9/5/23 Board Meeting

001Okay. Can you hear me? Audio right now. So, just when you exit out of it. Yeah. So, do that. But then it's going to say Yeah. Click on it and then just say just leave the call. Don't end it. Okay. Okay, I think we will um go ahead and get started. We'll first just like before we do the pledge, we'll um we have one board member coming from football practice, so he'll be here soon, Director Jones. One director is arriving back to Grand Junction from travel and one left. So, um they one or both might try to get on virtually, but we're not sure. But we but there are at least going to be three of us um here this evening. So if you can stand with me, we'll go ahead and do the pledge

002of allegiance. You want to kick us off to the All righty. Thank you. Uh we have a board of education resolution for the recognition of the Hispanic Heritage Month. So whereas Hispanic Heritage Month is celebrated annually in the United States from September 15th to October 15th to honor the contributions, cultures, and histories of our Hispanic community. And the diverse Hispanic and Latino community encompasses various cultures, languages, traditions, and histories from countries across Latin America, Spain, and the Caribbean. And whereas our Hispanic communities continue to help shape and build our great state of Colorado, playing a key role in the contribution to the fields of art, music, literature, science, politics, and business, among various others. And celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month provides an opportunity for our school district to foster cultural understanding, create access and opportunities for

003all, and embrace diversity among our students, staff, and community members. And now, therefore, be it resolved that the Mesa County Valley School District Board of Education does hereby recognize September 2023 as Hispanic Heritage Month and encourages our community to join our Hispanic and Latino population in celebrating their history and contributions to our community, state, and nation. All right, are we ready for our long range facilities plan? We have some joining us online and Yeah. And then I think Matt, can you hear us? I can. Can you hear me? And then you're going to present your slides, right? I can do that. Yeah. Okay. So, while um folks are coming up, um I know Matt will do an introduction in a second, but um this will be the first time we be able to give an

004update on the process we've been going through on um updating our facility master plan for a district. So, um Oh, it looks like Will was able to join. All right. Perfect timing. All right. Well, I'll turn it over to you, Matt. Excellent. All right. Is my uh my screen sharing? So, we can see it, but it doesn't look like it's in presentation mode. Is there a way to present so we can see it larger? Let's see. Yeah. Yeah. And you're a little um soft as well on the sound. So if I don't if that's your mic or if we need to turn you up. I'll scoot in and speak up a little bit. Is that better? Yes, we can see and hear you. Okay. All right. We'll uh we'll get started here. Sorry. uh brief

005agenda and really just want to jump in and kind of share the work uh we've been able to do with the district here the later latter part of the summer and talk about what the you know the fall and and uh early winter looks like in terms of a facilities master plan process and uh introduce myself. My name is Matt Corda. I'm a principal architect with Hard Copeland Mock working with a handful of my colleagues in my office, Lyn Eller, who is also a principal and uh lead designer master planner office and colleagues Reagan and Joel who have been actively walking the school sites to complete the facility assessment uh portions. Uh I have uh for myself been doing this my whole whole career since I graduated college and and at the same place. So

006I've been working really all over the state of Colorado on the design and construction of PK12 schools from the planning stages like what we're doing here all the way through you know uh real projects like you're completing on as part of your last bond. Here's the rest of our team again. So Lynn and Joel and Reagan have all been uh up uh and visiting your schools and been working uh with your staff to do that. Lynn will be up tomorrow and completing the the the walk of the Gateway school out in Gateway and we have a team of consultants we're working with on FCI constructors. It will be doing all the cost estimating and everybody here has been part of these blocks. Uh and then Bigghorn Consulting uh and has been working with as mechanical

007and and plumbing electrical engineers walking the sites and Lindau are done and the Austin group involved part of that process and again I think all teams you're familiar with from you know years of your projects and some of the capital work you've done. Oh hey are not advanced. There we go. Okay. Now now it is okay. Sorry I'm talking through some of them. Okay, it's not been cooperating today here. Sorry, I'm trying to figure out how to get to my next slide. Sorry, it's just not cooperating the way I thought it would. Give me a second here. Yeah, there's two. Oh my goodness. Making a mess here. All right, I'm going to try again. All right, I'm have to use this view here. Uh I apologize on and then uh again HCM as a firm

008we're in uh Denver. We're if you get to Korsfield we're just a block away in the the newer building the milk market. So that's kind of where our offices uh are and and as I mentioned so Matt are you we can't see the slides. Oh my goodness. Hold on. We've got a great picture of you. I could share mine. Let me try one more. Colleen, are you on? I am. I might be able to share mine, Matt. And as you go, I can advance. Let's give it a try. It's not working on my end. It doesn't look like it likes Blue Beam, so I'm going to try uh Adobe. Okay. Thank you, Colleen. Yeah, just give me one second to pull. I know this counts. Sorry, Dan. So, Matt, do you want to talk just

009as she's pulling that up just a little bit about the um I think we've gone through all of the elementary schools at this point. Yeah. Yeah. I think Colleen is I can see Colleen screen if everybody else can but perfect. Yeah. Yeah. So the process uh kind of kicked off in uh earnest in uh uh early August in terms of late July, early August in terms of starting to walk in the building. So, we started our focus of the the assessments of the buildings with the elementary schools. And a lot of that work occurred over on four days on on kind of a Tuesday, Wednesday, and a then a week off and another Tuesday, Wednesday. And we followed that up with some additional uh walks of the the middle schools and the high schools, but

010recognize there's been a lot of conversation within the district about uh the elementary schools. And so we did start there. We also wanted to get through those schools before kids were back and recognizing having a bunch of adults uh kind of walking around through your building and around your building is probably a bigger distraction for the younger learners than maybe the middle and high school kiddos. Uh so we did want to get all that work completed before school started and and uh we were able to do that with the elementary schools. And then some of the other walks did did occur after school got started and uh but really worked to try to minimize the amount of of disruption we would provide by being on each school site. And so we did complete uh really

011all of the walks on uh minus gateway school and then we're looking at a couple other district facilities to add to kind of the database of assessments and we're going to get those scheduled here before the end of September. So, I think that's kind of where I ended the last the last group there of our consultant teams. Kind of keep going, Colleen. Perfect. And keep going. One more. And so, really for a master plan process working with the district, we have really kind of organized our our workflow into four steps. And and step one is uh we're kind of at the tail end of step one uh which is really uh gathering a lot of that information. We call it the learn phase. So, we're gathering a lot of that information and really starting step

012two where we're compiling that and collecting some additional district information as it relates to uh everything the district has on their buildings and starting to now look at some of the utilization of each of the buildings which is work that's already been started by the district. I think it's just us getting it organized and ultimately put into one one document. Uh and then we will be uh engaging a planning committee here uh later in this fall to really start to look at what does all this uh information and data mean for the district as we move ahead ultimately with a goal of putting together a short, medium, and long range plan as it relates to your facilities and so the maintenance and upkeep and upgrades to facilities over time which ultimately puts you in a

013position to kind of really map out a timetable of, you know, when will it be time to address some facilities and and what would that scope be? And so that's that's the ultimate deliverable would be on having all of that put together in really one place. And so that's kind of the conclusion piece. I think the next slide might be our some of the timetable and schedule for that. And so that's taking those four steps and putting it on a calendar. I know it's really kind of hard to read but in general the summer you know July through September was that information gathering phase and you know now and through October really starting to analyze that and starting to uh engage with the planning committee which moves into the fall uh as we start to

014look at uh you know potential scopes or priorities of scopes at each of the campuses and each of the sites uh and really look to have all of this kind of wrapped up in the spring of of 24 in terms of our process of putting this all together. And so that's kind of the general timeline and what that starts to look like. Next slide. Just want to hit on some of the the progress. And so kind of a kind of a weekby-eek snapshot. So got started in uh in July. of July and early August we did walk uh at all the elementary schools gathered information uh and over on just after school got started had trips up focused on the middle school and the high school and as noted on tomorrow be driving out to

015Gateway and looking at the K12 at a gateway and then later in the month uh added a couple more uh district facilities u so those buildings and uh campuses can be part of this uh assessment report. And next, uh so what are we looking at when we're walking on the sites? Uh so again, we have a team. So on and then everybody kind of has a little bit of their focus. So the engineers are looking at their uh kind of their expertise and area of focus but you know looking at uh the sites uh in general and so the amenities in the site and also just the uh all of the hard and soft scapes and how everything is doing and in terms of durability. Uh we've been starting our walks up on the roof

016and in many ways to kind of do that as early in the day as possible before it gets too warm. But really looking at the roof and again uh you've guys have a good history of taking care of roofs. Some some have been replaced recently in some of it are a little older. Um we'll walk the exterior really looking at uh the what the issue is made up of. We're looking for um you know what maintenance might be needed. A lot of times we're seeing things related to the sealants that go around windows or in between different materials. Those are things that have a really a shelf life and need to be replaced over time. Uh looking for any sort of signs of distress. Uh you know, is there any cracking in the veneer of

017the the buildings or anything along those lines and structures kind of evaluating the same thing, looking for any signs of distress and and is there anything obvious? Is it structural or is it just uh cosmetic? Uh then we walk the interiors and we're looking for things related to just the overall uh age and quality of the finishes, but also anything related to code compliance as it relates to today's cold codes. And then the MAP engineers are looking at all the systems kind of the age of those systems, conditions of those systems. uh for your buildings that have more than one floor, we'll be looking at your vertical circulation, stairs, ramps, elevators, and then trying to look at kind of what's in each classroom space as it relates to uh amenities for teaching. So, whiteboards, marker

018boards, tack boards, technology, uh and in general furnishings. And then we're kind of look then we have a a separate chest checklist that we're looking at in terms of what we're calling educational program and adequacy and kind of equity amongst the schools. And so what spaces exist uh where are those spaces and kind of the quality of those spaces. So those are the things we're taking pictures of and observing and taking notes for and now are in the process of getting that all into a common database. And then we organize kind of what we're seeing in different categories as it relates to kind of what those deficiencies might be. And so fire life safety really be focused on code. Health safety hazard materials would be things uh it'd be kind of reconciling your reports related

019to your ah her reports which relate to uh you know is there in the building or other products. Sometimes those products are obvious to us uh and sometimes they're not. um safety and security ultimately uh we haven't seen to be honest a lot of those items more on the site level maybe in terms of where does a kid get off and out of a car how does he get to the front door but you on districtwide you've done a lot of work at your entries to make those all secure vestibules looking at EDA ultimately educational environment the majority of our findings would fall probably under the maintenance category just things that need to get replaced over time uh And every now and then there's things that are just u you know cosmetic and so and

020u not a high priority but they might have been damaged you know sort of thing over time and then looking at organizing all those and kind of prioritizing in terms of you know how soon should these things be addressed. So um some imminent code type issues you know we would put a a number one on but kind of just looking at things that have the potential if they did fail what would be the consequences you know of a of a failure. So that's kind of the two three four and five and then you know and then it kind of goes out you know to to 10. So on really focusing on the cost estimating efforts on those one, two, and one through four items on because kind of get a can get a handle on

