001e yes thank you thank you everyone thank you so much for your patience as we wrapped up our dinner session um just want to thank you for joining us tonight um please go ahead and mute your cell phones watches anything that beeps or buzzes um today is Tuesday March 19th 2024 and this meeting is now called to order at 6:38 p.m. thank you um would any board members like to make changes to the agenda okay seeing none we'll move on to our action items um our first action item is a resolution and support of transgender Vis day of visibility can I get a motion I move the board approve the resolution in support of transgender day of visibility March 31st 2024 can I get a second Kevin is the second would anyone like to read
002the resolution okay thank you Jess sorry trying to get organized all right in support of transgender day of visibility March 31st 2024 whereas transgender day of visibility is an internationally recognized awareness day that occurs every March 31st to celebrate transgender and non-binary people while bringing awareness to the discrimination and violence the community faces and whereas positive and accurate representations of transgender and non-binary people provide crucial visibility of this diverse community and this and this visibility helps those within the community to feel seen while helping others Braden their understanding of transgender identities and how it to be increasingly supportive allies and whereas the board wholeheartedly Embraces pter school districts transgender and non-binary students employees and community members for the perspectives experiences advocacy and diversity they bring to our schools and workplaces and whereas the board recognizes
003that while visibility is an important step in the acceptance and celebration of transgender and non-binary people there is more work ahead of us to ensure that in pter school district transgender and non-binary people do not face discrimination or harassment based Bas on their gender identity and whereas pter school district is committed to providing a welcoming supportive inclusive and safe environment educational environment regardless of gender identity in order to ensure all students families and staff members feel valued seen heard and empowered do I need to sorry I always don't know if I should read the now therefore be it resolved since we don't I okay sorry now therefore be it resolved by the pter school district Board of Education that March 31st 24 has proclaimed transgender day of visibility in pter school district the Board of
004Education encourages students and staff to recognize honor and celebrate the dignity humanity and history of our transgender and non-b binary Community thank you very much Jess and I believe we have someone here to speak to us we sure do joining us this evening to speak about transgender day of visibility is our lgbtqia plus coordinator Shaina shiek and Shaina is also being joined by one of our incredible students arur lamin from Fossil Ridge High School welcome to both of you thank you again today as you are considering this resolution we cannot ignore the fact that we're in the midst of an ongoing National conversation about school policies and support for Trans students uh Following last month's tragic death of a non-binary Oklahoma Teen Next Benedict the information that is currently publicly available shows that NEX disclosed
005being bullied at school because of his gender identity for a year before being physically beaten in a school bathroom the day before he died by Suicide I bring nex's story up today to connect with each other around our Collective desire for all of our students to experience spaces of belonging where they feel safe at school as a district we know that our trans and non-binary students experience discrimination and barriers to their safety and their sense of belonging and we have outlined expectations for staff of ways that staff support our trans and nonbinary students here as a step towards instilling trust to our students and their families that they will in fact be safe in our schools while stories of pain violence and tragedy among the trans Community are increasingly visible so too should stories of
006love joy and Triumph This resolution highlights the importance of sharing trans stories for the betterment of everyone and speaking further to this is Arthur lampin who's pronouns are Heim who is a sophomore at Fossil Ridge High School so please welcome Arthur to the [Applause] podium hello my name is Arthur like Shaya said I am a sophomore at fossil rdge I'm part of fossil's GSA gender and sexuality Alliance I'm sorry I had this whole serious speech prepared but quick question can you see me you can fantastic that means it's working I'm kidding of course clearly transgender day of visibility isn't for another week and a half so I'm still invisible I know I know that's not how it works what we mean when we say visibility is awareness transgender day of visibility brings awareness to trans
007issues my coming out as transgender affected not just me but every person in my life in some way the first people I came out to were my parents I was told for years that they would support me no matter what and I always rolled my eyes but true to their word when I told them I was a boy they said huh okay but my coming out to them was still a huge adjustment they could still have conflicting emotions and difficult decisions to make they can still face hostility and harassment the same way I can transgender day day of visibility is for my parents too and for all supportive families biological or chosen of trans people I guess you could say before the day of visibility they were transparent the first people I came out to
008at school were my teachers I am lucky to have teachers who I knew would support me still it's a whole process for them too my band teacher has to figure out where I'm supposed to sleep when we go on trips out of state when I take the PSATs in about a month teachers have to juggle two different names my teachers are supportive but it can still be difficult to have a trans student logistically transgender day of visibility is for my teachers too and all of the other teachers out there trying their best to help guide trans kids through a system that isn't built for us at all I didn't necessarily have to come out to a lot of people at school once my teachers started using my name people caught on I had to explain
009it to one of my friends though he said how does that stuff like work I didn't have a good explanation for him so I just came up with something right there um so some boys are born in boy bodies I was born in a girl body he genders me correctly and hasn't asked me much since but it was terrifying to feel like the entire weight of his opinion of me and everything that came with that was up to one answer I had to give on the spot it shouldn't have been all on me to educate him perhaps teachers have some awareness towards how to treat trans students but there has been no education for for students for my peers about the the about trans people and ways they can support the community transgender day of
010visibility is for my friends and peers too like another friend who when I came out to them said can I tell you a secret me too some kids aren't fortunate enough to find that community at home or at school in shaina's introduction she talked about NEX Benedict a 16-year-old transgender student who was severely bullied by their PE years as a result of his school's anti-transgender policy the superintendent of the school district has downplayed the tragedy and called the outrage towards nex's death a woke mob politicians have responded to nex's death by referring to him and other lgbtq people as filth with the cause of death being recently announced as suicide and with the country gaining a greater understanding of the harms of unaccepting spaces it's even more important for puter School District to affirm its
011commitment to the well-being of its trans students when I read their story the first thing I thought was I am lucky that my story is about as radically different from nex's is possible the second thing I thought was what could nex's friends and family possibly be thinking right now they say it takes a village to raise a child well I'll tell you it takes a community to support a trans kid through transition transgender day of visibility is about that Community it's about education something that schools are created to do it may just seem like another ceremonial resolution on your docket but transgender issues go far beyond reading some statistics about bullying and thinking gee that's a shame trans kids and the people who support us deserve a day to be marked specifically for that education
012for ourselves and others and we deserve for that day to be meaningful for this resolution to inspire actual change in pter school district that will help trans kids feel more accepted and supported but at the very least we deserve to be visible we deserve to be seen thank [Applause] you would anybody like to make a comment Jess go ahead I do but I don't know what to say say I you said it so well I don't want to dampen it I simply just want to say thank you for sharing your story thank you for sharing this day with your community like everyone in your community right your parents your teachers the trans Community thank you for welcoming us all into being your Ally and thank you for being one of our students you're phenomenal anyone
013else yeah go ahead Brian Arthur I as your superintendent I just want to say that I find you incredibly inspiring and I'm grateful that your experiences uh in PSD have been what they are to be your most authentic self that's incredible and I'm hopeful that when I say that we see you I hopeful that you don't just see that in our words but also in our policies so thank you for representing not just yourself but our entire PSD Community you've made us very proud anybody else Arthur if I could um that was amazing absolutely amazing um I I want to say to your parents congratulations um it is as a fellow parent of a transgender child um it's not easy sometimes Arthur you're making it easy for them you are amazing and you are going
014to go far in life and I am just so proud to see you standing there as your true authentic self speaking from your heart and telling us that there is still work to be done and that means so much to me the reason that I actually became a board member was when my child went to school um they did not come out they did not feel safe they did not have the experience that you were having and it warms my heart to know that you are having a much better experience than my child did and I want you to know that we are not done we will finish the work thank you oh yes Kevin go ahead sorry you moved me um I did want to Echo and say one thing that really stirred me
015in some of your comments we speaking to the moment that we we find ourselves in nationally and um I know that my vote and support which will be one with pride is not just a meaningless vote for a piece of paper but it is to me it signals a repudiation from this school district to those that you are speaking of that this is who we are and this is the these are the morals that we stand for and so when I vote tonight it will be with PR and it will Echo that suit so thank you for for naming that okay Jill can you call the vote Jim brokish hi Kristen Draper hi Connor Duffy hi Kevin havalda hi Carolyn Reed hi Scott Shen Bower hi Jessica Zamora I motion passes 70 sh can we
016get a picture can we get a picture Chana is would Arthur would that be okay with you if you got a picture thank you e okay uh moving on to 4.0 is the superintendent report um superintendent Kingsley will not make remarks to the board of education and to the community good evening everybody I uh I'm was very moved by that moment uh so if you give me a quick second here I just uh the Arthur's charge to speak to the moment is something I can hopefully I can carry a torch on right now so uh as we you know kick back uh off our school year following a well-deserved and restful spring break I'm hopeful everyone across our community had an opportunity to connect with friends with loved ones and recharge uh and I'm also
017now that we are back in person and learning both not only how to close this year on a successful positive note but as we begin to plan for our future together I really want to call for all of us to continue to come together uh not as a new Behavior a continuation of us convening and collaborating and engaging but also trying to figure out ways while we grapple with hard things to find ways to experience joy to experience connection to capture those moments as Arthur shared um to ensure that we finish our spring semester strong uh since I last saw all of you I had an opportunity to be in many many places across the community and had a a lot of fun uh since I've been uh the superintendent have had also the pleasure
018and luxury of being joined by many members of the board on school visits and school activities and I want to thank director Duffy for joining me on a plethora of school visits and a School Musical at Rocky Mountain uh High School a week ago to see uh Foot Loose which was incredible um it was a Coming of Age story that just remined it was just incredible but it was it was incredible uh some of the schools I'd like to highlight uh had a chance to celebrate uh with Mr Duffy at Preston Middle School our knowledgeable winners at Preston Middle School they also our state Science Olympiad winners there's a lot of really cool things happening over at Preston middle school so having a chance to meet with many of those students and the teachers who
019support those activities not just in the evenings but over weekends to make that magic happen just incredibly grateful for those types of experiences that are happening across our district and to see that we have state champions who are going on to National competitions I think is nothing short of tremendous uh in my 25-year career and I I don't take this lightly I had one of my most enjoyable School visits at Linton Elementary School where I saw a second grade presentation of learning in their cafeteria where about gosh Mr Duffy had to be about it felt like 107 year olds we're all presenting what they just learned in our new curriculum around the role of pollinators and the experience of bees and wasps and all sorts of different different insects on the pollination process and to
020hear a seven-year-old speak with such depth of knowledge and be prepared on the spot to answer questions and as I had an opportunity uh knowing director Duffy is bilingual to see him immerse in speaking to many of those seven-year-olds in their home language and seeing the joy and the light uh in their eyes come open when they had an opportunity to present both in English and Spanish was nothing short of magical so thank you for providing that experience both to me uh and to the school experience I just really proud of the teachers uh at Linton who have really doubled down on the professional development as a team and are continuing to learn from their instructional coach and each other around how to figure out how to make those presentations with their students more vibrant
021the implementation there is a district model in my opinion and we should all be curious and try to find out what's happening at Linton there's a lot of great leadership and a lot of great teacher practices and student Buy in uh also had an opportunity just I'm not going to be able to mention all I was at trout Elementary school yesterday another proud School in our portfolio of schools and uh they're a core knowledge school as we all know and I think their balance around how they appreciate and respect the Artistry of their teachers while having a very well-defined series and of content and specific and explicit set of content knowledge that they're building with their students really is an incredible healthy balance that provides a level of synergy and positive energy with the staff
022but also with the the school community so it was super exciting to see that as well um and I meant to say this in in my opening and I and I want to and I apologize that I didn't say it out of the gate but for those uh who are observing Ramadan uh I'd like to say to all of you uh Ramadan Mubarak um and I'm hopeful that for all of those who observe um that you recognize that we as a system see you and I want to thank all of our staff and support members who are providing a level of sensitivity and accommodations to supporting uh our community who are observing Ramadan I want to say thank you for for doing that it is definitely the right thing and it's an inclusive practice that
023we are very very proud of you know I as I'm talking out loud to all of you I have a nervous energy because I'm still thinking about Arthur I I won't lie it's uh you know the two particular topics that we are going to listen to tonight are complex and Incredibly challenging and what I think makes this system great and I continue to learn about this system and be impressed by a lot more things than I thought of when I first got here and was excited to move here and be a part of this district is that we continue to be curious and we continue to be courageous and when you think about the topics of graduating with options and thinking about graduation requirements in the midst of also tackling longrange planning efforts that talk
024about changing attendance areas potentially in school consolidations to try to tackle those things on while also addressing literacy practices trauma informed pract the things the multitude of things that we are T tackling that are adaptive in nature that don't deserve or require Technical Solutions but adaptive Solutions is incredibly impressive last year and we sustained it this year we had the highest graduation rates in 16 years in this District but we're still willing to show up and be courageous around how we can make it better and not just for the 13% of our students who estimated about 200 students each year that do not get a chance to have the luxury of shaking their principal's hand and receiving a diploma this is not just about them this is about also looking at deeply the 87% of
025our students who are experiencing high levels of success and trying to figure out how to make that even more meaningful more purposeful more aligned to their personal interests and allowing them to have the agency around their decision- making to ensure that they can pursue whether it's higher uh postsecondary education opportunities going directly into the workforce that they have choice that when they do have the chance to shake their principal's hand they can say hey these are the two to three things that I'm considering postgraduation I'm really proud that today we have seven graduates that are graduating with their associates degree part of this process is not just to accelerate that because it's not appr appropriate we're not trying to become the next Community College in town but I would also say that we're leaving a
026lot of money on the table higher ed experiences are getting more expensive and as we try to figure out how to make our in experience that has tremendous Integrity today even more meaningful I think it's incredibly courageous I also think and to take it one step further when we talk about those 200 plus students each year on average that are not getting a chance to walk across the stage we're being courageous to find out the story why if you think about each of those students and think about our own personal lives we have invested roughly about $10,000 per student per year for 13 years now if any of us in this community invested $10,000 of our own money into some form of an investment I would say it's quite unlikely that any of us walk
027away after 13 years when we're so close to the finish line of seeing a return on that investment so I'm really proud of this school district I'm proud of us of grappling with this particular complex problem and I want to thank for everybody that's involved tonight is an opportunity to not just talk about policy but it's an opportunity to show that we're listening this is an iterative process where we started is not what you're going to hear about tonight because feedback matters it's informed this process and your feedback tonight will inform it even further to be what's most appropriate to take a step forward hopefully and and the spirit of our students to not just graduate but to graduate with options and I want to close by saying you know those of you who are
028representing our facility steering committee whether you are a spokesperson or a representative from CSU and the institute for built environment on behalf of this entire governance team thank you for stepping up to the plate and tackling a very complex hard challenge you more than anybody right now understand the complexity of the challenges there in front of you as a committee you more than anybody realize that there's no magic bullet or a technical solution that is going to help us navigate how to make this system more healthy not just from a financial standpoint but to ensure we don't compromise on our PSD achievement and our PSD promise to have a plethora of offerings that are holistic in nature and comprehensive in nature to to build the whole child and not just parts of what students might
029be interested in um members of the the community tonight you are are going to hear for the first time particular scenarios that are being uh announced to the public this is an iterative process as well I believe where we start and I'm not speaking on behalf of the committee they'll do a great job speaking on behalf of themselves but I'm sure where we start is not where we finish as a result of engaging with one another but it takes extraordinary leadership to offer your own time to tackle challenges that are bigger than your own school or bigger than your own department bigger than your own local neighborhood and that benefit this ENT entire system to be better and healthier and on behalf of all of us I just want to say thank you so members
030of the board thank you for allowing me to address the community this evening thank you very much superintendent Kingsley um next up we have a community comment um so welcome to the community comment section of the board meeting the board desires to hear the viewpoints of all stakeholders including students employees parents Guardians and community members public comment is designed to address issues not personalities or Personnel matters please keep your concerns and comments focused upon the district please note that the board does not generally respond to remarks made during Community comment our lack of response should not be construed to mean that we agree or disagree with what was said or with a description or interpretation of events as presented by any speaker further even if some remarks may be factually inacurate we generally choose not
031to respond or correct the record here because formal board meetings are not the time or place for back and forth dialogue as we begin this community comment session let us model for our entire Community how to listen and how to interact respectfully even with those with whom we dis agree for we all have the students best interests at heart so this opportunity for public comment is for members of the community who registered to speak by the designated deadline those people will be called on to make remarks in the order that they signed up each speaker will be allowed 3 minutes to address the board and first up we have Anna leetta welcome I hear the timer is not working so you guys get to hear me longer than three minutes I could use like an
