Alright. I'm gonna go ahead and call the meeting to order. Start with roll call. Director Anyanwuabo? Here. Director Assad Lucas? Here. Director Battistelli? Here. Director Goldstein? Here. Director Marsh Holshin? K. I'll entertain a motion to approve the agenda. So moved. Second. Director Anyanwuabo. Aye. Director Assad Lucas. Aye. Director Battistelli. Aye. Director Goldstein. Aye. Okay. Rise if you are able to for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America, to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Okay. Superintendent update. So earlier tonight, we spent some time in work session talking about the latest with Thunder Vista, which remains probably the biggest issue, the heaviest weight that we're working through as a leadership team, not only in this building, but with leaders throughout the system. Challenging circumstance. I think word's now out on the street that we're not gonna be able to return to Thunder Vista this semester due to some fixes that still need to happen in that building with the electrical system to make it safe and to prevent recurrence of similar circumstances down the road.
So that's challenging, not the answer we wanted, but it's the answer that we need, to move forward with. And we're committed to getting that school fixed up in a high quality way and open for business in the fall. So that's the biggest thing going on in the system now. We'll be back in the space, many of us on Friday evening to talk to the Thunder Vista community about the why behind that, answer more questions, and see what we need to do to make this longer transition than we hoped work well for kids, families, and community. Beyond that, the legislative session is up and running as one of our colleagues knows
firsthand. Spent some time last Friday speaking to a joint hearing of the Senate and House Education Committees and the theme was around school funding and finance. I was part of a panel along with the CFO from Douglas County and the CFO from Steamboat Springs talking about funding issues. And the themes that I talked about included number one, acknowledgment that the state's in a tough budget situation. This is the third time they're gonna have to make big cuts to the budget in the last twelve months. They cut about a billion dollars last spring, as my recollection, they cut close to
a billion dollars in a special session in August or September after the big beautiful bill. And the most recent estimates I've seen is for an eight fifty million dollars cut for 2627. And so part of my remarks was acknowledgment that the state's been in tough times before, has made reductions to k 12. I hope that they won't make reductions to k 12 this time, but if they do, I hope that they're transparent and communicating what's going on. I think one of the challenges that I identified in my remarks is that the
governor continues to talk about how Colorado is fully funding k 12 education, and I think that's highly misleading, confusing, not accurate given that we've got two independent studies submitted to the legislature in late twenty twenty three at their request. Finding the state underfunds public education in the state by 3.4 to $4,100,000,000 a year. I think it's misleading given the huge increases in the levy overrides that have transpired over the last seven to ten years in particular, but over the last thirty years,
more broadly, where overrides have gone from 7.5% of what you might get under the School Finance Act to more than 40% of an add on in communities like Boulder. And so those kinds of things wouldn't be happening if we had a fully funded system of k 12. And then there's a lot of communities that have sales tax measures in place, whether it's Aspen, Steamboat, Woodland Park, Montrose. Lots of communities are finding ways outside of the School Finance Act and state funding to get their systems better resourced so that they can compensate staff appropriately and provide
programming that people want us to provide. So that was one of the themes. There's a lot of, concern raised by all of us that day about a proposal the governor released the night before calling for changes in how we count students and fund school districts when they are declining on enrollment, which is true of about 150 plus of the 178 school districts in the state are declining on enrollment right now. A couple years ago, we had five year averaging, that went to four year averaging
for this year. It's contemplated it would go to three years next year and hopefully indefinitely stay at three years and the governor's proposed to reduce that to two years and has also proposed that some of the specific ownership tax that we collect when people buy and license their boats, their cars, their RVs, Right now there's about $8,100,000 of that, that the governor wants to snag away from us and from other school districts that generate those, revenues off of levies, assessed from a levy overrides and bonds and instead apply
that toward the School Finance Act formula and count it toward the local share. It would be a cut to us and it would be a cut to all but 20 districts in the state is my understanding of the analysis that Gina has done. For us, it would be an $8,100,000 cut. I think statewide, it'd be a $220,000,000 plus cut. So we spoke against, that proposal that day. We talked about the misinformation that gets circulated by the governor and allies about in
declining enrollment. He claims that we are funding phantom students and we walked through some practical examples of how you balance your budget when you're declining an enrollment and often you're not in a position to cut teachers, especially at elementary without having unacceptable class sizes. So I guess if there's an overriding theme, it's like we just want the governor and the legislature to be honest in their messaging and the fully funded phantom students, we can take your SOT and put it in a different column and not call it a cut, is all a bunch of, gamesmanship that misleads our communities about the
needs that we have, and that was a big theme that day. We'll look at opportunities for our broader community to to weigh in with their perspective about these proposed changes. And I'm sure this session, I will be spending a lot of time at the legislature and with, others down there trying to avoid those kinds of changes which would be very harmful to our district. That's it for now. Thank you, Chris. Alright. Board of Education comments, recognitions, awards, and vision. We'll start with, Ike. Thank you, President Goldstein.
Just wanna say welcome back to the new year. Hope everyone had a relaxing and safe holiday break. Three things I'd like to to talk about. One, to the Thunder Vista community. It's incredibly unfortunate what has happened. We see you. We hear you, and, we support you fully. Number two, I've had a chance to start visiting schools in District 3. I'm gonna be at Horizon on Friday, and I will be at Rocky Top tomorrow. And last week, I was at Silver Creek. I had a chance to it was kind of a homecoming because three of my
four kids have graduated from Silver Creek. All four will go to Horizon, for instance, that sort of thing. So, principal Oliver, welcomed me into the school, and it was a great opportunity to catch up with, all the teachers there. I sat in on a performance monitoring exercise, which was really good to see how data and collaboration is being used to support our kids. Number three, I had a chance to go to the Adams twelve Honor Band concert about two weeks ago. My youngest son actually played French horn.
And, let me tell you, our kids are amazing. After only two days, all these kids from different schools, high school and middle school, were able to be playing like they've been playing together for weeks and months on end. It was it was wonderful to see and wonderful to listen to. And obviously I was proud of my boy. I I could tell you I'm a STEM person. I I think everyone knows that. But I I think that, if anything, with the educators who are supporting the kids, got them playing together, principal Fleeman opening up Horizon High School, band director Tim Daly,
and band director, Duran. Those guys are amazing. And and quite frankly, I think that, we could use a few more musicians, artists, and and writers in our society. And I think right here in Adams twelve, we give our kids that opportunity, through through what we provide, and I think we should continue to provide it. So, again, it was a wonderful day, and, thank you, yeah, for for all that you guys do. That's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you. Mhmm. Paula?
So I would like to wish everyone a belated Martin Luther King birthday. Congratulate or happiness, I guess, is the right word. And then I always wanna try to share a a good quote. This is from his strength in love or strength to love, book, and it's one of my favorite. Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, and only love can do that. And I like to try to center, a quote on, you know, important holidays like
that so we remember what the focus should be. I wanna thank the Thunder Vista community for your patience. I know this has really been trying, but I also wanna emphasize that the number one goal is always student and staff safety. And I listening into the conversations, that's what what I've been hearing is the centering of that above all else. I visited Seller Elementary School last Friday, and, unfortunately, I didn't get to hang out with the kids like I usually do, but I had a great conversation with principal
Buck. And I would like to share some of her highlights, that she really wanted to celebrate with everyone about Stellar Elementary. They continue their data continues to be above average, high achieving, particularly with their English, emergent bilingual student population. They have set up a system where their teams have time together each week, and they know that during a given month, they'll get to touch base with all of the various stakeholders. The teachers will meet with the learning, learning support services, the emergent bilingual educators, and
so on and so forth. They had a fantastic cultural night, and they also offered a family fun afternoon. They are looking forward to their one book, one school. They're going to do that for the first time this year, and I suggested The Wild Robot. And if you agree with me, you can write to them and tell them you second it, but that is a fabulous book. That's stellar? Yeah. That's stellar. And, yeah, it's just it it's always wonderful to get in there and hear what's going on and what their their concerns are. Final items. We met with the certified Classified.
