##VIDEO ID:pDwTqjJ1uX8## e e e e e he is live G board members you have three minutes of Trust one minute I'll for e e e we're just waiting welcome to the January 22nd Board of Education work session I am calling this meeting to order at 6:33 p.m. and the first discussion item is 1.1 Mountain View Academy renewal good evening members of the board um superintendent Hils so I just want to give a really quick U background on this renewal process so this is the first renewal that this I connect Zone Administration has done last year we didn't have well we had one but it was um Liberty Tree Academy and it was really a formality they had gone through a one-year conditional they met most of their conditions the only one that that he didn't it was enrollment and it was just a few students and we went ahead and said let's give them the rest of the years but this is the first fullon renewal that our team has done and the first renewal that we've bought brought before this board excuse me I have a tickle in my throat I'm hoping I don't catch what everybody else has um and just so that you know we've made some changes to the process this was the first time ever that we included individuals beyond the iConnect Zone it was important to us that we have a comprehensive view thank you so much Lynette of the schools and that we had as many eyes as possible so that we could um visit all the grade levels and interview as many people as possible so for the first time ever we included Grant G because Mountain View does serve quite a few second language Learners we included Dave Hurley so that he could um observe special education services and Dr Gutierrez can you explain what their those two individuals what their roles are in the district yes absolutely so Grant G is the coordinator of cldd so culturally and linguistically diverse education and Dave Hurley serves as the special education coordinator Ator for the iConnect Zone we also included Izzy coach Izzy um at the time he was a special projects coordinator and of course now he's the Zone Partnerships and Innovation administrator like I said we wanted to make sure we were there for two days and had it only been myself and Rochelle Koh house we would not have been able to see as many teachers or interview as many people as we were able to do so so by including Mr G Mr Hurley and Coach Izzy we also had um Miss tavanir who serves on Dax charter school subcommittee she came and she also assisted us with observations and um interviews and everything else excuse me post observations and interviews we collaborated very closely with Dr McKenzie Khan who's the executive director of caka which is the Colorado Association of charter school um authorizers so this recommendation comes to you after a lot of dialogue after a lot of advice um Britney Brennan who is our d49 Charter School specialist she's not here tonight she is with her child who is at a art show I told her your own Mom first you have to go to the art show um she also took our recommendation caka does um something that is called um authorizers fundamentals and they do that on a weekly basis she also took the some of our recommendations to that because we wanted to make sure we were really fair and that we were looking at the indicators of distress we want to support Mountain View we very much support Mountain View we wanted to support the administration and have a solid executive summary and a solid recommendation before we brought it to you so it's been months of iterations and then we did give it to Mr Mill for review and superintendent hilts for review so what you have before you has gone through multiple um eyes and um just lots of counsel and I'm ready to answer questions where I can some of you have sent questions um that I have not been able to answer because some of those questions we do not run the processes for National Heritage acmy runs the processes for so I don't have those answers and where I don't have the answers I'll just be transparent and tell you that I don't have them and student board I don't know if you had a chance to review any of the packet I know sometimes it can come at different times after a snow day it's fine if you didn't you could reserve questions for later I did get I did get to read the materials but I have no questions thank you thank you stie I don't either thank you thank you director Schmidt um so this is for a one-year renewal only we're recommending one year with some supports and then once we meet the recommendations in that one year then we'll add the additional years okay um I have a really hard time thinking about only renewing for one year especially given the incredible academic stor scores that Mountain View Academy has they were one of the top two schools in the district achieving an 80% Point score with a 95% participation rate so they're academically doing really good things um I know that Miller Mr Miller um didn't find any legal problems with their operations or their authorization and it looks like there was about two two two sets of parents maybe two parents out of roughly 250 plus um that had complaints so really that's only 0.8% of their parents so I think their parents are relatively happy because generally when they're not they're pretty well talking about it um I had some other things that I'm not sure I want to bring up I think I would rather talk to you personally about them before we vote on it this next meeting um so those are just kind of the things some of the things that you know I have a hard time with just one year you know I'm thinking maybe a little bit longer okay director Hy yeah when uh I saw the uh performance data for MBA last year I thought this is going to be the the just the fastest item ever um but when we started hearing about significant turnover issues at the school um that opens up the question of are those results going to be repeatable or are there going to be significant disruptions in learning um we saw this play out in LTA a couple years ago where they had some significant meltdown and you know there were there were some interruptions for those students um Scholastic care and uh that's uh so that's a problem uh so I I have unanswered questions about you know how much um turnover was there what was the root cause is it you know is it fixable issues or is it systemic because um if it's systemic um you know that brings into question whether it's a viable school and I think we have to be very concerned for our students in that case uh the other thing I was looking at too is I was trying to learn something about what MVA does and uh I found we are a district that Prides ourselves on transparency and when I went to go look at say you know what's going on at their Schoolboard and I I couldn't learn anything it's just the minimal amount of documentation you know the minutes will say we talked about a policy okay what was the policy what were the talking points um you know that's it's still a school that is spending public money and I think we owe it to the public to let them know that their money is being spent in ways that benefit the public good so um just as one board member I would like to see all of our Charters as they come before us increase their their transparency not necessarily to our level because I mean let's phas it we take it pretty far but um I I I think the public should should know what's going on in our public Charters if I may um address the human resource Portion by contract with our Charters d49 does not involve ourselves with their human resources and I think I've um answered that for you before so that's one of those answers that I cannot give you you um I could give you anecdotal information that Dr Brunton shared with me but I can't say they have x% of turnover rate that's something that National Heritage emies has they run the HR processes for Mountain View Academy and they really are under no obligation to share that with us um because under the contract Human Resources is not something that we do for them and and I do attend the um board meetings I'm there um this year I've only missed the January one um and I talked to Joe Hammond who is their liaison for the board and I told him that I wasn't going to attend that one so he knew I wasn't going to be there but I do attend and I take notes and I then um give a synopsis of all the charter board meetings to superintendent hilts when we have our oneon-one um I find that to be very productive for me um sometimes I find out events that they're having sometimes I get a heads up and things that they're going to be sending our way like that's how I found out that Benning Lewis is going to be building an Arts Wing which I thought was great um that's a preview of something that's going to eventually come to you so I do go to all the board meetings I do get the packet from um National Heritage acmy but the link does expire uh because I went back and I was trying to find something and I found out the link expires so I do get that um there is some transparency for me so I just want you to know that director devola yeah I have a couple of questions okay um I do see that there was quite a few um proposed remedies and conditions for us to consider um when we uh do this renewal and I wanted to um wanted to know when it comes to um the operational side of uh Mountain View Academy was there anything in their current contract or the contract that we have right now that was um um that was what's the word I'm looking for um that was um not followed was there anything in our contract that they did not do or that they viol that's the word violated thank you I wouldn't call it a violation we have struggled um since the Inception with reporting that has been an ongoing struggle and um we did ask for a corrective action uh plan that was in place for 90 days at the beginning of the year um right before it expired I did have to make contact because we were um we were struggling to get everything in on time for October count and we were able to get everything in on time for October count October count is crucial because that's where we get our money and um Mountain View was one of the charters that prevented us from uh reporting uh very CR critical report that was due in December they were one of the ones that did not get their report done on time is that something that's written into the contract they have to use they okay so it um I I understand all right and then um I do see that that poses a a problem yes um my concern is there were several other conditions that seemed very uh operational and as a uh someone who works at a charter school I know how um they much very much value their autonomy on making those decisions such as um uh behavior training um um how to engage their stakeholders and their teachers and parents and students uh that's something that they have the autonomy to to make and so I'm not quite sure I would go for the proposed remedies and conditions um because it seems a little bit overreaching on our part as an authorizer uh I didn't want I wanted to know what your thoughts were on these proposed remedies and conditions so Behavior Rose to a concern because it's it's on the rubric and also it was something that was um in our observations and was brought forward in some of our interviews um it was also shared by Administration they need to follow National Heritage Academy's model for behavior and what we observed there was a point system but we were not quite sure how it was implemented and what the purpose of it was and so that's the reason it Rose to the top um because it was there was a pattern of it so anything that you see in in the report there's a pattern of it in the observations the interviews um through the rubric that's why it's it's in the report uh I I do believe that would be something that they would need to work out with National Heritage academics um not necessarily our role to tell them um how to how to do right and we we would not dictate you have to use PBIS or you have to use capturing kids Hearts we would not dictate how they address it at all um can I ask a couple more questions are we okay um and uh for the interviews do you know about how many parents were interviewed we did not have very many parents Dr Brunton struggled to get parents to um agree to be interviewed and I know we had um some that were scheduled and at least one canceled at the last minute and she went out to the drive line and asked the parent to come in um I don't know the exact number of parents because I didn't bring the schedule but I know she struggled to get parents um I'm not sure if we can like the observations that we had when it comes to parent inter interviews that data might not be accurate um I do understand that if there is uh because you mentioned like the turnover if there is a significant amount of turnover and it's affecting the the community affecting the parents and the students um we would probably hear about it um that's what happened with LTA we got non-stop flooding of emails when the whole thing went down and so I do understand that they had some turnover but it doesn't seem to be affecting um how they're running their school or uh what what the parents view of their school we actually heard from two parents who came to our be board meeting last session and that's the only communication we've received from parents um so I'm just a little I I want to make sure we're really um I think it's because we are dealing with it at