4/4/23 Board Meeting

001All righty. We will go ahead and get started. So, if you can stand with us, we're going to do the pledge of allegiance first. Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, liberty and justice for all. All righty. Well, thank you for being patient while we were getting microphones uh reconnected here. So, all right. Well, um this evening is our work session. Uh so, we are going to jump right into uh our presentation. So, we have strategic plan focus group number three. So, they are here. Come on up. So, uh, good evening everybody. How we doing? You guys hear me? Okay. Yes, sir. All right. So since our last time in February, um our exceptional team has been determined to

002realize the year one goals defined in our engage and supported community partners focus area of the D-51 strategic plan. As a team, we remain steadfast to the task of intentionally cultivating relationships of trust and respect with our families and our community partners. Honest and open communication to our entire community about how we are collaborating with our stakeholders and allocating our resources is a top priority. This evening, we're excited to share the outcomes of our hard work this year with all of you. I want to be sure to emphasize how much I appreciate the dedication and effort of our staff and community partners serving on all of our implementation teams. Every single member of these teams played a valuable role in supporting this work and I'd really like to express sincere gratitude to all. Thank you

003very much guys. So each and every one of our D51 scholars deserve an exceptional experience educational experience. Every day, families trust us to inspire their children to become creative problem solvers that are culturally connected and fully prepared to thrive in their chosen career and in life as adults. As we know that um sorry and we know that today's youth face diff different types of challenges and are navigating a world that's vastly different than the one we all grew up in. That's why it's so very important for our entire community to have the opportunity to be involved in supporting our learners. This might be version Sorry about that. Maybe not. That's okay. Now, since we begun our work this year, we've kept a steady focus on defining ways to help our entire community better understand how

004our budgets operate and how some of our key factors that we need to consider when we decide how to allocate our resources. Tonight, Mel and Clint's team will summarize the progress we made and explain how we will continue this effort next year. After this, Angela and Andrea's team will share some exciting updates about the progress we've made in identifying who our current community partners are and how they're supporting us specifically in the areas of career exploration, student wellness, and strengthening collaboration with our families. They will also share how they plan to continue this work moving forward into the 2324 school year. To end our presentation this evening, Cali and I will describe the progress we've made so far this year in our effort to develop communication strategies to ensure opportunities for students and families are

005clear and available in multiple languages to meet the needs of everyone in the community. We will end our portion of the presentation with an explanation of how we continue to work we will continue to work over the summer and into next school year. Now, I'm going to pass it on to Clinton Mel for their presentation on transparent and effective resource allocation. just rotate up. Okay. Good evening. Uh given the uh limited number of seats, I think we'll play musical chairs a bit and switch so each of the presenters can be at the microphone. I'm Dan Prinster and I'm a community member on the transparent resource allocation team and happy to be here tonight. We'd like to provide you with a recap of the progress that we've made over the last couple months and then provide

006an update on the goals that we'll be working on through the remainder of the year. Um we'll start with Dan Bowlinger, Palisade High School. And if your name's Dan, we do coordinate our colors on our and then uh Clint will speak and then Rachel Tally, human resource data analyst and then finish up with Ashley. Z. All right. If you can go forward on the slide by one. Um, as you can see, this is the wrong I think we're supposed to start at like slide 48 or 56 or something like that. Oh, okay. So, our year one goals, we are we're on track, right? Our committee, we are on track. So, that's a good thing, right? Um, and then our year one goals, um, knowing how our budget operates, building baseline knowledge, systems, and processes. We've

007completed that, creating a district and school profiles. We're still working on school profiles, but we're nearly completed with that. We haven't started the inventory of programs, allocations, and the review of programs. That's our work we're going to be doing next year. And then we've started on the capital resources. were were um reviewing the district capital resources and how they're prioritized and funded. I think that's kind of the work of the next two years. So, so as we can you hear me? Okay. As we previously shared um our goals uh on providing accurate and improved data collection, um we've we've really tried to work uh on what we need to improve on and specifically with facilities. I think there were some areas that we identified this last year that needed to be improved and how we

008gather data there. So, our team is working on on ways to improve on how we collect data specifically uh again with facilities and through our work order system. Uh some of the things that we're trying to gather is labor hours, um supplies, all of the items that we use. We talked about that earlier this year. um do we know how much labor hours we're spending at any specific building or how many supplies we're using? That's important. So, we're working on getting better at that. We also expect that in this next year, we'll have a new system in place uh a new work order system in place that will help us collect the data uh and be a little bit more robust on how that gets delivered. This system will in will assist in improved data

009collection through our work order system. We believe that these changes will improve our ability to make sound financial decisions and recommendations when we talk about operations of our buildings. And then additionally, we also want to talk about what we're going to be doing with facilities master planning. Um over the next year, our district will embark on a refresh of our facilities master plan to further identify our building's needs and resources. And in line with that strategic plan, uh we of course will u it will provide an opportunity for us to engage our community partners and get them involved in that process as well. And then this is a little bit of a lofty goal, but I think it's going to be really important with resource allocation and that's um developing and doing a facilities condition

010assessment and then developing a facilities condition index uh with all of our buildings. So along with the master planning process, we'd like to see the development of an internal facilities condition index similar to what Colorado Department of Education does. Um they do it uh not every year. So it's not in real time. It's like a five-year condition uh assessment that they do and then they post that on the website. We'd like to I'd like to see that done in real time so we know exactly what we have in our buildings, roofing needs, uh HVAC units, all of those things that we need to track or should be tracking. Uh our district would utilize the facilities condition index to assess and making resource allocation decisions among the buildings uh within our district. So it's a little

011bit lofty, but I think it's doable and um something that we can shoot for for the next year. All right. Thank you. Uh so as Clint alluded to, we're going to continue that capital resource review goal um by engaging in a refresh of the master plan that will help us direct priorities for future facility needs. We'll also begin compiling an inventory of existing programs um and their allocated resources. And then as we look towards next year, um we will work to develop a process that will evaluate new budget requests based on their alignment and impact with our strategic plan goals. In addition to that, we believe that as other strategic plan groups progress, um they may identify resources that need to be reallocated to support the achievement of their goals. And so we will work

012to engage with other groups and identify areas to support their work. Any questions? Good job. I know the most important tough one questions. Can you go back to that? Sure. Oh, there it is. Oh, no. We got it. So, when you're compiling inventory of existing programs and allocated resource. So, what what's an example? So, what we were gonna But um what we were going to pull was just looking primarily at our general fund budget and we have set programs that CDE defines for all districts and then we have some that are uh a more detailed level for our own district. So it might be an example of that is uh instruction would be the broad category but intervention is an example of an instructional budget that we could drill down to that level. And so

013we were uh going to put together just a list um include that in our budget books. we used to always. So just get back to putting a little bit more detail in there um as having that as a published piece but also for our own internal review and assessment in the following years. So we're looking at the like supply and purchase service budgets that are included with something but also the FTE that follow along with any of our programs within the district. Um, so where we want to use that data in year two and year three is once we have this budget process in place that tells us if something is in alignment with our strategic plan goals and in support of that that we have something to benchmark our current resources against. Okay. So,

