or cono custodial staff and the like um so the next round will be uh more complete in that regard we will have transportation look at the current scenarios um we are using those maintenance costs um again Brian the architect um said you know do not take those with too much consideration um because those are those are estimates and that's a dynamic and changing world where the boiler says it's going to go out in 8 years and it goes out next week um and so you know we will look at those numbers but those are that's not a primary driving Factor um another important learning that we didn't talk about in the presentation
270was about understanding those existing assets and that converting a school that's currently um a middle school to include a playground and Tiny toilets um is a a big first cost now um you know we know that Capital costs and operating cost are not the same um but to to be mindful of resources nonetheless and so looking at what is the degree and scale of change that might happen to a building and so we've um been taking those into consideration the other thing that I might say from an equity perspective and one of the ideas that emerged this evening was that we might look at both um immediate disruption as well as socioeconomic diversity across the district as a result of the change so we might look at both of those factors but because we heard
271both of those concerns we heard people say disrupting students at a point in time is something that we want to avoid but we also heard that increasing socioeconomic diversity is really important for everyone in the district that concentrating low socioeconomic status students into small into schools um is also not a good long-term outcome for those students and so we're going to try to present both um as a way to help quantify a little bit that um that Equity conversation and at least say this is what it looks like in the near- term and this is what it looks like from a districtwide um economic diversity perspective so um we are those are the nature of conversations and I think that um your question was similarly around how are we going to see the what's going
272to be Quantified and how um and that's very much the um I think the the conversation that we're getting very close on um and it's taken this learning process um for the committee to get down to that and yet I think we're getting to a fairly um meaningful and Powerful list of things that we will be sharing back in the analysis um that will hopefully be more satisfying to everyone in the community to add to that I would just like to say that we learned from those scenarios and how you could see geographically people preferred certain ones and that was because those scenarios were very much only affecting certain parts of town and I think the the new scenarios that we submitted for modeling they're much more equal in terms of disruption geographically and so
273this is a community problem and that it's going to take the community coming together to fix it and it should impact the community as equally as we can make it it's not just one part of town so hopefully I didn't give too much no I appreciate that thank you Micah um I just go ahead um Connor if you just give me a moment um I just again you had mentioned um Equity Jos and I just want to bring it back to I I'd really like to um and I don't know if this is for the committee or for um the district but I would really like to make sure that we are getting um a good Outreach and good information and good um data back from the Hispanic Community from our Arabic community um because
274again I'm looking you know in looking at the data I noticed that you know 900 plus out of 1,700 um surveys were for 100,000 plus um 77% were white 3% were Hispanic you know 1% was Arabic it's we're not getting that diverse um look and I want to make sure that as we're doing this and especially as we're talking about socionomic um and long-term effects um I want to make sure that we are getting all of that look and so I don't know if that's a um we can talk about that if it's a charge for PSD to go ahead and make sure that that is getting out to people whether it's a combination thereof um but I just want to make sure that we are getting everybody's input on that so um Connor go
275ahead in the questionnaire uh portion where people wrote in did you see uh any substantial information in there about people saying that they would take their kids out of PSD and move them into Charter Schools or home schools that's certainly something that was brought up both at the listening sessions um and to a lesser extent in the questionnaire um but I think that families who understand that they have a choice and that that is um you know I I think it's both a a concern that they raised in terms of um what they want for education for their kids but also knowing that that is something that you know they can say that that might get your attention um I think there was probably a little bit of of both happening there if I'm just
276to to be kind of plain about that I think it probably be pretty good to test that question in the next survey that goes out um I know you're probably going to get some reactionary um comments to that but um even if we could add some kind of filter factor to what we think that would be really really helpful especially if if you look at you look at the schools who really responded to this survey right those are the same ones that track with those comments that I've heard in the community okay I think that just about WS oh Jess no go ahead I'm kidding I waited patiently so I just think one thing that we were we heard repeatedly particularly at our listening session was this want to slow down as the people on
277the committee I think we would be doing you a disservice if we didn't at least ask the question of how you are feeling about the timeline I don't want to speak for everybody on the committee so this is personally um I think we have all the information we need to make an informed decision yes it feels fast I understand that my concern is around buildings that have been named in scenarios what happens to them next year if if we truly slow this down our parents can to sayy I'm not going to send my kid there they were named what happens if they're named next year and because we've slowed down do those buildings see a mass Exodus because of that unknown and so that concerns me and makes me want to have that's why we're
278putting so much time in now is so that we can have a fully informed decision recommendation for you in June so that the timeline does not get extended and programs are living in this limbo of not knowing what's going to happen um cuz it was it was brought up it's it it's anxiety inducing and it's it's not comfortable um and I I live over behind bevens and it is all over the community on that side of town the unknown is just crushing for people and so I think and you guys can feel free to chime in I I think we have everything we need to make an informed decision we are looking at everything possible I have a binder next to my bed that I look at first thing in the morning if I think
279of something it's it's consuming us and I'm not looking for sympathy with that we want to make the best recommendation to you that we possibly can within the timeline because we are aware of the impact that it will have on community on the community if we stretch that out any further so I would just say I think there's probably no one on the committee that hasn't had either a dream or a nightmare about our work at this point like it's it's it's very all-encompassing um I would Echo what what Micah has said where I'm I'm very mindful of the the impact that dragging the decision out would have on the community and I'm mindful of the financial implications that the district is already facing with empty seats and reduced budgets and things like that um
280I know from talking to some administrators that budgets are already very slim for next year and that's having an immediate impact on schools um so I want to keep those things in mind I also feel like this is one of those kind of just difficult scenarios where we could keep trying to make the perfect decision for a long time and circle it and maybe get you know a millimeter closer with every passing month but never fully figure it out um and I know that it's you know the timeline feels fast and it does to us too I mean we're we're moving very quickly and we're having a lot of meetings but I'm not sure that more time would mean ultimately a significantly better outcome in terms of what we would recommend um probably not everyone
