Welcome to our September fantastic 49 presentation my name is Kayla Maldonado I'm the internal Communications manager for District 49 tonight we have some outstanding nominees sitting behind me um we have a bus driver who isn't just
behind the wheel but is in the stands cheering on our athletes a dedicated Community member who makes it their mission to ensure no child goes hungry and an athletic secretary who doesn't just manage her own day-to-day duties but extends her hand to a neighboring
zone so um for our honores and those who nominated them when your names are called please come to the podium for remarks and then we'll head to the back of the room for a photo before I introduce you to our nominees I'd like to give a quick shout out to our sponsors we are always grateful to
Dion's Air Academy Credit Union and Texas Roadhouse for donating gift cards to our honores our first Honore for the evening is Patrick Rose in allpurpose bus driver Patrick demonstrates the importance of supporting our students both on and off
the field not only does he provide Safe Transportation for our Falcon high school athletes with a smile but he also watches the games and cheers our students on here to recognize Patrick is Brandon Stegman Falcon High School head
football coach guys want to come up give him some Applause all right thank you for uh having me and Patrick congratulations thanks sir um so a couple of things about Patrick um you know when when you first walk onto the bus he's always
there to greet you with a smile um and for any kid that gets on a bus whether it's a baseball player a softball player a football player or somebody just going on a field trip that's a big deal for those kids and for their parents because you know they're they're sending them out with somebody to trust that that um
our big Uber driver is going to get us there um so so the the the start of the trip is one thing um but what makes him so special is is he'll stay he'll watch the games he'll cheer you on he gets to know
the kids we we talk about more kids by last names than first names in sports and you know he'll talk about your pitchers that are doing great and he'll talk about um you know the guys who who went two for three and the in the big time at bats and um stuff like that with
the kids goes a long ways when they can they can get on a bus and they know that somebody's there to support them um and that was a little bit about mine my trips with him but then we go down and watch my daughter play some softball and he was the driver for the softball team
and he's doing the exact same thing so it's not just the baseball team that gets all the the the fun and the credit um from our support um but then the the last part is is I was at the high school and you know he I drive up and and and he waves at me and I'm like there's the
bus driver again he's waving at me big old big old smile and he's wearing a falcon hat and I'm like that's a little late where are our guys going he's like oh no I drove Vista Ridge here so for me he picked up Vista Ridge wearing the baseball hat right so like
when it comes down to support for our kids and and our programs um and our coaches and just our culture that's what we need more of is guys like Patrick the guys who who enjoy spending time with our kids um thoroughly smile at them
right they're not in trouble if they have a snack on the bus or you know and he's he's welcoming to riding home with me only right I mean my wife doesn't even do that she she gets cranky right but him he's smiling the whole way home and we have wonderful baseball
conversations about our kids about our district about our schools uh so Patrick we thank you for everything that you do for our kids and our community thank you apprciate it okay thank you um our second Honore tonight is Margaret berky um she is the
acts coordinator for Woodman Valley Chapel Margaret and her team go above and beyond to make sure Falcon Zone students are taken care of she's always eager to help with weekly food bags for our family at Falcon Elementary and snacks to three other schools in the
Falcon Zone here to recognize Margaret is Carrie marison Falcon Zone Community liaison y hi everybody how are you I wrote down a few things because I was like if I don't write this down I'm gonna forget everything I need to say so I actually
had the opportunity to meet Margaret when she was when I was at Falcon Elementary school and she was um organizing the delivery of 15 food bags for our families at Falcon Elementary School and so um she organized teacher
appreciation lunches staff gift baskets drawing baskets um and just did an amazing job of taking care of Falcon Elementary School and then when I moved into the Zone liaison job in the Falcon Zone I reached out to her because I was like surely there are more families and
more kids in need in the Falcon Zone than just at Falcon Elementary School and she was so eager to support us um we now deliver food bags to Falcon Middle School Bennett Ranch and Woodman Hills um I even had a request from some of
those counselors they were like hey we we need some snacks for our kids and so I reached out again and I was like do you think like we could come up with some snacks and I think the last couple times I've picked up food bags there have been Costco siiz boxes of snacks waiting for my my counselors and for our
kids that I get to deliver um and then not only that she does Thanksgiving meal baskets for our families um she puts gift cards in there so our families have all the fixings for Thanksgiving dinners plus a gift card to be able to go and
buy a turkey so they can have a good Thanksgiving dinner um she organized organizes Gifts of love and so our families can go and get um um gifts for their kids and then that's not enough but then she actually gives the money
back to the zone so the families pay a small fee to be there and then the money comes right back to us and goes right back into the zone for things that we may need to be able to do for our families so I'm just so incredibly grateful that we have a partnership with Margaret and with the Woodman Valley axe
group they take care of us they're generous and I just it it's such a blessing to be able to have people that help us take care of our kids because we all know it takes a village um without Margaret and her team um we wouldn't be able to do it as well so thank you so
much I'm very appreciative thank you yeah yeah um I just wanted to say Pastor Andrew is here with me today and just we're we're really really happy to be receiving this on behalf of everyone at Woodman uh we just love supporting the
families in our community and and helping our schools Thrive so thank you [Applause] our third and final nominee of the evening is Barbara Johnson athletic
secretary at s Creek High School Barbara may be the athletic secretary at s Creek but she consistently goes above and beyond to support the athletic department at Vista Ridge High School she generously shares her knowledge and one of my favorite parts of her
nomination um is quote wolf or scorpion that doesn't matter to Barb she is here to help so um here to recognize Barbara is Elizabeth vill Vista Ridge High School athletic secretary good evening um Patrick I have
a Vista hat for you uh my name is Elizabeth vehill and I'm uh the current athletic secretary at V High School I nominated Barb Johnson for the Fantastic 49 award because sometimes we forget to tell the most important people thank you I met Barb 9
years ago when I began employment with the district from the beginning she has shown that compassion kindness and hard work go a long way we have gone through some highs and lows at this since I started just as anyone does at any school or company Barb has continually
been here for me cheering me on no matter if the situation is good or less than desirable Barb has told me recently I just do my job to that I say yes Barb works hard there is hard working and then there is going beyond the Call of
Duty Barb goes the extra mile for students coaches and co-workers I can always count on her to pull me out of the smallest problems like not having two golf pin bags for a letter jacket or answering a $10 million chassa question the list can truly go on and on and then
on some more most recently I was in need of a few things during our physical night she was in the middle of orientation at her own school and she made the time to stop and help she also shares spreadsheets so that I can create my own I appreciate that she makes the time and effort to
always get back to me no matter how big or small my problem happens to be she was a major help for me when we were looking for our new athletic director a couple of years ago I was unbelievably busy I felt terrible because I was unable to stop and give her the r recognition she deserved at the time now
I can stop and take the time to ensure that barb gets the recognition she deserves for everything she has done and continues to do for me and other teammates Barb yes you do your job thank you for doing it well and being consistent I appreciate you more than you can
know thank you um congratulations to all our nominees I'd like to turn it over to jind deola Boe vice president for final remarks thank you uh as always we are blessed to have such excellent employees
in our district um I absolutely love the collaboration and support between the schools and across the zones that's the kind of collaboration that is needed for us to um to support one another and to go forward as a as a
district uh it is because of people like you that our district is the best District in Colorado and thank you for all that you do to make District 49 fantastic thank you thank you to all of our nominees uh who continue to make District 49 the
best place to learn work and Lead that concludes our presentation all right it is 6:30 welcome to the September 25th Board of Education work session I am calling this meeting to order at 6:30 p.m. I also wanted to welcome our student Board
of Representatives we have Juliet Olsen um from Vista Ridge High School and Zane okones did I say that correctly from s Creek High School okay first item on our list is 1.1 which is individualized education
performance report for early childhood education nursing services and Peak programs good evening board Dr Nancy Leman Deputy superintendent and executive director for individualized Education with the performance reports from three of the nine departments
underneath uh IE do you want me to yes okay if you have any issues I can help navigate but we'll go here and advance for the good evening Stacy Powell I'm the
director of early childhood education it's nice to be here tonight got to put my glasses on and remember which button to click that's the only thing I need to do um so the first thing is I just want to talk about some of our strengths we added two new classrooms to Evans
Elementary this year so we have classrooms in every Elementary School in the district we now have the capacity to serve 646 students and we are sitting at almost 500 right now so we're serving a lot of our kids in our community um we
have the three students who are kindergarten eligible still attending our preschool um from the cut off change that was made um last year we have 139 students with IEPs in our program we are holding um 258 seats for them and I just
got news that we have 181 students coming potentially through c2b so those babies coming up to us um and DEP Part B services so we've got a lot of of evaluations and kids potentially coming in
90 oh I'm so sorry there we go um we've got 94% of our upk spots filled and 73% of our parent paid tuition spots filled we were looking at potentially moving some
of those parent paid tuition spots into upk however with the numbers that we see potentially coming through for IEP kids um we're having some conversations about maybe holding some of those those spots
um Staffing um we have had kind of a whirlwind this year and I think this is happening everywhere um we've hired we've had people resign we've rehired we're interviewing um right now we're sitting at um fully staffed with
teachers but we do have one resigning um we have three unfilled pair of positions and then these are just the other positions that fall under our program opportunities we are Contin contining with our pyramid training um all new staff will be trained this year
and existing staff um for the last two years have been trained um we're doing developmental screenings we're trying to do one almost every month we're not able to do one in October just because of the fall break but we're trying to do at least nine this year um we did adopt a
new math curriculum it's called a Nova mat and there are some pictures there for you it's just a really conceptual um math Cur curriculum and it allows our kids to really use developmentally appropriate practices to understand
those math concepts and then we also um were able through the district to provide a CPI training for our staff specifically because some of the holds are not really appropriate for the younger kids so they geared it to to our staff to work with our
kids and then just talking about future growth and development um because Stetson moved into the Sand Creek Zone we now have the fewest seats available in the power Zone um we have the fewest spots filled in the Sand Creek Zone I think that's partly due to the new
classrooms people haven't caught on quite yet to the Evans classrooms um we still have a high demand in the power Zone specifically inspiration view area and then in the Falcon Zone in the Meridian Ranch and Woodman Hills area we
have a lot of families that want their kids to go to those locations and we just don't have room any questions oh I'm sorry we'll save in questions for the end thank you hi good evening I'm Karen Sandage
I'm the dean of peak programs and uh I just want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to come and speak with you and brag a little bit about our programs again it brings me joy so the strength of peak's program is we started this school year with 30
students that's the most students to date and I'm very happy and excited about that because that means we're serving more students which makes a difference for all of the neighborhood schools as well as the students that are there with us we also continue to have a
high satisfaction rating as demonstrated by high peak staff retention rate 81% of the staff that work at Peak have worked there for more than 2 years that's phenomenal with the work that we do there Peak staff provided a live
enactment training to principles assistant principles and Deans on deescalation room protocol so when students are significantly disregulated using the tool of the deescalation room to support them in coming back to regulation and it was it was highly
effective and I'm super proud of the work and I just facilitated that three pair professionals from our team created that enactment we hired this year a full-time licensed clinical social worker to provide Mental Health Services
um so that our School site could focus more on evaluation and this is something that I'm magnificently proud of and pleased to tell you is that 20% 20% of the students at Peak qualify
for gifted Education Services and they're twice exceptional so when we don't understand behavior in the classroom and sometimes we just think that kids are disregulated because of a variety of reasons this data shows us that maybe we need to be looking at why
they're acting out what's what's the feeling underneath it and is it that those students are frustrated and disappointed because academics aren't being um accommodated to their learning and allowing them to go to the next steps and where they need to be in their
learning so so in regard to opportunities for for improvement at Peak many students at Peak have been receiving services for more than a year and we'd like to see more students returning back to their neighborhood school after they've gained the skills and tools that they need for emotional
and behavioral regulation we also need to hire well when I wrote These slides we needed to hire two more PA professionals but I'm happy to say right now standing here at this moment we now only need to hire one more so I'm stoked about about that
too big future growth Improvement here I am again I I really would like for us to have a larger building so that we can teach life skills to the students that we have our building really is at capacity right now the footprint um and the students that are there if we wanted
to teach kids how to cook in a full-size kitchen or to do laundry or all of the things that you might want to do um as they grow older when they're living on their own or helping their parents at home we could teach those things if we
just if we just had a bigger building in addition to that this last spring I'm sure that we broke fire code because we had our field day and we had a musical performance and awards assembly and I had so many parents and so many students
in that in that tiny tiny multi-purpose room that we got to have a gym or a theater room I got to have some place so parents can come and see the amazing things that their kids do we really need that um we also want to continue with ongoing evaluation of current
programming according to District needs and what I mean by that is that it's changed over time it started that we had a lot of big kids and now we have a lot of little kids and so programming has to adjust according to that and then I really would like another small bus for
learning beyond the classroom because currently we we have enough students in our programming that 115 passenger bus can't take our two small Littles classes on field trips to go learning in the community thank you for the opportunity to speak with you let me show my passion
about what I do miss Dev may I may I have 60 seconds that doesn't count against their time yes because um I just want to point out this this is an innovation that came to us from uh initially from our specializ department but the idea that instead of
transporting students over to Pikes Peak bosies we could serve them better here and from the very beginning under Karen's leadership this is a program that has attracted a lot of attention this past year we saw um repeated investigative if you will visits
learning visits from our neighbors in District 20 and so you might have seen an article right in the middle of August that District 20 is now open up their own version and we have a respectful rivalry with our our districts around us but it is sure great to see um that imitation is the greatest form of
affirmation uh this is a great program and it's great to see other people trying to imitate it they won't be able to because they don't have Sandage as they say at Peak may I just add one quick thing onto his little
piece on that little pray that praise piece yes as a parent of kids with special needs I am connected to lots of families in that Community um across multiple districts and I have been asked multiple times um why they can't choice
in to Peak um when I'm sitting at therapies and things with my kids um so that also it has a reputation with parents of kids um with stuff and they're saying um how do I get my kid in there I'm like ah you got to move to d49 sorry you'll have to sell your house in
D20 or d11 um so there's just it's really well recognized throughout the special needs parent community in Colorado Springs as well thank you uh good evening and thank you for having me this evening my name is paty Prettyman I am the coordinator
of school health services my title has changed this year but my job has not changed it's still the same so thank you um I would like to start with an overview of um what National Association of School nurses defines as a school
nurse um the this is recognize the school nurse as a vital member of the school team who collaborates with Community agencies to develop comprehensive emergency response procedures um the school nurse provides expertise in school health as a leader
