e e e e e e e e e e
e e e e e e e e good evening and welcome to the February 26 Board of Education 27j board meeting
standing room only uh I'm calling this meeting to order and all matters noticed on our agenda uh may be taken in any category for considered as action and any item not so noticed may not be considered and items listed on this agenda may be considered in any order at
the discretion of the chairperson first I'd like you to stand and let's do the Pledge of Allegiance ah may we have a roll call for attendance director Alvarado here director carbajal here director Khan here director green present director
Thomas here DOR director tro here director Wilhelm here Mr President you do have Quorum thank you very much next up is our commitment to governing style the board will govern lawfully observing policy governance principles with an emphasis on outward Vision rather than internal preoccupation preoccupation
encouragement of diversity and viewpoints strategic leadership more than administrative detail clear distinction of board and chief executive roles Collective rather than individual decisions future rather than past or present and governing Pro actively
rather than reactively next up I'd like an approval of the agenda I move to approve the agenda dated February 26 2025 as presented I second I have a motion from director con a second from director wilh home roll
call vote director Alvarado I director carbajal I director Khan I dror green uh here director Thomas I director tro I director willhelm I motion carries thank
you thank you very much uh next up and I'm going to apologize in advance because I'm going to butcher a bunch of names but the Board of Education would like to recognize a whole bunch of students and staff members as state and National me winners uh and these accomp accomplishments occurred during the 2024
2025 school year and I'm going to stand up here in front and call out a bunch of names we're going to start first with Brighton High School all okay first up Brooke Johnson who's our 5 A4 Rocky Mountain pitcher of the year is
Brook here come on now your hands are going to be S there you go thank you I appreciate it so much we appreciate you uh next up Taylor Madson a national winner second place in the USA
clay target League come on up is he not here oh Taylor's actually attending school in Nebraska and uh congratulations to her and you sir thank you very much you bet heck of a shooter uh Corey zerker a School Musical
International thespian Society is Cory here come on congratulations congratulations what an honor good job I told you your hands are going to be tired here uh Mata archuletta a national qualifier in the so solo
musical International pran Society is oh well let's give mat a round of applause anyways and the oldest student tonight uh Justin Bagel who's the the yearbook National of
the yearbook of year advisor so congratulations Justin congratulations thank you appreciate what you do moving on to priew oh no wait I have one more uh Maddie Ortiz was also picture of
the year is Maddy here okay but give it up for her next up is PB high school and I have Kaylee dring first place State Ninth Place National skills USA in photography and she also placed first in the state
competition last year come on up here now take our picture please so it'll be thank you very much moving on and I got a lot of names here we want to honor the Riverdale Ridge High School 5ay girls softball
team who stay Champions this year oh and I'm GNA I need uh and I'm doing it by number here okay uh number one Zoe Lindell number two Ariana Gonzalez number three Olivia
maras Number Four B name Jersey MacArthur Jersey it's Jersey here it's a perfect name for the South Ball winner Jordan Damon number five congratulations sorry number
six Tiana Cordova number seven lenee Medina congratulations number eight n lero we like walkup music playing uh number nine Payton SS I probably got
that one wrong number 11 NY B number 14 BR to number 15 Fage angard number 16 Addie
suer number 17 Shen fer number 20 jayen Espinosa all right the double dig are not is number 21 Obby Lyn Obby come
on you can make it come on up Aubrey number 22 gessa Duran number 23 Jasmine sandal and I think thisan Janna sandal number 24 and finally number 28 Bren
guno you have the coaches where were the coaches at ah I also had a list of the coaches do I can I have that list there yeah introducing the girls let's give a round of applause for the
coaches R alardo Craig Castillo Cole and josine bazer Stacy Veta I think I'm close uh guys uh T Lopez James Sall and
Dennis those coaches too and so proud of all you guys this is something that we have asked to do and we have contined to do you want to recognize all the Excellence in extracurricular activities that we have here in 27j school so thank you guys for get putting a great face in 27j we love
to have you guys getting out there and show just how great 27j is and with that we're going to get world with cookies and punch we're have a show reception here uh to all of you guys so and a group for can we get it all in there Michael will be in charge of the
organizing here let's try to get all the girl sball players or the Brighton High School people and together let's get a quick foot or two but please help yourself to cookies and punch we're going to get this show back going in roughly 15 minutes thank you very much conratulations only a round of
applause say if you received an award come to the front of the room if you have received an award please come to the FR of the room if you handed a certificate suitable for FR please come to the FR of the room come on down be promising to be quick if you
receive the award please come up to the friend if you're hungry go ahead and a cook e e e e e e
e e e e e e e e e e
e e e e e e e e e okay we're back in order next up is another one of those
exciting events that we love to have our student advisory council's monthly report come on down guys and these student advisor are going to present us information regarding their findings and recommendations concerning their research regarding artificial intelligence this is a new uh
strategy we've taken with our youth advisory uh our student advisory Council we're having them basically research topics and come back with some reports for our the board and so we're really excited to see what you guys have learned introduce yourselves and carry on thank you guys okay um well as you all know my
name is Tyler Bund I'm the one of the co-chairs um we haven't had any member changes at all everybody's still here that's been here you've seen most of them sporadically as it were no I think you skipped one no that's it
oh I was confused okay so um the way that we're going to be talking about this tonight um we we debated a little bit on our Monday meeting about how we wanted to present this information to you and we decided the best way was to go over a policy outline as it were and what we think that you should include in
any policy that you put forth um it's just it's based on the research that we've done thus far with talking to our peers talking to our teachers and such um and the general consensus that we came to over the last three meetings that we've had um since we last spoke or
last two meetings sorry um so first off we're going to talk about the applications of AI and how it can be used effectively in the classroom in order to benefit and enhance a students's education um implementation of a limited AI system we'll we'll touch on that a little bit um education of AI
usage and how we're teaching our students how to use AI responsibly and what that means what that looks like um and then what's it what it looks like once they graduate into college or if they go into the workforce um and then the consequences of AI overuse in the classroom cheating on tests cheating on
homework becoming overly reliant on it to complete assignments and such um so first you want oh all right there we go sorry so um I'm CR I'm a senior at Brighton and I wanted to talk about the um applications
of AI so there's many places of that AI holds in the classrooms and some of which include um the personalized learning experience so AI really makes it easy to adapt to a student's like um specific learning style pace and needs just helping them better understand like
the material like if they're unable to like learn that from just like the specific way the teacher is like um handing out the material um it supports students by answering questions offering study tips and providing like additional resources um there's also an automated
like GR in an instant feedback tool so it it can grade your essays and assignments in like a um very quickly giving real-time feedback which allows teachers to focus more on instruction and less on administrative tasks and it generates interactive quizzes
simulations and gamified lessons making learning more engaging and effective for students and I'll introduce myself I'm Zoe you Ed out the game game applied
right okay perfect um AI also provides students with accessibility support so like speech to text grammar Checkers things that students need in order to make their essays better but we don't want them to plagiarize we also have predictive analysis for student
performances so it shows students who are at risk of falling behind what they can do in order to get their grades back up to passing and you can use it for scientific reasons for like research projects and to better help your essays
and assignments so in the policy we really think that having some sort of classes or like seminar or something about AI usage uh should be included and so um like we've mentioned in the past meeting ASAS the future so it can't be ignored
or just banned entirely and just Banning it entirely students are going to find a way around that anyway and it's really important that instead of just Banning it and saying no you can't we can instead encourage that for a healthy use and for um people to be able to use it in a way that's actually helping their
learning instead of just taking it away or using it as cheating or whatever so this would look like having courses to that teach how AI can be a tool and we were discussing having this in health classes or in advisory slides that a lot of our high schools have and in this it
could explain the difference in proper applications for different courses so uh we decided that in English classes most of the time any use is not proper use because English is all about developing your own thoughts and um rationale and everything but science classes it can be
a very useful tool because it can explain problems to you or you can use it to compile data or um other applications like that so in some sort of Education Program H uh explaining that clearly would be very important and then also explaining um kind of like we
mentioned uh the difference between it being a tool or becoming cheating and then just um laying out appropriate consequences for its incorrect use um hi my name is traven Junior at Brian High School um and yes we have stated many many benefits of AI and it
can definitely be useful however there needs to be a line drawn between using it as a tool and being used as by it you know having a complete dependence on it um AI can very easily take over a student's ability to communicate effectively using the written word you know constantly using AI will allow well
create a dependence on AI to write essays write emails write letters all that kind of thing um as well as that the more ai ai is used and the more people use AI to publish things on the internet um kind of the Dumber it gets because it pulls
AI it pulls its information from stuff created by other AI so overusing it um and teaching kids to only use AI will create a world in which AI generated material is all that we have which is
not a good thing um there's so yeah also being able to brainstorm ideas is very important and depending on AI um can very easily take that ability away all righty so my name's Andre Martinez I'm a junior at rivale Rich
High School um some further consequences of AI overuse include um polluting the environment even more than it already is um every AI generative tool takes massive amounts of non-renewable energy resources to cool uh the CPUs and other
machines that uses to process data um it generally hinders uh students ability to be creative brainstormed their own ideas and use the creative mechanisms of their brains it further increases academic design honesty and promotes a lack of
integrity and decrease in learning if students are using it solely for doing their assignments like not using any of their own brain brain work or anything of that nature it could decrease their academic honesty okay so we we thought you guys would get a kick out of this um we
decided on our Monday meeting that why not because we're doing a presentation on what AI thinks um and how it can be used in the classroom why not ask AI um and it I mean very clearly is just very informative um data and privacy and
security um it recommends clear guidelines on date collection and measures to protect student information uh bias and fairness taking steps to mitigate bias and AI algorithms through ongoing monitoring in order to provide a service that is inclusive for all students is important um in any policy
on AI use ethical uses of AI um these can include students and parents remaining informed and providing consent for AI usage we sign syllabuses at the beginning of school years or uh sorry beginning of classes and then we have the student handbook if it's outlined as proper use in there and you make a
student sign it and they violate that um you know we're we're really putting a lot more of responsibility on students and parents um to educate themselves uh student autonomy and control it ensures that students have control over their learning process um I
know as a student myself I use AI every now and again to help me understand some difficult Concepts um and I know of other students especially people that sit on the AC sa with us um who use it for the same tools it's it's just it helps us understand complex ideas um and
then as long as any policy that puts forth that is put forth on AI use ensures compliance with local state and federal laws regarding AI data protection and student privacy I apologize I'm tired but yeah that's that's it any
questions I have one question I no no it's great you got your guys's work it's great I just um last time I went home and did a bunch of research because I was like Blown Away by the use of it and the cooling and the water and dumping out water and then I was like telling everyone we have to quit dumping out water by using this like negligently
because as adults we just like are enamored maybe and so we're just like asking it things so what it tells us without us even knowing kind of the repercussions of that so that was fun to kind of dig down but you guys talked a little bit about how some of the applications um could be like
spellchecking or going through your work and like making it better before you submit it but then when you guys turned around and talked about um application in schools you wouldn't teach it in English or give like that why is that or do you think you might still want to use
it in English if we're using it I don't know I uh so I made the education slide and so I wasn't really I'm very against AI so I wasn't even really thinking about the spell check and everything honestly um yeah that would be a helpful