281will agree with that but I I really think that to M gu point we have the information that we need I think the community feedback was enormously helpful in helping us identify sort of those Community priorities that we need to be thinking about and I feel like we can definitely devise scenarios that will work to address the needs of the of the district go ahead sorry one more comment on that that was very well put thank you um my I was talking to someone wise today who's in this room will not be named um but that wise person gave me a good perspective too which is I think we're all looking at this problem in isolation in the moment that we find ourselves in but this this problem likely will find us again as our
282population expands and and contracts and expands and contracts so the work we're doing now and the things we're doing now are setting precedent for processes that we need to be able to replicate and we need to be able to do and and learn the lessons from the from the next time so the problem that we are trying to solve today will likely face us again as a district and I want to be mindful of that as we're making decisions both for the long term and the immediate future and so there's really no question there it's just a comment that I think that what you spoke to really resonates with me and that sure we could re-traumatize the the community by dragging this out from for another year and a half we could make a bad
283decision imminently time will will be our our our our our judge but I also think it's important to note that the process really matters and what we're aligning ourselves with and arming ourselves with today and the data points we're considering the things that we're the values that we're hearing from the community that matters and it's going to matter for the next cycle of when this likely happens and so we also need to make have a little bit of humility again and I'm more of the moderate approach to this whole scenario and that if we have drastic permanent solutions for what could be temporary population dips and enrollment Trends then we've exacerbated yet another problem that we have to solve in four or five years and so I don't have a crystal ball and I'm not
284saying I'm smarter than anyone I'm definitely not but that's my only concern is that when we're looking at this please let's not look at it in isolation as a one-time fix as a Band-Aid because it's going to have repercussions down the road and we're likely going to have to do some iteration of this again did you want to go ahead and comment yeah I I just want to say that we're thinking of that like we look at the domino effect of consolidating buildings and what that will do in the next two three years but we're looking at data for developments we're looking at all of this to not we don't want to have to do this again we're fully aware that boundaries might change in the future and I think we're all in agreement that
285they should probably change more than they have to try and offset some things but we know that there's continued development out east and at some point the west side of town is going to turn over and we don't want to have to take a building that we recommended for consolidation 5 years from now be like hey we're going to reopen it we we don't want to do that um we know not everybody's going to be happy with the scenarios I'm a people pleaser so this is like eating me up that I know that people are going to be mad regardless and so we we're again we're coming into this trying to do the best that we can for the community and that extended timeline I just don't think we're going to get any closer to
286a perfect scenario because they don't exist so yeah all right I think it is officially time to let you go home so um I just want to extend um all of our gratitude to you um I seen lots of heads nodding in the back so yes thank you um it is it is a tough job um that we have tasked you with and I appreciate every um nightmare every every 3:00 a.m. wake up when the cold sweats um we're we we are we're right there with you um and we understand just how hard this this is and how hard you are working and I just want to thank you for that uh I know everybody here in in back of me also would like to to make sure that you are well well thaned and
287just you know we can fill you up with gratitude so yeah and with that yes there are snacks go home go to bed thank you so much okay that leads us to 9.2 the cell phone policy discussion Brian would you like to introduce this item yes what a pivot at 11:00 in the evening but this is an important exploratory conversation uh that I wanted to just say uh thank you to all of our school-based staff that are here in partnership with members of our cabinet to kind of represent the realities of the district around how this particular policy is playing out uh tonight we will be informed about how cell phones are managed in our schools and leading this presentation are assistant superintendents Dr Julie chaplain Dr TR gu and Dr inun Olen they will
288also be joined by Jesse moral our principal at Tim nith Middle High School Don kotnik our principal at ler Middle School Josh Richie our principal at Boltz middle school and Jaylen manares are uh one of our assistant principals at Rocky Mountain High School uh I know it's very late appreciate your dedication to this District in this conversation and really glad uh for all of you to be here so thank you superintendent kins is it on Hello okay oh get closer sorry you would think by now I would learn but it is also after 11 so bear with me um but thank you um thank you school board and um for allowing us to bring some schools forward around um our cell phone use um at their particular sites um we chose a few schools at
289the secondary level to bring forward to you um specifically a couple middle schools who um are looking at um implementing some Pol uh procedures and processes schoolwide as well as a middle Senior High and then another High School to kind of give you an idea of what current practices look like in our district um and so um that is what we have prepared for you tonight is to let you know um where each school is at in their practice I'm trying to move the PowerPoint forward I think I'm out of B yeah maybe I might be out of battery okay okay I could stand over there thank you okay oh well yeah here we go all right so current practices that we have and so we wanted to start with um I know this is
290a lot of information on here but really it is copied and pasted from our policy J I CJ and so just having some language there to ground us but really um what you're going to hear from our schools tonight is each site has their own internal practices based upon this policy um we are highlighting a few secondary schools and they will be talking mostly about adult practices and behaviors um with some informal data as well that they a couple of the schools have collected and so I'm going to hand it over to uh Mr Richie as he will be talking first from his school I will click for you good evening um yeah so in the spring of last year of 2023 um well I would say anecdotally um most behaviors and I don't have
291a data point for this um a cell phone is somehow involved from a student perspective whether that's Majors or minors um as an adate team we decided that a cell phone was somehow the there and for me my job is to remove barriers for teachers so they can build relationships with kids um Power struggles with the cell phone was a barrier that I could lift and my admin could lift to take that off of my teachers plates and so I got data um I asked my entire staff and this is a true data point 100% of my staff said they would like to move to a no cell phone policy um I asked my parent Community um incoming fifth graders um six and seven so current six7 an eighth graders and it was 87% with
292um about 25% of the overall population responded saying that they would be interested in no cell phone policy the question was are you interested yes you interested no and then um any other feedback for me that all of the families that said they weren't interested is because they wanted phones on their kids in case of of an emergency um worst case scenario worst day of our life type thing and that that was interesting information for us moving forward and so this year we implemented a no cell phone policy and initially we proposed it as it has to be in a locker um but really that came to negotiation is my my job is education let's have common sense about a cell phone probably everyone in this room has a cell phone and so how do
293you use it productively from an education standpoint when do you put it away um and teaching kids that skill I do want to point out with that is in our system there's no education about how kids should use a phone it kind of comes up in health class and it kind of comes up inal anecdotally but systemwide that it doesn't exist and this is an example of a site-based decision made by me and my my community to to support the STA staff and students with that yeah what' you say oh yeah and so and to me data tells a story and so this is students who are on a um policy violation so if could you go back one slide real quick for me that first step is a student gets a warning um Second