and integral partner with the school staff and outside agencies as um a part of educating our leadership in our district uh we focus on uh in informing you all and informing our school leaders uh that School nurses
promote a uh healthy behaviors in childrens and Adolescence through collaboration with Community agencies to meet physical and mental health needs we also advocate for policy changes to improve health we provide quality health
care and intervene in actual and potential health problems around chronic and acute illness as well as injuries in the school setting we are First Responders for acute ill ill nness and injuries in school on school grounds we focus on prevention of spread of
communicable diseases uh and we are both nurses and we are Educators in our schools you may want to know what a the qualities of a school nurse we are caring we are empathetic we are
emotionally stable adaptable quick thinkers hardworking great judgment and attention to detail and as you can imagine when we run to an emergency a medical emergency with a student we need to remain that way emotionally stable
quick thinker and have great judgment when we approach a situation nursing services are success um I am proud to say that our immunization compliance in 23 24 school year as reported uh to the state of
Colorado um in comparison with our neighborhood uh districts um uh example District 11 had a 67% compliance with immunizations District 20 83.8% compliance and District 49's had a 49
had a 96% compliance with immunizations Among Us students so we're very proud of that we work very hard thank you thank you um also another thing to um that we
are very proud of is our staff reten ition to be it continues to be at 95% over the past 3 years we have 14 nurses and 20 Health assistants and I can tell you I am very very proud of our team we have amazing amazing
staff and opportunities for improvement of course we adhere to our cultural Compass as in within our district we continue to focus on delivery of high level training for our nursing staff we want to make sure to provide the best
care possible for our students in our community and especially in areas such as mental health and Diabetes Care we continue to contribute support for other departments and we work collaboratively with those departments their leadership
and their staff uh to include our transportation department preschool special education Community Care and others for our future growth and Improvement We are continuing to focus on providing education for staff
students parents on opioid crisis our co-lead nurse uh Lena orchid has really taken a passionate interest and working with our district and working and partnering with our Safety and Security teams for
example um and provide education across the district we're working with principles on H appropriate Fentanyl and opioid awareness prevention for all of our schools at Falcon High School Lena is working on student on a student Le
prevention week during Red Ribbon Week um a staff staff across the district are being trained on signs and symptoms of Overdose and how to render Aid and support our students in the classroom and we do have standing orders for Naran Administration in case of an emergency
in all of our schools we also remain focused on our goal to promote safe and healthy community in which students are encouraged to be live lifelong Learners self managers and self advocates for their own
health thank you thank you what questions May these leaders answer for you director SMI um with the early childhood education Stacy what is Pyramid
training pyramid is a it's like an mtss process of behavior intervention so um it's something that the state of Colorado recommends for Early Childhood programs and so we have all of our staff completing that training so that they can manage some of
the behaviors that we see with our students okay and I was wondering also uh CPI training um I have a really hard time with acronyms I'm going to ask everybody to please define the acon at least the first time when they're used
because I still don't have them all down and I know members of the public don't either but what is CPI training and how is it different in Early Education so the acronym Crisis Prevention Crisis Prevention Institute it's what it is in
policy for um staff to be able to manage students who are disregulated who may be imminent danger to self and others um and involves both uh non-verbal deescalation and that also uh holds or transports when a student has to be
moved from a situation into a deescalation room and again in such a way that the student um remains safe and the staff remains safe and then the student is uh allowed in the deescalation room to have an opportunity
to calm themselves um really they just they just need a break they need time is that the same as how you would do it in um like a elementary and middle or High School how corre we use the same CPI training for K through 12 the reason
it's a bit different for preschool is because the size of the students well you can't carry a kid you can't pick them up it's going to be very different if you're taking trying to physically remove a three and a halfy old to keep them and other students safe than it's going to be if you're trying
to remove a 16-year-old okay so and then my last question is that uh the venat I don't know how to say that your math is that kind of like the math DNA that was really cool I was kind of thinking out of the box is that what that math is
it's similar it is very conceptual it's it's teaching kids and with our kids three and four year olds going into kindergarten um it's really handson they're they're making numbers with their bodies they're learning about flat
faing and round faces on shapes and they rolling on the floor and doing things that make sense to them to get those Concepts so that they have those foundations for higher skills that they'll be learning so yeah it's very conceptual it's just the um program that
we have is preschool oriented so thank you I also had some questions for the peak person and um if somebody else wanted to ask I can take
turns okay thanks um can you explain the program a little bit more in depth for me because I'm real new to this um it sounds like it is it special needs um everyone who attends Peak education center is on an
individualized education program or IEP IEP okay and then you know I took a class before school started on deescalation and the guy never got to the point of how it actually works and I'm just wondering
can this program can you guys give like a board member um a live enactment of how that works um in a public forum the language that it is used might be offensive to some because when children become
disregulated then they're not saying oh I love you so much Sandage I want to spend the weekend eating ice cream with you instead they're using language that is more language of disregulation curse words things like that is there a way to come to your facility to see how that
works just to just to see what happens there so we did videotape if you are interested in watching the videotape okay um we can arrange for you to view that okay um but again I just want to put a caution warning um we did not hold
anything back in front of Staff okay um so uh they needed to see see and hear in order to experience that would be great I would appreciate that sure and I can plug my ears yeah yeah yes all right cool because we wanted it to be as
realistic as possible so that the tool itself is used in a in a way because often times when students are disregulated they'll they'll try to go fish in and get you to take the bait per se so they'll say oh things like my arm is hurting or I'm going to throw up
trying to get you to engage with them because they want to continue with getting attention for the inappropriate behavior and so what we want to do is use what's called an indirect prompt so instead of talking to you I would say Nancy if we'd like to learn more about what we do in the deescalation room when
we're calm then we can talk about that see I'm not giving you any attention and I'm just talking to another person so all of those techniques and strategies are demonstrated in that enactment I'll be excited to see that and then the last thing it sounds really fun what's learning behind be on the
classroom is that just like field trips um well it's more than just field trips because field trips are fun field trips are like if you go to McDonald's and you do on the playground dingy and climb through the tubes and eat some McDonald's but when we're going on learning outside of the classroom it
could include McDonald's but what we're working on there is appropriate response to not getting your way when you order chicken nuggets and they only have chicken sandwiches today or taking turns weding your turn in line or making money paying for it with cash
money getting money back so that you understand the price of things we price the things out before we go on learning outside the classroom so it I won't say it's not fun because I really like having fun a lot and I think it makes a difference in education but it also is
learning outside of the classroom the skills that we're learning in isolation in that little bitty building thank you so much for all you do well thank you thank you for the compliments too I appreciate it very much director
H uh before I go um would you like to include the students uh I know Lori usually um pulls them first I was planning on doing that after the round okay don't want you guys to be forgotten so on the topic of Early
Education just a a comment because um I came across some science um this uh last week that demonstrated an 8 to 10 times uh generation of economic uh activity for
every dollar we spend on prek so that is a phenomenal value so anybody who might be looking at this program and saying do we really need to be spending the money you know show me somewhere else where you can make that kind of uh of a profit and it happens in two ways one is it
frees up um parents who um are then able to to work full-time sooner but then of course the big payoff comes many years down the road as these students grow up to have much better um academic outcomes
um break cycles of um you know negativity in their in their backgrounds etc etc so what a wonderful program and I want to be doing everything that we can to support it to that end I did have a question about the sort of the way
that it seems to be allotted you know we have so many positions that we have allotted for full tuition students so many for upk so many for IEP I mean ideally we would want to you know see that utilization closer to 90% right you
know the more kids we can help the better so can you just explain the the rationale behind that allotment sure so we try to maintain a balanced classroom of between our three and four year olds so age wise is one way um the other way
is we try to make sure that we have um the state actually recommends no more than 25% of each classroom be filled with students who have um an identified disability we um stay below 50 I mean 50 is the max you can go without changing
the least restrictive environment so um we just don't have capacity to be at that 25% yet but we did spread it out with the two new classrooms at Evans so we're we're we're trying to hold at 40% this year um but we don't fill to
capacity because when those students come through and they qualify for an IEP or they come through as a part c um child who's below three and then they qualify um and we need to service them in the school that would mean we would have to take another student and have
them leave and we don't want to do that so um we try our best to just maintain we obvious viously base um our numbers on historical data try to figure out what the best ratio is um for the classroom and we we go from there um we
have had conversations like I said about you know turning some of our tuition spots I think what happened with that is families heard free preschool and they said well why do I have to pay tuition if there's free preschool um so we are
having a hard time filling those those seats um we did like I said we talked about turning those into regular upk spots to get the funding but with the numbers we have coming through who are potentially going to be um students with disabilities we're just really looking
at ratios and trying to maintain that right now thank you director L Wright so just as a kind of comment on that piece with Early Childhood having been a mom who all four qualified under
the old system um a part of kind of what wasn't clear to some folks might be that so um if a child is not three at the beginning of the school year but is re receiving Services as a zero to threeyear Old for
Early Intervention which the district would have identified through child find but the resource exchange provides those services in the family's homes those Services TR provides have to end the day the kid turns three and under federal law as long as the kid was still hit the
qualifying percents the district then has to start servicing them in a classroom the day after they turn three so that's ideal if the kids' birthday is in August but if it's in November December March April even May the day
after that kid turns three their services go from in home to in a classroom setting in the district and so the district has to anticipate everybody body who's going to turn three that year who might still qualify for services
when they turn for three now some of those kids actually don't qualify for services anymore and would end up um used to end up on um the high-risk program the Colorado preschool program waivers back um before upk existed some of the kids still need still didn't meet
those goals and qualified for services at the age of three and so when folks see that number of empty seats those empty seats really aren't empty they're basic basically already spoken for um I had a question on the the tuition versus upk my understanding is upk only pays
for foury olds yet when we're running a special education classroom we're doing three and four-year-olds so peers would also be three so are we is some of that parent paid tuition aimed towards the three-year-old crowd yes so all of our parent paid tuition spots are for those
kids who are not in their pre kindergarten year um we do have because is the way they rolled this in with upk when they when they took over the CPP program is they said how many um three-year-olds so more than one year
before Kinder have you been servicing in your program and we're going to pay you that much moving forward so we are still able to service some three-year-olds or those um kids who have more than one year before Kinder through
upk um but it's a limited number and are those that limited number identified with the same screeners as were originally used by CP for the CPP program or is that just as as applied they're just as applied so what what we
did um we looked at we had them fill out an economic survey we had them fill out an application um we looked for kids who were at risk um but there's it's not the same as as CPP there's there's not that
interview process before and and kind of screening before it's just more of each each provider can choose how they want to do that we tried to maintain kind of that kind of that CPP isness right with the application questions and the
economic survey but right because there was a reason those kids were being paid for two years yes instead of one back in they were the kids like one of mine who he hit the 13th percentile because of early intervention so lost IEP service until he then
requalified in element Elementary but you know that if you're right on the border you lose services and then regain them he was a kid who needed to be in preschool to make sure that he continued to make gains and CPP made that possible and we look at some of those same qualifying factors income uh
multilingual families um you know some of those things but that it was not required through upk thank you and then I actually had a question about Peak um because you made a comment um in your
presentation about how when the program first began and I was here back then um it was a lot of big kids and not very many little right and it sounds like the program has shifted significantly and some of that had to do with us at the
time I think we started it the majority of students we were sending out of District were bigger because physically that just became so much harder to handle at a school than than Littles who are that disregulated um but now we're seeing that shift and
it's on average I have a couple questions on average how many years our kids in Peak before they move back to their neighborhood school that's a very sad answer for me um I would say that the shortest amount of time that a student has ever been there was one
quarter the longest amount of time seven years there's something broken there so average amount of time I don't I would say it's between two and three years because once the students come there and even though they're building
their skills I'm having a hard time convincing the case managers to come there and visit every month so they can build foundational relationship so when they go back to the neighborhood school they got their people they got their people who understand how to help them be safe and calm and use the tools that
they've learned in their toolbox so but the the flip side of that is if it's to three years and you're getting them younger then what we're really seeing is if the majority of your students are staying younger we're not
getting recidivism isn't the right word for it but you're not you're not getting a lot of send backs if you're not seeing a lot of older kids come back so that two to threee piece is giving them what they need to be reintegrated into their neighborhood School in the end and then
if they're not coming back to you it means that was a success and that may also be why we're seeing not very many older kids um percentage wise and more of the youngers as we're identifying them better making sure they get to the
people who can really help them instead of just warehousing them in a room in the elementary school and not including them in anything and then making sure they have the skills to come back and I know you'd love to see it faster but also hear that piece that I appreciate that compliment I can tell
you huge difference in all of the students that we've had and I'm sorry to say I don't know the exact number but I know it has to be close to 150 175 students over the amount of time that we've been open only two only two in all of those years have
ever come back um and and those one of those I believe was um a misunderstanding about a design intervention in regard to testing and the student became significantly disregulated and another one was about a
student who came to us first in third grade and returned back as a sophomore in high school um the demands were different in high school than what they were in middle school but and I'm proud of that data and I appreciate your statement about getting them young I also think that the co effect has had a
significant impact on our student populations because kids don't know how to be with other kids kids don't know how to learn an interaction or learn and interact with one another and they don't know how to deal with not having instant gratification of something in front of them and school isn't like that school
is difficult compared to that just an important piece in looking even at program expansion and what facility expansion looks like and if it keeps working the way you're seeing at work you may need less planning for things like a laundry room and more planning of things like a gym and things
