[Music] i would like to call to order this regular meeting of the Boulder Valley School District Board of Education for Tuesday April 8th 2025 board members may attend and participate in board meetings by electronic means in accordance with
BV SD policy BMEA and state law laura can you please call the role chavez here medler here nisnik Quinna here
raj Paul here sergeant here anger here thank you this time board members I'd like and guests this evening you to turn your attention to the screens for our land acknowledgement
[Music] the Boulder Valley School District resides and operates on land that is the ancestral homeland and unjustly and illegally taken territory of the Ute
Pueblin Arapjo Cheyenne Apache Navajo and 48 other tribal nations historically tied to this land who have called this land home since time and memorial [Music]
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 bbsd 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 bbsd recognizes the histories of the land in Colorado and the survival of many nations that carried their oral traditions into the present
it is BBSD's responsibility to educate ourselves our community and our students so that we can embrace the wisdom and knowledge of indigenous peoples and actively stand together to address [Music]
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 would like to remind everybody that the mission of the Boulder Valley School District is to create challenging meaningful and engaging learning opportunities that all children thrive and are prepared for successful civically engaged lives good evening everyone thank you for joining us here in person and those of you remotely um we're glad to have you observe and
participate in our meetings at this time is there a motion to approve tonight's agenda moved by Kitty seconded by Jason laura can you please call the role chavez yes medler yes
quinn Linawa yes raj Paul yes sergeant yes anger yes motion passes the first item on our agenda this evening board members is a
superintendent report dr anderson good evening good evening Board President Rash Paul members of the board it's good to see you all this evening hope everybody had a wonderful spring break and we are on the home stretch of the school year uh a few a few updates uh for my remarks this
evening uh board members as you know here in BVSD we're bilingual and proud which is why we're so excited to share that 12 amazing BBSD students competed in the 2025 Colorado State Spanish spelling be this weekend making up
nearly onethird of all state competitors thrilled to announce that two BBS students topped the podium on Saturday ansley Closer a fourth grader at ESA Bilingu Pioneer came in third place and Angivine Middle School 7th grader Galia Gomez was the state champion both
students will be headed to the National Spanish Spelling Bee this July in Albuquerque to represent Colorado and BVSD i want to congratulate both students and for all of our students who competed in the Colorado State Spanish spelling be board members as you may
know this week is Boulder County's high school student voter registration awareness week our outstanding partners at the county clerks and recorders office are working with our schools to host registration events at many of our schools makes the honor that Fairview recently earned especially special on
Friday the Colorado Secretary of State Office presented the school with the Eliza Pickroll Route Award from the Department of State for the third time ward is named after Colorado's first lady and the first woman registered to vote in the state and recognizes Colorado high schools where 85% or more
of eligible seniors are registered to vote great job Knights Fairview High School and thanks to all of the BBSD schools hosting registration events this week what a just a great activity that our students are able to participate in our food services team recently held
its annual Iron Chef competition bringing out the best in our student chefs they whipped up some incredible dishes showing off their creativity and teamwork we're told that the competition was fierce but ultimately first prize went to the super cookers Megan FTH and Lyra Schwarz from Lewisville Middle
School they made their grandma's assop pow and Brazilian cheese bread in addition to a $300 check their dish will be featured on next year's school menu how cool is that congratulations to those students and our food services team for doing something that's really
cool and kid- centered uh and board members finally you'll want to stop by the Dair Arts Center before May 4th the annual BBSD high school and staff art show is underway kicked off last Thursday with a big reception you can still catch it this month drop by the Dair Art Center to see the stunning
works in painting drawing mixed media digital art animation photography ceramic sculpture and more again that is at the Dair Arts Center through May 4th encourage uh staff and our community to go check out the talent of our BBSA
students and that is all I have for my remarks this evening thank you Dr anderson board members any questions seeing as there are none we'll move on to our next item this evening which is public participation the board respects the right of the public to speak on matters
concerning the operation of our schools the board does not endorse the comments of any speaker or remind all those who speak that you are responsible for your own speech speakers will each have two minutes to speak you will see a yellow card when you have 30 seconds remaining yellow card and an orange card
when you have 10 seconds remaining if you run out of time or have additional thoughts you are always welcome to email the board our first speaker this evening is Billy Gilbin hey everyone um common mistake here in
Colorado because it's Gilpin County i'm Billy Giblin no worries i'm uh wearing two hat that's all right because of Gilpin County get it all the time um I'm coming with two hats i'm a father of a first grader and a fifth grader at Ned
Elementary i'm also the mayor of Netherland and so I'm just here to uh talk with you guys um our board of trustees um of the town there's seven of us and five of us are parents of kids at that
elementary middle or high school ranging from first grade to 11th grade so we're pretty invested in the schools up there um I I you know goes without saying thank you all for your work on this board and and for all the work that happens through the district my family
personally has has has benefited from some of the resources that BVST has um and and for my kids specifically as well as many people in the community so we realize we're lucky to be part of a a strong district um
even though we're more of a rural player a rural community um and we and we as a town we need the school to succeed i think you know the recent decision on the principal the combination of two schools under one principal
[Music] um has has been a tad controversial as you may or may not have heard um I think ultimately the model makes sense to me and kind of works and um you know and I think you know Caleb with the right re Caleb Malama with the right resources
and support could be the right person to do that and so the town's goal is to support what's the ultimate decision and make it succeed because the town needs a school to succeed and to grow to have a
good future and not end up just being a bedroom or retirement community which is a great thing but that's not what our town is so um we we stand you know we we will work to get behind the decision and get bring our folks together to get behind it
[Music] um you know we probably have more institutional or generational poverty up there you know per capita if you will than down below so we appreciate that this school can be a good resource these schools to help our kids and give them an advantage they wouldn't have
otherwise um if it's if it's got if it has the resources it needs so the big thing we asked for with this you know moving from two principles to one is this dean this assistant principal at each school would be a great you know assistant principal
at elementary school would be a great addition but this dean that they talk of at the high school that that is going to be transitional we would hope it's more permanent um if if if that could be funded we feel like that would be something the community needs and one
principal would really work with two insistent principles and a um and a uh I'm looking for cards here [Music] yeah that was Sorry the cards are mostly for online i wasn't watching I was watching you but yeah that their two minutes are up and if you have
additional comments you can always email the board of education thank you our next speaker this evening is Tanya Corvalin hello okay uh I'm Tanya Corvalon i have a 17-year-old son who
has been at Netherlands schools uh since kindergarten and I'm also a trustee of the town since 2020 um mainly here uh to talk about the decision with the principal um I feel
the process was poor this is a big decision to take away a high school and middle school principal and in essence take away the elementary school principal and make one job for that person um it's a lot of a lot of uh
roles for this person to fill and there should have been some discussion um some respect towards the parents and the staff that are going to have to support this instead of just receiving an email about it at 9:00 p.m at night or whenever it was I read it um the other problem with the decision was that while
it may be very common to hire within it was not a competitive process other people were not invited or allowed to apply and there was no transparency with the decision which has left a lot of parents pretty upset and staff and
community um myself personally don't have an opinion about this person cuz I was child was already out of school uh but I've heard mixed reports so it's not like this person was 100% perfect and
deserved this large promotion uh But the it sounds like this decision is done we'd love for you to reconsider and put it back out but now we have this dean and it's super important that this person's here to advocate for our kids that get left behind a lot we lose kids
to Boulder and also to dropping out there's a lot of need for this resource and it needs to be here permanently in order for the school to be supportive um I want to make sure that we're going to hold a town hall soon to discuss this and we'd love some BVSD representation
at these town halls and so I hope you guys can consider coming we will send you an email invite thank you our next speaker this evening is Sarah Colamina who has been given two
minutes from McKenzie Rosen Stone they are virtual sorry I had my things turned off um my name is Sarah Colamina i'm a parent of two BBSD students including a second grade student at BCSIS Elementary i'm here to talk about the incident that
occurred at our school in my child's classroom on Thursday April 3rd allegedly a parent of a child in our class caused severe disruption alarm and fear among our students our parent community is frustrated by the stalled and vague response we've been receiving and uh would like to have more information presented to us about this
incident as our children were directly involved uh we feel the details that have not been shared have not been entirely honest we are getting emails with accounts from the principal that are quite different than the accounts that our children are giving us um and and we've come together as a parent
community to discuss the various comments that our children have had and their perspective on it and it is all on the same page and and yet still different from the information that was presented to us from the school administration um I am also want to voice my frustration in the reaction
time to this um this was directly involved there was a specific classroom directly involved in this we did not get communication from anyone at that school to us directly until three plus days after the incident happened and at that
time it was a very vague brief um email i am happy to send uh documentation of this to the board to see this um we have very little to no information on how it is being addressed uh both inside the classroom and outside the classroom this is a situation where kids were ran
screaming hiding under desks hiding in closets running out of classrooms and we've been told to return our children to the classroom with no information to help support our children about what actually happened other than the accounts of our children um I I realize
there is privacy issues um particularly maybe to one student involved but the reality of the situation is all of our students in this class were involved they're all minors and as their adult you know protection representation decision makers and the the key people
to you know alert these children and keep them safe and let them know they are safe we feel that we are entitled to some information about what has occurred um sooner rather than later we're not asking for specific names we're not asking even for specific consequences at
this time we just want to have an understanding of what happened to our children um you know after re-evaluating this talking to other community members talking to media members talking to administrators we feel very frustrated that this seems to be an ongoing um
occurrence in BVSD when incidents like this occur and we would like to see as a parent community better response time to this uh more human response to these situations continued outreach even if you cannot communicate to us the details
it is important to reach out to the parents specific to the children that are involved in these situations hey we hear you we're still here we know something happened this is what we can tell you at that time at this time this is what we cannot tell you at this time
and we will keep you posted and to continue to keep us posted even if you can't give us something um you know the the fact that there were three days plus before there was outreach to our class is really reprehensible um the only
outreach any of us got was because we were all very proactive in reaching out to the school um for this information and and that really shouldn't be the case i thank you for your time tonight i thank you for hearing me i plan on forwarding um some additional
information to you all to digest this and and really consider how we respond to these situations in the future and how we're presently responding to this situation thank you thank you our next speaker this evening is Katie Hackam who
was given two minutes from Kerry Proopio katie is also virtual hi everyone hope you can hear me okay um good evening members of the school board my name is Katie Hackham i'm also a parent of a second grade student at BCSAIS i'm here today echoing the concerns just raised
by Sarah and other parents you'll hear tonight to address the deeply disturbing safety incident that occurred at BCSIS last Thursday evening um but more critically here to really request transparency into what happened that day so we can appropriately support our children a clear understanding of the
safety protocols that are in place at the school the measures that were taken that day what changes are going to be made following this incident um to try to mitigate that from happening again um and when will our children's teacher be back we have no context or communication
around this either and the children are seven and eight years old and they are very confused um and very scared and the lack of the communication from the school uh and the details that the school has given to the affected families has really been unacceptable and we're actively undermining and and it's actively undermining the trust in
the school the district and ultimately the the safety um and well-being of our children as you've heard the alleged incident happened on April 3rd um and the children again were outside it was very disturbing um 911 was called this was not shared in the communication um
that should have been shared with parents we only found this out because our parents did their due diligence and found out that there was in fact a record of this there's a Boulder PD case we can share that with you after this 911 was dispatched and we're actually on site for almost two hours none of that was shared in the communication this was
not a minor disruption um this incident has been completely downplayed by the school um and whether or not these accounts are 100% accurate I actually can't tell you because I don't know what happened right so we don't have any details we have no idea what actually happened and we have no way to support our children and their questions because
the school is not telling us these details um and despite the severity of this event again the communication from the school um as you previously heard was significantly inadequate um we heard the first account from our children directly we had no communication from
the school until almost 45 minutes later that day no mention of police involvement um and especially the threat isn't over the child alleged child's parent that child is back in the classroom was the immediate next day the teacher's been removed but the the child
is still there and that poses a significant risk still that this parents or alleged parent could come back and do it again and we have no understanding of what's being done what protocols are in place and what's going to change because of this um and lastly with the communication that we're receiving from
the principal um the very vague recommendation verbatim that she gave quote unquote with some ways that you can best support your student include listening to their questions and concerns assuring them that they are safe and that school practices are designed to keep them so and encourage
them to talk to trusted adults at school how can we be expected to provide reassurance of safety to our children when we don't actually know what happened and we don't know what the protocols are in place were they followed and what changes will be made lack of transparency really breeds
uncertainty instability and significant anxiety for our young young children and our families we're already witnessing the negative impact here um again with the trust of what's happening at school and the emotional well-being of these young children um and on top of this I mentioned at the beginning their teacher
is not in the classroom and we have no context this may be personal this may be not but it's hard for us to support our kids when they don't know even why their teacher's there so I'd like to close again by saying our children are frightened they were hiding under desks crying some fear going back to school some haven't even returned they don't
want to go back to gymnastics because a parent might come and take them because we're not able to adequately support them and help them understand that these types of things may happen um this can only happen with we can only support them with the transparency from the school and the school board and concrete action from this board and
administration moving forward please we urge you to take these concerns seriously and please follow up with us as a group or individually um after this meeting thank you thank you our final speaker this evening tonight this evening is also virtual Stephanie Watran
hello um I am also speaking about the communication practices after safety incident at BCSS on April 3rd what's most alarming is the district's response in the parent communication following the incident which has been poulry parents and guardians were given little
detail beyond a vague email containing basic information about the event that resulted in what appears to be approximately 2 hours long police visit to the school my seven-year-old was a direct witness to traumatizing event involving a visibly agitated yelling and cursing adult directly outside her classroom door it was serious enough
that the staff felt it appropriate to call 911 i take issue with my minor child as witness to a crime and I am not made aware of the details surrounding the overall series of events during and after i understand the school has privacy obligations under the fura but I am not requesting privacy protected
material about other students i'm merely requesting a more detailed timeline of events which involve an adult from the community and my student my main source of information has been my seven-year-old student who was visibly shaken when retelling these details to me i cannot fully p support my child through this when I do not know what
happened to them that day i find it unacceptable that I did not and have not received any meaningful communication from any district personnel to assure families with actual facts and relevant details that this event was handled lawfully and appropriately i take issue with the public entities shielding themselves by remaining silent in the
face of investigations and this is not the first time BBSD has not offered meaningful communication following a safety threat just this March BBSD was equally KY when responding to an event involving a Snapchat threats at Summit Middle School added to the over this has added
to the overall mystery um of this the classroom teacher in the room with my child that day has been absent and we have not had no communication as to the mere fact that she was gone why she's gone whose choice her absence is and when and if she will return this absence has made it clear
that the district needs to improve the communication practices following events that happen at school and can do so without violating student privacy rights when I send my child to school my expectation is that they be safe and well cared for and until this date that has been the case i think that's all I have to say
thank you thank you this concludes public comment for this evening on behalf of the board I'd like to thank everyone who took the time to share your thoughts and concerns both remotely and in person tonight we will now move on to board communication board members who would
like to begin kitty so I'm sorry we didn't have a student moment this meeting but last meeting our student student moment introduced us students from both Monarch schools who
are published authors so of course I immediately bought the books all five four of them and read them and I really encourage everybody to read these books it's it's they're delightful
you know they're not perfect they're written by children but they were all good um and I'm just so excited that we have students who are published authors and they own the copyrights and they presumably get paid every time we buy
their books um I want to give a particular shout out about Don't Look at Me because it was written by an 8-year-old boy and it's about a monkey if you if you didn't watch the last meeting it's about a monkey who didn't like being looked at in the zoo but the
student who wrote the book didn't just say he was a monkey he was a howler monkey he had another um he was a he talked to a macaw it was it was a scarlet macaw he knew he didn't just call animals by
their name he looked up what types of animals there are and they all had their own name and I loved that because it showed he did some work um getting this done so the books are Xenovia which is by Leta De
Gorgi Don't Look at Me by Roku Maine Alien on Earth which was by Kira Cochran and Cara Stevenson and Anomalies by Evie Lesley
so they're they're all great they're delightful books i encourage you to read them also I still have some attempted murder buttons if anybody's interested in them and for those of you you were giving me a funny look it's a picture of two crows
with the aggregate group for crows being a murder so two crows is an attempted murder so there's nothing sinister going on with it but I saw this at a conference and I had to have some so I bought them and other than that I just had a nice
break it was nice i didn't go anywhere do anything but it was nice just to have time not to have to think about important stuff so that's all I have for today jorge thank you for sharing those books those it's really exciting and I know we
didn't have a student moment earlier but just you as you were going through the list of things that we saw from the um you know Spanish language spelling bee to the voter registration the dairy art center I'm I'm always you know so excited to see the work that our students are doing it really centers the work that we do here because we get so
