001this afternoon. Appreciate the opportunity for you to really make your application come alive and articulate um you know the things that we're going to be asking you today. So, we ready to go? Okay. Good. So Clint Garcia, chief operations officer with the district. Uh Dan Banell, area director, Jennifer Marsh, um chief academic officer. Red light on. Oops. Tammy Costello, assistant director. Laura Jean DS, director. Penny Dylan, second grade classroom teacher and K through sixth grade reading specialist. Okay. And uh we have Melanie on. Melan, do you want to introduce yourself? Okay. All right. And we have Tammy coming here in a little bit. So, well, like I said, thanks for this opportunity today. We're we're excited to be able to, as we've dug into the application a little bit, uh then be able to generate
002some maybe some clarity and some questions that we're going to ask you. Um, we're scheduled to go up until six o'clock, but just based off, you know, the answering of the questions and how these guys are feeling as far as, you know, do we have enough information then to to move forward. I I'll just describe the process. We we're here for our capacity interview tonight. Uh, we'll take the information that we gleaned from that. uh we'll go back into um our criteria rubric and if there's anything we need to add to it, beef up um if there's questions obviously that'll be answered tonight that we want to add into that uh rubric, that scoring device, we will um and then over the next week and a half or so uh we do have a couple
003community meetings coming up uh that first week in February. um which which really is is an opportunity for the community with board members to interact around the application and talk a little bit more Mesa Valley Community School and um during that time period this team will just continue to do the work it needs to and then we'll summarize the data that that we've gotten uh obviously from here and just from our overall review and then uh we're scheduled on the 7th of February Jennifer and I will then present it's a it's a work session so we'll just go ahead and present the results of really the scoring of how things have worked out. Um, just so you know, our district accountability committee last Thursday uh worked on their sections of the rubric and so they
004were able to interact uh with sections of your application um and kind of develop some questions and actually there's some questions that landed on the capacity interview that that we'll be asking tonight. And so we really feel like our process up to this point is is gathering and and really putting together a nice body of evidence then to then turn over on February 7th to the board of education in which then they'll have the opportunity to interact with that data. They've had the application from the beginning. So they'll have two weeks up until February 21st and if they're ready to make a decision that that would be the time that action taken. Okay. So any questions before we get started? Anybody? Okay. And yeah, and and we'll uh we've each got a set of questions.
005Um we'll interact with the questions. You guys are more than welcome to, you know, turn and whoever's like, you know, the qualified one or if you want to joint answer a question or all four of you can answer question, that's completely up to you. Okay. All right. We'll go ahead and get started. Um, I'll start us off with uh a question around mission and vision. Um, so you know, obviously your mission and vision and because the circumstances around having to restructure uh an already existing system at Mesa Valley Community School. Um, can you just articulate really how that new structuring affects your Mesa Valley Community School mission and vision? Sure. Um, yes. So, um it's it's kind of interesting because we after years of trying to lean away from the word homeschooling, we're now leaning
006into the word homeschooling. Um our students um um at this point about half of them are I mean gradewise half of them are actual homeschooled students that um help we partner with their parents and we provide part-time education for them on our site. Um, prior to this, um, almost all of our students were not homeschooled students. They they schooled at home a lot of the time and they often spoke of themselves as homeschoolers, but they were not homeschoolers. Now, we're moving a different way to where we're actively supporting them as as homeschool students. Although, we will still have a full-time program for full-time students who are public school students. It gets it gets a little confusing. um trying to make sure we're keeping it straight who we're talking about because we actually have different kinds
007of students now. Um very distinct different kinds of students. So when we rewrote our mission and vision, we just kind of leaned into that a little bit just to kind of um clarify that we really are um working very hard to actively partner with homeschool families in this. Um I hope that's what you were looking for. If there's anything else we can try and clarify that sorry I was late. I'm not trying to be rude. I actually was stuck in court and I don't get to dictate the judges in court. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to talk about goals, objectives, and pupil performance standards. So, my first question, it has to do with your academic growth goals. And um you talk about your academic growth goal, but you don't identify the assessment. How will these goals
008be measured? Page eight. Um yeah, the page eight ones are all on CAMASS. Okay. We also use NWA but and that's what I was wondering was it NWA or we do honestly most of our internal measurements on NWA because we do it more often and we like the detail that it gives us but I wrote these goals based on our um school performance framework and our Okay. So and SAT and PSAT. Okay. So Cass, SAT, and PAT. Yep. Okay. Yeah, we use Dibbles for the reading data, but I don't know that's that's on the school performance framework, but yes, we use Dibbles. Yeah. Okay. Um you also talk about um in the academic gaps you say that the gaps will be addressed in the UIP process. How do you progress monitor those especially if your
009goals are endofear um measurements? How are you progress monitoring to ensure you're on track? That actually is probably a penny question. Hi. With our kiddos who are on read plans, we try and do the progress monitor for students whose composite is in the red or if we have a classroom teacher or a parent who has expressed concern about their child's performance, we'll try and for the kiddos whose composite is in red. It's once every two weeks is the goal. Um with kiddos whose composite is yellow or if the parent reaches out to us and just says, "Hey, the accuracy of my child, it's off. there's something off. Can you check it? So, we'll do that once a month. And then with that, it's just a matter of communicating to the parents and the classroom teacher
010where the student is performing. Um, the parents do have an end goal in mind. We give um the dibbles parentfriendly letters. We also communicate with our families just to let them know um what is typical middle of the year. And so, for example, my second grade students in my daily lesson plans that I provide for parents to follow at at home, I just say, you know, the end of year goal is um 72 words per minute. At this point in the school year, your child should be reading 65 words per minute. And then um and then we just chart we just chart that progress in um Amplify. Okay. Are you progress monitoring the the CAMASS growth? Yes, we use uh mostly easy CBMs for that. Um that's the most common thing. We will occasionally use
