welcome to the Am I on hello hello okay okay we are welcome to the Wednesday April 23rd Board of Education work session uh before we get going there will be just a couple of moving items tonight item 1.8 will be moved to
1.6 and item 1.10 will be moved to 1.7 as we have out of town presenters and people who have to drive out of town tonight so just note that change to our agenda and then I'm going to take just a quick moment of personal privilege um
today is executive assistant day and I may be just a bit biased but here with the board of education we have the most amazing senior executive assistant with Lynette Depal who has really had quite the go of it but she
always manages to land on our feet and make life a little bit better for everybody who is around her so thank you Lynette okay and the first item on our agenda is going to be individualized education performance report for CLLDE
and gifted education um good evening board dr nancy Lamond um deputy superintendent and executive director for individualized education do I click on it yes okay where is the presentation um tonight there are presentations from
three of my departments um culturally and linguistically diverse education gifted education and special education um first there are a couple of slides from me information I just like to share to show you that we are um growing
shaking and moving um the first slide shows the enrollments for the last five years total enrollment is um indicated by the line and then the other enrollments for CLLD students with disabilities or on IEPs and then gifted
education i did add this year the growth from um 2021 to 20 2024 2025 just a percentage of growth for each one of the um specific areas just so you can see again we continue to grow um and we
continue to serve students with the multitude of needs and differences the other the next slide I want to show you is our scorecard as of 331 um yes it is a mixture of blues and greens and yellows and reds we have a couple more months um in order to meet a
couple of our KPIs that we are working towards um we will be getting data within the next couple of um months within the next couple of weeks um to update this um we are looking forward to again reaching more greens and blues as we near the end of the year the first
presentation will be on CLTE from Mr grant G thank you Dr lamont uh good evening board members uh and Mr hilts uh my name is Grant Gis i'm with the uh culturally and linguistically diverse education department that is a long title just to
say that we uh encompass and support students that are acquiring English as a second language and uh we refer to them as multilingual learners in district 49 uh we have been uh doing a plethora of events so I just wanted to share some of the great things that we did uh the
multicultural fair some of our uh excursions to the uh Shine Mountain Zoo um literacy events that we do with our families with the Pajama Jam uh and other various events throughout the year first the highlights uh students
made greater gains in growth on Colorado Department of Education's on track to proficiency metric year-toear between this previous year and uh or the uh 2023 school year and the 2024 school year 70% of our elementary students are on track
to proficiency that means that they will acquire English in the time frame that we believe uh they should be doing which is approximately five years for students uh give or take the circumstances of those students uh and that is above the state's elementary school percentage of 63% so
our elementary schools always outperformed the state in uh this previous year our middle schools also outperform the state 29.8% of middle school students were on track to proficiency which is above 25.6 for the state and then 18% of high school
students are on track to proficiency that is below the state average of 22% but uh one thing I would note is that goal plays an outsized role in our high school uh population so uh if we were to remove uh goal school uh from our data
then 48% of our students are on track to proficiency which greatly exceeds the state high school uh percentages uh quick thing to note is that uh students acquire English more rapidly the younger they are our brains are malible and the older we get the harder it is uh if
you've tried to learn a language and you're uh a certain age like me uh it is a struggle so uh our our young students learn very well our older students need more support but I think we have a great program and we have great teachers uh in
uh in the program as well we utilize as a um uh progress monitoring tool to make sure that the beginning middle and end of year that students are making growth and when we did our middle ofear assessments intel we noted that 61% of
our multilingual learner CLLD students are making the language level growth that we would anticipate that they should see and so we are hopeful that those students will make their language goals by the end of the year the other thing that we'd like to highlight is that the professional
development that we do in district 49 under the CLLD department is um uh very wellreceived and highly successful of the professional developments we've done this year which uh number over 25 we've had 90% of respondents said that they have new materials that support them in
supporting the needs of our CLLD students uh we have trainings that focus on tier one strategies to support language in all classrooms because we know that uh although our CLLD teachers are amazing uh they are only with our students probably about 20% of the day the rest of the time they're in all our
other classrooms so that's why we focus on seven steps to a languagerich classroom environment that we have been pushing uh throughout our district in uh multiple trainings throughout the year and instructional coaching that we do specifically in the power zone uh but I'm always willing to do in our other
zones as well uh in addition to that we offer offer professional development that support newcomer students which was a growing segment of our population uh we also address the needs of students that are dually identified meaning that they are uh multilingual learners and
they also have an IEP or they might also be twice exceptional and then observation feedback cycles which we routinely do throughout our schools in addition to that I have the privilege of working with two amazing community liaison who support our stu our families
through title three funds and they support the families through interpretation conflict resolution access to school resources home visits and connecting families to community resources so the the reason we want to do that is we want to make sure that our families feel welcome and included in
district 49 and they definitely feel that way because of these uh two ladies that do an amazing job in addition the community lison also uh support and run logistics for special events every month to increase engagement uh that includes
uh parentmies uh CTE collaborations and special education in addition to the literacy events that we uh showed you pictures of however uh uh we're not done uh we are still going to continue to push uh hard uh in uh addition to the great work
that our CLLD teachers do in district 49 we're going to provide leadership in supporting newcomer students duly identified students and experienced MLS experienced MLS is a phrase for students that have been in a language program for more than five years uh so those
students need special attention and a little bit more uh interventions uh we're going to expand our tier one training that support language rich classrooms across the district in fact we're going to be doing our initial training with Falcon High School and Falcon Middle School next year in July
to give them the strategies that we think will help our multilingual learner students and all students have language rich experiences and then finally we're going to support academic growth and academic achievement of multilingual learner subgroups on the district performance framework and school performance framework not only in the uh
language proficiency level which our students do exceptionally well in but in the other categories of reading math and uh PSAT thank you the next presentation is by Miss Diane Nef who is our coordinator of gifted
education thank you and I'm going to attempt not to talk in 30 seconds straight because I actually have 10 minutes so it's kind of cool i'm Diana Nev coordinator of gifted education um as you can see it has been
an amazing year in gifted this year we not only were able to send um have two extended learning um opportunities for the high school students we also had three camps where so many students registered that next year we are going
to be doubling the amount of students that we're going to be able to send so that's exciting we're already in the works to be able to do that um we our after school enrichment programs that we've been doing parents are continually emailing and asking when they're going to happen what's it's going to what we're going to have they just want more
um the honors academy has been a huge success um Falcon High School alone has as many students registered for next year as we had in the entire district this year so that's very exciting um students are also referring themselves at both Vista Ridge High School and
Falcon High School because they see what's going on with these C with the um honors academy classes and they want to be a part of that and several of them have actually been identified which is very exciting um with that the high schools have 52 newly identified
students um having the staff at those schools um full-time at Mr ridge High School part-time at Falcon High School and part-time at San Creek High School we have been able to focus on finding those students not only in the academic
areas but also in the talent areas so it's pretty amazing stuff um also this is really exciting 44 students have transferred into our district from other schools 26 of them are within Colorado and the neighboring district in fact I just talked to parents from district
district 11 today so it's pretty exciting okay um next slide okay so Dr lemon talked about our October count this um is showing from the beginning of the year until March
31st um pretty exciting stuff i think it's showing you that this the facilitators that we have that are dedicated to gifted education most of them are also endorsed in gifted education are really helping find those students if you look at Meridian Ranch Elementary
School you can see there's a really huge um amount of students who have gone from the beginning of the year until u March 31st vista Ridge High School which I was trying to um trick you guys because I put elementary school instead of high school
up there so I apologize um we had 32 students found at Vistriidge High School so we have 32 more students there um Evans Elementary School and Stson Elementary School both have huge um
growth as well as Ridgeview Elementary School um and then even at two of our schools that have part-time facilitators they're sharing the schools Odyssey Elementary and Knives and Falcon High School and Bennett Ranch those both have teachers who are also um endorsing
gifted education there's a huge amount of growth there as well so it's working yay um so part of our gem that we had the gem was the gifted educated education monitoring that we had last month where the state came in and they um talked to
us visited all the schools you know looked at we had um parent meetings student meetings they looked at surveys everything um part of that was to look at our special populations so if you look at our entire district again um at
the beginning of the year we had 1588 students we're now at 2003 um that's 10% 10.2 almost 10.2% of our entire gifted population the state average is 7 to 15% so we're right where
we're supposed to be as you can see we still need to work on the male female um we do have more males that are identified than females but we are working on trying to figure that one out um the talent areas which is part of my
KPI where we're looking at creativity psycho motor etc um students who were just identified in one of those areas alone we had 132 of them within an academia um an academic area as well
where we can look at the um they are maybe identified in science and creativity we had 56 of those students um altogether that's 188 students that are identified somehow in the talent areas and that's 9 9.4% 4% of our entire
gifted population which is pretty good um twice exceptional students which are students that are um identified in gifted but they also have a disability we have 11.9% of our students that are identified um as twice exceptional the
state average is 12% so we're finding those kids as well which is amazing um and a lot of those kids actually are identified in the talent areas so it's a good thing that we're looking for that um we do have our African-American population and our Hispanic population
is an area for growth if you look at our multi-races Asian um Caucasian all of that we're pretty right where we're supposed to be but those two we do need to um meet it with the district population um does that make sense okay
um so we are going to be giving the ENGAT um which is the negliary general ability test instead of the Kogat which we normally give to the schools um to Horizon Middle School next year just as kind of a test to see if we can find
some more of those students the Koget is very re um literary lit literacy focused where ENGAD is not and so we're hoping that if we use that we'll be able to find some more of the um that special those two special populations and then
we might think of going on to other schools um okay so from our gem we had some commendations and we had some areas for growth um the wonderful thing that they told us is that they never give four commendations so we're the first district ever to get four commendations
so yay so um and I have more to talk about okay so our vision they thought was very powerful it's all student focused it's about making sure that those students we're finding the students we're getting them the programming and we are um
helping meet their needs it's across our entire team it's a a focus for all of us and they thought that that was just amazing we have it on our website so I didn't put it up there but it's on our website so you can see it and the identification is a they thought was
amazing um we have a robust body we have robust bodies of evidence we use multiple data points we um look at in all areas as I was telling you not just the academic areas we also look at the talent areas um and we use
several all-encompassing that was the word I was looking for um it's all-encompassing and we use several data points and looking at all populations for our programming um we are strength and interest based to meet all areas of ID while still supporting the classroom teachers in academic areas and the
honors academy that I mentioned before is at two of the schools also centered around the needs of those students um our enrichment courses at the middle school help to have time more time for those students that are not um rather or I'm sorry since they're in
the classroom they don't have to seek out 80 different students to work on with one-on-one and then um our having all um stu with dedicated gifted education teachers are able to meet both the academic the area of
strength and their effective goals so um and then our personnel that was something that they thought was absolutely amazing so thank you and thank zone leaders and principles and everybody because when they heard that we have teachers at every school at
least part-time they were flabbergasted because there are some districts who have one gifted facilitator for the entire district so thank you very much it's a huge thing um so and with that being said I'm so
excited falcon Zone just now every school in their zone thank you Mr smith has um a full-time facilitator with the growth of the Honors Academy at the high school and Bennett Ranch Elementary getting over 60 students um Brian was
able to find the funds to be able to get a full-time teacher at each of those schools so yay um okay with that being said we are not perfect although we're pretty darn close
sorry um if you notice all of those are still called powerful practices which is amazing but we still have work we still have work to do within those our advanced learning plans we need to make them more meaningful especially for those high school students who are not in the high in the honors academy a lot
of them still think that those ALPS are just something that they have to fill out they really don't want to do that so we're really working with the high school team to get those ALPs more meaningful and get the ALPs more consistent across the whole district um
professional development they um really are our gifted facilitators like I said are all endorsed they go to trainings all the time but we really need to um try to engage the classroom teachers into coming to more of the um into more of our professional development as well
as the administrators they feel that the administrators um they lead in those areas and so the more they know about it the more they can lead and help the teachers as well so with that one of the things we're doing next year or in in
October for KEGT which is the Colorado Association of Gifted and Talented each of the facilitators that are going are um they invited either a classroom teacher or their principal to go so we're having 23 I believe
including Mr hilt and Dr lamont um and one of the principles is going as well so it's going to be exciting along with a whole bunch of classroom teachers so um and then programming very similar to the ALPs we have pockets um we have
great things going on across the district but we have pockets that still need some support um we need to ensure that all high school middle school and elementary schools um receive the same caliber of programming and so you know
