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two be e e ladies and gentlemen welcome to the February 26 2025 Board of Education special meeting the time is 6:33 p.m. and I am calling this meeting to order
can I get a roll call dalala here hyle here l r here Schmidt here Thompson here welcome everyone and please join us in the Pledge of Allegiance I flag United States
of indivis can I get a motion to approve the agenda I move to approve the agenda second any discussion can I get a motion for action item 4.1 point of order we need to vote on
approving the agenda can I get a vote please dalala i h i leier r i Schmidt I Thompson I and that motion passes can I get a motion for action item
4.1 I move to approve the proposed 2526 and preliminary 2627 District calendar second any discussion can I get a vote zala Hi H hi leier right I Schmidt
I Thompson I that motion passes and the special meeting is adjourned and we will jump right into our work session the time is 6:35 p.m. and first up we have the math
performance update star good evening members of the board I'm Christina tiin the coordinator of math performance um I'm excited to be here tonight as always um and so what we're going to talk about tonight is
Star Performance um our midyear data um we're also going to talk a little bit about closing out one of our grants um our mission DNA Grant we'll talk about um uh two different things proficiency and growth and so the first thing that
we're going to look at is star maath proficiency um and on the left hand side of our graph on the vertical axis we have our proficiency rate this is in percentages um and this is telling us the top two
proficiency proficiency bands which are our meets and exceeds um and when we're looking at this um this is really an acquisition of who uh the acquisition of Colorado academic standards who of our students
who have met those it also forecasts for us um Cass where our students are going to perform on CS as we look at this data over time uh our
41.4% proficiency rate is is the highest rate that we have had since the star math um has been implemented the next uh slide that we are looking at is proficiency r but this time it's broken out by grade levels um
we can see that there is a drop in fourth grade but then again in seventh grade um and we are well aware that this um Middle School Drop um can have some lifelong implications um that's why when we
started to write um the math grant that we were awarded this fall um we were definitely on target with thinking about um math for um 3 through 12 um when we think about the math that we see right
here in seventh grade our math team wants to make sure that this is does not become a trend and that we are feeding the roots uh for our students um that have any type of Unfinished learning and what does that look like and they're in
classrooms coaching and supporting teachers on a regular basis the next slide that we're looking at is um we're talking about closing out a fiveyear grant um that is going to happen this year um and so we're looking
at our military connected K through five um one of the lines the blue line is uh we're still looking at proficiency rate here um we're looking at fall to winter one is that when we first um implemented
the grant or was awarded the Grant in 2122 and then now as we're closing out the Grant in 2425 the great goal was that students would increase um their star performance 3%
year-over-year as you can see um based upon these points that we have increased um that 3% but when I look at that 50 % coming back in the fall what that does
say to me is at our K through five they didn't have a summer slump that is a huge celebration and um that is telling us that our mission DNA in place is working um part of the job as the math
team is to um continue to think about and work on sustainability on the next slide we're going to start talking about growth and um so what we do as a math team is we start we're tracking data all the time
what a surprise and so we are looking at we had for um cohort 2 and three cohort 2 was part of the original Grant and then desire mag our uh project manager added on um cohort 3 because we had such
an enormous interest in the Grant and so with cohort 2 and 3 we had approximately 110 um coaches teachers and leaders involved you'll see that those numbers don't necessarily add up to
110 that's because um we're not tracking growth for our kindergarten here um and we had to pull out our leaders and coaches as they're not necessarily tied to classrooms when we're looking at our typical 35 to 65% in growth I do want to
see that 27 out of the 53 teachers that were in um cohort 2 and three they had 50% or greater growth um as we were looking at that for midyear and so I'm going to always try
to talk about our math impact efforts um we are as you know a new math team um we're finishing out our first year together and and so January 31st um Viola Lee our math one of our math
coaches ran a um nctm mini math conference and that was she asked our teachers that we brought to nctm in the fall to run um just many sessions about uh takeaways and what they learned we were hoping to get 20 people we were
competing with puppy yoga and so we had aund people show up to our um math mini math sessions and the feedback that we got was incredible as we start to move on um
we're still working with um with our new Grant uh we're just a few months in we've been training already flying professors out we have some here today um and tomorrow some of the best mathematicians in the United States they're they're working on vertical
articulation uh with our 6 through 12 teachers we had a great day today um and just last uh last month I think it was or at the beginning of the month forgive me um we had a member of CDE um come down and take a look and kind of see
what what we had going on here because they've heard about it we've established a big relationship with them and uh they want to continue to support us and and kind of have a pulse on what's going on here um in our district I'm just going to keep on moving because I I'm afraid
I'm way over my time um we're still working on the usafa um tutoring the United States Air Force Academy cadetes partnering with them we are struggling to have students um show
up um at the tutoring um yesterday and Monday we went classroom to classroom uh for periods one and period two uh at vist Ridge High School and at San Creek High School begging students to um come to this free tutoring um and when I ran
it last night it was just myself and the cadets um so we're going to keep on plugging away um they do the cadets I asked them if they wanted to um give up they don't um they W they are eager to
help um they want to be a part of um supporting our math math efforts here in District 49 and I I I couldn't um say enough great things about them um as we look to the last part of our Ro
well some of the last parts of our road the math team we are running a spring break camp for sixth through nth graders we have almost 40 students um that will be attending that and then we're going to be running a fourth and fifth and um
at three different locations and then we'll be running a 6 through n camp as well um um and Desiree mag our project manager is working very hard to close out uh Mission DNA 1.0 we started with $1.5
million um and so that budget needs to be down to zero or one penny here in closeout year thank you you're actually ahead of schedule I oh um math whz using good use of the
T So are there any questions about the math presentation director Schmidt I don't really have any questions I'm just really glad to see these um summer camps because I know it made a really big difference with the reading so that's a
good thing to see and thank those Air Force Academy guys yes and girls yes thanks director h uh so I and forgive me for not having sent this in um ahead of time because uh
and feel free to tell me that you're just not sure at the moment um I didn't notice it the first time I I looked through this but on the uh star math what I noticed um if you go to page two um what I noticed was a really
interesting pattern when you break it down for school year where we've got a starting point and then it goes way up in Winter and then it comes back down down again in Spring and then that pattern continues for each of the school years do we have any understanding of
why that is so I can tell you why I think that potentially can happen um I if I take third grade as an example um they are finishing up uh Cass testing around the springtime and um Cass
testing for 9-year-olds is about three hours long um and so then to have them test on top of that for STAR testing um one thing uh sir could be testing fatigue right um and so that is just one
um there's many things uh testing conditions uh did they eat breakfast there's all different kinds of factors that potentially could contribute but normally when we see this and we can see this in other testing systems as well um
with a dip in the spring um I often as a former high school and middle school teacher would contribute it to kind of spring fever um and if you have ever taught seniors that have already been accepted to college well that's a whole
another story thank you um and I had one other question let me pull up my note um so I'm really excited to hear about the Air Force Cadets and their willingness to help out our students and you know
disappointed to hear that we're not having um students take advantage of it is the major challenge scheduling because I'm hearing that students are willing to come in for um the the spring camps so one of the challenges that um
again this is um tyrin beliefs right so um one of the things is that we tried to schedule it at a time and I uh all of my children are grown so I I asked several people what would be a good time but
then I also um had to take into uh consideration what time the cadets are available they are some of the busiest college students around right um and so uh just working with them and figuring out a good time uh when students might
be done with their band practice or their track practice and they could potentially eat while they are getting help um we do know that high impact tutoring uh is really has um incredible
results and that is when tutors are in and flooding the classrooms so we have students um during the day and we're not asking them to come back at night now we're not giving up um this relationship
that we have established with uh usafa and sometimes the professor one of the math department heads he also will join and try to support um so it it is I C I don't know why students are not not
coming to um I don't know well I certainly congratulate you for making the effort thank you thank you director liia Wright um just two quick things on that this the camps are targeting grades 4 through n basically
from what I see on the slide but the the tutoring program is high school only correct 9 through 12 so it's really a different group of students also um but I don't know if this is possible but I wonder if there's a way I know they
wouldn't be able to do this all the time if but if maybe at the beginning of the school year or at some point when the cadets have a little bit of time if there would be value in them coming to the school in person so the kids could meet them and see them and do something
relationally because then they may be oh yeah you know he was really cool and he's on this tutoring site so I'll log in and and talk to him I don't know if that would help with engagement um the other piece might also be um kind of mom
hat again sometimes coaches can have real impact on whether students choose to join things like this especially because it impacts eligibility when they're not doing well in class so I don't know if in addition
to just kind of going through I know at Falcon high it's on the high school the principal's email every week I notice Falcon High I know that they've had better attendance in the past but targeting athletic coaches and extracurricular coaches and saying kind of emphasizing that resource to them
they might even be willing to set up a hey this is mandatory you know mandatory our team anybody who's got you know below a c in math is going to be here as a coach requirement um I know some coaches have done that with other things
where they've required study groups um it might be a tactic just because we all you you know they they they would love for their students to do well academically but they also really need them eligible to play yes ma'am so thank you for those suggestions director
devola um I find it uh encouraging that you had a 100 person turnout so um against puppy yoga I just want to say that one more time that's great um so you I'm always impressed with what you've done to help us in in our
district and to really pinpoint and Target uh math and so thank you for your contributions to that uh I also wanted to touch base on um the slide that uh director H had mentioned um with the
star up and down data um would there be a way because you did mention like Cass Cass is usually in April is there a way to maybe do that testing a little bit earlier than the actual spring semester
um that might just just for that purpose of not having like testing fatigue right when see masses happening sure so um that the testing windows are something that is set by um Kathleen um granis and
her department but there's usually um a certain amount of instructional weeks that need to take place within each um testing window um but that is something that we have discussed in the past when should we test where should we test what
is the most appropriate where is so for those very um same reasons um that we're talking about test fatigue especially for the Litt um but it's definitely something um that we can Circle back and
talk to Kathleen about um she is in charge of um all of that and and um always open to collaboration may I ask a followup we know that star is a predictor of Cass sometimes it's an
optimistic predictor sometimes it's pessimistic IC yes sir of the two testing Cycles middle of year end of year which one seems to correlate more strongly to their camass performance oh so um well we really rely on um middle
of the year um when we are out and coaching I think I'm I think georgana might see the same thing because we are thinking kind of you're rounding um second heading to the third there's still a window of time to be able to um
move the needle if if the score has not landed where you wanted it to land if that makes sense you can still do something about middle of year yes sir so so a philosopher I like or I don't know commentator M said for every complex problem there's a a answer that
is simple clear and wrong and so here's my simple clear wrong answer to what you're showing us why don't we just stop doing spring testing on Star isn't that a great idea Kathleen I know you're listening he suggested it I
did not a as a math leader why is it still worth doing spring testing so I think that it it helps us with several things it helps us with placement for um especially when I'm
thinking about um algebra and algebra plac bement um and so that to me is something that I'm not ready to necessarily let go um we still don't h i
we're still hemorrhaging um at the ninth grade level and if this is one more um point in data that could help us support and put students where they need to be um and when I'm reflecting on last year
and um new schedules needed to be created at at least one high school that I can think of where they had to recreate and Shuffle kids midyear because so many students were not uh passing Algebra 1
and we don't want that to happen if this um could be an indicator if that alone um I would be for keeping this in place thank you and and I also want the board to know we're getting that star that spring star data we're getting it four
months three months before we get the Cass data so if we didn't do the spring testing we would have we would have a data desert for about six months and so it it is a weird it is a weird jigsaw and I I appreciate Mr H's pattern
recognition question um I just wanted the board to hear from our expert why we still are getting good valuable data out of that first of all I want to say thank you for everything you do you've really put your heart and soul into this and and uh I appreciate hearing it and I
have a kind of a Twist on the question I think the idea with the Air Force Academy Cadets is wonderful so I would actually like to hear from our student board they have rounded up Cadets from the Air Force Academy to do math tutoring with older students but they're
not getting the kids to come do you have any good ideas for what would be a good idea to get kids to come for this tutoring this tutoring is free and it usually ranges from $50 to $100 an
hour so Gilbert do you have any thoughts on what would be a good incentive to get older students to show up for free tutoring uh maybe come back to me just a little bit I'm thinking right now about that can I ask uh what time sorry I
missed the first little bit of the presentation but what time is tutoring often held at and is it at a specific location or is it like online so tutoring is on Tuesday nights um when school is in session um from 6:00 to 7
and it is through Google meet so in every high school classroom um there should be a um flyer with a uh QR code and students can just scan it and they'll be able to join that QR code
uh once they join myself or one of the other math coaches is there to greet them um figure out what they're working on and then we place them into a breakout room with um one Cadet um where
it is uh just onetoone tutoring uh thank you for uh informing me on that all of that I think I know it was mentioned earlier but with it being six to s I think I was told about this last year cuz do you guys also do like sat help and prep and things like that
or is that a separate thing we haven't thought about that um but I would we could put it on the list well I just know that from six to seven is usually when most high school students are working like I work at um I
work from 5 to 11 most nights on school nights and as you get later on throughout the like School uh years and things like that uh I feel like Juniors and seniors most typically are working those hours since it's the hours available um and I don't
know if it's possible but like after school tutoring I know at our school we hold it and we see High attendance levels throughout the school weeks even with sports and activities being in session uh just because purely they don't have something else that evening
if wa sorry wait they have something else that evening and in earlier times like at 3: or 4 it's more likely that they have the time available to spend at that if that makes sense thank you and then Gilbert I was thinking too
since you do some of your work online do you think having even a zoom option might be something that would be easier for a student to access for tutoring I think that could help for sure uh I think the biggest pause for me
is this is free tutoring correct at the end of school uh I have seen too many students okay with just to fail their class than to go out and get help than to actually learn I think one of the um few ways you could
potentially get them out is an incentive of some kind other than just the knowledge of getting better at math or um a getting some of the more popular people into it into your math class just
maybe not necessarily like Everyone likes them but just enough where they care about people and they're willing to bring them over so I think Gilbert brings up a good point in trying to find out students currency right um and so I'm talking to
San Creek um teachers today and um telling them that we didn't have any students uh come to tutoring last night and I my fear is that if they are unable
to um join a free tutoring session as a high school student um and they are only able to ask their High School teacher for help or someone in their building for help they're not going to be able to ask someone um at the higher ed level
outside of their Professor um and so that that's just my thoughts that I'm thinking I I'm thinking about currency all the time Gilbert so I appreciate you you bringing that up um we could think about bringing the cadets down here to meet kids I don't know what that field
trip might look like I love that idea but I I know I'm way over my time does the board have any other questions thank you so much thank you and next we have the primary literacy performance
report hello good evening good good to see you all again georganna raport coordin year of literacy performance um and I'm here to share with you a primary literacy update from the middle of year and just a quick review of our District 49 goal which is that 80% or more of our
K3 students are at or above grade level at the end of the year we've also built in kind of an alternate pathway keeping in mind that some students who are um well below need more than one year or um what Dr currs from Renaissance we call
