Board of Education Meeting: November 23, 2021

001good evening and welcome to this special meeting of the board of education and my last meeting this evening so today is tuesday november 23rd 2021 and i will call this meeting to order at 6 30 pm um 5 30 p.m funny enough i was going to tell tessa that i'm going to read this script carefully and stick to the script except for the time it did not that's right it was a blank so all right um so uh i will kick off this meeting and eventually we'll transition over to the new president but let me go to uh the agenda action item number two and 2.1 is the resolution for acceptance of the abstract of votes cast and board members i'd take a motion for that if i could please rob go right ahead sorry

002thank you i move that we accept the resolution of the abstract of votes cast for the acceptance of the abstract of those cast thank you do i have a second i have a second from dj anderson okay and with that i have i think i'll have an amendment from kristen go right ahead chris yeah i i moved to amend the resolution by changing the spelling of kristen from k-r-i-s-t i-n to k-r-i-s-t-e-n excellent do we have a second for that motion we have a second from dj anderson any discussion on how to spell kristin's name we do from uh nate donovan do we want to have the motion say that it's the abstract of votes cast in the the november 2nd 2021 election do you feel like we should be clearer on that nate seems like

003it okay it's not just any abstract would you like to restate that i move to amend the resolution of the abstract from the voters cast november 2nd 2021 is that good nate all right excellent do we and then do we have a second from dj we have a second from dj any further any discussion on this amendment as stated okay seeing none lexi i'll take a roll call vote please on the amendment dj anderson aye nate donovan aye christian draper aye christophe aye rob patterson aye carolyn reed aye jessica zamora aye motion pass seven seven zero okay so that's for the amendment any discussion on the abstract that we're voting on okay seeing none i'll take a roll call vote for this resolution please lexi j anderson aye congratulations nate donovan aye christian draper aye

004christophe aye robert petterson aye carolyn reed aye jessica zamora aye motion pass 7-0 okay thank you uh that completes the action items for this evening one of the main purposes of this evening is to do the oath of office so that's number three on the agenda this evening and the way this will work is we're gonna come stand here at this podium and i will be the one administering the oath of office for each of you um and we'll just kind of run through a typical oath of office and make it through that and get get on with business so first up this evening uh will be kristin draper please join me i hope so okay can you hear us hopefully it's turned on okay just doing the check okay kristen please raise your right

005hand and repeat after me i kristen draper do solemnly swear i kristen draper do solemnly swear that i will faithfully perform the duties of the office of school director as required by law that i will faithfully perform thank you the duties of the office of school director as required by law and will support the constitution of the united states and will support the constitution of the united states the constitution of colorado the constitution of the state of colorado and the laws pursuant thereto and the laws may pursue it there too fantastic welcome back to the board thank you [Applause] on come on back i think that's it oh that's it that's it okay carolyn you're next up and before we start i want to say that i am so honored to be sworn in by

006you i'm going to miss you so much thank you carolyn hey believe me i'm going to miss you very much as well so carolyn and i have served for eight years together excellent all right so carolyn please raise your right hand and repeat after me i carolyn reed do solemnly swear i carolyn reed do solemnly swear that i will faithfully perform the duties that i will faithfully perform the duties of the office of school director as required by law of the office of school director as required by law and will support the constitution of the united states and will support the constitution of the united states the constitution of the state of colorado the constitution of the state of colorado and the laws pursuant thereto and the law's pursuant thereto congratulations thank you welcome back

007that's it miss jessica zamora please join me at the podium welcome thanks excellent jessica will you please raise your right hand and repeat after me i jessica zamora do solemnly swear i jessica zamora do solemnly swear that i will faithfully perform the duties that i will faithfully perform the duties of this of the office of school director as required by law of the office of school director as required by law and will support the constitution of the united states and will support the constitution of the united states the constitution of the state of colorado the constitution of the state of colorado and the laws made pursuant there too and the law is made pursuant here too congratulations [Applause] that's it all right and finally my good friend mr jim brokish please join me at the

008podium it's a great honor for me too jim would you please raise your hand and repeat after me i jim brokish do solemnly swear i jim brookish do solemnly swear that i will faithfully perform the duties that i will faithfully perform the duties of the office of school director as required by law of the office of school director as required by law and will support the constitution of the united states and will support the constitution of the united states the constitution of the state of colorado the constitution of the state of colorado and the laws made pursuant thereto and the laws made pursuant thereto jim congratulations welcome jim it's uh it's a real pleasure to hand off the seat to somebody i respect so much so thank you oh is it time is all right

009okay before i move to the uh we're back to action items 4.1 or 4. but before we move to that um i did want to do one last thing in my while i still have a chance i received this briefcase from jim hayes who was director for seat district c i believe it was somewhat of a random choice who he picked i've never understood how and it'll seem a little random how i hand this bag off but jess i decided i'm going to hand this bag to you you may do with it whatever you may wish so [Applause] i kind of thought we could stitch the names on there at some point and see so it started with jim hayes okay let's get back on track so my i think the final thing i'll do

010on this board is help the board uh select the new president so here's why i'm going to read the skip the script carefully the first thing we need to do is decide whether the board would like to vote in a secret ballot or uh in public so what i'll do is i'll just ask the board for an i if you'd like to vote by secret ballot and so all those in favor of electing the president and the vice president by secret ballot please say aye when your name is called lexi please do a roll call vote okay dj anderson so i don't say no then i think you say no okay no you can say nay nay brookish nay nate donovan hi christian draper nay thank you rob patterson nay carolyn reed aye jessica zamora

011nay okay so as i understand it that means the role the vote will be done in public uh this evening and so the next thing i'd like to do is ask for nominations uh for the office of president if somebody would like to nominate a new president for the board carolyn please go ahead i nominate rob peterson for the office of board president of pooter school district excellent uh i don't know that we need a second i think i have to say that i accept that yeah but i do need to have rob let me know if he would accept the nomination yes i accept rob would okay so rob has accepted the nomination uh would anybody like to nominate anybody else for president this evening okay as i see it there is one nomination

012for the uh role of president of the board and that would be rob pedersen and seeing that there are no more than there's only one uh member of the board who's been nominated i believe that we do not need to go through a vote for this please confirm yes that's correct so rob you will be the new president i turn i yield the floor to you [Applause] thank you very much i will take my place in the public okay [Laughter] thanks thanks very much kristoff and and um actually the first thing i want to do in my role as president here is to thank kristoff again for his uh service uh on the board for eight years and his uh service as president uh for the last part of that it's been a super honor

013to serve with you and i have learned so much from you and i hope i'll be able to do justice to what you've done for the board so thank you [Applause] all right so that takes us to action item 4.2 which is the election of the board vice president uh nominations are now in order for the office of vice president does someone would someone like to make a nomination carolyn i nominate kristen draper for the office of vice president of the pooter school district board of education do you accept kristin i accept okay kristin draper is nominated are there any further nominations for the office of vice president all right seeing none i've got to get to the right page here seeing seeing none similar to the election for president i believe we are effectively

014electing kristin as vice president by acclamation so congratulations kristen [Applause] all right so so now we have several resolutions that we need to uh approve here in terms of appointment of other officers uh of the board the first one is the resolution of the appointment of board secretary uh may i get a motion on the resolution of the appointment of board secondary of board secretary yes yeah it's just it's taking some time pulling up sorry it's okay we've got some time sorry nervous it's just loading you could do it if you want yeah all right i recommend adoption of a resolution appointing alexia donnelly to the position of secretary to the board of education excellent may i have a second on that motion okay dj anderson is the second lexi if you would please do

015a roll call vote dj anderson aye jim brokish nate donovan aye christian draper aye rob patterson aye carolyn reed aye jessica zamora aye motion pass seven zero all right next we have action item 4.4 which is a resolution on the appointment of the board treasurer may i get a motion on the resolution of appointment of the board treasurer kristen if you wanted it again that's fine sure the board recommends adoption of a resolution reappointing dave montoya to the position of treasurer to the board of education may i get a second on that motion nate donovan second in the motion lexi would you please call a roll call on that dj anderson aye jim brokish aye nate donovan aye christian draper aye rob patterson aye carolyn reed jessica zamora aye motion pass 7-0 excellent so our

016final um action item for this special meeting uh is the resolution of an appointment of the assistant board secretary may i get a motion on the resolution of the appointment of the assistant board secretary go ahead kristen sure why not you got it i recommend adoption of a resolution appointing tessa oppenheimer to the position of assistant secretary to the board of education excellent can i have a second for that nate give us a second also i guess i should have asked for all the other ones is there any discussion on the motion okay [Laughter] except that this is yeah i think we're good yeah i think i think we're good lexi if you could do a roll call for us i'd appreciate it ej anderson aye jim brokish aye nate donovan aye christian draper hi

017rob patterson aye carolyn reed aye jessica zamora aye motion pass 7-0 excellent so let me let me uh take a moment to thank all the folks who are uh have been appointed by resolution here this evening lexi and tessa and dave thank you very much and with that that's this concludes the special board meeting and we are now adjourned at 5 49 pm all right thank you everybody for joining us for the board of education meeting this evening today is november 23rd 2021 and this meeting is now called to order at 6 31 p.m so the first order of business is the approval of the agenda would any board members like to make changes to the agenda all right seeing none we'll go right on to the item 3.0 which is a superintendent report superintendent

018kingsley would you like to make some remarks yes thank you good evening members of the board members of the community it's great to be here i'm also looking forward to working with this new board and the continued collaboration to ensure uh that our leadership as a governance team continues to meet the needs of all of our students in our community i want to congratulate director brookish uh on joining us this evening as well so thank you and to all of the all of the others who were recently reelected i'm really looking forward to working with all of you uh in the spirit of the thanksgiving holiday i'd like to center my remarks just on gratitude most days driving into the office to be honest i'm overwhelmed with emotion and gratitude as a result of just

019the sheer responsibility that i have to be the proud superintendent of the pooter school district every day our community sends their most prized possessions through our front doors and that level of trust and commitment is something that i don't take or does the team or our school leaders and teachers and support staff take lightly it's our duty as a school system to see our children's brilliance to affirm their identities and to make sure that all of our students experience educational success and as i have an opportunity in partnership with u.s board members to visit our schools i think collectively we can affirm that what we see in our classrooms is magical and that doesn't happen by accident we are a strong district because of the employees that make the system go as well as the

020partnership that our families have with us to make sure that together we work to support their children and give them what they need that starts with our teachers in our classrooms our school leaders principals and assistant principals the various support staff all of our respected central office staff leaders who support our schools to make sure our schools are beautiful to make sure that they're clean the children have meals to be served that they get to school safely and have a friendly face to affirm who they are when they hop on a bus and have a chance to to say goodbye to us for the day and we want to see them tomorrow i continue to be grateful around the level of empathy the level of compassion but also the commitment that this district has to

021innovation and just over the last week our schools and departments have donated incredible amounts of food and money to make sure that all of us have an opportunity to be centered on thankfulness and gratitude this week and i'm just overwhelmed by the number of things that have happened across this community in service of our children especially those who are most vulnerable and most marginalized this is a community that cares and takes care of one another and as your superintendent i'm just really grateful to be a part of it and so that concludes my comments for this evening thank you thank you very much superintendent kingsley really appreciate it um the next item on our agenda is our consent agenda and i would ask if any board members wish to pull any items from the consent