application but I think sometimes if you're encouraging it in an English environment you almost start of like it's a very Sly slippery slope I've even noticed like you're like oh I'll just use it to change the sentence or to make this sound better but then all of a
sudden you're like struggling to kind of come up with ideas on your own or how to start the next thing so yeah that's a great answer than thank you I have a question kind of off of um what director carbajal was saying so the environmental impact I think was news to
a lot of people it's something I've been hearing more chatter about I know as adults can be a little behind the times so do you guys feel like in high school that's widely known amongst your peers that like hey there's an environmental impact that comes with
this I didn't know to Rachel told me so I'm going to say no what AI programs are you using which ones have which let's have a list of them all and then well let's hear that first okay so I use um open AI chat GPT
um just because I don't have access on the school internet to use Gemini's deep research which is really what I use it the most for I use it for my AP research class um and finding research articles on like a certain topic it's just it it's AI has was born out of um
data analytic and oh I I apologize um it AI was born out of data analytics and pattern recognition so it's its chief purpose is you give it something to look for and it will turn through 10,000 different results or data points and it will find the correlation between each
um so I I really use it for AP research I use mostly chat gbt um from open AI I will occasionally use Gemini um which is Google's um but those are really the only two that I played with I also noticed people that are
really lazy they um on Snapchat it has its own AI system so you can literally just like take a picture of the assignment and it will generate an answer uh it's it doesn't always give the correct answer that one chatu PT is pretty much always um accurate or
whatever um I don't really use AI too often but um I do use math GPT which um I'm in calculus right now so sometimes when I go home and I'm like doing my homework and it's like an even problem so the answers are in the back of the book I and I want to make sure that I'm
right I'll just kind of like put it in there and then it'll give me like a step by step which I find really helpful um but that's the only one I personally use but yeah when we look at chat GPT and and like internet use and Google could you come
up with the same information utilizing Google as you do using that or does it just take longer to get the same results in terms of data if we're using it for problem solving or research um yeah 100% chat gbt really does just pull from
Google so I think if like you wanted to like actually take the time and do your work Google would be a more like efficient tool to do it it's just like actually putting in the effort to go find like your own sources and like evidence okay I'm old uh and so I used
to have to write things out by hand and then they came up with typewriters then they came up with computer word processors de system and well and I used to have to go to a library to look books up myself you know and go through little flashcards and everything else but every one of those steps there was people that
said oh no that's cheating oh no that makes it too much that makes it easier there was some that argued that a Chromebook makes it easier for you to do your homework to be in school that and so you know I think there's and I I'm kind of surprised that
some of you are against it but because it seems like the younger Generations always says well no this is the future this is what's coming this is how things are going to change and again I've seen all these changes happen uh and again cursive handwriting a lot of you guys don't don't even have to learn that anymore uh but we used to have to write
whole essays in cursive in college uh exactly and so uh you know it's kind of it's kind of interesting to hear your perspective on this what again I've seen this all change and I've seen everybody say well no that's cheating that's cheating that's cheating every every step seems to be cheating but go
ahead um I think that's a very good point um even my dad brought up the same point about calculators you know they brought out calculators and now that's cheating you need to learn how to do the math on your own um and while that is true we still learn how to do that basic math in our classes still I mean cisive
is a different story but we still learn how to do math and that's an important skill to be able to do math without a calculator and AI is a 100% very useful when it comes to explaining and learning and we're not saying that it should just be completely banished we're not saying that it is always cheating but for
skills like being able to communicate over using the written word you know being able to brain St our ideas those are basic skills that every human needs to have like there's no question about that and so humans need to depend on AI for those basic skills that you should
be learning in school or in life in general is a bad thing and that is what we're against and so that's why when it comes to things like writing essays at the very least an AI Checker or some form of limitation should be used to to stop plagiarism you know direct copying
so yeah um AI is we we agree that AI um is a tool that should be used it's just on those very basic human skills it can't we think it shouldn't be interfering with those um do you think AI is like so widely
used that a universal system would make sense in schools like a schoolwide districtwide universal type safe AI system okay um that prevents plagiarism that has certain protections think that
would be used we have actually discussed this at length um because we wanted to come to you guys with a solution we discussed it we did not put actions to words and actually research how that how that would look at the district level um and it was my that was my fault um I didn't take the time to do it but what
we did find what I did find and what we did find in our short amount of research was that chat GPT specifically open AI they do what are called API so essentially you buy the program from open Ai and then you build the model you train it you like if the district were
to do this with their it team um you train it to say if a student gives you this assignment or this question or like this if if this then give them the steps to do this thing um it would actually be
fairly easy especially with like open AI um and I even would imagine that Gemini has some similar API type thing um that we build it we we tell it what we want it to do with our students we give it we program it with those limitations um
because an AI model is built because it's AI language models the way that it works is you you talk with it you use it again and again and again and then it learns and it recognizes those patterns um chat GPT when you pay for it or start to pay for it rather it will recognize it it does
what it's called call they call it memories so like it knows my name um it knows so many different details about me and like when I ask it for help on math it will remember that I'm asking it to do it this way I want it to show me this
way when I ask it specific questions or like when I help when when I ask it to help me generate an idea for something um it remembers how I want to see it and so I think if we did that like on the district level it would be more beneficial to students um because they're still learning to use AI but
then they're learning to use it within the bounds of what is acceptable in the school setting we're continuing to build on their problem solving skills we're just giving them another tool to use it does that answer your question yeah as sorry I just wanted to make a note um like while there could be a safe AI made
for the entire school it I think it is also important to note that you know if a student tries hard enough they're not going to stick to just that you know there's always another way to cheat and so I think that's why um an emphasis on AI like usage education in general is a very good idea just to make sure that
once students aren't in school or even when you know they graduate they still have these B these skills to use AI in general when there isn't some safe one to fall back on oh that's I was going to ask that question we are talking about um preparing students for the future and what that looks like and so when we start to put safeguards in places like
that without the education piece are we preparing you for the future or are we just creating boundaries and then it's still an open door as a small business owner we use AI all the time and so when I'm hiring people or how we utilize that now um is an everyday work and so knowing what you're going out and doing
is really important so I don't know it safeguards either so I'm glad that you said that about about just the Integrity of the the the these kids right like I you could be shocked that they don't want to but they they want to do the work they want to learn they want to earn it they
want to they want there's not one of them that wants to use it to as a short cut for life they they want to do the work and like you listen to them talk about it it's like to Tom to your point that sounds like cheating It's like because they want to earn everything that they get in this world and it's
just like such it's fun to have a academic debate with with these kids cuz it's it's it's really refreshing and high level right it's like and they want they're C they they want their other students in their class to earn it too so it's like if you can cheat to do it
you're not you're you're not you're not making a shortcut on this you're not doing the work you're not going to be great so it's it's fun and refreshing to listen to them I'm honored every Monday I get to hang out with these guys because it's just incredible um I was just going to comment thank you guys for doing this work I know you've learned a lot through
this process um I was asked to write an article for an industry publication in the industry that I work in and um in the rules that they gave us for writing the article it said you may use chat like it told you it said just use your own voice but they allow you to write an
article for a magazine that and they said you can use chat we don't care just put it in your own voice so I thought that was super interesting interesting um I can also say that I do agree with you that I feel Dumber after using chat because I used to think I was was a pretty good writer and now I get stumped
and I just like I'm like I'm just going to go use chat kind of like how like I can do simple math but I tend to just grab my calculator and then I do some simple math problem like I could have done that in my head why did I grab my calculator um I feel like I'm just constantly like I'm just going to go use chat because it's going to be so much
quicker um the one thing I I just learned a new Chat thing that I wanted to share with you though is that we had a whole word document of like I don't know hundreds of items and it should have been in an Excel document but the person who created it put it in and we needed it in a table so we could sort it and filter it and I was like ah we're
going to have to retype this whole thing and I was like maybe chat will do it and I just literally put it in in chat and it said it looks like you want this data in a table here you go and took like thousands of lines of text and put it in a sortable table little cheat sheet for
you I I feel the same yeah wanting to piggy back on that like in my work like I use it so much now but it I see your perspective on that because I'm like oh create this meeting agenda and I just kind of plop everything in there and
then it makes it so nice and gorgeous and I'm like that was so easy and it gives me but it frees up my time for other stuff at work instead of typing out the agenda so I have a balance of however when I go to create an agenda I'm like oh didn't sound as good as chat
gbt one so also though when we dang it when we went to casby we sat in that room and they talked about how like if you're not great at something like don't continue to try to be great
at it so how do we use chat GPT to like go like we go around the wall because we don't need to be great at this one thing maybe it's making a table out of words and when we get to the other side you know like we can utilize the skills we're great at and utilize it as like the helper to get us there so I I really
appreciate everything that you guys do in research and it's really fun since you started coming with ideas about policy um know more than we do and like honestly sometimes I like sit up here and just think like thank goodness you guys are willing to take the time and give us this information so we really appreciate
you and you guys are kind of in the middle of what what I call data creep where these things are happening and they're moving beyond and and it's hard to draw a line in the sand Mandy has a notebook where she writes it and it converts it to text for
her and and these are things that that just they just happened you know uh so you get be taking notes in class and suddenly have it converted into a a Word document you can share it with everybody and is that helping them it might you know and so you we're kind of in the
middle of where do you draw the line and say what's helpful what isn't and that's why we really appreciate your research and we really appreciate your differing opinions because you know there are different opinions out there about this there are different ways to look at it too and I remember our teacher in math saying you're never going to have a
calculator in hands all the time well I do now you know and and so but I memorized the multiplication table but you know there's a lot of people that don't you know and again it's just this this data has been creeping along and creeping along and uh now we have a
giant server Farms full of data that's just that's just collecting more and more and more and more that's why we need keep needing more data centers and more data centers because there's just no stop in all this data that we're collecting and all this data that we're creating and so you're kind of in the middle of it but thank you for doing
this really appreciate it what's next um oh we're going to have to talk about that we were really focused on the AI thing um I would like to know however in all of our discussions we kept coming back to how can we help the students the most um a lot of us were of the mind
that just using AI in general hinders students um I am of the Mind as long as we use it as a tool it benefits students greatly so I think it's it's unfortunately it's such a nuanced topic that we can't just say yes or no um I think we we had a really hard time
even coming to you guys with this policy outline just because it's it's such a nuanced topic um but we really appreciate having the opportunity to present to you guys what do you want to hear next how about I don't know again it's kind of like the cell phone debate where we're like yeah we don't want the cell phones but I still wanted around to
call my mom if I need to you know that this I don't want the AI but I still need it around to do some of these things and so it's it's it's interesting and like I said you guys are really practicing the formals of debate where you there's two sides to every one of these things and there is no really one