011NWBA. Um and I think I got stuff from Ellie. I think those are the most common ones we use for um throughout the year progress monitoring. In your application, you state that a screener for social emotional health will be identified and purchased for next year. I'm just wondering what screeners are are you guys looking at or considering? So, uh, somebody reached out to us as soon as we released the application and told us what to use. I don't know if I brought it. Was it Panorama? Okay. Um, yeah, that's what they suggested and thought that, um, that was a good thing for us to use. That's what you guys Yeah. Okay. All right. Evidence of support. Dan, is that you? almost. Yeah. Um well I I think um we obviously continue to have some although
012less people are are accepting more what we're doing but we've continued to have people just say hey do you really have to change because you know what we've done is successful they like it. Um so we've had people continue to say that. Um I will say that um we were very um conservative with our estimates on next year's enrollment. Um there were enough unknowns. We really thought it was prudent to be um conservative. Um but we've now launched our application um form for next year and we've had really good response and it's quite honestly knocked our socks off. We're we're shocked at how strong it is coming in particularly in middle school. Um, I know in our application we projected um that we would have um 20 um full-time students and we've actually currently got
01331 kids signed up for that. Um which is really interesting. Um and um we've we've got u 10 part-time kids signed up. So just in middle school alone, we've got 41 children already saying they're going to come. So the support. Um, we believe they're likely to just do straight home school. Um, most of our families really don't want to be in a traditional school. um or even another charter school um not even um um Grand River. They they generally speaking don't go to those places. There are definitely times that they do and there are times that we refer them to other public, you know, traditional public schools, but um generally, no, they they'd rather homeschool. We also have heard from enough families that um the ones who have not signed up yet are waiting for
014our actual schedule, which is coming out on Friday. We anticipate another spike once they can compare it to WCCCC and what mods they're taking that kind of stuff. We anticipate another spike then. But we have been pleased with a steady growth of who has said they're coming back. Okay. Thank you. Back to me. Okay, I'm going to ask uh planning for evaluating pupil performance and educational programming. Could you please articulate the shifts andor adjustments that you are now making from what the K5 programming will look like this year and share exactly I you you have it in your application. I think we understand, but I I think it might be good for you guys to articulate it especially in this sort of uh venue. I'll start and then Cammy will remember everything I forgot. So,
015uh, last year about this time, we told our families that we would no longer be a full-time school program and that we would be a support program instead. So, they began the shift to um, call themselves, there's another word, register themselves as homeschool students and then sign up with us part-time for the support through our program. that gave them the responsibility for their curriculum and their grading and the kinds of things that traditional homeschoolers are responsible for. And so they started picking that ball up in August and the students that attend our school are homeschooled on the other days of the week. On the days they attend with us, we supply extra support in ELA and math and currently science and art and STEM. And so they come to our site two days a week
016for those programs or they have the option to come on Fridays. So it's two different tracks. They can come the one day Wednesday track and come twice or they can come on the Friday track and come once. Um same kind of support but obviously one day a week is a little less than the um two days a week. We had more families choose the two days a week um a lot more than the one day a week option. We think a lot of that was because we've provided two day a week classes for years in the English language arts area. That's what Penny has taught for years and they were already in that pattern and they were already very appreciative of the English language arts support in particular. That is one of the harder things
017to cover all of it at home. Um so they wanted some of that support. So that's where we shifted to uh last year. Um it's been very successful and very popular. It's really gone well. um that required all different hiring. It required a lot of changes on our part, but families have been very pleased. The enrollment in that program for the coming year is very strong. Um not getting a lot of hesitation on that. I think families were waiting to see what was this really going to be like and then once they heard of other families liking it, they're starting even some families that left last year in frustration that they didn't know what was happening are now on our list and are starting to come back. So that transition has gone very well. We've
018been very pleased. Cammy, did she miss anything? Not that I can. Okay. Um, so you talk about in in your application that you wait, I just went ahead of myself a little bit. Okay. So, will you um as a school recommend that parents use a CD approved reading curriculum at home? Yes. Yeah, we've done that for a long time. So, for this year, I mean, that was a big deal because all of our teachers are trained. They've they've taken the science and reading class. They're Orton Gillingham trained at the basic level. They're Wilson trained. They love teaching English language arts. And so it was very important for us um the very well I've been here I'm in my 10th year here and um we've seen curriculums that work that are multi-ensory and systematic and we've
019seen curriculums that fall on the weaker side and so um when we planned a curriculum this year for families to recommend it was the all about spelling and all about reading system. And then um and then in the classroom we do we don't use that curriculum but we use um Orton Gillingham based approach and then we also um use grammar voyages grammar and um try and just stick as closely as to best instruction in literacy. Great. Thank you. Um, how, this is more of a process question, but how do you, how do you go about um, selecting your program resources for each content? If you just share a little bit about that process and how you identify obviously not in elementary, but um, for your middle and high. Oh, for the middle and that is
020I was going to make you answer for elementary. Talk to me about the adoption process. So that um has really been kind of a a process of kind of an evolving process. When we began doing ELA classes, we actually had Penny and our other ELA teachers come together and decide what kind of approach they wanted to use. You know, if you recall or if you didn't know, several years of our program, we didn't have any classes. All of our students were schooled at home. So we never needed to answer that question. So, we ended up um using a novel-based approach partially because that's what a lot of homeschoolers were already doing partially because we liked that approach and we thought it tied in best to reading. So, I mean, excuse me, writing. Um homeschooling students
021tend to struggle a bit with the writing piece. It's harder to teach at home. It's harder to have another audience. And so by picking um novels and short stories and things that we thought would interest them, then the writing develops off of that um really nicely. And we liked the whole um kind of the the integrated approach of the grammar and the spelling and all that tying into what they were reading as opposed to separating it all out. And Penny may have any anything to add to that about why we do Can I Can I just add like a little bit more? Um I'm just wondering is it totally teacher driven then? what novels you're going to choose um or you know what does that selection adoption process look like is it teachers is it
