This is your 30 second warning. This meeting is now called to order. Roll call, please. Mrs. Konz, here. Mr. Wilburn, here. Mrs. Yanez, here. Mr. Salt, here. Mrs. Shandy, here. The pledge of Allegiance will be led by Mr. Derrick Wilburn. I have relinquished My responsibility to lead the pledge of allegiance tonight to two of our finest students, Hannah Phillips and Colton Morse, will you please come forward? I pledge Allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, students. Welcome to our Board of Education meeting this evening and thank you for coming quietly so quickly. That was awesome We're excited to start our gathering by celebrating the outstanding faculty, staff, and students of D20. Their hard work deserves our recognition, so we're encouraging applause during this celebration. So let's get
started. Tonight we have Explorer Elementary School Prairie Hills Elementary School and Frontier Elementary School here for our board spotlight. If you could all say until after the Superintendent update and take pictures with us, we would really appreciate that and we have a little gift for you. We will start with Explorer Elementary School Director Wilburn. Thank you, Mrs. Shandy This year their significant support needs program was awarded as a model site school for the Pikes Peak region. Once a year they get to run in the halls for a fundraiser called
Hawk Hall Rush. They are truly a neighborhood school. They have no general education buses as most kids can walk or get dropped off which means they have 6 crossing guards. Please join me in welcoming Kristen Driver, the principal at Elementary Explorer School. Good evening. Welcome. Hi, my name is Kristen Driver. I'm the principal at Explorer Elementary School and with me tonight I have my assistant principal, Nicole. Nicole Lovato. Sorry and Kayla Fitzgerald, our counselor and also we have Allison
Hamilton, she's our behavior para and we have students here as well, but you're gonna see them on the video, so they're gonna be sharing their experience from what we're gonna be talking about. So tonight we'll be sharing our recent event, Career Exploration Day that we did with our 3rd through 5th graders. We wanted to create an opportunity for students to engage with community members and have real world experiences that aligned with their own interests. At the elementary level, kids know a limited amount of careers that are out there, right? Like they know their parents’ career and and they all want to be Youtubers someday. So that's about the extent of
it, right? So with the focus on the ASKA standards which include college and career readiness, our counseling team wanted wanted to create a time for students to experience different careers, so I would like to invite Kayla to talk about the planning for this event and. I would also like you to know, the short amount that Kayla's gonna be talking about took like hours upon hours upon hours of planning and logistics and a ton of behind-the-scene work for us to get ready for this day that we just did a couple weeks ago. Hi, good afternoon. So every year as a counseling program
we do a career interest, a unit on career and interest for, you know, future endeavors for students at all grade levels. And this year we wanted to do a career exploration event to take this unit a little bit further. So we started doing an interest inventory for our 3rd through 5th graders, which is about 220 kids. And this survey covered 16 different career clusters with 9 different skill questions per cluster. So we went over this with all the students together. Some of these categories include arts, law, business, finance, hospitality, health
Sciences, transportation, and STEM plus others At the end of the survey, the students identified their top three clusters that they fall into. So pretty much whichever cluster they answered the most, like yeses for, right? We then use that information to design unique schedules for each student that corresponded with their top three choices So each student's names were then placed on sticky notes and the team worked together to physically play sticky notes on each each cluster according to their interest inventory results. This may have taken like 7 hours. We physically
moved them for each session that they had. In addition to creating student schedules, we reached out to community members and explore parents to be our guest speakers that aligned with the 16 clusters. Prior to the event, Allison and I went into classrooms to prep students with their schedule, including where they would need to transition to For each speaker, we set behavior, expectations and brainstormed questions for each speaker for that they had On the day of the event, we had the 16 speakers spread out around our school and the kids followed their schedule to attend
Three 15 minute sessions. Our speakers talked about the skills they needed for their jobs, their education requirement, a typical day in their job, and much more. During these presentations, students were able to gain insight into whether or not their top interests would be something that they would want to do for a living. And we love that they could learn about it from someone that's in the career right now. I would like to invite Nicole now to talk about how our career exploration event aligned with the portrait of a graduate and CTE. Thank you. Hello. So part of our district's work over the past two years has
been developing the competencies around the portrait of a graduate this This work has started with high school and middle school, and elementary schools will start this work next year. Highlighted in our video you will see some students making connections to some of the core competencies, although they are not explicit CTE opportunities. At the elementary level, we still wanted to have conversations and provide opportunities for kids to experience all the different careers that are available to them To make this connection, one of our speakers was from Liberty High School’s
CTE program who talked about the building construction path We are fortunate to be in a district that considers CTE programs a priority and avenue for kids to choose. At Explorer, we believe in creating experiences for our students and expanding their knowledge of the world beyond being a youtuber. So we hope you enjoy our video keeping in mind mind that these are elementary students sharing their experiences. And you're gonna understand what I mean by that in about 30 seconds. Maybe somebody who owns a business and wants to expand their
business for seven to 10. Minutes to seven hours, depending on what medication I'm giving them. So Mark, can you restart it please? Hello my name is Jack and this and today is my career day the first one I I have is info tech which I am which I am in right now. The next one I have is STEM and then the third one is art. And the one I'm most excited about is probably STEM. The job is we communicate with clients and and that can be anywhere from a couple who wants to build a house or it can be
somebody who owns a business and wants to expand their business for seven to 10 patients that I see during the day. They could be with me anywhere from 30 minutes to seven hours, depending on what medication I'm giving them. So before my patients arrive, I look through their laboratory results and I look at the doctor's notes just so I'm familiar with them. So one of the biggest thing is that we always wear our hard hat, our safety vest, and then we always have
goggles depending on what we're working on or safety glasses. Senator came in. She told about all the different like types of nurses there are, the nurses do, and the different shifts that there are So it was just really cool, sure because I just got to see like how the the architect got to be throughout the whole process of. Out of the three sessions that you attended on career day, which job do you think you would want to do when you grow up? I think the job I would want to do when I grow up is be a nurse. You need to be like an
effective communicator, which I can communicate with a lot of people close to my friends, different people that help us do stuff and as we nurses need to do, nurses like nurses. They need to like talk to the patients and the doctors to see what's going on. For the patient, they need to see what's going on with like what's happening and what they can help with and what the doctors they need to see like what was your your favorite session on career day? It had to be hospitality where the chef came
in. Paige, do you think you could be a chef someday? Definitely! Awesome, what skills do you think that you'd need to have to be a chef to be a chef? I need like learn a lot of different recipes to. And also I can give those rest, I can give some of my food to people and eat good. Do you think chefs seem to make a lot of decisions like like throughout their day? Yes, because you need to decide what to make. What spices to put in it. What ingredients you need
and also if you had like a home restaurant where you may where you have a restaurant at home, you would need a menu and a unique menu to stand out of all that stand out of the of different other restaurants. Awesome. I think you'll make a great chef someday. So just a huge shout out to our counseling team and to everyone behind the scenes that just do great things for students every day and just expanding their knowledge of what they could potentially be someday. And just also to our feeder strand at Liberty making those
those connections for kids. So thank you. Wonderful. Thank you so much. All right. Next we have Prairie Hills Elementary school. Mr. Wilburn. Prairie Hills Elementary, where we just were, was that yesterday, couple of days ago, which by the way, so we have School in the Woods in District 20. Prairie Hills is a school in the zoo as you're about to learn why. Prairie Hills takes a whole school field trip to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. All students and staff attend This is a tradition that's been running for seven years now. Each grade goes on a
tour that relates to their grade level standards. At Prairie Hills, they now have 13 class pets. They have two toads, a turtle. 2 tadpoles, 6 chicks. The chicks are about like that. The other day. A chameleon. Some fish and a hedgehog. It's fun. Prairie Hills has a time capsule that was opened last year when they celebrated the 30th anniversary The time capsule is now reset for 30 3034 when Prairie Hills will celebrate 40 years Join me in welcoming Principal Jackie Henson at Prairie
Hills Elementary. All right. Good evening, everybody. My name is Jackie Hanson. I'm the principal of Prairie Hills. Today with me, I have my assistant principal, Susan Yoon over there. I have Diane Henning, who's one of our third grade teachers and then I have two of of our student ambassadors, Hannah Phillips and Colton Morse at Prairie Hills, we offer a variety of clubs and tonight we are pleased to spotlight our Student Ambassadors club. Student ambassadors are a dynamic group of student leaders in 3rd through 5th grade these These students are dedicated to fostering school spirit.
Promoting community engagement and serving as a bridge between the student body and school leadership, these ambassadors are selected for their character, their initiative and commitment to making a positive impact within our school. The club provides students with valuable leadership opportunities and empowers them to take an active role in shaping their school environment through peer mentorship, event coordination, and participation in our district initiative about creating a culture of connectedness. Diane Henning is one of our third grade teachers and she is the lead of
the Student Ambassadors. Under her guidance, the club has grown tremendously helping to develop confident, responsible leaders of tomorrow. Tonight we will start with the video that highlights all of our student ambassadors that Miss Henning will share. A little bit about the club, and then our students will share their favorite parts. Yup. My favorite part about being part of student ambassadors was helping plan awesome events for the school and being a leader. My favorite part about being a part of student ambassadors was getting to decorate our yearbook. It was amazing. My favorite part about being part of student ambassadors is making
so many apps and helping out the school with them. My favorite part of student ambassadors is helping others and being kind. My favorite part of student ambassadors was bringing joy to other people, doing some arts and crafts and learning how I learned to be a leader by telling our buddy class how to make the crafts. I think we should thank student ambassadors for putting I think I like I think we should be thankful for our student ambassadors and buddies for
helping us put together all of them, and Thank you for making these crafts for us so we can do it with our buddies. I'm thankful for you our buddies putting together our crafts. This part about being a student me want to do student ambassadors for next year. I love making butterflies with my buddy class. I love my buddies.
I thank you for helping us to make our project. My favorite part about being a student ambassador is getting to teach the buddy class my My favorite part about being a student ambassador is helping with the students and teachers and making the year. My thought about being a student ambassadors was making the school happy by hiding stuff making stuff and hiding stuff. It was the funnest view because of it. Student Ambassadors was
choosing a year but cover and customizing it with my fellow 4th grade ambassadors, Logan Levi, and Annie. My favorite part about creating a student ambassador was that we got to pick the yearbook cover and design the inside of the yearbook. Being a student ambassador is so much fun. All right. Thank you, buddies for helping us, for making our crafts and I love you. Thank you. For helping me. Thank you for helping us do a lot of My favorite part of being a student
ambassador was meeting new people, having more confidence and just even there was a great experience. Things about student ambassadors is being leader My name is Diane Henning and I teach 3rd grade at Prairie Hills Elementary. I am the sponsor for Student Ambassadors. The main goal is to develop leadership skills and create an atmosphere at Prairie Hills where every student feels accepted and important. The leadership skills we we focus on are self-awareness, promoting acceptance, organization communication, and problem solving. A lot of the fun stuff we do will come from the student ambassadors. A sense of pride and
school spirit is promoted through the student ambassadors and activities we sponsor in addition to our own activities. Student ambassadors are asked to enthusiastically support programs and get involved. I am very excited to introduce you to two of our Student Ambassadors tonight. They will share a little bit more about Student Ambassadors I am pleased to introduce you to Hannah Phillips and Colton Morse. In Student Ambassadors, we learned how to become leaders We find crafts to do so we can bond and spend time with our buddy class. We make crafts as models and practice how to teach them to others. We learned how to help others
by lending a hand and leading by example. Our buddy classes are a great opportunity for our school to become more connected. We hope to make morning announcements more fun by adding Mindful Mondays where we talk about a color of the mood meter, Tell a joke Tuesdays while Wednesdays where we spotlight someone great in our school and Thoughtful Thursdays, where we share an encouraging quote. We lead the school assemblies and pledge of Allegiance. Pledge of Allegiance and taught the school the importance of keeping our planet clean. We
By creating school wide hide and seek game in the winter, Ms Henning calls us “joy bringers”. Thank you so much for giving us the opportunity to spotlight these amazing leaders. That's awesome. Thank you so much I'm gonna write that down. Joy bringers. That's awesome. All right. Next, we have Frontier, Frontier Elementary School. Frontier Elementary is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. It's first opened its doors to serve students for the 1984 and 1985 school year This year, Frontier has implemented Eagle time, a time at the end of
the school day that allows students to gain a club experience during the school day. Clubs offered include choir, art, STEM, and intramural sports. Additionally, Frontier students performed in their first musical The Wizard of Oz last Tuesday, April 29th. Please join me in welcoming Julie Murray, the principal at Frontier Elementary School. Hi. Hey, good evening. I have his Majesty King George with me to eat this evening. Formerly known as my 5th grade teacher, Mrs. Mulligan, and we are
going to be presenting along with our students, Dylan Talbot Tristan Crowley, Victoria Cordova, and Lexi Vargas. I am going to let King George explain our Revolutionary War project to you. So George Washington is actually getting her boot removed from surgery, but this all started when I moved up to 5th grade I wanted to bring the Revolutionary War to life, and I'm a big Hamilton fan, in case you
didn't see that, but basically every year students pick. At random, a person from the Revolutionary War period. And they do a lot of research and then they create a one-minute speech about who their person was and why they were so impactful to the American Revolution. So they have and you'll see just a wide variety of walks of life. You have your English side you
you have your continental side, and then you have everyone in between as well. So I will take it away, so you too come on for. And if I could invite one of our board members to come press one of our buttons. Usually it's the kids pressing our buttons right? Hello world, I am Betty McDonald. I was born January 14, 1741 I was born into a prominent family in Norwich, CT my father was a successful businessman and my family enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle a few years after I was born I was in a private private school called Canterbury, but then my father began to drink and he lost all his
his fortune so I had to take an apprenticeship as an apothecary. My decision decision to join the American Revolution was primarily driven by a combination of factors including my frustration with the British taxes and going as a patriot. I just wanted to hear it to the Continental Army leading to victories that could capture a Fort Ticonderoga and the surrounder of General Burgoyne in Saratoga But then I was not getting enough praise from George Washington and Congress, so I rebelled and went against the Americans as a British general. The American Revolution significantly impacted my life by transforming I for revered military leader into a notorious trader included
notable victories and injuries that were followed by a series of received slides and betrayals that ultimately led me to switch sides and and joined the British. Some interesting facts about very special “I” is that three of my siblings died from yellow fever, I betrayed America, and I also married the daughter of a loyal sympathizer who was 20 years my junior does everything I did in the revolution. Thank you for giving me the praise I need I might. If you don't. Have kids, kids good. Hi, my name is John Hancock. I was born in Brittany Massachusetts January 12th 1737. I'm the son of Colonel John
Hancock Junior. After my father died I was sent to live with my uncle aunt and lady Hancock after I graduated from bonland school I enrolled in enrolled in Harvard college. The British officials accused me of smuggling this is one of of the events that led to the American Revolutionary War. They accused me of struggling marijuana after seizing my sleep. They specifically aligned that I was not paying tax on a significant portion of the wine. I was also not shipping the goods through a British British merchant, which was required by Parliament. My role in the American Revolution was being in the Continental Congress. This includes serving as president of the second Continental Congress being being the first sign of Declaration of Independence, and becoming the first governor of the Massachusetts.
