Okay. It's 06:30, so we're gonna get our work session started. So I understand that we have a new grandma tonight. So, and she would really, really like to meet her grandchild and get to know the baby's name, which will not be shared with her until she can be with them. And so, we're actually going to move any items that Lisa Filo is presenting on to the very beginning. It looks like, I think you just have the one, the calendar. Correct? And so we're gonna move that to the first item so she can go meet her grandbaby. Yep.
So madam president. Yep. I don't know if you wanna wait because, we also open work sessions with the preamble to the Colorado State Constitution, but we could definitely put that after Lisa. Sure. Oh, she says go on ahead and read it, Lori. Feel free. We, the people of Colorado, with profound reverence for the supreme ruler of the universe, in order to form a more independent and perfect government, establish justice, ensure tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for
ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution for the state of Colorado. Lisa, can you come up? And so it's item it was was item 1.3 on the agenda, and we didn't need to do any amendments because with the work session, we don't have those pieces pieces because we're not voting on anything. Thank you, board of education. I really appreciate this. I'm anxious to meet that little girl. Tonight, I present I'm Lisa Fillo, executive director of learning service. And tonight, I'm presenting for approval the 2027 2627 calendar, the final calendar, and then
the 2728 preliminary calendar. I wanna first thank our committees. They were made up of teachers, parents, administrators, zone leaders, and I I greatly appreciate the collaboration and the feedback we received. It was a great process. Some of the the the teacher request that was most prevalent was get not having so many half days. They found it disruptive to their to instruction, so we looked at that.
They also asked for the two conference days to be full days. So you'll note that October 9 and February, twelfth, I think it is, is, full day conference days. Also, there was a big request for teacher work day, May 14 for the elementary to get their, their IEPs, their AOPs, their redact plans, everything. They have time to prepare those for the end of the year. I wanna, respectfully ask that you consider two things.
One is you will note on the on the calendar for the one that's posted, the '27 2627 calendar, that graduation date is the twenty ninth. The teacher's last day to report is the twenty seventh. The calendar year is a little wonky this year. So what our committee is asking is if you would respectfully exempt give us an exemption on the policy I see a graduations for our comprehensive high school shall be
scheduled on the Saturday before Memorial Day. We would greatly appreciate it. Leah Grammer called the World Arena. The twenty second is open and we could move that to the twenty second and, we don't have of course we're waiting for board approval but that would we would really appreciate that so that graduation can happen before the teacher's last day. I have investigated the impact on student count days and instructional hours, and we will be okay. We're you know, there's always a concern, because they'll start the collections are now by
grade levels. So just to be very transparent, it will be posted publicly like it was on January 13. That, the days will be posted on publicly. But we feel like we're still in we are still in compliance of, days and hours. Another, another request that came up from the committees was a request to honor Juneteenth day as a holiday for the district, a a paid day off, and, of course,
that is on June 19. Are there any questions or any concerns or Any questions? Looks like Deb has one. I just have more of a comment. I have no problem with moving the twenty ninth to the twenty second, personally, four other people here though. So, yeah, we can move that, I I think. Other comments or questions? So I understand that the the half days were put in place in part to, help with compliance. So I imagine some horse trading was had in order to remain in compliance.
So what what had to give in order to be able to give those full day conference days? Our team professional days, were not there, and also our elementary assessment days. We found and, again, from teacher feedback that the the assessments are really happening during that week. And then on that assessment day, they collaborate and they look at the data and the results and make instructional decisions, but they feel like they that is also happening in their PLCs, their professional learning committees.
Sounds great. Thank you. So we there's really three pieces here. Because so where is it reflect is it reflected in the motion that's requested? I hate how this thing works. I'm sorry. It's so hard to see because we actually have three separate requests there. Mhmm. Right? So we're asking I see it in the background and rationale. Right? Oh, no. That just says background and rationale. But you have three separate requests, I think, that are all a part of approving this calendar. So where are we reflecting those? Because when I look at so, like, because June isn't a school day, the nineteenth
isn't highlighted there, for Juneteenth as a proposed change, and the graduation date isn't either. So I wanna make sure that when the board moves this forward first of all, I need to know if we can move if it's good to move that forward as one full package. So they had two requests. The first request is to move that graduation date because of how late Memorial Day is. And my suggestion would be for future planning to look at the policy and come
back with policy language that allows you to automatically do that in the future for the every so many years that that occurs. I think there's probably a way to word it, because I don't what is it? Every five or six years, I think, Peter calculated that that actually occurs. But we'll run into the problem every so many years. So if you fix that language in the policy, then it becomes automatic. I did consider that, president Wright, but, I need to do some further research on how it'll impact our instructional days and minutes.
We we looked at for the next two years, totally fine. But, it adds right now, it's three days. As we get into, '28, '29, I think that's the next one. Yes. It does it changes to five days. And by then, I'll need to know if we're gonna be audited by grade level and if this will have an impact on instruction. So I'll have to bring everybody together again once I once I get that, data. But I just wanna make sure it doesn't impact our compliance with the state.
Oh, 100%. And I'm not saying bring that back in the next two months or three months or something. I'm saying because obviously, if it only impacts us every five or six years, you can take a year and say, okay. But now that we recognize that this is gonna be an issue, kind of flag it and say, okay. When we've looked at all of the impacts, this is a policy change we should bring forward so that a future board five years down doesn't you already have what you need. We can learn from the the piece. And then the second part is the June 19 reflection component.
So we're gonna have to kind of make sure I wanna make sure that when we bring it forward, we know, do we need this as two items or one and all of those pieces forward? I think right now, you're asking to have it added just to this calendar or permanently, Peter? So what we would like to do, since tonight is just a discussion, we'd like to bring back the revision of this calendar Mhmm. Indicating graduation on the twenty second versus the twenty ninth, and we'd like to bring a proposed revision to policy that makes the the date of scheduling graduation less rigid. Right Right now, it's rigid.
The Saturday before Memorial. And so it would be nominally the Saturday before, but in years when it would when that would place it after the graduation, then do the analysis. So it would be fuzzier language. And then within that same policy, we acknowledge the federal holidays. And so we would bring since we're discussing it tonight and we're openly proposing this, if there are members of the community that oppose either of those policy changes, they have adequate notice, they can come and speak in open forum, and and it preserves good transparency and due process.
But, potentially, you could both adopt the calendar and adopt the revisions to calendar policy at your regular meeting on February 12. So that's what we're asking to do. That's what they're asking to do. So now I need to know where people are on that. Go ahead, Laurie. Well, I thought I'd heard you. Just for a point of clarity, mention them kind of bundled together, but I think that one is the final calendar adoption and one is the policy revision. So I think they should be two separate items and not bundled together.
So then we'll be looking at the policy revision. So I was so but the policy revision, you're asking for both pieces in that would allow you to move. So on the calendar, right now, for next year, when we approve it, you want both the holiday and the graduation date. Correct? And if and if Lynette will permit us and if the board agrees, we would put the policy first. Yep. Because if you adopted both of those policy revisions, then the calendar will bring you as compliant with policy.
Right. And then you can just adopt it straightforward. If there's debate and and you don't you either don't support the the fuzziness on the graduation date or perhaps you don't support Juneteenth, in that calendar, whether or not the board supports Juneteenth is sort of irrelevant because it falls on a Saturday. Right. But if you do support it, then in subsequent years, it would appear on the calendar. Well, I think yeah. Because it would back up. It would back up on the phone. But when we approve this, we're approving and then conditionally approving preliminarily approving the other
one that gets posted for families to plan at the same time. Yeah. Which which calendar? The preliminary? Last week's time. Yeah. It's on a Monday. Alright. So I've heard one comment that lets us know that one board member is okay with graduation moving. I've heard no comments about any of the rest of that discussion. So, given they're asking to consider this a part of the policy discussion and bring that forward for action, I think it would be important for folks to say kind of what where they feel on both of those things so that we can have
a discussion around it if we need to. Holly, go on ahead. Yeah. I was gonna say I'm okay with both, especially the graduation date. I mean, you gotta do when it's available, when it's accessible. You know? Lori? Just a quick question. So if we add another federal federal holiday during a time when school is out as well, I'd like to know what the budgetary impact is because I'm assuming that's extra pay for everyone, which is great. But during this time, it would be good to get an idea of what the budgetary impact would be.
It would be a total of sixteen paid days. Is Is that correct, Paul? Yes. It it it doesn't increase pay. Mm-mm. It reduces workload for year round employees who are still working at that time. Yeah. I don't think we have the whole fuzzy, like my husband does where they let you group them and then do whatever. It's either you choose to take the federal holiday on the federal holiday or you don't have your federal holiday, basically. Kinda like a bank. Yeah. So if you're not scheduled to work on then June Juneteenth, you don't get to
claim it in September. Okay. So are there any other questions or concerns on that? Because, you know, if if there isn't a consensus on one part of that, it doesn't make sense for them to write the policy for both. So that's why I'm asking for everyone to give some clarity. Go on ahead, Deb. I also was worried about the cost. Again, given what we're looking at these days, the cost is we're gonna be all about cost, just so you know. Okay. So but we've just heard there's no budget impact. Okay. So are you okay with them bringing that policy forward with both of those changes?
Yes. Okay. So I've heard yes from all three. I'm a yes. So I'm in support of, the Juneteenth holiday. I am pending support on the, policy revision for graduation date just because compliance. And so I think we should have those answers. So if if we have those answers when you come before us for, February 12 Mhmm. And you can answer that with confidence, then you'll have my support. Well, point of clarity on that.
I think the change Peter was suggesting was gonna give them flexibility without the requirement so that they could do that analysis any year this occurred to determine whether they could move it. Is that a correct interpretation of what you were saying? Yes. I think you're yes. Okay. I'm comfortable. And possibly, I'll have more clarity from CDE if they're gonna change it to grade level calculations rather than school. Well, that makes it miserable for seniors because some seniors have enough credits that they're
only taking three classes or whatever final semester. And they don't feel like loading up their last semester, and they did they did amazing freshman, sophomore, and junior year. They usually could have almost enough credits. They usually have enough credits to graduate, but not quite all of their graduation required courses complete by then. They might still need a year of English, I think, and a year of social studies, if I remember my seniors correctly. So And they do have built in snow that we have those, but we never know. You know? So Right.
Okay. So thank you. Thank you. Go enjoy that grandbaby. And thank you for honoring my family first, and I appreciate that. Yes, ma'am. Yeah. K. So now our next item is the 2425 audit presentation by Holting and Company. Good evening, board. For those that I have not had the pleasure of meeting, my name is Heather Diaz, and I am the director of finance. And tonight, we're bringing you their twenty four twenty five completed single audit audit. And I'd like to Regular audit. Regular audit. Sorry. Single audit.
Yes. I'd like to introduce Tom Sesterre from Holting and Company. Thank you, Heather. And thank you board for, having me tonight to, talk about the audit with you. Our team was on-site, for about a week in early June, testing, internal controls and compliance. We designed our audit procedures based on the results of those tests, with field work performed over about a week, at the September this year. Overall, the financial condition of the district is, generally good, but there are some, financial
warning signs to be aware of, which I'll discuss in a little bit. We found that the, financial statements are presented fairly in all material respects, and we issued an unmodified or clean opinion as you've received in past years. I do like to point out that there's two presentations within the financial statements, the government wide and the fund financial statements. So the fund statements reflect how the district keeps its books on a day to day basis. Adopted budgets and monthly financial reports, are based on this fund presentation.
The government wide statements combine all the funds into a single presentation or presented on the accrual basis. So the government wide statements include, capital assets, long term debt, and other long term liabilities that are not included in the in the governmental funds. So the first statement I want to look at briefly is the statement of net position. And I'll hit a few highlights here. So the statement of net position essentially is the balance sheet for the entire district. It is the it is a government wide statement.
Cash and investments this year were down about $17,400,000 primarily due to spending down on capital projects. So expected spends. Capital assets, were up $8,900,000 as outlays exceeded depreciation and mill levy project work continued during the year. Liabilities were down about $26,000,000 net pension and OPEB liabilities were down $19,200,000 this varies quite a bit from year to year based on contributions and actuarial calculations so you
know. COPs and leases were down $9,900,000 as debt was paid according to debt service schedules. Overall the net position or equity in the statement of net position, was down $4,500,000 or about 5%. Getting into more familiar territory and looking at the general fund. Here in section number four, we're showing the ratio of fund balance to total expenditures. And you see here that that went down compared to last year.
Last year was about ninety nine days of expenditures covered by ending fund balance. This year about eighty. Like to see ninety to a hundred and twenty days probably. So this is this is an area just, eighty days may be an indicator of fiscal challenges. The board policy requires a 7% contingency reserve. The idea being that if you've got that reserve, you're kind of keeping yourselves off the rocks there. The actual reserve was closer to 5%. So as a result of that, there was no unassigned fund balance this year.
We didn't make that negative. Instead, we reduced that contingency reserve with a zero unassigned fund balance. Long term debt, just noting in in number five that certificates of participation in capital leases, were paid according to debt service schedules. Moving down to number six and looking at the funds. Once again just hitting a few highlights here. General fund fund balance was down $3,100,000 overall revenue was up 5% for the year.
Overall expenditures were up about 14%. Debt service fund balance was up 5,500,000.0. Grant receipts were down about 4,900,000.0. You know that's still as a result of ESSER funds code related grants going away. Capital projects mill levy fund balance down $15,100,000 with $17,000,000 spent on capital projects. Internal controls, happy to report that we had no internal control findings this year. Federal awards also a large component of our audit. There were we had no compliance findings this year, but I will note that the
financial statements look a little bit different. Because the federal government issued the compliance supplement six months later than it usually does. So we issued the audit without that and are issuing that report separately should be out in the next few weeks if all goes well. Last I just want to express my appreciation to you as the board and to the finance staff for having us on board again. Really appreciate, doing the work with you and over the years that we've worked with you. But I'm happy to answer any questions if anybody has any.
So Mike. Hi. So I got to spend a lot of time with, the audit, that you presented to us last year. Yes. First, because we used it, to interview our, CFO candidates. Yes. They had they were asked to present that document to us. Okay. But then again, very recently, you kinda hinted that there's starting to to to be some stress here, stress indicators. That's a good way to put it. Yeah. So we are, we we just adopted a a statement of exigency.
And, when we started to contemplate that, some of our community members started looking deep into our audit. And when they came back to us with this $45,000,000 fund, balance in the general fund Uh-huh. So we express that differently because they're you know, I and I understand that I I got to actually see just before this meeting the worksheets that your, company is using to compile and and and land on that number. Yes.