the iConnect zone so we we've been I at least have had conversations with Ellie Campbell who this year is their new director director of school quality she reached out prior to winter break asking if d49 would be willing to wave The Lure requirements uh we do do not have requirements for who can and cannot be hired at a charter school again we do not run any HR um processes for them and so the reason she was asking was because they do have at the time they had several vacancies and they were wondering if in waving some of those requirements it might be easier to hire I don't know how many vacancies there were I did not ask her and I said you know this is not something d49 would do for you that would be something that CDE would do for you just like if we had for example if we had a large number of math vacancies and we needed to hire a bunch of Math teachers then Lisa might contact CDE and say Here's somebody with an engineering degree can we FastTrack them into a math position right you get creative when you have a lot of vacancies so I said it's not us it's CDE and you might want to contact this person because that's the only person I know at CDE um after that she she thanked me for that but after that I haven't had any more communication but she did say they had a large number of vacancies they were trying to fill and they were trying to get creative with being able to fill those but d49 has nothing to do with who they can and cannot hire um I have one more question and this might not be um appropriate um are we able to get the perspective of the um of the board of MVA and um their principal are they able to speak to this to us I don't know if I'm not sure what you mean to be able to talk to discuss this with us sure absolutely this is I mean this is public business and so we can we can sort of solicit or invite and we've we've extended the statutory um the statutory deadline is the before February 1st but my mutual agreement we've extended that so we're we're fine in terms of time um and so yeah we can ask those questions the the principle at the time that we conducted the review was probably the primary source of insight from the from the MVA side um since I've already got my mic on I I just I want to share just a perspective this is the first time this board has done a full renewal MBA the I connect Zone office me as superintendent like this is a lot of what we're doing on the process side whether it was whether it was MBA or or brand new charter school that we've you know just just renewed for the first time we're calibrating so you're giving us a sense that's a little tooo specific that's a little too strongly worded that's a calibration exercise and we should do that well together around these these tables regardless of the substance we need to calibrate we need to get a sense of what you expect you need to get a better sense of what we how we got to this recommendation so I would just ask us all to to be sensitive to the fact that we're calibrating with each other but there's a there's a different Dynamic that's really powerful with MVA that I just want the board to consider and you already have quite a bit of evidence of this in the report and in some of the documents that have been provided to you we do not authorize National Heritage acmy we authorize MVA much of the substance that we require to conduct our oversight of MVA only comes from NH and we have zero leverage over National Heritage Acy Academy um NH is a great organization we we we are glad they authorize here and NH has been inconsistently collaborative sometimes they' been great to work with it depends on who's who's in a role sometimes they haven't been as responsive and that's they would probably be able to say the same about us because as we've had turnover in in critical roles in the district but in Colorado authorizers are supposed to have a primary relationship with the school the governing board and the administration of the school uniquely in our Charter portfolio we have an extensive relationship with individuals who work for NH and and who are only accountable to the MVA board they're not accountable to us and that changes the dynamic we have several charter schools that have Charter management organizations CMO generically is what they would be called and we have had others in the past before GPA was GPA it was an imagine uh school um at different times Banning Lewis has had different CMOS that have that have provided them support ptaa has support from a CMO uh for a while pepsol did and and what we're experiencing with MBA is unique in all of those relationships and so that's another calibration that we have to bring to you as a board we we simply have no leverage with NH and we're not really looking for leverage with NH we authorize MVA and so we don't want to get between MVA and NH but we are constantly required to work directly with NH because they they hold many of the data sources that we have to have access to and if I just might um answer what you were requesting Miss deola I don't know and Mr hilz you might um also give thought to this I I don't know if it would be appropriate for Dr Brenton to be addressed she has ended her tenure at Mountain View Academy she's no longer the principal there um I don't know if it would be appropriate to ask her to re-engage mine was for the current the current Administration and the current the interim board correct okay and and because most of this board hasn't been through this process before but our history is that we have this presentation first and then we typically have a public hearing we have been inconsistent sometimes we hold the public hearing at a regular meeting sometimes we hold it at a uh work session or a special meeting we just haven't been consistent um and so I don't think there's a reason to do one or the other but we typically ask that the charter school make a presentation at that hearing and so you should this is a recommendation from our administrative uh staff you should hear directly from the school as a board and then you can these are recommendations and considerations we understand the board is the one that's going to renew with whatever conditions you do or do not impose for whatever term you do or do not impose this is our good faith recommend set of recommendations you may conclude uh collectively that we've we've kind of over baked it um you may conclude that we've overfocused in one area and under focused in another that's your role as a board we just want to make sure we're that we can give you the rationale behind our decision thank you for that clarification because I thought there was a piece missing so thank you first of all I want to thank everyone who was involved with helping to put this report together and uh i' like that you highlighted their academic performance and yes they are one of our top performing schools yes so um and that is contained in this report just so people can be clear that that part is in there um I had just a few comments or questions first of all I don't think it's fair to compare this with Liberty Tree Academy it was a completely dis different situation it was Hatfield and M M what McCoy out on the Eastern Plains and we heard from lots and lots of parents in in all honesty the first time we heard from a parent with MVA was our last meeting when one of them spoke at public forum we haven't heard of those issues so I just like to make clear that it's two different situations when did you receive the October count what day did that arrive do you know the official October count from oh um so there's a series of actions that need to happen and I believe superintendent Hils attached it to one of the emails that was in uh responding to your questions Britney jelc has this long task list that begins I believe in early August superintendent hiltz begins in February ends in Jan for October count talking about the end of year no I'm talking about October count I I don't think I okay so Britney J sends out a task list and it's incredibly lengthy and I do believe it it begins in early August and you have to meet every single one of those tasks because every single one of those tasks leads you to the final October count and so there isn't a singular item that needs to be submitted to October count it's inred incredibly complex and part of it is d49 starts school two weeks earlier than our partner districts and so sometimes you're you're smiling you know where I'm going sometimes they enroll in d49 for two weeks but then they leave and so the state has an SSID and that's what identifies Lori Thompson went to MVA for two weeks in August but now she's at d11 you cannot both claim her only one person gets to claim Lori and so that cleanup and you get to be my example because you asked the question that cleanup is crucial now could there be more than one Lorie Thompson well we should be so lucky right so then we have to go from the SSID to the birth date and wow they both have the same birth date well now we need to go to the Social Security number right so the cleanup is extensive and that's why the tasks are extensive we have to be 100% error free we're never 100% error free we get pretty darn close because Bri Bry J you do not want to upset her I never upset Britney J and I never upset C Cindy the PE card administrator those I care more about keeping them happy really if Peter gets upset with me I'm okay with that but Cindy and Britney G never so we have to make sure those are clean because if we end up with 10 kiddos that we have to clean up that's better than 23,000 kids and that's why it's so complicated and every single school has to be 97 98 99% error free and that's that's why that's so critical do you think there was a good faith effort made to give you that information upon request in other words was there good open communication back and forth between the district and the school to get that information once I reached out and said we were at a critical juncture and we were at risk as a district to not meet October count yes and I would assume that you had similar experiences with other Charter Schools as far as getting those corrected and finalizing the October count no ma'am we did not have to deal with other charter schools in that way I also noticed that you referenced um a couple of notices of concern but I was on the board when the first one was issued uh December 17th in 2021 and that one was withdrawn so the documentation for that does not exist in the historical documents that I have for Andy Franco I went back and I looked and Miss guer did provide that via email I do not have access to Andy Frankle historical emails and I should not if I were to leave my role the person that follows me should have all of my documents in the drive they shouldn't have all the emails there's a lot of stuff that goes back and forth in emails I'm I hope very diligent about putting everything in a drive those documents did not end up in a drive what I do have that Miss gner provided is not not signed and so there is a document that was created between Mr Graham and Miss gner it's not signed and I don't know if it ever came to the board actually Miss Thompson may I may I speak to that um we don't know if it was signed we know that the copy that we have is unsigned but we also know Carrie gner and John Graham and both of them assert that they came to that agreement so so we've taken that on good faith So when you say that it that it was rescinded uh I wouldn't say it was rescinded it was resolved because part of our resolution process is that the board presidents can negotiate come to an agreement and we believe that they did these are two honorable people we have no reason to believe that that Miss gner submitted something for she didn't she she believes that that was their agreement John has also said yeah that's that's what we all agreed to so we have we are treating that we are honoring that as a resolution of that notice of concern the point I would like to make though is if we get to a notice of concern especially with MBA we've gotten to a second a level two notice of concern there's been a lot of dialogue in advance of that something has not gone wrong something has gone wrong in the authorizer school relationship and as I alluded to earlier it it seems to be part of the pattern that there are three parties to the conversation where with most of our charter schools there are really two parties to the conversation and that has created some additional layers of complexity um that we haven't always managed perfectly from our side and I don't think NH would represent that they have always managed them um what is really challenging is when you kind of get in a group with somebody and then that person am do something to leaves the role on either side of the table that person leaves the role you have to recreate a lot of you know relational capacity and even just workflow um and so that's been part of our experience and from what I understand from an email that we received today and I replied and copied you on it as well Peter it looks like when it comes to coordinating with the student information system that there have been issues with other Charter Schools as well not just MBA from what I received today that are off Cy so we don't have we don't have many off Cy Charters so I guess it's just correcting errors and I know that uh for and I'd have to provide that to you as well just so you could see