The American Revolution impacted my life, making me very popular but also also made me a target of the British authorities, forcing me to flee and ultimately shaking my post revolution career. Unfortunately I died in October 8th 17 1793. Quincy, MA. Phil Sweetly. Oh, hello there. I'm Phil Sweetly the first lady to write and publish a book of poetry. I was born on May 8th, 1753. A little fact was. I was sold and brought to America that I was sold sold and brought to America at the age of 7 or 8. Also a little fact was this is the name of the boat that brought me to America.
I was sold to the Wheatleys. They were sweet and they taught me how to read and write. When I was 20, I wrote my first book of poetry, another poem I wrote was on being brought from Africa to America and where explained my journey to America. When both Wheatleys hit the bucket, I I got married to John Peters, a poor grocer. I had three children in total, two of them had died and my husband went to jail for debt. My last son got sick so I worked at a boarding house and Sadly, shortly after that, I died on December 5th 1780 1784 at the age of 31. Also my son died soon after
Yes, I changed the game for black poats and it made history. We don't t even know I was buried. Well, that's my secret. Love Bill sweetly. Hi, my name is Paul Revere. I was born on January 1st in 1735. The first thing that happened in my life was at a varying age my father started to teach me how to do servicemitting and I and I became very scared. Something else I could craft at that time was Golden Cell to create variety of items when people could get a job and when I got older to get a job, I become a dentist and engineer and I even joined the army during the French and Indian War. The second thing that happened in my
life was the American Revolution on April 18th 1775, the British Jews marched out of Boston and then touched a confiscating the American arsenal and capturing Patriot patriot leaders like John Hancock and Samuel Adams who in Lexington that day. The last thing that happened in my life was my death I death. I died from. This is May 10th, 1818 at the age of 83. OK. So in addition to doing boards this year, some of the students as well designed activities to help our K through four students learn more about the American Revolution. And so for example
Phyllis Wheatley was part of a group of writers and artists and they were teaching students how to write in cursive using some quill pens. We had a group that were spies of the American Revolution, and we're teaching kids ciphers and using invisible ink. We had a English encampment with tea, and we also had an American side that did some battle reenactments as well well. And so it's just a fun way to bring our school together, do a lot of
research and also practice some of those public public speaking. Skills. That I'm really bad at sometimes, especially in front of adults, but we just have a lot of fun getting to know all walks of life and how even the smallest person can make such a huge difference and such an impact historically too. There you are. Thank you guys. Thank you guys so much Love how you're all in with the costumes and and everything. Wonderful job. All right, 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 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, aye. Mr. Salt, aye. Mrs. Shandy, aye. All right, I would like to to start off board comments tonight by honoring Mr. Salt
and for his service and his sacrifice to this district and make sure that you never forget us with your own, your gavel from your presidency not sure how your wife is going to feel about this being in the the house, but we would like to give this as a gift, a farewell gift for your service. Does anyone else have any board comments tonight? Mrs. Konz. OK, thank you. Just a couple shout outs. Let me get back to my photo here. Eagle View Middle School is one of my schools
this year and Mr. Lester is obviously very proud of all the work that the staff and students do there. So he let me know that Eagle View won their 4th consecutive best of the of the Springs for middle schools. Congrats to them. Yeah. And their 8th grade math teacher, John Ashburn, took the bronze for best of the the Springs in the Middle School educator category Congrats to John. Good
job. And he also wanted me to say that two of their teachers were up for the finalists, so they had split votes so it could have even you know, had more outstanding outcomes also big shout out to Woodman Roberts Elementary School for the Darling+ play that they put on, I think it was last Friday. So super cute about Jack from Beans the Beanstalk being on trial and they did an awesome job so shout out to them I want to thank all of the applicants who
submitted to possibly be appointed for Mr. Salt’s seat that he's vacating in a a couple weeks. So everyone's backgrounds their thoughtful responses and their passion for our schools and our district. were really impressive and inspiring, so I just want to thank all those folks and finally we got to to celebrate our retirees from the district a couple nights ago so I just want to give one more huge thanks to to everyone who whether they're retiring or staff
that's moving on to other ventures in their career. I just want want to give a shout out to them and thank them for their service to our district and really just just want to say thank you to all of our staff. For a wonderful year, all of our students and families for just making this a fabulous place that I love to be a part of. And congratulations to our graduating high school seniors this year. That's awesome. Mrs. Yanez. Happy staff appreciation
if you haven't gotten your little gift from the the Board of Education, you will soon. I just I told the story at DAC, so some of you are are here and you'll have to live through it again, but. On Tuesday morning, I was able to get to DAC and was walking out the door from preschool and this little boy was walking in with his dad and he handed me a loaf of bread that was still warm, homemade from the oven, wrapped in a brand new kitchen towel. And he said, Miss Lauren, Miss Lauren. And I just I've peaked. That's it. I there's
no other moment I need, I think professionally than to have have a little 3 1/2 year old hand me warm bread. But in all seriousness, this week is really important and it feels great as a teacher, so for everyone out there who has contributed in some way, brought in food, decorated a lounge oh gosh, I remember the popcorn. The popcorn was amazing. Just our pants don't fit by the end of the week and that's just OK because it's just a great combination for.
Just a lot of hard work through a school year, so shout out to all you guys. Awesome, Mr. Salt. Thank you, I just wanted to wish everyone a happy staff appreciation week. Our teachers do amazing work throughout the year. And it truly. Having kids here and seeing the way that the teachers interact with my kids and have encouraged them encouraged them to grow and really push them and the growth that I see among my kids, especially some of my really trying children, I
bless you and all that you do. It is amazing work and I really appreciate the contributions each and everyone of you make to making this district. The greatest district in the state of Colorado. So thank you. Awesome And I wanna piggyback off of Mrs. Konz’ comment about appointees and candidates, the four advancing candidates from the pool are Edward Waldrop Jeremy Beckman, Katherine Czukas and Susan Payne. All right, Mr. Smart, the floor is yours
All right, Thank you. So I have 5 administrators I'm gonna introduce tonight The first one will be Molly Lehman, who is recommended as the assistant principal for Academy Endeavor Elementary School and Molly is joined this evening. Her husband is online while he's in California is Is that correct? I think he's surfing. I'm not sure. No. Oh well. He might be. Who knows? And her, She's with her sons, Will and Max as well. So, Molly Molly holds a Bachelors of Arts and Interdisciplinary studies from the University of Northern Colorado and a Masters of Science in Education
leadership from Western Governors University. And Molly began her career in Academy District 20 at Academy Endeavor and never left. I think she's been there since it opened, almost. So she did academic support 3rd grade, 4th grade, and 5th grade as a teacher and she currently serves as the MTSS coordinator and we're re pleased to announce Molly tonight for the position of Assistant Principal at at Academy Endeavor Elementary School. Anything you'd like to say, Molly All right. She brought her own cheerleading squad. Watch out everybody else. Hi. Good evening, Board
members, Superintendent Haberer and Directors. I am filled with gratitude and excitement tonight to accept the position of Assistant Principal at Academy Endeavor Elementary having already had the privilege of working within this incredible school community, I am truly honored to step into this new this new role and continue serving in a greater capacity. Over my 15 years at Endeavor, I've witnessed first-hand the dedication of our staff, the resilience of our students, and the unwavering support of our families. I look forward to continuing these relationships and working side
by side with our leadership team, teachers, and support staff to ensure that AES remains a place where every student can thrive. I would also like to take a moment to thank my family, friends, and colleagues who have supported me on this journey. Your encouragement, understanding, and belief in me have made all the difference I am truly grateful for for the strong foundation that each one of you has helped me build which has brought me here to this very moment as I take on on this new role, I do so with humility. Purpose
and an ongoing commitment to our student success. I am excited for what is ahead, and I'm honored to continue this work with a team that I deeply respect. Thank you again for this incredible opportunity Go astronauts. I think they should come every time we do this, don't you think? Yeah, it's great We're gonna. All right. Next. I would like to introduce Brian Thompson, who's being recommended as the assistant principal at Challenger Middle School. Brian is joined this evening by his wife Rachel, his daughters Eliza, Lucy and Hattie, and also
his son James. Only. Yeah. See. There you go. It's about the only time you're gonna get to do that. Now, one thing I don't know if you know about Brian. He is a champion sumo wrestler. And I hope there's video of that somewhere. We're gonna try to dig up. Brian holds a Bachelors of Arts in in mathematics. I'm gonna probably say this call a drum, but we're gonna try it Musk and Musk in them. I'm Muskingum. Is that really a school? OK. And anyways, college got a master of Science in the university from the University of Scranton
So I will tell you, though, he is amazing with math I mean, this guy knows that instruction well. He began his career in Mason, OH as a 7th grade social studies teacher. I know he's a math teacher, but he did start his social studies Then he moved out here to Colorado Springs. I guess he came out here, he said, to visit a friend and said that's it, this is the place for me worked in District 2 and was at New Horizons school 7th through through 10th grade math and then came to District 20 and was at Challenger. So he's going back home. It was a 6th grade math teacher and a math department chair. He's currently serves as a TOSA for curriculum and
instruction. We're pleased to recommend Brian tonight for the position of Assistant Principal for Challenger Middle School. Anything you'd like to say, Brian? Thank you. I would first like to start off by thanking the Board Superintendent Haberer, Principal Debbie Holt, Assistant Principal Molly Bishop and the Challenger staff for entrusting me with the students and Challenger Middle School I'd also like to give a big thank you to all the Learning Services directors over the past six years who have mentored me and really kind of of molded me into the leader I am today, specifically Tacy
Killingsworth, who anytime asked a question for those of you who worked worked with her know she asked you back a reflective question. To help you answer your own question, my current director Shane Knight, we always start every one of our meetings currently with what what we learned this past week or these past two weeks and through that that we've had really rich conversation, which has pushed me further as a leader. So thank you, Shane. I'd like to thank my team as well we We have a fantastic time on it. Our team, we support all schools and we have fun while doing it, which I hope to continue with Challenger Middle
School. I'd also like to thank my family, so my wife, Rachel, I'd like to thank my 4 kids. James, Lucy, Eliza, Hattie. My son is still cheering and really a big thank you to my wife. She's supporting me throughout this effort. She's pushed me to do it and she's been someone to talk through it during this whole process. So thank you very much. As you all know, the smart boys go to Challenger and I told them I was going to introduce him to him, but then I thought he might change his mind, so we're going to make sure he gets Next, I would like to introduce Caroline Johnson, who is recommended as the principal at Village High School.