What I would really love to see going forward, is if we can incorporate some of that information so that when our administration comes to us and says, this is how much we have in available fund balance in the general fund, and then they go look at the audit and say, wait a minute. That's, like you know, there's 42,000,000 in there. Sure. We can say, yes. And if you go to this page in the audit, here's how you can see how that is. So I was just wondering if that's something that we could work with you guys on, so that our communications with our communities is a lot more clear.
Yeah. I I I think the the ideal would be, that you work with your finance department as to how you want that to look, and then bring it back to us and, see that that fits within, appropriate presentation. You know, sometimes it gets down to preference and, you know, we get very, territorial, with our financial statements, but there are there's certainly room for, modifying and making something more clear too. Outstanding. Thank you. Great. Other questions for the auditor?
Laurie? I know that there are some large districts that sometimes if there's a lag in receiving tax revenue dollars, they have kind of a rotating balance where they borrow funds until that revenue comes in. Did you find that we have less debt service overall compared to comparably sized districts? Or do you get that granular? Don't don't really get that granular. That that would be something we'd have to dig into. But, again, that would probably be a good question for your finance department as far as how did those cash flows work out during the year?
I would expect that as a board, you would know if you were taking advantage of one of those CDE loans, because you would wanna hear about that before something like that was executed. Actually, I have a question there. Finance people may know more about than you. But I thought that a couple years ago, maybe, the state changed how they were distributing funds, so that we no longer needed to do that. And that was part of why we could spend down some of our fund balance, because we kept a higher fund balance than many of the districts around us so
that we never had to borrow money. But now, I believe the state has fixed how they distribute their money so that they're giving us more before the property tax hits, and then the property tax hits in. So and I'm seeing some nods. Pushed at the state level. Yeah. And so I'm seeing so if I think that then means no districts are borrowing anymore pretty much under or or there's less. I don't know. Can you can you step in and explain those pieces? That? Yeah. It's rare that we we see that occur. Because it used to be really common, but I think Rebecca can probably speak to
that more clearly than I am. There are still some districts that take advantage of it. There are some districts, for example, like Aspen that are a 100% property tax, and so they don't really get like, spreading zero of zero over less months doesn't help them. So there are still districts that take advantage, but it has reduced the number. And I don't think, and Heather might know this more than I do, that we had to participate in interest free loan because we are not a high percentage of property tax in comparison to state equalization at this point.
So, yeah, I don't think we ever have. I was pretty sure we haven't since somewhere close to the Dave Martin board days, like, because that was the purpose of them building that fund balance up was so that we would never have to take the loan. But now, it's like, oh, well, we were saving that to not have to do it and now we don't need to save that extra anymore. But any other questions for the auditor about our finances? Okay. Thank you very much. Then we are recognizing that we have received the audit report as legally required.
Thank you. Thank you. We are now on to our professional learning update. Good evening, members of the board, superintendent health. I'm Melissa Burkhart Shields, and I'm the coordinator of professional learning. So I thank you for this opportunity to provide you with a professional learning update this evening. We're here to discuss our ongoing commitment to creating exceptional environment for learning, working, and leading. It's my privilege to share with you how we're enhancing learning for employees and systematically improving district processes performance.
We are committed to ensuring all our educators not only meet, but exceed professional standards. And empower them to inspire and lead effectively. So tonight I have three updates for you. I'm gonna share our professional learning initiatives, information about our local accountability grants and the ways that we are improving the new teacher onboarding and orientation processes. So first I want to just share with you, we're proud to report success on
two of our professional development opportunities. First, our new administrator induction program has received a remarkable 100% satisfaction rate. This is from last last year with nine participants completing the course. This course is a requirement for administrators to move from an initial to a professional principal's license. Our mentor PLC or new teacher and special service provider induction program has been equally impressive with a 96% satisfaction rate and 54 completers.
We provide ongoing training throughout the year for our mentors. Last year our presentations focused on active teaching strategies in literacy and math. We also spent time on behavioral management strategies. And these PLC sessions demonstrate our commitment to supporting our mentors who are guiding the new teachers in our buildings, through this two year required program through the Department of Education. And this helps them move from an initial teaching license to a professional teaching license. Both of these programs highlight our dedication to providing high quality professional development opportunities and
allow us to support our teachers and special service providers in meaningful ways. Next I want to talk to you a little bit about the master teacher online program. In the twenty four-twenty five academic year, we had an impressive two forty five para educators participate in this program. And they completed a total of seven fifty one courses. So far this year we have two zero eight paraeducators enrolled in these courses and they have completed so far two fifty three. This master teacher training program provides targeted and placement specific competency content.
It's unlike general professional development, this platform offers over a 100 courses tailored to the specific instructional and behavioral needs of the students and paraeducators that we serve. This tools in the toolbox approach allows staff to immediately apply strategies and provides discrete trial teaching and classroom modifications that directly improves student support. We feel that this improves staff retention and boosts professional confidence and helps with paraeducator
morale in our district. I wanted to just share with you some of the data on our total PD offerings. So last year there were six fifty one courses offered. Total satisfaction rating was 90% and we had an 86% course completion rate. The testimonial data collected last year providing provided from a variety of school leaders and zone members across the district has Confirm that professional learning, specifically the work that we've done with book studies around results two point o by Mark Mike Schmoker, bringing him in to be a guest speaker
to all of the leadership and the PLC plus initiatives have directly improved instructional alignment and data driven collaboration in our buildings. Administrators have also reported that these strategic efforts contributed to measurable academic gains. Increasing points in literacy benchmarks and notable growth in STAAR three sixty proficiency across all zones last year. The initiatives of the professional learning department have proven to be a vital catalyst for district wide student achievement and teacher efficacy.
I also wanna share with you some of our local accountability updates. Two years ago we applied for the local accountability grant from the Department of Education and we were awarded those funds and we are in our second year. So first I want to talk about PLC plus training. We've successively trained 170 administrators, coaches and PLC team leaders. This training is pivotal for enhancing our collaborative learning communities. Next, I want to talk a little bit about the PLC implementation survey that was sent out to all schools in the fall of this year.
There were over 40 questions that needed to be answered and administrators along with PLC team leads along with their team members were asked to take the survey. So this was not everyone in the district, not every teacher in the district, but the leader of the PLC and the administrator in the building. We received 92 responses. And across all zones, the PLC implementation is solidly emerging with standards based planning, data use and collective efficacy.
We're kind of the top strengths of that survey. We've moved beyond just starting PLC's into a phase where core routines like accessing standards, unpacking skills, using learning intentions and success criteria happening in the classroom, and analyzing progress and achievement are common practices. The next phase of the implementation based on the data is to provide training to support more vulnerable practices like pure observation, structured feedback through learning walks, creating structures and
their individual their individual zone results. And a summary of these results, strengths and weaknesses have also been analyzed and given to them. We have planned workshops for the areas to support the weaknesses and really lift up those schools that are exemplifying some of these practices so that we can use them
and highlight them across the district in these workshops. And finally, the work of the data dashboard preparation is underway. And I'll be excited to share that with you at the board work session on the twenty fifth. Data dashboards have been created for all schools in real time data that include SAT results, STAR results, school performance frameworks, attendance data, culture and climate, concurrent enrollment trends and CMAS. Each of these components is integral to our ongoing commitment to improvement and accountability in
District forty nine. One of the new initiatives that I've been tasked with this year is improving the new teacher onboarding and orientation processes. This is one of the strategic priorities for the Department of People and Culture. Started by looking at the beyond feedback survey data from last year, which takes all of our new teachers and SSPs SSPs and asks them at day 21 and day 90 how their feedback is going and how their experience is going in this district. By disaggregating that data, we analyzed trends.
I then asked all school administrators to nominate staff members to become part of committees to help break down this data and find ways to improve. We have a total of 65 individuals that are volunteering their time to serve on these committees. This is teachers, front office staff, ESP, assistant principals, principals and key department and division staff members. We are going to we are coming up with suggestions for ways to welcome new
staff members and integrate them into our building culture. The four committees are listed on the slide. And some of the things that we've come up with so far after three meetings of each committee. The training and development committee is looking at training for IEPs for general staff that are new staff to the district. Looking at a modified base camp experience so that our late hires get the same information that those that attended in July and August get. Our hiring processes and CAT. Our hiring processes and expectation committees is looking at revising a new hire employee notebook
that will be available both online and in print. We're also looking at providing suggestions for systematically checking in with new staff throughout the year so that we find out when problems are occurring. We're not letting staff just fester with that information, but we wanna know when it's happening so that we can make those improvements. The systems and technology committee, which is led by Paul Anderson and Rebecca Brooks, Brooks. They're creating flow charts for all employee onboarding processes from the very first contact with
the new employee all the way through getting them to the building. Also working on creating a district hub of resources where every resource that's needed from every department is located in one place. So there's no ambiguity as to where we find the information. And that's what I have for this evening. Are there any questions? Questions or comments? Yep, on ahead, Holly. So for the PD offerings, offerings, is there like a huge course library or do they have to take them in sequence?
So we use the Unified Talent System, the network and that's where we are training key individuals in the district to input and create these courses by zone, or by, if it's a district offering, or if it's coming from learning services. So those six fifty one courses are all housed in that warehouse. Yep, they can search by topic, to find the courses that best meet their needs. Laurie. I know we have a lot of flexibility for our teachers, both inside the learning
category and outside that they do have a lot of flexibility. Are there some PD offerings that are managed by the principals or mandatory? In other words, how much flexibility is there or do they have some that they have to take per school? So there are certain requirements for licensure renewal. Like there is behavioral health requirements and or behavioral management and special ed requirements. You have to have ten credit hours to renew your license there. You have to have a redact training. So CDE outlines some mandatory trainings that have to happen in order to renew your
license, but every zone and every school are able to create the courses that they want to offer and put it in the system so that those employees can get credit for all of it. And I know you mentioned that they have training for IEPs. Do they also get training for five zero fours? Yes, we do offer that. Training through the special education department. And I know Deb wanted to speak so I'll have Deb go and then Isaac. Yeah, I've been to a couple of your trainings. They're amazing. They're really good. It's a team effort for sure. Yeah, definitely. I do like this committee, this new onboarding and orientation committee work stuff.
You know, you hire teachers, you can't just leave them flailing in the wind, so I think this is a really good kind of outline to follow so that you can help them be successful. Thanks. So thank you. I think we're finding that the individuals that are on this committee, are very invested in this work and we're finding lots of areas where maybe we're not talking to each other and we need to be so that we can really create a system of continuous improvement around onboarding and orientation. And may I just quickly point out if you look over Isaac's head, you can't
quite see it behind there, but in the five to 06:00 part of that puzzle, it says optimizing the employee experience, and this is a direct outflow of that strategic objective that this board approved. So as we come around the corner to our annual planning summit, it's always good to remind ourselves that what you put on that wall makes a big difference in terms of the leadership and priorities out in the district. Isaac, you had a question or comment? Yeah. So I just had a question about those PD courses. So I've seen that although a similar number of people were taking the courses, that
the actual number of courses taken went down pretty dramatically year to year from last year to this year. Is that to be expected, or is that something where we should try to encourage that more with our staff? So I I think there's a difference of maybe 30 or 40 from last year number of courses offered. And I think that's some of it's due to, the zones have taken on more of the professional learning days. We're not able to offer as much because we don't own all those days anymore. But, we are definitely responding to what everyone needs and wants And when the feedback
comes in, we go out and find the training and put it into place. I do send out a professional learning update to every employee in the district every month that highlights, kind of what's going on. But that's a great question. Well, I think Isaac was talking about the slide where there were 700 courses versus 250 taken. Yeah. But I think that might also be because one of them is a full year worth and one of them is one semester worth? So I think that was the master teacher data, which we haven't gotten through the
entire year yet. So we're only looking at a half a year of the number of people that have accessed those licenses and taken those courses because the year is not finished yet. So we hope to be right on track with that number by the end of the year and meter beat to last year's. Okay. That answers my question. Thank you. Yeah. Mike, and then I'll come. So just to just to make sure I'm clear on this, the, the content in, the course offerings, that is all d 49 created content.
Is that true? So we have we hire trainers every year to come in and and deliver, you know, information. Right now we're we're offering keys to literacy. So there's trainers coming in that are national trainers that represent that organization. The PLC Plus, we have trainers we're working for with from Corwin Press. So it's it's a mix of both our own, you know, staff leading these courses and the zones and the departments that are bringing in national, support. Those courses are also counted in there.
So it's a mix of both. So that's that's very impressive that we have such high satisfaction ratings for those. So, you know, congratulations. And I it just kinda caught me, when you're talking about the workflows that that are happening, specifically with the system and technology, because that is what I do for a living, and I participate in those kinds of workflows, for onboarding, new employees in my own organization. And so, I know that they can be difficult because there's so many different roles
and different processes that different steps in the process that have to happen for different classifications. And, but, it is good to see that you guys are, essentially getting to, you know, the, industry standard. Thanks. When you think about Malcolm Baldrige and continuous improvement, you really need to get down to these this level of detail and create flowcharts, and that's what we're doing. Like, every step of the way is being mapped. I just wanna say I'm incredibly impressed at how large the network has become because I remember when it was an idea that Amber Whetstein ran with, who is now
a superintendent in a neighboring district. But it to see the level of engagement, the level of high quality courses, the continued commitment to offering it is really impressive to me. And I'm assuming because many of these are online things are also asynchronous, so teachers can take them when they need to. Mhmm. And I wish that had been around twenty five years ago when I was still teaching because then we could fit it in when we could. I know in my my own work life there are things that I do now that way.
And I choose agencies I will work for, based on whether they require me to show up in person on specific days to do my annual trainings, or if I cannot access them asynchronous online in a way that works for my family and the people I take care of. And that literally was a selling point between I I interviewed 15 agencies, for one of, for my son when I was becoming his provider. And that was key for me for picking. And so this is also a selling point, for recruitment when people see the training
that we're requiring them to do. So it's something to highlight as we as we recruit because this helps with work life balance and family balance when we can get what we need to succeed professionally, in a way that works for our family and works around our work hours. And so I really appreciate all the work that's gone into this. Thank you. And two very quick points of historical, references some of us will know and appreciate. The term network came out during a storyboarding session. The person that said it was Kim McClelland, former zone leader of the ICONNECT zone. And we have many of those meetings here, but also down the hall in the
excellence lab. And the name of that location was coined by our friend Tammy Herold, who is in the audience tonight. So, we we have good contributions over the decades. Do you need anything else from us right now? I think I'm good. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. We're now onto the I know she's ready to come up and strangle you. We're on to our amended budget presentation. And I'm gonna really quick just say how instrumental Melissa has been in that systems and technology onboarding committee that has she has been immensely helpful.
