Board of Education Meeting: August 22, 2023

001all right whoa yes all right is right uh welcome to the uh August 22nd uh meeting of the Pooter School District Board of Education I'll call this meeting to order at approximately 6 30 p.m um if you uh could mute your cell phone so that we don't have interruptions during the meeting which I will also do right now we can move right along our first item on the agenda is uh approval of the agenda which is does any board member wish to make any changes to this agenda that we have before us seeing none we will go on to our third item I guess the first item is the call to order the third item which is the superintendent report and we will welcome Brian Kingsley to make remarks to the board in the community

002thank you president Patterson good evening everybody it's an honor to be with all of you tonight uh Happy new school year uh really really excited to illuminate all the incredible things that are happening across PSD to start the school year so prior to my remarks I'd like to actually show you an Incredible video that the PSD Communications team put together to highlight what's been happening around our schools and arts district over the last few days foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] not only oh sorry not only is our Communications team rockstars for putting something together like that but I think you see firsthand that there was a lot of connection a lot of Joy a lot of enthusiasm and as I've had an opportunity to visit many

003of our schools over the first couple days of school people people genuinely missed each other and are truly enjoying being back in community with each other and that's not by accident that's by Design I want to thank all of the PSD staff members who have been working since last year to make sure that we were first day ready something that the community might not know that our operations team has been working around the clock to not just feed 1.2 million additional meals this year with universal meal programs that has been approved at the state level but we had 22 of our 54 schools were under construction over the course of the summer and for all of those projects to be moving forward expeditiously to ensure that schools were ready that classrooms were ready and people

004were able to experience Joy I want to thank the operations team and that's all of the various arms of the operations team it's a it's a pretty big division as you know I also want to think you know it's not just dedicated employees it's people who are committed in these ranks to like becoming lifelong Learners not becoming they are lifelong Learners and the entire district has participated in learning activities to make sure that we're not just creating Readiness but we're also sharpening iron we're you know trying to figure out ways to be better Educators better leaders better Servants of our community and so the commitment that I saw at Rocky Mountain High School and other places to really provide a first-class professional development experience for teachers for principals prepare professionals it's just really very impressed

005on not just the delivery of those particular options but how people were showing up and really truly engaging and wanting to better themselves as a person and as a professional I have great news that Center on this gratitude is our schools are taking learning and putting it into practice we have many of of our schools that are continuing to be recognized at a national level I got a phone call yesterday morning from Ann Alfonso the proud principal at Bethke elementary school to let me know that her school Bethke uh as a result of their hard-working teachers and dedicated staff because of the time energy and commitment that they put together to meeting and professional learning communities which are high impact teams to help move the work forward that's specific to what students need not just

006what we think that we need to teach they are now considered a model PLC work school across the country by solution tree PSD out of all of the schools that have received that designation Nationwide I want you to know the significance of this there are only 553 schools Across America that have received that designation and three of them are in PSD it's not just not just bath key but it's also Zach Elementary School in Canard middle school and I'm just so proud to be associated with people like our teachers our school leaders who are dedicated to not just teaching but learning about our kids needs through professional learning communities those needs and those meeting times are incredibly important and I'm grateful for seeing what that looks like at a high level it's great that we

007have models at National models in our backyard as you had an opportunity all of you to see the Incredible video of what's been happening across our system I firsthand on the first day of school joined Kristen and Rob and other people across the district and visiting six schools that day starting my day off at Lincoln Elementary School or Lincoln Middle School excuse me was a great treat it showed to me the importance of the transition days for our sixth graders and our ninth graders it was incredible whether you were walking off of or coming off of a bus or being dropped off by a parent or walking to school you weren't just treated with a smile all of the students there that I witnessed were actually treated by acknowledging who they were and what their

008strengths were we missed you how have you been doing on this what has your summer been like but calling people by first name on the first day is an aspiration that many schools try to set out to do and I saw Lincoln Middle School actually accomplish that I then had an opportunity to jump on Route 179 from Lincoln to tavelli elementary school and riding with driver Eric who not only prioritizes safety in his role as a bus driver each and every day but how he maximized relationships with the students who were on his bus I had an opportunity to get off at the various bus stops and talk to families many of them who are PSD employees waiting for their children to go off to school was a treat and a joy to connect with

009people about the excitement around what this District offers when we reopen so just really grateful for that opportunity I spent the day with Rob eating lunch at Linton Elementary School speaking with second graders and they had asked me point blank to please consider allowing us all to bring our puppies back to school there's a lot of Joy when we bring puppies many of them asked me to consider building pools on the roofs of Linton Elementary School to kind of offset some of the heat activities that I'll talk a little bit more about in a minute but we have a new principal there for James Garcia Sia and uh the school just went off without a hitch and just to hear the creative juices and and ideas of the students it was nothing uh but a

010treat and if you had an opportunity to see my Twitter feed today we had a student that asked me when I walked into his second grade classroom with a suit he not only asked me if I shopped at Macy's he asked me if I just come from church and we I really got a kick out of that and so he had an opportunity to wear my jacket for a little bit of the day and connect with him but there's just our kids are amazing and so are our teachers and faculty and staff members spent some time at Wellington Middle School high school and saw great things happening there and really excited about the new leadership up at the school with Troy krotz taking over there's a general sense of enthusiasm that building is still as

011beautiful as it was the first day that it opened and seeing it be maximized with even more students as we opened another grade level up there was a treat and had an opportunity to go to Centennial High School I saw their disc their Discovery program in action on the first day which is a re-engagement exercise size that takes six weeks for students that are on the margins that they really truly in their hearts are committed to finishing high school but they have experienced a lack of success up to this point and to see them go deep on a class around personal ownership and personal responsibility and realizing that we have individual choices that are required of us in order to experience success it's not just about the others who help us to see how that

012was taught with compassion yet conviction was super super inspiring and then I had an opportunity to end my day with many people over at Weber middle school and I want to thank Brian Davis who's in attendance here tonight for his thoughtful leadership that school just breeds Community if you want to see what instruction looks like on day one visit Weber middle school and while I want to acknowledge the focus on instruction there was also a focus on cultivating relationships making sure that we don't skip over getting to know who people are now I share all of those good things to recognize that we're also experiencing challenges it's hot y'all Mother Nature is not my friend and I want to just acknowledge that it's not hot just for our students it's hot for our staff as

013well and I'm really hopeful that cooler days are on the near Horizon and will prevail to make sure that we have a more comfortable learning and work environment for all that is involved we recognize as a system that temperatures in this area across the globe have increased over the last few years and that means it's going to be hotter in our buildings in our classrooms especially around the start of our school year and I want to acknowledge that head on knowing that there's probably some people that want to speak about this tonight what you might not know or maybe you do is that 33 of our 54 school buildings in PSD currently do not have air conditioning that is not going to be acceptable in the future we are going to need to engage the

014community to identify thoughtful Solutions around how we tackle that and I'm really grateful that this board had solicited an outside entity mckinstry who has been here to talk a little bit about solar feasibility we are in the near future are going to talk about what it's going to take to actually provide robust air conditioning throughout our system and I see that not just as offsetting the temperatures in the first couple of weeks of school it opens up the opportunity for our buildings to be accessible year round and so I really want to educate the community that this is not about an investment in a couple of weeks that we just need to suck it up this is about trying to figure out how we can be creative and Innovative around our scheduling around our extracurriculars

015and create environments that are safe and also enjoyable as you see that that's not sustained in ways that we can't create an environment where it's cool um that said our community has questions and I understand that understandably so and how we're addressing the various temperatures that exist in PSD and I want to acknowledge it on the front end what measures that we are taking and I also want to recognize that as I share these people may say that's not enough and I respect if you're on that side of this equation as well I had an opportunity yesterday to visit Fort Collins High School in the afternoon and connect with teachers students and principals and visit various classrooms and yes I did have the courage to go on the second floor in the afternoon and I

016will be honest that we have classrooms that while I was there persisted in the high 80s 87 86.8 degrees it was uncomfortable what I can tell you that I'm really proud about it is the an unfortunate situation that professionalism that was exhibited by our employees to not pass that frustration onto our students and ensure their first couple of days of school we're still met with joy that we're still met with enthusiasm around being immersed in instruction and learning I thought some of our teachers had really creative ideas that may fall flat in the eyes of the community but even like a rolling video of a blizzard on one screen where students were just trying to immerse themselves in the mindset of what it feels like to be cool knowing that we need to endure this

017for a little bit of time um we have in the past thought and have actually executed on having early release days when there have been persistent heat in our community that has not been the case yet even though it probably feels that way on the third day of school we have not persisted and endured heat but those people who are in those same classrooms know what that experience is each and every year and I understand that creates a lot of frustration but on the other side of that is having all of our students thirty thousand students go home two hours early creates another impact in the community as well which makes the situation feel feel like a lose-lose at times there are many families that are dependent upon us to feed their children twice even

018though we are an academic institution we also provide child care opportunities for families to be able to work and not everyone has the flexibility to be able to Pivot on a dime in the event that we make hard decisions and that's really tough to endure that especially knowing that there are several of our schools that have air conditioning so it's not Equitable or equal in this particular space I do want to acknowledge that families do have choice and I want to be clear and careful in this space families if you need to take your child out early we want your children in school every day all day for the entire day but if you have an individual situation where you feel it is in the best interest to excuse your child we want you to

019know that that is allowable under our current policies we want to make sure that we're trying to create environments where we keep people in school I was really pleased that the schools that I went to they had full classrooms people are showing up day one and learning but if I'm not as a district we as a district are not trying to take away parents rights on being able to ensure that if they have to make a decision that's in the best interest of their children they have the ability to do that and I just want to remind our community of those particular choices our staff and we have make sure last year that we distributed fans to every single classroom I know that's not sufficient in a lot of our classrooms in our hallways we

020do have functional fans but we also had ordered swamp coolers especially for many of our Second Story classrooms so we're asking for staff to continue to make sure that those things are on but that also creates other challenges too with noise and papers blowing around and so this it's not a perfect situation but we're trying to make the best of a hard and difficult situation staff is continuing to be encouraged to pull their Shades down on their Windows when feasible and to move their classes and I saw this at Fort Collins where Second Story classrooms were moving to empty first-story cloud or classrooms on the first level as well as in outdoor shaded areas which I thought was really creative and thoughtful we encourage our staff and our children to continue to wear lightweight clothing

021to ensure that we're bringing water bottles and staying hydrated throughout the course of the day and that we're just checking in with each other to make sure those people are not feeling uh you know if they're not feeling well that we have an opportunity to acknowledge that and take action to make sure that people continue to be and feel safe we're also doing our very best as an operations staff to bring in as you can tell even though it's really hot during the day it's cooler in the evenings and so we're trying to be as intentional as possible about drawing cool air from 3 A.M all the way to 8 A.M from the air outside bringing that inside to ensured as we start the day it's as comfortable as possible but I have experience firsthand

022in many of our schools that wears off and some schools more quickly than others and it's just a very difficult situation that we're going to need to find a community-wide solution for the last thing I want to share with you is about safety um the challenge of this situation is that it may be beneficial to bring keep our doors open and to continue to bring in air throughout the day but as we all know that also provides safety challenges and risks and so I want to just acknowledge to the community that District water expectation is that all of our exterior doors at PSD remain closed and locked during school hours and that's not because we don't want to bring in more air from the outside into the inside of the facility but while we're also

023prioritizing heat mitigation we're also prioritizing safety measures which actually amplifies the complexity of this Challenge and I know my words fall flat for those who are actually dealing with this on a day-to-day basis but we're doing everything that we can and we're going to need to engage the community thoughtfully around how we do this work moving forward you know tonight is a night where we're going to focus on how do we continuously improve the system through the lens of our strategic plan in our district uip and what I'm proud about those particular plans and you'll hear more cert uh really soon about this is that it's focused on our core business but as the public or any members of the community who are listening here tonight please know that while we are focusing are improving