294Step if an adult sees the phone they lose it till the end of the day they get back then today I tell kids I don't ever want to know what's on your phone turn your phone off I don't care it's on your phone right um then that third step is that's where we're talking about plans to getting parents involved the referral process where a student could be placed on and then the next slide please um a two- week cell phone plan and or continued violation is you'd be on a cell phone planned U through the remainder of the semester or the remainder of the school year if it was an ongoing problem or issue um to me at that sixth grade number that's there's a story there and that that number is low and I
295will know why and I have an assumption that my sixth grade team is lenient and moreal based or that data point is inaccurate but like let's just be real um but I I'm confident in those seventh and eighth grade numbers of students who are on ongoing cell phone plan so they come in and they turn it in at the beginning of the day they get it back at the end of the [Music] day all right so at lesser uh first of all thank you I'm Don uh principal at ler Middle School um I was very fortunate when I became principal at lure and inherited a cell phone policy already in place uh our all of our teachers love this policy they enforce it re um always talk about it at the beginning of the year
296staff meetings throughout the year how is it going is this still what you want and overwhelmingly like at bolts yes we want this policy it is great for us it is great for kids so we do not allow cell phones at all throughout the day that includes lunch that includes passing periods it is to be out of sight students can come up to the main office anytime they want to use their cell phone or to use our phones just like we did growing up as well uh the first time uh a phone is taken it goes up to the main office and that student can get it at the end of the day anytime after that a parent or Guardian has to come get that phone whenever they choose to come get it and some
297choose to keep it up front for a little while um to be really honest admin ministration doesn't really handle this much the teacher takes it it goes to the front office secretaries and then they handle pickup very few times have I had to get involved with this process um then we can look at our data so we have 770 uh kids at lesser uh so last year we tracked data because we need to know whether it's their first or second time um that's a total of 173 last year with 104 of those being first defenses and 69 being second or more offenses of the same kiddo then this year it's improved a lot 121 total I think we're on it I think new Administration new counselors I think we talk about it a lot with
298kids I make announcements over the intercom I inform Community about it um of those 121 76 are first time and 45 are repeat offenders um so I think it's something that principles need time to talk about we've had like one-on-one com ation a lot about what do you do what do you do but nothing whole group so I think we're having this conversation to see if there can be more alignment but I think it's important for you to know that we haven't bridged this conversation yet as a group awesome I'm Jaylen manzer I'm actually a dean of students over at Rocky Mountain High School and I'll be representing our building and some of our current practices um with regards to cell phone policies I would say we're very much in an exploration stage with how
299we want to go about mitigating cell phones and the distraction that is caused by cell phones within our building um and I say that as we have different departments and different classroom teachers that are trying different strategies that are effective based on their content area with a big comprehensive setting of just under 2,000 students it's challenging to find a one-size fits-all approach uh for our population with that we want to give teachers some flexibility and that's what we've really encouraged at this point in that exploration is collaboration amongst departments with figuring out what is the best use for cell phones within the classroom and how do we also effectively manage the behaviors with cell phone and the bigger distractions that come with it so at this point in time we've seen a variety of strategies
300being implemented um we have seen some distraction policies that are not solely focused on cell phone use but bigger classroom distractions that we're seeing whether that's hall passes and um finding just general avoidance within the classroom and we see that cell phones are perpetuating some of that avoidance within the academic setting uh we also have specific cell phone policies that are being implemented and introduced early on in the classroom um in that um introductory window of time when classroom Norms are being established um that's occurring in conjunction with also some of the cell phone storage methods so the cubby or cell phone jails however different teachers are referring to those and it really is just some sort of separate storage unit that is accessible within the classroom setting but provides students a separation in person
301from um actually having their device either in their pocket or in their bag readily accessible um we have found that in addition to offering those resources and having some explicit guidelines for how they should be used we've had some success especially in our world languages Department in implementing that with consistency and little push back um at at this point right in in the phase uh we're in the second year of really diving into that practice and I think we're starting to catch some traction with regard to how we're using that system so our hopes as we move forward and these are conversations that we're having within our um building leadership teams more specifically within our department leaders is to have some unified philosophies for how we want to go about managing cell phones rather than
302explicit policies because again we don't want to tie the hands of some of our teachers with how they may choose to use cell phones to further benefit educational opportunities especially at the secondary level so some of that conversation at least right now in more of our um school-based administrative team is no use of cell phones during instructional time unless designated by the teacher which I think aligns with some of the current policy as it's indicated in jic CJ um and giving teachers that flexibility and encouraging them to also prepare digitally literate individuals for transition into Life After High School so that's kind of where we're at in our planning phase for next school year um talking about here's our big umbrella theme that we're going to move forward with we're also going to provide every
303classroom with access to resources and providing them with some opportunities to use that cubby system um whether they choose to use that is going to they're going to have some choice in that at least at this point but we'll also provide them with some reasonable Solutions and ways to go about using that resource um and we can talk more about that in questions but in addition to what we're thinking about doing next school year and what we're currently doing um it is bringing attention to some of our current practices and reminding staff of how we can support in the front office through our administrative team and that's through the slide here on the right hand side these are our current options for interventions um with front office support so that is taking the phone teacher
304bringing that phone down to our front office we have conversations with students in the Dean's office about appropriate time and and place for use of the phone and why the phone ever came to us in the first place I think it's also to point out that not every teach teacher is comfortable with conf getting the phone um for them it's maybe a better solution to send the student for that conversation and problem solve in real time within our offices uh repeated offenses result in parent having to come the next time to pick up the phone and continued parent communication and then a third infraction would result in some sort of cell phone plan where we're either prohibiting the phone from being on campus for a period of time or we're making some arrangements for that
305phone to be on campus Because we also want to honor the fact that we have students with everyday needs and their families need to have reasonable access to communicate with them or so they need to feel at this point all right hello I'm Jesse uh principal at timi middle high school and um yeah we we've as a brand new school opening last year we've talked about all kinds of policies and and how to how to get things started at our school and we joke a little bit about it took us a while to figure out how to let kids go to the bathroom um consistently and we've gone from there so um but we we really did reground um at the beginning of this year with schoolwide expectations around a number of Behavioral um um