many different messages so many you know incidents that scare us um potential for budget cuts federal mandates that potentially put our students at risk and and we're trying to fight to do the right thing and so it's it's it's inspiring to see our what our students
are doing right and keeping that at the core of everything we do here and and I know Anley she's actually um at Esqua Belingua Pioneer and my wife and I run the running club there she's one of our strongest runners as well in addition to a strong speller so that's exciting to see um and as we go into the springtime and and we we're starting the running
club we had 60 kids yesterday and it just keeps at the front of my mind right why we're all here and why we're doing this so I want to thank the speakers for being for being here and for sharing and the rest of the board for the work that you you're all doing i know these are difficult times um but I want to reassure families that we're we're keeping our students front of mind we
we're a district that um is inclusive and welcoming and represents our students because they're the best of us and and I know um that we're working to do the right thing so I appreciate all your support thank you Alex uh yeah um first off I just wanted
to give a a brief update on the the last uh DAC meeting which I attended um uh Jason had to was out sick so I was able to fill in at the last minute um uh kudos to um the BBSD staff uh for Claire and Jonathan um sharing about our data
dashboards based on um performance which went over well and people were responsive to that in the disc in the follow-up discussions we had with the performance um working group uh they really reiterated how important it is uh for the school leaders to be engaged
with the school accountability committee in their community to be able to interpret all the data that's there and the people from the different schools really had different experiences in terms of the engagement of their sack so I think it's another example where um there's a lot of data there it's a lot of really powerful stuff and a certain
degree of facilitation of access to it can go a lot further and I know we're trying to do that but it really re reinforced for me the importance of how much people appreciate when someone takes time to work with them with their data and to help them make sense of it
uh so I just saw the the difference between a place where people felt like that was working at their school and where it wasn't working as well and um I think that's a great I think of the DAC as a two-way uh portal and it is sometimes ways that we get information up to the board and it's also a way that
people can help the sacks have school level discussions and sometimes I think we need to think more about how we're empowering all the schools to have a good sack discussion about the data um also uh their budget um folks um I think we need to continue to dialogue with the
DAC to get to a point where like their input will be on a timely enough basis to act on things like budget and policy um but I do think they have a a reasonable request to try to understand the budgeting decisions at the school level so as they're thinking about their
input on the budget one of the the group was expressing their frustration a few people were about trying to understand well what at a school level is is at the discretion where a school leader can make a decision about it or not and what are the decisions as they're thinking about whether the DAC is providing or
the SAC is informing us or whether they're thinking about their own fundraising through their PTO's and other things like well what is it where's where's the discretion what's how much money is controlled at school level and what could they do with their discretion to decide what to raise money for so I mean I think it really we'll
have a nice budget discussion tonight but I think it's important um that everybody have sort of the information they want to inform the decisions they're trying to make and I think sometimes people are eager to help ready to weigh in and they don't have quite the tools they need to be as informed as
they'd like to be and I think we can do more of that and then uh finally I just want to say um in response to not just the public um testimony tonight but the ongoing um uh things we read about or the things we hear about as schoolboard
members when um parents or staff or community members are reasonably frustrated about something that hasn't worked out I've been advocating for a while that we as a district uh need a better communication strategy to talk
about generically the things that we can't talk about specifically and by that I mean that when there's an event that leads to an investigation of a staff member or a criminal investigation of a student or a disciplinary action following up one student acting against another there's a host of reasons why we
can't talk about that case as board members as superintendent as a district principal as other staff and um that leaves uh parents and students and other stakeholders reasonably frustrated that something super intense has happened something unexpected something not okay
and we're in a situation where the people who uh presumably are taking action to try to solve that i say presumably from not knowing the people are trying to take action to address these issues whether it's an assistant principal working on a disciplinary a counselor working on two students who
were fighting with one another the police were investigating an alleged crime like stuff's going on that is intense and parents and students all want to know what's going on and to be clear my 15 months on the board you get a better education about all the reasons
we can't say something and they're legitimate and legal and they're real it's and it's not just furpa it's labor law it's labor contracts there's a bunch of stuff that that we are not at liberty to discuss as board members or staff aren't telling us as board members because they're not at liberty to talk
about it that's part of America in 2025 what I would like us to see as a district is a set of generic communications that you hand out to a student after there's a police investigation out of school and says "Here's how BBSD handles our interaction with the police generically here's how
student on student complaints that rise to the allegation of a crime are handled just so that the FAQ could help people explain situations that we're not in a situation to explain either as a district or as board members or as people in your school so I think it's
hard to both honor the protections that our staff deserve during an investigation that a student deserves when they're a minor subject to a fight about discipline uh to respect all their due process and if there's anything in America we need right now it's respect
for due process and I just think we could do a much better job of explaining people generically how those due processes work so that people don't feel like the inability to answer their question is because we don't aren't trying to solve a problem that people aren't working on it and that we're not
aware of their um of the harm and the problems there and that makes people come away feeling like there's one more government institution they can't trust and I can tell you from serving on this board I have developed so much trust for how many good people are doing good work on behalf of kids and trying to solve
problems that's not the problem the ability in America in 2025 is to talk to each other about anything and so I just think we need to anticipate that we're going to have a thousand disciplinary cases in a year and that we will probably have 200 investigations of staff in the course of a year and that
those staff and those students all have a lot of rights and we need to honor that so we're not going to change due process we're going to do it right and I think we could do much better at explaining how that works and people are frustrated that they can't do it and I think that's totally fair to be frustrated and I don't mean to diminish
anybody's sense of anguish or outrage i'm just saying that we could do more to generically help people understand why we sometimes can't answer their questions that doesn't take away the urgency of informing people and doing everything that we can but I I think we could do better on that
i'll go next board members as you know I've I'm calling it I'm on the road show i've been going to some of the meetings of standing parent organizations community organizations to talk about the upcoming school board elections so since we last convened I was able to go to my first DPC meeting ever which is
kind of funny to think about considering how long I was involved in the district accountability committee so that was fun to see that um I also chatted with the folks at Leadership Academy about the upcoming schoolboard elections and wanted to put a plug we will be having this Thursday from 5 to
6:30m here at the ed center our final formal meeting on answering any questions and kind of talking about what it means to be a schoolboard member what the requirements are what election are what is involved with elections so that will be this Thursday here at the ed center from 5:00 to 6:30 for anybody
that lives within the boundaries of BVSD and is interested in potentially becoming a member so that's been fun waiting to head into DPC i had the pleasure I guess Wednesday nights is a very popular night for our students to convene and meet in
districtwide committee and so I happened to see our green our students that are involved in the green BBSD initiatives and then I sat in on our student cabinet discussion which was fascinating they were asking a lot of questions about our curriculum and how those how our requirements are chosen how curriculum
is adopted and and I was really to's point about our students are so engaged in all kinds of different things and what was great to hear is how our staff support them in their advocacy and in that particular cabinet meeting staff were explaining how BBSD has a
district-wide course catalog and then high schools can choose for courses amongst that catalog and so if students want a course that's not offered at their particular school they can advocate to their school leaders say to say that they want XYZ course that's offered at maybe a different school than
their own and I wanted to put that plug in because I don't think very many people parents or students are aware that you can advocate for any of our BVSD courses to be offered at our school so I thought that was pretty cool i also had the opportunity to attend the first
of the BVEA negotiating sessions and it was great to reconvene with that group and understand the different interests of the district and the teachers and their commitment to the consensus based decision-making process so that's kind of what I've been up to since spring break and I agree with Kitty it was nice
to have that time off and I hope our staff and our students and our families were also able to get a little bit of a rest bit not only from school but from all that's going on around us that does impact our our students and our staff and our communities with that board members we
will keep plugging right along on this evening oh Kitty yes i since nobody else is going I just want to respond to Alex i think that was a great idea about how to communicate with parents about our process because I've spent a fair amount of time
thinking about things like this because frequently the district will um you know go out and ask for feedback on this that or the other thing before making a decision which is good and right and we should and then we get a lot of
responses from people who really didn't pay attention when we were putting out the information in the first place and that's not to um criticize anybody you see something you get you know we're all inundated with emails you see something oh this doesn't apply to me so you don't
think about it so Alex's idea of doing this kind of thing in the you know right after something happens people are thinking about it so I think it could be useful and I and I actually think we could do both um and you know say an
incident happens we respond this is how we respond to this sort of situation and then say refer to a document that we've sent in the past that perhaps would have more detail i don't know but I just want to say I really think it's a good idea
because we cannot communicate too much thanks Kitty we will now move on to our information items for this evening board members it is April which means we are due for a sustainability update from our team and it looks like Rob Price is walking up to
the podium to do the introductions all right good evening President Raj Paul members of the board dr anderson in alignment with uh earth month and board policy ECF which is our environmental board policy dr gita Carroll is our uh
sustainability energy officer miles Hoffman is our sustainability energy analyst and Aaron Greenwood who is our PK12 science coordinator will provide an update on the goals outlined in our sustainability action plan so with that
I will turn it over to Dr gita Carroll all right good evening okay so this is the GreenBSD vision and mission as stated in the plan we are all together for all students and the planet
which also aligns with our district strategic plan and our mission is that as a leader in whole district sustainability BBSD creates healthy learning environments and experiences that equip all students and staff with the knowledge and skills to create more equitable and sustainable communities
so our staff do continue to be requested at leadership forums to share our district's sustainability journey um locally state level and nationally this past summer Miles and I were invited to speak at a clean energy and indoor air quality national summit that happened to be hosted in Denver bbsd was also
selected to be participate in the Department of Energy's energy class program this year for districts invested in energy efficiency work um and we recently had two BBSD high school students recognized at the Green School's national conference in where was it florida in Orlando in Orlando for
their work around the Green New Deal for Colorado so that's pretty cool too um here are the guiding documents we've had in place since 2009 guiding our work around sustainability they're supported by board policy as Rob Price said which the board re-emphasized last year by
passing the Green New Deal resolution so all of the work we're doing supports both the 2021 sustainability plan and the Green New Deal resolution and as we walk through this presentation you'll see the letters G and D on the goals that specifically and directly align between those two guiding
documents our current action plan has the following four focus areas that are outlined on this slide each area has an overarching goal and three to five supporting goals and we're going to walk through them all in this presentation the plan has a five-year timeline which of which we're in year four of five next
year will be the final year of this current plan and opportunity to rebuild out the next iteration the first focus area is leadership where we have the goal to collect data at 100% of our schools related to healthy equitable and sustainable school best
practices there are four supporting goals in this category the first is to create a sustainability advisory group which is complete this group was established in January 2022 and meets quarterly to provide direction and feedback to the district's work around the goals outlined in the plan the current members include students
representing four of our high schools teachers community members some past board of education members um and more and there's information and minutes and agendas on our website the sustainability dashboard was also completed and launched last year we have had great engagement already in this
tool and you can find sustainability metrics for all of our schools you can do a Google search on green BBSD dashboard and you will find it sustainability dashboard and it's also on the district's new dashboard page we continue to update operational policies with sustainability principles so most of the work here has been
building documents into our bond program to make sure sustainability goals and priorities are reflected in the right places so for example our technical specifications and other contracts and VVSC facilities recently updated their grounds management manual to reflect integrated pest management priorities
and this was collaborative effort with the city of Boulder the work to create a professional learning plan for 100% of our staff is ongoing um our partners provide a lot of professional learning um to staff as part of their programs erin's going to talk a little bit more of some of the work that's going on um
and sustainability staff are also working with PD staff to create a new green BBSD staff certification which we hope to launch this summer or fall the tool that you see on the right is an interactive display for seeing sustainability action on our um at BBSD
that can be used also for PD and lesson planning and I'm going to turn it over to Miles thank you so much for our facilities and operations impact system we continue to pursue our goals focusing on greenhouse gas reductions particularly from building operations
and transportation as well as water management our short-term emissions goal is to reduce carbon by 14% compared to FY19 if we hit this goal it means we'll have reduced our emissions but from building operations by over 5,000 metric tonses of CO2 or the total emissions of
1,193 gas passenger cars driven for one year and we nearly hit this goal in FY24 and to continue to ident we continue to identify opportunities for energy reduction across our footprint our long-term uh goal remains to be carbon neutral by 2050 and this data doesn't
include an additional 289 metric tons uh of CO2 that we retire we got from retired offsets through our transport gas contract in 2024 in terms of building efficiency uh we utilize the energy use intensity or EI metric which we discussed last year
uh it normalizes our energy use across all of our buildings by incorporating building square footage area uh our 2026 goal is to average 56 EUI across our footprint and our long-term goal is to get to a 30 EUI average and you can see that we're still on track to hit both of
those goals um we've done really well instituting energy efficiency programs and engaging our schools to reduce energy use to this point we will need to focus on more significant infrastructure investment in the coming years to maintain that trajectory to achieve these goals in the long term
as far as our supporting goals go uh Gita mentioned the integration of our green building principles and the new tech in the technical guides for buildings and new construction and this of course includes uh both the modular factory that opened up here on the Arapjo campus uh as well as New Vista High School in addition we stood up a
sustainable finance team uh internally in the district here to continue to act on incentives and creative financing vehicles for building electrification and infrastructure improvements and for the second sub goal I'm going to turn it back over to Gita okay so we set the goal of maintaining our 50% diversion
rate which um when we created the plan in 2021 we were at 50% um since then we've experienced several changes which we've talked a lot about most notably the changes in the compost industry which make this goal no longer attainable however um this year we are on track to hit a 30% diversion rate
which is double the state average which is about 15% so we're still proud of the work that we're doing here um we have a lot to celebrate in our zero waste programming and partnership with Ecoycle including um new money Ecoycle recently secured that will make it possible to offer the Green Star Schools program to
all BBSD schools by the end of 2027 thank you um in terms of water we've been tracking our consumption and cost since 2008 and we achieved our 5-year water goal of a 5% reduction in FY23 fy24 was really hot as we can all
remember but we did pretty darn well and we stayed in at 4.5% compared to that 2019 baseline it's important once again to keep perspective of what these reductions really mean in terms of budget since 2008 our usage is down 30% our costs are up
73% so you can see that in that graph right there um we also recently stood up a district water team uh where we're working with uh our grounds and maintenance and uh facilities folks and we're looking to identify opportunities for more efficiencies grants to install
smart meter uh smart water management solutions and we're developing uh comprehensive water management plan as well and our indoor water use which is a little less touched by that outdoor climate is still uh holding steady at quite a drop from 2008
um as you're going to be receiving an entire separate transportation presentation I'm going to skip over this one a little bit i'll just tease that we have achieved our sustain our transportation emission reduction goals and I'm looking forward to hearing that uh and finally we've already discussed EY and building standards in a
few places but this last year we hosted three students from the CU's Master of the Environments program to develop the district's first decarbonization plan we spent time in the community in our schools on our rooftops getting stung by bees with our maintenance team when with utility and vendor partners investigating actions we can take to
electrify our buildings in the short term and create policies to support our 2050 net zero carbon goals and with that I'm going to turn it over to Aaron thank you so much i'm wearing green pants but I'm really glad I'm not wearing any of these outfits i don't
know if you can see those they're they're shocking um I'm here to talk about our very very busy year in curriculum and instruction it's a strategic priority in our sustainability action plan um our overarching goal is that all students have experiences to
develop their sustainability knowledge values and behaviors we happen to have lots of supporting goals and all of these goals are aligned to our strategic plan as well especially in the categories of no limits defining
the destination and also in the valued and included part of our strategic plan um and I'd like to talk about our first goal tonight which is integrating sustainability topics into the instruction we provide in schools so um
we have identified the standards in science social studies and health for opportunities for students to learn about sustainability through teacherdirected instruction we also have had students in our green youth council learn how to write optional elementary
lesson plans using our standards and the BBSD instructional model they have eight lessons so far and they're looking forward with the opportunity to practice environmental hope and action through PD with our teachers we have one new middle school
climate literacy course offered in our course catalog for next year and also two new high school courses for climate we before this we audited our system and we had no specific climate courses so this is a huge adjustment for this uh thank you so much to our board for
supporting these new courses in our catalog through your recent approval um a great example of how integration um of sustainability topics is occurring is through our work at Heatherwood Elementary they have become an environmental steam school and are
looking forward to launching their programming coming up here at the end of April and into May their students are inspired by nature and will learn about both science and social studies through exploration of current environmental problems and they'll design action-based
solutions as well all by getting outside to care for their natural environment goal number two is to support and track professional learning and as Gita referred to we are working towards a certification program that mirrors the seal of climate literacy for
our teachers additionally we've leveraged partners to engage in learning with science teachers especially around ways to engage students with sustainability phenomena and explore highquality resources we are also working with the professional learning
team to audit our PL catalog and future professional learning offerings to identify the courses that are aligned to our sustainability goals and tagging them as green BVSD courses so that teachers can easily find those opportunities our third goal is all