024our Core Business what's happening behind those scenes is the development of a long-range plan that involves these particular things around sustainability around HVAC around how do we take the various pieces of equipment around our school system and make sure that it's up-to-date modern and working at a high level we have a lot of creative approaches to do a lot with very little resource and there's a shelf life on our ability to continue to persist in that type of environment so we will continue to engage in those conversations so the community and this board are fully up to speed around what's possible in those particular areas but I just want to reiterate it will take community-wide support it will take us to lead with our hearts and be incredibly empathetic and we will have to make

025hard decisions in the near and far future to make sure that we're doing everything we can to maximize what's possible for this this school year but I am as the superintendent incredibly pleased on what I've seen so far but I also want I think it's important to acknowledge the challenges that as well so thank you for allowing me to open up this evening I really appreciate it thanks for your remarks Brian and thanks for all the clarification and information around the heat situation because I know that's been a challenge and we've certainly received emails about that as well and yeah I was excited to go to the schools uh with you as well we went to Laurel and then and then Wellington so that was that was good um the next item on our agenda

026is uh Community comment I want to remind us all for our hopes for this section of the agenda the board desires to hear the viewpoints of all stakeholders including students employees parents and Guardians and community members and input that is most helpful to the board of education and District staff is that which celebrates successes that support the educational and social emotional experiences of our students or which identifies a problem and proposes a solution for us to consider that ultimately improves the educational and or social emotional experiences of the students public comment is designed to address issues not personalities or Personnel matters please keep your concerns and comments focused on the district it is important to note that the board does not generally respond to remarks made during Community comment our lack of response should not

027be 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 we recognize that some although by no means all of the remarks that have been made are factually inaccurate we choose not to respond or correct the record here because formal board meetings are not the time or place for back and forth dialogue although we may disagree on some things I know that we all want the best educational experience for our students and as we participate together in this community comment session we should model for our students how to listen how to interact respectfully even with those with whom we disagree and generally how to show up each day this opportunity for public comment is for members of the community

028who registered to speak by the designated deadline those people will be called on to make remarks in the order that they signed up and each speaker will be allowed three minutes to address the board I will be fairly strict about when that red light starts flashing asking you to finish immediately we have nine speakers this evening and our first speaker is Jeff afterheide welcome my name is Jeff hofterhutty from Wellington Colorado the term bread and circuses dates back to ancient Rome signifying the practice of appeasing the masses with superficial distractions today it symbolizes how entities mask pressing issues with superficial measures as precisely how I'd characterize Brian kingsley's superintendent report and this boards at Board of education's handling of the Tyler zanella case let's consider the following I requested from PSD the safe to tell

029cases for the year on May 24th the Director of Human Resources resolved six cases case number 1446-1450-1480-1481-1482 and 1487 however only residue resolution dates were provided to me not their initiation dates and intriguingly a month later both PSD Human Resources directors reside as evidenced by the 622 2003 Personnel action report this resolution coincidentally fell on the same day The Coloradoan highlighted Tyler zanellas intentionally sadistic misdeeds it was later reported that six non-verbal autistic children were harmed by Tyler zanella indications from the resolution dates suggest Mr Kingsley might have been privy to this information earlier but chose silence during the May 23rd board meeting alarmingly at a crucial June 13th meeting where distraught parents sought answers Mr Kingsley was absent opting for private meetings in Washington D.C to add insult to injury while these parents were

030in court on June 15th the board celebrated with the private party on June 17th marking a quote successful school year unquote the boards previously mentions previously mentioned seeking legislative resolution concerning hiring individuals with child abuse records but let's be clear Tyler zanella was charged with the DUI on August 18 2022 not child abuse 11 days later he was working at psd's transportation department alongside his partner this isn't legislative mishap like you're attempting to spin it it's an egregious lapse in judgment let's discuss accountability superintendent kingsley's allegiances appeared divided is he serving the interests of entities like Chiefs for Change and Peter Gorman or is he truly committed to psd's board of directors and by extension are children he reports to you the directors not the other way around in closing we need genuine leadership that

031values the Children's Welfare over your Optics we don't need distractions or bread and circuses what we need are truth action and accountability sorry thank you our next speaker is the Reverend Dr Marta Fiore fioridi I hope I got that right otherwise please correct me okay welcome my name is Reverend Dr Marta fioriti and I am the minister one of the ministers at Plymouth Congregational an open and affirming Congregation of the United Church of Christ and I am also a parent of a student in pooter school district and I come today to speak in support of our lgbtq plus students in the pooter School District and I do so first as a citizen in democracy we are all equal each with dignity and worth we go first and foremost to our nation's Constitution to affirm the

032Dignity of each person including our students who are trans queer non-binary gay lesbian and bisexual ensuring that each student has what they need to flourish in our school system as part of being a democracy flourishing for a non-binary or queer student may necessitate asking their preferred pronouns and using them it may not necessitate ensuring that books that can be controversial but that represent lgbtq Community are in our school libraries that those books are not banned because some parents find their content objectable and it may necessitate sexual education and sexual ethic courses that cover many different gender identities and expressions I dare say that it not only necessitates but is also life-saving for these students simply using the correct pronouns so simple right is critical to the well-being and health of each student so I come

033to you first as a citizen but I also come to you as a minister in the Christian tradition for reasons beyond my understanding many efforts across the country would ban books ban sexual ethics classes and even ban the mention of gay parents and gay students in public schools a lot of those are represented as a Christian Movement many of my Christian ministerial colleagues and I do not subscribe to that narrow view of Christianity we come before you pledging support of our lgbtq queer non-binary gender fluent students in our schools and will fight to ensure that they are protected as people so that they like our students might flourish thank you thank you our next speaker is Megan Woodridge welcome hi all my friends call me Meg so hello um first of all thank you for

034allowing me the opportunity to speak this evening my name is Meg Woodridge I have three children one's a first grader and the other two are coming up into PSD I also happen to be a teacher at Fort Collins High School and superintendent Kingsley visited my classroom yesterday which was such a treat I have a few questions for you which you can answer in your mind and if you don't know the answer I can help you out at what temperature do you set your home thermostat is it 72 is it 74 when you're trying to save money at what temperature is your office thermostat or this very room and what is the OSHA recommendation for indoor work environments it's not a law otherwise I wouldn't be here but it happens to be 68 to 76 degrees

035and what's the temperature of the hot room in a research study done to determine whether heat increases aggression and yes it does the hot room was 86 degrees which is quote as high as the researchers figured they could go without endangering People's Health sounds pretty hot right well let me paint a picture of my classroom for you I teach at Fort Collins High School I'm on the second floor I have a large wall of South fainting windows that do not open I have a door that leads to a hot and busy hallway I have a swamp cooler which helps make things more humid I have a box fan which helps about four students at a time I have up to 32 students in my room and when I walked in this morning it was 76

036degrees at the end of the day today my classroom was 90 degrees and my thermostat's by the door it's about three degrees hotter by those south facing windows I've heard a variety of solutions mentioned and I'd like for you to expedite any and all of those Solutions and continue to think creatively about how to solve this issue 90 degrees is not acceptable it's not conducive to teaching and learning and it's really uncomfortable for all of us we're trying our best to be professional and it's hard there are 2 000 students at Fort Collins High School something over 200 staff members and we need your help thank you our next speaker is Fred Kirsch welcome hello thanks for listening tonight I hope everyone had a pleasant summer and I am here tonight to reintroduce myself and

037Community for sustainable energy and to make a few action requests um a big part of my job is a role as an educator and it's to educate the community for a sustainable energy staff the general public and when I'm here it's to share with Bruder School District to educate effectively I need to have quality information from which to teach so I spend a lot of time reading listening to watching news interviews reports studies and I talk to people that are a lot smarter than I am and my role is to take that information distill it down into something that you and I can understand and take action on it's taken me a long time and a lot of specific area Focus to learn what I have on this topic it wouldn't be fair to expect

038you to learn this in a couple of three-minute speeches so I'm requesting that each of you meet with me to have a little bit more in-depth discussion about this especially you Brian I am available for lunch coffee happy hour I'll move anything around set my upcoming wedding anniversary as you all know my role is not only as an educator but also as an instigator c-force is a Grassroots campaign we bring the voice of your constituents to you to demonstrate public support these letters are from people in the play dispatch of letters from people asking you to pursue this and to take the meeting with me um when it comes to sustainable energy solutions PSD has done a really great job with Energy Efficiency you've discovered that investing in efficiency isn't only about reducing pollution it's

039about saving money money that could go to air conditioning maybe similarly the potential for solar paired with electric buses demand management and even electric vehicles for teachers is about saving money much more money than what has been saved so far with building efficiency there's a lot of exciting potential here how much does PSD spend on electricity natural gas and bus fuel with some hard work there's the potential to bring those energy costs to zero and I'll be back in Future meetings to explain how that is possible it's an item requesting information about the new kinstry study I've shared the study with some solar experts and there seems to be some inconsistencies in their methodology for example they use a 20-year payback cap but they use a 25-year cash flow model there are a few very

040important cost and savings calculations missing from the equations on their inconsistencies and the conclusions within the report and maybe there's a a perfectly good explanation for this can you get to the bottom of what's going on here one more thing for now about the study will you please request that mckinstry finish their job by evaluating rooftop potential for buildings that need re-roofing including roof replacement cost is a common industry practice for solar feasibility studies mckinstry dropped 56 out of the 76 projects from the study because the roofs are not new so they really only study 20 projects is that what we paid for so in conclusion please ask mckinstry to clarify their methodology and to finish their job by evaluating rooftops in need of replacement thank you thank you our next speaker is Roger Hageman

041welcome good evening I appreciate the little film clip Brian where they showed the class of 2027. right I always thankful I could graduate in 67 so I'm always out of that good evening I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you tonight I am here not to condemn you or to rail on you but I am here to hopefully reason with you I was once a board member we had to make decisions probably similar to what you do we certainly were not perfect and you most likely are not better in that area either I appreciate you serving as board members it is really full-time job if one takes it seriously and I trust that you do we made a decision in that board once that was based on incorrect information that was just a little bit

042untrue and and without thoroughly checking caused much heartache after we made that decision years later I understood what we had done and God dealt really strongly with me to go and ask for forgiveness and make things as right as possible I did that and it helped all of us to find forgiveness and healing there are still scars in our lives though God takes very seriously the decisions we make especially ones affecting children I think good things come out of pooter School District many good things but I want to talk to you about something that's probably a little negative right now you're dealing with and seemingly have made decisions that are adversely affecting families and in my not so humble opinion are destroying young lives families and futures the early sexualization of innocent children is sinful

043I don't care how you look at it I don't care who says it isn't they're wrong it is sinful as a leader of children God has placed upon you a mantle of leadership that whether you like it or not it is there and you and I will be judged by what we do and how we do it today I plead with you that if you in any way are involved in this destructive process to Simply stop turn around and go the other way by working to uplift kids going through mental searching and lift them and their parents up and bless the family don't turn them over to so-called mental experts who only work towards the destruction of little kids house shameful we're all concerned I am not your judge but there is one who is

044and I promise you he will make things right for the kiddos and judge all those involved I'm going to quote from an author that you probably all know it says in Luke 17 1-2 it says then he said to the disciples it is impossible that no offense should come I need for you to finish your remarks but woe to him through whom they come it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea that he should offend then he should have been one of these little ones thank you thank you our next speaker is Becky woodcock's welcome my name is Becky woodcocks and I've been part of the Shepherds and Stem Elementary staff since 1998 and I'm here tonight representing myself and the views

045and opinions that I express are my own shepherdson is one of the older buildings in the district unless you work in an older building you might not be aware of some of the challenges we Face crowded spaces limited and outdated facilities problems with drinking water and no effective cooling systems to battle the annual August heat there are many things that make older schools challenging but tonight I would like to talk about the heat the August heat in buildings with in a building with more than 400 students and almost 80 staff members and no effective cooling system it's typically hot in August in Fort Collins historical records show multiple days in the 80s and 90s and for 25 years I have experienced hot days in August in shepherdson not just a little hot very hot hot

