001spe let me try it again I'm gonna call the meeting to order and Laur Le please call the role Stu Boyd here Denise Chapman here Amy Doran Don Kirk here Barbara Cruz here Alexander LOM here Nancy rumfelt here thank you Laur Nancy would you please lead us in the pledge alance to the flag of the United States of America and to the rep for it stands one nation under God indivisible withy and justice for all thank you Nancy and Stu would you please read the mission statement the Thompson School District will be a school district that empowers challenges and inspires students faculty staff parents School leaders and community members to learn achieve and Excel thank you and the first item on our agenda is the adoption of uh today's agenda which is December 13 2023
002are there any changes to the agenda for tonight's meeting hearing none I will take a motion to adopt the agenda for tonight so moved second so I have a first from Don and a second from stu um Laur Le please call the role Stu Boyd hi Denise Chapman hi Amy Doran Don Kirk hi Barbara Cruz I Alexander Lum hi Nancy rumelt hi thank you Laur the next item of business is the approval of the minutes and we have three sets of minutes to approve tonight so the first one will be the approval of the minut approval of the minutes from um November 15th 2023 does anybody have any changes or corrections to those minutes hearing none I'll take a motion to approve the minutes for November 15th 2023 so move second reverse order it's Stu
003at first and Don at the second Laur Le please call the role Stu Boyd I Denise Chapman I Amy Doran Don Kirk I Barbara Cruz hi Alexander lesum hi Nancy rumfelt I and our next one um approval for minutes would be November 30th 2023 this was our uh special meeting that we had for installation or um swearing in of our new board member and returning ones so are there any changes or corrections to those minutes hearing none I will take a motion to approve the minutes for November 30th 2023 so moved I'm going to look down here this time second was that you Denise okay so it was Don and and Denise for a second and Laur please call the RO St boy hi Denise Chapman hi Amy Doran Don Kirk hi Barbara Cruz hi
004Alexander Lon hi Nancy rumel hi all right and our final one would be the minutes for December 6 2023 and that would be our special our study session and our Retreat um that was at casby does anybody have any changes or corrections to those minutes hearing none um oh no I will take a motion for approval of those minutes so moved thank you Nancy and Don Nancy and Don and Laur Le please call the RO St boy I Denise bman hi Amy Doran Don Kirk hi Barbara Cruz hi Alexander LOM hi Nancy rumfelt I good news we're done with minutes approval of the minutes all right we will now move on to public participation and I'll turn it over to Dr Schaefer so good evening Madame President members of the Board of Education uh I
005am pleased to bring you uh some overviews of some things that have been going on in the district for the last several weeks in my power for presentation so we'll open with uh Thompson School District hosting an agency partners coordination Retreat which served as an opportunity for TSD and several of its Partners to network and discuss opportunities for future collaboration agencies that join TSD included the city of Loveland Parks and Recreation Department the lurmer county Boys and Girls Club the town of berd Parks and Recreation Department and the YMCA of Northern Colorado just prior to the Thanksgiving break team Thompson faced off against team Subaru of lovelin in a friendly but very competitive uh packoff competition for the kids pack program uh the competition is held annually and although the Thompson team emerged Victorious I
006might add we have uh five of the last six years um the true beneficiaries are the students in the district who are served by the program kids pack is a weekend hunger and hunger relief program that serves students at each School throughout the district on November 30th Thompson School District's dual language immersion program is honored to host a visit from Senora malusa Vasquez malusa is the educational advisor in Utah for the visiting teachers from Spain program for the embassy of Spain Maria Rodriguez the coordinator for the Spanish program for the International School of Denver also joined us for the visit maloa and Maria join District staff in visiting the district's dual language schools including trus Elementary Bill Reed Middle School Cottonwood Plains Elementary and Lucille Irwin Middle School it was an honor to share this
007great program with our guests can we go thanks to some creative minds within the community IV stocka Elementary now has a new piece of art on their campus the school had some beautiful old historic trees they wanted to preserve local chainsaw artist Fay Bron also known as the chainsaw mama uh shaped one of their historic trees into a lasting piece of art f is is known for her local artwork especially a similar project that she completed at Bill Reed middle school on November 29th Board of Education members Barbara Cruz and Nancy rall joined me in hosting a community engagement session with the Cafe Con Leche parent group at trusk elementary school it's a great opportunity to dialogue with each other and discuss various school and District based topics last week our Board of Education hosted
008a group of TSD student leaders at the Colorado Association of school boards conference in Colorado Springs the casby conference is a great opportunity for people to come together to learn and share information with peers from across the state the students were amazing representatives of TSD and I couldn't be more proud of the work they completed during their visit a reminder that students and families who want to attend a school outside their attendance area next school year are encouraged to complete the choice enrollment application which is closing this Friday Thompson School District has a variety of options available to fit the interests and goals of each student and family to learn more please visit td.org and finally winter break uh is the beginning of the district's winter break next week which will extend from December 18th
009through January 3D for students as we move into the break I just wanted to take a moment to say how proud I am of our entire District Community for all of your hard work continued dedication we have had an incredible school year so far and I can't wait to see what 20 24 brings I hope you all have a wonderful and safe and welld deserved break so tonight we have some guests uh we're going to start with our friends from New Vision charter school and uh they recently uh you can come come on up competed in a national competition amazing shake and so they are joining us this evening to provide us with an update hello my name is mallerie clasquin and I teach math at New Vision Charter School these are are some of
010our amazing Shake students introducing themselves to you tonight so they're going to be sharing with you a little bit about our program how we've grown from our uh inaugural year last year and how Nationals went and welcome you guys to come and attend our competition this year hi I'm Parker amazing Shake is a class and Club opportunity to learn soft skills professionalism and commun communication this includes an amazing handshake talking to adults giving a good speech and thinking deeper into questions and responses and knowing how to think on the spot so why do we have amazing Shake we have amazing shake to prepare so that we're able to to present ourselves exceptionally well for opportunities today as well as many opportunities in the future these are very applicable to becoming a well-round person beyond the
011academic classroom and how to handle ourselves well when we're stressed and soft skills are the number one thing that Fortune 500 companies are say they are missing from new hires this program teaches us many things beyond our skills it helps kids gain confidence and um gain also appreciation for the professional world yeah also to add to Lulu's Point I've also learn to like try something new because I feel like failure we're a lot afraid of failure right now but it's really great to step outside your comfort zone and kind of continue on the path of success on the screen you can see the next slide thank you um we have pictures from last year's Gauntlet round and this shows the some of the stations we had we had a college interview with CSU a mock
012Chick-fil-A interview and a News broadcasting where you had to read from off a tele monster and then the next SL on this slide this is a video from the Nationals competition a little bit about [Music] it [Music] as the video showed we took seven students Internationals uh five made the top 100 and we had one student Parker make top last year we had 35 students compete in our uh program and we only had one round our Gauntlet round at our school and we had three business partners and we only set sent seven to Atlanta this year we have 125 students two rounds 14 stations and a work the room we have 11 business partners and we're sending at least five to Nationals hoping for we'd like to invite you all to come watch our Gauntlet
013round on January 25th after you watch our gaunlet round please jump in as a judge for the work for our work the room on January 26th so what they're passing out to you now is just a little invitation with the dates and times for our in school competition and like they said our uh January 25th round is the gauntlet it's a pretty exciting and fast-paced uh situation they've got over 14 stations this year uh and as the the girl said we have 11 different businesses coming in to partner and run various stations so we'd love to invite you guys to come and watch it's quite an exciting event and we're lucky enough that this year to do a round two which will be the top 25 excuse me the top 25 students from that first
014night we'll get to move on to work the room which is a big networking station it'll be 25 adults in a room with 25 students for 25 minutes so they have to meet and greet and network and we'd love to invite you guys to be judges to that do you guys have any questions for the students on the um one from the Nationals one of the things said it was the circle of Doom and I'm curious what that is so circle of Doom is a where you sit in a circle and every minute you move to a new person and you get current events questions that you have to answer with your opinion and how you feel the topic relates to what they asked you any other questions Nancy I'm curious because I think it's
015really great that you increased the number of business partners to 11 so was that something that you all were involved in doing or how did that come about so I can talk about that a little bit we encouraged our students to reach out to local businesses and speak with them about becoming a partner whether that was to donate financially or to be coming in to run a station and then I've also been reaching out as the sponsor for the club for various businesses so some of the companies coming in uh Chick-fil-A will be coming back again this year their station will look a little bit differently unfortunately I can't talk about it because I don't want to give away too many hints to the students behind me but Chick-fil-A will be coming in OtterBox is
016also a sponsor and they've graciously donated $3,000 of a grant to our program which was uh incredibly uh beneficial so that was really exciting uh see we also have local Drive is coming in there are golf company Colorado Coffee Company Party City Joseph A Bank suit company uh chartered Tech uh and then we also are partnering with the Lisa program they'll be sending in some students uh and sponsors coming in as well as the Mountain View football team sounds like it'll be fun for them yes other questions what ages of students participate and how many from last year came back and you know how did you grow the program so this year um last year at the competition we did seventh through eighth graders so this year a lot of the seventh graders from last
017year myself included decided to come back and compete again this next year and in addition we added fourth graders and fifth graders just for the gauntlet and then sixth graders to also compete super done I just wanted to say thank you for inviting us uh not only to this but to the event you did in September I feel like that was yeah uh it was really it was really great to have you basically do that networking event you know where you're moving all over the room answering questions and on your feet so thank you for sharing that with us Ste question is this an extracurricular activity or is it something that's built into the school day yeah so we actually have integrated a little bit of both for seventh and eighth graders we have this
018like ELO class that you can take amazing shake with the extra eighth graders but for the fourth fifth and sixth graders you can also have a club like we host a club in the morning that teaches the same skills but it also integrates more of like a Kinder experience that was my question as well Stu so I'll have well um anybody else have any additional question questions thank you so much for we enjoyed it last time so much and it's just neat to see how they are so present in what they're doing so app inv to come thank you it's actually a possible could we take a picture with our guests yes yes and we'll come down and join [Applause] you all right make sure I can see actually that's pretty good okay ready on
019three one [Applause] good okay we're not going to move on to our um community and staff recognition portion this is called our top of Thompson and community champion uh recognitions so each month we have um a an organization uh within our community that um is nominated by a staff member um and so we'll start with that our community champion so tonight's community champion is Ace Hardware and we have Brett and Britney Stevenson uh re representing Ace and so uh Brett and Britney if you would come forward and they were nominated by Kevin Turvy uh and so Kevin will uh read his nomination and and present we have a a plaque uh for you so well uh Britney couldn't be here she's the uh kids pack Capital um campaign chair and she's in event tonight so
020that's how that works um but anyway um I'm honored that I nominated them and um Ace Hardware has been a community champion for as long as I've known the Stevensons uh Brett and Britney are true Community leaders um they've humbly done so much for the community um they own Ace Hardware at Orchards here and several other ones around um they've sponsored many TSD Sports spans extracurricular things um Brent's been an amazing leader with the youth um he has a grill day at Ace and um he have younger kids come and serve and all the proceeds go to cmn Children's mical Network and he also does a Roundup with the registers so that'll last about a week but he does that throughout all of his Colorado stores and so that's been very substantial for them um
021pass over Brett and Britney own other stores and other towns which they're very involved with their communities as well um I mentioned that Britney's the kids pack Capital can uh campaign chair um for the new building um her hours of work are are uh very generous and second to none um when our kids were in youth football she got several of them to come down and package and stuff and uh it's it's amazing what she does um one time I was actually at Orchard's Ace and she brought Barkley in and uh she told me that Barkley was going to a hospice to concert or to uh make another patient comfortable so even their dog does community services as well um uh Brett and Britney's resume is probably 50 pages deep and they're very humble and