014so if I understand this, so so you'll take a particular program and see what what how much of the budget goes to that program and then the plan will be to evaluate the effectiveness of that program to see if it continues or needs more or less or is that and who does who would do that that evaluation of the program effectiveness? So where we see our sorry it's on it's I don't know. Um so where we see that data we really see the work of our committee as providing data and coming up with structures for these not necessarily the decisions for how that data is used. So we're going to compile all of this information. We're looking at different um ROI systems. for example, like we uh shared an article that we're pondering for next

015year and how we uh look at it that Fairfax County, which is a huge district, and kind of the cycle that they um examine their budget on and whether it's something uh that they can evaluate versus the impact versus the dollar amount that are spent or whether they're looking at it as a cost avoidance type of impact. that they have all of these different structures in place that they evaluate how they're spending resources. And so that's something that we're lacking as a district right now. We know we have a process that we've added budget requests over the years, but kind of that review and evaluation of those is a piece that we could improve upon. And so that's what we're looking to use this data not only to understand and be able to communicate out

016that current inventory of what we're doing, but to be able to build structures going forward to review those. Can I ask a follow-up question to that? Um, it's great. That's great idea. I love it. It's It's almost like an internal audit of our programs. So, to follow up on Doug's question, who So, identifying the program is one thing. Identifying the effectiveness of that program and you threw out one idea. You said ROI and that means return on investment, correct? So looking at the return on investment might be one way but so I just want to be clear you are proposing that that this team will come up with the metrics to measure the effectiveness. Okay we're going down that path. Yeah go ahead Rachel. So I think it's dual purpose right? So, we would have

017some basic metrics that we would be able to measure against, but I would also say it's whoever is requesting that resource or whoever is overseeing that resource because there may be softer impacts that we're not seeing, graduation rates, um, lower expulsions, things along those lines. So, I think part of that push is instead of just connecting to the data at the end, you have to ask those questions at the beginning. So, I need these resources to do this and this is my intended outcome. So then you're starting to set those standards of what data you want to see at the beginning and it allows us to track it on through and see if it's successful or not. Thank you. I think that lost me a little bit. Um, so you're saying that I, so I

018was saying there's a program and there's an effectiveness and both of those and the effectiveness has data associated with it. And you're saying the data associated with it are data that can be used for things other than just the program. Well, I'd say it was the program. So a lot of our program is based around instruction or what's happening with our kiddos. Um, and so each program may have a different intent. Um, so it may have a different focus and so that focus would have to be well defined with data specs associated with it. So how are you going to move the needle? Yeah. On that specific item. Yeah. Okay. I love this idea. I love this. I feel like it's going to be so hard to parse out all of the contributing factors. Um,

019but I I I'm I love the approach and I think that that's great. Um, I had one other question, but I it failed me. Um, I was going to ask for the state timelines for this um, building conditions. I thought they were done every two years. Is it every five years? Okay. Okay. The last ones we had were the 2020 ones and I thought that I had as well, but maybe they maybe they are always coming and they just make sure they get every building every Okay. Yeah. Yeah. If you know if they're doing it, do we pay them to do that? No. Okay. Yeah. The I think the timeline would be pretty relevant because if they're doing it every five years or every two years, you know, how can we piggyback on their right

020work? Yeah. It's so much work. Absolutely. They're so long. Agreed. Um Okay, great. Thanks. Thank you. All right. Good. You're welcome. resource allocation team. Next up is our effective community. So, uh, thank you for our transparent and effective resource allocation team. Next up is our effective community partnerships team. Thank you so much. I want to begin um just by doing some introductions. Um, the committee members, it's been Andrea and me leading it. And then Bo Tobin has played an a very key role. Candace Carneahan, Jod Deers has been really helpful. Kayla Brown, Raul, Dave Vie Host Decker, Gabriel Oterra, Joy Hudac, Trish G, Alonza, Eric Ward has been so dedicated and come to all of the uh committee uh meetings. And so I really want to give a big shout out to you, Eric, um

021Tabitha Britt, Martha Graph, Sarah Schrader, and Sonia Gutierrez. So we just want to thank all those folks for playing a role in this because it really helps to have their input. Um as you know we are charged with focusing um on mapping the following partnerships and their engagement level student opportunities for career connected learning wellness and supports beyond the classroom for staff and students and engaging with families and deepening relationships. And tonight we really wanted to start off with a few celebrations. And so I'll turn it over to Andrea to begin those celebrations. So yesterday we hosted a middle school career fair at Colorado Mesa University who is certainly one of our valuable community partners. This provided over 1,400 7th grade students an opportunity to tour a college campus, some for the first time ever,

022and to explore careers ranging from agriculture, healthcare, and public safety to STEM, business, and skilled trades with 50 plus local businesses, organizations, and educators. This is just one example of the impact our community can have on the learning of our students when we come together. And our second celebration tonight is what transpired directly after our presentation the last time we met. As you know, we have reached out through DT Weekly to continue adding to the community partnership tracking tool. And the day after our presentation, the Grand Junction High School Academy team emailed both Andrea and me and asked us to come learn about their academy model that they are implementing. they felt we could really collaborate on their business connections with them and that it would really focus um on the post-secondary workforce readiness. So

023that was an exciting thing to happen right after um our presentation. So one of our goals was to map our partners and then identify gaps in partnerships. As we shared last time, we have over 200 community partners, but we still see a couple of gaps. We now know that we have partners in both student and staff wellness and family partnerships, but we're lacking data around those. After receiving input from CI, we've decided to add to our tool a new tab to collect data on our family partnerships. We have it broken down by school to identify and gather information for PTO and PTA groups. accountability committees, volunteer coordinators, and D-51 foundation ambassadors. We believe this will help in determining building level and resource gaps, expand communication impact, and build grassroot advocates, which helps to grow leaders

024as they find opportunities for future involvement in D51. We believe that working together, we can really ensure that each and every student has the resources and support they need for their brightest future. This matters because all of us are part of D-51. And with that in mind, it is my pleasure to introduce two family partnership advocates to briefly share the importance and impact of partnering with our schools. And so I've asked each one of them to introduce themselves and share a little bit about how they see that partnership working. Hi there. My name is Rusty Barrett and I'm the past president of the Windgate Elementary PTO. Um, and now I'm just a board member. But, um, I can tell you just from starting as in the, you know, as my child was a kindergartener, we

025started raising funds and doing different community events and how important those community events are to just bridge the gap of education as an institution. and then families coming together in that school community. Um, we run about six different community events during the year. Sometimes they're free events like bingo and and things like that, movie night, family movie night, and then we do um just parent events and then we do familyfriendly fundraiser events. Um, you know, when I started on this PTO, we were raising $10,000 a year, and now we're up to about $55,000 a year. So, the engagement that our, um, families have is very high. Um, we'd always wish that it's higher, but um, we have about 10 parents that are board members of our PTO and then about 20 to 30 volunteers. And

026a lot of them are business owners in the community. So, we look at how we can leverage different partnerships with the events that we're doing. Um, and you know, really just strengthening the the families and the togetherness and and what we bring to the table are these community events. Um, we also highlight our principal where they do a kind of an update to people that go to the PTO events and then they get to if they're on the board or if they're a PTO member, they get to um, vote on how those funds are raised. So, we've had like a two-year goal of aqua boards as one of the things. Um, and we're two away from every classroom in our community to have one. So, you know, we we look at those partnerships with families