right answer but and uh I hope that we as as a board can pursue ways where it can help you guys learn without uh hindering uh the actual learning process so thank you again moving on superintendent will pierce will now report on activities throughout the district
will I just want to again thank the kids uh they they even weigh through some of the complexities in their report uh in their their debate about the perfectionism M Mandy and that that it it limits the learner to take risks and try to try to be a good writer because I
could just do it quick and it's like people get paralyzed by the Perfection of that and I was like I would have never thought about that unless these kids di debated about it really cool stuff uh T tons of tons of interesting things happen in our school district I
know that you saw much of this on on uh Facebook Penny Schneider 58 58 years of dedicated service to 27j kids so she was a teacher at Brighton High School and then still volunteering in in first grade class for for for for
a long long time and and this picture I wanted to make sure I got this picture as well because if you look off to the left down in the corner that might we might know that girl anybody here know that that young sweet girl I know that girl that that's harlo
uh Mandy's daughter so just if you or Melinda's daughter if you didn't know Mandy's daughter yeah she's she's long gone gradua Melinda's daughter but that's pretty cool but we when we go to do that and you hear you hear about 58 years of committed service it just you you you you have no idea the commitment
and and I'm walking out of there inspired uplifted and saying man how lucky are we but then you walk by custodians that are all all in and doing their work and principles that are doing these things and a whole bunch of teachers that are in the background former teachers that are still volunteering and testing our kids and it
it just it's just it's heartwarming to be a part of that stuff so I had to share that in update um this is National CTE month and Mike gave me some additional statistics you know we've made a big industry a big investment and our community made a big investment in M Ley through CTE that the Brighton City
Council I'm grateful for that group recognizing the CTE month and gave us gave us a recognition of that and there's just some statistics that you can read about how cool C has been for our kids and and and and the the continued development of our our internship program and stuff like that
so we're we're pretty pumped about that and we'll get a he graduation uh report here later from Mike uh this is really cool data I'm going to go through it really quick you could spend we could spend a whole study session on it but but uh we get preschool data it's built into our dashboard or overall so you see
that results but you don't always see it in the in the state comparison Mandy you and I talked about this before like how do we do consider compar against the state but our Early Child special ed programs the kids they're in the EC ecse programs right the the the
three-year-old kids that come with the most disadvantages you could and how they do this is this is some of the data so you can read the top children have positive social skills and positive relationship you can see where we rank in our program uh Bethany aer's the
director of that program you can see how we do across compared to the state um you can see children have positive social skills a positive relationship how they exit programs where we rank across the state um you can see children acquire and use Knowledge and Skills
including language and early literacy where we rank across the state and and I just think it's just a it's a testate for for our kids this is this is how they rank um mean you can just I'll just flip through these charts because you can just see the middle line and how it ranks out kind of across the state for
this this this preschool and it's one of those things I tell you guys all time 27j there's a so many great things going like sometimes I can't even bring it to you all the stuff and so this came across my desk I'm like it's a lot of data share but that's that's pretty amazing for for our our kids and you
look at the names of the people that we're competing with and all the programs and all the money and resources other school districts have and right here in 27 J Man our preschool kids are getting a pretty good head start on on school so thought you should know that our our special kids and kudos to everybody if anybody's watching about
that um thank you for those teachers and those people who who work hard and if you volunteer if you choose on your application I want to work with Early Childhood special needs kids there's a place in heaven for you and they're not only Saints to do the work they're doing exceptional work so they should be
recognized for sure uh last night uh Mandy joined us at a Rocky Vista Community meeting that's a picture of the group Ben dolman uh facilitated the meeting and uh as you as you Bandy probably will update later I I will save most of those updates for her to talk about that and her her report but um
great to see Community engagement and people having questions and excitement enthusiasm about a school that's going to open in a couple years but this is a long time coming for Commerce City to have a high school and man we couldn't be more excited about it so that's exciting uh safety School checks you know that uh we we we we ran into some
snags working through the feasibility of working on um our weapons detection as kids walked into school um getting through that single weapon detection system made it challenging for 1,00 kids to get through there and we kind of aborted that we haven't given up on that
we continue to Value safety more than anything else but sometimes people go well well that didn't work so now they didn't do the job it's like I don't think we realize how much safer we are as a community with the efforts we did in making this happened so a long time ago Terry and and Sam worked really hard
to make sure that we had investments in in people that's at the bottom of this bullets if you think about at our high schools eight campus supervisors and SRO School school security guard that added resource has made a difference uh Jamie since then has taken it and continued to
go for it we've limited access points to all of our doors so there's only one door that kids go in and out of and I I tell the story that there's 118 doors that kids could go in and out of at Prairie viiew that external doors and they can't anymore there's the local alarms on all of them so all kids come
through one door and when they come through the door they're greeted by security right so like that alone is just revolutionized that that safety check our radios we could go on and on about how much our investment of safety be but that's also a tribute to the the taxpayers the mil and a lot of sweat
from a lot of people trying to do really good things by by our people I wanted to update you we're heading into our our budget budget cycle and I called this educational Financial uncertainties uh you obviously will approve our our budget at the end of the year our our
last meeting of the year so you'll get to hear all of this but you're not immune to hearing the rum LS from the state and just worry and concern about budget in general so I just wanted to update you the some of the context that we're working with we started our budget committee meetings and are wrestling
with this stuff all the time there's an anticipated $ 1.2 billion state shortfall in their budget and you think about all the things that the state pays for in budget when you're missing that much money there's a chance we could be impacted right um the likelihood of reduction of funding to PK uh pk12
school districts is probably eminent um there is a strategy the governor's proposed at averaging and I've never talked to you guys about averaging so I wanted you to know what that is um averaging is basically um funding the kids that are actually enrolled in your school district now in the past the
state has allowed up to seven years of averaging so that you wouldn't get a financial hit by your declining enrollment school we are lucky in 27j we continue to grow most districts around us are declining enrollment so as their enrollment goes down the state allows
them to continue to use the average so that kind of softens the blow of the the the reduction of pay um that would eat a big chunk of the of the state budget shortfall but it would also impact school districts around us that would be staffed to the number are funded to the
number of kids that show up today so you'll hear Cherry Creek going this isn't fair that we're using averaging you'll hear hubo on the the media saying this isn't fair we shouldn't be doing this um 27j would would would not be impacted by averaging um in fact we
would be more impacting if they don't average because then whatever comes next an implied budget stabilization Factor our share would just be even more if we had to pay the back end of averaging if we didn't use that as a state strategy so I don't know if political people
reach out to you guys but I know that if they ever did and you say what do you think about averaging I would be happy to tell them that we are all for using averaging as a fund and cut against all of the other districts around me saying please don't say that will I will not sign that petition to get rid of averaging it would actually help
27j um and then there's un unsure about the stability and the continued investment of federal funds um we we have anywhere between about 12.5 million dollars in federal funds that we get and grants and and you've just heard some of the executive orders and things that we
are just insecure and everybody's kind of insecure about what that means will that money continue to flow through schools more questions than facts um but but it is something in our reality and then even things like uh free meals for all program um that we
all passed as voters in Colorado there's not enough money in that program to fund that program and so they're already asking for local funding uh to supplant some of those funds or come up with a different plan so these are just right now these are rumors these are things
that are happening uh we're going to have to land as as a group to come about that and there's probably no safe path for that's not going to have some consequences and hurt to to our community and to our funding efforts and to our plans and free meals and all of that stuff so I just don't want you guys
to be caught off guard with the rumors this is this is why there's rumors so in summary of that there's a decrease in Revenue um there's an increase in cost because everything's getting more expensive right inflation is going up um
uh 27j budget if you remember last year that we we did execute a a plan spend down a Pre pre existing fund balance we were lucky enough to have a fund balance and we've been planning to spend into that and this kind of Catches Us at a time of like Ah that's going to make it the impacts of this budget even harder
on us so just wanted to forecast that as we go into this year it's it's worth it we have it in us to do hard things right group back there we have it in us to do hard things but uh uh I don't think we want to so we're going to figure it out those so we'll do our
best um I I wanted to celebrate a couple things I call in this slide por circumstances great response I think that you guys have been updating about these things but sometimes when things go bad it's like a great chance to celebrate the response right so prayer viiew High School prayer viiew Middle School power outage last week or was it
last week Terry couple weeks I don't know days days months weeks uh the the cool thing about the response is you don't realize how many people just jump into action and do things so there's executive team that scrambles and tries to figure out how we're going to keep the lights on in
schools schools continue to keep keep grinding and have teachers that keep teaching and keep going through power outage our nutrition services people still go out and make sure that every kid gets a lunch like the it just it's an all-in effort right and we talk about that value of all-in in all time but man that it's cool we had a broken sewer
line at the ESC and well that that's not good the response it's Z degrees and our own Terry lero is out there standing I don't know why he's standing out there freezing in 0 degrees but him and a crew of people worked way into the night to try to get that fixed as fast they can
and while they're doing that everybody flexes remote they flex and stay in different cubicles some of our people are down here they're working at schools they and we never lost never didn't answer a phone call or never didn't continue to serve people at the ESC despite you know a good excuse to have a
day off right we didn't take it take that opportunity so so proud of team for being that team Riverdale Ridge High School safe to tell this is this is one of those sad this sad weird stories uh you guys got the update but a student uh brought a gun on uh onto our campus but
this is one of those things poor circumstances I I hate that we live in a community in a world where kids think having guns is something that they should do um we've talked about that uh in another text with with the with a student that had a gun and didn't didn't work out for well right that's just sad
stuff but this kid is going to school with a gun and we get a safe to tell immediately we have a system the safe to tell 5 years ago six years ago we wouldn't have had a system that would add tattle tailing be that easy and we had a kid or somebody in our community I don't know if it's a parent somebody had the courage to reach out and tell us
that there's a kid that may be coming to school with a gun kid shows up in the car they describe the car in the safe tell shows up into the car uh with in in the car and we have a principal an SRO and our campus security person walk to that car to immediately intercept that
kid before was get further onto campus um we always hope that we have courage like that in us to take kids and put kids ahead of us all those three people sure sure enough do and the the kid had a gun never got passed out of his car before with the gun in his possession
terrible circumstance great response and I think in in a world where we can't always prevent everything from happening I'm proud that we respond in the way that we did I give shout outs to to to officer Ritter Cody Clark Jamie and her team Brandon's doing Dumar for for
stepping in and doing that that's that's pretty noble cool stuff and then even just last night I know I texted you this we had a we had a lost student I don't know if the student was lost or just didn't want to go home and wanted to go to a friend's house but didn't get on the bus went to a friend's house sounds
like an innocent event but that's that's panic in our community and that that that means Facebook posts of kids got lost at school and and we we don't always get to control that narrative but principal admin team stay at that school till 7 o'clock at night till we find that kid help look at IC help call
friends to find out find this kid they're looking at cameras Mark Gonzalez looking at cameras six SRO six ccpd officers are driving the neighborhood trying to find the kid it's like that that's just that's just incredible stuff that if you didn't know