022started out as teachers um and I would say it's still teacher driven um the teachers tend to adopt like one new book a year just because of changing needs they see in their students or they feel like there's a gap in the in the kinds of books or the lifestyle levels of the books they're they're choosing but it is largely teacher driven. That would be our primary source. But we have we have definitely looked at district book lists as well and compared and made sure that we're not um wildly divergent from district approaches. Yeah. And I have those um all those wonderful I don't know if you guys even still do that, but all the unit plans and all the things they do with them. So we try to pace it similarly and use a
023lot of those same concepts. Great. Um the application noted that you're going to use NWA or you were going to require NWA for your for your middle schoolers um for I'm ELA and math. My wondering is about science because science is going back on um for CMAS and so I'm just are you planning to do science or just stick with ELA in math? We've always been interested in doing science and delay. Um it's been just because of the way our school is formatted, it's been hard to get our families to come in. It we every time they have to test, they have to make an actual extra trip. Scheduling that has been very difficult. Getting buyin from parents isn't always easy. Um so for one reason or another, we've never done the science, but we've
024kicked it around numerous times. Um we don't currently have a plan to add science. That's one more thing that um we'd have to think through. Um, I definitely think we would be open to adding it. Um, it it is something that we would like data on. Um, it's it's just been logistically challenging. So, um, I I think that's kind of where we're at. We we're open to it. We don't currently have a plan for it. Um, and the only reason that I ask is NWA is line aligned to NextGen. And so those are the standards on which your students, our students, all of our students will be um assessed, right, against. Well, and we do obviously have our kids do the the CMAS science, so there's that. Um but that's not going to hit all
025of our kids now, so we'll have to try and plug that hole. Okay. All right, Mel, it's your turn. Great. I'm still here. Um do this is going back to the finance um policies and procedures section which thank you is laid out very well. Um one question on the record retention policy section is just that if it aligns to the minimum requirements of the Colorado State Archives manual for school district I know that's what we use as a guide um or how they were determined instead. Like I just want to make sure that those minimums are at least followed because a lot of the items mentioned a seven-year retention, a six plus current, but especially like in the employment areas, there are some records that are required um to be kept permanently. Yes. And we
026do have um those records permanently. They may it may not have been addressed in there, but um we do follow all of the procedures that are requested for records retention. Okay. Um, and then also in your budget, um, when it talks about your audit services, I noticed that you are using a quote from Cutler. Um, I was just wondering if that was something that you have moved ahead on of switching from CSD to Cutler and if so, what the reasoning behind that change from your current local auditor to a Denver-based one would be. Um, actually we have not moved forward on that. We did address it with the board. The board did approve for us to make that change if we felt it was um necessary. At this time, we are holding off on that.
027Um you may or may not be aware that I did have a conversation with Ashley in regard to that. Um and um so at this point, we've we've just decided to kind of hold off and um wait another year and see how things go. We were a little concerned with our timing last year with our audit. Um, and so we thought perhaps um, we know the other two charter schools are using John Cutler and so we had thought about it might be easier if we all went with the same company and that might be a better flow, but um, we're kind of um, going to wait another year before we make any further decisions. Um, I'm glad to hear that. I guess I would want to be involved in further discussion before you guys do
028or don't make a change. Absolutely. On that piece. Um so is on the budget side of things. Um is there a contingency budget in place? I know that you provided your five-year and it sounds like your student enrollments are going great, but I mean this is a big change. I know this year your enrollments were pretty spot-on to their projections, but what if in the future those um enrollment projections aren't met or other costs are higher? um specifically what areas in the budget would be adjusted to cover any of those differences? Yeah. Well, as you know, we had a a very large change in our FTE um this year. So, we were actually um very pleased to have only been off a couple um on that. Um that was a a a nice um it
029just went well. We were very pleased. Um so what we do uh in regard to the budget that you have in front of you for the 205 that is um based on some information and and surveys that we took from the parents um several months ago. We felt this was going to be pretty close for this year, but as you know um it could go either way. We could either have less students or more students. I usually um though you don't see it actually construct three to six budgets um each year depending on what enrollment might be they're higher or lower and usually use the middle one at first but it could go either way. I do have contingency budgets um all the way down to 175. Awesome. Thank you. S welcome to Are you
030on governance? Yeah, this this is a typical governance question I got to add because even though all the boards I've sat on, I've asked this myself. Currently, how does your board address accountability among themselves and staff? I know you have your bylaws. I went through your bylaws. Those are standard bylaws, so those were all in order. But do you know how the board does their own accountability? Not necessarily. I guess it depends on what you're talking about. I only like we do a board training in the fall and that kind of um you know well you had you had an agreement right in packet. You had a board agreement of what their duties were and things right. I mean we the only accountability I can think of off the top of my head is you
031know the attendance if they misses so many meetings and stuff then that's what we follow up on. So, I wouldn't say necessarily that they're doing that. We do that, but I can you think of anything else? I honestly, we've never had a problem that's needed to be addressed. So, um but yes, there is an annual agreement every board member signs. Um, I believe that the board members are chosen with care and they are not likely to become a problem, but if they were, they they would address it, self police it, discuss it with each other first and hopefully would never go further than that or need to. But, um, I know we have had conversations around attendance. Um we've occasionally had some board members who um missed more meetings than or were starting to approach
032a threshold where it was looking like that was a problem and those um just got discussed and it turned turned around. So um that's that's the only thing we've ever had to deal with. Yeah, it's hard because I sit on a board myself and I'm like, well, how do they hold us accountable? You know, I mean, you pick people that you think are going to do what the mission's supposed to do and follow the best interest, right? And you're right, probably there's limited things you would accept for if you had a but our our policies do involve a pro a procedure for removing and there right if if it came to that we definitely have a process for it. Yeah. Okay. All right. Um I thought you guys did a nice job in the section