what I'm talking about just to be and I'll send that to you just so we could talk about it further but it's fine for now yes are there any substantial violations of their exist ing contract with the district it is the reporting issue and I when I issued my notice of concern in the spring I issued a level two because again going into the historical documents I noticed Andy had issued a level two and I thought well we're still having the exact same issues and I didn't want to escalate it Beyond level two so I said I'm just going to issue it another level two we met with u Mr Carlton we met with Miss gner we came to an agreement to meet with the Cy team after we met with the Cy team we met we agreed to a corrective action plan they were on it for 90 days they complied within the 90 days and just recently I learned that they failed to meet the deadlines for the December reporting so we're back to not meeting deadlines for incredibly important reports now is that under records for schools rights and responsibilities in the contract where they agree to meet state federal and District requirements then okay yes ma'am and then um has the dispute resolution process been implemented at all that's when we met with Miss Carlton or I'm sorry Mr Carlton and Miss gner to say how can we address this um because it continues to be an issue we continue to get reports late um who can we have one point of contact we we were really trying to problem solve um we were trying to problem solve having a single point of contact UM having emails answered because there were times where our emails went unanswered for weeks uh we were trying to say can you send somebody to what we call The Mug meetings which is the Multi multi-user Group can you send somebody so that they could be trained so we were trying to problem solve and say we do not want this to escalate um and it I thought it was a very productive meeting Mr Carlton has been really great to work with but um like I said they miss those deadlines in December Miss Thompson can I make just a quick observation the the email that you forwarded today um none of the attachments came through we weren't direct recipients on that so so when you fored the attachments so I haven't seen those I just want to make sure my silence on those is not taken as Ted agreement and I and I just I want to offer a subtle Nuance that could be kind of important in a sense the reports are are not late they're the the way the state works we submit things they say oh here's here's your list of 180 errors or 63 errors and then we we cycle through again and we cycle through again but they put deadlines on the calendar where we have to submit an error free report and so it's not that they never submitted anything that that that's not I I just want to make sure the board understands they're submitting reports we then have to turn around and submit them as part of our upload to the state then we get an error report back an error log back I cannot express the the hundreds of thousands of lines of data that are getting processed and then anal ized and so we're not we're not managing errors for one MVA we're managing for 30 schools and working with all of their registar and there is something that is uniquely challenging about this working relationship because we get to the zero error deadline like we did last year on May 30th and we still have a lot of Errors if we if that's the last submission we make with 13 errors that's $130,000 of Revenue that doesn't come through for students that have already already gotten the benefit of the education and so it really matters to the school and to the district that we drive those errors as close to zero as possible you make me nervous 97 or 98 we got to be at 99 we got to be at about 999 um yes before before we're really hitting the mark thank you for that clarification Mr Hills he's right it's it's not so much that they're late it's just that they're not error free and then I did have a question too on some of the recommendations because Peter you were good to point out a CMO and it sounds like this is an emo and so our contract is with MVA a lot of this has to do within the concerns it talks about Staffing but that is handled by nhha and all the HRS through NH we do not have a contract with NH we have it with MVA and so that's why I just had some concerns about overreaching a bit into the operational side um and wanting you know just I had questions about that and also it was listed and I was kind of hoping director L Wright could be here tonight because she signed the original contract five years ago oddly enough but um it said uh let me find this one part here that where it says financial distress yes but my understanding is the original agreement was with the NHA funding which to me actually sounds like a safer Arrangement than most Charter schools because regardless of the per pupil Revenue NH is guaranteeing that financial support and so I'm not sure that I would list that as an area of financial distress it almost sounds like a bull worker it's sweep funding so it's a little bit more secure than just relying on the per pupil Revenue Miss Thompson may I respond to that because you and I have talked a little bit about this you're correct NH is a safety net and we have appreciated that they're also a vendor to MVA and if you depend on a vendor to be financially solvent it makes it harder to either change vendors or to hold the vendor uh accountable that that's that's not a that's not a a a specific particular criticism about MVA and NH that's a general observation that if if you depend depend on your provider for financial stability it changes the dynamic of the relationship and that's the dynamic of the relationship between the the emo in this case and and MVA is part of what creates stability we cannot control what could happen in the future in that relationship and we're we're obligated to tell you that as a board that that that raises concerns for us um it it provides at least as much concern as it does comfort that they have that Financial dependency and if if I could ex expand on that our other Charters that have a relationship with either with a CMO or an emo their daily cash on hand is incredibly healthy so Banning is an example they're at a point right now where they're making a decision whether or not they're going to continue with Excel schools they may and they may not they're evaluating that relationship Banning has over 700 days cash on hand they do not depend on Excel schools they can function without Excel for two years and so that that's where this comes in into play um exactly what superintendent Hill said Can NVA stand on its own financially how many days cash on hand do they have independent of NH well and I guess the reason that came up for me is that's how they were established to begin with and at this point I haven't heard of NH not remaining in a relationship with MVA so it's kind of a unicorn it stands alone a little bit with this this back stop and so where they may not have the same kind of cash on hand they do have that back stop and so that was just why I had a question about that because that's how they started so my biggest questions would be is is if there have not been substantial violations of the agreement we already had with them that would be something I would want I would like more information about I would also like to know that um we don't overstep too much into operations with some of these recommendations but I really appreciate the staff who spent the time and effort and I appreciate those who have taken the time into getting this materials together and I have to agree with vice president devola I would like to hear the response from the school on this report um and I assume now it's been I think they've received copies of it just to increase the level of communication because my understanding was when this first came out and I think it was supposed to be published as executive but that wasn't made clear when it was delivered but also that they are they receive any documents or modifications at the same time we do just as a a sign of transparency and working with our charter schools so are there any other further questions director H yeah just to clarify um I'm not trying to get involved in their HR processes um the question that I have is really based on a significant amount of openings because of a significant amount of resignations in a very short period of time um are they going to remain healthy long term and so I think that that's something that us as authorizers we should know we should we should have confidence that they're going to be there for their students and that their educations will continue to uh to Excel and uh be with minimal interruptions um as far as your concern about the uh the balance sheet um I just want to point out that NH is a for-profit charter operator and so yes they will absolutely by contract back stop MVA if you know um they start to have Revenue problems because um they're a declining enrollment or or something of that nature but we also have to keep in mind that they because they're motivated by profit they won't back stop them forever right and so it's very important that they be um financially healthy and able to to stand on their own so I just wanted to endorse that uh that concern of yours I I have asked that question how long are you willing to operate Mountain View Academy at a loss I I have asked that question and did you see see an answer not a concrete one director Schmidt excuse me they shouldn't give us that answer that's their proprietary business strategy and so I I wouldn't expect a a private company that is a vendor to one of our charter schools to to walk us inside of their books that they shouldn't yeah and just as a responsible authorizer we should be making sure that that there that MBA isn't in that position to to to have to face that question director Schmidt so clearly this turnover rate thing seems to be kind of an issue um a couple of facts are Charter Schools generally have higher Staff turnover compared the traditional public schools now I know we're not to ask about that that's HR our thing but clear across the state nobody can keep help so it would be very helpful to know that turnover rate in comparison to other schools of that size it it varies for the charters and it also varies with the relationship that we have with the princip princi I can say I have a strong relationship with Dr Brunton I served as her Mentor through her superintendent's lure and I'm currently serving as her Mentor through her induction for her superintendent license um but she's no longer at NBA and I'm going to um serve as her mentor and that's a separate role some of the other principles have shared they when they come to the iConnect Zone meetings in the meeting they can say I'm I'm 100% staffed and what principal wouldn't say that that you can say I'm 100% staffed in August that's a you know that's a bragging right and you can make the rest of the principles jealous um and some of them were 100% staffed in August and others were like how did you manage that where did you go so I can say at least three of our Charters were 100% staffed in August and at least one of our Charters rarely has an opening but they're very well established with a very wellestablished leader so they rarely they rarely have turnover so it just varies it varies director deola yeah something that I'm familiar with is anytime that you do have a a principle poll or a leader who um who phases out or leaves the school naturally you're going to have turnover um it doesn't matter how great the school is um usually you're going to have turnover and um this the school um still seems to survive and to keep going and to gain traction it might take a year but we saw that with uh LTA I mean we had the most dramatic turnover of students and staff and um just upset all over the place and and now we we see that their their scores have have um improved um that they were able to gain some traction um so as to um Mr H's question of is it sustainable I think yes I think that this school would be able to continue on and especially with those high scores you're going to attract people who want to be a part of that and to really have that mission and that Vision um of that school because of the high scores that they have maintained um so I'm not too worried I am concerned about the the data um merging and making sure that we have that data um in there so my question is would there be a way to like stipulate or say by a certain date we need to be fully into was it Power School um integ ated into power school for us to continue or extend uh this contract yes and and that has become critical in that the individual that used to be in our cyst Department that was helping to manage the conversion is no longer part of the cyst department so we do know we no longer have that Talent which puts a heavier um onus on our C Department to try to get through all those errors and when I got the error sheet for this last report um the submissions from NH were three times the errors of any other school in the district and that's a lot of Errors for our CIS Department to have to try to manage yeah that's definitely a problem we need to Res yes historically VA has not that's been a non-negotiable from their side and a previous board president supported that as a non-negotiable and so um we are where we are in part