All right. The Board of Education's meeting is now in session, and we'll just make sure that we're live. Alright. Um, I think we're live. Alright. The Board of Education's meeting is now in session. Welcome to everyone who is here in person participating. Thank you for being here and all of you who are participating virtually, like all board meetings, this meeting is open to all who wish to attend and we're glad you're here. These proceedings are being digitally recorded and broadcast live on the DPS Vimeo website, which can be accessed from the Board of Education website.
ESP De la And Director Delarosa has offered to read our land acknowledgement. Can you hear me? In the spirit of truth and reconciliation, Denver Public Schools acknowledges that we are gathered today in our schools on the ancestral land of the Cheyenne Arapaho Nation and Arapaho Nations. This area was also the site of trade hunting, gathering and healing for many other Native nations, the Y Lakota, Kiowa, Kaci, Apache Shoshone,
and many other Native Nations. We also acknowledged that our country was built with stolen labor and the generational wealth, which was created by the hands and backs of enslaved people, was kept from them. Well, enriching others. Thank you. And Mr. Young Quest has volunteered to read the equity statement, Mr. Youngquist. Racial and Educational Equity is our collective responsibility. We will achieve equity when we dismantle deeply rooted systems of oppression that have historically resulted in inequitable access and distribution of opportunities
and resources for those who represent marginalized identities, including race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, language, and ability. We will create conditions where we all belong, are included, have clear purpose, and have the autonomy to lead in our respective areas. By creating these conditions, we will eliminate the predictability of success or failure for our students and team members. Thank you, Ms. Atwood. Would you please call role Director de la Rosa. Present. Director Esserman. Here. Director Gaan. Present. Dr. Olson
Present. Director Sia. Present. Mr. Youngquist present And for our viewing audience, director Qba is outta town at a graduation. We'll watch this meeting and get caught up when she's finished. Uh, before moving to our next agenda item, we will approve today's agenda. The board will be asked to accept item 1.05, approval of the meeting agenda. Do I have a motion to approve Item 1.05. So moved. Is there a second? Second. It was moved by Director Esserman and seconded by Director C. The floor is now open for debate seen. Ms.
Atwood, would you please call role Director de la Rosa? Aye. Director Erman aye. Director Gaan Aye. Dr. Olson? Aye. Director Sia Aye. Mr. Youngquist? Aye. And with that, the motion passes. Thank you. And I will turn it over to Dr. Marrero for our first two items. Thank you Dr. Olson. Uh, good evening. Members of the board, uh, we're kickoff, uh, with several celebrations. Um, we are celebrating both Asian American Pacific Islander Month and Jewish History Month. So we have a video for each, and then we will have our scholars join us
for some more celebrations. I am of Thai and Chinese descent. I love Lunar New Year every year. Coming together with my family, it was important to me that a IPI was recognized within the curriculum because it's hard for you to see yourself as a leader or in positions of success if there's not those people around you. So it was my goal to be that position for other people, to show them that if I can do it, you can do it. I love my Sage Ranch, The Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander course. She was very, very instrumental in the
development of the course. We started off with a conversation that led to 45 students taking the course, and my hope is that we continue to build on that. A API Heritage month is super important to me because it's a time dedicated to recognizing what came before us, how traditions came to be, and just valuing our family and the people who have brought us up. Ally's been a, a really crucial part of that. Um, she will help us to plan the cultural event and then host it with a big smile. And also, you know, um, facilitate our club meetings.
There's a lot of holidays and recognitions that go on in our world, and it's important that students see these things and how they're prevalent to a lot of students and how they can integrate it to their lives to make themselves more aware. I'm able to help my peers and they're able to help me in ways that just go beyond the classroom. We're here for Jewish Cultural Club. Hey, it's a great group of kids who are passionate about Judaism and want to share their culture and educate people on, on Judaism. We're doing some Israeli, uh, just dance. We're making cr at bracelets.
We are playing some games. We're eating some pizza At Jewish, Colorado. We have a program called Jewish Student Connection, where we go to 16 different public high schools throughout Denver and Boulder area to run Jewish cultural clubs during primarily lunch. And it's a safe space for Jewish students, Jewish allies to come learn about the culture. What we do in the club changes every week, but it's all related to Jewish culture and just everyone feeling welcome and Home. It's all cultural based, not religious at all. And just a way for us to, you know, share who we are. It's not just for Jewish students, it's for all
I'd say a good amount of people there in the room are non-Jewish. A lot of times if there's just like one Jewish person in a friend group, then they, they bring their whole group and it's really great. So just even just learning about the religion, learning about the culture, learning maybe some of the traditions. I think what it means to be Jewish for me is to feel like a connection towards others in my community and to feel like I belong somewhere in a place that embraces being who you are and embraces community and home. Um, Dr. Marrero, I know you wanna go straight to the students and then we'll take some time for comments.
Thank you. Yeah, I think it's the opportunity for us to continue the celebration. As you saw, uh, in the videos, a lot of our, our student advocacy is put into, into work, but also memorialized. So I think, uh, for round up, uh, our student celebration, I'm gonna ask Luna Lee, who's the integration planner for Student Voices, uh, to join us. And she's gonna introduce some incredible scholars with, uh, some remarkable journeys ahead of them who've, uh, done remarkable work throughout their years here. And, uh, I have a soft spot
for them 'cause I engage with them. Um, and I don't get to engage with many students in my role. Right? So this is, uh, this is something that I cherish And I think they also challenge you, if I'm not mistaken. Dr. Marrero. Ah, I got it. Hi everyone. Thank you so much to the board for welcoming us. As Dr. Marrero said, I'm Luna Lee. I'm the integration planner with Student Voice and Leadership and I'm very happy and proud to introduce the superintendent student cabinet to this board meeting. And I'll allow, I'll, uh, give the floor to them. Dr. Morero, maybe you could take, um,
director Alba's mic or, yep, there you go. So they've got two. Thank you. Yes. There you go. Thank you. Yeah, and you could share it Okay. That it won't get picked up. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Musical mics and chairs. Um, welcome everybody. My name is, is Palia. I go to Cape North East Stem Leadership Academy. Um, we really appreciate you for being here today, and I'm going to pass the spotlight to the seniors. Hi, I am Sophia Adams. I am a student at Denver Center for International Studies at Baker, and I'm going to be going to the University of Denver next year studying, um,
international relations with maybe a minor, Not a minor, sir. A minor in public policy. My name is Cina Brohan Mescal. I'm a senior at Northfield High School. I'll be going to the uni, the University of Pennsylvania and I'll be studying economics and international relations. Um, my name is Alex Banger. I go speak Right into the mic so we can hear You. My name is Alex Banger. I go to George Washington High School. I'll be going to University of Maryland in the fall for elementary education. Shout out to Swaggert. Um, and then Clay can't join us, but she goes to DSST Elevate, she's going to University of Denver and she's studying e electrical engineering. She
Also got a full Ride. Yeah. Last public comment. Mm-hmm. Okay. So I'll start us off. Um, this is how Student Voice and Leadership is aligned with the Strategic Roadmap. Could You allow him to introduce himself? Thank You. So, sorry I'm late. There was a lot of traffic on Lincoln Street. That's okay. My name is Yuel Emmanuel. I'm a sophomore and I go to George Washington. No, you're, Thank you. Um, taking it off. Um, this is how Student Voice and Leadership is aligned with the Strategic Roadmap. I'll give you a second to look at the following bullet points and then we'll just continue. Yeah. And we can continue.
Um, this is how we are organized. So we just moved under the Interim Chief of Student and Family Empowerment. We have the director and then one integration planner and two specialists. And under Student Voice and Leadership, we have four groups. We have Student Board of Education, young African American, Asian, and Latinx Leaders, the Superintendent Student Cabinet, and the executive team with the Student Voices Podcast Network. And under that is the Black Voices of Color Podcast. So one of the four main, uh, I guess branches under Student Voice and Leadership is Student Board of Education, which is Espo. This past year we had nine schools in Espo cohort.
Uh, they're all listed below. Um, we actually lost five schools this academic year. And we think that that was mainly to do with the fact that Espo switched this year to be, um, to be more research based. And a lot of schools found that rigorous and didn't really find that, feel like they can meet that expectation. So we did lose five schools this year and we're working on seeing if we can get them back. And we also have schools that have had Espo one point or another are listed right there. And we are seeing if we can do anything to get those schools back. 'cause we feel like schools that have had Espo have had a really positive effect on their communities and their schools. Um, on the staff and teacher side, uh,
and student side, we had eight adult Espo coaches. Um, we and had 28 student Espo reps, and we had 216 total students at Espo. These are all numbers that we ended with. Uh, we started off the year with more, and these are just the numbers that we ended with in this last year. Um, we, the work that Espo has accomplished this last year is we had 278 students trained and certified in research ethics training. Um, we had 11 educators in city social emotional, behavioral human subjects research. We had seven ESMO teams presented policy arguments at Challenge 52 80 on issues, including first place was from John F. Kennedy
and they presented on declining enrollment. Uh, we had second place from DCIS Baker and they presented on school closures and consolidations. And third place was North High School and they presented on programming for newcomer students. And then these are, uh, listed below or some of the other policy arguments that some teams made. And we had two Espo teams who weren't able to actually make it to challenge 52 80. But they still presented policy arguments to school leadership that was south and northeast early college. And hopefully, um, just over this next year, we're seeing if they can make any change in their schools, if we can see if we can get any policies passed, um, within their schools in order to achieve whatever outcome
that their policy is aligned with. All right. So the next bucket of work is young, African American, Asian, and Latinx leaders. We added an extra a this year. Um, some of our partnerships this year included, uh, with the DPS restorative team. We all got RP certified and we also partnered with Denver Healing Generations. And the SBL staff are currently working with them to help develop like a youth advocacy toolkit. And as far as our demographics, we had five schools represented in y'all and eight students, majority seniors. Uh, this year we trained and certified in research ethics training as part
of the whole Challenge 52 80 process. And that was with the D-P-S-R-B team. And then we, with our DPS restorative partnership that was facilitated by the DPS Trauma-informed and RP team, we hosted an A CLU Know your rights training all about police and ICE interactions and just becoming more informed and aware about all of that. 'cause it's very prevalent right now. And additionally, y'all hosted a mental health day for BIPOC students. Uh, we had a variety of workshops including yoga, ancestral healing, and just a lot of fun activities. Wonderful. And when it comes to Student Voices Podcast Network,
we currently have seven schools which are engaged in the podcast and the schools are going to be followed up on the list. Um, we've seen a high engagement and interest when it comes to podcast creation and storytelling within these schools. And when it comes to partnership and resources, we have conducted digital wide podcast audit and, um, successfully we have, um, partnership with the following partnerships. Stars cited below and we seen growing opportunities when it comes to recording more podcast, more podcasts episodes. Um, when it comes to the evidence work, we've seen that the, um, um, C-U-C-S-U sports secondary, um,
Saturday, which is an opportunity when it comes to engaging families and communities, um, which is a storytelling when it comes to podcasting. Um, we also have the digital storytelling curriculum, which is a partnership four educators and 28 92 miles ago. And we have the High School podcast, which is a podcast during class time with students and staff members learn their career trajectory and explore alternative career pathways. When it comes to Black Voices and podcasts, um, we have evidence, or when it comes to social media engagement, we have over 500 abuse in YouTube and to 174 abuse and YouTube. When it comes to our mental health episode, we ha,
which has demonstrated a high engagement, um, amongst viewers. We have also, um, they have also cultivated public speaking, public speaking skills. Um, they have mc Challenge 52 80 events, mc, um, D-M-C-L-K, junior Early College, pep Rallies and Assemblies. And Savannah Bland, one of the co-hosts has auditioned for the Mc o the DPS Foundation gala, and was accepted. And finally, to end on the superintendent student cabinet, this year we have six students who make up our exec team. Um, we or from different schools across the district.
Uh, we have 21 students total making up our student cabinet this year. We have been able to provide feedback on the cell phone, uh, use policies in schools, Desmos, E-L-D-S-A-T prep courses, student Immigration resource, uh, toolkit safety and canine Weapon detection, culturally relevant math curriculum, uh, AI Policy and User Handbook, as well as working with the District Accountability Committee. Um, we have successfully passed five or have, are working on, uh, inputting five, uh,
edits to J policies, including J-I-H-J-I-C-A-J-L-C-J-I-C-F, and JICH, uh, and JICH dash R. Um, we also have a finalized version of the student statement of Expectations to provide you all with formerly known as the Student Bill of Rights. Um, and yeah, that's being passed out to you right now. Thank you. That all Was all. Thank you so much for all the work that you do, um,
on behalf of all the students in Denver Public Schools, I'll open it up now for, um, any questions or comments from my colleagues for you. So don't go anywhere. Um, director Gaan, The, the last piece that you were mentioning, the student work with the superintendent, is it, um, what does that process look like? Are they bringing, is the superintendent and the district bringing you work that they'd like to change and update? Or is it you all saying, Hey, we've got ideas on this, this, and this. What does that look like? Uh, I would say that it's both. Um, I think, you know, Magnolia would be like,
we're having these people coming in today, and we're like, oh, great. Like, we can see what's going on in the district. Um, and then sometimes we're also like, oh, we'd really like to, you know, further our knowledge and, you know, give feedback on like, AI that's like, pretty relevant with high school and school in general. Um, I would say it goes both ways. Great. Um, anybody else? Vice President De La Rosa to Follow up on that? Do you then have special times where you go and report out to your schools, the schools you're representing? How do you do that work?
Um, yeah, so as the exec team, we're part of a larger cabinet called the Superintendent, um, student cabinet. So, uh, everything that we hear from superintendents in the different teams and DPS, we usually go and report that back to the cabinet of, I think, 20 people that we have who are all, um, representatives of their schools who go back and give that message back to their schools. Um, so while it's just like six of us who are getting, like the direct communication we take, it's kind of like, um, a line of communication that goes both ways. We take things from the superintendent, take that
to the students, and the students have, if they have concerns, bring that up to us and we do the same. I wanna commend you all on the incredible amount of work and time you've dedicated for to be advocates for your classmates and for all the students. And d ps this is so impressive. Um, and I'm sure you've put a lot of time and, and passion into this work, so thank you. Um, we'll go to directors and then Director Erman, and then Mr. Youngquist. So I have two unrelated questions for you all.