021today's cost and try to make a guess of what that might cost in 10 years. Some of the things that are longer we're not putting a cost to because it'll start to weigh out uh uh you know when when things would uh need to get the example would be dos Rio says a new roof. Roofs last last 30 years is basically their lifespan. We're not projecting what the new roof in 30 years at dos reus would cost uh just because that would be end up being a very large number but it's something that's not imminent or something you need to deal with imminently. Next slide. And then ultimately for each school uh we will have a score that relates to physical conditions, program adequacy and then kind of student capacity and uh building efficiency. And

022these would be on how we would summarize a bunch of data into a very digestible score. And this these would be the things I think would be the first thing uh that we would on a website if you went to go look at your school, you would get these grades. And then if you're interested in how those grades came about, you can click and dig in deeper and kind of see the details of assessments. But so we're looking at everything being able to be scored on a kind of a one to 100 scale. And uh um and that's kind of the ultimately as we compile this information how we would make it available uh for your community as kind of what is the first thing you would see if you're you're looking at the assessment

023of your school. And that was a lot of me kind of talking about the process. We are early in the process. Uh we did spend uh quite a bit of of time up up in Grand Junction um with uh looking at schools and but really with a kind of a push to kind of get ahead of the students the best we could and and now we're probably uh we got probably about a month's worth of work of just getting all that written up and compiled and organized. So it's useful information here as we get into October where we want to use some of that information to kind of guide the process moving ahead. So, so I will um I will leave it for questions. So, thank you. Thanks, Colleen. Hi, this is Carrie. I have

024a couple questions. Um, so I'm curious. So, we're not combining those three individual scores into one overall score. We're just going to leave them as three individual scores. The building condition, the program adequacy, and the student capacity. I you know I think those metrics are all there as individual but I think there's been conversations about how do we uh do those get weighted to give a school and an outright score and so I haven't we haven't necessarily ruled out how those might could be combined into a you know this school got a a B you know in terms of if we wanted to provide an overall grade and are all those equal right or are certain things should be weighted so we haven't quite got there and that might be some of the for the

025planning committee to weigh on a little bit too in terms of what what do we do with all this information? So, yeah, it's and it seems like um the capacity question might be tied into the enrollment. I'm thinking about this from the declining enrollment committee perspective. There might be like a division of those scores like two of them might be relevant to one thing and another might be relevant to another thing. I don't know. Just something to think about. Um but then I have another question. So how much does that assessment and the um the numerical outcomes of it and everything that's considered how much does that align with the state's assessment that we have you know right uh the there is a relationship because they're a lot of what they're doing relates to the

026FCI score which would be their score related to if you were replace this building, you know, how much would it cost relative to investing in the existing structure? And so there is a there is a relationship to that to to the work we're doing. Uh but ours is uh I'll say probably a little more detailed on as it relates to some of that work on and uh takes into account probably more related to the educational adequacy versus just the physical you know the roof is old it should be replaced it costs X dollars uh you know portion of it. So uh and I think all all those assessments, you know, exist and are, you know, are benchmarks and are things the CDE uses often probably more specifically when you if you apply for a best

027grant, you know, they're going back to their data and looking at it from that perspective. Uh but it's just another I guess another data point, but uh not completely the same, but has some similar uh aspects to it. Okay. Thank you. And then when we're talking about costs over time, I understand obviously not projecting out the cost of a roof in 30 years, but are we going to understand um you know, I'm just curious. I understand the outputs of the long-range facility plan being this building gets this score, but what about costs over time? So are we going to have you know that as we look at that like urgent to non-urgent scale are we going to come away saying like okay this building to get it up to these urgently needed you know there's

028so many different numbers going into some like decision-m matrix for us there's the urgency so there's a time stamp there's a cost there's the building adequacy so it's great to have each of those things but how are we going to think of that on a systems level so that we have a process for moving forward forward so we can say next year we need to do these things. So I think what we have set up you know ultimately is u fundamentally a sophisticated Excel spreadsheet which will be a tool that would be you know the schools to or the districts to have after this and we did even have conversations about is there uh and we haven't necessarily come to conclusions is there ongoing support do we bring HCAM back once a year with FCI

029to update things because we did replace the roof and we update the database or is it so intuitive the district staff can do that on their own and some things along those lines. So that is it's so it's not just a moment in time snapshot that sometimes master plans have ended up being and and it becomes more of an ongoing tool that if you did do let's make up an example you know we did do $3 million of roof replacements this year. You update that database that shows you have those urgent things have been addressed. the amount of money to be invested in a school is now less because we just put in a million dollars worth of roof there. Uh so the idea is to leave you with a tool that can be uh

030sustained on over time or as or can be updated over time so that um so things that are 10 years out or now nine years out or eight you know and every year you can kind of look at you know in 2028 we're looking at you know x million dollars of things that need to be addressed and how do we how do we approach that and you know how much of that is uh can happen on the regular maintenance budget that's available or or are we looking at uh a need for a future bond to address a big chunk of work and and how much that work would be. So we're hope we're planning on leaving a tool that isn't just a snapshot in time. So So is part of the scope of work the

031actual prioritization of the project of the future work or is that not part of the scope of work? Does that sound like that's part of that would call I would say that would be part of the master plan effort that that this facility assessments are serving as information for. So that would be part of the work is working with the planning committee and on the district to kind of start to identify, you know, what are the first things we need to address and when do we want to address them and what would be second. And so that is part of this master planning process is to put some priorities to future capital projects which correct me if I'm wrong but I think when you guys have presented maybe last year or the year before you

032do some of that right now um knowing right prioritizing it but obviously this is going into further depth or maybe you can bring some clarification on how this is complementing what you guys are already Yeah, I I think we are doing some of that already, but as as Matt already pointed out, having that and we talked about this during the interview process, having a living document that we're able to update in real time for all of the work that we have done gives us a better snapshot of where we're at and what we need to do moving forward every year so we can plan accordingly. Um, it gives us just a better picture. I'm really I'm really interested in that prioritization piece and how we're going to it sounds like the you know we're lean

033right so we do things as you know we need to do them with good investments. Yeah. So so one of the things that Matt brought up and used as an example is roofs right a roof is a priority that's high on the list. If the roof's bad um we've got other issues then so we take care of that first. If it's a if it's a um an electrical outlet that's broken um or electrical system that's broken, it's probably something that we need to take care of, but it may not be as high a priority as a roof. Um something like that. Does that make sense? There's priorities for sure. You'd have to um get them out on a sheet and put them on there and know exactly what it is that we need to attack

034first. And this tool, I think, is going to help us be able to do that a lot better than we have in the past. I think we have a system in place but it doesn't allow us to prioritize like you're talking about and there's some other things that we're working on as well but yes I think this tool is going to be helpful and I think you know as we're as we're talking again about some framework for decision-m moving forward the question becomes you know like I think it's easy to prioritize things like roofs you know like when do you prioritize the things that aren't that urgent and aren't that critical and you know if we need to replace a school building How do we prioritize that and how does that fit into like our

035entire framework of decision- making? I'm really curious to see how all of that fits together and feel like I think a lot of that information is going to start to present itself once they get closer to to getting those scores together. We're going to be able to see I think have a much a clearer picture of where we stand with buildings. Yeah. It also it become it turns into a discussion about like appetite of the community and what they're willing to support as well. So, um, you know, we've had in the past, um, a facility master plan that had some suggestions of things that we should address at certain points in time, but then what came out in a final bond proposal didn't necessarily have all the, um, immediate things in it. So, uh, I

036think, you know, ideally, this is going to be an updated document that we can, um, util, well, one, we want it to be easily digestible by the community. So, do these scores make sense to them? and they understand why this school might be prioritized over another school, why this school might be listed as a potential building that needs to be replaced versus uh just needs some upgrades. And so, one, we want it to be easily digestible, but also we want to be able to have a clear plan for the next 25 plus years to say, you know, community, you supported us on Grand Junction High School, which we're so appreciative of. Um, but I think I have remembered was like three, four years ago, I remember Eric sitting up here saying at that point we

037had like $600 million worth of capital needs and that was years ago. So, how do we start having that conversation with our community to say um this is the prioritized list. This is when we might need to come back and ask for some things uh and ideally get more support behind it. Um so, and so that would be the goal. So yeah, I they're going to have prioritized list of things we should do, but it's going to be whether or not um what we think we can actually go out and ask for and are there things that we can do internally um with capital funds that we have currently. Yeah, I think that gets exactly to my point. Thank you for synthesizing like it like that. And I think that it's it's I think it'll

038be different for us to say, "Okay, here's our list of priorities. Um, and we need 10 new schools in the next 30 years." And so, we're going to have to, you know, and like start telling people about what we think is coming, um, you know, before, you know, now so we have this 30-year plan so we can keep just knocking things off the list. Um, and everybody knows what's coming. I think that'll be so important. Well, I remember vividly at one of the town halls in Fruda, there was a family that said um you know, not the same words, but basically, we feel like you just randomly come ask us for money every couple years, which obviously there's more to it than that, but um but you know, we heard we understood that as we

039we need some sort of a clear plan that's very um like I said, easily digestible by the community. So um so that's the hope with this is that we can it can be a living document that has a lot of stakeholder input and then we can use it to prioritize um projects that we need to do for our district because we have facilities are getting very old or um you know things that we maybe we weren't able to take care of in the past that that were high priorities. something in a central um central was a high priority need and we ended up again making some decisions on what do we feel like the community could support and so we went after just junction by itself but that didn't go away and so how do

040we how do we do that for the whole district so that's why I'm also excited that they're going through all of our facilities um even district level facilities and saying what what do you want to invest in this building or do you not want to invest in this building and so um it'll be a good comprehensive plan for us for the next you know 25 plus years do you envision or have a plan for some of this, like the scoring to live on our website so that as people can kind of see it as it's getting updated and then they can maybe go see the grade of their school, however you guys end up um doing kind of the final report. But something like that might be a good way for our community to continue

041to track like how things are going with the various buildings. I think too it's it's a good point. I know we think a lot about our schools, but the district also spends money leasing properties or doing other things and we want to make sure that obviously we're utilizing those funds the most appropriate way um and most efficient way. So I think all of that would help bring the community along and kind of this big I don't know to call it but just you know this big project that is all these buildings you know so in a sense you're you're almost property managers but we have to do like everything. So, a long range plan that has a vision, right, for the next 25 years that spells out where we're going is helpful for the community

042to be able to see and it helps us too to know where we're going, what's next, what's the next um ask. Yeah. Last year when I was at the Colorado Association of School Boards convention, I did one of the breakouts on the long range facilities plan. And I think Littleton has like a 50-year plan and their um I think it was their school board president along with their superintendent and some and maybe their chief operations officer presented and since they've been able to do this and get it honed in and and present it to the community, they've been able to go out and ask the community um for some things that they need for those buildings. So it sounds like, you know, as as people know you have a plan, then when you go to

043do the ask, they know that you've obviously done the work. So I it works. I mean, we're seeing it take place in other parts. Sounds and feels a whole lot different when it doesn't feel like it's random, right? When there's an actual plan to to move forward with it, and it doesn't feel like you're just asking. And the last thing I'll mention on that too that you mentioned Littleton, they've done a really good job about um or with being transparent with their community about when bonds get paid off and um trying to be strategic about when they go after asks of their community. So um that will be a a piece of this as well so we can be strategic around um that. And then um I know Matt mentioned it, but if we do

