001e e e good evening I'd like to call the meeting to order and we'll begin with um roll call please um Stu Boyd here Denise Chapman here Amy Doran here Don Kirk here Barbara Cruz here Alexander Lum here Nancy rumfelt here thank you um Nancy would you please lead us in the pledge to the the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice thank thank you Nancy and Stu would you please um read the mission here no it's not there you go okay the Thompson School District mission statement is the Thompson School District will be a school district that empowers challenges and inspir students faculty staff parents School leaders and community members to learn achieve and Excel thank you
002stu and um the first item of business will be the adop adoption of the agenda and this would be for today February 19th 2020 are there any changes to the agenda for today hearing none I will take a motion to adopt the agenda as printed so move so Stu second and Denise I have first from Stu a second from Denise Laur please call the RO Stu Boyd I Denise Chapman I Amy Doran hi Don Kirk hi Barbara Cruz hi Alexander Lam hi Nancy rumfelt she she's I dance to it all right thank you um agenda was approved we'll move into the approval of the minutes and we have two sets of meeting minutes to approve the first is for the January 22nd 2025 meeting does anyone have any changes or corrections to the minutes hearing
003none I will take a motion to adopt the agenda I mean the minutes as printed so moved okay was that Denise Denise and Stu again so laury please call the RO St Boyd hi Denise Chapman hi Amy Doran hi um Don Kirk hi barbar Cruz hi Alexander Lum hi Nancy rumel hi all right thank you approval of the minutes for February 5th 2025 does anyone have any changes or corrections to the minutes on that meeting hearing none I will take a motion to approve the minutes for February 5th 2025 I'll move thank you Nancy I'll second Denise so it's first from Nancy a second from Denise so Laur please call the rooll Stu Boyd I Denise Chapman I Amy Doran Don Kirk hi hi Barbara Cruz hi Alexander LOM hi Nancy rumfelt hi okay thank
004you all motions all minutes were approved as um as they were voted unanimously all right moving into public participation we'll start with Dr schaer's report good evening Madame President members of the Board of Education uh welcome to February and I'm pleased to provide you with uh this month's update February 5th through the 9th was designated as National School counseling week as part of the commemoration we recognized our amazing counsel counseling team members who play a critical and necessary role in development and lives of our students we are so grateful for their tireless efforts and contributions on January 25th Thompson School District hosted its 28th Annual District spelling be a contest that is designed for elementary and middle school students 24 incredible Elementary spellers from 14 TSD schools tackled 95 challenging words while 19 talented Middle
005School spellers from five district schools battled through 96 words to claim their spots as top spellers congratulations to all of our participants and best of luck to the six students who qualified for the state spelling be on January 31st students across the district celebrated the 100th day of the school year with creativity and excitement many campuses hosted fun activities including the chance for students to dress up as if they were 100 years old here is a photo of four kindergarteners from Riverview School who went all out with their outfits to mark the special Milestone Ferguson High School hosted a career panel in their Capstone class for our soon Tobe graduates several career professionals spoke to students about their Journeys through education career preparation and real life job responsibilities the panelist highlighted the skills in Thompson
006School District's portrait of a graduate Communicator critical thinker self- Advocate Citizen and collaborator emphasizing how these skills transfer directly to the workplace on January 23rd TSD hosted a dual language program Forum at The District administration building the meeting was an opportunity for families to share their experiences and thoughts about tsd's dual language program and to help the district plan for the future thank you to all who attended Thompson School District was pleased to host the Colorado dep Department of Education as they visited a few campuses in our district to take photos and record videos of the school's warm welcome program each morning staff members at these schools ensure that each student receives a warm welcome and a wish for a terrific day thank you CDE for visiting us and for your support so I had
007the incredible honor of introducing the lovelin high school band as they showcase their talent at the Colorado music educators Association conf conference in Colorado Springs back on January 31st this was a well-deserved opportunity for these dedicated and talented musicians to shine on a prestigious stage and they delivered a fantastic performance we're really proud of you so we have uh Mr Kyle Fen and maybe some members of his talented crew here so we're going to invite you up and and give you a few minutes at the podium thank you so much uh to Dr schaer and uh Dr lesum Who were able to attend our performance um members of the board we want to thank you for the opportunity to come speak with you just a little bit this evening about our experience I'm going to
008turn it over to the students who all took much better notes than I did so they will be more prepared tonight um cmea is Colorado music educators Association there is a conference for professional development that happens every year in January um they select three High School bands out of the entire state uh to perform as representatives of what is possible in music education here in Colorado uh this is the third time a group from leveland high school has been uh selected since I was appointed here in 2012 um and it's so special every time and I I'd say this is probably my my favorite time we've gotten to go down and perform um so I have some students who came tonight who just wanted to speak about their experiences that you helped support uh that
009everyone in our district helped support um so that you can hear from the students so who wants to go first Riley is up first well I just want to say thank you again for letting us have this opportunity to come talk and also for just aiding in this opportunity for us to go um I personally had an amazing Endeavor doing this um especially with these two great people um I'd like to highlight Owen and I had a pretty cool solo so that was pretty fun and um I just wanted to go over the couple things that I thought were a great um thing to take away from this so with this opportunity we had a great opportunity to um both build our team like leadership so um I and Owen are both principal players within
010the band and had to lead our own sections doing this we're also under this time crunch to get to this performance um which we don't get to experience um in a normal school year um which is really cool to see and um on top of that this conference also allowed us to go see a brand new array of different people to listen to our music so we often get to go to the CBA Colorado band Masters Association um uh contests you could say or festivals which often you see a lot of our other high schools but um in this conference we got to see a bunch of um band Educators which is very different but also a really cool experience um and I'd like to talk about how this was more extensive for us to
011learn um one great part of this um I guess we could convention that's the word one great part of this convention is that they had a bunch of different um different business owners and stuff there so we get to go look at all the different things that we want to get to see in our own high school so we get to go see different instrument manufacturers and different teachers and see how they can teach different ways of band um and that's most of what I have to say but on top of that it was just a great opportunity for us to build um better peer connections we don't get to travel very often or especially that far and especially with that small group of people um we're all in marching band and that's a huge
012group to go with so this is just a really great opportunity I want to say thank you again for allowing us to do that and helping [Applause] us okay hi my name is Olivia and I am a junior at lovelin High School being a part of this program has widened my horizons to a multitude of opportunities that I don't think I would have been able to experience if I hadn't joined um I've made so many lifelong friendships and have seen so many amazing things I just I'm beyond grateful to even be a part of this the whole CME exper cmea experience really opened my eyes to the amazing potential that our program truly has just by doing things like sectionals with professional musicians that Mr fren was kind enough to bring in to pushing us
013beyond our abilities with music that seemed virtually impossible when we first looked at it just for all to pay off in the end by a performance in front of the best of the best at one of the most prestigious hotels there is this experience has been life-changing and I have had the pleasure to make memories that will be held on to for a lifetime I cherish all moments whether it's with friends or in a group of people playing music with people who truly understand how I am and believe in the same things as me I believe you can only find this being in a group like this I just wanted to say a big thanks to the people who made this possible for me as a first gen student I didn't go into High School
014thinking that I would even get to experience something like this nonetheless know that in college I'm probably going to continue to do music even if it's not in my degree I would also like to thank my band director Mr freezen who never lets anyone in the program fall short of their true potential thank you guys for giving me so many opportunities okay um my name is Owen and I play trombo and I'm a junior and this experience was really interesting because kind of like Riley said we every year go to CBA and that's super fun to do but with that we get our music in January and then we perform it in March and April and it's great to work on that music and whatever but this year being able to like start from the
015very beginning of the school year getting really like interesting and unique music that like we wouldn't be able to play at C uh CBA allowed us to work on that for like so long and so it allowed us to advance farther than we have maybe in the past because of the amount of time that we were able to put into it and then it also led to a big payoff because in the end we got to perform in like a really beautiful place and in front of like super like knowledgeable and a really unique audience that I think was really inspiring to me to be able to like go through that experience and really enjoy that and overall the whole experience was just really like exciting I know everyone like in the band was able
016to be like super pumped for it versus like because it's something new something fun that like not many people have gotten to do so it's like we're one of the at least in like our raid of who we know in high school we're like the first group that's done this in a while and so having the opportunity to go down and perform was just really amazing because music can change like everyone's life and I think that was really special so this was definitely the most fun band trip I've been on the coolest B Tri I've been on in my time and yeah just thank you again for such an amazing opportunity to do that sorry I have to take pictures I also very into social media um again I just want to reiterate thank you
017for allowing the students to come speak with you this evening um their their experience uh a once in a-lifetime thing for them to get to do um for them to get to share that with you is super important to me so thank you for your time tonight and thank you again for your support so that we were able to go down and perform for all of the Colorado music educators have a wonderful evening I have a couple questions all right one is how many of you actually went uh right around 50 so it's it's just our top Ensemble we have three curricular ensembles at levelin high school um and this was our our wind Symphony that was selected and what was the song that you prepared to play the music that you played we uh
018normally we do a 15minute program um and this was a 45 minute program so the students you had lot of music yes so uh we performed for uh like 45 minutes of of music down there after Dr Schaefer had the uh the the honor of getting to introduce us we were so glad he was able to come down straight from the airport to see our performance um but one thing that's really important to me when we do opportunities like this is there are Middle School band directors in the audience there are high school band directors College Band directors and I want everyone to come away from what we do saying here's something new here's something I didn't know about here's a great piece of educational music so we played everything from college level repertoire down
019to what uh a middle school band would play um and you know I think we all have our our favorite pieces maybe of it for me it was uh we ended with a piece called Italian Rap City by Julie jaru um which was super fun it's about every everything you could think of uh as far as Italian music and maybe that stereotype but uh it was commissioned by a a by a director whose parents were from Italy so he commissioned her to write this piece and we had a lot of fun performing that Riley and ow and both had huge feature solo things in that one so maybe that's their favorite too but uh we had a lot of lot of fun getting to put that together is that the piece you played at the
020Christmas I mean the holiday program I was like hey this is really for cmea but we're going to play it anyway so yes the holiday concert that's anybody else have questions just um what instruments I think you you said you played the trombone what I play the B okay great job thank you can we do a picture yeah of course for sure where would you like us to go right up here okay come for a little bit because the board will go behind you so yep they'll just L up behind you they're going behind you yep all right see if I can see everybody um Amy can you slide that way for me just tiny bit okay all right on three one two three right thank you [Applause] there will be a lot of pictures
021tonight okay next um I am very happy to report that uh Thompson School District has four students who have been selected as beter scholarship semi-finalist so if you are um one of the four students or all four if you're in the audience if you can just stand up I'm hoping that there's one two three three do we have all four almost okay all right um beter scholarship is a four-year full tuition and partial living expenses merit-based academic scholarship awarded to graduating Colorado High School students award recipients on average rank in the top 2% of their graduating classes the following few slides will Spotlight our six uh fantastic honores Loveland High School has two semifinalists this year a special recognition goes out to Ellie Moren and Edward Jacobson for this amazing uh recognition page also congratulations
022to Mountain View High School's Ilana Collins in Thompson Valley High School's Patrick Tucker for advancing to the semi-finalist stage of this process this is a terrific achievement for both of these excellent students so congratulations to our beter [Music] semi-finalists and don't go too far we'll be taking a picture with you in a minute um I also want to congratulate Ilana Collins um once again who was selected as a Daniel scholar finalist the Daniels program offers a comprehensive four-year college scholarship that provides financial and personal support focused on helping Daniel Scholars uh to succeed in college and life we are also pleased to announce that Ilana has advanced to the finalist stage in the Bor scholarship process as well so congratulations to these amazing students we'd love to invite you up so we can take a
023picture with you and honor you so come on up please [Applause] that's good good I think we're good all right on three one two three good thank [Applause] you so next I'm going to invite uh Dr Melissa Schneider who who's our assistant superintendent of uh curriculum instruction to join me at the podium uh this evening we have the privilege and honor to recognize four um schools of Distinction here in the Thompson School District so I'm going to join Melissa at the podium and um I'm going to give Melissa the honors of explaining what does it mean to be a school of Distinction thank you Dr Schaefer Madame President members of the school board uh Melissa Schneider assistant superintendent of learning services and I'm here to present to you our four schools who have qualified for
024our in-house Award of a school of Distinction uh in the state of Colorado we award school districts with districts of Distinction who achieve a point uh of 74 or above on our rating scale and so what we do as a district is we like to recognize schools that have achieved that and this year we have four and so we are very excited to celebrate them tonight uh the first one I will mention is Carrie Martin Elementary School and so we have Nikki here to receive this award so thank you so much and second we have Lincoln Elementary School and while their pris principal wasn't able to be with us tonight they are at a title one conference uh we do have a member of the school to to receive the award and next we have
025lovelin classical school and we have Dr Ian stout here to receive the award tonight congratulations Ian and last but not least we have Coyote Ridge Elementary School and we have Dion here to receive it congratul want to get a group we'd love to do a picture um de you step on your back that's okay just because you're tall there we go yep just so I can make sure to see everybody look like you move this way Mark just like that okay I think we're good okay you ready on three one two three all right thank you [Applause] so next uh we move on to our top of Thompson and community champion Awards as you know each month we um recognize three staff members um one from each of our employee groups are classified our licensed
026in our a which is our administrative group um these are peer nominated Awards um individuals who um stand out um as being distinguished and so uh they're again peer nominated we also have a community champion award these are businesses or nonprofits or other members of our community that help and support our schools so we will first start with our top of Thompson Awards and first we're going to invite um classified so we have MI Michelle mcle who's the attendance clerk at Riverview prek-8 School and Michelle was nominated by Megan Dupont so if you can please step [Applause] forward so I didn't know I was supposed to present this award but I am Megan Dupont oh perfect so I'm the school nurse at riverv viiew I also have birth at high school and I have worked
027with Michelle for four years she used to be my health aid there for two years and um so I was excited to give her this award um so Michelle does so much more than just attendance here at Riverview she is our main Health office backup and has been delegated to all five of our students with diabetes she has been a huge help in showing our new health aid how things are run in the health office and in the front office she was previously riverview's health aid and has shared all of her knowledge and tips with our new health aid who is actually here tonight ton um not only is she an awesome attendance Clerk and health office backup she also manages the front door the desk answers the phone organizes volunteers has lunch and recess