So I'm Rebecca Brooks, chief financial officer, and I have with me Spencer McCabe, my budget manager, who has done a lot of the hard work behind the scenes on this presentation. He works magic with numbers. So you guys will probably find this, slide and the next one pretty familiar. These are the snippets of the final version of the student trends, data that we we present to you guys throughout the first part of the year while we're tracking enrollment. So these are the final numbers. They have been technically I think they're embargoed until tomorrow, but they were published in
the School Finance Act. So, this is where we stand. I'll refresh everyone's memory that the light green line is the prior year, the orange line is actuals for this year, and the dark green line is our budget projection line that set our revenue projections. Where we ultimately stand, this is our total district umbrella. This is everything including all of our charters including goal and the BOCES. So overall, we came in just a little under our budget projections, but that piece
where we were under, is all pushed through to charters and well, not both these. Charters are are down from the budget projection. So now I'm gonna switch to our operated schools. So for the operated schools, you'll see kind of, the opposite here where we came in above our budget projections, which is good. We wanna be conservative in those budget projections, but as close as possible. We were, I believe, 02/1936, which we're gonna get to that on another slide, above what we budgeted which is reasonable, not too too out of whack, but still conservative.
And here's that slide I just alluded to. So this kind of gives you the breakdown of the difference on how we came in under our budget projections for the overall total district. So even though we came in under, it's a little bit of a over under with the different lines there where we broke it out on how we get to that 171 total below. Good news is on the operated side, the 236 above is more more ultimate money into into our operated schools and our budget. And then this is our per pupil revenue update.
This basically gives you guys the update from what was projected back in May that we adopted in our budget, which was $11,185.08. It's now going up. So the way that filters through, once student count happens, October count, and at risk numbers are finalized, it kind of shuffles all the money around to get to our total PPR in the January, which we we then, include in our amended budget. It's a total of $71.81. If you factor that in with the increased enrollment, then we will get to an
additional 3,500,000.0 approximately. We're gonna talk about that in a revenue summary here in a few minutes. So right here, this is breakdown a breakdown with kind of a chart by each fund. If you want to kind of it's it's a comparison. So each one of these and I'm gonna I'm gonna kind of explain that everything on this particular slide, 10 through 19, is what when you're looking at our audit, they all get bunched into general fund on the audit because they all consolidate.
Then everything on the other screens above 19 are the ones that are separate and so that's why we kinda break these out differently in our project or in our presentations. So I'm just gonna start, with just under just so that you guys understand, the adopted budget column is where we adopted it in May, or actually June. The amended is where we're amending our revenue to now. Some of these are a little some of them are simple, some of them are a little more complex. I'm gonna kind of go over the big chunks in the revenue change for general
fund because that one's so big. So this breaks up to be approximately 4,700,000.0 will come from fund 39, so that's an increase in revenue through a revenue transfer if you guys approve the resolution at the next meeting. There's an additional 3,800,000.0 which you'll see further down on fund eighteen. That is one of the funds that we are going to collapse mid year so that revenue will get lumped into general funds. So that's part of a big part of the increase. The additional 3,500,000.0 for increased PPR revenue.
And then an approximately 1,200,000.0 will be taken out as a revenue transfer to fund sixty four, which is our health insurance fund for additional supplementation over there. The rest of it's kind of the in and out small minor pieces that go in and out to the other revenue transfers of other funds. Any questions around that? Because I know that's a big big dollar amount. Mike? Yeah. I just wanted to say thank you for breaking that down for us because I think a community member who's looking at the the delta here and says sees that
that's a 14,700,000.0. Like, you know, all of a sudden, the exigency doesn't look like it needs to be on the table. But, yeah, it's all internal transfers, and, so we haven't actually so and so the the total increase, was what again when we look at the PPR change? 3,500,000.0. Thank you. Yeah. Any other questions on that piece? I know it can be kinda confusing. K. It doesn't look like there's more on that slide. Okay. I'm gonna really briefly just touch on a couple high level things.
If there is a particular variance that I'm not discussing that you would like me, I do have the breakdown of of everything here, but I think I'm just gonna touch on some higher dollar ones. Fund 12 is changing because we moved the entire Medicaid program from fund 22 into fund 12. So that is a big shift, from what we expected at the beginning of the year due to that program kind of where it sits where where it is housed. And then fund 14, our assessed values, came up in a little higher than we
expected. So that is some additional revenue which we're gonna talk about what that means for us, on a future slide. And then we already talked about the 3,800,000.0 coming out of the Fund 18 because we're gonna collapse that fund. Alright. So this is kind of our next segment. This is still all talking about revenues. Fund 21, we're tracking higher. This is really the only reason that there's an increase there on our nutrition services fund. As far as federal grants, this is now factoring in any carryover that we received. So we didn't know those carryover numbers when we first adopted the budget.
Now we do, so we've added those in. And then I'm gonna jump down to fund 26. This one, it's also a grants fund and we neglected to budget for that at the beginning of the year because oftentimes you don't know what you're getting in grants right away. So we, are now making sure we've got that recognized in all of the revenue. And Any questions on this particular slide that I didn't cover? Alright. And then the last revenue one, as far as the COP repayment fund, that's the
other piece of where our MLO assessed values come in. So those came in higher than anticipated as well. So as you guys I think you know that we have a seventy thirty split, when it comes to our MLO. So that 70% of what comes in also shifts straight to fund 39. So that's the other half of that assessed values coming in higher. And then the health insurance fund, we talked about that as well. So we're adding more revenue from we're we're adding an additional piece of revenue for
two in two ways. So we increased our, all of the premiums. So we will be receiving more in premiums, and then we're also still augmenting an additional 1,200,000.0 from the general fund as well. Any questions on this side? Any questions? Just making sure I see no's first. Okay. Nope. Go on ahead. Okay. And so this is kind of just a summary. The general fund is increasing by 3,500,000.0. That's basically the increase in the per pupil revenue along with our increased student count over what we budgeted.
Based on the increased in assessed values we are now able to kind of shift an additional 2%. Correct me if I'm wrong, we were at 6% and now we're at eight. So that is helping with some of the pressure on the general fund by shifting more of teacher salaries into the MLO fund based on those increased assessed values which is a win win. And then we also talked about the 4,700,000.0 of one time COP money for technology and curriculum. And then just a reminder that our MLO state match funds have been discontinued as
of right now. They are no longer funded. Mike had a question on that one. That's fine. I didn't ask. So I just wanted to get clarity on this. So, essentially, a portion of our MLO is already designated as usable for teacher salaries. And what you're saying is with the increase in, the assessed values and the additional revenue for that, that that portion is now making up 8% of teacher salaries instead of six. Is that correct?
That is correct. Excellent. Thank you. Yeah. Oh, nope. Go ahead. I was gonna say, so that helps a little bit with the impact of the teacher repositioning project then, which was part of our hope, I think. Right? So, that it does not mean that we can apply an additional raise into that that table to be clear. It means that we're using that money to fund commitments to honor the commitments that we made and, gives us a little makes that have a little less of attention
in the budget because of that. So I just asked Spencer on the spot kind of what that represented and he he thinks about 1,200,000.0, was that additional 2%. So it's not enough to account for raises because those are considerably more than that typically, and it's also been accounted for already in the overall numbers. So any other questions before I move on? Okay. On to the expense. And so this mimics the other side. We're breaking it out just by fund.
And so this is basically going to give you a projection of what we think our expenses will be in each fund. And the reason that this is going to be different, we're gonna get to the appropriations piece in here in a minute. And I'm I I'm kinda going out of order with my presentation, but we're breaking out the expenses separately from the appropriation because we're gonna ask for your, allowance to
change how we've been doing our appropriation. So just kinda giving a little foreshadowing here. So really quick in the expenses categories here, the fund 10 variance is rather high as well but that offsets with the 3,800,000.0 in the fund 18 that we're collapsing into 10 that we were going to spend on our insurance, the 4.7 of revenue that we're shifting that we plan to spend on curriculum and technology. We did add budget to the zones for their increased student counts, and then there
are some additional expenses for special education both on the operated and charter schools, for what we pass through to them. And then Fund 12, that's the same situation where we shifted Medicaid so there will be the Medicaid expenses out of there, and so that matches the revenue and state grants that we would spend. Fund 14, that's gonna be the additional teacher salary that we're shifting over there. It's allocating all of the charters portion and the carryover that they have for their
charter MLL. There's no guarantee that they'll spend it, but we have to account for that as a possible expense. Fund 15, that is the carryover. So we're allocating that we can spend that carryover as a possible expense. And then 17, that is also fund balance that we're allocating as an expectation for spend in the Creekside project, for the renovations. And then it's the same situation on the flip side for insurance. We're taking away the expenses there for fund 18 as that's being collapsed into fund 10. Any questions on this slide?
Yep. Just so as a reminder, so we mentioned the Creekside piece and you see that money moving. That money had already been earmarked specifically by the builders when they when we made that transaction explicitly for central office improvement. So that's not money we could honorably allocate in any other way. And so, I think each time we have those pieces, although many of us know it, I think it's important for that to be reiterated each time so people understand that's money that was allocated and agreed upon on that land transfer to ensure, improvement
in central office pieces. And that might sound odd for developer to do, but remember, they sell our community when they sell our homes, so they care about what that outside aesthetic looks like to folks when they're marketing. And so, they tend to invest in things that they believe will improve that marketing component and many of them for a long time have complained about the building on on Woodman. So, yeah. So, that that's It it seems like an odd thing for a developer to put
a condition on until you think through kind of how that piece of their business works, but it also means that's the only thing we can use the money on. And that's what this building is becoming as we renovate it is the replacement. Absolutely right. Thank you. Any other questions or comments on this slide? Okay. Last slide on the expense side. So fund 22, we that also has impact based on the other side of the Medicaid piece. So that's where we're moving that from. So that's why it's a negative change.
And then we also just kind of we're able to hone in since it's grants on exactly what our expenses are based on the revenue we're expecting since fund 22 is required to essentially be zero at the end of the year. We must spend whatever grants we get within that fund. And then none of the others are really high dollar. Any questions on this particular slide? Okay. Last I guess I said the last one was the last one. I'm sorry. Fund 43 is the building fund. So this was something that we shifted. We were going to utilize this money for the central office and so once I
kind of understood a little bit more of the dynamic and what the expectation was for that fund 17, we have shifted that expense to be in the appropriate place under fund 17. So that's partly my learning as I go, and reallocating where we spend that. And then the last one is the fund 64 which is our health insurance fund. And I don't know if I specified this before. The fund 18 insurance fund is property and risk related. Fund 64 is our health insurance fund, so just to differentiate between the two. And this is just aligning it with what we expect our the what I would
love for us to consider, is CDE, I've spoken with Glenn Gustafson. We have talked with a lot of Pikes Peak Region districts, a lot of Denver Metro districts, and a lot of them have shifted to what they do is a appropriation of all revenues plus fund balance so that you don't have to be working on two budgets at the same time and bring them back to back for approval in June. And so essentially what this does is it appropriates everything that we have available to
spend, and then we come back with variances to tell you what we didn't spend and why which that's good that we don't. But it keeps us from having to come back with a supplemental budget. So I wanted to propose that. I don't know if that's the way you guys want to move forward especially under the circumstances of our finances. So if you would prefer that we come back on the twenty seventh with a different appropriation, I'm open to that. I just wanted to at least have the discussion and see how you guys felt
about it to kind of get in line with best practice. So questions on what that means. Absolutely. This is my guess. Can you give kind of a more concrete example of what I because I know we voted I I feel like multiple times on supplementals that were small incremental amounts as things got changed. And so I'm assuming it's trying to consolidate that because that then also looks like it it it looks differently, in terms of how actual accounting world works versus how
someone who's watching from the outside might think it works. How many districts do it this way or what is the do you know what the basic process is? I don't know exactly how many, but I know that many I'm on the Caswell board of directors, Colorado Association of School Business Officials, and a lot of a lot of the people that are also on the board with me or are, what I would consider, mentor level throughout Denver and Colorado Springs.
Those different districts have all started shifting over the last probably ten years to this methodology so that they don't have to do a supplemental budget. So, essentially, I'm just gonna use round numbers to make this easy. So say we are expecting a $150,000,000 in revenue for the year, but we have a $10,000,000 fund balance. We would appropriate a 160 or $160,000,000 for our appropriation so that we could spend
up to that. Now a caveat is in fund 10, I would exclude TABOR because we can't spend that. So it would be fund balance excluding TABOR. So we could have any appropriation if there was an emergency without having to come back to the board with a supplemental budget. That's become rather standard. But I don't have exact numbers on which districts overall. I know it is more and more common. K. Deb? So you guys are the ones we literally pay to look at this stuff.
Is this fund balance plus revenue an easier way for you guys to go and an easier easier to explain to the board and the public both together. So easier is is correct. It would be easier, but that's where I don't know if that's necessarily the tactic that we want under the current financial situation. That's why I wanted to bring it to you as an idea. I can see both sides. I love the idea of not having to work on a supplemental budget at the same time we're trying to build the entire budget for the next year.
It's a a crazy time of year. I think it's a matter of trust and maybe I haven't earned that trust yet, so that's why I'm bringing it to you to see how you feel about it, see what kind of, thoughts you have on the subject. So that's why I'm bringing it very open this way. That's what we've kind of brought it as an example. But if you would like us to change and stick another year, maybe maybe broach this when we're not in this situation, I'm fine with that. I just I wanted to kind of start the conversation so that you guys know
that it is kind of best practice across the big districts here and kinda just dip our toe in the water. See how see how you feel. Maybe it's not this time, maybe it's next time, but just start talking about it. Laurie? I know one thing that leads to some confusion with the public is there are certain funds that are restricted for specific uses. And so a lot of times they think, oh, well you can just take this over here. They also don't understand the nature of the pass through funds that are not ours
to spend, that we pass through to the charters. But the question I had just for clarification is how collapsing a fund works, and does it go from one designated use into a similar pot for a similar designated use? Is it just wiping out that fund? So I wanted more clarification on the collapsing. Absolutely. And for that piece, I have a whole slide on that here in a minute. And so if you don't mind, I would love to cover that here in a minute. But there is it depends on the fund for the short answer.