022agenda or discuss them all right seeing none could i have a motion to approve the consent agenda nate i move that the board approve and adopt the recommended actions for the items on the consent agenda could i have a second please uh dj has seconded the motion lexi if you would call a roll call vote on this please dj anderson aye jim brokish aye nate donovan aye christian draper aye rob patterson carolyn reed aye jessica zamora aye motion pass 7-0 all right we do have a little bit of business to do in in uh regards to the consent agenda so we will now take a short recess less than five minutes and we will and we'll be back in session shortly thank you all right folks uh sorry about that uh short interruption uh we

023are the board is now back in session and it is uh 6 40 p.m all right so tonight we have a uh sort of a special kind of meeting uh we are honored to welcome lawmakers from across colorado and and uh from our federal uh legislators we also have some representatives here as well and we're not honored to have you all here thank you very much for joining us for a discussion on education legislation so how this is going to work is that after i'm done describing this i'll ask each of our guests to introduce themselves and to if they wish make some brief remarks about uh what might be happening in your neck of the woods that will affect education uh coming forward here in in the coming year uh we'll be really interested

024to hear about that and then after you've all had a chance to introduce yourselves uh we will hopefully have a dialogue where you know we'll be able to ask you some questions and you can ask us some questions that hopefully will help to uh inform the work that you're doing and how it might uh benefit the students and the districts here so with that i will uh maybe i'll start in an unusual way i'll start in the back senator janal would you like to introduce yourselves and yourself and then as as you're finished then we can just go i guess way facing it left to right and then to the front so yes thank you and and uh i am senator joanne gennall i represent senate district 14 which is fort collins and um i'm

025in my second term i have been in the house as well um i served for six years uh and then went over to the senate and um it's an honor to represent this wonderful district and be working on policies that help the people of fort collins and the state of colorado first i want to say congratulations to the new school board members and a very special shout out to uh school board member kristen draper kristen has been an ally for the lgbtq community thank you so much for your voice because sometimes it gets lost and we need you on the school board and we need a lot of other folks in the public eye for our lgbtq community it's still sometimes marginalized a lot of times marginalized bullied you have always been an advocate and

026uh for my gay lesbian and transgender family so thank you very much and thank you to the teachers who are listening or out there that are on the board um the bus drivers and all the people who make the poor school district run um because you're all very important um this was a trying time with kovid we are learning as we go and also thanks to the students this has been hard for every single student i i just can't imagine learning remotely i have a hard enough time with zooms zoom calls myself i can't imagine doing that and i also can't imagine being a teacher doing remote learning as well so um my heart goes out to all of you i uh i know we've learned a lot about teaching through various and different methods

027and you know that's trial and error and i hope we will continue to improve that and as as time goes by um i am um primarily here to listen because as chair of the health and human services committee in the senate also vice chair i'm sorry vice chair of the health and human services committee in the senate and chair of local government i don't go to the education meetings and um it's uh it's not that i'm not interested in education it's up there on my list with all the other things that are really important but your time is you only have so much time so i rely on colleagues like represent kipp who i have had many discussions with about bills i've even ran a bill with representative kit kipp on education and i thank

028you for that rep kip um i also sometimes don't even hear these bills until they're on seconds in the senate chamber on the floor and so i need all of you to be in contact with me by text including you mr superintendent to tell me how you feel about these bills and that are coming and i it means a lot to know where my community stands my school board stands on things and i know that's happened in the past but i just want to reiterate that that the communication is always there you have my cell phone number you know how to get in touch with me um i will always support our teachers for more salaries and and the things that they need in order to run a classroom and also students student learning is

029very important that they have the tools in their toolbox but i wanted to first just i think share with you a few of the bills that are coming from your way or down at the capitol in 2022 um that i'm going to be dealing with first and foremost is mental health issues there are a few bills i'll be uh i'll be bringing forth that deal with mental health issues and one of them i think is is extremely important and that's a compact licensure for behavioral health specialists so that when they so that we can have compacts with other states and let's say you took got your licensure in wyoming but you want to come here for whatever reason as as long as you're within that compact you're allowed to do that and um you know

030this is an area with with mental health resources that we need more of and so this is a very timely bill i do believe it came up in 2020 however we couldn't pass it then because of the limited session time so it's a compact licensure for behavioral health counselors and anyone else to help our kids i think the other thing that we need is a safe space more safe space for kids to be able to talk about issues so two bills that are coming your way with mental health issues also uh i am running a bill and and for those of you who know me in the past i have always been a champion for people with intellectual developmental disabilities and one of the other bills that i'm running is a an open caption act

031which will help our uh hard of hearing and and deaf community and this might may or may not be incorporated into the schools but we're starting at theaters and drive-ins at social events but there may be a need for that at the schools so that is something i think is inclusive and i did go over your federal uh well your legislative agenda on the idea act and i'm glad that you know you're bringing that up i had no idea there was 17 cents to every dollar that was spent for our our children with intellectual developmental disabilities and i hope that our federal folks are listening carefully uh because i'd like to i agree with you on increasing the number two to 40 or more cents on a dollar lastly workforce development i with our aging

032population i'd like to see more things around seniors and how our younger people can work with seniors workforce development that might lead them down that path um there that that number is going to grow and we need help uh i i do want to say that i i know in the past we passed a bill about college credit while you're still in high school and i had an intern at the capitol who did her two years at csu while she was a junior and a senior and after two years of csu graduated and got a masters and now i'm very very very proud to say that she is a policy person on workforce policy in the state of washington so a success story which i don't think we hear enough of uh and maybe highlighting

033some of those things but um i'm i'm here to learn i'm here to find out what you want to have done and what's important for you in 2022 but thank you for all that you do and will do in the future thanks thank you senator gennall representative kipp would you like to go next um yes thank you and you know it's truly an honor to be back in the boardroom thank you guys for um hosting this event which i know we did uh pre-bandemic but i know hasn't been done in a few years so nice to be nice to be back here folks so state state legislative stuff it's kind of a lot going on right now um so let me start maybe with um well senator janelle mentioned mental health so some of the

034big things we have had going on during this interim have been the behavioral health task force which is a major task force which is looking at use how to use the one-time federal dollars that we'll be getting to create transformational change and so um that work um is ongoing i believe it's nearing its completion um but i think you know anything that you there there's still an opportunity to give input to that and hopefully you've and um that your the folks at psd have had some input into that process um another one that's i think big and you know any of these things that we have been looking at doing this summer while they're not directly related to education i think they all impact education because anything that we can do to make our families

035healthier and our students healthier makes makes it a better world right makes it easier for us to educate them so the another big one was the housing task force because we know that there is a housing crisis in colorado we know that um many people lack housing and lack affordable or attainable housing so those have been really big things as well because we know i mean we have usually at least back when i was on the board and you guys can update my numbers but we usually run about a thousand kids every year in psd which really shocks people out of our 30 000 kids we have a thousand that tend to be categorized as homeless and that's really not okay right and that was before the pandemic i don't even know what those numbers

036look like now um the other categories which i kind of combine but there have been sort of separate task forces on both have been the economic development task force in the workforce development task force and i think that those are both also related to education because we know the better job we do at economic development and under workforce development that all ties to how we educate our students so those are the big things that we've been working on i've served on several interim committees but one of them that i kind of i say i audited it because i didn't get actually be on the committee but i showed up and i got a sub a couple times which is related to this is the school interim finance committee now that committee has been going on

037for a few years um and frankly um you know some people have said it's not been terribly effective um but they are they they they decided that it was time to take another look so they launched the committee again um there's you know some new people so there was some good learning that occurred um and i'd say that i think there were three bills that came out of that committee well at least three bills but the primary three would be one bill that will affect the school funding formula as it pertains to poverty we're taking a new look at what an at-risk kid is going to look like right and in the past what we've used for at-risk kid funding it's not the right way to say it but at-risk students is we've used the

038the free and reduced pr program as a proxy and there are a lot of issues with doing that for instance like in some of our mountain schools we don't even offer a lunch program so there is no benefit to filling out the form and getting or at least that used to be the case maybe you guys have changed that now but but there's also been a stigma attached and once kids get into high school they don't fill out the form so all those kids who don't fill out the form then they aren't getting that state funding for that free and reduced funding which is a little bit of extra money that we give to schools because we know that it costs more to educate kids who come from poverty it just does so they are

039looking at a variety of different methods we actually requisitioned a study that should be coming out i believe in january i don't think december but i think in january and the school finance interim committee should have i think it's final interim committee meeting on january 10th which is two days before the general session the general assembly convenes on the 12th so that will be interesting to see how that impacts and you know basically what we're trying to do with that is get a better measure of what kids are in poverty right we want to be able to say we have a better more accurate number for defining the kids who should be getting whose schools should be getting that extra funding in order to properly educate them special education funding i know you guys have

040your idea and you know i was so hopeful and perhaps our federal folks can address that that you know full funding of idea which um you know full funding equates to like 40 when you guys are getting what 16 17 cents on the dollar right now that's not okay but we realize at a state level we're not doing an adequate job either so there are a couple of folks on that state that interim committee who really want to make sure that we're stepping up and trying to do a better job of funding special education because when we better fund all of our kids that means those the special education kids it means that we can better fund all of our kids right um and then the last piece is a really um interesting piece that

041senator rankin actually who's on the joint budget committee has been talking about for years and what that piece would do is it would um it's looking at a way to subsidize some low wealth districts if they so some districts vary greatly in the amount of property wealth they have and because of that one mill in psd might raise like six million dollars or whatever it raises a year whereas one mill in a small tiny district might raise you know six thousand dollars and how are you going to build a building a school building for instance with six thousand dollars how are you going to you know meet the needs of your community with such small amounts of money so what um we're looking at doing is for some of these very low wealth districts is

042offering them a state match for if they're able to get an mlo so if they pass an mlo for you know three mills that the state might match them for three mills so that's just the way to incentivize them to have the skin in the game and have this state step up and help them out because their property values in their area just can't create the um economic um sustenance that they need as a district so those are some of the things out of the interim committee and i know i'm talking a long time and i will um oh there is one thing i wanted to mention that i and and maybe i'll just give this slide afterwards to dave um or director montoya but um anyways there was one um type of mill levy

043authorization that um got discussed that i had not heard of before when i was in the interim committee and i just thought it would be really interesting to the board to know about this because i specifically stopped and asked about this when we were in the committee because what it is i think it was one that was called the debt free schools levy which will provide revenue to provide ongoing cash funding for capital construction new technology existing technology upgrade and maintenance needs and you know that's really interesting because we've always had to issue bonds to cover a lot of that material but apparently and you guys can double check maybe but but i did stop and ask the staff about this they said that if you get a debt free schools levy um if you

044get your voters to authorize one of those that money can be permanently put into this and it doesn't apply to your cap so that just might be something that you might want to think about if you're going back to the voters at some point to ask them for more it sounded like a really interesting and type of mill levy override and i just hadn't heard of it before so i thought it was worth bringing up here um and i guess really all i want to mention other than that is that i do have a couple of bills related to education this year myself one of them is on removing barriers for students student teachers to become teachers and the other one is about educa improving educational opportunities for committed youth because and those committed youth

045would be kids who are in department of youth services and um like youth offender services because they've made choices right and they're they've been committed so they're called committed youth and we want them to be able to imagine a better future for themselves because if they can't imagine a way out of the hole that they're in they're never going to become productive citizens so that's just wanting to make sure they have an appropriate opportunity so i can answer more about that later and i'm sorry to talk so long but oh i guess i one more thing i did want to mention um which i'm sure most of you already know about but the governor's budget which came out on november 1st did authorize well not authorized the governor doesn't authorize the governor proposes in the