one season of growth so we're thinking about seasons of growth so we've built in some alternate ways to kind of me measure the progress that we see um considering our options would be that 85% of our students are proficient um at the end of the year or that students
have 95% accuracy which is a really strong indicator that they are on the right path to those foundational reading skills or that they've moved out of that well below um mooved from the well below category and into theow into the below category so again just another way that
they're demonstrating growth so keeping that um goal in mind this is where we are at the middle of the year and this is um specifically our kindergarten through third grade data so we have 66% of our students scoring at or above and just a note last year at the end of the
year um we ended with 76% of our students in that at or above range and at this point in the middle of the Year 19% of our kindergarten through third grad students are in that well below category so we'll take a minute and quickly look at um each grade level
um and what we do have now since this is our second year with dibles 8 if you remember we transitioned from Acadian suring to dibles 8 at the beginning of last year um you'll notice that at this point we have we're acquiring more data so we compare can compare your over year
so at this point our kindergarteners always have exceptional growth um you can see that we have cut our students who are performing well below in half and doubled the number of students at least in kindergarten who um who are performing in that at and above range so again a huge shout out to our
kindergarten teachers who are managing so much I recently spent um some time supporting at Remington elementary school and I had got to sit in in Mrs Cook's classroom and all the things that those teachers are managing on a daily basis with kindergarteners from teaching
them social skills to um keeping them motivated and excited to learn with all their Wiggly bodies and managing to um show this um level of growth when kids come to school is is pretty remarkable so just a quick shout out to those kindergarten
teachers so moving on looking at our first grade data at this point in the year 64% of our first graders are scoring at and above um you'll notice from first grade and second grade that we are about in the same place this year
as as we were last year and so I'll talk about that a little more as I move through the slides um again kind of consistent here um at this point in the year 67% of our second graders are performing in that at and above
range um our third graders 70% are scoring that at and above range um and 18% are in that well- Bown range so this this is a slight improvement from last year to no in third grade we have less students than last year in that well below category and more students than
last year scoring in that at and above category and that's specific to third grade looking at fourth and fifth grade um are well below categories about the same as it was last time in fourth grade but we do have more students performing in that at and above range in fourth
grade and this since this is our second year with dibl 8 we're starting to have more conversations around um what this one data point means for us especially in fourth and fifth grade and what I mean by that is as you know these are composits so these scores are making up
a composite of subtests underneath that are giving us data and in fourth grade the one subtest that is weighted the most to get this composite is in um oral reading fluency and not the accuracy but
it's the number of correct words that students read in one minute and they get one passage so just keep in mind that is basically one point on a student that we are getting a lot of that has weighted a
tremendous amount in this data and so conversations that we've been starting to have are we really need to look at more of a body of data rather than just this one piece to consider how our students are doing please keep in mind that fluency is a very important indicator of reading comprehension and
that's why it is weighted so heavily and then looking at fifth grade um very similar um to last year we do have more improvement in our um both our categories well below and at and above in fifth grade from where we were last
year so thinking about growth this is growth as measured by our dibble's eth data the national Norm it's kind of hard to see on that slide is about 60% so you'll see that District 49 students have a higher percent percentage of students showing average or better
growth especially in kindergarten 1 second and third grade um fourth and fifth grade we are about at the national Norm we have very few students in sixth grade who take the assessment I think it's literally less than 10 but they do show up in that data that we get from
amplify so that's our growth data so that's definitely just a celebration of how much we're growing kids in especially in those those early grades so switching assessments here this is our are early literacy outcomes in kindergarten and first grade these
are proficiency rates from the fall um to the winter testing period um and again our kindergarten is showing exceptional growth in first grade as well that student growth percentile is the percent of students um at or above
the 35th student growth percentile just keep that in mind that's two categories combined and then here's our St early literacy comparison so this is comparing um time periods from Spring of last year to the fall of this year and then the winter of this year um so it's exciting
to see that at this point especially in kindergarten we're well above where we were at the end of the year last year um and about where we were at the end of the year um last year in first grade but still this is middle of your day these are this is an assessment student took
students took back in December so that's exciting this chart is reading so this is the assessment that students take in second through 11th some in 12th grade but I've um truncated this just so you can see second through fifth but again one of the trends I just want to point
out is especially in second and third grade that our winter 2425 data is well above our Spring end of the year data especially in second grade and third grade so I know we had a long just had a
long discussion about those um that slump at the end of the year but I think when you see something that's um that marketed especially in those two grades um it's something to take note of and celebrate so as I mentioned um kind of earlier and I just want to touch on
again so how are we discussing data with our principles and our coaches and our teachers and this year we have revised the structure in which we have conversations around data slightly and so I would just want to share a little bit of how that has looked we hold our primary literacy meetings at the
beginning of the year the middle of the year and the end of the year um every year three times a year to look at those three data points this year at the middle of the year um we held them at the Zone level so we met with um each of our district operated zones um the principes and literacy coaches attended
that meeting um obviously I attend our district literacy coach Yuki Rockwell attends um Lisa attends Peter usually attends Nancy attends um The Zone leaders all attend so um it's a really um great time for collaborative conversation around data
and here was the purpose that we set forth for these meetings um at the middle at at the middle of the year in January when we held them um and really I'm just going to jump to the to the underlying pieces is that our goal was that we Leverage The Power of the collective so we really are leaning on
one another to learn from one another that we're identifying a common challenge that's really rooted in data so data is the foundation of all our discussion we're seeking a common response so why a common response because that gives us more another point
to talk about collectively in a cycle of improvement to see what have we implemented is it working is it evidence-based and how can we leverage it further and then finally to have conversations around what we see in the data that's working and how can we share
that between schools so the outcome was just a very collaborative um conversation around data this is just showing you the body of data so again keeping in mind we're thinking out more of of a body of data than rather just
that dibles eth data keeping in mind that end goal would be by the end of third grade our students are not just proficient on dibles eight but they're also scoring um proficient on cmass which would be our ultimate goal that they are mastering those grade level standards um so this is kind of the body
of evidence that we looked at um leveraging an outstanding tool of educ climber to look at student level data and we're able to see all those points of data for one student and just having some really outstanding conversations about hey I noticed that this student was not proficient in dibles but they
were proficient in Star so what does that tell us and how can we learn from that and noticing you know what this student is absent a lot and that's impacting things how can we share that information with parents so this is just one of the common challenges that came out of those
Zone level meetings so how can we find a better balance between reading fluency and reading comprehension instruction using a body of evidence to increase student learning so we just spent time talking listening we synthesized it into one question and what this given to us
is a point of focus for myself and for Yuki our district um instructional coach to support any next steps with students with kind of a really focused lens on where we want to go so we always want to get to our response and our action planning so when we think about um
things that we're doing we're elevating effective practices setting some action steps for future implementation and then following up with um instructional coaching support and I just want to share these weren't included in the slides but some of the things specifically that um Yuki has been doing
to support our coaches um and all the things that our coaches have been doing to support teachers across the district and one of the things that I want to share that we've been thinking a lot about is that research really demonstrates that writing has a significant impact effect on reading fluency and comprehension and so I'm
going to quote from a research report that writing has a strong and consistent effect on improving students reading fluency so you would think that fluency a lot of people think fluency is oh let's just get doing some repeated reading there's so many other things that can contribute to reading fluency
and writing is one of them so um Yuki recently has developed some py and I had to chance to sit on it um at Remington when he did it but for third through fifth grade sharing a structure writing and discussion protocol that can be used
across content areas even in math we when the session that I sat in there was a match Suther was that was recognizing you know what I can use this protocol in math to get to get students talking and writing even in math um and then he's also created a video of instruction
modeling how to increase the amount of repetitions student get students get to respond in a quick five five to eight I think the video was five minutes and they were able to count I believe up to 30 to 40 repetitions that students get
in various ways to master that learning so the goal is getting to automaticity which will lead to fluency which will support comprehension um so just some really outstanding professional learning opportunities very much in alignment with that common challenge that we came
up with um on our personal prod day we also competed with puppy yoga um and Yuki offered a fourth grade cohort um class kind of um class where I think had 25 teacher 25 fourth grade teachers in attendance talking about specific
strategies to increase um writing and discussion around text using our CA curriculum um and I offered an adolescent literacy um intervention class so thinking about how are we supporting our adolescent literac our students with in in adolescent Middle School um fifth through eth grade um who
are still struggling um with reading so lots of good things I talked really fast but what questions do you have director H so educ climber that is not a term I'm familiar with can you give us a quick summary sure so educ climber is new this
year this is Kathleen granis again is the expert in Edge climber but we've all um really jumped in with both feet because it's a really powerful data platform that's pulling all our data together where we can look at it in one place and one of the features I especially love about educ climber is
what called the data wall where you can have EV every student you can filter it by student by grade level by school and have all their data points in one spot so I can look at a group of students and I can see their attendance I can see if
they have disability I can see if they um are on a read plan I can see their CS data their star data over time their star student growth percentile there Dibbles data all in one sheet that I can filter through a click on it's very interactive so um it's another tool
we're learning how to use and to leverage in order to look at student level data um I would Kathleen is definitely the expert but we're all learning and it's another tool to help us identify Trends in our data thank
you director devola thank you so much for all the information and the data that you've showed us um I do have a a question um I do with the goal of 80% or more K through three and then it looks like the third through
5ifth is 8 85% is there a reason why it's a a different number for no I think I think our thinking around that was just if we're if we're adding in various Pathways then we would hope that one group would increase to 85% while we're
kind of allowing other students to to fall into one of those other categories yep and then my other question and this might be because I'm not currently using doubles eight8 so hear me out with the 95% accuracy I do know different grade
levels have a different accuracy score is that still true for doubles eight I think it is I don't know exactly the breakdown but I do think accuracy is different based on where they are expected to be at that grade level okay and is that just for third through fifth the or there or the the ORF score yes
third third the ORF is done now in first grade through I mean it doubles eight go through eighth grade so yeah but it starts as early as first grade now but really when we're when when I talk about orph and that fluency and I'm really looking at Fourth and fth grade in in particular because we see that almost
kind of a a stagnant growth or a lack of growth um and we're really just wondering if that's because they get that one chance in doubles Z8 you know in aadience Reading they got three passages um and double Z8 they get one so get they get one they get to read one passage one time for one minute and
that's what their score is based on yeah so that's a big change and that's why we're thinking more about a body of evidence knowing that everybody has a bad day when they read a passage all right knowing that information thank you for that um with the or categories I noticed that's only
for third through fifth so is that not an or there for the goal for a k through three then even though they do have or for first and second and third oh I yes so that 95% accuracy would be for first grade and above yes oh that makes a lot more sense the ORF is only not available
in kindergarten okay um and the reason I wanted to identify that is I I taught fifth grade for forever and they have to have like a 97 98 99% um accuracy rate and if they fall below or at 96 they're actually below
grade level yes so I just wanted to yeah Che on that and I Bas at 95% um more on Research than on dibble's 8th thinking that if kids are 95% accurate then they're getting most of enough of the words right that they should be comprehending the text yeah thank you so
much for clarifying I need to wrap my head around doubles eight well and I know Jamie Lim was just telling me that they also use edge of climber and that it's a very very useful tool um does the student board have any questions about our literacy
presentation um I was just curious to know uh like you're speaking about different actions you guys are taking to be able to help raise scores and such but is it more targeted towards those who are already above or uh solely just below because I
feel like the scores haven't really adjusted that much when it comes to those who are falling below like the average while it has adjusted for those who are meeting that quota and then also yeah we're seeing more growth in students who were already proficient
rather than those students who are well below yeah that was really yeah definitely a good thing to notice um yeah so what we think about and what to to notice when you're looking at that especially in those higher grades when they are showing that lack of growth is that you think of a fifth grader that's
performing well below they have a significant um a significant Gap in Knowledge and Skills that they need to over come and so the challenge in doing that is is pretty great and they need some really intensive support and instruction repetitions and time to
close that Gap so we are teachers are working hard to find that balance to give them the grade level instruction that they need while also boosting them you know within the confines of the schedule that we have the Intensive instruction they need to um close those skill gaps and so and some of those
students in that category are students with disabilities who are receiving um support through their special education minutes so um balancing all those things and knowing that that growth over time also you won't see growth within that well below category show up on that
graph but students may be moving from say here to here but there's they're so they're still making growth they're just not coming out of that W below category so we try to also celebrate that growth within the category even though it might not be showing up that they're coming out of that category but really good
question well and the last comment I have I really like that you're going to do the focus on writing to see the correlation between writing and reading fluency so yeah keep up the good work and thank you so much yeah oh Deb Gilbert oh Gilbert
sorry this is a bit of a weird question okay I'm ready what steps are you taking to make this fun o that's a great question because I find that with reading it's an interesting one where the when you see the best growth from it
it's when they're having fun yeah that is an awesome question there's a little book series that I'm sure most of you haven't heard of Captain Underpants uhuh I've heard of it my brother would not read was just horrible at reading he never even really tried but yeah that that book series really helped him you
know he he just had fun with it yep absolutely I think that is a huge piece of it is that we have to consider the whole body of the student not just this one um area where they may be struggling and you're Absol absolutely right we have to find ways to make it fun and engaging for kids and think one way we
really think about doing that is finding success and helping the students see success and then also making sure they just have a general love for literacy like you said because there are so many books that can be accessible because they're graphic novels or they things
like Captain in underpants that still get kids in books and reading and seeing that love of reading um and so that is absolutely important our teachers do a great job of not just um teaching skills but also teaching that love of literacy
from from a bigger lens so that's a great question super thing to think be thinking about and we had Captain Underpants Diary of a Wimpy Kid was and my favorite was pippy Long's talking and so it's interesting too that
that Gilbert would bring that up because I know for a fact you're a reader because you also recommended the anxious generation you brought it to student board you had your bookmarker you showed me relevant passages so I suspect you are a lover of books and so thank you
very much yeah you know I love I love books a lot uh you know just grow sorry about that I should mute my phone but just growing up my mom would always read uh stories before we go to bed she knew
that would be that was very important that just kind of instills that love of all the stories director deola yeah so my my daughter is u a struggling reader she's on a read plan and uh this summer we discovered because I had never read di wimp Wimpy
Kid books ever we just discovered it and she read the first book on on um tape while reading the book because she couldn't access that even that book yet um she's in third grade so she was able to listen to it while she was reading
