Can I go? Yes, ma'am. Alright. I'm gonna call the Adams School Board of Education meeting to order for 12/01/2025. Director Assad Lucas? I director Batticelli? I director Goldstein? Here. Director Marsh Holshin? Oh, oh, here. Here. Present. Director Goldstein. You are Here. You. Director Marsh Holshin? Here. Director Potter? Here. Alright. I will enter now I will entertain a motion to approve the agenda. So moved. Second. Director Assad Lucas? Now it's aye. Director Batticelli? Aye. Director Goldstein? Aye. Director Marsh Holshin?
Aye. Director Potter? Aye. K. I'm going to recommend a motion to recess for an executive oh, recommend yeah. To recess for an executive session to discuss the acquisition of real estate near the Thornton High School campus known as 9201 Washington Street, and to receive legal advice regarding the condemnation process pursuant to board policies two point zero, general operating limitations and 2.5, asset protection, Colorado revised statute 20 four-six-four 24 a and b and two, to receive
legal advice regarding executive sessions and the Colorado Open Records Act, CORA, pursuant to board policy four zero one governing style and Colorado revised statute twenty four point six point four zero two four b. So moved. Second. Director Assad Lucas. Aye. Director Battistelli. Aye. Director Goldstein. Aye. Director Marsh Holshin. Aye. Director Potter. Aye. K. We are in executive session. Hello. Hello. Looking sharp. Got a good back to school picture today. Yeah. Okay. No. That's Right.
Yes. I can't be treacherous. So either I I cannot take on one more thing. I think we turned up the heat from where it was World's fastest.
World's fastest. Oh, here's a seltzer. Was it really? I was in heels. I don't do heels. Is everybody's microphone off? Mine's? Oh, mine's on. Right now. Alright. We are reconvened in public on to board business. First thing is the oath of office. We have with us tonight, Judge Tony Wayman. And the oath of office will be administered to Ike Ananwuibo, director of district three, and Amirasad Lucas, director district four. Adams And Broomfield County's official abstracts of votes cast for the twenty twenty five coordinate
elections were certified as of 11/25/2025. Ike Anyanwu Ibu received the greatest number of combined votes for any one person for the office of Adams twelve Five Star Schools director district number three. Amerisad Lucas received the greater number of combined votes cast for any one person for the office of Adams twelve Five Star Schools director district four. K. You wanna grab I don't know. Do you need to hold it first? I know. No worries. And I'd like to hear, on your.
It's close. It's gonna be spelled the way Alright. If you would wouldn't mind raising your right hand. I, Ike Anyanwu Abou, do solemnly swear I, Ike Anyanwu Abou, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully perform the duties of the office of school director That I will dutifully perform the Duties of the office.
Duties of the office of School School direct director. Mhmm. As required by law. As required by law. And will support the constitution. And will support the constitution. Of The United States. Of The United States. The constitution of the State of Colorado. The constitution of the State of Colorado. And the laws made pursuant thereto. And the laws made pursuant thereto. Alright. Alright. You're officially sworn in. Alright. Ready? Yes. Alright. If you would raise your right hand. I, Amara Asad Lucas I, Amara Asad Lucas. Do solemnly swear I do solemnly swear that I will that I will faithfully perform
that I will faithfully perform the duties of the office of school director as required by law as required by law. And will support the constitution. And will support the constitution. Of The United States. Of The United States. And the constitution. And the constitution. Of the state of Colorado. State of Colorado. And the laws made pursuant thereto. Congratulations. Okay. Officer. Okay. Rise if you are able for the pledge of allegiance. Again, to vice president Melendez. 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. Okay. First order. Next order of business is election of board officers, the president and the vice president. So the board will elect officers for the position of board president and board vice president. Okay. I have been directed to preside over the election of board president until the next president is chosen. So I will say now, you each have pieces of paper.
This is this this is secret. So nominations are now in order for the office of board president. Please write your nominee for the office of president on the nomination of board president's ballot. And you may only nominate one. And then fold them in half and Stephanie will collect them. We have one nominee, Lori Goldstein. Director Goldstein. Thank you. I accept the nomination. And because there's only one nominee, I can entertain a motion to elect by acclamation.
So moved. Second. K. So we don't have to do a roll call, do we? Okay. Thank you. I appreciate your support in me of continuing doing this this role of president. And I will then ask now for, nominations for vice president. You have a piece of paper here. Nomination for vice president. Please write your nominee on here. We have one nominee for vice president, director Assad Lucas. Director Assad Lucas, do you accept the nomination? I do accept the nomination. So Lori on this piece, I know so Phil's absent right now.
I've just had been playing through my head that the last action about the motion and the second, for you to be president. But I think if Phil were in the room, he'd recommend that there be a roll call vote to approve, the election of Lori Goldstein as president and Amir Assad Lucas as vice president, and then to do a roll call vote in support of that. Okay. Should we back it up first before we go any further? To the president one. Sure. Okay. Or you could do a combo. I think since, you could make a motion that I hereby move that Lori Goldstein,
be elected to the office of president and that Amerisad Lucas be elected to the office of vice president and have everyone just vote yes or no on that. Okay. I'll entertain a motion to elect Lori Goldstein as president and Amira Sad Lucas as vice president by acclamation. I hereby move that Lori Goldstein be elected as president and Amira Sad Lucas elected as vice president by, what was the word? Acclamation. Acclamation. Is there a second? Aye. No. Or second. Sorry.
Okay. Roll call vote, Stephanie. Director Anyonwu Ibo. Aye. Director Asad Lucas. Aye. Director Battistelli. Aye. Director Goldstein. Aye. Director Marsh Holshin. Aye. Okay. Congratulations, director Assad Lucas. You have been reelected as vice president. And congratulations, president Goldstein. Sometimes the simple things are the most complicated. Alright. What about board secretaries next? It's not a secret ballot. Okay. Is there any nominations for the position of board secretary? I nominate, Paula Battistelli for being a secretary or continuing duties of secretary.
Second. K. I accept, but I was hoping to pass the buck. Okay. Alright. So then the recommended action here is to appoint, Paula Battistelli to the office of secretary to okay. That's the wrong one. Sorry. Okay. Roll call vote. Oh, I see. Okay. We're wait a second. One more thing. And I would also entertain a motion to appoint, miss Stephanie Hicks as the assistant secretary. So moved. Second. Okay. Now what? I'm gonna encourage you to pull back that motion and, read it as it's presented
in the agenda because part of the benefit is that it refers, to Stephanie's position instead of to her by name. And if you were to have, a change in the incumbency in that role, there's benefit in just having the senior executive assistant by title be designated. See, I've only done do this every two years. Okay. I will enter recommend a motion to appoint Stephanie Hicks to the office of No. I'm gonna step back up. To appoint Paula Battistelli to the office of secretary and to appoint the senior executive
assistant to the board as assistant secretary for Adams twelve Five Star Schools Board of Education. So moved. Second. Okay. Director Anyanwu Ebo. Aye. Director Assad Lucas. Aye. Director Battistelli. Aye. Director Goldstein. Aye. Director Marsh Holshin. Aye. K. Now the appointment of the treasurer, I will recommend a motion to appoint superintendent Godowsky to the office of treasurer for the Adams twelve Five Star Schools Board of Education. So moved. Second.
And I just would like to to clarify for the audience that, not all boards appoint an administrator or superintendent to the office of treasurer. I think it's most common to appoint a board member to that office as well. But the practice in Adams Hall for about the last twenty years has been to appoint the superintendent largely because of the more sophisticated detailed knowledge the superintendent should have about the district's finances and to protect board members from, improper liability if there's something about our finances that would be discovered.