046outside and hot inside the building on those hot days we walk into the school at 7 30 in the morning to inside temperatures hovering over 76 or 78 degrees that's the outside temperature rises we've recorded inside temperatures of up to 89 or 90 degrees and not just for a day or two often for days in a row 25 years what has happened in those 25 years years after year year after year I've been told don't complain about the heat it's not that big of a deal dress lightly be sure to stay hydrated run your fan open your windows side note there are no windows that open at shephardson we take photos of the thermostats and we carry around digital thermometers to monitor the heat we sweat and become red-faced and some of us become lightheaded

047and faint our parents gift us fans by the dozens as well as the school district and we prop the doors open and run run jet engine jet engine fans in the mornings to supposedly cool the building down through it all we feel like we're teaching in a hot air tunnel making it noisy and hard to think clearly none of these efforts how much we might drop the temperature a degree or two we come home feeling draggy and headachy and sweaty and exhausted from having to talk over fans and being hot for six to eight hours some years it might be a day or two and other years it could be a week or two of this hot weather and we keep being asked to suck it up to dress slightly to stay hydrated and run

048fans year after year after year with no real solutions I invite you to come spend a few days a few of these hot days with us not just a quick drop in come spend a full day or two with us it's tough and I grow weary of being what feels like being ignored with due respect if one more person tells me to dress slightly stay hydrated and run fans I think I could explode I'm intelligent enough to know that please stop asking us to suck it up my colleagues and I have lots of reasonable ideas to help address the problem please respect us enough to listen and work with us to find long-term solution empathize with us make this problem a priority Don't lecture US during the hot days with what I should do to

049stay cool and then put the site the issue aside when the hot days of August end as it has for years please find a way to update our older buildings we do amazing things at shepherdson just look at our test scores and look at all the programming we offer please help us beat the heat and help keep our school cool thank you we need to have healthy and Equitable schools thank you our next speaker is Aaron Greene welcome good evening Mr Kingsley the video showed earlier in the meeting was not accessible to the visually impaired but you talk about community be a leader and turn the AC off in this building the food at headquarters should be the same as the food at camp I heard some deeply concerning things that the last school board

050meeting that I felt needed to be addressed our community is grieving and in my opinion the events last spring rise to the standard of the hate crime because the children were violently targeted because of their disability while another PSD employee stood by and watched you hired this former PSD employee knowing his past criminal history involving children and then put them with non-verbal disabled kids Mr Kingsley made a shocking admission at that last meeting Mr Kingsley announced that underneath his leadership our children are not safe in PSD schools or buses at least until the legislator takes some unspecified action Mr kingsley's message is that there are other PSD employees with similar histories as the employee accused of these atrocities it could be a substitute teacher a bus driver a front desk worker a maintenance technician all

051PSD staff should be suspect until some legislation is passed was the message that Mr Kingsley delivered to the board and the community two weeks ago Mr Kingsley we need a leader not an excuse maker and not a blame Pusher we need something more please tonight send a message to every PSD employee that immediate reporting of any suspected abuse means reporting outside the district first you don't front phone A co-worker you don't consult a school psychologist you don't go to a principal or to Administration and you certainly don't go to lunch you protect children by reporting and then you follow up with supervision or supervisors in that order show us where your priorities lie the legislative fix is not some law that would prevent PSD staff from making horrendously bad hiring decisions based on nepotism but

052one that would hold District administration accountable for the lack of institutional control that allowed this individual to be hired to be placed with the district's most vulnerable population and then to be unsupervised and unmonitored while complaints went uninvestigated Mr Donovan your comments were also concerning at the last board meeting you're either a part of the solution or part of the problem gaslighting the community with I'm a bus driver I took the training I know to mandatory report is reprehensible because you know full well that the bus driver did not report the abuse nor did several other staff your own monitoring report shows over a thousand staff failed to take the mandatory reporting training and that more staff took the bloodborne pathogen training than the mandatory reporting training showing a clear cultural bias for protecting staff

053over protecting children culture is a reflection of leadership sir our community will remember you this fall Mr Anderson on the other hand thank you providing for providing a public forum to access the elected officials that Mr Kingsley is trying to transfer blame of this incident on Saturday at 4 pm I'm sure you will have a high turnout for your event as many parents have deep concerns about how PSD has handled this whole process thank you thank you our next speaker is John Meyer welcome this past week I watched Chloe Cole's five-minute testimony before the U.S Congress found myself overwhelmed by the feeling that there must never be another Chloe Cole there must never be another normal insecure confused 12 year old affirmed into an identity that is not her identity there must never be another

054young woman with a body permanently mutilated by male hormones or marred by a surgeon's knife in a way that she will struggle with the rest of her life we must protect these children I know I'm talking about the most controversial subject in America 22 states have now passed laws making what happened to Chloe Koh illegal other States including our own have passed laws requiring every officially involved adult including counselors therapists and even parents to affirm their 12 year olds in those choices in some places parents can lose custody of their children for failure to affirm that identity all this means that there are very strongly divided views on the adult role for shaping a sexual identity of children and those strongly divided views are in our community as well and you have the challenging responsibility

055of leading in the midst of that but no one on any side of this issue wants more young girls facing the future that Chloe Cole faces when I shared about this two weeks ago there were 49 000 people posting their regrets on Reddit today there are fifty thousand an avalanche is coming an avalanche of human tears and bitterness and by their own words often the biggest influences come from voices around them the internet their peers and their schools I don't want to engage in specific controversies related to pooter School District I know there are parents who believe programs and PSD have failed their children in this very issue may God grant you Grace wisdom and stamina to handle all these challenges in the responsible way I know you intend I just ask you again to

056pay attention to what all of us already know young teenagers have not yet figured out who they are life looks different at 25. please be careful as you set the policies and programs that these children will judge you by in 10 years give pooter School District a legacy that a future generation will thank you for May there never be a young girl in Chloe's place as a result of the actions of any of us thank you our final speaker this evening is Skye Marsh welcome good evening board superintendent Kingsley and cabinet my name is Sky Marsh I am both the teacher and PSD and a parent of two Rocky graduates proudly and a current freshman there I'm here to tell you about the heat conditions at Weber Middle School in our classrooms currently an average

057of 30 students sit in 30 year old desks they struggle to get out of an 85 degree or higher temperatures with multiple fans running simultaneously draining drowning out both my voice and more importantly theirs I arrive at 7am to open the windows to begin pulling in cool air by 11 am I must close all of my windows and lower the blinds against the incoming heat wave the box fan provided by the district it ineffectively circulates the hot air like a Desert Wind by 1 pm students and staff are suffering struggling to finish the day Strong by 2 pm my clothes are soaked through with often visible sweat stains as are many of the students which is frankly quite embarrassing my 86 degree room is not even the worst today the classroom housing or Autism program

058reached 88 degrees before 2 pm a temperature that is neither conducive nor safe for learning students in this program are showing a spike in the aggressive behaviors in the afternoons according to the teachers creating an unsafe environment for all our students in wheelchairs are often soaked in sweat within an hour of arrival due to heat taking away their dignity in front of peers and adults as the heat increases in the rooms students must often take frequent heat breaks in the hallways sitting in front of those Jet fans to cool off which interferes with valuable time needed to be spent supporting their learning plans I am here requesting equity for all students in all schools districtwide recently new schools such as the Timnath middle height have been constructed including climate controlled classrooms and brand new furniture

059when one population of students is provided with significantly upgraded surroundings such as those that should become the new standard of equity across the district it is not Equitable to expect some students and staff members to accept the conditions of extreme heat While others are blessed with coolness we are all held to the same state standards take the same tests and live in the same district yet only a portion of our population is given ideal conditions students in these drastically different environments are not being given equal footing I'm going to skip to the two demands or requests I would have for this board number one a clear plan of action to cool all district buildings within a time frame shared with the community which will hold PSD accountable to provide all students with similarly similarly comfortable

060climates and second some kind of stop got measure until then including perhaps a set structured organized plan for early release when our non-air-conditioned buildings reach those extreme temperatures like some of the other teachers here I would love to invite you to spend not just a few hours but an entire day in our buildings I would ask you to truly reach every child every day by giving Equitable conditions in our schools thank you thank you that concludes Community comment for this evening um pardon me our next topic is board topics and Community Committee reports if there are any members of the board who wish to report or make a comment now is a good time to do it go ahead Kristen thank you um wow that is loud too it is yeah um just a couple

061of things that I just wanted to say that I had a wonderful time visiting Lincoln Middle School as the kids got dropped off in the morning it was so much fun and then headed over to tavelli and that was um that was a blast to watch kids come in um you know and and reconnect with their teachers and some of the kindergartners get to see their school for what would have been the second probably second or third time but a first time as an actual student so it was very it was great and then I got to go to um to Weber in the afternoon and had a wonderful time there and um so just thank you all for for letting me join you on that um just an update we had our first stack

062meeting student advisory council meeting yesterday and we have basically a a great agenda coming up Chase one of our students was there to help us set that we have some um some great choices of students to choose from we had roughly 40 people asked to be on stack which is amazing and we are going to try and bring it down to roughly 20. we're going to see how how we can do that but I wanted to share with you all some of the the students concerns we asked we asked the students why they wanted to be on stack and they um gave us they said you know we asked do you have any topics that you'd like to see covered by Stack and so just a few of them I just wanted to point out

063um yes racism sexism homophobia transphobia ableism bullying littering cyber bullying drug abuse harassment and other important topics that was one student okay um there was um a couple of others um I mean there you can see we have lists and lists of things we had a couple of people who was actually set the agenda for us um they had four or five of these um definitely mental health is a big topic the safety and respect for lgbtq plus Community is important to me and a lot of allies and members of the community I would like to see mental health safety inside the school and the topic of kindness be studied by the stack so I just um you know want to share that um well some people think they may be helping young people they

064really need to be discussing with young people what the true concerns young people have and they may find out that they're different than what they suspect so I am excited to work with the students that we get in stack I'm excited with the agenda I'm excited for you all to see what Amazing Ideas they come up with because they always do and I'm excited actually for hopefully some of our stack students will be watching this because we had told them that a couple of their ideas actually ended up in the uip so and then of course they asked what the heck is a uip so I'm excited for them to watch that and see how their ideas are actually being implemented in our unified Improvement plan so thanks so much other comments or reports from

065the board I'm sorry Jess did you have your hand up sorry okay I will just take a moment I want to amplify a little bit on the remarks that uh in light of the comments around heat in the Billings I'm just gonna amplify a little bit on the remarks that Brian made earlier I think the the short answer is that this board and I'm the administer I know Brian and the administration recognize that this is a very difficult situation in the schools there's just in the schools that are under air conditioning there's no question about it I I'm not sure how much more we can emphasize that the challenge that we have is that as was pointed out there are buildings that are air conditioned and there are buildings that are not air conditioned and

066um the mckinstry study we have at mckinstry study going on now about what it will take to air condition the schools that are not air-conditioned now um and that study is going to be presented to the board I think on September 26th is that right yes um on September 26th so I certainly invite uh anybody those who are legitimately quite concerned about this situation in our schools to pay attention when that happens and to um give us your feedback and input when you see that I think the the challenge as I understand it and I will be more educated when I see that report is that in order to put air conditioning in the schools that don't have it now we have two problems we have a problem of not having the money to do

067it and we have a problem about how long it will take to do it even if we had all the money right now the last time this topic was discussed and it has been discussed multiple times since I've been on the board um we need to find a funding source for tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars we'll find out what the number is when mckinstry uh comes to us with the information and the time issue is that even if we had all the money right now it would probably take and again this is old information so mckinstry may educate me better five to ten years to get this done and because we have 33 33 schools that don't have air conditioning in them and um you can only do so many of these

068schools in a summer both because of the amount of time in the summer but more importantly because of Labor the labor availability and the parts availability I can tell you right now I know folks are frustrated uh on the at Fort Collins High School that the air conditioning that is there isn't working uh and hasn't been working since last fall as an example of the challenge associated with Supply chains we ordered the reports we ordered the parts to replace or to fix that air conditioner last fall the final part for that is going to show up September 5th this year can't install it we can't turn it on we can't install it fully we can't turn it on until that part arrives and believe me we've been chasing down trying to make that happen I