and then she's like let's do the next one and the next one and the next one and we got to the last one and she read the whole first chapter by herself yeah and she kind of got fatigued so I ended up reading with her at night to because the last book doesn't have a book on tape at the library book on CD sorry I'm
old book on CD at at the library so but that cultivated a love of learning in my in my daughter so absolutely ask about book share for your daughter if she's in third grade your um special education folks might be able to qualify her book share will let you download Bookshare um
because I have two dyslexics they both qualified for it the district provided them the iPad and they download not only academic books but fun ones and it highlights the text as it depending on one of my kids needs a different background in font to be able
to read it um but it's it replaced recordings for the Blind and dyslexic it's called Bookshare and it's free for K to2 students um but your school has to help you access it and d49 students who qualify I'll access it because I have some who did audio books are an awesome resource
yeah Catalina did you want to add something else um so this is just a question in regarding to like I know this happens a lot with different testing and such but going from Spring uh semester then back to fall because there's that gap of
knowledge in the summer um I know when I was in Elementary School my mom would do this program through I think it was Pikes Peak um like Library where they would have like a whole reading program is that still something you guys recommend through the school absolutely okay because I feel like that would
definitely help with those uh score drops as like students aren't reading over the summer but with motivation like I don't know they have some great prizes too like some great giveaways some really fun yes it's a great program through the Pikes Peak Library District
and we're in the thick of read Camp planning as well so read Camp will be the 2nd through the 27th of June so we're hiring teachers and getting ready to un roll students for read Camp as well all with the goal of supporting that regression in the middle of the year or the summer thank you so much thank
you okay next we are on to 1.3 MBA renewal so Miss Thompson may I just introduce uh Miss Brandon this is the first time she's presenting to the board this is the first time she is managing a renewal
process because um and this is the first time the MVA is going through a renewal process in their fth year and so lots of Firsts here tonight and I I just I'm going to say it on the record it's not quite as obvious in the um in the content but this is the this is the hearing that statute mandates for for
when we do a consideration uh of a renewal so you are the finders of fact and and deciders of what goes forward and uh you'll hear from Administration and then you'll hear from MVA and then if you have questions I I would I would ask you to perhaps wait until after both
of the presentations because I know there'll be some questions that the MVA presentation is intended to answer that uh the administrator presentation is not and vice versa and so um we'll anticipate questions a little later on but welcome to the podium for your first
presentation you're G to be great ever so thank you um yeah so good evening members of the board um and thank you superintendent Hils for that um I'm Bernie Brennan Charter School specialist here at g49 um and yes as he said this
is a quick presentation um for the overview of our process and findings there we go um so this is the renewal process snapshot kind of puts everything in one spot quickly to see um this is what was sent out V email as
well and currently we are on step four which is evaluation and recommendations and I'll explain that um in the slides to follow so step one um there was a presentation during the um MVA board meeting in August um and
ongoing meetings with MV admin um as well as the we met with dsq um to discuss the process answer questions plan and build the site visit schedule gather names for interviews and also schedule those
interviews um in August we had a meeting with the principal at MVA to start building the site visit schedule it was very important to me to accommodate NBA as much as possible during the school day um we didn't want to interfere with the protected times like when and
teachers plan periods um so we used mv's master schedule daily schedule and special schedule to do this um and then as it says if you need further explanation or clarification um you can refer to the supplemental slides at the
end of this presentation step two um applications the renewal application is always available on the District 49 website um but like I said that was also sent out um on May 20th uh step three site visits interviews observations um as you can
see seven I connect staff attended the site visits of these members we had former teachers as well as former Administration um and we also had CDE and special education represented as well we um had a member from the Dax
subcommittee who also served on other renewals um or initial applications with the previous I connect Zone Administration um right now as I said in the beginning this is where we are at um for evaluation and recommendation stage
um the findings were presented in the executive summary and we'll also again hear from NVA right after this um this is just going to be a quick visual of the strengths and concerns um and they will be further covered in the
next eight slides um academic rigor was made clear during our site visits through seeing the NH provided curriculum um and M multiple teacher observations classroom observations um we have also expressed and celebrated mv's performance multiple
times and um you know we know academics is not the concern right now um the concern lies in turnover that MBA has been experiencing um really it comes down to good people create good results and the reality is that quite a
few of those people have since left um through interviews and observations it was made abundantly clear that the staff and students highly value the leadership at MBA um and again the reality with that is that MBA is experiencing that
transition of leadership um it was also clear during the site visits that MVA provides high quality materials I'm sorry NH provides high quality materials to MVA um but as you can see in the slide it our concerns lie in the non-compliant
reporting processes this one is best explained visually so I'm going to go over it kind of quickly but I'll speak in the next slide um as you can see here MVA has stayed consistently at a core 300
students that um 22 23 is a bit higher um but also keep in mind there competitive pressure from James Irwin Canada Drive and Remington Elementary with which are both within a three mile radius of MVA so that plays a little bit
of a part in this um again with this one it the chart that follows will better explain so it's going to feel like I just rushed over it but I'll explain more um this chart just shows the contributions from NHA and the um expect
Ed contributions so in 23 24 and 2425 they were expected to be pretty low um and then the total expected contributions were estimated at 1.9 million for the five years um for this one I just wanted to
acknowledge that we know our board has stated they have not received any concerns about MBA um but it is important to remember that they have their own grievance policy um there's about five steps till it even gets to us um and we are contractually obligated to follow that um so even
though we might get calls before that fifth step we tell them this is their grievance policy please follow these steps um but we also do document everything as well and MVA has been very collaborative with us um in following
the grievance policy as well um first I do want to greatly EMP the MBA is a valued member of our Pro profile sorry portfolio um and their academics academic performance does prove that um and although we do have concerns that arose during the site
visits um and a little bit after um and are they are written in the executive summary um the most prevalent continuous issue is the data um I just want to address that these critical concerns still persist and Corrections have not
um like it says here materialized into Dependable performance again 100% is the goal um these are our recommendations which are further explained in the supplemental slides as well um and I just want you to keep in mind our
recommendations are written with with urgency to remedy the ongoing concerns also continue supporting MVA and ensure mba's future success so that's what I have okay thank you do you want me to stay up
or do we want to do questions after I think we're going to do questions after both presentations to give a pretty balanced so thank you very much good thank you very much thank you do stick in here no
what's that probably is yeah me just want to open it just want to double check that we have PDF one okay okay so I'm guessing I'm using these arrows to advance slides any
direction on that or Arrow use the arrows okay I'm assuming the right arrow okay thank you uh good evening Madame President and the board thank you so much for taking the time to hear our presentation um I
want to just start with saying it's been a pleasure to be here this evening and hear so much about what's going on in the district though I do sometimes log on online I don't attend every board meeting and one of the things um as I was sitting there I was smiling and the reason I was smiling is because I'm so
excited about all the wonderful things that are happening in d49 uh and it's it's really exciting to hear even the individual stories about your daughter reading um I too have a son that's dyslexic uh and when I hear all of these conversations there's something that I think is really important that unites us is we all care
about kids that's really why we're all here tonight so I just wanted to share with you how excited I am to hear about those things um and just kind of ground Us in that this is really all about kids for all of us my name is Carrie gner I am the board president of uh Mountain View Academy I am uh one of the founding
members uh so I was here at least in front of uh director Olivier Wright uh when we did this I actually served on the deck at the time on the charter subcommittee um so I have a long history of being involved with the district as well um but I am one of the three one of
three founding board members that still sits actually on our founding board we have a very dedicated board uh here with me this evening is Matt Carlton uh who in fact Matt I'll just let you introduce yourself yeah um my my title is executive director of schools with National Heritage cies and I serve a
portfolio of schools across the country um Mountain View is close to my home I live in Denver and serve some schools up there as well so I'm super happy to be here so we're just going to tag team this a little bit on different pieces um but I do want to say and I I want to
I want to go over this quickly we do believe that there are a few factual ER errors that have been presented to the board um and that there's some lack of context that I hope that I can fill in but we really want to focus on what is good and what is happening so we're happy to answer any questions that are
in the details um but we really want to focus on what is happening we um really believe that we deserve a five-year renewal um we think that we have earned that and uh we want to share a little bit of that with you um
so this is our mission and vision ultimately what I told you when we started as we're focused on kids we really believe uh in our mission and our vision we are working very hard to achieve that at our school and then I'm gonna hand it over to Matt who's going to talk a little bit
about uh some specific items yeah so we wanted to start just with some raw proficiency data sometimes we talk about growth we talk about indexes and just so you can see the proficiency over time of our students compared to some of the closest schools um we're proud of the work that we're doing we're proud that
we're we want to to be the best um where we are and at the same time anything less than 100% is not okay with us and so we're going to continue to drive to that till we get all our kids to read write and do mathematics and and Science and those things um this is uh another another view of our state proficiency
where you can see the our new students versus our returning students you can see as as if students stay with us they do even better um and I think that's a Testament to the work that we've done at the school and we're really proud of that work as well this is a snapshot of our Dibbles
data from the most recent year you can see our our K3 students met um one of our Charter goals is around our our Dibbles proficiency and we had 85% of our students meeting their end of the year Benchmark um and you can see it's broken down across through K3 again this is really important work we heard some
about that tonight from your team about the work that that you guys do with Dibbles um it's very being able to read is the Gateway as as our our student board members shared um and that's really important to the work that we do and really proud of the work at at at Mountain View this is a a snapshot of
where we performed on the school performance framework and I think that was mentioned in the previous presentation um that we we are in that performance range we're at an 80 points which is which is really strong um we're not going to be happy until we get to 100% um I'll I'll note that our our
Middle School was in the exceeds range which I'm really proud out of and uh Middle School is a tough place and and we've we've done the work and it's it's it's a place that we'll continue to focus on to keep that up um and as staff has said tonight we've had turnover in our middle school but we're still doing
the work and we're still going to keep pushing to to get where we need to be um and then I'm gon hand it back to Carrie to talk about our performance review okay so this is just a little snapshot as I'm sure you're all very aware um we received feedback from the district and this is just a snapshot
showing where we are and what the district uh has told us our report card on how we are doing and how you are seeing as our performance and and so obviously we received that good standing uh and that that was an indication to us that we are doing what we're supposed to
do and meeting Our obligation to you as our authorizer and this is the um Charter goals that we agreed to uh when we started the school so I want to point out there's a green check mark next to each one of those I won't uh insult you by reading them uh give you some time to
look at those um but we are meeting those there's only one there that you'll see that red X by that's the only one that we are working still working on and that is um our attendance goal this is a really tough one because we don't have full control over this we also know um I
think that we don't want sick kids at school either so it's always one of those tough ones uh to balance I think you have all probably seen this as well uh that after covid uh we had a huge onslaught of uh of different types of things because people weren't exposed to
things so that you know we we've kind of worked through most of that I think at this point but we are just shy of s of being at that uh where we want to be which is 93% attendance but I still think um that we are that's that's a
really good attendance rate for our students and we are uh definitely seeing that in the work that is happening in the school and how they're um reaching our goals still have lots of work really appreciate U Matt's statement on that that's we talk about that our board all the time we're really glad that we're
performing well on that framework but there are still a lot of kids who are not reading at reading and writing at grade level um and we're not going to stop until uh we are serving every single one of those children let me know maybe a nod if you
are finished finished reading this I don't want to okay okay so in terms of governance we have a board as I mentioned we have three members who are um original founding members so they've been around
a while they've really learned a lot about our school um I'm sure as most of you know and you hear often it is not easy uh to to keep a school running and and keep things happening but um we're very fortunate that we have a lot of very competent board members some of the
experiences um that our board members have and some of these are overlapping because we do not have uh one board member that represents each of these we only have five but we have um school counselor someone who's been a bookkeeper a parent Community member someone who runs a large nonprofit an
elected official um and so we have all kinds of different skill sets that are on this board that I really believe have uh brought to the strength we also all uh participate in professional development uh in fact I saw a couple of you not too long ago at a conference in
Denver um which was really fantastic and so we all take that very seriously we attend again I won't insult you by reading all of it to you um but not only do we attend those conferences we're a little picky about what we attend because we want to make sure that we are being fiscally responsible and that
we're getting value for those um but not only do we participate in events with NH which are really great because they have data comparisons Across the Nation um but also we when we find in need we will specifically eat whether it's asking our attorney or bringing in someone outside
when we have a retreat we'll bring in experts on different topics that we feel like we need uh to work on WE of course do our needs assessment every year and talk about how the board is doing and what we need to do to improve ourselves um so we obviously have
regular uh monthly uh meetings um we um and I'm going to say this is a reference to an earlier posted thing uh that came out and said that maybe we had an open uh meeting violation I think that's since been removed and I'm glad that we were able to clear that up so
that was uh just clearing that piece up from a previous statement um and obviously we spend the majority of our time at our board meetings doing exactly what you did today looking through data asking questions asking what the plan is to
make sure that our students are uh are are getting everything that need that they need okay so there's a lot of talk um previously in then the last meeting and then a little bit today around Financial stability and what this actually
means if there's one thing that I want you to know is that this is a feature it's not a bug um we were very transparent when we came to the district about what NH who NH is what they provide this was not anything that we
hid we were excited about it and the reason is because one of the things that stops Charters from opening the most is being able to have a capital investment to open a building um bonding can be difficult and getting started getting started with anything new is difficult and so we were really excited to find a
partner that we could trust that has a very strong track track record of um making sure that schools are able to get to success even when they're growing and even when they're young so this is something we're proud of of course we want to increase enrollment we want to
um fulfill all of that because we want to serve more kids but I do think that um again this is this is a feature it's something we came and we're very transparent about and I think is a part of the reason why we were granted our Charter previously not a reason to look
negatively and I'll ask Matt if he wants to add anything to that piece and then let him continue no I just would reiterate what K said about uh nh's track record we've never walked away from a school in 30 years regardless of financial performance this is not the only school we have that struggles with enrollment and we we knew
what we signed up for um and we're in it for the long haul so we're excited to stand with Mountain View and to be part of the d49 community in that way um I want to talk about Improvement areas um now I I'll note that I was not a math major and it says MV is focused on three
areas and I believe there's four bullets there so I just want to follow on my sword there um staff turnover and retention so I just want to address some of the things that were brought up as concerns um this is year-to-date uh comparative over years of of teacher
turnover those numbers are high but they've been high consistently um that's not what we want to see I will own that but I'll also say we've performed with those numbers and that that level of turnover we hire a lot of new teachers a lot of new teachers that are thinking about doing different things and we get that and we're we're hoping that that
