Speaker 1: We're good. Alright. I would like to call our regular board meeting today, Wednesday, April 9th to order at five 30. Holy cow. That never happens. If we would all please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, there's a flag right behind us and then remain standing for a moment of silence afterwards. Chance would you mind leading? Speaker 2: I pledge allegiance Speaker 3: To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with, with liberty and justice for
Speaker 1: All. Okay. If you would remain standing for just a moment of silence please. Great. Thank you. Alright, onto the agenda. Are there any changes to the agenda? Speaker 2: There are none. Speaker 1: May I get, I need to get my words together tonight. I apologize. May I get a motion to approve the agenda as presented? Speaker 2: So moved. Second. Speaker 1: May Speaker 2: That work right Sharon? I'm sorry, I can say so moved right? I learned that. So well just as the first and a second and then just to say I need a motion.
Somebody else make the motion and then you second. Okay. Well I make a motion to approve the agenda for April 9th, 2025. Second. Second. Speaker 1: Sharon, may I get a roll call? Thank you. Speaker 2: Me? Yes. Eli Aye. And Bri is on correct? Speaker 1: He is on my Speaker 2: Fletcher Aye. Asco Aye. Jenkins. Aye Jen. Speaker 1: Aye. Alright. And then public audience. I believe there is one public audience. I'm gonna read just a few welcoming notes. The board's meeting time is dedicated to its strategic mission and top priority focus areas.
Public partic participation is an opportunity to present brief comments or post questions to the board for consideration and follow up. Each person is asked to focus comments to three minutes. The boundaries are designed to help keep the meeting focused and in no way should limit conversations beyond the board meeting. Please be aware that any individual student or personnel matters are considered confidential under Colorado law. It is out of respect for the individual students and staff that we ask for those conversations to be held in executive session. Insights are needed and welcomed and the board encourages you to meet
with the most appropriate person among the district's. Many leaders. I believe our, we've got one person tonight, Tela. Perfect timing. How? Speaker 2: Okay, Speaker 1: Perfect timing. Speaker 2: So I'm Speaker 4: Tila Forehand and I am from silt and I just wanted to say thank you to the school board for recognizing parental rights on the a CA name change policy issue. And then also I was looking at the CMAs scores, which we know suffer and we've talked about that a couple times in public comment. I know. And so I was looking at what are some commonalities
between Catherine Sr and Riverside who have the best overall scores and look at the state website. I looked at their most recent presentations and couldn't really see any correlation from their basic stats after a brief review, a brief review of pretty basic information. But I did wonder, I don't know what the school board is doing, I know you guys do a lot of things, but I did wonder, have you guys had some sort of maybe team or upper administrative collaborative session between those two schools to see what's worked for them,
what hasn't worked for them, if there is anything in common or that could easily be highlighted, you know, relative to other schools to try to just pinpoint where that success is coming from. So, yeah. Okay. That's all. Thank you guys very much. Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you. Nothing like being put on the spot when you first walk in, so thank you. Yeah, I appreciate it. Alright. Onto, was there anybody else last minute? Did I think she, I don't, Speaker 4: I Speaker 1: Don't think so. Okay. No, I don't have anything. Okay. I just wanna make sure we didn't miss anything.
So let's see here. Onto the approval of the consent agenda. Are there any changes to the consent agenda? Yes. Okay. Speaker 4: The first one is on page four sixth from the top. So six bullets down and a correction to the recommendation for Morgan up Hof to change the effective date to April 7th 25. 2025. Not 2024. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 4: And a correction of a spelling
for Amanda Bingman, which is on page three and that is second from the bottom. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 1: Are there any other changes? Speaker 2: I Speaker 1: Hope not. Okay. I don't think so. I hope not. Speaker 4: We already, yeah, we fixed. Speaker 1: Yeah. Perfect. May I get a motion to approve the consent agenda as amended? Please Speaker 2: Go ahead to approve the consent agenda as amended. Speaker 1: Thank you. Scott, may I get a second? Speaker 2: Second. Speaker 1: Thank you. Chance, Sharon, may I get roll call please? Speaker 2: Sure. Aye. Speaker 5: Aye
Speaker 2: As Speaker 1: Aye. Second. Speaker 2: Aye Jen. Speaker 1: Aye. Okay. Alright. And then we need to approve the March 7th special board meeting minutes. May I get an approval? Speaker 4: I make a motion to approve the March 7th, 2025 special board meeting minutes. Speaker 1: May I get a second? Speaker 6: Second. Speaker 1: Thank you Sharon, Speaker 2: Eliza aye. Speaker 5: Aye. Speaker 2: Thank you. Pass. Speaker 4: Aye Speaker 2: Jenkins. Aye. Speaker 1: Jen. Aye. And then an approval
of the March 12th, 2025 draft board minutes. Speaker 4: I make a motion to approve the March 12th, 2025 draft board minutes. Speaker 1: May I get a second? Speaker 2: Second. Speaker 5: All set Speaker 2: Too late Speaker 1: Sharon. Speaker 2: Aye. Speaker 5: Aye. Speaker 2: Ask Speaker 4: Aye. Speaker 2: Jenkin. Aye. Speaker 1: Aye. Okay. And now on to our governance discussion items. Brian, you guys are up. Okay. Speaker 2: So Speaker 6: Would you like us all to, like, this is the crew. This is my crew that's gonna help support me, but it's okay just to stay seated like that. Okay. And I'll whatever they want seat, I might call you up.
We got, all right you guys. I need to be able to see it too though. When we put it up. Do you want it up? Yeah, Speaker 2: Maybe Speaker 6: I just pull it up on mine. I think I'll do that. I do. Yep. That way I can see I've Speaker 2: Got a copy. Right. Okay. I'm good. Okay. Speaker 6: Okay. It is. Okay. So, and you guys let me know too, I'll go through the things that are on the one pager, but if you act, if you wanna look actually at the SPFs, I have those ready to go to, to answer questions
about the actual SPF. Okay. But for now, I'll just start with the sheet here. And so we started with, with just looking at CMAs scores and with the board meetings I watched, I know that it, it's repetitive that scores are low, scores are low. Yes. Scores are, scores are low and we, it's no different at Grand Mesa if you look at ELA throughout, other than than fourth grade, which, which to me is, is a pretty good jump of 7% over that three year period. And going up continually, the rest are pretty standard
and stay, stay pretty much where they are and have not moved up in the last three years. We're, and I think everyone knows this, but we're answering to that with curriculum changes. And in a moment here we'll talk about what we're doing at GME specifically to try to aim at raising those scores. Math is the same thing. And in math, since I've been here, it's always having to, at the end of the year when these scores come out, it was, it was the same when Ryan fids was my math coach. And it's the same now with Sierra as the math coach.
Like they work their tails off and we gotta figure out what is going on, what is happening to keep those scores so low because, 'cause we all do a lot of good work to try to aim at it, but nothing, we just can't, we cannot put our finger on how to change those scores, at least in a, in a more drastic way. Third grade is the one that really stands out for math and the other two are, are, fourth and fifth are pretty low as they move on. And a lot of that is context. 'cause if you follow the same kiddos, right, that third grade math group that had 30% then moved down
to 20% that same group in fourth grade, and then that same group moved down to 14% in fifth grade. So there, there's something happening there because when I think of it, like my own schooling and growing up, I think of third grade as that transit, the hardier really, to tell you the truth, you you're learning multiplication, division. And so there's something happening there where they, they're they're getting that at least more so than, than whatever we're, we're doing in fourth and fifth grade. I think. I think I'll go, we're gonna speak to, let's speak to what we're doing right now to try to help change some of this.
Okay. So at Grand Mesa this year and starting this year, we made a drastic change to our master schedule for a couple reasons. One was to align ourselves more with the strategic plan. We really felt like putting in intervention times for both reading and math and, and moving science and social studies to a specialist class would allow us just more time to hit the needs of the kiddos. And so we made that change.
And I'm gonna let Carrie, Carrie, if you, if you're willing to come up and talk about the intervention program that you started this year too, with the master schedule change. There you go. Thank Speaker 7: You for putting me on spot. Speaker 6: You're welcome. Speaker 7: So we changed our intervention schedule, the teachers, because we have added the science and social studies specials that gave some extra time to teachers, of which they are taking one of their planned times to do interventions.
So we have cross grade level interventions. So for instance, we have fourth grade teachers come down and they do small group with second grade for reading and for math first grade teachers go to fifth grade. So it's been kind of fun for them too, because they are getting to interact with kids that they've maybe had before. Gives the kids a little bit of change with teacher. And we feel like it's been really successful through our RTI program. We've identified the kids that are the neediest
and those are the kids that are in those small groups that are being taught by teachers. Speaker 6: Then the one you took from program that you've learned through that. Speaker 7: Oh, well, we've been using, we we're using 95% group for our reading intervention. We visited Dalton Elementary in Aurora last year to see how they were running their intervention groups. We have a nice data wall in the hallway in the office. We started in our intervention intervention groups based off of phonics screeners, which helped us
pinpoint the skills that the kids are missing. And so that's where we started. And then as we go along in the year, we retest the kids on their phonics screeners. The phonics correlates really well with the 95% skills. So the kids are working on the skills that they are missing so that they can move up to the next skill. Speaker 6: All done did, did I get That's perfect. That was absolutely perfect. And we do, we do love, we absolutely love the teachers being able to do the interventions. Like for years it was, why don't we have the most skilled employees working with the neediest children?
Well, in, in messing with the master schedule and changing things up, it, it fell into our lap. It was an idea by one of our second grade teachers. And it, and it, it has that piece of it has become highly successful. And so as we move forward now, it's like, okay, if we're gonna mess with the master schedule again, we gotta make sure that we can continue the good that we have found out of, out of doing interventions differently. So, and Speaker 7: We hope to see a change in our data this year. Yes, Speaker 6: We do. And and going into next year it's gonna be hard, you know,
we're changing curriculums, but because of the work put in by the teams who chose those curriculums and by piloting everything, it it, we expect those things to be successful. Speaker 1: And you guys were piloting all three? Speaker 4: We, we Speaker 7: Piloted wonders. Okay. We were one of the Wonder schools. Yeah. Speaker 6: Yeah. Beautiful. Thank you. I'm off the hook. Yeah, you're off the hook next. Yeah, I, I do I, yeah, I want Sierra to come on up and talk a little bit about not just math interventions, but just the success. And you'll see it over where it says RTI success you guys.
It says number of RTI plans, 35 parent meetings, held 26. That's something to really highlight. And percentage of students move to continued support is 37. And so that's what I would like you to talk to just a little bit about what's changed and, and why it's highly successful at this point. Speaker 4: Okay. Well, RTI has been a district push, as you guys probably know, but I feel like it's something that this building has pulled off really successfully. And as Carrie said, it's really supported that intervention system because we're identifying students who have needs and then through the RTI system, making sure
that they're getting the support they need. One of the things that we've really ramped up this year is just holding ourselves accountable to making sure that we're setting clear goals for those students that can be measured so that we can monitor their progress. And that's why we are seeing so many kids, 37% of our kids moving on to continued support, which just means they're meeting their goals, we're able to get them the intervention they need and they're moving to the point where they're not on an RTI plan any longer. And then a really big piece of the RTI system is that we're trying to involve families more in the academic
success of their children. So out of the 35 students that we have on RTI plans we're required to hold a meeting to put them on that plan. And out of those 35 26 families have joined us in setting goals for their children, developing action plans to help them succeed. And we're very proud of that. Speaker 6: Very well done. Good job. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. And then I, I know you're nervous, but I want Lorraina to come up here just for a minute. I want to point to the piece you guys where it says student success data. And this is, this is one of the coolest things.
I think because our, the population has changed over the years. Definitely we see more, more non-English speaking students coming into the schools. But if you look at the scores of, for SPF on track to language proficiency, the one that's highlighted there is the Graham Mesa scores for the last three years. And I wanna point out that they from 54% of those kids on track to 61 to 70 and the names of the buildings aren't on there, but the, the rest of the schools are on there too. And, and ours comparatively really does stand out. And so yeah, like Lorena, you've just done a great job
and, and I didn't know if there's a moment something you wanna share about just how you do your work and what you think makes it so successful. Speaker 1: Hi. I just feel like I just build relationships with kids. Bottom line. A kid is not gonna do or help or do anything for themselves or for you if they don't trust you, if they don't feel safe with you. So I really try to build those relationships with, with, with my students as soon as I come in, whether it's from another school or whether it's from another country, making them know that they are safe, they are taken care of and I got you
and we got you is really what I start with. And then from there I can really start building their language proficiency with all the other things. So yeah. Speaker 6: Thank you. That was awesome. And it is, it's a good, it's it's highly, it's just fun to look at because that is the, the population that we're trying so hard to not just engage with us in the community, but to see them learning and to see them growing in proficiency and, and, and it's just really cool what, what Lorena has been able
to build with our ELL program. So thank you for that friend. And you guys aren't off the hook completely. 'cause we're gonna have to answer questions too. But you've done very, very well. I do wanna point up to the, the staff success data. We, we look at this as successful because if at least part of my work has been with, with CMC and wanting to engage with them on how to get alternative licensure teachers in the building, one is because of the feel rate, right? And where, where we dealt with that for years at this point.
But another was because there are highly effective students in their program who might be able to help us before they get outta school. And so when you look at those numbers there, when it says CMC apprentice four teacher of record one adjunct licenses four, that, that used to be zero across the board. And because, and Sierra behind me, she was the first one outta CMC to be one of those students who we were able to pull in and still complete her program. And now the relationship between GME
and CMC is so strong that I, I sit on the board of li of alternative licensure for Colorado Mountain College and they talk about it all the time. Like that relationship is important and, and now that everyone kind of understands the, the need, everyone's working towards the same goal. And so I look at those numbers and first of all, it's a lot of work. It is a lot of work for the mentor teachers in the building, but it, it's really cool to have that many people who are worthy of their positions are finishing school and wanting to be lifelong, you know,
Garfield RE two employees. That's why they're doing it. Speaker 4: So are these Oh I am I okay to ask a question? Speaker 6: Absolutely, go ahead. Speaker 4: Are these four apprentices first year teachers Speaker 6: Or Speaker 4: Do you have different levels of the apprentice? So Speaker 6: Sierra, can you help me with this one a little bit? Yeah. Because we do have different, there are different levels. Speaker 4: Is there, okay. Yeah. So Brian kind of touched on it a little, but I think one of the coolest parts about these alternative pathways is that we're really growing our own here. And so we do have a couple of first year apprentices.
So Courtney Bowles in kindergarten is a first year teacher, first year apprentice. But then we've got a couple of people in the building that have either served in the district in different roles before or have been at GME for several years. And we love them as staff members and we think they're amazing and we want them to be here long term. And so Brandon Clover, our SPED teacher, he's an apprentice as well, he's been here for several years. Amber Clover, his wife actually she taught at Highland previously in the preschool department and now she teaches third grade here
and she's an apprentice. And then we have Kaitlyn Diaz, she is one of our SPED paras. She's been here for years as well. And she's going through the apprentice program. She wants to join a general education classroom later. So it's pretty cool that we're able to offer this to staff members that we've already recognized as Austin. Awesome. And we wanna keep 'em here as teachers. Yeah. Speaker 6: It is our strategy to keep the homegrown because we, we do want them not only for them 'cause we care about 'em and see the work they put in, but they are also part of what has built GME to be what GME is.
And so now to give them the opportunity to become teachers. Awesome. Yeah, let's Speaker 4: Do it. And then Brianna is our one teacher of record. So she's also in CMC, but she's done the traditional program all the way to her intern year and then accepted a full-time teaching position with us. But this isn't her first year here. She was a long-term sub for us last year when we had a teacher out on maternity leave. And then prior to that maternity leave, she was paired with a teacher here who was her mentor. So she's another one that we're growing to be one of our amazing teachers.
Thank you. How many mentor? Sorry. I said thank you. How many mentor teachers do we have? Well, so we have the two district mentors and they do the mentoring for like the induction program at Garfield R two. And then each one of those, those apprentices has their own mentor. And then Michelle Lee is the mentor for an apprentice, but also Brianna, our teacher of record. So quite a few. We have a Speaker 6: Lot of mentors. Speaker 4: Yes, a lot of mentors. Speaker 8: How are they, how are they represented in like staff? Like what would you, are they certified
Speaker 4: Speak to that? A teacher of record is certified. They get a, a teacher of record license. It's not an initial, it's like a license that only covers their first two years. And then once they graduate they get their initial license. What would, Speaker 8: How would we, what would we label the apprentice? Speaker 4: It's a long term sub teacher of record contract. So they, yeah, they're going through their courses at CMC. It's just shortened courses. So instead of 15 week courses, they're eight week courses and they will get a degree at the end. But then they also get credit for basically on the job training, all the work that they're doing in the building.
Speaker 6: And the adjunct licenses are certified as well. Speaker 4: Yeah. And so that would be a staff member who's been here for a significant amount of time, has worked in the building, but didn't hold a degree prior to that. If they have so many years of experience, they can apply for the adjunct license with CDE and then they do get a full blown certified teaching license certified teacher. Yeah. Oh nice. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Speaker 6: You bet. Other questions about that? Okay, well done. Speaker 4: Well Speaker 6: Done. Okay.
We touched on it in before the meeting started, but I did put a little piece on there just about what we do community wise. 'cause that is our, that is our drive here. But the demographics, I, I still think that's something that the focus moving forward, I would hope is, is about, honestly about everyone engaging in learning second language and supporting students who don't speak English at all. And how we're gonna do that because they come, there's just more, and Lorena knows
what she's doing here at GME without a doubt. But that's the thing I think that needs to be strategic about. What kind of support does that look like moving forward? Not only for Grand Mesa but for the district as a whole and how we're gonna, our success I believe is going to be based on how we embrace that. It needs to be embraced. And I love, I love forward thinking when it comes to ELL students and students who, who are coming from, from a different situation where they have no idea what in the world is going on. And I think that, that, that change can be made
through what Lorena said. It's about relationship, it's about attitude and it's about embracing, embracing who we are and what our community is. And so Graham definitely needs to focus on how are we going to continue to support that demographic. Yeah, I think, I think that's all I needed to say to you, but I'm definitely happy to answer your questions as well. Speaker 1: I do have one question. Yes. So when you guys went over to Dalton Elementary in Denver, what made you pick Dalton Elementary.
Speaker 4: Okay. Simon Speaker 7: Part of that, Simone was part of that she had gotten in contact with, so Dalton Elementary teaches Wonders, which was one of the programs that we were piloting. And they also are heavy into teaching 95% for intervention. So we kind of wanted to see how they do it. And I think Simone had gotten the name of the principal there from the Wonders rep. Okay. I believe is how we found them. Okay. And yeah, it was pretty amazing. Yeah. Nice.
It was impactful. We weren't, the only school that went there was people from throughout the district, elementary schools that went to visit. Speaker 1: Nice. What's their size compared to ours? Speaker 7: They're similar in size and demographics to us. Oh, nice. Speaker 1: Okay. Yeah. Speaker 4: I wonder Speaker 8: What were, what were like a couple of the main takeaways you took that you could implement here in the coming years? Speaker 7: So they shared their data wall with us and so our data wall looks very much like theirs. Each of our students has an index card. The index cards are colored according to grade level.
And then there's a stick, there's a sticker on it that tells like where they're at, what skill they're working on. And it has all of their data on that. And then it's been fun to watch the cards move along the continuum as the kids pass out of certain skills and move on to the next. And it's been fun to see how many kids at the end are maxed out. We have more, one more round of big testing to do for that just towards the end of the year to see where we, where we landed Speaker 4: Math pilot last year. How do you guys feel like with the new program?