that are are conducive to what younger kids um need to be able to experience in the community um versus what we would need to teach an adolescent who who isn't going to get there um but that data I think should be incredible for for people as they're looking at it
saying hey we really are doing right and we're doing something right if they're not coming back if they're not getting sent back because that is a process that's a that's the most restrictive environment you can have in an IEP so it's the hardest to place them in um and it's often the hardest to get them back out of to get them back into where they
are in with neurotypical peers and so I appreciate that work but also that data shift is pretty amazing to me and also right meaning that people recognize your program makes a difference for our young ones and making sure they get to you sooner rather than later which early
intervention in every aspect of life including emotional Behavior regulation is the most important so thank you you're welcome I thank you for the compliment and the feedback thank you first of all I want to say thank you to each one of you um what you guys do
is very valuable and important and I appreciate all the hard work that you and your team and the people who work with you um do so thank you so much for that um I did have a question on the nursing um Services um I want to know what your uh
Theory or your understanding of how we got 96% compliance when other districts were a lot more low with our imun immunization um compliance and then I also would like like to know um what are the main immunizations that are required
under state for state law so um thank you and actually I had a discussion with M Smith about this earlier um it was a great discussion so thank you for that I truly feel that uh not just the hard work for our team um
really um taking the time to understand not just immunizations but any any other needs any the other requirement that the state requires for our schools um our ratio and I am so grateful and so thankful for the ratio of school nurse
versus students in our district we have a nurse that a one nurse at High School uh one nurse at Middle School most of our two of our middle schools have one nurse and our elementary level there's one nurse assigned for two buildings so
that gives us so much time to really be able to understand our population understand our needs like I said not just with immunizations but any other needs with families with
resources when you have other I've had the experience of being at a school district and have five schools I could only be there one day a week per school I could only touch the surface I wasn't able to have the time to really engage
Eng with families engage with staff engag with students about needs and I think we have that privilege in District 49 to be able to do that and have the time to do that and really really service our our student population so I think the time and effort uh is what
brings us to success in in many things such as immunizations um as far as the requirements in the state of Colorado um there's different age um requirements for vaccines there's different age up to um in the preschool up to 5 years old
entry to kindergarten has the different um uh requirements for vaccines um entry to sixth grade uh there's a tetanus diptheria uh prasis booster that's needed um and there's so those are the main required vaccines for schools
there's other vaccines of course that are recommended but not required in the state of Colorado um so we follow those those policies in guidelines um our population also our families also have the option of choosing a non-medical
exemption um it used to be called a religious exemption or a personal exemption so we also have families that have those options um they um educated by their providers um by the school nurses on uh vaccine requirements the
benefits of vaccine requirement and prevention of of uh a spread of communicable diseases for example Le um so I think that's that's that's key in that area so if I may add on just a
little something right there um that 96% number that is a huge deal and a very important accomplishment because you know anytime you take a large population of people and you put them together into a small space it's just uh ripe for um
communicable diseases and so you know we all know that when flu season comes we're all going to get sick and it's going to come from our kids right um but uh when um when you have places that are seeing like measles outbreaks and I
don't think people really understand how bad measles can be and how it can just like devastate a child's life um when when you hit 95% and we're at 96 when you hit 95% you achieve herd immunity
that means that the spread of communicable disease is halted it cannot go anywhere and so if we have students in our uh schools if we have staffers in our schools who are immuno compromised they're good but also those kids will then go back into the community to their
families and friends and again there is no spread um so that is a huge accomplishment and um thank you so much it's really important thank you but 96% is not 96% vaccinated it's 96% of of
families have either demonstrated they' have met the required vaccination rate or they have submitted the form so together those two groups are 96% correct I was just going to say that's the compliance piece it's legally compliant not meeting her not
necessarily you might still be in many fully vaccinated yes I'm yes I'm sorry you just ruined my night I know all right Julia and zann do you guys have any questions I have question for nursing
Services um I really liked the that Falcon high school was implementing some education on like opioid awareness and overdose is there a possibility that the other high schools would Implement those programs absolutely we're being uh proactive in
um educating our our leadership in our schools and and staff and uh putting together presentations education for families um we have have a goal of uh putting together resources for example
for our Deans at our secondary level for example if a student is uh caught um with vaping or um any other uh substance used uh we want to be proactive and provide that family with resources to
help uh with the prevention of those um activities so yes we are we want to spread districtwide thank you you thank you um I had many questions about early childhood education but I think many of them were covered so I just want to say
um amazing job and thank you thank you guys so much all right we are on to 1.2 new d49 policy uh JC use of metal detectors and handheld wands good evening board David Watson director
of Safety and Security it's my pleasure to be here tonight and answer any questions that you may have about this proposed policy any questions director Schmidt sorry I thought there was more to it um yeah I have a little bit to say matter of fact
I think we're going to need two rounds um so let's do two minutes first round if we have consensus and then okay okay so I was very surprised to learn that metal detectors may have already been purchased by the district um day-to-day
use of metal detectors is the exception not the rule in the majority of US schools we may want to guarantee that our kids will be safe but expensive metal detectors cannot provide that for us there are a number of reason researchers who have found that when
using metal detectors in schools students report feeling less safe they are more likely to perceive violence and disorder at their schools and they feel like criminals the National Association of school psychologists said that massive public attention to school
shootings has created the misperception that schools are dangerous places even though crime statistics show that schools are one of the safest places in the US placing metal Det sectors in schools is controversial and needs to be a choice made by The Wider Community a
security committee who wants the district to purchase security equipment is not the wider Community students parents and teachers all need to be asked if they even want metal detectors will the units create a bottleneck and frustration among students every morning we don't need our
students to start the day frustrated compromising their educational day how often will they be screened will it be in the morning after after hours games practices dances school buses returning after lunch how many schools how many units what's the projected Personnel
costs for training and operation what's the projected maintenance repair and replacement cost what is the comprehensive plan going forward have we at any time used metal detectors in our schools are we currently using them now we don't have
unlimited funding and we need a lot more information on all of these items thank you I can appreciate those comments before I move on would you be able to give kind of a background on the rationale for why we are um wanting this
policy sure I'd love to um it actually started back in 2018 February to be exact when Parkland school shooting occurred that's when we started receiving a lot of community phone calls and dialogue from our community asking
what we were going to do to take next steps to protect our schools and our students several of the um suggestions from our community members who voiced their concerns did mention metal detectors they also mentioned armed
security and other protocols which we have worked through with escac the enhanced security Community advisory Council to implement a lot of those changes we did talk about metal detectors at one time but we moved
forward with other initiatives that were more impactful at the time such as armed school security officers now we find ourselves in 2023 is when we um had this discussion with escac and now in 2024 when they were
actually purchased with funds that we had available to us um but it was through the enhanced security Community adviser council where this discussion did take place where it does have um School leaders community members members
of our law enforcement Community as well as student members or student board members and parents I'm sorry yes and parents thanks Miss Murray okay director Schmidt or director
hyle so the Rapture is coming soon because for the second meeting in a row I have some agreement with AB Schmidt um so I am familiar with the science that you shared with us on um the impacts of uh of
um of metal detectors in schools and it's overwhelmingly negative so with that in mind though when I read this policy the most important thing that stands out to me is the when statement when d49
Administration has reasonable cause to believe um that we need essentially a escalated um security posture this puts a important tool into their hands um so when we have a credible threat that's been received that
something might be happening at a specific building or um specific school specific event um my understanding is that the purchased um uh metal detectors are portable and can be quickly set up and operated is that correct yes sir
that's correct so can you confirm that there is no intent to permanently monitor all d49 schools I can 100% guarantee you first I
don't have the manpower to do that second of all um it's not reasonable this there is no intent to deploy these units in a any d49 school on a full-time basis for everyday use this is literally
going to be for moments that that we may receive a late night threat through safe to tell that we cannot deem it not credible with our law enforcement partners and we have limited time to get back to school in the morning and it
would allow us to deploy them with a security team just for that morning or throughout the day so that we can add additional reassurance to our community that we are taking additional steps to keep their children safe while they're in our schools getting an education
so that answers any concerns I might have had that that match Debs and I I feel very comfortable in making this important tool available to you when necessary I I think that's a very legitimate concern Mr hyle um again I I have no desire to want to put metal
detectors in our schools fulltime director L right okay so one question currently I believe sro's as law enforcement office officers can in fact wand students and if you're hearing
things of people being wanded it would be the SRO that has done that correct no ma'am okay we'll have a conversation in private later um I was an SRO I never wanted one single student I understand but I have
personal knowledge so we can talk later but if there is any of that I don't think it's ever been a district employee it's been an SRO if it's taken place I'm not aware of it okay and then um the second this is just kind of I was on escac when metal detectors were brought up with students
before in terms of full-time and the students were wholeheartedly against it I was there as a parent representative when I wasn't on the board um but I can also say I was also a parent in 2022 when there was a concern at Falcon High
where there was an increase in armed security present that year um for a short period of time time and um my daughter's opinion was she would have felt better and safer if at that point
in time people temporarily walked through metal detectors than watching people walk with gun cases through her Hall and her take on it was a little bit different than most students the gun cases didn't scare her because she's a competitive shooter and now that she's in the Air Force she's an expert
Marksman her thought was it's going to take him a long time to get that out of that case um so she did not feel safe because she felt on the flip side of where some people are who aren't as familiar um she felt like they didn't the access wasn't ready enough and so
she felt kind of like it was a show to try and make people feel safe but didn't really increase her safety and she would have preferred everybody just walk through a metal detector that day so that was one student's perspective on some of how we deploy some of those resources and sometimes maybe if it's a
combined one um I don't have a problem with the way it's written because it's situation specific yeah and if and if I can clarify the unit that we've selected to deploy um as a part of our Safety and Security posture and protocol for
threats um it's very it's a lightweight unit it's not intrusive at all um and we can set it so that it literally can only detect what we would deem to be weapons of mass destruction which could be Firearms large weapons um large knives
it won't it won't go off on no books and keys and cell phones and stuff like that so we were very careful with the selection of this product when we looked at all the products available in the market and the product we chose the CIA
opengate is utilized at numerous um sporting venues throughout the country the Secret Service um Homeland Security and and others thank you um very good clarifying background information um I have a couple questions uh how many units did
we purchase one okay one one one full unit and two hand wands okay and then um the es is able to make purchasing decisions for the district or is that something that you you guys and your team made that decision no man' we
present the information to them as a council okay they make a recommendation of whether they think it's a viable option moving forward to add to our security posture and then conversations happen with principal groups Mr hiltz um
M Dr Fletcher um and others and we collaborate on the project okay so then that decision was essentially made by he yeah may I may I clarify any anytime you hear an acronym ending an act there's a pretty good chance it's an advisory
Council so whether that's cacdac esak seac um and that word advisory is really important so ultimately this is an administrative decision just like hiring extra security for our board meetings or or tasking extra security um those are
administrative decisions but because this does interface with an existing policy on personal searches and seizures and there are some first and Fourth Amendment implications um to this it's it's right
for us to get it in policy um most of the I'll speak directly to to director Schmid for a moment most of the objections or Or the critical questions that you raised are non-relevant to this to this implementation because we're not talking about doing these uh at every
school or every morning it is really situational and so um yes it's it's within ultimately my authority but but I would be def differential to our Safety and Security folks as advised by the escac um that this is that this is
is a legitimate purchase and the timing of this is just right because now we've gotten training on it um we did a demonstration at the escac now we know what we have and how it could work it's time to get a policy in place and then
one last uh last thing with the um now it's going to go right out of my brain um it was an important question I'll go to my school board uh School representative is um from a student perspective I do
think that this is a good policy just because it's situational um I do think it could help students feel more safe because you know like just uh recently there was that noncredible threat that caused a lot of absences and so if
students were aware that that there was going to be a metal detector that day or if parents were aware I think that would um encourage them to send their kids to school on days like that um and so just because like it's only with a reasonable cause I think students would appreciate
us thank you Mr Le right I want to add on to that and also your daughter's perspective um as of now like the only thing we show the security guards when we go into the school is our IDs and so for me personally that's scary because like they anybody can have anything in
that bag you know and so as long as it is because I don't want to make anything feel like a prison but I think if it is situational and I think it's just something to really promote and push because like I think as of now especially this past year many of us have been scared to go to school it's
like not fun it's scary is what it is and so I think yeah thank you Mr Zay we are very sensitive to that um we believe wholeheartedly in the protection of our students and preserving the safety of
the learning environment and we're very committed to that that's our mission that's what we do that's what we get up for every day and if we can have a tool that can be added to our tool belt to be able to assist in that um providing that safe
learning environment and provide for the opportunity for students not to be afraid to come to school when we um received these threats one of them came in from California one was up in Denver they weren't even in our area and they disrupted our learning environment for
days we got over 77 safe to tell reports in two days in our school district that is very impactful to our learning environment and any time that we can add a tool to assist in reassuring that our community
is sending their children to a safe learning environment I think the better we're going to be at meeting our mission yeah Julia actually reminded me of my my question um because it was my understanding that these instances have increased dramatically and you just
mentioned it just now about how that has this level of activity actually has gone up and actually finding things in students backpacks that were were weapons or things that that and it's a good thing that they did not use them
and that they were found but um if we could prevent them coming into the school that would be helpful so absolutely that was not a question that I did prepare some key takeaways that I think would answer some of your lingering question questions potentially if you would indulge me I can read them
for you that might help um we talked about it going through the escac already with the passion of this policy there is no intention for the weapon detection systems to become a permanent part of our everyday Safety and Security plan this policy and weapons detection systems will allow us to deploy quickly
