001e all right thanks everybody for joining us tonight uh for the pter School District Board of Education meeting uh please mute your cell phones as we begin and uh I will call this meeting to order at approximately 632 p.m. on October 25th so our first of business is would any board members like to make changes to the agenda yes I would please go ahead I move to amend the agenda to move item 3.2 to a new action item section after 7.0 consent agenda great be item 3.2 okay do I have a second second from DJ is there any discussion of this item if not Jilla would you call a roll call on that DJ Anderson hi Jim brokish hi Nate Donovan hi Kristen Draper I Rob Patterson I Carolyn Reed I Jessica Zamora I motion
002passes 7 Z excellent thanks very much uh meantime we'll go on to our first action item uh which is 3.1 it's a resolution in support of homeless youth Awareness Month um can I get a motion in support of the resolution uh Nate yes I move that the board adopt a resolution in support of national homeless youth Awareness Month November 2022 excellent thank you e all right good evening thank you all for being here really appreciate it thank you for joining the Board of Education this evening um please go ahead and mute your cell phones watches anything that beeps or buzzes uh today is Tuesday April 9th 2024 and this meeting is now called to order at 6:36 so thank you for your patience um would you please join me in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance
003all right thank you would any board members like to make changes to the agenda Kevin um I first move that item 10.1 internal monitoring policy review El 2.6 be pulled from the agenda and moved to the Board of Education meeting for April 23rd 202 four do I have a second Jessica for second Jill can you call the vote Jim brokish hi Kristen Draper hi Connor Duffy hi Kevin havalda hi Scott Shan bow hi Jessica Zamora I motion passes 60 thank you chel um and let's see whether any other changes that would like to be made to the agenda Kevin uh and next move that items 9.4 a 9.5 be pulled from consent agenda and moved into action item which will now be 10.1 do I have a second on that okay Conor for the second
004angel can you take the vote on that Jim broish hi Kristen Draper hi Connor Duffy hi Kevin havelda hi Scott shanower hi Jessica Zamora hi motion passes 60 thank you and moving on we are going to go to recognitions and reports so think go ahead and for Mr Kingsley good evening everyone it's great to see a full house tonight I'm really happy all of you are here and those of you who are tuning in welcome uh tonight we are excited to recognize excellence in our school district from The District spelling be Champion to the state wrestling champions to the coach of the year uh so I'm really grateful that leading our celebrations is our Chief Information officer Miss meline Novi welcome and thanks for being here all right thank you superintendent Kingsley members of the
005board cabinet and everyone here this evening I know we're all here for different reasons but I'm so glad that um at the end of the day we do get to be in community together and celebrate some incredible people who are in the room it's one of our favorite things to be able to pause and be able to recognize our amazing students and colleagues who make this district one of the best in the state of Colorado and the nation so thank you um we are going to start this evening um with recognizing uh nille ganta who is um our district oral spelling be Champion so at this point i' would like to recognize or welcome up my colleague Michelle wickom um to speak and then um nille if you would like to join us along with
006your parents here in front of the screen that would be wonderful and I will turn it over to my colleague thank you sorry thank you meline good evening my name is Michelle whitcom and I am the spelling be coordinator and Nichols fourth grade teacher at trout cor knowledge school on behalf of our principal Dr Alyssa Kendall Nichols parents and myself thank you for inviting us this evening I would like to introduce this year's District oral spelling be Champion niichel G and his parents Ashwin and himma G just a few words about our amazing nickel nickel a fourth grader at trout is an outstanding student in numerous ways and excels at all that he does while continually showing strength of character and perseverance he enjoys advanced work in math learning history is active with skiing and
007basketball and has an insatiable love of learning with Reading Writing and especially spelling his strengths and spelling recently resulted in winning Trout's spelling B for the fourth consecutive year psd's orals spelling be for the second consecutive year and a fourth place finish at the 2024 Colorado state spelling B in March which is most remarkable as he was the youngest child competing at State he stayed poised throughout every part of the competition as he went more than 25 rounds at State his accomplishments are extraordinary thank you again to pter school district and its distinguished board members for recognizing this incredible gentleman and congratulations again to nickol G and his [Applause] family load you up a deal should we give some pictures pictures would you to uh I would like to thank PSD for supporting me and
008for the opportunity to be here I'm proud to be a member of the PSD Community I would like to thank my family for supporting me and especially my mom because she helped me a lot with this thank you do you want a [Laughter] job knows to his mom looking you're amazing dude soat a well done you make [Applause] proud done Scott all right thank you all so much now we have what I feel is really unique backtack celebration um and so I would like to invite my colleague uh assistant principal and athle director Carrie Christensen from pter high school up um to introduce our colleague Barrett Galler uh as 5A Coach of the Year by the Colorado High School coaches association um so Mr glier if you wouldn't mind joining up here as well so
009that we can recognize you and your incredible work thank you meline um as she said my name is Carrie Christensen I'm the assistant principal and athletic director at pter high school um first of all I'd like to thank the board Mr Kinsley our cabinet for their unwavering support of Athletics and activities in this District um we are very proud to be a part of this district and the support that all of you show um for our student athletes and coaches is wonderful so it is my honor um like mine said to recognize coach baric goer as a 5A chasa Coach of the Year color Colorado High School coaches association so coach Galler has been coaching for 23 years at pter high school as a head coach and is by far one of the longest tene
010coaches in the district um which in and of itself is a is a huge huge accomplishment um in in the world of Athletics so this year just a little bit of background um for this year we had quite the season um we were City Champs we were Front Range League Champs with 16 teams in our league we were Runners up at at regionals we had 11 wrestlers qualify for state which is the most ever at pter school or pter High School hence um coach Galler's blonde hair which um is still growing out he he died that um he made a bet with the kids and said if if we got 11 to State he was going to dye his hair and he and he came true on that um we had four wrestlers make it
011to finals we had two state champions so it was just an unbelievable um experience in test to to our wrestling program and the and the kids and coaches we have at pter high school so the award that we're um here for is the chasa 5A coach of the year so this is voted on by all the coaches at the state tournament so it usually goes we finished fourth in the state which was a great accomplishment there's some really tough teams up at the top of the 5A um Co 5A wrestling um programs and it usually goes the coach of the year usually goes to the team that gets first um so it's it's unheard of for a team getting fourth for their coach to be voted on as 5A coach of the year so again
012just a a testament to the person that coach goer go goer is um amongst his his uh coaches as well at pter high school and on a side note he was also honored at champ this morning and received the sunny luic coaches of character award as well so I was joking around with him it's ver all your day at putter High [Applause] School um and and in closing just talking about Coach goer at pter high school a lot of you all know we have a a motto of I am who I am because of who we are and um pter High School is who they are because of coaches and teachers like Barrett so um please help me welcome our 5A Coach of the Year bar goer so I get to introduce a couple of
013the the rest wrestlers and we did have a stellar group and and part of it the leadership of some of our our older guys um senior Banks Banks Norby had um an excellent season he had a fantastic state tournament in fact uh a lot of his mat matches were pretty dominant Banks was uh in charge and that was really fun he's been third he's he's been fifth before and um now he's the state champion for 157 pounds in a 5A does he want to come up should I bring him up come on up Banks and our our other state champion um like carry said we had four in the finals and and two winners and it was pretty F fantastic semifinals with everybody in the semi-finals winning on the same mat but was uh the
014the champion was at 144 pounds Billy Greenwood and I just want to tell a little bit about Billy's story is uh about the second week of practice he actually was injured he he broke his jaw and had to have his mouth wir shut for most of the season and he he stayed really diligent and stayed practicing he was kind of a um what do you say like like a a a coach that was also a peer a peer coach and he was just so enthusiastic and stayed with it and he had he had a total of 13 matches in including in the semifinals beating a returning state champion in overtime and in the finals beating another returning state champion in overtime to to win in pretty dramatic fashion that's uh Billy [Applause] Greenwood you might
015have to hold there we go and if I can just yeah we'll do a picture um but if I can just say this just shows what a humble leader you are the fact that here we are to honor you and you immediately went into honoring your students so thank you very [Applause] much congrats coach proud represent us well [Music] thank you [Applause] congratulations thank you all for joining us this evening and for celebrating again just some incredible students and one of our incredible colleagues thank you so much and that concludes recognitions for this evening thank you so much mateline um we'll move on to um 5.0 action item uh 5.1 resolution and support of national de History Month can I get a motion anyone oh Kevin thank you uh I moved that the board approve
016the resolution support of national de History Month March 13 through April 15 2024 can I get a second all right Jim got the second and would anybody like to read the resolution I can read it goad thank you Scott whereas the purpose of national de history month is to increase awareness of and express appreciation for the many contributions that deaf and heart of hearing individuals have made to our society and whereas according to the 2017 Census Bureau estimate at least 11,200 th000 individuals in the United States are deaf or hard of hearing and whereas Deaf culture is an important part of the fabric of our society and whereas deaf and hard of hearing individuals have made and continue to make numerous contributions to the United States and whereas the American School for the Deaf open
017in Hartford Connecticut on April 15th 1817 as the first Public School for the Deaf in the United States and whereas galet University was founded on April 8th 1864 when President Lincoln signed the charter establishing it as the first college for the deaf in the world and whereas the National Association of the de and the American Library Association support recognizing a is National deaf history month now therefore be it resolved that the pter School District board of education does hereby Proclaim April 1st through the 30th as National deaf history Awareness Month in pter school district we encourage students staff in the community to celebrate and support deaf and heart of hearing individuals and embrace the differences that make us all who we are approved and adopted this nth day of April 20 20124 thank you very
018much and Brian I believe we have um some faculty in um uh staff joining us yes we do joining us this evening to speak to the resolution is our deaf and heart of hearing teacher Miss Kate Buffington Kate welcome I think you also have a special guest if and all the way through 12th grade um I wanted to allow a friend to come and talk in a minute but we did want to talk about deaf history and the uniqueness of being a deaf individual there is a quote by Mark Twain and it states that kindness is a language that the deaf can hear and that the blind can see one of the best best things about Deaf culture is it doesn't matter your age it doesn't matter if you're a part of the lgbtq I
019A Plus group your religious beliefs your race all that matters is that you can communicate that's all you need that's that's the most important thing um using sign language is really the only thing that connects them all um deaf individuals it refers to two groups of people so those that identify themselves as deaf with a capital letter D that shows deaf Pride Deaf culture and they embrace it and they use sign language there's also deaf lowercase D and it's people that may utilize amplification like a cular implant or hearing aid and um don't use sign language to communicate either way it doesn't matter you are part of that world and that culture putting that communication first is really what makes this group and this culture so special thank you for your attention and now my
020very very special guest and he will introduce him himself hi my name is Wesley I'm a third grader at Linton Elementary I live with my parents and oldo sister I enjoy skateboarding Harry Potter math and I'm in math Olympia this year I have unial death nness and I use a Cocula implant my teacher uses a microphone and I sit up fun I like being deaf because there's some upsides to it like when I go to sleep I can put my ear um on the pillow I can hear with down on the pillow also I'm unique because not everyone is Dea I have bionic hearing that's my superp power what's yours thank [Applause] you you there I just want to if anybody wants to speak and then we'll go ahead and call the vote and then
021we can get a picture is that okay all right what any like to say anything go ahead Jess I love that it's your superpower you are such a joy thank you for coming that's what his shirt says too it says I have bionic ears what's your superpower you're way cooler than I will ever be anyone else go ahead Scott I'd just like to thank Kate as well for all the all that you do for the district how long have you been with the district um I 206 is when I was first hired but I taught PE at I Stone and um worked with death and heart caring kids and went back to my masters and 2009 I think I started in this position so it is really unique because I get to go and follow
022kids year to year so I've been with him since kindergarten and he's in third grade so I've had just a few but that I've gotone the full the full way yeah you're doing great service thank you so much anyone else all right I just want to say thank you and it looks like the two of you are each other superpowers I love it thank you so much so Jill could you call the vote Jim brokish hi Kristen Draper hi Connor Duffy hi Kevin havalda hi Scott shanower hi Jessica Zamora hi motion passes 60 we took a photo hi nice to meet you have you ever spoken to a group this B I think you have two superpowers you did a great [Applause] job all right now we're going to move on to the superintendent report
023superintendent Kingsley will now make remarks to the board of education and to the community thank you I don't know how to f f i don't know how to follow a superhero um it's it's a really hard thing makes me want to go off script and just speak from my heart I I really want to thank all of the teachers and parents that make celebrations like this possible when you think about the commitment to academic Excellence athletic Excellence inclusivity Excellence it's really quite incredible to take a moment in the midst of all of the hard things that we are grappling with as a community but to recognize our competitive spirit and also recognize how great we are at excelling in these particular spaces and it doesn't happen by accident it happens because people trust one another
024they invest in each other um and the goal of the school system is to continue to find ways to you know build off of that and sustain it um these types of practices and commitment to classroom excellence and uh Excellence all over are evident every single day when I have opportunities to visit our schools uh I had the pleasure of visiting many schools over the last couple of weeks uh with members of our board for those of you that had an opportunity to join me thank you uh yesterday had the pleasure of being up at all three of our Mountain schools um and whether you are a member of each of those respective School communities or not I encourage everybody just to go and check out the buildings it's it's like going back in time
025but also seeing instructional Excellence with teachers who are teaching multiple grade levels and trying to continue to find creative and identified ways uh to make learning relevant localized to their community but commitment to the district Excellence when I think about uh all of the efforts that our elementary school teachers have had to go through implementing new curriculum in our literacy spaces those teachers and those schools have implemented two grade levels at the same time and their ability to come together and collaborate and think creatively to make that work and identify ways to accelerate students not hold them back uh but to use that as a leverage point is absolutely incredible other schools by name that I've had a chance to see and be a part of or pter High School RI Berg elementary school OD
026day Elementary School uh and shepherdson um and each of those engagement opportunities are unique to their school communities and as I see many of you representing other school communities we understand the importance of uniqueness but also the importance of Engagement and talking about hard things uh every Monday that I have an opportunity to attend schools I the last school that I'm at I stay after school and it's optional for teachers to engage and we have an informal chat just to have a chance to talk to me about things that they want me to celebrate and things that they want me to pay attention to or think differently about and I get a lot of really great feedback and Trends around the system but my most recent one was at shepherdson elementary school and what resonates
027with me is that our employees our staff members are really clinging for more opportunities to engage with us as members of the governance team and I think that's one of the reasons why you as members of the board are committed to create more listening sessions that we have one I think scheduled as early as next week and having opportunities to have everybody in this room today I really love the energy we may not all agree on all things and all topics but the fact that that we can come together uh is a really meaningful experience and I know that will continue as we close out the year the most incredible celebration of excellence in this community in this district is our graduations they're right around the corner believe it or not I think they're only
028a little over a month away I'm not a believer in counting the few days that we have left uh but celebrating you know 13 years of commitment to being a part of this District in this community is quite significant and it's not just a celebration for those high schools it's a celebration for those families it's a celebration for the middle schools and the elementary schools and our prek programs that all have been a part of that academic success so we're going to talk about those types of successes and challenges throughout the course of our agenda this evening on our agenda tonight is a topic uh that we've been talking about pretty frequently which is our graduation requirements and what the board is being asked to approve on the consent agenda is a true example of
029community engagement DRS Julie chaplain and Dr J Dwayne schmidtz along with their action team that is a part of our strategic plan have truly listened and adapted and have iterated on their particular versions of how to think about this change and an inclusive manner where all people feel heard we may not all agree on the end outcome and that's okay but the fact that we've changed and iterated on that process as a result of true Community feedback I think is quite impressive uh we will also hear the second part of our district ends 1.0 monitoring report Dr schmidtz will also be uh talking a little bit about that and cover our excuse me he's already covered in part one our academic achievement in the last board meeting and tonight is focused on our students mental
030health I will share as we've known and we've talked about over the last three years our district priorities around literacy mental health and belonging and ensuring all students have a chance to not just graduate but graduate with options choices whether it's a four-year program program a two-year program the military or directly into the workforce our District's budget which is another topic tonight reflects our values of how we invest in these things and I'm super excited and I want this community to pay special attention to the progress that we are making in the area of mental health we have not cracked the code we have many people in our community that are still hurting our young people are hurting but the fact that we are making significant gains and trending in the right direction as a
031result of us talking about vulnerable things the fact that we're talking about wanting to ensure that not just some people but all people regardless of your identities feel seen feel heard and feel honored is what makes this place special I don't know yet what my superpower is I'm curious about that if I have one but I do believe that this District superpower is its people as we talk about our budget tonight I know that there are many people tuning in and are here in person because there are a lot of questions about our budget there are a lot of questions on whether the data that's out there is accurate and whether that we have to solve problems now or you know if it's not so dire maybe we can do this you know three or
032four superintendent from now I want to tell you unequivocally we have to solve these problems now Our obligation to this community to our children and the future of this community to ensure that our brand promise Pro that our schools are not just Hollow buildings but Hollow buildings with exceptional teachers who are also surrounded by exceptional school counselors music educators PE teachers art teachers and we're figuring out a way to continue to attract the most talented people in those areas for our schools to be full and our buildings to be fully optimized recognizing that our infrastructure is continuing to be challenged because we offer so many choices vibrant comes at a cost and that conversation is hard but I'm here for it I'm here to lead in partnership with you and I'm really excited that I
033know that we're going to continue to Grapple with these hard things together I also want to recognize as the superintendent my reality and my experiences in this community may be different than our bus drivers our parent professionals our kitchen workers our teachers our school and District administrators people are hurting people are scared I say that not to be an alarmist I say that to name the uncomfortable truth that if we don't talk about what we're afraid of if what we're concerned about losing and come together in a greater good our students are the ones who are going to lose I ask us as a community to continue to come together and tonight is an incredible not just symbolic gesture of that but it's a real action-oriented gesture of how how you're engaging in our governance
034team and I'm grateful for that I want to also invite you and ask you to resist the urge to vilify any group of people any one school or one Department over another as a means to try to protect another one we're better than that the solutions to these problems are not on social media they're not on Reddit and Facebook and Twitter they're in these spaces and other engagement sessions where we have an opportunity to be a emotional but also tap in to our logical reasonable parts of our brains and our hearts and the wisdom and intelligence of this community and I'm confident that we have done that and are continuing to do that well people have shown up in the hundreds for the most recent listening and engagement sessions in this topic all expressing personal
035interests Community interests that are all valid and real but have done so in a productive way to be heard and for all of those that have been facilitating that whether you're a member of the steering committee or a member of CSU a member of our cabinet or a member of our community who simply just been curious or wanted to be mobilized into action I want to say thank you for caring enough to be a part of this school system and its commitment to being better we're going to get through these hard times together thank you for the opportunity to allow me to address the community this evening thank you very much and this now brings us to the community comment section of the board meeting um the board desires to hear the viewpoints of all
036stakeholders including stud 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 genuinely respond to remarks made during Community comment our lack of response should not be construed to mean that we agree or disagree with what was said or the description or interpretation of events as presented by any speaker further even if some remarks may be factually inaccurate inaccurate we generally choose not to respond or correct the record here because formal board meetings are not the time or place for back and forth dialogue as we begin this community comment section let us model for our entire Community how to listen and how to
037interact respectfully even with those with whom we disagree for we all have the students best interests at heart so this opportunity for public comments for members of the community who registered to speak by the designated deadline those people will be called on to make remarks in the order that they signed up and each speaker will be allowed 3 minutes to address the board and so to start it off I would like to welcome Steph got hold welcome good evening I stand before you today as an integrated Services teacher with a determination to advocate for students with disabilities and the amazing staff that work with them the levels of support our department is providing for staff and students are inadequate we are here to advocate for and help the most vulnerable population at school but the
038systems in place are failing us and our students for the last four years my position in PSD has been in an elementary multicategorical setting for those unfamiliar with special education services this means that I'm essentially a resource and inclusion teacher in my decade long career I've worked as a special educator in a variety of settings States and districts across these years I've always been teaching teaching reading teaching math teaching self-regulation and self- advocacy and yet in PSD I'm not teaching I'm managing behaviors in the past two years anywhere from three to eight students spent months in a secluded environment with me due to their unsafe and explosive behaviors this included managing situations involving physical restraints for safety amidst instances of biting scratching spitting and objects being thrown at my head I spent hours a day
039rocking a child as they screamed and cried and were unable to regulate and yet we are provided few resources to address the underlying trauma that triggers these behaviors requests for district assistance have too many times garnered no response leaving my team to shoulder the burden of managing extreme behaviors and Trauma alone reasons given for non-response included a belief by support people that our safety concerns weren't that big of a deal as teachers who work with our students every day we should be trusted to know what supports will best fit their needs I am here to tell you that this is not normal yes special special education is hard it's hard to make progress with students sometimes and it's hard to rework curriculum to fit unique needs but it is not normal to be physically assaulted
