001e all right good evening thank you for I think are we on all right good evening and thank you for attending and joining us at the Board of Education meeting this evening um please go ahead and mute your cell phone watch anything that beuse buzzes or otherwise distracts um and today is Tuesday March 5th 2024 this meeting is now call to order at let's see 6:30 p.m. thank you um let's go ahead and do the Pledge of Allegiance if you would join me and standing all right thank you very much would any board members like to make changes to the agenda all right seeing none we will move on to recognitions and reports um Brian would you like to take on yes thank you very much this evening we are honored to recognize music Excellence
002across PSD so so so exciting leading our celebration is our chief Communications officer Miss meline Novi uh meline welcome thank you superintendent Kingsley members of the board cabinet everyone gathered here and for those who are watching on our live stream um it is our distinct pleasure to be able to recognize incredible students staff and Community Partners at each of our board meetings it's one of our favorite things to do in this space and we are thrilled to be able to continue that this evening um to help us do that I would like to welcome my colleague Dr Melissa flail our curriculum facilitator for Performing Arts who will speak about each of the incredible groups being recognized this evening um and then I would welcome um to join me um directors havala and uh Draper um
003and then we will move through this night's celebration good evening um as mateline said I'm Melissa flil I'm the curriculum facilitator for Performing Arts I know many of our U previous and continuing board members but it's nice to see our new board members I haven't had the chance to speak with you yet um so we are really grateful always for the board for uh their history of supporting our performing arts and um whether that be through policy through funding but especially through attending our events our concerts I know that you get to a lot of those things and we really appreciate it um and March is music and our schools month from our National Organization so it's a perfect time to be doing these recognitions so um our cmea performing ensembles the Colorado music educators
004Association cmea has a state conference and by audition selects the very best performing ensembles who apply each year so it's a little bit like going to a state championship in sports um to give it an equivalent so these groups are really above and beyond um and I want to recognize not only our teachers here tonight but all of our music teachers across the district who do so much often with so little and provid so many opportunities for our students um as I talk about each group a little bit um I want to recognize that we have a few of our teachers who are not able to be here tonight because they are at musical rehearsal with their students or their own concert we have one who may get here and may not so um just
005keeping in mind that that is because they are offering such spaces of belonging and connection to our students along with allowing them to graduate with options with those skills of collaboration of being responsible and showing up and being part of a team so they are doing all of those things that align with our district priorities um have our printed program which I always want to thank our Communications team meline and especially Brad Randall who does the graphic design for us um this year we shortened the actual printed program a bit and included some QR codes so I would encourage you to take a look at those extended programs when you have the chance um and see some of the program notes some of the comments um really really great verbiage from our teachers so what
006I'm going to do for our teachers and students who are here tonight is just talk a little bit about each group but not make you stand here the whole time and then we'll have everybody up um one at a time at the end to receive their certificates and a full group photo so I want to talk about the groups in the order that they performed at the ca um conference just to avoid any like choosing favorites so um Fong win with our bolts jazz band was the first group to perform it was a really amazing performance something that especially struck me about this performance was the way that Fong featured so many students on solos and if you scan that QR code and read his program notes you'll see that was intentional that that's a
007way of involving everyone of really highlighting and encouraging students in their ability Fong also is a professional gigging musician and plays with the choice City 7 and he brought those musicians to play the closing number with his students and then they all soloed together and improvised together which is basically you're like speaking in music if you compare it with our English language literacy so um and then they all came down the aisle and it was a huge party and a wonderful amazing concert so that was the bolts jazz band so we will be calling them up in a little bit um the second group to perform was um the Canard symphonic band under the direction of Mike Perez my own child happens to be in that band that was a really fun experience for me
008and I got to hear them throughout the year and they've played excellent concerts every time but it improved all the way um every single time and really peaked at the cmea conference they had some great repertoire a lot of guest conductors which was a really amazing way to give the students different experiences and they played a fabulous concert as well um and the students just sounded really wonderful as an ensemble and there was a great connection with the Fossil Ridge program both in the concerts here and in the concert at cmea where my child who's going on to Fossil Ridge High School already feels a little bit connected to that program so that was a wonderful thing to do as well which leads me into our next performing Ensemble which was the Fossil Ridge wind
009Symphony Under the direction of Aaron Herman and his assistant band director at the school is Hannah Peterson and she conducted one of the pieces so they also had an amazing performance really in tune listening to each other I was really impressed such interesting repertoire it was such an enjoyable concert they had a fabulous clarinet solo feature they were performing a world premiere so these are topnotch experiences for our students um and LU for me I had gotten to hear their concert here in town because I had to leave a little bit early to get to the pter high school performance which overlapped so um that just gives you a sense of kind of the Excellence that we have going on and um so I'm so excited to have my kiddo go on and be in
010the bands at fossil Rich high school and they just did an amazing performance um pter High School right next door to us here um had an excellent choir perform they are called the impal aonics their director is David L owski he's one who may pop in but they have a concert tonight and he thought he might be close enough so we will see um their music was beautiful very expressive um they performed a piece called shore on this shining night that's always been one of my favorites and um one of the cmea representatives commented to me and I completely agree with was that David chose for his choir challenging repertoire but that was also accessible that other people in the audience could see it and think oh I could do that with my choir and
011that's a lot of what people look for at cmea so it was beautifully done in that regard and a really fabulous um performance myself and also our teacher from Lincoln Middle School were very touched to see some of our former students performing in that choir as well so that's a nice connection that we were able to have um the next choir that performed was 10th base an AC capella group from also Fossil Ridge High School under the direction of Bri McCormack and John Garner and they're not here tonight because they're at musical rehearsal for their upcoming performance of into the woods U but they had such an amazing contemporary Acappella performance I would say they were on par with professional AC capella groups I've heard um the visual aspects of the performance were amazing the
012singing was so well tuned and it just gave such an impression and it was a really exciting performance a highlight of the conference and then the final group to perform had a tough time slot Saturday at 11:00 a.m. when a lot of people are heading out of the conference um that is the sirens from Rocky Mountain High School they are um treble vocal Jazz and um also their director is at rehearsals for foot loose that's Elizabeth hoer so we have a few students here tonight to represent them and they also were amazing it's kind of rare to hear treble vocal Jazz these days and they had some really interesting repertoire I loved the way the concert was really student Le the way that the students interacted with each other um I had a former student
013in that group as well so that was really fun to see and Julia Kirkwood for anyone who's who's wondering and um just a fabulous sense of Harmony vowel alignment stylistic choices and just a great sendoff for the conference attendees so I just wanted to summarize those performances for anyone who wasn't able to be there and just take a little bit of time to recognize those efforts and so now I'll call each director up and if you have students with you they can walk up as well and be recognized and then we have your certificates here so with bolts jazz band Fong win [Applause] and then go ahead and stay because we'll do a picture yeah yeah perfect um with the Canard symphonic band Mike Perez and the students representing the symphonic band with a Fossil
014Ridge wind Symphony Aaron Herman and he is also going to accept the certificate for the Fossil Ridge High School 10th base on behalf of Bri McCormick and John Garner I don't see David lowski from pter high school in palaic so I am going to call up Corey Hixon to accept on his behalf the assistant principal and IB coordinator at pter and then because Elizabeth hoer couldn't be here for Rocky Mountain High School Sirens we have Amelia schoolie and Ella Swanson come on [Applause] up yeah I actually would love to say something um I just want to first of all congratulate all of you who um made it to cmea and um all of the wonderful per performances that you did there but I also want to let you know that music is something that you
015will take with you forever and so whether you went to cmea or whether you're just singing in the shower you know it's one of those things that it will stick with you forever um and I will just let you know that everything I know I learned in band camp so and I just like to say I should have in hindsight and hindsight I should have made um acceptance of these certificates condition upon you bringing instruments to the this meeting next time all right ahe and'll a [Applause] photo it's a second [Music] time e that's okay thank you all for joining us we so appreciate it and with that we conclude recognitions for the evening thank you so much and thank you all for coming tonight I really appreciate it um and I know half of
016you are now running off to other rehearsals right so have fun all right so next is our action items uh 5.1 resolution and support of women's History Month can I get a motion okay Jess I move that the board approve the resolution in support of women's History Month March 2024 can I get a second Jim thank you and would anybody like to read the resolution I all right Jess is gonna read that for us whereas in 1987 the national women's history project now known as the national women's history Alliance successfully advocated the month of March become known as National Women's History Month to celebrate women of every age race class and ethnic background and whereas women of of every age race class and ethnic background have made historic contributions to the growth and strength of
017our society in countless recorded and unrecorded ways and whereas women of every age race class and ethnic background have played and continued to play critical economic cultural and social roles in every sphere of Life of our community by constituting a significant portion of the volunteer and labor force working inside and outside of the home and whereas women of every age race class and ethnic background have been integral in the Art and Science of healing not only our bodies but our hearts and Minds as well bringing us hope in times of immense suffering and whereas despite these contributions and Milestones the role of women in history has been consistently overlooked and undervalued in art literature Education Health labor government and business whereas the pter School District Board of Education Administration and staff are committed to making
018pter School District an equitable and inclusive community for students families and staff and we recognize there is more work ahead of us diversity equity and inclusion are fundamental values in po pter school district and we are committed to ensuring that all students families and staff are valued seen heard and empowered now therefore be it resolved the pter School District board of education does hereby proclaim the month of March 2024 as women's History Month in pter school district and recognize the importance of women's History Month as an opportunity to ensure sure that the extraordinary and inspiring contributions of women of every age race class and ethnic background are included in our curriculum and instructural instructional programs wonderful thank you and superintendent Kingsley I think we have somebody who's here to uh introduce and talk about this
019right yeah we sure do uh joining us this evening to speak about women's history month is our diversity equity and inclusion coordinator Miss Delia mahany Delia welcome that's new I don't know if anybody's clapped before hi Delia mahen she her pronouns and thank you superintendent Kingsley Board of Education it is my honor and privilege to introduced tonight's speakers for women's history month they are both members of our recently formed um student Equity Coalition and amazing contributors to that group and I think some of you met them on last last Thursday and I just want to tell you that they are like Fierce female freshmen like like we are in good we are in good company right now with these two young women who are about to speak so it is my privilege to introduce Lily
020galbreth from Fort Collins High School who will be speaking first and Olivia Anderson from pter high school who will follow her yay hi my name is Lily galbreth my pronouns are she her and I'm a freshman at Fort Collins High School thank you for having me here today I'm today is so amazing because I'm because I get to talk about something I'm extremely passionate about to a group of people I hope feel the same I'm here to talk about women's history month and how we need to support young women in our community to learn more about the amazing advancements women have made throughout history to begin I want to talk about women I admire and look up to I want to first start with Jane Austin she's the author of one of my favorite books
021turned into a movie Pride and Prejudice I look up to her because she was in a male-dominated Workforce and she has books that are and still really important to our community and our and relevant in today's society as much as any male author next I want to talk about my mom I'm really I look up to her a lot because she's such an amazing example for for me and my sister um next I want to talk about the advancements women have contributed in the world for example we learn more about radium and po polonium to help with cancer research from double Nobel Prize winner Marie Kiri finally I want to talk about the school bathrooms I want to know why I want to know why we don't have feminine hygiene products in our school's bathrooms
022this is a very upset this is very upsetting because we don't have because we don't have tools that every woman should have access to in the environment that Fosters our productivity it's hard to focus on striving for achieve to achieve our goals when we have to when we have to be scared of having an accident during class the cost of a period product the cost of perioded products has skyrocketed to paying $20 per cycle and it would help students to have access access to these products at school one last thing to worry about during a day that will help us tremendously thank you for listening and I hope this information helps our district become better informed and more about and care more about women in the in the PSD School District good evening thank you
023for H thank you for having me here tonight my name is Olivia Anderson I use she her pronouns and I'm a freshman at pter high school when Delia first introduced the opportunity to speak here I jumped at the idea you see I'm on pter speech and debate team that is I'm the only one on the team but still my event in speech and debate is o or original oratory basically I stand on a stage Sim similar to this and I talk for 10 minutes straight about whatever I want it's a dream come true my oo is about why we should abolish the word lady I I know that's a pretty controversial UNF frankly shocking idea so it takes a full 10 minutes to explain therefore with only 3 or 4 minutes of your time I
024had no idea what I wanted to say so as any teenage girl would do I asked my friends for advice I asked them what they would say if they were the ones talking to you at first they had no ideas none a bit of this is because they're ninth graders and I put them on the spot I do admit some of it is that PSD is doing pretty well when it comes to combating Everyday sexism but some of it is that historically women and young girls have been told that their voices don't matter that what they have to say is wrong anyway there I was sitting in my doubt asking why did I sign up for this and yelling pleading and my brain to come up with something just something so I wouldn't be standing
025here fumbling over my words no ideas came but that's when the responses from my friends came flooding in they had all of these great ways we could make change and celebrate women's history month we can make an announcement over the loudspeaker put it in the PHS news or put it on the slideshows in our hallways we could also do more meaningful important things like improving safe to tell tell so you don't feel like you're putting lots of personal information into a random robot or schools could provide menstrual products like Lily said in all bathrooms all bathrooms not just girls bathrooms we can make sure that every school has a feminist club we could also do all of this and more with so many great ideas so I'm here today thankful that you are recognizing all
026of the wonderful women who have come before us those we know of and those who remain nameless I'm also here thankful that you are recognizing the work that still needs to be done but I'm also here to say that we as teenagers and young adults are ready we see the issues in our schools and want to fix them that we are watching you watching your triumphs and mistakes and watching you persevere watching you knowing you are making the decisions that are shaping our lives so while we may not be ready to Bear the burden all on our own we can work in Partnership to create a more inclusive better future and when the time is right you can safely pass the torch on to strong young women leaders in pter school district thank [Applause] you
027I know I'm speechless um I got to tell you the first thing that came to my mind was strong women may you know them may you raise them good job moms and may you be them and you are so thank you so much for coming and speaking tonight um absolutely amazing and I am so confident to pass the torch on it is you're you're going to rock it there's just no doubt in my mind does anybody else have anything they would like to say before we call the vote all Brian yes sorry oh wow I I I'm moved by your comments and I think what I want to thank both of you Olivia and Lily like you're not just here advocating for for women in PSD but you're also advocating for yourself and you bring
028such talent to our school system Olivia as a speech and debater Lily I've heard you sing before the different Artistry that you all bring is just incredible and I think what's significant about what you said here tonight is you honored and celebrated where this district is but you appropriately push us to where we need to be and I just want to acknowledge that heard you and I'm going to work with staff to try to figure out how we can work in quick and short order to do some of the things that you've challenged us to do so I just want to say thank you very much for your leadership all right Jill can you call the vote Jim brokish hi Kristen Draper hi Connor Duffy hi Kevin havalda I Carolyn Reed hi Scott shanower I