033for employees. So, I really don't have a lot of questions. Just a couple of quick ones though. Um, in transitioning to a new model, what information will change regarding employees? You referenced the employee handbook and then in your application said some things are going to change. Just off the top of your head, do you have some big rocks that you know will change? Do you know where that was referenced? I'm just kind of trying to Yeah. where that might be. I can't remember if I read it. Um, I think it was schedules. Yeah, I think what that was probably referring to is the way that we pay teachers. Um, because they were they weren't even doing the classroom stuff. They were doing advising and so we had to change our structure and how we pay
034in terms of how many hours equals, you know, a day and things like that. I'm pretty sure that's what we would have been referring to. I think in their schedules as well. Right. Right. because they that's oh that's the other significant thing is that when they were academic adviserss before so the majority of our staff was involved in advising homeschool families so the families would come to site we would sit down with them we would walk through their curriculum walk through their progress all that kind of stuff the adviserss could create those schedules however they wanted if they didn't couldn't work on Tuesdays then they didn't come on Tuesdays it was very very flexible and now of course you can't teach that way so they lost that flexibility ility when they if they committed to
035teaching a class then that so that's a different structure than we're used to in the past because before people pretty much made their own office hours and then we publicized those and now of course those have to fit into the confines of the schedule that we've put together. So now they do have like regular business hours so they're required to be there at 7:30 in the morning. They leave a half hour after class is done. So that is a change for those that have were coming and going as they need to be. Okay. Okay. Great. And then um my other question is so you've got 42 right now and then going to the new model do you know which positions will be impacted will that number increase decrease or what does that look like for
036staffing? I'll start go ahead and fill that in. uh it will decrease um because a lot of those jobs were advising jobs. Um that that's currently the process we're going through right now is trying to figure out we're pretty far along the road, but the first thing we did is anybody with a teaching degree or had the ability or interest to teach that we were able to shift them first. So we do have a pool of people still that we are re working on rehoming. Um we probably can't rehome all of them. Um, so that's the hardest part of what we're doing right now. Um, and our process is just one step at a time and talking to groups, getting those jobs set, and then moving to the next kind of job. We still have
037some open-ended things that we don't know how long it's going to take. Um, so we've got some, you know, wiggle room in there, but we needed to first fill all of the classroom positions and that we have just completed that literally. We're doing that this week. So, okay, moving through that, but it will be less than 42. Is the rehoming going well? So far, yeah, I think um Penny was always a teacher, but she has all sorts of comrades now that haven't taught for a while, and they really, most of them have really enjoyed being back in the classroom. It's been kind of fun. And it's, you know, it's two days a week, so that doesn't make it less work. I want to clarify that teaching two days a week in some ways is harder.
038You have so much more to get in. If a student misses a day, it's a big gap. It's the two day a week is not a walk in the park, but it is definitely familyfriendly. And if you need to alternate child care with your spouse or whatever, it's it's flexible in that way. So, I would say they've adjusted really really well. Anything to add, Penny? No. No. It's you know, you know how it is when you've worked with a group of people for so long and to lose anybody, you know, there's going to be some growing pains there, but yeah, that is definitely it's definitely a difficult process. We've had a good retention. Yeah, we have a very high retention and we're a very very close staff. So, it's And of the 42, what's the
039breakdown of of teachers and then support staff or classified staff? Half and half, a little less than that. Are you looking that up, Julie, or do you want me to take a guess? Let me see if it'll let me get in here. I think we're at this ballpark. Doesn't have to be. I think we're close to half teachers now. Um or will be when we're done with the whole process. And then we've got six um SPAD folks, six admin teachers, and then a few support. Great. All right. Thanks so much. Uh this next question really weaves really nicely into what Nikki had just asked. This is a question that came out of our district accountability committee that really had gone through the enrollment policy section and and and just a general question that that I
040I think you've started to answer and that is they just wanted to know, you know, when you have a an approximate 30% drop in FTE, how do you still financially operate? I think that was the big question. H how are you still a viable campus with a drop in FTE? So, I don't know who wants to take that one, but it was a good question from Yeah, absolutely. Um It's difficult obviously when you have that big that large of a drop. Um for us obviously part of that was um we did let some staff members go last year and so you're talking about full-time staff and benefits and all those those parts coming off each year. um we never spent all of our budget. So a significant chunk of our budget ended up going into
041a savings into a seafe or you know so we didn't ever use everything that we had budgeted out either. Um our we also for our kiddos as you know our model was such that we each student would get $2,000 and they could spend that on curriculum. We had last year not everyone spend that so those dollars were leftover. So, we actually had a significant amount of dollars left over that offset that um obviously to some degree. You have an increase in PPR. Um and all those those increases helped offset it as well. So, pretty much between those items, we did cut some things out of the budget. Some things got whittleled down pretty significantly. Um but we were able to still function and not um be sacrificing really or suffering because of of the areas
042that we actually cut down. we were able to um just make some some decisions in some areas where we could supplement something else and and not have an issue. So um it was it was a little tough. We did have to um this year it's possible we may have to dip into our Cafe a little bit to pull some funds back over to help balance this out, but we don't anticipate having to do that next year. in the budget that was submitted does not include us having to go back into our reserves again a second time. I think it's worth clarifying too. Um so those learning funds that we used to designate for students now that we don't need to designate those for students that frees up it's not just leftover money that wasn't used
043of that. That's a significant part of our budget that used to go directly to students that now goes back into the budget. So that helped cushion the loss pretty significantly. Yeah. So, for example, for for this year, um the 6 through 12 who are still receiving those funds, that's approximately $398,000. So, that we will not be putting out next year for that. Obviously, we'll still be paying for our CMU students, etc., but it's not going to be anywhere near that amount. So, that will come back into our um general fund to be used in other places. Yes. And we um uh three four years ago we designed a website to do all of our logging, all of our tracking. Our students log into it every week. They log everything they've done. It does our transcripts.
