##VIDEO ID:5qlFNsMfaok## and because I can't connect these monitors to the Apple TV Drive projector we have HDMI to take as a source from here to there e e e everything the same give e e e e e e e e e with fantastic 49 thank you um hello welcome to our November fantastic 49 presentation my name is Cayla Maldonado I am the internal Communications manager for School District 49 tonight we have some great nominees uh we will recognize staff who are exceptional examples of how d49 is the best place to learn work and Lead um for our nominees when you are called please come to the podium for remarks and then you'll head just to my left for your photo and we ask that you please stay for the entire presentation so our board members and District team members have a chance to offer you congratulations after um before I introduce our nominees I would like to give a shout out to our sponsors we are always grateful for Dion's Air Academy Credit Union and Texas Roadhouse for donating gift cards to our honores tonight's honores will receive a gift card um from some really nice restaurants uh courtesy of Air Academy Credit Union Yes okay our first nominee of the evening is Izzy hold on let make sure I have this right is B cof uh coordinator of special student projects for the I connect Zone he was nominated by very say Gutierrez I connect Zone superintendent um Izzy oversees a variety of programs that serve very Niche populations he's grown these programs and they have a great reputation due to his commitment to ensuring that students have the best options to meet their learning needs so if Izzy and um verice want to come up here we can honor them where oh [Music] [Applause] yeah good evening B superintendent hilts so I was told that I could wax poetic about Izzy and I will tell you this board meeting would not be long enough for all the praise that I could um bestow upon Izzy but what I will say is essentially Izzy exemplifies our cultural Compass I am a huge fan of Izzy not just as an employee of the I conect Zone but is a human being he is a fantastic human being he is also I got to say it a coach of a gold uh Olympian we have celebrated him quite a bit here Mr H has attended those celebrations but Izzy does exemplify the cultural compass for d49 and we are very very fortunate to have him in the icon Zone he to sees me I'm good you're good I can't say better than you so all right well then we got to go take a picture you okay um our next nominee of the evening is Matt W Transportation student management liaison he was nominated by David Odin Matt is an exceptional trainer um along with all the other hats that he wears in transportation he ensured that his traine had all the tools they needed and even provided mental health support to go along with the challenges of bus driving so Jack pello uh director of Transportation would like to give his remarks about Matt mat thanks Kayla thanks board members glad to be here um and I got to thank David Odin for for recommending this uh recognition for Matt um I can't believe I missed it you know U Matt is such a great honor uh uh asset to our team and a great team member and thanks David for uh reminding me of that yeah so uh I appreciate it a lot and uh it's it's really cool that it's coming from a person that he trained so um thank you too um Matt is a great trainer he's been with us for about uh four years he started as a bus driver and in order to be a trainer uh nowadays you have to be a driver for a minimum of two years uh uh for to be qualified to become a trainer and Matt has done that with the eldt courses right which there's only few people in the state that are actually certified to do that so um that's another feather in your cap and it's it's it's typical uh Federal mandate government training it's Death by PowerPoint and I believe it's two weeks long about two weeks long and Matt makes it interesting so that our trainees are not falling asleep during during that training so um he does it very well after um after we release uh all of our drivers once they get released and get to a route I sit down with every one of them and I meet with them and ask them how their training right went and um our training department is great and but that doesn't mean we can't make it better and who to who to get that information from than the people that were just trained right so and I can tell you every single person that sits down in front of me tells me what a great teacher Matt is he's patient and he listens um and he wants to make sure everything he does is absolutely correct uh very um uh I don't know how to say it very detailed I should say but he makes sure what he does is correct and right and and that's what it takes and I really appreciate that Matt and uh I thank you for everything you go for our team so um thank you for all you do okay you can I talk enough this way get your picture thank you go ahead thank you um our next nominee Jamie Z was unfortunately could not be here this evening and her nominator also could not be here this evening but I do have a letter um that her nom Ator uh Brandy pry uh wrote that I will go ahead and read and we will get her award and her um gift card to her at a later date so um says I Brandy pry nominated Jamie zaves for fantastic 49 she deserves this but so many other recognitions we work on the behavioral team for d49 and Jamie is the lead District Behavioral Analyst for the San Creek Zone Jamie is an integral part of our team she is a consument professional in all of her duties and then goes above and beyond the expectations and job description to support our team students their families and all staff one of Jam's key accomplishments recently was stepping into one of our schools after losing an important asset in their special education department she completely put all her effort time skills and compassion in recreating a safe functional caring learning environmentclassroom for our set of students in addition our team has undergone many organizational changes over the past few years it has been hard hard to feel like a team but having Jamie this year as my supervisor has provided so much professional Clarity in my own role as a behavioral support technician has provided the trust and reassurance that we are doing amazing things for our students and encourage growth both independently and within our positions to help facilitate improvement in our overall culture and mood from Team meetings and off-site work to remembering birthdays and good or bad news for individuals to working with families and all staff to ensure we all know and feel her gracious impact she has taken the lead and the payoff is endless I am grateful and thankful to have the ability to work beside her I look up to her for strength and ability to flood her compassion for students into every building she walks into Jamie deserves this and so much more and I did tell her I would send her at the stream so we can still give her a round of applause even though she could not be here in and then last but certainly not least is Carrie marrison Falcon Zone community delaz on she was nominated by Brian Smith Falcon Zone superintendent Carrie has exceeded expectations for engaging with the Falcon Zone Community she's taken the lead on new recognition efforts organizing events and publicizing stories that engage parents and students so Carrie and Brian would like to join [Applause] me all right good evening Brian Smith Falcon Zone superintendent and I'm honored here to be here to recog recognize Carrie um a few years ago in the Falcon Zone we did not have this position and we were watching the other zones and how they were benefiting from uh the community liaison in the power Zone and San Creek Zone and we're like we we need to do something Falcon's a pretty engaged Community we need to move forward and and have some similar things to better serve our community in the Falcon Zone and uh we started this role and I'm going to tell you Carrie has completely exceeded our expectations in what she does so much so that last year she was awarded the national Infinity award at the national modern learning conference um for her role in engaging Community uh with the connections with the instructional model and things taking place in our zone so Carrie has received National recognition uh for what she does uh in our efforts in the Falcon Zone she helps to en uh advertise educational stories successes that are taking place in the classroom um she really works to make sure teachers are shown for what they do for kids um advertising in our newsletters so that we can share those successful stories um she helped establish the new Falcon Zone Community Pantry that is now um benefiting our entire Community um she partnered with local businesses um and other organizations to help get that off and going we had a donation from a local bank recently to support the pantry and that's because of Carrie's hard work um today she even informed me she had a line going down the ramp around the sidewalk with so many families that were coming to engage engage in that pantry and that's because of the hard work Carrie has put forward there um she's partnered with the Falcon small business coalition to find ways to partner with those businesses and support our schools um she's put together staff recognition programs to help feature people that are going above and beyond in the zone Carrie looks out for other people she focuses on other people and I'm so proud of the work she does with that she collaborated with our Falcon high school student council this year to bring back the Falcon Zone homecoming parade is a new tradition and uh it really took off and we're looking forward to continuing that where all six schools promote Falcon High's Homecoming in the years to come and that was due to car's work there um she also set up our new Falcon Zone accountability committee where we get all of our sacks together and engage and share things about the zone and then let them break off into their school groups again to engage community in what we're trying to do um and she is in the works for a new large community event that's going to come this spring I can't share much yet but it's going to be totally Falcon and uh you just wait to see what we do here in the spring but car's got some pretty cool things in the works to just really focus on our schools is that Central Hub in the Falcon Zone uh and bringing back that small town feel um we know in the past we've had some chatter on social media and things about Falcon Zone um things that have not really spoke to what we do and Carrie single-handedly engages with people talks to them reaches out on their concerns and works to help them understand the great things that are happening in Falcon Zone and it's changing The Narrative of what takes place out there so I am extremely grateful to Carrie and all she does and she's well deserved of this [Applause] recognition um thank you guys so much and thank you Brian I'm going to cry um Falcon Zone has my heart and I'm super happy to be there um I love being in my role it's super cool to be able to connect with all six schools in the whole Community um and I I just I love my job and I I love the connections that I get to make so thank you guys thank you Brian um thank you for giving me this [Applause] opportunity okay um congratulations to all of our oh this was high congratulations to all of our nominees before we go I would like to turn it over to Mrs Lori Thompson president of the board of education for final remarks and I will this is our first Showcase Event where we're going to be traveling to different zones with our meetings so we can highlight different zones and as you can see we're having a little bit of technical difficulty with with our audio right now a couple of things I wanted to say is Izzy I had to miss both of since I was out of town for one I was just heartbroken um and we can hear about all your Great accomplishments but here's what people don't know unless they've been there I have had the privilege of attending two graduation ceremonies with you and what I see that is beyond any award is the way the kids light up when they see you the fist bumps and the hugs and you are such a valid valued member but what I see it is the joy and respect you've earned from our students and that's higher than a lot of awards maybe not you know coaching a gold medalist but I think it could exceed that so thank you for all you do Matt um being a trainer for bus drivers is so critically important and including the mental health portion of it um of how to control when things get out of control I've driven through white out conditions and I know things can change on a dime and I wanted to thank you for training the bus drivers to help keep our kids safe and it's such a critical important position so I want to personally thank you for helping to keep Kids Safe um and then of course we have the behavior analyst who's missing right now and as anyone who's been heavily involved with education knows there's been a lot more disregulated kids and to have that kind of support is extremely important and I cannot get over everything that you have done for the Falcon Zone that is just totally amazing and I'm so excited about the food pantry and the other things that you've helped spearhead you know it's just uh I want to thank you again for everything you do so that wraps up fantastic 49 we are going to take an 11 minute break and we will resume the meeting at 6:30 thank you so [Applause] much e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e do you want me to wait a few more minutes what it's a total I don't think the don't [Music] which would you prefer so we're waiting for another five yeah Okay ladies and gentlemen we are having a few technical issues that are getting worked on so we will start the meeting in about five minutes thank you thank you e e e e e e e I interesting apparently some people e e e ladies and gentlemen welcome to the November 14th 202 24 Board of Education regular meeting the time is 6:40 p.m. and I am calling this meeting to order can I get a roll call dalala here H here liia Wright here Schmidt here Thompson here would you please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance Al to flag of the United States of America to the stand indice can I get a motion to approve the agenda I move to amend the agenda and remove item 7.3 new policy ACA with the recommendation to add it to the December action item calendar I second discussion um yes um Madam president I asking to move that item because um as was evident in our meeting postings we just had an executive session to receive legal advice um specifically regarding aspects of this policy after having done that it was clear during that executive session that some tweaks were going to be made to the policy to to make sure that we are fully transparent with our community and that all board members have um the ability to read um those changes and process to make sure they're reflective of everyone's understanding I request that we U Move it to action for our December meeting rather than this meeting I think that that meets um the expectation of our community for transparency and respects everyone's ability to also um have an opportunity to read that again um without being rushed director devola yes I think that um I think we've had enough time to be able to go over this policy and it protects um the right of the rights of parents it also gives conscience-based objection protection for those who um would not want to have um compelled speech to uh say a non-legal name change um and so I would am not in favor of putting this uh putting this off any longer to the December meeting so I just wanted to share my opinion on that director Schmidt I agree with everything Jimmy Lyn just said director H so as Marie described there were a number of adjustments that we talked about and some language got updated in a form that is available to us in boarddocs now the community has not seen those changes yet and so that would um uh be non-transparent um so in addition there were other um topics that were not discussed um that uh or not not resolved and um so I I think we are making a good faith effort to um deal with a very complicated topic that has no right or wrong answers and um I think that we are upholding our community's faith if we um move on this at the correct uh pace and the only thing that I wanted to add is I agreed with director devola that there it's impossible to square a circle it's impossible to develop a policy um that will cover any unintended consequences a lot of work has gone into this trying to find a way to respect parent rights um to respect students rights and to to comply with a law that I would say that many of us have strong opposition to but we are required by the state to develop a policy and so the way it was written and past has a lot of loopholes and um so we're going to I wanted to move it forward but in order to move something forward you have to have a quorum which is three people willing to move it forward and so we did not reach that point so now we need to vote on the amended agenda the amendment to the agenda the whether or not to change it on the amended agenda yeah a yes vote would move this item to action in December a no vote says that you don't want to move it dalala no Hy I Olivia Wright I Schmidt no Thompson no so now we return and I say I move to approve the agenda as presented second any discussion can I get a vote tala I Hy I liia Wright I Schmid I Thompson I and that passes we appreciate and welcome comments from our stakeholders as part of District 49's open Forum please remain in your seats until called to the podium by the Board of Education chair once called upon please approach this Podium state your name and relationship to the district before beginning please speak into the microphone written statements may be left I don't know if we have a basket here um so I guess any written statements can be left in the front row row for now we ask that you not address anyone in the audience and that your comments be made in a respectful and orderly manner to fulfill our values of trust and respect we decline to create a forum for attacks or criticism against specific staff members students or other stakeholders therefore with the exception of the members of the board or the superintendent personal complaints against individuals connected with the school district are prohibited in this form follow-up action items may be assigned to the superintendent in accordance with board policy BH open form participation is limited to two minutes per person it is the practice of the Board of Education to withhold any comment or direction to the superintendent until after all who have signed up for open Forum have had a chance to speak I would also like to make you aware of our stakeholder grievance process this process can be initiated by anyone in our d49 community and guides the stakeholders through the correct people and processes to help them resolve their concern including as a final step the opportunity to formally appeal to the Board of Education we encourage you to utilize this process if warranted as many have successfully resolved their con concerns this way thank you for participating in open form the views and opinions expressed in public form are those of the commentators and do not necessarily represent official policy or positions of District 49 or the Board of Education and first up we have Kim beckworth good evening do I have a timer not that I really want one anyway I'm Kim beckworth uh Dak member I'm here to voice my support for house spell 1039 student non-legal name Chang in regards to gender identity this District Prides itself on Parental choice and parental notification let's please take a moment for a reminder parental choice if a parent chooses to instruct the district to call a student by their chosen name the school district and teacher should follow that student and parents Choice by doing so parental choice this policy concerns how our staff addresses students not students address other students so let's please stay focused on this purpose I disagree that both parents should be required to sign for permission this is overreach and it boils down to uh the students choice anyway concerning our valued teachers I believe intent does matter when addressing a student and accidents may occur as we change over to this new policy I agree that students can only change their name once per year changing it more often is too much on staff I do not agree that our teacher should be given religious exemption to House Bill 1039 because of Parental choice and remind the board of our own policy IH a student's right shall not supersede a students or parents rights on religious grounds in the classroom calling a student by their chosen name is not an offensive name but showing respect towards an individual a student and parents religious choice should not be out excuse me should not be outweighed by a teacher's religious Choice it is after all about parental choice or are we simply cherry-picking