Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the October 9th, 2025 Board of Education regular meeting. The time is 630 and I am calling this meeting to order. Can I get a roll call? D’Avola? Here. Heil? Here. La Vere-Wright? Here. Schmidt? Here. Thompson? Here. Can we please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance? And I, I. pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America
and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Can I get a motion to approve the agenda? I move to approve the agenda. Second, any discussion? Okay. Can I get a vote? D’Avola? Ay Heil? Ay. La Vere-Wright? Ay. Schmidt? Ay. Thompson? Ay, and that motion passes.
We welcome comments from stakeholders during district 49 Open Forum. Please stay seated until your name is called by the Board of Education Chair. Then approach the podium to introduce yourself. Speak clearly into the microphone and keep your remarks respectful and orderly. Personal complaints against individuals connected with the district, except for the board members or the superintendent, are prohibited. Each speaker is limited to two minutes. The board will not respond in the forum, but may
assign follow up action to the superintendent. We also encourage you to use the stakeholder grievance process for resolving concerns, which may accumulate in a formal appeal to the board. Thank you for participating. The views expressed in the form are those of the commentators and do not represent official policy of district 49 or the Board of Education. I'll call up the first five speakers, and you can sit over here in the batter's area right there.
And then when you introduce yourself, please share with us your connection with district 49. Starting here. Okay. Thank. And so we're going to have Benjamin Savel, Annette Yebba, Kevin and Kevin I'll butcher this last name. Alec Glasner. Sam Mayfield, if you could come and line up here. And the first one up will be Benjamin Savel. Let me start here.
All right. So our student board. Meeting. Yes. Awesome. Good afternoon. My name is Benjamin Savel. I'm a student representative representing Falcon High School. And I just kind of wanted to take this time to speak about some concerns I've gotten from my peers. Particularly, some female students have, expressed their concerns to me about the current dress policy. I believe, correct me if I'm wrong later.
The district has a district wide dress policy, and some of my female peers have expressed to me that they find the policy is a little more unfairly weighted. Especially towards women. They find that, men can get away with a lot more dress wise. For example, I have a friend who is not going to name names for obvious reasons. He likes to wear tank tops and if you look at it from the right angle, like you could see pretty much his entire chest.
But I've never seen him once get stopped by a school administrator. But on the other hand, I've seen some of my female peers and friends who have been wearing, similar pieces of clothing who have been stopped and dress coded by school administrators. 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, first time I'm speaking here. And that's really, all I had. Thank you. I yield my time. Thank you. Next up is Annette Yebba. Hi. My name is, Annette Yebba. I'm a taxpayer. In D 49. And resident. 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.
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, for of people that want to kill us, not just illegals. Excuse me? Not just illegals, killing Americans. But the cancer of radical, radical Islam. Just remember that MAGA is not the enemy. Keep in mind that the Islam religion.
Does not approve of this gay and Transgend And and forget about women's rights. 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. Dearborn, Michigan, has been completely taken over. Minneapolis has been taken over, and 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 def to Americans. So you better start showing respect for your country now, or you'll be living in another hellhole 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, resident, 49, and I have a student in your, district. We need to get back to, 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. Not all these, other flags, these little tranny flags and gay flags and [expletive] It's supposed to be American. We're in America. All right. All this other stuff that y'all got going on, in these schools with that, about their feelings and all these, 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, get our. Students in our schools about America and the Constitution. Not worried about whose feelings and where there's, a little [expletive] box for cats to [expletive] in, and they ain't even no [expletive] cats. All right, let's let's start keeping it real round here. We don't need no [expletive] tampons in the boys [expletive] bathroom, either. What kind of [expletive] 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, I. Let's 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 [expletive] is that? No. And you stay your [expletive] out of women's sports because that's where you don't belong. All right? Men do not belong in women's sports. Bottom [expletive] line. I've had enough of this [expletive] Yeah. Keep giggling. You think you're [expletive] funny? But, 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 we should 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. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Ali Glesner. Hello again. I am Ali Glesner, advocacy director with InsideOut
Youth Services, which serves many D49 students. Last month, board President Thompson, vice President D’Avola 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 for weeks ahead of schedule for standard procedure. 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 D’Avola, 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. Devin or Devin? I'm sorry, I had my reading glasses on. Okay, so first up will be Sam Mayfield. Hi. 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 no other trans student. Deb, you came in here ready to vote yes on the ban?
Yeah, 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? JamiLynn, 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 cis 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, unquote.
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 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, the Minnesota, being forced to show her breasts to prove that she belonged in the women's bathroom. Your arguments supporting bathroom bans are based on personal feelings, myths, negative stereotypes, and fear mongering rather than factual evidence. Marie. Mike, thank you for citing Title Nine 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 rush to vote based on feelings.
Thank you. Eleanor Skelton. Hello again. My name is Eleanor 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 D 49 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 state level protections for LGBTQ people, or even support nationwide bans if a lawsuit regarding D 49, another school board 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. And I've already talked to you guys before about the bullying that I have seen those students face. We know from history that policies that dictate separate but equal access are both discriminatory and illegal.
Gender nonconforming 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 the Oklahoma public restrooms and changing rooms only be used based on biological sex. Almost two years later, on February 8th, 2024, non-binary 16 year old Nex Benedict was beaten unconscious in the girls restroom at Owasso 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 Nex Benedict, and we talked about safety precautions they could take when having to use the restroom in case they faced similar bullying policy. JBI AA is harmful to students, teachers, and visitors. And I was out striking yesterday in district 11, and I just wanted to say that on behalf of CSEA, I think that D 49 teachers should strike as well. Thank you. Jeff Hall. Good evening.
Jeff Hall. JamiLynn, Lori, you did a hell of a job last night at the forum. Nice work. So I want to say to you, finally, you guys have a social studies program that's actually going to mean something. And kudos to Brian Smith. Back there for. Honcho ING that. That's just 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 there and it's good. But this seems like it should have been done a while ago. And I really appreciate that is 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 20 2-1- 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 U.S. 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 above 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 note one more time. Thank you very. Much for the social studies. It's right on. Thank you. Okay. John Graham. John Graham, past board, 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 XX2XY. 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, and you can't risk having biological boys and girls 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? Am I able to move this computer that way? Mike, put it up. I appreciate it when you use that. Thank you. Sir. Let's see here. All right. Good balance it actually.
So hello. My name is Devin Shedron and I'm a transgender woman. I'm going to be candid, since the board already voted before we could talk again. I'm discussing. The 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, what an underage student has in their pants a penis or a vagina is disturbing. If I remember correctly, D’Avola 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 your kid for being trans and you're not fitting
into your sexist, misogynistic binary, then accept them for who they are. I'm also 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? Looking at you, D’Avola. I also want to ask you three board members this.
Oh, 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 any. We deserve to know if any harm comes to trans or cis students in D 49. We know that you three are to blame for the, for these hateful and uneducated policies that you're peddling that causes trans students and students to get attacked and raped in restrooms at school for not looking cis. I stand by what I said at the last meeting. We aren't going to take it. We will kick you out of this office for cruel attacks on all D 49 students.
Thank you. I would like to make two quick clarifications. The, realignment with, the American history class was a board gold set at our annual, 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 reading 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. 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? DEPAUL: D’Avola? D’AVOLA: Ay. DEPAUL: D’Avola? D’AVOLA: Ay. DEPAUL: Heil? HEIL: Ay DEPAUL: La Vere-Wright? LA VERE-WRIGHT: Ay DEPAUL: Schmidt? SCHMIDT: Ay DEPAUL: Thompson?
