001Good evening everyone. Thank you for joining us for our first work session of 2025. Uh we'll go ahead and call the meeting uh to order and then if you don't mind standing with us, we're going to go ahead and do the pledge of allegiance. So, Director Jones, you want to kick us off? United States of America and to the republic for it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All righty, Amy, we can go ahead and do roll call. Mr. Chavis, Mrs. Evansson here. Mrs. Heights here. Mr. Jones here. Miss Lima here. All right. So, this month is board appreciation month and I think Dr. Hill has something he wants to say. Yes. Uh once again, I'll spare you from reading your own recognition. Uh but I am proud to
002read uh this recognition. So, um each January, Mesa County School District 51 honors our school board members during school board recognition month. Serving on the board of education is a volunteer role that demands countless hours of commitment, careful consideration, and tough decision-making. In the past year, our board members have faced particularly challenging decisions, striving to balance the needs of our students, staff, and community amidst complex and ever evolving circumstances. Being a school board member means dedicating personal time to preparing for and attending meetings, reviewing proposals, communicating with the community, and navigating difficult conversations and decisions. Board members serve without pay and are motivated by their belief in the power of public education to shape the future of our community and their commitment to making a meaningful impact on the lives of Mesa County's children. Our
003board members have immense responsibilities. They oversee decisions like adopting a balanced budget for the largest employer in the county, hiring and supporting the district superintendent. Thank you. Um and striving to meet the community's educational goals and expectations through policy adoption. Their work is not always visible, but it is critical to the success of our schools and the well-being of our students. We are proud of the work of our school board and express our gratitude to our schoolboard members for their selfless service and dedication. Their willingness to take on this work during these difficult times deserves recognition and appreciation. On behalf of the students, staff, and families of Mesa County Valley School District 51, we thank our school board members for their efforts and hereby proclaim January 2025 as schoolboard recognition month. Please join us in
004thanking our board members for their invaluable contributions to public education and our D-51 community. Let's uh round of applause for our school board [Applause] members. Thank you. We appreciate it. Um, all right. We have our United Way campaign update and report. Yes. Thank you guys for everything you do. You guys are awesome. Thank you. And we appreciate your support of the United Way of Mesa County and and how our district um partners with them. My name is Corey Hayy. I'm the principal at Appleton Elementary and we are the bookworms, the mighty bookworms. And I'm a chairperson of the District 51 United Way Pledge Campaign. The D51 United Way pledge campaign is an exciting annual event where D51 employees partner with United Way and Mesa County to help fund 34 local programs and 26 community investment
005agencies. These programs serve about 50,000 people in Mesa County and address a variety of social problems focused on healthy community, youth opportunity, and financial security. D51 employees are the largest yearly organization donor to the pledge drive and have given somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.3 million in donations since the partnership began. That's your custodians, cafeteria staff, administrators, teachers, grounds and maintenance, and every other D-51 department being represented in donating some of their hard-earned money to the United Way of Mesa County. They do this because they know it has positively impacts the kids and their families that go to our schools. Before I get to all the good news about what a great partnership it is, I'd like to recognize several people who have made this partnership possible. She's not here tonight, but the brains behind
006all of this is April Hart. She's our D-51 office of volunteer and community partnerships. She's the behind the-scenes organizer. Literally goes through thousands and thousands of um all kinds of pledge forms and everything just to make it all line up correctly and uh it is spotless when she's done. She is amazing person and works tirelessly to do it. Never wants the accolades, never shows up here because she just doesn't like that. but she deserves um a lot of uh just kudos for that. Also, Faith Rodriguez is the United Way of Mesa County Executive Director. She's a new one there. Kira Al is the community impact and outreach manager. And Cassidy Luhan is the donor and grants manager. And they help us out a lot as well. Our own D51 foundation executive director, Dr. Angela Christensen,
007will be sharing some words here in a moment. And we couldn't do this without the 52 D-51 building coordinators who run each building's individual schools pledge drive. And those people work really hard too to make this just add one more plate to spin. And they do a great job uh doing this. So now the great news. Here's the great news. 665 generous D51 employees donated 63,79140 back into the community through United Way of Mesa County. So that's outstanding. We always like to incentivize the giving and so we have some awards that we give out. One of the awards that we'll be giving out um in in the future here, we get some names put on these plaques, but we have some building plaque winners and this is for employee participation increases. And the winners this