good but we still have a little bit to go and finally May 6th is our gifted fair here at from 5 to 6:30 so I hope you guys can make it thank you oh sorry do you have any questions for
Diana Grant director Schmidt gosh I had a bunch of them and I just checked them all off because you guys answered them so well already um what are TEL scores i'm the acronym lady
yeah thank you Director Schmidt uh TEL is teaching English language learners it's a Pearson uh assessment that's done uh beginning middle and end of year and it assesses students in reading writing speaking and listening uh it's highly interactive and students uh get their
scores almost immediately so that we can see what growth they've made linguistically and provide interventions if they're not making adequate growth and then is it the CLLDE that does the home visits now what's entailed in a
home visit when you do that yeah a home visit is an opportunity for the uh family and either our community liaison our CLLD teachers and sometimes general education teachers and principles to meet the families where they're at talk about their child uh we always focus on
hopes and dreams making sure that we are rooted in uh meeting the goals and needs of those family members and it's also an opportunity for us to talk about our programming provide additional resources and uh direct them in any concerns that they may have but uh San Creek uh high
school for examples uh CLLD teacher does the home visits with her uh pareducator for all of her students and our liaison do it for all of our newcomer students that was it thanks thank you director appreciate it director Hy
so my question is for Miss Nef who will be very surprised that I'm interested in her work um this is the first time I heard about the Honors Academy could you just briefly um give a summary of that program yep you guys actually voted on it in May
of last year and the honors academy are four classes that are um at the high schools there's freshman sophomore junior and senior the freshman course is all about the students learning what it is to be gifted over excitabilities what they can um how that hey they can use
those overexitabilities to help them later on in life um the um sophomore class is the project leadership which is based on the um renulli model where the students um have four projects throughout the year where
they are trying to find a resource or um a need within the community whether it be the school the district or the city at large um and they do research on how to help that and then they have to try and do that and then they present to the class so they have to actually try to
fix that need um this year one of the quarters they cleaned up the high school because the high school had stuff all over it another um group of students um was trying to find um women's shelters for students which is really cool um the
junior year is the AP seminar which is um a completely student centered AP course where the students decide what they want to learn about and then they have Socratic seminars and they do research they learn how to do MLA format they do all of these things they have to
put a um portfolio together so on top of getting tested they also have to turn that portfolio into a the AP people um to get their score on that we had seven kids at um three at Vistar Ridge
High School and seven of those at Falcon High School this year um they will be moving on to AP research next year because AP seminar is a precursor to AP research and the AP research course is more of um the learning from the what
they want to learn about then they also have to go on to write um I think it's a it's a college level thesis i can't remember exactly how many words it is but they learn how to do the format for that as well the kids were really
excited they're loving it in fact it was funny it was the first year they did it and some of the kids were giving Mrs garner some tips on how to make it better next year so it was cool yeah so thank you i did not connect with the name but as soon as you started talking about it I remembered how excited I was that that was going to be a thing that's
happening so thank you and they are loving it the kids they are so it's good thank you Marin do you have any questions i don't director D'vola um excellent job with all the
hard work that you you guys pour your heart and your soul into these things and I really appreciate everything that you've done for uh all the different sets of kids so good job and the only question I wanted just a a little bit just kind of a thumbnail
sketch of the difference you were talking about Kovalt versus was it gab i couldn't hear too good the differences in those two testing so one is more literacy based and what is the other one so the ENGAT is more um it's the neglary
general abilities test and KAT is the Thank you cognitive abilities test thanks um and so the cognitive abilities test has three different batteries the verbal the non-verbal and the quantitative and then there's three subtests when each within each of those
um batteries the non-verbal and the the non-verbal is very um like um images moving things um I don't know how to describe it visual visual spatial yeah visual spatial thank you um the
verbal of course is they have to read and then fill in the blank and then the math is obviously you know math um there there are um ratios and all sorts of stuff within it takes a long time the N you know like 90 minutes I think for the
whole thing where the um niggliary general general ability test still has those three sub those three batteries but there's one test there's not three subtests for each and there is no reading at all so the students will look
at um directions it will all be in images it will tell them it'll have the movements to tell them exactly what to do um it'll show it'll point out to them in the movements with no words it'll point out to them um which one is wrong
and then point them to a new one in the in the um examples and then it does that for the same for each of the three tests each of the tests I believe are 10 minutes a piece and shorter not
completely you know um more lengthy I guess does that make sense sorry yeah okay thank you very much we don't have anything to move into
action next presentation is uh Miss Ronda May the director of special education good evening everybody um as Nancy said I am Rhonda May director of special education thanks for having me tonight um okay we will start with special education by the numbers these numbers
come from our December count um which is one of our uh various snapshots of data throughout the year uh really focuses on students eligible for special education funding so there um because it is a snapshot there may be some variability between these numbers and the numbers that Nancy presented um this is where we
are for this year and really the theme is we are growing lots of up arrows there um last year we had about 3,196 students eligible for funding this year we have increased a little over 7% to 3,443
students students on an IEP now make up just south of 13% of our total student population um for context the state average is just over 11% so we are a little larger um still kind of within that realm um all but one eligibility
category increased uh so the state gives us 13 categories under which a student can be eligible for special education services uh these are the two categories that saw the largest increases so just about 25% increase in our students with a serious emotional disability and a 20%
increase in our students with a developmental delay those are students age eight and under we did have a slight decrease in students with uh students who are served in an outofd district placement um although uh in all fairness that number fluctuates a lot throughout the
year okay key performance indicators for special education um so the first one here is timely completion of quarterly progress reports all students on an IEP uh their parents have a right to uh progress report each quarter that shows their progress on their IEP goals um we
exceeded the goal that I had set for us with 96% of those being completed in a timely manner um IEP goal attainment speaks to the number of students who were who either met their IEP goals or were on track to meet them during each quarter um we met the goal that I set
with 79% um and here I'll just note we don't want that number to be 100% um what that would mean is that we don't have very ambitious goals so 79% is a good number um the third thing there is timely completion of initial and annual
IEPs um we were partial there with 91% um so you know the bar that I set for that was 95% um the bar that CDE sets for us for timely completion of initials is 100% okay the meat and potato section
this year we participated in um a facilitated assessment process through CDE this is uh cyclical monitoring it is a new process it launched last year it was our turn this year um every um administrative unit so every district um
Boseies etc will go through this one time each four years uh this was a this was a large undertaking um with lots and lots of participation from lots and lots of folks throughout the district uh it consisted of two full days of two of
different kinds of work all of which was facilitated by um somebody from CDE so the first day focused on policies and procedures um which actually was more exciting than it kind of sounds when you say policies and procedures we had 40 participants in that it was a very large
group with lots of district leaders all of our special ed coordinators our zone superintendent building leaders special service providers and special education teachers participated in that um what that looked like was a presentation provided by CDE of our district specific
data around special education and then we broke up into uh groups and completed very detailed surveys in four domain areas um those areas I didn't put them on the slide but those areas are childf find and evaluations uh student outcomes
and FAPE uh free appropriate public educations sort of the ultimate measure of special education graduation rates dropouts and discipline was one sort of monstrously large category and uh least restrictive environment was the fourth
one so that was day one day two was an educational benefit review um we had 28 participants in this which consisted primarily of special education teachers and special service providers uh their task was to look at 11 students with
three years of data so three full IEPs one evaluation in there and really with an eye on what we call the golden thread um so if you're not familiar the golden thread refers to the extent to which we can tie together our evaluation data identified student needs the goals that
we're working on and the services toward those goals um so again a very large undertaking and I'll just say um CDE started us off by uh asking the folks who were participating to essentially not go easy um on on their colleagues
everything was redacted nobody knew whose IEP they were looking at or where it was from um CDE need not have worried folks took this seriously um if if anything they were um not critical but they took it seriously um and I'll just at the end of the at the end of the day
I asked for a show of hands from all of the participants u to ask who would approach writing their IEPs differently after this experience and every hand went up it was a very impactful experience for the case managers and the providers that participated um and for what it's worth we intend to continue
that process internally ourselves because it was so meaningful okay so once it was all completed whoops our facilitator um compiled all of the data summarized it and sent it to me um and so that consisted of both celebrations and some things to work on so we'll start with
celebrations um first uh special education is measured through a variety of different indicators that the state puts together um data coming from lots of different sources indicator seven is a reference to preschool outcomes and that was particularly positive um and I
really want to celebrate our preschool providers because many districts struggle with this and we this was really a bright spot for us um another celebration is that our CTE career and technical education programs are accessible they are known by our special education um case managers and they are
accessible to students with disabilities we are continuing to work on that but it is a bright spot um our graduation rates overall as other folks have pointed out these are all I should say specific to students with disabilities so our graduation rates overall among that population um and students with
disabilities in D49 are accessing their regular classrooms at a higher rate than in the state overall with regard to the educational benefit review in particular um some of the bright spots there was evidence that we were using a variety of assessments
we're not relying on just a few measures our students are being served as I said in their least restrictive environment um we were able to identify good matches between the identified needs of students and the services that we put together in order to meet those needs um and we're
doing a good job of writing impact of disability statements that really describe what those needs are okay this is a process of continuous improvement and so there was always going to be an action plan um everybody has things to work on i will say that
there was nothing that was surprising in this these were all things that we knew that we needed to work on um and for the most part things we already were working on and so we will continue that work generally speaking um the plan focuses on first maintaining our excellent data
that we do have um there there used to be a different a process under a different name for monitoring special education cde has has had not done that um at least well since well before COVID so for many many years um and I think it's important to point out that in the
absence of that really close monitoring we did not decline um we really held the line and there were a lot of things to celebrate okay so maintaining those things um also uh we want we're focusing on a clearer and more consistent MTSS
process across all of our buildings um that is a big beast to tackle that work was already going on uh we will continue that um addressing any areas of non-compliance that did come up particularly in those educational benefit reviews uh our graduation rates at goal
once again um there are lots of reasons why they are what they are this is work we were already doing um goal is doing it i'm working with them um as a group we're working with the state we will continue that work um we want to continue making sure that we are providing not just access but meaningful
access to the least restrictive environment to general education classrooms um and to to peers of the same age um and the last one is probably the most meaningful one to me um we are needing to work on a quality control
system for our IEPs we do have a review process in place it is pretty narrowly focused on just a few things and so we will really be um building that process out so that we can look more deeply at the content um provide immediate
feedback to case managers uh so that we can catch things as they happen um and we can definitely include some really targeted coaching in that we have a significant number of case managers who are new to the profession who are on an alternative um lensure of some kind and
so that is it's wonderful that we have them we're happy to have them they are amazing people um but special ed is a heavy lift and so providing some support and some more monitoring on that will be a big focus over the next four years um our plan has been approved by CDE uh and
it goes into effect on July 1st but as I said much of this work was already underway okay switching gears a little bit um back in the spring of 2022 I um stood before the board and presented a plan to restructure our continu
continuum of services in special education so as a reminder previously um and historically we had four discrete center-based programs that lived in various different buildings um but not all buildings and in addition to our larger sort of general population of
students with disabilities um we uh have moved now to more cross-categorical programming and what that means is that we're focusing on providing the programming that students need wherever they are so in whatever
building they are in um we still retain significant sport needs or SSN as a center-based program although for a couple of reasons um that has become sort of less and less distinct um essentially we have an increasing a very
fast increasing population of students with this level of need which has led us to uh to need to open additional programs um but more interestingly um and very encouragingly once we got our heads around the idea that we could
serve students that we hadn't served before that maybe we didn't know how already to serve um what we found were several buildings where a student enrolled in the school in their neighborhood school with this level of need where that school did not have a program and the school reached out and
said we think we can do this and they did and they have and it has led to really great things for students for families and for the case managers and the general education teachers in those buildings okay as a reminder um these
were our goals so this is from that original presentation in 2022 this is what the restructure was hoping to accomplish we wanted to improve access to quality programming in all of our schools we wanted to reduce student displacement um student displacement was
resulting from that center-based model which required a large number of students to change schools in order to access their programming we were looking to reduce that we wanted to maintain the continuity of services from elementary to secondary schools um just as a reminder all secondary schools always
did offer all of this programming and so what we were looking to do is bring that to the elementary schools as well um we explicitly wanted to build capacity within both general and special education to serve all students um we wanted to improve case load distribution so under the center-based model we