There have been some other districts in the state where the board treasurer role has been singled out for greater responsibility if something emerges. So that's the why behind that different practice than you may hear about in some other districts. Any other discussion? Director Anyangwu Ibo. Aye. Director Assad Lucas. Aye. Director Battistelli. Aye. Director Goldstein. Aye. Director Marsh Holshin. Aye. Okay. On to reports, updates, and information. Superintendent update. So not a lengthy update for me tonight. There's not much that's transpired since the last meeting. It was nice to have, a lengthy holiday break for Thanksgiving and a short three
week stretch for us to work hard and efficiently and finish up first semester strong with our students. I'll note something that I'm sure that most board members will be speaking about tonight, which was the really distressing news that we received on the eve of Thanksgiving that State Senator Faith Winter had passed away in a car accident and obviously is one of our elected officials with whom many of us have worked for many years. That's a painful, painful loss. I do understand that there's gonna be a memorial service later this week at the State Capitol and we'll certainly have some staff present to pass on our regards to
her loved ones and others. And hopefully we'll find somebody soon to take on the important work of serving that part of our community in the state senate. That's it for me. Thank you. So typically, what I do, I guess I start down on that end and work my way this way. And it's okay. You take what you want. Take time you need. So I can you give us an update or recognition or vision? Don't have an update yet, but I did want to, thank everyone who supported our campaign.
Really proud of the work that we did. And and at the end of the day, we're we're here to, number one, make sure that we support the mission of ensuring our kids have an inclusive, equitable, and safe learning environment. Our teachers have the resources they need to perform that task, and we as a community pull together around that mission. I'm reminded of former congressman and civil rights icon, John c Lewis, one time said or coined the term, good trouble.
And, I think that, we're gonna get into good trouble, but it's worth it because it's for our kids. So with that in mind, we have a lot of work to do. Let's get into some good trouble. Thank you again for the support, and thank you for your attention and for your time. Thank you. Alexis? Thank you. And I wanted to note my absences. I apologize. I was on a family vacation for the first one, and then the National League of Cities, for work for the second, which is, I usually end up going to
these conferences for work and end up talking about Adams twelve school board most of the time anyway, to all of our elected officials and bragging about it. But, I just wanted to say happy holidays to everyone, and I hope you had a great Thanksgiving break. And I too, wanted to share my condolences, to senator Winter and her family and her loved ones. I've known her for most of my career, and, she just really worked extremely hard
for the community and stuck by what she believed. And I know she'll be a voice, that is very missed at the capitol. So thanks. Thank you. Paula? I do have an update, but first, welcome to the board director Anyanwu Ebo. We really enjoy having you here. And, also, another farewell to director Potter, and thank you for your service. I visited the Cherry Drive anniversary, and I was able to help take some pictures.
The theme was come wearing something from the seventies, but I was born in the seventies, so I just brought myself. I'm not gonna tell you what year, but it was the same year Cherry Drive was built. So it's very ironic, and, I think the building's holding showing, aging better than I am. Let's just put it that way. But that's okay. I also want to, take time to sort of express my condolences to senator Winter's family. I met her I only met her one time. She was a very lovely lady, and my heart goes out to her to her
fiance and to to her children. It was heartbreaking news. Thank you. Thank you. Do Mara? Good evening, everyone. Thank you for being here. I also wanna share my condolences to senator, Winters, her family, friends, community. I've also known, Faith for at least a decade now. She reached out to me when I was running for the school board the first time in 2015. And so, known her many, many years.
It's a huge loss to our community. I hope everyone had a nice break. And if you celebrate Thanksgiving, hope you had a nice Thanksgiving. Obviously, not much has happened since our last board meeting, but I do want to share, an event I was able to attend Thornton Elementary, and I attended it as a parent. But, they peak put on a they called it peaks peak Thanksgiving or thanks peak. I can't remember the exact title of it. But anyway, it was a big potluck that some of the parents came together, cooked,
different dishes. They didn't even have to be Thanksgiving themed, but just whatever they, could bring. And there were over, there were at least probably a 160, 170 people jammed into that cafeteria, celebrating, eating. It was it was a really, really fabulous event. And I've been a parent there for a gazillion years, and, that was one of the first.
I think they might have done it before COVID, but definitely since COVID. It was a it was really great. So thank you to our peak community and staff because they do great things for our kids and, community. So other than that, that's all I really have. Welcome, Ike, And I hope everyone has a nice nice evening. Thank you. Welcome, Ike. Courtney. Thank you for your service. I hope I did have a great break, even though it was marred a little
bit by the by the news of Senator Winter, which, you know, it's kind of hard for me in a lot of ways. I've known her since she ran for city council for Westminster. She's been my city councilor. She's been my representative, and she was now my senator. And she was my friend. And, she she's one she's always the champion for me to push me to do the things that I do. And, yeah. So I'm definitely gonna have a hard time with this one, but, my heart goes
out to those that were even closer to her and her family and Matt, her fiance, Matt Gray, and and all the people, that we interact with. And, I mean, she was just a force to be reckoned with. And I'll never forget, she, she wore this cape, a Wonder Woman cape, because she really was a Wonder Woman and she was a fighter. She really was. And, and reading all the comments on social media, you know, one of the things
you like to say to somebody, you know, in recognition of somebody passing away is rest in peace. But one thing I noticed that a lot of people said rest in power, and she was powerful. So anyway, keep her family and her in her in your thoughts. On to general 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 Lee Kocca. A three minute timer will be 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 and only speaker tonight is Jessica Sandgren. Thank you. I'm actually, here on two different, hats, I guess I'll wear. One is City Council Member Jessica Sandgren, and then Jessica Sandgren, City of Thornton resident. I do wanna just welcome the two well, welcome the one new, Director, and welcome
back to Emera. We were planning to actually come here a couple weeks ago, but as you heard, National League of Cities was going on, and so some of us were out of town at your last meeting. So I'm here on behalf of City Council. Just wanted to read a proclamation that the mayor had put out for Courtney Potter for her service on the school board. So, I'm just gonna share that proclamation. So, this is a proclamation recognizing Courtney Potter for her distinguished service of the Adams twelve Board of Education. Whereas, the City of Thornton and the Adams twelve five star schools rely on dedicated public servants who devote their time, energy, and expertise to improving educational opportunities for our
community's children. And whereas, Ms. Courtney Potter has served the district with distinction as a member of the Board of Education, representing District 3 with steadfast commitment to raising standards, promoting accountability, and ensuring that every student has access to a high quality education. And whereas, Ms. Potter has championed teacher accountability by ensuring leadership presence in the classrooms each week, providing written feedback to educators to support professional growth and continuous improvement. And whereas, she has been instrumental in shifting the district's focus from lowering expectations to
lifting students up, advocating for student accountability, increased rigor, and expanded academic pathways that challenge and inspire learners. And whereas, Ms. Potter supported a new district wide elementary literacy curriculum that has improved reading scores and expanded support for students with diverse learning needs, including English language learners and those with dyslexia. And whereas, she played a key role initiating a review of compensation for critical support staff, including bus drivers, nurses, and custodians, ensuring that all employees who contribute to student
success are valued and fairly compensated. And whereas, miss Potter has served as a reliable and compassionate resource for parents, listening to concerns, helping families navigate complex challenges, and connecting them with meaningful solutions. And whereas, her leadership extended beyond board meetings, advocating for expanded middle school sports, mental health resources, and safe learning environments that nurture both academic and emotional well-being. And whereas, through her thoughtful leadership, tireless advocacy, and commitment to transparency, Ms. Potter has left a positive impact on the Adams twelve Five Scar Schools community and
the families it serves. Now, therefore, and this was from the mayor. Proclamation is from the mayor, not from the city council. I, Jan Coleman, mayor of the city of Thornton, Colorado, do hereby recognize and honor Courtney Potter for her outstanding service and dedication as a member of the Adams twelve Five Star Schools Board of Education, and for her enduring contributions to student success, teacher excellence, and community partnership. So thank you Courtney for your service. Ike, for you joining the board. You know, the city of Thornton has four school districts, but Adams 12 is by far our largest district. And so we rely on the partnership with the directors, the city council members.
