--------- Is Marie here? Yes. Okay. Okay. Okay. We can go ahead and get started. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to our October fantastic forty nine presentation. My name is Kayla Maldonado. I am the internal communications manager for school district forty nine. Tonight, we have some great nominees. We will recognize, staff and volunteers who are exceptional examples of how d forty nine is the best place to learn, work, and lead. For our honorees and who nominated them, when your names are called, please come up to the podium for remarks, and then you'll head to the photo backdrop in the back of the room to get your plaque and a photo with the individual who
nominated you. We ask each of our honorees to stay for the full presentation so our board members and district team members have a chance to offer you their congratulations after. Before I introduce you to our honorees, I always like to give a shout out to our amazing sponsors. We are so grateful to Dion's Air Academy Credit Union and Raising Canes for donating gift cards to our honorees. Our first honoree of the evening is George Blueen, volunteer at Vista Ridge High School. He was nominated by Andrew King. George has tirelessly served the marching band and winter guard programs for eight years.
He designs props, volunteers for chaperoning, drives equipment trucks, and helps prepare food. These programs would not be what they are today without his efforts. So if I can get George and Andrew to come up here and give a big round of applause. Yeah. Absolutely. What she said, I'd I couldn't do half of the things I do with the marching band and the winter guard program without this man standing next to me. I I come up with some of the the crazy things that me and my crew, with the marching program and the winter guard program. We'll give him an idea, and next thing I know, I have a wall of
gears that move mechanically from the mass amount of theater three d printed, mechanisms and motors that he's cranked out, and I I can always trust him to get things done. And when the season's done, he comes in and organizes the shipping container where we store everything. And next thing I know, it's clear and ready for breakfast with Santa in the Vista Ridge Craft Fair. So, eight years of this, mister Hall, my predecessor, a lot of the same things. Just tons of wonderful things to say about mister Bluhin, And his wife Abby, his
two kids, Alex and Lizzie, have just been a fantastic part of Vista Ridge. And just very thankful for this guy who's donated so much time and is responsible for all the success that we have at Vista Ridge. So If you don't, you can donate your time. I realized I wasn't gonna say anything because as an introvert, not really my thing, but I do wanna call out and say, mister King has done an incredible job, also mister Hall before him. The arts programs are incredible and necessary.
My kids have both been huge into them. They have found a lifelong passion. My kids were able to attend something called drum corps international, which is a program outside of schooling, but is still around marching at a higher level. And that passion that they, got for that activity came from working with teachers like mister King. So can't say enough about it. Really appreciate him. I volunteer because I want him to have a chance to have a little free time. So I'm glad I was able to do it. Okay.
Our next honoree of the evening, super we have super cute family pictures, tonight, is Lauren Waldorf, art teacher at Stetson Elementary. Lauren was nominated by Delaney Martin. Lauren nurtures creativity, confidence, and joy in every child who walks into her classroom. She hosts monthly paint nights for students and their families outside of her regular teacher responsibilities. She creates all of her lessons plans from scratch, which are tailored to spark curiosity and help students see themselves as capable artists. So if I can get Lauren and Delaney to come up here.
I was not expecting to speak She's really nervous. I'm really good at speaking to six year olds, but adults? I nominated Lauren for all of those reasons that I wrote down. Lauren is just an amazing art teacher. I've been at Setson for three years as a first grade teacher, And all of the students every year have said art is their favorite specials. So they she just creates a lot of, amazing lessons for her students. And she even told me that a parent got one of the art pieces that a student made tattooed on them, which is really cool and exciting.
So what she's, creating for these students is lasting, obviously, a lifetime for somebody, but, I'm just really excited that, to share all of her big and creative things that she does with the students that I teach. Thank you. You did so good. I just wanted to say thank you very much. I started with, d 49 during the height of the pandemic. So I am, officially going through my first round of students. So my fifth graders I had when they were in kindergarten. So it's really cool to see the growth, that they've had throughout the couple of
years that I've been with them. So thank you very much. I was also a former student. Oh, there is a former student here. But thank you very much. I really appreciate it. Thank you. And last but certainly not least, our final honorees of the evening are Brenda Waldron and Don Takis. That's close enough. They are wellness co leaders teachers and wellness co leaders at Falcon Elementary School of Technology. They were nominated by Charlene Stegman. Charlene is not able to come tonight, but I do have a video from her to play in just a moment.
But just to summarize, Charlene's nomination, Brenda and Don's work led to Falcon Elementary being recognized as an America's Healthiest School in the categories of stealth staff wellness and tobacco free schools. This was achieved in their very first year as wellness co leaders. They've expanded staff wellness opportunities by introducing or strengthening initiatives such as walking Wednesdays, semester staff breakfast, a Zen Den space, which I have seen and it's really, really cool, and wellness games. So I'm gonna play a video from Charlene and then I'll have you guys come
up. So hold on one second. Good evening, Board of Education members. My name is Charlene Stegman. I'm the health and wellness specialist for district forty nine, and I am honored to be able to be with you tonight via video. Thanks to the comms team for helping me with that. I am thrilled to honor Brenda Waldron and Dawn Takas for their outstanding efforts in staff wellness for for District forty nine at Falcon Elementary School of Technology. This, last school year, 2425, was their first year in the role as wellness co
leaders, and they excelled at, supporting staff and student wellness throughout all of the things that they did this last year. They included, walking Wednesdays, staff breakfasts regularly. They supported a staff Zen Den for their employees. And they also supported student wellness through Healthy Hawks program and anti vaping and healthy lifestyle program, making healthy choices for students. And, they, they were actually the first school to recognize that tobacco signs needed to
be updated throughout the whole district. And so they were able to we were able to support them with that. And then they also, brought in SWAT students, students working against tobacco, from Patriot High School for their fifth graders to learn more about anti vaping education. And that doesn't their efforts don't even stop there. They also support, district, wellness initiatives, including, receiving the highest participation award for at the
wellness summit this last year, and also at this fall's d four point nine k. They won the Golden Shoe Award for top participating school, and we're so excited to be able to celebrate with them. Their biggest contribution this year, most recently, is, as they applied for and received the America's Healthiest School Award from Alliance for Healthier Generation. This is a national recognition, for schools throughout the whole nation. And, Districts 40 nine only had Falcon Elementary School, apply for it.
And they were awarded, but they were also the only school in Colorado Springs to be awarded. So this is a huge accomplishment for them. It was it was it took time, extra time beyond the duties as a wellness co leader. And I just wanted to recognize their efforts and bring this awareness to you and and applaud their, their level of enthusiasm and dedication for their staff and their students at FalconL. Thank you so much, and congratulations, Brenda and Don.
If you wanna say something, you can. Dawn doesn't like to talk. She's the introvert. I'm the extrovert. We work really well. We work well together. So we were very excited. We wanted to bring something new and different. We know a lot of things have been done, which have been amazing, and we didn't wanna take away that from any other, people that had been wellness leaders. But, we were very excited. There are nine categories that you can go for, and we originally thought we'd do nine, but then we saw the paperwork. It's a lot of paperwork. But we're upping our goal this year.
So as Charlene said, we were the only school in District 49. We were the only school in El Paso County, and we're the only school in, the Falcon Zone. So we're very excited to represent this D 49, and we wanted to thank you guys for the nomination well, for the honor. And we also wanted to thank Charlyn, who's been amazing. She is very, was it I don't wanna say contagious because that's not a great word. But her enthusiasm and the things that she does for our district and wellness as
a whole are amazing. So we also would like to take the opportunity to thank her and let you guys know that the wellness that she does for our district is needed, and, we recognize that. We want you to recognize that as well. And the lastly, our Zen Den, we just we think that self care for teachers is amazing. And if they don't have that, they're not gonna be at their best to help our students grow. So the Zen Den, you are all welcome to come and hang out. We have neck massagers.
We have, heating pads. We have snacks. We have hot cocoa and tea. We have a wall that you can write on. Please know it's not the actual wall. It's a large piece of paper. We had to clarify that a few times, but we have coloring books. If you need ten minutes, if you wanna come to Falcon l, come on out, relax, enjoy our Zen Den, and thank you again for this honor. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Brenda and Dawn. Congratulations to all of our nominees. Before we wrap up, I would like to turn it over to missus Lori Thompson, president of the Board of Education, for final remarks.
I was just thinking when we were going through the nominees, and this is true of every fantastic '49, is you have people who are planting the seeds to change people's lives. My brother was in marching band. He has remained a very accomplished musician throughout his life, starting with drums, morphing to piano and guitar, and then my cousin won an art scholarship when you talk about arts, and look at brain development with both music and the arts and how important that is. But when I look at this wellness project as well, if you can put kids
on the path where they are not vaping, where they are learning how important it is to exercise, and when you give teachers a place to decompress, which they need so badly, and just to to reconnect with themselves and get back out there. Tonight was fantastic, and I am so proud of the individuals that were honored. Thanks. Thank you. And that concludes fantastic 49. The board of education meeting will begin promptly at 06:30. Thank you. Part: 2
school administrators. Um, and I personally don't think that's right. I think some of my peers don't think that's right. And I find that as a student representative, I should do all that I can to make sure that we really
make the voices of the students heard. So, this was really just my main concern for the um first time I'm speaking here. Um and that's really uh all I had. Thank you. I yield my time. Thank you.
Next up is Annette Yeba. [Music] Hi, my name is uh Annette Yaba. I'm a taxpayer uh in D49 uh and resident. Uh I'm happy to see that we're voting on an American pride policy and the education
that will be included with that. I just find that it's a shame that we actually have to vote on such a thing. uh all you have to do is look at the UK and Canada and see how their culture is being destroyed and that can be us.
Let's thank our previous administration for allowing an invasion of our country of people that want to kill us. Not just illegals, excuse me. Um not just illegals uh killing Americans, but the cancer of
radic radical Islam. Um, just remember that MAGA is not the enemy. Keep in mind that the Islam religion uh does not approve the of this gay and trans agenda and that they'd sooner kill you.
And and forget about women's rights. Um, you will have none. You are nothing more than a baby factory and a domestic slave. If you think that that can't happen here, just look around. Dearbornne, Michigan uh has been completely taken over. Minneapolis has
been taken over. New York is about to be taken over. And there's uprisings in Nashville, Atlanta, and parts of Texas. New citizens are supposed to assimilate to our cultures and not take over our country and want death to Americans. So,
you better start showing respect for your country now or you'll be living in another hell hole like the Middle East. Thank you. Thank you. And then Kevin, you will have to tell me how to pronounce your last name.
Hello, my name is Kevin. I'm a resident, 49, and I have a student in your uh district. We need to get back to uh doing this for America. Put American flags in the classrooms. Teach about the Constitution so people know about the
country and the laws of our country. uh not all these uh other flags, these little [ __ ] flags and gay flags and [ __ ] It's supposed to be American. We're in America. All right. All this other stuff that y'all got going on uh
in these schools with that uh about their feelings and all these uh gender identities and gender studies. That's all a bunch of crap. All right. Well, let's let's get this right where we get uh get our students in our schools about
America and the Constitution, not worried about whose feelings and where there's a a a little [ __ ] box for cats to sit in. And they ain't even no damn cats. All right. Uh let's let's start keeping it real
around here. You don't need no damn tampons in the boys' damn bathroom either. What kind of [ __ ] is that? All right. Let's get this back to America. Not all this other stupid crap that y'all got going on over here with all this. Oh, hey, let's her talk about his
feelings. Oh, let's talk about her feelings. Oh, she thinks she's a cat. He she thinks he's a boy. What kind of [ __ ] is that? No. And you'd stay your ass out of women's sports because that's where you don't belong. All right. Men do not
belong in women's sports. Bottom [ __ ] line. had enough of this [ __ ] Yeah, keep giggling. You think you're [ __ ] funny, but uh you know you guys you do what you do, but you know what's right.
Please address the board. Okay, you guys know what's right. America. All right. America and the Constitution. Maybe you should pre teach that in schools so maybe some people around here would learn a little bit about their country because this ain't Iran. This
ain't Palestine. And this damn Thank you. Okay. [Applause] Okay. Olly Gner. Hello again. I am Olly Gnner, advocacy director with Inside Out Youth Services, which serves many D49 students. Last
month, board president Thompson, Vice President Dvola, and Director Schmidt voted to pass policy JBAA, which is illegal, harmful, and based on pure myth like your other anti-trans policies. But at least your community could voice our objections to those earlier policies. We
were not given that opportunity on September 24th. President Thompson, in your reply to my email, you wrote that there was no lack of transparency in this process. So that means you expected your community to make the outlandish assumption that you would vote on policy JBA weeks ahead of uh schedule for
standard procedure uh for no apparent reason and we were to base this assumption on an unrelated snippet of conversation from the September 11th meeting. Even your fellow board members didn't see that coming. Despite what you say, it looks like a purposeful move to silence objection to what you knew would
be a controversial policy. In your email, you also said that neither you nor your fellow board members have ever told anyone that you don't care what they have to say. It's true you've never said that, but you and Vice President Dvola, excuse me, as board leadership have shown it over and over again.
Actions speak louder than words. You say you want to hear from your community, yet you rush to vote on this policy, circumventing public input. You say you care about student safety, yet you spread lies that are proven to harm youth mental health. You say you're careful with district funding, but charged headlong into a costly lawsuit
just so you could ban trans students from sports. You say you're open to all viewpoints and yet consistently dismiss any evidence that challenges your opinion on trans kids. And you dismiss overwhelming opposition to your anti-trans policies. If you no longer
wish to hear us speak, I have an easy solution. Stop attacking trans students. Let them live for goodness sake. To the trans students, families, and staff of D49, Inside Out Youth Services is here for you and always will be. We have your
back. Okay, so next up we have Sam Mayfield, Eleanor Skelton, Jeff Hall, John Graham, and Don Shedron. Deon
or Devon. I'm sorry. that I have my reading glasses on. Okay, so first up will be Sam Mayfield. Hi. Uh my name is Sam Mayfield. I'm a resident and also a former student of D49. Go Vista Ridge. Woohoo. Okay. I attended the meeting
where you voted to implement a trans bathroom ban. As I was listening in, it was very obvious that the school board was unprepared to vote and does not understand trans issues or know their trans students. Deb, you came in here ready to vote yes on the ban. Yet a few minutes before the final vote, you
asked, "Does every D49 school even have a unisex bathroom?" Why did you not know that already before getting ready to vote or being ready to vote? Jamie Lynn, you said, "We need to protect the girls in our schools. You are justifying this ban by implementing that trans girls
using the bathroom will put sis girls at risk." The William Institute at UCLA School of Law has found quote there is no evidence that letting transgender people use facilities that align with their public or with their gender identity increases in safety risk.
The opposite is actually being found true. As these bathroom bans are put in place, it invites increased harassment and trauma for both trans and cis girls and women. We are already hearing stories in places where the bans are being implemented of cis women cis women being followed into bathrooms.