028Duty made a whole school schedule for picture day which includes hearing and vision screening she knows all the students by name who their parents are how they get home in the afternoon and who picks them up she knows all this from memory if she doesn't know she knows who to ask to find out not only is she a hard worker she is always up for a laugh and she makes the front office a fun and exciting place to work so congratulations Michelle you deserve congratulations B next we move on to uh licensed and we have Nick Blanco who is the dean of students at Ferguson high school and the Thompson crew campus and uh Nick was nominated by Kesha Martin good evening Madame President Dr Schaefer members of the board I don't have McKenzie here
029with me tonight so we I know next time next time um it is my absolute honor and pleasure to introduce to you our de of students Nick Blanco um Nick started at Ferguson high school and Thompson career campus in the middle of the school year last year right in the spring semester so if you know you know it's yeah um not an easy task to do by any means um during the 23 24 school year he had to manage a lot of discipline referrals in the building while also trying to build relationships with students in the process and learn how we do business at Ferguson and Thompson career campus which you know doesn't always par well when you're trying to build relationships and manage the referral process um but he handled it with such Grace
030and professionalism Nick finished last school year out very strong and came into this school year determined and focused on building relationships with students right from the start day one he has taken on many leadership roles um with leading our uh give next sources of strength leading our re-engagement team implementing several new PBIS systems to celebrate students more frequently during the week week week which is our Fergy Friday celebrations supporting students in their credit recovery work and using his time during discipline referrals to really build students up and encourage them instead of giving them harsh words and consequences he is a team player and very invested in the mission of our school which is providing our students with alternative experiences that are different and not less he Embraces that mission every day with how he approaches
031our students and staff Nick provides students their dignity when conducting discipline and Views that as an opportunity to coach students up and encourage them to make better choices while setting them up with a plan for Success Nick has been identified by several students in our building as their trusted adult which I think is a testimony in the short amount of time that he's been with us he is uh making an impact on our students lives every day we are honored to have him as a part of our team and thankful he has joined our Ferguson family Nick is the to of Thompson and is fully committed to serving our students of our district with optimism encouragement Pride and Fidelity and equity and I couldn't be more honored than to be standing here today with him
032as part of our team way to go Nick proud of you oops my speak congratulations Tech um we actually do not have AP but we do have our community champion um and so I'm going to invite up uh assistant principal Dan KGO um from Mountain viw High School and uh Dan will be um recognizing honoring Pelican Joe's Pizzeria hi there there as a new local business in our neighborhood Pelican Joe's has proven to be an invaluable partner in supporting our students and school activities and I would like to nominate them for the community champion award since opening its doors Pelican Joe's Pizzeria has consistently gone above and beyond in creating a positive relationship with our school their support is evident in multiple ways including offering generous discounts on Pizza to our students who visit during
033off-campus lunch breaks this not only helps students afford a meal but also Fosters a sense of community between the business and our school in addition Pelican Joe's has been incredibly helpful in providing large orders for team events School clubs student celebrations and other school functions there ability to accommodate our needs and deliver quality food in a timely manner has been crucial in supporting Student Activities and events what stands out the most however is the kindness and professionalism of their staff both students and staff members are always treated with respect and Pelican Joe's management team is always open to discussions when concerns arise working collaboratively with our school administration to strengthen ties and improve the overall experience for everyone involved I believe Pelican Joe's Pizzeria is a shining example of how local business can posit positively
034impact their communities their ongoing support has made a significant difference to the students and faculty of mvhs and I wholeheartedly recommend them for the recommen recognition as a valued business partner in our neighborhood couple words I just want to say couple words I'm sorry um first of all educ this is our third restaurant I'm so happy to be in this community we have three granddaughters that go to school here and it's uh education is real important to us everywhere we are because I believe it builds a stronger community and it helps us um and I guess the last thing to say is I I'm an old guy and I talk to other old guys and they all say well kids these days and I say tell them kids these days are better than kids my
035days and they argue with that but I truly believe it and thank you guys the last thing I'll say is we're happy to help out the school district but you got to ask thank you any IND ual schools and things like that contct thank you and we'd like actually like to take a picture with our community Champions and also with Michelle and Nick if you can come forward we'll take a picture please okay um actually um Nancy let me have you stand on the end next to Alexander is that okay cool that's better okay you ready here we go on three one two three all right thank you [Applause] finally um I am pleased to introduce uh principal John dumbleton from Riverview pk8 as you know each uh month we uh showcase and Spotlight um
036one of our terrific schools here in the Thompson School District so uh principal dumon if you want to come forward and uh looks like you might have brought some guests with you yes good evening Dr schaer Madame President and school board members uh my name is John dilton and I'm the principal at Riverview pk8 um and it is my honor to introduce some special guest to you tonight um one thing I want to say about Riverview is it's a really special place it's a special school and what makes it special are its people um our students our staff and our families are second to none and I am really excited to share uh some of what we're doing through their eyes and their lens so these students deserve a huge shout out they prepared they
037rehearsed it was amazing but I also want to shout out our stucco uh sponsors Mrs Saunders uh Mrs Smith and Mrs Morton do an incredible job each and every day with our our students but they also did a great job of preparing for tonight so without further Ado I would like to introduce Mason hi my name is Mason and I'm in fourth grade I was in Riverview the first day it opened one of the things I love about Riverview are the lots of clubs and activities some of them include Art Club Basketball Club and 100 Mile Club another thing I like about river is that you can stay for so long because it is PK through eight one way I show leadership is by being a student councel Riverview student council here tonight for this
038presentation hello my name is Lexi Kirby and I'm in the fifth grade at Riverview I have been at Riverview since it opened in 2021 I was in second grade when it opened and throughout my years here I have been in student council twice Girls on the Run Battle the books and GE math when I learned rise for the first time I saw that it was an amazing way to show the outstanding things that Riverview does rise is an acronym for resilience integrity supportive and engaged we show this everywhere in our building like the cafeteria the playground and so much more when students are showing rise they earn purple feathers and silver feathers silver feathers are awards that students can earn when they are doing the right thing these are awarded every week on Friday morning
039purple feathers on the other hand are more common these you can use at the purple feather store so you could be rewarded for your good work throughout the building hi my name is Everly I'm in sixth grade this is my first year at Riverview I moved from Texas and ever since I came here I have had I have had so many great opportunities and I have made Amazing Friends at Riverview we celebrate student agency and Leadership one way I get to show it is by give next and student council and there's so many other ways other students are able to show it too hello my name hello my name is Brody music and I an eighth grader at riew I've been at riew since fifth grade in 2021 I showed leadership by being a student
040council give next and sources of strength I have also been doing many been doing many sports for review which include swim track and basketball I'm going to tell you about the sources of strength program which is run by our incredible English language arts teacher Emily Snowden sources of strength accepts all sixth through eighth graders source of the strength main goal is to prevent unhealthy mental health in students at review in all schools our mission statement is to empower a well World provide exceptional training and curriculum for youth at R review we help students to experience things like suicide violence bullying and substance misuse SOS has a firm commitment to providing evidence-based programming that is responsive to our students through their peers and classmates mn's goal is to connect students with others and spread positivity we
041connect students by our student initiated campaigns last year the entire School participated in our kindness campaign which our goal is to spread kindness we passed out kindness affirmation cards and students went into classrooms and read kindness books to our elementary students our inclusion campaign was all about celebrating what makes us unique we did this by taking personality pictures and Hispanic heritage photos our FaceTime Fridays and first F programs welcome our kindergarteners first graders and new students into the building good job hello my name is Melissa Ryan and I'm one of the eighth grade representatives for student council I'm here to present a slide about our school's give next team give next is a school-based youth Grant making program for middle and high school students in lammer County give next has done many things in our
042district they've partnered with nonprofits for example they've done hor and horses and bordom Fighters they rais money to give either to our schools or the nonprofits we planned and ran a Veterans Day assembly earlier this year where we celebrated the veterans who served our country and paid the way for our safety give next is also an is also doing an entrepreneur affir later this year to help raise money to pass the goal that we reached last year hi my name is ell and I'm a part of the gifted education program I have a twin and Riverview has welcomed our differences gracefully we are both a part of the GE Institute team I have been here since second grade I a girl on the run too today I'm here to tell you about reiew G we
043did our first news program where we shared information about the week and upcoming events this year a few years ago we did an entrepreneur affir run by the students today some people in math G are learning python which is a coding language last year the GE reading put on a play we started the play from scratch in our minds we wrote and per performed it it was presented in front of first grade fourth grade and kindergarten it turned out to be an amazing play good evening my name is Kate Stevens and I'm a sixth grader at Riverview PK thy I have participated in volleyball basketball and will be representing our school in golf this spring I have been at Riverview since third grade when it opened as student council members we put put together many
044fun activities for our school including our annual rise assemblies our can food drive competition new student gift bags our fundraiser selling holiday grams and our amazing Middle School Dance rise assemblies every quarter we put together assemblies to recognize those kids who have shown rise and gone above and beyond rise is our school acronym that stands for resilience Integrity supportive and engaged each quarter we give out either a resilience Integrity supportive or engaged award to our elementary students and for Middle School we give out one award to one student in the grade for showing all of rise the elective teachers give out the elective teachers do the same as the elementary students and give out one award can food drives during the holiday season we put on a little competition for our school to see who
045can support those in need of food during the holiday season and donate many food products we buddy up grades for the compet so for example our Raptor kindergarteners can still participate but they may not bring in as many cans so we buddy them up with our eighth grade Rapters the two grades with the most food at the end of the competition will win a prize new student gift bags as a part of student council we put together many fun welcoming and cool gift bags that hand that we hand out to our new students when when they join Riverview inside the bag we include a fun purple pencil a cool purple a cool purple space sensory squishy ball a list of what to expect at Riverview a purple bracelet and a Riverview sticker with our logo
046on it holiday Gams the week before winter break and the week of Valentine's Day we sell little little cards with either with a candy cane for Christmas or a fund Valentine pencil for Valentine's Day we sell them from for $1 Monday through Thursday in our cafeteria then pass them out on Fridays our Middle School Dance Every Spring we host a Middle School Spring Dance the middle school student council members plan set up and basically run the whole entire dance Elementary student member student council members can still participate by selling concessions the middle school dance is one of our biggest fundraisers of the Year hello I'm Elizabeth from fifth grade and I want to thank everyone for listening to our presentation about Riverview and their perspectives about River viiew board members do any of you have
047questions I we learned a lot about Riverview stay up here you guys we' got to have a picture with you in a minute too any questions okay Nancy I was just curious on the give next which is a a great program what is your goal that you want to be uh I wasn't really on GIF next to last last year so I don't specifically know what the goal was last year because we kind of changed our give next person so um I know it's over 20,000 oh wow and we're probably going to beat that we're still trying to earn money this year we're close enough and then for the entrepreneur fair are is it going to be students that actually oh that's that'll be really cool uh we were thinking to have each grade make
048something and then sell it at the entrepreneur fair it's like an entire school thing so we're having everyone um help with it awesome so you'll invite us all so we can buy things sure if you want to come you got a big money though all right um let's have you get up on the riser for me real quick and then can we have um the back row everyone slide this way a little bit so we can get Dawn and do in here better guys got a lot of people okay um I think we're pretty good you can slide this way a little bit down in between there you go just like that okay ready on three one 2 3 good thank you [Applause] all right our next item of business would be our board committee
049reports and so I'm going to start right over here with Denise and if you have a report will you share it if not just say I don't have a report tonight that's okay we've had a lot of fun tonight so far yeah I'll just keep my report n short uh had the opportunity on Amy's behalf uh to attend the cak um session this last week and learn more about what's going on with our uh special education um advocacy group um and just really nice to be um learning more about that part of our um service offering here at Thompson and the people that are working to make sure that um our students in special education um are having the experience they need to have so um thank you nice and short today um because I
050know we are right Alexander um I attended the joint Insurance committee meeting last week um where it was a big a big topic of discussion was about the um health insurance renewal rates for coming in July um unfortunately we as our district and many all of the all of the members of the um CBT the our collaborative group that we're a part of that funds our insurance um our expenditures have outmatched our contributions over the last um year or so and so our renewal rates are um going up a fair amount we'll hear more about it I think maybe next meeting um will they be the official that um the official presentation but um in order to meet the the needs of our employees um and make sure that they continue to be insured we're
051going to have to um up our contribution to the um to the insurance to make sure that the trust remains solvent and everybody can continue to um receive the healthcare they need um so it was a not not very happy meeting but um a very interesting meeting um for sure thank you I'm going to share um information about a community issue in January there was a federal court that vacated the 2024 rules for Title 9 made by the Biden Administration and the title 9 rules are to be rolled back to the previous 2020 rule based on it exceeded authority to include gender identity with the standard on the basis of sex ignoring fundamental B biological truths between the two Sexes deprives women and girls of meaningful access to educational facilities and violates the first amendment
052by requiring Educators to use names or pronouns for chosen gender this should nullify house bill 24139 on February 5th an ex executive order was issued keeping men out of women's sports was issued and in part says educational institutions receiving federal funds cannot deny women an equal opportunity to participate in sports it also directs resend all funds from educational programs that Devi deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities which results in the endangerment humiliation and silencing of women women and girls and deprives them of privacy so why is this District forcing girls varsity basketball teams to play against other District that have Boys on girls teams we are in direct violation of the presidential executive order and the court who overturn Biden's Title Nine changes is this worth losing funding and harming girls in sports