069know that's not those are not happy pieces of news right but I want to make sure that we're transparent about what the challenges are we face and what um what our options are you know I mean there are there's a calendar committee that looks every year at this question about what we can do there are challenges there about seat time about the difference in the the length of the semesters um and about Community expectations for when the school year starts when the school year ends and when the breaks are and changing the time in school or air conditioning the schools are sort of the two obvious solutions to this uh challenge uh and then there's the stopgap stuff that we've been trying to do and if within the within the kind of constraints that I'm

070talking about here if folks have creative out of the box solutions for how to address this problem uh please send them my way I'll be happy to read them and and engage on them so with that anything else that uh the board wishes to address okay then we will go to the consent agenda with any board members like to pull any item from the consent agenda okay given that's the case Jill if you would call a vote on the sorry we need a motion yes I'm sorry got distracted I moved that the board approve and adopt the recommended actions for the items on the consent agenda can I get a second DJ's got a second there now Jill if you would please call a vote on this DJ Anderson aye Jim broken hi Nate Donovan

071aye Christian Draper aye Rob Henderson aye Carolyn Reed aye Jessica Zamora aye motion passes 7-0 thank you Jill our next uh section of the agenda is action items we have an action item associated with resolutions that we are submitting to the Colorado Association of school boards can I get a motion with respect to the resolutions and then I'm going to ask you DJ to as the chair and legislative subcommittee to summarize and or read the actual res the actual resolutions I don't think we need to read all the rationale unless we all need to have a conversation about it but in any case can I get a motion with respect to the casby resolutions go ahead Kristen I move that the board approved the proposed Bruder School District Board of Education legislative and policy agenda

072for 20 20 23 2024. yeah I think I think if I can get uh an amended uh Resolute or an amended motion because we don't actually have legislative and policy agenda we're dealing with tonight that's that we've done that historically but that's not what we have now so DJ do you want to have a shot I move that the board approved the proposed pooter School District resolutions that we are submitting to casby do I have a second go ahead Jim there's uh Jim is second now DJ if you could summarize those resolutions for us or and or if it makes sense just read the resolutions that would be great because there's like three of them or four of them right three of them yeah uh first of all I apologize to the rest of the

073board for giving these to you a little bit later uh word smithing back and forth took a little time um so first off I've got we have a the new teacher mentoring program it's a grant program right now we had a great presentation on it last year about how we've been taking advantage of it and uh the difference it makes um I've only got to talk to a couple of the teachers that have uh used it but then the teachers that have promoted it and used it have been uh Overjoyed with it and to me it made quite a bit of sense so I brought it up to our legislative group um as something that we could take to casby and my idea on it is basically uh a it's get it get rid of

074the grant program aspect of it and make it uh a yearly program where the CDE could then figure a percentage of how many hires we've had in the last three years and figure out a formula but the gist of it is I'm asking for it to be a um an ongoing program so something that new teachers can always have any questions about that one I'll do it one at a time cool then we have an update to core the quora um a couple things that you know we wanted to point out is you know we we believe in quora we believe in being transparent we do uh just want some things clarified basically uh giving us a little more time to handle all the requests uh in the last couple years the the in the

075increase in requests have become greatly have increased greatly and it isn't just you know when someone asks for that here here's the record we still have to have that go through a couple people making sure that we're not sharing information that is is private or is stuff that cannot be shared a great example of that is just like um students email addresses with their IDs in it as one that we've talked about that maybe the the I'm sorry that's one of them that we think needs to get updated on um but if there's uh data in there that is that can't be shared we have to go through so it takes time to go through and do that process and so we would like them to look at that along with uh if the fees

076are if they should be updated because of how much time again it takes people people takes time and to make sure that we're paying them well uh and then the other thing was to make sure that it's updated to the new communication forms that are out there so student uh I emails for us they include the student IDs we don't want to make sure that we keep those private so there's certain things that the law doesn't really carve out that we think maybe needs to be updated on any questions on that one I don't have a question but I would just clarify that in addition to the number of requests having grown in the in recent years the type of requests or the the workload associated with each request has in many cases grown as

077well historically we would have folks ask for a particular document you know what's the document associated with XYZ or whatever we now have folks asking for any emails by one or more members of the executive team for example having to do with any particular topic or with a keyword of some kind or another that is um it takes a lot as DJ pointed out it takes a long time to go through that to make sure to find those things because we want to be we want to be responsive to the quora and to make sure that in the process we're not revealing Personnel information or student private information for example so it's just a point of clarification for the community anything else that folks want to chat with uh or not chat but respond to

078DJ's uh explanation all right go ahead DJ uh the next one is the uh update to the state hiring law this is uh we would like to in light of what has happened we've learned some stuff and one of the things that we think should be maybe corrected is uh license versus non-licensed employees we believe that non-licensed should have the same list of uh oh what's the right word misdemeanor uh restrictions yeah on there um yeah Rob do you have anything that add on that one yeah I'll just say the following the current law as it sits uh in state law is that for um uh for felony convictions and there's a list of the type I I don't have off the top of my head nor do I have in front of me the

079list of the particular felony convictions but there's a list of them that uh if a person has been convicted of such a thing uh they are prohibited from being hired by the school district and other entities I'm sure but we're interested in the school district right so felony licensed non-licensed same deal right What DJ is referring to is in state law right now under licensed it says that for certain misdemeanors um and again I don't have a list in front of me but for certain misdemeanors licensed employees May it it may be a basis for for not hiring an employee but it you you have to based on the combination of federal and state law consider factors such as how long ago it happened how frequently it has happened the nature of the of the

080crime involved again that list is there in the state law for uh licensed employees there is no comparable list right now for non-licensed employees that even says that to the school district you should consider this stuff right so I'm not uh you know so we are saying to the legislators that at the very least those uh expectations in hiring in consideration should be comparable right I think I think uh we're also actually we're going beyond that we're saying that uh to the extent that it can be done which is a matter of how state law interacts with federal law to the extent that what can be done we believe that folks who have been convicted of certain misdemeanors uh should it should go in the prohibited list you can't hire a person like that um

081again the legal intricacies of this are complicated even though as laypeople we may feel it's a pretty straightforward thing to say and we want to work with our legislators to tighten the law as as much as we can going forward is that a fair characterization do you think Autumn did you have any clarification on that because I know it's no you're good okay that's the and then one more yeah I thought there were four uh and then the final one is uh it is in regards to House Bill 21110 uh which was uh technology accessibility again we believe that that is very important uh our concern is the fact that the the rules are not set from the state oit office have not been set yet and to really be able to do this properly

082and well we feel like we need time after those rules are set to get that done and so we're asking them to delay uh the enforcement of that until after what we're saying until two years after that we'll see what we can get other people to jump on board with or not other comments cool yeah I'll just amplify that last piece that there's also some federal action on terms of laws and or not laws rulemaking in this area as well and I it will be important from our perspective that the that the state laws and the federal laws are reconciled in this way in in this area so we don't have conflicting directives I don't really anticipate that we're going to have that but nevertheless to legislative bodies or to rule-making bodies working in parallel

083night surprises so uh that's also a reason to consider delay and enforcement of of this of this worthy objective right which is to make sure that which is to make sure that all of the things that we're doing here are accessible um any any other discussion on this list of casby resolutions all right Jill if you'll call vote on the acceptance of these casby resolutions aye Nate Donovan hi Kristin Draper aye Rob Peterson aye Carolyn Reed aye Jessica Zamora aye motion passes 7-0 thank you so much and thank you DJ for getting that together and we'll look forward to hearing uh how those are Incorporated hopefully into the casby legislative agenda which is really the objective of all this um go ahead Nate um are we gonna work on a combined resolution on quora then

084or we think that one's okay the yeah okay good thanks yeah sorry for those who don't uh understand the entire context of what nature said the deal is that uh I think it's Bolder yeah Boulder Valley School District also has a resolution around Cora and we'll be looking to reconcile those uh maybe beforehand but certainly at the at the meeting where these things are adopted for caspi so that so that it reflects uh the combined will of the casby organization and I think and I think by the way while Boulder and pooter both put those resolutions in we have a lot of feedback from a lot of other school districts that this is a challenge for them as well for the same reasons that we're alluded to in our comments earlier any other comments or

085questions okay the next item on our agenda is uh titled board determination on recommendation from Arbor arbitrator sorry regarding pooter Education Association grievance can I get emotion with respect to this go ahead Kristen I move that the board approve and adopt the recommendation from the arbitrator on the grievance file by the Pea do I have a second looks like Jess okay um do we have a discussion or comment on this uh looks like Carolyn first and then Nate hi I just wanted to say that um though the arbitrator did rule in our favor and I understand why because I feel like the read Act was an unfunded mandate that came down from the state I know it has to do with licensing and but I don't think that there is any end to the requirements

086that can be put on on teachers and then on the training hosted on onto them and as far as having to take their time their own personal time to get that training done so I think it personally for me I think it's important to lean on our legislators about having unfunded mandates and putting that onus on to our teaching staff who are really already pretty overworked and stressed out and so yeah going forward like I said I don't think that there's any end to the kind of requirements that the state can put out and while we can't pay for all of those because we just don't have the money for it we should also be standing up for our staff to make sure that that's not being hoisted onto them uh my point is kind

087of along the same lines that I think the state should provide funding for requirements such as this so thanks other comments Jim did you want to say something well just ditto and also we're always making tough trade-offs in our budget budgeting process right if we pay teachers more we can't hire as many teachers if we if we put more money into buildings we can't buy as many buses I mean it's always a tough trade-off and it feels I I agree with the Arbiter on this one that it um that it's not reflected in the existing agreement however you know we all support teachers here I mean some of my kids are teachers and um I think it's appropriate to bring these things into the negotiation process I mean that's how we get help making these

088tough funding and compensation decisions so that's where I'm at Jess I am I'm kind of glad that this process happened I know it's a really arduous process and it's there's a lot of stress that goes along with it but I think to Carolyn's point it brings to light the level of things that we our community just puts onto teachers because we continue to expect them to do more every single year and to let the community know we can't just keep doing that um it's a while I can agree with the arbitrator I also appreciate that there's an opportunity to have this as a more public conversation thank you Kristen DJ anything go ahead um ditto to all of that and I think part of what we need to do is talk within our legislative committee

089about what things that we can do so that we don't have these unfunded mandates that when these mandates come down that we say well let's see the physical bill that comes with that and the other thing is that we can join teachers when they go rally on the hill which I'm not sure what date that is coming up but I'm sure there's going to be one um yeah there'll probably be many I know that we've done the red for Ed I know many of us here have done that right for Ed rallying on the hill as well so I think there's a couple of ways which we can help um to make sure that the state realizes what they're asking the community realizes what the state is asking of our teachers so we can go

090forward with that DJ no come here um it's up to you I can say them I think Jess actually said it really well and I think it's it it really does help Shine the Light on um these little extra things that keep getting thrown on the plate of the teachers and um I think it is it is a great example of something that it it it has well-meaning to let's get these teachers trained up in a new uh literature program because there's scientific basis that works all that stuff but to be able to try to just throw it in there without thinking about the time and the energy that it takes sometimes is is unfortunate so yeah okay thanks I'll just add that I mean I agree with what's been said here but I'll just

091add also that this is not a a hypothetical it's obviously not a hypothetical with respect to the read act that's already happened right but it's also not a hypothetical with respect to what might come forward as I understand it there's an additional requirement that's going to be for some or all teachers I'm not sure of the scope uh around training for uh students who are learning English language that the state has made some requirements around extra training for that as I understand it there's no funding that's being given to school districts to pay teachers to do that for example and so there's an opportunity even in this coming legislative session again I'm not sure about all the details but in this coming legislative session to talk talk real real hours real costs so if there's