032extra 10 seconds each time yeah I want to know that I'm getting my real three minutes okay I'm on okay all right good evening 18 months ago I started coming to PSD Community engagement opportunities to very intentionally voice my concerns on behalf of dyslexic students I came cautiously hopeful yet optimistic that the many new faces of PSD could bring about a much needed update to policies around dyslexia 18 months later I'm revolted by our District's unified resolve to remain willfully ignorant in regard to seeking to understand dyslexia as an indiv idual specific learning disability six weeks ago tonight I asked for an opportunity for families of students with dyslexia to share our stories with PSD leadership instead of giving us an opportunity to share PSD has chosen to try to quiet questions that have served
033to arise around dyslexia by hosting closed door meetings to convince stakeholders that everything is okay and there's nothing to worry about here as far as dyslexia goes this is appalling and sickening to me um the disinformation given at last month's seak meeting was closer in accuracy to Flat Earth theory than 21st scient 21st century scientific understanding of Dyslexia if you want to fact check that comment just read the Colorado Department of education's 2020 dyslexia handbook it's embarrassing how little our district knows about dyslexia this marks my ninth consecutive public comment this school year alone asking for dyslexia to be taken seriously and I feel like we've gone backwards the emotional Agony that the district's dyslexic students experience is real the district's fight against giving these kids access to evidence-based remediation that's effective for dyslexia is
034real the harm that comes from a dyslexic child not understanding why they struggle is real the need for dyslexic kids to understand that be understood by their teachers peers and family members is real and the inequity in our district when it comes to dyslexic kids not learning to read is real unlike our district I can't willingly sit in ignorance and in action I can't unsee what I've experienced personally as a parent of a child who had unidentified dyslexia in our district for years and I can't dismiss the stories that are happening presently in this District that mirror the experience of my own children in honor of supporting neurodiversity and PSD I'm going to switch gears and I'm going to shift the time and energy it takes to regularly find tune a three-minute public comment plea
035for help to actually helping the families in our district struggling with dyslexia to unify and have a collective voice in our district our District's kids can't wait any longer for you guys to come around to reality I do not believe I've wasted a minute of my time by coming to comment at the nine meetings I've come to this year because now I know without a doubt that you've had the opportunity to learn more about dyslexia and have Del deliberately chosen not to more so it's given me a clear window into the depth of dysfunction our dist our district Fosters around withholding meaningful academic supports from our most academically vulnerable kids so I'll still be up here but not every week so thank you next up we have Judy poen Fus did I get that right
036yeah I was say we can bring you a microphone yeah we're going to bring you a microphone wow this is totally totally different than it used to be oh all right um can you hold that for me thank you so much are we ready and I don't know where the timer is where's the timer uh so we've got the timer over here so Jill has the timer minutes and when you get down to one minut okay thank you all right thank you welcome thanks hi my name's Judy Judy pman Fus I'm from Fort Collins and the reason I'm here is because of the abuse that's happening to our children in schools schools are closing all over Colorado Jefferson County here as you're trying to consolidate why is that is it because of covid is it
037because of teachers not getting paid we don't have enough good teachers no it's because of the indoctrination that's happening to our kids in schools I consider them government Schools they're not they're not Public Schools anymore I just read just as we are sitting here that we are at 36% in fourth grade and 28% in 2022 math literacy in the state of Colorado reading is at 38% what's going on in school my daughter graduated from pter high school I am come from a school a family of teachers my dad was a teacher four of my six sisters were teachers one of my teachers got teacher of the year although that's not what it's called here in pter school district because she was an excellent teacher it's not because of the teachers when my daughter was a
038senior in high school she that was the first time I was called to the principal's office cuz she was a good kid but when she got into the the public school system and became a junior and high school student it was literally as if an alien had taken my child we were call I was called to the principal office my husband and I with her the the principal told us very clearly she broke this rule these are the four things that she must do in order to graduate if she does not do these four things she's going to be retr graduated she was at in the IB program she had enough credits as a as a actually as a junior and she went through all of that she never attended one class her last semester
039in high school she followed the rules that were the rules at our house but she broke every she did not do one thing that she was told that she had to do and she graduated she walked she was supposed to be retagged that did not happen I'm seeing a slipper slope of what's going on there's pornography in our school we identified that in 2022 sent you every single school that had every single pornographic book in it when the state legislature made the age of consent in Colorado in 20192 and for those of you who are parents maybe you don't know that because parents whether they're Democrats or Republicans are finding that out right now the age of 12 is the age of consent for psychological and medical health we're really on a slippery slope and
040I wish that you would consider I I've been praying for Open Hearts and open minds thank you for listening to me today thank you and next up we have Steve penus these are my grandkids right away hello my name is name Steve henus a grandfather uh I have uh am a member of task force Freedom we have identified several books in multiple libraries in this uh School District that we feel have uh no literal literary value which that's what we've been told do you think they have literary value that our literal pornography by our constitutional uh definition we're not interested in Banning the books we just would like you to identify these books and set them aside in an area where they can't be checked out by just any child without parental approval I just
041can't see standing by and contributing to the immorality of any child it's just something I don't want to have happen in my watch I read one of the books and the section that in particularly bothered me was where a father rapes his 11-year-old daughter this is incest this is just you read it and there are no pictures not even animated ones which lot many of these books have you have to find have a picture in your mind of how this story goes and I don't even like having that picture in my mind just uh we'd like you to consider that and uh many of the websites I was on these books were for 18y olds and older and not for minors but that's the way you do it here so I just like more consideration
042for not making our kids have the wrong values and the wrong mind morals and standards thank you thank you next up we have Scott horic welcome yeah should be two of somewhere over there the timer is now working so it'll display right here what's that it said the timer is now working so your time will display right here okay very good hello thanks for letting me speak um I'd like to say that um Sunday March 31st is Easter so um I just wanted to let you know that uh be aware of that fact that uh this resolution was passed on Easter um and I'd also let you know like to let you know that uh the definition of pornography is very convoluted but as they said um you'll know it when you hear it and
043when you see it um these books that are being distributed in the school system page 16 63 on The Bluest Eye of the father that raped his 11-year-old daughter the tenderness welled up in him and he sank to his knees his eyes on the foot of his daughter crawling on all fours toward her he raised his hand and caught his foot in an upward stroke P Cola lost her balance and was about to Kine on the floor choli raised her hand in her hips to save her from falling he put his head down and nibbled at the back of her leg his mouth trembled at the firm sweetness of the flesh he closed his eyes letting his fingers dig into her waist rigidness of her body of her shocked body The Silence of her stunned
044throat was better than Pauline's easy laughter had been the confused mixture of his memories with Pauline and doing the and the doing of a wild and forbidden thing excited him and a bolt of Desire ran down his generals giving it length and softening the lips of his Ang surrounding all of this lust was a border of his politeness he wanted to fornicate under consent of the king her tenderly but the tenderness would not hold the tightness of her vagina was more than he could bear his soul seemed to slip down into his guts and fly out into her and a gigantic thrust he made her made it into her and then provoked her the only sound she made a hollow suck of air in the back of her throat like the rapid loss of air
045from a circus balloon following this disintegration the falling away of sexual desire he was conscious of her wet soapy hands on his wrist the fingers clinching but whether the grip was from a hopelessness but Str struggle to be free or for some some other emotion he could not tell removing himself from him was so painful that he cut it short and snatched his gals out of the Dry Harbor of her vagina she appeared to have fainted charie stood up and could see only her grayish pantties so sad and Limp around her angles again the hatred mixed with tenderness the hatred would not let him pick her up this the tenderness forced him to cover her so when the child regained Consciousness she was lying on the kitchen floor under the heavy guilt trying to connect
046the pain between her legs with the face of her mother looming over her now it's up to you to decide if this is pornography thank you next we have Jeff after Heidi welcome my name is Jeff after Heidi and I'm from Wellington Colorado tonight I want to begin with a quote from a book entitled Within Reach Leadership Lessons in school reform from Charlotte meinberg Schools with a forward by Peter Gorman Peter Gorman is a former superintendent and a Brian kingsley's former boss Under The Heading improving transparency page 32 it reads quote the superintendent's calendar was posted online so everyone knew who he was meeting with and listened to Gorman expressed surprise at the number of people who paid attention to his calendar unquote given the context of this let's consider August 7th 2023 the state
047is significant because according to kingsley's calendar he had a phone call with Peter Gorman at 3:30 p.m. just 30 minutes before an off-site meeting with the Board of Education leadership although this seems unremarkable earlier that day the board president Robert Peterson and DJ Anderson had a legislative discussion the next day on August 8th puter School District held a legislative meeting to draft resolutions for the content accessibility criteria for Hing hiring staff in the wake of the Tyler zanella Scandal and amendments to the Colorado open records act or Kora during this meeting Peterson mentioned that discussions with legislators expressed interest in amending Kora to curb quote fishing Expeditions unquote Christian Draper also emphasized the same the committee also limited public uh discussed limiting public records requests extending response times and imposing Financial barriers indicating a potential
048shift towards reduced public oversight ironically I had to submit a core request to uncover this information these resolutions were submitted to the lobbyist organization called the Colorado Association of school boards of casby PSD pays them $25,000 annually for their membership and they use this organization to lobby and possibly even draft bills seeking Clarity on this relationship I submitted a core request and shockingly the district was unable to produce any contract or agreement with casby this lack of a former contract is deeply concerning especially given the recent legislative efforts to amend Kora what am I speaking of shortly after representative and former PSD board member Kathy Kip introduced House Bill 1296 which SE seeks to amend the Colorado open records act to address fishing Expeditions my objections to this bill are deeply rooted in the conviction
049that this legislation emerges from the concerted effort by Kip PSD casby and the lobby firm Mendes barcasson Associates this collaborative effort financed by taxpayer dollars cast a long shadow on the principles of public governance and the ethical use of public funds to influence transparency laws in conclusion the district's engagement with casby and your likely involvement with legislative actions under consideration suggest a deliberate strategy to use public funds to obscure decision-making processes from those that you were elected to govern this not only undermines transparency but it also erodes public trust and accountability we must demand that putter School District's actions of financial engagements especially concerning public governance laws be transparent and open to public scrutiny to uphold the democratic values of our community thank you thank you and next we have Janet Wright welcome thank you
050all for uh the time to speak and I want to use my time to extend my heartfelt gratitude to the board and all of the PSD staff for being welcoming supportive respectful and inclusive as noted my name is Janet my pronouns are she her hers I am the proud parent of five children two are grown and three are still in the nest and are PSD students one middle school and two high school I am also on the board of directors of P flag Fort Collins I am the parent of a trans daughter we moved to Fort Collins with our three youngest and 21 we'd love to state where had we stayed my daughter would not have been able to live her true self and she would not have been able to receive the necessary Medical
051Care here in PSD she has thrived as have her two siblings PSD has been supportive in our journey more than supportive they Foster a sense of community Through respect and by acknowledging each individual's worth I know of parents in nearby districts who have had to send their children to a school that that refuses to honor their preferred name and pronouns and I know of parents who fear their child is the next hate crime Target and who panic when a text isn't immediately answered that is their day today and sadly there are many more just like them the simple Act of using affirming language creates a safe and nurturing environment where everyone can Thrive this atmosphere of acceptance spreads far beyond the classrooms it creates ripples in our district our neighborhoods and even in our families
052it saves lives so to the teachers there some over there and staff and PSD thank you to the board thank you thank you for all you do thank you thank excuse me thank you um next up we have Sabrina Herrick I've heard some rather interesting takes on PSD since the last board meeting and I'm going to share them here since the YouTube feed doesn't get edited for positivity like the listening session comments do quote one I briefly worked with IEP kids at PSD they were awful to the kids I complained and got told deal with it or quit I quit quote two i' love to go speak to city council with you but Melanie Pandi is on Council and is facilitating my child's IEP assessment retaliation exists quote three maybe it's better to not have
053an IEP in this censored stain of a censored School District it's cheaper to buy the services myself than fight PSD to get my kids rights acknowledged meanwhile the media is calling you out for wasting time on a building consolidation plan that the paa says you're building off of incorrect statistics and an article titled Colorado legislature three-prong attack on the First Amendment claims that you guys wrote Cathy Kip's Kora bill as a retaliatory measure for people doing core requests and then posting your dirty laundry online guys reiring grass D wasn't the only thing that needed to happen to get integrated Services fixed the rot runs a lot deeper than that the rot is coming from a culture that staff can do no wrong and dissenting parents are the problem that rot is killing this District on
054Sunday Kathy Kip had a listening session the consensus among attendees parents and otherwise was that our tore refunds would be a small price to pay for our kids to be safe and properly educated we want our kids to succeed and for that we need you to succeed listen to your community we don't expect you to have all the answers we just expect you to accept new information when you get it I also want to take a moment to clear something up because Kathy Kip was certainly confused about it when she stormed out of her listening session while accusing me of abusing her Kathy Kip started her political career as part of this board and is now a member of the State House who publicly loses her crap two weeks after the fact because I called
055this board a political puppy mill who failed to teach her how to disagree with people that Rod I mentioned it's in this board as well and it's spreading to city council and the state legislature every time one of you goes there start the rock clearing process with your VES and give some of that nervous energy to the disabled kids you failed they deserve it just as much as Arthur does thank you and next up I have Anna sorry Anna Venda did I get that right no okay I'm sorry it's okay it's VY Von Indy yeah there we go thank you good evening do any of these items apply to you slow reader have to read a page two or three times to understand it not the best speller difficulty putting thoughts onto paper dreads writing
056emails letters has difficulty with right verse left remembering which way you pulled into a gas station sometimes confuses b or d unable to master a foreign language poor or mediocre grades despite High effort messy personal space slow non-automatic handwriting that is difficult to read when speaking difficulty finding the correct word if any of this resonated with you personally you likely have dyslexia these are some of the signs and symptoms of Dyslexia that are commonly found in adults and this was not an exhaustive list I run a small business teaching reading and spelling to kids of all ages who are struggling I train tutors and teach students myself after school although we can identify that 100% of our students have dyslexia this is not something they come to us knowing and although I was an elementary
057teacher for 10 years trained at one of the top schools of Education in in our nation I knew nothing of Dyslexia until recently like many of the families that approached me I did not understand why some students struggled to read and spell had IEPs While others picked it up naturally like many other Educators I chocked it up to development and thought wait and see give it time and I thought this would lead to literacy now I know this could not be further from the truth dyslexia is neurobiological it is a language disorder at the phonological level to put it in planer terms if a person of average to above average intelligence is struggling to learn to read in or spell there is no other word for it than dyslexia dyslexia affects one in five people
058so that's if one section of this table um of the room were dyslexic and no family is Untouched by dyslexia myth if you come from a home where reading and education is valued you will naturally and easily learn to read truth dyslexia is an unexpected frustrating and persisting problem in learning to read myth if you're sufficiently motivated to read it will come easily to you truth there are underlying neurobiological mechanisms for dyslexia and reading one cannot circumvent dyslexia with effort and repeated practice dyslexic readers require a different approach and Method than what our current education system is offering most schools don't assess for dyslexia less than half of students are proficient in fourth grade reading 1th Hispanic and Native American students are proficient in fourth grade reading the 2019 survey showed that 34% of fourth
059graders had not achieved the most basic reading skills in some groups like African-Americans more than half of fourth graders had not achieved those levels dyslexia affects 20% of people but schools identify less than 4% the families that come to me say the same thing my son's teacher said he'll grow out of it or I've spoken to everyone at the school about my daughter no one sees the red flags or I asked my kids teacher if he thought this might be dyslexia he said no an I'm going to have to ask you to wrap it up thank you okay go ahead in the past two years I've grown my business by 300% and receive more calls every week America Trails eight other countries in reading scores and is not different from 11 other countries our education
060system is failing our dyslexic population I'm asking PSD to put me out of a job through identification and intervention for dyslexia change is coming rather than being caught off guard by it let's read lead the way thank you I appreciate it all right thank you to all our community commenters we are um going to move on to uh 6.0 board topics and committee reports uh this agenda item is an opportunity for board members to provide an update on Community Committee work or to speak to board topics do any board members have anything to report you no all right um I just wanted to to share that um Jess and I were able to go to um that was Linton as well actually on Friday together to do um a read Across America day and that
061was just so much fun to be able to sit and read um with the first graders and kindergarteners that came in but the best part of it was actually the fifth graders who were doing the reading to those kids um as well and they just really took ownership of that and um it was really something to see so that was a great time anybody else all right we will then move on to the consent agenda would any board members like to pull anything from consent seeing none uh can I get a motion sure Connor uh I move that the board approve the resolution in support of trans oops wrong one excuse me I move that the board approve and adopt the recommended actions um for the items on the consent agenda can I get a