because we have not we it has not been non-negotiable from the district side that they shall use our system um we are tracking very carefully the person hours invested in supporting all of our Charter Schools um and we'll be coming back to you with some analysis analysis around on that but we probably would would Institute some kind of fee for service for whatever is the Baseline and then and excess above that um and and the the level of skill that we're talking about is is significant uh neither are the people at this table work at the level of skill that that is required to manage those and we're reasonably smart folks over here but we could not do the job that our data bolks are doing I know um hedge hedge that I said reasonably um but it it it's very expensive to provide that from a from a Personnel standpoint it's very expensive to provide the level of support that we're providing which Segways beautifully into my next question because my understanding is District 49 holds back 5% of the per person per pupil revenue for administration four okay it's 3% 3% and so the purpose of that is for Administration has School District 49 provided them with training on integrating into the sis system those are the monthly mug meetings that Britney gel offers and they have um they meaning National Heritage has a proprietary CIS and so what they received when Austin was here was training on how to extract data from their proprietary system into snowflake in such a way that then snowflake could convert it so that it could be input it into power school I'm not even going to attempt to explain it beyond that because I'm not Austin uh and Austin no longer works for d49 um we would have to find another Austin to be able to do that and then um the reason why I'm I'm very much in favor of um letting them respond because I did actually back in December Matt Carlton invited me to visit a board meeting and visit the school so I was actually at the January meeting and I got a tour of the building and uh they're not like us where they have to have YouTube well we do YouTube because we have such a great comms team we don't have to wait like other districts or have a separate account with another vendor but uh anyhow I did attend their board meeting and it and they do encourage parents and members of the community to attend their board meetings and I would also encourage our board whenever they want to to either arrange a visit or if you'd like to to attend one of their board meetings because we can visit Charter Schools you just reach out to them and ask them hey can we get an invitation always copy in um you know veryy when I got invited to that one I just you know I did also notify Peter um but uh I found their meetings to be very open and very very open and so one question that one of the board members brought up on our report was not understanding their mission and vision and and he actually stated that nobody asked me and I could have articulated that so it's kind of tough if you just talk to you know and I understand the difficulty with getting the parents involved with it um is to make sure that we we do solicit that information from them but they said they were never without Administration so I would like some kind of clarification between M view yes so that was my choice of words and I should have chosen my words better so what happened was they Dean parades parades I know I'm not saying that right was promoted and so she had a set date that she was going to be leaving Dean Lewis resigned and then Dr Brunton resigned and so when I said they didn't have Administration I meant they had all resigned but they were all still in their roles and by um Dean Lewis was gone prior to Thanksgiving Dr Brunton was there through December 20th and then Dean I don't know if it's Paradis or parades she has agreed to stay on until March 31st but there was a point in time where all three administrators were set to leave their position and that's what I should have stated so I apologize for my my choice and wording um they now have an interim who was interim between Dr Brenton and their original principal she has returned to be interim until somebody is selected um they have replaced Dean Lewis and like I said Dean Paratus said she's going to stay on until March 31st and then she's going to move on to the other role that she had accepted within NH system but there was a point in time where all three of them had chosen to move on thank you for that clarification to the fact that they were never left without Administration so I good so my my sincere hope is that we could we can have great Communications yes ma'am between District 49 and between Mountain View AC Academy find ways to work out any areas of disagreement and allow them to respond just because I'd like to hear what what they have to say so if are there any other questions that we wanted to get at this time not student board do you have any questions that came up director Schmidt I'm just wondering if we're more worried about the administration leaving or the teachers leaving um what's the biggest concern there there's been talk about a large turnover are we talking about teachers or administrators with that I would say it's a combination of both we want continuity at the school um we when we went into this site visit I I will be very transparent the I connect zone are big fans of Mountain View Academy like I said I have served as Dr Brenton's Mentor now for two years Miss Koh house was uh Dean Parade's Mentor through her induction program so they have a close relationship we went in there as big fans of Mountain View we continue to support Mountain View we continue to Champion Mountain View and we want we want Mountain View to be successful so we did not make this recommendation lightly there was a lot of meetings there is a lot of is this what we want to write how can we rewrite this um let's call McKenzie has this ever happened before because the team there was so strong I have not met the interim principal we are set to meet her Monday morning so the whole team's going over there myself um Miss Miss Cole house and U Britney we're going to go meet her and we're going we are going to say how can we support you and there's a whole bunch of things about d49 that you need to know there's the C3 there's the iConnect Zone meetings and there's report well she's probably going to be overwhelmed and is probably going to wish we never showed up because there's a lot of things we need to um fill her in on we want to support Mountain View we want to have just as stronger relationship with the new Administration as we did with the out Administration that's no longer there um it's a great school it really is like I said I attend the board meetings um I was there when the board agreed to buy a whole bunch of drums and xylophones and they have an amazing music program um last year they did great things to recognize their staff the board went to dinner with their staff I think it was every other month so there there's there's a lot of really great things that are happening that are not reflected in the executive summary the executive summary is these are the things we want to support you with so that the Mountain View yetis does continue to go on I was there the last day that Dr Brenton was there we were invited we went over there we broke bread with the staff we played games with the staff and it was a little bitter sweet I do have another question on the data part of it yes it seems to me that somewhere along the line the data is falling in a crack and going into The Nether world um so between MVA and nhha shouldn't there just be one person I think you said something to that effect before one one of those two doing it consistently yes okay yes that was part of our agreement one person I had a question for you um yes I know that they have occasionally cancelled a school board meeting if they didn't have a quorum correct what percentage of the meetings were cancelled this year so the October no I'm sorry the November meeting was canceled due to snow the December meeting was cancelled due to lack of Quorum and I want to say that the October meeting may have been canceled but I'll have to go back on my notes I have not been to a board meeting since September and I missed the January board meeting but I I talked to Mr Hammond about that okay and you had also reference board training but I'll go ahead and and send you some questions about that I'm happy to answer all questions and then director Deva you had a question I believe somewhere in the port report it said um the board meetings were cancelled and then also that they um were not um following open meeting laws was there no I don't think we said that there was something in the report that said look actually said open meeting laws um they do follow open meeting acts um I had talked to Dr Brenton at one point and said you can't lock the door because then because then people can't come in and that that is a problem and she fixed it immediately um uh the canceled meetings were not rescheduled impeding compliant oversight and decision making as well as compliance with open meeting laws so I'm trying to figure out where the violation of open meeting laws came into play I don't think canceling a meeting yeah canceling meeting should not be it's not a violation um it's under concern if you do business outside of a meeting that is but they haven't done business to my knowledge outside of a meeting so that might need to be rewarded in the report we will take it's under concern three okay we will take care of that thank you okay I think I think we're done M Thom oh yes just a note I I'm chatted with Peter do we want to formally extend an invitation to mba's leadership to present at the February 13th meeting would we' like to have bar I think I think that's yes consensus M yes and may we characterize that as the public hearing that that's that's been our I think so our history that's what we call that it's really important too because I know we want to communicate to the parents there uh that are concerned because they love Mountain View Academy and so I think uh that that should be the public hearing and they should have a chance to respond and it like I saw all board meetings all board members shaking their heads yes huh I believe that meeting is going to be held at Falcon high school so we'll need to we'll make sure that we well it's at Ben Ranch it's in the Falcon Zone but it's Ben Ranch Elementary so we'll need to make sure we communicate that to their communication team correct to get it out to their Community corre okay well I thank you for not putting five minutes up on the clock because this was not going to be five minutes I'm still it took an hour it's fine no that's fine it's just remember last time Dustin timed it so well I'm never going to be able to do that we have to mention that Dustin is the only Zone leader that came in under and I'm not going to try to beat him he gets to keep that record yes thank you very much I appreciate your time thank you okay next up we have the oh if there are no objections this will be moved into action at the February 13th board meeting next up we have the Patriot High School name change Madame President uh point of order or point of question I guess um we're voting on it on the 13th or we're having a presentation I think it'll be both although we do have a we have time until my understanding was we would have the public hearing and then the vote so we we technically have an extension and writing from Council for MVA to make our decision as late as March 13th or maybe 15th I believe our meeting's on the 13th so that could potentially be the timing you you don't have to have the public hearing and the decision the same night you can um but you could do the the February work session could be a special meeting or you could put it at the March regular meeting which I think is a reasonable idea that I can also talk to the board about if at the public meeting we have our hearing we could make the work session a special meeting so we could vote at that time and that might not be a bad idea because we might ask additional questions after that so I will reach out to the board for consensus on that schedule of events and and it gives us time to look over everything and just kind of process it all yeah I endorse the notion of having the public hearing at a different time than when we vote because we may end up refining um uh the um the uh requirements and um our positions at that time and it gives us the opportunity to ask any questions that may come from from the public hearing and also to work with Administration and our legal counsel as well so all right so now we are going to move on to the Patriot High School name change awesome good evening board Ryan Bailey principal at Patriot High School um as you know uh Patriot has been going uh through some changes over the last year and a half and one of those changes has been to to kind of Rebrand who we are and so two things have occurred that have led to us to the point where we're feeling pretty confident about a name that we'd like to put forth um the first thing is that we're adding Middle School grades next school year and so the term High School uh no longer applies and then the second thing is that we are no longer in aec as we've talked about an alternative education campus um we are following Traditional School performance