022don't really talk about it but I I want to brag about them a little bit um they're from right here um they live here and so if you could support their stores that' be amazing because a lot of their stuff does come back to the community in many ways that you don't know about um that being said I proudly present this award to the Stevenson I'm sorry and thank you for your friendship and all you do for the kiddos thank you [Applause] yeah thank you so we're next gon to move on to our top of toson um Award winners for this month so uh each month we have three employee groups classified licensed and AP and these are uh nominated by um other employees uh tonight we're going to start with classified uh Lindsay Adams
023who is a PA professional at Ponderosa so Lindsay if you could come forward please and uh lindsy was nominated by Abby Oswalt who's not able to be here so I will be um honoring you Lindsay and I will join you at the podium so these are the words that uh Abby had to say about Lindsay last school year Lindsay heavily supported our iilc classroom when there was no teacher as a sub she took on the role of teacher last year with little Direction and made sure the classroom flowed the way it should she came every day excited to work with the students and brought such a positive energy with her now she came on as a full-time perah while studying for practice test and supporting the transition into the new school year for both the
024students and a teacher new to pondosa she was truly the reason for that classroom running last year and any growth students made she has a fantastic attitude is a team player and practices open communication she is an incredibly valuable coworker [Applause] congratulations so our and I didn't feel like sending at the podium but I get to read uh are licensed and a um so they are not here tonight or neither are their nominators so um I will uh share with you so first we'll start with ap that was Liz Simon Liz is a nutrition services coordinator and Liz was nominated by Kelly Gardner here's what Kelly had to say about Liz short and sweet makes exceptional training materials easy to understand work AIDS and helps floaters out by having everything organized and ready to go
025now we'll move on to licensed uh licensed uh our award winner for this month is Brian Lindsay Brian is a math teacher at Lucille Irwin middle school and he was nominated by Teresa an McCarthy and here's what Teresa had to say about Brin uh for Brian as a new school year begins across the Thompson School District students will meet teachers who they'll consider transformational in their lives many years from now teachers guide discipline instruct and shape the young minds in the classroom and they approach the beginning of each school year with a sense of hope and even a little excitement which of their students will over overcome shyness which student will open up and find confidence in their abilities which student will learn a tough concept they fear they would never learn when a teacher
026believes in you any student can change from borderline to exemplary teachers like Brian l change lives every single day Brian arrives early stays late and offers before school tutoring every Tuesday and Thursday to help students Master New Concepts current students are found are fond of his class and former students visit him regularly the demands of teaching vary and Brian has found a way to balance that and be a true Master at his craft this year Brian took on the difficult challenge of teaching a stacked class of algebra and geometry by embracing this task Brian is able to help our school meet the needs of students who in years P would have had to attend classes at the high school this resulted in missed opportunities due to their late arrival to classes at LMS thanks to
027Brian these students will not have had that um additional stress in addition to this new teaching assignment Brian will also be the sponsor of the chess club at LMS Brian has also agreed to assist with District sponsored chess tournaments since he has knowledge of how to organize and operate such events furthermore since Brian isn't busy enough he will also cover for our administrators when they are out for district meetings this will be a tremendous support and comfort for our staff to have such a knowledgeable and caring individual at the helm when our administrators are absent from the building outside of parents te outside of parents teachers spend more time with students than anyone and I'm grateful that Brian has chosen to teach and work hard each day to get the best results from his students
028in my opinion Mr Brian Lindsay is due all of the respect and gratitude we can possibly offer I am proud to nominate him for the top of time award so that was Brian Lindsay and he was nominated by Teresa an McCarthy y so I would like to invite uh Brett if you could come forward as well as uh Lindsay we'd love to take a picture with you hopefully you're you're both still here yeah can we just by we're g to do a quick picture and Brett left so we'll take a picture with you Lindsay um thank you so finally I'd like to invite up um Sarah raspon Sarah is our executive director of elementary schools here in the Thompson School District uh and Sarah will be introducing our uh school that we're going to be
029featuring this evening good evening Madame President Dr schaer members of the board Sarah Ras an executive director of elementary schools and this evening I have the privilege of introducing principal Brandy stot she has brought some staff members with her and they are going to be um sharing a little bit about their family school and Community Partnerships good evening Madam president Dr Schaefer thank you Sarah and thank you board I am also pleased to introduce uh just a couple of my amazing staff members from linkoln first I have Jacqueline studeni who's a kindergarten teacher I have Janet Patterson who's one of our second grade teachers Jennifer Sutton who is our instructional coach and Christiana olmer who is our third grade teacher so we are happy to have them here to speak with you guys this evening
030as well go ahead to our next slide this is just our current mission statement at Lincoln we worked on this last year with um both community and student input and we've landed on that and is really become what we're practicing at Lincoln this year so our kids recite that every morning and these are two of our kindergarten students at our most recent um full sta uh full community event um our holiday concert so um we can go to the next slide on that so um tonight we're speaking with you guys about our family and Community engagement so this was actually launched during the 2122 um school year and was part of the work that we did with um the TSD implementation team initiatives they were given three options um hebi we were we were given
031three options PBIS family engagement and attendance and we really felt like if we tackled family and Community engagement that that would then lend itself to a more positive attendance rate as well as um more positive behavior supports in our system so building that community so that is why we elected to prioritize that one first uh we can go to the next slide we had two goals when we were working with this increase family engagement and increase the community engagement both both activ both of these were both we were looking for bigger um participation in our activities as well as more feedback on school and District priorities um a lot of the work we were doing during covid we may have surveyed our may have surveyed our community a bit too much and so um we
032were only getting like nine to 13 responses and so we were making decisions with not all of the voices represented that represented that needed to be so we can go to the next slide there so I'm going to first talk about some of the Community Partnerships we fostered in the last um year and there are more um I just couldn't fit them all on the slide and so our first one is Trinity Lutheran Church um they are an incredible partner with us they help um fund our back to school barbecue and they also cook the grill which is nice because then our teachers have the chance to meet with our families and our community me um our community members doing that they sponsor a supply drive for us which is really important because we're a
033title one community so um sometimes Supply are in uh sparse sparse Supply this year they donated to 15 different families as part of our holiday Giving Tree and they sponsor so much more including teacher events teacher appreciation events they're running anal support group for kids um who are suffering from grief they also helped repaint our garden boxes and our map on our playground and build our go GaGa ball pit so they're a very strong Community partner that we love to work with um wish for Wheels has done um they build bikes in conjunction with Ken graph Ford they built bikes for our second graders which was awesome um we had bikes running around our school for days bright orange which our kids loved um Costco Wholesale has donated school supply stest and they've also implemented
034a tutoring program which was one-on-one tutoring um they train up some people to help support at our school and then um CarMax cares donates um this was family connection so anytime a family member that works at at Carmax volunteers at one of our schools they also donate $25 for each hour to our PTO which is one way that we're help we're able to help build funds um for our parent community so those are just a couple of Our Community Partnerships we can go to the next slide and this is the the best part of it so our goal was to increase family engagement both like I said at community events and also getting their feedback our approach to this um we settled on the fact that we needed to quit offering all of our events
035at the same time they couldn't all be offered at 600 and 5:00 at night because many of our families work in the evenings and so we challenged our teachers behind us to start planning two commun uh two engagement events during the school day and the response was incredible we had families that we had never seen before come and just interact with their kids for an hour and a half um an hour hour and a half one of our biggest events is the second grade Marketplace which we just wrapped up last week um we have dudes day which is a during the day event where we invite male role models um they don't just have to be parents we're looking for anybody that you consider close to you they come in and they work with our
036kids sit alongside the teachers um pumpkin exploration day in kindergarten is they it caps off of a field trip they do and then they do some Project based learning activities with that um third grade does their Al pellet dissection with families which is awesome um if you've ever done an Al pellet dissection just don't don't come on an empty stomach and we also have movie night and if you go to the next slide we can um we had a community Carnival so we still did offer some of those after school events just not um not every month it just looked a little different um and then family bingo this year we've had a school dance already we did flashlight reading the list goes on at this point at by the end of last year we
037had had over 40 events that involved families into our building so um and we had good participation at those and like I said we were seeing families that we hadn't seen before so I'm going to hand it over now to both jacn steni and Christiana omo just to talk about the benefit of having those families in their class working with their kids hi hello um thank you for having us um in third grade I invited my families and I sent out a message via dojo and I said hey can you all come in and just have fun with us that was that was my marketing for them I made a little clipart and the turnout was phenomenal I had to pull stools from like other classrooms to get chairs in there but we had we
038had families engaging with every student in the classroom they were even the parents were like oh my goodness I didn't know this happened and the the language that they were using was fantastic and they talked about that for the remainder of the year and even now in fourth grade I continue to hear them speak about do you remember my dad came in and he did that science project with us so that's been a really powerful tool in my classroom is just inviting those families in especially just a quick message of hey come have fun with us and we've seen a huge turnout it's been great good evening um I have another family engagement activity that I've done um pumpkin exploration we go to the pumpkin patch in the fall I did that last year and
039this year and then the following day invited families to come in I had six um family members come in and they each ran a station sink or float measuring a craft um bean bag toss um yeah and it was just nice to see them connect with their kiddos and see how they interact with their friends and see what we're learning literacy and math and science all the things um in the classrooms I've also had um two families last year join our school PTO and they're board members this year so it's very exciting so we love having the family um portion engagement in in our school thank you guys so as you can see our over we've had oh sorry um that's okay no worries we've had a lot of positive successes one of the biggest
040ones is we've had an increase in volunteers so um at any point throughout the school day you can find a variety of Volunteers in our building from a variety of different places like I said running some of them are running groups some of them are just helping out the teachers but it's been great to get community members and our families in volunteering our PTO as Mr Denny said we increased it from 2 to 12 so we had two members at the beginning of not last year but yeah last year and now we're up to 12 which was awesome and you can read the bullet points but the piece I want to really highlight is that it's infusing more joy when we have our families engaging in learning with their kiddos our kids are happier and
041they feel more connected to their learning and it gives more power to our kids to be more inquisitive and so that's been a huge benefit that we've seen at Lincoln um so aren we're not done so now we can go to the next slide we certainly still have um next steps we want to continue to find new ways to connect with our families and our communities really starting to build out um those Project based learning opportunities and bringing community community members in um we are still trying to increase the amount of feedback we're getting on school related topics it's it's increased but not nearly to the level we would like to so we're looking at all sorts of different survey or uh information gathering options and um we might even be putting our student counsil