Or I'm sorry. Classified staff, whoever whispered that. Thank you. A week or two ago. I can't even remember at this point. And it was a wonderful meeting. I always appreciate their candor and honesty about, the areas of opportunity that they've identified, and I I take those to heart. And finally, I love going to that band performance that it seems like since I got back from break, I'm always a day late and a dollar short. That is my mantra for the month. And so I realized fifteen minutes before, and that is always a really popular concert.
And I just realized, oh, there's no way I'm gonna get a seat at this point. So, I didn't get to attend this year. But thank you. And the reason I asked on the school is because a couple years ago, Cherry Drive did the wild robot. Yeah. And were you on the board then? I may have been. And they had somebody dress up as a wild robot. It was it was kind of fun. Because now when we read a chapter We each read a chapter. Yeah. They used to have us read a chapter and they'd piece it together. Alright. Director Sal Lucas. Good evening, everyone, and thank you for being here this evening, in person or online.
I hope everyone had a nice winter break and holiday season. So as it was has been shared, we met with this, CSEA representative board representatives last Wednesday. I really always enjoy that meeting. Good to hear of what, is working, what we can do better as a system, what we can do differently, and it's also always centered around how we best serve students. And, what I really appreciate too is just getting to hear the stories, but I
always look at the theme of how they focus on relationships and just the the relationships are all of our staff built with kids and how meaningful they are, in so many different ways. And, you know, one of the stories I shared is something that seems really, minimal, but is actually huge for some kids. But my youngest has sensory stuff, and the, nutritional services staff at elementary school knows
that. I've I've never shared that. They probably learned the hard way. But, anyway, they know that. And so when something's on the menu that I might have forgot to pack his lunch, they will support him in that. But, again, that that happens across our district in so many ways between our classrooms, custodial, preschool, transportation, maintenance, base, pee, all of it. And so thank you everyone for all that you do to ensure our kids get
served the way that they deserve. I also wanna give a big shout out to all the staff, you know, here at the admin, to school leadership, to educators, again, and to support staff, to classified staff, with the Thunder Vista situation. The community, families, students, everyone has come together so well and worked so collaboratively, make this, you know, make a really hard situation as smooth as possible.
And so, thank you to everybody. And, again, just going back to how relationships matter, I think just the relationship that school has built with those kids, the district has built with their staff, has this is it's showing right now. So great work. Again, serving kids the best, way possible in the in the way that they deserve. That's really, I think, my big things for the past couple weeks. I'm still trying to transition from getting my life together from break and holidays and
the craziness of that. So, hopefully, I will have it somewhat together by next time and be able to share about going into some schools. So thanks everyone, and have a great evening. Thank you. Back at the January when school started, I got to go to, Thornton Middle School and hang out with the, English language teachers, looking at how they're implementing their new curriculum. And they they have been doing a lot of great things there.
It's been real helpful for them. They have a very impacted student body, and it really helps to have the structure from this curriculum to help them. So I got to spend time with them. And then, I have to say I went to my negotiations for the last time on that following, Wednesday. I am going to be stepping back from a lot of my, not responsibilities. There's nothing that says I have to do what I've been doing. I just enjoy doing what I've been doing.
But, I do have a new job, and that is I am the legislature representing House District 29 at the Capitol. So, you know, it's kind of that in between thing with this and the board. I'm committed to the Adams twelve school district still, and I'm not running out the door quite yet. But, just to let you know, it might be a little harder to get a hold of me, or at least pin me down. So anyway, that's what's new with me. I'm not on the Education Committee, in case you're wondering. I'd love to be on the Education Committee, but two things.
One, it was kind of full already because I did come in kind of late. I'm replacing representative Shannon Byrd. And the other thing is that I'm not giving up my role on the school board. They feel it's a conflict of interest but that doesn't mean I can fight like, you know what, for you guys for public education down at this dayhouse. And it's going to be a spicy season, to say the least. I kind of hope that maybe I have a little bit more say because I am down there. I also just want to put out also to the Thunder Vista community and the
staff and the district staff and the families on how I'm so appreciative, how everybody's pulled together to deal with a difficult situation. It's, you know, we get difficult situations every once in a while in AMS twelve, and I feel like, because of past experiences and how we handle that, I think it has been handled to the best that it could be. Not the outcome we want, but there are things that are just beyond our control. So, my thanks goes out to all of you. And that's all I have. Now we are on to general comment.
Public comment. Good evening. The board welcomes public comment to learn about the preferences and concerns of the Adams twelve five star community. Each speaker will have three minutes. Please use the microphone and state your name and city of residence before beginning your comments. Please give any handouts or information you would like to share with the board to Ryan Parker. A three minute timer will be set for each speaker. Please keep an eye on the timer and kindly conclude your remarks when your time has expired. Our first speaker tonight is Jason Herman. Microphone here. Mhmm. Hi. My name is, Jason Herman.
I'm an electives teacher at, at Horizon High School. And, I've come I've come to talk about, our electives programs, and a lot of others, have come as well. Our concern is that we're losing electives, teachers, and programs, at our comprehensive high schools. And it's it's been happening, you know, quite a bit over the last, last few years. Of course, we know where a district have declining enrollment, so that's, of course, gonna be part of the attrition. But, we also see that each year, we continue to offer more and more CTE
classes. Sometimes, they're classes that we actually offer already in the conference of high schools. So, that that's, that's a that's a very big concern to us. I, for example, I'm currently teaching I have five preps right now just to maintain a full time position, and it's exhausting. I, I I love teaching. I love what I do, but it's really exhausting. I literally have no time to do anything but plan. But I'm just, like so many other teachers, so many other elective teachers, I should say, just trying to scramble to to to maintain a full time position. Like I said, it it it's very difficult when you hear that we're district of
declining enrollment and we keep adding classes, sometimes duplicate classes. And I know I've talked to, I've talked to some people in this room about this before, several of you, and, I just figured I'd do it in a little more official capacity tonight, but it's it's very difficult. This is a sleepless time for electives teachers at the conference of high schools. We lose sleep for probably three months. I had a lot of my colleagues that couldn't make it. And to be honest, some were afraid to come, you know, for various reasons, to
to kind of express their feelings. And, I kinda lost track of what I was saying here. But, you know, tomorrow, it it it and it's and it's hard because tomorrow, Thursday and Friday, we're gonna watch, most of those of us at Horizon High School, we're gonna watch the the FutureForward staff come in, set up their table, and essentially tell our the students at our school, the students we love, the students we work with every day, don't take your electives here, take them over here. I mean, they don't say exactly that, but that's the message in a nutshell. And it's very frustrating because we don't have that ability.
We can't go and recruit students. We we we get our hands slapped if we even try to go into a middle school. And it just it's incredibly it it's just a terrible feeling to feel that we are so supported by our school. I'm so so supported by Horizon. Our staff is amazing. Our Our administrators are amazing. The people that I get to work with every day are amazing. We just don't feel the support from our district. And it it it's it's extremely frustrating. And I just I really don't know how else we should feel when we just see this happen the last three or four years. So, so, like I said, just wanna come here and say that in more official
capacity. Thank you. Thank you, Jason. I'll just lay this thing down. I forget where I took it out. Our next speaker is, Leanne Terrada. Hi. I'm Leanne Terrada. I am a former Spanish teacher at Horizon High School, and I'm currently an instructional coach. First of all, I'd like to congratulate Chris on your award. So proud that you represent us at our district. And I would like to acknowledge that Jason is actually an award winner. He will be receiving an award next month for excellence in teaching at the Colorado Congress for foreign language, language teachers. And I just wanted to acknowledge that because he is an award winning educator who
takes students every other year to Germany and has built up a program that cannot sustain him having a full time role. And that is why he's teaching world history this year. It is very difficult for our teachers to maintain this level of quality. Our programming in the theater, for example, We have a reputation for the best shows. You come to our show, this is what people pay big money to go see other places, and our students are putting on a fantastic show with the help of
our staff. And our theater teacher is concerned that she's not going to be able to to rebuild her program. She's concerned about, just funding, and not being able to continue at the same quality. She was not able to be here because they're in the middle of rehearsals for Cinderella. There is a lot happening for our teachers, our business teachers. We had our teacher retire. They were not able to, continue his role. So our two business teachers are really doing the work of three business teachers plus the computer science teacher. It is a very difficult time.