046legislator legislature approves um but he did want to do an 150 million buy down of the budget stabilization factor or the negative factor or whatever we're calling it some people are now calling it the borrowing from students factor and then right because that's what it is we borrowed from students all these years and that's not okay and then prepay a couple of those years i'm a little bit worried about what happens after those next couple of years that we prepay but that's another issue so anyway i will stop talking and let other people talk thank you thank you very much do you like to go ahead representative well thank you uh my name is representative andy basenecker i have the pleasure of representing house district 53 at the state capitol so house district 53 is

047everything west of college and i have the distinct pleasure of serving alongside representative kipp and senator janelle in making a good team for fort collins down at the state capitol so thank you board members and superintendent kingsley for having us this evening it truly is a pleasure and what a magnificent night for all of those of you who were just recently reelected thank you for your continued service to our community i wanted to just share briefly a few thoughts and priorities coming into the next session but what i wanted you to know first is that i'm also a psd parent i have three kids in our school district and i echo so much of what superintendent kingsley said that there really is no more sacred moment that when you hand off your child every morning

048to the educators and staff who are going to be working with them throughout the day and then you pick them up and you see the smile on their face because they've had such a wonderful day due to our excellent staff and educators here in psd i'd be lying if i didn't say that the schools here in fort collins were a huge part of why we moved to this community in 2009 i have educators in my family who work tirelessly day in and day out and i am so grateful for the service that you all provide and our educators provide and our staff provides to the most valuable asset our community has and that is our children so thank you i'm also a former teacher i used to be a k-5 elementary school music teacher at

049a title one school in deltona florida friendship elementary and i was looking up on their website today and reminiscing in advance of this meeting and just remembering what a distinct pleasure it is to call yourself an educator i would say that once you're a teacher you're always a teacher and so many of us have had the privilege of stepping into that role and serving our community in that capacity so thank you for the opportunity to be with you tonight i have a few things coming up in the education space and also some things that i think overlap with that space first and foremost i will be running a bill regarding superintendent selection and just to provide a brief summary of what that looks like it simply builds on some efforts from the last legislative session

050wherein if a school board names more than one finalist for a superintendent opening there needs to be a public forum where the finalists and the finalists answer questions from members of the public the goal here is that multiple finalists often are encouraged or should be encouraged because it provides more opportunity for public input and scrutiny and so we're trying to give our school boards the option to go down that avenue should they so desire many school boards still bring forth one finalist and that's fine that can still continue we just want to make sure that there's opportunity for public dialogue should a school board feel like more than one finalist is advantageous or appropriate for their community the other thing i'm working on most intensely in our community and i've been uh privileged to work

051alongside representative kipp and senator jones in that capacity is in regard to affordable housing in our community and so in particular mobile home parks and we're working on some legislation there to ensure that residents in this precarious housing situations ensure or enjoy as they do now housing stability and predictability when it comes to where they're going to live next month and the month after that if you're familiar with that housing space you know that it continues to be rife with problems not only here in fort collins but across our state and i know as you do that it's hard to teach a child if they don't know where they're going to sleep the next night and it's hard to teach a child if they don't know where their next meal is going to come from

052and so when i think about affordable housing and food insecurity and health care costs i can't help but think about how these things distill down to what happens in our classrooms each day and that's the priority i think that i bring to the state legislature ensuring that the least of unfortunate in our communities or perhaps those who don't enjoy the same socioeconomic status as others in our communities have that stability and predictability and the teachers can teach in the classrooms to the best of their abilities so aside from that i think i would just echo what representative kip mentioned about the priorities around school funding mental and behavioral health remains a priority for our learners in our schools i think covid has exacerbated those issues and certainly compounded them when you look at the anxiety

053and unpredictability of the last two years our students feel that acutely our teachers are often on the front line of dealing with those things and absolutely we want to make sure that everybody has the resources they need to be healthy and whole lastly and i'll just end with this the environmental concerns in our community remain i'll be running some legislation in that space as a parent with two children who were born with childhood asthma it is of acute concern that fort collins remains in a non-attainment zone in terms of our air quality we need to look at these issues holistically comprehensively not in terms of just transportation but also industry and figure out what we can do to provide better air for our students who walk in day in day out enjoy the playground at

054recess and make sure that they're healthy as they can be i think i'll end with that and just say thank you for your time to be with you and i'm looking forward to the dialogue thank you representative basenecker okay now we'll go uh to the other end there sort of like a typewriter for those of you who for those of you remember what a typewriter is i believe kim redd is here representing our federal uh house representative congressperson joe nagoos so if you'd like to introduce yourself and and his agenda thank you uh my name is kim wright i handle education issues for the congressman from pre-k all the way through higher education as well as uh finance and irs types of of issues for the congressmen so i'm in deep in a lot of

055different issue areas congressman the goose covers the second congressional district in colorado that includes nine counties including larimer county and we do have an office here in fort collins as well there are a couple of pieces of legislation that have just passed the house that are critical that have a lot of provisions for families and children and education the one that just passed the house last week that congressman the goose was very much held a key role in getting everyone to come together and agree and he he was a real negotiator along with senator hickenlooper on the on the senate side in really trying to get everyone on the buildback better act and the buildback better act uh past the house last week and one of the provisions and the build back better act is

056all around lowering child care and family care costs including capping families child care costs to no more than seven percent of income offering universal preschool for all three and four-year-olds which is the first time in a hundred years that our basic promise of free schooling in america has been expanded to preschool aged children and in addition they're extending the landmark advanced child tax credit which started in july and is providing monthly child care monies for families and that will be extended for another year as the in the build back better plan there are a lot of other provisions but those are the most critical for education and then the other act that just passed and was actually signed by the president on november 15th is the bipartisan infrastructure bill and within that bill there's over

057a hundred million dollars for broadband expansion which should be very beneficial to both families working families who are working from home and for children in accessing the internet and that hundred million it does not count additional grants that could be applied for under this federal legislation and we're still just trying to figure out where the money is going to flow and how it's going to flow and what grants are going to be available so please contact our office if you have questions or if you want to know more about either one of these pieces of legislation another item that was passed in the bipartisan infrastructure bill was the secure rural schools reauthorization and that provides money primarily to our mountain schools but there is about 270 thousand dollars that will be coming to larimer county

058and it's called srs or the secure rural schools it was reauthorized until 2023 and the congressman has been very very active in trying to secure those monies for our district we have a lot of communities up in the mountains as well all along i-70 and according to the the restructuring and the of the congressional district will be adding even more rural and mountain communities um in the future for our congressional district so that secure rural schools has uh act or it was an act but now it's just part of the bipartisan infrastructure bill and that has been reauthorized for two more years and then um the congressman last uh last week reintroduced idea the um by it's a bicameral bill so that he has worked with both representatives in the house as well as in

059the senate and it was reintroduced by congressman the goose senator chris van hollen in from a democrat from maryland as well as representative jared huffman a democrat from california and they reintroduced it it is bipartisan it's bicameral legislation and this is looking at trying to fully fund the 40 percent that was promised for idea it's looking at trying to fully fund that and so the congressman is very very aware of the critical need for idea funding and um just a quote from our press release that was sent out and this is from the congressman he says across our district as i sit down with teachers school board members and education advocates the need for increased idea funding is a resounding request full idea funding is essential to ensuring that students with disabilities can fully access

060quality education and have every opportunity to succeed that is why i'm proud to lead on this bipartisan bicameral initiative to ensure that the federal government holds up their end of the bargain to fully fund this program and to ensure that children with disabilities are able to live up to their full potential according to the national education association idea fell short last year nationwide by 23.58 billion dollars so it's a tremendous amount of money that is in play there finally the congressman has also just introduced a bipartisan bill to expand access to mental health and mental health care and it's similar to what joanne janal had mentioned and that is expanding mental health networks nationwide by looking at licensure and trying to make it available or accessible across state lines and so that was just introduced

061as well and so the congressman is very well aware of education issues he has a three-year-old daughter who just started preschool this year and so this is very near and dear to his heart and he hopes to continue to hear from the school board and from the superintendent about what your concerns are and what issues you would like to be brought for have brought forth on a federal level thank you very much and i did have a handout that hopefully you all got to give some details about both of those major bills that just passed thank you well thank you very much appreciate that and now we have james thompson who i believe is representing senator bennett if you'd like to introduce yourself and share some thoughts former board members um their services um but

062really you know things like cyber security grid security you know we have a limited funding was helpful maybe um passed in somewhat haste and uh you know we did kind of you know make sure to revise some of that later those better kind of funds in the american rescue plan to give them give some more flexibility but we're hopeful that those were helpful to our state our local governments and our school districts um you know as part of the american rescue plan the bipartisan american rescue plan of course um was and i know i'm gonna go and try not to be redundant here but the child tax credit extension which was a bill that senator bennett that he offered he is so happy that that was included and you know we continue to try to

063get to make sure that parents know how to sign up for that that is that is a benefit they can be getting right now monthly and we are so hopeful that that will get extended for another year centerman of course wants to make that a permanent uh benefit um there was talk about five years i think we're done with one year now um the fighting for that um and the american rescue plan of course has more money for local governments um now in terms of the the latest infrastructure plan um kim again mentioned the 100 million minimum for colorado for broadband that was based on senator the 500 and again this is a bipartisan infrastructure building the i say that because i think people forget um and that we work very very long time and

064and to tell you the truth this infrastructure plan was a product of years of input from our local governments all around the state bourbon rural um you know asking us to get things done infrastructure and so we appreciate everyone giving us their input on that and um and we're really glad that that got passed and so there are for instance the broadband again that is based on senator bennett's bipartisan bill with republican senator rob portman of ohio largely based on the bridge act that senator bennett proposed and so that is the largest federal investment ever in broadband and so we're hopeful that we can see that roll out and to make sure that when it gets pulled out it gets done some smart way that doesn't uh that eliminates some of that redundancy that we've

065seen in recent investments secure rural schools of course we want to get that authorized permanently as well and i think most folks agree on both sides of the aisle because that is really important especially um now in terms of uh the buildback vetter plan um you know senator bennett does there are a number of items in there that that may be permanent to you again of course the tax credit extension child care universal pre-k affordable housing and also youth mental health and so um you know we're hopeful that we can get something passed what it's going to look like coming out of the senate we don't know um it's most likely going to be very different so we'll have to go to a conference with the house and as you can tell for how long

066we've been working on this it's not going to be an easy task to get that passed we're hopeful that and we've we've been trying to to get folks to another uh from across the aisle on this bill and uh we've made a number of um changes to the bill that would make it more palatable but we'll just have to see in that regard um so outside of those um you know i'll just briefly say in terms of education i think senator bennett's a lot of the recent stuff and um you know there's been a mention more than once of affordable housing right now well in the past several months senator bennett has convened folks from across the state it's something we do on a regular basis and when we try to focus on an issue

067whether it's veterans or climate in this case affordable housing is we gather really smart people from around the state from all parts of the state and we get them together and they share ideas and we come up and and we come up well they come up with a report to present to senator bennett that can really inform some of the legislation so he felt that there was a need to do this on housing i know that we've involved senator hickenlooper and some of that as well and and congressman degoose um but you know we hope to have something uh like a report some kind of a report out that we can share with the public after that there was a product of that senator bennett was here just a couple of months ago meeting with