Um, on the student statement of expectations, has this been shared out more broadly yet? Uh, I believe that we're waiting for you guys to look at it first before we, but then I believe that we'll be sent out after that. That's where the technical question. No, it's in a process. Speak to how you all came with the process, which Is in many, many years, it's been four years. We did not start this work at all this year. This work was started a long time ago by the cabinet, and then this year I think we were mostly working on like finalizing edits and just talking with legal, making sure everything, uh, was okay
with it and then submitting it To No, you, you are absolutely right. Just wanted to also give credit to some of our former members. Yes. When I first came on board, Tanya, you all, Tanya, uh, started this work, uh, alongside her team there, and Skye took it over in terms of a leadership role. And, uh, it's taken many iterations, but what was described was this is the executive cabinet, the more intimate group. There's a larger cabinet representative of at least one, several, uh, students from each high school. And that's how they were able to gather information on what should be reflected into this document.
There's been many a draft. That's great. And that semi goes into my next question, which is, since it hasn't been shared out yet, you have all this feedback. How will this then be shared back out, um, with all students, particularly, I'm assuming this is for elementary and middle school students as well. And so how will across the all of our schools students learn about this statement of expectations? Well, I think the hope, especially at a high school level is that it's included in our student handbooks and that it's easily accessible to all students. I know on the first day of school, each student should be given their handbook
and have that easily accessible. I know some schools do it more so than others, but I think just being able to have easy accessibility to a document that just kind of reflects the responsibilities of you as a student and the district to give to you is really important. As far as the middle school, I know middle schoolers would probably be able to absorb this information well too. Elementary school, I, I don't know, I gotta refer to the teacher over here, but Yeah. Future teacher, but I don't know, maybe it gets read to, it's like a story time, but, you know.
And then I have an unrelated question. I was noticing in, in your pre presentation around y'all, um, I wanted first clarifying question. You said that there's eight members, five of whom are seniors. That's not total. Is that the leadership team for y'all, or is that it? No, y'all is eight members right now. Okay. Yeah. We are working really hard with recruitment and things right now, but our team is very senior happy right now. Okay. Is there any way that there could be support for you to be able to continue? Because I, I've known y'all since the beginning
and I know what an important group it is and what great work that you do. And so I would, I just wanna make sure that it continues to thrive in the way that it has. Yeah, I think definitely just once we finally create like our recruitment documents, just being able to kind of spread the word and kind of advocate for like supporting that program would be really important to us. But yeah. Thank you. We'll go to Director Erman. And then Mr. Youngquist, First I have an important question with the extra A is it not pronounced like y'all Had to ask?
Um, uh, one, I want to, I want to thank all of you, um, for, for your commitment, for your time, uh, and, and, and for your interest in improving what we do in Denver Public Schools. Your voice is, is critical and, and, and is valued among us as a board. Um, and certainly for myself as an individual. Uh, and so, so appreciate that and appreciate all of the work that's gone into this. I wanna spend some time with this, but, but at first glance, it looks outstanding. Um, very impressive.
I also wanna point out that, um, that I, along with Director Gaan had the privilege to be able to be judges at the, um, at the, at the challenge 52 80 competition. And just the impressive nature of all of you and, and all of the other students who presented that while there had to be like a first, second, third place, there was exceptional work done across the board and want to want to appreciate you for that. And also, I think we heard clearly the, the frustrations with the, with the research methodology and how that hit at different schools and,
and hopefully that we as adults can, can help figure that out to make that so, so that we're including some of those, those participants in schools who have been there consistently, um, and didn't feel like they could this year. I, I think as a board member, that's important to me as well. And I just wanted you to, to hear that as well. Um, and I wanna thank you for the, the presentation, which was really helpful and informative and and meaningful. Thanks. Thank you, Mr. Youngquist. Thank you. Thank you all for taking the time earlier in the year to meet with Director Delarosa. And I, it was incredible to hear, uh, the work
that you've been doing, the progress you had made, the kind of current status of the work and next steps. I appreciate that. And then to highlight in here, the input that you are providing, um, in regard to policies that relate to the student experience and student life is so important as a high school principal. When I read these, uh, talking about student interrogation, dress codes, school health or yeah, student safety from gangs, searches for contraband. What I know of those policies, there's a lot in there that is just outdated
and actually doesn't connect to the life of students today. I don't know, in the sixties, hats were banned from our schools, and I think they still are, uh, in JICA. So for you to be able to, to, to work with and provide that kind of support for school leadership and district leadership is really powerful. And thank you. And then I'm just curious as to how Mental Health Day went. Thumbs up. Is that a good one? Okay. Yeah, it was good. Good. All right. Thanks for your support. Uh, just I'd like to echo everything my colleagues have said. Thank you so much for being here. It's always good to hear about all the good work that you're doing, and I know it takes a lot
of time, so thank you. And I'm so sorry I missed Challenge 52 80 because I had a family commitment, so I'm so glad to hear that it went so well. And I'm really excited to see this. I think Sia Lopez will remember when we started this work pre pandemic, and it was, and it, yes. And it was, I think maybe 20 pages long at one point, and the students used it as part of interviewing Dr. Marrero when, um, we looked search for candidates. So I'm really pleased to see this. I'm also really excited to see, of course number 10, climate action, something that students have brought to us.
So you've really owned this and made this your own, and I'm really excited to see that. I also would be interested in hearing how you're planning on sharing this with the community, because I think this is something that's absolutely fabulous that the community needs to know about. Well, I think, um, social media is a very big part of our lives right now. And maybe, um, short term, like just getting it out like this is what is going to be put in front of all students in DPS. Um, so like parents will know, um, might be a great idea. And then also maybe we can get it on the website and all school websites. Um,
Don't wanna emailing it to principals and making sure that, uh, it's coming from Mero to like really emphasize that it's important and that it needs to be discussed in schools. And, uh, going back to like making sure we have an elementary version, I think that's very important. And I think we're, or at least I'm thinking about that, um, yeah, maybe like doing presentations to other students about it or something like that, or, yeah. Well, we've got comm sitting right here, so we can pick their brain as well. So I think it's just fantastic. So thank you so much for all the work that you're doing. Dr.
Marrero, I know you wanted the last Word. Yes. I, I just want to thank you all. Um, it's, uh, it sounds a little cliche when I say this is the best part of my role, but I think that you all know that the way that I engage beyond just connecting with you all the, the way that we really brainstorm it and get into some real issues, uh, I feel like I'm incredibly equipped with the right intel to bring it to this table so the board can make an informed decision. And I mean that wholeheartedly. So thank you all. I'm looking forward to our younger scholars as we continue to build, and I'm looking to see how you conquer the world,
um, and, and all in every which way. And I've already tried to recruit Alex, but she's, uh, not interested in our public school system. She wants something closer east. She wants something east coast, which I can get. Um, but I mean that generally thank you. And a perfect example of how our discussions go. This, this video that we should be ready to play right now, whoever's gonna queue it up, is a perfect example of, um, taking a stance on what's important without necessarily coming to a consensus. Is that fair to say? Right.
'cause we struggled on coming to a consensus and it's, uh, a political but purposeful in terms of what we need to continue the work here. So this is not an endorsement board of education. Sorry. Sorry Sophia. It's okay. In Washington, decisions are being made to pull back on federal support that helps Denver students, your neighbors, your kids, learn, eat and thrive. At my school, free meals are extra. They're essential for a lot of us. It's how we start the day, ready to learn. I meet with my social worker every week. She helps me with stress, with school and with life.
That funding, it's on the chopping block. When people say we can't afford it, I want to ask, can we afford not to invest in us? I'm getting career ready now. Cuts to our programs means fewer internships, fewer certifications, and fewer chances for students like me to succeed. Derma police school service, nearly 90,000 students. We are a multilingual, multicultural, future focused district. We've made promises to support every learner who walks through our doors. While we can keep this promises alone, This isn't about politics. It's about real kids, Real Needs and a city, an equity And access for all.
We are Denver and we deserve better. If Denver is to thrive, we must invest in the future. And our future walks into a DPS school every single day. Thank you. Thank you. That was fantastic. Thank you so much. I'm sure we'll find good ways to get that out too. So thank you very much. Very well done. Oh, we'd love to do a photo with you, if you have a minute. Can we get the board over here? Um, and Dr. Marrero, along with our young scholars. Yeah, it's terrible. I pictured it. I'll hold up. It's, it's a great conversation. One, two, and three. Good. And one,
What a great way to start our board meeting. That was fantastic. Um, thank you Dr. Marrero, for all the support that you give to the students as well. I appreciate it. I'll now turn it over to our treasurer, um, directors. Thank you, president s Olson. Uh, we're gonna go over the quarter three report for our board budget today. And so you'll, as you'll see throughout the presentation, there's cost centers for each of us as individual board members that are listed here. And then additionally, we have the cost center 2230,
which is our general budget. Um, as a board. And looking at this right now, um, we are on track actually spending a little less for the time that we are in the school year in terms of our overall general budget. You will note that our operating budget, which is a combination of both, um, operational expenses for board members as well as compensation for board members, is over budget. And we will see in a moment where that is coming from. So broken down here is the compensation for each of our board members.
And you'll note that for Dr. Olson and Director De La Rosa, they previously had not requested compensation payments for the prior year. And so those have been added in for this year. And so that is one of the areas that has, um, increased. It caused us to be over budget at this time. Going, I'll pause for one second. Any questions on this part? No, I'd just like to thank Attorney Thompson for helping me to be able to figure out how many of you have been following this, have known that I have not been able to figure out how to get that all
to work to get my stipend. And so thank you so much for working with me on that. Thank you. Yeah. Great. So broken down here then, um, you'll see the general expense detail on also salaries and wages. This is for staff who supports the board, um, and for our board meetings and the work that we're doing. And so that is, comes out of the general part of our board budget. These are our expenses for quarter three. So for January through March, these are the expenses that the board has had as a whole.
I'll pause for one second if anyone has questions about any of these charges. Yeah, go ahead. We just talk about when we say full or part-time salary and rate wages, who that's going to generally. Yeah. So it goes to the tech team that helps to ensure that when we do our videos for our meetings, um, that they're compensated for the extra hours that they are working as that is happening. I'm gonna look at our CFO. I think that that is the main, that's right.
Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Okay. Just thank you for asking. Right. It's staff who support the board. Yes. Right. Yeah. That, that's what, that's in essential capacities. Yes. Yes. We would not be able to broadcast our meetings if we did not have the folks who supported us in the work that we do. Great. And then here are a few of the other expenses that we have. Um, for the board, You will see, uh, we did do our community engagement activ. Um, most all of the board members held their community engagement meetings.
This is a new cost that came into our board, um, budget for this year. And it was a trial year in our budget to see how much this would cost so that as we are planning for our budget for next year, um, just to be able to prepare for that. And it was below what we had estimated it would be. So I think that that's really great to be able to have food and staff and again, supports at those events. On the next few slides, you will note that we then have the individual breakdowns for each of our board members. And so it shows any expenses that those board members
had in January, February, and March. I will remind everyone that with the passage of our new board budget policy, GP 16, moving into next year, um, the costs that will, aside from compensation that goes to board members will be directly related to professional development and then any other costs. So for example, on Director Youngquist here, you see there is, his technology is included in his individual budget for next year. Um, that becomes part of the general budget for the board.
So that was part of our discussion about how much to, uh, allocate for each board member. And, and the policy indicates that our expenses will be the professional development related expenses. So anyone wants to review these in more detail. They're all in the presentation. Any questions about individual board member expenses? Great. And then the last item that I wanted to bring to the board, this is actually going into next, uh, calendar or fiscal year,
but in talking to the district accountability committee, which is the one committee that is a board committee, um, we realized that they have not had a budget. And so we, director Erman and I have worked with their, um, with the finance committee, their budget committee, um, as well as their chair, to talk about what are costs that they have that would be helpful for them to continue to do the work that they do. A lot of that's either been paid out of their own pocket
pockets or it comes out of other budgets. And so this is the request that they put forth for us in terms of where they need, um, some additional support. And so we wanted to present this to the board in terms of our board budget for next year, which is pretty comparable in terms of the amount that we have for this year. Um, we believe that this is not gonna throw our budget off to include this, um, especially because we're, we're below, um, spending right now. But wanted to just put this in front of you all,
see if you all had any questions, if there was any feedback you wanted us to take back to Dak, um, around this. But we were excited to be able to support them in this way. I think that's an excellent idea and I really appreciate you and Director Esman working with DAK on that because I know that's been a tension that they've had for a couple years, so I really appreciate that. Vice President Delarosa, did you have something? Oh, When you're done, I'm done. Oh, I just wanted to ask the other advisory, uh, committees, councils, we have, do any
of those get any budget? So all of those, Just so everybody Yes. Knows. So all of those other committees fall actually under the superintendent, so I dunno, Dr. Morero, if you wanna Yes, they do, but that is part of our family and community engagement department, so it would not be reflected in the board's budget. Okay. Director Ertman, Just to clarify further, the district Accountability Accountability committee is technically a board committee of the board and the other acts are not.
Correct. Thanks for that. Clear. And That's required by state law, correct? Correct. The DAC is, yes. Yeah. Yep. Mr. Youngquist. Yeah. Just a question around the professional development, is that also kind of staff that are providing support in regard to data? Or what's an example of that? I guess They're, um, they've expressed interest in some local conferences that have conference fees that, that are, that times prohibited for members to, to attend. And so they ask specifically around that. Thank you. And I will just add on that
because we asked similar questions. Um, that it's around building their skills to do the community engagement and leadership necessary for the DAC to then be able to work with the, um, collaborative school councils, the CSCs. So it's this kind of train the trainer of professional development to ensure that all of our, um, organ, all of our, both our DAC and our CSCs, all of the members of those committees feel supported. Anybody else have any other questions? Um, director Seal, turn it back to you.
