Board of Education Meeting: September 13, 2022

001you all right good evening everybody and welcome to the pooter school district board of education meeting on uh today uh june 13th the meeting is now called to order at 6 30 pm uh i'd ask you all to consider muting your cell phones please so that we don't have interruptions i'll do the same and with that if everyone would please join us for the pledge of allegiance that would be great pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god and indivisible with liberty and justice for all excellent thank you so much would any board members like to make changes to tonight's agenda seeing none we will head on to item number four which is about recognitions and reports so i believe

002our superintendent will lead us in this item yes thank you good evening everybody we are excited to welcome our community school supply partners leading tonight's celebration is our chief information officer miss madeleine knoblet madeline welcome all right thank you superintendent kingsley members of the board cabinet everyone gathered here this evening and those viewing online we so appreciate you being here as we celebrate some of our incredible community partners so for those of us who are familiar with the processes this is a special time to be able to recognize our incredible students staff and community partners it's important to recognize that we cannot do this alone as a district and there are so many people who make us the wonderful place that we are this evening i am proud to welcome my colleague nick peterson psd

003community and business development coordinator who will recognize two just long-standing incredible partners we have in otter cares and csu who help each year to collect and donate thousands upon thousands of backpacks and school supplies to our students so that they can be proud and ready for their first days of school and access their education so with that i would like to welcome nick and our partners up he's going to say a few words and then we'll do the presentation of the recognition and then wish them a wonderful good night thank you so much thank you all right so um across our school system the need for school supplies for students is higher than ever before yet our community and business partners ranging from small businesses individuals community groups and to larger national level organizations step

004up year after year to help assure that every student in psd has the supplies they need for school to all of our partners big and small who contribute to supplying our students we're incredibly grateful however this evening we're honored to spotlight two of our biggest partners csu's school is cool program and our cares packed to school program which together provided backpacks and school supplies for over 5000 psd students in need by day one of school this year the level of work and coordination dating back to last february when we first assessed the school supply need in each school all the way through august when school supplies and backpacks were delivered to each school was extraordinary the fact that we can count on csu and otter cares to reliably provide this level of support each year

005is incredible here representing csu's school school program is colleen rodriguez and representing otter cares back to school program is sarah weeks i'd like to invite each to share a few words and also soak up the gratitude we have for your dedication and ongoing support thank you nick um hi everybody my name is colleen rodriguez i'm here on behalf of the school of school committee and this year was our 32nd year of participating in school at school and i just want the board and everybody here to know how much our csu community really loves this program it's so near and dear to our hearts we've had over 200 volunteers this year who helps you know organize stuff and deliver all the packs this year we supply 2729 packs to the elementary students and over our 32

006years that we've been partnering together we've done nearly 56 000 so um you know again education again is you know one of our values of course says colorado state university and we are so happy to be a long-standing partner and extending the partnership this year with otter cares was truly remarkable because i believe we were able to fill 100 of our needs so thank you so much for having us here tonight thank you and as colleen said this was our first year all working together which was very amazing um but as the impact and education director for the otter cares foundation i'm here representing my very small team as well as hundreds of otter products employees in northern colorado we just thank you so much for allowing otter to be part of pack to school

007because it is a beloved program over 100 individual otter employees stuffed 2500 backpacks and supply bags for 14 middle and high schools in psd otters donated over 500 volunteer hours to take inventory pack and deliver supplies thank you so much to the family liaisons office managers custodians and other school staff who ensured students received those supplies even more so in these tough times otter is proud to serve the families of psd [Applause] yeah from from the board too i just want to thank you so much for being uh active in our community to help our kids and and it really does mean a lot to us uh our board our our district and our families that you guys are willing to put in those hours and the manpower and going out and collecting that stuff

008and with it with a great uh tagline school is cool you can't can't beat that so thank you so much [Applause] that's a touch screen and that concludes recognitions for this evening thank you thank you so much madeline all right we will move on to our first set of action items this evening and that the first item is a resolution in support of hispanic heritage month can i get a motion in support of that resolution go ahead nate we can read it after we get the yes mechanics yes i move that the board approved the resolution in support of hispanic heritage month excellent do we have a second for that jess has a second um we will have some folks from the administration uh from the staff to talk to us about that but i

009do want to make sure it's red first so nate do you have that one to read i do if you do that i appreciate it thanks resolution of the pooter school district board of education in support of hispanic heritage month whereas hispanic heritage week was started in 1968 under president lyndon johnson and was expanded to hispanic heritage month by president ronald reagan in 1988 starting on september 15th and ending on october 15th and whereas september 15th is significant as it is the independence anniversary for the latin american countries of el salvador guatemala costa rica nicaragua and honduras the independence days of mexico and chile fall on september 16th and september 18th respectively and whereas countless people of hispanic and latinx origin have contributed to the economic and cultural growth and strength of puter school district

010in many recorded and unrecorded ways and our system is better for those contributions and whereas the latinx and hispanic communities face cultural and systemic barriers to an inclusive and equitable education booter school district and its community partners strive to close the equity and opportunity gaps for hispanic and latinx students and promises to create and uphold equitable inclusive and rigorous educational opportunities experiences and outcomes and whereas the pooder school district board of education administration and staff are committed to making pooder school district an equitable and inclusive community for students families and staff of latinx and hispanic origin and we recognize that there is more work ahead of us diversity equity and inclusion are fundamental values in pooter school district and we are committed to ensuring that hispanic and latinx students families and staff are valued seen

011and heard now for now therefore be it resolved the pooder school district board of education does here proclaim september 15th through october 15 2022 hispanic heritage month in pooter school district and encourages students staff and the community to celebrate the excellence and enriching contributions made from our latinx and hispanic community of the past and present thank you so much superintendent i believe you have uh some uh additional dukes yes thank you joining us this evening to speak to hispanic heritage month is miss delia mahaney one of our lead coordinators for our arts district's diversity equity and inclusion efforts and i know she's flanked by many other good members of our community that i'll allow delia to introduce thanks dalia welcome thank you thank you for having us tonight it is my honor and privilege to

012introduce to you an amazing colleague and friend dr huerta kelly who is the principal of harris bilingual elementary school and she has brought with her four brilliant and brave future fort collins and the world leaders to speak to the importance of this resolution and what it means to them thank you you everyone um my name is dr wether kelly i'm the principal of harris bilingual immersion school i am going to start in spanish and then translate in english and then our students will also do the same buenas noches estados good evening and thank you for inviting la cuella bellingue harris harris bilingual immersion school to speak on behalf of our community in recognition of hispanic heritage month it is with great pride that we are here before you today my own parents obed igloria huerta

013were migrant farm workers who left elementary school so that they could work in the hot fields of southern texas and colorado they were not allowed to speak spanish in school when i walk the beautiful halls of harris i hear children and adults from all backgrounds and skin colors proudly speaking both in english and in spanish speaking spanish is an asset and a gift and is one that i want all children and the families in fort collins community to always be proud of never forget your beautiful culture nuestros estudiantes de quinto grado quierencontarles porque esta orgullions a few of our fifth graders would like to tell you why they are so proud to be bilingual and why this is so why this month is so important my first person is alison mijares [Applause] hi my name

014is alison mijadis and i am proud to be latina because not only can i speak spanish but i can also speak english and with the privilege of being bilingual i can make more friends and be more successful in life and increase more brain work than most people i am glad i am i am glad that we have a whole month to appreciate the hispanic people hola me llamo alison estoy latina hank weeby hi hi my name is hank harris hi my name is hank i am proud to go to a bilingual school like harris because i get to learn spanish spanish is very fun and very helpful speaking spanish allows me to meet people that speak spanish who are very interesting people i am glad that we get to celebrate all the hispanic people who

015have worked really hard miss valerie good hi my name is valerie i'm proud to be bilingual because i think it's really cool and the fact that i can talk to spanish-speaking people is really useful because i can make more friends and become more successful in life i like that we have a whole month to celebrate all the wonderful hispanic people of the world and finally [Applause] hello [Music] and i'm grateful for speaking spanish and english because i can talk to my dad my dad has worked in construction for 25 years and i help him translate information from english to spanish maybe one day i'll be able to work with him too thank you for let letting us come to tell you and tell you this month is so important to us [Applause] can we ask

016norma and the students to stand up there we'd love to get a picture with you if that's okay really quick can i say is this on so don't don't leave just yet so i'm gonna try i'm gonna try to be brave here so norma allison valerie hank in saul hola mayam o'brien no sace sentirtan orgyosos which i'm hopeful translates as you make us all very very proud thank you very much for being here [Applause] take a step forward there we go thank you [Applause] all right how exciting thank you so much students for coming to share your thoughts with us it's it it it really makes us proud and and excited thank you so much um are there i believe i assume that's the end of the staff remarks is that correct or yes okay

017kristen do you want to say something yeah i'd just like to to follow up first of all to say thank you so much for for sharing that wonderful moment with us that was beautiful and for the community um if you're interested on sunday september 18th from 2 to 6 at the azlan center there will be a hispanic latinx heritage month celebration community celebration so they'll be let's see filled with music dance art stories and more so we hope to see you there at the atsun center on some sunday september 18th from 2 to 6. thanks anybody else on the board like to make additional remarks all right uh jill if you would call the vote on this resolution dj anderson aye jim brokish aye nate donovan aye kristen draper aye rob patterson aye carolyn reed

018aye jessica zamora aye motion passes 7-0 excellent thank you very much jill all right so we have one more resolution tonight and that is in support of national suicide prevention month uh can i get a motion in support of that resolution oh yes maybe just jess you wanna sorry i i move that the board approve nope yeah yeah sorry because the right get the right one i moved to the board approve and adopt the recommended nope not the right one resolution in support of national suicide prevention month i need to practice excellent wait a second on that jim is the second on that i believe uh kristen you're going to read no jas is going to read that right sorry see how this goes all right in support of national suicide prevention month september 2022

019whereas suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the united states and the second leading cause of death among individuals between 18 and 24 years of age and whereas according to the centers for disease control and prevention one individual in the united states dies by suicide every 11 minutes resulting in around 48 000 deaths each year in the united states and whereas it is estimated that there are approximately one million four hundred thousand suicide attempts each year in the united states and whereas reducing the stigma associated with mental health needs and suicidal thoughts and behaviors can encourage individuals who are experiencing these issues to seek life-saving help and whereas schools are an important setting for supporting suicide prevention educators mental health providers and all other school staff can play a key role in keeping

020students safe and whereas according to the morbidity and mortality weekly report for the centers for disease control and prevention risk factors for suicide such as anxiety and depression have increased considerably since the onset of restrictions to help slow the spread of covet 19. and whereas september is an appropriate month to designate as national suicide prevention month because september 10th is world suicide prevention day a day recognized internationally and supported by the world health organization now therefore be it resolved that we the pooder school district board of education support national suicide prevention month september 2022 thank you jess very sobering frankly brian if you'd like to have the staff speak to us about this yes thank you we already got one from jim so so thank you joining us this evening to speak to the national

021suicide prevention month is our director of student support services ms liz davis and she's here amongst other staff members from our community and staff welcome liz so i would like to just thank everyone tonight and uh thank sarah mounter wilkins and i'll have you say your title and kim granger and then you can say your title as well when you come out but i just want to thank both of you um for working on this appreciate you okay thank you members of the board superintendent kingsley and everyone joining us this evening my name is sarah matter-wilkins and i'm pooter school district's mental health and prevention coordinator nationally september is recognized as suicide prevention awareness month we ask that we in psd recognize this month to help shift public perception and spread hope and share vital