Are you, was it received? Sorry, chairs. Just everybody pull up a chair. No, just come on. Received. Well the transition to that, what did that look like? Yeah. We were lucky that we had Eureka in our building. We piloted Eureka and Kinder first and second. So a lot of our families were already familiar with Eureka. And then I think the reception's been great. We've had some concerns about homework that I think at this point in the year we've fleshed out just because it looks very different from
the old math homework. I'm sure you guys have seen it, but we also held a pretty amazing event here. We did a Math Minds and Mighty Hearts carnival last month or this month. When was it? Yeah, March. Speaker 6: It was amazing though. Speaker 4: It was, it was, it was a really good event. We, it was carnival themed, but we had instructional classrooms for math and then for our SEL ruler program. And you had to go to those classrooms to earn tickets that then you spent on all the fun carnival themed stuff. And we had a really great turnout. We, it was just amazing to go into some of those classrooms
and they were jam packed, like barely any standing room and just lots of families in there enjoying math together. And it was a beautiful thing. Nice. Speaker 6: Yeah. But I think of that continuum that we've talked about a lot, you know, of impact on community events and whether they're low impact or high, you know, where it falls on that. And, and that one was certainly high impact. 'cause he, 'cause they were, they were so engaged in the math and they were over on the other side, they were wanting to learn about the SEL program Making family. You know, what, what was it
that they, that you were doing? Casey? The, Speaker 4: The Family charters. The Speaker 6: Family charters together. I even took one. I'm like, this is great. It's a great Speaker 4: Practice. Speaker 6: Yeah. It was just really, really Speaker 4: Cool. And I think one of the things when we were doing the pilot with any curriculum, you're gonna have like a little bit of hesitation from students and from families and from teachers about like, this is so brand new, how are kids going to adapt to it? Are kids even gonna be able to do this because it looks so different from the old thing. And throughout the pilot year, we dealt with that a lot. Just a lot of assuring people trust the process, trust the process, trust the process.
And teachers came around at the end of the pilot year and they were like, oh my goodness. I like, I see it. Everything's starting to click and fall into place. And one of the biggest successes for us, I think has been watching, like our second grade class move into third grade. They had Eureka last year through the pilot. Now they're getting it this year with their third grade teachers. And the third grade teachers who didn't teach it last year had that hesitation. And then they're, I'm like, trust me, just trust the process. Just go through with it. And then they, you know, they give the directions to the kids and the kids can do it right away. And they come to me and they're like, I'm just,
I can't believe that they could do that. And so we're looking forward to, as it moves through all of our grades, the kind of successes we'll Speaker 6: See there. Well, and then also just everyone understanding how, how that instruc, what that instruction looks like because it is different. But again, then I would point to, we have teachers and we have staff members and we have people in the Access after school program, learning how to instruct those practices and then becoming involved in, in being those tier three. You know, we've got a couple kids who are literally in tier three in access after school
and it takes instruction of how to teach it. But man, oh man, once they've got it down, it makes sense to everybody. So it, that is a very cool thing to see. I'm very happy with with that. Yeah. Speaker 4: I'm really hoping it shows in fifth grade. Yes. Is that in cohort of teachers maybe? Or if they've been here or was there some turnover or changes in staff for the fifth grade math last year? Not last year, no. This year we do have a new fifth grade team. Speaker 6: We had one teacher who went on maternity leave midyear, but other than that, no. It, that was a team that had been here for several,
several years and then took positions elsewhere. Okay. Outside the district. So, Speaker 4: Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Bri, do you have any questions? Speaker 5: I do. Speaker 6: Go Speaker 5: For it. So this week it looks like we did some C mask testing. Is that correct? Speaker 4: Yes, we did. Speaker 5: So leading up to that, you guys were using DIBELS and iReady? Speaker 4: Yes. And the 95 core phonics screeners and then all of our Eureka math assessments. Speaker 5: Okay. And I, I mean, what would I think would've been awesome.
Have you guys seen any improvements in those tests when you took them early to the season to where we are, to where we are now, to, are we making improvements with these interventions? Speaker 4: Yes. Yeah, we have definitely seen growth on our i-Ready data in both reading and math. Carrie could speak to DIBELS and I don't have the numbers in front of me right at this moment, but I do know that they demonstrate growth Speaker 6: Be. And the last couple years, Bri and I, it may, it could have been discussed, but what we've done district-wide is there's been a lot of focus and a lot of work put into trying
to see the relatability between iReady and, and CMAs. And the work that Simone has put into getting that stuff together has shown there really is a correlation there. And so it shows that I iReady in general, that's a successful program for us to be using because there is a pretty good correlation between the end of year i-Ready and the CMAs score. And so yeah, we always get to this time of year and we get super excited. Right. And it just, and then just hope to see that what we've seen in i-Ready we see on CMAs,
I will tell you it is a different, we do our best to make the testing environment the same for everything all the time. But we all know when CMAs hits there is a different feel. And so what we try to do is take that feel and turn it into positive energy and rewards and cheer. You wanna engage. Yeah, yeah, exactly. We cheer in always every day for them. We honor them every single day just in hopes that they know because of the success they've seen themselves, they've,
they've written their own i-Ready goals and have been able to see their success that hopefully going into cmass, they, they have confidence going into the test. I will tell you, just on a side note, I got to proctor Proctor a fourth grade class yesterday. And it was funny because I told the kids, I'm like, it was the best effort I'd ever seen ever in my, all my years of proctoring tests. So that teacher had gotten that class ready and so we're coming downstairs to put tickets in our little buckets and then one of our paraprofessionals comes up to me and she had a, one of the small groups,
same grade from fourth grade. And she's like, Brian, that would, that was the best proctor I've ever had. And said the exact same comment and I was just like, ah, that would be awesome if this is, if that is the field going into the test for, for all three grades. And I, I, I have confidence that it is, and, and we'll see, we'll see what it shows. Speaker 5: One of the things I would ask, if at all available if you could do it, is to put some of those DIBELS and iReady numbers together and, and send it to me. Maybe the board would enjoy that too. I'd just like to see where they started out at this, at the beginning of the year to where they are.
The last time you tested before we went into CMAs to see it, just to see that correlation moving up. And I always think that'd be valuable information when we do these talks about the, you know, the, our one papers here to see some of those successes. So if you could put something briefly together, not to take too much outta your time just to see that. I'd appreciate it. Speaker 6: Absolutely. I say absolutely. Speaker 2: Go team. Put your, Speaker 5: I had one more question if I could jump into it.
You know, as we look at your, your SPS and just, just I guess a question in general or Grand Mesa, you know, in 2024 we're, you know, Beretta we're at, we have the PIP and I I'm sure we're gonna make improvements, but what, what is the next step of that? Unfortunately at our 41.6% or points per drops down, what, and I guess this might be for Elisa or Heather, what, what is the steps that happen to a school that unfortunately just keeps kind of dropping in that SPF?
Speaker 6: So I, I can speak to that a little bit about some of the steps that we are doing that are in addition to what everyone is doing in the district. We, we are working with a group called Strive that is gonna come in from an outside view and help us try to identify things that might be missing, might have gaps that we just aren't seeing internally. We get to do that twice here to finish out the semester and then that team is going to continue working with
Graham Mesa and one other building just to do exactly that to help us try to find the gaps and then help do some PD with how we can, how we can help the teachers with some of those things. We have a lot of young teachers and you just don't know what you don't know. And so I I, that's one extra thing that I think is extremely valuable. I don't know if there's more to say about the grant piece of that, but yeah, that's, that's one thing that I know we're doing in addition. And then, you know, just my own brain thinking about it, it's all about growth, right? It, that's where we're lacking.
That's where the scores lack. Yes, we go from yellow to orange, but if you look at the points, it's 41.6, right? And, and yellow is 42. So, so we're right there. But for us, I still think it's about looking at those kiddos who don't grow. They just don't grow and, and tightening up like we're doing this year, doing the interventions differently, having experts do interventions, and then bringing crews in who want to help, want to help with those kind of things. Like I said, families getting engaged, learning about
what they're, what they're lacking and, and learning about how they could help. Speaker 5: Well I really felt that, you know, not to take too much of, of everything, but your RTI success when you're talking about the 20, you know, you have 35 kids in that point and you were engaging 26, you know, the families. That's a big win. That's a big win. Yeah, I agree. You know, I now we just need to get that to a hundred percent and I, I think those little incremental wins here and there where we can point 'em out and and shine the light on those wind, it'll translate over. We'll get those points back.
I think Grand Maca is an awesome school. It's a beautiful campus, great people in there, you'll get there and I think you guys are doing good work over there. It's gotta keep moving the needle. Speaker 6: Yeah, I think absolutely. I think the skeleton of the RTI process would right now is, is super successful and, and it does have families engaged and, and it can be some work, but I think it's been worth it. Speaker 5: Awesome. Scott, why that Speaker 6: Work? Speaker 1: Everybody? Anybody else? Speaker 8: Just a couple things. Sure. You mentioned in, in your presentation you mentioned a couple things that I really want to hammer home is,
Bri mentioned it earlier as a family buy-in. Yeah. We all know we're more successful when families are involved Yeah. As a school district, as a community, and then grow your own staff. I've heard that term from since I came around. And I think it that's gonna be our number one model moving forward for the foreseeable future. And I think it's very important to, to make this attractive to, to kids in our district who want to stay here. So good job on that. Kudos for that. I'm sorry, I forgot your name. Lorena. Lorena you mentioned about relationships. Yeah, yeah. Building relationships with each kid.
I know that from coach. I know, I know that from coaching that if a kid knows that you that that you care about him. Yeah. And you will protect him. They will do amazing things. You can be harder on them. You can, you can push them, you can, you can drive 'em. So it is about those relationships. Problem is it's one at a time, right? And and to build them right, you have to take the time. And so that's a very long process. So thank you for doing that. Absolutely. And then I think Mark, and you've mentioned trust the process. We have schools in our district that are in the green, right? We have the process, we have the people
here, we have the leaders here. Just trust it. I know. We just keep putting them in the work. I know sometimes it can get like especially when those scores come back and they're not what you think, just trust the process. It's a lot of hammering it. You just have to keep going one foot in front of the other. Good job. Thank Speaker 1: You. Thank Speaker 6: You guys. Thank you. Thank you. I would like to mention too, like if you had mentioned the piece about sports and coaches and being able to be harder if you have that relationship piece. And, and that is one thing to highlight too. If you know Lorena at all, that is who she is. She is able to do that, but the kids love her
and so therefore she, she is able to use that as, leverage is the wrong word, but certainly motivation for the kids to want to be better. Speaker 8: It definitely is. Yeah. Speaker 6: Because Speaker 8: You can set high expectations for kids and they just want to, they want to meet 'em all the time. Speaker 6: Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 1: And I think representation matters. So when I grew up, I grew up in this school district, I didn't have anyone that looked like me when I came to school. So that representation that made me want to be a teacher, that made me leave my family, which is culturally not something that we do as women to go
and pursue my dream to come back to my community and to represent. So that's where that comes from. Speaker 2: I share that real quick. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? We're good. Think so. Thank you guys. Thank you. Speaker 6: Hey, I appreciate it. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks for listening to and yeah, we do, we do love our district and we, anything we can do to help the entire district, that's what we're all about. So thank you. Thank Speaker 2: You. Thanks guys. Speaker 1: All right. Onto the next, we've got
Speaker 2: What that Speaker 1: JJC i's here so come on down. Speaker 2: Oh, I thought I heard Bri say Speaker 1: Something. You are the next contestant on the board meeting. Woohoo. We've got candy. That's what we got for you Speaker 2: Guys need some chairs? You go. Are you sure? Okay. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Speaker 9: Try and talk to you guys and Speaker 2: The screen. Perfect. Speaker 9: Ready? Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 9: Hello. Thanks for having us tonight. I'm Kevin Huber with Johnson Controls. I know most of you so this would be good for you. I'm the project executive on this project
that I'm gonna be discussing tonight. And with me I have Robert Phillips, he's in charge of delivering the project, our construction manager. And then I have Don Flower who is our energy engineer and he'll be providing your measurement and verification reports, which I go into as well. So, So why are we here? This is a great, a great slide on the right hand side, you can see that graphic. We started this discussion with the district about two and a half years ago and wanted to see what some of your issues were.
And so those kind of highlight some of the issues we were seeing throughout the district with the main one being right in the middle funding. John had a very long list of deferred maintenance. It was just over $150 million across all your buildings. The problem is he gets about one and a half million a year to take care of all those facilities. So when you map that out, it'd take him about a hundred years just to get to get caught up and then he'd have another a hundred years worth of of issues. So some of the goals that came out of this
as we developed the project was creating a safe and healthy learning environment for all the students. Creating a more energy efficient operational buildings as well. And then you had an elementary school that hadn't been touched in about 30 years and needed some major updates over at Walmsley. And so John's previous role, he had done an energy performance contract and knew it was a good way to tighten up the buildings, kind of create equity across all the buildings with the lighting and thermal control.
And then also to fund a project without having to ask the taxpayers for money or dip into your general funds, even though he did dip in his general funds a little bit. This kind of highlights, just put this slide in here. At the same time we were developing these projects, you guys were working on your strategic plan. So we wanted to make sure this project aligned with your strategic plan. So on the right you can see some of the benefits that came out of this by doing the, the work that I'm gonna highlight here. Increased academic improvement, more consistent, pleasant
and focused environment, attracting and retaining staff and students bringing dollars and jobs back to your local community. We worked with a lot of local subs on this project. Transparency to your constituents creative financing mechanism to address a large portion of your deferred maintenance and then enabling a long term operation and maintenance efficiency. So when I talk about performance contracting, the best way to do this is when you look at that graph on the left hand side is what your operation budget was,
was a little over $2 million that you spend on your utilities operation and maintenance to keep all your buildings running across the district. What we did was we developed a project for you guys and found that we could reduce your utility operation and maintenance spend by almost 30% by doing the facility improvement measures. I'm gonna talk about on the next slide. So how we pay for that is we implement the project, we lower your utility operation and maintenance. We also looked for grants and we rebates to help fund some of these projects.
We put all that together and it came out to about a $16 million package. And then we used those savings and grants and rebates to pay for the annual debt payment. So we financed this project with Bank of America over a 20 year term. And right now we're coming up on year two. We started this contract May 31st of 23. So just about to wrap up the project as well. It's going by quick. Any questions on that about performance contracting? The other thing I didn't mention on there, there is legislation in the state of Colorado around this.
So back in 2017 they said we are required to guarantee the savings. So we do have a guarantee on this and that's kind of why Don is here and he'll, we'll talk about this in a few minutes, but for the first three years we will be doing measurement verification. So on all the energy improvements that we have guarantees on, we will be providing a report for you that shows those annual savings. If we come up short on the overall amount that we said we were gonna save you that 28.5%, we cut you guys a check
to make sure it keeps it budget control. So right here just kind of gives you some high level data. I've touched on some of this, I was wrong. Your total utility operation and maintenance was at 2.6 million a year and higher than this said. So put you guys at about a dollar 89 on your energy cost per square foot. And as you can see, we want to get that down. We're at about, I think a dollar 27 after this project is what we're projecting. This is really busy and I'll consolidate it on the next slide. But this just shows you all of the improvement measures
that were done at all the facilities. So 10 schools for district buildings. And to kind of consolidate that, you can see it's kind of three, three portions of this. There's the safety impact. So we put panic alarm upgrades, a dedicated panic alarm system at every school throughout the district. And then we put security film on all the front entrances of the schools as well. So that was the safety aspect. The energy savings projects are there in the blue. We did LED lighting, interior, exterior and controls throughout the entire district.
We did building automation, system sequencing, upgrades and analytical monitoring and all the schools boiler replacements at four schools. New air handlers and rooftop units at Elk Creek Elementary, 15 building envelopes, sealed dest stratification fans at all the schools. These are big fans in the gym that help circulate the air and push down irrigation controls at five sites, new water fixtures at 10 buildings, closed loop, hot water treatment at all the schools.
You guys have really hard water up here. And our engineers developed a solution to combat that and extend the life of your boilers on your equipment. So that's really, that was a good one. And then plug load management. This is just a little device that goes on the wall that can help shut the power off and save lots of energy as well. And then, then down at the bottom we have Wamsley Elementary where we did new roof, new siding, windows, doors, floor upgrades and they also got boilers and filling envelope and all those and everything else as well.
So I have Robert here, he, he got the pleasure of building this project and he's gonna go over just some of the, the fims that we did. We call 'em fis, facility improvement measures. And just highlight that for you guys. Find my phone. I, I too, have to look over at the chart here. Hi Heather. Chance. Familiar faces, few faces for me. So I did. I get to spend two, two years out here working in all your schools. Got to know the staff. I can't think of a better staff and more friendly environment to work.
I worked in a lot of places nationwide and garfield's it, right? I mean, you walk into school, people say hi, you walk up to the door and knock, they, they know who you are, right? It just was very comfortable and, and great contractors were great overall fantastic experience. But like Kevin says, we're done. We're just finishing up some loose ends and I'm gonna go elsewhere. Don's going to come in, be the face of JCI and, and keep reporting the savings to you folks. But I want to thank you for the opportunity first and foremost. But like Kevin said, panic alarms.
You guys have a top-notch system that we put some speakers in that I think you could hear all over the city. There's no doubt if there's something going on, everybody's gonna know about it. That was a huge upgrade that we were able to pull off and, and get to this school district. That's second to none. There's not another system like that that I go up in Colorado if there is an issue, pointed it out to me. But it's fantastic in terms of safety for the students and the staff, right? And as loud as it is, is pretty safe in the community as well. Kind of an added bonus. But second to
that, in terms of safety, the Windows security film. We didn't do all the doors and windows, but we did, you know, main entry points and I think we've tested it at, was it Elk Creek, John? And I think it worked to some degree and I'm not sure what that issue was, but we didn't test it. It got tested for us, but it did what it's supposed to do, right? Stop the potential intruder lighting, retrofit. I mean, it's here, you could see it. Walk this school. The, I remember walking in here the first cafeteria, the first time it was kind of go and dinging. Now it's bright, colorful, womsleys, a great example.
An older school, tight ceilings, lighting, new floors and whatnot in that school. Tremendous difference, right? Which creates a great learning environment for the, for the students and the teaching environment for the teachers, right? And us visitors get to enjoy nice bright, you know, spaces, right? I love it. B essence, BAS sequencing. Everybody's going, what's that? It's kind of smoke and mirrors. It's behind the scenes. It's, it's just doing things with your mechanical systems to optimize their operation, just to make 'em work better.
More in sync with, with the way schools operate. Make sure they're warmed up. You know, the schools are warmed up and pulled off before the students get here and just to optimize that, that operation. So, but it boils down to saving energy, but it also adds to the comfort of the school immensely if it's done correctly. And I think we've done that open blue. Another kind of a little bit of, I call 'em smoke of mirrors because I'm a construction guy, right? I like building stuff. But open blue is a pork kind of a, a video or a, a tunnel into your energy consumption.
So as part of that particular f we went in and put energy meters on every building. And so John can go in at any time and look at five minute incremental usage of power. He can, he can see energy spikes, he can see consumption real time as it happens. And there's no better way to save energy than being able to measure what you're doing and then compare it month over month, year over year to what you've done. So John now has that view into his consumption at every school,
every building, we can see what's going on, he can see what's going on. We also can see what's going on for him. But tremendous insights and how energy's being used here in the school district. Boiler upgrades, as Kevin mentioned, we did four different schools. We placed all the boilers in those schools. And I know when the state inspector came through, he recalled doing past inspections and was very pleased with the upgrades that were put in place. Very modern boilers and complete systems that
Speaker 10: Probably are gonna solve a lot of problems for John's staff moving forward and make the schools a little more comfortable all the way around. So I feel we got a pretty good solution there. Air handlers and rooftops, it's really, I dedicated to Elk Creek unfortunately, but we touched, I think there was nine different systems. Some, some rooftop units we call 'em. And then there's some air handlers and a penthouse. Those two, you know, are all driven around bringing in, you know, and maximizing the fresh air for the students. Getting rid of the, the CO2 and the things that make us sleepy and just make it a best, nice, really fresh environment
for the kids that are, you know, heated and cooled appropriately. Eh, building improvement envelopes or building envelope improvements, that's really just sealing up the doors, the windows, just making sure there's no drafts, just kind of getting the, the yucky stuff out of the schools, right? So that's kind of another little smoke and mirror kind of thing. It just happens, but it's very, very impactful on your energy. It saves a lot of energy. So we went through and did that. De stratification fans, not a big deal, but like Kevin said, they're big jumbo fans. There's more like a turbine in your, in all your gyms
and it's taking the hot and cold air depending on what it's up there, up in the rafters, pushing it down to the, to the floor level where the kids are. This kind of gets rid of that, what do you call it? The, the locker room smell, right? That gyms seem to, to accumulate, right? It kind of just changes it up for 'em and makes a better environment. Domestic water fixtures, if you've ever gone to the bathrooms, nice new China flushers that don't use a lot of water, very efficient and, you know, sets a new stage. But it really kind of created some consistency across the
district in terms of the toilets and the, and the flushometer and the controls and whatnot for those toilets and, and urinals, right? Irrigation controls. Willing did that where you're paying for domestic potable water if you're doing irrigation with your ditches, canals and stuff. We didn't touch that, but modernized the irrigation controls so that you can track your water usage and control it. You can, you can, you have better timing, you better controls. So that's always a good one to do. Water treatment, water softeners. As Kevin mentioned, you got really,
really hard water up here. You all know that you live here. So the water softeners are a preparatory step for your boilers, your makeup waters, for your, your closed loop systems so that we kind of keep all that yucky stuff out of there and get rid of it and that'll prolong the life of your systems in total across all the 10 schools that we touched. Plug load management and kind of boring, but it's a little switch that goes on certain outlets and it turns things on and off. 'cause that's the best way to save energy, right? Turn something off. So that little device does that.