008year in the elementary school division with an increase of 11.43% Broadway Elementary. Yeah. And in the middle school division, uh, Booklift Middle School increased by 10.15%. In the high school division, Valley High School went up 16.12% in their donations. And the office building was Emerson. That's a really tight competition. They went up only 1.69, but that's a tough competition right there. So, they did a great job. So, well done. All right. We have um we have some other awards that we need you guys to help us select. We do this every year. Uh these are our um pay period win a day off competitions. And so how this works is if a classified employee puts in $5 per pay period, we choose we they have their name put into a hat basically and we choose
009out of that hat and we we uh pick six of those folks to get a win a day off. And then certified folks, if they put in $10 per pay period, we also choose six of those folks. And then in the administrative area, if they put in 20 bucks per pay period, we choose three of those guys to get a day off. So Angela's going to help me with um passing these around. And if you guys would read the name of the person that you pull out and then we'll give those on to Amy over here and then we can keep track of everybody. So thank you for your help. All right. Which one? All right. Classified. Here we go. Who we get? We need We need six winners from classified. Go for it. Give
010it your best. Deborah Thompson from Loma. All right. Deborah Thompson. Eva Gi from BTK. Wonderful. Uh Katie Bosio from Fra Middle School. Great. Francis Dominguez from Taupe and uh Courtney Adler from Scenic Elementary. Virginia West from Taupe, Ruth McKe from FMS, Rachel Howser from Broadway, one Cat Brown from BMS. [Applause] Roxy McManis from Grand River Academy. Now, our last three names we need to draw from the administrators. These folks put in $20 per pay period. So, we just need three of you guys. Sean Wilson from Taylor. All right. Amy Shepard from Clifton. Right. And Todd McClaskkey from the Career Center. That's awesome. Uh thank you guys for your support in that. want to give uh the floor to Angela Christensen, our D-51 Foundation executive director, who's got some other good information about United Way. Thank
011you so much. Yeah, thank you so much. Um, my name is Angela Christensen and I'm the executive director of the School District 51 Foundation and um, I just want to sincerely thank and start off by acknowledging Corey Hayy. He has been directing this and leading this for so many years and truly without his hard work and effort, I don't think we'd be where we are. Um, and so I'd like to give a round of applause to Corey for all of his hard work. His enthusiasm on the uh, presentations is always inspiring after a long day. Um, I also want to recognize April Hart, as Corey mentioned, um, for her efforts really behind the scenes to make the logistics so seamless in this effort. And thank you for the entire team at United Way led by
012Faith Rodriguez for her hard work that really benefits so many people in our community. She's one of our nonprofit leaders who I work with regularly. This year's totals for the D51 Foundation is the highest ever. We are excited to share and will be receiving over $10,000 from this year's effort. Um, D-51 staff members can designate their donation to a local nonprofit, and it's been exciting to see so many of our D-51 staff members select the D-51 Foundation for their donation. Um, it says to me that they really know the excellent work being done and they know that the funds are going to go right back into the students and schools in school district 51. some of those funds um that they donate to end up going to our Bloom Where You're Planted fund that allows
013students with financial need to participate in extracurricular activities. Some for grants in the classroom for classroom technology like 3D printers and programmable robots. And some of the funds allow teachers to do a little more professional learning to help grow our students academically. The momentum for D-51 and the D-51 Foundation continues to grow. And I'm excited to share that in addition to the highest funds for United Way, we also have raised um for our White Ice Celebration um the highest sponsorship um that we've ever received. Um our 13th annual White Ice Celebration Galla will be coming up in early February. We literally had an 11% increase in sponsorships from last year. So that's pretty exciting. It's been year after year growth and I really believe that a large part of that growth is due to our
014fantastic and strong board of directors and two of them, three of them actually are right here. Um, which is just wonderful to have them on our board of directors. But they're out there connecting with our community and sharing the great things happening in school district 51. and I really appreciate their hard work. So, thanks to everybody who follows the foundation. Um, thanks to everyone who will be purchasing their tickets for White Ice that's coming up and it is truly making a difference all throughout um, Mesa County. Um, we ended up um, listing some incentives that's up on the screen um, for anyone who designated the foundation with their specific donation. And so the incentives are as follows. Um, we g will be giving six tickets to the building with the highest donations to D51 Foundation.