040every day and expected to continue teaching as if nothing has happened it is not normal to be ignored when you reach out for help it is not normal to be regularly pulled away from lunch and planning periods in order to assist with behavior outbursts it is not normal to then work 20 to 30 hours a month outside of contract time just to keep up with paperwork let alone to plan effective lessons I love teaching I love my students but I'm tired tired of being punched bitten and scratched tired of feeling like my voice is unheard and my efforts are in vain therefore it is with a heavy heart that I announce my resignation for my position as a special education teacher I hope that my departure along with the departure of many talented teachers each
041year will serve as a wakeup call to the district to take action to listen to the concerns of teachers and to prioritize the well-being of our students and staff our integrated services department is in crisis but it is not too late to make a change we need Staffing we need compensation for outof contract time and we need trauma and Behavior Support to be made available to the students who teach or say need it the most it has been an honor to serve the students of this district and I hope that one day I may Return To A system that values and supports its teachers thank you thank you thank you next up we have Amelia Catz welcome hello than thank you so much hello my name is Amelia Catz I'm a proud fourth grader at
042done Elementary I'm so thankful to be here tonight one of the main reasons my parents bought their house is so I could go to done and all the diversity and opportunities it offered I really really love my school and I know lots of people would agree with me I know every student loves their school dearly so I'm just here to tell you about why I love mine I feel done should not close because we have lots of unique projects programs and resources we are mainly a school of choice and we are a special IB School to start with I would like to talk about how wonderful it is to be a student and have some of the special and unique opportunities programs and resources we have access to just a few weeks ago the whole
043fourth grade came to this very boardroom and spoke for a big Civics project at Don we have an Autism program that is expected to double and the next year and Renovations will be made at one of the most powerful things for me is that Don has at least 50 International students each year and at least 26 languages we celebrate this each year in an annual naturalization ceremony this year one of my classmates parents got naturalized in the gym hanging our flags from around the world if we have a student who is from a place that does not have a flag up there we will get it up there for them I have watched their numbers grow over the years we are given lots of opportunities to make a difference even though we moved out of
044the D neighborhood my family decided to choice in D is the highest Elementary School for Choice which as a student brings in a lot of new ideas we have three classes in each grade which are all completely full at 22 to 24 which brings in lots of excitement and fun we have 257 Choice students which gets us to 65% Choice enrollment because of all this choice if we close everyone is going to go to a bunch of different schools so my little sister who would be in third grade and everyone else will have to start over completely with friends d as an IB dun is an IB World school so we and we do our best every day to bring out these qualities called the IB learner profiles we are reflective because we are always
045considering how to do better and how our actions affect the world around us every month we have a special assembly where we go up and the principal reads a recognition considering how recognition written by our teachers reflecting on how we brought out these traits you're caring because we all are always looking for ways to be kind and we celebrate our differences our school is partnering with Autocare City product heart in which we are being caring by raising money for a nonprofit We are balanced because we always try to balance different topics and perspectives we always make sure we balance our social physical and mental health our principal Abby Hemley says when we know better we do better she brings us out in our learning every day thank you so much for listening I hope you
046consider my view on this matter because we have lot of special opportunities programs projects we are mainly School of Choice and we are unique IBU school have a good night thank you very much Amelia next up we have Nathan Hall no Nathan okay thank you uh meline Nelson is up next thank you welcome hi Board of Education members my name is mateline Nelson Maddie and I'm a proud done fourth grade student thank you for letting me tell you why I do not think that dun Elementary should close first of all dun is a thriving school and is always at full capacity at recess I can always count on having someone to play with did you know that our current enrollment consists of 395 students I live 10 minutes north of Fort Collin so my neighborhood
047school is not done me and my family still chose to go to Dun though and I loved it so much that my little brother came to Dun 65% of dun students are choice in like me that means that 65% of dun students came to Dunn even though it was not their neighborhood School making them the most choice in school in the pr School District Dunn has great learning equipment for students and it's great teaching equipment for teachers despite it being the fourth lowest cost Building Maintenance per student Fort Collins is weird with the weather but down has that covered if it is really hot you can just turn on the air conditioning in the classroom 90% of our building is air conditioning and the other 10% has already been paid for and is scheduled for
048this summer I personally think and lots of people on my school also do that D has an amazing IB program and is welcome to everyone my best friend is from Sweden so she can speak Swedish in the lunchroom we have flags of some of the 52 different countries that are represented by dumb families many people at done also speak different languages there are over 26 different languages spoken in dun students homes dun also has unique events unique events like Unity night Ivy Awards and so much more for IV Awards each every month we go we get together with our book buddies and we have some students from each grade going up and we get to listen to what our teacher in our class says about us also every now and then we meet with her
049book buddies and we do stuff with them like reading books playing games or just coloring this year my book buddy is a first grader and she can speak Arabic Don also has an Autistic Program which will double in size next year in the hallway I see some of the people with severe autism being helped out a lot by the teachers and that makes me happy to see that they are getting the help that they need dun is an IB School as most of you know but dun doesn't just teach us about being IB and about the IB learner profile traits dun helps us live them at dun we learn about equity and equality Equity means that everyone gets what they need so not so not everyone gets the same thing equality means that everyone gets
050the same thing but it might not be what everyone needs I think that at done we focus on having Equity making sure that everyone gets what they need being a student at done doesn't just mean being a student it also means being a friend a helper a book buddy and so so much more thank you for taking time to listen to me speak [Applause] today meline thank you very much next up we have Lisa trimmer welcome those are really tough acts to follow um my name is Lisa trimmer I have four children in PSD um I have three at D elementary school and I have one at leer Middle School um I'm speaking today because I have um some big concerns regarding the proposed School consolidations which I feel have not been well thought out
051um I have attended every listening session with the steering committee I know that some of you have been there as well um so I won't go into detail about how I feel that D Elementary should not be closed um because you heard it much better from these kids here um there are larger problems with this process and the timeline allowed to make efficient creative and thoughtful considerations the steering committee appeared to not be provided with all or accurate data and they appear to be still receiving Corrections on the data they were considering in their scenario planning that includes capacity numbers and condition of buildings um secondly the steering committee did not seem to be familiar with the costs associated with continuation of programming um which was a guiding principle given by this board the IB
052program for example is in high demand but it's expensive to initiate and simply moving IB students to a new building does not make that building an IB School the accreditation process and teacher certifications are rigorous um third the steering committee did not have time or resources to problem solve The Fallout and collateral damage created by closing schools what are the plans for children with IEPs what about specialty support programs for children with autism hearing impairment severe emotional disabilities and homelessness these programs are currently offered in only a few schools many of which are included in the scenarios presented to this board and this leaves highly vulnerable students and families in limbo wondering if they matter enough to be considered in this process as well the fourth is financial transparency we were given General percentages of
053savings associated with each scenario as a whole and we should be able to see exactly how much is proposed to be saved with each individual consolidation closure or relocation the considerations for these scenarios should be broader than empty seats dollars or test scores our goal should be thriving schools not just full schools our goal should be an Engaged Community not a community pitted against each other as they fight for their voices to be heard the steering committee needs more time more resources and more information in order to make the smartest and most efficient plan moving forward thank you very much um next up we have Jared Olen welcome good evening my name is Jared Olsson I'm the parent of a second grader and a kindergartener in the district um and I wanted to address the
054board on a couple of questions tonight and and give them a couple questions that i' I'd ask them to keep in mind as they continue on with this process and before I begin I just want to thank everybody from the board to the staff and certainly the steering committee for all the hard work on this very difficult topic that we've engaged in um but I'd like to ask the board to consider whether this process is producing the type of systematically collected rigorous data that they'd like to have to be able to make this type of impactful decision that may have ramifications for years to come um certainly we know that the data collection should be systemic it should be rigorous um but we also know that its connection to the decision-making and the proposals that
055are uh the proposals that are made should be transparent well- defined and reproducible meaning different people should be able to look at the same data sets and come to similar conclusions or the same conclusion um thus far we have as as already noted had a number of revisions and I think there's a question of whether we have the most relevant metrics for some of our topics including Equity considerations for the outcomes that we all want for all of our students across the district um we also know that in the listening sessions we've gotten some conflicting information such as the scenarios B and C and whether those were out of the box or excuse me whether the steering committee described them as out of the box or provocative or not necessarily aligned with the guiding principles
056so given this disconnect between the quality data that we have the connection between the data and the decision making and the the importance of the outcomes we're seeing um we we definitely want to have a reconsideration of whether this is happening under the best conditions uh the second con consideration I like the board to uh continue to keep in mind is whether the decision that they make will achieve the desired goals of stability especially the financial stability of the district so the proposed savings that we've seen thus far for some of the scenarios are relative ly modest given the anticipated disruption and if students are further pushed from uh the district as a result of school closures and School consolidations uh this will further undermine those savings um certainly it's clear that across the district
057across all the schools high school middle school elementary um there's a deep and Abiding Love of the teachers and of the schools themselves uh I do worry that the that that affection that we all have for our schools may have unforeseen or cascading consequences um as these in as these uh decisions are being made so I certainly believe we can come together as a as a community to encourage smart growth to make housing and homes affordable and to continue to support the community growth and stability and I'd ask the board that they consider as many options as possible and reforms um before school closures including student-based budgeting thank you thank you very much appreciate it um next up is Keith Richardson welcome all right good evening PSD Community First thank you for the opportunity to
058speak this evening my name is Keith Richardson I'm the father of one current and one future PSD kindergartner um and as you continue to weigh the options before you I'd like to remind you the DraStic impact that closures of neighborhood schools um can have on our City's landscape and the priorities of its citizens and leaders in every scenario presented to this point a neighborhood school is closed adversely impacting the neighborhood's walkability livability and safety in prioritizing our City's neighborhood schools over majority school choice facilities for closure the district will be choosing to ignore an already the overburdened transportation department while choosing a solution of increased climate and air pollution as I've immersed myself in the issues before this board and the long range steering committee over the past several months something feels off after meeting
059several members of the committee and realizing there are others I've known for many years I'm confident that this disingenuous feeling I have is not a result of that group or their work I also know that I'm not Al in this feeling and the many questions that accompany it questions like how can PSD move forward with a plan that will exacerbate and already well-documented shortage of bus drivers how do we justify an 86% increase in central Administration parallel to a 4% increase in enrollment over the last 10 years how do we rationalize 13 to 18% cabinet raises while also being told that we must close our neighborhood schools to save money and how do we make sense of the projected data that is not yet being seen in the actuals through all the listening sessions and
060subsequent conversations one thing is clear there are major doubts inside of the committee as well as the broad PSD Community about the accuracy of the data that is being used the projected drop of 540 students versus the actual drop of 239 that The Coloradoan report reported in May represents a percentage error of 56% and in February the Colorado State demographer presented to this board a much different picture of the enrollment declines than the third party that was hired by the district at the very least this indicates that we do have time that this situation is not as dire as initially described so please take the time to answer the questions that your community is asking and more importantly take this time to truly gauge and understand an appropriate response thank [Applause] you thank you very
061much um and next up we have Stephanie Coleman welcome good evening my name is Stephanie Coleman and I'm the school counselor at Bady Elementary for the record I am here speaking on my own behalf we've already heard from students tonight how important our neighborhood schools are here in Fort Collins and I'd like to expand on that a little bit the 2023 2024 school year is my 18th year as a school counselor my 11th in PSD and my sixth year at batty I'm sharing this information to provide a bit of context on why I chose to speak tonight in the 18 years three districts and five schools I've worked in batty is the first school that feels like a cohesive Community where the students are seeing seen and accepted and as a byproduct students feel like
062they belong it is due to our unique building layout when you have no walls or doors the entire School becomes one large connected classroom grades become identities pods become communities and the school becomes a microcosm of the neighborhood around it educational programming was one of the variables considered by the committee and Batty's open concept directly ties into our unique educational programming our co- teing model can't be Consolidated into another building consolidating batty means closing the district's only open classroom C- teing model in the district our open concept allows for extreme collaboration between teachers eight hours a day leading to teacher greater teacher efficacy and reducing teacher burnout additionally batty has partnered with CSU and training of future Educators CSU trains their students on the co- teing model and then the CSU students come to batty
063to apply what they have learned if scenarios A1 and A2 go through and the board votes to close batty PSC will lose a treasure of a neighborhood school this community and its educational programming can simply not be replicated in another building baty holds a very dear place in my heart as it does in all of our families and students just like every neighborhood School holds a special place in their community's hearts neighborhood schools are the part of the fabric of Fort Collins when students students attend their neighborhood School parents can more easily connect with teachers and contribute to as school volunteers when students attend their neighborhood school they can walk or ride their bike meaning more time outside less time on buses and more physical activity and finally when students continue to attend their current
064neighborhood school it means no disruption to they already covid impacted education I implore the board to reconsider the consolidation process and look to other ways of solving the district's Financial issues that do not have such a direct impact on the very constituents you have been tasked to help our students thank you thank you very much uh next up we have Kate Bedford welcome hi good evening everyone so yes my name is Kate Bedford I'm a practicing architect and an instructor at CSU and I'm also a a PSD parent I'm concerned that as PSD is considering scenarios for consolidation that key goals from an urban planning perspective are being overlooked and will have a negative impact on our children and the livability of our neighborhoods I mapped psd's draft scenarios board you all have a map
065in front of you that looks like like this'll take a look at that um for multiple scenarios being considered two elementary schools batty and olander are removed in the center of the city with this a school desert uh would be created you can see that in the map on the right and the white Space School desert is an area without ready access to Neighborhood Elementary School this is especially troubling to me through the lens of equity Batty's neighborhood has the city's third highest amount of renters who are supported by Section 8 housing vouchers 51% of the students there participate in the free and reduced lunch program I think the dist District average is around 28% uh also with your packet there's a map or a chart that shows um that free and reduced lunch rates
066from top to bottom i' would also like to share some facts about neighborhood schools research from sources like the EPA state that a school's location affects student safety Community Health and the environment neighborhood schools reduce the need for students to cross busy streets to get to school they support smaller tight-knit communities where neighbors are engaged and look out for each other they're crucial crucial amenity for neighborhood Vitality they encourage an active lifestyle of biking and walking and reduce the need for car travel and busing nearly 70% of PSD students choose to attend or choice in to their neighborhood schools consolidation scenarios place value on unique PSD programs but they should also reflect the value of neighborhood schools as well historically open dialogue has existed uh between for Colin City Planning city council and the Board
067of Education creating a school desert contradicts City goals I don't understand why the city's input is not being asked for in all of this I also don't understand why the board of education has a vacant planning manager and Cad and GIS specialist positions currently I took a look at the new boundary lines proposed with scenario a my five and seven-year-old would be biking across Drake Prospect and shields to get to our neighborhood school for pedestrians and bicyclists being hit on Fast roads like these equate to fatalities urban planners know to consider the things my ask is that the board consider urban planning and equity in this thank you thank you very much um next up we have Austin Carr Austin oh thank you welcome my name's Austin Carr I'm an ILS perah at olander um
068I want to thank the people that have pointed out so many of the things that haven't been considered or that don't appear to be being considered I too am concerned with the speed and um haphazardness with which this decision seems to be being made um I'm afraid that really important qualities in our schools are being overlooked because you can't put a number on them um I want to tell you a quick story I first started subbing at olander um there was a second grade student in the ILS program who lives with severe SP dystonia quadriplegia cerebal paly and a vision impairment she's non-speaking uses a wheelchair and has a very hard time with muscle control on this particular day she was in the hall with a physical therapist using a walker she was struggling her
069face was red her looked uncoordinated as she tried to move down the hall if ever there was an easy moment to make fun of a student this would have been it at the same moment a fourth grade class walked down the hall and lined up against the wall to wait to go into PE they watched but no one stared I felt nervous about how they would treat this student working so hard then they started to call out good job keep going you've got this these were older kids they were chanting her name and they were clapping this wasn't her class the teachers were not prompting this they didn't have to be nice I watched I teared up this was exceptional something unusual something special and something profoundly positive was happening at this school now as
070an ILS Pera I've seen different versions of this story happen over and over my phone is full of pictures that you're all welcome to see where I attempt all the time to capture this powerful positivity um I'm starting after two years on the job to give up because you really can't capture it with a phone these typical students are so kind because these are their friends these are the people that cheer them up when they're having a hard day these are the friends they look for at recess and these are the kids they jockey to sit next to at lunch here's my main concern is that the rubrics that are being creative created and the ideas that are being floated out in the way that we are measuring things are not measuring some of the
071most important things that can't be measured with numbers and I think you've actually heard that from almost everybody who has spoken tonight here's the other most important part you can't just pluck this program from a community where the school culture is amazing and plop it down somewhere else and expect it to thrive these are some of the most vulnerable students in our community and they deserve stability thank you thank you very much next up we have Joe Dixon welcome thank you and good evening my name is Joe Dixon and I am the PSD District curriculum coordinator for K12 health and physical education and I'm honored to lead our amazing group of outstanding health and physical Educators I do want to thank the board for the support that you give to students and staff of PSD
072tonight I'm here to speak on graduation credits specifically on the addition of a health education or teen choices graduation requirement the current proposal stands at 10 credits students would be required to take two classes from the wellness education bucket but there is still no health or teen choices requirement we are still unfortunately allowing waivers so some students would only get one class in Wellness education and potentially zero health education according to PSD data since the requirement has been eliminated in 2018 we have drastically decreased our student health education numbers comparing districts of St brain Boulder Boulder Valley and Cherry Creek all maintain a healthed class requirement with additional Wellness Wellness credits with equal or higher graduate uation rates not having a health Ed requirement is not the trend around the state or the country and
073it allows every student in PSD to get basic foundational health education it is also clear from our community feedback sessions that health education is something that this community wants there's a slogan that talks of being a 40-year learner I guarantee you most won't be solving quadratic equations in 40 years but they will be taking care of their finances and their health and the skills they learn in their health education class will be foundational a health educ ation and teen choices class includes developing lifelong skills that consist of sexual health information disease prevention injury prevention managing health conditions environmental health skills to access reliable Health Care communication skills mental health skills refusal skills how to collaborate and employ empathy and compassion skills and how to goal set all based around seal which we promote one of
074our disert priorities in PSD is mental health and belonging and a health ed class goes hand in hand hand with us setting a requirement for health education makes a statement that we are making mental health and belonging important in partnership with our PSD mental health and Trauma education Specialists here in PSD there is a plan to introduce an aligned mental health literacy for secondary students and health education is the exact place that they would like to start this in if we require Health Ed every single student in PSD would get this curriculum if we don't require it then most will not get it according to the healthy kids Colorado survey right here in Lara County 41% experienced feelings of depression in the past year 14.6% of high school students were unsure if they gave their
075fully granted consent that's 3% above the state average in substance and alcohol use 14% of high school students have used marijuana in the past month these topics right here in lmer County we teach health education and every student should be receiving this information I thank you [Applause] thank you next up we have Tor papus oh not here today thank you uh next up uh Kevin Dorne welcome good evening my name is Kevin Dorne and I'm a parent from the olander elementary Community I'm here to express my personal viewpoints about the proposed School consolidations my message tonight is simple neighborhood schools are more than just schools the benefits of neighborhood schools may not be easily captured in a spreadsheet but they do bring measurable long-term value to our communities and most importantly to the lives of