frequently had situations where a center-based program teacher might have five or six kids on their case load while working alongside a case manager with 25 or more and so we were looking to um make that a little bit more equitable and um also we wanted to address the staffing crisis within
special education so this is year three or kind of year two since we had a z a year zero um so about three years in this is where we stand um we have increased staff efficacy within general education and
special education um and I think I think that the example of uh building saying we can serve this student this this student um with significant needs that is just one example it wasn't even explicitly our goal but it really demonstrates that once we got our heads
around that we we know now we can do hard things we can do new things and we can do great things for students um we have not seen a significant loss of staff or significant issues with retention now let me not oversell that we are still subject to
the same crisis in staffing that everyone else in the state and the country is um that we didn't fix that uh that would be great but that is not what happened um however we did not see a mass exodus of staff running away from this new model we really saw um a lot of
folks embrace it we have not seen a decline in student achievement um for students with disabilities in special education um and I think that really speaks to the quality programming and our ability to provide that in all of the buildings we have reduced student
displacement we have many more students now served in their neighborhood schools um and we really have seen increased collaboration among case managers as um buildings and teams really came together and said here are all the things that we are good at right what are our individual strengths and how can we
leverage those to meet the needs of the entire building case load rather than asking one case manager to meet every different kind of need for each student who happens to be on their case load so very positive things overall and that is all I have for you
13 seconds oh I have 13 seconds are there any questions marin do you have any questions i do not but it sounds like you're working really hard to meet the students where they're at so good job on that thank you our case managers and our providers are really the ones out there and our pair
professionals working so hard director Schmidt I really respect the way that you came up with the plan a couple years ago and you're following through so strongly so I really respect that thank
you good job thank you and again I have to say I mean yes I did lead that charge yes I did put together the restructure uh but the it is the case managers it's the teachers both in general education and in special ed and the paras doing the work every day and really um making
it their own director Hy so I want to call attention to the way that you guys brought in the CDE resource and embraced the process because it'd be so easy to to just take
that as like you know we need to defend our programs and this is an intrusion but you guys leaned into it as this is an opportunity to improve and then decided beyond that we're not going to see them for for another four years but we're going to continue this process on
our own that takes tremendous courage and um commitment and it just demonstrates that you guys are really putting the students first and setting aside your own egos and that is just really exciting so I want to thank everybody involved in that process
absolutely thank you director Dvola um so I know how difficult it was to kind of explain the process at the beginning and how there was a some conflict and some um like not quite
understanding of what this process was going to look like a little trepidation etc all right so I really value how you're coming back a couple years later to tell us how this rolled out how it um played out and uh the benefit that this
had um in order for us to be like that this this works like this is doing a good job um and all those fears and things have been pushed away smooth sailing perhaps not quite but yes
no but you know a couple years down the road we've really reaped the benefit of this new design so I appreciate the hard work that that goes into anytime there's a change you're always going to have uh push back absolutely if I could add I I
mean I have I have spoken about the work of the pair professionals and the teachers um but building leaders too this really took us some time to get our heads around um but since we have implemented this new model and especially in the last two years I have gotten the best questions from
principles um many principles have come to me and said I want to do this thing I have this idea and I I want to do it in my building and I just don't think that we would have gone there under the new mo or the previous model so kudos to the building leaders too i am so glad to hear you say that
because when this was first initiated there was a lot of reservation on within some of the building leaders and they did rise to it in including setting aside specific rooms and trying to adapt to it my question is since um has there
been an increase in family satisfaction keeping the kids closer to their neighborhood schools with that piece of it in particular yes i I would say yes i I would not say that I have specifically surveyed this but from families that I have heard from they appreciate that
their kiddos with disabilities can be in the same school with their siblings uh they appreciate shorter bus rides uh so overall it has been very positive i am glad to hear that if there are no other questions thank you may I May I
just affirm something um improved special education was a strategic objective in 2022 and we identified a set of metrics and you heard about all of them tonight and so you're going to get tired of hearing me say this um but we're going to get better at looking back at what
our strategic planning delivered because the indicators that we chose three years ago were more students meeting their IEP goals staff segment satisfaction low staff vacancy I don't know if it's low but it's stable um balanced case loads
parent satisfaction high compliance and reduced formal complaints we have seen improvement in all of those areas in some cases dramatic improvement in all those areas and so it just validates again the work you're doing as a board to focus us on a focus us on a limited
number of things so um that's a little um a little plug for a conversation we'll be having later on about a limited number of strategic objectives all right thank you thank you superintendent Hilts are you saying we're going to get tired of winning
okay um yet again Dr nancy Lamont deputy superintendent and executive director of individualized education with um three job descriptions um the first one is for the licensed practical nurse um this is actually more of a in our
back pocket job description um students with disabilities may also have some significant medical needs um those medical needs vary um they're on a bit of a spectrum um sometimes it can be handled by delegation from the school nurse to the health assistant and
sometimes it requires um a either registered nurse or someone with that skilled set skill set to be with the student in order to make sure the student is safe um no harms comes to the student throughout the day uh we would like to be able to add the in for this
past year we have been providing those services through contractors um if you have ever looked at contractors for things such as special service providers um the special service provider or the nurse gets paid the agency gets paid um
and somebody's making somebody's money somewhere it can cost us three to four times the amount of money that we would pay in salary and benefits for a contractor so this job description along with the one we already have for registered or for school nurse allows us
to have some freedom to be able to say we can provide this in-house we don't have to go to a contractor in order to provide the service so this that's what this job description is it is a in the back pocket for a um potential need
should that arise um for a student any questions I can answer for you director Schmidt I like the idea of in-house always i do um I couldn't tell is this a full-time position some of these um job
descriptions say school year some of them say 203 days um is it full-time so um the calendar is what the school year is so they would work during the school year um 203 days goes beyond the standard um school year so that's
extending beyond a school year for a variety of reasons but this would be during the school year because it would be for the student so when the students in school this individual would be working okay um and then I'm going to just assume and
you can just verify for me this is going to give our fra medically fragile students better care correct we believe it will we feel that when we hire someone in house they're more um likely to show up for work whereas sometimes
when we hire a contractor we really don't know sometimes if they're going to show up or not um we have an amazing group of health professionals that will chip in help out make sure that student can be in the school environment and is safe within that school environment so
yes um we believe this will be better for the student because district 49 employees coming to work so you're welcome Director Hy yeah and I just want to point out that there are additional benefits to um to uh an
in-house person versus a contractor besides um cost savings so you start to develop relationships you make that person uh become part of your culture um and so like if we have high intervention students that that um that nurse is
going to get to know those that student really well um so there's there's just all kinds of um sort of soft benefits that as well as just Yeah it's a heck of a lot cheaper this also um touches on our cultural compass of trust this builds a level of trust between the
school and the family absolutely marin do you have any questions about this okay anyone else okay if there are no objections this will be moved to action at the May 8th meeting
i'm going again so we're going to give you a standing ovation for all the standing tonight yes um the next two job descriptions I put separate cover sheets on however they kind of fall under the same category with the dissolution of
community care there were specific tasks or responsibilities within community care that still need to be addressed um some of them are required by state law um some things such as working with our students who are foster students making
sure they have a successful um school-to-school transition or hometoschool transition um other things such as our child fatality review team um that we must participate in uh with district representatives so there are variety of things that um need to be
addressed and that falls in under both of these um job descriptions the other thing is when we well first of all the truency portion of um the procedure the process the paperwork the tracking is
pretty monumental there's a lot going on in order to make sure we're working with the schools they're getting the letters out on time they're working with their families we're notifying um attorneys about um notice of non-compliance we're at those courtrooms whenever that
happens so that we can meet with those families interact with those families it's a significant um undertaking along with that um when we come to the decision that a student is going to be expelled right now the state requires
that those students remain enrolled they are our students even even though they are expelled and within a school environment they must offer one what they call synchronous class which means that we set up a Chromebook um the student logs in through the Chromebook the teacher takes the role they teach
it's not um I mean the schools do the best they can but I wouldn't say it's a very um uh supportive or helpful um process just because again we're trying to make sure they're getting that synchronous the other courses can be asynchronous or offline so along with
the trinsy we're also looking at someone to take postexpulsion so a student has been expelled um they will be online but this person will be doing regular check-ins with that student meeting with that student doing virtual um how are you doing with your courses what do you
need as far as help can I connect you with somebody at the school um making sure they remain connected with us um because they will return to our schools so about two weeks before the um expulsion period is up the this person would meet with the school to say "We're
coming up on the end of the expulsion period let's put together a re-entry meeting um let's discuss what's uh necessary here's the students transcript so here are the grades for the things they've completed." And hopefully we make that transition um less um of a of
an upheaval but more of a smooth move between online expulsion and into back into the school environment so that's one of them and then the other one again is picking up some other pieces from the dissolution of community care we are
looking at the um trenyy expulsion position to be paid not out of general funds but out of our Medicaid funds because this does support the health and well-being of our students so I hope I've covered both of those if there are any questions I can answer for you um
one quick thing the truency expulsion with the new process for salary schedules and um the the new look that we're doing with those we have not really landed on where we want to be as far as compensation um in a conversation
with Mr anderson we're probably looking somewhere around 50 to 60,000 plus um a 40% for benefits um but again we want to make sure we honor what our consultant has is guiding us make sure we honor what the position needs to do so I am
not giving you a final dollar amount for this um however we will have that if you move this forward before you vote on it in May so full confession I did not come fully prepared but because of the cadence of the board I needed to get this in front of the board so that we
can hopefully get it posted if you approve it director Schmidt um there's some language in in the counselor one that I really don't understand much um preventative services
enriched suicide risk screeners county child fatality review team those I have I have no idea what those are so would you repeat the first one please okay um preventative services is that what you were talking about
going to Within El Paso County there are a number of agencies and services that are available to our families that may be experiencing um you know food insecurities or housing insecurities or um need support because they might have a family member who's deployed or they
might be experiencing a variety of things so this individual would be able to not provide that but be able to connect a family with those services so working with our school counselors who we already have stretched very thin um to be able to provide those those
services um or not provide the services provide the um connection for where they can locate those things and then then we had enriched suicide risk screener we do in the district what we call the
suicide risk screener it's a series of six questions whenever a child is feeling um that hopeless I guess is the best term to use um we then provide that screener to the family the family then makes a decision what they do but we we
do those screeners just to make sure the student is safe in the environment do we need to call 911 of course call the family um so we were doing a full assessment we determine that we don't have the skill set nor the resources nor do we have the authority to make
decisions whenever a child is experiencing um suicidal ideiation so this screener is something that this person would make sure answer any questions help with again if a family were to call I need some help for my child where can I find this um so
provide that information kind of as a follow-up and then I think the last one you said was child fatality review well just one followup then this would be the family contacts you to do this screening does the school just take that on themselves it really depends on what
happens if a child walks in and sits down in front of somebody and says "I've had it i've made a plan i am planning on um ending my life tonight." We will do a screener and call the family those are usually happening simultaneously we're asking the questions do you have a plan
um have you talked to someone about this so there's six very specific questions that are asked that then we then present to the family to say you can take this to your emergency room you can take it to your local um PCP however you would like to handle this we we won't be
taking any further action unless we believe a safety plan needs to be done at school in order to um keep the child safe and then the last one was the county child fatality review team sounds so
serious it it is serious um we have an obligation under state law that we review all child fatalities between birth to under 18 or 18 years old um the schools participate in those in the sense of providing any information that may be school related um this especially
is important whenever the child has died by suicide um so um we want to learn from that the county wants to learn the state wants to learn so that if there are programs that need to be put in place if there's um uh education that
needs to be done we do a number of um death reviews that are unsafe sleeping conditions um which are babies uh those are the hardest ones to do for someone who's been doing this for the last eight years um that again for whatever reason the family has brought the child into
bed rolled over onto the child um so then again how what information can we give back to pediatricians to OBGYNS so they gather our information to then provide it back to a variety of agencies a variety of um professionals we just serve as um school liaison to provide