what parental choice we align with thank you thank you jackon is it Jackson husman huskinson I'm sorry hi my name is Jackson hoskinson and I am the School advocate at Inside Out youth services at inside out our mission is to build access equity and power with lgbtqia 2 plus young people in our community and my job is to help extend those resources and safety nets out into our schools and community at large today I will be commenting on the conversations you all will be having about HB 1039 and updates to your policy a30 ACA although apparently you've changed them so who knows what I'm commenting on um it was passed earlier this year HB 1039 and it states that it is discrimination in Colorado for teachers and other school Personnel to not use a student's preferred name in school and during extracurricular activities I'd like to start my comments by thinking I have the wrong public comment sorry I've been doing this a lot lately um I would just like to say that this comment is extremely harmful and an overreach um my gosh I'm kind of embarrassed but I have a minute and 10 seconds so I'm going to roll um I think that the proposed policy ACA that I saw this morning had multiple legal problems with it that would likely result in a lawsuit for the district um first of all po HB 1039 as it was written says that school personnel must call a student by their chosen name doing anything else is discriminatory that policy does not say parents must consent for teachers to use a student's chosen name it does not say that teachers may use a student's last name it says that a student's chosen name when reported to the school must be used anything else is discrimination and against Colorado law I at inside out and many other partners would be very interested in making sure that youth who are discriminated against are appropriately protected in any sort of way that means including lawsuits if necessary um my original request was going to be to push this push this action item down the road but even given updates happening 10 minutes before the meeting I guess you all won't do that um so I just want to say that inside out Youth Services is here for any youth or families who might need support in trying times regardless of what policy has passed tonight Oli GL hello everyone my name is Ali I'm the communications and advocacy director also with Inside Out Youth Services I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight and also implore you to invite more opportunities before voting on this policy ACA it carries incredible weight for this district for your students and for your families and voting on it now without full consideration for the facts would be irresponsible so I would like to offer you two facts tonight one is that your students deserve to be respected and valued for who they are not who we perceive them to be d49 cultural Compass names respect care responsibility and Trust as your District's values we ask only that you respect your students to care for their emotional safety to be responsible for that care when your actions such as voting on a policy before we're ready may cause harm and to embody Trust by giving us the opportunity to share our thoughts our feelings and our expertise on this policy before voting on it the second fact is that this draft of policy ACA proposes a large administrative burden on School staff students and students families logistically this draft suggests already busy teachers and administrators take time away from educating their students to collect file and keep track of unnecessary paperwork and parent signatures your St time is better spent supporting students as they become responsible citizens family members and Community leaders when we require so much work for what can and should be a simple confidential process among families we distract from what really matters and that is these students and their Futures and their hearts we are all here because we want to see them succeed so I ask that you vote to postpone the vote on this policy and give us more time to review the changes and give us more time to share our thoughts our feelings our opinions and our expertise on this matter thank you very much for your time thank you yvon Henderson uh good evening board uh Ivon Henderson d49 resident um a Colorado uh educational task force was formed under house bill 23241 it encourages the legislator State Board of Education Colorado Board of Education and all educational stakeholders to implement recommendations to address the needs of students and the schools by one changing how schools and districts are rated uh better metrics for the growth and achievement um focus on postsecondary and Workforce Readiness which we need a lot of help on uh create Statewide data uh databases on school performance for parents educator and policy makers to create a system of early identification and target support to help schools and districts to address address issues as they arise and recognize their successes uh my takeway though is more transparency on on how our schools are uh performing so with the Trump win he is looking at dismantling the US Board of Education and to leave decisions uh to the state which quite frankly scares me in Colorado we need to get back to the basics of the three Rs we need to take back or we need to take out the trash woke policies that that have done nothing to educate our children and individuals not willing to change those policies need to go as well thank you thank you does anyone have an item that they would like pulled from the consent agenda can I get a motion to approve all consent agenda items as presented I move to approve all consent agenda items as presented second can I get a vote dalala I H iier Ray I Schmid I Thompson I and we are going to be working on board dos just you know to PR present the changes that we're going to be discussing um in the meantime we are going to move on to our superintendent update thank you I want to begin um by thanking our Communications team um our hosts here a number of executive assistants uh Lynette in particular for all the work that it took to bring to life this idea of a board of education Road Show so this Showcase in the I connect Zone y'all made it possible so thank you very very much um this is season one episode one uh I I often talk about year zero when we're implementing large change this is this is the the first time that we have tried to do this on the road and I am really proud of the people and very grateful because the point was to bring the board to the zones to bring the board out into the community and thereby to build a tradition of having the community from that zone come out to the board so thank you very much for giving us the first step on what I trust will be a longstanding tradition in District 49 where this board that represents this community goes out into the community and welcomes members of the community to the board um speaking of welcoming members of the community into to our schools uh I was with several of you and a lot of our our staff and Friends yesterday at Patriot High School where we enjoyed their annual Thanksgiving feast I won't call it a buffet it was a feast and the culinary program at Patriot is one of our our long standing I I believe we're now into year 18 I think of that program and and I remember when we had just a little normal kitchen stove and we weren't allowed to use oils or fat fats to cook and to where it is now with a commercial kitchen where you can put 30 students in Chef's baskets and serve hundreds of people they served every student from Patriot along with uh over a hundred members of the community and they served a fantastic meal um I will blame any weight gain on the Patriot culinary program over the next two months because they will be feeding us a lot in a lot of places but it was a fantastic event I I had the privilege of sitting with uh some of our our friends from the neighborhood and their enthusi M for our students and especially for Career and Technical education was was palpable and we really appreciate uh the leadership at Patriot High School uh what Mr Bailey is doing leading that school and what Mr Lusk is doing leading the culinary program really benefits our students and so that was a fantastic moment uh shows that District 49 is the best place to learn work lead and eat um and so I'm grateful for that uh speaking of eating I had so much soup Wednesday Thursday and Friday because we were under this very unprecedented early season snowstorm and uh I want you all to know that from our Communications team to our transportation and grounds Crews to just smart folks around the district sharing their their Intel from wherever they were um we had great information to understand why we needed to uh make our decisions the way we did and when we did and each morning um as I woke up and looked at the cameras and actually got out and drove around I thought well this woke up as you may know and then we measure the 99% and it's not that we're better at weather forecasting and so we call it early and we're conservative there this wait and let nominal job worked hard through the weekend and got us ready to open safely on Monday so extremely grateful for that uh I'd like the board to know that uh I shout out to Kathleen granis and our assessment team in learning Services as well as um Logan in our our performance Excellence Department who has built a really great tool that we use have conversations with principles uh I'm not quite done meeting with all of the charter schools um but I am in that season we're starting to wind down the school performance framework conversations and at the same time I'm ramping up My Vow learning tour where I go and do focus groups to listen to um individuals from every school and every Department in the districts that's about 40 sessions and that takes us through the months of November December and January so in terms of what I'm doing with my time do not come to see me at my office because I will not be there I'll be out in a building having a performance meeting or a vow learning tour um or or some other kind of school-based event and one of those events that some of you attended was our year zero our first ever stateof the district invitation where we brought in people that that live and support support and and our vendors and Business Leaders and political and Faith leaders in our community they came to uh Peak View Hall we in introduced them to the district we introduced them to each other and the purpose of that event was to promote Partnerships we think it was a a very strong success especially for a first year event uh but we've already had our after Action meeting to decide how we can make it even better next year so if you had the opportunity to come this year expect even greater things next year uh that was another phenomenal collaboration between our Communications team and our team of executive assistants our our building folks particularly Kevin down at Creekside um just really pulled off a fantastic first round event and I am confident that that will get better and better I want to finish um with a personal note um not personal to me but to an individual person and that is that uh one of our district leaders Dr l who is our our executive director of facilities and operations he had the the courage and the the servants heart to apply to serve on a board of the public employees retirement Association perah in Colorado and we just learned that he has been appointed to the board of directors of perah so congratulations to Dr Fletcher and thank you for your service and to the state and to the district and uh watch our weather reports next Wednesday we are going to move on to student board updates which one of you we can go in order or Ava do you want to go first okay uh our I'm AA by the way I go to Pike Early College uh our last student board meeting was canceled due to the weather um so the only update I have is that we're still reaching out to our elementary and middle school students to get their input on how their schools are going um any input they may have about the district um everyone should have reached out to the schools that they chose before I think fall break um so hopefully by next meeting we'll be able to discuss that and have updates and be able to uh put in action their input uh I'm Nikos Clift I'm also from pek so glad to have this meeting here on our campus it's definitely nice to be inside of my own walls yes as Ava said We are continuing to make strides in our efforts to have some Outreach to the younger students in the district uh we've all been on an individual basis members of our student board going to administrators in each building and attempts to get that scheduled so that should be expected at some point in the upcoming months of course before the end of the year of course I do have to I do also have to take some time to talk about what's going on inside the building that you guys are in right now because we do have some exciting things going on uh we have a couple of Robotics competitions coming up both for middle schoolers and high schoolers through Vex robotics uh both tomorrow and Saturday we will be having our Veterans Day festivities just a bit late uh but tomorrow we'll be having a breakfast and inviting them in talking about what they have done for us in our country and then of course we have our IAP day coming up as well where we provide our students with information on career opportunities and skills that will really allow them to have further success than our school already provides with the programs that we have here so looking forward to the upcoming time that we have at our school thank you director Schmidt sorry I don't have an update tonight director H and mine will be short as well I hope you enjoyed the uh fall break as much as I did uh so I only attended two events and uh Peter um talked to both of them already uh so the first one was the uh state of the district uh event which was really fun because I came in there with absolutely no expectations I I had no idea what we were there for I just knew I was wearing a suit um but I found myself sitting around some very interesting people who were partnering partnering with the district and I hope hope I did the job successfully that I didn't know I was a signed of helping helping build uh that partnership up uh the other event was yesterday at the um Patriot High School the um the Thanksgiving feast and now I see on our agenda today that they have an item before us so apparently the dinner rolls weren't the only thing that were being buttered up but uh uh you know we are such a proud sponsor of the col program in particular over at uh at Patriot High School and we don't just you know sponsor them in the way that we you know support everything that's going on throughout the district as a board but we directly hire them to cater some events uh that the the board puts on and so now I was led to understand yesterday that that event that they're putting on for uh a senior group as well as you know their d49 um supporters um was essentially uh financed by you know in small part by the the business that we throw their way so um the students are you know volunteering their time and their efforts and uh we greatly appreciate that and their talents the the food is absolutely delicious I had the opportunity to sit right next to the L the uh student who prepared the pumpkin cheesecake and so she got to hear firsthand what a success that dish was thank you director leier Wright so as board liaison I attended the Falcon Ed Foundation um board meeting again last night uh the district has already received $18,000 in funds that are related to the teacher minig grants that were given out this season by the board all of those folks who received those grants are already hopefully spending that money however they will be officially recognized at our December board meeting as well by the Falcon Ed Foundation we do not have a formal date yet for our annual fundraiser but we should have that hopefully next month um set up we're looking at a couple of of changes in the venue possibly but we're excited to be able to bring that to our community as well um the other obviously we've had Veterans Day this week our schools have had all kinds of great celebrations so if you're looking for how the reason we're in school on Veterans Day is because we choose to honor our veterans on that day um and then also November is National adoption awareness month and so we have many families who formed families in many different ways in our community whether it is through kinship adoption foster adoption private adoption International Adoption um transracial and transcultural adoptions they add to the tapestry of our community in many amazing ways and they have um unique things they bring to us and also unique needs that we all should be aware of in our community so it's a great time um to reach out to families you know who've been involved in adoption in some way and um learn about them and learn about what our experiences are I as a adoptive parent myself can say my children have given me far more than I could ever have given them and it is an incredibly unique and amazing way to become a parent um but also in education we have lots of things we can do to support those families and learn about things like inclusive language and understanding family Dynamics as well that's my update director Deva yes so a while back way back in October I was able to go to a Vista Ridge football game which I thought was pretty fun and exciting um they won against Rampart High School and that was a a really good game very close one um I was I'm also excited to see the new Vista Ridge CTE Wing next week and I'm excited about our grand opening of the panther Den at Horizon Middle School um unfortunately I'm not able to attend the the ribbon cutting ser ceremony but I do look forward to a tour in the future um last or on Monday uh the 11th we did celebrate Veterans Day so I'd like to um just take a note of the history of Veterans Day and to thank all of our veterans for serving our country and protecting our liberties um those of you who are in the room who are veterans would you mind standing just for one second please so we can recognize you thank you so much for serving World War I known as the time as the Great War war officially ended when the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28th 1919 in the Palace of Versailles outside the town of Versailles France however fighting ceased seven months earlier when an Armistice or temporary cessation of hostilities between the Allied nations in Germany went into effect on the 11th Hour of the 11th day of the 11th month for that reason November 11th 1918 is generally regarded as the end of the war to end all wars Veterans Day continues to be observed on November 11th regardless of what day of the week on which it falls the restoration of the observance of Veterans Day to November 11th not only preserves the historical significance of the date but helps Focus attention on the important purpose of Veterans Day a celebration to honor America's Veterans for their patriotism love of country and willingness to serve and sacrifice for the common good thank you all to our [Applause] veterans well welcome to the episode one of the Showcase Series so we had decided as a board that we would take the meeting to the different zones and showcase the different schools and just so you know um am I not correct didn't understand that that's not I didn't either okay anyway um we had a 100% graduation rate I believe from Spring studio and at that graduation you would be amazed with concurrent enrollment how many people graduated with their associates degree credit towards another degree and their high school diploma um the I'm going to get more into it in the admin update some of the unique things about the iConnect Zone the State of the Union luncheon was put in place place to thank vendors for all they have done within our district and they had a trivia competition and I want you to know that I came in sixth out of 50 or 60 people I saw my little banana icon I did not end up in the top three but for perspective Falon District 49 was founded 23 years after Abraham Lincoln was assassinated so we have been around for a while it was founded in 1888 that was a new piece of information that I learned during that event um we also got to interact with different vendors that helped Service District 49 and it was a beautiful event I attended the Patriot High School Thanksgiving meal Chef Eric and the students outdid themselves it was a wonderful Feast um I can't even tell you how good the quality of the food was it was like a five-star meal it was so good I was invited to sit with a table of senior citizens now I don't know if they intuitively know that I have officially joined their ranks and we discussed whether or not to laminate Medicare cards but that was a different discussion anyway I had a great time with them they have attended this event for years because it's a community event so they have people from the community