076our kids neighborhood schools are more than just buildings they are the homes of the unique cultures and values of each neighborhood neighborhood schools represent a community investment our kids and our neighbor neighbor hoods are worth that investment the financial problems facing this District are complex but they're not insurmountable these problems are also likely not permanent as was indicated by the state demographers presentation of this board on February 20th of this year in that presentation the state demographer stated that it was projected that and I quote lur County births will return to increasing after 2024 end quote the state demographers projections indicated that in just a few years the number of births per year in lmer County would be the highest they've ever been I believe there are solutions to the immediate financial shortfalls facing the
077district that can actually improve educational quality equity and access there are constructive solutions that will strengthen the communities built around our neighborhood schools instead of being destructive simply to balance the budget in the short term one solution not yet presented in any of the proposed scenarios would prioritize keeping every neighborhood Elementary School open by better utilizing capacities two ideas to improve Elementary building utilization could include bringing sixth grade back into Elementary buildings as it was a little over a decade ago many parents would value keeping their sixth graders in elementary buildings an extra year allowing them one more year to truly be kids before going to middle school expanding early childhood education and full day paid preschool in elementary buildings should also be considered this would be this would open new revenue streams for the
078district and address the child care affordability and availability crisis both ideas would keep kids in their neighborhood Elementary buildings for seven or more years and strengthen the communities built around them these options are also flexible they could be implemented individually or together or and as short or long-term options depending on community needs in closing as we go forward please keep in mind neighborhood schools are more than just Schools they're the hearts of our communities I acknowledge that the financial problems facing our district are indeed hard but do hard things all the time for the kids let's slow down rebuild trust and solve these problems together thank [Applause] you thank you very much next up we have Brian Bedford Brian welcome hi my name is Brian Bedford I live in District G and represented by Jessica
079Zora my parents were Public School teachers as were my grandparents I'm a big believer in neighborhood public schools and in PSD I'm here today to advocate for a transparent and responsible process before our community is asked to consider options for closing schools shouldn't we first understand what is being done by the school board to save money and reduce excess at the administration level I'm sure I'm not alone in this room in this wonderful school district and wanting answers before we are at asked to accept that her neighborhood schools was closed having attended PSD facilities planning steering committee listing sessions it struck me that many of the topics raised from individuals were beyond the scope of the steering committee I hope the following questions res resonate with the school board as I'm sure they resonate with
080many parents in the district why did the school district superintendent and his cabinet members receive raises proportionately far greater than that of our District's teachers why are so many superintendent cabinet members necessary when we're told the root of the budget problem in the district is a low student population this includes a third assistant superintendent being added last year why has the PSD central office staff grown 87% in the past 10 years when the student population has grown by four are we protecting the students and schools who need protecting the most PSD in the school board has data to protect these kids and the equity index was shared with the steering committee will the board use it to make Equitable decisions how was Colorado Department of Education enrollment data being used to correct and improve the
081inaccurate flow analytics projections PSD is using to justify closing schools I'm asking the school board to delay a decision in closing schools until after these fundamental questions have answers Equity is noted as a core value in making these decisions show us that's true to quote Jess sora's website transparency builds trust what happens when we lose trust in the PSD Administration what happens the next time the PSD mil Levy override is on the ballot will voters have enough public trust to vote Yes will voters see current Schoolboard directors as part of a larger problem I can assure you saving money in the PSD Administration the superint superintendent's cabinet and the central office will not negatively impact my children's education in the same way that closing their school will show us an equitable process our kids deserve
082it thank you next up we have Ashley and Aaron McGrew welcome I'm glad I didn't ask her to speak I'm reading for this one so it was a privilege to participate in recent listening sessions really amazing parents teachers and staff from across the community this is a community I've really embraced and watched grow over the decades uh my husband and I have not gone far in life uh we were born at pbh he grew up in PSD and uh I grew up sorry I'm out of breath um I grew up visiting my grandparents Wayne and Shirley Linton uh for which Linton Elementary is named uh my dad got a start at Bennett and more and my parents substitute it done today I'm here representing dun Elementary School we parent a second grader and a kindergartener
083School of Choice allowed us to compare options uh across the district and choice in a school that we believed was the most optimal fit for our children we chose done for its IB programming as well as its proximity to our home in CSU where I work the focus within IB on the learner profile traits the support for development of international mindedness and the equity and inclusive education for which IB programs are known really strongly resonate with us dun celebrates its diverse Community with students over 50 students born outside the US and at least 26 languages spoken at home for so many reasons the opportunity to continue in IB programs at ler and pter continue to be a priority for our family while dun and mcra are the oldest i programs in the district we've been
084surprised to learn that dun's the only IB Elementary feeder for Lincoln and ler benett are not feeders for the IB diploma program at pter and uh you know it's been interesting to also see that there's about 25 26% of students from dun that actually move into the middlee program and uh program diploma program at pter 65% choice in it's the highest Choice rate in The District in the event of closer families may not choose to attend neighborhood or Consolidated School options are we at risk of having more empty seats at the district level due to families leaving PSD for an alternative option so why do we Choice into dun uh dun is truly a school that Embraces diversity and Equity dun's center-based autism program open in 2023 it's projected to double as you heard before
085today our family participates in equity the equity inquiry committee at Dunn which serves as a model for PSD engage and talk about hard things that's what I've heard tonight closing a school where Equity is being prioritized in which a number a large number of minoritized families are served runs counter to The Guiding principles that have been presented today it's been emphasized that there's enormous amount of fluid fluidity and now we hope as it's evaluated in depth please be clear moving forward in how the information is specifically correlated and what objective criteria and data are used in making final decisions we hope there are numerous opportunities for feedback as we refine the scenarios are solid I thank you very much thank you very much next up we sorry there next up we have Taylor Unwin welcome
086Taylor oh there we are thank you good evening it's nice to hear from so many other parents tonight um my son has actually never been able to to go to a neighborhood school or Choice into one because he's part of an Autism sight based program for OD day he's an OD day owl and we love OD day we're really happy to have OD day in our lives last year I spoke at the first Board of Education meeting um about the need for a thorough response to the actions of former PSD perah Tyler zanella some of you may have heard of him but there was some oversight or potential inaction by PSD that allowed him to abuse our most vulnerable students on a school bus I asked for random auditing of video and response and I
087was pleased to see that pter complied with that request and did Institute that but I don't feel that that goes far enough um I hoped at the time it was just the beginning uh the first step in the Journey of improvement unfortunately the topic has since taken a backseat although the district and the board advised in messaging to parents that they would be making positive improvements to ensure the safety of students and share results of a third party assessment it was never done nor was a meeting ever even held for Integrated Service parents to get feedback or provide concerns to the board or have them addressed although it could have been any of our children facing abuse the integrated Services Community was never even giving the attention it truly deserved and it still hasn't gotten
088it we still don't know if there are any other students that were ever abused by zanella and we may never know since he seemed to Target non-verbal children like mine for all of you who have the privilege of not knowing this communication apps like the one my son uses don't have an icon on them for my parent abuses me on the bus there was no initi initiative after the incident to try to prioritize safety communication for integrative Services students usually you see districts or corporate entities get creative and wrapping their arms around communities that they've hurt even if it's just for PR we didn't really even get that PR moment a year later the work still needs to be done even if Zella was able to plead out on nearly 100 of his felony charges
089um the district should be hiring and developing Paras not trying to lay them off or cut their hours um transportation should be trained in on evaluating and responding to family concerns and staff concerns video auditing processes should be more in-depth the district should not be passing resolutions on neurodiversity and two weeks later leaving their table empty at the autism resource fair I watched one of the recent Boe meetings as consolidation planning was discussed and priorities were outlined but it seemed there was more time spent discussing gymnasiums than integrated services in fact I don't think integrated Services was discussed at all even the survey release for input asked questions that only apply if your child is not an integrated Services it would had no consideration for how consolidation would affect this already struggling Community integrated services
090and site based programming need to be thoughtfully considered and communicated just as dual program programs are and rightfully so my son will probably never have a moment celebrated here before all of you um like some of the accomplished students we saw today he will never have that he might not even graduate but Integrated Service is not a backseat topic and I'm showing up today to ask you to show up for us thank you thank you very much next up we have Dan Baker welcome hello my name is Dr Dan Baker I'm a pter School District Parent I'm a full-time engineering educator at Colorado State University and I'm really frustrated I am frustrated that the focus on public school consolidation has pitted our schools our parents and our teachers against each other uh and the singular
091focus is missing the bigger picture the underlying current in PSD is that schools or sorry or students are leaving public schools and attending charter schools in the last 3 years Public School enrollment has shrunk by 2 uh 2.7% but charter schools have surged nearly 16% um yet the combined enrollment decreased by only 1.2% across the district these same Charter Schools make up over 10% of the students funded by PSD but some of the highest performing charter schools are exclusive and not welcoming to our diverse Learning Community within the district the school consolidation discussion is fatally flawed uh the objectives are unclear and shifting resulting in complex scenarios these scenarios have become the sole focus of a worthless and timeconsuming inperson and online feedback process rather than tapping into our community's Collective wisdom to solve the
092underlying problems at the heart of the consolidation process youve tasked 37 well-meaning PSD staff parents and community members to be a steering committee but have effectively tied their hands to focus only on the Dirty Work of school consolidation as opposed to broader and more productive options exploring alternate funding sources and optimizing existing facilities lastly I'm frustrated that the number of District of Central District administrators has nearly doubled in the last nine years while enrollment has only increased 4% while there's a supposed budget shortfall these same district administrators just last year received raises in excess of 15% including the superintendent's raise of nearly 19% here are my constructive suggestions stop the flawed and divisive School consolidation discussion immediately put all the cards on the table including Charter Charter enrollment and budgets work collectively to overcome the
093short-term budgetary shortfall and then finally to transparently form a comprehensive long-term plan this plan needs plan needs to include program Innovation to our public schools to meet the needs and the desires of the community we need to also limit and strategically or we need limited and strategic School boundary adjustments and possible consolidations and then we need to trim non-instructional costs including excess administrative positions and salaries we're all here because we're invested in our Public Schools let's harness the power of our Collective wisdom and work them work to make them excellent transparent and inclusive together we can ensure that our Public Schools continue to be continue to be one of our community's greatest [Applause] strengths thank you next up we have Olive tuck thank you welcome Olive hello my name is Olive and thank you for
094having me I'm a fourth grader from Den Elementary today I would like to talk about Dunn Dunn is an amazing school so many kids are welcome in fact we have 26 different languages spoken at Dunn dun lets you be you I love Dunn it is such a great Community I love all of dun's teachers and all the specials teachers we do so many fun projects this year I got to go to this exact same boardroom to talk about ESP a clip snow park we wrote proof paragraphs about ESP and the ups and downs of stakeholder perspectives something else to know about D is that I just added a brand new autism acceptance program for all those who are autistic I am so lucky to go to D I'm going to tell you about someone in
095my class he has a hard time focusing so he needs a little bit extra support and Don gives him just that if he needs a break he will get one if anyone in the whole school needs some break time they can get that in the wellness room are or meet with a counselor our principal made mental health a top priority as an example I came up with the idea of creating the com Cove the com Cove is a chill space that is outside and has materials like tree stumps leaves sticks and acorns my teacher immediately supported me and the next day I was meeting with a principal I felt empowered that my idea happened I also have the idea to create a sign language club for those who are interested in learning to sign I
096already have support this incredible staff allows students to speak up and share ideas on how we can improve did you know D is an IB School we are one of the only IB elementary schools one of the only IB elementary schools students that done get recognized for one of the IB profile traits I recently won an award for balance this means I'm able to focus on many things at the same time the best part was my class photo for me what an amazing feeling I also was voted to be a student ambassador I get to two new families from all over who are thinking about coming to Dun I know you have a lot of hard decisions to make I speak from my heart to support dun but I also speak for all the kids
097in our community going through this tough situation thank you for listening to me tonight and have a great rest of your night thank you very much thank you very much olive next up we have Sabrina heric welcome those of you on the board know me better than you probably want to but for those in the crowd my name is Sabrina and my daughter is one of the 11 autistic students who is abused by Tyler Zella did my microphone get cut no it's still working it sounded weird okay there have been a lot there have been a lot of interesting rumors circulating about this consolidation plan mostly accusations of blatant corruption on PSD leadership's part but I want to talk about one that got back to me thanks to Michelle Garrison from the Pea running her
098mouth in front of an acquaintance of mine apparently my lawyer forgot to tell me that my lawsuit is for $100 million and that's why this consolidation has to happen and some of the people saying this seem to think that makes the consolidation my fault I'm sure it will surprise the board to hear this but I do think about the things I say and do before I say and do them I consider potential consequences if I didn't Tyler's an Ella would be a missing person instead of an inmate of facing sentencing on Friday so understand that I mean what I'm about to say some of you have been on this board for like eight years which means you had seven years to fix your finances before I bothered to know any of your names and you
099had six years to fix your employment policies and staff accountability processes before you hired and failed to monitor the known child predator who hit pinched and insulted my daughter and slammed another kid's head into a window so hardy had a seizure I do not claim responsibility for this consolidation plan now this consolidation plan has already drawn an angry mob once my daughter will not be on the receiving end of the victory all you've earned everything I have done is to protect my daughter not you the footage of what you let Tyler do to her is not in the media because I've thought every day about it for nearly a year and every day I've deemed it in her best interest to not release it but if I get even an inkling that releasing that footage
100will protect her from a victim blaming mob no that I will not feel the slightest guilt about whatever effect it has on you when I send it to every reporter that I know handle your nonsense or I will thank you next up we have Violet tuck welcome Violet hello my name is violet I am a first grader at D Elementary thank you for allowing me to speak to today I have a friend from Saudi Arabia last year I was so lucky for her to be here she did not speak English I helped her speak English did you know that there was 26 languages spoken I am so lucky to be with people from all over the world did you know that I got and I be award for helping who are it it made me
101feel happy thank [Music] [Applause] you thank you Violet next up we have Megan Willis welcome hello I'm Megan Willis and um I'm here to speak in favor of reinstating the requirement for health education for all students here in PSD um I am a proud parent of two SaberCats go ridge um I'm also um have the privilege to work for UC Health in a program called healthy hearts and minds and I've served um this this community in PSD for 20 years um in that role in uh healthy Hearts just want to um thank all the hard work um that's being done on so many competing priorities right now I just thank the leadership here I know it's not an easy task and I really believe in our community um here just look at my two students
102I'm a really proud mom um and it's thanks to you know the collective wisdom of this group here um just to back up a little bit as um Joe had mentioned in 2018 the district chose to um stop the health education requirement that might be news to a lot of people coming up through the district but it's no longer required um health education and in 2019 we stood up in front of this very board except for I think that I was standing closer to you at that time um at the podium to say hey let's talk about health education and why it's important here um and a benefit for all students in our Greater Community for students to be well prepared to care for their health well if you're like me and I have selective
103memory you might um I'll help you recall in 2020 we had our biggest Health crisis ever in the world um that also was uh affected us here in our community in lmer county and here in PSD and at that time I just think it's so interesting that we had cut health education yet we have this major health um you know we have this major health event that's affected all of us and we know it no one wants to hear the word Co again but we know that um being sick if if we have comorbidities such as diabetes high blood pressure high cholesterol um unmanaged stress things that a health educator can help a student learn how to manage and learn that that language that we're better off if another you know if we have another
104um unfortunate epidemic which we won't ever have that no one's asking for it um but really setting our students up with good health education can help us mitigate and get through some of those trickier times um here in the state of Colorado we often brag about um being one of the most fit States um having low levels of type two diabetes and some of these chronic um conditions but two things really to note that there's two Colorados right so we have one of that privileged person who can go out and take the hikes and do all the things that are meant for health education or that really um improve their health but not every student not every person in our community really has that um that knowledge or that access to knowledge and students if
105you give them a choice they may not necessarily choose health education which is why we need to require it for everyone I do want to just quote um a very wise superintendent that once said um about an hour ago um the solutions to these things are not on Facebook and not on um Twitter but they're right here within our community and they're with our health Educators who um really are set up to help our students navigate some of these trickier topics thank you thank you and last up we have Juliana Evans welcome hi thank you for having me um inspiring comments by everybody um I come before you today to advocate for the implementation of the Comprehensive Health class as a graduation requirement within your school district as we have learned it is no longer
106required and you are actually actively cutting the credits required for PE and health as we navigate complexities of Modern Life maybe such as consolidation of schools um the significance of Comprehensive Health education cannot be overstated is crucial that our students are equipped with the Knowledge and Skills necessary to make informed decisions regarding their physical mental social and communities well-being as the health coordinator for Denver public schools um a school District that has successfully implemented a Comprehensive Health graduation requirement I want to share our experience and advocate for the adoption of a similar policy in your District I believe that prioritizing compreh Comprehensive Health education is not only beneficial but essential for the well-being and the success of all of our students through our Comprehensive Health education program we have observed numerous positive outcomes among our
107students they have demonstrated increas increased awareness of health related issues improved decision-making skills and a greater sense of personal responsibility for their well-being we already see some of that demonstrated today furthermore our students report feeling supported and connected within our school's Community as Comprehensive educa Health education Fosters open dialogue and reduces stigma of surrounding sensitive topics a comprehensive health class provides students with Vital Information about physical health including nutrition exercise and disease prevention which we all also experienced a couple years ago all topics that they will also actively continue to Grapple with the entirety of their lives um by understanding these principles students can make proactive steps to maintain their well-being and prevent chronic health issues in the future which is beneficial for our entire Community additionally promoting physical health prevents um academic or improves
108academic performance and quality of life Comprehensive Health curriculum also addresses mental health education an increasing Pro pressing concern in today's society Mental Health challenges among youth PE young people are on the rise and providing students with resources and strategies to maint manage their stress anxiety and depression are Paramount according to the health healthy kids Colorado survey Joe mentioned 47% of your high school students reported that most days they feel like their stress level is unmanageable and 177% of your high school students seriously considered attempting suicide in the past 12 months by normally normalizing conversations about mental health and teaching healthy coping mechanisms we can help reduce stigma surrounding mental health and Foster a supportive Community within our schools it is important that this is a graduation requirement as it is beneficial and essential for our
109students by prioritizing Comprehensive Health education we demonstrate our commitment to nurturing the holistic development of our young people and preparing them for success in all aspects of their life thank you for your time thank you very much and I want to thank everyone for coming out um today and sharing um I just want to invite you all before you get up and leave I just do want to invite you all to stay um when we do the budget we will be talking about the CDE data we will be talking about Charter Schools um and we will be talking about um forthcoming cuts um including to central office so if you are interested in that and want to stick around um if you have sleepy children um go ahead and watch us on YouTube later so
110but just want to invite you to do that thank you all for sharing tonight really appreciate it sleep all right so we're going to move on to 8.0 board topics and committee reports this agenda item is an opportunity for board members to provide an update on committee work or to speak to board topics um do board members have anything that they would like to report I actually go ahead Connor well we might be speaking the same thing legislative if I can let me go first and that would be great um yeah thank you um so yeah I think probably we are going to speak to the same thing which is you know a lot of times what this uh board topic and committee reports allows us to do is talk about the things we've been
111doing the since our last board meeting um and for most of us here that means um meeting with community members um visiting schools um answering emails that kind of thing um visiting the listening sessions and I think we just want to take this time right now to acknowledge uh that fear and anxiety that surrounds us right now we know that this is tough um and I just want to thank you all um for embracing um the empathy kindness and human sness in this work um that you display today I really appreciate that um we know that this is very very difficult work and we know we are not perfect um so everyone you see here or saw here today um you know we are all doing the best that we can every day and I
112appreciate that you you can see that and we are all here for the students so thank you whether you're watching um from the audience here whether you're watching at home um to those of you who have written emails letters those of you who have gone to multiple listening sessions um thank you thank you for being kind respectful and thoughtful with each other with the steering committee with staff with each other um I just really appreciate that we've read every email that has come through um and I can tell you that we are approaching this difficult decision with the best of intents intent looking through inequity lens and desire to understand different scenarios and decisions that we have ahead of us um I know that you are looking at that in exactly the same way um