you should know that's really cool that our community does that stuff on Lost student at Stuart right and I just think those are little stories of heroic things that I think you should know and then the last thing that I think that this is celebration worthy I believe in this slide is that uh I loved our
linkage linkage meetings I thanks thanks for Ashley and and Melinda for the leadership and helping make sure that we have that great interactions great feedback and if you you had a saying a summary for what the kids thought teaching matters man you have a great
teacher you love school you have a teacher that needs to get better that's a harder harder harder class to sit through and I mean I was proud of the feedback and all that stuff and and we hope to keep continuing to build great teachers uh we as a board you guys hear
public comment every every week and and and a month and then as Tom will say here in a little while when he reads that we we want to respond to some of the public comment um we've heard Janine come speak at public promit and we agreed that to improve 27j systems of
support to support students with read plans um and those are three things that we absolutely agree to that we have an assurance of a read plan development that we uh provide reading intervention and and and through and Lexia and then we we progress monitor our kids data to
make sure that the the these kids aren't being lost and I think she's been a great advocate of making sure that we don't lose kids um we don't always agree that the focus of the system should be on Intervention support right you you've heard me talk about if we don't keep the standard high for our kids intervention alone is not going to raise kids through
the roof right and so we we really believe working on core classes um the the the tier one and January 22nd she gave us a handout and it gave different tiers of intervention beginning with the classroom if the classroom's not good the interventions aren't going to be great and we're really believing also
that we got to work in the classroom and you've T you guys have heard me talk about classrooms where caged kids are producing problem solving thinking persevering those kinds of things and so that's where we believe we'll be in success and in that that that deep deep focus on Intervention is just not something that that we're prioritizing
at this time but we do care about the same things that there is above and then uh Patrick Patrick rally to respond to him I I called Patrick on Friday let him know kind of what we're going to talk about today but um as a school district we've we've we've raised multi we've had executed multiple investigations of some of the
allegations that Patrick has raised um School investigation HR investigations each of them with findings of ways that we can get better uh we also then recently just hired an independent investigator to look at the totality of school and District responses compared to our policies are we doing what we
should have we asked the investigator um accusations uh regarding retaliation and if our actions prohibited um the protected rights of his kid um Carolyn Lawrence was the the independent investigator and and she had no no material finding on those things
so I wanted to update you on that because you want you you deserve to know and that's part of my job is to report to you that the findings that we have and while I would say um no material finding was her thing that doesn't mean that Patrick had a Patrick and I have
had a lot of long conversations there's a lot of things that he said he he and I have talked about that we can be better in and we own that uh beyond the investigation Patrick consistently asked for assured oversight of program right making sure that we have oversight of the program assurances against bullying and harassment within our athletic
programs he's he's increased training for athletic staff who work with students and disabilities he's asked you guys for policy change on some of those things you guys have asked me hey we'll lean in on this and make sure that we we're doing better so in the spirit of that and I told Patrick this in a time I
I want to make sure that to be fully transparent I want to talk about the actions we've taken in response to Mr Riley's claims some of these have been legal updates that they were updating policies before in our own audit of our practices because when sometimes people give you feedback the truth hurts and you ought to change and get better these
are some of the things uh related to harassment discipline uh bullying response we've hired a full-time instructural specialist uh to Aid in the investigation of claims ensure consistency across their system response to students discipline um that's a new ad um making sure that we're consistent
across across grid level that's important we've reviewed and updated the following superintendent policies these are not board policies these are superintendent policies you've asked me to look at the policies there's the policies related to harassment and bullying and you can read them they're exhausting
exhaustive um exhausting if you want to read them and exhaustive um additionally we've updated guidelines and response protocols so these are things the way way we do business so our 504 guidance uh document our 504 check
list or athletic components were added the athletic code of conduct um screening responses harassment discrimination all of our actions related to those policies to make sure that our actions meet those policies we've gotten better at um in the past year uh training and monitoring student
resports we've trained all building administrators on these policies and Reporting and plan and implementation our specialist also meets with them to make sure that they're following them all all District staff did training on Intervention reporting and Implement implementing plans of
harassment bullying intitle line and then uh training all 504 training plans and implementing in athletics that that was a new ad for us this year and that's that's things that we wanted to make sure that we get better Dre Herz Fatu we got to get better and then monitoring supports we created a we we we purchased
a new implementation software to track patterns um because when we at the district need Patrick Riley's to call us to tell us that there's patterns of problems that's a little reactive I'd like to be able to have software that tells us what are the patterns what are the problems how are we paying attention to that that's new this year and then
jie white uh in in her new role is spending is at at high schools every week meeting with them on leadership and helping them work through some of the problems that they're having and building problem soling capacity with our APS and ads that we didn't have in the past so Patrick Riley has been asking you
guys to make sure that you're doing your job you guys are asking me if I'm doing my job I wanted to tell you and Patrick publicly um that this is us trying to do our job the best that we can and be responsive to these claims so with that I conclude Mr President I could
conclude our my my my superintendent update longw night I'm sorry that's okay thank you super uh you know and it just the summary I really appreciate it shows you that uh we listen to your public comments uh we take them to heart and uh you know under our governing style
there's a clear distinction between the board and chief EX executive officer rules this is what we've charged him to do and I appreciate you coming back to us and give us some stead full details and uh looking into it not just uh giving us a road answer we actually
delve deep in and try to solve the problems and look at it proactively as part of our governing principles there not reactively proactively so I appreciate what you've done there so thank you this is exactly what we've ask you to do thank you again
uh moving forward it's time now for matters of public comments the board will now hear public comments on the following topics that have been indicated on the sign-in sheet a reminded that this board meeting is a business meeting held in public not a public meeting uh the board hears public comment to learn about the preferences
and concerns of our community therefore tonight we will listen we are prohibited by state law from taking any actions on the items because Law requires formal public notice prior to any action on an agenda item uh during our next meeting if appropriate as we did tonight uh we will consider your comments in our discussions and we'll ask the
superintendent to attempt to find an answer for any of your questions by that time the board welcomes the comments of our community members but to ensure that everyone will have an opportunity to participate we have a few ground rules we ask you to follow uh anyone intending to address the board should sign the speaker signin sheet uh we'll call
speakers in the order in which they signed in uh speakers comments are limited to three minutes uh if more than one person is wishes to speak on the same topic we ask the speaker limit their comments only to new information we ask that you do not repeat views already expressed by other speakers and although we can't prevent you from doing
so we ask you to refrain from making complaints or negative comments against individual students or District employees however again we cannot prevent you from doing so uh such complaints and comments should be addressed first at the classroom or the school level and then if still unresolved to the superintendent
disturbing Good oper good order by inappropriate language or gestures as grounds for removal from the meeting and we thank you in advance for your participation tonight uh I have three speakers uh and we'll start them first with uh Sheila Ruffalo would you please come forward state your name whether
you're IND District out district and the topic VI your discussion to go and then just your name in and out of district and before I start my daugh I'm here for my daughter she is ill Janine ranola and
her name was misspelled oh gosh R you n f o l a I apologize I'll get that corrected in the minutes thank you that's my fault that's all on me it's not usual I'm I'm sorry so U my name I couldn't read your name
on this either so I apologize I said it wrong my excuse tell my kids my my children um Sheila renola in District and talking about literacy and uh I have my daughter's presentation here good evening and thank
you for the opportunity to speak tonight once again I am here to address the ongoing literacy crisis in our district the Colorado Department of Education has rated 27j as accredited with an improvement plan meaning the district is
either not meeting or only approaching expectations in many performance areas since 2016 this status has remained unchanged we seem to be following the motto if at first you don't succeed try try again but if we don't change the approach lit
if we don't change how we approach literacy education the results will not improve in fact they are getting worse one key way to improve our District's rating is to raise literacy scores across all grade levels including middle
and high school right now 27j score 15 to 20% percentage points lower on CMAs English language arts assessment than the state average at as the data I've provided shows this Gap only widens as
students progress through middle school there are many possible reasons for our District's struggle with literacy one learning loss from the pandemic two a 4-day school week three inconsistent intervention support four
an effective curriculum choices and more but the bottom line is this something must change if we want the children in our community to have access to Quality education future employment opportunities and full participation in
society literacy is not just an academic issue it impacts Health decision-making and overall quality of life I've been told the district is implementing changes but so far I have not seen any changes with the in intervention for my
own Middle School student this brings me to something I saw this last week an ad on Facebook Facebook for the achievement Institute at penck and Von it promotes a quote School within a school end quote a model
designed for gifted and talented students in a district with proximately 24,000 students about 1,400 or just 6% are classified as gifted and talented this ad frustrated me why because while
70 to 75% of our students are struggling with literacy they are be being handed a computer program Lexia to complete mostly at home meanwhile a select 6% are given a specialized tailored learning
environment so they can Excel does anyone see a problem here I know that literacy in intervention works I've seen it firsthand with just two hours of systematic tutoring outside the district per week for a year my daughter's
reading level jumped 2.5 grade levels nearly reaching grade level my husband's do you have enough you can just finish do you have a short yeah one more paragraph since then her progress has stalled why because she hasn't received
the support she needs within her own School the Gap is getting larger each year it is possible to teach these students and make school a place where they want to be when students can ACC assess the curriculum in all subjects attendance
improves if we are serious about addressing chronic absenteeism we need to start by giving students the tools to succeed in the classroom I urge the board to prioritize proven literacy interventions and ensure that all
students not just a select few have access to meaningful effective instruction thank you thank you Mrs Ren thank you uh Stephen did you still want to comment or it was my backup I tied it I I tried it at home and I ran over
you're fine thank you for coming in tonight we really appreciate and the graphs you presented you just don't speak as fast as these young people next you're gonna ask for AI to read it for you um thank you next up is uh Patrick Riley
please step forward name address in District outo district in the subject for Patrick Riley and District um so what I asked lenan to pass out to you guys was your own policy on communication Pathways and the reason I asked her to
pass that out is to try to explain why I've been so direct with you all so if you look at discipline questions or bullying concerns and you carry yourself around if the issue is not resolved contact 27 Board of Education which
which is you guys so my expectation as a taxpayer in your district is that when I send an email that warrants a response and when I ask for a meeting or literally any form of communication that warrants more than telling will to call
me or honestly nothing just silence which is what I've been met with over and over and over and over again so while I appre apprciate will the whole list of things you guys have
done that's not the same as the board leaning in and acting in leadership in a governance space and I was like super clear that I wasn't asking for personnel moves that's his space Tom you were super clear your only employee is him
and I responded back yeah that's great I'm not asking for personnel moves I'm asking for policy which is what you had said we do policy we do governance and I asked for that and I was met with basically silence and dismissal so um while I appreciate
everything you've done well I'm I'm not done so I'm still asking as I have done for the past five months and as I will continue to do monthly for the board to act in a governance space and lean in on