The national women's law center has found these bans negatively quote these bans negatively affect cisgender women by reducing people to their appearance and providing framework for inspecting individuals unquote. These anti-trans policies and
normalization of policing others in the bathroom is what led to a teen in Minnesota be Minnesota being f for forced to show her breast to prove that she belonged in the woman's bathroom. Your arguments supporting bathroom bands are based on personal feelings,
myths, negative stereotypes, and fear-mongering rather than factual evidence. Marie, Mike, thank you for citing Title 9, student polling, research, and attempting to push back the vote. Your colleagues would have really benefited from hearing real life testimonials of trans students in the
community, as well as statistics and facts before they rushed a vote based on feelings. Thank you, [Applause] Eleanor Skelton. [Applause] Hello again. My name is Elanor Skelton
and I am a secondary English teacher in Colorado Springs. I emailed you earlier to express my concerns about policy JBAA, the trans bathroom ban. On September 23rd, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a similar bathroom ban for trans people
for school buildings and government buildings statewide. I've noticed that the D49 school board often votes on these types of discriminatory policies right after Texas or another state with conservative lawmakers passes a similar law. I suspect that the board's goal is
to overturn Colorado's state level protections for LGBTQ people or even support nationwide bans if a lawsuit regarding D49 and other schoolboard policies ends up in the Supreme Court. I've taught in both Texas and Colorado and this is my sixth year of teaching in
both states. I've had trans kids in my classroom. Um, and I've already talked to you guys before about the bullying that I have seen those students face. Um, we know from history that policies that dictate separate but equal access are both discriminatory and illegal. Gender
non-conforming people often face possible violence for trying to do something as simple as using the restroom. In May 2022, Oklahoma Senate Bill 615 was signed into law that required that Oklahoma public restrooms and changing rooms only be used based on
biological sex. Almost 2 years later, on February 8th, 2024, non-binary 16-year-old Nex Benedict was beaten unconscious in the girl's restroom at AASO High School in Oklahoma and died the next day by suicide after overdosing on Prozac and Benadryl. My high school
students in the LGBT club that I sponsored in Southeast Texas made a poster together to honor Next Benedict. And we talked about safety precautions they could take when having to use the restroom in case they faced similar bullying. Policy JBAA is harmful to students,
teachers, and visitors. Um, and I was out striking yesterday in district 11. And I just wanted to say that on behalf of CSEA, I think that D49 teachers should strike as well. Thank you,
Jeff Hall. Good evening, Jeff Hall. Jamie Lynn, Laura, you did a hell of a job last night at the forum. Nice work. So, I want to say finally, you guys have a social a social studies program that's
actually going to mean something. And kudos to Brian Smith back there for honcho and that. That's that's really really really good stuff. So, my only question with that is why did it take
you so long to get there? Is it because it's safe now? I mean, I understand you're there and it's good, but this seems like it should have been done a while ago and I really appreciate that it's actually being done and I thank you for that. You two probably
didn't want it, but that's okay. So, here's a question for you. Are you doing the following? Colorado law, specifically the Colorado Revised Statute 22-1-106, requires the Commissioner of Education
to provide instruction on the proper respect, saluting, decorating, and use of the American flag for teachers in the state's grade and high schools. Public schools are also required by law
to permanently and prominently display the US flag in each academic classroom when an academic class is in session. And this display must adhere to federal standards for flag use and size.
So, you know, you two are all about the law and stuff. I thought you might have brought this up at one point, but it doesn't benefit you. So, I understand why you didn't do that. So, I hope that we are adhering to this. And also, one more one more time, thank you very much
for the social studies is right on. Thank you. Okay, John Graham. John Graham, past board uh director and president, taxpayer, business owner of several businesses in district 49.
Overall general fan of teachers and district 49. One of your biggest cheerleaders. For the Lord sees not as man sees. Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.
Blessed are those who thirst and hunger for righteousness. The affliction of the proud has no healing, for a plant of wickedness has taken root in them, though it would not be perceived. What stops us from loving others with
all of ourselves? I'd say that's pride. So you guys have a role and the community has a role. The people behind me have a role and that is first and foremost to keep all students safe.
The second role is to improve student outcomes of the board and to listen to the community. And I've been walking in a couple of director districts and I've been talking to people both who are Democrats and who are Republicans
and all in all they say they want to keep their kids safe. They want to make sure that biological girls and boys and trans are respected. But we have to be honest.
You cannot change your biological sex. You can't change from XX to XY. You can identify differently. And I respect that choice, but you can't push
what you want onto other people. You shouldn't be forcing the majority of biological girls to change in a room with a boy or someone who identifies as a girl girl.
And you can't risk having biological boys in girl sports. There's a reason why we separated them in the beginning. And let's stick to that. Thank you. Thank you. Devin,
am I able to move this computer? Oh, am I able to move this computer that way I can put my computer down? Oh, I appreciate it. Can you use that? Yeah, I can use that. See here? Or I could balance it actually. So,
hello. My name is Devon Chetron and I'm a transgender woman. I'm going to be candid since the board already voted before we could talk again. Um, I am disgusted that three members of this board were cowards and didn't want to hear public comments on public or on JBA or JBAA. It is pathetic that you as
elected officials are not willing to hear the taxpayers of this district call out your incompetence. It also shows that you're scared of public backlash. This is a story of something I dealt with at Christmas a few years ago. I had people who were distant relatives talking about my genitalia in an inappropriate way because I am
transgender and they were making vile comments about me. You're doing the same exact thing, but to literal children. It's gross either way, but the fact that you think that it's your business when an underage student has in their pants a penis or a vagina is disturbing.
If I remember correctly, Dvola called our side the loving and caring side child abusers. I think it's child abuse when you constantly think about what is in the underwear of students because you hate trans kids and when you'd sooner hurt kid or your kid for being trans or not fitting into your sexist and
misogynistic binary then accept them for who they are. I'm also or also I'm sure that at least one anti-trans person here has a kid who is transgender without realizing it. You're going to almost 100% get cut off by them when they're out of your abusive household and can avoid dealing with you. My father didn't
know I was transgender until I came out to him with man I feel like a woman on Christmas day when I was in high school. Enjoy playing that game of am I going to get disowned for being hateful. I'm looking at you at that or I also want to ask you three board members this all all over the
country school districts are being bought out by dark money. Is that what's happening here? Also, why are you pushing the same anti-trans policies that these super PACs are funding? We deserve to know if many We deserve to know if any harm comes to trans or cis students in D49. We know that you three
are to blame for the uh for these hateful and uneducated policies that you're pedalling that causes trans students and cis students to get attacked and raped in restrooms at school for not looking sis. I stand by what I said at the last minute. We aren't going to take it. We will kick you out of this office for cruel attacks
on all D49 students. I would like to make two quick clarifications. The uh realignment with uh the American history class was a board goals set at our annual uh planning summit and all board members
voted to move that forward. So that was the entire board. The other thing is is typically with policies we have a first read and a second read and one opportunity for public comment which was held September 11th. I've seen a lot of stuff saying that we moved it forward
when it was never scheduled for October. So I just wanted to clarify those two items. Um does anyone have an item to be pulled from the consent agenda? Can I get a motion to approve all consent agenda items as presented?
I move to approve the consent agenda. Second. Any discussion? Can I get a vote? Dvalo I. Hyel. I. Levia Wright I. Schmidt I. Thompson I. And that passes
and we are on to the superintendent update. All right. It's been a um exciting and intense several weeks in District 49. Uh some really good things happening and it's um just always a little bit baffling to to understand how we got to
the end of the first quarter so fast. I'm pretty sure we started about a week ago, but here we are and over the next 16 days or so, uh students only have to come one day. So, I know Emma and Banner are happy about that and a lot of our teachers are as well. Um we had over the
last uh week of September and the first week of October, we had a a site visit from uh examiners uh volunteers who are subject matter experts from the Baldridge Performance Excellence Program. That is the the quality assurance program of the United States
of America. And as I mentioned here before, District 49 is one of only six finalists who received a site visit. And we're the only education organization that received a site visit, the first school district in 10 years to receive a
site visit. And what we heard from the examiners is that um their experience here validated that that their prior review of our application was correct. We we stepped up and represented the district and the community, the students
and the staff really well. um they're not supposed to give us any hint about how they felt about it, but some of them got a little bit misty when they met with our workforce and heard them talk about our students and saw the passion. They said this over and over, the passion was obvious. We could see the
passion. We heard the passion. And so it was incredibly rigorous. Uh it's the most comprehensive and exhaustive and exhausting kind of experience you can go through. Uh and I will be happy not to do that for a while again. Um, but it really taught us a lot about ourselves.
There are definitely places where uh we have room to improve how we think about our ourselves, our performance, and our results. There's also places where we're stronger than we know. And so, it was a it was a really informative uh inspiring and um and affirming time with those
national examiners. uh they will give a feedback report to us in December and that'll help us know where we are strong in their eyes and where we still have room to keep improving and so we appreciate that uh and look forward to that. Um, as part of what they were
excited about is they they noticed that we really make a concerted effort to listen to people and so I got to see a great example of that uh at the student board of representatives candidate forum and so some of you participated in that. Uh I thought that the student board did
a great job. They wrote great questions. Emma and Ben were involved. I especially liked the lightning round. uh even though director Thompson may have violated the rules slightly by choosing all of the above in the lightning round question. Um but it was a great example
of why it's right to put some leadership in our students hands and to respect their uh their adult intelligence and their their adult priorities and concerns. And I I really I really appreciate their leadership and the support of the League of Women Voters at
that event. Um it was it was just kind of a a crown jewel and we only get to do it every couple years. So that was fun to see. Uh I also happened to be out in the community uh at a venue where the education reinvisioned Boseies was having their annual strategic planning
and retreat and you're going to hear from uh Mr. Wit a little bit later on. Uh but I want to tell you that that is a that is a vibrant, eclectic, purposeful, passionate group of people. uh they are doing all kinds of
interesting things that absolutely validate our vision to to be the best choice. Um my choice is not your choice is not her choice but the erosce is great at offering all kinds of choices and finding out what the market is
interested in. And so um I'm glad that you're going to hear a little bit more about that. And I just wanted to tell you that it was it's the first time I've been to that annual meeting and uh although my visit was brief um it was it was great to talk to the people that were there and to hear their excitement
and their passion. So um we are now through one quarter which means when we return we will be into potential snow season. So board you often task me as is
appropriate. I would like to task you to please vote for a winter where the snow falls only on the ski resorts and not down here in the plains. We would appreciate a mild winter. We would like to have every one of our days with our students in the classrooms that they are
planning to be in. Uh and I would appreciate your early intervention and sustained commitment to a mild winter. Thank you. Thank you. And now we are on to our student board updates starting with Benjamin.
All right. Um All right. It's working. Good to know. First off, I want to say these microphones are awesome. Um thank you, President Thompson. So um the Falcon Student Board of Representatives, which are the I believe
it's two main representatives, one reserve, um had a or excuse me, three main representatives and one reserve. had a meeting with all of the Falcon Zone um principles at Bennett Ranch Elementary School. And I'm, if it's okay
with the rest of the board, I'm going to take a moment to kind of um not just update you guys because this is probably some stuff that you know, but take this moment to update some of the members of the public. Um in district 49, we now have two new purple, I believe it's purple star
schools. Um meaning that they have been recognized as military safe by the United States government. And I also want to mention to uh you members of the public that um the Falcon Middle School sixth grade annex is being turned into the new
Falcon Elementary School campus, meaning that the sixth grade students are um returning back to the main um middle school building. Um that's kind of all I had regarding updates. Do you have anything? Yeah. All right.
Um I just wanted to update you guys. We all had um the student board had a leadership conference this past week. Um and it honestly was a really cool experience. There were just a few of us. Um but we just focused on some bonding. We did a little bit of karaoke, some um
lip sync battles. Um so that was fun. We definitely got to know each other better. Um and then we locked down on leadership skills. Um and we were able to focus on um just kind of understanding what the student board's mission is and our goals moving forward. Um and we had a long discussion about
everybody's thoughts on um certain topics and um I think we're definitely starting to move as a unit which is it's exciting to see um the students work together in such a way and we were able to set some goals that we're going to focus on moving forward. Um so that's
what our leadership conference was. Thank you Emma. And I wanted to come by during the lunch break for the APS, but I had a lot of family arrive in town from New Mexico, from Arizona, and people coming down from Denver, and I could not break away. But I did not know
there was going to be karaoke. I mean, come on. It was kind of an on the spot thing. We just connected to the TV and, you know, had some fun. Well, I think I'll have to work karaoke into our next APS just to liven things up a bit. Okay, Director Schmidt.