306situations and cell phones was one of them and where we landed here um to kind of make it as simple as we could was that um like it's written here cell phones and and headphones or airpods are not to be seen or heard um during class unless they're authorized by the teacher for some learning purpose and there are some reasons that cell phones can actually be support learning in certain situations and so we leave that to the teacher um to have that discretion in the class um we don't limit at this time cell phone use during lunch and passing periods so that's not something that we are um monitoring unless it's a big distraction and and there have you know there have been a few cases where we have you know a discipline issue that's
307come up over the use of a phone um similar to what um Jaylen was talking about in terms of some of the management um resources in classes teachers um offer a number different things especially if a kid is struggling with not um accessing their phone um whether it is putting it in sort of a designated area we have like the calculator um type of uh storage unit where you can place your phone in there um we have some some classes like our technology classes where it's like we really cannot have the phone in the room because it's a distraction and you're using safety equipment and so um their policies are a little tighter around some of that um and then we do have some students that maybe end up on on some kind of a
308cell phone plan as well or behavior plan where they might be turning the phone in um at the beginning of the day um and there might be other parts to their behavior plan that are that are in place but um they also eventually can work their way off of that plan um be able to kind of manage it on their own again and so um you can see again our I I would say sounded similar to what Rocky is doing in terms of first second third offense um teacher can certainly confiscate the phone um it might just be even for the for the rest of the class putting it in that designated area um but also could confiscated could it be end up in the front office if it's is a a pattern of behavior
309um and again if we're struggling um M with multiple offenses then um then that might be that cell phone plan where we're dealing with it in that way um but that's that's where we've landed as a school I think it's also worth noting um you know I think Josh mentioned um parents that maybe aren't comfortable with a no cell phone policy we do have a lot of communication that's happening on kids' phones during the day is with parents back and forth and that is um it's definitely being utilized to communicate with home around drop off pickup um whatever the the situations might might be that are arising and so um that is something that's that's notable in terms of what we're seeing in terms of the way kids use cell phones in the building at
310times all right so uh you know I think we were just uh looking to start a conversation and just share this is um if we were to talk to all of our schools they would each have a different response um but aligning with um a variation of teacher preference teacher practices um and I think it's also determined by the level of um the educational facility so Middle School I think has has some have a different philosophy um and then there's also research and studies on the developmental um you know the developmental process of teaching cell phone skills teaching cell phone usage teaching teaching that responsibly um so that when students you know leave and go off in their own lives um they know how to balance and manage some of those pieces um but you
311know we definitely understand that you know there's there's there's complexity um and there's so many options uh and not everything is just a one-sized fits all in all cases I think our parent voices um predominantly and in other um articles that U we have been reading about cell phone policies practices these are all shared um shared practices some that take some that take um maybe an approach like Josh or dond do um and others um again in Upper levels that are looking more towards how do we teach responsible practices um so I think it's something to think about um and when I think about how Josh brought up the fact that it's not something we address so we don't talk about in elementary when you have a cell phone you know so is that is
312that another area that we need to get get to and I think overall if this warrants a larger review we really need just need time we need time to talk across the district um I'm sure we are going to need to listen to parent perspectives and devices on that um safety is a concern uh and that is very real um to some of our families and some of our students who um have concerns about being in school and safety and um not having a phone for them can add to their anxiety and stress and those things um and just acknowledging cell phones can be used effectively they can add to the learning environment we actually have social marketing classes where you need your cell phone because you are marketing on social platforms and so again
313I think it's I think it's a I don't think it's a simple conversation um right now I think our policy the way it is allows for flexibility in that and um so if we're going to think about moving into some sort of a direction beyond that um in terms of practices and maybe not policy changes um again that was that's just something we should really take time to thoughtfully engage with all of our principles and staff and families so and we're open for questions yeah thank you yeah go ahead Conor really quickly for Jaylen and Jesse does your cell phone policy cover at all kids in their cars on school property so if you see kids driving on their cell phone texting like that is that kind of a elevated offense so we don't necessarily
314have that bigger overarching policy um what I will say is we have I think good management when we're fully staffed to have that management in the parking lots and a system for reporting whether it's family reports or student reports of unsafe driving habits so that's how we couch that and catch that information is student X is reported as driving unsafe in this manner and then we follow up in our processes based on that report if that makes sense yeah I would say the same thing and and it's yeah probably not we're not monitoring kids driving the parking lot to check to see if they're on their phone at the same time but if we're hearing about unsafe driving um somebody's going too fast there's always action taken there conversations had a lot of times our
315SRO is a part of that conversation as well because we're talking about you know driving unsafely in a in a parking lot or around the school area and so um we get support that way too but yes certainly texting or something while driving if that's something that's observed that's something that we would speak to and then Josh and Don real quick for kind of these tighter cell phone policies do they apply to your teachers as well that's a good question um our teachers do model what they want to see from their kids so do I see teachers on their phones yes but at appropriate times and not during instruction um it's never had to be a conversation I'd say never trust a boss that doesn't pick up a mop I mean it's you know model
316what we preach and I'll be the first toit I've been on my cell phones and kids will call me out on it and I'm accountable to that for sure go ahead Scott okay go ahead Carolyn um I didn't hear anybody talk about cyber bullying and I wonder about when we have kids put away their phones and they don't have access to it so they aren't taking embarrassing pictures or posting embarrassing stuff or bullying other kids do you see any correlation between having those phones put away and a and a drop in cyber bullying I mean kids I mean we talked about safety what about kids' safe mental well-being and safety I wonder about that so I can comment on that my discipline throughout the day very few cases of anything relating to a cell phone
317or SnapChat or Instagram or bullying when I do see that is in the morning if something happened in the afternoon at night when they did have access to their cell phone so I see an immediate drop throughout my day compared to to my experiences in other districts in high school where a phone is accessible throughout the day and things happen throughout the day on social media so I definitely have seen a huge difference with that policy and I'll just said that was why we went to the policy because of that exactly of how much of a distraction to the educational environment it caused of during the day and then throw in Tik Tok Snapchat and all of that on top of it that was the motivation for addressing it for sure I think within our
