must present that to a panel there's also an individual research component and they will write an individual essay and present that as well. And finally, like all AP AP courses, it also has a component for an end course AP exam. AP Research, which will start in the fall of 26, is very similar to a graduate level course in a lot of ways. So it really prepares students for college. They will write an
in-depth academic paper, much like a thesis paper, and they present that and do an oral defense of that paper. This allows students to immerse themselves in topics that matter to them. They get to follow their passions. And develop analytic research problem solving and communication skills that colleges seek in their applicants this program will allow students to follow their passions, build their confidence
and gain global perspectives. There are two ways for students to achieve recognition while expanding their educational horizons in the AP Capstone program. There's the AP Capstone diploma and the AP Seminar and Research Certificate. We'll take a closer look at each of these programs first we're going to talk about AP Seminar and Research Certificate. So the AP seminar and research certificate can be earned by students that earn a three or higher on the AP Seminar exam and
a three or higher on the AP Research exam or project. So by doing those two things in AP Seminar and Research, they will get a certificate that can be part of their diploma package. What's super exciting though is if they want to face the challenge to get the AP capstone diploma in order to earn the AP Capstone diploma they have to not only. Only earn a three or higher in seminar and research, but they have to earn a three or higher on four other AP exams, so if they meet those
criteria they get the AP Capstone diploma which is very prestigious distinction. Sorry, still me the AP Capstone diploma does build on the certificate as you can see we talked about. You just have to have the four additional courses and those AP subjects that at we have in at Pine Creek High School will help them to meet this objective, which is why we are bringing on even more and more AP subjects so they have more and more ways to meet that criteria. So beyond getting the distinction
of the certificate or the diploma, what are the other benefits? AP Capstone has many benefits. Beyond that, we've mentioned several. They get all kinds of things out of it, like we mentioned following their passion and choosing their research topic again it is skill driven, not content driven in that way. The AP Capstone program emphasizes engagement, cross curricular conversations, and they
get to choose something that students love to do. This differentiates for all students involved in the program. They also get to Sorry, TJ. It's also really good to note that a benefit of AP capstone are the essential skills that our students will gain from this program. One, of course, is independent research. It's based on their interest So they get in and they dig in and they research. Then they create that project around their passion. But what's really good to know is that it equips them with those research skills that truly are
increasingly valued by colleges. The other, really essential skill that we're excited about is the collaborative thinking that happens in AP Capstone collaboration and communication skills, as we know, are at the core of college readiness and lifelong learning. So the group projects that are essential to AP Capstone Challenge students to contribute equally to both the research questions and to coordinate for a joint presentation that they have to do. As you can imagine, students who complete this rigorous
coursework are really very prepared for college. It gives them distinction in the college admissions process. An AP Capstone Award is an effective differentiation tool helping students to stand out in the competitive college admissions process. In fact, according to institutional research, 85% of selective colleges and universities. Report that a student's AP capstone experience favorably impacts
the admission decision. It's worth saying or repeating that an AP Capstone award signifies to college admission officers that the applicant has the skills, the experience and the passion for sustained success in higher education. These are just some of the more than one colleges and universities that have endorsed AP Capstone for its challenging, interdisciplinary curricula. At Pine Creek, Barbara Michael Gory and Justin Morrell will be teaching AP seminar next year.
And then we will bring on AP Research the following year We are excited about this opportunity for our students at Pine Creek. So thank you so much for letting us share this excitement and this new program with all of you today. Thank you so very much. Mrs. Ruckman. Are there any updates to the agenda? There were updates to the agenda and the Board has been made aware of these. Thank You. Members of the Board, are there any items you wish to move from the consent agenda? Are there any discussion items to be added to the agenda? May we have a motion to approve the agenda?
Moved. Second. Roll call, please. Mrs. Konz, aye. Mr. Wilburn, aye. Mrs. Yanez Mr. Salt, aye. Mrs. Shandy, aye. Does anyone have anything they'd like to share for board comments tonight? I'll just say I had the privilege to go to Denver this morning with Director Wilburn and Superintendent Haberer for the Purple Star ceremony where we got to celebrate Ranch Creek Elementary, Douglas Valley and Eagle View Middle School for their work with military
families. And that was a real honor to get to be amongst them and it was pretty cool to see because of the, I think there were eight different school districts there. They were all from Colorado Springs except for one so. That was pretty awesome. All right, Superintendent, comments Mr. Smart. Oh, thank you. First, let me thank Becky Allan I missed the last couple meetings and unfortunately, she now has the record for the most announced in a board meeting. So I'm a little disappointed about that, but I appreciate her doing the announcing for me and I'm sure her jokes were
as good as mine are going to be tonight, so first I want to introduce Zach Mather, who’s being recommended as as the Chief Information Officer. Zach is joined this evening by his wife, Sarah spelled correctly, just like my wife Sarah. And children, Savannah, who's a senior at Air Academy Gavin is a freshman at Air Academy. Cadence and Riley who are both 5th graders at Rockrimmon Elementary School. So, you know, as I was going through something wow there's a lot of things we have in common wife's names are Sarah spelled the right way. We both have old
Commodore 64 somewhere in our basement, and we both have twins I have two sets of twins. He has one set. And so it's like, wow that's I didn't realize we were so connected, Zach holds a bachelor's of science and information technology from Columbia Southern University. He also holds a certificate of educational technology leader. Or is it C Tel? Is that correct C Tel certificate from consortium of school networking. He began his educational career in Harrison District 2 as APC Technician, Technology Specialist and then as a network support
specialist. Came to D20 as APC network technician. For some reason went back to Harrison AS a network systems administrator, chief network engineer and supervisor for technology services. I'm assuming not all at the same me time. And then went to Durango. Beautiful area. As a director for information technology and then was at Pueblo City Schools as a director for technology and he currently serves as a director for Information Technology and Infrastructure Services here in D20. We are pleased to recommend Zach
tonight for the position of Chief Information Officer. Zach is there here anything you'd like to say? Should we try this? All right? Hey, this one works. There you go. That's why I'm here. Superintendent Haberer, members of the board, it's an honor and a privilege to be here before you and be recommended finalist for this position. Certainly it's a little bit of humbling and a little bit of anxiety trying to step into the shoes of someone like Shelly who, you know, done this job for so long and as many as is kind of a pillar in the Ed tech community in Colorado. But one thing that definitely
alleviates that is the incredible IT team that we have, some of the members are here, just incredible people. And so it's really exciting to work with them and get to continue that in a little bit different capacity. And then of course just you thank my wife and my kids and my family for all the support because it's been, it's been a long journey and looking forward to continuing. So thank you. Thank you Zach. All right, next our next individual is actually online, so she should be able to hear me, I hope and she'll be able to respond when I'm done. I'm pleased to
introduce tonight Doctor Amy Ripper Ripperger I I always say this name wrong. I think it's the Ripper part that gets me. Who is recommended as principal for Air Academy High School Amy holds a Bachelor of Science in history from the University of Northwestern in Saint Paul or Saint Paul in Saint Paul MN. She also has a Masters of Arts in Teaching from Bethel University and Doctor of Education from Drake University. And I couldn't think of any jokes other that she's in Iowa and I hope she brings some corn with her when she comes out. And so she began her educational career in Savage, MN as a social studies teacher at Pryor
Lakes High School and then in Eola, Iowa as an instructional coach at the high school and then moved up to the district TLC coordinator for that district as well. She currently serves the Assistant Principal at Bondurant for Always Ferrar. I asked Susan to help me sound this out. She didn't help me very much for our high school. You did not. We are pleased to recommend Amy tonight for the position of Principal, Air Academy High School. And Amy, if you'd. Say something, go ahead. Thank you, Cameron. I appreciate that. I do have a lot of corn in me. That's true. That is the Iowa part of me. But I was born in
Colorado, so I will say that Superintendent Haberer, members the board, very excited to be here online with you. Like Cameron said, my name is Amy Ripperger and just really thrilled about the opportunity to lead our Academy and excited to get started. Thank you, Amy. Thanks, Amy. Next I'd like to introduce Rob Haack who is beginning is being recommended as the Assistant Principal of Chinook Trail Middle School And Rob was there when my kids were there and that may have been why he left and now he's
coming back now that they're gone. So I think there's a trend going on here he He holds a bachelor's of science and management studies from the University of Maryland, a masters of Arts in human resources development from Webster University A Masters of arts in teaching. Elementary education from the University of Northern Colorado. Rob served 22 years in the United States Army before beginning his educational career in District 8 at Abrams Elementary School as a third grade teacher. And then he came to D20 and was at Woodman Roberts as a fifth grade teacher and MTSS coordinator and then went to Chinook Trail Middle as a 6th grade Social Studies
teacher and then was an assistant principal there for several years and he's currently serving as a fifth grade teacher and Encompass Heights Elementary School. And he lucked out. He missed my kids at that one. So. We were pleased to recommend Rob to you tonight for the position of Assistant Principal at Chinook Trail Middle. Rob, anything you'd like to say? Superintendent Haberer, members of the board, thank you for the opportunity. I want to give a special thanks to my family. They couldn't make it tonight, but my son, Eli, a sophomore at Air Academy, my daughter Sophia is an Air Academy grad, currently in Greeley and my wife Ann, who is watching us online
from her conference in Minnesota. I need to thank them for all of the support they've given me through all of the the OPS and the unexpected downs coming out. Together all the time. Thank you to the teams Tacy and the rest on learning services to Jenny, Jenna, Lynn and the teachers at Encompass Heights for giving me a place for the last couple of years and to the staff at Chinook Trail Middle School. We had so many. Sorry about that. In so many ways feels like
I never left and I can't tell you how much I look forward to. And appreciate all that support. Thank you. Thanks, Rob. Rob. OK. I might need Zach back up here. Technical difficulties OK. So I'm pleased to introduce next Dan Hinkin who was recommended as the assistant principal for Pine Creek High School. I thought I heard a little woo woo over there, but maybe not. Dan is joined this evening by his wife Annalise, his mom Karen, and his dad Larry. And I'll tell you know, I always say I have a face for radio I'm gonna tell you Dan has a voice for radio
I mean just a natural and also my kids are at Challenger and he's leaving. I don't know if there's a trend here. My twin boys are there and a tornado one and tornado 2. And so there's just something going on, Dan holds a bachelor's of science in science education from the University of Central Florida and a Masters of Arts in Educational Leadership from the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. Dan began his educational career in District 11 at Russell Middle School is in 8th grade social studies and reading teacher then came.