022information to people impacted by suicidal thoughts or behaviors last december u.s surgeon general vivek murthy announced that we are in the midst of a youth mental health crisis stating that mental health challenges in children adolescents and young adults are real and widespread even before the pandemic an alarming number of young people struggled with feelings of helplessness depression and thoughts of suicide and rates have increased over the past decade the future well-being of our country depends on how we support and invest in the next generation while the youth mental health crisis is occurring our community behavioral health clinics are facing a shortage of care providers only exasperated by covet impacts with behavioral health clinics seeing their wait list grow while having trouble recruiting and retaining employees while this and other statistics that you've heard tonight can

023be to start heartening there is hope there are steps that we can take to support suicide prevention in schools including recognizing that mental health is an essential part of overall health reducing barriers to mental health services promoting connectedness teaching coping skills and problem solving skills through social emotional learning and identifying and providing support to those at risk we ask that you continue to support suicide prevention efforts and mental health access in schools schools provide a natural and accessible setting in which students and families are comfortable and trust staff to provide prevention and support them in navigating the mental health care system prevention is a key component of supporting student mental health and safety recognizing september as suicide prevention month represents our commitment to have psd's organizational policy and culture be one that promotes knowledge reduces

024stigma and empowers students families and staff to recognize key warning signs and know the importance and how to and the importance of seeking life-saving help i'm going to turn it over to kim granger good evening i'm kim granger i am the coordinator for health services for pooter school district i just wanted to add my personal thanks because by reading this resolution tonight you are all breaking down stigma it is important to know that talking about suicide does not cause more suicide or put ideas into people's heads my son robbie took his life in 2017 and never once said anything to anyone about his struggles i believe he had internal shame and had he known he was not alone he might have sought help and he might still be with us today when we prioritize all

025students mental health needs and teach social emotional skills from pre-k to age 21 we provide safety skills we provide resiliency and we provide confidence to all of our youth by aligning district teams and services to address every single student's mental health needs we have the ability to deeply connect and to hopefully save lives so from the bottom of my heart thank you this is important good evening um thank you superintendent kingsley the cabinet in the board my name is emily humphrey and i'm the director of community justice alternatives but i'm here not in that capacity i'm here as a coalition member for the larimer county juvenile gun safety coalition i'm honored to be amongst you all today and i want to talk a little bit about our camp campaign that we're going to play a

026video for you in just a moment called it only takes a moment the larimer county juvenile gun safety coalition is a neutral coalition that consists of every law enforcement agency here in larimer county criminal justice partners community justice partners and the support of each school district when we began this coalition in 2018 our mission was three-fold responsible gun ownership safe gun storage and keeping our kids safe during the pandemic we realized that the coalition would be remiss if we did not recognize teen suicide and what was happening with the use of the handguns so we created as a coalition with the our partners imagine zero and alliance for suicide prevention a campaign called it only takes a moment we're going to have the opportunity to play that public service announcement for you in just a

027moment these are children from our community that are the actors in this public service announcement we're very proud of that but it only takes a moment has two different meanings it only takes a moment for a child to make a permanent decision to a temporary problem and it only takes a moment for a safe responsible gun owner to lock up their guns to prevent that tragedy from happening so thank you for giving giving us and the coalition this opportunity today to play this campaign thank you if we could go ahead and play the psa that would be great on that one [Music] i never thought it would get this bad but it did i always thought i'd ask for help but i didn't i never thought it would be unlocked but it was but it

028was [Music] i never thought it would be so heavy but it was so heavy i never thought it would be loaded i never thought it would be loaded i never thought it would be loaded but it was i never thought i could go through with it i never thought i could go through with it i never thought i could go through with it and i didn't this time [Music] it only takes a moment [Music] [Applause] all right um does anybody from the board have any remarks you want to make about this resolution sorry dj go ahead uh yeah i just want to say 988 988 is now the national number to call for suicide prevention and just make sure that you guys all know that and pass the word and let's make sure that we

029not only let the children know but our friends and family too so thank you yeah um thank you so much for sharing um it's i know how hard that is um but it means so much um along with 988 which is um the new lifeline there's also just so you know i matter colorado and if you go to i matter colorado.org they can connect you with a therapist for up to six free virtual counseling sessions parents and youth can go ahead and do that they're it's almost instantaneous i believe it's less than a week's wait for you to get a therapist so please go ahead and do that one of the things that they state on the imatter website is parent seeking support for your child is not a sign of failure it's a sign

030of strength so just keep that in mind when you're doing that it is hard but it is a sign of strength when you go ahead and find help for your children um and then again 988 and also um there is the trevor project and so if you need help there as well you can connect with the trevor project so other than that thank you thanks very much any other remarks all right well spoken thank you so much uh to the presenters this evening on this and for all the work that you're doing to help our help our students and all of the folks in the community to support their mental health and to prevent suicides thank you so much with that i'll ask jill to call a vote on this resolution dj anderson aye jim

031brokish aye nate donovan aye kristin draper aye rob pederson aye carolyn reed aye jessica zamora aye motion passes 7-0 thank you so much jill all right with that we will move on to our superintendent report superintendent kingsley will now make remarks to the board and the community thank you um can you stay just for a second is that okay thank you uh it only takes a moment some of my speaking points i have to be honest just went out the window and i hope that's okay um since i have been five years old i've looked at this flag and said the pledge of allegiance like many if not all of you and if we think about the closing of our pledge when we talk about being indivisible with liberty and justice for all liberty and

032justice is not possible without health i am so grateful for this community for putting together the advocacy to get this message out not just across our school district but across every particular room and location because there are people that are hurting in our community that it only takes a moment to check in with them it only takes a moment for them to be self-aware that there's help and available to them and they're surrounded by many people like emily or sarah and or kim who have both professional and lived experiences that want to do something to help move this community forward can i be remissed if i didn't just say thank you for showing such great strength this evening and courage and vulnerability in telling your story you know there's a lot of significant conversations that

033are happening across this district every single day and what you all embodied alongside our students were as we're celebrating by literacy you think about when philanthropy came together with our higher ed institutions at colorado state university one of the things that resonated with me from that little presentation was they provided supplies for twenty percent of our students and what i heard them celebrate is they recognized that they were able to fulfill a hundred percent of the need ladies and gentlemen of our community and members of our board we can't ignore our data our students are hurting suicide is one of the leading causes of youth death in the state of colorado three out of four utes in this community in this district experienced and reported worsening mental health during the pandemic and some of those

034challenges include depression and anxiety eating disorders substance abuse disorders both suicide ideation and suicide and for many members of our marginalized communities those numbers are disproportionate and it's impacting them greater but this make no mistake about it these data points are cross-cutting and nobody is exempt positive change in our community cannot come from complacency we're going to need to come together and be courageous about in talking about uncomfortable truths many of you are here tonight and have volunteered to speak to this board and this governance team of eight to do just that and i want to welcome you and thank you for your for your words as regarding mental health as you've heard the well-being of our children and our staff and our community is a priority in our districts tonight we're going to be

035sharing more around how we collaborate across this district in our community to support students and staff and their families but there's no there's a lot more work to do and i think we all can agree to that we're committed to strengthening and growing this community and partnerships in these particular areas but the challenges that our kids are facing today are different than what we faced as adults growing up as young people society is different technology has changed so many different things things that we're talking about the things that they're struggling with and getting back to continuing to promote healthy human dialogue even when we disagree has got to continue to remain mission critical in this system for those of you who are here tonight not only are you going to hear more about our mental

036health support resources but you're also going to continue to be invited to engage in our strategic plan development efforts we'll orient everybody here and across the community around what those efforts are i'm really proud of the staff's efforts to actually right now i think it's at leicester middle school our first spanish speaking engagement session around the development of our strategic plan is happening as we speak we will launch our first strategic plan development session in english later on this week on thursday at i believe our new middle school high school in wellington and i really want to make sure every member of our community realize regardless of your mindsets values and beliefs that you're invited and welcome to advocate for your community your children in this school district in this particular space there's a lot

037of courageous people that are trying to do a lot of adaptive work that there is no technical solution for and i'm just so proud to be a part of it some of those challenges persisted over last week as well as we talked about what was at the at that time the elephant in the room the temperatures in our classrooms those types of conditions are not just about creating programmatic offerings that are engaging to our young people or making sure that they have backpacks or access to mental health resources and supports and we work together to destigmatize those supports but sometimes even the actual just temperature conditions in our rooms make it very difficult for learning we are continuing to explore options and opportunities to identify the true costs of bringing the 33 of our 55

038schools who currently do not have air conditioning which i would tell you is now 35 as a result of two hvac systems being overworked and no longer working at two of our schools we're going to need community support to improve those conditions there's been a lot of conversation on social media around thinking about that through the lens of just adjust the calendar to after labor day well last week i believe was after labor day and so this global you know phenomenon of heat and climate change is no joke we're going to need community support to identify not just what those total costs are but in order to actually operationalize improvements in all of these respective areas there's one way that we're going to accomplish it and it's together and so i am encouraged by the

039things that we're discussing and having robust deep dialogue this evening and i'd just be remiss if i didn't take a second to thank the staff and the members of our community lori thank you for all the work that you're doing at larimer county to support behavioral health services continuing to expand with a focus on youth services i'm just incredibly grateful to be a part of it but we have work to do and i look forward to continuing to roll up all of our sleeves to do the work so families don't have to say any more sad stories at our podiums we don't have to be saying our apologies and sending our prayers that we're actually talking about and celebrating the actions that this courageous community is willing to take so thank you everybody and thank

040you for the time tonight thank you as always for your remarks brian i appreciate it next we will be moving on to community comment this opportunity for community comment is for members of the community who registered to speak by the designated deadline those people will be called on to make remarks in the order that they signed up each speaker will be allowed three minutes this evening to address the board our first speaker is jeff after heidi welcome can you hear me okay perfect thank you my name is jeff after heidi from wellington colorado the issues i want to talk about tonight are your annual disclosures in conflict of interest specifically around mental health there seems to be this idea with the board that if you ignore this issue or change a policy it will go

041away but it won't last year the week before school started members of this district work with city and county health officials to re-implement a mandatory mass and social distancing policy for our children and we all knew the negative outcomes of your policy because parents were here at every meeting telling you about it it is for this reason i want to understand the driving forces and factors behind your decision-making process and one way to understand these forces and factors is through the submission of your annual disclosures on august 24th i submitted yet another core request pr-2023-53 asking for your required annual submissions for this school year and again the district responded that no record for my request exists and this is important because we know through open source research that some board members sit on other

042boards for example one board member is on the board of the mental health providers summit stone health partners we know that putin's school district now looks to partner with summit stone to address the very mental health and behavioral health issues caused by your policies last year even representative kathy kipp house district 52 and former school board member acknowledged the impact of your masking policy she wrote to me on november 24 2021 saying yes there are mental health and behavioral implications to mask wearing and will certainly be glad when masses are no longer necessary but these are the choices we must make damaging mental health mental and behavioral health which may be recoverable from or the potentially long-term physical effects of covid19 including death from which there is no recovery unquote your board members code of

043conduct policy 3.5 states that members will annually disclose their involvement with individuals other organizations and vendors that and any other associations that might be reasonably seen as representing a conflict of interest and i'd submit to you that there are plenty of those that meet that criteria may i ask for a date when the district board will start following its policy 3.5 for this school year or when will you start recusing yourself from making decisions where there are obvious conflicts of interest thank you [Applause] the number two is not there okay so the next person then to speak will be nick george or juric i'm sorry if i get that wrong welcome in early may of 2021 my wife and i were asked by our daughter if she could attend jenna reeves after school anime club

