001You're live. >> Good evening everyone. This is a work session at the EMTT Shocky Administration Building on Thursday, March 5th, 2026. It was 5:32 p.m. Um, being that we do not have a vice president or a secretary today, do I take role? >> Uh, sure. >> Okay. >> Um, Mrs. Johnson, >> present. >> Mrs. PZ present. Mrs. Friendley present. On to pledge of allegiance. Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all the flag for the state of Mexico. See a symbol of the United States. >> Okay. Are there any changes to the agenda? >> Uh no, Madam President. just let uh the board know that we have these items listed here. Depending on
002our time this evening, we may not get to all of them, but again, it's a work session. So, um anything that we don't cover here, we'll just make sure we do cover in a um uh a regular open meeting. So, no changes at this time. >> Do I have a motion to approve the agenda? I make the motion to approve the the agenda as your meeting. And I Thank you, Mrs. Johnson. Yes, Mrs. Pis. >> Yes, Mrs. Carly. Yes. >> Okay. Well, uh, Madame President, members of the board, thank you for being here this evening. We have three items that we're going to uh touch on this evening. We're going to look at the uh budget survey results from the community that uh that finance and Mr. AOK had put out. Uh, that'll be a
003good a good bit of context as we move through the budget season. Additionally, it'll be good context for um the input and discussion around revising our strategic plan here uh in this session. And then we have a series of policies that we're going to be um looking at. Um some of them needs a good first read this time because we may need to consider them for approval as early as our regular meeting at the end of March. Others aren't quite as urgent and we may just if we don't need to those move those discuss them in March and possible action in April or um May. So with that, I'm going to go ahead and turn over the workshop to uh Mr. Ak. >> Good evening uh Mr. Madam President, members of the board. Uh so
004we we put a budget survey out. We do this every year. This year we put it out in two different forms. We put it out to staff and board members and then we put a separate separate one out to the community um trying to get input of what the budget should look like. Uh we put that out at the beginning of uh February and it ran through the end of February. So there was almost a month of time for them to respond to that. Um so I get this thing to work if everything's plugged in. So for the the the staff and and the board members, the first question we had, we were we were grading everything from A through F. I figured that since we're at schools, we may as well use the Z
005grading system. And so, as you can see, for the most part, everything was, you know, in the A's and B's. We had a few responses that were uh D's and Fs. Um, and part of that was to ask if you graded it as an F, what did what needs to be improved? We did have 61 members uh, respond to this uh, survey. So, I used AI to go through all of the Excel spreadsheet and summarize it. Things in here, I don't think are to any surprise to anybody. They're looking at uh safety concerns. Um they're looking at, you know, needing more support for some of our special students, for new staff members, those types of things. Um holding students accountable, behavioral issues, those types of things that I think everybody has heard in some form
006or fashion recently before. So then we asked to rank a group of things in what prior what is priority and I think again I don't think this is any surprise to anybody school safety and security is first um you know support for the schools uh and the staff compos uh comp compensation is the top three on there I think this is the same that we've had on other surveys that we've done in the past as well. So then with that we ask what is you know of your two things that are high ranking what is it that you're wanting to see what can we help you what can we do to support that more and so the next few slides again is an AI summariz summarization of what was responded to us again I don't
007see anything that you probably didn't know about talking about security whether they're talking about SRO's security guards, um, metal detectors, things like that that we've already started working on some of those things. Um, looking at making sure that everything is locked, the playground access is shut down where, you know, the kids are are being safe and we're looking at that. I know that there was some discussion at some of the board meetings about, you know, clear back clear backpacks and some of those types of things that they're looking at inspections and and K9 inspections, which I think there's some uh policy that we're looking at to to improve that. If we look at the compensation, of course, you know, everybody feels the cost of living going up. Um, everybody's wanting more of that. But with
008schools, we are tied very closely to what the legislation does. And if the legislation does not provide funding for us, if we were to increase salaries for whatever reason, we're jeopardizing in the future because if they continue to do mand mandatory raises and we've already increased that, they're not funding us for that increase. Uh so we have to be we have to be cautious of that so that we don't end up having staff issues in the future. Uh they're talking about tuition reimbursements. Um and we do some of that for um our what is it the alternate licensed people where they're coming in, they have a a degree but they don't have a teaching degree. So we do some of the tuition reimbursements for that. Um but the funding is is not there for you