113we have read the all um I do want to apologize if I haven't had a chance to respond to them all yet um I have gotten caught up for most of them I'm probably about 20 or 30 behind at this point um and with that um we just want to correct a little bit of misinformation that has been um we've been seeing in some of the emails and hearing in our community um one is that um when we just heard it tonight that there was um added uh an added third superintendent I just want to let that be known that there was actually a change in position the chief Equity officer Chief equity and academic officer was actually uh a superintendent POS sorry a cabinet position that was transferred over to the third superintendent as
114an equal um equalizer there and the information um regarding Mr kingsley's salary being raised 18% is actually inaccurate um the previous board approved his contract um in the first year with a 6% raise and then in the second year with an 11% raise and it was in line with the average salary increase in that first year which was 6% and in that second year which was that 10.28% which was the highest um increase that we have seen in over 80 years for all district uh staff so I just want um to reiterate I stand by my statement that I made in the Colorado and uh and I will say it again with pride that we really do feel fortunate to have someone as exceptional as Brian Kingsley to lead PSD his salary and compensation is
115in with is in line with and as the Colorado pointed out it is among the lowest of all the our comparable districts Brian's an Allstar team that is leading the team towards excellence and you will see that later tonight if you stick around long enough to see de 1.0 uh presentation which we'll talk about uh where we are so we know that this is difficult we know that this is a lot of information being thrown at you we know that it's hard to keep it all straight um PSD has now created a resource that'll be um on the district website as of later this evening I believe um yes later this this evening it'll be addressing questions concerns rumors and in some cases misinformation so I do encourage you to stick around um both for
116the budget presentation for the de1 .0 presentation if you can't do it in person that's okay go ahead and watch that um on YouTube you can do that uh live you can do that later um and just go ahead and take a peek at that website as well um to help us try and keep all that information straight because we know it is difficult at this moment thank you yeah Jim go ahead uh I just feel the need to be very very precise on Bryan's salary okay so um when we hired him it was $230,000 that was his salary when we hired him okay the first year we gave him a 6% raise and that took him up to $243,800 okay the next year we gave him a 12% raise it was 12% to his
117base salary that took him to $273,000 okay so the confusion I think is some of the spreadsheets that have been floating around uh they took his base salary his first year salary as the base and then looked at what his salary is now and they said oh it's 18% well it wasn't that was over a 2ye period okay the first year was 6% the second year was 12% yeah those up you get about 18% okay so just please if if all of you can spread that when you hear misinformation about the 17 about the 18% I would really appreciate it thank you Connor go ahead well I was just going to give a committee report so if anybody else has something else to say I'm I'm sorry all right actually I'm going to let um
118then I'm going to let Brian step in and yeah exactly thank you both directors Draper and brokish I appreciate your comments you know I'll be quite Frank with the community this is uncomfortable every moment that we're speaking about me we're not focused on helping our kids but I would also double down on this is one of the reasons why we need to prioritize literacy especially media literacy with our students and our community because it's not just information and a plethora of information but there is a level of frustration that I think is valid not just about misinformation but also disinformation that's being intentionally put into the community to distract from the real problems that we have to solve and I think that's incredibly unfortunate this is a wicked problem we've heard professors from CSU members
119of our community as they study and analyze this is a really wicked problem because all of our schools are amazing all of them it's also a wicked problem because there's no magic solution as 37 people come together with great intentions with great expertise in partnership with this community and governance team to find the easy way where we can all get through this and it feels like a win-win there are a multitude of reasons why we're in this position right now as a district and a in community it's not just one it's not just two we can name declining birth rates we can talk about us as we mentioned in many of our members of the community appropriately talked about our state's demographer who suggested that our we're supposed to see an increase by the end
120of 2030 in our students ages Z through four in our community we're almost halfway through this decade and that hasn't started to proven to actualize even in our pre- programs just yet and when asked on the spot in that very same meeting that demographer their office did not even take into consideration housing cost and affordability in their predictions which I'm sure just adds to not just the frustration of the community because I hope that those students are coming I'm sure you do too but it adds to the confusion we do have declining enrollment you will hear momentarily in our budget report how that plays out how that plays out compared to Charter School enrollment we need to talk about that Charter School footprint has expanded in our community from a facility standpoint which means also
121from a capacity standpoint we also have not just affordable a lack of affordable housing but it an incredible increase in health care costs and inflation and by the way A1 billion doll price tag to improve our Capital imp Capital infrastructures just to bring it to current day standard and yes that includes upgrading if this community would supported 33 of our schools with air conditioning to not just improve our learning environment but our workplace environments for all of our employees this is not because of a lawsuit our district I can only speak to the time that I've been here and I've really loved being here it's a just under three years now we have been incredibly committed as a governance team as a district to providing competitive pay and benefits to all employees not just the
122ones that I'm flanked by that I'm grateful to lead with as a Cabinet I'm also proud to say that our employees have received increases in compensation the past 2 years last year's average compensation increase for all employees in PSD was 10.28% Google The Coloradoan article where our pea president exclaims that this was the largest raise given in 85 years in this District's history now as a member of our community who may be a parent a student you may be asking and reconciling how could we be giving raises at that level at the same time we are struggling with all of these Financial struggles the truth of the matter is our employees cannot live in the communities in which they serve in their schools that's the question we have to have as a community are we
123okay with that are we okay that people have to live in a neighboring town a neighboring County commute 45 minutes to an hour is that the future that we believe that we need to uphold in order to keep all of our schools open our employees two years ago received on average an increase our classified staff received a 9% increase the year before and our administrators received about 6.09% and I will tell you for all of those groups it's not enough it's not enough we're no longer positioned to support the numerous amount of choices that we offer I shared that with you in real terms with real people that there are many elementary schools that are having the smallest kindergarten classes in their recent history not just this year but going into next and principles have
124had in the last few months to sit across the table from teachers dedicated teachers disproportionately teachers who teach music and the Arts and physical education and tell them because of our enrollment and because of our budget we can no longer afford to keep you five days a week we're still going to figure out through our schedule how to ensure you serve all of our students we're not going to reduce services to students but we can't pay you at 100% we're going to need to pay you at 80% that's not a future conversation as we're questioning on whether this situation is dire that happened in the last two months it happened last year we're here celebrating competitions and music and the Arts and at the same time they're looking for other full-time jobs in neighboring districts
125that's not acceptable it's hypocritical I'm not here we as a leadership team are not here to blame any past person or Administration for the real financial problems that we find ourselves in we're here to lead we have an obligation to Grapple with hard things it is fair to ask hard questions it is fair to question Pace it is fair to question the level of Engagement but we have a long-term Collective responsibility to be financially responsible to make changes now to maintain the long-term health of our school system related to all of that I wanted to make a brief statement around addressing the questions and the concerns that are coming from members of our community about cabinet positions and pay I want to be really clear the oldest records in our financial system show pay structures
126like that we have today for members of our superintendent me our cabinet date back to 2002 but institutional knowledge suggests that those contracts likely existed prior to then these pay structures are not new in PSD and they are not new because you have a superintendent that arrived here in but it is incredibly reasonable and understandable for our community to have questions with them especially about me that's fair and it comes with the role four members of our cabinet received a 10.28% salary increase for the 23 24 school year the same average compensation increase negotiated for all PSD staff for the 2324 school year five members of our cabinet received salar increases ranging from 13.04% and 17.72% which in included the same 10.28% increase as part of the average compensation increase for all PSD staff as
127well as a market adjustment due to the changes in their roles to be clear the increases were from 13.04% to 17.72% Total that was not on top of the 10.28% average race for all employees I also want to tell you that four of these five individuals are female and the increases that were warranted above in the 10 2.8% were to address a gender pay differential that is incredibly real in our country women Executives in this country on average receive 82 cents on the dollar for the same work as men Point Blank we must pay women the same we pay for men for the same work I am proud of this District's dedication to making those decisions and I will tell you the steps that we've taken were not enough either similar to the steps that
128we've taken with all employees to further talk about that point there have been questions about added members to our cabinet three members of our cabinet who are here tonight autumn meline and Lauren were attending cabinet meetings when I arrived in PSD two and a half years ago they were attending board meetings they were doing cabinet level work and let's let me tell you what the reality was they were not being paid as cabinet members they were not being paid on a cabinet contract or compensated for the actual work that we're doing they are now members that I am really proud to say that they're a part of our team and our cabinet and I'm sorry that you had to endure that scenario it's not acceptable Additionally the community needs to know that there was a
129position funded for another member of our cabinet when I arrived that is what we refer to as the third assistant superintendent uh position I am really grateful that that position exists but it existed before this year as director Draper appropriately pointed out it was reclassified from a chief equity and academic officer position to an assist assant superintendent which was a really wise move to concentrate the locus of control the number of schools the number of communities that a principal supervisor has to support I want to share one last thing that there was one other position that in the spirit of transparency that was created in in the middle of the time that I've been here and it's our chief Institution Effectiveness officer which are Dr Joanne SCH Smiths who's sitting in the back hols this
130system is incredibly sophisticated in its data we have more data than we know what to do with and that sometimes is a blessing and sometimes makes things really really hard and we're going to talk about that tonight as our monitoring report but our dedication as a governance team and as a leadership team to ensuring that data leadership practices don't just live in this boardroom but are fully actualized in our entire School Community to ensure that not just some students experience success but all is the reason why his position exists and I'm proud of that too there is not one person in this room that's listening to this YouTube video that doesn't want our employees to make more money all of us do but again the most important message here is that we must remain steadfast
131in our commitment to providing all staff not just some but all staff with competitive pay and benefits and I think it's important for our district and for our community to have all of that information not just some of that information and I'm I'm grateful for the opportunity I know I went a little bit long there but I just think it's so important as we are really people are good-hearted people good-hearted employees who are trying to do the right thing and make sense they don't have time to be sorting through what's real and what's false and so having the opportunity to clarify that I'm grateful thank you thank you Brian I would like to actually make one uh Point too I just you know as you were speaking in and um talking about the gender inequities
132that were happening um and if you take a look around they're happening everywhere it's not just a school district it's not it's everywhere and I want to I want you to note that the three people who were doing cabinet level work who were not getting paid at cabinet level were women I just want that to to resonate as well so I'll let Now Kevin speak thank you thank you and thank you superintendent Kingsley for those remarks um since we're going a little extemporaneous here I had some I had some thoughts I wanted to express that I think piggyback well off that but it was um correctly positioned now as an action item which we will get to um everything you said resonates with me the tough choices are coming the dire Financial Straits we find
133ourselves in as a district are upon us whether we want to accept them or not deviations in enrollment in the projected future is where we get I think into a little bit of trouble I maintain as I've said all along we need to have a little bit of humility in this process and recognizing that no one in this room myself included has a crystal ball and I could look to the state demographers office to confirm a narrative that I that I would like to see I could look to flow analytics to confirm something that I would like to see I remain humble in that approach and that we need to deal with the problem right now that said I'm having a hard time reconciling some of the things that we are being asked to do
134as action items that I don't feel are congruent with that charge for instance the budgetary crisis that we seem to the to that we have which which are numbers we can do the Delta between enrollment of uh graduating seniors and incoming kindergarteners that wave will come through uh to the tune of 8,047 per people per funding and I hate to do that per kid but that's the math so we're getting at a roughly a 5 million Delta per year in a 12 12 year wave on one of the agenda items that I pulled from consent was asking this board to approve a $5.3 million expenditure for a computer refresh now I know there are compelling reasons to do this and in ordinary times of abundance I would love to lend my vote to give our
135our students and our staff the absolute best technology that they deserve however we are not in ordinary times as you just so eloquently stated so I want to charge our cabinet our board and our community I'm listening we are listening we are coming through every single email and I'm up at night we're wrestling with this problem all of us are and we're all humans and we're doing the best we can but that said I want our actions not just our words but our actions to be congruent with the charge that is ahead and if that means that we have to delay or think creatively about not using the expenditures as business as usual even for computers that we need even doing something that was pre-approved or that was for solicitation in January I need us
136thinking outside the Box the community is begging us not to close schools and that 5.3 million Delta that I'm being asked to vote for tonight in computer expenditures would save a consolidation under that simple simple analysis and I know it's not a nuanced approach so that's where I'm coming from and I I look forward to that discussion there is way more information than I've just truncated on just the computer issue alone but I want to start I'm imploring the board I'm imploring the cabinet to start looking at the every single budgetary thing with a lome not that we are not already but we need to be more exacting and scrutinize every single expenditure above a quarter of a million dollars so that we can reconcile that and I can I can look the community in
137the face and tell them we are doing that thank you anyone else Conor still want to speak yeah Connor you still want to go are we ready for legislative go for it okay so um a lot of people here on on the board have been participating in our weekly legislative calls monitoring bills down at the State House that could potentially affect our financial situation um one of the good things it's not going to solve everything but it does look I don't want to say 100% certain because the session hasn't closed but it does look like we will get the budget stabilization Factor removed that will yield a little bit more money back to the district or we won't have to give back to the state that is a positive sign the reason why I say
138that is because I think we can only go up from there right um for the last correct me if I'm wrong 15 years now we've had to cut a check to the state every year this year we most likely will not have to do that um another thing just on legislative um I think we also need to be very thankful and appreciative of all of our local legislators down at the State House they do know that education is a priority and they are working very very hard on it we have some very talented representatives from Fort Collins Tim nith Wellington area that are working very hard both in the state house and in the state senate um locally as well I think some of these issues that Brian brought up legislatively I'm not sure if
139everybody follows this stuff but our Fort Collins city council as well as I know the Timnath city council through the zoning codes are trying very hard to make some adjustments to land use codes those will have an impact um are we going to materialize you know an extra 500 students next year most likely not but they are trying very hard we are working in conjunction with them we talk with them um and I think that they deserve credit as well hopefully um well by the time we make a decision on consolidation that uh the session at the State House will close and they will not go into special sessions so we'll have more definition around what our hard budget numbers will be thanks thank you and I just want to add to that legislative piece
140of it too um yes the BS Factor um it appears uh from the long bill will be um going away um which is fantastic that is great news for schools um it means that they can actually do a full budget um unfortunately what it also means is that we are now fully funded at 1989 levels so I want you to think exactly right 1989 I'm not going to tell you that that was when I graduated but maybe um so that's where we are and that's at the state level and the legislators here know that they are working on that and it is something that we uh here cannot control but also at this point the legislators can't control um given tabber um given the fact that they cannot Institute taxes uh on us they cannot
141create those so we have to be creative in the ways to make this happen so there's there's celebration um in the fact that the long bill pass or is is in process right now with uh no BS Factor um we are not so celebrating that it's at 1989 levels and we are I I as I say to everybody who it is pie it is a pie and so no matter how you slice and dice it all you get is a single pie we cannot create more we cannot they can shrink that's about the only thing that that can happen so it's a very frustrating place um for the school district to be as well because we know that we need more um for everything so I just want to throw that out there as well
142anything else all right so now we will move on to the consent agenda and Jill correct me if I'm wrong but we already pulled something from consent 94 and 95 94 4 95 so we will go ahead and um would anybody like to make a motion on the remaining consent agendas should I go I move that the board approve and adopt the recommended actions for the items on the consent agenda do I have a second Connor is the second thank you and Jill can you take the vote Jim brokish hi Kristen Draper hi Connor Duffy I Kevin havelda I Scott shanower I Jessica Zamora hi motion passes 60 thank you and now we are going to go on to action items um 10.1 is now um student end point device refresh if I'm not mistaken
143thank you all right um and let's see can I get a motion on this we need to do a motion and then discuss so that's okay no you're good anybody want to I'm sorry can you repeat can you repeat what you said director dver I'm sorry I was distracted that's okay um if I'm not mistaken we need to make a motion so that we can have that discussion can I go ahead Kevin I moveed that the board open discussion on items 9.4 and 9.5 and we can do that collectively if that's a more efficient process item is that yes yeah we need to separate those out I move that the board uh discuss 9.4 second second okay Connor is the second all right who would like to open discussion I think you've already heard from
144me director Draper um I think everyone's heard enough from me tonight um I do I would like to hear we there were some email traffic today regarding some of the the questions that we had about the the necessity of these and I think that if we uh not to put you on the spot direct uh officer hunt but could we have a little bit of um background about this proposal why it's necessary what happens if we don't pass tonight I think that's what we we want thank you I'd be glad to do that and I appreciate the opportunity to talk about an expenditure that usually in in our hope is one that we don't talk much about because it's working and it's functional I think it's an appropriate time to have this conversation so thank
145you um this represents a a annual refresh of our current staff and student Fleet this refresh is a process that began uh due to some work of the tax pay fact I was one at the time who voted for our 2010 technology Mill uh in order to begin the process of moving this District to a one to1 Computing environment at the time that was a high school only program it was high school and instructional staff over time the success of the program the Investments and curriculum and resources throughout the district group uh that became a middle to high school program with those staff as well that continued down into third grade and then during covid uh we increased that expenditure to K2 we use a chrome a Chromebook device in K2 we use a Windows
146uh laptop for students one version for students in third through 12th grade uh and we use a separate staff device as well uh the refresh tonight represents our Rocky feeder it's the largest of four annual attempts to be on a 4-year refresh cycle in this case it also represents uh about 2,000 staff computers that are approaching their sixth year of life because they were delayed in previous refreshes to accommodate uh various cost-saving measures in the pandemic allowing for K2 device supports and other uh pieces there and so this uh this device refresh would be roughly 8,700 student devices 1980 staff devices uh relevant and related Chargers as well as uh a small number of desktop computers you're wondering why are there desktop computers in a one to one device refresh this bid includes uh replacement
147of uh in some cases 10-year-old uh custodial machines that are used as uh terminals throughout the district uh I think that might be the overview you were looking for the next question I have was what do we do if we don't what happens if we don't uh vote this tonight um well so the district has since 2010 been building its curricular resources and instructional resources around the idea that we have High School uh middle school and Elementary School students with some sort of computing Computing device as frankly as I could say it I think that's probably the weakest assumption in K2 I think there's still a lot of opportunity there there are a lot of uh I have some thoughts uh this happened prior to me but some thoughts on what K2 device environment should
148look like whether they should be one to one whether they shouldn't be uh these devices though do represent our primary assessment vehicle we're in our camass window it started a week ago most of our students in the relevant grades are using these devices to complete their required testing many others of our students will be doing the same with the PSAT which went digital uh just this year uh in that process more and more our state uh and and other assessment requirements live on these devices our curricular resources do as well uh again I'll point out those 2000 staff devices that are approaching uh the end of their fifth or sixth year of Life uh that is in direct impact for those staff in terms of efficiency ability to to do their jobs and make sense
149of of what they're up to uh the other thing that will happen at the end of this fiscal year with the student devices is that we'll start to reach the end of the uh ad the warranty period for those devices which means the way we fund our device repairs is through uh at time of purchase we we buy a slightly extended warranty than a than a consumer grade those warranties will expire our costs will go up and we will start to see uh slower response slower issues there we're already starting to see that in the fourth year of these devices I was working with the Middle School uh this week they've roughly got 150 of the devices in their Fleet in some sort of repair some of that's cuz middle schoolers do things to computers
150some of that's cuz computers at the end of four years that have been used day in and day out for the purposes we put them to are uh tired many of the devices that would be retired in this Fleet that are still functional would be repurposed into service so a four-year refresh cycle is slightly um it's it's not that on year four we we send them all out to pasture they do end up uh becoming uh spare and support fleets for substitute itinerate staff and uh hot hot hot swaps for other repair processes in the district um I could talk about the financial impact or I could pause and see what other questions you might have sorry I don't want this to be a Socratic Wonder of just me I have one more followup um
151you mentioned from the 2010 General M mil Levy um I want to understand that I understand I understand most but I want to make sure this is clear for the the community that's listening as well I'm looking at item 9.4 the contract checklist version 3 PDF this is a a fairly General contracts check checklist to solicit um bidding as I understand it section two uh indicates that it will be completed by budget director and it has a category of from where it comes and that category is the general fund so could you could you or uh uh Dave perhaps might be better to speak to this I want to make sure that we are using money that's for a specific purpose that we are sort of our hands are tied and we cannot use it