029Jessica Zamora I motion passes 70 excellent thank you can we get a [Applause] picture for you're becoming fam here Olivia it's a pleasure to meet you thank you all right thank you so much for coming tonight and running off to another rehearsal okay all right moving on to 5 point2 resolution to support of neur diversity week can I get a motion I move the board approved the resolution in support of neurodiversity week March 18th to 24th 2024 and can I get a second Carolyn all right and Kevin I believe you wanted to read this all right ahead thank you this one's near and dear to my heart whereas neurodiversity refers to the concept the neurological variations in the human brain are natural and is common for people to have different strengths and to find different
030things things challenging and that these differences should be viewed as strengths and as added value to our school culture and whereas neurodiversity can be used to describe an aspect of people on the autis autism spectrum those with ADHD and learning and developmental disabilities like dyslexia dyspraxia discala and tette syndrome and whereas neurodiversity may impact the way people think learn communicate and perceive the world around them and whereas many individuals with neurodiversity experience challenges not caused by their neurod divice thinking but are marginalized by soci societal barriers that cause social isolation inequity and a lack of accommodation for differences in cognition and behavior in schools and workplaces and whereas it is acknowledged that the school environment must be accessible to everyone and appropriate actions must be taken to ensure our students staff and families who identify
031as neurodiverse are able to fully participate in their their school community and their neurodiverse thinking and actions are seen as an addition that enhances our culture now therefore be it resolved that the pter School District board of education does hereby Proclaim March 18th through 24th 2024 as neurodiversity week in pter school district we recognize the importance of neurodiversity week as an opportunity to acknowledge societal challenges individuals with neurodiversity face the Board of Education encourages students staff and the community to celebrate and support the strengths of neurodiversity and reflect on how we can work together to create a more inclusive environment for everyone approved and adopted this fifth day of March 2024 thank you very much Kevin and Brian we' have we have somebody who talk about uh joining us this evening to speak to neurodiversity
032week is our integrated Services coach Aaron Coy welcome [Applause] Aaron thank you and good evening it is my pleasure to introduce a student from Timnath Middle School her name is Stella Keaton and she's here to talk about [Applause] neurodiversity hi my name is Stella I am 13 yeah almost 14 almost [Music] forgot I am a seventh grader at Tim M midle high school I have neuro diverse I have a disability I have a disability called William syndrome William syndrome is a genetic Del of c26 28 there are about 30,000 30,000 people with Will syndrome in the United States I don't get this it's okay I'm nervous you're okay you're doing great I have William I have William syndrome but I learn I learn like people who have dlex who have dyslexia dulia discal Oria or
033disg gravia good job wow sounds like loud sounds like fireworms or people screaming can bother me I actually learn things I actually learn things better with music I love taking Spanish playing the flute and seeing the star spam Banner at the s games I Lov being a Tim was finished you're doing great it is okay to learn it's okay you're okay it's okay to learn different write differently differently I learned from my peers learn from me I want to go to college have have a job like my friends I know I want people to know about Willam syndrome thank you to my my teachers Paras my classmates friends principles tutors and parents yeah parents parents thank you thank you kind of scared we'll see if they're going to say anything to us let's see Stella
034what a wonderful job you just did thank you so much for sharing so much of you um maybe someday we can play flute together that would be fun I play the flute cuz I started when I was in sixth grade awesome y so I would love that yeah thank you so much does anybody else want to have any have anything they want to share go ahead Kevin I just want to say thank you for sharing yourself with us tonight and I really appreciate appreciate you and The Bravery of speaking to this room thank you so much yeah I know you said you were nervous but you rocked it very few of our presenters come with PowerPoints so you definitely like took it up a notch well done thank you for coming and sharing your experience
035and all the wonderful things that you do and that you enjoy about your school and just your experience generally yeah go ahead Brian yeah hey Stella I I'm Brian I'm your superintendent and I am so glad that you love to be a timoth cub I am so glad that you are here tonight to share a little bit about you um and I want you to know that we have some things in common I like to sing I love music and I don't like when people yell at me either so why why we should talk offline about that uh but that's not appropriate because sometimes I hear in myol and it just that sometimes that when it when kids being to love the the principles yells at them yells at the kids but they did well
036I will talk to them about that but I'm is it okay if we come over and celebrate with you and take a picture with you yay all right thank you so much we do need to call the vote first so let's go ahead and do that quick vote go ahead Jo Jim broke it I Kristen Draper hi Connor Duffy hi Kevin havala hi Carolyn Reed hi Scott shanower hi Jessica Zamora hi motion passes 70 you feel good you're finished reading yeah here we to step over here thank you Stella I would like picture [Applause] good all right thank you so much saah for coming and sharing today and I hope you have a nice relaxing evening we'll see you later bye thank you and now we'll move on to 6.0 the superintendent report superintendent Kingsley
037will now make remarks to the board of education and to the community thank you yeah thank you I I think Stella Olivia and Lily have convinced me to change the entire order of my address tonight um it's just absolutely incredible to celebrate our students their identities who they are and listen to the push that they provide us to be better in terms of Servants of what their needs are uh just really proud to be a part of it um the range of different things that are happening across the system are so incredible I know that all of us know that and good evening by the way um you know just in the past two weeks I've had an opportunity to celebrate students here walked up the hill to pter high school and saw skills USA
038medals and Welding competition where our students were competing with other school districts on uh different various projects we had an opportunity uh yesterday uh I had a chance to go over to tolli elementary school a school I continue amongst all of our others to be a champion for uh under the leadership of Christine Hendricks the just the incredible staff in student body there is so so amazing uh I'm hopeful everybody has a chance to know that right now it's read Across America week and I want to give a special shout out to our one of our kindergarten teachers she's a Superhero Liz uh boek who had an opportunity to invite me into her kindergarten class and I think they may have snuck a couple first graders in there too it was a really really big
039group of students and I had a chance to read two books to them and they were just such a pleasure to be around um they were joyful they were curious they were open-minded they were incredibly eager and attentive and wanting to ask me questions super well behaved um and just want to thank the partnership and the trust of our families who send uh their students to to tolli uh there was another classroom I had a chance to go to too and I think it's uh important to celebrate instruction great instruction a master teacher Haley Alexander fifth grade teacher at tlli elementary elementary school second year in PSD moved here uh from Tennessee and I saw her uh conduct a math lesson and what was incredibly amazing about Haley was how she interacted with her students
040I told her it was simply magical she had the opportunity to work with her students to make their thinking visible that's what our teachers do how they were she was asking them questions she was making sure that they were having opportunities to articulate how they were thinking they had pictoral representations of how they were processing different things to meet different needs and what made it magical is not how she was just extracting their thoughts and their heart but it was an incredibly affirming and nurturing environment where students were celebrating each other as they had a chance to participate it wasn't about getting the right answer it was simply about engaging and Having the courage to share what you were thinking and regardless of whatever you were processing and whether it was right answer or wrong
041answer they were encouraging each other as a whole group so you felt individually rewarded but you also felt like you were some you were part of something bigger than yourself and I just want to thank Haley for her incredible instruction and allowing me into her classroom uh I also want to just say too for all of the different schools that were celebrated at cmea there's also an Honor Choir ceremony tomorrow for our Elementary and Middle School uh honor choirs at the Lincoln Center at 700 p.m. I'm really excited about having a chance to go to that and I think there was a special plug that uh Dr FL made but uh if you have a chance Rocky Mountain High School is having their uh performance called Foot Loose uh this weekend too and if you
042get a chance I'll be there Friday night at 7 pm and just can't be more proud of all of the great instructors and Par professionals and staff members and leaders who are making these events possible for our students to thrive and to see themselves you know today's uh a unique day not just in terms of celebrating celebrating our students uh but it's also super Tuesday and I say that not to get political I say it to for us to just take a quick second to take a breath and remind ourselves how much our voices matter how much our actions matter and how much results matter and I share this with you as like a kind of a call to action and a celebration of our District's efforts to be inclusive and engaging with various community
043members in really important transformative work that we move that we have in front of us moving forward as all of us know our District's facilities planning steering committee is super hard at work in fact they met uh again tonight and they're working to put together possible scenarios for boundary modifications school consolidations and educational program CH changes across the district not an easy task as we all know the committee is going to share its possible scenarios publicly and ask for Community feedback at a series of listening sessions starting later this month on March 18th I would really like to ask the community to stay engaged in that effort and I want to thank the planning committee and the steering committee for doing such incredible work I also want to shout out to the community that there
044you know not shout out you but I want to inform you that there will be a virtual option in the schedule to support those who are unable to attend an in-person session and separate from all of the listening sessions that the committee is hosting you all as the Board of Education will also host two additional listening sessions on April 16th and June 4th to make sure that you are hearing directly from the community in this work all of this information is readily available on our District's longrange planning web section and members of the board as a part of this governance team I want to thank you for your leadership and the high level of Engagement that you're committed to with our community I think that's what this is about that's what our district is about
045is leading with our values and many of you and hopefully all of us remember that when we had an opportunity to orient and ground ourselves in our District's Dei Equity framework one of our leading principles one of our leading values that that work centers on is ensuring that we focus on inclusion by providing meaningful access to District programs and activities that doesn't just start with extracurriculars it starts by making sure students get to school every single day safely and that's why I'm really excited that tonight we will begin to talk about again our Bell time adjustment that we will be making a recommendation to all of you and I know that's not an easy task you know the realities that we're facing across our transportation department are real they're valid we have incredible Staffing challenges
046where it is sometimes very very close for us to not be able to deliver on the service that we know that our families count on especially the 9,000 students who ride a bus each and every day currently the ranges of our start times are unstructured we also know that we can be better Financial stewards as leaders of the school system we want to make sure that students don't just get to school but they get there safely and they have the same driver that they can create and cultivate a meaningful relationship this is an equity discussion that we're going to have tonight and members of the board and members of the community I also want to share with you that this is one step forward the end game for my from my perspective as the superintendent
047is not to fine-tune our bell times while I think that is necessary what we should be prioritizing is how do we get from where we currently are knowing we're in a system where one out of every three families is participating in a choice school but also recognizing that every family does not have the luxury or the resource to drive their children to a choice school but wants to in some instances the end game is how do we provide robust Transportation Systems to all of our schools especially our choice schools to our entire districts today we are proposing a step forward but I am hopeful that it is not the end of the conversation because we have a lot more work to do and I'm grateful for everybody who participated in our survey recently um taking
048the time to share your thoughts by emailing us it's really really important that we're paying attention and I'm hopeful that you see your sentiment and your values in our present ation that we will be bringing to the board and to the community tonight I also want to say in name that we recognize the potential change any change it's not easy and that adjustments to Bell schedules impact not just our children but they impact our families and they impact our employers and employees and that's not insignificant and we also you know in the spirit of that look forward to a very robust conversation tonight and I want to close you know one of the things that you have charged me to prioritize is staying focused on our Core Business and another discussion we're going to have
049this evening is about our de 1.0 monitoring report which just does just that it tells us how we're doing where we're succeeding and where we're not and we need to begin to have exp explanations about what we're doing about that and so I'm really excited that Dr Schmid will present the first of a two-part update on our District's data showing where we are doing well and where we can continue to improve so we are supporting all students and we will continue to show that our data is continuing to Trend as a high performing District we are outperforming other districts across the state Across the Nation but it's still not good enough we can be better and we will do better but we must do it in partnership with people not to people and that's why
050the significance of our strategic plan our uips and all of our conversations and collaboration from teachers to par professionals to school and District leaders is so fundamentally important and I'm really excited about what we're focused on as a governance team tonight so that concludes my comments and I just want to say thank you again for the opportunity to engage this community I'm grateful for the opportunity thank you so much and yes we will have a vigorous discussion I'm quite sure later so stay tuned um right now the this is the community comment portion um of the board meeting uh 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 personality or Personnel matters please keep your concerns and comments
051focused 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 is said or with the description or interpretation of events as presented by any speaker further even if some remarks may be factually inaccurate we generally choose not to respond or correct the record here because formal board meetings are not the time or place for back and forth dialogue as we begin this community comment section let us model for our entire Community how to listen and how to inter act respectfully even with those with whom we disagree for we all have a student's best interests at heart so this opportunity is for public comments from members of the community who registered
052to speak by the designated deadline those people will be called on to make remarks in the order that they signed up each speaker will be allowed three minutes to address the board and first up we have Danny Lawrence welcome neurodiversity is said to affect 15 to 20% of the population it's estimated that 12% of the nation's School AG children are on the ASD Spectrum 1 in 36 children are autistic which is up from 1 in 44 in 2022 at that time PSC was only identifying one in 88 or 50% of its autistic student population these statistics were last provided on April 12th 2022 by Sarah blue being it that PSD in under identifies overall all of its disability population at 9% which fall short of the national and state average understand that that 9% hasn't
053moved in PSD since 2019 additionally another 32% of students which is that's a low estimate have some other neurod Divergent di diagnosis of Dyslexia tourettes ADHD Etc this is a problem that deserves a hell of a lot more action than an acknowledgment the resolution language itself states that these students are marginalized by social barriers a lack of equity and a lack of educational accommodation since last may I have sat in this board space patiently waiting for a response regarding the abuse of non-speaking autistic children and I need you as representatives to ask growth mindset questions the public doesn't get to see if this resolution means anything to you and here are a few questions I would consider starting with number one what did we learn about the district's neurodiversity systems from the Zella abuse tragedy
054number two in the wake of zanella and the trauma inflicted how did the district educate IT staff not only to be more trauma informed in teaching but how to notice the signs of trauma in these victims and in future victims number three I have seen via Kora request and offer for trauma counseling to teachers whose students were abused by zanella were the families and students affected and the students who witnessed this on the bus offered that same opportunity and number four since 2022 the district has maintained that auditing 1% of its IEPs is acceptable the recommendation this fall was to raise that to a whopping 2.3% how will increasing the audit data 1.3% on an underidentified population that nationally increased 8% in the past 23 months give the district the data that you need to
055fulfill the resolution you just passed tonight it's a start these questions and it's better than nothing which is what words on paper must feel like to someone like Sabrina consider developing an action item please finally I wanted to express that giving dyslexia presentations to yourself and to a cak committee that you didn't invite the mom to who is calling dyslexia a crisis and PSD isn't just disrespectful but I find it rule you didn't have to give Anna a platform to to present or speak just an opportunity to hear how the district was addressing her concern it's worth questioning why staff didn't want her to be included finally parents got tired of waiting for a seat at your table so we've been holding parent advisory committee meetings ourselves and our next is March 20 or March
05624th and we would welcome your participation thank [Applause] you thank you so much next up we have have Anna lietta welcome good evening I want to take this opportunity to Circle back to the resolution tonight geared towards supporting neurodiversity tonight you read the following which explicitly included dyslexia many individuals with neurodiversity experience challenges not caused by their neurodiverse thinking but are marginalized by societal barriers that cause social isolation inequity and a lack of accommodation for differences in recognition and behavior in schools and workplaces the school environment must be accessible to everyone and appropriate actions must be taken to ensure students staff and families who identify as narod diverse are able to fully participate in their school community and their neurodiverse thinking and actions are seen as an addition that enhances our culture the pter School