318building we don't see some of those behaviors during actual class time during academic time those might be things that occur during a lunch window or during passing periods which is a hard time to manage the cell phone use or possession uh of during those passing and transition times so I definitely think that in terms of our disciplined data cell phones contribute they may not be identified specifically as the code of conduct um infraction or a reason for discipline but there very frequently variables whether there's conflict um that's being recorded or messages that are inappropriately being shared or pictures being taken however that looks so definite consideration for that in our building yeah I would agree with that and um and certainly there is stuff that happens outside of the school and that's the part that
319regardless of our policy we're not in control of that and we do deal with that when it comes back in over the weekend things that happened you know at a gathering um you know outside of the school day um and the school comes back and it it it comes into the school and brings conflict or or creates um safety concerns that we then address as well so um you know whether that happens you know the access to the phone is happening in the day there's still definitely going to be things going on outside of the school day also actually I'm wondering if I can tack on to that before you go from your long one so well what I'm wondering actually is you know you're talking about we need a lot more time to discuss
320this and I think we do um and I'm wondering if based on your um discussion if we can't put questions on our connection survey that ask about um what is the bullying what sorry what is the cell phone policy in their school and then what um are they seeing as a result of that are they seeing less bullying are they feeling like it's being um you know um less intimidation in that sense um because I know it it almost seems counterintuitive you know if you tell kids they're going to put their phone away for the whole day I think as adults I don't know about you but it starts to give me the Jitters um but for the kids they may like that because it does prevent that and it's it's not their problem right
321no I was told to do it and I have to do it so does everybody else so I feel like there's some questions there that we could add add on to the connection survey that could really give us some good data Scott yeah so this is my fault I apologize for the late hour but uh this was my this is my pet project this is one of the main reasons I ran for the school board actually was a cell phone policy because I saw my own kids going through school I still have a junior at Rocky um kind of easy to tell which one because it's the last name but uh but anyhow um there are so many things The Bullying is a is a huge one um that I think this can make a
322dramatic difference and it sounds like it has um we need to give these kids a break at least for the hours that they're in in school there are countless studies I sent a slew of articles that at the last minute that I sent to you guys and I apologize for not getting them to you earlier but there's been study after study since this policy was put in place in 2010 which is when really iPhones if you think about it it was like 2008 the iPhone came out right and or maybe 2007 I don't know but really when they became prolific was around that 2010 so I can see why we made a policy but it's time to adapt I think because of what we're seeing they're used for um the mental health implications are unbelievable
323um UNESCO the United Nations has recommended worldwide that that schools ban cell phones like that's a pretty strong statement um the Surgeon General the US Surgeon General has said the same thing the the mental health Health impacts of social media are hugely detrimental to teenagers um there are 20 plus countries mostly in Europe in Europe that have banned cell phones in their schools they usually lead these types of discussions and I think it's something that we we need to really pay attention to um I understand the flexibility and and there is some advantage to academics and those can be exceptions but I think it'd be a huge relief to the teachers for sure I mean the 100% that have bought into that parents I I was in District Advisory Board I was the president or
324chair of District Advisory Board this is the one subject that unified a very diverse room there's 50 plus people there representing all kinds of schools and when we brought this up and it was I think it was the a past ass assistant uh superintendent who said there's really no Universal policy and parents were shocked they were like wait what there's no official policy from the school district that's universally used by all teachers and things like that 100% want no cell phones in schools now there are varying degrees of that because the the safety factor is real um so there was a SRO who talked uh at dab I think he was at um I can't remember which middle school but he said they had a policy of out of sight out of mind which is
325sounds like what you guys have where it can be in their bag they can carry that along with them but it never comes out on the desk unless the teacher says hey we're going to use our cell phones to learn something but that seemed to work um social skills eye contact you read all these articles about the um the change to a school's culture when people the kids are now at lunch talking to each other looking each other in the eye I don't know about you but my youngest has a real hard problem with with making eye contact and it drives me nuts because it's just like dude come on let's look up that's that's a big thing just interacting having team experiences um distracted learning absolutely uh anecdotal this is a story I always
326tell um at Rocky this is probably a year ago um my son had a friend who literally watched all five seasons that's 62 episodes of Breaking Bad during class he had one earpiece in he's looking at his phone like this teach never saw what that was going on Amazing show by the way it's the best show on television but not really appropriate to be watching instead of learning so distracted learning is a big reason that I'm against this but the number one thing is the mental health effects and that is a district end it's part of our strategic plan and to me th this is lwh hanging fruit we talk about low hanging fruit I think we can get the biggest bang for our butt because it doesn't cost anything we can make a dramatic
327impact and Improvement on the mental health of these kids no more bullying during school then we people taking pictures of somebody in an embarrassing situation that spreads like wildfire around that school that ends you don't have the social media all that stuff we can have a dramatic impact on the mental health of our kids without having to spend a bunch of money on it so I would I agree we need to do more research I'm not saying let's vote now and make yet another change for next year or the year after but man it seems so easy to me and and makes a lot of sense so I'll get off my high horse but I'm I won't stop this is this is a big deal and I think um I think our teachers and our
328kids will appreciate it so thank you for letting me say my peace thank you did you did you want to say something yeah go for Scott I'll back up your anecdote last year my fifth grader was asking for a phone con stly doesn't want one anymore um and I think partially because he sees his friends just on it 24/7 when they're not at school uh so I like that to I think the question I have though is do you want us to make a policy or do you want to organically land on it collectively as principles that's a big ask so you don't have to have answer necessarily right now but I don't even know that we're in a position to answer that question because there haven't been those conversations coming into this conversation and
329discussion here I think there's a policy that gives some latitude in how schools choose to move through navigating how to provide access reasonably to students using their cell phones that ensures the feeling of of safety and some comfort um but also gives us some really specific language that we can refer back to when those instances are occurring that cell phones are being used inappropriately within the educational setting so that would be my two cents on the subject at least right now I think in our building we're still having a lot of good dialogue and we're trying to explore right now with our current student population other variables push to the side we're actually starting to come back to some normaly right consistently we need to be able to see what practices we can effectively support
