001e e e [Music] you're ready [Music] yeah I'm going to call the meeting to order so Laura Lee will you please begin with the Roll Call St Boyd here Denise Chapman she with us online here okay you extending remotely Amy Doran here Don Kirk here Barbara Cruz here Alexander LOM here Nancy rumfelt here thank you lur Le and Nancy would you pledge alance to 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 for all thank you and um Ste would you do the mission statement please sure the Thompson School District will be a school that empowers challenges and inspires students faculty staff St parents School leaders and community members to learn achieve and Excel thank you stu our first
002um item on the agenda is the adoption of the agenda for today September 18th 2024 are there any changes to the um agenda for tonight's meeting hearing none I will take a motion to adopt the agenda as printed so move second so it was Stu and Don was second thank you and Laura Lee please call the role Stu Boyd hi Denise Chapman hi Amy Doran hi Don Kirk I Barbara Cruz hi Alexander Lum I Nancy rumel I thank you Laur Le all right um item 3.1 is the approval of the minutes for our last board actual board meeting which was August 21st 2024 does anyone have any changes or corrections to the minutes hearing none I will take a motion to approve the minutes for May uh 2024 I'll move thank you Nancy second was
003it joh okay did you get that okay so Laur Le please call the RO Stu Boyd I Denise Chapman hi Amy Doran hi Don Kirk hi Barbara Cruz hi Alexander Lon hi Nancy rumel I thank you the minutes were approved for August 21st 2024 and now we have the approval for the minutes for our last study session which was September 4th 2024 does anybody have any changes or corrections to the study session hearing none I will take a motion to approve the minutes for September 4th 2024 so move thank you second thank you Don Stu and done you and Laur Le please call the RO Stu Boyd I Denise Chapman hi Amy Doran I don Kirk I Barbara Cruz I Alexander Lum I Nancy rumfelt I motion passes so um we'll move into public participation
004and we'll begin with Dr schaer's report good evening Madame President members of the Board of Education and our awesome audience this evening I am pleased to bring you our September update of things that are occurring here in the Thompson School District we are pleased to announce that we are celebrating terrific academic achievement and progress across our district with 13 schools meeting or exceeding the median growth percentile and the most recent State assessments one of the most encouraging signs from this year's state test results is the decrease in the number of students who did did not meet expectations as the district continues to implement new strategies and support systems we expect these numbers to improve even more in the coming years a special thank you goes out to our entire District staff team as well as
005our students for their hard work and continued dedication to each student and family here in the Thompson School District yesterday Thompson School District was proud to join our community in celebrating Constitution Day September 17th is designated as Constitution Day and citizenship day to commemorate the signing of the US Constitution in Philadelphia on September 17th 1787 schools in TSD hosted a variety of educational activities for students to learn more about our US Constitution and its Rich history last month I was pleased to join members of the Board of Education District staff family members and friends as we walked in the 2024 corn roast parade in Loveland hosted by the lovelin Chamber of Commerce the corn roast Festival is an annual tradition that brings the community together for food fun live music and an excellent parade it
006was great to see so many smiling faces and such a beautiful morning thank you to the community for all your support September 3rd was designated as a professional development day for all staff in the Thompson School District PD days are an important part of Staff Development as they allow an opportunity for team members to enhance their instructional skills Garner New Perspectives and learn from each other our first few weeks of the school year have been terrific and we are thankful for your support grandparents day was celebrated at several several of our schools at the beginning of September multiple Elementary campuses hosted breakfast sessions or luncheons to honor grandparents and other important people in their students lives celebrations such as these provide a great opportunity for Community me community members to tour our buildings meet our
007staff and see the great work of our students our Board of Education hosted their first public engagement session of the new school year on September 12th The Forum provided an opportunity for members throughout our community to meet board members learn more about their work ask questions and share their thoughts we look forward to seeing you at our next session on October 21st here in the TSD administration building the alliance for a healthier generation has named namaka Elementary School and Centennial Elementary School as two of America's healthiest schools for 2024 this annual recognition honors schools for implementing best practices to support the health of students staff and families this year 879 schools across 30 states were awarded the title namaka Elementary also received this distinguished award in 2023 congratulations to both School communities congratulations to kidspack
008on the grand opening of their new facility the nonprofit which provides weekend meals for students in need throughout TSD recently constructed their new home in north lovelin and hosted an open house earlier this month this new building provides the kids pack team with the space they need to maintain their current programming while also giving them flexibility for future growth at the end of August leaders from the Thompson School District pter school district and Estus Park School District came together at The District administration building to continue their collaborative work in addressing youth mental health needs within our communities all three school districts in lurmer County are dedicated to align in our efforts reducing duplication of services and continuing to innovate our support offerings recently a panel of teachers and administrators came together to visit with Ferguson
009High School seniors about various paths skills and struggles that they have personally experienced this valuable discussion is so helpful as these students begin to make their own life plans after high school so we have a couple of uh student recognitions that we're going to recognize this evening and first I'm going to ask um and and helina Encarnacion if you're here if you can stand please awesome and let me tell you why she's standing congratulations to Angelina Encarnacion she's the recipient of the advanced placement National recognition award and the advanced placement scholar with honors award this prestigious honor is given to students who have demonstrated exceptional academic achievement by earning an average score of at least 3.2 five on all AP exams taken in scores of three or higher on four or more of these exams
010um Angelina's dedication hard work and passion for learning are truly accomplishments and are to be recognized congratulations that's amazing and don't go too far we're going to take a picture with you in a minute but I also want to recognize um we have several other students from Thompson Valley High School who are AP Capstone uh diploma recipients and so I think some of you are in the audience and that would be um Isaac kitzer Marco lapier and Kate weer we've got one of the three but let me tell you why we're honoring this individual Thompson Valley High School is proud to announce three incredible individuals who earned the AP Capstone diploma following their tremendous efforts in the 2023 2024 school year congrat congratulations to Isaac kitzer Marco lapier and Kate weer to receive the AP
011Capstone diploma students must earn scores of three or higher an AP seminar AP research and on four additional AP exams of their choice congratulations to these three students your accom your accomplishments really make us proud [Applause] congratulations so if we can have these two students come forward please we're going to take a picture with you on the board of education sh [Music] [Applause] okay I next uh would like to um introduce to you our recommendation as the new director of infrastructure for the Thompson School District Marvin Marv uh karmac is uh we are recommending um for the new uh position of director of infrastructure Mr carac comes to the Thompson School District from Englewood schools where he started his career in it as a computer technician b a position he's held for four years in
012this role Marv troubleshooted AV Equipment performed network analysis and established rapport with students staff and parents he also repaired maintained all technology Mr karmac then transitioned into the technology manager role as the manager Marv managed computer tax and oversaw the repair maintenance of all technology he also coordinated and provided training for staff to maximize the use of District technology systems Marv held that position for six months and became the director of Information Technology a role he has had for the past 5 years as the Director of Information Technology Marv oversaw the efficient an effective UTI utilization of the information technology staff provided Technical and business training motivation and support he also planned administered and supervised the systemwide implementation of the district-wide student onetoone program Mr Cari managed the procurement of it and developed a long-term
013capital plan to help with the district's mission and vision for technology we are really excited to welcome Marv aboard he will be a huge asset for the Thompson School District it is an absolute honor and privilege to serve in this role I look forward to each and every opportunity and challenge so thank you very much welcome next we are moving on to uh community and staff recognitions as you know each month uh we bring forward to you the top of Thompson Awards and these are peer nominated Awards Awards of Staff members in our classified licensed and a positions as well as our community champion award it's a new award that we started last year which recognizes um Community groups nonprofits businesses within our community that um have done great things for our schools so our
014community champion award um is not able to attend uh this evening and so we will honor them uh at our next meeting and uh just to let them know this is uh they are the stars of honor um and it's uh Trevor Taylor um is um the head of the company and he was nominated by Jamie Felton so again we'll we'll recognize him next month uh we're now going to move on to classified and so um I am going to introduce to you uh one of our amazing bus drivers Transportation uh individuals and that is Dennis Fout and uh Dennis was nominated by a number of individuals from Trust but I'm going to introduce principal Karen Hanford who's going to come forward and introduce the introducer good evening Madame President members of the board Dr
015schaer it's my honor and privilege to honor Mr Dennis tonight um my name is Karen Hanford I'm the principal at trusted Elementary School this is our fifth grade teacher Megan long and we had the privilege of taking fifth graders to Camp last year at Calwood and Jamestown and Mr Dennis happened to be our bus driver so I'm G to let Miss Long share good evening so Mr D was our bus driver to and from our overnight field trip to Calwood which is in Jamestown Colorado on our journey home we were safely going down the oneway mountain dirt road when we were stopped by two approaching buses coming up the mountain Mr D was so cool and calm the entire time as he backed up the mountain until the other two buses could pass on their
016way up the mountain the stress level was high for the adults on the bus and the students could sense that yet Mr D got us safely down the mountain he did a quick check of the exterior of the bus then calmly asked if everybody just sitting in the bus was okay I was really impressed so he stayed calm under the stress and got us back to school in one piece so thank you very much good job congratulations thank you he used to also be our bus driver every day so we've known Mr Dennis for a long time very well deserved so thank you congratulations thank you very much thank you and stick around because we'll take a picture um at the end with uh all the recipients so our next two individuals um I get