We have new council members being sworn in on the ninth, so I, look forward to that continued partnership, and appreciate the, work that the board has done. So, thank you very much for letting me speak. Thank you. Alright. Board business on overview of reimagined monitoring report 2.9 charters. Do we have anything about FAC before we move on to that? Yes. Sorry. Sorry. So FAC met, and, first discussed the 2.52, new policy wording, which I know, LRPAC had been discussed and had been brought up
in, work study, for the board as well. And this goes to LRPAC having a vote, unanimously allowing the name change and, FAC, also agreeing that, it gets changed to deferred maintenance, and that that changes from, changes from data driven to go into data informed when looking at, the priorities. And this is to the 10% that the district is allowed, to carry.
So I know that Margie and Molly Brandt reported on that and they'll be coming to the board with some updated language. They also got a monitoring report from Erin on reserves and unassigned funds and then a report from Phil Spare on the superintendent's contract. Thank you. Now on to monitoring report 2.9. I see Ms. Monaco. They're missing out Audrey. Okay. They definitely are missing out. This is going to be some very riveting stuff, so get ready.
I'm Audrey Monaco. I am the director of charter partnerships, and I also invited our, charter school special populations liaison, Kellyanne Scott, to join me here today, in case anyone has any questions. I have been in this role a little over a year now, and I received a lot of feedback last year about our charter monitoring systems, mostly from our charter leaders as well as our renewal reviewers, and also board members who asked during monitoring
report 2.9 for a little more information about our charter schools. We looked at that feedback, and we decided we needed some changes to our current charter monitoring system, which will impact monitoring report 2.9. So we really wanted to go over what that would look like and how it is different from our current processes. Currently, we track school wide trends and accountability for our charter schools through these following processes. In our non renewal years, we obviously have monitoring report 2.9,
which includes our annual report with those look fours. We also have our annual work between our office and the schools as part of that body of evidence and our compliance monitoring through our web based system, Report Well. For schools in their renewal year, we have all of those pieces, plus our renewal application that the school submits. And to go along with that renewal application, we do a site visit, with indicators that are rated by our Adams twelve content specialists.
The pinpoints that came across in that feedback, for our renewal reviewers, they really wanted more touch points with the school instead of just a one time site visit where they were going in and making ratings based on what they saw from one specific point in time. There were notes that maybe these observations could be skewed, and that it felt very brief. They wanted more of a body of evidence. Additionally, in the current process, it's very difficult to identify those trends for our schools and really work proactively with those trends for our schools and really work proactively with
them for improvement. We really wanted a formal way of documenting the work that we're doing with them from year to year. Our current annual review feels very subjective and anecdotal. This was some feedback from our charter leaders. There was in our current annual report, there is a stoplight rubric, and it includes light green, dark green, yellow, orange a variety of colors. And sometimes our schools didn't understand why they were rated maybe dark green versus light green. Our reviewers kind of weathered between.
So we really wanted to have our annual report our annual review be transparent and based in data and really be able to give feedback on our schools that was transparent and not confusing. We wanted to use the same pieces of evidence and the same criteria across our schools as well. And like I mentioned before, at our monitoring report 2.9 last year, I believe it was secretary Battistelli asked for some more specific information in
that monitoring report 2.9 about our charter schools and how they are performing. So taking all this feedback, we decided to create a yearly review process, which is what we're calling our school wide trends and accountability review, the STAR, which is fitting for Adam's twelve five star schools. And along with this STAR, we also, reimagined the annual report that will be linked into our monitoring report 2.9.
These together would be our continuous cycle of monitoring, support, and improvement. Starting with that star, we would look at a yearly set of indicators, that are really based in policy, contractual requirements, and state and federal statute. Any areas of concern that are identified, the schools would address through action plans. It would really be the document that would drive the work between our Office of Charter Partnerships and the schools. This is meant to be an internal document to give the schools some time to
work on any, pain points that are indicated, and really give them time to put into, put an action plan in process. This would inform our annual report, which we are imagining as a yearly slide deck focusing on the previous school year. So this document is really a year in arrears. It would focus on the school model, their academic achievement and growth, as well as their operational health and their financial health.
Any star concerns that have not been addressed would rise to the annual report and become public as a slide deck attached to monitoring report 2.9. Both of these documents would then inform our renewal decisions. Our application for renewal would include those history of star ratings as well as their annual reports, and the intensive renewal year star site visit would also happen during this time. And what does that mean?
Linked here is our full overview framework for our school wide trends and accountability review. We really separated this into non renewal years and renewal years. So for our schools that are in non renewal, we would look at a set of indicators. These are really the areas that are the most critical for maintaining an educational program that is successful. It also is we looked at the areas that we want to touch base yearly
because they are more complex and really do need multiple data points and touch points to really get an idea of how the school is performing. For the renewal year, we wanted to look at all of those as well as some of the areas where it might not change as often, such as mission and vision or their nutrition services. We don't need to look at those things every single year, but we want to make sure that we are touching on them for their renewal. So what does a STAR section look like?
Here is a sample. This one is curriculum and programming. This is an area where our schools have some autonomy in what they choose for their curriculum. So we really wanted our indicators to be based on that state statute, federal statute, contract, and district policy. We are asking, are these policies and procedures in place? Are they legally compliant and being followed? So you can see here, for example, we're looking a lot at the read act. We're looking a lot at differentiated instructions, scientifically based research, and grounded in Colorado state
standards. We're also looking at that college and career readiness piece. And in addition to our indicators, we are looking at specific pieces of evidence. A lot of these pieces are things that we are already, collecting from the schools. So we're not asking them to go above and beyond. We're not trying to put any more undue burden on the schools from year to year. It's also important to note that these indicators are not just rated by myself and Kelly Anne. We are, having our Adams twelve content specialists look at these as well to really
say, Is there a concern here or is there not any concern here? So we are rating them as concern. No concern instead of the stoplight. Anything that has a concern rating would trigger what we're calling an action plan. So this would require the schools to really create a plan to make sure that they are addressing the concern rating. It would be a plan that would include what they're going to do to correct the issue, and that could include incremental steps, especially for some, concerns that may not
be a quick fix. So incremental steps aligned with, trajectory timelines. They may also give us additional information that could change, concern rating to a no concern. And if that happens, we would be able to go back and update our report. And then some examples of acceptable action plans would be they're going to host some professional development to create alignment across courses and grade levels. They're going to update their staff and student handbooks with additional content, updating student plans
that we're looking at yearly and making sure everyone is in compliance, and then providing clarification and documentation if there were misconceptions. And like I mentioned before, we would, be rating these indicators on a concerns or no concern basis. So the way we're differentiating between the two is that if there's an issue or gap, it would become a concern if the school has declined support from our office or and has not looked elsewhere for support. Additionally, the school maybe did not create an action plan, or the action plan was
not implemented. Documented evidence of failed compliance over time, lack of communication, or audits of special education gifted and talented plans are continuing to not pass. Areas that would not be a concern is if we might be providing them support already or they're already in process for something that they're working through. It could also be that they are accepting support from our Or they found support elsewhere. The school also has already developed an action plan and they are, implementing it currently
or the issue is not compliance related. So we really wanted to come up with some indicators that are very much based in our office's purview and not so much on best practice. So we honor their autonomy. And, again, the concern ratings would trigger those action plans. So our year for the star would look most of the, work would take place in the fall with the goal of, releasing these to the schools in December. They would have a chance in December to review the report.