330teachers in managing and see how that impacts overall student academic performance as well as the mental health and social experience that they're having in the buildings I would say too I mean uh changing or updating the policy if that's where you know the board lands um it makes it easier in terms of then um doing that at your school if that's what we're going to do as a whole District um there's some there's some power behind that um the one thing I do think is is worth considering as we're looking at this issue is is it the same and we're a middle high school so we have them all in in one building is it the same for middle school and high school I wonder about that in terms of just that gradual release of
331responsibility and maybe you know a tighter policy at the middle school level and perhaps starting to help high school kids learn how to deal with a cell phone and how to manage it on their own and that might be a skill that we need to get more even more active with um it it's forced Upon Us based on how much they want to access the phone and so there's a lot of work that's done you know that way anyway but it could be something that is sort of like a part of um you know a piece of the academic program is how do we how do we manage this um take care of our mental health use the use the tool for the good that it can it can provide um without you know having
332it be a distraction or or or keeping us from the learning that we're trying to do together and that's an adult skill we have to learn that a lot of us struggle with that as well and so I think um you know there's a the phones aren't going away I think that's that's one thing we've talked about a little bit at times is that when you when you go this like totally keep them away from it that's one way to do it um and and there's some benefits to that and yet they're going to have this thing forever what responsibility do we have to help them learn how to utilize this device um in a responsible way um yeah all that is that I think we need to have education we are creating curriculum teachers
333are creating curriculum on many lessons on how to use a cell phone that that's the real reality of it and we don't have any standards or benchmarks on that it's what we think is best for our kids right and so that has to be a response is let's have intention behind that and then I would say is you have two Middle School pilot programs you we just need to be asking the right data so I think the connection surveys is a great Point what other data points can we have in syy we have a tech violation that doesn't really capture this but I think if we picked what data points we want we're already piloting it why not utilize that and then we need the opinions of our colleagues for sure yeah just a couple
334final thoughts we always want the opportunity to Talk Amongst principles to collaborate come to a consensus um it's a big difference with a incoming sixth grader who's 11 on social media and a senior in high school who's 18 very big difference there so that has to look different in regard to a policy yes if if we don't go backward right now we have a very strict policy I would hate something to come from above that gives it more leniency uh that would be negative for our building so it sounds to me like we're talking about structures uh Sops procedures um that we can be talking about and uh working on over the next like and learning about with our data points over the next year or two um my one thing is I would probably
335throw in elementary schools I know that's a little scary but um we have you know fourth fifth sixth graders who are on phones as well so and to your point there's no education about that until they get to middle school so I feel like that we should include Elementary um principles in the discussion was there anything else all right oh go ahead Brian I'm sorry I just want to share our staff's commitment to continue to engage our principles in this conversation uh throughout the close of this year and over the course of the year ahead and we would be happy to bring this back as a thoughtful conversation in service of the code of conduct for next year to see where we land and where principles are kind of reconciling what may be some uh
336steps for our consideration um and I also think it's important to recognize that Technologies are continuing to emerge there's a lot of wearable technologies that are actually starting to hit the marketplace where it's even like prescription eyeglasses are starting to have some of the same same functionality that phones are so we have to think about not just what our current experiences but what's on the near Horizon um and be mindful of that but I know the assistant superintendent and their shared commitment with working with our administrators in the district I feel like we can try to identify what progress looks like in the system in the year Ahad I think that sounds wonderful thank you so much and um my last thing is I will I will challenge you all um my my group of
337friends do this when we go out to dinner everybody puts their cell phone in the middle of the table first one to pick it up pays so yeah so if you ever want to you know lose lose your bet um on your cell phone there you go um but with that I just want to say thank you so much um thank you for the conversation and thank you for doing what you're doing um really appreciate it especially at 11:45 um so we're going to let you go and have a great rest of your evening as I enjoy those last 15 minutes before tomorrow safe all right and that brings us to .3 the preliminary budget um Brian would you like to introduce that yes uh thank you joining us this evening to provide an update
338on fiscal year 2024 2025 preliminary budget is our Chief Financial Officer Dave Montoya and our budget director Brian gustavson welcome to both of you than you well good evening everybody I uh was sitting in the audience wondering if I had ever started a presentation one one day and finished at the next and I don't know if I have ever done that and and we we'll try we're going to try and keep this on April 23rd but um fortunately as we talk about the preliminary budget uh we we did a lot of the ground work two weeks ago we talked a lot um about this budget two weeks ago probably more so then than a year ago at the same time so uh you're you're up to speak on a lot of things there are some
339things that haven't changed a lot but really what I want to do is um first and foremost emphasis again that this is a draft of our budget hey and it's very Revenue focused and so there will be some changes uh we want to show you what the assumptions are currently with the with the budget draft and uh really give you sort of a a brief tour of the budget document right so um I know board members you have you have the budget document in your your packets I I don't know um if you have the presentation yet but I'll have some screenshots where you can re you can see the lines that I'm referring to in your document and then you can reflect back on those or you can flip back and forth as I
340talk a little bit as well uh and and one other note too on the budget document one of our goals that that Dave and I share is that going into our next budget cycle we would really like to um redesign this document and and and upgrade it it it's due for some upgrades some user readability those kinds of things and so that's something coming down the road um in the future for us all right so if you were to look at page one in the document uh you would notice that that's a real basic list of assumptions and those assumptions uh again explicitly state that this is a draft budget it is focused on the revenue side of things in primarily the general fund hey and it's going to talk about the per pupil rate
341the funded pupil count as well as Charter estimates and I know there's been discussion tonight about Charters and those kinds of things even even dollars and we'll talk about that briefly uh and then we'll establish and I and show you the amount available for the expenditures that are going to start to get plugged in here in the proposed budget okay also as you look at the budget document right when you get into those those really small font spreadsheets there's a lot of stuff there okay and it's comparing a previous fiscal year a f year 23 the current fiscal year the budget and estimated actual the current fiscal year as well as next budget year and then there's a a Delta column A Change column that's going to compare the U proposed or preliminary budget number
342versus the estimated actual so just to familiar familiarize yourselves with those things and then it does encompass each of the funds that we use again we're focused on the general fund that's going to be on pages two through five as well as another page on on page 13 and our other funds like the grants fund and the building uh capital projects fund they're also in this budget document okay so if you were to look at uh you know I guess that's page two you'd see our our Revenue picture and I'm going to talk about the number that the arrow is pointing to of this screenshot and that's 424 mil 6,538 that's the general fund Revenue we're projecting in this preliminary budget excuse me hey those are going to be the operational revenues you find ON