Ay, and that passes and we are on to the superintendent update. All right. It's been a, exciting and intense several weeks in district 49. Some really good things happening, and it's, 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, students only have to come one day. So I know Emma and Ben are happy about that. And a lot of our teachers are as well.
We had over the last week of September and the first week of October, we had a, a site visit from, examiners of volunteers who are subject matter experts from the Baldrige 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. There was even a site visit, the first school district in ten years
to receive a site visit. And what we heard from the examiners is that, their experience here validated that, that their prior review of our application was correct. We stepped up and represented the district and the community, the students and the staff really well. 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. It's the most comprehensive and exhaustive and exhausting kind of experience you can go through. And I will be happy not to do that for a while again. But it really taught us a lot about ourselves. There are definitely places where, we have room to improve how we think about ourself, 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, inspiring and, an affirming time with those national examiners.
They will give a feedback report to us in December, and that will help us know where we are strong in their eyes and where we still have room to keep improving. And so we appreciate that. And look forward to that. As part of what they were excited about is they noticed that we really make a concerted effort to listen to people. And so I got to see a great example of that, at the Student Board of Representatives candidate forum. And so some of you participated in that. 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. Even though Director Thompson may have violated the rules slightly by choosing all of the above in a lightning round question. But it was a great example of why it's right to put some leadership in our students hands and to respect their, their adult intelligence and their adult priorities and concerns. And I really I really appreciate their leadership and the support of the league when voters at that event.
It was it was just kind of a crown jewel. And we only get to do it every couple of years. So that was fun to see. I also happened to be out in the community, at a venue where the education Re-envisioned Boces was having their annual strategic planning and retreat. And you're going to hear from, Mr. Witt a little bit later on. But I want to tell you that that is a that is a vibrant, eclectic, purposeful, passionate group of people. They are doing all kinds of interesting things
that absolutely validate our vision to, to be the best choice. My choice is not your choice is not her choice. But the air Boces is great at offering all kinds of choices and finding out what the market is interested in. And so, 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 first time I've been to that annual meeting. And, although my visit was brief, it was it was great to talk to the people that were there and to hear their excitement and their passion.
So, 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're planning to be in. 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 update, starting with Benjamin. All right. I it's working. Good to know. First off, I want to say these microphones are awesome. Thank you, President Thompson. So, the Falcon student Board of Representatives, which are the I believe it's two main representatives. One reserve. Had a or excuse me, three main representatives and one reserve had a meeting with all of the Falcon Zone,
principals at Bennett Ranch Elementary school and, if it's okay with the rest of the board, I'm going to take a moment to kind of, 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. In district 49, we now have two new purple, I believe it's Purple Star schools. Meaning that they have been recognized as military safe by the United States government. And I also want to mention to, you members of the public that, the Falcon Middle School, sixth grade is being turned into the new
Falcon Elementary School campus, meaning that the sixth grade students are, returning back to the main, middle school building. That's kind of all I had regarding updates. Do you have anything? Right. I just wanted to update you guys. We all had, the student board had a leadership conference this past week. And it on honestly, was a really cool experience. Or just a few of us. But we just focused on some bonding. We did a little bit of karaoke.
Lip sync battles. So that was fun. We definitely got to know each other better. And then we locked down on leadership skills. And we were able to focus on, just kind of understanding what the student board's mission is and our goals moving forward. And we had a long discussion about everybody's thoughts on, certain topics. And, I think we're definitely starting to move off as a unit, which is it's exciting to see, 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.
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 to 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. This month, I met up with Ryan in Falcons zone and Lisa Fillo, and we went over CMAS scores and figuring out how to read all that data. You guys are amazing. It's there's a lot of data. So I spent a day with each from doing that. I also went to a class conference up in Parker. It was a very cool venue. Had a bunch of cars in there. I think it's called the vehicle vault. But a lot of old cars in and whatnot.
So it was really a cool, cool place to have a conference. We covered things like law, campaigning tips and finance. It was a really good it was a good conference. And then finally, the candidate forum, saw two other board members last night in a candidate forum. They both did really well. There was a lot of good information coming, regarding what they're doing here. D 49 and that's pretty much it. Thank you. Director Heil.
So, Mr. Hilts, I know exactly who you can task because, Charlynn Stegman of the Wellness Department dialed up a beauty all day for the 4.9 K fun run. So she has that authority over the weather, and I. I think we want to task her with your, your snow directive. So the last full week of September, I had just a crazy busy week. We had an executive session. I attended the full DAC for the first time, and we had our special session.
And then I was at the SCLAC. 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 Sand 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, on the way. And, they are now six and zero.
Having won the next, they won that 150 to nothing on a shortened to, second half. We won 61 to nothing the next game, which I also attended. And so they're six and out for the first time. And this is after two years ago they were three and seven. 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, I'm hearing some wonderful things that are happening
as a result of the synergy between, the campus and, Sand 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. And then I learned that a few of the top players on the team are students at The Campus. And even better, though, their thing that was really exciting is I was talking to, Dustin Horras, and he talked about how at the
campus prior, they didn't have lunches, which my daughter attended. So I, I knew, and he took a look at that and said, we can fix that. And so now, 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 Horse for upgrading the, experience for our students over at that campus. Than that go Scorpions. They have a big game tomorrow at Cheyenne Mountain
who is also six, and oh, so that'll be a big test. Thank you, Director La Vere-Wright. So I was also at the 4.9 K. That was pretty fun to be at. And, the Falcon Ed Foundation is accepting all of the applications for the Falcon mini grants. We'll be reviewing those this week and then announcing the winners, I believe will 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. I am going to say a couple of things from the public comment portion.
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. But my daughter, the Falcon High graduate, can perfectly fold the flag showing
no blood for the funeral she serves at, as part of the honor guard. So we're doing a pretty great job. Where with the, I believe the only district in the area that has JROTC at every single one of our high schools. And JROTC 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. Also my very Catholic mother in law who worked for missionaries
and my very Protestant brother, lives in Dearborn, Michigan. My very Protestant brother in law teaches in Dearborn public schools. 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 and baba, if you if you try to drive through, because it's pretty amazing. My family still lives there, and, 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 Dearborn, 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. And I'm not afraid to walk through Dearborn 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. And I think that we need to recognize that Dearborn, Michigan also is an example of what that can look like.
Thank you. Director D’Avola. So I had the privilege of participating in two D 49 candidate forums. And I just want to thank the school board of Representatives for putting on a well thought out, well organized 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. 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. I was also able to attend a, teacher Freedom Alliance training session on school discipline and how teachers can be empowered to help their schools to develop effective discipline discipline policies in their classrooms, as well as as, school wide policies so that teachers are, able to focus on teaching and are not having to,
deal with, outrageous behaviors. In their classroom. So that was a really good, informative training, and I hope I can bring that information, to, to, 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, what Director La Vere-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 peaceably 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. And 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, there are certain guarantees that apply to everyone. I attended the SCLAC meeting last week. Or was it that 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 Read 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. 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. I also attended the 25th anniversary of Parents Challenge, founded by Steve Schuck and his late wife, Joyce. 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 an education, especially for low income 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, low income 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 often used Federalist Papers
Madison ten, 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 for 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's 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 Heil. So we heard from the, From my point of order.