015And Corey, you will have the pleasure of sharing that with your staff at Appleton Elementary tomorrow. The building with the most staff donations to the D-51 Foundation as designated goes to BTK. and then we will work on selecting two names from everyone who donated to United Way and designated it to the foundation and we'll be um sharing that with our uh folks here within this next week. So, thank you so much and uh thanks everyone for the support of nonprofits throughout our community. [Applause] Thank you. I think Corey gets to c congratulate the board every January because you guys always do your update the same time. So, thanks Corey once again. I was like, this is a little deja vu. I think you said the same thing last year. So, but we appreciate all that
016you do. All right. Now, we have our strategic plan update, which is our student and staff wellness team. Saw that one working. Now we're good. Okay. Good evening. Um, thanks for having us here today. So, with me, um, Connie Mack, Dan Banell, and Amy Zortman. And so, a couple of years ago, um, we really combined our, uh, prepared and supported students with prepared and supported staff. And it's really been this beautiful marriage between the two. And so, uh, tonight you'll hear both about staff wellness and student wellness. So, I'll turn it over to Dan and then, uh, Connie and Amy will chime in as well. All right. Well, thank you for, uh, listening to us tonight. It's been, uh, quite a while actually since, uh, staff wellness, student wellness has come together to present to
017you. I believe it was last September. And so, uh, we're just glad to to be able to share some some pretty interesting results and exciting results, uh, when it comes to student wellness and staff wellness. Um, we just want to reenter everybody again on our, um, graduate profile, which grounds us in the work that we do as a district. Uh, the outcomes in our district 51 graduates are that they possess the skills they need to fulfill their lifelong goals, uh, such as college, career, and technical education, military, or fulfill their career pathway of choice. Ultimately, they are uh when they graduate from district 51, they're creative problem solvers. They're culturally connected and they're ready for career in life. So, tonight uh the three focus areas obviously uh are the prepared and supported students, our prepared
018and supported staff, and um both of those two focus areas uh could not do the work that they do without the engaged uh supportive community partners. And we'll talk about those partners here in a little bit. All right. This graphic that I want to show you now is a a graphic that we over the last uh two and a half three years have really grounded ourselves on. Um it was a graphic that we had presented last year when we presented to you on our mental health and wellness um data from our students. Um this is a rendition of the model of Maslo's hierarchy of needs that describes two very important foundational steps. The physiological and the safety needs that must be solid. uh before a sense of belonging or connectedness is achieved. Uh Amy's now
019going to talk about the whole child approach uh that supports both students and staff and through community partnership. All right. Thank you. In order for us to achieve our goals, we know that we cannot do this alone. We utilize the ASCD and CDC's whole school, whole community, whole child model to help guide our community partners um who they are and help for them to help meet the needs of our students. All of these partnerships are incredibly valuable, but to highlight a few, we partner with Mesa County Transportation, Colorado Department of Transportation, and Safe Routes to School for a walk, bike, and roll to school day that happens in October and May every year. Colorado Parks and Wildlife. So, our students can participate in fishing, archery, snowshoeing, and cross-country skiing. Um, our local agriculture business to
020utilize local beef and produce in our meal programs. And so, you know, this month, uh, Colorado Proud Meatloaf is back on the menu. Students in some of our elementary schools are receiving education about nutrition and healthy eating from integrated nutrition education program. Um, we partner with the kids aid backpack program. Our D-51 nurses and school counselors receive resources um that are in the Grand Valley that are available uh to adoles adolescence through Mesa County Public Health and nurse family partnerships. Marille Clinic um runs our school-based health centers and we will highlight a few more throughout our presentation. All of these organizations help shown help us engage, equip, and empower our students to become healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged. All right. Now, let's jump back into our strategic plan. Um, as we look at the
021focus area around prepared and supported students, the priority area that I'm going to present the data to you on tonight is around student wellness. Um, this has been obviously a three-year journey or two and a half year journey for us around student wellness. Uh, we know that student wellness is crucial to the development of and growth of all of our students. Uh, for this reason, growing our students sense of belonging has been and will continue to be a primary goal in our strategic plan. When students feel a sense of belonging and connectedness and have trusted adults, they thrive both academically and social emotionally. So, as you can see, uh, tonight is an update really on our year three progress and where we're at as we head towards that June of 2025 date. Um, and so