But I I can go into more detail because I'm also giving you a sneak peek for what I hope to collapse at the end of the year as well. Mike? Yeah. So, I think part of my, problem with, the the proposal is that I don't really understand what that would look like. But certainly when we're talking about trust now, you've certainly earned my trust. But I think that there's a problem of trust from the community. Absolutely. And I think that the more transparent we are in order to win that trust,
the better. And so I'm I may be way off base here, but I'm kinda thinking, that these could be two different things. So one could be we approve an appropriation that says that this is how much you have to spend in the current budget year. But another is I would still like us to continue the oversight pieces that we're doing. Right? So, you know, continue to present to us on, you know, how's it going? You know, we we do that as special milestones, you know, once the student count has been finalized. And then now because, the, state has finalized PPR and stuff like that.
I would wanna make sure that we are continuing to do those pieces to keep our public informed, but also I want our public to know that their board is conducting the proper oversight to make sure that, everything is is going as possible. So if if those two ideas are not in conflict, then I would be fine with doing, a one time appropriation at the beginning of the year. We would still bring in an amended budget. So it would still be twice a year. Well, technically three times.
Adopted or proposed, adopted, and then the amended. It would just be the fourth iteration of the supplemental that we would hopefully avoid. But there's absolutely no issue with continuing all transparency and if there's any additional reporting mechanisms that you would like to see, we are more than willing to provide those. So my thought process on this kind of is being midyear, maybe the total appropriation
process begins in the next budget year, so it's clean when we compare. Okay. Because people are gonna say, well, we adopted a 161,000,000, and now they appropriated a 180. So they're spending 18,000,000 more, like, because they're not gonna get that we're not really spending all the appropriation. Do you know what I mean in terms of that component? It's something to think about. I I do understand, but let me really quick. This iteration would happen at the same time every year.
So we would not do the full I mean, I guess I guess we could do the fund balance appropriation. Okay. Never mind. Yes. We could do that. I'm sorry. Don't wouldn't you yeah. That because I'm trying to think about it because then what you're doing is changing the way you do the budget. So if you appropriated Yeah. Your initial appropriation in the first budget would be your full piece, and then the amended would be the full piece plus the actual PPR connection. Mhmm. In that way, we're never making the adjustment back and forth. Yeah. But is that whatever does everyone else do it the other way where they only
do the full appropriation and amended time? You know, I didn't I did not dig into that piece of it specifically. So it makes sense that they would. I just didn't think about it because we were in the middle of this budget part part of the season, but I do you know the answer? Go ahead. So the main finance person c d a CDE is Glenn Gustafin Gustafin. He does all the trainings, and he says at the, proposed budget to allocate all of your resources. So that's what they're teaching people to do.
So he's teaching you to begin do it from the very beginning of the of the budget planning process. And so just given because people are gonna be watching all of this, and I think if we have a number jump Yep. That isn't readily, obviously explainable. And as much as I a 100% understand this, when someone puts the slide out there on Facebook, your explanation isn't with it. Right? And so that we're cutting the budget, but they're spending 18,000,000 more and they just announced. I I just I can hear that chatter automatically.
Right? I think the more appropriate and I don't have a problem with making that change because the the very valid argument is this is guidance from CDE and is best practice, and we expect everyone in our district to work under best practice. Right? That's a part of the continuous improvement model. Why would we ask you to do something that isn't best practice? And we do a lot of minor supplement supplemental budget votes in July and August as things have to be rebalanced as you prepare for the audit that basically bring us into technical compliance that absolutely nobody really fully follows or understands.
And this cleans that part up, which I think ultimately makes it more, easier for the community and more transparent because they're asking questions about a technical component that unless you're that level of accountant, you're actually never gonna understand. So it it creates a a perceived lack of transparency. And so I think it's smartest to follow best practice. My personal preference as one board member would be to do that shift at the time as we do the proposed budget and do it as of rather than going
from a current budget to amended midyear. But I'm only one board member. I don't know where everyone else lands on that. So my perspective on that is that I really am not terribly concerned with the appropriation. That's basically saying that we have granted permission to spend up to that amount. What I care about is revenue and expenses. And so, I think that anybody who has some concerns, we would direct them to those those numbers and those resources. So I would be okay with doing this midyear if that's, especially because that that
would save you one, budget request this year. Is that correct? That is correct. K. Okay. Other folks, where do we kinda land on this so they know what direction to go? I kinda like starting fresh at the beginning of the year. That's warm it. K. Laurie? I have to agree, especially when there's been a lot of confusion with the public and within the staff. So the more clarity we provide, the better. Holly? I third with these two and you. The beginning of the, year.
Alright. So it sounds like the consensus is to do the full appropriation model as you build the proposed budget for next year, but for the amended budget this year to present consistent with the process we've used, at the beginning of the year. Does that direction make sense? It does. I have one follow-up question around this. Yes, ma'am. So, we will provide an addition additional revised version of this, based on that so that we're still on track for the approval at the next one. Is it appropriate to just submit that through the board docs for you guys to
review or do you want some other form of communication to get that to you for review prior to the The actual numbers of revenues and expenses are exactly the same. The only thing you're doing is changing whether or not you included what our fund what our our base fund balance is. So as one person, I'm okay with it just coming through board docs because there isn't actually anything else for us to analyze. Where is everyone else? I see Deb saying correct. Lori, Holly, Mike. So I think we're good. Perfect. We'll get that revised and uploaded.
So then I'll skip through these, and then we'll skip the first tab or, bullet point there. And now we'll get to what Laurie was asking about on the collapsing of the funds. So when I first came here to District 49 and I saw the number of funds that we had I was very shocked. And I had a lot of questions. So we have more funds than any school district I think I've ever seen in the state of Colorado. I'm not sure if we do for sure, but none that I've seen have anymore.
A lot of them are redundancies. And they're probably the simplest way to separately allocate money, but it creates additional complexities especially around things like when we combine all these funds in our audit, it's harder for transparency because they're not really all in fund 10. We have them in all these other buckets that require a lot more explaining, and is not as transparent. So, in this slide I talk about the ones that were collapsing mid year.
So fund thirteen is technically our emergency fund. So it is kind of a subset of money that we kind of have as a contingency for capital, but it is funded out of fund 10. So we're we're putting money there from fund 10 so if it comes from fund 10 it can come back out into fund 10. So we will collapse that and we will just have a contingency money set aside within our fund 10 instead of having a separate fund. Fund 18 is the same as far as property tax.
We're allocating money from general fund to pay that and honestly that can be easily tracked through a separate location or program code instead of having to be a separate fund. So those are two that we can easily do this year. Some other items that we would like and those will collapse back to the source fund which is fund 10. The other three that, we plan to collapse at year end is fund 15, which that one is a capital fund. Even though that does come from a budget designation out of fund 10, once it
hits in fund 15 it's restricted for capital funds. But we have four different well actually if you counted 13 we kind of had five capital related funds altogether. We really don't need that many. So we're gonna collapse fund fifteen into fund forty three, which is the CDE defined capital reserve fund if you follow the chart of accounts on CDE. So that's where we're collapsing that in. Fund seventeen is the central office. We can still keep that designated as central office, but it's a capital project.
It's a subset of a capital project. So that will be spent primarily in the Creekside renovations for that purpose, but we can continue to track it for just that purpose if there's anything left in Fund 43. There's tracking mechanisms through account codes and special things we call categories in our, financial system. And then the last one is Fund forty nine which I wasn't here for all the fun in Fund forty nine. I think so, that one was where we spent a lot of the capital from
our COP, but we were very fortunate arbitrage report to find out how much of that we have to pay penalty on for like the it's an IRS thing. It's part of bonds. It's pretty standard. And there's a piece of it if you earn too much interest because we did too good of a job with interest that you have to pay a piece of that back. There will be a piece that we'll be able to retain, but that will remain in the source fund which is from fund 39 for our COP fund.
So that will go back into that bucket that we're currently taking one time monies out of to spend, but that will augment that fund balance and be go back to its source. So does that answer your question, Lori? It more than answers it and I like the simplicity to group them together and have fewer different line items for the different funds. So thank you. Absolutely. I'm excited for that too. There may be more in future years as we keep digging in and simplifying things but these are the low hanging fruit so to speak. So if it's a unrestricted fund, it has to go into a unrestricted fund?
Or if it's a restricted fund, it has to go into a restricted fund or is moving around a little more fluid? So if it's restricted, it has to stay with the restricted purpose. So that's why the fifteen and seventeen and even 49 that we're doing later at the end of the year, those are restricted into similarly restricted and defined funds. Now if it's unrestricted, that's a little different, but that's typically more around our fund 10. And so that's why we allocate from there to all over the place for different
things for different revenue transfers. So, if you still have that school finance one zero one where I broke down the different funds and what they are and whether they're restricted or not, that will that will help you a little bit with that. So it's kind of restricted to restricted or unrestricted to all over the place. Yeah. I just wanna thank you for doing that level of work because I also think that when you're using the CDE designated number, then everyone can look that up.
So the community can be like, oh, fund 43. Well, that means it has to be spent at like, they can look at CDE and verify that has to be capital. There's no way someone looks at fifteen and seventeen and knows that as they're as they're following it unless they've, you know, worked with someone within our district. And so, I think it it lends to better, overall transparency too because it helps people understand. Because when people don't understand is when they think that you're doing something wrong with the money, even if what you're doing is completely legitimate.
And so using those designated numbers that track to CDE, I think, helps that. So thank you for taking the the time and effort and working with folks to get those pieces laid out. Mike? Yeah. And along those lines, I understand fifteen and seventeen are capital funds that we are not free to spend on, say, teacher salaries. And under the current audit, fund 10 through 19 are lumped together to arrive at our, you know, general fund fund balance.
So this immediately adds some clarity to our next audit going forward. So, Absolutely. Great idea. And as a side note, when we first started talking about collapsing funds, we did reach out to our auditor. We made sure that we were clear on what could be collapsed and what couldn't and what the appropriate measures were to do. So, we didn't just say, oh, this one goes there. We we we did did the work, worked with the auditors to make sure we're doing the right thing. K. So at this point, we have consensus budget forward with the understanding of how it
will be included. Okay. And that amended budget, because it has to statutorily be voted on before January 31, will be at our special meeting on Tuesday. Thank you. So our next presentation is the VOW annual survey. Good evening. I'm Paul Anderson. I'm the executive director of people and culture, and I appreciate the opportunity to provide a briefing this evening, regarding our VOW annual survey from last fall. I thought I would spend just a a quick minute talking about the Vow system. So what is Vow?
We'll just start with the basic. Vow is voice of the workforce. And, Baldrige has has had a couple of mentions this evening. And, the voice of the workforce system is something that exists today because of our work with Baldrige. We, we had done some random well, not random survey. We did some purposeful surveying, more than about, a little over ten years ago, but we didn't really know what we were doing. We're just starting to ask questions. And as time went on, we began to get much more intentional about asking questions
and asking questions in a in a much more purposeful way that, ultimately connect to, our mission and vision. What are we trying to be? We're trying to be the best choice to learn, work, and lead. So as time as time has gone on, we've we've seen how that we saw how that vow that survey, starting with the survey, it really became in a way a conversation where we're asking and and receiving, answers and feedback from our workforce. And, that be that, led to some other ways that we started listening to our
workforce. And that's what became that's what we would now refer to as the VOW system. So the VOW what started as the VOW survey is not the VOW system and that includes other things like the VOW learning tours, the VCT. I'm gonna forget a couple here as I'm standing here, but, but it really is the way throughout the cycle of of a of a school year where we, we we have these, points at which we have conversations with with our workforce. And if you look at the the the numbers of people who participate in the
various kinds of, the various elements of the workforce system, it's just about every employee is gonna have has an opportunity. Every employee has an opportunity. Some are gonna be able to have actual conversations with our superintendent or other leaders, and with each other in in in the in the VCT setting. So it is essential to our work at becoming, the best choice to learn, work, and lead, and it it informs our strategy. We've talked some of some earlier about a strategic some strategic priorities.
They those are because of the voice of our workforce, whether that's elevating the employee experience, calibrating compensation, and others. We also use this every year as a part of what we bring to you at, the annual planning summit. So, mister Hiltz, I I expect, is gonna be, bringing some ideas to you based on what we've heard from our workforce. So I'm gonna talk now more specifically about the VAW survey. So the survey itself has a pretty, is in a in a format that we've been using now for, I want to say, seven years in this current format.
We've done it ten ten years total, of the Vowel annual survey. And in its current format, we we seek to measure two things, employee satisfaction and employee engagement. And we measure a few other things I'll talk talk about in a bit. So employees have an opportunity essentially to select from 18 factors what is most important to them when they go any place to work. So they select up to 10 of those 18, and then they weight those that they selected, and then they score those that they selected. And that's what ends up giving us our scores in terms of our performance in
meeting our workforce's expectations. There's also a historical set of questions that we ask, that we'll we will look at toward the end of our time here today. We like to talk about participation. We really have, robust participation that leads to very, very rich feedback. And for, for this year in particular, we we were just shy of 93, 93%. We're rounding and saying we hit 93%. More than 1,800 workforce members participated in the survey and 9,500 comments.
So we get lots and lots of data from our workforce. And we're so we're so thankful that that they raised their voice through the vow annual. The trend over time so we're we are in this chart, we're represented in the goldish bar. And you can see we had we really have a just a a trend over time of increasing, and and actually if you look back to 2019 even then or 2020, which was a low point at 88% is exceptional participation. So we're we consist our our workforce wants to participate in this, wants the opportunity
to to give us feedback about their experience here. And the the the trend line also tracks pretty closely with, with ball the Baldrige benchmark. That is companies, organizations who have who have achieved the ball, the Baldrige award. So high performing organizations. Next, I wanna walk get into some, results. Again, key the the key things we measure are workforce engagement and workforce satisfaction. This slide looks at the trend, the trend lines from 2019 forward.
And you can see and and we're comparing the black line is the Baldrige benchmark, and the blue line being the industry or k 12 school system, benchmark. So we have tracked, historically in both engagement Baldrige, the Baldrige benchmark. And in fact, last year achieving in both engagement and satisfaction, seeing our highest scores ever. This year, we have a significant we have some significantly different results and we're gonna talk about that, why that is.
So we are we are now, as we look at this, we have opportunities to grow. One of the things I wanna use as a as a way of ex showing you some of the differences, something that we think contributed to the to the results that we see. So there when employees take the survey, they're given and they start to score those that they selected, there's a 10 slider. And for all all the prior years, our slider was set at 10.