Do I need a second, first. Second, second. Okay. Discussion. Director Heil. Director La Vere-Wright. We actually have a teacher involved in the task force who's here. I think before we start, 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. And although and I will say I was at,
the reason I was three minutes late was I was serving dinner at Falcon High School to the teachers as parent teacher conference night, and I run the chili cookoff out there every year for the teachers and feed them. Mr. Heydt said that he would also welcome people coming to talk to him. He's meeting with parents tonight, so he couldn't be here. But did want me to relay that before I forget. But, Mrs. Scarselli is here to represent the 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. 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, just. Ms.. Thompson. Yeah. Before you invite staff, would you please invite me to to comment? Okay. Superintendent Hilts. HILTS: Thank you. I understand the impulse to hear, from from staff members that were involved in task force. I want to encourage the board to pull back from writing unit curricula. That that is absolutely unprecedented. Call your folks at CASB 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 Ms Scarselli 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 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 D’Avola. You wanted to say something? Yes. So with the Social Studies Task Force, I do believe that the majority of what I had submitted, is, is covered. That's. Oh, wait, we have to discuss what she said first, because I want to make sure I'm in. I'm in order.
Okay. So, 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 decision. Are the things that were listed. Director Schmidt, did you submit those to, Brian Smith? No, I didn't okay. So, 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.
Not all of the specific ones. Or did I do did I do also? Okay, there were a few that you had referenced. 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 5 or 6 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, I wasn't I was not informed of that response. SMITH: Yeah. I had responded to let her know I was going to talk with the social studies department chairs. And that we in the, in the resources piece, we were going to reference the fact that we use a variety of Federalist papers, because the teachers do use references from the 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 to be the top five, but I think everybody has their own opinion on that. So. Okay, this is. HILTS: May I respond? Well, once sec, 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 a robust discussion without having all of the input and the responses back.
But I have to say, while we should probably vote on this first before I start continuing to speak, go ahead. Mr. Hilts. So my observation and I don't I am only speaking to the proposed amendment. I'm not I'm not speaking to the overall motion. But, 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 doesn't send a message of respect. It sends a 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.
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. 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, 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. But I do take offense, at that. Director Heil. So with the exception of the two gentlemen, on the very end of the dais here,
I would put my personal U.S history library up against anybody in this room. I mean, it's a it's a topic I have great passion for. And, 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, 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, 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, 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. Now, we. We are students. So this is kind of like, the reason we're here is to weigh on a policy that affects us. When 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, come again. Okay. I don't think that the board should really be weighing in, especially on, curriculums like this. I think we need to place that trust into our teachers. I find it very important that we don't overstep here. Especially because in my heart of hearts, I absolutely believe that government.
What's that word? Government consistency is very important, especially in such a local school district. But, I mean, that's really all I have to say. Thank you. Emma, did you want to add anything? I also agree with you, Mr. Peter Hilts. I think our educators understand our students more than anyone. I think, for me, I understand the Federalist Papers, and that's because, the courses that I've taken, it's been integrated in just our lessons.
I think a lot of times when it's clumped into a unit, it can become really confusing and get really mixed up. 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, are the most important, versatile versus it all just getting mushed together. So I think that it can make it more, laser focus on the things that we really need to take out of those lessons versus, just getting all of the information at once. A lot of times it can just it gets too much for our student brains.
Especially taking so many courses at once. And to make a clarification, I think Director La Vere-Wright had raised her hand before I went to the student board. So I'm 100% in agreement with Mr. Hilts, and in part, I'm the one boarder board member who has, the privilege of having three children who've been very recent graduates of Falcon High School, who've gone from pre-K all the way through 12 here. Some of the things we're asking about are actually eighth grade standards
that my children learned in eighth grade, at Falcon Middle School. Thank you, Mr. Baker. Thank you. A couple of other folks, although, Baker, I think now is at Spring Studio. Some things they learned in high school. Thank you, Mr. Heydt. Thank you, Mr. Bond. 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 think if you haven't had a child moved here recently, you wouldn't know that, right? So I, I appreciate board members not necessarily knowing what may
or may not be being taught. But it's pretty comprehensive when you look at the whole K-12 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 two 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. And Colorado has 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. Heydt’s class for my son, 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, 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. And I have one still in school. So, 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 work 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 D 49 that were affirming as a board and saying, 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. 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 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 didn't know what they were being taught when we were elected two years ago. 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 Heil. So my understanding is that we're here today. La VERE-WRIGHT: Don’t we need a second on that motion? HEIL: Yeah. D’AVOLA: Second. HEIL: Thank you. So my understanding is that we're, here to basically approve the alignment of the courses, and we're here to approve the statement of intent. There's nothing to stop us from having ongoing conversations about other things related to social studies, but,
I feel like those items are, ready for prime time. Director D’Avola. Yeah. 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, put forth are already being used. And as a board member who is not a social studies teacher, 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, 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. I am I think this is really awesome. The only concern I have in why I would second the motion is that I want to I do, feel like I had the amount of time for, 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.. That I think she she deserves to have to 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? And that that could be a moot point going forward. And it's not that I want to come on heavy handed and say you have to do this. These would be recommendations of what the board views
as really important documents or pieces to include in these courses. And I am really encouraged, actually, by the response that I had, I only had two things that were not listed, on my list of, of things that I wanted to make sure, were being covered in our district. So kudos to you guys for delving in deep. I know it was a lot of hard work. 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 mention Federalist ten, Federalist 51, and Federalist 70. So 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, you know, you could try to, you know, keep working and keep working until 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. DEPAUL: D’Avola? Ay. DEPAUL: Heil? HEIL: No DEPAUL: La Vere-Wright? LA VERE-WRIGHT: No DEPAUL: Schmidt? SCHMIDT: Ay DEPAUL: 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.
I'm kind of hoping, first of all, that these course proposals are going to be voted on individually instead of as a package. We'll talk about that in a minute. Of course, the Colorado folklore, there are some very interesting goldmine stories in Colorado. LA VERE-WRIGHT: No, no, no, we're we're still on the U.S. history thing. We're not on that yet. You're on the wrong item. We voted on your motion to postpone. THOMPSON: Yeah. And so now we're back to the original motion. Is there any further discussion? Director D’Avola? I am actually really encouraged, and I know I already stated that,
but I just wanted to let you all of you know that, There are some things that I definitely want to to put in, such as, different curriculum and things like that, but I know that's not my role. Necessarily. We do review curriculum and make sure that it's what's in there is valid. And so the for example, the social studies curriculum that is currently in the Falcons zone did go through our curriculum review process
and it was voted on by the board, even though I had voted otherwise. It did pass as a board. So, I will definitely make sure that, from here on out, any time we have any new course proposals or curriculum, we should be able to review it and go through it. 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, part of what we study is education law. And so 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. Then there are excerpts of those resources in the main body. A text book 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 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, 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. Since since my mic is on, Doctor 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 Ms. D’Avola said, she didn't get every single thing that she wanted, but she she really respected and appreciated the process, as do I. And so, 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 Heil. So just wanted to talk about, a couple of the products that came about from this, effort. So one of them is this course alignment, where we found that different courses were being taken in different years at different schools. And this board found that, taking U.S 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, came out of this, that, that was a really good product. And then the other thing is the statement of intent. 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, I do value both of those products. THOMPSON: Ben. Yeah. So Mr. Heil, you just spoke about, taking US history in 11th grade now that I am in support of. But, the other part of the policy that I just read was, under rationale, it says the task force believes that US civics slash government should be taken in 12th grade. That I disagree with.