053we must recognize gender dysphoria is a mental health condition and children who are expens experiencing this disorder do not need radical gender affirming care what they need is medical and Mental Health Care directed by their parents we must stop allowing children to be exploited by radical gender ideology activists and we must protect girls in sports and allow them to achieve their dreams so when is this board going to direct staff to change our policies to comply with Title 9 and the executive order of February 5th when are we going to stop the in ity of the dangerous radical gender ideology when do well as your representative on casby's legislative Relations Committee I want to uh bring you up to date on three bills and I'll have a longer report and one in writing when uh
054when we have our study session in a couple of weeks uh those of you who are up here with me on the dis as well as many of you in the audience remember a couple or three years ago when Colorado voters uh passed a measure to provide um what was called Universal School meals um it was a very popular initiative when it was first introduced um it has become a very expensive initiative to be able to fund uh last year I believe $100 million was put into making that uh voter initiative uh become a reality um they were they realized partway through that they didn't have enough money it ended up being $156 million and so uh the state legislature is currently working on how they're going to fund this if they're going to limit
055for example perhaps taking um high school students out of the mix in terms of who's entitled to the ival free meal um money is tight and so that's something that that they're working on also uh at the study session you as a board I was out of town but you as a board talked about the communication devices in schools measure thought I'd bring you up to date I had a meeting with the planning committee of casby the other day and uh it appears now that there is oh I'm sorry all right uh it appears that there's considerable interest in really uh loosening what initially was supposed to be some fairly strong guidelines in terms of what that cell phone policy would be and perhaps even allowing districts to develop a policy based on their own
056guidelines uh this is one that is interesting I know to the public it's interesting to our board and to other boards and I will certainly keep you up to date on that um as time goes on and then the last one that I'll talk about tonight very quickly is Senate bill 25153 which is entitled Public School financial reporting requirements there's interest on the part of some legislators to increase reporting mandates to ask boards to uh report even more than they currently are uh at this point uh the casby board has taken a position of opposed to this I think we all know that um there's a lot of reporting that's already going on staffs in financial services are limited in terms of number of people and amount of time and so this is another one
057that I will keep all of you posted on um I was unable to attend my two committees this uh this session thank you to Denise and to Don for taking my place um the Committees but um I would like to share um I would like to acknowledge the recent executive orders that have raised concerns within have raised concerns and questions within our Thompson School District Community I recognize the fear and uncertainty that many are feeling I stand firmly committed to fostering a school district where every individual feels valued safe and safe and included education is a fundamental right and I believe that a strong thriving public school system is essential to the success of our community and our nation that success depends on creating an environment that is free of discrimination harassment and bullying for
058our students staff and families I believe deeply that every student staff and family in TSD deserves to feel safe and welcome regardless of immigration status national origin background ability race Creed color sex sexual orientation gender identity or expression religion ancestry family composition or physical characteristics I want to ensure that our district remains a place where each individual feels valued and supported I want TSD to maintain an inclusive equitable and safe learning environment for all please know that I take this to Heart these values of inclusivity and safety have and will continue to guide me as I vote on policies uh I just wanted to give a quick update um Family Pi this month I got to attend which is super fun got to learn about active sup supervision training um and the community assessment that's
059coming up soon so so um lots of people in our community have a chance to give feedback on Early Childhood in our community um and then in all of the Committees that I attended there were questions varying levels of really what um a lot of these things that we're hearing about politicization um in our schools is going to mean to our schools and what the funding frees and things like that mean and um so far um um it's just important to know that not a single law has changed um and many things look very different as they go through the process because this is a process of representative government where um laws aren't just made by one entity and so you know it's very early to know what proposed changes will look like when they
060become actual law and so um it's obviously quite interesting I know some people who have said that they don't they don't keep cable they just uh pay attention to the news um because it is entertaining however at this point um you know no laws have changed and no funding has changed and everything that we're hearing might happen um is probably going to look very different as it becomes part of the process of our system as it exists today so um I just wanted to pass that along hearing that from all of the people who know what they're talking about thank you um I'm going to report about Thompson Education Foundation um it's a very busy very active committee and it's one that really supports a lot of our students as well as our staff um
061within the district and one of the things that's coming up is uh they have uh an event called project prom and if you have or know if students who would be wanting to go to the prom this spring and they can't afford to get a a appropriate attire they have minc clothing they have lots of prom dresses but they're also still looking for donations and so if you check the Thompson Education Foundation website they will it tells you exactly where I know one of them um is at the Ace Hardware store in Loveland they were collecting um some of the prom dresses another event is um the nominations are closed but the event is being planned so that the uh it's last year we had it as a breakfast I'm drawing a blank on what
062it's called but the breakfast that we have where we celebrate our educators of the Year there we go um it's going to be an evening event and it's an after after school evening it's um April 22nd and it will be a time where we also are going to celebrate retirements for the district so we're doing a combination event April second which will cover both of those activities so we'll be watching for information about each of those and I think that includes our concludes our board committee reports and we're moving over to public comment and I'm going to ask Don to please read the statement aloud that goes with and then you'll get to run our little machine all right because the board wants to hear the viewpoints of the public and also needs to conduct
063its business in an orderly and efficient manner it will schedule time during its regular board meetings for brief comments and questions from the public the board will set a time for public participation prior to the business portion of the meeting the time for each speaker will be limited to 3 minutes and each individual will only be recognized once if there are a large number of speakers the board may elect to take comments for one hour before the business meeting and conclude public comment after the business meeting public comments and questions at a regular meeting May deal with any topics related to the board's conduct of the schools speakers may offer such criticism of school operations and programs as concern them but are encouraged to exer I their speech rights responsibly Personnel matters will be discussed
064in executive session um when you start speaking the green light will go on over here when and there is a countdown when you have 30 seconds left it's going to give you a yellow light and then it'll start beeping at you and it won't stop with a red light when you're done first up we have Amy zallen good evening I wanted to express my heartfelt gratitude for your commitment to creating an inclusive environment for all students particularly those who are transgender I have a transgender child in TSD right now and I do not normally speak of this publicly or openly um but taking into consideration our current political climate I feel that something needs to be said these children including my own child are too important and they need voices they are not children that
065are going to come up here and talk and take pictures the policies of TSD not only affirm the identities of these students but also Foster a sense of belonging and safety within our schools this was incredibly helpful for my child and my family as we navigated these unfamiliar Waters so thank you for your dedication to equality and for ensuring that every student can Thrive and just for the record my child does have physical care through a doctor they have mental health care through a therapist what they need is support and inclusion and not judgment and Hate thank you thank you and I'm very sorry you had to hear what was said tonight uh next we have David Cook I'm David Cook I've been here before I'm with the center for government accountability just want to
066update you on a few things yesterday the president signed a order that pulls the funding from all of this craziness that's going on out there we all know what that is uh it's going to go along farther belong uh farther along than that uh you have a sheet up there there in the backside of it uh it explains the foundation of this nation the problem we have in schools today uh of the 40 Nations that are meas that measure academic achievement the United States used to be number one now it's number 40 we are the worst when it comes to academic achievement we are the the top when it comes to money per pupil so why is that well it's very simple we went away from what made the best students today we have to
067import people for the top positions in many many companies because we can't find anybody in our school systems that can hack it it's that simple there's more to it than that that of course but I won't go into the details right now the point is it's got to be changed and we have a president that is going to change it he's eliminating or will eliminate after Doge goes through it and finds all of the uh bad things that have been done in the education system the [Music] abuse so on and so forth once that's done the education department will be eliminated to Federal level the center for government accountability will be working with them to go over the material I've talked about before the fact that the schools are not educating anymore obviously they're in
068do ating in leftist and Marxist programs that's not my opinion that's a proven fact consequently These Foolish programs are going to be eliminated and the money to fund them will be eliminated if the president and those of us who have some influence here which we do can handle it however either way whether it's done by the government or it's done by the citizens the Declaration makes it very clear that if any form of government becomes destructive of these ends it's the right of the people to alter and abolish the indivual you're done great good evening Madame President members of the board and Dr Schaefer my name is Sue timer I am an educator of Middle School gifted students and also part-time president of the Thompson Education Association I am personally alarmed at the state of
069education funding in Colorado as you all know the Colorado legislature has been balancing the state budget on the backs of our students despite constitutional requirements to ensure adequate school funding for more than a decade the legislature utilized a budget stabilization factor which effectively withheld adequate funding from districts last year when this BS Factor was finally bought down and schools were fully funded at 1989 levels there were promises made that we would not return to the budget stabilization Factor as you also surely remember there was a special session last year in which new school funding formula was introduced and quickly passed realizing there would be winners and losers in this new calculation Educators were promised the new formula would not be implemented until there were adequate funds fast forward to the 2025 legislative session where the
070state is is short an estimated $1.2 billion while not calling another budget stabilization the governor is proposing doing away with averaging and determining District student numbers something that's estimated to hurt 80% of the districts across Colorado oh yes and he's pushing a new school funding formula to be implemented this year despite promises made less than a year ago the Colorado Education Association experts who studied the primary budget proposal believe this will cost Thompson School District more than $800,000 CDE recently released two adequacy studies confirming what Educators have long known Colorado's underfunding students by $4,000 to $4500 per student each year totally $4 billion shortfall and that was before the cuts no matter what it's called a cut is a cut I urge you as a collective school board and as individual members to reach out
071to the Colorado legislators and let them know this is not acceptable for students in Thompson schools let the budget be balanced by Cuts elsewhere not again on the backs of our students I inv invite you to join with tea CA and individuals across the state who care about public education for a rally at the state capital on Thursday March 20th fortunately this is during our spring break that we won't have to close the Thompson schools additionally I encourage you to send a letter on behalf of the board letting our elected officials know your objection tell them no cuts no way no how thank you I believe we have five four five um Callins hello my name is Katie steber I currently live in Leland Colorado and have a student that does attend school at Irwin
072I have been a active member of the sac committee and PTO at Irwin and volunteer on a regular basis I have observed a stacking change coming into this school year in the leadership team I have been very pleased in what I have personally witnessed that this leadership team is bringing to the table I do want to call out the principal as well in stating that I have witnessed really connecting with students adults in the children's lives and really making an effort to bring her staff team together I do want to also comment that my student has been very pleased personally as well as a multitude of her friends that she is also very pleased with leadership the principal and how the school year is progressing I will be brief and there is contact information for
073myself there at TSD as I am on the Safety Committee and the Dak committee as well I thank you for your time and I just want to stress that I am more than thrilled with the current leadership at Irwin middle school thank you Dr schaer president Cruz board members and staff my name is Anne Bradberry I have lived in loved ones for over 33 years my topic is patriotism in education patriotism is defined as love and Devotion to God and Country I am proud to be a part of patri Grandma a group of grandmas led by Sharon Penny we love God our country our families including our awesome grandchildren and our community we have a passion for the future Generations including the students in our school district I want to respond to two articles from
074last week in the Reporter Herald the first one was written by Mark schaer superintendent and Stu Boyd Board of Education member the main points included being in favor of providing an excellent education for all students however there were no specifics on how and what can be done to accomplish this Sharon Penny wrote a rebuttal to their editorial she mentioned specifics that parents and grandparents want to know about Dei CRT transgender issues and boys playing in girl Sports why haven't these issues been addressed Sharon expressed her thoughts very clearly I walk Side by side with Sharon and our Patriot Grandma group currently the school's culture puts stress on so many students mental health is a huge issue with students right now chaos and confusion do not make for a healthy school environment test scores are low
075niche.com shows Prof Proficiency in Reading at 45% and math proficiency is at 31% once the school district gets back to teaching more Core Curriculum in deic RT and other negative issues disappear school scores will go up students will be confident and motivated again I heard president Trump signed an executive order eliminating Dei in all schools deadline is less than two weeks away if our school district doesn't eliminate Dei then Federal funding can be halted I am assuming TSD will honor this request by the federal government another executive order signed by President Trump is to keep boys out of girls Sports this order just makes sense life at TSD is about to turn the current chaos into a healthier School setting better education gives students a chance for a bright future let's return to Common Sense
076education and patriotism if you need to contact me you may leave a message at 2676 thank you for your good evening Madame President TSD board directors Dr schaer staff and fellow citizens laori goal TSD taxpaying citizen my topics this evening are the behavior and language of board directors and discrimination of female athletes first before I address these two topics I would like to thank those who come fully prepared to these meetings and study sessions I know that it requires time and effort to be informed on agenda items but for those who are doing their job I want to offer and extend a heartfelt thank you item one behavior and language of directors I attended the January study session which focused heavily on the audit it was during that meeting that director Kirk utilized an explicit
077during her comments regarding the audit this took me totally by surprise this was not during a heated debate about a divisive topic but simply during her comments regarding the audit what took me by greater surprise is that she did not not apologized and she was not called out on this behavior is this typical of study sessions your in action makes it appear this way in light of this one must also ask is this the type of language that's being promoted within the walls of our schools I was hopeful that this would have been addressed at the January meeting however it was not I'm asking for an apology to the public from director Kirk regarding this very unprofessional behavior and also an apology from president Cruz for not holding director Kirk responsible for her language or
078holding the meeting dequorum to Professional Standards item two CSD discrimination against female athletes this is something that I've spoken to you about previously and something that you continue to ignore I'm passionate about this because of the opportunities that my sister and nieces were able to participate in they and other female student athletes are afforded opportunities for higher education due to their dedication and Proficiency in their respective Sports s not so if they are beat up in their sport by a biological male biological males have no place on a female sports team and have no place competing against biological females no matter the age time and again we hear of injuries many that are serious in nature perpetrated by biological males our daughters granddaughters and nieces all deserve to be protected from harm and injury on