about our partnerships and we continue to build partnership um relationships nearly weekly we intake new partners and we're building additional connections for our partners to work on BBSD initiatives as well um we're looking at creative ways where partners can be
involved in our Heatherwood work and our seal of climate literacy work as well this year only three more goals in this section um goal number four is to incorporate student voice so excitingly we have the inaugural year of our green
youth council this year we have a very dedicated group of students our leadership team meets monthly to plan our monthly meeting for the entire youth council they're quite excited to be involved in all different ways for our sustainability work they had the job
this year of designing our seal of climate literacy process um designing climate related courses and lessons and also speaking to the greater community about their work a really fun example of the green youth council working with partners um is they were paired with
adult partners recently to review the applications for the seal of climate literacy and our partners learned a lot from our students they asked great questions and gave really great answers there's a picture of our teams working together they mostly enjoyed the dinner
as well goal number five is once again related to um professional development but it also reaches into our curricular and extracurricular activities as well this is a very futurelooking goal it's something that's always on the burner um
we continue to pursue and develop aligned professional development opportunities and other activities in our schools um we have active green teams at all of our high schools and many of our middle and elementary schools we provide support to schools who would like to start new green clubs
or initiatives and we continue to pro promote the new tradition of rotating studentled high school climate summits the fall summit was at Monarch and Boulder High will host the summit on April 26 this spring and everyone is invited
and lastly goal number six is to expand pathways to green jobs this was year one of our natural resources pathway which will be branded the environmental sustainability pathway starting next year um school students in that particular pathway get to work in
various career fields related to sustainability and develop their knowledge in those topics as well and we've also engaged with BBSD's workbased learning coordinator to consider how green jobs can be highlighted in our new Pathfinder career portal for
students and lastly I just wanted to give a big update on the seal of climate literacy this is a project that started this year and we have already had one student and you can see by her face how excited she was she was an early graduate who graduated with this high
school diploma endorsement for the seal of climate literacy there's Rose she's now in Asia learning and volunteering and trekking um we will have 20 graduates this spring and they will be presenting their experiential portfolios on April 23rd all are invited to that as
well and the biggest most special part of our seal of climate literacy is that youth were able to develop and lead the process all the way through with support from adults love to pass it back over to Agita for our last
goal okay so this is our final section of the plan um thrown climate and culture and the goal here is to have regular opportunities to experience sustainability for everyone in our community at all of our facilities so the first goal is to have outdoor learning spaces at all of our elementary
and increase seating and shading at our secondary schools so while we may have met this goal we think we probably have we've not yet done a full assessment to confirm um but we've made great progress through partnerships in the community and through our work in the bond um so for example through a partnership with
the city of Boulder and Play Boulder we have planted trees at several of our schools and the community forestry corps is hiring for paid summer jobs for teens and students um to help with the planting and caring of these trees across Boulder County um the planting map on the bottom right was created by Boulder High School Science students um
and many schools have created outdoor spaces in partnership with their parent associations so if you haven't already go check out the beautiful new space it's what being coined the Mesa Mesa Oasis at Mesa Elementary um but these spaces are across our district really great spaces for outdoor learning the
second goal is to create an annual communication strategy which we have done we have communication around sustainability that goes out minimally monthly our biggest reach being the Earth spot that goes out communitywide and will be coming out in a few weeks um and the new tool that I mentioned earlier the day in the life of
sustainability is also a great way to communicate about the programs and the works embedded into our schools around this and finally the third goal is to support the model programs that exist and are truly the heart of the sustainability work at our schools so for example garden to table last year
reached 6,344 students in 16 of our schools one of their greatest successes was a 45% increase in student visits to gardens from 2022 to 2023 we have 45 schools working to committed to zero waste through our green star program our
amazing food service program continues to offer healthy fresh and when possible local foods for all students and are also committed to best waste reduction practices just going to give you another fun highlight food services gives Ecoycle the empty pickle buckets to use for classroom recycling and they Ecoycle
had so many that then they donated some to music classes that used them for drums in a stomp-like um lesson so this is interdisciplinary reuse at its best um in partnership with Thorne last year 30 BBSD schools and almost 2,000 second
graders got to visit the Simber Marsh Environmental Center to learn about wetlands and this year that was offered al with additional support from the natural resource students to the Apex program so great collaboration across the ages and trip tracker is an amazing program you'll hear about in the next presentation supporting sustainable
modes of transportation so this plan is a living document that evolves in response to implementation and evaluation next year will be the final year of this five-year plan and we hope to build out the plan shaping the next five years and fully integrating the Green New Deal um board of education commitment as well thank
you very much and with that we'll take questions thank you for that very thorough presentation Dr carolyn team board members any questions kitty yeah I have a couple of questions first of all I always love this
presentation and I just want to commend you on all the great work you all are doing because you've made us a leader in the country and we can be an example to what districts can do um couple of questions what can you remind me what
EUI and EFS are so I'll jump in with EUI it's energy use intensity okay so that measures how much energy is used per square foot per year okay so it normalizes thank you efs is short for education for
sustainability so we define that internally and then we look for those opportunities through the standards and one note is science standards are being revised currently at the state level and BBSD students are involved with that process as well they are being revised to look where climate science can be
additionally implemented into our current standards thank you um couple other questions what happened in 2016 i noticed there was a spike up in the I think it was the energy use
what happened in in energy i'm assuming I think it was before my time it was before 2020 so we know that we had our well we were in the middle of the bond and had a big dip that came from the bond and kind of came back up
again let me let's see where the is this the one you were talking about this slide so we're about so the this which part the spike up it was it looks like it's 2016 here yes
um I don't know i'm just curious yes i'll look back to what we said about it that presentation yeah okay that's fine and can you tell us who some of your the partners are
that we're working with so many yes mentioned a few um Ecoycle Garden to Table Thor um City of Boulder the OSMP department i'm going to I'm going to forget some i hope they're not listening classrooms for climate action partner
and can tell me exactly what is climate to table i mean climate good heavens garden to table yes to that slide they are an outside partner that um will sometimes install
gardens and then provide schoolwide kind of curriculum and learning to work in the garden so they at best they get to work with all of the grades um in the school at some point to get into the garden and sometimes it's just a particular grade but they support it you know from install all the way to
learning and growing and harvesting so the are these the schools where you see the gardens most of them so we have had uh gardens put in in other ways not through this particular program other garden programs but this is the main one thank you Jason um yeah I also agree this is one
of my favorite presentations and great to see so many um you know exciting things happening and so many in so many different areas um I think I think we've talked about this before and I know I've asked something similar but you know the chart that Kitty was talking about which is 13 which shows the what is it the
EIUI and then also kind of getting to net zero um you know thinking ahead not to I know we're going to cover transportation in more detail next but you know that that was pretty shocking to see kind of how what a challenge it is to kind of move from you know to
fully clean electric buses so what are the what are the big things you know there's a ton of things going on these are all great initiatives but what are the big hurdles that we like need to deal with I guess first question I know that's a big question and then you know what else can the board do besides you
know pass green new deal resolutions is there anything specific that we can do to kind of move us to these things I know we're not in ideal climate nationally around some of this stuff but it's great to see us taking the lead at the local level but I just I I look at this and it's you know we're making such good progress but that's still a pretty
big dip to get to net zero and I'm just curious for like what are the big things obviously transportation is one of them people beyond that yeah so part of this is what the students um the started to map out for us in our decarbonization plan and you know continuing of course to look towards efficiency when we're
doing end of any replacements and then when equipment is end of life that's a time to at least consider the options around electrification if that makes sense um a lot of electrification it hopes and relies on the fact that Excel's grid will ultimately be clean um
because that's how we get to net zero for electric and using not clean grid energy that doesn't that doesn't help but in the interim investing in renewables can be another option for that anything you want to add in terms of Yeah I mean what we need when we start talking
about this is the funding for it it all sounds great uh but even electrifying our build buildings that comes with a cost and then there's an ongoing cost of electricity because electricity is significantly more than natural gas so we have to weigh those as we move
forward is that a cost we want to incur or not in order to meet the goals so I think tonight's transportation discussion is perfect for this to start having those discussions of what is the priority and ultimately money becomes some of the guiding principles for what
we're doing moving forward so you know I think new Vista is an example uh you know we have to design a building that held 350 to 400 students but we also had some energy goals we still met a lot of those but we didn't exactly meet all of them so um I think as we're advocating
at the state level at the federal level in order for some of that money to help us reach some of these goals uh but it's going to take funds so um yeah we struggle with it i'll add just one last thing what I
mentioned that we set up the sustainable finance committee internally a lot of that is looking at what are the resources available to us mostly right now on the local level there are still some national levers that we're going to be able to pull and probably be able to pull for some time but there's also more
uncertainty in future years so that team is tasked with really identifying pathways to find financing outside of what can be provided in budgets and and bonds and whatnot so Alex
yeah uh I'm also super excited to hear all the things we're doing and um proud just to be associated with the leaders who launched all this and the students have been doing it for so long in Boulder um one of the legacy things I'm interested in you referenced the
interest in shade and trees um I live across the street from community monastery by where I think they probably lost 15 trees in the last 10 year and a quick JAT GPT search shows me that more than 3,000 ash trees have been removed in Boulders's public property as a city in the last 10 years and I have seen
literally none planted at community monastery since then that I that I count that that would provide shade yet what's like what's the scale of trees even to just go back and fill the lost canopy that we're like planting on a yearly basis and what can we do to actually get
back to having even the shade we had when my kids started at community monastery yeah um Alex I don't know if I have uh I'm trying to think back to when you're talking about a community monastery I mean one of the challenges we've had
with climate change etc it's getting hotter when a lot of our trees were planted that they didn't have irrigation so we rely on rainfall etc and a lot of those trees are dying so any new trees that we plant we require irrigation to be added um in order to maintain those
so that's what we're doing moving forward have we had a big initiative internally i would say yes by working with community partners and we can look at what has happened out of Fairview for example significant number of trees have been planted there we're working with the city of Boulder right now on their
climate initiatives we've got a big project coming up at BCSIS High Peaks with a number of tree planting so we'll just continue to work with our partners um on that but a lot of it it I mean it takes funds and again it comes back to that it takes resources in order to make
that happen but we want to do it right we don't want to just go plant a bunch of trees we got to make sure they're irrigated and they're going to withstand time yeah i I I guess I would follow up and ask like what's this like how many are we talking about because the loss has been so dramatic and in terms of a
prioritization of a pleasant place to be a small kid and a playground shade is so crucial in you know early and late months of the year that I like we could have a really cool initiative going on and replace 10 you know of the thousand so I'm curious to know what the actual
numbers are or if we have a plan that gets close to the scale of what we've lost assuming that we have to do irrigation i mean I'm I'm assuming we be smart and energy efficient and useful but I'd still love to see a canopy in our public lands that kids can play under and on i I think this aligns
really well with the goals that we have with the city of Boulder and I'll be happy to share an initiative that we have with the city right now that we'll be moving forward with this summer so I'll make sure the board gets that information i don't have specific numbers to that so I'm not sure it answers your specific question but we
are moving in the right direction on this i have another question that's about uh numbers um again super excited to see our the Green New Deal resolution that the previous board members enacted and excited to see the climate seal of
literacy i also look at our grad plus program and our strategic plan and we we have one of our big four planks of that is sort of the workbased learning that goes on and again I look at the numbers of it compared to the other pieces of our grad plus program and the workplace
numbers are just minuscule in comparison to the post-secary options and um I mean I look at the Green New Deal resolution and it's it's about getting those real world work experiences and I'm just like well how do we get the numbers up and and I'm curious what the interest is
amongst the students and if if we had 10 times as many slots as we have today would students want it or are we maxing out how much they want and how do we work with when it comes to climate uh I can't imagine a better city in which to partner with major institutions like
ENCAR and Noah and and NIST and CU um but I don't hear those referenced I I would love to know more about the scale at which we're creating those work-based opportunities ities and um whether it's a supply or demand issue or a partnership issue or what's the deal
with the low numbers i'm happy to answer that question for you Alex and uh luckily for us we have one of our strategic plan deep dive conversations where we're going to dig into a little bit of some of the work-based learning aspects uh certainly college before graduation has
skyrocketed making all other progress seem really low so uh I I do think that with college before graduation there is an infrastructure there already uh to be able to build that fast and quick um we
will have uh we'll be able to report out to the board um and I believe it's next next next next Tuesday uh some of the work we're doing on workbased learning um why is that taking a little bit longer obviously work-based learning is more than just us we have to find our
partners we have to get the agreements we had to build and develop a system to track and monitor uh and so we've done some of those things so we're happy to give you an update on that but I do agree with you i think that as as Grad
Plus evolves as um our worked base opportunities evolve um as the state has evolved now we have a seal of climate literacy which is super exciting um I would say and I would add Aaron or Gita the student interest is for sure there
uh and uh you know having our first environmental steam program at Heatherwood starting next year which by the way was a program that the community said we want at Heatherwood uh I do think that there is
uh there's a definitely a bright future in these types of opportunities uh but be able to update you all and dig into that a little bit more next Tuesday i just want to commend you for all the work here and how quickly you were able to integrate some of the priorities from
the Green New Deal resolution into the work you're doing and highlight that specifically i know that was something that the board had talked about inserting that piece into a plan that was already in motion so thank you for that with the professional development is that something that we're having to
create to provide those opportunities or does that exist in your just Okay well a lot of it is there oh sorry a lot of it is there and as Aaron mentioned we're kind of going through to kind of tag what's existing and and overlaps with this work a lot of it is provided by our um by Aaron science teachers by our
partners um and we're working to create new things so the goal in this plan was to create a plan around it and so our our plan is through schooly to have this new opportunity to become green BBSD certified as staff or teachers and so we've already got how many modules we're
we're coming along it's really close um so that then anybody can kind of go through take these trainings and become officially green BBST certified so it's it's a combination of things does that answer your question yeah it does thank you and I want to acknowledge the the
work that was done at Fairview on that campus the number of students that are outside utilizing the tables taking advantage of the green space it's outstanding and so I'm glad to see that that's going to continue as funds become available and as partnerships become available to continue to roll that out to our schools our kids our staff they
really like to be outside and connected to nature and that does wonders for stress levels so I'm glad to see that's going to be expanded and then lastly you have these really cool poster boards from a photography project and I would love the outfits we didn't explain them
free to share that so this is a project that actually happened in 2019 believe it or not that it was a collaboration with CU um a nonprofit called Eco Arts and I think six of our middle school and high school photography classes so CU provided these green suits and our
students went around and chose different sustainability features at our schools and um community that they wanted to highlight by wearing these green suits and they took the pictures and there were I think there were 80 plus submissions so this um is just two of I think 18 of of these that we have it's
been all around our community at Noah at CU at the libraries and now we're going to get it here at the Ed Center this year um in April for Earth Month so you can see the whole thing a little bit later this month and really cool project and continues to be you know exciting and inspirational to folks um and Erin
will be wearing a green suit to the next presentation so next year yes we all will rob too board members any additional questions for the team looks like there are none but thank
you so much for being here for all your work you are a small but mighty team and you are doing great things for this district board members I would like to call a short comfort break about five minutes to give you an opportunity to look at these boards before our staff take them away so we'll commune back in
five minutes i'd like to call this evening's meeting back to order board members we will continue on with our information items our second information item this evening is the transportation update all right good evening at the board's
request tonight I am going to be providing an update on uh our efforts to modernize our bus fleet in alignment with our sustainability action plan and just talk about some of the opportunities the challenge we face to uh as we look forward to electrifying
our fleet um also joining me tonight is Amy Thompson our safe routes of school coordinator who will provide a safe routes to school update later in the presentation so just to get started to give us a high level overview um this slide shows the
current mode share of how our students get to school so as you can see single family car trips still make up the largest portion with approximately 40% or 11,000 students getting to school uh by car every day um 5600 of the eligible
7,100 transportation students utilize a school bus approximately 8,400 walk or bike and 3,000 utilize RTD or carpool you can see the percentages uh in the piraphph there um I will say these percentages are not exact but they are
in alignment with past surveys trip tracker number bike counts etc um and I do want to emphasize our walking and biking numbers are three times the national average so thanks to our parents and our students for making those decisions um our action plan for
uh does call for every school to monitor their own transportation patterns and develop strategies to support more sustainable options this action plan goal has not yet been received or achieved um we are rethinking that i don't want to put another thing on
schools so we're looking at how do we develop another a comprehensive mode share data system um but please know we do uh work hard to encourage people to pick uh healthy choices like walking and biking school bus RTD and
carpool on average uh or our average fleet age is currently 10 years meaning each school bus is replaced roughly once every 20 years we operate 130 daily routes of which are 60 or general education routes 70 special education
routes we have 14 midday routes and we average eight activity and/or athletic trips each day for a total of about 2.2 million miles driven each school year and I would like to say or think that these statistics highlight uh the
importance of reliable and efficient school buses so here's the current composition on the left hand side of our 219 bus fleet by fuel type so while we've made great strides including adding electric and propane buses still the majority of