I believe taking civics earlier, and possibly taking a piece of this class later on in your high school career is absolutely beneficial because I found that my, understanding of government, after taking civics in, ninth grade, was expanded beyond my belief. So that's just my way in, and I appreciate your listening. Okay. And I'm going to call the question, can I get a vote, please? DEPAUL: D’Avola? D’AVOLA: Ay. DEPAUL: Heil? HEIL: Ay DEPAUL: La Vere-Wright? LA VERE-WRIGHT: Ay DEPAUL: Schmidt?
SCHMIDT: No DEPAUL: Thompson? Ay, 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. D’AVOLA: Second. Any discussion? Director Schmidt? Okay, I will do what I was trying to do before I realized that we hadn't voted yet. Colorado folklore. There are some very interesting goldmine 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 a big, Colorado folklore, some of the cryptids that are mentioned, like the Loch Ness Monster, is found in Scottish folklore. Chupacabras originated in Puerto Rico and Yeti originated in the Himalayas. And then they should be mentioned, you know, but 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 found 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 Heil. So as somebody who's raised Catholic has many Catholic,
family members, that is very much my background and my culture. I am un offended by a modest proposal. I find it to be, amusing. And, I have zero problem with it. And I defer to my Catholic, peer. THOMPSON: Director La Vere-Wright. Hang on one second here. Yep. Sure. So, Yeah. So I'm Catholic and of Irish descent. And I took this in Brit lit in high school, so I read it as a part of my Brit lit class.
My brother as a sophomore at a Catholic all boys school actually wrote his own satire based on A Modest Proposal and submitted to his English teacher in 10th grade. This is a piece of classic British satirical literature that is used all the time at this age level, to help teach the concept and to show kind of the ridiculousness of some of those pieces. So 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. And is even taught in Catholic schools. And one comment that I had is this is an elective course. And I think that once again, we're kind of delving into curriculum development. And in stead of curriculum review. So those are just my thoughts on it. Director Schmidt. We're delving into offending people here. There's so many other examples of satire that these kids can get.
You get Charlie Chaplin. He had movies that were spoofs on dictators. The Movie Network exposed the corrupt news industry. Doctor Strangelove mocks the absurdly high stakes decisions and the human arrogance that could lead to global annihilation. Why are we picking a piece that is religiously offensive? It's not. SCHMIDT: It is to me. Well, and so. Then it was you see, he was actually just. Let her finish. He was defending Catholics in that piece. THOMPSON: Okay. Director La Vere-Wright.
Did you want to say something? He was pro Irish. That was the whole point of the story. It's why plenty of us Irish Catholics love it. As he was pointing out to the British how absurd they were, and was supporting, the Irish Catholic cause at the time. It's part of like it's taught in Catholic schools, too. So, 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. They can choose their they can choose for their child not to be in the class. And that's a part of what we do is we offer that choice. I have a point of order. THOMPSON: Just a second here. Director D’Avola. The the person who, can't find the name, but, proposed it. They're not currently here. Correct. Okay. Because I, I could just ask them, like, why did you choose A Modest Proposal? And I'm sure they would tell us why, for for something like this.
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, 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,
deadly it gets. Right? So I'm totally fine with having, the course for this. And like everyone said, it's a, an elective. 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. It is an elective course. And so I think it would be good to go ahead and vote.
Point of order. Are we voting? Are we voting on each one individually or all three as a packet? That's a good question. Then we look at how the motion was. I think it's all three. Go ahead. But we could and then. 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. D’AVOLA: Second. Okay. Any other discussion about splitting them apart okay. Can I get a vote please? DEPAUL: D’Avola?
You got it. You got to state which one we're doing. First. LA VERE-WRIGHT: We're voting to split it. We have to split to fit it first. Yeah. DEPAUL: D’Avola? D’AVOLA: Ay DEPAUL: Heil? HEIL: Ay DEPAUL: La Vere-Wright? LA VERE-WRIGHT: Ay DEPAUL: Schmidt? SCHMIDT: Ay DEPAUL: Thompson? Ay. So now I'll make a motion. Okay. I move to approve the Patriot High school course. Film and literature. D’AVOLA: Second. Okay. Any further discussion? Would the student board like to weigh in on this one? Ben?
I just sorry. I should have let you start there. I guess I would say, at least me personally, I'm in full support of teaching A Modest Proposal in our, in the classes proposed in action item 7.2. That's really all I have to say. Emma. I think in my experience, the shock factor honestly brings the reality to our courses. Especially since it's not a mandatory class.
It's kind of a decision you're making. And, these things should be covered in the syllabus at the beginning of the year. 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 could write in an organized, professional and insightful manner. Students can read and understand nonfiction speeches and US documents.
Students can synthesize multiple sources and cite information correctly. Students have exposure to a a variety of literary genres. Okay, we. Ready to vote. DEPAUL: D’Avola? D’AVOLA: Ay. DEPAUL: Heil? HEIL: Ay DEPAUL: La Vere-Wright? LA VERE-WRIGHT: Ay DEPAUL: Schmidt? SCHMIDT: No DEPAUL: Thompson? Ay 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? DEPAUL: D’Avola? D’AVOLA: Ay. DEPAUL: Heil? HEIL: Ay DEPAUL: La Vere-Wright? LA VERE-WRIGHT: Ay DEPAUL: Schmidt? SCHMIDT: Ay DEPAUL: Thompson? Ay, 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? DEPAUL: D’Avola? D’AVOLA: Ay. DEPAUL: Heil? HEIL: Ay DEPAUL: La Vere-Wright? LA VERE-WRIGHT: Ay DEPAUL: Schmidt? SCHMIDT: Ay DEPAUL: Thompson? Ay, and that one passes. Okay. Can I get a motion for action item 7.3.
I move to approve any initial steps to explore alternatives and consider whether expansion is appropriate and any specific timeline. Second, it 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. 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. Brian Smith, Falcon Zone 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, residing together in the same building and then having the Falcon Elementary, service, peak,
potentially some other programs, and then having the district look at the properties where certain facilities exist on Woodman. That if the opportunity is right, that those, those properties could potentially be sold to then have, profits used for the construction of a new Falcon pre-K eight building. 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. 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. By starting this early. This allows us to work through and help get those answers to our community, and be forward planning, strategic and do this in advance.
