Speaker 1: And I would like to call our regular board meeting today, March 12th. Holy cow. To order at 5 31. Okay. If we could please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance and then remain standing for a moment of silence. Scott, would you please start us off? Speaker 2: My pleasure. Allegiance Speaker 3: To the flag of the Speaker 1: United States of America Speaker 3: And to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Speaker 1: Thank you. If you would please remain standing for a moment of silence. Thank you. Alright, let's move on to regular business. So Speaker 2: I, Speaker 1: Are there any changes to the agenda? Speaker 2: No, none. Okay. Speaker 1: May I have a mo? I I Speaker 4: I would like to. Speaker 2: Hi Bri. Speaker 4: Hi Brittany. I would like to make it, I would like to make a change to the agenda as far as possible. Okay. If under action items
after Elk Creek gets done, if we can do an update on the super search. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 4: So I'll make a, a motion to amend the agenda to add a discussion item of the superintendent search. Speaker 1: Okay. We will go ahead and get that. You want to do that after Elk Creek's presentation, Speaker 4: If that works. Speaker 1: Any objections? Speaker 5: No. My question can, he can't bring a motion though as chair, as the chairperson, correct? No. So I make a motion to amend the agenda
to add a superintendent Speaker 2: Update. Speaker 5: Update after ECE E'S presentation at 6.6. Between 6.1 and 6.2. Speaker 1: Can I get a second? Speaker 2: I second that. Thank you Speaker 1: Sharon. Can I get roll call? Speaker 2: Sure. Aye Mitchell? Speaker 4: Aye. Speaker 2: Asco Aye. Jenkins Aye. Speaker 1: Jensen Aye. Speaker 2: Alright, Speaker 1: Let's go on to public audience. I would like to say a few opening words first please. So the board's meeting time is dedicated
to its strategic mission and top priority focus areas. Public participation is an opportunity to present brief comments or pose 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, that 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 leaders. And with that, did we have anybody sign up here or just please You have. Okay. And there in order. Perfect. So we've got Leslie Smith first. She's perfect. There she is. Front and center. Alright, Theresa, do we have the, Speaker 6: Yep, it's actually right in front. Oh, it's right in Speaker 1: Front of her. Perfect. Hi. Just in case. Speaker 7: I'm Leslie Smith. I've been employed
with the school district since November, 2006. I've been at Rifle High School as their bookkeeper since May of 2008. I'm here to talk about the proposed new changes to the employee portion of the insurance. It's nothing less than telling our employees that they don't matter. The current changes are forcing employees to drop their spouses from the insurance as you approved a monthly increase of $1,238 for the employee and family coverage, it's approximately within dollars based on surest or the high deductible or the PPO eight.
If an employee chooses to stay with this co coverage to keep their spouse their starting July 1st, their or July 15th paycheck, their premium cost deducted from their pay is $1,616 or a yearly total of $19,392 just for premiums. So basically you're forcing people to drop their spouses. I don't know the, the charts that were provided at the last board meeting didn't have
any column totals. So I don't know if you were aware that the district actually decreased their monthly contribution by $1,433 starting in July. I'm not sure why the increase plus their decrease in contributions was put on the employees. Mainly the family plans. I'm asking you to reconsider and look at some different options. I created some charts. Don't know if you wanna look at those, but I think if our district goal is to recruit and retain quality personnel, then it makes sense to appeal
to families who want to come to this area and settle down and stay for a while. The increase seems to appeal only to single childless teachers who may choose to move on because they have no attachment to the area. Whereas equitably sharing responsibility for insurance costs for married teachers and those with families would likely result in personnel that stay longer and continue to provide their expertise to the district because they are not suffering a significant financial burden. This is part of our strategic plan. So why wasn't this factored into the decision?
You have to do better for us. Speaker 1: Thank you. And if you have those charts, I'd be happy to take them. Are they copies for everybody? Okay. Thank you. Perfect. Thank you. And can I, may I have another for Bri since he's not here? Thank you. Speaker 8: Thank you. Speaker 2: Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you Leslie. Alright, next up we've got Maribel Reky and I'm sorry if I murdered that. I'm sure I did. You're good. So, alright Maribel, thank you for coming. You've got three minutes. Speaker 8: Awesome. Thank you. My name is Maribel Reque and I am the Assistant Director of Operations and outreach for the Ark of the Central Mountains.
The arc of the Central Mountain supports and advocates for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities as well as their families. Today I am here to give color comment on the title one paraprofessional policy. The policy states that Title one paraprofessionals provide instructional support, quote under the direct supervision of qualified teachers end quote. But it does not define what constitutes direct supervision. Particularly in cases where the teacher is not physically present, clear guidelines are needed to ensure that supervision remains meaningful. And that paraprofessionals, oh, I'm sorry, I lost my plate here. Clear guidelines are needed to ensure
that the supervision remains meaningful and that paraprofessionals are not left to manage instruction independently. Without this clarification, there is a risk that students may not receive the appropriate level of teacher-led instruction. Additionally, while the policy outlines tasks that paraprofessionals may perform, it does not clearly distinguish the role from that of certified teacher. This lack of distinction could lead to paraprofessionals taking on instructional responsibilities beyond their qualifications. The policy should explicitly state that paraprofessionals are not responsible for delivering primary instruction and must work strictly in a support capacity under active teacher guidance.
Furthermore, committee members have reached out to us with serious concerns that paraprofessionals in significant support classes are being required to provide instruction under direction of a virtual special education teacher. This is completely unacceptable. Students with disabilities deserve direct in-person instruction from qualified educators, not a system. Paraprofessionals are placed in a position where they're not trained or certified for the district. Must take immediate action to ensure that students in special education receive appropriate in-person instruction from certified teachers, not virtual supervision. That undermines the right to quality education.
I urge the district to provide clear definitions of supervision and role distinctions within the policy. The district must also address the current issue of virtual supervision in significant support classrooms and put an end to this practice immediately. Thank you for your time consideration. Speaker 1: Thank you. And last but certainly not least, we've got Steve and I'm not gonna try your last name. I know I've Oh, I oh you. Oh you, yeah. It's French all front. Yeah. All. Steve, thank you for coming. You've got three minutes sir.
Speaker 9: Thanks for having me. Steve eu. I live in New Castle. My son goes to ec, my wife teaches at ec. This is a special place for me and my family. So I appreciate one thing is, you know, I think whatever you wanna call these of the spotlights of the school coming into the schools have sitting down, going over the data live and in person. I want to thank, you know, whoever's idea that was or the board's idea. I think that's a great way to both share, celebration, and struggle with each of these schools right there. I think going through, now that we're pretty far deep into this list,
we could see there's a lot more to test scores than test scores. Right. Or education than test scores and getting those test scores up as not a simple problem. So thank you for that. Mr. Fid said a lot of the pieces that I had to say for the PTAI had a pre pleasure being in the PTA for the third year. Now it's fun place to be. We have fun together. Jason makes great cookies and that's why we come back and, and we get a lot done, which is nice, you know, as a PTA we're able to provide a little bit of funds
to help in any way we can. And, and this year was actually quite a bit of funds. Right? But, and just like some of the other peoples that spoke today, where there's still a lot of work to do, right? The real funds are the, the, the struggle behind the scenes. Right? The one thing that I appreciate about ECE is that, and Mr. Fid does a great job of setting the bar for valuing joy alongside with education, right? This is an elementary school. It shouldn't be a, you know, a a burdensome and awful place for kids to come. That joy, I think is, is visible in the, you know,
past 45 minutes that we've had here. There's a lot of laughing and you know, every time, every year Mr. Zo always talks about the first day of lunch with the kindergartners. And that makes me laugh like crazy 'cause I can't imagine how different our days are. This, this school is wonderful. It's amazing, you know, Mr. Fids works tireless tirelessly to ensure the students and the support the staff are supported with all the resources we have. The teachers work tirelessly to, to give everything they can to the students. And I guess I would just, I wanna celebrate them
for being an amazing and doing more than they could ever be asked for, for pay. That could be helpful or that could be better. And certainly insurance that would be, could be improved. I think if we could focus as a community, as a board. Let's work together to support our teachers any way we can. 'cause they need it. They do an excellent job of it. And they're, I mean, I don't think you can ask anymore from them given their situation. So thank you all for doing what you do. Thank you. Speaker 2: Thank you. Speaker 1: Okay. Alright.
Onto the approval of the last board meeting, the draft board meeting minutes from February 26th. There. Can I get a motion to approve the draft board minutes? Speaker 10: I make a motion to approve the February 26th, 2025 special board meeting minutes. Speaker 1: May I? Thank you. Roll call. Speaker 2: Aye. Aye. Asco Aye. Jenkins. Aye. Jensen? Speaker 1: Aye. Alright. Now on the regular board meeting, draft minutes from February 26th,
may I get a motion to approve those? Speaker 10: I make a motion to approve the February 26th, 2025 draft board minutes. Speaker 2: I'll Speaker 1: Second again. Thank you. Roll call please. Speaker 2: Elito. Aye. That aye as aye. Jenkins. Aye. Speaker 1: Aye. Speaker 2: Alright. Speaker 1: Onto the consent agenda. Are there any changes to the consent agenda? Speaker 2: There is one change. I need to Speaker 11: Make a request to remove the 11th bullet for Randall Lee Milhorn. She is not retiring at Speaker 2: This time. Okay. Speaker 1: May I get a motion to approve the consent
agenda as amended? Speaker 2: I move to approve the consent agenda as amended. Speaker 1: May I get a second? Speaker 10: Second that. Speaker 2: Thank Speaker 1: You Sharon. Speaker 2: Eli. Aye. Ral Aye. Asco. Aye. S aye. Speaker 1: Jensen Aye. All right. So first up under discussion items is the Elk Creek data review. So Mr. Pitts, you would like to come on up, you and your team Speaker 2: If you'd be in front of that mic at the table. Speaker 12: Should I just grab it? Speaker 2: Yeah, actually it's, this
comes on this Speaker 12: One. Just be close to it. Yeah. Speaker 2: Be close to you. Like you want the data up? Yeah. Or the presentation up. What, what would, what would you like Mr. Speaker 12: I think we start with the, the template first. Speaker 2: Got it. Speaker 12: Okay. While she's doing that, obviously I, Ryan Fiddle, I'm the principal here and I'll let my, my team introduce, this is the Elk Creek leadership team. So I'll let them introduce themselves. They'll have a little component of each part of the presentation. We're gonna do department updates for you guys,
if we'll show you the, the data and then we'll show you what we're trying to do about it too. So Sarah, why don't you go first, Speaker 2: Are you gonna share the data first? Speaker 12: I want you to introduce yourself. This is how they treat me right here is question everything. Speaker 2: Hello everyone. My name is Sarah Clayton and I am the math instructional coach here at Oak Creek Elementary. We need all there. Speaker 12: Yes. Yeah. Speaker 2: I'm Erica Kuhn, the ELD teacher. I am Cindy Smith, the ELA instructional coach. Speaker 1: I feel like we should have a red carpet. Speaker 2: I know, right? Walk up music or something. Exactly. I know Jennifer Best. I'm one of the special education teachers.
Speaker 12: This is also Jen's dream come true to be able to present in front Speaker 2: Of a lot Speaker 12: Of people like this too. So we are, we are dream makers today. You guys. Speaker 2: Brenda Murphy, the counselor here at Speaker 12: Okay, so I'm sorry we have an awkward Yeah, I'm gonna sit over here. Speaker 2: How, okay. Speaker 12: So I'll just, I guess Speaker 2: There's Speaker 12: No really great flow to there, so just kinda explain what you're looking at here and then if you have questions, please feel free to interrupt and I'll try to clarify as best I can. And then we do have like a short slide
show from each department. Kinda show like what we're doing about all the stuff here too. So these are our overall scores. So as, as far as CMAs is concerned And it goes across, so like ELA for third grade, it goes across, so this is three years ago, two years ago and then last year. And then math does the same thing. And then we highlighted cohorts. 'cause I think that's the most important thing that you'll notice is a lot of our scores kind of go on a roller coaster ride and it's very cohort based. So the best comparison I make is like two seasons ago,
rifle high school football made the state championship game and with the same exact coaching staff that I don't think got any worse at coaching. They only won one game the next year too. So it is basically the cohort that they're working with and stuff like that. All amazing kids. But that kind of puts you on the rollercoaster ride. We're trying to smooth that out so that we can get a little bit more consistent with our academic achievement. So you can see this particular cohort in ELA is the red boxes. You know, it took 22% proficient in advance and three, three years ago and the two years ago as a fourth grade cohort, they're 29%.
And then as a fifth grade cohort, 17% in ELA. So you can see how that cohort kind of went together like that. And then same thing for math, you can see it's, our last year is fifth graders, 18% is third graders in math and down to 5% they kind of went back up to that level of 15%. And then our current, these are our current fifth graders in ELA. You kinda stay at that 34, 30 5%, you can see a little bit more of a academically talented group there. And then last year's third graders, we just have the one score for them too.
So you can, very similar for this group and our, it's our current fourth graders are, no our current last year's third graders. This year's fourth graders are very similar to this year's sixth graders as cohorts. Two years ago we had a pretty talented group of kids. Fourth and fifth grade, you can see we were up to 56% proficiency in ELA and fourth grade for that group three years ago. And then as fifth graders, they're very similar. Those kids are seventh graders now. And then in that same group math, that 33 and 35 and then our current eighth graders
are this group right here, they're at like 43% for ELA and 30% for math. So you can see we're just like all over the place where we have some lower achieving groups and we had someone that we were really spiking the football as well. So part of our, what we're trying to present in our departments is what we're doing to kind of try to smooth that out regardless of kids' academic talent, natural academic talent and stuff like that. Did I explain that one often? The other one is science here. We do do science every year. I was trying to find, I was working with Simone trying to find scores from previous three years and we can only get last year's score for science,
which we were really happy with. 'cause it's very much a reading test. They actually kind of outperformed their ELA scores there and it was very much on par with the rest of the district. And it's very similar for these ones too. We were kind of in that 25, 20 6%. I just could not find it. It's not on CD or anything like that. So that's where we're at with those ones there. So did I explain that well enough or do you guys have any questions or anything like that? As far as our demographics? Yeah, we'll just kind of go down. So we're up to about two including preschool or up to almost 290 kids. Close to 40% of our Hispanic population including preschool.
So 150 actually it's kind of pushing past 50 there. And then designated ELL students. We have 73 so that Erica is working with 73 students for her one certified staff member SPED students. That's including speech as well. We have 47 students that include significant needs. We have 10 students that are significant needs as well. Our average class size is 19 and we have kind of our instructional times here. We put a lot of eggs into our ELA basket. You can see that at most grade levels combined with our interventions, these are all combined. So we at least I'll use a round number in first grade.
They have a hundred minutes of core instruction with wonders. And then we also have, I'm using the word core, we have core instruction with the program wonders. And we have another program called 95% core for 30 minutes that we do working on foundational reading skills. And then in our intervention block we have 95% intervention. So first graders every single day get 160 minutes of ELA instruction. And then math is a little bit less. We're up to 90 minutes in some grade levels down to 60 minutes and others. And actually we, we boosted third grade in the last two
months up from 60 to 90 minutes. We kind of reshuffled some of the things. And I think what we're noticing is we're designing next year's master schedules. We want to reduce a little bit of what we're doing in EA in order to increase some of our math time. What we're just finding overall in math is we have enough instructional time but not enough practice time. That's the biggest one. So the kids need repetitions is what we're noticing with that. So we're gonna have to do some scheduling gymnastics to make that work for us next year. 'cause everybody wants more time. Then we'd start going to the master Schedule Jenga puzzle and we're like, I don't know where we pull more time.
'cause we also have things called student wellness and science and social studies and specials. We got a lot of things going on. Our specials, we can't call 'em electives here, but we do have a pretty common floor. We got music gen, PE library, and then we have steam art. It's mostly art, but science technology, our math kind of put into one. Those are 70 minutes long. And we also have our fifth graders doing service learning. So our fifth grade students that are at or above grade level, they do not go to reading intervention. They do service learning instead. So these kids are working in preschool, they're working in kindergarten, first, second grade.
We have kids working in the office. We have kids working in the kitchen. So we have kids all over the place doing service learning every single day. That's awesome. So those are our kids that don't necessarily need reading interventions. So they're helping us in school as we build our community. Nice. Speaker 5: I really like that. Speaker 12: Yeah, that's, yeah, will Brandis, our steam teacher is the one that put that all together. He actually presented the idea to me and he's the one that's run the whole entire thing every single day. So that's, that comes through him now. He's kind of working with Jacob through all the ICAP stuff through the, the careers parts where we really don't have a space in here right now
where we're, you know, pushing careers and I'm, I'm kind of interested in getting kids interested in, in what that might look like and stuff like that. So we're working on that. But he's kind of the one that's driving all that work. Speaker 5: Can we ask questions as we go? Speaker 12: Please? Yeah. Okay. Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah. How do you, so when you're looking at instruction time, I'm looking at, you know, your E-L-E-L-A. How often do you tweak that? Yearly. Yearly, yearly, summer. And then what kind, talk to me about like the process of tweaking that. Like what, what does that look like? What do you look for? Like what, what tell what tells you And then at the end of the day, what is an extra, like
what do you equate an extra 10 minutes of instructional time? Like what do you equate that to in student achievement or student? Oh, Speaker 12: I'm not sure if I can quantify that. That's a good question. I, I, I don't know. I think we just use things that we notice. We use the teaching staff a lot and then you guys help me please fill in if I miss anything. Usually in the collaboration day or strategic planning day in May, we ask for staff input for next year's master's schedule. That's where the process really begins. And that's where each grade level kind of gives us thoughts on how much time they really like the pro the programs give recommended times, so we try
to stay within those boxes. But the teachers find out pretty, pretty quickly after a year or two of instruction of like this, this 20 minutes is not useful, we could, we could do something else with that. So we could pitch this and put this in here and stuff. So we take the input from the staff and then use those instructional times that we're recommended from each of the programs. Especially since we got new, we're piloting wonders this year for reading program. Eureka is a new program as well. So especially in the first few years of implementation, we start to go, okay, we're gonna stick in those recommended times and then adjust from there. Like amplify science, two years ago we were doing 60 minutes
of science and now we're down to like 25 minutes. 'cause the teachers just found it was dry and so they, they didn't need that much time. It was just too much time to, to for the kids to stay engaged and things like that too. So we actually reduced time there to put more time over here. And so we're just constantly playing with that. And the reason we can't really tweak it during the year is 'cause it pushes one domino and it goes all of them. So all of our para schedules on our recess schedules, lunch schedules, we'd probably have to lock ourselves in a room for two straight days to kind of reschedule everything. So we can only like realistically make small adjustments
during the year unless something's going horribly wrong. Like we won't just stick with something that's going poorly. But otherwise we just make those little adjustments. And as far as like quantifying 10 minutes might mean this much more cheap. I, I, I don't know, like I, we just kind of rely on the input of the staff. Like I said, when we added more time to third grade math, she was basically begging like, I need just need more time. Like the kids just need more practice time. And since we were able to finagle between her and her partner teacher of how to create a little bit more time, we, we took core out
of one class and combined writing with some of our science and social studies. 'cause a lot of the writing component was covered in Wonders as well. So we reduced that and then added more math time. And I think Sarah's our's, our math coach can attest to like the relief she feels of the kids being able to actually just have more time for practice. It's like going to a basketball practice and the coach just setting up and running plays but never actually running through them lots and lots. So the kids are missing some of those reps too. So that's something we're trying to be mindful of, especially for math next year. Did I answer all that? Yeah. Did you guys have anything to add? Did I miss anything?
Speaker 13: Yeah, the staff input and like student need. So then you also have to like incorporate like paraprofessional use and push in support and that kind of stuff. So that, and you guys helps drive Speaker 5: That And you guys probably examine the cohorts like per cohort, like what needs adjusted yearly? Yes. Yes. Okay, well this really isn't working. Let's adjust more practice time. And that's probably where that stuff comes from. Speaker 12: Yeah. And then we also adjust our, like our paraprofessional support. Okay. So some grade levels get more paraprofessional support based on how we're Sure. Achieving academically. It's like this grade level, you know,
is the highest in the district in ELA they probably won't get a whole lot of paraprofessional support 'cause we don't really have six gen ed pairs. We'll be on four next year too. So we have to be really strategic with which classrooms receive that sport. Sometimes it's based on behavior as well. Like if there's behavior that we're having challenges with that we need some extra adult help too. So that's where we're strategic with that. Speaker 10: How many kids are in their service learning program? Roughly? Speaker 12: About 25. Yeah. And that's fifth grader. So that's about half. Speaker 10: It's just fifth grade. Fifth Speaker 12: Grade. Just fifth grade, right. Oh, okay. Yeah, we, we would like to, we're trying
to explore different ways to expand it. The, the best spot to do it is an intervention right now with kids that don't need intervention. And all of our kiddo and Cindy will kind of explain our reading intervention program coming up here. But like all of our kiddos up to fifth grade are even our top fourth graders are kind of finishing that last layer of intervention too. So we're not quite sure how we can expand it further, but we're interested in it. You know what I mean? Speaker 10: Apprenticeship with the fifth graders? No, the apprenticeship, you know like Yeah, exactly.
With the fifth graders. Yeah. Speaker 12: It's just finding the time to pull 'em from different stuff, right? Yep. Speaker 5: You really need to like teach 'em the joys of landscaping. And mow Speaker 13: Did some Speaker 12: Wood. We just did so wood chip, the wood chips on the fifth graders and we, we had bags over by our, our preschool storage and when Speaker 5: You were talking about that, I thought to myself, my elementary school, there's so many places I wish I could go. Like the kitchen we were never really allowed, you know? Yeah. And it just, that would be really neat and you know, as a fifth grader to kind of peek behind that curtain and Yep. And be able to help too.