our fleet as you can see is diesel or unled we currently operate nine electric school buses we have four more on order that should be here this year uh you'll see on the right hand side our ideal fleet uh would be 110 electric school
buses 30 diesel and 15 unleted that are needed for our mountain routes and our longer trips and 64 propane buses um I'll talk a little bit about the comparison of the different types in a future slide i would say the numbers in
the ideal scenario are based on today's technology um if the range of electric school buses improves additional infrastructure is installed throughout the state giving us an opportunity to charge elsewhere and money wasn't a
factor then I could see definitely more school buses in our future in the ideal state rob just to clarify when you say ideal Yep to is is that based on the maximum number of electric buses that we could
potentially have using today's technology and then we would be able to transport students is that is that how we're coming up with the the ideal number as verse to like an ideal set by somebody else so that correct so we've went through all of our routes right now our electric buses we
are getting about 100 miles uh maximum per charge so when we look at the routes and we look at the terrain we're not running electric buses up in the mountains we don't have the capacity up there uh we believe we have about 110 routes uh that would suffice for 110
electric buses so we've had a consultant that's helped us look with that look at that at a high level um so that's where that ideal state it's really based on today's technology thank you for that clarification um just moving on I would
say the age composition of our buses is broken down as shown you can see on this chart that we have 128 of our 219 buses are over 10 years old and of that number 69 of the 128 are over 15 years old um
so 31% of our fleet is older than 15 years and our goal is to get to a 15 year 15-year replacement cycle again to help ensure fleet reliability and uh maintain our emissions compliance so we have uh made important progress
over the last decade and I would say through electric infrastructure that was completed in the 2014 bond expansion of our propane fleet which started in 2016 the retirement of over 100 high emission buses uh the route
consolidation that we did in 2021 still while maintaining and trans transporting the same number of students um we continue to move forward with our sustainability goals and uh much of this work especially when we look at propane
electric buses the electric infrastructure that we've installed has all been supported really by successful grant applications rebates and fantastic community partners um as Miles noted in the last
presentation in the 2021 sustainability action plan our goal is to reduce transmission or transportation emissions by 750 metric tons of carbon dioxide from our fisc year 2019 baseline i'm pleased to share that we have surpassed
that target in fiscal year 24 reducing over a thousand metric tonses which is equivalent to taking off uh 241 cars off the road each year this slide that I referenced referenced a little bit earlier really
compares the major characteristics of each fuel type um as you can see propane buses have uh same initial upfront cost as a diesel bus but are less costly to maintain have lower greenhouse gas emissions than that of a diesel bus um
the range of a propane bus is around 350 mi which works really well down here in our non- mountain areas for longer trips uh longer routes however uh as I've stated before when we're ordering diesel um propane buses still lack the
acceleration we need up in the mountains that technology has not come around uh but as shown electric buses are significantly more expensive up front um they do definitely have the lowest fuel and annual maintenance costs they offer the greatest greenhouse gas reduction
and are definitely the quietest which helps with the student behavior um however their initial costs the associated infrastructure costs the possibility that we'll have to replace batteries in 8 to 10 years and their
limited ranges are all challenges that we are planning for um we've first bus electric bus was purchased in 2019 manufacturers have told us all along that the batteries would likely have to be replaced in 8 to 10 years we haven't had them long enough to know if that's
going to pay out or not uh right now if we're getting about a 100 miles per charge we do believe that will drop down to about 60 or 70% at that 8 to 10 year mark so as we're talking about costs in a further side uh think about
that um we currently have chargers installed at our Boulder and Lafayette transportation terminals we have three terminals throughout the district we have another one up in Ned however we do not have chargers up there these are this is a photo of the chargers we have
installed at Lafayette um here is a map we currently have 10 chargers at the Lafayette terminal one at the Boulder terminal for a total capacity of 13 uh to be able to charge 13 buses uh we utilize both level two and level three
fast chargers you can see the benefits of both uh in the bullet points and I would uh just add working with GA miles and others careful planning goes into when we charge these charging them during the day is a lot more expensive due to peak demand pricing versus
charging them overnight so that is uh something that we have to think about as we're uh charging buses and um installing the infrastructure uh as I have communicated before one of the most significant challenges we continue to face in electrifying robust fleet is the
installation of the charging uh infrastructure um this process with Excel typically takes anywhere from 18 to 24 months from start to finish and under the current rebate structure we are only able to install chargers and
the required infrastructure for the number of buses we order so if we order four electric buses we can only install four electric chargers so as a result each new bus order restarts that 18 to
24month process which significantly uh slows our ability to scale up with electric buses um and this process could be done uh faster and a lot less cost um by scaling up that infrastructure all at
one time when I say infrastructure I'm talking about the switch gear the transformer all of the underground conduit the wire the pull boxes etc and adding chargers then as needed if you can get all that in at one time and then add the chargers however rebates won't
cover that so that would require substantial upfront cost uh from the district so based on as we talked about just a little bit ago based on our analysis of our bus routes 50% of our fleet could be electric again based on today's
technology the range of the electric buses and the infrastructure installed throughout the state which is minimal uh for buses so if you look at just that 50% of the fleet not focusing on the other 50% here is a sidebyside
comparison of diesel propane unleted and I'll refer to that as internal combustion engines versus electric based on a 15-year time frame and again just reinforce based on what we know today so electric costs more upfront but offers a
long-term savings in fuel and maintenance that is apparent however even with these savings we still forecast an additional expense of about 58 to 73 million over the 15 years to transition that half of the fleet to EV
um I did not include some of the other expected costs just for simplicity sakes we have software costs uh we have upgrades to the software that we have to pay um and then the other thing I did not include and I think this would be a
discussion in the future is if we have a power outage and we have 50% of our fleet that is electric what do we do so do we build a cost for diesel generators do we have a micro grid that could power
the power buses but um power outages in our district are pretty common we see those quite frequently so that is something thing the other thing that other districts have done is prioritize routes which means the routes that have diesel and unled buses and propane will
get service but electric buses will not be able to service and you'd have to prioritize those notify families in advance uh of that so just something to think about um this is something where a consultant could really help us uh plan in the future on what that may look like
uh however I just want to note that cost is not in here the bus purchase line item 110 buses is calculated on $150,000 a bus for internal combustion engine 400,000 for electric buses uh based on
these current assumptions we anticipate a total cost of 25 to 30 million electric bus scenario 70 to 75 million uh that's over 15 years and these projections I will say do include inflation and interest built in and if
grant funding becomes available uh then we can close that gap of that 58 to 73 million uh we don't know exactly uh and the timing of this presentation was tough because we don't know exactly how the tariffs and some of the other global
uh changes that are occurring today will impact bus prices if we would have had this conversation six months ago we all thought that bus prices were going to be d uh dropping drastically because another number of bus manufacturers were to come online um and I believe in
today's uh what's happening at the federal level etc that's still to be seen so I have built this on a $400,000 bus not assuming buses will drop um the cost of the electric infrastructure and the chargers is estimated in the range
of 10 to$15 million for 110 buses i did take out some funds for the chargers that we currently have installed the estimated life for the electric school bus battery is 8 to 10 years uh right now we cannot get hard costs on what
that will cost to actually replace them but uh manufacturers are telling us that's somewhere in the 30 to 50% of the total cost of the bus so that is that estimate is 11 to 24 million um as you can see maintenance costs are about half for an electric school bus compared to
diesel and those are based on our numbers and then fuel costs are approximately 60% less for electricity compared to diesel or propane um to bring all of this back uh to the presentation prior to this and to
our sustainability action plan I think this is the real reason we're having this discussion is if we were able to achieve this goal we would have reduced our emissions from 66,000 to 22,000 metric tonses over the next 15 years which would be significantly and then
that's uh very similar to removing 9,600 cars from the road over that 15-year time frame i do want to point out that 22,000 metric tonses is produced by Excel Energy to supply the electricity to charge the buses if Excel can meet
their goals prior to the 24 20 240 deadline um 2040 goal that they've set for themselves that would be better than what I have shown here um this slide here I'm going to focus on the right hand side and then
I'm going to move over to the leftand side but to maintain a 15-year cycle for 219 buses I need to replace approximately 15 buses per year in order to do that in today's dollars if the board were to elect to move forward with electric we would need approximately $6
million of ongoing funds to replace 15 buses if we maintain status quo we continue to do replace diesel propane and leaded buses on that 15-year average we would need approximately 2.25 25 million per year not figuring in
inflation etc the current budget that I have in cap reserve right now is 1.5 million uh that was around a million and then a handful of years ago we increased that to 1.5 so with that 1.5 million uh if we were to purchase electric buses
out of $400,000 I'd be purchasing about three or four buses per year or with diesel propane and unled at 150,000 we can purchase approximately 10 buses per year so that replacement rate with the current funding right now is 22 years
um now moving back over to the left hand side the state of Colorado is no longer offering grants or rebates for electric buses they have pulled those um Excel is still offering a rebate structure and that is still active however a lot of
that requires us to uh put up the upfront capital and then we can get a rebate back the details with Excel right now are very unclear it's a first come first serve basis so you really don't know what you're getting until you're moving forward and you've already invested the dollars um EPA's website
still states that the clean school bus program is active uh but we know that's possibly on the chopping block and relying on federal fund funds right now is extremely risky and I would just throw out there the other options for the board of education
to consider would be prioritizing a sustainability component in a future bond measure or consider increasing the transportation override mill levy to help fund the additional cost and those funds could be used for both the infrastructure and uh to purchase school
buses so goals moving forward and as we're thinking about just finishing out this year into next year uh first goal would be to complete a bus electrification study and continuing to monitor grant opportunities to increase our electric
and propane fleet and expand our charging infrastructure and continuing to get rid of a lot of our older buses that are typically unled or diesel um and then I would look to the board for guidance on considering a potential
ballot question moving forward to uh enhance this priority um with that I am honored to turn it over to Amy Thompson our safe routes to school coordinator good evening board my name is Amy Thompson and I'm the safe routes to school program coordinator for the
Boulder Valley School District and what does that mean i I put together resources for the 22,000 kids who don't take the school bus every day so what are some of those resources um first of all RTD we have a wonderful
partnership with RTD and I want to thank the board for supporting ballot measure 7A last fall that was huge there was a pilot program for a year to have a zero fair for youth we didn't know if that was going to continue thanks um to that
initiative it is now a permanent fair structure and from my partners at RTD they have told me that youth writership has doubled in the first year and then we'll we'll get another report at the end of this school year i think the program has been extremely successful
the whole system is free even down to Denver even to the airport it's been a wonderful asset um second of all car pooling so we partner with the D Denver Regional Council of Governments they've got an online tool called School Pool we've got a a network set up at 54 of our sites
that um families can sign up for to find a carpool match we've got 700 families signed up for that right now walking and biking the one I like the best excuse me we estimate that about 30% of our kids walk and bike to school like Rob said
earlier that is three times the national average we're very proud um of that figure we're national leaders in the safe routes to school movement uh bicycle education we brought that back um it was took a hiatus from COVID it's
back we were out at Pioneer jorge thank you for cleaning up our cones for running clubs we're out there teaching bike and we were taking him out on the nice open space there a super fun time there will be at um Lewisville Elementary um later this
month and then encouragement um we've got the trip tracker program it's currently at 43 schools go to the next slide so trip tracker so um Jason I've kind of heard
you talk about how we have these fun like events we've got bike to school day and walk to school day and then and then what and so trip tracker is our kind of sustained encouragement program for the whole year so um every month I send out a survey to um parents and and older
students um and they report to me about if they walk bike roll take the school bus take the RTD carpool park and walk basically anything but a single family car in the hug and go and uh they get trip tracker dollars it looks like little Monopoly money and they can spend
it we've got a couple dozen different businesses think ice cream used bookstores think Gateway Park bowling they can spend these monopoly money like real cash and get rewards for their their green um choices so this program
has been in place for 15 years and so what that means is that we've got BBSD kids who have completely grown up with Trip Tracker so we kind of initially thought the program Monopoly money it's going to be elementary and middle school well now we've got high schoolers who like I've been doing this my whole life
i want it now so Fairview has signed up and they're one of our shining stars they're they post some really big numbers so that's been really great to see and like I said in the last year participation has been up 21% uh we saved over 700,000 pounds of
carbon um from the environment i can download from our bus routing software how far everyone lives from school which interestingly enough the median distance is 2.1 miles for the whole district even with open enrollment um and so I can calculate how much carbon we're saving
from the environment and I awarded over $83,000 so yes I have a drawer of $83,000 of trip tracker monopoly money dollars at my desk and then our students generously uh donated 6,500 back to our
schools and 4,100 back to local nonpartners local nonprofits I should say trip Tracker is generously sponsored by our partners at Boulder County the city of Bowler the city of Lafayette and the store owners i um with the grant
money that I get from our government partners um I reimburse stores 50 cents for every dollar that's spent that they're contributing to so it's truly a community effort to uh make our environment cleaner and get kids healthy really appreciate that and the government um partners this helps them
meet their sustainability goals so it's kind of a win-win and then safety collaboration so every month I meet um with traffic engineers from the city of Boulder Boulder County i meet with some of the other cities too and we've got some exciting initiatives coming up um
Boulder County is just starting the RFP process to hire a consultant to do a a countywide safe route to school action plan the thought with this um plan is to be more proactive rather than reacting to um crashes so that is starting and so
we'll have a safety plan for um all of our schools that's exciting boulder County is also leading the initiative for a vision zero plan vision Zero the goal is zero traffic deaths zero serious injuries so they're currently making a
plan for Boulder County and incorporated Boulder County the city of Lafayette and the town of Superior so that's going to set in motion some good safety improvements for those areas broomfield is also in the process of doing a transportation safety action
plan the same kind of thing looking at their streets to make improvements and doing a transit study to try to get more RTD service to Broomfield um Ced DOT has been that's the Colorado Department of Transportation excellent partners so over the last 20 years we've done 27
safe routes to school projects with them totaling $4.5 million so a lot of infrastructure a lot of crosswalk improvements bike lanes that kind of stuff um the city of Boulder has just recently um went through a process to update their pedestrian crossing treatment guidelines they let me be a
pro a part of that process so I got to give them feedback from the mom with a kindergartenner perspective that's going to set the the stage for some amazing improvements to um crosswalks and more rapid flashing beacons more bulbouts uh more speed humps those kind of things so
that's really exciting and then lastly we've had wonderful support from local law enforcement um the city of Boulder police have um come to Centennial Middle School to do some more patrols the Boulder County Sheriff's Department asked for a list of our bus stops in the
unincorporated county area and they've done some extra patrols for people running our stop signs on our buses um even when we had an incident in um Lafayette on Baseline Road that you know about the police were out there immediately doing extra patrols writing
tickets um doing what they can to make it safer and then lastly I just wanted to leave you with um automated enforcement is the future it's coming um and so the city of Boulder has experimented with that and they they focus on some corridors that we were
getting complaints on from families like Lookout Road Valma Road um this is going to be um taking over and making things I think a lot safer in our school zones and then lastly I just wanted to circle back to um bike and roll to
school day is coming up on April 23rd we're going to have lots of celebrations around the the district bike rodeos all kinds of stuff and we would welcome you um to join us in biking and walking to school and with that we'll take
questions thank you for that presentation board members who would like to begin kitty so I think you pretty much answered the where does the trip tracker money come from so do did you say we have a grant
and that's where our piece of it comes from so I get a a budget of zero to run this program so I have to get all um grants to pay for that 50% that we that we um reimburse the businesses so I um it's
mostly from our um government partners like Boulder County City Boulder City of Lafayette gotten some other grants like from the Colorado Department of Public Health things like that but it's all grant funded well you're doing a great job with zero money from us so that's a
win definitely and um I have another excuse me question what is Did you say automated enforcement and can you tell us automated so basically camera enforcement so that's kind of camera that flashes in your eyes and then you're blinded well hopefully you're not
blinded and you can't see the kid walking in it's going to be um more than just like right now it's mostly um stop light running and there's will be more speed enforcement too which um we know that speed is a big factor in how severe crashes so enforcing speed limits is
extremely important and automated enforcement is the way to scale it up and really make it impactful so it's the things that are already happening just not where but it's new um so the the running a stoplight that's been in place for a while um but the laws just changed
and so the city of Boulder is leading the way so that was like the Valmont the Lookout and I could see our other partners City of Lafayette Superior following suit and doing more and more um automated enforcement okay thanks
Jason um thanks very much uh I have a bunch of questions but maybe sticking to the transportator the um your piece of it um you mentioned you know so I know one of my kids goes to Creekide and there's been a number of improvements in the
neighborhood Martin Acres Morehead uh around you know kind of curbs and you know kind of traffic calming things yeah and you kind of alluded to it that there's been some partnership but I've been curious to know how much it seems like every time there is a and it's
something I know we're meeting with the city Boulder City Council later this uh school year and I'd really love to raise this because I feel like every time there is a transportation improvement project we should be one of the first calls that the city makes or or vice versa to be able to coordinate to make
sure that you know that perspective is taken into account so could you talk about kind of what that looks like and how you know not not necessarily the Martin Acres project but yeah you know where you know what that looks like when you partner with Yeah every time the city does a project they do public outreach and so they do work through me and I'm like and they show me the
project I'm like oh you probably want to talk to this and this and this school um to get out like the the public engagement um part of it and then they talk to me um about projects i will say their bias has been to tell me about the ones that are within like a half mile of
the school and I keep telling them every street is a school street like something can happen everywhere particularly with you know all of our open enrollment that's happening and that number is growing and growing so we're having all of this cross transportation so truly every street is a school street um so
I'm really happy to be serving on some of those committees for some of those big global projects like the the vision zero for the entire county and the safe routes to school action plan so um I get on there and I um tell them about my experiences back in the day when I was