Mr. Hilts, would you add anything to that? HILTS: If I may? Technically, the relocation of Falcon Elementary to the campus to share with Bennett Ranch is a consolidation, not an expansion. Technically, that doesn't require board vote or approval. It's. I have authority to do that. 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 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. We can now disclose that I. I previewed this for you in July in an executive session, and that's not a violation 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 biweekly meeting rhythm. And so, essentially, what we're 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 remodel ING that to the campus. We're thinking about which programs and on what timeline they might move. And those are things, 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, 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, are a very forward thinking, route to travel, so I, I definitely agree with going forward, Ben. All right, so I just have a question for either you, Superintendent Hilts or you, zone Superintendent Smith. I just need to know, what is the plan? I know nothing is perfectly set yet, but what is the plan for, possibly students who attend Falcon Elementary who may have transportation
issues and may not be able to make it to the new campus? Consolidated has been at Ranch. That is that is actually one of the questions that came up at our PTA meeting that we had. And I will tell you, there's already some ideas coming forward and things we could explore to potentially help with that. And so we've got to talk to transportation. We've got to talk to families about some of these ideas. 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. DEPAUL: D’Avola? D’AVOLA: Ay. DEPAUL: Heil? HEIL: Ay DEPAUL: La Vere-Wright? LA VERE-WRIGHT: Ay DEPAUL: Schmidt? SCHMIDT: Ay DEPAUL: Thompson? Ay, 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. D’AVOLA: Second. Any discussion? Director Schmidt? Yeah, I have some questions for Miss Fillo, but she is not here due to sadness in her family. So I'm going to have to ask my questions to Mr. Hilts. Actually, she has. Her and Brian have done an amazing job helping me to understand data much better. 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? And then once that's met, said another goal for 64. And then just keep building and building until where we're where we want to be. 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? Ms. Thompson, with your permission, I'd like to spend about four minutes modeling that. Mr. Nancarrow, may I have the air play? THOMPSON: I think it's a good idea. 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 just spent all day Wednesday, seven meetings with the principals of the power zone. I had previously spent all day,
in other settings in Sand Creek Zone and then in the Falcon Zone. And do I want BOE? Yes. And I'm going to use Ridgeview Elementary because they are there. 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 get Logan in our performance excellence team a great deal of credit for developing this. It's hyper complex.
One of the tabs 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. They tipped up to 81.6. And you can see by the color coding here they met expectations for academic achievement. They exceeded expectations for 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 Ridgeview, those students in third, fourth and fifth grade are 0.53 away from the next cut point. And so I met with the principal Rapaport at 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 7/100 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. 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 Rappaport felt like they're 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 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 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 principals have so much clarity and focus and purpose behind their their annual planning. It's why the ups are as strong as they are. I really appreciate the question. I apologize Principal Rappaport and Ridgeview team for, showing your excellence on a big screen, but y'all are doing really well. 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 comms team. THOMPSON: Director Schmidt. 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 as as I click through the zones.
Yes, there are 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 showing you elementary every school in the Sand 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 really starts with that election four years ago. You have led us to a deeper, more precise focus on academic achievement, and your principals 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. SCHMIDT: Thank you so much. HILTS: You're welcome. THOMPSON: Director Heil HEIL: And Superintendent Hilts, I wanted to thank you for your leadership
on this as well, because this ties directly to a BHAG that you proposed that you requested and that the school board approved to, shoot for, accreditation with distinction. 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 principals have been utilizing it. And I've heard from multiple principals who have sat in these sessions in using these tools,
and they just have nothing but wonderful things to say about it. So thank you. THOMPSON: Director D’Avola. Yeah, yeah, I second that, you've worked very diligently in order to create these things so we can get to that goal of being accredited with this distinction. Which brings up a good point of, fact checking that district 49 is not failing our students. 30% of our students are not, failing that or no, 70% of our students
are not feeling and only 30% are ready for college and beyond. Which is completely false. All of us are in our on, 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? DEPAUL: D’Avola?
D’AVOLA: Ay DEPAUL: Heil? HEIL: Ay DEPAUL: La Vere-Wright? LA VERE-WRIGHT: Ay DEPAUL: Schmidt? SCHMIDT: Ay DEPAUL: Thompson? Ay. 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, 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 Witt.
Oh good. Good evening. And thank you for having me here this evening. Board. I would like to, recognize that, Superintendent Hilts did a wonderful job of stealing my thunder. Thank you. But actually, I want to thank you very much for dropping by the, 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 I very much appreciate you stopping by.
And, I was I was glad to see it. It's, 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 re-envision. BOCES is a, one of many BOCES 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, we always start with vision, and we talk about why we do what we do and how we do it.
Is 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. We have three members in the education re-envision BOCES district 49. Who was one of our founding members? Montezuma Cortez. And thank you for that. Montezuma Cortez, who participates was representation on our board as well. And Pikes Peak State College, both of these can have, in, 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. 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. Our mission is that we will deliver, and develop services to both of 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 con ganas, 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 passionate about? Well, we have actually created six brick and mortar schools in the 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? 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 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, in perpetuity or for for long periods, and very grateful to be able to do that. You notice that that number is for those of you who have a history with the BOCES, you might notice that that's a bigger number than probably the last time you saw it. And I'll mention a new brick and mortar school here shortly. We also have a creative bricks and mortar school called the education Re-envisioned 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 multidistrict online schools. Those are statewide, as you're probably familiar with. In fact, the BOCES was originally the Colorado Digital BOCES and it was founded to do this online thing and make certain that there was some online, 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 district online schools. They have different characters, they have different approaches. They have different curriculum sets. And we think that choice matters in every capacity including in online. We there's a star on this one because we had a wonderful, interaction with the Colorado Department of Education this year, which I was actually delighted to see. 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 city
recognized that it supported it within the constraints of what they allow. But we began to have so many students and so much interest in that, that, they needed to expand. And the city 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, enrollment limit or capping on those for those students, because that community, it's in Pueblo, that community needs more of this. And so, we were just delighted to see that partnership. I'm delighted it will take some time to work that out.
It's not complete. It will actually be completed next year. But it was a great opportunity to work together to to bring about some, some new things and communities that really need them. We are a powerhouse for home school enrichment programs in the state of Colorado. 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. The CDE informed us this year that, over half of all students
participating in a home school enrichment program in the state of Colorado are in education Re-envisioned home school enrichment programs. So I'm pleased to say that we are 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 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. I will tell you that our pipeline for next year for home school enrichment continues to 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 home school enrichment growth for next year is somewhere between probably 30 and 40 new programs
on top of the, 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 executed. Educated. Last, just a note on new bricks and mortar schools. We did, authorize a new bricks and mortar school in Pueblo this year called Riverstone Academy. It's, in keeping with our mission of continuing to make certain that the programs that parents who wish existed do exist.
It is Colorado 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. We're confident that the Espinoza 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, 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. I will mention the one other thing that I didn't put in here. I talked about the other piece, so I won't say it, but micro schools, we have a handful of micro schools in Colorado which, we're delighted to, to see. It's a growing trend and a growing interest of families. And so we're happy to be, able to accommodate occasionally in the environments where there's a group of families that really want this, we're able to support those. And we're seeing expanded growth in that area as well.
So, delighted to see the, micro school component increase as well. Thank you for allowing us to be a part of, the 49. With your support, we do try to deliver some value to De 49 as well. I mentioned it here on this slide. We fund your Schoology seats. We give you an opportunity to look at innovative approaches at arm's length, without, without, you know, taking that on entirely on your own, but, enjoying the learning without the risk. And, we do try to be a sandbox.
So when we get to exchange ideas with you guys, we're happy to experiment as well in education. Thank you. Are there any questions. THOMPSON: Director Schmidt? SCHMIDT: I always have a question tonight. What is a Schoology seat? What is that? Schoology is an application that you use in the district to support, education. You have to pay for licenses for it. And it's one of the few things that we get to do to give back to our member districts. The state allows a specific
grant for BOCES to provide services to districts, and we we allocate that one to pay for your Schoology seats. SCHMIDT: Thank you. THOMPSON: Director Heil Yeah. As you were talking, I took a look at the the schools that are listed. If the CDE and I see the the the list is, it hasn't been updated, for 2025 because, 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. I know a family who their, child went to our allies, which is an outstanding school that, of innovation that specially serves students with, specific learning disabilities when their child aged out of, allies, they were, you know, desperate to find another opportunity that would serve them well. That student is now in Orton Academy, and the family is very happy with what's going on there.