It does it pretty well. So you can see 'em on the ceiling for little projectors plugged into one right now. So it makes sure that when we're not in here at that noise off and it's not consuming any standby power, so small but effective roof replacement at Wamsley. Like Kevin mentioned, Wamsley was in dire needs of a lot of upgrades. The roof leaked for years. Carpet was moldy and mildy because of it. We put a brand new roof on it, 20 year warranty and I don't think it's leaked since, so I wouldn't expect it will anytime soon.
So that's a great thing. The cow wall, unless you know what it is, it's, it was that little hairy siding that was on the side of the, of Wamsley Elementary. And I've seen it elsewhere in the school district, but I, I think John's changing some of that out. But we took that plexiglass looking stuff out of the off the walls where the kids could get to it and replaced it with nice sheet metal and you know, kind of sealed that up and got a little more rust safe, I guess, siding on that school, exterior door replacement.
Anybody that walked in and outta wamsley as many times as I did, I feel like those doors were horrific, right? So we replaced all, pretty much all the exterior doors. Nice new systems. We still have to paint 'em here this summer. We got a little behind last year just 'cause of deliveries and stuff and got pushed into winter. So still owe you guys a paint job on your doors and we're gonna put some window film on and get 'em all sealed up, caulked and whatnot and ready to go for the forever. So that'll happen this summer. And then lastly, and probably one of the more exciting ones for me anyway,
was we tore all the carpet outta wamsley and there was a lot of surprises underneath you guys' carpet. Speaker 2: So Speaker 10: We, we were surprised, didn't find any skeletons, but we ended up tearing out concrete, replacing it, doing floor drains, all kinds of good stuff, leveling floors. That school had been there went since 82. A lot of sins happened in there. So we got that all fixed up and sealed and you know, I think it made it really nice, you know, entryway I guess for that school. So that's pretty much it.
I can give it back over to Kevin here and you can tidy things up here for you. Speaker 2: Thank you sir. Speaker 9: All right, so when we look at the project, it's just some of the highlights for you guys. It was a great, great project for you. Total project size was just over 15.8 million. The total savings generated by this over the 20 year term was 19.2 million. So more than enough you getting, getting money back kind of at the end of the day, the utility savings is the majority of it, 17.1 million
with the operation savings at 2.1. There were a lot of rebates for the lighting on this. We're still, it's still not finalized, but we know it's gonna be over 300,000 that you guys are getting in total rebates. The annual district contribution is 300 K. So after we developed this project, we were at about a $10 million project with the other needs that were outside the safety and the wamsley renovations. John needed 6 million plus right away to do that. So he has committed 300,000 of his annual capital budget,
300,000 every year to pay towards the debt as well. So I kind of mentioned that earlier. So you have the energy savings plus your 300 k that helps pay for that. So the benefit to doing that was you gotta take care of $6 million plus worth of work, you know, and over the last two years as opposed to trying to break that out over the next 20 years and you just didn't have time, you know, the roof needed to be done, that kind of stuff. So the, I mentioned this again, savings on water, electric and gas percentage, we're estimating 28.5% that could go up.
We'll know after we get some measurement and verification done. We also wrote a best grant for you last year, which was for Wamsley and I'm gonna talk about that next. It's about a $2 million project. We ended up getting 550,000 from the state. We use this project as the match for that. And then the installation period savings. So when you look at kind of the cash flow, some of you have seen it, when you look year over year, how much you're gonna save. You have a year zero on there, which is kind of the construction, what we've been doing right now.
So those aren't part of the guarantee, but those are just additional savings. You guys have realized as we've gone and implemented all of this, you know, put the new lighting in and all of that. So right now we're at about $347,000 that you guys have already saved. That's just above and beyond. So in the little piggy bank over there, when you look at kind of to date where we're at with the rebates, the best grant and then the construction period savings, we've redirected 1.2 million back into the district already over the last two years.
So pretty significant. Some people say these projects are smoke and mirrors, but that's money that's in your general fund right now. So this is highlighting the best grant for you. We, it's a competitive grant. I'm sure all of you are familiar with it. If you want to know more about it, I can tell you all about it. But we, you guys have a high match, it's just your assessed values high, there's a lot of factors that go into it. It's like 12 different factors I think that go into making your match. So you had a 68% match.
We wrote a grant for 1.8 million and like I mentioned before, we're gonna get roughly 550,000 from the state. So this was for Wamsley was doing the roof, the two boilers and then the doors and windows was, we were able to kind of pull that out. Those are all good health safety items that CDE typically approves. And so we were really strategic on what should we put in this best grant and you know, what is likely to get approved. So Liz on my grants team worked with John
and staff to get that completed. And last May we were awarded, we're pretty high up the list so it was, it was good to bring some more money back in. That's pretty much it with that. And then this is just the timeline and then I'll hand it over to Don. As I mentioned, we started, we two and a half years ago, met with you back in August of 22. What we do is a business case, kind of a proof of concept to see is there an opportunity here. And you guys did have an opportunity in January of 2023 we did our project development agreement
and then our engineers and team actually spent over 4,000 hours over a four month period developing this project, working with local subs, everything to get this ready for you guys to close the contract and then do the financing. So we did the contract end of May of 23 and then Robert's been out here, like you said, the last two years implementing all these retrofits and, and building stuff and wrapping it up. So we're almost there. And then I'll let Don jump in here,
but over the next three years he'll be, he'll start the measurement and verification and then be able to give you guys a report and show you what the savings were on the project. Do you guys have any questions before I hand it over to Don to wrap up? Speaker 1: Bri do you have any questions? Speaker 5: No, it's all right right now Speaker 9: He's heard it all. Speaker 5: I've heard it a few times. Yeah, I, I, I do. I I would say though, just quickly, just for a narrative on it, it is tough to see how, you know, we spent this kind of money and yet we say we put 1.2 million back into our Biggie bank, you know,
but believing in what John says, him doing it before, you know, I believe those savings are there and I think one of the biggest things is that just the improvements we've done with some of the schools I think is just amazing. And if we're gonna give the kids the best environment possible, I think this was a great project at a great time, but we did it. So I'm excited to kind of get it wrapped up over the next few and then really start counting those savings as they come in. Speaker 11: Yeah, okay. There we go. So yeah, my name's Don Flower and this is the first time that I've actually been able
to be on in the district that I've met John a few times. So through the weekly meetings, and I know you guys know this, but he does a great job watching after this project. 'cause I sit in on those meetings and listen to the questions that he's asking and it actually like makes me like, you know, perk up thinking yeah, how is that going? 'cause I'm trying to pay attention to are these things getting done so that we can start counting the energy savings. And I love being part of these projects. 'cause my first five years of my professional career, I was a elementary teacher. So to get back into the school district and see the improvements come in, knowing that the teachers
and the kids are gonna benefit, I love having these projects as part of my portfolio. So, so what I do is I work on measurement verification, which is measurement verification of that energy savings. When we put the contract together, there is a specific section of that contract that says how we're gonna go about measuring all of these. And so like Kevin and Robert have said, we're in the installation phase, wrapping it up right now. So the installation savings that we have at 347,000 runs roughly from about February of 2024 to present.
And the, those are, those days are just tracked based on when the actual energy conservation measures come online and become beneficial of beneficial use. So in the future years I'll continue to, what what I'll, what I'll do in year one is I will continue to measure these, the fis that are on in that you, you've heard heard 'em a couple times but it's in that green box but you can't read it very well. But I won't go over them all again 'cause Kevin's already said 'em a couple times. Anyway, I'll list them out by building and by measure when you get the reports in the future so
that you'll actually see how much did the lighting actually perform. But then also like this one is already broken out by building. So that way you'll be able to see it a couple different ways and then we try and just make it easy enough to read with enough explanation that lets you know kind of what we actually do to verify the savings. And of the 11 seven of seven of 'em actually have like an actual measurement that's performed on it. And the other ones we do, we make sure that they were actually installed and performing as intended. So that's kind of my role here. And like Kevin said, I'll be doing these for the next three years.
So Speaker 4: That's all we got for you guys. That's it. That's it. Pretty easy. Yep. I do have a couple questions I guess. Yep. The rebates you said we're still waiting on those. Have we received any rebates? Speaker 11: I'll ask that for you. Okay. We received $181,000 so far we've got 120,000 worth of rebates still to Speaker 4: Come. And do they expire or like are they under a time Those rebates Speaker 11: Are paid to J-C-I-J-C-I write a check to the district for those, for the 120,000 that we lack. Speaker 4: Okay. And then also the, we did receive the best grant
to us already, correct. Me and Speaker 11: Heather Torres are working right now to turn that in to the state to get our money reimbursed. Speaker 4: Oh, Speaker 11: Okay. We're actually gonna do that week after next and we should get that. Is that the next month or Speaker 4: So? And so that's a check to the district and then we pay JCI, it's just like a revolving door. You've already paid this, we've already paid, you've already, but it's, but it's finance. We can put it right on the principal or something. You can put it Speaker 11: Wherever you want, Speaker 4: But okay. The Lord not use that. Oh, okay. So we'll be seeing that in the next month
or two maybe roughly. Speaker 8: So like how like, like how much of a hot Speaker 1: We go Speaker 8: With that? How much of a hot seat are you gonna be on like in five years you're realizing that, oh man, maybe we're not saving as much energy. Are is it gonna be an issue? Like if say some of the projects don't follow through with your projections? Speaker 11: Well that's what, when I look at them measure by measure, like I already know we've got measurements in for the lighting and the water and we're at like 102% on the lighting and 104% on the water. But as the rest of 'em come the line, then I'll follow
that contract savings to say okay, this is how we verify this. Now if they don't make the savings then like Kevin said, we'll be writing checks to make you guys whole. So Speaker 1: Will you do anything to help other, other than obviously writing us a check to make up for the difference? Would there be any other mechanical things or any other, Speaker 11: The contract is written so that if we can use the, we can invest money in to make that shortfall go away. 'cause it behooves us not to write a check every single year. If we can put in money to make
that go away in the first year or second year, whatever it shows up then and then we don't have it for the next 18 years, then that's a good thing for us. So, Speaker 8: So the our first our first report, I assume you guys are gonna come back and go through it with us if Speaker 11: You Speaker 8: Want us to. I think 'cause I mean, no, I, I I've been around you guys for a couple years now, but honestly we wouldn't know what we're looking at. We wouldn't know how it was, what, how the numbers were, you know, aggregated. You're just gonna show us some numbers and we're just gonna be like, oh cool, we meet our goals. Speaker 1: Thanks. So Speaker 8: We we're gonna need to know like this is
how you did it, this is the process and how we did it and these are what we're coming up with just so we can, you know, speak confidently about it. Gauge. Speaker 11: Yeah. And this is kind of preliminary for me because I actually will owe you a report within 60 days of final completion, which is coming up like not the 60 days but final completion then Sure. Is getting signed real soon and then the clock starts ticking. So then I will write you a much better report than just this slide. Okay. So that you'll actually like see it by building and by measure and then there'll be a little explanation so that, you know, like how did we actually measure the
lighting and what were the results and so forth. So that'll be much better than just looking at this one slide. And then if any of 'em might come in, if for some reason one of 'em was short, then they all get added up and you can find out if the whole project is short because of that. Or is is some of them long, some of them short, but you'll still see if one of 'em is short. So. Okay. Speaker 8: And my question for you is, you've been here for two years, what was your biggest challenge in this project? Project Speaker 1: John's taking bets on himself. Speaker 10: Probably John. Yeah, John.
John was a, he was as, as was pointed out, he was educated in what we're doing. He's educated in construction so he always asks the hard, hard questions. But honestly the, the hardest thing about the project was working in rifle silt to New Castle, right? We tried to use local contractors as much as we could, but we still had to bring people in. Getting materials up here, getting manpower up here, getting them to stay, getting them to finish stuff was challenging without a doubt. It was, I mean, staying here was great, right? I mean, living up here, I spent many, many weeks up here,
you know, great accommodations, great food, great everything, right? But keeping the workers up here was tough. It's like, it's only three hours to, to Denver an hour to you know, grand Junction. But, and sometimes I felt like we were, you know, it's like I felt like they were working on the Alaska pipeline. It's like, I haven't seen my family in five days. It's like, yeah, I know, I haven't seen mine either. Let's keep going and, and these people would, they'd go home. So that was, that was tough. Working in in the schools was the easiest thing we've ever done, right? I mean I've done a lot, a lot of jobs, right?
So that was, that was easy in all honesty. Working with Job and and his team was, was fantastic. I can't, you know, give enough kudos to everybody but just working in rifle was a little bit more challenging than I thought it would be to be honest with you. Speaker 1: Well thank you. Thank you. Bye. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Thanks guys. Scott did you have any questions? Okay, awesome. Thank you. Thank you Speaker 10: Guys. Thank you. Thank you nice lot. Speaker 1: Appreciate it. Next up is the LELA adoption? Did we need five minutes? Five minutes? So yes.
So we'll go ahead and take a five minute break. It is seven 50 so we'll go ahead and come back at 7 55. I'm sorry 6 55 that Speaker 7: No, they will come up when it's their turn. Oh, Speaker 1: That's alright. Speaker 7: You just tell me when you're ready for me. Speaker 1: Alright. Alright, let's go ahead and get this thing started. So ELA, it's all yours. Speaker 7: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for listening to a team tonight who has put in just over a year of very hard work.
They are going to share that with you tonight. Theresa, if you would move to the next slide please. Actually we need the Speaker 1: Slide. You get to do the introduction and so we need one. Speaker 7: So this is our team, you guys, and there are a few people who are not in this picture. It was a big team and I can't commend the professionalism of this group of educators enough. True grit, true determination, commitment, a lot of data collection. I don't think any one of them wanted to do,
but they did it some really hard conversations. They have been the epitome of professionals and I would work with every single one of those faces up there in a realm like this again. So I'm more than thrilled that they're willing to stand up in front of you and share the results of all the hard work that we put in. And if you would be nice enough to write questions down and at the end we will answer questions that you have. Speaker 2: I'm not good at that. Hi. Speaker 12: Hi, my name is Sarah Laia.
I am a second grade teacher and instructional coach at wamsley. And the first slide that I'm gonna talk about was put together after we took a survey during the 20 23 24 school year and all ELA teachers at the elementary level were asked what they valued in a reading program. So as we looked at curriculums, we could narrow it down to fit what staff felt like we needed. And the four highest areas were student engagement, alignment to the science of reading differentiation for all
of our students and vertical alignment across grade levels. Hello, I am Jade Bombay. I'm an instructional coach and focus on literacy at Highland. I'm Kaylee Pappas, a fourth grade teacher at Speaker 7: Worley soon to be Mommy. Yes. Speaker 2: You Speaker 7: Gonna tell Speaker 2: Congratulations I I didn't wanna assume. Speaker 12: So we just wanna talk to you about how we went through our process a little bit. So we started as ELA coaches looking at the state of Colorado. There is an approved list of curriculum and resources. So we started by looking at that approved list.
And then one thing that was very important to this group of people that came out in the survey that you just heard about, our previous reading programs were split K two and three five. And it came very, became very clear that we really need something K five. So anything that did not offer a K five resource we did, we didn't even move forward with. So after we had narrowed our list down, we then looked at ed reports. ED Reports is a group of educators that comprises of teachers, district leaders,
school leaders across the nation. And they look at different curriculum and rate different parts of it. It so that a lot of that heavy lifting is already done for us and things that they can see when they have it in front of them that you can't see unless you really can dig in. So based on all that information, we narrowed our three options and down to HMH into reading Amplify CKLA and McGraw Hill Wonders. Speaker 13: And one fourth of re two students received instruction from each pilot program. The other fourth was they still did Super Kids
in or ReadyGEN. Speaker 2: Oh. Speaker 7: So as we reflected on math, which some of you were a part of the math pilot process, what we knew was it was, it was a great foundation for us to build from. So based on our experience in the math pilot process, we did make some adjustments in the ELA process to make it even stronger. One of those adjustments was the final decision making process, which you'll hear about when our friends get down to that part of our journey.
We increased our knowledge building in all three of the programs. So all of the educators participating in the pilot had to go observe the other programs in the other schools. We did visit a district, A district that had another program in it. We partnered up sister schools. So instead of one building having multiple programs, we had two elementary schools working together in each of the pilot programs. And then we had a lot of cross program discussions at our pilot meetings
that included even watching some lessons from our teachers in the district and and asking questions and talking about the components of the lesson that they were seeing in the videos. And then we embedded a more rigorous data process, which you'll start to see some of that data. ELL is one area that we have got to grow in Garfield Re two and this is the place that we can do that. So we thought it was important to pull out ELL data and we also took assessments and disaggregated them by skill. And so our friends will share that with you
as we keep going. All right, Carrie Johnson, instructional coach here at Graham. So this table shows our beginning of year to middle of the year data that we collected for each of the, of the programs and also including super kids in ReadyGEN. So you can see in the first column for our i-Ready testing the percent of increase in proficient and advanced students. So for Wonders, you can see that was at 19% from beginning of middle year, beginning of year to middle of the year.
For CKLA it was 21% for into reading 23%. And you can see for super kids in ReadyGEN it was 16%. The next column is the percent of decrease in intensive or well below grade level. On iReady. For Wonders it was 14% CKLA 20% into reading 12% and Super Kids in Ready Gen was 10%. And then we looked at the percentage of students that met their typical growth on i-Ready. Typical growth is what you would expect a student to grow
in that amount of time. From beginning of year to middle of year in Wonders, 30% of students met their typical growth in CKLA, 43% STU of students met their typical growth into reading 33% and Super Kids in Ready Gen 31%. And then we looked at our DIBELS data. So the second to last column is the increase in proficient in advanced or above grade level. For Wonders, we actually had a a downturn of 2% for CKLA.
We increased proficient, advanced 9% into reading was 7% increase. And super kids in ReadyGEN was a 6% increase. And then the, the final column is the percent of decrease in our intensive students, which is the red, the students that are in the red. So that's well below grade level. So the percent of decrease in intensive was help me out. Am I It Speaker 2: Went up. It Speaker 7: Went up. It went up. Yes, yes. Thank you. So it was actually an increase with Wonders. So we increased the Reds on CKLA,
it we reduced and into reading, we both reduced those by 7% and then Super Kids and Ready Gen was 5%. I'm Melody Herm Miller, I work at Wamsley and I am the third grade teacher and instructional coach. And part of my job is also ELL teacher. The next slide you're gonna see is we looked at middle of the year data from DIBELS and compared the percentage of students who increased in their proficiency or advanced across all three pilot curricula and super kids in Ready Gen, we also looked at the percentage that decreased in our intensiveness students. All three pilot programs outperformed super kids in Ready
gen and at least one of the categories of decreasing our intensive students or increasing are proficient or advanced students. So if you look the at the bottom, there's the averages of wonder, see Kay in treating and then Super Kids and Ready Gen at the end. The average for Wonders increasing proficiency in advanced was 2% and their decrease was actually they didn't, they went up 4% for CKLA we went up 9% in proficiency in advance and decreased 8% of our intensive students for beginning
to middle of year into reading. They were, they did not increase, right? Is that correct? Okay, thank you. Their proficiency and advanced students, they went down 3% and then their intensive went down 6%. And then for super kids in Ready Gen they increased 3% and then stayed consistent at zero. Speaker 14: So I'm Amanda Williams. I teach kindergarten at Cactus Valley Elementary. And I just wanted you to notice that at the top in that kindergarten for CKLA,
there was a 50% increase in students who were proficient or advanced. And then there was a 55% decrease in intensiveness. So that are below grade level, well below grade level. It shows a significant move in the right direction for both data points. And this data was collected for correct letter sounds which is vital for kindergarten to master in order to be ready for first grade reading. Speaker 7: And I just wanna point out in this slide that if you look at the second column from the left, this data is specific to the most
critical skills at each grade level. So as Amanda mentioned, we looked at correct letter sounds for kindergarten words read correct for first grade. And the other four grade levels were oral, oral reading fluency. Speaker 2: I was wondering what those were. Yeah, Speaker 7: Thank you. You're welcome. Speaker 14: I was like wow, those would Speaker 7: Step up Your acronym studies, Speaker 14: Kathy that on my list, its not. Speaker 7: We also looked at our ELL data for each program. We took data on each assessment that was given for all pilot programs and disaggregated it into our ELL and non ELL students. This slide shows non ELL students outperformed ELL students
by 30% on those assessments for Wonders into reading. Non ELL students outperformed by 22%. And then in CKA non ELL students outperformed our ELL students by 26%. Speaker 13: All right, so we wanted to send out a family survey to all the families that their children were receiving the pilots, 'cause we wanted their feedback. We waited till like the middle of the year, so like January to do it. Here's the topics on the side. And then each pilot that we did, so we have regular communication, 83% of parents
felt they got regular communication with Wonders, CKLA, 90% of them and into reading 70%. And then you go down, child discusses reading at Home Wonders parents said 60%, 60% of Wonders Family said that they heard their child speak about reading at home CKLA 81% and then into reading was 64%. And then child reads at Home Wonders, a hundred percent of the family said that they do read at home, excuse me, sorry, CKLA said 99% and then into Reading 90
and then reading Skills has Grown. This was based off what the family saw either on report cards or what they saw at home based on when they did homework with their child. They said they saw a 42%, 42 of them said they seen their child grow and wonders CKLA 39% and into reading 41%. And then parents were able to give comments throughout all of these ratings and we are going to make sure we look at the com, the comments when we implant and oh my goodness, pregnancy Brain will blame you on that
When we implement, implement, implement, implement Speaker 12: The Speaker 13: New program. Did you go through one of the courses? When we do that, we're gonna look at the comments to make sure that we get all areas. Speaker 12: Another part of our process is making sure that we spoke with districts who have already implemented these programs and have been teaching them from several years. We know that by piloting we got to experience for a year the program, but we really wanted to hear from other districts who may have taught it for longer and hear what they have to say. It was important for us to find districts that had like demographics.