044It does our contact log. It's does everything. And we paid a whale of a lot of money for it that now we can't use. So that money will also move back into the budget. I I'm just wondering, Mel, did you have any follow-up questions on on that particular one? Um, I guess just yeah, thinking through this and obviously we're in the same boat of esser, right, that's coming to an end. Are you relying on that currently for any positions or is that all been above and beyond? Um that's all primarily been above and beyond except for we did hire um a part-time mental health um counselor this year. Um about 30,000 or so of what we received from ESSER actually was to cover her um benefits and her salary that's been moved in back into
045the general budget. So um we didn't rely on it. It was just to us. We approached it as being a bonus through the esser, but we were not um relying on that to continue. Okay, that's all I had. All right. Um I would echo what Nikki said. Thanks for the good information that you provided. Uh I only have just a few questions to go over with you. The first one is on uh nutrition services. I think we had done a pilot program with uh lunch lizard and we had a pretty low response to that. Do you foresee us uh doing anything else with lunch lizard moving forward with any enrollment increases? I would love to talk about that with you. Um we've never done anything with lunch lizard at our school. Oh. Um we know
046very little about it. We are very intrigued. Um we we have kids bringing their cold lunches. we have kids forgetting to bring their cold lunches and I know that the um healthy school meals for all thing was passed state and I don't know what the district response is yet. I don't know if you guys have even decided but um so we're very interested in discussing that with you and we don't have a facility that would be a kitchen or anything like that. Um so maybe we could chat about that and see if there's anything the district would recommend that we could do. If not, we our kids will just keep bringing cold lunches and when they forget them, we'll keep giving them something. That's good. Yeah, we'd love to talk to you about it. Okay.
047And then as we talk today, just tell us uh a little bit about your long range planning and and what that looks like like for a facility facilities, long range planning. Uh that's a great question. Um it's hard for us to do long range planning because things keep shifting. We've continued to move locations and now that we have our new location, we've continued to develop it and and now we're having to redo how we use our facility because of this um these changes. Um at the moment we're um quite honestly scrambling to get enough classrooms. Um we have um some approaches for that. I think we have um we have the ability to do what we need to for next year. Um expanding would be hard. So, um, our our expansion or long-term plan would
048involve, um, taking some of these dreams we've had. We've we've thought about a lot of different things we could do with the building. Um, but, um, it'd be we will need to, um, try to refine those dreams and say what's what's really practical. And within our new model, which um, honestly, we're still just grappling with this. I mean, um, we've had to do a pretty quick turnaround on how we're transitioning. So, um the facility um has mostly um fallen to the how can we meet this year's needs. It's not that we don't have the other in mind, but it's certainly not on the forefront. So, I don't know if that's a good enough answer. No, it's a great answer. I would say that in in some of the information that you provided from what I
049could see, there was a lot of infrastructure pieces that were put in place. Uh the HVAC systems and the things that are really needed that sometimes aren't the pretty stuff, right? But are essential to keeping the building running. And we've we've definitely worked to update electrical and things like that. We've we've tried to always be mindful in every um every addition or change we've made um to be mindful of what our future capabilities um when we get our update to the HVAC in the gym this this year. Um they're going to also be further expanding our electrical and part of that is for the HVAC, but also because they know that um there is potential for building more um above the gym or above that family meeting room area, which will also need more electrical.