Thank you. Um, this month I met up with Brian in Falcon Zone and Lisa Pho and we went over CAMass scores and figuring out how to read all that data. You guys are amazing. It's there's a lot of data. Um,
so I spend a a day with each of them doing that. Um, I also went to a class conference up in Parker. It was a very cool venue. Um, had a bunch of cars in there. I think it's called the vehicle vault. Um, but a lot of old cars in it and whatnot. So, it was really a cool
cool place to have a conference. We covered things like law, um, campaigning tips and finance. Um, it was a really good it was a good conference. And then finally, the candidate forum. Um, saw two other board members last night in a
candidate forum. They both did really well. there was a lot of good information coming uh regarding what they're doing here at D49 and that's pretty much it. Thank you, Director Hy. So, Mr. Hilts, I know exactly who you
can task because um Charlene Stegman of the wellness department dialed up a beautiful day for the 4.9K fun run. So, she has that authority over the weather and I I I think we want to task her with your uh your snow directive. Um the last
full week of September, I had just a crazy busy week. We had an executive session. I attended the full DACK for the first time. Then we had our special session and then I was at the Skilac. So when Friday rolled around, I was just
exhausted and I had no energy to do anything. But I had been invited by the principal to go check out homecoming night over at San Creek High School. And I just stayed in, rested a little bit, but eventually the noise got to be too
much to resist. So I went over there and made it at halftime where the team was winning 43 to nothing. uh on the way to uh and uh they are now 6-0 having won the next they won that
one 50 to nothing on a shortened uh second half they won 61 to nothing the next game which I also attended and so they are 6-0 for the first time and this is after two years ago they were 3-7 then last year they improved to seven
and three and now I mean they are just doing incredible While I was there, I had an opportunity to meet with some of the Sand Creek zone leaders and um I'm hearing some wonderful things that are happening as a result of the synergy between um the
campus and uh San Creek High School. So, I found out that there was a sizable contingent of students from the campus enjoying the game that they have now that they're part of the zone, they have adopted that as their team. Um, and then I learned that a few of the top players
on the team are students at the campus. And even better though, the thing that was really exciting is I was talking to Dustin Horus and he talked about how at the campus prior they didn't have lunches, which my daughter attended, so
I I knew. Um, and he took a look at that and said, "We can fix that." And so now um students at the campus are getting hot meals prepared right nearby at Horizon Middle and delivered to them. So I want to give a big shout out to Dustin
Horus for upgrading the uh experience for our students over at that campus. Um other than that, go Scorpions. They have a big game tomorrow at Cheyenne Mountain who is also 6 and0. So that'll be a big
test. Thank you, Director Levier. Wright. So, I was also at the 4.9K. That was pretty fun to be at. And um the Falcon Ed Foundation is accepted all of the applications for the Falcon Mini grants. We'll be reviewing those this week and
then announcing the winners. I believe we'll be awarding those at the November meeting. I don't know where Kayla is. I wanted to verify that. Watch for more information about our upcoming fundraiser that helps fund all those amazing things. Um I am going to say a couple of things from the public comment
portion. Um I have been a parent in this district for 17 years now. I believe I've had students continuously enrolled. So I can say factually as a parent having observed it in schools in every single zone because my children have
attended schools in every single zone at this point as well that in fact we're not only 100% compliant with the requirements around understanding the flag, saying the pledge and the whole nine yards. Um but my daughter, the Falcon High graduate, can perfectly fold
a flag showing no blood for the funeral she serves at um as part of the honor guard. So we're doing a pretty great job. We're, I believe, the only district in the area that has JROTC at every single one of our high schools. And Jerotc does an amazing job of demonstrating exactly how to respect
those flags in service every single morning. I would invite you to go watch them take it up and down every day. Those kids, even when they're not in uniform, show up early and stay late to make sure that flag is respected. Um, also my very Catholic mother-in-law who
worked for missionaries and my very Protestant brother um lives in Dearbornne, Michigan. My very Protestant brother-in-law teaches in Dearbornne public schools. Um, yes, you hear the Muslim call to pray from the mosques. And yes, you hear the church bells from
the Christian churches. And you can get some mighty fine falafel in Baba if you if you try to drive through because it's pretty amazing. Um my family still lives there. And um it's why I'm so passionate about ensuring we protect the rights of
those who are not the majority because the reason my family can live freely in Dearbornne, Michigan, and practice their faith and aren't wearing hijabs and aren't required to wear hijabs and aren't required to pray in a public school according to the majority in charge is because we have our
constitution that protects that freedom. Um and I'm not afraid to walk through Dearbornne streets. I've done it all the time for 40 years when I go back to visit family. My mother-in-law is not afraid to go to the store. Um, and I think that we need to recognize that
Dearbornne, Michigan also is an example of what that can look like. Thank you, Director Dvola. So, I had the privilege of participating in two D49 candidate forums, and I just
want to thank the school board of representatives for putting on a wellthoughtout, wellorganized forum. The students came up with comprehensive questions that really help our community to make informed decisions when voting this November. So, thank you guys so much for
all of your effort um and all the hard work that went into that. It was well done and it ended right on time. I don't know how you timed it, but it was just perfect. Um I was also able to attend a uh teacher freedom alliance um training
session on school discipline and how teachers can be empowered to help their schools to develop effective discipline discipline policies in their classrooms um as well as as a schoolwide policies so that teachers are uh able to focus on
teaching um and are not having to um deal with uh uh outrageous behaviors um in their classroom. So, that was a really good informative training and I hope I can bring that information um to
to um the teachers in our schools as well. I think that's that's all I've got. So, thanks. Thank you. And following up with uh what director Levier Wright was saying, the first amendment protects several
fundamental rights by preventing Congress from making laws that prohibit the free exercise of religion, the establishment of religion, the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, the right to peaceibly assemble, and the right to petition the government for
redress of grievances. And so when you look at the entire first amendment, it doesn't say any specific faith. in in America, you're free to have no faith at all if that is your choice. And so I think it is important to know that uh there are certain guarantees that
apply to everyone. Um I attended the SEAK meeting last week or was it no it was this week and heard about how they are navigating legislation from the state. I learned that next year all students K through three will be tested for dyslexia. Now, under the ReadAde
Act, they used to test students where they thought they might be dyslexic, but now it's going to be all students K through three. Um, there's no current mention of what will happen after the students are identified. I hope it does not morph
into another unfunded mandate, but I really do hope it'll enhance the identification of these students for early intervention. I participated in the SBOR candidate forum as well as the CFAN forum. Of course, our student board
did a great job and I think the League of Women Voters was very impressed with you guys as well. So, it was a great evening. Um, I also attended the 25th anniversary of parents challenge um founded by Steve Shuck and his late wife
Joyce. Um it is a really unique program to empower parents and they provide their families with information, training, mentoring tools and financial resources to equip them to choose the education they think is best for their
child which has been upheld most multiple times under the 14th amendment. They not only help students in public schools, they help homeschoolers and they help students who are in charter schools and private schools as well. Choice and freedom are enshrined in
virtually all aspects of American society. Why not in education? Especially for lowincome families for whom education offers the greatest hope for economic advantage. They also encourage participation by minority
families, anyone who might be in a school that is not meeting their needs. So there was a young man there who spoke and he was one of the first recipients or an early recipient of parents challenge assistance and he is now in
his surgical internship. So it was really incredible to hear these students that came from minority background, lowincome backgrounds from all walks of life and how parents challenge has helped them and I was really honored to be invited to that. So that's all I have
for now. Can I get a motion for action item 7.1? I move to approve action item 7.1. Second. Any discussion? Director Schmidt. Yeah, I was under the impression that
this task force was not just for providing alignment across the district, but also for adding essential content in the syllabus to be used in class. As far as I know, only two of us submitted extra historical documents for use. There may have been more. That's all I
know. Mine specifically included six oftenus federalist papers. Madison 10, which is often considered the most important of the Federalist papers, preventing any single faction from dominating and thus protecting liberty through scale and representation.
Madison 51, which covers checks and balances. Hamilton 78, which covers judicial review. Madison 39, which covers state sovereignty. Hamilton 70 which defends a strong single president and Madison 45 which covers our
government or enumerated powers. These six have been proposed to be used only as resources and references and not a collective unit. The federalist papers were a crucial exposition of the constitution structure and principles
explaining how the proposed government would function and protect citizens rights. All that said, I move to amend the unit syllabus to include a federalist papers unit to teach students what exactly the most used federalist
papers are and the reason behind them director hy. So we heard from the um from the teacher point of order. Do I need a second first? Second. Okay. Discussion. Director Hy,
Director Livia, right? Um, we actually have a teacher involved in the task force who's here. I think before we start, um, I I think it would be great for them to be able to answer questions because my understanding having looked at the list was this was
nowhere near exhaustive of the resources that are used. Um, and although and I will say I was at um, the reason I was three minutes late was I was serving dinner at Falcon High School to the teachers as parent teacher conference and I and I run the chili cook off out
there every year for the teachers and feed them. Um, Mr. Height said that he's would also welcome people coming to talk to him. He's meeting with parents tonight so he couldn't be here um, but did want me to relay that before I forget. But um, Mrs. Scarceli is here to
represent the t the task force and I think we should allow her to speak to some of those things. Well, and just real quick before we start with that, when they talked about the list, the last meeting that I attended of the task force, we talked about what could reasonably be covered
in this course because of the volume of different documents that are there that it would actually take years to cover everything that could be covered. Um, so I think it's only fair to have people discuss what it was and that this was not a complete list. I also saw three
different of the federalist papers that are mentioned in the list that we have in our board packet tonight. So I don't know who wants to go first. If if Mr. Smith would like to go first, Miss Thompson. Yeah. Before you invite staff, would you please invite me to to comment?
Okay. Superintendent Hills. Thank you. I understand the impulse to hear um from from staff members that were involved in task force. Um I want to encourage the board to pull back from writing unit curricula. That that is
absolutely unprecedented. Call your folks at CASBY and ask them if that crosses a line. It crosses a line. And I would ask you to do what you so often say and respect our teachers and trust them. You gave them great suggestions
and recommendations and I affirm that and I have throughout this process. But it changes the dynamic in a negative way if you cross the line into directing what they put into their units. And so I'm going to ask that you not ask Miss
Scarcelli to comment on this or Mr. Smith. If you want to first override me, that is your prerogative. I am your employee. I will salute smartly, but I am asking you not to do that because it it violates what you say about your
teachers to step well out of your lane and into their lane to write their curriculum for them. Director Dvola, you wanted to say something? Uh, yes. Um, so with the social studies task force, um, I do believe that the
majority of what I had submitted, um, is is covered. That's Oh, we're wait, we have to discuss what she said first because I want to make sure I'm in I'm in order. Okay. So, um, I'm not in favor of rewriting or adding things, but I do
have a question that I think will help us to make our this decision. Um, are the things that were listed um, Director Schmidt, did you submit those to, um, Brian Smith? No, I didn't. Okay. So, um, do you know
which ones? Can you list off the ones that you just stated again? You know what? I did kind of mention federalist papers to him in an email, but not these spec not all of these specific ones. Or did I do all did I do all of them? Okay, I did. There were a few that you had referenced in email
and the reason I referenced them is because they are the most used. I mean some of these we're using today and I just think that a unit that covers the federalist papers only the top five or
six and then let the kids go you know and and look at more would be very beneficial to them because that those papers explain our constitution. So then did did we have a response to to that by chance?
I wasn't I was not informed of that response. Yeah, I I had responded to let her know I was going to talk with the social studies department chairs um and that we in the in the resources piece, we were going to reference the fact that we use
a variety of federalist papers um because the teachers do use references from numerous amount of them. And so that's what I had shared back and then you had suggested the idea about the top five or something like that.
So I guess my question is do we have the top five or not? I have not had a chance to have a discussion with the department chairs on that piece. I have understood these two be the top five but I think everybody has their own opinion on that. So
okay this is May I may I respond? One sec. Uh, this was part of the reason why I wanted more time to discuss these things. I didn't think it would be able to have that a robust discussion without having all of the input and the responses back. Um,
but I have to say, well, we should probably vote on that first before I start continuing to speak. Go ahead, Mr. Hilts. So, my observation, and I I am only speaking to the proposed amendment. I'm not I'm not speaking to the overall motion, but um
I believe every member of the board believes that we should teach the Constitution, that the Constitution should be a resource in courses about American history and and American government. And it already is. So I would ask you to consider what
message does it send to professional educators to require them to do what they have always done. It it doesn't send a message of of respect. It sends a me message of suspicion. And I'm highly
sensitive to the relationship and trust and respect between teachers and the board. And I think we struck a really good balance in asking the board to make recommendations and trusting that the educators would understand the spirit. If you read the statements of intent,
these teachers clearly support what you and I have asked them to do. They have already been doing it. What we primarily have done is increase the consistency, coherency, and aligned the courses and reaffirmed that district 49 is committed
to helping students understand the reasons this is a great country, the reasons to love it, the reasons to hold it to high standards when it hasn't always met them. our teachers are doing that. And so I would encourage us all to respect what they have already
demonstrated in the classroom. Um, and I would I would I would advocate that we we withdraw this amendment. And the only thing that I'd like to add to that is, you know, my son is a history major and if you add in
everything that could be covered, that really does morph into a degree. Um, but I was given the opportunity to suggest important documents that could be beneficial and a lot of them were covered. So, Director Schmidt, I do take
offense at uh being accused of attacking teachers because I'm not okay. I am trying to get a unit in the social studies task force that is a little more comprehensive on the federalist papers
because they are the reason for the constitution. The not maybe not the reason the explanation of the constitution. I am not attacking our fine teachers. I love our teachers. Um
but I do take offense at at at that. Director Hy. So, with the exception of the two gentlemen um on the very end of the dice here, I would put my personal US history
library up against anybody's in this room. I mean, it's a it's a topic I have great passion for. And um I do agree that the the federalist papers are really important to understand, but I also understand that when we start
pushing things into the classroom, we're displacing other things. And we expect that our teachers are going to talk about the federalist papers. We expect that they are going to um use excerpts and examples from them. But I don't
think that for a high school course we have to have our students read the entirety of say the paper on checks and balances in order to understand checks and balances. I think our teachers can convey that without having to dive deep
into the source materials. So um I I trust in the discretion of our teachers. they have greater awareness of the standards and I would I would be very concerned about pushing things in knowing that that's going to push things out.
All right. Any would the student board like to weigh in on any of this? Ben? Yes. So, um, we just did a little deliberation between ourselves and we kind of came to the conclusion that we agree with Superintendent Hilts on this
one. Um, now we we are students, so this is kind of like the reason we're here is to weigh on on policy that affects us. What did I say? Weigh on to weigh in on policy that
affects us. So, I really just think I do think that the federalist papers should be taught, but I don't think that um Come again. No, sorry. Okay. I don't think that the board
should really be weighing in, especially on um curriculums like this. I think we need to place that trust into our teachers. Um I find it very important that we don't overstep here especially because in my heart of hearts I
absolutely believe that government um h what's that word government consistency is very important especially in such a local school district. But I mean that's really all I had to say. Thank you.
Emma, did you want to add anything? Um I also agree with you Mr. Peter Hiltz, I I think our educators understand our students more than anyone. I think um for me, I understand the Federalist Papers, and that's because um the courses that I've taken,
it's been integrated in just our lessons. Um I think a lot of times when it's clumped into a unit, it can become really confusing and get really mixed up. Um, but when it is specific to whatever we're learning at the time, it feels more targeted and then we're
learning the things that um are the most important versus it versus it all just getting mushed together. Um, so I think that it can make it more um laser focused on the things that we really need to take out of those lessons versus um just getting all of the information
at once. A lot of times it can just it gets too much for our student brains. Um especially taking so many courses at once. And to make a clarification, I think director Levier Wright had raised her hand before I went to the student board.
Um so I'm 100% in agreement uh with Mr. Hilts. And in part, I'm the one border board member who has um the privilege of having three children who've been very recent graduates of Falcon High School who've gone from prek all the way
through 12 here. Um some of the things we're asking about are actually eighth grade standards that my children learned in 8th grade um at Falcon Middle School. Thank you, Mr. Baker. Thank you um a couple of other folks, although Baker, I think, now is at Spring Studio. um some things they learned in high
school. Thank you, Mr. Heights. Thank you, Mr. Bond. Um and so I think some of and to be clear to our community is so I really think first of all, they've been doing an amazing job. And like I said, I I think if you haven't had a child move through recently, you wouldn't know
that, right? So I I appreciate board members not necessarily knowing what may or may not be being taught. Um but it's pretty comprehensive when you look at the whole K12 system. And it has to build on one another because there's no way you can get through all of American
history in one year. They used to try that when I was in high school, right? And you know how many times I learned from pre-revolution to the beginning of World War II over and over and over and over and over again. Do you know how many times we got to Vietnam to the civil rights movement to some of the
other things that were important? Pretty much never. Um and Colorado's done a good job of dividing those standards in a way that let us get there. So my kids actually did learn about Vietnam. They did learn about the civil rights movement. They did learn about the stuff that was happening in the 70s and 80s
and I believe all the way up I think the very end of it was the Gulf War if I remember in Mr. Height's class for my son. Um so there's intentionality behind those standards and in teaching it. Our teachers are experts. They're subject matter experts. And when we started this
um in January, the reality was no one in the board knew what exactly was being taught. I had some ideas because I've had kids actually take the coursework very, you know, I had one who graduated last year. That's how recent it is for me. Um and I have one still in school.
So, um we didn't know what was being done. And I'm going to tell you the document that I've heard multiple people in our community stand up today and praise. Guess what was what our teachers were already doing. What we had they've done is realigned it so that everyone's teaching at the same year but they came
back to us and worked together to say, "Yeah, this is what I do. This is what I do. Look, this is what we are doing. This isn't something new. This is in fact what our student the incredible education our students already were getting in D49 that were affirming as a
board and saying um great job. Yes, this is exactly what we want to have happen. Let's get explicit on the intent statements so that it's clear to our community as well what we're doing. Um, but I think that that's an important thing to keep in mind. With that, I
agree that we really need to put this the the granular curricular decisions 100% need to be in the hands of our subject matter expert teachers. Director Schmidt. Okay. Well, some of us don't have kids in the district and we don't didn't know
what they were being taught when we were elected two years ago. um we know now part of our job as a board is curriculum. So when we were asked to help on the task force and I wasn't able to go to
one meeting but when we were asked to help on the task force we were asked anyway I can see that the general feeling is to not do this. So, I'm going to withdraw
my first motion, but I move to postpone this item to the next regular meeting to give us time to talk this out completely. Director Hy. So, my understanding is that we're here to We need a second on that motion. Yeah.