042to work on some of that having our kids call some parents an interview about some things so some things were're just kind of tossing around and we want to continue to work on creating those Creative Learning opportunities for our students so that we can build those um critical thinkers and problem solvers as they continue through school so that is all we have to present on tonight but we are very excited about this opportunity it's bled into our next challenge with the implementation teams which is that positive behavior support and we're looking to get a Community member on as part of that team as well so thank you for your time this evening thank you do board members have any questions they'd like to share um let's start down Denise do you have one okay Alexander
043okay Nancy I'm curious and and Sarah might know this but because I know all the schools last year they got to choose one of three I'd be curious to know of the schools that chose the family engagement what what has the impact been on just the discipline behavior in the school school um as compared to some of the other schools that chose a different option if if having the family that really focus on it has actually impacted that in a positive way yeah I don't have the specific data on that I can just speak to what has happened at Lincoln and Sarah or Dr guthal might be able to speak more uh clearly on the other schools for our school it has built a more positive collabora collaborative relationship it does not mean that we
044don't have discipline problems at Lincoln that is not what it means at all we still work with kids and we still try to collaborate with families but I think it's taken the the curtain down a little bit and made them um help helped people to realize that we're really here to be in a collaboration with you that we're here to serve your kids and your community um whereas I think that in in years past it might have feel felt like a little bit of a different hierarchy and so we're we're still trying to break down some of those Falls but we've seen a significant difference um with some of our families in terms of our ability to connect with them on how we help support their children that's great to hear thank you St I
045appreciate hearing um the focus also on the fact that school should be about Joy it should be fun for them to come to school especially at the elementary and it can be so I'm glad that you are recognizing that thank you thank you very much for taking your time to come thank you for your time have a good [Applause] evening okay our next um item would be our board committee reports and I sent on an email asking them to think about something that was relevant for us as a uh school board from um casby and it could be something that we did as a group or something or a session that you attended just to let them know what casby's all about we went down to um uh the State School Board Association uh conference
046this last week and that's where we were and had time together and then we also attended different sessions so don you want to start us out with something yeah so um the first session of the first day that was the actual conference after our retreat was um a presentation of our youth crisis response team um and as you can imagine it was it was a little slow starting for most people because it was early um but the room just kept filling up and um um as as it felt filled up there were more and more people you know really engaging with what we're doing um here in Thompson with the co-responder program and um I thought that I had pretty good grasp on what we're doing but the case study that was presented was I
047think a really great way um to to look at the program and how it works and what um what the benefits of it are because there's a lot of benefits and so when you looked at it through the lens of of a situation that's happening in our schools with a student um it was really able to see all the ins and outs and the nuance and the specialty that comes with um our corresponder program and I uh was really excited about seeing how many people were flooding the um the front of the room to ask questions at the end right you know there was a lot of questions during the presentation but at the end there was a lot of people really trying to figure out how do we do something like this um and
048so um it was cool to get to share something that we've done that's that's uh really targeting the the thing that we know we need help with um in getting to share that with other people and get a chance to reflect on what's working and how where we're at with it I think was really nice to see so I got to act like a soccer mom taking pictures from the crowd uh which is also fun to get to celebrate all the good work so thanks for that St I always benefit from attending the uh casby convention uh the breakout sessions the small group sessions deal with nuts and bolts kinds of of business for the uh School District where representatives from school districts from around the state will'll present a workshop and uh normally there
049are ideas that emerg from those Workshop meetings that were're able to bring back and I haven't had a chance yet to share these with my colleagues but I did attend two sessions that I think uh will give us an opportunity to look at some things that perhaps we're not doing that other districts are another highlight just very quickly was meeting with the students and the student strand uh students from all around the state one School Board member and about 12 kids at the table and having them ask us questions Etc what I want to focus on is something else that's very important uh to me in attending this conference and that's receiving inspiration as a board member and that inspiration usually comes or often comes from the keynote speakers we had three excellent keynote speakers
050this year I want to tell you just quickly about the first one uh that we heard on the first day of the conference this was a a woman who lived on the New York city streets as a high school student she slept on the subway she slept under bridges uh she did couch surfing as she moved from friend to friend um as time went on uh she became quite a rebel and she was difficult uh for people to be around and parents uh with whom she had been couch surfing uh told their children not to invite her back that it just wasn't working she wanted an education and she looked for the right school and she found the right school for her and the principal of that particular School took her under his wing he
051apparently saw a lot in her that he thought was worth saving uh he had high expectations for her he practice a lot of tough love with her she did ultimately graduate from high school she was still a homeless student uh as a result of the work she did at this school and the inspiration from this particular administrator she received a full ride scholarship to Harvard she's now an extremely successful businesswoman and the reason I I found it inspiring is that as school board members we have the opportunity to work with teachers with administrators with bus drivers with cafeteria Personnel Etc ET and we're a team and ultimately the goal of the team is to do what happened for this young woman uh and so the uh the inspirational part of the casby conference every year
052is important to me as a school board member thanks to Nancy um I could due to work I could only attend the wind the um study session which was at the Broadmore and during that there was no public discussion or transparency about the tax rate the board approves that impacts every homeowner business and renter just so you know last year we collected over $3 34.6 million from the mlos which is still not enough to retra retain and attract quality employees why could it be the spending priorities are on implementing social agendas that have nothing to do with education clearly we're not spending the money on the right things things but no one wants to talk about this due to the massive increases in property values this will increase and produce a 16% average tax bill
053for each and every one of you how much of this taxpayer funded windfall will make it to the classroom has your standard of living increased 16% or are you struggling to pay your rent your mortgage or even sadly to feed your children while there are many things I don't agree with with the governor on I do agree that every tax entity has an abil the right the um obligation to provide tax relief to the citizens that we serve every one of us must adjust our budgets but not the government and TSD is no exception we talk about affordable housing with no idea of how we impact it every year we increase the budget as the student enrollment declines but Charter enrollment increases every the board refuses to establish spending priority for Education every year we
054add staff to 800 South tap increased social programs and now even talk about adding mental health clinics into the schools this board values language Justice gender ideology and creating Progressive social justice Warriors at the expense of real learning what happened to funding education to make sure kids can read learn history science and do math as you say during the bond campaigns it's just a Starbucks and so why can't we return the favor and buy you the cup of coffee this year the community deserves a public conversation not the board deciding at the Broadmore Hotel to vote on the mill Levy certification at a January 3rd Special meeting with no public comment or discussion Alexandra thank you um so again the casby is is a great for lots of reasons my favorite part every year is
055the sessions with the students um which Stu alluded to there's a group so all all students come from many of the districts in the state um there were over 200 students there this year which is the most there have been and they always lead there's a planning committee um that works for several months um planning the student sessions um of which we had two representatives from our district on the planning committee um and they're doing education and learning things in with about how to advocate for themselves and um sort of learning to um work with boards and work with Administration and things like that ways that they can improve their educational experience and then one of the sessions that they plan and Lead is an interactive session with board members attending board members um and
056so that happened on Friday afternoon um and I was we were with sort of different students from different schools and um had sort of a list of questions that we could talk about and then also just sort of some free flowing conversation and it's always so interesting to hear from these um young people um and I was with I met students from um the buers school district from Aspen from TDE from our own district from Canyon City um and there are a lot of the same struggles um that they have that we have within Thompson and some of the different things um I was able to provide one of my tables with a very a very very brief lesson on school Finance um when they were talking about leaking roofs and um falling apart buildings
057and things like that even in um you know some of the more affluent districts such as Aspen andure i' have these struggles as well um so that was sort of Illuminating I think for for me and for them as well and one of the key themes that came through in these discussions was about um communication between the board and the students um Canyon City actually does a phenomenal job they have a lot of interaction between the board members and the students and so those students really knew you know kind of what the board was doing and knew who their board members were um none of the other kids did um including from our district and they I think there's a lot of room for improvement um as far as educating um definitely high school students
058and hearing their their ideas um as well as sharing what's going on with them so that was very Illuminating and filled me with a lot of ideas of things we can do um a little bit better here and Denise wasn't able to join us um so we look forward to having her with us next year and yes so we're just glad you're here with us tonight um there were two things about casby that I find really beneficial the first is always our first day that we're down there is our opportunity for our board to have um we had our study session down there but we also had um our Retreat time and it gives us an opportunity to talk about some of the pieces that we need to address we also have a time to
059just learn a little bit more about each other as individuals and then uh we worked with uh some discussions that we needed to have that we could do it um have the discussion with a larger block of time than what we have any other time so we had a really good day to um work on different topics and then um there's like they said a whole variety of sessions um I went one went to one that was on the bond and M Levy despression funds but I also went to one that I thought was really I went not really knowing what to expect but it was called game on and it was all about um the activities and Athletics and how the school board and the Athletics work together as teammates and it was really
060interesting because it was presented from the point of view of um a larger District they talked about having a team or a committee that worked with the athletic director and problem solved pieces and then they divided it down into smaller areas so that maybe there was a a larger group of about six people but then small groups that fit under all those different cat categories to talk about inter murals talk about uh issues that come up with sports or any activity it wasn't just all with game on you think oh sports but it was all kinds from uh Eames to all of the activities that kids participate in and it was really quite interesting so Kevin I'll be talking with you sometime um so basically casby was our time to just kind of build our
061community as a board and um work together so let's move on to public comment because the board wants to hear the viewpoints of the public and also needs to conduct its business in an orderly and efficient manner it shall schedule time during its regular board meetings for brief comments and questions from the public the board Shall Set an unlimited time for public participation prior to the business portion of the meeting however the time for each speaker shall be limited to 3 minutes and each individual will only be recognized once public comment 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 concern them but are encouraged to exercise their speech rights responsibly the board encourages
062the discussion of all Personnel matters to be conducted in executive session um I'll call your name and then the light will go on over here when you start talking you'll have three minutes when you have 30 seconds left the light will turn yellow and make a little beep and then at 3 minutes it will start flashing red and it's going to keep beeping so that you stop talking uh first up we have Barbara Chow good evening I'm bar sh and I live in Loveland been here for about 14 years I believe and um I have enjoyed very much this meeting so far to hear what's happening in the schools and to uh get to know your board members a little bit and um thank you madam president and board members to that you allow us
063to speak and I just want to um congratulate you on the reelection of Nancy rumsfield and I think that you will find her um very uh wise and um competent might say or with expertise in the financial area that you uh as all the rest of us are facing difficulties and uh interesting problems to confront and so I just want to uh congratul ulate you on this uh board member and uh look forward to following your activities in this year thank youor Lori goal I'm ready Madame President board members Dr schaer members of staff citizens and parents of the beautiful city of Loveland laori Goble here ah yes it is the holiday season and it's time to go to Grandma's house right or will we that mil I want to speak to you about the