who came in and the funniest part was the G I was sitting next to wanted me to text her a few memes so I was texting memes um and then I tried to skip dessert but they had key lime pie that was a bridge too far for me to pass up on that um it was it was just incredible and then they served the entire student body it was just absolutely wonderful um engage 49 last night I went to engage 49 for health wellness and student support we had a representative from the El Paso County Health Department this was at San Creek High School we had a Recovery Group for teens including those that are in the court system addiction recovery Mental Health Resources um representation from our nursing staff and the students that I want to talk about I don't know what the acronym for I didn't catch that but they have a SWAT team of students from San Creek High School and what they do is they volunteer their time and their efforts to educate other students about vaping the dangers of tobacco so they have informal meetings that they hold they're going to be doing or they have done a presentation at Remington Elementary and I thought well why an ele elementary school and then they shared statistics about how many kids start vaping in Elementary School uh there was a gentleman there who spoke on physical fitness proper sleep H habits and how important it is to get enough sleep to exercise and to take care of yourself um I had a great conversation with the nursing staff and with a social worker and so they're going to have more that was the first event for engage 49 it was really an incredible event but I looked at those students and I got to tell you they are the Salt and Light of this community and it's easy to point out what people think is wrong with public education and if you focus on what you think is wrong you're going to miss Miracles that are happening throughout this district and so don't miss the Miracles and don't assume that everything that's happening nationally is happening in Falcon District 49 I'm very proud of this District my kids came through this district and several people that I love and in touch with today came through this District I went to a baby shower for two sisters who came up through this district and one of them flued from Hawaii to surprise her sister and here I am with two d49 graduates and one of those girls is now teaching in School District 49 so to watch them go from little kids to mam was really exciting um quick admin update I want to talk a little bit about the I connect Zone many of you may not know this but when it comes to parental choice we lead the county 52% of our kids attend Charter Schools we were the first districts to to pass the parents Bill of Rights in the iConnect Zone we have this is a hybrid school but we have so many different Charter choices from classical education we have and I hope later on that Peter might touch on that just a bit on the iConnect zone so the iConnect zone is everything groovy and that includes the hybrid school and all of our charter schools so we have a lot of people choice into our Charter Schools we have a school for dyslexics we had a parent who drove every day from Castle Rock to and from twice a day to get their kids into allies and I wish that had been available when my kids were younger because I have a dyslexic student so once again you always want to work on making things better you always want to look for problems but I encourage you all not to miss Miracles oh one final note we had local and national elections and like just about everybody in America I was happy with some results and unhappy with some local issues and I'm sure there were people who were happy for some local issues and unhappy with some national issues but we have a constitutional republic with representative govern government and that's what we have here on the board of education all of us were elected to represent the district we were elected from different director districts but we represent the district does that mean that we agree absolutely not there's many things we disagree on and that's how representative government is supposed to work is to have debate to have discussions and to try to reach a quorum or consensus and so it's messy and it's exciting but we have a voice we have the opportunity to vote and let our voice be heard and um so we have survived another election and we'll see what's going to happen in the nation and locally as we move forward all right can I get a motion for action item 7.1 I move to approve the job description for asset manager second do we have any further discussion student board have you had a chance to look over that position it's okay if you haven't I know we've all had a little bit of time off with snow days and while you're looking that over you can even ask questions afterwards but we're going to go ahead and take a vote toala i h I L Wright I Schmidt I Thompson I and that vote passes 5 Z can I get a motion for action item 7.2 I move to approve the new um adjusted Andor adjusted student fees as presented second now even if you haven't read the item do you guys have any opinions on student fees uh yeah I'll I'll give a couple words on that obviously there are a lot of opportunities that the district provides their students and I think that some people may be mad at the increases uh that are shown here on this item however for the people that would be mad about those increases you also got to consider the very large scale of opportunities that are provided by the district for completely free and we we do need money in some way to continue to push forward those free opportunities and all the great things that we do so some minimal increases I believe as a student and just an individual even if I was imagining I was an outsider not even a student at the school uh definitely beneficial in the long run any further discussion can I get a vote please dalala i h i laier wght i Schmidt I Thompson I and that passes 5 um before we move on to item 7.3 on a point of privilege uh our legal councel Brad Miller has asked to speak for a moment thank thank you um so item six point whatever this is uh has has now been introduced on board docs with seven-word uh difference than what was presented originally so before you were would move to um approve or not to approve this item we need to move to amend it to reflect the change that wasn't on board do originally can I get a motion to amend item 7.3 action item 7.3 I move to amend policy ACA to reflect the changes that have been made as exemplified currently in board dogs second discussion director devola uh yes so um the the changes were from consent to do not object um consent to do not object and then both to a parent um so those are the only changes that were that are um appearing here um I do have a question and it could be because I was late to the meeting so I apologize um I I I actually don't like the saying do not object I think that's that's the opposite of what we want here um if all parents all listed parents or legal Guardians consent to non-legal name change then the change be permitted I think we should keep that as consent and then if both parents or legal Guardians consent to the name change then the attached form must be submitted and signed by a parent so I would I would love to have that advice sure on why we are I don't like the Do Not object phras so I won't reveal the the sort of the innards of the discussion and executive session but the point of this revision was a practical one we talked about the fact that we're a military heavy uh community that we have um oftentimes we'll have a parent deployed and we also talked about the practicality of giving consent as a family that we trust our families to in concert reflect um choices on on multiple decisions like a field trip and so forth because the application of this policy has a time frame around it and because we are obligating ourselves to inform both parents we believed as's a practical consideration in as a group that the um the Do Not object language would give us some room for when a parent is distant or parent just um doesn't object but doesn't isn't HP happen to be home to sign or that sort of thing it's just a practical thing okay I don't think that was my question my my question is um what I think we can still leave it at with the word consent but then we say signed by a parent so they would still consent because we're showing them or we're providing with providing the implicates something um active and and do not object gives par families the room to just have mom or dad just sign on behalf of the family to represent the family unit that's the point of these changes I'm not advocating one way or another I'm just telling you that's what it was can we vote on whether we're amending it or not please unless there's any further discussion or questions I would like to keep it as consent as well can I U move to amend the amendment okay I move to amend the amendment to keep consent um so I would change it to where it says um if all listed parents and legal Guardians consent to non-legal name change and then the second B if both parents and legal Guardians can sent then we would leave the change uh parent can I get a second second so are we now voting on the amended amended yeah you have to vote on her whether or not to accept her Amendment first and then it goes to me and then to the original okay can I get a vote on the amendment put forth by director devola dvala hi Hy no laier Wright no Schmidt yes Thompson I I the item as amended can I get a motion on the item as amended what no you're not yet ready to vote on the item as amended now you're ready to vote on the amendment so you've amended the amendment the amendment that you're now voting on would you would have changed what is now in board docs so that the the language of consent is now part of what what is proposed as amended language so now you are are voting on whether or not to amend the item in board dos so that it reflects consent and a parent signature okay tala I hyle no leier Wright no Schmidt I tomson no so now you have declined to amend the content in board dos which means that the original policy as originally posted in board docs is the item now up for discussion and other potential amendments I thought we voted on the amend amended Amendment already but you just rejected it so now you've gone back to the original policy as it was put in board docs before the executive session occurred that's the process you all just put through now we're voting on the policy that existed prior to the executive session and you'll need to call the vote so okay y so we're going back to the original original I thought you were changing what we had already changed that just got rejected by vote so now we have no changes to the policy so it is the one that was Pol the vote is now the discussion and vote is now on the policy as it was originally posted in board docs which means someone's going to have to quickly try and fix that yeah I was too Miss Thompson yeah if I if I may propose an amendment and if the board decides to take it up they can take it up um because I think there's some lack of clarity and it it it doesn't help the board to move forward uh with with a lack of clarity so I would propose uh an amendment and if you agree with it um you could you could invite somebody else to make the motion or simply to say so moved so I would propose that the board accept the revision that is posted in board docs with the language of consent rather than the language of do not object and with the language of a parent rather than multiple parents so somebody could if someone agreed with that you could say so moved and somebody could second that and then you would the problem I see with that is I think we just voted on that exact change and it was rejected because we voted on the the amendment to the amendment which re re reverted us back to consent instead of do not object and then we voted on didn't understand the remaining revision which was simply a parent except that I think the point is that some board members didn't understand what they were voting on so they're asking to revote there was so much discussion that at least one board member misapprehended what the vote was about so I think for clarity sake you can do this so moved we need a second don't a okay any discussion back to this now and by the way we haven't had our student board weigh in on this yet do you guys have any opinions as we're trying we had a lot of discussions before the meeting which were privileged because they were in executive session point of order maybe you want to vote on this amendment okay we can do that can I get a vote please tala i h no liia Wright no Schmidt I Thompson I and that passes three- two now a motion to approve the item as amended I move to approve the item as amended second okay before we start off would the student board like to have any comments on this Miss Thompson yes may I give an overview of the of the policy generally yes you guys can hold on to that sorry Nikos no that's fine hi so Brad Miller I'm legal counsel for the district this is a policy that's introduced on the basis of a bill that passed in the springtime as house bill 24139 it's become kind of common parlance in the community it has a bill that is entitled um the non-legal name change and what it specifies is that students who wish to be recognized by a name that reflects their gender identity May request for this non-legal name change and the bill frankly was written in a loose framework with the lack of definition that has caused chaos in in school districts of all sorts of perspectives and ideologies because it it lacks Clarity one of the things that has been contested generally in the community is the question of whether student agency granted by through this bill is constitutional because the US Supreme Court stands for the proposition that parents are the guardians or the authority in their child's education and that's the basis of some of the um challenges that have been emanating out of this and as a result these policies have not been adopted timely in fact the the way the bill was structured policies were to be adopted with the Advent of the new FIS school year because they were to be enacted with the Advent of the school year our district has as a practical matter implemented processes to facilitate um the requirements of this bill but we still are way behind in time in adopting a policy there already have been legal challenges elsewhere um about the implementation of this bill and so this is really timely for you just a few items about this the bill does state that when a student requests um this change and and that framing is consistent with the way that anything is requested by a student whether it to be going on a field trip or to take aspirin it it in common practice uh requires par parental consent uh usually a signature on a field trip uh permission slip and that sort of thing and so this process reflects that sort of common approach that we we dignify these sorts of things with a a parental input and so I know that it's controversial to some folks but uh this is consistent with a lot of schools and school districts we're going to have uh if we pass this a process that requires parental consent and we just sort of went through um some of the uh elements of that and you you can get down to the weeds of that but frankly we um have landed in a place where we're saying at least one parent has to sign on behalf of the family uh which will because we're going to believe in good faith that families are are acting together in concert and so we can do this in the same way we do a lot of other sort of permission type of elements if if that's what we approv here we've also because um because the PO the the legislation has been so unclear in its application we have insinuated actually I suppose dictated in some respects uh that there'll be a process for this and so this policy will adopt a process so that not only will we say that parents need to write sign a form but then we're going to review that to make sure that it's an appropriate name change that we've that we've put time frames around how often name changes can be uh accepted and and and that sort of thing and this is because uh the the law requires that the adults that work with students whose names have been changed according to the law um they must they must honor that and so we've got to have a framework to make sure that it's all been well communicated and established there's a new red line from the last time that the board reviewed this last month that grants an accommodation to conscience-based subjections this is consistent with last year's Supreme Court ruling in a case that the 2023 case and and the language here actually pretty closely reflects that uh an accommodation isn't automatically um available to staff members but we're we're saying here that they can request an accommodation if there's a matter of conscience in in um implementing the a change and so that's what this piece is about and then you'll see there's a final red line at the bottom or red insert and and that recognizes the potential likelihood that this is going to be a law that's challenged in Colorado courts and in the event that is found to be unconstitutional which some observers believe will happen then this policy will be immediately voided okay student board I'd like to hear your input on this uh first before I give input on the item itself just a couple of clarifying questions to make sure I'm commenting on exactly the correct thing the amended item will continue to include the word consent rather than the previous amendment of do not object and instead of by both parents or legal Guardians that will say a parent or legal guardian correct correct okay as for some wording in the initial statement a if a student requests to use a name at school that is not in the name of their official school records then all parents or legal Guardians on file will be informed and ask for consent for their child to use another name there it says requests is that request by a student on a formal level and there's a form or is this simply a student asking a particular teacher or administrator within their school hello I would like to be called by this and at that point that teacher or administrator would have an obligation to inform the parents from that point we will be continuing likely a a practice that we've um utilized already for this purpose and we'll just we'll honor it in a-r or regulation supporting this policy and the um answer there is that we will will determine what that request is at the administrative level that it's not the board's competence to make that decision okay yeah just I wasn't sure as I sure there could be quite a change there depending on it's a student casually requesting this or submitting an official form so I just wanted to be clear on that as for the issue of the item itself obviously this is a relevant item with changing Colorado legislation and changing culture as well not just in our school but around the entire world as we continue to advance and the needs for items such as this to come into effect even exist and I don't have personal experience as an individual hoping to have my name changed in any way however I do know people who have I know friends who are in varying situations of course some may have very supportive parents in their hopes to have these legal CH changes and both their gender identity and just how they are called by others however I also know students who are on the other end of that and that is just of course a concern that exists there are students who wish to have their identity respected and they fail to have that at home due to par par that are disapproving of their choices in that regard so I think that's an issue however I think it is also necessary to see the school's obligation to both be transparent with parents as well as respectful of their students as a student of course I would want to side further towards a district school district needs a little bit more centered on a student because the point of a school district is to house those students educate them and Advance them to their their later parts of life but as I said it also has to be considered that the parents are the parents of these children and should have some awareness so I just I see issues that could arise either way so this is obviously a very difficult item to have because as it was mentioned earlier there's not technically a right decision because either way you will have people angered but just as kind of my statement as a student I think that there are situations where student could be endangered due to a request being taken too far and informed to their parents because they are not in safe situations if their parents are aware of that so that's just my comment okay uh I definitely agree with what Nikos was saying and acknowledging that um some students home is not a safe place but I do remember um in some of our student board meetings we' talked about how the district is very key on making parents and families