017the honor of introducing because our um recipients are here but the nominators are not there so I will be going to the podium so first I would like to uh introduce for licensed uh Julie Sullivan who is an ELD tosa so Julie would you please come forward and Julie you received an anonymous nomination so it's it's a big secret but I'm GNA still read the the great things that this person had to say Julie is always looking for creative ways to serve ELD students and ELD and other teachers in our district she drives out to observe and Coach she helps add accommodations and differentiate to lessons and assessments and she regularly presents and offers suggestions to colleagues and staff Julie can work with any teacher or group of teachers on any problem she never shies
018away from a challenge she even has volunteered to give scop presentations at schools she visits and Lead at Camp sessions too her great communication makes her easy to collaborate with and her efficiency and non-nonsense attitude make the teamwork feel effective Julie [Applause] congratulations next I'd like to um have Chastity Stringer come forward and Chastity is an our assistant principal one of our assistant principles at Lucio Irwin Middle School Chastity was nominated by Emilia Barnes teamwork was demonstrated by taking control as an assistant principal with being short staffed in the office all while taking control of Cass and with staff interviews she has been an amazing staff and administrator to work with she deserves to be recognized for her dedication to our school and our district trast congratulations okay so if our uh 3 can come
019forward we'd like to take a picture with you and the board all right everyone kind of Squish together a little bit make sure I can see all your faces all right on three one two good thank [Applause] you no I can't I can't parallel park so last but not least I'd like to um introduce Mr Theo Robison uh Theo is the executive director of secondary schools and Theo is going to introduce our uh school that we'll be presenting and as you know each month we showcase a school here in the Thompson School District and Theo take it away so greetings Dr Schaefer Madame President members of the board I'm extremely proud to be here tonight to introduce our new principal at Walt Clark Middle School Mary Lane so she could talk about all the great
020things that's happening in our neighboring middle school thank you everyone as Theo said my name is Mary Lane and I'm this uh principal at Walt Clark Middle School I'd like to introduce my assistant principal Chris Stein um we are thrilled to announce that our Colorado Department of Education school performance framework score has risen from 39.8 % in 2023 to 57.7% in 2024 this remarkable growth is a direct result of the hard work dedication and teamwork of our students staff in the entire Walt Clark Middle School Community we thank everyone who contributed to this achievement and we couldn't have done it without your passion and commitment today I have a little snippet of the people who are responsible um for this so I'll introduce them in a minute we really look forward to continuing to improve
021our academic achievement and growth during this school year by continuing to push for excellence this evening we'd like to do a little Showcase of some of the great things that make Walt Clark wal Clark so I'd like to introduce Liz herck hi good evening um I'm Liz harck the instructional coach at wal Clark so part of my role as instructional coach was um kind of building our plc's and a shared understanding which we did across grade levels Focus in on writing some of the things that we did from electives all the way 6th through 8th grade um we deconstructed Pro prompts and rubrics we did schoolwide writing um we did constructed restaurant practice you can see up there on the slides I'm not going to read everything we just really created a shared understanding around
022our goal how we're going to get there and through our weekly PC um get to look at student data and made sure that we were all on the same page as a school every teacher every student so hi um I'm Christine bout I'm the media specialist and one of our stem coordinators at Walt Clark obviously the work that our instructional coach does on our building is very important to increase scores um but we also take pride in having a the only Middle School to have a stemx program that also helps increase scores with students um our sux program provides curriculum that students would not usually get exposed to in Middle School career but let's hear it from the kiddos ourselves themselves and not me um first up is Zay higginson and he's going to talk
023about a couple stomach classes he took and why they were important to him and they're important to kids I'm a 8th grade middle school student at Walt Clark the two stemx classes I took that were my favorite were construction and electric vehicles I liked construction cuz I built a model wall that was like real walls and houses and I got to do the electrical stuff for it and wire up a light bulb and the final test was like plugging in the wall and flipping on the light bulb and seeing if it actually worked and then in electric vehicles I learned how to solder and work with electricity safely and that's what I enjoyed about the stemx program cool awesome hi I'm uh Talon Myers I'm an eighth grade student at Walt Clark Middle School in
024my favorite stus class I had was uh drones with Mr kuster uh drones with Mr kuster Pro uh provided a knowledge of the future of using drones in search and rescue emergencies to just having fun we I have shown my knowledge by helping Custer uh operate these drones and repair them and learn how to work them and we have shown a higher understanding of these drones to our students by showing the way they can maneuver to how they can get camic shots of like our school and recording videos of like school events to get a better View and uh I just love that class because I enjoyed having a Hands-On project and learning how these work and how they can move and all that so cool all right hi my name is Amanda Myers I
025am the Avid elective teacher and Avid coach at Walt Clark um we are unique at Walt Clark that we are the only middle school with the AVID program if you're not familiar with Avid it is a College and Career Readiness program um we develop skills and mindset necessary for success in school and in life um we incorporate in all lessons at Walt Clark the Wicker strategies and wicker is writing inquiry collaboration organization and reading um and we believe that that truly helps with increasing scores as well so the engagement that I've seen I'm I'll brag up on her a little bit but the engagement that I've seen with our students in her classroom is like you can feel the excitement when you walk in and so this is just a little snippet of the wonderful
026things that are going on at Walt Clark and thank you for inviting us thank you be before you totally go um do any of the board members have questions for them or did you have something more no you were okay with questions you could come um wire some of my house I I have problems and we don't want my husband doing the electrical so you could come do it um let's start down Don b i I just want to say congratulations to everybody for such a huge increase I mean that's just mindboggling so way to go for everybody who did it that's amazing um yeah congratulations amazing work um to the two students first of all both of you were phenomenal public speakers so thank you um yeah so hats off to you and just
027curious do you happen to want to pursue a career in drone or electricity or anything like that or thank you okay cool I feel like uh if I get a career I feel like I can for the students also have you had the opportunity to use what you learned uh last summer um since the class was over yeah I uh why don't you go ahead and come up to the microphone so it'll be recorded yeah I got to fly run my drone over lakes and stuff my dad's drone and got to see bunch of cool stuff and take cool videos and stuff right I had a competition with the car I built in my electric vehicles class and I won the competition for the fastest car and then I also had to make some repairs
028to the car during that competition what way to go guys that's terrif sure Nancy anything more okay yeah just thank you so much U the kids were impressive the whole outlook that you have on um this year must feel really really good so thank you yeah and U Denise did you have anything okay all right um Don can you slide toward Mark a little bit just so I can see your face there you go um I think that's going to be pretty good all right on three one three [Applause] right and that con cludes my report thank you all right 4.4 is our Bo board committee reports and board I don't remember if I gave you a topic or not because I wasn't feeling well so um I'm thinking that if you just talk about
029your committees would be perfect so let's start will let start with Alexandra you want to go first please sure um so the committee I had at the Joint Insurance committee which looks at um the the insurance coverage for employees so health insurance and vision and dental and things like that um took a break over the summer but then we did resume last week um looking at the um for the first time for this school year um and it was good to all be back and looking at um utilization um data over the past several months um and beginning a little bit of a conversation about thinking about how some of the um Insurance options might change a little bit for um the next year which the renewal for that will be next July so a
030ways a ways in the future but not that long um so it's always interesting to learn that side of the um healthc care stuff and um I enjoyed it my my committees haven't yet started up and so since yesterday was Constitution Day I just figured um I would just talk a little bit about you know that we are so blessed in this nation that there were those 56 brave men who risked their life including their children and their wives who signed the Constitution which has allowed us to be one of the greatest experiments um known and do we always get it right no but the great thing about America is it offers Second Chances third chances fourth chances to everyone and here we can still havee free speech and it's all about to me is
031just being able to debate the merits of ideas and then just go back to um helping each other working together and we really really are we really are blessed in this company in this country with all the rights that we have and so I love to acknowledge this day move on okay first of all amen Nancy to what you said um my committees have already begun to meet and I'm going to talk very quickly about two meetings that I had today um this morning at 700 a.m I met with the board of directors of the birth at schools fund this is the group that uh annually puts on the birth at bash uh those of you who have been around the levand birthed Community for a few years probably have heard of the birthed bash
032this is a community organization uh run primarily by parents that in the 15 years of existence uh has raised more than2 million for the birth at schools and I prior to my election uh to the Board of Education I was a regular board member now I sit on the board as an ex officio member and it's always a pleasure for me to go to those meetings and then the other thing that I did this afternoon with uh I think three of my colleagues up here we had the opportunity to tour the landing which is the teen shelter which is currently under construction on the campus at Monroe Elementary and even though the interior of the building is still pretty rough um it's easy even at this point to see uh what this is going to
033do when it's completed probably in December or January for the unhoused students in our community so um yeah that's that's what I wanted to share with you um my committees have met um on the 11th of September was um seak um so that's the special education advisory um committee um sort of did an overview of the new um Staffing model that llo hunt um has crafted and it's pretty pretty cool um um things are grouped more into pods um so there's um one coordinator in charge of um the k8s and Charter um one coordinator in charge of um element El with um a and ilc one coordinator in charge of the high schools um including transition and Community connections and then one coordinator um in charge of middle schools and outof District placements um and
034then each pod has access to a psychologist um so things are um I think going to flow um you know a little better as far as um contacts and um just the they can support more schools I think um we talked about PD and training um we talked about the seak recommendations and goals so um it was a um a pretty good first first meeting for the um semester the year and then I also attended last evening um the pi um Partners in education um and we had quite a good turnout of um grown-ups for the littles um in Early Education so um it was it was great um lamb gave a very detailed um yet userfriendly um overview of a head start um to all of the the new the new members um I