number will come down over time but this is pretty consistent with what we see with new schools quite quite often um we pay above Market we offer retention bonuses we offer signing bonus and we do a ton of development that I'll talk about as we go on in this presentation um just to give you some
examples of our staff development part of our DNA is something we call o3s or one-on-one meetings um that happens between teachers and administrators um administrators and administrators um we have all kinds of just just I I could spend an hour on each of these bullets telling you about all the things that
they do I won't because I believe I've got two minutes and 56 seconds left um but I'd love to share if you ever wanted more information um there was uh one of the questions was about student behaviors and I just wanted to share with you where we are with student Behavior this year um and
you can see over time this year we we put in some PBIS uh we saw some things were going on early this year that we weren't happy with we put in some new things under the leadership of our dsq and the dean team um and it's really come down that number uh 327 year to
date I compared it to our other uh three Colorado schools um our other three col Colorado schools were in the 500s in terms of that number so it's it's a despite that that peak in September on October um it's really come down and we're we're making a lot of progress on that front and I and I'll be honest with
you we we do Behavior this is what schools do um elementary schools middle schools high schools those things happen and we're in it and that's part of part of our work and so um I'm I I I don't doubt any of the things that were observed at the site visit but I also don't doubt that over time this shows a really good picture of where we're
at um I'll skip over the slide because I think I just said all the things that were on the slide um and then I'll pass it over to Carrie to talk about student enrollment okay so yes we want to have higher student enrollment um we continue to work on that um we're really grateful
NH has uh an incredible marketing team that we work very closely with there are a couple of things that we've talked about over the last few first of all I think you all realize we opened during covid so uh we we got off to a difficult start in this area um and so of course
we we would have expected that we would have grown a bit more um but we really did start at a deficit so we've tried to have a little bit of patience and understanding uh that it it does take some time to build up trust in a community and so some one of the things that uh we have asked a lot about is um
a prek program and so we're still in talks about that but we're looking at very specific ways um we also really believe that as we continue to show strong academic success that parents will choose us um I'm big on school choice I'm big on parents having having trust in making
that choice and I really do think that that is a piece of as we continue to have those conversations um that we're going to be able to see that you can see here um many of the things that we are currently already doing uh to be able to attract new new students but again this
is one thing that we're incredibly grateful uh to be have a partner with NH is that we know that we are still going to be financially stable it's a huge um advantage for us to be able to continue to do that uh but you can see the attrition rate down there at the bottom
and that's something I do want to point out um is that our students are staying so this is as Matt said are we a perfect school we are not do we have things we are constantly working on absolutely the board is very engaged on that with our
partner uh and we do believe that we're moving in the right direction you know I think you've probably all heard the saying you know it's it's it's not that it matters when you fall down it matters how you get up and that's a little bit of what we experience as a school it's really about how we deal um with
the things that come our way because things are coming that's just the just the nature of of uh uh being involved in a school sure um so one of the big things that I know we've talked about last month when I was here we talked about you know in between those times is the
CIS um and what I what I want you to know is we're we're committed to being better and figuring that out whether it's you know whatever those things are we're willing to over resource we're willing to figure it out um our board is really committed to staying on nh's CIS at this point and not moving to power
school and at the same time we we think that's a solvable problem um we solve it across the country at 103 other schools and we're hoping we we'll be able to figure those things out and so um we had a a good conversation yesterday about some ways that we might be able to do that between Peter and Brad and myself
and we just our our hearts and Minds continue to be open to to figure out how do we solve this so that we have zero errors um because we don't want those errors either I just want to add to that um tonight you heard about educ climber and
I know that um uh you mentioned how important that that snapshot is and I that really connected with me because that's why this is so important to us is to make sure that we have system that works best for what we do at our school and we
don't want to disrupt the great things that are happening so I just wanted to kind of connect that um but that it is a really important piece of what we're doing as Matt said we're we're completely um ready to be at the table and continue to be ready to be at the table to solve those problems whatever
it takes and I know that that um our partner is as well okay so here's the bottom line right why do we think that we deserve a five-year renewal um and without conditions I'll add and that's we have strong academic
performance we are honoring or we hope that you will honor the autonomy that d49 has continually valued I believe that that is a value of this board we earned the good standing on our report card that we received from the district we are financially sound we have a very
strong and engaged board um we are meeting our contract goals I think that's really the main piece that I want to emphasize with that little cavey out of that attendance piece and I realized that um but we think s maybe we would we would all be okay with that and knowing
that we're going to keep working on it and we're complying with all requirements in the law so we really do believe that we have that we have done what we said we set out to do when um when we were first given the charter and we would ask for that fiveyear renewal I think that um as I said we've earned it
I think that's very standard and uh we we really would ask you for that consideration that's our that's the end of our presentation thank you questions do we want to start then with questions here and then we can go for any questions with the district since they're already
up there well so depend depending so depending on the question you might want them both back toback and so Britney's prepared to come back up and and if there's places where either Dr Gutierrez or I can can chime in so miss Brennan and Dr Gutierrez will you guys just join
um and you may have some some additional process background or kind of like ancestral memory um because for many of you this is your first five-year renewal conversation as well and so yeah except Yeah
well yeah so I think this is this is the part that the board just kind of leads us through to your satisfaction and so any of us Brad included are probably subject to your question so we're going to start with questions for the board and if the
student board can be patient if you guys want to add anything later we have to get through some material and then get back to that are there any questions director Schmidt I'm not sure that I have necessarily questions but I do have some comments I always do um first of all I
spoke with both Dr Gutierrez and the folks at MVA and I actually also spoke with Natalia br brunon Brenton um I had a class with her earlier in the year so I kind of have a unique perspective coming from all three every single one
of them very warm very caring everybody has the best interest of the students in mind that is the bottom line um MVA doesn't want to use the student information system it was recently comprom compromise I understand their
desire to have their own but also in policy LBD it is stated that the charter school will use the district's sis as their primary source of student data however a
charter school can apply for a waiver with a replacement plan and rationale however a waiver could result in additional service fees to the charter school I hope I'm understanding that correctly the snowflake program which
apparently merges the data to be compatible requires extra time and significant customization in order to be accurate with d49 sis that costs money that cost somebody money I'm not sure who introduced the program if there was
a waiver to use it or why we are continuing to use it if it gives second rate results clearly these Data Systems are complex they're made even more difficult when there are numerous people working on them there were staff changes in both
d49 and MVA during this time there has to be consistent individuals on both sides if consistent results are the expectation as with any school every single school there's items that need to
be paid attention to and it sounded like this is the direction that MVA is going however given their outstanding scores and strengths that are identified I still hesitate to offer a one-year
conditional renewal with a 2-year extension the standard is 5 years I also wonder about those conditions and if it's the district or the board that places those conditions on the on
MVA see um I heard some questions in there do you want to address some of those concerns or questions that she had put in there let me start with with two quick ones um I good job especially as a
rookie reading the policies correctly because I I what we understand is that MVA does have a waiver to use their proprietary cysts and so that's that's how we've been working you're right that snowflake which is also called connected int it's actually more recently called connected intelligence uh it's a it's a
it's a product of the Power School uh Collective or conglomerate um I want to I want to make a quick observation for our board uh Matt and I talked about this some in our conversation yesterday mv's student data comes through Power School so it was exposed
as was all of our data exposed because it comes through power school because we use power school to report to the state so um keeping it on a proprietary system has other benefits but protection from Power School specifically it isn't really a benefit because eventually it
ends up in the lake we call it call it a data Lake and the data lake is what the hackers were U siphoning from um I got my own parent notice for my 2019 grad and so parents at parents at MVA are going to get notices um from power school as will you know parents at at
all R schools so that's going to be a factor um but as we talked about about a month ago um the issue isn't thou sh use our assist the issue is we got to have ontime error-free data and that has been
a challenge so the um the the condition and the question about who puts conditions on you do or you don't you're the Contracting party the administration is not the Contracting party and frankly NH is not the Contracting party mv's board and your
board are are the this board are the parties to the contract and so they they can have non-negotiables and so can you conditions are sort of non-negotiables that all may I add just a little bit on that um respectfully I would say we have
additional data that is not does not go through plow school so that is some of the data that we are trying to protect it's not required by law for us to send that and so we do keep some of it but that would be not have been
exposed director Hy uh Dr gu Gutierrez could you please please tell us what the uh student count was at um October count and what it is currently so I'd have to go back to my
computer I'm sorry to to look okay oh he can answer it yes on October count we had 390 students today we have 391 um the 8% attrition those are students that left but then we've back filled with new students that have arrived at the school okay director H can I jump in the reason
you're asking about this this is because I'm one of the people that believed that there was a 20% reduction and I had further conversations about this over the last couple of days there's a point where we thought in our business office not even our syst we thought that that
we saw a a number above 500 we were wrong so we were looking at the difference between but we think it's we think you're up one as as of right now and so we we have consens around um the same number uh up one because
your attrition is eight and your inflow is eight yes right so so basically flat as flat can be okay thank you I will just add to that it was we are we were looking at those reports that you get on a weekly basis with all the different
lines the dash lines the Orange Line the blue line so that's where initially we had seen that number okay thank you so um one of the concerns I have when I look at you guys as far as um on I mean
as far as your performance you get your students are doing outstanding work um I just have concerns about being able to continue and sustain that um performance given this significant amount of um uh teacher turnover um I mean every single
staff member in the middle school years that's that's got to have an impact um the other significant issue I have and the reason why I would recommend against doing a 5-year renewal is that the um
student data issue has been a three-year issue and it still hasn't been resolved and the moment we give you a five-year renewal we have essentially lost our leverage and you don't have to come before us for another five years and I
feel like we need to make that a condition of a extended renewal so if I could it's okay for me to address that um number one I would disagree that we may not have to come before you but if we are not following our contract goals you can terminate our
school at any point um if we're in violation of our contract I would defer to your attorney but that's my understanding so I do think that there is always a check there you always have a lot of authority over us um so I would say that additionally and again I want to keep this at a high level um
respectfully because we are still working on through the those issues but um we kind of talked about this at the last meeting I don't believe the characterization that this is a three-year ongoing issue that has not been solved as accurate um there have been multiple occasions where we believed it was solved and we're not I
would posture from my perspective that we were not informed that there was an issue and I believe that that still continues to be a bit confusing but again I'd like to keep this at a high level as much as possible um and just say we're committed to working on it
and rather than point fingers at this point I would just love to say we're committed to working we would both acknowledge I think that we are both very much trying to get to this um and again I would just say there it is not a three-year problem
that we that characterizing in a way that we have not been willing to fix that in three years I don't think is an accurate representation without going through all of the details of what has been happening over the last so I'm not representing that it was willing to be
resolved but yet the problem was first documented 3 years ago it has continued to be documented year overy year and it is still unresolved um and that's the bottom line Madam president I noticed that in the notices that they gave out there was
a twoyear four-month gap in between these notices and if I recall I think one of the notices was rescinded I'm I'm not sure if my memory is correct on that one I'm I'm going to say that there
again with trying to be as respectful as possible and not getting into a finger pointing I do believe that that is the case I resolved it we we had a dispute resolution with the previous board president um we believed from that moment forward that the district had
informed us that that problem had been solved we did not hear about it again until that second notice within two days we scheduled a Mee meeting and we sat down and we said we were absolutely not aware of this um I believe it was a
actually a slightly new problem based on a new protocol that was required of us that we did not know was coming and as soon as we were notified of that we began immediately to fix it it is my belief
though again we are working through this we submitted a corrective action plan and it is my belief that we have not been informed not my belief I will tell you I have not been informed that that has not been consistently
um happening at this point and so the at that meeting when we talked about that and we said here's our corrective action plan we said please call Matt Carlton or Carrie gner if and when this we are somehow not meeting this and I have not received a call and I don't believe Mr
Carlton has received a call on that either so again I want to continue working on it but I don't believe that it is fair to characterize it as a three-year problem that has not been resolved would somebody from our admin team like to respond to
that director Li Wright so um I'm going to give a a little perspective here long acting um because I sat long enough previously on this board that I sat through probably a renewal for every single Charter that's in the district and I was a part of the authorizing
board for this one and um in the entire history of that time and I think probably for the entire history of d49 we've never closed a charter I don't believe or have we had did we have one prior to my board
service we have never closed the charter because and so I I I would so I would just real gently say we did have one change in name in a process right but just respect closing a school isn't a point of Leverage because we that's like saying
you could you know you could pull the pin on a nuclear weapon no we we won't we couldn't we wouldn't well and yeah but we have we have had two charters that were approved and didn't open because they didn't meet the opening conditions correct and that the best time the only good time to close a charter is before it opens correct so
but but there's um so part of my point and we're also a recognized leader in um Charter District relations in the state and have been for a very very long time and we have used this tool multiple
times to make our Charter stronger um at least once when I was on the prior on during my prior board service we did um I believe the board just prior to me was on the precipice of the same thing with Liberty Tree uh and in each case it made
the charter stronger it's resolved the problems because there becomes an urgency because it's a part of the directly part of the contract right now none of these expectations are directly a part of the contract um enrollment expectation usually is referred to in
the contract at some point so right now that enrollment is about half of projected enrollment um and that probably is something that needs to be adjusted because what your Market is showing you is that's not
where your target is it's consistently about half and you now have a directly competitive school with a very similar um mode of education and with similar academic results in the same area competing with
you um so those are things that need to be considered but I think there are some other ways to look at this so we could say something like we do a conditional renewal with two years with the option to extend an additional three without additional
application so it essentially becomes a 5-year plan if the conditions are met to make sure we're getting error-free data consistently either with your system or if it continues to be error then you have to be required to use one that isn't going to give us error because
that is how all the funding comes um if our data is if we don't if we have student data that's errored eventually we get nailed by the state for that so and we are the person who becomes responsible to the state then we've got to try and get it from you because we're The passor Entity we're the AU were on
the hook um so it's an important thing to fix being able to have a more realistic enrollment um prediction Works to then stabilize your budget Works to then make you less dependent on outside funding and it's wonderful that they
were there to start up but startup funding isn't intended to last perpetually and being able to develop a realistic goal for budgeting starts with realistic expectations of enrollment um and even looking at things like we've