We wanted to make sure we were talking to people who worked with the same kind of students that we work with. We really, the point of the interview was to review their ELA process and then we as a team wrote the questions. So we were all asking the same questions and we talked with several different entities. We talked with principals, district leaders, teachers, former teachers, really tried to get everybody's view of how each program Thank you. So we were able to conduct three interviews with
Wonders, three different interviews with teachers teaching CKLA and two within inter reading Four Wonders. We spoke with people in d Douglas County, summit County and Moffitt County that comprised of a literacy coordinator, a principal and a learning coordinator for CKLA. We were able to connect with Putter and Harrison school districts. Those interviews had a principal and interventionist and academic coaches and for under reading both Eagle and it's not Grand Junction County,
I don't remember the name of Mesa County. Thank you. We spoke with a principal, a dean who is a dean this year. She taught into reading last year as a kindergarten teacher and a literacy specialist. Speaker 13: Okay. And so we're gonna see the results of that data. We combed through it and these were kind of the big ideas of the big ahas that we came away with. Each program. So you can see Wonders was easily adjusted to a four day week. That was one of its positives. It was predictable, it was consistent. However, it really had deep foundational skills. We kind of heard that overall from the, from the interview CKLA.
It really enhanced the children's understanding of science and social studies. And it really had a really high rigor. All we said, a really high rigor and, but however, we're gonna have to really be aware that there's gonna be a balance between teacher talk and student talk. So that's something that we need to be aware of as we look forward to this program into reading. There was, we had a really strong support from the vendor. They were amazing. The exposure to grade level text was structures was strong in that program. And however, the writing was a little bit weak in that area. So that was one of our concerns.
So we could go onto the next slide. So also the district coaches, they chose a rubric that we could evaluate each program. We examined several ELA curriculum rubrics that would help us to evaluate the components of each program. And we found that the rubric provided by CDE was really best aligned to our needs as it was really comprehensive and it was a really vetted framework. So the rubric was used in two ways. First we looked at it from CD's Viewpoint, I should stand over here. Sorry, they keep moving the microphone. So I promise stand over here.
First we looked at it from CD's Viewpoint. They used the rubric to evaluate each of the programs. They checked off to whether the programs had proper research, effective learning system supports effective learning. Then we ourselves took the rubric and we scaled it down just to the components that were related to the science of reading, such as phonological awareness, phonics vocabulary, listening comprehension, text reading and fluency. And we used those, just those components to do a deep dive analysis as related to our district's needs and as opposed to just using CDEs general viewpoint.
So as you can see, you can see the ratings here as, as we filled out the rubric. So you can see that kindergarten, 72% in Wonders, it partially met in CKLA in kinder, 95% of it met the needs of the kindergartners. And then into reading, 93% met the needs of the kindergarten skills. And then first grade, you can see that wonders it was a 81% low meets. What do we mean by that? It was, they were, Speaker 7: They were very close to being partially
Speaker 13: Meats. Okay. They were very close but not quite there. Correct. Okay, great. 94, 90 4% it met the needs of first grade and 87% in into reading 87% of the first graders their needs were met. You can see in second grade, 64% did not meet, did not meet in Wonders. 71% partially meet CKLA and 60% into reading did not meet the needs of second grade. Third grade, you can see again, wanders was really close to meeting. It was low me and then CKLA partially met in third grade
and then into reading, partially met as well. So you can see those percentages and compare 'em a little bit more. Fourth grade, 80%, again, it was very close in Wonders, but in CKLA it partially met and into reading, partially met and then overall average you can see at the bottom. So overall Wonders partially met the knees of all kids. CKLA met the knees and then into reading, partially met the needs. So Speaker 7: This next slide is about money. And in ELA it, it is potentially the most expensive program to adopt
because you are buying the teacher materials, the student materials. And no longer do we have Basils one book for every kid for a whole year to read all these stories. And like an anthology, we buy books, actual books. So it is an expensive adoption and we're lucky that we can split it into two parts. We can do half of it this year, half of it next year. As I worked with Kathy Lia Finance, we are expecting that we will take half this year out of small and rural, we'll take half next year out
of general funds and grants. We can use some of the Fed or state grants, the title grants. There are grants that we can put ELA programming into. So we would pay for parts of it with grant funding. And then you can see the cost analysis on the right hand side there for each program. I'm sure you're thrilled. We chose the least expensive. I encourage to this team that when you're looking at this dollar amount, that shouldn't sway their decision because it's so closely aligned. Anyway, when I got those quotes, I asked for the Cadillac so
that we had the worst case scenario sitting in front of us here. And my job now is to try and slim and trim with the vendors before we actually put our order Speaker 14: In. Speaker 2: No question. Question until the end. Write it down. Did you write it down? Speaker 14: Down? Speaker 2: I think you did that. So I just want Speaker 7: You to know before we came up here, these guys said, I'm gonna talk to him Speaker 2: Like a teacher. Speaker 14: I'm Shelby Williams. I teach first grade. I'm self-contained. So I teach everything at Elk Creek Elementary. So I am here to talk to you about our final decision process after all of the schools we're able to present. So each school came together and we presented and
after each school presented about the curriculum, voting happened. And we learned from math that last year was really tough. So this year we tr we changed things to be a transparent process. And in that process we had voting and tallying occurred at the same room with everyone was present. And how that looked was teachers were given a ballot with two stickers and you could place your stickers. This is the first round of voting. You could place your stickers where you wanted for your top choices or choice
and two stickers on one curriculum. You can split your votes if you'd like to. The first round of voting eliminated Wonders with Wonders only getting seven votes. They I taught Wonders. So they wanted me to explain some of those challenges to you. One of the biggest challenges was that there was an overwhelming number of resources that it was just too much to choose from. It was really hard to pick and choose that program. We had very minimal vendor support. And what that looked like is we didn't have any training on our program like until October. And that was really difficult.
The lessons seemed unstructured and that led to a lot of difficulty because many of us are really used to being able to plug and play. And so we're able to like, okay, here's how this is gonna go. This is exactly what I'm gonna do and I can just do that. And that doesn't look that way at Wonders. And they do that for a very specific reason. But it was really hard for us to do with no training especially. And then of course that data piece, that less impactful data on student achievement.
So that those factors brought into reading and CKLA into the top two choices. We were excited because we had two great programs to choose from and we then met as triads to kind of talk about the pros and the cons. They then, we were given about 10 minutes to review the data and the information collected on the two remaining programs. And then we voted, but we only used one sticker this time. And it was either for CKLA or into reading. Ultimately CKLA was chosen. We are pleased
because CKLA offers a new way to teach reading and writing. This program strongly aligns with the science of reading and incorporates brain research in its teaching methods. This will be a great, this will be great for our elementary students because reading will be taught in a more effective way to increase student proficiency. Speaker 7: My name is Terry Aragon, I'm an instructional collegiate, Catherine Senior and I get the easy slides. Speaker 2: So what she was doing. Speaker 7: So with all of that said, we are here tonight to recommend the third edition
CKLA core knowledge language arts as Garfield R two's core ELA program moving forward. And we have a video here where you're going to hear some educators talking about the program as well as, I even think more importantly, hearing some students talk about their experience with the program. Speaker 15: The curriculums we had in place before we got CKLA were basically kind of scattered. I Speaker 16: Think we were just not meeting the needs of the kids. I, I think teachers felt frustrated within the classroom always trying to supplement material. Speaker 17: We also really thought it was important to have something
that continued to spiral throughout the year. Instead of teaching things in isolation. It's teaching a lot of different concepts at the same time. Speaker 15: And when we came across CKLA, it wasn't presented with a big sales pitch. You know, there weren't a lot of bells and whistles. It was just pretty straightforward. Here's a program that can address, you know, foundational skills. It's got a content knowledge and it's gonna work for your EL students as well. Speaker 16: I think the bottom line is, after all the years of seeing language arts programs that are very similar, this has been a huge change. Their support in, in helping us out in training our teachers
and making sure that the curriculum was used appropriately was just second to math. Speaker 17: I, I was really doubtful in the beginning as a teacher was terrifying. I thought, how is this going to work? They say that it will, I can see that it might, but I'm not sure. Speaker 16: I felt like we, we underestimated our kids. Amplify does hold a lot of rigor and we for a second, when we started this program, we felt the kids were not gonna be able to meet those expectations. And they have, they surpassed it and we are seeing tremendous amounts Speaker 18: Of growth. They are reading things that typically we wouldn't be reading this early in the year.
Very good. The sound is out. Everyone say out. Ah, the introduction of the sounds follows a very different sequence than any other program I've used in the past. The kids seem to be picking it up more quickly. Speaker 19: What a man, what are Speaker 17: Major differences that I'm seeing are the ability of my students to communicate to Speaker 19: Each other. Fellow, fellow classmates. I'm up here today to talk about the invention of the clock. Speaker 15: The inclusion of the knowledge piece is so important.
And I think that's the one thing that we're really finding the payoff. Kids are reading about something and they're responding and the responses that they're writing are, you know, head and shoulder about where they were before. Speaker 18: My favorite part is the knowledge piece. Because of the storytelling, because of the interest later onto Zuma and his chief advisors met together. You see strangers, we have, I like that the kids are learning things that I wouldn't have thought to teach to a first grader.
We're also going to hear this word Speaker 19: Retreat. Speaker 18: This is the word retreat. Speaker 15: Core knowledge. It, it helped bring the learning alive in learning the language components. It wasn't just rot skills of grammar or vocabulary. It was actually tied to something that was, you know, worldly or meant something in their lives. What is a Speaker 19: Pitch, Alan? There's a good pitch and a bad pitch. If a good pitch is like many facts, well organized and formative, Speaker 17: They're learning about lords and serves and, and they were comparing and contrasting without even knowing
that they were comparing and contrasting. Speaker 19: What I like about CKLA is that we get to learn about all the inventors and do research on them. It's basically science and experiments and history and oh and bundle. It's really cool. It's a lot more fun this year with CKLA. Okay Speaker 17: Guys, welcome back. Today's episode Speaker 18: Of Speaker 19: Eureka. Speaker 17: As a teacher, I have learned a lot from CKLA. There are times when I'm looking at a lesson and I will kind of look and think. That's amazing. The way that they were able to teach
that specific skill in many ways was ingenious. The map that they have is unparalleled. So is there a specific subtitle that would have that information? Yeah. Speaker 19: Which one? It would have to be as in in, Speaker 15: We certainly like to see the, the way the program SPS throughout the year within a grade level of the, the spiraling between grade levels is really neat. The fact that kids are gonna see something in first grade and third grade and fifth grade, it's just gonna reinforce Speaker 17: Their love for learning it. Lots of times the bell will ring and they want to continue.
Just let us finish. Just let us finish. Give us five more minutes. When you have an English language arts curriculum that compete with recess, that's a huge deal. Speaker 19: Yeah, it goes by very quickly because a lot of people say that whenever the time flies, whenever you're having fun and I'm having a lot of fun. So time flies Speaker 2: Real fast. Speaker 16: I think what's making me most proud is the principal is that it's giving the teachers the tools that they need to be effective in the classroom, but at the same time it doesn't take away their opportunity to keep teaching in art. Speaker 18: I had spent 12 hours a day trying to come up
with curriculum and the Amplify has all these pieces already there for you. Are you ready to do some chaining? Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 17: That allowed me to focus in on all the fun stuff. Excellent use of text evidence. I love it. Speaker 16: I would highly recommend this program to any school. Just being that you see the building of the confidence within kids. It meets the needs of the socioeconomically disadvantaged kids. It meets the needs of EL kids. It meets the needs of all kids. Speaker 18: When you're doing something new and it's effective, then that's why you changed. Speaker 19: It's been the best year that I've ever done
because of CKLA. This class Speaker 2: Is awesome. Speaker 17: Language Studio is the English language development portion of CKLA. It is the designated 30 minutes that I sit down with my English language learners and we dig deeper into all of the curriculum that we're learning in. Speaker 2: Okay, so both Speaker 18: Language studio. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 12: As it was stated earlier, one of our goals with the ELA curriculum adoption was to go about a different way than the math program. And one of the things that we did was, after the decision was made by pilot staff to
recommend the adoption of CKLA, teachers were given a survey to determine if they could support the adoption. And you might have the graph in front of you, it says final survey at Speaker 2: The top. Yep, yep. Speaker 12: Our goal from the survey was to to see how staff were feeling about the decision to adopt CKLA, identify how many staff rated at a one or a two, and provide support to any staff that needed it based on comments that we received. So if you turn over to the next slide, These are the next steps that we came up
with based on the comments we received from that survey. So this year, between now and June of 2025, our first goal is to provide summer learning opportunities for any staff that are interested. We also are going to be discussing, discussing and exploring the topics of the text within CKLA and Simone is going to talk more on this after this slide is finished. We'll also provide online access to all ELA teachers to begin exploring
and learning to navigate the online platform before the end of June. Our goal is to conduct master schedule conversations. Since this program is different than anything we have done, another goal is to order materials and get them in the hands of teachers prior to the end of the year so they can start looking through them over the summer and feel prepared as the 20 25, 26 school year rolls around. And then also updating the scope and sequence so that it aligns to CKLA. And some of the things during those discussions that we're gonna be look at, be looking at are the third version of CKLA, the si,
the science and social studies connections within the units 95% core, which is our phonics curriculum that we're currently using. And then also looking at any sensitive issues within CKLA. And then going into the school year next year, we're gonna continue exploring the different topics and discussing them within the texts, providing in-person PD through the support of CKLA and then support staff in the shift of instructional practices that are going to need to take place. And some of these shifts are going to be having writing integrated throughout the lesson rather than
doing a traditional writing workshop, integrating science and social studies instruction through our reading program, balancing small group and whole group during our lessons. And then teachers will also need to have a complete understanding of all texts prior to introducing them to students. We also are gonna continue to increase our understanding of CKLA through the lens of the science of reading and the alignment to it. And then finally we'll continue to have reflections throughout the school year to see where staff are, how they're feeling, and how we can continue to support them.
Speaker 7: So Theresa, if you would stay on that slide for just a minute. Topics of text has been an interesting journey with CKLA. We were about Julie Khan up here. We were about maybe, maybe a month. Speaker 12: I got no notes. Speaker 7: We were about a month into the pilot and I got a call from Wamsley Elementary School and an email and a text and it was, we can't do this there. There are topics in this that we're uncomfortable with. So we we Okay, no problem. Whatever you're not comfortable.
We'll skip And let's look into this like what is this about? CKLA has three versions. Version one, no longer publishable version two is now extinct. We piloted version two, we will adopt version three. So I collected from wamsley every student, text teacher, text teacher, manual workbooks, fine tooth combed them to see what they were talking about. And really what it came down to is there were some religious, religious historical accounts and there were, there were some historical accounts
that may not have been age appropriate. We called the vendors in, we had a meeting with the vendors. And this isn't news to the vendors, which is why they now have version three. So version three has two units in every grade level. That's called a pathway. So if there are school districts that would like to choose the pathway that is not conservative, they can, and then their students will still see some of these historical accounts that are more religious based or historical accounts that might not be age appropriate. Garfield RE two will not choose that pathway.
Garfield re two will choose the conservative pathway. In the conservative pathway. They have guaranteed me that there are no religious accounts at all and that, but hang on, all of the material is age appropriate. They are getting every grade level, every manual, every unit to us to keep at the district office so that we have access to it. All our teachers will have online access as soon as we have board approval.
They have one person in their company who specializes in this. And if a school district is struggling, they will go out and they will spend time with the school district. They will train teachers. My new best friend Monty is our lead consultant with CKLA and he spent a lot of time with me yesterday. I let him know that we do have one school in our district who didn't pilot CKLA. In fact, they piloted into reading this was a hard decision for them because they really liked into reading. And so they have discomfort now with CKLA. So they're actually gonna come in next week
and do a PD with this school to help educate them on what the content really is and start to share with them what the content really is so that we can be good listeners of what their concerns are and also help give them the facts and the truth on the ground as to what's in the program. So we're excited about that. No doubt it's been a paradigm shift for educators. And I'm gonna let Julie speak to that just a little bit. Are you comfortable? 'cause I know I put you on Speaker 14: That. Yeah, you did. But that's, that's okay. I'm Julie wpo. I am kindergarten teacher, instructional coach at wamsley.
And I think initially when we got the materials and we hadn't really delved into them, we looked at the table of contents, we saw a title that we went, oh my gosh, wait, we can't do that without really looking at what the lesson was teaching, what the text was, what students were reading and what was in the manual. One of the things that we found, I was at the beginning and we called Simone, said, yeah, come help us. We knew we wanted to do this with fidelity and we were really trying to, and then we got the word, okay, we'll just skip that one.
Okay, well that's not really teaching it to Fidelity, so we need to really look and deep dive deep. And that's when Simone kind of took all of our manuals really went deep called CKLA came back, we actually had an online discussion, I guess with CKLA, where she really talked about the purpose behind some of those topics. What actually was being taught within that lesson, within that text. And then once we got to those texts, we went, oh, we kind
of blew it way out of proportion. 'cause that's what we do as educators. We want what's best for our kids. We want to be perfect. We also know that a curriculum doesn't make a good teacher, a good teacher makes a curriculum good. And once we realized that and kind of dove into it and said, okay, we can do this, our, our building, I can talk for Wamsley. As an instructional coach, there many, many discussions that we were like, Hey, we're on board with this now. And we were the biggest, Hey, stop.
And we're not so much now at all really. Speaker 7: I think when it comes down to it, based on what we're, we've learned as we go and what we know from CKLA, we believe we are getting the best of the best, the best program, and the best version of the program. I am Cindy Smith, instructional coach at Elk Creek Elementary, and I am excited to explain to you how the CKLA curriculum supports our strategic plan. So it does offer some supports for student success. Some of those supports are that it does follow the science of reading.