And then in the spring, they would be working on their action plans and finalizing those action plans. They can also start implementing that. We wanted to make sure we got this out to them quick enough that they could make some changes during that same school year. At the end of the school year, we would finalize the report, with all of their action plans and any changed ratings. This also aligns very well with the renewal process the way it is currently, that the, STAR would take place at the same time as our renewal site visit does
currently. So our star would then, inform our annual report. And I believe you received our draft annual reports in your board, materials. They're not public yet because we wanted to make sure that we're not putting our draft out there. We're still working on those. It should be linked in monitoring report 2.9 that will come in January. So our annual report, the purpose is that by statute, we are required to put out a annual report of our charter schools, that really provides timely information on their
performance. We identify their strengths and any needs their immediate needs of improvement, And we enable the community and public to understand their performance and their fulfillment of their public obligations and legal requirements. So we really wanted to focus on three main buckets, which are academic performance. Is the academic program meeting the needs of all students, their operational performance, are they fulfilling their legal and contractual obligations, and then their overall financial health. How does the charter school's financial performance affect its current health and future viability?
So focusing on these three sections. And the way that we would do that is by looking at some, a rubric and being able to say, is there any causes of concern in these areas? So for academic performance, we would be looking at three big questions. Are they implementing the material terms of their educational program as defined in their contract? Are they complying with applicable education requirements? And are they protecting the rights of all students? For operational performance, we really wanted to look at governance reporting and staff.
We wanted to make sure they were complying with their governance requirements, holding management accountable, complying with their reporting requirements, and making sure that they are holding their teachers and other staff to credentialing requirements. Along with that that, we wanted to look at the school environment, mostly their facilities and transportation requirements, as well as health and safety requirements. And then for overall financial health, we wanted to look at any findings that they received from their audit. Are these findings acted on, or are they still coming up year after year?
Have they been addressed and resolved? We also wanted to look at, their reporting and compliance with finance. Mostly, are they maintaining TABOR? Are they meeting their financial reporting and compliance requirements? And then we wanted to take a look at their health in the short term and the long term to make sure that they are, healthy financially for that long term and short term using the metrics that you see, up on the slide. So in conclusion, we really wanted to make sure that we were looking at all
of those identified pain points and creating a system that would really address each one of those, and make a very clear, transparent process that is really rooted in data and, statute policy and their contracts. I would love to hear any feedback or any questions that you might have. We can I will take feedback or questions now, or you can take some time to look at the materials and send questions and feedback to Bo?
Questions? Comments? I can't remember what I said a year ago, but I love the outcome. I remember. I I guess I just need a little bit of clarification. So right now, we do the annual report in January. Mhmm. Would we still do it in January? Yes. The star would inform the annual report. So we really the star is happening in the current year. So the annual report is looking at the previous year. So the previous year's STAR would already be done and be able to inform the annual report, which would still go out in January with monitoring report 2.9.
And our leaders and our charter schools are on board with this? We proposed the store or the star to them, and asked them for their feedback as well. We we wanted to make sure that they understood that it wasn't any additional, ask from them that we really were using the things that we already are collecting. They are excited about having something that's more based in data and gives them some an actual roadmap for their work with us.
And it holds both us accountable in our office for our support as well as them accountable to their action plans. We didn't get a lot of feedback, positive or negative. They I will share that they were maybe wondering if, potentially, this could be an expedited renewal basis. It's something to think about, but it would be something that we could look at year after year, and it would be a very comprehensive body of evidence for a renewal decision.
I envision this as it it could be used for our purposes in making renewal decisions as well as the school can use it to show, that they've been compliant for a number of years. It could be a really good body of evidence for them and for us. You might have said this during the thing because I was trying to multitask and listen to you and look at all the tabs. But with the with the assessment, that would only be considered during the renewal, like, the assessment tab, of the star.
Yes. The the ones that are in renewal have the renewal Right. It's noted. Mhmm. Is there a reason that that isn't considered yearly assessment and only during the renewal? And with the renewal, then would that be reflected all five years or two whatever that renewal period was? We really looked at the non renewal versus renewal on the most the the areas that might change the most often. We are open to feedback on if if you feel that some of the ones
that we have decided for renewal might be better to look at yearly. We were really trying to look at the ones that were the most critical and the most complex. And which ones change more often depending on staffing. Also, which ones are the most likely to potentially rise to bigger issues. And I think we came to the conclusion that assessments might be more of a renewal. But if there is feedback otherwise, I'm willing to open that. I was just wondering, like, that thought process. And I think it's important to note that the school performance framework is part of
the annual report every single year. That is something that we're always looking at. I think under that assessment tab, those indicators are really about, like, what assessment the school has chosen. That tends to be a longer term decision, not just a single year. Got it. Yep. And if when you look at the annual report drafts, you will see the first couple, slides are all based on the SPF and that academic section. So that will always be part of the annual report. Thank you. Can I jump in there real fast? I just wanna say two things.
One is, I appreciate the move from more anecdotal and subjective, evaluation to more data and criterion based review. I just know in my experience that our executive directors that supervise elementary, middle and high schools, sometimes over the period of years, as you have changes in those assignments and the people sitting in those roles, you can often get very different perceptions about what's going on in the school of building leadership, the culture, the effectiveness of instruction,
all the rest. And so getting the criterion based database things helps take out the eye of the beholder dynamic a little bit. So I think that's a huge step in the right direction. And the second thought, that's going through my head, and I think it's in part a board of ed thing to reflect on further as well as a staff thing. I I just think for a long time, I've struggled with having different expectations or different processes for our charter schools compared to our traditional schools. And I spent some time up here thinking, are there ways for us to perhaps
do something similar to the STAR review for traditional district managed schools? Doing all 48 to 50 every year would probably be mind numbing and overwhelming for staff and the board, but there might be ways, for us to do something that feels like we're bringing this comparable level of scrutiny and transparency, to all of our schools and not just our charters. So I'm gonna be looking to my colleague, Beau, to tee this up, for some further discussion at a cabinet meeting down the road and I'd invite board members to
think more about that too. Because it's, I think accountability, transparency, and, and a lot of scrutiny to what you're doing periodically can help you get better. And that's really the goal for all of our schools. So those are my thoughts. I think this is really a positive step in the right direction. And I think too, it takes it from being a hoop to jump through to being something more relevant and com- and authentic. Mhmm. We really wanted to build trust with the schools too. So when we were envisioning the star being an internal document, that really was to
build trust and to have that conversation be between our office and the school of we we recognize that not every school is going to be perfect all the time, but we can both our office and school leaders address and talk about those concerns and build, pathways of support as well as help them build their action plans. And it's more of the road map of the actual work. And only the areas that are concerning, and continue to be concerning would become public.
It's really not meant to be a gotcha. It really is to to strengthen our partnership with the school leaders and work with them and provide that support. Thank you for taking us through this. This I'm I work in quality. I love data. This is great to to echo what Chris mentioned. I had a question about that's a bit in the weeds. But, as action plans are developed, is there a time frame for closing them out? That's first question. Number two, if they aren't closed out, do they show up the following year? And is there a concern, regarding the workload if if audit findings, action plans aren't
closed out? And how do you manage those concerns? Absolutely. We've had a lot of talks about that. That is sort of how we've envisioned concerns rising to the level of the annual report. If the star shows that the action plan hasn't been successful and the concerns still remain, we we would expect that for larger issues, we may give some time and say, yes, we are making incremental progress.
We'd expect the schools in their action plans to come up with trajectories for the steps the incremental steps and when they would be able to really rectify the issue. If it's a very big concern, such as out of compliance with special education, we would hope that that would be rectified very quickly. There are some larger issues that might take a little bit of time, but we're hoping that the school will have, actual end dates for when they expect for the
concern to be rectified. We can hold them accountable to that action plan. And if in the following year is another concern, that would be something that would potentially, rise to the level of the annual report and become public. So especially in special populations, where we have a lot of very sensitive, students' rights components and legal components, for any action plan, we would see that closed out by the end of the school year. If they have not completed that work by the end of the school year, then we elevate that to that ongoing concern in the report.
But there are also other ways that we can address immediate, really big concerns. And I just wanna make sure that that's, you know, that's part of our process. If there's something that were a breach of contract, we can offer a notice of concern if there was something immediate that needed addressing, you know, in a very short, short turnaround. So there are there are other ways that we could address major concerns. This is really about that formative improvement cycle, that allows us to make change over time with the school. All right. Thanks, guys.