044at wellington middle school knowing there's a lot of inappropriate anime we reluctantly gave our permission trusting psd to provide a safe age-appropriate environment for our child december 13 2021 on our bathroom floor i sat with my child in my arms waiting for the ambulance to arrive she tried to kill herself at her request we had pulled her from wellington middle school just days before i rode with her in the back of the ambulance to the emergency room and i sat by her side during a 72 hour hold and the only reason they would let me do that is because she was only 12 and i watched helplessly as the ambulance pulled away to denver so that she could get the help that she so so surely that she so sorely needed not a single psd

045employee reached out to us to understand what in the psd environment may have contributed to her her decision to end her life not a single psd employee it wasn't until may of this year when wellington middle school made the news that we had a much better understanding of what had happened and realized that our experience was not an isolated incident anime club was actually a club about gender and sex and when we asked our daughter if she was ever told to lie to us about it she said she was told that students didn't have to talk to anyone about what was being said in that room and the parents asked students didn't need to tell them and it felt like a slap in the face to me to listen to brian kingsley and kelby benedict

046the principal through email and in person and video that they fully support and encourage these organizations organizations that they know bring with them a highly elevated suicide rate when we met with kelby he told us i am proud of the community that we've created in wellington a community that led to my daughter's decision to try and end her life and when we shared our experience with kelby he told us that kids being invited to art club and anime club were just rumors and then suggested our daughter was lying with regards to what jenna reep had told her about talking to parents i would love to trust psd but the last time i did the psd environment which you're also very proud of nearly cost me my child's life and you ask me to trust you

047again to what end so you can finish the job that you started psd please stop encouraging organizations that you know bring with them a highly suicidal environment our children's lives are at stake thank you our next speaker is aaron lee welcome psd board mr kingsley as the school year begins and you've all been given a fresh slate to improve academics transparency and respect towards parents i have some questions i hope you'll answer for everyone firstly how many families have to stand up here and tell you that your extreme gender and sexuality agenda hurt their child why do you all continue to act as though our children belong to you are you all aware that kimberly chambers told my little girl girl to pursue medical transition and not tell me do you condone 12 year olds

048being struck instructed in your schools to pursue puberty blockers without telling parents as you've now publicly defended yourselves with the claim that kimberly chambers and splash were removed from psd in fall of 2021 will you give the public a date in which this removal took place do you have any evidence of your intentional removal of this person in this program from our schools if you removed kimberly from psd in 2021 why was she still a registered substitute teacher for the district with an active psd email through 2022 why was splash listed as a resource in the how to be a trusted adult staff training conducted through 2022 why was splash listed in the human growth and development curriculum as young as 5th grade in 2022 why did teachers counselors and outside presenters continue to disperse

049splash and skittles materials to our children in 2022 why is splash currently listed as a resource on your community mental health resource page right now why have you continued to transition an elementary child's gender even after the parents have firmly objected to it multiple times why are you trying to make all confidential gsa clubs school sponsored is because you want staff to be empowered to openly discuss theirs and our children's sexuality without our knowledge why do you have a transgender toolkit that explicitly encourages staff to keep our children's gender transition a secret from us for that matter why do you have a transgender toolkit and gender support plan that's implemented with our children in secret but has never been made publicly available if transitioning our children's gender is so beneficial for them why don't you

050discuss this toolkit and transition plan at a board meeting why don't you publish the toolkit and plan on your website i've experienced all of your deceit i feel your apathy i know you don't care what happened to my child or mr jurek's child but how many more kids will you cause harm to how many more families will you break how many more children threaten to take their own lives before you stop this hypersexualization and secret gender transition of our children when will you actually be transparent with parents this community looks forward to your answers to these questions thank you [Applause] our next speaker is stanley young welcome actually i go by kane i am the founder of task force freedom our primary objective is to remove critical race theory social emotional learning and the sexual

051grooming of our children from your school it's shameful i want to call you frauds but i think the public can see exactly what you are it's disgusting you can reach us at taskforcefreedom aol.com i'm going to talk about the pornography and the books that you have available in your schools if you would like a copy of the list that these people are provi that these people um the books that these people have provided for your kids contact me at task force freedom i will give you the books that they are providing to your children sexual grooming suicide let's talk about the problem is suicide a problem yeah it is let's talk about why part of it is the sexual grooming that you are doing it's shameful i'm not here to talk to you i'm here

052to talk to the people i don't really care what you think because you don't care about the people here men where are you fathers brothers uncles grandparents grandfathers where are you you're supposed to protect the children from people like this you're going to sit on the couch you're going to play your games while these people destroy your children you can look at them they don't care they have no shame they're not embarrassed they have no care compassion for what's happening to these parents take your children out of these government schools they are not misguided they are not mistaken they are criminals and they are corrupt and it's shameful so i'm going to say this again take your children out of the government schools there are many many options for you they don't care about you

053i'm gonna end with this there's suffering that must occur the parents and the children are suffering and i'm sad to say that they need to they have to suffer and they need to suffer more so that they learn to never ever vote for people like you again ever [Applause] our next speaker is nicole alvarado welcome good evening my name is nicole alvarado i'm a high school counselor in psd i am the co-chair of the pea equity council and this thursday marks the first day of the national hispanic heritage month and as a woman whose paternal grandparents immigrated from mexico i feel it is important to speak about the importance of a diverse teacher workforce growing up i cannot recall a single teacher of color 20 years later i am dismayed that we continue to see

054similar trends of a lack of diversity in the educator workforce students parents and members of our community have spoken about the need for more teachers of color an august 2021 article from the colorado inn noted that minority students make up nearly 30 percent of psd student body yet 93 percent of psd's teachers are white this article did not mention principal demographic data which i would be interested to know as well psd spokesperson said the district acknowledges the diversity gap and added that psd is actively working to quote retain recruit and retain the best teaching staff we possibly can but noted that the district does not have specific goals tied to removing these disparities a report from the council of chief state school officers states quote teachers of color serve as role models set high expectations

055and support the academic growth of students of color i reviewed the district ends monitoring report prepared for this board in march page 85 notes that patterns of student connection are evident based on student ethnicity there is an overall and persistent pattern of latinx black and native american students showing lower levels of self-reported connections associated with school awareness of these student connections associations and patterns should prompt psd to explore these relative patterns within their specific school environment i have seen how students of color benefit from a strong connection with an educator who may look like them i've spent countless lunches with minority students talking about our upbringings goals personal and cultural expectations it is vital that students see educators in their schools who come from similar backgrounds and ethnicities an additional area that needs attention is

056equitable hiring for positions of leadership within psd i know many educators of color with psd who no longer apply to administrative positions in our district and one who recently left the district to pursue an assistant principal position elsewhere these educators are qualified and ready for these roles yet are consistently passed over i have two asks for you tonight the first is for the district to formally acknowledge and set measurable goals to increase the number of teachers of color and psd second i ask that human resources continues to review and update its hiring practices to ensure that every educator regardless of race is given an equitable chance for these positions what is currently in place is not working i asked the board of education district cabinet human resources and administrators at every building to review their

057hiring practices and reflect upon implicit biases so that our students and staff can experience a diverse workforce that reflects the diversity of our community thank you [Applause] our next speaker is mark mark fuchs welcome good evening uh transparency you all like to use this word a lot to quote a famous movie line you keep using that word i do not think it means what you think it means transparency is defined as free from pretense or deceit it's also defined as characterized by visibility or accessibility of information especially concerning business practices secret gender support plans are not transparent staff training by concerning outside parties like silent wellington are not transparent changing kids genders without telling parents is not transparent instructing staff to lie to parents and not tell parents if their kids are suicidal or cutting

058is not transparent you are transparent in one way though many of us can now see through the lies can see through the deception you are portraying my daughter was a victim of your agenda she was the perfect target shy did not fit in was easily manipulated to make her feel like she belonged during this time she had radically changed at the same time she became more and more depressed it was so hard to watch her decline while at the same time be on her side this is when i saw what psa had become you nearly destroyed her life thank god we took her out of that environment because now she was flourishing she has become an amazing beautiful young woman who is no longer afraid and is strong in what she believes so those parents

059who might be listening there is hope and that comes from taking your kids out of psd don't wait for it to happen to your child because it will for anyone sitting on the fence reach out to us we have proof of their reception and we'll help you out the best we can with their other options thank you [Applause] our next speaker is virginia mack welcome thank you and good evening i'm jenny mac i am a mother of two children second and sixth grader in the district last week during psd safety week hundreds of staff and thousands of children went through lockdown drills across the district since the columbine massacre of 1999 lockdowns have become synonymous with active shooter preparation and school settings the psd webpage indicates that everyone or that hopes that everyone will will

060feel safe and conducts lockdown drills in a culturally responsive and age-appropriate manner yet we know that many students across class classrooms in the district are left feeling fearful and that these drills are not trauma informed we're asking that the board collect and track data that shows the effectiveness of these lockdown drills and their impact on children psychologically to date that we are not aware of any evidence that shows that these lockdown drills are effective yet on the contrary there's ample research showing that lockdown drills can result in children feeling more anxious and more depressed show more signs of sleeplessness and experience worse test scores afterwards we're asking the board and psd to provide at least one week notice so that parents can opt out of these drills if possible in addition to psd safety week

061last week it was also national suicide prevention week we would like to recognize and applaud our board of education and its leaders in the district as they took an active step recently toward increasing awareness about the roles that guns have in suicide deaths with placement of a gun safety tab on the school district website thank you board of education in taking this step and in partnering with imagine zero and the lambert county juvenile gun safety coalition the district has shown that gun safety is an important issue and that it cares as deaths from firearms are now the leading cause of death in children in our country we ask that psd decides to take an additional step in its mental health planning and gun violence prevention work by placing additional information about secure firearm storage in

062the main section of your website pertaining to the safety and wellness of students so it can so that it can be accessible to more members of the community we ask that the board of education decides on an inclusive resolution in its messaging so that all communities especially those who are latino black and other minority groups who are disproportionately affected by gun violence are reached by your efforts and that this life-saving information about secure firearm storage can be shared with all recent research has shown that outreach efforts to educate families about secure gun storage can result in one-third fewer suicide deaths in this age group public health experts mental health clinicians parents and teachers across the district will be watching and we hope to partner with you in your efforts thank you thank you our next

063speaker is kelly notar francesco welcome good evening thank you for having me i'm short um i'm a parent of three pooter school district students and we've been a proud member of this community since 2010 i've also served on a public board so i know what it's like to sit not quite in your seats but in something like that and and i just want to thank you for serving our community in this way it's not easy to sit up there and have robert's rules of order running through the back of your mind that's tricky i know i just wanted to make a comment tonight just briefly about board policies i think board policies are a great way for you to be transparent with the district and be transparent with our community and i commend you on

064all the policies that you have i like on the website it's very clear when you've updated one that's really clear for the public to to have access to that and i thank you for that um so i guess i would just encourage you to consider maybe more policies anything you have that is a you know some some piece of work that you're doing in the district you codify that in a policy that gives you direction on what you're doing and that helps all of us understand what you're doing as well um i had a couple of questions about the religious policy that's listed there uh imdc is the name of it um but i'm actually i'll just email you those because i know that we can't there's not a back and forth here so i'll