027and I know we kind of do step on each other's toes every once in a while when we're doing silent auctions, but um with this database, I think it would really help identifying the um communities and then the the families that own businesses to help those partnerships. So, thank you for your time. Any questions? Hello. Um, my name is Carrie Bolinger and I'm the principal at TOE Elementary. TOE is a steam school, which means that we practice problem-based learning. We want our learners to feel empowered to solve problems. It's taken a while, but our staff is just about as good as our students at looking at problems and coming up with multiple solutions. This ideating and finding solutions is one of the reasons that we have been able to do what we do. Partnerships with

028families have been an essential part of what we do at every level. In fact, becoming a steam school started out as a problem. We pulled students, parents, and community members in to help us find an option that provided a unique pathway for learning. These partnerships continue to help us grow and develop a strong learning community. In fact, many of our PBL solutions have come to fruition because of our parents and the community connections that they have. Parents have presented to us as experts in the field. They've served on panels. They help students prep and practice for panel time. They are a natural and integral part of what we do right now. This is what we need. We need families and community members to come together to help ideiate and create solutions to all of the

029problems that we are facing. And what an excellent time to come together. So many problems. I mean, opportunities out there for us to find those solutions in order to support our precious children of Mesa County. And thank you, Rassie and Carrie, for coming tonight just to highlight some of the things that are happening at both of your schools and how family partnerships are so important with that. Okay. So looking forward um thinking ahead for our next couple of years, we are wanting to deepen our understanding of how community members currently partner with D-51 and also how they want to partner with D-51 and then we can use that information to develop a menu of opportunities for engagement. As we mentioned earlier, our other goal moving forward is to strengthen our community partnership tracking tool by

030adding a new tab and collecting data on our family partnerships. Again, by doing so, we really hope to identify building and resource gaps at each school, expand our communication network, and build grassroot advocates and future leaders. Um, any questions? Um, I do have a question. What kind of advice would you ladies give the other schools to uh get their PTO's and things like that, that cooperation going? I know I I mean, it's great that you two have it going on, but I've been to schools where they can't get but two or three people at their PTO meetings and you know, so if we're really trying to close that gap and build that communication and it's going to take our parents and our community, how do we do that? Well, I think it's a great idea

031to get the P and I haven't done this, but it's a great idea to get the PTOs and PTAs from different um schools and you know, once a quarter we could just brainstorm on what all we're doing to strengthen things, you know, and hey, we've got this on the calendar. Let's make sure we don't do community events at the same time. I mean, you can have like a PTO 101 class, you know. Um, there's a lot of resources out there and it's just getting together and talking about it and making it happen. I didn't know that everyone didn't have a PTO. Like I had no idea. It's it's crucial to every elementary I think. So I'm happy to help with that. I would also say in the past I know that the the foundation has

032had things like lunch and learns for the PTO's and PTAs to come together and sometimes your um foundation D-51 foundation ambassadors are members of that as well. But I could see that as being a a great possibility of coming together and helping to uh share what works well at one school. I was the former co-PTA president at Windgate for three years and so I just saw that need too. But I think there are lots of opportunities. I love all of these questions and ideas. There was a few I know the PTO at Chapa was reaching out to other PTOs to have a PTO get together to start to brainstorm ideas and see what works for schools and what has not been as fruitful. I love having some central point um because yeah, I know that

033that PTO has been struggling with how to reach everybody and when you find a school that doesn't have a PTO, you know, of course bringing in the principal to figure out how to yeah support that principal and and teachers and developing one. I think that Yeah. Yeah. I would I love the idea of having I think it'll be a tool people will use a lot actually Carrie if we have that all in one place and that's why we felt like it was necessary to add that extra tab so that they could potentially principles can utilize that and the PTO's and PTAs. I also wonder if, you know, I was thinking when you said that $55,000, my goodness. Um, that is astounding. Great work. Great work. Um, I was also wondering if we could partner, you

034know, partner you up with a school that either, that's just where I was going. Yeah. Partner a really successful PTO. Yeah. Somebody that's struggling and and really share mentor them. I mean, really put them in just a one-on-one partnership together where they could work together and share those ideas and and share some of that big love that you guys have had over at Wing Gate. Well, that was my We're all thinking the same thing. It's one thing to go to a school and have a presentation about here's what we do. Yeah. But to many of our schools that aren't there, they are there's a high there's a that pyramid of hierarchy of needs and they aren't even ready. If you gave some schools those they aren't in a position to even go after those. There's

035base things that have to a foundation that has to be developed like like you have your schools and that gets back to the idea of partnerships or sister schools or brothers whatever you want to call them but teaming up you can't do every but I I mean again I we're not here to come with solutions but I think you you brought up some ideas that could reach out to other schools that would love to be where you're at but how do you get there and and it takes that partnership more than just here's what we do but we'll help you to do that or but it's a lot of work because I know just dealing with your own schools tremendous amount of work and I've always thought it would be a good to other ones

036and say okay here's our events can you guys volunteer for our events and we'll volunteer for yours because you know the parents end up volunteering for like the fun run and you don't get to do it with your child but if you coordinated that together and maybe it's the the schools that feed into the middle school that like sister, brother. Sure. But that concept of of reaching out I I was say I think part of the issue is I think you may somebody mentioned a while ago who's the point person. So our district currently doesn't have a family engagement, family partnership department. And we've talked about that. And I know um you know a lot of the work that Tracy's starting to do um they're going to talk about that some in the next group

037but is around how do we strengthen those family partnerships and so you know a district that might have a point person for that could help coordinate those things but we don't really have a department in the district right now that could be helping with that. So, I think some some of the work that they're proposing to do in the future could help with this and have a point person help coordinate the PTO presidents between different schools and have shared experience with the a school that maybe is struggling with some of these things. So yeah, that may be the root of some of the problems is we don't have we don't have a department that focuses on that solely. And it wouldn't be fair to put it on, you know, the foundation or the CT group,

038but if maybe, you know, um Tracy's team, that could be something that could be a focus for the future. Yeah. But that's that's really what you need is a point person to coordinate that. And and I like the idea of the feeder system. Sometimes even schools within a feeder system are struggling, you know, in in that area. And um yeah, but I think there's a lot of promise and and opportunity. So get after it. I know you are. That's terrific. Okay. Thank you. Right. Make sure it's on right. You guys hear me? All right. So, thank you uh community partnership team for that awesome update. Um before I begin uh with our final presentation of the evening, I do want to take a second just to u recognize publicly the names of the folks who

039participated on our committee um as the communication and connection with families committee. Um, Lisa Urena, Carrie Cooklish, who's no longer with us, but she was with us for most of it. Uh, Nelly Garcia, Cali Burkson, Australia Rice, Lance Seline, Jamie Cyro, Zeb Miracle, Kim Davis, Joy, who's kind of double duty because she's helping a lot with community partnerships. Um, Hudac, and uh, of course myself. Um, I always like to thank myself, right? So, having said that, um you know, tonight our area is going to spend some time uh recapping our um one our year one strategic plan goals and discussing where we're where we are in those goals and then some of the outcomes we have so far we've seen so far. The communications department completed our communications audit in late fall of 2022. And