Frameworks and want to make sure that our um our name reflects that that our community knows that we are a school of choice just like any other school in the district where students come to be served um in the best way that they can uh three of our pillars are relationships relevance and rigor um that's uh consistent across the I connect Zone and and we really take that to heart and so relationships we've done a great job of establishing relationships with students and making sure students feel safe and comfortable and welcome and we're really focusing on the relevance piece um when we have strong relationships with students and the work that they're doing is relevant to their lives then the rigor comes naturally and so um the the term has come across um AS application so we want to have what students are doing really apply to their lives to apply to their future apply to them personally and so that's where the name application came from or applied and just uh to kind of give some ideas of what does that look like what does that mean last week we had over 30 community members in our building throughout the week um on Monday we had an advisory committee where we had 10 Community uh members coming in to advise our Ace which I talked about last time Ace um alternative uh oh my goodness whatever that one stands for I can't remember Cooperative education thank you um we have an Advisory Board where our our community comes in and tells us what are the skills that kids need to have before they leave to out of high school we had 10 different community members there the next day we had 11 community members um one per our advisory our small groups meeting with our advisories talking to them about um respect in the workforce and um harassment and uh discrimination really just having deep conversations with our kids the next day we had UC Health out doing working with our health classes um doing a bunch of of testing and talking to them about how to maintain and stay healthy um on Fridays we have our pathway way design classes um those are new each quarter they do three and a half hours of class for a quarter long um we did our first ones for quarter three we had students out of the um exploring Colorado Springs history so they're out the py museum real life learning we had students um engaging in a boxing class um really trying to uh develop some of that self-confidence and um and persistence we have um a group that's organizing an event which you'll all get an invite to um it's a murder mystery dinner that will be hosted with our culinary team and our drama teachers so they're learning about um how to plan an event and all the aspects of that uh we have students getting a personal care worker certificate um they're in a class and my understanding is that is like the entry level under a medical assistant um but it's a certificate that the kids will come out of we have an investing course and embroidery course um and then just Saturday this last Saturday our culinary team um announced that they're going to have Community cooking classes um and so within 2 hours uh they were full they had 24 spots for student for um families to come and they had over 80 people wanting to attend and it's a $10 class uh they looked up classes and they're usually running about $75 so it was very very popular and they'll be running those every Saturday for the um all the way through June so a lot of really neat things happening that align with the application uh in addition our CTE our career and tech ed classes as you know we have culinary in construction districtwide we've asked added graphic design and um Ace alternative Cooperative education um and we are actively looking at other Pathways for next year um to include heavy machinery pathway a telecommunications pathway or some sort of either uh small engine or diesel engine Pathways so that's where the application comes from and so I I gave you uh a brochure that uh is not public cannot be shared with because it has a name on it that is not official but that is the patrio applied learning campus brochure um and that is the name that we are proposing is that we' put forth Patriot applied learning campus uh when we shared that with our community there was some concern about the applied learning making it sound like it's less than and so we wanted we have thought about that and uh and and also from students perspective they don't like change they wanted High School to still be in the name um and so Patriot campus we're just playing with some what that can look like for them and what we collo would call it but the name that is before you as Patriot applied learning campus and would love any questions or comments nailed it yeah yeah I learned from Dr Gutierrez stie do you have any questions um no questions just to comment so as a student I will say that your new uh like interim name that you're workshopping um students are just going to call it Patriot like other schools are just going to call it Patriot so the feeling of like less than or like kids aren't going to feel attached to it they will they'll just call it Patriot awesome thank you for that feedback Marin I agree with everything stie said but um it sounds like you're working really hard and like preferring students for the future so um good job on that awesome thank you reminder to the student board turn off your microphones because only so many can be on at a time and you're right the only reason for the name change is they're not Patriot High School because they will have a middle school but you're right they're going to call it Patriot director Schmidt I would put forth that the dinners that you're having is applying the learning so if somebody gets snarky tell them we apply it this way come and eat awesome they're not going to turn it down that's for sure and that is the intent behind the name right is that everything we do has a purpose directorio uh thanks for the update on all the new cool stuff that's going on uh really exciting stuff happening on your campus um I'm really glad that you kept the word Patriot in there to continue to build on a brand name that you've already um got given so much value um and I would push back hard on anybody who tries to tell you that applied learning is less than I work in an engineering field and what is engineering but applied science and engineers build the world so um you know good for good for your students awesome thank you director devola I like it thank you I love brevity I have a it's kind of fun we have Patriot name change pretty soon we'll have Patriot Lane change um I'm very excited about this I would like to know who chose the font setting for this brochure because even with my reading glasses this is like how could you get such a tiny font setting I'm G to have to get a magnifying glass to read this I'm going to say no comment you might need a pamphlet instead of a brochure yes that's a good idea but thank you for having a QR code yes are there any other questions or comments I want to thank you for your presentation and I want to give a special thank you because there were several people from Mountain View who came hoping to have a chance to speak tonight and when we published the agenda we didn't have a public comment portion and so hopefully with the next meeting you anyone who wants to will have an opportunity to speak speak to that so I just wanted to say thank you very much for coming tonight and that we just didn't have it published in the agenda that there would be a time to speak so can I say one thing really fast sure um next Wednesday from 6:00 to 7: is our open house and that's for our first opportunity for our Middle School families to come on site and then next Friday the 31st is when applications open at 8: a.m. thank you that is wonderful and I have to make one more quick comment one of my friends has a student there they are so thrilled with Patriot awesome that's great thank you debie you have another comment I'm sorry I didn't see your hand up um I was just I was just wondering about the U offering for others to speak are they going to have the little three minutes or you going to give them a presentation they will actually have both at the next meeting they will have a chance to make a presentation and if any parents want to come they can also sign up for public form so okay next up oh if there are no objections this will be moved into action at the February 13th board meeting next up we have the voice of the workforce annual survey briefing good evening board I'm Paul Anderson I'm the executive director for people and culture as we um take a a brief look at um the survey results for this year I want to um um mention something that we part A group of leaders participated in today and we we spent a lot of time talking about voice and what voice means in District 49 and the value of or the importance of listening to people and the The Vow survey is is one of the ways that we that we listen to to staff in particular and the voice The Vow annual survey is is one element of the broader vow system or voice of the workforce system we're not going to talk about all those other elements today we're going to focus on on the survey itself that we administered this fall um but we have we have developed something um really special in District 49 in the valve system um it's I don't know that any of our any of our neighboring districts have developed anything like this um there it's it's I would say is it's not secret but is it is one of our secret sauces here um something very special um lots of good news to report from the from the survey this year um and we'll spend we'll we'll spend I'll try to spend most of my time looking at those I I want to let you know about our participation this year so that this is the ninth um bow annual survey we're almost a decade a decade into this 92% participation and we um we know that um survey participation 80% or above is really really strong and we we continue to um to sort of overachieve in this area and we we believe that the work that we do as an organization that says something about our culture that the level of trust we've established with our staff through the through the vow process which is some some aspects of it are are um confidential and anous other aspects are not that way but and they know that but all but in all all cases we listen and then and then synthesize information and create action plans and improve the organization because people um have raised their voice so over 1,00 people uh responded to the survey so when we think about the amount of data that we received from 1800 employees including the 93 you know including 9300 comments that's lots and lots of data that tells us how we're doing these The Vow um The Vow survey The Vow annual survey gives us two key measures satisfaction and engagement employee satisfaction Employee Engagement and these are two of our main measures of the district's culture we know that our culture is really strong and we've said that for many many years but we have data that shows that um and data that shows us compared to um um the industry the K12 industry or or sector we perform really strongly compared to Baldridge uh winning organizations higher performing organizations were right on their heels and so this is this is a as a measures of culture it says we're doing some right things and and and moving in the right direction as well when employees uh are given the survey sent sent an an anonymous link directly to their email um our survey survey vendor sends that to them and employee is going to go in and they're going to select from a list of 18 things that they're essentially saying these are really important to me at work and we call those employee key requirements so the list of 18 18 items that you see there employees are going to select up to 10 and then they they're going to wait them uh those that they selected and then they're they're going to score those that they selected that's the basic survey methodology and through some math that our our survey vendor does for us we get the scores for for engagement and satisfaction so some some of the high Lev results that we want to share with you so the solid line in these two charts uh are represent District 49 So speaking first satisfaction on the top half um we're there's an a whole bunch of things that we're excited about here one being um how we're performing that that 8.2 is a new high for us for satisfaction action um and the overall trend line over the last six years now six years of data here um really positive uh upward trending um we're also again as I noted performing well above uh the K12 U Benchmark and um and approaching um inching closer to uh the uh Baldridge Benchmark likewise with we see we see the same with engagement our highest uh overall score ever for engagement at 8.4 and um again we're we're uh we're we're approaching um role model performance um I want to talk a little bit about um what people have selected as they take the survey and then as we look at the ekrs or the employee key requirements the satisfiers First on this slide and then the engagers on the next slide um one of I'll point out a couple of things here uh you see the Green Arrow uh above the bars that just indicates the number of employees out of the 1827 what percent of them selected that particular item um and then so um so I'll point out as as we see have seen every year competitive salary always our