So when you open the survey, the slider's at ten. You have to move it off of 10 if you don't wanna score it at 10. And and this year, we decided to set it in the middle, at five. And we see different results. So I'm gonna show you that 2024 with the with the slider set at 10 is is the is what you're seeing on the left. This year, with it set on five, we see many more fives this year than,
you know, than than last year, and and certainly many fewer tens. So, it it clearly has had an impact, and so we have we're gonna decide what to do about that, for future years. We've I think, we frankly have decided that that we have a new, we have a new benchmark for for our own performance or a new a new floor and, we'll begin to build on this. And I'm gonna interject just a little bit. One of the challenges is that the provider that we use, beyond feedback, who is
a best in nation, nationally recognized provider, they're not consistent about how they handle this. I think the initial placement of the slider is is based on kind of their conventional design, but they have they have other methodologies that use a five point scale versus a 10 that don't use sliders at all, that might use check boxes. And so, we have found the 10 scale really works for us. But if you look literally at at all of our scores over the last decade, five really wasn't a true midpoint.
A truer midpoint might have been seven or eight, but we didn't set it at seven or eight. And so going forward, we're at least contemplating using, instead of a slider methodology, using radio buttons so that nothing is selected. So there's no so there's no inertia to be overcome because we don't wanna measure inertia. We don't wanna measure irritation. We wanna measure satisfaction and engagement. And and so this may be an opportunity for us to even help beyond feedback improve their recommended methodology, but certainly for us to set a new baseline as mister
Anderson is saying. So now now as I go through the two sets of of results, satisfaction and engagement, I'm gonna give you we'll take a quick look at this year's scores across these satisfaction factors. So satisfaction factors are things like the basics that you expect when you when you go to work. That's pay and benefits in a safe environment, for example. So next, I'm so so, one thing I'll point out on here also is to orient you. So we have the percent of employees selecting.
So again, back in the be at the beginning I mentioned, employees can select out of 10 of 18, up to 10 of 18. So the percent selecting means 64% of our 819 people who took the survey selected relationship with coworkers as one of the important factors for them. So on this slide, I want to show oh. I'm sorry. Interrupting you. You can go back one. Even with that, artifact, that that methodological artifact that that Paul identified, this is the first year in the history of the Big Rock survey, which became the vow annual
survey. This is the first year that competitive salary has not been our lowest rated item. And that is remarkable regardless of the numbers around it. That's a a remarkable achievement directly resulting from the boards and administrations priority on compensation over the years. And I think it is we we know this, not I think. This is not my opinion. This is absolutely backed up by the comments in the survey that this had a lot to do with the commitment to the teacher repositioning project, which is why it was it was really kind of a no brainer to protect that initiative in the
context of the fiscal exigency. So this overlays last year's results with, with this year. So just to give you a sense across each of the the, EKRs here, employee key requirements, we call them. So each of these factors, you could interestingly, the you know, they're they're fairly similar in terms of what is what is, where they're scored, year over year, but, obviously, the numbers are significantly different. So the gap on most of these is pretty it is pretty similar.
I would note, that, again, we see the highest, scored item here being coworker relationships. This and relationships with relationship with manager pretty consistently been our highest scored, items. Some of that we're very proud of and and that speaks so much to the culture in District 49. Here are the engagement scores, for this year. And And again, I'll just jump to go right to the overlay with with last
year's to show you the the gaps. And here, again, pretty consistently, the the the order and the scoring is pretty similar. I just you have the, you know, roughly point and a half to two point gap in in the scoring. So there are the historic questions, three that we, we pay closest attention to, I'll say, are the these are the questions that connect directly with our, with our mission. And so we the question or the the the stem is essentially, oh my goodness.
I'm just running the mic. Our go ahead, Peter. So it essentially asks the question about whether or not you agree with the statement that District 49 is the best place to learn, that District 49 is the best place to work, is the best place to lead. And then this column, in each case, measures the percentage of people that agreed with that, in and and we're we converted this to a 10 scale Yeah. As well? Yeah. This is 10. Yeah. And so this would measure, kinda like a net promoter scale score if you're familiar with that metric, but it would measure the upper end of that 10 scale.
People that very strongly agree that rated at a nine or a 10 or agreed would be, sixes and sevens and eights. Yeah. It finally came to me. It would it's I would recommend district forty nine as a great place to learn, to work to lead. So, you know, we see a similar, dip in the scores here because the same same dynamic is at play with the slider. So what happens after we receive survey results? We push, so we get local department level results, school level results.
So each supervisor essentially receives a set of results from their team members. As long as that team or the number of responses for a team is is, five or more. If it's lower than that, there's not there's no data reported. But the what we, the assignment we give our our principals and our supervisors to do is to report out results, to their to their workforce members, their team members, and then to go through a process of what here locally can we learn can we improve? What would make this a better place to work?
Or we see this is, this is really strong. What is it that makes that's that makes us great in this area? So we really ask our leaders to engage with their workforce members, on about the results so they see both local and district level results. We we, also we report results, through our communications channels, and then we we also take the opportunity to record improvements made through the through Vowel, feedback. So then ultimately, this is a learning tool.
This is about learning. We we use Vowel, Vowel survey and Vowel system feedback to help us get better. We we identify areas for very specific opportunities for improvement. That drives us as senior leaders as local department or school leaders, to, work on improvements in their, in their areas of of control. And then ultimately, as we bring that ideas to you, recommendations to you at the
the planning summit, you will guide and direct our work, as you endorse ideas for, for improvement based on workforce voice. And in the end, we really, you know, we really appreciate our workforce's willingness to share their voice, to raise their voice. And, you know, I think it's been interesting over this we have really the I think the the level of voice is increasing kind of all the time, and we have I think we're getting better at asking questions, asking the right questions, asking groups
for input on things that we might otherwise not have in the past. And I think our workforce, appreciates the opportunity to, to be at the table asking questions. So speaking of questions, do you have any for me? Laurie? With when you look at the previous year's trend lines and you do look at that dip, it does appear that that slider did have an an impact overall on the final results. Or do you think that that to me, that would be the biggest indicator just looking at the prior year trends?
I think it's unquestionably a key factor in what we're seeing. I think one of one of the things that, we discussed early on was, actually our our our survey, vendor, Beyond Feedback, our, the our contact there called before he published our or pushed our results to us. And he said, is there something going on? What happened? And so Peter and I had an initial conversation and and I remember the the first thing you said is, last year was a tough year.
And and I I think there were that that is also some factor. It's harder to measure that, but I think clearly the the slider had a really is so clearly an impact across the scores. But I think mister Hils is right. We came off a rough a difficult year and and, we're into another one. And, so that all of those things impact what it's like to work here. Holly? Is there any any area in these surveys, is it all just, like, the slider
or the scale, or is there a portion where they can leave feedback? Yeah. So so employees have the opportunity after each of those that they that they've selected here and then they've scored it. They can comment on that on each of those up to 10. And then there are three open ended questions at the end of the survey, that, for example, ask, other than pay, what is the what is the greatest need of for improvement in District 49? I think we dropped we might have dropped the other than pay this year, but
clearly, the the this is a place where someone can just say, I wish we would do this differently or or I wanna give kudos to, you know, someone I work with. And so we we get all really out of the 9,500 comments. So we mentioned that there are nine over 9,000 comments from employees in the survey. And so, lots of opportunity in there to share. And what what are anonymous comments? We don't we can't attribute, because of the purposeful relationship we have with our vendor. No date no.
We don't have any way of knowing who's who submitted what, who scored what. Dan? So in addition to changing it up so we don't have the survey bias from the sticking it on the five, that's kind of tends to make people have a little bit of bias one way or the other. Is it possible for the board to see the whole survey and comments so that it could maybe help us look forward to what our workforce needs? Yes. So we and I think we have in the past provided you with, I think
the raw comments. So, yeah, I think it's 8,000 pages or you know. So it'll be a big PDF, but, we we have shared that with the board, and I'll do that with some instructions, for how to use that information. Yep. Mike. And so when we looked at the the side by side for the '24 and '25, survey and we saw the behavior, change, one of the things that as I was looking a little closer at it, I saw not only did we see, significant change between the fives and the tens, but there was also an increase, although not
as noticeable, in people selecting six or seven or eight or nine. And so, to me, the pattern is pretty clear, that the the default selection had a significant influence on behavior. So I would just teach people to just not pay attention so much to the year over year scores because the methodology methodology changed and therefore the results changed. But just to focus on the raw scores. So with this screen you have here, relationship with manager, 7.9
is still a very strong score, and, we can feel very good about that without necessarily, you know, overworking ourselves to say, but it was 9.2 last year. What happened? Right? So we can just accept that 7.9. That's very good. So I would caveat that with I mean, the size differential doesn't stay the same. Right? So you can see those pieces. But, the other component to me that I think is probably more informing given that you had the scale change, And personally, I would think if I was denying it,
I would designing it, I would put it at a five and make you choose positive, you know. But, sort of depends on how you're thinking about the numbers too because in some surveys, five is neutral and then you're going up and down. But I think the comments and if there are shifts in comments related to those areas because of the fact that the there's a change in the tool the way the tool was u would be utilized because of the slider, those comment change shifts, are probably more informative, would be my guess, in terms of areas of focus than
the raw number is. But, because you can if you're reading the comments that apply to your zone or to I don't know if it breaks into those pieces or not or if it just stays district wide, but if you see a change in the tenor of the comments that gives you validation that maybe that shift is is in fact something that has to be paid more attention to or to prioritize which ones were more important. Just food for thought. Yep. Is there anything you need from us from this at this point?
No. I, I just appreciate the time and the opportunity to present. Alright. Anything if no one else has other questions, then we'll, move to the next piece. I know at least two of us have had to run quick. Do we wanna take a couple of minute break before we do the sixty minutes presentation so everyone has a chance? Yes. Alright. So let's do five minutes. And then we'll be back for the zone leader presentations. Good for you. See, this is driving me Netskode. Sometimes it'll launch in my browser and other times it'll launch Yeah.
It's the kind of thing that I'm like, I have It's diligence. Alright. So I think we're ready to, resume the meeting. Sorry. Are we ready? Yes. Yep. Okay. So then we're ready to start. Brian, you're the our first one to present tonight. Alright. Well, good evening. Brian Smith, Falcon Zone superintendent. I'm excited to be up up here to start off our presentation this evening for
all the zone performance reports. I get to go first, which means I get to set the tone, and then Dustin and Teresa get to answer all the questions. So it just works out great. Now we are excited to be here. I will commend my two colleagues. The three of us have been working so well together just as a team. We're really trying to bring things together across the district and streamline a lot of things, but also still have our zone autonomy and do the things that meet the needs of our communities as well. So you'll see that in our presentations tonight. Line to last year, and we made some enhancements to make sure to show how
our KPIs are progressing. And so for new board members, just as, a highlight, on the bottom of the slide, you'll see a chart there that highlights our three main KPIs, the district performance framework, the star assessment, and then customer satisfaction. And so as we go through this, you'll see that chart populate as we go, to ultimately show our final rating at the end. So I'm gonna launch right in, the first KP zone performance framework. So this is taking into account all of the school performance frameworks from, each of
our schools, and then coming up with a score. And so you will see for the zone, we've got last year we were at a 62.6, this year we're at a 57.5. That dotted line that is there represents what we would have been if I didn't have the new school added because we obtained an iConnect school. So if Patriot was not included we would be at a 58.5. And so we just wanted to do that as a reference since we all had new schools add to our zones this year. Falcon Zone, obviously, we're not happy that we dropped a little bit overall, but what
I will point out that we are excited about, this is the first year ever that every single school in the Falcon Zone was green, on the school performance frameworks. The pastors that I've been up here, I have had to talk about schools that were improvement. We've had to talk about schools that were in yellow, and this is our first year ever. None of our schools were in yellow. So we got all of them to green, which is good, but we had some declines, and we're not happy about that. And I will tell you, our principals are drilling in. We are looking at this data. If you look at all of our school performance frameworks on the achievement side, we
did relatively well. We had a lot of green marks on our SPF. It was the growth area this year that got us. Fiftieth percentile means you're growing in, growing similarly to like population schools and we had several dip just slightly below that fiftieth percentile which bumped growth to yellow and growth is measured, 60% versus achievement 40. And so that growth measure is what mainly, impacted us in the Falcon Zone. So my principals and their teams, their teachers, their other leaders are working incredibly hard
this year. Growth is our focus. We've gotta dial in on individual student data, so that we don't see that trend continue. My academic administrator, Tim Scheck, is a guru of data and so he has populated a variety of tools for my principals to drill in at the per student level so that we're looking at what each individual student needs so that we can move that growth in the right direction. But overall putting all schools together we are in the green and so we maintain that rating of three which is meets for our zone performance framework.
On the STAR assessments this year, I'll start with math. You will see on the achievement side, we moved from yellow to green. And so last year I was telling you we were in approaching. This year I get to tell you we made it to Meets, and that's with adopting a new math curriculum. So usually when you do that, you see a dip, and we did not see that from mid year last year to this year. So that's showing us that our new curriculum is making an improvement already, with its implementation, and we're happy about that. The trend for that line is going in the upward direction and we want to
maintain that trend and so our teams are really looking at their data working on that piece to keep that achievement line moving in that right direction towards the upward way. For growth, last year we took a dip. You'll see we dropped down towards 45, but this year we've rebounded and come back up to 47. That's still slightly under the fiftieth percentile. We need to get it there to turn green. With the new math curriculum, we have more targeted assessments now that are in place so we can progress monitor our students better. So as I talked about looking at that per student level, that's exactly what we're
doing to drill in and get that growth percentile up above the fiftieth percentile that moves it to the meets rating. So that's the big thing that we're focusing on with that new math curriculum adoption, and implementing the different interventions and supports that our students need. So we maintain the two but we are so close and I'm confident with what we're doing with the tools Mr. Sheck has developed that we're gonna move that one green next year. We've got the right systems in place and we're gonna keep going. Reading, you will see we also moved that one to our highest level that we
have seen. Last year we kept it in green, we maintained, but this year we grew 3%. So we moved it further into the green by showing a growth from 50 to 53 on our achievement. And our growth percentile also slightly upward moved to the fifty third percentile in terms of growth, so that's also on the right trajectory. And with reading in particular, last year was year zero for our science and social studies adoption, so we were starting to utilize new tools and new materials to help students get more exposure in real world connections to science and social studies, and so
we're seeing some of that impact here but now we're truly in year one where teachers are really looking at those resources, utilizing them with their implementation of CKLA at the elementary and then the My Perspectives at secondary, we are really making sure that we're leveraging reading and writing across the curriculum that it's not just happening in language arts class, that it's happening across the board. And so all of our principals, all of our teacher teams are really focusing on tier one instruction, making sure curriculum is effectively utilized.