Speaker 12: And the fifth graders love it. Like, I mean, my bad, not trying to exaggerate anything, like those kids know exactly where they go. Will doesn't even like bring them together that like only just a couple times a quarter. Like they just go to the office, they go to the kitchen, they go to preschool and then they know exactly what their jobs are at each, at each spot too. And they just, they love being a part of the whole entire school. So that's been a really successful option for us. Yeah. So yeah, those fifth grade, but that was service learning. I just like, I need some fifth graders, I'm wearing brown pants, I don't wanna get dirty, let's go get these guys here. So I just supervised. Well they did all the wood chip work around gole be
and they were so happy to get busted outta the class. So do they. And I didn't hardly get a stuck of dirt on. It's great. Speaker 1: Even better. Yeah. Do they rotate the different Yeah. Places they Speaker 12: Go to. Yeah. So they're, they're not stuck in the same job, whatever. He rotates quarterly. Nice. Yeah. And then sometimes based on need, if it's kind of clear like we have either too many kids in this one spot or we don't need as much help here, he'll redistribute that too. And then things come up where we're just like, I'm struggling to think one on the spot here, but we've had like management meetings where we're like, oh we'll get service learning kids to do that.
You know what I mean? So we just kind of and would tell will, hey, can we borrow service learning kids for A, B and C whether it's like setting up for Thanksgiving lunch or something like that and yep, there they are. And they're really using our kids to help us, which is awesome. That's Speaker 1: Awesome. Yeah. Thank you. You're Speaker 12: Welcome. Stop. Okay. What else are we missing here? Staff success. We do have two non-traditional teachers. We have one I I, the way I understood it was like our permanent sub is, is one of our non-traditional, we do have a gal that will be starting maternity after spring break.
So our permanent sub is moving into the long-term sub position. And then we are filling that permanent sub position with a parent of a student here that's been subbing for us. And then our significant needs teachers teacher of record, she's actually in the apprenticeship program through CMC. She, I think she's like the first person to be enrolled in that too, which has been a big, a big benefit, like lower cost for her overall. And she can earn during her student teaching, like she's teaching on the job and she won't have to go through that student teaching period. She's actually earning as the teacher of record right now and she, she's doing an amazing job.
So we have one open position in preschool and that is just as recent as two weeks ago. Kind of keeping that open right now as we're kind of finagling all the positions that I might have next year and if there's anything that I have to eliminate, hoping to keep people in the building. So I don't wanna fill that position. I wanna be able to move somebody if I, if I can turnover rate. I, I was really, we did this like six weeks ago, like we did this a while ago. I was like, how did we, like what was our formula for the turnover rate? And I think as my last five years we looked at all the positions that have kind of come and gone
and we've kind of retained about three quarters of staff over this five year period. And I think we looked at certified and classified staff 'cause we had spreadsheets for both of those. So we've retained about, like I said, 77% of the, the folks have stayed in my five years here are started with us and are still here. Which is I I like that. And then through our staff survey in November, just as a preferred place to work, we had 87% of our folks agree with that. Only 13% weren't sure, but we had no, nobody that disagreed with that. And I did send out staff intentions for next year
for classified staff and of the, I have a lot of classified staff 'cause we have a lot of preschool, but of the almost 30 classified staff we have, we only have one person that's considering other employment right now. Which is a great problem to have. Like usually, usually there's four or five classified staff that are not returning. So that was really encouraging too. So I think we're doing a lot of the good things with our people as well. And then just kind of positions my department. You can see our largest department now is preschool. So we expanded that to,
to four preschool rooms in a toddler room. So 50 some preschoolers now as well. So we did put out a plea. We're trying to look for donated labor and I did get a, a contract to read out to me today. We noticed in our, we had to partition off several areas for our preschool playground 'cause we can't have 50 preschoolers in one little playground area. And it's on a spot where the sun doesn't reach very well as he's facing. It's right near the creek where there's some tall trees there and stuff. And the kids have kind of played and they t trample and it's getting muddy and stuff. So we'd like to do artificial turf over there
and talking with John and if our best path is a pretty expensive project with that first baby step would just to see if people would be interested in donating labor, installing that. And then, so I did have a a a, a parent of a preschool student reach out to me, does some general contracting work, then look at it on Monday with me to see what we can do. And just the scope of the work. He's like, what's the cost? I was like, a lot. It's like a big project. It's like how big is face? I'm like this big, you know, it's like one's a rectangle, one's a square, so we're gonna look at that on Monday
and then we'll start to kind of chip away at that one as well. I felt a little like icky, like in my newsletter it's like we made $24,000. Hey can anybody donate time? Like it's like, it seems like we should just pay for it, but that's a, that's a big expensive project. So, but we like to do artificial turf back there, you know, as soon as we can. And then attendance and disciplines, our attendance rates right around 94%. We're kind of following that district policy as best we can at the 8, 12, 15, 20. And I will say that when we do get to the 12, when you do meet with parents, try to make it just a very supportive meeting. A lot of times it's how can we help you?
And a lot of times it's, oh, I can't help you with anything. They've been sick this different times and stuff. I just gain an understanding with that. And parents just being able to come in, meet face to face and kind of be disarmed that it's not, they start with like, nobody's frustrated and you're not in trouble. Like, and I know you're an adult and you're talking to the principal, you're like, you feel like you're in trouble, you're not, so how can we help or just help me understand like why we're up to 12 days and stuff like that. And once you have that meeting, we do, I would say nine outta 10 families at least improve attendance.
So that's been a, it's a big deal. Like it takes a lot of my time, but the opportunities I get just to meet with families one-on-one help a lot too. And referrals like this year more than any other year, although we're in a bit of a trough right now with some of our more challenging students, but more than any other year of my five, I would say we're the most regulated as a school. And we'll share some student wellness stuff and myself and Ms. Murphy and in just a second here. But just overall our kids have the tools to regulate themselves. I would invite anybody to come to our school and just see how our kids act in class
and I don't think there'd be any concerns there. So as far as like big behaviors that get to me, referrals per week, I, I, on average I get two in a week, which is, that's not very many discipline referrals to have to be able to do. And sometimes I think I have zero, like I don't have any to, to do. And of those referrals, only 21 of our, almost 290 students have even received a referral. So only like a small percentage of kids are, are struggling to that level of behavior and we've only suspended one student for one day. So, you know, like we, we try to go on that coaching
and teaching aspect, especially at this age more than anything. I know when we're working on discipline matrix stuff, when you get to middle school and high school level suspensions and stuff like that become a lot more appropriate as kids mature and, and understand and know better. But as far as suspensions here, like them not being in class is, is not gonna accelerate them getting better. So I, I really give a lot of kudos to our teaching staff and how they manage kids, but then also how they are accepting of kids coming back in their class. It might've been really difficult for them the day before. Like I wanna be really supportive of the teachers and sometimes it's hard to put another kiddo that you,
that you suspended back into that class and stuff like that. But teachers are like, Nope, welcome back. Here we go. You know, and, and, and people do a really good job at that. So it contributes to a lot of why we just don't have to suspend very much. Speaker 5: You may have mentioned this already and I apologize for being late and missing the shine, the light, do you still do your principal group? Speaker 12: No. Well those, the boys kind of graduated, started one of the fourth grade kids. That was last year. We kind of started and dabbled and then we kind of grabbed this other kiddo to kind of help join that group. And then one of the kiddos we kind of through RTI,
we put on a separate plan that he's been really successful with and the other kids just doing well. So I just kind of let it go. But we're using a lot of those components schoolwide next year. So we're, I'm gonna share with you guys a little bit of like what Brendan and I really excited first time we were like, you did this really coherent student wellness and kind of like behavior training I guess for kiddos that I think will make a long term difference. And we're, we're doing it here and at home, so I'll share that with you guys too. But we're using a lot of components that I started with in all the classrooms
and we have teachers that are kind of dabbling and piloting that stuff with their own classrooms like, but our third grade right now is doing that stuff with their whole class basically. So we're trying to expand it, but it's not quite that same thing if I got in my back pocket, a couple boys that are just not quite getting where they need to be. So, but yeah. But I did go visit a couple of the, the, my boys last year up at middle school and had lunch and stuff like that too. Oh cool. They're doing well up there as well. So yeah, Speaker 5: They're gonna value that relationship. Yeah. The rest of their life. Oh Speaker 12: Yeah, you got sixth grade boys hugging you, I think you're doing something right, right. Like
Speaker 14: They don't even hug your parents Speaker 12: Show you stuff, you know, like And the dad and the dad and the dad and the dad who spoke last year. Yeah, exactly. It was like the back parking lot a couple weeks ago I think he brought his son to to basketball practice and I didn't recognize him. Like I just knew someone was sitting in the truck and I just like, as I'm walking to my car and stuff like that, it was just friendly way and all of a sudden this guy's getting out and he's like, oh hi dad and stuff. And he comes right up to me and just big bear hug. And then he is just kind of talking to me in tears in his eyes like yep, everything's going really well. And shared some personal things with me. And it's so funny.
He's like, I mean, coming outta school, he is like, so are you still principal here? Speaker 14: Yeah, Speaker 12: Just like five months ago, man. Like sure am So, so, so just that too. And he was my hardest parent. My most difficult parent. The one I was most afraid to call bear hugging me a couple years later. That's Speaker 14: Awesome. Perfect. Lemme share this. He just bear hug Ryan. He bolted out of that truck, ran towards him and just grabbed him. That's awesome. Speaker 12: Hey fella. Yeah, he's pretty good. But yeah, that, that's, that's somebody that has
sworn at me on the phone for, for no fault of my own and the most challenging parent is somebody that can get that relationship. Speaker 5: Well I, you know, as, as somebody that may have said rude things to you on a football field, I can understand. I can, Speaker 12: I got receipts, man. I tell you what, Speaker 14: Not you two. Bri, are you out there? I believe you had a question sir. Speaker 4: I do. Could you put the, the grade down and back up before move case? Yep. Yeah, so you know, I love Elk Creek Ryan, you are my favorite official of all officials I've ever met. You're the best. But I did want to touch base
as we start talking about cohort cohorts and really what I'm, I'm seeing is the trend of the cohort is going down. Can you tell me what kind of factors you think are, are causing this? I mean, you seem to have a great staff, they love to follow you. You have low turnover, you have no open positions, you know what, what, what kind of factors do you think are contributing this? And, and I might a little missed a little bit of the actions you're taking to try to improve those numbers. And then also just the last part of that question would be,
are there specific challenges you're seeing there at Elk Creek that's causing some of this? Speaker 12: Yeah, so we'll, we'll share some of the actions next and really as you're looking at some of these, yes, there's, it appears to be going down and some, so, but when we have a smaller group of kiddos who are anywhere from like 30 to 40 kids in each class, in each cohort, it's really a kid or two makes four or 5%. So it's really not a big enough trend for us to say one way or another. But yeah, I mean that's part of the big puzzle
for us as well. It's like school achievement's always. I mean this is year 20 for me and it's always kind of baffled me. There's been things that I've done with Heather at Grand Mesa that I thought would make the biggest difference in the entire world. And we actually went down in achievement instead of up. And then there's things I figured that I didn't think would make much of a difference and then things went up. So that's, that's kinda what we're gonna share of like, what are we gonna do school-wide in order to kind of have that, those numbers go on an upward trajectory for year to year. Like obviously we'd love to see this group go 22 to 29 to 35
or something like that instead of kind of fall a little bit here. And that's kind of like, that's the rollercoaster ride that we're really trying to kind of investigate and figure out. And I, I, I don't, I don't have the exact answer for you. That's, that's the hard part. We're like continuing to like, investigate and try different things. I think you'll see like our coherent plan around things that are gonna make a difference for us. One thing we did notice around reading is that we were really struggling in the foundational skills of reading. So that's where we went with our whole 95% intervention when we do that school wide. And we're actually gonna do that even
to a different level next year as we tweak and adjust that. I know our new math curriculum is really exciting for our math. All of our teachers that are teaching math, I've actually never seen our teachers so excited to teach math because they're actually seeing results with kids. We're actually excited to see how Eureka, like usually that first year of implementation, you get a little bit of a dip and I think we're actually gonna exceed what we've been doing. Kids just have more, more focused efforts towards what their work. There's less strategies. Like as part of what was the Pearson program investigations that we were doing before, it was like, hey kids,
we teach you this strategy and this one and this one and this one. We're trying to teach flexibility, but there's like no practice. I mean, not enough practice, not enough practice. And the kids just get lost in the sauce with that. And with Eureka it's been a lot more coherent practice of like, here's the two, but we're gonna focus on this one and stuff like that too. So just little things like that. I think we're gonna make a big difference along with how we just continue to tweak and adjust our instruction too. So it's, it's, I I I wish I had a better answer. Like as a principal here, I, I feel like you should have all the answers, but school achievement's always been a mystery to me.
Like how, how we could be like a group that's twice as academically exceptional as another group here and what we were doing at this group versus this group. And I think we're just finding like some of the talent level with some of the kids as they come in. So like, like comparing to other cohorts in the, and we just did like a dibs data review together. And one thing that I noticed is like our kindergarten group had 0% of the kids came in as their beginning year of that, that were on grade level for reading. We had no kids and like to compare to another school,
Catherine Senior had 13 kids that were on grade level before they even were taught and things like that. So we're just kind of playing with that kind of stuff too. But we're really interested in figuring it out, like we're gonna keep trying until we actually get it. So we're really excited about not just our student wellness piece, but what we're doing with math and what we're doing with reading and stuff. So I'll have these guys kinda explain that next. Bri did that answer your question? I wish I had a better answer. Yeah. Did Speaker 4: That answer? No, I just, no, Ryan, I I just really appreciate the fact that you guys will throw those numbers up. You kind of realize there's still a lot of work to be done
and I think the biggest thing is just that you're able to put 'em up there and you're talking about 'em. And I hope that as a board we're giving you the resources you think you guys need. I, I wish I could funnel hundreds of millions of dollars into your school, you know, as the ultimate, but I just want you to know we are, we're here to support you and I really appreciate as a principal, you'll throw those numbers up, bring your team in and, and just realize we still have some work to do and I just appreciate that. Speaker 12: Yeah, thank you. But we are, I mean,
we're just interested in doing better in that capacity. Like as a principal, my big focus and Steve brought it up too, is like, how can we like connect joy with being at school? So more than anything, I just wanted kids to be, want to come to school the next day regardless of how well they do in school. We have kids that are really talented in a lot of things that have nothing to do with school. And there's the kids that are also lucky enough to be like inherently talented at reading and math. Like my son's in the 91st percentile for reading and all I did was read him bedtime story. Like I didn't do anything magical, you know? So he just had the magic for reading
and not all the kids are that lucky to come in that way. So how can we grow those kids and accelerate their progress as, or we're really interested in. But then as the principal, having that joy piece, and I'm always into like student wellness is like my thing. It's like what I do is I put a lot of eggs in those basket. And so just this year we're actually being a lot more intentional with the staff of raising the bar of just academic achievement. Like before I was just like, nope, we're doing great. Like every single observation I can do, I'm, I'm really pleased with the teachers are doing. So if we're pleased with what all the teachers are doing, like what, what can we do next to, to have our
academic numbers match the effort the teachers are putting in? 'cause the efforts there, if the strategies are there, the engagements there. So what are we missing? That's what we have tried to unlock. Speaker 2: So. Speaker 12: So yeah, let's tell about the stuff that we're doing next. So can you put up the Speaker 2: Slideshow? Speaker 12: Slideshow? What, which one is first? Speaker 2: Cindy? Speaker 12: Okay, so Cindy, thank you. Speaker 15: All right. So this year, as Ryan said, we really put a much bigger emphasis on our intervention program. And this year our collective school-wide goal is that 40
to 50% of our first through fifth graders who scored green, yellow, or red on the BOY DIBELS assessment would grow by at least three skill levels based on the 95 intervention program. And we looked at both phonemic awareness and phonics. And so we currently have three different times for intervention. We have a kindergarten time where we have two groups. We have a first, second, and third grade intervention where we are serving,
we have 11 groups. Fourth and fifth grade we have eight groups. So currently we have 21 intervention groups that we're running in our building. 64% of our students are in an intervention group. And again, our goal was that 40 to 50% of our students would grow by at least three skill levels. Currently 48% of our students have already grown by three or more skill levels and we still, we're in our fifth cycle now
and we have one more cycle to go. So I'm pretty optimistic that that number is going to go up for programming, the skills are taught based on student needs. So the students are given a screener and the screener helps us assess which skills they're lacking. Each skill is taught for 15 days or what we call a cycle at the end of the 15 days, they are progress monitored to see whether they can move on to another skill or if they need to repeat that skill. Next slide please. Okay. Kindergarten, I don't have data for you.
Kindergarten didn't start intervention until the beginning of February, but 39% of those students are in an intervention group. And this week we are testing for the first time so we can see what their growth was first, second, and third grade. They part kindergarten participates in phonemic awareness first, second, and third graders parti could participate in phonemic awareness or phonics. We have an average of 78 students who have been in each of each of our cycles. They are currently at a 47% pass rate in each of the cycles.
Fourth and fifth grade focuses on phonics and we were recently able to start a multi syllabic group with them. They average about 47 students with a 53% pass rate Speaker 2: Question. Speaker 12: I'll, I'll add that with our intervention program, one thing that we're gonna adjust for next year is we're finding that we don't, we don't, so we have a, the kinder block, we have a, a couple paraprofessionals help with that, but then the two classroom teachers, then we have a first, second, and third grade intervention block, which we have some paraprofessionals
along with the classroom teachers. And then we have a fourth and fifth grade block. And what we're finding is that we don't have enough educators to teach every single block. So we do have some kids that basically are no man's land. So we have them doing some online, some iReady stuff and things like that. So next year what we'd like to do is school-wide intervention block. So we just flood, our entire staff is available to do intervention blocks so that way we have anywhere from like three to six to seven kids and each intervention block and every single kid is covered. So kinda like SFA, like back in the day we do miss SFA
we are, we'd have a 30 minute kind of school-wide intervention block in order to use every single staff member and you know, specialist teachers, coaches, things like that along with our classified staff to be able to, to get every kid into an intervention block for 95. So kids that everybody participates in intervention intervention block, but there might be a 15 day cycle where they're doing some online stuff because lack of amount of educators to do it properly. So, Speaker 13: Alright, I'm gonna report out on our actions for math. While we were piloting last year, we also started up a math focus group every quarter,
maybe a little more often than that. And through that math focus group we were came up with wishes from the grade level above. So second grade got to tell first grade, can you just please get your students to do this and I'll like teaching math a little bit more. So with that said, these were the things that were discussed during that meeting. And then we also reached out to Riverside and asked the sixth grade math teachers, what in the world can we send to Riverside to have our fifth grade students like really good at like mastered at.
So these are just kind of the skills that those grade levels above chose. For the grade level below, we've had a lot of fun renaming all of these things. They were grade level wishes and then we turned out previous grade level mastery standards. So we're gonna make some fun acronym, whatever, but that's what we came up with. So kinder sums to five, first grade had two sums to 10 and then one more, one less just quick fluency there. Second grade was 10 more, 10 less and two digit addition. And then for grades three through five,
it was multiplication facts. Like everyone was like, please just help them to know the multiplication facts. So for third and fourth, it's just facts to 10. And then for fifth grade we upped the rigor a little bit and did elevens and twelves and then also are having them practice standard algorithm. Next slide please. Can you define standard algorithm? Yes. So that's probably how you learn to multiply. So if I, I think each him to stack them, that's the one. Wow. So standard algorithm. Yes. It's like you can do four digits by one digit, two by two.
We're doing it all. I learned the box method method with my kids. Yeah, it's a good one. Yeah. So here's our data. So we're doing beginning of the year te like whatever test dipstick, middle of the year and end of the year to just track, track our growth. Third through fifth is actually helping me do little progress monitorings each month. So you'll see a little bit of different data on the third through fifth but for kinder, 20% of our kinders came in knowing they're friends of five. At middle of the year it was 33%.
And then this week they just started the module about how to add within five and now we're up to 48%. And out of all of our kinder, 78% grew from one for efficiency to the next or stayed proficient first grade there already at our goal, I didn't go over our goal, but our goal is 60 to 75% of our math students will maintain that proficiency or get to proficient. So first grade started out sums to 10 41% and already at middle of the year they have passed our goal.
And then same with one more, one less. They started the year proficient middle of the year obviously grew. And with that we've added to that like made up the rigor a little bit 'cause they obviously need that. Yeah. And then second grade with 10 more, 10 less, 28% at the beginning of the year. 64, middle of the year, which is in like January. And then 21% proficient beginning of the year, 74% proficient now. So our younger grade levels are,
we're headed in the right direction. And then if you go to the next slide, thank you. There is a little star here because this one is a little bit harder to figure out. So I gave the multiplication facts to the teacher and I just said, tell me how long you think your students need to take this assessment. Third grade chose six or eight minutes. Fourth grade chose 10 minutes and fifth grade chose six minutes. And we found that our data reflected that quite a bit. So with it, with us upping the rigor in fifth grade, we just, excuse me, recently gave them 10 minutes.
This beginning and middle of the year was six minutes. So that's why you're not seeing a ton of growth. And so we thought to compare kind of apples to apples, we'd give each grade level 10 minutes. So that's kind of what you're seeing there. So if it adds a star next to it, it means they got 10 minutes. What am I missing? What do you wanna know? Speaker 5: You mentioned kid kiddos that start the year proficient. Yes. At grade level. How do we, how do we ensure, or do you have the flexibility to ensure that those kids keep growing academically? Not just maintain proficiency but actually Speaker 13: But like go to the next level. Yeah, that's a really good question.