We have a great, administrator. Erica Fleeman has really supported the work of electives, but we are still not able to do the type of work that needs to be done. They were able to hire an art teacher and at the same time, you know, part time. And and people are afraid of their jobs. It's I mean, it's only January and people do not know what this will mean. My moving into an instructional coach really saved the department because it is declining enrollment. It is a very difficult time.
And I do want to say that the way it's structured in terms of scheduling, does affect the way our students have, can take electives, and we are automatically dropped out of the scheduling because they have to have that hour to go. They have to have the hour to come back. They're barely eating their lunch, rushing to another class. And who gets dropped? Is there a conversation with the student? It really, is affecting us in a big way. And when I walk around classrooms, our classes are the ones where students are moving,
they're laughing, they're interacting, They're having skills. Spanish, German, and French are skills that is really university work. It's one of the only classes that from level one, you're actually getting credit because our students skip out of other classes because they're building proficiency and developing competencies for the at the global level. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Leigh. Our next speaker is Ginger Zancanella. Bon soir. I am French teacher at Horizon High School with my fabulous colleagues.
I'm Ginger Zankanella. I've been with the district for twenty three years. I'll focus on the past, the present, and the future. So the past, when I got hired by the district, I came into a thriving world language department, 12 Spanish teachers, three French teachers, three German teachers. I was promised a career, a lifelong career. I stayed with you for twenty years so I could earn my stipend. And now I'm twenty three years in, and I'm looking at not having a full time job. I've got four preps, as Jason does, and now I've already been told that I
probably will not have a full time job next year. So I must take on something else. Should I become licensed and certified in something else? I'm a 52 year old, twenty three year teacher. Do you want me to go back to school? Do you want me to put more money into my education? I've already put thousands of dollars into becoming high highly qualified so I could teach Spanish. And now that was taken away from me. So now I'm only certified to teach French. I'm not going back to school. I can't afford it. So now, I'm looking at, what am I gonna do? I'm nowhere near retirement.
What's my future gonna be? So I thrive. I try to do my program. I currently run the French National Honor Society. I'm hosting the French immersion program next week on the twenty seventh at here at the ESC. All the French teachers are bringing our kids here to compete. So, again, we're trying to build our program. I'm also running a trip to Paris and Barcelona. I do whatever I can. I'm always at the school. And here, I'm looking I'm being told, you don't have a future. You all are telling me that I don't have a future with Horizon High School. Where am I supposed to go?
Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Wendy Dre. Thank you. Good evening. I just wanted to echo some of the sentiments expressed by my colleagues tonight on the matter of CTE. I wanna start by saying I, I'm not here to bad mouth CTE. I really, value and respect CTCE programs. In fact, myself in high school, I benefited, from an occupational work experience program that truly got me through high school. I've had family members benefit from CTE programs, and I've seen students benefit greatly as
well. So I don't want to, in any way, diminish the work that they're doing. I think it's very valuable, and we should continue to support that. However, I do feel that CTE programs and enrollment are, best serving our students and the community when they're targeted when they're targeted to, students who need them, who can benefit from them, and mostly students who, if it's pursuing some kind of a certification or a career trajectory, rather than, say, taking electives that are offered in our buildings,
at another school or, when kids take the three pass the two passing periods and they're gone three, three periods of the day, it makes it very difficult for students to fit things like electives into their classrooms. And I personally, obviously, highly value electives as as a German language instructor at Legacy High School. However, that, my my German studies truly shaped the whole trajectory of my future. I didn't even know that I liked German. I didn't know I I even cared about it, that I that I would someday
speak German. It wasn't something that ever even dawned on me. And then it altered the the entire course of my future, and I think that's the value of electives is that students sign up for something thinking, that sounds neat. That sounds interesting. Let's see what that is. And it can radically alter the course of their life. They can find a new passion that they never knew that they had. And for me, that's something that was truly life altering. I have students from Legacy who have, who've gone on our exchange program and made lifelong friends. I have kids who continue to go back and stay with their original host families.
I have, kids who have enrolled in a program to get their bachelor's degree for free in Germany. I just had my first of those program to get their bachelor's degree for free in Germany. I just had my first of those students graduate recently with his bachelor's degree in economics for free. Zero tuition, he paid, and stayed in Germany because he loved it so much. And I have two others who are now in Germany preparing to start their bachelor's, studies for free. And this is something that those students would never have, had on their radar had they not opted to take an elective. Wow. German, that sounds different. I think I'll give that a try.
They would never have had that experience. So I think it's very important that we continue to support our electives while finding a balance with CTE to make it work so that it doesn't impact our livelihoods as well. Thank you. Thank you. Our final speaker is Deanna, Guswin. Good evening. I'm extremely proud of my colleagues, but I am going to read a little bit and probably add a little bit more. Just wanna make sure that I'm very succinct tonight. Good mem good morning. Good evening, members of the board. First, I wanna thank you all for letting me speak tonight, but also, for your
service on the board. My name is Deanna Guzman. I am a professional school counselor at Horizon High School. I joined Adams twelve in the year 2000 and spent my first two years at Thornton High School teaching science. I then moved over to Shadow Ridge Middle School, taught eighth grade science and math, and I opened that school for three years, then moved over, made my way home to Horizon High School in 2006. Taught fifteen years of science there, and then moved over into a school counseling position about six years ago. As a school counselor, I support my students at three general domains. That is academic development, social and emotional well-being, and then, career exploration, which is why
we're here tonight. Excuse me. What I have noticed recently or have seen is a significant and widespread shift in educational offerings away from our college preparatory models towards CTE concentrated offerings. I'm not here to speak, again, like some of my colleagues have said, negatively about CTE. I know the data. The data is good. I know that students who attempt one or more concurrent enrollment credits in high school are dramatically more likely, excuse me, to matriculate to college within one year after graduation.
Okay. I also know that nearly seventy nine percent of students graduating okay. This is not real. Sorry. I'm just gonna talk freely. There we go. This is gonna be better. Basically, the biggest thing that I am noticing is the messaging that we're sending and the students that are in those pathways. We have students that are college bound students who are entering in those pathways, and then they are getting pigeonholed in those pathways. We have students who are not being able to get into those pathways, who are
want to get into those pathways. CTE is designed for trades. Those trades are for students to learn skills and then get employment right out of high school. Some of those CTE trades that are there that are enticing a lot of our students are not serving that. There's a lot of our students who want very good example, because I wanna make sure I talk about examples, is I have students that are in the EMT and the, the, firefighting pathways. They cannot secure employment until they're 21.
So we're not really serving those students. They're not getting directly into the college pathway or the the trade pathway. I really messed this up y'all, I'm sorry. The second big piece of it, and I know I'm running out of time, is that our college bound students, way too often are they taking these programs. K? They are taking these programs as their elective. One big thing that they are missing in this is their world language. If they are college bound or college bound students, they need a world language. They are now missing that and they're having to pay extra for that when they go into college.