That's all I have, so thank you everyone. We'll have the, uh, end of year report when we get back in August. Fantastic. Thank you so much. I appreciate your work and Director Mann's work on this. So thank you. And of course, Chuck Carpenter, thank you as always for supporting us. So Ro I will turn it over to you as the next item is yours. Thank you, Madam President. Alright. Um, excited to share, um, an update with the board. I know the board you have, uh, been engaged in your individual capacities, um, to a certain extent around this initiative. Uh, but also some members of our community.
I'm gonna ask Mr. Joe Edmondson to come join us. Um, I think there's going to be an opportunity, uh, Madam President on whether we go through the entire deck or there's a nice place to pause in the middle. 'cause I'll let you direct, you know, where there's a good place to pause. So you let me know. Alright, so, uh, tonight's, uh, presentation is intended to provide an update to our community on an updated policy, pardon? That we are establishing to support our schools across, uh, uh, across the board, and particularly those who've
historically, uh, struggled with performance. So over the recent months, we've engaged our community. So the acts that the aforementioned acts, um, as an example, um, Can you explain what acts are just to make sure? Advisory councils? Yep, there you go. Advisory councils, um, our school partners, um, our unions, um, and the two large unions I would say. Um, and of course our charter partners as well to establish a common understanding, uh, that will enable us to move forward towards a process that allows us
to more effectively support student outcomes. Um, and I'll draw on why we're taking this approach, but before we get to that, everything that we do is driven by our mission to ensure that every learner thrives. And this presentation is aligned specifically to EL two and EL L five, not, I think this may be the first time that we have EL five as a direct way of, uh, um, addressing it. So I'm excited to, again, establish our commitment to accomplishment and accountability, which is
what we're aiming to do here. So, uh, this update, we will have two parts. I'm gonna do the first part of it, uh, Mr. Edmondson is going to update on the launch of an exciting new network of schools called Elevate. And that's where I mentioned that we could possibly pause in between two. So we'll see how, how, uh, how you all feel as I continue. Thank you. Alright, so the school transformation process. Um, what are we trying to accomplish? Uh, we're looking to streamline support for our persistently low performing schools, uh,
implement specific interventions in a more timely manner and ensure our approach is both transparent and consistent across schools. In my journey, the road show of introducing this conceptually, um, I did receive feedback and particularly I remember vividly from the dac some of you were in attendance. So is, is this about the bar? And in essence, that's a great way of describing it. Right now we have different bars of expectations across our network of schools, whether we wanna accept it or not. It is true, um, in particular when it comes to district run expectations. And we've had, uh, schools chronically on the clock well
beyond the threat, the threshold well beyond the threshold of five years, um, in certain cases, even when it comes to our charter partners who have a well-established bar who can be renewed, but yet still are let's say orange or even red in certain cases. So it's establishing a bar of expectations, but also, uh, looking at what I believe and the team believes is, um, not working in terms of how we're functioning here locally, but also in the grand scheme of, of the state specifically,
we're right now in a five year accountability clock. Um, and it serves primarily as the mechanism for addressing low persistent schools, right? A label. And with that label comes some extra expectations, if you will. Um, this is problematic for a number of reasons. One, the state SPF establishes a fairly low bar. Um, 25 points is the absolute bottom of the scale. Uh, schools only need 34 points to be orange, 44 to be yellow. Uh, given that schools have five years
to improve their performance, a student could potentially spend their entire elementary, middle, and secondary career in low performing schools. Um, we are deferring to the state board on how best to should address low performing schools. And I struggle with this 'cause the irony, those of us who've, uh, been part of this process and, and the state of local control, right? The land of, of local autonomy and flexibility. The irony of, of, in year five, we have to go before a non-local entity and,
and in essence ask for, for permission to continue serving our kids. Um, to me that's still mind boggling and I still struggled with that from day one here. Um, and this will prevent that from happening, no disrespect to our state board of education, but what can they offer that we can't do here locally? I believe it's our duty to serve our own, again, in the land of, uh, local control. And I believe that we have the expertise and capacity and maybe, uh, the state cannot. So this is not an anti state. It's, I struggle seeing what's the purpose of going
before the state board when I believe we have a duty to our community to address our own business. So a a little bit of a soliloquy there, but I feel strongly, uh, in that regard. Um, and it's been great. No, we've had great, uh, presentations before the state board from Manuel. I've been part of two of them resulted in them coming off the clock, but we have not been successful. When it comes to a Lincoln, I believe that we will, but I don't know if the state intervention was the catalyst of that. It was what we decided to do. Um, I believe seven, eight years is,
is just simply not acceptable. I think we have five years and we can figure it out. Um, here are, uh, some more of our current state, so several other factors to consider innovation. Schools may continue exercising their flexibility regardless of where they are on the clock. I see that as, as a concern. There's this notion of, uh, bonded and earned autonomy. Uh, charter school contracts, as I mentioned earlier, regardless of where they are on the state clock, can be renewed. And we've seen some of that as we go through our yearly, uh, renewal cycle. Uh, several new school applications have been submitted throughout the years that do not align with the needs
of our organization. Um, and that can be problematic as well. Um, I think that's, this approach solves for that because it creates a nice, uh, competitive process to, to respond accordingly to the needs of the community if there is a school, um, in need of being reimagined. And I'll get to that in a moment. Here's where we're looking to move. So the school transformation process outlines specific interventions that can be taken based on where a school is on the five year accountability clock. So schools in the first, second, third year can be renewed.
Reconfigured, you'll see some examples of what that is. A lot of those, uh, reconfigure elements we've seen even in the EL 18, um, solution that was brought before the board. Um, year, year four is where we have to make a a tough decision where we're saying we'll have to reimagine. So it's renew, reconfigure, reimagine, and to reimagine year four, before year five, which will consist of either the school closing, which I know is hard to say, but we've been through that recently with the EL L 18 process or replacing the school with a new operator.
And I'll get into that in a moment. Alright, so here is what it would look like. So it will have implications for all schools. Ultimately, all school types will be held to a more similar set of expectations of performance. Currently, charters must go through a competitive renewal process every few years in order to keep operating innovation. Schools are reviewed at least three years, um, ensure that they're making their progress. This policy will ensure that we're establishing clear set of expectations for our district run schools as well.
That does not exist. Example that I mentioned most recently, Manuel and Lincoln, are the two, uh, clear examples. In addition for our district run schools, we will establish the Elevate Schools network. Mr. Edmondson will speak to that in a moment. Uh, for our innovation schools, we ask them to adjust. We, we would ask them to adjust their practices as they progress on the state clock For charter schools. We're continuing, um, our discussions to update the contract language to be representative of what we're doing with all the other schools. Uh, a specific point that I want to name about new school applications.
Uh, if and when, uh, we issue a call for quality schools, any provider can submit an application. And I've learned historically that of course there are some, um, charters that engage, but also the district and even the community has engaged as well. That's what I mentioned, um, earlier in terms of more competitive process as opposed to what we have fielded in the last few years, which are school communities or entities that want to establish a school that really aren't aligned to the needs of the community. And it's, uh, caused a, a difficult, um, recommendation on my part, um,
and has led us to the state board and so forth. Alright, so this next slide outlines, um, the various aspects of the policy to be, uh, implemented. So district-run schools will be eligible for renewal reconfiguration beginning this upcoming fall. A few potential actions are listed here on this slide, including the launch, as I mentioned, the Elevate network, which we're incredibly confident, uh, about, uh, the successes that we'll have there. We've seen a little bit of it already, just simply with the data mine process, with the added supports that Joe will get into, I feel incredibly confident, um,
beginning the fall of 2026. So a year from this upcoming fall, all schools and, uh, I ideally inclusive of charters will be eligible for reimagining. Again, this may consist of either closing the school or replacing it with another provider with no, with without any exception. That's the tough part of, of, of this because we've been through the grueling process of, uh, school closure. But this is, uh, not because of enrollment. This is our duty to make sure that we have again, uh, expectation per EL five of, uh, quality in our schools.
Um, we're continuing to negotiate with the charter sector. I believe that there is a tremendous, uh, interest, uh, but, uh, not an altogether all in, uh, agreement yet. And I wanna stress yet 'cause I believe that we will get there. Uh, here's the list of the 25 schools on the clock. Uh, we've crossed out the schools that will be closing at the end of this year per EL 18. Note that we also have, uh, five charters on this list. Um, and this next slide shows the same, but with our approach. So when identifying, we wanted to make sure that we had, uh,
a runway for schools, this should not be a surprise. So, uh, lake and Abraham Lincoln, you see that they're boxed, they're already under, uh, state directed, uh, actions. So, uh, it would not make sense to start in year four. Definitely not year five plus. Um, so we're looking at, uh, our schools in year three, or as they progress, I should say next year into year four. That would be, um, the ones most, I guess the earliest schools that would be considered for the re-imagining component. And, uh, should we elect to replace one of those struggling schools. Uh, this slide provides a high level overview of
what the process would look like. So December of this upcoming, uh, calendar year, so December, 2025. Um, and as needed in future years, we will release a call for quality schools seeking applications for potential replacement providers. And those, again, for schools that will be in year four. Uh, you all the board of education would vote on the new school applications by June 30th of that academic year. So, uh, a little bit over a year from now, applicants approved by the board may elect to submit a school placement application to replace an existing school. This will require the school to address
how they would apply their school model to the specific location, uh, that has been identified. Then a placement review committee will evaluate the, the strength of, uh, the application and make the recommendation to me. Then I will then inform by that and recommendation, bring it to the committee and will recommend, uh, a replacement for you all to consider. So that's the natural pause point that I feel that we should take. Terrific. Perfect. All right. Uh, director Erman, I saw your hand. Oh, no. Okay. Questions or comments? Nobody has any. Okay. Uh, Mr. Youngquist, the, and director C Yeah.
Just interested in an example of what reconfiguration might look like. Absolutely. So as we engage a good example, I'm gonna reference, uh, Koons Miller if I can. So, although Koons Miller was not on the clock, it's the best way for me to describe it. If we identify in year one, year two, before we get into year four, that a K 12 scope, um, it's not the best for that community, um, and they're showing tremendous success in the secondary, then the reconfiguration could be, okay, this is now going to be a six 12 as opposed to a K 12. Director CI
had one I wanna start off with, oh, I wanna start off with, I would didn't know if I heard you correctly, um, on slide, sorry, hold on, on slide 14, next one. Yep. You mentioned that this as schools progressed to year four on the state accountability clock, then there would be the new application process. But earlier in the site it said if they were five plus years on the accountability clock. So can you you explain that to Me? Yeah, thank you. So yes, in year four is when we will, uh,
engage and ultimately make the decision before we get into year five, uh, with year five being truly the, the initial year of inception for the new operator. So, um, if I said earlier, it's probably in reference to, I'm sorry, this chart, perhaps that makes it a little bit difficult to, to see just visually, just because we're not starting from, um, an empty canvas. Mm-hmm. Um, but specifically those schools in year three,
if they're in year four, we would be engaged in this process with them and in the following year for those school in year two, if they continue to be on, uh, on the clock. Okay. Thank you for that, for that. I have several other questions. Is that okay? Um, so I was also curious, so along those same lines for year four, you said the board would vote by June 30th. Is the intention then that that school opens as that new school in August? Or is there a year, like a year zero Gr Great question. I think, uh, we, we can entertain either, right?
I think that if there is, uh, if there is time, um, and, and the operator is well equipped, like, I guess it's circumstantial. There are some entities that can easily replicate what they're doing well, uh, immediately. Um, but we would be open for a year zero, um, if that's what's needed. Am I wondering around that is, and this is also in the renew? I think Renew is the first one, right? Yeah. And then reconfigure, um, just thinking about, especially if you're gonna reimagine having to hire new staff mm-hmm. Hire if you're gonna change curriculum. So I just flagged that as perhaps something to think through
and, and maybe Joe's gonna talk about that a little bit in his presentation with the network, but I would just flag that, that that would worry me as someone who has had to start schools from the ground up that it's really hard to do in a month and a half. So, um, and then I have a couple of questions in terms of, uh, the conversations with the charter sector and how, actually this is not just for charters, but both for charters and for innovation schools. Given that there is explicit state statute about renewal
process about closure and the ability to be able to appeal to the state board, how are you, um, making sure that those are aligned so that we're not asking charters to give up their rights that they have per state's statute? Yeah, great question. So we are in conversations with our charter, uh, sector as well, the innovation, but in particular charter, which I believe it's, it's the challenge. There, there are 27 different boards that need to, uh, agree.
And once we have that agreement, we would update the contract, and the contract would, would, uh, be in line with what we're, uh, articulating in terms of all schools. So, But would that include that they would not, if they chose to be part of this process, that they then would forego an opportunity should they not agree with a decision for closure or for re-imagining that they could not appeal that to the state board? That is the, that that is what we're asking them to consider. And here's why. If we're looking to establish a bar,
I think it would be incredibly, uh, unfair for us to hold all system schools accountable, in particular district run school who does not have the ability to appeal, uh, for a charter to say, okay, we agree, but when it actually happens, then they exercise that option. So they would have to forego that. Okay. Knowing legally they could, but I, I would hope that that's established clearly and that is the ask of the charter sector. Okay. Then last question, um, I'm curious how this aligns with the timing that's outlined in EL 18,
because in um, the presentation it set there was end of November notification, but EL 18 is actually October notification. And so, um, I was just curious how you're thinking about this given other decisions that might be, have to have to be made about schools regardless of their performance here? Yeah, We, we did take that into account. I think that the board's discussion and decision to put a bit of a moratorium on EL 18 allows us to quite frankly, have this come to a decision point
before the next wave of EL 18 considerations. Um, so in essence, I think that we'll have this come before the board, before the next wave of schools for consolidation based on enrollment. So, um, and then by then I think that maybe they could not be more ELA team conversation if we know right size perhaps through this approach. And Then, so it is a bit of a toss up in terms of timing. But I, we do forecast this happening before the next wave of EL 18. Okay. And then similarly,
I know we have not approved this policy, but the current structure of EL 20, given how it is a waterfall effect, as we think about buildings, I'm curious how you're thinking about how EL 20 plays into this and that. We haven't obviously approved that policy yet, but what are your thoughts about that when it comes to facilities? There, there are some thoughts, and I, I don't know where the board is going to ultimately land. Uh, we started this conversation in particular, I, uh, around this time last year, quite frankly, uh, it was well
before the conversations at EL 20. So, uh, I can't say that it was informed in any which way, based on EL 20, are there gonna be impacts? Potentially? Yes. Um, so I don't know how to answer that, uh, direct to see it, because I don't know how you all are going to ultimately land EL 20. Well, we'll shift accordingly. The, the beauty of this is, is that, uh, at the moment, as you see, it's a admin policy, right? So it can, uh, uh, shift accordingly. Um, the, what I'm trying to establish here, and I believe it's clear, I just want to use this as an opportunity, is this allows us to say very firmly
that we have a bar, and it's the same bar right now. We do not. Right? So, um, I believe this is, uh, simply a step towards the right direction. 'cause in my conversations and what I'm calling the road show, uh, some were content and excited about the same bar, some wanted more, meaning let's raise the bar before we even decide to entertain that. Let's establish the bar. 'cause right now we don't have it. That's great. And I appreciate that. I think that that is an excellent move to be able to go that direction. I apologize. I do have one other question.