065just follow up with email with those if that's okay one thing that i am particularly interested in this is sort of a leap from a legal standpoint is what's the definition of religion i don't i'm asking because i don't know so that's one of the questions i'm gonna um be sending and and then i'm also curious if there are any changes to that policy i believe it was enacted before the kennedy case was decided by the supreme court and so i'm curious if there are any first amendment conflicts in there um my last comment is just a broader question and that is um in regards to policy so as i said like policies are great helps people know what you're doing i'm just curious what your process is for how you adhere to those policies

066make sure that the board adheres to those policies i know it's one thing to have the policies but it's another thing to actually ensure that you're um guiding your your work by those and i know that you review them on a regular basis but i'm not sure maybe something already exists where you do have a process where you actually evaluate hey is our district actually doing what we say that we're going to do that's an important component to business so i'm just interested to know what that is so i guess i'll just leave you with this i just would encourage you to have well-documented policies and then just look for my email and i eagerly await your reply so thank you all very much thank you our next speaker is adrian flight is that how

067you pronounce it clicked i'm sorry welcome thank you good evening my name is adrian flick and i've had the privilege of teaching in pooter school district since 2010 it has been in many ways a dream come true for a child who grew up beardless in the land of cheese and has been fortunate to live and learn in this community for the last nearly 20 years i am here this evening of my own accord these words are mine endorsed and sent by no one i'm here to say please and thank you because i grew up in a place and a time where those words held tremendous weight first thank you thank you for making the call and taking control of the rising classroom temperatures in a way that i cannot i've been asked to collect data

068in my room for the last seven years to prove that there was an issue i've also been told that everything is working as it should be we've made it work between 85 and 87 degrees with masks on 82 and 83 degrees this fall but i still often find myself teaching in the dark this is quite a bit warmer than when i'm working in the woods wearing jeans boots and a hard hat yet i'm inside this experience is not unique to my building or the high school level in general as for possible solutions i've been encouraged to shave and to reduce my still midwestern body mass index though i've been working on it for nearly 20 years i've tried using my microphone over a chorus of fans and it is still hot but the room is

069just deafening the second word is please i know nothing is simple anymore in 2022 but please acknowledge that classrooms are now filled with more students more laptops more support technology than ever before in the history of pooter school district class also no starts well after the sun is up in the sky and heating up the front range they then run deep into the day closing in on supper time i understand the intentions that have brought us to this point but the consequences must also be acknowledged these choices have locked many as many of us in as educators in the ground floor of maslow's hierarchy unable to move past the most basic physiological and safety needs for months or more each fall the current temperature challenges limit options and positive outcomes for students right out of

070the gate during the time in the school year where every member of this staff is working to build a firm foundation and set the students up for a positive connected successful year of learning please consider action going forward as the two early release days were not the only days where the classrooms were unbearable handling this challenge is burning the final vapors off an already empty tank it has a tangible impact on the physical and the mental health of students and thing excuse me of students and staff so again thank you please and good night thank you [Applause] our next speaker is danny lawrence welcome good evening uh thank you for the opportunity tonight i had some comments regarding your discussion in the revision of policy 3.13 first i want to say thank you to those

071who understood my concerns for those with disabilities and i appreciate the representation the new redline edit stating quote notwithstanding this rule translators and other individuals as needed as an accommodation may accompany the speaker indicates that the individual who wrote the comment needs to be present which defies true accessibility in my opinion as indicated in public comments last time teachers or parents may need comments read for them for fear of retaliation and as written this policy indicates that they would have to be present divulge their identity and stand at the podium in my comments last time i expressed concern for folks with disabilities and the need to be able to have their comments read those individuals may have a disability that prevents them from coming here and standing at the podium i don't believe the edits

072represent the conversation that i witness from all of you and they certainly don't address the concerns for retaliation and those needing inclusion for me this leads to the bigger problem that my family has and my son faces in the district today in real time and that is accessibility currently the math department at rocky mountain has chosen an inaccessible math curriculum for my son and others who would rely on screen reading software for access and like this public speaking policy relies on those with disabilities to ask to be included at what point in time is psd going to work toward a culture of inclusion because the draft of this policy doesn't do it the district's lack of an asl interpreter for these meetings doesn't do it and here's just a real world example for you all

073at the beginning of this year the school year we met with rocky staff prior to the start of my son going to school there his general education teachers teacher the visually impaired all sat around laughing about the signage in the building apparently the braille sides at rocky don't actually match the room numbers my son's my husband and i kind of sat there stunned that a group of educators and administrators would sit there and laugh about that while my son was present in the room so let me know if hearing that on recording would help you to understand the insensitivity we face weekly in peter school district the district's website is also completely and totally inaccessible it's not even close in 2020 the ada received roughly 2 500 complaints for website accessibility last year that number

074rose to nine rose nine thousand with a total eleven thousand five hundred complaints let me assure you from my personal experience that when a district becomes investigated by the ada for lack of accessibility they will look at everything they will look at ramps door weight websites parking playgrounds everything i would bet that most of you work in environments doing more to with accessibility for those with disabilities than what's happening here in peter school district and i'm tired of asking you for access we are 47 years past the adoption of the idea 33 years past the adoption of the ada it's 2022 and accessibility is a given now if i can't make this board space accessible what hope do i have of getting the math department to consider making curriculum decisions accessible inclusion starts here it

075starts with leadership and it starts in this room and i hope this board will set a tone of understanding that we should be and could be doing more to help those students and parents with disabilities in every single decision you make thank you thank you our next speaker is aaron greene welcome thank you very much uh proud alumni of bennett elementary levins middle school it was junior high back then and rocky mountain high school uh mr kingsley uncomfortable truths i agree we need to address some of them as you walk into this building one of the first things you see is a large sign uh i hope after my speech tonight you'll look at that sign a little bit differently its message may be aspirational but it's clearly not accurate and it's not representative of

076the reality in pooter school district the sign says our mission is to educate every child every day it's clear that you talk to talk but can't walk the walk a 59 percent graduation rate for students in the integrated services department one of the lowest in the state why can thompson valley and saint variance school districts have a 10 to 15 percent higher graduation rate because the real motto of pooter's school district is every child every day except for the broken ones why has a placation task force looking into the horrendous graduation rate only met once every child every day except for the broken ones remains the priority of this district and this administration and this board why is there zero attendance by senior administration the superintendent or board members at the special education advisory council

077committee that i'm a member of when other attendance at other committees is commonplace every child every day except for the broken ones why was the special education advisory committee not invited to participate in the task force looking at those graduation rates every child every day except for the broken ones why does this board meet without accommodations of a sign language interpreter or picture descriptions 40 years after the individual's disabilities education act 49 years after the rehabilitation act and 32 years after the american with disabilities act because you all set the example you all embody every child every day except for the broken ones why did the colorado department of education find nine violations of federal law with the services that pooter school district gave to my son in this past year while the internal peter

078school district investigation found zero problems every child every day except for the broken ones mr kingsley members of the board senior administrators my child is not broken neither are the two thousand seven hundred students being serviced by the integrated services department at this school what's actually broken is your leadership your administration that has allowed this program and allowed this problem to fester my hope is that every time each and every one of you walk into this building and see that sign that says every student every day you will be reminded that the current situation in pooter school district is except for the broken ones thank you [Applause] that concludes community comment for this evening next we're going on to the board topics and committee reports do we have any remarks from any members of the

079board that they want to share nate yes i just wanted to note that this past tuesday i believe it was a week ago several members of the board and superintendent kingsley attended a colorado association of school board regional meeting in johnstown and i just wanted to highlight that uh the pooter school board is a member of the colorado association of school boards i have to serve on the cosby board of directors and uh it's an important way to participate and have a voice in decisions made in school districts all over the state so thank you thank you very much do we have any other comments from board members it looks like not in which case we'll move on to the consent agenda would any board members like to pull anything from the consent agenda seeing

080none cannot get a motion to accept the consent agenda nade yes i move that the board approve and adopt the recommended actions for the items on the consent agenda can i get a second dj jill if you would call a vote on the consent agenda dj anderson aye jim brokish hi nate donovan hi kristin draper aye rob patterson aye carolyn reed aye jessica zamora aye motion passes 7-0 thank you so much jill next we're going to move on to our second set of action items and this one starts with an internal monitoring report and policy review on el 2.9 and that is interactions of the district with the citizens of psd um can i get a motion nate yes i move that the board determined that the superintendent has reasonably interpreted board of education policy

081el 2.9 in his internal monitoring report dated september 13 2022 and that the evidence presented supports the superintendent's conclusions stated in the internal monitoring report do i have a second for that kristin is there any discussion of this monitoring report that people would like to share nate yes i think the internal monitoring report demonstrates that the superintendent and staff have been very busy in terms of having interactions with members of the community and that's appreciated other comments yeah i'll just echo that and say uh we very much appreciate the community engagement sessions that the that the that you and the staff have helped to put together for us who think they're a significant improvement if you will on what we did a long time ago before the covid time and we look forward to the

082engagements around the strategic plan and other community engagements as we go forward so thank you thank you if nothing else jail if you call a vote on this please dj anderson aye jim brokish hi nate donovan aye christian draper aye rob pederson aye carolyn reed aye jessica zamora aye motion passes 7-0 thank you jill the next item is uh yes the next item is board consideration and a vote finally on board uh new board policy gp 3.13 which is about uh community comment at uh board meetings can i get a motion nate yes i move that the policy and proposed revisions on public participation at school board meetings be approved and adopted by the board as new board policy gp 3.13 thank you do i have a second kristin is there a discussion on this

083policy additional discussion nate yes i just wanted to highlight what ms lawrence said during public comment and state some legislative intent or however it might be phrased that i don't interpret the words in this policy to prohibit especially because we made changes to delete standing in place of another that the speaker does not have to be the person that authored the comments that someone else can deliver those comments uh for the author dj actually mine is to the same point i though question that i guess would i would like to hear uh miss abs aspen's uh opinion on that because that that first paragraph does say during community comment only the current speaker so i wonder if that only should be removed or well and yeah so the current speaker is permanent so i i

084do kind of wonder about that because i think that is a valid point that we did take out the stand in place but then with that paragraph does that confuse it at all that paragraph doesn't have anything to do with standing in place it has to do with how many people can stand at that podium to speak at any given time there's nothing that says you you have to read your own statement anybody can read a statement for anybody else the way this policy is now written we took the part out about not being able to do that all that says is you can only have one person standing in fact doesn't even say standard it says permitted at the podium right so if a person needs a wheelchair or some other way to communicate

085with us we provide that but it's only about you can only have the person who's actually speaking which may or may not be the person who wrote the comments and or anybody else that person needs to bring so that we can actually receive the comments that they are choosing to share with us that's the intent of that paragraph okay it's not about who can say what based on you know who can say what for anybody else nate yes i failed to mention that i support having a opportunity for community comment and i think it's particularly important for the board and uh district leadership and others in the community to hear from members of the community and especially on topics that may be uncomfortable or that may be hard to hear so hard for us to

086hear so i appreciate that we have this and i expect that we'll continue it even as we read today in the greeley tribune that other districts may be considering getting rid of their community comment but i think it's an important part of a meeting of a public body such as a school board thanks thanks for sharing that and for also bringing up that there are other approaches that other boards are taking and we're not going down that path we're going to continue our community comment period other questions comments discussion of this policy okay with that jill if you would call a vote on the policy dj anderson aye jim brokish hi nate donovan kristin draper aye rob patterson carolyn reed aye jessica zamora aye motion passes seven zero yep all right thank you sorry i