057District Board of Education recognizes the importance of neurodiversity week as an opportunity to acknowledge the societal challenges neurodiverse individuals face the Board of Education encourages students staff and the community to celebrate and support the strengths and neuro of neurodiversity and reflect on how we can work together to create a more inclusive environment for everyone give me a second all right given that my repeated efforts to Advocate on behalf of dyslexic students last year's at last year's engagement sessions yielded no tangible change going into this school I have prior Priti coming to every board meeting starting October 24th to Advocate on behalf of this particular group of neurodiverse students I have done this because our District's dyslexic children are suffering daily and families are exasperated in this current school year to this day dyslexia continues to
058remain intentionally unrecognized unidentified and unremediated in PSD at the board meeting four weeks ago tonight I asked the district stakeholders for an opportunity uh opportunity that would allow them to hear our stories and to gain a better understanding of why I'm standing here instead of reaching out to coordinate an opportunity to listen the district's response has been to Double Down behind the scenes to convince stakeholders that there is nothing to worry about here and that dyslexics needs are being take care taken care of that any stories that we may have to share are irrelevant and unnecessary ponder that response to my request please how much easier would it have been just to give us one single meeting to talk and to to be heard dyslexics and PSD are the epitome of a marginalized group of
059neuro diverse students and PSD leadership is actively working over time to keep it that way and each of you sitting on the board and cabinet have been privy to this over this past month if you want to reflect on how you can work together to create a more inclusive environment for dyslexic Learners please start with taking the time to hear our stories tonight's resolution reeks of hypocrisy talk is cheap words alone are not enough meaningful actions are needed to prove them thank you next up we have Joe Dixon welcome my name is Joe Dixon I am the PSD District curriculum coordinator for K12 health and physical education um I am honored to lead our group of of outstanding health and physical Educators tonight I'm here to speak on graduation credits specifically On Wellness education uh
060being potentially removed from the required graduation credits and put into an electives bucket which in turn would mean some students would receive zero Wellness education throughout their High School career I do want to thank you for the support that you give to students and staff and PSD I also believe that we have the shared vision and value of ensuring all students in the district have the same level of Engagement and personalized success I also thank you for supporting the many emails that you have received in honor of Wellness education 15 credits of Wellness education is the current requirement in PSD and is not the only way out of our decline of Health but it certainly is not the problem comparison districts of St B St brain Boulder Valley and Cherry Creek all maintain a health
061class requirement with additional Wellness credits with equal or higher graduation rates this is not the trend around the state or country nor would I nor would I recommend us to go to zero It is Well documented that living an active and healthy lifestyle has a direct correlation to academic success and students have a much higher chance of becoming a well adjusted adult into society and the workforce every person in this room has thought about something regarding their health today what you ate how much you moved your medications that is all Wellness education we see students that need mental health skills basic health skills basic first aid skills and they need the skills to deter determine appropriate Sexual Health decisions and sexual health education how to set goals and how to build relationships with others we
062have a mental health and physical fitness epidemic that is sweeping our country and we are proposing here to cut Wellness education from a curricular standpoint what do we want students to know and be able to do how does PSD plan to address the state standards in health and physical education if we have some students that will never take a wellness ed class we are proud of Wellness education we want stud students to be able to move correctly to participate for a lifetime to be able to train themsel and train others to be a fair and loving and fit human and value movement physical education today is so much more than what any of us had one of our strategic plans is mental health and belonging and one of the ways we measure success with this
063is with our ke healthy kids Colorado survey some of the results from right here in Lara County regarding mental health 26% of Youth felt their stress was unmanageable 41.5% in larer County experienced feelings of depression in the past year health and physical education make this better for kids I just witnessed jeie Morgan at pter high school and Taylor Ania at Rocky Mountain High School just last week teaching yoga and Stress Management not that many days ago that is Lifetime Wellness education sexual health and dating I'm sorry you're gonna need to wrap that up thank you um so much uh under the proposed requirement students would have 165 credits of choice meaning that over the two years of the high school students career would be filled with students Choice our stakeholders and Community Partners deserve to
064be a part of this and they are the ones that support PSD and our students thank you I'm going to have to catch you up there I'm so sorry thank you thank you yep thanks for thanks for speaking next up we have Lisa Paulson welcome Lisa not here okay thank you um next up we have Jim wein Brunner welcome 11 years old I remember when this was the age that kids learn teamwork on the soccer field the age to join a middle school robotics team or a year to develop musical Talent with piano lessons sadly now 11 years old is a dreadful deadline imposed on pter parents the state of Colorado healthy kids Colorado survey used in pter school schs Point Blank asks 11-year-old kids are you transgender simply presenting this question implies that pter
065schools has already taught 11-year-olds the concept that some people describe themselves as transgender when their sex at Birth does not match the way they feel or think about their gender otherwise the question would be completely out of blue and inappropriate parents need to have already discussed with their children before age 11 that they are created in God's image that that God created them a boy or a girl that God does not make mistakes parents need to have already taught their precious daughter that she is not a boy trapped in a girl's body simply because she likes to climb tree trees gone is a day when boys could be boys and gradually discover that the same girls who once had cies are now developing very attractive curves parents are now obligated to awkwardly teach their young
066children from a faith-based perspective about gender transgender gay two-spirit bisexual pansexual asexual and other invented gender identities otherwise their child's beliefs regarding these new found genders May reflect the lgbtq qia plus advocacy within the pter schools kids our kids have suffered significant academic losses because of covid lockdowns and masking why would you take one single minute of valuable academic time to present the newest gender identities from got to be careful on this lgbtqq I AA p2s plus Advocates thanks for listening thank you next up we have Sabrina herck welcome I really hope some parent or student asked for the neurodiversity week resolution because I directly asked for the opposite it let's start with a brief summary of events that have happened since last year's resolution at the end of May 2023 it came out that
067Tyler's and Ella had been abusing 11 autistic children including my 9-year-old daughter that parents and staff alike had complained about him and been ignored the first footage of my daughter's abuse was for March 29th two days after last year's neurodiversity week ended and Danny no we didn't get counseling we got sent to kayak also at the end of mate Dennis rasad sent out an email essentially saying saying Tyler's gone nothing needs to change in June 2023 public commenters got a formatting error if they tried to put Tyler's and Ella as their comment Topic in August 2023 the board asked casby to lobby for Kora changes which has resulted in a bill that would allow PSD to label concern parents vexatious fall of 2023 parents reported the new complaints process doesn't work and Jeff Connell told
068the committee he doesn't want to change policy due to the blatant abuse of 11 neurode Divergent students January of 24 I learned a friend's ADHD stepson is being bullied by classmates and his second grade teacher and No One Compares no one cares when his parents complain in February of 2024 Dany reported blatant retaliation for her demands that PSD acknowledge her son's rights three days later rasad announced he's totally been planning to retire since December LOL just forgot to mention that and just and a few days later Danny was told PSD that was told by PSD they really wanted her son at their next IEP meeting and when she agreed they said cool by the way our lawyer will be attending as well and that brings us to last week when cak had a meeting about
069dyslexia and Anna one of this District's most publicly outspoken advocates for the welfare of neurode Divergent students was not invited last June I spoke to the board for the first time I told the board I don't want a shallow resolution I want change rephrasing this year's resolution isn't change spend some time looking at what schools are doing right for inclusion and bring stuff they're doing to other schools and departments start with shepherdson I've never met such respectful and kind elementary kids in my life Wayne thorns and his staff clearly know something others don't and fix your complaint system fire the abusers at finds use your good staff as a positive example to train everyone else and push yourselves to be where you need to be thank you all right moving on to uh 8.0 board
070topics and committee reports um this agenda item is an opportunity for board members to provide an an update or committee on committee work or speak to board topics would anybody like to uh begin no one I'll jump in because I had the lovely opportunity yesterday to go to uh actually was that yesterday no that was this morning it's been a long day um to go to riffenburg this morning um for read Across America day and got to read to uh three classes of kindergarteners um it was absolutely fabulous um to be able to read to them they got books to bring home um just you know it's always nice to go into the classroom and see why it is that we do this work that we do um it's a good reminder for all of
071us and so if there's ever any you know that feeling of why am I doing this or this is hard um go into a classroom and look at the faces of the reasons it's amazing and it'll restore your faith in humanity like that um anybody else who would like to share go ahead go Connor sorry yeah so for an update on the legislative committee um I had the opportunity to go to the capital last Thursday and Friday and um see some of the bills that were being worked through um specifically the um assembly um some of the things were pertaining to um education and education reform um I believe on Friday um after I left two resolutions had passed and went over to the Senate um and last but not least on that is from
072some of our um Association Representatives um there will be more um education related bills to be introduced left in this session so keep your eyes open thank you so much for that that update anyone else go ahead so Connor or Connor sorry Kevin and I went to Tim you're right there um and I went to cruise today and both schools have some really cool like March Madness things happening so one they at Tim they were using um their foreign language classes so French Spanish they would play music they would learn about the music so it was a deep lesson but they also got to have a lot of joy and just content knowledge about it and just seemed like the most fun thing something I had never done in school for sure and then at
073Cru Elementary they also had a March Madness but it was books so they were using the month of March to they read like two books at a time and then the kids get to vote on which one they like better and then that moves on to the next round and I was like this is a really great way to use March Madness that we all know about but in a very kidfriendly way in a way that they really enjoy and I got to read the two books today and it was pretty great uh duck for president is the book of the day so just so you know I don't know I think it was Fluffy MC whiskers cutness explosion which is what I read this morning so we'll have to have a a face off
074on that one so thank you all right anyone else fantastic um so moving on to 9.0 consent agena would any board members like to pull an item from consent okay seeing none um can I get a motion on the consent agenda Jim sure I'll do it if you like thank you I move that the word approve and adopt the recommended actions for the items on the consent agenda and we have Kevin as a second excellent uh Jill will you please call the vote or is first before I call the vote I'm I'm sorry was there any discussion NOP okay all right now we can call the vote Jim brokish hi Christen Draper hi Connor Duffy hi Kevin havala hi Carolyn Reed hi Scott shanower hi Jessica Zamora hi motion passes 70 thank you Joel and
075now we move on to the meet um so 10.1 meet schedule uh sorry bell schedule and transportation routing optimization so um just so the public knows what we have to do is call a motion for something then we'll have the discussion and then we will call the vote just like everything else so um can I get a motion Kevin did you want to do a motion uh point of order um moving for either option A or B we're going to have discussion prior to correct correct okay um I move the board approve Bill schedule in transport Transportation routing option A do I have a second uh all right we'll give that to Carolyn thank you all right and now um Brian would you like to introduce Jeff yeah thank you so much joining us this
076evening to provide the schedule and transportation routing optimization presentation is our chief operations officer Mr Jeff Connell Jeff welcome thank you superintendent thank you good evening um thank you for giving me this members of the board public thank you for giving me this opportunity to come back and present to you the transportation routing optimization plan um and specifically giving you an opportunity to kind of hear some information on the parent and staff survey that was sent out um and present to you what is option A and B right and option b just being just to ref familiarize ourselves basically takes option A and moves it five minutes back so just kind of keep that perspective as we go thanks um just a reminder again about our terms in case I use any of these any
077terms of art you can refer back um I we certainly try to keep a not to jar and heavy the real important part of this is why are we doing this right and the these elements of our operation are real the Staffing challenges we have are significant we've had a number of times where you know when my director of Transportation herself has had to get on a bus over half a dozen times this year and and not to be dire but to be frank about this for our conversation that means that was the absolute last person available to get on a bus and run a bus route and these are people who are getting on a bus whatever bus and they're given a map and they're told these are your students these are your stops
078go get them and you know that's not the best way to run a bus route system but that's what we've been doing in order to keep our system running the other piece of this uh that the superintendent mentioned earlier is the the lack of structure for our bell times this is in by and large one of the main reasons we can't optimize our busing system and reduce the number of routes any further than we have Because unless we change those we're kind of locked into this is as good as we can do and we've had a national consultant review our bus route system as well as our own staff routers and this has been the the the lowest common denominator for us is this is what we need to change if we're going to reduce
079the number of routes and increase the flexibility with that comes the other piece of this that we mentioned before the financial stewardship so there's two elements to this that end up happening right one is we run a lot more routes than ultimately we have to and every route that we run morning and afternoon for the course of one year is about about $80,000 the other piece of this is then all of the activities field trips music opportunities certainly Athletics um that we can't meet with internal drivers and buses is being performed by a charter company the cost in the last year for us exceeded $400,000 of something that we really believe we can provide inhouse if we have the right number of drivers available this adds up to a significant savings savings that actually under
080our budget constraints we would like to experience now we know that the timing of this kind of change is never ideal but we're talking between1 And1 and A5 million dollar that we can save in the 2425 school year as we look ahead you know this this is incremental change right there is more standardization of our bell times that we can do we've looked at our neighboring districts quite closely including some down in Denver um and I don't want to pick on or highlight any in particular but I can tell you in neighboring districts if you want to send your child to an elementary school you can pick any time you want as long as it's 750 and in Boulder that will get you to an elementary school and this this is what we see our
081neighboring districts doing so that they can optimize their transportation system and reduce the number of bus drivers they need so that they can keep their systems running that's really important to us too because we have not been short of Route yet this year that means a lot to us in the transportation department and and what we value so what we bring to this District um but it's in danger of of any day not having enough our our attrition rate is 30% we train a lot of people we license them with CDLs we get them on the road we give them experience and they find great opportunity because of that and so we are constantly in a licensed trade recruit develop and then do it again and that's okay um but it just means our system
082runs really lean so we issued a survey in response to your questions um from the last information session that we did um we we are pleased with the number of participants so just kind of quickly running through some of the you know just the information on number of responses 5,556 valid responses from parents 720 from staff 133 from community members um is really quite good breaking it down a little further then um 29% of those indicated that they're children ride a bus to the school we did see a difference in the respondents right versus those that are looking at this from merely a bell time Shift versus those that see this as a bell time shift for a bus that they rely on to get their children to or from school so looking at the
083aggregate although it still bothers me that this is slightly reversed option A is blue but it's on the right option b on the left um be that as it may it was fairly close option A was slightly favored remember option b is simply moving option a five minutes back um but let's look a little bit more deeply at this um so of the feedback provided um trying trying to parse it down a little bit further is what we're trying to do here um looking at those pieces of feedback that come from bus riders responses um and getting a representative group from each 175 parents Elementary 69 middle 53 High School um and then a smattering of staff from the various schools as well gave us this so there's there's a couple of interesting things going
084on in this graph and and Hope you've had the time to look at this um we see a few Trends right we see that by and large option A again slightly favored taking you know the average over the entire survey results but noticing a few things um middle schools do move earlier and there was quite a few responses about the difficulty of that change on on all of those reasons we've you know superintendent mentioned earlier you know jobs and families and other siblings and you know just the difficulty of managing that level of change the other piece that was interesting about this is if we look at the parents of the high school and we look at staff at high school the two larger blue bars with the short orange they overwhelmingly favored option A