062second all right Jess thank you all right uh Jill can you call the vote please Jim brokish hi Kristen Draper hi Connor Duffy hi Kevin havalda hi Carolyn Reed I Scott shanower I Jessica Zamora I motion pass is 70 thank you and now we'll move on to 8.1 executive limitation policy 2.8 can I get a motion Kevin thank you I move that the board determined that the superintendent has reasonably interpreted Board of Education policy El 2.8 is internal monitoring report dated March 19 2024 and the evidence presented supports the superintendent's conclusions stated in the internal monitoring report can I get a second uh Connor thank you uh are there any questions or comments on this okay seeing none um Jill can you please call the vote Jim brokish hi Kristen Draper hi Connor Duffy hi
063Kevin havalda hi Carolyn Reed hi Scott Shen Bower hi Jessica Zamora hi motion passes 70 excellent thank you um so now we will go on to um 9.0 informational reports and discussion items uh first up 9.1 is the facilities planning steering committee update um Brian I believe you had a brief some and I have something as well so yeah sure I think this evening we're going to look forward to hearing an update from the facilities planning steering committee leading the presentation is Josie plot from the CSU Institute for the built environment I want to welcome Josie I believe she's joined by uh Jesse moral Micah neelsen Amy hoseth and Rebecca Everett I want to say welcome and thank you again for your Collective efforts thank you so much and I just wanted to do um
064an introduction and uh thank you as well um one of the things that I I want to start off with was um going back to the why why are we here why are we doing this um you know we are seeing declining enrollment we are seeing uh fewer dollars as a result of that um we have been working with legislators um to try and get more money but um it it is pi and it is finite and even the legislators as of last night were instructed to cut $150 million from their budget so this is not something that we are um you know able to walk in and say hey if he just gave us more money would solve the problem and they go oh why didn't you ask and we can give it to
065you so this is an actual you know a struggle that that PSD has been facing for quite some time and so we as a board um went and ta we tasked um bu school district and therefore um superintendent Kingsley to come up with some solution um to this and figure out how we can best go ahead and save money that is needed and have it be best for students so that's what we we have tasked um the the superintendent and and cabinet and PSD as a whole to do and which you I great gratefully um have stepped up to help in the work and I appreciate that so much um this work this is hard this is probably some of the hardest work that we have ever had to do here at PSD I'm venturing
066to guess it's probably some of the hardest work you've all have ever had to do um and so I want to thank those of you who are sitting on the committee who have been here for um five meetings now and when we say meetings we don't mean two-hour meetings we mean all day meetings going into the evening meetings um I want to thank those who even just applied um and said you know I am willing to put myself into this position and you weren't selected I appreciate the fact that you were willing to step into the arena um and that is something that uh I want to acknowledge um this what we're doing here what you're doing here is for the greater good it is for PSD as a whole and for our students and
067um I know you know that but I want you to know that we see that as a board we see that as a district and we see that as a collective here and we want to make sure that the community sees that as well um that said we all know that we're this is an emotional topic right we are going to find some something owie in all of this and I you know I I want to encourage people to say ouch when there's a there's something there that needs to be said and we can do that in a kind way we can do that with Humanity at the center we can do that by acknowledging that we are all people first we are all going to have these emotions that you know oh they named
068my school they didn't name my school this is going to happen this isn't going to happen um and that's okay we can all accept that that we're going to have those emotions and we can be kind about that um and so I just want to um commit to you all as a board um as a cabinet and a and to the community um that we are here we are here to seek to understand we are here we're going to give Grace um and we are going to be kind to one another and we hope that the community um and uh everybody will will join us in that um so this is the first of three present ations um that you'll be um giving to us um we encourage the community to give feedback um you're
069going to start tomorrow night um with some feedback sessions or tomorrow morning right tomorrow morning my mistake um for some feedback sessions please if you haven't already plan to go go ahead to at least one of the three um feedbacks uh uh sorry one of the five feedbacks five five feedback sessions I think or six now it's six right okay I'm yep um seven is it seven okay we keep adding one it's great um so go to one of those sessions come to one of the board listening sessions um and you know we have two board listening sessions uh one on April 16th one on June 4th um and you know just to let you know that the board for for tonight we are going to listen we are going to um you know try
070and figure out um in our minds what what you are presenting trying to synthesize that trying to do that um and then hopefully with some input from tomorrow morning sessions and the sixth thereafter some input from us um some discussion that you will see in public um that the board will make a final decision come June um but I just want you all to know that we are listening we understand the difficulty um of the problem that we have presented to you and we want to thank you so much for stepping up to try and uh solve that problem uh to create V iant schools and to fit PSD values in here um to the best of our abilities so thank you so much thank you for that opening director Draper I really appreciate it
071um as we get started I'd like to introduce myself uh to the board as well as to the community and the members of the listening public that are joining us this evening I'm Josie plout I am a Fort Collins native Irish Lincoln pter uh my daughter went through this the pter school system as well uh done Lincoln pter p c no GA the online one and then um and she was not one of the students who shook the superintendent's hand um but she's lovely and she's doing great and she's uh living her life in her way so um but just so you know that I am part of this community I'm deeply committed to this community and I've worked at CSU Institute for the built environment for the past 20 years helping to support this
072school district our city uh government our County uh and many private entities and Beyond in bringing research to practice helping groups of people work through both exciting work together and sometimes really challenging work working on issues like permanent Supportive Housing and working on transportation and housing and affordability and new development so not uh not shy about difficult and challenging and in and uh topics that bring people together with diverse perspectives so I'm honored to be working with my community in this way and like you I appreciate the time and effort that has gone into this the care and the support that we've received from the um from staff and from the community members who've been present and we hope to share with you tonight a little bit about the work that we've done so far
073um so with that um I think I will jump into the presentation all right we're going to move through tonight um a little bit of framing I want to share with the board and with the community uh a brief overview of the context that was that the steering committee has been working with um and then Rebecca is going to share with us tonight uh a bit of an overview about the committee um and The Guiding principles that were provided by the board to work with within that committee and then we'll talk a little bit uh Jesse will talk about the scenario development process so how we've gotten to the scenarios that we're going to be presenting this evening we will be presenting three scenarios this evening I want to say this coming into the conversation
074and we'll say it multiple times throughout these scenarios are meant as a point to begin a conversation they are not the likely scenarios that we will be presenting to you in May when we come forward with recommendations they are here for the purpose of opening conversation and sharing some diverse ways or some different ways of looking at what potential scenarios might look like so I want that to be um sort of clearly understood uh I don't think that anyone on the committee feels like we've arrived um and that we're presenting scenarios to the community that uh now we're just going to try to look for some kind of path through we're authentically looking for the community uh including all of our parents teachers staff and community at large to to give input on on these
075ideas and help us craft the best possible solutions um one thing that's also worth saying is that this is the definition of a wicked problem I like to work on problems that have beautiful win-win Solutions and where we can find creativity to find our way through um this seems like a wicked problem where there's probably not a single solution set that causes no um discomfort for anyone in our community so I just want to acknowledge that um I also wanted to say that tonight's meeting is being recorded it will be um sort of edited and um made more uh sort of palatable if you will it won't be so long um and that will be made available to the community so that people can watch that before taking the community questionnaire that we've been um
076that we've developed and we'll be sharing with you there's also um during the listening sessions those will not be recorded and they will not be live streamed so we just wanted to be clear that the one recording of this presentation will happen this evening and that all content that will be presented at the listening sessions will be the same content that's presented tonight it will be a condensed version so it won't have quite as much detail at the listening sessions but all listening sessions will be the same all of the um and it will be basically the same content that we're presenting this evening so we thought it was important to clarify that for um for the community okay so framing the conversation um you know director Draper as you mentioned this is difficult work
077um it's also important work for our community we need to be able to move through difficult decisions and continue to maintain the Financial Health of our schools and our school district so that we can provide the highest possible education opportunities for our children um for their education and for our community and we understand that everyone who is investing time in being here tonight in listening to this conversation in coming to the listening sessions that if we don't share anything else we do share a love and care for our children and their education and that is a really important common ground to to begin from and uh to be kind to one another in the conversation knowing that it is difficult so thank you for framing that uh as has been mentioned many times um the
078reason for consolidating schools is really TW fold there is declining enrollment happening at PSD and across um our state and our nation that's um showing up here in 2,200 seniors this year and only 1,600 kindergarteners so we can see um we can see evidence of declining enrollment through our uh our class sizes um the most recent count is that there 256 students Less in pter school district this year than there were last year and there's an anticipated 9 and a qu% decline over the coming um few years so it's it's not a long period of time there's also an important Geographic shift so where students live within the district has um is changing we're seeing growth in the Timnath and Wellington areas in particular and we see declining enrollment on the west side of Fort
079Collins uh again I know some of this is review but I just want to make sure that we're all starting with the same framing uh empty seats in the district are largely due to this trend where people are having fewer children and the graph here is showing the decline in birth rates over the last several decades um people in this country and many other countries simply aren't having as many children so even with immigration we're seeing overall fewer schoolage children in our um in our schools so I think one of the big questions within the community is that um we feel the growth and I have um worked with Rebecca previously in her work at the city of Fort Collins and now at lmer County um in planning and developing M and we know the
080community is growing um it's obvious we all feel it when I was born here um I think the population was less than half of what it is today um and it's not it's happening now with older folks so people are moving here and they're not coming with families and school AED children so yes the population is growing but it really matters what what age demographic those children or excuse me those uh residents are um second it's not happening equally across the district so we're experiencing high growth um in the Wellington and Timnath areas where you see in Orange um that's largely uh to the east of the interstate and north where we don't have a lot of infrastructure or many schools and then we're seeing declining enrollment on my side of town um but I'm
081not taking it personally so we we're seeing declining enrollment on the the west side of town um where there are older more established neighborhoods um we don't see as much new construction happening in those areas there are some small info projects a lot happening around CSU but again those are school-aged folks not uh families with children so um there are some challenges with moving boundaries to adjust the changing demographics of where School aged kids are living we can't just bring everybody from Timnath over to this side of town um that ends up being practical and I think many families expect that they're going to be able to go to school close to where they live um so just wanted to emphasize that we've been you know looking at and trying to understand the realities of
082what it means to try to balance enrollment across uh a a geography where people are living is uh changing so um School budgets and again I know this is kind of Basics but I want to make sure that the entire Community is starting from the same same Baseline information or at least knows what Baseline information the steering committee has been work working from so School budgets are primarily based on the number of children who are enrolled at each school um and when you're running a school that is less than half enrolled it becomes difficult financially and ultimately it's unsustainable to run partially full schools and the more and more schools that we're running that are at that partial capacity uh it makes the budgeting process simply unsustainable so as enrollment number numbers go down at
083schools the cost to operate those schools does not go down in step with the amount um that that the funding goes down so um that's the source of the issue uh I think it's also important to ask the question of what happens if we don't take action so without the financial efficiencies involved with consolidating schools so that we have fewer Fuller schools what happens is that the school district will still need to make the same budgetary Cuts because as you said there not more money to go around um even though the district has been looking for other sources and securing other sources of funding they're not reliable sources of funding and so the changes in Staffing will need to be made either way and they will likely be more severe if action isn't taken around
084school consolidations so that means that we're starting to um really dig into having schools with all the specials with all the um support staff that they might like to have and that I think our families expect to have benefits um Fuller schools are better able to provide staff and resources to support positive outcomes for students optimizing enrollment helps ensure the financial district of the school of the district overall so there's the health of individual schools as well as the health of the district as a whole working body and school consolidations open space for Early Childhood Learning Centers which is something that is uh we have a need for in our community uh as well as improved facilities for integrative service programs and other beneficial uses so these buildings can be used beneficially to accommodate and
085absorb needs that we have within our community already especially around early childhood education um and serving our integrated Services families and students better what else is the uh is PSD doing to save money um you know school and Central budgets are already being reduced and that has an impact on the number of Staff across PSD and reductions there which we all know is uh undesirable and and a painful process um but it's something that's already a reality within the district um and the district has also on the positive side puru pursued grant funding um in the total of millions of dollars it's been a meaningful addition but those are not reliable dollars that we can count on to operate the schools on a day in and day out basis um for those who are interested
086in learning more about psd's budgeting process enrollment numbers all of this uh the finance and budget section of the website as well as the longrange planning website all have deeper dives into information so with that I'm going to turn it over to uh Rebecca to talk a little bit about the committee charge great thank you Jesse hi everyone my name is Rebecca Everett I am a proud parent of a putam panther and a 20-year resident of Fort Collins um and I I really appreciate the opportunity to serve on the committee alongside um some really amazing amazing committee members um it as as has been alluded to it is hard work and it is Meaningful and it um is something that we all care deeply about um the committee uh is really charged with supporting you
087all in your decision-making um our job is to identify scenarios recommendations um that relate to school possible School consolidation boundary adjustments um as well as placement of educational programming um that may result from some of those changes um we were instructed to start with a clean slate um as compared to what may have been presented last fall and that clean slate has has then been built upon using data Equity considerations soon we will have Community feedback to add to the mix as well as our own um understanding of the system the and uh the the issues that we see in different parts of the district um the committee is charged primarily with focusing on short-term challenges and solutions not necessarily um solutions that may um benefit the district longer term and we recognize the immediacy
088of the need um to identify Solutions that can be implemented for the 2025 school year um fundamentally we understand our role to be to provide deep thinking and Analysis and support um for for sound decision making and we take that seriously the committee consists of 37 members about half or um approaching half our District staff uh be they teachers administrator classified staff um or District level staff as well as 14 parent representatives and two community members at large there's representation from every feeder um system as well as parents at the elementary middle and high school level um and representing our alternative schools as well uh there was an application process to be selected and I can um speak from my experience spending um over 24 hours with the the members MERS of this committee so
089far with a lot more still to come um that this is a group that is really thoughtful really dedicated to uh the success of the district as a whole and really good at um seeing and recognizing our own um biases our own fears and concerns um acknowledging when feelings are coming up because it is really hard to see your your school's name listed um or called out um I really have so much appreciation for everyone who has committed this time to serve and uh know that there's still more to come briefly mentioning the roles um that that various groups are playing I want to start um with a mention of the the staff that are supporting the committee's work and uh just express my gratitude um for Lauren and Dave and the other staff who
090have spent time with us um helping to educate us um build our understanding of programming of the different Services the district provides of the integrated nature of um how schools relate to one another and doing a lot of work in between meetings um alongside um Josie and her team at ibe to make sure that we have good information and we are set up for success as well um the role of Staff really is to support the committee um an give us the data that we ask for which they've been um very very generous with um helping to share perspectives but not directing our work um they are there as resources um and not um influencing the committee uh the board as you all know are the the ultimate decision maker on any changes to um
091the boundaries to um school consolidations and will'll listen um we hope to the recommendations of the committee as well as to what you hear from the community in response um to the scenarios that are presented finally uh there are four committee Liaisons so Jesse myself Amy hoseth and Mike neelsen um were um nominated by peers within the committee to speak on behalf of of the committee um though any of the committee members I'm sure could represent represent the work well at this point there is a website for community members who are interested in learning more about the work having access to a lot of the data that we are using and our our work sessions um and the the QR code and the website are up there for anyone who'd like to learn more all
092right next I'm going to remind you all of some The Guiding principles that you have established for this committee and to to communicate out to those who may be watching and I won't I won't read all of the guiding principles but they are available online this is the abbreviated version here that really has been our our guide post as the committee has been um entering these conversations so these guiding principles were established back in January um to communicate direction to the committee um before we we organized and in summary uh The Guiding the goals of this committee are to optimize enrollment across schools including through consolidations continuing access to and continuity for educational programming um that's choice is very desirable within our district consider the cost of operating facilities Capital needs um and and the
093how those costs extend into the future as well as easing enrollment pressures on the east side of town where we're experiencing a lot of the growth that Josie has mentioned we have also been working to embed equity in our process as a committee and in the recommendations that that we eventually make um including the scenarios that we're presenting tonight and that's reflected both in psd's commitment to equity as well as some Equity guidelines that the committee ourselves have generated and worked on together um the the committee's equity guidelines were developed through researching um other communities and how they have approached School consolidations bringing uh the expertise from committee members who do a lot of work um related to Equitable processes and outcomes and I'll I I will read these because I think that they're important