022by the end of this June, um, our our goal as a system was that all schools will meet and exceed the national norm for student sense of belonging for all students, including disagregated groups, as measured by the spring student panorama survey. So if you remember or if you um are new to this, we uh survey our students twice a year with our panorama survey. It is our perceptual survey which really uh measures that climate and culture that students feel in uh in all of our buildings. Um we do have parts of our survey that caters to K3 students and then uh most mostly in our elementary schools, it's our four five students and then our secondary schools which would be our 612 student uh students across the system. Um so we want to just take
023a look at that progress and update you on uh really what the trends look like uh over the last two and a half years. Even though there's there's four years of data that that is here, uh we have been using this panorama tool as a a way to measure our metrics for the past uh 7 to 10 years. Um and we've got some exciting trends that we want to show you tonight. Uh trending uh to the third-year goal. The inputs and outputs are moving and trending. schools continue to set belonging goals and they're all moving in the right direction. So, as you can see, uh in our elementary graph there, uh the national norm, which uh is where we want to be for each of our levels, is at 68%. So, as measured from spring
024to spring, um and you can see a steady climb in our elementary schools where our students continue to feel a sense of belonging. And um this last spring we were at our highest level that we have been in in four years at 64% to the national norm. So, we're we're excited about where we're going with that and and obviously um I'll show you some preliminary fall data that will show that we're we're even on track to do better in elementary. Um you can see in the middle there, that's our middle school uh cohort or level. Uh the national norm uh for middle schools and they're um answering in a favorable response is at 49% and we have been seeing a steady climb obviously after COVID uh from that 39% up to 43%. So, small gains
025there, but we are uh we're continuing to move in the right direction. And then high school, this is a great celebration that we did celebrate with our high school levels last year. Uh the national norms at 42%. It was the first time uh since we've been doing Panorama that our uh that we've had a level uh meet that national norm and our high schools did hit that. So, the national norm is 42% um and we hit 42%. So, that is a celebration that uh that we want to make sure that we acknowledge. Okay. Um because our third year goal in the strategic plan is around belonging. Uh it includes disagregated groups. That is where the goal has shifted not only in belonging for all of our schools. We want to see that national norm hit.
026Uh but the goal changed significantly to include our disagregated groups. Um and our focus has has really shifted into digging the data down into those subgroups. And these subgroups include students obviously with disabilities, our Hispanic students, students of color, uh students who are gifted, um free and reduced lunch. Those are all of our disagregated groups that we continue to monitor. And um uh we really this last fall ha have really dug into those disagregated groups to make sure that we are closing gaps there. We want to make sure we're not widening gaps with our our subgroup populations of students, but we're closing those gaps. So, um that has been a major focus this last fall and it will continue in even into the development of our our uh new strategic plan this spring. Um we
027also know that um that the trusted adult as I mentioned is a key component to uh the supporting uh the belonging and the connectedness in our schools and our classrooms. Um so we are uh really focusing in on measuring with uh some new questions around that trusted adult piece to ensure that all students in district uh 51 have trusted adult or at least one trusted adult in our schools. Okay. Um this is the preliminary data that I wanted to show you. Um as I said we we do the panorama data in the fall and in the spring but um for the strategic plan it is spring to spring. Uh so this is really a formative measure that we did back in October and you can see our elementary is on a a positive track. They
028continue to go up and then you can see our middle school. If the trend continues, we'll hit the national norm uh for our middle schools and you can see our high schools have gone from that 42 and they're trending to that 47% uh when it comes to belonging. So, we hope this and we want to continue to push um and measure and monitor the goals that the schools have put into play and um and we're seeing some positive results out of that. Okay. All right. Um we are looking at multiple data points. In the fall of 2023, our students participated in the Healthy Kids Colorado survey, which is a statewide survey that also contributes to national data. We had the best district-wide participation we've ever had, which is a huge celebration. As you can see
029on the screen, 65.2% of high school students and 65.3% of middle school students reported that they feel like they belong in their school. And 95% of middle school students think it's important to finish high school. Okay. Okay. So, now we'll switch to staff wellness and we'll talk a little bit um about um the progress we've done so far this year and talk about some next steps as well. Um, but what we know about staff wellness is that it's crucial for fostering a positive and an effective educational environment because we know that when staff members are physically and mentally well, um, they're better equipped to engage with students leading to improved academic performance performance and providing some strong support for students. And so, um, in the next slide, if you want to advance slides, Dan, thanks.
