Good evening, everyone. Good evening. It's a pleasure to be here. Good to see you all. For those who I haven't had a chance to meet, I'm Rob Anderson, proud superintendent of the Boulder Valley School District. And this is one of my three favorite evenings of the year, and all three are times where I get to celebrate the outstanding achievements of our students, of our staff, our community at the superintendent's honor roll. How about a big round of applause for everybody who we are here to honor
this evening? So just wanna thank everybody who's been able to join us. I know how, busy the holiday season can get, and so thank you all so much for being here. Before I get going, there's a few folks that I would love to recognize, and that is our BBSD Board of Education. So, yep, round of applause. Absolutely, excited. We have a couple new board members here that we get to introduce to you tonight. So our board president, Nicole Rajpal, is here. In the back, our newly elected board vice president, Alex Medler, is here.
Alex, good to see you. Our newly elected treasurer, Jason Unger. Jason, where you at? In the back. Thank you. Our two new board members, Diane Bucher. Diane, where are you? And we have Anna Timo Ading who's helping us out here in the front. Anna, thank you. So good to see you. And Jorge Chavez, where you at, Jorge? In the back. And Lalania Quinlan Ouedes in the back as well. So thank you all so much for being here. Thank you, board members, for your service, and, appreciate all that you do. Who's ready?
Everybody have enough to eat? Here's what you can count on, at a superintendent's honor roll. Really good food and some lousy dad jokes, so I apologize in advance. Try to keep it light, but certainly, the the spotlight is on those that we'll be recognizing and honoring today. So now I will tell you that a superintendent's honor roll is not complete without this group. So tonight, we're proud to once again honor the student journalists from Monarch High School, Monarch the mix. Come on in. Come on down.
Come on over. Come on up. That's right. You can't cheer for them enough. You can tell they know what they're doing, they've been here before. So for two out of the last three years, The Mix, which is Monarch's news magazine, has won the National Scholastic Press Association's Pacemaker Award. It's a huge honor. Pacemaker Award, which has been given annually since about 1927, is considered the highest honor for student journalists. In fact, some have even called it the Pulitzer Prize of student journalism.
To win it twice is outstanding and true indication of the skill of these journalists and the support of their incredible advisor, Ben Reed. Ben, don't stand in the back here. Come on. Shout out to Ben. So so winning the the the Pacemaker Award is is an incredible achievement, but that's not all. At NSPA's national convention, Monarch earned triple the number of individual awards compared to all other participating Colorado school districts combined. Yeah. Whoop it up. Let's go. A number of the individual winners are here tonight, So when I call your name,
please step up to be recognized by this amazing crowd that I know is going to cheer incredibly loud for each and every one of you. Does that make you uncomfortable? Just slightly. Just slightly? Well, that well, sorry. Connor Lachrim. Connor was a national finalist for the broadcast news story. Fox Theron was a national finalist for comic strip. Rachel Larsen and Lydia Greaves. National finalist in news magazine Spread Design and Julia Abare, Ben Lehman, Abia Evoluf, Chloe
Blair, and Evan Schmidt were national finalists for Multimedia Story. Now some of you thought I was done, but I am not done. There's a couple more things to recognize. For the eighth year in a row, the Mixed Magazine and Yearbook each won an All Colorado Award from the Colorado Student Media Association. And KYOT, Monarchs TV new cast won all Colorado for the fifth year in a row. Congratulations. Let's give everyone a huge round of applause. Okay, Connor. I'm gonna ask you a question. Okay. Is that okay? You ready? Yeah. Okay. So putting out the news is a tough challenge.
We know that. Can you give us some insight on what it takes to keep your stories and up and publications at this high standard? Well, I think it starts with, like, the community that mister Reed has built for us. We play games every week to keep everyone in touch everyone interested and having fun. We have snacks. Like, all the people on the staff just want to make something that is good because it goes out to the entire school. They don't want something that's good that we actually want something that's great. I think that starts with everyone. Not something good, something that's great. I love that.
And I love the culture, the winning culture you all have obviously built. Ben, come on up here. I know that you're so proud of these students. And our goal, of course, is not to win awards, but to prepare students to go out into the real world. Do you ever hear back from students from this program and what they've had to say about this experience, how it shaped them? And are any of them famous? Not yet. I gotta say, you know, we've met with this many, many years now, but it can't be underestimated about how hard these students work, how smart they work, and that this doesn't happen by accident.
State championships and national championships don't happen randomly. These are the smartest, best kids in the entire school, I'll tell you that much. When it comes to the future, yeah, I have, we have students right now at North Western. I have a couple that are writing for the Boulder, daily camera. We have a couple of students. This guy who's gonna be going to perhaps Arizona State, one of the best broadcast schools in the nation. Couple of girls down there going to Mizzou, one of the best journalism schools in the nation. But beyond journalism, it's also the skills that they get, whether it's gonna be going
into architecture or international development or psycho criminology. They know how to do it because of the work they do here. Another round of applause for the MOHAI mix. Thank you all so much. And we have certificates to hand out, and we're gonna take a picture. So we wanna hand out the certificates. Thanks, everybody. Thank you. Thank you so much. We'll see you again next year? Yeah. How fun was that? Off to a strong start here at the superintendent's honor roll. Now, I'm really, really excited for this next group of individuals that we get to,
celebrate. So we all know that the Broomfield Eagles fly high, but that most certainly is the case when it comes to the Broomfield High School gymnastics team. Come on up. Last month, they won the five a state championship. Credible accomplishment. During the competition at Thornton High School, the Eagles earned a score of one eighty two point two seven five to claim the team title, beating Chatfield who came in second place and the defending champions, Mountain Range who came in third place.
This is Broomfield's fifth title in gymnastics with the last one in 2022. And with this year's win, they are now tied as the sixth winningest team. Congratulations, ladies. Now coach Anderson, I need you to come over here to ask I gotta ask the, I'm not the MOHAI mix. Right? But I I'll ask you a few questions. Team overcame some challenges mid season, but really pulled together in the post season from what I understand. Understand. Talk to me a little bit about this and and just some of the some of the highlights of the season and what makes you so proud of this team. Yeah.
So for those of you who don't know, we are a district team. Although, we wear Broomfield on our back every single meet, all of these ladies are from almost every single high school in Boulder Valley. And so coming together as a team was quite challenging, especially because we had 10 newbies of our 20 gymnasts. And so the super exciting thing was my juniors and seniors this year, you know who you are, they really stepped up and they took it upon themselves to show leadership and to make sure that the newbies knew exactly how our team ran and
they dedicated this season to not only being wonderful gymnasts and athletes, but to making sure that they created the culture and the team that they wanted to create. And that was all them. I am not taking credit for that because they did that all on their own. And so I can't thank my juniors and seniors enough for that. And then my freshman and sophomore really stepped up because they came into an unknown world. Gymnastics is very much individualized until you get into high school.
And so they stepped up and they said that, no, this is not about me this year. This is about Broomfield and this is about the team that we wanna be and the team that we wanted to create. And that led us to a state championship, so I couldn't be prouder of them. So good. Alright. So, So good. Alright. So, Lily, where's Lily at? Hey, Lily. How you doing? So, you led the team, you came in third in the all around competition. Congratulations. That's amazing. Woo. But I know that, that you've you've really had a have had a chance to speak about the team element of this win.
You all really were supporting each other. Talk to me about the the the teamwork that went into the state championship. Well, our whole season, our motto was to walk as one and that not do it for yourself, but your for your teammates around you and for Broomfield. And so that really gave us confidence that we had it in ourselves and that we not only could like do it individually, but if you messed up that's okay because someone's got your back around you. And that really helped us at the State individuals because we knew that as long
as we were doing what we could do to help it, the outcome was no it didn't matter because we would be proud of ourselves. Said like a true champion. Great job. And I will tell you, I did have a chance to go to the Broomfield High pep rally where where the entire school, was just so proud of this entire team and celebrated them. Let's give them all a round of hand. Let's round of applause and let's take a picture. They also get the award for the biggest trophy. That is an enormous trophy. Now, I shared with you all, you know, the opportunity that I had to go
to the, to the Broomfield High School pep rally where they recognized our our state championship, gymnastics team. But that was not the only team that we were celebrating that day. We had another group of Eagles win their first ever state championship this fall. Let's have the Broomfield High School softball team come on up along with their coaches and another big trophy. They're tied at first for the biggest trophy because I think it's the same trophy, but alright.
So this team has some amazing stats. Over the past three years, this team went fifty three and three. Can you believe that? Went so they went into the state five a champ state five a championship tournament. Eagles were undefeated and the top seeded team, which is a pretty, pretty impressive feat in in and of itself. Neither their competitors, Eagle Crest in the semifinals and Legend in the final, were gonna go down easy. They made it really challenging for our Eagles. Both games, of course, Broomfield won.
That's right. They were down by a couple of runs in the middle of the championship game, but the by the bottom of the fifth, they exploded scoring 11 runs, bringing the game to a quick end, which is that a 10 you 10 run rule them? Is that you did that? Y'all know what that that's a thing? Yeah. If you're winning by 10 runs, they just call it? I I think that's the way you probably wanna win a state championship. So let's join me in in congratulating this year's five a state champions in softball. Okay. So I have some questions. You know, this is just, you know, this is the fifty three and three. Look at the picture there. I mean, what a what a just a dream season.
And when the game ended in the fifth with the team coming together, somebody tell me what was like. Coach, you tell me and then maybe have let's have one of your captains tell me. Yeah. Sure. First of all, this was an incredible team. We had 12 seniors this year. They have simply dominated the competition over the last two years. Didn't lose a game in state at all, this year and lost one last year. And so to find ourselves behind in the both the semifinal game and the championship game, and have them explode the way they did to to find a way to
win those games. These seniors just were not gonna let their team or their school down this year. And so Broomfield High School is full of championships, and we were very, very proud to bring the first softball championship banner to Broomfield High School. I'm looking down the line to see which leader is gonna step up and talk. Okay. So, woah, that's odd. Okay. So we all decided that our motto was gonna be all for one because it wasn't just because of one of us, it was for all of us and we were gonna do it for each other.
Because last year we fell short and I know know that really hurt all of us and really had a strong impact on how that made us feel, so we decided that that was not going to happen this year. And it was our most of our last years, not all of us, but most of ours. And that would have just been devastating and, like, horrible way to go out, so we decided that that was the best way for us to celebrate each and every one of our successes and not just ourselves. Yeah. And and if I recall at the pep rally, I think it was one of
your captains said, we we decided we weren't playing for the name on the back, we're gonna play for the name on the front, which is Broomfield High School. How awesome is that? Another round of applause for our state championship, girls softball team. Anybody in the mood for another state champion? Miles Cool, come on up. And coach Serwin, any Fairview administrators that are here, please come on up. And school administrators, please. I hope that you're coming up with your teams to to be able to get in these photos. So I apologize. I'm looking so in in October, Miles won the individual state title in the five
a state tournament in Grand Junction, clinching the win with a birdie on his final hole. In this photo from the award ceremony, you could see him alongside his teammate and good friend Ash Edwards who came in second place finishing one shot back. How great is that? So Miles, I I've got all kind of questions. Here, come on over here. First of all, did the birdie on the final hole, is that what won it for you? Yeah. Yeah. That's clutch. Did they call you that at school Clutch? No. They should. Let's let's get let's make that a thing. Let's get that going. So, I understand that, that you you came in second as a sophomore, third as
a junior, but how did it feel to finally take home the title on the last hole with a birdie? It felt great. I feel like I just had to had to do it. It was like just runner-up and then third, and I was I had to get it done. Couldn't let my teammate beat me this time. So Yeah. Otherwise, they wouldn't call you clutch. Right? There you go. So while state championship's a big deal, you've got your eye on something bigger. Might we see you in a green jacket someday? You've committed to San Diego State University where they've got great weather and coaches. Are you excited to head to San Diego State and, tell us about your future?