most selected um and but but among all of these um really high percentage of employees uh select these uh um satisfaction factors as important to them um and then the scores here a couple of things to point out again we see relationship with co-workers really right really high scores really important to people as well so part of what people love here is the people we love working with the people in District 49 um competitive salary we have moved we've moved that uh we've moved that and that has been really a challenge moved uh an intentional work over the last few years moving us um to into that 7.5 which is is um definitely moving to where we we want it to be we would love to be at8 there um and we hope through some our continued work on compensation U we'll be able to move that further uh in our engagement um factors some similar things that we see here relationship with manager 9.2 so not only do I just love my co-workers my colleagues um I really like my manager too I have a good relationship with my manager um so strong leadership supporting a great Workforce our low lowest going here at input into decision-making at 7.9 still you know Rel it's a relative low it's a pretty it's a good overall score so really happy to see all of our scores here in both engagers and satisfiers uh above the seven theeven seven Mark um and um and most of them trending in the right right direction a summary of the all the akr ekrs 10 of them improved year-over-year um seven held steady and then one dropped slightly and I and that was um right tools for the job dropped by 0.1 points so overall you know good good progress or movement positive movement in in most of the ekrs um in terms of the ekrs compared to our benchmarks that all 18 of our ekrs were we exceed our K12 um comparators or or Benchmark and then uh six of ours are add or above the Baldridge um the Baldridge levels and then finally I would point out that of of all of the KR so we have this the something called contribution which is what P um how important is that to the overall to those who in total what's the most important one that most selected highest weighted um five of our top six um most what people said was most important increased uh year-over-year the last thing from a data perspective that I want to show tonight is about our our um historic question questions which align to our vision mission and values and these uh again we reach new highs across all three of these um and really rebounding since the pandemic and these are these are questions about would you recommend District 49 as a good place to to work to learn to lead comments Comon themes are pretty similar to past years's um positive about relationships compensation remains top of mind so kind of in summary so what do we do with all of this data well we we all all of our leaders go out and have a set of local results so every school principal every Department leader has a set of results to take to their staff read share out the results and then engage in an interactive conversation about what can we do to improve what should we focus on improving we'll do some Communications uh to the staff about results through our community Communications team and then we'll synthesize what we're hearing through the V survey as well as other aspects of The Vow system and then and that'll inform what we bring to you at the annual planning Summit and give you an opportunity as a board to um to U affirm uh recommended strategic priorities related to Workforce and this last slide is what we say to our employees thank you for raising your voice voice coming back to that that idea of voice and the importance of it in making District 49 the best choice it really takes our staff telling us what what can we do to be better what are we great at already that we should amplify um so we thank our staff for for engaging in the process I'd be happy to take questions sir okay stie do you have any questions um I two things so number one I would like to say that my teachers over the past two years have all been the most incredible I've ever had so I hope things continue to Trend upward and they continue to be treated very well and secondly do you have an example of recent change that was made based on an action plan based on these surveys oh that is a good one I I would say that the work we began last spring on teacher repositioning was largely driven by comments not just on The Vow survey through the whole vow system related to compensation that that to me that's the signal uh achievement accomplishment response yeah and and so that's that's a very specific aspect of that but the um compensation in general um over the last four or five years has been the top priority from a Workforce perspective and that is all that's a consistent theme through our through our our survey feedback as well as well as other uh elements of The Vow system we hear from staff about compensation and we've really prioritized that Marin I don't have any questions sounds great director Schmidt um on the one that said reasonable expectations for performance is is this uh kind of eluding to are teachers not feeling as burnt out as you hear all these teachers are burnt out out um is that does that kind of Encompass that that would be an example of what what would be someone is probably thinking about here can I get all can I get the work done in the time I have available to me right okay thank you is my case load reasonable director H so first just on the the 92% uh participation rate that is a commentary on the system as a whole that is that is uh the participants telling you that this is a good use of my time because it my input is going to be valued and it is going to possibly lead to meaningful change and you only get to that level of confidence through a culture um that uh that has to be built over time and so I just want to congratulate you guys for for building that culture um obviously I have a lot to learn about um the Baldridge framework but I'm looking at these things and I see uh if we go to uh page seven there we improved on the satisfaction Benchmark we improved on the engagement and you know and yet we still lost ground on our on our Baldridge so why does the Baldridge uh Benchmark move year to year go ahead so I I probably know a little bit more about this because I've been involved with bald as an examiner senior examiner for a long time um that that black line represents multiple Industries the blue line is K12 education and so the um there there are there are two variables that create that black line and why it has a little bit of volatility one is that these are all of the recipients role model organizations that use the company Beyond feedback to do their employee satisfaction and engagement so if a if a new company came online last year used Beyond feedback and became a recipient then their data would be introduced to the data set and if they had particularly high performance with their Workforce um I I actually I think it's really impressive we I read it that we held our own both of Baldridge so so we're overall we're closing the Gap but this year we we just held our own um and I have I think education of of of Industries education is one where it's really hard it's not like we're satisfying people with exorbitant wages or extravagant perks and so we're being compared against technology Industries we're being compared against manufacturing Industries hospitality industries uh I'm really proud of our of our ability especially especially on the engagement because here's a different way to think about it look at the engagement score three Cycles ago we would have met the Baldridge standard so it is it is Improvement in trajectory over time it's also overtime and so that that will keep moving because the data set for the Baldridge Benchmark will keep growing yeah okay so that's that's good to know because my concern there is of course you've set the the goal of becoming a role model organization and so if that if if that finish line is always moved you know if the goalposts are always moving away from us um or or always moving as we're trying to move towards them then um but if this is just a sampling of companies who have that designation who are also using that's that's a whole different uh context thank you Mr how the the challenge with both of our beags to become a district of Distinction and to be a role model organization we are submitting our performance to external entities we don't control them CDE is likely going going to change the rules for districts of Distinction and and so our beeg is pinned to something that itself may may move along but it's external accountability and so we're we're sort of cheerfully submitting to a really high bar director devola uh yes I was wondering if you go back to the um satisfiers page green go y there thank you um so I know that last year's numbers for competitive salary was um lower than that 7.5 do we remember what last year's number was I believe it was six something sixes I'll sorry I forgot my mic um that number has improved each of the last four years years last year we said we want we want to get everything above seven so I think it was six it was 6.8 or 6.9 and our goal was to get it to seven the fact that it jumped up to 7.5 I give great credit to the board's leadership around teacher repositioning because half of the respondents are teachers and and the board has clearly made uh compensation a a priority and I think I have heard it I I think I already reported this to you through the vow learning tour that I'm doing right now I've actually heard more positive comments about compensation than negative and that's the first time that's ever been true uh in my 13 years yeah I just wanted to highlight that even though it's the lowest on there it's significant improvement from where it was the it was the biggest mover the biggest improv in one year so yay go us and I just wanted to say I'm really glad to see Gaines in both satisfaction and tremendous growth with engagement that that's just you guys have done some really good work encouraging people to participate in this and I think it's really important to communicate to our teachers our staff and our administrators we want to hear from you unless you're really mad in which case you can contact vice president devola um anyway but no seriously we really do like to to hear are there any other questions oh director Deva I just remembered a uh something I was going to say after my Kyle was talking about um the 92% rate and how um that just shows the organization is awesome it also shows that we are really good at incentivizing surveys to um have people take the surveys because incentives were definitely behind this and so um yes Pizza is great so um it was a combination of both healthy competition encourages people to participate for sure and we should have served more pizza we did do okay we got 57% response on the board of education evaluation which results will be available later so with no other comments I just wanted to thank you for your presentation there will be one slight change to the agenda as soon as we are done with the school district family calendars good evening Schoolboard I'm Lisa phow executive director of learning Services one of my um task is the school calendar and I have provided the links up there for the school calendar for you to review the 25 26 I would like you to consider that as our final calendar and then the 26 27 we would like to in uce that to you for approval for our preliminary calendar so this calendar just to give you a little bit of information there a lot of input um through from parents uh I did a zoom with our V committee and I invited parents to that too um VCT sorry and um we have a lot of input and and this is what the product that we created to bring forward to you any questions Sadie I just want to say that I use the calendar a lot and it's very helpful thank you you're welcome mayor agreed it's a great resource thank you director Schmidt I just remember being an employee and April having no time off was the longest month of the year it is and that's that's always a conversation that is our assessment month and so we are restricted within the guidelines of the time frame that we can offer Cass and so that's part of it is some of it's not but for our makeups and things like that it's our last Stitch effort I call that a good instructional month because we have them for the whole month yeah good information thanks I didn't really even realize that so thank you director Hy so in order to save me from growing crosseyed um trying to look at this in uh previous years um any significant changes um that we should be aware of no we are requiring um on Elementary assessment days to align with our oo oober count and meeting the guidelines of our attendance guidelines and policies from the state that students must you can't just use that for a data meeting day um which is a good use of it but we have to bring students in so all elementary students will be testing in person on those days rather than using instructional time during the in the school days for elementary sounds like a good change director Dev can't think of anything else um I know our calendar is the Envy of many districts around us so um I I love it uh one thing that I would um would ask uh and this is probably more for the communications team uh it is difficult to find this calendar on our website um yeah