One thing about Carolyn, she's so excited to start, she's been trying to hire folks even though she hasn't started her job yet. So that's great. That's what we like to see. So Caroline holds a Bachelor of Arts in music and psychology from Columbia College, a master of social work from the University of Denver, specialists in education and education, and leadership from the University of Northern Colorado, and she's pursuing AP APHD in educational leadership from Northwest Nazarene University and And she loves to go to college apparently as well. Love it. I'm almost done, almost done Caroline began her educational career in Douglas County at Legend High School as a social
worker, then moved to District 3 and she's at My Way Blended Learning program and became a program facilitator, program coordinator and then my way virtual school where she's currently the assistant principal or was the assistant principal and she's currently the principal of the Haven School in District 3. And so we are pleased to recommend Caroline tonight for the position of Village High School Principal. Anything you'd like to say? To start off, unfortunately I'm not going to be as entertaining as Benedict Arnold, but it's OK. Thank you very much to Thank you very much to the Board of Education and Superintendent Haberer for
trusting me with this position and for the warm welcome to the D20 community. I also want to thank everyone who was involved throughout the hiring process for this position. I am truly honored to be chosen as the next leader of Village High School A special thank you to my family for their support and encouragement as I take this next step in my professional journey. Village High School is a very special place. The energy of the Village community is effervescent and I'm very excited to be joining the team of dedicated staff who the heart of. High school to the students at Village High School, I look forward
to being part of your unique educational journeys to Village parents, please know that my goal is to provide your students with the best educational experience possible so your children can can thrive and achieve their full potential. To my staff, thank you for welcoming me to your school. I look forward to working with with you to preserve the strong foundation you've built while continuing to push Village High School to new heights of academic excellence. As As mentioned previously, Village High School is a very special place. Not only does Village provide an innovative learning option for students, it is
a place where all students experience a sense of belonging and community while leveraging the power of student autonomy and choice. I admire District 20 for valuing nontraditional learning options for students to ensure that each child is able to experience success in a learning environment that is best for their unique needs. Thank you again for this opportunity and for welcoming me to the D20 community. I Look forward to the upcoming school year. All right. Next, I would like to introduce Shane Knight, who's being being recommended as the Executive Director for Learning Services, School Leadership. Now I just want to show you some. So Shane loves these candies. These are
Russell Stover chocolate candies, sugar free. That's the ones he likes. So if you really want to, you know, get on his good side, drop a bucket of bucket of those off at his office. He loves those. Shane holds a Bachelor of Arts in Diversified Liberal Arts from the University of San Diego and a Master of Arts in Urban Leadership from the University of Missouri. He's had a lot of different places, so I'm just going to kind of really tell you where he's been. He's been in Texas, California, Missouri twice, and Denver Public Schools and Sheridan Public Schools. He's done anything from special Ed teacher, principal. He was a founding
principal of a school as well, and then also a strategic support coach. So he's done a lot of things and currently he's our director for Curriculum and Instructions, so we are excited to recommend him tonight for the Executive Director for Learning Services, school issues. Anything you'd like to say? Of course, of course he does. Thank you very much, Cameron loves potatoes. If you guys don't know this, he loves potatoes so I'm allergic to him. Please don't be. Every single day I find new sugar free chocolates. If you have a chance to try one, don't. They're horrible. A
year ago I think at the May meeting I was introduced to you all to to be the director and I had no idea what I'd be getting into. I didn't know where I was coming. I mean, I kind of knew, but not really. What I found in Academy District 20 was every single day I'm inspired by the incredible people I'm surrounded with. I cannot tell you how blessed I am to have the opportunity to serve our students. And to work alongside such amazing educators and to have the opportunity to do so in a new role was a very hard decision for me because I'm leaving a great team. But fortunately
I'm going close enough that I can throw a sugar free candies at them. So thank you all for trusting me to serve our students and serve our staff. And I couldn't be more honored to have the opportunity to continue my employment here in a new new role. So thank you so much. All right, last is I would like to introduce Gary Arrasmith. He is not able to be here tonight because of personal matter. He has to take care of, but he wanted me to tell you he regrets not being able to be here. Gary is being recommended as the summer school administrator. As you know, Joe, who's been there for a
long time, is really retiring now he's retired retired, but now he's really retiring. So Gary's gonna be filling that spot. And so Gary holds a Bachelor of Arts and Music Education from the the University of Oklahoma. Boomer Sooner. And Master of Arts and curriculum instruction from the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. He began his educational career in in District 3 as a band director and then moved to Moore OK as a band director there as well at junior high and and high school. Came back to District 20 'cause everybody loves district District 20. So he came here. Rampart High School, he was the
the district's director for instrumental music. I know they did. Really well. His band's always did a great job. And then became a Dean of students and they went to Fountain, Fort Carson as a Dean of students. And he's currently the sister. At the classical Academy in high school and I don't know one of my directors, Holly actually was one of his students when when she was in school and then wind up when she was in AP at Liberty, became his boss. So just weird things going on, but we're happy to recommend Gary tonight for the summer school administrator position. So thank you. Thank you, Mr Smart, Superintendent Haberer. Yeah, So what a
a wonderful week of celebrations. So I really want to start with our happy Staff Appreciation Week. I started my morning at Chinook Trail Elementary School for their staff appreciation, which was super fun and I had a chance to sit with the SSN teachers in Paris and just marvel at the amazing talent and expertise that we have. And they were just sharing very heartwarming stories about their work with students so I'd like to. Switch this next one. I want to start just with a
quick video. Mainly just to show the different pictures that are in here The communication team did a great job of putting together a staff appreciation video so just want to share that with you. Stop it there it it goes. Oh, as we celebrate staff appreciation Week, I want to pause and say 2 simple words that carry profound meaning. Thank you. Whether you're teaching in a classroom, supporting students behind the scenes, maintaining our buildings answering phones, or leading from your office
your work matters deeply. You are the heart of this district and your impact impact echoes far beyond the classroom walls. Each day you bring more than skills or information, you bring compassion creativity and connection. You help students feel seen, heard and capable. You make learning learning come alive and you build the foundation for their future future. Aristotle once said educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.
That's what makes our team so extraordinary. You do both. You deliver a quality education not just through lessons and curriculum, but through your care your character, and your unwavering belief in every child's potential. Thank you for your energy, your heart, and your commitment to our students and families. You are seeing. You are valued and you are appreciated, not just just this week, but every single day.
Happy staff appreciation week. Academy District 20. So that's just a quick snippet of all the amazing things that are going on in our schools and people really are our staff are the heart of our success here in D20 So just a huge thank you to our amazing staff and just the difference they make with students every single day. What other careers do we have out there where we can positively impact the future every day and as I attended attended all the senior awards this year.
I just think, wow, our future is in such good hands. Because of our talented educators and staff who are raising an amazing families and their support raising students that are just going to go out and positively impact our world. So I was just so inspired like this whole season. So I went to several different schools this these past this past month at Rockrimmon Elementary I was really fun this teacher there was. Teaching students how to do punctuation
with their arms. Kind of that whole person response, which was fun. Also at Rockrimmon they had their world tour I think I went to six different countries and the picture over on the left this family has been there for for over a decade, coming every single year to share with students about Ireland. So, I just thought that was amazing the The middle picture there with the instruments, those are her parents they They love these Celtic instruments, the Egypt I I think is the favorite. They have a stuffed dummy and they pull out organs like
hearts and intestines and they put them in balls. That he kind of gets grossed out and then they have a whaling funeral procession through the hallways. But I was just super fun and a huge shout out to Rockrimmon and all the work that goes into into that. And of course, Principal Carrie Bonilla lived in Costa Rica for while her husband's from Costa Rica made the most amazing Costa Rican coffee. That was another wonderful benefit then it was was so funny because the Costa Rica's on the ring of of Fire and they shared how there's earthquake drills.
So Kerry be teaching all of a sudden she'd say earthquake and all the kids would go down and do the earthquake drills. So just super fun. The kids really got a lot out of that Pine Creek High School, wonderful visit. Had a chance especially share and have a good conversation with Tiffany Davis as you she has won multiple awards for the amazing work she she does with our students and graphic arts they earn multiple industry certifications and the the student here Divinish. Cole Carney, he's one. I mean, he has earned like 2
two or three industry certifications and is a highly marketable now and they all came from being in her classroom classroom. So I always want to go visit Miss Tiffany when I go to Pine Creek 'cause she's always doing something amazing. Antelope Trails Elementary just had a wonderful time there in the middle of the music teachers. Actually, it's kind of a positive reward system. Students get to go up and put a sticker up based on some of the kind acts that they've done in the school. And then the picture with me
and the principal, Laura Cressip was they they every year, for every grade level, they put up a bulletin board. And you see the stars where Laura's standing students get to put a star or like an Earth when they have mastered certain skills for. So from the outside, they all look the same, but the students know which one is theirs. And it's just a nice way, I think to empower students to own their own learning and to to celebrate their success. And to kind of spur each other on. And I saw that at their school last year as well.
There we go at Academy Endeavors. So fun students are learning how to ride bikes. the PE department there wrote a grant to buy these bicycles and some students already know how to ride bikes, but they kind of set up obstacle courses and and teach kids how to ride bikes safely. Hence the helmets How many of you guys did parachutes back in gym there? Yes, I see hands. They still do parachutes. It was so cool. So it encompass students were doing that and they kind of made their own little tent, flipped it up
and pulled it down, which was really fun. And then on the bottom picture there, our MTSS coordinator, Mallory Cording, they were hatching eggs, which were chicks, but But then you see that little device there, they can literally put the egg on the device, turn off the lights and turn on a little light underneath and you can see the chick moving around inside. I was so excited about that. You could barely Get Me Out of that classroom. Village Middle School director Wilbur and I had a wonderful time there. I appreciate the way they empower students
to really, again own their own learning through through their online programs. And we walk through right Mr Director Wilburn, every student was like on a different program but but they were helping each other and they get to decide which which content they can they want to start on and they help each other It's it was just a really quiet and you could just feel. The brainpower going on in that room. A home school Academy, as was highlighted I think, in a recent article by The Gazette. They went out and planted trees in a burn scar
area. The project was made possible through a seedling grant awarded to the school earlier and the grant provided seedlings and support to make this experience both beneficial and impactful So a huge shout out to Home School Academy for. Really contributing to our community and our environment and getting those trees started again. Discovery Camp Purple app was such a fun celebration this year. I started my tour over at Discovery Canyon Elementary School where the fire department you can see
see that huge American flag with all of the various firefighters and people from the the Coast Guard. She certainly also the Coast Guard is helping out with the grant to provide more celebration around Purple update. The morning was filled with giant flags, warm coffee, Donuts. And mostly meaningful time to celebrate our military families. This was a huge celebration as well as led by Douglas Valley Elementary School principal Adrian Murray, it was a celebration of
of Purple Up Day, which was especially highlighted with mayor mobilade being there and and he signed a formal resolution for a Colorado Springs being the Purple Up April 25th as purple update in Colorado Springs. Was great. He's really good with kids, got them all jazz and it was really fun to be able to celebrate together again our amazing military families and students. So that was
a great celebration. And then Director Wilburn and I were over at summit new summit Charter Academy for for their career fair day, which was amazing, the highlight was the. Adopt A dog. Foundation and lots of dogs running around. Just way too cute. We had to hold him. Director Wilburn, anything you want to share? I was just amazed by all of the different partnerships that they had. It was incredible. I think there was like 100 and 10120 or something like that. So it's more than just engagement with the students and their families, but with the community, with our small
business owners and things like that, showing children at this age what you could be one day if you stick with it. And it was very impressive, everything from financial services planning to I want to be a fireman. Midwife, everything in between, it was really cool. Foothills Elementary I got invited to be a part of of their family trivia night and thank goodness for the students because they knew most the answers, especially when different music was played and you're supposed to associate it with new movies and And I thought, well, I remember 101 Dalmatians, but the
the newer movies I wouldn't have been able to connect the music to. But it was a great time, so fun to be with with students and their families. I went to all of the high school spring musicals and. Just so amazed at the talent that we have in our schools, our community and a huge shout out to our our theater teachers. They do such a wonderful job and I know they and all the volunteers and staff put in multiple multiple hours to make these high school musicals a success. The Air Force JROTC awards I was able to
to attend that and just amazing leadership skills that are being built with our students and developed with them. Representatives from the national veteran organizations such as the Veterans of Foreign Wars and Middle Military, Order of World Wars military Military Officers Association of America. America Legion Military order of the the Purple Heart, and Daughters of the American Revolution they all showed up to help give out different awards for our students. And it was just a great partnership with all of those organizations
and I had the wonderful opportunity of recognizing recognizing Alina Tazma Kamadova and we had an opportunity to talk to each other the day that we we were at. Their inspection, so it was really fun to be also be able to give her award. As you mentioned Director Director Khan's, there were several of our students and staff members and schools that were honored as the best and brightest and the The Gazette honors 20 high school seniors across the Pikes Peak region as part of
the Best and Brightest scholarship program. These students are selected for their academic achievements, leadership, service and ambition, and in 2025, more than half of the total honorees, 11 of 20. Hailed from Academy District 20 the Best and Bright winners are profiled in The Gazette and You you can see all those amazing students and then. We also will recognize the Middle School Educator of the Year Crystal Fish came from Timber View Middle School and won the gold. Middle school educator John Ashburn
Eagle View Middle School won the bronze and then the whole school of Eagle View Middle School won the the gold and the high school, Air Academy High School won the Browns So just another example of the amazing excellence that we we have here in D20. Rampart recently won the high school second place in the nation for the NSPA National Best of Show and AS as you know, KRAM is Rampart's student broadcasting program and is run by our amazing Patrick Mooring. Rampart High School, also recently
went to high school. Future business leaders of America. They had 31 FBLA students compete They had two state champions and a team of three and two individuals who are state runners up. And the student over on the right is Corbin Hoffman, who was one of the state championships and also also Anna Paul, who's on the far left we've got got second place and Celine Bono on the right, who is also a state championship. So 2 state championships with ramparts
FBLA. Pine Creek High School also they had 49 students compete. 39 of them placed in the top 10 and 21 students qualified for the National Conference in Anaheim, CA this summer They had 6 state championships and four state runners up and it's the largest number of first place winners in Pine Pine Creek High School history. And additionally, you can see on the far left Pine Creek High School Assistant Assistant Principal Matt Mahan was recognized as the FBLA
Administrator of the Year. Liberty High School Director Wilburn shared this with me. Liberty had a total of 11 athletes signed letters of intent to continue their athletic careers at the collegiate level. 4 baseball players, 2 from girls swimming, diving and one from each girls softball boys boys soccer, girls soccer, boys basketball, boys track and and field. All of those wonderful opportunities for our students so congratulation to their senior athletes and all of our senior athletes athletes. I know this is just one of many signing events.