092any other commentary go ahead Nate I would call a question right okay we'll do that Kristen could you call a vote on this motion please um sorry Kristen made the motion Jill could you call the vote on the motion that Kristen made absolutely DJ Anderson I just want to clarify we're voting so we're voting to approve and adopt okay I approved bye Jim broken hi Nate Donovan hi Kristin draber aye Rob Henderson aye Carolyn Reed aye Jessica Zamora aye motion passes 7-0 thank you very much our next item is an informational item we're going to hear a first reading effectively of uh revisions to policy i c i c a uh the school year school calendar instructional time uh policy and in support of this item my Brian you can introduce it I guess but

093according to my information here Lauren and Autumn might uh might have some things to say thank you yeah okay yeah there's no presentation for this item but staff uh particularly Lauren and Autumn are here to engage in any questions I think in light of the in light of the possible intersection of the heat question with the calendar question I think for the benefits of the public it's at least worth quickly summarizing what this is and isn't I know this is I know this is not a response to the heat question but I I think we need to put that in the room so autumn if you would just give us the 30 second thumbnail summary of of what we're voting on here or what we're what we're considering for next meetings vote um yeah so

094there's a few proposed changes within the policy the main change is to alter the timeline for when the calendar would come to the board right now the policy states that it would come by November 1st of each school year for the next school year and the change would be to um make that prior to the end of the school year just to get a little bit more flexibility I believe the intent is still to bring the calendar earlier on or I guess later in the fall but just to give some flexibility for when the calendar actually comes to the board that's one change the another change is to just add some language that's taken directly from State Statute about providing a copy of the calendar to families and also providing notice for any sort of

095changes to the calendar aside from any emergency closer closures which would not have that notice option and the other change in the policy is to include information on an option for remote learning day if there is any sort of unforeseen condition or other emergency this is not something that would need to be done by a school district but in order to ever exercise that option we need to put it in policy so it's just there to provide that opportunity if we ever do need to move forward with one of those days I think that's most of the proposed changes within about thank you thank you very much and I and I would encourage anybody who's watching uh to uh go to the uh board agenda site which if you don't know how to get there

096we can get you there from the from the uh by calling the office or by going to the school district website board of directors um and read it if you're if you're interested in the in the details um is there any discussion or comment on this uh DJ um yeah so I have one I think it's um I'm not in favor of the idea of taking out completely the November aspect of it because the way that it reads to me right now it says prior to the end of each school year is when they have to do it and and I think it's I think it's better that we have that deadline at the end of the calendar year or December November I I'm not I'm not hung up on the fact of the date

097as as much as it happens before the end of that first semester I guess and so I I'm not a big fan of of how this part is worded the rest of it I I think it looks great um I love the fact that we're changing all the D's we're a big District let's get there okay but that that's my thought about the deadline so yeah uh for those who are watching uh DJ was talking about uh just the clerical change in the policy which changes the the reference to the district from a small D to a big D which from a grammatical point of view or from a editorial point of view makes sense but probably is not the most important thing um other comments I guess my understanding Brian is that is that

098we're it's your intent that the staff bring the calendar by the end of the school year uh sorry by the end of the calendar year by the end of the first semester and that uh so I I'd invite you to consider whether moving it from November to the end of the school year is is overkill to get what it is you want done and I think the I think the other reality is I mean deadlines are deadlines and if there are some extraordinary circumstances that require it to go beyond the end of the calendar year or whatever deadline is Set uh then I suspect this board will recognize that and and work in partnership with you and the staff to do the right thing so that's my input other comments Nate yeah it supported being

099the end of the calendar year seems to make more sense in terms of scheduling and uh with uh schools so thanks and and families being notif notified early thanks other comments all right uh again we're not voting on this now we'll be voting on it in the next uh meeting I suspect it'll be on the consent agenda unless unless somebody wishes to pull it um and so we'll see it again then and obviously if anybody from the public has input on this you're welcome to send us your input before that time our next informational report is again a proposed policy revision that we're hearing for the first time this evening which means we will not vote on it this evening it'll be voted on at the next meeting it is a change a revision to

100board policy executive limitation 2.9 which again if you can just remind us what that is Autumn and what the nature of the changes that would be great okay this policy is currently titled dealings with the citizens of Pruder school district and the proposed changes uh change the word dealings to working and change the reference to Citizens throughout the policy to either members of the community or community members or Pruder School District Community to basically change the word citizen to community okay I'll say I support that I think that I think that we have a a community of folks who are in who are in our district and we ought to refer to them and refer to those our stakeholders in that way um and um so it's a it's a I think it's a good

101change other comments okay well I think I suspect again that will come back on consent and if anybody is interested or concerned uh you're welcome to read that on our board agenda site and send feedback or comments uh finally and uh the sort of biggest uh item tonight in terms of uh in terms of uh sort of weight going forward is the Strategic plan that we have uh been working on and talking about for some time here in combination with our unified Improvement plan which I'm sure will get an explanation of what that is and why it's important and then at the end of this presentation we will be having a motion to presumably approve the unified Improvement plan which is a necessary step in our relations with the state officials education officials so with

102that Ryan if you'd like to kick this off that would be great yes thank you um I think you know I just want to take a second to pause and as we get into this presentation I think it's really important that we try to humanize this work and it's Mission critical that in the role that I play in the system that I don't begin to talk about where we're going in a way that's tone deaf to the community and the people who have just engaged in the process of governance in our system we are asking people to do a lot our conditions are not yet equal or Equitable across the system which I think is really important as a result of that that we have to figure out a way to create Focus to re

103to accept the fact that not everything is Mission critical that we need to think about what is absolutely essential for us to focus on to train on to develop people on so we can begin to disrupt the data that suggests that not all people both students and our employees are experiencing this system the same and as I shared with you earlier in the evening this particular plan our strategic plan which I'm incredibly enthusiastic about is really focused on the our Core Business learning and teaching um and I'm really really proud of that we need to figure out how to continue to find strategic ways in partnership with our stakeholders to identify what's most important pay attention to it invest in it and then continue to see how that provides you know different outcomes across the

104system over time and so as you think about the Strategic plan what I'm committed to with this team and within with this district is to ensure that tonight shouldn't be feel like there's any surprises we have been talking about this work for almost a year and have really responded to stakeholder involvement to narrow down our Focus even more than what we thought was a narrowed down version of this to really you know critically identify what are the areas which are literacy mental health and belonging and ensure that all of our students have the opportunity to graduate with options I think those are areas that we can unify across the system on there are areas that our data suggest that we need to continue to pay more attention to and I think that there's also cross-cutting

105factors that if we invest in these particular areas there will be a trickle effect in other areas if more students belong the likelihood that they are academic achievement outcomes increase is great is really really highly likely if we continue to improve upon our already incredibly High literacy rates and continue to push past proficiency as being the goal and ensure that all students can read and function and think critically at Advanced levels we have opportunities to continue to do amazing things in this system but what's not lost on me is this system is already really strong and so I want to honor all of the work that has happened across our systems and not just think about the hard truths of how do we go from strong to exceptional and that takes courage it takes vulnerability

106and it takes all of us to think about how we do this together and I'm just really really proud of that I'd love to start our presentation this evening by showing a video that helps kind of tell this story in terms of where we are and where we're going we're all about helping kids and young people achieve at their highest levels and pursue their dreams and it takes our entire Community through a focused effort to make sure that happens the PSD strategic plan is that focused effort it's the roadmap that will improve outcomes for all students our priorities are literacy which goes far beyond learning to read reading to learn unlocks students potential in all aspects of their education and lives mental health and belonging is about promoting emotional well-being and healthy connections with peers

107adults and others in their lives for graduate with options this means that when seniors cross the stage at graduation they do so knowing that they have choices this plan won't just sit on a shelf this plan is a living breathing representation of how we show up for kids it's our promise to students and our commitment to public education [Applause] excuse me I think what Matt shared is and he's the voice for those of you that may not know from our Communications team that shared that storyline I do think what he shared about this being our promise our brand promise is significant you know when we hear PSD in the community acknowledging what that stands for is really really important and this is an educational experience for all systems stakeholders to engage our community thoughtfully around

108how we're doing this not just what we're focused on but how we're actually approaching it to make systems level change what I also appreciate about this system is it continues to double down on its values to ensure that all people experience success and not some and I really believe that as we think about the school system and building upon our strength that already exists is that this is an investment in our people um as you think about aligning our work and creating moving from a system of schools to a school system that is complex adaptive work and it is our greatest hopes to try to greatest hope to try to figure out how to cultivate a win-win scenario that we are not adding more to a plate but we're just we're actually clearing a play

109and saying these are the most important things that we're paying attention to I also think that's significant if you pay attention to the third bullet there is that we have to outline our theory of action to identify how we actually are supporting and developing and cultivating our talent to be able to execute on where we are focusing our energy and I think what makes this significant when you look at other strategic plans and there's a difference around our strategic plan compared to a lot of others is that rde 1.0 monitoring report which is one of the most robust monitoring reports of any system in America I will tell you it tells us everything that we want to know about our students what's missing from it is it doesn't necessarily tell us yet around how we're

110growing as adults myself included and so really trying to figure out that if we believe that our adult practices continue to take a stance of learning and we continue to be better not just as Educators but as Leaders as central office support systems if we continue to believe in a few things that we can measure and do well then ultimately we should see an improvement in student outcomes but we cannot continue on the backs of students to measure them more to get more data on them when we recognize it's us that is influencing with their families with our community who it is we are influencing the experiences that they have and so this plan in itself is a district-wide commitment not just to Improvement but to accountability and I think that's a Nuance that needs

111to continue to be iterated across our communities like we will be measuring this along the way both around how we are improving as adults but also how it's impacting or not impacting students positively and I think that's something that's really really important because I think all of us want to be accountable to doing great work that's why we get into this business but thinking of about what that actually looks like in public education we have room to grow in those particular areas and I'm really excited that the team has put together a thoughtful approach to being able to do that next slide please no surprises here as you can see this plan will continue to ensure that we're focused on our three system priorities of literacy mental health and belonging and graduate with options we

112want to make sure that we're ensuring that all of our students not some of our students are continuing to benefit from that focus on those particular priorities you will also see tonight that you will be voting on our district uip later on this evening the Strategic plan sets the course to d uh the district uip begins to talk about what does that look like in the year ahead in a very specific way one has to Cascade to another and the schools as they're developing their school specific plans that Cascades from the district uip so just in terms of how we structure this not just on paper but in action in terms of when assistant superintendents visit and support schools when I support schools and go out and just become curious around what we're seeing what

113we're not seeing what's working what's not these are the focal points of what we're engaging in dialogue in conversations around specific School communities I think it's also important to note not just for our internal stakeholders but external stakeholders is that while we are focused on these things you heard through the range the broad range of different things that came up through Community comments tonight there's other aspects of this system's work that continues to be a priority and I struggle to say that because it's I don't want to be a hypocritical leader a lot of things are important ensuring that Safety and Security continues to be something that is a focal point of this system each and every day will continue to be a constant it's not going to be dictated by a three to five

114year strategic plan six years from now we're going to still need to focus on Safety and Security we also as you heard me allude to earlier there's operational sides of the house that we need to continue to focus on and director Brokers you were so spot on and realizing that there are trade-offs around our investments and our energy and our financial resources around how do we invest in our organizational infrastructure but also double down on our Core Business I think in partnership with the various associations this District modeled that in our last years of last year of negotiations around having a collective effort and prioritizing our budget as an investment in people but also our system priorities the goal is to continue to sustain that high level of collaboration in the years ahead and the

115other piece that I will share too is that diversity equity and inclusion can't be an initiative it can't be a shiny object that this District chases in a vacuum it needs to be something that we're thinking about our mindsets and our values and beliefs and realize that that is adaptive work that doesn't live in isolation and it's Mission critical to actually achieving and disrupting the outcomes that the system currently has and so as we transition to our next slide you know that work is going to be really important and you're going to see some language that and the community will see some and hear some language tonight from staff that may be new it may seem like edgy speak so I just want to take a quick second to just level Set uh for everybody