aware of what's going on with their student which I definitely agree with um so personally I'm definitely agree with having a parent be aware and agree to a name change um especially if uh teachers are going to be um held accountable for that I think parents should definitely be made aware um and agree to that so that they can act as a family unit um and I know we've also talked about that if a student is not safe that there are some steps put in place for that um but overall I think that parent should be informed of uh name changes I will provide one further note since it came to my mind during a statement I definitely agree with the amendment of a parent because previously it was both parents and our Guardians and I think that it's an important amendment that was made that is just a because that allows for more flexibility in those home situations especially in the cases of uh students who are in homes of divorce where their parents are on very objecting sides on issues such as this where they will be able to have that opportunity despite one parent who may be in the opposition of this to actually still be able to pursue that without that parent hindering so just definitely like that amendment to it thank you very much director Schmidt thank you um I have several concerns with HB 24139 um the ACT clearly states that a chosen name means any name that a student requests to be known as that differs from the student's legal name to reflect the student students gender identity with that definition in mind there are many teachers and staff who may have conscience-based reg religious objections to using a chosen name and they should be respected the state apparently feels that it can hand down this unconstitutional mandate and tread upon the First Amendment protected rights of teachers and staff by compelling them to say things that may be against their personally held conscious conscious based religious beliefs any policy compelling speech intrudes on the right to private conscience and when it comes to government violates the First Amendment the state of Colorado also apparently feels that the refusal to use a student's chosen name is discriminatory however the Supreme Court has defined actionable discrimination harassment as condu that is so severe pervasive and objectively offensive that it can be said to deprive the victim of access to educational opportunities or benefits provided by the school I think we should also consider the supremacy clause the supremacy clause of the United States Constitution establishes that the constitution federal laws and treaties are the supreme law of the land and take precedence over state laws that conflict with them mandating against conscious based religious First Amendment protections sounds to me like a conflict finally there is already one lawsuit in Colorado against the state for HB 24139 and it may take years to adjudicate in the meantime this ACA policy if it were to pass tonight would remain in effect in our district until that happens um the policy oh do we do we really want to put our teachers in that uncomfortable place for several years do we want to do that to our teachers the policy itself has many points to it once a year name change and the possibility of becoming null and void when the state mandated bill is found unconstitutional however until then we have this policy that we may adopt tonight thanks director H so this is a conflict a complex issue involving conflicting rights for number of different groups the students the parents the staff we are making a good faith effort to resolve some very difficult questions and so I disagree with the urgency to pass a policy tonight um but as the policy stands before us tonight I can characterize it best as malicious compliance so on one hand we're making it difficult for anybody who's interested in it to find because we bury its purpose in the second page in a definition so it's really difficult for anybody who's looking for a policy on um uh changing your name to reflect your proper gender that word gender only appears in that document one time it's not in the title so you have to understand that non-legal name changes are is the policy that applies to your situation but then we create additional barriers to uh as many barriers as we can to recognizing that right although we just modified it to only need one parent signature we still put it changed it to say we need consent of both parents so now we're in a situation where that is an active thing that has to be received and so I don't know that we would have a whole lot of ground to stand on if we only took one parent signature um whereas if we left the language as do not object then we assume that if we haven't heard from one of the parents which we would expect in most cases that um that they're they're supportive um and then we have some language in there that basically to a reasonable reader says that we're going to allow for staff to violate that student's right anyway um whether assuming they've gone through the whole um effort now to that last point I thought that we had achieved a mutual understanding on what we actually want that to be but the language that's in that policy currently is problematic so I wanted the opportunity to suggest alternative language that would be more descriptive of the the uh the understanding that we arrived on but we're rushing this into a vote um so um and then the last thing is since we talked about this a new Clause uh arrived uh with a auto revocation um if the the law is voided so there are you know multiple ways that that can be treated in the in the courts right it could be upheld it could be voided or it could be voided in part or we could gain a new understanding of some limitations on it etc etc so if there's a change we are a district that values transparency and we should therefore you know present that publicly in a public meeting rather than just putting that language in there that says oh this automatically goes away we all understand that all of our policies are subject to constitutional review director L Wright no further comment director devola yes all right I just want to make it very clear that I'm against uh House Bill 1039 and I believe it is completely unconstitutional uh I do believe that our policy makes a statement um that we are putting in safeguards that challenges the elements that are unconstitutional our policy prot protects parental rights by requiring parent consent and signatures and this policy will also allow for conscience-based objections to compelled speech so staff who object to being forced to do something that violates their religious beliefs or conscience have an accommodation for this for example um calling students by last names instead of first names um one thing I do want to note is if we do not put a policy in place every principal or teacher can decide how they are going to respond to House Bill 1039 any way they want we do not want them to do whatever they want without guard rails or safeguards um which is why a policy is needed uh when this house bill 1039 is ruled unconstitutional our policy uh will be null null and void and non-legal name changes will not be recognized um also another thing to note is uh both parents will be notified uh and given time to object to the name change um if one of the two parents do object and uh that's why I love go just to be clear before this house bill passed H House Bill 24-10 39 we had a process we had a process that if a student wanted a a non-legal name change we would accommodate that if their parents agreed so as far as this being you know if it is ruled unconstitutional the way it's currently worded that doesn't mean we won't have a process because we really do want to find a way to Value all people to include the students parental rights and the teachers and I mentioned before it's there's no way there's no possible way to square this circle it can't be done you could come up with a hundred different wh ifs and you could come come up with a lot of different situations we do have processes in place if a student if we believe a student is in danger that's a mandatory reporting issue and that has to be dealt with and so how do you respect the First Amendment rights of the student the parental rights is usually determined by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution there'll be a lot of different opinions as far as whether or not something's constitutional well if we could all agree on that we wouldn't need a supreme cour court so trying to come up with a policy that respects the students respects the parents protects the district to the best of our ability no matter what we do there's going to be challenges there's there's no if all five of us were to write a different policy on this you would have five different policies and you'd have hundreds of objections to each of the policies just to be clear too house bill um 24-10 39 is K through 12 12 that means starting at kindergarten um and do does a child in kindergarten have the developmental ability to do this so under house bill 23-12 N1 they have mandated updated expulsion hearing officer training I started taking this training because we hear appeals and the first thing they talk about in this training is brain development and they Define three eight is Early Childhood 9 to 11 is middle childhood 12 to 18 is adolescence and they talk about the different developmental stages and whether or not things are developmentally appropriate they talk about cognitive brain development emotional and physical development and I only got through the module of Three Ages three through eight which talks about learning impulse control uh symbolic play self-concept and aspect of identity so how do you develop a policy for a kindergarten student um how do you do that with excluding the parents how do you respect the rights of people who want a non-legal name change um it's not perfect I'll admit it's not perfect but I want you to know that uh we've worked hard on this we've tried to accommodate different belief systems um I know that director H High had an objection to the term of a religious accommodation that was actually changed to cont conscience accommodation uh I know that our legal council consulted with different legal people throughout the state and throughout the country uh currently there is a lawsuit pending over this where a parent is suing a school district for socially transitioning their child without notification there was a ruling in Ohio the eastern district division of Ohio last month that a local school district violated the First Amendment rights of a teacher when it forced her to use a name she wasn't comfortable with we would never want anything in place that would single out a child that would say hey only you will be called differently for an accommodation that's not what we want to do because that would be a civil rights violation because gender identity is a protected class under the C state constitution so once again a lot of hard work has gone into this trying to protect the students to protect the parents to come up with was something for the district and to have a process available but I just wanted to be clear we had a process in place without a policy before this was passed by our state legislature um and that required parental notification and those non-legal name changes were honored in this district with parental consent so it's difficult I don't know how you can write a policy for K through2 on this issue I don't know how you can write a policy that makes students happy Parents happy the district happy but I do have concerns about developmentally appropriate decisions also when a student is 18 this doesn't even apply a student can make that determination on their own when they're a legal adult so just so you know um there there was no way to square the circle so we did the best we could and not everybody's going to agree on that is there any further discussion Nikos I'll just make a conclusive remark on this given the input that was further provided by members of the board obviously as it's been stated several times this is an issue with a very large level of complexity there's a lot of In-N-Outs there are a lot of groups of people that there is an effort to please within this item and I think that efforts have been made and it's visible by the board to attempt to some ENT support each group of individuals and given the fact that educators are uh legally obligated to inform authorities when necessary in the case of the abuse of a child as um the reporters of that I do think that there are steps in place overall even if not specifically described within this uh item that do protect those students who are in dangerous situations and I think that having this in place does in some ways still continue to protect those individuals who are hoping for these name changes and no matter how many years hours sessions are put into trying to make the form and the rules that we have for this there will never be a place where we can get 100% approval from anyone because that's just impossible but I think that this is definitely close to that in as many ways as AR District can be with our model of transparency and respect to the students director dellaa director Schmidt I just really want to protect our teachers from having their First Amendment right stepped on director devola yeah something that was brought to my attention I think is a really good point is that this policy also protects principles and other key staff who are making decisions by giving them guidance on how to implement this um and they're getting guidance from elected officials that represent the community um so I think that's that's an important thing to note as well um and so our goal is to protect that the conscience of our teachers principals staff members um all of them so uh just to uh director Schmid point I believe this is this policy does do that and also to make clear we did not wake up one day and say hey let's write a real controversial policy that will piss off everybody no matter what we do that is not the case the case is is that this house bill mandates that we develop a policy um we've already had a neighboring District that was threatened with reporting because they did not have a policy in place so just to be clear that this is something that is required through this house bill which I think doesn't always have the best language in it and it's very unclear and I have reservations about developmentally appropriate like I said K through 12 just to be clear this bill says K through 12 so if there's no further discussion can we get a vote please tala i h no levia Wright no Schmid I Thompson I and that passes on a vote okay we are on to discussion items and the first one would be item 9.1 is can Whit still here there he is you're hiding behind the podium from my my viewpoint thank you I was going to ask who's clicking uh number one I just want to mention a couple of things you talked about adoption earlier and name change in concert as an adopted child who chose his own name at a at a later point in life I deeply respect uh both your recognition of of adoption and the support services that go around that uh and also uh I have to say that I so appreciate the work that you put into to this ACA policy uh it's amazing the position that you've taken not to put yourselves between parents and their children while still respecting the requirements uh I think you've done remarkable work here so uh kudos to you and you certainly have my respect on what you've done here I'm here to talk about education re-envisioned bosis uh and as you most of you know uh I haven't presented to a couple of you uh but I do come every year to talk about this so uh some of you are more familiar with our program than others I'll try and do a little background as well as uh kind of jump into where we are and what the current landscape looks like allow me to apologize uh I added some beautiful pictures of some programs and then didn't send you the copy that had the pictures in it so those of you who saw maybe some pictures last year try to evoke them again in your minds and those of you who haven't I'll try and paint a couple of word pictures for what kind of programs we have as we talk through this um we are a bosis a board of cooperative ative Education Services we are different in complexion than the normal Bose in Colorado in that we focus on creating a broad path for school choice uh do I have a clicker to advance or I'll bet I can the right AR okay got it thank you uh our vision and Mission I'm not going to read these slides to you uh you you're all in education and probably read quite well uh but I will point out that what we focus on is creating a broad path for school choice in Colorado uh we we shephered a number of innovative and and conventional Choice uh programs and schools and in various models uh but I will quote the one phrase that I like to use most often to explain really what we are we choose to be a welcoming host to Innovative exceptional programs in schools and a Wellspring of better education models we are welcoming to new ideas and we proliferate we work hard to proliferate good ideas and well-received ideas in the community but always working to make certain that the choices exist that parents want we want we focus on attempting to always support communities to create the programs and the schools that parents wish they could get their kids in uh because we very much uh aligned with what you've done here today respect the rights and the expectations of parents in the education of their children uh our operation Norms I'm not going to go through this I'll just point out one one point because I get asked about it every single time no we didn't invent these I actually borrowed these from a great Charter network a few years back uh but the most important of all of the things we do in our operating Norms is the konanas we are passionate if you have never been to education re envisioned I hope you'll come visit us sometime uh the team that we have the investment of the people that we have in the many programs the many schools the many models that we that we work with that we Champion that we Mentor that we help develop while always giving them autonomy to operate according to the vision and the mission that we've approved for for that particular School uh it takes a lot of energy uh it takes a lot of passion we really lean in with what we do and uh I'd love to love to show you some of that anytime so you're any of you are welcome I know I've had a chance to meet with many of you uh you're probably aware that Marie olier Wright has been on the B board the education re Envision Bose's board previously your your board member John Graham has been on that board um so I know that you're well connected to us but please uh take advantage of being well connected to us every way you can so what are we I'll go over the the detail here in just a second but we operate schools online programs uh contracted educational models homeschooled enrichment programs all across the the state we couldn't do that without d49 and our partner members who support us who who give us the leadership and the oversight that we require as iosis to be able to operate and so I can't express enough my personal gratitude and the Gratitude of our organization for d49 and your support you are a founding member of Education re-envision you're our fiscal sponsor and God bless you all uh so who are our members we have three we have District 49 we have montazuma Cortez School District as well and we have Pikes Peak State College those are our three members who who sit on our board and provide oversight as well as a couple of at large members uh board members as well so thank you for that uh we continue to see in the state of Colorado an absolutely voracious appetite for alternative education models we we know we all went through the co era and we know that some parents became more aware and more perhaps a little more invested in what kind of options there were in public education for their children and in nonpublic education for their children we kind of we are a public entity I want to be clear our programs are publicly funded programs but they take a slightly different model in some cases because they're part-time programs that support homeschooled families that's our homeschool enrichment side of the portfolio we also have conventional um multi-district online schools and so I'll give you some numbers that we have six multi-district online schools uh you're familiar with k12 and stride uh we have all three grade ranges an elementary a middle and a high school of the stride ilk as well as an aec an alternative education campus model in in that mode uh we have a Connections Academy online school that is also multi-district across the state and we have a unique model in Colorado uh Williamsburg learning which uh is a slightly different uh framework but another awesome multi-district online school so it's a large online multi-district online portfolio that we have we do operate to Brick and Mortar schools