040you guys can see up there that we have completed um that goal. And after analyzing those results and the data from the audit, we're developing a plan for our year two goals. We're also on track with our second goal that's primarily focused on increasing how we communicate with families whose primary language is other than English. We have intentionally partnered with our colleagues at the migrant education program to host um a couple of different kind of monthly meetings so we can really hone in on that um that goal to better meet the needs of our migrant families. Uh one of the meetings um is a focus group meeting and we're very intentional about um you know getting information from the parents about what do you what else do you need to help you feel better connected

041um to school. So that's been a really cool we call it constra and that just means talking with Estustrala and Claudia. Uh we have another one called No Informativa which is uh once a month and these are um topics that we talk about that we got from a survey last year that we did that families said they needed to learn more about and so we do have monthly um topics. We hold them um the the sessions in Spanish and we actually invite um district leaders to come and speak to our parents about um the topics they're interested in and um sometimes our district leaders even have to put on the headsets and and get get some translation or interpretation and it helps bring perspective. Um we've recently started a a meeting around mental health specifically

042because parents have said, "Hey, we want we want to know more about me mental health." And so uh we did our first one last month, a couple weeks ago. We have another one coming up this month. So those are some things that we are really working on to try to uh make sure that we're strengthening um connections between our our multilingual families and our buildings. Um the last time we presented we walked through walked you through uh our communication strategic plan and our five goals to proactive communication with students, staff and families, brand awareness, family and community engagement, internal communications, and employee employee recruitment and retention. Tonight, Cali will quickly outline where we are in each of these communication goals and how we're moving toward year two goal of implementing streamlined communication tools. Okay. So,

043we all know that uh safety and security here in district 51 is a top priority. And so, when we conducted our communications audit, um we received a lot of feedback from our families about the communications surrounding um emergency incidents or incidents that happen in the schools. And so right now we are working strategically with our uh safety and security department because some of that feedback was that when these incidents happen when we conduct shelter in place drills and lockdown drills parents are hearing through the grape vine that their students were in a lockdown or they were in a shelter in place and they're the communication isn't necessarily passed along that it was a drill. And so we're working with the safety and security department to develop those communications that will be just templates that get

044sent out to families as soon as the drill happens because again we can't tell them beforehand, but afterwards we can certainly communicate with them before their student has the chance to um go home and tell them that they were in a lockdown or a shelter in place. So our families will have some of that information proactively. Um, in addition, we're looking at a two-way communication platform. And Tracy and I will talk a lot about this a little bit later, but um, so right now text and emails to our families when something is happening at schools are only available through a computer, which isn't always very convenient in our jobs when we're out and about and in the schools. And so, um, we're researching a two-way communication option that will not only help with engage engagement,

045but will provide us better accessibility to send those critical messages to our families and our, uh, students when we aren't at a desk. And then brand recognition and awareness. Uh, we have developed our website steering committee to guide us through choosing a website vendor. Uh, that committee did take a hiatus for a little bit and so we're, uh, here shortly. will reconvene and we will look at uh the in-depth process of kind of creating that uh or completing that website platform demos. And so we have demos scheduled or we will get demos scheduled with three of the top website vendors that are used by schools throughout the nation. Uh family partnership and connection. So one of the ways Tracy and I are approaching family partnership is through streamlined communication and data analysis. Uh we've been

046in the process of demoing several two-way communication platforms and our plan is to implement one of those chosen platforms on a district-wide scale next school year. Not only will these platforms make emergency communication and districtwide notifications easier and more accessible, but they will also make teacherto-f family and schoolto family communications more manageable. These platforms offer a variety of tools, but a few of the key uh highlights are they offer two-way communication between our staff and our families. So having a communication platform where our staff and our teachers and our administration can talk directly with the families of their students and then in turn have those families be able to send a really quick text back and get right back in communication is going to really streamline that family to um teacher and that schoolto family

047uh relationship and then it will also naturally facilitate some of that engagement and conversation that we're looking for. uh these platforms also serve as a data analysis tool. So through these platforms, we can track when schools, areas, and classes are best engaged. And then this data tracking is going to allow our communications department, the migrant services department, and potentially other departments depending on on what data the platform can provide um an ability to start engaging those specific demographics and area of our district that we might be missing or some of those areas that might need some a little bit more attention. And then this is something I'm really excited about um native language communications. So right now one of the really big um one of the largest difficulties that we find in our communications is

048that our platforms don't natively or they don't communicate in native language to our families. So what that means is that when we send communications, it's not going into the language that our families have selected that they prefer to be communicated with. So essentially when we develop a commu a communication the comm's department has to work really closely with our translation services and then they'll translate the document and then we will go in into our system and we have to check a box that says translate and then we have to select all the languages we want to translate it to and then we have to override the communication to the correct translation. So, it's a lot of back-end work and these platforms are going to streamline that process and they're designed um they're strategically designed to

049communicate to our families in their native language. So, when we ask our families to choose their preferred language, our comm communication will be sent directly in that language. There's not going to be a need for us to um seek resources to translate those communications. So, these two-way communication platforms are built with intentionality. Um, and implementing one of these platforms would be a big win for our district and it would help us communicate and engage more effectively with our stakeholders. And then, uh, moving on to internal communications. We're still in the process of working on implementing our event master calendar, which I know we talked to you a little bit about that last time. um we'll share this calendar with all of our school sites and they'll have the ability in real time or ahead of

050time to go in and share events and happenings at their school campus and then I'll be able to share that with departments like Dr. Hill and our senior leadership and safety and security so that our offices all kind of know what's happening within our school buildings and this will really um help that school engagement community and then employee recruitment and retention. So, this is our last of the five goals. Um, we're currently partnering with 14K Media in collaboration with our HR department on a series of recruitment videos. And then we are still looking for some ways to uh rejuvenize staff and get them excited about the upcoming school year. So, more information will be shared on that as we get closer. It's kind of what we have for right now. when it comes to um

051better connecting with our families, a couple of things I'd like to highlight and Cali talked a lot about our two-way um asynchronous communication tool. Um but we are excited about that possibility. We think it's really going to be a gamecher. Um another program I'm really excited about is our home visit pilot program. Um just last week we completed a training for approximately 36 D-51 staff members to participate in our D51 home visit partnership program. Um we're starting our effort with a small spring pilot um for focused um on visiting preschool families that will be attending kindergarten next year and we're going pretty small scale. We want to easy lift. It's a busy time of year. There's a lot going on in in in our elementary world. However, over the summer we're looking to um broaden

052our scope and really focus on our transition years. So we're looking at um of course pre to kinder but also fit the sixth and 8 to 9. and we trained a variety of staff with a variety of skill sets. And so we um do have the ability to really go in and do some more targeted home visits um if building leaders feel like it'd be beneficial to strengthen relationships with these families. You know, our focus for these home visits are really um just basically getting to know parents, understanding hopes and dreams, and just um really opening up lines of communication. And so that's kind of what we're focused on for these for this um program and we plan on doing it through the summer and hopefully we'll do a a fall push before our our

053grant money runs out where we can help compensate staff for doing this. Um another thing I'd like to highlight is our roadmap for family partnerships. Um, we are partnering up with the Colorado Education Initiative to um create a roadmap and I by the end of the week we'll have completed my project orientation meeting with that organization um so we can really get get rocking on this road map. Um the road map will help us identify key priorities and set strategic goals that will help us improve how we're partnering with all of our families. actually um one of our CI partners is here tonight and she's taking some data right and so the discussion we were having um just a little while ago around strengthening our PTO structure is something that we're going to talk about