any school information that may be um applicable they typically ask does the did the student have a friendship group um were there any signs or any indications so and we provide information that we can and then
lastly um I'm all about money i'm all about money um I'm concerned about the money so is it a wash since community care went away it's actually a win okay um so there were uh five
positions four positions within community care that were eliminated and so um this this will be a a positive delta so thank you you're welcome director Hy
uh I just wanted to call something out um uh regarding the uh school counselor on special assignment because here in this district we often and rightly so uh bring attention to the challenges that uh our military students are facing when they transfer in from another district
and making sure that they get all the credits that they need and that they get the right you know IEP supports and stuff like that and one very important component that they have is that they are coming to us with a parent who is very supportive of the process that
knows that child well and is able to connect them to the programs that they need and are interested in and when you bring in a foster child it's a whole different ballgame because now you're talking to a caseworker and a foster parent who are themselves just getting
to know this student and uh so a specialist who can navigate that process is is going to be absolutely vital just as we we have uh specialists who help us navigate the uh the military um uh connected families so uh yeah I'm very
supportive of that uh that um function in particular director Dvola You had um mentioned that one of the positions you were going to try to get covered under Medicaid funds yes ma'am okay so that's another win because it's
coming out of a pool of existing money so correct okay you remember your Yeah I remembered my question um do we currently or well before community care went away did we have a position that did these things previously or this is
this a new role they myself and members of community care did much of this um Carrie Frederick the amazing Carrie Frederick um happy professional administrative assistance day Carrie wherever you are um
uh has been working on truency um it's just Mr hill it's a it's a massive process i don't know how else to explain it um we have tried a variety of things there have been other admin assistants that have taken it on it's
just it's it's a large undertaking i there are more checkboxes to it than expulsion maybe even completing an IEP there are more checkboxes to truency if you're going to do it correctly and do it right which we need to do so then
we're taking what we lost with community care and we're rolling it into this that and we're moving truency off of car's plate and on into this and the expulsion online we're moving off of the school's plate and onto this so um which I
believe um Mr smith is happy to teach or speak to the support of this if you'd like him to may I comment when I when I discussed this briefly uh with our principles this morning they were overwhelmingly enthusiastically supportive of this in
fact I had to I had to hold Tom Payne down so that he wouldn't come running to this meeting to beg you to make sure that this went forward marin did you have any input or questions okay all right well if there are no objections then we will move both of
those positions to the main meeting and now we are going we're going to give Dr lamont a break and we are going to do if you arrived a little bit late we're going a little out of order out of respect for people who travel here to be here so we are on to 1.8
which is the compensation calibration almost sounds like something out of schoolhouse rock you know little alliteration to to get us going here compensation cal well good evening board i'm Paul Anderson executive director of people and culture and I want to thank you for
giving us some time and for adjusting the the agenda order tonight uh to accommodate our our guest from Golden um the com that what we're going to be talking about tonight is a follow-up to a discussion we had at the annual planning summit one of the key elements of the strategic compensation system
we're working to develop uh work that we're doing this year is is the redesign of a of a few of our key salary schedules um that work has been going on um it with some um a lot of technical help from uh from uh Terresa Lang who
who'll introduce here shortly um with some internal a lot of folks working internally from HR and from finance as well as with some feedback um some inputs from members of the workforce as we've been talking about the types of changes we may be implementing the the
purpose of the conversation tonight is not to present new salary schedules will be doing that in at the May meeting we're a little later than we would like to be that has to do with the state funding situation and and I know that um that'll be talked about later um but really the purpose for tonight is to to
get provide an overview of what is the process that we're working through as we're working on this redesign process um what is the how does this fit into the broader um compensation system that we're working to develop so without any further delay I'm going to introduce Teresa Lang with Om Consulting who will
be uh let's give her the full 10 minutes please thank you thank you thank you very much for having me tonight uh click arrows okay i've got directions on how to move us forward so that's that's a good start and I've never heard of compensation related to
school rock so that is awesome i I will add that to my my list um I'm Teresa Lang i'm the president of M Consulting Services we're a human resourcesbased uh consulting group uh from Golden Colorado i've lost track of how many
school districts I've worked with over the years it's somewhere in the 75 or more number uh in this area we worked with all of the El Paso school districts to conduct an annual compensation and salary survey for those groups uh we've
I think I've worked for 20 years supporting Harrison School District's compensation system um amazingly we developed that system 20 years ago and it's it's still serving them well uh so that that's and years and years ago I worked in this district came to a board
meeting and it was in a trailer in a different place and there were not very nearly the number of students and that that you have now so thank you for having me back so I'm going to spend just a second talking about the existing pay structure
and the existing pay structure uh in in this district basically was non-sistic systemic or systematic uh there were multiple pay structures that were not related right now so we have a
professional technical schedule which is for exempt folks there's an administrator pay system if you will and then the ESP folks the classified folks the custodians the paras nutrition services all the way to your um you know
electricians grounds trades all of those groups are on an hourly salary schedule and that schedule um is much different than the rest of the marketplace in which you compete so the systems that you have right now grew over time i
think they probably grew as the district grew and were not connected they're complex they're hard to understand uh they do not seem transparent to the the folks that are paid in those systems so one of the reasons that I've come into
the picture is my specialty is is working with districts and public sector employers for that matter to design a system that's transparent to meet the needs of the now to come up with something that we can afford now and can
afford in the future and so I bring that third-party perspective um to to your district and so with that we'll talk a little bit about where we're going with this compensation system redesign so in
kind of keeping with with the district's learn work and lead um the first part of our process was was really understanding a bit about compensation theory and developing a philosophy the philosophy for the system is the northstar so it's
what we want to try to get to with the systems that we're building and so we had a workg group meeting i I think it was Decemberish time frame it was a while back um thankfully we had a a a member of your board um a part of that we appreciate that very much and a group
within the district and HR and we sorted out a compensation philosophy um for the district and we're going to look at that in a second um that then guided the work that my team did um to complete a market salary study and try to link that
information to the compensation philosophy and then we we wrap that up by leading with implementing new salary structures and so the new salary structures will represent those three groups um I did also help your district
work through the teacher study last year and and work in the design of that new system as well so the comp philosophy is listed off to the left i'm not going to read that to you but um in the end we wanted and and
the philosophy ensures fiscal sustainable based on funding it provides equitable across all employee groups it's compliant with current pay equity legislation so we want to look at pay equity and that legislation which changes it's changed
quite a bit in the last 5 years and we expect that to continue in the future uh we want the system and the philosophy is for the system to be guided and defined by market review and follow best practices and so best practices for comp
in the compensation world in school districts we can apply from compensation throughout the nation but then dial that into in the school district how does that work obviously in the school district world we're not we're not
earning money to pay people salaries so we need to figure out how how to make that mesh in this system so the first part and probably the most uh laborious part of our our process was the market study process um
and that study process uh basically starts at the top with the compensation philosophy it's guided then by the external market survey um at about three o'clock we then go down to salary range recommendations which is where where
we've landed in the last month is developing new structures based upon the philosophy in the market and then a transition process has to occur just as there had to be one from the old teacher schedule to the new we have to transition folks from the existing
structure to the new structures and then the last part of that cycle is employee uh employee notification and communicating out how the process works how folks are moving into a new salary and and whatnot so the market study process to
to just dive into that a a little bit further you know the first part of this is really just like that picture we put a pin in the map uh where are you who do you compete with who are the school districts around you that you compete with but not only do we want to look at
school districts we have to look at your proximity and consider where do people live that are going to want to take jobs in the district they're probably not going to drive from Littleton Colorado because I just did that and you don't want to you wouldn't want to be doing that every day so we want to look at
where are folks coming from and then also look at what other other employers in the area might we compete with or need to be paying in concert with in the marketplace so UCCCs hospitals uh city of Colorado
Springs Colorado College those are some of the few that we looked at as well and so you know that we're looking outside of we may not find para educators at those districts but we'll find a CFO and we'll find someone that works in finance and we'll find trades positions and and
even nutrition services positions at the hospitals so we look at that um a note on the peer districts we use six peer districts um so as in other words other school districts uh those are either they're in a geographic location near to
you or they're similar sized so those include Fountain Fort Carson i had to write these down district 11 Academy 20 Widefield uh Lewis Palmer and Harrison so those are the districts that are included um and we felt like and and
honestly that came um much at my recommendation and I know this marketplace pretty well and so in knowing where you all are and and knowing the philosophy these made sense so the data analysis piece we look
at about we try to get to somewhere over 60 to 70% of all of the bodies and positions within the district so in other words in looking at the ESP structure uh we found 64 job titles
where we know we can find matches in the marketplace we know we can't find a match for every single job because every single district has special unique positions like the LPN that you just talked about I can tell you that probably four districts have that job and some of the others don't it just
depends on the district and how they're structured they may cover that in a different way so we choose titles that are also highly populated by employees so for example bus drivers nutrition service workers we look at all the building administrators so principles
assistant principles all of those jobs so on the ESP side the 64 represented 88% the administrator professional technical I've lumped those together we looked at job titles reflective of 60% of employees so comp best practices
would tell me that if we can get those kinds of percentages we can put together a salary structure that meets up with the majority of employees in the workforce other positions can be looked at over time and we'll recommend that to
Paul and his staff that we look at the other jobs that we didn't look at to see if we can find a match how we would slot them in so we do determine job matches by job descriptions so that is not a
simple oh we see that the this district has an accounting manager well that might actually be a lead accountant in one district that could be a assistant director of accounting in a couple of districts around here that have lots of different levels that could simply be a
lead a lead accounting supervis it could be a lot of different titles we look at the job description so I'm looking at job descriptions to determine what are the minimum requirements to hold the position do you need a degree do you not how many years of experience do you need and then what's the scope of the job
does the job supervise others do what is the decision-making level all of those types of factors to compare to the other job descriptions so that's the process that we went through is that my timer that I have to talk faster okay talking
faster in the end here's what the data showed us so this is looking at the ESP positions and you can see your superintendent refers to this as a saw to like that that's another thing I had never heard that before irregular
heartbeat looks like that to me so you know the bottom line is what we're looking at the market is the dark gray black and D49 is kind of all over the map right so this is the ESP and this
sorts from your lowest paid positions to your highest paid positions and we're looking at the midpoint so we're not looking at the minimum pay we're not looking at the maximum pay i want to look at where most of your people where are you wanting to get them to to keep them in the district because we're
wanting to retrain retain them as well here's how we look for the administrator and protek um we still have the heartbeat going on here uh in some places you you can see I think the interesting thing about this one to me there are quite a few flat parts that
you can see where D49 is and that's that's the result of not having a structure that grew with time in this district in my opinion because what happened is there should be more levels in this district for positions right now we don't have enough levels to be
reflective of the different director type positions that exist and that's something that likely happened just over the last 10 years so again you can see discrepancy with the marketplace so once we took that
information we've developed a market market-based pay lines um for the administrative professional technical group and for the ESP groups we've placed all of the current jobs into those based on market data or based on an internal equity analysis and that's
something that my staff does that involves looking at job descriptions and from a third-party perspective putting them in the structure um so you know last thing on this positions may be in a range that's similar they could be in a in a range
that's higher or they could be in one lower because if you think about the irregular heartbeat that's what it was telling us that some of the jobs they weren't sorted right so uh last I think we're at the close to the end implementing the new
compensation system hope compensation philosophy it's informed by the market it's consistent uh it has and responds to supply and demand and supports pay equity sorry to go over
time questions thoughts um my only question is like as far as like the implementation of this is it all like an all at once kind of thing or like what's the timeline so I think the timeline right now the district is sorting
out finance perspective what what's going to make sense um so I'm not sure I'm the best person to answer that i'd be happy to see this is why Paul's here yeah that is a really good question um you know if we if we could we'd say
we're just ready to do all of it and um we don't have that clarity yet um and if I think with what we're designing we could do pieces of this um and we could prioritize based on a variety of factors but that we might prioritize based on
where we sit in the market right now if we if we know we're lagging or something like that but our hope would be to do all um but right now it's really hard to know that that's that that's uh what would happen our we began with the idea that we would implement this these new
schedules for the 25 26 school year thank you director Schmidt well I don't like seeing the little heart attack but I don't want to have a heart attack when we see the price tag so are we going to be reasonable