044want to go out for a best grant, this this plan also will help us um state our case a little bit better on why we would need those funds. Um, which remember we got 10 million in best grand dollars for junction. Uh, so ideally we could go out and ask for that as well for a future bond. Any other questions? It's just it's just Dr. Schulties and I I don't know if we do we have any board members online. I don't want to I don't want to dismiss if they do have questions. Will's called in. Okay. All right. Well, thank you. Is there a way that we could get um a copy of those slides? Just the board the time frames and kind of the I don't know that information just would be really helpful

045to be able to kind of look back on. Yeah, we can we can send it out and then I um and then we'll have them come back and give regular updates as well to the board on the or if you can just summarize it to the board. There was a couple slides on there that would be really helpful just for frame of reference. Maybe just the Gant chart that was that'd be legible. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Thank you everybody. We can send that as its own file too because I think it got shrunk down to fit on a screen. So we can send that as its own own PDF and make it a little more legible. That'd be great. Thank you so much. Thanks Matt. Thank you. Sorry about the technology piece. I'll I'll know

046to use Adobe next time. So all right. We are now um ready for our strategic plan update. Student staff and wellness. So, uh, as the folks are coming up to present, uh, just a reminder in the that we're going into year two of our, uh, three-year strategic plan. Last year, we gave a monthly update to the board and we focused on, uh, different focus area each time. Um, this time around, we're going to spend more time looking at uh, individual priority areas so that it doesn't feel like as it's a lot of information or too much information at one time. And so, um, we've we've structured out the year to be able to present on those different those nine different priority areas, um, throughout the year. Uh, today's a little bit different because these are

047both wellness priority areas. So, we have a staff wellness priority area and we have a student wellness priority area. So, they are presenting two at one time, but uh, for most months, we'll just be giving an update on um, on one priority area. So, just a reminder, uh, recentering ourselves in our graduate profile. Um, this is a communitydriven process that we went through to create this uh strategic plan and graduate profile. And the graduate profile for the folks that um maybe aren't as familiar with the strategic plan, that's basically what do we want our students to have? Um what skills do we want them to be able to have when they walk across our graduation stages uh at the end of their uh K12 career. And so um we want them to we want to

048make sure that they're creative and problem solvers, culturally connected, and ready for career in life. And so we have um areas that we're focusing on as a district to try to make sure that we have uh students prepared for whatever comes next. And then within the plan again, we have those three focus areas. So first off, being prepared and supported students. Um and we have the three priority areas underneath that that we're focusing on as a district. So again, tonight you'll hear about student wellness. Um and then when folks come back, you'll hear about the other two. And then you'll also under uh prepared and supported staff, you'll hear about staff wellness. But we also have updates um throughout the year on um the other two priority areas. And then under engage and supported community

049partners, our three priority areas, we will u make sure that we have folks come back and give updates on each one of those uh as well. Okay. So u I'm going to turn it over to Jen and she's going to take us through uh student wellness. Dr. Hill. Thank you, Dr. Hill. Okay, I'm live now. Um this board presentation is going to be a little bit different um from the strategic plan updates that you've had in the past or the experience last year. This year the presentations all of them will be much more interactive. That's why we're doing them during these meetings and not the business meetings. Tonight we have data for you to to review and dig into and we're going to use a protocol that we use often in um in our schools

050or in district meetings. It's called notice and wonder. You'll look at the data, you'll have some noticings, and then you'll have some wonderings. But I just want to review real quick what the goal was for um student wellness. And you can see there, it's in the middle. Well, that was one of the last presentations that was presented last year at the end of the year, but the district will show growth of 2% or more on yearly panorama data for on school belonging for each level, elementary and secondary. Year one, we wanted 2% or more. We presented again this slide again last year just grounding on where we were at the end of the year. And you can see that uh the green bars are spring to spring, the darker green to the lighter green, but

051that also includes the midpoint, the blue bar, which was our fall, but it was fall of 2022. I'm sorry, 20 of 22. Yes, our goal was to increase our overall percentile by 2%. And we're pleased to share and show that our secondary schools met spring to spring. But as you can see, unfortunately, elementary dropped by 1% um from spring 2022 to 2023. While fall 2022, you can see was high. It was actually one of our all-time high um scores for belonging, but we are surprised and disappointed by the decrease in spring for elementary. So, we will continue to work on those goals. That's how we ended the year. And now I'm going to turn over to Amy because she's going to talk about uh what we're doing right now. All right. So this is an

052image um of an adaptation of Maslo's hierarchy of need. Before students are able to feel like they belong in their school environment, their physiological and safety needs must be met. All right. Uh the purpose of our panorama mental health and wellness survey is to assess the physiological and safety needs of our students. We just completed administering the Panorama mental health and wellness and well-being survey on Friday. This past Friday on 91. This survey is designed to assess and support the individual needs of students in grades 3 through 12. Students are asked questions regarding their feelings of safety, well-being, emotions, coping skills, and assess uh what resources are needed. This is not an anonymous survey. Because it's not anonymous, we are able to assess immediate needs for students and respond for students with non-emergent support needs.

053This survey allows us to know what resources to provide. Student responses are only shared with school counselors, school administrators, and designated D-51 student service staff so that may uh that we may respond to student needs and requests are done in a timely manner. As with all of our surveys, students and families were able to opt out of the survey. All right. So, this um shows our participation for third through fifth graders. Um number of students surveyed was 3,777 and that is a 91.14% um of students surveyed. In 6 through 12 it um number of students surveyed 9,000 or 7,926 and that's percentage of 75%. All questions were related to safety and security, their feelings and their feelings in general. Okay, as you see here, uh this is the key that we're going to be using

054when we do our data dig. Um as Jen mentioned, this is fresh. Um it is so fresh that we just closed the survey on Friday. Um, we did a little work over the weekend. Charlie's done a great job in in in preparing the data for tonight, but the reason it's not in your board packet tonight is because we wanted it to be complete. Uh, so it is complete survey results. And um, you guys are really the first ones to get your hands on it to do the data dig. So every afternoon, our team reviewed uh, the data from the surveys completed that day and assigned a color code uh, to the student that receives the appropriate responses from an appropriate adult. So, as you can see here, yellow relates to food and housing insecurities, which

055uh Amy had mentioned is around that physiological need. Pink relates to the current emotions, happy or sad, or if they don't feel like they have a trusted adult. Red relates to not feeling safe, um, and they have requested to talk to a counselor or a principal. Blue relates to recently being harassed, threatened, targeted in the past month and uh a contact is made by the administration and purple is a combination of at least one red response and one blue response. Now, I want to quickly go back um to talk about the response rates. So, a school when a when a student flags as yellow and that is the food and housing insecurities has up to three weeks to make that contact with that student. pink, it's a little bit higher level. Um, they have one

056month and then red, uh, which is that safety one, we have within 24 hours. We're requesting that that principles, uh, and counselors, uh, respond to those student needs within 24 hours and make a contact. Blue uh, again is within that 24-hour range. And purple once again is an admin and a counselor contact within 24 hours. Okay. All right. So going back to this graphic um this shows how this data supports the panorama survey supports this. Our goal is to pro provide students with resources they need so that they can be healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged. Based on the color code that Dan just shared, this graphic shows how questions in the Panorama mental health and well-being survey support our efforts to increase belonging in our schools. So, we have packets for everyone up here.

057And we're gonna take Yes, it's hot off the press. Here you go. On here, it'll um the the front of it, you'll have a front and a back of yellow. The first side is a 35. The second side is 612. And it shows um for on yellow students have at least one yellow response and so they were marked yellow. Um it has the response and the support that is provided. On the screen we have um the overall numbers for the public to see but uh the board has a little bit more in depth. So um we're going to dig in. Um, this data represents how students answered questions around housing and food. These are basic needs that all students should have. Please take a minute to review this slide and corresponding data in your packet.

058And then we're going to ask, what do you notice and what do you wonder? We're going to take these notice and wonderings back to our uh focus area group on Thursday to review them. We've got time a minute or so. Oops. Do you want to tell us what we notice now or do you want us to wait? Yes. Yeah. Well, go ahead and we're we're going to go page by page and guess what? So, um for the third through fifth here where you guys have it broke down for us, um it looks like the three through five special education, those percentages were higher um across the board. So, you know, does your family have enough food at home? No, was high. Currently live in a tent, camper, hotel, homeless shelter, yes, that percentage was higher

059than any other group. um currently live in someone else's house with friends or another family member. That's the highest percentage um out of all of them. And then during the week, how many times did you feel afraid? And they were the highest percentage out of all the groups. Just a quick note. So what we're seeing is different than what you guys see on the screen. It's it's um diagregated by um male, female, sped, and not sped students. And we can disagregate it down further. It's just the data that we had pulled and and we can do Hispanic, non-Hispanic, we can we can break it down even further. It was just really overwhelming. So, we just picked, you know, a couple data sets to take a look at. So, you we will do that. Yes, absolutely.

060Yeah. Like Dan said, we just got this on Friday and so these are overall Yeah. And our team will will dig deeper into it as well. Great. Um I have a question about the response time the three weeks here and the one month for the pink who how did how's that decided the as far as the the timing uh you know I I think you know when we sat and discussed you know what those response rates would look like obviously the survey we've given this survey the past uh two years um so we went in just to I I think you know that discussion goes into what's more important this level or this level um you know I think the physical needs of kids is very important and obviously that you know when you looked

061at that Maslo hierarchy um and understanding how many kids really feel like um you know they don't have enough food at home um they're not living you know in a place that that they feel you know is a safe place um I I think that I don't know Amy what you know it was one of those things where we just kind of discussed is it the emotional well-being first and how does the physical well-being fit to that. Um I think you probably could have given a response that was probably equal to that. We also know that we have to have the capacity in the buildings to to do that response. We do have some programming within our system that can help with that. Our reach program obviously works with our homeless families. Um and so

062we feel like we probably have a better resource. um within that time period to be able to respond. But Amy, did you want to add to that? I would agree with that. I think capacity um it's a school. It's a school team respond to all the data. Yeah. So, how do we prioritize that? Right. Right. Is this is this Have we done this in the past? Is this what we normally do or is this new the three weeks response? I'm curious if there's a feedback mechanism. So, if we if this is the first time we do it, if we're like, did that work? Do we need less time? Do we need more time? because it sounds like it's a it sounds like we've been doing it and maybe we know a lot in the schools.