biking with a you know a kindergartener or a kindergartener with a baby um those are the the vulnerable road users that I'm biased towards as um the moms with little kids are they you said that they have if I can follow up that they see the kind of
the school's involvement or district involvement like within a mile of the school they don't yet kind of have this vision type for the city of Boulder like they don't yet have a vision of like anytime there's a street improvement we should consider kids going to school and you know that kind of stuff or has that's what I've been trying to
encourage them more and more um with because that particularly with the safe routes to school that 4.5 to 20 million in the 27 projects they're generally within a quarter mile of a school and um I'm just saying it's a whole ecosystem
our buses are on these roads we've got bus stops we got kids walking and biking we have parents driving and car pooling um so we produce a lot of uh movement around the the county every single day and um yeah so Okay yeah well like I said we we
are meeting with the city i don't know what the process is for developing that agenda but it's something I feel like we should prioritize it's a natural partnership there's no reason it doesn't have to cost anything extra it just seems like you know we we should have similar goals here and it's great to see there's alignment but it sounds like it could be improved and it could be more
of course and I'll I'll just give you a heads up that there the city is collecting um information or input on Fulsome right now so um although it's not necessarily really close to any one specific school probably have lots of students and families traveling on it so
um Google it get on their website they've got three different plans and cast your vote make your comments um yeah if I can ask just one more question on this issue the the um bike and roll the school it's you know it's uh it's great i feel like at at least at our the
schools where my kids go you know there's at least a 50% increase in the number of kids that are biking um and I don't know what it is is it the snacks is it the like you know activities but I would love and I don't know what is involved or the cost but is it is it possible to do that more often and I
know we have the weather factor but you know it seems like the more we can do that at I mean even just sending out advertisements that don't involve snacks or a huge cost yeah you know that alone I would imagine would have an impact on emissions because I just see you know the bike racks are packed people are
locking them against all the fences and so we're overflowing it has an impact and so maybe just you know monthly or quarterly it seems like the more we can do that um you know the better yeah i mean it's hard to to host a huge party every week um but I will say back in the
day like when my kids were at Heatherwood we did walk and roll Wednesdays um and that kind of kept it going and so we do like a little mini party every Wednesday um I don't know if you saw our video with the Coline Beatsy Bus so every Wednesday they're riding as a group that's kind of a big party um
the trip tracker kind of keeps a little momentum going and then there's some interim um events we could do more with there is winter um bike to work day that we could um you always put it on the calendar but we don't really plan anything specific and then in November there's Ruby Bridges walk to school day
that's kind of a new thing that's taken over the nation of kind of like celebrating um transportation and racial equity like and how they interplay in that role um so that happens every November um and they put out some really great resources even for teachers like things they can
do in the classroom so that's something we can put on the calendar for November for next school year alex yeah I'm I have some bus questions but I for Amy I'd like to ask you first um how big is your team
it's me and then I do have um like three bus aids who help me um count the money every so they make the packets um I do have one bike instructor under me that um is teaching um every once in a while
a crossing guard but we're a pretty lean team yeah I would I would just point out as we figure out our priorities clearly I'm sobered by um our bus discussion and super excited by our RTD and you know
people going so it seems like every kid that we might otherwise be busing that is not and every carpool that could be a single vehicle um and every mom riding an electric bike with a kid and a toddler who's going eight miles like uh
is a win for the rest of our budget so um it might be that if we can figure out what our highest leverage things that you're achieving as an individual with with three people helping count the monopoly money um we should invest some more in as a district and that the returns would be not just happy kids and
better air but um save us money on buses whether they're electric or diesel so I'd be really curious to know what you could do with a little bit more financial or HR resources that would get more people um out of their current transportation stuff that we'd like to
avoid thank you i appreciate that and in my heart I do feel like biking and walking it's um the best thing to save money for the district to save the environment for the kids' physical and mental health i think it's one of the best things um we can be doing and so I
would appreciate any extra support you can give me well and I uh if I may I would I would add I mean I think for those watching at home this is another one of those great topics for someone working on a dissertation or a master's degree to really model out the dollar investment in what we're doing to
support biking and walking or RTD and what we would save from investing in um having to buy increasingly still diesel buses in 2042 under those plans so um I I think we're missing missing an opportunity to invest a little bit and get more people there like I would be
curious to know this kind of thing someone could study right away is on the the bike rack usage in our elementary and middle and high schools and figure out where we actually could use more bike racks and go ahead and build those and prioritize those in the short term alex I already know that so we do
monthly um bike counts at schools so I've got data and I can see where it dips in the winter and comes back up in the spring and and we do definitely have some schools where at the peak the fall and spring season think like Fairview and Southern Hills and Louisville Middle and Centennial Middle School where we
are um overflowing the bike racks and so I'm looking for grants um to to get some more bike racks well maybe we shouldn't rely on grants for this and we we are not we have added a significant number of bike racks over the short amount of time creekide being
one of them so uh I will I just want to emphasize um city of Boulder has been an excellent partner in all things transportation uh they are limited they have constraints just like we do uh but they I feel like
they reach out to us on every individual project ask us for our input can they always do what we ask them to do no they can't but they have been an excellent partner i just want to emphasize that i want to put a plug in for some of like
sitebased initiatives i Amy Thompson is great when schools call her and say "Hey we need help with flow of traffic in our parking lots or we we the students are counting the bikes every month and we need more bike racks and I think you're doing a great job and there is continued opportunity i mean at the district level we can do some things but sites can do
other things as well with PTO support and different things parentled walk bike roll the schools that are not necessarily coming from district comms and so I just want to shout out for all the work that you're doing there i can see it where my kids go to school um Trip Tracker has been something in our
family forever and when they first started taking the RTD bus to school it was with our neighborhood Eco Pass and then when zero fair for air for clean air came out like they were the only ones on the RTD and then grow I'm glad to see it's double because I've noticed
anecdotally along like the skip route there are way and more kids every single year even throughout the year as more students ride there's increased comfort level and to Alex's point if 20% of our transportation mode in our district is a bus and the costs
are very significant really capitalizing on the other ways in which kids and staff get to school that's positive for the environment positive for their bodies is a really good way to think about how we use our money and so continue to support those efforts I think is really important at
the district level and at the site level and um lots of improvements and I'm really glad to see that your team of one is pulling this off and a big shout out to the businesses that do participate in the trip trackers i mean Gateway is packed when at towards the end of the
year when the weather gets great weather gets nice that is a hot one for kids to spend their money on but it does like that having those businesses participate really does make that program robust so shout out to our community partners for that and back to my previous comment again
I'm still thinking about the cost of electrifying our bus fleet and the fact that it's 20% of our students are taking that mode of transportation and so those return on investments are something to really think about and to Dr carol's point
earlier how green of a option that is does also depend on the XL XL's use of how they're electrifying their grid like how what are they getting using to electrify their grid so not
always within our control board members other questions or comments alex all right this is a small one but I'd be remiss if I didn't speak to the impassioned stakeholder group we have of beautiful seven-year-old girls who are pushing us to get rid of the idling in
cars and the parking lots so we can add that somewhere i would feel like I was representing the constituency of the incredible advocacy of our uh anti- idling community kitty yeah I had two other questions written
down and I forgot to ask them so with these chargers we have at schools that the public can come and use do we make money off that we make enough money to offset the electricity and the software costs okay
that's And do we have any of the faster chargers in you know at public places or are they just the regular ones we No we do not okay yep we have some level three for our buses but not for cars okay
thanks in our last purchase of vehicles I noticed we purchased a lot more a white fleet smaller vehicles can you speak a little bit to as enrollment declines our transportation routes are shifting how the size of the vehicles we're purchasing may or may not shift and how
that can also impact environmental efficiencies reached if we have vehicles at capacity yeah so um as you saw I think 128 of our our vehicles
are 10 years or older well times have changed our routing looks completely different when we uh ch changed our routing back in 2019 we have less kids riding than we did at one time so what we are doing now is trying to rightsize our fleet as we renew the fleet so for
example we need more 14 passenger buses and less 71 passenger buses however that's taking time if we're only replacing a bus about 10 buses per year right so that is what we're working on right now is to rightsize that fleet
making sure we have the right 14 passenger right number of suburbans right number of 48 passenger 71 passenger right number of wheelchair buses etc so um Andrew is not presenting today but Andrew Thompson sitting here in the front row is our fleet manager
for transportation so we work closely determining what those numbers are and and as we place orders making sure we're thinking through that i appreciate that because that's something I've been hearing from the community wonderings about non full buses that are running and the
environmental impact and how that's impacting our sustainability goals and so it's a good talking point for us to say that as we're turning over this fleet we are trying to rightsize but there's going to be a space in which you might see buses that are not at full capacity and but we're we're aware and
we're we're working on that and the other thing to think about is our buses run two tiers so they pick up a school or they pick up drop off at a school and then they you know they pick up and drop off at another school they might be really full at that first tier or the second tier but not on the first or
second does that make sense so we keep that in mind also the way tiering works um sometimes you'll see half empty buses but the second tier they're full for example thanks for that Jason and then Kitty
um yeah I think you know Alex described the bus conversation or the bus presentation is very sobering and it really was I appreciate all this uh but it's really eye opening to see you know I'd love to electrify tomorrow as as I'm sure all of us would but to see the cost and to see that you know the in a time
of limited resources so you kind of alluded to it i know this is probably not the right time to you know given the volatility in kind of the world right now um but you know maybe pre this volatility if we could go back to that thing what was the trend among school
bus manufacturers and the likely kind of expectation that those costs would be you know at least closer to you know what a you know a diesel or propane you know right now it's what 400 to 150 you know was there a kind of long-term trend
line again pre maybe that's no point in saying that but kind of pre these last few months and tariffs um where you know we could look to 5 years down the road and say you know that's probably going to be 250 instead of 400 or something like that what what were the kind of industry assumptions around that we've
been working closely with two different consultants on electrifying our fleet and no one would ever promise numbers or anything but everyone thought the prices would just continue to decline and as I mentioned there was a number of bus manufacturers that are supposed to be
coming online and again that's yet to be seen especially with what's happened at the feds there was a lot of money that was freed up at one time for luxury school buses um that money is no longer available both in the state and at the federal level so um I can't answer your
question because I don't know but we thought the numbers would decline i have not made that assumption in this analysis uh because we just don't know what will happen over the next four years one more question and I forgot to write this one down so um on the slide where
you talked about how many single car trips there are and you know all the different ways kids get to school is there any way that you've been able to keep track of how many people drive their kids to school just to take them to school and how many people drop
them off on their way to work and I don't know if that's possible but I would think there's a big difference in the two because if you're driving to work you're going to drive to work anyway but you know like I said there may that may be unknowable
we would have to look at past surveys Kitty to pull up uh those numbers i don't have those numbers tonight and I'm not suggesting that you take on extra work i just wondered if it was something you know that you been able to do dr anderson
excuse me sorry um first of all I want to thank our team for the significant amount of work that went into putting this presentation together you got to see some of our superstars in action today around sustainability and transportation so I want to thank the
team uh appreciate the questions let's talk direction right this is something that the board prioritized as something to investigate uh there's a there's a spectrum of of moves as a district we
can make smaller moves let's put up some more bike racks let's get Amy some help potentially to see what she could do right on the smaller moves bigger moves let's consider an Operation Tex mill
levy override to begin to expand or accelerate some of these programs let's consider um direction as we're considering our next bond is sustainability a critical component of that
uh your policy board members dictates and correct me if I'm wrong Rob how far away from school we transport with buses right what would that do uh do you take another look at that so uh there's
a presentation and information item not a work session item in particular and this doesn't happen to have doesn't have to happen this evening but we're presenting this information in response to a board request and So to the extent that unless you say otherwise right
given the cost associated that Rob has has um has presented and and today isn't the time where you'd have to decide those big things unless you directed us today we'll be we'll continue to keep this as a priority and continue to make small moves as they make sense within
our overall um with overall budget and strategy uh unless you direct us otherwise and so just making a statement and almost a question of clarification because there are things that we could do to move this and accelerate these
further um uh not you know not in competition from other things if we staff up and we bring the people in place um so there are opportunities just to be really clear on what it is we can do as a governance team around this so would pose that question to the board if
anybody would want to respond or if there's no strong feelings so let's just see how things go and we could potentially continue to have this as a topic as we prioritize moving forward even more maybe more of a work session topic in in in a future semester to see how things are happening how have the
grants shook out i don't want this to I don't want this to be a oneandone for the board because it feels like this is a priority uh but I want to make sure that we're meeting expectations jason I was going to say given the high degree
of uncertainty that we are facing at a state and federal level and the impacts that reach into many facets of the services that we provide I think continue to consider this and wait and see how the dust settles
before we make any big changes i I I think even mentioning an MLO or adding that in a time of market instability and people are having to make hard choices at their households and it just that would feel the timing is not right i think we
need to understand where we are in the context of everything and make choices that continue to meet our sustainability action plan goals um but and and keep an eye on this as things change but potentially not can committing any dollars or
exploring additional dollars until we understand how everything is going to shake out at the state and federal level that's kind of where I'm coming into this at okay i agree with Nicole in terms of this is definitely not the time given
the the vast uncertainty we have with what's going on in markets and what's going on in the economy economy and even if that were stable seeing the vast difference in cost between running an electric fleet versus
you know something powered by a fossil fuel um it's hard to justify spending that much more money at least this quickly without having that money come from somewhere other than us um because
we have uncertainty in terms of what our funding is going to be as well and I love the aspiration we have for you know it' be great if everything we did was 100% green and we had no emissions
and I don't see that happening anytime soon but taking things incrementally looking at what's going on you know I would certainly if I were here to vote for it would be in support of going to the taxpayers at some point but I agree
this is not the time because we are fortunate to have such great community members who um support our work and you know the whole county benefits from the foresight that our taxpayers have in
terms of here's what's important to fund but um I agree unfortunately now is not the time um I I agree with those comments uh Kitty and Nicole i do I do think um you know Dr anderson you said something that there's there's things we could do more aggressively that are not in competition
with our current priorities and so obviously given the uncertainty that Nicole and Kitty mentioned and the timing you know this is maybe not the time but I I would be curious to know what you know beyond what's presented here I mean if we really want to reach those goals you know we're not we're not
on track to do that at this with these current actions i mean we're we're on track to make progress and reduce emissions but we're not on track to meet the goals that we set uh and so you know I'd be curious to know what those moves are that we can make that are more aggressive that you know does not don't
have to be done now but at some point we should be considering in the in the you know coming months um that you know again it's easy it's hard to know what those things that would be what could we could do that that cost money that's not in competition with things that we all care about but if there are things I
think I I at least would be very interested in seeing what else we can do to be more aggressive on this front biggest things you can do bonds mill levy transportation those are the two big ones right um to the extent
that that that we went for bond on dollars that would increase efficiencies you know old school older buildings are inefficient newer buildings more efficient and how close did we get to
net zero um at um New Vista uh New Vista has an EUI of 38 so to be net zero you want to have a EUI right around 30 so we're real close and then the idea is you can put solar on
the building to offset it so the four new schools that we built in 2000 that we opened in 2017 they are all net zero cap so if we add solar to those buildings they could be officially net zero buildings i I would say so those are are
the big things um you know the question around you know if you continue to shrink routes right does that meet our goals but then push more cars on the roads i don't know how you'd even know that right but I mean theoretically you could change you know
transportation is only mandated for special education students in the state of Colorado all their transportation is is transportation that we provide uh you know I would say going fromund and how many routes did we have were up to 130 we went from 186 to 130 that was pretty
significant and for those that were on the board on the time know and understand that uh not everybody was psyched when we did that i think that there were some people that were were bothered so I mean I do think that that it's going to take money to reach those goals jason I don't know that you can't
it's just not turning the lights off at the end of the day or you know like these are big energy moves that we would have to make um and then transportation i would say I commend the team for having a plan i would say though to to to further investigate what it would
actually take we would need to bring in a consultant to do the study as Rob was referring to um that would be the next maybe not huge move but the next march in that direction around transportation
um uh and then as we're thinking about next bond thinking about what that could potentially cost I would say that when we do our facilities study which we'll do like we'll do an analysis of our facilities before we go for another bond we can keep an eye on that i mean we
could we could do that right Rob to be honest and our team has been talking about it the lowhanging fruit I can assure you this team has thought about the lowhanging fruit the next big thing is Miles was talking about electrifying our buildings etc this idea of a sustainability component of our
bond makes a lot of sense we have a community that believes in this work and if we think about a capital improvement planning committee coming together thinking about what the next bond would look like looking at solar looking at electrifying our buildings looking at
transportation which could be a part of a bond program we haven't included buses before but definitely could be part of it that does make a lot of sense been prioritizing that with the list of everything else that we want to do more efficient buildings newer buildings um