I know that for first grade we're up, like since they've met the goal, we're like upping the rigor each time. With kinder we're kind of leaving it just 'cause they're just now learning those friends. Speaker 5: I'm mainly worried like fourth, fifth, Speaker 13: Fourth, fifth. Yeah. Speaker 5: Like you know the kids that come in proficient, are we proficient? Challenging them to continue? Speaker 13: Well, funny you should ask, I brought this little piece of paper because this is a piece of paper I've passed around a lot and this is a module three fifth grade question for math.
I'm gonna bomb that bad boy. And I just want you to look at it because I tried to solve it with my fifth grade teacher and Speaker 5: Take my feet, take my shoes Speaker 13: Off. I brought it to Simone at a math coaches meeting and I gave it to all my math coaches. Yeah we did. Did you do it? Yeah. I don't want, no, you don't have to do it, but I just want you to look at it because it is crazy. Jacob gave us one of these one Jacob? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Speaker 12: I thought your job, I thought your job was to make 'em like masks. Speaker 13: I know, exactly. But I think you'd be surprised like just how many students, I think Eureka Mask wear does that for all of our kids.
I think it pushes the kids that came in proficient. I think they are getting their world's rocked a little bit 'cause they, there's just so much extra rigor to this program. And then also with zn, the online platform that the state provides this year that that like also provides opportunity for extension. Yeah. Thank you. Good question. I think that's all my slides. If you figure it out, let me know. I'll check your answers. Okay. Wish I brought like a prize if you got it,
but Or gold star sticker. Yeah, gold. Perfect. I missed those old fashioned sticker. Speaker 16: This is like, Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 12: Is it solved already? Speaker 2: I didn't even, I drew a line. Speaker 12: So, we'll, we'll let you guys continue to work on that as you go. I'm gonna, I'm gonna let Jen kind of explain a little bit what special education and she has to book you to pick up her kiddo from the dance. Yes. Dance. So I just ask, sorry. So if she has, if you have to explain and then go please do it.
I'll, I'll cover the rest. Speaker 16: Okay. So ECE currently has 28 kids in our special education. And I'm just talking about our mild to moderate needs and SSN programs, the number earlier included our preschool students and our speech and language only students. So that's the difference there. And we have currently have two full-time special education teachers, one mild to moderate needs and one significant support needs teacher. These kids qualify through a very thorough process that I won't explain now, but, and then once they qualify for special education, we have goals that are written specifically to each child.
So my, my data is not as global as others just because each child has their own specific goal, their own data and their own progress towards that data that is constantly tracked. So if they qualify, what we're doing is an action plan is then they receive that specialized instruction and accommodations and supports that they need specifically in order to meet their own goals. And in order to make progress in the gen ed curriculum in order to close that gap between where their achievement is and where it needs to be.
And then that progress is very closely monitored and it's also shared out with parents quarterly at the same time as report cards. So it's kept up with same as any other report card. And then I'm gonna let Ryan talk a little bit about our SSN program. Speaker 12: Yeah. So I'm gonna fill in for Amanda, our significant needs teacher. As a teacher of record, I was like, so did you want to present in front of the school board? Like, but I wanna highlight the things that they do. And she's like, how about I give you
the stuff and you can do it? And I said, okay. So we, we have 10 kiddos in our significant needs program and we have 10 staff members including the teachers. So we have 10 a teacher and nine staff members. And most of those kids require a one-on-one paraprofessional with them. Our goal with all 10 of those kids that they spend 80% of the time as a general thing, each kid has their own IEP and has their own, their percentage of time that they, they should be in class, but as a, as a program goal about 80% of the time is a, is a general rule of thumb is how often we want those kids in a general
education classroom. This group is amazing. So this both Jen's group and the significant needs team, which we call the Super squad, are very close knit group of people. And so with the SSN gals, they do a lot of different special things. So I put birthday recognitions because they go above and beyond for all the birthdays of our kids with special needs. So they put together, if the birthday's in the summer, they do a half birthday celebration and if it's during school year, they celebrate the birthday then. And these gals with their own time and their own money, even though I've told them many times
that I will reimburse them and I'll pay for anything that they do. They get, they put on a birthday party for each individual child, pull all the other kiddos out of class. They have presents for those kids balloons, homemade goodies. And they really investigate all the things that the kids really like and enjoy so that they can have their own special birthday. It's my birthday tomorrow. So they send me a text message saying So and so was having some sort of crisis in the super squad room. And so they tricked me to come down there and all the kids had balloons for me and I did a whole celebration for that. So they do really special things for their kids that are really meaningful to them and their families.
They do a lot of special field trips. So Amanda puts a lot of things on the table to get these kids out and about and experiencing different things. We've done partnership with the Ride program with these steyers a lot with the, the horse riding. They went to that twice and I think they're going again this spring. They went skiing in Aspen yesterday at Snowmass through Challenge Aspen. And every one of our significant needs kiddos that went was able to ski and it was really successful. One of our, we, we were sending videos to parents and stuff like that to when her parents came in and she's like, I couldn't come in.
I was crying in the parking lot, like this whole thing. So those are really meaningful things that these were, these guys are doing. They took 'em to Stewart's Pumpkin Patch and then we also participated in the Special Olympics bowling event as well, which was a a a lot of schools around the district too. And then she texted me today saying, as we were passing by Glenwood, we, we thought we could do like a hot springs field trip with the kids and stuff like that. So, so I guess they got something going on with that too. And, and then just this week really through Lisa's help as well, but a parent came to me, one of our parents
of kiddos of special needs and was wanting to start a support group of just, just a parent group. So I've been working with her in providing some guidance around how to build that and then providing the space and we were making this as a whole district-wide thing. Eventually we'd love to see this as all districts feel invited. Our first meeting was on Monday. Lisa came and joined for that one as well. We only had Elk Creek parents here for this one. So we're gonna try to widen our reach for the next one. The next one I've already been working with Tara up at KSC and the next one will be on April 24th. And so we're, we're trying to switch locations
'cause people see some of those flyers and it's a district thing, but people, it's out creek so it must be an Elk Creek thing. So we're gonna try to widen that by changing locations. After we do that, we might try to, we probably try to try come over to Rifle and if we have to do like an after school and we did it during school 'cause then childcare was taken care of, but then you're battling work too. So we're trying to find the best time and space. But I would say that that meeting just with the Elk Creek, we had five families there or five parents and just the power within that you could see it was really needed. There was a lot of tears in that meeting, a lot of big emotions, all good.
And there was a couple times people, you could just see that there was a realization of like, it seemed like it was the first time that they could see that, oh my gosh, I'm, I'm not the only one. It's not just me. Like there's other people that can, that are in a situation like I am and, and people that can help me. And, and, and so you could just see the, the, the power in that too. So it was really cool. So we're we're, that particular parent and I are, are working on building that agenda for the next one and then Lisa's committed to being a champion for that too and really trying to spread that district wide next thing.
And I learned a lot through that too because I, I didn't have any great training around students with special needs and I told them at the meeting that day, I was like, that department makes me feel the most uncomfortable. Not because of the kids, but because I don't feel like I've expertise there. Like everything else, people come to me as a problem solver in that and in that realm I just am not properly trained to, to be able to help in different ways. So I just do what I can. And I told 'em like my philosophy of the kiddos there is like I act as if they're another typical developing child. So I won't go out of my way to to to, you know, get down
to a kiddo or something like that. It's like, hey, good morning. Things like that, just like I would act with the other kids and stuff. So just being able to have those conversations with those parents was really powerful. So we're looking forward to, to keeping that going too. Speaker 17: So, so those are the big things we have going on in special education. Jen, you can, you have to go. So your own babies. Okay. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about our ELD program. I just took over this year, so I inherited it from Sarah Clayton had the previously, and Jen Best have helped me immensely this year,
just getting started with some systems and things. So we have, I'm, I'm hoping now my numbers match what you have before, but we have 40 NEP that means non-English proficient 24 LEP and then four that are full English proficiency. They're in our spread out throughout our third through fifth are the, the FEP students. Language acquisition is a huge focus, but we've kind of been playing both at the district level and within our building, how we want to provide that. We want a safe place for newcomers and students that are, have very little English to be able
to practice and feel comfortable and, but we also don't wanna keep 'em outta class. They need to be, you know, getting their content. So the beginning of the year I was doing a lot more pull out, especially with those newcomers just to give them just like I said that that safe place where they could be practicing their English and they're doing so great that now they're more in class. So it's kind of, it's, it's like, like anything, like we've been talking about trying to find the, the healthy balance of both. But I do feel confident that they're all getting the support that they need.
Whether it's push in or pull out or planning with some of my teachers too. Our FEP students don't really receive that level of support, but we do monitor them very closely, just making sure that they're growing academically and they're all, they are, they're doing very well. So we're happy about that. Interventions, this is separate than our reading interventions, although we have 19 of our NEP students that are in either a reading or a math. So they do, they do get the 95 intervention, but we've also had to be really creative this year for like making individualized interventions.
We have kids that are coming with no school at all and then kids that have a little bit of school and then everything in between. So we've had to really get creative as far as like what their intervention is. And I feel like we've, we've done a really an amazing job of getting that individualized instruction. So it's still not perfect, but we're working on it and, and it's been, it's been fun to kind of co-plan with the, the pairs and the teachers to figure out what the best way to help these kids grow. And then we've kind of mentioned as a building, we really are like striving
for academic achievement, but to Mr. Bull's points, like at this picture just makes me so happy. We, we call these our Healthy Bites kids. I don't know if Jacob's here, but he would understand. But the healthy bites, they, Ryan empowers us to bring joy to the kids, but like they, they have brought me so much joy this year. It's been such a fun, just a fun year. I've just, I've loved it so much. Everything about it, working with them and we'll just, we'll see what happens. Access scores are coming back pretty soon, so I'm hoping
for some big growth and I, I think we're gonna get it. So that academic achievement, I hope it matches 'cause they're, they're a happy, healthy, fun bunch. So that's all I've got. You guys have any questions? Speaker 10: I do. Okay. So most of our schools we go to call it ELL. How come here? It's called ELD. Speaker 17: That's a good question. I think we're kind of Speaker 10: Transitioning And what is the difference? Speaker 17: English language development. English language learners. Speaker 10: Yeah. Speaker 17: So, and sometimes they'll be called MLDs multilingual, ML Ls multilingual learners. So I think as a, yeah, Speaker 10: The state keeps giving us Speaker 17: Another name that's that's,
Speaker 10: I was just like, like I, I'm like what's an ELD man? I had to go to my sheet Speaker 17: And Speaker 10: I was like looking it up and I was like, oh, English Speaker 17: Student would be an English Speaker 10: Language. Must be at a higher level of like understanding and comprehending learning maybe, but then maybe not Speaker 17: It, there's the, the, the program, the department is English language development. Yeah, the students might be referred to as an ELL or an MLL depending on what building and what what you, so it's all this, but yes, I think we're trying to streamline Speaker 10: Towards ELD Sorry for Speaker 17: Knowing know. Yes,
Speaker 10: Yes. Sorry for not knowing that I'm still learning a year in there. Speaker 17: There's a lot of acronyms so you're not Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. Speaker 10: What classifies that in ELD instead Speaker 17: Of EL? Speaker 10: Am I missing something? Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. That was my only question. Thank you so much Brighton. Did you have any questions I keep forgetting about him? Speaker 4: No, I'm, I'm good on that. Speaker 12: I was, oh, one thing I didn't bring up, it's part of you guys packet too is our SPF and I'll just mention something that's not in front of me, but our, our, we're like a point away from green,
but in both the last two years. So we're like 53 I think is what you need to get to green. We're at like 51 and a half for one year up to 52 in another. And the biggest bang for our buck to go from the top of the yellow to green is our ELL population. So you'll notice like two years ago we did much, we had much stronger scores in ELL and that's when Jen, who was our, did the SPED presentation. She was our ELL teacher at the time. Then last year, in the end of September, we lost our mild
to moderate SPED teacher. She, she moved on to Eagle County and then Jen came to me and she said she would like to do sped. So we didn't have an ELL director throughout the rest of the year last year. And so this year we have Erica and so, and we, we actually just have much more coherent programming and somebody leading it. So we're really excited to see like the growth that comes from that and just if we just get that we're not far away. So if we could just get just a small amount of growth, we'll be in green and if we get really large growth, we'll be well beyond that too. So that's another part that we're really kind
of focusing on is their ELL Speaker 10: Population. Yeah, I think you, you hit the nail on the head earlier when you were talking about, you know, your class sizes, the number of kids in the school and like one or two tank, it really can throw your scores off. Yeah. And that really brought understanding and clarity of, of your graph on the earlier one. So yeah, Speaker 12: It makes percentages go up and down pretty quickly. Speaker 10: It can really swing that. Yes. Quick, Speaker 12: Quick Speaker 5: Clarification. How many, how many kiddos do you put in your interventions? Like what, what is a Speaker 10: 68% Speaker 12: Or something like just in one little group?
Speaker 5: Yeah, what, what, Speaker 12: What the group, it depends on how many kiddos have tested out of a particular skill. So we do have a group that's as like a classroom teacher's taking a group that's up to like 10 to 12. We only have like a group or two of that. Most of the groups are anywhere from like three to six. Okay. Yeah. And that's why we're trying to flood all our teachers into one intervention block so we can keep everything small and then serve all of the kids too. Okay. Our, our last department check-in will be student wellness. Brenda and I kind of work as a team on this and we've got a lot of things going that we're gonna want
to, that we're looking forward to next year. The first thing is, is called Top 20. So this is the programming that I use with principals club. It's called Top 20. I don't know how they came up with it. I learned about this group from one of the case conferences, the principal's case conference. And there's a guy in Minnesota where I'm from that has come and done professional development with us all around the idea of the line frame, other people's opinions and things like that too. So what we've got kinder through fifth grade curriculum now and we're gonna implement that next year
at every single grade level. Like I said, we have third grade dabbling with it and really enjoying it right now because this, it would take a long time to kind of go over all the, the stuff within the resource, but we do it during our eight to 8 25 time. Our classroom meeting time is basically our, I guess what you would consider character education time and stuff like that, but it's more like community building. But the stuff within top 20 are things that we can use throughout the day. Like they're just always these little like teachable moments and stuff. And the big thing that I could explain is like teaching the kids the line.
So when you're above the line, you're hopeful, you're optimistic. That's where your best choices come from. When you think below the line, that's where negative, pessimistic, and that's where some of our best, our worst decision making comes from. So we talk about what it takes to be above the line and stay above the line if we dip below the line. And so we just use that terminology with the kids and I can use it with kids that are struggling. So we're trying to having that go all around school wide. So, and there's a lot, there's just so much more to it, but just the stuff that we've done with it we're really, really excited about because it has so many layers that you can just do in the moment with kids rather than,
right now we're working with like seven mindsets, which we, which we like. But like the, the second quarter focus was a mindset called passion first. So we can accentuate kids' passions and things that they like, that they like, but it's not necessarily a teachable moment when a kid is not showing resilience, you know what I mean? And that's what we're kind of looking at too. So that's what we're gonna implement schoolwide next year. And we have a couple grade levels, third grade like I said, but we also have other individual teachers that were like, I want to at least try a little bit and stuff like that too. So we're working on that. But that's all the stuff I did with the Kids with Principals club last year.
We're using that schoolwide. I think Brenda's gonna do Focus Speaker 14: Kids. Okay. And I have my little pin here that says Live Above the line as my own reminder, like they're not gonna steal my day. So Focus Kids is actually a local entity company I guess. And they just take donations. They don't have a set price, they just take donations and come in. But they have been instrumental in changing our school. And I brought the puppets because I got this little quote that said every kid wants to relate to the world and the people in it with ease, but sometimes they just dunno how to do that.
They don't know how to control those thoughts for their emotions or their behaviors. And so Focus Kids has provided us and our staff, our kids, our staff and our, they're reaching out parents, which is always a struggle, but they're, they're diligently trying that to just teach 'em some brain based kind of skills that can be lifelong. And it helps our kids to understand what's happening in their bodies and how to control that or change that. And you'll see with some of our data from our survey of how impactful I think it's been and kind of what Ryan was saying about Top 20, it's given our staff and our students a common language
and a common place to come from. And so it's easier for us to intervene and use those things with them. So every class has a little calming basket and we talk a lot about our God dog who is the one that does the, he fights for us, he keeps us safe, our amygdala and this one's been really important. So those big emotions that they get and what can they do to calm this down so that they're little, little wise out can come back and focused and do some learning and some things to happen. And so it's like I said, just given us a really good foundation for all of that. It helps our kids to know like, oh,
I'm getting sweaty palms, I'm filling some butterflies in my stomach, what can I do about that? So just increasing their awareness of what's happening with the aunt within them helps them to be able to regulate better. And as I said, our data is gonna show that. So that's kind of our focus. Kids, I do have to say though, we are their favorite school and they are on record of brain now. So there you go. We're not second. Speaker 12: So, so yeah, in a nutshell, they teach the kids the three parts of the brain. She mentioned the amygdala with the guard dog, but then the Wise all is a prefrontal cortex. And then Miss Afte is the hippocampus and we, we do this preschool through fifth grade and they do come in once a month
to do lessons for us as well. Speaker 14: Well, and they tailor the lessons like Ryan, we, we take from our staff like what they think our kids need and then Ryan will powwow with Amanda and Suzanne who are the two that work with us. And they will tailor the needs to our different kids in our different classes, like fifth grade, fourth grade, I think they've just, they're gonna be doing skills around Speaker 12: Test anxiety. Speaker 14: Yeah. Because it's a need. Yeah. Speaker 12: So we're trying to find every little, just every little spot in the margins to kinda help these kids perform like we know they can. That's the other part is like, I don't think our, our scores match our kids' ability level either.
So that's what we really want. Speaker 14: Yeah. We're trying to get that to match and the effort that our teachers put in, like the scores don't show that and we just really want it to show that. Yeah. So we're working hard Speaker 12: And then through the regulation stuff, I mean you can see there's, there's glitter jars, they're just little regulation strategies for kids breathing balls and stuff like that. We have a calm corner in every classroom. So, and kids are able to like excuse themselves when they need to and kids do a really good job of doing that Sand timer. Yeah, two minutes, five minutes, whatever. I'm back to learning and stuff like that. I do a lot of that work with kiddos that actually make it down to the office
that are really escalated as well. You know, do anything until we're regulated so they understand all that language too. That comes from Focus Kids. We're not the only building in the district that uses Focus Kids too. So I think there's actually, there's a lot, a majority of the elementaries are using Focus Kids as well Let Grow. So this is gonna be our new one for next year. So that Girl project is going to be, it's kind of a home project. So this comes from the book Free Range Kids. And the whole idea in a nutshell behind it is that as a society we've, as parents, we've
really trended towards not letting kiddos be as independent in the physical world. So we're over supervising kids and not letting them do stuff. I think like if we had conversations of like when I was a kid, like you know, we got to stay out till dark and our parents didn't know where we were and we only heard the dinner bell and that's when we came in. We had to be home before life, that kind of stuff, right? Like, and now we're tethered to phones, GPSs and all those things. And some of those things are good safety things for parents and things like that. But we're over supervising the physical world and we're providing zero supervision in the digital world.
So we have no idea what our kids are watching on YouTube, what apps are on, what's happening on Snapchat and things like that. And so what we're, we're not gonna touch the digital world thing, but what we're trying to do is we're trying to empower parents to step back so kids can step up. And so what Let Grow is, is a part of that book. Free Range Kids, they have a curriculum with that and they have monthly themes around I I, gosh, I wish I had written them down, but like leadership's a theme. Independence is a theme. And then, so what the teachers will do is once a month they'll have, the kids are in that classroom meeting time,
we'll pause top 20 and we'll talk about Let Grow. And the kids go home with basically a reflection sheet and a project list. And really what they have to do with their parents is decide on one project with permission from their parents from the list that they can do on their own without parent assistance at all. Whether it's washing the dishes, cooking a meal, going to get the mail, organizing a play date without parent assistance. Just anything that we can do to help develop independence with kids. And the lists are like 30 long, long
that people can choose from, from very basic to a little bit more complex. And then what the kids do is they have a little bit of a reflection of like how it, what how they felt, how it made them feel doing that. They bring that back to school and then they just have a discussion with that, with the whole class of just like, here's what I did what they did and here's how it made me feel. And then we'll have that displayed around the school of like all the independent activities our kids are doing. And then we're gonna incorporate that into our assemblies too, of like, okay, we got five, let grow kids, what did you do? And and start highlighting that. So we feel like if we are able to do that for more
of a long game, like years at a time that we can make a big impact overall and really giving parents permission to like step back. Like you can, we can let our kids do stuff. You know, your kindergartner Speaker 14: Can carry their backpack. Speaker 12: Yeah. Just little things our kinder teachers are right away. It just like, I want a part of this so that, yeah, so we can like let kids walk up to the building by themselves and hang up the backpacks by themselves, tie their shoes on their own. And there's just so much of parents just being hovering over that, that we're trying to like let them go so we can let them grow and, and gain an independence. So schools that have been a part of this project
report big gains in their students' independence, which is filters along towards more of like the behavior aspect too. So coupled with what we're doing at Top 20, we think those things are gonna make a big difference for us too. And hopefully parents kind of see stuff like that. We've already been working with some parents and dabbling as well. I have some teachers piloting too. I'm just being very thankful of like, oh my gosh, it had some self realization too, like even in my own self with my own son, things like that of like, since I've read that book, I've let him do more than I would've before. And I always kind of think of that. It's like, let him step back, right? Just step back, let him do it, he can do it, he can do it.