094just to mention so um our Equity guidelines for the committee's work are ensuring Equitable access to engagement and the the committee has shaped how the listening sessions um are organized at um recommendations for additional listening sessions and the types of listening sessions that might be helpful um Equity impact analysis will be important as we start to evaluate scenarios uh it's important that consolidations are not based on school performance because we know that performance does not always reflect quality um making demographics explicit has that's been a major focus of the conversations of the committee uh as well as minimizing disruption to atrisk students um and and at risk can be defined in many different ways protecting and continuing English language development education and protecting and continuing to provide free and appropriate public education as important charges
095of the district so we hope that um you all and the community will see some of these principles reflected if not you know in the initial scenarios as we as we work to um come together around some final scenarios for recommendation all right so now I'm going to um hand this over to to Jesse moral who will present more information on how we develop the scenarios tonight all right thank you so my name is Jesse moral I'm the currently the principal at Timnath middle high school and I'm also a product of PSD so I went to Boltz Middle School in Fort Collins High School and I have three daughters one who just graduated um from our district and two more in middle and high school so um obviously like everybody on the committee and everybody
096here in the room care a lot about uh the future of our district and and the direction that we're going so um we're going to talk about the um the scenarios now which um one thing just we really want to reiterate and you'll there's going to be another slide on this to fully reiterate it but this is these are draft scenarios so they are not in final form um as Josie talked about earlier and this step in the process is really important in terms of gathering that Community input and so that's going to be really really valuable and really helpful as we go through the listening sessions um and get the online feedback through the form um and that will help guide um future iterations of the scenarios before as we as we move closer
097to the to the May deadline um they were developed Again by the steering committee um with support from flow analytics um our District staff and ibe um but the committee really doing the work of coming up with the ideas um the committee felt it was very important to present multiple options and especially in this this part of the process um to not not like have just a scenario and then just a little tweak for a second scenario but really give um some different options to look at um so that um we could really explore some different um Creative Solutions to um to kind of what we're what we're trying to um hit with our goals so so you're going to see that as we as we look at the actual scenarios that are built out
098tonight um and again the the the community will continue to help us inform where we go um moving forward um the exploration process um involved one tiny thing yeah so on the back slide there's one sentence on the bottom that I want to make sure it gets read can you go back one yes okay the the caveat there the fine print is not all schools that are currently in scenarios will be affected and some schools that are not currently shown on the scenarios may be suggested in future scenarios so um just to understand what you're going to see is not a definitive list of who's on the table and who isn't the the committee really chose to present a variety um without narrowing it to too to you know few schools too quickly but uh
099I think it's just really important that the board and everyone in the community understand that just because you see a name tonight it doesn't necessarily correlate to seeing a name in May when we come back together great thank you no thank you thank you for adding that all right so as far as the um the exploration process um again the committee um we kind of started with a lot of what ifs um coming up with some different like what if we did this what if we tried this um and sending a lot of um different ideas to flow to um send back data on here's what would happen if you made this move or tried this scenario or this option uh there were I I I think approaching 50 or so ideas that kind of
100have been put in into the room and some of the ideas as we've gone through have simply just not worked when you've when we run the data um it makes a school way too full or a school way too small or does something where it's just too far um in terms of where we're um trying to bust students from um from their homes to a school um some ideas certainly worked better than others and some of the things we're going to share tonight at least um seem to work mathematically um in terms of um student being able to fit in schools and might and helps us with the efficiency issues that we're trying to address um and as we got into it again has has been talked about this is really really complicated work um
101and there's so much more to it than the math um there's so much more um to consider um as we're trying to come up with scenarios that feel healthy feel like good moves for our district and to help um help keep our district strong some of these variables that have been reviewed um I'm not going to read all of these bullet points but you can get a sense for um the different types of data that our our committee has been reviewing um and and most of these um if not all of this data is available on the district website and so in forms of graphs and charts and um and spreadsheets where you can find this information online um anywhere from you know considering the buildings themselves how big they are how many students they
102can they can accommodate um how new they are do they have air conditioning or not um you know what what does the um the mckinstry report tell us about future needs for those buildings um to current enrollment data future enrollment projections um weight lists that are that are at currently at schools um transfer in transfer out rates um we've really looked at a lot of different factors as we've as we've considered um options um that that might be um effective okay now um we talked Josie talked a little bit about um school budget and really the one of the target areas that we're focused on with um this this work is the size Factor adjustments and so um you know this graph is just showing the elementary schools across our district and where they're at
103in terms of enrollment and you can see that as elementary schools get under 400 students um the student-based budgeting model starts to break down and that's where um we just going based off student-based budgeting you're not able to run a school that includes all of your specials your PE your art your music um that has all of the staff that you need to just run a school um whether you're a big school or a small school there's a certain number of staff that are needed to just make a school operate um and so as you get below 400 at an elementary school or 700 at a secondary school um that's where the student based budgeting model starts to break down so that is a key um piece that we're trying to address um right now
104um PSD supplements schools um to the tune of about 6.6 million per year um because of schools being smaller than those benchmarks so then they need extra funding to be able to run and maintain the robust programming that we currently have um and again if we get more efficient in terms of our our building capacity um and enrollments um then we can start to um bring that number down and that will help us be more efficient financially as a as a district some other key terms here is we talk about capacity and building utilization um there's a couple different formulas that are that we're being that are being looked at one is called the room index capacity and that is simply the number of teaching spaces that exist in a building um times the number
105of students that you can fit in each of those teaching spaces so um for elementary schools that number is 25 students per teaching space for middle and high schools secondary schools it's 30 per teaching space and so that's if you're using all your teaching spaces and filling them with students all day long at that rate that's kind of like your maximum possible capacity we don't generally really run schools at the room index capacity because teaching spaces are used for different purposes um and so we talk about um the number that we're really utilizing is called the National Standard capacity and this applies a percentage to the room index capacity that um really reflects more how schools are really utilized um and and gives us um a number that's more accurate in terms of an actual
106capacity for running a school um so for elementary schools we take 80% of the room index capacity to get the National Standard for middle schools it's 75% for high schools it's 85% for middle high schools it's 80% and so that's how we've modeled that when you look at those um that information on the spreadsheets that have been provided all right so again back to financials the scenarios are really striving to reduce the size factor and the student-based budgeting model that's a target targeted area um that we're going for um to try and again make us more efficient in terms of how we're using our dollars in PSD um we also know though that there are additional savings Beyond just the size Factor so you're going to see some estimates on what we're saving on the
107size Factor tonight um but we know that there are more additional savings if you consolidate a school um that are Beyond just a size Factor such as um knowing that you um if you consolidate a school one school with another school you need one principal for those for that school now and not two um you need maybe less custodial staff um if we're utilizing a building in a different way um those buildings can be maintained differently based on the types of usage um it might even be deprioritized in terms of things like air conditioning and that sort of thing so even School um that we're look we're considering for consolidation that would be repurposed um you know might be um maintained differently and would cost us Less in the long run so there's more Savings
108in there than just the size Factor okay we're going to talk about um some things that were not included in the current scenarios that we thought might be wonderings already um from people that thought maybe these would be things that that we would be looking at so one of the um uh some of the schools include the mountains schools um these were schools that are when you look at capacity and and where they're at in terms of utilization they are on the low side um however um these schools serve as community centers um in their in their smaller communities there are large travel time there's a huge um area that the mountain schools cover um and there are big travel times for students to get to school already um with the with uh what currently
109exists in terms of the mountain schools when you look at consolidating one it increases some of those um travel times um pretty significantly to the point where we felt like um it was it was challenging to to consider that as a viable option um the PSD District boundary extends all the way to the Wyoming border we have a really big boundary um and uh and so that this was just an area that felt very difficult um to make a move on even though it was modeled um a couple of times um we will continue to monitor these schools for declines in enrollment and and there's some consideration of maybe some technology related supports moving forward as um more opport options for remote learning can be considered um but right now it it didn't feel like
110that was the place to consolidate um another area that uh we did not include at this point in the scenarios are the creation of K8 schools um there are some some places where mathematically it looks like the students could fit into a school like a middle school and you could turn it into a K8 and there's some things that maybe make some sense there um but there's a it's a pretty significant move um really really big boundary changes that have to happen to align um all of those boundaries to to one K8 um that that feeds kind of feeds into itself um potential for um renovation needs where if we're going to take a middle school and convert it to a K8 we have to do some things to that building to make it work
111for elementary students um things that we thought about were like bathrooms and playgrounds Furniture um there're going to be different things that we'd have to do for to buildings to make that happen um we also know that like there's a there's a big difference between Elementary um even lure and the way that elementary schools run and secondary schools and so um even thinking about principal ships and leadership in a K8 um there's a lot to think about there so I think in general we felt like this was something where um it would warrant further study further like let's let's decide whether k8s are something that we want to pursue from an educational standpoint um and that would help us determine whether this was these were good Solutions or not but they're not currently in the
112scenarios doesn't mean that couldn't be something that changes but right now that's why they're not in there okay and then also um there are no changes included to Wellington Middle High School right now or the Wellington um area um while there is growth in well inton um and uh you know certainly it's an area that is adding students um at this point the projections for Wellington Middle High School have them staying within the building capacity for the next several years and so we didn't make Wellington um the Wellington boundary a priority in terms of our scenarios okay so we're going to get into the actual scenarios here and as we go through them um you're going to see that we we work from from east to west um with each of the scenarios so you
113can see again Josie pointed out kind of the different parts of the district um the East Side being um you know the schools just west of I25 and then obviously east of I25 in the timoth area we've got a central area that's identified here on the map and then we've got the West area where we're seeing the most um declining enrollment and so um you'll see our our scenarios um mapped out by area okay some other things that are are considered in the scenarios are our alternative schools and our integrated Services programs that need space so that includes schools like Centennial PCA um our transition Pathways programs that support students ages 18 to 21 um and a transition program to um to help them move from high school to um to their adult life um
114and then also Polaris and and PGA pter Global academy uh schools that are currently on zerob based budgeting again those schools are are um more expensive right now than student-based budgeting schools um and so those are schools that all need spaces and potentially um can have opportunities to be more efficient with with uh funding Jesse I'm sorry could you define zerob based budgeting for the people are watching and don't understand yeah maybe I don't Dave do you want to Define zerob based budgeting that you might be better at defining that so Z Z so zero based budgeting is is something that we started doing through Co where we actually pull the schools in build Staffing plans from the ground up so we don't start with a budget number we start with what the minimum necessary
115for that program is and that's where the zero base idea comes from can I ask Dave can you clarify why some schools would be funded on an SBB model and some would be funded on a zerob based budgeting model just for the public in terms of what schools are under that umbrella yeah sure so let me pull it up here real quick so I can make sure I get them all um so the the schools that are on the zerob based model are um the mountain schools and so those are those are schools that we um that we basically have a minimum program that we have to provide there the a good example there is that my understanding is that it's hard for a teacher to teach more than two grades so that creates that
116minimum there um other uh schools that are on zero base are uh putter Global Academy um just the way that program is structured um it's a zerob based School the SBB model doesn't fit it um same thing with um Centennial and uh and PCA um those were also uh schools that um even when we went to student based budgeting like 18 years ago that alternative programs didn't fit in the model because they just cost more and so we've been looking at those costs um I think that's it oh Polaris is the last one that's a zero base school and um Polaris uh also the way the program is has been structured is why we zerob base it um it has in the past been on a student based model in the past so there there's
117some exploration there all right thank you okay so before we talk about the first scenario one more reminder these are draft scenarios um and it is really important again to remember that um and you the community will help us inform how the community moves forward as we develop future scenarios recommendations to the board as Josie um talked about not all schools that are currently in the scenario will be affected and some schools that are not in the current scenarios may be suggested in future scenarios and so um there's nothing final about what we're looking at but these are simply um ideas things that have have been modeled and and considered um we're also not choosing between scenarios at this time and I think that's important also and we might even as we as you look
118at these you see opportunities where there's some like interchangeable parts you know you could do this thing for the East and you could do a different thing for the East while still doing the same thing for the west or doing something different for the West so you um so there's a possibility that we might find something we like in one scenario and stick with it and change other things um based on other things that are modeled I think as we go through this um we'd like to present all the scenarios and then open it up to questions so there's a lot of kind of a lot of information information um but if we can kind of just um get through all the scenarios then we'll open it up and answer any questions that you have
119okay so here's the first first one um scenario A1 okay again we start at the top of the slide which is the East Side um of the school district the first um move here says to balance enrollments at Timnath Bethy and Bamford elementary schools by adjusting boundaries between these schools and that's essentially taking um a part of the um kind of this southern part of the Beth key boundary moving it to Bamford and taking maybe the southern part of the Timnath Elementary boundary and moving it to Bethy with the goal there being to um alleviate pressure on tinmouth Elementary and put more students into Bamford Elementary so that's kind of the the move there and I think you see that in most of these scenarios that's kind of just a a boundary move that seems
120to make sense right now um the next move on the east then is to adjust Bamford bamford's feeder so that um the students the families that are in the Bamford feeder would then attend Preston middle school and Fossil Ridge High School instead of Timnath Middle High School and so that will um would alleviate some of the enrollment pressure at Timnath Middle High School and um divert those students to Preston and Fossil Ridge and help make those schools um uh capacity higher as well so that's the east on A1 when we move to the West um the uh consolidating bevens middle school so students at blevens middle school would be spread between Lincoln Weber and bolts middle school so that boundary would be divided up between those three and blevens middle school would consolidate um consolidating
121batty and o land elementary schools and those students would consolidate into Bennett Johnson Lopez and Bower Elementary Schools um you'll notice that there's a that group of schools there are multiple options that could be considered within that group and so there's multiple ways to model that within any any two of those schools could be considered that's the one that was modeled here in A1 um also on the west um farther west consolidating CLP Elementary School into tavelli Irish and putam elementary schools and consolidating CLP Middle School into Lincoln Middle School so both CLP Elementary and CLP Middle School Consolidated and moved further east the last three rows are are ideas for the alternative programs and where they could land in this scenario we have P pter Community Academy and Centennial High School moving to the
122blevens Middle School building and combining those programs um into one school um we have Polaris Expeditionary Learning School remaining in its current in its current building and making um attempts to move them to a student-based budgeting model from zerob based and then our transition programs could move to the Centennial Building and that is A1 some things to consider so benefits for A1 it does alleviate enrollment pressures on the east side elementaries and Timnath Middle High School it increases enrollment at underutilized currently underutilized elementary middle and high schools it does create space for early childhood and other programming with some of the buildings that could be repurposed it improved Financial viability of zerob based budget um for alternative and choice programs it provides PCA with a gym and better public transportation access with um at the
123blevens building the savings are modeled at about 33% of the current um size Factor adjustments so between 2.1 and 2.3 million per year um it it improves facilities and access to CSU and employment centers for the centers for the transition programs students some things to consider um within this scenario uh this does create longer Transportation times especially for students who attend CLP middle and elementary schools currently um and some of the CLP middle school students already travel from as far as the Wyoming border so they already have a long travel time you're adding another 10 to 12 minutes or so um Beyond where they're at um this does not facilitate a shift away from zerob based budgeting for Centennial and PCA and it does not facilitate a shift to student-based I think that's a mistake
124okay actually if uh if they combine into one program potentially you could shift them in that direction correct um do I need do we need to say that more clearly so I think if we yeah as we're saying that that's listed here but potentially if we combine those two those two current schools into one program at blevens there could be more students there which could allow us to move away from zerob based budgeting to student based budgeting so that one we should probably take off there um also it does this does not facilitate a shift um to student based budgeting for PGA okay is it possible for you to go back to the previous slide just for a minute yes okay you bet okay scenario A2 it has just one variant from A1 one and