063It sounds a little arbitrary which is you know I'm just curious how the if yeah if it needs to be three weeks if this feels like a long time for me for those issues but I don't know what the capacity is like in schools. So I wonder how we track if that is success to us or if it needs to be tighter or if we just can't do it tighter if we need more resources allocated to it or if it can't take longer. I think the key will be over the next three weeks, right? Or the next two weeks for some if if they surveyed their students at the beginning of the window, then of course that 3-week clock gets started. Um those that one month clock gets started. Um it is something that we

064have to ponder. We're going to we're going to meet as a mental health team on Thursday to go through the data. And I do think we do need a feedback mechanism from the schools to say one, we didn't have enough time. We had plenty of time. um maybe this um kind of trumps this as far as the time goes, but we're going to have to really kind of measure what was the response time like. Were we able to um we're ready as a district to help schools and respond to the school needs, but um we did have to wait to see how the schools were going to respond to it. So, you're right. I we do have to have some closure on that feedback loop. Is this the first time we've done this? Uh no,

065we've we've done it in the past. Um we got a little bit more focused on it. this one, we we really I think supported the the why behind it and the need behind it. This survey really does um look for kids that are coming out of the summer um because we've only been in school for two weeks when this window started. So, this the point of this survey is really to what wraparound services at a building level or a district level do we need to um be responsive to kids needs coming off of an extended break such as summer? And then what does the first couple weeks of school feel like for kids? and and so no this I I believe this is our third or fourth year that we've given this particular Are you

066asking is this the first time we've given the survey or is the first time we put a system like this in place where you have colorcoded uh yeah I'm asking specifically if we have a three if we're asking if we're telling ourselves we need a three-week response time to this where did we come up with that number how long have we been doing that implementing that and do we know if that's working or not yeah so that was an inherited number that that we've worked off over the past but I do think Now it's time to get some feedback from our system to see is that number an accurate threshold number? Do we need to change the threshold? But in years past, you've you've diagregated this more and more, right, into the different Yeah, absolutely.

067The color coding is not new over the past, you know, three survey years that we've given it, but yes, we Well, because my my thought would be, granted, I know we have more the maybe the 10,000 foot view here, right? Um but if you if the if there's an issue um or we're seeing higher percentages um say in the in sped students versus non-sped students I think in order to allocate resources and time more efficiently it'd be it'd be good to know is there more of a specific group and and again I know that these aren't anonymous so you're going to be able to pinpoint students more quickly but I would just want to just so we're not randomly trying to, you know, get everybody. Are we are we being very intentional about where we're

068spending our time and resources to to hopefully close the gap for some of those students? Yeah. And I don't know, maybe share with them too how um we're not giving all students this um survey at one time, right? when we do we've staggered especially some of our bigger buildings like our high schools and our middle schools. We're not providing surveys to everybody at one time because that will completely overwhelm the adults. So staggering when we're doing so we're prioritizing and then we're staggering so that we can ensure that we're providing the support within a in a set amount of time. Yeah. the amount of um students on here that are saying they want to speak to a counselor. I couldn't even imagine our counselors if all the students were surveyed at once. Um so in

069in those cases, do we do we have backup help or does the administration in the building step in if we start if it's just too much for one counselor? Yes. So with the counselor getting into the weeds a little bit? No, it's okay. Counselors obviously there's a response mechanism. We have our mental health therapists that can help out as well. We have social workers. It just depends on the layer and if counselors can keep up. Um and and the data is sent out to the schools each day so they can be identified, you know, where are kind of your warm spots, your high numbers and then uh Charlie is able to get that out to the mental health team to say here's kind of our buildings that have some higher numbers. Let's reach out to

070those buildings and see and if they're able to keep up with those responses. So good. Thank you. Okay. Um we can we can move on to the the pink and this this is going to follow the same pattern obviously. So this data on the pink page really um represents how students answered questions around their feelings. You may notice that we are sharing some varying questions between elementary and secondary. So let's just take a second here. Is there any notice and wonderings that you see obviously with uh how kids are feeling at this at this particular time when they surveyed. [Music] So I still see the same stren the same trends with our sped students. And then well cuz these ones are asking you know if they feel afraid or hopeful or sad things like that

071but it also trends higher with girls that were non-sped. So those are just some notices I'm making. Certain certainly the data I think is trending in a way that um our special education department our director of special education will want to see the data obviously and we are planning on sharing the disagregated data throughout our system and throughout our department to be able to support. So it's a good notice. Okay. You want to move on to the red? Yep. can go to the red. So in the red, this data represents how students answers questions about um how often they feel safe and if they would like to talk to a counselor or principal about their safety or safety of someone else and again notice and wonders and I would like to point out the response

072on this is within 24 hours. So, how are we qualifying safe? Is there qualification like questions for a student? Is it just how they feel? And then the counselor then would meet with them to then dial down on what it is, what part feels safe, whether it's emotionally, physically, mentally. Is that what then we do? Yeah, it the survey just says safe and then at the elementary level it says no days. Um some days, a lot of days. It's kind of broken up into the days that way and then at the high secondary level it's um almost never never and builds up. Yeah. Yeah. I think globally I think we can all acknowledge that just across the board sped in every single category for every single thing. So that can't be a new trend. How

073have we addressed this in the past? I think for me and for our team, pretty much a whole new team within our department. Um it's going to be it'll be good for us to go back and look at the prior year surveys to see. Um I'm not so sure that that action planning has been done around um some of those disagregated data numbers, but that's part of the reason why we're getting together on Thursday to not only look at current data trends, but let's look back to see, you know, um is it is it something that just popped up this year? It's a one-year anomaly, which you're right, I don't I don't think it is. So, if it's not been addressed or if there's not been action around it, then obviously it it may be

074showing up again, but we'll have to take a look at it and see. So well I would be curious too um because it says the total surveyed you know do we is was there a point where more kids start identifying as sped like just because we're like as a district have we just done more to identify kids as needs so are we see like I would want to know do we see an increase in sped is that just generally but or is because we also have just more sped students. Do you know what I mean? Like you I think there's a c right a couple different questions there um you know of of why there's an increase. Well I I will say this we are our overall sped numbers as a system is running higher

075than what it should. So we've got a disproportionate number of students one that's either identified over identified or underidentified. So we are running at that 20% marker across our system. So 20% of our kids across our system are on an IEP. Um so that you know obviously you're going to see an elevated number in that in that protected group. Um Dan, can I ask you certainly something to dig into? So when you said higher than we should, what does that mean to you? Well, I I I believe the number and Jen you can help me out with this one that that that you want to really kind of be in an area of about 10 to 12% as a system or even as a school building. And that's kind of the number you want that

076that is kind of, you know, when you look across national norms. Um, you shouldn't be higher than that. You shouldn't be lower than that. That's that's about the national norm. Um um I think part of the work that we're doing and we're starting right now around our multi-tered systems of supports is making sure that we have multi-ter that that are that are making sure that one we are exhausting everything that we can while the students you know are in that green zone area that yellow zone and then uh kids that are bubbling up are are kids that truly um are students that that we you know that possibly have a disability. ility of some sort. So, we've got a lot of work to do in that the checks and balances within our MTSS system to

077make sure that we are identifying the right kids or are we over or under identifying. So, I think that in tandem goes with each disagregated data point that we continue to see in special education that is running high. We need to that's a point that obviously Ann Marie and I continue to have conversation and we'll we'll do that as well um across our system. So do we have reason to believe when you say running high and the numbers that should be do we have a reason to believe that we are not doing that correctly? I'm just I mean like what it you know so there's two realities and I'm I'm struck by the language. It seems like um I guess I I guess when I just heard the number I thought it would just mean

078that's just where that's just the population that we have. There's just high needs. Yeah. Um is that not how we're viewing it? Well, I think I want to make sure as a system that we are um we have the right processes and structures in place to make sure that that we are one finding through our child find, we are finding the right kids, identifying the right kids, and making sure that we're getting those kids the support that they need. Um I just there's there's multiple layers within that and that's what we're doing right now is really peeling back those layers to ensure I if it's 20% and if we get done really over the next two years determining do we have the right systems and structures in play through our tiers of support or multi-layers

079then 20% it is and that's just where we're at as as a system and as a community. But I want to make sure and we as a department want to make sure that that we're not under or over identifying kids um just because often times it it can you know it's a pathway to special education and that's not the case when when you look at a multi-tered system of support that's doing it correctly. So, it's a major audit year for us and our system to make sure and it's a lift from for our K12 principles right now and within our buildings is our MTSS systems of support making sure we have good solid best practice green zone layers and instruction for kids and we're monitoring where kids are at on that high rigor. Um, but

080Jen, go ahead. Jump in. Well, I I was just going to say frankly, yes, 20% seems high. Um when we look at our comparative districts, we're right there or not much more ahead of them. And frankly, our the special education numbers are on the rise in our nation. So where 12 to 15 would be normal, I think 15 and above is become more the norm in public education. Our we are noticing that our special special education identification those numbers are becoming higher. But when you don't have necessarily and we're coming out of a pandemic, all behaviors don't mean a student has a disability. But we need to make sure that we're meeting the needs of those behaviors or those learning. A learning gap does not mean you have a disability. But we also have not

081been able to appropriately meet the needs of all of our students under the conditions in which we are just exiting. I have said often, you know, coming out of this wilderness, these numbers are high. Is it appropriate? We're going to look and see and dig in. How do we compare to us ourselves over the years? How do we compare to the other districts that we compare ourselves to and so many other categories? And how do we now compare to the state or to the nation or to the nation as a whole? But yes, special education numbers and public education are on the rise across the nation. Yeah. Do you think some things um we've we could have just well either needed or I guess just needed the resources where maybe a student was put on

082an IEP where taken a little bit more time or maybe the district if we had the resources we would have found the solution for that that particular student versus being on an IEP. since this is sort of the only resource maybe that we've had, that's been the route we've had to take. I mean, is that I mean, because I I guess I hear the gamut from parents. It's like I hear like IEPs for some minimal things. And again, I I wouldn't disagree with a parent or child on whatever they need, but then it seems like like you said too, there's students who were missing maybe some of the needs that they're that they are needing. So, kind of that over and under. So yeah, sounds like you guys are really trying to work on calibrating

083that and balancing it out. Um, you know, so maybe some that were maybe over where we we we can find a different resource for them. And I guess from the board standpoint, it would be nice to know what are those resources that you all need. if it's if it's not a special education route for a student, what are the other resources we need to look at um to have in the district that would be supportive for student services and our counselors that and obviously ultimately to those families and students for for those different needs. I guess I don't I don't even know what those are. What those resources are. It's not just money. We can have all the money in the world, but we don't have enough special education teachers that are trained and ready

084um to meet the needs of our students because they're not coming out of we don't have students going to school and they're not leaving our universities or our colleges by any means. So, you know what resources? We can get more money. That's not always, but we've got to make sure that we have the right personnel and the right resources in um um actual things that we use to teach or resources that we use. So, it it's complicated and unfortunately there are a lot of forces or factors that are out of our control as well. And yeah, and I think the the the harsh reality is that if we if we're having a hard time getting, you know, teachers and educators in general and then more specifically sped, I think it's something we have to be

085cognizant of of how do we make a plan moving forward because if we don't see that changing in the foreseeable future, then I guess that's what I'm saying as the resources is like what I and again I don't even know the answer to this. I'm I'm spitballing it here because it's like I don't like what do we do like and what are what are we seeing other districts do because again I know we're not the only ones um facing this um but we I don't I you just don't want to get too far you know behind in trying to address these things. So that's just it's it's just more my question to put out there. We don't need to answer it now, but I would from a board standpoint, it'd be good information that if