in the event we are unable to determine the credibility of a communicated threat in a timely manner through a collaborative investigation with our law enforcement Partners the city of Colorado in El Paso County have seen an increase in juvenile violence possession
of weapons by juveniles and our loan um sorry and there have been um over 5,000 stolen firearms in The Last 5 Years weapons um detection systems are a prudent measure to provide Community reassurance that we take incidents of violent threats seriously and are
willing to take expanded measures to help ensure that we will uphold our community promise to provide a safe learning environment this will enhance our district safy and security posture it could deter a student from acting on violence at a d49 school as well as it
be a proactive measure to prevent weapons and unauthorized items from entering the learning environment and the last really important one is although there may not be a majority of support through our community they have voiced substantial
support every time we receive a threat that's all I've got okay are there any objections I have a few more things to say do we want to do another round Okay one minute so situation situationally
speaking if I saw a metal detector at my school I'd run like hell um normally the board gives consensus to send items to committees about topics that need more information about when the board sends something to the committee the committee has a meeting or several meetings where the topic is discussed and minutes are
taken when the committee reaches its conclusions they are expected to be presented to the board during a public meeting for board consideration this is imp policy however the legal responsibility for decision making in all matters of policy and operation
rests with the board as one member of the board I would would like to know the date of the public meeting where the use of metal detectors was first introduced I do understand that was probably with the last board I want to know the date when the previous board publicly gave
consensus to send this topic to the security committee I would like to see the minutes the attendees and findings from those security committee meetings I would like to know how the security meetings were made public at which board Education meeting the security committee
presented their conclusions for the board's consideration and and I'm just not sure that proper protocol for advisory committees was followed completing completely according to policy BDF did we spend jistic money on metal
detectors without the board of education's approval was the process done correctly for maximum transparency were parents asked a lot of parents not just committee parents a lot of students not just
committee students until the dist District can answer these questions I cannot give agreement to move this forward it does not seem transparent to me director Schmid I um respect your statement um but one uh point of
clarification this is not a committee this is a council advisory Council um so it works differently and um we have a legal responsibility in the state of Colorado to do all we can protect our kids and provide a safe learning
environment and we're moving forward doing the best we can with that mission Mr Hills can you further clarify if I I can so the policy that director Schmidt is referring to uh about advisory committees is BDF but there are multiple places within that policy where it
speaks about the board or Administration so it's incorrect to say that all decisions have to come back either have to originate with the board or have to come back to the board that's not our governance model that's not our Administration model and so um the the characterization that
you are applying to this policy is what is kind of colloquially called a management board we don't have a management board we have a governance board and so one of the things that I'm charged to do is administer the expectations of the board or the expectations set in policy and and
maintaining safety in our schools is one of those um the board has had Presence at the escac but those are intentionally not not going to be public meetings and I'll I'll stand on that all day long um we may disagree permanently but you don't want to have discussions about
security protocols in public um you want to have those in private you want to have demonstrations of security technology privately because you don't you don't want to that's one of the reasons why um sometimes people will request video
and we are allowed to not release video from our security system because it might reveal the dep the field the range that is visible and those are security details that were explicitly allowed to keep private so if the interest of of
safety um is well established and it is then there are times when we are not only allowed but we're prudent to have less transparency uh in this case um the escac has operated now since Parkland Right started under under the leadership
of Mr Watson and our former chief operations officer P all adaa it it is a representative uh committee it has had student parent staff security professional voice um which I explained to you this week in in our email exchange
and these are not matters that we should discuss or or will on my watch discuss in a town hall setting where we have gotten input has been when there are events nationally that increase the level of of concern
and anxiety in every Community including our community so if there is a uh a shooting in AAL or a shooting in Parkland or or uh the shooting in Nashville when those things happen we constantly get an immediate kind of
Blossom of requests to harden our schools and and the number one thing that they they usually say is put metal detectors at all ENT entrances we've already had that debate at escac and we've clearly rejected that um and every
one of the representative groups there has rejected that so it's not like students hate it and parents want it nobody wants as as Zayn said earlier to prison ify right you didn't use that bad grammar I did but we don't want to make our student our our students go to school in a prison but that's how we all
always say it plus prisons are really dangerous places like lots of crimes happen in prisons so we're not trying to harden them to the point that they um that they can't be effective learning environments uh but in terms of how the
advisory councils work um this is 100% within our protocol and our normal practice for decision making and if I may add to that as having been a sitting board member when it was formed we approved the bylaws that explicitly
stated what the membership would be um what the rule and um how it was going to operate and that included all members signing non-disclosure agreements when they participate or not confidentiality nondisclosure
because scenarios that could involve um security decisions that if known would then defeat the purpose of the security protocol um would be discussed openly with people serving on that community on
that committee and so they have we have to and I'm no longer on it because I don't respond to anything from it because I was a parent rep and I can't be a parent rep and a board rep at the same time um but when I was on it I signed that agreement and I could not
talk about anything even though I was representing Falcon high as a parent I couldn't go back to Falcon high and talked to the principal about what was presented there unless I was explicitly asked to get feedback from my building leadership because some aspects of it had to stay in that very close in that
in that that close group to keep everyone one safe and that was explicitly approved by the board at the time it was established and I'm assuming those bylaws haven't been substantively changed to that point but I remember us explicitly stating that and in fact when
the board gets briefed on those things they are sensitive enough that it qualifies under um executive session rules um because it would put people at risk otherwise and I want to be respectful to you um director Schmidt and answer one of your question before I
walk away from the podium here in a couple minutes um the last time that esac talked about this topic was November of 2023 direct H so this was a question that came to me from a constituent earlier this morning and I already heard a hint of it and I
just want to get confirmation were principles consulted on this policy uh the administrators that were in the esac which isn't I'm sorry which includes principls assistant principles Deans so there is
Administrative um attendance thank you and regarding the the the confidentiality requirement I mean one of the things that people will be talking about and you need to be able to talk about in the ascac is Frank conversations about things like known vulnerabilities you know a building that
uh you know may have a an entrance that isn't properly secured and we need to strategize on what we're going to do about that things of that nature that's why it's absolutely vital that these conversations are not happening in the public yeah and that's why I love engaging with our student board and
other students in the esac process because I can do a vulnerability assessment at any of our d49 locations all day long but you know who's going to be the expert at telling me where our gaps are students any further questions from our
students it's also technically not a board advisory committee correct isn't it an advisory to operations and therefore it doesn't even come AC policy so it originated as advisory to the chief operations officer and then in the
weird year um that that attached to me and and then we actually passed policy that whatever was a prior reference not I'm sorry we didn't pass a policy we adopted a memorandum that anything that previously referred to a chief officer now referred to the superintendent
so even though we still have some chief officer language that Lynette is judiciously scrubbing out um even if it says Chief education officer we have uh we have board approved practice that that translates
the superintendent it's not the same as a board appointed group that's correct and it's also not a statute there is no statutory foundation for the esak it's a District 49 uh probably not a unicorn there's probably comparable in other places but it it's something that we
created after the uh margerie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland incident because we did not want to be making these administrative decisions that as Mike said require super high sensitivity we we just knew we needed more wisdom in the
room and we used to have a district safety Emergency Management Council that um I used to chair prior to the escac so we stood that down and stood up the escac so that we could get more Community involvement and uh students
involved and parents okay before we go to director Schmid um we're going to go to our student board um I had a couple things I wanted to throw out there this is no way shap or form a question but this is something I want to throw out there so that way we all hear each other I'm really big on hearing each other out I like to hear
other people and I like to hear myself sometimes too um so I wanted to say the questions that we ask about topics like these can always like start like bickers between each other and we can always end up with questions like were parents asked were
teachers asked or Deans asked but like at the end of the day what does that question lead us to do you want your kid to feel safe at school like what would the obvious response be like no so I mean like yes we do you know what I'm saying and so I just feel like the question of is everybody okay with this
I feel like the answer should be yes I feel like if there is a credible threat then yes we should be okay with making sure that the kids at the schools who are experiencing experiencing it sorry are feeling safe I also wanted to say that many times we say that things like this won't happen especially you've seen
this around the world I'm sure um and it's always the people who say like oh our school would never get shot everybody here is so nice it's always those schools like that that something does happen and I think this is a really good thing to push because it's making sure that we're prepared I also wanted to say that we can say that metal
detectors are scary and that we want to run away from them but also I want to add being in a school shooting and being in a threat is scary there's like it just yeah thank you very well said Zane thank you Juliet did you have anything
no thank you dror Schmid I'm just going to say nothing is 100% effective and if we're going to throw metal detectors out there to offer a sense of security we're not going to get that
that metal detectors will not give us 100% sense of security um director SMI I can appreciate your stance on that but neither will a firearm in the hands of a good guy inside the school there was one in the
hands of a good guy SRO in Parkland and a major mascar took place so there are no foolproof strategies with all due respect with Parkland you had a student that was in and out of
school in and out of difficult situations taken out of the school putting back in the school everybody knew he had issues and they kept putting him back in the school so if he took a gun from someone somebody didn't do
their job along the way because the kid was messed up all the way along and everybody knew so I don't like using Parkland as the example because we knew they knew fair enough
um Parkland is what got all this started everything esak armed school security everything and I'll just end saying if someone's intent on evil evil is going to happen and we've got to be
prepared and have the best tools in place to be to be able to meet it but will they meet it I hope so all right uh well we're going to go ahead and uh it sounds like we have might have some objections so if
I can get a consensus on the mic please no yes yes yes okay and that will move forward to our next meeting we are on to to thank you so much uh we are on to 1.3 new job
description Zone Partnerships and Innovation administrator members of the board as as uh Dr Gutierrez is walking up I just want to I want to make a a quick observation um Although our materials tonight are are uh replete with the name
Izzy because Izzy's in the role that we're talking about in needs the programs that are that are part of this discussion um it is a good HR principle that you don't create positions for persons right that's a that's a just a good General principle in HR and I just
want to I want to be very clear that's not what we're doing um although you do not create positions for persons persons often create great programs and so I'll use allies as an example we we all understand that
Rebecca Thompson was incredibly important in in creating that program and we wanted to create succession that would carry the success of that program forward so what what very is about to to present is really a way of creating
sustainability if there were to come a time where we didn't have the person who's creating these programs and we want those programs to continue to be viable and sustainable then we need to have the right position in leadership um so that we can support the existing the
incumbent but also think about succession and future um program sustainability so I just wanted to give that frame around um this isn't about Izzy this is about the position that Izzy is in yes thank you superintendent
Hils because that is a very important um frame to have and thank you school board for allowing me to come before you to make this recommendation So currently what we have is a coordinator of special projects and when
that position was created it was appropriate but since then um and up to now the role and the responsibilities of the role have greatly
increased um I connect Zone continues to grow and so I was checking our enrollment tracking currently the I connect Zone makes up 55% of the total District enrollment and I did go in and
I said without goal because we always have to make that distinction so even without goal I connect Zone does make up 39% of D 49's enrollment we have um several schools more than the other
zones and we continue to grow we want to to continue to grow we do have the programs that are in the scope of work the high performance program without it um spring Studio would uh go down
significantly in enrollment because it is 36% of spring Studio we have the F1 Visa program we don't currently have international athletes that doesn't mean that we would not be approached by an international athlete AOL lab has grown
originally it was 14 students currently it's serving 241 students and I believe it was at the last board meeting that a parent came before you and said her child learned how to fly before they learned how to drive which I thought was
phenomenal so we just have all these amazing programs and we have several in the works and so what what I'm looking to do is eliminate the coordinator of special programs position and replace it with his own Partnerships and Innovation
administrator which is a mouthful we do have a savings a little bit over $2,000 that we would have because currently what we're doing is we're stien stiening that that verb sounds weird to
my second language learner brain um but we're providing a stipend for every day beyond the current contract because there's just so much work that needs to get done so going to a 261 day contract
at a Zone administrator is is actually a cost savings to the Zone we're looking to bring in more CTE Pathways we're looking to create more Partnerships this is really truly a year round position
I'm really excited um that we're looking to develop two Partnerships with two of my my former employers were looking to create a partnership with Target for internships for students in the Ace
classes at Patriot and since you said be mindful of acronyms I sat in the back and said I don't know what Ace means now I do it's alternative Cooperative education so we're working with Target
out at briergate to provide internships for Patriot students and we're trying to build a partnership with waterburger to bring in Waterberg University for leadership development so really excited to have those two
Partnerships in the works but I can't take on that work Rochelle kohh house can take on that work but a Zone Partnerships and Innovation administrator can take on that work so I'm hoping you would consider um creating this position
eliminating the coordinator and that you would consider voting this into reality at the next board meeting and I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have director Schmidt thank you so much for breaking
that down for me um on the F1 Visa I did not realize that d49 was using it that was one of my questions how we were in implementing it I didn't know you were using that for international athletes I always assumed F1 visas were for adults
wanting to come to learn in the US um I don't it sounds like you need this position but I would like to just throw out there that from 20,000 or from 2000
to 2019 the number of school administrators have increased by 88% and teachers and students have only only increased by 8% so I'm going to be very mindful about
putting more administrators in although from what you've said it makes sense in this yeah particular case that's that's why I'm eliminating one yes I'm eliminating one and replacing it I'm not adding yeah that's what I got out of it so I do appreciate that chair may I
interject for a moment director Schmid can you clarify the source of that statistic because we have a board policy Center for Education statistics so that's a national statistic so I want I want this on the record it is that is radically incorrect for District 49 we