125so this one same thing as A1 all the other all all things are the same except for in this scenario uh CLP Elementary and CLP middle schools would become Expeditionary Learning schools leaving the neighborhood boundaries in place and moving Polaris Expeditionary Learning school to the CLP campuses combining them to make a K12 campus with elementary students um attending the seal CLP in that using that building and grades 6 through 12 using the CLP Middle School building so that's a a difference um just in how the CLP buildings would be utilized um benefits here it does expand access to the Expeditionary Learning model it's also a really great campus for the Expeditionary Learning model um it saves it does save money it does not save as much as A1 but it saves about2 25% of the
126size Factor adjustment 1.6 to 1.8 million per year um some additional considerations um it does then um CLP is about 10 to 12 minutes Northwest of polaris's current location so it adds travel time to students who are pro and currently families that are providing their own transportation to Polaris um and there's no public bus transportation to CLP okay gonna hand it to Rebecca for scenario B so I'll be presenting scenarios B and C and before I um start flashing over to those slides I just want to want to provide a little bit of intro to those scenarios scenarios B and C um present a little bit of an alternative to what might um conventionally um kind of rise up when you look at some of the data and numbers they were crafted with a lot
127of iteration um and really an attempt of referencing back to what Jesse was saying an attempt at ensuring there was a large variety of options on the table to explore to gather feedback on um and may not jump out as the most obvious of solutions and so um we we present these um again in that attempt to get as much feedback and open up thinking and open up dialogue as much as possible recognizing also like Jesse was saying there's some interchangeability there's some parts and pieces in all of these scenarios that could potentially be M mixed and matched in different configurations so um scenario two starting with the East this one's too long to fit on one slide so um we'll go piece by piece on the East um it is it starts with the
128same change that Jesse mentioned for scenario A1 of balancing the enrollment at Timnath bethe and Bamford elementaries by uh through boundary adjustments under this scenario Preston would be consol Preston Middle School would be Consolidated into Canard Middle School um and a neighborhood boundary would be created for Canard so that would turn Canard into a neighbor neighborhood school that feeds directly into Fossil Ridge High School and Preston would be Consolidated the boundaries would be adjusted to send some students from the new Canard boundary to Boltz Middle School to balance out the enrollments in that area finally Bamford Elementary School uh would adjust similar to scenar similarly to scenario A1 to feed into Canard middle school and Fossil Ridge High School rather than Tim neth Middle High on the west side of the district there's some rebalancing
129through boundaries in the first couple lines so B the boundary between Bower and olander elementary schools would be adjusted to better balance out enrollment between those two schools similarly Weber and bevens Middle School the boundaries for those schools would be adjusted to um reduce some split feeder issues uh by moving all of the Lander boundary into the blevens Middle School feeder and balancing enrollment at Weber and blevens Lopez Elementary would be Consolidated into Johnson batty and mcra elementary schools and this one I want to particularly note like like Jesse mentioned in this particular area of the community um where Lopez Johnson mcra old Lander um all exist and batty there there are a lot of different options that could be explored um you know there's different considerations related to facility condition and age and programs
130and things like that um but there is a lot of um there are a lot of different options in that area based on the space that exists within a lot of those buildings and the current enrollment numbers finally on the West Side Dunn Elementary School would be Consolidated into Bennett putam Irish and Bower Elementary Schools and just to note Dunn is an IB School so is Bennett um Irish that DL there um stands for dual language it's a dual language school and then the boundary between putam and Irish elementary schools would be shifted um to send more students to Irish um because many students from dun could potentially shift into putam I do want to add the asterisk on this this point um on the West Side Dunn has a sign ific amount of choice
131in students we cannot predict what changing the location or replacement of a program like an IB program or corge or any other program that has a lot of choice we can't predict what choices parents will then make um if a if a school with one of those programs is is moved to a different location or Consolidated um so it it's hard to model numbers around some of those because there's already a lot of Parental Choice happening in those areas and finally there's some rebalancing of boundaries amongst the middle schools in the Central and western part of the district um adjusting the boundaries between Lincoln Lusher and bolts um to better to relieve some pressure at lesser and better um balance enrollment at Lincoln and bolts in particular finally the alternative schools under this scenario um
132Polaris and pter Community Academy would both move as separate programs into the Preston Middle School building these programs would not be combined um but there it would be space in the school to accommodate two different programs similarly at Lev's Middle School um pter Global Academy would be moved into blevens um in a portion of that school that that may not need to be utilized under this scenario so again those programs would not be combined but they would exist within the the same building at blevens the journey program and Opportunities Unlimited would move to the Centennial Building um and com and coexist with Centennial High School in that building and the transitions programs transition programs would move into the existing pter Global Academy building across from leasher um so here is this scenario in full and
133in small print um and I'm happy to flash back to it once I after I talk a little bit about the benefits and additional considerations so benefits of scenario B it does alleviate enrollment pressures on the East Side Elementary similarly to to scenario one it balances the enrollment across several schools through a lot of boundary adjustments it increases enrollment at some of the underutilized elements eles middle and high schools it may allow for the expansion of Polaris within the Preston Middle School building it does free up space potentially for Early Childhood um education and other programming and this scenario would save um less than scenario a but about 22% of the budget size fa Factor adjustment some additional considerations balancing enrollment without consolidations of consolidation of schools does not impact the financial bottom line it
134does not impact the size Factor adjustment um in most cases this does not facilitate a shift to student B based budgeting for PGA or for Polaris um and also does not facilitate a shift away from zerob based budgeting for Centennial or PCA since all all four of those programs um Polaris PGA Centennial and PCA would remain kind of um their own program in a smaller smaller space um this would scenario would require renovation of Preston and blevens to accommodate K12 programs and as I mentioned it's very difficult to predict uh Choice patterns um and under this scenario with Canard moving to a neighborhood school and um a a school with high level of choice being done Elementary closing would be hard to predict what some of the patterns might enrollment patterns might look like following
135those changes does anyone need me to go back to scenario B okay yeah okay Rebecca may I make a statement I see many if not all of the board members writing furiously we have printed copies that are being printed right now of these scenarios for all of you so once they get here we'll just deliver them just wanted you to be aware of that wonderful thank you you good okay all right scenario C looks um fairly similar in some ways to scenario B so I won't dwell on on the similarities too much and I'll High highlight the dist the differences um the this scenario has some variations on the alternatives on the east side of the district um and the alternative schools and the West Side Remains the Same so under scenario C the enrollments
136of Tim neth Bethy and Bamford would balance again um by adjusting boundaries so that doesn't change however Timnath Middle High School would be converted into a high school only and middle school students would be divided um into Preston Boltz and ler middle school middle schools Linton Elementary School would um change to a 100% Choice dual language school without a neighborhood boundary and current Linton neighborhood students could um Choice into Linton or be sent to a a new neighborhood school um whether that be Zach Elementary or Cruz Elementary depending on geography the boundaries between Cruz wner and bacon would be adjusted to balance enrollments that's on the east side for the alternative schools um pter Community Academy would move into the Lopez Elementary School building which would be Consolidated under under this scenario um into other
137Elementary schools so PCA would exist alone in that that building pter Global Academy would move into the blevens middle school um similar to in scenario B the transition programs would move into the the pter global Academy um similar to be the journey program Opportunities Unlimited would move into Centennial um but one difference is that the Polaris Expeditionary Learning school would remain in its current building and moving back to the student based budgeting model model so you can see there's just some variations um to provide some amount of comparison between scenarios A1 um A2 scenario B and scenario c um some benefits and considerations here um I'll highlight what is what is different on this slide um this one does SA an estimated 26% of the budget size Factor so between 1.5 and $1.8 million it
138would add a dual language program in Central Fort Collins um that matches some of the demographics in that area and then under cons additional considerations um you making Timnath Middle High School into just a high school would underutilize that building while it is um you know at a high capacity right now um removing the Middle School piece would um result in not only a split feeder from middle school to high school um but would also underutilize that building um just scanning for some of the key differences um some of the financial changes are are similar to scenario B and some of the facility renovation needs um the highlighting the last two bullets related to the Linton Elementary option um the students that are currently in the Linton neighborhood boundary may need to travel further to
139a a neighborhood school if they do not Choice into Linton dual language if it was a dual language and busing is not generally provided for 100% choice schools so that's a consideration as well finally I want to mention the financial maximization scenario this is a scenario that was explored by the committee really with the goal of of um understanding what what could be done to fully maximize cost savings for the district um this is a very aggressive scenario um that resulted in closing 13 schools um and over a 60% reduction in this the budget size Factor um you will not see any details of this scenario because the committee does not feel comfortable sharing what this scenario looked like um it was a difficult and painful scenario for for those who worked on it um
140and it it almost immediately compromised on many of the guiding principles that were set by the board for the work of the committee um it did not maintain program continuity um or access to diversity of programs across the whole District it caused extensive Transportation impacts um and it didn't even need to be modeled to to demonstrate that it was pretty obvious um it reduced access to educational programs for atrisk students in particular and it created very full schools um which can translate to uh large class sizes facility issues and challenges for for teachers staff um and students all right I um I don't I want to pass it back to Josie to see if she has anything um nope before questions for the board so we will open it up here we've just presented a
141lot of information um and Jesse and I will do our best to respond to questions that you may have um and provide additional information as you need it I changed my mind J Chang mind um just so you know um once the questions are complete from the board I will go through next steps and talk about um the community questionnaire how to access that Community questionnaire review listening sessions review the board listening session excuse me the board listening sessions so we will talk about next steps after this um and uh show folks where they can access the community questionnaire so with that uh we we welcome your questions thank you so much and um what an amazing job y all did um that is I mean the savings is fantastic and the thoughtfulness that went
142into this um is really commendable I know these are not final and so we're not making choices here um but I can see the process that yall went through and um really looking at very ious options um I know that a number of those were um a surprise to me as far as you know I hadn't thought of that at all so thank you so much for that um with that I don't know if U board members want to ask questions um I know that um the community session starts tomorrow at 7:30 is that correct um so I know that there's going to be a lot of iteration starting very early tomorrow morning um and moving on through the next time that we see you so so um with that does anybody want to go
143ahead and ask questions now uh yeah Connor go ahead I just have one really quick one for the scenarios that are on the east side specifically Tim lith did the committee speak with the Tim nith development director and some of the developers over there pertaining to the developments that are coming online Jesse I know you live in the neighborhood there a new house goes up every day um and I was and when think about the boundaries in my head I I think of two or three specific communities that could affect these plans in the short term and I was just wondering if you guys had reached out to them you want me want me to jump in okay I'll I'll start and see if Jesse has anything that he'd like to add since he has
144U direct knowledge of that that area um we while we had access to some development projection data from flow analytic studies and um some information about that we had some maps we had some of that type of information we did not do any Outreach as a committee directly to um you know any Community Development staff and different communities um I will mention I my professional role is as the community development director for lmer County um and we have others on the committee who may have some some knowledge of some of those growth patterns but we did not get to that level of granularity and that's that would be really great information um to continue to gather as we move from kind of ideation into evaluation awesome Kevin I'm still processing a lot of this so
145I'm not going to have fully formed questions yet but I didn't I'd be remiss if I didn't uh express my gratitude to you all first and foremost uh I've done it before when you're not in the room but now that you are the representatives other Representatives I want to say thank you um thank you for stepping up and answering the call to serve your community in this way this is a truly as you put it eloquently a big um how did you put it Josie a wicked problem uh and so it is and so but it is a community problem and so therefore it deserves a community solution and so for the people to step up when our a lot of times our most precious commodity these days is not um our resources or money
146but it's time and there's never enough and it's fleeting and so what little time you had you decide you decid to step up in this way and so I commend you for your leadership and your service um you're not perfect this is not going to be a perfect scenario and I acknowledge that I'm not going to be a perfect decision maker at the end of this um I commit to thinking through this problem with you with some humility and some Grace um and affording everyone the space they need to kind of process and do this but what I I charge you to do is to stay the course and to thank you for for stepping up and serving in this way um and we're going to need you so I know you've gone through a
147range of emotions already frustration anger disbelief um and you know it's it comes with a territory of stepping up and saying I'm G to be a leader in this area so uh I just want to express a heartfelt thank you and to continue doing this work and I look forward to continuing the work with you I'm going to formulate some questions but for now I just wanted to say thank you go ahead Scott yeah i' like to reiterate uh thank you guys very much thanks for the Whole 30 plus uh member team 24 hours of meetings that's brutal so I really appreciate you guys taking the time on this and these are really well thought out options one option that um I've been curious curious about other people have asked about um and given the
148the data that we're seeing where you know for the short term definitely you know enrollment is down but maybe 5 to 10 years from now it might be up and maybe we need to bring buildings back out of mothball if that's what's happened to them or whatever um what was the scenario I think you mentioned it earlier but was the scenario of just pure boundary changes considered um given that in the past we bust kids in from Wellington all the way into you know CLP and further prer high school that type of thing so those long I mean there are kids already doing long commutes so I I know it was kind of said it wasn't acceptable to parents and Tim nith um but I think we we owe it to the Community to just
149expand on that thought as just boundaries being a being an option so was that considered um you know we didn't draft up a scenario that included just boundary changes so you know everything's still considered right now again because nothing's final um but I think as we were getting into this getting at the small school Factor piece generally involved consolidation and that was where we were making some actual Headway on that number um so at this point no we haven't looked at just a scenario with only boundary changes anyone else Caroline I just wanted to to respond to Scott's question which is is that like you know we still have the same infrastructure cost then right so we don't get um so I mean we have fixed cost right so we got to think about that
150too in my head you know we have fixed costs that we have to think about and so um yeah and I I did hear a lot of talk about boundary changes for for Timnath actually quite a few conversations about timmith um having boundary changes so I think a lot of the scenarios you mentioned did have a lot of talk about boundary changes it sounds like to me that was came up in well it did come up in every scenario where there were boundary changes so I appreciated you guys in that aspect you know making those considerations but just to answer your Scott answer for you Scott is for me the consideration two is is about fixed expenses yeah and I'll just add that the our scenario um kind of development process was really looking at
151different areas of the community developing lots of options around those areas and then starting to piece some things together rather than thinking let's develop a whole scenario that has a particular kind of theme to it or goal to it um so that just the the way that these scenarios evolved was not to kind of look wholesale adjust boundary changes or a consideration like that but to look at the pieces and parts go ahead yeah yeah and I I totally appreciate that Caroline I think that's a good point when we're just thinking about cost savings absolutely consolidation has to be a part of it I think what I'm think I'm seeing is is down the road there's talk of maybe have to build out in Tim because the growth is as Connor was saying the growth
152is extraordinary out there and so that's going to be an expense that the district's going to have to put up so the budget's going to have to increase for that so I'm thinking more that long-term combination of things where shift everything from the East so we have um maybe the possibility not having to build in timoth which just given budget constraints and things like that so maybe we can we do boundaries instead of that but that's just a scenario that maybe is not realistic um but it's something I think that's worth at least saying we looked at um because that's going to be the voters are going to be thinking about that uh come November about that particular question so uh but I really again I I appreciate what you guys have uh have put
153together so far it's uh it's pretty good and and honestly I was surprised there weren't more consult validations in these scenarios one last thing I'm sorry I'm Hing the time I know we have a whole another presentation um is this counters what I was just saying but is the savings the 1.2 to 1.6 all the way up to I think 2.2 million is that enough and maybe that's a a bigger question for for us as an executive team um but is that enough given the initial proje I don't I don't know okay go ahead Jess on a different note um why can you explain the the Linton changing to 100% Choice um only because that school has it does have a lot of dual language students it serves a unique community in the Southside I
154worry that if it becomes only choice will families continue to have access to that school will they know how to choice will they have the tools to still access essentially their neighborhood school since they won't be automatically ushered there can I jump ining that one I I I was going the same direction as far as can you unpack that scenario that sub scenario C and talk through what the transportation would look like cuz I I actually had the exact same concern um and I was going to ask a followup about what were you thinking through as far as transportation for the Linton 100% duel knowing that it's a title one and transportation and choice schools is an equity issue that I've talked about before yes um the committee has some of those same questions um
155the this this piece was oh sorry let me go here okay so the the Linton piece was at added into this scenario um with the idea that similar to how Harris bilingual functions now where some transportation is provided um to Native Spanish speakers um that if that type of model could be applied to the other dual language schools or to Linton in this scenario um that that could could be a more feasible option and a way to provide a dual Prov expand dual language programming into another area of the community um you know there are there are a lot of considerations and trade-offs and in everything that we've got in here and this is this is a a great example of one where we have we haven't fully evaluated what the impacts would be and