To D20 and at discovery Canyon campus high school is a social studies teacher and then went to Montego Bay. Is that right? Montego Bay Jamaica, yeah man, OK as a a humanities teacher and then came back to D20 as A and went to Chinook Trail Middle School as a humanities teacher there and he's currently serving as assistant principal at Challenger Middle School we're pleased to recommend Dan as the for the position of assistant principal at Pine Creek High school anything you'd like to say. Members of the board, Superintendent Haberer, thank you for this opportunity. About six years ago, I got an opportunity to go
and help open up Chinook Trail Middle School and I got to teach alongside Rob and Lauren and. Great opportunity to work with Tom Andrew who helped spur me on my leadership journey and then about four years ago, Debbie Holt took a chance on me and gave me a job as an assistant principal, a challenger and it's been a great four years. It's really sad to leave, but I'm really excited to bring both of those communities together at Pine Creek and just continue to serve at D20, so thank you
to my parents and my wife. And I'm just really excited to keep going so thank you, guys. Go Eagles. Next, I'm pleased to introduce Lynn Driggers, who is being recommended as assistant Principal at High Plains Elementary School Lynn is joins the joined this evening by her husband Ross her sons Kayson and James and parents Kristin and No sorry I wrote I Keith. Sorry I can't read my own writing Keith and Lou are they here everybody here it's always great when
the parents come. I do need to read a message from Doctor Getchell. He's going to be the new principal at High Plains and he sent me this and wanted me to read this tonight, so. Hopefully I don't tear up 'cause it's really good one so I'm beyond excited to work beside my new teammate, Lynn Driggers, who's incredible leadership and passion for education make her an exceptional l addition to High Plains Elementary School. Lynn's heart for students An incredible instruction, instructional capacity and ability to lead with purpose and vision are truly inspiring. I can't wait to begin our time at High Plains as we work together
to support an amazing school community. Great things are ahead. All right, so Lynn holds a Bachelors of Arts and Elementary Education from the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, a master's in Education in Curriculum and instruction, and early Childhood Education from Concordia University. And she made me add these two there. She's got a masters in marks in reading from Regis University as well as that's where she got her admin license She began her career in District 8 at AS a Weichel elementary school. She taught kindergarten 1st and 3rd grade and then she came to do 20 and went to Chinook Trail
Elementary School as AK-5 interventionist and then went to. Encompass Heights Elementary school as a second grade teacher MTSS coordinator and interim assistant principal and she currently serves as the Dean of students at Encompass Heights Elementary School and also so my kids went there and she got the chance to spend some time with them We're pleased to recommend Lynn to you tonight for the position of assistant principal at High Plains Elementary School. Anything you'd like to say, Lynn? To the Board of Education, Superintendent Haberer and Board I am incredibly blessed to have this opportunity to serve. High Plains community, I'm truly honored and humbled to step
Heartfelt thank you to my mom and dad. And still the strong work ethic rooted grounded in service to others, your unwavering support and belief in me, and encouragement through the tough days as well as celebration of success on the great days. Have shaped me to who I am. To my husband, who's been my rock. You're always encouraging me to be my best self. And to my boys, thank you for being flexible on all the early mornings and late afternoons, but making sure my calendar is always filled with joy. Thank you to the people like Jenny Stirk Jenna Gifts Dad and Leah Hall who have paved the way of being a leader with integrity
and heart and teaching me along the way, no matter how big any of the bumps may have been, I'm excited and honored to work in the community and staff to create a school that exceeds expectations no matter how high the bar is. A-Team that is dedicated to being problem solution focused overcoming obstacles and ensuring that every student at High Plains Elementary finds success. Albert Einstein once said the important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. To the High Plains staff, I promise to remain curious, not just about the work that we do together
but about who you are as individuals. I will always seek to understand how I can support you and your goals to our students and community, I believe Simon Sinek said it best. Leadership is not a rank or position to be attained, but leadership is a service to be given as we begin this journey together, I I commit to serving you by listening deeply, communicating openly, and valuing each and everyone of you. Together, we will build a community where all students are seeing, valued, and heard Thank you. All right. It's my last one now you guys are
ready. So pleased to introduce Cheryl Dahl, who's recommended as assistant principal for Frontier Elementary School. She is joined this evening by her husband Glenn, who was in the Air Force and apparently is the reason she got dragged around to all these amazing places to get all this great experience, her daughter Maddie and her son Grant. And I could say this about both of the Lynn and Cheryl perseverance if you looked it up in the dictionary, you're gonna see their picture right there. So they hey continue to push forward to get this position that. Recommended for tonight and it's I'm just proud of them
both. So Cheryl holds a Bachelors of Arts and entered this let me try that again interdisciplinary studies from the University of Northern Colorado Masters of Science education and curriculum instruction from Walden University as Cheryl began her career in District 40 District 49 at Evans Elementary School as a kindergarten teacher and then went to Del Rio, TX and taught first grade, 2nd grade, third grade. As well, they went to Enid OK. Go Sooners, and as a third grade teacher, are you a Sooner fan or Texas fan? Neither it's
too bad. OK, And then went to District 20 came here and went to Legacy Peak as a fourth grade teacher Chinook Trail Elementary School as a third grade teacher and she currently serves as a as a Dean of students at Chinook Trail Elementary School re pleased Sarah recommend Cheryl tonight for the position of assistant principal at at Frontier Elementary School. Anything you'd like to say? Good evening, members of the board and Superintendent Haberer and the rest of the leadership team. I think you guys so much for this opportunity. I feel so incredibly blessed to o\ be here. As Mr. Smart said that I I've wanted
this for a while now and I haven't given up and so along the way I have had some incredible mentors and I think Mr. Shoemaker and Mrs. Kessler for their support along the way and all that they have done to get get me to this point as well and believing in me. And my family for dragging me along to all the different places that we have been over the years that's been one of the blessings that I've been able to come back here. I am an ASD 20 graduates I I went to Rampart High School. This is home. I grew up literally
right across the road from here. When this is progressive not SD 20 when we were that little tiny building over there. And so it's so awesome and just incredible to be back in District 20. And to now be in this role and I am so excited to be able to know that moving forward that we're staying here long term and my husband will be retiring this summer. So we're here to stay. And so that is such a blessing as well. I
I am so excited to be a part of the frontier family and I am so thankful to work alongside Dr Julie Murray and I know that she is doing incredible things over there at Frontier. And having the opportunity to partner alongside her is just the biggest blessing that I could ask for so I think my friends and family that I've been here to support me tonight and I thank all of you for this opportunity. OK. That's all I got. Thanks. Thank you Mr. Smart. All right. Superintendent Haberer? Yes. What a
wonderful celebration. Great team coming on board. Such a great time of year to just welcome all of you. I'm super excited to have you on board and our wonderful journey next year, so. Gotta go back to the beginning if you would please. All right, there we go. So. Board as know I'm still spending time in schools and had a wonderful opportunity to go to these four schools. Took a few pictures at Pioneer Elementary School. Had a chance to visit classrooms with Principal Zook and we saw students using technology as tools for learning. Had a chance to
go to Discovery Canyon High School. It was a wonderful art class. Makes me really wish I would have taken art in high school. They were learning how to use several different mediums in order to express their ideas. Yesterday I was at school in the woods and. It was also what the Colorado land grants a Rep they wanted to see our programming so this. Is a pond exploration and they were investigating what Groves and swims in the pond and the best part of the whole thing was to find a leech little black
leech. I didn't even know they existed here in Colorado so that was interesting, super exciting that's a picture on the right there and I And I just really want to celebrate John Worth. He was an administrator at School in the Woods and he was one of the founders. That opened the school in 1999, so it was super fun to meet him. He still goes out every Tuesday 'cause he can't, just can't stay away from the pond. He loves to be out there with the kids. So that was really fun to celebrate his volunteer work as well. Eagle View Middle School under the direction of choir director Wes
Sparks, the 8th grade concert choir performed a spotlight solo at Carnegie Hall in New York as part of the choirs of American Nationals for TOP choirs showcasing their talent on a national stage throughout the event. The Eagle View Middle School students participate in workshops clinics and applications, and coral Exchange programs. Really refining their skills alongside some of the best young vocalists in the nature and the nation. The choir members also immerse themselves in the culture and history of New York
especially, of course, Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and the 9/11 Memorial. A great opportunity for our students. At Rock Rimmon Elementary School, I had a chance to tour the halls and with Principal Bonilla and really observe the amazing artwork that was on the walls. On one mural they literally recreated Starry Night by Van Gogh and they were learning all about his work. And as you guys know, I just really believe and I know you do too, just how important the Fine Arts are to our students Speaking of Fine Arts, had a wonderful time
watching the Eric Academy High School Guys and Dolls presentation. And as Director Shandy shared, we did do the went to Director Shandy and Director Wilburn and my and myself, we had a chance to go to the Capitol today and it was actually at the Colorado Department of Education. So Purple Star Schools created in 2020 by House Bill 241076 the e Purple Star Schools awarded designates public schools that provide exceptional services and supports to military connected students and their families to mitigate the academic
and social emotional challenges related to frequent moves new schools, parental deployments and different social l circles and experiences. The Purple Star r designation recognizes a school's significant commitment. To supporting military families and students of servicemen and women and we had d three schools that earned that award as a Purple Star school this year and we look forward to continuing work with h other schools to be recognized next year. Rocky Mountain Robotics, the district's Rocky Mountain Robotics team
has 50 people on the team from all of the public D20 high schools they have spent the last three months working on n 100 LB robot that is designated to o be both autonomously and manually controlled and compete in a regional competition in Denver. The team also participates in various community events and promotes STEM in elementary and middle schools. And I believe we have the. Sponsor of this team. Here and the students to share more about this program do we have e them here tonight? Yay. So please come up
introduce yourselves and tell us a little bit about your program. Hello, board, Superintendent and other guests I am Emily Tremios and I have the honour of being the CEO of Rocky Mountain Robotics Team 662. I'm Kayla Borland, I'm the COO of the team. And I'm Andrew. I'm the vice president of the CAD department. Rocky Mountain Robotics is an amazing robotics team, that is sponsored through 1st and our season actually begins all the way back in summer where we are responsible for taking on and planning a boot camp in which we invite every single rising
freshman and as well as any other student that is interested to come learn about robotics as well as power tool safety. Our kickoff is the beginning of January, the very first Saturday of January. Where we will get a video of what it is that we need to be building. We then go through the engineering design process to figure out what our priorities are, to figure out what we wanna do in competition and d we also have to come up with the design we then spend over r 20 hours a week all the way up until spring break working on this robot, both building, testing and programming this
robot then for competition we then then go through a series of matches in which we are in an alliance of three robots going against another alliance of three robots. But our team members might be our opponents in our next match This year we had to figure out how to get a giant piece of PVC pipe onto smaller pieces of PVC pipe, as well as climb on a cage that is barely 3 inches above the ground, as mentioned before our team consists of 56 students and we are entirely student LED and we are run like a business with the CEO, A COO and
S over multiple different technical departments ranging from areas from programming, media and the mechanical construction. The communication between these departments is difficult, so we. Industry standards such as Kanban to build to seamlessly communicate between these we also have interactions that at are not purely business focused but we also. Create a social atmosphere between our leadership team in our students with having separate events outside of it. As for our performance this season, we were able to win a single game as well as performing the hardest challenge, which was pulling this 100 robot and suspending it off that
cage, which you can see in that middle picture. It was one of our most difficult challenges. Along with that, we applied for the Impact Ward which is a prestigious award offered at the 1st program, which involves how much we impacted the community such as creating almost a dozen FIRST Lego teams at Mostly Folks towards Eagle. You middle. Awesome. So in conclusion, Rocky Mountain Robotics is a great way for students to come and grow their engineering and design skills and ideas. I want to give back to the community as As you said, we sponsored over a dozen
robotics teams, which is focused towards your elementary middle school students and And we along with this growing impact for the younger students, we then impact our older students where even coming up with leadership we are preparing them for the future. Where to get a leadership position you have to go. Through and give everyone a resume, a letter of intent and go through a very interview process that is very difficult and can be quite stressful awesome awesome if If there's any questions please let me know. Thank you. Thank you so much. Please stay after I'm