That we had in our district and thank you, Director Wilburn for for sharing that with us. Let us know. Lots of senior events. I was able to attend all of the senior awards at all the high schools and I know we've got a few more breakfasts and lunches ahead, but it's just just truly amazing. My understanding is that we have 3 beture scholars from D20 that that is amazing is one of the most highly competitive scholarships. It's a full ride to various
various colleges in Colorado. And the fact that we had three come from D20 is exceptional. Like I've never heard of that before. Usually you might get one, maybe 2, but to have three, one from Pine Creek, one from Rampart and one from Air Academy High School. So again just another example of the absolute peak of excellence that we have here in D20, our amazing transportation team competed again in the rodeo, right, the rodeo
competition, which is in Castle Rock and. Sean Foster, who's the technician? In technician category once once again took first place in state. This was four times in A row for him and he is in the picture holding the two plaques there there. And also Jeff Prophet took first place in the conventional category and Jeff has qualified for the National competition in Austin at the end of June, so we have the most highly competent bus drivers transportation team in the state and the
transportation team has won the team trophy for the past two years. And they did it again. Our district art show. So much fun to honor all of our amazing artists that we have. We had hundreds of Academy District 20 students, families and friends gathered to recognize our outstanding artists and then award more than $4000 thanks to Air Academy Credit Union donated that money so that we could have this amazing event for our students. And we had what, we had homemade sweaters and
intricate handcrafted jewelry. Sculptures of colorful shattered gas profound pencil sketches, and many, many more. We also completed a second semester of a district wide book study on focus, which was really a follow up to Michael Schmoke who's result now and one one of the major themes of this book study is that importance of encouraging writing and all content content areas. And I know for sure as I've gone around to different schools I've definitely seen that intentionality
around writing. So huge shout out to Doctor Field and her team and Jeremy. Koselak, Dr Koselak and their work in putting this this together. I was able to sit with different tables and just heard these amazing conversations from teachers on what they were learning and how they were implementing many of Of Schmoker’s best practices in the classroom. This is super fun. This was our last business and community partnership round table that was the new state Kroger group that I started this year and so we
we went to Discovery Canyon and their biomedical program is second to none. Seen the biomedical table? Or you can look at all different kinds of systems now they They even have a second one where they can bring it up on a screen so you're not having to look down at a flat table. But they had, I think like 40 different students that they recognized when I went to their awards assembly that had just went through all four years of their their biomedical program. So making a huge, huge impact. With our students and the business partners
loved it, I think. Every time and we're planning to have more formal visits and taking our stakeholders into schools next year, so I look forward to sharing that plan with you as Mark and I are developing that together we went to to Becky Harris and I went down to Denver where we able to celebrate Liz Walhoff at the Case Awards ceremony that they had and as you know you know, we did the investing you D20 budget. Conversation huge thank you to Mark and his
his team for hosting it and to. Deputy CFO Becky Allan and Assistant Superintendent Cameron Smart. They just did a fabulous job sharing their expertise we had folks submit questions and we were able to answer those questions and we're developing an FAQ for any remaining remaining questions that we can answer, ones that we weren't able to get to during that time. I think we at one time we had what, 60 or 70 folks signed up, 70 people signed up to watch, which was awesome. We, CNS and I had a chance to Director
Yanez and I had a chance to go to that special education awards. And it was just so heartwarming. It's where our families have a chance to celebrate the amazing educators on the impact that they've made on their families And that was very heartwarming. And as recently we recently, we just did our retirement banquet. And again, a thank you to the communications team, especially Krystal Story. Shout out to her There she is. She's like the perfect Hostess and emcee for these events. So just was really fun to be
be able to recognize all of our amazing retirees. And we had our. This was super fun Director Shandy and I, along with the communications team, had a chance to go and just celebrate all of our annual winners our for our schools and for our whole district. So the Thomas S Crawford team award starting up in the upper left crown corner was was Woodward Roberts, their whole elementary school exploratory team. Which it consists of Barbara Hackersmith, Adriana Rouse
Heather Childress, Matt Kaiser, Rebecca Cordova and Kim Keating. Volunteer of the Year was Doctor Kevin Taverde, who was at Foothills Elementary and I know Director Consign. I had a chance to go to their steam night. He and his wife, who's also a teacher there, helped to head head that up. And I definitely thought that their ice cream that was made from liquid nitrogen was amazing. I was surprised. Special education specialist of the year Caroline Abersack at Foothills.
And Rockrimmon, they share her. Administrator of the year was Laura Cressup at Antelope Trails Elementary School and early child educator of the the year was Heidi Tillman at Legacy Peak Classified Classified of the year was Taniel Payton at Academy International Elementary School. Charles W Tewell Elementary teacher of the year. Rachel Thompson at Academy Endeavor there There we go, all right on .2 I'm, I am impressed. And then John Asbury, secondary teacher of the
year, was Keith Ascencias at Rampart High School, and he is their band director. And as you know, they won state with their marching band so. Super fun, really the highlight of my year being able to go around and celebrate all these. Amazing educators. And last, but certainly not least with such an honor to recognize our retirees and I know that those celebrations are happening across the district as I know we all take care of our folks, but we just had a chance to be able to take some pictures yesterday celebrating members
of the IT department who are retiring which which is Shelley Kooser, Chief Information Officer. And Shelley, we're going to miss you. You're amazing and it's just you've just been, you've developed the whole IT department went from 7000 instruments when she started our computers computers devices to 32,000 over her tenure. So just a huge thank you to you Shelley. Lori Hartman, who's a director of digital Digital Innovation Services, David Hahn, who's our database
application developer and Ruth Hens who is our database application application developer. Just we just have a, an amazing IT department. And every year again, we celebrate all these wonderful retirement events, and we're just so fortunate that we're able to capture some of that and share just a piece of what we do here in D20 around retirement. And last but absolutely not least on behalf of of D20, I'd like to recognize Aaron Salt Aaron, you have
just been such an amazing leader. I really believe you've been a major cornerstone of our board, I personally appreciated your leadership, your your consistency and support for me as a Superintendent and for the Board, and you have left a positive legacy and a positive impact on our district, so I have a card and back to give you and then I would open it up for the rest of the board if you have anything else that you'd like to share with Aaron. Anyone happen? Director Yanez. Now I feel like I have to say
something, but I really want to say something. I'm not sure who I'm going to spar spar back and forth with more this is true. Aaron, I respect you and I've really appreciated getting to know you. And your family, I think. Your heart for education shows in everything you do and and your heart for teachers. Is so strong, I always keep that about you and. That's it. Mr. Salt, it's been an honor. I don't know why I feel like I'm gonna cry because, you know, it's
you should, but you do make us cry sometimes. But it is just been really a lot of fun. But most of all, I just appreciate your mentorship because I feel like you've raised the bar for me to to try to attain and just your immense knowledge with. The educational system. And I can't. Leave out Courtney, your wife too, 'cause she has been a mentor as well and just it's really been an honor these these last four years getting to know you and
your wife and. Just it's immeasurable how much education you have given me in this seat so So thank you and best of luck. Director Wilburn. I'm going to cry too. Aaron, you've been a great friend and I remember we first met when we were both voluntold about a committee committee we needed to serve on. I think that was 2019 or 20 or 21, something like that. Didn't know you well, but you you've mentored me and taught me a lot. We got to be great friends. We talked a lot inside and outside of the boardroom. Let alone education, hanging out a basketball games
games, whatever. You've just you've, you've been a friend you've forgotten more about this world than most people know The intellectual loss when you walk out the door is is going to be broad, deep and wide and it's going to be tough shoes to fill But we're going to find somebody who's going to give it a try and I just can't And I just can't thank you enough for your friendship. I know that'll continue. Even though you're no longer on the board, I look forward to spending time with you doing what we do when we're not here, So thank you, my friend. Again, I think you've impacted each and every one of us, so just thank
you for your service and your sacrifice, because it is that and just thank you so much and best of luck to your next role. So. Thank you all I have loved loved my service here on this board. The team here is. Above all that I have worked with from board members, the Superintendent cabinet on on down to each of the building levels, the teachers in the in the classrooms. Each one of you have made a profound impact on me. I have immensely loved the work here
I'm going to miss it, but. Also, I'm moving on to continue to work within educations, just where I'm passionate and really looking forward to what the next future holds. So thank you all. Awesome, thank you. Thank you for the update, Superintendent. However, we need a motion to 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. There are 20 people
right now viewing the live stream we are going to take a 10-minute break to take pictures for the spotlights and administrators. So, Explorer Elementary, Prairie Prairie Hills, Frontier Elementary and the administrators, please make your your way forward for pictures. Thank you so much. I don't leave. Everything's propped because for whatever reason they can't turn the heat off. I don't know. Cheryl did. Aaron leave? he's here. His dinner still here? We're just gonna wait a few more minutes or seconds for our directors to return.
OK, we're going to go ahead and Mr. Salt will join us when he gets back, so OK It's always so incredibly inspiring. Oh sorry, Mr. Salt, literally just seconds. Turn but I realize how important drinks so. It's a long day. OK, so it's always incredibly inspiring to begin our meeting by celebrating the hard work and achievements of our D20 students, faculty, and staff and
now we transition into our business portion of our meeting, a time for thoughtful discussion and decision making out of respect for for this focus, we ask that you the applause be held during this part of the session as we shift our attention to important work ahead. Thank you so much I I appreciate your consideration for this. There are no items pulled from the consent agenda. So we will move on to Written Reports. Summer Institute. Does anyone have any questions or comments? Director Wilburn, just one is Jeremy. All the numbers on this report are pretty consistent year over year except for staff signed up and
and registered for 2025. But then there's the caveat so far, so I'm guessing that simply is indicating we're not deep enough into the process yet. There'll be a bunch more yet to come That's correct. I have some updated numbers to share kind of in that regard and because we had been anticipating some declining numbers. Just over time, teachers have taken less on average number of courses in summer institute but in fact the numbers are coming in as I just checked them this afternoon before the meeting today that we had we still
still have about 825 people who have signed up for at least one class this summer 'cause that's a significant number of of teachers, administrators, classified folks who have signed up up for over 2200 total number of classes. Across about 92 sections, so the numbers tend boosted up quite a bit since I was able to pull the report last SO So that middle number, the 350, is now 820 OK, thank you Absolutely. Any other questions? Awesome. Thank
you so much. That's great news. Thank you guys guys. All right. Primary textbooks for English language, art and ESL grades nine through 12. This anyone have any questions or questions or comments? My only comment was on the National Geographic book Let me find that. Really fast. I, all in all, I feel like it needs to be pulled and discussed. I don't necessarily consent to it so So however we go about doing that for consent next
time, just notate that. Thank you. Did you have a question about it or are you just pulling it? I'm just pulling it. OK, thank you. All right. Legislative updates. Does anyone have any questions or comments? Director Wilburn. Thank you for pulling this together all the time, Ms. Thompson. It's been a just a whirlwind session last month month we got draft proposal of I think it was a final draft of 22/1 one dash 143 I think was Representative Bacon. Bill would have provided A pathway for students
to file complaints with CCRD for violations spelled out under SB-296. Something like that. Do you have an update on that? I just, I didn't follow it. Thank you. Yeah, Senator Bacon had ran that in light of the recent. Trimming or limiting of the office of Civil Rights at the federal level. And so I think this was Senator Bacon's alternative to create a state option for that. What's final status? We're seeking progress on that. OK, thank you.