we've actually operated four but we are not about Empire Building we are about making certain that the schools and programs that parents want exist and they're able to get their kids in it so if we may start a school but if the school district that it's affiliated with says hey we like this we would really love to operate it we're we're more than happy to cooperate with that district and say great if you would Charter that school we would love to let you operate it if you'll operate it well and so we've done that uh with a couple of schools uh we've actually gone the other way as well if a school district said well this doesn't quite fit our port folio we say well we don't want to see it close we'll we'll take it we'll operate it we've gone that way too so we try to be a really good partner with the school districts uh where our programs reside and I think we have been a great partner and we've we've continued to work with these districts uh and I'm so grateful for uh those districts that have agreed to sign uh M Us in perpetuity for the operation of some of our schools we have that as well uh we have a send College Prep in D20 which is truly a College Preparatory High School with a with unique focus and a unique operating model uh which has some some great Renown in the State uh and a waiting list at this point but that school D20 was kind enough to sign a perpetuity uh agreement for us to operate that school and we're grateful for that and uh likewise uh in peblo we have a Classical Academy The peblo Classical Academy which we just signed an operating agreement in perpetuity for as well so again thank you to that school board and that district for allowing us to operate that school there so we're grateful for those Partnerships we also have homeschool enrichment programs and we have unique models for homeschool enrichment programs there there's just a wide portfolio we have approximately 45 of them and they're and they're literally everywhere it's all throughout Colorado at this point um and there's no there's no slowdown in the appetite for homeschool enrichment programs in the state of Colorado uh we grew by approximately 30% in that portfolio this year in terms of number of programs we will grow by another 20 to 30% next year looking at our pipeline currently in those types of programs across the state so there's still a significant appetite for support for homeschooling families uh and of course homeschooling famili is taking personal responsibility for the education of their children they're the Lea they're asking for support they're asking for enrichment they're asking for extended opportunities for those kids and so those those programs have just a remarkable uh variation in what they do we have programs that uh are core Reading Writing arithmetic support for those parents we have programs that are ecoin studies that are forestry programs uh we just did a a cyber security program uh which starts this which has started this year which has three campuses not a lot of students but three campuses and a lot of interest so I expect that one to grow pretty quickly we have uh some support programs that that provide uh one area of Interest or another um Falcon Arrow Labs of course which you guys are very familiar with as well we have some falcan Arrow Labs uh campuses as well so a very broad portfolio as you can imagine with 45 programs it's just it's it's remarkable the different uh categories that we see uh we expect this year to add another 15 to 20 programs so again there's just a huge amount of variation there's a very large appetite in the state for it uh people constantly ask me well you talk about 45 programs over 50 schools and programs together just how big are you well we don't want to be big we want to be effective but uh what are we we are currently at about 7,750 funded enrollment that's a full-time equivalence but remember about half of our programs are halftime our part-time programs they H School enrichment so uh we're at just over 10,000 students so again thank you for for your support you are making an enormous impact about allowing us to reach all of these families who need support across the state and Prov by providing a huge range of School Educational choices for families in Colorado so thank you I'm happy to answer any questions let's start with our student board who happen to be in a hybrid learning environment what questions do you have for Mr Wht or any comments oh uh no questions but definitely comment it's definitely appreciated to have a board that is able to provide for just such it allows the already wide range of District 49 with our charter schools and our brick and mortar schools that we already have just to continue to have an increased number of options for all the students so it's definitely appreciated the work that is done uh yes I also agree I went to pipo for k38 and as a kid who cannot sit still that definitely helped me actually be able to learn and um I'm definitely a kinesthetic learner so I could definitely um use my hands and like get in there and like actually learn stuff and then having the opportunities here at peek to earn my associate degree by the time I graduate um plus having the option of hybrid so I can also get a part-time job both have been really cool opportunities um that I've been able to do through these schools director yeah I never knew what bosis was so I'm just now finding it out I would love to see you know some of what you have going I know reach out to me and we'll schedule a visit if you I'll do that thank you absolutely director Hy I thought it was really interesting that you mentioned k12 and uh Connections Academy because my daughter uh out of state um before we came here she did a year at Connections Academy and K12 was the other one that we were considering for her um um so when I look at our CDE data for how we were performing as a district um the most recent um data is for 2023 and of course we've been talking here about how much it's been improving uh this past year but um for the previous year we um came in at 45.3 which is not great um when we dig into our data we find that that is influenced essentially by two things uh want to a lesser degree allies which is a wonderful School of innovation we operate here that um supports specifically dyslexia concentrates those resources and the parents just absolutely love that resource the other one of course which has a tremendous effect on our performance framework is goal Academy so that's a Statewide school that has more students than all of our other high schools combined uh so it it in creates a huge influence on our scoring um it's an alternative education campus so it in a lot of cases it's a school of Last Resort so under that context we can explain our 45.3 and say if you take those two out of the equation we're performing really well so curious about how er bosis is doing I pulled up your framework information and I found that you finished a few points below us so I was hoping you could give us some context to help us understand that that performance absolutely because we have such a a mix right we have schools home school enrichment we're dominated by uh in terms of number of programs home school enrichment now we're kind of at this half and half you have to look at each of the segments but our school performance framework is mostly dominated by the online multi-district online schools and the brick and motor schools of course so we have one of the challenges that you have but we're in transition on that one uh you have allies we had uh Orton Academy which was also a dyslexia school that's one of the schools that we've agreed to transition to a school district that wants to Charter it and operate it so uh we had some challenges there uh and with a dyslexia school you're pretty much always going to just as you've experienced yourself we're that one's actually trans transitioning out of our Poli portfolio so that that will cease to be an issue for us but um please understand it's not any desire of ours to transition it out to solve a problem we believe that school is necessary and important and we absolutely want to see it continuing to operate and support it fully um similarly online schools traditionally have a low testing participation rate multi-district online schools because that's parent population for many reasons has chosen not to put their students in a traditional brick-and mortar school and often it's because they really don't want them a brick and Mort school and in in that environment so they don't want to send them for State assessments to a brick and mortar school either uh so we find that participation rates are low in multi-district online schools although we certainly encourage that they participate Etc so we were marked down for participation rate in one particular school that uh over three years and it's one of the stride schools um over the last three years every year it gets marked down for participation it it it ends up the priority Improvement we then petition for reconsideration by showing them all of the the testing that goes on the the normative testing that goes on in the school because they didn't have enough participation with Cass they then evaluate that and say oh yeah you're right your part your education is doing great and then they reassess and they usually realign that so we're we're in the process of reconsideration right now on that one and our score will probably go up somewhat uh again as it has in the last two years but we're not control of that process in the end so I can't make any commitments I can only say that we've asked again and we've shown the evidence again and as far as we can tell the numbers will justify the the uplift again those are those are the largest challenges that we deal with director Li right no questions director devola I really admire how you've kind of been the Forefront of uh School Reform here in Colorado Springs and I just really appreciate everything that you've done um noticing or seeing the um uh the lack of quality choices and then being able to uh put together something that gives those choices back to the parents I think it's really really important the work that you do um and I value that a lot um so I am really ex uh happy that we get to partner with the ER bosis and to all the things that you do so thank you very much you if all students learned the same way wouldn't that be wonderful you could come up with a one siiz fits-all educational model for how to have outstanding scores in every area I was really tickled when Ava mentioned being a kinesthetic learner me too and it's really interesting when you look at auditory visual or kinesthetic Learners and so I was really glad that you touch on that because also when I was in high school I was working part-time because I like to have my own money um so I really love of course what ER bosis does I do have a question though because I attended a meeting a while ago and they talked about having a multi-district classical High School do you think that'll ever come about I know we've had discussions on that but do you think that could ever become a possibility I I do and and because we've had this conversation I know a little bit about what you're referring to uh so I'll I'll be circumspect in the following respect that's not likely to be a Bose school it's likely to be a multi-district school uh the Bose's might be a facilitator in in in helping pull that together and we are willing to and we're staying in the conversation but it will take three districts wanting to do it all three being willing to agree on the enrollment practices and um the challenges in the detail sales there and in the will to actually drive it through because it's a multi-year process uh but yes we are enthusiastic about that model we believe the need exists we believe that d49 D20 and d11 are at the are at the Nexus of that need and we know that there's a significant body of K8 classicals that could feed a classical high school and I would love to see that come to fruition of course if the scores are good then each district can argue on who gets to count them at the CDE or how they get divvied up by student enrollment Etc split the enrollment yeah yeah so Al righty if there's no further comments I'd like to thank you for coming to present to us tonight thank you very much appreciate you very much and what a wonderful facility what a brilliant thing to do I need I need some mentoring superintendent Hils cannot have our com team I love next we have item 9.2 teacher on special assignment this like Secret Agent Man here yes very similar hey I'm Kathleen granis uh good evening uh director of academic performance and data services and I'm bringing you this job description a lot of detailed information in the board docs I want to give you some highlights uh so yes tosa we often say for teacher on special assign assignment so we're looking at a a teacher to support assessment and data and so um you know we are a school district we've grown we have about 25,000 students including the I connect Zone where we are tonight and so uh we are crossed um oh we provide support um for assessment in um multiple um different assessments uh across 10 grade levels we have District assessments across 13 grade levels K through 12 um and you know as in dist um in our district we do run lean uh our current assessment team uh includes me the director of academic performance and data services and we have an assessment technician so the addition of this teacher on a special assignment assessment and data would provide additional supports for data and assessment for all of our 5,000 students uh with our size more support is needed I hope to convince you of that uh so the tosa uh for data and assessment has four key roles and all of those are in conjunction with the uh director of academic performance and data services the first one is to support the district assessment coordinator so CDE requires everyone uh every District have someone to um serve on that role and I serve on that role so this too would also support all assessment Administration and Reporting uh they would U work really closely with our school assessment coordinator so each school has two that they've designated and the goal would be really to increase validity and of assessment data that's collected so the second key role is support for Regulatory Compliance so um as you guys know the um the entire performance framework for elementary and middle school is based on assessment data and two-thirds of the high school framework uh relies on that assessment data as well so the tosa for assessment and data would ensure that schools follow all the regulations and guidelines uh reducing the district's risk of legal or academic penalties and uh a third key role is increased support for data analysis we' got the data we need to make sure we're using it and so uh with 31 schools to support having another hand would be very valuable uh with analyzing student testing data for um multiple assessments applying knowledge in the CL uh for um how to to change or adjust in the classroom so for classroom practice and to work directly with building leaders and teachers other academic coordinators and schools to use data for system performance Improvement and then the fourth reason uh we really think this uh role would be key is increased support for data literacy you know what does it take to go from good to great so we're in a good place but that intentionality of going to the next level um is key and the complexity of the data um we need um to um understand it to find tune our performance uh and to meet our academic um expectations so um strategies to measure uh performance and Improvement at the classroom level is so important as well as growing strategies to use data to increase instructional leadership at the building level and so this tosa uh would be key to that work and just a couple last points here uh the it the tosa for um assessment in data is critical for improving and increasing the district's data literacy assessment Integrity as we continue to grow so this position would be title funded and it wouldn't impact our general uh funds of the district just to give you some data because you want data right especially if I'm here uh comparing District 49 to districts in the springs uh in in Colorado our assessment staff supports six uh six and a half times more students than our neighbors so if we look at Lewis Palmer and and Fountain Fort Carson they've got about a 1 to 2,000 student ratio for their assessment unit uh Colorado Springs has about a 1 to 3,000 Cherry Creek has about a 1 to 6,000 ratio District 20 has about a 1 to 7,000 and District 49 has about currently a 1 to 13,000 so this position is needed this position will have a positive impact and I really appreciate your time what questions do you have for me student board the the scores that a school get on testing in all regards is often the basis for judgment by many people's standards of the district as a whole so it's kind of insane to me that we don't have a position like that even now because that is a lot of work being put in by yourself which by the way thank you that's immensely impressive but it it definitely seems like something that would be incredibly beneficial in order to actually have a full grasp of these statistics which as I said are such a basis of judgment from the general community so definitely agree with what you have said how many people did you say are on your team d That's crazy okay yeah I was gonna ask if you could you know give me a little data training but if you only got two I can't take that away well we'll do it we always say yes okay director hello Mike Hy resident board data nerd uh really excited to uh you know hear this proposal because you know you guys are dealing with a a vast volume of data um data literacy is always a challenge um and we need to be able to bridge that gap between you know the um the team that's that's collecting and analyzing it and the team that can actually do something with it you know the principles and the and the the trainers and Etc but all of this is oriented towards um improving the district performance framework that I was just speaking about right and uh we can we can only find room for improvement if we know what's going on and so this is uh important diagnostic information that we can use to um improve our programming and improve our student outcomes and that is what we are here for um and I'm also super pleased that you found funding for it outside of our general fund so very much in support thank you Dr Olia Wright definitely overdue director devola so we are a very datadriven district and the fact that you only have just you and one other person is kind of scary and I'm really glad that that you're heading this up and finding ways in order for us to um really analyze our data I'm I mean with with Peter's vision of um being accredited with distinction this is extremely important because we we can't do that without data and data analysis and diving in and really hashing out what's going on um so I 100% support this and like uh director H was saying I'm really appreciative you found a way to to fund it through title funds so thank you so much for that effort um if I could give you another a couple of employees I would just a personal note I love our student board I love that we have this here I love that we have them participate with comments so um and earlier tonight I talked about how sometimes people are so focused on problems that they miss the Miracles personally I consider you one of those Miracles and Regulatory Compliance if if people really understood Regulatory Compliance within the education system I mean personally I'd like to take a bunch of regulators and beat them with a big stick but that is implied violence so I won't say that um anyhow but I just want to thank you for everything you do and let you know that I really appreciate you and if there are no objections I think we'll move this forward for further action the next meeting next up we have the operations performance update Mr Brown Excuse me good evening board Bruce Brown facility project manager I need to get dialed in here oh we're to arrows okay uh this is my November 2024 board presentation it's a little bit uh a little bit different uh from my general project updates um the theme behind this is where did the the middle school money go so I I hope uh I hope by the time I'm done here I've shown you a really good idea of what happened to the middle school money I think that was a big question and in one of our longrange planning meetings Mike when I brought some things up you were pretty happy you heard that information so it it let us know we probably should put something together so so we'll get started uh with the original plan this is this is back when Brett Ridgeway was here the plan on the left is the original plan of what the money was going to be used for I want to get too into the finance part because that's not me um but I do know the fund 49 cop money was intended to be spent on Bennett Ranch Phase 2 