policy because there's still a need for something there the the feds have put in policy I send it to all of you Min is Tracy she wasn't here yet I send it to the rest of you guys over winter break and I know you have it if you need it again let me know you all have my email
I know that you have my email because I've sent you all multiple emails repeatedly my phone never goes off you can get me at literally anytime I have never sent any of you to voicemail I've never failed to respond I am looking for
engagement and response reminder you're all elected officials you're not the district HR that's Michael I think he's back there somewhere yeah he is like that's Michael he's back there that's his job you guys are elected officials so like I'm looking for you
guys to act as elected officials and if you're not willing to that's cool election season comes in May and while oh oh yes it does yeah the the in May is when the
the state requires submittals in which again it's fine we we open that up and I have built while this has all been going on a war chest of about $110,000 to start sending out mailers so I have no intention of
running but I do have intention of making sure that all your neighbors and all of your co-workers know exactly who you are so just know that so lean in in or update your policies and say that we don't care about the kids and we don't
care about what happens to them and we don't care if SSA knows who we are because we don't care so at least own it because if you don't care at least acknowledge that you don't care because your actions say you don't
care I never hired a lawyer but make no mistake and will knows this very well I hired a PR agent eight months ago thank you appreciate you coming in thank you for your comments uh next up is our consent agenda all matters listed under the
consent agenda are operational matters about which the board has governing policies Implement implementation of which is delegated to the superintendent they will be enacted in one motion by category in the order listed below there'll be no discussion of these items prior to the time the board of directors vote on the motion unless members of the
board staff or public request specific items to be discussed separately and or removed from this section uh any member of the public who wishes to discuss the consent agenda should notify the president of the board at the time requested and be recognized by invitation of the president to address the board uh having none our consent AGA
consent agenda this month includes a approval of the Board of Education minutes dated January 22nd 2025 our study session and regular meeting February 12 2025 our linkage meeting with 27j schools graduating seniors minutes and B approval of personnel
items on the memorandum that February 20th 2025 what is your intention board I'll move to approve the consent agenda as presented second motion from director carber Hall second by director tril roll
call vote director Alvarado I director carbajal I director Khan I director green yes director Thomas I director tro I director wilham I motion carries thank you thank you very much uh next up is our government's process that supports
our Global goals uh we have a number of items here that uh the board has given their opportunity to uh give a report on or if they have none they're willing to say so uh first up is ownership linkage director carball or director KH you go ahead I missed earlier yeah we had a really awesome linkage with
graduating seniors um is by far my favorite linkage uh we've done and we've learned a lot from them about the thinking classroom and and how it's being implemented and where it isn't and how we can improve there and make our classrooms more um inclusive for these kids and and
comfortable and and how to let them lead essentially um we learned a lot does anyone else want to have input on that anyone again I think it was a very rewarding session we really appreciate you guys for putting that together and uh our earlier comments was is this has
been some of the best uh ownership linkage meetings we've had in my entire term on the board so I appreciate you guys continued good work on that I was going to add though something really cool about it that I'm noticing is the community that it's building aside from the information that we're gaining like now like we're go out in
public or we Dro into a school and the faces of people that are coming into this room and having those meetings with us are showing up so whether that's the community one and I'm out at a meeting and we're shaking hands with the people who came and talked to us or running into students um I think that that is also a value the building of community
there so something not to oversee thank you again uh next up is board education director director Thomas um there's nothing to report I know will had mentioned there was a few um the executives that have some topics that they want to come talk to us about
so we'll get those get those scheduled but nothing to report now uh per thank you uh board committe is the fpac uh advisory committee uh we have a meeting next week that we're scheduling uh and so I will be attending that uh on the facility planning and
advisory committee uh Capital facility fee Foundation uh director Alvarado director Khan and director to yeah we had a good meeting it was my first one so just kind of figuring out the ups and downs of everything but overall what I took away is a ton of growth in the area nice to see a lot of
the subdivisions that are going to be coming in and planned for the growth of our community so lots going on perfect thank you uh Rocky Mountain risk director carbal Yeah we actually had two meetings this month so we did a social where we all got together we share that with Mapleton public schools
and I know I'm going to mess up the other one but what's the other school for my pool for Rocky Mountain risk West oh thank you gosh I couldn't remember that um so that's nice it just kind of allows me to be connected to those other districts and how we operate
in the pool um when we had our actual meeting um just talking about budget increase we had somebody come in and sort of uh find him the numbers and give us information on that the I'm learning when it comes to risk management and insurance I knew nothing about this when I started in this position um so a lot
of the things that we're getting to work on are for me to understand is just like how it works how it works to serve in the pool together and then I'm asking a lot of questions about rfps and US following policy and guidance there um I don't want to make decisions or vote on things without being physically
responsible for um the funding of our public and so I think just asking those questions and kind of understanding policy is what I'm doing at that meeting at this time awesome keep up good work uh uh next up uh the 27j Believers do do you need a drum roll Mandy please go
ahead no no drum roll needed um we have a schedule um thank you lenan for for publishing that schedule for us we will be doing our next 27 J Believers award at the April 23rd meeting um I started the nomination form today and I promised to have that to linan this weekend um I
may or may not have used chat to write my nomination form um also um yeah it's a very excellent theme EX excellent theme so we're excited to do that in April you crack me up can you uh can I ask you a
question um is it reaching out reaching in is it Believers like both directions can people in the community nominate I just have a parent who I ran into when we did those meetings last week who really wants to nominate a teacher can they do that how does that work I'm looking you so our nominations
go out districtwide because it's basically District recognizing district and basically what we've done is um school to school teacher to teacher whatever and then we've had um staff schools recognize community that have reached
in um that particular person could go to their school and just say hey is there a way to get this teacher right what we find too is a lot of times those teachers get recognized at that school level as well and that's why we kind of do the community that is reaching in does that make sense
yeah our Our concern is is that we get so many nominations now that if we opened it up for parents to nominate the teachers that every parents would nominate every teacher and we'd be looking at hundreds of applications and it would take re thousands and and uh it'd be tough to even judge the criteria
so it's kind of a peer-to-peer recognition but they typically are if they are have excelled in their teaching are nominated by their peers so that that's but I would encourage them to talk uh to their teacher teacher their their District their superintendent
their principal and and encourage that way Ashley how can we recognize teachers in that way like is can we do something like once a year or it seems like we don't do that like parents like parents parents
yeah yeah we'll have a discussion on that at our next I I guarantee you we that's great I'll send an email back to that parent and let them know that the school does that and that's good place to celebrate for now but the board's going to work on some way that we can hear about those stories yeah and I would encourage them to reach out to the
principal and ask what the schools do because a lot of PTO ptas they do that recognition once a year of their teachers and staff and yeah that type thing so a lot of the school areas are but this is a way for peer-to-peer to recognize okay I think it's too that's
that's important because this person serves on the PTA and they don't do this at this school so how do we make sure that we're having Equitable opportunities for teachers in schools that don't have those systems I think that's something that we need to be aware of and we will have a discussion I guarantee you man Mandy was taking notes
uh the Commerce City and School District 27j youth tax committee uh that's director green and director wilh home we are trying to work out a meeting uh so that we can uh make a request on that one so that that's our only report we have but it's coming uh the 2015 2021
Bond oversight committee director Alvarado and director Thomas um I thought it was a super interesting meeting we met last week um and heard a lot of presentations got to see some updates about what's going on at aru Vista what's going on at Talon Ridge and
then just talking about some overall um budget shifts we might be looking at our next month meeting is going to be on March 20th I believe and we're going to have a lot to cover as far as some some numbers and some ins and outs of what we're going to do with things but really interesting um to see what's going
on yeah and um as will mentioned in his superintendent report I did attend the bond meeting at um for Rocky Vista last night um yeah it was great attended we saw the picture the room was packed um with a good representation from the
contractor the architect the owner's rep um 27j staff lots of questions from the community about you know how's this going to what what are you going to do for dust mitigation what are you going to do with the prairie dogs um there was so lots of great questions and um
um one thing that we pointed will and I had a conversation after the meeting around you know there were so many questions and and our community like this is their first High School in their area but for our team like we've had the opportunity to open lots of schools and so these are all like all the questions they had some of them were premature but
it's all stuff that our team has done over and over opening schools um throughout the year so very excited for that there was a lot of a lot of excitement in the room um for their new school let's move on uh uh the 2022 mil Levy override oversight committee that's director Thomas again and director
willome yeah so I attended our we met on February 10th and um we had an update from our Charter School Partners what was fantastic about that is our Charter Schools they like they're not obligated to follow the same language of the mill
um but they all do they've all invested their money in um Safety and Security and teacher pay and um so yeah it was really great to see how they're how they're spending their Mill dollars and what an impact um the M Levy dollars are having in their programs perfect thank you uh next up
we'll have director Trill is invited to speak on the Brighton youth commission um yeah I'm actually loving this new assignment the students are amazing that we get to work with so they're still working on speak week it's
a big leadup to it um last meeting everyone was broken up into groups and they all get individual assignments so they have a budget they're working on the budget to create a video have volunteer shirts and then the Run packet um which includes shirts and bibs and
things like that for the runners they have another group that's working on um giveaways to the different schools and so they focus on like what's going to go out to the elementary school versus what's going out to the high school they create a video every year um yeah
there's a lot of work they put a lot into it oh and they were awarded a grant they received an award for last year something that they did with speak week and so they got an extra 5,000 in their budget which is really cool not to put you on the spot but what
does speak stand for I don't know Suicide Prevention education and awareness thank you thank you oh I we gave it a chance we I knew we were going to get it out there but why did you look it up on your phone I
didn't I saw I was trying to get the dates I wanted to get the dates for it but I didn't I couldn't get the dates fast enough uh that wasn't AI though um next up is the expectations of the board uh the board asks to accept or reject
the following reports since the last meeting there are none uh next up is B uh the executive directors of school Brett Minnie will present the expectations of the board report through 3B treatment of parents and Guardians Brett thanks go forward I did it an it
worked I love it uh thanks for the time tonight uh just before I start a couple of thank yous to to make sure that I share Julie small Kelly pep and Beth York they put together all of the data that you see in that report those graphs and those tables they make all of that collect all
that data and make those graphs for us Desiree Kinton and Lucia Gonzalez put together the narratives and collect the data on the Family Resource Center and the Welcome Center uh that you saw in the narratives and then Carla Ryder and Lisa Morris make sure that the surveys get uh scheduled handed out or sent out
to schools to families so they get to families and um help compile some of that data as well so grateful for their efforts on that um collecting all of that data and doing that work I put together just a couple of slides to kind of help highlight some of the things in the monitoring report uh the first one
would be on page nine and I've got it on the screen there but this is the districtwide aggregate data so this is all of the responses that we received from the 10 questions you can see on the top row there uh one would be strongly disagree two would be disagree three
would be agree and four is strongly agree Grant total of responses and then our average and then on that far right hand column percentage of threes and fours two things that I would highlight there um will mentioned it earlier tonight in his report about safety look