going to do a quick update because we'd love to get your picture of course. Awesome, awesome experiences There's another. Here's I think your robot and let's see if it works. I don't think there's any sounding against us. This gives you some more facts about this club. I really appreciate too just the efforts to get back to the community and your work with the elementary school. So thank you So thank you so much. Right, let's see. Trying. There we go right. Let's see so as board we
purchased I Excel, which is a program that is a technology tool for students to use to help them develop their skills and as they go around and talk to different schools what what I'm seeing is many schools are especially using it to help students with their math skills and it does some good differentiation, right? And I think it's a real support for teachers 'cause it's hard to differentiate if you've got, especially if you're a secondary teacher and you've got maybe 100 kids or more in a day. So IXL has its own rewards program and 9 Academy District 20 students were recently honored for their outstanding dedication to
learning through IXL. Students led the entire district in mastering the most skills from their personalized study plans, demonstrating their commitment to academic growth. And to celebrate their achievements, a representative from IXLS Denver office recently visited the schools. To personally present each student with a certificate and prizes, and families and staff joined in celebrating that work. So another great way that we celebrate academic achievement and growth in our district. Had an opportunity to meet with our amazing operational directors It was a great time to learn from them. What's going well, what we
need to continue to work on and just really want to share my appreciation for that team and our stakeholder meetings we met t with the patrons at community, did our communicate connection our student advisor group, our patron counsel, our teacher communication. Council and the two topics were facilities and budget and thank you to Pete Ristig did an amazing job talking about maintenance. You know, I think we take buildings for granted. We go in and
in our air conditions working and our buildings are in there for the most part in really good shape. So it was really a nice way to appreciate all the great work that they do and of course a huge thank you to to Becky Allan. On your presentation, Becky was amazing and just helping us to better understand the budget. I learned something new every time I hear a presentation, so it's awesome. And. I think all of us had a chance to see Temple Grandin Absolutely phenomenal and a huge, huge thank you to our special education department and again, board, if you haven't seen the movie you need
to Google Temple Grandin. Anyone else who's here, it's an amazing movie about her life and she actually that's over her, though we're on the left in the middle. She lives in Fort Collins. I especially appreciate her advocacy for children with autism and the amazing. Contribution she's made nationwide, she said. Most meatpacking companies in the nation use her method for how to humanely work with cows as they're going into the meatpacking plant so I was
as really a fun time to experience that together. Are there any board members who'd like to share anything else about that experience? And speaking with her, I ran up and got 2 copies of her book. My sister's a huge fan of hers as well. And she was really she e brought up something really unique, interesting, challenging. Where she was talking about Algebra 2 and how difficult that class was for in fact, today she said if she had to graduate from high school today, she wouldn't be able to, she wouldn't be able to pass that class and we
didn't really have time to get into why that at particular subject matter was so difficult for her. But she said, I really want people to to understand that there are engineers. Visual thinking people. Who just cannot pass that class or can don't see algebra 2 right? She said I can and then she puts up this sketch that she said she created and just like less than our or something incredible and so it was just a reminder to me once again that you know, we have yes state standards and different
paths but are we creating paths for people who. Have totally unique. And groundbreaking ways of thinking are there barriers for them that we can prevent? So she really is a tremendous person I have not seen the movie yet. I said I was gonna run home and watch it. I ran home and fell asleep, but I will get to that movie. And. We just last. It was just such a joy to celebrate our wonderful years of Service awards. And thank you to Mark Belcher and
the whole communications team for hosting that. It really was wonderful again this is awards, these awards are given to our employees for their service of 2530 and 35 years in our district and as you know, people are the heart of our success here in D20. And it was just really inspiring to hear the stories and to be. With these folks that have had such an amazing commitment and dedication to our students especially over many years, they're really leaving a very
impactful legacy And the top picture there, the teacher with the flowers is Kim Hitner and she was, I think the only one that was celebrated with 35 years of dedicated service. And it was really fun to talk to her so. Let's give a hand to all of our amazing employees. And that's the end of my report. Thank you, Superintendent Haberer. We need a motion to approve the consent agenda as posted Moved. Second. Roll call, please. Mrs. Konz, aye. Mr.
Wilburn, aye. Mrs. Yanez, aye. Mr. Salt, aye. Mrs. Shandy, aye. Mrs. Ruckman, can you let us know how many people are on the live stream? Mark, can you let us know how many people are in the live stream? 13? 13 people. All right, we will take a break now for pictures with spotlights in new administrators. Thank you. We have to go back. Probably. There are policies. So there's just more work that hasn't been done. Then that's where it's me. OK, we are the meeting. Please find your seats.
All right, there are no items pulled from the consent agenda we are on to our monthly reports. Please find your seats so we can resume the meeting. Thank you. First written report is the monthly financial report through February 2025. Does anyone have any questions or comments? Nope. All right. Summer school programming for summer 2025 Does anyone have any questions or comments? Director Wilburn, I'd just like to know what our numbers look like compared to last summer. I'm guessing it's pretty
pretty similar. And do we anticipate the loss of ESSER dollars Any impact other than the obvious? Tacy Killingsworth. And Tacy, that's good OK, so I'm here representing Joe Royer, obviously. So summer school numbers are very comparable to last year. We have good numbers every year and we just keep increasing the number of students who, especially at the high school level who want to get ahead, not just make up classes
So yes, that number is. Similar, yeah. In terms of S or dollars, yes absolutely. Knew that was coming and prepared for it so tuition that's charged or fees that are charged or not. We're all planned for and anticipated with that reduction and loss of that serve. So we're setting up. And I had one little thing for you. I apologize for not sending this to you. I just forgot I meant to over the weekend. But there is a program called Foundations and sounds it's kind of like a precursor to dyslexia. Susan Barton recommends it for kiddos who can't
like even pass her Screener. And it's one of those programs, I think that could be incredibly impactful in a short amount of time and just something to look at. I just wanted to throw that out there to you to maybe just investigate, but. Foundations, it sounds. Thank you. Yes, Casey's writing it too Thank you. Thank you. All right Annual monitoring report for executive limitation Policy 2 7 Employment compensation and benefit. Does anyone have questions? OK, my only comment is in previous monitoring report for the policy I raised concerns about the definition of
deviate materially. I continue to believe this warrants further discussion at the board level and have submitted proposed language for that revised definition for a later conversation. Just wanted to bring that comment up. Is the superintendent's interpretation of the policy reasonable? Is there sufficient evidence to determine compliance for each section? All sections in compliance. I couldn't tell you from your face recognition of exemplary for performance or concerns regarding performance. Would you like to see any additional different evidence or should any part
of this policy be changed in the next monitoring report cycle Beside what I just said, I'd like to look at the definition of deviate materially. Do you see evidence which is extraneous or no longer necessary? All right. Legislative updates, does anyone have questions or comments? OK, Annual monitoring report or governance Governance policy Process policy 4.14 Electronic attendance and participation in school board meetings. Does anyone have any questions or comments? MRE see here. Is there any sufficient evidence to
to determine compliance for each section? Is there sufficient evidence to determine compliance for each section? Are all sections in compliance? Recognition of exemplary performance or concerns regarding Would you like to see additional different evidence or should any part of this policy be changed in the next monitoring report cycle? Do you see evidence which is extraneous or no longer necessary? OK, presentations, first one up is district accountability committee report a school resource priorities for school year 2025/2026 Superintendent Haberer, Dr. Field, Becky do you
want to introduce? I do. I am always proud each year the DAC budget subcommittee and these two chair persons. Jennie Rogers and Erin Stephens and they are going to share with you now the report of the resource priorities for next year 25/26. Thank you very much. I'd first like to thank Lauren Yunez because she recognized that as DAC we get together and we do this and we meet with every single principal and every single feeder strand and we really put work into this
And so to be able to explain a little bit more in depth the things that stand out as more important seems. And so we're happy to be presenting, OK So like I said, we're just really gonna point out the things that we find to be the most important thing since you can all read so, OK. So we're gonna go through these resource priorities organized according to these different areas. OK, so when it comes to learning gaps, there are a few things that you'll see. There are a few themes that you'll see that run
throughout all of these. So one of the things we really wanted to point out was to continue the district wide focus on professional learning communities including PLC late starts. This was talked about so many times in all the different areas, the principals really appreciate this, the teachers, staff really appreciate this It's incredibly important. Also pushing at the education to parents why it's important and what is happening during these times is crucial so that everybody understands why the need is there. I'd like to say that all these things are important, but
also we recognize that budgets are tight and they are probably going to get tighter. Understanding what's happening in education, so know it's time to start getting a little creative and really focusing and paying attention to the things that the principals are saying are the most important Providing adequate staffing to support math and literacy Programming. We were talking about getting creative when it comes to some of these things since there are maybe potentially going to be cuts when it comes to these
areas. So how creative can we get with these when it comes to technology and digital resources consistently replenish and maintain devices including school level technology and labs and peripheral technology such as projectors, television document cameras and screens and consider the district centralization of some technology funding. So the main thing that came up in our feeder strand was the pine Creek feeder strand, but we've heard it in all of the other ones was that there's the DTT issue that there are not enough, there's not enough DTT support for
each individual school and the way that it's kind of handed out is not necessarily equal for everybody because it's based on the number of students, the age of the of the students. So there are some schools who are sharing and if technology breaks down. In certain places, then learning kind of ceases to exist in some areas. So keep that in mind. We're gonna come back to it manage information technology staffing at the district level. So potentially trying to have the DT TS be more of a district
position and have or having more DTTS and additional DTTS be in the district and then go out as needed to the different schools provide funding assistance to schools when parents are unable to pay device fees. We talked about this last year as well. That there needs to be a lot of education around free and reduced lunch and how free and reduced lunch doesn't just mean lunch. Obviously lunch is now free as of now. That might change, but it's free as of now. So a lot of families think, OK, I don't need to sign up for
this anymore, but signing up for free and reduced lunch also enables you to qualify for some extra fees that you may not be able to afford to be covered. And so that education needs to take place at various schools. At the district level, that's incredibly important. OK, the next category, social emotional learning and culture of connectedness. One of the things that was stressed is that learning can't happen if these are not addressed because at the end of the day, if there's dysregulation and chaos in a classroom or in a school, there won't be learning happening at all, so
when I talked about DTT, we also went through all these social emotional learning culture of connectedness issues that we we talked about. And when I said, would you rather have more school counselors or would you rather have more DTTS they said school counselors hands down, no question about it. So as much as that DTT issue was an issue and a conversation that we had at length, they would rather have the school counselors. So the things I want to highlight in here in this category are to continue professional learning regarding how to intervene and support
students experiencing anxiety, depression, academic pressures and or trauma. And Miss Yanez and I were talking about how that's incredibly difficult, a lot of people already have a lot of that training, but it's really hard to figure out the line between what you can do and what you can't do. But I do think that everybody is seeing an uptick in dysregulation. So trying to address how. Maybe we can intervene a little bit better could help if we do not have the social support in the schools necessarily in the
form of counselors. Continue with assigning a behavior team to each feeder strand and staff at least one behavior paraprofessional at each school. Increased staffing for additional school counselor positions and move closer to the student to counselor ratios recommended by the American School Counselor association. I know that some grants have been cut that were in place for school counselors, so I know that the number of school counselors are actually decreasing next year. So this is when it comes back to being creative, I know that there was a lot of attendance at the ASKA
conference. By the school counselors and they were just saying the principals were saying it's incredibly difficult to try to move closer to the recommendations when you don't have the bodies to back up the work. Staffing a full time safe counselor in each feeder strand. So that kind of goes with the vertical articulation and the siblings with family trauma if you're addressing it in the feeder strands, then you're kind of hitting it at all of the points for those families that might have some added trauma. As far as needs, that did not exist three to five years ago.