343LINE 17 and you'll also notice on line 18 right below there a beginning balance of reserves of 9,798 740 I have a little asterisk there that's going to change as we start to plug in expenditures that's going to that's going to be um you know adjusting as well and so when we present the proposed budget I'd like to come back and talk reserves a little bit more uh than we would this evening but if you're looking for more detail as far as uh what builds into those reserves summaries or Revenue summaries they're on pages four and five so some of those preliminary general fund Revenue assumptions building up to that 424 million these haven't changed since two weeks ago and these have been very consistent really throughout this process the 5.2% inflation the buy down
344of the budget stabilization Factor the per pupil um rate change of just over $697 and the funded pupil count based on 5year averaging of just over 295 funded pupils those are still the same you saw this two weeks ago as well exact same slide where we compared fiscal year 24 with the preliminary Revenue projections in the general fund of fiscal year 25 and noted a$1 17,31 15,682 increase in program funding this is program funding the formula okay number of kids times dollars per kid right that's important and I'm going to show you how or where that falls out here in the budget document you uh you saw this chart two weeks ago as well but I've drilled in a little bit just to focus on these Revenue changes that very first line in the table
345that's on the screen that that is the total program that I just just talked about $17.3 million of new Total program funding additionally we are budgeting for an additional uh $1.1 million of M Levy override funding I'll show you where that is in the document and an additional $900,000 of State categorical funding I'll point that out as well um those new revenues come to $19.3 million of new funding and I am including even though this this budgets focused on revenues and not expenditures I am including charter school allocations because it's really treated like a negative Revenue in our budget setup it's money that comes in from the state and we flow it back out and I know as I mentioned you've discussed already that that that number right now we're projecting to be about $1.7
346million higher next year and it's important to remember that's based on flat enrollment projections okay as we continue to collect the uh proposed budgets for the charters we're going to update the those enrollment numbers and that number will be adjusted it'll be adjusted on both ends dollars coming in and dollars going out and log away in in your mind the uh projected available amount for compensation and budget priorities is $17.6 million and I'll quickly show you how that sorts out in the document so we're going to have a series of screenshots here this screenshot is really from page two that's our Revenue uh summary lines 1 through 13 that summarizes the program funding he on line 13 there all the way to the right side that's the Delta column that's the change between fiscal year
34725 preliminary and fiscal year 24 anticipated or estimated actuals and there's the $17.3 million that was in the first line of the previous slides table if you were to flip to uh page five that's a little more of a deeper Revenue summary that captures our mil Levy override funding um data and information and so that that uh line 18 that is highlighted in this screenshot hey that's the 2019 mil Levy override and if you were to scroll all the way over to the right side there again that's the Delta column of 1, 91,5 34 that's additional re Vue for the 2019 mil Levy you don't see comparable numbers in The Other M levies because they set dollar amounts this particular Mill uh moves with the rate of inflation that 5.2% so that's why we anticipate
348additional Revenue in that M Levy and then further down on page five line 47 to be exact uh that that summarizes the other state revenue with regards to categorical funding so things like uh transportation reimbursements funding specified for special education or vocational education um purposes all of those things summarized come to that almost $900,000 of new funds got that circled there for you it's actually 899,000 million doll number that I pointed out earlier but to make the comparison of what's available we have to jump back onto the revenue page and that's page three and the the bottom of page three has lines 57 that's the charter school allocations we talked about and line 59 which in a balanced budget in the proposed budget line 59 won't even exist because these will be total expenditures matching
349total revenues however in this document the total expenditures are7 m614 36 fewer and so line 59 is illustrating what's available now for when we uh factor in compensation the results of negotiations um budget adjustments and critical needs or reductions all that stuff that still has to be factored in in the next four weeks it's going to be working with that $17.6 million um number okay and that brings us right back to this chart same thing from a few slides ago just to show you that what we had up two weeks ago is what we've plugged into the document there okay so you can refer to those lines and back to that information and thinking briefly about the expenditure side of things these are not in this budget document but we know that they exist we
350know there's going to be a $5.3 million increase in health and dental benefits primarily health for staff that has to get in there somehow we know that uh we need to budget for more expenditures and utilities and insurance and that the insurance more the like the premiums and and deductibles those kinds of things and our Central departments and cabinet uh are leading the way of identifying critical needs items like additional mentoring support accessibility Staffing the additional cost for graduation ceremonies uh and the additional cost of SRO contracts okay to the tune of about $322,000 that's not in there but needs to be factored in and on the other side of adding needs there will be reductions uh again the central departments are looking at how to reduce budgets and right now I've identified just over
351$2 million of reductions in the form of some FTE across different departments um eliminating or reducing ring or combining modifying bus routes reducing operating expenditures uh reducing testing fees and professional development expenditures as well as uh reducing or eliminating hiring bonuses in some of the hard to fill classified areas and employee recognition programs among other things okay these are some of the highlights of that $2 million reduction category uh last or yeah last time two weeks ago we did talk a little bit more about the student based budgets and zerob based budgets that have already been deployed at about a $4.5 million reduction again these things have to get into that expenditure equation as well and I'll take a quick sort of you know Sid step and talk about something that's not on any of
352those slides yet and that's capital expenditures right nothing earmarked there for here's more money to add um you know a roof or fix a boiler or anything like that and it's important to understand that our Capital expenditures are really right now coming out of the budget in two different funds uh a very limited amount in the general fund we allocate about $900,000 a year in this this particular fund to address specified maintenance uh needs at buildings okay whether that's playgrounds or things like that um as well as some Transportation capital reserve to address Fleet replacement and um some carryover of tech security projects like uh the security video camera system those kinds of things okay that's in the general fund we also have dollars in the capital projects building fund from the 2016 bond that
353are being wrapped up okay projects being wrapped up there we project we leave us about $13 million of reserves in that fund that are there for us to be a able to allocate projects uh and get us to basically a next election cycle because we don't replenish this on an annual basis when it's gone it's gone so again capital projects are not in there I just wanted to point that out so what's next we should see a finalized Public School Finance act hopefully soon I think it was U uh sent for Appropriations maybe even today or still today hey uh finalization negotiations May well I I know the next iteration is May 2nd but here's sometime in May finalizing the critical needs central departmental reductions and then we'll have a proposed budget that captures this