086as you guys go along, you know, bring that back to us to see how and I'm sure you will tell Dr. Hill and he will be telling us, but I just I I think I just want to bring our community along with this to see that this is a this is a big challenge and um it's not going to just have a quick answer. Um, and I think as a community, we're going to all have to come together to um, address this because if we literally just don't have the people and we need the people, what are we going to do? The time to ensure that our teachers have the right amount of time to learn, know, and understand what they need to be doing in their classroom, in their schools, to ensure that we're

087meeting the needs of all of our students. This is just a way at first to identify what are the needs. Absolutely. And well, like you said, you can't start I I think you've said this is you you have to have the data to know where to start, right? We might not love these numbers, but if we don't know the numbers, we don't know where to even begin. And so, um, they're sobering. Um, I'm glad you guys can dial down on these even more, I think, to help identify more specifically. Um, but, uh, it's it's it's a good it's a good place. I mean, we just need to know where we're at, right? And so we're going to go ahead and skip if you're okay. You you understand or you you now have seen the rhythm

088of when we're looking at data and that notice and wonder protocol. They'll go digger or I mean they'll go digger. They'll go deeper in their dig. They're going to go digger. They're going to go deeper in their their um digging and they'll go down to our our different groups, different schools. How are we working with community? But that leads me to this la next slide that I'd love Amy. So what can we do and how are we partnering with um our community and what does this data tell us? Right. So um we also have the Healthy Kids Colorado survey coming up for secondary students. Um and that time frame is September 18th through the 29th where all of our schools will be participating which is very exciting for us and our community. Um and our

089K5 students will have the Panorama education um perception survey coming up as well as family survey and then the end of the year. So we have more data points that we're going to be looking at along the way and we'll share with you as we get data back. Yes. Go to staff wellness. Okay. All right. So, our next is our different our priority area of um prepared and supported staff and Connie is going to share what we've been doing as a district for um staff wellness. Yes. Thank you. So, can you hear me? You can. Okay. With regard to staff wellness, when teachers and staff feel supported, empowered, and trusted by school leadership, they're able to create the conditions that lead to students academic, social, and emotional environment and development. And today we're going to

090f the slide before this talks about the objective that we've had in prior being that district 51 staff receive the mental health support they need to engage with students and families as healthy leaders. to remind you of our goal that we had this last year by 2020 June 2024 for uh the district survey questions related to staff's overall well-being we would like to see an increase by 2% of the favorable responses. So we'll go into that in a little more detail. So first of all though in May we shared this model with you. We felt if we focused on these three things, communicating resources, establishing meaningful partnerships, and connecting internally with intent, we would collectively engage more employees and make a difference. We want to be sensitive to the fact that our employees are exhausted,

091stressed out, frustrated, and overwhelmed. Yet, they report that their work matters, it's meaningful, they're happy and engaged, and they feel they are effective and satisfied with their jobs. But in order to impact organizational wellness, we feel it's important that we change the culture to be one where we truly care about each other from a human standpoint and that we all take responsibility to check in on each other. We need to allow this to happen in a safe, non-judgmental environment. So, we are aligning our internal wellness efforts and communicating more clearly about the wide range of resources we already have within the district. We're teaming up with other partners such as the District 51 Foundation to facilitate and promote social events specifically for D51 staff. For example, last Thursday the first joy celebration was held at

092the Ae House and we had close to 150 employees um attend the event and yummy mocktails and yummy mocktails and so that is giving us a good place to start for future events taking place. All right. We are also working uh to connect internally at all levels across the organization aligning our efforts. We have a variety of new leaders setting the stage along with our increasing number of embedded wellness champions in every school and building promoting and encouraging utilization of our internal resources through the benefits and wellness newsletter. Instilling the importance of self-care, genuine care for our co-workers, and a sense of belonging. An example of organizational alignment happened during the social, emotional, and behavior supports training provided by student services on August 10th. Employees that chose to attend this session learned the tenants of

093wellness, learned to identify compassion fatigue, how to mitigate symptoms through practical application and regulation techniques. Participants also learned how to access district internal and external resources. This was the first time we've been able to have a staff well have staff wellness as an option professional de for professional development and it was appreciated by attendees. Those are those first two days those first the 9th and the 10th when we had delayed start for our elementary folks. So on this slide I would like to go over some of the data sources that um apply to staff wellness and share with you the timeline. So with Triad EAP, we have this as an ongoing service. It's offered to our employees and we monitor utilization data on a quarterly basis. Um for that, right, smart source. Smart source is

094administered every other year in the fall. Schools will complete this survey in late September. This is a school survey um to inventory the school's policies and practices in relation to the whole school, whole community, whole child model. One survey per school is completed by a small team of staff members. Result result results of the survey are used to improve the school's health practices. All right. The TLCC teaching and learning conditions Colorado survey is administered every other year. It provides valuable data on the impact of schools conditions on student growth and on staff retention. It's given to school staff and has a handful of questions related to employee well-being. It is the only data source on school conditions that offers state comparison points. This is scheduled to be administered in spring of 2024. And Monument Health

095has health plan population and clinical data. And with predictive and analytics and the health plan utilization, we review and analyze clinical data on a quarterly basis as well. Excitingly, we are about to launch the Goodlife wellness platform health risk assessment. Um, it's powered by Monument Health through phases beginning this week. Um, free to all district employees, GoodLife is a digital portal to a world of whole health well-being. It empowers employees with a range of personalized tools, resources, and expert guidance to enhance their health and lifestyle. Employees will receive an email with login instructions and once they log in, they'll be prompted to complete a health risk assessment which determines a baseline. It will automatically route them to their personalized online dashboard where they can review their scores and customize a plan specific to their needs.

096Identified wellness goals can be achieved by completing specific activities. Progress can be monitored on one platform. In early 2024, we'll begin to see aggregated data from those who have completed the HR, giving us more insight about our population's gaps in achieving optimal wellness. And this is important for evaluating our employees personal health and well-being. And then we have the Panorama survey, and it's administered annually in the fall. This survey gathers teacher and staff perceptions of their professional well-being, and it's the tool we're using to measure overall well-being performance. And so tonight we have the survey instrument for you. You have this in your packet. And remember the PA panorama teacher and staff survey gives school and district leaders a tool to listen to and address educators professional, social, and emotional needs. And it's designed to

097spark productive conversations between teachers and school leaders about well-being, staff leadership relations, school climate, and belonging. And so the survey questions number 18 through 32 on the tool gather the staff and teacher perceptions of their professional well-being and their answers to these questions contribute to their overall well-being score. So the these questions are grounded in educational research that shows how teachers across all grades teach best when they feel competent and connected and avoid burnout when they feel supported and impactful. this survey. We don't have exciting data yet like the student wellness. Um, but it'll be administered this fall and we won't know if we've met our goal until we see the results. But we're happy to share either with Brian or with you what we find out. So, we wanted to give you an opportunity

098to review the questions and notice and wonder. Are these anonymous with staff or No, these are anonymous. Yes. Okay. So, if if you saw some really concerning answers then how do we help that person? We don't have the data on an individual um perspective. It's really aggregated. That's where we each have to take our responsibility to check in with other people and hopefully if someone Yeah. So it looks like Good Life Wellness platform is a Monumental Health platform. Monument Health is it's powered through Monument Health. And then the Triad Triad EAP is our employee assistance program that offers services to all employees. Okay. Y All right. Thank you. When does staff usually take their survey? Is it in later the fall? And so we'll have the data usually the end of December, early January. Do

099they take it at like the like on their own time? Like um there's a window and typically yes, it would be on their own time. Yeah. I'm just thinking like if they were in the middle of a crazy day like the answers could fluctuate versus like if I I mean generally I think we as adults we understand how am I generally feeling most of the time but I would I would just want to make sure that it wouldn't be skewed in if someone just had a bad day but sometimes that happens. One of our goals was to really con connect internally with our leadership. And so giving the opportunity to um view their own populations within their schools will set the stage on how uh what the response will be. Right. And this is broken

100out by school, right? So principal can then see how they generally feel like their staff feels. Right. Okay. Correct. So it's done by schools and of course there would be an end count or that number. So the percentage of your your teachers or your staff you would want to see a higher percentage which is a better indicator of what that health might be in the and it's um it's also departmental um surveys as well. So central office uh staff get get to um take the survey based on their department and so there's information that different departments can take back and gets that information. What about like our other staff like janitorial and nutrition services? They all so everybody does it. Okay, great. There's two different versions. One is specific to teachers and the other is

101specific to staff. Okay. Right. Support. No data yet, but at least you had the opportunity to see what's to come. Any additional questions? Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for the information. That's really helpful. I feel like I'm doing a lot of talking tonight as board president because there's only two of us. Well, my job is really to help facilitate the other board members discussing stuff and then I usually throw in at the end, but well, I guess when there's only two of us, then do 50% of the talking. Thank you all. All right. So, next we have our um elementary and secondary school emergency relief fund update, which those are the ESSER dollars that you've probably heard the district and the board discuss. Yes. And Mel and I are presenting. Um Doug Shaw

102is our grant accountant. Um unfortunately, he's not going to be here. So, if there are some more detailed questions that you want to know specifically, we're going to talk big big buckets, big spending buckets, but if there are any additional data or numbers that you want um and we cannot answer it, we will make sure that Dr. Hill has that information in. So, okay, thank you for the opportunity to share a little bit about district 51 and how we've used the elementary secondary school emergency relief funds or ESSER. ES funds have provided Colorado school districts with historic opportunity to invest in strategies that would support students, families, and educators in responding to the pandemic, accelerating recovery efforts, and promoting student success. Esther funds were provided to states and from the states to school districts primarily

103based on title one funding um in through multiple allocations. Um these are these funds are one-time meaning they are not ongoing and must be spent by a certain date. We'll go over each of the allocations, their timelines and then their amounts. Um back in 2020 seems so long ago during the first wave of the pandemic we were faced with unprecedented disruptions and seemingly impossible challenge of providing quality and equitable education opportunities for all of our students. The decision on how to spend these resources has been inherently and intentionally focused on our district's specific and unique needs and they're aligned to our vision of engage, equip, empower each student each and every day. These funds have helped us better address the effects of the pandemic and its significant interruptions of teaching and learning. D51 is committed

104to ensure that every student has necessary the necessary support to thrive in school in the wake of this pandemic. All right, this is a busy slide. Um, but this is a funding timeline showing the various federal grants related to COVID and the simultaneous impacts that Colorado school districts were facing through state funding reductions. Um, while it may be a bit hard to see at first glance, pay attention to the bar in the middle that has the years in red, orange, yellow, and green. Um above that, the colored arrows above the bar indicate the federal funds received and when the funds need or needed to be spent. Um you'll note that CRF and SR1 um have both their timelines are completed. SR2 will expire at the end of this month, September 30th, 2023, leaving SR3 available