have not increased our administrative roles in fact we have a very strict ratio that we have maintained for 12 years um and so while that comment may have great relevance for a national observation for the purposes of this conversation and since we're on the
record that when a board member speaks reasonable people might think you're speaking about the district that you lead that statistic is completely wrong for District 49 I wrong not to site that I'm sorry I I appreciate that and I just I just want to balance the record and
make sure people know there is a Time coming when Mr Anderson's going to stand up and show you a couple of graphs and he's going to show you that our administrative line has been flat I think it stated 78 to 80 administrators for 10 years in a row even though our
number of students of all kinds has grown a lot and so I I appreciate and I appreciate the the rapid acknowledgement of that but it's also part of why verin said this position was right when it started and it's not we we have essentially the programs have outgrown
the position Dr yeah I just wanted to say um you know you are responsible for your Zone and you are telling us that this is a position that you need and that you that you've outgrown another position and so
it's one for one it's completely budget neutral and you know we have faith in you that's why we gave you the position and uh so you have my support thank you I appreciate that director L right um I totally agree especially when you look
at the analysis and you see by creating it um as a salary admin position with an admin contract you're getting um a little bit of a savings technically um but either way when a program grows it's very similar I like to the comparison to allies because allies started as a program within a
school a very small program within a school and has now grown to its own school so obviously we didn't have a principal of the program within the school but we ended up having to have a separate principle for that um as it grew substantially into not only just a
program but a full full School of its own and I think this is a similar um development for similar reasons Innovation and education to reach reach student needs which is what we're supposed to be about so I think this is awesome thank you did I do that did I touch something I shouldn't have touched
oh there it is okay thank you for bringing this forward I think it's important for us to know what's going on with our Zone and to hear the amount of students that are at the AOL lab is really exciting and encouraging and uh that's like my husband's favorite thing to talk about
is that AOL lab um and coming from a school where we have actually experienced growing pains ourselves and had to create new positions or re rework different positions based on our needs I fully support this um this uh re redoing
of a role essentially so yep thank you may I add just one more little observation yes really fast um one of the reasons I'm super excited about the relationship that we maintain with our tror schools is because of how
many great Charter leaders are working in operated schools and Izzy is an example of that he was an rmca guy before he was an I connect Zone guy and and whether it's Martina or Mike weeder I I just there's a long long list of people who are in leadership roles in
District 49 who who came through one of our Charter Schools uh at least four principles just just thinking rapidly and I don't want to say them all because I'll miss somebody but at least four of our principles came to us out of the charter School community and I was at a math conference the last couple of days
with one of our great teachers that went through a math Masters program and is now providing great leadership at one of our charter schools and that story is just as common so just another example of how critical the ey connect Zone has been to the culture of d49 it's not just
about student Choice it's we say it's the best choice for anyone who's choosing a place to work a place to learn a place to lead and is he exemplifies that but he's far from the only one who exemplifies that absolutely what about the students do you have any
questions for me if I don't want to walk away without you asking me something if you if you wish I don't have any questions I do think it's a um great um job to add especially because it prioritizes the students needs so thank you okay thank you Zan I don't have any
questions to add as well I do think that it's amazing what you're doing your Partnerships congratulations thank you yeah okay any objections okay if there are no objections this will be moved into
action at the October 10th board meeting thank you very much I appreciate your support okay we are on to 1.4 Unified School District district Improvement plans Lisa Vu thank you Dave he knows I'm so B it's going to be this one this Arrow right
there don't touch the other ones right hi I'm Lisa fellow executive director of learning services and I'm really happy to be here tonight because we have good news I'm happy to okay the right I'm here to present to you our
unified Improvement plans also known as our uip so uh that's what the only acronym I hope to use um but I'll catch myself the our uips are constructed in response
to our uh school performance Frameworks and the the state only requires for schools that are at performance and above to do these every other year um since I've been in the district they're done every year and
they're just a good reflection of our where we're at in our schools and what what our opportunities for growth are for student achievement and maybe some highlight some great things that are happening um this all ties into our
culture and strategy of continuous Improvement this is up here's are I'm showing you our 2023 school performance Frameworks or school performance ratings that's what that R is um you'll see a lot of yellow uh up
there and you'll see one for insufficient ient State data and now here is our working student performance I mean school performance Frameworks our spfs for this year and just a significant Improvement and we are so
proud of that I really want to highlight um evans's Elementary as far as I know they've been in uh Improvement status for quite some time and this year they are not and it was a lot of hard work for that school
so so y thank you I also really want to I think what has driven the us to have more schools on performance is the work that Peter started last year with meeting with every single principal and
Zone leader in one-on-one so that was a lot of meetings and really explaining their school performance Frameworks and going all the way through digging very deep into the data that that just giving them that
awareness and setting some goals that were attainable that just because it says does not meet you're very close and this is how you can get there um I just the whole vibe that we have in learning Services now we're on this trajectory
for improvement and it feels really great so thank you to Mr hiltz for leading Us in that direction um I also the state had changed they do every they do something creative every year
this year they streamlined the the unified Improvement um plans online and they they allegedly streamlined them but there have been so many technical difficulties formatting
difficulties that I need to shout out to Karen Bixler my some of my team came cuz I don't know if they don't trust me up here or if they're here to really support me cuz I they told them to go home they just got back from a professional learning conference so I know how tired they are but
Karen she took every one of those calls from principles panicking because the formatting wasn't working um we are grateful that she has such a great relationship with um the Department of Education that she just picks up the
phone and these issues were solved immediately it was pretty good um and then oftentimes we beat other districts and Reporting these so we helped out other districts because they got resolved right away so thank you Karen
also she did trainings at for all the zones then she did one-on-one trainings because some um principls required more training and then she even did daily trainings with all the phone calls she received so thank you Karen and as a
result of Peter digging deeper into our spfs and really uh working with our School leaders on identifying their data and data literacy that created a lot more work for Kathleen
granis she gets many requests on a daily basis for data that is so deep and very very specific that um and she just responds right away um things that we thought
couldn't happen that we couldn't pull that data Kathleen pulls it right away so thank you to Kathleen for all her hard work um let me move on I pushed the wrong button just a reminder that our unified Improvement
plans are a result of uh the school per it's an answer to the school performance Frameworks and this is just a quick reminder that it's 60% um academic achievement I mean growth and and 40% academic achievement
but now they've added some science in there so we had some science scores this year and um I just wanted to give you this with a link to online tools to help you better understand it and then I present to you our school
unified Improvement plans um these there's two schools that are not on here um pepsol and P and that's because they exercise their right to do every other year the I connect Zone the charter schools often do that some give them to
us every year but those two schools exercise their right not to now keep in mind if they are below performance so if they're an improvement or priority Improvement they must do them every year so um I know these are a littleit this
is a lot uh we put them in a PDF file for you to better read like a summary of them um and I know that Lynette and I have talked about possibly doing a training on the actual platform and the
tool on how and the how decisions are made so I'm happy to do that and lynet and I will set a time for that okay any questions director schmi I just had a comment I did not when I was looking at
it the link to the online tools went right pass me so thank you oh okay at it okay okay director H director liia Wright director Schmidt did you want to
say something that I did have one more uh comment and it was that there wasn't any data in I think it's the next pages that is uh excellent observation because these are all Based on data a lot of them a lot of what we write in
those and the uh unified Improvement plans uh you'll see a couple of them with some data that's pretty ugly it's huge that is the one formatting issue that CD has not figured out and that only happens when a school is trying to
upload screenshots and they are aware of this they have repeatedly asked us not to include data um charts now you can speak to the data and some schools did um but
you cannot insert any graphs the they do that now which this is new they they put all our graphs in there all our Cass um longitudal data everything's in there and so they ask us not to it's kind of
frustrating because sometimes we really want to address our primary literacy scores or our math scores in k to and we can't I mean we we cannot upload the the data the charts and the
visualizations so and then I have a issue that when they do the PDF when we run the PDF those charts that CDE puts on are not visual so that's something they said they're working on I will
direct you to the school view on um the Colorado Department of Education where you can put in particular schools you can also look at our district school performance Frameworks and you'll get some really good data there again not
our dibles 8 data and not our star 360 data so it's kind of frustrating um Juliet do you have comments uh no thank you for what you do Z no thank you for what you do well I
want to thank the school principls too they did all the work um any other questions I just want to say that I am so proud of our district and how far we're coming
and the amount of schools that are in performance now than used to be and we're going to continue to keep going so um this has given me a lot of hope so thank you I always say just even little bit of success it really does breed
motivation I know our Department's very motivated we're seeing that with our principles our cordinators our Zone superintendent so it's it's it's a good feeling and I also want to tell you that the um final ratings these are working
ratings the school performance Frameworks will come out in November and hopefully there'll be some more good news okay thank you thank you thank you all right we are
on to 1.5 Energy Services per performance Contracting Fletcher you're up I just wanted to come to you very briefly before our guests come on you'll probably remember back to to the anual planning Summit when we talked about the
exciting deferred maintenance but we talked about how that is something that's growing in the background as we do great things out front it grows I always challenge my colleagues to not just come with a problem to come with Solutions so I don't want to be um
divorced of that myself so uh looking at energy performance Contracting is a solution that allows us to do some investment and growth and get return on that so without further Ado we have a representative of SNY Electric and a representative of the state from the Colorado Energy Office letting you know
we went through a process where we looked at many different providers got down to two finalist had great scrutiny and Schneider Electric was on top of that so that is why I bring them before you as opposed to bringing a parade of energy service companies to talk to you without further Ado thank you Dr
Fletcher okay sorry I'm just gonna I feel like I'm going to need the water um good evening Board of Education superintendent hilts thank you so much for having us today uh my name is Will Benish I'm a program manager with Schneider Electric and with me is
Charlie Stevens from the Colorado Energy Office he's a program engineer and he's really here just to be in the background supporting all of this which is great thank you for being here Charlie um so like Dr Fletcher introduced uh we've been working with the district hand inand over the last six to eight months
in you know consistent conversation understanding well what are your greatest challenges when it comes from an operation standpoint where where are challenges in the learning environment um and how can we help uh I I've had the opportunity to work with um schools big and small across this state for over six
years now and helping them that's the slide this way now we know okay thank you thank you um and I'll acheve a lot of the goals when it comes to reducing that amount of deferred maintenance um so you could see there there's a lot of content up there in 15 minutes we'll see
if we can get through all of it but I know they'll have some questions and we can definitely touch base at that point as well very briefly um like Dr Fletcher alluded to uh we're an energy services provider pre-qualified to do this kind of work here in the state of Colorado
partnered with the Colorado energy office um to be able to execute projects like this for schools cities counties municipalities all across the state um a little more information about who we are more nationally I guess um but I've had the pleasure of working here in Colorado
over the last six years um doing this only with school districts so one of our first conversations together as a team was understanding well what does what this program is and what do you do to benefit our school learning environment and it really came down to three main categories uh very
first creating a comfortable working living environment for students and faculty and staff when it comes to addressing deferred maintenance we're going to talk a little about what that actually means today speaking with the actual Capital recovery program the energy performance Contracting itself avoiding massive
future operational costs so dollars can be saved now and can be leveraged for projects that are coming in the future projects you normally seen in a general Bond obligation or with a large cash infusion can be used through this program appropriately and then finally providing and promoting environmental
stewardship um but as well as providing student engagement opportunities especially for students that have interest in a potential career down the line when it comes to engineering electrical mechanical and the trades which is something that our team has to offer
okay so you see two images on the screen I'm going to do my best to explain this this was the work of superintendent hiltz and Dr Fletcher when I explained exactly how this program works they came up with this analogy it has to do with the snowball so imagine you have a snowball it represents the giant pile of deferred maintenance that is at the
school district which grows every single year right currently the heating source that is melting that snowball is the sun something that chips away at that snowball year over year but unfortunately the snowball is growing
faster than the sun is helping it melt so the amount of deferred maintenance the dollars that are being added up and the operations expenses are adding up as well so let's say instead of the sun we use something like a blowtorch blowtorch is a bit extreme right it's going to
melt that snowball immediately this is something like a general Bond obligation that you'd see where you'd see millions and millions of dollars being addressed a large cash infusion a capital contribution that's a very expensive low torch and not a lot of school districts have millions of dollars in cash to be
able to use something like this so thinking more realistically and accessibly what about something like a hair dryer a hair dryer not as powerful as a blowtorch but what a haird dryer will do will melt the snowball at a faster rate then the Deferred maintenance will grow um and we're going
to talk about how that correlates exactly with what this EPC energy performance Contracting program can get to so I'm going to give them all the credit for creating that analogy there than thank you we talk about the program itself one of our one of the things that our team takes a ton of Pride and is
understanding how a school district functions the goals that it has the Strategic goals that it has and and the future thinking that's in place so very early on our team took a look at really major categories that we're going to use as the foundation for a lot of this work understanding how our accessibility as a
project management organization can match up and align with accessibility with the Baldridge framework with which we know you take a lot of pride in um how we know the district's not going on for a bond this year but sometime in the future being able to address operational challenges now so you don't have to go to your taxpayers in the future with a
larger ask that's in place strategic goals that are associated with improving the facility condition index score at your schools this program supports that entirely student achievement and accessibility with career shadowing opportunities that we've done right down the road at District 38 at Elizabeth School District a Canyon City School
District and have students received scholarships as well as opportunities for job um opportunities in their futures of course how is this funded over time and how are we managing energy in the process so up to this point we've had some steps that have occurred you're
going to see this word IGA come up quite often that stands for investment grade audit um that is the state energy office's contract template for an Energy Services Company like our team to be able to go in and complete an extensive audit of all of the facilities or a
majority of the facil ities inside the district to determine well what are the things that are going to generate utility and operational savings that we can then use to help pay for a lot of the big mechanical needs big building automation system needs needs that you don't see or feel right now but your