354all for you on May 28th you won't vote on it on May 28th it'll be for information uh voting to adopt the budget will be June 11th but it'll be presented to you here's what we believe the fiscal year 25 picture looks like I with that hey you did it fantastic what questions do you have yeah questions you right yall got like 30 seconds before it's tomorrow so I'll try again next year we'll get we'll get across that dayline thank you thank you thank you so much Brian really quickly for on May 28th are you can have any information on on there about um replacement of the 2019 um mil override or that 2016 uh Bond so are you guys going to have placeholders in that proposed budget well um so the the 2019 override
355is in there that's the one that grows with inflation so yes it it's in there yeah and that doesn't have a sunset that will continue on uh in our bond fund it will reflect uh next year's principal and interest payments do you want to address that as well yeah and I because I think I know where you're going with that um so we also have the opportunity to revise our budget at any time up till January 31st so if there were to be I think we're talking about maybe an election or something like that that would be built into a budget um that would be something that we would revise if we were to do that but we would not build it in expecting that to happen and you're going to have multiple times to
356see this budget through all the way through June so um this is just the first draft it's the first opportunity for us to get the document in front of you so you can see the the nuts and bolts of it and kind of walk through the revenue piece next time we'll bring the expenditures and uh we'll have a proposed budget at that time um this is a reiterated request I I got earlier I prefer to see things in Excel because it's easier for me if we can make Excel spread sheets accessible to the community I think that would be appreciated too and I know you're working on that and this is more important but if we could I just want to renew that request thanks okay y go ahead Brian Dave and Brian I was
357wondering if you can clarify something that I want to build off of director Duffy's question earlier you know thinking of our long range planning discussion there is conversation around how much would it cost to potentially need to modify a facility based upon whatever is proposed in the upcoming scenarios can you please communicate to the board and to the broader community in terms of what funding source we would be looking at to potentially tap into for any of those potential facility Capital modifications yes so um one of the things that we've been uh considering is because our history has been like other Colorado school districts typically we've been doing maintenance with bonds and um that's that's not just pter School District that's the entire State that's been doing that and the problem with that is you're
358doing small projects and you're mortgaging them over 20 24 years doesn't make a lot of sense you're paying interest on that so the thing that we've been exploring is this uh it was a it actually came out in 20 uh 2016 legislative session and it's called the debt free Mill of override and what it's designed to do is it's designed to be an annual allocation unlike a bond that is one time um so it's an annual allocation but it's designed to get you out of that cycle of going from bond to bond and actually have an annual maintenance budget that you can do maintenance cycle things with so so that's exactly what we'd be looking at as as far as a revenue Source potentially on that um that differs from a traditional Mev override where
359typical on a traditional M override you're looking at program things um items that would be enhanced would be something like that the other thing on the traditional mevy is that the it is actually capped out at 25% of that total program that Brian was just talking about so there's a limit to that one whereas the debt free Mill has much more opportunity to fill in for the maintenance needs Dave just thank you for that that was very very important information beyond that in our current budget take putting aside a potential uh debt-free Mill yeah uh scenario would we look at potentially tapping into reserves uh that are associated with capital or would be be looking at other potential funding sources or both and yeah I I think it's really the slide that Brian had here
360um Brian mentioned it I'll just I'll just reiterate it the the amount of um budget that we have in general fund for maintenance is um not enough 900,000 is not enough for district our size um so we would be hitting those budgets first for needs that will go really quickly given the breadth and size of our district um if there were other projects that materialized outside of um the 2016 Bond projects that were identified earlier we would be using this $13 million unassigned Reserve um to basically deal with those until we came up with a new solution to funding maintenance um as Brian had pointed out the problem with this is this is finite and once it's gone it's gone um so we we doesn't replenish so once we spend the 13 million it it
361it is gone and as we um are aware of last year we can have big things hit like rooftop units that um air conditioning units or HVAC units and they can cost half a million million dollars a times um so that money can go very quickly yeah go ahead sorry uh debt free Mill Levy override for maintenance in there do they how do they Define maintenance um there is a legal definition I don't want to just wing it right here I don't have it in front of me but um what we're really looking at is things that have things that are like a replacement cycle um things that would break um so think about buses think about maintenance think about everything that goes into a building would be something like that um those are kind
362of the big things that come to my mind is there anything else that you can think ofri that's that I mean those are the themes that you're going to be looking at um you could also use it for um so we have so thinking of general fund we have some staff that are paid for maintenance to do maintenance work those could fit into the debt free Mill Levy as well okay go ahead Carolyn I have a a question about Taber reserves I've had a couple different people ask me about those like why don't we spend them why don't we use them can you explain like the Taber reserves and and why they're there and what you can do with them Taber reserves are considered restricted we can't touch them uh is is really what the
363law says and they have to be set at 3% of of those expenditures in our budget and really statutorily they're set aside for the utmost of dire circumstances um you know natural disaster those kinds of things and so government schools must set that aside we can't just address those and if there were to be that dire circumstance where we would have to then we would have a payback period of I think to to restore those within a year the next fiscal year so those we have to just carve off right off the top one more thing on the Taber reserves just because I've been we've been both doing this for a while but um there has been discussion way back in the past around the fact that there's double reserving for Taber because we reserve
364for Taber as well as the state does um that's never been resolved it was talked about at the legislature probably 15 16 years ago um but that there I just haven't heard much about that since thank you for that explanation and I think we found our our next thing that we could uh campaign for right yeah I think that should be brought in our next legislative session yeah we had it in one of the agendas before yeah anything else all right well good job Brian you did it you're into tomorrow all right all right all right thank you so much yeah thank you and thanks for uh waiting for so long to present so the next we have is 10.0 executive session negotiations can I get a motion [Laughter] yep I move that the board
365enter executive session for the purpose of developing the strategy of the school district for negotiations relating to the 2024 2025 collective bargaining agreement or employee contracts as authorized by CRS 24-6 4243 individuals invited to join the board in executive session are superintendent Brian Kingsley Chief officers Lauren hooton dve Montoya and Eric on Savage and general counsel Autumn Aspen do have a second Kevin all right um Joe can we take the vote Jim brokish hi Kristen Draper hi Connor Duffy hi Kevin havelda hi Carolyn Reed hi Scott shanower hi Jessica Zamora hi motion passes 70 okay we will now convene in a closed session this is the last agenda item before adjournment at the conclusion of the executive session we will come back to this room to publicly adjourn the meeting the adjournment will be recorded
366but not televised have a good evening e