i mean our our intent and one of our driving factors is to build something that's sustainable and that's fiscally reasonable so that's that's where we're at director Hy so just to um share with the the rest of the board members um that it
was really important that we put informed by market comparisons because we don't want to be tied to the market but we do want to at least be aware because what we don't want to do is have external factors beyond our control um
dictating our budget um so that was an important distinction um I'm curious um because we look at that uh saw wave thank you um that as an electronics guy I appreciate that metaphor
um when when we when we do adjust then there will be some um schedules that will um adjust upwards and our uh our staff members in those areas are going to just love us but we're also going to be moving some down and we're going to
need those offsets in order to make everything um make sense from a a budgeting standpoint so how are we going to navigate uh that um so that we so that we're not you know cutting compensation on people
um unfairly or well the models that we've looked at today no one loses pay so no one loses pay and and I think that's just a clear I was given that edict early on and that's what we're working under that's
exactly what I was hoping to hear thank you Director Lee right no you know just a just a note Peter what percentage of our budget goes for salaries roughly well you're going to hear a little bit
about this in your next presentation but it it should be un between about 82 and 85% in a given year we've actually been drifting toward that 85 and once you get above 85 you you get into a different kind of danger zone um and so um I I
will just reme remind the board remember how hard we worked on teacher repositioning the teacher repositioning task involved one job description one position across a lot of people but one position we're talking about a hundred positions across
multiple schedules and a thousand individuals so the the level of complexity here is multiple orders of magnitude higher um than what we did and so I'm grateful that we did that one first because we learned a lot um one of the things that we learned
is it is possible to be so generous that what you adopt is not sustainable and so that'll be a a shared caution I think both from this conversation as well as from the budgeting conversation to come and that's kind of what I was going to
get to next because I heard you mention the goal is sustainability just to make sure because we did make we we talked to through these microphones to other employees that we didn't want to just raise teachers we also wanted to raise other people and the sustainability part
has been really important we also have fewer administrators than other similarly sized districts so I I always am proud that we do a lot with less and so I appreciate the sustainability portion of this as well so okay any
other questions all right well thank you for coming down here have a safe trip back thank you i'm happy it's not snowing y you bet thank you and we have one more change in our agenda that we are now
going on to 1.10 10 hello everyone i'm Rebecca Brooks and I'm excited to present first of many times to you guys um the first um thing I wanted to bring to your attention before we bring our budget next month
the proposed budget I really just wanted to give you guys a a sneak peek overview of what we're looking at financially and I have both Heather and Spencer up here with me who I'm on day
six of working here full-time so I rely very heavily on the amazing work they've done okay so we just kind of want to go over what we're anticipating for revenue and I wanted to give you um some historical information for you guys to kind of see
our trends so you'll see we've had a couple years of some decent growth in our revenue coming in um what happens in what's projected for the 2526 school year uh the bill has passed the House of Representatives but it is sitting at the
Senate still right now but based on what has passed the House we will actually lose $13 per pupil based on what has currently been sent on to the Senate
um so super high level and I I apologize if I'm repeating things that have been shared with you before but I also want to make sure that you're educated at least on a super high level we are our biggest bucket of funding is based on
per pupil revenue or PPR uh times our funded pupil count as a district we are expecting to grow in pupil count but that is projected through only our charters we are anticipating a decline in district
schools so that being said we are anticipating an overall reduction in our revenue and so that's what you'll see represented here where we jump from 158.3 projected obviously we're still in this year so we don't know exactly where
we'll land um but that's why that's projected and then next year we are anticipating a drop in revenue so with that potential drop in revenue when I very first came on and Heather and and Spencer have been getting me up
to speed my very first concern was that we are dipping into recurring revenues and one-time revenues both for recurring expenses um you'll see the very next slide I'm going
to get to here in just a minute we'll kind of maybe flip back and forth between the revenue and the expenditure side um because you'll see that we have over spent last year and this year projected and next year it will get potentially even more so um so I'm
wanting to kind of set the tone and set the framework that we need to be cautious in what we commit ourselves to in recurring revenues so I know that compensation is a very huge target for
us and we want to remain competitive i'm asking that we just pause there's power in a pause make sure we're strategic in what we're trying to do um and that we understand that we're not dipping into one-time monies that are not infinite
they do not continue to go on because once we commit to these SA pays it basically allows us to continue down that slippery slope and we will run out of one-time monies okay so then I wanted to show you the
year-over-year on the expenses side and this answers your question Lori around our compensation so as of right now with the cuts that were made we would have been pushing really close to that 85% we would have gone probably if not over
just under where I would caution us but the cuts that have been made have kind of allowed us to absorb that teacher repositioning but it doesn't really a afford us a lot more room so um and then I'm going to kind of toggle back and
forth here for a second so if you guys notice for years 23 2425 and then projected 2526 you'll notice that the expenses side ex exceeds our revenue side each
year we are in a very unique situation in this district we have a very healthy fund balance we have um additional mill levy revenues so we are kind of a little confusing because we look like we're in a very strong financial position which
we are i just want us to caution what steps we make going forward um did you guys have anything to add maybe one thing yeah please one aspects of the comparing revenues to expenses
that I probably should add to this is that um each year we'll allocate carryover funds from the previous years so typically the expenses will show higher than revenues but that doesn't necessarily mean that we're budgeting more than we have um it's typically that
revenue amount plus what we didn't spend from the previous year thank you for the clarification do you guys have any questions we will have a lot more detail when we come back next month with the proposed budget i really just wanted to take the opportunity to
stand before you and and frame what what to expect with with the state changes and challenges that are coming through for funding and we don't anticipate a sunnier look in the next couple of years actually before questions may I add one
additional bit of detail um the board's well aware that we have consolidated whether that's consolidating zones you've heard about some position consolidations we have been very tactical about not backfilling positions where that that has made sense and so I
just I want the board to know in the context of this budget conversation um that of those cuts that we have made and I'm not going to put an absolute dollar figure on them but they do they do keep us balanced from a budget perspective
um 58% of those cuts have come from non-instructional and so even though instructional staff is is the overwhelming majority of our positions and even though of the positions that we've we've cut a majority of them have
been at school sites that makes sense because most of our people work at school sites our principles and our directors have done a fantastic job of protecting classrooms and so only only 40% of the impact is in classroom
settings and in most cases it's because we are managing enrollment and having less sections so instead of having four third grade classes of 22 students um we may have three classrooms that have 28
students that's not pleasant depending on the grade level but but it is fiscally responsible and so I just wanted the board to have that contextual information that we have not used um we've not used a sledgehammer we've used a scalpel and we've been really really
careful about where those cuts go i appreciate that and Rebecca it's an interesting time for you to come on welcome to District 49 and as you've probably already figured out you inherited a great team who have really stood in the gap during this interim time so thanks again to you guys because
you've done a great job yes Director Schmidt i just want to say I really really agree with being conservative and careful yeah thank you Director
Dola so I'm going to ask kind of a difficult question uh at the DAC meeting last night um we were discussing title one title two title three funding and how we may or may not have that type of
funding for this following year can we kind of touch a little bit on that i was told that there was a article in the Gazette about the possibility of not having that those positions being um paid i I'm gonna speak to this because I
I I want to take even more responsibility than than uh Miss Brooks tonight um I am reading everything that comes across any resource I have access to i'm listening to podcasts i'm reading every note that comes from our state
commissioner um I am uh obsessively watching and listening to what's happening in in Washington DC and so um filter all that package all that i'm listening really hard and I'm analyzing
it as hard as I can i think it is nearly impossible highly unlikely that we will see any funding reductions for the 2526 school year in our federal funding that is as much a political analysis as anything else because the entire House
of Representatives and a portion of the Senate will be up for election uh in about 15 months the election season will be in major full swing and defunding public education would probably be bad for electoral choices now I I know I'm
speaking to elected officials and so I'm I'm preaching to the choir but you don't tend to see people poke the electorate in the eye right before a major election and so this will be the offcycle election the the midterm election and so I think the political calculation makes
it much more likely that we will get that federal funding what I am hopeful for and I think there is reason to be hopeful in this direction is that what we may see over the next two budget cycles is a shift away from the highly
controlled system of federal dispersements toward a system that is more uh like block grants or direct funding to states um and and there is reason to think that that is not not to think that is in
conversation already at the federal level um I would be a strong supporter of that direction i don't want no no constraints i don't want zero regulations um but we spend an inordinate amount of time complying with federal regulations
and they're not substantive regulations they're more procedural regulations you have to I cannot tell you how many grants I sign off on it's it's a dozen a week probably where we sign off on it then the fiscal rep signs off on it then I sign off on it then we send it to CD and they sign off on it and then
somebody at CD says "No we need some changes." Then we start over again and there are grants that I have approved five or six times to get federal funding or for our consolidated app it is a morass of of regulation and procedure um
and we spend a lot of money on the FT that it takes to support that now I want to keep all the good people that we have but I would sure rather they focus on applying those funds to student success than satisfying a system that has gotten
really topheavy with bureaucracy and procedure so I I am going to kind of put my reputation on the line and ask you to trust me i do not believe it's reasonable to expect federal funding cuts in the 256 school year i I'll say
it's probably the case there just doesn't seem to be any political appetite to to slash funding now to use funding as leverage to use funding to give states an incentive to comply with other federal expectations that
absolutely will happen um and so we're appropriately thinking and and concerned about that but I think for next year uh it is likely that we can count on that funding director Dvola I appreciate you uh helping answer those questions just
because uh it was a hot topic at the DACK and it seemed like the whole world was crumbling down so I'm really glad that you helped to stabilize the fear factor thank you are there any other questions are we going to wait for the full budget marin
do you have anything okay all right well thank you so much thank you next up we have the school health improvement plan wellness update i always forget how to do this oh here we
go perfect okay good evening uh board of education if you need a minute to stand up totally okay with me i've been doing it several times all of like please know that that's okay
um just pay attention and I'm totally fine with that um my name is Charlene Stegman i'm the health and wellness specialist for the district so of course I do want you to stand up and move a little tonight um thank you for your time tonight i um I am honored to be here again this
year um the staff and students of D49 are fortunate to have the support of the board and Mr hilts who recognize the importance of a district-wide health and wellness program and the positive impact it has within our schools in alignment with the district wellness policy each
school that receives nutrition support for D from D49 is required to identify a health related area for improvement based on one of the 10 components in the whole school whole community whole child model schools then develop a specific goal and action steps which are outlined
in their school health improvement plan or SHIP tonight I'm pleased to highlight some of those a some of the outstanding work being done across our schools to help students say stay healthy safe engaged supported and challenged for your reference a copy of each school
ship is attached to the agenda and additionally wellness success stories are shared on each school's website and are also available on the district's wellness policy web page um this year students at Meridian Ranch Elementary were encouraged to
focus on healthy eating and sleep habits students that get good rest and have healthy snacks in their diet see an increase in focus and overall well-being so before spring break students received a magnet with healthy snack ideas for families to place on their refrigerator
as a visual visual reminder students also received their own sleep mask to encourage good sleep practices meridian Ranches focused on taking small steps for big wins and helping all of their students find new ways to take care of
themselves at Horizon Middle School the health and wellness program encouraged staff to engage in activities that support both physical and mental well-being throughout the year staff took part in a variety of optional challenges including adding new healthy
foods to their diets participating in the district-wide Walktober step challenge and completing a month-long bingo game featuring healthy habits and activities and in February the school hosted a kindness and love challenge giving staff the opportunity to send notes of appreciation to one another
during spring break staff were invited to join a well-being challenge focused on rest recharging and personal wellness staff have enjoyed the program and incentives offered this year at Inspiration View staff and students are encouraged to promote
healthy activities staff are encouraged to capture moments of physical activity building healthier habits and new hobbies as staff participate they're entered into a monthly fit flyer raffle and are able to win an incentive to
reach students and promote healthy proactive activities outside of school the wellness committee created a blackout bingo for all grade levels the bingo included workouts mindfulness activities relationship building activities and way to express creativity the students who participated received
an incentive for their efforts students also submitted ideas for a new bingo board and the wellness committee created this new bingo board full of student ideas to close out the school year patriot High School provides the last example of the great work being
done to improve health at schools and this example is youthled patriot along with other secondary schools have created a SWAT team standing for students working against tobacco at their school students at Patriot have created an anti-tobacco or
vaping posters educated peers and presented to school leadership to help bring awareness of the danger to tobacco nicotine and vaping math classes have also re researched financial impact of tobacco use and plan to share their
findings with the SWAT team to help increase local awareness and prevention education at Patriot their educational reach will extend to fifth grade students at Falcon Elementary as they present tobacco vaping prevention education in the coming