The board helped us, prove those adoptions over past years and so now we need to make sure we have let's use them and let's keep going. We're seeing the trend that both of those are moving in that upward direction, so we wanna keep moving that in that direction by leveraging those resources and those materials across the board. So we're happy seeing this trend move in the right direction. For early literacy, kudos, our teams with STAR Early Literacy are in the blue and we've maintained the blue. So we are at the achievement level, I'm sorry, the exceeding level, for achievement there
which is super amazing for those primary literacy grades. Growth though, when you get into blue, it is so hard to grow because they're already in that very high level. And so you will see, we had a dip the previous year. We've brought it back up towards the forty eighth, but we are pushing hard because we wanna get that to the fiftieth or above so that one moves green. We are happy that the achievement is in the blue and up there in that high level, but now we wanna, again, focus in on growth. That's our our mission with all the tools that we have to dial in on
what students are specifically doing so we can help each individual kid move to that higher level. So we're gonna maintain that with early literacy. In term and KPI, mister Anderson just went through all of the stuff related to Vowel so you will see we have that similar trend that you were seeing related to satisfaction, related to the district results. And so we're sad because we made it to blue last year and now we dipped just under green. So that's an area where we did move from blue to yellow, which is concerning for us. We know in the Falcon Zone looking at that, our two main areas related to
the indicators mister Anderson was just talking about relate to work life balance and also relate to right tools for the job. My principals have all done their presentations with their teams. We know with work life balance, the calendar challenges that we experienced this year were a big impact on that. And then also with some of the budget impacts and cuts we had to do last year also had an impact because we had to recalibrate and move some responsibilities around. So those are some of the things we're hearing from staff on that. On the right tools for the job piece, we know, with our new curriculum adoptions,
the first time you implement them, where's this? Oh, we still need this. Also, we saw that with math this year. There were some manipulatives that were not in place, that needed to get obtained and ordered. And right after the survey was administered, there they were, but our staff didn't have them at the time, and we heard about it. It was talked about there. We also are finding that with our new curriculum, some digital resources that were available in the past have not been available and so staff are talking to us about some of those other resources that they're hoping to have access to as they're working
with students on intervention and other impact there too. We're still drilling in on that data. Again, principals just did their presentations when we came back from Christmas break, so they're getting additional feedback from staff. We've analyzed all the comments. I've shared kinda that summary with you with what I just talked about, but now we're getting additional feedback from staff based on what Mr. Anderson was just talking about to identify some next steps. This is, we just administered our satisfaction survey. That was administered in December right before we went on winter break. And, when we did this, I will tell you we are very proud of this
parent score. Last year, we were at 6.6. We were yellow. And this year, Falcon Zone brought that to we have been doing a lot of work to engage our parents, to get our parents involved, to make them know and help them fall in love with Falcon. There's been a lot of efforts that my zone community liaison, miss Mirasan, in collaboration with all of our schools have worked on. And so to move that rating from 6.6 in the yellow up to green, we are very proud of that and we wanna keep that momentum going to keep that moving. Elementary students maintained, their rating right there at green, so we were happy about that.
But secondary is an area of concern. Last year, we we dropped. We dropped into the red, and so that is an area that we are not happy with. It's related to the question of would you recommend this school to another student, and so that is concerning when we see something drop into the red. I've talked with my secondary principals. I will tell you Patriot, is seeing right at the green level. Falcon High and Falcon Middle are not seeing at that level. And so my two principals at that school are already dialing in and doing some student focus groups, talking to get further information on that.
But I do wanna reference it's in my supplemental slides, but I just wanna skip real quick to slide 14 because we also, in this satisfaction survey, asked our secondary students related to our instructional model, do you feel like you have an engaging environment for learning? Do you feel you have the right opportunities for the next step? Do you feel instruction is elevated for what you need? And when we got ratings back from our secondary students on this, we were getting sevens, eights, and nines. So our students overall are very happy with things that are happening at the school,
which this slide shows, but when it related to that one question in particular, back on the satisfaction rating, we were in the fives. So that's why we need to drill so that we can address that because we're gonna we're gonna turn that around real quick. We've got some quick strategies that we're looking at already but that is a huge area focus because that one's red and we're not happy about it. So when you put all this together with all the different ratings that you see there, it averages based on the weights and so overall we still are at a rating of three.
We're proud that math achievement went from yellow to green and that our parents' rating went from yellow to green. Those were two big successes. Voice of the workforce went from that blue to yellow, so we need to drill in on that and focus there. Similar trend across the board, but that's still not good enough for us. And so we need to tackle more what happened there and how we can fix that. And then our secondary student reading went from, I believe it was yellow or green to red and so that's the other one I'm really concerned about and wanna dial in on and focus.
So overall in the Falcon Zone we focus on our Portrait of a Graduate. We empower all learners to earn their wings and so when we talk about wings that's wisdom, integrity, networking, grit, and self confidence. And some things we're working on in the Falcon Zone with wisdom, that implementation of our new zone math curriculum, I will tell you we are seeing the impact of it. I've been talking with teachers. The rigor of the assessments and the question level that is there aligns very closely with CMASS and aligns towards that higher level thinking that we just want in general from our students. And so we're very happy with that.
We're in year zero, but you're already seeing from the STAR data that the trend is going in the right direction. Seven steps implementation. All of our core schools have been trained in seven steps, so we are leveraging that along with, the writing objective that the board has set, to really place an emphasis there on key strategies that are gonna have an impact on student achievement. With integrity, our zone has placed a lot of emphasis on evaluation alignment. All of our administrators, each meeting we have, we do rounding and norming and talk about effective practices that should be taking place and how we can give quality feedback
to our teachers. They deserve it. They need to know things they're doing really well, and we wanna continue to challenge them to grow to that next level. So we are continuing to norm as a zone to take that to that next level and provide the right level of coaching and support for our teachers. We've also really dove into the data process to drive instruction. Mister Sheck's tools that he continues to build, our principals, even our teacher teams call him up. Hey. Can you build a chart with this? Can you put this tool in place? And he builds it right away so that our teachers have what they need to use that data and then engage in those PLC meetings to use that to drive
instruction. We've had people trained in the PLC process as, Melissa talked about earlier, and so we're leveraging those practices there to to enhance that PLC piece. With networking, we got a zone writing curriculum committee together, based on the strategic objective that you set. And so we brought teachers across the board, k-twelve, all together, and they talked about how we were doing in writing. What are the essential things that need to be in place? What do we need to make sure a kindergartner can do? What can a preschooler do with pre k? What can, a seventh grader do?
And so we mapped all that out and looked to see if there was good continuation from pre k all the way up to twelfth grade. We then identified what holes were there, and we started to fill those gaps. We looked at how it lines to the writing rope, with the literacy effective practices. And so now we're going back to make sure that we create a simplified tool that every teacher, not just language arts, every teacher, math, science, social studies, explore, are all leveraging that to tie in writing and get our kids to use writing effectively. It was a very strong committee, great voices in that room, and we're excited to
be rolling that out with the tool here shortly. We're elevating that hashtag fall in love with Falcon. Our social media campaign really amplified. We're getting a lot of stories out there. We were finding last year, because of what our survey showed us, people didn't know what was happening in our schools. They didn't know the things that were taking place. They didn't know the great stories. And so we've really amplified and put a lot of new information out there. And now what we're hearing is our elementary school students, what does it mean to be a firebird? Or our firebirds, what does it mean to be a bison or a falcon?
And so we're putting together some student reels where they're talking about their experience that we're gonna show in the schools below. We're gonna show parents so they can learn how to become that successful student. So you're gonna see a lot of new social media stuff coming up to really help people know why we fall in love with Falcon, why we love the Falcon Zone and the great things we're doing for our kids. So you're gonna see two point o of that here pretty quick. With GRIT, we have offered our EdCamps, which, we offer professional learning credit for. Our teachers all, provide best practices professional learning core concentrated sessions.
Our last one, we we did two this year. We did one in November and then another one in January. And each one, we had 40 to 50 sessions offered where teachers were sharing their best practices, and teachers got to choose their path, their place, which ones they were gonna go to to best meet their needs. And the surveys we have gotten back on that have been amazing. Teachers appreciate it. They love it. They love that they got to focus in on their goals and things they're working on to fix or things they wanna just try and learn. All of us I even jumped in and taught a class, and so all of
us were just sharing best to help each other grow. It's been awesome. I mentioned earlier, tier one curriculum focus is our big effort to really dial in on that growth. We need to make sure we are all aligned and leveraging those tier one resources so that we can really see what is what our students know and can do. And when they're not meeting that expectation, we can go back and intervene. And so all seven schools in the Falcon Zone are really honing in on that tier one curriculum, tier tier one instruction to make sure we have the best practices
in place. And then self confidence, we're leveraging wings. We're talking about wings. I was at one of our elementary schools the other day, and a student was on the morning announcement saying, I'm earning my wings by showing effort in the cafeteria or what whatever piece they accentuate and they have a different student every day. We're doing things to help people learn this piece. We're gonna start putting some some paintings on the buildings to amplify that because we feel those qualities are really important, and we wanna make sure every graduate in the Falcon Zone has those characteristics when they walk out the door.
And then we're doing a lot of recognition. We are really pumping up. We have teachers doing great things. We have staff doing great things. We have community members doing great things. And so we're going around. We're recognizing them. They're getting some Falcon Zone swag. They're getting some Falcon Zone kudos. But we really wanna celebrate and recognize people that are going all in to help our students and our schools be better. It has grown exponentially from where we are at, and we're gonna continue that growth with the recognition that we're doing. So we're very proud overall, and we'll keep those things going, as you can see,
aligned to our wings focus. So that concludes for the Falcon Zone. I'm sure Dustin and Teresa will beat me time wise, but, what questions do you guys have for me? Mike, I know you had a question earlier in the presentation. I had a question, and I answered it for myself. So thank you. Alright. K. Holly? You're killing it, Bry. So for when you were talking about the parental engagement, what what kind of activities were you guys doing to to grow those numbers? We we had a lot of individual things happening at schools, and we didn't have
a real collective focus at the zone. And so over last year in particular, we started doing zone, accountability committee meetings. We learned that from the Sand Creek zone. And so we put that in place. And so now when we have SAC meetings, we meet as a zone. We talk about what's happening, and we break into our individual schools. But that was getting more parents in the room to learn about different things happening. And then Carrie Mirasan has really elevated our social media presence because we learned there were no stories out there. And I will tell you, a lot of negative stories were just getting out there
and people commenting on it because they didn't have the information or the facts. And so we wanted to make a, concerted effort to make sure that we are putting here's what's happening at this school school today, here's what these students are engaged in, to the this science lab happening this day, and we're really getting those stories out there. So in that last piece you were talking about, like, for students to earn Vince wings, and you mentioned paintings. Are these student paintings? We are actually I've worked with we have a marketing club at Falcon High School
that designs some, cool cool stuff. And so they're designing some concepts of what this could look like that then could be on the outside of each school to help exemplify that. Mhmm. Isaac, do you have any questions or comments? Not any questions. I just think it's awesome that as a district, we're really trying to emphasize all the great things going on and keep that pushing forward. Thanks, Isaac. Jeff. Good job. Thanks. I really enjoyed being in the Falcon area. Well, I appreciate you coming over to chat and see what we're doing.
And I will say, as someone who lives out there and so sees all of the various social media pieces, not only does Carrie post all kinds of great things, but I've noticed she very quickly provides information. So when someone puts a post on that's either asking a question or maybe is stating something negative, she immediately engages with them. And not in a in an argumentative or contradictory way or any way in any
way, shape, or form. She reaches out and says, hey, you know, how can I help? You know, can we talk? Can we so she makes those connections, and I think that piece has really changed the tenor of the communication, out there overall. And so I think it's really been a worthwhile effort. Thanks. So thank her. Yeah. Well, I just I wanna add to that. I have seven rock star principals that are out there. They're engaged. They're in front. They are talking to people. They are collaborating. They they are jumping in.
If if Carrie gives them a heads up on something, they're calling them. Like, hey. Can we talk about this? These principals work so hard, and I'm so grateful to have them on this team. Thank you. Mhmm. Alright. Alright. And so next? Good evening. I'm Theresa Ritz. I'm the power zone superintendent. Brian broke all the rules. He said this was going to be his fastest presentation ever. But that's K. We forgive you, Brian. Alright. So I am happy to be here this evening to share a little bit about
how things are going in the power zone in terms of data, and then just, share some of the exciting things happening. So this slide here will show you the zone performance framework. Note that last year, we were at 65. This year, 66.1. So it's not a huge increase, but it is an increase in the right direction. We're excited about that. We if you look back at 2023, we were actually at 59.9
points. So from 2023 to now, that's a 6.2 overall increase for our zone, which we're we're very proud of. We really enjoy having mister Hiltz wear blue at the district events, and, we are all going to keep buying him nice new blue shirts because that is the plan moving forward. A few things I want to shout out about this. We had Ridgeview move into Distinction. So they were the second power zone school to achieve that, which was wonderful and
awesome to see. Vista Ridge is a huge celebration. If you look at that score there, that is very high for, our high schools, and it's certainly And there's a lot of reasons for that. There's a lot of really strategic work happening there in all of our schools, but Vista Ridge, that's that's just huge accomplishment. And then allies, if you if you see allies, if you've been following allies, you know, we a lot of people weren't sure they would ever make it to green
to performance. And they have been sure that they would even when others weren't sure. And sure enough, there they are. And that is the new floor for them, and they're only moving forward from there. So very exciting celebrations there for the power zone. And so on this metric we are at a three, a green for our KPI score there. Moving on to star for math, we are trending up in both achievement and growth, which is great.
That's exactly what we want to see. Lots of really strategic work happening in math across the last three years, really. We are right now in our HRS work, we're working on a guaranteed and viable curriculum. So we have new math curriculum also. I think we brought it on maybe a year ahead of Falcon Zone. I'm not quite quite sure. But, we are working on now we're at the point where we're fine tuning. We're we're taking another look at those prioritized standards. We're working on assessments and fine tuning those common assessments, making sure the core resource
aligns with our curriculum mapping. So a lot of really strategic work happening there and it's paying off. Leading the way in the power zone in math growth right now is Vista Ridge High School, Inspiration View Elementary School, and Ridge View. So I just wanna give them a shout out. And then I wanna note that if you look at 2022 at achievement, 22%, and where we're at now at 43%, although we don't want to stay at 43%, we're
we're pretty pleased with that increase of 21 points. So for STAR Math, we are three in green, on achievement and growth for the KPI. Moving on to reading, we are up in both achievement and growth, which is exciting. And when you look at, all of the Power Zone schools district wide comparing to all of us, we are showing strong in reading. And most of you know we've been working on this language rich initiative for quite some time, and we are seeing that that pay off.