It has a rigorous text that includes vocabulary and knowledge and knowledge building. It also provides supports for staff success. Some of those are professional development, which does include a scope and sequence skills that align with previous and next grade levels, as well as the fact that it highly correlates to dibels. And then also it does support community success in
that it engages families with communication that is offered in both English and Spanish. It has a high number of science and social studies topics that are included within the curriculum in both reading and writing. Also, students are exposed to many local and community topics. Speaker 3: Hi, I am Jamie Zimmerman. I teach first grade at Cactus Valley Elementary. Glad to be here. Speaker 7: I'm Allie McGee. I teach kindergarten at Wamsley Elementary. So we looked at CKLA and we looked at the graduate profile and we saw that CKLA does in fact correspond
to the district's graduate profile. First students will be more academically prepared. We anticipate producing more proficient readers with a strong foundation. CKLA prepares students academically by offering a well-rounded, structured and challenging curriculum that builds a central literacy skills, enhances knowledge across subjects and fosters critical thinking. Second, students will become empowered individuals. They will have a deeper knowledge of the world around them and can use this knowledge to independently analyze problems and find solutions. CKLA helps students develop self-awareness by providing them
with the tools to reflect on their learning, recognize their emotions, and build confidence in their abilities. Speaker 3: Okay. In addition to the graduate profile, we also have strong and determined and the structured scaffolding leads to the increase of confidence and success within our learners. We are finding that students are more driven to further explore topics presented through the knowledge component. And CKLA helps students build the resilience they need to succeed both in school and in life. And finally, there's the community connected within the
graduate profile and students will become more socially aware due to the various perspectives shared in the content that they'll be exploring and CKLA through ELA. And there is an increased opportunity for diverse populations in our district to collaborate and discuss relevant texts to become more socially aware of their peers and their unique experiences. Speaker 2: Thank you. Speaker 7: With that chance Jenkins, do you have any questions, comments? Speaker 8: Yeah. Kind of glossed over it
and I'm wondering if it were wouldn't be a better suitable for a two by two or for something to, to dive into what the issue exactly was. I need, I mean, I need to know what, to feel good about voting. I need to know what the issue was, what your exact solution was to it, what C-K-A-C-K-L-A said and then what the remediation effort is. Does that make sense? It Speaker 7: Does. So Speaker 8: It's awesome. Like all the work you guys have put in it, it's, we've piloted, this is the second time you've done it, Simone Pilot program. I think they work great. But yeah, that's kind of where I'm at. Speaker 7: Okay. Speaker 4: What We will just go down the line.
I guess I'm next chance if it helps you with anything. My son was CKLA at Cactus Valley. Speaker 8: Definitely a no Speaker 4: No. Listen, he grew 132% in i-Ready growth and he hates reading. Two of his teachers are here tonight, previous years good butter. And they know how much he hated reading, but he had 132% growth in i-Ready right. As of right now in this year. So I, I mean I like CKLA,
I obviously haven't seen any of the other pilots. It's been fun reading the passages that come home and it's not just, you know, a story, it's, it's educational is what I liked about it. It's like we're learning about planets or water systems or you know, whatever the topic is. Speaker 8: I definitely do Speaker 7: Like that. I'll share with you Chance we were, we were scared. I mean when they put this on my desk, my impression was what have we done? And, and as I learned with them, as I learned through the vendor with them, with the, it went
so much better than we thought it would. There are parent letters that communicate the content being taught within every story. And then we knew that if we ever had a problem, we had the controversial issues policy to fall back on. We did not get one, not one keep from one parent from either school that had CKLA at any grade level for that. That's a huge kudos to the teachers because they were the ones that were uncomfortable. The kids weren't, the parents weren't, it was the staff and, and that's what we mean by a paradigm shift in teaching. Do any of you want to wanna share any thoughts around
that, that experience? CKLA? If not, it's okay. I feel like, sorry. I feel like Speaker 14: It was more of a, a hot word that people were seeing and then it was before actually getting into the source, actually going into the manuals that then people were like, oh, that's it. So a lot of people, well not a lot of people, there are some people that are worried but they haven't done those, the research in the actual source in the actual manual.
There is one topic that we actually talked to Danielle, a representative at CKLA and it's no longer in the third edition that's been eliminated. There's one topic in the kindergarten that somebody was upset about. I actually taught it and there were four people in my room that day and only one of them was uncomfortable with it. The other three were just fine and they thought it was a phenomenal lesson. And that is an optional lesson or unit in the third edition. Speaker 7: When we do our scope and sequence work, if we have been told
that in version three there is no longer any of this as a concern, if any of it is a concern, we will address it through the scope and sequence and we will be diligent to say, guess what? Not appropriate for Garfield Larry. Two And the controversial issues top policy will be used if needed. It will be mandatory to send home the parent communication letters because again, I, I don't know if you remember seeing them, but they tell you exactly what's being taught in every story being read in the program. I don't know if that helps you more than
welcome to do two by twos. I just wanted to step back. Speaker 3: Can I, can I speak for just a second with the experience of go microphone Jamie, I'm, wow. So teaching in this district, you have children from different age groups from the same family. And I just wanna share that one of the family members had said their oldest is now a senior in high school and I have their youngest who now is in first grade and talking with the family when they came in for even conferences in October, they were like,
I don't know what this is going on, but I cannot get this girl to be quiet. When my older kids would come home, I'd say, what did you do at school today? And they'd say, I don't know, what'd you learn? I don't know. They said they can't get her to be quiet about ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Mayan engines, the Aztec and just the history of it. They just said it has to be pretty good and they are all for it. And they're really positive because she's coming home and sharing what she's learning every day. Tell 'em what grade you teach first grade goes topics. Yeah.
Oh, and I wanna talk about too, as far as controversial, as far as the religious aspects and such like that, you know, we're learning about history. And so when you're learning about, for example, ancient Egypt, you are going to be learning about what they believed in, you know, and how they passed stories down from generation to generation through folk tales and learning the history. You have to say what they believed in order to build on how time changes and how events change and how events change people and places.
And really, there was one example we were learning about Anse, who is the spider God And it's through the African American folk tales and there wonderful stories. I remember reading them years ago in a program that we did prior and they showed a picture on the slideshow of the sky God who Anazi is the spider that goes up and asks the sky God to release a story down. And so he says, okay. And so he comes up and he's this beautiful black African American man or African man up there
and one of my students raises their hand after I talk about him and they said, well my God is white. And I just said, well that's awesome. And we just moved on. We don't park in any of the topics but wow, what a connection. And it was to themselves and to the text, what we were reading and also history, which was science and social studies embedded. And so I just wanted to share that. It's really powerful to me. I've been in this district for 25 years with these wonderful ladies and learned a lot. And I'll tell you what, I am all on board because I love it
because it's what's best for kids. Speaker 7: What other questions might you have? And I wanted to, I forgot one thing too about the five year quote is a five year quote because it's a, a savings of 30% year over year. If you buy annually, you pay 30% more each year. Speaker 8: So it's, you know, roughly $190,000 a year for textbooks and workbooks and teaching materials. Well Speaker 7: I'm not good at math. What was the question, Jason? Jeff? Speaker 8: No, what I guess what I'm, that's 30%? No, it's still for you. Simone.
Simone, that's all you're getting is Speaker 7: One 20 Speaker 8: Just workbooks, textbooks and teaching material. No training Speaker 7: Online access assessments and Speaker 8: Intervention program. And then we have access like CKLA is on the line anytime we need 'em. Speaker 7: Correct. It includes the professional development includes the onsite coaching. Again, I asked for the Cadillac. Sure. So now we'll go in and start trimming down what's in year one, what's necessary in year two, what's necessary in year three. And we'll, we'll forge ahead from there. What about, so
Speaker 14: One of the things I don't think we talked about is CKLA is created by Amplify. Amplify creates dibels. So the DIBEL scores that we use, all that data that you saw is directly related to CKLA and the online platform for students. It directly downloads that data and helps us create our interventions and makes sure that our interventions are RTI process all of that is specific to that student based on their data.
We don't have to go in and put it into a spreadsheet, make the spreadsheet work, which I'm not very good at it. It really works very well with that DIBELS platform or that Amplify platform. So I just wanted to put that out there. That's also a one of the savings I guess as far as we keep, you know, we don't have to spend as much time putting together our small group interventions, our RTI process. 'cause we have that data in there. Speaker 1: So do we get like a bundle and save then? Yeah, just like progressive. Just like progressive.
Just curious. Should be like, should be like Google. I know. Get Google. Google. Cassie, do you have any other questions? Speaker 8: I have one more. I don't want, I don't wanna hog time. Scott do you have anything? Do you guys have anything? Speaker 20: I, I do. Just first of all, thank you 'cause this is a lot of work and you all put a heck of a lot of work into it and it's a great report and I really appreciate it helps me understand it. And 80% of you decided that it was either really something positive or even strongly positive. So that speaks a lot. It's a good endorsement. I guess the only thing I would ask is, is there anything
that you saw that might be a gap in this that you can cover that gap in some other way while you're teaching? Or is this pretty comprehensive and it's, you're ready to roll with it and it's really pretty good? It sounds like it is, but I just wondered we Speaker 1: So we're not gonna, 'cause that was one of my questions is if we're gonna have to supplement anything Speaker 7: As we, as we have built the scope and sequence, we built a scope and sequence for each program so that we were ready no matter what came forward. So now the the, as you saw on the next steps, we'll go back now and look at every grade level, every unit
and ask those questions where, where did we see gaps in holes and where can we make it even better as we launch into our first year. So really this year was like our first year with the program. Speaker 20: Can I Speaker 14: Thank you. Can I speak to that too? Sorry. So on when we were talking about the dibble data for kindergarten, we had four teachers that were piloting for CKLA and dibels. And we did that solely with Fidelity to CKLA. It was that program only, we did not do the 95% core intervention that the rest,
I won't say the rest, but what we were supposed to be doing, we decided to forego that so that we could really see what CKLA was capable of. And so that 50% on this slide, page seven, the 50% increase in proficient and advanced students and dibels, that was all CKLA in kindergarten. And the negative 55, the decrease by 55% in intensiveness was solely CKLA. So what we are excited about is these kindergarten kids that are moving up to first grade
and as they move through CKLA, what is that going to look like for them later on and how is that gonna impact our proficiency in reading? Speaker 2: I'm just gonna speak to that Speaker 13: Just so I can introduce myself 'cause I forgot to introduce myself. I'm Kelly. Hi. I'm a first grade teacher and instructional coach at wamsley. I have to say I have four paras working with my, one of my teachers meeting the needs of AAP kids. And I have to say all intervention materials came from CKLA. It was great to be able to go to the website or to go to our platform for Amplify
and everything was put into a, a way in which I could just print it off and hand it to a para and it would had like basically instructions on how to teach each component that this kid needed. And again, it tied to those DS data and so it was perfectly aligned to what those specific kids need based off of their DIBELS data. So this is the first time I've never had to go and like pick and choose from other resources to try to pull something together to give to these pairs, which is saving me a ton of time and it's super efficient for me to be able to just hand that over.
And it's relieves a lot of their stress too 'cause they're not having to try to understand what I'm trying to get at. It's all written down on a piece of paper. So Speaker 5: Kind a question. Speaker 2: Go ahead. Speaker 5: Okay, thank you. How does C-K-C-K-L-A, how is that gonna support our ELL student? Speaker 2: Does anyone wanna speak to that? I'm coming. Speaker 7: There is a component that I believe was also in the Cadillac of prices for called Language Studio. And this is a 30 minute tier one for
specifically for our ELL students. It has all four domains of listening, reading, speaking and writing. And it either prete some of the things in CKLA or reteaches some of the things in CKLA and I've seen a big jump in those kids that my, my third graders specifically who do a language studio with our ELO para, they come back in and they're very confident and they wanna speak about it and most of the time our WIDA scores lowest is speaking. And so it's really been an amazing thing
to see this year them wanting to speak about it. And then within the manuals there's also, what are they called? Supports, CL supports I guess from like, I don't know remember what they call it but it's like entering, bridging and advanced and there's little excerpts in there of how we can support each of those kids through reading and writing. Speaker 1: Did you have anything else Bri? Speaker 5: Yeah, I really like the way Amplify and S or Amplify is s and I think that's a great benefit that the two are
are the same, you know, really the manufacturer and really just the way hopefully it's supporting those English language learners the most is with this program. So yeah. Great work you guys. Great work putting this together for us. It's a really thorough presentation and you know, on on with chance to, you know, if the board feels they need some two by twos, I I think that's a good thing. But I do think it's a a solid program. Speaker 1: I I do have a few questions. I'm sorry. So during the family survey data and there was comments that were sent in, were any of those comments reviewed prior
to making the decision? Okay. Yes. Speaker 7: All of them. Speaker 1: All of them. Okay. Speaker 7: Every single one we looked at all of them. Speaker 1: Thank you. That was a lot of extra work I'm sure. Sorry, I wrote it down on the page in which it, I did Speaker 7: The same thing. I had to go find them, Speaker 1: Which it correlated. I thought I tried to to map it but I do really like the way that the CKLA also enhances science and social studies. I think we'll see that that also help bridge the gap with other things too. Especially as they prepare from going into middle school
and then going into high school. Speaker 7: We do have a meeting tomorrow with, I'm sorry, Friday with admin because this will affect master scheduling. No longer do our schools need a separate social studies block and science block. Our teachers will be able to grade the majority of our science and social studies content standards right in the reading block. I would've led with that. Pardon? I would've led with that. We can still, let's start over Speaker 1: And and then I did have some of the same questions too, like what was considered the sensitive issues. Have you guys seen version three yet to see how
that compares to version two that we piloted? Okay. Speaker 7: Yes. Speaker 1: I was like I'm getting some nods. You Speaker 7: Wanna speak to that? I can go ahead. They C-K-L-A-C-K-L-A Speaker 12: Gave us online access to some of the new units to look at and then they also sent every pilot teacher a new unit that we can try out with our students. So actually next week I'm gonna start, the new poetry unit was second grade and the ELL supports are more robust. The, there's also things for gifted students within it.
So yeah, there's a lot of great changes coming to the third edition. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 4: Is this all, I Speaker 5: Have one thing shift, if I could ask one more question. Let me get, just get back into the, it was the proficient partially needs, let me just find that slide really quick. Was it concerning at all that it only seemed like kindergarten through first grade it met those standards and then it seemed like third, fourth and fifth it didn't. And then when we look at our, a lot of our SPS and whatnot, it's showing that those are the grades
of boost concern that aren't meeting those CM A expectations. Is there any concern with, with that, I mean it seemed like the only reason they got to proficient was because kindergarten and first grade were so high. Speaker 14: I can speak to that. So KI the second grade, third grade and fourth grade, they have a heavy lift no matter what our pilot program is because they're not having kids that have had the program previous to that. So you are going to see that kinder and first grade have the most proficiency or,
or have high growth and these meets expectations while the others, partially because they have, they don't have the kids that have that background knowledge to come in. So they're not seeing the full capability of the program even though this is pretty significant in and of itself. Speaker 4: Was there any, any teacher that piloted CKLA that did not like it? Speaker 7: I, I didn't hear Peep from one of 'em. You're like not from one. Well you guys have Speaker 13: All, I would say it's the opposite. I say that you know, in the beginning we might've been
like, don't dunno about this. She's always pulling me from the back. We weren't sure about this program. You know it was not a lot of bells and whistles. Not a lot of you open the teacher's manual, it's black and white. It was straight to the point. And so we were like ooh, this is not pretty enough for us. And then, oh my gosh, I have to say our meetings, two of us were almost on the verge of tears when we were making decision 'cause we were afraid people weren't gonna choose this program 'cause we feel so passionate, passionate. I've been teaching for 32 years, I'm getting emotional. I've never seen kids so darn excited about coming
to my class every day, hugging me every day. This I teach first grade, this is so much fun. I love reading, I love coming into your class. And then she said they feel so successful. I've never kids feel like I have these ELL kids who didn't speak English at the beginning of the year and now they are reading and they tell me I, I can read and they're just, I mean I just feel so passionate about it. I can't even tell you. So. So it's the opposite. Not one of us is saying gosh we wish we were doing something different. Speaker 14: Can I speak to, I'm sorry. She's another annoying. I'm the other one that was crying.
I don't know if you've looked at the nation's report card and as far as the reading proficiency, but the Nation's report card says as this year says that 40% of students fourth grade and eighth grade are o are proficient in reading. That means that 60% of students in the United States are not proficient readers science of reading it. It's basically research backed science based that says this is the way that kids learn how to read. I was tired of having kids that walk through my room that I know have characteristics of dyslexia.
And so I've spent my own time in dime for I don't know how many years. Simone, you're kind of responsible because she was my principal at the time and she added a lot to what we learned about the science of reading. And then from there I just moved on and kept going. But basically in order to hit those kids that have dyslexia, you need to be teaching the science of reading. And if you're teaching them how to read the others that already get it and don't have the problem, they're gonna be successful as well. So that's why I'm passionate about this program. It is the only one of the programs that we piloted
that is solely based in the science of reading. And that's why I back this program entirely. Can I say one one more? I was an on the fence person until probably a month and a half ago. And what happened is I'm in the middle of teaching, I am teaching kindergarten, so we're learning to read and we have these two books and I kept thinking, well why do we have two books? Why don't they combine these? We've already learned these sight words, just put 'em in the book. And I decided to read the manual. I mean, not that I didn't before,
but really read not just really Yeah, exactly. Not just skim it, not just go, oh I got this. And it really had a professional development moment for me. I've been teaching for 25 years at all grade levels and when I read the explanation of why we taught these sight words this way and it really had to do with brain research and not putting a cognitive load onto kids so that they can actually master this before we move on to that. And I kind of went, oh
and now it makes me wanna delve in even further into those units that I was still struggling with that I didn't know how to teach that I, you know, at the beginning thought I knew how to teach reading and I'm finding out that there's so many new things out there that this program has embedded in it. But that personal professional development was huge for me. So thank you. I'm not on the fence anymore. Speaker 12: Simone. Can I? Speaker 21: Okay. Speaker 12: So you guys heard a lot. I think almost everybody that stepped forward has been somehow involved in CKLA.
I was not. I did not pilot CKLA. I was an instructional coach in a building that did not teach it. So when you're saying did everybody like it, like I don't think we can ever say that anybody liked everything because no program is a silver bullet. We are going to find the things that you guys were asking about as we continue, there's holes in everything because as you've already heard, good teachers is what gets results. I do work with several people who are working through their emotions of piloting this program.
But what we're gonna do is we're gonna educate, we're gonna meet with CKLA, we're going to learn as much as we can so that we can all get to this point. So to address your question, like I don't think you could stand here and say yes, every single person that taught it loved it. 'cause we don't, we also, it was an anonymous vote so we don't know how people voted. It's still pretty big. Yeah. And then can we just readdress Brit's question, 'cause he was talking about the curriculum review and Bri I see what you're talking about with like second, third, and fourth grade inflated could have possibly
or kinder and first could have inflated that overall. And again that comes to when you look at the other two programs that they also didn't score super great in second through fifth grade, right? Yeah. And I think that that's where we come together as a team and that's where we're gonna start finding those holes. And I think some of the work our team can do is look at the rubric. 'cause our teachers filled out these rubrics so we can go back into the second through fifth grade rubrics and say, okay, that's a great starting point for us to say where did it fall short and now what can we do to make sure
that we give our students in second through fifth grade everything that they need. So that we do see that increase in C mass as well as we're starting to see an i-Ready, Speaker 21: I'm gonna add something up to what was said. Daniel wants turn fourth grade at GM E. Nice to meet you guys all. You'll see me later with collaborative solutions as well. But I piloted Wonders. Wonders was great. Has a lot of resources, very colorful. I also got to go to each into reading and CKA and I what was mentioned for both of them about, 'cause I teach fourth grade and that's,
there's a heavy lift no matter what. And we saw it, I was also part of the math pilot last year and we are seeing it now that we have kids who didn't have Eureka before where we're still having to fill a lot of those gaps where we have, kids are coming from either investigations or if they were being in the pilot group with Reveal or Bridges. Bridges, that was the other. It's like there's three and so it is a big lift for the upper grades to get to that. But like we saw this year and what Sierra Math Coach said earlier for GME, those
who got the pilot of second grade and then moving into third grade, they saw kids that could just pick it up and they were already there and it was a lot easier to implement. So I think we'll see that as well. As we continue each grade, it'll get a little bit better and it'll get a little even better. And then we will see those CMAs scores go up with the continued exposure to the same curriculum. At least that's what our hope is. Speaker 2: Okay. Thanks guys very much. Do you all have any further questions? Okay. All right. One clap for this group. Please go. Thanks guys.
Alright. Thank you guys. That was, yes, thank you. Can Speaker 22: I ask a question? Say something? Sure. Okay. I'm very layman and I've had kids in the school system since probably 87 or six or something like that. And I, I am blessed to be volunteering in kindergarten this year at Cactus Valley and it's just blown my mind what these kids are learning. I mean, when did you learn geography? You know, it was, it was a sixth
grade or something like that. And these kids are learning so much so quickly and I'm amazed at how locked into the work that's being done, they come running in from recess to get back to what they were doing. And I just think it's very special. I wonder if you don't need to have some teachers, I don't know if you could even do this, follow the kids through, you know, second or first grade. Second grade, you're gonna have 'em all graduate when they
hit fifth grade so they'll know as much as we do in fifth grade. So you're kind of building a monster here. But no, I think it's, I think it's really important that, you know, the data for Cactus Valley next year, you know, and, and so that's all I want to say. Speaker 1: Well thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for volunteering in the school. Appreciate it. Speaker 22: Sure. Speaker 1: Grants Speaker 22: Blessing. They're hysterical.