students will and it's going to come as a budgetary item in the future that will be very expensive so that includes an introduction of the Colorado energy office which is the state agency that provides oversight to our team's analysis of the energy work that's being done as they do with every other school
city and county here in uh the state of Colorado if the board were to decide to move forward with the investment grade audit there is a formal approval required for that and then once we get into there we'll have about a typically a 5 to seven month timeline in developing and completing this investment grade audit this is the
investment that the energy services company makes to the school district uh in terms of getting down to exactly how much money is being saved how much energy is being saved and how are you creating that analysis so we'll finish that investment gr Auto report providing updates to the Board of Education in the
process deliver it to the energy Office deliver it to the district and if we're all happy with what we see we would move forward in implementing it so obviously we're very very early in that first stage um but wanted to make sure you understood how the development of this time line goes how am I doing on time
not good all right so when we're talking about the different facilities and I hope I got these colors right I I superent helps helped with that um the facilities team and the planning team came down to I believe 20 schools in the district that we would be taking a look
at in prioritizing these schools I don't think you could see it on the screen there but this is averaging out to a school year built around 1992 and just over 1.5 million square feet being audited so those would the schools that would be included in the investment grade audit so what does that mean in
terms of kicking off the investment grade audit so like I mentioned earlier there is a contract associated with the investment grade audit that is not a electric contract that is a contract that is the Colorado energy offices this is the contract that every school City and County that has done this work
utilizes with Partnership of the Colorado energy office so we've been working with the district currently in finalizing what that contract could look like but in that contract there is the determination of what the price of this investment grade audit actually would be
this is not an upfront price required by the district this is the cost that it would take for our team to go in and develop this work over the next five to seven months but it is not something that we're requiring in a specific ask from the board right now how that cost
is determined we take the total square footage that we're looking at we multiply it by and I don't know why the energy office used it this way but we multiply it by the distance from here to the Colorado Energy Office in Denver and that determines the cost per square foot so luckily enough Falcon's got the
lowest uh cost per square foot on there at 20 cents square foot um so you're seeing an investment grade audit price just under $300,000 that would be the cost of the actual investment grade audit on the right there I've got a lot of text I'm going to make sure this is is very clear
this is very important so the investment grade audit price is not an upfront fee it is a contingency fee if we if we move forward with this and we develop this project and the school district decides to move forward with the construction of this project the cost of that investment
grade audit is rolled into the cost of the entire project which we're going to talk about is covered by utility and operational savings this is a budget neutral program if we execute this IGA and the district decides at the end hey you have a viable project here but we don't want
to move forward um that would be the fee that is invoiced tiid or electric for that work in the rare case but we have seen it before if we cannot find a viable project if we cannot find a project that generates utility and operational savings um that we can
present to the board of of Education um both parties can walk away without an investment grade audit being owed I've never seen that before but it has happened so anyway I just wanted to make sure that was very clear and understanding how that is broken
out so I showed snowballs little IGA stuff um this is a very clear description of how this program actually does work so what we would do is gather a utility and operational Baseline of what you're currently spending at your school which we don't have that number yet we
did a feasibility assessment of four schools in terms of how we got qualified for this that spend was about $630,000 just for those four schools between electric gas and water here we did not actually calculate any operational spend specifically but we would gather a
baseline utility expenditure we would make recommendations that we know are going to generate utility cost savings um and what our team does is once we install those um we essentially guarantee the savings well we guarantee the savings things so if we tell you you're going to save $100,000 a year off
your utility bill um and you only see $90,000 saved from your Baseline we will write a check to cover the difference that's what the guarantee means and the Colorado Energy Office holds us to that jurisdiction um and the statute supporting it here in the state of Colorado that's how every state with
this program is performed um so in turn the savings that you're seeing that are being guaranteed we're using the savings to actually pay for the work through a variety of different funding mechanisms high level
okay so speaking of funding um there are a variety of different funding mechanisms to actually pay for this work um the most common funding vehicle that we see is actually a form of financing it's called a tax exempt lease purchase agreement as a tax exempt entity um
lenders and school districts have the opportunity to work together to essentially um Finance out this project so we were talking about on that last slide there those payments there the savings that are guaranteed that are generated the annual debt obligation that a school district would make are
covered entirely by the savings they have to be that is what Dr Fletcher reflected with the budget neutral approach the savings from your utility Baseline will cover that annual debt obligation entirely if we don't meet that we cut you a check to cover the difference and of course figure out why
is that happening it shouldn't be happening so I'll go back to that real quick so just as a quick example we worked with District 38 down the road a few years ago and as we talked about their project their project included the installation of security vestibules it
included boiler installations rtus brand new controls LED lighting it was very Capital intensive um so there were a bunch of different funding vehicles to get there and one of the things the board actually requested was understanding okay well the savings are paying for the annual debt obligation
each year if this is a $9 million project when are we going to see $9 million in entire life cycle savings so our team completed a projected payback that um over the life of the equipment inside of the facility in year 17 of that life cycle that is when the savings
would be meeting um the entire life cycle of the projected payback of the project cost and I broke that out just a bit further on here for the project at District 38 which is relevant just because it's down the road and it's it's a great project um about 3/4 of that
project cost was finan through a tax exemp Le purchase agreement as you could see there but on top of that we actually were able to secure a few few different grants well I guess considerably the best Grant um and they use some of their sr2 as well as their own District
Reserve in order to achieve some of the other work that did not generate any Energy savings but wanted to be included inside of this project so that's broken out there below um and I just think the importance of this project with the association of we implemented items that
didn't have much to do with actual energy management or utility cost savings but Capital priorities um which was something that they wanted to prioritize especially around Safety and Security so that was a big really important project that our team took on in that
moment so we talked about the financing mechanism as the primary form of funding um but one of the things that our first team takes on first in the investment grade audit is looking for federal and state funding that we can use as an up front contribution um there's a lot of free money out there right now for projects like these with school
districts we have an in-house Grant and rebates team that would be able to take on Federal and State Grant applications the ones you see up here are simply examples of fiscal year 24 applicable federal funding I am not saying that is what we would go after it's whatever would work best for the school district
um this is your project at the end of the day we're not here to enforce a scope of work that does not meet your expectations and requirements but these are just some examples of ones that we've gone after this year here um we're not perfect but we've got a great grants team uh and and we'll work our tales off
to find funding for you up front before we look at that primary funding vehicle oh 40 seconds okay and the most important part too um we're really proud of our student engagement programs at Schneider um it it's something that has grown tremendously over the last five
years five six years um one of our top programs our energy fellowship program um is actually an in-house program where we allow students to come on site with our construction team in an appropriate setting of course provide trainings and teachings for them especially for students interested in the trades um so
we'll have folks um construction managers that essentially become mentors to a lot of these students that are interested we did this most recently at Elizabeth School District and it was very successful I'm going to move actually to the right because actually at Eliz at Elizabeth we included our Schneider Electric University program
which is free to all students that we work with those are 300 classes associated with engineering electrical mechanical And Trades work um that we offer to students as well there are a few others on there I will skip them just for now um feel free to take your time you're fine thank you so much I
appreciate that you know what then I'll stay on it actually perfect um students in seam is a great event we actually held this in the El Paso County area uh we held it for three years in a row we took off last year but we're hoping to bring it back this year here in a few months actually um but essentially you
bring in speakers and um just impressive individuals that started out in the stem and steam oriented fields to be able to talk and speak to students we usually hold it at the space Convention Center space Discovery Center in Colorado Springs um that's an event that we want to expand further out into different
regions of the state but just a specific one I wanted to include for some of the younger grade school students we recently kicked off our waste diversion program at Thompson School District up in leveland Colorado um that's been a big success with two schools that we've worked with there and finally on the very right associate with Schneider
Electric University is an energy dashboard we use in house for how students can monitor and manage actual energy usage but most importantly cost usage inside of their buildings I've seen competitions occur that way too awesome thank you to wrap things up kind of way back
at the beginning our team did complete a baseline utility analysis of four schools at the district um we took a look like I mentioned between electricity Natural Gas and Water understanding what the cost per square foot is what the usage is between all of those utility providers so what could a
scope of work actually look like for that and again we worked hand inand with the facilities team they gave us some guidance on things that they might have already addressed or preparing to address but a lot of the scope decision making we took on our own in this case
um we wanted to understand well what are the things that we know are going to generate utility and operational savings what are the things that we know have free and available funding out there that the cost can be covered so the school district can take on larger capital projects a lot of the items you see on there you don't see or feel but
especially under mechanical and electrical equipment those things are extremely expensive um they degrade heavily over time and those are the things that schools hospitals counties and cities need the most so how can we fund those with other items that are going to help get them there without an
upfront contribution from a school district or going to your taxpayers that's how we came up with that preliminary scope of work on those four schools this financial summary you could call it a financial summary there's no costs on this page this is simply what the
savings projection opportunity could be so the Topline data in green that is a rounded range of energy and operational savings that could be generated based on the four schools that we looked at as well as the life cycle savings associated with it this is over a 20-year term based on ashray standards
for equipment that is inside of that facility I included on the right side sort of just a a visual to be able to highlight what savings and how they escalate as they follow utility rates over time and then below is the very similar chart the only difference in the
chart below is the inclusion of a renewable source being solar and the only reason I included solar in there is because of the tremendous impact it does to the cost savings on top of this between ITC credits that are out there tax incentives it is the cheapest that
it has ever been to afford this especially for commercial properties as well um so we've been very successful in capturing 30 to 50% cost deductions on solar panels to be able to impact a savings potential like that so you can fund a lot of your top mechanical and
automation needs that are desperately needed I believe that is all I have besides some next step and just discussion thank you so much for for the time and the extra time we appreciate it
questions yeah thanks so much for your made a little more sense listening to you talking about it sure um because there were a lot of acronyms in there tried to you did good you did good um so I'm understanding
that we need to fund and proceed with an investment grade audit first and that it costs about $300,000 is this to the state or is this to Snider Electric so the the contract that you have is the state energy
offices template contract but it is between Falcon and Schneider okay that's a great question and then wow 20 years of financing that's a lot that's a long time doesn't have to be 20 years of financing sorry to interrupt you well that's fine let me know if there's
something better we can do because that that's long um it's also recommended that we go ahead and proceed with the Energy Service performance cont contracts but I couldn't really ascertain what what that cost looks like um I know you didn't
have numbers on there for it but boy that would be good information to kind of have an idea on and with all due respect I'm I'm not trying to be rude here but it appears to me that these service contracts would
pay Schneider who identified the work to complete the work that Snider identified does that make sense so we essentially serve as the general contractor for this work so we would be the ones that are as we're measuring and verifying the Energy savings we're also bringing on the
subcontractors the site superintendents are all in-house to us so we designed and build this project entirely so that's where the so but this it still kind of goes to you as the the main guy not the subcontractor correct well the subcontractors are paid absolutely I
mean the project price and the contract is with Schneider Electric but we we pay our subcontractors accordingly okay um how much of this work can we do ourselves if I can clarify also the the they have what we call open Book pricing you get to see all the subcontractor
pricing okay so that you're it's all that data is available and you're able to see it during the EPC development process the the energy performance contract process and also another thing is that the equipment has to be has to last as long as the
financing yep so that part of the the state law says that you can't wear out your equipment in 10 years and still be paying it for it for 20 years so that's that's part of the the how the legislation is written and I think I think the next question is for me yep I
heard the first part of it um I was just curious how much of this work can we do ourselves I mean can we maybe split it up and just get the IGA and then do the work ourselves well I'll give you a for example um that's not the most efficient way to do
it but one of the things that we did we were able to do is that we won't have any uh LED lights within this uh contract because we did that part ourselves but we don't have the expertise and the uh insight to be able to do uh energy monitoring with like
with the Fidelity of this group would do it so on a physical thing where it's plug and play we pull out the uh fluorescent lights plug in the LED lights we can go out there and look what our energy bells are and what the savings is so so that even if the rate goes up for the Energy company we still know we're having some savings cuz if we
did nothing and the rate went up we would be paying even more um we're already in that process ahead of other school districts because that when the law comes in effect January 1st about not being able to buy sell or trade um fluorescent light bulbs in Colorado we're already ahead of that game and
that was a great thing we were able to do but you got to understand um being able to do energy performance is not our skill set in operations so we need to bring in a specialist to be able to do that more efficiently than we could director
H so I've been involved in this from the beginning you might remember me from when you came out to to make your pitch um so um Dr Fletcher just for um for background uh correct me if I'm getting these numbers wrong but we have
approximately $150 Million worth of deferred maintenance for which we currently have allocated approximately $3 million a year for projects yeah we've done we've been able to do some work with fun 49 and Bruce Brown will bring that to you next uh next a month
after next in November but yeah essentially we had uh our our assessment of our master plan so we can see what the uh things were we were around 150 we're around 138 now with some work we're able to do with a a blowtorch we
got temporarily C fund 49 we will never have that blowtorch again conceivably so what we're looking at right now is if we had to enumerate with $138 million of deferred maintenance looks like it's 46 years worth of deferred maintenance and we throw $35 million do at it each year
so that's one mechanism we had get getting money through the general fund through the board authorizing that what we want to do with um industry performance Contracting is we want to make another source come in to be able to do that because the interesting thing about deferred maintenance is also addition by subtraction I don't want to get too too complicated in the math with
that for example one of the big expensive things we have is modular if we a to subtract modulars there's more than just the and put some replace it with something like a permanent building we can get a little more asymmetric or or um savings on that