064reducing the mill Levy as was the case yesterday morning at the County Commissioners we gathered as concerned citizens mostly grandparents because people are working they can't take time off work and even here tonight a lot of parents they can't come to the meetings or maybe they are watching online but they're helping their kids get ready for the next day for school with homework Etc but what I wanted to bring up is the fact that at the city council meeting it has been brought up to making an adjustment to lower the mill rate to lessen the tax burden for the citizens of Leland what makes lowering the mill Levy rate even more necessary is the housing market when the assessments were done this was at the height of the market the very height all of our
065properties have decreased in value since then and if property taxes are not lowered by the city by the county and by the school district for those on a fixed income for those living paycheck to paycheck they're going to end up having to take money out of savings or out of retirement accounts and this is unsustainable in the long term we've all been hit by inflation Insurance fuel utilities groceries Kevin McAllister's little grocery list back in 1990 was $19.86 last year was 14 $440 and this year that same grocery list is over $72 I've mentioned uh the fact that our property taxes are going to increase just by the she fact that our valuations went up so dramatically I'm looking at a 28% increase that's crazy I'm not having my income go up by 28% with
066all the other at add-ons I'm asking you each to very carefully look at your priorities when it comes to budgeting it's time to re-budget and spend the money on the things that we truly need to get the money to our children to the classrooms there's only one school in the entire District that performs at over 50% in both uh English language arts and Mathematics so I implore you to do what our state legislature failed to do and make a meaningful reduction in our property tax by reducing the mill Levy this helps everyone helps the young helps the old helps the property owners it helps the renters family is important as was mentioned by the Lincoln Elementary so Merry Christmas thank you Forest Epper thank you to the board and to the president for having public
067comment and allowing us to speak I believe that public comment is very important I come to you as a a former TSD student I graduated from birth at high in 2014 and I am proud to have gone to this district and to have walked through this admin building many times as a student and now as an adult I was also a student when our board went through a really big rough patch 10 years ago it felt like a dark Cloud was hanging over our district when that new board was sworn in It produced anxiety among the teachers among students and even among the community and I know bad leadership when I see it and so as a former student and as a community member I implore the board all of the board members to do
068to do the right thing to continue Contin to invest in good Community programs that help students I urge you to promote I promote you to I urge you to promote accountability among our teachers among our staff and amongst yourselves and to bring forth complaints or issues that you have according to district and board policy not on social media airing your own personal grievances and I also urge you to please please listen to students you listened to us when we brought when we brought our own personal Grievances and our own issues up 10 years ago please continue to do so and I also really really ask you to use your position to do good for our district and not Advance your own personal agenda thank you nicholet erens all right thank you so much good evening
069um LIF this up a little um uh as I said my name is Nicolet erens and thank you U Mr schaer and the whole board for hearing me out tonight um I am a uh mom of four I have two sons that attend birth at elementary and I also have two-year-old twin girls so uh shout out to my husband who is holding down the fort at home tonight so I could be here um I am here um to share concerns about the recent bus transportation plan that is affecting uh birthed bus routes um families in the area where we live are 15 to 20 minutes outside of town um our bus comes I apologize um at 7:12 in the morning and um even um even if a family um can drop off their kids at
0707:45 by the time the parent returns home they will lose almost an hour of work time that totals up to 7 hours in the period That's being requested which is almost a full workday lost when they don't have ping if a family is unable to find a car pool that doubles to 14 hours because of the return home um you can probably see that for families that don't have options to hire child care because those hours are over a short week and sporadic providers are not going to come around wanting to help you with that child care time uh from the bus driers perspective uh bus drivers and bids have really big Buy in to their students and their families they are similar to teachers in the way that they build relationships with students and
071they use classroom management skills to keep the buses safe and to um keep them friendly for all the students that are on there I know our bus driver works really hard every day to provide this for the 50 students that ride with my boys um asking those drivers to move to a new bus in some ways is similar I am sorry um to asking a teacher to abandon their class in order to teach another class for seven days and that as you know if any of you have ever been teachers is not anything a teacher would ever accept lastly um I am really puzzled at how a proposal that is not acceptable to the current longterm and reliable drivers that we have is helping us with our transportation problem if we lose two or more
072drivers we are worse off than we were before the plan was implemented um so I urge you all and transportation to reconsider this plan and do not ever consider this as a long-term solution for our transportation challenges thank you so much for listening I apologized for my emotion thank you Emily oh sorry Emily Boyd hello my name is Emily Boyd and I will have bus eligible students in birthed and in birthed schools through 2037 we recognize and acknowledge that school transportation and the school bus driver shortage is a systemic and ongoing issue and while the state of Colorado and Thompson schools are not required to provide student trans support we are very appreciative of the support provided in order to get our students to and from school this week's email dictating an impactful change in
073transportation services for peal birth and families to birthed schools in the Thompson School District is alarming and difficult for families to accommodate and it's becoming a big point of contention with our local bus drivers so much so that many have already issued letters of resignation or quit for to my count so far uh this further compounds the already strained Transportation issue in the Thompson School District we would like to understand how many children are being transported in this change and why our birthed schools were targeted for bus routes being cancelled rolling cancellations the rural birthing communities affected do not have many alternative options in order to get our kids to school it's too far our CH too far for our children to walk or ride their bikes there's no public transit options or even crosswalks
074in our area and many parents have working hours which cannot accommodate transport to and from school rural families depend on the school district for this critical and historically provided transportation service as I understand there are other areas of the district also affected by the school bus uh driver shortage however it is also my understanding that this is the first instance of rolling routes or routes actually being canceled on a rolling basis for a prescribed period of time leaving many parents with no options to get their children to and from school other Transportation plans have included all children being transported albe yet some children are arriving late to school but all are still being provided that critical transportation service why wasn't there any Public Communication of this proposed plan and no opportunity for the public to
075comment on the impact to families in our community if there is a plan for this protocol to continue past the March deadline a transparent plan should be disseminated to the community now for public coment input before any additional changes are forced Upon Our Community the email indicate that this plan will expire in March what's the plan after March what is the school district doing now to ensure that this bus driver shortage is remediated and kids in our school district can get back and forth to school utilizing that uh District transportation the bus is really an extension of the classroom many bus drivers develop really phenomenal relationships with their bus students and our children's behavior is a direct product of the caring nature of our bus drivers serving our children with A disruption to the beginning
076and end of their day school of routine is going to have significant impact on our students morale and success we object to these route cancellations and ask the Board of Education to work on a transparent and comprehensive Transportation plan with public input which addresses these issues I'm sorry your time is up Elizabeth Kerney evening Bo thank you for spending your evening doing this important public work um I'm Elizabeth Carney and I live in Berk Colorado I'm here to talk to you about the bus driver problem I've heard from several of my friends in ber it who drives school buses one's a farmer on the rest of the day and he's driven a bus for probably 20 years and he is shocked that all of a sudden transportation is going to be pulled out from underneath
077his rout he he is a great guy he has great relationships with his kids and now they' those families have been told hey sorry you got to get your own kids your kids to school don't know how that's going to happen but they have to get to school and they can't walk it's County Roads that have lots of traffic on both sides so that's my first issue I would like to weigh in on the need for um public comment and consideration before those kind of changes are just lobbed out there um the second one is on the mill Levy um decrease which this board has the authority to do you can temporarily reduce the mill Levy this year and give a break to every homeowner every property owner in this District here's a little summary
078from your um annual comprehensive report that's part of your agenda tonight in 2014 property taxes levied were $29 million in 2023 property taxes levied were $65 million in 2020 2014 there were 15,000 students in the district in 2023 according to your comprehensive report there are 1274 um there's a that was a doubling of taxes levied and a reduction in students and I'm not great with math but there should be a little wiggle room in there that you guys could have some Grace and reduce that Mill Levy just for this year and hopefully the legislature will come forward and be able to do something else to fix it but you guys have the power so if you pass on this next time you show up in front of the the district shows up in front of
079the voters asking for more money guess what the voters are going to say sorry can't help you this is your chance to create some good faith it's a it's a critical opportunity and I urge you to grasp it thank you Sharon Penny Dr Schaefer president Cruz board staff Sharon Penny Loveland I know your thoughts says the Lord whether you're asleep or awake I know your thoughts I am for you I am for you not against you I am not confused I made you male and female I am not confused do not be confused I knew you in the womb each of you come to me he says seek me out I will lead you I am light in me there is no Darkness I'm for you I'm not against you do not be confused come
080to me he says seek me out I will lead you I am light thank you good evening my name is Lauren H I live in Loveland Colorado and I'm a parent of three students in TSD today I would like to continue the conversation of our school's need for literacy interventionists at the last Board of Education meeting I talked about the lack of reading interventionists in our elementary schools many schools have no literacy interventionist or not adequate FTE assigned to literacy intervention for the needs of the student body I understand that building Administration is largely responsible for Staffing at the building level however I'm asking that the district reconsider this when it comes to Staffing for literacy intervention I believe that adequate literacy intervention Personnel should be required in every school especially in elementary schools where
081they will have the biggest impact this will not only have a positive effect on literacy growth across the district but will also have a positive impact on the social emotional aspects of our children's learning experiences throughout their K through 12 careers this in turn can have a positive impact on chronic absenteeism and our graduation rates it's my understanding that the board and District administration are discussing a potential M Levy override for the 2024 election cycle I would like for the board to propose that a portion of these funds be set aside for strengthening literacy intervention offerings within our school thank you I can be reached at h. laoren gmail.com that's hug. laen gmail.com thank you uh good evening this is Linda Rosa I'm a retiree in Loveland and I've for lived here for 30 years
082I'm speaking today to urge you to lower the school district's Mill Levy that will starting in 2024 and thereafter contribute to Sky High property tax bill it appears it will add over 22 million to the district's property uh owners bill I want to urge you to reverse course and do to a permanent Mill Levy reduction with a reasonable increase for the next year and all years thereafter a whopping jump of 30 to 40% increase in valuations is simply not reasonable to inflict on taxpayers when the typical increase are more like six to 7% this is going to hit the citizenry hard these are hard times financially people are hurting they're already struggling cope with large utility bills the ever increasing prices of food housing insurance and for some all the Monstrous fees and taxes inflicted
083by Metro districts reports are that the elderly are forgoing prescription meds in order to buy food and kidspack reports on their website that 5,000 children one-third of the district students come from families struggling with food insecurity and on November 7 Loveland voters across the board voted for tax relief they need tax relas I urge you to consider lowering the mill Levy though so that the school district gets a reasonable increase I hope you keep in mind that the most effective way to keep housing in this city from becoming even less affordable is to be realistic about what citizens are able to pay in property tax families are counting on you to be Humane in your taxing policies thank you very much for your time and attention that concludes public participation for this evening we will