Again, greater and challenging social emotional needs of students. We've been talking about this for a while. We've been talking about it since COVID, but now we're pretty far out from COVID and it's still an issue and it's increasing a greater difference in enrollment levels within various parts of the district we talked about that before, increased levels of challenge related to student behavior needs more educators considering leaving the profession. So one of the things we talked about was retention and how do you keep
staff and teachers and everybody happy when the budgets are tight and you feel like you don't have any more money to give them in terms of their salary. So again, this is about getting creative the principles we're talking about how different primary is from secondary and how different the needs are for primary teacher versus the secondary teacher and how we tend to do things based on. Needs of the secondary students and teachers and staff and then it filters down to primary
whereas that might not serve the primary staff as well the primary teachers as well because in reality it's not the same needs that you have in through 5-6 through 8 and 9 through 12, so So maybe taking a bit deeper look at how you can change things a little bit and not just look at what are the high schools doing? OK, we're going to do that for everybody else. So that comes to thing, that's when it comes to things like contact days that the contact days are not necessarily needing to be the same for all students and the differing needs and
responsibilities at different levels. So maybe the you a teacher who's teaching an AP class and a history class, AP European History and then another history class does not have the same needs or time constraints as a teacher who's teaching every single class. The entire day. So it's definitely something to consider. When it you think about contact days, contact time PLCS, how can we adjust that to kind of keep teachers feeling like they're heard and they're doing what they need
to be doing and they're able to do their best when they're school? Future needs anticipated three to five years from now addressing differences in enrollment within various parts of the district, including space demands for schools at capacity deferred facility maintenance as buildings continue to age. I know that in the past we had talked about a rotating schedule of needs because that every single school is going to need a new gym floor at some point, that every single school is going to need new theater curtains you at every single school is going to these high
these high profile things that exist at every school, they're going to do new things. So potentially putting them on a rotating schedule so that not only do the principals are they able to anticipate when those things are going to be done, but maybe being able to save the funds for that, put them aside. The district will know, so the work can perhaps get done a little bit more quickly than it's planned ahead of time. Then you know what contractors you need, maybe you need more. So it's just one thing that we had talked about. An increased budget constraints from lower state funding and fewer grant opportunities forecasted so again
that was something that came up many times and is a very large concern. And you talked about the ESSER funds going away with summer school and I think that a lot of parents now didn't realize that summer school was being. Partly funded by ESSER funds. So now that the prices have gone up again, people are panicking and they don't understand why. And so I even think that educating people about the fact that this is what they it used to cost I I know that they're educated in here. The people that are in here know these things
cost but the greater community does not know that these things exist They They don't know what senior is they didn't know what ESSER did and now they're just seeing oh, summer school is extremely expensive and I was I was planning on this and I don't know how to make it happen. So putting something out saying this is why this is what it used to cost. This is why it costs less, this is why we are where we are could be useful. High priority facility needs the only one that we have here is that older facilities being on par with newly constructed facilities for areas such as air conditioning and heating
gym space, intercoms, bathrooms, furniture and playgrounds I I think that the bond is trying to address this, but of course there's always going to be schools that are aging even Pine Creek, which is seen as like the new high school in the district opened in 1998 and. That's when I graduated from high school and. It feels like yesterday and I look like I graduated yesterday. I did not graduate yesterday. So, yes, and I would also like to point out that Jenny Rogers is very capable of making this entire presentation herself But she will be doing this next year, yes
and I will not be. So she's just taking notes. So that's all I've got if anybody has any questions. Director Yanez. Well, I I'm gonna give up a secret here. I'm the luckiest board member because I get to be the DAC liaison and I get to be be at these meetings where I get to. Just interact with all of you really passionate people who love the school district and who want to celebrate the wins and then get at pick at edges where maybe
maybe we can do better, right? And. School funding and finance isn't a really tricky spot, I'm a believer that crisis forces creativity, so I when you are referring to creative thinking, I think, well, yesterday I was listening to the. Colorado House of Representatives do their budget work online. I do not recommend zero stars. It did not reduce my stress level whatsoever, but you know to listen and to prepare and to plan
and to understand what's happening. It's our job, right Thank you for everything you poured into this. I absolutely loved being part of those conversations, talking about each of these things. Now prioritizing gets to be the, you know obviously the really tricky part. But what I heard you say is. Really listening to our administrators who are in those buildings and getting at some of those needs that way. Just again thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. Yes. Thank you so much for your time. We do really do appreciate it all that you put into it. Thank you so much for serving on the Budget subcommittee and
leading. It was a pleasure. Thank you, Director, one more question, Director. Cons, not even a question more to our administrative staff, but thank you guys. I've had the blessing too of getting to be with Dak and it's yeah, it's a special kind of joy being involved, you know, in our school district that way. But so thank you guys for all the hours and hours and hours. That you put in, but I just want to point out. Hopefully Mr. Belcher kind of heard those references to educating our wider community
better about free and reduced lunch summer school fees as their funds and you know, I've said it before that we can do so much with our principals because people have a variety of methods and ways that they learn the information best. And so not only just blasting it on social media and our district website, but just working with the principals to make real intentional efforts. To share information like this I think would be appreciated, so thank you guys. Thank you ladies. Appreciate it.
All right, Next up is Challenger Learning Center of Colorado annual update Superintendent Haberer. I'm gonna go to Dr. Field and let you introduce who's here Thank you, Superintendent. I'm gonna actually have Shane Knight. Who's our Director for Curriculum Instruction, introduce our speaker. Good evening and I'm really proud to introduce Becca Manis. She's the Vice President for Challenger Learning Center Ron Bush is the president is not able to be here because he's in his own board meeting. I believe they're live streaming this, right They are. Thank you very much, Challenge for learning centers
an amazing program in our district and it should be a hallmark of what we do and tonight's been an example of our our district's commitment to STEAM science, technology, engineering and mathematics You saw Challenger's partnership with. Mountain Ridge Middle School and Becca's gonna talk more about the work that they do, not just with our middle schools, but throughout the district. Thank you school board members and Superintendent Hebrew, thank you very much for inviting us here tonight. We are proud to have a partnership with you and proud of all the students we serve within the
district. I have some numbers to share with you that total programs this year. Were 704 programs across all of our programs, but within the district we did about two which is about 9000. Students from the district, as you guys know you support us in many ways and one of them is sending all of your middle schools to us at a certain grade level to do the on site simulated missions which are big flagship program and additionally you
from 2019 until this past year gave us an additional $70,000 in funding and we use that to cover other programs in other their grade levels. Additionally, Challenger Ron does a great job of finding sponsors and funders to cover more programs and we were able to cover about 36 6,000 in programs. So last year we did 300 programs with the district. This year we're down to that 271 and we were able to provide from the
center about $17,000 in additional programs, so we're excited our programs in general and what we do and I'd like to give you some highlights of f the school year. The 1st is. Oh, there's all the numbers there. Chart was there. OK, there's the chart. That's what I was speaking about earlier. So you can see we're pretty consistent throughout the last three years. And this year just being a little short because of that shortage in some of the funding we had. And then our highlights for this coming
school year is that you got way more more. Sorry about that. And I already said that. And yes, we fully exhausted all of those $70,000 funds throughout with the teachers. And in fact this year we've opened booking and we've got about 84% of the additional funds already used up for next school years. Booking program. So that's everything I just said in that last one. And then here's our highlights for this year. That Mountain Ridge Middle School partnership you saw the students bring in their engineering programs, we've decided to take a strong focus in
engineering, focus on engineering this year because we realized d that is such a critical, critical need in the STEM fields And so the Mountain Ridge partnership began and we are super excited just hearing the students speak tonight that was my my first time hearing them. I hear all the stories from that my colleagues give back to work and talking about all the leaps and bounds they see in some of these kids. So we're are ally excited to hear about that. Additionally, we have new and improved digital discoveries programs. So what our goal is to is to have
persistent STEM engagement from kindergarten until high school and we feel that Challenger can play a critical role in that in District 20. So with that in mind, we have revamped and kind of reinvented the wheel with what we call digital discoveries. These are programs that are packaged a A teacher has a Lesson plan. They get a set of materials that we mail to their classroom and then we meet with them live so after they hey teach the Lesson plan, we conduct a live lab online with one of our flight directors, followed by follow up
materials. And so these are all this year based on literacy. We wanted to tie everything every cross curricular connection we could into these packages. At the K to two level, we're focused on literacy, so each of these come with a book. And the teacher uses that as the springboard for the labs and for the activities that they do. And then of course for that live connection. A huge thank you to Rockrimmon Elementary. They helped us test some of these and give us some good feedback so that we could tighten them up and make some good programs for anybody who does
the digital discoveries Engineering. Pathfinders was a camp that we debuted last year. You met Mr. Carney, he introduced the Mountain Ridge students. He brought to us this perspective that engineering is a word to many people, but it's not a reality. People don't understand it. I always thought it was a train conductor. I didn't realize there were all these strands of engineering and So what we want to do is open the eyes to students that there are several different areas of engineering
So last year we developed a camp that lasted 4 weeks, so a month long. I poo pooed the idea because I thought we're not gonna get parents. You wanna take that much time out of their summer to sign their students up for four consecutive weeks of camp? That was not the case. We had about 17 students sign up and the 1st few weeks were focused on four different engineering concepts. So electrical engineering I know is gonna forget them 'cause he says. I'm so fascinated 3 ted. 3D design, coding and programming and then.