079top of that there is the theft of award and Records designated for female athletes which should only go and which only belong to biological females things are changing at the federal level and will be required to be changed at the district level you need to make the appropriate policy changes soon or rather than later I look forward to your prompt action on this item and keeping men and boys sports for biological males and keeping women and girl sports for biological girls thank you for your time and attention to these matters I am Lori vda Ward 501 West Forth Street Loveland my email is Lori H Ward msn.com Madame President board members and Dr shaer I'm calling to address the recent executive actions by Mr Trump relating to Education First the cancellation of hundreds of contracts
080at The Institute of Education Sciences chills the collection of data that allows us to understand Student Learning Without the ability to identify achievement gaps and pursue Innovation and excellence in schools we put our International competitiveness and National Security at extreme risk next executive actions targeting equity and inclusion policies will harm the abilities of schools to support students with both physical and intellectual disabilities programs to assist these students as they move from high school into the world of work have already been slashed in some districts other executive actions removing protections for immigrant students and adults in schools have instilled Terror in employees parents and kids alike these newcomers to our country whether documented or not are afraid to come to school where they could be caught up in Immigration enforcement English language learner policies are already
081being investigated and bullying of these students has caused at least one 12-year-old to kill herself some of you have written public letters supporting our students who are differently abled lgbtq Plus or our immigrants but that is not enough you must remain steadfast in the work you've been doing and continue to serve all students and keep all students and employees safe do not give into fear or anticipatory compliance the actions of the new federal government are already hurting our most vulnerable students you have more support in this community than you realize it is up to you to protect public education thank you hi my name is Brenda adury and I live in Leland my family has been here for five generations from my grandparents to my grandchildren and all part of the Thompson School District I'd
082like to address that on Friday in a memo from Craig trainer and the Department of Education they gave an ultimatum to stop using racial preferences as a factor to help students he said and I quote that students should be assessed according to Merit accomplishment and character but then in contradiction he went on to advocate for preferential treatment for white and Asian students in his statements so my question is why is he saying that simply being white or Asian is Merit if they have already claimed that racism in any form simply due to a student's race is discrimination this means the Trump Administration is forcing schools to discriminate based on the race they choose just like before Brown V Board of Education so far no discrimination laws have changed at the state or federal level so
083today this memo is telling schools to break state and federal laws I did look at the stats in today's agenda and saw that white and Asian students consistently have the highest grad rates in Thompson School District they do seem to be doing just fine illegally discriminating against the students of all other races won't help Thompson School District have higher graduation rates and test scores in fact I contend racism hurts us all even us white people I would like to end by extending kudos to the amazing students teachers staff and to the six school board members that have consistently worked for all of the students in our district every one of you deserve Applause for your hard work and accomplishments especially for those graduation rates those were pretty astounding thank you all and that concludes um
084public participation all right move on uh we'll move on to um action consent items these are items that we had presented to us a previous meeting or a study session and involve items that just need to be approved I'm going to read through the whole um list of what we have we also have a gift and donation to be read as well as a resolution to be done and then a proclamation and then I'm I'll ask if anybody ask do you have anything you want removed there we should be fine them okay I'm going to go ahead and start and then we'll have those two things read okay 6.1 is the approval of personnel extra Duty and coaching recommendations 6.2 the approval of expenditures over $50,000 6.3 approval of gifts and donations 6.4 is the
085approval of the second reading policy gbi criminal history record information 6.5 approval of termination of memorandum of understanding mou with Summit Stone contract and then 6.6 the approval of proclamation of national school counselor week so I'm going to turn to who's reading the do the donations oh okay I'm going to have Alexandra read the donations and then we'll have Amy read the proclamation um there are a number of donations today which we are grateful for um School Board policy states that gifts donations over $1,000 need to be approved by the Board of Education um so we have I believe five four four well six of those today um number one a $1,000 donation to be used for the stemx program at Walt Clark Middle School from Brian and Company number two a $4,140 donation to
086be used for the greenhouse at Walt Clark Middle School from live love laugh believe incorporated number four a $1,500 donation to be used to support this um stem eel initiatives at Big Thompson Elementary School from Plat River Power Authority number five a donation of a base instrument with bow and case valued at $5,000 to be used in Orchestra class at berth at high school from wiland forer and number six a donation of 30 Dell Latitude 5430 Chromebooks valued at $4,975 70 to the district from Banner Health National School counseling week Proclamation whereas school counselors are employed in public and private schools to help students reach their full potential and whereas school counselors are actively committed to helping students explore their abilities strengths interests and talents as these traits relate to Career awareness and development and
087whereas school counselors help parents focus on ways to further the educational personal and social growth of their children and whereas school counselors work with teachers and other Educators to help students explore their potential and set realistic goals for themselves and whereas school counselors seek to identify and utilize Community Resources that can enhance and complement comprehensive School counseling programs and help students become productive members of society and whereas comprehensive developmental School counseling programs are considered an integral part of educational process that enables all students to achieve success in schools therefore the Thompson School District does hereby Proclaim February 3rdd through 7th 2025 as National School counseling week thank you Amy um I'm going to ask if the any board members have any items they wish to speak to or to have removed from this list and
088moveed to the um other next item nobody okay so I'm going to ask for a motion to approve the action consent items as one measure so move thank you stu second and Don second did it um Laur please call the RO Stu Boyd hi Denise Chapman hi Amy Doran hi Don Kirk hi Barbara Cruz hi Alexander Lum hi Nancy rumel hi okay thank you motion passes and so we have those all set all right we will move now into discussion items so we'll start with um 8 8.1 which is um graduation rates and midyear midyear data update and it'll be Dr Schneider introducing thank you madam president members of the board and Dr Schaefer uh tonight the learning services division brings to you uh our annual update on graduation rates Dropout rates and midyear uh
089I data so we have some more celebrations to talk about again this year so that's always nice and I'm going to introduce to you U Mr Theo Robison our executive director of secondary education and Miss Carrie Bartman our uh a director of assessment and evaluation who will share this presentation greetings Madame President Dr schaer members of the board I'm Theo Robison the executive director of secondary education and we're here tonight to do a presentation pertaining to our graduation rates Dropout rates in our middle of the year I ready data so our Focus area one student achievement tonight we will share with you our 2024 graduation and dropout rate data and our 25 middle of the year I ready rate assessment data this presentation will illustrate our successes and opportunities for continued growth as well as
090current work taking place to further support increasing graduation rates and student outcomes so on this first slide what you're able to see here is our four-year graduation rate which means students receiving a regular diploma in four years or less when they enter High School this is also known as our anticipated year of graduation which is considered an ay and here you're able to see that our current graduation rate for the 2324 school year was 80% while the States was at 84.2% on this slide you're able to see that our graduation rate for our males is higher than the state's average by 6.8% and our female graduation rate is higher than the state by 4.9% we also see a disparity it in our female to male graduation rate by 2.9% within this bar graph I would
091like you to see that we've increased our graduation rates for American Indian or Native American students and our Asian students and we saw some decreases over the last year in our white Hispanic or Latino black and African-American or two or more races Within These bar graphs I would like you to see that we have increased our graduation rate for our English Learners our gifted and talented Learners however we've seen some decreases in our highly mobile students and our students with disabilities in these graphs we're able to see that our graduation rate gains were at berth at high school leveland high school and levelin classical Charter School at Thompson Valley High School and in Mountain viw High School we saw some graduation rate decreases I would also like to point out an astounding 11.6% graduation rate
092increase for Ferguson High School our one alternative school next we're going to transition into our Dropout rates here you're able to see that we've had three straight years of dropout rate decreases and we're still below the state's average by 6% to give you a little bit more details about what this rate is measuring it's when our students enter 7th through 12th grade and a Dropout as a student who leaves our school without enrolling into another school or an education program here we see our dropout rate is low lower than the state average for males and for females also we're able to see a 4.4 decrease in our male dropout rate from 23 to 24 school year and we also see a02 decrease in our female dropout rate next we're able to see a decrease in
093our dropout rate in all race categories except for our American Indian or Alaskan native and we also saw an increase of 3.6% within one student group specific and that is our American Indian or Alaskan native here we're able to see some continued work that we need to do to further support our students who are English Learners here we see a 05% um increase in that rate and we seen decreases in all other student groups at this time I would like to point out that tsd's dropout rate has decreased by 4% tvhs saw increase in their dropout rate by 0.9% and Mountain View saw a decrease by 0.1 or I'm Sorry by 1.4% as we currently re-evaluate our credit recovery and unit recovery programs in our district and look at different platforms based on teacher and
094student feedback we expect to continue to see our um dropout rate decrease over time and in addition to that as our counselors and School staff work further to help our students transition to our Ferguson option program that will also help us decrease our Dropout rates over time as well next up is Carrie Bartman our director of assessment and evaluation to share with you our middle of the year I ready assessment results thanks Theo good evening Madame President members of the board and Dr Schaefer I am Carrie Bartman director of assessment and evaluation so what does this mean for us every August our district is given a district performance framework as well as each School in our district gets a school performance framework on how we're accredited by the state so each of these numbers that
095Theo just represented for us tonight for each student in our district is calculated into this District performance framework for us this year we were 60.9% and we were again in performance for the state of Colorado on the next slide on the post-secondary workforce Readiness this is where these school dropout rates as well as graduation rates will be calculated for this coming school year so all the rates that you just saw we will be um measured on all of those this coming school year um and we will see those um show up on this District performance framework this coming August how else are we measured it is by our student achievement and our student growth through our Cass scores as well as pad and sat and so how we measure our predictions for how we're going
096to perform this coming April is through our I ready diagnostic so next we have our middle of year I ready K8 data kindergarten through 8th grade take our I ready assessment three times a year we had them take this right before um holiday break to give you an idea of how we place students uh we have two levels of green where students are performing at Mid or above grade level or early on grade level one grade level Below in yellow at middle of year still gives students time by the end of the school year to be on grade level so right now they might be performing slightly under but they can get there with typical growth by the end of the school year then in red and slight pinkish color we have two grade levels
097below and three grade levels below as you're looking at the graphs moving forward we're going to start with reading tonight so this is our achievement data where are we Landing as a school as a district K8 across the board so from last winter to this winter we have 7,571 students that took the the middle ofe Diagnostic and this is where we are landing percentile wise we split that um apart for you K5 as well as 6 through 8 our K5 data shows how many students took that middle of year diagnostic at the bottom there our threeyear Trend data from 2022 2023 and 2024 I ready has now rored all of their data to 2223 school year we no longer have the prepandemic mic um rating from 1819 we have three years of trend data now
098post pandemic that we are rated on and they rationally normed all of those um diagnostics for us here is our Middle School reading data those were the achievement slides now you're going to look at a growth slide here you have a four quadrant chart that um assesses High per performance and high growth you would we want to see our grade levels in the upper white right hand quadrant in the high performance and high growth area for reading as you can see the majority of our grade levels fall in that the next quadrant that we're looking at is that high growth low performance which is the upper left quadrant you can see seventh grade falls into that and is very close to also in the high performance side this means those those seventh graders are um
099growing very well the achievement part is isn't there yet and if you remember I know I've talked about this many times Now growth precedes achievement the dash line is a little bit Mis uh misleading this is where we hope students are after 14 to 16 weeks in between their beginning of year and middle of year if you actually look at the diagram at 50% or better that's where everyone is supposed to be if our students are achieving typical growth which is one year of growth we're hoping they're at that 68% dashed line there but as you can see each grade level is actually above the 50% which is measuring well all of the grade levels you see above the dashed line actually could be achieving at um stretch growth which is one to two years
100of growth not just our typical annual yearly growth so switching over to math the slides are the exact same here is where we are three-year Trend data post pandemic I broke it apart for you as well um kindergarten through fifth grade and Elementary you see the number of students that took that assessment over winter or right before winter break as well as our Middle School data same slide math is a lower um threshold of the percentile we're looking for 56 percentile just because of the new norming um if you'll recall in the fall when I met with you um even the state of Colorado rored Pat and sat math for us this last year we're still noticing math is a little bit further behind than reading just nationally and so that typical year growth is
101sitting at about 56 percentile but again if you notice anything above 50 is where our students receiving typical growth should be at this point in time each of our grade levels falls into high performance high growth and sixth and seventh grade are in the high growth which is what we want to be seeing at this point in the year and the achievement hopefully will follow so our high schoolers what do we do now for pad and sat so in the fall our students took a practice test in aluminate DNA this gave teachers the ability to see where where student skills actually were and so stu um teachers received that feedback gave an idea of what standards and different things needed to be hit throughout the school year and now on Monday March 3D students will
102actually go into the Blue Book system which is the the testing system that they now take pad sat on and do a full practice test so all of our freshman sophomores and juniors on March 3rd will run a full practice test with accommodations for students that are give are offered accommodations um this is when they will also um apply to the their scores if they wish to the four colleges of their choice and and run through all of the pre-work needed before our actual test date on April 16th freshman sophmores and juniors will take the official pie at SAT test on that day and that is in our window for um testing assessment for the school year our third grade through eighth graders will take uh their Cass assessments um starting the first week of
103April and ending the last week of April one change this year is that the state has now reentered cmass social studies and so fourth grade and seventh grade um get to take um one additional section of a Cass social studies assessment it is a third of our buildings um this year the second third will go next year the third third will go the following year and then we will see if it's everyone taking that one session of Cass social studies after that 5ifth 8th and 11th grades continue with Cass science as usual does the Board of Education have any questions for us questions board members you start uh yeah so when you talked about Dropout rates what where do homeschoolers fall when we talk about Dropout rates like so if they start 7th through 12th