116that's paying attention to what we're launching here tonight is that we have priority Performance challenges that I actually with our team Embraces opportunities our data has signals in it that tells us that we need to be paying attention to a lot of things but some more than others and that's how our priorities were cultivated and created and it's why the Investments that this board had made in adopting a new curriculum and adding more mental health supports and thinking robustly about how we continue to have students not just pursue four-year degrees but how do we help offset the students who want to go directly into the workforce or military or two-year programs that's going to CR that in order to accomplish that we need to think differently because that is not the system that we live

117and work in today the theory of action that you've heard me allude to earlier is really a simple if then statement if we do this then we should expect this as the result but I want to us pay all paying attention to that if part of the sentence because the If part needs to be explicit around what we're expecting staff with a partnership of our non-profit sector with our families to be able to do and to learn in order to grow as a community so ultimately students can grow with us and then we have key strategies that are important to continue to ensure that we're leveraging that not just investing in it but giving people time these particular priorities are not going to be fully actualized in terms of improvement in one year we should

118see this as a multi-year effort towards Improvement where we show each other as humans Grace compassion in terms of our experiences with learning sometimes unlearning sun setting practices and things that no longer serve our students well and taking a stance of not just looking about what we can do professionally but Dei work also forces us to look within our hearts and within our minds and our lived experiences to see what biases that we have that we potentially need to address in order to show up differently in our work to serve all people well so I'm excited about that work we're going to Pivot here in a second to learning more about our Dei strategy and how we're structuring ourselves as a school system in order to accomplish that but I think it's important that we

119continue to stay data informed in this work and I just want to continue to double down on our principles of community of taking a stance of learning focusing on diversity also thinking about inclusion respect courage and action all of these things can't be words on a piece of paper or on a website they have to be actualized in what you see in terms of how we're approaching people in our learning strategies and how we're thinking about our Core Business differently to support our students we have a lot of incredible staff members that are both here at the table also here in partnership with us not just to be visible in the work but we'll have some opportunities to engage with you this evening but I think I'm turning it over to Eric our chief HR

120officer to talk a little bit more about how we're structuring ourselves to be more focused in our Dei efforts moving forward so Eric welcome foreign so hopefully hopefully this is uh you can hear me there um so as Brian pointed out we are um not highlighting the Dei component as a specific um shiny object it's not just one project or one thing that we will be doing Dei is really something that needs to be included in every every bit of work that we do and everything um that we set as a goal so the Dei committee has developed a new framework for how it is doing its work and in doing that it is also working towards developing a work plan and a work map for the 2023-24 school year once that work map is

121completed it'll be brought back and shared shared with the board and with uh with our our systems and including included in that work map will be a whole variety of different projects that we believe we have capacity to achieve in the school year among those would include things like completing training for both board and for the cabinet in this Dei lens and how we approach our work it would include an update to our anti-bullying policy and integrating our principles of community into how we do our work how we treat each other how we approach classrooms parent-teacher conferences and how to integrate that principles of community into our everyday work thank you Eric it's a pleasure to be here tonight just as members of the team continue to take on different roles in the presentation and

122for the community if you can introduce yourself and your title along the way that would be wonderful okay thank you absolutely Dwayne Schmitz Chief institutional Effectiveness officer it's a pleasure to be here tonight um so as we engage in this work you know data informed action steps we've got the uip and the Strategic plan and in the past we've talked with the board about how the monitoring report which was mentioned earlier de 1.0 is supposed to dance with the uip because really the uip is the adult actions the steps the plans on how we're moving to the next levels and the modern report is looking back and talking about how are we done and how are those outcomes that are really student outcomes I want to mention as we head into this process that we

123use body of evidence from multiple years in a row and multiple different sources of data which includes everything from Achievement data growth data but it also includes connections data healthy kids Colorado data discipline data all manner of data that we look at to kind of set the stage for what our priority Performance challenges are and then we address those priority Performance challenges through both the Strategic plan and the uip which are very very aligned it's critical that those two documents are aligned tightly and I'm sure that the board as they've read through both of them carefully probably multiple times can see that alignment we've run processes with staff and staff walk away from those processes seeing that alignment and they appreciate that alignment I want to mention that we have accelerated the timing of the

124uip if the board thinks back it was September 27 last year that we are sitting here doing the same thing of looking at the uip so we're about a month in front of that that's by Design we're benefiting from the work on the Strategic plan and the alignment between the two to kind of accelerate our timeline on the district uip the importance of that unified Improvement plan or uip being accelerated is it buys our schools about seven to eight weeks to have the uip in hand that hopefully the board approves tonight so they can align their school unified Improvement plans with the district unified Improvement plan I want to say a thank you to the district accountability committee and Becky is sitting right behind me here and spoke earlier and she's a member of the

125district accountability committee and I want to say thank you they worked hard and fast to get this done a month early and they understood the importance of that work so that we could better support the schools in aligning their efforts with the district's efforts I also want to mention that the school's plans are due to the the state on October 16th so that's where the eight weeks is coming from and there's another component to this the three assistant soups have done a great job of putting together a document they've done this in past years the assistant soups but this year is kind of the US you know leveled up basically it's a document that's very aligned with the uip in the Strategic plan and it's utilized in a couple different ways with the school leaders

126and I won't say more because I don't want to steal their Thunder for the meeting this Thursday right but but the point is we're able to align and organize our system towards these several very specific efforts when we had Advanced the timing like this a little bit one of the important data sets that we get from the state and by law we have to respond to the data that we get in this District performance framework is what it's called a DPF schools get a similar document a school performance framework as you're aware and if we have certain low marks on our district performance framework by law we have to address those now pooter school district has a long history of being accredited and we don't get low marks on our district performance framework that requires

127that we address them specifically so we have the freedom from the state size to just address the priority Performance challenges that we've identified which is great I really quickly want to mention that there's a lot of change going on in this accountability World we're about two years into now a fit a fairly full-blown assessment system in the state this is the the DPS and the spfs we're going to get later this week we believe if not early next week we haven't received them yet um are no longer called transitional so we're back online where we've got you know growth data from grades four through eleven which is the first in several years um we have we'll go into a little more detail in just a moment but we're back on these are important data points

128for us but I want to point out and remind us they're not the only data points we use the monitoring report we use our map data arcadiance data we look at multiple year Trends and yet this is important information as the board looks at the list of the indicators the key performance indicators they'll all look familiar for these 2023 performance Frameworks which are no longer transitional over the last five years as you see a line graph in the upper right hand corner there's five years of data there that indicates that the Pooter School District district performance framework is traveling very very consistently at about 66 67 percent and the most recent year which was last year 2022 that we got a performance framework I want to remind you what's called a transitional performance framework and

129the reason the state did that is to signal to us that the data was thin and not as robust as it is in typical years it's kind of like a cautionary note right furthermore I want to point out that the one dip that we see in that most recent year of 2022 that 2022 SPF SPF sorry or DPF is actually reflecting 2122 achievement and growth data and it's actually including for the post-secondary workforce Readiness measures the class of 2021. and that's where the dip came from which is only 2.2 percentage points but it's coming from that pwr post-secondary Workforce writing a section of the framework we were accredited and that dip will pop right back up as we come out of that transitional framework and we get the more recent data graduation rates are in

130there and other things and as you know we have the highest graduation rates we've had in many many years last year that data is not included in that picture but it will be on the next one a couple important changes we just wanted to take the opportunity tonight because we know that the board is going to see school performance Frameworks as well as the district performance framework when they arrive and there's some changes that we're back on they're not transitional and a couple there's six changes I want to just highlight real quick for several years there had been a an aspect to this where you could get a decrease of one plan type if you fell below 95 percent participation rates they had done away with that during these transition years and on these years

131at a couple years where they paused the accountability Frameworks and just held over ratings at any rate when we get these 2023 Frameworks that rule is back on so you can drop a plan type if you have less than 95 attendance it is what they call the accountability attendance rate which does not include in the numerator or the denominator parent refusals right where they took their kids out of testing the second thing and that's interesting all the the numbers went from one one one down to two I just sometimes Google does weird things so that's really one three six um in my world okay the second one is that they're no longer put the participation descriptor on these SPS and DPS growth as I mentioned is available for the first time grades four through eleven

132because that's skip grade piece we've done on the assessment system we're past that they are going back to finally they have single ear and multi-year performance Frameworks if you remember they used to do a three-year framework and a one-year framework and they gave you the better of the two they had to move away from that through these coveted disruption years well they're back on but the multi-year is a two-year they are changing one of the key categories for that we reporting student outcomes in to multi multilingual Learners rather than English language Learners and when you see that on the Frameworks multi-language Learners will include all of those categories of like limiting attrition fluid English proficient and so on not English proficient all the way up to exit year one and exit year two so it's

133all of those different categories and there's going to be a new piece of information called exceed it the six year clock specifically for multilingual Learners it'll be a new uh measure that we will see and it will be on the part that they're also bringing back for informational purposes called on track and I don't know if you all remember that on track growth as opposed to median growth percentiles those are back coming on there are more changes but I'm not going through the list I've spent too much time probably on it already the point is that changes are here we're getting back to the full-blown accountability system and the point of this next slide is is it takes a look through the next couple years past 2023 we're going to see yet more changes are

134coming our Direction what I want to mention as the chief institutional Effectiveness officer and somebody who's been paying attention to this accountability metrics as well as all our local metrics and then the whole improvement process that we use in PSD all of this stuff rolled up really just means that we are going to continue to see changes in the in the accountability landscape but pooter school districts deep analysis that we do every year where we land on these three priority Performance challenges we're going to talk about for the rest of the evening in this presentation will be reflected in all across all these different changes in the state accountability system it's not going to throw us in a different direction from what we have planned in our uip and our strategic plan and that's probably

135the bottom line message I want to share with you and I'm going to pass over the mic to Tracy to take us into literacy thank you Dr Schmitz Dr Tracy geil assistant superintendent of schools it is my pleasure to be the cabinet sponsor and honor to speak to the work of the literacy team they've been working throughout last school year to identify the different strategies that would help close the gap in performance that Dr Schmitz talked about from our monitoring report between our current state and our desired State and so we have some key strategies that we want to walk through tonight so in just a brief highlight and overview of the district monitoring report in terms of what we were seeing for our current state going to desired state so this slide shows two

136data points one of which is acadiance reading which our students in kindergarten through third grade have been taking for several years and the other data point is our map Reading which is nwea which is a nationally normed assessment that students in grades second through eighth grade have been taking so the first data that is in the upper left corner is acadiance reading and that spring achievement effect size so you'll see on the x-axis we have the years dating back to 2016-17 and then the on the far right of that graph is 2223 data point and then on that y-axis is the spring achievement effect size so in short that effect size is a metric that we use to to be able to compare different assessments and be able to to take that information and interpret

137them across different tests to see what the story is that we're seeing in our Trend data so this particular acadiance reading that spring achievement effect size is showing that we have a three-year decline a trend so we always look for that three-year Trend that started pre-pandemic and then certainly had a significant drop in that 20 20 21 year that acadians reading is measuring early literacy skills those foundational skills that are critical to Future reading and comprehension and so that led us to examine that this could potentially be a really important priority performance challenge for us to investigate and to explore some really key High leverage strategies to address so acadiance reading is shown in that that upper left and then going across to the right that percent of at and above grade level expectations the

138Spring end of year so you see a percentage of 79.2 percent that 2016-17 year and then 22-23 we've had three years trending upwards since 20 20 21 with last year being 72.2 percent comparing to our PSD Target and National Norms the story is still showing that PSD students are performing above National Norms but we do have a higher Benchmark that we've said as our PSD Target of a 0.25 effect size and also an 85 percent at grade level and above our Target while it's at grade level proficiency that we have as the title of that particular data side our Real and True outcome with literacy is we want students to be able to access high levels of text and complex text and texts that they can have Rich discussions about and texts that open their

139world view so while this is a measure that's really important to see if students are on grade level and on track for that level of proficiency the other really important outcome is their ability to engage with high levels of text and so you'll see as we get into the strategies that one of those really important strategies is this text at the center and being able to work with a text that challenges their thinking and challenges their assumptions and that they can read and respond to so also on this slide in the lower left corner is the map reading it tells a very similar story about why we chose literacy as a key performance priority challenge you'll see that declining trend line with a little bit of an increase in the last year on our map