Second. Thank you. Um, so my understanding is that we're um here to basically approve the alignment of the courses and we're here to approve the statement of intent. Um, there's nothing to stop us from
having ongoing conversations about other things related to social studies, but um I feel like those items are um ready for prime time. Director Dvola. Yeah. Uh first of all, I want to say
that I was very encouraged to see that the majority of the documents and proposed things that I had um put forth are already being used. And as a board member who is not a social studies teacher, uh I the purpose of this task
force was to see what do we have and what are we teaching in the district and how can we supplement or how can we help to shape a course that comes um with the foundations of our country. And so I think that the task force did set out to
do that that it accomplished that goal. Um, I am I think this is really awesome. The only concern I have and why I would second the motion is that I wanted I do
uh feel like I had the amount of time for um my documents to be reviewed to see if they were there. And I'm not sure that Director Schmidt had had that same amount of time maybe because of submitting it later, etc.
um that I think she she deserves to have so that we know do we already teach it because the things that she listed might already be there. Do you see what I'm saying? Um and that that could be a mute point going forward. Um and it's not
that I want to come on heavy-handed and say you have to do this. Um these would be recommendations of what the board views as really important documents or pieces to include in these courses. Um, and I am really encouraged actually by
the response that I had. I only had two things that were not listed um on my list of of things that I wanted to make sure um were being covered in our district. Um, so kudos to you guys for delving in deep. I know it was a lot of
hard work um and it is more than appreciated. So I want you to hear that from me. Thank you. You know, I just wanted to say that trying to cram 250 years of history into a semester or into a year-long course. I
mean, what you guys have done is really, really extensive work. And it's been mentioned several times that this is not a list of every document that is used. And so, when you look at how it's worded, it actually says key documents and resources, but it doesn't say the
only documents and resources. And in it they mentioned federalist 10, federalist 51, and federalist 70. So I I'm sure there could be a lengthy debate about what we could include or not include, but we really have to look at the rigorousness of the course and the
timelines that are there. And so I think that um you know you could try to you know keep working and keep working till you come up with something that you everybody feels wonderful about but I don't know if that would ever completely happen because everybody will have a
different opinion of what is the most important things to cover and the bottom line is we have to look at the time constraints of covering 250 years worth of history and so that's my opinions on it. So right now we have a motion on the floor to postpone this and I think we
should take a vote on that. Tvala I hyle no Levia Wright no Schmidt I Thompson no okay that amendment fails. So now we move on to this action item
and the original motion. Is there any further discussion? Director Schmidt. Yeah, I did get a chance to talk to Ryan about this. I do have some compliments and some concerns. Um, I'm kind of hoping first of all that these course proposals are going to be
voted on individually instead of as a package. Um, we'll talk about that in a minute. Um, of the Colorado folklore. Um, there are some very interesting gold mine stories in Colorado. No, no, no. We're we're still on the US history thing. We're not on that yet.
You're on the wrong item. We voted on your motion to postpone. Yeah. And so now we're back to the original motion. Is there any further discussion? Director Dola. Uh, I
am actually really encouraged and I know I already stated that, but I just wanted to let you all of you know that um there are some things that I definitely want to to put in such as uh different
curriculum and things like that, but I know that's not my role um necessarily. Um, we do review curriculum. it makes sure that it's what's in there is valid. And so the for example, the social studies
curriculum that is currently in the Falcon zone did go through our curriculum review process and it was voted on by the board even though it had voted otherwise. Um it did pass as a board. So, um I will definitely make
sure that um from here on out anytime we have any new course proposals or curriculum, we should be able to review it and go through it um through our policies.
Director Schmidt, I would really like to see some legal clarifications. What is our job with curriculum? Although I'm not a lawyer, um part of what we study is education law. And so a a a normal definition of curriculum
would be a course of study, often using the language of scope. What do you cover? And sequence, in what order and for how long do you cover? So curriculum often talks about scope and sequence. It always includes resources. Uh then there are excerpts of those resources in the
main body. Uh a textbook is a form of curriculum, not at all the only form of curriculum. And and the reason that I objected to that amendment, which I I appreciate the withdrawal, is because stepping past curriculum into unit
design is instruction. We talk about curriculum, instruction, and assessment. It is absolutely clear in Colorado this the local school board does have authority over curriculum but teachers have some academic independence autonomy and we hire them
and trust them for that. Um since since my mic is on director Schmidt if I use the word attack I apologize. It was not my intent to suggest you were attacking. My my call was to the board to respect and trust our teachers which I think is an even higher standard than not
attacking them. If I said attack, I was wrong and I apologize. I hope I did not say that. But I do not apologize for asking all of us to trust our teachers. I think what Miss Dvola said, um, she didn't get every single thing that she wanted, but she she really respected and
appreciated the process, as do I. And so, uh, I'm I'm sure Mr. Miller can improve my answer, but this is actually a good practical example of the legal distinction between governance of curriculum
and administration of instruction and assessment. Director Hy. So, I just wanted to talk about a couple of the products that came about from this um effort. So, one of them is this course alignment um where we found that
different courses were being taken in different years at different schools. And this board found that um taking US history in 11th grade and not sooner is important because we want to have our students to be at a higher level of
thinking and being able to understand and appreciate it. And so that was something that um came out of this that uh that was a really good product. Um and then the other thing is the statement of intent. Um I think that this reflects what our teachers were
already intending in their courses, but it does communicate to our community that this is what we are doing and we are doing it with intent. So uh I do value both of those products. Ben,
um yeah. So Mr. Dr. H, you just spoke about um taking US history in 11th grade. Now, that I am in support of, but um the other part of the policy that I just read was um under rationale, it
says the task force believes that US civics uh/government should be taken in 12th grade. That I disagree with. Um, I believe taking civics earlier, um, and possibly taking an AP civics class later
on in your high school career is absolutely beneficial because I found that my, um, understanding of government uh, after taking civics in uh, 9th grade was expanded beyond my belief. So, that's
just my weigh in. I appreciate y'all listening. Okay. And I'm going to call the question. Can I get a vote, please? Dvalo I. Hyle I. Levier Wright I. Schmidt. No. Thompson
I. And that one passes. Can I get a motion for action item 7.2? I move to approve the course proposals for Colorado folklore, film and literature and culture literature. Second. Any discussion? Director Schmidt. Okay, I will do what I was trying to do
before. I realized that we hadn't voted yet. Um, Colorado folklore. There are some very interesting gold mine stories in Colorado like Tom's baby, the Molly Kathleen gold mine accident, and the search for lost gold. However, when they
talk about Colorado, his having it be uh Colorado folklore, uh, some of the cryptids that are mentioned like the Loch Ness monster is found in Scottish folklore. Chupacabbras originated in Puerto Rico and Yeti originated in the
Himalayas and then they should be mentioned. You know, are they Colorado grown? No, they're not. But I do really like the strong emphasis on this course on research, citation, plagiarism, and
writing skills. Now, film and literature is a little different. This course includes students analyzing a modest proposal by Jonathan Swift. The full title of the essay is a modest proposal for preventing the children of poor
people in Ireland from being a burden to their parents or country and for making them beneficial to the public. I find the lack of disclosure of the full title a little disappointing. Not everyone is aware of that story. The unconventional plot was meant to
bring attention to the problems that Ireland was having at the time and spoofed it by offering satire that suggested a fair, cheap, and easy method for converting the starving children of Ireland into sound and useful members of the Commonwealth. This satirical
description is that includes that across the country poor children predominantly Catholics are living in squalor because their families are too poor to keep them fed and clothed. Why this story and why something this offensive to one
religious group? I do find it important for students to understand what satire is. However, there are many examples of satire that are not as offensive and certainly not against one religious group. Pride and Prejudice, The Nose,
Animal Farm, 1984, and many others are available. Why the negative thoughts about Catholics? Real quick, Director Schmidt, we have to let the other board members have an opportunity to speak. Director Hy.
So, as somebody who raised Catholic, has many Catholic uh family members, um that is very much my background and my culture. I am unoffended by a modest proposal. I find it to be uh amusing and um I have zero problem with it and I
defer to my Catholic uh peer. Director Levier Wright, hang on one second here. Yep, sure. So, um, yeah. So, I'm Catholic and of Irish descent, um, and took this in Brit in high school. So, I
read it as a part of my Brit Lit class. My brother, as a sophomore at a Catholic all boy school, actually wrote his own satire based on a modest proposal and submitted to his English teacher in 10th grade. Um, this is a piece of classic British satirical literature that is
used all the time at this age level. um to help teach the concept and to show kind of the ridiculousness of some of those pieces. Um so I I I I don't see it at that level of a problem because again this is this is truly actually classic
education. It's in most British lit books at the high school level. I believe certainly was for me 35 years ago um and is even taught in Catholic schools. And one comment that I had is this is an elective course and I think that we're
once again we're kind of delving into curriculum development and instead of curriculum review. Um so those are just my thoughts on it. Director Schmidt, we're delving into offending people here. There are so many other examples of
satire that these kids can get. You got Charlie Chaplan. He had movies that were spoofs on dictators. The movie network exposed the corrupt news industry. Doctor Strange Love marks mocks the absurdly highstake decisions and the human arrogance that could lead to
global annihilation. Why are we picking a piece that is religiously offensive? It's not Jonathan. It is to me. Well, and so then you can let her finish her commenting.
Go on, please. Okay. Director Le Wright, did you want to say something? He was pro-Irish. That was the whole point of of the story. Um, it's why plenty of us Irish Catholics love it. Um, is he was pointing out to the
British how absurd they were. Um, and was supporting um, the Irish Catholic cause at the time. It's part of why it gets taught in Catholic schools, too. So, um I I don't think, you know, as an actively practicing Catholic, I don't think that's the
interpretation. But also, this is an elective and so if families have specific, they can see exactly what's taught. If it's something they don't want their child exposed to, they can choose not to teach it. Um they can choose their they can choose for their child not to be in the class. Um and
that's a part of what we do is we offer that choice. I have a point of order. Um, just a second here. Director D'vola. Um, the the person who um I can't find the
name, but uh proposed it. They're they're not currently here. Correct. Okay. Cuz I I could just ask them like, "Why did you choose a modest proposal?" And I'm sure they would tell us why. um for for something like this. Um I'm a
huge advocate of things that expose and sometimes that's in a in a satirical way. Sometimes it's in a very like harsh way such as Animal Farm or um 1984 or A Brave New World or those books that are
they're kind of shocking but it has that shock value actually exposes the evil of the world or it exposes things that are need to be changed or the effects of socialism and communism and how um uh
deadly it gets, right? Um, so I'm totally fine with having uh the course for this and like everyone said, it's a an elective. Um, so yeah, there we go. There's my two cents.
And my only concern is once again that you know when we have a course proposal, it's it's not necessarily the place of the board to rewrite the course or or put it how they would like to see it. It is not a mandatory course. This is an elective course and so I think it would
be good to go ahead and vote. Point of order. Are we voting on Are we voting on each one individually or all three as a packet? That's a good question. Let me look at how the motion was. It's all three. I think it's all three.
Okay. I would like to amend it so that we vote on them individually. I move to vote on these courses individually as opposed to a packet. Second. Okay. Any other discussion about splitting them apart? Okay. Can I get a
vote, please? Tala, you got to state which one we're doing first. Voting to split it. We have to splat to fit it first. Tala. I Hyle. Hi. Le Wright I Schmidt
I Thompson I So now I'll make a motion. Okay. I move to approve the Patriot High School course film and literature. Second. Okay. Any further discussion? Would the
student board like to weigh in on this one? Um I just sorry should have let you start there. Um, I guess I would say at least me personally, I'm
in full support of teaching a modest proposal in our um in the classes proposed in action item 7.2. That's really all I have to say. Emma, um, I think in my experience, the shock
factor honestly brings the reality to our courses. um especially since it's not a mandatory class. Um it's kind of a decision you're making and um these things should be covered in the syllabus at the beginning of the year. Um and that's when you can remove yourself from the class. So from the student
perspective, I think it's it's okay to teach and I think that if it's if it's a course you're choosing, then that's that's on the students and the parents to choose. Any further discussion? And I do like the top. Students can write in an organized, professional, and
insightful manner. Students can read and understand non-fiction speeches and US documents. Students can synthesize multiple sources and site information correctly. Students have exposure to a a variety of literary
genres. Okay, are we ready to vote? Dvala I. Hyle I. Levia Wright I. Schmidt no. Thompson I and that one passes. Okay. So now move to approve the Colorado Folklore course
at Patriot Applied Learning Campus. Second. Any discussion? Okay. Can I get a vote, please? Dvala I. Hy. Levier Wright. Schmidt I. Thompson.
I. And that one passes. And I move to approve the culture and literature course at Patriot Applied Learning Campus. Oh, second. Any discussion? Okay. Can I get a vote, please? Dvala, I. Hy, I.
Livia Wright, I. Schmidt, I. Thompson, I. And that one passes. Okay. Can I get a motion for action item 7.3? Oops. I move to approve any initial steps to explore alternatives and
consider whether expansion is appropriate on any specific timeline. Second. Sounds bizarre. Any discussion? So, Brian, can you just for our community explain exactly what that sentence just meant because it was pretty darn vague. Um, and so I'd like
people to know what we're actually voting on. I think we all know, but I think it's important for our community to know what the heck that sentence meant. Do you mean Mr. Smith wasn't just standing up there to look pretty. Okay. Yeah. Uh Brian Smith, Falcon's own
superintendent. So, we are looking to start our steps because of the challenges we're faced with growth, challenges we're faced with budget, challenges we're faced with just school sites and all the things that are contained there within. And so we are
wanting to begin our process to look at the potential of Bennett Ranch and Falcon Elementary uh residing together in the same building and then having the Falcon Elementary um service uh peak. Um potentially some other programs. Um and
then having the district look at the properties where certain facilities exist on Woodman. um that if the opportunity is right that those those properties could potentially be sold to then have uh profits used for the construction of a new Falcon PreK8
building um that would go on the eastern side of the district. So, there's a lot of moving steps and planning that has to take place with all of this. There's a lot of community conversations that still have to take place with all of this. Um there's just many different
things that we need to start moving on and planning for and engaging. For example, we had a PTA meeting with Falcon Elementary parents and they had a lot of great questions and a lot of great feedback and we need to dig in and look at that and explore that and get answers to those questions and work
through this process. Um by starting this early, this allows us to work through and help get those answers to our community. um and be forward planning strategic and do this in advance. Um Mr. Hiltz, would you add anything to that?
If if I may. Um technically, the relocation of Falcon Elementary to the campus to to share with Ben Ranch is a consolidation, not an expansion. Technically, that doesn't require board vote or approval. It it's
I I have authority to do that. um as we have relocated other programs through the years or consolidated them or moved offices, but we're we're pragmatic. We understand this is something of great public import. You certainly have a a large voice in it. So, we wanted to
bring it to you, but we're well too early to be able to bring you anything specific. Almost anything we would say definitively would be wrong because events. And so, we're asking for a broad grant. It's why I came and spoke to you about this. Uh, we can now disclose that
I I previewed this for you in July in an executive session and that's not a violation of of that privacy because the timing was appropriate to respectfully bring this to our our teachers in the affected buildings and then to the community as we brought it to you. So,
we've done that. We're now moving and so our exploration of alternatives may mean that administratively we may need to move decisively and our need to move decisively and to make plans may not mesh up with your bi-weekly meeting
rhythm. And so essentially what we are telling you is we've given you the plan. The presentation is here. Mr. Smith did a great job of explaining it. We are now continuing to explain it in other settings. But we're also starting to work with architects who may have to do some remodeling uh to the campus. We're
thinking about which programs and on what timeline they might move. And those are things uh those are those are details that we would not bring to the board. This approval tonight is essentially a grant of authority for us to move forward using our administrative
judgment um to be decisive where necessary and deliberate where that's appropriate, but in full view of the public. Director Schmidt, I think these these plans, though everything's not gelled perfectly, um
are a very forwardthinking uh route to travel. So, I I I definitely agree with going forward, Ben. All right. So, I just have a question for either you, Superintendent Hilts, or
you um zone superintendent Smith. I just need to know um what is the plan? I know nothing is perfectly set yet, but what is the plan for um possibly students who attend Falcon Elementary who may have transportation
issues and may not be able to make it to the new campus um consolidated with Bennett Ranch? That is that is actually one of the questions that came up at our PTA meeting that we had. Um, and I will tell you there's already some ideas coming forward of things we could explore to
potentially help with that. Um, and so we've got to talk to transportation. We've got to talk to families about some of these ideas. Um, so I don't have a firm answer on that other than it is something community is bringing up and we're digging in to see what answers we
can figure out. And I would just like to add the reason why Ben asks insightful questions and likes to share is because he is interested in pursuing a law degree and I want you to coordinate later with Mr. Miller to see if you go to work with his
firm later on. So are there any other questions or comments? All right. Can I get a vote? Dvala I. Kyle I Wright I. Schmidt I. Thompson I. And that one passes.