156we would love Community feedback and you know hearing feedback from you as we're we're hearing now um that helps inform whether that's something that should be considered further or should it be taken off the table I I would also say I think the committee was interested in um the fact that there's a weit list at Harris and trying to think about what might the options be um the other obvious choice for a choice du language would be Irish but it's geographically in closer proximity so I think um that's not a decision in any particular way but a more of a question of if there were to be another Choice dual Language School in Fort Collins um what could that look like um and that is part of what this exploration is about there's a popular
157program with a weit list and what might a solution to that look like and um I jumped in on behalf of the steering committee but no thank you for that context I think I just worry about it being 100% choice because Irish and Harris har Harris I can't speak anymore um both still have boundaries so no Harris har Harris is 100% has boundaries okay correct okay so I think I just still worry if it has no boundary that how do we support the students to make sure they have that continuity of learning but thank you can um Jeff maybe you can tell me the percentage of kids that are bused into Linton or how many buses we have going in there right now just two it's about two Max and I can check to make
158sure but yeah good enough there's a lot of uh I believe if and I've learned this just last week I think they are one of the few boundaries that is exactly one square mile um so it's predominantly a walking Community um a lot of their students reside in the harmony uh Park Village I I don't know if I have that name correct um what if I can make a comment specific to Linton just since we're on topic if that's okay and I also want to lead which is gratitude this is an incredibly challenging task that you're collectively taking on with the other 37 you know 30 some Plus members of this team and I just want to say thank you for being so thoughtful and considerate and having Equity be at the Forefront of your
159decision- making and how you're grappling with this knowing that is a value set of the committee and the district at large and this impact on Linton and its broader Community is very spe specific to uh some of our most marginalized students has the steering committee thought a little bit around community outreach with that specific School Community any differently than the upcoming seven considerations of listening engagement sessions to flush out the assumptions around that Community wanting more dual language offerings just I was just curious about that yes thank you for that question and I'll I'll see if Josie has anything to add after I after I respond um Outreach to the title one schools in particular has been a a topic of conversation among the committee and a point of a lot of feedback from the
160committee to staff um and to to IBA ibe and thinking about um whether the listening sessions fully capture input from those schools or if there are other other mechanisms that can better capture that input um we do have representation on committee from District staff who work directly with the title one schools um the family Liaisons as well as um in the kind of Grant coordination role and um in addition to the listening sessions we have a questionnaire um and we know that principals are are doing some Outreach at their own schools um and committee members are doing individual Outreach as well um we we welcome any feedback on additional opport unities to to gather that input but the feedback we've heard from the family Liaisons in the title one school so far um is that
161what we are planning for outreach is generally sufficient to reach those those community members and again there's probably always more that we could be doing to reach people go ahead so I one thank you for that that that doing doing that type of thinking on the Forefront of this effort is going to be tremendously important it's an invitation if if you need any supports from staff regarding translation services to ensure the questionnaire is available in multiple languages family Le this whatever you need just continue to rely upon the staff myself to be of assistance to you as you named in the role Clarity effort uh in the front end of the presentation and if I can also ask the committee for consideration as an invitation to think about what program continuity for dual language program
162could look like in PSD at the middle school level um CU currently that is an area that I think we need investment um and as we're continuing and considering to expand it continuing to have program continuity at the secondary level I think could be beneficial to the system at large so thank you again for your consideration yeah thanks for the request and uh just to be clear so the um the materials the fa uh we created frequently asked questions document this presentation the questionnaire will be translated into Spanish and Arabic uh we've been working closely with staff but they've been incredibly supportive we've been in regular communication saying is this sufficient are we reaching people do you have what you need from us to be able to communicate with your um with your families and
163so we've been working very closely uh we will uh be having a session on April 4th that will uh be focused specifically on the Spanish speaking Community uh and with and we'll have uh we'll present in Spanish uh and have translators present we'll have uh our bilingual steering committee members will be present as well as English uh monolingual speakers but we are uh thinking very carefully and extensively and confirming with um your staff and the families that they work with that there are ample opportunities for engagement um the last thing I'll say on that front is that we created a student engagement toolkit as a resource for um principls and steering committee members and others uh we we Shar that with the district Advisory Board to be able to uh thoughtfully uh engage students in
164uh how you know in how they want to participate and what might be useful for them to contribute in this conversation they're also encouraged to come to the listening sessions and take the questionnaire so uh just to give a little bit Fuller picture of the extent of the ways that we have been working to get full and complete participation from our community that's wonderful thank you so much yeah Kevin go ahead sorry I've got another this is sort of a big and it can be an open-ended question that I want to I want to circle on because I think it's important is that um we as a board attended a uh session at the last casby um meeting about uh Jeff CO's consolidation efforts and so there were some lessons gleaned there and some things
165that we took away at least I took away and one of them is sort of foundational and I think you touched on it Josie in your opening remarks and I want to come back to that is that in order to do this work there really needs to be one universal truth or one set of facts and data that everyone Embraces and sort of has alignment upon um I from conversations I've had with community members constituents other stakeholders um from recent Colorado and article it seems to be that there is a misalignment or perception of data misalignment that are our base presumptions and so as we go into this work I want to be mindful of that and as we go into the listening sessions that there will be a lot of feedback considering what the
166data is what the universal truths are um and I think data is interesting it can be read and bent in many different ways but um I'm wondering what conversations the steering committee at least has had on sort of those aligning conversations for data what is our base what is our truth and our spring board to to dictate the urgency and the necessity and the uh mediacy of the work ahead and if you can't answer that today that's fine but I think that's an important question to raise in public I you know know that question's been raised on the committee as well I think um as we moveed forward we have chosen to trust the data that we're that we're provided with um and that we're getting from flow and from um all of the resources
167that we that we showed in the slides here um and that's what we're that's what we're working with um we're we're trusting that that data is accurate um it is um you know it's guiding our work as we're going forward so I think like you said you have to kind of at some point say hey this we're going to this as a as a truth and that this is what we're um this is what the data is telling us this is um these are resources that we can trust um and that's how we've been operating in terms of developing the scenarios thank you for oh sorry go ahead jie sorry um the one place that that did come up that we addressed as a committee um at length was that there were some questions about
168the building utilization calculations um those had come up as uh flagged for some community for some committee members and the remedy to that was that the new District architect uh reviewed the cad drawings for every building within the district and confirmed those numbers came back with modifications uh most of the buildings did not have significant modifications um there were some buildings that there were discrepancies in and that reconciled the differences that the steering committee members felt um for or saw between uh what they beli to be the uh the building capacity and what we saw on the initial analysis so uh other than that um so that has that was a process that the committee went through and that uh now the committee feels reconciled in uh for by and in large with those numbers
169we are in the same I will say we are in the same ballpark we are we are very close we are maybe not on the exact same base but we are very we might even be within the same diamond right like we're we're we're close and and it's close enough for the work that we're doing right so one of the considerations there is that we are looking at you know 75 to 80% of that very full capacity so we're already um basing building utilization numbers on that you know 80% number which gives enough flexibility that everyone feels comfortable if there's still a little bit of a a sense of disparity there um but I did want to call that to light because I know there's been concerns with them the community as well particularly around
170the building capacity calculations and those numbers have been verified and the committee um is satisfied with the outcomes of that verification thank you I think it was important to State appreciate that no I think it's important to State too is actually a question I had and I like how that just opposes to Scott's question of is this enough so we've got the question you know uh of um is it too much are we overreaching here are we under reaching and so I think that that points to the the questions that we have to ask and grapple with so um and I know go ahead Brian you had something as well I just want to ask a followup about the universal truths because I I really appreciate that level of questioning in terms of how the
171steering committee is grounding itself in the data and as we've you know and director havelda just alluded to there's different schools of thought around what the future holds in terms of enrollment projections and where things are coming in but is it a universal thought amongst the steering committee that we have 4500 to 6,000 empty seats in our district today CU one of the things that I think we're collectively as a community grappling with is seeing is this a future facing problem that we can either avoid or circumvent or think differently about and I'm just curious if we're having as a universal truth that this problem is almost it's it's a there's a level of historical nature to this problem in my opinion but I'm curious if there's a shared belief system with the steering committee
172and what I'm talking about yes I'd say there there is a general kind of agreement or um understanding within the committee that cons there are consolidations that need to happen in order to um get keep some schools or get some schools at a capacity that can better sustain the staff and the programming at those schools and that's um that is something that we are all aligned on thank you any Carolyn go ahead I would I just want to say that um you know I've thought a lot about like what does the future hold and and um you know are we making the right decisions because I am reminded that uh before I got on the board maybe four or five years before I got on the board in 2014 that the district had contemplated closing
173for elementary schools because they were underutilized by quite a bit and um at that time the board decided against closing those schools and what happened was is four or 5 years later those neighborhoods turned over but what they had then was a higher birth rate right than we have now and they also what they had were falling interest rates where neighborhoods were turning over and I think we have a kind of a weirdness here now too where we don't have neighborhoods turning over because people there's a lack of uh houses houses are expensive so I think right now we have a different Beast too when we look at economics not just birth rates that that we're going to have to kind of navigate and get our heads wrapped around too I think I don't think
174we've really talked about that but I think it's at least a small consideration go I don't think it's a small consideration I think that's a large piece of our puzzle and I actually really appreciate that you said it because we have had like as a district we've grappled with it before but this is a different Beast than has been here before yeah I I agree and I mean I think um a lot of people heard this past week or so that there is a large population of um older people who are not moving out of their homes and so that prevents turnover which prevents younger people from coming in the higher interest rates I mean it it is a different Beast right now um it's unfortunate for those who would like to move into the
175area and who have young families and we would love to have um but it is a very expensive place to live and that's not just here right now it's very just very expensive to be a homeowner in general so um yeah I I appreciate you bringing that up go ahead Jim yeah just briefly I was talking to a friend this morning and I said I'm so excited for this presentation this a this evening and I'm also terrified and I I got to tell you I'm not terrified anymore I just thought your work has been thoughtful and professional and creative and presented in a very clear clean fashion and I'm just so grateful to the work that you're doing and continuing to do so uh thanks that's it all right go ahead Brian so obviously all
17647 of our traditional public schools are dialed into this conversation tonight um some of them maybe have been dialed in a little bit longer as a result of the conversation that took place in the fall so I wanted to build off of that and just ask a clarifying question on behalf of the Polaris Community uh a couple of the scenarios suggest moving Polaris Expeditionary Learning school to a student-based budgeting model can you clarify what that means in terms of its current program knowing it's staying at its current based on that proposal staying in its current facility but what what are there any implications to the model of the Expeditionary Learning school as a result of that move let me start that and then Dave has a microphone so think Tracy oh and Tracy as well
177I I I would say an an assumption of the committee and I this is not an area where I have much knowledge or expertise at all um an assumption of the committee is Polaris has a very long wait list if there's the possibility to put Polaris in a space that could accommodate more students in that program then that could help to to shift the budget model that it's under but I I Look to Tracy or Dave to to weigh in on that so we just recently went through looking at budgets for every single School in the district so the three assistant superintendents we approve along with the finance department every budget of every school and so knowing that this you know sort of was being forecast that Polaris and PGA really needed to um re-evaluate
178their models um we charged them to do so for this budgeting cycle and so Polaris actually did get really pretty darn close to an SBB model this for this year going into next year and so like in terms of it disrupting programming it doesn't appear that it has yet now I'm not you know in terms of had the staff experiences yes you know they had to you know let go of some things that were important to them but I believe it still allowed them to maintain the Integrity of the program so I think it's an important question of can you still do Expeditionary Learning as it's intended in an SBB model and I feel like we got really close this year okay thank you yeah other other questions or we could to all right um
179all right we're first I just want to let everybody know we are going to take a 10-minute break in between um so um but I just want to end by saying um a tremendous thank you um I know that you I think all of us have expressed our gratitude um and we just can't say it enough this is as you said Josie a wicked problem and I feel like um we have wicked good brains working on this so as a Massachusetts person I can say that right wicked good brains um so yeah I this I like Jim I feel very relieved I feel um like this you are we are in very good hands with y'all I am excited about what the community has to say um the iterations that will come forth from that
180and we will see you again in about a month right all right again thank you go home get some sleep you have a 7:30 presentation right thank you all all right so we're going to take a break until 9:23 yes I'm sorry it wasn't over it wasn't over sorry I I totally forgot I am so sorry next steps my bad I was okay my mistake um I'm going very fast no I I just have to say that we're we're back here at 9:14 uh my mistake I led us to recess too early we have next steps to go okay and this really won't take long I don't even have to rush it just won't take long um okay so just to remind everybody for where we are in the process um we're moving into the
181community listening sessions as we all know and the community questionnaire that's happening through uh this week next week and we have our last session on April 4th um so there are six in-person listening sessions they will all be the exact same same content it'll be a condensed version of what we presented to the board tonight um there's one online listening session again with the same content but to enable participation particularly for people who may live long distances away and don't want to come back to town um or just need to stay home to be with their kids whatever that might be um we do ask that folks watch the video presentation uh there will be an edited version before either attend a listening session or watch the edited version of tonight's presentation uh before taking
182the questionnaire just so that we all have that Baseline understanding and context um and then in April and early May uh we're going to do scenario refinement and develop recommendations for the board so we will bring um the committee back together uh they have elected to do additional work sessions to make sure that that work is done well and done right there are ad hoc committees that are working together um with facilitation so that is not like unsupervised time where people are working in secret coalitions everybody is working to be very transparent with one another but also doing some divide and conquer because as you know working through every detail with 37 people just turns out to be a lot um so we will um synthesize and bring the insights from the listening sessions and
183the questionnaire um into uh the whole group context with some analysis we will then refine scenarios that will be presented to the board um via recommendations report um then there's a board listening session on 4:16 um I have a schedule for that uh and then we'll give a presentation to the board of directors um in May so uh the steering committee will present we have four leaz on so that they didn't all have to be at all the meetings so that's why Amy and Micah weren't here tonight um it wasn't their their day to be on duty um but they will come for other meetings um and then we will present recommendations to the board on 520 8 there's a second board listening session for the community uh before a decision is made so everyone
184will see the final scenarios that are present via the recommendation session in May and then you all will have a final chance to hear from the community before making your decision on 611 so there's uh some nice touch points and iterations um that are going to happen through that um these are just the dates these are published online I don't uh intend to go through them but as mentioned uh we will be meeting at Tim neth middle tomorrow morning at 7:30 a.m. um and then we also have a session tomorrow evening from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. at for Collins the board listening sessions these are new additions uh this did go out in whole district-wide Communications but uh thank you for graciously allowing more time for public comment um by opening up to these listening
185sessions I think the timing of them is also really nicely placed um I'm not sure I think that might have been a happy accident but I think it works out really really well um so uh those board listening sessions and then uh this is a link to the community questionnaire it will not be live until tomorrow um we do want to get the uh edited version up um for the uh the recording again trying to get everybody to watch that but the questionnaire uh will be released tomorrow and it'll be open through April 5th at 10: a.m. so uh just so that everyone's clear about when that happens everyone is uh encouraged to participate teachers parents students um you're also only allowed to participate once and you can only hit the submit button once so
186make sure you know what you want to say and how you feel before you hit the button uh you can keep it open as long as you want you can return to an unfinished survey it's pretty short we tried to keep it nice and concise um but also to the point um and so just so you know um you can't go back once you've submitted it um just want everybody to hear that and that's all so thank you uh for that little bit Yeah process for the listening sessions yeah is there like an order sign up uh is there a moderator like how's that going to I'm sure some people in the community are wondering like how am I going to participate how's that look I don't have the answer to that question okay Lauren
187do you do we know at this point so to answer the question there is no sign up they're open to everyone so anyone who would like to come please come to the listening sessions or watch the video fill out the questionnaire online and then in terms of how they'll be structured we'll do a brief version of this presentation to kick things off and then table discussions thereafter sorry Lauren the question was about the board listening sessions board listening sessions also totally open to the public anyone can come no it was actually it was for it was for the the the first listening sessions but that's fine oh for the F sorry I misunderstood the question it was a poorly first question so say it again I was just curious as the format about getting Community