K? So we're setting them up for not having to I'm sorry. That your time has expired. Alright. Thank you. So Lori, if I can, I just wanna jump in and share a little bit of, my current thinking as I listen to all of, the comments made here today? I think one of the pieces that doesn't seem to be understood that's driving this because I think the issues I hear, being raised here today, I hear being raised in communities throughout our state and by other superintendents. Our state for this group of freshmen or maybe it's this year of sophomores has mandated as a graduation requirement that you either have, a CTE credential or you have
twelve hours of concurrent enrollment. The CTE credential needs to be in a high demand industry, is the other caveat to that. Or the third piece to meet this requirement is to have a relevant work based learning experience. The latter one I'll just say is very time intensive in terms of marrying kids with an employer who can give them a relevant work based experience. So I think what a lot of districts are doing are trying to find ways to meet this new state requirement that we either need to get kids up to at least 12 concurrent, enrollment credits, by the time there's graduating seniors or we've gotta
get them a CTE credential in the high demand industry. That's a state requirement and I think a lot of districts are struggling with that. I do, wanna dig into this issue deeper with you all because I feel like even with that mandate, I'm concerned about hearing about things like duplication of programs and I wonder, why that's happening, where that's happening, and if there's opportunities to change that. I also think it reinforces some of what I was saying on the front end, which is we're, we're getting squeezed a lot of ways right now in Adams Twelve,
not just Adams Twelve, but other districts in the state. Several of you mentioned declining enrollment and that definitely complicates the equation. We thought we'd be down four fifty kids this year. We're down thirteen fifty students. We get $11,770 per student and so when you're bleeding out 900 more than you thought, it's a huge financial impact. We project we'll be down another 800 next year. And so we're gonna have to balance our budget for next year based upon 1,700 fewer kids than what our budget last year was planned around.
So that's a challenge. We also with our override felt like the most important place to invest was in competitive compensation for staff given that we're next to last in our regional market for staff. And I feel like that's a commitment that we can't back away from. If we do that, we're gonna have other challenges that come similar to what you've described here in terms of people wanting to come and to stay. So a lot of our investment in this Milleavy Override Program, as you know, is around CTE and compensation. And it's because of state pressure and requirements and market realities that we have been
only above 27 JN compensation in this regional market and we can't allow that to sustain. If we go down the path of what the governor proposes which is to take $8,100,000 of SOT money out of the mix and we go from three year averaging to two year averaging, all of those things become even more difficult to solve and having the right balance for our kids because the electives are very much an important part of a student's experience for a whole lot of reasons. Whether it's getting them ready for college requirements and not having to take a makeup
class or remedial class, just having breadth of experience for many of our students. The one and only time they'll have that chance is in high school and we don't want that to be lost. We don't want high quality educators, to be employed less than full time and having to seek out other jobs because of that. But it is a complicated piece to solve. One of my next steps will be, to huddle up with our high school principals, not as the last step but as a starting step just to get more insight about some of these scheduling issues you're talking about.
I frankly wasn't aware that there had been so much fragmentation in terms of some of the classes you're teaching and having four or five preps. So it's helpful learning for me. I wanna work with others to see what we can do to mitigate some of these impacts you're talking about. And at the same time, I just wanna acknowledge it's a complicated puzzle because of all these other financial pressures, enrollment pressures, and state requirements. Thank you. Thank you guys for being here and sharing your experience. Okay. Onto, board committee liaison reports.
DAC? Thank you, president Goldstein. DAC had a meeting, this, last week. I was unable to attend, but I did get the minutes from the meeting, and I can take the team through, the current updates. Number one, within the SAC work stream, the SAC principal survey is nearly 100%, submitted back from the principal. So we have had a great response rate. So I wanna thank all the principals, for responding to the request, to to fill out the surveys and and to submit them.
This will be really very helpful for for the SAC team and for the for for DAC in general, obviously. Number two, the UIP work stream, has really good DAC representation. We have at least three members going to to meetings currently, ICM and ILT meetings. So that's really good to see. And finally, number three, the spending priorities work stream. The draft of the 2526, SACS spending survey is currently being reviewed by the team, with a release date of January 28 planned release date.
So progress is being made. Looking forward to the next meeting and ongoing progress. Thank you. Thank you. FAC is, Alexis Marshholschen, and she is not here. LRPAC, I was unable to attend, but I can give you an idea of some of the things that were talked about based on the minutes. There was a Thunder Vista fire update. There's some renovations going on at our pool, the BMAC, and, talked about the furniture projects and new construction, talked about, what's gonna be done this summer in terms of
construction and the timeline for the kickoff for the 2026 design and 2027 construction, IT and finance, and, that was the two hours. We'll talk a little bit later about moving forward what our committees look like. Yep. So I just wanna let you know one of those items that Laurie referenced will be coming back to you for more education and then likely for action later this spring, and that's improvements at VMAC. We have a group that, is passionate about playing underwater hockey at the highest levels
and there are certain conditions that have to be present in terms of the pool to perform in those kinds of competitions and they're interested in donating, multimillion, dollars to make some improvements to that pool that will allow them to do their thing, will support our renovation needs of the facility, will actually reduce how often we have to redo some things there because right now, we know the pool deck and the bottom of that pool is well beyond its useful life and there's lots of patching. But it's, it's unusual and complicated, sort of arrangement for us.
But we also feel like after investigating it thoroughly that it's something, that we feel like can hold together. So there'll be more information coming to you likely in the months ahead about that. Thank you. On to monitoring reports. I will entertain a motion to acknowledge that the board has received a monitoring report as of 01/21/2026 for the period 07/01/2024 through 06/30/2025, and finds the superintendent's interpretations are reasonable and supported by data that is relevant, justified, and complete.
So moved. Second. And I need to say it was the internal monitoring report for Operating Limitations Policy 2.9 Charter Schools. Ms. Madago. Sorry. No worries. We're all good. Okay. Hi, everyone. Hi. I'm Audrey Monaco. I'm the director of Charter Partnerships. And last month, our charter liaison for special populations, Kellyanne, Scott, and I presented to you regarding the changes to our internal monitoring processes, and also the way that we are reporting this data to you, the Board, as well as the public.
During that presentation, we, gave an overview of our STAR report as well as our annual report template. Today I'm here to present the monitoring report 2.9, which is part of that annual reporting process. And those annual report templates are part of this monitoring report. Annual or monitoring report 2.9 is meant to inform you, the board as well as the public, of our charter school compliance and performance for the previous year. So in this case, school year 2425.
And I want to note that much of this monitoring report is actually the same as in years past, with the addition of some more information on our internal in our internal monitoring systems. So an overview of some of the things that have remained the same. The charter schools have the same process for accessing our district policies, and they are notified in the same ways of new policies or any updated policies. They also have been granted waivers through their to some of our district policies, that
include replacement plans. And these are granted through that renewal process and contract adoption. For this monitoring report period, the charter schools have followed district policy as well as the replacement plans outlined in those waivers. Additionally, last year, New America Thornton was the only charter who participated in the renewal process. They were granted a two year renewal, and they also had additional requirements outlined in their attachment 11 to their contract. The school also requested district waivers, and they are included in their finalized contract attachments.
All of our other charter schools are currently and last year serving, their five year contract term. The section of monitoring report 2.9 that is a little different, and updated is the, section in regard to our monitoring processes of the charter office. The highlights of that, we did implement Anvilar's web based software, which is a centralized hub for our charter schools to submit their, required reports. And district staff and charter staff can see in real time their compliance with all
of those reports. This year you might have heard us mention ReportWell. It is the same same type of software. Charter schools are submitting their reports to us, and we are both able to see on district side and school side, in real time if they're complying with those required report deadlines. And I wanna note that, ReportWell does have integration with Google Calendar as well as Microsoft Outlook, and that has been a big game changer in our schools meeting a
lot of those deadlines. Just the software in general has really supported that process. The other parts that, have been implemented, we are a team of two now. We have myself as the director as well as Kelly Ann, our charter liaison, and bringing that charter liaison on. She has done an excellent job of, creating a pathway to notify schools when there are reports that are due special population specific as well as internal deadlines that they
need to meet. And her monthly monitoring processes have really helped the charters maintain a compliance in those special populations areas. We also wanted to note the STAR process was finalized last year and published, as well as the annual report template that you saw in December. And you will see again linked in monitoring report 2.9 tonight. The annual reports for each of our four charter schools are linked in the monitoring report, and they really focused on the school overview, which is our first section.