And he does. And then he and he wants to, the kids want to do these things Speaker 14: On their own. Oh, what they feel about being so accomplished. Speaker 12: So so part of like how we feel like parents are involved is, is is completing like let grow projects and stuff. They're very, they're very simple too. So we're really excited about that next year as well. And we've had Epic Eagles and Pats in the back. Do you wanna explain what we do with those? Speaker 14: So yes. So these are ways to celebrate our kids when they do amazing, wonderful things. So Epic Eagles has our character traits, right? I should have brought one of those too. Has it built right on there. Traits that we're kind of emphasizing for our quarter and what teachers are looking for. So they just, kids can collect it from anybody
in the school at any time. Teachers collect them and then they pick one, Ryan announces it and they get to do what Ryan, their Speaker 12: Hand prints on the wall, Speaker 14: Submit police peers started. All those hand prints are because they've all, or one of those and something amazing as far as character building goes. And then Pats on the back are a little bit more above and beyond. Those come from teachers. And so they will right when out for it. Kiddo for example, like so and so is really kind on the playground. They picked up trash and they shared blah blah blah with somebody or academic as well. Like they worked really hard on their math test and did this.
And so those are pats on the back. And then a part of that is also te students can give teachers pat on the back and those are always fun as well to hear and see what they wanna say. Then Ryan makes personal one-on-one phone calls to whoever the child wants. A parent, the parent, sorry, not anybody to a parent, an adult and shares it with them and celebrates it with them, with the kid right there with them. They get a new book, they get a brand new pencil and the smiles as they're walking out or ear to ear. So they Speaker 12: Get on the big Speaker 14: Screen and they get on the big screen in the office if you're there holding their lovely thing.
Speaker 12: Yeah. Yeah. So Epic Eagles we do every other week. And the Pat's in the back or the other weeks. So, so every other week we have up to 12 different kids doing hand prints on the wall. Thank you Lisa Pierce for starting that. And then Pat's in the back. Thank you Heather Grimley for starting that Grant Mesa. I've kind of taken it to a different level. Speaker 14: Sorry, Speaker 12: I give Ryan credit, we taking it to a new level. Yeah. So so those are, those are our reinforcers, like hey, we're doing a great job. And we noticed that. And then the next slide, Theresa, kind of show our counselor core grant survey highlights. So these are our third through fifth graders giving us input
and feedback as well. And so, so 98% of our third through fifth graders reported feeling safe here. And that, it was funny because we did have some responses that were the, the one that it was like two weeks after the break in as well. So there was some kids that were like, some of the responses point to like, I feel safe, but we got robbed. Something like that. We got robbed. So, so kids still felt sa safe even through that Speaker 14: Situation. Even after that Speaker 12: 82% of our kids feel like a part of something here. This is a lower number, but Brendan and I are super proud of like 72% of our kids state.
They know how to behave in a classroom. Speaker 14: Doesn't mean they went, but they know, Speaker 12: But but that's what we're, that that's what's that we're proud of. But it's just like that shows you like if, if you, if you're somebody that comes in teaches junior achievement or if you're somebody that's not in education, you think you just go into a classroom and just, I teach, they listen, they sit there, whatever. And that's, there's so many different complex layers that go into that. And so even third through fifth graders, we have a quarter of kids that still don't feel like they know how to behave. So we're still teaching that at all times. So it's just kind of a big eye-opener of like all the things we, the challenges they present us
with and the things that we're really working on with kids. 94% of kids feel like they have a trusted adult in the school and 85% of the kids say that when they feel anxious, nervous or worried, they know healthy ways to make themselves feel better. And a hundred, every one of our kids say they feel happy, hopeful, proud and and able to have fun here most of the time, which just goes back to the joy piece that we're trying to bring. So, so those are the numbers we're most proud of, of that survey data. Speaker 2: So Speaker 12: Okay, that's all our departments Speaker 2: And there's our babies. Yeah, there we go. Speaker 12: Any underlying questions?
We kind of went a little longer than I was expecting, but Speaker 5: I think it's just, for me it's, you look at the staff survey, you look at the, the student survey from the counselor core grant. I think number one thing that I believe it speaks to is a leadership team at the school. You guys are doing a great job when you have a hundred percent of 250 kids. Speaker 2: Well Speaker 5: That's Speaker 2: Say any Speaker 12: 4, 3, 4, 5. So okay, Speaker 5: Well still, Speaker 12: But I like what you're, you're Speaker 5: And you have a hundred percent of that many kids agree on anything. That's something to be proud of. And I, I hope you guys are like Bri says,
that's not taking away from the fact we know there's still work to do with student growth and student achievement, but number one thing, kids gotta wanna be here. You know, they've gotta wanna be here and be engaged with their teachers to even start that journey. So I just commend all you guys, all the coaches, ELD, math coaches and I did finish your worksheet. What do I'm not telling you out loud, Speaker 2: You can grade it later. Speaker 5: Student privacy. Okay. But it, you guys are awesome. I I hope you guys know that and I can't say enough about that. Speaker 2: All the numbers are trend positively for us. We just can't quite correct the code of those big
Speaker 5: Aspects from, from a, from a community member that I was just a community member last just a year ago. And you come in and this was one of the first buildings I ever came into and participated in a board meeting and I got to listen to your principals club and that was one thing that stuck with me for this last year. And it's just that outreach to the kids that, you know, need just the extra, you know, like, hey, you know, you gotta live up to this and, and that's, that's huge. I can't say enough good things about it. So still got work to do high Speaker 2: School. Are we your can't do that.
I can't do that. Not on camera. I will not confirm nor deny. Speaker 5: I I will. Great answer. I I I love the staff, so thank you. You're Speaker 2: Welcome. Thank you. We like you too. Yeah. Yep. Bri Okay. Yeah. Speaker 4: Yeah. One of the things I wanted to touch base on was I love the collaboration with Riverside. I think what a great idea either school to work with them and then just once again, seeing the mid-year growth from beginning of the year to mid-year. You know, those are the trends I think we all need to celebrate.
And I think that is attributed to the staff there in the work you guys do. I know C Math and we put those numbers up and every that, that isn't a total picture of what's happening within the school by any means. So really proud to see those mid-year numbers in math increasing. And I just wanna say great job and keep up the good work. Speaker 2: Thank you. Speaker 18: I really like the Let Grow project that's, that's phenomenal. I it gives the kids that chance to get away or break away, do their own thing, succeed at it,
and then bring that confidence back into the school and into their classroom to, you know, hey, if I can do this, I can do this. And it really, I think overall, you know, it's not just at home or whatever, it's not trying to do that math problem, Speaker 2: But Speaker 18: You know, having that confidence Yeah, it's, and and doing independent work. That's great. Yeah. Speaker 5: Yeah. You hit it on the head with the confidence thing. Yeah. I think confidence is key as they move into middle school. Yeah. Speaker 12: That's where we can, can you just find all those ways where we're looking on perseverance, resiliency, grit,
kindness, like all those parts for kids. Like I feel like those are the things that'll lead to academic achieve even if we do those really well. At the same time too, it's like I don't go in the grocery store and I, I judge how people treat me. I don't really like, ooh, this person is for sure red on Dibbles and Speaker 2: I Speaker 12: Guarantee yeah, this person is definitely below average on CMAs. You know what I mean? Like, as we grow up and mature, that stuff tends to fade and we put at such a forefront here. And I don't mean like here, just, that's where education is and just like, more than anything, I just want that for the staff. Like they work so hard, they're a great group of people.
They do anything that we ask them to do and I just want those efforts to be rewarded in the things that were reported publicly. You know what I mean? Like, I want them to be able to stand proud with that. 'cause all this other stuff that we do around wellness and joy and things like that, it's just not reported. It's not measurable. It's, it's as measurable either unless you come in here and and come see us, you know, so and Jim can Speaker 2: Come see us. Speaker 12: Yeah. So it's that, that's that next layer is like, I, more than anything, I just want that for them to validate all the efforts that they give too. So I'm just, like I said, I'm over the moon with my leadership team, like with kind of like a,
a brand new full group with Cindy and Erica joining us too. These guys have been really dynamic in, in leading programming and then our teaching staff is, I couldn't ask for more. I really couldn't like, and be able to keep them all together. So we really want that for, for them too. And so if we can continue to find these little things on the margins, things that I'm passionate about, it's like, Brenda, I found something like this is gonna work and if if it's relationship based, you can always sell me on it. So, so that's kind of where we're headed. But more than I've ever been as, as, as a principal of the last five years, I feel the most confident
and most excited about the direction that we're going into next year. Like we're already having next year discussions and we have just like this clear path of what we wanna do for ELA, for math, for ELD, for student wellness. And we've never quite had that clear path of everything. A lot of times summer meetings and stuff we're just kinda like, okay, you know, we're, we're trying stuff and now we kind of feel like we found it. So, and then it takes a long period of time for it to actually like show the magic too. So we're gonna try to stay consistent and stick with something here, but I think we found all our it's and the things we find value in.
So, so we're, we are excited. Well Speaker 1: Done. Speaker 12: So thank you. Thanks for your all the time here I am Speaker 1: This presentation. I thought so. Speaker 12: Sorry. Oh, sorry. Fathom. Go ahead. Speaker 1: So first of all, everything that you guys are doing and even though you feel maybe the scores don't show it, it will. So everything that you guys have done, I mean, especially looking at your third through fifth graders that completed their counselor core grant, I mean a hundred percent of students, like Chance said of third and fifth graders wanted to get 'em to agree to anything and, and then to agree to actually they're happy and having fun at school.
Like that's, that says a lot too about what the teachers and what you guys do here and I really do like the service learning. Yeah. I think that is gonna be one thing too that we can, we can help and grow with our CTE programs too and maybe start other programs with that, like gardening or, you know, something I don't, I don't know. But, and the, the Grow project, like Scott was saying too, I think, you know, it's, it's hard as a parent to back away
and want your kids to do something. 'cause what if they get hurt? I know, but you know what, if they get hurt, they won't do it again. You know, it's like when you touch the hot stove, if it burns, you don't touch it again. So I think what you guys are doing is, is awesome and it, it definitely shows. So thank you. Thank you guys for all your hard work. Thank you. Speaker 2: Thank you. Welcome. Speaker 12: We're excited to present this too, so thank you. Okay, Speaker 1: We're gonna go ahead and take a quick five minute break and we will be back at seven 15. So thank you everybody who stuck around and completed the great.
You got plenty of presentation. Plenty. Plenty of real estate. All right. Brittany, are you still there? Speaker 4: I am still here. Speaker 1: Perfect. So we did do the amendment to the board agenda and we're gonna do a super update. Superintendent search update. Sorry about my abbreviations. So Bri, if you wanted to go ahead and take over. Speaker 4: Yeah, thank you very, very much. I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who participated with us this past Thursday and Friday as you met our finalists. And I did wanna let you know that the, the board is focusing
in and zeroing in on Kirk Bang Hart. So we started the process with Kirk and as we progressed through that process, we will keep everyone abreast. I know a lot of people did get the opportunity to meet him in the community and staff and as we set back and we started narrowing that search, he seemed to be the person best suited to be our next leader at Garfield RE two. And that's all I have to say on it at this time. Speaker 1: Thank you Bri. District accountability review.
I think Brisa are you sorry? I think is it just you? It is just me. Nobody wanted to join you, right? We Speaker 7: Weren't actually scheduled to speak today, so thank you. You're welcome. I think it was supposed to be last month but so, but we're here today. Okay. So I'm Bueno. Good afternoon School board members. Thank you for having DAK here today. I spoke a couple of months ago, the beginning of the year,
so it makes perfect sense that I come back towards the end of the year. I have been in DAG for over 10 years. Soon I will have two children that will have graduated for from our school district. So that is amazing. The longevity of the commitment for some of these DAG members. Yeah. Oh. So let's see. I have a couple of updates as requested. And first of all, I do appreciate DAC appreciates the collaboration with the school board and D, we can't do the work without
suggestions and the transparency that goes on the conversations, the issues that arise from those meetings. I know some of you school board members have attended our meetings. If, if you have not, I highly recommend that you do try to make one before the end of the school year. So as a reminder, it wasn't until last year that D started making recommendations to the school board on policies and policies is a huge, as you know, a a beast. There's a lot that goes on with it. So before I get started, I think DAG will be proposing a training of
what a policy entails, what can we change, what we cannot change kind of or role as D Now that we have begun more of the work and policy and making recommendations to the school board, there's a lot of new parents that are joining in, joining in. So hopefully to be continued, but hopefully before August or in August, kind of start with the training for, for new members. So the first policy that we tackled was the B-E-D-H-R. So the public participation at board meetings.
And it took us several meetings to come up with consensus of what D wanted to recommend to the board. So looking at the priorities, looking at the school district, looking at the parents, the students. And after we come up with some suggestions, it's still vetted through the legal department. But the tricky part is the implementation piece of it. Not only that, but after is, is being implemented, how do you bring that information back to DAC to see if DAK is doing an what else we can work on, what else, how else can we support each other?
And we realized that the one we tackled first directly impacts all of you. So with that being said, some of the things that come to to mind is DAC has not gathered any information for participants on this topic since it's been implemented. So we do welcome the conversation in an update from the school board, especially on ongoing policy that we will work on seeing what other questions we should be asking, if it was, if it was helpful, what we came up with as recommendations from the deck.
So how can we further collaborate in that way and vice versa. Some of the things that come to mind from the policy is, you know, how is it working? Having a timer is grade, it's right there is big, I don't, I don't need my glasses. But what about the three minutes, right? What are the thoughts of the community? Was that, you know, what, what, what are you hearing or the implementation of no yielding your time to anyone else, any barriers that you have all encountered and why? So how do we communicate that back to DAC for further work on new policy? We know that we don't all get it right on the first time,
but we do wanna make sure that we're doing the best we can. The second item is we have been working for over three months on the bullying prevention and education policy. A lot of talking, looking at the policy, rewriting it, going back, looking at the state policy, making recommendations. We have so many different lenses through our deck participants that hopefully the update is that next week we should be finalizing it, we should be voting on it. So it should become a recommendation from dac, hopefully by the end of the month or in April.
So again, if you have any questions after you review it, anything else that DAC can work on, please let us know. I think this is a great opportunity is a second policy recommendation. We work on that. We wanna make sure we have a streamlined process going further, especially for new incoming members to really understand what that that, and that is just a piece of the work that DAC does. So more to come on that. And I just wanna say there was huge, there was huge interest participation from very different
community members from the schools. So we were happy with the turnout. And let's see also the after, after the, we finalized the recommendation for the bullying prevention and education policy. We will be looking at the parent and family engagement in education policy. We know that we talk about family engagement, we, I mean we, we heard it with the last presentation. How do we get parents involved? How, how do we get the family involved? So we will be starting to tackle that again, we always invite the board members, our parents
to attend any of our DAC meetings. Always looking for members. So hopefully we'll have more update from that in April. And lastly, sac, I don't have a list of what school is ACT that has sac, how it's going. But I know we kind of, at the beginning of the school year, we kind of designated a school liaison between DAC participants and SAC participants because again, it's, it's not just, so for instance,
after we do re we recommend for the bullying policy, it's vetted, it is approved, it's then the implementation happens and then we don't want it to be dropped off. So how do the schools report how they're implementing it back to, to dac and then ultimately how does that information get back to the school board, right? Because you want that feedback. So right now there's, we feel there's gaps in place that we need to look at collectively to come up with some
of those solutions. Especially how it's being affected at every, at every school. So the communication between SAC and DAX still needs to be stronger. I did attend and I, I guess I can speak for the rifle high school sac. I went last week and last time I came we said we kind of paired it with the booster club and I feel it's working really well. There's consistency from a group of moms that show up on a monthly basis, but once they go they share that information out to more parents, right? And that's ultimately one of the goals. Invite more parents to these staff meetings
and then share that information like, hey these, these are things going on. So, you know, make sure you go. So I think that concludes my deck update. I didn't have a PowerPoint presentation, but you know, if you want one later on, we can certainly work on that Speaker 1: In your spare time. In your spare time. Speaker 7: That's right. Speaker 1: Well congratulations on getting ready to have your second graduate from Garfield. Speaker 7: Oh, he better graduate. If not, you'll see me here next year. Speaker 1: Air warming. I'm sure he'll be fine. So no, thank you for all of this. I know before I was a board member I was on deck
and so it's been a lot of fun to see kind of how it's progressed from my very first meeting and now to where you guys are at. And it's definitely nice to have the input from you guys as well. And then definitely I think SAC was always something we needed to improve on and we're getting there. So I'm excited to see what the changes bring with that. So, and I appreciate you guys looking at some of those policies for us too. It, it's nice to have that third, fifth, sixth, seventh set of eyes, so, so thank you Bri,
did you have any questions for Brisa? Speaker 4: No, that's all right. I appreciate what they do at daf. I've been at the last few meetings myself and I'll be at the 18th meeting also. So I definitely appreciate what they do and once again, if we could get anyone involved to help, to help out that organization and be part of SAC too. I would do anything I can do to help get more people there. But thank you Bara for what you do. Speaker 7: Yeah. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. And there's a, is there still a representative from every school or there was a school that we're missing a representative from, from Deck, is that correct? Speaker 7: I, you know, Melly and I looked at,
and I think that's a conversation we're having this coming Tuesday. Okay. Because there's, you know, stipulations how many meetings you can miss. We have 15 voting members. Everybody else is welcome to attend and invoice their, their thoughts and opinions and contribute. Because again, we wanna make sure we have diversity voices, different lenses as you know, we have teachers, we, so it's, it's a little bit of everything, which makes this work even more important because there it's different perspectives, right? And then sometimes it's, it takes telling the story behind the, the comment until you really understand where
that parent is coming from. And then you start looking at, oh, there's this other policy that might fit better. Let's take a look at that. Like, what else does the school district need? Right? So I think on top of of that, yes, we, we, we do make it that we want a rep, we want representation for every school. And we also want that commitment as well for, for the voting members. Right. You have to attend in order to really see the process and make it work. Yeah. Speaker 5: Well I want to personally say thank you for your guys' work on BEDH dash R.
That was a frustrating policy, I think for all of us. You guys put a bunch of time into it that wasn't unnoticed. And then by the time it got to us, you know, with the flip of a pen, we really kind of Speaker 1: Put more, Speaker 5: Just changed it and took some stuff out on advice from counsel and it, so I know sometimes that process can be probably frustrating. 'cause that was my number one thing. Like, you guys spent three, four meetings on this and then it comes to us and we just change it. So thank you for having the resiliency to push through because this is important work.
And we do, we really do rely on you guys to help us with the policies. And I think we all, we all appreciate you. Speaker 7: Yeah. No, yeah. Thank you. Let me just follow up again, I invite the board to, after it's been implemented, to come back today, I, and say, you know, this didn't work because of this, this is, you know, maybe try this approach or again, 'cause we wanna make sure we're working collaboratively and ultimately working, you know, for our whole school district and our students and our parents. Speaker 1: Yeah. And I think when we tackle or when you guys tackle the parent engagement, you need to get with Ryan settled I and his 25 member P tac
and see what they're doing. And, and I hear Jason makes great cookies. Okay. So he should bring those in and see what they're doing to get that involvement. So thank you. Thank you, thank you. All right. Staff success, strategic plan. Come on up. Come on down. You're the next contestant on the crisis, right? Oh gosh. Okay. Speaker 5: I accidentally hit my lever when, when Ryan was talking and I was like sinking. I was, I was hoping I didn't notice. Speaker 9: It's good to see everyone. It's been such a long time.
I don't know. Well, we've run into each other quite a bit in the last couple weeks. We're we're gonna, we're gonna give you our update on the strategic plan. And I thought I'd give you a little history of the strategic, of the strategic plan. I think this is my sixth presentation. We do three a year. We tell you what the goals are. We spend our summer in our end of year setting those. And we, in mid-year, we tell you the progress and the end of year we try to tell you where we're at and where we see the future. Historically, I don't think anyone invited the finance nerds to the Strat plan party. So we're, we're thankful to be a part of it. It has guided a lot of our decisions. I'll try to show you that in a second. But let me, let me, oh,
and the good news, I will not be pointing at columns of small numbers tonight. Ready C Thread. Speaker 5: Does it, does it bother you or you that you're only invited? 'cause you have the money Speaker 1: Humor. Thank you. Sometimes Speaker 9: God that'll pay for the party. Yeah, yeah. Well our goal in, in finance by the end of the year was to be able to provide decision makers with the necessary information to inform district wide decisions. And our secondary goal was to formula formulate short and long-term plans to properly resource the district. So that's, that was our focus this year.
We do that in three separate pillars, three separate goals. We have our financial education and training goal, our financial communication goal and our improved procedures goal. Surely you can read that nice and small. Oh my computer. Small numbers, small words. Today I want to talk first about the financial education and training. What we've done, what our, what our plan was and what we've accomplished this year. One of the things was to get the board good timely information on a, on a monthly basis. That would be 10 times this year. I'm sure most of you're like, we've seen this dude way more than 10 times, but,
but just not at just at board presentations. But at our Monday morning meetings, when we have opportunities in our board, updates on the weekends to get you guys some good quality information. So when you're in the community, you know right where we are, as timely as we can make that. We also have legal and financial trainings with our financial secretaries. Kathy has been amazing in implementing this. She puts those together roughly on a four to six week basis. She runs those meetings. You saw Leslie Smith earlier today. We've got great financial secretaries. She's one of our best. We'll take their procedures, their policies.