And that was SB 23296. Protections therein, right? Do I have that Do you even know you have that? I know it's a lot to memorize. I don't have it memorized. I don't have it memorized. OK, I can look it up. Thank you. Director Konz OK. Director Wilburn and I were just kind of chatting before this and Ms. Thompson because because you do such beneficial work educating us on these the status all the time. I I was wondering if maybe in the future during the May or
June meeting, especially if the May meeting is is after the legislative session ends, if we could switch this to. A presentation 'cause I really like getting more of your feedback. Absolutely, and in the past up until this year has always been a monthly presentation yes so I would welcome the the opportunity, yes, to move it back to presentation or every other month, sure, at the beginning of the session, sometimes there's not much to say, but definitely towards towards the end and right after, it would be beneficial for the whole board
to just hear more from you. So thank you, absolutely. Cheryl, will you make a make a note for next year? Thank you. All right. Monthly financial reports through March 2020 Does anyone have any questions or comments? OK, Director Wilburn. Yes. So Ms Allan, first of all, you and your team, God bless you. I don't know how everyone on your team you're not you're all not so near sighted right now that you're like Mr Magoo. These are hard to read. I can't imagine making them. Everything was really consistent except on Page 3, the salary comparisons 2420
adjusted budget versus actual. Is actually considerably down. Is that because those numbers may have been a little bit overly budgeted budgeted last time you followed that question? Part of it is because what we've experienced over the last several years every every year we budget for every position to be filled every single day. So typically we have some funds unspent, but certainly the staffing shortages have been much more aggressive. Since COVID hit last year
we had a greater number of unfilled positions. I'm going to give you a statistic that helped me recognize the magnitude of it last year because we just did some analysis of how our spending is this year. Last year we were under spent by about $9 million in salaries and benefits. Now I want to be clear I don't like that savings, right? That's not an area that we want savings, we want staffing. This year it's about half that It's about four and a half million. So that's why you're
seeing the percentage larger that I think is. There's probably multiple, but that's the primary factor that I would say it is attributed to is that we are making gains on having less unfilled positions. And so we're seeing that number. Yes, it's less savings, but that means more folks are are in our positions and serving our kids. So that's a good story. OK, got it. So it's one of those negatives really equals a positive Yes, Sir. Thank you. All right. Building fund update, does anyone have any questions or
comments? Yeah. Thank you thank you. since Mr Barnhat. Oh, they're both here since we have have a presentation later, should we just table questions till then? Sure. OK. Oh, go ahead and ask it. OK. From the report. So 00 percent is spent on all line items, and we understand why with the exception of LED lighting upgrades on page 6, some of that money's been spent. And I've been to a couple to a school where that's
been done. I'm just curious how that rollout is being determined. What Who decides which schools are pulling the trigger on in November and how that works because clearly some schools are going to cost a lot less than some others. OK, so you're re referring to the 2024 bond, is that correct, the LED lighting I'm sorry, correct. OK, So just a quick briefing. There were a few schools that we were able to get in and do a little bit of the LED lighting. Primarily cause facilities will be doing some projects so there are two gyms at 2 elementary schools we wanted to get
get in ahead of them putting a new floor in the gym they're gonna do to do that this summer. So we were able to get the LED lighting putting those two two gems and then there were the transportation project as As you know, we're finishing up a major renovation of the existing building, but it didn't include renovating the entire building, so there was still light fixtures to Fixtures at transportation, so we took advantage of the contractor we had on board to do those while we were there, so we would minimize the impact to Transportation, not come back and interrupt
them again why they were there. They did the warehouse as well All right, two birds, one stone. I appreciate the before and after pictures of the the offices where the lighting can slop. That looks great and I would like to request soup Superintendent if we can can get a tour. Set up fairly soon with the new transportation facility, yes we are absolutely working on that and I think that our our director, Joey Eisenhut had one. There was official what I heard that there was an official. that. So I've still been waiting to find out when the best time is for us to
do that. Well, I'll find that out tomorrow, 'cause my project manager told me that Joey gave him a date and I don't know if he ran it up to you guys yet. Nope. We need to hear it because we'd love to be out there. So it's super exciting and we appreciate his leadership with that project. My understanding is that the tour is after the burrito breakfast at Transportation, so you know that early morning where we hand out the burritos. Mr. Salt will be at DCC for the 5th grade continuation for our children. But that's the that's the
morning that I'm anticipating that to be for the ribbon cutting or for the tour. Yeah, we may have to schedule another time 'cause I know know I already have something on my calendar, but let's get something. Beyond that, where we can schedule it out a little bit, I'll be a little just tomorrow and yeah, let's just let's do that. That'll be great great. Alright, great. All right, third quarter board of Education discretionary budget update. Does anyone have any questions or comments? Director Wilburn. None other than the public can see and know that we are spending within our
means. All of our budget expenses, expense items are coming in lower than we're budgeted for. One exception being. Which one was it, Miss Shandy? I talked about this earlier. The annual The retirement banquet, of course, is still extremely low compared to the budgeted amount, but that banquet was just Tuesday night, so all those bills haven't been paid. But other than that, we have a current budget amount of about two 000 come in year end we will have spent about 224. So we are
spending well below below what we anticipated. Awesome, thank you so much. Monitoring report for board Superintendent relationship policy 3.0. Governance management connection. Does anyone have any questions or comments? OK. Is there sufficient evidence to determine compliance for each section? Are all sections in compliance? Recognition or of exemplary performance or concerns regarding performance. All right. Preparation for the next report cycle, 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? Alright. Monitoring report for board Superintendent relationship policy 3.1 unity of control. Does anyone have any questions or comments? Is there sufficient evidence to determine compliance for each section? Are all sections in compliance? Recognition of exemplary performance or concerns regarding performance. 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? Monitoring report for board Superintendent relationship policy 3.2 accountability of the Superintendent does anyone anyone have any questions or comments? Director Yanez. I do I want want to. I think it's important to recognize success specific to this board Superintendent relationship policy with Superintendent Haberer first, Jinger has made herself available each and every time I have had a question needed needed clarification, had a concern. Or a wacky idea. Additionally, if she
didn't have the precise answer in the moment, she immediately put me in touch with the staff member who did. I believe that healthy organizations operate in just this way. The policy states that the organizational accomplishment of ends and operation within the boundaries of EL’s will be viewed as successful Superintendent performance in In my opinion, it's Jinger's commitment to availability that undergirds this success I believe it's important to publicly recognize her efforts and to communicate the standard set for the BSR now and. Future board members, awesome. Thank you. I
second that you always do a great job answering questions Anyone else? Nope. All right. Is there sufficient evidence to determine compliance for each section? Are all sections in compliance? Recognition of exemplary performance or concerns regarding performance, Doctor Octopine, as you said that. Would you like to see an additional different evidence or should any part of this policy be changed in the next monitoring cycle? Do you see any evidence which is extraneous or no longer necessary? OK. Monitor and report for board Superintendent relationship
policy 3.3 delegation to the Superintendent. Does anyone have any questions or concerns? Is there sufficient evidence to determine compliance for each section? Are all sections in compliance? Recognition of exemplary performance or concerns regarding performance. Would you like to see an additional different evidence or should any part of this policy be changed in the next monitoring report cycle? Do you see any evidence which is extraneous or no longer necessary? OK. Monitoring report for board Superintendent relationship policy 3.4 Monitoring Superintendent performance. Does anyone have any questions or comments? Is there sufficient director
director cons, are you good going through my notes? Yeah, the only thing. On 3.4 that I don't believe I said in a previous meeting, but I just wanted us to all consider since we are are doing Superintendent Haber's review next month, this is the policy, you know, it was just wonderful going reviewing this policy again because it clearly delineates. How we can give her the best? SWOT analysis if nothing else. And so I just wanna drive run's attention to making sure you really
really look at this before we proceed with her evaluation. Yeah, Superintendent Haberer Yeah, I really appreciate. I think last time we brought up that policy so So right now I'm working together with Brittny to come up with a different format that we can use that ties directly to the policy and that will be easier easier, I think, for you guys to be able to make those ties because we don't really have a template of any kind and so that we need develop like template and so. I think that you will find that helpful and
I think while we work together, we can keep working on something that makes sense to tie it. Really, the board ends and the EL’s all through the year are really part of that evaluation, so to put it on one place so just know we're going to develop something I'm actually have have a folder to that I'm calling the evaluation folder, so I'm putting in different documents that help support more general statements that I put next to those essential parts in the evaluation. So I should be able to send that out out to you by the end of May. At least a couple weeks before the meeting and just
would love to hear feedback on that because we just want a really effective tool to be able to have that two way feedback and. In that continuous cycle of improvement, good I appreciate your work on that, Director Yanez. Alright, Madam Chair, I wanted to remind you I will not be present for the June meeting. So it's the second of two graduations from my son at the Army and he's decided to get married all on the same weekend. So I will be officiating that you can do the same thing for 4999 if you go online and you can order a kit and you too can
do that so. We'll be on a little pontoon boat in the middle of the Chattahoochee River with life jackets getting married. So I digress. I will not be present for that piece. And so that makes me really sad. So I don't know if if there's a way for me to. Yeah, I don't know what the timeline is, so just let me know. But I mean, if possible, I'd love to be there. I we don't have Internet service there there. Very little. I appreciate that. I think that would be something that we can talk about for agenda setting. Maybe we do a special meeting when you get back and we
could just meet or the week prior or the week prior perhaps, yeah. OK. I appreciate that. I'd love to have your feedback as well before you go. This is also Air Academy, Mary's Rampart High School, so that's gonna be really fun. And President Shandy, we can also do a different meeting, but Ms Yanez can submit all of her comments and reflections to you to compile for the review. Yeah, too so. All right. Is there sufficient evidence to determine compliance for each section? Are all sections in compliance?
Recognition of exemplary 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? Do you see any evidence which is extraneous or no longer necessary? All right Presentations Report of the citizens Bond Oversight Committee, Superintendent Haberer and and I'm gonna go over to Deputy CFO Superintendent Becky Allan. I'd like to to welcome Mr. David Brockway. He is our Co
facilitator of the Citizens Bond Oversight Committee and he's gracious enough. He's been there literally since day one of of the 2016 bond. And he has graciously offered his leadership through the 2024 bond as well. And notice I, Mr. Brockway, I said through the so just. Thank you. The first bond is 99 complete, so that's exciting to celebrate with that. I'm really reporting on 2 bonds 2 2016 bond and then the activity under the 2024
bond. The 2016 bond is. As I mentioned, 99% complete Which point you ask then why is a contingency fund needed and it sounds like in the first quarter that's been the main activity in that bond is kind of unwinding that $4 million of contingency fund 3 million of that went to the PSMI project for the new pre K through 8 Douglas Valley School on the Air Force Academy and another
another 900,000 plus went to the. Federal yield restriction payment that was made to the IRS and that was kind of a victim of our own success of selling the bonds in a very low interest rate environment and then being able to invest a lot of the proceeds in a higher interest rate environment. So that was sort of the small small cost of that. Looking forward really by the end of this quarter, June 30, 2025, the bond language project should should all be completed. And I think that's a milestone to celebrate.
As it relates to the 2024 Bond 30 $36 million of the proceeds were issued the first first tranche was issued in February, I believe and that is really the amounts that are designated for the non charter schools, 23 million for about 10 million for TCA and another 1.6 for new Summit charter. So that was kind of the funds around those that were issued in the first tranche and about. $2,000,000 for Air Academy High
school design work that's being done the second tranche which which is about 47 million that'll be issued probably in 2027 as the Air Academy project comes more online with the matched funding. But as Mr. Garnhart explained to Director Wilburn, there has been some money spent on the 2024 bond in the area of the LED lighting lighting upgrades at the transportation building, the warehouse. There the CTS
Chinook Trail Elementary School gym, the Woodman Roberts Gym and TCA being able to do some of their LED lighting as windows appeared. They'll be an RFP that'll be issued shortly for the turf field at Rampart High School and also for the play surface at DCDC DCDC CES and we'll have another meeting as we do and in in July and I'll update the board soon thereafter, but happy to to answer any questions I could. Mr. Wilburn of the SO so the 36 million that was that has been distributed, I just presume
that money is residing in some sort of very liquid non interest bearing vehicle of some sort of savings account account. I'm not sure exactly where it resides, but. Those funds will join the building fund where we still still have some existing funds for 2016 and what we do is we project out for the upcoming time how much we need liquid. And we do invest some of it either in Kahlo Trust or CSIP Those are the two vehicles that we have for interest bearing safe other school districts
districts utilize these. So we do earn interest on that and there is interest income and in fact that's what caused, you know, once you only have a certain amount of interest that you could collect and if you get over that you have to give give it back to the federal government. So that was really what happened when we gave some of those dollars back for our yield restriction payment. But we get significant support from that interest that we get, but we plan it out so that we don't put ourselves in a tying dollars up
that we can't get to when we need it. To invest it too wisely. Not possible. Yeah. All right. Thank you very much I appreciate. Thank you. All right, MRE for insurance 1.2. Yeah, so. Hey, say Dirk Executive Director Tacy Killings worked a great presentation last time on 1.2 The take away for me on that was that. We want to do a crosswalk between the 10 characteristics that we have in the board ends now with the. Portrait of a graduate. The six competencies and see how they align and that we would discuss that at
at our April 14th meeting. We'll already do some work, some potential crosswalking and bring that to the August 14th retreat and we can kind of land on what do we specifically want to be monitoring for Is there a place to be able to connect the competencies with what we already have in the ends? Do we want to change some of that or not? And then the second piece of that is we just did a better alignment of the Hanover student
Experience Survey because that is the way we're gonna do character now 'cause we made the agreement last time when Doctor Jim Smith gave his presentation. We just saw like a stagnation in that data with the self-reporting for students and it wasn't really providing the data that we needed to be able to take steps. And we had the the question, is it really monitoring? Our progress because there was no fluctuation and not sure that self-reporting is as accurate as what we'd like it to be of our actual work with students
and so I think the student experience survey is gonna give us more of of the data that we need. And so I think we just gave that survey earlier this week, I believe and when those results results come in, we'll be able to kind of compare it to some of the similar ones we gave last year. But I think this year will be a good baseline for that to be able to say how can we measure and we change that in our culture of connectedness instead of the belonging. We change that in our strategic plan and in that we're
measuring. Like attendance rates? Students experiences and extracurricular activities and all those other ways to really say if students are doing all of these things, we can infer. That they're getting character development and then evidence of community service, right? And I know. Mrs. Killingsworth did a really good job of putting together several different examples of what we're doing in the district and Director Konz, I think you mentioned that you wanted to see kind of more examples like what we put in our strategic plan rather
than just a different programs that we're doing doing and that from the different programs if we are using that. What's our evidence of character development? As a result of those or though did was that that accurate in the takeaways that I had written down or taken away from that Director Yanez I remember we were talking about as well well defining someone of the defining some of what those programs do because we use a whole lot of acronyms, and I think some of us were less familiar with what so
like ruler plus capturing kids hearts plus. Help me. Source. Thank you. Defining those and showing them where they fit. So sort of the crosswalk of program programming as well. I, you probably said that I was just using those needed to say those examples to make it fit OK. Director Konz. No Superintendent Haberer, are you partially hit on what I said and And last month, Ms Yanez made that connection more clear for me, the understanding more of those programs. Can help explain how it's benefiting our 10
character trait ends I I think my point, my desire is that we just see additional. Programs, events, structures in each school that specifically address the character traits in in addition to all the other programs that are sometimes more under the SEL umbrella, so that's all just as an example when elementary schools focus on one
of those character traits each month. Award a student of each classroom who's exemplifying that doing written reports. Etcetera about character traits, I just think we can add additional stuff. Yeah, I appreciate that. And I think that's why it's also really important to see if we can align some of those with the competencies like we saw tonight, right, the elementary school and was already aligning with some of those competencies with the port of the graduate and there are certainly some that
that may not fit and we just add them, you know, maybe none of them fit, I don't know. We just want to do that crosswalk it. Director Yanez, that was where we ended. Thank you for reminding me and saying that because we were talking about the fact that some of these programs that are already in existence are doing those things, but we just haven't defined where and how. But it's not adding more, but it's some of this is already in alignment. Yeah, OK. All right is the superintendent's interpretation of the policy policy reasonable? Is there sufficient evidence to determine compliance for Are all sections in compliance?