084move on to action consent items these are items um that we have had introduced to us at study session and um have been grouped together for a u a vote so we have three three items on our public consent yeah um first one is approval of uh Personnel extra Duty coaching recommendations 5.2 is approval of expenditures over 50,000 and 5.3 is approval of gifts and donations and so I'm going to ask ask um Alexandra to read the donations for us and then we'll take a motion for passing these there are um three donations um for which we are grateful oh sorry there are four um number one a $1,500 donation to Mountain View High School for Mountain View athletic sponsorships from Pelican Joe's Pizzeria a $2,000 donation to Mountain View High School to support the
085band program program from Jerry chase a $2,000 donation to GED program testing from Julia cherry and a $2,200 donation to Ferguson high school for scholar field trips from Andy and Jenny D young so thank you very much for all of those thank you Alexandra all right um I will take a motion to um approve these three uh action content items so moved thank you Don second and Alexandra first from Donna second from Alexandra and Laur Le will you call the role please Stu Boyd hi Denise Chapman hi Amy Doran Don Kirk I Barbara Cruz I Alexander lesum I Nancy rumfelt I thank you lle we will move now into discussion action items and we'll begin with um 6.1 which is the acceptance of the 2022 23 annual comprehensive financial report known as the a it
086doesn't make sense Acra AER does not make sense has to be a vowel in the middle of all those consonants it's the way it goes all right Gordon Jones thank you for joining thank you madam president good evening um Dr Schaefer members of the board I'm Gordon Jones Chief Financial Officer for the district um this agenda item that is being brought forth for the board's consideration is an uh an annual item that takes place uh Colorado statute requires that any public school district uh has to have an outside independent audit each year and that audit is to be completed within six months of the end of the of the fiscal year um The District's fiscal year runs July 1st through June 30th so the report that's being presented to you tonight for consideration is for
087the 2022 23 audit that is um I'm pleased to say very near to completion right now there are a couple um outstanding items that I'll refer to here but um it is uh very close to completion so this being the last scheduled board meeting um for the board um the uh the consideration that's being asked is for um acceptance um it's not approval necessarily but uh in it's t it's essentially approval acceptance of the audit report that we have from our independent uh Auditors this is not required by Statute it's considered uh um standard practice and good practice to uh ask the board for that consideration so the uh the document that uh that you uh that is posted on the website is the um essentially complete uh audit that has been prepared by staff
088with review by our independent Auditors and then issuance of their um opinion the uh document that the board has been provided is provides an overview of sections of the for um again annual comprehensive financial report for the board's consideration uh last year the report was 145 Pages this year uh 147 Pages um so a slight increase in the volume um there's a lot of detail that's in this report um there's a lot of um factual information um about the district about operations of the district and the financial statements for each of the funds that the district maintains so um if I could I'd like to just uh refer the board and the community for that matter to a few um highlighted sections or portions if uh somebody doesn't want to spend the uh exorbitant amount
089of time of reading all 147 Pages or pouring over that certainly all that information is there first I would point the board and the community to the table of contents that's Roman numeral one through Roman numeral 3 in the document letter of transmitt is pages one through six that is an overview of District Operations um economic conditions um locally regionally Statewide nationally that could have a bearing on the district's future financial performance um a variety of different points that are covered in the letter of transmitt the independent auditors report is the ultimate goal of the the audit each year to get that opinion from our Auditors the example that's provided in the document that's posted is a sample it is last year's report so the it is not for this year's report we likely will
090have that U tomorrow or Friday we will have the uh the report no findings have been communicated from our auditor um and I don't anticipate any um the language would be nearly verbatim to the example report that's provided um just with the updated dates for the 2223 fiscal year Management's discussion and I'm sorry that's those are on pages 13 through 15 numbered Pages not the uh not the PDF number pages but the actual page number on the document um next is the management managements discussion and Analysis mdna it's referred to that's Pages 16 through through 30 that gives more um specific financial highlights across a variety of different funds we'll talk about those in just a second um but the management discussion and Analysis is prepared each year notes to the financial statement is maybe
091a bit of a um I don't want to say a stretch but there's a lot of financial information in there about assumptions um estimates uh policies Financial policies practices procedures that are used um that is on pages um sorry I lost my train of thought Pages 41 through 71 so it's 31 Pages um just for the board's edification two notes in that notes 10 and 11 um comprise 15 of those 31 Pages those have to do with a um uh the the par calculation as we refer to it and the um defined benefit contribution plan that is present in the district that the district participates in who are these notes from uh those notes are prepared by staff and reviewed by the auditor however those two that I just referenced notes 10 and 11 which
092are 15 pages almost half of the total notes um are um prepared by the uh our independent Auditors and if you were to look look at any um acur for any other District you would see very very similar if not the exact same footnotes um there it has to do with the the district how we have to report our Prat share or proportionate share of the unfunded liability of the perah um uh retirement plan thank you it's uh there's very complex um considerations that go into that I think the note spells it the notes spell it out very well but it takes 15 pages to um spell it out um fairly well as well perhaps the the most uh concise or the most relevant or the most useful um information is the budgetary comparisons so
093on the list that you have each fund that the district maintains is listed or has a a separate Financial is prepared for it that will show um you the board the community any user or reader of the financial statements the original budget the final budget um the actual results and then the change um compared to that so I won't enumerate the the full list here but um just running through the the funds very quickly general fund the general operations of the district the largest of all the funds federal state and local grants um is just that um I think we have about 80 grants 80 separate grants that we are dealing with from a federal state and local level um at this point there's notes to this required supplementary information that's on page 82 Bond
094Redemption fund is the um Debt Service that the district has for outstanding bonds it's the principal and interest payments and how that revenue is um secured and what is paid out for according to the debt schedules that are in place the building fund on page 90 um summarizes the district's um expenditures and Revenue in that in the building fund which is just what it says so for Capital construction projects um all of that activity takes place in the building fund page 91 is the nutrition services fund again just as the title suggests um nutrition services operates as a separate um entity almost if you will of the district that that financial information is included in that report athletic and activity fund um is largely uh fun raising um that schools do dollars in dollars out
095um that are largely related to that uh those activities the land Reserve fund on page 93 also referred to as pyo which um the acronym is um is an acronym for payment in lie of these are um fees that are paid to the district required to be paid to the district through agreements with each one of the municipalities that the district operates in for um for each uh property that's built each home that's built there's a a fee that comes to the district or um the at The District's discretion they can negotiate with a builder to have um dedication of land rather than paying the um fee there therefore the name payment in lie of the pylo account uh fee supported programs fund is on 94 that's uh any any uh activity that has a
096fee associated with so class fees will be in there um uh the Early Childhood Program for the year in question or the year being reported here is the 2223 year um those um tuition costs or or tuition uh revenue is included in there um that is changing effective with this fiscal year 23 24 because the state has migrated to the uh upk or Universal preschool program so those those dollars are no will no longer be reported in the uh Fe supported programs fund and capital projects fund on page 95 is similar to the building fund but on a smaller scale so any capital projects um a repair to uh a roof perhaps uh an air conditioning unit uh a boiler in a building for heat a parking lot repair um still capital of nature in
097nature but um typically not elevating to the uh the size of the transactions that are typically taking place in the building fund and then the last section that I'll reference and again this is an example only and marked as such in the document that's posted um it's it's referred to as the single audit um single is a bit of a misnomer because it uh it deals with Federal programs so as part of the uniform guidance that the the district and all other school districts and and anybody receiving federal funds from a grant perspective have to abide by um they have to undergo a single audit single audit is really just looking at specific um Federal programs that we have so I've listed for the board and the uh board's consideration um even though it says
098single audit we have several programs um and they're they're audited on a rotating basis not every program every year but single is a bit of a this misnomer when I say that for the 2223 year Federal programs that were reviewed was were Sr one sr2 sr3 homeless youth one Grant homeless youth 2 Grant Ida which is the special education program those are the programs that were selected by our independent auditor for review in the 2223 year um that information on that uh the report the independent auditor report again um is is um complete we just they're they're making the final tweaks to that and we should have that tomorrow or Friday that's an a a very brief overview I Know It uh deals with the pages I referenced are about 75 pages of the 150
099or so pages so half of them um I know that's a lot of of information on those and I I don't expect everybody to read cover to cover but uh the ability to or the opportunity to is included in the in the document that's presented the next page that the the board has in front of them is just a very brief summary you will see these same figures on those pages that I referenced where these funds are included in the annual report but I thought it was worthwhile just to uh spend just a moment looking at those so the board could see um in in governmental accounting or fund accounting we start with a beginning fund balance which is a Reserve balance that uh that is in place in each one of the funds there's
100Revenue each year there's expenditures each year there's often transfers between the funds in and out um between One Fund into another and vice versa not in every fund but in some that um that activity um typically typically it does get us to a net change in fund balance so in the simplest of terms Revenue less expenditures equals change in fund balance either POS positive or negative and then that is added or subtracted added to or subtracted from the beginning fund balance to arrive at the end of year fund balance so for each one of those funds you will see the uh the activity that is taking taken place a positive number for the net change in fund balance would in the for-profit world would mean um a profit um governmental accounting or fund accounting doesn't
101necessarily look at it as such the the term again is net change in fund balance but essentially that's what it relates to you'll see two of the funds three of the funds actually that have a negative net change in fund value or fund balance that is also common especially in the funds where you're seeing that and I'll I'll talk about those very briefly the first is the federal state and local grants um a lot of the grants that we have are on a uh reimbursement standpoint meaning we incur the costs we pay the costs and then we submit receipts we submit documentation through the proper reporting channels to be reimbursed for those so if we've incurred expense but haven't received the revenue as a cash basis taxpayer or reporting entity that the school district is
102um It's Not Unusual to see a decrease or a a loss if you will where expenditures have exceeded Revenue it just means primarily that there's Revenue that is deferred revenue that hasn't been invoiced and received yet or submitted based on the the schedule that's in place on the various various grants the other item uh other fund that has a negative balance pardon me is the uh building fund that is just what we would expect this is primarily the proceeds from the 2018 bond that were received up front and the district has been spending those down now entering the fifth year of spending down that balance so um what's typical is you would see a negative balance more expenditures than Revenue meaning those those projects are taking place and dollars are being expended thus res reducing
103the fund balance the third area is is somewhat similar to those as well that has a use of fund balance for the year is the capital projects fund those are the smaller capital projects that I refer to again um we we Budget on an annual basis July 1 through June 30 when we get to June 30 there are projects that have been budgeted for that year that haven't been completed yet because a lot of that work takes place over the summer so some of those expenditures that were budgeted in a previous year or in the current year don't get spent or expended until the following year so again that's the same same thing kind of like the grants that I talked about where there's Reserve balance projects that were budgeted that didn't get spent in
104the current year get spent in the next year thus creating a reduction of the the fund balance all of the other funds um that you can see sorry there's one more that I overlooked there the nutrition services fund um there's some interesting interesting things occurring with nutrition services um with the healthy School meals for all um program that's one aspect also during the pandemic there was the the USDA funded all student meals so all student meals were free um those that created a a fund balance that was larger than typical um meaning we we were we we had a positive add to a fund or increased a fund balance in the nutrition services fund CDE said we want you to devise a plan to spend down your fund balance we don't want you to hold