188engagement and getting having the listening sessions giving the community the opportunity to to speak at these as well okay so yes I will explain that specifically so the way that that works is I will give a brief presentation at the beginning of each listening session to uh assure that we're all kind of on the same page and present what again the condensed version and then steering committee members will host table conversations there is a discussion guide for them um people are welcome to say whatever they care to say it's not a a mandatory discussion guide it it's a guide um and then there is a reporting form that the table hosts will report back their key learnings and understandings as well as be able um individuals will be able to take the questionnaire so um
189steering committee members will be there to listen to the comments from uh the community at the listening sessions and then at the board listening sessions my understanding is that those will be uh essentially an open mic with a timer um and the board will be able to listen to uh the community comment but it allows everyone a chance to speak directly their voice to the board thank you yep maybe one more process question I think I heard you say the steering committee listening sessions are not live streamed correct okay they will not be live streamed the I it was probably me but I I misunderstood because I was planning on attending tomorrow's live stream so maybe just if we could check the website and just be sure that it's very clear that they're not live
190streamed because there's something that says click here for live stream and so just make sure that to our Communications folks I guess thanks y okay thank you um I think that is now it um I am so sorry about that um so let's go ahead and take a 10-minute Break um it is 921 p.m. on uh Tuesday March 19th and we will be back here at 9:31 thank you for e all right oh we made pretty good time it's actually 9:33 to start with um on Tuesday March 19th we're back from Recess um and so we are 9.2 policy ikf revisions the first reading so Brian would you like to introduce this item yes thank you for asking tonight we will be informed about revisions to policy ikf developed by The Graduate graduate with option
191strategic plan committee leading our presentation tonight is our assistant superintendent Dr Julie Chaplan and our chief institutional Effectiveness officer Dr Dwayne schmidtz Dr dror welcome thank you thank you okay president Draper vice president Zamora board directors and and superintendent Kingsley we are going to talk tonight about um a graduation requirement um option for the board to consider as we move forward um tonight we the purpose really is four things we're going to discuss the why why behind proposing these changes to policy ikf which has to do of course with graduation requirements we're going to review the process that we use to collaborative collaboratively develop these this proposal we're going to preview the recommended policy change and and updates for your consideration and then we'll engage with you around questions you have in preparation of the
192second reading which would be on April 9th sound good okay so pter School District um has a diploma that has a lot of integrity and this board and I think our community has seen a lot of data around that so I just want to mention that we have a lot of um data over lots of years that kind of back that statement up at the same time um we have a changing landscape of opportunities for our students um that you know has emerged over the last five or 10 years where we have work-based learning opportunities and we have uh different things like concurrent enrollment and dual enrollment Associates degrees all kinds of different possibilities internships and so on so to create some space for students to be able to access those opportunities and kind of
193enrich if you will and Elevate these opportunities for them we are going to talk about graduation requirements um if you think about on 1024 24 it's a couple months ago a while back I guess we had a a session in here on graduating with options and I just want to remind you that we heard from students that night from pter high school and we heard from a teacher from pter high school and some other folks right around the junior Ry program and others and I wanted to remind you that some of the things we heard from students is that they would like a bit more consolidation in these key requirements we also heard um that students were excited about getting Associates degrees and other nationally recognized credentials we heard that um one student mentioned a
194sophomore that they had been wanting to be an engineer for a while and they were just a sophomore my point there is there are students um in our system who do have thoughts about what they want for their career pathway and uh lots of students want to explore multiple different path ways and start figuring that out and that's what this conversation is really about is how do we create space and time for students to do those Explorations and by the way PSD had about seven students in the in 2223 who did get an associates degree in our district I also want to mention that the number of students we have trying to access these opportunities is not trivial at the lower portion of that slide in those colored box as you can see we had
195in 2022 23 we had 1,16 students who had a work-based learning experience we had 628 who earned uh CTE certifications we had about 3,332 students who took college courses and that includes campus select High School select Ascent PTEC T rep there's so many different opportunities where kids are getting college credits and even degrees and credentials and in our system so that's what tonight's conversation is about is how do we expand those opportunities so that more and more students are able to access them okay so in this challenging landscape of opportunities college credits at no cost to the families and the students is a big deal colleg has become very very expensive so lots and lots of our students are getting those college credits in high school students want to explore those multiple different Pathways um
196The Proposal tonight as we use that language about four-year plans and Pathways and such just to be clear no student is locked into any kind of a pathway or exploration just because they begin to explore and take courses okay but we do want them to have access to that kind of exploration if they would like to do so um we already mentioned the associates degree possibility but another piece is the job ready skills so it's a big deal Nationwide Statewide and in our in our district that we want to give students opportunities that lead to living wage jobs that are in high demand Industries if that's the pathway they wish to take and so this is again what we're talking about with our graduation requirement um you know recommendation um I think it's eye openening
197to realize that there were 225 plus businesses that are participating with us on creating these kind of work-based learning and internship opportunities it's a huge number of businesses one of the reasons that exists is we've got um work-based learning coordinators at each of our high schools that's very unusual and that's one piece of the puzzle and the other piece is we have a really great partnership with the Chamber of Commerce and there's folks that are looking day and night at work for these opportunities for the Youth of our community so that's how we get to these great outcomes at PSD has been able to talk about in our monitoring report and such the last piece I want to just highlight real quick is that a lot of students can take their first year of college
198for free through the ascent program or t- and the truth is um that is free college to those students and it doesn't bring it doesn't break the bank in pter school district because we actually get a a renumeration back from the state for that programming so it's a winwin win everybody wins in this including Society at large PSD had an estimate by the way of about $6 million in tuition expenses that our students didn't pay in 2022 23 that's across all the grade levels based on all the college credits that were earned that's real money for families and that's because of these kinds of opportunities okay so what happened happens when students get engaged in their interest and passions while at school which is what this is all about without going into detail and every
199little sub chunk of that table data and those line graphs I just want to point out that there is a positive relationship between higher levels of student connections to their interests and passions in high school and the following things attendance goes up discipline rates go down and achievement and growth go up that data if you took a moment to truthfully look at it carefully and compare it to the next slide I'm about to show you would would bear out what I'm saying okay the data that we're looking for is derived from 3,999 students so approximately 4,000 students who are high school students who have taken the connection survey and they indicated 75% or higher kind of a respon of yes to feeling connected to their interest and Passions when we then I'm going to flip
200the slide and we're going to look at students who indicate at less than 75% connection to their interest and passions while at school and when I do that if we had time to look at this really carefully and go into the Weeds on it what you would see at the end of the day is that attendance rates have gone down from about 92% to about 83% across these groups discipline has gone up from about 2% to 4% achievement has gone down um so everything moves in the wrong direction when students don't feel connected to their interest and passions at school or they feel less connected I shouldn't say that they don't feel connected but if they feel less connected that's the simple takeaway so again I'm setting the stage for like why are we considering
201graduation rate or sorry graduation requirement changes and it's all about student and family agency you know opportunities because we've been talking about graduating with options and so making um space for students to explore those options okay great and as we talk about options for students to graduate our current policy does not have options for all of our students to graduate with a a diploma from pter school district um nor does it have flexibility built in to allow all students um to meet those graduation requirements and so we have in the revised policy additions that you have access to um we have created another subsection um that we call the um recommendations um for what we're what we are calling excuse me opportunities for diverse Learners and there's two populations that we're targeting in that section
202of the policy the first is our students with disabilities um so in the first section um the the students on an individualized education plan as it is currently today and has been in practice for pter school district as long as I can remember and before that if you took an alternative assessment State assessment on the alternative assessment whether you met the graduation requirements or not you were not eligible for a diploma that is what we what we are requesting to have in policy that is changed so that regardless of whether you take the state assessment s Pat 9 10 or you take the alternative assessment that meets your learning level if you meet graduation requirements you can earn a diploma previously students were given a certificate of attendance okay the second piece that's really impactful
203for students on an individualized education plan is allowing their IEPs really to sort of Drive their graduation plan in every IEP there is a planned course of study and that aligns with their 4-year plan and what we're recommending that you adopt and and vote approval for is that those students and their IEP teams can make decisions about the coursework that they need to take in order to fulfill those graduation requirements or possibly rep replace and wave graduation requirements that really aligns again with their course plans and study that meets their post-secondary and transition goal outcomes so that's the first part the second part we want to address is the opportunities for multilingual Learners there's two areas in this as well the first um is allowing them to earn a standard oh excuse me I need
204to flip the slide is allowing them to um earn that diploma um and replacing some of our um credits that are needed in in uh language arts uh in World Language other graduation requirements but allowing the ELD courses and the programming that's required for them to gain supports um English proficiency allowing those courses to count as graduation requirements so that's area one the second area is that currently um when we have students that come into pter school district um that are immigrant students if they have no transcript or formal records which is not uncommon for some of these families um then they start in pter school district they have as of right now no matter what grade level they're in 9 10 11 12 they start with zero credits and they've got to go up
205to 24 to get there and so what we are proposing is that the Immigrant students um and David Aon reath and his team be able to look at each of those immigrant students and provide um provide some of some of that credit accumulation whether we have a formal transcript or not that gives credit for Education that they have participated in in their home country before coming here so that puts them on a much better projectory for ontime graduation than what currently exists today so those two pieces are in the packet um as language um in addition to um what we will continue to talk about for the specific requirements so as um as we've talked about a little bit this whole process that Dwayne and I have been engaging in um has been very has
206been completely iterative it's been a process of us creating a scenario and much like Josie talked about um how they created this scenario to start a conversation it's exactly what we did so our first scenar scario that we put out in um our first timeline the original action team recommendation was really let's start a conversation and it started with 110 credits of additional coursework we blew the gates open to say what could be the maximum options that we think we could like we we could look at right and what's the conversation we have so we went around and we engaged with different um uh Community stakeholders um District level dis um student excuse me District level staff and I have another slide that'll kind of document what we went through um and gathered feedback on
207that um then um in that December um December timeline we met um and revised some of those decision revisions again and we came up with a a second draft and that paired it from 110 um credits of additional coursework adding some more requirements in based upon some of the things we heard in the community that will outline more specifically and reduce down to 85 additional course credits again we shopped that around went to more Community feedback sessions came back to the full committee um and what before you we have is the final proposal um which actually we have two versions of we do have a we do have a a recommendation for you but we want you to see both considerations as the committee felt both were options that they wanted you to see um
208and so one of them has 85 credits but it does look different um than what what has been shown before and what was different in the first round and then the other option has 95 credits and that's that attempt to try to gain more uh flexibility in the system in a level of um what we thought could be another option okay now we're here tonight first board reading uh we're going to get feedback from you and there's time for us again to go back to the action team um we actually have a couple more groups that we're going to get some feedback from in the next weeks um and so then we will then go back and make revisions one more time before coming to you with any final revisions for that piece so that's
209that process um and we really have taken feedback and adjusted every single step along the way so um as we look at some of the Community Partners on the left side of the screen you're going to see these are more community outreach so yes there's some District committees but there's a lot of community mainly Community folks and parents on these committees so um some of these we've visited multiple times um and so we have the student advisory committee that's really where it started um we've been there multiple times District Advisory Board we've hit multiple times District accountability committee um we've worked with work-based learning coordinators we have input from industry Partners we will be continuing to reach out with the Chamber of Commerce and then we had two Community input engagement sessions as well to
210the public on the right side of the screen we're more staff specific in PSD and so some of the other things that I didn't put up there we we left off we went to a staff Equity Coalition um but we've multiple times with secondary principles assistant principes counselors curriculum facilitation or facilitators we've hit multiple times we went to then their District level curriculum teams to meet with the lead teachers to present to them um and gotten feedback integrated services staff we also hit special ed advisory committee twice um student services staff learning services staff we hit the staff Equity coalition um and we know there's a couple more groups that um we working um we're working with our coordinator of diversity Equity inclusion um uh Delia mahany to uh get some more feedback on a
211couple of groups that we hadn't yet so that's the process um and I'll have Dwayne share with you the themes of what that feedback was we can break it down into several themes and then we'll go through the next here was the first version second version and here's the version of recommendations today thank you Julie like woo right it's like a whirlwind right sorry that's how it felt though like it's been 3 four months I'd say in a ton of going out and showing off what we've got the thinking of the action team not Julie and I and getting feedback revising just like Julie said it's just been a lot and it's been good so here were the big themes right there was different themes by different groups and during these different models but when
212I pull it all together just overall what does the board really need to hear on some of these overarching themes here they are okay one people and when I say people students parents staff all community members everybody likes the flexibility concept and that students H and families have agency and can explore options for themselves about their interest and that they can customize their education people like this concept that there's Pathways that it's not like every kid's getting the exact same thing so they that was a plus simplified structures people like across the board again simple is good right unless it's wrong but simple is good so people like a simplified structure there it's very clear like what what all the things will show you what is required it's it's easy to understand so it'll be
213easy to communicate specific requirements people advocated for um certain courses in the first round we didn't have financial literacy as required it currently is required for students to graduate we had taken that off along with a few other things and there was overwhelming feedback from all fronts to put financial literacy on the required list so it is and it has been now for several iterations likewise F and applied arts and wellness we also um more of a 50-50 split people have arguments on both sides of whether we should or shouldn't be requiring or how much we should require versus the tension that you get around agency and freedom versus expose kids to these things right students so that one was on there um World Language also which to be super clear is not a current
214requirement right it's World Language and or culture so there are plenty of students in PSD over the last 10 years who graduated who did not in fact take 10 credits of World Language nonetheless that also has been a conversation should World Language be 10 credits required or not and if it's not required it's recommend it why 10 should it be 10 to 30 so we've we've had a couple iterations on that number four on this list implementation concerns um folks gave us strong feedback so regardless of what decisions the board makes if we create if we change graduation requirements we have to pay attention to the communication plan the training for our staff our counselors our teachers our families because we clearly want our students to have the guidance of all these caring adults so
215people need to understand what these options are and how to access them so that came out through the implementation concern and the support well I'll just take them one at a time so number five equity and access um yeah another strong um theme is that our Community Values Equitable access to Opportunities um we're proud of that so specifically for historically marginalized populations and there's a lot of ways we could talk about that but what comes to mind when you think historically marginalized populations that we keep our eye on that make sure people have access that can include things like Transportation because not all all opportunities are available at all sites and so some amount of Transportation comes into play there I want to mention at this point that we had Julie and I in our
216presentations during all these months had talked about the importance of students that needs um support support courses that part of the reason we would build some flexibility to schedules is to make sure that students support it with IEPs students support it with read plans multilingual Learners actually had access to all these great opportunities of work-based learning and you know the Futures uh la and all that cool stuff that we have going on so because we talked about that upfront I just am giving it special mention it didn't show up as a community concern like make sure that happens but I think that's because we addressed it UPF front right people very much that resonated with people is what I'm trying to share that we we do that the last one is support for our Educators
217right there are concerns anytime you change graduation requirements how's that going to impact scheduling how's that going to impact choices students make um and so on and then based on that how would that Impact Staffing and resources and so those are legitimate concerns one thing I want to mention at this point is that uh pter school district will study no matter what choices the Board of Education makes on this uh if we change graduation requirements we will systematically study for the next several years what how that impacted course taking patterns and such right we won't leave it up to chance okay so there's some input themes that we gathered now we're going to do just kind of a quick run through on some two versions so the first big version that we put out for