Yeah. I'm really excited. I'm just try trying to get out of the cold. It's hard to golf in snow. So, yeah, I'm excited for the future. We'll have four years there and then hopefully get a green jacket. You see you've seen him here. You can say you met him. Clutch. Clutch cool. Alright. Let's take a picture. Whether it's high school athletics or physical education class, we know that it's crucially important that our students have the opportunity to move during their day. Not to mention all the skills like teamwork and communication the kids learn while they're participating in these activities. Our physical education teachers do such a great job with our students.
And this year, not one, but two of our physical educators were honored for their work by their peers this year. So if we could have Tim Chavez from Emerald Elementary and Emily Hill from Southern Hills, Melinda and Samara. Any other administrators, come on up. So last Friday, Tim was honored by Society of Health and Physical Educators of Colorado with its annual Colorado teacher recognition award, and Emily was named SHAPE's Middle School Teacher of the Year. Let's give them a big round of applause. Alright, Tim and Emily. Come on over here.
It this it wouldn't be a a attendant honor roll complete unless we ask some questions here. So getting up and moving, we know is so important, more now than ever possibly. Why don't we have both of you share a little something about what drives you to be a physical educator in VVSD? Okay. So I've been in BBSD now, back in BBSD for ten years, and I love being in this district, first of all. Yeah. Keep it going. Yeah. At Southern Hills, we are blessed to be able to teach things. Me and my teaching partner, we get to do archery and golf, skateboarding.
We do a lot of nontraditional units. We try to compete with the kids in badminton, so a lot of nontraditional things. We work out every Wednesday, which to some people would be crazy. But to our students, they hate it at first and then learn to love it. And they actually look forward to working out every Wednesday. So lifelong fitness and just getting kids moving. I think one thing is it doesn't you don't have to be an athlete to love PE. You could be the most smart, studious kid that goes to PE kind of just
to move your body and you can still thrive, so I love it. So thank you. Yeah, I'll just piggyback off that. We do skateboarding and bikes and non typical stuff as well. I can't take all the credit but one of my previous students was just up here with Broomfield Softball. So, now Yeah, just touch. No. We just like like to make it fun for all the kids to come in and enjoy. I got a supportive staff, a great team, awesome principal. We come up with ideas and and she's like, yeah.
Let's do it. So it's all for the community and stuff. Big round of applause. Let's take a picture. So this next individual we wanna recognize, I'm not sure if she made it. Is Vanessa Marina Maia here? She's not here. Do you wanna know what she want? Gotta have a little suspense here at the superintendent's honor rolls. We were we're excited to to celebrate Vanessa. In BVSD, we like to say we're bilingual and proud, and that's certainly the case for Vanessa. She works at Manhattan Middle School of Arts and Academics, and her students, were gonna
be up here, but, she wasn't able to be here. Secondary bilingual teacher of the year by the Colorado Association for Bilingual Education. So, Vanessa, if you watch this later, we're proud of you. We can't wait to get our certificate to you, and thank you for all you do for our kids over at Manhattan. Takes a team to support our gifted students here in VBSD, and tonight we're excited to celebrate that work through one of our educators, Jana Krutzinger from University Hill Elementary, Uni Hill. Jana, come on up. Jana recently received the 2025 Special Advocate of the Year Award from the Colorado Association
for Gifted and Talented. Organization developed the award to recognize professionals in learners beyond the classroom and provide con contributions of time and effort in supporting gifted students. Let's give Jana a hand. And then I gotta ask her a question. Jana, come on over. So it's so Jana, it's your work is so important in making sure that we support our gifted students.
What does that look like, on a day to day for you in supporting your students at UB Health? That's a great question. It really runs the gamut from making sure that we're identifying students and that we are, specifically my school, making sure we are identifying students who are underrepresented which tends to be our Latino students. And then just making sure that they are getting enrichment and extensions in the classroom, as well as getting emotional support.
Another round of applause. The first big error of the superintendent's honor roll, there's bound to be a few. This is Jana, not Jana. So Jana, let's give every Jana a round of applause. We can't all be the Broomfield girls softball team. Sorry. That was definitely okay. Alright. I think I'm gonna recover you. I think I got this one. Alright. Next, one of the biggest honors that a high school science teacher can receive is being chosen for a Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science.
Centaurus High School teacher, Kim Becker, was honored as one of Colorado's finals for the award not once but twice in three years. Kim, come on up. Carlin, I saw that you're here, come on down. Erin Greenwood, you think you're gonna take pictures but you're coming on up too. So Kim was named a Colorado finalist for the presidential award for excellence in 2023 and again this year in the science category. Historically, teachers that are chosen get to go to Washington DC, visit the White House, and receive $10,000 from the National Science Foundation.
Unfortunately, everything is on hold indefinitely. Regardless, we couldn't be more proud of Kim for being selected to represent Colorado twice and helping to make Centaurus and BVSD a leader in science. Let's give Kim another round of applause. Kim, talk to us about what it means to you to be selected twice for this award. Well, it's, it's really an honor, but I also think it's about the students and what my students have been able to achieve. I like to make my classroom so that students are able to act as scientists and engineers and actually, like, are empowered and so I think that's probably a big
reason why I'm getting to do this. You can see some of those pictures are from, some of the things that we've done with my students in the past and, we actually just got back from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Saturday. I was there with my students. We went and visited Caltech and JPL and participated in an invention challenge there. And, they went to Griffith Observatory too. It was really great and I just, love inspiring the next generation of, scientists and engineers. Yeah.
Big round of applause for Kim. So a number of BVSD schools participate in National History Day, a chance for sixth through twelfth grade students to dive deep into a history topic of their choice. It's truly remarkable to see the projects these students create after gathering extensive research of libraries, archives, archives, and museums. In fact, usually at the June honor roll, we celebrate all of the BVSD students who have won awards at the state level of Natural History Day. National History Day, as you might imagine, takes a lot of support from our educators
that guides them to that level of competition. And today, we're excited to to celebrate one of them, Anna Royal. Anna, where you at? Come on down. Formerly of Summit Middle, now at Manhattan Middle. Come on up, Anna. And is anybody from Manhattan who wants to come up and celebrate or Summit who wants to come up and celebrate? So recently, Anna was named the National History Day Colorado Teacher of the Year. That's a big deal. That's right. She she represented our state as a delegate at the National History Day finals, which
were held at the University of Maryland last summer. And, Anna, I've got, well, let's give her another round of applause because she's awesome. How did you get involved in National History Day? I did National History Day at Fairview and did very poorly. And that's how I got involved. But Summit has been an incredible place to hone and develop the advising tools. And I have to give a shout out to Ben and Susie and Meg from Summit who are here and have been partners on the journey at Summit with NHD
and are really equally responsible for this award. Another round of applause for Anna. Are you having fun? This is a good good time. Right? There's cookies out there. You can, you know, get a bowl of shredded beef or something if you're hungry. Actually, this is our last, our last recognition, but this is a big deal. So don't no shredded beef right away. Just just hang in there with me because I really need everybody here to celebrate this next honoree. Tonight, we honor a student who saw a classmate in trouble, took action, and saved their life. June Johnson from Meadowlark, come on up along with mister Caldwell is is here.
Anybody from Meadowlark? Wait till you wait till you hear this story. Right? This is amazing. June was in the lunchroom at Meadowlark. She spotted another student choking. Staff member tried to give the student the Heimlich maneuver but couldn't dislodge the food. So what did June do? She stepped up. She had just the right touch. This time, the students' area was cleared, saving their life. Give the biggest round of applause of the night to June Johnson. June, I got we gotta talk to you here. So I understand it was your grandma that taught you the Heimlich.
Is that right? So I bet you never thought you'd ever have to use it. What gave you the courage to step up and and do that in that moment? I mean, last summer, I guess it was the 2024, she's a nurse, and she had, like, dummies at her house. And I was about I was about to start, like, baby No. That was it. You and you nailed it. Congratulations. Another round of applause. Let's take a picture.
Thank you all, again, so much. I know this is a busy time of year. Again, it's always so great to celebrate our our champions, our incredible students, our incredible staff, our community. Thank you for your support of our school district, for all you do to support your students, and your schools. Again, please help yourself on the way out. We've got plenty of food. Thanks for being here. Hope everybody has a great winter bake winter break. Take care, everyone. I'd like to call the representative of the College of Education for of education for Tuesday, 12/09/2025. Board members may attend and participate in board meetings by electronic means in accordance with
board policy BMEA and state law. Laura, can you please call the roll? Bucher? Here. Here. Chavez? Here. Medler? Here. Quinlan Ueda? Here. Rajpal? Here. Tamu Ading? Here. Ungar? Here. Thank you. This time, I'd like everyone to turn their attention to the screens for our land acknowledgment this evening. The Boulder Valley School District resides and operates the unjustly and illegally taken territory of the Ute, Puebloan, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Apache, Navajo, and 48 other tribal nations historically tied to
this land, who We've called this land home since time immemorial. We acknowledge the atrocities We acknowledge the atrocities committed here, including the painful history of genocide, forced assimilation, and efforts to alienate the indigenous inhabitants from their homeland, supported by the policies of the United States government. BVSD is aware of the many indigenous peoples past and present and their dignified nations and cultures who care for this land with strength and resilience. BBC recognizes the histories of the land in Colorado and the survival of many nations
that carried their rural traditions into the present. It is BBC's responsibility to educate our community and our students so that we can embrace the wisdom and knowledge of indigenous peoples and actively stand together to address injustices. In offering this land acknowledgement, we affirm and honor the history, wisdom, oral traditions, and resilience of indigenous people and recognize the responsibility to care for and appreciate this land together. I'd like to remind everybody that the mission of the Boulder Valley School District is
to create challenging, meaningful, and engaging learning opportunities so that all children thrive and are prepared for successful civically engaged lives. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining us here in person tonight. And for those of you attending remotely, we're glad to have you observe and participate in our meetings. At this time, is there a motion to approve this evening's agenda? Moved by Lalania, seconded by Jorge. Laura, can you please call the vote on the motion? Bucher? Chavez? Yes. Medler? Yes. Quinlan Uyeda? Yes. Rajpal? Yes. Temuwadding? Yes. Ungar? Yes.
Motion passes. First item on tonight's agenda is the work study session. Board members, we have one work study session topic this evening, which is a presentation from our auditors of the annual comprehensive financial report, otherwise known as ACTFUR. I'll turn it over to Bill Sutter to do the introductions. Alright. Thank you, president Rajpal, members of the board, doctor Anderson. We're here to present, the, annual comprehensive financial report as, was mentioned, the ACTFER as it's called. Just quickly want to call out a few folks that are here.
Bob Smart, a long time member of the Audit Committee. Didn't know that it was a long sentence that he was going to be committed to for being on the audit committee, but he keeps staying around and his wisdom is greatly appreciated. Tiphapa Karashudi, our Director of Finance and Accounting Heather Groeters, the Accounting Manager and of course Allison Sleiff, the principal, not that kind of principal, but principal with Clifton, Larson, Allen, our auditors. We did meet as the Audit Committee back on November 19 to review the draft
audit in detail, spent about an hour talking through it. So it has been looked at, but certainly we'll turn it over to Allison to dig in to the presentation for, the audit. Great. Yeah. Thank you so much, and good to see you all again. And, welcome to the new new members as well. So I'm excited to present the audit results, this evening. We do have just a brief PowerPoint presentation. This is just a summary of what we already met with audit committee, members about a couple weeks ago.