had schools adjust what years of education they offer based on what they're seeing in their enrollment and their ability to keep stable staff um so I think a a way of looking at this instead of an all Oro or as a a punishment or you know we had Parents
show up with the impression that we were discussing closure at a meeting that we had parents come speak at that isn't on the table nor has it been nor do we we have a history of doing that to Charters um but I heard the fear in the voice and it was fear in the military
family and I can say that I also understood their perspective of with an NH school when we change bases at least I'm going to someplace that's going to use the same curriculum because I have friends who homeschooled for no other reason other than their husbands were on the fast track and so they were moving
every single year on the way to being base commander and there was no way when you mooved from state to state um with no DOA schools and with no Common Core that they could get their kids to not have education gaps um so that is a value in our community as well so
there's value here but I think we also have to have we have to have the ability to hold some of these expectations tighter than we've been able to and that comes our only tool is the contract our tool once we issue that cont that's the only tool we all have to refute refer
back to during dispute resolution I think it's fair given some of these concerns to say let's write some conditions into this renewal and maybe look at it from the perspective of saying okay year one we want this met year two we want this met if those
conditions in year one and year two are met you get a three-year extension without having to come back for Renewal if they're not now you have to come back to the board and renegotiate that lets maybe the district um meet some of the concerns here and in my experience with
previous schools it's made them stronger and they haven't had a problem and they've been for before us for more than one renewal some of whom were in danger of actual closer closure who um who are now very successful uh so I think we
need to look at it as that tool rather than as this like absolute punishment or threat to close the school the last thing we want to do is close your school and have to find a place for 350 kids that's the absolute nightmare position for School Board is where are we going
to put 350 kids in classrooms that are already full so none of us want to do that what we want to do is set up a system that Mak sure that all of this is happening in a way that is efficient and effective that everybody is getting what they need and that we solve these
problems and our contract is the tool to do that that's my perspective director devola uh first of all I want to say that it's really hard for middle schools to outperform their Elementary schools so nice
job that's uh to be envi envied for sure um I also wanted to to touch base a little bit about the turnover of Staff as well as the enrollment um not being met um I personally know because I I work at a very a high performing charter
school and we have staff turn turnover every single year and I don't know what our numbers are but we hired uh what was it 20 25 new staff members this year so it's it's
very that's like a third of our staff so um it's uh it's not unusual for staff turn over to happen um what is important to note is that um you guys have a certain type of of um program that you
teach so when you train your teachers even if they're brand new um they using NH uh NH or is that right did I say right um and that program just like we do at our school um and that program is
what actually drives the school and the coaches that are there and the people who are doing the trainings um not necessarily the staff members um of course staff members are very important but it's a it's that's a very different from a Traditional School in a
traditional classroom uh what drives the education is the the um quality of that teacher being a self- driver versus a program that has been tried and true I don't know if I'm
making sense on that um so then also with the enrollment um enrollment has been a struggle across all schools all districts um and it has been decreasing even for high performing schools um also
when you're a startup school it starts starts slow and then it picks up speed so uh James irn has a school that just recent or that the Canada obviously just opened so we can't use that but if you go to the other school that school has
been open for a while and they're not at full capacity right our school is the only school that is at full capacity because we've been around for 20 years and so we have a reputation that has been able to
um filter to our parents and our families Etc um so it's it's something to note for sure can I add one thing about the enrollment piece um well I'll say our enrollment projections we we we feel pretty good about our projections one
year out um and we're always going to shoot for we want to have a full building and so when you see our five-year projections is because we want to get to a full building just like we want 100% of our kids to read um more than happy to revisit that conversation about enrollment projections over 5 years um we know we're not going to be
at 700 next year or the year after that it's going to take us a while to get there but those are aspirational goals for us um where we want to be not necessarily where we think we because we we just can't project that far out with any accuracy and again I happy to revisit that if that
helps I'll just add if that's okay um I'll just add I I hear what you're saying about realistic I mean I absolutely agree with that at the same point I don't see revising that go down as having a big impact on how we budget because we're
not going to change our budget and cut back anywhere because we have this back stop and we want to utilize that and have all those resources for our kids so I think we could certainly have that conversation I don't think it would actually affect anything that we're doing at our school um so I just would
just offer that respectfully um and I would also uh just say again respectfully you you've sent us notices telling us you're going to withhold funds so I do think that there are some ways to bring us to the table uh that you got me to the table within
two days um so I will just say there are some other tools I really do believe that and here's the here's the thing um it's not a secret that my husband was also part of trying to come in and help LTA I I respectfully would say it hasn't helped them it has not
helped their enrollment because it does not provide when you say one year or two years with conditions it does not provide stability parents kids teachers Wonder are we going to get there are we what's going to happen and they start looking around so I would say it
actually can harm the school the reputation which we've talked about is key for enrollment uh and being able to move us forward even in that teacher retention piece so respectfully I would say we really do need that fiveyear renewal and we will continue to work
with you we have we have demonst rated that um we have demonstrated I don't want to get into the details on that we have demonstrated that um I think we could call it a misunderstanding at the worst um but
that fiveyear means a lot to us for those reasons that's why my suggestion was allowing it to be up to five as a three-year extension so it is that compromise piece that I discussed was essentially recognizing that saying
here's how do you get to the five years without an additional application meet these goals in year one and year two and it without then you don't even as long as you're Meeting those goals you don't have to come back to us and it's a fiveyear but there's a stop Gap where you have to come back if you haven't um
that's different than what was offered to LTA I believe I wasn't on the board when we did that it's also different than what we offered to the previous Charter um a very long time ago um that also needed that um support um to get themselves
financially back on track so it that compromise piece is saying let's build in because in fact um it said plan to stabilize leadership and Dynamics but there still wasn't anything specific to to turn over or numbers um these are
fairly General statements that could be negotiated out so I think they were all fairly reasonable but again you could have it where here's your Target date here's your target date and it has to be met because our additional three
years are are dependent on it and that gives our um it lets us use this tool which is our primary tool legally and moves you in the right direction and still gives you that five-year message because nobody was saying close and I don't think anybody here is thinking
that director devola yeah so I'm going to kind of use an analogy and I know Peter will understand this analogy as well um when we evaluate our teachers it's extremely important to tell them this is
what you're going to be evaluated on our superintendent also when he's being evaluated wants to know what the heck am I going to be evaluated on right um and so that contract piece is what you guys as a charter are like okay when we go
into this renewal process this is the the things that we are going to be really backing making sure that we have these pieces for Renewal okay um it's it's a little unfair in my opinion for us to say well because you didn't do
this which is not a part of the contract we're going to uh have conditions on your next renewal um I do believe it would taint your reputation as a as a school um and I I do highly value that what I also know is that
there has been an on both sides miscommunication misunderstandings um things that uh uh staff members on both sides just like uh director schidt had mentioned that um
left or were not a part of it to begin with and they were trying to pick up the pieces and so I understand that there is ways for both both the district and and VA to come to the table and hash this
out get things accomplished what needs to happen how can we do this let's put our heads together without pulling the entire Community into the turmoil because we did that with LTA and that was messy
very messy um and I believe we're all adults here and we should be able to work this out without having to put condition on re renewal and that's my opinion you know um one thing I I have to kind of point out is it's easy to
reference LTA that was a completely different situation um also known as the Hatfield and McCoy okay that was a com that was a school divided it was so many things that do not apply to this situation you know we we talk a lot
about our cultural Compass we also talk about our big rocks at our little rocks and if you look at that Third Rock on your right hand side it's offer exceptional choices Mountain View Academy is our highest performing charter school I have
two kids that are three years apart for years we were at a private school and we were very happy there until some things happened and they actually told me well your daughter fits in well here but not your son and I looked at them and I said you know you've got a different
definition of family than we do parents want stability if I have a child at a school and I want my other child to go that school I don't want to hear one or two year renewals I want the commitment of that school and so having been around
for all of this um the biggest issue has been working on ways to get that data correct um some of the recommendations I felt were a little bit of administrative overreach getting into administrative operational things with the charter
school that we don't typically do um NH completed the land purchase under that building I've Ted the building you invited me to a board meeting it was a very committed board and I was impressed with what I saw during that meeting at at this point what I'd like to do what I
would like to see for a couple of different reasons is to go towards that five-year Direction and to have stipulations on working on the data to making sure that it's seamless and one of the biggest concerns I have that that
affects me right now um Governor polus has been a little more Charter friendly he started a charter school and when this bill came up that would have severely undermined charter schools in Colorado he said he was going to veto it
he is term Limited in 2026 and so I'm concerned about who follows Governor polus may not be Charter friendly 53% of the students in School District 49 are in our Charter Schools we believe in parental rights
that's why we passed the parents Bill of Rights and responsibilities um we believe in choice for our parents that they get to guide and direct their child's education and so at this point I am really in favor of a five-year renewal to give stability to
the staff to the parents I think it'll help you with finding your next principal I'm really grateful that you got a previous principal who's experien to come back and and help with the ship right now during this transition time it looks like your turnover is actually lower this year and we have to be
realistic about some of the numbers like 50% staff retention well if you have three teachers in one level in one grade level how many teachers can leave to upset that 50% so if you have one leave it's 33% so
to me we have to be careful of those percentages to scale with one school as far as disregulated kids that's something we struggle with throughout the district and um it looks like you're doing a good job of turning those down so that those are just some
of the comments that I have um it looks like director Schmidt you wanted to add something else yeah kind of back to the adults in the room thing I think we could sit down and everyone could sit down and figure this out without having the cudle of this hanging over anyone's
head it just seems I don't know it just seems like something's hanging over you all the time and that's difficult to operate in those situations um behavior-wise I was in that school I didn't sit in the office and talk these things out we walked around the building
I saw one very small Behavior issue that was managed quickly professionally and I don't know every school's got Behavior problems so I'm not really putting a lot of credence into that I don't know I think
we might think about who chooses the techniques who chooses obviously the board imposes conditions um but do we have that
much power so to speak over the charter schools or do they have are we giving them enough autonomy I guess those would be a couple questions did you mean that as a question or yeah okay so I I'll try to respond to
director SCH Smith's question and and director H's earlier um I've got a short list in my brain so a couple things one I I want to I want to confirm what I heard from Miss gner I do believe a prior notice of concern was
appropriately resolved between M gner as a board president and Mr Graham as board president and whether we have a signed document or not I think is not relevant we believe in good faith that that was resolved I think we have we have shared that before we think that was we think that was squared away where we have ongoing disagreement
and this is partly responsive to Mr Hy is there are instances where we believe we have communicated concern in good faith faith and at a professional level to the MVA NH
system and I I can guarantee you that there are things going on in the cyst department and the I connect Zone that I know nothing about and I can guarantee you there are things going on that Mr carp that that that that Matt did not know about that krie did not know about um just like Peter
did not know about things but I would not say that they didn't tell us I would say that our system did didn't properly distribute that information or pass that information through the system and a huge part of that is individual turnover and we've all acknowledge that on both
sides of the of the data conversation um it's I think I might see maybe as many as 10 different people over five years that that we felt like were the key person to talk with and we've had probably close to that many on the d49 side that's a real thing um in terms of
the conditions I think if you uh I well you you've got it in your packet if you want to look at it I think if you look at the conditions that are proposed I think if you approved a three-year renewal and said upon completion of these conditions it's a five-year
renewal automatically I think that this team would have all but one of those conditions met by the end of March um I think the financial concern that that we have expressed around the enrollment projections and nh's back stop we now have a copy of their service contract
with VA I'd like to put it in the record and executive content and to me that meets that condition I don't think these conditions are are honorous to me they show fiduciary responsibility and that that you as a board are taking it seriously it gives MVA a chance to say
okay we we understand why you see those are stressors and here's how we're going to we're going to knock them off I I would invite you guys to speak to that with the exception of the Cy all the other conditions could be addressed essentially by conversation and and by a
plan is that is that reasonable I could after you vote we enter into a 60-day contract negotiation and so what you were talking
about Miss DEA and mmid those those conditions that you keep referring to those would be put into the contract and that's where we would very specifically outline the
error free on time um and that would be negotiated by Mr Miller and I believe you have Eric Hall am I correct is that your attorney so they would go back and forth with a contract and we have 60
days by um statute to get that contract written well because I think the point is there I mean the things you're asking for for that the district has listed for conditions are things that aren't exceptionally onerous right
so expect them to use power school CIS as primary or require them to demonstrate at least one full year of airfree ontime reporting for all major reports is that a fair thing to write in our contract as a requirement that's one of the things we have to think about as
a board because that's a condition you can put that condition on a five-year renewal but saying but if you haven't met that in a year you're using power school that's what this first condition is that the board's asking that the Administration has asked for to address what has been from the district
perspective an ongoing issue with ontime data reporting which impacts our ability to report to the state which also creates an undue burden of work um for our staff right so we can write that into a contract if the board agrees that that should be a condition of renewal
and that then makes sure that it happens it gives them the tools to make sure that that's compliant you can write it in as a five if it's not done by your if you don't have the data working in the first year then you have to use power school that could be a contract requirement or if you don't have it in
two years then you have to use power school because we're asking for one full year of error-free on time reporting so that we don't continue to have also discrepancies in student enrollment part of that happens we're seeing a difference in student count than they're seeing in part because the data was bad
right we don't have those miscommunications if the data is good um having a a five-year enrollment and budget projection that matches what's happening in the community okay they're saying they don't think it will impact them much but it
impacts how they use the building it could impact decisions later as their board's going on that's not going to be hard for them to do um and they're really running it 50% so it it seems to me that kind of thinking through that is also an
important tool but that one we could debate too having stable leadership okay so how are we going to do that having and and we're not asking we even have stabilized it but what is your plan to address it that's not honorous that's something that could be
written into an expectation present this to us by that date as a part of your five-year renewal and they can negotiate what the um what the sticks are if that doesn't happen around that date and then the last one who is your primary person
who's always responsible for Al cutical Communications so this Comm who got what when where how who's talking to whom stops you designate they can designate a position and we all agree on the position and it's designated in the contract that resolves 3quarter of the
communication problem right that's a but that's something you could you'd then require in the contract so so as caveat you know on the of adults being adults yeah Matt and I agreed that in until further notice that person is Matt and
and so that's an example where by conversation we we created that condition I I think there is a value in formalizing those expectations versus leaving them as assurances that are verbal right because if you leave or he leaves or both leave all of a sudden