Can I get a motion for action item 7.4? I move to approve the district and school unified improvement plans as recommended by the administration. Second. Any discussion? Director Schmidt. Yeah, I had some questions for Miss Pho,
but she is not here due to sadness in her family. So, I'm going to have to ask my questions to Mr. Hilts. Um, actually, she has her and Brian have done an amazing job helping me to understand
data much better. Um, but what I'm wondering is I'm not seeing any set goals that we're reaching for. Like say a school has earned like 62% points. Can we set a goal for them for
the next year for 63% points? Um, and then once that's met, set another goal for 64 and then just keep building and building until we're we're where we want to be. Um, is there a way to set that type of achievable achievable goal?
Maybe, I don't know, make it a strategic plan or I don't know what would that look like setting those types of goals. Miss Thompson, with your permission, I'd like to spend about four minutes modeling that. Mr. Nero, may I have the airplane?
I think it's a good idea. I I appreciate this question. And goal setting is the ultimate purpose of of what we do with a tool that we call the DPF calculator. And so what I'm going to put on screen, I I just spent all day Wednesday, seven meetings with the
principles of the power zone. I had previously spent all day um in in other settings in the Sankreek zone and the and then in the Falcon zone. And do I want BOE? Yes. And I'm going to use Ridge View
Elementary because they are they are the school that I that I went through this with last and they have very they have very high performance. And so this tool that you are seeing right now allows us to select different schools up here in a drop- down menu. And I want to give
Logan Logan and our performance excellence team a great deal of credit for developing this. It's hyper complex. One of the tabs uh has over 30,000 lines of data, each one with multiple fields and cells. So here is Ridge View. In 23,
their score was 72 on the school performance framework. In 2024, they were at 73.8. 8 they tipped up to 81.6 six. And you can see by the color coding here, they met expectations for academic
achievement. They exceeded expectations for aca for growth. And then you can see that we have an entire section devoted to what director Schmidt is asking about which is goal setting. And so the way this calculator works, if I don't put any numbers into
this column here, then the goal is simply to maintain from 81.6 to 81.6. But the tool that we use allows us to see in the area of English language arts, CMAS, ELA, in the population group
called all students, they scored 751.9 points. The next cut point on an 800 point scale is 755.9. You can ask CDE why they have to decimal, but it's because they're measuring at the 85th percentile, which
requires that calculation. So that means that at Ridge View, those students in third, fourth, and fifth grade are 0.53 away from the next cut point. And so I met with Principal Rapaort at um at the Power Zone office. We agreed that it
made sense to pursue the all student ELA number as a goal. We thought it also made sense because they are even closer in their math all student performance. They're 71 100ths of a percent away
which is less than one point on an 800 point scale. So we agreed that it made sense to add two points there. And we thought that there were some other available points. Uh for example, they cannot improve their math growth because
they are already receiving maximum points. So you can't set a goal higher. They actually have to kind of defend those points if you will, maintain and sustain those points. and they're not especially close, but Principal Rapaort felt like their their students who are
eligible for free and reduced lunch are three points away, which which is 4.8%. And she felt like there was a a pickup opportunity there that they could pick up one quarter of a point for that population. And so if they do those two
things, improve achievement in two places and improve their growth in one place, then their goal for next year would to have an would be to have an SPF at 87.4. So Director Schmidt's asking an outstanding question. It's taken us a
couple of years to build a tool that lets me map and set goals the way you're seeing on screen. And this is why our principles have so much clarity and focus and purpose behind their their annual planning. It's why the UIPs are
as strong as they are. I really appreciate the question. I apologize Principal Rapaort and Ridge View team for uh showing your excellence on a big screen, but y'all are doing really well. I I think they have a really good chance of being our first school to break the 90 plateau and that would be
outstanding. So, thank you all for letting me share your results. I yield back to the comm's team. Director Schmidt, I do have one more question. Obviously, this is one of our higher performing schools. I'm going to have to assume and just, you know,
verify for me, you're doing this with the schools that are kind of a little bit lower in reaching. I do this with every single school. And and as as I click through the zones, yes, they're a higher performing school, but look at that. Every school in the
Falcon zone in performance, every school in the power zone in performance. I'm I'm showing you elementary, every school in the San Creek zone in performance. When you're already performing, you have a phenomenal foundation and you can aim higher when you've got a firm foundation beneath you. Every one of our elementary
schools is there. Every one of our secondary schools that received a rating was in performance. We only had one school that didn't receive that rating and it was because of insufficient data, not due to performance. You have led us and I want to give this board credit and it and it really starts with that
election four years ago. You have led us to a deeper pre more precise focus on academic achievement and your principles have responded to that call with with vigor and enthusiasm and they are leading a resurgence in district 49. So,
thank you for your leadership and for keeping my feet to the fire as I keep their feet to the fire. We owe it to our students. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Director Hy and Superintendent Hilts, I wanted to thank you for your leadership on this as
well because this ties directly to a behag that you proposed that you requested and that the school board approved to um shoot for um uh accreditation with distinction. Yes. And
so based on that personal goal that you set for yourself and in your leadership, this tool has come about and all of our principles have been um utilizing it. And I've heard from multiple principles who have sat in these sessions and using these tools and they just have nothing
but wonderful things to say about it. So thank you Director Dvola. Yeah, I second that. uh you've worked very diligently in order to create these things so we can get to that goal of being accredited with distinction. Um
which brings up a good point of uh factchecking that district 49 is not failing our students. Um 30% of our students are not uh failing that or no 70% of our students are not failing and
only 30% are ready for college and beyond. um which is completely false. Um all of us are in are on uh performance. That's incredible to know that we are all in performance and that wasn't the
case several years ago. So kudos to this board. You guys have all worked really hard. Student board, do you have any questions? Okay. Can I get a vote? Tvala I Hyle
I Levia Wright I Schmidt I Thompson I Okay. And now we are on to discussion items. And before we get to that, I'd just like to make a point when you talk about um US government, you got to see some good examples tonight of
representative government, how you can disagree, how you can have discussions, and that is a benefit of a free society. And so we are on to item 9.1, Mr. Ken
Wit. [Music] Good evening and thank you for having me here this evening board. Um I would like to uh recognize that uh Superintendent Hilts did a wonderful job of stealing my thunder. Thank you. Uh but actually I
want to thank you very much for dropping by the um off-site meeting, our annual retreat. It was nice to see you there and to at least share a little bit of what's going on and let you see some of the enthusiasm and creativity that goes into the planning that we do. So very
much appreciate you stopping by and uh I was I was glad to see it. It's a it's a new thing. You're always welcome. It was up and now it's not. Oh, thank you. Click arrows. Excellent. So, Education
Reinvision Boseies is a uh one of many Boseies in the state. I believe all of the board members here today have heard me speak at least once. So, you'll recognize some of this, but uh we always start with vision and we talk about why
we do what we do and how we do it. uh as any good leader knows you start with why because none of the rest matters if you don't know why you're doing what you're doing. Uh we have three members in the education reinvision Boseis district 49 uh who was one of our founding members
uh Monizuma Cortez and thank you for that Monizuma Cortez uh who participates with representation on our board as well and Pikes Peak State College uh Boseies can have uh in uh institutions of higher learning as well and so we do and we're
very grateful for that relationship. So, as I said, always lead with vision. Uh, we genuinely believe that better education models and formats continue to emerge. And so, we resolve to be a welcoming host to innovative and
exceptional programs and schools and a wellspring of better education models. I read those words because I genuinely believe that they are profound. as our board debated aggressively over what does it mean to say we're going to be
innovative and what does it mean to say that we're going to create a broad path for school choice in Colorado. Those words were hotly debated were carefully considered and I deeply appreciate them because I repeat them all the time. I get to tell people we intend to be a
wellspring of better education models. We're a welcoming host to innovative and exceptional programs. Those are powerful words and I am so delighted to be a part of them. Uh our mission is that we will deliver uh and develop services to both these districts and authorized schools
to expand availability and access to quality innovative public education programs. Not just any programs, but the programs that families are actually looking for. We have some operating norms that I talk about occasionally to keep people
mindful of how we operate. And and I'm not going to read them to you, I promise. But I always start with the first one because it is the most important concept and it defines how we behave as an organization. We operate Konganas.
The work we do is hard and we see it as an opportunity. We do it as a challenge. We are passionate about what we do and I am deeply appreciative to have an organization that really leans in on what we do and to have some support from districts like
school district 49 that genuinely believe that there is a there's a purpose and a reason to have what we do in the Colorado sphere of choice. You can read the rest. The other one that I would call out is our growth mindset. and I call it out now because I'm going to refer to it in a moment. We
do genuinely intend to continue to broaden the path of choice in Colorado, to expand the available programs, to expand the footprint, and to expand the public's awareness of the choices that
actually do and can exist. so that parents can find the right fit for every student and that every kid can find the educational environment that will make them thrive, prosper and succeed and it's not the same environment for every child.
So just a little bit of how have we executed this vision and mission that I am so p passionate about. Well, we have actually created six brickandmortar schools in this state. two, we have transferred to school districts that
recognized the value and the merit of what we have brought about and have said, "Hey, can we have this?" Uh, we are not about empire building. Our expansion mindset is about serving, not about owning. And so, we very much are welcome the conversation with school
districts and we have schools about whether or not they would like to support that school and will genuinely support it. And uh so we have occasionally transferred schools to school districts, but we also have schools that rightfully are operated by us and intentionally and with the permission of the school districts in
which those schools reside. We have memoranda of understanding that allow us to operate those schools uh in perpetuity or for for long periods and very grateful to be able to do that. You notice that that number is four. Those of you who have a history with the Boseies, you might notice that that's a
bigger number than probably the last time you saw it. Uh, and I'll mention a new brick-and-mortar school here shortly. We also have a creative bricks and mortar school called the Education Reinvision School, which is an umbrella for many of the unusual programs and
homeschool enrichment programs that we have around the state. We have a number of multi-dist online schools. Those are statewide as you're probably familiar with. In fact, the Boseies was originally the Colorado digital Boseies and it was founded to do
this online thing and make certain that there was some online um availability in Colorado. But we've we've expanded our view of choice and continue to to build on that. But we certainly have not abandoned the commitment to online education in Colorado. And so we have a
portfolio of online multi-dist online schools. They have different characters. They have different approaches. They have different curriculo sets. Uh and we think that choice matters in every capacity including in online. We there's a star on this one because we had a a wonderful u interaction with Colorado
Department of Education this year which I was actually delighted to see. Uh we have a brick and mortar bricks and mortar classical academy that ran their high school as primarily a virtual academy
within the school and the CD recognized that and supported it within the constraints of what they allow. But we began to have so many students and so much interest in that that uh they needed to expand and and the CDE actually worked with us to say, "Hey, why don't we give you a separate school
code for a single district online school as a component of that high school so there's no uh enrollment limit or capping on those for those students because that community, it's in PBLO, that community needs more of this." And so uh we were just delighted to see that
partnership. Uh I'm delighted it it will take some time to work that out. It's not complete. It will actually be completed next year. Uh but it was a great opportunity to work together to to bring about some some new things in communities that really need them.
Uh we are a powerhouse for homeschool enrichment programs in the state of Colorado. Uh we have 54 individual programs across the state as of this year and we have a pipeline that will continue to grow that very aggressively.
We have about 70 campuses because some of our programs have multiple campuses. Uh the CDE informed us this year that uh over half of all students participating in a homeschool enrichment program in the state of Colorado are in education
reinvisioned homeschool enrichment programs. So, I'm pleased to say that we're delivering on that footprint that I talked about earlier, that parents are finding the choices and they're finding a a very broad portfolio of choices. So, they're finding the right footprint for
each student. Our funded enrollment and part-time, full and part-time student headcount, if you will. You're familiar with both of those numbers. I only talk about this to show that demand still exists. the last three years, year over year over year, you can see that we've
averaged approximately 40% growth. Now, I'm not I go back to that we're not empire builders. We serve. The idea is if there are programs that parents and families wish existed, we're going to do everything we can to make sure that they do. And that's why they keep coming
because they're bringing these ideas to us. We're not deciding what should exist somewhere. It's communities and founders and and families saying, "We wish we had this." And then we say, well, let's see if we can make it happen. And that's the right way to serve the families of
Colorado and make certain that students are getting the education that their families actually wish for them to receive. So, as you can see, it's a year-over-year growth. Uh, I will tell you that our pipeline for next year for homeschool enrichment continues to
predict this growth rate, at least in that category. It's hard for us to predict bricks and mortar because there are a lot of moving parts to making those arrangements with districts. So, I won't prognosticate on that at all, but I will tell you that our homeschool enrichment growth for next year is somewhere between probably 30 and 40 new
programs on top of the uh 54 that we have now. So, there is no slowdown in interest and demand among the Colorado families for support in educating their children the way they want them to be execu uh educated.
Uh last just a note on new bricks and mortar schools. We did uh authorize a new bricks and mortar school in PBLO this year called Riverstone Academy. It's uh in keeping with our mission of continuing to make certain that the
programs that parents wish existed do exist. Uh it is Colorado's first public Christian school and we are happy to have that school open. We're delighted that they came to us and said, "Hey, we'd like to operate this school." Uh
we're confident that the Espinosa ruling of the Supreme Court says we can't care when we apply public money to these private educational institutions. We can't care whether they're religiously affiliated or not. And so we don't. And we're delighted to see this school open. And uh we will continue to move forward
with innovative, exceptional educational programs throughout Colorado. I don't mind skipping this slide, but do you mind if I call one thing out? Okay, thank you. Uh I I will mention the one other thing that I didn't put in here. I talked about the other two pieces, so I won't say it, but microschools. We have
a handful of microschools in Colorado, which uh we're delighted to to see. Uh it's a growing trend and a growing interest of families and so we're happy to be uh able to accommodate occasionally in the environments where there's a group of families that really
want this. Uh we're able to support those and we're seeing expanded growth in that area as well. So uh delighted to see the uh micro school component increase as well. Thank you for allowing us to be a part
of uh D49 with your support. We do try to deliver some value to D49 as well. I mentioned it here on this slide. We fund your schooly seats. Uh we give you an opportunity to look at innovative approaches at arms length uh without without you know taking that on entirely
on your own. Uh but uh enjoying the learning without the risk and we do try to be a sandbox. So when we get to exchange ideas with you guys uh we're happy to experiment as well in education. Thank you. Are there any questions?