152for any other purpose because I I don't know if I understand that with the general fund let me let me go ahead and address the general fund piece because there's a lot of I think people are defining what general fund means and what it doesn't general fund is all-encompassing for our daily operations which includes our total program Revenue it includes state revenue for total program or for U categorical programs but it also includes our M ofy overrides so those are all in general fund um we do classify things within general fund and isolate them so like we might have a budget control that isolates 2010 mevy dollars and how those are used in a refresh but they're all general fund it's all in general fund Conor so to be clear are we allowed to use
153the 20 10 Tech Mill Levy save those costs and use it for other areas besides technology um that's a hard question to answer on the Fly here because I think there's some legal ramifications behind it um my inclination would be that when the voters pass an override that it should go what it's intended for and that was one of the things that the 2010 was for was Tech refresh um I'll also say that we have overrides from 1988 that have things that aren't necessarily relevant anymore so they over time that SS to a road but so that's that's the best I can answer that other questions go ahead Scott yeah so I guess I I did want to know um but thank you for your expertise on this and I think in some earlier emails
154today just kind of going back with with questions on this there was a discussion of the K2 um uh devices and whether those might have some flexibility uh what kind of dollar figure would would that be um if if something changed on that if I could let me let me first say that this would be a philosophical and practical impact to our schools without any conversation with our schools where we to move in that direction tonight I just want to articulate that very intentionally and I will tell you that a Chromebook right now on a four-year cycle we could probably squeeze to six without too much impact on students Google would tell you they're good for 10 I will tell you I've done this work for a long time what the vendor says you'll get
155and what you actually get don't match so that uh Chromebook refresh this will be the first time we've done a refresh of those Chromebook devices in the district it's roughly 670k of the total expenditure and that's outlined in the purchase uh data here if you'd like to consider that further yeah and that's that was I think the number I had I had in my mind as well so that to me I think warrant some consideration by the board um of maybe adjusting 9.4 um that would be my preference is is we can't solve this I was talking to Jessica earlier today we can't solve this with home run swings um they taken you know two million here two million there I think we need to do it with singles and bunts to to really get
156our uh I'm Mr Sports I'm sorry guys what a nerd anyhow I swear to God but that's how I think and I I think that's how we can get to uh um really saving some money uh in the district is is with some smaller things that make sense in the short term um you know as Kevin was saying um I really think that we need to um we owe it to the community and to the voters and to our students to really think this through and and uh it may sound like nickel and diing in the grand scheme of things but it does add up so I would just encourage people to consider that when we vote tonight go ahead Connor B one quick question um does this refresh impact any of devices for integrated
157Services uh there are integrated Services purchases included in this both in the sense that students in our district would receive integrated Services students many of them receive the same standard device we differentiate service based on need and based on additional software sometimes we augment Hardware depending on a variety of factors uh this will also impact the staff that serve those students this this is not a protected group refresh this is an attempt by this organization to intentionally refresh everyone's technology on a consistent basis so there will be direct impact to to is and to every other group in the district if I may there's impacts but I thought I heard you say that we're not in too bad a shape on the K through two in any area if I had to make it again
158I would say yeah this this is not a conversation I've had with our schools this is a conversation that we're having right now if I had if I were wanting to stretch the dollar I think K2 is a great place to do it I think the Chromebook platform and the usage data that we have about it which isn't great for a variety of reasons that would be fun to talk about it at a different time uh would that would be the appropriate place to stretch at this moment in time with the least amount of impact in the district yes can I make a motion yes go actually I do have one other question oh Jess go ahead so can you we're on this foure cycle um or that's the goal is is the goal is
159four years that's a good way to say it we never made it fair um this year the proposal is 5.4 is million what's next year is it about the same year-over-year no no this is the largest of the four-year cycle I don't have the other three years in front of me but because of both the catch-up nature of that large number of Staff devices which does not represent a quarter of our staff as well as the the students impacted in this particular feeder this is a slightly larger refresh than others the other reason that we are eager to get this refresh accomplished is it will help us rejuvenate some of our those remaining devices as I talked about that are in uh okay shape will rejuvenate some of our sub and other supplemental device fleets
160which gives us more ability to stretch down the road um but this is the largest of that four-year uh cycle and if you'd give me a little time or I can give you the data tomorrow about the actual other three years yeah um in our you know email questions today you did also give us sort of a broad us of what it would cost if we don't do it if we Punt and I think that would be valuable information just because it's not free to do nothing yeah I'd be glad to answer the question I'll tell you these are rough numbers right but uh conservatively we think if we if we were to avoid or delay a year we would still have issues with both repair and then we've got a a down the road
161Windows operating system issue I'll speak to the to the repair uh aside from the fact that we're talking to our vendors and I spoke to a couple of our teammates today who are working with vendors already we're already seeing part scarcity on some of this Fleet so what what you typically do when you when you decommission some of a fleet is you use the the broken ones to fix the wellworking ones I mean we we don't mess around we we will use all the parts of the laptop for as long as we possibly can but batteries start to wear out you can't really reuse a battery so uh we think it would cost us roughly 750k to maintain the fleet next year because we would lose the volume pricing in this uh bid which is
162largely what this measure is it's a bid we're saying to the vendors we want to buy a large number of computers in exchange we would expect a lower price and our price Point's roughly $1 to $130 uh lower than than market cost so replacing the one-offs in the repair would cost us more so it's accumulation of that figure as well as the time it would take us to do things we'd probably need to reallocate uh some staff to to go under the part-time part scrounging business and working with our vendors to make sure we have the machines and then we'd have to increase uh repair uh costs and whatnot so I think I think the number I gave you earlier today is about 825 I'm I think that's a conservative number I think it actually
163would be worse than that um so I think it would be be closer to nine uh if I'm and and it's still that's a rough number but I appreciate it thank you and then okay go ahead yeah sorry and just to clarify I think that that number is if we did nothing if we didn't pass any of the 5 million um we would still need to spend that to maintain the devices we have while still having the degradation and service quality that a refresh would allow us to provide and then we would have staff uh sitting on about $1.3 million of five to six yearold devices that makes sense yeah I just want to clarify I'm I'm looking at I still would like to vote on this at some point but maybe not tonight with
164the final I'd like to look at some of those options that we just talked about the kther 2 and adjust and maybe get that 5.4 down under under under five if we can uh but still upgrade things I think the windows 11 upgrade is a is a big deal um and the staff especially those six years is is pretty brutal if I may it's it's worth articulating the Windows issue I realized I started to answer that and I didn't we plan our Fleet refesh in in long periods of time and operating system life is long but it's not infinite and so we have timed our refresh cycle to allow us to retire Windows 10 devices about the time Windows 11 is the standard so Windows 10 stops being supported by Microsoft in October of 2025
165we have another quarter of our Fleet that is still Windows 10 primary it might upgrade it might not I don't really seek to play uh uh flip coins with that decision so to to really get us to the windows 11 situation we do need to make sure that our Fleet is refesh refreshed prior to that October 25 so what I what I hear you saying bud is that yes we can push this to next year but we still got to spend the 5 million next year plus I have to spend 800 900k this year to maintain the current systems that are out there the older computers that are still there is that reasonable we will spend similar money for less quality of service and pay higher prices one of the values that the team here
166and it's one of the reasons I was really glad to come and work uh with so many of the folks involved in this work um they are thinking about this in ways that minimize cost while it's a big number it could have been a $7.5 Million number the 5 million looks scary but it is a it is a good stewardship of uh managing that annual bid process so we take this to bid every year we argue with our vendors every year we create the opportunity for Price competitiveness each year we will still need to spend this process has allowed us to conserve as best we can today thanks if I may I would love to make a motion if can I ask one question before we do that I'm sorry Jim I just I do
167have one question um so but if we were to um remove the K2 part of this at the moment um would that provide time to speak to teachers and and um be able to figure out if that's something that we could um we could uh simply not do this year and look at doing next year the year after um since you said you know it might have six years um in in the Chromebooks um and if not something that would be uh doable for then bring it back is that something that would as a or do we lose the um do we lose the uh sorry the quantity um bonus the the Chrome pricing is a separate quantity item so each model so if if as you suggest we were to move forward with chrome
168excised from this bid um I do not believe we would have any ill effect and I believe it would give us the opportunity to make a final decision or to be able to come back and definitively say we can stretch another year or two okay Jim would you like to make a motion thanks I like that question Kristen I appreciate it um I would like I move that the board approve item 9.4 with the exception of the 670k for the K through two refresh do I have a second Jess for the second Jill can you call the vote wait wait wait sorry discussion oh disc yes anybody apologies yes is there discussion on the motion to vote okay no Jim broish hi Kristen Draper hi Connor Duffy hi Kevin havelda nay Scott shanower hi Jessica
169Zamora hi motion passes 51 thank you all right so moving on two now which 10.2 the hold on sorry to interrupt I think we need to do 95 we did 94 but didn't didn't we pull both 94 and 95 yes it's going to be 10 but it's going to be 10 point action items 10.2 Sor inter which is uh wireless access points go ahead I'm glad you caught me so we are going to go ahead and do that can I get a motion for that we're moving to do what excuse me it was the open discussion yes we can open discussion or if you want to make a motion to approve and then we can amend as we do that why don't why don't we just make a motion to approve if if that's okay
170I move we approve uh item 9.5 or is it what is it now 10.2 now item 10.2 I move we the board approves item 10.2 is there any discussion on this oh sorry I need a second yes uh Kevin second oh no opening for discussion sorry no I need a second first Scott will second first who's on third I don't know all right Kevin go ahead because we've been here for almost three hours and we're starting to lose our thought um the only discussion point I want to make is that um among the uh wireless access points that's being included in this provision um it looks like they're being updated please correct me if I'm wrong but um for virtually all the schools in our footprint including those would be up for consideration for potential
171consolidation or closure this doesn't represent all but it represents a considerable portion and one of the reasons we uh are comfortable moving forward with that is they're uh they're movable if need be but until this District makes any sort of determination about building there's still a District standard of providing access in a building so we intend to uphold that standard and I understand that the um total expenditure is less than a million is that correct yes we we actually budgeted this project and and one of the bummers about uh budgets uh sometimes is we don't show you the budget number uh this project was originally budgeted at 1.5 we're going to come in at just under 1 million on the project yes last question can you speak to the e- rate uh factor a little
172bit please I think that's helpful nothing uh excites me more than talking about e- rate at 9:00 at at night um everybody in this everybody I'm kind of not kidding so I'm sorry and you can wave me off uh no everybody who's ever paid a phone bill has a has a bunch of charges at the end some are taxes and some are called Universal service fees those Universal service fees have been collected by the federal government for since we were talking about dial up or telephones to uh augment and and support and subsidize largely rural connectivity at first for long for actual phone connections then longdistance phone service then phone service and data service then data service across phone lines and now more and more it's just data service and the e- rate uh in
173this is is representative of what the district's current refresh rate or excuse me rebate rate is from e- rate or Universal service eate is the nickname for the schools and libraries version of the Universal Services Program uh the costs in here some are eable due to something called category two of eate there are two kinds category one is basic internet connectivity category two is the infrastructure necessary to support that connectivity in this case wireless access points fall into that category there are eable dollars here in this project that we've provided to the board for awareness but we do not uh we do not budget the project assuming we will receive the subsidy we budget the project assuming that we won't then we work with our grants and finance team and when the subsidy comes into
174the district we return it to the general fund did I answer your question beautifully there's more I'd love to say about Universal service but perhaps a different time we will do that over a beer not including this entire room of people any other questions yes go ahead Scott yeah I could hear you talk about e- rates all night man that's going to replace Barry White my household that's good stuff man um I will I will ask this though about the like seriously on the on the roll out I do have the same concern about the the schools listed there if there if there are on the list of consolidation is the roll out like an immediate purchase or will it be over the course of several months so that once decisions are made in just
175two months we're going to decide this can we hold off on that decision and then maybe save more um or do we need to pull the trigger on this thing right away so the advantage of this not being a total Wi-Fi or WAP replacement for the district is we are going to over the next couple of years continue to do refresh of our wireless network we're switching to a new vendor um we will have fewer wireless access points than we need to refresh the district we will receive them ideally in the springtime with the idea that we'll be doing much of the deployment and installation over the summer depending on other conversations and decisions we do have the ability to Pivot however I would articulate that since we expect to use our current buildings in
176our current state in the 2425 school year the pivot is likely a future pivot should we be in the process of uh de sessioning any buildings but to my knowledge that is not a conversation we're having at this time that's a good point I forgot about that that we will need to have these buildings functional all next year as well and again more and more our goal is it doesn't matter which district building you're in you have that same connectivity um whatever you're doing wherever you're experiencing and and keep in mind too the repurposing of the buildings um regardless of if for if it's you know for um preschool or for um adults it's well we will need Wi-Fi yeah so Jim did you have something I just got to say I'm glad you're here
177bud thank you very much me too me too let's see can we call the can we call the vote absolutely we'll call the question all right Jill can you call the for the vote Jim brokish hi Kristen Draper hi Connor Duffy hi Kevin havela Scott shanower hi Jessica Zamora hi motion passes 51 okay and now well we've all been waiting for the informational reports and discussion items the budget update 11.1 so Brian would you like to introduce us yes thank you uh providing our budget update is our budget director Brian gust gustaffson uh Brian welcome glad you're here good evening and thank you thank you for the opportunity to uh get up and talk about uh what we're what we're working on as far as planning our preliminary budget for fiscal year 25 and so
178I'm Brian Guston budget director and we're going to tag team uh Dave Montoya the chief finance officer and I we're going to talk about our uh our setting the stage process I will be in front of the board here a number of times in the next two months to deliver a preliminary budget a proposed budget and then finally a budget for adoption and this preliminary budget that that we're focused on right now is really uh going to focus largely on revenue and we've had some conversation already about general fund Revenue but that will be the primary focus and we'll deliver or or submit a preliminary budget in a couple weeks to the board of education and I going to tell you right now will not be balanced hey it will reflect what we expect to
179see for fiscal year 25 Revenue but it will also reflect a gap that we're continuing to work on When developing our expenditure plans for next year Year all right so the the information we'll present tonight is the process uh that we're employing to get there and and the the variables the items that were considering to develop that budget all right let's see here okay as as we start developing the budget each year and as we go through the year hey we we have to constantly um be grounded in making sure our budget ties to our strategic plan budget priorities okay the focus on literacy focus on graduating with options and mental health and belonging okay these got to the these items have to keep us uh not only grounded in the classroom but in our
180decisions that go into to Preparing the budget okay it's important also to note that on a year-by-year basis we may increase budgets based on these items we may decrease budgets based on these items or we may have to make the decisions to not change things based on these items and and make no adjustments additionally uh things we're considering in this budget cycle of course declining enrollment and evaluating those impacts on the budget for next year we're talking about July 1 of 2024 through June 30 of 2025 fiscal year 25 uh additionally uh constant lens on safety and and that throughout the district and how that's going to impact our budget decisions uh continuing to look at competitive compensation and benefits for all staff and assessing now in year two the impacts in our budget of
181the uh implementation of the universal preschool system and the healthy meals for all program hey we're just now getting through the first year of these programs and and finally getting some data on how they're impacting us financially so we'll be going into year two of these next year and I'm glad to to piggyback on directors Draper and Duffy and talk a little bit about uh things that are happening legislatively that we monitor when thinking about preparing our budget hey number one the school Finance act hey and we're going to hear a lot about total program that's the formula of per pupil rate times a funded pupil count he that comes from the school Finance act which is part of the long Bill the long Bill sets the budget for the state of Colorado and as
182mentioned earlier that long bill is under consideration right now and hoping maybe we know a um a status of that even by the end of the week we'll see uh but fortunately that that process is moving a little more uh rapidly or expediently than in previous in previous years hey and in that long Bill the school Finance act hey has um some updates to the formula that I mentioned one of those updates is the addition of rural funding to the formula now while PSD certainly has some rural locations and rural parts of the district PSD is not considered a rural school district there are small rural districts and large rural districts and we're not considered either one so it'll be interesting for us to monitor the the school Finance formula and how rural F uh
183funding once rolled in will impact us down the road he additionally in that school Finance formula something that was supposed to be new this year but it's going to be tabled one more year is a new atrisk measure okay a new a new way of funding atrisk students hey currently uh our atrisk measure is is based on those families and students that qualify for free and reduced meal benefits hey there's been an ongoing task force that's been working on a new measure to to roll into the school Finance act that was supposed to come in in 2425 and and again that's going to move out to 25 26 at least so next year uh that at risk measure basically going to be a whole harmless year for us we'll get the greater of our atrisk
184funding for fiscal year 24 or 25 how whichever is calculated right so those are the things we're watching in in the school Finance act and hopefully that long Bill gets uh passed and signed into law here pretty quickly and we'll be pretty confident about plugging in those Revenue numbers Hey other items there and this is a new one right there in the middle of the the screen distribution of State share is going to change this is already something that's been signed into law by the governor a typically and what we've had happen is the state equalizes um our formula for what property taxes cannot provide hey we collect our property taxes in lumps those come into the district typically in the spring March is a big chump hey May June another big chump hey then
185it's pretty lean the rest of the year when the property taxes are coming in the other part of the formula is the state has an equalization or a backfill basically to to make our formula whole and that's come in equal installments throughout the year this is going to change next year there's been a recognition that school districts have to borrow money for free which we have done to make cash ends meet until property taxes come in so now what's going to happen is that those Equalization distributions are going to cycle counter to those property tax distributions so when we're getting our property tax we'll see less Equalization and when we're running lean on property tax collections just due to timing uh then we'll see more Equalization and that should help our cash position moving forward
186next year and so we're interested to see that roll Out Among the other items that we're watching there is a school uh Finance task force and this is really more into the fiscal year 26 realm um this this task force released recommendations on a new formula a new Finance formula back in January and while there was talk about maybe rolling in uh early adopting some of these parts of the formula we really don't expect to see that but uh we're we're cautiously awaiting how those things might impact us in the future again things like rural funding and and other adjustments that may impact PSD negatively based on early runs we've seen but there's a lot to be determined there and so we'll watch that closely there is um supposed to be some adequacy work done
187by this task force uh and reports on that being rolled out next January and lastly uh just things we're watching and this may or may not impact the the budget next year may impact the budget this year that there's talk of and work on some funding for new arrival students these are students coming from other countries that are non-english speaking students that arrived in District after the October 1 count date hey so when a student arrives in a district after October 1 there's not funding for that student you don't get retro reimbursement for kids that come in there has to be a a drop dead date of when you get paid right so there is some work being done to acknowledge that and you've I'm sure heard about this in the news and districts throughout
188the state the impact of serving serving students without the corresponding funding so we're looking forward to seeing what that might look like we haven't seen any fiscal runs or or really heard of notable estimates on that but it could be something that impacts us on a one-time basis at the end of this year that might roll into next year hey so we dial it down from the state level to more of the the district level okay what's our process look like so far as we're working on this preliminary budget hey well back in November the governor rolls out a budget request okay and he puts out a budget request that includes what uh is estimated to be increase in per pupil funding for schools throughout the state okay so we see those increases in per
189pupil funding and our teams here start working on a projected pupil count okay we get that projected pupil count in January and we start plugging that into um formulas basically runs that that go along with that projected funding the state is is communicating about the legis lative council at the state level then kind of confirms some of those numbers and in January we started to get a pretty good idea of what we can expect in per pupil rate in increases next year okay so we're looking at school Finance act Revenue projected pupil count that's been on going for a few months now can I Ender up to you just for a second I'm sorry when you said each year are you referring to calendar year or fiscal year with that fiscal year okay thank you
190yes thank you yeah I budget guys we're always talking like fiscal years and if I say this year hey I'm I'm already thinking of next year and last year is this year and it's man it's a mess yeah right okay um additionally back in really January this process of of getting enrollment projection started and that's when we start building budget allocations for our schools hey January been thinking about fiscal year 25 hey and we actually roll out our school-based budgeting and our zero based budgets to certain schools in February and then our principles go through the process in February and early March of building their compensation plans their Staffing plans their operational plans and their buildings around those allocations that's important because those are allocations that are based on student enrollment and our our buildings
191our leaders know that they have to make important Staffing and and uh planning decisions early hey with the best interests of staff students planning and mind so that happens in January February March so those allocations are now are now out and when comparing what we deployed in student-based and zerob based budgeting already this year if we are comparing fiscal year 24 enrollment numbers and fiscal year 25 um funding levels it's about a $4.5 million decrease in what we've rolled out to the buildings for next year okay so a budget reduction essentially and we're going to get into more numbers I'm going to talk kind of high level Dave's going to come up and he's going to assault you with some information and he'll talk more about that all right but so that that's that's one