Recognition of exemplary 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 Just as noted. Perfect. Thank you. Do you see any evidence which is extraneous or no longer necessary? Alright. Mr. Belcher, how many people have signed up to speak during public comment Section 1? We do have one speaker who is signed up however, this public commenter who has signed to speak, Ms Amy Mushall has notified us via email she will not be able to attend this
evening. Upon receipt, her comments will be entered into the public record as a written comment. Thank you. We need a motion to approve Resolution 21625, Acceptance of the District Accountability Committee end of the year report. Moved second. Discussion please. Director Yanez, Once again we got to celebrate on Tuesday. Hi, Shannon, we got to celebrate on Tuesday at the DAC meeting all the hard hard work that people pour into. I see Grammy Stef back there. Subcommittees, Erin, you're back there if I'm
someone else is here from Doc, I'm really sorry. Jenny, this I got myself into trouble. I'm saying no more names, OK? Accreditation subcommittee, Budget subcommittee, just all the work that pours into this. It's real. It takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of effort, it takes a lot of commitment. So thank you so much. For making that happen, Shannon, this is you're stepping off this committee and we really are gonna miss you. I only got to work with you this year, but I know you've been working at it a long time and so thank you for your commitment. Don't cry. And then Erin Stevens. She's not here tonight, but
she's also gonna be stepping off. Was she Accreditation subcommittee, budget I knew I had had that wrong when I was coming out of my mouth. And Jenny is that you're gonna be stepping into that role. OK, she said that very tentatively. We have it as public record, but just a huge thank you. All right, Jenny, I have something for you. Just Shannon I'm sorry, Shannon, I have sent something for you for all your years of service. So we want to give you a board coin.
All right, so I'm here to give for those that don't know I'm Shannon Hester and I am the District Accountability Committee parent chair and is my third year being the parent chair and I am here to give the end of the year report. So go ahead, I don't know can I do it? Fun. I am sorry these are so small but the District Accountability committee charge. When you join the district accountability committee and I'm gonna call it DAC from now on 'cause it's a lot of words. You're here to work. As they said, it is a lot of work and we have a lot
of things that we need to cover. We are one of two of your committees. The other one is audit and then it is deck. So we have a lot of things that we have to cover. And I am not gonna read these through. I'm just gonna highlight some things we do the first first one there is the board priorities of the spending of school monies. That's a huge part of what we do. In the. It is not on that one, the 4th one, there we form a accreditation subcommittee that makes
recommendations concerning all kinds of. All of those acronyms, Sips and dips and SPFS and all of those things we read all of of those and correlate those site plans and make sure that they're all together. Then we also do the budget subcommittee and and that's the District's budget process and we receive information from all the Sacs and all the principals and and for the spending of the school district's money.
We so this goes along with accreditation that we annually review the site plans and the UIPSs. And. So again, we're still on the charge you guys. This is still things that we have to do We develop and assess tools to help those. Teacher evaluations number there is. Again, Principle evaluations 9 is the we get input in the district's conduct and discipline code
and #10 is really our big one. We increase the level of parent arrangement in the school district in the public for engagement of students students so we have parents from all walks of life life on the deck. All right We do a lot of presentations this This year we had nine meetings because of a snow day and we fit all of these in to 9 meetings, so. This is slide one.
Again. We. We get an update by our board liaison every meeting and we also do an accreditation subcommittee and a budget subcommittee after they are are formed, we get their input and then all of those other things. And. They just keep going. We review all again, the site plans the the UIPs, we go through the resource priorities and then we just did the absolutes with our principals
and reported on those. So those are all presentations that we have to do. These are all presentations that our parents want right? So we wanted all of these presentations and so we asked for them and they all came and it was amazing amazing. But we got things like the building fund update, we got legislative updates We've had the bond presentation at the beginning. Safety and security as always a hit the this one is the big one is the projection and future growth update that one
one's always interesting for parents to hear. And then those other presentations that happen. And there's more cause we fit a lot in our nine meetings. Many of them are reports that you guys get here at the board meetings that are also then presented to your stakeholders at the DAC meeting. Alright, so again we had nine meetings this year because of the snow day in January which is very similar to last year, which was also nine meetings because of a snow
snow day in January. So our big meeting in January is usually about resource priorities, which has been pushed off to February for the last two years, but this is our budget subcommittee's big Becky calls it our big Super Bowl, where we meet with all of our principals in our feeder strands and go over the money, the money priorities for those feeder strands and then then back in April. We had. Erin came in, gave the presentation to
you all about those money priorities. We get a presentation from Jolynn and about the dip about the district improvement plan and. The three major improvement strategies for UIP for the year. Alright, and then accreditation our, big our other big meeting, this one is in November. This one is all of all of those acronyms we read all all of those things we meet in our feeder strands and
go through all of those things to make sure that they're aligned and that's how you guys we present whether the school should should go for. Those accreditations, Shannon, can I interrupt for just one second the when I was on DAC 100 years ago? That was not the way it was done right in feeder strands and it is so effective that I know, Susan Dr Field, you brought that to DAC and it I just was blown away because I don't know I would. I remember sitting with
a different principal from a different school looking at and it So it was just a little little bit more disjointed. This was fantastic 'cause you got got like hot off the press information. There was no time lag for any of that. It was great. Had to interject. Keep going, Shannon. Yes, it's wonderful to meet with your feeder schools and learn about what's coming for those kindergarten parents. And what has going on for those of us that are in high school? So again, this was our November meeting going through through the site plans and UIP reviews
We also look at the external reviews that are done throughout the year, which are done every three years. And we just look at those. We had our educator effectiveness by Mr. Smart He comes and talks about why this process is done. And then Tonya came at the beginning of our year, this year and talked about what happened in the 2023 2023-2024 school year in terms of the conduct and discipline code and
the data that came from that. So again, our big thing is parent engagement and community engagement. And you can read on there. At a minimum, DAC should it only need 7 people, we have 60 So we far exceed. Yeah that's amazing. So we go above and beyond. And then our other big thing that we do is we review any charter, charter school applications and we did not have this year. So we did not have to form that committee so
So thank you for a great year. It is my last year. Thank you. Thank you, Shannon, so very much. And I realized I broke my own rule there, so I put myself and time out next time. That was a celebration though, yeah Yeah. All right. Roll call, please. Mrs. Konz, aye. Mr. Wilburn, aye. Mrs. Yanez, aye. Mr. Salt, aye. Mrs. Shandy, aye. All right, we need a motion to approve resolution 2/17/20 Acceptance of Proposed Budget for Fiscal Year 20/25/20 Superintendent Haberer Move Oh, sorry, it's OK, moved second
discussion, please. Now, Superintendent Haberer Deputy Superintendent and CFO. Congratulations, Shannon That's special. Ms. Allan, Ms Allan. This worked, Yep. Next slide, please. So good evening. It is my pleasure to share with you this evening the proposed budget just important to remind you this you will accept this formally as the proposed budget. But the adopted budget will not be considered until
the June 12th meeting and just for context, tonight there will be a second resolution for salaries because they do come to your consideration this evening for approval because the HR team starts to prepare contracts and all of those pieces. So it's my pleasure to share with you what we have and I'm going to go ahead and just start. I don't need to say next slide. I know. Thank you. All right, so a little bit about the process again, this is a
timeline of just the entire budget process for the year and where we are is that check mark so you can see what do do we have ahead in June, we've got our budget hearing. The adopted budget will be considered by the Board of Education on June 12th as well. And if for some reason it does not get adopted that night, we have until June 30th, so by the time we leave here on June 30th at 11:59 PM, the state will expect that we have an adopted budget. All right, let's go ahead and start with General Fund
resources. Now, this presentation is mainly focused on the General Fund because that is our main fund where we do our operational work At the end, I'll show you just the appropriations for each one of the funds and be happy to take any questions that you have. So how do we go ahead and build this budget It's based upon three main variables, student enrollment. Are per pupil revenue that we are going to get from the state? And then our assessed valuation. Now the tricky part of this is we don't know the student enrollment
yet and we don't know the exact assessed valuation we did did find out yesterday that the School Finance Act was approved by the Legislature and now it is on the governor's desk. So one of the things that we want to keep in mind is this budget that's built and approved by June 30th We know if all of those are correct we just hit the lottery, the Powerball. We know that it's not always gonna get that way, so we have that opportunity in January to have a mid year budget for the board to consider where we
call it truing up. We true up our exact enrollment true true up, the assessed valuation, true up if there's been any change to the per pupil revenue. So let's look at the first item that we have and this is our enrollment. On the left of this screen you will see what our our certified enrollment is for this year towards the top you'll see the 26,569. that is head count so 1/2 time student is counted as one. Down below you'll see the funded pupil count and
And this is exactly how we get funded. That's how we get paid per student if you will. That number is always equal to or lower than head count because a student who's who's half time is only counted as .5. What you'll notice there is that. That number that you see on the left representing our averaging this year. Represents a three year average That's important. There's been a lot of conversation around averaging and I'll speak to that in just a moment and Miss Allen previously it's been 4 year correct yes and the reason I
reason I said three year is it you we were eligible but they always figure out what what level of averaging will work most, the most it's ever been is five year, but they do a five year average 4 year average three year, 2 year and you get the best of best of the lot. And as one of the things that the governor requested in his November budget request was to eliminate averaging, because averaging causes school districts to be funded at a higher level to
dampen any big declines that they are seeing to help that be just not so impactful at the at that district level. So I'll kind of cut to the chase since I've mentioned it. We were concerned and that was one of the big lobbying points that we all had that you all. Great job lobbying for when we went to the Capitol, please don't cut us off just from up here to nothing So what has transpired out of the School Finance Act is it is going to be a gradual
change. So next year we will have 4 year averaging the the following year three year averaging then Then after that it's something called smoothing I I don't know yet what that means. It could be a fancy name for two-year averaging or no averaging, I'm not sure yet. Smoothing As a mathematician, I think of like a curve best fit. Maybe they try to make some allocations to dampen any big changes, but we'll have to see that. But that's something that's been favorable that
we've seen that this wasn't an overnight go away when When you take a look at the middle, you see the projected changes we're looking at. So we're looking at a -, 43 in our head count between this year and next. How does that translate to funded pupil count on the lower right you see? I will tell you we take a more conservative approach. We used two year averaging for that just allows us some flexibility, something drastic that we can't imagine changes. It just allows us to be a
little bit more conservative in that process. And again this will get trued up at the mid-year, the other big variable of course is the per pupil revenue and what you can see on on the left in the green box is the per pupil revenue that was in our mid-year budget. And what you see off to the right is 11,000 035.35. The good news is the School Finance Act passed the legislative level yesterday with that same number. So that has held that's what we shared with you in April for the revenue assumptions and
And so that's solid. That's about a 2.87 increase over what we had in the mid year budget It's important to notice on that upper right, the CPI it's. Price index. It's the rate of inflation that the state is using. It's really important to know that number because it's often not real far away from how much are per pupil revenue goes up It's also a good marker that we use as we develop our salary strategies and we really
really strive to try to at least meet or outperform the rate of inflation. The third big variable is our assessed valuation as. The year that I came this 20 2025, was not a reassessment year, so we just had small growth of .57%. I shared that with you in January. We are assuming for the 2026 estimated A a 3% increase that may not come true. We might be high or low, but that's our best guess because it is a
a reassessment year. What I'd like to draw to your attention is in the orange box there even though our our bond passed in November. Please notice that our levy is still now projected to decrease again with this increase in assessed valuation. So if we put those 3 variables together here's where we land. We are estimating or we have about 7.38 million in new available resource just
to give some context. Last year at this time when I made this presentation for the current year, it was over $16 million. So you can see with the rate of inflation that's going to, that's a good thing in some respects that it goes down But the per pupil revenue then typically is more in line line with that. We also know that the state had a difficult year there at 1.1 16 billion in the hole and so that is going to trickle down to what we feel as well in
our particular funding situation. So now let's talk about expenditures. Now something that I want to remind you of and and it fits so perfectly with Superintendent Habbers recognition of our staff, is that the most significant aspect of our budget is salaries and benefits benefits. In fact, we're just over 70.2 of our general budget expenditures are are dedicated to salaries and benefits and that's because
because they are the heart of our success without a doubt. So what you see on this chart is. Basically a summary of the compensation package. So let's go ahead and start with the salaries and benefits at that top part. Now friends who are watching from home or here who are staff members in district District 20 know that they received a budget memo back on March 31st and it was still early in the process. The biggest thing that we were really concerned about was how was
averaging going to play out. So it's a good news story when that message We were saying at that point it could change 1% recurring 1% one time and what you can see in front of you is a stronger piece, it is a 3.5% increase for existing staff that is broken into two parts 2 2% recurring, 1.5% non recurring. Now the non recurring will go
go to staff just like the regular salary does. It's not. Lump sum. It will be spread out in every paycheck over the year, so next year our staff will feel a 3.5% increase if our our finances were to become dire next year then perhaps going into the next year. I'm not saying this would happen, but if we could afford nothing then they'd only retain the the 2% increase that was given. That's recurring That is a strategy to help
us be healthier in light of. Could something happen where the state we've heard that the state to cover a lot lot of their bases here with their budgeting this year that I heard the best analogy that they looked for the change in the sofa cushions and that's a one time fix when you get all the change out of the the cushions unless somebody puts more in there, that's it. So what we need to be thinking about is that this. Budget challenge is not a one
and done and in fact next year, and I'm not trying to be glim, but it's just we need to know the reality and it may get tougher because they used up some of their one time sources. So it's good that we're ready and when you have a mix of recurring a 2% recurring 1.5 non if things were to get very dire that that has just saved the district then from an ongoing financial financial commitment of about $3,000,000. If we couldn't afford it, so one
of the things that we ask so where would the starting teacher teacher salary be? So we're currently at 51 250 and this would move to 52 52,020 dollars. That total price tag is a little over 7 point million. Let's go down to some of our other pieces. El 2.7 point 3. This is the report that Human Resources produces. They'll do an analysis of the positions and find ones that are out of compliance. We had 11 of 50 classified positions
be out of compliance. 3 of Three of them get in compliance when we do the 2%. The other eight positions needed some extra boost and that cost 271,000. Those are the dollars you see there when we increase the base. You learned about summer school today Coaches pay. It's all tied to the base. Someone makes 2% of the base, 8% of the base, whatever the extra pay might be. So when the base goes up, so do our expenses for the extra pay
That's what's reflected in the 133,000 You know that our Kaiser benefits, our Kaiser premiums went up 8.4%. It's over 1.6 million. And we simply could not afford to absorb all of that as we have in recent years. So it's a 5050 split, 5050 said we just said said do 5050. I promise there were real goals behind that. The first goal was, could we see to it that staff members monthly
premium, none of them go over $100 per month We were able to do that. And in fact, the average is a little over $56. Then we also strived to keep the monthly premium lower than what they were in 20 2019-2020. So think about it How many of us can go into King Soopers and buy a box of Raisin Bran cheaper than we did in 1920? Unless there's a digital buy or something like that, right? So we could do that with 9 of 12 of the plans, so
those were our goals and we kept working until and the 5050 was the sweet spot to achieve that. Our dental premiums also went up and we're doing a 50/50 share. We also will continue with our staff leave buy back. Mr. Smart and his team have put together what's called the National Board Certified, that's a National Board Certified teacher recognition that teachers can receive and when they do, they'll get a $1600 stipend. That's new those two two are going to come out of. An established reserve that we have. So they're not new dollars.