035talked of course about the budget you know what's interesting about Head Start is that budget goes from October to November so it's a little different than the traditional um budget and then um we're thinking about new officers um so lamb put the call out to um for new officers so and then um you know what I appreciate a lot about Pi is you know it's very um accessible for everybody to get to because there's um Child Care um and food and always pie so um uh so Dak has met once already this school year and uh we had a brief overview just to bring us back to the state statutes that guide dax's work because it is one of the Committees that does have some guidance that we have to do and then we gathered
036a lot of questions and ideas for topics throughout the year so that presenters as they're presenting are already given information in advance about what the people in DC want to see as they're getting the presentations which is really nice it gives people a chance to think way ahead head and to prepare and to come ready for those things that it's interesting to the people in the room and then um we had talked in our board retreat about giving Dak a charge and so really having Dak give um more than the recommendations that we've been doing for years but a deeper level and a deeper dive into a challenge um and so there was sort of a preview of what those might be and some discussion about how that might work differently than before uh I
037also got to meet with rotary yesterday which was really nice there's so much support in that room um you know there's a member uh who's sitting up here who does represents us well and um a lot of support in the room and then um there were lots of events already at schools I mean we just hit the ground running when it comes to the school year so lots of exciting things happening thank you Don um Denise do you have a report yes okay I know sometimes it's not there all thank you Denise all right mine um I'm on the PCC which is the professional concerns committee and our task for this year primary goal is to work on addressing some of the concerns that the teachers brought forward last year on and coping with strategies
038to help with that throughout system basically so we're working on that we found that an hour every month doesn't really seem to give us enough time so we're expanding that and looking for a longer period of time so that we can have some good face-to-face convers ation around it and then the other one is teacher education found Thomson Education Foundation and um they have always got a plethora of events that they're working on activities celebrations um ways to support teachers ways to support students um one of the things that's coming up this weekend if you have any free time and you can get a ticket still is uh the Moonlighting teachers is a group of retired teach teachers that entertain people with songs and parodies from all about education and it's quite funny so um
039that's this weekend down at the Rialto anybody else have any other comments or all right thank you that's all of our public committee reports and we'll move now to public comments so I'll turn this over to Don who will read the information about it and run the button all right because the board wants to to hear the viewpoints of the public and also needs to conduct its 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 is a large number of speakers the board
040may elect to take comments for 1 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 topic related to the board's conduct of the schools speakers may offer such criticism of school operations and programs as concerns them but are encouraged to exercise their speech rights responsibly Personnel matters will be discussed in executive session uh so when I call you up and you start speaking well the green light will turn on when you have 30 seconds left it'll give you uh yellow light and then it'll start beeping when you are done uh first up we have Tom pittz thank you I'm Tom pittz I'm a 49e resident of Loveland and self-employed Consulting engineer when I heard the students uh from Walt
041Clark speaking it brought back fond memories of the times my children were at wal Clark um for the last several years I've served on the master planning committee of the district and this year I'm chair of the committee uh my remarks tonight are my own uh the master planning committee was established in 1995 by the board to recommend Capital facilities needs to the board and to update the master the facilities master plan in areas of U maintenance modernization growth and safety for each school I'd like to emphasize that the committee is made up of community members primarily and the recommendations that come out of the uh of the committee or those of the community members that making up the committee the bond issue that is currently under consideration was developed by the community members on
042that committee um developing the bond issue occurred over a two-year period of effort by the uh committee and with a lot of support from The District staff fortunately um I would like to point out that our master plan include for the years of 2024 through 2030 includes $400 million of needs for the district the $220 million are the highest that are in the bond represent the highest priority needs for this district and we thought would be a wise use of taxpayer funds and we're very much aware of that that these funds are provided by District taxpayers um the bond funds will benefit every school in The District in different ways depending on needs and uh fundamentally the bond issue will accomplish two things it'll modernize and maintain the function and safety of our existing schools
043and two it'll meet the short-term highest priority growth needs in the district uh in the process of talking about the bond the money the building the property tax it's easy to lose sight of why we are doing this we are doing this for the children and I would hope that that would be the Forefront of your messaging to the community to the voters to the public I would like to add that one of the great experiences of the uh working on the committee has been working with our outstanding administrative staff Todd pone ter Flores Gren btig Ryan Gordon Jones lamb Koo and many others and from an outside perspective you can count on that administrative uh Team to carry out your policies and directives and to meet keep this District functioning on a day-to-day uh
044and year-to-year basis thank [Music] you Kelly seatan good evening Madame President board I'm Kelly Seaton I live in berid and first I just want to say really quick I'm so excited about our girls flag football teams they are doing awesome and I just wanted to say it was a great article on the portal Herald today so that wasn't part of my why I'm here but go go okay so first I'm here to thank you tonight for your vote of approval for the bond and the Special M Levy for the 2024 ballot it's grossly apparent our District's in dire need of repairs upgrades additions as well as haircut conditioning our growth and birth it is just beginning and we need these additions to attract and retain staff and students in Thompson schools while I wholeheartedly empathize
045with the Thompson School District V voters this election year because there's a city and county tax increase also on the ballot I just simply ask voters to take time and talk to any student in our district about why they should vote Yes don't talk to me don't talk to our awesome you know Bond supporters talk to the students and ask them why we should make an investment in our future while I am an internal Optimist ask anybody if it should fail our district needs to lead the way to Advocate a change to school funding at the state level creative funding for electrical upgrades air conditioning need to be explored additional information sessions for continued budget transparency and Community Education need to happen if you heard more than 20 school districts are on the ballot this
046November asking voters for 6.4 billion in tax measures that number is increasing daily nine districts are on the ballot last year both for M levies and bonds only two passed three districts are repeating their flea again this year this is a cry for help that funding for education in Colorado needs an overhaul I'm going to try to get through this last part without crying lastly I've only been a parent for 15 years I tell my kids that daily that I'm learning to do this every day and trying to do the best I can this past week has been one of the hardest weeks because every email I received from your District regarding threats to my children's schools and substantiated or not it sends me into a roller coaster of panic sending my kids out the
047door every day I can't imagine the decisions that you all have to make to inform us parents in public about these events I just want to Simply ask that our district and law enforcement Community continue to hold these students accountable for these actions I don't have Solutions or suggestions because it's beyond my realm of expertise and just in a perfect world I wouldn't be here talking about either of these things tonight we're all navigating this together and I hope we're all doing the best we can thank you Megan lock good evening my name is Dr Megan lock and I am representing a group of parents and athletes regarding the termination of Coach Tores even though this is a Personnel issue parents and athletes deserve to know why coach Torres was not given a second chance
048we are aware of a survey that was given to students at Thompson High School regarding pronouns and preferred names did those teachers get coaching after sending out the surveys we are not aware of any coaching that was given to coach Torres so why was this not the first course of action there were numerous individuals that spoke last month regard regarding coach torres's termination and concerns about due process what actions have been taken since the last meeting we're not asking for specific details but parents and athletes deserve to know if any course of action has occurred since the last Board of Education meeting anybody able to answer that I don't know okay um in that case um I know you can't answer this next question but um the next question that this group has for you
049is do you have a plan to conduct an independent investigation there are several members of the level and high school girls cross country team who wanted to be here tonight but could not so I relaying an Ask of them to you the Board of Education we hope the district in investigates coach torres's termination so we can have our coach back for track thank you for your time Reggie Johnson thank you for allowing me to speak my name is Reggie Johnson my pronouns are she and her I'm the president of P flag Fort Collins in Northern Colorado I'm here on behalf of P flag families in the Thompson School District and across Northern Colorado P flag's mission is to create a caring just and affirming world for lgbtq plus people and those who love them I
050am also a proud parent and grandparent of kiddos who are part of this marginalized Community Malcolm X has stated education is an important element in the struggle for human rights it is the means to help our children ReDiscover their identity and thereby increase their self-respect I believe education is more than Reading Writing and arithmetic it's about gaining the knowledge and skills needed to become a better person and to create a better society in which to live according to the Trevor Project 41% of lgbtq Youth seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year that's more than four times more than their peers these youth are not inherently prone to Suicide risk because of who they are but rather because of how they're mistreated and stigmatized in our society this includes the classroom and the school environment
051but having at least one affirming adult can reduce the risk of a suicide attempt among lgbtq young people by 40% that adult may be their parent but it also may be their teacher when looking specifically at transgender youth the static statistics are even more alarming with up to 56% considering suicide and 23% actually attempting to end their life this is unfortunately evidenced by many stories I've heard from P flag families who found out that their child is transgender at a Behavioral Health Center or an emergency room in response to this hate Nationwide P flag has seen a large influx of what we refer to as refugees which are families who have moved to the area in order to flee states where they faced extreme discrimination against them and marginalized of their trans loved ones they