068local housing and community leaders to talk about that issue i think i'll just stop there i think you know in terms of the other priorities that you have certainly again we're here in listening mode so we want to make sure to take that back to senator bennett so thank you well i appreciate that thank you very much and last but certainly not least we have here representing senator hickenlooper uh sally bachela i'm guessing i'm sorry butchella okay yeah i apologize if i got that wrong thanks for correcting me so if you'd please uh introduce yourself and and share uh senator hickenlooper's agenda well first of all this is my first time here so thank you so much for inviting me it's an honor to be in front of you and along it gives me a

069chance to see some of the people i haven't seen in a long time i also want to echo what everyone has said and congratulations to newly elected board members and also to the ones who have been working so hard for this school district um so just a little bit about me i'm the northern colorado regional director i oversee five counties including larimer county for senator hickenlooper i have an office in fort collins and also greely the senator is also on the health committee which is health education labor and pension and just a little bit about my background i actually was a substitute teacher i was a volunteer parent in the classroom for many years i am a parent of public school students not in larimer county i live in weld county and i actually did

070a lot with the district accountability committee and worked on several bond and mill levy campaign so i know i know the issues that you face firsthand so i just want you to know first off that i'm accessible i just handed you my cards same thing it was i'm accessible to the parents as well for any issues or um you know any our door is always open so a little bit about um some of the priorities for the senator um so the senator you know has been working on apprenticeships he thinks it's really important uh in regards to the workforce pathways from early you know middle school high school all the way up to um um you know moving into community colleges with the career and trade education and um i know that larimer county has

071been working a lot in regards to those workforce pathways and it's actually been some brilliant things that have been coming out of the economic development department for a really good transition into healthcare or manufacturing and then also energy transition so i'm very excited about that i think that language county is really innovative in that respect also in regards to broadband larimer county again very innovative so when we talk about bringing broadband to rural areas as well as giving access to those communities who are vulnerable you know there's there's great partnerships happening with electric co-ops and municipalities coming together to really bring out a great way to implement that broadband money that's coming down from the federal government so i'm excited about that and um and then in regards to uh you mentioned the idea funding

072i'm definitely i've already mentioned it to my team and um and we will i will definitely mention it to the senator i was just with the senator this week we had several phone calls with local government commissioners and in regards to housing mental health and broadband and some of the things that i've been hearing not just in larimer county but just across the districts with superintendents one of the number one priorities is mental health and then also housing and so i have a couple questions if that's okay i wanted to know a little bit about um what are some of the things that are happening in regards to mental health for students and faculty um and where are those challenges like what what kind of things do you do you need and then this the

073second thing is is that a lot of a lot of talk has been around people experiencing homelessness and one of the things that really isn't being talked about a lot is students who are experiencing homelessness and so that is happening across the districts as well so we're very interested in hearing more about that with the different districts um and how you're how you're how you're supporting those students and again what are your challenges so um and then talk about school funding i just wanted to mention i'm just going to be echoing a little bit but um about what my two colleagues have mentioned in regards to the infrastructure uh bill that became law and then also the bbb but um on the school funding piece so colorado schools have received 1.1 billion in school funding

074through the american rescue plan to help the schools open safely and address the education social and emotional needs of students and we're definitely working on them for additional grant funding opportunities and so again my office is always open if there's anything that we can help you out with in regards to grants or if there's something that you know coming down the line that you're not aware of please reach out the american rescue plan also included 7.1 billion in funding to support schools and libraries to purchase laptops computer tablets wi-fi hotspots routers and other equipment necessary for distance learning because i know that is so important and as a result of the pandemic so the application windows for schools and libraries closed october of this year but the fcc is reviewing applications for funding on a

075rolling basis so that is something again please reach out to my office we can get make sure that you are just in the know so to speak of that rolling process so that you don't miss out on that and then lastly colorado schools and libraries collectively have requested 46 million in funding support for distance learning equipment so again anything any barriers any challenges in regards to those two things and also the broadband issues with distance learning and just making sure that every family has that ability to access the internet um again our office is always open so so thank you so much again for inviting me thank you for your marks i appreciate it so uh actually uh the questions you posed uh represent a a nice segue actually to the second part of our

076meeting where we'll have some dialogue between us and uh we'll actually take that as the first uh the first piece of that and i believe superintendent kingsley will try to address some of your questions about what we're doing for mental health for students and and homelessness and how that impacts our district and then we'll go on from there thanks thank you uh president pedersen and thank you for the question so my experiences and i've been in our community now a little over four months and beyond leading a lot of listening and learning and what i'm hearing from people in the field both at the student level as well as in the community employees non-employees is that the need was great prior to the pandemic from behavioral health services this community was quite aware of that

077and the pandemic unfortunately has served as an amplifier for all of those needs we have a robust peer counseling program here for students to help and train and how to you know be another trusted confidante for other students who may not necessarily want to tell their story of what they're dealing with with an adult and as i was sharing with them some of the bleak data in terms of how students were experiencing life right now all of my numbers they told me to throw it away and triple it the need is that great i don't i don't mean to sound gloom and doom but i do think that this is something that we need to be candid about that that need exists across this community that there's just not enough people i am really proud

078of this district's investments in school counselors mental health specialists we have to figure out ways though to thread the needle around the various services that we provide to our families internally in the system and help families navigate the handoffs from what we provide to what our community provides but at the city level the town level the county level there are a lot of services and families are having a very difficult time navigating those ecosystems agencies municipalities all government agencies have to come together to have real candid conversations around the health of that ecosystem we need to be able to provide supports for whether it's not the non-profit sector to come in what you're proposing around licensure is incredibly important i'm hopeful that has positive implications on telehealth services what i can share with you is

079when i speak to our employees and many of our students especially those from our bipark communities is that they're looking for providers that look like them that understand the socio political context of what it's like to be in their community and there is a lack of those resources and they are already vulnerable marginalized members of our community and so i'm very hopeful that your approach to the various legislation around flexibility around licensure can open the door for many other providers especially in more diverse communities to meet the needs of many of our vulnerable populations i just think that's really really important i'd also say that i'm learning that different families want different types of services it's not a one-size-fits-all approach and i share that with you again just trying to whether it's members of our

080lgbtq community and the services that they may be looking for the members of our bipark population and members of our majority population it's things that we need to think about it really rooted in what people are experiencing and asking them what they like and want some of those services to be and making sure that we're not providing a one-size-fits-all approach i think it's really important i'm really proud that our district invests a lot in employee wellness we have a resiliency coordinator here at the district level actually participated in some professional development with all of our school principals just last week around how we can provide more robust supports to our staff both at the central office level and in our schools around just resiliency and what does that even mean in a work context when

081we're always asking people to do more and do more and do more our district has centered our priorities around belonging and accelerating learning they're mute it's a both end it's not it's not one before the other but i can't tell you enough how important the need for additional supports but also through legislation i would say selfishly that we have to incentivize various agencies to thread the needle around how these various supports and resources are connected and create coherence in that ecosystem so families are not having to navigate websites when their family's in crisis that's not the solution and so having more robust community conversations about this learning about it i'm also very excited about governor polis's transformation funds using and leveraging american rescue plan dollars to incentivize agencies to come together our local cities and

082towns we're actually having these conversations that we probably should have been having years ago but they're they're starting to happen now but we need more legislation to incentivize that robust nature to make sure that these services it's not just more that we're actually connecting people to what they want what they need and really making sure that we're not creating a competitive ecosystem but an ecosystem that is is is getting to the people and that's where i'm seeing in my experiences in our community that that's an area of struggle and i'll close with this because you also brought up homelessness i don't believe that larimer county yet has any facilities for children experiencing homelessness that is an area of need that we need to have a robust conversation about especially unaccompanied youth students who age out

083there 18 years old and don't have resources they're struggling to figure out places where they can find just basic shelter in our community and again that's not to be coming from a place of gloom and doom it's coming from a place of wanting to work in partnership with all of you to solve that problem thanks very much superintendent kingsley for that overview and you your our guests are certainly welcome to follow up with additional questions as the as the conversation ensues here but at the minute i'll throw it to uh other board members to ask some questions it looks like dj has one can i touch on the broadband one sure also is is we are greatly appreciated that that has been added because as you mentioned getting students hooked up to the internet is

084very important and hopefully we never have to do the online teaching again but the resources that are available out just all the time out there for students to be able to connect is very important to us and so um you know you run into the the issue of the these like the city of fort collins coming up with their own broadband but we unfortunately have you know uh we're more than the city and then there's pockets that are right connected to the city that unfortunately have not been able to get hooked up uh even to comcast at times and i i will tell you the one story of when we did have to go online we had mobile home parks that were just on the edge and we couldn't get them hooked up and it

085was a challenge to get those students online and we need to make sure that we are are meeting those needs of all the students out there but the the idea that this is talked about in the way of a necessary service is so appreciative right now and i i think you know getting it up to some of the mountain locations is going to be even more of a challenge at times but it is definitely going to be important for all of our students that we have out there so i really appreciate you bringing that up and talking about it and pushing forward on it i think you know you've got a lot of the conversation ends up to those mountain schools or those mountain students out there but we got to make sure that we're

086also getting those little pockets that kind of fall in between the city or the county or or what else and we've got to try to get those people connected better so thank you for that and keep pushing forward on that one dj um have you talked to the colorado broadband office about those pockets of areas that are not getting services or have you had any luck in we did have luck with with getting uh comcast actually move one of their hookups a little closer and then we use the myfi last time i knew uh for them does that sound right to you guys at all yep add a little bit i just wanted to answer i have an answer for homeless youth that i want to touch on but now that we're talking broadband right

087now unfortunately the results of the wildfire i'm on the wildfire matters committee interim committee and it i saw the results of not having broadband in mountain communities in even unincorporated parts of larimer county and how important it was for communication period but i think the on out of bad things comes some good things and i think what we learned was we need more broadband period up there so unfortunately the fire brought that out a lot in the cameron peak area for example um so that along with and they are putting in broadband up there so i think that will help tremendously to students that are in those areas i'm not sure how far along they are right now but i just wanted to make sure that everyone knew that broadband is being brought into those

088areas secondly in regards to your question um superintendent kinsley about the homeless youth yes there there was a bill that was passed i brought the bill forward it actually came from larimer county um folks uh in loveland and uh about homeless youth um there were kids that uh were scared to be on the street uh had problems at home couldn't go home but also maybe couldn't go out in the streets so um i learned that and i did not know that shelters did not accept uh people under the age of 18. so we changed that in in circumstances where this is a critical issue for that particular child and so the bill now allows children or young adults 14 to 18 to be able to go into that shelter seek help and hopefully get together

089with their guardian or their parent uh but it but it's a really important bill i think that might even save some lives senator what bill is what's the number on that it i i can look it up for you sally i i really okay yeah do you know so just to be clear that that bill passed last year senators um it was in um 2020 for 2019 okay 2020. it's currently lost 20 20. yeah yeah because we got that done during the special special session yes at the end of session um so i was on that bill with senator janelle and really i'm just just to be clear what that bill does is it allows those that age student to consent to be sheltered and i believe it has to be instill a youth specific