009a lot of other um tuition reimbursement. One of the things that I've talked about and tried to talk to principles and and and even the teachers about is, you know, their classroom supplies and their technology and that type of thing. We're always hearing where teachers are having to use their own money for things in their classrooms. Now, if they're doing holiday decorations and things like that, yes, they need to use their own funds because our policy says you can't buy holiday decorations out of public funds, but they shouldn't have to be buying classroom supplies and those types of things. But I think some of that is just an education, especially to our newer teachers, as you've seen before where they're talking about that, of how to obtain those supplies, whether it's, you know, each school
010is a little bit different. Do they go to the secretary? Do they have an open supply room? You know, those types of things. Uh technology issues. We do have some outdated uh student laptops that was purchased back during the uh pandemic whenever we have were work doing remote uh learning. We are trying to put a plan together to see how we can start um updating those on a more regular basis because if we did the same thing now that we did in 2019 2020 and we buy all these laptops for everybody in 5 years we're going to be in the same situation that we were in that we're in now. So we're trying to put some plans together on how that works and that will be part of the we'll look at that as part
011of the budgeting process. some administrative support that that you have here. Um, again, I think it's just a, you know, anytime that there's change, anytime that there's there's new things coming in, anytime there's there's request, everybody likes to know the more the wise behind it and that type of uh so that they understand what they're being asked to do. >> I had a question on this one. Mhm. >> Were there any suggestions for what staff wants to address those bullet points? >> They just need, you know, like I said, this just the the summary here that's that's showing here, there wasn't a lot of action items that that can be taken for that. And and I some of this too because we only had 61 responses. If you've got one person that thinks that they're
012being micromanaged, >> right, >> it's going to be more in the summary because there wasn't a lot of responses to that, right? >> We have close to 900 staff members. Is that right? >> So, is there a way to maybe incentivize doing this? >> Um, get a better better full gift cards or anonymous the same time. >> Well, yeah. And see, that's that's part of the thing is one, we can't do gift cards. It's against policy. Um, and there also some IRS there's some IRS implications in there as well. Uh, but then to try and be anonymous if they think that um we know who's responding. That's probably >> they may not be responding at all and or was what they they really >> present members of the board um as I had shared with
013you at one point we have our panorama uh you know surveys that are going out uh out with students and parents and also staff. Um unfortunately some of those are anonymous as well. However, I know I spoke with Mr. Mr. Wyman on that and so we're going to try to get some more data back um on on that and that kind of ties a little bit to this on how people feel efficacy and how well they do their job. I think there's some relation. So um you know we can we can loop back and and see uh Andrew with the panorama surveys I know with the parents they they have to be they're anonymous. >> Yes. >> Uh >> will we able to tweak those though or are they what the state has to name
014them? So, so Madam President, members of the board, Superintendent Wager, there are there are some different ways to do it. Right now, we have uh the state system is what we've been using uh that the state pays for and the state allows for. There are some and this is what he was he was talking with me about. There are some options to uh do some additional surveys and some additional work with Panorama. So, I'm reaching out with them. We're going to get together and we're going to see what that can look like maybe for for the future as we move forward. >> The question the states did not I did not open. I thought your in order. >> Yeah. And the state really has uh an how I want to say this, they haven't really
015allowed it to easily be tracked on who exactly is responding. So that's why again it's excellent data. uh but we need a further discussion on on on if that's what's right for our DPS to get the information that that we need because if we do purchase from any kind of survey company like Panorama um or others um we can set it up to to draw from their bank of questions to get information that we need um in addition to you know they'll craft questions for us. I always like going with those questions that they already have because then they can sort of rank them against national type of norms or other statewide norms. So that's something we can certainly look into, but it can get into some of these things, right? Teacher um perception about
016how they perform their job, their perception of student behavior is tied exactly right to this. So we'll we can definitely look into that further as an investment >> a wider net to responses would be a lot more helpful. I mean this is helpful too, but like you said it's it's the opinion of 61 out of 900. >> That's a drop, you know. >> Sure. So >> Mr. Yeah. So, so one one other thing that we're doing is we're working I'm not sure if you saw that email I sent yesterday to Miss Suche, but uh so we are going to send a link directly to parents again. Uh but we're also going to send out a social media blast uh asking for parents to check their their email and to get in so that uh we