105on to that we want you spending that for the benefit of the program so I'm taking that to heart that's exactly what the nutrition services team did and they are spending down that fund balance on a prescribed plan um that is been uh reviewed by Colorado Department of Education as well so without going into more detail um there there's more line item detail on each one of those pages that I referenced but uh that gives you a somewhat brief overview of financial performance of the district for the 2223 fiscal year okay are there questions from the board okay let start down thereon just a couple of questions but first a comment this two-pager that you gave us is very helpful I appreciate being able to follow that as you're talking um I believe you said
106the audit itself would be completed within the next couple of days that is uh we are in uh multiple times daily contact with our Auditors um they're working on certainly we're not their only client but we are yes that the expectation is that we will be finished in the next day or two I if I could add one uh a further comment um the audit advisory committee um that the the board has appointed um we have met once um about a month and a half ago or two months ago the plan would be to reconvene that group um as we do annually have our independent auditor there to answer to provide an overview of the work that the Auditors Auditors their team it's not just one person it's a team of people the work that
107they've done in all these areas and uh answer any questions that the committee would have and then have that committee report back to the board um likely in the February time frame all right followup question um assuming that the audit itself will be finished within the next couple of days and I know you're working against a deadline because it needs to be finished pretty quickly will the independent Auditor's report be available at that time or yes it will be because I'm interested to see what the uh auditor has to say also the management discussion and Analysis will that also be completed at the point that the the report is that is already completed the mdna or management discussion and Analysis is a finished product that's part of the final review work that the Auditors are
108doing is ticking and tying the the figures that are referenced in the mdna the management discussion and Analysis with the financial statements making sure that they're in agreement with the comments that have been made in the mdna that they agree with the financial statements so the mdna is the is a completed um document the only items not fully completed um in the report that's posted is the auditor's opinion and the single audit Auditor's opinion so both items from the auditor that we're waiting for that they um we just completed the management representation letter today um spelling out what exactly what management is responsible for that's another requirement before they will uh issue an opinion we have been told again that there are no findings um there's sampling of all the work that they've done from
109a sampling perspective there are no findings and I would expect the language to be um nearly verbatim of to the example documents that are in the report now just for the current year all right and then the opinion will be available when that would be those are the last two pieces that we should have tomorrow okay and they will be part of the completed audit absolutely okay I'm very interested than seeing those parts thank you Gordon all right other questions Nancy um first as always thank you for you and your team's work on this um as an accountant I understand what goes into this and I'm sure you'll be breathing a big sigh of relief when it's over um one thing I like about this report well first I don't like its new name cfer
110was better but um agre is that you can it's it's it's a great report to really see actuals and one of the things I would love to see happen with the budgeting process is to start putting in there the actual column not the final budget number we approved but what did we actually spend because I think most people in reality when they're looking at making a new budget they don't look at well what did I budget they're looking at what did I really spend and so I think this column is very helpful I also look at at the understanding that when you look at um which a summary that you did for the fund performance is really helpful so just between the general and all of the grant funds just to understand that when you
111take that by our funded pup account we're spending over 14,000 per student so that's again why I do think we need to at certain point start talking about what does it really cost to educate one child and the M Levy Revenue was originally at 32 almost 33 we ended at 346 million which is a great number but I think people need to understand it's important right now to say there is no more room for another M Levy override because we're basically are almost at legal capacity to do it anymore and the maintenance M Levy override as I call it um is the only option we have to free up money and make um this keep working but overall thank you for all your work on this report thank you for your comments any other questions
112all right so what do you need from us just an acceptance a vote of acceptance or what what's it um the the ask would be and it could be um I'm I'm not a parliamentary procedure expert but I would uh imagine that in the light the wording of the motion that it could be something because it's not a fully final document yet without the opinion that are there again I have a very high level of optimism that the opinions will be an unqualified or clean opinion which is just what we're after it'll be very much like it is U if not exactly as it was worded last year for the uh audit opinions that we should have in the next couple days um and those that know me for me to say I have a
113very high level of optimism um is a extreme statement um um so the perhaps a a motion that would include the language of um adopting or uh uh agreeing to adopt the uh annual report at the 2022 23 annual report as presented pending any um unknown uh I I don't know sorry I haven't I should have written out an eloquent statement for the motion but pending any adverse findings or adverse results from the final audit opinion that is issued okay that the report is adopted you want to say it I'll try then can I ask a question so then what if on the unforeseen event that there are adverse findings then what would happen that would be my direction uh that I would not have authority to submit um well let me correct that I
114do still have the authority the district has the authority and the requirement to submit by December 31st um the options are uh request which we have done in the past although at a much earlier time point an extension of the audit um I have not broached that subject with the office of the state auditor um that could be an option to uh to request an extension um or uh I assume the board would uh welcome an opportunity to have a special meeting over the uh over the holiday break Dr schaer will um maybe not appreciate that comment but um there would be there are options available it again I would not be offering that if I didn't have a very high level of Confidence from the daily Communications we're having with our auditor that the
115report will be nothing but unqualified which is just what we're searching for or seeking not searching for that's what we expect every year um there would be but there are options available the other option is to um the motion could include language of if there are adverse findings the board will at the next scheduled meeting will have um a thorough presentation on what those adverse findings are we still have to submit the audit whether it's a perfect audit which is there's no such thing as perfect in this report but but very good um that's that's what we expect but if there were significant findings we still have to submit that report so the office of the state auditor has that we have to post that on our website um all of those things would have
116to be included with the auditor's opinion at that point their final opinion identifying any major significant findings they would have identified um we still have to submit the report so the report could still be submitted but in the motion it could be if there are any if the audit opinion is anything but a unmodified clean opinion that the board will receive further updates on what those the the findings were okay I'm going to try to minimize this a little bit and then I and you add anything that needs to be but we're going to look for a motion to accept the act for did I say it right act for as it was presented by Gordon tonight um with the caveat that if there's are adverse findings that we would have an opportunity to address
117those in January does more need to be added is that okay does that say what we're looking for tonight we're just motioning to accept that piece so I need a motion for that Nancy well you don't have to read it I've already stated it so yeah so all you have to do is I I make the motion or so moved I so moved there we go and I need a second from somebody second thank you stu so we have a motion to accept the Acer as is presented with um caveat that we have further opportunity to have conversations around this after the first of the year if we need to but it will be presented um by the 31st it it will be submitted by staff by the 31st which goes to the Colorado Department
118of Education um the um okay the municipal reporting entities a couple of our banks uh we posted on our website all of those reporting requirements by Statute would be met all right thank you all right um Laura Le please call the RO Ste Boyd hi Denise Chapman hi Amy Doran Don Kirk hi bar Cruz hi Alexander LOM hi Nancy reld I okay thank you Gorden sore one just one quick comment if I may have the privilege um this is not a document that is prepared by one individual oh totally this is a lot of work by a lot of people across the not just in business services but across the the district so I'd be remiss if I didn't uh point out um okay um the work that everybody has there thank you we appreciate
119it Gordon we know that it's a lot of your time all right discussion items begin with 7.1 we will have an update on false Sports from Kevin Clark and activities Not Just Sports correct correct yes okay Madam president Dr schaer members of the board thank you so much for uh allowing me to be here to uh talk about the great things going on in our schools um I'm going to start tonight um by recognizing one of the Partnerships we have um and it's Thompson Valley EMS so at this time if I could have Chief Steve foran and chief James Robinson come up here uh just kind of want to brag about them and uh some things they've been part of uh to help our athletic directors our athletic uh trainers um so I've reached out
120to these gentlemen uh really about every two years we try to reach out to them and do emergency action plans and we walk through of okay what if we get a call where we have to call 911 in a gym in a practice facility at a practice field and uh and again it's educating our coaches so when we reach out to uh to EMS um they reach out to Loveland Fire Loveland police and then I tie in our athletic trainers from OCR and our district Safety and Security and as a team we walk these sites and we update these plans that our athletic uh trainers have our coaches have and uh basically our emergency action plans in case we ever have to to use them this past summer um we did all four sites over
121two days and during that uh our athletic we do have aeds in all of our buildings and in most cases it's multiple but uh they saw a need that to get us portable aeds to travel with our athletic trainers at all times and I think if you guys know sometimes we're going offsite for some of our contests they're not always on campus um some of our baseball fields in particular um are probably more than three minutes um and that's kind of the recommendation if a kid were to go down or oftentimes if the spectator were to go down within three minutes we might need to administer an AED shock so uh these gentlemen here I turn it over to them briefly to see if there's any questions you have or anything they'd like to to
122talk about and then uh we'll talk about the ads they uh they brought today thank you Kevin my name is Steve Foreman I'm one of the Chiefs at Thompson Valley EMS um like you described I was able to uh take a look at the emergency action plan and walk through the buildings and one thing we did realize is that within the chain of survival for cardiac arrest one of the most important things besides early CPR is early defibrillation and the time it takes for somebody to go to a building to get something come back is just too long so uh um just give you a brief description of the history of this um 10 years ago we started initiative with the mcke Wellness Foundation we have a representative back here um to make our community
123a heart Safe Community and in doing so we deployed aeds did CPR training we're doing first on the scene training I want to also thank the school district for providing the um the locations uh many of your schools to to do a lot of these trainings at uh with with the help of the mckin Wellness Foundation we're able to get aeds in your schools and also an example of the four we brought here tonight that they've funded for us and we handled the deployment for those and the upkeep for those and the tracking of those so we're we're very happy to provide that through the athletic trainers uh for these aeds for your high schools and it'll just make the uh the school a much safer place you have any questions for us on that
124questions yeah thank you so much so much comment as well thank you I'm James Robinson I'm the chief at Thompson Valley EMS and we really appreciate this partnership and and uh while you're no stranger to um accolades from your peers it sounds like around the state um I just wanted to give you another one because you as a board have supported something that is not very common across um the educational landscape which is providing us curriculum time to teach people CPR hands only CPR Hemorrhage control and AED use as Steve mentioned those things are cornerstones of of survival of increased survival and the fact that you allow us an hour of curriculum time to teach all of the sophomores those skills shows me your commitment to survival in this community and what a great partner
125you are and so I I just want to thank you and give you some some uh recognition back thank you very much so I guess uh formally at this time uh the mcke foundation Cara papis I believe uh through a partnership with Thompson Valley EMS they are donating these uh four aeds over here uh that will be deployed to uh each of our high schools uh prior to Christmas break awesome aome was wonderful can we do a photo with you guys absolutely sorry you even have to ask we're like in a [Music] days yeah absolutely can you all squeeze in for me please tighten up there you go okay here we go on three one two three okay [Applause] thanks before I sit down I'm wrapping up in my coat my gosh wish I had