Yes. Thank you. And any feedback you have after reviewing the documents, feel free to send to Beau and or any questions, feel free to send our way. Thanks. Thank you for all your work on this. Okay. Next on the agenda, policy matters. Legislative update and forecast. Looks like we have Heather and Katie, but Beau's gonna preempt it. No. I'm still doing this. Oh. In one place. These are technology expressions. A man of many talents. Alright. Hi, ladies. Hi. There we go. Hi. So nice to see you all.
So I'm Katie Hancock. This is Heather Retzko with Policy Matters, and we just wanted to give you all a little legislative update, before the session starts. Before we begin, we wanted to take a moment to echo the sentiments that Superintendent Godowsky and the board made, regarding the pass and passing of senator Winter, who was a fierce member of our delegation. Our thoughts are with her family and loved ones during this time. So a little overview of what we'll be talking about today. We'll go into, the September revenue forecast, the governor's November 1 budget request, and then
some departmental requests that, have been presented to the JBC so far, before we talk about, upcoming dates that are relevant to you all. So we did have a little bit of a shakeup in the Joint Budget Committee this year. Representative Shannon Byrd, decided to step down from the JBC, and Rep Kyle Brown was appointed in her place. So this year, we have chair Emily Sirota and vice chair Bridges. We were really sad to see rep Bird go, but she'll continue to be a fierce advocate for us this year.
So right now, we are in the middle of, staff briefings, and starting on some hearings in front of the JBC. Briefings are where JBC staff go in front of the, committee to, kind of explain the departmental requests that have come through, and then hearings that start this month into January is where the department comes in front of the JBC, and answers any questions they have. Awesome. Hi, everybody. So in September, we received the revenue forecast that we receive every year, and this is really the basis for which the governor, bases his budget on, his November 1
budget that, they submit to the joint budget committee. In September, the analyst told the committee that they were estimating anywhere from an $840,000,000 shortfall potentially up to a billion dollar shortfall, in part for a few reasons. One, because there's been just a structural deficit that our state has been facing over the past few years. There's been incredible rising costs in Medicaid, with the expansion, and just, the post COVID
situation. And so, the revenue forecast really spent a lot of time stressing that there needs to be a lot of, structural decisions made, on Medicaid. They're also anticipating with the, passage of HR one at the federal level, significant impacts on the state budget, particularly in terms of implementation of that legislation. And they're not quite sure exactly what that will look like, and how much that will add to our projected shortfall. Some and then so fast forward to November 1, the governor, submitted a request to the JBC.
He every year, the governor has to submit a balanced budget proposal, which is really just the basis for these conversations that Katie mentioned that'll start that have started happening and will continue through the March, and early April. The big themes that the governor's budget request focused on as anticipated were Medicaid. They proposed significant cuts to Medicaid including clawing back a lot of provider rate increases that they had, passed in the prior year. One of the big themes, that they continue to talk about is protecting funding for public schools.
They're they're using the words that we're wanting to hold k 12 harmless. The interesting thing with this budget request is that because the shortfall is so big, a lot of the recommendations in the in the governor's budget will require legislation to be implemented. So things like, he requested he's recommending the sale of Pinnacle, which is a workman's comp, program in our state. They they wanted to do this last year and it's just incredibly complex, But they did get a valuation of the company, and they're estimating it to be worth anywhere
between 400,000,000 to $450,000,000. So they essentially put a placeholder in the budget for that. They also are recommending, decreasing the reserve from 15% to 13%. Each percentage point in the reserve is worth about a $168,000,000. That too will take legislation for us to be able to do. And so we just sort of stress that because those things are not guaranteed. And if they don't happen, then we're gonna the state is going to look have to look at additional areas to cut, and, it's possible that k 12 at any
point can be on the table. The let's see. Let's go to the next slide. Oh, and then the another big thing that they did was they required each department to submit requests for a 2% reduction in in overall operating. And so that's what we're seeing at the JBC play out right now is each department came up with their own recommendations for for cuts to equal 2%. Katie's gonna walk us through a few, that are specific to the Department of Education. Yeah. So these are requests from the Department of Education to just meet that 2%, reduction.
So one is the CSI mill levy equalization. So it's reduction of 3,900,000.0, based on projected utilization in fiscal year twenty six, twenty seven. The best assessment IT system, so this one is a cash fund increase for software cost for this facility insight system. Local accountability grant program reduction decreased, $200,000 from the general fund, and then, ongoing administrative reductions in general department admin, educator effectiveness, the Reid Act administration, and capital complex.
These are, additional oh. These are additional requests that I just, earmarked because they would require legislation in order to to be implemented. So one is the REED Act Awareness Campaign and Evaluation. So this would move the, REED Act program evaluations to occur every other year. The requested decrease is $950,000 cash funds from the early literacy early literacy cash fund to eliminate the $750,000 appropriation for the evaluation and reduce the awareness campaign appropriation by
$200,000 And then the restructuring of social studies assessment. So, currently, there's testing on a sampling basis assessing fourth and seventh grade students at different schools each year. This would propose to test all students annually in seventh grade only. And it is a, decrease of around 230,000 from the general fund. So I'm just gonna jump in here. I'm mindful about IKE. I maybe all the acronym soup that's coming your way makes perfect sense to you,
now. But if not, I'll just, reference a couple of the acronyms that I've seen in the last couple of pages. So CSI Charter School Institute, we've got four charter schools in Adams 12 that are authorized by this Board of Education, New America, Westgate, Prospect Ridge, and Stargate. We also have three within our boundaries that are chartered by the Charter School Institute, and those include Global Village Academy, the Academy, and Pinnacle. And that's a state appointed board that the governor makes appointees to, and that mill levy equalization is intended so that if you have a mill levy override like the
one we recently passed, we do share it with our district authorized charters, but we don't with Pinnacle Academy and GVA. And so the equalization is a way for them to have comparable mill levy override support to others. The Read Act is all about making sure that kids in grades k one two who have significant reading deficiencies have customized plans to help them make progress and go forward. The SCF, a reference here at the end is the state education fund that has a billion dollars plus, I think, in it, but is often the place that the
legislature is pulling money out of and there's often worries about how long is it gonna last, are we leaning on it too heavily. Bottom line is, I just would invite you, I can all the rest, but but especially you that if the acronym SEWP isn't, making sense to jump in and and ask questions, because there's lots of acronyms that we use in education and in the legislature that I think can just make your head spin. You are right, superintendent. We often get bogged down in the, in the acronyms, so appreciate the clarity. I did just wanna clarify the social studies assessment.
It's a decrease of 230,000 from the state education fund, not the general fund. I misspoke. Yes. And thank you, superintendent. That's a helpful reminder. We definitely get get stuck in our little bubble. So, one piece of good news, and I know the legislature and the joint budget committee was in particular grateful for the board support of the healthy school meals, ballot measures. With the passage of those measures, the state now believes that there is sufficient funds to cover, the Healthy School Meals for All program, $254,800,000 in total.