We take best practices, we share 'em, we partner, partner financial secretaries up for training, give 'em legal, the legal advice. We have new financial procedures. We have videos now going out to them through Heather Toes. And, and that's been just that connection, that strength. It's a strong group. It's a really strong group that's connected. Finance doesn't say this, but we all love each other. So, Speaker 1: And you don't pay each other to say that either. Speaker 9: No, no. Actually in finance we say good morning. That's how we say I love you. We, we also want to put together SOPs, both HR
and finance are little gun shy from two years ago when we arrived on the scene with no instruction manuals, no SOPs, and 830 people's lives in the balance on the 15th. So we're trying to make sure that, that any system we put in place last outlast us for sure. And we've, we are trying to put together SOPs and Heather Toez came up with a fantastic method to do that recently. And our payroll system's almost completely SOPed very rapidly. So that's fun. It's, it's, if you've ever sat down and told people, write down everything you do all day, that's a very unpopular management command.
But it is working out cross training in our department. I think everyone can do everyone else's job in our department, except for me. I can't do anyone else's job. So, but they, but if any, if anything happens to us, we have great cohesiveness now and can fill in for each other. And, and so we, we, we can survive a, a short term catastrophe. Two, moving over to financial communication transparency. We had our stuff to the auditors earlier this year. We had our stuff up on the website earlier this year. The board, the board reports
and board presentations are in a different position than they've been in the past. For me, the transparency with our staff, transparency with our leadership, our believe meetings, just getting 'em the numbers as fast as we can. This is, this is what you need to know. This is, this is what these numbers mean. Education at believe meetings I just discussed. I think we've done four of those this year. I think the goal was three. And I bet you I'm gonna get asked to do one or two more. I even got asked to make a 37 minute TikTok video, which I did. That'll go on TikTok, right? With all the information, with transparency,
our new document storage policy that you guys approve. We thank you for that. Leslie was instrumental in putting that together. She's unbelievably organized. If she had worked for me when I was a lawyer, I'd probably still be a lawyer. She's that good and, and very rapidly becoming irreplaceable. So she was instrumental in that piece. And then dynamic financial information. My, my goal and dream is that people can open a screen and see what happened as of 10 minutes ago in any department, at any level, at any level of budgeting. That's, that's a pretty high fantasy with the, some of the software that we have.
But I'm, I'm trying to get that within a week so they can see what's happened within a week ago. And made big progress on that. Actually this week with improved procedures. We reorganized the district within the LA or reorganized our department. Within the last two months we, we lost our payroll manager. And I can't believe it's two months ago, it feels like, I think financial years are dog ears, but within, within the last 60 days, we've reorganized, divided out tasks, made sure that we have cross training that we talked about earlier and, and, and, and brought on somebody new
who thank goodness we were cross training at the time. So that, that's a huge accomplishment. Although it wasn't. One of my goals this year was to reorganize the department. We have a new huddle schedule. We meet weekly. I was gonna show y'all. We, we take our, we take our goals from the strategic plan and we go over 'em and we organize who's in charge of what, what's happened. Take quick notes. We reorganize those as as things that are on task in progress and behind. We, we really do use the strategic plan. It, it drives every decision we make.
It drives every process we try to build and I wanna make sure that my staff is clear. That's our goal. Our goal is to take what the community and you guys put together and make sure it's our shining star. So we actually do that. That's on a biweekly meeting, even though we yell at each other through the wall. Every second improved budget process. Again, I'm gonna give Kathy full credit for this. Our, our budget adjustments in January and our budget's, where they are now, and the budget meeting she just completed. And we're already onto budgets for next year. We're so far ahead of last year.
I can't, I don't remember what we were doing last year. Like she's amazing personnel meetings. We just completed, we did 10 of them in four days. Even though I wanted to do no more than one meeting a day, no one listens to me. We what'd you say? We did 10 meeting. Yeah, You got me. Sorry. You loved it. I, I said, I said I predicted they'd be the best personnel meetings, the smoothest we've ever had. And they were, they were. And it's because of all the hard work of hr, it's all the hard work of finance putting together people, people were ready to move and,
and understood where they were probably better than since I've been here. So I was proud of that. That's kind of our, our accomplishments, progress direction for the year. We'll be moving on to next year's goal, which a year ago we said was to execute a financial sustainability plan. If that's next year's goal, then I'm glad because that's what we've been talking about since probably November. In my department, that's what we're working on. We wanna plan a system of policy that anyone can pick up and continue and keep the district safe. That's it. We're really proud of the team. I hope you can tell I'm proud of my team.
I work with the best people in the world. We tell each other good morning every day. Speaker 10: It's 'cause you stole Heather from me. Thanks. No. So moving to the second part of staff success, it absolutely, we, I we kind of strategically plan ourselves to put the money first because without solid financials, the next portion can't even begin. So without having solid financials in a team that is able to provide that to us all the time and support the work that we do in partnership,
it is sometimes hard to make sure that our two departments aren't blending. Because there's a lot of times where we, we walk everywhere. We get our steps in definitely in the day between finance and HR because they, they really are one department. So big kudos to them. So I represent the part of staff success, which is maintain high job satisfaction and productive workplace and positive climate and culture. And so a lot of that work does, it is driven by the school. So you'll go into each school and you'll notice that each culture is different.
And, and Ryan's building, they, they all really love Ryan and the administrative staff and they are a family. And so we do rely on our buildings a lot to push climate and culture and really take care of those staff because they're the ones that are on the boots on the ground every day. So we have two pillars. So as you notice, as we go through the strategic plan, the pillars kind of get smaller. That's not necessarily a, a bad thing. And it's so that we can be specific. So our first initiative is staff attendance and then staff onboarding. And so we are kind of updating on that portion
and you may ask why, why did you choose staff attendance and staff onboarding? And so a lot of it staff attendance is the satisfaction comes from, you know, decreasing burnout, decreasing needs for creating sub plans. And then it also helps with our student attendance data, which then supplies our student achievement data, right? And so those all kind of go into climate culture and the productive workplace because if every time we have to call in a sub, which is we're gonna talk about subs next, it, it can decrease that productivity, drag them down and get them more burnout.
And then staff onboarding. I actually liked listening to our public comment 'cause that means that our goal is on track. That our community cares about, you know, how our staff are onboarded, how they're trained, what the expectations are, because I think that is something that we are really passionate about. So first I, I'm gonna talk about kind of some of our targets this year around staff attendance. So as you all know, we approved and revised our staff leave policy. We took five leave policies and combined them into one so that there isn't confusion
of who gets what leave. And, you know, being contradictory, this is, we've had a few holidays with our, our blackout date policy to try to reduce the absences the day before and returning from holidays. We have one coming up for spring break. And so we do have staff that appeal that, that need those special circumstances. But we do have that policy in place and our, our buildings are fall following that policy. And so that is a positive. We update and train all staff on absence management systems. So we do have two systems currently. So we had a, a slow rollout with smart find express.
And so we are still working to try to make sure that that software is the, you know, working to the best of our abilities with part of the standard operating procedures and like the internal auditing process. We are, we are working towards that goal to make sure that it's a fully functioning system and looking at efficiencies there. Our, our staff has done a really great job. I'll say we have amazing substitute coordinators in every building, including Michelle, which I'll, I'll talk about in a second at our district wide level. And they really do a great job of making sure that our reports come over monthly
because when payroll hits, which is this week, it, it's all hands on deck, right? Usually. And this month it actually went really well. You know, Michelle and Heather are so efficient with putting that work together that you don't really necessarily notice that it's payroll anymore. It used to be really chaotic and we try to clear our schedules because it was, it was really tough to get payroll out the door. And those two ladies have become so efficient in the last two months. It's absolutely amazing. So we're, we're really proud of that. Train, HR and finance on formal procedures related
to staff leave and absences. So I think we started getting a lot of questions of, you know, how many hours of bereavement do they get, how many hours of sick, how, how is it accumulated? And last year you heard a lot from Jason and I around, you know, how do we help have our financial secretaries help their staff know what their leave balance is? Angela can attest, she does a really great job of making sure that our classified staff and certified staff know how many hours they have. And so when our supervisors are signing their time guards electronically now, not on paper, which is absolutely awesome.
They, they know what they're signing and acknowledging for staff taking their time. So those are some big, huge targets and and I will say we've either met some of those or they're absolutely on track. And so I'm really excited about that. We wanted to create district wide incentive programs and I will just say the tiering of the immediate is, is a real thing of my, my my every day, our teams every day. And we have an amazing leadership team that gives us some grace to say we understand that Terry and immediate but also holds us, holds us accountable
to say, Hey, you have the strategic plan and you have these goals and where are you at? And let's give you a push. And I, I just really appreciate that also the work of Alex Carter to say, Hey, here's some ideas to move you forward. So I think the supports that we have in the strategic plan really help leaders like myself because yeah, we can't lead on our own and somebody's gotta start it off and, and keep it going. So without this team approach, this strategic plan wouldn't continue going because the tyranny, the media does get us drugged down. And so big kudos to our leaders, to my right and,
and pushing these incentives forward. So our big one is our March madness and we are at Elk Creek today, and you all are the leader right now for elementary schools with two absences for the month of March, which is, is a big deal. Our secondary leaders right now are tied with Rife Middle School and Riverside with two 12 absences this month so far. So it's kind of exciting. And we are going off of sub needed, which is sometimes kind of our absences 'cause kind of tough because some of these schools are really big, right?
Like Rife High School has way more staff that could possibly be out, but I think it is like an internal competitive thing and they get a trophy, really cool trophy and tacos. So it's a good incentive. So they get that and we're doing an end of the year prize. So all of you have seen the, the dash to the front of the stage to get prizes and we're actually tying those to attendance for our elementary, middle school high. Our departments classified overall school and departments. So we are including certified and classified in there with the lowest rates. So, and we are trying to get local prizes, so getting,
giving back to our community as well and trying to make sure that they can get benefit from somewhere in the community. So we're kind of excited about that and our team's getting really creative and, and fun on those prices. So we're, we're pretty excited about that staff piece. And moving forward with our initiative, we, we are trying, we kind of adjusted this. So we talked to you a lot about that. This is a living breathing document and part of our strategic plan, one thing that we wanted to increase based on the need was recruitment of day-to-day substitutes.
So this was not really our, our beginning target was to try to, obviously part of it is to recruit and retain staff, but the specifics around day-to-day substitute wasn't necessarily the, the beginning target. Now it is a huge target. I have an amazing partner, Michelle, that is just giving me all of the, the incentive to say like, she's, she's kicking butt all the time. She's phone screening and interviewing and hiring our substitutes. She, she's working her tail off to try to recruit these substitutes. And so if we go to our next page, we'll we'll kind
of talk about why we're needing to recruit substitutes. So she, so far in 2024 has hired 19 substitutes. So you can just imagine on, on the daily of what she's, what she's doing is processing pos, answering questions, the volume fingerprinting, all of these things. She has really recruited those staff. And the reason for that is, is on average we need 33 subs each day. Right now we have 31 actively available subs in our district. And so you think about,
and these are substitutes that aren't dedicated to working every single day. You know, they, these are people who are retired, they're a mom, they can help once in a while. Maybe they work a, you know, a a three day week and then they're off for a couple days. And so we really need to increase our, our substitute recruitment because staff are out and if you all have children or you have gotten the flu yourselves, you know that, that during flu and cold season it's, it's rampant so you can't really avoid that, right? We also have staff that go out for professional development 'cause we wanna make sure that they can continue their
education and, and things like that. So we, we obviously need those subs. Right now we have an absent rate on average of 9.4. The national average is 5.5. So we do want to see that come down. And so that is part of our incentive program to try to reduce the absenteeism rate. I will say that our fill rate is actually above national average. So that is the big thing to, to note too is that we're actually doing better than other school districts right now. You know, our fill rate is at 69% and the national average is at 55.
So we are doing better than the national average. So yes, what explain bill rate, which means being able to put teachers or substitutes and get somebody to cover the classes. So on average we only fill 69% of the absences. So you have principals, Ryan's really great at that. Angela's really great at that. They, they call the more board, sometimes they write on whiteboards and see who's out and can they have a paraprofessional cover, which I'll talk about in a second. Which, you know, we have paraprofessionals who get their sub license.
Angela just got our sub license to cover our classrooms. So we're pulling people out of administrative roles. Librarians are principals and they are required to go get their sublicense so that they can be in the classroom. And we we're pulling everybody that can, we have classes that get combined. So if you have to put 'em in the gym, do whatever and make sure that lasts in. That is like our last resort. But we also have where we have teacher to teacher coverage. So if they have a plan period, they can go during their plan period, which means they take up, they sacrifice their plan time and they have to plan before or after school on the weekend. And so they're sacrificing that too,
which plays into our burnout rate, right? If they are sacrificing that plan time more and more, but they're, they're team players and they're doing what they can to cover these classrooms. So that is a huge kudos to how much they, you know, our district does whatever it can to make sure that there's people in front of our kids making sure that the progress is still moving forward. With that being said, we are, like I said, doing the teacher to teacher coverage staff to staff coverage. And so we are giving an incentive for that for our certified staff. You know, they get $30 for the first period and then $60 max
'cause there's only two planned periods. And then our classified staff get paid for half day and full day incentive and we're utilizing a grant for that to pay for that incentive. So thank you Simone for letting us tap into your grant for that. And then the next one is recruitment. So utilizing the grant again to pay for sub licenses and fingerprints, it costs about $116 with those two together for a one year authorization. And it costs $146 for a three to five year authorization.
There are certain qualifications in order to get a three to five year bachelor's degree experience, things like that. And so one of the tactics is going to be tapping into the first one is 150 volunteers that we have in this district. So that is really awesome. And Chelsea, who is on our communications department, created this beautiful postcard that we'll be going out to those 150 volunteers to try to get them to sign up to be a substitute if they have time to come in. And they're already connected to our district.
They already have fingerprints, we've already ran their background checks, we know they're great people. Yeah. So we really wanna tap into them. And CBE actually started this before, Kathy is pretty awesome and she taps into her volunteers and kind of sneaks it in to say, well, do you wanna come work here? You're here all the time, why not? So that's pretty cool in the recruitment piece. And if you haven't met or spent time with Michelle, the previous slide, that is her beautiful smiling face and that's the face that you're gonna get to see every time you walk in the door because she really is the face of our recruiting for subs.
And thanks again to our communications team for creating a landing page on our website for substitutes so they can get all the information quickly. So we wanna say thanks for that. And a big bonus of the efficiency, I just have to say this, we paid 27 subs this month, so Thursday we'll pay 27. And is that, that is the most subs we've paid in three years. So that's pretty awesome that they worked that much. That was huge. And next is the onboarding process. Sorry, I'm taking up a ton of time, just apologize for that. This is something that I, I'm really passionate about
and you know, the HR director needs to tap into their, their passion too, right? You have to remember why you got into this profession and what you really love. And a lot of what I love is, you know, why do you wanna get in the profession? Why do you wanna stay in the profession? And if you have all of the tools necessary, we may not necessarily get paid the mo the most, we may not have the best compensation on the world because we get our funding from the, the state and, and we're not the most funded thing out there. But if you are trained well, you love the boss that you work
for, you're gonna wanna stay for a long time. And so one of the pieces that we are working for, for all staff, including our substitutes, which is something that we've added, is making sure that our onboarding process is consistent. So we are creating a template for all staff and classifications. So what we're starting with is kind of a, an onboarding packet with just the basics. So one of the things is, is making sure that all of our staff have their bell schedule, what time does work start and what time does it end?
What time is lunch? You think that's really silly, but sometimes they don't have that when they show up on the first day contact information for their supervisor. What is the hierarchy? What, when do they get paid? I mean those basics. We have started this work with our orientations. I would love to have any of you join us next year for our big orientations in January. We had a ton of people in that room. We had 2032. Yeah, like we ended up with, yeah, 32 in this room. And they, they were a really fun group. We had a great time with 'em. And we get some larger groups in there
and it, it's really great to see them and we put all this information in there. We're also going through their job descriptions to make sure their expectations are clear. Sometimes if you've ever read your job descriptions, it's very wordsmithed and you're like, well what does that actually mean? And we wanna really use simplified language to make sure that staff really know the expectations in their job description. Which hence then turns into a checklist for when somebody is training a paraprofessional to say they need to be able to understand, you know, what deescalation is in a in a student.
How do they handle that from this age level to this age level with our special education paraprofessionals? What is an appropriate hold or restraint for a child? What are the proper protocols? Those are big, big things to make sure that staff understand because like our public comment said, is there, there's legal requirements for those staff and, and that's a huge burden for that department. So we wanna make sure they understand that and we are partnering with our special education department to make sure that we refine those skills.
The other one is professional development presentations that we need to do around that onboarding process to try to help our staff and our leadership and prove that onboarding process and really listen to the experience. If, if you've seen our consent agendas, we have four principals that are putting in for retirement for transition years working in retirement and they've got a lot of experience in this district and others as well. So we really want to tap into those folks before they go onto the retirement years. So that's one of our big levels
and really working with these, these schools on what do they currently do, what's really going well and how can we tweak things to make things improve. So that was a lot of words, but I, I will just say that a lot of the work that I, I do and, and lead it is really the work that our principals and paraprofessionals and administrative staff do. And I just get to speak on their behalf. So I am really proud of this strategic plan and no matter who is getting to lead it, it's definitely going to move forward.
So any questions is really our last question for you guys Speaker 2: For Bri do you have any questions? Speaker 4: I I do. I would like to know Devin, and how does, how would you say collaborative solutions help support staff success? Speaker 10: Yeah, so part of our scope of work every year includes, as you guys have seen right, salaries and compensation. So salaries and benefits is one of those.
And that's obviously part of the financial success because they need to be able to be paid a wage to do that. And the benefits that go along with that be be able to ensure themselves or their dependents if available. And so they, you know, speak to their constituents on, on the salary portion of, you know, what are they hearing, what, you know, they weigh in on data that we present. And so they very much represent their schools. We have every school represented right now with the exception of Highland, right?
I think they're the missing school right now. But anyway, so they, they really get to listen to their constituents and we have a mix of classified and certified and admin from those different schools. So that's kind of nice. You get a mix and so they focus on that financial piece and they are able to weigh in of what they're hearing, what their constituents are saying and then they bring that to the table so that hopefully our staff wanna say they're able to have a living wage, like things like that. The next portion that they weigh in on for staff successes, our calendars every year. So you get brought that they give input on,
even recently in February, we did not have that holiday previously because they heard from their constituents that kids get a little uneasy in the break between Christmas break and spring break and they're like, it would be really ni you know, they hurt. It would be really nice to have that breakup, you know, have that long weekend there. And so that's something that they weigh in on. They also hear from their constituents of when they return. So that calendar work is really important. And when the proposition of, you know, do we go back to a five day school week or a four day school week? What are they hearing from their parents
and their staff as far as, you know, is this gonna work well or are staff able to adapt to that? So I think that is the big piece. And the other one is on communication. I asked, I said, where do your staff pay attention to communication? You know, and so that's one of those, is it in the bathroom? Is it in the break room? Do they read their emails? Do they use the chat? 'cause everybody's a little bit different. And so they get to weigh in on how is, you know, how are we communicating to staff? And so I think that's really helpful because if staff feel like they're getting information then you know, they feel like they're well informed. So they really kind of help us get the message out too
because, you know, we're only, you know, our HR team or our finance team or any other departments or adjusted department. But if they're in the building, they're kind of the boots on the ground, they can help make sure that staff feel well informed. So I will say staff satisfaction with all of those things and our scope of work for this year and whichever year it changes a little bit, but they, they align with the strategic priority. If you'll see in the scope of work, it is tied to a strategic priority, which is really important. They started that last year and I, I thought it was really cool that they wanted
to make sure that they were, the work that they were doing aligned with one of those priorities. Speaker 4: So would you say through collaborative solutions, employees definitely have a voice when it comes to salaries and benefits and things of that nature? Speaker 10: Yeah, so I I would absolutely say yes. 'cause they have a representative. So it's like our, our government, right? We elect it, know a governor to speak on our behalf. We have Perry Will is our representative here. And, and so our, they, they listen to their constituents so
that, that's the point of collaborative solutions so that it's not just administrative staff, HR and the superintendent making all the decisions for the whole body because how do we know what someone is thinking from Elk Creek versus Riverside? And so they get to bring that perspective of their climate and culture, what their needs are, what their population is, because they may, you know, let's say their school has a bunch of people who are single first year teachers, you know, and that's really their population and they, you know, they're really on their own and, and that's what they care about. And then we have other senior staff that have been here
for 30 plus years. They have family spouses and they've been here a long time. That climate and culture is gonna be a little bit different. It's really important that we make sure that there is a representative from every school so that we know what the climate and culture and needs are. It's really important that our members take it very seriously that they're representing the whole body. So when we give our story, I'm not sure you know, Britain or any of you who have gone, they get to bring the whole story of examples of things that they've heard of, you know, last year
or I think it was two years ago when we made the big move because we got our kickbacks from CBT, you know, we got our, our refund from the 2020 lack of usage. And then, you know, we had some of those big bumps. We were moved salaries and benefits because we did get that funding in that big lump sum. I got to bring the story of this was the first time they have ever been able to be put on benefits that that was a great break and that was just somebody that I had heard of and our staff I'd also heard of people being frustrated and this is what their needs were. And so those voices get heard by bringing forward story.