I like, um, I, my last question was, um, sorry, You caught me on the bar situation. Sure. And then I was like, so excited of how having the same bar that I, I lost the question that I had. Um, oh, when you talk about, um, because of the way that the charter contracts are currently written, usually they're not renewed and they closed. And so the way this is written, is it recommended that a charter school, if it becomes reimagined, it's a replacement as opposed to a closure.
And would the, I don't know if this would be language in the contract or how that would work, or is it essentially a charter school instead of being reimagined, would actually be closed and then there'd be an open call for a new school? Yes. I, I think that you can, I, I very carefully chose the words to use here. Mm-hmm. We say reimagine, but we're saying replace, which is also to close. Okay. So it's all in the same, I'm just treading very carefully here. That's what I wanted to clarify. Thank you,
Mr. Youngquist. You got a follow up to that. Yeah. And I just got cut up on the last que. I appreciate that clarification as well. Um, my question is, is I think pretty straightforward. One, I appreciate the interest in getting ahead of statutory and state board requirements. Um, and just wanna, um, check my understanding that the, the state timeline doesn't go away. We're still there, we're still reporting to the state. Absolutely. We may still go in front of the state board with the same kind of timeline and rhythm as we have in the past. Is that right? Ab Absolutely. Yes. So the state, uh, the state timeline is still, uh, applies not only
to DPS everywhere else. The only thing that will change for us in the way that we operate is that we would not go before the state board on year five and beyond. Um, because we would've made a decision on the school by then. And, uh, just, uh, one clarification team. Thank you. So, the way that we have, uh, written in the policy that we will have a year zero. However, I do feel that in certain cases it could be possible that we can have immediate operator, but right now we are given that one year grace of, uh, planning for the new operator. And as a follow up on that, could the,
the operator could be a charter school, an innovation school, or a district run school, correct? Correct. So they all could apply in the open call process? That is correct. Okay. Anybody else questions or comments? No. Oh, sure. Mr. Quist, would an operator also be an external manager within the same school site? Would that be a possibility Or? I think the best way to describe it is all of the above. Um, the most important piece is ensuring that it is, um, what that community is in need of or yearning for,
and that we establish a clear process on how we make the decision. And ultimately, I bring the recommendation to you all. So any, any entity that you can imagine can issue an app, can respond to the call for quality school. Thank you. Director Erman, Just a comment. I don't actually have a question here. I, I really, uh, appreciate the thinking here. Um, and, and in particular because, uh, Denver Public Schools has a, has a history of looking at, um, at schools that are struggling on,
on performance, uh, and figuring out how to punish them. And this feels like an effort in supporting them. And, and I think that that's how, that's how we're most likely to move forward and, and bump up our achievement. Thank you. Um, vice President Delarosa, director, gaan, do you have any comments? No. Vice President Delarosa? Um, one of more of an explanation. I don't think, not everyone, you talked about the data mind, and I don't think everybody knows what you've been doing or how long you've been doing the work with Data Mind.
So if you could give it a bit of an explanation for the community. Yeah, I will. Um, in a moment, Joe is going to highlight not only that, the other supports. So that's part of the second part. But for those of us who are unfamiliar, uh, it is a convening of, um, certain school represented by their school leadership. Usually the principal, sometimes the principal and ap and, uh, myself and the cabinet, um, members of the district leadership team a lot who are in attendance now. But in addition to that, all the support mechanisms that we have, um, in a room where we discuss the school,
the what's happening at the school, what's needed at the school, uh, data analysis in a very public way, and truly just displaying wraparound supports for that school. And it's proven to be incredibly invaluable because we've seen some immediate, uh, successes just simply because of that process. What's exciting is that process multiplied by, um, compounded, I would say with all the other supports that we're gonna put into the Elevate Network, has me incredibly encouraged about ensuring that eventually, I believe that we'll say that we have zero schools that are read. I, I believe that wholeheartedly, but that we'll have hardly any, if any, at all on the clock.
I believe we can't get there. And also, you said you would create a placement review committee. Who would that be comprised of? Yeah, so that is, um, an, an existing policy. 'cause we, we relive some policy, but that's members of, uh, both the community, very similar to how we've engaged in others. So, uh, we can think of bond oversight, so that'd be internal, external individuals. So everyone's going to have, uh, an opportunity to be part of that. There will be a process, of course. My LA and my last question, and maybe, uh, Joe will talk about this. How will you engage the families in this, uh, process?
Because it would, for me, as a parent, it would be very important to know where the school is and what are the efforts being done to, to get it to that bar. Yeah. So yes, you're right, Joe will address that. Okay. Uh, we have an absolute duty to ensure that the school community, even if they just simply engaged in, um, the Elevate Schools network, which would mean that they're no longer part of their existing collaborative, there is going to be explicit communication and also, um, the roadmap of
what potentially could happen if we're not successful in supporting and turning around the outcome for the schools. So that is, uh, well, part of, uh, the Elevate Networks communication. We and our team will support, um, our, our innovation, uh, schools, zone schools in particular, and our charter schools to ensure that they have the same line of communication with theirs. But, you know, they're autonomous, so they'll have to do it on their own wrong. So you will work with the zone schools in their, uh, Yes. Interesting. Um, one of the charter leaders, um, and this was a welcomed request, unexpected on my part, uh,
when we introduced this, um, had a similar reaction as Direct to Sea, excited about the bar, um, and the same level of expectations. But the request was, uh, I wouldn't consider a formal request, but it was a wondering, is there any way that the Elevate Schools Network can support us, us being the charter, um, to ensure that we also, uh, move off the clock? Uh, I wasn't expecting that, but they were, again, uh, well, well welcomed, uh, requests on my part. Go ahead. I just wanna really, uh, just clarify my understanding. Um, and it relates to something that Director Esserman said.
What it, it, what it sounds like is that after four years, this is the ultimate academic penalty based on the state SPF, um, with a consequence that I don't know that the state has ever employed in regard to school closure. And I just wanna make sure that I'm, I'm understanding that it's not, that I'm not supportive of that. No, that is correct. Okay. That is correct. And if I can, again, I, uh, uh, the, the State Department of Education, I appreciate what they're, especially even now during the time that we are all under fire, as the students mentioned in their video.
Um, but I do not know respectfully if the state can intervene the way that we would need them to. So we would alleviate that burden from them. So, before we go on, I just have a couple comments. I appreciate what Director Esserman said just about the history of how DPS has done this in the past. So, Joe, I'm really excited you're in that seat because I know you know the history of where we've been. So I would just, um, reemphasize something Director Jay LaRosa said about bringing the families and the students and the teachers along to be sure that they really understand, um, this process.
Because that on slide nine where it says reimagine means to close or replace a school, I just know how traumatic that can be for communities. So keeping that in mind, um, I agree that I think we have a better runway for schools to be successful. And I know that it's better that we work with our schools than having the state come in, but I just can't underscore enough the impact on a community when we replace or close a school and have somebody else come in. And on that note, on, um, when you mention on slide 10
that there'd be new school applications that would match the needs of the community, again, I would ask that the community be involved also in what the needs are. So it's not somebody outside who doesn't understand the community coming in, going back to my comment of making sure that the community understands and the teachers understand what's happening. And I had a similar comment to what a direct, um, director Delarosa asked about who would be on the review committee, because that's really important too, to make sure that we have student voice as well on that, as well as families. So, thank you. And I'll wait, I have, I have some other questions,
but I think you're gonna address them. So, alright. Thank you. Take you away. Thank You. Thank you all, uh, for that. Um, before I pass it over to Joe, a little bit of a, of a, a preface here, um, excited about how we are going to support open to seeing if there is more interest beyond that one inquiry from a charter leader who asked for support. Um, and I don't know if that's been said at least recently, I shouldn't say ever, um, that this is not in my case about closing schools. It's about ensuring that we don't have schools on,
on the clock, right? And, and, and that means all schools. I am incredibly confident that we will have a tremendous success because, uh, aside from the wraparound supports, uh, Joe Edmondson, his and his team are going to make sure that they, no pun intended, elevate the expectations. And in, in this room, I've had some great conversations with folks about Ableness. You know, can we get folks to a place that they can even accept and make the shift, uh, in terms of mindset and efficacy that our students can, and whatever those barriers are, that will remove them. Um, so Joe, take it from here.
Alright, can you hear me? One thing we've learned from Paula comment is you just gotta speak right into that mic and make sure it's on. I'll do. Thank You. Thank you. Yeah. And just for you, those of you who don't know me that well, I am Joe Amundson. I am the Executive Director of School Transformation, and I'll be overseeing this work. But I wanna first just take a quick second to acknowledge two of my colleagues that are in the room that really are leading this work at, at the ground level. So, one, Ashley Madonna, and Dr. Sawyer, who I'll speak about a little bit later, who will be the director of the Elevate Network.
Um, and I think, as you mentioned, um, Dr. Olson, I've been doing this for 13 years, uh, really wanting to stay grounded in the community and all of these decisions. Um, I see myself as the school's biggest champion, biggest supporter. And that's, I, I, I prefer that title if I, if I can choose one. So, um, I'm gonna just speak a little bit about the inception of Elevate Schools Network. I'm sure there'll be more, uh, iteration of this as we work with our school leaders over the June
and July leadership week, and would love to be able to share how this is coming to fruition. So our goal with the Elevate is simple. It's to ensure no school gets to year four on the state clock. For many years, our focus on improving schools has been to give principals autonomy, flexibility, and resources. In many cases, this worked, in fact, from 2019 to now, we had 29 schools on the clock, and today we have 12 and six that are on watch. So through that, we, we have seen it, it, it work. Um, but when it didn't work to the point that the two
of you were talking about, and when schools closed, there was a powerful critique that if the district knows how to improve schools, why didn't we just do it? Why didn't we just put in the supports? And I think that is what is this is all about. That's exactly what Elevate sets out to do. So this is not a new initiative. This is not about experimenting or finding the next big thing. It's about ensuring our schools have the conditions needed for success, such as being fully staffed, having clean and vibrant facilities, and removing operational barriers so that our
educators can ex execute our instructional vision. It's really about execution of what we know works. Ultimately, we need to ensure every school on the clock has the focus, support aligned systems and instructional leadership needed to implement the DPS instructional framework. With Excellence Elevate is our move from theory to action, a network where our instructional priorities come to life, and every student has access to the kind of teaching and learning we know works. That's, that's the pitch for Elevate. So our vision and, and our mission, our vision of the Elevate Network is
through focus support. In implementing proven practices, schools will have lasting success. The mission is to ensure the conditions are in place for schools to have high impact execution. Grounded in consistency and shared accountability. This is us being in schools, doing the work with our schools, um, not telling them what to do or not just saying Good luck. These leaders, um, to bring this to life, I mentioned Dr. Sawyer, our Director of schools will lead the network alongside a, a team of highly effective school leaders that are embedded in the Elevate Schools.
The research on school transformation keeps telling us over and over external providers that are not in the building, doing the work with us, doesn't turn around schools. We have to be in schools doing the work. So these leaders won't just coach from the sidelines. They'll be in classrooms, in planning meetings in side by side. They're with the principals and the educators Building capacity and ensuring the DPS instructional framework is deeply implemented. This is all about getting that, that instructional framework in these schools. So why do we have the Elevate Network?
So as we launch Elevate, I wanna underscore why this is necessary. While we've reduced the number of district run schools on the state accountability clock since 2019 significantly, we're still seeing persistent gaps and current supports haven't been enough to drive lasting improvement. Making sure our most vulnerable students are positioned for success is what this is about. This network is our answer to that challenge. While nothing is guaranteed, we're setting up the conditions for success. So to launch Elevate, we use a targeted data informed approach.
For this initial cohort of schools, we focused on elementary and E eight schools that are on the clock or recently exited, as well as current interim data to assess performance trajectories, because we're talking about schools getting off the clock. But then we also need to support these schools 'cause we see schools dip back in. So the idea that we've seen schools like Hallett on here, that's not on the clock I wanna name, but is this school that we have seen a big drop in the one year and we wanna make sure that they're getting the support. But, so this led us to identify the Elevate eight, a cohort of schools that will serve as a proof point for
what is possible when we fully implement our instructional priorities with focus and fidelity, ensuring the conditions exist for kids to succeed. So we have other schools on the clock as as, uh, Dr. Mera just showed. So, while Elevate launches with the initial cohort of eight elementary and E eight schools, I wanna be clear that all schools on the clock continue to receive strategic, embedded, collaborative support. And as another part of my school transformation department, I think some of you know Emily Yates and the school improvement team that also continues to support our tiered support schools.
So this slide shows schools currently on the clock that we will monitor for continued tiered supports. Many of these schools are engaging in a lot of that deep community engagement and redesign that's happening right now at JFK, for example. So schools that are not in the Elevate Network that are getting the tiered supports receive priority support from their network director, instructional leadership support. They, we work with them on their CDE aligned accountability planning. Their UIP, they're tailored to their current needs. Realtime monitoring through the data mine, which Dr. Merrill mentioned.