So, if there are any questions, though, happy to to field those from any of the the board members here. So ultimately, what our scope was of the whole audit, as was mentioned, Bill mentioned the Act First. That's ultimately the financial statements for the district as a whole. As a reminder, or those that are looking at it for the first time, that does also include the five charter schools that are, considered discreetly presented component units of the district. So those are shown within, the district's financial statements as well as the district as a whole. So, just wanted to mention that. Us CLA, we are the ex external auditors of all the charter schools as well.
So we did perform those audits as well as the main district audit, and that's what you see in front of you today, with the the ACFR that was attached to, the meeting. Also as part of that, we do, conduct our audit and and, determine if there are any sort of findings or recommendations, best practices, those sorts of things. So that's part of our ultimate deliverable as well. I'll cover, that in a second. Then we also have required government governance communications letter. So we're directly engaged, with you all from a board of education standpoint to perform the audit. And so there is certain required communications we have directly with you all.
So that's one of the letters that we did issue as part of our deliverables that really just summarizes, any sort of major changes during the year, findings, any sort of concerns, things like that. So that's also one of the letters that we issue. And then two other parts to this. One is a report of internal control over financial reporting. So that's really, a deeper dive, in accordance with governmental auditing standards, over any sort of, controls that you have, from a district standpoint. So if we were to have any sort of concerns from from a, finding perspective,
those would be reported in that letter. And then the last, pieces are report over, the the, results of your or of your federal program. So, because the district is a recipient of federal funds, you have to go through what's called a single audit. So the threshold used to be 750,000. It's actually bumped to a million now going forward. But any entities that do receive that federal funding go through a deep dive audit. This is a bit of a unique year, for a lot of reasons, but one of the reasons is, the the main kind of document, that us as auditors follow
that, the Office of Management and Budget or OMB puts out. It was delayed this past year. Typically, it's put out in, May every year. We just got a Thanksgiving present where the final issuance was just the, two days before Thanksgiving. So, that's a lengthy delay, and we are not able to issue our single audit until that came out. So, obviously, that was just a couple weeks ago. We were able to perform a lot of our testing over the draft supplement that was put out by the feds, but we did have to hold everything just like everyone else in the audit community had to hold that report. So, that will be separately issued this year.
That has been done in the past kind of, with the change of administration. That was the last time we did have to separately issue that. So that will be forthcoming. And, certainly, if we have any, results of of a concern, we'll report that to you all, but nothing at this point. We've already performed our test work and just kind of finishing things up now that that final document is, released. So just wanted to mention that because that was a a big delay across the whole community that do receive federal funds. Alright. So ultimately, good news here. Though, over the financial statement audit opinion, so that's in the first kind of, third
of the financial statement document of the ACFAR. So we did issue an unmodified or clean opinion, which is the easier way to say that, but the the technical term is unmodified. So that is the best opinion that an organization can receive. So did wanna congratulate the district again on achieving that, for this fiscal, this past fiscal year or fiscal year '25. We did not have any sort of material weaknesses or significant deficiencies as a result of the audit over the financial statements. So again, that's a positive result, and no, nothing that rose to the level of needing to be a written finding, that would be reported as part of the, the
ultimate result. So again, congratulations on achieving that. Just some summary items, from a government governance communications. The details of this are as part of the board packet but, there was just one item I wanted to call out. There was a new accounting policy this past year that the district, among all governmental organizations, had to implement related to compensated absences. So that's related to vacations, sick leave, sorts of accruals, a lot of nuances there with governments. But basically having to increase the liability that government show on their financial statements.
So that is something that, is, new to the district as as well as all all districts, and other governmental organizations. That was a a big lift, though, for for Bill and the team to, make sure that they complied properly with that standard, and we did not have any sort of findings related to that or anything like that. That is a large amount, though, that is on, the full accrual statements that are within the ACFAR. There was also just a change in accounting policy related to submitting subscription based IT arrangements, just kind of, increasing a capitalization threshold there. So just wanna call out those major changes.
Otherwise, we did have a few what's called uncorrected misstatements. And so, just to spend a a minute there, that means those were items that that came about through the audit process, but they're not considered material in nature. So they don't distort the financial statement results, but they are big enough where we just have to call, to your attention. Typically, that tends to be timing differences. Maybe things were recorded in the incorrect fiscal year or or an incorrect amount. So, not a, not a material error, but it is something that just rose to the level through the, through the audit process. So one of them related to, this this new accounting standard with, compensated absences, that
is a standard that has to be retroactively applied to kind of beginning, equity or or, net position. It wasn't big enough that the district had to go back kind of two years and recalculate that, so that is a past adjustment. That was corrected though. It kind of flowed through, and the ending balances are correct, as of sixthirtytwenty five. Another one was a timing issue related to an accrual adjustment for construction. Again, more just timing, recorded in a different fiscal year. And then one was related to a past adjustment related to a lease, item, which is basically just an impact, kind of a gross up of your balance sheet, if
you will, within the general fund. So, again, no material items, but just wanted to mention those were found during the audit process. No corrected misstatements, though, so nothing in terms of material audit adjustments, as I mentioned. And then, more is just an FYI. We do have the management representation letter that we do get signed by management saying that they provided us all the supporting documentation. They let us know about litigation, kind of a laundry list of items. And so that is something that we have to get before we can release our audit results. Otherwise this is just a real high level overview of the large, annual comprehensive financial report.
This is just a printed version, actually double sided, so it's very large. But just some of the highlights I just wanted to briefly mention there. Our audit report so that's the independent, auditor's report, kind of towards the front of the financial statements. Management discussion and analysis, or MD and A, is a good kind of high level summary if you're trying not to review the 200 some pages of the financial statements, but it does kind of describe changes year over year and has a good narrative there. Then kind of the middle of the financial statements are really the focus of the audit with, the statement of net position which is the balance sheet for the, district statement of activities and kind of all the fund level statements with all the nuances
there. So, a lot of information though within the ACFR that is required to be part of that ultimate deliverable. With that, that really concludes kind of our overall results though. We did also have a management letter comment. I'll mention that that's really more best practice recommendations around, IT recommendations. So we do go through IT, audit, requirements and standards. So, that's more, as just an FYI for you all, that that was one of our best practice recommendations as well. But happy to address any questions or feedback. We're always here, to help, address any any questions or concerns from the board.
And my contact information is also in there. Certainly happy to to connect with anyone as well. That's all I have. Thank you for that presentation, Allison. Board members, any questions? Lalania. Thanks, Bill. Questions or comments? Bill? I have a couple of things. One on that single audit, the state auditor issued a blanket waiver for everybody in the state, because of that, delayed information and delayed, single audits. So while we do have a timeline that we have to meet, in state statute, they have the ability to waive that, and they did.
And then also attached in the agenda item is form AFA-twenty 25, which is the assurances for financial accreditation. So, there's, required by CDE, by state statute, just affirming, that we are in compliance with all the required financial components. And so, this has a signature line for the board president. I certify it's included in there.
I saw that. Thank you. I do have a quick question on the IT controls that came up. Do we have a plan? Some of them seem very simple, like subscriptions expiring or do we have a plan to address any of those? I know they're not critical for the audit itself, but just out of curiosity. Trying to remember, there was one about Windows 10, that's in process. And I can maybe add a little, color commentary to that too. We did meet with, the IT team here at the district about the details of those. So, there was good conversation between kind of our CLA IT team and then the
the district's IT, team to address those. So, from our perspective, yes. There's, you know, action being taken. Is that fair to say? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yep. Great. Thank you. Seeing as there are no further questions, we will take a brief break to reset the boardroom. Thank you so much. Welcome back, everybody. The next item on our agenda this evening is a superintendent's report. Doctor Anderson, good evening. Good evening, board president Rajpal, board members. Good to see everyone. Hope everybody had a wonderful Thanksgiving break, and, just wanted to take this opportunity to
thank all of our board members and everybody who came out today for superintendent's honor roll. Great opportunity to celebrate our kids, our staff. So it's just really, really fun thing to do. So appreciate everybody who was able to attend that. Board members holiday season is definitely underway, and BVSD helped, kick it off last weekend in Lewisville. Marching bands from Centaurus, seen here. And Monarchide on the next slide. As well as Centaurus dance and cheer teams and our outstanding BVSD transportation team. See that, but that bus is, all decked out for the holidays.
Participate in the Louisville Chamber of Commerce Parade of Lights on Friday night. Not only was our, did we have a bus in the parade, CW, our adorable mascot that helps get out the word about crosswalk safety and other safety tips made in appearance. I want to thank all of our students and staff who participated lighting up the night and spreading holiday cheer. Today's Colorado, today, December 9, is Colorado Gives Day where many important organizations receive donations to make an impact to our community. Today, our BVSD Foundation impact on education unlocked a $35,000 match from Google and an
anonymous donor for more than $70,000 gift. These funds will expand academic well-being, college, and career opportunities for thousands of students across our district. If it's not too late to give, you can make a donation to Impact on Education or any of the many participating local nonprofits on the Colorado Gives Day website, www.coloradogives.org. Finally, we see, we love seeing the units from Boulder Mod continuing to literally fly off the assembly line. Latest module reports, the latest modular units built by Apex Construction Trade students landed safely
in their forever home in the Ponderosa Mobile Home community, and CBS four was there. Homes fresh from the factory are being installed in Boulder. These so called Boulder mods are duplexes that are made in a factory and have now been transported and placed in the Ponderosa mobile home community. The project is a collaboration between the Boulder Valley School District and Habitat for Humanity. It's an effort to bring more affordable housing to the city and give students workforce training as well. Board members, I know that that you join me in being so proud of this effort, which is made possible through our outstanding partnership, Flatirons Habitat for Humanity and the
City of Boulder. Just I think an incredible thing that's happening in our school district and in our community. And just one last reminder for our families, that Universal Preschool Program, UPK application for four year olds open today for the 'twenty six-'twenty seven school year. In 'twenty six-'twenty seven, BVSE will continue to offer half day preschool sessions five days a week, morning and afternoon at all of our preschool sites. The majority of our sites also offer preschool enrichment to extend the day. Applications can be submitted at upk.colorado.gov. As a reminder, you do not apply with the district.
You apply at upk.colorado.gov. That's all I have for superintendent remarks this evening. Thank you for those remarks. Doctor Anderson, board members, any questions or comments? So I was driving in here this evening, and CPR was doing a piece on the mod factory. It was fun. They were interviewing Sam Fuqua, past board president, on that piece. So it was just fun to hear that tonight, see your presentation as well. The next item on tonight's agenda is public participation. The board respects the rights of the public to speak on matters concerning the operation of our schools. The board does not endorse the comments of any speaker and reminds all those who
speak that you're responsible for your own speech. Speakers will each have two minutes to speak. You will see a yellow card when you have thirty seconds remaining and an orange card when you have ten seconds remaining. If you run out of time or would like to share additional feedback, you can always email the board. Board members, we have two speakers this evening, the first of which is Alexandra Prospero or Zanna Prospero. Zanna does not appear to be here this evening, so we will move on to our second speaker, Steven Schwartz. If you wanna come up to the podium. That is just fine. You can always email the board if you wanna share your feedback with us at
a later date in time. Okay. We will now move on to board communication. Board members, is there anything you would like to share? Alex. Just a couple of things. I just wanted to, let people know I got an invitation to go visit Prospect Academy, which is a charter school in GEFCO that focuses on kids on the autism spectrum. And I was gonna go visit it Wednesday morning, and Diane is gonna join me. So we're just gonna go see what it was like, and get a sense of the school. So I'll report back after our visit and look forward to seeing what they have.