This is huge. This was there was a lot of worry, that if this didn't pass, the general fund or the state education fund would continue to have to, support that program. And it's and it's just something that would not be sustainable. So they're incredibly grateful, for the passage of that. Bill rumors. So some of the bill rumors we're hearing, local control teacher evaluations, I believe we've shared with with y'all and are planning to attend a stakeholder meeting that we will report out on. Childcare licensing, as you all know, we are we are running a child care licensing
bill. And, we have heard rumors of some other members planning to to run something, but we don't have any details yet and are following up on that, and we'll share out with you all. The other bill is, Rep Phillips, is planning to run a five zero four bill just to move some of the the processing from that to CDE. And so that's what we have so far, and we will keep you all updated. Can we add to those rumors? Yes. Absolutely. Education deserts? Yes. Yes. That is that is a bill rumor. And we, have actually participated in some, small group stakeholdering about, you know, what the
plan will be if that we don't have confirmation that a bill is coming, but I think it's very likely. And so we're certainly gonna need to have some pretty significant strategy around that. I think the momentum for the bill is gonna be much stronger this year. And so what that looks like and and how we engage will certainly keep you apprised and strategize with the team. Another one is, if, Governor Polis decides to accept the, federal tax credit? Yes. Okay. Yeah. And then, Mayor and I knew about the local, teacher evaluation because it's a resolution
that was passed at CASB. Another one is we re upped our, mental health facility, resolution. Can I speak to them? Yeah. So just, I think it was the one that, that originally Senator Winters, presented- is passed. And then with the concerns though of who can like, where they are located and
whom's allowed to or who's allowed to, reside there or would qualify residing there, because I know that the issue that came with the city of Northglenn. So we proposed to CASB that, just yeah. More regulation around around that and ensuring that anyone who's convicted of a sexual offense cannot reside in a, you know, a mental health facility.
That, you know, and this is kind of in the weeds as well, I think. But one of the things I talked a lot about CASB is there's there's a difference. And maybe this is something too we can talk about of all these are is residential agencies. That's literally all they are. And, and so it's just the lack of regulation around that as well, and lack of supervision. And so, right, being very thoughtful of locations within near schools.
So Yes. Thank you so much for pointing that out. We actually just connected with representative Byrd, earlier today, and I think she's planning to definitely run something and is looking for assistance. She mentioned that CML is very interested in it as well. So it's really helpful to know about CASB, as well. So I think all of these, the the bill titles were just due today. Like, all of the sponsors were just due today. And so I think after today, we'll start seeing a lot more actual drafting of legislation that we can actually look at and respond to and put some strategy to.
So we'll certainly send send that all your way as soon as we receive them. I'll just do a quick touch on one other, that I know in another district in the metro area has interest in moving forward and that's changing the existing requirement that you evaluate every incoming kindergarten kindergartner, in terms of the readiness for kindergartner and for kindergarten. Gosh, I better stop speaking. And then have a plan about how to support that child and doing it for all kids is often a waste of effort. There's lots of kids that are amply ready and probably ready for second grade when
they're starting kindergarten. And to have a a student specific plan for that student doesn't serve a lot of interest, or doesn't provide a lot of benefit. It's frankly the same sort of concern our staff has about teacher evaluations. Right now, state law requires that you evaluate every teacher every year. And once upon a time, maybe fifteen years ago, there are lots of teachers you evaluated who were four years plus in their, service once every three years. And right now, there's just a lot of wasted time and effort and check boxmanship
that goes on by doing every teacher every year. There probably could still be triggers if you change that to say, if somebody's showing different kinds of production in the classroom or different behavior than in the past, you could take them in off cycle by doing everyone every year, every student in kindergarten with a big plan. Those are the kinds of things that just don't make a lot of sense, given all the things that we just continue to pile on to staff, in our schools. And while we're at it, I know that the governor has said that he's going
to increase per pupil funding, set amount. But what it's kind of almost, we're declining enrollment. Right. Right. And so, you know, call it what it is, really not increasing education funding. Yeah. It's such an excellent point. I think, getting control of that narrative is going to be really important. I think you all did such a great job at the delegation, dinner and Superintendent
Godowsky really kinda walking the members through those detail. I think as much as we can continue to get them to rally around, the truth in the narrative, you know, the better the better off we will be. So I think we're certainly gonna need to rely on the members of the delegation and the GBC members who really do get it. But I think you're right. It's important that the public it's important that everybody understands exactly what this is. And, you know, we're in a budget crisis and so let's call it what it
is. So absolutely agree. Thank you. Okay. One more. And one more. And then we just have some upcoming dates. So tomorrow there's a briefing, for the Department of Education where they will discuss, school finance, and so we will report, out to you all, regarding that. And then, hearings for the Department of Education and early and Department of, Early Childhood will continue throughout the month of December, and we will keep you all, updated on that information. And then the session begins in January, and we're off to the recess.
And CASB does do lobby days, and so any of you interested in going down for that or any other time, Yeah. We're happy to. And Absolutely. Katie and Heather and their crew is always happy to help us, navigate it and, set us up for conversations. Absolutely. I think we're gonna need it this year more than ever. So we would love to have you. Those are usually on Thursdays, right? They are. In February? I think it is at the January this year. We're gonna be gone. You won't be gone yet.
It's right before that. It's before we go to DC. We go to DC. Yeah. And go to the hill. Yeah. But anytime you wanna go. Yeah. And I'm happy to help too. Thank you. We appreciate it. That's all we had for you unless there's any other questions for us. Wonderful. Well, thank you all so much. Thank you. And thanks for being here. Yeah. Thanks, ladies. K. Which leads us to the governance process, the legislative platform. And what you have in your packet is the existing legislative platform.
And every year about this time, right before the session starts, we take a look at it. We think about what we might wanna take off, and we think about what we might want to add. So, I think maybe some of you might have some suggestions. I do have a couple of, well, a couple of asks because I think, you know, it's important that everyone gets to weigh in. Ironically enough, I was trying to look up I had written down my suggestions and my, email. This is a Greg thing.
He should be here so I could say, come on, Greg. What's up? I had to change my password, and I can't remember my new password because I had it for a year. Okay? But, anyway, I can remember the gist of the suggestions that I had made or the let's phrase them as questions for the group to consider. One of the items I would like to ask the group to consider is that in that platform, on the second page, it's the fifth bullet. Could we potentially add language to it about protecting all students' access to rightful education?
So, I know there there are things going on in the world where it feels less certain that some kids will have the access that they deserve, and that's one thing that I would ask us to consider adding language or phrasing it in such a way that we could accomplish that. And the other thing is around making sure that the physical spaces of schools are maintained both in perception and in actuality as safe spaces. So and, again, in and around schools.
The third thing that I would like to ask the group to consider is, potentially something around legislation on how title one schools are evaluated by the Colorado Department of Education. Because I think in the past, when we've we've had conversations about this, it seems that the metrics we use to evaluate title one schools are off or the metrics we use to evaluate all schools are particularly punitive to title one schools.
And so one of the asks I have for the group is whether or not we would like to support any sort of legislative action that might revise that evaluative process to use a more and I don't want to say a more positive approach, but a more nuanced and contextual approach that takes into some of the factors that kids in title one schools bring with them to the to their classroom. So for example, we've talked a lot about high mobility, and there's only so much a teacher can do if they have a student in the classroom for two months.
But the current way that we evaluate, districts using the standards from the CDE don't take that into account. So that that's what I wanted to ask that we consider, around those bullet points. I apologize that I forgot my password. I was sitting here trying to remember it and listen to the legislative update at the same time, but no luck. I'll just have to reset it later. And I wanna put out there, the bullet under adequacy and equity, the I think
it's like the seventh one. It talks about, help the districts address long term impacts from the COVID pandemic. I'm wondering if we can preserve the items in there without mentioning the COVID pandemic. I think we've kinda gotten through that. I don't know what your thoughts are. Yeah. I mean, I Yeah. I agree. I think that is a very important item to keep in here, but making it
relevant that's not related to COVID. Yeah. It is kind of easy to add around. I'm fine removing it from it so long as we still understand that we're trying to address a long term problem. Right. But there's a lot of other things that contribute to that long term problem now, just not just COVID. So at least given the conversation thus far, and there might be more coming up, one of my suggestions would be that if you have specific language that you'd like to substitute, or add to or delete, that you send that individually on to Joe
who's, the administrator over our platform work and liaison, liaising with policy matters and to Steph and to me. Just so so if you send your specific language to the three of us, we can, develop a new draft for the next discussion that you all have. And there might be some parts that, would also benefit from having some, staff insight. I think a lot of what you're talking about are values oriented things that aren't so much data driven or technical. The one possible exception that I've heard thus far is around accountability.