These schools do get to come and speak to their needs and their plans and access to focus resources. These are the schools that are eligible for our state and federal grants for school improvement. That's managed through this team. So I mentioned that schools like JFK and Lincoln are receiving that wraparound support through their network team and working closely with the tiered support team to, to implement very similar strategies to what the Elevate Network is doing. Alright, so this is our, these are our essential drivers. So how are we going to make this happen in these schools? And again, I says focus, focus, focus, and implement.
So this slide shows our two Elevate essential drivers. Each is directly aligned to the DPS instructional framework and supported through in-school implementation. So Driver one is about rigorous and aligned instruction and intervention. Elevate will support teachers in using high quality instructional materials planning and lesson internalization on a weekly basis, and adjusting based on the needs of our students. Again, not things you've never heard before, we just need to make sure it happens with high fidelity in these schools. School schedules will protect instructional time, ensuring schools have access every day
to excellent instruction in meaningful interventions. The most recent TNTP report that talked about these, uh, these schools that are, are making the greatest progress, keep talking about is we need to ensure baseline instruction in every classroom. And that's what this is really about. TNTP is, uh, the new teacher project, and they just did a huge report on, uh, schools that are, are, are making significant progress and continuous continuing progress. Driver two thank you is about the intentional school culture within the framework. So aligned to the frameworks positive and inclusive learning environments,
schools will implement clear culturally responsive school-wide culture plans with consistent routines and strategies to drive student engagement and belonging. So again, having the support in the school to make sure that the things that we know our schools are creating and are trying to do, happen and happen with great degree of fidelity. So the ultimate goal is to meet schools where they are and rapidly build their capacity. This represents a shift from compliance driven oversight to real time capacity building leadership that improves instruction immediately. And what makes Elephant Elevate different is
how we support this work deeply embedded in the weekly PLCs, embedded realtime coaching and co-created professional learning plans based on each school's needs. I think wrapping this up, just as we close, I want to center us all on what matters the most, our students. So Elevate is about making sure that our most continuously underserved students have access to excellent instruction each and every day. Over the next two years, we expect Elevate Schools to exit the state accountability clock by reaching yellow
or green on the SPF within one year, meet the district's accelerated trajectory targets for desegregated groups, consistently implement the Elevate Essential drivers aligning to the instructional framework, strengthening teaching and leadership capacity through embedded coaching and aligned professional learning, and staying accountable through our quarterly DBS data. Mines reviews, where we're all involved in the school. So Elevate isn't a program, it's a commitment to instructional quality, to system-wide coherence, and most importantly, to our students. This is how we move from theory to action,
from good intention to real outcomes. So appreciate the time to give the sales pitch and why we are doing this. But again, I think to your point, this is about us doing what's right for our kids in our schools, with our schools not from, from here, not being en you know, engaged. So excited to be part of this. Excited to have Dr. Sawyer, Ashley, and we're building out the team and we are excited to, to, to be in these schools. We've already started doing visits in all of them, and there's great things happening in these schools and there's great leaders and we are just excited to accelerate that.
J just want to add, uh, I know that he would like to, he being Joe, uh, named some of the other supports, uh, beyond, uh, Ashley and, and Christian, uh, Dr. Sawyer and team. Um, but soon we will. And a lot of you will be excited because there are a lot of leaders that you'll all familiar with who've led in, uh, many capacities and communities who are, uh, bringing their expertise to this, uh, network. But we have to wait a little bit for that now. Folks are still making decisions. And could I invite Christian, please to join us if you do have questions? Please, please. Um, Dr. Sawyer, come on up. Thank you.
I'm glad you could be here. Thank you. Thank you. All right. I'll open it up for questions in Cummins. Director Gaan. Hi gentlemen. Um, one question. So you, you do mention, um, learning and training for leadership. What does that look like specifically? And I'm asking because I'm thinking about the Southwest Denver schools, uh, that we do have new leadership, new principals in those schools. And so I'm curious if you can specify a little bit more about what that training or, um, leadership training that they'll be receiving or support. You wanna go ahead. You know, I'm,
we are just now you get, You get to speak right into that mic and turn it on. Thank you. Thank you. Perfect. Um, you know, I'm thinking about Meredith Hoy's research. Um, oh, Christian Sawyer, nice to meet you. I'm currently, uh, the director for Collaborative seven. Uh, and I am so excited, uh, and honored to be a part of this work that I think taps into a deep, uh, purpose that we have as educators. I'm thinking about Meredith Ho's research, uh, into the principle learning process and how when it's really effective, principals are part
of designing their learning. Um, so that we can really anchor our principal's, uh, journey with professional learning in, um, the instructional core because our principals come into the work with, um, I think a compelling purpose for being instructional leaders. And I think it's our duty when we think about the Elevate Network and as a district to really create the conditions, uh, for our principals to grow and to flourish in their continuous journey to be the best instructional leaders that they can be.
So I think it is a co-construction process for looking at what we know the, the core components of instructional leadership are, and how, which area of that does one principal really wanna grow in, and how we see the school's data aligning with that trajectory. Whereas another principal might be in a different area, uh, a different component of that instructional leadership equation. So I think it's a co-construction process, um, grounded in instructional leadership. One quick commentary, um, will,
in customizing it, will that include, so in Southwest Denver, we have a predominantly Latino, Mexicano Chicano community. And so will that be customized to, to how they present to community, how they as leaders present to community or Spanish speaking communities. So I appreciate you saying that that will be customized to the school and the school leader. Anything else you can share about that? I think, um, what you bring up is so crucial. Um, in this next week, I'm really excited to get a chance to visit each school and really partner with the principals,
the instructional leadership teams to understand their school's unique journey and their school's unique set of needs. So that the learning process is, um, a bridge between, you know, the effective practices of instructional leadership and the unique needs of each school. I think that is absolutely essential to be effective. And Director ga, if I would could add, I think that the, the value that we are talking about with this is we're not sending our principals for development to UVA, we're not sending them away to learn. We, we've learned everything that we could possibly learn about how to do this work.
What we need to do is be in the schools side by side. I think what Christian and I have taught, like our, our value add here is, is real time coaching with and and aside and alongside our school leaders. And so development is done through the work, not about the work. Other questions and comments? Um, director Esserman? Aye. Um, one, I wanna say, uh, thank you Dr. Moreau for tapping excellent people to do this. Um, Joe and I have been doing a lot of work together for a lot of years, um, maybe dating back all 14.
Yeah. Um, and I've had a lot of conversations and I just had had one question about, excuse me, about one thing you said earlier, which is we've seen schools make progress and then backslide. And I'd just like to hear more about what we attribute that to and how we see this as preventing that from happening. Does that make Sense? Yeah. I mean that's, that's the most frustrating part about school improvement is you get to a good, and Christian, you can probably attest to this better than I, but most of the time you see backslide is
because we don't have strong succession plans and don't have those systems built out in the school. So our whole value here is get those systems in place, make sure that we have strong pipelines, that our, our focus is on the ILT 'cause we need the next people ready to step up and make sure that our systems are strong. I really do believe, like when we give, have given school leaders so much autonomy, that's been great when those school leaders know how to leverage that autonomy. And, but then when it becomes their, their thing, right? So this is about the district's way of doing instruction, doing school. And, and while every school community is different,
there are certain things about high quality instruction and implementation that if we can get right and get the systems right in these schools, then we can maintain that. That's our theory. And, and just a follow up, is there, is there also thought to, um, how we scaffold the structures and supports and the working alongside, uh, so that, so that at the point where the school is, is succeeding to the degree that we want it to mm-hmm. That, that we know that we're not pulling out the rug from under them. And, and that, that, yes, we're building those structures,
but we're also not withdrawing support before. Yeah. Uh, a community may be ready for that to occur. I think the one thing I would say, and Christian would love your thoughts too, it is really our tiered support strategy has been a largely financial in support of our schools. And you've seen like these funding cliffs that our schools have seen, right? We've given our schools a ton of resources to implement their models and their, their, their approaches elevate the, the resources are actually coming to the network to support these schools. We're trying to avoid that cliff. I still think the cliff is if we, when we pull,
elevate away too soon, if those systems are not strong, but it's not a, it's, it shouldn't be as big of a, now you've lost hundreds of thousands of dollars and we, you, you're back to square one. I just, I wanna build off of that. Um, I am a big believer in teacher leadership, having been a teacher and a principal for all of my career. Uh, almost. I think the more that we can grow and support teacher leadership and the capacity of our instructional leadership teams, the more the work is sustained. Um, once, you know, the strategic supports are, you know,
able to be scaled back. The rich leadership, um, and capacity of our teacher leaders remain in place with our students and communities. Director c you, I had a quick question on slide 20. You talked a bit about the district run schools that are tiered schools, and obviously they'll continue to receive support. Can can you talk just a little bit about what's the same or what's different between the Elevate Network and the tiered support schools? Yeah, I mean, the biggest different is the network is,
is all under one, what we currently call a collaborative in our tiered schools. They're in every collaborative. So they're in, they're getting the individualized support from the tiered supports team, from the academics team. And that's coordinated, but it's not as coordinated as in, we have these high pri, these high performing principals that work with Christian and our partners that are in the school. That is p purely targeted to the, the side by side coaching and implementation in those schools. Very similar structure happens through our tiered support team. So we have high priority school partners
that are in those schools, but they're working on the school improvement team and they're deploying resources at, in support of the directors instead of being under an umbrella of one collaborative director. That's the biggest difference between what's happening in the schools and other school and the Elevate. I think the other thing that I would say is, as we look at, we talked about, um, like JFK is a good example of a school that's going through a comprehensive redesign with the tiered support team right now to redefine vision, mission model, their programming.
Um, and that's happening. And we, we don't anticipate doing those type of large scale schooled, uh, design work in the Elevate Network. 'cause we're really saying this is about implementing the instructional framework with Fidelity. Gotcha. Thank you. Any other questions or comments? Um, vice President Delarosa, Uh, I guess this goes back to, um, have you thought about how you will engage families to support this effort? Because I think it's crucial for them to understand, um,
some of the supports their students might need, or maybe they can learn that they can support this work at home. And would that, you know, maybe like monthly study sessions, like why is it important to whatever it is, maybe that could be a great, um, idea for face to do something so that the parents have a buy-in to the work that that's being taking place and supporting the school. And then my second question, you know, in the past we used to have report cards.
So once you saw a school that had not a very good, um, grade, the enrollment went down. And would this be something that we would expect to CSM enrollment declines with those schools that maybe are on this list? I don't know who wants to answer that, but the first question is, how will we engage the families to support their students? Yeah, I, I'll take the, the latter part of the question. No, I do not, uh, foresee any enrollment dips, uh, because we have throughout the last few years, reshuffled the way that we really group schools.
And that hasn't resulted in any, uh, dips in enrollment. Um, and when it comes to, I guess the labels, you mentioned report cards. We may not have letters, but we do have the colors, right? And red schools are red schools and, and so forth. And, uh, yes, that has some impact. Um, but the goal of this is to not have any reds. So I believe that that, uh, will, I'm not gonna say that it's going to encourage families to make the choice to opt in, but I don't think it's gonna be a deterrent in terms of communication with, uh, with the school communities. Do you wanna take a Shot or, You know, from my role, I'm also thinking, uh,
thank you for your question about, um, we've done a lot of partnership with Dr. Wright and the academics work around high quality instructional materials, um, and the different approaches to, for example, accelerating literacy, um, accelerating student math achievement because we know our students are inherently brilliant. Um, and so thinking about on the instructional front, um, growing the family partnership with these new materials, like we've been looking at some really exciting, um,
different reading tools, um, and how we can, you know, grow that partnership with our families using these great resources. On the instructional front, I just came from a policy institute, and one of the things that they implemented in some of the, uh, one of the school districts was study sessions for families. So they could come in and understand what the concepts that were being taught and how to, how to support at home. Thank you. Go ahead, cia. I have a follow up on that around the community and the family engagement.
Um, I, it sounds like you're having really great conversations with school leaders and you're out visiting the schools and to director ton's question about how are you really thinking about the culture of the schools and, and the community that exists there? Um, I, I would, and you're gonna have to roll this out to teachers to understand what this new instructional bar is gonna look like and how they're gonna have these supports. But what's that conversation with families? Because I think back to Director de La Rosa's point, if their school was selected to be part of this network, that, like, that means something and,
and we want them to improve and we want to help them. But I, I'm just really curious, how, how are families actually going to know that there's a difference? Is there a plan for how we're engaging them in these conversations? I saw one of the culture items was around attendance, and so I'm just really curious how we're I, as a former educator, I'm well aware of like the work that happens with leaders and teachers, but I think families are so important in this as well. Mm-hmm. Uh, a hundred percent agree with everything you said.
And I think as you go through this, like the deck and we do name, you know, engagement and attendance and chronic absenteeism, we know those things. If they're not in, if we don't address them, we can't get to the, to the instructional core, right? 'cause if our kids aren't there, i, I, I wanna just name like where we are in this process. And these ideas are, please send them our way too, because we are, we are literally building this and we wanna build it with our school communities as well. This is where what we wanna hold tight on is we get, we need
to clear the way for our school leaders and our staff to be able to implement high quality instruction. That's, that's our non-negotiable. We don't wanna say we have everything figured out 'cause it is a community thing that we need to do. Like, if we set that bar, then our work over the summer with our school leaders and going into the year does need to include, uh, voices from our staff and from our, from our, from our families and students as well. Uh, thank you for all of this and I'm excited you two are leading this. And Joe, I'll just say again, I know, you know, as Reman said, you've been around a lot
and I know that you've learned a lot from this. Um, one of the things that I just want to reiterate, kind of going back to what, um, everybody's already said is how you're gonna engage the family, the community, the teachers, and how will you build trust with, so it doesn't feel like people from 1860 Lincoln are coming out to my school and saying, you need to do better or else, and I know that's not what your intention is. And Dr. Murrow, thank you for thinking through this so clearly and having some new ideas and having been at a school that experienced this, you know,
I know that when people came out to Kepner, I didn't trust them. And ultimately, you know, with reason. But how can you, and you might not have that answer now, but thinking about building trust within the community, with the front office staff, the custodial staff, the food and nutrition workers, like everybody who builds that school into what it is. Because people, as we've learned from the school closure process, people love their schools and they all want what's best for their children and want them to do better, but they have to trust you. And I would just say take great care
and think about the Situatedness Place Bridge Academy. It looks different than Cheltonham. And how you approach the community is so important to be able to think through that and thinking about what we've learned and what we know about other schools in our district that are bucking the trends and how are we learning from them to be able to say, this is something we can replicate, but that trust in the community that they're gonna have in U2 and the principles that you have is really important. So it doesn't become this thing, my school's closing and these people I don't know, are coming in and telling my principals and teachers what to do. So I think we'll leave this school and go somewhere else.