126mittens apparently we just comfortable apparently we didn't pay our eating bill what's the deal yeah okay didn't we just talk about the budget I really you might ask your neighbor how she feels all right carry on Kevin you bet we're going to roll through this uh birth of death um activities um long story short with all the activities going on there's just a few highlights we'd like to uh to touch on FBLA um tended a fall leadership conference um they're really focusing on increasing their uh their enrollment and they have a district competition coming up at UNCC uh the marching band at ber at high school were was Regional Champions and plac fifth in class 2A this year Esports is a growing uh program at berd um they're in the more they made the playoffs
127for the chassa playoffs for uh rocket League the FFA there's three students who attended uh weeklong Leadership Conference in October um they are looking forward to the FFA convention in Indianapolis um they have six students that will be advancing to the district FFA public speaking contest uh I believe that may have taken place last week FCCLA uh five students attended their fall conference at CSU and they're getting involved in some community service knowledgeable had a good start to their season winning their first competition transition to the athletic side boy uh Bera did qualify one boy golfer uh for the state meet cross country um they had two individual qualifiers JC Williams was on the podium at 8th uh they're boys um we qualified 20 teams out of ballpark 70 uh in Cross Country walked away
128with um two the second place trophy they were Runners up and uh just a a great job by coach Jordan Jennings and the program he has built at birthed softball they were Regional Champions and they have a Workhorse pitcher um Cameron picket she was named uh chass a first team All State uh she had an 18 and3 record and recorded over 200 strikeouts this year volleyball did make the regional round of the playoffs and football had a great season under coach Cory tickner um for his season he was selected Denver Broncos coach of the week the week of October 25th um his team went undefeated um so they were League champions they won their first round playoff game they were eliminated in the round of eight and we did find out uh actually it was
129today that chassa selects a a Wendy's Hot Shot Wendy's sponsors a weekly award and uh senior Alex Larson from berad for his accomplishments uh his 4.0 GPA and his ability on the football field got him that recognition all right have loveand activities next and my slides are they get out of order someone throw them see trying to save money the double sight print messed me up here so all right Loveland activities marching band they were third place at uh at regionals and they were also third at State and to talk about how close they were from being state champions uh they were one point away uh and that was the difference between first second and third place so uh just another unbelievable season for uh Kyle Fen and his team the Luck Club took a
130field trip to UNCC and most of uh we'll see that through all of our schools will highlight their field trips uh Deca um five teams and 10 individuals they won districts and um and will be state qualifiers speech and debate um went to Grey Central and they had five first place and three second place finishers uh Key Club um the the exciting thing about Key Club is it was one of the uh we call it covid casualties and they're up and going again and choir um All State Jazz choir Mason braggin and uh aliser Gardner selected for the All State Choir and there were 20 students who were selected for the uh combined League honors athletically uh Loveland did qualify two individuals for the State Golf Tournament um cross country they had one individual qualifier
131the girls team took second at regionals and Ninth at State we highlight Elena Torres as she was conference Regional she placed fifth at State and she'll be running at the University of Iowa next year gymnastics uh we had four individual state qualifiers the football team um finished the regular season seven and three won their first round playoff game and then lost in the round of six 16 volleyball team went 14 and N qualified for the regional round and uh went to Mountain Vista um they were essentially they needed to win two more games to get into the uh the round of 12 for for State all right Mountain View so their marching band received an excellent rating at the grey marching Invitational uh Deca has a state qualifier FCCLA also has um somebody who is
132selected as a state officer and Lily hoverson will be um representing CTE at the capital leadership conference uh later this year in Washington DC choir they had four singers selected to All State Choir and 16 of the combined League Honor Choir talked about the field trip musical drama rehearsals have started um mark your calendars February 29th to March 2nd they will be doing SpongeBob musical so be a fun one and Orchestra performed at the Rocky Mountain Orchestra Festival um another one I earlier this school year got to talk about some of the unified activities that were happening at level or at Mountain View High School and they have met with their uh Club unified and they are planning a polar plunge a pack the stands unified game and an inclusion week um with inclusion videos
133for the uh for the student body speech and debate Marin napalitano was the tournament champion and I believe she is a betcher semi-finalist is what I read on one of Dr schaer's Twitter post and uh the thesbian troop is headed to thescon they're excited about their conference that they just attended and they will they were fortunate to enjoy two live shows and three three days of workshops by uh basically Professionals of the industry Mountain View Athletics will highlight their cross country team which was second at league and fourth place at regionals they did get to participate in the state meet there was a uh young Clark girl who had a pretty good cross country season so makes it kind of fun yeah yeah uh Thompson Valley activities um again we the National Honor Society working
134with Loveland rotary to help paint over 400 Hearts um Deca five state qualifiers choir All State Choir um and they also have 16 students selected for the combined League Honor Choir uh marching band Superior rating at the grey marching Invitational uh the science NHS um assisted with the t uh Thompson School District uh science fair speech and debate has competed in four tournaments and uh again I think we've said this name uh every activi is update but Jaden Fitzpatrick and Tessa how having a very successful uh year Thompson Valley Athletics Boys Tennis did qualify their number two singles and all of their lines of doubles qualified cross country the girls were the Regionals Runners up and the boys were Long's Peak Champions and Regional Champions and they finished place at State and uh they do
135not graduate anybody from that team and we do have some teams being reclassified so uh not to put pressure on them but I I believe they should they will be in the hunt for uh if not first to second place finish next year boy soccer uh made the state playoffs football um just an unbelievable season Jamie still was the interim coach um this season and and under his guidance he was also selected as a Denver Broncos coach of the week and it's rare for us to get one but to get two within our district in the same school year is uh again a highlight to the work that our coaches are doing um so Jamie LED them to a leak title they did receive a three seed they made it to the uh the final
136four um they fell to Holy Family who went on to eventually be the state champions volleyball uh again a team we've talked about quite a bit the last last three years uh 21- two in the regular season three-time League champions they played for a for a state championship and they took it five games and they went they they fell in the fifth game 15 to 13 but uh again the last three years they've been state champ State Champs in second place so just an unbelievable run that they have had all right just a few other things I want to highlight coming up our our Thompson Valley geometry and construction um class they have started uh if you've been to the turf field at Mountain View High School what we've asked them to do is to
137not only build a ticket booth but have it multi-purpose and serve as a concession stand as well so they are in the works of that um last year we started a uh Thompson School District leadership day where our athletic coaches um nominate freshman sophomore and Junior students for a day of leadership uh we be back at the campus of Colorado State uh this year uh we're fortunate uh that our keynote speaker will be Loveland High School graduate and uh NFL draft pick and three-time Olympian Jeremy Bloom so he's going to come and uh speak to our students they'll also get some other leadership activities that day and on February 28th Colorado State uh women's basketball is moving the start of their basketball game to 11 o'clock our fourth graders across the district will get to
138attend that game um if it is not sold out it will be very close cl to a to a sellout and we're excited about uh all the things happening with our Athletics and activities Kevin um can you also share uh toson belly chair team yes yes so by the time I had to submit uh the slides um was actually due when I was actually at the Coliseum and uh so we'll talk about birth at high school um they did make the State final in 4 a cheer they finished fourth and Thompson Valle for the eighth year in a row has walked away with the trophy so again they qualified for finals they finished second place and uh again eight years in a row where they have either been state champs or state runner up and
139uh we'll highlight that in the winter report but uh again it just goes to I think uh Stu and Barb I got to talk to you at the the concert last night with just the talent that our students have is amazing is great and they're getting great things done not only in the performances we're seeing but at the state level yeah it's awesome questions from the board I have one too and I want to know what Lu stands for you bet so luck and it it's gone through different uh different name changes but it's the Latino's unified Club thank you yeah okay thank you and again it's gone by different names um but that is the that's the current name that's current name okay thank you yes yeah okay do so Kevin the uh services
140and the opportunities that leveland EMS provides for the leveland schools are those same Services provided for the birthed schools yes so Thompson Valley EMS or Thompson Valley EMS Thompson Val EMS they do that the only difference is uh that I see like if I were to go to Ray Patterson for an activity or to Max Mah is lmer County Sheriff's Office versus Lov and police but they're both um Thompson Valley EMS and so all of the schools all of the high schools in the in the district um at all of those schools the students have the same opportunities and receive the same Services perhaps just not from the same provider is that what you're saying yeah so the like em so I guess it's probably two part the EMS I'm thinking about like our emergency
141standby ambulances we have at football games um that is Thompson Valley EMS is our third party company for all of all of Athletics that we use um they talked about a Hands-On training that they go in currently they're working with sophomores and they go and it's a basically it's a onehour um if you were to stumble upon some it doesn't get them a CPR certification but it's Basics if you were to stumble upon a scene and have to be the first person to to act until a first responder gets there and that's districtwide yes yes okay thank you yeah and that was part of the partnership that Chief Robinson was talking about thanks any other questions yeah so I It just strikes me every time you do this I'm so much fun and I'm really
142grateful um you know like this is some of the stuff that um make the difference right like it is easy to also see this as those extras that aren't always like showing up in test scores but what I know to be true is that that for many of these students this is how they're going to pay for whatever's next right this is helping them with like La launching into what's next it gives them a leg up on those things for some students the only reason that they participate and do well in school is because it's tied to them being able to do the thing they're passionate about or it gives them something that they can be successful in if academics isn't necessarily their their favorite thing like they have a a different way that they
143can be successful I'm I'm really always grateful that you um are are in here tying the Athletics and the activities together I'm glad that you're the person doing that for us um and I think on a night when we're talking about budget and and you know making hard decisions it um this is the stuff that feels like the cherry on top but what also strikes me because it would be pretty easy I think I've said this to some people who know me well like some of these Sports aren't my thing right and if this were my my budget and I was at home having to make a hard decision I might prioritize things very differently because that's not my thing but what I see I like I've almost never said that out loud before because
144what I see is that that's one of the biggest strongest ways that our community is connected to and shows up for our schools right they don't always get a chance to come into the classroom and help read to kids although they can we have opportunities they it's it's showing up in the stands and it's showing up and and being a judge for for one of these activities right and and um Co our coaches are often um not always Educators right and so like even though this is the fat in our budget it's the furthest thing from the fat if we ever want to get to 100% graduation rate any smart person wouldn't touch this um and I think that we're all a lot smarter than than that so thank you for helping us you know
145enjoy it and have fun with it and celebrate all of the ways that students in Thompson can be successful because we're pretty amazing I agree thank you for saying that thank you Kevin you bet have a great night great report we appreciate it um summer school update good evening Madame President board members and Dr sh [Music] in because it's still summer but it's still enriching so these are the guiding uh questions when we really said why do we need to have an academically structured program we really wanted to talk about a summer experience that gives teachers and students time to reinforce and practice the skills that are going to support ongoing learning and so how do we give them that opportunity over the 3-week program we really want students to use the uh foundations and
146through three so we're increasing that use of common language and common structures in or structures that they're already seeing in their classes and then we really want to use envision our new math curriculum um intervention kits to really stretch their thinking and uh see new ways that they are solving math problems we want to uh utilize The Invention kits that we purchased last year we have a few left that will stretch their thinking and um think critically as they go through those kits and then we really want to make sure our online programs are limited over this summer because we really want to make sure they have less screen time during that summer 3-week program and something new is we are going to do a pre and post so we're going to track the students