Thanks, Alex. Jorge? Thank you. Always my favorite time of year to see the super the superintendent's honor roll. Just such great things to see what our students are doing and our and our teachers and our staff. Just a sense of community is always kind of overwhelming. It's it's wonderful to see. I mean, it's such a great, thing to celebrate right now. And and it reminds me, you know, how how we serve all of our students and how the community we build matters so much. And as a part of that, I know that right now there's there's a lot of fear in the community. There's a it's a time of year where while it's a great celebration, it's all the time for isolation and People feel vulnerable and alone.
And the important role that we play, in our staff, our faculty, the board, our administrators, and then the student body and parents here, to recognize that, you know, if you see somebody, if someone looks alone, looks fearful, to put the word out there and say, hey. You're not alone. You're surrounded by a community here of people who have, who are here to support each other and to be part of the larger community. And I think that message is really important during this time of year, and to recognize that, you know, we we've built into our we have resolutions about how we support each other.
We've got our policy about how we support each other, and but it's something that we all do as as a part of that. So I just wanna kinda, highlight that, this evening because it's, I got more fuzzy feelings today. So just kinda share the thought. Thank you. Thanks, Jorge. Dionne? I wanted to share with you that the the celebration tonight was especially sweet for me because, Tim Chavez who received a p the PE award was one of my students. And so it comes full circle. Gosh, it's been twenty five years since I've had Tim in a classroom, but to
see him become a teacher. And he and I worked together on the, the project. It's called the Latino History Project, and that's associated with the University of Colorado. And he and I worked together to do some really great work, and he's a great contributor to the community in a lot of ways. I also wanted to recognize that I was really proud to be sworn in to, I think, the most diverse board we've ever had in Boulder Valley Schools from my
memory. I got thirty years. You got any more in there? But I just wanted to celebrate that, that we have a lot of diverse viewpoints on the board now. I don't have much, but board members, I had the opportunity to meet with two awesome students, Tyler and Owen from High Peaks and Boulder High, who are working on a project for the gifted and talented student advisory program. They're trying to find a way to to create almost like an NA National History Day or a science fair for our gifted and talented students to share their capstone
projects or to share their passion projects and have those viewable by other students. They can discuss their their strengths as gifted learners, whatever they may be. So that was very interesting. And just to give you all a heads up that there are students in the gifted and talented advisory council are all working on individual projects on how to advocate on behalf of our gifted learners to improve their experiences within our schools. So that was pretty exciting. Two awesome humans who have a lot of really great ideas.
That was a fun fun meeting that I was able to have. And then just for the community, the board is taking off to the Colorado Association of School Boards annual conference tomorrow. We will learn and connect with school board members from all across the state, from folks from the Colorado Department of Education, really improve our effectiveness as I just wanna thank taxpayers for supporting us in making that trip down, and we will take back any of our learning to really improve the work of this board and the work of the district. So I just wanted to share that as well.
We will now move on to the information items of this evening's agenda. We have two information items tonight, the first of which is the annual enrollment update. Doctor. Anderson, would you like to do introductions? Yes. Thank you, Board President Rajpal. We have Glenn Segrue here, district planner, to give, the board and our community our annual enrollment update. So, Glenn, I'm gonna turn it over to you. I think your mic is off. It used to be red is on, not red is on. There it is. Got it. It did look different. This is the annual enrollment report for 2025. It's a snapshot of 2025, enrollment using October count data, which is the data thank
you. Data used, or I should say audited by the state and by, BVSD, to be the most accurate that we have. And we also use that past year October count data for an even comparison from year to year. We look at that, we can look at trends, see how this year fits into past years, and look at how we got to where we're at today, based on overall enrollment. This, enrollment information also contributes to enrollment projections, which will be coming in early January.
It also contributes towards the 2627 budget coming up, and resource allocations for FTE, facilities, educational materials, and things like that. We also use a lot of this data in committees and processes such as LRAC and BOND. So overall trends for twenty fivetwenty six. This chart shows the the trends that we've seen in enrollment since 2015. The gray line across the top represents, the overall enrollment of the district for those years and the trends that we see build up to twenty twenty twenty five.
The light blue area represents charter enrollment, and the darker blue area represents the, general fund enrollment, which is the non charter enrollment. And you can see that the baseline is 15,000, so that that chartered segment is not proportional for the overall thing. Mostly what we want to see in this chart is a difference from year to year. With that we see continued decline in 2025, but steeper this year. We had a loss of closer to 1.9%, or 525 students.
We had projected closer to point nine students around 250 student loss. The five year trend that we've been seeing averages to about a 1.3 loss, year over year. One thing we did want to look at the past two years, immigration has been important in surrounding districts and us as well. We use data for, non English proficient to help gauge that because we don't have really good immigration data. Last year we did see a spike in non English proficient students.
This year we saw quite a bit of a decline in the number of new new NEP students entering the system. This chart shows annual year over year change. So if you look along the side of the bar with the numbers, that's the absolute number that we lost year over year, of students. The line that you see in gray represents the overall district, and we see elementary, middle, and high bars projecting along each year as well.
When we look at this, we see a declining trend starting with elementary in 2015 and spreading to other levels as we move, to later years in the chart. We see unexpected gains at middle school in 2023 and 2024, where know, having smaller and smaller elementary classes, we would have expected to see declines. We thought that probably were kids from COVID, who are going to private schools or
homeschools, reentering the system at middle school. This year we do see declines at middle, so that trend may be wearing out. Overall losses at all levels in 2025 with the greatest loss at elementary, and the high school and middle losses were the greatest than we've seen in the previous two years. And overall greater than what we've seen in recent years. This chart shows grade levels along the bottom K through 12, and each bar represents
the popular the number of students at that grade level. The very top of the bar in the dark blue box represents the most that grade level was in the last ten years. The bottom level of that darker blue box represents the smallest that grade level has been in the last ten years. When we look at kindergarten on this chart, we had a little bit larger kindergarten that we've seen recently. It's sixteen twenty six, I believe. That was greater than projected. The white square represents that kindergarten class that we see now, and the triangle represents
what what that class was projected. So that is good news on that part of it, but then we see a decline at first grade, which is fairly unusual. Usually we see a bump from first grade as kids come out of private kindergarten classes and homeschool. We do see about a 50 student bump pretty regularly, so a decline at first is unusual. Going up the chart, we see most of the classes, excuse me, this year are on the bottom end of the ten year trend, really all the way up until
twelfth grade. And we still see that twelfth grade class is a little bit larger than we've seen in in history, but we do expect to see that to change as these smaller cohorts move up. One unusual thing at twelfth grade is we do see growth at twelfth grade. Last year it was to the tune of 160 students, mostly resident students, and we saw something akin to that this year as well. We've tried to look at a few explanations, and we haven't really come up with anything firm. However, it is an unusual trend. This chart shows residential growth.
So this is looking at the students that live in our district, within our borders and excludes open enrollment factors. We break it out in the East in Boulder subtotals, which is the dark blue line, and the eastern part of the district, which is the lighter blue line or blue bar. And the line itself is, the BVSD total. And when we look at this, in most years Boulder has lost students since 2018, where the eastern part of the district has been a little more inconsistent.
There's lost years, and there's even years, and a little bit of growth even in 2018, '19, and a little bit last year. K-twelve resident students in 2025 were down, however, by about 655 students. So down quite a bit further, more than a 100 students than the overall enrollment. That puts us at 23,900 students for 2025. This is the second highest loss since the pandemic and and, but it does appear that OE has helped offset some of that loss, and I can talk a little
bit more about that later. This is a refinement of that last, chart. Again, it talks about resident students. Now we're just looking at the elementary level and a little bit finer, finer look at each of the individual communities in Boulder, Bream Field, Lafayette, Erie, Louisville, Superior, and the mountain areas. So each of the bars represents those different areas with the darker bar being blue, darker bar being bolder along the bottoms. And like some of the other ones that we see, the bolder, bars are mostly
negative throughout the chart, especially at elementary because this declining trend did start earlier at elementary than overall. And this year also unusual was the Lafayette Erie, which also saw pretty one of their largest declines in ten years. Lafayette area is where we have most of our new housing, and that does help offset some of the the losses that we see in the area. For for some reason that didn't occur this year.
We are looking to see if immigration has something to do with that, if there's a disproportionate, effect to that community, but right now that's a little hard to bend down. Other factors affecting our enrollment, migration, out of district students, and births. This chart is taken mostly from CDE data, and for that reason it includes preschool where typically we don't include preschool in a lot of our numbers. And when we look at it, we see pretty good growth since 2022 in out
of district students open enrolling into our district. In fact, last year was the the high watermark up to that point, and we beat that by a pretty good margin. What's more is we're also seeing the number of students leaving the district had been leveling out in recent years, and last year it even declined. We don't have 2025 data from CDE yet, that'll be coming in mid January, but we'll we'll definitely wanna see if that, net gain continues. One of one of the most important factors in in enrollment is is net migration
to a region. So, we know we've had declining enrollment over the years or I'm I'm sorry, but declining births over the years. But in past in the in the February, for example, we had enough net migration to offset declining births during that time. So how you look at this chart is taken from our own student data. The top green line are the new students that we get to the district, not counting K students, but first through twelfth graders. And the bottom red line represents the students that have left the district since last
year, and that one discounts the effect from twelfth graders. And what we can see with this is it's not really one or the other that influences, whether we grow or or decline in that migration, but it's that middle arrow. How big that middle arrow is, your net gain. So what we've seen in recent years while we've been declining in, excuse me, new students to the district, the students leaving the district has also been declining. So our net gains at least the last two years have been relatively healthy.
Three eighty five in 2023, and five eighty last year, which is pretty good. This year we saw a sharp decline, and mostly from new students to the district. First are the last major factor, in in enrollment that we're discussing tonight. This chart shows the trends since 2007 broken out for the eastern part of the district in gray and the blue part of the district or the, Boulder, part of
the district in blue. Of course, we've we've seen continued declines since 1999, but we have seen some leveling, in the eastern part of the district in more recent years, particularly since 2000, where during the teens especially, we saw a sharp decline in Boulder overall. However, Boulder does appear to have leveled off somewhat since 2019. But we'll kinda have to see, if that's still slightly a decline trend or a true leveling, but it certainly isn't as steep as it was previously.
And, of course the important thing of birth is how it affects our kindergarten classes and those sizes. This chart tracks our resident kindergarten classes, just the ones the students that are live in our district, and that's the darker line along the bottom. And then it overlays, births that, from five years prior to that. So when you take a year of 2022, '23 for kindergarten, the the birthmark is
is the birth class that should theoretically affect, become that kindergarten class, five, six years later. When we lay this out, we see a pretty consistent trend over the years of of connection between births declining and our classes. You see the ratio along the bottom. It usually historically has been around low 90s to the mid 90s ninety percent Centile. Although, we did see a dip in 2022, and '23 into the eighties.
That was worrisome at that time, but it has since leveled off to about 93%, of of of that kindergarten class related to the corresponding births. And when we take that out to the future a little bit, that does give us some insight of what our future kindergarten classes may look like. We may see some leveling or some slight decline. So in summary, enrollment declines of about 500 students this year or close to 2%, which is the second greatest loss we've seen since the pandemic.