Director Schmidt, I always have a question tonight. Um, what is a schooly seat? What what is that? Uh, schooly is an application that you use in the district to support uh education. Um, you you have to pay for
licenses for it. And it's one of the few things that we get to do to give back uh to our member districts. Uh the state allows a specific grant for boseis to provide services to districts and we we allocate that one to pay for your schooly seats.
Thank you director. Yeah. Uh as you were talking I took a look at the the schools that are listed um at the CDE and I see the the list is um hasn't been updated uh for 2025 because uh the performance ratings
haven't been updated yet. And I see Orton Academy there and I know that that has since been transferred over to District 11. And I just want to say that is an example of a school that is very much needed. Um I know a family who
their um child went to our allies which is an outstanding school that uh of innovation that specially serves students with uh specific learning disabilities. when their child aged out of uh Allies, they were, you know,
desperate to find another opportunity that would serve them well. Uh that student is now in Orton Academy and the family is very happy with what's going on there. We're delighted to work with the 11 on that. Again, we're happy to transfer it where it'll be supported and I believe
it will. Now I do though I heard that at the end that essentially erosis is going to be participating in the spread of uh religious schools receiving public funding. And as somebody who you know
gets deep into our US constitution and our US history, eroding that separation of church and state is very concerning. And for us to be a partner in that is uh it does not sit well with me.
Um just a note of clarification, separation of church and state is not contained in the United States Constitution. I wanted to hear a little bit more about micro schools. Absolutely. Uh there is a growing trend in small groups of families wanting a
custom curriculum set that that they come together and teach a smaller group of of students, but they still have an instruction an instructor and a well- definfined curriculum. Uh they'll they'll meet in a smaller facility. Uh it's often 10 families, five to 10 families instead of being a large
school. Uh and we're finding a lot of interest in that nationwide. Uh but it's definitely occurring here in Colorado as well. Students, do you have any questions about any of this? Ben, I see your pin up. Thank you. Um, I really just have one
question. I apologize if I missed it, but throughout that presentation, you use the term bricks and mortar a lot. I apologize. Uh, I apologize if I missed it, but could you just kind of run me through what that means? Absolutely. There are we we in our
hierarchy, we kind of define four models of education in terms of the institution. All right. So, a bricks and mortar school is a school that you can physically attend. So, most of the schools you're familiar with are bricks and mortar schools. Uh, online schools
you can't physically attend. You attend them remotely, right? Virtually. Uh, homeschool enrichment is often not a building built for that, but you just meet somewhere to do that. Sometimes it has a building, but sometimes it doesn't. So, homeschool enrichment is
yet a different model. Uh, so bricks and mortar is I would call it the traditional school building. Thank you, Emma. Do you have any questions? Okay, director D'vola.
Uh thank you for everything that you do and I I am very well pleased uh all the choices that you have and that you are just that support for school choice and for parents to um send their kids to uh
institutions and places that they would love to see their kids be a part of. So thank you for championing that. um as to whether or not we should support uh schools that have Christian values or that want to be a specific orientation
to um a religion of sort some sort. Um, just so everyone's aware, uh, pre the 1960s in every public school, they taught the Bible and they prayed every morning in the classrooms. And so uh which was very
much a part of our our national uh heritage that every school promoted um the values of the ten commandments and the Bible and our our students were taught that all the way up until the 1960s. Um and so
and they were funded. So there you go. Okay. Are there any other questions? All right. Well, thank you for coming. Thank you. And now we are on to item 9.2.
Good evening board. Uh I would like to just introduce our next speaker. He's coming to us from RBC Capital Group uh to speak to us and kind of inform us on COP refunding. We hope to bring you a very soon future resolution to move
forward with this, but we thought it was very prudent to come and inform everyone on what the process is. So, it's my pleasure to introduce Mr. Tide Snido Snido, sorry, members of the board of education, uh Superintendent Hilts. Uh, good evening.
I'm Todd Snider. I'm the managing director with RBC Capital Markets up in Denver. And I'm here, I think, really just to make sure that you're aware of an opportunity to refinance district uh, certificates of participation. And, uh, this stemmed from the retirement of my
colleague uh, David Bell, who had worked with the district for a number of years uh, back in December of 24. I came down in the spring and had meetings uh with Superintendent Hilts and the interim CFO and then again more recently with uh uh
Rebecca. And so when the uh series 2015 COPs were sold, they had the opportunity to be refinanced at the 10-year call date and we're actually coming up upon that. That'll be the uh the 15th of December of this year and the IRS actually allows us to go back in time 90
days to affect that transaction. And so really this is very I think analogous to what we've all done when rates were attractive and refinanced our mortgages. So you have the opportunity to pay off the series 2015 coops in their entirety uh in the middle of December. And the
way you would do that is you would sell a refunding series of coops. The money from that sale is used to then pay off the the 2015 cop. So again, once those are extinguished, you're left with the lower payments on the refunding cops
with lower interest rates. The annual savings is going to range between 128,000 and about $170,000. And so in the aggregate nearly 2.5 million, we look at what that means in today's dollars, which we call present value savings, and that's nearly $2 million. Uh the government finance
officers association says that if you can save 3% on a present value basis from your refunding they view it as an economic uh opportunity for that issuer. Right now in this current market we're about 4%. So when uh we met back in the
spring uh we were not in those ranges. Interest rates were higher but now that the Fed's actually started to follow through on its uh interest rate cuts we're starting to see rates heading in the right direction. And so, uh, right now, as I said, you're about 4% savings. If we continue trending downward, we'll actually hope to see a little bit
better, um, result for you. And, uh, I guess with your your permission, we'd love to begin that process. And I think, as Rebecca mentioned, we'd come back to you with a formal resolution probably next month when we're further down the road. Um, this is one of those things that, um, I think is something that
districts do to show their fiscal prudence. Uh I when I was looking through the documents it occurred to me that the series 2015 issuance was actually a refinance of the earlier 2006 and 2007 COP. So the district does have pretty good track record of doing this
for its taxpayers. Um but again I just I wanted to come here and see if there were any questions on that and and uh making sure I got you answers. I know there were some questions about some of the terminology and some of the memos I prepared. Director Hy. Okay. Thank you. And just just so that I
can get a little bit of clarity um if we could move to page three on this. So we're we're specifically talking about that 2015 series. Yes. Um we're talking about the amount outstanding is 50.5 million. Are we
talking that is our target to raise uh with the new issue of coops? So we're not adding additional debt. No. actually in and the interesting thing and I don't want to kill you with the uh the you know the minutia of the uh taxes at market but you're actually
going to pay off about 50 million500,000 worth of existing coops and we're going to propose to issue about $47 million uh and because we'll be able to generate some premium from that sale that will get you the money you need to pay off the 15. So you're actually going to reduce the principal outstanding by
about $3 million. And then as far as the maturity date, are we targeting the same final maturity date or are we planning on extending that out? Nope. Um, this is another thing that differs from how the mortgage market works. You don't reset a 30-year mortgage after 10 years and take it on
another 30 years. You're going to not go beyond the existing 2039 final retirement. So, to summarize, we're going to we're going to reduce our outstanding debt. We're going to have the same
maturity date on it and we're going to save 120,000 or so per year doing so about 170,000 the first year because it's kind of a you know a shorter period it's it's a lower amount but the bulk of the uh machuries from 2026 through 39 would be
in the 170 $180,000 range. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? Okay. If there are no objections, this will be moved forward to action at the next meeting. Great.
Okay. Thank you. Wait. Thank you so much. Okay. Okay, we are on to item 9.3, the preliminary fourth quarter financials. Good evening again. Um, I just want to
Oh, let me get that open really quick. Oh, thank you. Thank you. So, I would really just like to make sure that I call out that these are preliminary. They are unawituded. So, it is our first essential draft. We have a
we have closed the period other than adjustments through working with our auditors. So even though there should there could be some changes, they should be relatively minor. Um and we will represent fourth quarter with the audit. So we will get those
finalized fourth quarter. Actually it'll be the full year um financials once audit comes through. So, I know this is different than what you guys have seen before. So, uh I mean it's still probably very much the same data, but the format probably looks a
little different. So, I want to take a little bit of time to explain what each of these pages represents. Um, and then I would also welcome any feedback along the way on if you would prefer or if there's something missing that you would
like to see in the future. Um, this particular slide references all of our general fund or fund 10 revenues. It is summarized in a year-over-year comparison. The top is the 2425 school year, which is essentially our our
fourth quarter financials that we're talking about today. The bottom is a comparison of the 2324 in the same fourth quarter totals. Some of the things to note, um, our revenue is up year-over-year and
our transfers also went up. Um, I don't know if you guys remember when I talked about the increase of the subsidies to other funds that we've had to do. That also is constituting what we transfer to charters. Those are both in that transfer total. So even though we had an
increase in revenue, those transfers increased more than our revenue. So we're actually down overall if you look at the 182 million in 2324. So just kind of where my mouse is right
here and then the total for 2425 is gone down to 177 million. So ultimately that is an overall decline in revenue. Any questions about our revenues for
general fund? I'm going to move on to expenses. So this is also a year-over-year comparison. So the revenues couldn't quite fit on a side by side. Everything else going forward is side by side. Um so these the right hand side is your 23
24 totals and the left side is your 2425 totals for fourth quarter. So here this is also year-over-year. So you'll see there's comparisons. What we're primarily looking at here are the actual columns. So actual is the second column
in each of the field in each of the tables. This particular slide is only focusing on salary and benefits and it is broken out by the different categories of of employees that we have. So it gives you
a little bit of detail here, but it's still summarized in a way that's not hopefully too overwhelming. the things that I have for of that that are of note in this particular slide that we did exceed budget projections.
Um, and I want to also tie this back to how I don't know if this has been a while since we talked about this, but we budgeted in the 2425 school year at a 97% of salaries. So the fact that we
exceeded that shows that going forward I anticipate changing that. The current year we already upped it to 98% but we've also talked about how well staffed we are across the district. So I think that begs future potential change to
even shorten that that percentage a little bit more. And then overall we were we had an increase of $15.1 million year-over-year in salaries and benefits. And this just as a point of
clarification was before the majority of the pay changes that we've put into place had even come into play. So those mostly are in this new year, the current year that we're talking about. So we can expect to see even greater increases moving forward. Any
questions on this slide? Director Schmidt, did you have a question? I did. Um, explain variance again. I think I have it, but let's go again. Absolutely. So, a variance is anything that varies from. So, in this case, what
I'm talking There's kind of two variances noted on this particular slide. So the one that I'm talking about in the notes that I'm calling out is a year-to-year delta essentially. So a change from one year to the other. However, there are
variances noted on here also of budget to actuals. So depending on which particular column or cell you're looking at, the variance could have a different like det like um definition. Yeah. Thank you.
You bet. Any other questions? Okay. Thank you very much. Yeah. All right. So now this next slide is for everything non salary. So um
this is everything operational in our general fund. So it would be any services that we purchase. Um it would be all supplies, all equipment, basically anything else that's not salary and benefits. This follows the same year-over-year comparison with the
right being the 2324 and the left being 2425. The things of note here, we had a $5 million increase year-over-year here. Um, the majority of that, however, was our CDE contact audit. Just as a point
of clarity, that's that's the bulk of it. And then you'll notice at the very bottom, this is a really big Excel spreadsheet that I've kind of copied and pasted into the different slides. So when it talks about the subtotal expense
accounts, that includes all of the salary and benefits and these non- salary. So overall, it's total of about 20 million year-over-year increase. Any questions on this particular slide?
Uh, yes. So, I just want to make sure nobody else had a question. Awesome. All right. So, my question is you described um you said it was a $5 million non uh salary
expenses increase. Uh would you consider that something normal just yearbyear for the district? No. So, um, typically, I mean, it can vary depending on if we had a big project or things like that that we were
paying for something out of our general fund, but since it the majority of our budget is over 80% almost 85% salaries and benefits. So, for us to have a 5 million jump in our outside of salaries
and benefits, that's a very large increase for us. And the reason that it jumped so high, we had a particular audit from CDE and it was over $3 million that we paid. So 3 million or a little over of that 5 million was part
of that audit. So that's why it was so much more than what we would expect. And that was why your schedule changed at your high school. your minutes and all of those changed was because the audit caught that we weren't calculating those minutes correctly in some places.
So um right which happens to every district eventually when they come and audit this is not substandard but that's why when you talk to your classmates that 5 million that 3 million that we paid is part of why we made sure we made that change so that that never happens again.
Well I am learning things today. Thank you. and MI have bad news for you. That means more and more snow days will turn into online instructional days. Director Dvola. Um, but apparently the school board has
the power over the weather, so it may not happen. I have to correct that. Only our wellness department has that power. Oh, gotcha. Okay, any other questions on this slide?
Okay, and this one's kind of the catchall of everything else. So, we kind of captured the summary of the transfers for the funds, but this breaks it down um because they are ultimately a reduction of revenue. So, this is more of a
breakdown of what all of those transfers actually ended up being. And then it also captures what's been spent out of our different reserves and then gives you an overall total. So really the bottom line of everything we've talked about general fund up until now shows
that we have a $6.8 million deficit for last year. And that ties into the fund balance changes that I brought last month. Um and then some appropriations changes that I brought last month to show where everything kind of fell at
the end of the year. Any questions on this slide? Director Hy, I just wanted to make a comment because I've been seeing some things on social media about, you know, teachers wanting to to make more money and we absolutely
want to pay more money, but as you see, last year we operated as at a deficit after approving um teacher salary increases. And you know, we have control over how we spend money, but we have ab
almost no power whatsoever over revenue. Um, you know, ultimately all of that power belongs to the the state when they set their budget and it belongs to our taxpayers, uh, you know, approving um, new revenue streams. So, uh, I just want
to let you all know we're doing everything we can. Matter of fact, I would have to hazard a guess that if you were to compare us with our two closest competitors in terms of size, that the percentage we
spend on salary as a part of our budget exceeds similarsized districts. I don't have that off the top of my head. Um I do know it's pretty standard for most districts of our size to land somewhere between 80 and 85% of salary
and benefits. then we're right in that window. So it sounds like we're on the upper end of that ratio. Yeah, we're at approximately 83 something% for the current year. So we're definitely over the halfway mark.
Yeah. Okay. Any other questions on this section? Okay. So now this kind of shifts. So, we really in the past we've done a lot of indepth around our general fund and fund 10, but I also wanted to make sure we
didn't neglect giving you guys some summaries on our other funds. So, this is kind of a new format that we've come up with. We did um kind of look at other districts in the area and see what we thought was a really good summary format. So based on that, this gives you
a true budget to actuals and whether or not it's a true deficit of revenues versus expenses for each fund that we have. This does exclude fund balances currently. So I would love feedback on if you would prefer to have fund
balances included in this going forward or not. Um but it definitely would kind of change the format of the data. This shows you truly within the year if we have for actuals a true surplus or deficit within each fund.
And so I don't necessarily want to call like go through every single one of these. That would take forever. Um but I would like to kind of call out there's a few pages of these. On this particular page, I'm just going
to kind of correlate with the funds that we did subsidize this year. So on this particular screen, our insurance fund fund 18 and our preschool fund fund 19 are two that we subsidized this year.