104grade with us and they go into homeschooling would they count as a Dropout or or not because they're growing a no program yes I just wanted to make sure okay um and I had another one and it just left me so thank you they would be undated they are undated separately and so they are not considered a Dropout in that way um first of all and Theo I think this is a question for you how many students graduated in 2024 from lovelin classical 30 kids 30 those numbers today I'm sorry sorry 30 30 kids 30 students graduated last spring all right compared with um our smallest High School Traditional High School which is birth at high yes that's about 160 170 all right so a fractional percentage okay why is there no Dropout data for
105LCS so they have not had drop correct they it is 0.0% and has been the last three years they have had no dropouts okay um thanks Carrie for answering the question that I the questions that I submitted to you ahead of time uh I was interested to hear that you don't have pre-pandemic performance data that only since the pandemic do we now have that and thank you for explaining slides 19 and 23 for reading in math I Now understand those two slides do all 11th graders in the district take the yes and and is there an SAT practice test as well there is that is what they're doing on March 3rd all right my last question is um you previously gave the board a hand out entitled percent of 12th graders receiving specific diploma types
106over the past four years per High School I don't need a breakdown by school unless you feel knowing this is helpful to the district by the way to my board colleagues I I did submit this question but I wonder what percentage of students who graduated with a 20 credit diploma had at least 22 credits that's a great question have that so we are running that those numbers right now okay uh the data that you received in the previous uh study session and I believe that was Andy Stevens and Tiffany Jones that brought that to you that is the accurate data from this past school year this this last graduating class uh we have to change and alter to the 22 credit because what we ran for you at that point in time was how many
107graduated 20 how many graduated at 24 and how many graduated with distinction so we have to go back through our Infinite Campus system and see how many of those 20 credits actually had 22 so that's going to take us a little bit of time so at some point you will be able to report that to the board either in a presentation or or in writing either way whatever you would prefer all right fine and then Madam president if you'll indulge me not no more questions just four observations as I went through the data the dropout rate continues to drop overall and that's great the dropout rate for subgroups also dropped or is relatively constant that's outstanding um our students meet expectations in reading and writing math dropout rate and graduation rate according to the way
108that I read your data did I read it correctly and then finally interestingly enough uh in Sunday's reporter heral uh they have this every Sunday there's a section called this week in history and uh somebody sitting next to me just said uhuh so somebody else saw this as well 10 years ago the Thompson School District graduation rate was 74% yes assum assuming that that data in the reporter heral was accurate and I have no reason to think that it wasn't Dr Schaefer what's our district-wide graduation rate right now 90% so in 10 years the graduation rate has improved from 74% to almost 91% I think so Kudos of course first of all to our students to our staff to our uh parents who support our students and then to the community at large not just
109for the graduation rate but for the consistent Improvement in these other areas that I just highlighted as well so hats off to everybody I just mentioned um I'll start with the graduation um and you you already answered or asked about the 20 credit so I'll skip that but I was also wondering so a year ago Theo I asked for remediation rates and you had said you were working with someone um I can't remember I think it was issue so I'm here A year later asking do you have remediation rates so we can get that for you for sure and we probably get that with in a week we should be able to learn something more about that about a week but I don't have that tonight oh okay but you do have it now I
110can work on making sure I have that within a week that's what I'm trying to say okay all right thanks and then on the I ready results um you know to Stu's point they are increasing but I'm still concerned about for those that it isn't because when you just run the numbers don't just look at the percent right look at the students k through eight there's 99 students that are currently three plus grades below reading to me that that's a problem but I also looked at the fourth grade students um that are below you know two or three um grade levels below and then I looked at the prior year for third grade so you can see that the number of fourth graders actually increased in those two buckets but it also so to me
111that shows that the kids that are doing well are still doing well and achieving well but but they're still this bucket that you know last year they were third grade they weren't reading at grade level and in fourth grade they still aren't and then when you look at fourth grade math it goes into supporting why you have some of the numbers that we have in fourth grade math not being proficient so I know it's not it's like to use uh Dr Schaefer's term like where he always likes we're solving for World Peace but what is the plan if we see that last year we know like this year what what are we going to do for next year because once they leave elementary school that's that's my real worry is that if they once they
112leave elementary school and they can't read and they can't do math then it's just I think it's a it's a situation we can't recover from and that worries me absolutely so we still have a focus on all of our disaggregated population our duip is specifically pointed out our multilingual Learners and students with disabilities we are currently in a curriculum adoption in piloting for our new element curriculum for reading and literacy and so depending on what um curriculum is chosen and the adoption and you know planning for that um all of those things are a focus on what you just said is is there ever and I know again it comes back down to money but is there ever the thought that um these particular schools that might have these students that we need to put
113additional teacher supports there so so I think a couple things so the board has really invested in us having professional learning communities and so some of our work in our ec12 meetings over the last two years have been helping us better strengthen how to utilize professional learning communities within our schools to better Target what intervention groups we need to have for students and so between ensuring that we actually have curriculum that's the rigor of the grade level standard which Carri just mentioned for the ELA adoption and know we just recently did a math adoption as well but those Investments we expect to help uh minimize those gaps between student learning over time so that's where our biggest investment is right now okay okay all right thank you um Nancy I just want to make a
114statement too is when you say they can't read that's not a true statement they just aren't reading on grade level and there's a difference because they can read they just probably aren't reading at their current grade level so there's a difference in that so I just want to whenever you say it you have that that tone and it's just it's not a fair statement for those kids so if the student is three grades level below that doesn't mean they can't read they probably can't read fast enough or whatever the assessment might be so that doesn't mean they can't read they can read probably just not at their grade level it okay it's still important so I have a couple of questions as far as the graduation data every year Thompson Valley High School is quite
115a bit lower than the other traditional high schools are there thoughts about why that is and what can be done to help bring them up to be in on par with everybody else so I will tell you um I've asked that question directly and so what I think right now we saw was that during the pandemic this class that we specifically looked their graduation rate data for this year had a higher number of students that ended up going to school part-time and so those students are still in the building the majority of them for a fifth year senior but one of the things too is that um I'm going to go back to something that I said a little bit earlier in the presentation is that we're currently relooking at unit recovery system and credit
116recovery system across and so we've kind of learned some of the things that we're seeing taking place at Ferguson that we could better generalize into other school Dynamics and so I'm really anticipating what that adoption process is going to look like for our new uh Credit Recovery in curriculum um across the system for that but but another thing too that I want to tell you is that um so hopefully in a year I'll be standing up here to tell you that Thompson Valley has over a 90% graduation rate because as we look at the numbers right now they're projected to be over 90% And so hopefully we'll finally cross that but thank you for asking that question okay cool thank you and then I have a question for you too Carrie on the all of
117the um the data across the years from you know the past three years is basically the same from year to year so if we're you're saying that kids are in the like high growth and potentially high achievement at what point should we see that translate into that these actually like changing great question so there are lots of different factors that can go into that depending on one your student group population is different correct students move in and out so you're always measuring different students the achievement is measured all students your growth data is only those students that took the fall assessment and the winter assessment so there are always going to be little caveats there that aren't um in it the new Norms I I would say in the next two years we should be
118able to see it because we're just now based on the 2223 norms and so hopefully we'll start to see that shift upward from all of the growth that we're actually seeing but again we're brand new into these new norms and so it's been pretty status quo the last three years on the achievement side okay so I remember like often when we look at these charts some of the ones that like jump off the page are often because our student groups are are small enough size but big enough that they count right like I know they wouldn't even show up on here if they were small enough but they might still only be 10 or 20 students something like that um and yet um I just some things have came up repeatedly um before tonight and
119definitely tonight as far as different disaggregated groups of students and so I'm a pragmatist what if like if we are saying that the the needs of different student groups English language Learners and um gifted and talented special education to just name a few I mean it if we were to take them completely out of the data set could we get to our 90% graduation rate in an average year if we took out students who are non-white and non-asian and who are not in any of our other disaggregated groups I mean that's hundreds of students right so yes I mean I realize it's like asking you to know some numbers off the top of your head and do math real quick it's algebra even um but we're talking hundreds of students who fall into these groups
120that have been the subject of many of these conversations so so the thing that I'd like to say is that I think we've done a strong job in focusing on each learner across our school district and one of the things that we find when you talk about ins sizes like I know specifically for our black student population when we went back to try to track what happened with that going from 90% or 93% the previous year down to 50% I recognize very quickly that that was eight students thanks to the help of Carrie Bartman here and so then when I started to reach out to talk to some of those families uh one of the things we learned is that one of the kiddos actually did graduate from another place but our data was wrong
121we also know that we have one of our high schools reaching out to that kiddo and their family to help get them caught up with Ferguson through the options program so so we never even though we see these numbers as final for the school year we're still doing work to ensure that each one of our students get through our our um system here in t SD with either a diploma or a GED so so I really like the fact that we're consistently focusing on each student and the journey doesn't stop once the data set ends for the year we're constantly going back to work with those students and families I can attest to that my oldest would not have graduated if it wasn't for a math teacher following up for two plus years to say
122you need one class and your diploma matters there was no reason that they needed to do that none and um you know I love I love good data I love gold stars you better believe I was an a student I love good data at the same reality is one student can fit into many of these groups and that's something you we need to keep in mind right and educating kids is what we're talking about it doesn't always show up in the one day that we took the one test or I might you know be struggling but that doesn't mean that I'm not working really hard to try to learn one day to point and one day depending on what's going on 100% And also these are rad numbers especially compared to the graduation rate um
12310 years ago and I would like to point out that I did not swear there and I absolutely could have so there we go thank you Don all right thank you you too great job welcome all right 8.2 is cultural climate survey bules thank you Madame President members of the board Dr Schaefer I'm sorry oh I'm right here and it's me again and and and another member of learning Services uh Team uh Dr Jennifer guthal who has also gone through um this data with you earlier this winter in two plus two sessions and she is is coming back to give you highlights from that discussion um You probably recall much of what she has to say tonight but she's going to highlight light it for the community tonight so Jennifer thank you thank you Dr
124Schneider excuse me Madam president Dr Schaefer members of the board thank you for having me tonight apologize I'm getting over a little bit of a cold um so uh our annual climate and culture survey support focuses um on things that touch on all areas of our strategic plan um I always like to highlight that the kind of more obvious things that people think of around of course um our goals around inclusive and support of culture are covered but also it can help us um track if we are um taking action in areas that can increase student achievement um we can keep track of things that can help us with our stewardship of resources as well as assist us with retaining critical human Talent this is the fifth full round of our annual climate and culture
125survey and it was administered to all staff students grades three and up and then all families in November of 2024 our survey is delivered electronically um we also do make it available to community members who not have students in our schools and um this was the first year as I mentioned to you a couple of weeks ago that we did not offer paper surveys because that need had dwindled to fewer than half a dozen and it was very expensive um and we are pleased to see that even with making that change actually our family response rates went up this year so we feel really good about the decision we made to save some money um and still see some response rate improvements from our families just a reminder that our um of our surveyed areas
126so our student surveys there are two categories um social emotional learning competencies and supports and environments our competencies are the areas um where students um tell us their perceptions of their competencies related to social social emotional skills such as um persever an um social awareness and so on and the supports and environments are our students perceptions of the supports around them to be successful in school our teachers take um a specific set of teacher surveys which is on this screen and they're also part of the climate and culture survey um so they take a teacher self-reflection survey which um I think is a little more accurate if we think of it as a survey about self- efficacy so their belief that they have um the Knowledge and Skills to meet their students needs needs um
127and then of course because they are expected to help us meet the standards from the state of Colorado we ask them about the professional learning they receive in order to do so then we survey all of our staff on staff leadership relationships school safety and school climate and then on our family and Community surveys um we ask them questions about um what's going well in our school district what would they rate as a priority how safe do they School our schools so on and so forth um so these are response rates from last fall and this fall um as you can see our response rates are quite High uh I did want to mention it looks like um if you go down to where it says teacher measures and it looks like there was a
128drop in Fall 2024 um what that actually was was a glitch unfortunate glitch in survey delivery which is that um Panorama sends out the links directly to staff so that it's recorded with their employee ID that way we can track response rates um and they accidentally only sent one of their surveys to our teacher the second one the climate culture survey one not the one and it's supposed to automatically take them to the one and it didn't however we have a lot of very smart staff and they figured out that Mr hman um had sent out a link for staff and that's intended to be for staff who work at multiple sites and otherwise can't take it for multiple sites so our staff who couldn't get to the other survey went and took it that
129way which does not link to their ID which therefore does does not show up as a response rate so their information is included as far as favorability but they don't count as a percentage in their which is very unfortunate um so uh of course I was not thrilled with Panorama for that mistake um however I would like to acknowledge that they fixed it within two hours of me and notifying them however you can tell right these numbers quite a few staff members had already taken the survey at that point um so they assured me that that will not happen again but as you can see um other than that glitch uh in recordkeeping there basic from Panorama and um our response rates are very good and in fact every time I meet with Panorama they're
130kind of amazed at our response rates and so I'm very pleased with the work that our schools do to um get our Student Response rates up and um as you all know because I've been speaking about this for many years with you we are keep trying to get those family numbers up and we we did push them up just a little bit and I would really like to acknowledge um the help of our school staff in making it available during our family um parent teacher conferences um and the support from um quite a few members of uh its and other teams who were able to help us get that data in earlier so that families could have access to that during parent teacher conferences um I'm not going to go into detail on these two