Speaker 1: Last on the discussion items is collaborative solutions. Do we need a break? Do you need a break? Yeah, I'm thinking, yeah, might have. Okay. Yeah. Five minute break. Sorry guys. Oh man. Here you go. Break Speaker 4: Jason's up first, Speaker 1: Jason. Okay Speaker 4: Dog. And I'll, I'll really team up. So we really just wanna ensure that not only you as a board but everyone watching at home, anybody who watches this re-recording gets a full understanding of the financial impact of what we are looking at as far
as this year's budget moving forward in the future. So that it's understood of what budget, that collaborative solutions the district had to work with in order to achieve benefits and salary based on projections. So I'll let Jason go into the details about that and then collaborative solutions go into their story of bringing this topic back up. So I'll let Jason explain. Speaker 11: Well if you wanna look at the first slide. You guys saw this a week ago Monday. Jeff and I met with you guys last week and two by twos
and we showed you a cash flow since that time. And I, I probably need to say too that, sorry, you're good that a really smart director of finance probably wouldn't be speaking publicly right now. This it's, it's chaos and we're talking about a lot of forecasting estimations and, and things that are terrifying. So it'd be smarter if I was behind a rock somewhere. But Speaker 1: We don't have anything to throw at you. Speaker 11: Well maybe next year you'll be like, can we get the,
the cash flow slide? That one, the first slide two. That's where I was. So if you look at, if you look at the projections through, through June of 2025, so that's this year you can see that we're projecting to come in at about $2.2 million in the red. That is what we, the decisions that were made last year to advance the salaries to the 6% level. And so we, we knew that would come in that would, that would eat some fund balance this year. That was part of the plan.
And then as a good finance director, you would like to see that trending back towards a neutral or even, my goodness, black numbers would be wonderful. As we, as we move into the 2026 numbers, this is where you're seeing a 16% increase in, in our medical programs. As I've warned people, 16% doesn't mean that your piece goes up 16%, the district's piece goes up 16%
or that we could split that five and 10 or five and 11. That is a 16% increase on the total amount. So it runs our total healthcare costs from 7.2 million up to about 8.4 million is a huge, huge increase as a, as a state entity, we only get another 2.3% to two to 2.3 and we're still finding out if it's gonna be that high as an increase. So when you have a 16% increase in any category, it creates a lot of strain on the system Because
of that, you're seeing that and that that we're looking at a projected deficit next year of about 1.8 million. That's the 1.799 that's, that's below the 1.2 transfer to capital. That's where we're gonna be a year from now. And that is again, a heavily forecasted number. This is far more art than science, but if you just look at the things that will increase and that is also projecting a step, which is a 2% salary. So at a 2% salary
and an increase in medical costs, that's where we would be is that negative 1.8. Luckily we have an expert on the board in medical costs who, who terrified us Monday and said that this 16% may not be a one time event that we may be looking at at least an 8% the year after. Now that's terrifying because you're talking about a 16% and then the year after another eight, that's a huge, huge increase over two years to the system. And so that next projected fund balance deficit
is taking into account an 8%, which we were told was probably conservative. Normally we would, we would project that out in finance at two to 3% a year. And so another one is coming. And so that also would include another step in that. So if the employees are getting a step every year there's steps in lanes of about a 2% raise and we build in the cost of projected well known increases in medical and projected medical increases the following year.
That's the, that's the trend that we're looking at. CS is gonna give two options tonight. There's only one cash flow projection. I figured that out at two in the morning. The reason is both of those projections w both options. If, if you take the cheaper medical option, medical premium option, that money CS would request that in some form of a, of a compensation piece. Either a outside experience increase or a a maybe a percent
on on on the, on the salary. If you take the, the projections that are closer to what Jeff and I showed you Monday, then that extra piece gets absorbed into the, into the benefit cost. So I think both, both of them will, assuming CS took the savings and put 'em in the salary somehow or another, I think both of them will be looking somewhere around that 1.8 deficit next year and then the following year that would actually, so a lot of red on the board.
Sorry we don't have a different color yet. Speaker 4: Do we have to wait till the end to ask questions? Speaker 11: No, Speaker 4: If, if you have questions about the finance piece, you're welcome to ask him. Okay. So this was our two by two meetings. Speaker 11: Well Speaker 4: They don't match why. Lemme clear Speaker 11: Up. Yeah, lemme clear up too that 1.8. Yeah, after that meeting Jeff and I sat down and tried to really hammer out some, some accurate predictions. Speaker 4: Okay. And it Speaker 11: Looks a little better than we talked about. Speaker 4: Yes it does. It looks quite a bit. I was like whoa. Yeah. What am I missing here? That's Speaker 11: A good question. I meant to lead that. Yes. We ended up sitting down and,
and going over like I said, art on science and trying to project some things that we think we see coming and things we think we see in the future. Okay. And I think that's, Speaker 4: This is more accurate. Yes sir. Speaker 11: Yes Speaker 4: Ma'am. Okay, thank you. But Speaker 11: We're still red for the next Speaker 4: Sea of red, sea of blood. Sea of blood. Sea of blood. It worked back Speaker 11: Shore at least. Speaker 4: That's Speaker 11: A good question. Sorry. Speaker 4: Thank you. I print your story for why we're back here. Yes. Okay. We would love to talk about why we're back here. Speaker 11: Do you need me or Jeff or you're back?
Yeah, don't be going anywhere. Don't Speaker 4: Get to leave yet. You can go ahead and and just sit right back over here Jason. Yeah, Speaker 1: No we locked the door. Sorry. It's actually, can you guard the door please? This was the Monday one. Speaker 4: Okay, so really quick. I am Jess Wilson. I am the sixth grade dean and athletic director at Rifle Middle School and also a CS member, Speaker 21: Daniel ESL fourth grade at GME. Also a CS member for our school Speaker 4: And director of human resources for fel, RT and CS participant. So we are back here as a CS group with our benefits package again. So we presented our last option to you guys
and I think very much kinda like when we first presented it to you guys, it was kind of like, okay here, here when we were told the 16.5% increase, we in our group were like, holy cow, that's like a lot. What are we gonna do? It was initially like, oh it was gonna be even higher and we were still like, wow, yay. That's the positive of that. And so kind of going through like what does this look like? And Jason and Devin and Emma from Will Watson, they created this really fun little spreadsheet that we got to sit and toggle numbers for eight hours and try this.
Like what if we do this? What if we do this? And sat and tried about every option that our group could come up with. And then, you know, sticking with our benefit philosophy because we wanted to make sure a, we are being financially sound in what we are presenting to our group. And then in years past we've always heard that we want, staff would like to be able to insure their kids. Like that has always been kind of the big thing of like we want to be able to have our kids on insurance. I mean we all know kids get sick and that's kind of our why we're here at school. And so keeping, we created our benefits philosophy and wanted to keep with that of like making sure it was affordable for our staff,
keeping their kids on the insurance, making sure that we are financially sound and then spouses were kind of our last on our priority if we could with that amount of increase. It was like what, what has to be the thing to go? And we, we went with we're gonna try to decrease the amount on the spouse just because we knew we wanted to keep kids on, on insurance. So we presented the option to you guys and then very much like you guys, there was a lot of feedback and we got a lot of feedback as well when we presented it to the entire staff. I think again people were still kind of like, what does this mean? What are we gonna do that's like a mortgage payment?
I don't make that much money. And then we went back and said, okay, I know you guys met with Jason and Devon and those guys and said something, something's gotta come. And so we did the same thing on Friday. We said, okay, what, what are options? Jason kind of gave us the here's the red, here's the things. And so we went back to is this the best option? Do we need to come up with something new? Like really thinking about the people that work here and we've, yeah we've talked about we want to give people these raises, we wanna do all these things, try to get more experience, but our priority has gotta be the people that we have here. I mean we've gotta be keeping people here.
We gotta do what we gotta do to keep people happy and want to be here. And so we did come up with a couple of options that Jason and Devin and, and I think you guys even got to see one option and then we came up with another one to present to you guys tonight. But again, we went through our entire process again talking through the story, what is it our what, what is it that we really want to give all of our people still trying to stick within our philosophy but knowing those, those red numbers are kind of there anything you want to add. Speaker 21: So I, I joined CS probably,
I think it was December meeting was the first time I got to join, which is at the very beginning of this when we were first told the very sad news from Devin that we should expect almost a 20% increase. And then like just said, we had like a yay, it's only 16. And then we were given numbers and there was a lot of trying to balance numbers and this was like a, I would say almost four or five hour, maybe six hour process of us trying to find numbers and options and narrow it down. And then we heard back after it was presented to the staff
and then we did the IBB process, which if you don't remember is the interest based and I always forget the last name. Bargaining. Yeah, bargaining. And so we went back over the story, we looked at our philosophy and really evaluated what we were looking at. And we had the fine work that Devin and Jason and Jeff did to look at some three options roughly that they came up with that we weren't going to mess with numbers anymore because we got into a whole we're toggling numbers.
And then somewhere math wasn't math incorrectly because it is a very hard explanation. Like one of the stories I heard a lot from my staff was, well if it's 16.5% increase, why did my number that I'm paying per month double or in some cases triple? And that's a very hard concept for even me to understand And I sat through this whole presentation twice and so we were trying to find a way to soften the below in a sense and find a way that we could keep our staff and retain and make sure that the numbers
matched the way we wanted them to. And everyone was coming at a little less disgruntled. 'cause it's, it's hard to appeal to everyone and to make everyone happy is a Speaker 23: Game. We don't say Speaker 4: You've never heard that yet. Speaker 21: And so we went through the process and like just said, we looked at our, not only our benefits philosophy, but we are also trying to keep our compensation philosophy. So the first one is just what I believe Jason already showed with you and Jeff. And then the one that we're also presenting is the second option to look at
that was we kind of went from our away from our philosophy a little bit with being a sustainable budget because it is such a large impact on a lot of our families and a lot of our members of, in some cases taking that hit would take almost half their salary for the month going towards their benefits. So we went with that and then we went to the next part. Speaker 4: Yeah, and the only thing I would add to this is
part of that story, what they, the first round, a lot of what they're considering is that when you make your benefit decision first, that impacts what you're able to do with salaries. And so, you know, we have a large portion of staff that are part-time that aren't even eligible for benefits. So they're impacted by the salary. We have a, a larger group that are employee only or employee plus child as well that are not impacted. So you have, you have to look at right, the greatest of the all and that is what a collaborative solution is supposed to do, is look at all employees and everybody's impacted in that, every bit of salary.
And so when they were referring to that, and the, the biggest picture is we also had our scope of work that y'all approved when we were over at rifle high school and that includes wages, benefits, and our communications committee. And so these are not absolutely, these will absolutely happen, but these are projects that they like to work on, which is, which is important. If you remember usually this page, it's like a three page document of scope of work, of things that they wanna work on and do that and instead brought those three items, which was pretty great and, and worked on.
And so with all that in consideration, and we, I worked directly, Chris and I worked directly with Emma at Willis, Terra Watson and Bobby. And explain the situation of the feedback that you all received, that we received and just talked about. You know, it, it has come to kind of a decision to bring back the discussion of benefits, to look at some options and look at other ways of philosophy for controlling costs, but also our, our budget because that, that's something that also needs
to be understood is that Wills towers Watson, we let them know kind of what our budget is as well. We say, hey, this is, these are the restraints that we have with our budget. And this happened because if you remember on the slide deck that we had prior, it said if we do absolutely nothing like to change our contribution strategy, we'd be at like 7.4 million right out the gate. And that means like no steps and lanes, nothing like, I mean we would've been so far, we would've been almost at 2027 into the red right with our spending. We knew that we absolutely couldn't do that. And so we couldn't take on the full increase of 16.5.
And so she knew that put numbers together. And so when talking with her, one of our strategies to help control costs was to help staff with health savings accounts. And so when you look at one of these options, you're gonna notice that, that the option does take away our contribution of a health savings account. And the biggest portion of that is so that staff can start paying for premiums, whether that's somebody that's on their plan or not. And so when we went back to the design table, we did give her, you know, bits and pieces of the story.
I did take that from collaborative solutions. I took the input that came from our public audience. You know, we heard from several public audience at Elk Creek Elementary. We had letters, we had comments from our benefits presentation. So we gave those to Emma so she really understood. She was also there virtually and, and heard the feedback from staff. And so I think that was helpful when she created our options, she did, like Daniel said that she created three kind of options for us. I put kind of the hard number down of like,
we're not tweaking toggling these types of things because when we came around the first time I provided and then I provided like three hard options and then option to change percentages of contribution, which gives them some control of like, well what does this look like? And so we kind of stuck to that knowing that we had an end goal. And so next you're gonna see on our recommendations on this slide, I just placed some updates. So our first option was our slight update and it, it, it was truly more of something
that looks like a, a administrative error and, and I would say with option one it was just changing, making sure that the employee contribution from the district, it got brought down into the employee plus spouse tiers. Okay. And that's just making sure, because it was currently what we presented the first time was penalizing somebody for adding their spouse. So instead of with a high deductible health plan being the employee plus spouse cussing $806, it was at like 770. So there was a slight update with that for option one
and that truly was the only thing that changed from our first recommendation. And so that is an option for you all. And so that's on two slides down. So you have your previous recommendations, that's your compare and then updated option one and that's highlighted there in red. So this is your first option to choose from. So that changed our spending very, very slightly from 5.701 million to 5.715. And so if you have your printouts with you, it goes to the screen, previous medical plans
and then option one, updated option one. Okay. Speaker 21: Also in the yellow box for tail yellow. Yep. There's a mark of what the changes were for the option. Speaker 4: Yep. So to be clearly identified and I understand that it can be a little bit small on the printout, it's kind of difficult. Oh no, I blew 'em up and printed them at home. Speaker 21: Okay, cool. Speaker 4: Awesome. And with this, so then with option two, this is bringing this back. So option two, we no longer will be contributing health savings accounts to the high deductible health plan. And we are going to contribute to the employee plus spouse premiums.
Prior recommendation was discontinue the non-employee spouse premium contributions. So in your slide deck you will see the option two in there. I wanted to show first option one versus current. And so that page really does show that change to make sure that we have 8 0 6 being contributed. And then option two, as Daniel pointed out, we have this pale yellow box that talks about your changes. But we are looking at an employer contribution to spouse tiers now at 65% instead of that 42 coverage.
And I wanted to give some clarification 'cause there was some question on, well they're not covering 42% of our spouse, they are covering 40 per two, 2% of the total cost of that plan. Hopefully that makes sense. It's not of that spouse. So it's the total cost. So if you're looking at a high deductible health plan, an e plus spouse costs $1,925 per month right before any contributions from anybody. And so they're updating that total coverage. We, we had to redo some assuming of migration of enrollment onto each plan because based on affordability, people are gonna move plans.
Thankfully we're not looking at like hundreds of people migrating. So the, the shift in cost doesn't get a two outta control. The, the same district contribution goes towards all dependent tiers. Two e family contributions and EE contribution, e ee contributions of children changes. So that is the basic plan for your review. And then option two versus current is going to be the next slide. And I know this is a lot of numbers, but hopefully it helps you look at, okay,
when we made our decision earlier in March and so you're going to see the 2025 employee pays and then 20 25, 26 employee costs change. And so if it's gonna go up or down, what that's gonna look like in our contributions changing. Does that make sense? And on Speaker 8: Option two, our total contribution is 6.3. Speaker 4: Yes. Yeah. Yep. So we're looking at that 6.3 spend instead of I think 5.8 was our original. Yeah, 5.701 was our original. Okay.
And that was taking in consideration the up to 6.2 is the, the original budget that we like constraint that we thought we had in order to make moves towards salary. 'cause as Jason talked about, it's about $1.2 million just for steps in lanes and that's no additional salary increase. It's a lot of numbers and explanation. What clarification can I give right now? Speaker 8: And then these are, these are the two. Yep. Jason two is what we discussed. Speaker 11: So when Jeff brought that proposal,
it had flat rates of, of 800, some of those 700 marks. Okay. We gave that to Willis Tower Watson. They adjusted it with their formulas. The other thing we asked them to do was we don't have any expertise in how people will migrate and plans. We asked for their expertise on that. And so that is what was given to you guys presented to Willis Tower Watson for their expertise. Speaker 4: And so the other projection that you all saw, the number is slightly lower from what you received
because the HSA contribution from what we presented was not included in that number with the projection. So the cost spend was slightly lower in the first generation that you saw. And that was just something that was missed with the health savings account contribution. Speaker 8: I mean, you're the insurance guy. Explain this to me. What is it? It's better for the, for the employee. Speaker 20: Why is this better? Speaker 8: What is better? Which one, which one's better for the employees? Speaker 20: Option two because you have more contributions to Speaker 8: From the district spouse Speaker 20: And family care Yeah. Speaker 8: Which Speaker 4: Is not hitting your paychecks as much. Right.
And so they're not having to pay more every month and in contribution as far as like for their salary. Like we can't say Right. Right now what we're talking about is like in their paycheck as of right now with no salary change, this is better for them with paycheck. So, Speaker 20: And it's it's painful, right? It's, and it's just something we have to deal with and in this circumstances and you, you hate to do it because it does cost money and it costs the employees who have ch spouses a lot more than they're paying right now.
Yeah. But when you're dealing with 16 and a half, there's not a lot of wiggle room on there and you just try to do the best like you guys did and everybody trying to sit around that table and coming up with some solutions. And I think that this was a, a pretty good compromise. Speaker 8: No, I think you guys did a great job going back and kind of, I really just gonna ask a lot of questions now. Okay. I don't want to go back to Speaker 4: We don't either, so that's okay. Speaker 8: So Jason, what was the percentage of that 16% did we eat up on option two,
16% increase? How much of that did we saddle Option two Speaker 11: As a percentage of the total gain? Speaker 8: Ballpark it. Speaker 4: Total increase, Speaker 8: Yeah. 20 Speaker 11: Ish. Yeah, we get a 2% raise from the state, so Speaker 8: Oh cool. Yeah, there's that. Yeah, Speaker 11: That was the, that was the, the wedge here is that costs are moving up at a 16% clip and revenue's moving up at a 2.2% clip. Speaker 8: It'd be nice legislation this year. Is there any idea that they may adjust that mind Kathy? Yeah.
Speaker 11: Downward. Speaker 8: Oh, Speaker 11: Well so far school finance and the long bill passed a couple weeks ago and our allocation based on the number of CD posted went down by about a hundred thousand. So we're expecting the, the 53 million we talked to about last time, it, it really, I mean we're sad to lose a hundred thousand, but the potential to lose more, that's not a whole lot in 53 million budget we can with Speaker 8: That. Yeah. I mean, things already red can't get redder, can we?
Speaker 4: And I, I do wanna express like, and so this is, this is really hard place that I have sit and and we all have to sit in, is that we, whatever decision comes out of collaborative solutions, we have to stand behind it and we have to be proud of it and, and support it and, and be that neutral party because all of my staff, my direct staff, the people who report to me, I signed their time cards. Every single one of them was affected by this. Every single one of them was in tears and was hurting because they didn't know what they were gonna do. One of 'em told her husband to go kick rocks and he can figure out his own insurance,
which she cracks me up. But they all don't have that option, right? Like they don't all it, it's scary to go out on the open market to try to find your own insurance. But if you have something where you can't get insurance that's even any cheaper than what the district offers And what, what if you've been uninsured and you had a bad experience being insured and your husband can't be uninsured, right? Like they can of of course afford this employee only thing, right? What I guess you say afford, but it's, it's palatable, right? Nothing is affordable anymore, but it's palatable
however, that it is impacting people we love and we care about. And there's a reason that the, this entire committee decided to come back. That's why you all decided to say, Hey, we, we gotta go back here. And we understand that this is also going to impact next year in 2027 and 28 unless something else changes state funding wise or local funding wise. Have you guys Speaker 21: Gone Speaker 8: Back and communicated this with your stats? Speaker 4: The new options? Yes. Not quite yet. Not yet. I mean we, it was kind of a way I, I know like in our building I kind of talked about, hey, did anybody kinda look at the options
that are going to the board? A couple people did and they were still kind of like, eh, it still hurts, but, and it was one of those like at 16 and a half percent, like it hurts, but they were like, eh, it feels a little bit better than the first time though. Speaker 21: Yeah. I haven't had the opportunity after that Friday. 'cause we just did this last Friday and then with CMAs coming, it's a night, it's scheduling is a nightmare with any free time. But I actually have had some staff members come talk to me about it, who went to the board meeting
and looked at the presentation and just asked me what my thoughts are and to explain some of the numbers as best as I could. And the nice part is I think they're starting to understand that this is where we're at and this is the best that we could do. So that's as much I've told them that I will be meeting with them on Friday during our strategic plan day to explain what the board's decision was to go further in detail as well. Speaker 4: And as far as me, so I communicated out to the district office staff, facilities, transportation.