085even five minutes later a lot of the feedback was that pushes our high schools even further back may even by five minutes making you know all those things that high school students have in the afternoon even that much more difficult for them in terms of Athletics jobs child care all the different things that they have going on Athletics every evening um so when we look at this we we see the balance and we do see the the weighing of Interest right quite a few parents in Middle School liked option b better because even five minutes is important in the morning when you're rushing out the door and and we appreciate that and for high school students the same they're interest more on you know saving as much time as they can so in the commentary
086data that we received right these were some of the themes that came out of the those responses right the logistical issues certainly first and foremost um you know the sleep and well-being of Middle School students one of the things that we would like to um highlight now and again is we agree middle school students ideally would be in a later tier right we we are not able to accomplish that level of change for this edition of bus route optimization but if we do look deeper at standardizing our bell times then middle schools would be mov moved they would be moved back almost decidedly so and we would try to do much like other districts standardize we are geographically rather large that's one consideration so we we may not be able to fully standard standardize as
087much as some others however you know Elementary High School Middle and and some blend of that is a standardization that we would like to move to um and so although this is not ideal it's something we would keep in mind for the future the other piece many comments about Athletics and the difficulty of the high school start time and end time some some comments about just the the general logistical concerns time on a bus time of day darkness safety security those kind of things um and and a number of comments about starting elementaries earlier actually being a benefici in terms of heat mitigation right our buildings do heat up in the The Hot August afternoons finishing earlier can only help that situation looking at the high school start times just wanted to kind of remind
088everybody of how we got here right there was a considerable amount of study and research done related to the Adolescent benefits in in some ways right when we did the bus optimization we prioritized keeping high school students to a later time it wasn't our intent to revisit this it was just to balance out those students that seem to benefit from having that different circadium Rhythm and sleep cycle um and so this was something that we tried to prioritize again for now so looking you know just just at get a graph right the one on your left current um on the right then proposed um really the the column to focus you on is the runs per tier right remember the highest number is the number of drivers I have to have on the road at
089any one time and so the highest number of our current am Bell time is 122 the highest number for our proposed would be 106 and then in our our afternoon routes the highest number we had in the morning was or in the current in the afternoon was 115 that number would go down to 110 so kind of balancing between the two different graphs that's 12 fewer routes running that's $80,000 per route and that's an increase in our ability to do all the Athletics and events and music to a much greater extent maybe not as much as we would like to again but to a much greater extent Jeff thank you so much I I just want to ask a clarifying question for members of the community that are tuning in right now for members of
090our board if they're orienting themselves excuse me to this screen where it says proposed AM or PM bell times can you just reiterate what option that was that was previously presented to the board yeah that was option A thank you yes okay I do have copies for the board if anybody wants to refamiliarizing school just ask um otherwise that's all of the information that we have for you tonight is there any questions or concerns I think we will have questions for sure um and actually I just wanted um if we can just before we get started um I would like to do this sort of in two parts if that's okay with everybody I'd like to go ahead and we can talk about about um it was motion uh the motion was passed for option
091A so we can talk about that and then I would like to go ahead and um talk about setting up a charge for um the superintendent and the cabinet as to what to look for in the following iterations so um you know and I know that those things are very overlapping so we may not separate them out quite so much um but I want you to be thinking about those two things as we have our conversation um that said I don't know who would like to kick this off so anybody Kevin I'll go first um first of all thank you for the hard work that you both have done um and the level of detail and explanation that that's come with this um I'd like to make four three points and then um I'm glad
092you asked about the charge because I do have a charge to leadership um my first main thought is that to Echo I think a sentiment you carried Jeff is that doing nothing is not an option I would like very much that we didn't have this problem confronting our school district I'd prefer not to have to vote on anything like this tonight quite frankly um but that is a luxury that we we don't enjoy in my view as a district nor is time of commodity that we possess based on the information you presented either financially or more importantly for me right now on a Personnel level um r y I think as you aptly articulated at least for tonight is that our bus drivers are struggling um meaning our people are struggling and I for one
093insist that we take care of our own um we've gotten notes that our our staff are overworked they're underst staffed and they cannot we cannot attract additional candidates due to uh some of these constraints uh and the result unfortunately to Echo some of the diess of this this situation is that we may have to eliminate routes altogether if we keep going on this path and um what I've been told is that that could mean blackouts that could mean days when we don't have transportation for students in my view and I'm speaking for myself uh only in this position that is inexcusable um and let me be clear that while this does affect 30% of our family and and students and so that was some of the comments that we we heard in community feedback um
094there are students in our district right now to Echo superintendent kingsley's uh comments that rely on busing now to get to school um and so with all the things to consider and all the the the detail where I come out is that if it's possible for a student in our district to not attend school because he doesn't have here or she or they don't have uh a busing or Transportation that's inexcusable to me and that's as simple as it it comes as far as option A versus option b and I wanted to make this point I've made it to leadership and I want to make it for the community now um looking at the data results I noticed on slide eight maybe if we can pull that back up that Middle School parents and teachers
095uh prefer option b over option A and I wanted to highlight that I think Jeff did a nice job of kind of explaining and doing the Deep dive and I appreciate that because I did too um and so where I come out um is that since middle middle schools will be the most impacted by an earlier start time under option A I believe their votes and the voices should carry more water and of the two I would prefer option b for that reason alone and again I've said this over and over again at board meetings that I don't believe that fairness is giving everyone the same thing it's giving everyone what they need and we have clearly seen the data here that our Middle School teachers staff and parents are asking for an additional five
096minutes I think that's eminently reasonable that said and while I wish to elevate this subset of data the majority of our community have responded that option A is the preferred option and I must respect the community's wisdom in that regard um final point on sort of explaining my vote is that um I've read every single email and letter from the community that come across my inbox on this subject as I'm fairly certain most of the board and the leadership have as well and so I appreciate and I I I commend you on giving us the opportunity to have this discussion with the public because I think they deserve it and quite frankly I think that if this is something that's going to affect people's lives then they they ought to hear from their representatives to
097say why we're voting a certain way and we can stand by that and I will stand by my vote tonight um the hard thing is I agree with most of the comments that I've heard in these emails it's hard when people make the exact points that I'm thinking about and I want to make um one comment that got my attention again while visiting one of our Title One schools here in the district the feedback interestingly that I received from the school leader that came from their parent Community was that above everything else parents need consistency in their lives especially uh people that are coming from two working households or or individuals that are working multiple jobs for their kids they need consistency and so this this sort of this vote also is hard and so
098I think I need to articulate at least my own vote on this because the Whiplash effect that this is going to cause in our district and we've already had this happen a few years ago is considerable and I heard from a teacher today saying that the amount of change that they have seen in this District in the last year and a half two years has been overwhelming were their words um and so I want to note that and I want to honor that and so I'm not voting tonight in favor of option A in in spite of these concerns I share them and so that leads my next point which is the charg to leadership that I've come up with to lessen the effect of the Whiplash effect that I just that I just mentioned
099if we're going to do this again for the next year I have two things that I charge leadership with accomplishing and my vote will be contingent upon these two things and the efforts that we make collectively as a team the first and I agree with this we need a more standardized belt time for all grades part of the reason I believe that we're in this issue is that we have an unbelievable amount of start times and end times across the district making this an absolute disaster for coordination and uh uh exacerbating this problem it's already bad and so I I would push to have a uniform start time for elementary for middle school and for high school that people can plan their lives around that is semi-permanent and that we can expect regardless of the
100School of Choice we may go to regardless of our neighborhood schools there is but one start time and one finish time uniform and I don't think in this society that should be as difficult um to accomplish but again that may come from a place of ignorance and secondly and perhaps most importantly if we're going to review busing and transportation again and I appreciate superintendent kingsley's leadership on this issue I implore that we allow the ability to have free transportation for students of need in the school choice setting if we are committed to equity and inclusivity then we need to put our money where our mouths are and that means offering transportation to kids who can't afford transportation to their school of choice we have a community of privilege and the fact is that when parents
101and teacher or when parents and families opt to go to a different school they know that they have to get their kid to and from that school and they have the ability to do that and that is not the luxury of every kid in our district and so if we are intentional if we're going to be committed to equity and inclusivity that is a charge that I want to see accomplish when we do this the next time around last thing I think yep that was it thank you thank you very much Kevin who would like to follow that act Jess thank you thanks Kevin uh my way is formal Kevin when I look at this slide again the Middle School teachers actually did not prefer B and I know I I would have I think
102I assumed similarly and would have thought but and I think the Middle School parents it's not as drastic as I would have originally thought it would be which I think is also why plan option A because it's overwhelmingly preferred um which is a surprised to me but nonetheless is why I would vote for this um similar to you I want kids to all have access to school each and every day and I want to put the best bus driver in front of them each and every day and that's the one that they can see consistently um oh I have so many things I agree that doing nothing is not an option we have to do something and I think one of the things that keep I keep coming back to is I think this shocks
103our system our families our students our staff because they haven't had to feel the repercussions the way Transportation has Transportation has done such an amazing job of covering that you've just get it done and you take the brunt of all the challenges so that everyone in the system just gets to get to school and be well served so I thank you for continuing to do that for our families and as a Middle School Parent who will have to change and as an elementary parent that will have one of the latest time so I will have the biggest spread I will vote for this because it's good for all of our kids in the long run I also share Kevin's charge that we need to actually have some serious boundaries on what is too early what
104is too late for both starting and ending times what is ideal for elementary middle and high school what do they need um I charge us with not just doing that internal audit but contacting our community asking them what their thoughts are we changed start times for high school years ago connect with our community and see how is that working is that still serving our students the way we intended it to I hope it would but also times have changed a lot has changed um I Echo that I was probably the most disliking of this plan originally I think that's probably saying it mildly um and so I think to get to the point where I am willing to vote for it I think says a lot of your leadership your communication on why this is
105necessary the students that we're serving um it goes so far beyond the amount that we save it goes beyond the routes that we save it goes beyond you know helping bus drivers have a consistent route it helps the entire team I yeah I cannot say enough about the amount of communication you've provided to make this a vote that I could get on board with thank you thank you Jess anyone else who would like to speak Carolyn go ahead I just want to ask a clarifying question for parents who might be watching so suppose we did decide not to do anything and and just hold the status quo for this year and then maybe just wait and do the changes next year tell me what some of the possible pitfalls are if if we do that
106because I've heard people up here say doing nothing is not an option so I think we need to articulate for people what consequences would be of doing nothing so we we we're all right normed we all understand understand what's going to happen thanks I I think that one of the the significant pitfalls is that buses and bus routes for students will one morning not have a bus driver available and that becomes kind of a sudden unexpected event right once that happens more often we may have to look to a system of rolling blackouts like Thompson has done or we may have to make other choices about what schools or areas uh walk zones I mean there's there's other implications that can be done to try to relieve how many bus routes are out there running
107but it would mean substantial and hard change with no to little notice because that's not something we can predict so come November 2nd of of this year in the next school year we could all of a sudden find ourselves one day three bus drivers short and that is going to be a dramatic event that we are trying to plan for now so that it doesn't happen then and that's really important to us and and the other piece of this is the financial stewardship that comes with it you know this is not an ins you know insignificant amount of money to try to save and improve service to our students and families it comes with it the price of changing bell times and that obviously that's you know our big concern about this and all the
108implications from that but saving this amount of money reducing the amount of money we spend on Charters optimizing our system so that we can continue to run with fewer bus drivers needed so that our system can continue to run is really what we are most at risk of not succeeding at Jee I want to thank you for your response there and and I'm grateful that Jeff leted out because the driver here is ensuring the continuity of service and I want that to be unmistakable but I think it's incredibly important for us as a community to name and recognize and reaffirm that our budget as a district and its current form is not at scale for the number of students that we serve and it doesn't mean we're overspending but we are investing in areas that
109we need to prioritize leaders ership practices that identify efficiencies because in the event that we cannot leverage these savings we must find those dollars somewhere else in the system to put our budget at scale and balance it moving into the system next year that is not the driver if we have to do that we would do that but I want to recognize identifying efficiencies and making sure that we're not losing service this is about workplace conditions this is about ensuring our mechanics and our supervisors and our director can play the role that they're in knowing that those roles are mission critical to optimizing service we also need to make sure that as you know director havelda appropriately suggested that our parents need consistency I know that we share a value that our employees need that
110too part of the context of the various change and and optimizing and mobilizing these things all at once does create an element of fear across our community and our system in fact I've heard even from a bus driver recently that as a result of reduction of routes is this a means of moving forward to privatizing our busing practices in the future and I want to say directly to our transportation department the answer to that question is no we value you we want to make your workplace conditions today better we want you to find Opportunities to work different shifts if that is something amable to you and we we want to make sure that we find and create a joyful work environment where morale goes up where we're not having a 30% attrition rate every single
111year those are the drivers but it's it would be remissed if I didn't talk about the financial aspect of these challenges that we're facing too which is another reason why our steering committee's work is so important running parallel to this as well as other efficiencies that are being gleaned both at the school level as well as the central office level in spirit and in service of balance our Budget moving into next year and if I can just add on to that too I just I just want to point out that it it's not only uh the workplace um that having having a a a good workplace to be in right that the transportation is a great is a great place to work it's not just bringing that we want to do that absolutely and when
112we do that what we're doing is we're bringing happy drivers to kids and their kids are able to see that and that is a significant um portion of what it is that we are doing right this is the first person that they interact with on their school day is they get to see the driver and they know the driver they know the driver's name they can talk to them about maybe baseball or whatever it is but if we are sending people to work who are extremely tired or unhappy or not knowing the route or not knowing the kids that in and of itself is an equity issue and it's something that we need to be looking at um because that's that's not a great way to send our kids off to school you know the
113if the very first interaction they have going to school is somebody who's grumpy because they don't know the route that they're doing they don't know the kids they don't know you know okay when I get back I have to go to the next route because we're still missing drivers that is affecting our students as well so yes it's about having a good workplace a work environment because that leads to a better environment for our kids so I just wanted to throw that in there as well is there anybody else Jim go ahead yeah I just wanted to I won't repeat what Kevin said and what Jessica said but I'm in strong agreement with all of your comments so thank you for those uh one of the things I did want to say though was when