105uh to districts through next September for spending. below the colored line uh illustrates state funding to districts. It's important to note that the polarity between the top and the bottom in that CRF and ESR dollars were first distributed to districts when state funding shortfalls were at an all-time high, a result of CO's impact on the state's economy. Again, while all the onetime federal stimulus dollars will expire by September 30th, 2024, they have significantly helped local students and communities weather the immediate and lasting effects of the pandemic. So looking specifically at district 51, the ongoing shortfall in state funding to Colorado school districts doubled from 201920 to 202021, resulting in a year-to-year decrease of nearly 5% to our per pupil funding that's shown on the right side there. Um, this is probably information you're familiar with

106already, but D51's funding is one of the lowest in the state, and we rely heavily on state share, which accounts for 68% of the per pupil funding we receive. The loss in state share numbers in red signify the amounts of funding shortfalls, which had to be absorbed during the years 2020 to 21 to 2022. Another graphic that's been shared previously depicts that cumulatively these shortfalls have reduced D51's funding over 247 million and span more than an entire generation of K12 students. In relation to CO funds, these CO dollars have been critical to addressing the many additional needs brought on by CO within these budgetary constraints. Um these are the allocations from the various COVID related grants that were available to D51 from each of the funding sources. The first dollars to be shared with the

107district were the coronavirus relief fund or CRF followed closely by SSR1 both in the spring of 2020. Um SSR 2 was then announced in December 2020 and finally SR 3 which was signed into law in March of 2021. Each one had their own intricacies. Um, but to date, D51 has expended all but the SR3 allocation for which spending continues this year. And Jen will now share information about the purposes for each of these grants and the critical needs they have addressed. We've been working hard to allocate these resources with fidelity to the specific needs of our students, staff, and community. This slide identifies each of the allocations by name and its purpose. The color of each of the esser fund allocation also aligns to the timeline that you just saw. So, um, one slide, but

108I've got a lot of words. So, um, Mel had all of her words over multiple slides, but, um, please bear with me. We're going to go around this graphic. Each of our ESSA resource allocations were designed to have a specific benefit, whether it's safe schools through HVAC upgrades, accelerating learning through summer school or interventions, or improving student well-being through mental health supports. These allocations were prioritized to better enable us to meet student needs of of staff, student and staff needs. Over the past three years, D51 has prioritized these four these funds in four big spending buckets. safe and healthy learning environments, addressing lost learning and accelerated learning, support and stability for educators, and providing mental health support for students. So, the first bucket, safe and healthy learning environments. The pandemic elevated the critical role of

109safe and accessible school buildings and classrooms. These federal pandemic recovery funds have enabled our district to invest in cleaning and disinfect disinfecting, contact tracing, handwashing and sanitizing stations, and other CO 19 mitigation measures that helped our schools remain open and limit school closures and serve students during an incredibly challenging time. The next bucket, lost learning and accelerated learning. D-51 remains committed or dedicated to CO 19 pandemic recovery and providing the best resources to accelerate learning outcomes for all students. We have prioritized proven approaches to accelerate learning and increase student achievement by expanding summer school providing evidence-based interventions offering quality professional development and teacher collaboration time. as her funds have enabled our district to better address um address learning gaps in both teacher and student learning. Student mental health. We understand that the experience of the

110pandemic took a mental toll on our students. Research says that students learn and achieve higher levels when they feel safe and supported in their learning environments. In addition to having trusting relationships with adults that surround them to support their social, emotional, and mental health needs of our students, we use the ESSER funds to hire additional nurses, counselors, mental health therapists, behavior interventionists, and a suicide prevention specialist. The pandemic has taken a toll on our nation's students and D51 has not been imu immune to these struggles. Support and stability for educators. D51 is committed to ensuring that all students have access to great teachers and other educational staff. According to the most recent Colorado District needs inventory, workforce and staffing needs are major concerns for many of our districts throughout Colorado. Top issues include severe staffing

111shortages, not enough substitute teachers, staff burnout, and mental health needs. To fulfill this D-51 vision, it is critical that our educators are well supported and equipped to provide quality learning experiences to our students. These funds allowed for additional substitutes, COVID work um load compensation, instructional coaches, and online teachers. By investing in our educational workforce, our district is showing its commitment to the partnership between families and educators, and they're all at the heart of our students success. I say Doug, but it's Mel. You're putting your duck out. We'll share the actual numbers for each of these big four buckets in our spending. All right. So, the first grant was the CRF Coronavirus Relief Fund with an allocation of nearly $11 million. Um some of the major spend activities here um obviously this was towards the beginning

112of the pandemic and so PPE was a large expense of about $1.5 million of the fund. Um also sanitizing equipment custodial supplies uh within the lost instructional time category was primarily used for and starting up what was then the new DO program an online option offered at GR and technology that supported remote learning as well as additional platforms to address learning gaps at all schools. Support for educators and staff stability was primarily uh professional learning payments around safety protocols, COVID procedures, and digital and remote teaching practices. That's hard to read on that up here. Um this one is Esser 1 and that was um an allocation of roughly 3.4 million. It's a little hard to see on that um background and this was used in 202021. So, thinking black back to those original slides where

113we had our PPR decrease, um this these funds were primarily used to fill a gap in the general fund um budget due to the doubling of the state funding reductions that took place that year. Um mainly sustaining staff positions that were already in existence. Uh one of the unique characteristics of these grants being federal dollars um is that they allow supplanting which any other federal grant does not. meaning that they can be used to cover existing costs that qualify. Because custodial salaries were clearly a qualifying cost, we chose to use esser one to cover a portion of these salaries and benefits from one year. Esser 2 with a total allocation of about $20 million uh was used in the following manners. um creating safe and healthy learning environments consisted of COVID subs. Um some more

114PPE and safety equipment such as air filtration systems and purifiers, disinfectant and electrostatic sprayers, vacuums and hydration stations. um under the address lost instructional time and accelerating learning category was largely spent on academic intervention curriculums and software for schools um that were provided districtwide and the cost of continuing to operate the online option at GRA. Roughly half of the total SR2 allocation was spent in the next category of support for educators and staff through APLUS workload recognition payments, instructional coaching, and maintaining school-based positions during declining student counts. Additional mental health staff such as behavior and suicide prevention specialists that Jen mentioned were also hired to support the increased and ongoing mental health needs of students and staff. Lastly, in SRE 3, um this had the largest allocation of 45 million uh within the create safe

115and healthy learning environments. Uh again, staffing such as health assistant additional hours and nursing positions, uh custodial cleaning equipment, and still a little bit of PPE. Um a unique requirement of SR3 was that at least 20% of the allocation has to be spent on addressing loss learning. Um and so we have exceeded that requirement of the set aside uh using about six million for educational software and curriculum. Three and a half million um for the summer school offered during these years and then another 6 million for our online and GR online grow program through these years. Again, the supporting educators and staff is the instructional coaches and APLUS and mental health staff um bucket also includes capturing kids hearts in SR3 which was purchased utilizing these funds. So you probably noticed some overlap and some

116of the costs continued across multiple grants. That is one funding stream ended. We were often able to continue the programs in the next COVID grant. And so putting these figures together across all of the grants, nearly 40% of the overall CO funds have or are planned to be used for lost and accelerated learning. Uh the next largest category is support and stabilities for educators at nearly 30%. Safe and healthy learning environments accounting for 13%. uh indirect funds which help sustained our general fund at 10% and mental health needs and charter and private school allocations rounding out the remaining approximately 8% of the funds. Uh we do have a page on our district web page. It's at d51schools.orgser org/ser where additional information can be found with specific narratives from our state budget, uh some graphs as

117well as a feedback form. As our SR timeline begins to sunset, D-51 will remain committed to making strategic invent investments that can better address learning gaps and increase student achievement outcomes both in the short and long term. Thanks to our community and our educators, we are already noticing some promising growth in our student learning. D51 educators and staff continue to be the bedrock of the success of our vision. as her funds were necessary to accelerate student learning and to ensure that our students would thrive during these unprecedented times. We will continue to work with our educators, school leaders, families, and community partners to provide the best social, emotional, and academic support for all of our students. Um, thank you. I have a question about how we are thinking about the programs that Esser funded that

118we will not have funded anymore and how are we yeah just how are we thinking about that? How are we prioritizing what we're doing moving forward and how are we assessing how effective those programs were? So I'll take a crack at it and then if you want to add Jen. So, in our current budget, we were able to set aside um some funds um through to enough essentially to cover our online program because we knew that would be important to continue that option as well as summer school um and some of the intervention programs that we've been able to purchase districtwide where in the past um some schools were able to pay for them out of their title one allocations or through intervention dollars, but it wasn't uniformly available at all schools. And so knowing

119that those pri were priorities that we wanted to keep, we were able to set aside those reoccurring dollars within the general fund um going forward. Um I think we've always known that these were temporary dollars and that they would expire. Unfortunately, right? Unfortunately, we knew and unfortunately a lot of our needs are always staff positions which makes it kind of hard with onetime dollars. So we know we won't be able to keep everything, but we have set aside some so that we wouldn't need to address it all in one year. in regards to I think this was what you asked and maybe were about to ask is how are we um monitoring the effectiveness of everything that we have purchased. So, of course, with all of our um our funds, especially specifically, I should see

120should say with our our mill dollars, we do program evaluations. And so, certainly we ask there's some perception surveys that we ask our teachers, you know, how do you feel? Was were the um was this resource easy to use? How were you using it? Would you use it with your own student? And then we compare these program evaluation questions and tools and then um compare it to the data from um from our from our system and individually at each of our buildings. We'll do the same thing with our intervention funds. How are you use I'm sorry are intervention programs essentially the same type of program evaluation asking first looking to see what is the usage are they using it um as compared the percentage to the amount of money that we are spending on these

121that would give us the reason to continue spending our money and then again comparing it to growth and proficiency that we're seeing within our um within our buildings and teachers along with their class sizes or their classrooms. So then do we thank you for explaining that. So then do we say is there a threshold if we're like oh it's not um achieving 5% growth we cut everything below that or do we say we're going to keep the top 10 or how does that Yeah I think that's a fair question and we haven't um identified what those thresholds are. We do know that we have some which you'll hear a little bit later. we have some global um resources that we want to change because we know we're not getting the effects that with the money

122that we have spent or not or the time that we have spent we're not seeing our return our rate of return on our student learning. So we will do some changing but we have not identified what those thresholds are yet. Okay. Thank you. So then my question is specifically for like the online answer we that was just one it was one example and I know that there are tons of options but so how how specifically I'm curious just because that was the example how did we decide like what did it if if we don't know exactly what we're benchmarking it to what was success and and how did we decide to prioritize that over some programs that we decided not to. I think that goes back to my original we have a we have a

123lot of need. We had some pretty significant interruptions in teaching and learning and how we identified first which programs online programs or platforms we would use was based on evidence-based or researchbased um comparison to others. And so we only chose or I only chose with help um programs that were already vetted and esser I'm sorry not esser ESSA approved. So and they were already showing that research showed that they were getting the response that we would need. Um but I'm a little confused when you asked about online. Are you specifically talking about like our online platforms for or our online school? Online school. So specifically, so that's great that we used an evidence-based approach to choose that that program. Of course you did because that is your superpower um and your job and you're very

124good at it. But um but yeah, so why did we keep it? So I I think it's an option. It's part of our robust options that is involved with our um strategic plan and we have over 600 students that are part of our online school. Um, I think that we certainly work with our um our online school to ensure that they're receiving the support that they need to ensure that they're meeting the needs of our students. But as of right now, we have over 600 students that are attending this option. Okay. It's Yes, it's an option. Can you go back to the slide? um the budget stabilization factor funding reductions. Yeah, it's the one with all the blue lines. I just I have a couple questions to make sure I'm interpreting it correctly. So, these

125are the deficiencies, right, of the money that we did not get from 2009 to present. Correct. So, for a total of almost 250 million. Yep. And the money we got from ESER was just a little over 80 million. Mhm. So, but really, so the 80 million doesn't really I mean, if you just think about this from a budgetary standpoint, right, you have we have so many expenses or things that we actually couldn't spend money on because we didn't receive that money, $250 million worth. But then the $80 million that was given to us from the federal government to help with learning loss actually had to go towards things that we should have been getting money for and not really towards the things that we needed it to go for. I mean, it did. We we

126got through some of those things with CO, but I guess my point is is that $80 million did not get us to the point of where we had a $250 million deficiency. There's no business I know that can run like this. And so obviously in order for us to balance our budget, we cut a lot. Is that correct? A lot. I mean, I'm looking at years 2012, we were short 25 million and then 2020 short 24 million. I My point is to this, and correct me if I'm wrong. I think there's a misconception out there that people think we're going to continue to get a lot of money from the state of Colorado. That's obviously not the trend. It's just that this year we just only were short by 3 million instead of 20 million.