All levels saw a decline in 2025. However, kindergarten, at 1626 was the largest that we've seen since 2022. Previous student gains at middle school didn't occur in 2025, which may indicate, that getting back some of the COVID students that had left, that that pool is kind of drying up. And out of district contributions to enrollments were higher than last year's historic high. Boulder largely driving enrollment declines in 2025, but we also saw saw unusual declines in
Lafayette and Erie this year. Birth showing signs of maybe some leveling or at least slight declines, going forward, after steep period of steep declines particularly in Boulder. And resident student, net migration that we've been seeing also faltered a little bit in 2025. With that, I'm happy to take questions. Thank you, Glenn. Board members? Questions or comments? I'm curious about the kindergarten first grade data and if we have any anecdotal information that might explain that trend of having more kindergartners and fewer first graders.
None really. There was a little bit, of concern that maybe we're seeing higher levels of, parents hold back their kindergarteners or their Graders into kindergarten, which would explain also a little bit of a bump at kindergarten. But when we looked at it closely, there is a small difference. There is a little bit up, but maybe a difference of 15 kids or so in the past, not quite the 75 kids or so that we would have would have needed to match, what we would have expected.
Jorge. Thank you for all this. You presented the data on non English speakers. And so is it that we had fewer new non English speaking students than we expected, or is it that we lost non English speakers or a combination of the two? Combination of the two. So we actually retained the the non English, proficient speakers from last year pretty well. Our population is is only a little bit below what it was last year as a whole.
But when we look at the number of new ones that we add every year, that's the part that was down, over down over what we've been seeing in more recent years. Thank you. Alex and then Lalainya. Yeah. I'm thank you very much for all this. It's it's really helpful and really important. As I think about sort of long term or medium term, I think about the things that we can kinda control as a district that that lead to some of these numbers. And so I'm encouraged to see, like, the increase in the out of district enrollment, you know, coming in as something that we can use to backfill our numbers.
But I'm I'm also looking at, like, a significant decrease this year. If we're down, like, 600 and we're up, like, two twenty or something and out of district enrollment, like, if we hadn't gotten the increase in district enrollment, we would have had one of the biggest decreases ever. So I it just sort of makes me think about the importance of things that we do programmatically or that we have within our control that make us attractive, both to families that are outside the district, but also to, you know, retaining everybody we can and attracting people to live here too. Do you have any thoughts on, like, the things that are due to to, like,
what we do at school versus what's going on in the community? Like, do we have any way of parsing out those contributions to the decline? You know, really, the the one I have to fall back on with that is I don't have a lot of answers on the why. But at least this year, we can see that, you know, we we seem to be retaining our students, at historic levels for the last three years, pretty close. And we seem to have been overall even gaining on on that retention, and the piece has been more new students enrolling in the district, which probably has more to
do with migration net migration levels overall going down would be my guess in the housing market than really kind of a programmatic thing within schools. That would be my guess. Melania? Glenn, can you tell me or do you know how we're comparing to other Front Range districts? We actually, yeah, do talk about that with with other planners. Most of the almost all of the districts are down this year. Last year, people were kind of feeling buoyed a little bit, I think, but, that
didn't happen again this year. And and most districts are down, and most kindergarten classes are down too. So that's the one standout where we have is our kindergarten is a little bit little bit higher, at least. Thanks, miss Glenn. I'm it hugs. Do we have any good data on, like, our surrounding districts' homeschooled enrollments or any changes that's going on with those populations that are registered in the surrounding districts? We can look, look with the CDE and what they produce when they when they
produce that data in in January. So right now, we know we don't have a a strong feel for that. I I just bring it up because I'm, again, I'm interested in the things that we could do that would, forestall further decreases in enrollment, get students back, or or retain more. And, it's one of those things where I could like, how many students are going to online schools, How many students are homeschooling? How many students are leaving versus coming the district? Those are all the things I'm I'm curious about to figure out how we can do the most to protect our enrollment in the long term.
So I'd like more information on that as we can get it. Clem, will you will you share that in in the enrollment projection presentation? Is that part of that? I do know that that's something as part of our declining enrollment dashboard that we have online. Mhmm. So will we update it there, or will we also present present it when you do enrollment reductions? Both. One further comment, and then I was looking at some old state data, from last year. And there's a significant like if overall the state's going down pretty significantly, of the decrease, about half of it's due to sort of looking like they're just lower enrollment, brick and mortar public school enrollments decrease, it's about equal to the increase in virtual,
enrollment and and in homeschooling numbers statewide. So I know we don't have good district level data because of homeschooling stuff, and we can't necessarily track who's in which virtual schools, you know, once they register outside of ours. But I do think we've gotta figure out the contribution of things that are programmatic versus the things that are not programmatic. Melania. This is a comment not necessarily for Glenn, but for my fellow board members and our public that this is very sobering data for me.
And I had seen it I had seen some of it, earlier, but not everything that we're seeing today. And I think it's important, and I've said this before, that the the problem is here now. And this data, puts that in pretty stark relief for me. And I think I did have that happy feeling last year, like maybe we were
gonna escape some way. But it doesn't look that way. Thank you for your work on it. Jorge. Thank you. I think that's important to keep that perspective, right? That these data take into account increasingly smaller cohorts that are falling as we get rid of these larger cohorts, as they graduate and move forward. And so if I'm understanding this right, you're accounting for those decreasing cohorts and the decreases were even larger than we expected despite accounting for those changes. Correct? Well, you know, I think going forward to kind of adjust that a little bit,
I mean, a lot of this is kinda like a stock market. Know, it kinda goes up and down. It's not always, you know, because we went 2% down, now we're we're destined to 2% from now on. That's why I brought up the 1.3%, which has been our past average. So that is one of the fundamental things, and that is does account in the projection, is, the size of the cohorts and how often, and it does account somewhat for in migration and out migration, in that in that as well. So, yeah, that to answer your question, that is built into the model for the
most part. Thank you for that presentation, Glenn. As my board member said, continues to paint the picture that, you know, students are declining. A lot of that is without our without outside of our control. We need to focus our energies on the things that we can control, a lot of which is coming up. Our next item this evening for information is the twenty twenty six, twenty seven budget
development process and the 2627 budget outlook, which Bill Sutter is very eager to present. Mhmm. Bill, I will turn it over to you. Thank you, president Rajpal, members of the board, and doctor Anderson. We just finished last year with the audit. We're still in this year, about halfway through, but we're gonna stop talking about next year already. So we'll start out with a little video that Randy and his great communications team
put together. It just helps explain a little bit that cycle, the fiscal cycle with the last year, this year, next year. So we will jump into that. It's about two and a half or three minutes long. Here in the Boulder Valley School District, we take our responsibility as stewards of taxpayer dollars very seriously. We pride ourselves not only on our careful management of the funds that you've trusted us with for our students, but also being transparent throughout the process. Beyond being honored by national and international experts in the area, VVSD is committed to
ensuring that our community understands our fiscal process so that you can follow it and participate. It's important to know that from start to finish, the fiscal cycle is about twenty eight months and includes first defining our budget process and planned milestones, then regularly checking in on the fiscal lay of the land. Opportunities are given for staff members, families, and community members to contribute ideas. District leadership then considers the alignment of these suggestions to the district's strategic plan and prioritizes things accordingly as the budget is created. It is then presented to the board of education for discussion and potential editing.
Once board members approve the budget, BVSD staff works to implement it. Along the way, as we will discuss in more depth in a moment, there are factors which might alter our course, which is why we regularly come back and update the board and ultimately revise the budget midway so that it reflects the conditions on the ground. As the fiscal year ends, our team ensures that everything that happened is properly recorded. That report is then audited by an independent outside organization and they report back to the board of education about how we did, covering whether we followed best practices, complied
with state and federal law, and accurately reported the information, ensuring that we stay on the straight and narrow. As we go through this process, it can get a bit complicated because as we mentioned, the entire process stretches over twenty eight months. It is common that our business services team is working to establish next year's budget while implementing this year's plan and reviewing what happened during the last fiscal year. Ultimately, each cycle has the same effects. What does change from year to year are the factors that may impact our budget. Every year, we base our flight plan on the best information we can gather and
try to forecast what might be ahead. Challenges certainly can emerge along the way. With a billion dollar budget, we can adjust and still get to our intended destination. But in the rare event of a situation in which we need to significantly change course, we are in constant communication with our board of education community so that everyone is aware and can provide feedback and be part of the solution. Here in the Boulder Valley School District, we are proud of our tradition of strong financial stewardship. That is a great, brief synopsis of how to think about the budget cycle, and
the fiscal cycle overall. So again, we have a little color coding here with our last year, this year, next year concepts. So we've got those built into the slides to help really paint the picture of kind of which piece of the process that we're talking about. This is largely focused on next fiscal year with the 'twenty six-'twenty seven budget, but also includes information relative to the current fiscal year. Next, we have our timeline and milestones.
So this is a slide that we've been using for several years now. Just a reminder that this changes very little from year to year, about a week, on some of the dates, just from the normal cycle of when they happen. Cycle of when they happen. There are statutory requirements, for when data becomes available or is presented, employee contracts, when the board meetings occur. And we receive data to build the budget over ten months, over the course of
ten months, often after decisions have to be made. So, the real takeaway here is that the budget process does span several months, and there are lots of options for staff, the community, stakeholders to give input with that relevant information coming in over the course of those months. Next, we have our September state revenue forecast.
This is the most recent one that we have, although about a week and a half away on next Friday is the December revenue forecast. So just to think about how the state is forecasting revenues in the current year and what their the state is building its budget on for the next year, in the September revenue forecast, there's only 14% of the data that they have to make
that forecast. So with that limited information, the variability of what can happen towards the end of the year gets greater. As we move through the process, the December revenue forecast has over twice as much information as the September revenue forecast. So it paints a better picture for the state and us as we build next year's budget. Just to note, the March forecast has about 50% more data or over 50% more
data than the December forecast, which is what the state is building, its following fiscal year budget on. So again, as this more information comes in, the picture gets clearer and clearer. I will say that, there are a few pieces of the data that were delayed with the government shutdown. So it might be a little squishy for the December forecast, but will certainly correct itself as we get into that March forecast.
So again, the budget, whether it's the state budget or the district budget, is built on imperfect and incomplete data. But as the timeline progresses, things get a little clearer. So included in the September revenue forecast, they're projecting the current year revenue, which is an indicator of the following year as well. Inflation, what the inflation rate is looking like. Current and projected. They do a two year projection on inflation and then how the economy is going.
So HR1, the federal HR1 really impacted the state revenues, both from income tax standpoint, how the state calculates income tax based on your federal returns, and then all of the things that were included in that federal bill. So it really impacted the state and thus they had to have a special session
and take some action in the current year. For inflation, right now or as of September 2025 was projected at 2.8%, which is up from the June forecast of 2.3%. The governor did build his next year's budget on a 2.6% inflation rate, so kind of tamped it down a little bit. Again, inflation is one of those things that was impacted by the federal shutdown.
So we'll see how that next one comes out just next week. And then as far as the state economy, the economic outlook has weakened, with a recession possible. It is, so I attended the CU leads business research division's 2026 forecast for the state economy next year. And they're not projecting or proposing that there's going to be a recession, But as
any good economist, they never definitive on things and say it's possible. So in the forecast that was developed, there are four things at the federal level that were built into it, tax policy, the fiscal policy and executive actions, immigration policy and trade policy are all included, in that forecast, for the state. So the state has cooked in some of the impacts that have been come down
from the federal level. For the state revenue forecast, we have flat revenues from last year into this year projected. So that's a decrease from what they built the budget on, which is why they had to make some adjustments. And then an increase in FY 2027, but it's not enough to offset the increasing costs both from inflationary increases as well as caseloads. So again, the increases the statutory increases in state budget areas, including K-twelve, are making
it very difficult for adding programs, new programs or moving towards fully funding K-twelve to meet educational expectations and mandates. Next, we'll dive into the strategic plan and how that impacts the budget development. So we're just going to review a few of the investments that we're making related to the strategic initiatives. I won't narrate them word for word, but just hit some of the highlights in
each area. So under no limits, all students experience grade level standards based instruction. A few of the things that have been put in place, seven new standards based curricula, which is a huge investment, across all levels, in the district, elementary, middle, and high, differentiated funding, data driven instruction. And the last one there, short cycle improvement planning, which is a mouthful, but, the ninety day plans that are talked about frequently, is included in that.