192area where we've already got some adjustments ongoing and and in our buildings beyond that uh we've got an ongoing Central department budget review taking place our cabinet has proposed um a list of critical needs things that must happen uh by or by with implementation for next year and additionally a list of proposed budget reductions at the central level okay that critical needs list and we're talking general fund is about $300,000 hey that budget reductions list is about $2.1 million these things are still being evaluated and reviewed okay they've been through U cabinet reviews budget design team reviews budget accountability committee reviews but still working on those things and then remember I mentioned our preliminary budget will not really be balanced it's because we're going to continue to to grind on those things and they're continuing
193to be things we need to get information on uh to assign cost to so on and so forth to dial those in and again Dave will show you a little bit how this all all falls out and fits into our plan okay so I'll start to get into numbers and I'm GNA hand it over and and I know folks have this extremely overwhelming spreadsheet in front of them and it's it's big um that is a representation of multiple years of the the funding formula right here at PST and Dave's going to do a great job of of looking through those things what I want to show you or I talk about real quick is just the real high level what goes into that he when the legislature is determining our per pupil rate inflation is
194the primary driver and the inflation rate that's driving that per puple rate for next year is 5.2% we've already heard talk about the elimination of the budget stabilization Factor hey that will be another $5.2 million that's being withheld this year that will be in our revenue streams next year important to note we will not be fully funded hey we will still be short over $330 million that has been withheld over a decade and a half that's not coming back right so you we we get into the semantics of fully funded you know in the school Finance world and that's one that makes us bristle a little bit because fully funded would be another $335 million coming in and we won't see that it will be nice to be rid of that 5.2 million budget stabilization
195factor and and as uh director Duffy mentioned that that's in the law and that should be proceeding in the school Finance act next year hey what we do see is our per pupil rate going up by a little over $697 per pupil and our funded pupil count declining by 295.000 pupils and that's based on a five-year average and again when you see some data here in a little bit you'll see how the averaging Works some hey but 295.50 students fewer funded pupils U next year all right with that I'm going to hand it over to Dave and he's going to jump into this funding worksheet that you have in front of yep thank you Brian um so tonight one of the things we wanted to do for the board was to do a little bit
196deeper dive than we usually do around school funding formula and specifically what I'm going to get into is the counts within the school funding formula so that we can understand really how we use this data to formulate the budget and the the relevant pieces of data um give me just a second here there's the keyboard okay I'm going to go into Excel I'm nervous about this because I've never done excel in board meeting like this before I think it's GNA work okay so there's a lot of data on that sheet that that's in front of you if you have it if you have it in front of you and there are copies at the table there for people that want to look through it we're not going to go through all 340 lines of the
197funding formula tonight there literally are 340 lines to the funding formula and and it really starts at the top and it works its way through starting with enrollments getting into funding elements taxes we're going to look at this in a second um but this really is what drives 75% of our budget general fund this is how we derive total program it also actually has uh categorical programs in it as well as well but this is really how we calculate total program every year and it also is going to drive back a point of what's been happening to our accounts and why are we concerned from a budget perspective okay so what you see in this big sheet is a number of columns and they go back in time so this this represents data all the
198way from fiscal year 2019 off of CD's website all the way up to the newest projection that is posted out on their website that we're using to formulate next year's budget and you're going to see that there's two columns that are next to each other and they're colorcoded the same color um and I'll just kind of Point here as going you're going to see a projected and then an October final okay the only one you're not going to see that for is the new projection because we haven't gotten to that October yet but every cycle on here is going to have an initial projection that was put forward and then we're going to look at what actually happened and that way we can track what is CDE projecting what is the district projecting and and
199how do those reconcile to to formulate a budget so again I promise that we're not going to go through all 340 lines of this this uh funding formula but for those that want to Brian and I are very well versed in this we understand this formula inside and out we can do that um when we need to um where this data comes from and there will be and I we're going to post this on the website so people can have access to it and and use it um but one of the things that is Ava where this so all this information and there's a big dark line here on this sheet and so everything below that line is going to come from CDE and that's where we're going to talk briefly and then I'm going
200to go back to the top and talk about the summary data but before we get started I want people to understand where this data comes from so that they can go back out and reproduce it themselves if they wanted to or go back and confirm where this data is being taken from so there's a hyperlink within this website or within the spreadsheet and what it's going to do is it's going to take you to the car Department of Education uh school funding area and end here they're going to have various pieces um they're going to have next year's projection they're going to have the current year they're going to have last year and they go all the way back to 20101 now I've only gone back to 2019 in this analysis um but you can
201go back and look at historical data as much as you want that is where this data comes from and if you were to click on any one of these let's just click on 23 24 um there's going to be various different worksheets that are in there there's going to be a final worksheet um for a year that is concluded so that final worksheet is there we're also and we're un pulling those project ection numbers from is they also include their historical funding sheets that they're using in the legislature as they prepare the budget so those are really represent what CD's initial projections are and then that next worksheet represents what the final result is and as you go through each year you're going to see similar data for each of those and um and again
202I wanted to put the hyperlink in there so people can go back out there I haven't done anything with this data other than compiled it and and and nothing more really so let's look at some of the data brief L um and then we're going to come back up to the summary because we again we're not going to look at everything on here um but this data again it's when you when you actually run those fun files that off of the website what you're going to see is all 178 districts in a giant spreadsheet what I've done is I peeled out pter School District because that's what we're talking about tonight um so as we look at the data and as we start to look at numbers from CDE there's various numbers that get confusing
203um they'll talk about membership they'll talk about um they'll talk about October FTE counts they talk about October membership um with Institute charters in them you can see down below um we start adding I'm kind of going all over the place here but here's the FTE and then they add in Institute Charter Schools down there so it's important to understand what the numbers are and and what they represent and why they're important for the uh for the funding uh formula um as we go through um and I'm just going to kind of cruise through some of these titles um these are fun fing elements in the funding formula they talk about base they talk about online cost of living factors at risk things um those are all funding elements within the formula they talk about
204our tax structure in here um they have data on prior year funding for comparison data they have categorical funding I mentioned that uh or Brian mentioned that I'm G to mention in a second here sorry haven't got to that slide yet um these are categorical funding things where we get money for transportation voke Ed English language proficiency special ed so there's a lot of information in this in this um download and you can see all the information it's got the inflation rates um that this is the current year 24 inflation rate and then they have Taber calculations in here and then this is really where I wanted to get to is all of that data and all the enrollment numbers and all that stuff what really matters is the funded people count because that's what
205our budget's going to be driven by is what are we going to get funded by so when you really start breaking down into the into the detail of this one of the things you're going to notice is that there is an averaging calculation in the formula and we've talked a lot about the averaging and so you can see right now in the current year that we're in so this is October 23 what you're going to see is that the averaging calculation 28608 is actually 271 FTE higher than we really are and Brian and I refer to those often as ghost ghost kids or ghost funded kids because what the state is doing is they're funding us this average to slow that progression of the decline um so there's already 271 kids that we know need
206to be reconciled in this analysis as we look at this because the averaging is artificially pulling us up by 271 kids D that averaging is a fiveyear rolling basis or is that's correct the the current School Finance formula is a fiveyear rolling average there is some Whispers at the legislature they might change that to four years we don't know but right now it's 5 years and that's what we're basing all of this on and so what I've done I've just highlighted those two numbers so that you can see that there is a difference between what our FTE count is now versus what the average count is and I'm not going to do math in my head very well but it's roughly what 260 kids looks like okay and Dave can I can I interrupt you
207for just one second I'm sorry I just can you let the public know why we average and when when we started doing that yeah and and it's not it's not just us averaging this is in the school State's School finding funding formula it's I don't know when it came about it's been there since I I've known the formula and that's that's got at least two decades behind it um many of us didn't pay much attention to it because it wasn't relevant for most of us we weren't declining and so throughout throughout most of my budget time we didn't think about the averaging and things like that it wasn't until recently where districts started finding themselves finding themselves on the average we um we started declining and then really it was a state it's always been
208in the state formula it just is something that is becoming more and more enhanced because many districts not just us older others are declining in enrollment and the averaging is designed to try to mitigate or slow that progression but at some point you got to catch up to it because those higher numbers roll off and you come to the lower numbers so so this is this is one part of the the funding formula that we have here now there's other items that get added in and this is important because you have to understand what the number represents and what it doesn't and so when you really start diving into this you see that we have like there's some full small pieces of full day kindergarten factors that's a small P there's a story behind that
209um Institute Charter Schools um this is uh they're folding in the insute charter schools here you can see that they got their kindergarten then you come up to a funded count um then we have to add in some extended high school things like ascent and some other programs we have mult multi-district online programs ultimately what we get to and and the math is all embedded in these sheets if you want to download it from CDE the formulas are all intact you can see how they do the math um but here and and they actually do a really good job of saying fc9 total funded pupil count is fc7 funded pupil count plus the 5 5.1 so you just go through and you track what they're adding up and you can see it in the form
210plot ultimately you come down to 32734 funded p pupil okay and because we know what's made up in that number and CD actually does the calculation for us right here they break that number out between District funded and Institute Charter funded okay so they're doing that for us but most of the numbers are combined until they break them apart okay so right there we're going to start pulling numbers and so what you're going to see is I'm done looking at the formula for now um and we're going to come up to the summary um what I'm going to do is I'm going to pull these lines that CD is calculating for each year up to the top because those are really what's relevant those are what drives our budget those are what impacts our budget
211and we're going to look at the trend over time here in a second um so what you're going to find is we're going to take this this line fc9 fc11 and then fc10 and we're going to come up here and I'm just going to pull those to the top of the page that's all I'm doing there's a there's a formula that just drives it up there and so you see that hang I don't want to show that col yet okay so we're starting off with that fc9 total funded pupil count now we got to subtract out because we know Institute charter schools in there so let's subtract that one out then we get to 29 3 99.8 now this is where CD doesn't have the detail and we have to add some detail so this
212number 29 293 99.8 I know includes not it's our district and our district is not only made up of our non-charter or non-charter schools all of our schools but they're also our charter schools within our district and I've I've added the names Liberty Ridgeview Monas mountain sage and Compass are the the charter schools that we have and what we've done is we've just gone to our budget documents and pulled the projected number for the charter schools and then the final number for the charter schools in each of these cases um so in this in this current fiscal year 23 October um or fiscal year 24 October 23 count once you peel out the district Charters you're left with a project a a funded p count of 26 64.3 now why that's important is that that
213is what we will get funded based on they will take that number they're going to multiply that times the PPR number and that's how we get 75% of our revenue and if you're curious I wasn't going to do this tonight but I was I was kind of playing around with it over there a little bit the PPR number actually comes from down below and and this is this is where we use this data all the time um oh I didn't highlight it on here I'm sorry sorry um right here so right here you can see GT 7.6 that's where they're introducing the revenue line item or the per pupil amount so once we get those two factors it's it's just multiplication to get to the to the budget okay um ask go quick clarifying sure
214it was clear to me it may not have been clear to everyone listening and I want to make sure it is that the Delta between the 29,000 and the 32 that we started with the fc9 versus fc1 yeah so you you've excluded the enrollment for charter schools in our district correct so fc9 includes all schools including Institute charter schools and District Charter Schools right so that's like the big bucket yep and then we're taking out of that Institute charter schools because they don't have anything to do with our budget at all they we don't even get money for them it goes to the state yeah that that was my sorry that was my fault but I want to make sure this is clear so those those per people count for Charter Schools we are not
215being allocated additional funds for from this not for the Institute charter school that goes directly to the state run uh Ci or whatever they're called Institute charter school down there and they actually manage their budgets for them with them um very similar like what we do is we receive the revenue for this funded pupil count and then for our district Charter Schools we have to forward their money to them so they do flow through our budget and that's where it gets confusing Institute Charter does not District Charters do okay so now let's just look at some history and and we're not going to blabber this too much tonight I know people are going to get tired of looking at the data but it is interesting so now we're back up at the summary and I'm
216all all I'm doing is pulling fc9 fc11 and fc10 from CD's numbers and then now I'm subtracting out the district Charters and you can go to our budget documents and see these numbers that's where they come from and then we come up with a range of projections so the first column and the First Data up here is this is cde's data right so this is cde's projection and in 2019 FY 2019 they projected 26 uh 26554 um we projected the district's projection is going to be right underneath that that's in our budget we projected point9 what ended up actually happening is the column right next to it right above 26 502.407 [Music] our October count though was October of 2019 so this is our high point this is where we were at our our fullest
217enrolled right and so the funded pupil count at that time in 20 in in fy20 ended up being okay CD projected 27650 and we projected 2753 well you're going to say well wait a minute Co happened in there well Co happened after the counts so so none of that changed right and so this is our high point now we get into Co okay so now you see um the projections are starting to drift quite a bit because people are having a hard time projecting and figuring out what's going to happen um in this year this is when CO's happening sorry I'm not zooming all over here CDE projected 27 uh 754 we projected 27563 the actual funded pupil count was okay so this was the rough year and this was where we were figuring out
218how many kids are we losing what's happening this was all happening in real time okay but this was the first decline that we started to see in the data um as you scroll over and we're not going to go through every one of these um after covid we did see a slight uptick in funded pupil count but I mean we're talking about under 100 kits and and I put some arrows in there to kind of show the direction of what's Happening um you move into 23 another decline we moved from 27 165 to 26719 and these are the final numbers these aren't projections at this point okay and then when you roll all the way up to this time we're at 26604 and if I go back and look at where we started at the
219High Point what that means and and I've got the note here is that we're that's terrible I can't see it um it means that we're 9589 funded pupil count just down in the calculation above keep in mind that's the averaging calculation don't forget we got 271 ghost kids that we need to not forget about and add those to that we're really 1230 kids down over the course of four years that's a lot of students and that's a lot of funding and and so I'm hoping that this will help demystify projections enrollment numbers Institute Charter School District charter schools and how we get to these numbers the data is all intact it will be made available for people to look at you can go to the website you could reproduce it if you want it's not
220hard to do um and and you can see where it's coming from so we're trying to demystify some of the information that's out there because it is complicated there's 340 lines to this funding formula it is complicated and that's why Brian and I know it very well and we understand the intricacies of what does this number represent and what does it not represent um so hopefully that helps a little bit establish at least where the data is and again I'm not doing anything with all those numbers under there other than just compiling them for you so you can see where they came from and see what they are um what I did is this summary data up top of which anybody could do that um with the data that's below so it's not it's not
221hard um is there any questions on the sheet because if not we're going to keep moving through to the presentation of which I'm going to get to some more tables around data and student count but we're going to go away from this historical look and we're going to start focusing on what does this mean for our budget next year good okay all right so let's move back into this presentation at this point and um so we've we've walked through this uh document and so now we do understand where this funded pupil count decline is coming from you can see the real data you can go back out and reproduce it if you want to Okay so let's continue to unravel this a little bit more because I think there's more information that we can see
222okay and if you want to and I've checked it these numbers in this column will correlate to the numbers in the big sheet so just we we know they tie it Ryan and I checked it before we did it um so what we're doing here is what we're what we've in inserted here is the this is the full-time equivalent part portion of that formula that's getting at FTE this is different than funded pupil count okay and and I think that's part of the confusion is there's an FTE and often when we talk about FTE we're talking about our own staff CDE funding formula is talking about students fulltime equivalents okay and then there's funded pupil count which is on an average so those aren't going to be the same okay but let's talk about the
223full-time equivalent first what we've done is we pulled the full-time equivalencies off of the sheets from um CDE with the exception of this 27815 that is our own internal projection and it is based on the five-year projections that we have it's based on the the the trend data that we saw 1,200 kids uh decline over four years um and so that is our projection um what that would indicate now this includes district and District Charter but it does not include Institute Charter Schools okay because now we're focusing on our budget we don't care about Institute Charter School's budget that's go to going to the state they manage that okay so now we have district and District charter schools and we can unravel these numbers a little bit more by taking our district Charters and this
224is the information that see it's not as readily available in the funding formula but we can add our district Charters here we know what those counts were we're assuming uh it's a good note here this one hasn't changed yet we haven't gotten all the district budgets or District Charter budgets and that's where we actually gleam what their funded pupil counts are doing when we get their budgets and those are coming next week so um so that that may change but right now we're holding that number constant until we get something else um but when you subtract out District Charters what you get to because remember District Charters are going to just it's a we're a pass through we get the money and then we pass it forward to them this is really the budget that
225we have to work with is what doesn't get passed through Pass forward and so this is the district non-charter count full-time equivalency and you're going to see some things that are popping right here right you're going to see that Charter Schools grew by 408 students or FTE in the time period that I have here keep in mind Liberty opened a campus in that time period so that probably makes some sense that there would be more kids there but that gets to some of the question of are we losing what how are Charters growing so we can see that and you can see that in the historical document if you want to look more what it really comes down to is when we compare 21 to 25 in this data we have oh darn it I
226want to do that we have declined as a district F full-time equivalence about almost just almost about a thousand kids okay all this is good data this is full-time equivalency data and that's exactly what it is what we care about from the funded pupil count standpoint is the average and so we're pulling this average again this CES from the big sheet um but we're calculating it here um just to kind of bring it back into PSD so now let's move over to funded pupil count and this is where it gets a little different because we introduce things like this average so this is no longer an FTE number it's an average number that's made up of multiple FTE numbers okay um we still know what our district charter schools are even though we know that
227there's an average number we know what that is and we we can take a pretty good guess I've got what CDE is guessing here as far as the increase in like ascent and online and those other programs that we saw in the funding formula they have 807 students in there it's a slight increase of about 20 kids um from what we had this year the the year under here is the year that we're in and this is the projected year um but what we're doing here is we're subtracting out funded pupil count at this point because this is what matters for Revenue so we are projecting a budget of 29 29,100 one um funded pupils in our budget 27955 of those are district Charter Schools leaving 26 38.6 District non-charter funded pupil counts okay why
228the comparison data is important is because now we're talking about changes in revenue and CH changes in one of the key drivers there's two there's two um pieces of that there's there's the the number of kids and there's the per pupil amount you're multiplying it by so this is a big change 295 students is the decline and funded pupil count that we are wrestling with in our budget as we go forward okay but you have to understand that there's more to come as the averaging continues to roll off now pulling it all back in and trying to bring this back into um to the budget conversation and and prepping us for the preliminary budget that'll be coming um in the next board meeting what we just looked at is really how we evaluate and how
229we come up with 75% of our general fund Revenue it really is it's it's 340 lines long but if you know what you're looking for you're looking for certain things you're looking for the funded pupil count you're looking for the per pupil Revenue you multiply those two together and that's how we get total program when we look at this the funded pupil count has declined by 1% keep in mind funded people count has averaging and all sorts of other calculations in it so it's not just a an enrollment Drive it's a it's a calculated drop right the per pupil Revenue has increased based on the school finance bill that's out there the 6.9% makes sense to me um because we have a 5.2% inflation rate running through school Finance formula plus the buy down of
230the budget stabilization factor is how they're getting to the 7% That's where that comes from and if you look at the change between the current year that we're in now and what we're projecting for next year that's about $17.3 million okay now that sounds like a lot of money in the scheme of everything that we're talking about now let's let's pull this thing back together and we're going to talk about how these pieces come together and what this is doing is it's kind of previewing what you're going to see in the preliminary budget when it comes okay so we when we get down to how do we resource this allocation out we just talked about 75% of our revenue is going to increase by about $17.3 million and we walked through how we do that