127Am I looking at that correctly? No, you're looking at it exactly correctly. So, a couple of things that I take away when I look at this is obviously the year 2021 in that big jump that we were going in the right direction and really coming out of that 20112 numbers 201213 and then all of a sudden it doubled again. Right? So, there's some unpredictability in how we are funded um through our state formula. And then like to your point, the big increases or the more significant increases that we've seen in recent years are because the budget stabilization factor has been bought down in some pretty sizable chunks. Um but then once that's gone, which hopefully is next year, um we should go back to more stable funding and uh increases that are more based on

128inflation than digging out of this budget stabilization factor. I mean, this is just crazy. I mean, I don't I just have a ton of respect for you and your team on how you guys actually figure out what money we're going to have and how we budget because when we're some of these are dramatic differences from year to year in in what we're going to be able to spend. Well, basically not spend because there's there's little it's all red. There's like there's no money. And you said consistently we're 5% short like over or what what was it like a prior two slides? I think there was something where our average is it was on this one. And so that large increase on the year 2020 2022 our per pupil funding went from 8,64 down to 7700.

129So not only did we not get an inflationary increase that year we went the opposite direction through a 5% reduction and that's where the 5% was. Okay. And we but we don't know for sure if they're going I mean do we know if they're going to do away with the budget stabilization factor. This just doesn't seem like something our state can get fig I mean our legislators can't seem to get this figured out. In theory in the school bill passed last night in theory um part of what was passed was that the budget stabilization factor would go away for 2425. So that would mean um that that $3.4 $4 million reduction would go back to zero, meaning for the first time we would be considered funded according to the funding formula since 2008 2009. So

130that would be a big win in and of itself. Um but to your point because the state has this mechanism in place where they can budget their own um they balance their own budget through this I even if it goes away like when the next thing happens it would probably come back. Well, I guess my question is is if if it just takes us to zero, then how do we know we're we're funded? I mean, all it's doing all it's doing is just wiping out the it's just basically saying, "Nope, now you're at zero, so you're technically funded." But does that mean we're funded? I mean, does that mean we still have the money that we need to be able to do our re, you know, resources? And I'm sorry I'm getting a little like

131I don't mean for my tone to be that harsh. I and it's not to you but I'm just saying like I don't know if our community understands that this is a very complex and frustrating issue and to like constantly have to try to run the district in the red. So there is a committee at the state level that I think they've had their first meeting now where they are looking at that. Um our formula that we get our funding is set back in 1994. Obviously, a lot of things have changed. Um, we know our district is considered a floor district, meaning that of all the districts in the state, we receive from the lowest amount per student. Um, because of the way that the formula currently is laid out. So, over the years, there have

132been attempts to change that formula and look at if it is equitable and if it is meeting the needs of all the districts that it's serving. And so, that efforts underway. Um, but I think kind of where that always gets held up is that there will be districts that would receive more and districts that would receive less. And so it's really hard to change something when there are districts that would receive less and they tend to be some of the bigger districts. Do do other districts I mean do you have this kind of data on other districts? Is there a place where we could see Yeah, I don't I have it graphed anywhere, but it is available on CDE's web page where we could look at any of the districts over time. Um, it's going

133to be similar. Um, any the only districts that wouldn't have been affected like this would be districts that are fully locally funded um because this is bringing back um state funding. And so if they aren't receiving state funding because their property values are sufficient to pay their PPR, then they wouldn't have had these same reductions. How many do you know how many districts roughly are able to operate like that? I don't I feel like Aspen is one that's regionally kind of like that, but that gives you the idea of the property values, right? When the median house price is 2 million, then yeah, your property tax can cover. Yeah. And they have a smaller district, right? there's not as many schools and students. I just want to kind of Thank you. I'm just trying one

134I want to make sure I understand it and two I'm just really trying to point out the disparity that we have here with our funding and just what it takes to get us and I guess it frustrates me because I just feel like this is like everything that we're thinking about that we need for sped students or student mental health or um staff and student wellness, all the things that we've just talked about. It's like where the funding like where does it eventually come from? Exactly. But y'all do a good job navigating all of this. So, thank you. I can't imagine I'm I would have like no hair left. I'd be like pulling all my hair out after like trying to navigate this. So, well done. Thank you. Thank you guys for the information. I

135think so. I just want to I just want to say one last thing just as I'm trying to like sort the prioritization of and as we're talking about our robust and aligned options and making sure that our robust and aligned options are meeting our standards. It's like how we assess that and how we will develop a framework to assess that as we move forward with hopefully developing more robust and aligned options or supporting more or whatever that might look like. Um, yeah. Okay. Curious about that conversation moving forward. Absolutely. Are we moving on or are we breaking? I'm fine moving on. Yeah, I'm fine. Okay, let's talk social studies. All right. So, our last um update for this evening is the update on the revised social studies standards um from House Bill 192. and that

136committee. Thank you. Had one. I had a copy of my All right. Um, you all know, but I'd like to introduce or reintroduce Jackie Anderson, our executive director of teaching and learning. And um, yes, she's going to talk about social studies. Thanks. Thank you. Actually, could we go back just one slide? Yeah. So, there's a revision date here. Thank you for inviting us to talk about curriculum studies talked about I don't think on either big changes in curriculum in each of the last two years we uh early literacy with reading and then science our nextgen standards and recently with a new adoption in science there are big changes in social studies too there was a revision last year December of 2022 and if you go to CDE's website you would also be able to find

137the revision before that which was 2020 and probably that strikes you as a quick turnaround and it should struck us the same. Mhm. Yeah. So the standards before that were I think they were last revised in 2009 and revised in 2020 and those changes were substantial. Uh many more evidence outcomes, more content to teach, broader content, a lot more robust. And then the state uh moved to a cycle with curriculum rewrites said we're going to put each content area on a cycle. And the first content area to be rewritten was social studies. And that's because there was there were a number of bills in the House that were being passed that dealt with social studies content and topics. And so the revision happened in quick order again in 2022. So at the same time that

138this legislation was passing and that's the next slide. Three pieces of legislation described here, the standards were rewritten and then published in December of last year. So this is the first full year of implementation beginning implementation of the new 2022 social studies standards. So each of these are bills that passed alongside the revised standards. I'll give you a second to read those. Yep. Can I just say so for the one um wherein the community is invited to discuss the content standards and history and civics, that doesn't mean that we can change the standards. The standards are the standards, but the community is invited to have a discussion about them, but the standards are the standards. Yep. And we'll talk more about that later in this presentation. It's a unique um expectation of the state. No

139other content area has that expectation. And so it's a great opportunity for our community to engage with the standards. And we haven't done that yet. We mean to do it this year, but then all districts would fall in line with the six-year cycle of hosting uh a forum. Yep. To discuss the standards civily about civics and history. That's the intent. If you go back to that one. Oh, you're fast. Sorry. Uh 13, House Bill 1336 is about primarily the Holocaust and the teaching of certain genocides and as a system as a board of education. You've addressed that one already. We've revised our ninth grade course, our global studies course to include those studies. That wasn't before a part of our curricula. And so now that's part of graduation requirements for all students uh leaving our

140system. But I'll have more to say about that in a moment. House Bill 119 uh is really about and there's a phrase there the contributions of historically marginalized groups. We see a lot of shifts in the standards related to House Bill 1192. And then finally 67 is about strengthening the civic standards and especially Colorado standards. So with that, here are examples from each of those House bills capturing the shift. Uh there's I think a couple typos on the one in the middle, but I'll again I'll give you time on this slide. in this room. As recently as Tuesday, yeah, it would be Tuesday as last week, high school uh teachers were really digging into the standards that you see discussed here on this slide or big changes. If I'm a high school social studies teacher,

141these are significant changes. So, the next slide is about our efforts to address some of the changes. And if you've got your phone out, if um it'd be great, I think to click on that QR code or you can find it by navigating to CD's website. You find the social studies standards and to the right there's a menu and one of those links is a summary of the changes. That's a great link for anyone in our community to navigate to to see a pretty concise yet precise summary of some of the changes to the standards. And then on the right on the screen here, um a brief outline of what we've been doing as a system to address those changes. So at high school, we'll start with high school and move to elementary. at high

142school. Again, we've already revised the global studies course to include a study of the Holocaust and some of the named genocides. Um, it doesn't necessarily fit well in that course as a global studies course. If I'm a social studies teacher, I have content in history, in civics, and economics, um, and in geography. And so, that's a geography course, but I'm teaching parts of modern world history. So, where does it fit in my scope and sequence? A group of high school teachers has come together in the context of resource adoption as funded by our mill to look at all three of the credits that we require for graduation at high school and re-evaluate how these standards map to courses because again there are more standards here. There's more to teach and I have four domains and

143three credits. So somewhere in there I need to integrate some of that content. where's the best place to integrate it and how might we realign the courses with resource adoption on the table. So, they have pretty significant work ahead of them that will conclude midy year. So, we'll be coming back to you with um recommendations for resources for all three of those required courses midyear this year and a chance for our community again as we've done with previous adoptions to look at and provide feedback on those resources. So substantial work underway at high school. I want to acknowledge that all of the work I'm about to describe is led by one brilliant person. It's Amy Desaw. She's our K12 social studies specialist. And so she's leading a number of teams to support our system in

144aligning with the standards. Um middle school, middle school is unique. At sixth and seventh grade, we teach ancient world history hemispherically. So that's how it works in Colorado. Those are our standards. the western hemisphere and eastern hemisphere and ancient world history in sixth and seventh grade. And then in the eighth grade year, that's a study of US history. We've just recently had and you approved a new resource, McGra Hill, to support us in that shift. And so that resource is rich with primary sources that do a great job, especially of addressing some of the shifts that we saw with House Bill 1192, the emphasis on marginalized groups. Again, lush with primary sources. So I have great opportunities to think about the contributions of different people's over time. And at elementary, we haven't had much or