Fabrication So the students learned a crash course in each of those. And by the end of this four week time span, they've developed manufacturing teams, engineering teams and we're given the challenge of building a rocket. We simply gave them an Estes rocket engine and they were challenged to build a rocket that would launch, that would have its own launchpad, that would deploy a Rover, that would parachute out and land. And the students went through a week long
session of being. Assigned roles and going through multiple iterations of things that worked and failed and pushed them to their limits they had by the end of the week, several iterations of their rockets and their launchpads, and we laid those out at the end of the week and invited the parents in for a like come in and see the showcase of what your students have been working on all this week and you can see the distinct differences between the shapes of the Rockets, the shapes of the fin, the size of the launchpad.
First started out really big and then they eventually get really teeny tiny and their parachutes were really big and they got tiny and they just learned to be more efficient and develop things that worked after we shared all the Rockets with the parents, we took them out and we launched them and there were only two teams to engineering teams. There's a big debate about who won because the first rocket took off, looked beautiful and landed on the moon and landed on the roof and did nothing else. The moon would have been awesome. Boy, it would have
been. Yeah, the second rocket took off didn't go very far, but it shot at its little Rover out. And the Rover landed. So there's a big debate. And we didn't feel like we needed to kill it and just let them win with what they had succeeded with just learning everything they did through that week. So that was our engineering Pathfinders camp and then. Up there, high school internships, we're so proud and excited about this partnership. Last year we had two village middle school interns who helped us.
Design A high school emission platform that we can now use and we are wrapping up the final. Work on this high school emission that will be deployed soon and they developed a full on game that showed the inside of the Orion capsule and integrated a game into it and they're trying to and it sounds like a game, but it was really cool because we talked to engineers at at Lockheed Martin and they gave us already a 3D Interior of the
capsule and our students then integrated the challenge into that. This year we have continued that and we have two new interns who are helping us design A robot arm for our simulator and they are building it from scratch every time I walk in the garage and see what they're doing, I am so mazed that they're 3D printing the box they're re running all the little wires and codes and they were in there with their heads down and he's like, it's overheating and it just sounded like it was Mission Control. It was amazing. Thing and they are working wonderfully so
o we love the high school internships and we hope to see those continue any years. Now looking ahead for this coming school year booking is already opened as I mentioned we do do have all of our middle school dates set with the middle schools. The district did get a two week in advance booking window of anybody else who is booking programs with us so all those middle school dates are set and. 85% of that additional funding has already been claimed by schools beyond the middle school mission so
we're excited. We know we've got some great kids coming back and great teachers coming back. Also our engineering Pathfinder camp that I just mentioned with the rocket building has now developed into an idea that we need to rebrand all of our camps We've always done them with an aerospace focus, but we really think that engineering needs to start as soon as first grade. So we're upping the ante. We're adding robotics and coding. We're making sure that they see it from the time they're little and until they get to that engineering Academy, which is what we've rebranded the
high school program that I mentioned earlier with the again, with the Rockets not going to the moon, but to the roof So we have 24 of those week long summer camps, 19 of those are re going to be hosted at Legacy Peak. Laura has been a great. Partner with us and is advertising for us in her newsletter. We've got about 40% of those program or those summer camp spots booked so we would love any advice or. Any links we can to getting more information out to students in the district to help get those seats filled for
us over the summer? And then we have our teacher, Sam boot camp. This is something we've been doing for 15 years We're excited about this year being our 15th annual year of 2 1/2 days of teacher professional development at a very minimal cost to teachers we raised d funding to cover most of it teachers. Usually we have about 100 teachers there. They get priority booking and they also get they usually walk away not only with everything that the collaboration
and that the presenters share with them, they usually walk away with some materials and we have a giant checkout library that they can pull from to continue and use these things at school. They don't have to write grants or do anything to try and get these robotics and engineering and Arduino kits that we have. We like to give them to them. For free. And Shane and Beth have been great with helping us advertise these programs to teachers So I think is that all of me? Yes. And as always, we do want to thank you for your partnership and coming to visit us
this year and designing your mission patch and Ron was so o excited about that. We hope you enjoyed your visit and we look forward to another great school year ahead. Thank you so much. I know Superintendent Haber and I were at Mountain Ridge last week, I think it was. And we got to see your space. We missed the rocket launches, unfortunately, but we did get to see your space. And it was really, really amazing to see what all they're doing in there so great job. Great partnership with that. Yay. Thank you, Director Yanez. Oh, is that it? Is that our patch? Oh, I
I hadn't seen it. Sorry. I take it back, Director, and ask Doctor this is the patch that we created. I haven't seen it in person yet when we went. You'll have to check it out. OK now, Director Yanez thank you so much. OK, I would be remiss if I did not mention I noticed that the digital discoveries mentioned K1 and two. I think you could even challenge yourself to do pre K just saying I I just as I think about opportunities for preschoolers, there's a couple things like planning those seeds really early for engineering and
elevating the work that we do in early childhood as well right? So it's not just play, but this is wonderful play It's also, you know, these students are capable of of creating patterns, right, using color. Some number recognition, some letter recognition at that time right. But that's just something I was thinking about as you were speaking. I thought if you. If you ask a few preschool teachers in this district, I am sure that they would love to embark on that kind of project Absolutely. I appreciate that. Point taken. It's something
I think we've talked about and just not had the capacity to get to. But this year I think we'll since we've got these locked in we will have time to expand. I'm just mentioning no, I I appreciate it. But then another idea nextdoor.com marketing your camps, get that out there, you can reach a lot of people. Grandparents, such as myself, would love to help make that happen for grandkids, but sometimes we just don't know. So that's just another place to kind of get the word out that, hey we're doing this and we'd love to have your kids. OK, I'll check it out Thank you. Director Wilburn. Great stuff. A couple
of things in your report kind of jumped out. You mentioned the internal funding being down and that you could not miss that you couldn't miss that when reading the report. It was almost half, I think in 24, it was around 36,025. It was around 17,000. What happened? Some of these questions are going to be Ron questions that Becca may not be able to answer, but. I think that we have gone through some ups and downs with some of our sponsors who were very big on promoting STEM and then when we've gone back to them and years post COVID, they've decided that they're gonna shift gears and focus
more on high school programs and so we've encountered some of those things that have kind of thrown off what we have just for the general pool of students. I live in the world of philanthropic giving. I know all about it. Is that an offer? I can write checks with the best of you want to check, I'll write you. I'll take a check just don't drop it. And then I mentioned so the Pathfinders Academy necessitated repurposing a garage into engineering workshop, which is great. I did
Does the garage get repurposed or is that now on the to do List for later in life? It is fully engineering lab setup and we have interns working in there now. We do not ever break it down or move it. We are planning on trying to maybe expand and do potentially after school programs, but these are just kinda OK so that's its that's its new home yes cool it's an amazing maker space. They've got a technological makerspace and then this one has more of your hand tools and such. It's awesome
to be in there, especially when there's kids in there working. All right. Next up, we have annual monitoring report for NS-1 2 character Superintendent Haberer That's Tacy Killingsworth. Evening. So I'm here to talk with you about our Ends 1.2 Character Monitoring Report. So just for background we have given either a climate and culture survey combined or we also separated it a few years ago since 2000 to really get
excuse me, stakeholder feedback and student feedback around how that's working in District 20. This past school year, 2324, we shifted and didn't give our culture and climate survey, but we gave the student experience survey and that student experience survey was in partnership with Hanover Research, which we do a lot of our surveys with. And it was focused on staff, parents and students perception of overall satisfaction school belonging, social and academic environment for students engagement and then outreach and district priorities. So this
survey was a little bit different than our climate and character survey. So we don't have correlation data regarding character traits specifically on that survey. And I'll explain what we're going to do moving forward. But for the character report this year, what we did is we gathered, which I know we've talked a lot about as a board, just that qualitative data from each of our schools to outline how are we teaching well, what resources are we using and how are we teaching and
developing character traits within each of our schools. And then what does that student output look like? How are they demonstrating that? So I know you were given a board packet and in that board packet. You have obviously the character traits and then you also have each of the resources that our schools identified using and a definition of that. I thought that would be helpful for you to just understand which resources schools are using and what that definition for that particular program is. And then you also have the output of each
of our schools and we'll talk about that. So as we have our board insurance character statement that all students will develop the qualities of character necessary to be exemplary citizens and positive contributors to society. And we utilize the same definitions which you see on the screen there that we identified several years ago when we started getting the character survey. And then this year, what we did is we created a form for schools to answer 3 very
specific questions. First of all, what resources and programs do you use to teach character? How do you ensure that students develop those qualities necessary to exemplify citizens and positive contributors to society? And then we ask them to provide specific stories for examples, which I think is the power of. How we see their instruction and action. And so again, this is just a list of the various programs and resources. What's important to note is that
as a site based district, if you will, schools have different communities and different ways they resources they think are important in teaching that character development. So some of our schools use capturing kids hearts, some of them don't We have IB schools who really focus in on that IB learner profile. Castle Court Company competencies. Really something that all of our schools are grounded in when we think about what we want students to be able to do And then there's other programs ruler as is one that
is across our elementaries for consistency, but Kelso's choice, which I'm not completely familiar with, but is a newer program that some schools are really utilizing to help students understand how to make choices. So you'll see in the. Big packet part for each school. Which one of those resources or which? They use more than one in most of our schools. And then what is really great, these are just some of the highlights. I mean, obviously you can read by school of how we actually teach and develop character within
our schools, a lot of our schools, especially at the elementary use morning meetings and even middle school where they really talk about those character traits, explain what they are and really have that direct instruction. Oftentimes this is done through reading and writing. You will have both all levels really thinking about when we're reading the books, how are the characters in those books displaying the character traits that we're developing in our students and what we value many of our schools have a monthly character trait focus, so a
lot of times you'll hear in schools when you're there students talking about what the character trait is that we're focusing on, what it means and how can you be thinking about demonstrating that as as students. Of course we have counselors providing. Guidance lessons, lots of team building activities community engagement is a huge piece that you see our schools really talk about how our students can get out and serve the community you saw that in examples tonight a lot of our schools do awards recognition assemblies where
they can recognize those students for the displaying those character traits. We have a lot of mentorship programs especially at the middle and high school when they mentor the 6th graders and 9th graders coming in. And then we have a freshman success class where we've really focused on, first of all, how to navigate high school. But then how do you do that demonstrating character? And then the students in action. This is my best part. I read through this entire thing and it's just so fun to see how our kids demonstrate these character
traits in action. These are just a few, but as you see up there, and I'm sure you read, we have 36 unique examples of how character and action is displayed at our schools. A bald for bucks is a huge thing, and a few schools recognized different ways that students demonstrated that character, especially when they. Think about empathy and compassion The Make a Wish foundation. We had schools fundraising for kids who really needed some support
Harvested Love is a huge competition within our district I know Chinook Show Middle School always brags that they're the winning school for getting the most for Harvest of Love. Some of the great things with students, mentoring students We have great systems in our high schools for our freshmen coming in. Of how we really latch on to them and support them through the older students mentoring them and then students demonstrating inclusive practices, I think you read many examples of that, but some of the things that stood out
to me was especially for our students and our significantly support needs classes How are Gen Ed peers welcome them and they're a part of the classroom. They're we're all together in this, right? Another one I think you read in there was about when new students come in. Teachers often don't have to show them the ropes, students do it right and just that inclusivity of when you come to Academy District 20 school, you're part of us now. And then as I spoke earlier this year, we don't have the survey data that's comparable, but
what we have been working on Jolynn Patterson is kind of the lead on our support and partnership work with Hanover. And so for our student experience survey that we're going to administer this spring, we have questions directly related to those character traits and we're asking students, staff and parents their perspective on how our schools. Developing character within their students. Whichever school they attend, so we will have baseline data to report out next year and then we'll continue to.