at question number one our school environment is a safe place to learn 94% that's one of our highest scores that we've had uh ever um our families feel safe at school uh and then down at the bottom uh our total percent of families
that rated three or four 92.9 3% that's two points higher than last year three points higher than the year before an interesting note about that uh if you study Gallup or get any Gallop polls they do a poll on parent satis fa action of schools every couple of years the
most recent data had their percentage at 80% and ours is at 92.9 3% which is 2% higher than last year so pretty exciting uh uh data there well above what we would call a national national average on
that um the next table is on page 10 um in your report and it's the same data but it's just a summary by category so you can see safety our average um uh score between three and four was a 3. 56 communication welcoming environment and
so on I would point out on this table uh two things number one uh each of those separate categories is the highest rating that we've had in the seven years that we've collected this data so 3.56 is the highest in safety and so on and then that overall average of 3.57 on the
bottom there is the highest average that we've had as well uh on that data this one just gives you a comp comparison across um uh Across The Last 5 Years going all the way back to fall of 2020 um again I would I would share
that those fall 202 24s as an average are the highest in some of those categories that we've had um and then when you look at kind of each one individually you can see that the growth that we're having uh 2020 was an interesting year so some of those scores are really high because we had half of
our kids coming in for half of the days we had um kind of limited ability to get in and out of the school I find the welcoming environment one really fascinating that that's a really high our highest score of those um be uh because only about half the people could get into the school at a time so it was
it's an interesting number um but again looking at fall 24 to fall 23 higher highest scores each of those categories are up excuse me on that and it's interesting that the welcoming went down now that everybody's all in there you
know I could be especially that 3o uh 3.3 that was when everybody came back but we all had to wear mask and so I think that had certainly had an impact on not feeling welcome in schools you said we had seven years of this data seven or eight years of the way it's
compiled like this yes and this one I put together so previous previous boards have asked uh about the response rate we've had some questions and interacted on those so I wanted to give you some data that would would reflect ress in that so this year we had 6,419 total responses which is
121 more than last year at this time 763 more than 2023 so we're adding more responses each year our response rate is 36% and so I did use chat GPT to check this against what would a a national
average be on chat GPT said that most schools struggle to get 15% average response rates so we're more than double uh what the national average would be on that we have uh some schools that still struggle but the majority of our schools do really well uh I counted earlier tonight I think there were only four or
five schools that were below that 15% the other 20 were above that 15% so um uh exciting data uh as previous boards have asked us to pay attention to and try to get those response rates to go up something that we were constantly considering and thinking about is um and
I put it as a little narrative on page five in your report but who is not calling so on page five I described up to two weeks ago we had 101 parents call the ESC or call up to the office and either share a complain or a concern that they have at a school level they get a call back they get a response from
someone on the executive team someone from my team uh within 24 hours they get a call back and then the meeting is usually set up or a phone call is set up it's a little bit above where we were a year ago at this time by about 20 to 25 phone calls but we're always trying to wonder and pay attention to who is not
calling so we have 101 phone calls this year who's not calling because they feel like it's not they're not going to do anything about it we don't you know they're not going to help me or whatever it is we want to make sure we're trying to tune in to those as best as we can by promoting the fact that we do listen they'll get a call back from us within 24 hours and they'll get an appointment
scheduled with someone to have a conversation with them about the concerns or or complaints that they might have with the school so we do respond to those but we're always trying to just be sensitive and aware who might not be calling um with that and then on along the same lines who's not completing the survey
so we have well more than 6,419 parents in our district if our district averages 36% we know that there are 64% of our parents that are not completing the survey so what might they say that 64% what might they say about how we're
doing uh for our parents um so we're always trying to kind of pay attention to that increase those response rates and then just be aware what they might be thinking as well so I would report compliance on this report I think there are some significant things to celebrate some of the things I highlighted and some of those graphs um but it would
report compliance on this report how do we utilize this data like do you use it at each individual school do they kind of take apart the numbers and look at how they're trending and ways that they can change maybe that welcoming um parent thing or like how do we utilize that per school so there's a
couple ways one it is included in the dashboard and so as schools tune into the dashboard they see this data and they can link right to their surveys um most schools will get this in front of their ptas pac's packs uh pto's and have some kinds of conversations around them
um if there's a school that you see a significant number say safety is really really low then either Jamie or I would reach out to them and have a conversation with the principal hey I noticed your families are saying this uh let's talk about a little bit how might you get a little bit better than that
but when you look at the general report we do really well so there's not a lot that stand out to us that oh we've got to shine a spotlight on that some schools take it as far as um we'll collect data um you know more often than the two times a year that we do
um yeah did did that make sense D yeah you're just there's not that many outliers in terms of you utilizing the data to like Drive change not when you look at the the whole data across the board right there's not a lot of schools have really low scores High by level they tend to do differently so high
schools tend to score a little bit lower than Middle School and middle schools tend to score a little bit lower than elementaries but there's not data in there as I reviewed this report and put this report together that would say oh we got a problem here at this school we need to go do something okay and what would be the number that you would be
looking for for that type of intervention from your guys' teams time you get below a three so remember one two three and four one would be strongly disagree disagree agree and strongly agree any we get below a three we start to look at that and say oh we might need to tune into that a little bit awesome
thank you yeah I I think the outliers are really the participation rate when you get to the high schools and uh the elementary parents it sure looks like they care a lot and they really get are involved in this survey responses but when we get to the high schools they really drop a lot
of them in single digits uh you know when you get less than 10% even participating and 6% in 27j online uh the outlier among the high schools was Innovations and options but we've always talked about how those parents really care about their student getting through
there you know and that's like a second chance school and so that was kind of interesting to see that that went up a little bit but yeah if it's anything it's the high schools that we and I don't know if it's the gatekeeper of the students that's not getting to those parents or something but that that would probably be the ones that would be nice
to see a little bit more response rate from yeah and I know they work hard at it they send them out in um the texts and the emails and they put them on the website um have them available at conferences time but it's definitely one we want to try to work continue to work
on no my takeaway my notes I had made was yeah with a couple exceptions but if you think of this as like ABC scores like the um most all the elementaries are like high A's like people love their elementary schools and then the middle and high schools um tend to struggle but
so your your thought on like why aren't they like who are we not hearing from I always think in surveys like you're going to hear from the people who are really upset and the people who are really happy and then the people in the middle are just like h no complaints everything's good so I don't know and like when you go to like
Chili's or wherever and your server is like hey did you like your service today please take this survey so like if teachers like could teachers interact with their parents when they have those interactions be like hey we really like because if it's a personal ask from someone that you know then you're more likely to take it than just some email
blast you get from the district um and then my other favorite stat that I that I saw in the data was um that 94% felt that their child had at least one adult who cared because I know that that data has really proven success in in students if they have at least one adult that
cares for them so that was it was awesome to see yeah any other comments please let's move forward with a motion I'll do it thank you um I move to accept the expectations of the board report through 3B treatment of
parents Guardians as conveying reasonable interpretation of the executive limitations I will second motion from director thas second director carbal roll call vote director Alvarado I director carbajal I director Khan I director
green yes director Thomas I director tro I director Wilhelm I motion carries thank you thank you Brett uh next up oh we got a double dose here Michael how you doing you think we couldn't recognize you behind the mask uh we
have director of learning Services Carla reader and Michael B present the global goal report through one1 graduation rate please go forward it worked all
right is that close enough yes all right great thank you uh I'm Carla rer executive director of learning Services here with um Michael Burke our director of postsecondary Workforce Readiness and Career and Technical education uh we are going to start
tonight with um board Global goal uh academic 1.1 which is our graduation rate goal uh this goal is based on the four-year graduation rate so what that means is for students
who enter high school as ninth graders we an anticipate that they will graduate within four years of high school and um so that number is is the numerator is how many kids out of
those who actually graduate so that's how the percentage is calculated the data presented in this report is from the state of Colorado um so these are official State graduation rates um that we will be reporting on and ultimately
Mike's going to share about most of the data I'll just give you the big overview that we did see a slight decrease um from 2023 we decreased by 0.9% in our graduation rate um the graduation rate
for 2024 was 87.2% um which is down from 88.1% um the previous year so overall we are reporting non-compliance for This Global end goal but I am going to ask
ask Mike to share some of the notable data points that are included in the report thank you Carla um so in table one you'll see that we still are at 3% higher than the state uh Colorado
graduation rate and then we also list out by schools so notably you do see an increase in Brighton High Schools uh from the 23 to the 24 graduation year to 93.4% and then also uh Eagle Ridge Academy increased to
97.2 uh Riverdale Ridge as well 96.2 and then there are some drops in some of our locations as well but uh Innovations and options also is is a uh increase and then Online Academy a 7% increase so even though the numbers did
slightly go down we did see uh increases in some individual schools um this table 2.1 is a different uh graphic that last year I wanted to share just comparatively uh looking at our cohort size so the state of Colorado has over almost 70,000 graduates and that's at an
84.2% rate and 27j again still um ranks We're second in Adams County districts but if you look at the uh size of the cohort in strawber at 96.5 they only have 86 students graduating so just to note that that
number even though we are second um our our ins size is much larger than that as well um longitudinally uh across uh the state how we've compared with Adams County uh We've continued to be ahead of most districts with this exception of
strawberg again at 87.2 with a slight drop to 0.9% U still above the state average and then still um leading in the in the in the uh Adams County region um behind start strawsburg with a cohort of 86 and
then the data that I think is really important is as we look at uh Global goal 1.1 is in four years and I know that will talked about this with graduation rates and he did say I don't want to still any of your thunder but um I think our four five six seveny year
data is really important to look at if you look at longitudinally um how we rate against the state um and just some more data we'll dig in here is even though it our rate did drop in the last uh fouryear cycle our five and six-year
data we continue to sustain with those students St so there are many reasons where those students may not graduate in four years but even though that they are not meeting that four-year Mark we continue to work with them and make sure that they do finish and meet that uh graduation whether it's five six seven
years down the road um notably we do uh rank higher amongst uh Adams County and and the state in in multiple areas of of being in the high uh low to mid90s uh with the five six sevene data so I think it's important to look at that is even though our students in the four years
may not be getting done at at a percentage that we would like to see the five and sixe data as we show that we sustain and make sure that those students do complete their high school diploma um before they leave our school districts at a higher percentage
um this data so just to note the uh gender and ethnicity uh state of Colorado changed their reporting data we used to disaggregate this by uh gender within each uh uh race and and ethnicity percentage for confidentiality reasons
because some of your end numbers are so low they do not list that publicly anymore um it's something they're working on but so this is data that we were only able to pull through CDE but uh we did see some drops in some of our disaggregated groups uh but did see increases in our two or more race uh uh
population of 3% higher graduation rate uh White students at a. 3% um but our our students of color at an 84.6% graduation rate was a decrease uh by 210 of a percent uh obviously that is a number that I think we really want to