114we think about bus drivers I really think there's some of the UN unsung heroes of our district and then I got to thinking well how can I make their life better how can the commity make their life better when you see a bus driver coming by wave to them give them a thumbs up I mean make them feel like they're doing something special because they are if they're driving your kids go ahead and give them a gift card from time to time you know recognize them for the work that they do and make their job something special I think that will help us with our retention of bus drivers that's it thank you Jim Connor did you want to go or Scott you go either way I just I've got a couple of things but
115just on the financial portion of it I know the transportation department is going to do everything they can to get materialize these cost savings but in the nature of cost savings it takes more than one year to realize them I will be flabbergasted and extremely proud of the transportation department if you can even get half of the cost savings that you're proposing and the reason for that is normally it takes a while for those cost savings to actually kick in we will still have kids on charter buses next year option A or option b we will so the $400,000 that is is in that bucket is already going to be is is going to be less um a question so I haven't heard concretely why can't we just right now make the big change that
116we're talking about making in you know 12 to 18 months 8:00 8:30 9:00 why can't we do that for to for next school year 2425 instead of 2526 is there a specific reason for that um I think you know that that would be ideal you know as a logistical matter that would be a significant change to the system right so we would engage with a consultant and we would do that routing and you know some of the comments that I heard tonight about Community involvement and some of those other pieces we would want to make sure is robust and present there's no specific practical reason we couldn't do the big change quickly right there's there are issues with choice of schools parents choosing based on start times these kind of things I think the other
117big piece is the the equity piece that that Kevin first brought out here tonight is that part of what we hope to do when we do a a more substantive standardization of our bell times is to create the option for Choice busing that is going to take more time because those students to this date have not been routed onto a bus and so they are more scattered because they don't sit within a school's boundary and that's going to take more for us to accomplish than we can do between now and August that's probably the biggest practical limitation other than communication and some of those others if it's if it's okay thank you Jee and a piece that I'd like to add to that and check my math uh Jeff but I believe you know with
118option A in its current form 58% of our portfolio of schools are not impacted and I think that's really really really important using the context that I know all of you have heard with director havelda elevated that you know it is not uncommon as we're engaging with staff members to talk about the level of change that people are experiencing right now being overwhelming and I know multiple changes doesn't build confidence either but creating efficiencies where we recognize I mean that's true transformative change that I believe that we can get to for 2526 I'm grateful for the specific and explicit charge that many of of you if not all of you and I know I haven't heard yet from uh all of the board members are providing I believe we can do that work and meet
119the demands that are being challenged or charged To Us by our families through the survey that we provided but in the context of everything that we've experienced as a school district Community through our long-range planning efforts starting in the fall the great work of our steering committee I think really being mindful of the level of Tolerance of change people can experience right now is another part of the reason reason why as we're talking about this we believe that this is the best place to start but understand the healthy push that you're providing and in respect to I just think that the amount of change and we also have to take into context that three years ago we changed and we had great concrete reasons for changing three years ago that put undue pressure on the
120transportation department then um we had great reasons concrete reasons for doing that I haven't seen one concrete piece of data of about whether that was effective or not for our children right so now we're going to change this here and say hey this is going to be great for our transportation department we may get cost savings but then even before we can collect any of the data we're going to make the real change that needs to happen as it pertains to bell times and transportation right I think something and I Jeff and Des I this is not an indictment of the work that you've done or whatever especially as it pertains to the survey option three is an option it just wasn't presented to the community right we could have said in that very survey
121we can hold the transportation department as it is but everybody in the community needs to know that you are running the risk of a rolling blackout or we could have said a myriad of options for that what ends up with this survey is it front runs the the authority of the board and we as board members need to take that into account we came to the community and said hey look you're either getting chocolate or vanilla but you're going to have some ice cream okay instead of saying hey you don't have to have ice cream but what you might not get is ice cream ever again right that undercuts us and our decision-making ability and the confidence in the community in the board I hear time and time again you're you guys are going to
122change bell times again why please don't change the bell times again and this isn't from survey people this is from other leaders in the community not to mention I think that students first right students first is important and yes it is very important to have a nice face on the bus right but it's also important to have a teacher who's ready to teach right we're impacting some of the other employees in the district with changing these times right not to mention you know I don't know many teenagers getting up an extra half hour early who are bright and ready to go either right so I don't think that if we just narrow it all down to just the transportation department and make our decision without being cognizant of the unintended consequences to other stakeholders our
123par professionals our teachers our our parents um everybody that we do a disservice to ourselves as a board in doing that and we also impact the students last but not least and I said this at the last meeting I understand the equity argument I I I really do and I don't want my comments to say that I disregard them but if we continue to boil every decision down to equity we therefore do a disservice to issues of a real Equity this is an issue of not being able to get and retain bus drivers if we I said last meeting if we have 20 more bus drivers this problem goes away right and we could we could create a plan on how we're going to do that and retain bus drivers I think that if we
124sit there and we say always well it's an equity issue it's an equity issue it's an equity issue then when we have really hard issues of equity such as Transportation going forward in School of Choice I see that as a big Equity issue but if we say that issue is now we subsequently dilute all of those issues in in the future um I won't be supporting either either of the options um I don't think I just don't think the community can take it I think they're losing confidence in the board I think flip flopping back and forth on school times again is a major disruption to our community and our staff and I we're just we're going to do it again um we're going to do it even bigger and harder next time around Jeff
125and Desiree I think you've done a great job I I think the transportation department over the for The Last 5 Years has done an incredible job um a charge you know if you could just hold it together for one more year that would be that would be incredible uh I know that's extremely hard I'm putting undue pressure on you but if you guys could do that that would be incredible um because real change is coming go ahead Scott I think Connor said uh a lot of lot of thoughts I've had actually brought in more things so I appreciate that I appreciate everybody's comments this is this is one of those issues I've talked to a lot of you individually uh I have grappled with tremendously I I've gone back and forth since we started talking
126about this in January and um you know the work that PSD staff has put into this it's a lot of hours um I greatly value our classified staff uh Desiree you know I baked uh how many I don't know 120 cookies and brought them over to to during classified appreciation week for the bus drivers so I am uh a big fan my father-in-law was a bus driver in his retirement um my first take on this was the impact on uh the community parents and employers I'm a small business uh G uh general manager um so changes to schedules when I got to drop my kid off when I need to leave to to pick him up um deeply impact our function we're a small business I can't imagine uh some factories and other big businesses
127um to to do that two years in a row to disrupt those schedules of of parents and kids um really is troubling to me I think that inconsistency um where we're rearranging schedules we already did this I think it was 5 years ago I think it was 2018 is when that that was discussed um and it was a big deal at the time we were were on dab Jess you and I when that was talked about and the mental health impacts were really a big deal especially for the high school kids um but middle schoolers my kids uh were in both middle school and high school and and absolutely loved the changes that that they went to at that time uh but to do it again and ask those uh parents and employers to make
128changes that was my number one thing um but then I got and this is just a few these are the pages of uh of emails some two three pages long people passionate about about this they didn't have to take their time to write that that's that means a lot and it's not just hey we're going to listen to five or six people they're representing a ton of people that didn't have the time to write these emails but here are some of the things that I got that you know I can't articulate but but they have um the mental health impact on middle schoolers um people from dab came back to me and and just and reminded us of the all the studies and I'm glad you brought that up that's that's definitely fair to to
129bring that up and I appreciate you showing all the different perspectives but there have been scientific study after scientific study talking about the impact on teenage uh brains on not getting enough sleep and to ask our um middle schoolers to go in um at 7:30 in the morning or 6:30 in the morning when they have zero hour they have to go in my kid was in uh band and Jazz Band those are those of those times that they would go into Weber uh that hour before school started and that's that's brutal that means kids are just going to opt out they're not going to do those um enrichment type of activities that that maybe they would have and should have and could benefit from so that's a big concern um school choice parents they've already
130picked where they want to go based off of of these times uh if we change them now that could disrupt uh plans they've already made for child care and and with work uh he last uh school board meeting we had um an elementary school kid that really touched me that got to me got me all quaky uh in terms of my decision and uh in terms of you know hey they have to now stay later in uh in the hot day uh same with the teachers um before and after school activities I already talked about that even coaches getting coaches to those middle schools uh that much earlier they have to leave their work at 2:00 in the afternoon um and then the biggest thing for me is I feel like this is going to
131exacerbate many of the problems that PSD has right now I think we're going to suffer um some enrollment changes people may say hey I'm going to take my kid out and send him to a charter school that has a different uh schedule um attendance I think we're going to struggle with attendance at Middle School um with or at least tardiness that's going to be a major problem it's going to disrupt the teachers ability to teach their class cles or get them started um and then even employee retention you know like you were saying Connor it's going to affect staff all over the board so to me we're impacting 30,000 students two-thirds of those parents are already driving their kids to school so the vast majority are are doing that we're trying we're doing this for
132one year now if we could find a way to do it next year and Beyond and keep it and I think the way to do that is with the standardized spell times now we can if we can figure it out and implement it we get the cost savings we remove that inconsistency that disruptive nature of changing schedules if we can do that now find a way and I agree we do want to address the uh the choice schools but that's not something that's even in place right now so um people won't be upset if we don't get that fit in on this on this round but if we standardize bell times now we get the cost savings and all the other benefits and it's consistent no matter which schools are closed right if we consolidate
133schools that doesn't change anything it's elementary school starts at this time middle school starts here and high school starts there so I would say instead of you got to think about it from an organizational standpoint if my business is struggling to provide the services to my customers I can't ask the customers to just lower their expectations or change their expectations I need to fix it and I think we can do better at retaining uh and recruiting and some of the ideas and I'm sure you've talked about this but I think we can we can really push this are incentive bonuses for people that we have trained to stay if you stay a year you get $1,000 they're doing this or or $5,000 whatever it works out to be we're talking about 12 roots or 20
134M routes that could fix this problem it's not that much money in in the short term the other thing is is attendance maybe that's a stipulation of this bonus you get if you stay a year and you're at 95% attendance you get your bonus that's how people are are retaining uh drivers and so I think for 12 to 20 people on that side it's better to really focus our resources and attention on that then affecting 30,000 people for one year on this side and so um that's that's all I have to say it's a incredibly tough thing I know we're in a financial uh um you know we're struggling with some of the financial stuff but I think we can find a way to uh really focus on the kids and the staff and retention
135and keep keep things rolling but um I do value everything you guys have put into it but uh I'm also going to be a no on either option I wish we could have a third choice of standardized bell times or don't do nothing so that's all I have to say Madam president quickly point of order is is it possible to table this this action item for two weeks to develop um what it would take or or do you or are you looking for a a straight vote on this for an implementation of in the 2425 school year so because there's been a motion on the table for voting for a um we need to take the vote if a were to not pass then there could be a motion for tbling it Caroline did you
136have a and there there could there could also be an amendment to the motion to right there could be um I let me consult with Autumn I'm sorry I just wanted to consult with autumn um yeah yeah under Robert's Rules of Order there could be a motion to amend the um current motion that's on the table or there's also some options for tbling a motion that is currently before the board if the board so chooses to either table it or move to postpone to a different time Kevin and I believe um Madam Council that would require an additional vote of the board correct to even do that procedural vehicle yes that's correct okay thank you yeah carollyn go ahead so this is quite the conundrum right I mean I think we all agree we can't
137do nothing I think I've heard from everybody up here something needs to be done right Connor I hear you say yeah let's standardize the bell times but let's not do it twice here let's not do it this year and if we're going to do it do it all at once is that what I'm hearing you say and then so and then I'm kind of hearing the same thing from you Scott you don't object to the change but if we're going to do it let's do it all at once whether it's next year or the year after let's only do it once is what I'm kind of starting to hear from you two guys and I can't say that I I disagree with that you know I mean because change once sounds a lot better standardized
138start times you know like what you said like 8 8:39 you know everybody knows you you know uh when they start when you're when you're in grade school you you start at 8 when you go to Middle School it's 8:30 and when you're at high school it's 9 that gives a lot of predictability and I find that really attractive and I think our parents might find that really attractive too right and only changing once might be might be really great and you know I you brought up something about not getting an option see I don't know if it was you or Scott who said that and I can remember one time voting on something a few years ago and they brought the presentation to the board and it was one thing it was you can
139do this you can actually it was you can bury the pipe next to top to to the middle middle school and I said well what if we don't bury the pipe what if we just put a fence around the ditch and somebody said to me well we didn't consider that and I remember that really really upset me because even if it didn't seem feasible it was probably something that should have been brought forward right for at least some consideration so I do hear what you're saying right like maybe we should have had a third option on there which said do nothing and risk and risk rolling blackouts right risk your kid not getting to school so parents could know what the what the alternative was or hey next year we're going to do this really
140heavy lift right and we are going to standardize everything your kids if it's in grade school it's going to start start at 8 you know if your kids in middle school you're going to start at 8:30 so that's your only choice so maybe that that third or fourth option should have been thrown out there and so I I hear your argument and then on the other hand you know I heard what Kevin had to say here about like should we do this now because we have Financial considerations should we do this now because we're going to save some some routes and we might take some stress off of the bus system and so I guess I'm still kind of like torn about this I I would have said coming in here tonight I would vote
141on a you know and I still feel like a is a really good option but I I think I'd like us to have some more conversation about this if we can so if I may um respond to to this um here's here's the conundrum that we throw into if we were to postpone this right um so if you say okay we're going to talk about doing one big change after consolidation um so that means doing nothing at the moment that means we lose the the 1.5 or the 1 to 1.5 million um savings it means that we run the risk of rolling blackouts it means that there is a very good chance that suddenly we are having this conversation but we're having it um as an immediate need because tomorrow we are going to have
142the same problem we have today which is we our five routes short how do we make that happen what do we do about that and then we're doing it on the backs of kids because those kids are not getting to school one of the things that I I talked to um to Melanie Mara at riffenburg today was if we go to Rolling blackouts she can tell you that she will lose about 15 students from her kindergarten classes every Eighth Day they will not be in in school because they do not have another way to get to school um so there is repercussions for this if we don't do something you know there is a third option you are correct about that we can do nothing um but that does not come without consequences as well