017hope hope to have increased participation. It's one of those things you can lead the horse right to water but >> but even this was staff. >> Yes. It's a staff >> and I got the email like four times I feel like staff. >> No, we we did that. >> I did too. >> We had uh you know for this we had emails going out every so often. We had uh social media blast going out. So just about every week there was some form of communication that this was out and available. >> And we'll say look, you know, board members, we we'll say look at that. That is a you know that is definitely needed. anytime we send a survey out oftentimes we don't get back all the responses we would we would like. >> One
018of the things that we did talk about or that I'm thinking about doing is for next year is having a question of who are you representing? Is it you know what school um are you from or depart or if your administration that might be able to give us a little bit of a a little bit more information to try and you know dig in. Is it one school that's we're getting these responses from or is it, you know, a district-wide type thing? But again, I don't want to put it so narrowly focused that you that they feel that uh they can be uh sought out. So, in professional development, um, you know, they're talking about some training for for new you new new teachers and, you know, special education and some of those things. I
019know that we do some new teacher orientation things. Um, and we're looking at at getting some some help on the special ed education side of. So that was the um the staff and the board members uh side of it. So if we look at the community, the community we had 237 result or responses. Still not good. Uh last year though we had the one survey to everybody and there was 202 responses. So, we did get more, but you know, there it's it's still not a good sampling of what, um, I think we should be able to get, but as you can see here, um, mostly approvals, A's, B's, a few Fs. uh you can see in in the survey results and I know that was sent to you in in an Excel format there are
020some that just gave us an F all the way across the board and was not happy with anything that we do. Um but that's that's kind of to be expected as well. Again, we're we're kind of talking the same the same thing here from the community versus from u the staff. They're looking at um security, you know, stronger security measures, whether that be um security guards, metal detectors, uh things like that. Um behavioral student behavior. They even talk in in here about wanting uh or thinking that our uh that were too lenient with with the students. There were some comments about that as well. And actually that is wrong. I just noticed that. I went through this several times. This isn't this is the staff and board one again. But uh the the community one
021was very similar. Uh this is the community stuff. Um, so again, they're talking about secure, safety and security, locked doors, fencing, supervision, um, concerns about fighting, um, all of those things that we're trying to address with metal detectors and policies. And >> there was one that kept me mentioning magnets. Do you know what school they're talking about? Uh, >> and not that we need to say that law, but that's something that can be Johnson. I did review those and I I don't have good context context for the comment about magnets. I'm going to have to look into that and uh and and see what what that's about. And then the the classrooms um you know here's they're talking about things you know where they're too lenient with um with discipline. Um you know we've tal
022we've seen where staff is getting injured um that needs to be addressed. Again, you know, a lot of the times whenever you get these results because it's a small sampling, you've got those that are doing it for a reason >> and they have a specific purpose in mind. So, that's kind of bringing some of those concerns >> and that was brought up in the community one, not even in the >> This is in the community one. Exactly. >> Yeah. And then some of the things that they're that they're talking about here, um, you know, I'm not sure be more on the educator side of if some of these things can even be done. uh you know I know that there's some special things whenever it comes to to dealing with u special education students um
023and meeting students all in one classroom and not not doing any any type of se separation >> bless you >> thank you so communication um again you know communication always seems to be a thing they didn't know. Um, some of it could be that they didn't answer their phone when we tried to call, but you know, they didn't know. One of the things that we have talked about a lot is getting a centralized a district-wide communication system between parents and staff members so that it's not separated by every school being having something different. >> Infinite campus allow for that. Infinite Campus does a one direction uh communication, but they do not have a comeback. So, I can send as a staff member, I can send something to you, but you can't go back to me
024unless you go through email or some other form. Uh we're looking at I know that my uh >> Yeah, at Chapperel, I know they use Class Dojo. Uh my wife's on it, you know, being able to communicate back and forth uh with that. >> Teachers use different apps, >> right? Right. So every year you're downloading. >> So that's exactly and that's what we're looking at. Now there there may be I know the some of the comments was maybe there's an elementary and a secondary because of kind of the ways that you need to communicate might be different >> the number of teachers. >> So but there that has been in u has been being discussed and so we'll put in some money in the budget to make sure we can get uh some sort of