the transportation center phase 1A and elevations middle school and if you look at the adjusted plan on the right you see what's in bold is what took the place of elevations Middle School um I'm not going to talk to you tonight about Bennett or the transportation center because we've from my perspective we've closed those out with presentations to you guys so the first one is Vista Ridge um I don't think you've seen it yet I heard Jamie Lynn it sounds like you're going next week the project is substantially complete there are some items we're working on we have a few pieces of glass and things to do over Thanksgiving break the ribbon cutting was October 28th I feel it was quite the success um I have a financial snapshot on the right it did come in on schedule and it did come in well under budget so that's always good news yes sir um I have some pictures of a biomed room corridor regular classroom conference room couple pictures of the outside this is from the west and then these are my two favorite because it's not too often we do a drone soccer arena as far as construction right so um this is the CTE cyber security um it room on the left and the Drone soccer arena on the right and the other project that was mentioned tonight is Horizon in Middle School um all the finishes have started Cabinetry started sidewalks are being installed and the ribbon cutting is scheduled for January 7th I have no major challenges at this time but when I walk through there I'm nervous but that's probably probably normal and that's my job there's there's some work to do before January 7th but we have a commitment from the contractor and our team at wers so here's some pictures of horizon the picture on the left is from inside of the gymnasium some classrooms rooms bathrooms with tile classrooms with carpet now we'll get into some of the smaller projects we did I believe all of you were present uh in February when RTA presented the master plan to you so November of 2023 we RTA completed our master plan um and what that Master Plan revealed was $167 Million worth of deferred maintenance 70 million of that was due in the first 12 months so as I stand here today I can confidently tell you all 70 million of that has been done I'm kidding um we we've put a good dent in it but uh 20 million of that was due in the first five years and and then the 77 million that was due after five years as part of that master plan each each facility was issued an FCI right our facility condition index that's how we measure the quality of our facilities so this districtwide summary on the right is what I'd like you to pay attention to Green is good um the districtwide summary basically shows the FCI of each facility this is a quick explanation of what the FCI is if you're not aware the Deferred maintenance of the building divided by the actual value would give you your percentage of your FCI so um if you notice on the previous slide we had two in in what I'll call Tan that should be heading toward towards an orange or red and that's Horizon Middle School in Falcon high school and we'll I'll get you a bigger slide of that here in a second sorry I went the wrong way um I can tell you fun 49 projects lowered our district average FCI by 4% our fund 49 projects reduced the Deferred maintenance that was identified in that master plan from 167 million to million fund 49 also allowed us to mitigate approximately 9 years worth of deferred maintenance Dr Fletcher will be proud of this because with all that good news he wanted to make sure I'm letting you know we still have $139 Million worth of deferred maintenance and if if nothing broke or nothing went bad from this day forward and we took the amount of money we're allotted annually which is approximately $3 million we would be working on deferred maintenance for the next 46 years it's a challenge so although we have some real good news for you today the the the war is never over this is this is simply a a bar bar graph of the impact the Deferred maintenance had or the fun 49 had on referred maintenance again green is good and you can see the two the two tan facilities Horizon Middle School that was almost at a at a 50% and Falcon high school at a 0 41 or 41% um the difference on the right you can see Horizon Middle School was reduced by 22% that's that's an astronomical number to be able to lower the FCI in one facility in a couple years in my opinion it's it's big um but the darker green and that very bright green are the top five that were top five facilities that were impacted by the money and the fun 49 money and here's a bar graph of that and then we I broke it out by Zone um I need to make sure you can see it that the iConnect zone is a two10 of a percent it's not 2% it was it was a small bit of work we did in the connect Zone but I think that's that's just relative to the size of the I connect Zone compared to the rest of the zones um here's a list of the uh impactful or major projects that were part of fund 49 so other than the big construction projects there's really two areas that we focused on that helped reduce reduce the FCI at the facilities one of them um LED upgrades at three high schools and the other one would be the roofs that we'll get into here in a minute but I'm sure you're all aware that as of January 1st 2025 we will not be able to purchase fluorescent light bulbs Parts ballasts and so I can honestly say even before I got here our facilities Department was pretty active in getting many of the uh LED upgrades done and what we did with the with the fund 49 money is we concentrated on the three high schools as opposed to buying stock piles of fluorescent lights like some of our neighboring distri districts are doing I've had some conversations and I can tell you we're in really good we're in a really good place compared to our neighbors I don't have a Year's worth of data I don't have enough data on San Creek or or Vista Rich High School however I do have six months worth of data at Falcon high school so I thought I'd I'd take advantage of that and put this together to give you an idea of what what we accomplished with the savings and the and and the usage so for six months we reduced our usage by 18% uh it equals an average kilowatt hour saving of approximately 19,000 kilowatt hours per month we reduced our cost by 14% which when the math is done totals $4,530 per year I will say I this is a raw cost I did not factor in maintenance savings which is a big piece um with LEDs we shouldn't have to touch those for seven to 10 years I didn't factor that in um and we also at both high schools two of the three high schools which would be Vista and and uh Falcon high school we changed the controls the controls that were initially installed um I could tell you War Stories but they were they were just inadequate So that obviously drove the cost up a little bit um we have currently in our district we have 1.8 million square feet in the district and 1.3 of that has been upgraded to LED last week we started at Meridian Ranch and so we have started the installation of the remaining LED at the last 500,000 Square F feet quick bar graph of the uh kilowatt hour savings per month and a quick bar graph of our cost savings per month at Falcon high school I will say I wouldn't expect to see the same with San Creek in Vista Ridge because we already had some Led upgrades done at both of those schools um the eight roof projects we did are listed on the left we did those over the course we really did seven over last summer and one the summer before it was a it was a hard push um but they're done they're they were done successfully the roofs are in good shape and those roofs reduced our district average FCI by 1.3% and they were absolutely in need of replacement and again I will say this we're not out of the water it's not like we've arrived we still have I think eight or nine that are due coming in 2025 a lot of our schools are hitting that 20 plus year mark I have some pictures of the roofs you know we got strategic and and as opposed to doing complete tear offs and spending a good chunk of money we were able to do some repairs so what you see on the left was repaired um instead of completely tearing off maybe 90% of good material we only tore off the 10% and that enabled us to stretch the dollar some Falcon High School pictures of the roof being loaded and then the last group of projects I want to talk about did not impact our FCI however we feel they're really important we the safe entry vestibules at our six prototypical elementary schools Stetson Falcon middle school and at Creekside so I just snap some photos of those those for you if you haven't seen them this is the inside of woodman Hills inside and outside of Woodman and Meridian and the last picture is dson Elementary secured entry vle with that are there any questions student board no director Schmidt director H yeah I just wanted to speak really quickly about uh because you talked about the the unknown maintenance savings for um the uh LED change over so my experience when I was on the ship we had uh our spaces that we were uh responsible for and I would say about every six months we lost one guy for two to three hours just changing out uh fluorescent bulbs and uh ballasts um in the spaces that uh my work center was responsible for multiply that out by 1.8 million square feet and it is easily conceivable if we hate our workers enough that we could make that one person's full-time job to do nothing but go around our schools I mean look at the lighting in a place like this absolutely the number of Lights the height of them is a complicating Factor so yeah we could have somebody that spends the entire year doing nothing but replacing bulbs so one of part of the story that isn't fully understood there is that this is going to reduce some pressure uh on the the workforce there and we're we're not going to be quite as pushed into additional staff so that that's a really great thing too but I love the fact that yeah other districts are out there stockpiling old technology because it's not going to be available and it's going to be Aging in their stockpile and it's going to become less reliable over time and we're out there getting stuff done so I really appreciate the uh the approach and the integrity and thank you so much Daniel and CJ deserve a lot of that credit that facility staff has been way in front of it for a few years director livier right well and utility prices aren't going down um Falcon high is mvea I believe because they're by me but the majority of our schools I think are covered by color Springs utilities and they just voted rate hikes I believe for the next five years um so we're going to see significant Bill differences in folks pay for the old lights that cost more can can look at their budgets as we have no control over what is going to continue to happen to utility cost that's true and we did see at Falcon high school we saw January 1st of 2024 we saw 1.6 C increase per kilowatt hour so that's factored into our savings director Deva I'm in awe of everything that you were able to accomplish accomplish with fund 49 I just thought it was a it was a massive beat Beast of Awesomeness I guess it was there was a lot there were a lot of people involved it was it was a great team effort yeah but you definitely you headed that up and really I appreciate that a lot and um like you said there's still work to do and um I think this is going to be uh Works in process which is part of the reason why at our last board meeting we had talked about the Energy Efficiency um and I would love to hear an update from that from you over there at some point about how we're doing on that you over there did you read your email uh today did you send it today L then no I have not read my email because I've been working all day so I will go do that we have come a long way from an emergency meeting with the last board because that's when the arm Army Corps of engineer tanked the site for the evaporating middle school and money's had to be spent or lost and I just have to I just remember that meeting where we're sitting there if use it or lose it and in District 49 we are experts are doing more with less but just the judicious use of funds and how it was apply and applied in the regular updates to us and to the community is so important because people need to know that that it's valued it's very valued and and you're very valued so I just wanted to thank you just from that quick meeting to where we are today it just blows my mind it's just incredible so thank you so much you're welcome we got a lot done thanks next we have the professional learning update good evening members of the board Mr hiltz my name is Melissa burkart Shields coordinator of professional learning and I thank you for this opportunity uh to provide you with a professional learning update this evening so tonight I'll share updates on the professional learning initiatives that our department has been working on and our local accountability efforts funded from a grant from the Colorado Department of Education our first update uh Master teacher online program um is a training library of over 100 lessons focused on the needs of par professionals this wonderful resource is now part of the professional development opportunities available to our par Educators in District 49 staff members began using this resource in September of last year and 785 courses were completed our second update uh the Colorado Department of Education requires induction application renewals every five years last year we worked on applying for the renewals for all three of our programs and were renewed we are now required to apply separately for our uh special service provider program special service providers are our school counselors our nurses our OT our PT and our speech language um Pathologists our social workers and our behavioral specialists in our buildings we're working closely with the director of special education to ensure that all of the new requirements are in place as we move into this next phase of five years before we have to renew again the new requirements for special service providers require a higher level of differentiated content for the for the then in the past when both teachers and special service providers were a combined program our third update in order to increase participation in professional learning um we use teacher survey feedback vow data and we use all of that to plan for our title to funded activities we continuously communicate with department leaders our Zone leaders and principles to assess staff development needs and as a result of this communication and through the participation of 48 d49 leaders and our results now 2.0 book study by Mr Dr Mike schmoker we're implementing comprehensive training in the PLC plus model over the course of the next three years Dr schmoker will be spending March 4th with District leaders to learn more about teaching and leading with focus and there will be time built in to the day for schools to discuss implementation strategies moving forward for local accountability update the district aims to merge the local accountability and data performance reporting systems to create a strong sustainable accountabil accountability system this integration will provide real-time data to stakeholders like teachers administrators parents uh you as the board um it will help improve planning share best practices and also Knowledge Management comprehensive training will ensure effective system utilization the professional learning communities model will be Central to all of this aligning well with the goals of a robust local accountability system this initiative will not only benefit d49 but also offer valuable insights to the state and other districts the local accountability committee was formed in August of this year and it consists of members of The Learning Services team performance excellence and academic systems together we are all working to define the local accountability system through the completion of a logic model which is helping us to Define and develop structures to support performance Improvement and accountability for all of our d49 schools we're planning to have Zone Representatives join this group beginning in January our second update for the local accountability Grant uh in June 2024 we began implementing a three-year training plan to support our implementation of the PLC plus model this training will help to improve the practices and structures in place in our schools that support academic performance it will also improve teacher Clarity and build Collective efficacy for a collaborative approach to school Improvement this slide represents the work that's taken place since June of last year aligned to our implementation and as I've been out visiting schools and visiting with principles and observing PLC teams in action I was very impressed with the work that's happening at Stetson Hills Elementary led by Lori McCoy the principal and Mina s San the assistant principal the structures that they have built and the collaborative work that their teachers are part of have helped lead them to their improved academic performance results in this next slide Nina is going to be speaking to the process that they've put in place using the PLC model good evening I'm Nina San the assistant principal at ston elementary school I want to thank Melissa so much for inviting me to talk a little bit about what PLC looks like at Stetson and what it's done for our school Community Lori McCoy principal really wishes she could be here tonight as well but she is currently in New Mexico at a conference for our dual language immersion program often when I hear people talk about PLC they're referring to a more casual type of meeting where teacher teams get together to talk about best practices and instruction and those meetings are great and there's a time and a place for those meetings but that's not PLC and it won't get you the results that PLC will PLC in its true form is an extremely systematic data driven approach to collaboration the expectations for all staff are extremely explicit and the vision is clear the ultimate Vision we're doing this work to help all students grow and Achieve at the highest levels and at the same time we're working as a team to support one another to do this work well at stutson our PLC system functions as a cycle of three different types of meetings the first meeting is our team quarterly planning days once a quarter every team is given a full day every grade level team to come together and plan for the upcoming quarter they look at the Colorado State Standards and our main curriculums and they decide what standards they will teach during what weeks and what parts of the curriculum they will use to do so effectively then we have our team twice weekly plannings at STS in every Tuesday during their planning periods our teachers meet to talk about Ela and every Thursday they meet to talk about math and what they do is they look at that mapping and pacing that they put together during that quarterly planning day and they decide the specifics what is instruction actually going to look like what type of assessment are we going to use to make sure students have mastered those Target skills and then they also analyze the data and make decisions about what type of enriching um and R teing is needed the third meeting in our cycle we call our endof day PLC meeting at this meeting we really differentiate to meet the needs of our individual teams the content of these meetings reflects what our teams have communicated to Lori and I and our coaches they need more support in to do this work as best as possible when Lori and I came to ston as the administrative team at the beginning of 2324 ston was a low performing school we were 3/10 of a point from being an improvement school that's designated by the state of Colorado morale was low after one year of PLC we're very happy to report steton is now a school of Distinction according to our school performance framework we are the highest performing Elementary School in District 49 morale is high our parent survey results just rolled in overwhelmingly we are up parent approval of ston has improved significantly across their thoughts on our instruction our culture and even our physical School environment I had the opportunity at our zone partnership leadership meeting this week to talk to a cross-section of our staff and tell them a little bit about those results the response from staff was that they concurred with the parents and they weren't surprised because now they find Stetson a truly fantastic place for kids to learn and for them to be educational professionals thank you I want to thank you because you opened your doors you let me come in we've been videotaping some of your PLC meetings your teachers have been great and um The Zone leaders are are going to be seeing all of that so um it's amazing work and it makes a difference and um thank you for allowing me to have Nina come this even any questions from the student board director Schmidt are do you share this with the other