weeks i'd like to thank all of our school wellness coleaders and wellness teams in our D49 public and charter schools they put in hours of additional work beyond their job to build and support wellness at their schools through collecting data creating ship objectives and working on steps to
achieve their goals each year this work could not be accomplished without their contributions and desires to serve thanks at a district uhwide um districtwide thanks to grant funding
strong community partnerships and collaboration across departments we've been able to promote and support health and wellness practices for staff families and the community this year across the district several pro programs have grown from these efforts and a few of which I've listed here and I'd like
to take a moment to highlight a couple in particular um this year we were able to uh be awarded a vaping prevention education grant to support vaping prevention efforts across the district a portion of the grant focuses on tobaccof
free policy efforts to support schools in their enforcement of tobaccof free policy tobaccof free signage at schools are going to be refreshed this year the example um is indicated on the slide there um featuring each school will have
their own logo on it um and with updated current pictures of tobacco nicotine products additionally Jordan Mclofflin a student at Vista High School designed a tobaccof free t-shirt to help raise awareness about the importance of living
tobaccof free and promoting the message strong minds and healthy lives this shirt was offered to staff and SWAT students to to wear in support of the national takedown camp sorry national takedown tobacco campaign on April 1st
2025 takeown Tobacco is a youthled movement aimed at exposing how tobacco companies target young people through appealing flavors and high nicotine products in on April 1st staff and students across the district proudly wore their shirts to show their support
for this important cause as shown in the picture this shirt will also be used to support future awareness days additionally the grant um has been supporting student well sorry SWAT teams um students working
against tobacco groups this particular picture is um San Creek High School's students educating Remington Elementary's fifth grade class on the danger of smoking and vaping and how to combat peer pressure swat students provided trivia
games hands-on displays testimonials and so many facts over 95% of fifth grade students left the presentation feeling equipped with the tools to say no to vaping it was an honor to be in the room with these
students as they educated fifth graders and provided positive leadership examples it's awesome the wellness summit um was a great success again this year held at Vista Ridge on a personal proday we had
177 participants 20 vendors engaging speakers on a wide variety of topics wonderful food and yes as you can see even puppies falcon Elementary won lunch from Chili's for having the highest rate of participation at the summit feedback
was overwhelmingly positive with 95% indicating that they would return next year one participant said "Thank you for helping us learn more about how to effectively take care of ourselves lastly I've got a couple upcoming events that I just wanted to draw your
attention to may 15th is an annual elementary track and field day um it gives opportunities for fifth I believe just fifth graders um from all elementary schools the opportunity to come and practice track and field
um events um and then our upcoming D4.9 runwalk is September 20th mr mr hilts please put that on your calendar um and as well as you board members are welcome to come and participate in that
uh we it's a huge turnout every year um and I'm excited that we'll have registration open hopefully the beginning of May um I will leave you with a thank you and some pictures of our last D4.9K event and I'm happy to answer any
questions you have director Hy I just want to thank you for everything you do um I don't know that the community really fully understands what a great investment um your programs are because um you know there's so much
community focus on um on performance by our students and you know indirectly you're having a huge impact because like with all this uh anti- um tobacco education right how engaged is a student
who is thinking about getting their next nicotine hit because they they've got an addiction right um so this really is very supportive of uh student success and you know for the same token the investment in the teachers uh and and other staff you know if they're well
taken care of we're giving them the tools to be healthier happier they're going to be more engaged and more supportive our of our students so um just uh wonderful work and uh keep it up i also want to plug the the D49 uh 4.9
runwalk i've participated in it a couple of times it is a family event so I I see lots of kids out there running with their parents um it's it's just a good time for anybody who has two healthy knees
even if you don't you can always walk it um thank you so much for those comments that's you're speaking to my heart so thank you very much marin have you ever had the chance to participate in any of these i have not but now I'm very interested
and I also would be super curious to um see what the engagement would be like in schools specifically high schools so I'll do some research get your friends Marin come on marin and I go way back i don't you guys don't know that but yeah from Vanny
Lewis when I worked there yeah that's fun oh one thing just to note and I know that Kim knows about this uh the very first engage 49 we had a presentation with the San Creek High School SWAT team and they talked about taking this
program to elementary schools and they were led by Lance Carroll so we were there before they visited the school so now it's kind of fun because we get to see the pictures of what we heard about a long time ago so are there any other
questions or input on this well I have to echo that thank you for everything that you do and thank you for encouraging us to stand up you're so welcome please make sure you do that more often okay thank you okay here we come with Mr tim and Mr
brian to tell us about this new math curriculum all right good evening members of the board brian Smith Falcon Zone Superintendent along with the awesome amazing Falcon Zone academic administrator Mr sheek um and we are here to bring forward our math
curriculum adoption that we've been working on over the past year in the Falcon Zone um and so we'll go through you're going to see a very similar presentation to what we gave last year when we did our science and social studies presentation um just so we can be consistent and share with you the
same data um as we go through um but a couple of key points with this um first and foremost as a board you identified a strategic priority related to math performance and in the Falcon zone um we have noticed our performance we've shown gains um but we've also seen places
where it's kind of stabilized and we've really dove in to analyze and talk with our teachers look at our data to determine we need to to make some adjustments in terms of our curriculum um we have not had new resources in math
in our collab in our classroom since at least 2015 um and maybe even longer uh when you look at the middle school pieces um we also know we had a serious lack of alignment um in our K12 math process and we are all well verssed in
that especially as we saw and heard the concerns about high school uh math curriculum adoption math performance in the past year um and when we really dove in and looked at that we realized there is not a strong alignment from kindergarten up through 12th grade in
our zone so this needed to be a priority um we also similar to when we approached science and social studies we wanted to ensure uh that there was a common vocabulary a common system used kindergarten up through 12 so as students learn a concept it builds each
year as you go up teachers are using the same terminology using the same processes and systems so those concepts build all the way up especially with math that is so critical um that we build upon those skills um and again making a priority with your strategic
priorities to really focus on math performance so we dove in and we started earlier this year um and uh I'll turn it over to Mr sheek who did a phenomenal job leading this process yet again with our teachers um and uh we'll share with
you what we learned and what we did good evening i'm excited to be here tonight to walk you through our process for our math adoption so like Mr smith said we started earlier so um we started getting our committee together in December um there was a lot of
volunteers that wanted to serve on the the math curriculum committee there was a lot of excitement around getting new math curriculum we had um representatives that represented the teachers administrators from each of our um
K8 schools um parents and we collaborated with the district math coaches as well um one of the things that Mr smith spoke of of having that alignment was very important so we also invited um a representative from the high school to be part of that committee
so he could speak to the alignment up to the high school as well um we use the CDE website and they have um rankings of all of the different curriculums and so we worked with the the district math coaches to look through that and then we presented that
information to that committee and we basically said look at anything that scored above a 90 on the CD website and if you guys want to look at it if we'd like to have a presentation from them I will make that happen and so they chose six curriculums to look at ANOVAT Into
Math I Ready Envision Eureka Squared and Illustri and then over the next couple months we had those presentations um during those presentations there was time for review the committee used a very similar rubric as the um one they
did last year for science and social studies slight change on a little bit of the wording from like the science one because there was some science specific language on there but you have a copy of that in uh in the board packet um so after all of our presentations we got
together and we looked at that data and feedback and had a conversation we cut those six companies down to three companies um and then I asked the uh members of the committee to look at the three remaining curriculums and take a
high needs high impact or commonly misunderstood standard in their grade level and look at how it was uh presented across all three of those curriculums and they did a a second process where they compared those curriculums and rated things and I'll
show you that data here in a second um after they were done with with that we met together again as a team and um through conversation narrowed that three down to one which we then took to our sacks and then brought here tonight so
um this is again the rubric that we used uh it was based upon our engaging environments elevated instruction um and enhanced opportunities with some also some core values in there and again you have uh the full link to that in the packet if you'd like to look through it
um these are the pros and cons uh that came out of those conversations of the curriculums that we reviewed these were the first three that were eliminated from consideration at that first meeting um this is what came down to these are the three that the committee compared a
specific standard across all three curriculums and then the the pros and cons that came out of the uh bas both conversations the initial and the secondary conversation um this was the data from those initial rubrics so you
can see our six curriculums along the bottom and then the three that were um were cut kind of shadowed what the the data told us off those initial rubrics and then these was the that second task
that I had them do and you can see the the different uh questions that they rated those three curriculums on and there was a pretty clear highest ranking one and a second place and there was quite a bit of discussion that went back
and forth between those two um but we landed on um Envisions Mathematics by Savis and those are some of the the strong points that came across during that conversation some of the things I can highlight with that is SAVIS uh
envisions is what the high school has um and that's what they had been working through so by moving forward with this that would provide a K8 alignment up to the high school um so that was a big strength with this one um it had a lot of availability of print resources plus connections to digital because we still
believe strongly kids need to be putting pencil to paper with math and working out math problems um so that was a strength of this one also having some of the digital connections as well um teachers actually got to sample and try this we heard from a lot of students that they really liked this and they
thought math was fun when they were working out problems in this one that's a big win um to hear student feedback on this one um the level of support that is provided there is actually a parent resource that parents can go online if their kid comes
home and says "I don't know how to do this." A parent can go online click a link and it will show them how to work out the problem or provide support so the parent can help their child at home with math when we told our parents that they were rejoicing beyond belief to
have that resource um it interacts well with Schoolagy just a lot of great online material connections it also because we went with SAVIS for science and social studies there's going to be some great crosscurricular because it aligns with our other two curriculum that we have so we have those
connections um and just the math intervention that was probably one of the biggest things that our teachers were saying with our previous curriculum they were having to supplement and pull in all sorts of outside extra resources that they did not have and so we didn't have consistency there and now we have
some specific math interventions that tie to this curriculum so that we can link back and provide support close instructional gaps with our students so a lot of pros that came forward with this um we did open it up to our community review window to allow
community to come in and take a look if they wanted to do that um and then we brought it forward to our SAC committees and you will see all of them unanimous unanimously endorsed this and Falcon High's sack even said we want to endorse it as well uh they are not part of the
adoption but they already have it and those parents were very adamant they wanted their voice heard because they wanted this to align up to the high school because they knew of the challenges that we had so kudos to Falcon High for also submitting an endorsement to make sure that it aligned
as well um so very strong overall um I wanted to thank Lori I know you came in and reviewed materials so thank you for coming in to do that and Deb thank you for coming to our meetings and participating um I appreciate the support and and being available for
those pieces so with that Mr sheek is happy to answer any questions director Dvola U i really like the Falcon Zone curriculum evaluation rubric and the questions that are on there is there a
way for us to or did you guys like um come up with an average score or of everyone's uh rubric or is this just one general rubric that was done was or was it individual or versus committee rubric
every individual so every individual filled out a rubric and then the initial um data set was based on the average of those individual rubrics um would we be able to maybe get the
um the individual question um median score or average score of each question absolutely yeah um I just want a little bit more detail because I like the questions on here yep would you like that um comparison between those final three or just for this just for the one
that you're proposing that are moving forward i just want to see where we were at with each of the questions okay yep i certainly hope that would be great and then um I I know this took a lot of effort and a lot of work so I wanted to congratulate you guys on doing a very
thorough and uh extensive amount of uh work in order to do what's best for our kids so thank you for all that appreciate that director Hy I just want to call out the uh parental support element there um as somebody
who's strong in math and felt very comfortable um teaching their um you know helping their um elementaryaged student at home and then coming in and finding out that all of the concepts and procedures were unrecognizable
uh that was not a pleasant experience and having a resource like this available would have been great and I'm just have to wonder why this wasn't uh something that was made available to parents years ago director
Schmidt yeah Brian and Tim I just want to thank you for letting me be an observer on this this was so interesting to me to see the whole process um teachers were so engaged and actually a couple of them were a little sassy sometimes and I like that they they
asked very difficult questions to all of the presenters they did it was great um can you go back to slide 10 which one is that right 10 there you go um I liked absolutely everything on this
slide the alignment the print form being able to work with school schooly um everything's editable parent support i mean it just th this is really a good curriculum i think you guys did a really
good job thank you i appreciate that director Dvola uh how long has the high school had this curriculum they they this is their second full year of it their second full year okay okay because anytime you have uh implementation sometimes we see the
implementation dip and rise how have we done with our our scores i can't think high school the performance in high school math this year is night and day compared to last year that's what I thought and I just wanted to confirm that yeah well first of all I just wanted to say