147data and then we'll pass that data on to their um upcoming teachers the next year which will be the fall so here we have our K5 option last year we had uh fewer sites but these are the sites that we're looking to work with Transportation last year worked really beautifully and uh students went to their nearest elementary school and then uh Transportation transported transported the students to the sites we're going to do 8: am to 12: and we're going to go for three weeks Monday through Thursday and then of course we'll have breakfast and lunch for our students so here we've got a typical schedule we'll do breakfast and then we'll do a literacy block with foundations for K through three they'll take a little break um and then we'll use the Envision the aln
148uh program that we're using that uh Blends our aln and it really goes into the pedagogy how do we teach math um and then we'll do the invention kits we're going to work with our community and have in some guest speakers and do some stem time and then the students will have lunch and then they'll go home so as we think about elementary Staffing increased sites means higher Staffing but we really want um to have an increase for teachers our pairs our showas and make sure that we're giving them the time to plan for the students in front of them knowing that we're going to go away from a plug-and playay invention kit we really want our students to plan using the data that they have with the students um and really create new daily
149plans for the students as they come we also want to make sure that our site coordinators are identifying students who are encouraged to have that additional practice over the summer and we want them to connect with the parents before conferences this spring from our elementary feeders it works right now and then we'll feed our students with breakfast and lunch typical schedule looks very similar to the elementary um and then we're going to add some Project based learning in there and problem based so as we think about Middle School Staffing of course uh with increased sites we're going to have um multiple staffing needs there but we also want to make sure that each site coordinator is at the current middle School in that they are uh meeting with those families and those students starting this
150spring we also want to make sure that the coordinator is reaching out to those parents and those adults to encourage those students to attend and make summer plans and then we really want to make sure that the site coordinator is using the current data that we have on our students so we can Target what our program looks like we want to make sure that IAP which is that individualized career and academic planning is part of our summer program and including our goal setting and future planning with our students using zel we also want to make sure that we're not utilizing our online programs unless it's utilizing our my perspectives curriculum right now that we already have and there's some components that give students access to podcasts in different videos that would be the component we
151use but we're not doing anything else online so things that went really well I've looked through all of this surveys that parents completed last year the marketing they really appreciated they L the updates um with the registration packet parents really had positive feedback about Camp extreme they love the transportation because we were able to um make sure kids were able to attend we did not if you notice um add some birthed sites into our program this year and then the kits were really engaging so we don't want to fully go away from them but we really also want to add that academic piece this year so things that we wanted to tighten up is that purpose of Summer programming what is our real goal when we bring students in over the summer um and then
152we really want to make sure that we're academically driven for um the students that are in front of us by planning quality instruction for our kids we want to make sure that uh teachers are using that data and that we're offering multiple sites so we're not limiting that and then we want to of course increase our time for academics over the program so kids really truly get that extra practice and that they're ready for upcoming school year so things we need to finalize as we plan our summer program nutrition services working uh with what sites that they host summer meals out of so that way we can plan accordingly we need to work with Transportation so we can figure out how many students are going to be at each of our sites and then operations
153we want to make sure that any construction or closure um over the summer that has been happening with all of the mill and bond work um that we are at sites that are definitely open but those meetings are going to happen happen this January um and then we need to hire our lead coordinators and then also solidify our budget so overall thoughts we really are excited to set high expectations with extra paid hours for Staff last year's uh teachers received 30 minutes of planning and again it was different because it was more of a plug-and play we're going to up that one hour so teachers really are utilizing their planning time for the students that are in front of them and then they're constantly checking for what the students need um and then we want
154to make sure that we have more sites that we are offering two bir birthed locations one for the middle school and then one for the elementary and that these really this program is a great balance of academic and enrichment for students and then the biggest thing is engagement doesn't mean putting kids online we really want to um engage our students so I included last year our staffing model and so up here you will see how many staff we utilized last year our overall cost for Staff last year with the limited um sites was 166,000 we also purchased $100,000 in those um invention kits and so what we're changing this year if you look is of course the uh funds are really going to the staff we want more staff we want students to participate but
155again we're adding all of our Middle School sites and not just one Middle School and then when we look at site coordinators of course we really want that site coordinator to get ahead of it and really start engaging and um encouraging our students to attend now and so it we've built in extra hours compared to last year for that now to happen so we would be looking at 297,000 um and then $2,000 in materials we do have a ton of materials that were left from last year like markers and um different activities puzzles that the kids were using but everything else we have so really our cost is around Staffing what questions do you have for me so questions from the board so last year we had 667 students register um we would be looking
156at about 600 right now the thing we want to make sure is we had a weit list last year but if kids stopped attending that first first week we never allowed those weightless kids to come in and so we're looking for that strong parent commitment to join all three weeks it's really only 15 days um but really with this new Staffing model we can handle 600 students if um if we get them to come but I do believe we will get them Alexandra I have a couple questions one simple question is what is the showa what does that stand for yeah school health office assistant okay okay okay I think we probably all had that question good question yep and then my a second question was like it sounds like it's just sort of general
157education like previously there have been sort of different themes or different things like that um and it sounds like this is just more open open or is that true I think it could be open I think um based on the site coordinators what they know about the students that are attending we can use um different like stem activities or Community connections based on on some interests that those schools have I know we would also really focus on the areas of of the data that we're looking at and so but of course really we want to add that language arts component and that math component but we can always add some some themes to it the kits we have to have different themes for K1 and 2 three um but those would be overall themes Nancy
158I love this program first well I think it's so great and my question is so on the budget so from last year you said 100,000 in kits and then for this coming year you're increasing the Staffing which is good so is this a 2,000 does that mean you don't need to buy more of those little kits that you had correct we're not purchasing anymore we have enough for this year oh okay and then my only um concern is we've heard a lot about the bus drivers and transportation so for summer um if that's a key thing will that we have a problem oh oh Todd's he's giving me the signal he's gonna be okay with it he said Todd's driving Todd Todd gave his gonna do okay um on your slide for the were you
159finished I'm sorry on your slide for K5 you have um the found the foundations for K3 what are the others just going to be using our ready gen materials all right foundations is really heavily focused on phic awareness okay so that's my next question yep so what if you have some K3 kids that are reading through everything and they don't need any more foundations because they've had it for three years or two years already will they just fit into the other literacy aspect of it and they'll have and we can we can always enrich as well okay as long as you're yeah because I really like the idea of it being focused on literacy and math with a a purpose yeah okay my comment's going to follow I think pretty closely what Barb just said
160your presentation makes it sound like this coming year summer school program has more of an academic or an achievement focus and I applaud that there were three abbreviations or acronyms that appeared in the slides that I didn't understand and and I I didn't quite catch what Alexandra's question was so excuse me if I ask you to repeat something that she already asked what is sha showa is school health office assistant all right and IAP IAP is the individualized career and academic planner that's required for all students 6 through 12 and then MP my perspectives curriculum good job you could answer all of them I now know what they are thank you Tiffany you're welcome okay so um I've got three questions they're all rather random from each other but um I almost emailed you before
161now and then I saw it again and I went yeah I definitely need to ask because it feels like we might need more ESS support than we have planned um I just that hit me two three days ago and it hit me again today that um if if we don't then I'm not then I'm not sure who we're inviting right and so I'm just going to say that and leave that with the experts um and also like are we are we required to do spe uh summer school no okay so that would be another thing that like we're doing that's special okay um and then where do we fund this from he it is summer school like something we must do oh okay I thought you said yeah yeah just in general like we're not
162we don't have to have a specific program for summer school um we do it because we know that it's great yeah yeah and that it's not just one grade of reading that we need to hone in on it's all of them and math and all the other stuff okay and then where does our funding come from for this like is this something that we we plan for every year and it not that I need to know the exact lineat and page number but I'm about to get it non FTE expenditures item number I have I have no idea out of those 300 lines stumped him yep um prior to 23 24 we funded this from Esser um the federal stimulus dollars at the that $300,000 level um for 2324 in the adopted budget um there
163is a placeholder in the general fund for that so it's out of the general fund operating budget um the latest numbers I've heard is as we're wrapping up our Esser expenditures which we have to have finished by um September um of 24 um I think there's going to be um some money available there I'm going to say um please well you can quote me on this it may not be absolutely accurate 75,000 that could still be available that would just uh we would use that certainly we'll use that first to make sure we're fully utilizing those dollars and that could result in some Savings in the general fund as well okay Gordon what about food I didn't like like breakfast and lunch is that paid for there's a discussions going on right now um right
164now students in Colorado um all students are eating free with the healthy School meals for all or HSM May legislation that was or um voter initiative that was passed um so the summer program is outside of that but there are discussions if it can be wrapped into the H hsma program um that would be great if it could be at some level um anecdotally for the board's consideration and the community um I've asked Lisa Kindle to provide an update on how many students are using the hsma um for from October last year to October this year November last year to November this year breakfasts we're seeing about a 40% increase in the number of meals and lunch is about a 50% increase in the number of meals um I'll leave it at that but there's
165significant interest in the program and conversations that could potentially wrap that into um hsma but if not there is still the USDA summer food program um that's based on demographics the atrisk populations there's it's a shifting landscape there of how they identify what the at risk number is geographically and what schools are eligible to serve the meals so that's an important consideration that Tiffany was talking about with um coordinating with Lisa Kendall and nutrition services on because not all schools are eligible to serve meals so um what can we do to to Target the schools that are eligible to be a to host those programs and then make maybe it's sack lunches at the other schools or something like that so there's a lot of discussions taking place there too and and that was also
166part of the numbers that we got U those would be outside of the general fund numbers that we talked about because nutrition services operates as its own fund its own separate entity um so that's fund 21 for the district outside of fund 10 so they um they could have the ability to sub a bit because of their fund balance and the increased participation that we're seeing now I would anticipate an increase in their fund balance for 2324 as well thank you further questions all right thank Youk you very much looking forward to hearing more all right um we have one written report um the family Pi report oh was the financial on there I didn't go go back in and look I'm sorry it's probably there I I see it is it's but I that's
167not what I go off I go off my own agenda yeah yeah okay um is there a request for information it's not a well actually this is a requested it's a request for information for from the board um Laura Lee sent to you a survey on second semester topics for working sessions um if you can um take a look at that um because based on how the board what your the board preferences are will begin to start developing in caling caling I can't talk you know what I okay so okay yep we need a plan for this okay all right anything else all right the meeting is adjourned