052come to Colorado where our school boards have policies to protect and create safe spaces for transgender students the bottom line is that the work that Thompson School District and your board is doing to affirm each and every lgbtq student particularly transgender students is literally life saving it's imperative that students all students exist in an environment where they are safe supported and even celebrated when a student doesn't have to constantly worry about who they are they're able to f focus on who they can become for students who are affirmed at school surviving is a reality and thriving becomes an option behalf of P leg thank you to the school district for what you're doing to care for our kids that's all okay this concludes our um public participation little brain FL blog I guess all right
053um next item will be the action consent items and these are the items that we had presented to us at a previous meeting or at a study session um and involved items that need approval um I'm going to read the list before we continue and I'm going to ask board members afterwards if there's any item they want pulled for further discussion um then let me know okay so here are the items that are on our list 5.1 approve approval of personnel extra Duty and Coach coaching recommendations 5.2 approval of expenditures over $50,000 5.3 approval of gift and donations somebody's reading that Don is okay thank you not yet but um 5.4 approval of adoption of the Thompson School um School District Board of Education legisl platform 5.5 approval of Buckingham and Southside ditchwater shareer sale
054contract 5.6 approval of the city of Loveland intergovernmental agreement IGA for energy assistance program 5.7 approval of federal grants and Head Start policy manual 5.8 approval of Thompson School District um accounting policies and procedures and federal grants FIS physical fiscal um policy man man so board members if you have an item that you want pulled for further discussion um would you let me know now instead of pulling it during when we before we vote can I just make a comment during discussion sure we can do it that way then I'll just do it that way okay does anybody else have any items okay how about any um discussion on any of our items um do you want to go ahead and make your comment now yeah go ahead it it's in regards to the legislative
055platform and so this is something that stoy started last year I don't remember when we started remember anyway um at first I wasn't certain about it but then as we worked on it there was a lot of good conversation that we had and then when I S saw the final product on September 4 study session there was a part of me that was a little uncertain because it seemed really kind of heavy on some of the inclusion in mental health and I would wanted to see more emphasis on education and academics and and funding and so forth and as I thought about it it just seemed that it's not it's not a perfect document but I think that the work that we did made it a really good start and so I'm supporting this because
056I know that this won't be the the first time that we look at it and that probably as we think of more things and work together more we we'll find different ways to improve it add to it expand it and so forth and so I just wanted to share those thoughts with everyone about how much work went into this and and that how I went kind of full full circle so okay thank you all right um Don would you please read the gift and donations there was a $5,000 donation to support class uh to offer support with classroom supplies for 10 teachers at tresc elementary school from Subaru of leveland thank you all right um since we didn't have any items pulled do I need to reread the list or are we good we're good
057okay I will take a um motion to approve the list of items on the consent agenda so moved second that was who Don and Stu all right any further questions or discussions on it all right Laura Lee please call the all Stu boydd hi Denise Chapman Denise hi Amy Doren hi Don Kirk hi Barbara Cruz hi Alexander lesum hi Nancy rfel hi thank you Laura Lee and It All Passes thank you appreciate that Nancy all right um 6.1 is nopes seven where are we no we're on 6.1 M okay that would be um assessment update hi Dr Schneider good evening Madame President members of the school board and Dr Schaefer Melissa Schneider assistant superintendent of learning services tonight I bring to you uh an annual presentation on how we have done as a district performance-
058wise and academically um as well as places where uh we can highlight efforts to improve moving forward and uh required communication that I need to give you from our state in terms of our school ratings so uh without further Ado I'm just going to get going on that uh this connects very strongly to our strive 2025 areas one and two student achievement and inclusive and supportive culture our aim is to be able to uh provide access to an excellent instructional experience for our students that maximizes academic performance and student well-being this presentation will include academic outcomes and plans for continuous Improvement across our instructional system a little bit of background each year our district receives a district performance framework also known as the DPF from the state and each School receives a school performance framework
059these Frameworks uh Drive our unified Improvement plans a unified Improvement plan or a uip is made at the school and the district level and you need to use the data reflected in your uh report as areas of improvement and the purpose of this presentation is to highlight our areas of Celebration as well as an instructional vision for moving forward great news is there's a lot of celebrations this year very pleased to share those with you this year as you probably read in our local newspaper it was our highest score on our district performance framework since the framework began in 2016 we didn't have a score for a couple of years during the pandemic but this is a huge celebration we increased up to 60.9 points we were up 5.8 points from last year and are
060we are accredited with performance a side note is I was really interested to find out how um unique it is to improve 5.8 points and I actually did pull uh the Improvement levels of other school districts across the state and for the 170ish school districts that are in the state only about 15 of them uh improved more than 5.8 points so that is a large margin to improve and so I'm very proud of that as well um for the school district 24 of our schools were accredited with performance up from 19 last year four of our schools qualified for our school of Distinction award and last year we did not have any all of our high schools are accredit with accredited with performance our graduation rates are record high and the district made significant gains
061in student academic growth what I have for you on this slide in the next one is the front page of our district performance framework you can see our score off to the right there of 60.9% and you can also see that our uh our growth and achievement are still approaching levels but we also have strong post-secondary and Workforce Readiness um in the performance area this is on the lower part of the first page you can see um that we meet some standard assurance es with participation rates uh you can see on the bottom which is a a place that I go to quickly when this comes in is how did each of our levels performs so you have elementary middle and high school and Elementary we are uh we are meeting in achievement and approaching
062in academic growth in Middle School approaching in both areas and in high school meeting in all of those areas now while there is a ton of data I could provide to you I did select some basic slides to be able to show you how our performance was I am more than happy to provide and get my uh assessment team to be able to provide for you any other mix of data that you would like for us to pull uh so I'll go off of these tonight and I do want to thank director Rumsfeld for being able to point out uh an error on one of our slides which I will be correcting in the moment tonight and then sending you that correction so I do appreciate that um Nancy so on this first slide here
063we are showing how many uh the percentage of our students who meet and exceed uh the the performance requirements on these State assessments so on the left you see Elementary School and on the middle uh on the right hand side you see middle school and the gray bars uh represent how the state did and on the left hand side the colored bars are for the different year last three years of our performance as a district so you can uh see where we've we've we uh flattened out a little bit in elementary school for English language arts and we are very aware of that and we are working very hard to to drive with the science of reading and make some improvements in that area so we held steud there and uh in in middle school
064you can see that we've made gains and and uh in the elementary we stayed above the state and in middle school we are still edging towards the state performance while I won't go through every single uh bar on this you can see the same pattern in terms of a state gray bar and the comparison of our different uh a few selected groups that that uh our district performance framework tracks and you can see their comparison to the state performance and you can also see the performance of our uh the the students who are labeled as gifted and talented and this is for grades 3 through 8 English language arts for our math scores this is the slide where I will make a couple of Corrections for you so on the uh orange green and blue
065bars that are on your leftand side those uh are are good news but they should read 33.9 35.3 and 39.8 so there is a an an incline there and in and in all cases we are outperforming the state in elementary math on your right hand side those three bars should read 27.4 26.5 and 26.8 and I'm pleased to see that uh middle school math is increasing and we've we've had some challenges in terms of last year we we we didn't have the growth we wanted to see in middle school and this year we are really turning the corner so that is very promising to see again for the same uh the same format here we have the disaggregated groups uh that you can take take a look at I will tell you that uh on
066a future slide but I will point it out now so you can actually see it mathematically with your eyes multilingual Learners and students with disabilities are two groups where our district is going to be really targeting improved practices and they will be written into our district unified Improvement plan because the disparities in those two groups are greatest and I want you to be able to kind of see that when I mention it later in high school we compare with our uh PSAT and SAT scores in the 9th 10th and 11th grades we had uh across the state and Nation the SAT and PSAT uh ran a brand new test it was an electronic test no longer paper and pencil and it was a completely different test and it was also rored so that is why
067you don't see more than one year of comparison here is because it is not an Apples to Apples comparison the celebration as you can see on the left hand side is in our um in our English language arts we outperformed the state in every single grade level and over on your right hand side uh we we did that with 10th grade and we are still creeping up on the state uh mean scale score averages in the other grades some other celebrations our matriculation rates our matriculation rates just so you know what those are are what we what we are tracking that our kids do when they leave us so do they go off to serve in the military do they enter the workforce do they go to college do they go to technical school do
068and we we follow as much as we can we follow up with what their plans are and what they are doing and we were able to actually increase that last year we went from 31 I'm sorry 38.1% uh to 40 48.4% so we had a 10 over 10% growth in matriculation rate data this past year also we have one alternative education campus Ferguson High School in our district it was a tough year Statewide for aec's because with the state included chronic absenteeism and truancy and factored that into our scores this took a lot of aec campuses down in their scores this year and our barely moved and and so we are very we're celebrating that very very much we have a wonderful program at Ferguson High School this slide is an annual requirement if we
069have any schools that have been uh listed on priority Improvement or turnaround status so that is why we have required communication to publicly announce that we have schools on on this particular status last year we had a handful of them and this year we have one so I'm I'm here to tell you that uh the Peak View Academy at Conrad ball is on priority Improvement but I also want to mention in the same breath that they are very close to being on Improvement and made uh significant gains in their score last year from somewhere in the mid-30s to in the low 40s so we're pleased to see the improvements that are being made um at Peak View Academy at Conrad ball so moving forward the next step is is all of our schools as well