A lot of times they try to leave out names just so that it's ambiguous, but that there's a whole section, I think it's like two pages long, even on the benefit story of what each individual story was, pros and cons. So that's really where the voices come forward. Okay. And we also have feedback form. I don't, I don't, I will say I don't know how highly utilized that form is, but there is an opportunity to fill it out to say I have a concern or I have an interest in, and Fiber solutions is, has to review it every single time we meet, so. Speaker 1: Okay, thank you. And how are the representatives chosen in each school?
Speaker 10: Oh gosh, I'm gonna have to have Lisa and Heather help me because I really don't know, because that's really A-W-G-E-A, they really helped run that recruitment effort. Speaker 11: So over the course of time, the WGA president is charged with building the membership of that. We've had, I would say a healthy mix of WGA rep representatives that are in our teachers union, as well as those on collaborative solutions that are not representation representative of the union. And 'cause I think I've been on Collaborative solutions now almost as long
as Breeze has been on DI have been on collaborative solutions for 11 years. And so that being said, I I would say that there, it, there are volunteers, they typically will contact the WGA president first, and then if they struggle to actually fill, fill the spots, then they'll lean in on Lisa and I, you know, through the administrators to recruit the spots. But typically it's a healthy mix of classified and certified staff. We definitely have tried to ensure that there are administrators on that team teacher representatives as well as support staff
to represent the district. Speaker 1: What do we do when we, so like Highland, you guys believe isn't, doesn't have representation. How do we get that out there so that we can get that school represented? Speaker 11: Well, what we, we reach out to every school every year trying to recruit as best we can. I think one of the barriers is that it is a three year commitment. So once you're in, you're in for a very long period of time and rightfully so, when you're making those kinds of large scale decisions that involve some kind of education and knowing, I think you guys can feel that from a school board's perspective.
It just takes some time to understand the content of which they're basing their decision making on. And so, Speaker 10: And Anthony does put out on the community, like, so there's like a, a chat group like in an announcements and stuff, and I see him all the time like trying to recruit people and he puts flyers out, he taps into the union members and he, he really tries to sell himself. He really does a good job. He nailed it. People and the Speaker 11: Team are compensated. So not only are they giving their time and I mean eight hours at a pop on a Friday, right? And you meet several times at least approximately once a
month for the entire duration of a year. That's a lot of time that they're logging in. A lot of time spent on big, huge discussions around some of these large scale decisions that ultimately come to you as a board to make the, you know, to make the final decision in, in your actions. But there are times, and this is one of those years of which we filled it to the best of our abilities and, and we've got some really great, I would say dedicated staff members. And I would say that once those decisions are made or the common messages is put out to staff, Highland is not excluded by any mo by any means.
And, and we just have to make sure that we're communicating to the departments potentially that aren't represented as well as the schools. Speaker 10: Okay, thank you. And so, you know, we do have somebody from custodial transportation, we have paraprofessionals, teachers like secretaries, secretaries, there's, it's like an tab. Fish is a teacher slash like admin. She has our administrator's license. There's grade level instructional coach, like, so there is a a a large mix Speaker 5: Large cross section of the staff. Speaker 10: Yeah. And you know, from all different backgrounds.
Some that have been there in the district for a while, some that are brand new this year, which is, is really cool. Speaker 5: So I think it's important to highlight the fact that the process in which CS goes through this, especially coming off of last week, last times meeting about, you know, it is a tough decision. I I think we all discussed the exact, the, the bump in rates when it comes to spouse. It, it's not lost on us, it the financial burden that places on our staff, but we're in a time when, you know,
all the covid funding's dried up. There is no free money to be given out. We started the year prior to formulas being redone at hundred 70th, hundred 60th out hundred 70th. So a hundred 60th that I'm 170. They redid the formulas and we ended up right at a hundred 60th again, which is statistically amazing. It really is. I think we've all, we've all expressed the fact that I wish we could give the teachers the world. I wish we had money to where we could, we, we could, would, we could stay away from these hard decisions. But I think it's important to, to highlight the fact
that we do listen when teachers email us. I mean this is coming from, I just have insurance for the first time LA you know, this year as a private and it, it's, it's expensive. It's, there's no great answer and I just wanna highlight that we don't take that lightly. So, Speaker 10: And it's heavy on them too. Oh yeah. I mean when they get ready to take a vote, I mean I think all of us are like, okay. And we do take a pause a lot of the times is like, okay, like is this right or not? And take a recess
and try to re you know, let's go back over this information and let's really look, look at all this information. Is this what we want? And the hard thing with benefits and we, we talked about last time is how do we bring 'em together benefits and salaries? Because if you make this decision here, you may not be able to make this decision over here. And you know, we also hear from our constituents on, on salaries of, you know, I've heard a lot of our administrators that were frozen for 10 years and a lot of our teachers and so they didn't get steps, they didn't get annual steps, which causes their retirement to be way less. Yeah. And that's gonna affect them way down the road.
So if we're not able, you know, we have some staff that are holding off on retiring because they're banking on getting one more step and getting a raise that next year. And if we can't give them a raise, you know, are they not gonna be able to retire? Are they not gonna be able to afford that? And did they wait one more year for no reason? And so those are, those are stories too that, you know, that there's this other future plan that you know, is really important to staff too is, you know, and, and recruiting. You know, I I'm going to these recruiting fairs and I have this very beautiful packet of benefits and I'm like, but look,
and we you have a retirement plan at 21 years old, this is so cool. And they're like, yeah, what's your starting salary? You know, like, and, and that hurts my heart a lot because there's a lot of time and effort that that gets put into that. And I'm like, yeah, but look, their PTA is so involved and they, these kids are so happy and they have all this technology and their buildings. Isn't this so cool? What your starting salary? You know? And so we hear those informa that information too. So it's like, and but then you also hear, hey my, my spouse like has this chronic illness and my child has this illness and they were just in the hospital
and I'm gonna go into debt paying our medical bills. Right? So all of those things tug on your heartstrings and it, it's heavy on, on that population that has to make a really hard decision when they're not the director of finance, they're not the director of human resources, they're not the superintendent and they're going off the best information that they have. Speaker 5: I think it's a good system though to get their buy-in, to get, to get what's happening in the building. Speaker 10: Sure. My question kind of goes back to you talking about teachers leaving, coming, going. Can you kind of touch on the critical
shortage working retiree? What, what qualifies someone for that and what does that look like? Yeah, so para makes the rules and they're actually statutes. So in the state statutes, so they go in and they lobby, right? So para makes the rules every year. So they set the, the stipulations. So critical shortage working retirees for 2025. Our teachers, bus drivers, food service, oh gosh did I say bus drivers, food service principals and superintendents qualify this year.
And then in July of 2025, substitutes will no longer be qualified for critical shortage that will sun, that program will sunset. And so what that means, critical shortage means from January 1st of a calendar year till December 31st of a calendar year. So January, December they can work as many days as they want. They have no limitations on days. And what that means is, is that the district will pay them their salary as normal, nothing really changes. And then what happens is they get to also pull from their para retirement fund. So they're double-dipping in sense.
So they're getting their retirement check and their staff tech, a lot of staff put that into savings. They pay off debt that they have, things like that. So it's really a way to incentivize these staff that have been here a long time, they're eligible to retire, to stay on and continue working, pull people back at a retirement 'cause we are in a critical shortage need of educators, bus drivers, food service, things like that. So, and we, as far as following years, 'cause we have staff, we have one staff member right now that she's on her last available year for six years.
She's been coming back and coming back, which you can take a year off of critical shortage designation and then come back and do another six if you want. Which is kind of cool but what have you, one of the, the also situations is every year your principal and the superintendent have to approve you to be a critical shortage working retiree. So if we have to cut teaching positions because the student count's not there, we may say we can't actually can't approve you in this school to be a critical shortage working retiree or in this department.
However you can apply somewhere else in the district if there's an opening, things like that. Or you know, if there's not a need. So we have the ability to deny them to be working retirees because once they do re retire it's, it's a year to year basis. And so that's usually what is based on is need performance, things like that. And then there's also the other designations that you will hear, which is a 140 day designation. That just means from January to December you can only work 140 days in that calendar year. So a lot of the times, but usually we use that for counselors,
instructional coaches, things of that nature that don't qualify for critical shortage so that they can get that working retiree year. So, and then 110 days is the standard working after retirement day and that's usually what our substitutes fall under. Speaker 2: Thank you. That makes sense. Yep. Over explained. I had two but you already answered 'em in your presentation so I'm good. Oh Speaker 10: Thank you. Speaker 2: Great. Speaker 1: I don't have any questions. Nope. And written had to sign off but he'll sign back on. He had to get better internet.
Speaker 2: Okay, we're good. Yeah. You have no Speaker 10: Questions for Speaker 2: Jason Page that looks, they laughed. I got in behind you usually Speaker 10: He's the funny one. Thank you guys. Thank Speaker 2: You. Thank you. Thank you for all your hard work. Yeah, thank you. Speaker 1: Is everybody good? Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: Okay, let's just keep on moving forward. Assistant super report. It's me. So lots of things going on in the district. Last week we hosted two SAR R meetings, that is our student attendance review board. These are cases that of when students go all over 20 absences that,
and we've tried all of the meetings with the parents and we've tried all of our interventions. We bring them into the district office, we bring a lot of community members in. DHS is often there. Mine Springs is there, everybody advocates are there. We bring them in, we talk about, we bring the parent in and the student and we talk about how can we help, how can we put together a plan that will be successful for your student to come to to come to school. This is pretty much our last step before we move on to truancy court.
And the judge says you have to send your kid to school. That is the state law in, in Colorado. So we had two of those, lots of family engagement, lots of solutions that flew around. One was secondary, one was elementary. We got these kids back on track and their attendance is, is up this week. They're here. So that those are good things. Shouts out to Amanda Vaughn and all of those community partners for SU supporting the SAR idea and wrapping around students to get to solutions. We have very few students who end up in truancy court. We've had three this year. Okay. So that's pretty good.
Our wonder is making strides in supporting our at risk students with our high needs pop student enrollment in our individual support plans. Shouting out to Chelsea Protz for leading this initiative also to the tech team and the data team for all their supporting efforts. We somewhat forgot to include them in our original rollout. So they have literally been chasing after us to, to get the the guidelines and the guidance around that. So it's just been wonderful to watch how those programs are being successful and how we are are again finding a way to get
to our hardest kids to make, make plans for support. Coleridge students are volunteering at the one door pantry. They're also the one door has just launched a food drive and I just have to say thank you to the students who are organizing that and of course the people at one door who are supporting their their efforts. Last week the district participated in assist training from the Colorado Office of School Safety. This was an initiative and training to enhance our ability to support students in crisis. Just thank you for those people who came out to support
that and to learn more. Shouts out to Sarah be and Diane Canna. They've been taking on hands on hands only CPR for our students. 754 students have been trained this year to save lives. That's a really big deal. Wow, that's awesome. Yeah and I don't think they're done. They haven't hit them all yet so I think they're gonna keep going. Maintenance this week completed 80 work orders that just shows their great commitment to maintaining our safety and our efficiency learning environments. Shouts to shout out to John Oldman,
his crew for all their hard work. John implemented this week a breach protocol that after the breach in this school was developed by him and his safety team. And then there was a door left open at one of our buildings this this week and we implemented the protocol, made sure everything was safe, nothing was hidden and it was a great success. So we're very proud of how we respond and then how we get better. The sub rates were the next thing I was gonna cover. Devin did a great job at that. I think one of the things for you guys to be aware of is that that fill rate has gone down from past years.
We've been tracking it since Covid and every year we've landed about an 80% fill rate. And this year when we started our personnel meetings, we were about 67% fill rate, which is a huge difference. And this is where the stresses come in is because the principals and their teams, that team of people from Elk Creek stands around every morning and figures out how everything's gonna get done that day. How are all the tasks going to be assigned to people who are there when other people are absent? And it is stressful and it is a hard assignment.
We believe that that the sub fill rate going down like that is due to our permanent subs. We were using our covid money to pay for the permanent subs. We had a lot of them, our fill rate was better, it was easier on our staff and then the Covid money went away and it was costing us $1.2 million. So we cut that down, every building cut at least one permanent sub some more and they, we see that in the fill rates And I do believe that we we're gonna come on in on budget around $750,000 rather than that 1.2 million.
So it, there is good savings there and hopefully that can go to help reward all of the hard workers who are doing that coverage because when there's not a sub, it is somebody else doing the work. The kids are still there and we are still educating shouts out to Michelle, Devon and the HR team for all their work in this area. 'cause it isn't just about the subs and getting more subs, it's also about bringing the teachers in and making sure that the kids are getting the best first instruction. We know all
of us know when the teacher is there, the kids learn more. That's who they have the relationship with. The subs come in, they follow all the directions, they work really hard. But that's a hard job to do it the way the teacher would have done it when you're only there for a day and you don't even know their names. That concludes my report unless you have any questions. Speaker 2: I don't think so. I do not. Speaker 1: Brittany are you back on? I am gonna go with no. Okay. So now on to to you Heather for your, your super report. Speaker 11: You bet. So in staff success, our finance team is, as you heard from Jason tonight, really truly
they are in real time developing budget monitoring dashboards to improve our financial transparency and decision making. And so once those dashboards are accurate and actually working, then we'd like to launch those and then have those available not only to the school board of course, but to the public And so Jason has created a new educational video. It is not 37 minutes, it is 22, but it explains the revenues, expenses, and the fund balance we're gonna share with the admin and design reels. And so almost piecemeal out that long content of which
to the audience of which those that are closest to the dollars and that need to be fiscally responsible. Our financial secretaries, our principals, our assistant principals, our director team, but then the staff at large really does need to understand to the best of their abilities in small chunks of what actually our revenue streams are and our expenditures, our fund balance the rating of one 60, you know, out of 1 78. And so that is what they are getting ready to do in the next month. And the HR and finance team is head of schedule,
if you can only imagine in the FY 26 budget planning process. And that really comes down to the tight standardized operating procedures that they're working together on as a group. That is them going into the buildings and working with the financial secretaries on their practices. And so I would say it is absolutely all interconnected and, and these two teams are really leading the charge in student achievement. We've been advertising for a three, I would say the trifecta of measures of student success. Three meetings that we really wanted to talk to community members as well as staff.
We actually had a rifle high school student join us too. So I would say a student representation as well to really talk through and focus on how our district supports academic growth through the skills of the graduate profile. And so we're really trying to build on the upper upperly up operations, I guess. Huh. Operationalizing, how about that? Of that graduate profile, we've had two, two of those three meetings. We talked about report cards at K 12, how we might re re design them in the future. Simone found report cards from the like 1940s all the way to
to date all over the country so that we would have from K 12, so that we would know what those look like and what we wanna glean from them to make our reporting purpose, you know, more effective and going forward in the future. That was a very fun meeting for sure, as to get the feedback from that, that group. The next one that we are hosting will, we're inviting our local business partners in and really collaborating and deepening their understanding of our grad profile and what they're looking for in the workforce. The academic achievement group is finalizing plans for the April 4th strategic planning day,
and they'll establish a district-wide data review team to drive the continuous improvement. So they are deep in it as well. And then Cole Ridge High School is developing an outdoor recreational leadership CTE pathway, and they are working on course offerings and teacher certifications to enhance career readiness. I think we've heard a lot about some of those pathways that are established at Rifle High School. And I would say that, you know what, both of our high schools are gonna have special offerings in our future. And then some shout outs, I wanna give a shout out to Rifle and Riverside Middle Schools.
They competed in the Brain Bowl, which is something that after Covid, we weren't sure if we could resurrect. And these two schools have and competed against each other. They've had growing participation, and there are plans to expand the competition outside of our own district for next year. So that's an exciting thing for them. A shout out to Mary in all the kitchens I shared with you that last week, it was national school breakfast week, they served over 13,000 meals in regards to the breakfast promoting healthy nutrition. And they even had a farmer's market kind of fruit display
that I think the kids were wild about. I cannot absolutely give enough shout outs to our strategic plan team. You heard tonight from Jason and Devin, but it also, Amanda Bingman and Simone and Jacob and Lisa and Roger and Theresa is not only have we been regularly meeting and revisiting and moving those strategic initiatives outside of the tyranny of the immediate, but we also are planning and are proud to be hosting an in-house field trip for six other districts around the state in late April
in collaboration with Alex Carter and CEI. And so this team has been on fire prepping the celebrations of which we can brag about to our colleagues around the state and as well as discuss the challenges and problems of practice that we also are all facing around the state. So I just wanna thank you for being all in because this team is one second to none. And then the most exciting news of today, I would say today is a shout out to the Coleridge Boys basketball team. They made it to the great eight.
They played this afternoon at one 30. They won that game 44 to 39. And the first time ever, we will advance to the final four. So, yay. Speaker 1: Pretty amazing. Speaker 11: That's awesome. And Ryan and the Elk Creek team had watch parties going on here at Elk Creek, so even our little guys were definitely tuned in too, what was going on with our, our Titans. So, Speaker 1: And I heard that they were doing math problems at the same time. Absolutely. So they wanted to win. How many baskets do they need to shoot? How many points or is the other team behind? So, you know, it's educational, so I appreciate that.
Thank you. Anybody have any questions? Nope. Okay. All right. So now we'll go on to board reports and requests. So I'll start, we'll just kind of keep it going in the loop, so chance you're up. Oh, Speaker 5: Thank you. You're Speaker 1: Welcome. Speaker 5: I was gonna talk about Coal Ridge, but you stole my thunder. That's amazing. Hopefully those kiddos know how important they are to their community and how important they're to the kids in this, not just this elementary school, but all elementary schools. It's great to give those kids something to look forward to. Real quick, I want to mention it, it hasn't been
talked about much because we've been busy, but we have not forgotten nor ever stopped putting student safety at the forefront of all our, all our decisions. There are many conversations we've had to have, have with finance to find out if we can even afford it, to find out what our options are with funding it. And I'm referring to the camera system. The, we met yesterday, capital Projects along with Theresa and, and John and, and Roger
and the Wallet and Jason himself. And we got, I believe, a good plan moving forward. Speaker 1: Thanks for the new nickname for Jason. The wallet. The wallet right now. I know Speaker 5: We are going after the best grant. That's the, that the presentation is in a few weeks? In May. In May, yeah. With, and we, and we're using this project as what we're presenting on, and then there's also a federal mineral lease grant that we can go after, after we're awarded. Well the, that cycle's in October and that cycle's in October. But these are funding as Jason called braided funding
that we're gonna use utilize to, to, to get this project off the ground and moving forward. There's a best case scenario. We're good financially that way. Worst case scenario, we're still moving forward. It just, I think we've decided as capital projects, it might have to be a phased implementation, you know, and then at that point it would obviously be highest priority areas, you know, probably your high schools down to middle schools and then elementary schools. That's worst case scenario. One of the things they were really wor they were really
consider considering was the compatibility of the system. Making sure that it is going to last into the, into the foreseeable future. I mean, technology changes so quickly, but making sure it's compatible, making sure the entire system is compatible with each other. They've, they've, John's done a great job and Roger's done a great job preparing specifications for what we're after. We do have a rough estimate that we're working with. I mean, that's not by any means ready, ready to be presented on, but it gives us an idea of where, where we're at.
So there's that, let me find here. I really enjoyed district accountability coming in and giving us an update. And I just love the spring. I think it might be one of my favorite times of year time of the year, you know, when the sun start. Time change was rough this year, I'm not gonna lie. But seeing the kids actually play outside, you know, you see, you know, CRVI noticed was playing baseball, practicing baseball when we guy came in. And I love this time of year looking forward to soccer, looking forward to Speaker 2: Baseball, Speaker 5: Baseball, Coleridge, baseball now.
I mean, it's rifle Speaker 2: Baseball. Speaker 5: Rifle baseball. I'm a cool, rich guy. Speaker 2: Sorry, Speaker 5: We Speaker 2: Won't Speaker 5: Hold that. We all can't be perfect. Speaker 2: We won't Speaker 10: Hold it against shit. Sorry. Speaker 2: Just kidding. But, Speaker 5: And I really appreciate though, Devin coming in and talking about the benefits and, and the, the heartache and, and and difficulty in finding the path forward. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 5: So I think that's about it all I have. Oh, I was gonna talk about superintendent search.
I appreciate everybody coming and participating in that. It was a process that Speaker 2: I, Speaker 5: I think I'm already on the record of saying I'm not very fond of. And nobody really likes change. And I've found through this process that I'm one of those people that don't really care for change. So we're looking forward. I think everybody and doing the best we can, Speaker 2: So thank you. Good. Cassie? Speaker 10: Yeah. Broken record here. Congrats to Ridge Basketball. We've been watching them all season traveling far.
I think we went to Craig to watch them play. We went to Palisade. We're big fans. We obviously have kids that go to school there. We do not have anybody on the basketball team. But watching that team work together over this season has been amazing. More, in more than one way. And I linked that back to, I listed out all these committees and I look back up and I'm like, oh, it's not committee reports, it's just board reports. So I don't know if committee got left out of there or we're just generally speaking.
But you know, I, I've, in the last two months, I mean, you look at my calendar, I've put time at hr, curriculum safety, Latinos, dac, superintendent search, meeting with community members regarding policies, community members regarding questions that come from public comment, answering texts, answering emails. And I'm not the only one, no, my fellow board members do it as well. On top of trying to be in front of the public at community events, basketball games, now we have basketball, soccer, and golf.
I forgot about that. Track. Track baseball and baseball. Yeah. And trying to make ourself available in the public. And I feel like the community likes seeing us out there, but when I get a text or a call that in the staff and in people that we have tried to make ourselves available to, to hear their needs and wants and how to work with, it's really hard for me, I'm not gonna lie. 'cause we're all a team and we gotta work together.