focus on and continuing to meet every and of our students um table five I think is another aspect to look at uh again not for excuses or reasons but this also puts into perspective of the students that we continue to serve that
have different uh instructional program type so our students with disabilities and we've have this in a seven-year data just for the the graph sake we only put it in the last three years if you look at our cohort size over the years those students in those certain categories students with disabilities economically
disadvantaged English language learner they've continually gone up uh over the last three years and that just takes more time and resources and that may be some of the reason some of our students are not getting done in four years because we don't get to choose when our students come to us they may be coming
straight from another country not speaking any English and we got to ensure that they are able to speak English before we give them an diploma instead of making sure they're done in four years so those that data does do it does impact uh our graduation rate but it's just another a longitudinal look at
um serving the all of our students and serving every um those populations are starting to grow throughout the years I mean economically disadvantaged is one that is uh strikingly different from two years ago from class of 22 to class of 24 with 928 of our graduates being
labeled as economically disadvantaged um and then uh just our uh how we rank against instructional service type compared to other Adams County districts um again strawber does skew the data in some of these other areas Bennett um Westminster some of the smaller
districts within Adams County uh those end scores if you only have two students that fall into one of those categories that's why you're going to see a lot of 98s or 2% so just noting that of where we ran rank third second second second
second third um I think as far as comparatively uh with Adams 12 being our our most similar neighbor uh we do show that we are meeting the students needs Within These instructional service types and still getting them across the stage even though they do have some additional
resources and services that they do need to get them across the stage so with that said uh we report non-compliance due to global 1.1 with a decrease of uh 9% in the overall graduation rate and not going up 2% as
per Global 1.1 Global goal questions uh Mr reader Mr Burke thank you very much for this and uh I know it's not easy to report non-compliance but we also set a very aggressive goal and so uh we continue to see signs of improvement in here we continue to see
signs of of effort and work towards it not giving up uh and so you're continue to fulfill our goal of every so thank you for that appreciate it do I have a motion I well I have a question go ahead um can you put the table back the first table that had the schools I think it was the first table that had like this
the graduation rates by school yeah so so I know we have Colorado Connections Academy like they had the largest decrease in their graduation rate right and our district managed schools and we care about all kids but I
just want to better understand like do we have any oversight over Colorado connections their graduation rate do does our Charter if you remember if you remember in klin's report um when she talked about it we have we have scorecards and
expectations for each of those and that goes against a knock in a conversation about how we improve that with that but but oversight no um but they we do manage their Charter we do expect them to continue to get better it's one of the things though that you know you when
you look at number and you go down there's there's reasons to panic not panic I mean we didn't we don't reported this report it used to be in old old report the dropout rate and that's 1.1% so they're not leaving they're still here we still have them if we care about
the mission or do we care about we care about the mission them having a future or do we care about them getting done on time and the goal's still worthy four years have Advantage we want to do that but well I think and and and connections
definitely I think that was one of our worries when we first took on connections their graduation lowers would that hurt our graduation but we had other reasons for taking on Connections Academy and they they want to get better too of course but I think it's also interesting to point out that color Connections Academy
are not 27j uh students but they are a charted under 27j a 27j student would go to our Online Academy so corre a Colorado Charter are not 27j students but they are chartered under 27j
correct the the kids in that that demographic are everywhere but 27j because our online kids go to 27g online so they're not they're not in our boundary they could be in Aspen they could be in I don't know Colorado
Springs Durango they they they are Colorado connections we just have them under umbrella any other questions I moved to accept um the Global gold report through 1.1
graduation rate as conveying reasonable interpretation of the executive limitation do I have a second I'll second that I have a motion from director Thomason second from director willome roll call vote director Alvarado I director carbahal I I'm noting that
director Khan has stepped out for a moment director green yes director Thomas I director Cho I director Wilhelm I motion carries by majority thank you thank you very much and now you're going to stay here because this is right in
your wheelhouse uh next up will be our uh uh Global goal report uh one two postsecondary Readiness the three e please continue your report all right so um as you mentioned this is the academic
go goal for the three e and the three e have really caught on here in 27j when we talk about the future for our kids we want our kids to leave us with options for their future around enrollment enlistment um or employment and so
that's what the data in this report is really going to talk about are kids prepared to have those options so there's data in here around sat AP exams um completing a college coursework prior
to graduating potentially demonstrating through other assessments like the acup Placer which of our colleges use um to support where students start in their college studies um act the there is data
in here about the work keys which is a national career Readiness certificate um asbab is the assessment around um to help students who want to enlist in the military service and how they start their military careers so
that is the the type of data that you're going to hear about in this report and see about um additionally um and this is where I think you'll see some of the the highlights is um data around students graduating with an industry certificate
and um before we get into the data I do want to just thank the community for the support of the M Levy a couple of years ago um that allowed us to build the CTE centers at each of our high schools because I think some of the data that you will hear about in this report
report is directly connected to having that opportunity at each of our high schools for our kids um so um with that I will turn it over again to Mike and just going along with uh academic goal
1.1 I think this is really where the quality of the graduates that we have uh is demonstrated with those three E I think the focus every time we talk about this outside of our district with other folks in my positions they they're like I really like that three EAS and I think the fact that this is one of our Global
goals is uh a testament to that we know our students are are going to have um an ability to demonstrate their Readiness through those three e and that's really what matriculation rate and all those things talk about so um like Carla mentioned uh a lot of lot of data in
here uh we do track this um we do not have any data so you will not see Connections Academy in here just because we just don't have access to that data so just because that did come up um and then I will note that next year stad will be included in all this
data because it'll they'll have their first graduating class so we do have uh our total graduates in 27j through all of our schools including Eagle Ridge Online Academy Innovations options uh Brighton High School Prairie View and Riverdale um the table one and two is
your your total number and there you're going to have students that are going to be in multiple categories because students will demonstrate in multiple areas in fact this is something we would would like to continue to celebrate as students demonstrating Proficiency in three or more areas of being what I call a triple threat um so students that
either demonstrate in an English College English or college math class earning an industry certification um the ASVAB a Capstone which we will explain a little bit what that Capstone is and then how they demonstrate on the state assessment of sat in their junior year um Below on
table two is just your percentages of how many of those students um from each school and then districtwide in our total number of, 149 graduates how many have students demonstrated um proficiency and Readiness through those different um
certifications one thing to also note with the industry certifications uh last year particularly um we had one student bright High School had nine certifications so I mean we had almost 1300 certifications earned 817 total individual students so um in our
matriculation data we will not see that until next year because that takes a year to get reported on but in this data here you will see how many uh students in the class of 2024 earn industry certifications as well
um with the college uh English and college math we continue to work on that through our department of uh expanding concurrent enrollment and that offers opportunities for students to take college classes at the college level in their high school with our 27j certified staff that are approved through our
partnered uh higher ed uh instit institution or we also do support students going on campus which we call Campus select to take courses if we don't have the opportunity to offer that uh notably some of the things we're expanding into is taking college classes into Aviation um that's one of those
areas that is CTE but we don't have an aviation program so that's our data around all of those certifications um in college classes ASVAB uh Capstone uh is included because Eagle rge does have that as a demonstration they use a
comprehensive portfolio that allows students to show a body of work that's a culminating academic uh and intellectural experience for those students that they are then approved as deemed uh postsecondary ready uh according to the three e and their
graduation requirements um on table three then we start looking at uh our act work keys AP English AP math with a score of two or higher in each of those uh classes that are approved in each of the subsets and
then sat English and sat math same same with table four as with tables 1 and two giving you the percentages of how many of our seniors that graduated last year were able to demonstrate in there again multiple students did demonstrate in multiple ways whether it's an AP class
and an industry certification and sat or in some cases in all aspects depending on how many assessments they took so with all of that said uh we report compliance that 100% of our graduates completed An approved College and Career demonstration and many completed
completed more than one moving into 1.2 matriculation rate will increase by 2% every year uh table one under 1.2 shows the Colorado total
matriculation rate for the class of 2223 and again this data is a year uh in delay because students need to go to college and sustain and it takes that long to collect that data so we're looking at class of 23 data here so the
class of 23 uh matriculation rate for the uh for 27j schools is at 75% the state rate is at 57.2 we will note that there's asteris on multiples of these because there is a data question that we do have with the
state the work keys was on What's called the C dip list um that is a Colorado um uh I'm drawing a blank on the you know yeah you know C yeah it's approved industry certifications or
assessments outside that allow and um act work keys was included in the 2223 school year in the guidance that we were we found from the state um as a building principal I did not know that was reported to the state it was only until we started pulling the data from the state that I told Carlo these numbers
don't seem right so we are working with CDE but it wasn't approved um a demonstration that they did count in the CP list which accounts for our numbers being a little higher I'm curious as to looking at class of 24 because it was not on the CP list even
though we gave it to multiple um students multiple times um so that that data will probably there'll be a possibility dip in there it's just something that we're just going to work with CD to find but um we do offer that in all of our schools uh that are are
our Aster uh Eagle Ridge um they do not offer the the um act work keys and Colorado connections does not offer those as well but looking at our matriculation rate compared to the state and then tremendous growth across all schools with their matriculation rate
increasing double digigit increases um for matriculation in in our two to fouryear n CTE um through the class of 23 um tremendous tremendous growth Online Academy notably at 91% again most of those students did take the ACT work
keys and that was included and you'll see that in their CTE scores as well um flip this around here okay um as we compare to other Adams County school districts again the state is at 57.2 our
data uh listed on CDE is at 75% Adams 12 57 and obviously we are far ahead of everybody else based on the data that we're reporting um that matriculation rate um again is showing how many of our students are a able to demonstrate
post-secondary ress either by in a four sustaining in a four-year School a 2-year School industry certification in CTE or enlistment in the military so with that uh we report compliance with the matriculation rate rate increased from 53% to 75% from the class of 22 to
the class of 23 notably just this breaks it out and disaggregates it um with and with with Carla stating you know the the bond and the mill in 21 and 22 respectively uh we're going to continue to see this growth because of the
programming we do have in each one of our CT programs that do offer uh industry certification that our students are able to take right into the workforce when they graduate from high school if you look at our four-year uh matriculation rate 27j schools is below the state rate in fouryear matriculation
we've known that that's why a lot of the push for our CTE our our population and our community said a lot of our students are not going and staying at four-year colleges um we did drop in fouryear matriculation uh there's a I think UC see uh throughout the whole country the
cost of education and all so there's multiple reasons for that even though the state did raise 3% we dropped 4% in fouryear matriculation um there was an increase at Eagle Ridge and an increase uh or sustainment at uh Riverdale Ridge High School our two-year matriculation
rate um we are above the average we went up 3% and we're above uh by um 1.9% at the state average uh I think a lot of this is because our students looking at their bang for their Buck going to a 2-year degree is much cheaper and I think because of our concurrent