Uh, can I, can I just say like, I so, so appreciate, I mean, I was a turnaround teacher my first year, right? And I was, I didn't trust anybody who was coming into this school. Um, and I've been on the other side, right? As a district central, off per office person. I've probably been in most of these schools in some level capacity of support. The, the only way that a teacher, family member is going to trust us is up by us delivering, right? If we come in and we tell people what to do and we leave and we never come back, then, then that's you. You can't build trust. So I think we,
we've talked a lot about the way we are gonna build trust. The way we're gonna be able to implement any of this is by being there and delivering with really high quality support when people see that you're there for them. Uh, so it is, it is gonna take us being there, it's gonna have this team that's truly understands the school and that that's the work, right? It's like we have to build those relationships, but we build relationships by, by serving our schools. I, oh, go Ahead. No, I just to build on that, I, I really appreciate that, and I would encourage you also to talk to the people
and find out how they see their school. Because I know if somebody would've asked me what we needed at Keppner, I given you a laundry list of things and people are expert in their own lives and ask them what they're seeing at their school and how they're seeing the needs that they have. Go ahead, Dr. Sire, Thank you for that really rich feedback. Um, I just wanted to share that. Uh, and thanks to our school leaders, um, I've been having conversations with our school leaders to understand, you know, we have our vision and our goals, and then there are the enabling conditions to achieve these.
And our school leaders and our instructional leadership teams have really rich insights into the enabling conditions that we need to help mobilize, you know, district resources to clear the path, support, clearing the path to do, to bring the instructional framework to Denver Public School's, you know, most maximal implementation. And I think our school leaders have shared such rich insights already about those areas that we need to help improve. Thank you Dr. Murrow. Yeah. Uh, thank you all for, uh, the questions and feedback.
Uh, the questions are, I believe are gonna allow us to continue to, to, to build this network, um, in the best way possible. Um, and although I want to acknowledge that this can be seen as turnaround, surely that's not how we designed it, right? Uh, the, the Elevate Network Elevate is purposeful, right? Um, to the trust concerns. And, um, if we engage purposefully and elevate the collective voices, that's how we earn trust. If we engage the community as, as you all have asked us to,
so there's no surprises. It's less of a, I gotcha. This is more of elevating, uh, the collective voice. And ultimately, if we have to make a tough decision, yes, we're all subscribed to it, but at that point, we can empower that community to make the best decision for that community. So I think it's all in the approach. I, I can understand why folks say, okay, here comes another turnaround strategy. Mm-hmm. But that's not how we designed this, That trust piece. Just wanna say that again. So thank you. But I'm excited. I think it's better that we're doing this than the state. You're right. We know our community better, Dr. Murrow. So thank you and thank you both for being here.
We really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. And Dr. Murrow, you're calling up the next group as well. I am. Um, I get, uh, to be accompanied by some more, uh, brilliance here. If I can ask. Um, Pam Wong, our executive rec director of research and analytics and assessment and data. Also, Jennifer Lemoine, let's see here. She's right there. Our Executive Director, exceptional Student Services. And Ella Ado, I saw her around here. Uh, there she is, our Executive Director of Family and Con, uh, community engagement.
Um, I'll, I'll kick off, uh, this presentation, uh, then Ms. Wong and I'll go back and forth. Um, there is a nice place to pause, but it's not a long one. So I would suggest maybe we go through this entire one, if that's okay with you. Madam President, as always, our work is guided by our vision and mission, and this particular one is, uh, directly aligned to Ends one. Uh, this is, uh, our, our reasonable interpretations that, um, were part of our response to end one as written specifically.
Uh, this is our main monitoring, uh, focus on our student, uh, participation, uh, perception data, pardon, and also our DPS system audits that we illustrated that we will conduct. So for this evening, as I mentioned, we have, uh, Pam Wong, Jennifer Lemoine, and Avela Aon, who will share alongside with me. Specifically, we're monitoring the measures that you see on this slide and on this following slide. And, um, after I pass it to Ms. Wong, I'll come back and I'll show you where we are actually in all
of these reasonable interpretations. Ms. Wong, Good evening. Good evening. Uh, I'm going to begin tonight by presenting results from the Your Voice Tovo Student Survey, where two of the three riss that we are reporting out on today are from. There's a lot here, and we're going to move quickly. So, uh, to get through it all. So I'll, uh, answer questions at the end. Alright. Uh, you may, you may remember that in January we came to report on results from the VO Family Survey, and now we are following up with results from the student version. The goal of this survey is to gauge the, the degree
to which our students feel healthy, safe, welcomed, empowered and engaged. We administered the survey in March of this year to students in grades 3, 3 13 best survey practice saw teachers administer the survey to an entire class of students at once with the survey, read aloud to third through fifth graders, but students could take the survey on their own as well as it was emailed directly to them. Parents were informed ahead of time about the survey and had the opportunity to opt their students out if they so desired, and students were not required to participate or could, uh, skip questions.
We do have an incentive program, uh, for participation, which is highlighted by a very popular, and I hear delicious, uh, snow cone truck. Um, and so we had 12 schools, uh, who are, uh, currently, uh, receiving visits from that snow cone truck right now. So here are some high level takeaways before, uh, we go into more detail. Uh, participation remains strong with 54% of students, uh, participating overall, DPS maintained the student experience index year over year for all students and for our underrepresented
and underestimated student groups. Our strongest components include feeling safe, getting along with students, different from, uh, me being the, uh, that's the item that a student would read and teachers respect students and their culture and our areas of opportunity include fostering a sense of belonging, student involvement in decision making, and clubs and sports. Thank you Ms. Wong. Here are the reasonable interpretations and specifically where we ended up, uh, for this year. Uh, as you can see, our student Experience index remained stable from last year to this year.
Um, I want to acknowledge that given our national shift, um, just landscape nationally and the challenges at the federal level, um, has some major implications in terms of student attendance that did influence. Although I am, uh, still encouraged by our overall actual and our participation. Um, um, I will be remiss not to acknowledge that there has, uh, this has been a difficult year to, to conduct surveys across the board. In terms of participation, specifically what I'm referring to is you see student participation remained very strong this year.
Last year we had tremendous leaps from 30 all the way to 57 overall, uh, historic amount of, uh, participation last year. We slightly, uh, but when you see that we had a 1% dip when it comes to our district run schools participating, uh, 6%, uh, a dip when it came to charter participation, believe that it, uh, contributed to us, uh, slightly missing some of our measures. I'm gonna pass it back, uh, to Pam, then I'm gonna come back and show you some disaggregated all district and also, uh, just district run schools so we can see the difference in terms of, uh,
those, those targets. The first reasonable interpretation is centered on results from the Student Experience index, or SEI, which is, which is a subset of items on the two O survey designed to measure students' feelings along five different strands. Um, healthy and safe, welcomed and belonging, sense of agency culture, cultural and linguistic pride and engagement. You can see the specific survey items that belong to each component. On this slide, we average the percent positive response for each of these items to make the composite score.
There is also a sixth component of the SEI that is not actually surveyed, which is satisfactory attendance. Satisfactory attendance is defined as whether the student has 95% or greater attendance so far this year. And we import that information, um, into the calculation on the backend. Uh, thank you. Uh, just wanna highlight that. Um, as Pam mentioned, uh, those are reflected in the student responses. However, uh, a key part of the formula is the satisfactory student attendance, which would we have at 95 or above, which is well beyond, uh, any
of the articulated expectations in terms of attendance, uh, which I impacted the se, um, the index, uh, significantly. However, um, it is appropriate considering what we would like, uh, to, to see across our system. But a tough year for it to be realized considering the attendance woes of, uh, of, of this year because of the federal threats. Uh, regardless of, uh, that being the case here is, oh, I'm sorry, this, this was an appendix slide,
but that reiterates what I mentioned, the attendance, uh, in particular being at 95, uh, and above. And if you look, uh, to put it in perspective, no one truly can can represent that a student who's 80% of the time present is chronic, right? So just to show that that bar is incredibly high in terms of how we calculate our, uh, student, uh, experience index. Getting into some specifics. So you'll see that all schools, so this is inclusive of a district and charter.
Um, we maintained, uh, from last year, um, but the target, uh, shy of the target. But in this next slide, you'll see that if we, uh, and remember the charters had, um, less participation, but when we look at our district run schools, uh, we still felt short of the, of the target, but we did see, uh, 1% increase. Uh, overall important to note that, know that 34%, uh, in satisfactory attendance, um, again, is what we established is what we presented. So that's what we're going to use in terms of the formula. Um, but unforeseen
and unexpected, uh, attendance was, uh, I'm pretty sure that we would've met this significantly if, uh, this was not the case, but it's the reality of what we're dealing with. Uh, back to Pam. All right, so continuing on with our look at SEI, uh, for our district run schools, here's the breakdown by race and ethnicity. White and Asian students had the highest SEI with both groups at 76%. Our Latinx and black students stayed stable year over year with s EIS of 71% and 70% respectively. Now looking at the SEI for our multilingual learners, we see remarkable consistency
amongst the different MLL types with them all at 72% or 73%. Our in-service MLL show, particularly high sensitive agency and engagement scores, we are going to look at a variety of student groups on this slide. GT students had the highest SEI with 77%, which is five percentage points higher than non GT students, students with IEPs. And five oh fours had s EIS of 69% and 71% respectively. FRL eligible students had an average SEI of 71% as well,
which is stable year over year. Last year was the first year that we calculated SEI for our LGBTQIA plus students, which set the baseline at 69%. This is the first year that we are, uh, that we can calculate a year over year comparison. And, uh, SEI for students who identify as LG bt, oh, sorry, LGBTQIA plus, um, has held steady at 69% compared to students who identify as hetero. As heterosexual at 73%. Now we are switching to the second RI reasonable interpretation, which is the percent
of students who answer positively to the item. I see people who look like me working in my school overall. We saw stability year over year with 71% responding positively this year. On the right, you can see how different student groups and grade bands responded. Interestingly, we see much higher percent positive on this item from high school students at 82% compared to 63% in elementary and 72% in middle school. Finally, this isn't an ri, but we wanted to report out on results from our main safety item on two vote student. As we recognize that the importance of students feeling safe
as a precondition to learning. Here you can see the percent of students who, uh, reported positive feelings for the item. I feel safe at school. We saw consistency year over year with a one percentage point increase to 91% of students this year on the right, uh, you can see the different student groups and grade bands, and you can see that there is not, uh, much sizable variation between the different groups. Uh, before we go to the next, maybe this is a good time, 'cause then we shift into equity audits. So I think that, um, but I also, there's a lot to highlight and a lot of, uh, uh, hard realities of, uh, of what we have
to ultimately not only endure, but um, accept, um, which is what it is. But this, uh, is incredibly encouraging considering everything that we've dealt with throughout the last few years that, uh, overwhelmingly, um, our, our students feel safe in their schools. So, uh, thank you. And maybe we'll go to the next slide just to show the transition point, but maybe we can take questions on Duvoss now. So, we'll, I'll open it up if anybody has any questions or comments on the TUVO data that we just looked at. Go ahead, director. Gaan,
I'm curious if in the VOS is it, is feeling safe or safety defined when they're being asked? I feel I feel safe. Is it defined? Question, respond. Uh, so the, the item that you saw is exactly the item that the students see, so it is up to their own interpretation of safe. Okay. Anybody else? Oh, director Delarosa. So after you look at this data, what do you do with it? Um, It, it allows us to, to really, um, or I guess our response is multifaceted.
So, um, there there isn't anything that is so alarming aside from us, uh, being shy of our targets, which again, we're ambitious. Um, but in the case of where, if we were to see, I'm try, I'm trying to identify a specific, uh, piece. But it's hard because it was, it was, it was good data, right? But if we see an anomaly in where, let's say our lgbtq plus community feels unrepresented, unseen, then obviously we'll respond accordingly, right? So that's how we would use this data. Now with that being said, we did, uh, survey our leaders,
uh, 'cause we questioned in terms of participation, although again, it is a incredibly higher than it was two years ago. It was a slight dip, uh, compared to last year. And what we've heard was not only that, this was not the right time to survey our students, 'cause there was a lot going on, um, during the winter tours, uh, the spring, that, um, maybe we need to revamp what we're asking, um, because it's becoming a little bit more of a, of just a, a response. So we're evaluating on whether we take a different approach and, and as I mentioned to,
to the board via my written update, that we're looking to see how we can just assess a perception in a different way moving forward. Director Erman, First I wanna follow up on director Deros question 'cause I think it's important, which is, uh, I think it'd be helpful for us as a board and for our community to hear what some of those action steps are around things like LGBTQ plus community safety and what we're doing to, to enhance that and address that. And there are other data points in there that I think you'd agree are, are worthy of action and are things that we wanna do something about that I'd love, I'd love a, a future.