And then on this page, our transportation fund 25 and our base 49 fund 27. also received subsidy this year. And then lastly, our health insurance
fund on this page, fund 64, also received subsidy from the general fund. Do you guys have any questions around any of these individual fund comparisons? Director Hy. Not a question, but a
comment. I just wanted to let everybody know that um the reason we were um supplementing the transportation fund was because the board approved a change to get rid of the transportation fee that we were charging um families and uh
is my understanding. Is that correct? We still charge a fee. I do know that we adjusted but we didn't get rid of it. Two years ago, we asked for an increase to match budget and the board did not approve that increase. And so since that time, we've operated by transferring
funds. Um, so when we charge fees, those come in as revenues. They can go different places, but we we needed to subsidize our transportation service out of primarily out of fund 10. Yes. Primarily or exclusively out of fun. It's exclusively exclusively out of fun. Um, I seem to
remember a request, but I I guess I'm misremembering. Yeah, there he had meant Peter had presented that idea, but we never voted on it. Director Dvola, yes, I do know like there's some parameters around which funds can be
used for which things. Um, so what with the general fund, are we allowed to use the general fund to subsidize all of these different things or are there only certain ones that we can pull? That is a great question. So there's
only certain ones that we can subsidize with fund 10 general fund money. So taxpayer dollars definitely have certain rules around what we can um transfer out of fund 10. So for an example um the
anything with the MLO fund that's funded separately through MLO funds. We do not subsidize typically with our general fund. Um, we also fund 29 is a huge one that is exclusively fund raise dollars and it is very inappropriate for us to
transfer any funding of taxpayer dollars into something to be used with different rules and parameters under fund 29. So those are just a couple of examples but you are absolutely right. Any other questions?
And before we move on, do you guys have any feedback on yes or no on the fund balance or if you would like to see that and have it kind of change the dynamic or do you like this as it is? Director Hy.
So, um, when we talk about the overall fund balance, is that just fund 10 or is that a summary of all of the the different funds? So it's a little bit of a combination of both. So there are some funds that roll up into fund 10, but
typically that is just our fund our combined fund 10 total. So uh because I would be interested in seeing fund balance only to understand the the health of you know the the overall district but like the the
fundraiser um one is an example of one that we don't need to be focused on. So, I would I would I I think what I'm getting at is I'd like to see an overall fund balance that incorporates fund 10 plus all of the eligible um targets for
fund 10 and then just that one value would would satisfy me. Okay. Thank you. Anyone else? Director Schmidt, if we were to do them all, how much would it impact this? This is pretty easy to read. How much would it impact
it? Would it be like a ton of data to go through if we had all of the fund balances? Oh, if we were able to like I could do it one of two ways. So, if you wanted all of the fund balances, it could just
be a simple line for next to each one that I could include. Like say for example, right here next to bond redemption 31. I could we could do something in here with what the fund balance is. or it can be something that's incorporated into the totals, but
then it would skew it would be a different presentation of data. So, it kind of depends on what you prefer to see as the board in this financial report. Director Dvola, sorry, Deb, did you have a follow-up? Um, I I'd just like to get together and
we'll discuss it. Okay. And then I can make my decision and they can make theirs. Okay. Director Dvola. Um, first of all, I think I understand more about our budget than I have in the last four years just because of the way
you presented it. So, please keep keep this. Um, the fun balance though, if if it's as if it's as simple as just adding that column, I'm for that. Okay. Ben, did you have a question?
Nope. Director Hy. And um if we're going to go ahead and add the the fund balance for each um the funds, I would just recommend that instead of doing a column, we do an extra line just because I've got old man eyes and I can just barely read this as
it is now. And if it scrunches in anymore, I'm I'm going to be lost. It it would be a row. Um so definitely a new line. Okay. Thank you. One last slide and then I'll open it up to any general questions. But this is just something
that honestly I have to give the idea was Peter's to show this revenue versus expenses um kind of chart to show how our revenue which is the green line has kind of flatlined. It's slightly increasing but our expenses have
skyrocketed. So just a nice visual to kind of see how how that aligns with with our current budget situation. So now, do you guys have any questions overall? Director Hy.
So, first of all, this is slightly off topic, but I want to thank you for the one-on-one conversation we had prior to the um refunding uh because I was kind of lost in the weeds and you gave me enough clarity that I was able to answer
ask very simple questions and help our community understand what we're talking about. And so, thank you very much. um on the slide previous if we can go back to that. So I just want to point out to the community that when we do the budgeting process we are essentially
trying to predict the future and so you see that that revenue growth and how closely tied we were on our expenses to that because things were very predictable. And then if you were to project out that expense line out even
further, you would see that it it aligned if you if you continued the revenue line the way it was trending. Then our increases in expenses were very reasonable given the history. But there
are so many variables that influence revenue. They are way beyond our control. And so I just want to let everybody know we're very aware of the situation that we're in. We're working hard on it and um you know
we can't predict the future with 100% clarity. Director Dvola. Um I do believe that we can slightly predict that that will come down. Correct. Because of that one spike in
increase uh with a 3 million um that is a portion of it. Yes. So that did inflate that to some degree. However, I know you guys have heard me talk about recurring versus ongoing expenses. we still are on track with our
recurring and ongoing expenses versus the one time. Um, and so we will have to definitely make some decisions and adjustments ourselves outside of the 3 million, but those are in the works.
We're we're working on a plan. Yes, Superintendent Hilts. So I I just I also want to observe um the the difference that we call the delta between the two lines in the 2425
year is a combination of it's well it's a combination of some increased uh some increased expenses some of which were one-time and some of which were recurring expenses that increased at a
higher rate such as insurance such as literally just some of the supplies that we purchase um through various programs, costs of construction, cost of gasoline for our snow plows, right? So, it was a combination really not not really historically a
spike really a return to the historical increase in expenses over time. Why we're concerned with the year we're about to come into the year we're already in. Why we're concerned with
that is because we simultaneously had a significant reduction in a special funding instrument from the state uh that had been appropriated and had been appropriated and had been appropriated and then wasn't. So that's what caused
the the gap. I have heard on various things social media that we've got a $9 million shortfall. That isn't the way we would talk about it. We are required to come back to you with a balanced budget and we will do so. We are operating this
year within our means because the reserve is part of our means. So I want to make sure everyone understands we we don't have we cannot deficit spend and we cannot exceed your approved authority on the expense side. So, we are going to
be scrubbing hard and looking not only for ways to reduce um all of our expenses across the board, but we're also appreciating that our schools drew even more students this year, we were able to to restore some enrollment revenue uh that we didn't have last
year. And so, our job will be to come back to you and communicate this to you. Uh as we come around the corner into the annual planning summit in February, um we'll have a set of proposals. I will I will predict that in December, Miss Brooks and I will be asking you to
invest a chunk of time at the annual planning summit on budget matters. We have not always done that, but we believe this year we're going to need to do that. And the January um particularly the January regular meeting where we adopt the amended budget, please read
that slowly, read that thoroughly because that is going to be a a critical inflection point for the district. Thank you. Okay, any other questions then? Okay, thank you. Thank you.
Next up, we have 9.4, the superintendent report of quantitative performance metrics and quantitative multi-raater results. Good evening, friends. This is Peter, superintendent, and I would like to
quote um one of my childhood uh heroes, Chevy Chase. I believe he was playing Gerald Ford. I was told there would be no math. And yet, after the last two presentations, I am going to bring you more math. Uh and so, um what you see
here on these attachments, uh if you've opened them, you have seen these before. Uh I've presented these for uh I don't know, at least six years in a row. And there are two that are somewhat new. And so I'm going to start with this one.
And I'll zoom in so you don't have to squint. Remember that we give an opportunity to this year. I think I I I'm I'm I'm going to miss the number. I'll come back to it in the report. We give an opportunity to a group of individuals to evaluate my performance.
So we ask people that um are are direct reports the cabinet. We ask people that are uh indirect reports in the plus one or two deep. So that would include principles. So we have a category of principles. We have a category of cabinet members. We have a category of other district leaders. These might be
directors. Uh they might be individuals in other leadership roles. Then we have our our support professionals, educational support professionals, ESP. Um, and we include in the the other leaders category some professional technical
folks. And the goal is for you as a board to get a sense of how my leadership is perceived uh among the workforce. And this is one of the ways you you know about that. You hear it anecdotally. Um, you say you hear what I claim and and what others might. And
then this gives you an opportunity to look at a set of categories. So on the left you see the categories color-coded uh customers, knowledge, leadership, management, results, and strategy. Now before and then the workforce. Before I
I scoot to the right, just ask yourself which of these do you think is an area of higher performance for me and which do you think is an area where I need to continue to improve? So am I really good with the workforce? Do I nail strategy? Am I delivering
results? How do I do a management? Am I am I strong in leadership or knowledge or customers? And then we'll scoot to the right and we'll see if your predictions, you probably already looked at the data, so it's not really a true test, but over here you can see uh on a
fivepoint scale, and my goal is to get every number above four, every individual number, every average number uh above four. And so on a five-point scale, uh I am down year-over-year in customers. My overall score there is high relative to others. I'm at 422 up
slightly in the area of knowledge. I am down about a tenth in leadership. I am down 1/100th in management. Um however
um you'll see in the comments I think this is significant. I'm I'm taking this as significant. Management is the area where I think the people that look to me for leadership are the least satisfied at least in their comments and anecdotes. I'm not managing as well as they expect.
Um even though the numbers don't show that I think the comments back that up. um in terms of results um we have a significant improvement and that is going to be I want you to remember that because it it doesn't necessarily match
up with the data that I'm about to show you on the quantitative metrics but as perceived by the people um they perceive that we're doing we're focused on re on results to prioritize improvement compared to other organizations etc. uh
strategy, which I I would like to think I'm I'm good at strategy, but the folks don't agree. And so, it's a lowcoring area and uh let's just be blunt. I you should trust their evaluation of this better than mine because I I have uh a
disproportionately higher view of my my strategic leadership. I think it's because I I strategize a lot in my brain and I don't always articulate it well, but you can make your own judgment. And then workforce, which has been an area of of significant um significant commitment over the years. This this
disturbs me. I I really dislike seeing a drop of of this magnitude. And I would invite you to look at the comments. I have some ideas why I'm about to start the vow learning tour. We are analyzing comments and scores from the vow annual survey because I need to understand that
that is a negative trend and it's a it's a significant negative trend and it has to occupy my attention. So that is that is document one that is in your packet. A different way of looking at the same data
is by those groups. So you see the averages. What I just showed you was this set of data here. Now you are seeing the groups compared to my myself rating. Uh I rated myself overall at a 389. The people that rated me rated me
overall at a 4.1 means we're not that far apart. And I have some additional narrative down below. Uh you can see for yourself which which items overall were higher and lower scoring. Um, but I think it's it's interesting
that I I score my highest score is with principles and that is not normally what I think you would expect. I think normally you would think well I I work directly with and have relationships with the cabinet but I have higher scores here. I think
I do not have proof of this and the comments are not very revealing, but I think this is about that district performance calculator, school performance calculator. And I think when people feel like they're accomplishing significant work together, they value each other and and maybe have a slight
bump. And my theory is that the great work that our principles are doing lets them know they're moving in the right direction. and I get just a little halo effect because I'm the one that's in the meetings with them. That's my theory. And maybe there's principles behind me saying, "No, he doesn't know what he's
talking about." Um, but I have to speculate a little bit. I have to infer some things. You have as well the full report. And so this report breaks it down in excruciating detail. And I'm just not going to do it. Lots of
columns, lots of rows, lots of numbers. Um, my overall average yearover-year I dropped from a a 4.14 uh all the way down to a 4.12. I'm being facitious. It's two 100ths of a drop.
That's really flat year-over-year on the perceptual survey. Flat year-over-year on the metrics that I'm about to show you. It's a much worse story. And so, we decided that that was going to be important. So this perceptual report from the people that I
lead is important. And then you get down here, you get into these these this shows you the distribution of scores. So, for example, in working with customers, I'm not getting zeros and ones, which mean that I I never am
intentional and I never understand, but I'm getting a, you know, a fair smattering in the 34 band. That's a high scoring overall. So, you can kind of see where the big dots land here. And then if I scroll through additional pages, you see, oh, when you see more big dots
to the left, then see where they are, uh, what group they might be coming out of, which specific item. And so there's some concern here about my monitoring of performance and how I'm doing in that area. jumping down. Um, no real big dots
to the left, but there's a kind of a range of perspective about um, my positive leadership. And this one, I think my wife would score me low here because the full statement of this is creates a positive leadership culture through the use of humor. And so, I
guess dad jokes don't work in D49 because I got some lower scores there. But that's part of what that's talking about is cultural leadership, personal leadership, not my strong, not the strongest part of my brand as a leader. Um, these are sort of self-explanatory. I am
not the most focused person. I say that ADD is a professional hazard or requirement. And I I've actually improved in this quite a bit in the last couple of years. And so I appreciate that. But remember that overall I think this is the area where I have the most
dissatisfaction. Then with results probably well one of my top two categories because the perception and the focus of results that we have done together is is landing well uh with
these evaluators. Um pretty mixed bag on strategy. It's the only category that has three big dots to the left uh in the in the two column and a smattering of ones. Um no zeros, I'm glad. But when you look at the items,
this is a lot about my communication of the strategy. There is one win here. And the win is that for seven years as a chief education officer and then two years as then CEO then first year as superintendent. This used to be my worst rated item is careful not to
overinitiative the organization. So I'm a slower learner but I learned and that's now not even in my bottom five which is kind of cool. I've paid attention to that and listen to the folks. So you're welcome to have more fun with that. And the version that you have in administrative content uh
includes comments. Uh some of those comments are personal and revealing of who wrote them and that's not appropriate for for public content. Um at least not without significant redaction. Uh and then this is the
metric data. And I know it's really hard to read, but I'm just going to remind us we all agreed that it was appropriate if we were all focused on data together. We all agreed that these are the things that you should use to evaluate my objective
performance. The DPF level, the DPF trends, and the SPF level. And so this measures how many schools got into the improvement. And I showed you earlier they all did that were measured. This measured how many of them in the
green got better year-over-year. There are some other scores we didn't have. We don't have our report yet back from Baldridge, but because we are a national finalist, I made the judgment call and you can override me. I made the judgment that being a national finalist meets
expectations. Um, I think if we were a national recipient, I would ask you to rescore that to four, which I think would exceed expectations. We don't expect to be, but we'll be incredibly proud of our of our workforce. So, as you look at those data and you scoot right,
this is not a good result. I'm down 25 points year-over-year. The main reason is that we have a very very high standard for ongoing school improvement. And so these two numbers
right here, we expect that our charter schools and our operated schools will improve their school performance. I I can only meet ex expectations if over 16 of our operated schools improve
year-over-year. And we did not hit that mark. Uh in fact, in the version that that you have, it lists the schools that did improve. And while that is a great group right there, there's some really important names missing. There's some schools that had tremendous performance
last year and fell back. And I am the academic and performance leader in the district. and it should reflect in my evaluation and it does. You also know and I won't belabor it but we had some significant pullback in the charter sector as well and in the charter sector
um the meets expectation is seven the partially meets is six and so you can see um my rating is only two because we only had these six that that improved year-over-year. So those are significant. Um, I'm I'm happy to explain what I believe happened, but I
think the the intent of the board and my intent with you is that these are objective metrics. They are they're not excusable or hidable. There may be some reasons. Um, but I don't think my job is to explain the reasons for the results. It's to present the results and then see
where you take us. So, I'm I'm going to stop there and see what questions you might have. Thank you for letting me go a little bit long. This is our second year using this model and I actually think the significant drop triangulated with the multi-raider is
good data for you as evaluators. Director Schmidt, you have a couple of questions. Um I'm wondering if this multi-raider shouldn't be presented by a neutral person. No offense. Not offended at all.