054at our orientation meeting but I'm really excited because I think these uh these conversations are are really um going to add to our ability to meet these needs that we're identifying through this process of implementing this strategic plan this year. So this has all been uh very helpful. Um our family communications toolkit. So, uh, we're currently collecting feedback, um, through some of the meetings that I explained to you guys earlier, um, at various family engagement activities that we're going to use along with what we learned from our roadmap, um, to create a family communications toolkit and we're going to be um, ready to share that with all of our D-51 families um, at the beginning of the 2324 school year. And then um it's not up there. Didn't make the final cut. But I do

055want to uh also just highlight um the wonderful opportunity that we have with the Colorado um statewide family engagement center. Um it's a five-year grant and we will be getting support from the National Center for Family Learning to create the infrastructure necessary to become a model district. So, we're one of five districts across the state to participate in this effort and we will convene regularly with the other four districts so that we can share ideas, celebrations, and strategies. What's really exciting is um the director of the program is um she'll be here here in Colorado supporting all five of our districts and she works she's works directly for the National Center for Family Learning and they're doing wonderful work all over the all over the country. So Colorado's lucky to have them and Grand Junction

056and Mesa County D51 is lucky to be part of this effort. As we look towards um next year, we'll be using what we learned from our work over the summer as well as what we're learn as we develop our family partnerships roadmap to help us create the portfolio of communication tools that we will use to implement in our year two goal. questions. I had a question about the two-way communication. Um, do we how do principles feel about that? You know, I'm I'm just wondering if, you know, you send communication out to 300 people and they can just quickly text back. I wonder how much inundation inundation will occur and how much that how rich that engagement actually is because if the principal can't the principal's day is either shot right or they can't respond to

057all of that so then it's unanswered and so yeah. Yeah. So, um, the nice thing about these platforms is you can set pretty strict parameters on kind of not only how much or how many communications people can send. So, depending on what level you are at the school, but you can also turn off the ability for it to have two-way communications. So, if we're sending districtwide communications, say we have a snow day and we need to send out communication for snow day, I prefer not to have 20,500 people respond back in a text message. And so, there is the ability to to um to turn off the two-way communication. A lot of that two-way communication will likely be utilized through the teachers. And so principles have the ability to target either specific classes, they can

058also do their school. Um, but there's some customiz customization that can happen on the communication level on the back end um to mitigate response overload. Questions? All right. Thank you very much. Thanks. All right, that's it. So, this concludes our uh presentation for the evening. I want to thank you um actually our team for all the hard work this year. Very excited to build on the momentum that we've created during this first year of implementation. This will be the last presentation that we are are giving you guys this year. I truly believe that the goals outlined in our engaged and supportive community partners focus area will help us garner the trust and confidence from our community that we need to realize our vision to engage, equip, and empower each and every student each and every

059day. As we continue to build the infrastructure for authentic and meaningful family partnership at D51, we're going to be able to connect our families to student learning in a way that we've never seen before. The family partnership roadmap will serve as our on-ramp to help us be in a position to best take advantage of the five-year statewide family engagement center grant. The exciting thing is that we will have the chance to collaborate with the statewide partnership organizations and the other four partner districts to share best practice and ideas. Thank you so much. All right, up next we have um Proposition FF healthy meals for all update. Good evening. How's everyone? Great. Well, I'm excited to come and present an update um for school district 51 where we're at with healthy school meals for all kids.

060Uh you might remember during the uh COVID years uh we were doing free meals for all kids uh through the United States Department of Agriculture federal waiverss and then that ended this school year and so we were turned back to uh where where families have to apply and uh only some of the families that qualified through that process um were able to receive those meals for this school year. So we're going to provide you an update on that. Uh, I want you to know that the presentation um um is is only about seven slides, but they're real beefy slides. I intended these slides to have links that you as a board can go through at leisure on your own time to kind of go through some of the links and if you have questions later

061and even after this presentation tonight, I'll be happy to answer those. So, let's kind of go through what's what's occurred so far. So, Proposition FF went to the state of Colorado voters this this past November and it was approved. Um, that that uh bill here is linked uh it's HP House Bill 1414 and that does start effective this 2324 school year. Uh, one of the things that the the uh the bill and legislation targets is to help eliminate stigma for students and cafeterias. One of the things I noticed as a school district uh nutrition director in our cafeterias in our in Mesa County is that that definitely occurs. Uh there are students who don't eat especially in the upper elementary years and middle school years because they feel like they're looked at as the free

062kid. So this legislation will help eliminate that in our classrooms. Another item is the administrative burden of collecting lunch fees. Um that's always uh kind of a pain for parents and staff uh always chasing and and uh and going after that. Uh and then finally, I left a link here at the bottom that that talks about how this healthy school meals really increases student achievement and and what this will do for school meal programs for us and across the state is um if you look at one of the most uh impactful things that is out there for childhood hunger in in uh our country actually are school meals. uh they're one of the largest uh nonprofit organizations that help contribute and help take care of childhood hunger along with nutrition. So, this article that I've

063linked here for you not only goes into that, but it has 60 based uh evidence-based research articles that talks about how important healthy school meal meals are for student achievement, health and wellness and mental. So, kind of I want to talk a little bit about the participation and the funding of it. Yeah. During COVID, I want to kind of give you some numbers here. We have 21,000 students approximately in school district 51. And during COVID, during that two-year period, about 9,500 students, actually before COVID, about half the students in Mesa County would participate in school meal programs. Um, during COVID, that number jumped up to 13,200 and nearly about 4,000 students per day. And so, it was pretty significant. And it really showed us that as a district prior to COVID, we were always about

06445% free and reduced on our lunch uh percentages. And then during COVID, we went up to 65% nearly in and the number of kids that we were feeding. And I really believe that speaks to several factors. I think it speaks to families that that don't apply for fear of stigma. I think it speaks to there's a huge amount of Medicaid households that currently don't qualify under the state regulations and and others. But anyways, I don't I don't want I don't want to drive down that rabbit hole too much tonight. But anyways, the bottom line was this. There are 4,000 additional students that will benefit from this as a district if we opt in going into next year. Um, and that basically equates to about 2,000 families. Uh the majority of the funding will come from

065federal still sources through the USDA. Uh I project that Mesa County about half of our reimbursements or half of our funding for school district or for the school meal program will come from that and then the remainder will be from the state this new funding. Um, I want to make sure to remind community members watching online and the board tonight that school meal funding is completely separate of the district 51 general fund. A quick just a reminder, uh, our school district is looked as the best practice district in the state. We started with a lot of grant money and the millions and millions of dollars back in 2013 and retrofitted our kitchens with uh equipment to do scratch food cooking and we made a lot of those improvements. But I want to say this will

066help us even further and and entrench it further. And by the way, if you look at that slide there, you see the carneita street tacos, those pictures that you see on our district website, that really is our food. Okay, that's Yeah. Thanks, Doug. Some people say that is that really your food? Yes, that is our food. Uh we're we proudly cook from scratch every day in every school. Oh, by the way, that on that last slide is a link if you want to go in and look at that. Uh any of the meal items. Uh one of the things that the funding is going to do in the year 2024 25 is the following. And the and it's going to provide additional funding for stipens and or wages to make sure staff that are in