What, what we're, what, what the action steps are that we're taking. Um, so that's sort of a, a request, um, on my part and maybe other board colleagues as well. Um, I want to, I want to look at that attendance data slightly differently. If I'm not mistaken, if we're talking 95% attendance, we're talking, a student could miss roughly one day a month for the school year. Is that Yeah. Yes. Roughly, somewhat mathematically accurate, yes. Roughly, depending on number of days, et cetera. But, but we're looking at about one day a month. So, so if a, if a kid has some sort of serious illness
and misses a week of school, you, you're already dipp into like somewhere around 96 or 97% attendance. Mm-hmm. Um, if there's, if there's a family function they need to miss school for, right? That there are a lot of things. So that 95% bar ideal, but, but really pretty high, right? If, if a student misses for, um, for religious holiday, right? That that's counted against the amount of attendance, all, all the sorts of things that we know happen, let alone students who have serious medical conditions that,
that end up with them missing significant amounts of school. And, and I think we saw that in some of that, that, uh, IEP 5 0 4 data as well, and that shows up. Um, so, so I don't know if it makes sense as we think about the, the strict attendance numbers in the future, how we approach those, right? I, I appreciate a high bar for those, and I want that high bar. And, and it doesn't mean that we need to move that, but, but I think we need to have, um, some more nuanced conversations around attendance and what that looks like. Agreed. Um, DRDO, if you can go to slide 13, um,
again, this was what we constructed. Um, so we will adhere, and no, hence why it's before the board. Uh, but I can't illustrate enough the student who is 90% present, although we define it in this formula, in no world is a, a, a student who's 90% present, chronically absent. And that's the, that's the level of expectation, uh, in this formula, which obviously brought down the overall aggregate. Um, even with that, uh, being the, and again, we were okay with that because in a normal school year, we, we anticipate, uh,
success, but this is not a normal school year. Far from. And, and just to follow up, sorry. Um, do we have data, do we have information on, on, on the relationship between attendance and academic success and, and, and sort of where those breakdowns are? Right? I, I know that we've identified these numbers. I don't know if these numbers are associated with performance. Does that make sense? Like I, I don't know if there's a drop off at 95%. I don't know if there's a drop off at 90%.
I don't know where statistically, in terms of large groups of students, like we have in Denver Public schools where, where academic performance is impacted significantly by attendance as opposed to other factors. And I don't even know if we can isolate that, right? But, but I think, I think again, that, that there's some nuance of that and some, some worthwhile discussion that could go on there. Any other questions or comments on director c? I wanted to request that we receive information about the actual numbers associated with these percentages per EL four. We are sup The only place where I see percentages
and numbers is on slide 11. And it would be really helpful to know what these percentages are broken down for each of these responses, because One, I feel like 54% response rate is a low response rate. Um, if we really are getting to all of our students and to then see that's broken down by the desegregated data, it's un it's not as helpful for me to look at these percentages and say, oh, great. Like we're, we're maintaining, although in several areas we're decreasing, and I do. And while it is one or 2%, that's still one or 2%.
And so I would like to know how many students that actually is. I don't know if this is too much of a request, but to see it by grade level, because I think that that's also really important. Back to the question about even the safety question. You know, how many high school students are responding that way versus middle school versus elementary students. And I think similarly, um, it would be really interesting to know for the, each of the items that are in the SEI, the student Experience index. You know, are we thriving in elementary school?
And by the time we get to high school, we're not, because I, I just think that that's important for us. It goes back to the conversation in the previous presentation and how we're thinking about all the things that play into why schools are successful, including what Director Esserman just said around the attendance. Like, I think, so sorry, that was a bit of a soapbox, but I, I think this data is really important. How we use this data is really important. And who are we not hearing from and why are we not hearing from them? And how are we thinking about getting their voices in here as well?
Thank you, director. Cm, some of my comments were similar. I was gonna also ask for the numbers as well as the percentages, because that is, um, really helpful. And I wanna say I'm really impressed that we have the LGBTQ plus IA in here. So thank you so much for adding that. I'm really curious about, um, the demographics of the LGBTQ plus population as well and what we can learn from that. And going back to the previous presentation, will I, I assume we have school level data for this from two votes. And how are we looking at that as you move into the Elevate Network?
Like pulling out those school's results on two votes and saying, this is what we're learning from the students and how they feel about their school as we begin to work with them? Yes. Thank, thank you. Uh, both Ticia and, uh, Dr. Olson. Uh, of course we have, uh, the dashboard that we share with the leaders, and that'll be easy to share with you all. The reason why this is in, in percentages is simply because that's what was represented in the ris. So we're just progress monitoring based on what was approved by the board. So definitely can't share and we will share the data's available,
but it's just to be consistent with the progress monitoring component. The only other question or comment I'd have is I know that the district accountability committee has often, um, thought about the questions on the VO survey, and I know they're more than willing to give some of their ideas. And I know some of their membership who are parents who have taken the survey and said, I'd love to have us ask about this. And I know that's part of the role at the deck, so I'd just like to lift that up as well. Thank you so much. Alright, next section. Alright, we are now going to present, uh, on our third and final, uh, reasonable interpretation for tonight, which is 3.1 Systems audited for equity.
This reasonable interpretation set a goal for us this year to complete an audit of three different systems for equity. We chose vaccinations, special service providers, and collaborative school committees. All three audits have been completed meeting the RI target. We will, uh, now present the goals, findings, and recommendations from all three to present the findings from the first two equity audits on vaccinations and special service providers. Uh, let me introduce Dr. Jennifer Lemoine, the Executive Director of Exceptional Student Services. Hi, good evening. Do you wanna go to the next slide?
Yep. Just be, you can even adjust it and speak right now. There Go. I'm tall. Thank you. I need tall Mike. Um, so during the 24 25 school year, um, the vaccination equity audit was one of three district audits. Um, we looked at, um, vaccination data across all demographics and schools, and we're tracking, um, progress on these daily. The purpose of the audit was to identify any inequities and vaccination rates and or access to vaccinations and respond to data and increase immunizations across the district. The vaccination data was updated, as I said, daily, and was used to track overall immunization rates as well
as rates on specific vaccines. Um, throughout the year, we had three guiding questions, as you can see here. Um, are we having the same rate across race and ethnicity? Are there schools in DPS with lower vaccination rates? And are there ways we can improve vaccination rates based on our data? Go to the next slide. So, um, the DPS nursing department has been tracking this data in addition to just tracking it, they also began to respond to the data during the school year to increase our vaccination rates and percent of students immunized. As of May 1st, our overall immunization and DPS is 86.87%, and tracking and responding
to immunization immunization data between October and April has increased immunizations across all races and ethnicities. Increased immunizations for in-service, mlls provisional MLL, and re-designated MLL students and has increased immunization across DPS as well as at schools that were being tracked with less than 60% immunized in November. Some of the actions that were taken by the nursing department is scheduling vaccination clinics across DPS. Um, we've provided 29 in-school clinics that targeted the lowest vaccination rates, um, by school and 32 community clinics.
We've increased our communication to families promoting community clinics with flyers that have been, um, in all languages as well as providing vaccination information to families. The nursing department has also worked closely with FACE and our community hubs to provide information about clinics and immunization to our families. Next slide. Thanks. Um, this slide shows our immunization data, um, by vaccine. So breaking it up into each of the different types of vaccines that we report out to CDE. As you can see, um, 86% immunized overall is actually less
than each of our VA vaccination types. The reason for that is we do not include our exempt students and our overall when we report to CDE, but we do, um, include exempt students in each of the different type of vaccines, um, as we're tracking data. And that's just how we're doing it for CD and go to the rest. Um, the data from this year's audit shows an increase from November to April for all students. Um, however, the data also indicates that in April, our native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander students are 29% below the overall student immunization percent in DPS
and will be a group that we will continue to focus on, um, in the future. Next Slide. Um, while the percent of students vaccinated in each group above has increased from November to April, there is currently a 13% difference between immunization for our in-service, mls and overall percent of DPS students. And there's currently a 16% immunization difference between in-service MLS and non MLS and DPS. And then this graph shows the schools that we were tracking. We looked at any school in November that had less than 60% of their students immunized. So each of the schools, um, non immunized student rate went down,
which is what we would wanna see. It means that they have more students immunized. The graph can be a little deceiving because we usually want graphs to go up, but we were looking at non immunized, um, students. And so for each of the schools that we were looking at, we have made pretty good improvement, um, in our students that are being immunized. We will continue to track data for all schools, but target our schools where we have the lower numbers of immunizations. So our current state is we have a collaboration between our nursing services and, and several community partners to provide vaccination clinics across our school district. We target regions and schools with low vaccination rates.
Um, increased communication to families about vaccinations. Our next steps are continue what we're doing. However, we're also putting some other, um, things in place to improve our immunizations throughout next year. Our, um, director of nursing has reached out to, um, principals at any school that have low immunization rates and asked for a one-on-one meeting to talk about having clinics at back to school nights next year. She's also working to get permission for immunizations, um, for the school clinics to be part of our school registration packets so that we get it at the very beginning of the year and then can be immunizing students when we have clinics
and not trying to seek that permission later on. Next slide. And then the next equity audit that I'll speak about is our special service provider, our SSP equity audit. So for 24 25 school year, we've used this as a baseline year, um, for our equity audit, and we needed to create a data tracking, um, system for vacancies, placement changes and leaves across SSP groups in exceptional student services. So there is one group of SSPs out of exceptional student services counseling, which we did not look at. Um, so these were the, the group of SSP groups that we're currently tracking.
Um, at the beginning of this year, each department were tracking these placements within their departments, um, using various types of spreadsheets. However, the data was real time, so you could look on any given day to see how many vacancies you had, but there wasn't way, a way to track over time to see if the vacancy continued, how many vacancies there were. So a data system has been created to be able to track that with, so that we have baseline data and then can move forward with looking at what the data tells us and how to move forward with that. Go to the next slide. So starting in mar actually March 14th
to be exact, we had a system created where we can actually track vacancies. This does show the vacancies we've had in each SSP group. These could be leaves or a vacancy since March 14th. Each of these vacancies have been filled with contractors or DPS hired. Um, but they, those are the vacancies over time, and we'll also be able to see the length of the vacancy as well. So our next steps is now that we have the baseline, we have a way to collect the data. We will start looking at, um, are vacancies consistent across SSP type, are vacancies consistent across schools? Are we seeing more vacancies across all
of these types at a specific school or in a specific region that's impacting, um, students in a different way? And then our elementary, middle, or high schools and charters being impacted by vacancies at the same rate. And are there themes that we can look at as we're analyzing to be able to make improvements to decrease the number of vacancies we have within SSP groups? And then Adela is going to, um, present our third equity audit about collaborative school committees. Good evening everyone. I'm short. Hi everyone. Uh, I will be talking about the equity audit for our collaborative school committee. Um, so our CSCs, so the background of this is
that this was, again, one of the audits that we completed during this school year. It was a self-assessment that was, uh, conducted with all CSC members across the district. There were two research questions that we were trying to answer. The first one is the representation of CSCs. If that was in alignment with the DPS community, we were also looking at the functionality of CSCs and if they are functioning as they are intended per state and district policy. So our, our research approach, uh, was first to make sure
that we made this available to all of our CSE members across the district. Uh, the audit was launched on March 14th and closed on April 30th. During this time, our audit was led by the face team in collaboration with other teams Office of schools strategy and the district accountability committee. I wanna give a special shout out to Sarah Seacrest and Amanda Boucher on the face team who really led the groundwork and made this happen. Um, the, so in in partnership with the communications team,
we made sure that the audit was distributed, um, across the district through multiple channels. Uh, we also collaborated with the operational service directors to make sure that they help help us connect with schools who weren't participating as early on. And so made sure that we, uh, reached all schools. So this graph here shows, uh, the, the responses, um, for, for our audit. So we received a total of 421, uh, self-assessed, uh, self-reported responses. Of those, the majority of them were in English, uh,
with only one of them being in Spanish. A total of 124 schools. Of the 212 schools were represented. And then 80% of our school, our district run schools were represented in 2% of our charter schools. 70% of our schools that responded had multiple responses. And the representation of who responded included school leaders, teachers, staff, and parents. So this next slide tells us a little bit about, uh, the demographics of those who responded. Uh, the majority, uh, were not Hispanic, um,
with 24.9% being Hispanic. And then others, uh, about 9% choosing not to answer. Uh, the race was primarily white, um, with 9.6%, uh, black and African American. And, um, let's see. Next slide please. The findings that we identified through this assessment were that our, the majority of our committees meet regularly, uh, with most of them meeting once a month, 60% of those
a quarter of the committees, um, also reported that all members participate actively, or I'm sorry, most of all members actively participate. So 96% reported that members actively participate. Um, 85% reported that the meeting information is visible and accessible to the larger school community. The majority of the committees, uh, meet the minimum, uh, membership requirements set through state statute. Uh, and though many of them continue to work to increase parent representation, most, uh,
of the committee members have a good understanding of their scope of work. Uh, next slide please. So, the findings, we identified three areas, uh, for improvement. Uh, the first one is that the com uh, the committee, uh, still struggles to increase, uh, the representation of their school community. So, one example of this included, um, a school that primarily had 60% of, um, Spanish speaking families and did not have representation of Spanish speakers on their committee.
Um, meeting the requirement of three or more parents is found to be challenging despite the outreach efforts. Um, also finding a community member who is solely a community member and not also a parent representative, um, has also been challenging. And then wanting to make sure that the collaborative school committee role doesn't feel like a formality, but rather, um, that they are contributing in a meaningful way, was another finding. So the recommendations, and, uh, I wanna preface this by saying that, um,
the DAC has, um, identified the district advisory council has identified this equity audit as an exemplar, uh, for co-creating and what it means to co-create with community. So when our team approached the dac, we came with, what are your thoughts? What are you thinking? A blank slate. And really partnered with them to develop what this audit looked like. So I say that because one of the recommendations is tied to our partnership with the District Advisory Council. So the first one is to collaborate with other departments. I am, uh, looking at my friend bill in comms, uh,
to help us improve messaging and outreach to increase diverse participation, um, for collaborative school committees moving forward, uh, providing additional guidance and support to our committees onto as to how to engage other community members and how to, uh, emphasize the value and the impact, uh, of, of the collaborative school committee. And then creating additional training materials to support our committees. And so really incorporating, uh, key examples of committee roles in those training materials.
And then lastly, in partnership with our district advisory council, would be to increase opportunities for our collaborative school committees to collaborate across, um, across different collaborative school committees. So bringing, bringing together various, um, collaborative school committee members from across the district to share knowledge, ideas and strategies. And that is it. Thank you. Any questions? Thank you, team. Uh, just wanna, although informally, um, if you're wondering on how we came up with these 10, these, uh, three, the roadmap calls for 10 audits, and we've, uh, conducted seven.