addressing some of the um issues that we have with our learning environments with a lack of natural daylight some of those other things so if I were to look forward and I were to guide the board if you looked at me it would be a sustainability component of a future
bond and thinking of it that way and hopefully times will be a little bit better in a future bunk because I'm thinking about our current bond and the rate of inflation and construction prices and again timing is everything when it comes to these things alex I saw your hand up yeah thank you um uh I
agree with everything people have said from the board in terms of prioritization and direction and timing as well um I also think so much is sort of in an unknowable mode for thinking about things like infrastructure and energy spending in the next decade or so even if we weren't in the current
political environment we'd still be in a technological environment flux so I think modeling out too far in time is really pretty hard to do um I will say though in the meantime our high lever partnerships like not just with you know city and counties but with RTD seem like
high leverage points that we shouldn't give up on or that we should consider part of our you know broader strategy is to influence the other people who are moving people around and uh figure out how we do that well and internally uh like the numbers it takes to do the
infrastructure to create a single bus charger pale in comparison to giving Amy Thompson more staff resources to do more partnerships in individual schools to get more people out of the buses and onto their bikes so I mean I think we can when we think about community engagement and we think about what we're
doing on the individual campuses um I'd be like I think some of the soft stuff we could do uh would would be higher return than figuring out a solution that ultimately costs you know $112 million or something along the lines of that a little bit one
thing I've been thinking about the start of every year I get a lot of questions about what time do your kids get to this RTD stop do our do we work with our school do our schools work with RTD to kind of backtrack and and and help their community understand what time at what stops they might want to hop on a route that gets them to school that's an RTD
provided route that's not our route we Oh thank you we do provide um like a master bell schedule to RTD every summer um and so they can kind of look and adjust and they do make adjustments for us and they do what's called school trippers where they put an extra bus on
a line around school times um but RTD has had some of the challenges that we've had in transportation um with getting enough drivers but they're they're getting better kind of like we are and so there are they are approaching preandemic levels they're
not quite there yet um so to answer your question yes we they do look at schedules but also they have limitations um and so they can't do everything that we ask and maybe an opportunity for our students that are really eager to get involved in this work at certain sites and helping solve the problems in their
specific schools another really cool development is um both the county and RT RTD just hired a new youth engagement um specialist who um I've talked to and she's willing to go out and do like back to school nights presentations she can even bring an RTD
RTD bus to schools so they're really looking to do more um interaction with families and kind of educate about their services great board members in Oh sorry Dr anderson so so one idea board members you so
here's what I'm hearing uh you know right now continue to do the work you're doing look for lowhanging fruit and opportunities potentially a next step and I don't know if you've had the resources or the support to do this have we ever contacted the parents of
families that are within our walking and biking zones that we designate per board policy to find out the reasons that are getting in the way for kids not walking walking or biking um and would that be something that maybe we could put
together as information gathering as lowhanging fruit to begin to move forward to something it feels like everybody believes in we've never formally done that i've always thought you know maybe what I guess what used to be ADU would be an interesting just add a couple
transportation questions i will say a hidden gem of the trip tracker program is every month my last question is tell me about your successes and challenges getting to school and I get the best comments like those are the ones that I share um with RTD or with the counties
um so that's been kind of a jump but formalizing it to like a more robust survey um I think would be good for knowing those reasons and good for figuring out this like consistent mode share board members i think that's something that we can do if you all are in support
of that uh it may be allow us to give better more pointed data and feedback to our partners within our cities it may identify some and and maybe help rep prioritize some some road work or bike lane work or um you know um routes i
know that we work really closely with our safe routes so maybe that's not the case but maybe we'll feel I don't know i think that you don't know the answers to this question unless you ask them but that would I think feel like a a good next step and I believe that we could isolate within schools families who live
within those like we could we could isolate the right subset of parents and um and and do some information we can we we'd have to think about timing it might not be until the fall until we do that just because at the end of the year you want to make sure you get good return rates and so
um as long as everybody's okay with that I think that would be our next step alex yeah um totally agree with that i would just say um to again don't think too small about what the transportation route is there's a lot of people out
there on their ebikes going pretty darn far and so we shouldn't think too small about what the affected community is you're ser surveying and I would also I'm would be curious to know having been in elections 18 months ago what the status is of the city's implementation
of its effort to make sure that our parks and public spaces that included our sidewalks and bike paths and multi-use paths are being um prioritized to make them safe and easy places for people to use so if we're making progress on that and there's other going ongoing city investment to make things
like that safer and better I would suspect that's one of the things that a parent takes into consideration in our district thank you both for your very thorough presentation much appreciated board members we have one more information item this evening it is
the 2526 preliminary budget bill Sutter will be presenting this topic tonight mic check all right we're good thank you President Raj Paul members of the board Dr anderson i'm here to present on the 2526 preliminary budget
uh I have made a few adjustments and additions uh to the slides at the end of the deck uh 20 slide 27 to 29 just made a few adjustments i'll speak to that when I get there uh but we'll add these u the full deck uh updated uh to the
board uh board docs file uh after the board meeting so just a quick rundown of the agenda i'll run through uh the budget development timeline and milestones uh the input gathered our enrollment
projections uh preliminary budget adjustments uh and next steps uh moving forward on the timeline and milestones uh again this is um a repetitive uh presentation that I include um when we
last spoke about the 2526 uh budget development cycle uh we had a significant amount of data and input in January February and March to work our way through uh we've done that uh we're up to the big bright red line there uh
just uh graying out the uh items that we've moved beyond and uh we're winding down on the data inputs that we get uh in the cycle uh largely uh it's the legislature
finishing up its fine work in the next four weeks uh now we're moving on to balancing uh the budget for adoption in June uh again we've released uh staffing uh the major uh commitment of uh budget
dollars for the district uh we started that uh right before spring break uh and even a little bit before uh as the slide notes uh but um we're continuing uh to update uh those staffing uh needs at schools
uh as we move uh through the final uh stages of the school year so the takeaway on this uh the budget development process uh does span many months uh we have a couple more to go and there are numerous options for input
uh and the relevant data information and information uh coming in all the way up till uh budget adoption in June so I'll pause there for just a moment uh and see if there's any questions on uh the process up to date uh or anything
if not moving on nope dr anderson does indeed have a not so fast Bill um and this is for the board and for the public as well and and I I I want to first acknowledge that the complexity of our budgeting process uh the limited
amount of time that that I think Bill has in front of you all we could literally talk about this for hours um in in in terms of transparency so as Bill presents this budget board members um and community members you know as
you're building budgets and for those that that work in businesses um who have big budgeting processes right we use an incremental budgeting process versus a zerobased budget process there's a lot of really and Bill's
looking at me and you tell me if I say anything that's that's that's off base but from a general budgeting perspective right what you'll see today is the adjustments and changes from last year's budget based on revenues and expenditures as we're building the budget and so it's not we don't all we
don't we've we've tried to include some slides to give the totality of the budget so you can get a sense of the size and scope of the increments up or down but because of our contractual obligations because of our collective bargaining agreements because 90% of our
budget is people right you can't do a zerobased budgeting process because everybody would then be on one-year contracts right so it doesn't it doesn't make sense to we don't zero out the budget see how our priorities shifted or changed and make make tons of changes and adjustments there's core business
that we do that rolls over from year to year uh and so it's important to kind of set that as context as we pro provide this budget because what Bill will talk about are the changes year overyear as a reminder to our public anybody who wants
to get in specific detail uh we do publish once our you know and and again you know our budgets are based on assumptions right and very much assumptions in preliminary budget because we still don't know what the state budget's going to be we have projected enrollment depending upon
which state budget means how much we'll get per kid so we don't know how much we're going to get per kid we don't know how many kids we're going to have and so you know as as we take input and as we think about what we've prioritized right um and you will see some adjustments
that we've made last some budget adjustments from last year to this year and and we'll we'll highlight those but I just think that it's it's not something I think I've ever stopped and paused and said publicly around the different ways that you can budget but you know in talking with some board members I think it's a
good clarification uh that we're really talking about an incremental budgeting process and really speaking to the increments because the core business that we have and we do is already set um by by agreements that we've already made
you can't zero out your budget every year and rebuild it uh but when there are new investments and we're doing new things board members we've done this one of two ways either we build it into the overall budget so it's recurring or we put it on one-time
dollars or in the case of weighted differentiated funding in the great in the case of some of our grad plus supports we set aside categorical dollars for multiple years but not forever like so you so you can either do it we're going to do it until we turn it
off we're going to do it one time see how it goes or we're going to do it for a couple of years to to either accelerate deepen work so on so forth so just wanted to give a little bit of that context before Bill got going and Bill if I said anything inaccurate there please stop and correct me um from an
accounting perspective I don't know if you you would describe that as incremental or zerobased but just from my budgeting experience that's how I describe it yeah absolutely um nothing off base there i will say uh the one of the challenges with talking about
zerobased budgeting uh particularly on an annual basis uh is it really upends the stability uh of the the organization and the system uh if every single year there's some expectation that that
there's going to be deep change uh across the organization so Alex yeah uh thank you um as one of the people asking questions about this I just want to be clear i hear nobody on the board suggesting zerobased budgeting that hasn't been anything anyone's
talking about at all i recognize that we do incremental budget from year to year my questions are based on understanding the proportionality and um scale and scope of those incremental changes not going to zerobased i understand that would be chaos and not at all conducive
to us pursuing our values and goals so that's that's not what anybody I don't want anybody on the audience or the community to think somebody on the board is suggesting that we go to zerobased budgeting because that's not at all what any of my conversations have been about no no no i I Yes that's a good point of
clarification we didn't have the board was not suggesting zerobased budgeting i was just speaking to budgeting in general and budgeting with collective bargaining agreements and so I do think that we'll get to some of the proportionality of the increments right
i just also think that uh setting the stage for what school budgeting on a year-to-year basis is for your person in the general public and knowing and understanding the challenges and complexities so I apologize if I insinuated that board the board was suggesting zerobased budgeting um if
that were the case I wouldn't have brought it up here we would have probably had a conversation prior to that um I'm just trying to give some clarity to the public as we present yeah uh absolutely and and that was um the focus of my comments as well is uh it
comes up in the community conversations occasionally uh people hear this term and and suggest you know why doesn't the district do it uh and uh it's particularly disruptive and so just pointing that out uh not a suggestion
from any board member and just what just one other point Bill and and as we've watched our district accountability committee continue to try to figure out how to hone in on how to get budget feedback from our community like like I think that you know there's there's more
to be more to learn about statewide budget how we get our money how we do it our budgeting and so the more context and clarity we can have these conversations I think helps all right moving along uh budget development
input so uh every year uh we have conversations around uh the the focus of budget development uh and sort of what are the the big rocks that are included uh so uh topline employee compensation
uh strategic initiative investments uh particularly around special education bilingual education uh grad plus uh and the strategic plan implementation and then of course addressing achievement gaps opportunity gaps and disproportionality uh and then last but
not least uh inflation which is uh continuing to put pressure uh on some items in the district so from an input standpoint uh there are numerous uh committees and organizations and uh
statutoily required uh input opportunities and uh this is just a a suggestive list um it's not that each of these organizations or or committees or councils have uh had a conversation of
um hey give me your budget input for next year uh but generally speaking any conversation that happens in any committee tends to be about the budget in some way shape or form uh our transportation and sustainability
conversations there was budget uh information and items sort of woven in there uh and so all of that is feedback and input to the budget development process so while it may not be as clear-cut as the uh district
accountability committee's uh required statutoily required um recommendation process it certainly is uh part of the budget development process so and then the last item on there the 16 topics at
11 schoolboard meetings so uh I've just listed these in here it's uh as much a reminder for the community and folks that are watching of the kinds of things that the board discusses that are all part of budget development unified
improvement plan uh declining enrollment uh data uh review and work sessions the Renee Crown Wellness Institute research that we've been doing uh the adoption of the unified improvement plan the universal prek update the strategic plan
updates when we do our audit uh that's reviewing how our finances were in the rearview mirror but it informs how we're doing currently and going into the future and again multiple uh uh enrollment uh reviews and discussions
uh the DAC budget recommendations coming in January long range advisory committee and then of course uh the strategic plan updates there were fewer items this past year uh than in uh previous years uh but
there were a few topics that were uh related but not necessarily specific uh the charter application uh policy revisions there certainly has been significant conversation at the board level on policy revisions which feed
into uh budget development uh enrollment and open enrollment uh student fees graduation requirements charter school policy so there's lots of conversations again that are all piece of uh the budget development and the things that
um uh put constraints or uh guard rails uh on how we develop the budget so again I'll pause there for just a second and see if there's any questions or uh items of interest of the conversations that we've had
i just want to say I thank you for highlighting that i think the budget is something that's challenging for a lot of the stakeholders in our community for parents to to understand school finance act is not an easy thing in the state of Colorado and what we continue to say as
a board and what staff I hear continue to say is the decisions that we make with a strategic plan and at policy level and all these things everything we do every every decision we make has a fiscal implication whether you see it outright or not and the
more we as governing bodies continue to stay tightly aligned to the strategic plan and the work that's within that that really is driving our financial decisions in probably the biggest way staff is a big part of that th that's I don't think our community understands the degree to which those decisions have
really significant financial has a significant financial relationship and and even as a board like we're not always talking about direct dollars and how we move them around and which buckets they should be in and sometimes I think our community expects that a little bit of us but the
conversation that we're having that's related to budget is these are our priorities these are the things we need to continue to work on and improve on and because we are focusing on those things there's inherently ly resources associated so while those few slides feel like not necessary to go over I think it's actually a really important important point and I appreciate you
making that so moving on into enrollment um no real surprises here our declining enrollment uh is continuing uh this does follow front range uh overall in Colorado and national trends uh but our
efforts are continuing to slow or mitigate that uh continuing on the high quality uh prek uh program that we have our enrollment preferences that were updated uh and the things such as school revisioning uh in Heatherwood so uh
while we are on that declining enrollment path uh we have uh started to mitigate that uh and we'll continue those efforts uh into the future so board members you know as we have presented this in the past Bill has
presented a a generation like a like a kind of a standard to give a sense of how enrollment when it goes up or down how it impacts our budget uh but that was with the old school finance formula right so a hundred kids used to
equal the what we'd say a million dollars but it's a million dollars right now if averaging changes that number changes we don't know that yet right it's definitely not going to be five
right it'll be four potentially um and as the finance formula changes that number changes but uh so just as a just to be clear we don't know how many kids we're going to lose we're estimating based on a couple year trends
that it's 150 that's before any of the new immigration policies that have been been been leveraged that's before um the past week in the stock market and e economic that's before people started losing their government funded jobs so
none of those things are necessarily built into this estimate this is based on trends not the events of the past um few weeks i just want to be really clear on that and if you want me to stop like commentary like giving color commentary on the budget you just have to you know give me one of these and I'll stop
talking but just to provide context so now moving into uh the preliminary budget uh so uh the focus of this conversation will be on the general operating fund uh the reason for this is the the general operating fund reflects
the major activities uh of the district uh and has the revenue changes that can be directed towards uh a variety of uses they are not restricted like bond proceeds you can't use bond proceeds to pay staff uh everybody knows that and
understands that I think internally maybe not externally but uh we've uh uh continue to to u remind folks that uh while we might have budget challenges on one side of the equation uh we have
passed a bond and we sold those bonds and we have those dollars to spend on the bond program but they can't be co-mingled uh with uh general operating practices in the district uh same goes with uh debt surface the uh principal
and interest payments on those bonds those are collected and have to be spent on that they can't be redirected towards anything else uh so the highlighted changes to other funds are due to the impacts uh that
these these accounting funds these other funds that I mentioned uh are uh often largely um get their resources from the general fund uh the override dollars the school finance act dollars come into the general fund and then they're uh
transferred out to these other accounting funds uh where those uh spending activities happen so here we have uh what we'll call the base budget summary so the idea here was to uh show the revised budget
for the current year uh as adopted in January uh and then show the total dollars that were included in that uh of a one-time nature uh so board policy uh has is very uh clear on the use of
one-time resources uh and they are need to be directed towards a one-time uh spending uh reserves are also included here as a one-time item uh reserves are are a savings account uh are similar to
a savings account uh they they don't get spent from year to year therefore they carry forward into the next year so it looks like they're reoccurring dollars but really they're a one-time pot of money and if you spend them they are gone uh and so why do we have reserves
uh the bond rating agencies so when we sell our bonds we get more favorable uh interest rates which saves the taxpayer dollars uh if there's a significant drop in revenue it protects us uh and then also state law and the constitution and
board policy require uh the district to have reserves one one other back when one other benefit of having reserves if we is if we have cla cash flow issues right so luckily today there's an
interest fee loan program that's that that that the state allows us to participate in um if for whatever reason that were to ever go away and you needed to be able to pay people and the re and for whatever reason your revenues were delayed or something happened i've been
only I've been in a district where this was the case and we we ended up spending on down our reserves and and repaying those things out but if you have cash flow issues having reserves can allow you to get through some of those things absolutely especially for a district that's heavily reliant on property taxes