schools as well not yet but it's we're we're trying to you know find pockets of Excellence that we can then um let everyone see and you know I'm I'm I'm thinking about putting a PLC work group together for the district so that people can come together and learn from each other across zones good ideas director H yeah I remembered the ston hills performance when we discussed uh that data and so uh I was really excited to hear what you guys are doing specifically around plc's and I'm very much looking forward to having that model shared around with uh the rest of the the district so kudos to the leadership team you guys are doing amazing work and our students are getting a tremendous benefit director liia Wright I remember PC being bantered around about 16 or 17 years ago um Dr wer at the time was trying to bring it into Falcon High and the board at the time was not support of giving teachers any time whatsoever to do it and um but the then even once um there had been board philosophical change and there was an appetite for providing the time a huge piece of it is knowing how to use the time correctly um and well which also will look different at at different levels right like what a team is and how it functions and what kind of data you have and all of those things change as you move from elementary to secondary but it's also not something anyone comes in with their educational training knowing how to do so when we look at teachers and say well we built in a day of PLC time go um they're like okay but how do we do this what are the tools what are the best practices and having having you available and now having someone who's had an exemplary opportunity to imp implement it in an elementary school and now looking for okay and how do we tweak that for middle and high and how do we train our teachers how to do it how do we train our ad ators to support it so that they can make effective use of that time is huge we can't just give them the time we also have to provide them with the tools for how to use it effectively because if we provide them the tools rather than just selling them figure it out that's when we see these kinds of results so I really appreciate the work you're doing to help make it meaningful um and make it beneficial for our students and for our staff welcome director devala um uh I know as an instruct instructional coach how valuable it is to get a group of people together to collaborate to data dive to come up with ideas um problem solve really just Hash Hash that out um it not only does it help the students it builds the morale of the teachers because they have they can build ideas off of each other well have you tried this are you on this like it's it's it's a work of art um you can do oneon-one all that you want like I I'm I'm an instructional so I can do oneon-one all I want but if I can get a whole team around with me you could see the whole team take flight and lift off and it benefit the students dramatically so plc's I am 100% in support of having having those even at the high school level because that it's really needed at the high school level and I know those High School teachers sometimes don't want to share their best practices with others but um it is beneficial for them to be able to collaborate and to talk I would say the high school teachers would love to have people to have best practice shares with but unfortunately are also often in a silo um when I was a physics teacher I was the only physics teacher um I was one of two chemistry teachers and we collaborated a heck of a lot together but it was just the two of us um so looking at how we look at those things in high school is also different because we don't um we're subject matter experts but there are other things that maybe PLC can be used in differently um yeah but we loved sharing we shared all summer every summer Mr Smith and I for three years but it was all about um it's about we often our art teachers will complain they're the only one in the building our band teacher is the only one in the building and so it's said well go meet with your your department and your team well the band teacher is doing something very different than the 2D art teacher um and so they might be able to support each other in terms of classroom management but in terms of content and that that becomes much more difficult and we have to be more creative and the training is going to address all of that um looking at Singletons at the high school level um there's still a place for everyone to participate and looking at more of a common challenge that teachers that you know are by themselves come together to figure out what that common challenge is and work on that in maybe eight to nine week Cycles I think this really speaks to the value of collaboration listening brainstorming and letting the cream rise to the top of course when you put somebody named Lori in jar that kind but no I'm sorry I couldn't resist that but no I just wanted to thank you for everything you've presented tonight and I'm so excited for STS in elementary I know Dustin will probably take credit for it but we know it happened at the school okay so it's just amazing turn around really Dynamic leadership yeah all right thank you very much next we have item 9.5 Patriot Middle School good evening again um planette were we able to get the um presentation attached oh great there it is I learned not to mess with this last time can so I'm even though I am listed on the uh board agenda I am actually just up here to say that Mr Bailey principal of Patriot High School will actually be presenting this because he is the one who is very much leading the efforts of expanding the grades to 612 and doing so very effectively so I'm gonna just hand it over to Mr Bailey all right I already got an Applause thank you um well first of all thank you for all the Kudos I'll make sure to pass that on to Chef Eric and Hunter and we're glad you're able to join us um just a little bit about Patriot High School um just a reminder we currently serve 9th through 12th graders um students apply and go through a process to become a Patriot High School bison currently our maximum class size of 18 18 we have a Monday through Thursday daily schedule and a slightly different Friday schedule where kids are doing some pretty cool things um we've got kids going all over the um all over the county tomorrow um we have our two districtwide CTE programs both construction and culinary uh this was the last year or last year was the last year that we were an alternative education campus or an aec so we are now a tradition on a Traditional School framework um starting this school year and we were one of the seven schools to hit distinction last year on that aec um framework thank you um so why in middle school so January of last year um superintendent Peter hiltz put together an uh eth grade exit standard Summit um focused is that good it's great excellent um just focusing on on how can we help students be successfully transitioning from 8th grade to nth grade more or less awesome um lots of people that were involved in that middle school high school community members and one of the things that came out of that is that there is a need in our district for another option for middle school and uh Patriot High School was one of the places that we felt like would be appropriate um fit for that so we put together an internal task force and I have a couple people here U Miss Binkley Jones our math teacher and Mr Gray Cox our dean of students who are on that internal task force we have been meeting for uh weekly um since since September we also put together a rather large external task force that met monthly this includes representatives from each of the current middle schools as well as um director Schmidt um and superintendent and lots of other people that are kind of giving us insight into what our community needs as we're designing this new middle scho school um our internal task force I challenge them to just uh take away any other barriers that we think of in terms of school let's start fresh with um all sorts of ideas and so what has come out of that is we would be adding sixth through eth grade starting next year with that um we thought it would be beneficial to focus on the developmental stages of the students and so we'll have sixth and seventh graders um in one area and their direct instruction um the programming the structure will all be different than what's for our eth and ninth graders who would be in one area of the building and their um instruction and programming and routine would be different than our 10th through 12th um generally it's going to serve the same purpose and the same model as our um current um Patriot High School small class sizes um 100% instruction inperson instruction five days a week continuing to glean from our our network of big picture learning that we've been uh working with um we would continue to be a non-traditional District coordinated school not alternative education campus not a tter um and who's the demographic that we're serving is just students who struggle in a traditional setting whatever that may be um as well as students who are really wanting to move into that CTE pathway we're going to continue to um add more and more CT programs to our campus so here's just a little bit um of what it would look like at each at each level so that sixth and seventh grade we really going to focus on the students transitioning out of elementary school where they've had one teacher um for their entire time and as we transition instead of going from one teacher to seven or eight teachers like a traditional Middle School in that sixth and seventh grade maybe have two to three transitions each day for the students High structure High support um lots of focus on the behavior social and emotional needs when I talked to kids the other day at Patriot I said what do sixth and seventh graders need what's different for them and they said they just have a lot of energy they need to have like mandatory outside time I said like recess said yeah yeah recess um so uh obviously different Focus than the eth nth graders um really focusing on community um lunchtime together and and then a lot of parent classes um I think as we get into the higher grades parents are less likely to take in support and advice um from us our Educators but as coming in as sixth and seventh grade we would probably have some mandatory required parenting classes just on how can you support your child as a transition into Middle School um and a variety of things there in the eth and nth grade grade our Comm our external task force really focused on autonomy on Independence um students starting to really get their interest and find who they are and that's what our students need and so we're going to direct a lot of our programming in eth and nth grade to give a lot of that Independence that autonomy those leadership opportunities um with our sixth and seventh graders opportunities to to see what it looks like to be in the big high school um to have opportunities to be in some of those classes as they're ready um focusing on CTE and then really trying to focus on Competency Based on kids having to have a certain level of um skills both academic Behavior social emotional before they're ready to transition into that 10th through 12th grade and so this model looks like maybe we have a nth grader who at seme at the end of their first semester has demonstrated those skills and they're ready to jump into that 10th and 12th environment where there's a lot more autonomy and freedom and they can transition and that would be a big deal we'd celebrate that and there may be some kids who aren't ready just because they're sophomore and they may need a little extra time to demonstrate those competencies um before they transition and so uh probably every quarter would be an opportunity to transition and so just providing that opportunity for kids to to move when they're ready eth and nth graders are probably our most biggest difference in students developmental skills and levels and letting them transition when they're ready finally at our 10th to 12th grade we're going to continue our focus on postsecondary preparedness job Shadows internships student driven projects and learning um our hope is that within the next year or two we will become a CTE designated site which means that we have at least four CTE programs at least 80% of our students are involved in a CTE program and we have an administrator with a CTE director's license and so that is our hope and we're exploring lots of different opportunities to continue to offer both internal CTE opportunities for Patriot specific students but also um districtwide CTE opportunities so what's the timeline it's a pretty quick one um we're going to advertise to our community um starting next month about what this middle school has to offer um our hope is that we can um have enrollment open in January so that we have students enrolled so that we can then post and hire positions in February at the prime Market um as you can imagine Middle School teachers are uh Unique Individuals they're very hard to find and ones that are that are going to be able to support our school in the way we want are going to be very specific and so we want to have that Prime opportunity to um hire those student or those uh staff members uh and then once we get the staff together then this internal task force will kind of go away and that new staff will begin to develop a lot of the details of um of the program with um our hopes to open the program in August or July August so budget all this cost money um our proposed Staffing and this is all pending enrollment would be that we' be able to have an assistant principal uh about four Middle School teachers one electives teacher that would serve the whole campus one special education teacher our external task force has said we're going to need a lot of support for special education mental health um a little different uh at Middle School level especially as students who are struggling than at the high school so we need to make sure we've built in that support uh we need an intendent secretary just to help run that building and then special education parah I do want to point out that there are a lot of positions that because we already have a campus with already staff already that we don't have to add on or hire because they already exist in our building so PE and art teachers all our CTE teachers are choice and success advisors counseling uh security all of those areas we already have on campus we will not need to hire more we'll be able to provide support with those um positions and so we're here here today just uh inform you and uh get your feedback and would love to entertain any questions you have student board I definitely think that this is really interesting I'm definitely familiar with alternative middle schools being in the same building as one and I like this model as well it's definitely different than our spring Studio Middle School model but as I mentioned earlier our district is very diverse in the way that we run our schools and I think that that's honestly one of the key things of this district is the capability as a parent to go into our district and be able to really fit the needs of whatever student or parent may be wanting to be a part of us and this is is really interesting because it continues to expand the capabilities of the district to support many different types of people so I really like this awesome thank you yeah I agree this is also a cool idea and as I said before not like a sit at a desk and learn for like a hour straight type of person and a lot of kids aren't so I think this is really cool and I especially like the emphasis of transitioning them like slowly into high school um when you say like transition when ready and like evaluate quarterly what do you mean by that we're still kind of figuring that out but we would identify competencies to say this is what students need to do be able to do academically behaviorally socially emotionally um before they can transition into like our big high school and so when um at the quarter is when we accept new students and so at the end of each quarter we would we could re-evaluate students and see where they're at and if they've met those competencies then that would be the the time that we could transition almost like a graduation where they transition from the smaller building into the bigger building um and that would then then they'd be starting to take classes um with those 10th through 12th graders um and have a lot of those freedoms simple things like off-campus privileges um different slightly different um electronic device um policies stuff like that director Schmidt I'm very very excited about this I really am this is pretty cool um my granddaughter I was talking to her about it she's going to that one at wson high school I forget the name of it I just know it was at wson high school and she's gonna go to that that's a perfect place for her because she needs that non-traditional but she's smart as a whip so she'll find her spot right there um she suggested a child development course so that's just throwing it out there for you so love it awesome add it to the list thank you yeah this is cool I'm I'm really excited thank you director H so the bad news I have for you is that the turkey coma has already worn off and so this is going to have to stand on its own merits but with that said there's this has a lot of of Merit to it um one question I had uh when I'm looking at the the budget impact I don't see anything for um uh like facilities so this is going to be utilizing existing um building capacity that you have right now that's a great question yes um what we believe we can currently serve is probably up to 90 students with with the facilities that we currently have um and there's some other things coming down the road with that as well okay and then the other question I had and this one seems really interesting because I know you guys are moving on from the a aec designation but I look at the demographics you intend to serve and it seems like an aec population so um I would think that you would prefer to continue to be evaluated as an aec because that um you know it's much easier to achieve distinction and if that's appropriate for your population so I'm just curious how you're navigating that and what's what the impetus is for making that change yeah part part of it was that we were looking at um raising our expectations in our building and um the alter AC standards are slightly different and we wanted to say you know what we still we believe we can perform well at a traditional um performance framework um superintendent H do you want to add anything to that so an additional um consideration is that uh in years when we want to pursue a request to reconsideration process from CDE we would be required for all of our aec campuses so in this in this current cycle that means both Patriot and go both have to be at performance and so that doubles our exposure to the possibility that one of those schools might have an off year which would limit our ability to to request the reconsideration process but really the larger purposes we want to reposition Patriot with less of an alternative focus and more of an applied focus and so we think this is the right constructive positive direction um and while we do intend to continue to serve students for whom a traditional setting is not ideal um it it actually removes some administrative burden that we don't have to manage uh tracking all of the adverse conditions that that allow students to help us qualify for a status um nor do we have to develop alternative measures under the AC framework uh it's just a cleaner look at the kind of school that we we hope to operate uh as a patriot Secondary School well I certainly appreciate setting high standards and high goals and I you know wish you well and look forward to supporting you in any way that we can awesome thank you director Liv you're right so I remember the day when Patriot was a 10 through 12 school way back when it was like okay um our students who had basically completely bombed ninth grade and our three traditionals were then um encouraged to head to Patriot to get support and then it expanded and shifted to a 9 through 12 and we've increased the CTE and that CTE piece has become huge so it's great to see this growth couple of things I like about this first I think being able to um Target students for whom this could be a better fit in sixth grade instead of ninth or 10th grade is going to make it much more highly likely that they're going to have that academic achievement soon um a lot of kids struggle with that you know when when I have a a young man I'm working with right now who recently finished some programming at Patriot and when I talk with him about his school experience he talks about Middle School being where he hit the the wall first I have two children who will be too old for this but had this option I have one who went to Spring studio and that was the right fit for him