So here, the remaining three to, to satisfy the 10. But specifically when we look at, uh, vaccinations, the hard lessons learned and realities, um, in certain pockets of Denver from covid, but also Commissioner Soto and her advocacy. So thank you on for informing us for me to make this, uh, selection, uh, SSPs, um, from, from Pam and, and advocacy Denver, uh, to also ds, uh, DCTA and their advocacy. And we've heard repeatedly in terms of how we need to look at SSP. So although it wasn't an official request by these parties,
it had helped me make the decision on which are the final three to audit. And as, uh, Ladora Heron mentioned, uh, the DAC was instrumental in, uh, making sure that we can, um, and also some board feedback in terms of questions we had around this time with, uh, the process or lack there of a process at certain sites when it came to CSCs. So thank you all for allowing us to just, okay. Maybe we need to look at it deeper. Thank you. And thank you so much for the presentation. I'll open it up to questions and comments from the board. Uh, vice President Delarosa, Did the, um, the data on the SSPs, does
that reflect charter schools as well? Yes, Yes. It's all our SSP groups. Okay. I'm sorry. Yes, it Does. Thank you. So anywhere that we've placed an SSP, it would be tracking, so whether charter or District run and they contract with DPS for that service, is that correct? Correct. So yes, we, I know we've heard this in public comment numerous times about, um, SST SSPs in some of the charters. So I just wanted to go back to that com public comment.
Any other questions or comments? Um, I would echo Dr. Murrow's, thanks for all of this and looking at, um, commissioner Soto's work and Director gaan, I know that you've also hosted some vaccination clinics as well, so thank you for your hard work as well as getting the word out in Spanish to make sure that our communities are vaccinated. So thank you and a thank you to DCTA for their advocacy as well around the SSPs. I know that that's something that I've worked on ever since I got on the board and DAC for their partnership. I know that they've really appreciated you ala and your team
or, and all that you've done to work with Dak. And I just really, I'm heartened to see that we're auditing CSCs to make them stronger. So I look forward to learning more in the future. So thank you all for presenting to, oh, did you have one more thing? No, no, that's okay. Go for it. Just in the nick of time. There we go. I said really que quick question on the SSPs because the baseline obviously just was set for this. And I know given how the reasonable interpretation is set up, this is one of the audits for this year, but this is really for Dr. Morero. I think would it be possible for us
to get an update perhaps just even in your weekly updates around this time next year or just to see where did we go from baseline to now that we're tracking this more closely, where the vacancies are so that we have better sense of once we do the audit and then we make some changes, what actually happens after that? Thank you. Yeah, I think, uh, the mechanism that we have in our weekly, uh, BOE updates, uh, we can incorporate that as we do with, with leader updates. Thank Great, great suggestion. Now I'll say thank you so much for being here. We really appreciate all your hard work. Thank you. Well done. Thank
You. All right, Dr. Marrero, I'll leave it to you to call up our next speaker. Thank you. Uh, I'm gonna ask, uh, attorney Johnson, uh, to come and walk us through some policy governance, but to embarrass him, he is here with us when he could be court side at the Nuggets game. Right now, I just want everyone to acknowledge that. Thank you. Maybe not quartzite, but I know the game for sure and he's here with us. Thank you so much for being here tonight with us. We appreciate it. Yes, Thanks for loving us more than the nuggets. Yes. Listen, this is way more important. Okay.
Can y'all hear me okay? Yes. That game starts at seven 30. You still have time? Yes. This is way more important for me to be here with y'all. Well said. Thank you. I may be questioning your judgment from here forward. Good evening everybody, and good evening to the people watching at home. So as part of our policy governance agenda item, starting with 6.01, um, we're going to be voting on the amendment to EL 18, the school consolidation and closure. 19 is first. Oh, it's 19 first. Yep. Sorry About that. No, that's okay. 18 comes right
after that, so you're alright. Appreciate it. You're just teeing it up for us. So yes, um, EL 19, that is, that's enrollment boundaries and zones. Um, with that being said, just so the public can know the cadence on how the board revised these policies or even introduced these policies and adopt them. First thing is that the board works on these policies in the background and also works on them in work sessions and pg daytime work sessions. And then they bring it to the regular board meeting to vote it into first reading, second reading or actually adopt a policy.
Now between the first reading and second reading and adopting a policy, there is time to revise these policies so members of the public can come to public comment and comment on these policies even after a policy is actually adopted. Member of the public can come comment on these policies in our up open public, uh, comment section of the, uh, public comments. So we're going to be starting with EL 18 again. This have been, this was moved into first reading on 4 14 25, 19 0 19.
Do I keep saying 18? I apologize again. That's okay. EL 19 was moved into first reading on four 14 and 25. Um, today the board will be voting whether or not to move it into second reading. And again, for the public, you can still have time to comment on this policy before it's adopted. And I will turn it over to you. Dr. Ols. Thank you. Is there a motion to accept item 6.01 second read of EL 19 Enrollment zones and boundaries. So moved. Is there a second? Second. So it was moved by Director Esman and seconded by Director Gaan.
And the floor is opened for debate. Scene none. Ms. Atwood, would you please call raw Director de la Rosa? Aye. Director Erman aye. Director Gaan Aye. Dr. Olson? Aye. Director Sia Aye. Mr. Youngquist? Aye. With that the motion passes and it's moved into second read, so thank you. Now onto EL 18. Now I'm gonna say EL 19 a hundred times. Um, okay, so EL 18 is the second thing on our agenda. Um, we're voting on the amendment of EL 18, the school consolidation en closure policy. And again, this was moved into second reading on
four 14 of 25. So we're voting tonight to adopt a pol this amendment of the policy and this is the language of the amendment. And I'm gonna turn it over to Dr. Olson for that vote. Is there a motion to accept and adopt item 6.02. Final read of EL 18 school consolidation enclosure. So moved. Is there a second? Second. It was moved by Director Esman and seconded by Director Gaan. The floor is open for debate. Scene none Ms. Atwood, would you please call role Director de la Rosa? No. No. Uh,
And to be clear, we are only voting on this, uh, new language here. This, uh, Nay Director Esman aye. Director Gaan Aye. Dr. Olson? Aye. Director Sia nay. Mr. Youngquist Nay. And because we are a board of six tonight, um, and the we're split with three nays and three i's the motion fails. So we'll move to the next item. And item six point Of clarification. Yes.
What are our next steps with this then? Um, I will turn it over to Attorney Thompson to be sure that I'm clear. So Do you wanna come and use a mic Here? So Dr. Ols, Dr. Olson is correct that because, uh, it was a, a tied vote, the status quo remains. The status quo is that that language is not in the 19, uh, it can be brought back at a by motion at another meeting in the future. That's what I thought, but I wanted to be sure. Thank you Director Erman. Now we'll move on to the next item. Item 6.03. Alright, And I'm going to share my screen here now, 6.03, we're gonna be talking
to the public, speaking to the board about the board community community engagement and the ends policies. Um, the board has decided that it would take on reviewing and maybe revising the current ends policies. Um, and we are bringing that and presenting it to the community. Now, um, there will be community engagement around this. So the community will have a say in how those ends policies are revised, if the board votes to revise those so they will not revise 'em without, um, the community's input.
And for the community, what are Ian's policies? Ian's policies are board policies that they create to show the future goal or the long-term goal of the district. They are policies that show the future vision of the district stating in terms of how they would like the district to help students, staff, and how the district is going to move forward. So the next question the community probably have is why revise or look at those ends policies now? Well the strategic roadmap has one more year remaining on it.
So the superintendent and his team will be working on a 2.0 of their strategic roadmap, a second session of that strategic roadmap going forward. And the ends policies are looked at to develop that strategic roadmap and make sure that it is in line with the board's goals. And so this is a great time for the, uh, board to review the ends and make any revisions that they think are necessary in order to instruct the superintendent on his strategic roadmap. Now how will the board include the community
in these revisions? Well, the community is very important in making these ends policies. So the board will be going out and doing community engagements and as you will see, we will show the schedule on the next couple of slides that the board, um, each board district will have two community engagements in person and there will also be at least one virtual. Um, not for each district, but for the at large board members for the entire Denver community to chime in on these, uh, revisions to these ends policies. Now this is a, uh, broad level of the schedule here.
Um, so may starting now where we're letting the community know that we will, the board will start to look at these ends policies and possibly revise them. Um, in June they will introduce revised ends and start the community engagement plan. Now July of course there's a summer sabbatical for the board and in August they will start to actually community engagements. And from August to October they would start community engagements and actually go out and, uh, speak to the community about this. And at the same time, between May
and the end of August, the superintendent and his team would start the approach of, uh, revamping the roadmap and then lunch, their community engagement and intake portion starting in September. And hopefully the finalized ends will be, uh, introduced to and adopted in October. Now we're gonna get into a little bit more specifics here. Um, so as you can see that again in From August to early October, there will be two community engagements per district. Those will be in person, so for a total of 12.
So the community can can put in input. Um, starting in June though, we will develop that communication plan and that engagement plan and decide on the locations and then put it out for the community in July. And in August the board will start those engagement sessions and also release a survey for the community to, to provide feedback. And that will continue through September and by October, hopefully, um, by the October 30th um, board meeting, it will be the final reading adoption
of those revised ends policy if the board does decide to revise those. Okay. Any questions about any of that Or any comments that my colleagues would like to make about our beginning to look at the ends? Open up for questions or comments? I know it's been, uh, fun to start looking at it and start thinking about, um, what our vision is through the, through new ends. And I know some of us are going to a policy governance conference and that's one of the questions that we'll be thinking about. I know you're, you and Attorney Thompson are going with us
and we're looking forward to hearing what other districts are doing and learning what some of the other experts would say. So I appreciate all of your help, particularly Attorney Johnson. I know you and Laney, I see you over there. You also have been helping us think through this and building out a schedule. And Melissa, who's not with us tonight also has been really helpful. So thank you so much for coming and presenting that. Yes, You mentioned that Laney became a policy governor certified On Friday. I didn't know that. So Lainey Shaer is now policy governance certified. Let's give her a round of applause. We look forward to learning from your expertise as well.
So thank you. Thank you Attorney Johnson for all your help. Thank you. Thank you. All right. With that we are ready to consider our consent agenda. Um, Ms. Atwood, could you please come up and review the items on our consent agenda for us please? Thank you. Um, 8.01. Approval of the minutes from the April 14th, 2025 regular board meeting, 8.02. Approval of the minutes from the May 1st, 2025 work session, special meeting, public comment and executive session. Approval of the minutes from the May 13th, 2025 special
board meeting, special public comment session for non-renewals and executive session 9.01 Ellis Air Conditioning 9.02 BD 2 3 0 5. Translation and interpretation services revision 9.03 BD 2 5 6 6 as need custodial supplemental staffing 9.04 BD 2 5 8 4 electric school buses 9.05 BD 2 5 6 8. Portable device charging carts 9.06
districtwide white fleet purchases 9.07 ever driven. Third party transportation, 9.08. Certificates of participation de 9.09 DPS fiscal year 26 insurance premium renewal estimates Approval of the personnel transaction report, 12.02. Approval of the addendum to the May 15th, 2025 personnel transaction report. Non-renewal recommendations 13.01. Approval of Girls Athletic Leadership School, middle school,
single site contract resolution number 5 1 8 8. That's it. Thank you. Is there a motion to approve the consent to agenda? So moved. Is there a second? It was moved by Director Esman and seconded by um, vice President de La Rosa. The floor is now open for debate. Scene none. Ms. Atwood, would you please call roll Director de la Rosa. Aye. Director Esserman aye. Director Kaan Aye. Dr. Olson? Aye. Director Sia Aye. Mr. Youngquist? Aye. With that the consent agenda passes. Thank you Ms.
Atwood and colleagues. The presentation of a teacher dismissal recommendation from the superintendent is our next item to protect the confidentiality of the employee. The superintendent will share a little information about the process, but we will not discuss the con contents or any facts about this recommendation. Dr. Marrero? Thank you, uh, Madam President. Board members, uh, in the manila folders you just received is my recommendation, uh, for teacher dismissal pursuant to Colorado Teacher Employment Compensation Dismissal Act known, uh, as teta, the basis
for the recommendations are described in the documents, uh, contained in the folders. They're confidential, should not be shared publicly. These are not voted on today. Uh, please read them and return them in the envelope. Once the teacher is afforded full procedural rights undetected, they will come back to you for final vote. Thank You for that. Um, before we move to our next agenda item, I'd like to remind my colleagues in the viewing public that we have received a written update, 18.01 administration policy, a BBB school transformation process.
And this can be found in board docs. The board will now vote to move into executive session with the board's gen out, um, attorney for the purpose of receiving legal advice and the legal process for responding to a complaint of discrimination pursuant to CRS 24 dash six dash 4 0 2 4 B. Is there a motion to move into executive session? So moved. Is there a second? Second. Second. It was moved by Director Esserman and seconded by Director Sia. And the floor is now open for debate. Scene none. Ms.
Atwood, would you please call Role Director de la Rosa. Aye. Director Erman aye. Director Gaan Aye. Dr. Olson? Aye. Director Sia Aye. Mr. Youngquist? Aye. Thank you that the motion passes and we'll move into executive session. This concludes the public portion of our regular meeting. We will move to executive session. Members of the public. Please remain seated until we've exited the room. Thank you. And have a good evening. Oh, hang on. We need a motion for to adjourn. Sorry about that. Hang on. It was on the next page.
So now we have completed all the business before the Board of Education this evening. Is there a motion to adjourn? So moved. Is there a second? Second. Thank you. It was moved by Director Esserman and seconded by Mr. Youngquist. Uh, the floor is now open for debate. Yes. Director de la Rosa. I'm unrelated to this. Okay. Thank you. Ms. Atwood, would you please call Role Director de la Rosa? Aye. Director Sterman aye. Director Gaan Aye. Dr. Olson? Aye. Director. See ya. Aye, Mr. Youngquist? Aye. With that, the motion is adjourned. Thank you. I I just wanted to note Dr.
Marrero, that you have your, uh, seal of Climate literacy and one of the things that the students asked us was not to be drinking water out of plastic water bottles and make a commitment to that. I'm so thrilled.