145a robust uh UCIA, a unified curriculum at elementary to support social studies. Teachers at elementary split time between science and social studies in their week. They alternate 45minute periods. So we're rewriting units and curating resources. We don't have on the calendar a resource adoption for elementary social studies. I just named it. for working on high school and later we'll be talking about middle school. But um that doesn't mean that there's nothing we can do. There's a lot that we can do to curate and put together a unified curriculum at elementary. That team started doing that work in summer of last year and they meet again for the first time next week and they've put together some units that give teachers more options and opportunity to those standards. Yep. And then this is really important. Uh

146you touched on this earlier Dr. ulties the we've have a council the 1192 council um a committee that we're putting together here in district 51 and that had started work last year before it was postponed. The purpose is to plan those forums to plan the forums um and invite stakeholders from our community to come out to talk about read and talk about the standards not all of the standards. It doesn't include interestingly economics or geography. It's really about our history standards and our civic standards K12. And so we mean to do that right and not just do it in one night but two and create a space for our community to engage. So we have planning meetings. And I would just like to add while CDE we've been um directed essentially to do this, they

147have not given us any guidance on what these forums might look like. So um we have really I think that Jackie has really been very thoughtful in in planning ensuring we did one or two we had a couple we had a couple planning and then we had we weren't able to continue. I know Andrea you were a part of it. So, we want to pick those back up, but we're not doing it with any guidance or didn't come with a manual. Although, we will have a person to support us this year. CDE uh sends someone from the House Bill 1192 group to be part of the process. And so, last year we couldn't get that person assigned, but now we do have someone that will support us. So, that'll bring a manual. I don't There's

148a manual. There's just an opportunity. Is that from I think there's a list of individuals that are part of that committee that is on the CDE website, right? So is it's probably is it somebody from that list then? That's my understanding. I don't know if that I saw like I saw like a whole list of like different people that were part of that and so yeah. Okay. Don't have a name yet. I was just curious. Okay. Thank you. Or know how are they split up? Is it regionally? Is it Yeah. Yeah. We don't know. Something um that our system will need, that our teachers need and our students need so that their experience can be safe around some of the shifts in the standards is guidance from us about what does this look like? What

149resources should I use? How might I address this with my students? And many of the standards in elementary that deal with marginalized groups. Well, those standards in history and civics aren't taught until the second semester. We think it's really important to engage with our community in the forums and then provide guidance. So the forums are scheduled tenatively for November and then we'd have time in November and December to really engage our teachers in richer conversation about shifts in history and civic standards at elementary in particular. So now there's time for questions. Any questions you have about what is the state's intention like what are we what is a desired outcome? Is it just is it just educating people? Is it kind of like so nobody's had you know as as a valley we have not

150been taught any of these things. So it's like teaching the parents too. Is it like what is this? So I've read it again and again and again to try to glean that and we did that actually as a house bill council. What is the purpose? It it is that broad to create a space for the public to discuss the standards. It's that's it. That's the extent of the the ask. Um we as a House bill council talked about what we'd how what is our desired outcome for this work. We'd like broad and wide participation. We'd like it to be an example of civic discourse. We'd like to see our students involved, our parents involved, our community involved. And so we developed as a council additional desired outcomes. And we'll do that again when we reconvene

151next week as we start up. But from the state's perspective, it's create a space for members of your community to talk about the standards. So there's no there's nothing we're taking that there's nothing we're taking away from it to implement. The point is just is the space. We are creating the space and the structure and presenting the the standards. So so so people walk away with new information and maybe like this nice civic exchange, but to be engaged. Yeah. Engaged. And I think it was awesome the last time we had students who have had the opportunity to review these these standards or specifically these genocide and what has that done for them leaving our system with that knowledge and it's been great because such a small portion or percentage of our students have ever had

152the opportunity to to learn these things. How many you figured it out at one time? What was the I'd have to go back. Amy did. We look to see who who had taken modern world history. If you think about the content that you cover in modern world history, not many of our students get that before leaving our system. And that's something that House Bill 1336 does a much better job of ensuring. So, we're excited about that. Now, we just have to figure out where in course content could it live. We embed. Yeah. And to be fair, if I'm a high school social studies teacher, I'm saying, "Well, I really need a fourth credit. I need another class and a bigger team." Yeah. But these shifts are common now across the our content areas. So, remind

153me. I know that we've um and maybe it was in middle school, they do they do reading around the Holocaust. Is it middle school or high school? So that was historically in our old UCIA. In 8th grade, the English language arts teacher would often partner with the social studies teacher. The English language arts teacher would do a novel that dealt with the Holocaust. There's one of two or interrupted what was going on with social studies scope and sequence, but it hasn't been part of our unified curriculum. Yeah, because I was going to say like when I went to school here, which I did elementary through high school, excuse me. I I mean I remember reading a novel and then and then you were in grade also went with Yes. at Bookcliff Middle School. I was

154there and and then it we did a portion in social studies around it. So Okay. Uh but and we do in US history, but it's only the US involvement in World War II, which is different than teaching students about the Holocaust, right? No. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. Great. Thank you for So, there'll be more updates. That group will convene many times between now and November. And then we want to advertise that and Yeah. And what we're thinking two two separate community nights, right, for those civic civic forums. Is that what Yeah. Okay. And then we will work with Cali and her team on making sure our community and parents know about that. Yep. Okay. Yeah. still need a location and I'm thinking about weather a lot in November. Yeah, sort that out. All right, but we

155have one more slide. Oh, yeah. I didn't One more to fail to mention um because we've spent so much time talking about reading and literacy across our system and we've made big changes at elementary to align with research that we're doing the same at middle school. We will speed up our resource adoption process, which is typically a six sixyear process. um and make that a five-year process at middle school to ensure that our students and teachers have access to high quality instructional resources in English language arts. It's missionritical. It's our moral obligation to ensure that our students are reading and reading well and that they have access um to all content areas through reading. And so it's a priority and we'd like to see a shift in how students grow and achieve um that we

156haven't seen today at middle school. We've seen real pockets of growth and achievement spikes, but not anything systemic and over time that so we're making a shift there with resources. Myself and our secondary director of curriculum and professional learning, we're heading out to middle schools this week to talk to middle school English language arts teachers about it. How do they feel? What's next? But that'll be coupled with a year'slong progression of professional development on what works in reading. And so that's it. Much like we did with our elementary when we shifted. So you'll see us back um for two resource adoptions in January andor February. And that is that will be the middle school ELA and high school social studies. So directly in line with that, we need a plan and a team for the

157mill because it's great to think about resource adoption in five years when we don't have a mill anymore. Correct. So, we need we need a plan to put together a team and we need to come up, you know, like we've all dug into, you know, that those sessions might need to come up during midterm elections or presidential elections for success, most success during presidential, second most success during midterms, and then it falls off when you're not aligned with those bigger elections. Um, it's like when would we when would we reapproach this? Who is on the team? what are we putting in place? You know, we have to give ourselves enough time that if something happens, we have time to address it before we're out of that money. But I think right now when we're far

158enough ahead, we need like a real actual plan. You know, we've been talking about this for years because we need to, but like I think we need a plan. Our mill sunsets in 2027. The amount of money that we get every year for our mill is not meeting the needs of our resource adoption um cycle. when and you said the state is picking. So social studies was just one that they brought back up again. Do you do they have a schedule of like which resource is tell you what's next? Yeah, I'd be curious just I just so we kind of know again looking ahead what what are we going to be good with that re potential resource or are we going to be changing it again or I just would be curious just to caution

159us um yes while there may be a plan the last couple adoptions they essentially cut ahead of the line because we were directed by CDE right or legislation or legislation or both well legislation then CDE then right we didn't have a choiceirect So I mean locally we're following data y and using program evaluation. Jen talked about that earlier. Program eval all the systems and structures that we've put in place are dependent on cycle. They're iterative cycles and processes. So right y thank you questions. I don't know if we have board members online or not but it's hard to say and so all right thank you so much for Dr. Hill, do you have any anything else? All right, Carrie, is there anything you'd like to discuss board open discussion? Well, last time I keep asking

160for the um we keep having the discussion about East Middle School closure and the impacts of that. And last time I'd asked when that information would be presented and we had in that meeting, we had talked about having that presented in this meeting. And then right after the meeting, you followed up and said perhaps we should discuss, you know, um we call them two two in ones where it's two board members and Ryan and any experts we need. And so that is the first line of discussions that we will have and then after that we will be discussing that information publicly. So I just wanted to give everybody an update. I get a lot of questions about it. Um and so just want folks to know that it is still happening, but we'll talk um

161amongst ourselves first and then we'll follow up soon. Yeah. Yeah. And I think along with that too, um I know I've had a lot of community members ask about what is the plan for the east building, which um I know it kind of goes into play with our long range facility master plan, but I think if there's any kind of inkling or information that we could get out to our community, you know, sooner rather than later, um might be helpful. or if we I don't know whether we're going to plan to have some open community meetings too with I I I know I send all the feedback I get and ideas on to Clint because there's a bunch of people who are inquiring but um I think just there's a I think it's still a

162lot of questions around that. So, if we could Yeah, we've um and Jen and myself and Calie um I can't remember if Nikki was in on that conversation, but we've already uh started planning out some um some sort of like a town hall just to talk about future use of that building. Um so, we'll put out some information soon on when that would be. And, you know, we've got some ideas for what it could be used for, but we want to hear from the community surrounding um the east building to see what their hopes and aspirations are for it. So, we'll put out some information about that. Okay. Thank you. Anything else? Did you want to talk about the CASBY? Oh, yeah. Well, so each October um the Colorado Association of School Boards, what we

163call CASBY, um has their delegate assembly. So, they um send out a packet of resolutions that different districts um have proposed to CASBY. So, um I have agenda setting tomorrow with Dr. Hill. Um, we didn't I think we were all still learning how this all worked last year. Um, but the board will take one maybe two meetings to go through some of those resolutions. Um, I am the voting delegate that goes to that and um, so I just kind of want to know that I'm representing our board as a whole on those. Some some we may be totally neutral on, some we might want to take a different stance on. It's interesting. uh last year when you go there, you do see kind of a a difference between the more urban districts and what they

164tend to vote on for resolutions. And I'm sure MVA has the same things that I'm seeing heads nod when they go if they have delegates as well versus more rural and and but Mesa County is very interesting because we're kind of urban and we're kind of rural and so it's uh we're we're just uh it's interesting over here in some of those resolutions. So, um, so anyways, we will be looking at discussing some of those as a board um because I need all the board's input um before going to that meeting in October. So, other than that, that's all I that's all I had. Well, great. Look, this gets done pretty quick when there's only two of us here to talk. We couldn't vote on anything tonight, so it's a good thing it's not a

165business meeting. We didn't have a quorum, but So, all right. Well, thank you everybody for your time. Have a good evening. Oh, and board coffee this Saturday, right? At 9:00 at Chatfield. Yes. So,