nobody has an agreement if you do it by title of job in the contract it's clear to everyone all the time so the question for us in part is we have multiple questions in front of us the first question is what conditions if any
do we want our do we want our folks to consider writing into a contract then the second is the renewal component which things are dependent on extension which things are not and I think those are two separate pieces so the first question
is as individual board members and then as a group do we think any of these expectations that our staff have asked to have do we think any of them are inappropriate to write into the contract or do we think all of them are inappropriate to write into the contract director Schmidt
you I think some of the behavior thing recommendations are overreach um they're not on the recommendation list there's literally only four it's on slide number 17 I don't have I don't
carry my computer with me um can we pull that slide up onto the screen Absolut so that um everyone's looking at the same piece of information because I think with everything we've read seeing concerns and all of those other other internal recommendations are different
than what's being considered for contract so this is really what we're being asked about I saw it on a different document and maybe I can't discuss that in this meeting I don't know right I make a just a really quick observation and I'm really curious about what what Carrie Matt would say to
this I would rather see you grant a fiveyear renewal with conditions then a three-year renewal with no conditions it's it's the conditions to Marie's point that I think create an expectation of strengthening the school and I'm just curious I I know
you want a fiveyear unconditional but but of the two things which is the most critical is it the fiveyear because of what that does for stability and enrollment or is it that the conditions you know feel like a violation of
autonomy I would say we prefer a fiveyear however I don't like being forced into two boxes that I don't like so if there's been a lot of questions about fair and whether these were fair and I'd love to give a little bit of our perspective on this so here's a question that I have to you
all trying to be as respectful I as I could of your staff but I'm going to get a little more explicit it is clear that there have been failures on d49 side as well so when that failure is on d49 and you're holding me to a year what do I do
you're going to hold me to a standard that I may not be able I may feel that I am doing everything which I do currently feel and I want to be clear we currently believe number one that when we say positions we could have said this it was
Matt Carlton and Carrie gner and neither one of us got a phone call to say that there was any problem what am I to do in a situation like this where you've put a year and then I've done everything I can and there's a failure on the other side so it's a little lopsided to me
considering that we have agreed that there have been failures on both sides so that's a little bit of my problem with why I don't think that is actually a fair condition and I would say if we are going to go into this with trying to trust each other and work together I would say let's do that rather than making it feel like we are going to be
potentially in that situation so that would be my respon to that particular one if you want us to have a different budget we can certainly do that as I said I don't think that's going to change anything I unless the way that it's getting written into the contract is something incredibly bizarre we're going to keep doing what we're doing
which is looking to that it's not going to it is not going to make us more financially stable I can tell you that it's not going to change anything because we're already financially stable if that is something that you want to see I I guess we can do that um it I
don't like again you know I I sit on the other side a lot of the time um and I do land use issues and we do conditions that are on all kinds of developments I don't like to put on conditions that I don't think actually do something important um because I do think they just become overly burdensome and
they're just conditions for the sake of conditions so that's my bias it's your right to do that however that's kind of where I'm coming from is let's not Cloud the issues with creating something to argue over later um in terms of pro present a plan to stabilize leadership
and Staffing Dynamics by octob October 1st 2025 I guess it all depends on putting trust in d49 that there that when we present that to your point we could make that case but I think we've actually already done that to some extent um we're in the middle of of hiring right
now that's not a secret we've been very open that one of our Deans got a promotion so yes we're going to be we're going to hire that's how how are we going to stabilize leadership and I also want to say this we can't discuss personel isues here and I think we all know that if there are people who have
left our schools there are good reasons and I'm just going to say that and ask you to trust that we have the results to prove that we are making good decisions as a board and other than that to designate the principal or another executive I mean again I think we have already done that so it feels redundant
and it feels like it just feels very strange to me that we're continuing to ask for something that we have already done especially when we have said this in the past and we didn't get that phone call so if we want to put that in there that you know call this person I I I think that it's a little bit honorous because I think that that could that
could potentially Flex in the next five years uh writing into a contract maybe it's maybe we decide that it works out better for Ellie um you know our dsq to be that are we going to write it into a contract and say we can never change it I just feel like we should just be able to say hey these are the people and if
we need to change that we could call you and say hey we would like to change this to our contact and we should just be able to do that uh so that's those are my why I think it's just a little bit overboard to put them in the contract and why I would I would say I believe we
have earned that respectfully the five years without without putting things on us that I think aren't valuable um truly and really put us in a position where I feel like we're over because Mr Miller's been waiting to
speak thank you thank you Brad Miller speaking and um this might not be the most apt juncture but I wanted to put a couple points of clarity out there um I don't see any purpose and I'd love to see Matt sort of uh agree with me or not
agree with me but I don't think that we're going to have much contract negotiation per se we've got a solid instrument that we've all been operating under so I don't see a 60-day sort of time frame for that in fact I think it's plausible that I could bring you at your
decisional meeting a version of the contract that might be acceptable to everyone if I get clarity coming out of today in terms of what added functions need to be considered and I I want to just agree with Peter on
the one element that I think I think I'm hearing a sort of a consensus from the board is that our expectation of cooperation and success on the power school or the CIS issue is probably the condition that is most likely going to
be included within that and and so to that end I think that that could be something that could be implemented into a contract for sure again no later than your next meeting if need be well I think what I am hearing right now is I'm hearing at least from a quorum of the
board of consensus that we want to move forward with a 5-year renewal with conditions to be determined and I really believe at this point that those conditions can be discussed back and forth because the biggest issue we've had is a little bit of broken communication not intentional it's
happened Staffing turnovers and who is the designated point of contact so I would like to move forward with a consensus that we move towards that five-year agreement and work on those recommended conditions between the two attorneys to see what kind of resolution
we can work with that works for the district and for mountain Academy at the risk of you know my own um income I don't think we need to over ler this tremendously so think that's accurate I've taken notes as the five of you have spoken and it's my belief and
understanding that three board members have expressed an interest in a fiveyear um contract Marie somewhere kind of in the middle on that and so I can bring to you proposed resolutions that you can have we can provide alternates for but I
think I can take from what I've heard from this group and give you a proposed primary motion and secondary motion and so forth and and and that's not to prescribe the way you vote but it will give you the language in case you're going to go in a particular
direction do we have a consensus to move forward in that direction can we go around one more time please okay director Schmidt I'm just curious how many Charters currently have conditional contracts in the district
virtually every contract almost all charters start with conditions and they It's Not Unusual to renew with conditions it's also not I would say It's Not Unusual to renew without conditions but cont condition yeah the con there's
Provisions in the contract that that spell out expectations that's why you put it in writing so that you so that you know and so you you could you could reasonably say and I think I think car made a good point we can at the point that we issue a level two notice of
concern we can start withholding 8% I believe is the number and that is that's a big number that's going to impact right that that is absolutely anent that's a m mediumsized Hammer it's not the sledgehammer it's not the I don't know some other small Hammer
it's a medium Hammer um and so one of the ways that we could go forward I think what Brad is proposing is we just we sort of take them away from being renewal conditions and we make them contractual conditions right I don't
want to that's what I'm suggesting okay very appropriate this hearing is for you all to express what you prefer do you want these as a condition of renewal do you want these as a condition of a contract that you'll later vote
on director H so I came into this with you know concerns about St long-term stability essentially you guys have outstanding academic performance and that's a huge marketing advantage and you really
should be attracting students and I think probably the number one barrier to that has been the turnover because students come in they get a relationship with their teacher and it takes great teachers to deliver great results right and so we talked about the junior high
the Middle School level outperforming elementaries which is extremely unusual but none of those teachers are returning so that puts it into question um so I have a concern that you guys would be able to maintain that same level of um
performance and so my recommendation would be I like Marie's suggestion of a 2year that then extends out for three more um when the conditions have been met one of the conditions I would ask
for is sustained uh academic performance you know if you drop a few points you know that that happens but uh I would be concerned if we see a precipitous drop that that's the thing that I'm thinking about when I look at the the total picture and that's what I'm worried
about we owe it to our to our district to deliver you know outstanding choices and uh we want you guys to continue to be outstanding we would be concerned if if we start to see that fall off the other condition of course I'm very interested in the
accuracy I'm you know I am disinterested in how we got here I I don't I I'm not interested in who at fault the only thing I'm looking at is that we have a problem and that problem hasn't been resolved um and so I just want to you
know incentivize uh not this doesn't just pressure MVA because this also uh is being expressed as a expectation of our board to our superintendent who will then relay that to his subordinates that
this is a problem that needs to be resolved um as far as the designating a point of contact I don't think we have to spell who that is in the contract except unless we assigned it to a role
so if that's the principal or if that's uh you know M Thompson may may I respond to that very quickly the way that condition was written the word designate to me implies and has already been this way that that that could change it could change by by role
or by person so there might be years when the director of school quality is is the person that has the capacity and the bandwidth to be the you know the the switchboard um there's a saying that every system is designed perfectly for the results that it
produces this system has been producing results that don't meet any of our expectations I want a better system whether I get there by a contractual requirement or a renewal condition is less important to me than that we get
there yeah so it it could also just be terminology in the contract that says that MVA will designate a person and they can designate whoever they want that role can change from year to year but at any point if that person needs to
change we are immediately contacted and just just so that that's covered um the other concern I had coming in here was of course the the budgeting but I'm hearing information here tonight and I am no longer concerned with that so
thank you for for alleviating that concern director Li right I'm okay with a contract that with it being a contractual condition rather than a renewal condition as long as we're getting what we need my issue with
the enrollment is also just public facing and when people look at the contract later enrollment is always an expectation somewhere in our contracts um so set the expectation to something that is realistic rather than
aspirational because realistically you're at half okay and if you're realistically at half and that's what you're saying you're going to beet in your contract guess what you've met your contract obligation if you're saying we're we we said it aspirationally well we're only meeting
50% then um it looks very different for any sitting board coming after us as well five years from now if we're continuing to not meet enrollment projection so I think that that actually serves serves you better as well um and
then the designation I think to me is important to have how that's going to be designated and who at our district is informed that's not a huge deal in terms of writing it in the contract I don't think it's overly onerous I think what it does do is
recognize that the dynamic of having a third party involved is very different than what we have with our other Charters we did at one point one of our Charters had an emo they none of our others now do I think maybe PTI I think does right so but there there are more
challenges and more opportunities in those relationships having this designated contractually then also is protective of MVA because MVA can say we did what you said your people messed up right and it's very clear in the contract look we designated here's the
date and time we sent that person you weren't communicating to that person then the it solves the miscommunication problem in a way that is sustainable between multiple staff changes multiple board changes in a way that everybody
can point to no matter who's at what position at any and who moves on at NH and who is at MVA and moves on at MVA and who is at the district it moves on I think it's the right way to solve an issue that occurs because of the way in which the
management system works that's my personal opinion but I think they can all be addressed um in that renewal contract and that would be my preference individually director devola Miss Thompson if I if I may really quick the
current contract language enrollment does allow for variation it kind of not quite like this but it kind of talks about plus or minus one standard deviation so it's not you must have 600
students in year one 60 students in year two it does allow for some variation yeah but 50% yeah so it's it's there already Miss Thompson yes Mr Miller because this question gets raised quite often in in these sorts of contractual negotiations
I just want to be clear I don't believe it's the expectation of the board that this a diminished enrollment expectation would look like a cap right this would just be just to be really clear okay thank you may I ask a clarifying question on that because I hear you
saying and talking about it as a goal but it is not in one of our Charter goals so are you are you proposing adding it as a goal or just as a piece aren't numbers normally in the contract if you remember the the slide with the
goals that I had up there I don't believe that our enrollment is an actual contract goal so that's what I'm just trying to understand is that going to are you are you suggesting we put it in as a goal or just as a piece of our contract to me and this you know Matt please please improve my
explanation to me I'm I'm closer to what Marie said that having a budget and an enrollment ejection that is close to reality is is better for our community it's better for the district we have an operated school that should be competing
with you for enrollment um we have authorized a charter school we we authorized James rwin Canada based on enrollment projections we thought that students were going to come there we thought some of them would come from Evans we thought some of them would come from MVA some of
them come from rmca and so this is partly fiduciary management of our portfolio to have realistic fact-based and and and I agree with the distinction between between realistic and and um aspirational in
terms of goals I I we we completely agree it's not going to change how you budget or staff or program or or perform in in an academic sense but it is going to prevent a future superintendent or board member from saying look you've been you've been chronically below
projections for a decade what is wrong with you I think I said this to Matt in our in our conversation I think there's a vision or a future of a very healthy MVA somewhere between five and 600 students or maybe I said 450 and 550 um
I don't see a likely future where you have 700 students if you get there it's going to be because you you did something really significant which we'd love to see but but right now the board's current approval and you're
looking to renew that approval your current approval was for a school that would be at 772 students already and so if you're going to approve a school and extend it for another five years I I just think as a board you want to get you want to close
that Gap so either you close it by cranking up enrollment not realistic or you close it by resetting the target completely realistic and so that that's that's my clarification I don't know if that's how the board understands and if I just may briefly add to
that director Deva I know you've been waiting to speak it's related to the topic so when we talk about student count in terms of um Charter Schools we're really really focused on their financial viability right because that's where the primary
source of budgeting comes from but with NH having a different relationship with them that we do not find in our um in our other Charters it is less critical and so we may even choose not to make
that a contract item can I still ask for clarification because that I I I just want to understand this piece so again if it's something that you just want to see a realistic again it's not going to change anything for us so if we want to put that number there as long as there's no
cap but I do want to ask again are you seeing it as a goal like that's different than what we have now and that's the piece that I want to understand are you are you proposing to change that into a goal I'm not seeing it as a goal I'm I'm seeing it as a constituent of your budget plan okay and
and I already said but but let's just let's just say that you came back and said look we we think we're going to be um 550 during the term of this renewal a five-year term because I think you're consens around that um then then I know
that NH is committed to back back stopping a school that has a 550 student Revenue so for me this is really about budget and enrollment and and I agree this board could say what does it matter if they're 100 below or 300 below nh's
got to cover the check so it's not on you it does give us some projectability as a district and that and that matters but it's not it's not going to screw us up if we don't have it I think it's a budget projection