050So, we're trying to make sure that we're um building out that capacity as well. I would say that's part of your planning because it it's it's being done well. It looks like it's being done. Yeah, it's just not all written down, but it's definitely how we're approaching it. Um and then just lastly, um your process for hiring and procuring qualified architects and and general contractors. Yeah, we do actually um FCI has always done our um all our construction from the get-go. So, we continue to use them. However, um we have in compliance with what we were supposed to do have had bids from other um places as well. we just have always gone back to FCI because they know our structure so well. There's a lot less prep. Um and um they know what they've
051done previously. It's very easy for them just to continue that process. Um but yes, we we have um gone out for bids and met with other um construction companies as well. But I've gone back to FCI. If there's been a very small difference in that bid, um if it's uh small enough to where we can justify staying with the company, that would probably actually in the long run be yeah better for us. Great. Just because I know not everybody toured the building. Um just for anybody who's listening, that building is 20 20 25 years old and it is hitting what all of our houses do when they get to 25 years old. has a lot of weird little how come they did this kind of thing and so having somebody who's encountered those things and
052remembers them from the last phase has been super helpful. Try 60-year-old buildings. We've got a couple of those. Yeah, absolutely. I think the other piece too is we would love to, you know, do more with our building. We certainly have the space for it as you saw earlier, but you know there's also the funds part and um you have to make sure that the space that you develop you're going to use you know the costwise you're going to actually use it wisely and and there'll be enough use of it. So there's those pieces too and I think our biggest thing um for us is is we don't want to have any more debt than what we have right now. We have that cop. We were blessed by you guys to have that cop, but we
053don't want to incur any more debt at this point, especially at a time when we're making these changes and we need to let it roll for a while and see what the success is. Um certainly if we have enough um families who are wanting to come into our program and it becomes we have such a a waiting, you know, or we can't fit kids and we're at capacity and now we have issues. that's something to address because then you know that um you know by taking those extra students and and receiving the funding for them it's going to offset that but this point we just don't want to to incur more debt. Sounds wise. Thank you. Before you jump in for more um I'm going to I am going to go off script just because
054it it has come up um in some recent conversations with board members and and you describe in in the ification the student safety and security section and I and I think the question from board members or the community is with our district charter schools how do they interact with um the ability to to work with our safety and security teams if you do and obviously it's articulated there but but it's about are they working with us are they partnering with us so maybe just talk about your partnership you know with district safety and security and then just that we're keeping our kids safe at our school just like you you know, all the other schools in district 51. So, absolutely. So, I will say um we so appreciate um the support from D51. We have
055Rob Barker as um our safety and security officer. Um he is there whenever we need him, thank goodness. That is very rare. Um so, um but he does stop in and he's available all the time. We do follow procedure for safety and security. So, he does a walkthrough at the beginning of the year. Um we do participate in fire drills. We just had one. um uh lockdown is to come here um in about a month or so. So, we do follow all those procedures. We stay um on task with that. Uh I'm in touch with Tanny when I need to be. Um and we have radios. We do have um radios upstairs and downstairs um so we can contact people when we need to. But um it's very important to us that um we follow
056all those procedures and that our kids are safe. Um, the one thing that's interesting is because of where we're located, most people don't even know we're back there. So, that part is actually a blessing, as strange as it may seem. And so, that part's um, great. But, we do um, we do follow all the procedures. We have our drills. We know the procedures should we need to shelter in place lockdown. Um, I do stay in touch on the radio. Um, so I know that the surrounding schools are are going into any kind of a situation. So I don't think I noticed, but how many points of ingress egress are there in that building? I didn't notice that today. Okay. It would be seven if you count the garage door. Yeah, by the garage seven. I
057believe it's seven left. That's right. Yeah, I think it's seven actually. But to clarify, you know, there's only one you can go in unless you are staff and you have Are the others fobbed then? Um, not all of them, but many of them. Okay. Oh, and actually there's one on the second. We have some interior doors that are fobbed as well. Yeah. So, like you can't go up the stairs to the second floor. There's that's on a fob as well. Yep. And then um back into the staff area. We've got another one going into another family area. So, um, we do they do have to use a a fob. We have an interior door or exterior door upstairs where you can go out, but if you want to come back in, you have to have
058a fob to use. I was just going to say when we built the building, we had uh we were intricately involved with um D51 security and staff and all that. And we were it it's just good to look at the history. So, we were originally a contract school before we were a charter school. And as a contract school, we had no choice. We were just part of them. So we established all those relationships back then and then when we became a charter school that was just natural to continue those. So we kind of have a leg up um on that in that we were handed it in the beginning and so we've been able to keep those relationships and connections that other charter schools may not necessarily have because they were never literally a district
059school. So it's important to remember that you know that was 2008. We became a charter school in 2014. we kept most of that and then through this third switch um we've still been able to pull most of that through. So we've got some connections and understandings of the process that wouldn't normally maybe be a part of a charter school structure but because of where we started it is. Thank you. All right. Um Tammy Eritt may want to um chime in as well or ask some follow-up questions. um you talk about in your application that especially for the elementary um students that um you don't provide those special ed services because they're homeschooled students. So my question is how many students do you think or how many students do you know are not receiving services because
060they've chosen um not to because they don't want to go back to a home school or a neighborhood school. Well, I I I know from I we only have one year. So, the students that we had last year that we have this year, um of those students, I don't know that it's right for me to actually say how many it is because it isn't that big of a number and this is recorded, but of those students, um 20% moved and 15% went to another school. So, that means we kept the rest of them. Um and right now they're being supported by um the read plan and the meetings with that. We provide uh classes, we're calling it for struggling students that are open to all students, but those are the students who want them and
061they already had a relationship with those staff members. So that was an easy connection to say, "Hey, you want to meet with me?" So they're meeting with them once or twice a week. Um we do the same with um um occupational therapy kinds of things like handwriting help and things like that. We also have uh people with that expertise come into the classrooms and work with all of the kids. So we have some kids that meet specifically with people honestly if they just request to meet somebody and get help with their struggles then they meet with them. And then we have others that go into the classroom and support all of the kids on some of those basic kinds of skills so that they're all getting that um input. You don't have you don't you're
062not running you don't have IEPs correct at all. Correct. For K5, right? K5, right? But six through six are servicing IEPs on that. Right. Okay. So I want to build a little bit more off the the Read Act. you do in your application say that your K3 teachers are redacted. Um they have they're approved or have done the the certificate. Um my question is what PL did you use for that? And then what PL are you planning to do as the administrator and then your your teachers that are teaching reading 4 through 12? Do you remember the name of it? It was the CDE one that the district did last year. You did it online with CD. That's pepper. But the wasn't a trick question really. Okay. All right. That was it. That was the