025communication. >> Talk about that. So my kids school just changed it up and someone suggested that it might be because they're worried that if something legally happened then their phones would be confiscated because they used to use Class Dojo and now they're like nope it is only email. >> Okay. So I don't have good context for why that decision was made but if you are using an app like class dojo remind are two very popular ones like there's the band app that's was initially for band but used for lots of things. Those are those are all designed where that information is not stored on your phone. It's actually stored on the app and in the cloud so we can actually have access to that information to monitor it at all times if we need to
026without having to worry about hey you've sent a text message, you've sent a whatever. And so it would >> those apps when when you know used at a at a district level kind of function like the email, right? The email is an app. And so right we don't need your phone to get the email. We just, you know, need access to the the app which you've signed up for to get >> so that can be shared to where that fear is and >> Sure. Sure. And I don't know the context of that, but but thank you for sharing that, Sean. >> Well, one thing I was going to say is there are a lot of parents in the community who don't speak English. Mhm. >> So, how is um language associated with with the communication
027and how >> I I miss I can speak for one product that um I'm I'm familiar with that does have um an automatic built-in translation, right? When you're when you're texting and the parent can select, you know, hey, even though Mr. Wman might be sending it in English, they can receive the message in Spanish, then they can respond in Spanish and then Mr. W gets it back in in English. Um, uh, I don't I'm not sure about, you know, whether it's available across products, but most certainly if we're looking at a product, that would be something that would be a key. >> I think that would probably increase some of the communication with parents because historically they go the neighbor, hey, can you read this for me? I don't know what the teacher is asking.
028I don't know how who respond to the teacher. And so if if it were I don't know you know how technology works these days but possibly >> it will work differently two weeks from now it's working today more advanced a month from now than there is >> today coming from Bell has the three different language >> yeah is that um is that policy like a passive district where everything comes in >> or is it just a middle school district it seems to be English and Spanish but from >> is it required to be, you know, certain certain types of correspondents are required to be in their preferred language. Correct. I know we have some translation services that we use for I'm going to say the non- Spanish because Spanish we seem to be able to
029have you know some internal translations but if we have something that's in a language that we don't have that internally we use this extra >> and so like the class dojo I'm not familiar with it. Does there is there something that you for Spanish for that one? >> Yeah. Yes. >> It it's the same as with >> those questions. Um you know again support uh for the staff. Uh I'm not sure how the community was talking about staff being overworked and underappreciated unless they're you know uh unless they're staff members that are going in as a community member and filling out information which is possible. >> We're both sides sometimes teachers express that and it can be some express of that. Yeah. And and then the last one with, you know, the the leadership piece
030of it. Um kind of interesting that second bullet point there. Um I think uh >> superintendent um Wilmouth has done more parent uh meetings than we've had in a long time. But >> again, perception is is more reality. >> If it's you don't get the resolution that you want, then you're not happy. we'll keep trying to resolve. Um, but that's that's basically the res the response um that we got on the budget. So, we're going to take, you know, those things into considerations. Is there anything that that you guys have based on on what you saw that we need to look into a little bit more um and or with budget considerations? I don't I know from an all-around perspective I do not disagree where the stuff about the in-classroom behaviors especially where it's affecting
031staff members. How are we going to keep retention in our staff members if we're not showing a united front of wanting to protect them? You know what I mean? So I feel like that needs to be addressed. I know some of our stuff we're going to be talking about could touch on that. >> I think I think the TR will touch on that. I will share that right in as as I I may have mentioned to you all and maybe I didn't but yeah also that was also a theme in the the teacher trenches uh advisory group right um as well and so um that is a that is an issue that needs addressed um I think there's um different ways that that that can be addressed. There's there's, you know, um, you know, school,
032you know, uh, school expectations, school culture, um, you know, leadership. I think those are all involved. I think it's one of those things that's not going to that's not going to be resolved to the manner that we'd like overnight. Um, I think it's one of those things that over time we have to put we have to um, put some specific practices in place, you know, to, you know, to address that. But clearly something that is of of significant need here in in Denver. >> I was going to say that's pretty across the board >> throughout all all school districts. So how are other school districts kind of dealing with those things? >> True. >> Might be something to look at because yeah, it's not specific. >> No, you're right. You not it's not it's not