When you look at the bottom, what's the total price tag about About 8.7 million, but 162,000 of it is coming from a reserve and you might be thinking wait back 8.5 million then is from thought you said we only had 7,000,000 something in new resource resource. You're right. Let's look at the next slide. I love this slide when I was know I'm a mathematician and I'm not so good at Shakespeare and all of that. And so for me, Cliff notes, I needed my Cliff I tried with the other but I needed the Cliff notes to me
me this is the budget general budget Cliff notes in one sheet. It tells the whole story at the top top we have available dollars 7.38 million. So I have in two sections sections blue is we're using those dollars up look it's it's all gone in that one salary and benefit and we didn't even pay for it all. So we have to go into the the red box, the red box. Refers to using some fund balance so that pays for the rest of the benefits for
salaries, the salary amounts, the benefits there's s some other pieces there like a new progress monitoring, extending the IXL for ELA and math the assessment assessment group did a lot of hard work to determine that would be really useful at 11th grade as well and we have some other adjustments in there about staffing etcetera when you you look at that whole red box. That means that we our budget that we're giving you is consuming some of our fund balance about 2.18 million of fund balance
That is pretty typical. I don't think I've put a proposed budget in since I started that wasn't upside down. We call it where your expenses you're consuming some of your fund balance Our target is typically about $2 million last year year it was lower. It was only a little over 200,000 000, but I don't want to alarm you. That's something that's fairly typical because we typically don't spend our whole budget in one year because we budget our largest
expenditure, 70% salaries and benefits We budget every position every day filled So one of the things that I just want to notice as a takeaway here is out of our available resource 7 point 100 cents of every of one of those dollars is going towards the salaries and benefits and again, because we're about about people, our staff, they are the ones whether they're teachers, administrators, custodians
secretaries, librarians, paraprofessionals, I I hate to even do that because bus drivers, I know I'm leaving leaving someone out, security guards, facilities they all make the difference for our kids. And so it's a point of pride to say. All the new resource we had went to them so that they could in turn provide the best experience possible for our students. Let's talk a little bit now about unassigned fund balance. That's that. Unassigned fund balance where I said we're we're planning to use about 2.1 million
million of it. When you look on the upper right part of that screen, you'll see in the red box, that's the amount that we're budgeted to use. So that our unassigned fund balance has to be between 4 and 12%. Four's the low end, 12 is the high end and what you can see is that math is 8.6 I want to give you context the The adopted budget that I brought to you last year was 10.3% now. Couple things that I want to share with you on that because you might be
thinking is that healthy is that that a healthy financial place to be first of of all, I actually shared it a little bit earlier when. Mr. Wilburn asked about the salaries and I mentioned that we've done a deep, deep dive. Kathy Watts did a great job of really anticipating our spending for this year. We expect at least to be underspent by 5 5 million. So when I'm looking then at a 2.1. That 5 million I know that can plug
up another thing. We look at a portion of this is 1 time 3.1 million are are one time dollars. And again, the 5 million under spent we can cover that. The other thing I want to share with you and this is not in the budget book because it would be inappropriate, we only do do audited actuals for our prior year. We're in 20 2425. We don't have those yet, but again our analysis shows that we'll be at least 5
million higher to give you an idea of what that would do do if we had that on the books right now. That second to last, we'd be at about a 10 1% on that unassigned fund balance. So it just gives you some context on why we're making this recommendation and not feeling that it's any type of financial risk and again that one time allows allows us to be frugal and to make sure that we're not overextending, we're pushing as hard as we can
but doing it in a way that's responsible fiscally. So that we don't put ourselves in a bind Remember the other variable in funding and please please know this is not any type of political statement, but there is a uncertainty at the federal level with respect to education in terms of title dollars, Medicaid Medicaid dollars, idea dollars, title also is impact aid. Impact aid dollars are in there. So it just allows us to take a little bit more of a cautious
stance because we do not know. Exactly what is ahead? Here's a look at all funds in front of you It's hard to believe our total appropriation is over $650 million in District 20 That's a pretty incredible dollar amount. I’d be happy at the end I'll ask for any any questions just the way way ahead this evening Mr Belcher worked on on a budget memo. We always promise that
that our staff will have another update. This evening as to what transpired at the board of Education meeting and then again when we come back June 12th, there'll be a formal budget hearing and it's like public comments, but specifically related to the budget and in fact tomorrow tomorrow we start putting newspaper ads ads in the newspaper just to elevate the exposure We put a hard copy of the budget at the front desk for anyone who'd like to look at it.
And we also publish the information on where it can be found online to encourage people to read this and make any comments if they feel so inclined to do so. We'll have that budget hearing and then the board will have the opportunity to consider the budget for adoption that evening. Or they may decide what what? We're not, we're want to do more work. We would just get that that done before June 30th. Before I take questions, if you would please just allow me to thank people. This is a lot of work that Cabinet has
gone through and we started in January and they are so gracious I often say when we go through this work there's must haves and nice to haves and and the nice to haves are never a hot tub. They're never a trip to Disney World. If you looked at the nice to haves, they look all like things that we must have, but they are gracious. And giving up with one another. And Kathy Watts is one of the most
brilliant people I ever met and she has crafted this budget and I just can't thank her enough for her attention to detail and incredible way of putting this all together in a cohesive, understandable, healthy manner. And what what I enjoy about working with her is. We really do try to take that stewardship of dollars and she does that when she says, Becky, I don't think this is is you. That takes courage. And I just appreciate her and her integrity and
that she treats the money better than she would her own. Any questions for me? Director Yanez. My word, you did it again. You have a way of explaining really hard things that I actually understand them for today and then I'll ask you again. All right, I don't know how many exposures 1 needs to this to really get it, but as a small business owner owner myself, I watched General Liability Professional liability insurance rates go up 0 claims 19% last year, another 7 or 8% this year.
And when I don't know when that threshold is when you say enough shopping for for insurance is like shopping for a car. Yes, it's the worst. At what point you hit that threshold and is that something that you just actually look at every you do an analysis every so often because the story I keep hearing hearing is that's just an industry standard. That's what's happening right now, right? That's the answer you get. Claims are no claims, right? And So what you'll see is we we have about 160,000 budgeted. For that increase and those are the things that
that people say, why can't all of the new money go to salaries? Because we have some of those expenses that are not very exciting, like property insurance going up and those types of things. So just like with most of our RFPs, it will be soon we we work with a broker and we start to look at the companies again and we see and Pete Ristig is the one the executive Director for operations he. Whoa, what a brilliant man in terms of the insurance products
and all of that. I've learned a lot from him. So he'll go out to market again and he'll start to market and we have lots of different insurance from cybersecurity to educator liability, I mean there's a lot. And so that will get bid out again and making sure that we're getting the best products and the best coverage, so it's not only cheaper, it's what are the best products as well in terms of deductibles and all of those pieces and cybersecurity insurance has has skyrocketed because they're having to do so many payouts, it's difficult to even get
a plan. It is, and I tell you what, we have one of the best because we have Mrs. Kooser and Zach Mather and they have so many pieces in place. We now even have I'm not sharing anything that's confidential, but you know how you can have a security system in your home and if it goes off you get a phone call even at 2:00 AM. That's what we have for our security, for our security, for our our computers and all of that. They have such robust plans.
That companies are they want to work with us on that I just just talked about Arctic wolf. Arctic Wolf, that's the name it Arctic wolf. I said it's like a security system but but for the cyber and I we were talking about cyber insurance and how you have so many developed plans were seen as a not a terrible risk in that in that realm. Thank you for being continually diligent to to find ways to save. It's just it's it stands I am so proud and grateful
All right, roll call please. Mrs. Konz, aye. Mr. Wilburn, aye. Mrs. Yanez, aye. Mr. Salt, aye. Mrs. Shandy, aye. We need a motion to approve resolution to 18-25 approval of salaries for fiscal year 2025-2026. Moved. Second. Discussion, please. So just to clarify, on this you would be approving the salary package again not the whole budget, even though it's a significant piece but this is the timing that we look at that I put
this slide together. It's the same I just showed you So really no difference there, but it would be approving this. And then Mr. Smart and his team you saw saw attached, we gave you a document that gives you current salary schedules compared with the ones that would result result from these changes for next year. And so all of that then would be put into play if this is approve approved, the same thing. Any questions for me? All right, roll call, please. Mrs. Konze, aye. Mr. Wilburn, aye. Mrs. Yanez, aye. Mr.
Salt, aye. Mrs. Shandy, aye. All right, Mr. Belcher, how many people have signed up to speak in during public comment Section 2? We have 11 commenters this evening. OK, the board welcomes the comments of our community members. We greatly value all comments from the public, but in order to adhere to board policy and and accomplish the work ahead 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 exercise their speech rights responsibly
as they are personally responsible for any legal consequences attributable 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 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 4.04 comments will be curtailed if remarks or behavior becomes inappropriate the Board President may interrupt, warn, or terminate a speaker's statement that is unrelated to the business of school district inappropriate for K12 students, or disruptive to an orderly civil and productive meeting. Thank you for your cooperation. OK, this evening we're going to announce our speakers and then announce who's next on deck for the mic. Our on deck speaker is welcome to move up and sit in the front row, so they're ready to take the mic when called our
Our first commenter is Liz Wilcox, followed by Veronica Baker on deck. Good evening. My name is Liz Wilcox I live in ASD 20. Is this one on? Thank you. I have three children who graduated from ASD 20 schools and two grandchildren. One currently attends, the other will start in the fall. Tonight, let us rejoice Colorado is a state that believes in dignity and compassion for all of its inhabitants. On April 19th 2024. Tiara's law was passed. This law makes it
easier for transgender human beings. Who have committed felonies to legally change their names by adding gender identity to the list of acceptable reasons to request said name change. Several hate groups, such as Moms for Liberty, Lives of Tik T.O.K and Christian Nationalists including several churches in Colorado Springs lied to prevent this from passing their claim was that it would make the the felony record disappear. In fact, the record follows the felon by means of fingerprints.
And Social Security numbers, which do not change The only way for a person to change the past arrests arrests or convictions and have them deleted is to have their record expunged. This is a legal process with many steps and no guarantee that it will be approved. Let us rejoice on May 6th, 2020 at 10:15 PM, the Kelly Loving Act was was passed. It will move on to Governor Paulus's Desk for signature. Kelly Loving was a transgender human being who was
slaughtered in the Club Q massacre along with four other human beings. Another 25 were injured. Prior to this passing, there were numerous revisions and amendments, such as removing provisions that would have affected child custody decisions the most most controversial portion of the original bill This act provides greater clarity and greater production. Thank you. Your time has expired. Our next speaker is is Veronica Baker, followed by Thalia Navarro. Hello, my name is Veronica Baker, I'm a parent and
taxpayer here in District 20, and I'm here because I'm deeply concerned about the state of special education in our district. According to Colorado Department of Education there were 59 special education lawsuits filed across the state in 2024. District 20 accounted for eight of them, 14% of all cases statewide. That's not just a coincidence In fact, in 2023, The Gazette reported that the US Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation
into D20’s unusually high number of special education complaints. Instead of addressing these concerns, district leadership is making decisions that worsen the problem While most Colorado districts are struggling to fill special education roles, D20 is releasing dozens of experienced teachers and paraprofessionals at the same time. 15 district levels, special education administrators and their their support staff remain untouched without pay
cuts or accountability. These administrators often visit schools just twice a year. How can they make informed decisions about what students and teachers actually need? Paraprofessionals who make as little as $15,000 per year are the backbone of special education education classrooms, yet their jobs are being cut without them, student progress declines, behaviors increase, and and lawsuits rise. We're also losing, losing new and veteran special education. Educators because they lack the training and support they need.