So I got it to John, both John's and their staff got it to the family resource staff. Special education in those departments. 'cause that's my responsibility as well, right. In our billings to make sure I also put a link to the, the board packet so that they could see all the, all these presentations. Our common message. Theresa put the common message in the newsletter as well and helped us push that out. I personally haven't heard from anybody else and I haven't had any of my other, like any of our other directors reach out that anybody had any additional feedback that was any different?
Or, or or like positive? Like positive. I, I, it is been radio silence since we published that. However, it was a late published, so I could, well and I think because we had, when we did our last presentation of it, it was like the open enrollment. It was on our strategic plan day or it was a work day even. And all staff was like almost required to be on and watching and seeing all that kind of stuff. So that's, I think where more people were invested in what was going on. We haven't had that option yet. I think some buildings will probably do it Friday once we kind of know. But one of the things even we've seen,
like we put out each time we meet like, hey, if you have any thoughts about things that are coming up, make sure you put comments. And we don't, we didn't hear much. Oh sure. And then as soon as, you know, we had this presentation, then all of it started coming in and you know, we were trying to be as transparent as we could early on, guys, this is coming, this is coming. It could be potentially this. And we got one or two comments, maybe not a whole lot. So I don't think people were really like grasping it until the numbers were there and it was in their face and it's like, now it's here. I think once we kind of decide and we pre represent the, the new options, we may
or may not hear a little bit more. I don't know that it'll be that full entire district at one time conversation though. At least not that we've planned out. Speaker 8: Yeah. Written. Do you have anything? Speaker 5: No, I think just going back to the, the fact that collaborative should got back together. The board went back to work, did the two by twos with our finance team. It is a tough pill to swallow even seeing it now. But, but I mean, I don't know till till we, a bunch of money falls outta Scott in her lap. I, I don't know what else we could do.
So I appreciate, I just really appreciate the work you guys did really do Speaker 8: On a second Pat, you guys getting back together. Rehashing it isn't great though. Isn't it fun for any of you? And it is frustrating when you try to reach out and then you don't hear anything and then you sure do. Yeah. Right. But I would just recommend and encourage you guys to keep being proactive in that messaging with your building. Do are we, does every facility have a representative yet? Not Speaker 4: Yet. No. Speaker 8: Be very proactive in recruiting people from those buildings. I mean being involved is difficult, have make sacrifices,
but just the messaging, get those guys involved. Yeah. Speaker 4: Great. Speaker 8: So I appreciate you guys doing Speaker 4: Going back. Well and we've even talked too, I mean we know like things have gotta kinda change too as far as like our usages of things and educating people better on how to use. And we know that that's not gonna change anything for this year. But hopefully now, like we, we as a committee can go to people and just say, hey, like that hurt. It could potentially hurt again. But there's a few things that we probably need to start changing up. Obviously. No. Like if you are sick, go to the doctor. The people that you know are going through horrific life changing things of cancer,
like no new, please do all of those things. But it's like other things that we do have options of like the CEBT clinic of if you have a sore throat or your kid has a sore throat, it's a quick thing for us to go use. It doesn't hit our premiums as hard and everything. And so it's just trying to help educate people on those kind of things. A lot of stuff that we didn't know is an option. I mean even I've sat through this presentation, I don't know how many times and I learned something from Devin and Christie each time and I'm like, oh, where's that? And, but even for myself, I've gotta be better at seeing those things
and then pushing it out to people. There's people within the district that have used plenty of our, of our resources. We have a few people at Rifle Middle School that have used like the surgery plus that anytime they have an opportunity to share that we try to push them and I'm like, Hey Devin might need to you to go out and help with insurance stuff. Like you would be the perfect people to go like push, hey, this is a better thing to do. Try doing this just because without the education, people don't know. And if we don't, if we aren't out there like you said, chance being proactive and we kinda sit by it and we wait, then it kind of turns out into this.
So yeah, it's gonna have to be coming from us even with like whatever option you guys choose tonight, we, it's, it's gonna have to be a push and it's gonna have to come from us. And I think what really makes the difference is the word of mouth. I mean, Theresa does a great job with her, her news and everything. And again, but people kinda skim read things as they want board meetings, people are kinda in and out. But I think it was that here we're gonna sit down, have a conversation and it's gonna be all of us sitting in a room together and we're all gonna hear it. So Speaker 8: Bottom line too, financially, I mean this is the first year since Covid,
we haven't had any extra funding. We got a lot of cool stuff during Covid. Yeah, right. We all got raises, we all got cool benefits. That's gonna go away. It just, it is just math. Yep. I mean we teach the kids math every day. It it is what it is. That's, that's the hard lesson, right? Don't, don't rely on those things. Yeah. And I think I even had a con conversation with Bri and Fathom during our meeting with Jason, you know, last year we did give that 2% bump because we felt good, right? Like we want to help the staff. In hindsight, that might not have been the right thing to do.
Stick with the 1% and over years of stability. Right now we're looking at Jeff's terms, a sea of red. And I know in, in, in, you know, educational finance, it's always a sea of red, especially in Colorado and they rob the education budget for anything. But it's a serious thing. We're all that extra funding is going away. It's gone. And the effects of injecting that much money into our economy over the last three years, four years we're feeling. So the money's gone and we get
to feel the deal with the side effects. That's the bad lesson Speaker 24: So much. Speaker 8: I don't, I don't feel for you guys trying to explain that. Oh, Speaker 4: I'm sorry. Yeah. We're teachers right? Speaker 1: Were Speaker 8: You talking while I was talking? Speaker 4: We were, we were trying to figure out some numbers over here. Quit Speaker 8: Looking at the numbers. Just ask Jeff. Speaker 1: But we have to understand the numbers to be able to ask Jeff. Yeah. Speaker 4: But I think we figured it out. Yeah, I definitely Speaker 8: Think we have to do something. That's why we sent 'em back. Yeah, Speaker 1: I think, you know, and I, I do appreciate, I think everybody taking the time here and out there too, to definitely go back
and, I mean none of these decisions are made lightly at all. Especially when it's, I mean if we could afford to absorb the entire 16.8% we would, but unfortunately we can't. And that's, that's almost with everything. So I definitely appreciate you guys taking the time and the extra time and, and then trying to make it known too to the, taking it back out to the community with the newsletters and the push. So Speaker 4: Can I see this summary page as a total spend summary too?
Your final summary page? Oh, as a total spend of funds. Speaker 1: We'll keep scrolling. Speaker 4: It's in blue though, not red Speaker 1: Choice. Speaker 4: And then for you all the document that Sharon provided you, this is an extra one that it's just all of these condensed onto one? No, she Speaker 1: Gave Speaker 4: To you before the board a hard copy. It has all of these slides on one, so you're comparative of like what you, what it was in 24, 25, what y'all voted on the board approved, voted on. And then option one adjusted and then option two. So those are all condensed
and there's a key at the bottom one. So I have like three different papers. So that's condensed. So just hold that one in front of you. If you're trying to look at like comparative to 24, 25 option one, option one amended and option two well as far as impact to a staff member. So which one are you trying to like scratch your head about? Well I was looking at like really where they adjusted the numbers. So on option two you're saying that we're gonna drop from the original one that we approved had 258 employees in
the employee only and option two now only has 196, which is on the high deductible health plan. Yeah. So that's based on they, a lot of those people will and was come back to staying WTW that made these adjustments. So our original migration was a three fourth move just 'cause of affordability. And then now it's about a half of our total enrollment. So your total enrollment still stays at 5 0 1. It's just dispersed a little bit, a little bit differently. But like I said, the, the migration from three-fourths to half back up to the high deductible,
it didn't adjust the, the total cost. But regardless that's not going to, it didn't impact the bottom line a whole lot. The the big numbers that you're trying to look at is option 2 24 25 and then the board approved of like how much it went down from our first option. So like what the board is, is that the spouse is gonna see some reprieve. So they're gonna save 481 from that big change. So now their monthly cost on the high deductible health plan is gonna be $674 for an e plus spouse.
And that's, so those are on the gold column. Green is option two increase from 24 25 blue is your board approved versus option two, Does that kind of help you? So yeah, your first block is enrollment numbers, second block is 24 25 and then the board approved and then the slight board approved change and it's very minimal. So you know, next one is your option two for 25, what the employee pays, what increase from 24 to 25 is, and then option two versus what the board approved was.
So what impact positively or negatively was making this change. And so I do wanna note, you'll see on the a plus children for high deductible health plan from what y'all approved a month ago, it goes up by $85. So now their cost is $593 instead of five a week. But on the plus spouse it's going down by $481. So now they're only paying $674. This is the high deductible health plan. It's just our reference plan. Right? Right. And then the two EE families, so people who have two spouses in this district
and then children, a child or mul multiple, their costs also went up by $85. And so now they're paying $704 instead of $619. The e plus family went down by $784. So that's gonna save those staff $784 in their check. And so $783 will be coming out of their check. So when he said somebody's paying twice, so half of that cost came off. And so you'll see the percentages of what we covered on that entire plan on that option too. So you'll see that these yellow highlights,
it shows the employee contribution. We cover 88% of an employee's on the high deductible, 65% on the employee blouse. Employee plus children is 65% and then the family tier is 70%. So hopefully that's helpful for you to see how much of the total cost. And if you're wondering why like the employee only doesn't go, we have a, a federal requirement for how much we can charge for our qualifying plan. So what that means is, is one of your medical plans. So either a high deductible
or a PPO has to be your qualifying plan as an employee only. So we take the lowest paid person in the district, there's a formula. And so right now it's our classified level one. We have to take that hourly rate times 149 days 'cause that's our smallest employee contract. $16, 16, 74 times 149 days and what their salary is and there's a a percentage that you can't go over to charge somebody for insurance or else you get really hit by the IRS. They get really mad at you and they find you. So the
Speaker 20: Two employee family is two employees plus Speaker 4: A child. Yeah. Okay. A child, A child A or 10 A or yeah, it doesn't matter. And we have a lot of those You ever have time to teach? Yeah. Hey student count. That's right. Trying to help those numbers doing their part. Does that give some clarity kind of show your comparison? Yep. It's a lot of numbers but I just, I, it's really hard to show you. Like I could put big numbers that says they were paying this and this and I could give you a 50 page packet if
you'd like, but no thanks. What did collaborative solutions feel would be the best options? Like they thought too? Option two, Speaker 21: I mean it was a back and forth. There's some people who really wanted to stick to our benefits philosophy of trying to be more budget friendly. But I think majority of us led towards option two just because at the very least it lessened the increase and so people can start planning for it if we're continuing to expect it to increase as much
as it has been and it's projected to continue. So I feel at least that's how I saw our conversation was that a lot of people were leaning towards option two, but also some people were still leaning towards the updated option one because of it's been budget friendliness. Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean with our philosophies. 'cause we've worked really hard to try to get those two philosophies in place and trying to stick to those and making sure that we're as consistent as we can and yeah, keeping, keeping the budget in mind but knowing, I mean the real reality is we're sitting around that table and saying, you know,
people are talking about leaving or those of us that are in the process of trying to hire people and you know, we're losing out on some people that are coming in and not that we have like 800 million people just knocking at our door to come and fill up our spots, but it is kind of a tough pill to swallow when you offer these to people and they're like, well I can go over here and I can make this or anything like that. So it was definitely a like we gotta do what's best for everybody in the district. And like Devon had said too with part of that is we do have a large chunk of our employees
that don't even get this benefit. So making sure that we're not forgetting those people either because again, these are all people that keep this whole ship afloat. So, Speaker 21: And that was one of our biggest stories that we heard from a lot of the responses, hearing a lot of people saying that we want to keep the staff that we have and benefits is what's impacting a lot of those decisions for a lot of 'em. Because for most of us, like we've figured out how to survive on what we have right now and what we are expecting to get, but to have that dwindle down even more
is really hard, especially with cost of living. And so that was another big concern that we were looking at is how that's been increasing and if we have so much going on the employee of paying for this, there's a lot of people who would not be able to afford and would either be burning out because they have to work two to three jobs at that point or leaving to find something that pays more. Speaker 2: Go. Thank you. Okay. Speaker 8: Do you have a comp? What, what's the salary? Did you guys talk about salary at all? Speaker 4: We got into the early part of our process,
but like Devin was saying earlier, this kind of determines where what we were gonna go for next and ask. And again, not being those people that are just constantly like, can we have this, can we have this, can we have this? 'cause being realistic too. But so we started our, our whole IB pro IBB process. We started our story, we talk about our interests and then when we meet again on the 25th, then we'll get into options and before Yeah, whatever day that is here soon. Yep. Then we'll really get into that, that piece before we come back.
Speaker 21: 'cause we wanted to have more realistic numbers of what we, what we're dealing with to have a better understanding of where, where we can go and how far we can go with what we have left after we go towards benefits. Speaker 4: And we did talk about the desire to try to bring benefits and salaries together and we've talked about will with Willis Towers Watson, of how we can possibly do that, whether that's a projected increase based on our, our utilization and data or what have you. And obviously bring it forward, have a discussion,
and then not vote until another session. However, like if we have benefit the benefit presentation first or whatever, or we have salary and we spend it here, we can't even pay for the benefits and we have a requirement to pay for the benefits. We don't have an option. Like we have to pay something, you know, we have to adjust that. So that's gonna be a balance and we're gonna have to work with you all our brokers finance and, and try to figure that out for next year. Speaker 8: At the same time it would give us a more complete picture of our financial situation. Speaker 4: Right. Yeah. And, and Speaker 8: That's my number one concern is, is that's our philosophy
as a board to make sure this district is financially viable for the next, for the foreseeable future. Yeah. So to get these, our, our biggest contribution out or our biggest expense out of the budget is employees. So if we can get that big picture together, that way I can sit here and say, well you want, you know, you want this on the insurance, so I'm not, I don't think you need this for us. You, you, you see what I'm, I mean that's part of the process. Yeah. And I just really want to get you guys understanding that's where I want to be soon. Speaker 4: Well and as you know, the cash flows that Jason and Jeff had presented
that are reflected here in this presentation are for a 2%, which is steps and lanes. Okay. And that's pretty much I would say, Jeff, tell me if I'm wrong here, but that, that's about as maximum as you would say to go. Speaker 1: I would certainly be as far as I might Captain. Yes. Speaker 4: So we've already talked about that. CS is very aware of that. Every single finance presentation from August to today has been for a 2% and that's as far as these guys felt comfortable to with the cash flow. Is that Speaker 8: Currently we're absorbing almost a one? Well, we're a little more than a 1% increase.
Same as a 1% bump in pay with the, with the 600 and thousand and change insurance requirements. So Yep. There's that. Speaker 1: Thank you guys. Yeah, Speaker 4: Thank you. Thank you. Speaker 1: We got action items next. Bri did you wanna touch on the first action item? Speaker 5: I mean, no, I mean I think we've discussed it as a group one on one multiple times and lemme see. I'll just put my video on real quick so you can see. No, I think this will, I think once we can get this under,
get this part taken care of, of, I think we can move forward. So no, I'll, I'll make a motion to approve the contract with Kurt Bank Tar as the next superintendent of Garfield. RE two. Speaker 1: Thank you. May I get a second? I second that Sharon, may I get roll call please? Yes. Aye. Speaker 5: Aye. Speaker 1: Asco Aye. Jenkins. Aye Jen. Aye. Speaker 5: And since that's been taken care of, the next step on that process will be Cassie and I will get together, we'll get that signed
and get that turned into HR so they can start his packet for him. And Cassie, I'll try to get to that to you first thing in the morning. Speaker 1: Okay. Sounds good. Speaker 5: Thank you. Thank you. Speaker 1: Amended compensation packet. Do we have any discussion? Speaker 5: Just to clarify, is collaborative solutions recommending option two? Speaker 1: Yes, that was, that's kind of what your guys' vote. Speaker 8: That was up in the air. I Speaker 1: Think that was up in there. I you guys get to choose between the two. Thanks a lot. Thanks. Speaker 5: One and two. Speaker 1: Thanks. You're welcome. Options are open.
Yeah. Speaker 5: Well I still am sitting here thinking option one is just, it's too extreme. Yeah, it's too much. I kind of like the way Chance phrased it. Of course I would've love to give that 1%. It's potentially a raise to the staff, but I, I think it's gotta go into benefits to, to make that more manageable for pretty much everybody in there now. Now the numbers seem a little more realistic as far as as affordable, as affordable can be at this day and age. So I would definitely lean towards option two more
so than option one now. Hmm. And once again, thank thank you to everybody that went back to the table and put in that extra work man. I, I really appreciate it. Speaker 1: Well, Speaker 20: Go ahead. I would move that we do approve option two as presented Speaker 1: To update the Speaker 20: Benefits packet. Speaker 1: I need to say we're adjusting As amended. As Speaker 20: Amended. Yeah. As amended as presented Speaker 1: Tonight. Yeah. Amended would Amended conversation. Speaker 8: I want to, I would really like to see some salary numbers too and like what, what they're thinking that way I will second
that to because, because I'm with BRI and you all the rest of you guys I, the original compensation or the original benefits was, was extreme. Okay. It was a lot. So I think that that is better. But with the caveat that I want to, I would like to see salaries soon. Speaker 5: Yeah. Speaker 1: Sharon May get roll call please. Aye. Speaker 5: Aye. Speaker 1: Asco Aye Jenkins. Speaker 2: Aye Judge Speaker 1: Aye. Thank you. Approval
of the recommendation for the K through five ELA adoption for CKLA. Speaker 4: I make a motion to approve the CKLA adoption. Speaker 1: May I get a second? Second Sharon, may I get roll call please? Speaker 2: Eli though? Aye That's fine. Aye asco Speaker 4: Aye. Speaker 2: Jenkins. Aye. Jenson. Speaker 1: Aye. Thank you. We've got our onto some policy readings. We've got the first reading of GC GC dash R,
the job sharing in professional staff positions. Thank you everybody for coming. Speaker 4: Yes, thank you. Speaker 2: Thanks guys. Speaker 4: No one wants to stay for policy. Speaker 1: Wow. Hey they stay for finance people. Stay for the finance for the numbers. So you know what, that's a win. That is Speaker 2: A, we are growing Speaker 4: Policy. This is why we need CKLA. Like excited readers read policy Speaker 1: Simone, can we put policy anywhere in that curriculum? Just kidding. Okay, sorry.
First reading of job sharing and professional staff positions. Did Sharon, the red is the changes, correct? Speaker 2: Yes. Okay. And that the first reading, so what didn't get packet on the last one. So it goes with the GCGC and the GC GC Speaker 1: Yes. Speaker 2: Present last week. Yep. This is the regulation to that. Speaker 4: How many teachers does this affect? Evan? Speaker 2: One school. Speaker 4: One school. One school Speaker 2: Right now. Right now Speaker 4: Just like two teachers, Speaker 2: Four teachers. So, okay.
We truly wrote this for the current situation of how it's working. To be totally honest with you. So when you look at the first Speaker 4: Line, I took out non probationary teachers because at this current state we have one that is a long-term sub teacher of record who is completing their education. She'll actually graduate the of this year. One is a non probationary teacher, then the other one's a long term sub and, and a certified teacher, but still is in probationary sa 'cause she has been with us for a couple years. And so These buildings are being as creative possible to put the best educators possible in front of children
to make sure they're excelling. And these classes are working really well. The both of these indi, all of these individuals are supporting each other. They're actually watching each other's children on the days that they're not in the classroom at the times they're not in the classroom. It's, it's a pretty great situation. So that's how we kind of wrote it. But right now it's only affecting four. There were several staff that actually here tonight presenting for ELA that were in this program many, many years ago when their kids were very small. So that's why some of the updates are in there. Yeah. So May 1st, there was a question on there why I extended that.