070as the district need to submit a unified Improvement plan to the state that's due on October 15th I am very excited next week at Dak to share this information and get their input they will see these data they will be able to talk amongst themselves and and uh ask questions and give some input so that I can include that in our district unified Improvement plan these plans are written for a two-year period of time one was written last year and I do make tweaks to that because it is a 2-year plan so we will be actually be looking at what we said we wanted to do last year take a look at our our fresh data and update it to to reflect where we need to work next year the major Improvement strategy Mi also
071known as an Mis is what I spoke about before one of our major Improvement strategies is going to be on multilingual Learners their growth and uh on students with disabilities uh their growth and achievement as well in the plan oh that's fine Laur Le you can just keep going um so I want to talk about uh our major Improvement strategies a little bit more so we have two areas that the state asks us for academic and culture and climate so we have to name ways in which we are going to uh measure how we are improving in these areas the as a sidebar the state doesn't offer like a standardized assessment for culture and climate we actually use our own and that's the Panorama survey data which you all have uh been familiar with so
072as I mentioned multilingual Learners and students with disabilities we want them to increase their academic growth their academic growth is in the low singled digigit percentiles we want to see it at 50 50 means you're making at least a Year's progress to be able to catch up to your peers 50 or more so we're really targeting those um those groups uh intensely this next year we will monitor them with I ready and with our uh standardized curriculum assessments and for our culture and climate goal we want students to be able to report an increased sense of belonging we will be measuring this with our Panorama student survey data which is a survey that happens in the fall last but not least how will we do this work you have seen uh this image before although
073it's a little more polished looking than it was a year ago I I I'm am not Hightech so I actually had some help with this but I'm pleased with how it looks now it's our instructional vision and we take a look at these three areas that are on the outside of the triangle which I'm going to talk about in a minute but the center of the triangle you see an acronym which stands for professional learning communities professional learning communities are what the school district uh allows to have happen on Wednesday mornings Wednesday mornings our families and our students stay uh home for an addition hour and what I love to be able to answer the question is if somebody asks me well what is that hour at home away from school doing for my kid
074we have an answer to that question because our teachers and our administrators are taking a look deeply at data literacy which is on your leftand corner and that is what guides on the top our professional practices what does the data say about what our students need how do we need to plan our instruction to deliver and actually move our student outcomes and over on the right hand corner the supportive and inclusive or inclusive supportive culture what is needed as a foundational place for students to feel safe and to grow academically I also want to I just presented at Rotary yesterday and a great question came up there that I want to share with you all um I shared this slide with them and spoke about it and they asked about school safety and it is
075uh a good thing this year that I want want to say that about 30% uh of our time at or more at our administrator meetings I share with my my colleague um our chief operations officer I'm sorry assistant superintendent of operations Todd pone we share that time so that uh the principes and our administrators are instructed in Safety and Security we have upped the amount of time that we are spending on school safety sense of belonging because we want that for our kids and for our families um last but not least before I ask questions or ask for your questions is I don't think this accomplishment would be made possible without the wonderful students and our teachers and our staff that have worked so hard at being able to overcome what has uh the dropback
076that we experienced from going through the pandemic we are now performing at rates that are far beyond that and I I do look forward to reporting to you next year hopefully um even better news but thank you very much what questions do you have together from 2017 one and so the data it really was fascinating and even spite of the 20 and 2021 you could see from 2017 to today the amount of change isn't a lot which to me is a good thing because there was such a gap with the 20 and 21 but the biggest thing was on the e8th grade math is that it actually increased like 16% from 2017 to the 2024 for I mean that's I didn't when I I didn't realize that till I saw that and I thought that
077was that's huge so and even as I say that though I go back to we still have nine elementary schools where the the proficiency is under 35% in reading and four middle schools were for 8th grade the proficiency is under 44 or is under 35% so so I guess I would like to ask and I know you won't have the answer tonight is to contemplate because I know we have some um additional supplemental and budget approval process and and it's okay Gordon don't get um what would it look like what could it look like if when we go to finalize the budget for this year what additional resources can we give these elementary schools for the third grade that will help this year push really push them up and same with the Middle School eighth
078grade math um whatever we've been doing with eth grade clearly is is working so if he can do more but that's and again I know it's a question you can't answer and you probably have to get with Gordon and he's going to tell you you can have way more teachers for interventionist and yeah um but anyway I thought it was just looking at it from that perspective it really did show a lot of good Improvement I appreciate that feedback and we'll provide you with a future update Ste couple of things um first Melissa will you send us the corrected slides absolutely with the uh the new numbers and then if we can go back to the slide that's entitled other results it's back a few yep there it is um would you talk about this
079slide in a little bit more detail I'm a little confused about the matriculation rate concept also and I'm reading that last year the matriculation rate was 38.1 and we had a 10.3% growth in one year but the bullet above says that our district is at 48.4 the state is at 57.2 MH so can you explain I'm obviously delighted to see the growth M can you tell us why we're about 10% behind the state in the matriculation rate I certainly can get that information for you and I am going to look back at uh Theo Robison he oversees the director who does report this information he may have more details so um greetings Dr Schaefer Madame President members of the board so we did a lot of work last year um and let me go back
080two years ago when we disconnected from the navian system where all of our information was originally housed for whether the students were going to college going to the military or a variety of different other places so when we saw that drop from what we previously had which I can't remember right now before we're at 38.1% it was higher than that for sure that transition year going to exelo had an impact on that because we didn't have access to that previous Navan data system anymore and we were still learning how to get this information inputed into the exelo system so one of the things that we were able to do thanks to Andy Stevens our director of College and Career and Tyler Schlegel our College and Career coordinator was go back work with Naviance but then
081also work with our teachers about making sure we also have the accurate information in our Infinite Campus system as well and so a lot of work between the teachers and the counselors inputting the information in our IC System and then also working with Carrie as well to ensure that we can get this data uh housed in the right location as well so it can have a better pool we certainly expect it to go up again in another year as well as we're strengthening our system to ensure that the right data is in the right tools so it can be reported accurately so is what you're saying Theo then that the fact that we Trail the state by as much as we do actually has to do with changing a system uh a program yes and
082um perhaps these numbers aren't really accurate I'd say our data should be higher we're that tracking system is critical in ensuring that our staff members are putting the right information in Infinite Campus and we put a lot of work into that system and we're doing more work in that system as well and training our teachers on how to make sure we get the right data in the system and the counsel that's reassuring because that I when I saw that number I thought whoa that's a lot it's one thing to be be to be behind uh another District or a state average by a point or two but 10 or almost 10 is quite a bit so your explanation makes sense to me and uh yeah we'll look forward then to increased growth um that's perhaps
083a little more accurate in terms of its reporting all right thanks [Music] indeed um I just had a a couple of of thoughts when you were presenting I did get to hear it twice in 24 hours so that's lovely it's nice to get to hear that um so one thing I noticed this time was our high school are meeting and Elementary was was also good and there sort of that messy middle of middle school years which is not named that by accident um but one of the things that that I have as a takeaway from that is that we we really don't expect that kids come into the system is early childhood and kindergarteners with nothing to learn because why would we send our kids if we already knew what we needed to know and
084it is really ultimately our goal to get them where they need to be by graduation right that's a moment where we say this is what graduation means it means the same thing and so while it it's helpful to get other Milestones throughout the the fact that our students are where they need to be as they're getting into high school I think says a lot because it means that all those times in between and that messy middle that we all go through and we're literally learning something is what we're doing that's what we're here to do um the other thing I'll point out because it comes up every time we look at the standardized testing results um and and it just frustrates me to no end about how terrible it is that we have a system
085to measure um things without necessarily connecting it to all of the things it's supposed to measure um it is ludicrous that we have a system that is measuring the end of the year expectations with 20% of the year left that if that was what we were doing out in the in our work we'd say forget it this is garbage it's not fair to measure me on stuff you haven't even taught me yet let alone given me a chance to learn and practice and we do that year after year with students so any student so like when I look at where we are now at that 60% rate what that really translates to if people stay on that same track and I'm assuming that nobody else gets better from that either it means that our students
086overall are like at 80% which is phenomenal right it really is and and of course in those 20% of the year that's left to teach kids lots of them are still learning and changing their track as well um you know there's a lot of stuff that kind of starts to make sense at some point and so I just want to point that out because it's one of the things it's silly about how Colorado does things um but you made another point yesterday that I think is is connected to this that I wanted to highlight as well which is talking about the fact that Colorado has some of the the least amount of hours or days in the school year Nationwide and I had a a former educator come to me uh afterwards and say how