140Reading both of these confirm for us in our monitoring report that this is an area that we need to pay attention to and why it's being prioritized in both our strategic plan and in our uip so in literacy the uip priority Performance challenges so as I talked about the metrics are in the monitoring reports we are looking at both that early literacy foundational skills as a gap that we're addressing we're also looking at the nwea but also the big part of that first bullet of reading proficiency levels is again engaging with complex texts and having it the ability to do so at a high level the second bullet being that our gains are evident post pandemic across all of our grade levels yet pre-pandemic literacy levels have not been fully realized so we want to

141regain some of that ground we had pre-pandemic and then the third bullet talks about we really do have persistent gaps among student populations so our historically marginalized student groups meet grade level proficiency expectations at lower rates than other groups in PSD both pre-pandemic and currently and our strategies really are working to address that so our theory of action what we are working toward through the literacy plan is that if all students consistently Implement high quality materials systems and pedagogy then every student will have the foundational and critical literacy skills needed for success and then that strategic plan major Improvement strategy for year one is we're really focusing and provisioning that high quality standards-based materials that are representative of multiple cultures and identities so the literacy year one projects with I'm the proud sponsor of the

142team along with Dr Julie Chaplin we have several team leads who are championing the work in different areas and some of them are represented here tonight and appreciate all of their work getting us to this point there are four key projects that we will Elevate and execute on during this school year the first one being adopting 9th and 10th grade English language arts materials with that recommendation coming to the board of education on or around January 24th is a date we're looking at the second bullet being that we want to have really strong curriculum implementation of three programs across our pre-k through five system with creative curriculum amplify C Cala for our core knowledge schools and El education at our K-5 schools I also want to mention that our dual language schools will continue to

143have professional development tied to their wonders of maravius which is specific to our dual language programs the third bullet being that we want to focus specifically on the materials that we want to de-implement that are not aligned to the evidence-based reading instruction all of our staff have had a really robust training and professional development that has allowed us to see different materials and different approaches and what is truly based on evidence and so we want to look at the materials that we have had in our literacy curriculum and remove the ones that are not really going to produce the results and close the gaps that we we recognize that we need to and then finally based on feedback from the board and other stakeholders at our last meeting we did add that fourth project to

144really address the task aspect within literacy so not only do we want our students to engage with a really strong complex text we also want to give them an authentic task with writing at the center of it to engage in and so that feedback that that we received at the last meeting we did add that particular project with a teaming protocol so we're going to combine a teaming protocol to look at designing tasks that are really strong starting with our middle school teams and with that I'm going to move this off to Liz Davis who's going to talk about mental health and belonging thank you can you hear me okay so Liz Davis I usually her pronouns and I'm the senior executive director of student services and grateful to be here today um supporting mental

145health and belonging so I always do this the wrong way yes oh I have to push hard okay [Music] so this slide demonstrates survey data from our youth last year correct Dwayne yes and it is in table format with mental health concerns listed on the left and rows containing our end count total percentage female male and queer non-binary students on the top some of our students so some of our groups of students in particular are students identifying AS lgbtqia Plus self-report elevated mental health risk factors such as self-harm suicidality and signs of depression especially in females in queer non-binary students we're concerned about this data we're really concerned about our high numbers and grateful that we have a strategy for mental health and in the uip around mental health and belonging so our uip performance

146challenge we've really come to understand some of the challenge based on the global pandemic caused by stress in our homes in school and environments and our youth need a ton of support and we've seen that in the years and we've all seen that our students who are historically marginalized self-report not feeling as connected to their peers staff or interests and passions at school when compared to the overall PSD student population and some of our groups some some of our groups of students identifying AS lgbtqia Plus again self-report that elevated mental health risk factor rates our strategic plan our theory of action States if we increase access to mental health supports for staff and students then we will create a learning environment that Fosters inclusivity can connectedness and well-being which will increase student engagement and improve

147academic outcomes and then we see our strategic plan major Improvement strategy for year one is really about increasing student access to Mental Health Providers and opportunities for those meaningful connections but when we think about that we think about that not only internally in our district but working in collaboration with very closely with our Community Partners and we're excited about that to come thanks for bearing with me um so excited to engage in some of this work with sponsors with Madeline notley and Dr insu Nelson so thanks so much and amazing team leads and we have a group of projects and I'll walk us through a little bit and the first one you know when we think about our schools we think about not adding lots of new stuff our schools are doing lots of amazing

148things and one of the things that they're all doing is they're all having multi-tiered system of supports all of our schools are having teams that meet um but we really wanted to see that specialized focus on social emotional and Behavior Support aligned with our data and really a focused area around that we're excited about that project and really working on some consistent guidance in that space connected to some processes and protocols and you've all heard this about hiring and training and working with CSU and and having interns to fellows we're excited about that and increasing our mental health staff and trainees to not only work on our processes and systems but to really support some of the Staffing to increase connectedness with their students we're excited about that and we have a cohort of 10

149starting from CSU School of Social Work soon next week we will also refine and continue implementing a comprehensive Community Partnership strategy specific to mental health and belonging we're working hard on and we're working really hard on engaging Our Community Partners and excited to work together because we can't do this alone and we know that and we will continue refining and implementing a comprehensive Community Partnership strategy I talked about that the next one promoting awareness of PSD and Community Mental Health Resources through the multilingual communications project driven by student input and that's the work of Madeleine and her team and the next one is a project around bullying prevention and education and really having a team being intentional about looking at our policies and looking at our Frameworks here in the district here in the state

150in transnationally and making sure that we're aligned with best practices and looking at our data so we look forward to engaging in a project around that as well thank you foreign I'm Dr Julie Chaplin assistant superintendent and I'm really excited to talk about one of my passions which is graduate with options coming from all my entire career in secondary um I feel a real strong connection to this work I'm excited to be a candidate sponsor to support it along the way so as we think about this strategic priority and how we determined to land here you know this kind of goes back to some of the data that Dwayne really helped help there we go helped us really kind of elaborate in terms of how do we look how do we look compared to our

151districts that are similar in demographics and in size and when we look at the uh the table up here the two tables on the left really indicate line graphs around SAT scores so you can see pooter school or pooter school district is in black and that indicates that among amongst all of our districts we are second from the top in how we score which is our achievement so we have really high achieving outcomes for our students on the SAT when you then start looking at the far table on the right again pooter school district is in Black we are at the bottom of course we're above the state in terms of our graduation rates but we are still lagging behind all of our comparable districts which for us then calls into play this need for

152a strategic priority and how we Shore up and how our graduation rate really becomes more representative of our student performance and what we see happening in our schools and we see as our students in terms of what they know and what they can demonstrate so I'm very um you know as we think about the priority Performance challenges really in a nutshell it really talks about you know we're not commiserate just as I had just stated um in terms of levels of College and Career Readiness and we have historically marginized student groups who have not been graduating at the same rate as our other groups throughout PSD and so and they also don't have the same graduate graduation rates as their like peer Light Group peers throughout the state as well so our strategic plan our

153theory of action we we fully believe that if we expand options to meet those graduation requirements and we Implement some Equitable grading practices in our system we focus on decreasing absenteeism among students um then we're going to help prepare them better for their future opportunities and so in year one our strategic plan really focuses on updating High School graduation requirements to support support multiple Pathways multiple I want to stress that to ensure that students are supported and they're attaining all of the things that they need not only to graduate but to follow their intended Pathways after they leave pooter School District and so I'm thrilled to be the cabinet sponsor along with Dr Dwayne Schmitz and Dr in soon Olson we have amazing team liens a few of them are in the house tonight um

154that and we'll continue to add some more as we focus in on the Middle School um so by around September 15th we'll have a few more leads as we address truancy absenteeism work and middle school but really the three main bullet points of our projects um are looking at those High School graduation requirements to support multiple Pathways including two-year College four-year College military uh career and then how we also adjust and out and allow for students to earn standard diplomas even though they may have an individual education program or they might be a diverse learner and so we've got some uh we've got some you know wording and policies that we can restructure to make all of that happen the one piece that I really want to stress as we're looking at graduation requirements is

155that this again is how do we provide more Pathways and more opportunities for students to take classes that they want to take that aligns with their interests their passions exploration and future ideas of what they want and who they want to be this is not trying to manipulate uh you know credits and in a way to boost rates that is not the intent here I fully do believe that when students are engaged and they're able to work and complete coursework and their passions we're going to see that that is not the goal we need to really be articulate about different Pathways that students can take what does it look like to get an AAA in our high schools what's the pathway to the ascent program because it's not very clear to all of our families

156how do we begin to map a four-year College pathway a two-year a military enlistment and then multiple Pathways of all of the Avenues that you can do for career we have designated CTE Pathways and so how do we develop those make those so that students and families can understand them and tap into work-based experiences internships apprenticeships gaining industry certifications there are so many nuances into graduating and being prepared and right now our current system really isn't allowing students to tap in where they need to so you tell them a little excited about that work um the second project of course is looking at middle schools and we're starting at middle schools but this will be all secondary it's just going to take a while to develop not only the common understanding of Equitable grading practices

157first with our principal group and what do we what what is our common understanding and then what do we agree upon as standard Equitable practices and how do we build that that's our Focus this year is fostering that leadership development with our middle school principals in the hopes that next year not in the hopes they will next year then Implement those same sorts of Engagement processes with their staff and next year we would reiterate this process with high school which would iterate the following years and then the final very important work that's our that has been be um in progress with um Liz Davis and her team and James depalado and a number of other members in our district is looking at our truancy processes and how we Implement system-wide strategies to address chronic absenteeism

158and truancy they are not the same thing and they do require different strategies and so we've got a lot of um we've got a lot of committees and Community engagement parent partnership engagement to review truancy handbooks come up with recommendations and then even potential future ideas of how we develop even more Hands-On supports for schools families and kids so that I think this goes to miss Madeline all right thank you Dr Chaplin my name is Madeline noblin I am the Chief Information officer here in PSD and this evening I'll talk with you about how it is that we will communicate the PSD strategic plan now that you have gotten to take a tour of it we want to make sure that our community our students our staff our parents and Guardians Our Community Partners all

159have opportunities not just in the days to come but in the weeks months and years to be able to really understand the plan and be able to see themselves in it because it's only then when we have awareness of it across our system that we can build alignment and ownership into that plan and be able to really see how it can affect students and what their experiences are in the classrooms every day so as far as a launch for communications we provided an update as this team at our administrators kickoff in July being able to help bring everybody along with the work that has occurred the simplification going uh you know deep on some of these the few different Focus areas that we have as well as help provide understanding of where folks would be

160able to provide input and help inform the work moving forward from there we had the Strategic plan launch video that was played earlier in the presentation play as well at the August 10 and 11 district-wide professional learning days as a moment to be able to again build awareness and and hopefully some excitement around launch of the plan I will pull up here in just a moment a strategic plan subsite that we've had a number of folks working on that will be the home for all information about the plan not just today but as we move forward and then we'll package all of this up the subsite link which is a strategic PSD strategic plan or excuse me strategic plan.psdschools.org we'll package that up along with the hype video and really our why why it is

161that we are doing this plan why now and how do we all work together around it that'll go out tomorrow to all staff and our community so parents as well as Key Community Partners and secondary students and then our team has been working on building out a protocol to be able to partner with District leaders to again increase awareness of what our steps are moving forward with year one and how the work will move forward in our system and again where all of our colleagues regardless of position can hopefully see themselves and figure out where it is that they can bring our priorities to life and then what we would propose is bringing updates to you all to our board twice annually and that allows our teams time to do the Deep work make sure

162that we are building alignment that we are taking the time we need to bring people along and to get feedback so that this work can happen with Fidelity across our system and then be able to in a consistent way across all of these action teams be able to share how it is that we're doing on the plan what's working what's not working and be able to then after presenting to you all reflect that same information out to our community primarily on the Strategic plan subsite that we will tour briefly here in a moment and and then through various strategic Communications plans to support each of the teams recognizing that there will be important milestones and and things that we need help from folks across the system to implement as we go well all right so