218feedback keeping in mind like was mentioned in the earlier presentation this the purpose of this version was to generate feedback and thinking and public deliberation right and and to to um cut to the chase on this one humanities econom ICS financial literacy Wellness fine applied arts and World Language were all moved off the required bucket basically or the required list okay additional coursework was increased and that's a new name for what we have traditionally just called electives so when I say additional coursework electives we're giving it that name because we want to signify it's not just things like art and PE it might be additional math classes and history courses it's additional coursework that doesn't are for a bucket that's not already filled of requirements okay at any rate the first version had us move
219from 65 elective credits up to 110 and to give context not so much for the board but the viewing public that I know is still up at what time is it almost 10:00 watching five credits is a course at a 4x4 block High School in a quarter so so each five credits so when we say you know we're going from 65 to 110 10 credits you can do the math on how many different five credit you know one quarter courses that equates to okay not trying to slow down here too much um we shift it to version two with the action team when I say we it's not Julie and I it's an action team that sat down and revised a recommendation based on the feedback that we'd gotten for about six weeks I think
220at any rate in version two as we continue to listen to stakeholders financial literacy like I mentioned before comes back on the required list and it stays there through all the iterations okay we came up with this concept of core electives where Wellness fine applied arts and World Language were each included and there's a requirement that 20 credits had to be earned from any combination of those three and then that got revised a little bit further so it was at least five credits in Wellness at least five in applied Arts fine applied arts and then World Language didn't which didn't have a required minimum so this version saw additional C coursework go up from the current 65 current electives right to 85 but that's down from 110 the other version that we've been floating around
221so we got feedback based on this version many other things staying the same and I'll go a little more depth on the higher education admission recommendations and how um that those recommendations align with all of these different versions We floated as we look at the last and final one because I want to really spend our time on what the proposal is the recommendation so this is the recommendation to the Board of Education um and so I'm going to slow down just a little bit and Orient us all to this on the left hand side of this slide are the current required coursework requirements right for pter school district on the right hand side of the slide is the coursework under the proposal that we're making to the board of education and as I walk through
222this a little bit you can see that language chart and and sorry let me back up a little bit on the far right hand column is the higher education admission recommendations those are developed from the Colorado Department of higher education they gathered information from Colorado universities and they come up with this list of recommended credits this does not mean that a student would will not be able to access or get into a four-year University in Colorado if they don't meet these it's just a recommendation for the system to have some shared understanding okay at any rate pter School District past and current you know proposal meets those higher education admission recommendations for language arts and science social studies and additional cour worker electives um in all versions right mathematics they recommend 40 we've had 30
223in the past and we're sticking with that 30 in this proposal so those subjects language arts math science are all staying fairly consistent from our past to our current recommendation social studies has just been shuffled around a little bit and really truthfully went from 25 required credits in the current current state to 30 and the state required by law that we identify a course where Holocaust material is taught and that we have identified that course we identif that course to be world history that's a choice pter School District makes that becomes then a required course going forward as of next well as of the future okay we had to we had to identify the course by 20 by next year which we've done at any rate there's a little bit of reshuffling of the social
224studies coursework requirements right so World Language or sorry world history is required US History which was still is um Civics was required still is required at the same level there's an additional um five credits of social studies classes that are required the meat of the conversation really comes down to these the the next couple pieces so financial literacy has been required currently and still is required okay Wellness we're recommending that it's a requirement at 10 credit hours okay find and applied Arts we're recommending at 10 credit hours and additional coursework is at 85 so when you think about what did that really buy us 20 credits which is four of those five credit courses you know one quarter classes in a block schedule 20 credits of of additional coursework above the 65 electus we currently
225have and it um changes it gets us in in sync with the requirements under social studies we added another piece down below of recommended additional coursework because we want to signal to our family community our counselors our teachers our students that World Language we're recommending students take 10 to 30 credits and that's very much based on what their goals are in learning that language and their post-secondary goals are to determine is it the 10 20 or 30 we're recommending the humanities classes at five credits geography at five economics at five and health or team choices at five but to be clear those are all recommendations they're not required IR ments for graduation Julie do you want to add anything to that walk through um yeah I would say number one I think geography is 10
226but I know my social studies people will will chime in if we don't correct that now so it is 10 recommended and we'll make that adjustment um but um the only other piece that I would say is um we did also um when we looked at moving from 110 to 85 credits um we did talk with um you know the work based learning and um Tanya alcarez who does a lot of our CTE programming and Community Partners to determine is 20 credits like is it is the bang work worth our buck right um is this enough to really make an impact and make space for students to take advantage of some of these opportunities and they felt like yes that would be so I think as we were moving forward with our revisions we we
227we felt we felt that 85 was acceptable um we certainly could go better um but that would be acceptable and going less was something we did not want to to engage in a conversation of in the adjustments in order to make space in that programming so yeah but okay yeah I don't mean to interrupt the flow um so the the parentheses I I Dwayne I'm not sure if you spoke to this so were you about to do that I can do that yeah yep yep we'll talk we're going to talk about that so we have our main recommendation and then we'll kind of talk about we do have a version two policy in the packet as well and no you're good you're fine um and so yeah can I take yep go ahead so the
228action team meets talks takes all the feedback and discusses right so the recommendation to the board right now is the in Black bold the 101085 additional coursework okay but um like Julie was saying there is a desire for maximum flexibility for students and so the furthest the action team is indicating that the furthest they would want to go with like increasing that flexibility would be to create 95 credits of flexibility right in additional coursework and the way you would get there is by reducing the requirements for fine and applied Arts to five and wellness to five I want to share with you all that as Julie and I have walked around and spent many many hours talking listening um with people that I feel that it is we're right in that zone of Landing in
229a good spot I think it's one of the reasons we didn't have a long list Community commenters tonight that would be staff who would would have been very upset with this option or with that option because as we walk through this process that the 101085 is probably the the clear safe palatable tractional like option in this District if we move toward that 5595 to create yet more flexibility in all honesty I think there'll be a little more push back and anxiety from the teachers and some of the departments in our system um they they can live with that but it's going to create a little more anxiety and stress and so that's what we're trying to signal and I would also say some of our Community Partners in the mental health um and wellness areas
230those private Community Partners um we've received Communications from the Fort Collins Department of Health um so I think they also would resonate that um you know they see a priority in the district honoring um some of that um which is also why we opted to put as a recommended course health or teen choices because that does really hit some of those core components um that would be good foundational skills but didn't want to call it out as a specific requirement that would prevent you from graduating high school and I think juliean unless you have anything else that you're thinking about that we should add that we are about there to open up for just conversation with you all and just Q&A does that sound right yep okay all right thank you so much um questions
231yes go ahead I just I want to thank you guys this is great work and really a testament to getting the community involved and getting that feedback uh when I heard financial literacy was universally pushed for when it was on the dock of being taken off that was that was that spoke to me because that is near dear to my heart I think there is no better way to avoid lifelong misery than to understand how finances work and things like that so um and I I love that our community spoke back and let us know how important Wellness was I think that's really important in today's society that we really emphasize that it is important not just you know exercise absolutely but also wellness and and learning those types of things and just from my
232own experience the art classes getting exposure to that and requiring exposure to that I think is really important because uh kids may not know that that's really where they want to go my own daughter that's absolutely what happened to her between freshman sophomore year and now that is her career graphic design so thank you for all that work I I'd love these recommendations thank you thank you we heard that's what we heard as well so anyone else yeah go ahead Jim just fantastic job in community comment I'll EO that and I trust your judgment judgment on the 101085 that sounds good awesome um can you just share how many credits are possible for a student to get in four years yeah that'd be great just oh yes that would be perfect especially for those watching
233still um but yes so every every um year you can earn 80 credits and so you can earn 320 credits over your four years if you were to take a full schedule of all all periods every every quarter of your high school career so yeah so our requirements of 240 still does have flexibility even beyond that thank you yeah go ahead Connor two questions really quick um The Wellness requirement 10 credits is that sexual education or no or is that gym class yeah that's a great question so in the wellness um in that category it is the physical education classes it is Health um which does have um it doesn't have sexual education it does have topics gosh drug awareness um it does have it does have information about STDs and how to be safe
234but it also has mental health um you know how to manage your stress your anxiety um you know so that that Health portion of it is still required it's not no it's a choice so in the wellness you pick 10 credits and there is a whole menu of classes also includes classes offered in family consumer Sciences so you could take nutrition you could take um excuse me culinary excuse me U food and nutrition and culinary you can also take teen choices which cover similar topics um and it's mostly like sexual violence and you know how do I how do I keep myself safe how do I make safe choices I'd say anything that's along those um mental health and social emotional um guidelines those are both kind of in Teen Health and teen choices and
235health but they don't have to take those classes it's still a choice which is what the the the case is currently too right the the 15 credits in the current case is not Health it can be all gym classes that's correct and it's it's 10 now but it's not Health it doesn't have to be it can be all PE classes it can be none it can be all in family consumer Sciences okay and as well as waivers for athletics and things like that second question I think the community has some uh concerns on uh the off-ramps for kids who get into a tract and they find out that it just isn't there can you explain a little bit how that's built in and how we have we have safeguards to ensure that that doesn't happen
236yeah I'd love to so when we say Pathways right and and I like four-year plans or Pathways it is not the case that a student has to sign up for a pathway and they start taking courses such that those courses wouldn't apply to General graduation requirements right there's tremendous amount of leeway and so in no way does a student getting into pathway take take an example like Advanced manufacturing and a student takes a class or two in advanced manufacturing and they decide that's not for me what a great thing to discover while you're still in high school right before you spent all the money and went to college somewhere or whatever and so those courses go into their additional cour work requirement right so those courses still count and they still were on track to
237take the math and the language arts and the social social studies that they needed to take to graduate so being on these Pathways in no way locks down a student I want to share this I heard from a couple um parents a concern is what about my student who doesn't know they want to go to college until they wake up one day they're a junior or they're a senior and they kind of realize hey I really do want to go to college which plan would they be better under our current graduation requirements or these proposed graduation requirements and the answer is clearly they are much better under these new proposed graduation requirements and the reason is a couple of the courses that are no longer required they're still available so students can choose to take
238them but those courses in particular are generally saved and taken during those Junior and senior years and those just aren't requirements and so you've got that space so a student might say I need a little more math or I need a little bit more language arts or I need a little bit more whatever maybe art my daughter also went off to a College of Art and Design she very much wanted to get take advantage of Rocky's amazing menu of options so it gives that student more flexibility to customize right before they launch and start paying some big bucks for that same exact training elsewhere that they can get for free and PSD so it is better for that student go ahead Kevin I just want to say thank you um I appreciate the creativity in
239looking at the problem through a lens of trying to solve this in a creative way but also having the humility to engage in that iterative process that you did and come back with a different recommendation than how this started yeah um and it shows that you were listening to the input there was there was a compromise made there um but it's it's it it I think it was very important to listen to that value statement because requirements are value statements and so putting our value statements in and focus on health and wellness I think it was a good move um but I just want to commend you for approaching it with through the lens of really graduating with options that's the really big bucket and then diving into it to present to us this thing
240um you should be really proud of the work you did thanks so I feel great and I've loved working with Julie on this project it's been great yeah go ahead Carolyn yeah and I want to ditto what everybody else has said about the great work that you've done and um and I want to thank the staff also that helped out in this work and your committees um I think personally for me having been on the board since 2014 and having been really concerned about our graduation requirements since like 2016 for me this feels really good it feels like a culmin culmination of of values that our students and our families have expressed to us about wanting to see a change in our in our graduation requirements because I think there were unintended consequences from the
241last time we changed our graduation requirements for our Ela students for our students with IEPs right we practically eliminated choice for them and I think that that that really for me raises up the whole Equity question even for this decision is and I noticed you said you were going to meet with some other people and I saw the list of the ones that you had up there and I hope some of the Committees that you're going to meet with are going to be edac and maybe cak as well we have with cak yeah we met with cak met with cak okay and the and the reason I want I I I want to hear their values and I want to hear if they have any concerns that there might be unintentional consequences here that we
242have looked at this with an equity lens right that this is a decision that's already had that Equity lens put on it and I just would like the community to hear that that yes we're thinking about this with an equity I so appreciate the feedback and um you know we we we started with our staff Equity Coalition um when we went to one of our community feedback session sessions we actually had a young gentleman who was in our high schools the only student that attended any of our sessions um that weren't you know a student advisory committee and he was from the the student Equity Coalition and he spoke to say hey like we would like can this come to we thought this was going to come to us and and we had heard maybe
243it was going to and and Dwayne and I we hadn't heard that we hadn't gotten an invite we didn't know when they meeting so reached out to Delia when we got back to say can we do this so we're working with her I'm not sure that if she wants to call a special meeting but we've got options to we're thinking of being able to do little little quick screencast maybe and give a get out a form for them electronically to give feedback um and then similarly with edac um and so that is um and we are on their agenda for next Thursday um 5:30 to 7:30 so we do appreciate that feedback um as we were not trying to like we were we were meticulously like what groups what groups what groups so um you
244know so we we needed to rely on everybody to kind of help tick our brains on like who who else do we need to talk host who we feel like we want to talk to or who wants to be you know heard from and so yeah I think I think at the end of the day we may have created a nice little Master list of if we do these sorts of iterative processes what are some of these groups that we want to make sure we have and so um so that may be a positive outcome that comes as a practice for us moving forward when we're getting feedback from you know different pieces that we need can I just add one thing because I know you're passionate about this and I know all of you
245are um and Julie had it on the slide that said you know showed which groups we were at but I you didn't verbalize this one but um language culture and Equity was one of our first stops so we went up and met with David aath and you know him and his people and the quality of their work and I know that their staff and it's different than we also need to go out to community members but that was one of our first stops same thing with um Dennis and his group and integrated services and then there were certain groups um that were most impacted we knew they would be over in John pasano shop of curriculum and instruction so we were really purposeful some of the very first groups that we got feedback to make
246sure that we were having that lens to make sure we were doing the right work for the kids that need us most quite frankly and I really I really appreciate that and I appreciate like the intentionality with which you guys are doing this work so much and and then Brian I have a challenge for you um we know that kids um pick up language best at a very young age and I think that World Language which needs to be pushed down into elementary school as an experience for our elementary children um I think all the studies are showing kids pick up language much better when they're in elementary school and that certainly is the European model right kids start language when they were in elementary school and uh so when we were talking about language
247being a requirement I mean kids pick up a love for language I think at much younger ages and and then it doesn't become a requirement it becomes you know a joy for them so I think as a as a as a system we need to be thinking about that message receiv okay that's great anything else I just want to Echo everybody else's um gratitude for this um the list the comprehensive list which people you um interacted with and took note from um I I do hope that that becomes sort of the Playbook you know that because I think that is just brilliant start with the people who are most affected start with the people who um you know have the most to to gain and see what uh what comes from that and I think
248pretty much every iteration that we are going to do from now on whether it's um you know this or something else um can follow that Playbook that you've established so thank you for that thanks yeah thank you yeah we appreciate all of your time we welcome any feedback before we come back on April 9th and uh excellent job well done thank you thank you all right so we will now move on to Executive session 10.1 legal advice can I get a motion I can go I move that the board enter executive session to receive legal advice on specific legal questions relating to Human Resources procedures specifically including procedures on hiring practices as authorized by CRS 26 24-6 424b individuals invited to join the board in the executive session are superintendent Brian Kingsley Chief officers Jeff
249con Jeff Connell Lauren hooton mateline Novi and Eric ju Savage and general counsel automatan can I get a second all right Kevin's the second um let's see Jill can you please call the vote Jim brokish hi Kristen Draper hi Connor Duffy hi Kevin havala hi Carolyn Reed hi Scott shanower hi Jessica Zamora hi motion passes 70 thank you so we will now convene in a closed session this is the last agenda item before adjournment at the conclusion of the executive session we will come back to this room to publicly adjourn the meeting the adjournment will be recorded but will not be televised so thank you all for coming tonight and enjoy the whatever's left of your evening good night and it is 10:21 p.m. e for