And we have an open door policy. We've all set it from day one. And I feel like some of the stuff that we feel that's brought to us, we go through it. We actually even educate ourself before we come to the board meeting and take an hour or two hours to listen to presentations and hear what people have to say so we can make educated decisions or the right decision for our school district. So I just, I just am having a hard time
with a report tonight to say the least. Because I look at Core's team and they've come in the last week they had some blows that came at them in the last, I guess it's been two weeks now. I mean, they had some blows come at them. And you know what? The team didn't stop. They picked up, they kept going, they kept working and it shows. And I feel like a lot of us do do that, but those blows sometimes are just not very fun. So just maybe be thinking about that stuff.
I think I hear Bri is Bri back. Bri is back. Hi Bri. Oh. But anyways, I do really appreciate the people that came out for the superintendent search. Mike Chance says, you know, in all of this, we don't like change. But it was nice seeing the community come together in all of that. And, and it's just a another step in another direction. You know, just positioning a little bit different. And we're gonna keep moving. You are gonna keep going. We're gonna make the top, we're gonna be at the top.
I wouldn't even say we're changing direction. We're not really changing direction. We're just like, we gotta keep going. And it's not all bad. And I think that, you know, trying to stay focused on the big picture is key. Speaker 1: Next, next, Scott, Speaker 18: Well, further you get ahead the line, the more repetitive we get. Speaker 1: I know. Speaker 18: Yeah. But no a, a big shout out to collaborative solutions. That committee is, is tasked to making tough decisions and they're not gonna please everybody all the time with all your decisions.
So I know they do the best they can. And so I just thank them for that and for being out there and, and putting that on the line. Echo the superintendent, search, all the people who signed up just to be a part of it. And then the committees who were actually there, the people who came in for Thursday night, thank you very, very much. That was very important. I thought we had good participation and I thought it was very important. And it showed the interest in our community and, and what they wanna see. Good luck to, let's see, break a leg to the rifle High school Theater department. That sounds pretty cool. So hopefully that goes what?
Speaker 1: Yeah, opening nights tomorrow. Tomorrow, tomorrow night. Yep. Yep. Speaker 18: So I hope that goes well. I'm sure it will. And then to coach Harvey and the guys over in Denver, you know, like you said, Cassie, they, they just show a lot of resilience. They bought into Paul's philosophy of basketball. Their defense is tenacious. I wouldn't want to go up against it. They're very athletic. They come at you and they're giving it there all, every single night. It's fun to watch. So good luck this weekend. Speaker 1: Does it, Speaker 18: They they Speaker 1: Stay there till it's, they Speaker 18: Yeah, they go
Speaker 10: Friday. No, they're coming home. They came home today. They'll go back on Speaker 1: Friday. Are they coming back? Okay. Or night or Friday morning. Yeah. Okay. Okay. That's right. It's home on Wednesday. Yeah. Speaker 18: So they played, they played but this weekend, Friday and then Speaker 1: Weekend. Speaker 18: The last state. Speaker 10: Yeah. If they win tomorrow or Speaker 1: Friday. Friday when they win tomorrow, yeah. Yeah, Friday. Friday. When they win, when they win on Friday, then the championship games on Saturday. Perfect. Which, Speaker 18: Real exciting Speaker 1: To see. Yeah. I need a new That's awesome. Thank you. I'll go ahead and go and then we'll save the best for last
with written again, it feels like forever, since we've done board reports. So there's a lot going on. I mean, there was wrestling, there was basketball, and of course it's again, ditto. It is awesome to see our, our students going to state and progressing that way. And especially, you know, I mean, Coleridge has done basketball, baseball, we had wrestlers represent state at both high schools and we had female wrestlers, repre represent both of our high schools at State as well.
Our cheer team, our dance teams. I mean, they went to nationals, going to nationals, which is, which is amazing. So the dedication, the resilience, the hard work, and I'm gonna go with the tenacity that these students show to get to the level that they're at, is just, just amazing. And is not only a shout out to the students and to their families, but to the teachers and the coaches. So with that, now it's baseball season, track season and golf.
So, no pun intended. Spring sports are definitely in full swing. We had, so, and, and like Scott said too, the rifle high school play, spring play is opening night is tomorrow. I believe Rifle Middle School is going to see it during the day, which is, is exciting as well. I'd like to give a shout out to Rifle Middle School when they were talking about, when Devon was talking about the attendance for the staff. So going to month, the quarterly assemblies for the honor roll and they recognize the students for attendance, but they've also started recognizing
the teachers for attendance. So it's, so it's kind of awesome to see and it's nice to have that friendly competition between the two middle schools, which is always nice and fun to see. 'cause you know, rifles better than Riverside. Right? James? Easy. Just because you guys want it, football doesn't mean, but we won't go there. We win wherever it matters. Yep. It's exciting to hear that CTE program that Coleridge is getting ready to start with the outdoor leadership casting. And I did attend the leadership forum last night at,
that was at hosted the Ute, which quite honestly, it was my first time. I had no idea what to expect. And we actually had community leaders from Glenwood all the way to Rifle. So it was nice to hear that we're not the only ones dealing with some of the issues that we're dealing with. And it was nice to, to also hear the things that we're doing well and that they've noticed. It was a lot. It, yeah, it, it was a lot. It was definitely, I went home and I, I was done. So no. And I again, thank you for the, I,
I feel like a broken record, but change is never easy. I am probably the weird one where I actually, I, I don't wanna say I enjoy change, but I embrace change because usually with change that comes a learning opportunity as well. That being said, we definitely have some big shoes to fill and I'm not gonna look that way. So to have the community come out and to realize how important it is for our superintendent search, because they are, she is a huge
beacon of light in our community. So it was, it was nice to hear the community feedback and Friday was a long day. No, don't cry. I told you I couldn't look over there. Friday was a very long day. So it was there to the community members that stuck it out to the staff that came and stuck it out. And to the rest of us, that stuck it out. So thank you to everybody. Bri Best or last Speaker 4: Thank you f I'd like to thank the team for covering for me.
Work has taken me down south for a little while, so I really appreciate everybody being there tonight covering. I'd also like to thank ECE for hosting. I wish I was a part of that tonight. I always loved being in that school, Speaker 1: By the way. You missed some really good food. Speaker 4: I don't doubt it. I don't doubt it. I had some Tijuana tacos, so I'm pretty unhappy with, as far as the super search that took place on Thursday and Friday, I really want to give a big shout out to Rifle High School and Cole Ridge for hosting that to have two
of our big schools on display. I thought it made our finalists even more excited to, for the opportunity to be a part of Garfield Re two. I felt it was awesome having the community staff and a couple students be a part of that search and get their feedback. And, and once again, we really studied, stayed focused on the strategic client and we, we made it clear that that was a, an expectation for our next superintendent. I do feel through that process, we found some a, a leader that's gonna help keep Garfield R two going in the right direction.
We made it clear we didn't think we needed a big horse correction, but we, I feel we found someone that's gonna bring some, some talents to our district that I believe in that I'm proud to be a part of. And I think he's gonna be a great addition for it. I really wanna do a shout out to Mary and the team with breakfast last week. I, I'm a, I'm a firm believer and breakfast is such an important meal to get the day going. So I wanna really shout out to those guys for feeding a lot of the kids over the past week. And then obviously the Titans, coach Harvey and that team. I'm always excited when one of our teams can take it
to the state level and perform, especially coming from out here on the western slope to go up to the east side and really, really shine. So way to go Titans and keep it going. And I've also heard there's a big track meet coming up at Rifle High School. I think it's this Friday. It's one of the biggest ones in the States. So I'm really excited that Rifle High once again has the facilities and the capability to host something like that, to bring it to the Western slope and really perform. So that's about, I have, I wanna say thank you to everybody there. That's still rocking with us and I'm really excited to get into some policy now.
Speaker 1: Woo hoo. Yay. Thanks for that segue. So we've got some policies where we're gonna do the first reading on. The first one is policy ad, which is Educational philosophy and School district mission. And Theresa is getting those pulled up. Speaker 10: Red is what the state changed, Speaker 2: Correct? Well Speaker 1: This one is not a state policy. It's ours. It's not a cas B. This is our policy and our educational philosophy. We, when we did the strategic plan, we rewrote the mission statement, not
by, but the mission statement. Quite a bit of change. But the vision statement, we changed from every student to every member of our learning community every day. And then we also added in the strategic plan, these community cornerstones as well as the saying, honoring the past. We look forward and work together to build a brighter future because those are all in our strategic plan as part of our vision, our mission, and our philosophy. It was time to update this policy as well. So those are the changes that are there are in red,
those are our changes that match the strategic plan. What's crossed out is what was on the old policy. And Speaker 10: I was really like, yeah, it was kind of a joke 'cause it was like, can you wow this state really? Like Speaker 2: Can you Speaker 5: Provide context on why we changed it from student to member? Speaker 11: We wanted to include the staff. Speaker 2: I Speaker 11: Was wondering if, and so ultimately student should be crossed out at, so for second, for the second reading it would read that our vision is to encourage, nurture and challenge every member of our learning community every day.
And we felt like that was our whole staff. Speaker 2: I like it. Yeah. Speaker 5: I just didn't, I I wanted the context in which Speaker 11: Absolutely. Speaker 2: Yep. Speaker 1: Any discussion on this one for the first reading? Speaker 2: Okay. Question. I think Speaker 1: Next policy is GDAA Title one paraprofessionals. Speaker 5: I have some questions about this one. Speaker 1: Okay, so can I just, let me go first ahead. Go ahead. What we have learned, we had sent this one in to Brent case, he suggested that we call CASB. CASB has dropped this policy completely.
It was repealed in 2018 because it's no longer a federal or state requirement. His recommendation was to either repeal it or discontinue it or leave in the, the wording down there around the qualifications. He wouldn't have changed anything. He also checked the rest of the, the other states or other schools in the state and could not find anybody readily available who had this policy. Speaker 10: So we just pulled this one for review. Is that how we got this one? Yes. Oh.
'cause it was adopted in oh six. Speaker 1: Yeah, it was an older policy. It didn't match necessarily what our, our practice was, especially with the qualifications that are down there. Speaker 10: Was this, one of the ones that guess or the public commenter was asking about Speaker 1: Is the one was asking. Speaker 5: So I guess if, if we were to repeal it. So I mean we wouldn't have a policy as a district. What can you go, can you go up Therea please? Alright. Yep. Up a little more. Right there. There you go. So we wouldn't have guidance or the policy outlining the duties of a paraprofessional.
Speaker 1: Well this is just title one paraprofessionals. We have a slew of different kinds of paraprofessionals right now from when Simone and I looked through this. We believe that two schools have title paras and each of those are part-time. So that principles and the way we write our consolidated applic application for title doesn't really lend itself any longer to a lot of paraprofessionals that are funded through this particular program.
Speaker 5: Okay. So in the public comment it was asked to define supervision. If, if we were to repeal it would, I mean, doesn't that just does, I mean, does the problem go away or does it just kind of get grayer? Speaker 1: I think that we would, I mean, using job descriptions that are specific to different kinds of paraprofessionals. So a paraprofessional could be a mild, moderate, special education paraprofessional, a significant needs paraprofessional. All of those have different job requirements.
And when people hire on, they sign off on these are what you have to be able to do and what you're expected to do. So that's kind of like what Devin was saying, our checklist of now I know how to perform because I have this job description and it's, it's accurate. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 1: Do you like me to address a little bit about public comment and the Yes, yes, Speaker 2: Yes. I'd love to love you to, Speaker 1: One of the things that our, our public comment brought forward was virtual special education teachers. We have 54% of our
SPED staff is not qualified. They are working on becoming qualified. Like Ryan said today. He has a teacher who is in the apprentice program. She's going to CMC, she's learning how to be a SPED teacher. The state has given us a license to be able to do that so that she can go to school, learn and continue to, to work for us. What we do have for her, it's not only our, our own department with our director and our coordinators, we also have BOCES that helps with that training.
And on top of that, we hire a virtual special education teacher to help her with the paperwork. That person is not doing, the virtual person is not doing any kind of supervising. Right. They're, we are literally hiring two people to cover that job. 'cause we could not find someone to do it. And this is where we are in the state of spec special education. There aren't teachers that are applying. We had rif, the middle school had three amazing teachers that were there for the long haul. And they all three left last year. And nobody applied.
Nobody applied. We have, and this is another way that we are trying to fill the gaps. We have the instructional coach, both instructional coaches and the dean of students who are taking classes on how to do special education. Yep. Who are each taking a grade level and making sure that the kids are getting the services that they need, that what's required in their IEP. We also hired the virtual teachers to assist them so that they have someone who knows the laws that can write the IEPs, not get us in any kind of trouble
for doing something we're not supposed to do within those IEPs. Because special education is full of all kinds of loss. And those are the people that are giving us our guidance if they don't know we have our department and then we have both cs. So the idea that we have kids being supervised by paraprofessionals, not, that's not virtual paraprofessional. Virtual paraprofessionals not happening. Speaker 2: Well, thank you. Thank you for the clarification. Yeah, you're welcome. Yes. Thank you. Does BO CS provide teachers or they Speaker 1: Just, whatever BO Cs provides, they charge us for and they charge us at their rates.
So if we wanted to use on top of our fee that we already pay, that is included in our fees. Oh. It's included in the sometimes. And some of them, like we've negotiated our school psychs, we can't find one, we can't pay one enough to work for us. It's not in our salary schedule. Bo OC hires them, pays them more, and then we pay their hourly rate for every hour that they work for us. Okay. So those school psychs are making what Bo OC says, they'll pay to come here and do what we need done for special education.
And so then we only pay for the hours that they're in our schools for. Some of the people for, for like the, this this psych yet, like you just said, like the psych, the OTs, different ones like that that we split with parachute. We'll go by the hour. Sometimes they go like, we pay 80% para parachute pays 20% the deaf and blind the like, like there's a teacher for the deaf and blind. We only have a couple of students who fall into this category. We don't wanna hire somebody just for us. So we go through BO Cs for that one
and then we split with parachute. But because we have more students, we pay more money than parachute. That's part of the agreement. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, so when we pay that we're paying, are we getting like a bill from BOCES and then we pay BOCES and BOCES is covering their, that's how it works like in paper. Okay. Really what happens is the, the federal government sends BOCES the special education money and then they're supposed to send it to us and then we're supposed to send it back to them. We do all that on paper. Right.
So, but that's how that works. That sounds efficient. Yeah. We've gotten more efficient. 'cause we use very complex pass through. Yes. Yes. Okay. So anytime we're getting BO C'S help, it's not like a free service. It is extra. They have A B, CBA that we sometimes need to use. So we kind of rent them. And B, CBA behavioral works with children with autism. Okay. Yes. And pretty severe autism too. Okay. Behavior certified. So what is included in our fee to boces,
the administrative costs. We have a, I think one or two compliance secretaries that work with the state until the state tells them, this is what you need to do to fix these IEPs. They tell us we fix them, we send them back. We pay for the director, the special education director out of the general fee we pay Ken, sorry, or a portion of that. All of the different things that he does within that job are kind of sectioned out. Okay. We pay a membership fee for everything CTE
that they do with our, with our students. Speaker 10: And do you feel like we're utilizing it? I mean, we're required to have it. Do we utilize it? Speaker 1: I think we, we get as much out of it as we possibly can. I agree. Okay. Absolutely. Speaker 2: Okay. Good. Speaker 10: That was like way off of this policy. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, it kind of looped back around. Speaker 5: We were talking about, we were talking about SPED and thank you for clarifying that. Speaker 1: Yes, yes. Thank you. Thank Speaker 10: You. Yes. Kind of like around, Speaker 1: So conversations around this policy. So do we, Speaker 10: Legal is saying that, do we appeal?
Speaker 2: It's Speaker 1: Repealed. That was the Brent's, well first it was advising Brent's recommendation and then CASB said they repealed it and if it's Speaker 2: Repealed, it's repealed. It's gone. Speaker 10: It's gone. So we Speaker 1: Don't have, so we don't even need to review it anymore. Okay. That one was easy. I'll, that's, so Speaker 11: We won't bring that one back. Nice. Speaker 10: Next. Okay. Speaker 1: I like those. I like those easy ones. We still got public. So there is next policy is GCGC, job sharing and professional, professional staff positions.
This is another solution when we can't hire a full-time teacher. Okay. So this is, so like we, we've got a teacher out and another teacher is using their planning time lunchtime to help fill in the class. No. Okay. Speaker 11: These guys are taking over basically. So when we couldn't hire at one of our elementary schools, we couldn't hire a certified staff. We couldn't hire a teacher. And so we had actually a teacher that was a part-time coach, part-time teacher with another
staff member to fill that Other position. And so it's a creative way. This has been done with maternity leaves before. When you've got one teacher out and one teacher takes over, they can share halftime. Halftime. They can share it in a calendar year. And this policy hadn't been updated in quite a long time and we actually haven't done a lot of job sharing in quite a long time. However, this would be another creative way to fully staff Garfield re two. And so for one of our schools this without this policy this year, we would have been another,
what, two teachers down? Yeah. Two full-time teachers down without the job sharing in place. Speaker 1: Thank you for that. Speaker 5: And the edits come from, Speaker 2: The Speaker 5: Original edits come from Speaker 1: The human. The, the red marks are from human re from our HR team because they manage this. And it's not an easy payroll leave. There's so many questions that come up when you start sharing a job. 'cause you're sharing the, all of the pieces of it. And they also needed a deadline because it, it came right up against the
beginning of the year last year. They weren't ready. It, it just caused a lot of administrative questions because we hadn't done it in a long time. So we thought it was time to bring it forward, make sure we were all aware, and that we could get the standard operating procedure in place for how this works for the next time. Somebody says, I got two people that will both do a halftime. One will work from August until da, da da. And the other will work from this time to this time. So it's not necessarily like morning and afternoon sharing job or you know, this week, that week sharing job. It could be any of those combinations.
And so that all has to be written out, planned out, thought out on how it works in the finance as far as payroll and benefits and everything. In that second paragraph, I, there's a proposed program may be prepared and submitted to the superintendent by any teacher or administrator. Not later than May 1st. Would it? Speaker 2: No. Speaker 1: Can we do no later than May. Okay. I was like it. I'm just not reading that right. Of the proceeding school year. Okay. Speaker 2: Any Speaker 1: Other discussion? Speaker 2: No. Speaker 1: And then
the, the next policy is that G GC GC dash E. The job sharing in professional staff positions the job sharing agreement. So, so this is obviously the legal part, I guess of the two teachers agreeing that they are going to share said position. Okay. Speaker 2: Okay. Thank you. Speaker 1: I can't believe that teacher two's signature was not on there the first time. Speaker 2: Like I said, it might have been 1992 when we did it last. Speaker 1: Any discussion around that one? I think it's pretty straightforward. Next one.
Gc, GC dash R. Job sharing and professional staff positions. So this is the Speaker 2: Regulation. Speaker 1: The regulation on the Speaker 2: Policy. Speaker 1: So Speaker 2: GCs, Hmm? It's not, I don't, it's dash RI don't have it on the I don't have that. I don't have it in the packet. That's the one that I had added. It's not on the phone. Okay. There's copies that I don't have it. It's not on the incident. Interesting. Since that one is not on the agenda, do we need to add it to the next agenda?
As in first reading. Okay. Works. So that was on Saturday morning. Speaker 5: So now CCA. Speaker 2: No worries. Yep. I'm just writing myself a note. Okay, so next is the CCA. Speaker 5: This is the 2018 Speaker 2: Model organizational chart. Wow. Speaker 10: I think this is the one we're wanting to get rid of. Speaker 2: That's Speaker 5: A 2018 model. Speaker 1: Yeah. This would all have Speaker 2: Bind here. Very basic. Yeah. This is the basic model. Speaker 5: So, and so Speaker 2: Then the changes are the, yeah.
Speaker 5: LLC coordinator. What's that? Speaker 2: Yes. L-O-C-L-L-C. It's our I know location. Speaker 1: It's Wendy. She's the one that sits downstairs. Does all of the event coordinations, does the food, the setups, all of those as well as she is the financial person for Simone, Jacob, and Roger. Speaker 5: What does LLC stand for? Speaker 11: Learning Opportunity Center. Speaker 5: Okay. That's what you call the annex, huh? Speaker 1: Well, it's the Speaker 11: Well's, what we call the district office. But I think that, sorry, the district office, you either call. I mean when it was built and expanded upon, that was
the name that was given to it. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 1: I always think the DO is upstairs and the LO Cs downstairs. Speaker 5: I dunno Speaker 2: Why. Speaker 5: So in practice, I know this is in practice, this charge saying all the directors go through Lisa to you or go through the assistant S soup to get to the sup. Is that how it's working? Speaker 1: Not necessarily. Speaker 2: No. Speaker 5: No. Right. I mean 'cause you, you meet with them as much every week. Yeah, Speaker 2: Yeah. I Speaker 1: Move, Speaker 5: I'm an organizational chart Nazi. Nazi. So I can I bugs me.
Speaker 10: I have some other questions before we start picking apart. Like what, what's FRC? Coordinator? Speaker 2: Family resource. Oh, okay. Speaker 10: So resource coordinator. Yes. And she has counselors under her and then also the liaisons liaison. Those would be liaisons. Should we change that to liaisons or keep it counselors? Speaker 2: Both. The Speaker 1: Liaisons are also under Family resource center coordinator. Both Amanda and Jacob and Simone. Both. All three of them work with the counselors. So the counselors really report to more than one person.