Solicit the feedback that you have in your packet this year that qualitative data like how are we teaching it? How are we seeing it exemplified within our schools? And then so right now in our board ends, it lists as the characters traits that. Tracy talked about and something I like for the board to think about probably in one of our upcoming retreats is do we, do we want to go to we as you remember Part 2 of a graduate we had so much amazing stakeholder
feedback. We had students, we had parents, we had our patrons we we had our business partners. I did that right when I came through the United Way, our business roundtable have. Reached out and helped us with this so there was so much district wide feedback on this part of the graduate and these were the competencies when we took all of that feedback and condensed it. So a question I have for you as a Board is I'd like for us to maybe consider looking at those characteristics that are
in our board ends now and doesn't make sense to. Maybe not have all of them, maybe keep a few, but have these ones embedded because this is the document that. And the process we've already started as you know, Jamon Peariso, Dr Peariso has done a year long process with high schools. They've developed these wonderful plans on how they intend to take the portrait of a graduate and embed it in the high schools based on what they're already doing But being intentional to say OK, when we're looking, when we're doing.
National Honor Society, and we're doing all of these community service kinds of projects we're really being a contributing citizen. What does that mean? So time these to what they're doing also if they see. One of these competencies that it's like a hole like we, I don't know if we really have anything school wide where we're really focusing on this. They're also addressing that. We've asked them that they put together plans and we're going to keep working on that and then we're going to bring the middle schools into that process next year and the following year the elementary. So this is the
document that is a district wide document. It's not just a a lovely thing that sits on a shelf, it's really going to drive our work around character development. So just something to think about in a future retreat. Is that something that we wanna look at the board ends, I think they're established a while ago, which is great, but now we have this process. How do we make it all aligned? And that's really about that alignment piece, so I'm excited about that process. I think that probably be a very valuable conversation to have. Anybody else have thoughts on that? Tacy, are you done or can we start with
questions? Questions. It's all you. Director Konz. Thank you. I appreciate it. OK so Maureen used to get to hear me harp on this and now you do so. These 10 character traits I did express this to Superintendent Haberer that I'm old school and I love them, but I also find value in aligning with our portrait of a graduate because it's been such amazing work. So that being said, these 10 character traits, you know, integrity, courage, respect citizenship. One, I'm glad that a lot of them
are named in the portrait of a graduate, but. For thousands and thousands of years, these are the epitome of what To be fully human, fully engaged in the world around you in the most virtuous way possible and the way I explain it, that I think of it is that our 10 character traits are outward focused compassion on, excellence, citizenship, hope, courage There are others focus.
And when we conflate reporting, we do a lot of good stuff specific to these character traits. In our schools especially. Especially all the service oriented programs But when we mix those character traits with SEL based programs that I feel are more inward focused, it's kind of the foundational getting, getting students right with themselves to be able to go out into the world and exemplify these 10 character
traits. I just I would love to see even more of a focus and these It's everyone else is going to have all the great but just of Focusing more on community service, others service to others and that is going to do so much to bring the level up of the 10 character traits in our ends that students are experiencing so just
there's a lot of important work you like Aaron brought with all of the DAC priorities there's a lot of important work for behavior. Monitoring self but I like to see those separate in our in report about our burdens. So just wanna point that out direct cons I think that I think it's gonna be helpful that we have. We've already shifted that because the survey before was just a self report by students. Do you think you have right now courage or integrity and that kind of
of thing? So it's more that inward focus like you're saying. And I really feel like if we're gonna have something in the ends, we need to have a way to measure it right. And so. What we talked about if you guys remember last year as we we said, how do we, how do we measure the student experience, how do we know by what students are participating in, whether it's community service, whether it's being on a sports team, whether it's and then how do we and we're still figure out how to do this, which is part of what ends are right 'cause you are always being creative to figure out how you can measure certain things and just 'cause you
you can't measure it doesn't mean we shouldn't aspire to figure out how we can that. But we have many students too who. Participate in activities outside of the school Right they're doing karate, they're doing gymnastics, some of these other kinds of activities. Scouts, And so we are working on right now, how do we collect that data and I know that Jolynn's been saying OK, how with principal, how can we collect that so we can get a full picture of how many students are involved in some of these other kinds of activities and even if
if you know maybe it's a home based kind of activity that that you know, I just remember as a Girl Scout, my mom used to sit with me and we'd work together on badges, right? I would count that as character development 'cause I learned a lot through that process. So how do we capture that and then as we look at the students and if we even have a way all the way down to the student which we may eventually have with our district wide dashboard that we're gonna roll out into next year to me then are there some students who
haven't haven't had that kind of support and how do we identify them so we can say 100% of our students are involved in something? You know, we definitely they get that in the classroom also. How are they demonstrating that? By their participation. On some of these kind of activities and then even what they're demonstrating class, I think we can infer if students have a high attendance rate they're probably developing the character 'cause we know our teachers and our paraprofessionals and our counselors every day. You know, people are the heart of our success, so they're working together to
create that character. But like you're saying, what are those outside examples? And that's what we're attempting to measure through that student success survey as opposed to the inward one that we've had before. So I think we're on the road to that. Yes, absolutely. And I appreciate as soon as you started you found a way to start making this quantifiable with participation in extracurricular activities and stuff. And again, I love T CS report where she just highlights, you know the character in action because this
is what I think of when I think of our 10 character traits is all the mentorship, the web cruise the Bald for Bucks you know, the food drives, clothing drives. And so but we. And this is extremely valuable, the reports we've been getting the last couple years from each school, but that's specifically what I'm referring to is we just haven't hit the mark completely. I mean, we're always all of us individually and corporately are a work in progress, but I don't think we're hitting the mark specific to these 10
character traits when schools also refer to. Other SEL type programs and not just. The 10 character traits programs for that so just important for me to differentiate and I would say as a board we're starting to develop our retreat ideas right 'cause this is the way we've we've traditionally reported out on that and you know we've talked about it, but we didn't as as a Board say this is what we want something different other than what you shared before. And then we started that work on Portrait of a Graduate, which is really
kind of moving in that direction. So when we get to that question. Is moving forward, what do we want that's different? I think like I hear what you're saying, but I don't know what that is and I don't think we know as a board what that looks like so we just need some time. So I appreciate you putting that question out there. Director Yanez I think Nicole, I'm, I think I'm understanding you, but tell me if I'm way off base, but. So I was trained on capturing kids hearts I've used PBIS, trained on ruler and
metamoment. I think the connection piece. That might be missing. And let me know if I'm on Oh IB learner profiles OK is. Through through ruler when I realized that. I've made a mistake with a friend. I need to take responsibility, right and go back to that person and make amends when I am awarded a roar punch Shout out to Woodman Roberts in our PBIS system, I showed that I was responsible because.
I remembered my poster board for my presentation but forgot it last time. So like connecting those character traits with the tool? It does that like we do that using these capturing kids hearts is I think more of that relationship piece with students. But it's been a hot minute since I've reviewed that, so I'd have to go back. I probably could argue citizenship in that one So I think maybe having doing like some a crosswalk of the
tools with the character traits versus the tools with the activities might be where we could flush that out so you could see. So and we could use a couple examples. What does the PBIS system at Woodman Roberts do versus the PBIS system at another school? What are there? So everybody has an acronym, right and Woodman Roberts was ROAR and it was responsibility on task attitude and check. And respect. Something and so you were catching kids doing that, right? And that those were the four that we just chose to do so I think that we could make that part of that and I would be happy to create a
a worksheet. Yay. Start our retreat off right. But no, thank you for pointing out those connections 'cause I do think that is the missing piece if we are intentional about because all of these programs give us the format, give us the ways to measure and so for intentional about calling out the character traits that we as a board think are the most crucial for the success of these students I appreciate you saying that we can find the corollary because yeah capturing kids hearts the.
Traits. A lot of those overlap with our character ends, so every school does it differently. But thank you cause that'll be helpful and I think Amex just to so we don't lose the essence of it. We have a retreat. I mean, I think if you read through all the case studies that you know that Tacy put together, you see a reflection of that in the work as you read through it. So I think it, I mean it really kind of sounds like we kind of need even like maybe an overhaul on how we're looking at it and what we're doing and like I
I said, we just kind of we tried, we've already been changing with portrait of a graduate we've been changing with having a different way of doing the survey So I think we're on the way to those changes and we did those things in response to what we heard last last year. You know, I think I had what you know, few months into it and we had it. But so that's what we operate on for this time, but I think. What would that it would be like? How do you collect that in a way where it's not a lot of work on the principals, it's something we could just pull. But I think what I'm hearing too is being more
intentional to say, OK, we have PBIS, here's the characteristics and every school kind of connect it whatever their program is. I think that's kind of what you're thinking. Is that in it in it, Lauren? Perfect. Yeah, it's just. There are two different things. There's such a need for behavior based, you know, SEL type things for a lot of our students as we've been hearing from the principals. But there's also a need to instill all these character traits, and so I just don't want to leave out some of these things when we could be bringing all of our students
up to this higher level. Now I think it's, oh, go ahead, sorry. There's two other things I wanted to add. I wrote them down as tasty as you were talking but two things that I think really we have to make sure that we're defining these character traits or for students continually because we. Don't come automatically programmed knowing what all these things are and providing constant examples and then ability and opportunity for students to reflect, right, Which I think is
really great in theory, but tough when you start talking about schedules and time. But that's when you get at that. It's like, oh, I actually was this thing, but I have to reflect on my experiences and be given opportunities to show that, but I have to have direct instruction around that first and really strong examples of. What that looks like and so yes, going back to that conversation about intentionality making sure being intentional about those pieces, especially for our students and me being one of them as a kid that grew up in you tough circumstances I needed
that example in front of me so. For our students who we've already identified through our work through DAC, who are already struggling, I really believe that those examples of. Persistence and perseverance and. Love. Are really life changing as well So yes we'll get to the other ones but. Giving them space to see and then reflect is going to be a huge piece of it as well. So I appreciate that you said that about the definition. So I put this slide back up there
were hours and hours of work that went into the stuff these definitions and so I think. In general, I'm already thinking about, you know what we just need I think a first step is let's look at those others. Let's look at this. Where do we want alignment? Because I'm going to tell you if we have this and we're doing a full court know, court press on getting this out, but now we've got these other ones. It's going to cause it's going to be hard, right Can we do some crosswalk between some
of these and what we have here and if there's something big that's missing, maybe we can make sure that gets kind of folded in here. But if we have two sets, I just think that I think people will be overwhelmed and I just don't think we'll get the results that we want. Great discussion though, really appreciate everyone's input. So great, thank you so much, Ms. Killingsworth. All right, Next up, preliminary revenue assumptions for fiscal year 202 5/2026. Superintendent Haberer.