I have searched for it myself several times this year and have not been able to find and that's been most of our phone calls just yeah cuz they come it comes up with the one that's the clickable one per month but not the green it's right schedule um so we there's a new legisl rule and I don't know the number but um or we all documents that are put on websites school websites cannot be in a PDF form which is what this is so we have to be in compliance with that well communic ations um oversees that we've worked extensively with um Joel he's doing the very best he can but I keep getting requests from staff to to send them this calendar because it is a little easier and they're more familiar with it but it's very hard so the one that I don't even know if it's posted yet that he's working on has to look like art and so that's why it's got those big bubbles and yeah we got a lot of feedback from the VCT on that do we know what legislative number that is so I can contact my legislators it's actually not legislation it's the Americans with Disabilities Act and it refers to accessibility to uh persons who may not use conventional browsers they might use screen readers if they're visually impaired or they might have other uh access Technologies I can send it to you they should have an ability to have both right I know we we are working contact information and working to thread that needle that's the work that Joel is doing and and Leisa is leading Dave Le yes with our Cal she's right about our calendars being the Envy of a lot of people because of our extended breaks in between um and when we originally moved to the modified year round calendar that's when we began to experience where people would enroll their kids for a few weeks and then maybe move on and maybe not so but you know part of the thought process behind it was retention of learning with a shorter summer break and longer breaks in between so thank you for all your hard work on this thanks it was a community effort and then the change in the schedule was I was not aware that thank you okay thank you that Mr Dalton had flown in for this meeting on behalf of NH and so we're going to give him a few minutes just to speak from nh's perspective and since NH does not speak for MVA um Carrie G gner their board president will speak for just a few minutes so good evening and thank you so much for uh taking the opportunity um I did want to clarify that uh Mr Carlton drove um but I no nevertheless quite quite a distance and so we are grateful uh for the opportunity um you have all received a letter from me as well as some additional information uh I I I want to thank you for your service on this board I absolutely know that it's a volunteer commitment uh as our Charter School boards and so I want to thank you for the time we in our letter um and to be perfectly transparent because I know that you have a lot of folks here who did not see that letter we talked about our concerns around the report that we found publicly on the website um and we never received it as a school we also never received any feedback on our site visit and so we were really caught off guard about what the process was that was happening we have not received communication so that letter was really to let you know we had gotten that report online we wanted to have the opportunity to have dialogue because we really believe we can add a lot of context to the conversation that was happening so I'm really grateful it sounds like we're getting to finally nail that down really appreciate that we were able to extend that deadline I'm glad that's mutually beneficial for all of us um but we think that there's quite a bit of dialoguing that needs to happen around this because the process really was not carried out the way that was described to us and we've really been left in the dark we're really not sure exactly what happened what was going on me much of the information that was presented this evening was new to us um some of the claims that were made have never been shared there is there are two contacts that were specifically given at um the meeting that was referenced and that was if there are any issues you call Matt Carlton or you call Carrie gner um and to be clear we are we are Partners we work together in everything that we do when you call NHA you are calling a contracted MVA staff member and that's how we think of these folks we work together very closely so I just wanted to make a little bit of that clear let you know we're we're really trying to figure out what exactly is going on because we have not been officially communicated with about this process um and what was going to be happening so we're trying to figure that out but I do want to introduce Matt Carlton um I'll let him give you the the kind of feel out of what his role is at NHA U but to be very clear every staff member that MBA has is contracted and we we think of them as MBA cont contracted staff so when you're calling Matt Matt and I talk way too much um and there is plenty of accountability right Matt um and so I just want to make that clear before I introduce him that um you know I think of Matt as my right my right hand in terms of being on the board um but he is involved in the day-to-day much like you would refer to Peter or someone else because you are volunteers that is how I think of Matt so with that I will let Matt just of addressed a couple of things and just two quick clarifications I think I called you Dalton instead of Carlton I do apologize because we have spoken on the phone you've always been very responsive and Carrie I think there's a chance your email did not come through um right now she's looking at the spam folder I was aware of it because you had told me about it but we might need to check where your email ended up with so I'll coordinate with you which email address it was sent from and if you ended up in spam we will will get you out of there okay I do know that I believe I received a response from director Schmidt um I believe because there were some correspondents around pret uh visiting the school um and I do believe so I I I don't know there was an original letter that was sent last week um just kind of outlining that we were concerned and we don't know what's going on and then I sent additional backup materials earlier today uh actually Matt sent those from his email address um um because I asked Matt to do that and so um so you will see that that from his but if you did not receive that letter I will most definitely figure out how to get it to you will you add Dr Gutierrez and Brad and I to that uh Brad and me to that um yes I have the materials because Lynette forwarded those on but I don't have the letter that I think previewed that okay and that one I sent it to the all Board address just so you know okay thank you okay well thank you for driving out here oh no good evening I'm glad to be here it's it's great to see you all um it's nice to meet you uh superintendent hilts it's my first time with you and it's great to meet you board members um I work for National Heritage cies I supervise about a third of our portfolio of 104 schools um and Mountain View is one of the schools that I serve and I'm glad to do it and I've been with him for about two and a half years now so it's it's a it's a great honor um we do renewal all the time as part of our our work just like it's part of your work um and as I I'll just Echo what Carrie said it's been we we've we felt a little bit in the dark and it the communication hasn't been great I'm sure some of that belongs with us and I'm sure some of it will will own on on the the d49 side as well as as you said uh superintendent Hil we'd like to improve the communication between NH MVA I think we're we're we're we're I'd like to argue that we're one unit we work for the board to do their bidding and to make sure that we're following the contract and doing all the work that we do um I'm super excited that we're going to get an opportunity to kind of present our case uh next time you're together and kind of make hopefully answer many of the questions that you have I I I think many of them will be to your satisfaction um we um as you've all pointed out our student performance has been amazing um and at the end of the day that's what we're here for is to help kids read write and do mathematics and I think we've shown we've got a track record of doing that we've had principal turnover before we'll have principal turnover again and we'll keep doing the work um and so I just am excited to to be able to make that case and improve the communication to see if we can get through through this process and answer some of the questions and lastly I'll say with this issue with the Cy and our Cy and that it we are committed to solving that problem we don't want that any more than you guys want that I've got a whole team of people in Grand Rapids Michigan that work on this on a daily basis and they're just pulling their hair out as well and so we want a problem solve with you guys to fix this we that's why we jumped in the car this summer to meet with Dr Gutierrez and said hey we put together a cap and as far as I knew we fulfilled the cap um tonight was the first night that I heard we had an issue in December um so if we don't know these things we can't solve them and and we're committed to that process okay M Miss Thompson can I just quickly we it may be it may not have been just tonight but I think we were just learning about that today as well um did I characterize nh's position correctly historically NH has been pretty fiercely opposed to adopting our cyst as primary cyst is that is that a correct characterization since you're here I just want you to can I answer that since we are the D you know it's it's actually MVA who's opposed to that uh and I want to be clear because if I tell NH we want you to do this they're going to do it and they have proven that to us over and over again because we have as for things outside of their model when it was something that we believed was important and necessary for the success of our students we have a very very engaged board um and and I'm happy to have you know more conversation but I believe that the students are best served because of the model that NH has that's why I chose to found a school and build a board and put in so many hours of work over the last six years because I really believe in what they do so I think it's important for the benefit of our students to continue with that in addition I have grave concerns about security and privacy of student data I think you know where I'm going with this um there are concerns that I have about some of the systems that are used we have to put some of that information in I would prefer to stay with this my board would prefer to stay with this we are absolutely dedicated to working through that and I know we don't have time to do all of this here but I will say I believe we were in compliance if we were out of compliance there was never any indication of that then there was a change moving to snowflake which we found out on the Fly and and again with all due respect though we need to be open and transparent when we sat down in that meeting staff did not seem to understand that that was the problem either they did not know that they had basically foisted a new process on us at the beginning of the school year and we were completely unaware our it folks just like you said I am never going to be the person that's doing that data transferring I you know I can listen and I'm a reasonably intelligent person I would argue but there's a lot of down in the mud so we said if there's an issue you call us we will communic we will make that happen the mug meetings that were mentioned we were never invited to those until that meeting we would have been showing up we would have done anything that we needed to do but somewhere along the line the miscommunications continue to happen uh because we believed that we were completely in compliance and that notice came out of the blue completely unaware and again I get it you have turnover and staff we have turnover and staff these things happen so I want to give you as much grace as I as I want but when the first notice happened and we did that um resolution with John Graham um I'm going to tell you that Andy said to me I should have picked up the phone and called you and I said yeah Andy we know each other we work together we love kids we love education you could have picked up the phone at any point and said Carrie there's something going on and I would have fixed it um and that didn't happen and so we were in a place where I believed that was going to be the case but then we had some turnover at the district and so here I am again going all you have to do is call me uh Matt's on speed dial we we are texting and talking all the time about things that are uh you know needing work or needing Improvement um and so it's really not it's not something that we know how to fix if we don't know what's going on so that would that's a little bit of a helps you understand why we're so I guess caught off guard um by some of what we're hearing is because we are here um to do that because it's so important that we continue to be able to operate our school and serve our students well I I appreciate the clarification and I think it's good for the board to know that the the what I characterize as a non-negotiable is an MVA issue more so