But the accountability stuff, it might be helpful for Dave just to, look at whatever you're proposing, Paula, and to provide perspective. I think historically what I've heard is frustrations about the accountability system are most severe in teleschools because there are students who might be a multilingual learner, who are also a free and reduced lunch pupil, who are also, a student with a disability. You can be in like three or four different subgroups that are all getting counted. And if that student is struggling to make growth and to achieve, you're often having
that single student in your, data analysis three or four times. Some would say, well, if they're doing really great, then you get three or four really good things happening. But just given the realities of the circumstances those students are facing, it's more often the case that that student has a number of places where their performances is still struggling to overcome some things. So if you put things into this document, if you can get things on to stuff. I can get it. I have I do have some stuff crafted out. Uh-huh. As Soon as I remember my password, I'll be sure to share it with you
all. Yeah. But I'll get that to you, Joe, and Stephanie. Maybe by the end of the week, that would be great. And then we can start to get a draft in place and do some research with some other data from staff if that's helpful. We'll see. Because the password questions are asking me things that I also don't know the answers to, like where I had my wedding reception. If you were there, let me know. I was having a similar problem. I had to remember my childhood phone number and I couldn't remember if they'd put a dash in it or not. I mean, that's how picky it is. Okay. Is there a way that that we can get a Word document to edit?
Because what happens here is it just goes directly to the website. But if we could get a Word document to mark up, and then yeah. It's great to have it by the end of the week so we can bring it back to the next board meeting, because we wanna do this before this session. Is it possible we can vote on it in two weeks, or do we, like, vote on it as amended? I mean, how does that work? Do we have to vote on each amendment, Phil? You asked several questions. What's your first one? Okay. Can we have it If we have all the edits in, can we vote on
it next time? Yes. Okay. If we amend it, do we have to vote on each amendment or can we just vote to accept all the amendments? You could vote to accept all the amendments at once. And then if there's any dissension, we can discuss it and Could be tweaked at that meeting. Okay. Alright. So that's the game plan here. Okay. That way, like I said, we'll have it done when the session starts. Because we do take this and give this to our, electeds, and we do take it to our congress folks too. I also wasn't super reading this.
When it says current, I I assumed that was are we gonna have our updated mill numbers in here from or do we when will we get those on what passed? So on the on the fourth page, it's assessed mill and assessed of the ranking of the districts. Oh, I see what you're saying. That's not reflective of the mill that just passed, correct? That's that's from previous years. So when we put together the brochure, once you adopt the new legislative platform, all
that information will be updated. Okay. So it is in the lobby of the brochure. Got it. The brochure will be updated from what we put forth. Okay. Alright. On to number nine, establish fiscal year 2025, 2026 tax revenue and mill levy. Hi, Gina. This is something that we do every year. Gina will, give us the rundown. Good evening. That was loud. Good evening, board. As you mentioned, this is something the board does every year. And so we're gonna cover the legal compliance and policy, critical dates, the mills that
we're certifying, a comparison by counties, impact to homeowners, and then the five year trend. What's important to know is sometimes for this board meeting, we have the final assessed valuations from the counties. In tonight's, we're using preliminary. And so we'll talk about that a little bit more as we go through, but I wanted to start with that so I don't forget to tell you them. So the board is required each year to certify our mills that go to each of the counties where they apply those tax rates to property owners.
The certification has to be completed by December 15, and the reason we don't have final right now is our counties have until December 10 to get us the final numbers. So knowing this board meeting was the Monday right after Thanksgiving, we went into tonight knowing we are not going to have the final numbers for this meeting. Once we have them, we will prepare an update that shows what we are sharing with you this evening and then what the final numbers came in and how it
tweaks some of the values. So critical dates. By August 25, we are required to receive the preliminary values from each of the counties. October 10, the, state board this year had to approve the new residential assessment rate for school districts. And so it could have it could have gone down to 6.95% if the statewide actual value growth was above 5%. It came in at 4.27 from '24 to '25.
That's what the the, statewide actual value growth was. If it had gone to 5%, that number would be 6.95%. And then December 10, I already mentioned the tenth and fifteenth dates. And then just for your information, the counties mailed the tax bills out starting in January with payments due by April 30 or February 28 and June 15. And so when we talk about when we get the bulk of our property tax revenue, that's the reason why. So the mills that we're going to talk about certifying tonight, we have our total
program mills of 27 that is statutorily required, and we are estimating that it's gonna generate about, excuse me, about a $121,000,000 towards our local share of the total program funding that we get. The voter approved mills, we are estimating right now that they're going to be at 24.429 to generate just over a 109,400,000.0. The first four mills are fixed dollar mills, meaning that as property values go up,
our actual assessment rate goes down because we can only legally collect $35,400,000. Our 2,018 mill gets to grow by inflation each year. So from last year to this year, that number was 2.3%, and we are looking to collect about 34,700,000. And, yay, our brand new mill that voters graciously approved, for 2025, we can collect the greater of 8.795 mills or 39,420,000 this year.
And then next year, we can collect the the dollar amount that we earn from the 8.795 mils. So a little confusing there. So we will not collect more than 39,420,000. And depending on what these actual numbers come in, it could be a little bit less because the best we can do is the 8.795 or the 39,000,000. So I know it's a little confusing, and that's a this year problem only. In this year, the abatement mills, we're estimating those to be at point eight six
two to generate 3,900,000.0, and the abatements are a way to make us whole for disputes that happened last collection year, where we certified our mills to collect a certain amount of money. And people disputed didn't have to pay that much. So we get to we get a second chance at collecting those revenues in the next school year. And so that number does change every year depending on what happens in that dispute
process. Usually, we see it more in assessment years and not in the non assessment years, though it can happen in both. And then we're estimating our bond redemption mill. We're not changing the the number of mills at 18.665. That's what we levied last year, and we believe it'll collect about $83,700,000 Gina, I'm just gonna add two points on what you shared, for the benefit of, Ike and perhaps others. One is, you said up on the top end that the mill levy of 27
mills is statutorily required. It's true, but it's also helpful to know that not all school districts in the state are levying 27 mills. We've always been levying that amount, throughout my time here. Some districts, some have been less than 10 mills to support their part of total program and there's a statutory fix that gets scaled in over time where people have to increase theirs a little bit over time until they get to 27. But just know not everyone's at 27. I think some of, there might even be a few districts in the metro that
are not all the way to 27 now. It's more of a common issue in some of the rural districts. Just helpful background information. And then at the back tail end of this thing, the Milleavy, for the bond redemption piece has, actually come down from where it was years ago. I think it used to be 21 something, two or three years ago. And our, long term philosophy has been to keep that constant, ideally in a way that allows us to recover money that will exceed the amount necessary in any particular
year to pay bond interest and and principal, and maintain a reasonable reserve, and also allow us every six or so years to be able to go forward with a new bond request without a tax rate increase. But there are times that, what we found is when you have big property tax increases, you start to recover more money than you can reasonably hold back under federal tax guidelines. And so within the last year or two, we've reduced that down, which actually I think has been helpful in terms of overall tax liability with this more recent mill
levy override. So just wanted to add more background there that I think is helpful and and I think is accurate given that I see Gina nodding. Yes. And we have a slide that will show, I think it's four years of what the rates have been so that, you all can see that. And then a quick little disclaimer is all the numbers you have on here, obviously, are going to change when we use the final values, and what we give to you can change a little bit because of rounding. Alright. So real quick, we're just gonna do a quick walk through of that total program
piece. And so I'm not going to go through all of this with you, but here is a nice picture of what the new School Finance Act looks like. It is this looks more complicated than it is. It's way more simplified than the old School Finance Act. But, basically, we we go through and add each of these areas together, and that gives us our total program funding for the old school finance act. And then we, know that it's being phased in.