which we don't collect until the second half of the uh fiscal year uh we borrow about hund00 million from the state that interest- free loan program so we would have to have a hund00 million in cash in order to be able to uh to provide that
cash flow for our 25 to$30 million monthly uh payroll uh that we have alex thank you um this is really helpful uh for our viewing audience at home or for us up here on the front um what
really is the middle column here represent so those one-time transfers when do they get made does the board vote to approve those have we already done that what's the process like how would you describe that middle column
uh just the transfers or all of the numbers in there uh all the numbers in there okay uh so uh in the uh budget document uh and in
the resolution for uh the the I think it's like six or seven uh resolutions that come with the adoption of the budget uh there's one that is uh use of beginning fund balance uh which uh in
each accounting fund uh states the uh amount of fund balance or one-time resources that are used and those uh activities or u planned spending that are related to that that spendown and that's what this re represents so we
want to make sure that just for that first line the revenue that $2.2 $2 million that we clearly understand that there's $2.2 million in the total budget that's not going to be there next year uh so the total revenue will naturally
drop by that amount because of whatever the projection was for that particular line item in revenue on personnel those were all the the items that uh Dr anderson mentioned that we have identified as a one-time uh expenditure
uh supporting class size our uh staffing reserve uh some of the initiatives that we have uh undertaken so we're just identifying all those things that are uh only going to occur in that one year weighted differentiated funding and
personnel that that is that is assigned through weighted differentiated funding would be in that bucket as well in a in a different fund that but it's in a different fund so it's not in the personnel fund thanks for the clarification bill lenia
bill remind me even though I've seen this so many times right um what is it what are those one-time non-personnel do dollars that are 23 million that will not be um textbooks
uh carryover dollars SRRA um uh I think we had some utilities in there in a one-time basis this year i don't remember all of them but we have it clearly identified in our 200
pages of budget document alex and I appreciate your indulgence of my trying to just understand this so the the way I see this out of the total of all those there's something like you know 98 million that's one-time
expenditures in our 2425 budget that are over the base budget and then do we every year is that about the right same amount of one-time expenditures that we have each year or is whatever that total is of that central column is that a
normal year's version of one-time expenses or is that bigger smaller That's that's the kind of insight thing I'm trying to get get more of uh the textbooks number is I think a
little higher than normal we did u uh set aside some uh fairly significant dollars it's like 7 million uh for textbooks uh in this current year um personnel uh has been
uh a little higher recently with our staffing reserve that we've uh been leaning on uh particularly as we're declining enrollment and have more inefficient schools um [Music] the SRRA carryover hasn't been very much
that's pretty consistent from year to year three to 500,000 um so I would say in some instances it's a little higher than uh long-term track record uh but fairly
similar to recentish years and and the reserve is always going to be 7% uh correct and we have a we have um additional reserves beyond the 7% 3% TABER and 4% contingency uh we have a district reserve that we set aside a
couple of years ago uh just to protect us uh and there's some um generally accepted accounting principles uh that you have to have reserves for um prepaid items things like that so um
yeah on the revenue side uh so we have our net uh per pupil revenue change the this includes a 2.3% inflation factor uh enrollment decline uh and the new school finance
act uh in that new school finance act it is uh including the four-year averaging some going from five years to four years uh it's a 15% implementation of the new school finance act um it was a 18% as
adopted last year um the overall enrollment decline of 230 and I believe it's about 370 uh funded students decline because of averaging um we had some larger uh
declines previously uh which is um sort of pushing up our uh actual change from year to year uh we are seeing uh so I've also included the 25% mill override so as uh
per pupil revenue goes up uh the override goes up categorical funding uh is required to increase by inflation um but as inflation increases the pool uh enrollment decline affects how much we
get uh there's also if there's shifts within the state uh in those particular categorical funding buckets uh special education transportation uh career and technical ed uh English language proficiency and gifted and
talented um and then these net other revenues uh again we have to include things in here just to make it so that everything adds up uh when we start going to finalize and balance everything um some plus uh
revenues and some minus revenues uh for a small uh incremental change there um we are uh projected to have uh a continued increase in the local share uh exceeding new revenues so as the school
finance act uh uh is structured and the revenues are driven off 27 mills of our uh net assessed valuation that is projected to go up by uh 4 and a4%
uh which is about 11 million more in local property tax collections just for the school finance act uh and we're only collecting $5 million more uh so we're continuing to uh head on a trajectory of
being fully funded locally uh there's a lot of factors that go into that uh but um it is headed in that direction at the point that the district becomes fully funded uh that 27 mills will start to
see uh a credit against it uh and property tax rates will uh go down but that's uh not in the relatively near future pause on revenues there i have a
question about how confident you are on that PPR change number given new legislation rolling out daily which we'll talk a little bit about in our legislative update on school how the school finance formula is going to shake out like how how confident are you plus
minus on that 5.1 mil uh pretty confident um the the work that has gone into I'm not happy with it we'll say uh but uh confident that the the direction that the speaker and the
governor uh have taken the state budget um and putting in place this new school finance act and trimming back uh where they need to they do still have or had a$ 1.3ish billion dollar uh state
imbalance um so I'm fairly confident it's going to move forward uh this was also developed more than 4 days ago uh and so if the economic conditions for the state will change significantly
which Colorado has uh industries agriculture that will be impacted by uh this tariff discussion and so uh the next state budget uh or state uh
revenue update is not until June uh so that'll be after um the legislature adjourns and everything so I I wouldn't be entirely surprised if there was a special session if things really went
sideways um but that would be um sort of fear-mongering here um those would be conditions that would change the reasonable projections that have been developed up until this point and the other thing I wanted to highlight in the previous slide we
talked about being down about 150 students but I think you said because of the way averaging works us losing our biggest class sizes we have smaller class sizes coming in the funding shift is about for 380 do you think 350 350
students and so I think that's something for our public to keep in mind that as as we continue to have those larger classes continue to roll off and we have more of those smaller smaller grade levels we're going to lose per people funding that's disproportionate from our
actual enrollment shifts and then I saw Alex's hand and then I think's hand no if you could connect the is the 6.9 million uh increase in revenue what will happen
to the 430.6 million that's on the previous slide in the revenue for 2425 am I thinking about that wrong or is that a different revenue line uh it is that revenue line and it will be applied to the 428.4 at the end okay it say that last
part again uh that 6.9 million in new revenue new ongoing revenue will be applied to the 428.4 million in the top right uh box so the the base for 2526 would be the 428.4
again or will we do we create a new base that's different than the 2425 base for 2526 all right I'm confused um yeah you would add the you would add the new ongoing revenues to the base and then that would
be the 2526 base so you would add 2 428.4 + 6.9 correct and that would be the 2526 base that would be the new base okay okay uh let's see where are we transfers uh
so again as new revenue comes into the general operating fund uh charter schools uh receive their dollars via the district so as we collect uh local property taxes as part of our funding uh that is moved over to the charter schools uh for uh the school finance act
and the overrides as part of our contracts and um uh statutory requirements and then for the risk management fund and athletics fund uh we have some uh inflationary uh adjustments related to premium increases uh and uh
transportation uh there not changes in programming uh but just inflationary increases so those would all add to the base of those current expenditures today correct so the charter schools fund is 1.6 6 million plus what's already being
transferred transferred over to the charter schools what already exists in the transfers in the charter school fund yep and I have that total as one of the adjustments I made to the slide uh let's see compensation uh so
what we have uh built into the budget at this point uh is uh no cost of living increase uh salary schedule movement uh for all employees on existing salaries uh schedules and uh within contracts um
nothing else included for other negotiating negotiation items uh and $ 1.5 million increase for the 4.6% 6% premium increase uh in health and dental uh uh premiums uh we did a major
restructuring of our health and dental program uh with the support and assistance of the benefits committee um major restructuring we're in open enrollment right now which is uh going really well i think employees are learning uh things about their uh
employee benefits um because we're going through this uh active open enrollment uh everybody has to actively open enrolls over uh so that uh people are getting more informed about their uh benefits and what's available to them
uh so back on slide eight uh I said employee compensation is a focus uh and this total uh does exceed all the new revenue uh in the general operating fund um and so like again it's a focus of the
budget development um oh so TBD I want to highlight that uh at this point this is board members a preliminary budget we're in negotiations right with all of our
bargaining units we have not and we're going to discuss compensation as one of our items within BVEA and Nicole you were there so you saw that and so I don't want uh these are just things that we haven't determined
yet uh just want to make that clarification alex and just so I can catch this our revenue two slides up or is going up 6.9 million and uh the cost of
compensating our people without a cola is an $ 8.5 million increase just dealing with the extra cost of the dental insurance health and dental insurance and the salary schedule movements right so I'm understanding that right so to the extent that we were
to negotiate a cola we would be taking that out of somewhere else that's come yes uh budget adjustments uh so um after uh compensation u as a main
focus uh moving into the staffing formulas so uh we make budget adjustments uh to address that inversion uh of new expenditures versus new revenues u these
adjustments are largely uh due to declining enrollment um we annually make adjustments for declining enrollment um there are many components of the staffing formulas that
are not as linear uh as a classroom teacher staffing formula uh and so we included and have made a number of um other staffing uh formula adjustments to rightsize uh some of our schools um that
uh we just haven't up until this point um made those adjustments we've got additional student supports uh for ILC classrooms and MTSS uh utilities again one of those inflationary cost increases uh
translations uh so translation services have been uh on one-time dollars uh for a couple of years now uh so this includes it as an ongoing expense uh BBSD online uh which is a tuitionbased uh option for students to
take classes over and above their normal class load uh we're moving that out of the general fund just the accounting for it uh and putting it in the community schools fund where uh those staff uh uh manage that program and that's one of
the revenue changes those those other revenues that I mentioned that sort of net together uh so it doesn't impact the general fund it's just taking all of the revenues and expenses and moving it over to the community schools fund uh for management purposes uh and then
attrition savings uh so as staff turnover occurs uh there's uh uh attrition savings uh within uh all of the compensation uh and then we are uh further tightening the budget a little bit uh to the tune of a
million dollars uh from our projected ongoing uh spending based on our mid-year analysis uh that uh we completed uh for spending projections up through uh second quarter or December uh and projected out towards the end of the
year end of the current fiscal year uh so we're able to tighten the budget a little bit more there so uh $4.1 million of budget savings uh from these uh budget adjustments bill I will just make a point um all
these items aren't necessarily equal in terms of confidence attrition savings is a projection right you know so that so based on recent um uh market activity to
the extent that that could prevent or or um impact somebody's ability to retire right i mean you know we we don't like you these are based on trends right like that we've projected out right so to the extent that we that could change or
adjust I think everything else um outside of inflationary cost projections for utilities but we're only talking about you know that's only $500,000 uh the additional student supports that's hard money right so
think about that you know we've adjusted these staffing formulas to account for the loss of 350 plus students in our student count uh but in losing that we've had to increase our additional supports in special education by two almost $2 million
so just kind of lifting this up a little bit Bill um just for the general public to know and understand and this you know this projected budget variance we continue to tighten our belt around our margins which can get a little bit scary
as you start to think about the uncertainty with some of the other trend data if things start to change but we feel confident in that variance adjustment yeah because when we're talking about projecting uh compensation and uh cost
of staff and staffing formulas uh we're projecting where we're going to be uh what 15 16 months from now uh so it's all the staff turnover that's going to happen between now and the end of the
year people that are retiring uh people that don't come back uh the non-renewals all that activity uh and then um who gets hired uh and is it um a first year second year third year person that's non-renewed and we hire somebody back uh
that has more experience and they actually cost more um or vice versa somebody retires a very senior member of the staff uh and they're replaced with somebody who's uh newer to the profession so like all of that movement
um is cooked into these numbers so again just thinking uh that that is the projection uh timeline and horizon that we're looking at just a note on the revenue side its
revenues property tax revenues come in uh into August so we're projecting property tax revenues that we certify mill levies for in December based on October counts uh whatever six seven
months from now so like there's a lot of uh of um uh reasonable assumptions uh but they truly are assumptions uh looking forward uh well into the future here's a
summary of uh these uh changes so uh on the revenue side uh we did have uh ongoing revenue included in the current year budget that was unspent
uh that came out of the revised budget process so um there's ongoing revenue available uh compensation budget adjustments and transfers and so we do have an ending
balance of about $2 million projected um going forward uh that will uh be built into the budget as we finalize uh and see how the state budget uh shakes out see how negotiations shake out uh in the
next couple of months alex yeah thanks Bill this is one where I I think I you could help me understand this and maybe help the audience at home understand it so the the these are the sum in and out of the adjustments we're
making to our previously updated budget and so makes sense that they're only 2.1 million off or or that that's the next balance that we have and then that's out of a like is this out of the 660 million
total spending or the 430 million so how put 2.1 million in perspective for me for what the corpuses of are of these things like I I if you'll hold that thought for about four more slides we'll
get there because it'll I've got it all summed up with all those changes I think um so if we don't cover it uh we'll come back so this is all the ongoing uh changes um moving into the one-time
changes so uh again as back to that much earlier slide where we had the base budget and the one-time dollars that are included in the current year uh these are those one-time expenditures that we're including uh in next year's budget so our staffing reserve uh we do have
additional special education support uh uh uh moderate needs programming it's a pilot program uh to uh see if we can um uh not spend as much on uh sort of the high needs
classrooms uh subteer incentive pay we're continuing that incentive pay program that we have and then a co a couple other small adjustments uh in human resources communications and curriculum uh for uh continuing some activities that we're currently doing so
this is all in accordance with policy DB the annual operating budget where we identify these specific items that are funded with one-time resources um and also in accordance with the budget development focus on special education
support uh and compensation reserve Yep that was I didn't mean to scream at you uh back a slide i just wanted some clarification on on for the board and the public on two things so So the our moderate needs program board
members this is a new program we we're finding that as we increase our are the needs the needs the number of students served on IEPs increased is increasing we're finding a that we need a space to
serve these students between resource which is the lightest touch services we provide and intensive which is the deepest support we provide and so that's why these moderate needs where kids are probably have more needs than than we
can serve in resource but maybe not enough needs to service in some of our most intensive programs and so that's where those that moderate needs program is is is is going to sit and we're going to kind of see how that works and then
the subteer incentive pay I just want to be really clear we do not at this point know how we'll deploy that $1 million for substitute compensation board members we've heard a lot of feedback this year in this boardroom and
in other um venues around substitute pay over the past three years we've tried to solve this three ways three years ago we were doing surgebased compensation right think you know your Uber drivers and uh then we
just did a base pay increase and then we've done we're going to pay people who work more days trying to increase coverage so our team will do do an analysis of those three models to determine what model we'll move forward
with next year so before um and we're not going to we're not going to to do that until we get the the data through the end of this year so we can know and understand so so it's here in the budget but the compensation model we still have to decide on i just wanted to make those
points of clarification bill thanks i have a question on this slide in the past couple years the board has invested significantly in curriculum this is a much smaller number than we've seen but it's an adjusted number it's making me
wonder a little bit about when um for all the different curriculum renewals we've done is it still science and social studies that haven't had a full readtion or where are we with our curriculum there's a significant amount of unspent dollars in the current year's
budget that will carry forward into next year we just don't we project to spend out all uh non-personnel budgets when we do the midyear analysis because authority exists to spend it so we don't
try to guess on how much is going to be carryover or not so but we we know that those um dollars I I want to say it's around $5 million maybe um that will carry forward uh into next year for curriculum
i appreciate that because I know that curriculum spending has had a significant impact in students and kind of really working towards our goals of horizontal and vertical alignment and is doing wonders and so I just wanted to kind of see where we were heading with that curriculum thank you
uh one-time reserves and transfers uh so the Taber and Contingency Reserve uh three and 4% respectively so this is on uh new spending uh so about $700,000 uh and then we've also included $4 million transfer to the
differentiated school support fund uh to continue that initiative it's not changing the program that exists we have a three-year model in place right now this is just setting aside dollars to be able to continue that uh into the future
so So to be clear we're extending weighted differentiating funding another year out board members and um as as as we every year we should be investing in that fund if we wanted to continue not wait till the end of the three years and
try to find $12 million that's not how that would work you spend a year you invest a year that's the model and if there were to be significant federal changes in the near
term this is also another opportunity to use those dollars to offset some of those impacts if Title One dollars go away right we need to have a plan right so to the extent that um the weight to
differentiated funds in that could backfill some of that or we could rethink those things uh that's a worst case scenario we have no indication that that's going anywhere i want to be incredibly clear about that uh but uh having that money in that account is is
a bit of a of an opportunity for us as well uh a little summary uh projected $13 million available on one-time resources uh and then u spending um 11ish million uh so there's a balance
of $1.8 million available in one-time uh resources uh to be allocated we're still working through the budget uh development process we have uh additional requests uh that are still being vetted and uh scrutinized uh so
when we get to the next iteration of this um we'll see where where they'll all those shake out so this is the slide uh that includes the base funding uh the new one time the new ongoing and the
total uh projected budget for the general operating fund so hopefully this uh captures the question that you had board member Midler um base revenues 428.4
uh from the previous slide uh new one-time resources are projected uh $13 million of one-time resources new ongoing 6.9 million uh total uh resources 448.4
uh I won't read all the numbers off here personnel non-personnel transfers and reserves uh and then each of the uh ending balance numbers for the base new one-time new ongoing uh and total
available so uh the budget as it stands right now it's preliminary uh we have been uh in this place in the past where this is a negative number uh and there's still
work to do uh we've been in the place where there is optimism that the state legislature will provide more funding i'm not in that place uh at this point um but I'm also not pessimistic about
where it is um absent the last few days of market turmoil so we'll see how that shakes out um so we'll pause there for a second in in future iterations Bill if this