067nutrition service positions or at market level in their local against restaurant and other competing hospitality industries. We experienced that as a district about a year ago. You might remember um I had a board member that came out and helped me serve at Palisade High School when we were short staffed. Thank you. um during the when when we were down uh staffing at 20 out of 40 schools a day. And so anyways, uh that's going to help us to have market level wages to be able to uh not only attract but retain staff. Secondly, it's going to help districts and ours uh increase our local sourcing. Right now, all of our local apples or apples from September to November are local. All of our milk uh throughout the year is local. Uh but we want to

068expand that and we want to be able to get more uh food from Western Colorado farmers. This this kind of funding will help with that. Okay. And then uh Melanie is going to talk about the at risk and title one. Right. So, as we've been excited about this opportunity and knowing that we um would be able to opt in and offer this to students next year, there were also a couple of substantial funding sources that we wanted to make sure wouldn't be um have an unintended consequence of negatively affecting those funding sources. And so, as more information's been coming out from the state and as they've been finalizing some rulemaking, all of that information we've been continuing to monitor and gather. Um the two funding sources were title one which title one are some federal

069dollars that we receive every year for our atrisisk students. So it is um tied to those at risk students in order to support their needs at those highly impacted schools. That's about $5 million that we receive every year. And so we wanted to make sure that by um offering meals to all and having the potential to receive uh fewer free and reduced lunch allocations that we wouldn't be then decreasing our amount of funding there. Um so overall the state and district title one allocations are already based on census data and not directly on the free and reduced lunch data. And so we're confident that our district allocation won't be impacted by participation in the healthy school meals for all. Um the thing that we will need to come up with as a district is a

070different um metric other than the free and reduced lunch applications of how we distribute those dollars out to the schools. And so that'll be one piece, but our overall dollar amount won't change or be impacted. The second is our at risk funding factor which is a factor within the school uh finance formula that is a contribute contributor to determining our PPR rate and that's about a $10 million factor to us. We do have a higher um free and reduced lunch percentage than the state average and so we do benefit that from that more than the average school district across the state. Um but there are some changes going around with just how that at risk funding factor is calculated in itself unrelated to this. And so that's another piece that there's been a statewide work

071group that's been working to prepare for the implementation of a house bill that was passed last year that would change that at risk measure within the formula. Rather than being based on that free and reduced lunch application data, it'll now be based on what they're calling an identified student percentage. Um, so far we actually believe that our percentage is likely to increase because now the Medicaid eligible students that Dan touched on briefly, they will automatically be a direct certification category. And so we think that that'll increase our percentage above and beyond what we were uh calculating under the forms. um that state work group is still continuing their work and they're actually recommending a further implementation rather than next year out to 2425 um due to some other statewide factors. But what we do know

072now is that they have some count equalization and hold harmless provisions too. So even once this um new at risk measure is put into place a district wouldn't lose funding um in that next year as a result of that. And so given these two pieces and that information that has been gathered over the last couple of months, we can feel more confident with the information tonight. So D51 will opt into healthy school meals for all starting this month. Um, there's a link that I did a little snippet on the slide here that basically shows and indicates that we like what Melanie was just stating, we're still waiting on the application instructions from the Colorado Department of Ed, but we can start that process this month as we do the registration for the community eligibility pilot,

073which is due a week from um, yesterday. So, so anyway, so there's a lot of steps still to be developed like she had hinted at that are going to be that we'll go through as a district over the next um actually three months. Uh June uh July 1 will be the official last step of the process and then we'll be able to start effective with the 2324 school year. Uh again, the main concerns we had for waiting this long, she's already hit pretty well. Um, but that's I just wanted to show you that that was where we've landed now as a district. Um, I've left links here for the board, for the community members, staff, and parents that can go into at any time. The CDE, that first link is a great document uh that

074talks about at great length um some of the things that Melanie was hinting at and some of the things I've talked about. Also, communication is going to be important. So, I'll be working with Cali um over the next month or in the next few weeks, we'll do a press release and uh but then we'll also be sending out flyers over the next few months that um CDE has created that will help explain the why and the what to healthy school meals, what that means for them. Um so, anyway, so we'll working on that. Kelly, I hope you're ready. Yeah. Anyways, u and then staffing. Um we are going to be uh needing more staff. Um, so I've got some set dates. I'll need all board members at least once a week. We could do a

075rotation. Um, no, I'm just kidding. It was fun. I enjoyed it. Put me down. No, just kidding. Yeah. But anyways, uh, we will be posting positions with Nikki and her team's help in the sometime in May. Of course, we're going to place our e staff first. Um, but anyways, yeah, we'll have about 10 positions that we'll be posting. Uh fortunately we kept some of the positions when we were going through the short staffing last year so we wouldn't be in a position where we needed to hire 30 or 40 people um going into this fall. So yeah, I'm excited. I'm excited for the families in Mesa County. Um I'm excited for those kids. I think it's going to help benefit learning and behaviors and all of that. So questions. So were you chocolate milk this

076year? What's that? Were you able to get chocolate milk this year? That was Yes. Okay. We're actually working on strawberry milk for next year. That's been a number one comment from our students. Yeah. Just just quick question. Um this may be unfair. This is the Melody just because you threw out we obviously have a lot of source a lot of sources of funding for our district and you were mentioning and where you're at that these aren't from our district budget from our fund 10. These a lot of outside dollars. So how much Melanie do we ballpark it if if you can if it's not meant to be unfair question do we federal dollars do we get not just for the food but you were mentioning you know for our title title schools I mean I

077wish I had those numbers because I just pulled them the other day actually for the paper um so I can definitely send those out to you guys um it's substantial I think federal revenues if I remember right were about 15% of our overall revenue um sources whether that's going through nutrition services or title one or our ESSER dollars. Um busing we there aren't there federal dollars that support our busing? I don't believe so maybe for sped only. Yeah. Um otherwise there's a lot of those dollars. There's a lot of categories, a lot of different grants. Um most of them ongoing sped is the other big one. The 6B funding. So it's substantial. Yeah. 15% is what I'm remembering. When we took of the whole budget that was when we were looking from outside sources than

078local it's about 65% within our general fund. Yeah. Within our general fund there's a lot of dollars that come into health to support like you said kids learning safety health all those kinds of things. So it's a been a good thing. Yeah. I think it's great. I think it's great that the state's finally going to use uh algorithms and equations to get to that level of funding versus the old school processes. No, and this is so terrific because you're it does so many things. First, the stigma aspect, right? But then just seeing the before and after co how many more children are benefiting from these kinds of program that we need, right? That whatever that's what our kids need and families need. That's terrific. appreciate your leadership both of you and in all this it's

079a lot of work do exemplary work. Okay. Can I ask a clarifying question? So are you saying that so the state if we're talking about the general fund? The state is about twothirds and we bring in about a third locally. But that's just the general fund. That's just the general fund. Yes. So we're kind of talking about a couple different things. the general fund we get receive very little federal dollars because most of our federal dollars are for a specific purpose which means that we house them in other funds for whatever that purpose is whether it's our grant fund or nutrition services so there's very few federal dollars that go into general fund but if we were to look at all of our funds cumulatively that's where the 15% comes from so what proportion do