143and so I need you know we need to be thinking about what those consequences may look like not only for um you know the transportation system and our budgets but what does it look like for those kids and what it looks like for a lot of those kids is they don't end up going to school and that is a problem that is something that we as a school board should be extremely concerned about I mean I agree with you Scott that we could have attendance and tardiness problems in middle school but I will take that over every Eighth Day not having 15 kindergarteners in riffenburg so that is is that's the problem that we're wrestling with change is hard and I understand that we are asking for a lot of change in the next year
144from our community from our staff from cabinet from us this is hard work y'all this is what we're here for um and we have been provided with um you know people who have given us good feedback you know I I had down here you know option A versus option b with the Middle School parents it was only 26 parents versus 32 parents um you know as far as a versus B um the difference though you know between the six um parents who have opted for A over B versus the parents who didn't even have time to take the survey because they're working their second job and without the school bus what are they going to do um you know when we're talking about Equity you're right Connor like everything is about equity and Equity means
145get getting people what they need when they need it so we have to be able to provide that for all of our students not just the students who have the privilege of being driven to school not just the students who have the privilege of going to a choice school for every student we have to be able to provide an equitable way for them to not only get to school but then be at school as a whole person so we do have options we can kick this can down the road um we can you know say do nothing um I personally will be voting for a on this um it is one of the things that uh you know as the public said we will take this um it it is I understand that this is
146a a bitter pill to swallow as far as change and then change again but I have questions about you know if we were to do do it all at once even if we say okay we could do it all at once for next year what does that look like we'd have zero Community engagement for that and you know here we are talking about Elementary starts at 800 middle school starts at 8:30 and high school starts at 9: I guarantee you if you ask the high schoolers they want to start at 8:30 and the middle schools don't want to start toight at 9: but we don't know that we'd have to ask them we don't there's there's a time limit here too for us to be able to do this and so I want to um
147just really have people I there's not a good answer the answer is it's not good but there are better answers that we cannot push off the good to wait for the perfect that will hurt kids and that's what we are here to do is just make sure that those kids get to school Kevin uh I just want to say very well said Madam president and to reiterate to two points that you made I think that are worth repeating um uh and director Duffy your arguments are articulate and eloquent and convincing and had me second guessing my own positions on on the stas but where I come out and I want to highlight this is if we offered a third option to the community overwhelmingly my belief would be the majority would still drown out that
148option A or B and those voices get lost that need access the most and the second Point that's related to that which I want to elevate and I think is an excellent one Madam president is that Equity is not a pick or choose based on the situation we're in equity if we're serious about the business needs to be a lens through which we examine everything and some of the things that are confronting the school district are not easy problems they are very challenging problems and there is not a perfect solution to any of this I don't I don't like option A quite frankly I don't like option b I don't like starting school at 7:30 I think that's too early and I want to make that very clear unequivocally on the record I don't like
149like starting school at 7:30 7:45 is already too hard for my family but given the options of having kids not come to school in our school district is something that I can't in good conscience vote against so I just wanted to amplify those two points because I think they were very they were very good thank you go ahead Scott yeah I I love this conversation I'm glad we're having this kind of the first time we've had like a real debate in public so it's awesome um I you know I I hear everything that you guys are saying I think this is this is the hardest thing that we're grappled with um I don't think the third option is do nothing what I'm advocating for is the standardized BT times next year again we save the
150money we keep the uh the um health benefits for our middle schoolers and high schoolers but we need time to figure that out we have right now I just did a little Googling uh we have 23 weeks until school starts I think we as a district can figure out how to get 12 to 20 bus drivers secured if that's what we need to do to get through the rest of this year or be prepared for next year I think we can come up with incentive plans and training during that time to get ramped up or if we do standardize spell times um we have time to get surveys done with with people to to make sure the thing is is we already have proven data from the other school districts neighboring us that that parents
151accept this this is just the general way school is done in Colorado and and it would be different for us for sure and it would probably lead to a lot of feedback but I think the the inconsistency the disruptiveness um we're really focused so much on the um the small amount of anecdotal evidence that we're not focusing on the big picture and I I feel that emotional pole of we don't want a kid uh or any blackouts or things like that I think that's scared to everybody when Thompson did that and I don't think we're there yet because you guys are doing great yman work but I don't know how long what our what our uh Runway is to get to that so I would I would like to know more um I'd really like
152to study the standardized BT times I would ask for a two-e delay or or shorter whatever we can do a special session I don't know um but that would be my my take on on this is let's really think about it before we make a giant leap tonight Jess was first and then Caroline so just to combat the um standardized time our goal might be 8 8:39 but there are many districts who do have standardized times but they might be 7 7:30 right so there's no guarantee that even if we standardize we're going to get the ideal that we want right carollyn so um I just as a former employer as former professional driver myself as an former employer of drivers myself I will tell you that it is not easy to hire a driver
153CDL drivers are like unicorns they're like gold you know it's like finding gold and so I don't want to minimize how hard it is to hire and train a CDL driver that is a huge lift we heard Jeff talk about 30% attrition like there is churn all the time you are you're hiring and training all the time even when you hire and train I don't know how many people are washing out of your classes but um anybody in here who work Works in HR and hires people and brings people in for um interviews and hires them and they don't hire up they don't show up for the first day of training right right you they just don't show up and you've already invested a lot of time into somebody who doesn't even show up so
154everybody needs to get their heads wrapped around that there aren't drivers out there there's no magic bullet for getting those employees it's just hard work and you just have to hope that you get the Unicorn you get somebody who really likes kids and really wants to do this work it's like h in Paras you know it's hard work we're asking people to do huge things great things for a little bit of pay it's super hard and so I don't want to minimize that in public or to or to you guys that I think that it's easy you just have to hire more drivers I don't believe that's ever going to happen right it's not in our current situation it's not going to happen so but one thing I am curious about is could we do
155the big change next year could we do the standardized start times next year could we go big I I'm getting curious about that I really think it is important for us to um optimize our routes and to optimize um our start times um I'm getting more intrigued as I'm kind of listening to people talk about it is that doable for next year I mean really could it could it be doable I mean it sounds like a heavy lift but we're already suggesting this could we pivot as is that realistic do you think Brian I I really appreciate the question and you know this is going to be the first of a multitude of incredibly difficult complex decisions you're going to be asked to make and I don't envy you and I don't envy us and
156I I honestly that's a sentiment I get most in the community as I have a chance to speak with people walk in Old Town it's the first thing normally people say is I I don't envy the position that you're in and it's not going to get easier it's going to get more complex you know we as a leadership team and those of you who were here from the moment when I was hired you know it is our aspiration to seek a win-win scenario every time we can find one it really truly is I know it might not feel that way but it is our aspiration to identify the scenario where it is a win-win and the challenges that we're in the trade off here is we create some stability for a year but what's happening
157with the context of what's happening in the department our ability to secure and truly say uh that we're going to commit to providing all of our students our 9,000 bus riders Services every day we can't make that brand promise anymore it's just a fact it's a hard truth that our community is just starting to get their head grappled you know their head around and I share with you you know I'm learning as a super superintendent not just leading and I have learned a lot this year going through the long-range planning effort around the level of Engagement that this community expects and demands and deserves when we're making transformative decisions so much so where we stopped a very hard decision that we were about to make in the fall to give more time for Community engagement
158where we are in the academic school year and this is not your fault this is not to put pressure on you to make a decision or else and I know it might feel that way but the reality is is that we're about to go in a spring break normally our Master scheduling for the following year is done by March 1st there are schools across the system today that are in limbo about fine-tuning adjustments that they're looking to make and not sure of how it's going to play out because they don't know what their bell times are going to be it impacts school choice and choices that families made a while ago and recognizing what does this mean for them on the back end of that many of the people who are at our schools who
159run these scenarios of managing these changes from our principles our counselors our registar they're not all 12-month employees and so I don't say that to pressure you I say it to recognize that we have in good faith in partnership with you and this community have brought this item to the board now I believe this is the third item we've discussed it now twice I think that was appropriate to delay and we're in a space that we have to recognize if we choose to delay this there are implications at the school for this school year in our planning in service of next year and I'm worried about the message and I share this with you I just it's not going to get easier I say that with a humble heart it's going going to get harder
160myself the staff nobody wants to make multiple changes I crave stability as much as you do our families and our staff and to be in these spaces these are real problems that deserve real solutions and there's not an easy solution out there we have provided a multitude of hiring bonuses training efforts for bus drivers our 30% attrition rate is still very real within this last year I have called every single bus driver that has left this system personally me as the superintendent to ask them to come back to work with us what would it take for you to stay can you consider your retirement another year out the personal touch points that are happening in HR and transportation I've never seen anything like it because of the problem that we're we're having and for our
161community uh that has been paying attention to the great journalism the Colorado in that illuminated this incredible Amazon facility that's opening up 20 mil south of us in the next two years our problems are going to get even more complex as a Workforce I don't say that to scare us I say it to just speak truth in this reality and so it is I do not believe it is attainable in good conscience for us to engage the community thoughtfully knowing that moving to distinct bell times at each level I share that aspiration too but I believe it will require a deep level of community engagement knowing a 100% of our schools will be impacted by that and to do that thoughtfully in partnership with people I do not believe we have enough Runway between now
162and the end of the year to have a level of clarity and direction for our staff to pull that off next year um if I felt that there was an opportunity to do that I would recommend that we delay this conversation and continue to have it but I do believe we are at a space where we're out of time and I don't say that to put pressure on any of you it is a very very difficult position that all of you are in but we are two years away to be able to achieve the direction that you are providing staff and myself but I really do appreciate the level of clarity and the debate that is happening this is good governance in my opinion thank you and I I yeah just a moment I just
163wanted to to um follow up on that um because I I do want people to understand that we have been offering incentives for people to stay it's actually been 3 months so if you did if you stayed for three months you got an incentive to stay um and I think Dave you can maybe clarify how much that I don't know if it matters how much that was but there have been incentives out there for people to stay incentives to come in and get your CDL and for us to train them and those have been going on for years and for years consistently we have not been able to find the drivers and we have not been able to keep the drivers that we have so yeah so it's just you know it it as Carolyn
164um spoke to it is in incredibly difficult um particularly in Northern Colorado I don't know why um but in Northern Colorado to keep uh to get and to retain uh drivers here so um there is that um and you know there was the question of you know or or the statement that the transportation has done a wonderful job and so um we just ask you to keep it together for the next year um and here's the thing is they were one person away from canceling a route one person you know what happened if desire had been sick that day and could not drive because she was Ill what happens when a couple of drivers get covid what happens when you know there's all those wh ifs and normally I am not a wh if or
165a what about this kind of thinker in this case the what if what if Desiree were sick that day we would be having a conversation about what do we do the next time this happens and how do we make sure that those kids still get to school because what we would have had would would have been three routes for one driver if I'm if correct me if I'm wrong Jeff but three routes for that one driver that those kids would not have gotten to school how do we get in touch with the parents well every driver every driver uh sorry every um um person who works in the transportation department is driving who's calling the parents to say hey by the way your bus isn't coming today so your kids who are standing outside at
166the bus stop waiting for the bus are going to be there all day you better bring them back in how do we get you know how do we make sure that that does not happen so this is what I'm looking at here me personally I see this is like this is a stop the bleed right we have been lucky enough not to have a bleedout situation and we are able to hopefully get some prep in there I don't want to have this conversation when we are looking for bandages that is not where I want to go with this I want to make sure that we are ready and able to make sure that all of those kids get what they need um and you know as far as talking about um getting um the the
167tiered um options for the schools I 100% agree I think that should be part of our charge um and I think we absolutely need to get the community's engagement on that because I might think that 8 is too late you might think 7:30 is too early you might think that a great start time is 9:00 across the board you know everybody's going to have their different opinion and I think that it's very very important that we get the community's uh input on this and we may even hear that that we like the different times yes other schools do a a um a a set time but we have people who like the having that well I can Choice into the school because it fits with my time better so I I do think we need
168to make sure we get that robust conversation happening with with the community I mean we did not do that in November and it was painful so I feel like if we rush into this um to do this again without that robust Community input we're going to that's going to be a painful experience for everyone not just the board but the community and I want to avoid having that painful experience for the community so it comes back for me it comes back to the fact that option C is do nothing which puts all of this in Jeopardy because we don't have the time the runway the ability to get robust Community engagement to do what it is that we want to charge and if we go ahead I think um you know I have a a
169lot of things written down here about we need standardization for all grades we need um and we need and expect it to be um semi-permanent so that you know when we do this we are we're in it right we're in it to win it on that one um we need to make sure that we can get to that point where we're getting those students transportation for choice schools because right now that is a that is a privilege that only the people who can drive their students to a choice school have um and so you know and that is a huge Equity issue um we need to discuss what's too early to start what's too late to start what's too early to end what's too late to end those are all discussions that we need to
170have and as I go down this list I think my gosh how could we possibly have this as a robust Community engagement and have it done by the end of March which is when they would need to go ahead and start doing their their bell times and even that would be a month late for them and you know when you're talking about a small elementary school that's stressful when you're talking about a Comprehensive High School I don't even know how that would happen I just don't even know um so I I again um my take on this is that we need to go ahead um and um vote on this one um and not delay the discussion not delay the vote um and make sure that we have solid um a solid charge to leadership
171so that when we make this change again that it is a permanent wellth thought out well executed and uh available Equitable uh available to every child so that to me is is what we need to be doing tonight so I I was a couple couple things on that um whenever we get to the decision of set bell times which may or may not be tonight uh it's got to stay right if we come back and we go to this issue again in two years then we all shouldn't be on this board period and I'm serious about that the we are running through the trust of the community on this very issue because we keep flip-flopping back and forth right and I I I know I I laugh about it and joke about it but that's
172that's serious the other thing is the decision before us tonight is detri Al taking this decision tonight is detrimental to taking the next decision in the future and the reason for that is I agree in robust communication with the community and getting their input but we've been going back to them time and time again for input and then we go ahead and we just make these decisions right at some point they say to themselves here we go again why should I even put in input they're going to do what they want right so I think that hashing out because this decision is so important hashing out a third option that it seems to me we all kind of agree on that we're going to be doing something that is more optimal to bell times in
173the near future hashing out that option very quickly and it doesn't have to be uh surveys with the community just even seeing if we could feasibly do it within two weeks and if it's not it's not and then we come back and we vote on these options I mean I if if I can't have a bell time that is going to be put in place and stayed then I don't I I don't see why we're changing I just I just don't and I know Jeff that again it's not an indictment of your department because you guys are doing an awesome job but if if Desiree doesn't show up to work yes some kids are at the bus stop but the sky doesn't fall okay we scramble and we get those children picked up and to