087important that was that you um that shocked her because she came from another state and um they had 180 days and she was like I can't imagine what how we're going to cram everything into those 20 less days and yet somehow we do you know um I would I would absolutely put our students especially you know our graduates up against people from all over the nation because I I do a lot and we have a lot to be proud of in fact I believe we have the highest uh population of postsecondary in the nation so you know while Colorado doesn't put our kids through enough public education we're putting a lot of people through college so we make up for it and our our students are ready to do that and they're doing it at
088really great schools um and so I just really wanted to point that out because those are all things that challenges in what's presented here and you guys very rarely even bring it up unless we do first and so I'm going to say that for a little bit because we're knocking it out of the park on on a whole bunch of things that that don't exactly make sense and don't line up and you guys stand up here and actually still like give it your all those are not excuses but they are absolutely important things to know about this does Denise have anything no I I'm sorry what' you say okay thank you um the only okay there I heard you all right um the only thing I have is as the schools are writing their unified
089uips unified Improvement plans are they taking those two main points like what you talked about with um multi lingal learn the Learners and the um culture and climate as part of what they're working on in that as well as a matter of fact we have ec12 which is all of our uh District administrators come together we have one tomorrow and we had one just a couple of weeks ago to discuss just that for me to to come forward and disclose our our district goals and say these are the areas that our district is is really focused on and the schools having some cascading goals in our own professional plans being able to impact those goals that the answer is yes and we are working on our culture and climate goals tomorrow in a couple weeks
090before we worked on our academic gos okay thank you I just was curious all right thank you very much it was really beneficial and we're excited all right the next item is our um website and Technology accessibility and I think it's Mike and kelly all right good evening um Madame President board members and Dr schaer Kelly s Chief technology officer and I have the pleasure of presenting with my colleague Michael hman about website and Technology accessibility update so the accessibility update and the new law that we're going to be discussing is related to strive 20 2 by creating and improving access to District Services communities and technology for all students families and staff and community members the Colorado law um makes sure that we have persons with disabilities um well we strive to make sure
091that we have an inclusive and supportive culture within our community Colorado laws for persons with disabilities makes it a state civil rights violation for government agency to exclude people with disabilities from receiving any services or benefits because of a lack of accessibility this legislation became effective on July 1st in 2024 and applies to all district software websites multimedia content documents desktop computers computers and mobile devices so one and four adults in Colorado have a disability and one in eight students in Colorado are enrolled in special education sometimes this could also be related to either a permanent temporary or situational disability when we look at our web content accessibility guidelines there are a set of successful um success criteria adopted by the Colorado technology accessibility rules to ensure compliance with the new Colorado laws for persons
092with disabilities these guidelines are also referenced by other Federal Regulations they include the 21st century Communications and video accessibility Act and the Americans with Disability Act these guidelines apply to all software websites multimedia content documents created for the Thompson School District okay uh before I continue I do want to just quickly Spotlight the amazing work that has been done by Mr Matt Beal Matt is our web developer and he is seated right behind me here I'm not trying to embarrass him Matt has been the person who has really um spearheaded the charge on all of our accessibility working on the district he's done a terrific job um learning about all the requirements and putting together the the committee and coordinating that work and doing all this stuff with our website and working with people in
093the schools Etc um he's done an awesome job so I just want to make sure that we could congratulate him and thank him for that um so one of the first things that was done um was we put together the accessibility committee uh the committee itself is a group of individuals staff members from across the district that has come together to really help guide us through this process and to make sure that we're um we have voices from across the district in evaluating website pages and talking about tactics and how we can move forward Etc and one of the things that they put together was a technology accessibility implementation plan and as you can see there are four aspects to that evaluation and Remediation skill and training access and accessibility statement we put together and
094then also some work with our procurement process within the district so I'm going to take you through just some of the things that we have done to kind of give you an idea of what that looks like um as you can imagine there is a lot of material that is generated by District staff at the school level and also at the district level for students and staff and community members um you know the general public so one of the things that um we've put into place this is for examples but uh grle dos is a extension that is now present in the district's Google workspace and the way this works this is the first year that that we're using this the way this works is it's a lot like a spell checker so if you
095have a Google doc or a Google slideshow or a sheets or anything that you've imported into that format you can you can essentially have it do a accessibility check and it will point out um it will point out any errors that are there and also provide some solutions for what you can do to make that section more accessible it's really slick it works really well we've been rolling that out um for staff members and everyone in the in the district as a staff level um staff member has access to that it's just a plugin that's in their Google work space um canva canva if you're not familiar with that is a it's like a graphic design program that people can use um they also have a really good accessibility Checker that's available there um so
096that's that's one thing that staff members can use and then just your Microsoft Office Suite has an accessibility Checker there that you can use and then Adobe Acrobat for like when you're creating PDFs it also has an option there that you can use for um doing accessibility checks and we have all this available at our accessible docs website that's there for staff members to utilize um also part of that so silk tide silk tide is a program that we run it's a it's a tool basically that scans our district website as well as all of our school websites and what it's doing is it's looking for accessibility errors and similar to what gral docs does it's highlighting those and that so the person who's working on designing the page can see it and can address
097it and fix it before it gets released to the public and you know help prevent people from having to reach out to us and asking for an accommodation um there's also other wave extensions as they're called for other websites that we utilize and then I would say probably the biggest thing that really has helped move this forward was that last fall in 2023 um Matt led the charge in creating a new accessible template for the district so if you'll remember our website design changed at the district level and the school level and those were all built with accessibility in mind and trying to make sure that we are doing everything we could to make them as accessible as possible for the community so the other big thing that we're also working is on skills and
098training we want to make sure that our staff members um have a way to learn about accessibility and to learn about ways to make things more accessible um it's a it's kind of I would say it's kind of an adjustment to your thinking you know I think once you you do it a few times you just naturally kind of gravitate to it but you need to train people on what to look for and what to do so one of the things that's put together is an inclusive design uh basically a package it's an inclusive design guide that TSD staff are able to access on the portal that provides them with just some Basics on what to look for and what they can do and it's also printable you can do it you can print it
099out as a onepage or we also have a large print format that people can print out too so they can have it handy for when they're working in addition to that we're also providing some uh training opportunities um we're going to be providing some additional inclusive design B uh training courses and some ways to incorporate Universal Design for Learning within the classroom um as well as more role-based training and documentation and we'll be providing some more information to staff members as that as we move forward but the training portion is really a big part of where the work is going to be now in addition to continually working on what's in the system and making it more accessible the training as we move forward is a big part of what we're what we're looking to
100do all right um the other thing that we did was we created an accessibility statement and and this is open to anyone who visits the link it's just at td.org accessibility um this accessibility statement um it it talks about our goal to meet or exceed the accessibility standards that are there um and then it also provides ways for community members to provide feedback to us so if they see something that they that they think needs to be adjusted or if they just have a general question there's a way for them to reach out to us um and it also provides a way for them to request an accommodation as well okay and then the other thing that's been added on there is a section that has some third party resources that people can utilize as
101well if they're interested in the topic that's all available at that web page on our district site last thing I'll talk about is procurement so one of the things that a lot of people don't understand is that the accessibility um requirements don't just apply to the stuff that we create and that we distribute in the district they also apply to material that's being offered by third party vendors so what that means is that means that we need to have an evaluation process in place to make sure that the vendor we are working with are providing whether it's software or information or material we need to make sure that they are also Meeting those standards too and so one of the things that the accessibility committee is doing and will be doing moving forward is working
102with all of our departments in an evaluation process of that so that that's one of the things that's checked when we're going through um the process of Contracting making sure that are these thirdparty vendors we're working with are aware of the requirements of what we need them to do and stuff and also to ensure that we have a way to provide feedback with them to make sure we can get them where we need them to be and stuff all right so with that do you have any questions for either myself or Kelly start down here Don question question Mike Andor Kelly um you were talking about additional training for staff that is is available is available or will be available is it part of PD is it part of the professional development that's currently available
103or will be available we have been yeah and Matt Matt has done some trainings and stuff at MPD we've done some around like website work and stuff like that too but that's one of the key places that we'll be rolling that out because that's a good place for us to be able an opportunity I should say for us to be able to work with staff members and provide it but I will say this I think that it's important for us to make sure that we have lots of different opportun for people to get the training because there's a lot of competition for what what you can do on PD days and stuff in terms of the topics and what you can learn more about so a lot that will be one of the aspects we
104provide as well as some other opportunities for staff members would any of this training be available for credit that's something I'd have to look into possibly I don't know but maybe possibly it might be more attractive to staff if they thought that they might also be able to get credit in addition ening yeah it's possible someone's already applied I have to look going to address that she's creeping up on you we also have it as part of the required Public School Works training that everyone is doing so this accessibility work that the committee has been working on for the last year it's already embedded into our Public School works and it's required okay yeah so there's a course that's available there for all for all staff members that they'll be having to complete here certain