We wanted to really highlight what makes this charter school unique and different from other Adams twelve schools. We also wanted to give an overview of what the school population looks like to show their accessibility to the community as well as their commitment to diversity. We really focused on three big buckets educational performance, operational performance, and financial performance. I do want to note that Stargate Prospect Ridge and Westgate Community School their templates
look very similar. You will notice that New America's educational performance section does look a little bit different. And this is due to the fact that they are an alternative education campus. There you'll notice there is a lot of, SPF data that is reported in that section. And because they are a AEC, they have additional metrics, so some of their charts look a little bit different. And we've tried to really intentionally explain that difference in the descriptions in the annual
report. When you look at the educational performance section of the annual report, you'll notice that the first slide has indicators. Each section educational, operational and financial has a corresponding rubric that helped our office answer, those indicators. If an indicator is marked in yellow, it should have a corresponding comment as to why there is a finding. And I will say that for school year 2425 the only areas for our four charter schools that you might see a comment is in that educational performance section.
And if there is a comment, the, the issue has been resolved in school year 2425. So the operational sections as well as the financial sections did not have any significant findings. The operational section really looks at the governance reporting, staff credentialing, and how well the schools are complying with safety, standards for facilities as well as health and safety and security. None of our schools had any significant concerns in those areas.
And then our financial sections look at short term metrics and how they're doing in real time as well as long term metrics and how they are, sustaining that financial viability. And, based on, the analysis that our finance department did of the school's audits, we did not find any significant findings in the financial section either. So I did wanna highlight that, those new reports are linked in there. If you have any questions or any concerns that you, would like some answers to,
feel free to reach out to myself, or to Beau, and we can definitely provide you those answers. Does anybody have any questions about monitoring report 2.9? I guess not. Okay. Thank you. Director Anyanwu Weibo. Aye. Director Assad Lucas. Aye. Director Battistelli. Aye. Director Goldstein. Aye. Okay. Internal monitoring report operating limitations policy 2.5 asset protection. I will entertain a motion to acknowledge that the board has received a monitoring report
as of 01/21/2026 for the period 07/01/2024 through 06/30/2025 and finds the superintendent's interpretations are reasonable and supported by data that is relevant, justified and complete. So moved. Second. Ms. Bratt. Alright. Thanks for having me. I'm Molly Brandt. I'm honored to serve as your chief operating officer, and I'm here to talk about our monitoring report 2.5, asset protection. As part of the 2.5 board policy, the items we're really gonna go through is items around ensuring the district,
adequately maintaining our district facilities, equipment, technology infrastructure, etcetera. We're gonna talk a little bit about purchasing policies, protecting property, and, develop or approval processes for purchases exceeding 500,000. That is kind of the overview of the key points of this board policy. The board policy has 10, different subcategories that I'll review. Our monitoring period, similar to the last monitoring report, was last school year.
So that is July 2024 through 06/30/2025. Alright. So the first one second. The first policy, is that we shall not fail to ensure against theft and casualty loss of property owned or used by the district, and we shall not fail to ensure and indemnify against liability losses to board members, staff, and organization itself. Happy to report both of these items are within compliance of our monitoring port. We have insurance policies and replace and policies in place, and we have policies that
cover board members, staff, and organizations for acts of different litigation settlements and judgments against them. Under board policy two point five point two, this is the only item of the 10 items covered in this policy that is out of compliance. You are aware of this from I came to a board study with Margie Ammon, our director of facility design, and we talked through, the reason for this. I'll explain it, shortly today as well and our plans since that meeting, of how
we will identify a pathway forward. So this is, the projected cost of total deferred maintenance shall not exceed 10% of the total value of district facilities replacement costs. So, currently, the amount of deferred maintenance exceeds 20% of the cost of replacement of all of our district facilities, so therefore exceeding our limit established in this policy currently under two point five point two. The reason for this is that, a couple things.
First, data. The cost to replace district facilities is coming in just over $2,000,000,000, as estimated by our VFA facility software. The software also estimates our deferred maintenance cost to be 400 just over 440,000,000, which equates to a percentage of 20.81%. That exceeds the 10%. Some historical data since 2022, we have been out of compliance, every year averaging, that percentage between 1214%.
This year, it jumped to 20%. The the reason for that is because this is the first year reporting data out of our VFA software system. In all the prior years, we were reporting out of a system called CostLab, and the difference between the two systems that account for this jump in percentage that you see is twofold. One, there's different methodologies that BFA has assumptions within its software. The inclusion of soft cost is one of those, which was not a part of
our, cost lab that will increase the deferred maintenance amount. It's also, all inclusive system based approach for several systems rather than a component approach. So, cost lab was a component approach, meaning it's the, air handler unit as its singular piece. And that's what CostLab used to do for years prior. Current year and moving forward, it's going to take that systemness into and say the cost of the unit itself plus the items in which you need for the duct
work, etcetera, for that unit to work. So it gives a more accurate picture. The other reason that our, precedence has jumped with the switch to VFA is that we also were able to take a really good look at what we've been putting in CostLab asset wise, and there were things we did not track in CostLab that we are tracking currently in VFA to give us a more accurate picture of our true deferred maintenance. This includes things like, but aren't limited to, like landscaping elements, irrigation, playgrounds, scoreboards, dugouts,
storage buildings, other items that we have brought into our district as assets. So with that, I promise the board as we met, back in November, early December, that we would do a few things to create a pathway forward. We hope to come back to you in the spring with some recommendations. So far, we have, talked to our LRPAC committee, our FAT committee, about this, two point five point two, got the recommendations on some pass forward.
I've also joined a subgroup of our LRPAC committees to and we are going to, in February, put three options of new language in front of them to get feedback. With that, we'll also go back to LRPAC and FAC before we come to you in the spring with a recommendation. So that'll be the plan for getting us in compliance in that area. Molly, can I jump in on this one? I'm just mindful about, the training we just did this weekend on policy governance. And part of what what I added at the end is that if you're hearing
about noncompliance in a monitoring report, there's three reasons. Three possible reasons. One is that you have an aspirational policy, that's not really achievable or reasonably achievable under the circumstances. The second is that you could have an interpretation of what constitutes compliance that is higher than it needs to be to meet the board's expectations that staff has developed. And then the third is that you've got a performance problem with staff. When I think about those lenses on this issue that Molly's raised, I would submit that this isn't a performance issue at all.
We know that education in Colorado is badly underfunded by studies that show 3.4 to $4,100,000,000 a year underfunded. For us, it's anywhere from, if we were fully funded, a 17% to a 71 increase in annual funding under those studies. So we don't have enough money under the system to take care of all of what we want to do, need to do, whether it's maintaining, electives, sections and teachers in the way that we once did or in taking care of all of the
aging parts of our buildings in the timely schedule that, facilities folks might recommend. And at the same time, we've kind of pushed our foot to the metal in terms of bond issues over the last, from 2016 to 2014, we've brought in over $1,000,000,000 in, capital to not only, build a few facilities, but largely to take care of things that exist. So I don't believe it's a performance issue to the extent it would be. I think it's only because we don't have sufficient revenue to meet all these expectations
and that requires either legislative support or voter approval and, we just don't have the resources we need. On the interpretation part, I would submit that our prior use of CostLab probably created a misleading data set that, wasn't really accurate in terms of dealing with all of our assets, as Molly said, and really talking about what truly needs to happen when you have things beyond end of life and your parts and pieces. The expenses tend to be much greater than what I think CostLab estimated.