it's pretty amazing to start with six different curriculums to review and I know what you told me you were looking for 90% plus correlation with the CD requirements for CAMASS and then uh didn't you also get a discount on this one as well so it has the building
blocks and you got a discount oh yeah so we we had some road bumps with SAVIS with our adoption to science and social studies so I played that card um and uh they really wanted to sit and work with us um we also chose to move forward this
year with our K12 ELA curriculum or I'm sorry our 9 through 12 ELA curriculum to align with Sand Creek and Vista um I had put that forward in an info item earlier this year well I also played that card to say well wait we're getting this and we want to get math they really cut us
some good deals because of that so um yes we are getting a very nice bargain they are treating us right um and we're getting the right materials we need for our kids you're a great businessman yes Director Lee right um so given that so
it says everything in print is also in digital which means kids can't lose their homework on the way home because parents can get it because you're going to load it into schooly um but also that means also because that's online those things are all editable correct
so that's going to be huge with what we heard with special education and including um much of their programming has moved to more inclusionbased and the most difficult part for the general education teachers is being able to effectively and
efficiently accommodate the work um especially things like homework and math as a parent who has one who has a math disability um the amount of time the the ability to collaborate on that with special education teachers to make sure that the homework assignments for
students who are in the inclusion programs are appropriate for what that student should be completing and what they need practice on to also be successful i think this is going to be a huge step forward um in that realm did the high school curriculum let you do
that as well or not as much yes however I think because of the initial implementation we know there was some training deficiencies and so not everybody knew the exact resources or how it could be used and from that learning Savas itself has made some
improvements even uh Mr trop who was part of our committee said "Oh well we didn't initially have that but now that got fixed and so those are some enhancements that have come towards the high school side having the special education teachers also then trained on those pieces so
that they can adequately support um because that's often where that that barrier is is access to the material and knowing how to work it." So they can say "Well but I know what what my student on my case load should be doing for homework let me help you with that that's editable." Boom then that can be
in a separate folder on Schooly and the kids who need to access that can access it the same as the general education students which is always that accessibility barrier is always the the the hard part absolutely so I'm excited to see how that changes and I will say when we were looking at picking dates
for our professional development to start the year all of the principles wanted to make sure it was a date so that their special education teachers could be there um and not be in another training because of the points you just brought up i think the online support is amazing i
did have a backup system it went like this larry Marin tell us about math did you like the curriculum you had at Visttor Ridge i do um from freshman year to sophomore year when it changed um I think I definitely saw an increase in
engagement in classes for sure and I do think it's good to have consistency from grade levels um with math being a a struggle subject for most so I think consistency is good cool well if there are no objections we can
move this to the May 8th meeting thank you so much thank you thanks we are on to student fees miss Thompson if I may tee this up um you'll you'll notice as I'm sure you were studying your packet and you
clicked through you'll notice an amazing amount of detailed information and I just want to remind the board of the background on this as a district we don't have to do that we could prevent we could present you with a single page summary of an Excel spreadsheet and that
would absolutely comply with state law but we made a uh we made a decision um almost 10 years ago that we were going to do full transparent pricing of all fees for all activities so that you could have the conversation that you're
about to have and this is um it it is difficult because these things are really expensive but it it shows that we're committed to transparency more than we are committed to to ease or or convenience and the biggest part about this is we make a commitment that if we
tell a parent this is the fee for for the sport that's the fee we're not going to come back and say "Oh and you also need to buy a uniform and you also have to buy a stick and you also have to buy a ball." um we we really work hard to give them upfront pricing and so that context is really important because what
you're about to hear is unusual and it's a direct result of the board's historical commitment to transparency and with that thank you Heather good evening uh Heather Diaz with the business office uh tonight uh we bring to you a very large packet it
is our 2526 student fee uh breakdown the first 25 pages um like Peter said we did a summary so you didn't have to go through and read all every single page of every fee breakdown so over the last two months we've met
with all 21 schools and their admin um team and before we met with everyone we let them know to please bring to the meeting a breakdown and justification of each fee and what it costs to make that total cost
um we the schools are have to provide a core path um with no fees attached so this is any fee outside of that and again in all the supporting documentation behind behind the 25 pages
is the fee breakdown um in this in the first 25 pages the the orangish color is an increase to any fees and most of that as you'll see is a cost of transportation and there was a few
decreases uh we got cheaper rates on a lot of things schools did a really great job in bringing their their work to the table as well so with that is there any questions director Schmidt I just want to say again I really
appreciate the summary at the beginning with the color coding on the increases reductions totals all of that because it's nice to see if there's an increase a decrease a new fee if there's a red flag then we can look at the corresponding information that you have
behind it i just really like this it It's nice to know where it's going is it science kits is it t-shirts what is it so um I really like this s this summary and this format so thank you it's not
easy reading it's it's large no it's not director Devola um I will say that I did look at the first 25 pages so yay i did not look at any of the other stuff afterward but I appreciate the fact that it's there uh
so that we can dig dig a little deeper and the public also knows what all of those details are because it's a posted document so thank you even though I didn't read all 267 pages nor should you
but thank you so much for for your uh detail on this welcome Director Hy yeah and I just wanted to um call out the um the level of detail that goes into this and one of the things that a parents when they first
see the the top pages and they say you know why does my student have to pay uh a fee to go to first grade right so that's one of the ones I I pulled up as an example and then you look into it and you find the detail and it's uh a take-home folder end of year gifts uh
rewards and incentives holidays crafts so it's nothing core instructional it's all extra stuff so we are paying for uh the things that are necessary for their students education and these are just some nice little things that are going to improve the the school year for them
and it's not a terribly high fee director Levir right there's two other components I noticed too so something that is different from when my kids were in elementary school that they've separated the activity class fee now and
list a separate field trip fee on the elementary schools and um what some don't realize is a part of our board budget is if a student is in the free and reduced groups the board covers
those fees right when those field trips weren't listed if a parent couldn't afford that field trip other parents might chip in a teacher might chip in or the kid couldn't go um this is also an
equity a fairness and ensuring that all of our students have those opportunities and no student is paying for another kid that money comes from our board budget um so that isn't one family subsidizing another family one family's fees doesn't
subsidize another child in their classroom who couldn't afford the fees our board subsidizes that to ensure that everyone um has those opportunities and that when parents are paying they're only paying for their child but I'm I'm really I'm very pleased to see that
field trip line there because I remember the the calls you know the parent groups getting together and say "Hey well we've got three kids whose parents can't afford it who can chip in who can do this who can do that to try and make sure everyone could still go." And that's a hard thing for a kid to be in
that position to know someone's asking for them and for their family and so some of those families their kids would just be sick that day right um we're not putting families in that position when we make sure that that's out there upfront um and the same thing with saying you know I I had a text about the
size of the cheerleading fee um inevitably when that one comes people say something when their kid is participating the reality is it was always that expensive it was just you were hit up over and over and over and over again all year um and so there were
kids who tried out and made the cheerleading team and thought that was it and their family scraped together to pay that first fee but then they couldn't do all the other pieces and their child had to drop out um or families had to figure out a different way to budget to do it this makes it all upfront you know exactly what it's going
to cost you the coach can't throw something at you later or the school um so it's a much ultimately a much more fair way to do it and I appreciate both aspects of that as an objective for our department we're trying to be as transparent for the entire district as
possible so this is part of that marin I bet you you just love going to your folks and say "I need money for this and I need money for that." Unfortunately sometimes okay if there's no other questions thank you so much thank you
and we are on to the annual strategic objection and we need to do those i was looking at the attorney and I just said objection strategic objections i mean I don't know what that popup was um but uh if you
were Good evening Peter Hill superintendent and if you were to look on the wall uh up above above you over your shoulder um you would see our 2425 board of education strategic objectives um I am discussing with our communications team u the option of
placing that circular graphic on the wall over here and the reason for that is not just because it's a nice design and uh and we paid a little bit for it but also to remind us that when we have these strategic focuses we we get things done on them and as I presented at the
annual planning summit we've had significant success that we can point to over the last cycle uh but we can actually go back four cycles um and and look at what we were focused on in 2020 how we made progress 2021 22 3 4 so we
intend with your approval to replace that graphic with what is now on screen and that is a set of four strategic objectives that we discussed at the annual planning summit and two of them are academic one is related to our workforce and one is related to
operations i will go through each of the four but these are the four that we talked about uh back when we met for the annual planning summit we had some conversation about possibly adding uh others uh we think the sweet spot is
four or five in a given year um less than four you might be missing an opportunity to delegate and focus more than five you start to diffuse your focus and and so we're going to we're going to continue to advocate for
presenting you four or five strategic objectives each year they really really help us set priorities um they help me decide you know I'm going to skip this opportunity and capitalize on that one it even helps me know who to pay attention to uh whether it's CDE or
CASBY or uh the legislature or our lobbyist depending on what the board has said to focus on so I'll go through these um also consistent with the board's uh the board's expectation to to delegation um I'm going to continue to
ask members of our cabinet to take the lead on strategic objectives so you can see that the academic f focus objective for writing performance under the leadership of Lisa Fellow with able assistance from a large group of people but especially our literacy coordinator
Geanna Rapaort and all of our school leaders and and ELA instructors but this is a case where we're going to need to integrate writing into other curricular areas so it's not just about English teachers or English interventionists
this is about educators making sure that our students are writing more writing with purpose having opportunities to review and improve their writing and so this initiative not only will help our overall ELA scores but it's going to help our students think more clearly uh
writing is a great discipline it helps you commit your thoughts and your logic uh to a form that other people can review and interact with and so I'm really excited about this one i actually uh once upon a time I got to teach writing um and it was one of my favorite
things to do to teach writing process because when you teach writing you're really teaching thinking you're teaching argumentation persuasion inspiration it's a it's a really phenomenal thing to help students express themselves well um let me pause here and see if there's
questions i won't read the bullets to you you're all very capable readers and see if there's anything else that I can explain director Dvola uh yes with this writing objective
um I I would kind of hope I guess I'm old school that um we can target uh writing formatting for paper pencil as well as computerbased because I know we do a lot of computerbased writing even
at the elementary school level um but like handwritten is that something that is that we currently do or is there ways for more handto paper type of writing activities
we do some handwriting and and that's still a really important skill um but Marin and you and I are in three different generations and I suspect that more and more students are more comfortable and
and are more native on digital devices um in five years they'll be doing speech to text almost flawlessly it's pretty good now but we're we're less interested in hanging on to a technology that has
served us well for millennia and working really hard with students where they are at there are there are absolutely students that that write by hand and write really well by hand and will continue to that's one of the ways I I take a lot of my notes um but there are
also a lot of students and families who don't set that as a priority anymore and we want to teach to them as well that makes me sad i understand that um just because there's a lot of research that goes with hand to paper writing and
the writing process and your brain and how it uh they're intertwined that's why cursive writing in my opinion is very important um because it does have a developmental part in your brain that is different than typing so typing is a
different uh triggers different areas of your brain than handwriting does and I think our students are lacking in that skill so I know I'm only one fifth of the board but I would like to see more paper pencil but it is also why we offer choice because we have we have charter schools in the district that that
express that philosophy director Schmidt well I'm going to be two-fifths of the board here because I think cursive writing and writing in general I agree with Jim Lynn as far as you write stuff down you tend to remember it a little bit better um plus
all of the old documents that are written in cursive these kids need to know how to read those i understand that educational philosophy i also understand as a board you've directed us to improve our academic scores and our students will be
tested exclusively on digital devices and digital written production and so um I don't have a way to square that circle we could put resources into and some schools do put resources into cursive writing i I led one of those schools for a long time and handwriting and and
verbal expression and it's kind of a a patient approach a low tech approach that can work really well um it is it is less and less mainstream and it is it is not something that we're we're getting any strong demand from our parent
community are we going to be lemmings i think that's an unfair characterization director Hy yeah and so this isn't an advocacy it's really more just of a counterpoint um
our students um are digital natives and they have been using um uh text um for you know sometimes before they even show up into our schools and the thing is they are practicing it really really badly on their own and they need to
develop those skills um and especially because they're going to be um moving into a workforce where that will be the primary ways of communication i mean uh I was using teams uh pretty extensively
um just in my job today and so the the text speak that they tend to use is is arcane it is uh syntactically poor and uh so that is a skill that we we absolutely want to be shoring up for