Speaker 10: Okay. Speaker 1: And the LOC coordinator, maybe we need to put that, who's Speaker 10: Like officially over the counselors. Like is there like somebody that oversees, like Jim, Jacob and Simone oversee curriculum? Is there someone that oversees the counseling department? Well Speaker 5: What Speaker 11: To, what we've done today? There's people is in talking to Councilor Cor grant, you know, the ladies from the state and the work that's been done inside the, you know, with the administrators and the counselors themselves, I would say that they're probably moving more towards
curriculum directors than they are to be under Amanda Vaughn at the Family Resource center. Would you agree? So, Speaker 10: Definitely. Thank you. So should we adjust Speaker 11: That? So maybe we can adjust that for second reading and put the counselors officially there. I feel like you've really been instrumental as well as Jacob. Well Speaker 10: They are there Speaker 11: Working with these, Speaker 10: They're already on, Speaker 5: They're already under curriculum, but we, they, Speaker 10: So Speaker 11: Oh, instead of, Speaker 10: But I would maybe move them under the liaison though, under the, like it's like the family resource coordinator and then she works with the liaisons.
Absolutely. First. Yes. Right. So I think those two, if the counselor stand or that if, unless you wanna adjust that. I have a Speaker 19: Suggestion. Would it make sense under Amanda instead of it saying counselors instead mental health team Speaker 10: Because she uses like MindSpring and that kind of stuff. Right. Speaker 5: I mean, I, I would rather, I mean, are they counselors or are they mental health? Speaker 11: Well, Speaker 5: Are we talking about school counselors or are we talking about mental health professionals? Counselors? Speaker 11: Yeah, we're talking about school counselors. And when there is a crisis, the crisis management team,
which could consist of several counselors from several different schools. If they were all deployed to one site, then I would say that Amanda plays a piece in that when you're in, in an emergency situation. So Speaker 5: I would, I would say I would just like you just name a crisis response team. Speaker 11: Crisis response team. Or like the threat assessment team. Yeah. Something suicide assessments. Like Amanda plays a, a really big role in that as well as those counselors support that work Speaker 5: Because their day-to-day stuff, they're going to Speaker 1: Report Speaker 5: To report to Simone. But if there's an issue, you know,
Amanda's already have the protocols in place. Maybe Speaker 1: Could, she also provides PD on colla or strategic plan days to the counselors. So that's another piece of her job. Sometimes they plan it together. I think that we started that at the beginning of the year planning together. And then she's really, she has for the last few years, and again this year is, is organizing that piece. So she's, she works with them. She has regular meetings with them. Do you always attend those counselor meetings? The, Speaker 19: I don't go to the ones at the Family resource center center.
They're more along the scope of the, the crisis response and the support that they give through those protocols. And then as you know, the, the paradigm shift that's happening through the counselor core grant is that they're becoming more aligned with academics, college career readiness and behaviors to support learning. And so that's the work I'm doing with them, which really is their job description. Speaker 2: Then they can take along there. I, Speaker 1: If that is their job description.
This is the org organizational chart on who they report to for their job description. I would say that the counselors need to go under the directors of curriculum and then under the family resource center. I would change that to the critical response teams. Speaker 2: That Speaker 19: Makes sense. Speaker 1: Any other questions? Speaker 2: Any other Speaker 1: Discussion? Speaker 2: I wonder, oh, there was a second. Speaker 5: I wonder if it's possible to, I don't know how you do it, but how you would visualize the actual like, flow of the workflow
through where it wouldn't bottleneck at the assistant superintendent. Like you need, like, it needs to be, I mean I know that this is, I know this is a formality and you're gonna work how it works, but it needs to be as accurate as possible. Speaker 2: I wonder if the Speaker 1: Assistant superintendent doesn't belong out to the side, like the executive secretary. Speaker 2: Yep. As it's Speaker 1: Kind of an direct line in tangent Speaker 5: Thing. And then, and then that line goes over to you and Heather. Speaker 2: Yep. Yes. Foot catch. Speaker 19: If I can, I might recommend it's time to add CT e under
Speaker 2: Curriculum Speaker 1: As well. Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 2: Okay. Absolutely. Yes. Thank you. Speaker 5: Yes. Where, what, where is it now? It's, Speaker 2: It's Speaker 1: Not, not, Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's not, yeah, we need to add it. I guess Speaker 20: My biggest question is, are we talking about actual people or are we talking about things like when we say CTE, are we talking about we don't have any, an actual position that is a CTE related position. So is this an organizational charter position within our district? Or is it an organizational chart responsibility Speaker 2: Of people? Speaker 5: I look at it as an organizational chart of resources.
Like the flow of resources. Speaker 2: So you, as Speaker 1: Part of that conversation, sorry. Speaker 20: No, no. I If the mic, we have a, we have a, we have a team of people, but they're not getting paid or they're not specifically, we didn't hire them to do CTE related things. We have people that step up and participate in group. We have a Core Pathways team of people that works with that. We do have CTE instructors, but those are all people who are reportable to their building principles. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 21: So I I Speaker 5: When, when the CTE needs funding, where do they go?
Speaker 21: When the CTE needs funding? They, they work through their own funding mechanisms to get funding through the state or the building itself is the one that's providing the funding. Speaker 5: So they can, they can just unilaterally get funding from through without any of you guys signing off on it? Speaker 21: No, they, they participate the funding mechanisms that the state gets for CTE programming comes through the district. Speaker 5: So, but you guys, as directors have to sign off on Speaker 21: That's true. So I, so at the end of the day, the overall CTE coordinator in our school district is me. And so I, but I don't know if, you know, Speaker 5: That's how I, that's how I, I
Speaker 21: Guess you could put that under there. And then I'm, I'm reporting to myself. I, that's where I don't understand where, if you were to put that in there again, are we specifying specific job titles in this organizational charts and, and who they report to? That's, that's what, to me is a little confusing. When Speaker 5: I look at org charts, I, I'll, I assume I look at it as like, who do you go to to solve a problem? So if it's a problem with CTE programming problem with CTE funding, they might pursue a pathway themselves,
but at the end of the day, you have to sign off on it. Speaker 21: Yep. Speaker 5: And if there's an issue with programming or resources, you're still gonna have to sign off on it. Speaker 21: And if that's, if that's, if that's what we're looking at then, then I wholeheartedly support putting CTE obviously underneath the director curriculum, because that's where it falls under. But if it was a specific job title of a person, no. Like liaisons is a job title of person, you know, then, then we don't have a specific position that is dedicated to CTE. Yeah. It's just one, it's just one of the many hats that people wear. Speaker 5: Okay. Yeah. I look at it, I look at it as resources.
Like problem Speaker 18: Would be something, I mean, we could get, Speaker 5: If there's a problem, where'd he go? Speaker 18: It'd be huge if it was resources. But if we did it just by job title, then that's where I see an org chart that we've always done. Speaker 1: I, it's a title, title. We do a title application. We got Simone and Jacob in charge of all of our title pieces and how we're implementing it. But it's not written on here. It would be, there's money that goes to the principal. There's money that goes to the family resource center that's been, all of those things are written within our title grants and monies. So it's more like CTE. Right. Because it's something we do.
There has to be somebody in charge of it, but it's not necessarily on the work because it's a Speaker 5: Makes Speaker 1: Sense. It's more of a thing. Okay. And, and so the way that I also look at it too is CTE is gonna be part of a job description, which would be Jacob's job description. So he technically is responsible for CTE and there's other people with other titles and positions that kind of help fill those gaps. So I don't think, like, I, it's not a true position. We don't have like a CTE coordinator. Is that a thing?
Speaker 5: That's, Speaker 21: That's if you were ever to expand to a CTE coordinator, then Yes, I would say that. And that is a thing in some districts. So if you were to do that, then I would say yes, put a label underneath directors of curriculum and that's who that person would report to. But right now, again, that's just one of the many hats that people wear. And in a lot of these, in a, in a medium sized school district, we all wear a lot of different hat Speaker 1: With our ranking at 160. Speaker 11: That's Speaker 5: Okay. So are we just, where are we at taking cts, leaving it off? I mean, or are we putting it under curriculum?
Speaker 1: We'd be adding it. So, 'cause it's not on there at all. Speaker 5: I know, that's what I'm saying. Are we leaving it off or are we adding it under curriculum? I Speaker 18: Again, it's not a position. Speaker 5: Yeah, that's kind where, because you're right. I mean if that, if, Speaker 18: If it became a position, then we add it. Speaker 5: Yeah. Speaker 18: You know, an occupied position. Speaker 5: Yeah. I guess there's a, there should be a program, you know, I don't know if there should be or not, but the org chart, this org chart should probably just apply to positions that have job descriptions. Speaker 1: Yeah. A specific job description for Yeah, I I would,
I, I would suggest leaving it off, you might need to consider the crisis response team too. Because that's the same, same sort of thing. Yeah. Okay. Then. So I, I would, you know, with that logic, you know, our family resource center coordinator, the only thing that would be under her would be the liaisons and then the counselors would stay under the directors of curriculum. Speaker 11: The other thing, since we've just added that, that wrap, I'm gonna call 'em the wraparound team. Right. In the, at risk in dealing with our expelled population, I would add that those are,
you know, new, a new position. Okay. In regards to handling that population that Amanda oversees. I would add them, you're right. Crisis management team, not so much. Those are existing people that come together for Speaker 1: Part's, part of their current job Speaker 11: Discussion. Right. But we do have now task force to at risk, I would say educators. Educators. Okay. Great. I don't know if they were liaisons or what we're calling it. So educators underneath Amanda right now for that at risk population of expelled students. Speaker 5: So can we clarify what's on their job description and then add that to this flowchart?
Speaker 11: Those job descriptions are completed? Yes. And there's actual people that are Speaker 2: Going working Perfect. Those Speaker 11: Positions. Yes. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 5: So we can make that change for a second. Reading. Yes. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 1: We also have two other changes that we noticed done here. One is under human resources that we, Speaker 2: There's Speaker 1: Two HR generalists. Exactly. The HR assistance and sub coordinator. Devin reallocated that to an HR generalist under there. That position
Speaker 2: Is, Speaker 1: Is it? No, because Speaker 2: It still has Speaker 1: A PC M Speaker 2: I'm not sure. Speaker 11: Let's talk through that. Let's Speaker 1: Check. Yeah, we'll talk with seven. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: So it would be Director of human resources, one HR generalist benefits, and then the HR benefits specialist. Speaker 11: Well, right now there are two, because that was a transfer that Michelle had made into a generalist position. So she transferred into that. So she's got two generalists. But Michelle also is handling the sub coordination, right. As a generalist. So, and that assistant piece is just one that has gone unfilled.
Speaker 5: So Speaker 1: Also, but I don't think we need to have two listed. It'd be like having 10 counselors listed under the counselors. Oh, so just put an S on the end. HR generalists? Yes. Got Speaker 2: It. Good point. Speaker 1: Sorry, back with you. Speaker 2: I could Speaker 1: Figure it out. Speaker 5: Like Cassie said too is is under finance, you have grants Speaker 2: Payroll manager slash grants. Speaker 5: We, we don't have a grant. Dedicated grants person. Speaker 11: Well that's part of her job description. Okay, perfect. So what happened is, when they re, when they reconfigured that team, we had Heather Tornness who was kind of, I would say straddling both departments.
She was HR and she was finance. When she moved over to take on the payroll position after we lost our payroll manager, she kept that responsibility of being fiscally responsible for our grants. So she is a still a grants manager. That is her job title. Speaker 2: Okay. Okay. Cool. Good deal it. Heather, anything else? Okay, onto the principal. Oh, sorry. Are we going to the principal one for the second one? You have question on there? Operation?
Speaker 1: Yeah. So then there's the, the organizational chart for the, Speaker 2: Looks Speaker 1: Like it Speaker 5: For facilities. Speaker 1: Yeah. There's Speaker 2: The first Speaker 10: One's not labeled like officially, like the other two. Speaker 2: If Speaker 10: It, if you want it to have a title to be consistent with the other two. I don't know what you would label Speaker 2: It. I think that's Speaker 1: A great idea. Speaker 10: It says operations. This Speaker 2: Is a hard, it's this Speaker 1: Org chart was made a long time ago in a program that doesn't work very well. Right. So I may have to say to change everything over to make it something manageable.
Yeah. It's not manageable right now. Okay. I would say yeah. 'cause our resource center is listed on there twice then. Okay. Yeah. Speaker 11: I put a duplicate on that second page. Speaker 1: Got it. Speaker 2: Yeah. Can you blow that up Theresa, please. Thank you. I'm as big as Speaker 1: Person too. We have an assistant, a field manager Speaker 11: To add to Speaker 1: Nutrition Speaker 2: Services. Yeah. Speaker 1: And what to nutrition services. There's a field manager that Mary was approved
for last year that she's hired. That's Celine. So we need to add that box as a position. The facility use coordinator and financial secretary at the bottom of director of facilities is also, that's the LOC coordinator used to be under John's department. So we can scratch that. Yes ma'am. Okay. Speaker 2: John? Speaker 11: Yeah. But John still has Speaker 2: Janie facilities in the schools, but not the LC. Speaker 1: Oh, I hear what you're saying. Not the LOC. Gotcha. All the Speaker 2: City, different city rec programs.
Speaker 1: Got it. Speaker 11: So would you call her the facilities youth coordinator and financial secretary? Is that, that's what, Speaker 1: Okay. Is that her job description? Yep. So the mechanics didn't move under your purview. They're still under transportation. One supervisor. Speaker 2: That does not make any sense at all. There's reason does it? Oh yeah, Speaker 11: That, that's based on the fact that we have relatives that are working in the department that need independent oversight. Speaker 2: Oh, okay. Makes sense now. Yeah. Speaker 1: Maybe the reason that we leave it over here.
'cause that's where, yeah, I just leave it there. Speaker 11: I where I would say ideally that's where it would be. That's Speaker 1: Where it would go. Okay. Anything else on that page? Principals and assistant principals. Speaker 2: I feel like Speaker 1: There's some assistants missing. Speaker 2: Wamsley does. Nope. No. Speaker 1: Catherine. Catherine Senior. Speaker 2: Nope. Speaker 11: Grand Mesa out. The four elementaries do not have assistant principals. Speaker 1: Is it? They don't have assistant principals. What? Because it's not in their budget or in their size or is it, so I Speaker 10: Thought Wamsley, what is Speaker 11: She? Betsy is a dean.
Speaker 2: Oh, a dean, okay. Okay. Speaker 10: Okay. And this is just principals and assistant principal paper. Speaker 2: Okay. Got it. Speaker 1: So is it not, what's Speaker 5: The difference between a dean and a principal? Speaker 11: Responsibilities? Speaker 2: Yeah, Speaker 11: Roles and responsibilities really. And dean's. I don't know if deans have to have an administrative license. Speaker 2: Do Speaker 1: We need to add deans student or No, Speaker 10: Just assistant. Speaker 2: Just principals and principal. Okay. Speaker 10: Like, because I was thinking, I Speaker 2: Saying same thing Speaker 10: Because I was even thinking athletic directors, like how far do you go down? Speaker 5: Well that, that's just an assistant
principal wearing many hats. Speaker 2: Right. Speaker 11: To be at, I mean, Speaker 10: Director, you Speaker 5: Changed. So like I'm saying like Speaker 10: I just don't know how far they wanna go. Speaker 5: He's ap, you know, mean. But also with ad, Speaker 10: Maybe direct individual school has a long, and once it hits the principal and assistant principal, then they get the top sheet for the board and the superintendent are, and then they have their order chart. And there's lots of ways to do it, but Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 5: There. Yep, yep, yep. I'm getting, I'm picking up to lay it down. Speaker 1: I what I'm, so with the four elementary schools that don't have assistant principals, is that a position
that needs to be there and it's just not filled? Speaker 11: They are not available. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 11: That's personnel matter. Fifth graders. Okay. I mean, not a personnel matter, like you can't know, but that is a personnel allocation of which has never been given to those four elementary schools. Okay. And it's always been based on enrollments and the formulas of which we take to personnel meetings in the spring with these buildings. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 1: Makes sense. That makes, okay. Speaker 11: The reason that the two originally got assistant principals when we moved the fifth grades out of the middle schools.
Middle schools that Highland and Cactus Valley were our largest two elementary schools at the time. They still are, although others are growing very quickly because when we start to count our expansions in particular to our pre-K expansion, Wamsley Elementary has grown tenfold. You know, really when you think of, of them in that way. But these two schools were granted those assistant principals at the time when the fifth grades came. Speaker 2: Okay. Here. Okay. Alright. Speaker 1: Any more questions on that one? Speaker 2: No. No. Okay. Speaker 1: That's all I got.
Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 1: Alright. Future agenda items. Speaker 11: Okay. So our next board meeting is not until April 9th. We do not have another board meeting in March, spring break based on the fact that spring break everyone will be on spring break. So on April 9th, right now we will be at Grand Mesa Elementary School. So they will be a discussion item JCI will be on hand with John and then collaborative solutions, we'll see how far they get. The next piece of negotiations that
that team is working on is obviously salaries. And so depending on how the collaborative solutions meeting goes, that that week before, it's possible that they will be ready to bring forward a salary renegotiation with to Speaker 2: You. Okay. The ELA program adoption will be ready that Speaker 11: You wanna do that on April 9th Speaker 2: If there's a Speaker 11: Be? Well that's all I have should be, I mean I'll put it in purple, which means maybe, right. Like Okay. If not that one, the second meeting for sure.
Simon. Is that okay? Speaker 1: Is there a timeframe on that one? When it needs to be Speaker 2: Approved? The sooner we approve it, the sooner we can get teacher manuals here for them. It takes anywhere from six to eight weeks to do Speaker 11: That. And I'm gonna say you're coming on April 9th. That's just time on you now. You're in black. You're not in purple on my draft. Okay. Speaker 1: Anything else? Speaker 2: That's all I got. It's a good meeting. Speaker 1: Yeah. Huh. Second readings of policies. First reading of the, one of the dash R. Yep. We'll probably be ready. Okay.
Any luck bullying will be ready. Hopefully with any luck. Speaker 2: Got Speaker 1: Latinos and Dak are together this month. Yeah. Nice. Great. Speaker 11: And what you're ultimately looking at for that second meeting in April is it will be heavily financed again because the economic forecast, they'll be ready for that. They'll be ready to present their quarter release to you. And then again, if CS doesn't bring forward salaries on April 9th, they absolutely will bring them forward on the 23rd. Speaker 2: Okay. So Speaker 11: Lots of money talk. Speaker 1: Okay. Anything else that anybody would
Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 1: Meeting debrief. Chance? Do you have anything Speaker 2: What Speaker 1: I'm just asking? Speaker 2: No. Okay. Speaker 1: Cassie? Speaker 2: No, I'm good. You too. Speaker 1: Okay. I did forget one thing in my board report as Cassie stated, I think our constituents have no problems coming to us, which is great. But I did have, and I heard it brought up earlier today too, was with our students that are leaving our school district for other school districts, whether it's
Two Rivers, homeschooling, things like that, and how we can start to retain our students, especially for our per pupil count. I know that has been a concern of, of one of the high schools as well as the, the students that we're losing, which also means the funding that we're losing, which also means some of the resources for the volunteers that we're losing. So I, that's one thing that has been a concern of some and Speaker 5: I've, I've heard of multiple numbers thrown around. Yeah. I would like to see if we can limit,
Speaker 10: Is there a way to see that? Speaker 5: To get a accurate number of what we're looking at? What guys Speaker 11: For student count? Speaker 5: Yeah. For students that are, Speaker 1: That live here, but don't go to Speaker 5: That live here, that go to other districts. Speaker 10: So if last night Speaker 11: Some projections I, we can calculate, we can tell you exactly who's come back. Speaker 1: Okay. To Speaker 11: In particular, well to any of our schools. But Coleridge had a influx of, of students that we gained back this Speaker 10: Year. Okay. So, Speaker 11: But we can get that for you. And probably a projection on how many Speaker 5: Leads, how many that are out there.
Exactly. Because we've, we've heard wildly different numbers. Well there's, Speaker 1: There's somewhere on the CDE website that Jason and I had found last year. Speaker 10: We're still looking. Speaker 1: We wanted it for our personnel meetings and we just Speaker 10: Actually in the data, Speaker 1: It's in the October count Speaker 10: Data. I can, I can show you where that is. Thank you. Okay. Speaker 11: Will you help me find it and then I can get these guys a, I can put that into your weekend report. Speaker 10: Okay. Speaker 5: Perfect. Speaker 10: A gentleman last night approached at, at the meet and greet thing and he goes, yeah, thanks for all the kids
that are keeping Two Speaker 1: Rivers alive, two Speaker 10: Rivers alive. And I was like, what? He goes over 80%, 80% of the kids at Two Rivers are, Speaker 1: Are two students, Speaker 10: Our two kids. Speaker 1: And that be a stretch this end Speaker 10: Of the district. And I was like, what? Speaker 5: I'd like to Speaker 1: See that. Well and I think a lot of it is true. Well, and I think a lot of it is, how do Speaker 10: You know that Speaker 1: Is you've got the parents that work Speaker 10: Up Valley Up Valley and it's a five day a week school. Yeah, that's what it was. That was the other Speaker 5: Was better.
I'm gonna, I'm gonna try to find that. I know Jamie, Speaker 10: I just Yeah. Somebody mentioned. Speaker 5: Yeah. Speaker 1: And how can we be better than Two Rivers? Speaker 10: Yeah. Speaker 1: Because we Speaker 10: Are, we have a lot to offer. Like come on. Speaker 1: Alright. If there is nothing else, I would like to throwing it out there. Going once, going twice. Okay. I'm going to adjourn the March 12th, 2025 board meeting at 9 37 and I'm going to use this table.
Ah, nice. Okay.