030Um, we'll talk a little bit about our staff wellness surveys. So, in the past, we have issued a Panorama staff survey in November of each year. This year, we'll be issuing that um staff survey to all staff um late March, early April, and that's typically the same time in which the TLCC survey is issued. The TLCC survey, which is teaching and learning conditions in Colorado, is typically issued by CDE and it's typically for our educators and our school-based staff. It's not meant for all staff. And so, our Panorama staff data is meant for all staff. And so we hope to be able to um steal some of those questions from the TLCC survey, include them in our survey so we can track trends yearover-year. Um and we'll have that data. It'll be it's not apples
031to apples because again TLC is for educators and our Panorama survey is for all staff. But what what you can see here and um one of the things that I think Amy and and Connie have done a really great job with last year they increased our participation rate for the staff survey uh by 19%. And so we had an amazing turnout for our staff survey. We hope to emulate that again when we issue our staff survey in the spring. And then um we're hoped to make some gains in how staff are feeling about their sense of belonging and their wellness. And so to talk a little bit more about um what we're doing to improve staff wellness, I'll turn it over to Connie. Thank you. So the next slide, Dan. So I wanted to share
032with you what's happening on a monthly basis with regards to our staff wellness challenges. We've been very mindful of the wellness challenge topics, taking into consideration the feedback from previous surveys and the timing of different district initiatives and activities. For example, August is a time when teachers and staff are preparing for the school year, meeting new students, getting to know other staff members, etc. We called it the be prepared challenge and points were awarded for preparing for success, establishing routines, completing annual required trainings, and fostering working relationships. In September, we launched the digital detox challenge, which aligned with our new cell phone policy. In October, we encouraged walking. And November focused on celebrating and giving gratitude, which included over 800 employees receiving gratitude guides. And Amy will talk about this a little more in a
033minute. December, we focused on happiness. And this month, to start off the new year, we we're highlighting financial wellness. Amy, do you want to talk about the guides for a second? Yep. Um so we partnered with uh Gandola Goods who is a local business to um she creates gratitude guides for many different age levels. And so she did the guide um to meet for our district and um then we asked staff to um just request one. If they wanted one, we bought them one and we were able to give out over 800 which was awesome. Um employees responded that they that it was beneficial to take time to focus on what they were grateful for and they appreciated how the gratitude guide was set up and the activities that were in it. Um we heard
034I heard a lot of positive feedback. Um and they were all very excited to get them, receive them and work in them. There's 90 um different activities that they could choose from to do. And we do know that a couple principles actually requested for their entire staff to have a copy of the the guide. Yes. Very neat. Okay. The next slide, Amy's going to talk about the different statistics that we um that we garnered from all of those challenges. So, we've been implementing the staff wellness challenges since March, so not quite a year. And we are learning what types of challenges our employees like to participate in. Um and we promote them in our staff newsletters. So on the screen you'll see um the number of people that registered and so we use the good
035life portal through Monument Health and so um employees have to log on to the portal and say that they want to do the challenge and then each week they go in and they mark off what activities they've done for the week and if they meet a certain amount of points then they go in to a drawing and we're able to give out some pretty cool things every month that we're we are pretty excited about and um employees get choose out of three um prizes each month. So, some of these as we're going through, we're seeing, okay, what do people like to do? Um what do they not like to do? Uh so we can so that can help guide um our future challenges. In October, we launched or we partnered with Monument Health to offer
036a six-w week um healthy plant-based cooking class series. And we held this at CMU Tech Culinary Kitchen. D51 sponsored 24 participants to learn the benefits of a whole food plant-based diet. They received instruction on how to cook different recipes and then they enjoyed the freshly prepared meal for each session. Sessions were taught by a CMU Tech culinary chaff and a local primary care physician. So, we'll be offering a second session in the spring. It was very wellreceived and we'll see if we can get more people to participate. We also held our annual benefits fair, vendor fair in early October at Grand Junction High School. Employees could sign up for free chair massages and a flu shot. They could pick up some free swag and put their name in for a chance to win some great
037healthpromoting pra prizes. We had close to over uh close to 200 staff members participate in that fun event. Then I wanted to share our employee um assistance utilization. And this slide shows our utilization from 2018 through 2024. As a school district, we've always outperformed the national benchmark of 4%, but I wanted to point out the 27% increase we've had year-over-year from 23 to 24. And this is really good news. Um we're continuing to promote EAP as a free resource. um reducing the stigma around reaching out for outside assistance for things that are impacting our staff members and or their spouses and families. Whether they're needing assistance for personal health and wellness, financial wellness, something impacting their immediate family, or perhaps the stress of caring for an aging family member. You can even access discounts for