We are 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 E-R BOCES is going to be participating in the spread of, religious schools receiving public funding. And as somebody who, you know, gets deeply into our U.S. Constitution and our U.S. history, eroding that separation of church and state is very concerning. And for us to be a partner in that is, it does not sit well with me.
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. 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, students, but they still have an instruction, an instructor, and a well-defined curriculum. They'll they'll meet in a smaller facility. It's often ten families ish, 5 to 10 families, instead of being a large school.
And we're finding a lot of interest in that, nationwide. But it's definitely occurring here in Colorado as well. Students, do you have any questions about any of this? Ben? I see your pen up. Thank you. I really just have one question. I apologize if I missed it, but throughout that presentation, you used the term bricks and mortar a lot. I apologize, 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 defined 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, online schools you can't physically attend. You attend them remotely, right? Virtually. Homeschool enrichment is often not a building built for that. But you just meet somewhere to do that sometimes has a building, but sometimes it doesn't. So homeschool enrichment is yet a different model. So bricks and mortar is, I would call it the traditional school building.
Thank you. THOMPSON: Emma, do you have any questions? Okay, Director D’Avola. Thank you for everything that you do, and I. I am very well pleased, all the choices that you have and that you are just that support for school choice and for parents to, send their kids to, institutions and places that they would love to see their kids be a part of. So thank you for championing that. As to whether or not we should
support, schools that have Christian values or that want to be a specific orientation to, a religion of some sort. Just so everyone's aware, pre the 1960s, in every public school, they taught the Bible and they prayed every morning in the classrooms. And so, which was very much a part of our, our national, heritage that every school promoted,
the values of the Ten Commandments and the Bible and our, our students were taught that all the way up until the 1960s. And so and they were funded. So there you go. Okay. Are there any other questions? All right. Well, thank you for coming. WITT: Thank you. And now we are on to item 9.2 for the. Be just a second.
NANCARROW: Thank you for patience. BROOKS: Good evening. Board. I would like to just introduce our next speaker. He's coming to us from RBC capital Group, to speak to us and kind of inform us on co-op 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 Mister Todd Snidow. Oh, sorry. A members of the Board of Education.
Superintendent hilts. Good evening. I'm Todd Snidow and 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, certificates of participation. And, this stemmed from the retirement of my colleague David Bell, who had worked for the district for a number of years. Back in December of 24. I came down in the spring and had meetings, with Superintendent Hilts and the interim CFO, and then again more recently with, Rebekah. And so when the series 2015 COPs were sold,
they had the opportunity to be refinanced at the ten year call date. And we're actually coming up upon that. That'll be the, 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 COPs in their entirety, in the middle of December. And the way you would do that, as you would sell a refunding series of COPs
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. 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, opportunity for that issuer. Right now, in this current market, we're about 4%. So when, we met back in the spring, we were not at those ranges. Interest rates were higher. But now that the feds actually started to follow through on its, interest rate cuts, we're starting to see rates heading in the right direction. And so, right now, as I said, you're about 4% savings. If we continue trending downward, we'll actually see a little bit better. Result for you. And, 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. This is one of those things that, I think is something that districts do to show their fiscal prudence. I when I was looking through the documents, it occurred to me that the series 2015 issuance was actually a refinance of earlier 2006 and 2007 CFP. So the district does have pretty good track record of doing this for its taxpayers. But again, I just I wanted to come here and see if there were any questions on that and make sure I got you answers.
I know there were some questions about some of the terminology and some of the memos I prepared. THOMPSON: Director Heil. Okay. SNIDOW: Thank you. HEIL: And just just so that I can get a little bit of clarity, if we could move to page three on this. So we're we're specifically talking about that 2015 series. Yes. We're talking about the amount outstanding is 50.5 million. Are we talking that is our target to raise, with the new issue of COPs? So we're not adding additional debt? SNIDOW: No, actually. And the interesting thing, and I don't want to kill you with the,
the, you know, the minutia of the, taxes at market, but you're actually going to pay off about 50 million, $500,000 worth of existing COPs, and we're going to propose to issue about $47 million. 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. HEIL: And then as far as the maturity date, are we targeting the same final maturity date or are we planning on extending that out?
SNIDOW: Nope. This is another thing that differs from how the mortgage market works. You don't reset a 30 year mortgage after ten years and take it on another 30 years. You're going to not go beyond the existing 2039, final retirement. HEIL: 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 SNIDOW: about 170,000 the first year, because it's kind of a, you know, a shorter period.
It's a lower amount. But the bulk of. The maturities from 2026 to 39 would be in the 170 hundred and $180,000 range. HEIL: 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. Okay. Yes. Thank you so much.
Okay. We are on to item 9.3, the preliminary fourth quarter financials. BROOKS: Good evening again. 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 unaudited. So it is our first essential draft. We have as 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. And we will represent fourth quarter with the audit. So we will get those finalized. Fourth quarter actually it'll be the full year, financials once audit comes through. So I know this is different than what you guys have seen before. So, 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.
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. This particular slide references all of our general fund or fund ten revenues. It is summarized in a year over year comparison. The top is the 24-25 school year, which is essentially our our fourth quarter financials that we're talking about today. The bottom is a comparison of the 23-24 in the same fourth quarter totals.
Some of the things to note. Our revenue is up year over year. And our transfers also went up. 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 23-24.
So just kind of where my mouse is right here. And then the total for 24-25 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. So these the right hand side is your 2324 totals.
And the left side is your 24, 25 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 feet. And 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 us that are of note in this particular slide, that we did exceed budget projections, 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 have. 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? THOMPSON: Director Schmidt, did you have a question? SCHMIDT: I did, 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 like definition. Yeah. SCHMIDT: Thank you. BROOKS: You bet. Any other questions okay. THOMPSON: Thank you very much. Yeah. All right. So now this next slide is for everything
Non-salary. So, this is everything operational in our general fund. So it would be any services that we purchase. 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 23, 24 and the left being 2425. The things of note here we had a $5 million increase year over year here. The majority of that, however, was our CTE contact on it.
Just as a point of clarity. That's that's the bulk of it. And then you'll notice at the very bottom that 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 a total of about 20 million year over year increase. Any questions on this particular slide. SAVEL: Yes. So.
I just want to make sure nobody else had a question. Awesome. All right. So my question is you described you said it was a $5 million non, salary expenses increase. Would you consider that something normal just year by year for the district? No. So, 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 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.
LA VERE-WRIGHT: 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, right, which happens to every district eventually when they come an 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. SAVEL: Well, I am learning things today. Thank you. THOMPSON: And Emma, I have bad news for you.
That means more and more snow days will turn into online instructional days. Director D’Avola. D’AVOLA: But apparently the school board has the power over the weather, so it may not happen right. HEIL: Now, I have to correct that. Only our wellness department has that power. THOMPSON: Oh, gotcha. BROOKS: 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. 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. 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? THOMPSON: Director Heil. HEIL: 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 at a deficit
after approving, teacher salary increase is and, you know, we have control over how we spend money, but we have almost no power whatsoever over revenue. You know, ultimately all of that power belongs to the state when they set their budget and it belongs to our taxpayers, you know, approving, new revenue streams. So, I just want to let you all know we are doing everything we can. THOMPSON: 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 is a part of our budget exceeds similar sized districts. I don't have that off the top of my head. I do know it's pretty standard for most districts of our size to land somewhere between 80 and 85% of salary and benefits, and 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 point something percent for the current year. So we're definitely over the halfway mark. 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 in depth around our general fund and fund ten. 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 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 balance is currently. So I would love feedback on if you would prefer to have fund balances included in this going forward or not. 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. 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?