Becky Allan. Can you hear me OK? Great. It is hard to believe that we are in the part of the school year that I am saying that next month, that on May 8th we will bring the proposed budget to the Board of Education for its consideration preemptively knowing that the end goal is in June, that the board will consider adoption of a budget. This report this evening gives you some insights into the revenue outlook for the upcoming
budget. It does not get into the details of reducing expenses to yield resources It's simply about how our revenue resources will specifically grow, maybe decrease or end because it was a one time revenue source. So I will make a few highlights and then be happy to take any questions that you have. So if you take a look at item one on page 2 in the report, we go ahead and identify the per pupil revenue that is anticipated. Now it's
important to know that the School Finance Act was just introduced on April 2nd in the house it was introduced and it's still there in the house. So we do not have a final School Finance Act, keep in mind that the legislative session does not end until May 8th the evening of the board meeting. It's absolutely possible that I could stand before you that evening and not have a past school finance Act. We hope my fingers are crossed that does not happen, but we need to be working towards obviously
as we have for months, working on what are our assumptions as we build this budget because we certainly can't wait until the last minute to put this together. So we try to take clues throughout the process and certainly when the School Finance Act was introduced, we got runs from the Colorado. Department of Education that give us insight into what our per pupil revenue might be again, if the act were not amended or changed. So we have to watch it closely, but what we see so far is an increase of about 3
307.00 per student. That's about a 2.87% increase over what we have in this year's mid year budget I I always find it helpful to bring some context about what was I sharing one year ago. About what the PPR increase would be $702.00, so you can see that's a significant difference, almost a $400 00 difference per student. It's important to note that this year was our first
year since its inception that we did not have a budget stabilization factor, also referred to as the negative factor. We still don't have one in what's projected next year but I want to be clear that this clearance of the budget stabilization factor is reflected in the 37 increase. There's not some other pool of money that's coming from the elimination of the budget stabilization factor. On page two, another critical component is student enrollment, because obviously the total
program funding we receive is that per pupil revenue amount times the number of students. Now the district is projecting a decrease over the entire district for next year of 43 students Now that gets translated to what's called funded pupil count when we talk about 43 students, that's head count funded pupil count takes into account for. Example a part time student is equal to .5, a full time student is 1.0 ET
et cetera. So as we build our budget, we need to build that off of a funded pupil count calculation and we are projecting a decrease of 106.5 from this current year that you might be thinking how in the world do you get that one We're just decreasing by 43 students or projecting that for next year. It is because this year's funded pupil count is artificially inflated by the averaging that occurs at the state level.
And this year's funded pupil count is based on a four year average next year. There's been a lot of talk about averaging and as you know you u have done a great job from the Superintendent to the board d advocating at the state legislative level to maintain averaging because the governor brought in his request in November to eliminate enrollment averaging to make the expense that the state has to fund K12 education lower.
Because as many of you we think about where the state of the budget is in Colorado, it is in the hole by one point billion with a “B” dollars So the state is trying to look anywhere they can to save money. The clues that we have right now, the introduced school Finance Act, good news, it shows four year averaging next year. However, there has been transparency about an assumption that it would go to three years after.
And then could it go lower then they say something maybe like a smoothing factor, I don't know if that means a 2% like a two year averaging, we don't know, but it's something we need to be aware of as we build our budget that we have to take pause on some of our big expenses to think like with salaries and as an example we've already shared with our staff members that we are prioritizing salaries and benefits. However, we most likely need to look at.
Mix of recurring salary increases with one time because we don't know what the future holds so o we don't want to overextend our expenditures so as we look to plan for our budget next year, we are assuming 2 year averaging because again we want to be conservative and not overestimate. That also gives us some leeway should enrollment not come in as strong as projected. So again, it's those, some of those.
Approach we balance it with maximizing what we can do for our students and staff while also making sure that we're conservative and do not overextend and put ourselves in a position that cannot be sustained year after year. Please know that we will most likely come with these numbers in the proposed budget unless they change drastically between now and then, we would certainly update you on May 8th of that, but we always have that opportunity in the mid year budget in January.
Where we threw everything up, we drew up the per pupil revenue, we true up our enrollment as well the third thing I want to point out before I take questions is on Page 3, Item 8, which is just a look at how, what does this equate to in dollars when you say that our per pupil revenue is increasing well based upon the enrollment and the per pupil revenue amount that we just talked about. That's an additional $6.7 million for
However, 1.5 million of that flows to our charters. So we're really looking at new revenue of 5.2 million from the school Finance Act. For context, again, what number did I share at this time a year ago 13.3 million, so again, just contextualizes the difference and we always keep in mind 1%. Salary increase with the salary dollars and the benefits is about now $2.1 million.
So you can see what type of buying power that's there in terms of a 5.2 2 million versus a 13.3 So again you will see us again on May 8th What questions do you have for me? Great job, Ms. Allan. Thank you so much for keeping us updated on that. Thank you, thank you and thank you for your advocacy. It's made a tremendous difference. I am difference. I am absolutely confident in that. So thank you. Mr. Belcher, how many people have signed up to speak during public comment Section 1? We have one speaker tonight.
All right, the Board welcomes the comments of our community members. We greatly value all comments from public, but in order to adhere to Board policy and accomplish the work ahead already on the agenda, the Board and Superintendent will not respond at the meeting speakers may offer appreciation for or criticism of school operations and programs as concerned them, but are encouraged to to exercise their speech rights responsibly. As they are personally responsible for any legal consequences. Attributed to their comments, including claims for
defamation. Please keep in mind that students often attend board meetings Speakers remarks, therefore, should be suitable for an audience that includes kindergarten through 12th grade students, including no use of profanities or obscenities. Comments concerning personnel matters should be directed to the Superintendent or Board President in writing with your signature Supplemental written materials can be given to the security guards and they will be delivered to the Board Secretary. The Board President will recognize each speaker and consistent with GP 4.4 comments will be
curtailed if remarks or behavior becomes inappropriate the Board President may interrupt, warn, or terminate a speaker statement that is unrelated to the business of the school district inappropriate for K through 12 students, or disruptive to the orderly, civil and productive meeting. Thank you for your cooperation. Our speaker for Public section #1 is Katie Czukas Do you have to push a button? OK, I'm good to go my name is Katherine Czukas. I live in the district. I'm an Air Academy high school parent. I'm still the SAC parent
Co chair and I'm excited to continue that with a great student Co chair next year. And my topic is about the Board calendar and item 11 D, which you were just hearing about. I really want to bring to your attention the sentences at the bottom of page one and the top of page 2. This is about the process to approve the budget. There are three meetings which must take place with board members present before June 30th, but as I see the calendar for May and June, there are not three meetings scheduled on the ASD 20.org calendar involving the board.