Next best step, educators and administrators implement and track tiered supports and instructional strategies to engage and grow all students, and monitor success in doing so. So, monitoring those supports, MTSS, some staff to assist with that, the assessment framework, and expanded availability of standards based based assessments. So again, all those, inputs that are needed to, track students along the way. Define the destination. I need to put on my glasses here.
Throughout their PK-twelve career, all students access career exploration opportunities and earn at least one of the following college credit, industry certification, work based learning experience, or seal of biliteracy. So that, is directly tied to the grad plus framework, where we have teachers on special assignment TOSAs, and CTE, FTE at high schools, dual language programming, expanded concurrent enrollment offerings.
So again, all those additional offerings so that students can access those additional programs. And then included and valued. All students feel included and valued in their learning environment. Schools engage in restorative practices with students when appropriate, and schools consistently apply recommended resolutions for specific disciplinary events, I e the discipline framework. So we established and implemented the discipline framework, and implemented the application of restorative practices.
So again, across all levels in the district, things that are touching those areas of the investments that we're making in those areas of the strategic initiatives. So on to the budget development outlook and challenges. So the governor's budget request, 2.6% inflation, which is his projected CPI. He gets to pick, that's consumer price index. He gets to pick the number that his budget office, develops the budget on.
Whatever it is, it's the calendar year, 2025 will be the 2026, '27 inflation rate that is when you talk about inflation plus growth, within the School Finance Act, that's the number. Statewide enrollment decline of point 7%, 6,000 students across state, three sixteen almost million increase in the state share, support for K-twelve schools, increases the state average per pupil funding
by $413 and a $14,500,000 increase for categorical programs. Continues to implement the Newell School Finance Act 1448, implements three year averaging for declining enrollment and implements the act at the required, 30%. It maintains the budget stabilization factor, at zero. So after the state paid down the negative factor, they're maintaining it at that level.
It's important to note that budget stabilization piece, so keep that in the back of your mind as we wander into these next couple of items. So there was a joint budget committee briefing on K-twelve finance last week. The governor's budget request suggests a likely implementation pause, not next year, but the following year in 2728, of that School Finance Act. So that cuts $90,000,000 out of the plan, to increase funding for k 12.
And this next bullet is in quotes, LCF, that's the legislative council staff, is confident the General Assembly should prepare to implement cost savings measures in twenty twenty seven, twenty eight to reduce the cost of the school finance formula. It's pretty stark, what they're saying. LCS economists, will provide a detailed school finance analysis, at their December 26 quarterly revenue forecast next week, and the governor will submit a revised budget, in January.
So the next phase of the 1448 implementation would be to go to 45%. So it's being implemented at 30% in the governor's proposal, so another 15%. So pausing that. And when I let this sink in for a minute, one of the LCS staff economists explained that the 2025 session changes by saying, quote, the general assembly realized maybe
we couldn't afford it. So let that sink in for a minute. Don't wanna say I told you so, but, you know, maybe. They also said, and I quote, you have a big problem in 2028. So the economists are telling the Joint Budget Committee that they have a big problem and they need to reduce funding in the K-twelve formula. They're not suggesting to reimplement the budget stabilization factor because that would be too easy
and too transparent. So instead, they're offering up suggestions on how to cut the school finance formula. So one of the suggestions is to require districts contribute all of their specific ownership tax, which is car registrations, to their local share of total program, thereby cutting the state share by $219,000,000 It would be about $6,000,000 to $7,000,000 for BVSD. And then also suggesting that the rate used to fund part time enrichment students back
to the homeschool conversation earlier, from halftime, you're either full time or halftime, now to half time or quarter time. Now they don't suggest three quarter time. Maybe that would be part of the condition as well, just to get a little bit more granular. So this year, we have a 102 halftime students, a little under half at twelfth grade, and then spread down through k through eleventh.
But it would be about $300,000 if all of those halftime students went to quarter time for us. It's unlikely it would happen in the event that that three quarter time piece was also built in there. So it would mitigate it to some extent. But again, they're offering up suggestions on how to cut the school finance formula by changing the definition of what we get to keep locally that has been in place
for decades, and then also changing how we count students. I don't wanna say I told you so, but Rob told you so. So, after adjusting for 2.6% inflation, reducing the averaging for declining enrollment, implementing the School Finance Act, maintaining the budget stabilization factor at zero, so there's all these moving parts. The state is increasing per pupil funding at a greater percentage, 3.5%,
than total funding, 2.7%. Right? So that's why the talking points, out of the legislature and governor's office usually include how much per pupil funding is going up because that declining enrollment is impacting most of the state and future years are indicating reduced funding. So for the legislative council staff, they they build the school finance act, and put
all the governor's, proposals into it. So for us, for Boulder, they of that 6,000 statewide, they have Boulder at a three thirty seven student decline, which is about 1.2% total, but that is all concentrated in our non charter schools. Charter schools have wait lists and are filling up to their contracted capacities. But this next piece really sort of indicates that stark difference between, total funding and
per pupil funding. So charter schools are getting that full increase in funding at 3.1% because they're funded on a per pupil basis and they're maintaining their enrollment, but the district is seeing a less of an increase in funding than both what the per pupil amount is and what the overall funding is. So oh, yes. Can you just say that just that last little part about the term is non
charter? Because the enrollment decline is concentrated in non charter schools and charter schools are maintaining their enrollments because they have wait lists, their funding is going up in total by 3.1%, recognizing all of the new components of the School Finance Act and inflation, while the remainder of the district, the non charter schools, are seeing total funding going up by
1.7% because of that enrollment decline, where the overall district is seeing 1.8% increase in funding from the School Finance Act. So that statewide drop that I mentioned, the 6,000 students and Boulder's three thirty seven that they've projected, does not include what we experienced this fall. So the governor's budget and what was put into this was too early in the
process to include all of the most recent enrollment declines. So it's unclear whether this will accelerate the decline both in the state, in our own projections as those numbers get built built into the projection models. So we'll see as we get into January when Glenn does his enrollment projections for us and the state revises their budget and has new enrollment numbers.
So budget pressers for Boulder Valley, so rightsizing staffing. So we have staff on one time resources, which we do on an annual basis, to maintain continuity and classrooms, not impacting, students as they're with teachers for the first month or two of school. So we'll make adjustments for that projected declining enrollment. We'll have very limited options for new ongoing expenditures. And then we have long term funding concerns relative to the declining enrollment, pausing of
the rollout of the new school finance act and these ideas coming out of this legislature, for cutting funding for K-twelve. So the budget will be focused on continuation of current strategic plan priorities. This kind of repeats, again, staffing enrollment and inflation will continue to use one time funds for staffing. Employee recruitment, in a tight labor market.
While, unemployment is increasing a little bit, it's still a very tight labor market for school district employees. And as we've noted in many board meetings, inefficiencies with small schools and small classes. So we have those shifting and declining enrollment patterns, smaller elementary classes, graduating larger classes, which does mirror state and national trends. So we'll get new inflation numbers next week and an updated governor's budget in January.
So I've included this graphic that, again, Randy and Jade put together for us to help illustrate the flow of funds, how that works relative to local funding and state funding and the state budget. So if you think about the total program funding for k-twelve, think about oil and water. So in the total program funding, the local sources are the water and the state
sources are the oil. And so as more local sources, property tax revenues flow into total program funding, that flows some of the state resources back into the state budget to be able to do other things. So this is just important to note and I'll illustrate it better in the next slide with the dollars. But if you think about the budget stabilization factor also being a component of this,
if anybody remembers the water saving technique of putting a brick in the tank of the toilet, It's the same concept here. You put the budget stabilization factor in the total program and it pushes those state sources back out into the state budget for other uses. So while they could do that, the budget stabilization factor, the legislators really don't want to engage with that process because it's a reminder, an annual reminder, of dollars owed
to school districts. Although I will say amongst my colleagues, across a broad range of district demographics, the from the CFO perspective, using the budget stabilization factor is a much more fair way of if you have to cut the state budget, then do it on a percentage basis through that budget stabilization factor. So it's tracked, so it's very clear what's happening and it's evenly distributed as a
percentage across districts. Can I follow-up on that one? Are you who is suggesting that the budget stabilization factor being reimplemented would be a good idea? Did I miss that? Not a good idea. But a fair and an equal approach? Who who was saying that? CFOs. That if the state is going to cut $218,000,000 out of the state budget for k 12, instead of taking SOT and forcing districts to put in the non equalized
share that's currently built into our budgets that taking that and distributing it as the budget stabilization factor. So it because once that SOT they had such they had such an easy time putting back the money from the budget stabilization factor over the last fifteen years? It took them a while, but they got there, yes. So, in the September forecast, this really illustrates the state budget over three years and
how that local share and state share changes as the local share increases. So total program grew by in the current year, grew by less than the local share flowing 124,000,000 back to the state. So total program went up $253,000,000 but local share went up $377,000,000 So the state share was able to decrease by $124,000,000 So projected for percent.
So projected for next year, we have a decline in local share, which is a combination of some tax changes and also could be related to oil and gas and just some of the property values declining a little, that the state share is growing more than total program. So from year to year, this is how that impact local collections for property taxes,
we don't get to keep and put somewhere else in our budget like the state does, those state share dollars. They are kept by the state to use elsewhere. So just a quick rundown of the next things in the budget process. So next week, we have the second quarter revenue forecast. January and February, the state supplemental budget will come out. In January, we have the revised draft strategic financial plan for the next fiscal year,
2627. We'll have the budget adoption for the revised budget in the current year, midyear analysis in February, and the preliminary budget in April. Thank you for painting such a rosy picture for us tonight, Bill. Board members, any questions or comments? Alex. Yes. I'm curious, knowing that we have financial rough times ahead and that we are getting great benefit out of our investments on our strategic plan, can you give a sense of what the investments do add up to for like if you look through slide
16 through like 20, like what are the things in our budget that align with those investments and how much are we investing in our strategic plan? Can you estimate that? Some of them are very, easy to calculate. So the standards based curricula across all instructional levels as a purchase of the items, easy to do, implementing that or it's part of the teaching and learning that is happening every day.
So how much of, you know, regular instruction would be included in that? So there's some nuance on how you could look at that. Certainly, the differentiated funding is a pretty solid number. Some of the things that have been developed, is it is it the work that is happening or the development of the work or just the whole system in general as it's moving along. So as expectations change, so some of them are a little more solid than others.