080we actually bring in locally if we're looking at all of our money because you know I'm I'm used to saying a third of it comes in locally but it Sounds like that's actually not true. It's less than. It's a third comes in locally from our uh school finance formula funding. Um so what that lo the local dollars that that third doesn't encapsulate within the general fund is that we keep our 2017 mil levy dollars separate and we keep our bond debt redemption dollars separate. And so those are two other funds where local dollars come into it, but it doesn't fund our per pupil revenue if that makes sense. And I, like I said, I did just pull all that stuff so I can forward it on to you board and have all those numbers not

081from memory so that they're accurate. I think it's interesting people understand that we that we're supported, thank goodness, by by outside Yeah. to these, right? Yeah. We we have to be Yeah. community, our kids, our families. It's can't shouldn't be lost. and for the for the main goal of right helping kids learn and be successful and healthy and safe and all those kinds of things, right? So, it's good. Excellent work. Yeah, I do have one um clarifying I guess maybe more statement. So, I was um contacted over the last couple of weeks around, you know, I think people misunderstanding that we hadn't opted in to do this yet, but it sounded like we hadn't done that because you wanted to make sure we weren't going to lose our title one funds. Did I hear that

082correctly? Yeah. And the at risk funding. So, like I said, like we're a higher percentage than the state average. And so we really just wanted to take the time knowing that all this work is going on at the state level with this work group on at risk and the final rule making to make sure that we weren't going to hurt ourselves in other areas of our funding too by making that decision. Right. And then and then I think there was some confusion too that the board had voted no on this which this is not a board decision. And this is something that obviously you all were, you know, like I like to say, measuring twice, cutting once, and making sure that we weren't giving up other funding in place of this, and making sure obviously

083that we get both. Um, and then it's just something that will now move forward with the district. Correct. Yep. Exactly. Correct. Okay. Thank you. I just think there was um some misinformation out there this week that somehow the board um kind of dropped the ball on this and that's not the case at all. and I knew we were going to get presented from you all and I figured that this would come up. But I do appreciate you looking that we didn't we didn't want to lose our title funds which are really important for our district and other at risk funds because those are important pieces that play in the district as well and obviously I had given them some confidence that we would probably be moveing forward this way but we just want to make

084sure that everything was good. So I appreciate the cl excuse me the clarification on that. Yeah, we'll be doing a lot of communication followup like I talked about. We'll do the letter to parents through PHAR all that and then repetitively over the next few months. I think hopefully that'll help uh negate some of that. Okay. Thank you. The the I just want to reiterate the the concern from our end was never whether this was a good program. It was whether or not there were unintended consequences as Mel mentioned. So yeah, we got some of the same questions that came to us. And so I just want to be clear about that. We we think this is a good thing for kids. We just wanted to make sure that we had all the information before making

085a decision. So, um, and yeah, thanks to Mel and Dan for all y'all's work on this. I do want to say I've got a 9-year-old at home who is the pickiest eater in the world, and this year he decided he's going to start eating school lunches, and he loves them. So, I don't know what you're doing. All right. But it's pretty amazing. So, um, it's not me, it's my team at the schools. They're doing it. I want you to stay here. This is a little bit of trivia for our board. Does anybody know when did the school lunch program begin and why? Before me [Laughter] before me too and I'm older. That was a long time ago. Do you know you know? Yeah. Do you guys post World War II? Go ahead, Doug. It was

086after I I know this because I did a research. Yeah, I had the book back in graduate school. No, it was really fascinating that that it started because when soldiers were being re uh drafted or whatever into World War II, they found how how malnourished our our population were. The soldiers came in malnourished. And so it was actually a a national defense act to to do that. And then in the 60s, I believe, is when the the breakfast program came about because first just lunch and then later was was was breakfast. Yep. So for national defense and Yeah. Yeah. So I passed the class out here. Yeah. This is a um this is a historic change. It really is. State of Colorado and only about two other actually more states are now doing it, but

087there still just a handful of states. So, and and the other thing that's really interesting is is that over the years when you talk about people who would get subs, you know, their lunches paid for, even the students that would pay full price, it's still being subsidized by the federal government. There are some districts, Gasman was one I remember that took no funding and their their lunches were, you know, astronomically high. But so we've been so it's never been a free lunch for anybody or it's been you know comp uh compensated lunch for people. So it's been a good thing for nationally is a is a great thing and you've done a great job taking advantage of advantage but taking the opportunities for the grants that are available not just for the food but for

088the your um outfitting the kitchens and staff and everything else. So you guys have done a great job. Thank you. Important work. Okay. Thank you. Okay. All right. Well, Melanie can stay up here because we have our auditor request for proposal update. All right. Um, so I don't have a formal presentation. I just kind of want to update you guys on what's happened. So, last month I uh sent you all an email informing you that our auditor CSD had uh told us that they would no longer be able to service our audit, which was a big surprise and and pretty disappointing because they've been our partner for a long time in our audit. And really, not just the audit piece that we always present to you guys, but just the advising piece that goes around

089year round far as what best practices are. um if there are Gazsby pronouncements that we need to implement that they're helping us and really working alongside us to make sure that we're implementing them um appropriately. And so there's really a lot of work that we work with whoever this auditing firm is outside of just our formal audit as well. And so since that time that we were notified, we've put out a formal RFP um in order to gain some other interests and be able to hopefully have some um requests for a new auditor. And so that was launched on March 14th. And to date, we've received some questions from some interested firms. It's out there um on the Rocky Mountain EBID system, and we know that there's been 19 vendors that have looked at it

090and downloaded our RFP. So hopefully there's some interest out there. Um but that process will close on this Thursday, April 6th, where they need to submit um a submitt by then to us. Um, from then we'll review any of those audit firms that are interested and put together an interview team which will be April 13th and 14th is what we're targeting for. Um, we're working on putting together a committee which will obviously consist of our finance staff, several of our accountants and myself, um, our accounting supervisor. We'll have a representative from the fiscal oversight committee as well. Um, we would love to have at least one board member participate if anybody is interested and available on those days. I think that would be good because ultimately we're going to be bringing our recommendation to you

091um for approval at the April 18th um board meeting is what our goal is as long as we receive interest. So, um, yep, 13th and 14th of April. It's that Thursday and Friday. So, depending on how many um firms we're interviewing, we'll hopefully likely not need all of those two days, but a portion of those days. Um, and again, bringing forward a formal resolution because that is one of the things that you guys approve is who our auditor is. Um, as as much as we just wrapped up our audit, May is really when we start engaging in audit work and field work going into June, even ahead of the fiscal year ending. Um, so we're hopeful to have a new audit firm on board and under contract that we can start that work with. Any

092questions on those pieces? Anybody so excited about the 13th and 14th? Not really, but I've done it before, so I'm happy to help. I mean, I've had to hire auditors before, so yeah, I would love to have have you sit on that. Will and Angela, do you guys want to Okay, great. You split it up. However you want to utilize us. Perfect. Um, I'll be sending you guys more information then. Thank you. Thanks, Melanie. Awesome. Dr. Dr. Hill, do you have anything else or are we ready to I just we have board open discussion. I just didn't know sometimes you Yeah, I did want to give an update on um Oh, round of applause. Oh, wrapping up thoughts. Oh, pause. You said round of applause. You did a good job, too. Oh, you a lot