them um to prepare for prepare them for the workforce and I can offer just a different viewpoint just from a recent personal experience where I began to lose the use of my right hand until my recent surgery and so writing I would fling pencils
around the room literally I mean I didn't have as much control and if I didn't have my reading glasses I couldn't always see to text so one of my favorite sayings is talk to text is my worst enema anyway um are there any
other comments about this portion director Levir right i think the most important thing is we help them learn to express themselves well and for some students that may involve writing as a chronic left-hander who can't stand the ink and pencil being smeared all over my
hand every single time I write I became native at a very young age even though I'm 53 on using something I could type um because then I didn't turn into a giant mess and my words were still legible when I was done because my hand
wiped the pencil across the sheet every single time um so I think there's pros and cons to each piece um but the most important thing is that they learn to express themselves in a written format
that is coherent and thoughtful and um shows the the level of complexity that they're going to be expected to do regardless of what tool they use um young children I think are still learning how to handwrite where I don't think they spend a ton of time on
cursive at least mine didn't um but I actually put two of my kids through a year of occupational therapy privately in addition to the school trying to get them to write um so for some kids that forced trying to make them make the letters if they don't have the dexterity
holds back their ability to express um verbally and when they're given the the technology tool that no longer requires that piece um the amount of writing you can see from them can grow exponentially my child who had access earlier writes
far better um because of that but it wasn't because we neglected teaching him how to handwrite we spent a lot of extra time on it um so I think they need a combination and and I understand that part because I had a student with disgraphia Marin what
do you think of the discussion between cursive writing text typing um I'm 5050 I like to handw write notes for sure but I also agree with Mr hilts when he said um everything is digital at this point i mean like um my SAT last
week was all I wrote an entire essay on the computer like like every every piece um prepare of our education currently is electronically like digitally um so I think as far as like preparation digital
the digital aspect is important but I think handwritten is equally as important so I'm I'm torn but also I don't think we're lacking that in the classrooms either i think we still have a little bit of both which I think
is what we need so so says the D49 student okay we're on to the next part the academic focus objective related to middle school performance um I have asked zone superintendents to lead this and so you know them very well uh you
know how connected they are um to their to their schools but we do intend that the middle school performance objective will also apply to charter schools um as I explained and and I want to get it on record again we have multiple K8 charter
schools where the elementary performs and the middle school is approaching performance and so two things will change next year one we will be reporting to you by level so we won't just report a K8 score we'll report an elementary score and a middle school score that will bring additional
scrutiny and focus uh to to some middle schools that are not performing and some of our operating um middle schools really need to improve their performance our operated middle schools also need to improve their performance so that's why we advocated for this um but this is
really going to take uh in our operated schools it'll take direct oversight and and ongoing um encouragement from our zone superintendents and then those building principles at the charter school level where that leadership really rests with the building leader um
in some cases that's a a K12 principal in some cases it'll be a dedicated principal for that level um we will work with them as we have uh but we'll we'll have a different relationship with them because we won't have the icon zone structure that we've worked with so are
there any questions that I could answer about focusing on middle school this is a broad objective it will cover not only the tested subjects but it will cover both growth and achievement across all of our core and elective curricula we
just want to get better in the middle all right now for a bit of Oh sorry um just noticing that um the zone superintendent will will be working closely with Lisa Fellow because what
happens with the writing also will have per will be at the middle school performance level so there will be some good communication back and forth between the two of them that is correct four of them five of them i can't count apparently well and along with our our
other lit our literacy and math uh leadership out of the learning services department so not just our coordinators but our coaches our instructional support team um so yeah this is a this is a joint effort for sure now just to make things um
confusing I failed to update the date on this one so um we did not already approve this in March but that should say May 8th 2025 i failed to copy and paste which is sort of like failing to write correctly but you heard the kind
of initial salvo at the annual planning summit and then quite a bit more detail tonight from Paul and Teresa um this is all about the calibration task related to compensation and as I said it's 10 x 10 more complicated than the teacher
repositioning um and yet just as critical because this is half our workforce director Hy so based on the complexity um do we anticipate um completion this year
no I know I know Paul was not willing to be quite as decisive about that i'm willing to be decisive about that um I I do expect some implementation this year but completion no director Schmidt
if we don't have the money we can't pay people more bottom line um conservative pause i I understand Director Schmidt's advocating either that we we discontinue this or that we not do it and and if
there were a board consensus I' I'd respond to that um my only thought on this is we had made a commitment to first adjust the teachers and then to look at the rest of the staff so as opposed to doing a pause I would really like to focus personally on the
sustainability um just because we want to keep the workforce that we have i think it's more expensive to have to hire and retrain if we have higher turnover because we're not somewhat competitive in the marketplace so I'd like to focus more on
sustainability than pausing it but I'd like to hear what the other directors director liver right i think the other piece of this is um there's a huge amount of work that's going to have to go into this that isn't yet done which is a part of what this goal is so when
we looked at the saw to what we're being told is that our our job descriptions and appropriate pay are not aligned between jobs relatively either and we
recognize that we might not be full market on anything but the question is are we consistent within and the answer is no on both of those right now and one part of this task is first getting
consistent within developing something that will be consistent within where that compares to market is will be driven by budget constraints that will also be driven and as well as when it's implemented right now we don't have an implementation
schedule paul would is it wasn't going to definitively say it but the reality is we are not designing and implementing a full new scholar schedule next year for all of those positions because it won't be possible to fund and it won't be possible to have all of the work done
it's the combination of the two i think we're we need to take we will be this goal is about taking the time to get all of that right and the sustainability was one of the key sustainability which means fundability long term is a component of the process and so that's
why I'm not I'm not saying pause it i think we have to continue the work and one of the parameters we gave them was it had to be sustainable within our budget so because that's one of the parameters this is still an appropriate goal in my personal opinion
director Hy yeah and my interpretation and it's it's very basic and just a visual aid um but my interpretation of the sawtooth wave is essentially that we have a number of areas where we are above the midpoint of the market and so we would expect that
an implementation starts to bring us down and the way we're going to accomplish that is we're going to have new hires that come in at a lower rate than than has previously happened right because we're not going to affect current employees but that's going to end up realizing us some savings that
then gets offset by um increases for other positions that are um that are um lower paid but the big thing and I pointed this out during that private prior discussion is we are going to be market informed we are not going to be
market uh indexed right so we are still going to um budget our uh employee our our staff um in a sustainable way within our means director Levier right and I believe it
was also about the transparency component of the the pay scale mhm so that's the other piece that we're rebuilding is going from a complex not well understood pay system that also probably contributes to the saw to thing when you're placing new job descriptions on
it um to something that's very transparent to employees um so that that piece in and of itself isn't necessarily the expensive part um but that design component I think we have to continue developing it and then timeline for
implementation becomes your secondary your next discussion point and that gets driven by what our budget realities are as we move forward i'm going to also point out based on this graph on screen right now sometimes the way you you correct the saw tooth is not by moving a
position up or down it's by moving it right or left and that's a big part of what we have to get right some of our positions are simply placed incorrectly when we look at market information we may have a position and
we'll um we'll say the position is lawyer and maybe lawyer and superintendent should be just the same and maybe one should be significantly higher and one should be or right and so part of this is figuring out which
which position should be further up the scale and that may mean that that the position that the individual in the position experiences a pay pause or a pay freeze um but it doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to stay where
they are and just wait and wait for that line to catch up to them there's there's movement on two axes in in this and that's part of why it is so complex true there not as much of that is true here but enough of it is true here that that
it's going to take us a while remember that the board made a commitment it was a multi-million dollar commitment because it was multi-year at at a million million 7 million nine and then over two million the board made that commitment before we knew that we were
going to experience a decrease in enrollment before we knew what was going to happen and so I appreciate the caution and the and the fiscal stewardship and conservativism but hanging on to a system that has inequities in it
already is not noble um it it is right to correct it with whatever resources we have available for it and we have less resources than we would have because of commitments we've already made so unless the board unmakes those commitments and and distributes
dollars differently we have to tackle this task at some point if it's not a strategic objective it's still going to be an administrative objective we've still got to work on this director Dvola yeah and as we heard from our new CFO
Rebecca Brooks um she is also wanting us to be very cautious so I have I have um full confidence that if we go for forward with this objective focus that the uh
um financial department is not going to let us overspend um in order for us to make this happen without very much coming to the board and saying hey red flags we we can't do this right now yep so um I I think this
is still a good strategic objective um it might be a little bit harder to implement um as quickly as we had hoped but over time I think it would be it would work so and I just would observe our track record on on competitive compensation if
you look at the vow survey results that Paul presented back at the annual planning summit that's the item that we've improved the most and I I'm convinced that the way we've improved that is good robust discussion in this setting with the VCT but also keeping it
a focus remember when director May said um we don't want to get our IEP goal attainment too high we don't want it above 95% because that means that uh we're not ambitious enough for academic goals i'm just going to tell you I need
our workforce to hear me say I want to push right up against the line because we're already behind the market and so if we're not pushing if it's not making you pay extra attention and making us cringe a little bit then we're not pushing hard enough we've really got to
keep the pressure on compensation because we will fall back very fast if we don't um so I just I would encourage the board to to include this in the package moving forward um with your permission I'll move to the fourth objective which is that we want to
really work on our cyerspace presence um somebody hacked into my slide and added March 13th again uh we're going to we're going to find them and stop them um this is one that I want to take the lead on for two reasons one is it's so global it
encompasses more than it encompasses more than cyber security it really is we will look back on the 23 to 26 time frame as the the time when schools
transitioned pretty dramatically from an analog primary environment to a digital primary environment we've got to do that well we've got to we've got to pay a lot of attention to it um we still live very
much in physical space but increasingly our students live in a cyber space and we've got to make sure our presence there is just right um what you see on screen is focused on security that's the emphasis here um but that that has to be
it has to permeate all of our operations cyber presence matters for transportation for food service certainly for education for administration and for our business office and so that's why I I would like to lead this initiative um but I will
delegate liberally and and heavily and invite a lot of other experts to the table um under Rebecca Brooks supervision as CFO Brent Buena and I will work very hard to make sure that we have some consistent frameworks and that
we can we're really creating a structure for cyber space cyber space presence um going forward we have the the pieces of that structure already but they're not assembled we got to do the work to assemble them director
Schmidt because this is a discussion area and I did not get to finish my discussion i'm fine with this okay okay if there are no objection then this will be moved forward to May 8th oh wait director Dvola so Director
Schmidt was it the last slide that you had wanted to say something i'm not sure that I'm not sure that she saw you i'm I'm happy to come back to this one i I heard you make a statement that we should pause and then I was silent for a while i didn't hear anything else so if
the board wants me to answer more questions I'm happy to do that director Schmidt so we already know that we have less money next year we already know this now if we want to go ahead and look at changing up the whole form that's
fine but I don't want to implement anything until we're ready to implement it as far as the money goes on the compensation i don't think we have any numbers yet so that's this is just part of the process to determine what we can do and I know you've been doing restructuring that zon
superintendents have had their budgets cut and there's been a lot of reorganization so we don't even have numbers to discuss yet so this is just the process of moving forward it is and the board has to adopt new salary schedules so this is this is adopting a strategic objective is not the same as
guaranteeing a strategic outcome and so what this does is it tells us that the board agrees this is worth our focus um and I think frankly that the fact that there's disagreement and and caution about it is part of why it is a
strategic f it should be a strategic focus right because I I agree with Director Schmidt that we're we should not be implementing or voting on anything um which we can't um and so um but it's
still an important strategic objective because we don't know what we don't know until we've researched it and we've gone through it and we see all of the different pieces that that are components of this there I don't love the phrase but there
is some lowerhanging fruit in these compensation schedules so there might be things that we could clean up without making a major difference in cost that's why we have really smart people named Paul and Teresa leading that effort that's why Paul's name is on this not mine
well and I think that when she was presenting she even said that there were things that were inconsistent yes and so also to look at a framework that we could move forward with that would remove those inconsistencies and give us a clearer pathway forward no matter what that is whether we do it now or later
but we have to know what we can do because we did make that commitment to our staff to look into it so I think that's something we owe our staff so are there any other questions director Hy yeah and I just want to point out too that we spent all that energy um uh
uplifting our teachers and and rightly so and I think that um that gives us sort of a a moral obligation to honor the rest of our workforce as well okay if there are no other questions then we are adjourned
don't forget to fill out your surveys and turn them in to Lynette