Bill, we'll get you some more solid numbers as we get started going through the budget process. The hard numbers we can get you. Right? And and, we can we can start working on that right away, in terms of, you know, like like Bill said, some of them are easier. The ones that aren't, we can explain it. Anna? I appreciate the whole presentation. And, yes, I appreciate the rosy picture as well. I also say I'm the commission of higher ed, and we are going through very similar things, within the department. And one of the things that I've been really encouraged by is seeing a lot
of the, institutions of higher education and nonprofits really get together on innovation. And so, for me, this is just me publicly saying, when we're looking at the strategic investments, especially the defined destination, I would be happy to really collaborate with, openly with Rob and really anyone at the district to work with the department to make sure that we are streamlining what we can for the concurrent enrollment, for at least that section to make sure that we're as innovative as possible, getting our our students
into those, into those career pathways. As our enrollment declines, as our budgets continue to shrink, it's gonna be incumbent upon us to continue to look for operational efficiencies where we can find them. Billy, we're really early on in this process, and there's still a lot of questions. I'm wondering with the specific ownership taxes, are they considering just that, any other tinkering with the to increase any of those, or is it just like taking all of
our making the putting them all in the in our current pie? Are they doing either tinkering around the periphery? Do you have a sense of whether the legislature might want to not wait until the impending doom of 2728 and fall fall us off a cliff if they are willing if there's they might slow roll or, you know, make changes in the next year even though the governor won't transition. Do we have any sense of, like, what other options might be available to us? And I say this also, board members, as we think we're coming into the legislative
session, we have to have some legislative priorities thinking about where we wanna start advocating for, is gonna be really important in the weeks, months, year ahead. So for the, specific to the SOT, specific ownership tax, the suggestion wasn't a proposal, but it was a suggestion of here's two eighteen million dollars you could go get and relatively easily in the sense of you just redefine what is included in equalized
and there's no more non equalized, sort of do that and move on down the road. Could you make it half? Could you make it a quarter? Three quarters? Like, yes. All those pieces could be built into it. There are the way the equalized and non equalized is determined has to do with your number of mill levies, so both bond and, override levies. And so it affects, every district that has overrides and bonds and, affects them differently
because it depends on how many total mills you have. So higher mill areas, that take more mills to generate dollar amounts. So I think Adams 12 is somewhere just north of $8,000,000. Even though their overrides are not as much as ours, their SOT is more they get to keep more of their non equalized because the mills are higher there to
generate that. So very nuanced and and it's a mathematical problem on how it's done. So either they tinker with the math problem or just make it all go away. Any anticipation of opening a conversation around mill levies and mill levy overrides and how that comes into the calculus? The conversation around the New School Finance Act being implemented to more equitably distribute nonlinear
distribution of nonlinear distribution of mill levy overrides. So there might be an opportunity if things are really bad, for the legislature to allow districts to increase funding, but it's kind of opposite of a lot of the
conversations that they've had. Alex? Yeah. If I could, I'd go back to that. Well, first off, I wanna say congratulations on a clean audit and a great report and all the wonderful work, your team's doing. For being on the finance, or the audit committee, it's great to see the quality of the work that your team does. I also am grateful for the takeaways and the presentation tonight. It's really great to see sort of the big picture stuff that makes it easier for us to make sense of all this, so thank you for for doing that. To Nicole's point of mentioning, like, our our legislative agenda, I was gonna say when
we, as a state, I don't think people who aren't in public policy or finance don't realize how messed up, like, Colorado public finance is and how long we've been trying to overturn TABOR and stuff and the decades long fights that we have as a state to, like, be more rational. And I put among them a great victory in the last few years, the budget stabilization factor. So if the CFOs or somebody else is casually suggesting that's a short term fix, I suggest that's crawling back into a deep pit that took took a long time to get out of. So I think there's a much bigger political long term, medium term risk towards advocating
that than the CFOs are thinking about. So as we consider our agenda, I'm strongly in the know going back to budget stabilization factors, and we'll argue for that till the crowd grows come home. Thank you, Bill. Board members, the next item on tonight's agenda is Action Items Consent Grouping. 9.1 Personnel Items. 9.2 Approval of Minutes 11/18/2025. 9.3 Approval of Minutes 12/02/2025.
9.4 Acceptance of Donation Operational Services Department. 9.5 Comprehensive financial report, annual comprehensive financial report. 9.6 resolution 25 dash 32 certification of mill levies. 9.7 grant food services farm to school programming CDE. Are there any items board members would like to pull from consent grouping? Hearing none, we need a motion to approve. Move by Lalania, seconded by Alex. Board members, any discussion on the items within the consent grouping?
Can you can you turn on your mic? I'm interested in exploring the resolution. I don't know if it's a resolution, but it's about the, community schools and the use of use of property. Well, that would be on the next Oh, it's in the next one. I apologize. Seeing as there are none, Laura, can you please call the wrong consent grouping? Bucher? Yes. Chavez? Yes. Medler? Yes. Quinlan Ueda? Yes. Rajpal? Yes. Temuwaring? Yes. Ungar? Yes. Motion passes.
The next item on this evening's agenda is policy action consent grouping. Items 11.1, retirement of Board policy ADA educational objectives. 11.2 retirement of Board policy IA instructional goals. Are there any items board members would like to pull from consent grouping? Hearing none, we need a motion to approve. Move by Lalania, seconded by Jason. Four members, is there any discussion on the policy consent grouping items? Very excited and grateful for us to be able to eliminate two policies that really are not relevant to our current practice. That will make our work, reviewing these policies moving forward and our future board members
much easier. Laura, can you please call the roll on policy consent grouping? Bucher? Yes. Chavez? Yes. Medler? Yes. Quinlan Ueda? Yes. Rajpal? Yes. Temuwadding? Yes. Ungar? Yes. Motion passes. Before we head into our next meaty section of tonight's agenda, which is policy study, I'd like to request a five minute comfort break. Welcome back, everybody. The next item on tonight's agenda is policy study. We have several policies to study this evening, and we will begin with our d
chapter policies, which I will turn over to Kathleen Sullivan. So green means that it's on now. Right? Okay. Alright. Thank you, board president Rajpal. We have a couple of sets of policies that we will look at tonight. As a reminder, the board has set a goal to review all policies within a five year cycle. In order to do that, we need to hit around 20 a quarter. So Chris Brecht, our policy project manager, and I are working hard to hit that
number. We really take policies in two sets. There's the policies that the board prioritizes through your twice annual sessions. Those are items that the board particularly wants to look at, study your address. And then we just do our ordinary maintenance. So the items we're bringing forward to you today are maintenance. They haven't been identified as a priority, but we need to catch them in that five year review cycle. So the d policies are all about fiscal management.
We have a total of 22 policies in this section. The board already took on board policy DJ DJE around signature authorities. So that one is not coming back at this time, but it's referenced a lot in other d policies. So that would be a good one just to review as we update this whole chapter. So we're gonna be looking at nine of the d policies tonight. You will notice or catch on if you're a new board member quickly that we
we seem to have a lot of both policy and then supporting regulations and supporting exhibits. It can feel a little fractured sometimes to a staff member or a family trying to follow. So part of our work has been consolidating those into one comprehensive policy where it makes sense to do so. So kicking off the first policy, 13.1 is the big policy on grants management. After tonight's very sobering budget and enrollment, we may really be focusing on grants, so
we wanna make sure that we have a policy that is current, matches your current board policy style book, reflects our more modernized practices. How does our, director of grants review and support entities as they submit those applications. The red lines in board policy DD have been reviewed by our business services team and our grant manager, and we are proposing to incorporate the essential elements from item
thirteen point two and thirteen point three. Those two items are proposed for retirement, harvesting the good and important language into red line d So is there this is not a policy that I got a lot of feedback on. We did not get any public feedback on it, but I welcome the board's discussion. Alex. This isn't a substantive question, but for the benefit especially of our new board members,
can you explain the board's role and how it varies depending on a policy versus a regulation or procedure as we consolidate back and forth just so they know what the difference is for that because I just think it's helpful. Sure. Happy to. So our I am a little bit of a policy nerd and a wonk. I'm not gonna lie. So forgive me. I'll try and keep it the right level of detail here. So the board has a policy on how the board sets policy. It is in the b chapter. It's board policy BP, and that's where you will find a description of the three
types of artifacts you'll find in our board policy book. The board policy itself just has a letter code that's either two or three letters, like DD, our first example. That policy is really the umbrella. It's the biggest, broadest statement that the board makes about whatever topic is being addressed in policy. In order to adopt a board policy, we have to read it at least once, and then you can adopt it at the next meeting. Or if it needs a lot of work, we can continue to work on it
until the board's happy with that policy. A regulation, which is designated by the letters and then a dash r, is a place where we put more direction and detail. Regulations are theoretically easier to change. They're shorter. We need to put them on your agenda as an information item, but they don't specifically require a vote unless we're retiring them. And then the exhibit, historically, has been a lot of forms for how to implement
the policy and the regulation. Where we can because forms do change really, really frequently, we're trying to embed in the policy what we would need that exhibit to be and then leave to your staff to create items that are going to change more frequently like an exhibit. When we really need one, we do include those. They're designated with the letter code and then a dash e. Those, again, they don't require a board vote if we're going to update them. But if it's something important to the board that you leave in your policy book,
anytime staff need to update that form or that exhibit item, it would come back to the board as an information item so that you could see it. And then those are approved for immediate implementation unless there's a board directive to do something else. Warms my little policy heart. Okay. So anything on DD? I really appreciate you folding in the language from the regulations into this policy. It doesn't make sense to have one paragraph stand alone documents. So I think that'll for ease of use, that is great.
And I think particularly the subaward grants, third party grants has come up a lot recently. And having it embedded in in the main policy and grants will provide a lot of clarity for our community as well as those within our district. So thank you for the work on this policy. Okay. So our next policies and the reason my good friend Bill Sutter is sitting in the front row in case you have real questions are, DEB. We have currently on our policy book, we have DEB, which is about loan programs
and talks about state and federal sources of revenue. And then we had another policy that had three letter codes attached to it that we hadn't looked at since 1978. And when Bill and I talked about it today, some of that language has been moved over into DEB. I think it's likely that at some point, this was an important policy around cooperative projects. But the supporting regulate the supporting law in this case, the statute that's cited at
the bottom that identifies for board members and for all of us that use the policies, The reason that we have this policy and the laws that we're implementing through this policy are the ones listed. For the second policy, d e b, d e c, d f c, I looked at the legislative history, and the underlying law has been updated six times since the board last visited it. So for that reason, we are recommending the full retirement of DEB DEC, DFC, that's
one policy, and collapsing the essential requirements into DEB. I'll note the other change made to this policy is incorporating language that both reflects the board's commitment made to our students as part of the board's resolution around energy efficiency and greening of our schools and economy. We also had some changes to state law, so we did bring forward, just language to reference the importance of renewable and energy efficient projects.
Board members, any questions on DEB and the retirement of that other string of letters? Lalania. Hey, Bill. Do we ever use tax anticipation notes? Once. Do tell. It was over a decade ago, maybe fifteen years ago, the interest free loan program, the requirements to participate in it got really complicated and we had a refunding, I believe that we could we did at the time. So we were able to do all the required legal debt work around tax anticipation
notes. And so we did it once. But then we got back into the interest free loan program, so. And Bill, since we have two new Board members and you're already up there, the interest free loan program is something we regularly heavily locally heavily locally funded school district, our tax revenues come in February to August, the majority of them.
And we for the current year, right, so we're collecting money in February through August for operating eight months ago. So we need to borrow money. The state interest fee loan program got put in place when the state changed its fiscal year in 1992 from a calendar year to a fiscal year and saved a bunch of money for the state by pushing the fiscal year into the following year.
So we participate in it. We're actually one of the larger users of the State Industry Loan Program. Us and Denver, I think, are the two largest. And the benefit of it is that you don't have to have piles of cash sitting around only to operate cash flow. I don't think that's an efficient use of resources to just have money only for cash flow when the state has that option It's somewhat labor intensive.