093of times you have a concluding thought. So, wrapping up thoughts, not wrapping. Concluding thoughts. Um, no, I it's not on the agenda, but I did want to give a quick update on um the committee uh for elementary schools because I said I would do that the last meeting. So, I don't have a whole lot to update because we haven't actually met yet. Um, but just a couple things. So, one, um, the the facilitating duties are going to be shared. Um, so at first it was just going to be me, but um, Dr. Medbed and then Paul JB, one of our site directors are going to help me uh with this process because it's uh going to be a lot of work. And so I appreciate both of them for not only doing their normal day-to-day

094jobs, but they're going to help with this as well. Um, so we did send out uh invites to committee members um asking them to be a part of this. And um just as a reminder, and this is straight from the resolution language, so it's nothing new, but the charge for the committee was to continue the work that was already started. uh review the data that has been presented, acquire additional data if necessary, study all options, including the benefits and ramifications of closing elementary schools, better educate the community on the issues surrounding the enrollment declines and the effects uh enrollment decline can have on the district, and then develop recommendations to address declining student enrollment. Um and so we have we did identify uh members to invite um you know I'm appreciative to we have gotten

095emails from people in the community saying I want to be on this um committee and I appreciate that and I want to recognize that. I do think that we had to have some sort of criteria uh or parameters around who was invited because if not then it could be like why'd you put that person on there and you like that person you don't like that person. So, um, we tried to make it as simple as possible. And so, we, um, we pulled in, uh, elementary teachers, administrators who are currently on existing district advisory committee. So, I have a, um, superintendent teacher advisory committee with over 30 teachers on it. So, I've asked um, teachers from that committee to be on it. Um, we also have a superintendent principal advisory committee. Um, so I've asked folks

096to from that committee to be on there as well. Um and then um we also have invited family members who serve on our DAC. So that's our district accountability committee. And so we've invited um family members that are on the DACK as well. Um and then we also have community partners that we have um sent invites out to um serving in varied roles such as city planning, community assets, um folks from our minority advisory committee um and then people from our uh strategic plan priority work are area or priority area work groups. and some of those entities, city of Grand Junction, city of Fruda, the county, the chamber, GJ, and I mentioned the minority advisory committee. And then we will have folks from our senior leadership team obviously there at the meetings um helping provide

097data, answer questions if there's data the committee wants additionally, then we can go out and get that. Um and then we also have um some of our board of education members we've asked to be a part of the process too. Um and then Calie will be uh in the meetings to help with communications. um and she's been in some of the planning meetings with us as well. So, all in all, outside of just like senior leadership people, um we're looking at about uh 20 um folks from outside of, you know, district level staff and and senior leadership level staff that'll be a part of this. Um we don't have all we're waiting on a couple people to get back to us. We told them we hope they let us know by the close of business

098tomorrow. Um and if for some reason we get somebody that says last second like, "No, I can't," then we'll try to find a replacement for them. But the goal would to have uh would be to have all the representatives um from those different organizations on there um and groups. Um just so you know kind of the timeline. So we are planning on trying to meet uh second and fourth Tuesdays of each month for about four hours at a time. Um and then um we know in May we're going to have to reschedule the second one because it's it ended up being the last day of school which wouldn't be smart to pull teachers and and principles from their school building. So, but the goal right now is to at least get two meetings in a

099month, at least four hours at a time. Um, and if we need to add more, hopefully we won't, but if we do, we will. Um, summer months, we're going to have to work with the committee because we know people start going on uh vacation and things like that. So, um, but having enough time to meet to actually get through this work. Um, and then we will provide um updates. Um, those will be separate from my Friday updates. I don't really want the superintendent Friday update to turn into the school enrollment update. So, um, we'll send a separate update, ideally on Thursdays. I'm looking at Cali because she's going to be working along that. But, um, uh, ideally on Thursdays after we have meetings out to the community families and say, "This is what happened in

100the meeting. This is what we talked about." So, that folks are brought along in that process. And then, um, and then I will um give an update at we'll give an update at the work sessions to the board as far a formal update at the board meetings at those work sessions. If we have to add another one to a business meeting, we'll do that as well. but at least um doing updates there. Um and so again, the first meeting is coming up uh next week and then we'll have a lot more information obviously after that once we start actually meeting uh to give to the board. So just want to give an update on where we are in the process. I am very appreciative of um Dr. Medvid and Paul. We've met I think three

101or four times just already this week alone um on planning out what these sessions will look like uh what we anticipate uh we'll need to review with the group but then also um wanting to be um accommodating to the group if there's information that they need available that we can have time to get that to them. Um and so yeah, Dr. Mev's here if you have any questions, but um that's really all we have at this point because we're just still putting the committee together. So he's saying no, don't ask him any questions. Okay. So, that's all I had. I can't think of anything. Um, does the board have any other open discussion? Um, not really open discussion, but uh uh I just want to kind of give a little shout out. Uh, one of

102our educators lost her husband to cancer, so her thoughts and prayers go out to I don't want to put her in out there like that, but our thoughts and prayers go out to her and, uh, we're all praying for her. So, thank you. All right. Um, well, we are going to since we had a meeting last week around the curriculum and we tabled that uh we're now going to call it a business meeting together because the board needs to um approve the um curriculum adoption. So, we'll go ahead and um call that meeting to order. U Bridget, if you'd like to do roll call. Okay. Mrs. Heights here. Mr. Jones here. Miss Lima here. Mr. Levenson here. Dr. Schulties here. All right. Do I have a motion to approve the agenda? So moved. Second. Okay.

103I'm sorry. Who seconded? Angela. Okay. Mrs. Heights? Yes. Mr. Jones? Yes. Miss Lima? Yes. Mr. Levenson? Dr. Schulties? Yes. All right. Do I have a motion to approve um item C which would be uh we have well we have C3 we have A1 A2 A3 um and then C3B. So we have advanced placement English language and composition advanced placement world history advanced placement art history and then high school science resources. So moved. Second. Right. and then discussion on any of those resources. I just want to thank the people involved for the job they did to get everything taken care of and I know there were some questions but those questions got answered and taken care of in a timely manner and just want to thank those people. Yeah, thank you for bringing um just keeping

104the board in the loop and around transparency and that you the stuff that you saw come up and then I I feel confident in the additional meetings I had last week of just getting clarification. I think really knowing that they'll be there's no perfect resource out there. You know, we're always and that that's really the the job of our curriculum team is to take that resource and then use that and guiding with what we want to do with the state standards and the rigor that we will, you know, adhere to with those and then making sure that that works within our community and our community of learners. And so any resource that we adopt, our team is always going to have to take and kind of work within that um to tweak it or do

105whatever they need to for for our particular community. And so I feel very confident with both the the resource and the questions I had along with the professional learning aspect of that that really our team is kind of that that stop gap when it comes to making sure that the resource will will work with our community. So, I think um you guys have done a great job and thank you for your work on that. So, thanks for saying that. I don't have to. Oh, is that what you were going to say? Oh, very much. Well, that's just how I felt after, you know, going through that process. So, thank you guys for answering all those questions. So, all right. Any other discussion? All right. Seeing none, we can go ahead and call the vote. Mrs.

106Heights? Yes. Mr. Jones? Yes. Miss Lima? Yes. Mr. Levenson? Yes. Dr. Schulties? Yes. All right. Do I have a motion to adjurnn? So moved. Right. Thank you everyone who was taking