So for this year, we're getting 15% of that new school finance act. And so and I'm embarrassed that I have this backwards. I did not my brain did not catch it until right before I walked up here, and Aaron said, can you change it really quick? And I said, no. It's a PowerPoint. So I would have to be up here changing it. So you take the fully implemented total of the New School Finance Act less the Old School Finance Act, multiply that by 15%, and then you add that to the Old School Finance Act, and that's our fiscal year 2526 total program number.
So and the reason we're sharing that is because we're talking about that difference between local share and state share, which the 27 mills gets us our our local share. And so another, nice graphic of how this works, where we take the property tax rate, specific ownership taxes that gets us our local share. We don't talk a lot about that specific ownership piece because you saw 27 mills was I already forgot the number, a 121,000,000 ish. Specific ownership tax for this is roughly, I'm estimating, about 7 to 8,000,000.
So it's obviously not a huge number in the whole scheme of things, but it does come into, play with that. So then we have our total program funding, that local share, and then the rest is what the state backfills. So I feel like you guys probably think I I share that too much, but I think it's so important for, everyone to understand that it does our 27 mills, regardless of what it generates, we will only get our state equalization number. We will not get a dollar more.
So, in our budget plan, we proposed a budget back in May that included, what was already approved for mill levy override. We obviously did not include the the hopeful twenty twenty five mill. So when we come back to the board in January, next month, I guess, with our amended budget, you will see that that has been added to the amended budget. And then here is our preliminary net assessed valuations by each of the counties along
with the actual value. So you can see the statewide actual value increase was that four and a half ish percent. For our counties, it actually grew by 6.5%, and our assessed valuations grew by 8.8%. Oops. Wrong way. Okay. And here, it shows what we assessed last year versus what we are showing on the presentation for the assessment this year. And so the revenue change for the between total program and the mill levy overnight
overrides is growing by $40,200,000. And you can see that most most of it is obviously the the $20.25 mill levy override as well as the local share increased by just under $10,000,000. On our bond redemption fund, we are collecting about $290,000 more than last year. And the bond redemption fund, I should probably explain that. That is where we collect the property taxes that pay the bond debt. So when we incur the when taxpayers approve our bond debt, this is how we
pay that debt back by collecting that bond mill. And so here is the estimated impact to a homeowner for a home valued at $500,000 We we use that that round number to help simplify the math if people wanna try to make a the guesstimate with what that impact is for them. And one one two of the things that I wanna point out is in addition to our mill changes, there's two other changes that will have an impact to homeowners'
property tax bill. First, in 2024, there was a reduction to the home value of $55,000. That goes away for the 2025 year. And then the assessment rate went from 6.7% last year to that seven point o 5% that I mentioned. So with those two changes, regardless of what happened with our mills mill passing, our homeowners were going to see a change in their actual tax bill.
And so for this year, if you had a $500,000 home, you're looking at an annual increase of $631 I have a question. That change in the assessment rate, is that allowed to happen because Gallagher was repealed? It's not only because of Gallagher being repealed, but there was a special session on property taxes. I don't know if that was last year or the year before. Two years ago. Thank you. And that created two different assessment rates, one for everyone but school districts and then
school districts. And so that's what prompted this particular change is school districts were given a different rate, and that rate was based on the actual growth that I mentioned earlier. And so it could have been 6.95%, but it's instead the seven point o five. So Gallagher did have an impact that has caused the assessment rates to change, but this particular one is not that. Alright. And then I promised that we had it's a five year comparison, not four year.
And so you are able to see back in 2021 the different rates. You you can see, we'll go with the mill levy overrides. We were assessing 19.256 mills on the mill levy overrides. Last year, because of the growth in property values and the way our mills are struck our mill levy overrides are structured, we were down to 16.826 mills. This year, with the addition of our new mill levy override, it grows to 24.428. And then as Chris mentioned earlier, our bond override mill was 21.665,
and we reduced it in 2023 to the 18.665. I think many of you have seen this slide before. This is the comparison of where the district was on a per pupil basis for mill levy overrides compared to our peers had the override not passed. And so you can see we were just just near the bottom. And then with it passing, we moved from fourteenth to ninth. So what questions do you have? Questions? You helped make sense of this.
So thank you. And I think Gina mentioned this before, but the resolution, gives final authority to me to set the rate if we have some tweaks and adjustments to these numbers based on final data that we get from the assessors. And what we'll do if that is the case is an email from Gina or myself will come to you saying, here's the final numbers. We plan to submit this tomorrow. Let us know if you have any angst or questions. But that's procedurally what will happen next. Yes. And I anticipate we'll have that. Today is only Monday. I anticipate we'll have that out by Thursday or Friday.
Thank you. Oh, I had a quick question. Did do we anticipate any significant difference in terms of the estimates versus the actuals that'll come in based on past experience? Just curious. I don't know. It it is it varies wildly year over year. And to the counties, well, I'm trying to think of the right word. They've had a challenging couple years with pretty massive changes in the way that they are preparing the data.
And even, for example, we didn't know the counties didn't know what the residential assessment rate was when they gave us preliminary. And so I believe they used seven point o 5%, but, I can't prove it. And so if they if they went with 6.95%, then then we'll see a significant change. But until I have the final numbers, it's hard to say. But it varies every single year. And the, abatements is where we see a lot of variance because there's a window
of time where disputes can be approved. Okay. I wait. We never made the motion. I will entertain a motion to adopt the twenty twenty five-twenty twenty six Mill Levy Certification Resolution as presented. So moved. Second. And I did that before Phil reminded me. Director Anyanwuivo. Aye. Director Assad Lucas. Aye. Director Battistelli. Aye. Director Goldstein. Aye. Director Marshall Schoen. Aye. Okay. Resolution of necessity. I will entertain a motion to approve the resolution of necessity as presented. So moved. Second.
And Phil is going to the podium. We have the resolution in our packet. Yes, the resolution has been now included in the board agenda, and I would ask you to consider the resolution as presented to include the correction of two typos that I have found as I sat there, preparing to come up here. The first is in the second whereas clause in the phrase not limited to parking storm drainage and facilities.
It should read instead of and and facilities. And in the fourth whereas clause, I would correct the spelling of Washington Street. This property this property is located at 9201 Washington Street, adjacent to the current Thornton High School campus and as part of the plans for reconstructing And expanding Thornton High School. This property is necessary for that project. This resolution of necessity. Is a formal action by the board to allow our outside counsel Alderman and our
Alderman Bernstein law firm to take steps to file a petition in condemnation to take that property by eminent domain because our efforts to purchase the property through negotiations have not been successful to date. Do we need to read the resolution? We don't need to read it because it has now been posted. Okay. Any comments questions? Director Anyanwu Abo. Aye. Director Assad Lucas aye Director Battistelli aye Director Goldstein aye Director Marshall Scholzhin aye.
Okay. I will go on to minutes. I will entertain a motion to adopt the minutes of the work study session and regular board meetings of 11/19/2025 as presented. So moved. Second. Comments, questions? Director Anya Nuevo. Aye. Director Asad Lucas. Aye. Director Battistelli. Aye. Director Goldstein. Aye. Director Marsh Holshin. Aye. Okay. Onto, consent agenda. I will entertain a motion to, approve the personnel actions as presented. So moved. Second. And director Anya Nuevo.
Aye. Director Assad Lucas. Aye. Director Battistelli. Aye. Director Goldstein. Aye. Director Marshall Shin. Aye. K. On to future agenda items, just, you know, for Ike. If there's something that you want to add to the agenda, just let me know, and we'll figure out how to work it in and where and when. We do have CASB next week, so everybody drive safe. And, I will proceed you there in Wednesday afternoon for a CASB board meeting and safe travels to you too, to New York.
Thank you. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. And Today, 08:08 fifteen AM. Is there a flight or when you have to get to the air? That's when I when I start flying. Okay. Well, let's get you. We'll get you out of here. We are adjourned.