231I can also tell you that our 2019 mevy override it's the only mevy override that grows by inflation but it does grow by inflation and when we bump inflation up against that miv override that will bring in about $1.1 million more we do have state categorical money um that when the long bill is finished most likely probably nine times out of 10 that I've been doing this will grow by inflation as well I don't think that's going to change so we're pretty confident it will be 900,000 what categorical programs get the bulk of that we'll we'll see how the long build divides it up the legislature likes to kind of spread it around different times different sessions so so we are pretty confident that our revenue piter is looking at about $19.3 million we also
232know that there's some known costs that are coming at us that are not necessarily under our control um I wish I would have reorganized these the first one District Charter allocations those we don't have any control of I talked about being a pass through that's the pass through of the new Revenue they get about 10% of the revenue they're about 10% of the account okay we also have utilities and insurance and I'm going to under underline Insurance in this budget cycle um we might have to do some tweaking on utilities um insurance is an issue not only for school districts but everybody in Colorado up and up and down the Front Range um we're seeing massive increases in our in our cost for our insurance mostly due to wind hail damage things like that that's
233happening um this is not just school districts it's everybody um but we are we do participate in a pool for our insurance um but even the pool has indicated we have to pass on some increases and they're doing a really good job of not doing it but they they can't avoid it and so we're we're dealing with the fact that we have to we're going to have to deal with those cost pressures um that if you subtract those out that leaves us with $16.9 million um and then we're going to go through some of these quickly we spend more time on these with these with in the preliminary budget phase um but Brian kind of alluded to this already we've already been working through some reductions so student-based budgets that were rolled out in January
234had $3.7 million less than they had the year before the zerob based budgets um some of those zerob based schools have been tasked with moving onto a student-based budgeting or closer to a student based budgeting model and by doing that there is $800,000 of additional savings from that we have also been evaluating and Brian mentioned this um Central and non-school reductions of about $2.1 million um that is still being evaluated but that's what's on the sheet now and that's the number that we're working with it's still a moving Target somewhat um we fold in those critical needs that Brian talked about um and there's not many 300,000 is what we came up with it basically was we're losing a grant that's going to lose four Mentor teacher mentors and we're asking to bring one back
235so that's one critical need another piece of this would be some accessibility I think I hit the high points right there um those are the critical needs then we get into compensation um we did in negotiations at the last session uh finalize the benefit increase and that is coming in at $5.3 million um this is a sizable increase for us it's one that we're not accustomed to seeing um it's it's a combination of some decisions we made in last year negotiation about not fully funding what we thought was going to happen as well as the fact that claims are coming in higher and so those combinations of those two things the benefits committee has been working for a number of months and has come up with some plan design changes and things that were um
236approved in negotiations but the takeaway for budget is PSD as the employer will be paying three or $5.3 million more in health insurance claims or for benefits okay that would be Dental Health all of that stuff um then we start really I mean we're really winding down the pieces in the budget right and so now we're getting to the the the um the increases for salary and so the first one is a step and a step um for our licensed staff and an equivalent for our administrators and our classified employees costs about $5.6 million that's roughly about a 2% increase in salary that's going to vary on the license depending on where you're at in the schedule um because it's going to be different for those folks the way the schedule's structured um we have
237not filled in a blank for the cola or the cost of living adjustment um across the board cost of living adjustment um but the math behind it is for every 1% for licensed administrators and classified it cost about $2.8 million per 1% so you can kind of do multiplication with that with that factor if you wanted to um all the numbers that we have and kind of how the the preliminary budget's going to be coming forward we're going to have a an amount available to spend or short so in this scenario that I've I've outlined here um we have about $12.3 million that has not been spoken for keep in mind every 1% in Cola is $2.8 million so that will be spent could be spent pretty quickly just on salary increases if we were
238to look at that understanding the inflation rate is at 5% and and that's a Target that we need to be thinking about not only from how School Finance is working but that's also a reflection of the cost pressures our St feeling too so um this this is a good summary to kind of lead you into what you're going to be seeing at the next board meeting um the last piece that we want to talk about tonight was just our budget process I know many of you have seen this before we're really winding down we're in April now um so we have negotiations and we're doing that this Friday and we'll be talking about all sorts of things I I think we're talking about compensation toward the end of that um our comp committee is going
239to be convening to talk about compensation some more um BDT uh is going to continue to review as we iterate on those critical needs and those reductions um BDT is our budget design team and then really what we're doing is we're getting into May and we're hoping to conclude negotiations so that we can prepare up uh a proposed budget for you that would come at the end of May and then in June you would be asked to adopt a budget and so that's kind of the the the cycle at what's going to come so the the next board meeting what you're going to get is a preliminary budget and that's going to put together all the concepts that we just talked about in a budget form so that you can look at it the next
240cycle will be the second meeting in May where we bring to you the proposed budget and that'll be based on what happened what if and when we conclude negotiations it would reflect those changes in that budget and then that gives us a couple weeks to get the final budget and usually it doesn't change from the May to the June and the June is where we actually ask the board to take action and approve the budget that's the process that's that's kind of where we're going um we're getting toward the tail end of this we've got a lot of numbers penciled in we got pretty good confidence around some numbers we still need to negotiate around some pay and some other things too that's it Dave thank you so much I I really think and I
241saw everybody paying very close attention so I think this is going to be very helpful for uh everybody um we're going to we're my yeah we're talking about getting that up on this clip of just this section of the board meeting getting that up on the website so people can kind of geek out on their own time and um you know really dive into this um and we'll make sure we have the spreadsheet up there as well so but thank you good thank you anybody else have anything one quick question um before we hopefully have a break um I don't think I saw any numbers for the non-district or the state Charter numbers do we have that somewhere um because I know there's schools in our district that are non-district Charters but also State authorized
242do we have those members so so that they were in that funding that funding detail they're they're The Institute charter school that's the Institute okay that's the Institute Char when I say Institute charter school they're the state Charter Schools thanks yeah I think they referred to as CSI on that CSI yeah which you know immediately went Charter School Institute right that's the first thing could come up in my memory but that's what it is yeah CSI Dave quick question in the overall budget not what's being or projected as maybe an increase of what we'll have um in May but in the larger budget that you're talking about how much do we allocate for operation and maintenance of our facilities right now um that would be hard for me to just peel off from the top
243of my head we do have some documents that I could get to the board that would kind of get to some of those percentages um I just don't have it in front of me right now okay yeah so of the roughly 12 million increase in Revenue that we're seeing we know that there's some items that are still outstanding that will reduce that in from that reduction um that do we have anything projected in the budget that would go for facilities and maintenance out of that 12 million Okay so so no we don't right now um the critical needs that I listed at 300,000 were really accessibility and the other piece I mentioned there's not much more there um so there is not increased allocations for operations and maintenance there's not specific for Capital now we're
244not making those adjustments in the cycle no air conditioning no solar no air condition now this is and this is really we're really talking about general fund tonight and not that we have Capital dollars to do that with either um but but yeah air conditioning wouldn't really be part of the general fund conversation but we don't have general fund to do it if that's what you're asking go ahead Scott um I I had a question on the uh Institute funded schools so like can you give me some examples of what schools were talking about I don't remember off the top of my head a Ascent okay people are whispering to me ascent asent out on County Road early colleges isor would like R Christian and leveland the CSI website has them all listed we can
245get that information for you okay yeah so the the Colorado early colleges that type of thing so y one thing just looking at these numbers so like in 18 19 it was like about 1700 and the next year it was uh, 18800 I need my classes um yep and now it's 3,300 students so and the dramatic jump happened looks like during Co or 2021 about 800 wi but it's kept going so have we as a district asked those that have left the district why have we surveyed anybody have we exit interviewed Lauren's going to come up and talk about that I think we have I've asked this before I'm sorry we did send out a survey and I believe we got one response one response yes wow okay well I think that's something that we
246need to do some more research on um like I've talked about before my background is marketing and sales how do we attract people back there are a lot of benefits to Public Schools uh a lot of things that we can do that uh these smaller schools can't do I think that's a track that we can really explore rather than cutting cutting cutting let's add um by attracting people back so those were that's where the kids went that's where the Thousand that we've lost are it it seems pretty obvious to me but we need to work on that thank you good and just to reiterate on that one I know there's been a lot of conversation about Charters we don't have any control over those Institute funded charters those are State fun like they're State institutes
247so there's some people you could contact but fortunately not under our purview yeah but if I can say one more thing on that sorry go um loosen the ketchup bottle Scott um but I note that from the numbers at least we've the Delta between losing that to our authorized Charter Schools but we're still allocating 10% of our budget for operational costs of those so in other words we're not receiving the benefit of the PE per people headcount from those Charter Schools while still ding out uh 10% of our budget correct can you say that one more time you said it really fast sorry trying to be efficient um in other words another way of phrasing what I think Scott's point was and I believe director Zamora's point was is that included in this analysis if
248you will we are losing certain amount of of children and students to our district authorized charters for which we will not receive the benefit of a per pupil all allocation from the state while simultaneously allocating 10% of our operating budget to these schools directly correct so 10% of the budget goes to the charter schools that that is true and I'm still having a hard time connecting your other piece there you're you're with me do do you follow maybe maybe okay I'm I'm having a hard time Kevin sorry so the district Charters are included in the actual funding formula so we're receiving that Revenue but then turning around and sending that 10% to them say that but that is the 10% right I think that's that was the decision clarifying that's a it's a zero do
249zero net overall right it's not like we're losing 10% that happens yes and and there's there's more to that and we can talk about that more in the preliminary budget where we we have pretty consistent communication and contact with those Charters and we'll um that they'll utilize services from the district that they'll pay for and so there is some some give and take and some back and forth so it may not be there there's more to the flow through than just the per pupil rate yeah thank you thank you yeah go ahead yeah go ahead Lauren random pie of information to add to this conversation to we do track movement between our charter schools and the districts of the it team looks that kind of transfers in transfers out and over the last couple of
250years the discrepancy or the difference in transfers in versus transfers out to our schools is a a very few students like a handful five six that sort of thing so we can make that information available too so thanks Lauren yeah thank you for making that available as well yeah quick question on that Lauren um do we have the dates of those transfers too by month uh cuz I would like to have that public online please I'm not sure if we have that level DET we'll see if we can find it and I do think that you as we're talking um both with State Charters and um District Charters one of the things that you know as you pointed to that you can do much better in a big bigger public Arena and that is the
251Futures lab um is the you know prime example of that that we have the capability um to do that and we need to start U letting people know the great assets that PSD has and to come on back so that's part that's part of the work that we are um we are doing and need to do better MH yeah I totally agree with that Caroline would too um that's a that's got to be the jewel of PSD and really what we focus on and of course sports teams there is there is no better place than public schools to have BigTime High School sports so I think that is an attraction that we need need to also focus on can't help myself all right thank you so much Dave and Twain I hate to do this
252to you but we are going to take a 10-minute break in between so um we shall be back here at about 10:13 e I know all right so we are on to 12.0 action item uh 12.1 monitoring report policy review de 1.0 General District ends part two welcome Dwayne it is 10 minutes or die got it all right here we all right yes I know I have to do a motion first I'm so sorry but I just want to put that out there good move okay can I get a motion I to know that wasn't the motion that was like no no no that the motion is to maybe anybody yep because we need to approve this tonight this is part two we had part one two weeks ago or four weeks ago so yes
253I got it so I moved that the board determined that the superintendent has some on the right one District dens 1.0 y okay I move that the board determined that the superintendent has reasonably interpreted Board of Education policy de 1.0 in his internal monitoring report dated April 9th 2024 and that the evidence presented supports the superintendent's conclusions stated in the internal monitoring report can I get a second Kevin's on the second all right time starts now no excellent okay I think Brian wanted to kick it off I just want to introduce Dwayne not that you need a community introduction welcome back for part two of this very important presentation regarding our district monitoring report which outlines our outcomes for students so as we as a governance team and a community grapple with hard things I
254think it's really important that we pay attention to how our students are fairing as a result of our efforts and that's what Dr Schmid is here to tell that story uh with some of our other partners uh so I just want to say welcome to you thanks for uh your hard work thank you superintendent Kingsley and hello board president Draper and vice president Zamora and directors of the Board of Education I'm just stating for the recording it's about 10:20 at night so we're going to move a little bit quick I also want to mention the Board of Education and the community has a copy of the full monitoring report and so this is not intended to be covering the full monitoring report I'm just going to K hit a few highlights for us so to
255Jump Right In we are going to go over the district um over the moning report which really is um a measure of our district ends which are aspirational goals and show how we're making progress toward that the outcomes in the moning report are aligned with the ified Improvement plan and the Strategic plan the things that the district says it will do and then we'll answer any Board of Education questions that come up I just want to remind everyone there's four of the district ends the first one being foundations to success and then student connections success in a changing world and above and beyond we've had these for multiple years which has been great because allows our system to align lots of our process and our um people in our in our budgeting toward the um
256attainment of these District ends we're going to just uh as superintendent Kingsley mentioned this is part two of a two-part report and the first part was on foundations for Success so tonight we're jumping right in at student connections the way we measure student connections is we give an annual survey in the fall to all fourth through 12th grade students we measure a couple different subscales in that survey student connections to their interest and passions to adults in the school and to their peers we also measure have a safety subscale um we measure five different social emotional learning competencies and we measure graduation expectations for our 6 through 12th graders it's um been a pretty stable survey so it good gives us good longitudinal data to look at I just want to mention that both response
257rates and the number of students who responded both increased um in the most recent year of 2223 so that's a positive and you can see that those response rates at 78.5% in the most recent year is quite High um that's because we deliver the survey to students in school and this is this is student voice from about 15,000 students what we've learned over the years I think we've um done this survey for eight years from 2016 to 2023 is it's given us some really um strong data around the the fact that attendance achievement and discipline moves in predictable ways with student connections and when students feel more connected to their peers to the adults and their interest and passions at school um these other metrics all move in the right direction the direction the parents
258and the staff want them to move one thing I want to highlight is from um from the the report is that we are tracking one of the subscales of interest to passions um student connections from 2017 to 23 in this slide and what you can see is that big dip During the covid period of time which makes sense uh students weren't in our schools in the same way that they had been prior to and since but what you can also see is that there's a steady rise year after year of students connection to the interest and passions in pter school district schools and the most recent year 20123 that outcome was the highest it's been since 2017 this is important given tonight you know um part of what the board did in their consent agenda
259was a change to graduation requirements that will be working into the system and a lot of the logic behind that change is to open up and expand opportunities for students because we want to encourage and support these connections to students interest and passions and we're talking about elementary middle and high school another piece of a data point I want to just draw our attention to is when we look at that student to interest and passions connection subscale and we separate it out or parse It Out by students who on a different item indicate whether they anticipate graduating from high school or they're they h seeing challenges in front of them um to graduate from high school the Blue Line in that line graph are the students who raise their hand and say I'm confident I'm
260going to graduate and this is for our sixth through 12th grade students and the red line is the um outcome on the connections item regarding interest and passions for students who said I'm not sure I'm going to graduate and I want to point out that there's about a 20 percentage gap between those two sets of students and that that Gap is pretty consistent across those many years and as you know I like to say chance events don't replicate that's a real pattern it's just an indicator that this matters like students being connected to their interest and passions is associated with whether students believe they're going to graduate or not when we um look at some data for middle school students um we see that the connections data and whether students indicate they're going to they
261feel they're going to graduate or not are displayed there the First Column of data is for the students who the 4,665 students in the survey uh 6 through 12 I'm sorry this is 6 through eight because it's Middle School who said I will graduate the next column over is for the 389 students who said I'm not sure if I'm going to graduate and that third column is the difference between those two sets of metrics and as your eyeball scans down that you see that these are very important items like students indicating that they sense uh they they have food security that they feel safe at school that they feel connected to adults at school that they feel listened to cared about and helped that somebody helped them explore their future um whether that was a
262teacher or anybody and then that they that the IAP um the individual career and academic plan process helped them and uh how how helpful zel was and so what you see strong message there for our middle school students is if for the students who are not sure if they're going to graduate they're reporting less favorable outcomes on on all those different items okay same exact type of data view but this time the data is trimmed for just the high school students so this is 9 through 12 same items same type of pattern on the difference and so that similar pattern between Middle School and High School those are independent sets of data because there's no student that's both in middle school and high school at the same time and again I like this chance events
263don't replicate it just kind of strengthens the the student voice that when I when I'm not sure if I'm going to graduate I tend to have these uh I'm more likely to have food insecurity not feel safe at school not feel connected to adults and so on and so forth so it points out that the resources that we have spent in pter school district and time energy um are are well spent in helping students feel connected and having supports when we look at social emotional learning data um split out again by the same two uh groups of students I've been indicating you know those who indicate they expect to graduate versus those that don't you can just see that clear evidence three years in a row that the um social emotional learning composite score is
264much higher for students who think they that believe they're going to graduate it's lower for those who don't so these things all travel together in a predictable way I want to highlight that we put a new item into the connection survey this year um we put in a couple new items and they were really quite good one of them was that we asked a series of questions like would students like support in specific areas and again I'm splitting out that data across these two groups of students I've been highlighting tonight those who say hey I know I'm going to graduate and those who say I'm not as sure and what I want to point your attention to is the top T half of that table is data for middle school students and the SEC and
265the bottom half is for high school students again these are like independent sets of data these kids didn't get together and talk and and kind of decide what they were gonna I apologize Dwayne the screens have told us it's night time oh I I will restart them for us they are correct I was on a roll stop the timer this will not count against this does not count against me I'm probably at 10 already I so sorry but I'm rolling you are rolling I'm rolling I also like to state in the record that I've not had um internet for about an hour and I think that was conditioned because of my vote earlier I just want to name that and say well played rtion yeah well played but thanks for your help meiz by the
266way this is this is why we worked with your department to help us out during this Cass assessment window I get it I want to do a shout out real quick since this isn't up but maybe we're still live on camera I just think that was an excellent presentation by Dave and Brian on finance I'm so proud to call them a each colleagues um just think they do such great work as well as Bud's Department okay bud thank you very much so we're back on so here's the the point of this slide that when you look at the students who've raised their hand and said I'm not certain I'm going to graduate the the item that ra Rises to the top that they want help with um additional help with is Stress Management when you
267look at the students on the left who raise their hand and say I am definitely going to graduate Stress Management actually drops down to spot number two and what's spot number one is school activities I think there's something powerful there to really think about I want to really quickly mention that the student advisory committee for pter school district surfaced a project that they're finishing up this school year for us around um guidance for our teachers recommendations on syllabi and the way the students landed on that project is they were talking about stress and Stress Management and mental health and that was the students one of the activities and the solutions they have to increase their mental health and decrease their stress so I thought it was kind of interesting to see it show up in
268this connection data I think those students are on the right track okay moving right along I'm going to switch gears now to the healthy kids Colorado uh survey data that was brought up a couple uh times earlier tonight when we were having Community comment and we have it here in the monitoring report as well the first set of items that I'm highlighting here have are are the items that are most directly related to mental health the first thing I want to orient you to is that the items that are written in green on the left are worded in such a way they're positively worded so that a higher percentage would be a more favorable outcome for our students right the items that are written in red on the left are negatively worded so that actually
269you would want to see a lower it' be more favorable if there was a lower percentage in the columns to the right okay so you have to pay attention and then I group the items based on whether they're positively worded or negatively worded the second thing I want to orient you too is that the state is kind of a middle column with a bunch of Nas not available they haven't released their data to us yet Statewide so we're not sure yet but we do have PSD data from 2021 and from 2023 and that's what I'm comparing here and the shadeed the the cells that are shaded blue which is basically all of them for 2023 are shaded blue not only because they're they moved in a more positive direction meaning that our mental health or