087was getting lost in my paperwork here um i appreciate that and now we will move on to our informational reports the first one is this uh a strategic plan update uh uh with the draft framework and i'll just note apropos of some of our earlier conversations and in fact some of the some of the public comment that this strategic plan addresses both academic areas which and also mental health areas in addition to safety as well so with that brian [Music] so as we get a chance to engage in this topic tonight marlene i hope you don't mind if i steal your thunder here to celebrate that we actually have 55 members of our spanish speaking community currently at leicester middle school right now engaging in dialogue in collaboration around how to take our draft framework

088to another level with their voice their community so super proud of that presenting our strategic plan update this evening our chief equity and academic officer ms marlena gross taylor and chief institutional effectiveness officer dr dwayne schmitz uh welcome to both of you thank you all right while we are pulling up tonight's presentation thank you uh superintendent kingsley for sharing about tonight that is just one of many engagement sessions that we will talk about tonight and we do have quite a few for our spanish and arabic speaking families as well so with that said attached to the board packet is an overview of our as a document that is our strategic plan framework draft emphasis on the draft we will also be updating our website so it's easily found on our district website as well so

089everyone can see what we'll actually be talking through at our community engagement sessions so i want to take a little time just to remind us of what our goal is in trying to create this draft and what our goal is in going out into our community sessions and i'm excited to have dwayne here as well and also madeline for pulling up tonight's presentation thank you so tonight we're going to talk briefly about just an update on where we are in the process again go over in more detail our actual draft framework and more importantly talk about the community engagement sessions where we're able to gather input from all of our different areas that make up this great community and we'll finish with next steps all righty so we've seen this information before and we realized

090that the meaning of this slide is just that there's a lot of great work going on in pspsd not all of it is as aligned as we would like it to be and we think we can be more effective in delivering services for our students and our families if we have a little more alignment so a big big goal of the strategic plan is to provide that kind of alignment toward stronger and better student outcomes so consistency is consistency and alignment you know it cuts across the strategic plan plus other improvement planning efforts the modern report the uip and so on but the strategic plan will perhaps that three to five year range it'll include some operations components as well as achievement growth and the things we typically think of as student outcomes and so

091hopefully with the work of the community being highly engaged in this collaborative process will land on an optimal three to five year plan we kind of have hit this portion before with regard to step one was analysis and we landed on some priority performance challenges and then we moved on to putting together the draft framework which is now we're moving into the stage of the the many different community and collaboration opportunities to kind of add some more definition to that draft and to respond to that draft i don't know if marlene you want to jump in there yeah yeah thank you thank you duane so as dwayne mentioned we're at step three community engagement and i just wanted to remind everyone that after we go through all of our community engagement sessions which will take

092us pretty much through october so we can hit all of our feeders as well as some targeted listening sessions as well we will take that information back our strategy teams will look at that data make whatever adjustments or revisions that might be necessary and then we're going to push a revised strategic plan framework draft version two out to the community via survey and so we are on track to have that survey go out sometime in november and we've been working with our principals to make sure that we are starting to plan for time for our students in particular to be able to take the survey during class time as well it only takes about 15 to 20 minutes but we want to make sure we are getting the feedback from those who we are truly

093here to serve so let's take a look at the framework draft so here are the different components of the framework draft that you're going to see in just one moment or if you've already clicked into the packet you have that there we have our desired student outcomes that align with each of our four priority areas that you see here being literacy mental health and belonging graduate with options and safety next you'll see in orange is the strategic objectives and those were created based on a swot analysis and they really embody what our aspirations are based on what our teams our respective teams have identified as being areas that we definitely need to improve and might be possible root causes so our strategic objectives are our goals after the goals you will see and the framework

094draft a gray section that are our specific strategies they will be phased in in our final framework and when it's no longer draft but right now what you will see and we'll show shortly is that our strategies for each of these areas truly are the what so what do we need to do in order to reach the goals that are in orange what you won't see tonight and it is natural to want to jump right to the how we're going to do it you won't see the action plans yet because it's important that we calibrate and make sure we have the right goals and the right what we need to do to reach those goals and that information is the purpose of our community engagement sections and our survey after our survey is complete we

095will go back to our respective strategy teams that actually encompass about 50 to 60 people across the district across school leadership district leadership representatives of some of our different organizations and they will go back and then they will help determine which one of the strategies are which ones of the strategies in each of these areas need to be phased and who needs to serve on the action teams for each of the strategies so that will be exciting but i just wanted to share that the how is not in the framework draft but it uh it will be forthcoming lastly our operations human resources i.t information technology finance communications you may not see that explicitly in the goals and the what you will see that more than likely in the action plans when we get to

096that step because there's no way we can talk about that how we need to do some things without talking operationally what different departments might might need to do in order for those action plans to be successful so here is our plan it is a lot and uh we will be sure once again just to have this on our district web page where you can blow it up make it bigger and we do have it in spanish and arabic as well and we will be sure to have some at our front lobby as well so if anyone wants to come get it on really large paper it it will be there for you but with our strategic plan framework draft as you can see here it is a lot because we have a lot to do

097and we know that and we know that we can't do it all at one time that we have to be just as strategic as we were in creating our goals and our strategies as well as in our implementation of those so i will just briefly highlight a couple of things in each of these four so with our desired student outcomes as i mentioned before these are our goals that we well higher than our goals this is our outcomes that we are looking for in each of our four areas so they're in order one to four and they actually align with our four different priority areas as we take a look at our first uh strat our first priority area literacy i just want to point out one more thing to be able to navigate the

098document in the orange our goals our objectives you will see that they're numbered one two and three and in our strategies which is the what in gray they correlate to the goals that they apply to so when we look at goal number one for literacy one a and one b uh tells us what we need to do to accomplish the goal for objective number one in orange as we look at this we have quite a few initiatives and i just want to highlight that much of the work here we've already started doing and will continue to do the purpose of having this here and even when we get to the phasing stage is to really think about what are we going to put our focus on for literacy which aspects which of these strategies will

099we put our focus on so we can achieve our desired student outcome the next one is mental health and belonging and i'm very excited for our mental health presentation of services that will be happening right after we're complete up here but our mental health and belonging really identifies three goals that i think that we heard tonight and our resolution as well as what you'll hear coming up after this particular presentation these three goals are important and i think that the what we need to do to get there is equally important so as you take a look at what those different strategies are please note that this might change after we go through with all of our community engagement sessions we really want to make sure that we are hearing our students our families our community

100members our partners to see like are we doing the right what and do we have the right goals graduate with options we talked about this a little and the spring before we finished out the school year again the goals in orange one two and three these are areas based on root cause analysis that our strategy team for our graduate with options priority felt that really captured what we needed to do as our goals and the what's really capture how we achieve those goals again as a reminder and you'll hear me say this a lot we know that this might change particularly in this when we think about our community sessions our student sessions and and our staff sessions do we have the right what we know that we do way more than what is listed

101here but we're really trying to be strategic and where we want to put our focus of attention and resources and lastly safety safety is incredibly important and so for this particular priority it is important to acknowledge not only our goal love but our commitment to making sure that our kids are safe in their physical buildings as well as their emotional well-being and so you see that the strategies here the what capture our attempts to capture and we'll know more after the community engagement sessions the what we need to do to reach that particular goal so let's talk about those community engagement sessions because ford we need your help and for all that are listening we need your help and spreading the word we're so excited to have 55 of our spanish-speaking families tonight and we

102want even more at our additional community engagement sessions our sessions are grouped by staff and then by community members and students are welcome and invited and encouraged to come as well in our feeder areas and then of course we'll have a survey sent in november i do just want to point out that our targeted groups that we'll have additional sessions with make up those that you see here such as our psd committees our non-school-based staff our employee associations business community partners we have on a total of about maybe 20 to 25 total engagement sessions from the community in the targeted sessions to make sure that we are reaching out and we are giving everyone ample opportunity to really be a part of this process for our staff and community input sessions our staff sessions will

103start at 4 30 to 6 and that will be by feeder areas that you see here for our schools for our 10th and wellington middle high schools because their bail times are just a little bit different those will start at 5 pm and we really need our staff to come out staff teachers lunchroom workers everyone we do have some targeted sessions for those that help get our kids to and from school so we do have some targeted sessions for our bus drivers so they can also give input but we really want to see all of our staff come out and we try to make it by feeders so it's most convenient but anyone is invited to come to any of these sessions so if a staff or community member misses their feeder date they are

104more than welcome and we want them to come to any date that works with their schedule once our staff and community sessions are complete we'll have just about 30 minute transition time and then we'll repeat this process with our community members and those start at 6 30 at all of our feeders and of course at our timnathan wellington middle high schools those will start at 7 pm we're excited to share with all of our staff and community the data of why we chose those different district priorities as well as some other pieces of information to help them give us really thoughtful feedback everyone that attends the session will get these really large sheets of paper that have our strategic framework draft and we will also have the framework draft we'll also have interpreters so all

105of our families can come to any session at all so we will have interpreters there as well so with that let's see next steps last slide join us at the community sessions we need your help get it out share it on all of your socials and all the things we have already sent out communication as a district and we just ask that we everyone just join in and help get the word out when our sessions are i've talked about our comments and how we'll bring that back to our strategy teams they'll make whatever necessary adjustments as well as a survey that happens in november and those results will be reviewed and our strategy teams will make once again any types of changes that's needed please note along the way we'll make sure to keep the

106board informed so you can see all of those new revisions of the drafts and and all of those pieces as well once we have that final framework it's no longer a draft it's the final version our strategy teams will work with uh with cabinet teams to help identify action teams for whatever strategies that will be phased for the 23-24 school year once again we're not going to wait till the 23-24 school year to start the work as much of this we're already doing but that's when we're really focusing on whatever strategies are chosen for that first year those action plans should take place anywhere from february to march where we'll have those uh and then we'll be presenting those to the board and everything will be made public all all of our action plans all

107of our presentations all of that will be on our district website that's a lot of information but it's a lot of goodness so i would love to open up to answer any questions that you might have board members are there questions from the board nate i just want to thank you for all the work and uh encourage everyone as marlena said to attend the community engagement sessions uh this is really important work so thank you kristen i just want to say that um yesterday jess and i had the pleasure of um being one of the the test cases um with or targeted cases sorry that targeted groups um with the um the kids in the student advisory council and they just ate it up um and you got a lot of feedback i'm sure that

108yeah from the 10 students that were there you get a lot of feedback um but really do you want to encourage people to come that really is what we're doing is trying to get all kinds of feedback so that you know if we hear something multiple times from multiple groups from you know multiple dates and it's not in our strategic plan obviously we've missed something so we really want to make sure that the community is involved in this and that what we're hearing is what we're what is then in the plan so please come out and and join us it actually is a lot of fun it is thank you so i'll say ditto to all that and um i'm looking forward to attending uh these as well and with that i think we thank

109you very much for your presentation thank you and for all the work that you're doing and we look forward to hearing updates as they occur yeah all right sorry we were just uh doing a little uh housekeeping about whether we needed a break or not um so uh since we don't uh we don't think we need that we're gonna go on to uh mental health services overview and brian if you'd share that with the introduction with the community presenting this overview will be our chief equity academic officer marlena gross taylor and the small army of larimer county employees that have decided to join her this evening oh my goodness i'm so excited okay so i am so honored to really pass the the mic to all of these incredible mental health educators and professionals and

110experts in their field i just wanted to just reiterate that you know as we have a new director liz davis who you heard from earlier today which we're super excited to have this is a lot of work it's a lot of work to provide the services for each of our students and you're looking at a committed group that helps lead this work and i think it's really important that we celebrate them we celebrate all that they do we celebrate the services that they provide and i just want to share when we did this presentation for our principals last week and principals that have been here you know for a really long time they were just blown away by all that we do for our students and and we are always trying to see ways we