038buying a new or a used car through this resource. And the resources are truly endless. The next slide I wanted to share through our health plan member programs. Um we're continuing to expand our ability to offer more lifestyle improvement and preventative medications at an afford affordable cost to members through our new elect RX and GLP1 programs in addition to the Samaritan Fund program that removes the financial burden of medical and pharmaceutical cost for select employees and members of our health plan. All of these wellness initiatives that we talked about tonight support the overall well-being of our employees and staff. And the year isn't over yet. Evidence suggests that if school staff or all employees feel well and supported, it will improve student well-being and academic success. Any questions? Thank you. That was a great update
039and especially knowing what um what the district's doing to help get these numbers there. So instead of just reporting out numbers, it's nice to know how we're getting there. Oh yeah, go ahead. I do have a question. Uh have you ever looked at the reasons why elementary at 68% and why it goes down from middle school and high school? Like what is elementary doing so well that we're we're not doing that as well in middle school and high school? Yeah. Um I I would say this, Jose Luis. Um, nationally, uh, obviously elementary tends to perform better, um, for the reason of you have, um, you have less adults in in a school situation than in elementary. Uh, so you have that one primary teacher, that one teacher. If you remember when we transitioned to middle
040school, you you end up transitioning to multiple adults in a school. Uh, obviously a lot going on in middle school, social, emotionally going on in middle school. And then of course high school there's that that tend to start to release a little bit that responsibility kind of letting kids kind of find their own pathways and things like that. So um I mean that nationally that's a trend. You just see the elementary piece of it sit where it sits and and middle school. Um and certainly I think some challenges there are um you know what kind of relationships are being developed in the elementary school? How are those relationships being developed um through the morning meeting process, through some of the action steps that they're doing? Generally, kids feel really good uh at a younger age,
041developmentally when they they're going to school. And and I think it's a mystery both academically and you know, social emotionally. We want to try to transition. And I think that's the critical stage that that we need to really focus on as we move into this spring and as we've got some some transitions coming. um how can we do better from those transitions from fifth grade to sixth grade and what that looks like from elementary to middle and then that transition of course from 8th grade to high school and then another there's a couple other transitions that we don't talk about much and that's that prek to kindergarten uh that transition is often you know can be stressful on kids and families and then obviously that transition from 12th grade graduation to post to post high
042school so I think that's something as a system as we look at our new strate strategic plan development coming up is how do how can we put some focus on what those transitions look like and how can we do better, right? I I think it's also important that we're when we set the goals in the strap plan that we what we were trying to compare ourselves to the national norm because you're right when you look at it and we're not going to be satisfied unless we have 100% but looking at it compared nationally I think also helps put things in perspective but um yeah we always want those numbers to be higher. I do appreciate that um this group and the the folks that are working on it have been focusing on so many different
043avenues around staff and student wellness that it's not just one thing. It's getting outdoors. It's putting technology down. It's nutrition. And so I I appreciate the comprehensive approach that y'all taken around um student staff wellness and not just hyperfocused on one or two things, but it's a lot of things that can really contribute to that. So thanks for y'all's work on that. The other the other question I had, do you have do you ever look at uh your staff if they feel if they feel like they belong just Yeah. And that um that that is part of and like what are those scores? Do you ever bring that to us? Yeah. Yeah. So that our um staff survey will be issued in the spring and that's where we take a look at belonging, their well-being
044um and a number of other factors as well. So, we'll have some some data in the spring and we have that data that we had from last year as well. Yep. And that data will be for principles. They have their own individual school data so they can really hone in on things they could do at the campus level. And then we'll have district level data as well. All right. Next up, we have our bond planning update. Good evening board. Hello everyone. Can you say happy new year even though it's the sixth? I guess we haven't seen you. Okay. Happy new year or the seventh? The seventh. Well, happy new year on the seventh. Good to see you all. Thanks for having us tonight. Um, for those watching online and those in the audience, I'm Clint