and I couldn't find the right fit for two of my other kids for whom this would have been phenomenal not having to go to eight teachers having only two or three that had to learn about them and for them to be able to learn about would have completely changed their six through 12 educational experience so I'm really excited to see that I'm excited to see that you're also already anticipating that some of these students for whom this could be an amazing environment May in fact really need some more special education support support um my son who's ASD that's a you know that would be a huge piece for him that's part of why a smaller environment with fewer people to interact with would have been amazing um you mentioned that you're looking at hoping to go to a CTA CTE designation with four programs so you have culinary and construction now what are you looking at adding for your program three and four have you explored that yet yes we have and we actually have three and four right now um we have Ace which is alternative Cooperative education and that's a class that FOC or a pathway that just focuses on preparing students for post-secondary um so it's uh resume building internship uh um interviews uh all those basic skills and then ends with an internship usually um so that one's one that we added and we just added multimedia graphic design as well so those are two internal Patriot specific um we wouldn't serve those to um students outside the district kind of what we're thinking about is the one or outside of our school the school the the the programs that require a lot of um building of things construction of things um that would be hard to offer in multiple schools those are the types of programs we're looking to host on our campus we've thrown around the idea of a diesel program with our um brand new um Transportation Center um we've thrown around the idea of a heavy machinery um option actually on Monday we have a um a heavy uh Machinery simulator company that's coming on campus so the kids are going to get to spend five minutes on the simulator where they could it's actually designed to where you can be fully trained on the heavy machinery um without ever getting on the the um piece of Machinery um we've looked at a horiculture um there's a couple other ones that have been oh we've looked at uh what is it one that Sean Norman is the building the concrete prefab concrete walls I don't know there's some cool things out there oh and Dr Gutierrez would like to add I would just like to to add that the ace teacher Jennifer Smith is amazing she's absolutely fabulous and she is working very closely to be able to provide internships and eventually full-time jobs um for students at the Target over at Prominent Point so um she's working really closely there with the management and we're going to make that happen director DEA I'm I am definitely for this uh this school and the the reprogramming that you're doing for it for sixth through 12th grade um that's a huge group of students that really need that targeted um instruction so I really appreciate that and so yeah I'm in full support thank you you know it's so neat to see things come to fruition because I know that um superintendent and I have had discussions about the downfalls of having two aecs and how that impacts the district but if you go back 16 17 years ago that was a really sad campus okay we did not have zones we didn't have zones of Distinction we didn't have director districts we didn't have Peter um and that campus is where they first did a run at an online school for kids who didn't fit in well always with with a traditional high school and my my son was a student there briefly because online wasn't the right fit for him but to watch how that campus has changed and to watch how the district has changed since then has really been amazing and of course my first question was will the culinary program stay and I think a lot of people thought that way because it's just so extraordinary so I want to thank you for all the hard work and I like the idea of setting high expectations and seeing going to happen next so awesome thank you very much appreciate all your time and if there are no objections this will be mov moved forward for Action at the December regular meeting next we have people who have done Yan's work this past week our Communications Department performance report and Dave before you start I just want to say one thing um you do such a great job with communicating with families um earlier this week we had a report of a possible gunman near a couple of our schools and uh it turned out to be a false report but the way the comms team the security team cspd the way everyone came together to protect our students I just want to commend you again for doing a great job with keeping people informed means a great deal thank you very much it's it's a Tre tremendous collaborative effort that we've built over the over the years uh even prior to my arrival at District 49 the collaboration between the Safety and Security team and our law enforcement partners and our school leaders really turning this into a process that uh that really helps us get good information um in a timely manner uh to our families and to our staffs um and we continue to work on that uh every time that we have an opportunity to so thank you very much I think a 20 minute turnaround is pretty good to get the updated information and then of course to verify the update and get it out thank you thank you my pleasure so um speaking on behalf of my team and others in the room there's a lot to clean up tonight so I will move quickly through our presentation um uh flying through uh wanted to share with you um our traditional metrics and and uh once again this is an opportunity for me to explain uh our the Communications office approach um to the way that we uh help understand our community understand what happens at District 49 and why we're the best choice to learn work and lead and we do that um through an approach of show not tell um through storytelling which is why you see the metrics that you see here and that we continue to value and track as a Communications team and so we are constantly looking uh at ways to Enterprise new stories we're also in collaboration with um our campuses um both our Charter campuses as well as our operated campuses to really connect and learn uh what is exciting what is going on what do each of our camp campuses do to distinguish themselves so that we can then turn around and tell that story um as communication professionals Professionals in collaboration um across the district and so we talk about stories told we talk about um fulfilling our Communications and promotions uh plans in a timely manner um we have a commitment that we uh that we have established ourselves as a team that we then extend um to our internal customers and then we're also looking at um maintaining a balance we want to make sure um that no one's being left out we want we there is Excellence all across the district when you look across the landscape and we want to make sure that everybody is getting um their voice uh to the table um and so while you see the numbers here uh we this is a this is a snapshot of of the overall storytelling effort that we do um because we're also sharing a great deal of content that's being created um by our schools by our departments um which really gives us another opportunity to amplify that through the channels that we maintain as a team um I kind of like to call these uh uh vanity metrics um these are some traditional metrics that the the 49 comm's team has been looking at over the years uh in the Advent of uh social media and where we land in terms of the uh the engagement and the level of saturation across uh our region I'm happy to to say that for those who engage in Facebook we are uh uh the the top uh among the top three districts in um in southern color Colorado or at least uh in the Colorado Springs area um we are we are lagging behind a little bit on Instagram but uh we continue to climb um every month as we take a look at those metrics uh in the works right now um last time that we talked I was uh talking about um building out the team well that process has concluded and in the slide that you're seeing before you I can kind of do a quick introduction of our team um Kristen soosi is over here um she's new uh she started in January of uh this year here we have Cayla Maldonado she's new new um she's our internal Communications manager we have Rebecca Levy who is our compliance and customer service specialist she's new new new um and then we have Greg Mueller uh over here who I'm happy to introduce tonight um he is a broadcast media specialist um times two so our our video we've uh We've expanded our video team to another person another instance of that particular job he is new new new new so um at any rate um what I but I'd like to talk a little bit about um about my team and I've had the pleasure uh over um the past few months over the past year um and challenge to kind of move through transition uh from uh having a a team of folks who have been here for quite a while who know the district very well um have taken other opportunities um Amy Bremer I'm happy to say is a part of the uh the campus right here as an instructor we were stared to uh see her go but we're glad that she landed back here in d49 um but when I look at the team that we have assembled um I really do feel uh deeply that this is a team of MVPs and when I talk about that the point I'm trying to make is um in the Denver Nuggets uh run to the championship that didn't quite go their way last season mil uh Joker The Joker said something like well if we could just clone the MVP then then we'd be fine and we'd probably win a champion Championship no problem um I would love to be able to clone my team so that all of the daily things that we that we do all of the monthly things that we do will continue to happen but I can also learn from these folks uh really Source their industry expertise that they now have brought to District 49 as a part of the communications team we are on the cusp of a very exciting time for the Communications office because we have these new voices these new talents coming on board to share um with me and with the district uh their strengths and their skills and so it's very exciting to have this team completed we're going to continue our transition we're going to we're going to form we're going to storm we're going to Norm um but we're going to do a lot of great things uh moving forward as a team so I'm I'm just I'm thrilled to have everybody on board um quickly in progress um podcast season 3 excited to to be working with superintendent Peter hiltz on this one this is really going to kind of capture our story story as to a district uh credited with distinction as we feature our seven campuses um within District 49 who have achieved that um we're going to let them tell their story and share that with us in the form of a long form podcast episodes that we're working on currently now um what's interesting about this is that we have so many packed into such a short amount of time actually feel like a podcast producer actually where they gather all the things produce all the things and then they drop all the things and so we are we are in a very cool um time if I may say in terms of sharing those stories in that medium and uh be looking forward for those to be coming out here in the coming weeks uh website support is we have transitioned from Blackboard to final site um we are answering questions we are working oneon-one um with our schools and campuses where they need some help to understand um the new configurations how things kind of work the look is overall the same but there are some different functionalities um that we're that we're kind of helping through uh ADA compliance is important because there's both a federal expectation and now a state expectation that all electronic communications from organizations like school districts are in that ADA compliance U standards um so it talks about accessibility it talks about compliance it talks about um getting everybody uh have the ability to to access the information that we are providing out there um showcase Board of Education meeting school year 2425 huge thanks uh Nathan persa uh uh ver Gutierrez Amanda PTO Bill Pierce Rochelle Koh house uh Kendall um everybody who helped make tonight happen from the campus side of things you guys tremendous definitely appreciate your grace your your enthusiasm for getting us out the gate um and from just just just sort of an aesthetic perspective you guys are looking great like this this is a this is a great looking Arrangement and configuration so in colorful environment here at the campus it's been a real thrill to be here with you all tonight um the employee of the year event is is um going to be coming up in the works here very soon uh the spra school Public Relation award season is coming up both at the state and The Inter National level we'll be looking at things um from the comms team to submit and hopefully report back that we will bring home some recognition from both of those organizations and Discovery 49 the magazine issue 8 the spring edition we will have our first content meeting coming up next month when we discuss um next Spring's Edition so uh questions what may I answer for you student board yeah I just I think that media production is is cool media production the advertisement of things doing stuff behind the scenes podcasts all that fun stuff but I know that there are other students as well in our district so we're also very interested in that do you have any intent of ever going out from school to school doing any kind of work with students because I I definitely know people not just at the campus but across the district who would be interested in something like that yeah I I think where the opportunities would present themselves we would be interested in doing that uh we have a process that we call the com check-in which is where members of our team go to Every uh campus on a consistent basis to ask the leadership there uh how can we support our schools how can we tell their stories how can we promote them and I'm this is the type of idea that I think could be a discussion Point um in any of our schools so I think we're always open to that opportunity very nice director Schmidt I had some email questions for you but I see you were kind of a little bit busy here so I'm looking forward to hearing from you when you get a chance thank you and I think we're gonna I'm G to need some clarification um on some of those questions I I had a chance to glance at them um little bit not sure exactly how to specifically answer those so we'll get we'll get together and and try to get those questions answered director Hy so I would like to draw the attention of the audience to the table to my right and the sheer number of cables that you can see dangling from there and by the way these these black and yellow things are Cable Management uh items there which are each holding probably a dozen or more cables themselves and so I just want to point out that moving our board meetings from our permanent location to this location is a huge technological uh accomplishment as evidenced by the complexity of uh just the cables so um a lot of work um really appreciate your support uh and the team pulled it off uh did beautifully we had a minor glitch with the microphones that was resolved very very quickly and for for the number of technologies that we were employing in here to to have just that one minor glitch resolve very quickly the first time we ever doing this um big job well done thank you very much provisional member of the team is Kevin Ro uh over from Creekside who drove from his home not once but twice tonight um and said hey why don't we use that speaker right there that'll get it sure enough we're back in business so thank you very much director Olivia Wright I'm I'm thrilled that we continue to make the investment in this um it's been a long time watching it slowly grow from I think one person now to a team of five and sometimes people will point out the budget piece but people don't there's no way our community can know what's happening if we don't have a way to communicate it and even just looking at things like core requesting all comes through your office media inquiries all come through your office and then making sure that our community knows all of the amazing things that are happening can only have happen if we have someone on top of it to be able to do it so I appreciate the work of your team it's been wonderful to make sure that that Magazine's going out um four times a year there's a Community member who's always in my ear um because she's also volunteers at PTA and she's in the Falcon middle school right now as a sub I think Jennifer Johnson from way back in the day every time it's like well what are you doing to reach out to my neighbors and I'm like did you get your magazine they send it to your mailbox four times a year so I guarantee you you're they're no longer getting something only when we ask for money um and reaching that demographic is hard because they're not necessarily as accessing social media in the same ways and even if you are unless you're following something it doesn't stay in your feed very long so being able to also still use print media and understanding the value of that is important and um it's great to see that our um broadcast media is expanding too as we also start developing the programs in the schools so um when it was asked well hey what about partnering and reaching out to some of the student groups I know the Falcon zone now has a broadcast program that goes from the Middle School into the high school spring studi is now starting their broadcast program um as that interest starts building those could be some great opportunities for internships as well within the district to use those kids to help tell some of the stories too Mr MIRS has really done a great job there at Falcon Middle School of getting that program up and going and keeping the interest rolling into the high school they have some really talented students who are participating that on a daily basis so a new generation the next generation of of media experts are coming up uh another quick note I would say thank you on the on the magazine we're excited that um this is this is the second edition that is coming out now that we've also did a li a limited run in Spanish we've just finished that translation um and with the help of Grant G and his team we uh have have found a way to Target our audience um both that's within the district and then some other partners so where we can distribute the the the Spanish version of the magazine as well to expand the reach from from that aspect director devola I just want to say thank you you've done an incredible job you and your team and um building up your two new team members and and really taking the charge on that so um I always love to get my magazine and look through it so I'm um really thrilled that you are a part of our district thank you thank you very much I do remember when we first brought up the idea of moving some of our meetings to different zones and you had a distinct deer in the headlight look and uh your face did did say words that we typically don't use in in public well we've done it we pulled it off you guys did a great job and I thank you and I really hope the community will come to Value the traveling meetings and that this equipment can be utilized in other places and so we're going to have to rename Kevin the fixer yeah the wolf something yeah we'll have to come up with a good nickname for him yeah so I just really wanted to thank you for everything you did and and uh I know it's going to be late night for you so thank you very much well I mean thank you this is this is a an adjustment for you all as well um trying things out and having the grace to roll with live TV and it's not always pretty but you know what guys I was watching the live stream as we were uh proceeding through the meeting and things are looking really good so um for a for a first swing um I I I think it was a pretty pretty successful event thank you well if you guys can make us look good that's miraculous thank you okay then just a personal note if you think your vote doesn't matter sometimes if you think oh why bother with this you know um tonight my friend Rebecca Kelty won her Race by seven votes and oddly enough she defeated one of the original sponsors of the non name change yeah and so seven votes made the difference for people who got out and participated in the Democratic process okay we are on to do we have any uh miscellaneous items as a matter of fact we do have a miscellaneous item will you all join me in singing happy birthday to our board president happy birthday to you thank you very much and it's kind of funny because it looks like someone couldn't wait because they cut a slice but I hope you guys will join me for this delicious looking choc cake okay and this meeting is adjourned at 9:46 p.m.