174school be it late yes and we do our very best each and every time to get them there it's not as if we have one issue in the transportation department and then everybody every bus runs out of gas right there on the side of the road and nobody gets to school right it's not that dire there has been times that my children have been at school where there's been an issue with the bus the bus breaks down there's traffic the the the crossing gates don't go up and the kids get to school late right that that's that's part of it right and I think parents are flexible with that now I'll give you if this is something that happens recurring all the time and and I want the community to know that's that's a possibility
175and I don't want to Discount that at all right that is if that's something then yes we have to make a different decision but we've been Jeff and his Department have been doing a wonderful job keeping it together for five years right all all just one more year just limp it over the line and we'll make the hard decision than uh it's a couple points of order um I want to make sure another director doesn't have another motion to amend because I'd like to make a motion to call the question at this point however one response is that I do think we can make some semi-permanent changes based on the language of the next proposal by including super majority language instead of uh an up down vote uh to change bell schedules in the future
176I think that might be prudent um we don't have to decide that tonight but I would unless there's a motion uh from the other directors to uh amend what we're going to do i' I'd make a motion to call the question Madam president I'd like to make a motion to make an amendment okay so yeah I was say so we we need you to um so make a motion um to amend 10.1 action item uh in the original motion it was to move the board approve Bill schedule on Transportation rooting option a um I would also like to the amendment on that is um to take an amendment to table the discussion for two weeks to explore whether or not an option b is viable okay do I have a second Scott's a second all
177right are there in this case um are there any questions about dates or anything like that that would that's the what we can discuss at this point right is dates to do that yes so just to clarify you're talking about for next board meeting to bring it correct for the next board meeting okay excellent um Jo can can you call the vote Jim brokish no Kristen Draper no Connor Duffy yes Kevin havalda nay Carolyn Reed no no Scott shanower yes Jessica Zamora no apologies motion B 52 thank you Jill thank you and so now now we can call the question yep I move to call the question uh second all right Jess and so Jill can you call the vote and just as a reminder can we just have a reminder as to what now
178the vote is for just so we are clear I believe M president Point order I think the original motion that I made while ago was moved that the board approved Bill schedule in transportation routing option A was the original question thank you okay Jill can you call the vote Jim brokish hi Kristen Draper hi Connor Duffy no Kevin havalda I Carolyn Reed I Scott shanower no Jessica Zamora I motion passes 52 thank you very much Jill and before we move on to the next uh item I just want to thank every body here for a robust hearty vibrant conversation um these are not typically um what we have had in the past and I for one just love it and um I think it's excellent for the community to see um just how this goes
179and how uh at some level how the sausage is made so thank you all for participating in such a robust conversation thank you for allowing this um Jeff and and desire thank you so much for all the work that you have put into this um for putting out the survey um to those community members who filled out the survey thank you uh we appreciate that so much um and I just you know hopefully you can go now and enjoy your spring break thank you thank you yes just one last thing thank you guys very much I appreciate everything you put into this um just so I can get this on public record I would suggest this would be a a charge to you guys uh I have a candidate in mind to be a uh
180bus driver that is Nate Donovan and I think he would great he's got a CDL and lots of experience that he is free right now thank thank you for volun telling him to come over here and do that we appreciate it okay oh yes absolutely um we're going to go ahead and take a break it is 9:04 p.m. on 3524 and we will be back in let's do um 910 no do you want 10 minutes can yeah actually sorry 9:15 we'll be back at 9:15 e okay we are back it is 9:16 p.m. on March 5th 2024 and we are going to be moving on to um 11 informational reports and discussions 11.1 monitoring report policy de 1.0 General District district ends um and Brian are you going to introduce yes yes I am thank
181you providing information about policy de 1.0 tonight is our chief institutional Effectiveness officer Dr jwayne schmidtz jwayne welcome thank you thank you superintendent Kingsley thank you president Draper and vice president Zamora and directors of the board of education so this is the de 1.0 moning report part one so as you know there's four District ends we're going to really focus on the first the foundations for Success really is where achievement and growth and graduation rates and Dropout rates and all kinds of important metrics exists so we'll do this tonight and on April 9th we'll talk about Connections success in a changing world and above and beyond all right so um the the goal of tonight is to provide a high level overview of some outcomes now in the past this is a big report by
182the way um um the the report itself is about 136 pages and there's an executive summary that's just six pages I believe and so you can you know read that to get the quick look at what's really going on and then I want to point out to yourselves and to the viewing public there's a whole set of data visualization tools that the IT department and the um assessment research evaluation Department put out and so that data set all those data sets and those visualization tools back up this whole report so truthfully is just a ton of information right so tonight I'm not going through trying to make every point that I could about the moning report and the things that it elevates I'm not going to try and go through every single section with a
183slide or two I'm just going to highlight a few things that I think are important for us to just talk about and then uh leave it to yourselves to read through that report and uh the district and its leadership team certainly reads through that report and we use it as a foundation for our strategic plan for our unified Improvement plan it's part of how we identified our priority Performance challenges we have Community Partners who use that report throughout the year to go after grants or to understand PSD better and know how to plug in and help us out we have departments around here that go for Grants and use pieces of it so the the the monting report de 1.0 really does get used year round by many different um stakeholders in PSD tonight's just
184a kind of a high level overview and introduction for yourselves in the public okay so we're going to start off with normally an achievement I show a whole bunch of graphs that that basically point out that pter school district has a high level of achievement relative to the state and relative to our comparison districts and so on and so forth tonight I'm taking a little different Twist on that and I want to just get focused in on the literacy implementation that you all know we did on K5 this year and kind of use that to highlight um some some achievement outcomes so when we do an uh an implementation like that K5 we have two data sets we can look at where we have fall and winter data beginning of year middle of year so
185we can look at gains across that time frame right so this is let me back up just a little bit de 1.0 is really about the 2022 23 school year and the outcomes that we've attained in alignment with the district ends but a couple years back the board had expressed interest in when applicable and we have more current data than that maybe it's enrollment data patterns maybe it's achievement like I'm about to dive into here that you'd like to see it so that's why we're actually looking at 2324 data when I talk about fall to winter gains on an important event Like A literacy implementation K5 so we have Maps NWA Maps tests as well as Dibbles 8 and both of those assessment programs show gains for our K5 students the typical fall to winter
186gains on those assessment programs range between 3 to 5% that's over the past years um this particular fall to winter and two 2023 we saw gains for K5 approximately 133% meaning um we had 133% um additional or more students who were measured as being at grade level uh proficiencies by those assessment programs so we expect to see an implementation dip potentially folks talked about that there's actually not evidence of an implementation dip which is great there's actually evidence of some acceleration now I don't want to overbeat that drum because this is early it's you know we've got three or four months under our belt and these in these test gains that we're looking at but it's certainly a good sign going in the right direction so I want to just kind of elevate that for
187us a little bit okay um achievement staying with achievement for a minute I also want to make a point about how much attendance matters when it comes to achievement this is another thing that's highlighted in the report so once again before I click to the next slide I will point out that when we do look at our achievement relative to the state relative to our comparison districts which are Boulder St B and Cherry Creek they're the most similar to us large districts great outcomes just like us we actually outperform our comparison districts we outperform the state we outperform the country frankly when we look at nationally standardized tests like NWA all of that is still true as I say that it is also true that we have achievement gaps as many districts do so we
188have various subgroups of students right that have lower achievement than the overall population um so mentioning that too but to dive into achievement I'm going to focus a little bit on attendance and the impact that it has on achievement okay so this slide is kind of just taking a moment to remind us that the gaps that I just mentioned a minute ago that persist specifically we see gaps for students supported with IEPs we see gaps when we look at achievement for our MultiLing or M multilingual Learners or English language Learners uh we also see gaps for students that come from um households that may be a lower socioeconomic status and some specific ethnicities okay so we acknowledge that we're working on that uh continuously as many districts do but I want to now zero in
189a little bit on the impact that attendance makes on our achievement across different all all different subgroups of students including the overall student group a series of slides we're about to look at I promise this is the only slide I believe that has sort of sort of like a statistical lesson embedded in it just to ground home viewers and and and board members just to remind us when we look at a achievement and PSD we tend to look at something called the achievement effect size the reason that we look at achievement effect size is because all the different vendors the cmass test the SAT the Dibbles 8 the NWA map they all have different ways of creating cut scores for grade level proficiency and different metrics they report out but what we can do is
190we can take all those different metrics that they give us we can standardize those metrics into zc scores puts them on kind of a probabilist or normative scale relative to like other real students who took the test either Nationwide or Statewide and we can actually see how our students performed on that test across different tests using the same exact metric so that it's it allows us to do lots of things combine data in sensible ways and understand things quickly so what you're looking at up there is a picture and the blue normal curve represents the overall National or state outcome on an assessment could be Maps could be cmass could be sat wouldn't matter there's generally a normal curve outcome for the nation or the state or you know the large group of students taking
191it the red curve represents psd's normal curve on that of outcomes on that same assessment and it's shifted to the right um generally about 0.25 to3 of a standard deviation unit I used to call that and I think I still will the PSD Advantage okay not sure exactly what creates it could be the great community that we serve could be that we're in a college town could be our great teachers and our curriculum alignment but there's a very consistent result where the PSD achievement outcome distribution is shifted in the positive direction meaning a better outcome or to the right of of national or state distributions the distance that that normal curve is shifted is what we mean when we say an achievement effect size it's being me measured in a standard deviation unit okay so
1920.25 of an achievement effect size means 0.25 of a standard deviation unit of the underlying assessment to be able to make sense of that for lots of people because lots of us don't think in terms of standard deviation units unless you're maybe a statistician it a lot of us are more familiar with percentile rank right so I have a little chart up there that just points out that if a an effect size is zero an achievement effect size that we're talking about is zero that's the same as the 50th percentile meaning right at the middle typical outcome nationally or Statewide when we see a p we have a PSD Target of an effect size of 0.25 or greater that is equivalent to saying that our typical students outcome is actually at the 60th percentile nationally
193so the 50th percentile for PSD is the 60th percentile nationally meaning our average student is doing as well or better than the lower 60% of students instead of the lower 50 it shift at 10% units to the right when we get all all the way up to a 0.52 achievement effect size which we're going to see in just a minute we do hit that half a standard deviation shift to the right we are saying our typical student in that group is actually at the 70th percentile that's a huge shift to the right okay so that graph was just there to kind of ground Us in what are we talking about when we say achievement effect size what is the overall cmap PSAT sat that ranges grades 3 through 11 standardized testing grades 3 through 11
194there's multiple years of data in the in the uh slide and it indicates that that green dotted line that's cutting across that graph is marking off the 20 the 0.25 effect size right a quarter of a standard deviation shift to the right and we can see clearly that we're always above that at 31. 32 and so on in the most recent two years so the table below it there's tabled values below it that are colorcoded all the blue cells are at the point they're at that 0.25 or higher we met that growth Target in those grade levels for those years where you see those blue cells the green cell indicates that that's a growth effect size greater than zero meaning the PSD students did achieve better than their National or State academic peers meaning the
195distribution shifted to the right the point of that slide is just that not only do we have consistently high growth or sorry high achievement in math but you can see that that achievement is really being contributed to by all the grade levels remember all these graphs and things are in the actual report so I'm just going to kind of move along a little bit now we're looking at reading outcomes it's the same exact picture we saw a moment ago but this is for reading or evidence based reading and writing when it comes to PRS sat as opposed to math very similar story you notice that basically third of a standard deviation shift to the right of our distributions consistently and you can see that those grade levels are all contributing to that wonderful outcome furthermore
196you can see that in the most recent year of 2223 there's a whole lot of blue things are going well okay now hold that picture in your mind for a second I'm going to hit the slide and show you what that looks like like for the students in that same group this is still a reading achievement it's Cass through sat the only difference is it's trimmed in the data set that such that students had attendance less than 95% and you notice that that achievement effect size line graph drops dramatically it's below our Target of of the 0.25 growth effect size remember the other group was up at like a third of a standard deviation a 3 33 this drops down to just under the 0.25 interestingly these students are still outperforming their National and or
197in this case actually this is all state assessments so they're Statewide academic peers so what happens though when we see when we do the same thing but we look at only students who have 95% or higher attendance and you see that those grow those achievement effect size go up above 0.5 so that whole distribution is shifted half a standard deviation to the right that's like saying for that group of students their typical outcome is at the 70th percentile nationally which is very high achievement matters right when students show up consistently to school their measurable outcomes really all of them move in the right direction okay I'm Switching gears now from Achievement so there's lots of different slides and information in the full report on achievement but we're going to switch gears now to keep on
198this theme of attendance we' identified attendance as an issue that we're working on through our strategic plan and our uip and our various efforts that we have going on in our system attendance rates have declined in PSD over the past several years that same that statement is true for Statewide and for other districts in the state so attendance in general has gone down in the last several years our Target is that we and this is really generally a Statewide Target that we have 95% or better daily attendance um it's worth mentioning though that PSD attendance rates do lag our comparison District's attendance rates okay the lower attendance rates are evident among all the student groups all the different grade levels the subgroups the population overall so attendance is an issue which is why it's in
199our strategic plan and it's in our uip we know it impacts other outcomes we care about and we know that um from the simple data points I just mentioned that it's an issue worthy of psd's time and attention which we are giving it that sorry Dwayne can I interrupt for just one moment going back to the um attendance I just want I'm just one of the definition of attendance here is this um excused unexcused combination of both combination of both okay thank you now in all of this data is for 2122 and 2223 so on this next slide what I want to show you is what is the attendance pulled very recently for 23 24 okay so again this this um table breaks out what you just asked about the First Column is overall attendance
200percent the second column is the excuse or um yeah the excused absences percent and the last column is the unexcused absences percent so if you were to add those last two columns and take it away from 100% you would get that attendance total in the first one so it breaks it down a little bit and then the columns the green columns that we see to the right are just showing the breakdown of attendance by grade level K through 12 in our district for this school year up to that date of 22724 where the green is the attendance rate the black color indicates the excused absences and the orange-ish red color shows you the unexcused so what happens as kids get older they have more unexcused absences that's what's happening yeah for attendance is this missing
201a full day or partial day or a couple of classes that's a good question because every District gets to Define this a little bit differently and I think our definition varies just a little bit by Elementary versus secondary I know know that there's some folks on our attendance um action team and and such so maybe maybe we take that at the end and talk about attendance sound good okay team back there you're for wored we're they're ready so we'll so we'll get into that in a little more detail all right so I think the the theme to this particular slide though is that you can see the big difference is not in the distance of the black on each of those bars it's actually just that as the grades go up the excused absences go