045Garcia. I'm the chief operations officer and presenting tonight is Micah Adams with Dynamic Project Management. And uh, you'll all remember back in November, our community said yes to our bond and um, we're very grateful for that and that has uh, obviously given us a lot of work to do. And so tonight, we're going to, if you'll push that forward, we're just going to give you a quick update, uh, a little recap on the master plan and what we've done over the last few years, uh, a bond scope overview, and then, uh, some work that we've done since they've said yes to the bond in November. We've been working pretty hard, uh, since then, getting things going, and then just a little snapshot into the future. And so, I will turn it over to Micah to
046kind of walk us through it. Sounds great. Um, thanks. Uh, it's good seeing everybody again and uh, congratulations on board appreciation month. We know that you guys put a lot of hard work into your jobs um, for no pay. So, we really um, so like Clint mentioned, we're going to do a quick uh, just recap of the whole facility master plan um, process. And so back in May of 2023, um RFQP went out uh to hire a master planner. Um in June, uh three firms were interviewed and Horde Copeland Mock out of Denver um was selected to do the facility master plans. Um so then they went and uh toured nearly every school in the district uh with a team of engineers uh noting all the building deficiencies uh that they could see. Um and
047then following that they interviewed uh the principles at every single school um noting deficiencies uh whether in the building itself or in the educational uh environment. Um and then they started to to compile a a you know long list of items. Um got help from a contractor on putting budgetary cost estimates um to the items that they had developed. Um and then started meeting with a planning committee um over a course of months and really started to develop the priorities in the district um where that money uh if a bond were to be passed where the district wanted that um focused. Um, so that uh that all happened. Um, and then the exciting news came in November that the bond passed. Um, so it was $190 million in total. There were three major components to
048it. Um, improvements to Central High School, improvements to Fra Monument High School, and then uh the priority improvement projects or what we're calling the PIPS. And you can see there on the right a breakdown of the the budget um for those components with uh Central High School um being the uh largest single component. Um uh the PIPS uh collectively uh were were up there as well. Um so collectively they they would be the largest component of those three for Central High School. As uh you can see there that the budgets uh just under 70 million um and the improvements primarily um revolve around safety and security upgrades. uh you know, vestibule, intravestibule, um life safety improvements, fire sprinklers, ADA improvements, and the replacement of the the twotory classroom wing there on the north side of
049the school that um uh really needs some love. Um along with that some some possible renovations to the dining rooms and uh Feder Hall. Fruit of Monument High School being roughly 20 million um also primarily revolved around security upgrades and at Fruit of Monument High School that would be connecting uh those out buildings to the to the main building. Um so that there's uh not as many um you know unsecured buildings on campus. Uh then there'd be some classroom improvements as well. There's some science classrooms there that are very outdated. Um some classroom classroom additions and expansions. Um just really some reconfiguration of some of those classrooms in there for a better learning environment. Uh for the priority improvement projects, you can see some pictures there of uh items that may be included on that
050list. Um but anything really from uh you know upgrades to sinks that maybe need ADA access um uh there's brick facads uh that uh are in disrepair and need some um patching. Uh you know addition of safety features to roof hatches. um asphalt parking lots that uh need some improvements, patching, repair. Um you know, there's concrete sidewalks, uh cracked, um you know, there's a long long list of items that's included in there. You can see the three kind of main categories within the PIPS is the safety and security upgrades uh including you know camera upgrades, access control upgrades. There's the priority maintenance and life safety upgrades um really what this revolves around is like ADA and fire sprinklers. And then there's the improved learning environments. And the improved learning environments are um you know uh
051are are really I mean it could be uh furniture, it could be uh more lighting. Um but a a good portion of that too is potentially um classroom renovations for changes uh with uh changing enrollment recently. Whether it's um making some classrooms larger to accommodate more students or renovating some of uh unused space into uh sped classrooms, kind of depends on each school individually. Um so here's a a brief overview of the schedule for the priority improvement projects. uh didn't want to get too into detail for the coming summers as um it I think will yeah there's still planning to do. So um this is a list for the the phase one summer projects. Um, you know, a lot of the thought that went into that was uh starting with primarily um schools that had
052more um needs uh that primarily the D-rated schools from the facility assessments and starting on the east side of the valley uh working west. So progress made since the bond was passed. Um an RFQP went out for architects. Uh six uh firms submitted qualifications. Um three firms were interviewed. Two firms were hired as you can see there on the screen. Chamberlain um a local architecture firm teamed up with Horde Copelan Mock um to uh take on the Fruit of Monument High School and the priority improvement projects. And then the Ble group um another local group uh architecture firm teamed up with DLR um to take on Central High School. Along with that um Grand River Environmental was hard to start uh surveying all the schools um for asbesus and start preparing designs uh for aspesus