It's every two weeks you have to do a new cash flow and tell the folks that run it at the state treasurer's office how much you need. Actually this week, we're borrowing $20,000,000 for payroll. So we're in that time of year. In June is when we bring forward the cash management resolution to participate. We have to tell how much we're going to borrow. It's around $100,000,000 and then we start borrowing November ish is typically when we start
doing it. Thank you, Bill. Board members, any other questions or comments on policy DEB? Guess not. We're gonna meet this target. I can feel it. I yes. We are committed to doing so. So we have I guess I said these would be in three chunks, but, realistically, it's a few more than that. The next policy on your agenda, board members, is DH. This is about bonded employees. You'll remember at your organization meeting last week, you elected officers. We need to make sure that we have bonds for all of the officers and
those who have responsibilities and signature authority consistent with board policy. So this is a stand alone fiscal policy that we're recommending the board keep. We've made some red lines to allow that level to float. When we updated DJ DJE, we increased signature authorities based on different categories and using language that says we would bond that officer and is some consistent with their authority
means that as we revise those, we wouldn't have to come back in and change every single policy that would reference those authorities. Board members, any questions or comments on this policy? I think it is an excellent change. I out of curiosity, when we increased our signing authority, did that make a significant impact on how much that insurance is for for bonding? Premiums? No. Perfect. Okay. Moving right along then. Our next item, 13.7, is board policy DI. This was previously limited to just addressing fiscal accounting, and then we had a separate
policy DID that talked about capital asset accounting. We've incorporated those then so that we're proposing to keep a more robust DI and to retire DID capital asset accounting. Board members, any questions or comments on DI? Kathleen, one question. It's uncommon for us to state cite state statute in the body of a policy. I'm just curious why we decided to leave that in accordance with CRS, the board review financial statements on a quarterly basis.
I think it should be a citation at the bottom of the policy. So I I I just overlooked it trying to make the other changes. Okay. Then our last d policy for tonight is 13.9. This is board policy d n district property disposal procedures. I know it is a very short and efficient little policy. After speaking with my cabinet members, it's still important that we do have something very clear in policy that says you can't sell district materials and you can't liquidate our
assets. It's an important protection that we're recommending the board keep in policy. Any questions or comments on this policy? Seeing as there are none, we can move on to the next chapter. Okay. Great. So tonight, we are going to be looking at three e policies. I mentioned I think I started with we've got 22 in the d chapter. E is a meteor chapter. We have between now and March to try and get all of this work done. There are 46 e policies. We're bringing you three, and we will be retiring a lot more out of the
remaining 43. I'm not sure we need a policy on asbestos. But tonight, we just have three for you. So policy e d around material resources management is now proposed to be the umbrella policy that would incorporate the important elements of EDA about the warehouse and receiving. And then would also incorporate board policy EDC, authorized use of school owned materials. So we're proposing those last two for retirement with incorporation of important language into what
would be the new EDA. Board members, any questions or comments on EDA? I do have a comment. Thank you for waiting for me. I am, concerned that that 13.12 that references materials that are used, by community schools, does not go far enough to protect the schools from theft or breakage of those materials, which happens quite frequently. Nobody wants to turn away community schools.
The other thing that sometimes happens is, teachers materials that are just open for, grabs in those classrooms are sometimes stolen, and so teachers need to have some recourse in order to get their materials back from community schools. So I have a question about that, and I have another comment or suggested edit. The way I read the sections on community schools, it's really specific to leases or loans or rent of equipment. Is there a different policy that might cover, like, damage?
I'm I'm just I wanna be clear that we're being clear on what this policy covers, and that was why I was also gonna suggest a couple subheadings to break out. It's a little confusing the way this policy reads having three different things smooshed together. So having a breaking point that talks about loans and leases or because I think that language was originally titled, yes, school use of school district resources, and then there's, like, a resource management. So having subheadings might help clarify the limitations of that language. But then I do have a question on, does the scope extend beyond loans and
leases to damage or would that be covered elsewhere? So we do have board policy k f, which is our commute community use of school facilities. We have both a policy and a regulation in that area that we updated or that the board updated in 2021. I know, mister Sutter also has some updates to our practices. The board will recall that over the last, really, six years, we've done a lot
of work in this area, both in terms of the policies and the implementation to require more supervision on-site to protect against users who abuse that access and, compromise teachers materials. We also absolutely have canceled a number of permits based on our practices and policies when users engage in misconduct if they're using a facility.
You can find that language. It's in k f dash r, the regulation that supports it. I did speak with board member Buechler just for a moment about this. So I'd like to spend a little more time in that policy before I'd suggest any language in this one, but I think it's an important observation and consideration. And then one other point of feedback, I find the language in the second paragraph, the one that has been unedited that starts with conscientious efforts, to be a little
circular and redundant. And so I did share with Kathleen to suggest, like, if we could tighten that language up to make it really clear what we're talking about, I just feel like those two sentences say the same thing slightly differently. So cleaning that up so it's it's clear what good management means with regard to both efficiencies and economies of scale, storage. But, like, the two sentences are very similar. So if there's any way to tidy that up, I would appreciate that.
And just for clarity, you're referencing the paragraph that starts with conscientious efforts, the one that's in black font. Right? Correct. Okay. It's also weird. And then the sentence above it, actually in the green, it's not entirely clear. It starts with element shall include, but the opening sentence doesn't clarify what you're referring to as elements. And so making that a little clearer would be helpful as well. Just this nature of the beast when you're working through a lot of red lines.
Any other questions or comments on this policy? Seeing there are none. Is that it? The policies? Nope. That completes our policy study work for tonight. Thank you so much. Well, congratulations, new board members, on getting through your first big chunks of policy. This is the time in the board meeting where we are, on to future agenda requests. Board members, it is your at your pleasure to bring up items you would like to include for consideration at our next board prioritization meeting. Are there any items board members would like to have considered?
Alex. I know we're going through the next prioritization in just a little bit, so this could be redundant to what we do, like, in a few weeks. But I I am interested as we consider the declining enrollment to talk about the programmatic issues that are going on and and get a handle on how many students that are living here attend virtual schools here or elsewhere, how many homeschool register elsewhere, and how many, could be in programs if we offered them or, like, honestly, it comes up in the policy discussion today around having half time or quarter time funding
for partial enrichment. If we don't have much partial enrichment, but we've got 50 kids in it, but we're losing 200 to somebody else's, cutting it from 50 to 25 is a net win if we get the kids back. So I just want us to be aware of what our actual numbers are for things like partial enrichment, homeschooling here elsewhere, virtual enrollment here elsewhere. I think the numbers are all relatively small. Like, none of this solves any of our declining enrollment problem. It's all totally on the margins. But I think it it could be significant over time. So I want to get a handle on the kids who are going somewhere else,
how they're enrolling in things like home school and virtual school in our schools, in our systems or others, and how partial enrollment and things play into the enrollment issues we're facing. Any other items? Anna? I have two items that I am going to bring up, once we do our, board setting in a couple weeks, board prioritization setting. Right? That's Bring them up if you you have to bring them up in advance, so I'd bring them up now. Okay. So the things that I do want to work on, last, or, well, maybe, I
guess, this is two board meetings ago. Former, board member Richard Garcia came up and spoke about, putting together a workforce or really putting together policy of how we, handle, immigration, training on immigration, ways that we support our undocumented students. And I really do want to take that on, for the district. I did work in, immigration policy for the past sixteen years and know a lot
of the levers, a lot of the community supports that we can bring in to really make sure that BVSD is the model of how we're supporting our undocumented communities, our immigrant families. So for me, that is one of the big, things that I do want to prioritize. The second thing, when we are looking at declining enrollment, I want to make sure that we are exploring as many different innovative ways to really make, our district a much, less burdensome district to live in.
And I think that, I've been speaking to a lot of people at the, statewide level of, our our ten year plan of what we want to make sure that we have here in the state. And I really want to make sure that we start talking about, what does early childhood education, primarily, universal childcare, look like for the district. And I have heard from, Gary Community Foundations that they are very interested in supporting us and really helping us, in making sure that that happens for our district.
And as I'm new, I'm not sure entirely how, that correlates and that blends in with our district and where we are. And I know that there have been several conversations with the, Early Childhood Development Council on what's gonna work and what's not gonna work, but I do want, just to make it, explicitly clear that those are the two things that I want to work on is making sure that we are the model for how we're supporting our undocumented immigrant families. But we're also looking at innovative ways of of lessening the burden for our families
to hopefully increase, to at least not decrease our enrollment. Dean? Thank you. I have a couple of issues that I'd really like to, hear about. One is I know there's a fairly new policy on neurodiversity in our schools and how it is, how those students who have neurodiversity are educated, and I'd really like an update on how teachers are being trained to participate in those students' education and
how just having the policy around it is improving things for those kids. In my, in my experience at a private school, those are the kids that are leaving the district. So I'd like to hear about what what people think about that, so that we can get them back into public education. The other item that I'd like to bring up is, six years ago, there was a a superintendent's advisory board called the Safe Schools Coalition, that has, is now kind
of defunct. And it is a group of people who, devote themselves to helping our LGBTQ plus IA folks. And we're living in a time when those students and the parents and the families they come from are terrorized by what's going on in the news, and we need to make sure that they have support in getting through our schools. Did you raise your hand, Alex? And again, I think this might be on the list from before, so I apologize if it is. I did have interesting conversations with a couple of folks from Keystone in the last
few weeks about, districts involved in creating housing for teachers and staff. And I think there's been some developments over the last year. So this may be of the category of, like, let's get an update on what the latest is. But I'd add, district involvement in housing for teachers and staff. I think there's a CASB session on that one again this year. Anna? And I'm just repeating this just so that it's reflective in the minutes, but from the, conversation we just had on the, concurrent enrollment and the collaboration that we can
have with the commission on higher education, I do want to make sure that that's also named in one of my commitments to really make sure that we're figuring out how we streamline, all of that synchronicity between the district and, institutions of higher education. I have I'll say two things. Actually, one, I don't actually think is a prioritization item, but we have a new bell schedule. Some schools have implemented advisory for their first time. I wonder not necessarily second semester, but maybe after first year of implementation, just an
update and see how that's been going. I think advisory has some opportunities. Our schools that have been using advisory for a long time have found it successful, but anything new can have challenges and bright spots, so I'd be curious to see how that is going. And then board members, we continue to get emails around ebikes, ebikes safety. We had a conversation with our city council members when we convened last April. I tend to punt everybody that comes to me back to the city because they are they're the enforcers of all of those things.
But I did have a conversation with city council member around some innovative work out of California where school districts are partnering with cities and other entities in getting little bike permits, and you can only park your bike at school if you have a bike permit. And so I think that's an interesting opportunity to explore. Along with that comes some training and assigning from parents to say, yes. I understand I my liability here. We should not have governors removed like, we should have the governors on our bikes.
And then, the other thing I was thinking about is potential opportunity of a partner with community cycles to help, not only with ebike safety and education, but maybe some grant potential to get this off and running. If we can if the city is willing to participate and our partners are willing to participate, I think we do need to have some creative problem solving around e bikes. And the biggest riders of ebikes that are of challenge tend to be fifth grade through about ninth grade. So it really is BVSE's population. So if there's some creative solutions that we could come up with, I just wanted
to throw that one out because California is doing there's some localities in California doing some interesting work there. That's all I have. Well, that's a lot of new items, and we still have to focus on the strategic plan and declining enrollment and this cash tight situation we are coming in. So we will go over all of those during our priority prioritization session in January. But with that, tonight's meeting is adjourned. Thanks, everyone.