270our students I'll say it this way our students um indication of their Mental Health on these items has improved and it shaded blue because that Improvement is statistically significant for each one of those items okay so those are real movements in the positive direction which is one reason I asked my friend Liz Davis to be here tonight because we may end up talking about that we'll see how it goes I'm going to move on to the next slide this is high school data by the way that we're looking at this next set of slides that I'm highlighting are all related to um um why do I not have that there um School related they're the items that are most related and IND Direct Control of like what a school chooses to do right and how
271we work with students so as you read through those items you can still see that red and green coding so most of them are worded in the positive and once again you can see that in 2023 there were improvements just about across the board and even the white cell towards the top that's the 44.2% for the usually or definitely think their their school lets their parents or Guardians know when they have done something well that's a positive increase from the prior year also it just wasn't a s statistically significant increase right so the only item that actually went down from 21 to 23 because they do the healthy kids every other year was the last item that says skip one or more whole days of school during the past four weeks that percentage went up
272by about 1% now that data point is in alignment right with what we saw in the foundations for Success when we looked at the attendance data so that's not a surprise but once again I like it when I see these patterns that make sense across these different data Gathering exercises that a district does because it tells you it kind of validates there's something real going on there okay moving on we're going to we are going to switch gears a little bit and we're going to look at um and I'm going to slow down here just for a minute because this is a very important point and topic and we had just been looking at healthy kids Colorado 2021 to 2023 right because we don't have the state data we're going to switch gears a little
273bit we're going to look at some healthy kids Colorado data Broken Out by different ethnicity groups and other groupings and we're going to compare across groups more so than across years we'll do probably both what we're going to see in just a second in the data I wanted to call out the big takeaway points I'm going to read these off we see that the highest rates of racism are experienced by black Hispanic and Asian students and this pattern is true in both the 2021 survey data and the 2023 data so it's a persistent pattern okay the second bullet point racism experienced by Asian students has increased several related items indicate significant increases this is something we should pay attention to when you think about geopolitical events and what's going on in the world I think
274this could make sense and I think as adults who care about our kids we need to pay attention to this the third Point racism experienced by black students as self-reported by the students taking the healthy kids Colorado survey has decreased um related items indicates it's actually a significant decrease so that's a celebration that that might be moving in the right direction but I want to not go too quickly not to draw your attention back up to the first bullet point which is true so even though those rates of racism appear and bowling and such appeared it's not really bowling it's racism specific specifically appears to have decreased for black students they still have one of the highest rates of racism self-reported okay so all right everything I just gave voice to is what this table
275just kind of um provides the data for um the red in the items on the left indicates that yes you want you know seeing lower percentages is a more favorable outcome and as we scan across that set of data you see that you have the PSD overall percentage but then followed by specific um ethnic subgroups and the two red cells under the Asian column are indicating that those um two outcomes are significantly worse than the prior year 2021 data which has that little red circle around that 6.3 and that 23.8 those are the you know the data points from 2021 versus those 23 percentages the one blue cell for black or African-American students is a significantly more positive outcome which is the basis of that statement about the races and levels declining but they are
276still high I also need to point out really quickly in case someone looks back at the film and slows down on this a little bit is those asteris whenever I put an asteris by one of the numbers in the in the column it actually is indicating a significant difference from the overall PSD population as opposed to comparing between two years of 21 and 23 I know that's a lot to absorb but there it is Scott did you have a question quick question sorry to interrupt um okay just can you remind me when this survey was taken to Healthy Kids yes it was taken kind of in the late fall early right I think I believe it's right around november-ish that it's given and it's quite a slow turnaround time and then um what uh groups
277of people would fall under the Asian category would that also include Middle Eastern is that what you're alluding to you know students probably self- select that okay as a as a category but I imagine it's kind of about it's like the federal um designations and so I think students and what they choose to what they choose is what's going to show up in the report okay thank you absolutely okay so I'm going to move on but that slide kind of speaks for itself if if anyone wants to view it later moving to the next um set of slides from healthy kids Colorado this data is specifically highlighting B buling data okay and the two bullet points there that are worthy of reading the highest rates of bullying are experienced by students who self-identify as gender
278queer non-binary Andor gay lesbian and those patterns also persist which is why I'm highlighting them for 2021 and 2023 I think it's really important that all the adults in our community understand that students from these different groups can experience higher levels of bullying the second Bull uh bullet point bullying experienced by gender queer non-binary students has decreased and yet it remains double to Triple the rates of the overall PSD student population so we're happy in that second bullet point to see that maybe it's moving in the right direction with less bullying but just like my prior slide don't don't lose sight of the fact that that's still substantially higher than the overall population and and we're not okay with that obviously as a community this is the data that backs up the statements I just
279made and and um I I you can Orient yourself to this set of data just like my other description on the other data slide so that blue cell is just indicating a significant Improvement for gender queer non-binary students in the 23 data relative to that same group in the 21 data where the percentage went from 32.6% of students um saying they've been bullied electronically um versus 18.1 so it's cut in about half and I might have moved through these slides quickly enough that I didn't really get to call out that we have if you look back more carefully we have a lot of those um metrics and mental health and such that moved in the right direction by like 2/3 to a half like Improvement like closing a gap it's a significant substantial Improvement if
280you look back at that carefully okay moving on to this the the Third District end success in a changing world we measure this in a in several different ways um I'm just pulling out some highlights the first point I want to make is that work-based learning Career Technical Ed um classes concurrent enrollment where students um get tuition free college credit and earning Associates degrees internships these are the things that are the many great experiences that pter school district off offers it students and lots of students take advantage of the numbers across the top right of that slide in those colored boxes indicates that the number of students we're talking about is not trivial there's thousands and thousands of students that are involved in these experiences in pter school district we are State lead leaders in
281this space if you look in the uh monitoring report of the full report and you look towards the back around our numbers on this compared to comparison districts and the state overall we are State leaders in this area um Tanya alres and her department has just done such a fantastic job of leading this work for us the pictures there highlight a few things the the first picture on the top is a student who's earned two associate degrees while in pter school district prior to even graduating from high school the UC Health picture is there because we have a student involved in an extremely Technical and awesome medical um internship with in partnership with UC Health we have great Partners hundreds of them in businesses all through this District or the community the bottom slide I
282want to really slow down and mention because I find it amazing that's just some drawings of some like architecture drawings but I want to mention there's a architecture construction and engineering program in PSD and the students involved in that class and that experience have been involved in projects like one design of The Concourse sea Renovations at Denver International Airport that's a real project the second real project that they've been involved in is landscape design of the city of Fort Collins new dovetail Park in the Bucking Horse neighborhood that's a real project the third project they've specifically been involved in is interior design of a new elementary school well of sorry a new Elementary School in Johnstown I mean that's amazing so my son went off to college after finishing up at Rocky Mount High School
283and he went to Boulders program and he graduated he's off putting in Resorts and stuff these kids are in school district and they're basically doing the same work my son Caleb had to go to Boulder and we spent a lot of money to get that degree so he could go do the same stuff it's incredible pter school district is full of these types of opportunities that kids are taking advantage of there's a lot of onramps to these opportunities of all different types can current enrollment dual enrollment AP IB Ascent free college t- programs the pte program it's incredible some of the facilities that we've built up over time to support these programs are amazing and we continue to work to bring in more resources through grants to keep supporting that work and we're so thankful
284for our great Community Partners who are interested in expanding these opportunities and by the way all this happens because of industry-based partners that we have throughout this community this is not PSD working on its own this is 18 different career connected opportunities that are available through pter school district and I want to just mention since I have the mic tonight that a parent or somebody who might be watching this if you want to learn more you just go to no no spaces just PSD future.org PSD future.org you'll get to a website it'll lead you through these opportunities it breaks it down by depending on which high school and middle school you're at um there's just a wealth of information PSD future.org okay moving on to above and beyond which is actually pretty related to the
285stuff we just talked about but when you start talking about above and beyond the feel is really more like bringing home the gold you know winning the prize expanding your skill set to uh a high level um so we have lots of students every year that go off to Nationals and they go off to State and they win state we had some tonight um here in our in our building talking about the incredible things they did within wrestling a lot of achievement there this is just another subset there's so many possibilities of kids and groups we could highlight so these are middle school and high school students that do Science Olympiad then there's a group that's doing theater they get invited to um to do things nationally and they win state prizes and they come
286home as Champions another piece of evidence is we actually ask parents directly we do a survey every other year called the family engagement survey and we directly ask parents has PSD Andor this school provided one or more opportunities for your children to strive toward their personal above and beyond as described above and in the survey it is described above well it turns out that collectively um in this most recent year the 2223 data that we have 83% of student or sorry parents indicated yes and only 177% said no and so we track that and we want to see that improve over time but that's a very direct measure of that so 87% is something we can be proud of and then we continue to work hard to expand that something I want to mention to
287the board we don't currently um collect that data in such a way that we can follow up with the parents who said no and that had been true for the first couple years of the connection survey if you remember we we ran it kind of anonymous because we wanted to make sure we were getting valid data what have you at some point we realized the data was so valuable and it'd be more valuable if we could follow up with students and so we switched it and with the connection survey we are able to follow up with students which has been great we might want to consider doing the same thing with our family engagement survey on this next round which will be next school year so food for thought and we can come back and
288talk about that later Awards and accolades so I'm going to run through these just kind of quick there's 20 student because it is about bringing home the gold National Hispanic scholar um this this award really um is it honors the top 2% of Hispanic scholars in America and so we have a list of 20 students who reached that goal which is impressive the US Military Academy appointments and Ry scholarships we have nine students who attain those accolades the National Merit scholar program which is the top 1% academically um it's it's eight there are eight students in PSD in 2022 23 who met that criteria we have seven students and four State Championship events that are represented in this slide that our students went off and competed in and won we have 691 plus students represented
289in this slide around various types of advanced placement endorsed diplomas International baloria graduates um students who earn the Seal of biliteracy and other endorsed diplomas and I want to mention that seal of biliteracy on diplomas for certain languages and in certain partner countries like Germany students can go off and go to college for free in Germany but they've got to have that seal of biliteracy to earn their ticket to that I I know that through my son Caleb I I was so proud of PSD literally teaching my kid to be fluent in a language that I can't speak even though my last name is Schmitz and I would love to be able to speak German but you know I didn't go to pter school district so I didn't have that gift all right so I
290want to invite um before I do I guess real quickly we've got the beter foundation scholarship which is a really high high level um scholarship I think we're all aware of that's a full ride to college and we had a student ear earn that honor and then we had Stu two students earn the Daniels fund scholarship and you can kind of read there um they can attend these are both basically full ride scholarships very impressive very hard to get and before I just leave this and Liz May if if you have questions Liz is here to help Liz Davis um to answer any questions before we leave this I just want to remind the board about something that we should be proud of a couple of things one is I want to say thank you
291to all the all the principales all the counselors all the teachers um that have made the collection of healthy kids Colorado data possible made connections data collection possible do the work with kids in and out day day in and day out to have those numbers shift dramatically in the right direction like we just saw evidence on slide over slide lizz's Department the district works hard on that the schools work hard I heartfelt thank you to our system for making that our reality I'm I appreciate that the other thing I want to mention is when we think of our three big priorities because I said at the beginning that these pieces are aligned with our strategic plan and our uip so really quickly let's remember we already went through foundations for success but collectively the whole
292monitoring report when we look back at our literacy goal we successfully carried off a K5 implementation that's already showing signs not of a dip not of an implementation dip actual Improvement I don't know if you remember that that's amazing that's a great literacy go um outcome for us right in the mental health and wellness space we just walk through healthy kids Colorado and connections data that shows that things are moving dramatically in the correct direction well we've flowed a lot of resource and effort in that direction everyone's been a great partner in that we've normalized Mental Health Services and talking about mental health and that feels like it's moving things in the right direction so that's a celebration we also um in the graduate with options piece we have been focusing on expanding the opportunities
293for kids and making the Easy Button available so more and more people can tap into those opportunities and I want to mention that we have a Shameless plug for tomorrow night there's a there's a high school senior Ascent a student hiring fair and I dropped off one of these little pamplets at each one of the board members uh desks it's amazing they are going to have a job fair tomorrow night down at the Future Ready Center for all of our seniors some of whom aren't going to go off to college and they do want to graduate and start to work and start a career if you look at the long list of the Community Partners and businesses showing up to to connect our students with employment right here in our own Community this whole event
294happening tomorrow night um April 10th from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. it's at the Future Ready Center you've got that pamphlet and again I want to remind the public I gave the website earlier um to to link into if you want to see that under the calendar of events I also want to mention that our district was only one of six districts I believe that is going to present in Milwaukee and this presentation is happening May 1st through third in Milwaukee and it's all around our Career Tech Ed data collection and data use and Tanya and her team are going out not just to go be to observe the um conference but they're honored in a publication and they're going out to present we are literally national leaders in this space lots of other districts
295around the country know about PSD to our Career Tech head and our work-based learning and our expansion and what we're doing and the last piece I want to announce real quick there's also a career connected conference happening that some a group called the attainment network is running and that's going to be um this September 18th and 19th and our team will also be at that presenting data on our outcomes because nationally there's not enough information on the on the hardcore analysis of outcomes so our team is attacking that and we're going to be getting out there and presenting that stuff I just want the board to be aware of that that all falls under that graduate with options piece so I just ran through a big celebration in each one of those three priority areas
296and I just want to say thank you to our staff for making that all real and with that questions comments or bedtime oh nice Dwayne that is it's just it's remarkable um honestly and and I apologize for the morbid humor in the beginning um because this is why we're having all of the discussions that we had prior right this is the reason because we are seeing such good results because we know that we can do better for our students and we are doing better for our students and we can note that year after year we can see those improvements so I think it's I think it's fantastic that we're going out nationally to talk about this to say this is how we're tracking this is how we're finding um the data and using the data
297um you know I look at this and say while we're having these um you know the improvements for our middle school high school we're also having those improvements in literacy k k through three and it's like that's just going to compound each other and they're it's just going to keep getting better and better so um and to those who are asking questions about um the charter schools and and what are we doing to um you know counter that I I really you know we talked about it slightly a little bit earlier um with the Futures lab but if you see the choices that kids have you know the 18 different levels at which you can um take courses the graduating with your um associates degree all of those things are just um a remarkable um
298achievement that you all have uh and and all the staff have made happen for our students so for those who you know are are were with us looking at the budget and we're looking at you know the what can we do and what can we not do this is the reason for all of that so I just want to put those things together um and with that yes Kevin sorry real quick question and comment I Echo everything you said director dver I think it's this is the kind of stuff that and next time I'm going to make a motion to make you go first in whatever we do because I think this deserves way more time um with everything that you just said I also and I I'm not ch picking this but I also
299want to make sure that we're pushing ourselves to always be better and I just had it up but in one of these slides there it is um and this was somewhat discouraging for me to look at I mean there was a lot of great in here but um on the slide where it was the healthy kids uh Colorado racism data I'm looking at Trends and this is what was concerning to me is that in 2021 the statement treated badly or unfairly in school because of their race or ethnicity in the past 12 months those numbers seem Flatline between our Hispanic black African-American and Asian students from 2021 to today and this is no indictment of any work that you guys have been doing it's a it's a charge to kind of do better and also
300a plug thank you uh Eric who's invited us and some of the board members to do some uh diversity Equity inclusion training um some of the homework that we received which I want to put a plugin for is Transforming Our public schools to be more culturally responsive and so I'm going to dangle that there and we can engage in that later because of the hour but I think that there's something there that might help alleviate some of those numbers and be interested in exploring those kind of conversations uh when it's not 10:50 at night thank you for elting appreciate that b the mic for two seconds we are a family in pter school district and we like to have be joyful in our work so we're all going to say happy birthday to Dr Tracy
301Guile's mother and the camera if the camera can switch it over there towards Tracy you'll see a little sign she made happy birthday from pter school district we know you're one of our most loyal uh viewers does anybody have anything else JZ go ahead okay I've got two things one similar to the healthy kid survey on slide 13 um I just many of these red oh what did I want to say sorry I got to read my notes oh the red items like not only are they blue but those red items most of them are either half or nearly half like the amount of improvement it's not just statistically uh relevant right or significant it's substantial and I think that that just needed to be called out good job um the second thing I want
302to say is the slide right before that where our kids are telling us about Stress Management healthy relationships all the things um we changed graduation requirements we're trying to broaden opportunities for kids I know the next phase of work is trying to really Define classes a lot of that will be at the high school level but I think there's going to be some digging into Middle School I would encourage us to consider what kind of classes are important I would push for Middle School I think our system needs to kind of weigh in on that but how do we support kids early so that they do have the skills to have Stress Management to have mental health supports to build healthy relationships so I just wanted to make the plug thanks thanks for elevating that
303anyone else can I make a yes go ahead Brian so I just uh you know building off of all of the conversations that we've had over the course of the evening what I continue to be most proud of in this system is our ability to not just protect but to accelerate our children from the adult decisions that have to be made to ensure that this type of work and our results not only are sustained but continue to be improved people are working so hard and staying incredibly focused on our young adults and our children to achieve these results they do not happen by accident they happen as a result of a community family type effort where people and children and young adults feel bigger than themsel feel like they're part of something bigger than themselves
304I want to extract one data point uh because you've all collectively I can't agree more with the comments the healthy push around doing better if you can go back really briefly to the connections data for both middle school and high school students that are unsure of graduation just really briefly as we talk about Connections and layers of support again I just I want to you know so proud of our teachers who are working hard to make sure our students have plans for their future but when you look at the students who suggested I will graduate or I am certain you go down did anyone play a role in exploring the future and did a teacher coach play a role in exploring the future and a third of our students are getting that level of love
305and advisement both in the classroom and outside of the classroom from people like bus drivers kitchen managers custodians administrators it is a collective effort of people who are not looking at siloed relationships within the four walls of a classroom is truly a school community that is investing as a network to ensure that all students find themselves in their purpose and what their aspirations are so I just this is celebration for all employees um we're all important in the mix of it I think that's what makes some of the things that we're grappling with even harder uh and to know that these things are taking place these types of results across all of our schools another reason why these challenges are happening uh in terms of our sense of urgency to address them but makes the
306challenge of potentially losing this or feeling like we're losing this uh that much more emotional I just want to just you know make sure that we acknowledge that people are working incredibly hard and it's in service of actually incredible subst stantial results and I'm just so proud to be the superintendent of this District so thank you for a great presentation thank you so much and so now we do need to call for the the vote so Jill can we call for the vote Jim broish hi Kristen Draper hi Connor Duffy hi Kevin havelda hi Scott shanower hi Jessica z i motion passes 60 thank you than you all right this leads us to 13.0 Executive session um can I get a motion bless you I'll go I move that the board enter executive session for
307the following purposes one to receive legal advice on specific legal questions regarding relating to a lawsuit on a breach of contract claim concerning a public sector collective bargaining agreement as authorized by CRS 24-6 42 subsection 4B and number two to determine positions relative to matters that may be subject to negotiations develop the strategy for negotiations and instruct negotiators relating to Charter School renewal contracts between charter schools and the district as authorized by CRS 24-6 42 subsection 4E one individuals invited to join the board in all our part of the executive session are superintend Brian Kingsley Chief officers Lauren hooton and Eric Juan Savage and general counsel otum Asin can I get a second Connor's got the second all right Jill can you call the vote Jim brokish hi Christen Draper hi Connor Duffy hi Kevin
308helda hi Scott Shan bow hi Jessica zamor I motion passes 60 thank you okay we will now convene in a closed session this this is the last agenda item before adjournment at the conclusion of the executive session we will come back into this room to publicly adjourn the meeting the adjournment will be recorded but will not be televised thank you all and have a great night