This is this is a part of our success in reading and writing. It's also helping us a lot in math, quite frankly. The the CITLITS people will tell you that they see the biggest growth in math with increasing structured language in classrooms. So we're we're very pleased with with our reading growth. Leading for growth, as per usual in our zone is Allies. We always see their growth off the charts, but all also Vista Ridge. Vista Ridge is up there in star growth, which is super exciting because we're hoping
I mean, Tom Payne is living in the seventies. He's got his bell bottoms on over there and he is ready. So we are really hoping that their SPF will be, up there soon in distinction. If you look at where we were in 2022, we are 10 points higher, at this point than we were there and so we're excited about that. That lands us at green in reading. STAR Early Literacy tends to be a strength, I think, in all of our schools,
but you can see there that we achievement is sitting in the exceeding categories. Growth for us is wasn't quite at where we wanted it to be this year. We like to see it a couple points at least higher than that. In terms of this measure, Ives is leading the way in the power zone. So very excited about that. Achievement is in the blue. Growth is in the yellow, missed by one point. So we will continue to to work to increase that growth. This was our big opportunity for improvement this year, and this is a big, big
deal in the Power Zone because, as you know, we're people first. That's our that's our main priority. It's been the foundation of the Power Zone since the Power Zone became a zone. We really hang our hat on that and my philosophy as the leader is that the staff experience shapes the student experience. So kids are always first, but we believe that the way we make kids first is through our staff. So to see this number drop is concerning, and and you've heard some about that this evening. I mean, we're down across the entire district.
I think as I was looking through everyone's slides, I think there's one school that's actually up, and so kudos to them. And the rest of us have dipped down. So we're really taking a hard look at this like Brian described. All of our principals right now are leading these conversations, really digging deep. Tools for the job came up for us as well. So we have some really targeted PD happening right now to address some of what we've heard from our staff that they need. Work life balance is always a concern. I mean, the calendar change, having less time for conferences, some of those things that,
miss miss Philo talked about, improving for our calendar for next year will help. So this is an area of growth for us. We, landed in the yellow category with a two. However, there is a bright spot here in customer satisfaction because we're very pleased with these scores. I mean, the secondary score just kinda blew me away. That's really, really hard. I don't I mean, I've been watching this score for years, and it's like no matter what we do, our secondary students are just not gonna say we're a good
school to come to. That number just tends to not be high for us. This is the highest I've ever seen it. We actually made it into, the green category, meeting expectations, which is such a celebration and it says so much about our our staff and our teachers and the connections that they're making with our kids. And I think it also says a lot about our pathways work because we are working very hard to make sure there's a pathway for every single student.
If you're an if you're an arts kid, we've got the pathway for you. If CTE, we've got the pathway. Athletics, whatever your thing is, we are working really hard to make sure that we have that both at Skyview and at Vista Ridge. And there's a lot of really great alignment happening between the two schools. A great example is our band directors. They do a lot of work together from Skyview to Vista Ridge. And so our kids are visiting each other's campuses. We've got more and more of that happening, and I think that's paying off in
our scores here. So our our parent score is strong. We're very pleased with that. In terms of our our student score, I I think those are the highest in the district right now on on this piece. And so that's that's something that we really need to celebrate because how kids are experiencing and feeling our schools every day matters a whole lot to us. So very proud of that. We work really hard, of course, you know, with Capturing Kids' Hearts. All of our teachers are trained in that. We utilize that heavily across all of our schools.
And then, of course, Justin's Renaissance is is something that we've brought on, which I think is really helping that secondary score. That's that's a heavy influence at both Skyview and at Vista Ridge. So for the KPI there, we actually have two two blues and a green. And then that brings us to the final aggregate score. And in looking at this, I mean, the voice of the workforce is certainly the the piece that pains my heart. Not happy with that. We we put so much care into our staff and I wanna make sure that
whatever whatever it is that they're not receiving, that we're listening to that and we're doing all that we can to help. So that's that's certainly a focus. When you look, at the star section for Power Zone this year compared to last year, it's better. It's improved. There were several yellow spots last year and that that has improved greatly. So overall, we're very excited about where we we're landing right now. In our mid year data, every star category, increased, both growth and achievement in everything
that we test. And that's that's a huge testament to our teachers who are working so hard and our leaders who are leading that work. We have amazing instructional coaches. We have an amazing team at the zone and at the building levels, and they care so much about each student's success, and that is paying off for us. So this right here is just the slide that kinda tells you a little bit about who we are. And around the perimeter of the slide you see People First opportunities, our acronym there,
POWER. Those are our power priorities. So those are the things that, we we filter everything through. Those those are really the values that guide us and a lot of those have been in place since the very beginning. We've tweaked them and fine tuned them and we've, changed them with the changing needs of our community and our our stakeholders, but really found at the core those are those have been a part of us since the beginning. HRS stands for High Reliability Schools. That's our improvement framework that we use through Marzano Resources And we we've been using
that in the power zone for a very long time. I would argue that we're using it right now better than we've ever used it. And it's it's a very effective, research based, strong framework. And, we have laser like focus on these levels. We have laser like focus on the initiatives within the levels and I've put in, bolder font, you know, the ones that that we really give our energy to. Something that happened when I became the zone superintendent is we really narrowed our focus. We found that we were just trying to do too many things and when you
do too many things, you can't do them all very well. So we narrowed And so the things you see there, Capturing Kids' Hearts, Josten's Renaissance, really effective PLCs. That's what's getting our energy in level one. The PLC work is a big part of what you're seeing at Vista Ridge. So those high school late starts are a really big deal for Vista Ridge High School. The PLCs are stronger than I've ever seen them in a secondary school, and that time for our teachers to collaborate is really critical.
HRS level two is effective teaching. That's where our seven steps framework strategies comes into play and the new art and science of teaching. And seven steps is it's stronger than ever in in the power zone. Our evaluation tools align with the strategies. We have ongoing professional development, both both that we're offering internally. We have Sidelitz partnership right now with Nancy Motley and the experts in seven steps. So we're excited about that initiative. And then HRS level three is a guaranteed and viable curriculum and that's that's our
core resources. We're bringing on secondary science and social studies as well soon, similar to Falcon Zone. And we're just gonna continue to increase opportunities for speaking, reading, and writing across all content areas. We're seeing that pay off for us. Our schools are working on HRS certifications. So Ridgeview is working on level four. They will be our first school to and that's not even on here because Marzano would tell you, oh, that's like icing on the cake. These are the three that you really need.
Level four is standard reference reporting, and it's somewhat optional. But Ridgeview said not for us, and they're working on it. We have a couple of schools working on level three and a couple of schools working on level two. And I anticipate that by May, everyone will achieve their next level. And that's really all I have, but I would love to answer any questions that you have. Questions? I do like seeing the blue. Thank you. We do too.
Very nice growth. Thanks. May I preview a question? But I'll wait until after mister Horace's presentation. The board asked us to do all these presentations on the same night, in the same format, with the same KPIs, and so you're gonna see a third version of that in just a moment. And after that, I'm gonna ask you, do you like that direction? Do you wanna maintain that? This is the second time we've done it all the same night, all the same format. The third time that we've done, multiple zones in in concert, we just when we had four zones, it was a little different.
So I'll save that question, but I just want you to be percolating on it while we go through the third of three. The one question I well, later I will have to analyze how many minutes Brian took and how many minutes you took. It was longer than me. Thank you very much. Do you find that the KPIs are a good indicator to help you keep an eye on the pulse of the expectations? I I definitely think so. I think it may it gives us a a comparison across the zones. And we we have a healthy level of competition, which is, you know, I mean,
my my own principals who love each other have a healthy level of competition. But it also helps us to collaborate because if if I if we see that, you know, like, for example, the secondary score at Vista Ridge and Skyview is that's that's higher than what we normally see. So maybe Brian and Dustin's principals collaborate with Tom Payne on that and share ideas, that sort of thing. I mean, we've shared ideas across the last three years like crazy. I've I've we started implementing Johnston's Renaissance really because of the success we saw in
the Sand Creek zone. Brian and I have partnered on some seven steps work. You know, there's just there's lots of opportunity for that. And I think this this helps us to compare to one another a little bit, which I think is healthy and good. And it makes the data, make sense also, I think, to our community, which is helpful. Any other questions? Phenomenal job. Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. Alright. Alright. Last up. Alright. Alright. Best for last. Actually, I think it's mostly the most direct for last.
This they they did that intentionally. So, Dustin Horace, Sand Creek zone, superintendent. The the district performance framework, I'm I'm I was real happy with the way our schools did this past year. You can see our overall, zone score, and that's the highest that it's been in three years. The dotted line again, that 63, that's without PPAC and Spring Studio. So I know that that a lot of people think, oh, PPAC's gonna make you rise by so many points and and and it helps a couple, but, still still
improved. That's even without those two, the Sand Creek zone was was higher than they've been. The thing that I'm that I'm really most happy is when you look at the individual schools, what what I feel like our zone has done is really raise the floor, over time. We all all of our elementary schools are scoring in the sixties. So we don't have we don't have a school at at distinction this year like we did last year when when when Stetson had a huge increase. And that huge increase they made, that's unattainable for years on time.
They they they they're performing now where they they should be and then with the goal is slow growth. But all of them in the sixties is is very good. And that shows you some of the consistency that we have in the zone among the schools. Lots of collaboration, very similar things. The schools all have different fields, but doing very similar things and they collaborate a lot. Horizon, great growth, with Horizon. And, as as being the at the higher end of the middle schools in in
the SPF is pretty pretty nice, especially, one you know, five of our including Horizon, five of our our schools are title one schools. All four of our elementaries and Horizon. Sand Creek would be title one if we if we if we gave title one to to high schools. Same or Horizon Horizon did very well last year, especially, especially, there were some there were some challenges in the building, in different ways, but the staff did a great job last year, maintaining focus on kids and and really, getting them to perform.
Super proud of of kind of that consistency. And like I said, the the, I really feel like we've raised the floor in in what we're we're doing in the zone. So STAR Math, this is comparing midyear to midyear over time. And as you can see achievement wise, I mean, we're at the highest level that we've been in in five years, and I believe even before that, consistently. We, our elementaries are doing are doing well, in in that achievement. We, elementary wise, when you just look at achieve well, not elementary wise.
We when you look at achievement just across the the district even, the three top achieving at midyear schools were were, PPEC, Springs or PPEC, Stetson, and Springs Ranch. So which which is impressive for those schools. And and honestly, our little surprised that that our two secondary or, well, two of our secondary schools, Horizon and Sand Creek, I was surprised their math achievement wasn't a little better than it was at midyear, but I I'm confident that they're going to
perform on CMASS, better than than STAR. And, honestly, we've been outperforming STAR on CMASS for two years across our zone quite a bit. So, I'm real hopeful there. Same thing with growth. We, a little bit of a dip in growth, but our achievement's up a little bit. So, I mean, that's what we wanna maintain that achievement. So, doing okay there. Reading, similar. We're we're getting in a real consistent place in reading. We're we're we're we're maintaining a level of achievement that's, again, the highest that we've
had in the zone at midyear. We've had top two scoring schools were PPAC and Springs or Springs Ranch. So we, again, doing a good job there. We did get above the 50 across the growth, and so I'm excited to see what we're doing there. And, yeah, I think we're doing good things. We've done we've our schools do we have instructional coaches at our elementary level for math and and literacy, and they are they are excellent, in in, one, working together
across schools, but also maintaining, just maintaining the expectation and giving writing work we're doing and the improvement we're seeing, writing doesn't isn't really translated on this assessment so you don't really see that writing improvement. But I I some of the stuff in writing we're seeing is is I think we're gonna see big results there. Early literacy again, this is, we we've always done pretty well achievement wise, but that
those are pretty high scores, especially, again, we're talking about four title one schools, kids that that a lot of kids have come in that haven't had preschool. Now we're we're getting better because we have preschools at all of our schools, schools, but we didn't, we haven't always had that. So doing well there. And again, like I said before, we're the the floor, the bottom end, the the lowest we're gonna be is higher and and so than it's been. And and that's what, I really like see and what we want. The other thing about this that Theresa and Brian can correct me if I'm wrong,
but, I believe that every zone is at the highest levels of achievement that that we any of us have had at midyear on star. So I think all zones are are doing doing some good stuff in that area. So VAL scores, this, we you know, you've heard. I mean, we dropped a little bit too. Still still maintained in the green. But what I wanted to show you I'm gonna jump ahead to slide 43 real quick. So you saw the valve dipped a little, but this is our Studer survey that
we've been given sent giving since 2016, so basically ten years now. And we you can see it. It rose. So and this is this is employee survey at the the top one there. And so even though our vow went down, this one that we've been giving consistently for ten years within the zone is higher, and it's over four. And in that ten year period, we've only been four as of the overall average in the zone, we've only been over four three times, and this is one of those years that that it was over four.
You can see in the bottom left the national mean. That's, Studer works with a lot of schools. That's over it's like 80,000 samples, of surveys, and and that's where the national mean is so you can see kinda where we fell there. So I just wanted to kinda, point that out because that that kinda goes along with the Vowel, similar similar survey and and still looking at similar things. And I think that this is due to you know, we have strong principles, that
create good culture. Renaissance certainly will you you've heard about it. That that's a huge part of that, is is the culture this the parent and student survey. So this one is these results here are actually a year old. So we we have traditionally given our our parent and student survey. We've been giving in in we're giving our student one right now in January, February.
We, so we're a year behind because we, by the time we made this decision to to do this similar question this year on this, we had already contracted when our search Studer survey was gonna be this year. So next year, we're giving it in November like everyone else. So next year when I'm here reporting, I'll I'll actually have two sets of scores. I'll have the one we have that we're doing right now and next year. So, so that's a little bit different. So we're we're year old data here, but this data is actually pretty consistent.
When you look at the student average between those two, the average is 6.7. 6.7 has been our average for students for three years in a row. So it's been exactly the same, which isn't great that that it's not improving in some ways. And and the results, if you differentiate them, are gonna be similar, where secondary students are a little lower. Our parent, this is a high win for our parents, score, so it's it's improved certainly. So we're happy about that. Again, this you've seen this one.
Obviously, it's better to have more blue than yellow, and and that's what we're working toward. We talked about math a little bit, that that we, that that a couple schools weren't that surprised me that they they weren't a little higher, but I think that's gonna be different when we get to CPASS. I'm pretty confident in that. And so, anyway so as far as in the zone, some things that that to highlight, we, we have an instructional framework that's centered around culture instruction and success, that
that we work on and we try to do everything within or under. In in culture, you know, six out of our seven schools or campuses released, we have eight schools but the seventh is the the campus, are are implementing Renaissance, which is promotes positive culture, rec recognizes and rewards kids and staff. I know that sometimes it gets talked about, by some people who maybe don't understand what's going on quite as well. But this has truly made a huge difference in in our schools.