131slides but this is a reminder to anybody looking at our data that um Panorama as a team that works very hard on ensuring validity and reliability of their surveys and they had been studying um student responses for several years and had come to the conclusions that they needed to make some updates to the questions to make sure that they were um clear and getting the best results possible ible and we had the option to not make that change which I don't think is much of an option because of course we want accurate results from our students and so the caution is that um basically we have a new Baseline for our student surveys and when we look at the results earlier you'll not I I put little stars next to all of the areas that
132were impacted by these changes and questions um so we really need to think of it as a new Baseline as opposed to we can't really follow it the same way as we have in previous years from last year to this year and I'll explain that a little bit more when we get closer this is just more on that for those who would like to dig in um so this is just one way one snapshot of how to look at our student results um so you can see the top four areas that's under the student competency section I mentioned the bottom three are um the uh um supports and environments um and so blue indicates um scores that are uh notably above the national average Green is right around the national average um orange is slightly
133below national average and red is notably below the national average um you can see our elementary schools in the supports and environments have some really outstanding results um we can see that our school safety for our secondary students um is is uh doing well when we think it from a national average perspective um we do continue to see um these concerns in our Secondary Schools teacher student relationships and sense of belonging um and then um as you can see emotional regulation um is now at the national average for all of our students grades 3 through 12 um and some more work to be done in some of the other competency areas um this is a little bit of a breakdown um where you can see this by Elementary versus middle versus high instead of just
134Elementary versus um secondary and you can see the stars to remind us of the areas that are impacted by changes to survey questions um so when when I was working with the Panorama team on understanding the changes because of the questions what they explained to me is first of all that we were going to they predicted that we'd see a significant drop in growth mindset scores you can see that that's the case um and that any scores where we saw a drop it was most likely attributable to the changes and questions that we really now have a more accurate portrayal of what um our students um are thinking um and that areas that held steady or went up we should see as a real celebration because that was indicating that even with a more accurate
135um question set we had better results so um you can take a look at this data from that lens um and then these are the supports and environments um uh topic areas and you can see sense of belonging and teacher student relationships were both impacted by question changes school safety was not um school safety has actually held pretty steady for quite some time um and then you can see that those changes as described and I think the notable one here really is looking at that High School sense of belonging this is an area that we've been very concerned about and I will not acknowledge 36% favorability is still not we would like it to be but um this is the first time we've really seen movement there and this is the second time we've seen
136some movement in the middle school since of belonging so um we have plenty of room to grow with 36 and 43 but it when you start to see movement in the right direction um that really helps us get that momentum going uh and and that's what we need to to meet our students needs um this year we did um challenge our ourselves in learning services as well as our school leadership teams to look at data by student group and so we set goals um to say not just that overall all of Elementary student groups would have high favorability rates and sense of belonging but if we looked at each individual student groups we would also see the same thing and so I did kind of a checkpoint to see how Target we were to achieving
137that by the end of this school year and the student groups closest to the goal for elementary students we are multilingual students and are gifted and talented students and the students fur this from that goal or are students qualifying for free ruce lunch so that helps give us um some places to learn from and also to focus for the rest of the school year and then this is um showing the same type of a goal but for our secondary students and so because that s a belonging number was already lower you can see that our goal is a little bit lower um but again the student group closest to the goal student groups closest to the goal are multilingual Learners and our Hispanic Latino students and the student group furthest from the goals are black
138or African-American students so again what can we learn from the student groups closest to the goal and what can we um do learn from that to to help our student groups further from the goal this is just a review of everything I just said written out for anybody who would like to read through that later um and teacher results um so there's that teacher self reflection self-efficacy um so that is um uh just below um the national average at 68% favorability and RPD is a um slightly or at pardon me at the national average at 44% um I always think this is funny because um the self-reflection is always higher than the PD and yet as you can see the national averages are flipped um I would just like to say that of course we
139would like to see the PD numbers going up regardless of what color it is and um what what we've noticed is it's the same thing each year when you dig into individual questions that our teachers really would like the PD to be as differentiated as possible so we're continuing to learn from the sites when we look at it by schools where it's very highly rated in that area area and how can we help bring that to other school sites um if you could just go back one slide there's one thing I wanted to highlight on there um we have also seen an increase in favorability inpd for our high schools which is is really good to see um so when we look at all staff together um around the teacher leadership relationships with their staff
140School climate school safety those areas I have it broken down by all staff together and then teachers um pulled out because last year we had seen some decrease in favorability when we looked at just teachers so we wanted to monitor that this year so you can see that for our teachers and our staff our staff teacher leadership relationships are quite favorable and our teacher numbers have come up in that regard and they are at the national average school climate um not quite as favorable as that first category and the teacher average is just slightly below the national average and our school safety um favorability numbers are pretty high though there is a difference in our teachers perceptions of that as opposed to the rest of our staff um I did want to mention that that
141school um safety rate uh rating has been at or above 80% for quite some time um what this is one of the things I really enjoy about um the Panorama dashboard is you can really dig into individual questions um and and learn from that and when I dig into the staff leadership relationship questions what we find is our staff overall um has very U they feel that their leaders are respectful friendly and understanding those are three different questions and all three of them were rated um at 80% or above in favorability um and in areas with large increases include confidence that the leadership has the best interest of the school in mind and that they find their leaders motivating um and then when we look at our families it's a very different type of survey
142um and so uh you can dig into those specific questions and some of the data we exchanged earlier in the year um but the school climate ratings were um at the national average at 65% favorability school safety is held pretty steady there's no national average there that's why there's no color um strengths and opportunities that's where they do the comparison of these are the things priorities is these are things that are important to us and how important they are and strength and opportunities is how we're doing in those areas um and I would say that those vary a lot by school um and I think in some ways those responses can be really impactful for the schools sometimes more than at the district level and then um the fscp questions that we pull out um
143those two listed there for you um are at 66% favorability there's also not a national average for that because those are extra questions that we add um one one of the things I found interesting about the family priorities um this year is that the top five priorities that our families have identified are the same ones as last year and so you can see the change from Fall um 2023 um there's virtually no change and so these are the top five as I think of them for our families and um I I find it intriguing that um our families would agree with all of us that our staff are the most important part of meeting our students needs um and that they have as you can see there's a 10-point difference between their first one and
144the fifth one on the list so hiring developing and retaining best staff is very important to our families um there's a specific question where we ask all families if they would recommend their child's school to others and that is at 80% favorability which has held study for quite some time um and our family results are quite similar to last year with majority of respondents giving favorable ratings uh you know there's when you know when I look at the data I can look at it very specifically by grade level by school all sorts of different configurations but if I pull all the way back out um uh I think we can see in our data that we still have room for growth for our secondary student sense of belonging um we do need to dig into
145that staff School climate um those staff School climate results and see how we can continue to move those in the right directions and of course attending to our fam's priority of hiring developing retaining the best staff we can and pulling all the way out when we look at celebrations I think having a motion regulation at the national average for all of our surveyed student groups is a real celebration I think when you dig into the specifics of those staff leadership relationships results it's it's actually quite heartwarming to see um the hard work of our leaders being um acknowledged by our staff and then um our families really think our elementary schools are great so it's really neat to see that show up in the data as well and then we are um trying out our
146new check-in tool the money we saved from the paper survey we're rolling into a check-in tool which allows for Progress monitoring on a more regular basis with our schools um it is a really different tool in the dashboard and so there's a lot of learning to do we did our initial training and um I'm meeting with panoram actually next week to have them do another training for us because um it's just so completely completely different but schools are very excited to use it um and then we will learn from that this semester and determine if it meets our needs and if we want to move forward in future years and then of course with our continuous Improvement Team Works F uh work focused on improving um climate and culture we are looking at this data
147um schools are reflecting upon it and continuing to make changes related to this data and hoping to continue to move it in the right direction and that is all I have for you tonight thank you questions mark Dr before we run into questions I know today's been a busy day for Dr guthal I believe uh so she presented uh this morning at the winter case conference um on youth mental health I I believe she presented with Shannon Jenkins as well and Jen CH Conway and Jen and so we appreciate that and and I know that same presentation actually Dr sh and I will be presenting nationally uh at the aasa uh presentation as well so uh Thompson continues to be State leader in our work around youth mental health and we appreciate U Dr gotho
148leadership thank you yeah all right Denise questions so how does this all get fed back into the schools so that they can each address their own specific um and I'm assuming they're getting regular each time you pulse um so so the really cool thing is actually our schools can see this same dashboard for their school that I can see for the whole District um and um even cooler than that uh we worked with Panorama so that I can monitor with Panorama the quality control of the data during the survey now so that as soon as the survey closed I was able to open it up to our school leaders we've never been able to do that so our school principal saw it almost immediately and then um they had a couple of days to digest
149it and then it opened up to kind of the leaders and you know their counselors and whatnot and then they had a week or so that D it and then it open to all staff um that have access to the dashboard so um they're they're in there right away using it and then we also provide support through um various trainings and PD and whatnot to um help them understand analyze and then take action on the data and then I assume it's tied back to their building plans yes yes the SS yes so um all uh School leadership teams worked on having one of their suip goals related to climate and culture and most I can't think of any of them that didn't use this data to help write that goal and track it SRA okay
150the only question I had was um during our two plus two you had talked about that you were going to send us the entire survey so we could read through everything and I don't know if I missed it but I could I went to when I went to get ready for tonight I I didn't find it so I added that to the slideshow so right after we were done the slide the slideshow from the 2 plus2 from the plus in the wrong place I'm happy to work with Laur Lee to resend that um but I just went ahead and added the link back in the slideshow that you had access to I missed it then okay no I'm sorry that wasn't clear Dr Guff I know that the um slides that we saw this evening
151may have different numbers than the slides the board received um I'm referring to slid 11 and the information that I am interested in and I I submitted this question um is what plans are in place to address high school ratings in supports and environments yeah and and I did um did you get the written responses to your questions that I sent over um to Dr Schneider okay so we can get I would be happy to send those as well as answer your questions um but I did um do written responses to all your questions to make sure that you really had thorough answers right um so slide 11 um is the student results is that correct I just wrote down the slide number which is slide 11 I didn't write down the title you okay
152and then could you just ask your question your question for me one more time okay my question is what plans are in place to address high school ratings in supports and environments and I understand that questions have changed and that may have some kind of an impact but it appeared to me that the that the rating that the uh the number was rather low and so I just wondered what plans are in place to address that or if you've had time yet to um think of strategies to address that well absolutely and and that's an area that we've been monitoring for some time and so one of the answers to that question is the work of the continuous Improvement teams so um the focus um of the learning this year was around cultural responsive um
153restorative practices so we started with um warm welcomes so um that every single staff member greets every single student at every single door every single day um to make sure that our students feel welcome and then they also worked on um co-created classroom agreements so that there was shared understanding of how we're going to be together in the spaces where kids learn and then um so schools that was a lot for some schools to implement um many of our high schools to to go straight to your question about high schools didn't already have much like that and so it was a it was a lot of work for them and we've really excited to see how they've tackled that then as we move throughout the year we've added on to that um some other tools
154and strategies like um re-entry after um a classroom agreement is broken right and and there might be a kind of a damaged relationship between the teacher and student how is the student going to H apologize right so we we gave um teams a framework for a restorative apology and then how is the teacher going to support the student in reentering we also gave them a protocol for that so I could give you many more examples but basically this year was building on previous years of continuing to help get those tools into the hands of our teachers um so that they can have those strong relationships with their students so those those are just some of the examples I could share um having been a high school educator for a long time I know the challenges
155uh regarding seal topics or seal Concepts when when working with older students um I'm glad to to know that um you already have strategies in place and knowing the work that you and your team do I know that there will be more but I just wanted to call attention to the fact that that was one thing from the data yeah U that I found concerning the other one that concerned me was the teacher rating on school climate and I understand that also might have been impacted by a change in question but again that rating seemed quite low and so I was one I wondered um how you were addressing that and in order to save time if you have already responded to me and I just haven't received that yet we can skip that at
156this point well let's do a little bit of both if that's okay because what I would like to just say is that the work that we are doing for instance through continuous Improvement teams um is designed to to improve relationships between students and students and teachers and students and so um really when you look closely at those some of the questions within the climate portion that you're talking about for staff staff um having better relationships with their students and each other would improve that so some of the work that I just described for our continuous Improvement teams should also help with some of the staff climate results so that's just another example of of how that project is hopefully improving the climate culture for for everyone in our school district all right and I'll look
157forward to reading what what you're going to send me um is the Panorama survey opt in or opt out um it is St that's a good question I'm trying to remember which direction we do it um we send out the notifications in the fall and then the families sign off in the fall okay all right um I thought the areas for celebration are indeed areas for celebration and uh I'm going to perhaps Step Beyond my role as a school board member and just say Dr Guff take the weekend off thank you and I think I would say it probably the way you're asking the question they're opt out so the the families if we don't receed an opt out from them then their students do take this survey took care of all of them didn't