105point in time I just wanted to um clarify so are we just we're not just talking about the website we're talking about in always so my question is when you uh saying uh mobile devices and all this other what how does that play into like the nonverbal students does that what kind of uh Tech is there Tech that falls into this for nonverbal or is that something like different it's separate so all of the devices that we currently have our Chromebooks and our iPads have accessibility features built in and then if there is something that was required for a student who might be non-verbal then we work with um the team and learning services to identify those needs through an IEP and through some different pieces to make sure that they have the stuff that
106they need but as of right now all things that we have within a Chromebook and an iPad have accessibility features built in so that will allow them to to communicate okay Alexandra so I have a question about like so say can you provide an example or so of say like if you ran this grle docks or one of those things what what's an example of something that that would flag as being inaccessible so I will give you an example of one that we uh just had today when we were meeting in cabinet we were looking Dr schaer's chuckling because he knows exactly where I'm going to go we were um we did a accessibility check through grle of our cabinet agenda which is a very very long document so it took a little bit of
107time to to generate but one of the first things that it did for example in Google that document has a name but the document itself it just goes right into our district logo and then a bunch of information so one of the things that it flagged was you really need to have the title that's on your document as part of the document itself because if that for some people that would not be obvious for like a screen reader or something like that so it's things like that it's making sure that things are congruent that things are lining up right it's looking at contrast it's looking at like images it's making sure that alt all text is there in case an image needs to be described things like that so we we did the check and
108it found some errors and it was it was interesting good it was a good demo that Kelly did with us um does Denise have any Denise uh no okay thank you you know what this was great I was curious about where it was going to go and I'm very I mean I I I read through it all but you know until somebody talks you through it sometimes you just need to hear it so it was very helpful so thank you very much you're welcome thanks for letting us do it for you thanks yeah of course all right um 7.3 NOP 6.3 7 7.3 it is it is 7.3 three oh my gosh my brain is so bad um hi Todd his 2018 Bond summary updates yes good evening M president board education Dr schaer Todd
109pone assistant superintendent of operations uh tonight I have invited Tammy canow to give us really a celebration presentation on the 2018 Bond um if we reflect back just seems like yesterday or 20 years ago um you know in 2018 the voters um you know pass the bond and since then the amount of work coordination when you look at U what it takes from all departments schools um Community um everyone here you know on staff on Tammy staff to implement a uh Bond you'll see that started at 149 million end up at 209 million um is a huge celebration so just a quick shout out to that because um it is a um Monumental undertaking and we've done it in a way that's been transparent and um really impacted what we wanted to do was the
110students so I'll invite Tammy I understand I'm last so Todd said as long as I'm done by 10 o'clock yeah no thank you madam president Board of Education and Dr Schaefer for a chance to uh get in front of you and report on the 2018 Bond I plan to just summarize the executive summary that was submitted in July so I'll go over kind of a high level of that detail report and uh make sure we're on the same page as we end so in summary this is in alignment with strip 2025 for being transparent and being a good Steward Steward of our resources to me that means both financially and of our facilities so at a high level um that table there shows like Todd mentioned that we started with 149 million and later I'll
111go into the details of how we got to 209 over the 5year period and then we spent 85% in 3 years so our goal was by January of 22 We Beat It by month and nailed that by December the reason that's important is school districts used that 85% in the first three years um for reasonable expectation of spending those resources um it shows that um we're on a good time frame we're addressing the critical infrastructure needs that were in the bond we're not just letting it sit in the bank and gain interest and um we're taking care of business in other words so uh and then the facilities we're completing what was promised um there's some reports later on that show um how we address the line items of the bond and then very inclusive
112um part of the culture here and what we wanted to implement was making sure we use integrated design and construction approach which simply means we include everybody we can that has a a foot in the door of Education um I could build the best building out there the way I know how and I'm not a teacher I would not be able to build it to the best needs of the kiddos so that's one of our goals for sure so as Todd mentioned the overall timeline it flies once all the hard work was done before November of 2018 good planning with uh estimating inflation contingency numbers those estimates all turned out really well staff positions were filled by January of 2019 so we hit the ground running with that um in the green at the bottom
113of the timeline you can see how much we spent by the end of those years um again getting to that 150 million by December of 2021 uh the big unknown there was March of 2020 with covid-19 and how we reacted to that and I do have more info later on in the slideshow for that too um we did finish in the fiveyear October of 2023 but we were able to come to the board and to our uh citizens Bond oversight committee with a plan for spending the extra 6.6 million which again I'll detail a little later on so we are finishing into 20 24 this fall with some of those contingency projects and we actually have two that need a little more attention the funds are good but we will be going into 2025 finishing
114up two of the projects that we approved in October so you start off organizing and planning for the bond again work in every building was critical for that bond for it to pass our promise to the community and the way the numbers were put together and we achieved that that includes support build buildings and every school building we have um and our Charter Schools our partners with them they also received funding from the bond we coordinated an extensive major with finance and procurement right out of the gates again uh Finance identifying budget codes cash flow how we were going to actually dispense the funds as payment requests and invoices came in procurement to decide how we we would select different vendors um materials equipment that kind of thing laid out the plan for that and
115then the guidelines we focused on those three buckets educational specifications were important um wal Architects and Engineers came in and worked with some of the board members cabinet staff to identify uh a short high level plan of what's important to our district to include in all of our educational facilities the technical guidelines are written and maintained by the director of operations Kristen bige and we use those to give to our construction teams out of the gates too to say hey here's our standard this is uh where we want to begin with all the work we do for the consistency and quality reasons excuse me and then this Bond was different than a bond I've worked on before we were blessed with 4.9 million of Premium that we allocated through the board for fixtures furniture and
116equipment and with that we had Innovation day if you guys remember early on at Thompson Valley High School where we invited staff uh superintendent students parents to work together in the cafeteria and come up with ideas and again standards for the district we also had a couple of open houses where vendors brought in Furniture um to help us identify quality consistent Furniture throughout the district and the results of that were um three books with options that we're still referring to today as principal call um HR we were able to get some chairs for Tom and his team over there it's nice to have that reference book that you can go to you know who you're working with and what you're going to get for the dollar so to implement the bond after all that planning
117of course the schedule we looked ahead and said how best can we spend these funds and one plan that we put in place was divvying up the work by feeder system so by doing that we also uh secured our contractors design teams right up front in feeder system packages it gave them a chance to look at the whole Bond program holistically Ally instead of just one project at a time by doing that we moved some projects up we actually moved I believe two projects back just to where they fit into the overall better and I'll talk later why that was important to have our contractors on board um the design process again this this very cumbersome uh diagram shows the amount of communication and integrated approach that goes into the projects from on the left
118side Divine Design Advisory Group led by the principal they put that together including staff parents um custodian other community members all the way to the top right which is all the uh internal departments for Thompson and then of course the reporting up and down the chain from um the operations director um Kristen to the chief operations officer which is now the assistant superintendent of operations all the way to you uh the board of education at the bottom we had the bond advisory committee cabinet members were on the bond advisory committee also and then the citizens Bond citizens Bond oversight committee um which was integral in doing a lot of what we needed to do and I'll talk about them more later too excuse me so budget tracking the dollars is what it comes down to
119and what we really want to be transparent with every move we make um we talked about the 85% in three years why that was important um we leverage the funds of the bond and I'll talk about that a little bit more on the next slide but in order to get grants and funding from some other sources some of them have to show that you have funds to either match or to help complete a project and then they're more willing to give you some of their funds to complete the work and then we also added $1 million of assets and that was land sales from the facilities building to um Ferguson and then various land sales that happened just a portion of those were also allocated by the Board of Education ition uh to the bond
120work so the best uh result we had was the grant Awards thank you um when we talk about leveraging the funds and getting the most for your dollar we were very good at that um and it took a team so when you look at the best funds Alone um those are typically split up where you go to best with a overall project and and the cost for that project and it's a 7030 split roughly get to the little percentages 7030 I'll get you there so we provide 70% they say okay we'll give you the other 30 and we're able to add scope in some cases some cases we're able to use those funds just to cover some of the bond work again to free up the bond dollars to go to do the additional scope
121later on too so this list of um grants um let's see the best is pretty uh pretty detailed there the inflation one was for conball and the renovation to Peak View um we did run into huge inflation after covid and luckily best was able to provide that so we did secure that Grant the security Grant under best was for the Middle School entries we were able to upgrade the vestibules um still have more work to do there but we did address a lot Peak View um that playground Grant was actually um sought after by the principal B all all out to get that and um secure the 700,000 so we can make an accessible uh playground there and then erer I do have a correction that should be Esser for elementary and secondary school emergency