versus just linear it doesn't just like we take out 2 million it becomes 2 million it might be three million so what we're doing is this is one strategy that I believe is effective um we'll be we'll still be doing Effectiveness things on our sides that we need to do but yeah you're exactly right if we were
able to keep defer maintenance at the same level for 5 years that would be a win that would be something that most people can't do so we have to go against it attack it we have to make sure we modernize and some of the things that would happen through the energy performance contract would be replacing some of that equipment as 13 years past
its um effective date and that kind of thing so one of the ways to characterize this program is essentially when all is said and done we are getting some work that we can put towards that uh deferred maintenance and
the net cost to us is nil and what the value ad for a Schneider is is that number one they can um they can do that audit and so they can give us really good information on exactly how much or very good approximations of how much
Energy savings we're going to get for these projects that's not an expertise that we have in house also they're going to go after um grants for us that we you know we would have to spend you know many many hours researching um uh applying they already have that
knowledge inous because it's something that they do um and then it's really important to understand too that this is a three-way partnership so we've got Schneider who is coming to us with recommendations and saying these are the projects that we think uh align with
what you're interested in and are going to give you the most bang for your buck our facilities team who is really good and has led many projects they're going to be able to evaluate that and um see how that matches up with our district priorities and then we also have the um
office of energy who is providing an oversight mechanism to really make sure that everybody is getting value out of this so just as uh you said if if you promise US $100,000 a year in savings
and you only deliver 90 then the the rules established by the office of energy established that Schneider has to make up the difference and make us whole what hasn't been mentioned is let's say that we exceed expectations and we get
$110,000 worth of savings we can put $100,000 toward that debt and the rest is ours to reallocate as as we choose so we get to keep the Delta so um it's a really great project uh really great program um especially with the office of
energy you know providing us that layer of protection um really it it's a very very very safe bet may I add one thing to that in every project that I've been on as a uh as a conservative set of
Engineers that are on our board where we're saying hey if we're setting a guarantee we don't write very many checks we've always seen there being a positive cash flow associated with it you're not going to see down to the penny every single year the ex the extent of associated with it so great
point though I'm glad you mentioned it and just going to Deb's original question on that is that being that it's budget neutral there' be no incentive for them as the general contractor to inflate things because they would end up paying for those things they inflated I'm not saying conflate things
I'm just saying when you have cost it's not nil no yes no no director Li right okay so I just want to make sure I have Clarity and others who've kind of asked me things have Clarity on this too the
294,000 for the initial audit is not a check we write to you if we agree to do the project yes that that money then only comes out of what we do pay it but we pay it only out of savings yes that
we make on the project if we make no savings on the project we're not we're still not paying you that money because you're writing us a check back to then give back to you so it ends up being neutral to pay that $300,000 bill that's correct correct um so so that's why we can say this is budget neutral is that
as long as we agree to do the project we actually never write that check that's correct M other than it comes out of it becomes a part of the payment plan but a part of the payment plan that's only out of the savings so it doesn't come out of our operational budget right or a new it
isn't a new ex like it is but it's not I'm I'm trying to think of the right way to say it so if my electric bill is $300 a month and I'm saving instead 150 a month my payment can only also be 150 a month because it can only match what my
savings is to you so my most money out of my total pocket my from My overall budget look it's as if I didn't change anything yes where I'd get a benefit is if I was paying 300 bucks a month for utilities I have to pay you 150 a buck
150 a month for the work but now I'm only paying 50 bucks in utilities now I still pay you the 150 I get to keep 100 extra if my utility bill doesn't change you pay me the 150 you said you
promised and I send you the 150 back to make my payment so my budget is still exactly neutral is that essentially how this works did you get that right but I mean like see because do you know what I'm so
I really would like to interject because I think this is one where where we shouldn't use analogies we need to be really really precise um we will have to finance the cost of the audit yes however because of the
state program of which Charlie is a representative the terms of that financing are are incredibly attractive we estimate just looking at the market and where the state's at and after the the drop in basis points we're estimating that that money would be available to us at about a 4% rate and
and 4% money that not only not only does the you know the 294,000 but the the cost of carrying that that financing can be paid off by the savings um we do not have and the business office would tell
you and and kind of as their representative in this case I'll tell you we should not write a check for the investment grade audit we are going to be we got two weeks left we are just just barely in the black on our
projected budget our our enrollment has really stabilized in a good way we'll talk about that in two weeks but we shouldn't be adding a $300 a $300,000 expense right now and so the financing can get rolled into the
cost which then gets paid by the savings and if the savings don't pay for the cost then they pay for the cost that key question to go back and forth right they they eat it basically the key
question is whether there are enough savings available if you take out LED savings if we don't think we have bonding capacity to replace all of our roofs for example um and that's the
analysis that we've been working really hard on and and I will I will trust um partly in the in the collaborative process that we've gone through but but Lou and his team on on construction and facilities in
particular they've worked really hard to understand whether this is net beneficial the bottom line is they they believe that it is there are some side benefits like it gives us real Clarity on our deferred maintenance and it it it allows us to do some things that we don't have the expertise for but the
financial terms of this are at worst neutral with many many more options uh of significant savings than options of neutral right and I think that's kind of is that correct what I was trying to say in in a way that I was like I don't
think we ever actually end up owing them $300,000 that comes out of anything else we wanted to pay for unless we completely chose not to implement the project which would be not great so um right because that's that exit Bill if you say oh thank you very much but we're
not interested then you have to pay them for the so this is really important because I ask I ask their the paiges senior right to to this this group here their their their senior representative that was at our last meeting I said if we decided not to implement the
savings then is it worth doing the audit and she said no which is a great answer from a vendor that stands to do the audit like they're telling us it it's only worth doing if you walk forward with it right exactly as she explained
it's like in it's like the candy in the store as you go out it's a loss leader for them if they do it that way this they work in the same okay I'm sorry right I just like you know that that the my but the point would be the only only time in which we're actually writing a
check where we end up instead of being budget neutral which means it does not impact any other project we have and doesn't take any money from those other projects is if we said thank you very much we're not interested in Energy savings right um I would say you know
and that slide that showed projected as an example was that your example just on the one was that specific to District 49 that was to those four schools that we looked at so then when we look at that just your if that's the saving in one
zone right in one year if you look at four zones you know two others of that are about the same size and then one that's smaller um in one year then it's we're
probably getting the Savings in the first year no actually I I I need to interject again and manage expectations that slide which is slide 17 that slide is not actually a projection it is an
example and that that's really important we're not Schneider Electric is not suggesting you're going to save $135,000 75 to 135 in the first year that that scale and and this is something we talked about that is not a
so if we come back next year and tell you well we saved $330,000 I don't want you to say well we thought the low end was 75 that that's not that's not what we're seeing on screen it it it is at least visually a little bit misleading
but it wasn't intended to be misleading it was just a visual just an example we talked about that if I may oh sorry yeah how specific is it to that that information that's what I TR see this is as high level as you this is 30,000 ft
in the air um we had about a month to walk the sites for a day look at an annual look at the utility bills um utility and some of the operational challenges from there in our investment grade audit you are going to see exactly what that guarantee is in that first
year and that's it takes that much time for our team to develop the resources and also has to do with the the cost per IBI so we'd have we'd have something that was was more of an actual projection rather than potential by then um because my my other thought on this
and why I think overall it's a good idea to move is I think the two least predictable pieces of our budget in terms of explosive cost and impact tend to be utilities and health
insurance like they tend we have Personnel we can say okay we we we can look at our number of students and where that's going to go right we can those costs tend to be far more predictable than what we have to pay in healthc care
coverage which tends to balloon to higher than inflation often in our budget which then messes us up because we're not going to get that ballooning from the state and I think energy is the same because it gets so significantly
impact by differences in federal and state um energy policies which change every time we have a new Administration um so in that way it might be the smartest thing to aim for in terms of trying
to hit as much efficiencies as you can because we have so little control over what energy we will have access to and what the cost of that energy will be in the in a 20-year period because we're looking at I'm assuming you're doing 20-year estimates because a significant
amount of the equipment would have a 20e lifespan that's exactly as Charlie alled to that earlier we've watched utility rate escalation take a a really volatile turn over the especially since covid um a lot of utility providers National but also Statewide are taking on carbon
emission goals that are impacting the utility rates they'll be providing to their residents their commercial providers and so on and so forth so we that's part of our analysis as well is is the utility rate escalation in terms of volatility and if I could just add on to that too if we can reduce our energ
consumption then that reduces our exposure to that volatility as well that's my and like I said I'll never represent anything to you as the only thing we can do I mean you could give us $10 million a year for defert maintenance that's that's a possibility go get that um if
we decide to do nothing defer maintenance still grows so like I said I will never bring you this is the magic flashbang solution to something but this is something that has been shown to be effective gives us us some capabilities and also gives us some expertise we
don't have and some you know some some Acumen with being able to do the grants so we can do our jobs and not have part you know part of our FTB grants too so it has some upside with it too but you know it's like we said it's the haird dryer it's going to help us to keep the
ball the same size or Shrink it it's not going to necessarily get rid of it we have to do we'll have to do other things but this is like you know not doing a bond so this adds no taxes and that kind of stuff so so this is not the only strategy to assess and address the district's
deferred maintenance liability no I saying this is not the only Str not the only Strate strategy to buy down our deferred maintenance like I said you could give us instead of $3 and A5 million a year to do deferred maintenance or our capital projects you could give us 10 million but then we'd
have to look at the budget to say what is it what is the net impact of 5 years of $10 million versus $3.5 million so what I'm saying is that there are other ways do it some ways are more painful and there's also not doing anything at all which is also a choice Juliet do you have any thoughts
or comments no thank you Zane no thank you are there any other questions before we move on I'm still stuck on the 20 years financing that's really sticks in my
side yeah and uh of all of the options that we have in front of us they're all going to involve some budget pain and what's really interesting about this solution is it's budget neutral where we might or if it's not going to be budget pain then it means
we're reaching out to our taxpayers for a bond and they're feeling the pain right they are anyway because grants are paid by taxpayers if there are no objections no objections okay I can't
move that forward so maybe with the meeting with Lou we can discuss it but I can't move it forward I know you three probably will okay can I get um voices on the mics yes yes
yes thank you thank you thank you for your time okay so this will be moved forward into action at the October 10th board meeting thank you very much okay we are on to item 1.6 proposed casby resolutions and direction to board
delegate okay so after um telling up the votes you can see the ones that are unanimous um to support so I guess you guys can just discuss amongst each other if you agree
and I think there was only three or four five that you need to fully discuss to see if you want to go for them or you know because they were neutral L I have a question yep um are
we having that other meeting October 4th in order to finalize this yes sorry okay so I did have one comment because on one of them that I wanted everyone to think about because one of them was a resolution to support
increasing the amount of um time in school and do you very nicely didn't put down the names I am the against and I'm going to tell you exactly why and that's because nowhere in there does it say with
funding okay and so when it says let's in casby supports increasing the amount the state's required instructional hours um I believe without commensurate funding that would require us to ask people to work more hours without
commensurate increase in pay so becomes an unfunded mandate so when it's discussed at the casby level um I have no problem saying let's have kids in schools more if somehow we're also going to have more money to pay for the people
who have to be there to teach them um yes our teachers are salaried but they have 181 day contract and we're not going to add 20 days of contract and not add 20 days more pay and then we have plenty of hourly people um I think there are two against there there were four
support two against um I I'm the other against yeah and the reason I'm the other against I I I have I have so I I concur that it's an unfunded mandate and it's the kind of mandate that usually get passed on to teachers invisibly by lengthening the school day slightly and
so we we we we take it out a drop at a time instead of a pint but we're still we're still taking um and so that's the reason but the other reason is that our calendar is so distinctive in in District 49 that any manipulation of the
calendar is a risk and given the significant Improvement I don't think it's a Time issue I think it is a performance issue on my part on the zone and principal leadership team and on classroom leaders
that we call teachers I think we can perform better within the time so those are the reasons that I that I was not supportive of of this you're yours is a little bit more um mine's very direct in that boy everybody politically would say yes let's make kids go to school more
and then they're going to be like have fun everybody who has to work longer days longer hours and although teachers are saled per professionals are not salaried secretaries aren't salaried anybody who's an hourly employee we're paying hourly rates our cost goes up our
budget doesn't go up so raises no longer happen because we no longer have the money to make raises and we further burn out a field where we're already having a hard time recruiting so this is like a disaster in the making because politically it sounds so great to so
many people so I can see people latching on and saying sure let's do it yeah there will be no money because there already isn't enough money in the state budget this you know the the financial information that has been coming through is they have less money coming possibly
than they thought they were going to be or less robust growth so very very very simply like literally 15 seconds uh if you project out 5 years we're in the best year it gets worse worse right really worse and really worse so so that's a recipe for absolute Financial
meltdown um because they will pass it I guarantee you it will be passed on to districts without any money um the state won't have money to give us so um that's why I'm against it because it it's the it's the train it's the train coming to
hit you right smacking in the face of all of the Good Intentions that end up having really unintended consequences that hurt so anyway So Others May kind of want to think about that piece um and bring it up bring up the fact that it creates an unfunded mandate when they're
debating um because we can cry all we want when we go up there Medicaid and education already the majority of the state budget they have very little flexibility to so what what I said off Mike is Medicaid is eating the state budget and that's why they project that the next five
years it gets worse and worse and that and because of the new legislation so the repeal of Gallagher started to restore the balance that used to exist between State and education and local funding for education and because there was political pressure to then readdress the
fact that Gallagher was repeal to try and control the growth of property taxes that has negatively impacted the state's budget because local Shar is now isn't going to grow the way in which it would have if that legislation hadn't passed in the emergency session in in the um in
the legislature so it's a complicated mess but um this this sets us up for Worse anyone else discussion uh director Hal yeah so I was a provisional support um but that was