I don't think it's a goal in it may be a goal but from our perspective it's it clarifies what we should realistically expect from the gool and certainly if you exceed expectations that's terrific and and there's a there's a charter
school that's about to submit an intent to renew I don't think it's going to directly compete with you but it's there's a there's a school that's going to come in and make their compelling case from a different part of the district but I think there's a chance that it'll have a ripple this board
should think about hey we already have these Charter Schools what will this one which will also be a Ka what will that do to our portfolio of schools I just want them to have the most accurate information they can have as they make that assessment and right now I feel
like there's a there's a accuracy discrepancy between projection and reality and I want to be clear I am that is a different thing than the goal piece that's why I wanted to clarify that if that's what the purpose is I have no problem with us doing that and in fact the clarification around it being a
piece of the contract and not a condition of renewal makes me much more comfortable on any of these items I appreciate the clarity around as long as we can change that design you know something around that that that doesn't give me heartburn um you know and I
would and I would say openly it makes me much more comfortable on the cyst because I know that there's a contract dispute resolution process that means I can call up and I can sit down with Lori and go hey I think some of this is happening on your side and that creates a much more fair situation for us to
work those out rather than being a condition of renewal so I'm I still think that it's probably not necessary but respectfully um but if that is something that is going to put in I I think contractually that makes us much more comfortable director
devola um yes and uh correct me if I'm wrong um superintendent hilts but I believe that we were already looking and having performance as a condition um going forward with all of our Charters
um because I do know with our meet or exceed that has been a part of um contracts before but not all of our contracts but we wanted to make sure that we put it in for each charter school that we currently have correct I think that's direction from the board to
me that I not bring you back a contract that doesn't include an expectation of performance did did we already direct you on that because that's what I I thought we had already done as a board I would say that in previous conversations
particularly in your adoption of the the beag around being a a dist a district of Distinction you you set an expectation for all of our schools not not just our schools um and so I would I would consider that that is baked in but I appreciate you bringing it out explicitly um that is already a part of
the MBA contract it was part of their original applic ation that they would they would have high academic standards and they're I mean they're you know they're in the upper right quadrant when when Miss Gran shows you those charts we have some operated schools that are there you know either on performance or
on growth mvas is uniquely strong in both in particularly in ela um I don't I don't think we would write in a specific Target but I think the band of performance um to me meets is the
minimum that we would expect from any of our schools I actually believe that we have a contract provision that says that they will meet or exceed our academic performance but I would have to add the caveat we have choices that that would
not apply to um for instance like if you take go Academy and so just a caveat for and then when you look at allies that's a distinct population so just that but so so this is a case where I think the LTA
experience is very instructive we all understood they were having a a profoundly disruptive thing happen within their school we understood that they were going to they were going to have an academic decline we didn't Panic about it they didn't Panic about it their enrollment bounced but more
importantly their performance bounced and so that expectation doesn't carry with it a predetermined sanction it just gives us an opportunity to say hey hey this year you you were below and I think I do that in the
context of the SPF meetings that I have with Charter School leaders as we say you know and and we had this this is all Public public data and public content we had this conversation with GPA they had a weird year they they dropped from their historical performance they regressed right back to their positive
mean which meets or exceeds District performance and so all that was there was never a letter or it just conversational it was just looking at the data together and figuring out what we're going to do different I would expect if that were to happen in in any degree at MBA at least the first cycle
of that would just be conversational what do we think might be going on and then um I totally agree that we can put um the single point of contact UM being very clear that uh if that
point of contact needs to change or will change um that there will be a specific process of how that notification will happen and um how it is communicated so for example um it will be communicated
through email to this person that we need to change on either end the communication um piece I think that's something that's important um as it comes for the on time or error free
ontime reporting um I think you guys would be able to negotiate that with the two parties on both ends um of what that would look like because to your point it could be
District error and you don't want to be held accountable for district error Etc so um I will let you guys decide to Hash that out because I don't really know the best way to do that um but yes I think we should do
exactly what um Brad had suggested so thank I mean Mr Miller um so yeah that's where I'm at can I and oh go ahead can I I just I just wanted to affirm something that superintendent Hilson said just a moment ago about like hey this happened hey let's get on the phone and have a
call let's talk about this let's and I think tonight we're seeing that kind of modeled out as we're having this kind of like group discussion about how do we get there and I just want to say thank you for that because I think that's for us what what I'm Yearning For What NH what mountain view is like let's let's begin to have these conversations in a
more constructive manner I think we've got some water under the bridge that we're all like gosh we wish we weren't there and we're not there anymore and so I just so like with the the single point of contact that makes sense as a process point but it's going to be like 25 people having these conversations right and us all talking and figuring out okay
who needs to help with this and who needs to help with that and so I just want to say like yeah yes it makes sense and us all leaning in is what's going to get us there so I I appreciate what we've done here tonight because I think it's it's valuable speaking of hashing it out we have far exceeded the top for this which is good because the things
that I hope were communicated is that we appreciate the work that went into both presentations tonight and I want to make that clear that we appreciate the time and effort that went into both presentation and I also want to make clear that we value Mountain View Academy as in our Charter portfolio as
one of our best performing schools so I think that Brad has collected more than enough information to start putting things together and that we can get to work on that and so now you guys have seen how the sausage is made um Gilbert you come from a home school background
and you're in one of our Charter Schools what do you think the process uh yeah that's definitely how the sausage is made for sure uh but yeah so I think I do have a few questions mainly to clear it up in my own head do you guys have like a
building you all go to that like all your students will show up to okay well then I do have one bit of suggestion okay if you have attendance Awards don't give them to the students but to the parents they're the ones driving their
kids everywhere that's all Catalina I don't think I have any questions but I do think it's interesting uh seeing the whole process of this because I think as a student it's easy to forget the attendance levels and uh the grades we receive not
just like us as individuals but as a whole like goes into like the continuations of schools and I think it's very interesting to see like the different uh sides and everything with it but yeah Miss Thompson may I ask Gilbert
what Charter he attends uh I go to go high school oh awesome thank you yep all right well thank you everyone and now we are on to what was the action item number three
Miss Thompson yeah I'm just going to say this for the record I I understand that the board has somewhat informally uh accepted Mr Miller's self- tasking to generate a a draft contract um which we would then place on
on the next agenda as part of your decision as part of your renewal decision yes um I further understand and this and this matters even these two weeks since we're heavy into enrollment season I I further understand that the board is is more than receptive your intent is that MV will receive a
five-year renewal your intent is that our lawyer will draft conditions that I will review them uh that you'll review them um that you know where they re require you know clarification with with the MBA team NH
team they will review them and so what you would want to see next time is that this side of the house is bringing something to this side of the house that we have consens on in advance I don't know if you'll have worked it all out
with Eric but what what we would kind of loosely call an agreement and principle which you can then support and then we can we can move to final contract is that a rambling but fair characterization of your tasking yes do we have a consensus to move forward with
that I'm a no just because I still prefer the 2-year um renewal with conditions and then uh automatic three-year when the conditions are met but I understand I'm in the minority yes I'm a yes as long as those
conditions are in the contract yes yes okay we are on to 1.4 the United States history and Civics course with a presentation by director devola yay it only took till 911 but that's
okay um so um as a little bit of a of background and some rationale for why we're seeking this is um we had pre at a previous board meeting um found out that US history is not a
required course for our um students to grad graduate uh they could do US history or world history um based on entrance um requirements for college was my understanding um and so I had had a
one-on-one conversation with um superintendent hilts on what we could do in order to make it a requirement um because US history is in my opinion a non-negotiable thing that needs to that
all of our citizens of the United States of America need to um have in order to graduate from high school um and so in that conversation with superintendent hiltz I had asked him well how many students do we currently
have that are graduating without taking it because that would help direct our our uh conversation and our discussion and so he came back to our uh Feb February annual planning Summit with
numbers for the board and so we discussed it as a board and uh uh according to what you had or what he had presented um currently 29% of our uh graduating seniors are have not taken a
u US History course from years past so that of course wouldn't wouldn't include this year or was it last year's numbers Mr hilz or the pre it was 2222 I'm going to say it was a multi-year average okay multi-year average thank you um and
so with that we had a discussion as a board of the possibility of um even leveling up from just having a US History course to making it a um all inclusive US History course that
would cover Civics um as well as as uh citizenship UH responsibilities what does that look like government uh knowing their US Constitution we even had talked about the possibility of
having the the seniors take this or take the citizenship exam um and We Came Upon the brilliant idea which I'm going to give credit to superintendent hiltz I know you don't want the credit but but of um
having our social studies teachers be a part of this process of creating a d49 specific uh graduated graduation required class that um would include all
of those pieces and in and having our social studies teachers collaborate and come up with the resources and the ideas of um what can we use to uh promote
patriotism um and citizenship and understanding of our constitution our founding government uh and why what it means to have um P or to value our country and where we've come from uh as
well as um I think I pretty much said it I'm repeating myself now but this is something that I'm extremely passionate about because currently there are I mean you've had
Sur you've see the surveys all the time of how few American citizens actually know our founding documents our history who the presidents are um what American
exception exceptionalism is and how we are the exception and not the rule of um um the world and uh so yeah um do you guys want to add anything or did I miss anything
well I want to thank you for bringing this forward I also like superintendent hilts idea to make it a unique d49 offering and to include our social studies teachers in the development of this because it gives the teachers agency to help us produce an outstanding
course and it also en it encompasses our our community I don't know how many of you have ever seen a man on the street interview where you were answering all the questions and they weren't because I can tell you that I have seen them I see a few hands going up there and so I'm
really excited about developing this course and before we get to the board I'd actually like to hear quickly from the students what you think about this course why is US History separate from world history I think it's because we live in
the United States but we are part of the globe director devola um so are you think are you talking about the course like US History being a different course from world history instead of having just one course that has both yeah okay
very good question so what's really cool about history is the farther you get in the future the more history you have in the past um and so you keep compounding the amount of information that students need and so so the reason why it would
be a separate course is because you can't cram world history into one semester or one piece you can't do you can't do that with US History either we actually had this discussion about even in a full
year they can't cover all of us history even the little condensed version that we go through because there's just so much so um uh or um I almost made you superintendent how cool is that
director director Hy um mentioned that with his course we they made it through the 60s correct the 1960s and with this course I took that was the same thing the 1960s we just couldn't get there was like the last week of school and my my
social studies teacher is like no we didn't make it this part right so it would it would be very highly it's it's practical impossible for it to be combined and crammed all into one year couldn't you still make that
argument for almost any part of history as a whole not just United States history so something that is really important with all countries this is what's really cool about having countries is that each country teaches
its own citizens about its history and there is a a pride that comes comes from knowing about your specific country's history that's separate from the world that's in every country so in in the European countries
they they learn you know French history and and Spanish history and all those those different types of things and so that's why it's so important and I'm actually you bring up a really good point I'm going to read something that I marked in
here um so I'm I'm going to read this this is actually from one of our founding fathers U Benjamin Rush uh he was um one of our um founding fathers that really had an impact on the education system as we started as a
country so he said patriotism is as much of virtue as Justice and it is a necessary and it is as necessary for the support of societies As Natural affection is for the support of families the or patre or
the love of country is both a moral and a religious Duty it comprehends not only the love of our neighbors but of millions of our fellow creatures not only of the present but of future generations and that was by Benjamin
Rush so it's really important for us to have a separate us history course um as citizens of the United States that was a good question you really quickly you mentioned how he said love of your neighbors is he referring to just the
people around you or is he referring to like other countries as well in this particular instance I believe he's talking about the neighbors as in our closest Society so that would be your community as well as our country
so you have really good questions he does Catalina um I have a couple questions but to start off uh you had discussed like new courses that you would bring up with the history teachers already like currently having uh but it's my
understanding that some high schools already have a US History course so would this just be a new course that you're trying to get approved or new requirement like would it just be for new schools that don't have a US history class that that would be made for or all schools in
general so we had actually talked a little bit about this at our an annual planning Summit this would replace the US History requirement for those students who um I don't know we need to discuss it a
little bit more what do you think it I I think I can speak to that so we already have Statute in Colorado that requires instruction in Civics and we accomplish that one of two ways either students take a a dedicated Civics course or they take a US History course that has Civics content and embedded in it there are a
few other nuances AP uh concurrent enrollment but but generally the case is that they're either taking civics or US History um I I I can speak to the larger thing I'm I'm a social studies guy I taught world history I taught us History AP US History this is kind of where I lived but I also taught Russian history
for a long time now if I had a student graduating d49 I would have no interest in making Russian history a requirement but I would have great interest in making us history a requirement because presumably students that graduate in d49 will live in the
United States and and so I see the the key themes around this concept as being understanding the history of our country so that you understand the responsibility of being part of this country so that you can take advantage
of the opportunity of living in this country so I see it as a as kind of a Triad of of the history clarified our responsibility so that we can all have more access to the opportunity and this country is
uniquely responsible and it creates unique opportunities other countries also create unique opportunities but there is something that is that is special that we should honor and and teach our ourselves to honor and and teach students to honor and so I'm
supportive of this but I also appreciate that we have really passionate Educators that will come from a variety of perspectives uh some of whom you know quite a few of of my own family are are naturalized citizens that population
has a certain kind of affection appreciation but also respect and concern about what it means to have history responsibility and opportunity and so I expect that perspective will be there there are there are others that um were here ancestrally their their family
lineage goes back before the formation of the United States I have that strand in my family too that's a perspective there are some that came and were Founders and bu those are the perspectives that I I think we have to include our social studies Educators to
make sure that we bring all those perspectives to the surface um because to write this course we're going to have to say no to a lot of things to get it into a one-year required course uh I have also advocated and and I think we'll we'll have this discussion with the teachers I
think the course should be for upper classmen I think it should be required at the junior or senior level it is somewhat strange to me that we have a tradition of teaching Civics to students who are not yet old enough to to exercise their civic opportunity I'd
like to to to flip that script and to me it' be a great thing to add to the brand of exceptional choices in d49 so that's that's why I'm supportive of it okay Catalina did you have one more before we get to the board just with
that so since you are talking about creating a whole new course curriculum for that would that be then removing courses that are already in place like Civics and world history my expectation is that we would no longer offer civics or US history of Standalone courses