THOMPSON: Director Heil. HEIL: Not a question, but a comment. I just wanted to let everybody know that, the reason we were, supplementing the transportation fund was because the board approved a change to get rid of the transportation fee that we were charging, families. And, it's my understanding. Is that correct? BROOKS: We still charge a fee. I do know that. HILTS: 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. 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 ten. BROOKS: Yes. HILTS: Primarily or exclusively out of. BROOKS: Its exclusive. HILTS: Exclusive fund. HEIL: I seem to remember a request, but I guess I'm misremembering. LA VERE-WRIGHT: That he had meant Peter had presented that idea, but we never voted on it. THOMPSON: Director D’Avola.
Yes, I do know, like, there's some parameters around which funds can be used for which things. So what with the general fund, are we allowed to use a general fund to subsidize all of these different things? Or are there only certain ones that we can pull? BROOKS: That is a great question. So there's only certain ones that we can subsidize with fund ten general fund money. So taxpayer dollars definitely have certain rules around what we can, transfer out of fund ten.
So for an example, the anything with the Mlo fund that's funded separately through Mlo funds, we do not subsidize typically with our general fund, we also fund 29 is a huge one that is exclusively fund raised 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? THOMPSON: Director Heil. So, when we talk about the overall fund balance, is that just fund ten 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 ten.
But typically that is just our fund, our combined fund ten total. So because yeah yeah I would be interested in seeing fund balance only to understand the health of, you know, the overall district. But like the, the fundraiser, one is an example of one that we don't need to be focused on. So I would, I would I think what I'm getting at is I'd like to see an overall fund balance that incorporates fund ten plus all of the eligible, targets for fund ten.
And then just that one value would, would satisfy me. BROOKS: Okay. Thank you. Anyone else? THOMPSON: 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. BROOKS: 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 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. THOMPSON: Director D’Avola. Sorry, Deb. Did you have a follow up? I just like to get together and we'll discuss it. Okay. And then I can make my decision, and they can make theirs.
BROOKS: Okay. THOMPSON: Director D’Avola. 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, the fund balance. So if, if it's if it's as simple as just adding that column, I'm for that. BROOKS: Okay. Ben, did you have a question? Nope.
THOMPSON: Director Heil. And, if we're going to go ahead and add the fund balance for, for each, 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 any more, I'm. I'm going to be lost. BROOKS: It would be a row. 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, 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? THOMPSON: Director Heil. HEIL: 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, refunding,
because I was kind of lost in the weeds and you gave me enough clarity that I was able to ask very simple questions and help our community understand what we're talking about. And so thank you very much. On this slide, previous, if we 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 are very aware of the situation that we're in.
We're working hard on it. And, you know, we can't predict the future with 100% clarity. THOMPSON: Director D’Avola. I do believe that we can slightly predict that that will come down. Correct. Because of that one spiking increase, with that 3 million, 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. And so we will have to definitely make some decisions and adjustments ourselves outside of the 3 million. But those are in the works where we're working on a plan. THOMPSON: Yes. Superintendent Hilts HILTS: So I just I also want to observe, the difference that we call the delta between the two lines in the 24-25
year is a combination of it's well, it's a combination of some increased, 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 the literally just some of the supplies that we purchase. Through various programs. Costs of construction, cost of gasoline for our snowplows. 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, that had been appropriated and had been appropriated and had been appropriated. And then lost. 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 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, 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 that we didn't have last year. And so our job will be to come back to you and communicate this to you, as we come around the corner into the annual planning summit in February. 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've not always done that, but we believe this year we're going to need to do that.
And the January 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 critical inflection point for the district. Thank you. THOMPSON: Okay. Any other questions then? Okay. Thank you. BROOKS: Thank you. Next up we have time point for the superintendent report of quantitative performance metrics and quantitative multi rater results.
HILTS: Good evening friends. Peter Hilts, Superintendent. And I would like to quote one of my childhood, 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. And so, what you see here on these attachments, if you've opened them, you have seen these before. I've presented these for, 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'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, are our direct reports to the cabinet. We ask people that are, indirect reports in the plus 1 or 2 deep. So that would include principals.
So we have a category of principals. We have a category of cabinet members. We have a category of other district leaders. These might be directors. They might be individuals in other leadership roles. Then we have our our support professionals, education support professionals, esp 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, among the workforce. And this is one of the ways you know about that.
You hear it anecdotally, you say you hear what I claim 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, customers knowledge leadership management results and strategy. Now before and then the workforce before 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 it 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 on a five point scale. And my goal is to get every number above for every individual number, every average number, above for and so on a five point scale, I am down year over year.
And customers my overall score there is high relative to others. I'm at 4.22 up slightly in the area of knowledge. I am down about a 10th in leadership. I am down 1/100 in management. However, you'll see in the comments I think this is significant. I'm taking this as significant management as the area where I think the people that looked at me for leadership are the least satisfied, at least in their comments and anecdotes.
I'm not managing as well as they expect. Even though the numbers don't show that, I think the comments back that up. In terms of results, we have a significant improvement and that is going to be it. 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, they perceive that we're doing, we're focused on, on results to prioritize improvement compared to other organizations, etc..
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 low scoring area. And let's just be blunt, I you should trust their evaluation of this better than mine, because I have, 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 significant, significant commitment over the years.
This this disturbs me. 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 day to.
Is by those groups. So you see the average is what I just showed you was this set of data here. Now you are seeing the groups compared to my, my self rating. I rated myself overall at a three, eight, nine. 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. You can see for yourself which which items overall were higher and lower scoring. But I think it's it's interesting
that I, I score my highest score is with principals and that is not normally what I think you would expect. I think normally you would think, well, 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 maybe have a slight bump.
And my theory is that the great work that our principals 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 principals behind me saying, no, he doesn't know what he's talking about. 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. My overall average year over year, I dropped from a, a 4.14, all the way down to a 4.12. I'm being facetious. It's 2/100 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 never am intentional and I never understand. But I'm getting you know, a fair smattering in the three four 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, 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. No real big dots to the left, but there's a kind of a range of perspective about, 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 D 49 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 there's not the strongest part of my brand as a leader. These are sort of self-explanatory. I am not the most focused person. I say that 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, with these evaluators. Pretty mixed bag on strategy. It's the only category that has three big dots to the left. In the, in the two column and a smattering of ones, 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 the chief education officer and then two years as then CEO, then first years superintendent, this used to be my worst rated item. Is careful not to over initiative 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, includes comments. Some of those comments are personal and revealing of who wrote them. And that's not appropriate for for public content. At least not without significant redaction. 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 DPS level, the DPF trends, and the SPF level. And so this measures how many schools got into the improvement. And I showed you earlier that 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 Baldrige, 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.
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 can only meet expectations if over 16 of our operated schools improve year over year. And we did not hit that mark. 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 pull back in the charter sector as well. And in the charter sector, the meets expectation is seven. The partially meets is six. And so you can see my rating is only two because we only had these six that that improved year over year. So those are significant. 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 hatable. There may be some reasons. 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 rater is good data for you as evaluators.