I think every principal would tell you that. The conference, is the best I've been to, and and people really enjoy going and and and we have a lot of people that lead at it now and and deliver messages or deliver, PD of that. So our culture our culture we're all of our schools feel good, when you go in, and and that's important, I think. Instruction wise, pathways up there, one to be to be honest, one of those pathways is is not gonna be there, next year, just because of student demand and and
different things. But that's where we're at right now with with where we're at at Sand Creek. Curriculum wise, I mentioned we've been doing a lot of work last year, with writing with design. We we which is a writing structure. It's not a curriculum. And we started at the elementary level last year. This year, we've brought on we're k 12. We've done this year training. Language arts teachers have had six, basically, three hour sessions of when the trainer comes. And then science and social studies have had three or will have three three hour sessions. And then we have modeling days, and it's making a difference.
I I elementary wise, when there's a I was in a math classroom at in at Remington last week, and the writing they're doing in math is, I think, is kinda crazy. You don't think about writing to math, but it I mean, we're talking paragraphs. And, that's I think we're gonna see big improvement on on some in some areas with writing. Horizon has absolutely taken off and has loved right the training this year. They they're into it. All the contents want it.
They're implementing it. They're they're they're taking it on. And Sand Creek's, we're we're we're we're making progress there as well. It it just takes a little more time in high school sometimes to to get some things moving. But we're we know we need to write more, and that's the the point. And that's kinda where I come from. Kids need to write more. And and as I said, for STAR, you don't really see the benefit of the writing in STAR as much. But we will on CMASS, and we also will in life for the kids. Math d Mission DNA, that's k 12.
We've it's something we've required for our secondary teachers. All math math teachers have been been involved the last two years. The other thing at Sand Creek that's pretty impressive, last year, we haven't had to hire a new math teacher at the secondary level in two years. And that's been uncommon prior to that. And and as far as I know right now for next year that I don't know of any math teachers at at either any any of those levels that's leaving, so, which is good. Curriculum wise, we do have new social studies curriculum at Horizon this year.
Horizon's not had social studies curriculum that I know of, in many years, and so that's been beneficial. And we're Horizons, we're readopting science there this year. And then, at Sand Creek, we're we're gonna be moving to a science and ELA adoption for Sand Creek. And success wise, we, I mean, success is what it's about. Right? So we, like I said, pretty happy with with the with the performance of the schools consistently.
Super happy with Evans. Evans had a huge increase, and Evans is the the lowest title one the the highest percentage of title one schools and students in the district. And the the the other thing the biggest thing that's impressive about Evans, they improved achievement. Their score in every test on CMASS went up seven out of seven. And I don't know if I've seen that. If I have, I can't remember a time. So, it's not very often that a school improves in every single test. So that's impressive there. Renaissance, several other schools received different levels of awards.
The other impressive thing I think you probably are all know is is Liz Dalzell was elected to the Hall of Fame for Renaissance this past summer, which is pretty cool. Several different certifications at at Sand Creek that you can get, with different things. The one I wanna highlight is the phlebotomy. And the reason I wanna highlight it is because February, they already have the dates. They are looking for volunteers or guinea pigs, if that's what you wanna say. So if any of you would like to come and have a student stick a
needle in you for practice, they are they have to do I can't remember how many 100 they have to do, but those are with mister Yerger on on February. So, be if you wanna come, you're welcome. Yeah. And then concurrent enrollment again. Sand Creek is is just excelling in the number of kids taking concurrent enrollment classes, over 250, in this fall and 280 now. The other thing at Sand Creek, 12 students are gonna graduate with an associate's degree
from Sand Creek. That's pretty impressive. And, yeah, just a lot of concurrent enrollment classes offered there. At at the campus, 70 of of PPEC students are are enrolled in a concurrent enrollment class. When you when you fur when you see that number, you might think as I did and do, why isn't that number 100%? Because it should be. So Izzy and I have had many conversations and and we're on the same page and, you know, this is his first year as principal. And he he understand.
So there were some there's a different direction PPEC was going with not maybe requiring some things of kids, before. And and Izzy and I have had conversations about, if it's an early college, then if you're going there, then that's what you're doing. And so he is definitely changing the expectations. It's it's kind of a slower process because we're trying to do it without, punishing some kids that have been there, while also making the expectation as they're doing their their meetings now with with new families.
They're making it clear that when you come in as a freshman, you're taking a concurrent enrollment class. And if you don't wanna do that, then this isn't the place. And so that I mean, that's what it's supposed to be set up as. So we're we're getting back to what an early college model is supposed to be and not just by our opinion, but the state and that's the requirement of it. So we're we're it's it just doesn't happen in the first year, as as we're trying to grow that back. So, but he's on board and he's doing a great job in in getting that
expectation back. So there we go. Questions or comments? Laurie? First of all, I feel bad for whatever phlebotomy student ends up with me because I have a blood donor. Yeah. I'm also a registered marrow donor because there aren't enough within the Latino community. But I have very small veins. So whatever student gets me will either stab me multiple times and have fun or they'll get it the first time. Right. Yeah. You had mentioned a correlation in academic growth after you implemented Jocelyn's renaissance that you
saw substantial academic growth, which appears to be because it sounds like then the power zone has adopted it as well. What kind of difference do you think that has made for the Sand Creek zone? Well, I I think it's created some consistency in in the one, first, the culture of the buildings and the feel of the buildings. I mean, obviously, my most intimate experience with the Renaissance has been the principal at Horizon and and starting it there and seeing the improvement in at Horizon that happened over, you know, a ten year period really, and and is still happening.
And and Liz is certainly, taking that further than than I can or or did. So I think it it's I think when you go in our buildings, it's a feel. I think you the other thing is it creates a level of consistency of among staff and the and the the belief and the the expectation that we're this is why we're here. You know, we're here for kids, and we're gonna be, you know, there there are
schools at different places in different districts that, you know, maybe, staff might not be all on the same page and whether it's a curriculum or whether it's, professional development or whatever. And I think Renaissance really helps that. I mean, I think it this is we're all on the same page and we're here for a reason. I think part of that too is I think it helps create expectations and procedures and this is how we do things. It's not necessarily exactly renaissance, but I think they kinda come together. Sand Creek is a good example. I I the difference in walking in the hall in Sand Creek this year between
two years ago is drastic. It's not even comparable. Like, knock on wood, I think, I think Sand Creek that I know of has had one fight this year, that I know of, that I can remember. It certainly isn't. And two years ago, it was pretty frequently. Now some of that is is certainly the students. Some of that is left over from some COVID things and kids learning to be back in school. And and, certainly, I think that's beneficial to all of our schools now. I you can definitely feel the difference in in we're we're far enough away from
COVID that kids understand how to be human again in the school. And so I just think it's all of that. I mean, it's it's a fee I think when you go into our schools, you you get treated a certain way and you feel a certain way, in all of them. Yeah. You beat me to, singing the praises of Evans because, yeah, I've I understood that they are the highest concentration of, title one eligible students in the entire district. And for them to come just a few points shy of distinction is really impressive.
I also because this is the zone that I live in, and, so my neighborhood social media groups, they talk about the schools. And, you know, I'm like, uh-oh. You know? They're they're asking a question about, you know, this particular school. What's gonna happen? And the feedback is very positive. Like, they are recommending these schools to each other. They're saying good things about it, and so that's really exciting. I just wanted to to because I know this topic comes up a lot, and you you already kinda touched on it. But could you, apart from the the convention, could you talk to the budgetary impact
of Renaissance? It's minimal. I mean, honestly. There are thing like, schools can and do do things that reward kids. I mean, whether it's popsicles or cone ice or a t shirt, if you make a level. Those kind of or it's cotton candy. Or, last week, or actually yesterday, I was meeting with Liz and she is, she's having a bingo night for parents, but it's also going to be a renaissance thing that they're gonna double up basically. So the costs ongoing are pretty minimal.
I mean, like, they're there's just not very much. I mean, popsicles don't cost very much. Sometimes it's pizza. Lauren is is good at getting things donated. So, we, so it's just I mean, an actual I mean, I can give you around about what I think what I used to spend a year, at Horizon, which is is is, I would say, not very much. I mean, we're talking $5,000 for the year maybe. And that's typically principal's discretionary money in for things like that.
So it's just and, again, it's things to reward that kids want and they they work toward. I mean, kids, they but they love the free stuff. They love seeing their name on the board. I mean, that's what they like the most probably. But they like getting pulled out of class for, you know, Kona Ice for, you know, half an hour or twenty minutes. So, yeah, it's just not, and honestly, the conference is I mean, it's it it it's like any conference. I mean, it's not I would say it's a it's less expensive than several, But
it's, I mean, it's, very energizing. I mean, it's a it's a good one to go to, certainly. And so I'll just, you know, add to that that, you know, it's been said many times in this room, You get the culture right, and the achievement will follow because if you have a positive atmosphere and we've seen, like, in some of these presentations. Right? Like, our secondary kids are pretty tough judges of their schools. But if you if they feel comfortable, if they feel safe, if they they feel like they're going to be recognized for, you know, going that extra mile, then they
come into classroom, they're more engaged, they're more focused, the and, yeah, the achievement follows. Yeah. No. I agree. I've I've said many times if the culture's right and and that with the culture being right, that means you're doing the right things instructionally. I never as a principal, I never worried about what scores are gonna be if those two things are there. Well and just historically, Dustin is the one who brought Renaissance into the district. And Horizon started as the poorest performing middle school in d forty nine and was
sort of just expected to stay there by much of our community because of the demographic it serves. And it's the highest performing this year, and it was playing the long game and investing and changing that culture, and Renaissance was the tool that did it. And we're continuing to reap the benefit from that. And so these are the pieces that unless you're working in it and living it, often I think it's hard for people to understand, but the data is there.
Horizon is is the best example of it, because we have the most data for it but it it's been now what a twelve year journey to get to where they are, and they're the highest performing school, middle school in our district, and socioeconomically, they're the only type they believe they're the only title one middle, correct? At this point? Is Sky View now Title one as well? But the demographic, we know what the property value and demographic shifts across the district and what those schools serve and so I think that's a testament to the power
of programs that work to change those pieces and invest in kids and in staff and so thank you for bringing it to us and thank you for helping us show what that longitude link can do, to impact our community long term. Yeah. Well, and and Renaissance is a big part of the Evans success too that Marsha would tell you. I mean, Marsha was an was an AP with me at Horizon for a while and then when she went so she she got into Renaissance there. And then when she went to Evans, took it with her and, it's I mean, they're seeing the benefits of of that and many other things that they're doing well,
but too. Any other questions or comments? Okay. Thank you. Thanks. Alright. So now we send her back to Peter's question. So what do we think about having them all on the same night? I think it's good because it's a good comparison and it obviously creates a competitive attitude between those three. But, I think it's really good to have the comparison across for the whole district. So I like the four bed of all three at one night.
Others, how do you feel about it? I like it too. I like the rivalry. Yeah. It's good. Deb? I don't like it. Sorry. It's too much all at once. I think we can understand each individual zone on different nights. It doesn't have to all be at the same on the same night. Mike, where do you land? So I also enjoy the interactions between the three of you. I think as long as you guys are are lightly roasting each other, that that shows that collaborating and competing with each other in a very positive way. And I think that, you know, from a, from a community perspective as well as
my own perspective as a board, being able to get all of that information in one night, it makes it so much easier to compare and contrast because, you know, if I if several weeks goes by before, you know, a previous presentation, I I can't relate one to the other. This is this is to me, the right format. Okay. Well and I think maybe we can look at trying to, space out some of the other pieces that were on the agenda tonight too. So for I I know because of the fiscal exigency declare declaration and the high
focus on some of those pieces, it was really important to get the audit in front of us as soon as we had it. But typically, we've done that at a regular meeting instead of a work session. I remember it often being in February. So I think we can also try to manage in terms of data overload by looking at some of those things and maybe not having as many all of the number intensive presentations on the same day. And so, we can do that from an agenda setting perspective too, because I think I do like seeing, I like seeing all three of them together, so that I'm
not going back and trying to pull pieces out. And now that it's three zones instead of four, it's more manageable as well because I think they used to do it two and two. So my preference is to continue to do it this way as well. Mike? And, the month of January does have some, you know, critical milestones that we have to achieve as a board, you know, the budget and stuff like that. And so I think one thing that we might look to do is adjust our calendar for this and select a time frame that is just maybe a little less
busy, from our perspective just so that because because this presentation, it is lengthy and weighty. And and so I will comment just the squeeze on this presentation is we have to be into January to have all of our MOI data, and we we want and the board has expressed, you wanna know this before you get the annual planning summit. Because some of the things that you saw tonight might inform an annual strategic objective or they might they might inform some of the discussion. And so that's the window which basically basically means it has to happen in the
January, in order to be within those two those two parameters. If one of two things happened, one, if you push the annual planning summit later, or if you said this data isn't as critical to inform the annual planning summit, then we would have freedom to move it somewhere else. You couldn't really move it any earlier because we don't have the MOI data, but you could you could certainly move it into February. Okay. So that's food for thought for all of us, and we can also look at which pieces for sure the audit we could have done in February in future months,
because that isn't doesn't really inform our amended budget discussion at all in terms of approval. It's just the report of the prior year. And so that's one thing that would make this a little less data heavy. But we can look at that kind of keep that in the back of our minds as we plan it, as we plan January next year. Maybe our January meeting will be a little bit later, if that's our next item. Right? For, the agenda for preliminary meeting dates.
I don't think we have anything else. Does anybody have anything else on this presentation before we move to the next one? Alright. So we just have our preliminary meeting date piece, and I think Lynette was showing that to us. Correct? So the January 1 for next year is the fourteenth. That may or may not make the budget piece be able to be presented before the work session. Right? I don't know if they've left, but we can look at that component. This year's January meeting was just very early. It was one of the earliest dates it could be.
Yep. I think just so everyone can hear you, we're good. Okay. Yep. Sorry. That's okay. So go ahead. This is just Okay. So I think, I just wanted to also mention that, our March through October will be at Sand Creek High School. And then that's October will be at Sand Creek High School and then that's only for the regular meetings. And then the work sessions will be in our excellence lab while the construction goes on in here. Any questions on this? Any questions on those dates, Lori? Not necessarily on the dates.
So I'm assuming we're gonna be in the Sand Creek Auditorium. Yes. Well, if there's no objection, we'll move this forward so we can get those approved and posted. Alright. Then it looks like we might be done. Yep. We're done for the night.