111can do better that we can collaborate more across our learning services teams um that we can always continue to support our families so before i pass it to liz i just want to point out for our board members you should have that in front of you and those that are listening we will be adding this after tonight's presentation we have a couple of documents that make it a little bit easier to understand the services we provide so a mental health overview it also includes who our partners are and how we connect with them and we have an additional document that has all the contact information who do you call right when you uh whether you're a student whether you're a family member a staff member educational leader who do you call to to get the

112support that you need it's a big team and we are endeavoring to make sure that we are streamlining uh how we connect with everyone in our community so with that i am going to turn it over to liz davis and her team hi thank you marlena and thank you members of the board superintendent kingsley members of cabinet and the community my name is liz davis i use she her pronouns and i'm the student services director we are excited to celebrate our staff tonight supporting mental health to provide a mental health overview here at psd we appreciate all their efforts and work to support our students our communities and all of our families linking and connecting with our community partners as we partner together supporting mental health and belonging every day tonight we will highlight a

113full spectrum of social emotional learning mental health supports in the district and we hope to highlight our community partnerships as well although we only have a short amount of time so we'll go fast um go ahead sarah yeah i'm sarah matter wilkins she her pronouns i introduced myself earlier and you'll get to hear more from me later but i did want to definitely call attention to this mr anderson beat me to it earlier but 988 is the suicide and crisis lifeline that debuted in july 2022 it is available for call text or online chat so anyone who's experiencing a mental health crisis for themselves or a loved one can be connected immediately to a crisis counselor our theory of action if we create access to enhance and support student mental health and belonging then students

114can engage in learning opportunities to grow and thrive and leah thank you yeah um i'm leah haeger pronouns are she and her and i am the behavior prevention and intervention coordinator and it's great to see you many of you have gotten to work alongside of me and do a lot of the work that takes up most of my time but before i get started on my own work i want to speak a little bit to the system that helps all of us organize more intentionally the way that we provide services the way that we provide instruction across our entire team you can see in the slide that i'm going to be referencing multi-tiered systems of support and there are three levels that we use to really understand how these services are provided in this framework

115first at the universal tier one level we know that these are services that are going to be or instruction or supports that are going to be reaching all students and we recognize that about 80 percent of the students are going to be completely successful at that level of support however there are more students who may need additional layers of instruction and support on top of that right so then we go to that targeted tier two level of support and that's some students we estimate about 15 percent who are going to then meet success at that level of support yet sometimes there are still students who need an additional layer more intensive supports more duration a longer time more expertise brought to bear to meet them at their point of need and that is about five

116percent and this covers academics behavior sel mental health and wellness so as we talk about this tiered logic model we're using the colorado mtss model that has these five essential elements and all of these help us to organize and collaborate across our different areas of service so i'm going to speak in particular to this idea of special service providers as well knowing that because of our specialized roles a greater proportion of our time might be spent supporting students and teaming with school-based partners community-based partners at that tier two and three level because of our expertise our training our experience we are prepared to meet students at their point of need across all tiers however we seek to partner with our educator um partners at schools to also build their capacity to be working with students

117at tier one so the work that i do in particular is restorative practices and i think of it as pathways to belonging that's how we like to describe it it's based on a set of principles that are leading to restorative community it's building capacity across all of our classrooms and schools k-12 and we think of a tiered continuum that goes from the universal level all the way up to that targeted and intensive level we want to be proactive and we want to be responsive and we want to ensure that we have professional development for all staff using a tiered model of learning and implementation so many of you have experienced the tier one the universal proactive level of circling and you can see this is for all students to experience and then on the right

118hand side when i say 80 percent of staff time that means that i use about 80 percent of my time as the restorative practices coordinator at tier one services so that is circles that all students can engage in but that's me supporting teachers and educators to provide that level of access to circles for all students same with restorative conversations this is supporting all staff and students to approach dialogue and problem solving through a restorative approach and then when i think about that tier 2 and tier 3 more targeted intensive level this is where i spend about 20 percent of my time helping psd staff and providing direct services to add those additional layers of data informed support again in circles and things like formal restorative conferencing so this is the responsive end of restorative practices

119so again as my colleagues continue to describe their work you can look for that same structure that same framework to help our understanding so thank you all right good evening i'm beth green the counselor coordinator she her pronouns so as i begin um i'll focus on those tiers one of the things i want to bring your attention to is that 113 on the side this is something to celebrate we have 113 counselors in psd so we're really proud about that and out of that 113 we have 14 that are grant counselors so they're funded through grant money so we continue to work with our grant partners as well um to provide that support so around with school counselors there's around 50 percent of that staff time is on that tier one level our counselors really

120have a pulse on the climate and culture within their building and they're often the first to intervene to provide supports as well as to celebrate with students they work to ensure that all students feel connected and have that trusted adult within the building we know that when that's present then we'll have we'll have greater academic outcomes as well as pathways to graduation and this is all done within that support of academic success college and career readiness and social emotional development for all students this looks different at each building but it could include things around the icap social emotional lessons within the classrooms and supporting teachers in that work goal development the restorative practices and school-wide programming again the goal is to always form those deeper connections for students to their schools and always working alongside

121our parents and guardians so that they also feel connected to this school and continuing to collaborate with them so that tier two level then we're looking at counselors spending about 30 percent of their time providing supports to students and this is going to look more like specific and focused counseling groups it could be around academic social emotional or skill building as well as some one-on-one time with the counselor and again collaborating with families for some specific supports around plans that might be academic based or social emotional and then at that tier three school counselors are going to spend about 20 percent of their time and in this part they're really collaborating consulting with families and the school to bridge to our community partners so that way our students continue to have that ongoing support outside

122of school as well as counselors responding to crisis situations which could include suicide risk assessments thank you good evening again i'm kim granger representing health services at this time the district funds 14 fte school nurses and we were fortunate last year to get a grant to fund an additional 3.2 fte for school nurses still in the process of hiring the last one we are fortunate enough to have 49 health tax in our 50 locations with an fte of approximately 24.2 so oftentimes our health techs serve roles in the office as well so sometimes they have two hours of helping out the school nurse per day and sometimes some buildings have funded as much as 7.5 hours a day for the health techs their range of medical experience varies from none to a full emt and

123a couple of cnas on our health tech staff so the majority of health services time is spent in tier one and that is reaching out and building relationships with families and students who have health conditions um and and the reason i say everyone is we will ask if the student has a health condition of every single family not everyone volunteers that but we do do tier two supports for those students but in terms of supporting the district we'll train staff on first aid cpr medication administration diabetic training for those that are working with our diabetic students and other health conditions one of the things i highlighted on the slide tonight because we're addressing mental health specifically these are students with diagnosed health conditions so this means a medical or mental health provider has actually given

124a diagnosis so this under represents the amount of student and parent reported health conditions we have but um last year we had one thousand 000 sorry 1 127 kids that actually had diagnosed anxiety and 1068 who had other mental or behavioral problems other than depression or anxiety you can see where adhd add head injury and depression fall on that list i included asthma because that is the number one cause of absence in school age populations so nurses spend a lot of their times working on healthcare plans and education with the families of students with those health conditions immunization compliance vision hearing screenings all the stuff you think about with a school nurse managing emergencies and illness within the school as well as supporting their academic success readiness and social emotional development through those relationships that

125we build with those kids thirty percent of our time is spent in the tier two that's targeted for students who do have identified health conditions or who are missing a significant amount of school related to their health conditions we will write the health care action plan educate on the health care action plan recommend accommodations for our students with 504 plans oftentimes we are directing the counselors in the sense of saying hey i think the student could benefit from some accommodations related to their health in addition to contributing to the iep team with how the health condition impacts the student's ability to learn in school we'll check in with those individual students who we know are struggling either for physical health reasons because they're they don't want to have diabetes in middle school that's a very

126common uh condition for kids but we are pushing them towards independent management by the time they graduate individual brief counseling oftentimes the students will present to us first with their chronic headaches or stomach aches and we identify because this is happening around the same time every day perhaps there's a stress component related to that and we will teach stress reduction and anxiety reduction where we can to try to get those kids back to class as soon as possible always in consultation with our school partners as well as our families finally 10 of our time is spent in those consultation with the experts in the buildings as well as out of the building so we'll consult not only with the mental health professionals on this team we also consult with a school-based health center when a

127student needs an independent health care provider and doesn't have one or already identified medical providers so that's health services good evening gotta lower this because kim's a little taller than i am my name is mary hummel and i work for every child pediatrics i do not work for pooter school district but i am the director of the health and wellness centers at centennial high school in lincoln middle schools centennial is 30 years old this year and we just opened our most recent center at lincoln last february with a great really really cold grand opening so how do i do down ah there we go staying on this multi-tiered system of supports we are a comprehensive clinical service provider doing pediatric and adolescents primary medical care and integrated behavioral and mental health care so we're an

128integrated model ahead of the medical model in many places but we are clinical in our focus and we're actually going to be opening oral health services in 2023 that's the third leading cause of kids missing school i just recently learned the majority of the work that we do is actually in the tier three in the intensive tier of providing actual diagnosis and treatment for individual students we we deal in tier one from a perspective of any pooter school district student can apply or enroll in our services and regardless of a family's ability to pay we're going to serve a student's needs regardless of that family's ability to pay the tier 2 is really around more classroom education groups things going out into the community health education those types of things but the vast majority of

129the work 95 percent of what we do is individual sessions with kids sometimes with their families so the services that we provide can be done either in person at centennial or at lincoln or virtually and the virtual care model that we have is a very very robust one i'm not going to go into detail about that but that is where the opportunity lies for us to expand so if we're looking for a strategy for the new strategic plan for the district i'll just say since i have the microphone school-based health centers and virtual care is one of the best ways for us to look forward to meeting the needs of more kids we do from a mental behavioral health standpoint we do validated health screenings for depression anxiety substance use and adverse childhood experiences all

130of our licensed and non-licensed professionals are trauma informed and we actually do healing centered therapies for the kids so it's coming from a positive perspective and not a problem perspective so we focus on prevention intervention we do suicide prevention and risk assessments and we work alongside the staff the lovely staff that we have on both sides of me here to meet some of those continuum needs but we're at that tier three level so this is really about trying to address inequities for those who have barriers to getting care in the community being either in a school or on school grounds means that kids have direct access to the services that they need when they need them where they spend the vast majority of their time and all research shows that we lower absenteeism we increase

131graduation rates we increase belonging and connectedness and resilience so it's a proven data driven kind of model for a safety net for kids with barriers to getting care i want to make it perfectly clear that we do not replace nurses health techs counselors and all the wonderful other pooter school district staff that are supporting the kids instead we complement and we work with those different individuals in those different buildings to make sure that the kids are getting the level of care that they need when they need it and our real primary goal is to make sure that kids are ready and able to learn and getting back into the classroom as soon as possible thank you hi my name is natalie jacobson i am one of three general education behavior intervention coaches my team of

132three our team we each serve two feeder systems ranging between oh thanks thank you we each serve two feeder systems serving between 15 and 18 schools each students without ieps or special education services grades k through 12. so um let's see we spend very little of our time at the tier one level primarily consulting and collaborating with school teams educators outside service providers and providers within psd in order to support behavioral interventions at tier one our services at tier two are very similar we spend about five percent of our time at tier two working with teachers and teams and school buildings and other service providers to provide tier two interventions or to support more support tier two interventions and provide unprofessional development at that level and then finally at tier three that's where we spend