033a specific You're right, Miss P. It's not a Demi specific thing, but what I what I say is that it it has been uh even prior to me getting here very top of mind here. Yes. >> Uh in Demi, um sometimes that goes in other communities up and down on top of mind. It seems to be something that has been very top of mind consistently here. >> Any questions for Joe? >> Thank you, Joe. Okay, we're going to we're going to take we're going to take a few minutes here to look at a couple of policies, then we're going to shift over uh with Miss Stephanie that I think is going to pin a lot of these things that uh that y'all were just talking about. The the three I want to focus on um
034right now and then we'll see what our time looks like when Stephanie's done um have to do with things I mentioned before are our open enrollment um procedures here that Mr. Wyman's going to help us with. Then we're going to talk a little bit about transportation, how that relates to that. And then we're going to take a little look here at our which we've looked at a couple times. Um our our our um policy on student searches. Okay. So I want to kind of give you an idea about that. So we're going to start here. Um Mr. Wyman, we're going to start with our um open enrollment. Um well, we going to pass down, Miss Johnson. Open enrollment has a policy >> and a um uh regulation. You want to pass it. Is there a
035way for us to see your regulations? >> They write them >> online >> like when people have something like a concern I can like go >> you know what >> and the policy but as far as the regulations >> it's like on table context it's a policy and I'm right on race. >> Okay. >> Yeah. Yes. So yeah. So this is a great question M. So when you look up a policy in the policy manual, this one happens to be uh JFB, open enrollment, if there's a regulation that goes with it, right after it, it will see JFBR. So R will mean regulation and then E means an exhibit. Policies always require um board action. Regulations and exhibits do not require board action. However, uh we will always um share the regulation um with you
036as we develop it. What would an exhibit be like the forms that they can >> exhibit? An exhibit is a form and and those need updating um as well. So, Mr. Wyman, I'll let you get started uh with the with the board here just the policy and kind of what we're trying to get at here. >> Awesome. >> Madame President, members of the board, Superintendent Waggamouth. Uh so before you is a proposal for some updates to the policy JFB for open enrollment. Uh so there are if you if you flip I believe this is included. >> Uh it's at the very back. Yes. So there is kind of a summary of the the the changes as well. Uh but we did go ahead and add some definitions to clarify a couple things specifically to school
037of residence uh school choice uh resident student non-resident student. We also went through the policy and changed uh just updated the terminology from pupil to student um and and again defined those other pieces. Uh we also removed uh the we're proposing the removal of the specific paragraph regarding non-title one students >> 26 on second page line 26 >> and that's from the oldfashioned no child left behind days that hasn't been in effect for a long time. >> Go ahead. >> Yes sir. Uh we did also adjust the the application timeline to give us some flexibility. Each and every year uh we need to bring before you a calendar. Uh you guys approve the school calendar. Uh all of those kind of things have to be set in motion before uh the student information uh system
038coordinator. Miss Croll can go in and create the calendar for next year. And then she has to roll kids up, students up. And then after that, then we could start to open up the the applications uh and create all that process for the next school year. So, uh the previous policy had us tied in from March 1st to April 30th for the specific time window that they would be able to apply. Uh and so we wanted to kind of give us the ability to be flexible with that each year based on uh a when the school board uh passes the the school calendar, you know, b when we're able to get the system set up for the next year, uh etc. And so that is a proposed update as well. >> How would that application
039window be communicated? >> So we have traditionally sent that out in the social media with emails to parents. Uh we've sent it out numerous all the different Facebook and different different platforms that we use >> and president I will share with you uh and I and of course this was in research prior to me getting this job. This March 1st April 30th deadline has been in this policy when you all adopted this policy service. It hasn't been practice in following that deadline that time frame. Right. So we want to make sure our policy aligns with our practice. >> Yes. >> Go ahead. >> That generally speaking actually throughout this these these policy updates are to bring us in line with you know what's what's historically happened to Deming uh based on you know previous uh
040procedures. Uh however this policy was passed I think it was two years ago. Um and and some things have changed since. So there's a little bit of updating since then and then also updating for our new uh systems. There's also some uh administrative control updates to centralize mid-semester transfers uh in order to give the superintendent or his designate uh the ability to approve midsemester uh transfers between elementary schools. Traditionally,