based uh that was uh awaiting answer to to a question that I I didn't get uh answered so um how many instructional days do we currently have in our calendar we have 172 but some of those
are student contact days you and I wouldn't call them instructional days because they're assessment days or they're or they're um allowed to be counted even though they are conference days and so the actual number is closer to 65 all right um ready to move back into
the against column and the state controls hours not days so um that's why Peter said well the nightmare would be then people would add hours so the reason some school districts can run four um four day school weeks um isn't because they run longer into the year
it's because they run much longer days and that's what they would start doing everywhere to meet the new hour requirement I and I and educationally it does nothing for for you there was a time one of my last year's teaching at d49 we had to add three minutes per class for the last couple months of
school so that we could make up snow or something um I guarantee you I didn't teach more extra chemistry in three minutes per class there was no educational gain in actually making up the time that way it checked off a box and that's similar to the way this would
end up being implemented yeah so I B basically went into the um positive column based on an assumption that we were already um in compliance with the recommendation so now understanding where we're at um I'm
not ready to take on that additional budget stress any other items that we want to discuss before the October 4th meeting um will that chart still be active for us to change our responses yeah it's still active right now perfect
so then we can go through and change anything that we would like to change yep okay I think we're good then you do have to vote on this for the
10th okay so if there are no objections this will be moved into action at the October 10th board meeting awesome we are on to thank you Lynette yeah we're on to 1.7 resolution opposing recreational
marijuana and I'm up yay okay I'm going to go ahead and read something that our board president uh Lori Thompson had sent me on um the rationale for why
um see here actually let me read the resolution first let's do that anyone want to read the resolution or should I just go for it I'll go for it okay cool uh resolution opposing ballot question
300 whereas the safety of the children of d49 is of Paramount concern to the d49 board of education and whereas Colorado ballot question 300 is on the ballot for the coordinated election this November and whereas voters in the city
of carado Springs will consider the question that would remove the ban on retail recreational establishments and allow medical marijuana establishments to be licensed as retail recreational marijuana establishments without increasing the cap on the number of
locations and whereas this measure will not enhance the safety of our children and harm is already happening to our kids from the re ready availability of other drugs and whereas it is appropriate for the Board of Education of District 49 to partner with parents
and other concerned community members to advocate in the interests of the children of our community and whereas increased access to higher potency substances is especially risky for the Youth of our community as demonstrated conclusively by medical research
summarized as recreational medical marijuana should this ballot initiative pass d49 students will likely experience increased exposure to high potency THC our students safety is this board's top
priority and the science indicates that high potency THC impacts the developing brain of our youth and Adolescence just a few very concerning examples of this impact according to the science is increased risk to to psychotic symptoms
and other psychotic disorders evidence of altered connectivity in brain Pathways IQ Point loss uncontrolled and repetitive vomiting cannabis use disorder dependency dependence now
therefore we The District 49 board of education do hereby oppose ballot question 300 and we recommend that all voters in our community vote no on this ballot question let me read what Lori sent
us okay these are her words not mine I mentioned this year but it's worth repeating I know of two former students of District 49 who experienced marijuana induced psychosis one fully recovered and one will be on antis psychotic
medication for the rest of his life anything we can do to minimize student access to marijuana is a good thing especially since it is far more potent than it used to be when they first legalized medicinal marijuana we had a spike of marijuana incident in the
district per Dave Watson he is going to to get me some statistics on marijuana incidents in our school here we go even though our students would not be old enough to buy it it is still an enhanced risk hopefully those who have a card for
medicinal marijuana are a little more cautious around children okay discussion director H and so I'm am very sensitive to the the harm that it causes children um but that's not the only
substance it's out there that causes harm to children as we well know so I I when I think about this one I also think about alcohol and I think about firearms and you know what are we doing to limit our students access to either
one of those really nothing right you can buy either one of them pretty much anywhere um now if this city ordinance did change the availability of uh marijuana then I
would support it but the the the resolution says that it will increase access and I don't believe that that's true because that Genie is out of the bottle we live in a state that has authorized it for medical use or for a
recre ational use and so it's 30 minutes away and I'm not a user but I know people who do and they go pay a visit to a dispensary and they secure a six-month
Supply so you know 30 minutes 6 months the availability is there um so I don't think that this you know we're not increasing the number of dispensaries because this um new measure is
essentially a compromise they say well we're not going to authorize any new ones so only the ones that are currently licensed or if one closes down then another one can can be authorized so um yeah there will be additional purchasing
happening within the Colorado Springs uh City Limits but instead today it's happening in manitu and the citizens of the second largest city in Colorado are you know subsidizing their budget and so
if if I'm if I'm a manager at uh manitu Springs I'm really excited for this budget for this uh this measure but if um or this resolution but if um I represent Colorado Springs and most of
my um director District lives there um then I think that those dollars the the tax dollars that they're generating should stay in Colorado Springs director liia Wright um the one thing I take issue
with is it still says recreational slmed um if we're going to discuss recreational let's just say recreational rather than referring to both I have a very different opinion on recreational than I do medical having a family member who has a seizure disorder um and
putting myself in the place of parents whose kids didn't have it well controlled um without the access to medical marijuana so um let's separate the two not continue to convolute them um first uh
second where I look at it is yes we have a lot of substances that our students should not be able to purchase under 21 and are having access and it is a having teens in high school
currently that I am observing the level of access that I'm seeing already is unacceptable but I'm also seeing and have firsthand knowledge of places selling things like um nicotine Vapes to
people who they should be asking an ID for and aren't um and so my concern in opening the door of saying let's let the medical marijuana establishments also sell recreational is the more LAX we make the
regulation around each facility the more opportunity it is for adolescent to more easily purchase because we're already seeing a difficulty in enforcing on things we have laws on the books for
brought up firearms firearms um pistols can't be purchased till you're 21 rifles can't be purchased until after the age of 18 we know kids are getting their hands on them um there are laws already in place for some of those things but it does it does reduce having the law in
place to say not not until that age does reduce some but if we're already having a hard time enforcing laws that should be protective of our children um on things that are already legal I am not comfortable expanding the opportunity to
for even more which is why I would be supportive of the resolution although I don't get to vote um I live out in Falcon we do not have a medical dispensary out in Falcon either so the kids who are getting their THC in Falcon are getting it from people bringing it
in from the city um who are accessing things um so um so I I don't get a vote in the city piece of it but it does concern me to continue to rather than look at H at
the prevalence of access to THC in our Adolescent and even Middle School communities currently and that our students have access to and the fact that obviously there's a whole level of things not happening um enforcement
already until I see a step up on on the ability to enforce what's already there I'm not comfortable saying let's also have another Avenue for people to access I I would need to see heck of a lot better ability to enforce by cspd and El Paso County um before I would ever be
okay with increasing those substances and the substances aren't coming from the kids homes I'm getting context from Plenty of parents saying we don't use in our house our kids getting it from elsewhere and I know the locations in Falcon where it's being sold illicitly from people buying
it legally in town um some from the marij medical marijuana places and then some buying it legally as recreational so um that's my concern and it's why I would support this because I do think the greater access the more access you
have the greater problem and it really if we want to make it to the gun piece well if we're talking about the more if people believe that the more restrictive gun laws are the fewer shootings we will have kind of the same thing the more restrictive our rules are around a substance that isn't safe for adolescent
brains um maybe the safer we can keep them so it's it's the same concept in both areas for me dror Schmid do you have anything no all right um I'm going
to we can always amend it so you you brought up a good point of the recreational retail uh versus recreational medical right I think and medical isn't even on the ballot right other right so I think that's going to be a really easy fix so I would agree
that we should go ahead and fix that um I also agree with uh director Lite on um limiting the number of access or the ways to access things is is the right
way to do it um just saying that uh would they have access to alcohol or they have access to Firearms or access to other uh other things that are harmful to them um why wouldn't we take um action in order to limit the
access to medical or to um recreational marijuana why would we just continue to open the door to Pandora's Box um and uh same goes with with alcohol um I would love to be able to limit the access to
that for our adolescence because that does lots of damage on an adolescent brain um and so uh one of the things that is important to know is when our state decided to legalize marijuana and
have the medicinal purposes Etc uh we did open this box and we're seeing the effects of it um and I think it's it's it's been very detrimental to our state and our city and uh I would like to be able to shut those doors a lot more uh
than we have in the past so um this state is not the state I grew up in I also just have one other kind of minor philosophical that's just kind of my own yep go ahead personally philosophically I disagree with using
sin taxes to fund education I do not think that we should say well sure go on ahead I I don't like using gambling Revenue to fund education I don't like using alcohol tax to fund education I don't like
using pot tax to fund education I don't like using ammo tax to fund education I think the two things should be completely separate and I don't think that we should benef I don't I don't believe my children should benefit from
someone else's choice that could be harmful to them um that's just a personal philosophical belief is that I the use of a syntax to to fund things for kids seems to me to say well we'll make things more
available that expose them to environments that can be hurtful both because of addictions that the parents then suffer sometimes and to for easy access to kids because so because then we can educate them better um it it it creates a dissonance in my head but
that's just me personally um as a as a separate thing to this well to top that off to top that off uh the supposed money that was supposed to come from these taxes actually never came to
fruition for our our education so when they say that it's actually a a mute issue it does not actually happen yes uh director Schmid I do agree with changing that you know amending the recreational and the medical part of it other than
that I I agree with this yes yeah so um I just want to reiterate that this doesn't increase the supply um or the the number of vendors those vendors are already under some
very strict rules they have to um make sure that uh they're not selling Beyond a certain amount to um individual customers they have to be checking IDs if they are non-compliant they risk losing their um business license um and
that's an existing thing that those companies are facing today so where do students end up getting their hands on these things that they're not supposed to be having generally they're coming from adults who are legal purchasers and
then make them available either you know intentionally or not um so these things are already available to our students through the adults that are around them the if they want to get a hold of them
they will um so like I said I I I disagree that this adds any new avenues um it's just a short driveway it's like why would we not want to keep it strict because when you open
the door I mean you're going to have people in there that don't have med card who are now purchasing you're going to have new purchasers so with new purchasers no there won't be new purchasers they'll just be people who have to make a shorter drive to to make the same
purchase they would have made well there are some people who are unable to drive that far they get it from other other avenues or people who pawn it off on them Etc and we're just anyway I think I I think we're arguing a mute point at this point but
um if we can get consensus on the mic because I do see that we have um objection possibly so here we go I have no objection no yes as long as you make the word change I suggested so
yes was a yes to move it forward yes I did not word that right do I have consensus to move this forward all right if there's um this will be moved forward to action at the October 10th board
meeting okay we are on to 1.8 resolution supporting ballot question 2D oh man of course I it's pulling up there we go whereas d49 is committed to the safety and well
wellbeing of our children and whereas Colorado ballot question 2D amends the charter of the city of colado Springs to add a new section 130 of Article 15 prohibiting retail marijuana within the City of Colorado Springs on
the ballot for the coordinated election this November and whereas this measure will enhance the safety of our children by prohibiting the operation of retail marijuana establishments within one mile of K12 schools residential child care and alcohol treatment facilities and
whereas it is appropriate for the Board of Education of District 49 to partner with parents and other concerned community members to advocate in the interests of the children of our community and whereas this measure will inhibit access to high potency substances which is especially risky for
the Youth of our community now therefore we The District 4 9 board of education do hereby support ballot question 2D prohibiting the operation of retail marijuana establishments in Colorado Springs and we recommend that all voes in our community vote Yes on this ballot
question discussion director H so I think the conversation on this is already been uh is already had but we did not hear from our students students do you have any thoughts thank you director H for
helping me with that um for um the resolution the past resolution I think from a student perspective I do support that one just because um I think we're already seeing a lot of students use um marijuana and
so just any way that we can limit that um is helpful and then for this resolution I also would say that it would be helpful and just to further prevent um students being exposed to um
these sites where they can purchase things thank you um for the past resolution sorry for the past resolution um I wanted to kind of like agree as well um I think being a part of like students working against tobacco we see
not only kids using tobacco but also things like marijana I mean kids have like Vapes everywhere now and stuff like that so I see it all the time but I just think it's not a toy store like we're not trying to give it out more we're
trying to prevent it so yeah thank you guys for your comments I have a this one okay it says whereas Colorado ballot question 2D amends the charter of the City of Colorado Springs to add a new section prohibiting retail marijuana
within the city of Kos spings on the ballot for the coordinate election this November doesn't it actually I don't know maybe I'm my brain I'm just having brain frog but doesn't it just prohibit the sale of retail marijuana within the City of Colorado Springs
period not just asking the question ever or not just the question this November I'm probably just over reading the sentence but I don't know that you need that last section right Mr Miller would you have any
thought thoughts on that like do you need the on the ballot for the coordinated election this November wouldn't you just say whereas Colorado ballot question 2D amends the chter of the City of Colorado Springs to add a new section of Article 15 prohibiting retail marijuana within the city of
limits of Colorado Springs Springs period would be Springs period would be more correct right yeah actually because it's a um because it's a aware ass statement you would want to say Colorado Springs semicolon space and and then then delete on the ballot for the
coordinated because you referenced the the ballot you referenc the question so you shouldn't have the other part on there right otherwise it sounds like you're just opposed to it being on a ball that's exactly where I was going same thing he just said yes I didn't catch that on okay do we need consensus to change that
or we it it's what we call a minor repair okay so you can make a minor repair between now and when you take this up for a vote and especially because this is a resolution as opposed to a policy
it really yeah lessens the you know the perfect okay any any other discussion no any [Music] objections I'm a no all right um can I have a consensus
to move this forward yes no yes yes all right that will be moved into to action at the October 10th board meeting yay okay are we
concluded yay okay okay well this is like a discussion that isn't for the meeting what exactly are we discussing in our meeting that's Zoom October 4th for the amount of time we have allotted this for
you um everything that's on the form double-checking it and uh anything that might come up between now and then because you might have more understanding of it and things like
what you just said that are helpful for me to write down so when I'm at casby I can be like this is this is what my board feels I would love to have those thoughts cool we are adjourned at 9:25 but I
guess we don't have to do that for a work session nice job Jamie Lynn nice job