063one that all of our teachers did and I will confess that I got partway through it and I'm not done yet. So I will finish that by the end of the year. We had a few other things come up. So but yeah, we they all use the same program. So that self-paced program through CDE and you expect that the other teachers your fourth through 12th with who are supporting and teaching reading to students on read plans? Yeah, I think they already have. I think everybody's because they were all with us last year. Yeah. Okay. You have one that's in process who's new, but everybody else is completed. Great. Um, can you talk a little bit? We're going to go back to special ed now. Just how how are you what does it look like for
064your different students on IEPs, those services based on their identified disability? Can you share a little bit about how that programming looks? Yeah, it it evolves over the years, but we have um one high school sped provider and we have two middle school sped providers and they meet with those students um they meet with them for all of the minutes in their IEP and then they do additional push-in support for classes that they're taking on campus if they're taking classes on campus. So that that piece will be look a little different next year because they'll all need to take classes on campus. But this year they would still have the option to not be on campus in which case they come to the school and all of their minutes are met with that teacher. Excuse
065me. Usually on a small we don't have huge population. So like our biggest class I think is seven. Um and they meet we have an ELA and a math um and they in both high school and middle school for that. And then their OT services are separate from that and their SLP services are separate and we just coordinate all these schedules according to what the parents want as kids are coming and going at different times because of when their classes might be. Do you have any followup? I'm just wondering then about ADA compliance for other um not necessarily learning disability or how are you guys fully ADA? ADA. Yes. Yes. And we forgot to show you when we were there, but we have a Yes. I forgot to that's yeah there we have a lift
066and that's okay for that. All right and then I will add since you paused FCI is amazing at making sure we meet all those every time we build something. So that's been nice. Can you talk a little bit more specifically about the resources that you're using for your students on IEPs that are meeting those specific academic goals? Yes. Hopefully I hit all of them. I'm not sure that I will. I actually think my list is mostly from the younger ones, which is Lexia and Con Mappers and Alex. Um I know they use Wilson and foundations are two and Voyages. Um I'm missing one though. There's a math program that I think is actually in here. Yeah, it is listed. Um because it was one I wasn't familiar with. I'll let you find it maybe. Saxon?
067No, they do use the Saxon with some of the middle school students, but the high school teacher uses something different. Um, they do use a lot of math you see. Um, and a lot of the manipulatives that come with math you see, but he has another program called um, moving with math learning systems and West math pathways and pitfalls. And then high school, they use a combination of teaching textbooks and math. You see uh what is that one? A GS publishing mathematics concepts and basic math and pacemaker practical math for consumers. Thank you. I want to um just ask a little bit. I thought I thought it was creative in um and I understand why. I'm just I'm going to talk about wonder about progress monitoring and I know that you were saying that the
068in the application it talks about the the five days then the 10 days and then you made the created the formula you you yes so you can see why I'm just wondering how you created the formula then it was two days so it was going to be five weeks instead of 10 days it was so I believe the district progress monitors every two weeks, right? So that's correct days, correct? So every 14 days of instruction, I think is the pattern that we we equated that to is that if you were progressing monitoring after 14 days of instruction, actually it' be 10 days of instruction. 10 days. Don't do that on the weekends. Um then we would progress monitor every 10 days of our instruction, which would come to a few weeks. I I'll just be
069interested to see how how that formula works. I mean, if it's I'm I'm worried it's not enough. Yeah, I'm worried it's not enough. It's too far in between. And I would assume though that that's not necessarily the progress monitoring that you would do with students on IEPs. Um, you would need to monitor that maybe a little bit more closely or a little bit more frequently. But I I see where you made the formula. I'm just wondering if that's going to be too spread out, too far apart. It will be. I um you know Kathy Lynn has helped us with a lot of that um and doing that progress monitoring. So unfortunately I don't know how she would answer that question but yeah um I think all of that will be um figured out and evolving
070through next year as we um figure out exactly how those schedules are going to work because they would still your students are still expected while they're only with you for two days a week. They're still doing school five days a week. So the teaching and learning is still evolving. And the the reason I think they did that is that if you only if you did it every two weeks and it took a class period to do it, you're only getting three days of instruction every two weeks. And they didn't want to lose that instruction time. That's what it came down to. Um and then sometimes they'll just roll that into that instruction. But yeah, that it may not be the best formula. Yeah. More more to come. Yeah. That are I think that's all my
071questions. Correct. No, I have a whole another page. All right, I'm done. No, no, I'm not. You're not done with me yet. [Music] Um, e our English language. I know one of you can jump in. Um, I I just wondered you had mentioned in your application that that your students English language learners were not you're not programming. you don't have programming plans because at this time you don't have any students that would be identified by that. Um I I would just encourage you know that's something on the rubric then it would yeah it would come down um no no plan. Um I do appreciate though you're very uh transparent in saying we will work with district 51 but I'm just I'm just wondering if uh well we also have um two student two teachers who
072have masters in ELLL. So that's definitely a good step in the right direction for a plan, but we have not um developed exactly what that would look like. Okay. Um and then your students identified as GT. I would assume you know GT is there are many categories and identified it's not just academic. So ensuring that you have that referral and that process to ensure that the other um areas or categories in which a student can be identified GT. Yes. We have a a staff member who works with GT and she goes to all the district GT meetings to get our students identified. So, um that part's been in place for quite a while and it shouldn't look a lot different. Um and we Yeah, we use the Kogat for the screening. Yes, I saw that
073you have Kogat and you don't we do it for second grade in the district, but I think you did it for other grades or you just did. open it up to students because we serve homeschool students if they come in as a sixth grader and their parent would like to know or we're like then we will do all of the grades if they request it. So we routinely do second and seventh seventh that's I thought I remember seventh a whole lot of other grades in there being tested at the same time if they have not been co-ad tested before. Okay, this really is my last question and it has to do with um the counseling role and you in your application talk about how um your counselors supporting students. You talk about SEAL and emotional
074behavior. My my wondering is um what about that guidance that college and career readiness and IAPS how are th how are who who's supporting that because I didn't see those in your actually um that's it's one of those things that you didn't state the obvious because it's right in front of you. So we have five academic advisors high school adviserss who meet with those students every month and they're doing that every single month. So they're doing one layer layer of that when they meet with students about their work and about their progress. And then we have two people that are doing the next level of meeting them without their about their plans and their um we have one gal who does all the enrollment at WCCC and CMU and how that fits into their IAP.