163this is uh just a an image on the screen here of a student with their arms raised above their heads it's one of the students in a elementary school here in pooter school district and it when we click on it here will take us to that strategic plan subsite subsites just a fancy word for a separate website that everyone will be able to get to from psdschools.org so starting tomorrow we will have all sorts of easy ways for folks to get to this site but what you see here along the top Porter School District strategic plan and then there is a blue navigation bar just below with our district priority areas of literacy mental health and belonging and graduate with options when users navigate to each of those it will take them to a sub

164page that highlights the information that my colleagues have shared this evening around why is it that we're focused on each of these three performance indicators what is it that we hope to accomplish as we move forward in this work who is working on this not the specific staff members names per se but giving our community a sense of the true collaboration that's happening across our system represented in different departments and school-based leaders and Community Partners and then over time again thinking through the twice annual updates being able to reflect data that we collect and monitor so that our again Collective Community can see the progress that we are making across each of these areas all right so our next steps as we have talked about before in the space but want to bring us back

165is right now in Fall we've walked through of course the year one project implementation from here we have action teams that will be identifying year two projects so teams came together just recently to be able to work together understand the charge ahead be able to figure out how it is that they're going to be working best as teams to do this work and then building out those year two project plans and then as we come back in Spring to be able to provide you all an update we want to give progress reports on each of those year one projects and then how it is that we're going to refine and move through the year two projects and then at that point we will be able to add information to the subsite around those year two

166projects and start the planning process for year three and again all of this we imagine the Cadence being that we'd come here get feedback from you all as our directors be able to integrate that with feedback from our teams and all of those various action team feedback loops and then share the information out across that strategic plan subsite all right with that we will go ahead and pause and then any questions discussion you'd like to have we're happy to entertain that looks like Nate has something will there be fireworks looks like Nate doesn't have anything [Laughter] sorry go ahead good question I wish there were I've not yet gotten approval from the fire department I will add it to the plan TJ you had something yeah um and I think you're kind of getting to

167it on the website when you're showing it but one of the things that I I felt kind of missing a little bit in there and you talk about you know seeing yourself in the work and so I kind of wonder if there's a way that we have an opera if we have an opportunity to share in our newsletters or in Communications of um like what you might see or how you will see the work and I'm not smart enough to come up with great ideas on that necessarily but it's just so that one we're talking about it regularly and two will understand that like literacy you're going to see new books on on their you're going to be seeing new books or a new way that we talk about this um I just wonder if

168there's a way that we could work something like that in there so that again we're coming we're talking about it twice a year or whatever but we want everybody really talking about it all the time and so I that's just something that jumped out to me and then I felt a little better when I saw the actual website versus what I was reading before but I think there's an opportunity to share that yeah great question or idea director Anderson as our team worked over the summer not just on the subsite and huge shout out to our friends in it as well and helping us pull that all together what we have built out in our Communications strategic plan for the year are I hope what will address your idea and that is not just being

169able to provide the community with those concrete updates around our progress on the plan but really as you said where are we seeing it in our system and so we have I don't remember the number of stories that we identified that we want to tell as a team but being able to go deeper do more kind of Feature work and so some of the ones that we have on our list are around what what does the elementary literacy adoption really look like for students and we don't know yet exactly how the angle will play out but being able to show not just tell what the experience of one of our elementary kiddos and our elementary educator friends what that is actually looking like in practice and how it is different from past experiences with our

170literacy curriculum so that's one example Matt and Philip are talented video team are working on a series that they want to Center upon each of our district priorities and we recognize some of the episodes May in fact bring together all three of the priorities in one so they did a series years ago around it was called the student experience and again the idea was really to show not tell the beautiful intentional experiences that our students have every day and so they'll be working through a video series with between four and maybe six of those this year we also have stories lined up to be able to more deeply feature and really show the people behind the fellowship program on the mental health side of things so to be able to talk to several of the

171fellows and be able to understand who they are as humans and what motivated them on the journey that they are on to be able to serve our students and then tied to that what the experience is like for our students to be able to see them and interact with them in our system and for our colleagues to have the additional support in the system so our plan is to launch this is really the starting place and then to be able to we have as a team said we have aligned our work entirely around the priorities so that in time we should be able to build out content on that subset across our entire site that is in constant alignment with the work that is happening day by day by day so I hope that helps

172address other comments or questions DJ apparently has another I have another yeah on the literacy one could you explain to us and the community why uh when we're looking at we're looking at 9th and 10th grade what about 11th and 12th grade just address that part so I will do my best to address that particular question so 9th and 10th grade are two of those core courses at at high school of course where um that the critical aspect of all kids are going into those two courses it's probably our best opportunity to leverage an adoption of some very targeted materials that has a systemic impact across across the district whereas once students start to go into those 11th and 12th grade they tend to be you know very selective types of courses that a district-wide

173adoption wouldn't necessarily best serve as many students as much as it would be at that ninth and 10th grade level and let Julie Chaplin add on as a more experienced secondary yeah sure I can definitely add on a little bit to that um yeah that's that's you're you're right on with that when we get to 11th and 12th grade um not only are there more course offerings um in language arts but we're also um you know looking at concurrent enrollment so we're not using District you know curriculum we're aligning with those Community College Partners or um and so the really the the stratification of that um really becomes um quite quite intense I guess and ninth and 10th grade also hasn't had an adoption for oh gosh I I don't even think that I've said

174that yeah um so yeah so I'm 20 years and I've never seen one so it's really really really needing to do that but yeah ninth and 10th are really the core of where you get students in focusing helping get the SAT level um I just I just want to share some of the things that um that I heard as you all going around the room here um one of the things is um I just love the way that this has been set up and divided you can see the overlap and everything but you also see that there's definite ownership and that um I just want to thank you all for the strong teams um thank you all in the back there for being willing to be on these teams um this is It's other words

175I wrote down excitement um I think maybe Julie you won the excitement one I don't know um I think that was while you were talking I wrote that down um the other the other thing that just struck me was that um this this is the way to eat the elephant right one bite at a time and that's what we're doing is this year it's that one bite and then next year it's going to be the next bite and the year after that um Liz as you were talking I looked over here and I saw the three beautiful posters that we have I also noticed them up at um the welcoming Center in the mall they were on the back of the bathroom stall so for those who can't see those posters they're designed for students

176with a QR code that basically says um I think it's is it actless ask listen connect um and it's a there's a Spanish and English and a um Arabic version of that with a QR code on it so that they can connect with any Mental Health Services that they may need and they're attractive and fun and just beautiful um you are taking all you all are taking something that is extremely complex and you have made it easy to understand digestible and I think that's going to be a super important for our community they're going to need that in those bite-sized pieces digestible pieces um Madeline your discussion around you're talking about storytelling around our priorities and that is an amazing way to get out what what we're what we're doing here um that storytelling um

177and then just what we're doing is we're just getting the most out of those changes when you're talking about doing 9th and 10th grade that you're hitting the majority of the students or in a sense all of the students instead of saying well we could piecemeal here and there let's focus on the students that we can get the biggest bang for the buck kind of thing um so I'm just I think I'm excited by this this is really um it's just extremely well done well put together um it's energized me and thank you just thank you I know the tremendous amount of work that went into this I know that probably divvying these up into the pieces that they and and who is leading and who's on the team and all of that I'm sure

178that took quite the effort and looks fantastic so thank you Jim just building on what Kristen said I love the ownership I love the commitment I love the focus one of the things I love about this whole thing is when someone comes to me and says Jim how's it going on the school board I'm actually able to come back and say actually we're focused on three priorities literacy mental health and belonging and graduate with options and then start talking about those and it's just so fun to be able to do that and when I'm done usually people are like wow that you know it's much more than what they expected so I sure appreciate all the work behind that to make that work thank you other comments oops getting loud again looks like not right

179okay we really appreciate the presentation and the engagement with the board around the Strategic plan and the underlying unified Improvement plan which we're going to talk about and vote on in a second so thank you very much appreciate it so our next item here is in fact the adoption of the unified Improvement plan for 2324 can I get a motion with respect to that plan Nate I moved that the board approved the 2023-2024 unified Improvement plan for the Pooter school district has presented excellent can I get a second looks like Jess gave us a second there all right I'm assuming that there's not additional presentation on this is that correct or is there okay so are there any other comments or questions on the unified Improvement plan as perhaps distinct from the presentation we got

180on the Strategic plan I think yeah me too but you can go first Fred that's right finally finally he gets it right go ahead Preston it's only been six years the one question that I haven't and um I I think it was answered via email but I just wanted to sort of put it out there for the general public too is um so if we could have um a better an explanation of in the uip we talk about complex tasks centered on complex text and the other one was um the oh my gosh now I'm going to forget what it was um let me see if I can pull it up here um text task and thinking instructional shifts if we can just have some explanation as to what that might look like um what

181the teacher is doing what the students are doing what what families can expect at home and I know that you did a really nice job of laying that out and the answer in the email but just um I don't know if that's something that we can put onto the website for the uip there's I feel like that needs to get out there because when you look at complex text send it on complex tasks send it on complex text it sounds great it's hard to say um but I don't it doesn't necessarily tell me what it means and then the um the text task and thinking instructional shifts doesn't necessarily tell me what it is either so if we can just have a less edgy speak um uh explanation of it would be awesome you'd want

182that in the room or and on the site or both yeah I was going to ask that you don't mean in this moment here you mean as part of our materials as we move this forward exactly no no I because I no because it's been beautifully explained in the email and it's you know it's like five paragraphs so I don't I don't need that in the room I just want to go ahead and have that a front-facing public facing so that people understand what it is that we're talking about when we say that thanks Krista yeah um other comments or questions DJ okay so I'm trying to find where I with with our new app it tells me it's on page 27 that I made this note but um it is [Music] it is in

183reference to handoffs and with like mental help and Partnerships in there I believe but my question was are there any road bra roadblocks for the smooth handoff between agencies that we as a board should be working on with either legislation or community outreach and and this is really just kind of a I'm setting you up so that when those come up I'm not expecting necessarily have them right now but if those are roadblocks to that please keep us in mind and figure out how we can try to overcome those so that um that we're able to address these these kids needs and I think we've got a lot of great organizations in our community that step up in the summer and that we also work with and and I some of the feedback I've heard

184is sometimes it's hard to know what's been done because of because of of privacy and which all means we need to do but if there's ways that we can help Foster that please let us know and let's make sure that we're thinking outside the box on ways that we can help help make that a better better job thanks other comment other comments or questions from the board all right I have a couple of things one of them is that um as it relates to particularly the Community Partnerships and the absenteeism and truancy um I I appreciate well I had identified that I had some concerns about the level of specificity of the plans associated with those two items in the unified Improvement plan I appreciate the district getting back to the board and indicating that

185we'll have further updates after let's say mid-september uh on both of those things because they're both real important things they're things that the board has had some focus on for some time and I think we'd be real interested to understand more about the specifics there the other thing I would just mention and it's sort of in the same camp is the whole question of bullying I know I certainly feel strongly that that's a thing that needs to be addressed I appreciate the fact that we're going to have a focus on that as one of the items in the mental health Arena you had mentioned Liz about examining policy and that's certainly an important thing to do I think it's also important in the same way that we looked at discipline uh stuff that we need

186to ensure that there's consistency of expectations and execution around how we handle bullying incidents in our schools across the district because I suspect that's not the case now uh so I'll I'll look forward to either as a member of the board if it comes to us before November or as a member of the public after that I'll be following that with some interest personally and I suspect other members of the board will uh will do so as well other comments or questions okay getting close to the end here I don't know what never mind uh so what so what do we have some varieties you have something else you want to no no you're just looking at the clock too um Jill would you call a vote on this uh on this motion please DJ

187Anderson aye Jim brokish hi Nate Donovan aye Kristen Draper aye Rob Patterson aye Carolyn Reed aye Jessica Zamora aye motion passes 7-0 excellent thank you very much um yes so uh this uh concludes the business of the School District Board of Education at our meeting today um it is still August 22nd and it is approximately 9 13 p.m and I am now adjourning this meeting