090a youth shelter no i mean they can go in a normal they can go to shelter to my understanding i'll get the bill number for you but um i think the important thing is that um thank you all right i appreciate that representative if sure representative bassnicker go ahead thank you and just a quick note on the broadband piece i wanted to just flag for you uh two things i sit on the agriculture livestock and water committee in the house as well as the transportation and local government committee this past legislative session we saw a number of bills come through which prioritized federal stimulus dollars to be directed towards local governments jurisdictions counties etc that could be then be used for rural broadband deployment development oftentimes it's middle mile and last mile projects which are

091just not cost effective for an isp to engage in and so i just wanted to reiterate that the state legislature is indeed very aware of that issue and i welcome any opportunity to partner with you on that um the other thing i wanted to just mention to you is i think it was last month or perhaps the month before uh representative kip and i think senator john janelle and myself heard a great presentation by our larimer county uh government here county commissioner shattuck mcdally i know is working very closely in the same regard right trying to identify pockets in larimer county where service does not exist perhaps it's cost prohibitive for those middle mile or last mile projects to be taken into effect perhaps there's other compounding factors a mobile home park it's difficult to

092pull in uh fiber because that's private property that park owner can often control what service park residents have access to but larimer county i think has shown us at least the incredible amount of research they've done and and the projects that they have i think through grant funding in line or on tap that they'd like to tackle with some of those dollars so please do consider any one of us a resource to that end whatever extent we can be helpful and just to pipe in one more time that it was um the homeless sp2106 was consent to shelter and services by homeless use and um really i think also just in conjunction with that loveland was looking at putting a homeless or a shelter in place specifically for those youth but they needed this law

093to pass before they could do that so hopefully they've made some progress thank you okay thanks very much uh other uh questions or uh conversation starters from the board kristen would you like to go ahead sure right um i love that you're talking a lot about the mental health aspects of things right now and i think that's fantastic both for students and for staff because it's definitely needed in both areas um you know i absolutely believe superintendent kingsley when they said triple in numbers i believe it uh there's just so much stress happening right now um and to that end what i would love to see you we're talking about um the compression of the the mental health so that you could have um sorry not that's not the correct word for it um but

094you could have this you know through states um compacting thank you that was it um so you could have that um you know the mental health workers from various states working within our state um the licensure can be um done and i think we need to look at the same thing for teachers um because that is something that teach you know teachers are coming in and the licensure is from a different state or whatever it might be and it they just they have to go through the process again and that's not something that we really necessarily need to put them through um i think it'd be something that would be super helpful um as far as when you're talking about that with um making it with mental health um you know making it easier what

095we'd like what i would personally love to see is making it easier and encouraging mental health workers to work in schools so if there's a way for them to do that i know that we have had for instance school psychologist positions and school counselor and social working positions that have been empty for months because there just are no people to fill the positions so if we can make some way to have that encouragement there maybe through some loan forgiveness or tuition reimbursement if you know kind of like if doctors agree to t uh to to go to rural hospitals teachers agree to go to rural school districts mental health professionals agree to work in schools for a certain number of years that we could have some loan forgiveness or tuition reimbursement program for something like

096that i just wanted to add that i literally was just came from a meeting with north uh north range behavioral center so um they have a school-based model that they're it's very successful in greeley evans school district and actually six other districts um uh that they're going to be implementing but how that works is is that north range so i guess that would be summits is it summerstone or because i know they're doing amazing work in laramie county i don't know if this is already happening so forgive me if it's already happening but one of the things that i thought was really amazing because all the school districts and the different schools are in this need this model basically the so north range will basically front the monies to implement the model i think it's

097like for a year so that you can measure the success but then in the end everybody invests in that program right to see it to fruition and longevity right and what that does is it it includes having um they also have like you know how you have your community health centers that have those school-based health clinics it's very similar to that but it's mental health and um so say for instance a student um you know it could go anywhere from feeling the blues one day or maybe um you know they they had an altercation you know something like that all the way up to trauma um and it's right there at the school and then they can also help with family you know intervention like all kinds of things family therapy and because usually something's

098happening in the home as well so so it's it's like a continuum care kind of model i'd be happy to connect you with that model so you could see it maybe with a slide deck or something like that or presentation but um i just really think that it's just a really great move forward in this respect because everybody is dealing with it and there's no reason to recreate the wheel you know um but anyway i'd be happy to do that if that's something of interest sure go ahead so thank you for offering that we would love to i would love to learn more to see what the implications are on staff and or the potential of adding additional resources one of the additional challenges i think it's important to name in this space probably two

099of them is one is that as we're problem solving rapidly across agencies even just internally we're focused on one-time dollars solving these problems and there's tremendous challenges as we all know with putting one-time dollars to people and staff where we don't have a sustainability plan and so that's an incredible challenge that i think is really require it's it's it's not requiring it's it's limiting our imagineering in this space uh and i don't know the solution to that um but you know we're grateful for the yeah that's that's how you're going to make the most out of those funding dollars when you get together with private and public sector and you bring in your nonprofits and you know all of your community leaders at the table all your stakeholders and you get to actually open those

100conversations up so that i mean if you only had someone like say all of you were at the table but you didn't have other people that were at the table maybe bringing in something that you weren't aware of that was happening you're missing things right but you also have buy-in from all of those people because you'll you know so many people care about this issue and you'd be surprised the support that's out there you know in regards to investing in something especially if you can prove that it's measurable you know successfully right um but again one time that one time dollars absolutely i agree with you and a lot of the dish a lot of the region i'm sorry a lot of the counties are really thinking in that in that in that way a

101collective impact approach to utilize that one-time funding because to make a dent in a major crisis like mental health or housing or things like that or or people experiencing homelessness because you can't do it alone and it's not going to go away so you don't want to just put a band-aid on it with that money you want to bring some you know x amount of people together or as many people together in your community that can invest in that issue you know and problem-solve with you and it becomes a you know collaborative partnership that's that's um what i've been having conversations with people and that that's the way they're approaching it because again you can't do it alone um if i can add one other comment too and one of the things that i appreciated

102most about your initial question around behavioral health is that you included staff in the question right and while we're here today our schools were closed today due to staffing shortages they were closed yesterday as well due to staffing shortages the fragile nature of our institution right now as a result of the pure exhaustion that people are experiencing as a result of the things that are creating compression on their families so such as personal things that we're dealing with as a result of the pandemic but also professionally i think we i don't want to say underestimated the magnitude the sheer magnitude of what our children and what we are still continuing to learn about ourselves of how we have been experiencing the last two years of our lives but it's playing out every day in our

103classrooms and in our schools and these staffing shortages are a crisis i cannot close our district again right as a result of that on average we're having approximately around 250 or so teachers out of our school district a day that's being compounded as a result of quarantines and other scenarios that we need to think creatively about but it's also people just in terms of how they're experiencing life right now it's compiling and compounding itself when we talk about our bus driver shortages our shortages for paraprofessionals for school counselors for child and nutrition services and so for the few people that we have left they're pitching in and doing the work of two and three other people and the sustainability of that model is not it's just not there i had a conversation with a bus

104driver in our district a week ago this bus driver has been working their tail off in this system trying to figure out everything they can do to support their family take on as many extra hours football games extracurricular activities they've been homeless for the last three and a half months and the challenge is that they're experiencing trying to take on additional work and the sacrifice of having to leave their children outside of a hotel door because they can't get to them because they're at a football game trying to support their family that's the reality of what people these people aren't are not unemployed we're interacting with them every day they're asset limited they're income constrained and they're employed but they're also hopeful optimists who are trying to figure out whatever they can do to serve

105this community serve their family to make us continue to grow better and stronger as a school district the adaptive challenges that we're trying to tackle while people are in crisis is also preventing us from being the imagineers that we need to be collectively i would say yes and so whether that's affordable housing paying people a fair wage this is not our bus drivers and just child nutrition services it's negatively and disproportionately impacting our classified staff but if you're a new teacher to this community i don't know how you find a place to live and call it you know you get a mortgage unless you've been here for twenty thirty years and those are real challenges their people are changing career professionals are now changing you know what they thought was a career now into a

106job and it's compounded further by the professional development implications the number of people that we're training for cdl licensure the number of teachers we have to continue to train and how to be great literacy instructors those are additional costs that are exponentially larger than what we can afford and so how that's playing out every single day is super significant and i thought it was important to name just in the fact that we're here today in person when our schools couldn't be and the challenges that i'm sure many of our families had to face as a result of that potentially not having child care the magnitude of the problems that we're discussing and the opportunities to hopefully solve these are just incredibly significant i know that's you know that that's why you're here and we're grateful

107for that but i just thought it was important to put a face or two to some of these scenarios because it's not just our children as you alluded to in your initial question in many instances it's also our staff thank you so much for sharing that thanks superintendent kingsley i really appreciate the clarification and amplification of that that important message go ahead if i might and i know this is not the answer to the world's problems but just in terms of the discussion on mental health i just did want to make sure that some of those one-time dollars are going to a program which is allowing every um kid in the state basically um you know at least until the money runs out um to have three free mental health telehealth exams and so i

108hope you guys are advertising that to the district and then one of the other things just for the adults i wanted to mention that one of the laws that we did get signed into law this year ensures that you know if you you know that health insurance must cover an annual mental health wellness exam in addition to an annual physical exam because we do i mean i think that's one of those bipartisan things now the legislature we all recognize that behavioral health is having a huge impact everywhere in our state so i just wanted to make sure you're aware of those senator janelle if you'd like my comment yes thank you and i was this is in regards to substitute teachers and i know that there's a shortage of substitute teachers as well um do

109they how how are you trying to innovatively get substitute teachers do they have health care coverage do they have health care coverage do they have anything as far as incentives for sub substitute teachers mr larson our executive director for human resources may i invite you into that conversation just want to make sure i'm giving accurate information let's get you a microphone hold on one second we're green okay uh so right now we have uh one main substitute incentive we're looking for longevity in our subs so that they come in and sub more than just a few days in a pay period we're telling them that if they sub 10 days in a pay period they'll receive a 350 bonus in addition to the 115 a day rate um our subs do not qualify for benefits

110um and that's not something that we've looked at doing based on the sheer number of hours and days for throughout the year we do have in-building floating subs it was a position that we started last year these are subs that are dedicated to one site and are there all the time those subs do receive benefits and they do receive actually an hourly rate instead of a daily rate we treat them as classified employees now that are benefited so we have really been looking in the weeds for anybody who would want to be a sub a lot of outreach to csu a lot of outreach to our parent community too a lot of times parents want to volunteer in schools and we say hey would you like to volunteer and get paid and they can come

111in and do some substituting so we've been really working hard on that and every two weeks we take in a class of about 20 people and we do these sub orientations every two weeks as they come in thank you for that explanation i just wanted to ask have you gotten any seniors retired folks that want to come in and substitute teach has that been something that you've seen an increase in regards to i don't believe so i mean i think that in the front page of our newspaper this morning our our sub pool is actually half of what it was a year ago um so we're hiring okay thanks so kristen if you'd like to yeah one of the things that i'd like to address on that is from what i understand um having spoken

112to somebody who's recently retired from the school system um is that they would like to come back but it would affect their para so if they come back then that means that their retirement will be you know if they were a teacher making um you know uh you know i'm trying to not top dollar but you know the at the top range if you will and they want to come back because they're they've retired and they said but you know what i would i could gladly drive a bus be a nutrition worker be a substitute there's so much that i can do within the schools and i know how this works but if they come back then their para gets diminished so um yeah kathy sorry oh no that's a great comment but we did