slide is helpful for the board the the one column would be the new base because you'd have to back out the one time from the total to get the new base funding so so just you know as as we're
trying new new ways to clarify this for folks board members you could give us feedback now you can give us feedback later has our conversation helped do we need different visuals to articulate what we're sharing with you all to kind of de get in a little more depth and
clarify but that would be the one piece and looking at this bill that new base would probably be helpful alex yeah I'm I don't mean to uh be the one asking all the questions i'm just trying to understand myself on this and I appreciate uh this last slide i guess
my questions before had been like if id backed up to the one-time expenditures let's say on slide 23 or something and I wanted to understand special education support or subteer incentive pay um again I want to know what subteers pay
is total in order to understand whether 1 million for the incentive pay is a big number or a little number so when I it's it's good to know how we got to 6.6 million on slide 23 um but to uh
Nicole's point the curriculum onetime expenditure of 0.2 million is on top of what is the actual curriculum expenditure in a year for the district so I don't know how to evaluate 0.2 million as a curriculum number in the absence of knowing what we spend on curriculum and that doesn't show up here
i only get the total of the budget adjustments against what the budgets are so that's where when I'm asking like well what is what is a 1.1 million special ed support thing in the context of understanding what we spend on special ed i get to understand what it is in the context of adding up the
incremental changes which is I understand why we're in incremental budgeting but I don't know how to evaluate if that's a big number or a little number a good number without knowing what it's relative to um so that's where I'm I'm pleased to see uh you know slide 26 give me those totals
and then I can make everything add up but all the items in the previous slides I really I'm just I have to I don't I don't know um how to understand them other than the way they affect the incremental budget and I feel like as a governing board member I should be able
to understand how we're prioritizing the effect the services for kids with moderate disabilities not just how we achieved an incremental change to the budget so if you go to slide 22 Bill I have an idea um board members if you'll indulge me for a moment uh you know
potentially Bill we could add a another column that is a percentage of the total budget an up or down right like so it's just one more column right so the 6.9 is a percentage up or down of ongoing revenue plus new revenue now that's
easier to do on slide 22 on slide 23 what makes this challenging is because these are new these these are one-time expend like so so the special education support that's that's all new dollars that's that's that's not ongoing but
it's one time right so so there that would be that goes from 0ero to 1.1 now what makes it complicated is we typically have an instructional staffing reserve and this is more than we typically budget right so we typically
we're budgeting $2 million in staffing reserve we've budgeted more in staffing reserve because of the uncertainty of what's happening and because of the inefficiencies subt teacher incentive pay that would be a 0% change because that's what we had in there last year
that's what we have in there this year um human resources that's a 0% change because we're continuing that FTE to continue to try to recruit people the communications that's continuing that's
the same as it was last year so let so let me think about how we would articulate the one-time expenditures as more or less or similar to the year before like maybe comparison to 2425 budget versus an incremental change over
the balance um and and then uh and then maybe that would be more clear in regards to how it's going up or down or how it how it um relates to the whole if that makes sense yeah I think um that would be one one thing that would help a bit especially
with the one-time expenditures that exist sort of as their own thing and then like for special education support I'm super excited about 1.1 going into moderate needs programming i'd like to remember what percent that is of what we spend on all our special education
programming so there's sometimes there's different contextual things that give meaning uh to these numbers and the percent of one-time stuff from last year's one one time makes sense the also is the percent of like well how big is the overall spending on this so that I can know like this is a pretty small
incremental change from one year to the next and we've always making a small up or down you know 1% 2% of this expense but I don't know if these are one or 2% changes to expense or 40% changes to expense because I don't know what the full expense is of the thing so that's where I feel like I'm in the dark as a
board member um trying to interpret this so to clarify um it gets tricky because we're using really big numbers and then we're using really small numbers for specific categories without the larger
categorical numbers so you can see the comparison like if we were to go to uh um like we don't have our personnel budget broken out by special education regular education so on and so forth so
um let me work with Bill on how we could do that in the future certainly we want to make sure that we articulate and and share the budget in ways that you all fully understand approving and being involved in the budget is a big responsibility of this board and this
governance team and I want to make sure you have what you need um and so and so let us go back and see if we can't do some work between now and the final approval of the budget getting you some of that information beforehand
um I don't think we have we have all of the data and information i don't think it's it's a heavy lift it's just it's just putting it together in a way that that you all would understand and one thing I I always think about the budget year-over-year also is we see it we see very discreet components of the budget
at different times right so now we're seeing the incremental change as we're preparing or this preliminary budget the last meeting we talked about um the the previous year's budget leading indicators on this so we're seeing different chunks at different times sometime of the budget and sometimes
months go by and it's hard to sometimes remember all of that and part of me is also wondering as me to help bridge that gap a little bit potentially is during our extended day work sessions if it's just a budget deep dive we kind of do the two things together so that
information is a little bit more fresh on overall budget plus the incrementals if that would be a potential way to help as well but I think some of the timing between and how we how we look at this budget in very specific ways at specific times throughout the year if that
creates a level a barrier as well so just throwing that out there kitty I was wondering if if it would work to put a a link in here where you could
click to get a bigger context in rather than having the slides and the presentation overloaded with information because that's that's difficult for me to process but if I could discreetly look at one thing call it out say "Okay
I get that." And then you know put it away we consider a we could consider a couple of options links that drive down to more detail or an executive summary that sits by the highle presentation um uh we could think about either one of
those but here's what I'm hearing that you know the board's not questioning what we've budgeted you just want to better and understand what it is and how it builds into the context of the entire budget and I think that's an incredibly fair ask and we'll work to make sure that we do that um and so I appreciate
the conversation today around the budget and the feedback alex yeah I really appreciate that i I just want to be absolutely clear i I have great respect uh for Bill and his team lenny and I serve on the audit committee and we get in-depth briefings
on the budget and never had a question not answered satisfactoryy and you just dive into so much detail um but and I've asked most of the questions on this section tonight and so I' I'd like to know from other board members am I the only one who doesn't get it when I see
you know 1.1 million for moderate needs and I don't know if that's a big or small number and I don't know how to interpret it um or other people have that are do my questions make sense to you um and is the place I'm pushing us to constructive to how you'd like to understand this because I don't want to I can talk to Bill and have a private
meeting and get my questions answered but I don't understand this when I look at this presentation to in order to make substantive interpretations of it and so that's why I want more and I like to know if that's just me and I can I can figure it out myself if it's just me i think it's really important
to have it very well understood up here and that helps our public to understand it and that's why I am a proponent i don't want it to be a super heavy lift for Bill because I agree with you i can always sit down with Bill and we and I can understand only because Bill does
like a mind meld with me and I'm like "Oh okay i finally get it." But I think it's really important for our public to understand it and particular as we go into um negotiations with BVEA these are challenging times and we
don't really know what the future brings but we want to all be on the same page as as to what the information is so I want to be sure that um those people who need to understand it outside of this room can also understand it
jason if we're going around the the board here um you know I can just say I I really appreciate you know I think the the budget process can be intimidating for even people who follow this stuff and get regular updates and so I appreciate Alex you in particular you know kind of
just asking for more clarity and context and I think all the things you've asked for um are reasonable to the extent that they are Dr anderson and um I I I appreciate that it would help me because I look at some of the stuff too and I you know don't know what to ask and so you've kind of at least asked some of
the questions that I didn't know I had but um but I appreciate that so thanks Jorge thank you for the presentation today um I I appreciate the focus on the budget and the details and the greater context that you've been discussing today as
opposed to the process that that we've seen so much in the past um and I I agree i think having the greater context about the overall budget not just the changes I think would be helpful but even just today the discussions about the what numbers are unstable what are we waiting on you know what's likely to
change and why is I think is really important that context has been very helpful so so thank you Dr i understand that it is never too much work to be to improve i just want to be really clear like this is a big part of our job and responsibility my
responsibility as superintendent is to bring you a superintendent bring you um a budget right that's balanced and that you understand and so I take this very seriously and so I really appreciate the conversation that we've had at this board table this evening lots of really
good questions lots of this is the type of stuff we should be talking about more more rather than less and so um I just want to be really really clear that you know don't worry about the workload on what it will take
to get this right let's work on making sure we get it right and um we have an excellent team who absolutely can answer any questions you'd want on budget has managed this budget in an award-winning manner for decades and uh they want
nothing more to be able to then to be able to present you a budget in a way that it makes sense that you understand it you understand the volatility you understand where it's stable um and and we want everybody here to have confidence in what we're doing so so I
really appreciate the this conversation to allow us to to improve this process i'm just going to add one little thing that will um be some context for this uh there are
one to many relationships in what's presented here which will pose some challenges right so all those compensation increases there's special education staff in there that are getting compensation increases that'll increase the comp the total budget for
special education services and every other service in the district that um sub teacher incentive pay some of those subteers are for special education teachers that'll show up in the special so that the the
the goal has been to try to summarize at a high enough level so that it's not super confusing but also provide enough detail of what the the change really is
about um so we'll absolutely work on uh what those comparative things are uh but they're not going to align perfectly because in a oneto- many relationship that sort of
breaks the comparison in some cases so know that going forward but we'll take a crack at it lolia Bill I might like um this is just kind of for
future i think that sometimes I have a low understanding of reserves and why we have so many different types of reserves and I think that would be another thing where it would be great if the board would have a really firm understanding of all those different pockets of
reserve and therefore then our public can have a good understanding of that so that just might be something we put in here because when you say it sometimes I I mean I counted at least four different kinds of reserves right but there's maybe more than that yeah
six or seven right right right right all right catching up here summary other funds notable items uh to other funds so uh there's uh 20 odd uh other accounting
funds in the district uh these are notable changes uh to some of them uh for the community schools fund uh we are closing the district print shop um uh with the restructuring of uh the
technical education center on the hill now Apex um the space didn't exist anymore so we're uh transitioning out of having a district print shop uh and then as I mentioned before that transitioning of the online tuition based classes uh
from the general fund into the community schools fund uh for the preschool fund um it's the second year of the UPK structure um I think this is important to point out there is zero increase in
the funding for UPK from the state uh while the focus of the fiscal related legislative work uh has been on the school finance act and the new school finance act uh and the failure of the legislature to adequately fund schools the legislature quietly restricts the
ability of districts to adequately fund programs by not keeping up with inflation so for the current year it wasn't kept up with inflation and now going into next year uh there's no proposed increase in uh UPK funding from
the state so again these are just further constraints on uh the general operating fund having to support uh the programming in other areas that uh we receive funding from the
state for the athletics fund uh again these are included in those transfer changes uh but uh just to point them out again uh inflation uh security for games and transportation costs uh a $3.1
million total transfer is the ongoing transfer for the athletics fund uh risk management uh $400,000 for district insurance premium increases as property liability and workers comp uh it's a $7.8 8 million uh total uh ongoing
transfer the new number would be this this number uh and then charter schools uh 1.6 million estimated transfer for uh per pupil revenue and overrides and enrollment growth uh and that's a $36.4 million uh total ongoing transfer uh for
charter schools differentiated school support as mentioned $4 million on one-time transfer uh and the food services fund um just sort of waving a flag here uh that uh there's no there's um transfers
related to compensation again that big compensation number that was included several slides ago includes compensation for the entire district uh again since these other areas other programs in the district are supported largely by the general fund um that's included in one
number it'll be a transfer eventually so that's another one of those complicated factors but uh there continues to be shortfalls in funding from the state from this income tax increase that was passed uh Proposition F um there will be
uh two income tax statewide income tax uh items on the November ballot to increase funding uh if they don't pass uh the funding will only be for schools that qualify
for community eligibility in January and uh the way the legislation is written to put these ballot items on uh it's as of um November which means
after the federal legislative changes would have occurred and it could drop the number of eligible uh community eligibility schools from 37 to five um and so it would be down to just Arapjo
Ridge Sanchez Coline Justice High uh and Hion so um we'll see how that uh ballot question uh pans out um but this could be an impact uh that we'll see uh in the
current year uh if there are changes that are needed uh in the um uh midyear uh related to this um it's I think we get about five to six million
uh from the state for uh funding uh related to uh the free meals for all program so it's a it's potentially a big impact i have a qu Oh sorry Dr anderson
i'm just wondering about communicating the potentials impact of this to families and thinking about when we went from had the pandemic money and we had universal free lunch for a period of time and then we didn't for a little bit and then it was back again high degree of confusion high degree of board
related communications that we received around this and it doesn't the more I continue to watch this one feel incredibly promising and it will be incredibly disruptive to have a November change in programming and so
while while we wait to see what happens on the ballot I think messaging to families at the start of next year that things could potentially change to the best of our ability would save us um a lot of some degree of heartache
from our community if there is a significant shift these midear shifts no matter what they are are a challenge i was going to say the same thing uh probably an early fall topic for an information or a work session item on the impacts and what that would look
like and how we would have to turn those things back on in short order and the labor changes and the costs or what would the what would we need to set aside to keep it going for the rest of the year like we like we'll have to have a conversation I think in the fall as a
prioritization so Laura add that to the prioritization list is everybody okay with that I mean I just don't know how we don't talk about that in the fall alex well and I guess uh in addition to the board discussion I mean I do think the other part is adding it to the sort of ongoing communications piece even
before uh us as a board uh and then next steps uh so on May 7th legislative session ends um so uh that school lunch uh item is pending legislation i don't believe it's been
passed but it's in process so we'll know for sure uh in the next four weeks uh whether whether that pans out as far as even uh coming forward uh to the voters uh we'll be continuing to refine our numbers as projections come into greater
focus uh things will change uh absolutely um hopefully not significantly but uh we can't control the legislature uh nor the federal government um and certainly we'll provide an update if something significant does happen uh otherwise
we'll be back at the end of May uh for the presentation of the 2526 uh proposed budget the end thank you for that presentation Bill board members we've had a lot of questions on this topic any further
questions or comments before Bill gets too far away from the podium thank you seeing as there are none we will look forward to hearing from you again on May 27th unless big things change at the
legislation between now and then let's hope that big things don't happen so thanks Bill okay board members one final information item this evening it's a big night for information and that is the legislative update which for which I
will turn it over to Dr anderson thank you board president Raj Paul uh big update is around school finance so um we've built our assumptions based on um the bill it is House Bill 1320
uh which is the school finance act um I will tell you that the district stands with Case Casby Rural Alliance um in we are in an amend position on 1320
uh trying to to get a few other pieces of language uh into the school finance act uh CA uh is in support but is also asking um a s for sustainability within the the
school finance act uh the school finance act uh goes out in you know four or five years for full implementation again I think there's questions in regards to the sustainability of that and so uh more to come on that uh in the meantime
there is another school finance um bill that will be dropped uh we believe shortly um and that will uh do a couple of things um it will
require education funding to come off the top of the budget the general budget so uh prioritizing K12 over other priorities um uh and uh a few other other
uh corrections around uh the transitional budget years so uh still in the same ballpark i think a couple different ways to get there we'll continue to keep you all posted uh and uh and that's what I have uh for uh for
a legislative update nicole I didn't know if you have anything else to share no board members I mean our focus continues to be on this school finance wild west one thing I I did want to share came to our attention bill that we had
supported board members 20 Senate Bill 2586 the social media use protections bill passed with a two-th3 majority but my understanding is that the governor is considering a veto for that and so there are folks that are looking for some
advocacy should you be willing to do that to encourage the governor not to veto a bill that creates protections for social media users so I just 258 Senate Bill 2586 so
and that was one that Judy Mal and Kyle Brown um got on and co-sponsored so that was just an update there because that was one that we had supported publicly and um is now TBD as it's heading towards the governor's desk any other questions about the legislative
session then we will move on to action items consent grouping 7.1 personnel item 7.2 approval of minutes March 11th 2025 7.3 acceptance of donation Eisenhower Elementary 7.4 4 Amendment to Peak to Peak Charters Charter School Capital
Construction Funding Agreement 7.5 Contract BC Interior 7.6 contract with environmental designs LLC 7.7 contract with Stone Brook Exterior 7.8 contract with Tyl Roofing Inc 7.9 Epic Placements Contract Amendment 7.10 10 GoG Guardian
fiscal year 26 renewal 7.11 resolution 25-08 disposal of non-ontiguous land sliver near Sombrero Marsh 7.12 resolution 25-09 non-renewal of license contract 7.13 grant Boulder high school
adilante city of Boulder 7.14 grant career and college connections adante plus city of Boulder 7.15 grant career and college connections concurrent enrollment CDE 7.16 grant gifted education Universal screening CDE board members are there any items
you would like to pull from consent grouping this evening hearing none we need a motion to approve those moved by Kitty seconded by Jorge board members any discussion on items
lolenia i would like to give a public thank you to the city of Boulder for funding Adalente and Adalente Plus um as I came into this position I was less familiar with some of these grants and this is one that I greatly
appreciate for um helping some of our students with the greatest need any other discussion items board members hearing none laura can you please call the role and consent grouping chavez yes medler yes
quinn Linua yes raj Paul yes sergeant yes anger yes motion passes board members we do not have any action items this evening so we are now on to the final topic of the agenda which is future agenda requests for members any
items you would like to add for consideration at our prioritization meeting in June none the list is growing we added one from Dr anderson earlier this evening well board members seeing as there are no new agenda items to add that is our wrap for this evening's
agenda thank you for your time i look forward to seeing you guys next week meeting is adjourned