Instead of hiring full time specialists, the district relies on contractors and online providers, which is ineffective for students needing speech, social or psychological support. We need change District 20 students deserve better and so do the the professionals who serve them. Thank you, my next speaker is Thalia Navarro, followed by Elizabeth Clay-Del Rio. Dear school board members, my name is Thalia Navarro and I'm an incoming senior at Rampart High School as well as the daughter of a
a resource teacher at Air Academy High. But I'm not here to talk about that. I'm not here to spend my 2 minutes berating you or threatening you with lawsuits. I'm going to spend my 2 minutes telling you a story. There was a girl at Rampart High School, let's call her Ruby. You can see her bouncing down the hallway everyday with a little red hair clip. Ruby red, of course she'll happily tell you that her grandmother gave it to her when she was just nine years old. She's been wearing it ever since. Ruby is full of dreams. She's full of of potential, full of hope, and naturally, full of energy. More energy than most. In fact, Ruby has an IEP
to help overcome the challenges of ADHD. Ruby bounces Ruby daydreams. Ruby questions. When am I ever going to need to know the mass of a helium atom? This is not really much different than any other kid, except that she needs help staying on task. A lot of help. As it turns out, Ruby is a paraprofessional. Accompany her to three of her classes every day to help her stay focused, to help her navigate her emotional complexities, and to help her understand the lesson once the chaos settles down. If you ask Ruby, she'll tell you that her para is a lifesaver, a mentor, and a friend. She'll tell you that she couldn't get through it all without her. Ruby was devastated to learn
that her para won't be coming back next year. See, her para was laid off after helping students like Ruby for the last decade. And Ruby's? Wasn't alone all of the resource pairs at at Rampart would let go, leaving Ruby and all the other kids like her in need next year the the skeleton crew that remains won't be able to build these pair of shoes. Paras are instrumental in holding up kids like Ruby so the world can see them shine. This is where you come in. What Ruby, and all the the shining controls like her, at her at the high school level need is your leadership. They don't just need you to ensure that they have the legally mandated resources, they need your helping
hand. Let them note that they are important to you. Let them know that their future is important to you have the power to save these paras and and with them, all those little rubies sparkling in the darkness, Don't let those lights go out. They need you. We need you. Give us all something to believe in and bring back. These paras. Thank you. Our next speaker is Elizabeth Clay-Del Rio, followed by Catherine Beasley. Hello, I'm Elizabeth. I have a lot of friends in the D20 system but I mainly come here here because I care deeply about the students and all that come together to support them and the way that I
I personally like to show that is just by playing here Thank you. I'm trying to do this off the cuff. Forgive me if I stumble. Father God, thank you for this day and for every single day. Father, today want to bring up the topic of excellence. It's been brought up a lot during this meeting Academic excellence is one of the the, I guess, big goals of this district. God but also, as was equally mentioned, education of the mind without education of the heart is
is not an education. So, Father, I just pray that in the pursuit of excellence that we would not leave behind well-being because these kids are our future and when we neglect these things at the earliest stages of life and continue to neglect them up through up until they're delivered into into adulthood, it produces a very broken society that has paper success and broken hearts all around. Lord, I don't want to live in a world like that. So Lord, let it start here. Let's start in these schools, please
help us to pursue emotional roundedness and well-being and not only academic success on paper. Thank you. In Jesus’ name, Amen. our next Dear school board members, my name is Catherine Beasley and I'm a taxpayer, a parent of four students, and a resource teacher in this district I am here to advocate for the students in light of the special education crisis in D20. I've worked as a licensed special education resource teacher at both Eagle View and Air Academy. In February, I was told that district reallocated funds and all resource
programs cut PARAs and qualified speed teachers D20 Speed and Budget Office have said there are no budget cuts but but rather a new reallocation process. This is not the truth. My position was not reallocated to another resource position at the secondary level. I was not offered another comparable job. My position as a full-time resource teacher at AIR Academy was cut, as well as that of two of our paras leaving the program with half of its staff That is not right. Our paraprofessional, Miss Jen, works hard for Air Academy students and has been serving D20 for over 14 years
Not only was she cut for next year, but is used frequently told that her choices are to become maybe a para an elementary elementary SSN, or. Or leave like like D20 speed is setting up students for failure, setting up teachers to leave and and risking lawsuits from parents. Paras are essential to the resource department, providing academic support, implementing accommodations, and building trusted relationships that drive student engagement and growth. Their role is vital to both academic and emotional development and any any reduction would directly harm students ability to thrive. I respectfully
urge the OR the school board to one form a committee to to review recent budget decisions and staff reductions affecting. SPED and paraprofessionals to collaborate with SPED staff and evaluate each school program individually, recognizing their unique needs and three revised the budget to ensure that at least one paraprofessional per program district wide supporting special education students and retaining qualified speed teachers depends on on providing the staffing and resources that they require. Thank you
Our next speaker is Karyn Guevara followed by Kat Gayle. Hi, I'm Karyn Guevara. I'm a D20 parent and a resident. For those of you who aren't aware, a beloved Rampart High School teacher passed away on Saturday. My daughter had him as a teacher twice and was devastated when we got the news. Mr Kazuk taught my daughter's least favorite subject, but she loved his class because of, excuse me, because of him, his knowledge of and enthusiasm for history helped grab her attention
and keep her interested. She literally screamed with excitement when when she saw his name on her class schedule this year. In addition to being a fabulous teacher, Andrew Kazuk was a dedicated Rampart alumni. His passing is a profound loss for our community. I'd also like to share my deep appreciation for our principal, Meghan Sanders. She handled this very difficult situation with such care and concern for Rampart students and staff. She alerted parents right away so that we could decide
how and when to share the news with our kids. She also called in D20's care team. And they were at Rampart providing support all day Monday. My daughter cried throughout the day Sunday and was really struggling with going to school on Monday. Fortunately, she was able to utilize the care team services and came home in much better shape and better able to process the the significant loss. While this is teacher appreciation week and I am so thankful for the wonderful teachers we've had the pleasure of working with over the years.
I am also incredibly grateful for the members of D20's care team and our school counselors, for all that they do for our kids, our students and families benefit so much from their knowledge and expertise. Our next speaker is Kat Gayle, followed by Emily Von. Allah Akbar today I say thank you to the incredible teachers and administration and staff who have taught, supported and mentored my son from kindergarten at Da Vinci through Eagle View to Air
Academy High School and the village. It's very appropriate that Teachers Appreciation Week is this week because we appreciate those teachers. Some of those teachers have become friends of mine and I hope that they will remain in his life as well. In political philosophy and democracy, a government's legitimacy and right to power come with the consent of the governed. This board seems to have forgotten that they are accountable to us. First, public comment decreased from three minutes to two, then the sign up for public comment went from being
open until 4:00 to being open until 1:00. Those of us with small children who need to run them to school, it's almost impossible to find the time to sign up. Then you went on to change the meetings from 2 a month to one a month With no meeting in July. You ran for these positions. Yes, you were volunteers, but a lot of people spent a lot of money to get you elected and you knew going into this that this was a very important, time-consuming job. I would like you to reconsider the one meeting
a month and also no meetings in July there's a huge turnover in staff and students, especially in a military town like this when people are getting last minute orders. There are decisions that need to be made. And you need to make them and the the public needs to be able to have a part of this. Again, thank you to the incredible teachers, staff and administrators at ASD 20, their security guards that even know know me by name and not because I'm causing trouble. Alhamdulillah. Our next speaker is Emily
Von, followed by Richard Brown. Hello, my name is Emily and while I had something else prepared, I'm using my time to address a procedural violation violation that occurred earlier in this meeting, specifically, President Shandy unilaterally removed agenda item 11 BA written report after the agenda had already been approved by this board. Beyond being deeply disrespectful to the staff member who waited here for two hours to present. The action directly violates Robert's Rules of Order. Once adopted, an agenda can only be changed by
a motion, a second, and a majority vote of the board. No individual, including the board president, has the authority authority to remove agenda items on their own. President Shandy, I understand that you're new in this role and you may not have had time to review the Robert's Rule of Order the exact same book that you recommended to others a few weeks ago, but Mr. Salt and Ms Thompson Do you know you guys do know better and I expect that that you guys to uphold the rules of order and correct this misstep beyond the procedural concern, let me be clear, this kind of unilateral action
exposes the Board to potential legal consequences especially when it suppresses scheduled and approved reports. It is a violation of both internal governance in the Colorado Colorado's open meeting law. This board is already under legal scrutiny Additional violations like this only increase the risk of litigation and the misuse of taxpayers dollars. I urge the Board to immediately correct this violation by reinstating item 11B on tonight's agenda and addressing it before adjournment. Our next speaker is Richard Brown followed by Bernadette Guthrie. I just want to start by expressing my gratitude and appreciation for
you guys. I've been coming here since I think September and this is is a wild environment. I got to say. Not one anybody would like to invite upon themselves, yet you do it. So I might agree with some of you and not agree with all of you at all times, but I definitely appreciate all your hard work up here. It's easy to throw complaints and accusations and not offer solutions and just complain from this side, but over the last few months I've heard many different detailed meetings of you guys expressing the concerns the the teachers, the. And what you're doing to help thrive this community in this district. So my children
go to New Summit and I'm truly grateful for that school and their teachers and the fact that they have a sign on the school that says, “parents know best”. It's hard to understand because some of the complaints are very valid of needing a special Ed a foundation where we can build upon instead of it keep collapsing and hurting these kids in need. So what I'm gonna do tonight is invite just praying over you guys and for the need to fill that role Heavenly Father, thank you so much for today and all that you give to to us and times of calamity and conflict and difficulty. May we remember that our battle is not against the flesh and blood, Lord, that there
are things going on in the Heavenly realms that are beyond us and that we are called to to love each person here. Not conditionally, or when we like to, but unconditionally as Christ loved us. Lord, the concern for the special Ed department and the need to have valuable and reliable teachers and resources available. We pray for that, Lord. That you are opening up the doors, preparing the right people to fill these roles, getting the wrong people out, and even though there can be uncertainty and be unsure of why things are changing, we know that You can work all things for Your glory. So, I just pray Your blessing
over this team up here of the board. Lord God, that you would continue to give them wisdom and direction. That they wouldn't listen to the hate, but instead listen to your love Lord Lord Holy Spirit, bless them and guide them. In Jesus mighty name we pray. Amen Our next speaker is Bernadette Guthrie, followed by Jennifer Stites. If we truly appreciate teachers and staff, then our actions, not just our words, must reflect that appreciation means means supporting the people and programs that strengthen public education That means we need our cabinet members working closely with legislators to fight for fair funding and support bills that protect
kids. And it means supporting elected officials who stand for the values of public education, not those prioritizing partisan politics their own religion, or personal agendas. I recently downloaded and analyzed every board member application. Through AI used objective criteria aligned with D20's own vision and values. Hands-on district involvement, alignment with public school priorities, effort put into the application, and any red flags or conflicts of interest It was telling applicants who ranked dead last on merit were at the top of some of your
lists. That should concern every one of us. Let me be clear. As I told Mr. Assault last year, our teachers will not survive another politically charged, hateful election cycle. They will not tolerate propaganda stepped into their mailboxes spewing lies about what happens in their classroom and who they are as people. That kind of rhetoric is pushing good educators out of this district. If you truly support the teachers and staff of D20, show them because lip service, cringe worthy videos and pay increases that
that don't even cover their benefit hikes are not appreciation, they're an insult. With the rest of my time, I'd like to specifically thank the incredible educators that have made a huge impact on my kid’s hearts and lives. I know I'm going to miss some names, but Renee Castro Riley Bomberger Radiocratic, Christy Hilton, Beth Podall, Pat Shoemaker, BJ Campbell, Coach Harris Elena Mann, Eric Dalastasi, Ariel Hull, Jennifer Richardson, Liam McFadden, Connor Reeves, Lindsay Duncan, Chelsea Vitoni, Tracy Tracy Schneider and Samantha Pasternak. You have loved and supported my babies through so many moments big
and small, happy and sad, have ignited their love for learning and and exemplified the district's values every day. Thank you. Jennifer, are you in the room? That's our final speaker. Thank you, Superintendent Haberer, do you have any clarification or next steps? I do not. All right, happy birthday to Ms. Nicole Conz on May 17th. Happy birthday. And happy birthday to Colonel Stallworth on May 24th. if you can pass this down, that would be awesome. We won't sing to you, so with our
business this evening focused on activities that promote and honor our mission statement, our belief statements and our global end statements that remind us all that all all students will have the knowledge, skills and character necessary for successful, successful transition to the next level And upon graduation, we'll be fully prepared for success. Did the board hear information tonight that would require the review or revision of a policy? Ends 1.2. We talked about reviewing. Did the board hear information tonight that would require a new policy? Did the board hear information tonight that the board would like to include on
a future agenda? Director Konz, if you'll indulge me, Ms Shandy. So, Speaking of a future agenda item 11B on our agenda tonight was a written report which we all reviewed at length since we've received our board packet and that was not removed in itself. We addressed it just like every other written report, but pertaining to your question right now
all you did was because that whole group of textbooks as singular unit would have normally gone on next month's consent agenda, all you did was request a modification to next month agenda that all the other books minus the National Geographic would remain. On the consent agenda to be voted on and you just requested pertaining to the written report that we did go over that
that the National Geographic books would become a decision item next month. Is that accurate? That is correct, OK thank you. Director Yanez, So does that mean that we will meet like in a study session to discuss that one particular choice or we get a presentation on that? How are we moving forward with that? I believe it's a discussion item on the agenda. It's a discussion with discussion. A decision item with discussion. All right, there are 32 people on the live stream. There is no executive session
tonight. This meeting is adjourned.