158leave it to me ask um do you have the ability to see more student breakouts I know you said that you can see it a lot of different ways and um I'm just wondering when I think about how stressed some people have been and how that would impact almost every one of these categories looking at um that over time by different groups might be really helpful so even if it's not something that everybody's looking at is it something that some people at the school level and at the district level have the ability to see uh so that question actually has come up related to our check-in tool because we can can we can and do look at the fall data by student group of course as I showed in some of those slides the like
159I said that checkin tool is very cool but it's set up really differently and so we're working with Panorama to understand um and I was very upfront with them that we need to monitor all of our student groups and so we need the check and tool to be able to do that so they're working with us to they can definitely do it we just want to make sure that it's easy for our schools to do it doesn't take 25 steps so that's the next round of training that we're doing to be very Frank that's that's a work in progress in the check-in tool yeah awesome and then I'm going to give you a compliment in front of everybody that you've heard now twice at least and I'm sorry that I'm saying it twice um but
160uh I just really wanted to point out that the the two things that we've implemented at every school have made such a huge difference and um you know it's almost unfortunate that the Baseline shifted because I would have been so fascinated to see that having seen the difference in every school at every level it is like I mean truly of all the things that I've seen us do and there's some really cool stuff I've gotten see this is the one that had just that like ripple effect everywhere in every school um and I just I really appreciate that as I said at first I was like why are we starting with those those seem like super easy why no big deal and yet um it was my favorite seeing it at a high school actually
161um there is something so different about what these little repeated every day I care about you moments are doing for high schoolers you know they eat that up and I don't think some of them get that enough and they're loving it and I really appreciate seeing that so thank you to everybody who's doing it it's not just you but you have gotten to to share it with us and I just wanted to make sure that everybody heard um how amazing it is thank you our our teachers and school continuous Improvement teams leadership teams have been working if I can just jump in for a second with regarding what uh don said I think a lot of times we think that high school kids don't need that that they've outgrown it U that they don't need
162the praise they don't need the warm fuzzies and to know that U those those aspects of their school and aspects of their life are being addressed in the Thompson School District is awesome yeah it really is and and if you haven't gotten a chance to see that in our middle schools and high schools it is quite fun to watch what our high school teachers have come up with and how to do that so thank you for noticing thank you Jennifer very thank you care of yourself thank you I will you need to I can hear it in your voice I'll go get some rest tonight but thank you for the opportunity I really appreciate it thank you all right um 6.3 professional development Bill are you going to introduce or should we just Madam president
163School Board Dr schaer Bill seberg assistant superintendent Human Resources I'm I have the honor to introduce key Garen our professional development director who is part of the human resources team thank you thanks Dr staff Dr Schaefer Madam president members of the school board thanks for having us uh tonight yes key Garen director of professional development um we're excited to provide you a midyear update on professional development for the [Music] year thanks LLY um tonight's update connects to the human resources Focus area of strive 2025 specifically to 3.1 and 3.2 our update tonight focuses on a review of the District professional District professional development Day held on January 7th um I've also included my answers to the questions I received um at the end of last week in my presentation so for licensed staff on January
1647th um this was their fourth district PD day of the year and classified staff it was their third as we have done in for the past three years so this would be the fourth year licensed staff have engaged in professional velopment at their individual schools led by their principles and school leadership teams traditionally the January PD day uh provide schools the opportunities to engage in differentiated and targeted PD uh based on the student data and the student needs of their specific school and as it relates to District performance uh goals and areas conceptually District day one and District day4 are connected um for example in this slide I've just highlighted the row that were referencing in terms of our conceptual PD plan at large um so this would just be the reference of most of
165the feedback from tonight is coming from that row so in January licensed staff um spent the day working on culture and climate and academic goals um and performance strategies that their continuous Improvement teams identified over the summer before school started for classified staff January 7th off offered targeted differentiated PD conference style sessions at Mountain View again and offer job specific training through departments such as nutrition services transportation and uh custodial staff so this is just a glance of um what our conference style schedule looks like so we're just going to start by re reviewing some of the classified staff feedback um our classified staff survey is all um qualitative so they are all free response we do collect um email addresses and names in our uh feedback for classified staff that is different than licensed
166for a classified staff at Mountain View High School um there was about 55 separate PD sessions as well so that's where all of this information is kind of coming from based on the survey results classified staff reported seever several takeaways three major themes included naming specific sessions that folks really liked such as the working together session leading through crisis session and the function-based behavioral session the second major theme um that came out was technical learning so um sessions particularly that focus on platforms such as Infinite Campus uh learning Vivy or Medicaid documentation the third major theme that I saw was sessions focused around theoretical knowledge so for example practical ideas um or practical ways to apply theoretical understanding such as critical thinking accommodations versus modification and the importance of understanding students background as it relates
167to uh working with student Behavior we also ask classified staff to identify future PD requests as well well as um we always ask for recommendations for improvements classified staff uh provided that feedback um this is I would say very similar to other days but always continuous so future PD requests included more advanced topics across all areas but specifically more in-depth training around um supporting and responding to student Behavior Uh the second kind of theme I saw was uh requests for specific PD based on job roles and assignments such as training specific to being a Learning Center paraprofessional and then third um just more opportunities for Technical Training such as CPR CPI and then differentiation based off of level so being a Learning Center perah at elementary versus secondary areas of of improvement um included better
168sound systems so one of the we run into at Mountain View is um not having like a large sound system in the cafeteria so that can uh we are peace mealing uh speakers projectors mics um in these larger areas where microphones are required so sometimes sound can be difficult in our larger sessions each one of these days espe on the classified staff specifically um there might be a session that all of a sudden becomes very popular that we didn't anticipate so we might move them into a bigger room that doesn't have the sound setup um and so we are continuously even adjusting in the day based off the feedback that we're getting um and so sometimes we are surprised by some feedback in the moment uh additional areas of improvement um were increased relevant PD
169sessions and then offering the sessions more times throughout the day so as you know like in a conference style session we might offer one session while five other sessions are happening or that session is only offered once a day um as our presenters are able to we ask if they can do at least a morning and afternoon session but sometimes that doesn't play out uh for our classified staff um we do not spend any additional outside money uh all the the trainers are um internal um or it's a partnership um externally that somebody is donating their their time um and expertise on that but most of the sessions are provided from internal internal staff um so we review and consider each participant's feedback uh for each opportunity so there are 135 classified job titles um
170at minimum um that would include Learning Center par professional that doesn't include the differentiation based off of levels so when we're trying to accommodate and respond to at minimum 135 job specific PD opportunities that can be challenges so when we get this re this feedback each time um we connect with each division each department um as well as our classified PD Community uh committee and the I have to write it down so I don't say it wrong the classified staff advisory Council to meet those needs uh I know those needs also come up through the meet and confer process in that group and and get funnel through us that way so we are continuously uh partnering with um leaders Department leads um and our staff to understand what what they need and be able to
171provide that as best possible one of the other barriers that we run into is that for example our CPR staff um in the district that have been hired and trained to provide CPR um our licensed staff right now so there is um a conflict on some of those days so sometimes uh there are um that licensed staff member can be excluded um and and be able to teach but many of those opportunities are on Saturdays uh classified staff are typically then either um offered comp time or are paid additional hours to attend the training that they're needed um that's required of them for their roles but we're also following up with them if there's additional opportunities that aren't on those days to ensure people are getting what they need um so moving into the licensed
172uh feedback we do collect uh this data anonymously um so that people feel like they can provide that um without uh any retaliation so the barrier to that is that I can't follow up with an individual and ask maybe more about what they meant by that like I can in the classified um feedback so um I've provided the next five slides are just the uh snapshots of each of the questions that we asked so we try to keep these to about five to not um over overs survey uh so 95% of licensed staff respondents reported that they felt that the January 7th PD aligned to um or somewhat agreed or strongly agreed that the PD align to uh the major Improvement Strate strategy identified at their school 88% of the respondents reported that the PD
173activities at their school were worthwhile um were a worthwhile use of their time 88% of respondents also reported that the feedback would ohop sorry I think there's a duplicate I'm sorry I caught that in here 88% um said that the PD activities expired inspired them to change improve their practice 89% of respondents licensed respondents felt that the PD activities were likely to improve student outcomes and overall 90% of licensed staff that responded agreed somewhat agreed agreed or strongly agreed that the PD on January 7th that they were satisfied with that so we also asked two more additional questions for licensed staff we asked them to identify y um a practice that will have the greatest impact on their school many staff um at large identified the common language and the universal practices so Jennifer talked
174about some of those pieces um whether it was classroom agreements or warm wel welcomes but getting everybody on the same page was at large the biggest takeaway for um most most of the respondents so that common language and schoolwide consistency we always ask for improvement so when licensed staff were asked to identify the student outcomes that will be um I'm sorry student outcomes that they see will be improved as a result of the PD uh they identified student achievement specifically writing was named the most um as well as sense of belonging for students now we've asked for uh licensed staff to report on how PD could be improved for next time um and at large more time more work time um and then more learning from their peers so that was an interesting one too
175so that's exciting to see that um there are clearly some experts in the buildings and teachers want to continue to learn from each other so I have um two more slides with some testimonials when I say testimonials I think about celebrations at large so these might seem a little bit repeated but this is a separate question um this question is more in response to is there anything else you want to share with us um again at large licensed staff really appreciated um presenters so those were those teacher EXP experts um as well as being in their schools on that day and then classified staff appreciated the organization of the events that day and they also appreciated the presenters um of their PD sessions and then lastly I just have um a brief uh update on
176how many PD sessions and hours we have so far but this is a running total um So currently it looks like we have about 250 courses or s if you will totaling for 66,000 hours um we hope to continue to increase because we're increasing um reporting and tracking especially around classified and AP staff uh on our classified PD days uh that is really actually open to apt staff as well it's relevant for most staff members um so we we hope that continues uh I would also say in terms of reporting data sometimes there might be other things going that we aren't tracking that we don't know about and so the more that we know the more that we can transcribe for folks um and then they can use this whether it's for relicensure purposes or
177future um leadership opportunities or job changes that they're interested in wow I I wrote down two notes this must be really stressful time for you well it's like the end of my year as of yesterday it feels like right so like I can kind of it's just crazy it's a lot do they pre the classified people pre-register for their session so it's just first come first and we' shifted that um what we had noticed um across the board um back to even Ed Camp is that when there was pre-registration if participation was low um like five or under then uh facilitators would cancel and so we took that option away and said that if you're going to host you're going to host and if one person shows up then then it was worthwhile and so
178that's been a great change because people feel valued even if it's just an individual person getting um the information that they needed okay so yes some days it can be quite busy yesterday was um a really great day we had uh all elementary licensed staff um as well as classified staff at Mountain View um and an exciting celebration was we brought over the Grounded Coffee Bar from Mountain View they set up mob over there and that was um a great success and so we hope to continue to do that as well wow all right other questions let's start where did we start last night Don why don't you have any questions I just wanted to shout out and I I always um kind of it's a great pulse check when you see that some of
179the critical feedback falls into the category of like the rooms are too cold which does matter but like that tells you a lot when that's what people are commenting on about the quality of the education and so shout out to everybody who did that yeah Amy I didn't I don't know if I knew this but we use our own to own do all this education so for the classified yeah yeah I think that that's wonderful um yeah and I just I always love how you you know have your followup and your improvement and it just is this continual you know cycle so um thank you very much thank you yeah having gone to lots of sessions and filled out feedback um reports and then going to another session um for professional development and wondering why
180did I take the time to uh record my my feelings and I had talked to colleagues who did the same thing I don't think folks in Thompson School District whether they're licensed staff or classified probably uh could honestly say that they really feel that nobody is paying attention to the feedback um I've given you feedback before that when you make presentations it's really important to me to hear what people didn't think was great or what what additional opportunities should be offered and you do that now on a consistent basis so I have one closing question you get all this feedback how do you decide which Improvement suggestions to implement is it by enough number do X number of people have to make a similar comment or how do you how do you move forward with
181improving PD I will tell you we look at and address almost every single comment or feedback that we can that's specific to CL classified because there are so many different job titles and what was a success on one day might be um not a a success on the following day so we are we look at every single one of those responses um in terms of license staff that is a um a collaboration with learning services so just a few hours ago I was meeting with members of learning services to um Theo was just asking like I can't wait to get that feedback from yesterday so we can continue to use that as we make our PD plans for the next um school year so really we down to the individual we are we are taking
182that into consideration wow that's so important thank you yeah Nancy I would just Echo what everyone that else is saying that you do a really great job you and your team team and I really like how the classified is really giv a lot more training I think that's really useful and beneficial for them yeah thank Alexandra I believe as we've talked about before substitutes are invited to attend yes correct but it's are but do they get paid for the day or is it it's non-paid for them okay it's a non-paid day um they have opportunities um for some paid training how they choose to use those hours is up to them um what I do find is if there is a substitute who wants to come to one of the trainings they might just pop
183in for that instead of spending the whole day um especially I see that mostly with the safety offerings okay yeah and do you find that a fair number of substitutes come or not so much or I would say just a handful typically um or our long-term subs or some of those subs that have that strong partnership um but that that could be an area uh you know for for improvement figuring out how to get that group there but also it's a day off right so okay thank you Denise uh just that I love the continuous process Improvement cycle that you're in it's great to take data do something with it um congratulations on putting an engine and it seems to be really picking up momentum and addressing the needs of our teachers thanks and clerical