113pass a law with it two years ago i think it was um that said and and might not the the specifics of the school district might matter and so maybe it doesn't apply here but there are in some circumstances that para is making an exception for um for teachers who come back into the system where there is a need for those so i would um i think it might be rural school districts if that would be something that we could look at to make an exception regardless of the school district that would be a huge help because i have heard that there are many people who would love to do that on a part-time basis you know a few hours a day not a full day because they have retired but it's you know it

114also they don't they can't afford to have it affect their retirement so if that is something that you could bring to perry to say we have to suspend that rule for a period of time or reduce it or whatever it might be i think that would be extremely helpful no that's a great suggestion so we did it for some we should be able to do it for more thank you other board members have a question dj go ahead and then nate uh i'm gonna jump to uh the preschool because i'm pretty excited by that idea and i think it's it's fantastic that we are actually going to start putting some money towards it uh i do have a couple concerns and this is going to be uh state and federal aspect of it because uh

115it's coming up on the federal one too um first of all the the state one is talking about basically two hours a day ten hours a week um that is a small chunk of time and just comparative you know we we do three three and a half here so it's for what we offer right now and so finding uh the workforce for that is going to be even trickier and so i i want you guys to keep that in mind when we're spending this year going through the process of trying to get this all figured out about how we can do it in 23 and on that same note the the licenses and certifications is another point that we need to make sure that we have that on our radar that we need to make

116sure that we're not making them jump through too many hoops and making it easy for them to adjust make it a possible because there is going to be a big demand i think eventually having the workforce and having the space is going to be a couple of the big aspects of it and so the other part of that is that space one and so for our state i just kind of want to mention that again that if if there's something that we can do to help help the capital dollars to try to make sure we have space for these kids it's very important uh to the federal uh i am so excited that it's being talked about federally i didn't see on there what they talked about as a day for these kids if it's

117going to be a three-hour two-hour day and how that's going to be set up i i think that is an important aspect and my concern is a little bit that colorado unfortunately did another thing where they they did a great thing but sometimes the details get lost out to all of our parents and family members and that two hour block is is concerning because of how we transport or how these kids also get to day care or how you know it's wrap around service and so we we've really got to make sure that we're thinking about this uh throughout i am so thankful again though that we are talking about it and we're taking those steps forward um but we got to make sure that we don't uh get too far ahead that we we

118don't plan it well because i think it has a great opportunity to be part of our whole k through 12 program and to be able to be brought in i think the fact that you know our school district has locations uh that we can grow museum and great but the more that we can pull in those preschool programs that are not connected with the district and build off that so that these kids have the you know the pathway the the feeder system set up it's really going to be helpful for those families and so i am so happy that's out there but i just do want to caution you and have some things for you to look at for on that um and then i'm going to i'm going to jump to this okay sure

119i say something just on that point and don't quote me on this we can find out in terms of uh um the number of number of uh hours and and some of the more some of the uh deeper dive on the details there um we we also know that it hasn't been passed yet so there are going to be provisions that are in the house bill that it may not may be different in the senate bill so um it might behoove us to maybe not not jinx it but um but i i do believe and having done some reading and again you read about these different proposals whether it's from the biden administration or or the house pass proposal or um you know what the latest negotiations are but i do believe and again don't

120quote me on this that there is uh that i think the number that i read was 25 of those funds would be for capacity building for workforce and infrastructure so but um we'll find out for sure representative kip you had something on this topic as well and then you can go on um yeah um thank you so as you all probably remember back about a year ago colorado passed ee which is basically increased the tobacco tax and one of the things that we're doing that is offering free preschool basically for four-year-olds but only a certain number of hours a week it's pretty limited i think it's like 10 to 16 somewhere in there it's a small number but also what we did in this last legislative session is we had the office we created the

121office of early childhood and the the problem that we've had is that early childhood has been parted out to a number of different places right for instance you have your human services which was dealing with the childhood and so some of your pre-k education was there but then some of it was in the department of education it was kind of a big mess so we're trying to um you know put it all in one place i actually serve on the it's a long committee early childhood and school readiness legislative commission and we've been meeting um during the interim and um you know so we're monitoring the progress of what's going on but really you're right it's a huge challenge state wide and we have put some incentives in place to try and improve um both

122the child care workforce and the early childhood educator workforce right but what we have here is we have one of those imbalances like you have a school bus drivers we don't pay them enough right and they have to have a certain amount of education so we're trying to make it real easier for them to get earn that you know get that education but we have a number of providers a number of different categories and we are trying to meet the need but even with pushing for it and providing incentives it's going to be challenging to get the number of providers out there we need so um stay tuned you can always look at what that those organizations are doing online but if you need information happy to forward it to you but yeah we're totally

123aware of that and i'm sorry so dj you had something else you wanted to say and then we want to let nate get in here yeah i i was gonna i want to jump to the other side so we had preschool and then you guys talked about the pathways and career readiness and um those to me since even before i got on the board has been a big change for education in the last few years and and what our community and the businesses all want from us so i'm we're we've been addressing that early childhood and i think that's great fantastic you know and the the career readiness the pathways have been uh throughout the nation is really kind of hit and miss on where they're coming at it and so i'm really excited the

124fact that this is being talked at a federal level and this is something that you know it's going to take a commitment of our government government agencies to put some dollars behind it because you know we are shifting from what our core business you know was with abc's basically uh to trying to you know give these students uh options when they graduate and to do that again it takes capital and it also takes a different manpower and different teachers and so i appreciate that you guys are doing that i i commend you to keep pushing forward on that because education has as it always will continue to change and evolve and so the fact that we are we're talking about this is great and we just need to find the different resources to make it

125a reality for all these students and so uh you know the state has done a lot of stuff to give us grants which has helped us to be able to step up but again if our federal partners can do something else to help with that that would be fantastic also so thank you uh looks like representative kip has a comment on this as well and then we'll go to nate yeah sorry about that i also serve on the um as an advisor to the colorado commission on higher education where this year um we've been working on the 1330 task force so hb 21 1330 with a bill that's going to invest some money basically in those pathways right and trying to make those one-time investments again so um i urge you to look at the

126work of the 1330 there's a couple of different task forces that have been working on that to see where they can invest and leverage those dollars but yes we are well aware also something that might be of interest to you folks who are interested in that type of thing is the roi report that's put up by the colorado department of higher education roi stands for return on investment and basically what that says if my kid or if i was a student go to a particular kind of school and get a particular kind of education what's that return on investment look like so um just something maybe to keep in mind so just don't look at it if your students have already gone to that school okay thanks uh nate you had a question or a

127discussion yeah two things one is for our federal folks thank you for your commitment and work on idea funding it's really helpful and critical and i hope that senators bennett and hickenlooper can partner on that legislation and thank you to representative goose for his championing of that legislation and and i think there was a year or two ago he did the same thing so we appreciate that um for our state folks um i wondered if you could talk uh give us your thoughts about what's likely to happen with state testing and accountability following the covid pauses and wondered if you know how the general assembly might handle that thanks um that's a great question and um honestly i would imagine that they're going to go forward i have not heard but um it's possible that

128there would be legislation to allow it to be paused for another year but i have not heard of that yet if you guys think that there's a need i would be anxious to hear that and i will take that back to my colleagues and and see what we can do yeah i think that there is a need um i think it would take a lot of stress out of the system we're continuing to prioritize our core business we know learning and teaching matters we need to continue to measure our students but summative measures is only one way of measuring student growth and our state accountability system in my opinion is quite sophisticated and there's other ways of taking a look at that so in the event that there's an opportunity to extend that we would

129be interested so i just want to clarify so you want to have the testing brought back oh you want it paused okay thank you clarification taken go ahead representative bassnecker well thank you i would um echo representative kip's remarks that feedback there would be very helpful and certainly happy to take that to colleagues out of personal experience i had a kindergartner who started school two years ago she attended half of your school and now she is back in school this year as a second grader and going through that process and you can imagine how hard her teachers worked over the course that last year and a half to do everything they could for her to be the best learner she could be right we know that and yet at the same time we need to

130ask the question about to what level is this testing appropriate given everything that's happened in the last couple years so i i would absolutely be um welcome your feedback there and certainly would want to take that to our colleagues and express the same you have a follow-up on that carolyn or okay dj if you want to do the follow-up and then we need to yeah i just i want to um throw out there if if we could have some creative thinking with that on uh the school's accountability aspect of that too that you know if a school is sat on a certain status for a while if there's some way that we can we can get that checked because if they've made their improvements but we haven't been able to have the test scores to

131do it if there would be some way to that we can creatively think about doing that it would be beneficial for those schools not to have to go through certain paperwork if we've made the improvements so we have an example of that here in our district um if i could also mention to my federal colleagues um that you know that a lot of that those federal testing mandates come from the federal level and most of the testing we do is required by the federal level and so if they have to be willing to allow us to pause now i'll tell you it was a fight last year and we only came up with a compromise that kind of let everybody half not do the tests but um just um fyi it would be really nice

132if you guys well we'll we'll definitely get back to you on that one because it's in this given the stress that's in the system there's a lot of there's a lot of potential for gain there carolyn you wanted to ask question or raise a topic yeah just a few things and so um sally thanks for talking about the partnerships for mental health i think that that's really going to be important for for school districts going forward leveraging um community partnerships with uh not-for-profits and maybe with some for-profit companies and i know that summit stone health partners has just opened a clinic in thompson school district from in one of their high schools a mental health clinic and i look forward to visiting that clinic with with brian um here probably in january so we can

133kind of learn more about that and maybe bring that model into our district so i'm really excited about about that and then i also wanted to talk a little bit about our homelessness problem and just like brian i had a chance to see this up close and personal with a parent who works for me and she shared with me that she was homeless and um so i asked her all the questions did she do this did she do that had she accessed this agency that agency and what happened here to her i just want to share with you a little bit about what happened to her is during covid they had some insecurity problems with job their jobs and so couldn't pay their rent but because of the eviction moratorium they were able to stay

134in their apartment after the eviction moratorium ended they were evicted and even though now they were both in her and her partner were employed and were being able to save money and had money for a down payment on an apartment could now not get an apartment because their credit was ruined because of the eviction and part of that eviction moratorium part of the reason for that was to give landlords time or give people time to get money covered relief funds to pay for rent and it's my understanding that those coveted relief dollars that were meant for rent for rental for for for people who couldn't pay their rent during um the coveted relief times that less than 10 percent of that money was ever distributed now all that money to my understanding is still sitting

135there i'd like to encourage you to do some creative thinking and help out these parents that brian is talking about and the parent that i'm talking about that through no fault of their own were waiting for that covert relief money that never came and then became homeless and now are all gainfully employed and can save money but still cannot gain housing because their credit was ruined so i think that that would go a long ways to helping these families being able to be able to get into housing if they could just pay that back rent or if some money could be made available from that covert relief fund money that wasn't wasn't spent the way it should have been from my understanding and then um i guess that i mean that was the last thing

136that i had just it was about that covert relief money about that maybe since it was just sitting there that maybe it could be spent to help these people become housed i just want to say before i let kathy that i too was very surprised with the amount of money that we have for that particular purpose that 10 to 20 percent was was is all that we have allocated right now and so um i i'm i'm not sure why um but i'm definitely going to look into that because it really struck a chord with me as well because of um you know the money there was quite a bit of money to help quite a num a large number of people so um i too am in that questioning that percentage of money that's been