And it is because we are always going to try to find one educator if we can, to stay in the classroom for consistency purposes. A lot of times you will hear us say, okay, now what are we gonna do to make sure we fill our buildings, fill our classrooms, things like that, needing to get creative. And that's when the staff are willing to come back and input in that time. So that's why that date was extended out. And then once again, I change it from teacher salary to appropriate salary because if we have a long-term substitute, they're not on the teacher salary schedule, they're on the substitute salary schedule. So that is appropriate.
And then the increase every year didn't seem fair Employees with 50% or less of the contract work for two years before moving down the set. Like that's not how it works now is once you're here, if you're hired after, before February of the contract year, you are granted your step for years of experience. We wanna align that with actual salary schedule placement right now. And then at the compensation is current hourly, you know, current hourly rate of pay for, you know, substituting.
That's not a huge issue. And that's, that's really all that changed. And then we changed the R that goes with it. The like sign, like the agreement that they sign and the information. I do not want anybody putting their social security number on this paperwork, so. Okay. Thank you. Yep. Speaker 1: Any questions or comments on that one from anybody written? Speaker 2: I have none. Speaker 1: Okay. So then we'll move on to second readings for policy A, D, A as in apple, D as in David for educational philosophy, school district mission.
Speaker 4: This the second reading. Speaker 1: This is the second reading. Yeah. Speaker 2: There Speaker 1: Were no changes between first reading and second. I didn't think so. Yeah. Speaker 4: I must have been really tired at the end of this meeting because I don't even remember Speaker 1: Looking. There was no changes. We took the word student out under the vision statement because it said student member. Speaker 2: Mm, Speaker 1: Title. Okay. Speaker 2: And Speaker 5: Why Speaker 2: Did we take students out to member? Because it's every member of our learning community. So staff, students, Speaker 1: Community, Speaker 2: Not
Speaker 5: Just board members. Speaker 1: Wow, okay. I remember the ccca. Any, any changes or anything to that one? Okay. Onto second reading of gc. GC And there was no other changes that in between the first and this one, right? No Speaker 2: There Speaker 1: Except, yeah, social security number we was taken out. Yep. Speaker 2: That was wiped out in the first reading. Maybe one of these things. I'll figure out how to use diligent. Speaker 1: Give you a last one. Speaker 2: Alright, Speaker 1: Onto second
reading of GC GC dash e. I think we just went over that one as well. That was just the one pager. I apologize. Nice Speaker 2: Spread. Nice Speaker 1: Blow chart. Now this one's fun. The CCA, the organizational chart. Speaker 2: It's much better. Speaker 1: Yes, I got lessons. Speaker 2: Well done. Good job Lisa. Speaker 1: There were some changes on here as requested. Yep. Speaker 2: Okay. Any, Speaker 5: Can I, can I ask a question about this flow, this chart? And I guess my question just
because it popped up a little bit over the past is under director of special education, how many occupational therapists do we actually try to employ? I believe I thought those were all from O Cs. Speaker 2: Want to Speaker 1: Look? No, I think it's three or four. We asked this question very recently. BO Cs salary schedule. It has a higher price tag to it. So we hire our, yeah. Speaker 5: Oh, okay. So I was thinking of it, I was opposite Tim. And we also, I was thinking Speaker 1: Opposite, get to evaluate at that point and have a little bit more accountability and control.
Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 5: Okay. And they all, they all, they are all part of special education. What, what does an occupational therapist do? Speaker 1: Basically they help children who are having a hard time perhaps walking up the stairs. If you watch children when they learn to walk up the stairs, they do it in a very unique way. One step, one step, one foot, one foot. Occupational therapists would look at that and go, they need to go step over, step over step over step. And so then that would be the coordination they would start working on. It can also have to do with penmanship,
how they hold a pencil. It's all the things to help them To movement. Yeah. Movement. And to help them be successful in their setting, in that setting. Okay. So you can have occupation. I can have occupational therapy and it's completely different than a child because it has to meet my occupation. Speaker 5: Therapy design your everyday Speaker 1: Movements. Yeah. Yep. Good questions. Speaker 5: Okay. Well I got another one in that same category. Okay. If we have a, a director of special education. What's an effective Needs director? Speaker 1: Effective Needs director. The effective needs program is our, oh,
what are the correct acronyms? SED stands for Social. Social Emotional development. Yes. Disability. Disability. Thank you. Yeah. Social emotional disability. So that is our kids in like our TRE program and our Wellspring program. Speaker 5: Oh, okay. Yep. Yep. Just this one. This is a newer, this is a newer position. Am I correct? Speaker 1: It was approved by the board in 2020. Then there was a bad audit. We chose not to fill it and then we had a principal doing it for a while as part of a job that didn't work out so well.
It's hard to keep a teacher in that program. So eventually the principal, retired, assistant principal retired. We hired her part-time to do those two programs. Where, so how many of under, under our special education? Just 'cause I know that it's been a hot topic a lot lately. How many of these people are in a classroom and how often a lot of these people do pull out kinds of programs. So when a student gets an IEP, they,
we look at all these different areas. So if they're not, if they're struggling to keep up academically, what's the why? Why is that? Is it 'cause they can't hold the pencil and they can't do the writing or whatever it is. So everybody would evaluate the child and find if they are on level for development in each of these kinds of categories. And so then they would come to the table and write a plan for an individual student based on what they found, what the deficits were and what the strengths were. Okay, so these, and so then they would, for the most part, preschool
and kindergarten, they try to push in during, you know, the game time and the activity time when kids are playing and try to do therapies within the play atmosphere. When you get to first grade, it's a much more structured kind of classroom. And so that might be a 20 minute pullout to work on specific skills with like a group of two or three. Lots of times with our most significant needs kids, it's a one-on-one. One of the things that our significant needs classrooms do is they'll plan an activity on a daily basis based on
what the occupational therapist has said is the biggest need for the whole group of the class. So they've collaborated with the teacher to say, we can give these kids more than just the pullout kind of program programming piece. Speaker 5: You know, special education is such a complex department. Is there, is there an audit that is done, a special education where you find out if, you know, just like Graham Mesa's looking at somebody to come in and say, you've got some polls here to help fill.
Is that, is that something we should take advantage of as, because it's such a complex, Speaker 1: Excellent idea and we are in the midst of it. Boce started it last year as an audit of their whole program. And they've come in and interviewed different people. They've given us some feedback, mostly around paperwork pieces at this point. But they are looking at the total programming, they're interviewing different people. They're sending out surveys to parents just to give us a comprehensive look at the whole program. And that really will be for the au for the Bo Cs.
So they'll do it for us for Parachute and for Yampa Mountain High School. And Speaker 4: They're already doing this, Speaker 1: They're in the mix last Speaker 8: Year. Like as in November of recent November or like last school year? Speaker 1: No, not last school year. It like recent, like, okay, so it hasn't been going on for nine months. It's like, holy moly. I know. Going on for a long time it feels like. So we do have some results coming back. Yes. Okay. And and, and it's more focused on their programming, but then they take that information, break it down to us. So what are we doing to support them? What are they doing to support us and how do we do that?
We also do a, i Speaker 4: Are you asking Bri about an internal audit for the district or from boces? Like, or both? Or both? Speaker 5: I'll take it from all, as many as I we can get. Yeah, I mean my question would be why does it take this long? Who's, who's the, who's the heading that from both East? You know, I guess and like, I mean, you know, you know, we've, we Speaker 1: From an Speaker 5: Once again, such a complex help me here, but it's such a complex area. Yeah. And obviously we've had some issues in that area
and if we could get some help, I just don't, I guess I'm curious how long does it take? Who and Boce is doing it? You know, as they're going through a new, they're getting a new director, superintendent or you know, over there. So Speaker 1: Might be good to have that. I guess Speaker 5: I'd like to come Speaker 1: And speak on that, where they are, what they've learned, you know, who Speaker 4: Would they audit us or they would come in because we, in collaboration with them, we utilize their people and services. So, and then they could come in and like audit us at the same But they're not doing,
they're just doing their side. Speaker 1: Yeah. Lots of layers of accountability. So the finance people, why are you laughing at me? Like an onion? Okay. Yes. But like the finance department, the HR department, all of our departments have to upload. Like the October count is an upload and a requirement from the state that they are keeping track of what, what our programming is doing in those areas. It also happens for special education. Okay. So every year we upload all of the teachers, all of the paras, everybody's filling our positions in sped they
make sure that we have them filled with the correctly licensed people that we're doing the correct trainings. 'cause if you are a, a para that teaches reading, you gotta take the read act, the science of reading things that they, that they talked about. It's a state requirement. So the state is making sure we follow the rules as well as BOCES has a compliance department. They have a, a director and a couple of secretaries that look through all of the paperwork to make sure that we've written correct targets for kids that we have people assigned to.
Like if a student needs one-on-one support all the time when they're in the general ed education classroom, they, they're making sure that we're following through on all of those pieces that we have people hired to, to do those, those kinds of jobs. So we, it's an extensive kind of audit. It feels like it goes on from year round because there's so many different places where they, they pop in. Well and I'd be curious, I mean when we, when we receive an audit, whether it's a financial audit, whether it's an HR compliance audit, we're informed of
of when it starts the documentation that is needed, when it needs to be received by. And then we're also given a timeline as to when the audit is gonna be completed. So we can be given that exit interview, I guess, or that exit report. I'm using the wrong word I'm using, I'm gonna, it's not audit. This Speaker 4: Is an internal, I guess this wouldn't, this would be an internal, like an evaluation review. How about that? Or an evaluation or, so it's not as something that has come from the, the Colorado Department of Education. Okay. It's not something like with our finance audit, you know, with our audit and finance department every fall, that's something that happens statewide with every district is reviewed.
Okay. I would say that is not Speaker 1: A place Speaker 4: In which we are officially being audited by an entity outside of Garfield Re two. Okay. We work in collaboration with BO Cs and I would say more that that's a review and no, we have not, I would say maybe nailed down a tight timeline like we perhaps could have. Okay. And with Ken leaving, you know, with the new superintendent, assistant superintendent combo here, it would probably behoove us to have that as an initiative next year for our special education department as we collaborate with BOCES as well. Okay.
Speaker 5: Because I'd like to, I'd like to see how we, how, how, how we view both BOCES also, you know, are are they providing the services we're paying for? Because I mean we throw a lot of money into that and every time I hear from both Cs they're supposed to be kind of spearheading special education and I just want to be sure, you know, we're, we're getting some of the value that we're, we're throwing in how much do we throw in 1.2 million or something. Speaker 1: Finance guys left. Speaker 4: And I will say this Britain, we have a strategic planning A BOC strategic planning meeting coming Friday, next in May.
Well let's just say we're, let's just say late April, early May with the BO Cs and the districts that are involved with BO Cs. So chance is gonna be stepping down and Scott's gonna be taking over. So Scott, myself and Ken are gonna meet this Friday to talk through like what are some of the obligations going forward. And then the whole group of superintendents plus the, the B BOCES board will meet to do a strategic plan and then of course what Ken is leaving behind and what Leon will pick up. So there's a lot in play right now
and a lot of transition with leader leadership. Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's gonna create a little bit of a gap there. Isn't that Sure it, Speaker 4: I think so, but I Speaker 1: Think it, it would also be a good time to kind of reevaluate and get some goals and stuff in place too. Yeah. Only a good time for that. Speaker 5: Okay. Just wanna be sure we're supporting, we're getting support that we need, that we deserve and we pay for. Speaker 4: Right. Yeah. Speaker 1: Okay. Any other questions on, I know we kind of deviated but it was all still around the organizational chart. It all, Speaker 4: It all goes together. It all goes together.
Speaker 1: Any other questions on that? Okay, future agenda items. I put down BOCES audit if, whenever that will be. Speaker 4: Okay, well I, I, we'll talk to Ken on Friday. Scott, won't we, and we'll just say hey, would you maybe like to come and do a presentation before the end of the year of just maybe even around the strategic plan once we get it written, but we can kind of brainstorm with Ken on, on Friday. Okay, so we have, we are back. We are done Grand Mesa, you are our finale tonight with our school tours. And so we are back at the district office
but we are going to be shining the light on nutrition services. So Mary and her people. So we'll still do a 4 45 presentation that evening for her and her team in regards to the strategic plan updates, we have student success on here and we're not at a place where we have end of the year data in particular to DIBELS or iReady. But we haven't talked about student wellness initiative, which is a piece of that student success. So they are on deck as well as we do have the Aspen Business Group survey data back
and we shared that with our administrators, the family data and then probably some pulse data. What do you think Theresa? Or not? Not enough, but the family could certainly be. So at least the family survey that's, that's the mo, the most participation we've ever had since we, you know, we Oh wow. Awesome. Ignited our partnership with Russell Disper and Kelsey and so we're excited. That's awesome. And the schools have begun to plan for next steps and they saw their data last week and so it'll be important for you to see too. That's awesome. Okay. And it's finance season as y'all know.
And so Jeff and Jason will officially come to talk to you about quarterlies and the economic forecast you see us coming with. They can't salary and the reason they can't is because it worked out awesome in regards to DA dates and alignment to the board meeting as well as their work. But we don't meet collaborative solutions until the 25th, which is Friday. And we do our board meeting on the 23rd. So they won't be ready, we, we won't have officially met. So there's nothing for us to bring that E that evening. So that would be the following meeting. You bet.
And when you do see, I'm gonna say the finance presentation, I would say that you'll hear from Jeff and Jason and be sure to ask those questions again around what they could potentially reiterate going into two days later when we do negotiations with collaborative solutions. Okay, thank you. Speaker 8: When would, that is all I have. When would be a good time to bring up and discuss possible like low hanging fruit or possible I guess, adjustments we can make within the system
to save money as far as eliminating open positions, whatever that may be. When would that be? When would be a good time? Speaker 4: I think maybe when, maybe when you talk about, sorry Bri, I interrupted. So when you talk about staff success though, in particular to the, the family business group, that's a place in which Jason and Devin could potentially come and also be part of that night and they, they've got ideas and going into the third year of the strategic plan in regards to money saving around personnel, around non-salary budgets
with Kathy Sili and her team. So they could perhaps, I would say weave that into the finance presentation as to what they're thinking for 25, 26 and what we're gonna do to control some of the costs in the best way we can. I didn't do that. Would that be a good place? That'd be great. Yeah. Briton, sorry I interrupted. Speaker 5: No, I, I just think you know as now that we've finally finalized to the, the contract with Mr. Bangard as he's coming in, I know he's gonna wanna be boots on the ground in this next month or so. Once or twice. I think he's already coordinated a few things
so I think just kind of getting him in the loop of some of that also as we start talking about something we've heard about, you know, as far as eliminating physicians, you know, we definitely want to get him in the loop of that so I know, I know he's gonna hit the hit the ground running. Speaker 8: Okay. Speaker 1: Anything else? Okay. Speaker 4: No. Speaker 8: Speaking on where one public comment collaboratively. Oh I guess that's during meeting debrief. Yeah Speaker 1: We can go to meeting debrief. Okay. Chance you're up. Speaker 8: Sorry. Tina mentioned collaborative collaboratively work
with Riverside and KSE, I'm assuming excuse meaning maybe have them lead some training sessions 'cause their data was so good. Speaker 1: Well and I think just kind of like collaborate and see and brainstorm to see what what has Speaker 8: Worked. What's works. Yeah. Yeah. You guys do do that like during professional development, right? Like yeah you guys are always collaborating. I just wanted to address that. Speaker 1: Yeah. Chance, was there anything else you'd like to add to your meeting Speaker 8: Debrief? No. Speaker 1: Okay. You were up for the board report on Friday to get
that to Theresa by Ted. Chad Speaker 8: GPT. It is, I mean, yeah, Thursday to Thursday if possible. And yeah, Speaker 1: Friday 10 at the latest. Don't follow my suit on that one. Yeah. Just Speaker 4: Told Chance 6:00 AM I on Speaker 8: Friday it No worry. You'll have it Saturday morning. I'm just playing. I'm just, she's Speaker 1: Gonna throw something at you next Speaker 8: You'll get, it'll be in trouble. Speaker 1: Cassie, Speaker 4: I feel like it was a good meeting. I am very excited for the ELA pilot. I am hoping it's all that it was for my son personally.
So for other kids in our district 'cause so cool. There's so much growth and potential and I believe so Speaker 8: It's cool to see the excitement outta the staff. Yeah. You know, I mean and the Speaker 1: Passion. I think that word was used several times. Speaker 8: Yeah. I mean math, I'm not sure you can get passionate about, so we didn't really, my son loves math. We didn't, we didn't really see that during the last pilot. Loves that. It was, this one is, it's fun. It's cool to see that. And I can really respect that. Just respect that Scott Speaker 20: Just reiterating the, the thanks to the
CS committee and then everybody up and down the table in Britain just trying to get this whole benefit thing straightened out. Yeah. To where everybody's happy and And a lot of people in the district stood up for the people that were getting hurt and they weren't. Yeah. So that was really impressive too to just kind of come around their team members and get that done. And then of course, you know, again, we try to do what we can do and there is a pain point and it's unfortunate and, but I'm glad we were able to come up with that solution. Speaker 4: And I'm gonna say thank you to the board
because this is the first time and we talked about this at Collaborative Solutions last Friday. This is the first real time where we've been presented with an issue where we've gone back at CS and the board in a true negotiation fashion instead of one entity just saying no or one entity out voting the other. You know. And so in that room it was absolutely noted is that you also were willing to negotiate or talk about or review or re-review and amend a decision that you had voted on
and you didn't have to do that. And I can say I've been on collaborative solutions for 11 years and I have never seen it happen like this. And it was, this is the hard, one of the hardest things I think we've ever done because it's such a big ask and I just, I wanna thank all five of you for being willing to, to do what I think the nature of that team as collaborative solutions and board working together is supposed to look like. So thank you because it's been a long decade or it didn't always look like that so Speaker 1: Hey Bri. Speaker 5: Yeah, I can echo what Scott said.
Just really appreciate everybody doing that. We're, I want to throw a reminder out there. Graduation's coming up. Yeah. So we kind of need to be preparing for graduations and since we're done being in the schools, I know it's still kind late notice, but I didn't know if, we never did hear from school councils. I didn't know if there was a way we could throw something together where maybe as far as the future agenda item, we could just hear from the schools maybe that had had a school councils student counsels. Are you talking like that's it. Speaker 4: Oh, student council Speaker 1: Had them Speaker 4: All levels. Student just high schools. What are you thinking?
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, you know, I mean I don't wanna make it really complicated. I know we only have a few more before school's out, but just it would be neat to hear what those kids are doing. Just kind of the, to wrap up the, you know, the like the student side of, of the school year, the year. Just to kind of say what's, what student councils are up to. Which one? I don't know. Just as long as it would, I don't wanna complicate things. It just kind of popped in my head that we just never, we've talked about that but we've never heard from those guys. Speaker 4: Okay, I'll note it for May. What do you think about that? Speaker 5: Yeah, that's what I was kind of thinking. Women's graduation.
Speaker 4: We have Friday night and a Sunday and then a Sunday. Whoa. Friday night and then Sunday at 10:00 AM Yep. Speaker 1: Yep. Speaker 4: Cole Ridge. Yep. Cole Ridge is Ridge Sunday. 10:00 AM Yep. Rifles Friday night at what time? Friday night. 6:00 PM I think it's 6:00 PM 6:00 PM on football field. Yes. Unless it's Stormy. Speaker 1: Bri was there anything else? Speaker 5: Nope. Nope. That's it. Thank you guys for, for being there tonight. Speaker 1: Just a few things, again to echo what everybody else has said about CS coming out
and definitely all the work that was put into the benefits, all the work that was put into the curriculum pilots, that was, that was huge. And, and again, to hear the passion and actually have that word used with teachers, I think, I think it's just as invigorating for the teachers as it is for the students. Which is, which is awesome 'cause that's why they got into this job. I also wanted to check in with the encourage, nurture challenge Field Day. Is that happening? Speaker 4: Yeah. Yes. Amanda just brought that up in our sped meeting. We'll confirm the date and I'll
put it in my update this weekend. Okay. Speaker 1: Thank you. Yep. And with this being our last board meeting at the schools, thank you to Grand Mesa for having us. But also, Ryan, thank you for, for your years of service and for the time and the dedication that you've put into this school, this district, this community, and to your students and your, your family as a whole being Garfield are e too. So, yeah. Appreciate that. Thank you. So if there's nothing else, I will adjourn this meeting at
9 53. Done.