So I would say if there's an interpretation problem, it's looking backwards and using a tool that probably wasn't as robust as it needed to be and I think we have now solved for that and VFA gives us more accurate reliable data. And so then the top piece is whether this is an aspirational policy and I believe as it's written now, given what I've just outlined, what I know to be true about our efforts to take care of things and the challenges that I know are true in other districts, I do think it's aspirational and it'll be helpful to
have, some recommendations from this committee work to bring before you to see if we can get something that I think is more dialed in and realistic that you can hold us accountable to. Thank you, Chris. The other part of, section two point five point two that is in compliance is, that our fun our plant maintenance fund is, kept to a maximum of 3%. We are currently under that at 0.096% of total replacement costs. That fund sits in the cap reserve fund is about $2,000,000 So on, this one,
I'm gonna jump in and add a little bit of, explanation too because my sense is from the training that there's interest, and maybe revisiting more of the board's policies that haven't been changed for a while. The history behind that provision is that there was a tension, between what our business services leadership would advocate for, where they often felt like they were under resourced and underfunded, and that the learning services side of the house always got all the new money and all the love and attention. So they advocated pretty strong with the board to say, you need to make sure
that we can hold on to our money if we don't spend it each year and put it in a contingency fund before learning services persuades the superintendent to give it to them instead. So that was that side of the discussion. And on the other side, there were some board members who worried that we would hide and hoard and put too much money in the facility piece and not invest enough in teaching, learning compensation and other parts. So in the end, they struck this balance of a maximum of 3% to kinda balance those competing interest. For two point five point three, we shall not fail to maintain the plant with
due care in a manner that ensures facilities are open 99% of available instructional hours. Happy to report that the district's performance during this monitoring period complied with that statement. We did have one moment with Rocky Top Middle in which during this monitoring period we did release kids, about eight minutes early from their scheduled bell time that was not due to not maintaining the plant, but instead behaviors of students' fleshing materials through our system that we needed to, come and snake.
So that is what happened there. And this is one that next year, given the Thunder Vista incident, we'll have to think thoughtfully about the words in this policy. We we don't wanna be gaming this, and making it sound like we have compliance if we don't under the terms of the policy and the interpretation. But just as I think about it at first blush, really the the trigger language in there is fail to maintain. I think our view is it was failed to be designed and constructed appropriately. And so where does the locus of responsibility fall?
You may find us coming back and saying, we still re report compliance even though kids were out for a week at Thunder Vista before going to their new four schools. If we land there, I think it's gonna be because of that wording and whose responsibility really is it in the end. For 2.5.4, we shall not fail to maintain equipment and information technology infrastructure with due care. We complied with 2.5.4. All CDE required school transportation vehicle inspections were completed prior to transporting students, and everything
was compliant through CDE's threshold requirements. In addition, our, core information technology systems had an uptime of 99% or more. For two point five point two, we are also compliant. Shall not make a purchase, wherein protections have not been given against conflict of interest. We have, policies in place to protect against conflict of interest, ensuring methods and processes for competitive procurement as well. There are known policy violations or anything reported, during this time frame. Two point five point six shall not fail to protect against intellectual, property.
We had no loss or damage with regard to our district's intellectual property during this monitoring period and therefore complied. Under two point five point seven, shall not fail to provide periodic procurement reports to enable our board members to monitor purchases, vendors, and trends. As per past reporting, we, in the same essence, we, reported compliance in this area. This is an area we want to strengthen going forward. Gina Lanier, chief financial officer, and myself have been talking through what that might look like. She is utilizing, the DAC to I'm sorry, the FAC to run some ideas about
what periodic reports might be, drafted and put in front of you for, your feedback of how you might like to see this going forward. So do expect that in this monitoring period, so probably this spring. Under two point five point eight, we shall not fail to obtain board approval for property rule otherwise, in excess of $500,000 that is not already budgeted and or a part of a bond implementation or override plan. We complied with this. There were two purchases that exceeded the $500,000, mark, and that is one, Thunder Vista
repairs for their utilities underground, and the other one was Northglenn High School's 80 a, upgrades for their parking lot and a few, other places within their building. Both of those came to the board and were approved via decision information reports. 2.5.9, we shall not acquire property. Of all the bullets that you see on the screen, the district did comply with 2.5.9, and we did not acquire property during this monitoring period. Same thing with two point five point ten, but relinquishing property, and we did not or we did comply with two point five point ten as we did not relinquish
any property during the monitoring period. And with that, I'll take any questions. Any questions? Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Director Anyanwu Weibo. Aye. Director Assad Lucas. Aye. Director Battistelli. Aye. Director Goldstein. Aye. Thank you, Molly. Thanks, Molly. Okay. Onto board business, the amended fiscal year twenty twenty five, twenty twenty six budget and appropriations resolution. I will entertain a motion to to adopt the amended fiscal year twenty twenty five, twenty twenty six budget and appropriations resolution as presented.
So moved. Second. Hi, Gina. Good evening, board. The computer almost won. Alright. So, on the agenda tonight, we're gonna do a quick review of the finance calendar as it relates mostly to budget. There's a couple items on there. We're not gonna go over all of it. Don't worry. We're gonna talk again about school finance act calculation, the impact of increases in AV to our budget, fiscal year twenty five twenty six amended budget highlights, some other updates, and looking forward to fiscal year twenty six twenty seven. As we go through, please, feel free to stop me and ask questions.
I'm happy to do so, and I expect Chris will love to provide commentary along the way, as is our custom. So, again, not gonna go through this entirely. This starts in July and the slide goes through December. Really the the highlight I wanna make is the finance team in the district where we you know, Aaron calls it the ABCs of budgeting. We're always budgeting constantly. And so this, perhaps, this particular cycle, the amended budget, is a, an opportunity the
district has to update the did I say adopted? The amended budget. It's an opportunity to update the adopted budget you all approved back in June. Back in June, we didn't know our funded pupil count. We didn't know the state revenue. We didn't know our property taxes. There were a lot of things we didn't know back then, and so we didn't know our beginning fund balance. And so this is an opportunity for us to go ahead and adjust the budget based on what we do know now. So as you can tell, we're here tonight for the amended budget approval. And then, after hopefully, after this week, we're gonna start really diving in, as a
cabinet team and district on the fiscal year 2627 budget. This is a reminder about what the New School Finance Act funding looks like. While it looks on the surface more complicated than the old one, it's actually way more simple. You can see this is added it added it added it additive, instead of multiplicative, which the old finance act is. In the, so right now, if you ask me, do you know what's our funded pupil count? I think I make everyone crazy by saying, tell me more about what you want
to know, because I could answer that in a several different ways. And so we have the funded pupil count that is used in the old School Finance Act. That's five year averaging. Then we have the funded pupil count in the new school finance act. Both of them are used to calculate our funding. The new one does four year averaging this year. And then there's the phase in period. And so, with and we'll talk more about that in a second. So what I wanna remind you is as enrollment eventually stabilizes, the benefit of averaging
will eventually disappear. Now, of course, we had hoped it would stabilize a little sooner than it is appearing to, but eventually, as we get to a more stable number, we stop losing the benefit of averaging. And so, continued the the School Finance Act. So the way it works is we take the School Finance Act of 1994, that has the five year averaging, and then we add the difference between the new School Finance Act and the old school finance act.
This year, we multiply it by 15%, and that gives us our fiscal year 2526 total program funding. Here's a little visual of what averaging looks like and how it impacts our funded count. And so the bar portion of the graph is our October count funded number. Now that doesn't have any averaging, so that's our straight up number of kids that are enrolled in the district who count towards being funded. And then the green line, which is the one that's a little bit higher for
most years, that's the difference between the benefit of averaging and that October count number. So you can see in, if I'm angled correctly, twenty five twenty six that was a that's a really big gap. Right? For your averaging, you can see that gap gets smaller. So that's the difference between the benefit we're getting. And you can see, like we talked about, as our enrollment stabilizes, and these are, of course, projections, if I could tell the future, I would probably be doing something
else. Just kidding. I love this. Anyway, you can see that that benefit starts to go away. And I anticipate next year, we will add another line that shows the benefit of three year averaging because I think it's important for you all to have that visual of how that impacts what we're funded. I know you guys probably are tired of me talking about this, but I I just think it's really important to just do that reminder. Our revenue as a district is really not impacted by our assessed valuations.