184or classified staff uh and just a thank you to all the the folks in all of the divisions willing to donate their time and um come out on that day because you know they're busy on on those days as well so couldn't do it without them nicely done get some rest now because you must be worn out all right um this one is 8.4 Kinston centa land dedication good evening Madam president Board of Education Dr schaer pone assistant superintendent of operations uh tonight I'm provides just really our process be transparent with um the work we're doing to land our School site um east of I25 in the Santa Kinston area so in part of this process you'll see on the next slide um we have board policy that really guides us um on what to
185do um and then uh pieces to make the board aware of when we find issues within the sites we have so I'll spend a couple minutes on this diagram to kind of wouldn't orientate and then walk through the different issues we have and then um thoughts on next steps so you can see the bottom of the page there is Highway 34 then the the center yellow or I'm sorry white um line there is I25 Kinston is that entire development um on the right side of the page so a pretty big area um what you'll see circled in is in bright green is the original School site when we started this process uh years ago now um that's where we just kind of conceptually put the School site it's a sight size similar to um Riverview
186so a K8 SI site um as the development's moving forward we um found some issues because in board policy fe- it lists several items that could disqualify the site from the school district taking in so um not that it can but the the board policy says just make the board aware and then we can work through um the next steps if we so choose so on the original School site there is actually a um high-press gas line that travels like the entire almost length of the US um that falls really well almost well it does it goes underneath the the School site and then within the entire neighborhood so in looking at that we also looked at the proposed s you see up in the purple um so this School site um that we're looking
187at as well does not have that but it does fall within an airport influence Zone um so that's not you know there's as we talked to attorneys the risk of that we just need to be aware of um but it's not unheard of that you know things are built in that zone the hospitals built there um there's another school in another District built in airport influence Zone High planes actually sits within like almost across the street um if you look within this this this line so with that airport influence Zone shows is it's really that blue shade that overlays the top um and it's dashed all the way through and it does the proposed site does is encompassed and is in that area so that's what um we're working through um we did look at
188both um disqualifying features uh with our attorneys the larger risk seems to fit within um the high pressure gas line um when we looked at the proposed site the insurance company said there's nothing additional within that the awareness from our attorneys as we were look through it was really around sound um just really the noise that it could produce um but when you look further into and believe me there's like a whole uh gamut of what anir airpol inflence zone is there's different levels so this is on the outer level uh 65 DB is the concern level and that's really right near the runways so we far away from that um but it still sits within there so that that's why we're we're talking tonight about this but so those are the two proposed sites
189um you know as you look at the yellow and green that it might look like there's a lot of different options what's not on there is there's oil sites um you know act active Wells that kind of determine where we can put things so it's putting a puzzle together and these are the two pieces that we've kind of come up with so in saying all that um um really what what we're required to do is just bring this awareness forward to the board um we're going to continue um work with or the suggestion is to work with our legal council and insurance company to then make sure that um really that proposed site on the North side in that purple airport is is okay um before it actually gets dedicated to us we come back
190to the board for approval um but it is a long process to get to that point so it to be fair to the process and the develop ER what we don't want to do is get a year down the road and then you know it's this becomes an issue so we want to make the um issue um we at the board aware of this issue now and just um yeah any feedback of concern but our plan would be to move forward and really dive into greater details on that um northern site that um if you Orient yourself where there's the Best Buy there there's the railroad tracks um in that whole Centre area it sits north of that so it sits driveway under the under the interstate yeah yeah so but north north of that
191yeah um I'm sorry correct the north side yes so that that's the general area you know we don't even have the the location because there's a large location we kind of shift it but um that's that's the thought as of now so does the board have any questions or concerns with that direction good I have one which is that say that we can we keep proceeding on this because of the policy that exists we would have to vote on it with like an an acknowledgement that there's an exception because it because of it maybe being in one of those zones correct yeah so yeah yeah as part of the uh final dedication we say yes it it satisfies our needs but it does have this um exception on it yes except okay thank you anybody
192else um and how many acres is this is this is this dedicated for an elementary a K8 it's proposed a K8 so it's about 14 to 15 Acres okay yeah it's the same really footprint as Riv review we use that that design for the for this okay and um wines are going to pay for the new school building yeah there's no oh they're not here so yeah yeah I don't think so but uh they're good to work with so all right thanks and so I I mean I assume you've been working with them about these sites or how does like is that are they agreeable to potentially having this Northern site or how how's that process going they are yeah I mean they're um you know they're they're a good partner for us and yeah
193we've been working very close and that's when we sat down you know as this develops we finally sat down and said okay we're to a point to where we have options and you know STA and feel comfortable going to the next step and to be fair to you know McInnes in their development you know they've got to put time and money in making this happen too so that's why we came forward tonight and I'd be sort of curious to know about how the noise of the airport compares to the noise of the freeway if it's right next to the freeway yeah there there is a buffer there um yeah and there are standards within the decibel levels that really anything above 65 DB is what we've got to not build within um yeah so that
194that's something we already looked at and yeah all right got oh so the do we have anything um looking at air pollution right there by the highway I mean a proposed School site next to the highway I know they do it but um there are environmental risks yes I mean it um I don't have the ex we can look into that I don't have the exact you know what is the risk of being there compared to a quarter mile to the east um but that's not anything that we would have to look at for this propos new proposed site at this point no that's not what has been brought up so I can we can double triple check to make sure that's not yeah thank you to are you working against any deadline are there
195any time constraints in terms of getting this worked out well there's always a deadline yeah I mean really what what the deadline is is um the development's moving forward so they want to keep building the School site as the city sees it right now is the original site you saw with the gas line MH so they're asking us okay we can't build on this we can't do anything until we get this figured out so it's really more of a deadline to you know continue the development pushing through to the South um we're okay as far as our deadline of you know procuring it the dedication for when it's projected to be needed um it's more just to be a partner just so they can we can figure this out so they can plan their development
196so you're not working against the date like we have to have this figured out by 2028 I I'm just throwing out a year um I am we are not as as the district know but uh the developer is they're yeah thanks yeah thank you Tod yes all right 8.5 this budget update Bob Mr verol Madame board board president members of the board Dr schaer um thank you um Robert eers Chief Financial Officer um one I'll start with the financial uh discussion every Chief Financial Officer has a different Financial format the format that was sent to you is not my format it was inherited it gives you the information uh we're planning to change that uh I will note that um Zach did not load the January budget because the minutes were not approved till tonight's
197meeting very very no it's okay because we want to make sure that in case there were any change that might want to come through at that point so these January financials do not include the January budget that you voted at your last um board meeting um secondly um the timing of the expenses the other thing on the format the budget was not adop well the budget was not presented in our accounting system on a monthly basis so we don't have a budget to actual we have a a percentage to actual which is a way of looking at the numbers it's a way of looking at that point but what that tells me is that I don't know and I can't tell you when something should have been spent should it been spent in September when
198the school was starting are we going to do it in August before school starting so that that part I'd like to touch all the numbers to make sure they're correct I haven't touched them yet Zach hasn't touched them yet um he we are using the opportunity when any staff members ask us something we say stop we need to know why you're asking us the question how does it affect the budget how does it affect our financials what do we need to do to change procedure if we need to because we don't understand why you're asking and we're not blaming them because nobody told them so we have a lot of good people in the finance department some of which were at the professional development and giving some of the training and theyve obtained it too
199um we have a lot of good staff members in all the Departments that are asking us for certain information we're giving it to them as soon as possible that means we're not giving it to you as soon as we want to as well um so we're updating the the budgeting process at that point um the other thing I would note um as uh when the board adopted the budget last year you budget budgeted a um a budget that has more expenses than Revenue well it was balanced by using part of the reserves the district has some uh good reserves and that's a good way of budgeting at the appropriate time when you look at some things there so when you look at the numbers you always want things to be in the black well we
200budgeted to be in the red accounting wise we have the money to pay our bills we have the money to pay our salaries so I always want to say accounting wise we're going to be looking at some different things there um so looking at that um uh I would say that um the numbers are as presented and I can't tell you anything more about them um for what they mean um the other thing I would say is that um looking at how we spend money um people don't try to spend money to use it they spend money to spend money on the program so it's not the I have to buy more sticky notes to spend the rest of my budget that is that is nowhere in the mentality of the the the district so
201I'm very happy with that part for what I've seen um and then on the the cash balances on the next sheet um we have cash um we don't have the property tax money coming in yet that comes in in March we have a interest free loan with the state that we can draw down the money in the short term on that um it's a great operating um procedure for that part as well um um cash is okay we're paying our bills we don't worry about paying our employees I always want to say that um so that that's that's where I am today I I can't give you any more information then but I'd be open to any questions that any board member has start yeah all right let's start down this way Denise any questions
202on budget okay Alexandra Nancy uh first thank you for everything um so the only thing I wanted to just bring up um so all I did in my spreadsheet is because like to your point you don't have the month by month so I just divided everything by seven months has happened so far in the year and compared it that way when I do that it does look like Central support for whatever reason is really running High I don't know if the next couple months that'll level out um but that is something concerning because and same with School administration because they both look like they're going to be around 2 million over but it's hard to say because I don't know like you what hasn't been paid that maybe because you can't see it in the
203budget yet but that's of concern to me because we already budgeted to use around 11 million of reserves so it's just something just to be cognizant of which I'm sure you are thank you we will definitely keep an eye on that part great thank you for your time you bill um negotiations I'm sorry just trying to up mam president School Board Dr schaer Bill seber assistant superintendent Human Resources uh I'm presenting tonight with Su timer our TA president negotiations update Focus area number three human Talent uh investigate areas and compensation and benefits so that TSD is competitive this presentation will connect to strive 2025 number three human talent to upcoming negotiations which is on Monday February 24th discussion items for tonight is highlights of 2425 negotiation agreements interest based model for negotiations we continue using
204that model and then uh we'll introduce the negotiations team and then review negotiation dates and time so um looking at what what we accomplished last year if you recall we have a 2-year mou so last year was an off year so primarily focused on um compensation so teachers did get steps and columns um in our in our new agreement really we excited to add $3,300 to the base salary and that rippled through to all the other sales throughout um there was a little bit of change with the extra Duty salary schedule we add added four positions per Elementary in terms of Elementary leadership team which was really um um a good thing because we have teachers who were doing the work without being compensated for it um they added girls flag football head coach and
205you've talked about that flag football team uh unified programming coordinator one for the district um step for all extra Duty contracts which doesn't happen every year so that was good um also um a $500 a year stien for licensed staff who have national board certification um also out of that we had a lot of task force forces formed so there was one task force that specifically addressed Elementary PL um plan time um site-based shared decision-making models across the district and leave practices so today we finalized our critical questions so 2 plus two is the oversight committee so it's two members of administration two members of ta that kind of meet and we move critical questions forward for us for discussion so the eight questions that we have is the first one is what adjustments need
206to be made to site Bas share decision-making process so that's a committee group that that we worked with uh outside in negotiations going into negotiations this year what adjustments number two is what adjustments need to be made to Elementary plan time so that's a Contin ation of conversation we had last year number three is how can we recruit and retain quality professionals having to do with compensation how can we clarify the problem solving grievance process uh question five how does the TA president's release time help support education number six how do we address undesirable student Behavior seven our leave practices meeting the needs of our employees and that's a committee group question and the last one that's a continuation in there how do we clean up up the memorandum of understanding to match intention so
207interest base it's it's the same model that we're using so I necessarily won't go over there but uh you know we cover the story for each one of the questions we cover the story the interest options criteria solution agreements and implementation so negotiating team looks somewhat similar we have Karen Hamford Elementary School principal who's new to the team and then uh Aon Estes who's a teacher at High Plains is the new uh member for Tea's team and in negotiation dates we invite all of you to be there if you'd like uh like I said February 21st is in the boardroom we have March 13th April 10th and 11th and we really love the back-to-back days so we love it so much we're like let's try a trifecta so instead of two days let's try three
208so April 28th 29th and 30th is uh a group of times we're meeting and the last meeting is uh May 5th thank you board any questions for us Sue will be more than likely to answer any questions you have so I'll stand out of the way and let Sue I have questions one first of all is are you having a facilitator and who yes so Susan Sparks is coming back uh we're totally excited she's been with us I think this is year 26 with us also on your dates that you're meeting so what happens if a negotiation sub cancels last I'm looking at and there's Fridays Sundays Mondays and Fridays are big um how do you handle that because Subs is Subs seem to be yeah so typically the school would cover that or that's
209something in human resources that we' need to send a person over but it's highly important to be attending the meetings okay and I don't know which side we start on question Andra I just have a question this year there are a lot more negotiation dates than last year is that because it's the like on year so there's more topics to discuss to totally this is the critical question year so uh last year we had compensation and two related items so this one we have eight one more question we get a of those questions because they weren't on our yes we we didn't add that because we just finalized right before the meeting today make sense at 4:45 before executive session we finalized and then we called Susan Sparks on the phone she was on a
210plane heading to Arizona so we had a conversation with her of what the agenda looks like and what the questions are okay thank you all right appreciate you guys all right um we're almost done iom promise I think the only other thing is there's one remit one written report which I believe was Pi no is that right um and then um just an announcement February 26th which is next Wednesday we will have a special meeting at 5:00 here in the ad building okay other than that um and if you can't make it I'll make sure that you have what you need the 26th oh yeah I know it was that was well work through it I'll I'll make sure you have things all right um meeting is adjourned