122relief and that provided additional furniture at the high schools after covid for return to learn and some of those efforts um also improving the air quality at a number of sites with different filters and upgrading equipment so with all those extra funds we were able to leverage them like we've talked um into contingency projects and contingency simply means um funds that are set aside for unforeseen conditions emergencies or changes in the scope of work again early planning in 2018 set aside the proper amount you usually plan for 5% um contingency and luckily we did and it was able to help us through the hard time of covid and other changes and unforeseen conditions overall at the end of the bond we ended up spending only 3.5% overall in contingency so it worked out really well
123um we came to the board in October of 2023 with this list of extra projects that came from a collaboration of Staff other items on the old bond list that maybe didn't make the priority one two or three to get on the list and we were able to address a lot of sites here as you can see Leland High School uh the three Fields were upgraded um finishing up that right now including the Ada walkway to the fields excuse me um the main it server room you don't think that supports kids but we all know how bad it is when the internet phones everything else does go down and uh Kelly's team has been very flexible with us as we work through that difficult project uh finishing that up and then of course just uh
124a little bit of Pocket Change there to cover the extra management for that extra year of um managing these projects so reporting and transparency um again so critical to the culture and to our charge here uh the citizens Bond oversight committee we call it seach was uh made up of multiple community members Business Leaders from all communities that we serve the bond advisory committee was made up of Dr schaer cabinet members Tod and Kristen and I the director of operations and assistant soup of operations and then of course the Board of Education reporting and making sure you were informed and part of any major changes throughout the six-year period we also did expense reconciliation with Finance if you think of it um we maintain budget planning tools on our side for the funds and then
125uh business plus is the district system that actually tracks the actual income and outgoing funds so reconciling to that has been very key and that's going to be ongoing um through the next 6 months probably as we close out and try to get down to the dollar make sure we're in good shape there all that being said that box there with the check marks we had regular meetings with all these entities diverse members inclusion visual aids as needed cach was very good at requesting AIDs that they could use to go out into the community and better talk about it and we tried to keep the updated information out there and address questions as they came in excuse me uh so again reporting so I talked earlier about the 1,59 line items of the bond we
126did track those line items they were packaged so 30 line items might go all together into carry Martin Elementary for example but we did track them individually also um to report on that again being transparent and transparent making sure we were taking care of everything the vter voters voted for back in 2018 um the priority numbers uh Priority One were um very critical items uh system failures uh Safety and Security issues as bestus uh containing materials we tried to get those out soon um priority two were a little less more like flooring repairs basic things that had a longer life cycle remaining and then three were more um aesthetic maybe signs uh outlying sidewalks those kinds of things and the bar chart there is from April of 2021 I just wanted to give an example
127of how we did report as we started completing things and those bars turned Greener and Greener right to the end so covid-19 the joy of that hit in March of 2020 like we all know um I listed some of the items there that we'll go over the the biggest thing is we had 13 major projects underway over 90 million of committed contracts and expenditures out there that's a little scary but it also helped us because we were ahead of the game we had a lot of the materials ordered we had our subs wrapped up um the bond funds were a guarantee when the rest of the nation did not have the funds guaranteed like we did so um we were able to proceed and those were the big projects you had Riverview the elementary additions
128down in berd uh Ferguson the vanban renovation and then stanbury so to have those five big projects under way and secure really helped um we um like everyone social distancing lockdowns and providing daily um protective gear for the workers on site was a constant Shuffle and it took a lot of the subcontractors out of sequence so the worry there when you're you're working a little out of the norm is how that'll affect schedule and cost and our vendors again being on board early and wanting to work also through those Hard Times um over backwards to make it work I experienced spot pricing for the first time in my career which is where some of the materials we did start ordering during 2020 they would not guarantee a price until the day it was delivered so
129you'd get an estimate and our contractors would have to deal with that you know we had contracts and they were able to stay within that again using a little bit of contingency here and there to cover some of the fluctuations but in general we were able to stay right on track in inflation was also a big one um before Co I don't know if I said this earlier but it was 6% per year was the construction inflation after covid between 20 and 22 it was 1.6 per month so in that two-year period our contractors contractors estimated a 40% inflation rate in a two-year window um and the early contracts we talked about the other piece of that was having Flex ible Financial team with us again when you're working from home systems are down we
130still have to pay these people to keep them coming and Gordon's team was key in making sure that we didn't have any hurdles there at all so our teams wanted to come to work and actually um keep going for us so again you get to the end this is a summary I'll go through a little bit um but can't say enough the importance of um accurately reporting to our stakeholders and making sure they know I mean I I'm a stakeholder also and I want to know where these dollars are spent and that I'm getting what we all voted for um regardless of the district you're in our buildings are used by a lot which equals maintenance concerns our buildings get they get uh they get worn to say the least and that's what we do
131is we provide those facilities but it's also important to understand that the typical budgets of school District receives from the state cannot keep up so the community was so critical in allowing us those funds to do what the normal budgets can't take care of um so when you work down this again we went from 149 million to 29 the premium was originally estimated at 14.9 and we almost doubled that and that's not due to poor planning that's just due to Great planning and a good Market good timing on Gord part interest again was estimated at the beginning at 5.9 and we came in right at that and that's always good grants we knew we were going to go for some in the beginning but we realized 15.5 million of additional funds by the end and
132then the 85% three years we beat That by a month and um that's the first number I put up on my 5year schedule when I landed here was um December was my goal and then during uh we went from 5 years to 6 years because of the added scope not because of delays that we could have had because of Co or other factors um touching every building in the district was a huge charge and um we ran into some unforeseen but we were able to navigate those so um to follow up on what Dr Schneider said earlier is we need sound buildings for excellent education to happen and the community made that work so we're very blessed to do what we're able to do in this six-year period are there any questions questions let's start
133down here Alexandra anything no I don't have any questions but just thank you very much for your work on this massive project over the last several years and all you and your team have done is impressive thank you to my Tammy the teen shelter was not tied to the bond issue is that correct correct that kind of um came to fruition after the voters had approved the bond issue and and the Teen shelter I believe is completely paid for by grants correct yes alongside you know the other major project starting right now is the expansion the one classroom to a TCC in Ferguson high school and that is also not buned funded we are managing that project but it's not with bond funds all right and then then something that's not a question but I
134want to thank you uh during your presentations for making them understandable for having them be very well organized I appreciate and I'm sure my board colleagues appreciate too that the last slide always says thank you voters because without uh the vote ERS having approved this our students wouldn't have the amazing uh amenities that um that they've been provided and the other thing that really became very obvious to me as I've heard you do the presentation uh the various presentations is that the success of this whole project really was a team effort it wasn't just your bond team there was um certainly significant input from Business Services there was input from operations um probably there was input from um technology and from learning services at times um and as a school board member I really appreciate
135the fact that as this all unfolded and now that it's come to fruition that this was really the result of a team effort so thank you to you and to all the rest of you who made made this happen sure thank you and when you think people it's you believe it you think it you say it yeah and then you show it yeah and I think you just got to keep repeating that when you want something to be believed so thank you you know as you were giving this you know massive overview that again is very well put together organized user friendly all of that I was just thinking you know about the the collaboration but you know just that it's been you know this this beautiful dance of you know collaboration accountability flexibility um
136you know Co in there like all things and so um yeah it was beautiful and so thank you thank you Don uh similar sentiment which is um several things you said had me flashing back to um work that we were doing five and six years ago and I you know forgot and um all of those were really heavily Community Le or um High Community engagement and we had such a strange monkey wrench that was thrown into all of that and um and yet we we still didn't stop and like compromise on community engagement like we had to adjust and adapt on how we did that but ultimately that remained a huge priority and something we did everywhere and um I also want want to appreciate you as the queen of understatement especially this evening there
137are some things that you made sound like no big deal that are ridiculously big deals like 40% inflation and you're like oh yeah but really you know we managed it 3.5% what because you did and I I say you and I really do mean the whole team as well because um there are lots of things that went into making sure that the that we didn't get impacted the way so many other people did I know that there were times when you were scrambling to try to make sure that the impact wasn't that bad um and it's queen of understatement of just being like no we got a plan and we're going to fix the plan if we need to change the plan and it's just great so thank you for keeping your cool which helped
138everybody else keep their cool uh to get all this done because it's it is a lot a lot of work thank you I think in CL I'd only like to close saying that community members if you want to be involved it doesn't have to be Bond program anything you want to do at your school go to your principal reach out there's so many different committees to be involved with and we can't do our job without that input does Denise have anything okay okay all I can say is we've done a lot in the last few years last six years when I think back and reflect on uh TCC being over there and it's like when I came on the board it was still an elementary school you know so it's just there's been so much
139change that's occurred over the last few years so thank you the dance that went on between all of the people that put this since accomplished this is amazing so thank you thank you very much thank you yeah you're all newbies after that election but yeah in 18 yeah I've been on a long [Laughter] time um thank you so much thank you all right um written reports do we have any don't think there are any on right now are there any requests for information I don't see any either so I guess this meeting is adjourned