We've done both. There's been years where Paul Anderson has presented it. There's been years I always do an analysis for you and then you can read the comments and actually I think part of what you evaluate evaluate me on is the authenticity or integrity of my
report of it. Um, I'm also I'm a big believer that performance measurements should be tied directly to the job description. And I've only done this once, so I'm not
sure if this multi-riter covers everything in your job description. You know, we hired you to do a job. This is the description of what we want you to do. Are you doing it? Is that answered in this? I would certainly say that the
multi-rator covers the categories in both my job description and in your evaluation instrument. So the evalu the evaluation instrument that you use has the same categories as this. Um the job
description is not quite written that way. It has there are some other reasons that an HR document has to have other things in it. Um I think it has to tell you that I I might regularly have to lift 50 pounds or something. Um so there are some things in the job description
that are not reflected here but the but I don't think the board would have allowed a significant mismatch. And I just have kind of one more question. Um, when we have the board evaluation, is it the same employers
council product with the same fivepoint scale? And if not, why would we use two different products with two different point scales? Excellent question. Um,
the basic answer is because you chose to because this whole evaluation process is is embedded in policy. I think it's CBI-R. Paul brought that to you, discussed it with you last January. We made some adjustments to it over the years. Um,
I have suggested and I will do it again publicly that if you really want to understand my performance, pick either a random or a purposeful sample of the people um that work in the district. probably a couple cabinet
members, some principles, some teachers, some some operational uh individuals, somewhere between seven and 12 of those folks, put them around a table with two of you, talk for an hour, and you will walk out of there and you'll know more about my performance and and then I'll
learn it from you because you'd be doing your own version of a VT. I've done 600 VTs. I learned so much from listening directly to people. And these are people that I've gotten a survey from and I've gotten and I still always learn things from sitting down with them. So I would
once again encourage the board to delegate to individuals to sit with a group of people because you'll you'll know you can ask them outside my presence and just say what frustrates you with Peter? What inspires you? What what do you wish
you'd do more of? What um you know what makes you respect him? What makes you distrust him? you would get insights that you cannot get in this multi-raider. You cannot get in these in these numbers. That that'd be my recommendation. Um and and I would value the feedback. Um
I'll stop there. Well, and I think that makes sense, too, because we're looking at the difference between what the board the board interacts with the superintendent, let's say, three to four times a month, and the employees and the other leadership
positions interact with him on a completely different basis. So, I think that's part of the reason why there's a different evaluation process. Director Hy. Yeah. And just to add to that too, I think it's important for the board to be evaluated differently simply because we
have a very different job. Um so um the the one uh difficulty I was having in trying to understand this data is directly related to this screen that you have up here and that was just in the weighted score trying to understand you know what does
that mean? you know, how do I how do I contextualize that? Is 62.5 a good or bad weighted score? Right? So, I was thankful for you for adding that extra context that I was missing by giving the year-over-year. So, I would just like to ask um presenting this next
time. Could you please include that? Absolutely. Yep. Last year that score was 87.5. Director Dvola. Um, uh, I would like to suggest that the
board does actually do that. I know, um, what my question is, what time frame is, um, the board evaluation? Remind me what? February. No, I think you get a form. So, Paul
Anderson runs that. Yeah, appropriately. There's your neutral neutral party. I think he brings that to you in November and I believe you all know. Yeah, I know you all know. Um, I will be sending you an email in
December that says this is your annual information that if you do not non-renew my contract, it will extend and you have to ex you have to non-renew me by January 15th per contract. And so before you do that, make that decision, you
need to complete my evaluation because the two ought to be related. Okay. With uh with that knowledge, I know that we had all discussed the um evaluation that we used versus the evaluation of the multi-raider and how
it wasn't aligned and our wanting to be able to have that um more aligned. Um, do we want to task board members to kind of delve into that a little bit more on
which tool we use or do we want to um have Paul Anderson try to mesh those together so that they're more similarly aligned or I don't know. I'm just throwing ideas around. Director Schmidt,
I think we could explore that both ways, you know, ourselves and see what Paul might come up with because I I agree. I think they should be more aligned. And the only reason I kind of question that is because it's coming from two
different positions. One is a position of oversight and the other position is day-to-day working. So that's why I think they should be somewhat different. Oh yeah, different categories. But I'm talking about the the scale. So we had
the one through four point scale versus the one through five point scale. And we used the multi-rator to help us to make our four-point scale. But that was really hard to say that a three could
only be a two or was it a you know it's it was very challenging in that aspect director and yeah I like the idea of um giving more options so that you can get more um
you know useful feedback. The problem with that though is that you lose the ability to evaluate delta year to year. essentially the the the year that you go to a fivepoint scale, that's year zero, right? New baseline.
And the other thing to think of is last time we relied on a super majority rather than maybe looking into a weighted score. Meaning that last year you had to if if you chose a number, four of you chose that number. Correct. Instead of an average or a
weighted number. So correct. And I asked for that because in the past I had gotten evaluations where one individual gave me a five or four and one individual gave me a one and that's a pretty mixed signal and that's why I think it would be better to look towards an average
instead of having that super majority. So those are my thoughts. Students, do you have any questions about this? Nope. Director Dvola. All right. So then do do we have consensus for any changing or do we want
to just leave it the way that it is so that we have consistency or I kind of want I would definitely like to explore it. I'm not saying there's going to be any change, but I think it should be talked out a little bit further because everybody's got their reasons and what
fors and all that stuff. And many times in conversations you might have a reason or I might have a reason and someone else will say something that you go okay wait a minute I should be thinking about that. So I think some conversation for
sure some exploration by conversation director hy. So, uh, if we're if we're just talking about the five of us doing our evaluation of the superintendent, I don't know that the the year-over-year um data is really all that important just because, again, there's only five
of us. So, um, and we're also talking about changing it to an average rather than um a super majority. Um, I wasn't very happy with the way that it ran last time. I didn't think it had good quality and so I'm very much in favor of moving
those changes both forward. And so the question would be is do two of us want to meet with Mr. Anderson or explore the roundt discussion? Um and so I think that that might be worthwhile. I think Mr. Anderson would be very good
insight. Director Dvola. Uh, so then do we have Well, I'm not the president, but you want to ask for consensus to Can I get a consensus to explore a different evaluation system with Mr. Anderson? I don't know. Mike, are you interested in meeting with him and me
just to kind of get an idea to discuss that? As long as it's not during my working hours. Yes. Okay. Can I get a consensus for that? I do have one more question. Can we do Noah's Arc two and two meet with Paul Anderson?
Well, I think that usually typically our process has been to have two, but I think there's more interest than just two. So, could we do like again Noah's Arc two and two?
Brad Miller here. So to me that feels like dangerously close to what is referred to as a daisy chain of of information and I would prefer that we avoid that. Director Dvola, would it be at all appropriate to have
that in a open meeting with Paul Anderson with all five of us? Yeah, having a meeting would be a very appropriate approach and if to the extent that you needed some confidentiality, there's probably a basis for some amount of executive session type of discussion around that
sort of thing, too. Well, I'm in favor of that then. Do you want to think about maybe having too many people meet first to think through some ideas and then come back to everybody just because of
because it's very scattered right now and I haven't said a whole lot but in part because I think we're heading in kind of an odd direction. Um because there was significant value in having to come to some kind of agreement
in that discussion. Um, I've been on the board when it was a straight average and um had been advocating for a long time for us to be able to have um discussion prior to writing the evaluation because we weren't you can't meet. We can't all sit
down and say what do you think? What do you think? What do you think? So, we had to submit a document having no conversation with other board members and it would be very very different. And then Paul was just putting all of that together. So you and we never got to have a discussion as a board without the
person. With the change in administrative structure, um the barrier to having that happen went away. Um trying to say that as carefully as I can. And so one of the major improvements is that that discussion had to happen.
Now whether that has to be a supermajority or a majority um I think that piece maybe is something that can be discussed a bit but um because some of that got kind of silly in my opinion when we got there and it was sort of
like okay well fine someone's just going to give in rather than really thinking through the depth of what we were doing on aspects of it. But I think we have to be careful about not losing that value that finally got added. And going to a straight average makes it too easy for people to not have the
discussion. And the discussion is important if um because you get a divided board who then makes it very difficult for the person to know where they stand. Um and that it makes it hard for them to move forward and to lead in
my opinion. I'm going to go in the order I spotted the hand. So, first it's Director Dvola. Yeah, I think we're a little bit off in the weeds a little bit because we need to get back onto what we were actually talking about. So, I think we should
just go to um start with two and then have executive session with all of us um about the proposed changes. So, um, we should call I call for consensus on I would say part of it would be not
executive session and then if there's something but I think we have to be careful too. I'm not I'm not ready to cross the bridge to declaring that we have an executive session pending on on this, but let's let's see where we land.
In public, which too? What we had just discussed a moment ago was myself and director Hyle. I'm very interested in this topic. Director Hy.
Yeah. Um so I think it is appropriate for Marie to be raising those points now because that's going to inform the strategy for um changing things. Uh in particular, yes, I absolutely agree. We should be having those conversations. And I think one thing maybe we could do
is just go around the table and say everybody here's the category what is your number and then just go one by one and yeah give your reasoning for it and I think that's important because when you hear somebody's reasoning for giving a different score it may move you right
um and so then at the end you give sort of a a final score and then you move on then to the next topic. why that is important to the the initial strategy planning is if we're going to take the time and have those conversations I don't think we want to go as granular
with the you know um I I don't know how many categories there were like 35 of them so we would turn that into a 4-hour meeting so I think maybe one of the things we want to do when we're strategizing this is say let's just take leadership as a category that's going to be one thing that we give a score but
we're going to keep these five things in mind as we assign that score. So I think that's something that we want to bring into as an understanding to the that that redesign. Isn't that part of the current? We didn't do 35 scores last time. We did
one for these are we weren't scoring each of these statements last time either. We were scoring the six general categories I think um which are based on the domains that come from the superintendent law the regulations at CDE for that. Yeah, that's one of the things that makes this conversation hard to have
now. I haven't seen that thing in, you know, nearly a year. So, I'm not really hearing a way forward at this point. So I think the way forward from what I was hearing is going to bring some of those concerns and suggestions about how do we massage it to make it make a
little more sense including whether or not we incorporate because there's another component of this is do we incorporate this in this evaluation cycle which is in the next two months um or are we talking about what we do in the year following which we should have challenged this then in January when Paul approached us with it um and so
sorting that out with Paul with the two of you probably makes the most sense saying here were a couple of things. Are any of these realistically doable for this evaluation cycle knowing you want to have some type of idea before December 15th? Um, and looking at those
timelines and then what other things do we want to flag for further conversation. Paul is the best person to sort that out with the two of you I think. Um and then come back with a whole board discussion on that piece for dividing it into what makes sense in this evaluation cycle if anything and
what are we looking at for next and it looks like Peter had a comment on what my summary was. Purely calendar last year you did the evaluation on the 3rd of December and you provided it to me on the 5th of December. Director Dvola.
So uh it's very clear to me that director Schmidt would like to be a part of that. So I actually would cons have consensus that it would be Lori and Director Schmidt who would I'm calling for consensus for that. So it's we didn't get consensus for the other.
Any comments or feedback on that? I would give consensus to that. It's not the hill I would die on. Director Levir, right? You look like you want to say something. Oh, okay. So, it looks like move forward
with is that Director Schmidt and I will meet with Paul Anderson to gather information to bring back to the board. Yes. Yes. Yes. Sure. Yes. Okay.
Now we are on to item 9.5, policy and procedure review. And on this one, we're looking at adding in the requirement for a doctor or therapist's note as part of an absenteeism. My I got to log back in
here. Hold on here. Yeah, it looks like so if they've already initiated truency, you can't just excuse your student anymore. You're going to have to pro provide proof of absence. That's a summary of what that is. I believe Director Dvola, I'm in full of support
of this because truency is a huge problem and parents have been able to get around it by just saying, "Oh, it was excused." So, this is important. Director Hy.
Yeah. I actually had a sibling group of um foster kids who were um missing school to the tune of 30 some days a year and I saw exactly what the impact was on their education and um so yeah this is this is something very serious
and we as a board especially if we wanted to focus on academic outcomes we need to be um we need to be serious about this. Okay. Okay, if there are no objections, this will be moved forward for action. And do we have anything in
miscellaneous? Okay, the meeting is adjourned at 9:36 p.m. Um, the cut off for public comment was 6:15 and she actually had extended that time and so there was no second comment because it wasn't done by the cutoff.
No, I signed up. I signed in. Hang on just one second while we check the iPad. Does the iPad have a record, Lynette? Um, if my name was on there, it's a mistake, but I still would like to speak if we're doing another public comment.
Well, I have more to talk about. What did you speak about? We have miscellaneous. Did you want to have any miscellaneous category? Um, I mean, not particularly, especially
considering that would give y'all the opportunity to push back and I don't know if I'm ready for that right now. Hang on. There's always the iPad. True, Dad. I also I listen I'm also
considering it but you know actually you know what I'm kind of on the student board because I want to make my voice heard. So that's what I'm going to do. Um, okay. Can you hold on one second while she's checking the record? Roger that.
unadjourned. Unadjourned. And it looks like Gail Thompson did sign in on time and it was missed when we were putting the stuff together. So, give us one second here. Okay. Go ahead.
[Music] Okay. Uh, I am Gail Thompson speaking on JBAA as a friend of several trans people who went to D49. In the mid 1950s, there grew a moral panic in reaction to the racial
desegregation of public spaces, of black people, particularly black women, being allowed into white bathrooms. With no real evidence, they were viewed as dangerous, hypersexual, a corrupting force to the fragile innocence of white
women. Policy JBAA is nothing but a repetition of that unfounded bigotry. There is no threat here. This fear is manufactured baseless. The only thing this accomplishes is further harming the already marginalized
cruelty with absolutely no benefit. This is not a difficult situation. It's quite clear. Trans people are not the problem. The problem is ignorant paranoia spread by segregationist fear-mongering. The average transirl is no more
dangerous than anyone else. Just as the s just as the average black girl was not. This is simply segregation regurgitated. I urge everyone that can to disobey this policy for everyone. sis students and their parents included to file
complaints, flood the system. Anyone who can sue. You can contact Bread and Roses Law in Denver to assist. Vote everyone who supported this policy out. Do not let the scum who voted for this, Lorie
Thompson, Jaime Lind Davilla, and Deb Schmidt, get away with it. Okay. Thank you. And Ben, what did you want to share? So, um, um,
so during the miscellaneous time, I also wanted to make a comment about, um, resolution JBAA. Now, I understand most of the board is not going to like what I'm about to say, but that that's why I'm on the student board is to make my
voice heard. Right now, I'm wearing a t-shirt that says America 1776. I believe in the values of this country, which is why I'm exercising my First Amendment rights right now. I am the friend of many trans people.
So, I do not believe that this issue should be black and white. I believe there are other ways to do this than to just go to the extremes and to find the quote unquote final
solution. This is a complex topic that should take far longer than just a simple vote. I have full respect for all members of this board and I have full respect for all people who were elected to this board,
which is why it is upsetting for me to say this, but my respect for some of the members who voted on policy JBA has gone down considerably. I still consider you all my colleagues. I still appreciate your time that you take for this
district. But what I don't appreciate is the fact that you are violating one of our key principles to value all people. Thank you. I yield my time. And just just a quick note that the
miscellaneous section is for the board, but you missed a couple of the student board meetings where we did discuss this topic in depth. And so I encourage you to make all of the SBOR meetings that you can so that you can participate in the discussions and hear what your
fellow students had to say. So thank you. All right. And we are adjourned at 9:42.