053abatement ahead of these projects. Additionally um an RFQP went out for construction managers. Um seven firms submitted, six uh were interviewed and four were selected. Um and so uh these these four firms you can see on the screen, it's all uh pending contract negotiation. We're working through all of that right now. Um but asset construction management local firm was awarded two priority improvement projects um both in Palisade Taylor Elementary and Palisade High School. Distinctive Design Build, another local firm, actually all four of these are local firms. Um, distinctive design build was awarded two priority improvement projects as well. FCI constructors was awarded four um, priority improvement projects along with uh, Central High School and Shaw was awarded Frontman High School. Uh, so that kind of brings us up to speed where we're at now. Um,
054and so moving forward, uh, design is in progress. the priority improvement projects are really the the main focus at the moment since a lot of that work needs to start happening this summer. Um so the the architects uh Chamberlain and HCM have already come out and met with the principles of each one of those schools for this coming summer and started to really dive into that design. Um, and we expect those schematic designs here in about two weeks, I believe, uh, with, uh, pricing to follow. And then we're also having kickoff meetings for Central High School and Fruit of Monument High School designs uh, here upcoming. And then the uh, surveys and designs for the asbestous abatement is underway as well. Um upcoming procurements uh that will be happening in the coming months are for
055commissioning agents, surveyor, uh geotechnical engineer, um construction material testing, third party, um mover and asbestous abatement contractors. Um so quite a bit of uh components to the team still to be brought on. believe with that that covers everything in our presentation. Do you guys have any questions? Well, sounds good. All right. Thanks, guys. If the Yeah, while we're at it, we might as well a little bit more. Um, if you could give everybody just an over idea. I know we're just getting into the design part with Fruda and Central. There's a lot more to do with those two schools. It's a lot more involved than some of the priority improvement. Um, but give us an idea when you think people in the community are going to start to see some movement. Yeah, that's a good
056question. Um, so like I mentioned, we've got kickoff meetings uh for central on Friday and then Fruit of Monument will will be beginning of February. And that design process for projects of that size is fairly extensive um like you mentioned. And so, um, you know, I would I would think by the end of the year, we would I I think is what we have scheduled to have those designs, um, to a point where the community will start to to see everything. Um, I mean, the idea is to, uh, I believe spring next year have those projects go out to to bid, um, and subcontractors locked up, work starting next spring. Um, so yeah, later this this fall, you'll probably see designs. And I'm very disappointed there isn't any music. I was trying to figure out
057how how to squeeze a drone fly over in here, but wasn't quite sure. So, we'll work on that. Yeah, the pips. I think uh Adams and the pips. Clint knows how to write music, so I think we'll work on something there. All right. Thank you guys. Thank you. All right. Uh now moving into business items, we do have the second reading and adoption of the policy LBD which is relations with charter schools. Um do you have a motion for the approval um and adoption of the policy LBD? Motion to approve LBD. Second. Any discussion? These were obviously changes that had to be done per uh Colorado statute that was done this last year. So we just updated those. Um so any other discussion? Okay. Excuse me. Seeing none, we can go ahead and take the
058vote. Mr. Chavez, approve. Mrs. Evansson, yes. Mrs. Heights, yes. Mr. Jones, yes. Miss Lima, yes. All right. open board discussion or if you want to share any good things from over the break. Got some rest hopefully. Um, actually just I know we uh had a short meeting uh virtual one, but uh Jose and I had the privilege of going to the Warrior Classic and seeing some very good wrestling in the district between both men and women and the girls really really put wrestling on the map out there and doing some good work and so it was good to see the community pull together and all be out there and kind of I guess got they got to miss a day of school and pack the gym for two full days of wrestling. So, it was
059it was good and we had some great wrestling going on and a lot of good championships on both sides. So, good. And I would like to add that the girls D51 won the Warriors Classic first off that I do believe that in my own opinion that the girls were given a disservice by not being in the main gym. They were separate and so uh you couldn't you had families that were separated and schools were separated and I think it worked better last year when they were all in the main gym. Everybody could watch their skill level because those girls are are fabulous. Good feedback. Any other Well, tomorrow is my 25th wedding anniversary. I can't believe my husband's put up with me that long. No, I'm just I'm joking. Um, no, it's been good. We
060are best friends and so I'm thankful um thankful for our life together and our three kiddos. So anyways, something good to share. You don't don't hear a lot of that much anymore. White ice. I'm already working on my Oh, I bet you're working on your outfit right now. So it'll be something special. Director Jones is always the one to watch. Plus a few others. There are a few people that really go all out for White Ice. It's a good show. I mean, good good a good good for good reasons. Good causes. Yep. All right. Any other Okay. All right. A motion. Motion to adjurnn. Motion to adjurnn. All right.