137used represent that's a really good question so um as of october 21st 41.1 of the era one funds which are from [Music] some of that first tranche of money have been expended larimer county was actually pretty much always at the forefront of giving out those dollars there were a lot of counties that were not as giving out those dollars as efficiently but just so you know there's era one and there there's era 2 er1 for colorado had um 247 million in it and era 2 had 196 million they still have to give out um the er 82 money but yeah they're i mean people do need to apply for it though and they have become much more efficient at getting that money out starting in august so people who have applied for that money and

138were still waiting for it when they got evicted what happens they should get their money um well that's what i want is wondering so you know they can if you have somebody with a particular situation you can always have them feel free to reach out to us and we can um check on um the specifics and i believe referee snecker has something to add here no thank you and um i would just echo those comments and just say that we routinely work closely with our federal delegation and also our colleagues in the state house and senate anytime there's a constituent in our community who is facing eviction or homelessness you know please do reach out and we will make it a priority to ensure that they have whatever resources we can leverage to keep them

139housed i think everyone here recognizes that it's immensely more costly to re-house someone and that doesn't even take into account the emotional and physical cost it can take on an individual or family to go through that situation so please do consider us a resource it doesn't matter if they're any one of our constituents it really doesn't we routinely work with state agencies in regard to like unemployment claims you know things get hung up in the system there's unintended consequences dollars aren't coming as quickly as they need to any one of these things we are happy to poke and press and ask the questions to make sure that folks have the resources they need in our community i did want to just highlight one additional resource and entity that i think we all have worked closely

140with over the last couple of months and that's the covet 19 eviction defense project here in colorado that is a non-profit but they do some great pro bono legal work on behalf of folks who are facing eviction or the consequences of eviction i think their website is ced project.com but you can look them up again it's a great resource we always like to take care of things in-house but we also do rely on community partners to really get this thing done so consider us a resource as well thank you very much um i'll just do a housekeeping thing here and then we'll just continue i would say in order to respect the time of our guests and my fellow board members we'll we'll target being done in about a half an hour if that's if

141that's okay with folks so people can think about what they want to fit into that time so i don't know whether jaz or jim you have something you want to add to the discussion since you haven't spoken up yet go ahead jim okay i'll go ahead uh superintendent kingsley spoke very eloquently about the high frustration level across all the different jobs in the district and i think you know that when you combine a high frustration level with relatively low pay the end result is part of what we're seeing right now and so i know that looking longer term which i think is partly where superintendent kingsley was going not just on short-term funds but looking longer term i know tabor's a tough nut to crack it's great to see governor paul's budget relieving some of

142the budget stabilization issues my question i guess is if you were on this board where would you put your energy and partnership uh to make a longer term change in the funding for our district yeah i'm asking the group i don't know any of our state since most of our funding comes through the state any thoughts from the state folks representative kemp well having served on the board i think we all know that the most important thing we need to do is properly fund our schools because if we can properly fund our schools they can better pay for the bus drivers they don't have for the substitute teachers they don't have for not having some of the worst paid teachers in the entire country right it's not okay that we're in the position that we're

143in but it is where we are we are doing what we can i think everybody agrees at the state level i think all hundred of my colleagues for the most part would say yes we need to better fund our public schools you know but as again the devil is in the details and it's how do we get there and how do we go about it i think there might be some proposals coming this year that could help us with that and i certainly encourage you to support those if they do one of the things i will tell you that you can do as school board members is lobby and advocate and tell us what's important to you like tonight is the first night i heard that it would be useful to have another pause in

144testing i'm not saying that's going to be easy but now that we know it's important to you that's something that we can ask for and i was going to say one other thing but yeah the oh testifying because of the pandemic we now have allowed remote testimony i expect that remote testimony options will continue so that means that you don't basically have to plan an entire day to come down to the capitol and testify on a bill so i would highly encourage you all to take advantage of those opportunities i mean when i would go down and do it when i was on the school board it would be you know you have to allow two hours to get there you'll have to have to allow two hours to get back it takes time and

145money to park and be down there and in addition you never know how long you're going to be down there because we're incredibly inconsiderate of our people who come to the capitol and we keep them waiting all the time and it's terrible and i'm sorry for that i can't control it but remote testimony makes it a whole lot better it's not perfect but um i really encourage you to um and then text us you guys should have all of our text numbers if there's something that you say oh you guys are voting on this today you need to know that we think this is important if that's where you are let us know please senators in all thank you i um i'm going to put on the hat that i am more familiar with because

146how can you learn if you have depression or if you have suicidal ideations and and to me the health of our students the health of our teachers are extremely important because if you don't have your health how in the world are you going to be able to learn and so i would say the answer to that question is the physical and the mental health issues that are going to be you know um left in the wake of covid and how we can help from teachers to students and everybody in between to to get well however we want to define well so that's i agree with representative kipp but this is also from my viewpoint health is the most important thing thank you miss patrello did you want to add something i just wanted to also

147echo on the federal level just like what representative kipp was saying we we often especially because the center is on the health committee we look to you educators who are in the field of education to help guide us on different policies coming down so if there's like i'll give you an example we had a we had a stakeholder discussion with our legislative team um in regards to um a library act i think it was senate bill 127. so they were able to weigh in on that on that language to let us know yes it's strong we support it you know maybe this part here is weak you know it may have unintended consequences or it's not it's not really supporting us in the areas that we need the support so if you see something coming

148down from the senate i know james is the same way we work we partner up a lot on the different topics and issues and policy so if you see something and you say you know i don't i have some concerns or i love this yes i support this either way we want to hear from you because that's how we help that's how the senators can help you really create innovative and and strong policy that's going to actually make a good impact thank you um is i guess my main um concern around testing and around things that are on a federal level that if you have other superintendents that are also and other school boards that feel the same way it's very important for them to advocate on a federal level to all of us so

149that we are very aware of your stance it's more than just one school district it's a lot of school districts that feel that way and it's similar on other issues on a federal level that the more you can give us some feedback and and have it be broad so uh you know other superintendents across the state other superintendents within our congressional district we do definitely listen the congressman definitely listens to the feedback and the letters that we've gotten from the board have carried weight so we appreciate that thank you so much jess you want to raise something and then made if you wanted okay nate if you just have a follow-up to that um yeah we'll work with casby on that and i'm the current chair of the casby federal relations network so um we'll

150try to get together on on that and get something to you thanks great jess you wanted something to add something yeah sorry about that um one thing kind of piggybacking on something kristen said earlier was you talk about the compact licensure for our special ed mental health specialist and she was talking about doing also for teachers um i've heard about that happening regionally is this talking about doing it across the entire united states so if you're somebody in new jersey you can do it in colorado or are we still talking in a regional sort of space are we talking mainly about well for the compact specifically mental health professionals hopefully that transitions to teachers at some point but for the time being mental health um right now it would start out uh regional or other

151state it's um it's yet to be determined in that language i mean um a lot of these compacts that we've done with dentists or dental hygienists or other healthcare providers have been within the region but um they're going into the midwest and and even the east coast so it's you know it's what the con who wants to be in the compact yes if i could just mention oh representative cape these types of compacts in the last year and i think there's more coming because we recognize the need but they're basically designed as interstate compacts so what you have to join the compact of the state so basically what we're doing when we create legislation is usually we're joining a compact i've not heard of a teacher compact but that's a really good idea and we

152could maybe start one and then there's usually a minimum number of states before the compact really gets going but then it's you know it's kind of like cross licensure so you can just work in either state and so yeah did okay nate on the compact idea does a compact exist that we want to join or are we talking about creating a compact for mental health professionals um i i don't have an answer for you right now i i'm not sure if one exists i believe it might and uh i can let you know any additional follow-up or questions just go ahead sure mine's more of a comment at this point but um i would encourage you to think about doing that for teachers as well in creating that compact because we're in dire need not

153just of teachers of any really any professional in the school district and colorado continues to be a magnet um for families to move to even though it's really expensive so like for example i moved from arizona i have an arizona teaching certificate at the time that we moved i became a stay-at-home parent i you know had that choice either way but i would have probably considered going back into a school building when my son was maybe two or three but by that point the number of hoops that i have to jump through to transition to colorado after being out of the workforce for a minute i found other avenues of participating in that conversation without being an educator myself so you might find that we have people willing to do these jobs that they just

154don't know how to navigate the hoops or they have found other avenues of being in the workforce and being connected to education without being an educator so okay great uh kristin looks like you have something and then people don't want to think about last questions or comments and and then i'll throw something in sure and if i can just follow up on that i think um as we're talking about the compact maybe it's regional or or national but i also think that that's where we need to start talking about um things like um you know forgiving student loans we can do that on a local basis as well but i really think that this needs to be done at a national level um you know what we're finding you know i think superintendent kingsley spoke

155again very eloquently about the the dire need that we are in and we are a great school district that people flock to and so imagine what's going on in school districts that are not as great and they're having trouble you know it's just exponentially bad it works for them and so what we need to be doing is thinking at a much higher level and not just about a district or a county or a state but talking about it at a national level if you're willing to go into teaching let's talk about great you can teach you can go to school here because it's your state school and you can get um you know loans if you teach in anywhere in the united states those loans can be you know either deferred or paid better however

156it might be what we whatever we can do for them but if you are teaching then that's fantastic this is what we need we do not have we had a teacher crisis before covet we had a teacher crisis coming into this and now we have people who are retiring early because you know it's just the crisis right now that the mental stamina um that these teachers need to have i was reading a an article today on vocational awe and that's where we are with our teachers and i know you all understand this but we expect our teachers to perform heroics on a daily basis the same way we expect our mental health professionals to perform heroics on a daily basis and our health professionals are doing this as well and the thing is it can't

157be done continually we have to provide them some sort of respite we have to provide them some encouragement to continue to go into this so again if we if there's some way there's an article in chalkbeat that i can send you all and it talks about multiple ways to go ahead and do this offering tuition reimbursement for college students and education programs for giving current teachers student loans awarding scholarships to promising high school seniors entering teacher training programs reviving teacher prep programs and colleges easing restrictions on accepting teacher licenses from other states simplifying the employment pathway for people who graduated from teacher prep programs but did not complete all requirements for certification and it just goes on from there and i think that's something that we need to be thinking about not just at a

158local level but at a national level so um i know that that was a little bit of preaching to the choir because i know you all are thinking that way um but i think to talk to your friend to your friends your colleagues your um you know the senators the the representatives that you work for i think that would be tremendous for us so thank you go ahead so you're talking about expanding public service loan forgiveness type programs making them more specific for teachers and they have revamped public service loan forgiveness i don't know if you're aware of that i could send you some information i have experienced a couple of constituents i've been working with for five years and they had over almost two hundred thousand dollars one individual had almost two hundred thousand

159dollars worth of loans forgiven last week and he was ecstatic so it's and and he had been given all the you know all the excuses all the barriers why they wouldn't do it and for the next year there is a great opportunity for um teachers and anyone you know that has tried for public service unforgiveness it has expanded the ability to qualify for it tremendously so that's a real positive but i agree that there there are other opportunities i would like that chalk beat absolutely yeah and i mean and just you know as an example i have a um a friend who is a student at um csu and they want to become a teacher and it's wonderful and they're looking at the future and saying well i have to pay this state institution so