enrollment uh situation a lot of our students are already getting started on Associates degrees so it's a nice transition right from high school and going into a two-year program so our matriculation rate in a two-year program went up to 14% where we saw increases at Brighton High School Eagle Ridge Prairie
View sustainment at Riverdale and increase in Online Academy uh the CTE matriculation rate this is where we noted that the the percentages are very high because of the inclusion of the ACT work keys or the ncrc being
counted in the particular particular graduation class as a CTE demonstration for pwr um we do see that 27 J's rate is at 49% from an increase in CTE from 22% this data will obviously increase
because we I know that we had 642 industry certifications alone in that class and in the class of 24 we had 817 so there was a huge increase so that that data will continue to grow as we look at CT matriculation rate for 27j schools um there will be a drop
obviously in areas because the ncrc or the work keys will not be included in that c dip list and not included in this data but based on the data that we reported to CDE this is the what they have on all of their links and which is provided through CD's website so with all of that we do report
compliance um again to go back to our graduation rate and this we feel confident that our students are able to truly meet our mission of empowering them for their future empowering them for their future today for their future tomorrow um so really exciting to see a
lot of this and then I know a lot of you have all seen the work that we're doing not only in pwr but also in CTE and and making sure our kids have access to those three e of in enlist enrollment and employment so thank you yeah I have a couple of questions um
one of the things when we did linkage and we asked questions um was like oh man all the CTE programming is obviously amazing they're excited about learning it but there's a capacity sometimes that we're not hitting looking at that 800 number for a graduation rate is insane so congratulations on that but how do we
foresee us being able to increase capacity so that we are meeting all the needs of these students so everyone has that opportunity I think a number areas uh and it was interesting when you guys were talking about that I think we we have to do and this will be something um as we talk about budget and whatnot and
bring to the mil Evy oversight um we need to be more targeted in in um intentional around how we're having meaningful career conversations starting in the Middle School level and articulating that from 6th 7th and 8th as those eighth graders are coming to the high schools we're we are seeing
Improvement of our high school CT programs going to the schools and having the middle school students to see what those programs were like um so we've got to do a better job with that we are expanding CT at the middle school level for more of an exploratory which is exciting but that does take time and
resources to retrofit certain areas to allow for those uh another area is is just finding people that are certified to teach that and leaving industry to come do those things um and then capacity to do that is we've built out as far as we can and um I think you're
going to see a decrease once R uh Rocky Vista opens we're going to have some movement of there and I think th those those uh opportunities will open up at different schools just because there'll be less kids trying to get in all those programs but because we selected the industry programs that we have we know that there's jobs in those obviously
they are are popular um so I think it's a combination of being more intentional putting kids in the right Pathways instead of just oh you want to be in welding cool and making sure that we want that we have kids that are are definitely want to be in that pathway so I think it's meaningful career conversations and better training for uh
staff and counseling to have that articulation from 6 through 12 as we we work with kids and in planning so they understand what those pathways are uh so that we're not putting kids in Pathways that maybe they're not interested in that's taking a seat from another student and are we starting to have those conversations as we look into the
new year because so I have an eighth grader and then I have a junior so my Junior's done welding he'll graduate with college welding he's like Mom I think next year I'll take culinary and I'm like are you GNA do culinary and he's like I don't know but like I could get my certificate so like eliminating that like maybe so people get seats that
need them is that what we're looking at and then our eighth grader going in like signs up for all the things but I'm like have we have we done any development there and I think there's a Nuance to that as well is you never want to tell a kid hey I might be interested like I want to make pancakes and be a welder like I I could see that being something
there you never want to tell a kid no you can't do that however meaningful career conversations that what what do you where do you see yourself doing when you leave here in a year three years 5 years um and I think uh yeah that's something Darcy Brown and I I've really
had a lot of conversations about the need for more pwr conversations I think the conversation you guys had about um using advisory time uh this will be the first time high schools will be on the same schedule across the district so we can really leverage that and making sure we're having targeted systemwide
conversations about all right let's really dig into what is my plan and what is my path and why am I taking the classes that I'm taking instead of I just need to graduate high school like let's make this more meaningful I think also the growth of the internship program and our internship uh work that we've been doing will help uh really
streamline kids into getting into fields that they're interested in another thing that leveraging relationships uh Bennett School District this is the first year we've got Wildland fire we've got kids that are there training the kids in Wildland fire certifications we don't have that program in 27j we're very
thankful that Bennett has invited our students to be able to go do that so continuing to Foster those County relationships that we're able to provide other opportunities for our students to find their passion even though it's something we don't have the capacity to serve and allow for students to go into that to that was that thank you for
sending that list to me part of the reason I asked for I just asked for him to send me a list of all the people who are doing internships and I thought it was going to be like a one-pager and it was like nuts so that was like eye opening for all the opportunity would exist if we can get people going the right direction my next question though
for you was because of the dip that you're talking about in the matriculation rate I know you said concurrent enrollment might be changing that if students are exiting our high schools with two years of college and then taking two years are we losing out on that fouryear because they're in a four-year College how does that work uh
no no that's a great question um usually uh and I think as a parent myself my return on investment I don't know if I want a kid going to a four-year School unless they absolutely know what they want to do so I think there's some of that of being aware of let's really think about what
you want to do as somebody that went to be an architect and came out an art teacher um and really understanding that there's no ribbons for finishing at 18 by 22 to graduate college and being intentional with those things um and I
also think just our community has said we've got kids that just want to go to work that's why we have the CT programs and they they the Community has spoken and I think we've answered that call and um as when I started an education 22 years ago I think about the damage I did of like no you've got to go
to college go to go to college there's a lot of kids that they didn't need to go to college they did not need to take on the debt so I think there's a little bit of that return of investment and understanding like do I really need to go to a four-year degree do I need to go to this school like if I'm going to do this thing can I do it at maybe Metro or
can I do two years at at uh Front Range where I have guaranteed transfer then I can go into a four-year degree over at at UC Denver or are transfer into an instate school so I think there's a little bit more awareness of of um being intentional about how we're
spending our money and not taking on too much debt um as a family especially when you're talking about first year as a first year or first generation person like my parents didn't know how to navigate college and I think a lot of we you see it at graduation how many kids are first grad in great generation
graduates from high school that's shocking every time I'm at and I I come to tears thinking like we've got work to do in this in this country that's how many kids are still not first generation going to college and to expect them to do that I think is a misguidance for us really as being
empowering them for their future to make that decision so as much as I want my own kid to go to college I want them to do that in their own time and not because society's timeline thank you yeah I just wanted to share I was talking with Mr Burke about this before the meeting um so I had one student who
chose college and got her Masters and then my son was like I have no interest in college at all um but we were talking the other day because he has a skilled labor job now that he got right out of high school and he loves it like loves
his job and he has excelled quickly through the ranks at his job and has been promoted received a big promotion this week and I was talking to him about it we were talking about even though the CTE classes he took weren't directly not the exact same but the skills he learned through his GTE classes prepared him for
this type of work and interestingly they're earning the same my daughter with the Masters and my son who went straight into the workforce and so I love that we give um that we give kids the the choice and support them in that because he is so happy and I know that it so thank you to all of our CTE and
teachers and programs that um and I know his story is not unique I know there are hundreds and hundreds of those kids who um are having a similar experience and and I know it's it's the skills that he learned through his CTE classes that are giving him the success now yeah and I want to say just an
experience I had too with that you know not coming in as a freshman and being unsure my daughter was able to still get on a pathway and they worked it out where they they worked her schedule well she'll finished that biomedical pathway by the time she graduates and a small
percentage she was in that to get into the biomed engineering program at CU she's at Regis with like a full ride just amazing having that background of the CTE and where it's getting her and what she wants to do as a graduating
senior so it's been really cool to see that as well and then even like well I can you know have my photomy certificate and work do over here doing this as I'm going to college at that four-year level so it is
pretty amazing where it can lead in so many different directions she's also doing the uh athletic training certification too at prayview so she can be a personal trainer or bottom or and yeah you ready for a motion or no I got
I just one you know as phenomenal as these results are I really appreciate the action steps to keep improving uh that we are not resting on the on rules you've got two pages full of things are going to keep going and make this even better so I I really appreciate that too
uh that was some real intentionality in in what we're the results we're delivering so thank you for that yeah move to accept the Global gold report through 1.2 postsecondary Readiness 3 e as conveying reasonable interpretation of the executive
limitations I'll second motion for director Thomas second director carbahal roll call vote director Alvarado I director carbajal I director Khan I director green of course director Thomas I director tro I director Wilhelm I
motion carries thank you thank you very much uh next month we're going to talk about our social emotional learning dashboard the good humans Mandy Thomas go and compensation benefits so we look forward to that uh next up item Terry are you GNA handle this
or uh the Board of Education will consider approving a request for a draw from the 27j school district 27j Capital facility fee foundation in the amount not to exceed $2 million for the design and construction of Rocky Vista High School did you want to say anything or
you want so sweet okay are there any questions about this we did have a little bit of a discussion in that if not I will accept a motion sorry to make you walk all the way up here move to approve a request for a draw from the school district 27j Capital facility fee foundation and the
amount not to exceed 2 million for the design and construction of Rocky Vista High School and to authorize staff to execute all required documents related to the draw request second I have a motion from director Dre Hill second from director KH roll call
vote director alado I director carbajal I director Khan I director green you betcha director Thomas Doro hi director wilham hi motion carries thank you let's get going on building that new high school thank you
very much uh our scheduled meetings next month we only have one meeting uh due the spring break so that will be on March 12th we'll have a study session and a regular meeting uh next quarterly meeting evaluation will be presented at that March meeting director willhelm
will present the evaluation are there any closing comments no we doing uh I will I'll make a closing comment that speak walk is May 3rd um we don't meet on March 26th uh no we will only meet on March 12th uh next up
I'm asking for a motion to go into executive session do I have that motion and I'd remind somebody to very slowly and very very clearly read the motion so you don't want me come on director Alvar you got it move to approve entering into an
executive session per CRS 24-6 d424 a for the purpose of discussing the purchase acquisition lease transfer or sale of any real personal or other property
interest do I have a sec I'll second it I have a motion from director Alvarado and a second from director Thomas uh we'll need a roll call vote director Alvarado I director carbajal I director Khan I director green yes director
Thomas I director Trio I director wilham I thank you m motion carries thank you at this point we will adjourn for our executive session uh there'll be no business uh that will be conducted after we come back in will beely to be adjourning the meeting so uh you're welcome to leave
again we're going to go into executive session now and then when we're done we'll just C adjourn the meeting thank you president green will you just mention who you would like to invite into that I'm assuming is just uh will and Terry I will invite uh
superintendent uh will pierce and uh Terry what is your title now Operating Officer oh was King God of everything uh Terry lero to join me in that meeting or join us in that meeting thank you thank you sir