133about 90 percent of our time we are responsive to requests for our services we support educators teams and schools in intervention planning and implementation for students with intense emotional and behavioral needs those frequently overlap with mental health needs and sometimes also overlap with physical health needs and i can speak to the awesomeness of mary's services we've been collaborating a lot over the past two weeks more specifically our team conducts functional behavioral assessments in order to develop behavior intervention plans then we model coach and support that plan implementation and data collection we also spend quite a bit of time especially right now providing direct support to students in crisis who present as a significant safety risk to themselves and those around them so we provide direct support in schools in classrooms sometimes outside of classrooms working

134directly with those students to ensure their safety and ensure the safety of those around them we collaborate within the building within our department quite a bit and also with other professionals within the district thank you hello my name is shayna sychek and i'm the lgbtqa plus coordinator and my pronouns are she her hers and as part of my roles to advocate for folks regardless of gender expression and gender identity want to comment on why i and others here share their pronouns and just as i share my name with you all i share my pronouns with you just so when you're talking about me you know what pronouns to use to replace my name rather than putting you in a position to make any assumptions and my role is still quite new in the district which

135is indeed a celebration and to link it with mental health to to connect for folks why my role exists and why it is connected with this team here i wanted to share just some specific psd data points to help kind of ground ground what i'm going to share so the healthy kids colorado survey last fall we had middle and high school students self-identify sexual orientation and gender identity and 30 percent roughly of those students identified as having a sexuality other than straight and about eight percent of students self-identified as either being transgender or still exploring their gender and mr kingsley earlier in the day or earlier tonight shared that our folks holding marginalized identities have more suicide risk factors and that is true for our lgbtqia plus community and one amazing thing about the healthy

136kids colorado survey results that we have is that we can really see what those discrepancies are and ensure that we are putting in the supports to include our lgbtq community in that district priority of mental health and belonging so for example our middle and high school gay and bisexual students reported suicide temps five times more than their straight peers and reported feeling a sense of belonging 30 percent less and our middle and high school transgender students reported suicide attempts four times more than their cisgender peers and feeling a sense of belonging about 45 percent less so to move on to what my uh what my role actually looks like so about 20 of my time is spent kind of building that building and district capacity to proactively support students so that includes providing professional development

137opportunities examining curriculum and materials to ensure that students feel represented in the materials providing advocacy for district-wide guidelines and policies that support our lgbtqia plus community and then in turn supports all of our students also about 20 of my time is spent at that supporting initiatives that some of our students need access to in order to access their education so this includes things like the implementation of gender support plans to ensure that our students both know of and have access to their rights either with federal colorado law or with district policy and it also includes connecting students and folks with genders and sexuality alliance club and family engagement nights to help cultivate that safe and supportive environment and most of my time is spent at that higher level support so consulting collaborating with students families

138staff community members kind of across the full spectrum of experiences that folks have throughout their school day and school experience and really discussing that individual need that folks bring and i'm also involved in responding to instances of bias discrimination or harassment especially with that piece of gender identity gender expression and sexual orientation falling under gender-based harassment and also connecting that to the tier one work to help create or advocate for policies that are proactive in creating a safe environment as uh as miss draper highlighted earlier of the tread the trevor project their research shows that in the past year lgbtq youth who found their school to be lgbtq affirming reported lower rates of attempting suicide and broader lgbtq youth who live in a community that is accepting of lgbtq people reported significantly lower rates of

139attempting suicide than those who do not thank you so i am sarah matter-wilkins mental health and prevention coordinator i have the honor of leading pooter school district's mental health team there are 21 mental health specialists who serve 52 of our schools all of our mental health specialists have either a master's in counseling or social work all carry a cde license and most carry a clinical license part of our role is to be on call throughout the school day and drop what we're doing and be there for students and families and staff who are helping a student work through a mental health crisis at tier one we're spending not an incredible amount of our time however a lot of that is identifying barriers for students accessing mental health support in our community and really helping to

140bridge those gaps we're also collaborating all day every day within our schools with all these fine people as well as students and families at tier two is when we start to see those students we're doing a lot of social emotional groups as well as really consulting and collaborating with families and schools a lot of this is that warm hand-off to community resources so helping families find what resources are available to them helping with barriers related to paperwork or transportation really helping them get connected and getting into those long-term services in our community we also collaborate closely with many community providers including the alliance for suicide prevention which provides suicide prevention education for youth in our schools we also have are implementing a training program for our four mental health ssp groups around suicide risk assessment

141and documentation and safety planning within our schools we train on the neurosequential model for educators which is trauma informed practices for educators to serve our students in the best way they can we engage in sources of strength and youth mental health first aid as our other educational programs oh and qpr which is our staff suicide prevention mandated training we've trained on that as well at tier three is where we're spending much of our time which is really where we get the honor of serving those individual students we have a really unique and special position of serving students in their moments of darkness and crisis of being there for them in their day-to-day their stress about a math test their celebrations their graduations we get to really experience the whole child which is a really beautiful

142thing we work really closely with our parents and guardians in times of crisis this can be a really scary moment if you're hearing this about your child for the first time and we really help guide that process and help get them connected to supports to keep their child safe including stabilization plans supervision plans and also a big part of our role is responding to crisis related to acute grief including a staff for student death being there in those buildings to support those students through that time and help build resiliency for them and we do a lot of that collaboration with community partners you know including three hopeful hearts who can help with family permission arrange candlelight visuals that are off-site to help support grief healthy grief and loss and build resiliency so that's another big

143part of our work hi i'm cassie mcdermott i'm a lead social worker in the district i'm not brittany hudson but i'm going to speak on behalf of brittany hudson who can be here today brittany hudson is one of 39 school psychologists in the district in in tier one which encompasses about 10 percent of their time school psychologists work collaboratively with school staff on proactive social emotional and behavioral support strategies and outreach to community resources to support families in tier 2 which encompasses about 20 percent of their time school psychologists provide more targeted support as students move up in the ftss process developing interventions facilitating groups collaborating with school staff on 504 eligibility determination and planning referrals to helpful community resources in tier three where seventy percent of their time is spent school sites work collaboratively

144to support students in crisis this involves or may involve student risk assessments suicide risk assessments threat assessments safety planning and stabilization plans direct and individual direct individual and group behavior mental health support for students with ieps conduct functional behavioral assessments develop behavior support plans evaluation for special education and develop student ieps they also support in manifestation determinations for students with 504s and ieps and i am cassie mcdermott i'm one of the district leads along with trisha van horsen who also can be here today and in tier one which is very little of our time we're kind of doing the um the more collaborative work amongst the school staff to determine proactive measures that can help support our students in social emotional learning behavioral strategies for the teachers and at tier 2 supports which is about

14520 percent of our time we're connecting youth and family with various community resources that we've researched along the way providing more targeted supports for including social emotional learning groups and developing individual interventions and communicating that with teachers and necessary staff and families and finally tier three which is where our most intensive work is done there is nine school social workers in the district and we're all tied to sed programs that support students with significant emotional disabilities and then if time allows we also support other students within integrated services as well we provide crisis response and direct support for all those students that we're supporting within those programs also suicide risk assessments and threat assessment plans with a lot of the people here and we support in the development of individualized education plans for students as

146well and kind of support advocating for meaningful inclusion for all the students and provide brief counseling for is or integrated services students and again with serious emotional disabilities hello i'm james dipolato and i'm one of three student safety coordinators in the district he him pronouns and our team supports mental health by are through assessment and by helping to coordinate positive interventions for students who prevent present safety concerns to others so as you look at our tier one universal practices those include warning behaviors training to all staff we also help develop safety teams at each school and on those teams there are mental health professionals as we move up to tier two we have more targeted trainings specifically to our threat assessment teams we also have a lot of collaboration with everybody that has spoken before

147me as well as our support teams at our schools and we have regular meetings with our community partners to identify trends and needs and discuss how we could address those and as we move up to tier three that's where most of our direct work is with students and families you can see that we coordinate school community wraparound meetings and in these as well as through assessment and planning we believe that we can provide appropriate supervision strategies and positive interventions to ensure that our students are successful in school that they feel safe and connected and that they're successful socially emotionally and academically i am also not miranda bateman but i will speak for her this evening so miranda is our sexual assault resource team coordinator and she provides education around sexual violence prevention as well as

148consent she also supports survivors in our district and she coordinates our wonderful sart peer program where the students themselves help with education and support to other students in our schools thank you all right hello everyone again my name is madeline knoblet i am the chief information officer for pooter school district i don't have the pleasure of serving on this wonderful team but i certainly get to work with them alongside my team often through crises and in other means tonight what i am here to talk with you about as you have heard there are so many wonderful professionals out in our system who are there to support our kids every single day we have found i mean you all have experienced this i'm sure over time that not all of our students not all of our

149staff not all of our families and community are aware of what is available within our system and within our community to be able to help when people need it most with that in mind through last year's budget process we approved one-time dollars and ultimately the board through our budget approval process one hundred thousand in one time dollars for a mental health awareness and resource campaign what we heard from students last year particularly through the student advisory board that you all work with and affirmed by others is that students said that mental health is important to them they want to talk about this they want to reduce the stigmas that exist around it and they want to help each other when they don't have the answers and they need our help to do it but they

150need us to do it in ways that matter to them and that are on platforms where they are and deliver it in ways that will engage them so far we have not done a great job of that and that's not the fault of anybody here it's just that the way that people consume information and in particular our young people it's changed and we need to make sure that we are getting that to them the way they need so moving forward we have a process underway to hire an outside multi-service marketing firm that we look to establish a long-term relationship with to help us with a variety of projects throughout the district this campaign is one of them and so working alongside liz and other members of her team as well as our team and strategic

151sourcing we are aiming to do interviews with our final firms in the next couple of weeks and then from there uh select a firm that will ultimately engage in this work with us it's important to note you see we have four five step ones and we're going to do all of them simultaneously uh no really we'll start with research and engagement and that's the most important piece right that's where we're discovering really what people need and how they want to get their information from their being able to build the plan and we have stipulated that this firm in partnership with our district staff will put together the project plan and timeline they will help produce the communications materials which could range from posters and bathroom stalls to instagram uh reels and stories led by our

152students again driven by them we're not sure yet what that will look like as well as evaluation and setting goals and metrics some of those could be somewhat intangible in terms of reach and awareness of these services and then the hope is right that we see over time as a result of increased awareness greater utilization of existing services and identified other means through which we can be reaching our students and families and then looking forward we've asked the firm through all of our projects to help us think sustainably this isn't a one-time year effort right we have an investment here and we want to see what the impact of that investment is but in order to have sustainable impact it needs to continue for the long term and so how do we utilize some of

153those resources and information and things that we've created and build them into a longer term plan to showcase these amazing humans who stand next to me so that is our campaign that we'll be working through and we'll provide updates to the board around that and our other work throughout the year so briefly to wrap up we will be engaging with all of our community partners and all of you and all of our all of you and uh in the strategic plan process we're excited about that we're excited that mental health and belonging is part of that uh madeleine talked about the mental health marketing campaign we'll we'll collaborate with that and continue our amazing work with our community partners we have been meeting with them almost all different partners yesterday the day before lots of

154folks we have created a mental health ssp lead team specialized service providers and professionals and we'll collaborate together to support planning and implementation with school staff building and district administrators that team is an integrated team and has integrated services folks as well as student services yes so we just wanted to highlight 988 as another resource that anyone can access at any time nationwide as well as our community partners and resources that we are doing that almost daily collaboration with and partnering with to best serve our students and families takeaways truly the awareness of incredible levels of mental health support that psd provides and really ensuring our psd leaders teachers students and families know who to contact [Music] but we have work to do the work will never end so we are excited to engage with