because this required course would capture both of them would that include AP classes um that's part of what we would work out but I think not uh and I think concurrent enrollment would be another example where it would um if a student took a push I think
they're getting a lot of civics I think they're getting a lot of understanding of opportunity and responsibility uh I taught that class for years that's a that's a really comprehensive and aush is essentially the same content that you would get in a concurrent enrollment class the difference being a push is
typically taught over two semesters and a concurrent enrollment class is usually the same content in one semester because college courses move at a at a quicker Pace those are the things I would count on teachers to to sort out okay director
Schmidt interestingly I looked up the US citizenship and Immigration Services uh questions for the naturalization test which you probably are familiar with there are a hundred questions that they have people wanting to come be a citizen of this country
there's 100 questions they have an oral test for the applicants and they ask them 10 oral questions out of the hundred so they have to study all hundred they don't know what 10 they're going to get um and they have to answer six out of 10 correctly to pass the
Civics portion of it um I think it's really important that our kids know our American Kids know as much if not more than the naturalized citizens um I don't know I'm
sure there's probably many points of view on that I just think it's crazy to not know for instance what what are two rights in the Declaration of Independence uh who makes federal laws what does the Constitution do if both
the president and the vice president can no longer serve who becomes the president I think kids need to know this so that they can become citizens of the country uh practicing citizens of the country they can vote that their knowledge ible how
the process works what kind of system of economy do we have is it a market system is it um a command system a traditional system I mean you know you need to know these things so I think if we started maybe with the teachers
and said hey why don't you look at this list first and that might guide you into what you choose for your curriculum director Hy so this is one place where director
DVA and I are in full agreement um we definitely want to see our our students we owe it to our community to turn them out as well-informed and prepared citizens because the moment they leave us as 18year olds they are they become
the caretakers of the Republic along with the rest of us and uh so uh especially we're find out how important local elections are right so uh you can have an outsize voice in those um and to your question Gilbert um the
important thing to know about history is there is an absolute ton of it and you could study it your entire life and barely scratch the surface and so what happens is you have to you choose you know how broad you want to go and that
determines how deep you can go and so with a world history is a very broad topic and so you can only get you know to the very surface once you start narrowing that scope you can go a little deeper and a little deeper and a little deeper and I would argue that even US
history at a high school level is still extremely Broad and you don't get to get very deep and we have to start cutting out important content um but uh you know we're limited by um the school year so we do what we can do um
the one thing I would say to this though I would like to push back a little and I think you know obviously Mr hiltz proposed this as a as an idea and this is his subject area and he's very knowledgeable but it's been a day or two since he's been in the classroom and so
what I suggest is rather this is presenting a solution to our professionals and I would like us to pull back and get back into our role as a governance board and say no no no no what we're going to do is we're going to Define
requirements and then we're going to send that to our staff and we let them come up with the solution and maybe that solution is exactly what was proposed here but maybe it's not and so I I would I would prefer to let the
experts propose the solution director Li W I think that's actually what they're act already doing they're saying we want this to be a requirement and but in recognition of
the state statute requirement for civics and the way in which high school is structured ensure that it meets the civic's curriculum now social studies teachers go design an amazing course around this that we can require that's what I'm hearing but we're putting it in
the hands of them to design not us because they're the subject matter experts um with the caveat that Civics has to be incorporated because right now we do that as a separate course so if we're going to require it most of our high schools do a couple of them don't
but most of them actually do and require them to take it freshman year um and at Falcon high it's opposite geology so or GE yeah geography so they take a semester of civics and a semester of geography um so I think this is the right approach um I would ask in terms
of when it comes back eventually in terms of implementation pace and title and titling that we involve our counseling staff significantly because they're the
ones um it so for example we had a class that came from vist Ridge it was a counseling department that flagged it and said when we send this to colleges because of the way it transcripts they're not getting what they need on their their transcript they're going to be the ones that are
going to catch those pieces they're also going to be the ones who are going to be able to tell you implementation wise what the pace has to be so for example anybody who's a current freshman sophomore or Junior at Falcon High has already taken their civics class and
passed it um so have if we added this next year which is not realistic and any any means so I'm not saying we're doing that we're not doing that I promise we're not doing that um there' have to be an implement M ation process that was
for that would start with the nth graders who hadn't had Civics yet and anyone who failed it could also be required to take it but the other component is they also have to have a year to plan the um the implementation for scheduling none of us deal with that
either I can tell you having worked as a high school teacher I was only vaguely aware of it but I know they're already building and assigning teachers so that they can build schedules so kids have classes to be in for fall the majority of the initial building of that's
already done so when you change course sequencing and what courses are going to be taken you're changing what teachers have to be repaired who can be assigned what and it destroys the schedule they built so they're going to need so you would not be able to put this even if they said hey we have a great idea they
would not be able to start this next fall for example that would be unrealistic given that so to set our expectation and then also to recognize that we're going to need those experts for that piece of pacing implementation and Technical titling um
I I believe this course will most likely reasonably apply as a requirement to the class of 30 or 31 that's realistic and that's where it's gonna that's where it's going to make sense because everybody got real excited at the
planning session if we could even do this and I'm like oh my God if you have not worked in a high school and dealt with what it's like to to actually do these moving Parts through a transition I lived through a minor example of it when the state decided that they were going to put chemistry questions on the
state test sophomore year which then meant that physical science could no longer be taught in nth grade because we had to teach biology and then chemistry had to be moved down to 10th and what that meant Staffing wise because people who are biologists are often not chemists or physicists so that meant
huge Staffing ch changes and doubles and I taught Singletons for two years for the kids who failed and all kinds of crazy stuff that the counselors had to do and it took a couple years so I want that on everyone's radar so we're not beating them up when it takes some
time director devola um yes so I think with with this I do I do want to have some like guidelines I guess for our social studies um Team um because I think there are some
specific things that we would want to make sure are in there um for example reading the Constitution I mean that should be it's a 15minute read now obviously they would want to teach a little bit more about
that I know we have Constitution Day but do they actually read the full thing um the possibility um of the citizenship test being a part of of it this is not necessarily like you have to do this but this is kind of what are
some of the suggestions um to bring to them about what the board would like to see um that type of thing and then also um to director L wri's point that this is
going to take some time um I understand that because you had thrown out 31 or 32 um in the interim could we still have us history
as a requirement for our incoming freshmen while we are working on this extra piece because the more we wait the more citizens we graduate who don't know our founding our founding of our of our
country and that is going to continue to impact our society I would ask to have the conversation and and to include counselors in that question because it may seem counterintuitive but we have students that are planning their
High School class Pathways in seventh grade and so just as a matter of respect for families and and the ways that families plan academic Pathways this is a major change um and so I'd want to make sure that we're doing it respectfully I don't think think what
you're describing is is impossible but I just want to make sure that we're doing this in a way that is community respectful but also this is the board showing leadership and saying this is this is a thing that we want to have as a distinctive of District 49 um maybe I
would suggest that you task me with proposing what I will just generically tonight call a task force that would include teachers other administrative staff which I would include counselors in that
and board members but perhaps not at every meeting um so that there's some iterative process and an opportunity for for board members who are particularly passionate every one of you is we saw that I am too right it's kind of you unusual that all all six of us are lit up about something but we are we all lit
up about this and so I would propose that you task me tonight with the development of a task force and that really as soon as that task force invitation goes out and people people jump into it then that group can begin to develop what could an interim you
know methodology look like what could a long-term outcome look like and um director Li Wright when Peter says class of 3030 that refers to their graduating year not their incoming freshman year so you're only talking actually about a year so we're talking about current kids
who had currently be entering freshman year basically right because this graduating class is 25 so next year so the current the entering right but the entering freshman will be 2029 so we're talking about one more
year the kids who are already in high school um would be very difficult to to do anything with so we're really only talking one year difference and that's that's one more year of kids who know their US History I'd be careful
because you can't shift they're not going to be able to shift the the other courses quick enough well I do know that the state had made it a requirement for us to put the genocide studies as a requirement we implemented that pretty quickly I know we Implement that into other
courses but they still had to some students still had to switch their schedules in order to take the course that had that in there no we were given transitional years this is why I would ask us to I would ask you to let me take this offline and I'll give you an example a
high school uh principal could say you know this is coming let's get in front of it let's reduce options and increase US History they could do that without any Direction they could do that because you're giving direction and uh you're you're casting a vision for the future
and then they start to shape programming to that but it I would be over my skis if I tried to Workshop that with you tonight task me I'll get working will come back this school year with with a a
proposal and you know kind of a composed task force with a proposal for the future director noola so then I would propose that we task superintendent hilts with the creation of the task
force Etc with me as leas on to that task force Gilbert I think my biggest question and this is I'm still kind of scratching my head out trying to figure out which I'm sure you've said already but I would like it
cleared up uh is this replacing world history or no it is not replacing both will just be required right no no it was either or in order to get them to as a graduation requirement to get
into college they could either have US history or world history what we're saying is US history is going to be required as well as world history no or as still as or is it still going to be the choice or is it I because I'm
still a little confused right now direct Li right so you have three years of now goals requirements are different you're a charter school this cannot apply to Charter Schools because Charter Schools disc serine their own curriculum however under d49 graduation
requirements for the schools we we operate they required three years of social studies right now the typical student at Falcon High because that's where I've had kids take for their first year of social studies they take geography and Civics for their second
year most take world history some take us or AP classes and then third year and this is where you get 30% who don't take us history and 60% who do junior or senior year they take a variety of other
social studies classes to get that third credit US History can be that class for 60% of the kids they choose that which means they've actually taken both world history and us for many of them and then for other students sociology psychology
economics some of those other pieces you can also choose to take a fourth year my guess is what will happen is the freshman year will get replaced with world history when they remove Civics because Civics will now be incorporated into
this US history class and then US History will be junior senior year and that second year you're going to have to pick other social studies classes because you'll still need three years to graduate we're just designating what one of those years has to be right now one of the designations at most of our
coordinated schools is one semester of civics and then schools take care of it like finish off a second semester for my kids it was geography um but those are the pieces Catalina so I had a similar question but since I
like the understanding is that the US History would be the credit that is required why are we not also holding that to world history because if we're taking away the Civics requirement that technically isn't being taken away because it's still being integrated into
the US History course why are we not also having it a mandated credit to get uh world history director devola uh and correct me if I'm wrong but it would seem that the
majority of the students would need to take world history because they have to have those three credits and um but there that could open a possibility of what they're doing with world history right now of or uh US
History right now where they could replace world history with a other history course is that kind of understanding they it is and this is what this is what boards do this is what leaders do the leaders are saying it's intolerable that graduates have no US
history and you're sort of saying it is tolerable maybe not desirable but tolerable that some students might graduate without world history because you you you will probably have some freshmen who won't take a history course their freshman year they'll take some other they may take sociology or you
know something else in social studies and then they may they may take the course that we're describing and then they may take another one in their senior year so they may load their social studies into their sophomore through senior year um and so leaders set priorities leaders
determine what's acceptable and what's not this board is saying that they they want to make US History Civics and citizenship a requirement and absolute and O like they're not requiring
psychology or sociology or world history many students are going to take all of those things or or or a set of those things but every student is going to take the US History experience okay we're going to do a second round with one minute each so bear with us real quick while we get
that going okay director Schmidt I won't take a minute I just want to volunteer to be the secondary liaison for this task force director Hy so just to um further clarify my uh previous push back what uh I wouldn't want to do is have a bunch of
um teachers come in and we start telling them why we brought them together and they say you're already describing a course that we know or you're already describing a course that we could deliver if we use this existing course and then we just combine with these other materials so that that was all
that that that was about but if if we allow the task force to determine what the proper course is then um then that would satisfy my requirements um as far as the the pathways through social
studies uh where I graduated um it was required in nth grade that you took world history it was required um in 11th grade that you took um US history and it was required in 12th
grade that you took one semester of civics so um I that still leaves you with um if if you just do world history and you do um US history that still gives students One requirement that they
can fill with whatever they want and then they could take an optional 40th year as well director liia Wright I'd be careful on how many things you list as explicit requirements because we are a high military community and being a high military community means we have lots of kids who transfer
in with transcripts that are a mess um and we would like them to still graduate in four years especially with um several high level command here I S lots of times where I had kids taking classes out of sequence and science when I taught at Falcon High um but that's
again where you talk to the counselors about what's reasonable to have as the the set absolute requirement in a lot of schools it'll be standard that you take a a course sequence like technically geography isn't required but every Falcon High freshman takes it because
they need something second semester to B balance Civics and so there are a lot of things that the majority of students students so if you attend Falcon High all four years I bet everybody will be taking world history I'm willing to bet on it because it's the easiest class to stick in however um there'll be kids who
transfer in as sophomore juniors and seniors and we want to say this is the most important thing this one you have to take with us and we'll take everything else you're transferring in director devola I'm not opposed to requiring world history I just want to make sure
everyone knows US history is the Del the the hill I will die on um so that's that's that's that I also am not opposed to H having this US History course with um you know citizenship
responsibilities Etc um being a year and then that semester because as to our Point US history is so involved I don't know if we're going to be able to pack everything into one full year so still having a Civics requirement with the
world US History could be a possibility I'm not going to open that can of worms right now but um we might find out from the social studies teachers they're like there is no way that we can gram all this stuff that you guys want in one year which we will let them figure out
um just a quick comment that when my daughter was starting her freshman year we went around to meet the teacher teachers she had the this amazing Civic teacher and listening to his presentation I told him I want to take your class and he mentioned at that time
that he wished he was talking to Juniors and seniors who were getting ready to vote and so I also like that component of moving it forward if there are no objections this will be moved into why don't say action uh I think we're going
to have an update from yeah tasking superintendent hilts I don't think we need to move it to the next meeting because we're not doing any action on it okay so we are on to information first 2.1 the monthly District performance
report sorry we are done okay this is adjourned at 9:49 p.m. for