202up that's what's driving that okay now Switching gears out of attendance into what we call additional support progress so real quickly what do we mean when we say additional support in this District we have a system where we look at all of the scores from last year for each student on standardized tests in reading and math and if we have a student for whom all of those scores are traveling below the 35th percentile we would identify them as a good candidate for additional support in that subject and so the data slides we're about to look at are trimmed to reflect those students who are traveling in that lower onethird of the achievement distribution nationally that are in school here with us in PSD okay so what we see and we've seen this in past moning
203reports as well is that the growth that we see the academic growth um annual growth for students that were identified as good candidates for additional support exceeds their academic peers Statewide and Nationwide um but did not hit our growth Target which is different than our achievement Target our growth Target of 020 growth effect size and so and that growth from this most recent year of 2223 was a little bit lower than the prior year of 2122 I want to explain real quickly like what is a growth effect size because we talked about an achievement effect size right where our distribution and PSD shifted to the right a certain number of standard deviation units once we know the achievement zcore or you could say effect size for a group but for individual student their zcore on
204the preest and we similarly know their zcore their location on the post test when we subtract those two we get the Z gain or the growth effect size so at 0.20 represents students on average coming in wherever they came in but not just growing as much as their academic peers Statewide or Nationwide actually shifting 02 standard deviation units further to the right than their typical academic pure so that's why a 0 2 growth of excise is our Target it means that our kids are moving forward or accelerating relative to their state and National peers in in a given time frame make sense so our growth um Target is 020 and above so there is some consistency when we look at which schools school by school met this Target and there are schools we'll see in
205just a minute that meet this target each year in reading and in math there is some consistency year toe and across subjects on which schools those are and we generally highlight those in the moning report because we want to shine a light where we see positive things happening because we want to spread those best practices there's one last thing I want to mention that in pter school district there is an increasing number of students that are being identified as good candidates for additional support so we do see this population if you will growing a little bit in PSD over time this is a list of schools um based on three different measures a Cadian map versus um the third one Cass PSAT sat these are the schools that actually did hit the 020 or higher
206growth effect ex size Target for the students they served that had been identified as good candidates for additional support so they're helping kids catch up which is great aadience really covers students from first through um third grade because this is growth so it's not including kindergarten for map it's third through eth grade and for Cass that would be 9th through 11th grade okay that's being represented there and you can see on that list and maybe it's harder to count there from there but we have 18 schools in that aadience list that met that growth Target for their students that had been identified as good cans for additional support based on map a different grade range and assessment there were 13 schools in for Cass that list contains 14 Schools and so each year we kind
207of identify those for the reasons I had said before so it kind of helps us with conversations and we spread best practices okay we're going to switch off of achievement and growth and additional support and we're going to move into graduating with options one of the priorities in pter school district right so I created this graph because there's a big important story in here we have been pter school district has been on an upward Trend in our graduation rates across multiple years but it's also V you can you can clearly what's indicated there is that the graduation rate has bounced substantially up and down given that we have um 2,000 graduates a year basically that's a lot of Bounce in a number with that much endc count in it so it kind of indicates a
208lack of systemness in my opinion and then in the last two years within the rounding era of 0.1 we have been at 87% twice there that's to me that is a celebration in that we've done some system changes with the help of our counselors and our teachers and our principes every it's all hands on board we've been doing that work for several years and you're starting to see those results and one of the results you're seeing is consistency and now and you're also seeing that it didn't just slide back down so that's great we have more distance to climb up but it is a celebration that two years in a row we're at 87% that it was stable for two years and that we met that Target of 85% or higher which for many many
209years I I think I've been doing this report for 15 years and I believe there was only one other year in the past where we even hit that Target where we hit you know beat that Target and we still still weren't as highs these latest two years so that's just a positive story now it's nice to patch yourselves on the back and celebrate it's also important to challenge ourselves to know where our our areas are for growth right and we have areas for growth here as well so students supported with an IEP their graduation rate compared to like peers other students around the state also supported with IEPs our graduation rate was 66.7% in in the class of 23 the States was 69.3 so that means we were below the state and our graduation rate
210for students supported with an i I can make a similar statement for students eligible for free and reduced meal prices our rate was 71% the states 73.3 so there's two kinds of gaps you're seeing there right you're seeing that for those two groups they're they're they're not getting the same 87% as the overall population that's an in what I call an internal Gap and then there's a difference between that group locally versus a similar group Statewide and I call that like an external Gap they're both important to recognize so we have work to do there we know that and we're engaged in that work English language Learners did gain 5.4 percentage points compared to the prior class graduation rate so they're at 69.8% so there's a celebration there that it did go up it is
211slightly higher than the graduation rate Statewide at 69.4 but you can see how close those two numbers are PSD should be much higher than that in our opinion so I mention all three of those groups because we're actively working in all three of those spaces to increase those graduation rates and when I say that it's kind of like saying increasing achievement levels it's not the achievement score we're trying to raise it's the actual learning of kids that's we're trying to raise right that's reflected in the scores the scores are supposed to be an indicator of similarly we're not working to raise just the graduation rate we're trying to raise the successful completion of high school for our students and graduation rate the foure on time is an important indicator of that so we're working toward
212the students having the outcome that all of them and all of us want for them okay so when students don't graduate why you you know we could unpack that for hours which we won't do in here tonight but trust me our teams here we do unpack that for hours we have lots of conversations about this topic and we dig into it this graph is hard to read from your your chair but what this is is we took I took the students who didn't graduate with the class of 2023 for whom that was their anticipated year of graduation meaning that was the graduating year for them four years after they had started nth grade of that group 87 of those students were are currently enrolled in PSD schools in the fall and I asked a simple
213question what credits are they still behind on as they came into their fifth year of high school and so that little colorful pie in the middle every one of those colors is a different subject area and we have graduation requirements based on all those different many things so those are the credits A lot of the students were missing the other thing that that slide shows us is that there were I got curious because I've heard this before well what if a lot of the students who don't graduate kind of came to PSD as 11th graders or 12th graders and they were so far behind we just couldn't get them caught up in time so I went back and I looked at of those 87 students how many of them showed up in our schools as
214ninth graders four years earlier and the answer is 73 of them did now that means that 84% and my slide's wrong because it says 88% and I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote that okay but if you recheck that number 73 divided by 87 I think you'll get 84% but that means here this is the important Point not that Dwayne messed up his math tonight but that 84% % of the students who didn't graduate within four years and then stuck with us the following year 84% of them were with us as nth graders so it's not that we're just bringing in students from elsewhere okay our Dropout rates have always been low in PSD frankly if you look at the data it's very consistently we're under 1% or we're right at 1%
215maybe we might be 1.1% it's low it's low relative to the state it's low relative to our comparison districts so our dropout rate from last year and it's important to remember dropout rate is not one minus the graduation rate because because the dropout rate is 8 through 8th grade through 12th grade all those students get into that calculation graduation rates just calculated difference it's not one minus the other but our dropout rate was 0.9% and that's a decrease from the prior year of 0.2% so both of those are celebrations in a in a way right and our Dropout rates are well below the state and the comparison districts so that's just been a consistent theme in psd's data that we see all right financial assistance for postsecondary pter school district recognized several years ago through
216this monitoring report work that we did not have the FAFSA completion rates that we see Statewide we see in our comparison districts and that we think are important college is expensive if students don't fill out the FAFSA they're not really accessing those possible funds very important so did I just click it Forward no we're good so we did see did I did I click it Forward one on that one no we're good sorry I don't know I must be tired I bet I'm not the only one all right so um T alcarez is sitting in the back there and Tanya I don't know for certain that you're the one that wrote that Grant but I bet you're the one that wrote that Grant we maybe we'll talk about that in a minute but we did
217get that $30,000 Grant um to address this issue it's a completion grant for FAFSA and cfsa which is I believe the Spanish version of the FAFSA Spanish language and so with that money at our future ready Center um they had Tanya and our team and other folks in PSD have been running workshops and information nights for um parents and community members they've been providing training for counselors Finance teachers and family Leons they've provided one-on-one complet support for again families and students that need that kind of you know one-on-one help and bilingual assistance has been prioritized in that so that's just work that I thought you'd be interested in knowing is going on and you can see in the line graph on the top the black line is PSD the other lines are the Pink as
218a state and the other three are our comparison districts so it's it's evident that our Fafa now notice that data is kind of dated that's for the class of 2021 right right we're going to be graduating the class of 2024 but State data in that space is always lagging doesn't mean that there's not a signal in that data that we need to pay attention to so we're working hard on that when it comes to Preparing students for uh you know a rewarding future we are a leader PSD absolutely by every measure is a leader and we should be proud of that like very proud of that class of 2021 the most recent CDE Statewide data so that I can get Statewide comp parison District as well as us you see some some data points up
219there our dual enrollment is really high at 70% compared to the state at 42 concurrent enrollment 65% compared to 29% for the State Career and Technical education enrollment CTE enrollment 80% way to go compared to 72 Statewide keep in mind that's a little bit data 2021 some fresh data 2223 we had 3,332 students 912 that took college classes and that's generally not 9th grade we had 1,16 earned credits for work-based learning experience I want to pause there just think about that for a minute 1,16 students in a school year getting credit for work-based learning experiences we only are able to do that because of the great partnership that we have with the Chamber of Commerce and the and they help us find those placements that are appropriate we also have work-based learning coordinators at each
220one of our high schools that make that magic happen and that makes us a bit unusual among districts Statewide it's one of the reasons we're leaders in this space and we had 628 career teched industry certifications earned by PSD students huge celebrations the great work going on whoa great work going on in PSD all right so when it comes to first year college outcomes and this is we're just about done with this presentation we have seen this year after year so if you look through the moning report you'll see graphs to to this effect we have the low lower lowest really remediation rates in both English and math we have high first year GPA we have a a um High college graduation rate within four years we also have a high percentage of our students
221that persist from their first year of college into their second year of college which turns out to be an important marker on every one of these PSD is Con is consistently a leader Statewide even relative to our comparison districts a quick summary these are the last two slides normally I have shown you the table which is in the report there's a full report that has the table of outcomes so with all the colors but basically if we summarize them right they're in five different groupings the first one's on early literacy and we met five out of eight indicators within that grouping of our targets so early literacy there's a lot of positive outcomes the second one on achievement and growth we met our Targets on four out of six indicators again pter School District kind
222of has a history of high achievement high growth and yes we can start digging in by subgroup and find some things that we need to work on the additional support Target you know we have five indicators we met one of them that indicated and yet what I said was true we're getting high levels of growth for our kids but we set some pretty rigorous targets for oursel in that space because it turns out that students that need or good candidates for additional support they need high levels of growth three years in a row to truthfully be catching up so we set rigorous targets for oursel because you've got to meet rigorous Targets in order to actually get the students to where you want them to be and remember we we have some schools that are
223hitting that Mark but not all of our schools and we're working on that on the fourth grouping around graduation completion we meet four out of four indicators where we meet those targets again there are gaps and such we pointed out earlier so and then on the fifth grouping of targets um Health mental health and belonging I want to mention healthy kids Colorado survey data came out the day that we submitted this report to you all so when we talk I think it was April 9th it's in April we can we can have the um healthy kids Colorado survey section update the version that you got it's the same static stuff that we had from the last round so we'll update that so right now we met one of two indicators depending on how that healthy
224kids Colorado piece comes in we might meet two out of three indicators cuz I've taken a glance at that report and thankfully a lot of numbers moved in the right direction like there were improvements for PSD so we'll but we'll see we'll get more detail in the future all right is that a new record 35 minutes I I gave you 10 minutes but I'll take 35 that was great all right that was that was fantastic thank you do you need a towel that was like a marathon that's quicker than usual job yeah thank you um are there any questions or comments um I know this is you know part one so we've got part two coming and that's actually not next meeting but the meeting after that just so everybody knows um and we'll be
225talking uh as you said about the um Healthy Kids Club and mental health and that sort of thing but any questions for tonight yeah Scott go ahead uh great presentation thank you Dwayne this I always like to see your graphs they're easy to understand for the most part standard deviation a little tough but yeah okay anyhow uh everything looked great I'm really excited especially about the literacy um increases the one area looked to me and this is near the end was the FAFSA completion um with that with what Tanya is doing um in the uh the workshops and things like that when will we know the next round of stats to see how we uh compare you know we Tanya do you want to talk to about fast for a little bit or that is
226why I asked T to be here because she's she's leading a lot of that yeah great question uh the data is live right now um and so you can see it by high school you can't see it by District we have to aggregate it uh by district and I don't know if you f follow what's going on with baa right now um so I don't know how accurate our data is but uh they just relaunched the simplified FAFSA they've had problems with um the the platform so Across the Nation the number of FAFSA completions are down and then the cfsa is for Colorado students that are undocumented um so so that data is not as live um but we'll get that at the end of the year June 30 so I'll add one piece to
227that so it is in the monum report what the latest numbers were but what Tanya just said super important in case someone didn't know they've had problems with FASA and so we're about 5% below at this time right now we're about 5% below where we normally are at this time of the year but that is highly likely due to the problems they're having with the fasta getting it processed so it's very suspect data we really can't tell yeah and I'll just throw in one of the things as I look at the grant that you got that's so timely because I know so many parents right now are struggling with it um because of the changes and things are not going through and you're not able to submit and all of the the issues so I
228think that that Grant was extremely timely so thank you other questions all right I think we're we're all good Dwayne thank you so much um and I just want to you you said it in the beginning but I want to reiterate for everybody that this is on our Bo um Bo Insight um it's on uh the web for um the public to go ahead and take a look at you can slice and dice um and figure out you know different um populations and schools and you can do all of that so you can go ahead and see um how we are doing um on your own not just take our word for it here can I give a quick shout out absolutely so we have doc excuse me we have Dr Ranchi sitting right there
229next to Tanya and you all are just getting to know um ran and she has been a wonderful addition to our team and she helped write this report and she's worked on a lot of other things for us as well but I just wanted to just take a minute to introduce you real quickly to them to let you know we've got a team working on this stuff so we're looking forward to the next presentation thanks a lot for tonight awesome thank you so much all right um so that's moving on to um 12 point one um executive session for negotiations can I get a motion Okay Kevin I move the board enter executive session for the purpose of developing strategy the school district for negotiations relating to the 2024 2025 collective bargaining agreement or employment
230contracts as authorized by CRS section 24642 subpart 4 E3 individuals invited to join the board in executive session are superintendent Brian Kingsley chief officer Lauren huden Dave Montoya mine Novi and Eric waves and general counsel autum Asen can I get a second just the second okay um Jill can you please call the vote Jim brokish hi Kristen Draper hi Connor Duffy hi Kevin havalda hi Carolyn Reed hi Scott shanower hi Jessica Zamora I motion passes 70 thank you Jill 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 good evening we are set for and we'll go into closing
231this out at 9:57 uh at March 5th 2024 and we'll meet in 10 minutes