155our community and continue the work continue to work with the community on the strategic plan and work together as a team with our district and move the work forward so i wanted to thank um our incredible team here tonight supporting this full spectrum of mental health support and for taking the time tonight to share the incredible work you do every single day so i'm so impressed and honored to work with you and i'm so grateful to be here at psd with all of you and i hope you know that um thank you to members of the board superintendent kingsley members of the cabinet and our entire psd community for collaborating together to support all that we do every day to help support mental health and belonging with our pst students thank you so much and

156we are yeah yeah we're good okay you know we welcome any questions and i know it's been a long evening and i welcome next step engagement with all of you whatever that means and whatever whatever that looks like so we appreciate your time it looks like dj has something he'd like to add go ahead yeah i got a couple things uh first of all thank you all for taking the time to come and talk to us personally i really appreciate you guys showing up uh and being here and because you are here and i know you're able to listen uh i also want to put out there that please at any time feel like if you've got a great idea of something that we as a board or me as a citizen that can help

157help you let me know and and not only policies that we do here um as sarah mentioned the warm hand-off thing something that i have talked to um with laurie at the center too before was uh with that warm hand-off situation we're trying to make sure that we are being able to set these families and these students up correctly but sometimes getting back information so that's in the building and helping uh foster that and support that child is sometimes difficult is what i hear um and so that's that's one thing that you know i have taken to legislators too and talked about and things like that that we can help push or drive uh for our students i really hope that you feel comfortable enough to email me call me let me know things that

158we can do to help because i think that all those partners that you just showed are fantastic and that and i'm so happy that we've partnered with so many of them um but i think when we get going through our strategic plan we're going to find needs that we are going to have that we need to improve on and uh i hope you guys keep your voices out there and keep sharing them because you guys are on the front lines dealing with this stuff all the time and we've got to find the right way to to reach these kids and families i'm not sure if you heard some of the comments you know there's there's misperceptions of things that happen in a school district and we've got to make sure that we're continually trying to

159straighten that out so i don't think a majority of psd understands what you guys give to our students and what's out there so i really thank you for that but i also want to i want to get better and and i think you know with you guys and with brian and his team i think we can we can narrow down some things and really make a difference so one of them is help educate me continue to do that please one of the other things that i wonder about is and you guys you guys did a nice job at talking about how much time you spend in different areas but one of the things that uh i brought in the past too was understanding your guys's caseloads i think that's i don't want to put any

160more work on you but to have an idea for us as a board to understand that and then for our community to understand that i think is going to be an important way to be able to drive this home a little bit more and make sure that we know what's happening and you know i think uh duane has at times you know we've had our ends about uh health and trying to monitor it in our monitoring report and it's kind of it's a difficult thing to do so that's another option that i throw out to you guys when you're brainstorming you know when you can't go to sleep at late at night you're laying in bed if you come up with a great idea for us to be able to have something that we can

161help monitor and communicate it out it would be great to hear that from you all too so uh i i can't express enough how much i'm so happy that you're all here and that you're here helping our students um yep that was it thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you kristen okay i have three things but i'll try and keep it brief i promise um first well four things first thank you i mean to come and nine o'clock at night and talk about what it is that you do in 30 seconds or less bravo thank you so much um what i'm going to tell you the three things that i just loved hearing um takeaways from me um the fact that we combined the mental health and the physical health together beautiful

162i just love that so much the fact that we are folks we are trying to get people to understand that they are all one so we're talking about oral health we're talking about physical health we're talking about mental health all together bravo thank you the fact that we mentioned that lgbt students have a disproportionate number of mental mental health incidents that needs to be addressed and the fact that we have the numbers that say we have these children in our midst and we need to help them thank you thank you for bringing that forward and i'm hoping that people will understand that this is why we want to help and then third i just love the fact that we are working with partners i feel like that has i know in the community the perception

163is that psd can be hard to work with and the fact is that that is already dissipating that is already being like oh no they're not that bad we can do this and so and i just love the fact that we're continuing to talk about partners and partners like hey wait how about if we do this this would be great so fantastic work um just i i again i don't know how to say thank you enough so thank you thank you other comments nate yeah i just want to highlight uh and thank you all and thanks to all the people who are on the front lines every day doing this in their schools and i know that you all addressed uh what you do and what they do so i appreciate that i just wanted

164to highlight that we had some comments earlier uh about whether uh social and emotional learning was something that was important in schools and it was evident throughout your presentation that that's a integral part of education and so appreciate that and that mental health and social and emotional learning are very important parts of what we uh do every day and if we didn't have students graduate who were socially and emotionally adjusted well adjusted then we wouldn't be doing them as service or the community service so thank you so much appreciate it thank you excellent any other comments i think brian would like to make some comments sure uh don't know where to start the presentation was beautiful the services you provide are equally as wonderful you know i think about the heart the mind and the

165soul of the work that this entire district does and how you do that in partnership with people i'm reminded that you're doing it in the midst of really challenging times where we have a charged society not everybody understands the need or wants to understand the need but somehow somehow some way you continue to show up you continue to represent the system with pride and you continue to provide hope and strength and resources to the people who need them most so in the midst of all of the chaotic experiences that we're all going through because when parents children experience darkness there's a range of emotions that come with that and none of us in this room are exempt from experiencing that ourselves and so i just on behalf of the entire team i just want you

166to know that we see you we value you and we couldn't do what we're trying to do without you so i just want to say thanks again thank you thank you so much thanks thank you anything else from the board i'll just uh use nate's ditto again i mean there's been tremendous words spoken by the board and and just by our superintendent here that i think represent a lot of my feelings as well so thank you so much appreciate especially the work that you're doing appreciate also the presentation this evening and i and i appreciate this this chart here which with this with this nice summary so that we can as as memories of tonight fade if you will we can refer to this material to understand again what you've shared with us tonight so

167thank you so much appreciate it thank you thank you [Applause] all right so we have one more item before we do an executive session and that is a consideration of uh a new policy on youth usa sorry youth suicide prevention this is intended for consideration as a new uh board policy and i believe that the superintendent will have some introductory remarks once we have some discussion about it uh tonight again this is just discussion we're not voting on anything tonight um we can make some judgment calls about when to bring it back for uh actual adoption superintendent thank you president president pedersen uh presenting the youth suicide prevention policy this evening again is our chief equity and academic officer marlena gross taylor and our general legal counsel ms autumn aspen thank you for being here

168for this item absolutely um so what you see in front of you is our attempt through partnership with folks that were just presenting as well as some community partners and community members on our suicide prevention policy we want to make sure that we recognize how important this is and that we codify that in our policies while also leaving room for ever-changing improvements and how we support our students particularly they're at risk or have auditions of suicide so um did i miss anything autumn okay do you want to share the process a little bit uh so the the policy is before the board now for consideration if the board would like we would move forward with bringing it back for a second reading and the board could approve it then it's not a policy that is

169legally required in colorado or one that's required for the board to adopt but given the nature of this policy i think it'd be appropriate for the board to be the one that approves and adapts this policy as a board policy and if there's any questions or comments or any edits feel free to ask those now or later on and we can incorporate edits into the policy make some changes or have a discussion on some of the content within the policy dj i i just had a clarifying question about um the legal responsibility of of teachers already for kids in danger they have to they have to notify the proper authorities and stuff like that and so i guess my my question is does this still balances that correctly and still has um this is just

170being more specific on the suicide prevention aspect of it correct is that correct and it's our commitment we're we're making it very public and very known that we are committed to ensuring that all kids are safe and making sure we're doing our part in helping our teachers and our staff with that goal thank you other questions for members of the board i have one question it's it's not so much on the substance but the last thing that talks about resources it says will be maintained on the district website and made publicly available here i i assume we're not planning to make the resource list in the policy itself is that correct or correct on the the here would then have a hyperlink so that would link to a page on our website that would have

171those resources so it could be updated instead of being static within a policy okay yeah that makes sense to me is the board generally in favor of the board adopting or bringing this back for another reading for that possible adoption it looks like carolyn has something to say i just want to make sure that we have somebody who's maintaining that informational website because there's nothing worse than a person going there looking for um information and getting the wrong information or out of date information so i just want to make sure that we have somebody who will be responsible for making sure that that that information on that pages is correct and up to up-to-date okay okay okay given that we're generally oh looks like dj has another thing i did i i thought this the

172other day and didn't um the um the paragraph where it says the board expects district staff to be equipped with practical skills and usable information these are skills that we are already doing so we are not putting anything new on there correct correct correct but then as strategies change or updated as we uh become even better at providing supports for kids we want to make sure that we are we're training staff and and leaders as well in that area and i would like to say um autumn shared that it's not a requirement in colorado to have a policy and i've come from states and a state in particular that it is a requirement and so um i think this is a great thing for pooter school district to be the first of because none of

173our surrounding districts have this and i think hopefully we can help encourage them to put their support for kids as well in this in this particular way yeah i totally agree and i think it's great i just want to make sure that uh we're not mandating something else that has to be done or something so and clarifying that so thank you for clarifying that thanks sure so i have a follow-up question to what you just said marlena the the state you came from requires the policy how does how would you say this policy as currently drafted compares to the kinds of policies that you've seen in the places that you've been it's just more explicit to say that it is a requirement that all staff would do x y and z whatever that might look

174like and that's normally led by the state department of education will dictate like what that is so being that we do not have that here i love all the supports that we do and and the trainings that we do for all of our teachers and staff to make sure that we're meeting those needs of these kids okay so your view it your view is given you you've had more experience with us than the rest of us have that this is given the context that we're working in this is sufficiently strong the way it works absolutely okay absolutely thank you i appreciate that yeah go ahead brian so one real quick thing because i appreciate the commitment piece that marlena just brought up a moment ago in response to board member anderson's question i just want

175to it's re it's really important to orient ourselves around there's no guarantee to safety right so as we do everything we can to keep our students safe i just want to orient all of us as a governance team to that first paragraph that this is really about prevention assessing risk intervening and responding there's no guarantees but we need to do everything we can as a system to position ourselves to be in that space to to reduce these particular incidents and i think that's the spirit in which i believe marlena was speaking to it and especially through the lens of safety so i just thought it was important for the public to to stress that thank you looking at my fellow board members i see no additional hands going up so i will thank you very

176much and yes i believe we should bring this back at next meetings on next meeting's agenda for a vote thank you very much excellent thank you so much for your work on this we appreciate it uh all right and so now the last item on our agenda is an executive session and i need a motion with regard to that oh it looks like kristin's going to read it i move that the board enter executive session for the purpose of developing the strategy of the school district for negotiations relating to the 2023-2024 collective bargaining agreement or employment employment contracts as authorized by crs 24-6-402 subsection 4e3 individuals invited to join the board in executive session are superintendent brian kingsley chief of staff lauren hooton chief finance officer dave montoya chief human resource officer eric von savage

177general counsel autumn aspen and board secretary jill berner i have a second for that it looks like dj is on the second uh jill could i have a vote on this motion dj anderson aye jim brokish hi nate donovan aye kristen draper aye rob henderson aye carolyn reed aye jessica zamora aye motion passes 7-0 thank you so much jill we will be going into executive session in the superintendent's office let's plan to meet just so we're at 9 30. that'll give us an opportunity to decompress a little bit for the members of the public we'll now be convening an executive session this is the last agenda item before adjournment at the conclusion of the executive session we will come back into this room only to publicly adjourn the meetings thank you very much for your

178attendance and your attention and we look forward to seeing you again because you