160that i can go work for free at another institution so i'm paying somebody to learn my job it's it's a little you know there are things there that are a little backwards as well that maybe we can work with people that um it's more of an internship than it is i need to pay a um somebody to to then um let me internship somewhere else so it just there i think there are many avenues that we can look at okay so uh carolyn did you have something else you wanted to yes i know we've talked about mental health a lot but i also did want to acknowledge sally the the work that hickenlooper has done around career readiness specifically career-wise that he instituted in 2018 to help students get into career pathways i think that

161that's really going to be the way of the future for school districts is more career planning for students as they come out of school ready to work and not not in a dead-end way i think about career-wise i think about you know multiple pathways that lead to multiple careers and that our students will be lifelong learners because technology is changing so fast we have to prepare our students to be lifelong learners and so i think that career planning is going to be really important and i also think that career planning is going to be critical to working our way out of our our shortage of employees right we need to get kids ready for the career pathways that we have available a student should never leave a high school without an idea of what they

162want to do or or where they can go to get the education that they need and that money should never be a barrier for our students when they leave here to get the training that they need so i i did want to acknowledge all of the work that taken looper did around a career rise and i appreciate that work and i and i really would like to see that really expanded and made robust all across the state dj did you have one other thing you wanted to add well i think yeah so what why don't you go ahead if you want to make a closing statement and then and then i got a question or two and so uh first of all i want to as the legislative chair here on our psd board i

163you know sat down and came with a lot of different areas that i thought i wanted to cover and i really want to thank you guys for knocking out of the park on the opening because you guys covered almost all of them that was fantastic and i really appreciate you coming and being here i do want to there's a couple call outs that i you know we've talked about that i want to make sure is the idea funding um i am so happy to hear that congressman august is keeping pushing that he was the leader pushing that with our getting the the money into the recovery money for it that went towards it i appreciate that so much that has continually been a focus of his when i've had the opportunity to talk to him

164he is he is right on top of that so thank you senate senator bennett with the child tax reef tax child tax credit there we go uh has i think has hasn't affected schools as much but it affects the community and the families and i greatly appreciate him being a driving force for that and really pushing hard to continue that and so uh i i'm happy to pass that on and for uh hickenlooper i am i'm very excited to hear about the uh the push with the pathways in the career because i think that is as carolyn said is the new way of of what we are expected and so i think it's important that we keep those things on the forefront um our our local legislators thank you for being a contact for me

165uh many times that i've reached out and got feedback about bills that are happening and to bring to the board so thank you again for being such good partners with us to try to make the situation better for our students our community so i just wanted to make sure i got a chance to thank you all and and uh any help that you guys need uh trying to push something through please make sure that you can come to us come to us and and we will we will be there to testify we will be there to get the voices that we need to to make this right for our students so thank you thanks very much for those remarks uh dj so um i will i have i have one question actually that i'm going

166to ask and it's going to be for our state folks and that is what do you see as the longer term prospects for education funding in colorado and on what assumptions do you base that vision if you will that that view of the future because funding is at the heart of a lot of this stuff and we know there are challenges with with tabor for example and other things which limit funding but i'm curious where you think we're going on this go ahead representative kipp um thank you i don't know i've heard that there might be um a ballot initiative coming to um try and find some funding for um for education i'm hoping that's the case um i think it's probably a little bit early to know whether um where we are on that

167but honestly you know we do have tabor in our state we do have tabor does a lot of things tabor says that even though we didn't raise taxes this year for instance that every one of you when you filed your income tax refund you got a 69 or you're going to get that well anyway you're going to get a 69 refund this year right because we're giving money back to voters before we adequately fund education so tabor doesn't just mean that you get a vote on all of your taxes tabor also means that there's a limit to how much revenue we're allowed to keep and we're not allowed to do things like properly fund our schools or our roads or anything else without money tabor also means that there's language that has to appear at

168the beginning of every ballot initiative that does raise revenue that makes it look like a very angry screaming thing shall we raise taxes by right and and it just looks really mean and nasty instead of well what are we actually trying to get done here so there are a lot of limitations that tabor puts in place that keep us from doing things um there are i know um there's still the taber lawsuit which i don't know if it's changed its name if we've changed governors but that was ker versus hickenlooper and this board was um party to that lawsuit and so you probably know where that stands better than i do at this point um that basically questions the constitutionality of a direct democracy because when we became a state we agreed to be a

169republican form of government not you know the capital r kind of republican but a lowercase our republican form of government where we allow our elected officials to make decisions and elected officials elected people all over the state from the state legislature down to school boards have been limited because of what tabor has put in place so i think it's going to require something going to the voters because frankly we are hamstrung in the money that we have and yeah you can say well we can save 2 million here if we don't do this or we can save 5 million here and yeah that money will add up after a while but it's not adding up to the amounts of money that we need plus in order to create a maintenance of effort right not a

170maintenance of effort but we have to continue to increase our education funding by that level of inflation because that's what amendment 23 called for and so we have to keep on ramping that up and so it's like we're on a little you know hamster wheel and we never quite catch up with ourselves i couldn't have i couldn't have said it more eloquently than representative kipp um and i guess i was going to ask you guys a question about where you see the school district in 10 years so it kind of is back and forth but i hope we can get the monies uh that are necessary i know it's a fight we've had constantly since i've been in the legislature and we make incremental progress and then sometimes we go back but just know that

171we're here and with kathy's knowledge of school finance and and all of her uh you know all of her knowledge that um you know we will we will fight for what what what we need to do to help our teachers and our students yes representative bassnecker and then and then i think uh you've raised that you've asked us a question senator chanal and i'm i'm sort of uh looking to uh superintendent kingsley to address that uh so representative basenaker first and i will keep it brief and uh just start by thanking you for uh saving the easiest question for last um certainly not a tough nut to crack and just appreciate the time constraints to be able to do that so should be no problem to get it solved tonight i would just echo what

172representative kip said in regard to the challenges that taber presents i mean and the acknowledgement that i think we all need to face that it pits equally valuable projects that our state needs to fund against one another unfairly right we should not be talking about roads or teacher pay right we should be talking about equitable and and fair and modernized transportation system that allows our teachers to be paid well and get to the districts that are going to do so right i mean these are things that are pitted against one another constantly and i think quite frankly tabor does exactly what it was designed to do in that it forces us into these conversations and it's incredibly effective at doing so and i think unfortunately more and more school districts across our state are facing

173the implications of that right more and more school districts are going to four day in learning weeks right more and more school districts are having difficulty attracting and retaining teachers right because of the constraints that funding places on each individual district in our state as a result i am proud of our community for the work we've done when we can to ensure better funding for our teachers and better pay for our teachers i think that is a point of pride for us as a community but we have to start thinking about this issue as more than just district by district or region by region or county by county this is a state issue right i want my kids to receive a good education here and then i want them to stay here right and if

174we're going to retain the same folks we're trying to educate i think that involves a long-term conversation about what our priorities are as a state and how tabor does or does not align with those priorities thank you uh superintendent kingsley you'd like to make some remarks in response to senator janelle's yeah i love big bold juicy questions like that um so but you did say about 30 minutes or 30 minutes ago so i want to well we'll extend it a little bit yeah no i i appreciate the question because i think you know something that my team and i talk about is we can't complain about what we tolerate and i think this on every side on the other side of every problem is an opportunity as well and for us to be successful for

175us to see all children as being brilliant before they even walk through our doors for us to affirm all children's identities and for us to ensure that all children not just some students experience educational success we're going to need to put big bold ideas on the table in partnership with legislators and try to be creative and figure out ways that we can accomplish just that right now i believe that we were designed as an industry to be a learning organization for children but the things that we all have experienced as adults in our own community in our own backyard over the last two years alone has created such divergent new needs that are emerging that are forcing us to be a learning organization for the adults not just children if we want to double down

176on workforce development opportunities we can't just expect that that's going to happen through an edict from my office people have to be put in situations where they can learn where they can partner with outside entities where they can begin to understand where this is working in the field and how do we do that at scale i think the state of colorado has done a lot of really great work around the read act prioritizing early literacy i would say that that needs to be a priority a priority k-12 even in the post-secondary education as we have students continuing to experience struggles in literacy while they're also still graduating and we need to reconcile why is that having really bold robust conversations we need to double down on behavioral health and mental health what we as board

177member draper earlier talked about considering figuring out ways to incentivize tuition reimbursement i would also like to encourage you to figure out ways if you can to consider how that also applies to continued learning i believe the needs that are we are experiencing require graduate level learning courses for all of our employees that's not going to happen at the end of the day after you've been in the trenches in your classroom teaching your heart out and we're trying to stuff everything we can possibly can into the last 30 minutes you have before you need to go home and feed your own children just doesn't work that way but the things that we're asking teachers to do prioritize literacy instruction prioritize mental health prioritize intervention prioritize equity diversity inclusion prioritize enrichment how do we provide universal

178access to instruction for students with integrated needs and different types of services all of that requires learning i am incredibly proud to be a part of an organization that's committed to that whether it's at the principal level the central office level and our teacher level but the idea here justice is in the details of that we have to go deep and expect a high level of precision in what we do as instructors and as educators and i know the community expects that of us we are one of the strongest districts across the front range our board is very proud of that and we shot it from the mountains but it's not good enough yet because we haven't reached the needs of all of our children and we have to figure out a way collectively together

179in my opinion over the next 10 years to redefine the institution of public education to be equally as committed to learning for our adults and honor them pay them provide them the time can't do it on the cheap and expect that we're going to get to every one of our students graduates with options yet we tell them that all the time and so i think if we can continue to be bold to make sure that our educators know that we see them that we value them and that we actually know through different deeper levels of empathy around what they're experiencing and what our community expectations we should not be lowering our expectations i've never had one teacher one principal in this district asking to lower my expectations of them they want to do it all

180but can't figure out a way to prioritize time energy and attention and themselves and so we need to be honest about that and i think once we can do that we cannot then be begin to be honest about providing real-world real-time solutions to actually accomplish that and i just i'm really grateful for you actively listening and being open to that so thank you very much all right dj you dj you had a quick follow-up to that yeah superintendent kingsley i covered that the where we want to see ourselves inside really well but your 10 10 year question i also want to point out we are a big districts that's going to grow we are we have two new schools opening up uh one in timnath and wellington two areas that are growing quite a bit

181uh you know kova definitely slowed down the growth of northern colorado some but it's going to come and so we are going to have to grow with it and we are going to have to make sure we're meeting the needs of our community and i and part of those needs is the the preschool and those pathways areas again both both uh ends of the spectrum there and so we need to make sure that we're growing with them and and making sure we have those services so that we can provide those things but uh it's kind of exciting time to be on the board because we are going to continue uh not only open these schools but you know at some point there's gonna have to be some elementary schools up north too so we we

182have different areas that we will have challenges for so that was a great question thank you all right so we are just a little bit past the half hour that i had suggested and i want to take this opportunity to thank very much our guests we really appreciate that you took the time to engage in the dialogue that we've had here and your offers for us to get back with you as bills come up and as issues come up and whatnot and you can be assured that we will take advantage of that so thank you so much we really appreciate that i i also i also want to take this moment to uh thank our cabinet and the staff that helped to make this meeting possible i mean obviously you do that for all of

183our meetings but this in in some ways this is special because these two days are supposed to be off you know so thank you so much for taking the time to be with us this evening and for helping to facilitate uh this meeting absent any other urgent uh comment then i will adjourn this meeting at uh nine or sorry 8 54. thank you very much you