Even with your current meeting schedule, the first meeting that you could have about the budget at the May meeting on the 8th that may not be able to happen. You've just heard that based upon the state legislative session, so maybe that state legislative session will end or maybe it won't and so and maybe the School Finance Act will be decided earlier, but really, will it do you know? Does anyone know? It really seems like you should give this great finance team an extension and move the presenting of the D20 budget. To later in May. That should be your first meeting the
second meeting is a budget hearing, the school board budget also needs needs to be publicized and given that time of year in May after the last day of school I it would suggest publicizing it to the greater community with sufficient notice lots of notice through sources that reach my neighbors and encourage them to attend. They are retirees, they do not have kids in school. And then there's the third meeting to approve budget. I think last year that was handled in an With a Zoom meeting sometime in June, but personally
I'm not sure that's the best course. We're not in a year where the resources are going up. You just heard this, we're in a fiscal year where resources are really going down and hard decisions need to be made. Please, Board, think about a calendar for three very clear meetings in May. And thank you your time is up. Appreciate your comments. Mr. Belcher. That concludes our public speakers for Section 1. All right, there are no decision items for this meeting. Mr. Belcher, how many people have signed up for speak during comment Section 2? We have 8 8 speakers. This evening we're going to call up speakers and announce the next speaker. Who
is on deck for the mic. Our speaker who's on decks is next up and is welcome to move up and sit in the front row so they're ready when they're called. Our first speaker is Alizabeth Clay-Del Rio followed by Angela Blount who is on deck. Hello. Can you hear me? Yeah, OK. Hi, I'm Alizabeth I'm 23. I'm a college student. I come here because I really care about the students of this district and everybody who comes together to support them. And the way that I like to show that is just by praying over the meeting in the district. So Father God, thank you for this day and for every single day that you've given
us. Lord, I just want to pray over this district and some of the topics that we talked about today. God, I pray that you would help these people, help these students. God, to have joy as you have joy Can supersede circumstances that isn't only dependent on circumstances, not ignorant of them God, but is able to hold the joy even in the face of hardship, and is able to be pure as you are pure God and having character both inwardly and outwardly. God just helping to build these things Learning how to support our students and them to support our staff in them and just in all
these areas God help us to make this work and to be. A unified people that are able to produce students that are good and upstanding citizens. God that take up. For the good of those around them. Thank you. Can you use this name? I pray and give much thanks. Amen. Our next speaker is Angela Blount followed by Tymm Hoffman, who's on deck. Thanks for serving on the Board, I speak peace and blessings over your lives and the lives of all your family members. Now the disturbance and the disturbances in the meetings have been unacceptable over the last
couple of months and most classrooms there are clear rules and when those are broken, there are consequences the consequences are not for the whole class but only for the rule Breakers. This is your classroom and you have complete authority here. You are strong and courageous. Do not shrink back in fear for anything or anyone you have security covering this room at all times and a police officer here tonight. Please use them to remove the offenders. Fear not the
disturbance. That's disturbances that we have been experiencing Experiencing have unfortunately taken us away from our most important matter, the Children. I've been watching the test scores monthly and I have two concerns. One, there was way too much testing it wears out the students, the teachers and the administration and the results, quite frankly, are overrated 2 there is too much emphasis placed on these scores when the emotional, social, spiritual, mental well being of every student is
far more important. As a former educator, I look back and know that few of any students talk to me after the bell about testing or their scores. Yet far more frequently came to see me for deeper issues ranging from self worth to suicide ideations especially over the past decade. Many students are crying out in so many ways that are very serious and severe. We need to answer by providing more true and effective resources. I'm not suggesting abandoning all test taking, but we can table some we must prepare our students to survive in our world, see the value of their lives, and learn how to
properly handle stress, debilitating anxiety and depression as well as other challenges while seeing themselves as strong functioning human beings as God. Thank you for your comments. Our next commenter is Tymm Hoffman, followed by Veronica Baker. My God, I'm here for like the billionth meeting in a row to say the same thing over and over and over and over again. The cowardice of the previous leadership was such that it would do nothing to address this with our recent presidential l transition, I feel no more confident or optimistic about the character and integrity of the board, or its willingness to do the right thing, in fact
I feel even worse knowing that this new leader is cut from the same cloth and lacking in the same areas of character's morals and integrity. But as long as I have a student in this district, I'll be here to chirp about it so. Sing along if you know the words. This Academy District 20 Board continues to harbor a Board member who has proven to not care about bringing reputable character and strong integrity to this district's leadership. This member has openly admittedly docks the district family in an attempt to get others harass, intimidate or harm them claimed ownership of intellectual property and lied to both government and corporate entities about it, which the physical harm to district parents and leaked chats
Skipped the first day of school to harass and defame a parent. In a public City Council meeting encouraged other equally hateful community members to engage in defamation of the district, Parent read vulgar denigrating offensive words out loud at a student run form and has sued a district parent and and attempts to silence any public comment regarding them. Any one of those single bullet points is more than enough to deem this board member unworthy of this role, yet most of this board is only interested in their own political endeavors or the goals of those backing them otherwise how could you hear these verifiable truths and not move towards encouraging this individual to willingly resign from the
Board to say what little integrity is left? If this board truly cares for the students and teachers of this district, and if this board member is truly an advocate for D 20 kids indeed, and not just in the name of a Facebook group, then they would willingly choose to resign their role as their mere presence in this space is harmful to the district as a whole. You guys are only strong as your weakest link right now. Your weakest link is super weak Be better. I gotta run back to a track meet. Thanks. Our next speaker is is Veronica Baker, followed by Rob Rogers on deck. Previously, I've spoken about concerns our community has
had around special education and as this academic year is closing I'm conscious of hearing about case managers, para educators and service staff not returning. It's especially disturbing to hear about case managers leaving in the middle of the year. As a parent of a student of special education, I hope that we're listening closely to those exit interviews and finding ways to retain excellent staff. I also wanted to express my support for the HB 25 One O 7 bill, Which promotes and ensures qualified staff to work as speech language assistance my children have been very lucky to have
experienced quality in person speech pathologists and d assistants. They have made encouraging progress on their communication goals. Speech pathologists provide integral insight into our kids challenges and their successes. They are an important team member. Moving to a different subject and while I still have the opportunity tonight I'd like to speak about the recent changes to public comment for board meetings this past year I've been able to speak at many local meetings, City Council, county commissioners, library board and PTA meetings, the standard for public comment that I've experienced has always been to provide speakers with three minutes, which at times can feel
rushed, but not nearly as rushed as 2 minutes. Another important component for public testimony has been applause. Applause has always been an accepted part of showing agreement and appreciation for those who have the courage to express their thoughts. Many other local school boards such as Woodland Park and D49, allow clapping after their speakers at D20, though, it has been deemed as lacking decorum. We've been clapping for years at board meetings and now we find it unacceptable When did we become so intolerant? And if you are so moved to clap after a speaker, the consequences are draconian
The penalty for. Clapping started off as being directed to the hallway for a time out, and now we have to stop the meeting completely and reconvene on a completely separate day and time. We've lost sight of how to work together, how to collaborate around expectations and the result of this fallout is such animosity and division our next speaker is Rob Rogers, followed by Leah McFann. Good evening. It's not hard to notice that the carefully curated facade of D20 is crumbling, and it's happening fast. Over the last two years, D20 has racked up more than a half, $1,000,000 in legal
fees and districts carrying hundreds of millions in deferred maintenance. 2 board members evidently wanted to win, but can't be bothered to finish the work and finish their terms. Honestly, I've got a pool going on who's going to bail next and add to that a validated campaign violation complaint from the Secretary of State’s office. And just today a little bird told me about another lawsuit. This one tied to executive sessions ballooning to nearly 1/4 of your total meeting time. So transparency, it seems, is in freefall. And still, somehow, a board member is suing a
constituent parent for calling out a bad decision. The district has one of the highest per capita speed violation rates in the state, and some of those cases are truly outrageous And yet, in spite of all of this, the board chose to spend 3 hours in executive session discussing how to legally prevent people from clapping at board meetings. Really. You have a district with real problems, urgent ones, and you're burning time and taxpayer dollars debating applause. And you sent the Superintendent, District Council and cabinet members to small claims court over $7500, which is a fraction of what you
actually cost yet another parent in legal fees. What are you doing? If D20 were a house, it would be on fire and you were all seem fixated on whether the neighbors are cheering or booing from the sidewalk. It's not just embarrassing, it's a dereliction of duty. When will the Board stop insulating itself from accountability and start addressing the issues that actually matter? To students, parents in the future of the district because we're all waiting, Mr. Wilburn, I'm genuinely looking forward to your court appearance next Friday. It's not every day you get to watch one of the country’s
top anti slap litigators dismantle a frivolous retaliatory lawsuit in real time, so it should be quite the civics lesson. Our next speaker is Leah McFann, followed by by Bernadette Guthrie on deck. Hi, my name is Leah McFann, I am a resident in the district and I'm a staff member. I want to start by saying I've written many versions of these comments, not because I don't know what to say, but because I have so much to say and not nearly enough time to say it. We open tonight by celebrating administrators stepping into new roles. And while I genuinely believe in recognizing good
people doing important work, it struck me because I've been asked many times if I've ever considered going into administration. My answer has always been heck no. That sounds like the worst part of my job, but lately, I get it For many, it's not about a passion for administration. It's about survival. It's about staying in education without staying poor. The truth is, most educators don't leave the classroom because they want to. They leave because they have to, and that's where I am right now. Last year was one of the hardest
years of my career. I was ready to walk away. In fact, I came back kind of kicking and screaming this year. But this year has been redemptive. My classroom is full of life, joy, and learning. I remember why I love this work, and I probably say that I am Dang good at it. But the catch? I can't afford to live I coach 2 sports, I have a private tutoring business, and I write curriculum. And I shouldn't have to do all of that. To afford to live semi comfortably in the district with a roommate in a town
home that I'll never be able to purchase on my own today when my students asked me why so many of their teachers live so far away from school and I told them the truth, we can't afford it. Meanwhile, central admin salaries keep climbing the blanket percent raises and those of us in the classroom doing the Daily Face to face work of students are left behind. That gap sends a clear message The further you are from kids, the more you're worth. So let's talk about that. Let's talk about how a quote, modest one isn't even enough money to cover the increase in benefits and I'm I'm not the only tired teacher tired of being gaslit into thinking that
impossible to pay a suitable wage. Our next speaker is Bernadette Guthrie, followed by Emily Vonachen. They say protect the children, but they don't mean the children of the parents they disagree with. They say protect the children but bully the mothers who advocate for their children unless those mothers parrot their politics. They say protect the children, but they vote for men who read **** to kids and then praise them for it while knowing real children were harmed by this disgusting behavior. They say protect the children but refuse to do the bare minimum to protect a child from her abuser at her school
They say protect the children but prioritize once over needs when passing a. And they say protect the children, but spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a lawsuit fighting speed violations instead of spending that money on students. They say protect the children, but they don't mean the children of immigrants, Title one students, or non-Christian students. They say protect the children but ignore the rampant racism happening in our schools every day. They say protect the children, but they bully educators. They drive out experienced teachers all while denying them basic pay and respect They say protect protect the children but demand a fully conservative
board that is not representative of the community you represent. Research shows consistently shows that diverse school boards are more effective and better aligned with student outcomes, but they don't want effective government they want control. They say protect the children and shall academic excellence like a slogan, but don't support the programs that would help raise se scores. So no, they don't want to protect the children, they want to create fearful, uninformed voters. They want to control the narrative, not serve the public, but to manipulate it. If you really want to protect the children, all children, then support all parents.
Respect your teachers and start focusing on the issues that matter. Our final commenter is Emily Vonachen. Hi, my name is Emily Vonachen. I'm a parent and I live in the district. The Team 1 slogan might make a nice social media post, but if it weren't for the crumbling reality D 20 families are facing. You say our teachers and staff are the heart of our success, but how can a heart keep beating when it's been blood dry in just four years 6 out of the the 8 primary teachers my children have had are gone. Some retired early, others
fled to better districts. This year alone, both kids lost their primary teachers. Year and for two children with neurodiversities who literally need consistency, this has absolutely derailed both of my children this to disgusting levels. Their educational momentum was derailed. Special education support enrichment teachers counselors, They're gone. And we're not alone. This is happening across the districts. Principals are begging for help. Speed education in D 20s a disaster. Miss Shandy, who campaigned on
speed expertise, has done nothing but stir division and invite a mobile prayer group. To monitor parents and my child at board meetings, that's not governance, it's political theater Gregory warned back in 2019 that a teacher crisis was coming in. What has the board done? Nothing of substance you focused on punishing parents, obsessing over shelved library books and engaging in identity politics while educators walk out and students are left behind. My child, my children. Team one no longer means unity. It means whoever's left. And it won't be the veteran
n educators standing. It'll be whoever hasn't burnt out checked. Out or been pushed out, so we're done with seat warmers. Show confidence or follow Aaron Salt's lead and step down. Parents do not have the luxury to pretend things are fine because they're no longer fine. There are no longer fine. They're not. My children should not have to lose both their teachers mid year it's not OK. My child with dyslexia he is so far behind he doesn't even make thank you for your comments. Your time is up. That's the end of our public
commenters. Superintendent Haberer, do you have any clarifications or next steps No, I do not. We want to give a shout out and happy birthday to Mr. Rich Payne at the end of April. Board, was our business this evening focused on activities that promote and honor our mission statement, our belief statements, and our global in statement that reminds us that all students will have the knowledge, skills and character necessary for successful l successful transition to the next level. And upon graduation, we'll be fully prepared
for success. Do the Board hear information tonight that would require the review or revision of a policy? I would say El 2.7 and ends 1.2. Do you have that Mrs. Ruckman? 6. 26 got it he's on it. Did the Board hear information tonight that would require a Nope. Did the board hear information tonight that the board would to include on a future agenda? The retreat, agenda. Retreat. OK, did you get that Mrs. Ruckman? Thank you. There are 26 people viewing the live stream right now there
is no executive session tonight. And this meeting is adjourned. Good night. Thanks.