THOMPSON: Director Schmidt SCHMIDT: Yeah, I have a couple of questions. I'm wondering if this multi rater shouldn't be presented by a neutral person. No offense. HILTS: 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. 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 rater 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 rater covers the categories in both my job description and in your evaluation instrument.
So the evaluation instrument that you use has the same categories as this. 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. I think it has to tell you that I, I might regularly have to lift 50 pounds or something. 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 a lot of significant mismatch. And I just have kind of one more question.
When we have the board evaluation, is it the same employers council product with the same five point scale? And if not, why would we use two different products with two different point scales? Excellent question. 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.
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, that work in the district, probably a couple cabinet members, some principals and teachers, some some operational individuals. Somewhere between 7 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 then I'll learn it from you, because you'd be doing your own version of a VLT.
I've done 600 VLTs. 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 he’d do more of? What? You know, what makes you respect him? What makes you distrust him?
You would get insights that you cannot get in this multi rater. You cannot get in these in these numbers. That that'd be my recommendation. And and I would value the feedback. That's not there. THOMPSON: 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 3 to 4 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 Heil. 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. So, the, the one, 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, presenting this next time, could you please include that? HILTS: Absolutely. Yep. Last year that score was 87.5. THOMPSON: Director D'Avola. I would like to suggest that the board does actually do that. I know, what, my question is, what time frame is, the board evaluation. Remind me what?
February. No, I think you get a form. I mean, so Paul Anderson runs that. D’AVOLA: Yeah. HILTS: 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, 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 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. D’AVOLA: Okay. With with that and with that knowledge, I know that we had all discussed the, evaluation that we used versus the evaluation or the multi rater and how it wasn't aligned in our wanting to be able to have that, more aligned. 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, 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 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 rater 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 it was it a you know it was very challenging in that aspect. Director Heil. HEIL: And yeah, I like the idea of, giving more options so that you can get more, you know, useful feedback. The problem with that, though, is that you lose the ability to evaluate Delta year to year. You essentially the, the the year that you go to a five point scale, that's your zero. HILTS: New baseline. And the other thing to think of is last time we relied on a supermajority,
rather than maybe looking into a weighted score. HILTS: Meaning that last year you had to if you chose a number, four of you chose that number. Correct, instead of an average or weighted number. So correct. And I asked for that because in the past I had gotten evaluations where one individual gave me a five and 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 supermajority. So those are my thoughts.
Students, do you have any questions about this? Nope. Director D’Avola. 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? SCHMIDT: Or I kind of want to 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 fours 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. THOMPSON: Director Heil. So, if we're if we're just talking about the five of us doing our evaluation of the superintendent, I don't know that they. The year over year, data is really all that important just because, again, there's only five of us. So, and we're also talking about changing it through an average
rather than, a supermajority. I've, 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 roundtable discussion? And so I think that that might be worthwhile. I think Mr. Anderson would be very good insight. Director D’Avola. So then do we have. Well, I'm not the president, but you want to ask for consensus?
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 Ark? Two and two meet with Paul Anderson. Does that make sense 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 Ark two and two. MILLER: 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 D'Avola. Would it be at all appropriate to have that in the open meeting with Paul Anderson, with all five of us? Yeah. Having a meeting would be a very appropriate approach in if to the extent that you need it's some confidentiality.
There's probably a basis for some amount of executive session type of discussion around that sort of thing too. D’AVOLA: Oh, I'm in favor of that then. LA VERE-WRIGHT: Do you want to think about maybe having to meet 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. Because there is significant value in having to come
to some kind of agreement in that discussion. I've been on the board when it was a straight average and, had been advocating for a long time for us to be able to have, 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 end we never got to have a discussion as a board without the person.
With the change in administrative structure, the barrier to having that happen went away. Trying to see 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, I think that piece maybe is something that can be discussed a bit, but 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, because you get a divided board, who then makes it very difficult for the person to know where they stand, 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 hands.
So first it's Director D’Avola. Yeah, I think we're a little bit off in the weeds. A little bit, because we need to get back on to what we were actually talking about. So I think we should just go to, start with two and then have executive session with all of us. About the proposed changes. So, we should I call for consensus on I. LA VERE-WRIGHT: I would say part of it would be non executive session. And then if there's something. But I think we have to be careful to. I'm not I'm not really across the bridge to declaring
that we have an executive session pending on on this, but let's let's see where we land. D’AVOLA: Hold a meeting in public. THOMPSON: Director Schmidt. SCHMIDT: Which two? What we had just discussed a moment ago was myself and Director Heil. I'm very interested in this topic. THOMPSON: Director Heil. HEIL: So I think it is appropriate for Marie to be raising those points now, because that's going to inform the strategy for, changing things. 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. And so then at the end you give sort of a final score and then you move on 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, I don't know how many categories there were like 35 of them. So we would turn that into a four 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 that, 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, which are based on the domains that come from the superintendent law, the regulations at create 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? Or are we talking about what we do in the year following which we should have challenged this? And in January when Paul approached us with it? And so sorting that out with Paul, with the two of you probably makes the most sense. Thank you. 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?
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. And then come back with the 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. THOMPSON: Director D'Avola. D’AVOLA:
So, it's very clear to me that Director Schmidt would like to be a part of that. So I actually would. Consensus 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. HEIL: It's not the hill I would die on. THOMPSON: Director La Vere-Wright. You look like you want to say something. Oh. I need to say.
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. SCHMIDT: 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 note as part of an absenteeism.
I gotta log back in here. In here. LA VERE-WRIGHT: Yeah it looks like so if they've already initiated truancy, you can't just excuse your student anymore. You're going to have to provide proof of absence. That's a summary of what that is. I believe. Yep. Director D’Avola. I'm in full of support of this because truancy 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 Heil. Yeah, I actually had a sibling group of, foster kids who were, missing school to the tune of 30 some days a year. And I saw exactly what the impact is on their education. And, so, yeah, this is this is something very serious. And we as a board, especially if we want to focus on academic outcomes, we need to be, you know, we need to be serious about this. 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.. AUDIENCE: Yeah, yeah. We have public comment. The cutoff for public comment was 615, and she actually had extended that time. And so there was no second comment because it wasn't done by the cutoff. AUDIENCE: You know, I signed up I signed up for the second comment section to. Hang on just one second while we check the iPad. Does the iPad have a record, Lanette?
SAVEL: 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 do. D’AVOLA: We have Miscellaneous. Did you want to have the miscellaneous category? I mean, not particularly, especially considering that would give you all the opportunity to push back. And I don't know if I'm ready for that right now. Hang on while she checks the iPad. HEIL: There's always the next meeting. SAVEL: True that I as 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. Okay. THOMPSON: Can you hold on one second while she's checking the record? Roger that. Okay. I need. 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. Okay. I am Gail Thompson, speaking on JBAA as a friend of several trans people who went to D 49. 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, and 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 ignorance. Paranoia spread by segregationist fearmongering. The average trans girl is no more dangerous than anyone else.
Just as this just as the average black girl was not. This is simply segregation regurgitated. I urge everyone that can to disobey this policy for everyone, cis 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 Lori Thompson, JamiLynn D’Avola and Deb Schmidt get away with it.
Okay. Thank you. And Ben, what did you want to share? So, I'm. So during the miscellaneous time, I also wanted to make a comment about, resolution JBAA. Now, I understand most of the board is not going to like what I'm about to say, but 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, JBAA 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. SAVEL: Thank you. All right. We are adjourned at 942.