than an NHA because that that is critical um and I I don't want to do back and forth I will say much of our training I I've been present in the principal's meetings where MVA staff have been invited those meetings for years not not 6 months or N9 months that's a standing invitation that extends through multiple administrations so we clearly aren't getting that message far enough into the system that people can respond to it that's something we can all own and we can corate absolutely but there hasn't been any um it it hasn't been a secret that these resources are available and and some of it is Staffing turnover but I think some of it is also there's layers of both organizations absolutely and you know I'll be again very transparent I've said this before I've said it to Matt sometimes an organization size can be both its strength and its weakness um which is why having a local board and I want to be very clear which is why having a local board doing the accountability work is so important because we hold these guys feet to the fire uh and so that's why I have said if you've got a problem Matt does this 24 hour well not 24 hours a day but pretty much right I mean you guys know what it's like um but this is his full-time job it's not mine and so sometimes I have a very very busy schedule at work during the days um as I'm sure many of you do and so sometimes I am not as available as Matt is and so I have said you can call me anytime if you can't get me you're welcome to call Matt Matt can make all this happen and by the way if you don't get a response from Matt you definitely call me and I will make sure that I call Matt and I will get it done um I really have to do that because Matt's truly fantastic but um but I I just I don't understand when I hear that things aren't getting done because I haven't gotten those phone calls so if I'm not getting those calls and I've said please call me if something is wrong I really don't I don't know what else to do in that situation and again I really appreciate your your statements about calibrating and all of those things at the beginning of the meeting I I certainly respect process greatly um and all of those things and so I really appreciate you kind of letting us uh do this right now and and kind of coming out of what is maybe the norm or or not really sure um but we want to fix it and we just want that to be clear it's very concerning to us that there continues to be a feeling for whatever reason that we are somehow not doing everything that we can uh because it is incredibly incredibly important to us the entire school one thing I'll add to that as far as BT you emailed me when I responded to you about yes I'll come visit the school and attend a board meeting you replied almost immediately and over the Christmas holidays as you were recovering from surgery when I called you you answered the phone so one thing I can say is I I'm glad that you're here and I finally get to put a face to it is when I have reached out to you whether it's a confirmation email or a phone call you have been accessible so that's good if we can have improved Communications all across the board I think we can resolve a lot of the issues which is always a good thing so thank you so much for speaking and for coming up thank you so much I really appreciate the opportunity and look forward to perhaps we can outside of the meeting talk a little bit more about whether we will receive documents before the next meeting because again we're we're still a little bit in the dark and we haven't gotten some of that information specifically around like the site visit or any of that so thank you thank you very much appreciate it and I forgot to add with the um School family calendars if there are no objections we'll move this to the February 13th meeting and next we have the Board of Education meeting dates yeah um did you guys get a chance to look over those calendars what do you think director H so the one thing I noticed is that we are moving uh our meeting back on uh in November so that way we can make room for a working session rather than having two straight months without a working session seems like a pretty solid plan to me I like it that can change we we normally do have work sessions but if there's not a lot on the calendar it'll fall off and I forgot to ask the student board since you guys will be appearing a lot of these if you had a chance to look that over I did not look it over but I'm sure it's great your confidence is misplaced are there Direct in us not you yeah you have your fingers up there director DEA Miss Thompson may I make a request yes um we need to add the annual planning Summit uh historically the annual planning Summit was always on the final Saturday of January then we had a run where it was the first Saturday of February this year we kicked it back to the 15th of February and and as a result um some members of of the cabinet uh will not be able to attend because they had they had prior plans that certainly extended and may have coincided with Valentine's and I am not putting the annual plan Summit above Valentine's Day um that would that would distort work life balance and so if we could get it on now and I know it's far enough out that you probably don't have things on your calendars yet then but if we could just commit to a one of those Saturdays in that time frame it would help us for planning purposes um we'll avoid like like this year I might have been in Chicago if you had done it on February 2nd I think and so um the sooner we can get that on there added on here if we could do it tonight that'd be fantastic the first week of uh February is Saturday the 7th that's when it's normally done you're talking next year right yeah 26 please please not Valentine's are you guys good with that da yeah so next year the second Saturday would be Valentine's Day so yeah uh first Saturday I'm good with uh I would I have a personal concern around the last weekend of um January so that's that's the sweet spot for me if there are no objections are you okay with the calendar change for the aps for 2026 director devola yes I'm just going to have to sing Happy Birthday to my family on one of those Wednesdays from afar I'll just sing to both of them because it's both of their birthdays no January 21st you can recommend change is always allowed and encouraged during board meetings just for the record okay I I think we're good with that change then or to add the aps oh yes that would okay and if there are no objections these the board calendars will be moved into action at the February 13th board meeting and the next item will be a board discussion and that is for the annual planning Summit agenda review and I know I had received one email with proposed additions that we can discuss I'm just trying to get back into my board dos what if I it just went away to oh I see what I did here in the wrong box what we currently have for Saturday February 15th 2025 um we have welcome and introduction then we have the annual strategic plan integrated report and evaluation uh the beag uh distinction with diversity report education leaders so there will be a strategic plan over that District performance framework analysis the beag role model organization operational leaders which will be 30 minutes and then we'll have a break administrative planning we have long range transportation and M and Dr Fletcher will be presenting that work Force compensation trajectory which Mr Anderson will be presenting budget and finance status and projections and it looks like misss Diaz will be presenting that we'll have another break then we'll go into the annual strategic objectives for 2526 writing performance middle school performance and writing performance is part of our literary literary um assessment middle school performance Workforce compensation calibration optimizing cyberspace presence a lunch break then we're going to get into board management which will receive the results of the multi-rater feedback the report and we're also going to be discussing uh board training reading data and director Schmidt I think you had some things you wanted to possibly add to or discuss for the aps I did not bring my information on that tonight I didn't realize we were going to get this is intense so I don't have that Miss Thompson can I can may I clarify something I I apologize I think I I either copied and pasted incorrectly um on item three the beag distinction with diversity everything after 30 minutes where it says recommended objectives that was supposed to be the header of the item eight because it it's not my job to tell you what your annual strategic objectives are these were recommended uh and I believe last year we showed up and we kind of collaborated to land on the five that are up there um so we are recommending and and I mean we uh the the cabinet had some dialogue about this we are recommending uh these four um the board may want to add a fifth or take one back but we would anticipate having a new version of the the circular puzzle um maybe we move that one over there and keep track of what we've focused on and have new ones up there but I just wanted I wanted to make it very clear I do not presume to tell the board what your objectives are these are recommended and you you will give us Direction well and also um I'm not finding it but I think what we we should do as a board is if we begin to send in suggestions of what you would like to see on the annual planning Summit I think that we'll have to reach a consensus of whether or not we want to address certain things and so I think it's a great opportunity especially since director L Wright isn't here tonight if the board could email in what do you think would be a good topic and that's something that you could send to Lynette and we can kind of see we can even once those responses are received because we're at a shorter time frame then we can get that back out to the board and maybe have the board decide which ones we could address director devola um something I know from previous experience of um these meetings is we always run out of time for everything that we want to discuss um so we have to be mindful of what we put on the agenda for this um for this meeting there are some other um things that we can discuss at a work session or another board meeting or we could schedule um a 4H hour on a Saturday in April like you know things that we can think about cuz I know we all well I can't speak for every of us for every one of us but we um did want to have some training on specifically Finance uh that's something that we would need to put on a separate date um and then yeah I personally would love to be able to focus our attention on making sure that we have US history as a requirement for graduation not sure we're going to be a able to discuss that at this particular meeting well and that's a good point about things that can be moved into a work session and once again I have to encourage you to fill out those forms for agenda setting um because we've had a lot of cases where people committed or it's their turn for agenda setting and they and they can't make it for one reason or another but we had also discussed the quarterly trainings director devola and I had him so far we've had just the one I think and that was on writing resolutions so I think it would be good to do a quarterly training on finance because that's a lot to unpack so when those responses come in um to Lynette I think it'd be good if director Devol and I work together to kind of look over the list and determine what could be a work session what could be a special training and what could be added to the APS and reach back out to the board director Schmidt so what do you do when you fill out the form and it never gets on the agenda not everything will necessarily go on the agenda but they are received and so have we received any forms lately no whenever couple months ago yeah when those there was b d bdh I think was the last one you proposed I think it was the bullying one JL CDE J we had a response for that I don't know yeah I think that was passed on on to Dr lemman and L and she was supposed to work with you on questions that you had for that which ones were required by the state she emailed she emailed um a response to see what um question but she had said that we will need to do a full policy review on that and that's what I'm trying to get done and I think since that is within her wheelhouse that's something you'd work with her on and once we get a overview um on that one she told me to talk to you guys I think it has to be like a board consensus that you all want to work on that policy I think that's what we need to make sure that we have so I think it is my understanding that any board member can request something to be put on an agenda um we just need to figure out which agenda scheduling rationale um however it does need to be put on an agenda at some point we can't just not put something on an agenda so um um yes I think what she's alluding to we would have to have consensus for her to work with Lan to review that policy or create that policy so maybe we could put that on our next agenda as a discussion item had consensus so sounds good um and then can you send that form to me again thanks thank you okay and the rest of the items that I'm seeing right now it looks like they are information only so I think we are done so this adjourns at 8:4 47 p.m. thank you