So the School Finance Act, we are required to levy 27 mills. Whatever that 27 mills generates is applied towards our total program, and the difference is what the state backfills through the state the state share the state equalization. Then we have our mill levy override. For the nineteen ninety one to 2,008 mills, we generate 35,400,000.0. What that means is if AV goes up, the number of mills we, assess our homeowners goes down. If if, assessed valuation were to go down, then the number of mills we have
to charge go up. At the end of the day, we generate 35,400,000.0. The 2,018 mill is a little different. That one gets to grow by inflation. And then the $20.25 is a fixed mill, which means that one, if AV goes up, we will capture additional revenue. If it goes down, we capture less revenue. So just a little reminder there. Okay. Now why you're really here. So the, general fund 2526 budget amendment, some of the highlights are that our beginning
fund balance was adjusted and increased from what we had put in the adopted budget by $8,200,000. Most of that increase is a result of higher than expected interest earnings. We rose the budget, and it still came in higher than we had anticipated. And so that accounted, for a a portion of it. And then while we're doing the amended budget, we're projecting how much do we think will, need to be encumbered that's encumbered for this year. So those are obligations we've made to buy items that don't come in by June
30. So we make an estimate based on history and trends. Unfortunately, if they don't come in by June 30, they have to be expenses in the next year. And so some that came in higher than we had thought. So that's the bulk of the change in fund balance. And then when we look at revenue, as you would expect, our $20.25 mill levy override passing increases our budgeted revenue by $39,400,000 and then we also made some small adjustments to, state and local grants, some SOT, abatements, and other revenue to
get to that 47,300,000.0 increase in revenue. Our budgeted expenditures grew by 23,700,000.0, and I have a list of where that can all be found. A lot of it, again, is a result of the way the encumbrances worked. And so all that together, when you do the math, our budgeted ending fund balance for the general fund, 06/30/2026, grew by 31,800,000.0. And here is a summary of what our adopted budget looks like compared to our
amended budget looks like for projected ending fund balance. So the the area I wanna highlight the most is unassigned fund balance. So board policy requires that our unassigned fund balance be no less than 4% and no greater than 8% of general fund revenue. That number is approximately 5%. So we've been holding steady at 4% for a bit, and now we're around 5%. So still within board policy. And for me, I think that's a healthy place to be with all the uncertainty we have going on.
So I just wanna check. I think seeing fund balance grow by $31,800,000 Just given the public comment that we had before, some might say, what the heck are you doing? Are you making unnecessary cuts and why is that happening? I really feel like the explanation you gave on the prior page is that frankly, the biggest game changer is that we pass the override. And there's $39,400,000 coming in the door. And if it weren't for that, it wouldn't be going up by 31.8. It would be going in the red. That is correct. That was a very good, explanation.
And you can see the bulk of the increase to fund balances in unassigned that 30.6 million- that is the- the- made up primarily there were some other changes. But the primary change was that increase of money that we don't believe can be spent by June 30 for the 2025 mill that passed. Those monies are set aside for work that supports what the voters approved. It could be I mean, it's possible that some of that could be tapped into.
We don't think that it will, and it will likely be spent down in the next couple years. Alright. Moving on to other funds. So each of the funds, we adjusted the beginning fund balance based on the results of our audit, that was presented to you back in November. On the bond redemption fund, we also adjusted the revenue to reflect the property tax revenue once the mills were certified. We now know that number, and so we adjusted that as well as updated the investment earnings forecast in the budget.
And then for the building fund, that's where we spend our bond proceeds. We adjusted for the investment earnings and, what we believe is going to happen for expenditures throughout the rest of the fiscal year. We are projecting that the fund balance as of June 30 will be about 61,300,000.0 for the bond fund. Okay. So if you don't have questions about the specific amended budget right now, I wanna give some highlights around legislative action. So as you all are probably aware, the, General Assembly be, convened on January 14,
and, they are full steam ahead. So we will be watching that closely, and you will, I'm sure, be receiving updates along the way. The inflation rate was released gosh, I think that was last Monday, but it could've been Tuesday, came in at 2.3%. As late as late December, we were learning from the state economist that they thought it was gonna come in at 2.5 percent. And prior to that, the governor's budget proposal had it at 2.6%.
So while point two or point 3% feels like a small number, it has a pretty big impact on the revenue forecast in the way it flows through the School finance act. So we've adjusted our, our projections on what funding will look like for next year. So just it's it's smaller than smaller than we were thinking, and it's a it's a tough two sides of the coin challenge with inflation. It's better for us to be lower. But from a funding standpoint, it benefits us benefits us if it's higher.
So, there's that piece. And then we will not know if the triggers for the School Finance Act moving forward with I call it 1448. You may hear it as thirteen two thirteen twenty. I probably need to just call it the New School Finance Act because this year, it'll have a new number. And so the triggers that could pause it won't be known until the March economic forecast, which is usually around the middle of the month. So just to add a little bit more there, I think, the fork in the road that Gina's alluding to based on these triggers is that the legislature will either
be, in a place of saying this new school finance act, which provides more funding for multilingual learners, for special needs students, and for at risk students measured by poverty. They'll either be in a space of saying economic conditions aren't good enough under those triggers, to increase the weights and the implementation of that new act. And so we'll be at 15% implementation another year and use four year enrollment averaging for declining enrollment districts. If none of those triggers are activated, then they're on track unless they change the
law, which I think they can always do that too, to implement, fourteen forty eight, the new finance act at 30% and go to three year averaging. That's correct. And there was a presentation last week that the, they're not projecting that there's going to be a need to pause, but we won't know until the March economic forecast is out. Looking forward to 2627, I already mentioned that inflation is is going to have a very minimal increase in our per pupil, our base per pupil funding.
You've been shared, you've, it's already been shared tonight that we are declining in enrollment. We're projecting to be down another 800 enrolled kiddos, and that will absolutely impact our revenue. Just like the state, we will be looking forward to the economic forecast in March because it does help us in, in the budgeting process. And then I'm pretty sure you have heard about the governor's proposal to shift a portion of the SOT, specific ownership tax to be completely local share.
Whereas today, we're we're able to keep a component of that around 8,100,000.0 as additional revenue to the district. So we will be watching that very closely. And again, I feel like, a lot of what I'm saying, I always think about Ike when I'm saying it, but, I think there's a number of folks who, are newer to the board and may not have heard this. Roughly speaking, when you look at the salary and benefits of an average teacher in Adam's twelve, that's a $100,000 a year. So if you have an $8,100,000 loss in SOT funding, that's 81 teachers.
I think that's just a good way of trying to put into perspective what it means. That is correct. And some key takeaways, the the difference between averaging and the benefit of or the benefit of averaging in our actual, that is gonna continue to decline. It's gonna cause our revenue to continue to go down. The increases that we're seeing in different areas, the cost to do different programming, those expenses continue to go up. And the uncertainty I feel like I say this every year or every time I
talk about budget. There's just so much uncertainty around what the state will do, what the, federal government will do, and, the different impacts that it will have on the district. Many of my colleagues are calling if there needs to be a cut to k 12. Don't do it from SOT. Reinstitute the budget stabilization factor. And so that is something that we can keep track of. We can apply equally to districts rather than a disproportionate, impact across different districts.
So the change in averaging, SOT, those are just examples of you're impacting specific districts and it's not being the the budget shortfall is not being equally distributed among other districts. So, very challenging. We will continue to monitor the impacts of federal action as well, and that's where I think having that unassigned fund balance in a range maybe a little higher than the 4% is helpful because I think about this past summer where there was so
much uncertainty around different title funds and whatnot. We have to make decisions before we know what's going to happen, and having that cushion to keep us, in a good place is important. If I can jump in on that. Today, G and I were both part of a webinar that was placed, put on by CASE, which is a school executives group. And there was a person from AASA, the American Association of School Administrators on the call too, who's really familiar with lots of federal legislation. And beyond everything we've shared, I think there's a lot of worry about a part
of the big beautiful bill that allows people to get up to a $1,700 a year tax credit by making donations to scholarship granting organizations that in turn, send those revenues on to private schools primarily is the risk and concern that people were talking about. I think there's a lot of worry that, Governor Polis is going to opt Colorado into that program, one of the few governors in the country that I think is planning to and especially to do it sooner rather than later it seems.
And so playing that out a couple of steps, there's worries that starting in the twenty seven, twenty eight school year, you might see further erosions to public school enrollment because other folks will use the $1,700 tax credit, maybe outside organizations make contributions to, and there will be more and more financial support or incentives for kids to seek out private school options. So just another part of the mix. So that's the end of my presentation. What questions do you all have? Any questions? I always have a lot of questions, but they tend to be more existential.