075And then the third level would be the actual IAP participation which we also do. Um we've got I don't know we had a really high percentage last year of kids that are actually participating and it was NViance last year. So Okay. That's what I was going to Are you using a platform? Yeah, we're using the same one you the school links. Yeah. It took us like I don't know if anybody here was in on that like six weeks to get our kids connected right in there. It was a nightmare. But yeah, they're using school links. Okay. All right. That really is my last question. Sure. Do you have any Okay. Anybody? Anybody? Uh no. All right. Well, that concludes our questioning um as a whole. So, I guess I would open it up to you
076guys if you have any questions for us. Um here feel free to feel free to ask. So can I interject really quickly? So Melanie, if you're still on board, um line 40, which is technical consulting, that budget figure will actually go away. We're using synergy, so that will be reallocated. Okay, great. I'll make note of that. That's always a good one to finish off with like Mel and a financial win is like, right? So, well, one of my questions, um, you already brought up with the lunch lizard thing, so we'll chat about that later. Um, I think, um, my biggest question is, and I I'd kind of thrown this in the application, but I don't know if any of you flagged it. Um, we know that the district needs to record keep for homeschool students
077and um, we're all about homeschool and we would love to be able to um, take that burden off of you if you would like to get rid of that. Um, and um, allow us to do that recordkeeping for you. We think it would be great for us to be a one-stop shop for the district um, and homeschoolers. Um, I understand if that's not something you're interested in, but um, it's interesting because I actually Dan and I talked about that, not your request, but just how important it was. We were wondering about the recordkeeping. How are we ensuring or how are you ensuring that your students are um, signing up or registering as homeschooled? I think that's something we can talk about. Certainly to discuss it. I think it would be easier in a lot of
078ways. um they already have their NWA scores if they've taken them with us. And so we were even just the other day talking about, oh wait, do they have to actively submit those to the district? But you know, we have a spreadsheet that we submit to the district. So it'd be just a little bit easier to check these things off. I think we actually part of the other conversation that we are having is you've got such a niche in our community. You know, I I really appreciated your executive summary. No, we don't have a philosophy or a I was like, you really don't. I But you fit, right? It just fits. And how can we ensure that we are um promoting this charter school to our homeschool students and I I think it I think
079it's a a great opportunity for our valley and for our community. So, I definitely think this is something that we can talk about. I don't know what it would look like. I don't know exactly how we could, but I think I think it's a conversation for sure because I think this would help um you guys would help our community ensure that just build our community as a whole. Yeah. Right. Um I think my other question is is maybe not best for this forum, but um so you don't necessarily have to answer it now, but we've really struggled to understand what the district's um approach to homeschoolers um with concurrent enrollment at college, you know, WCCC and CMU. It's we've run into just confusing um information from different years, different documents. So, we'd really love to
080understand a little bit better what the district's approach to that is. And um again, we'd love to um help plug in kids into that. Um again, I would say, yeah, let's talk about that. I don't know that we have an approach. And yeah, how might we identify what that approach is and and create some sort of flowchart and a a document that would identify that and ensure that um because of course we want our students to have that opportunity in and obviously even more so if they're involved in um Mesa Valley Community School, our district, our our system. So yeah, I think that's just another conversation. Okay. Did you want to talk at all? No. Um, well, I I can't pass up a mic if we're going to close up the meeting. I just want
081to I just want to summarize for anybody who maybe didn't read the whole application that we feel like we fill, like you said, a niche in this valley. Um, our parents don't want um to put their kids in a traditional school 5 days a week. That's why they're here. Um, the two-day a week model works really nicely for them. It gives them a lot of flexibility. It gives them a lot of time at home. Um we will now be providing the curriculum, but it still gives them that um time at home that they value and that family life that our families have come to value. So we feel like we are a unique um offering in the valley. We don't compete with anybody. Um there's nobody else that do does what we're proposing to do.
082And I just kind of want to summarize what that's that's what we're looking to do here. And it's it's messy and it's quick because this has all been put together. um you know in a relatively short amount of time, but we feel like we have a plan that um could support homeschoolers but also raise the bar of the uh education that they are providing and that we are providing and it's really a really good mix. So that's our plug. It's a good way to end it. So okay. Okay. Thank you guys. Appreciate. Okay. That's pretty good. That's really good.