Like, why? No. Why is the state funding formula this way? But, I I guess what I would say is that it's nice to see some some padding this time around, and I'm really grateful to those people who voted yes on the mill levy override for that reason. It's nice to be on the the up instead of the down. Think of it as a life jacket. And a one time fund life jacket. TBD. Okay. Any other comments, questions? Okay. We'll go ahead. Director Anyanwuabo. Aye. Director Assad Lucas.
Aye. Director Battistelli. Aye. Director Goldstein. Aye. Okay. On to beginning fund balance for the fiscal year amended fiscal year twenty twenty five twenty twenty six beginning fund balance resolution. I will entertain a motion to adopt the amended fiscal year twenty twenty five twenty twenty six beginning fund balance resolution as presented. So moved. Second. Okay. And, we already got the presentation on it. Director Ananya Uwebel. Aye. Director Saad director Saad Lucas. Aye.
Director Battistelli. Aye. Director Goldstein. Aye. Onto, Incline Energy Oil and Gas lease agreement. I will entertain a motion to accept the conditions of the Oil and Gas lease agreement with Incline Energy three LLC as presented. So moved. Second. Hello, miss Shannon. Hello. Hello. Good evening, board. I'm happy to be here tonight for my first official board meeting as your new general counsel. Welcome. Thank you. So I thought it'd be helpful to provide an overview of what's contained in this
lease and the reasons why our outside counsel, Matt Sura, who is an oil and gas attorney, has recommended that the board approve this lease. So we asked, Mr. Sura to work on negotiating a better lease, with with better terms for the district. We received an initial offer from a different company for $4,000 an acre and a
bonus payment of $36,476 with an 18% royalty. With mister Sura's help, the offer that's that's proposed in the lease tonight is from Incline Energy for $11,500 an acre, which is a bonus a bonus payment, which totals a $104,868.47, a 20% royalty, and much better terms in for protecting the district's interests.
There's two options if the board decides not to approve this this lease. We if we don't lease our minerals, then we end up being force pulled. Mister Sur doesn't recommend that we be force pulled because first and foremost, we'll lose out on this bonus payment. Second, we become an unwilling partner in the oil and gas industry. So for those reasons, he's recommended that the board approve this lease offer, and I
would entertain any questions that you have for me. So no matter what we decide or how we support it, it's gonna happen one way or the other. Correct. The way the way, state law is. You did mention on this most recent, Incline Energy, Is that the right name? Okay. Yes. That there were better terms for it. And I think I did see something to the effect of that. We could leave that relationship more easily if we needed to.
Is that correct? Correct. On the new on the lease. Yeah. On this new yeah. And as Amira said, it's sort of either get force pulled and find yourself a partner in the oil and gas industry or do a lease. Those are the options. Correct. And I just wanna put it out there. The last time this the board, the Adams Tool board discussed this was the month before I was sworn in. So I and I was there, so I at least heard it. And there was a lot of angst about, and, what direction the board should go
in terms of this. And they chose to go Forest Pool. And, at the time, there was a lot of public comment and a lot of, feedback given from the community. And, I believe this is the same pad that was discussed seven six years ago over by Silver Creek Elementary. And, there's nobody here tonight. There's nobody that's contacted me. I don't know if anybody's contacted the rest of the board. And I have to say, I visited a fracking site a couple months ago with
Civitas, which I believe is the company that is doing this, and they showed me around. And they showed me really well, how their operation works and the safety precautions that they have and the monitoring that they have, and it's a pretty well run operation with what I felt was a, environmentally conscious approach. And this, you know, since the last time that our board discussed this, there's been a legislation that's mandated a lot of, safety and environmentally protect, communities.
And, it's sad that you know, we as a school district have to rely on, money and sometimes some of us have a hard time subconsciously approving. But, you know, here we are talking about cutting $8,000,000 and so, you know, this is money, and the the industry is willing to do this. And there are bad actors in the oil and gas industry, but I don't see the ones that hear as that at all. And so it's just, you know, you have to think of it in terms of,
you know, what are we doing with our fiduciary responsibility of whatever money. And this is gonna happen with or without our approval. I mean, so, I don't know. Is there anybody else that has anything to say? Yeah. That was that's what I was gonna say. If we're gonna be forced into something, might as well financially benefit from it for our schools and kids and yeah. Yeah. I I remember speaking, about six years ago. It wasn't at a board meeting, but I think it was at maybe, just Adam's
twelve general meeting, where we got our licenses renewed. And, my kids were at Silver Creek at the time. And I remember speaking out against it. After I did that, I did talk to colleagues who were civil engineers. Actually, in preparation of this decision, I spoke with colleagues who were civil engineers and said, what do you think about oil and gas? This is the situation. They gave me some basic questions to ask, but they said, I could there there are always risk in everything, but oil and gas is is very good about reducing
the risk and managing the risk. And that's what you wanna make sure that they can do. And so based on your due diligence in base, Laurie, on on your visiting Simmental, I I think that, they've I'm sorry. I'm sure that they've they have a good risk management process in place, in regards to health and safety. So if there are any questions, I'm sure we'll get them and we can revisit that through an audit, that sort of thing, bringing them in and speaking to us in the community. Okay. Director Anyanwu Weibo? Aye. Director Assad Lucas? Aye. Director Battistelli?
Aye. Director Goldstein? Aye. Thank you, Kathy. Yeah. Thanks. And thanks to Matt Sura for his work on this too. Okay. Next is the action item, proclamation Black History Month. I will entertain a motion to adopt the proclamation declaring February 2026 as Black History Month and Adams twelve five star schools as presented. So moved. Second. This is something we do every year. And then sometimes somebody comes and talks. But I think we all, you know, coming off the heels of Martin Luther King Day, understand the importance of honoring diversity in this district and to continuing to honor
diversity in this district. So I wholeheartedly recommend this. Director Anyanwu Weibo. Aye. Director Assad Lucas. Aye. Director Battistelli. Aye. Director Goldstein. Aye. Onto board liaison roles. We are going to review the liaison roles for for the district accountability committee, the finance and audit committee, the long range planning committee, and also, the bargaining team. And, because I'm going to be stepping back from some of my, activities and and others have offered to step up, I appreciate that.
I believe with the district accountability committee because of his experience with the deck, Ike has agreed to assume those duties. We're gonna do a little shuffling here. As far as we know, director Marsh Holshon is going to stay on the finance and audit committee. And because I'm stepping back, from my long range planning, I believe Amira is going to step up on that. And then, Paula, I believe, is going to, learn how to be a interest based bargainer. And are you staying on the deck?
No. Due to time constraints. Okay. Alright. And, we talked about other there's other commit committees that our district, supports, but these are the ones that are actually board committees that we feel we need to have a liaison for. So, there's really no vote here. Any other comments? Okay. On to the next. I will enter the minutes. I will entertain a motion to adopt the minutes of the regular board meeting of 12/17/2025 as presented. So moved. Second. Comments? Questions? Director Anyanwuemu?
Aye. Director Asad Lucas? Aye. Director Battistelli? Aye. Director Goldstein? Aye. Consent agenda personnel actions. I will entertain a motion to approve the personnel actions as presented. So moved. Second. Go ahead. Director Anyanwuewebo. Aye. Director Assad Lucas. Aye. Director Battistelli? Aye. Director Goldston? Aye. Alright. Future agenda items. February 4 is a special community engagement board meeting. It'll be here, and I believe the invitations have been going out to the community to encourage and invite them to come and meet with us.
February 9, we'll meet with DTA like we do every year. I talked to, the president of DTA, Steve Lash, and he'll, he has ideas on the questions. Record. I said, You know, I've been coming to a lot of these meetings over the years, both sides of the equation. I said And I understand, you know, the concerns that teachers bring up, because they do every time. I said, This time, if they brought a couple of solutions to the table, along with their concerns, I think that would be very, encouraging for them to do that.
And then, our next regular board meeting is February 18. Is there any comments or questions?