Speaker 1: Wednesday, June 24th to order at 5 42. If you would please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Speaker 2: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with Liberty. Liberty and justice for all. Speaker 1: Thank you. If you would please remain standing for just a moment of silence. All right. Thank you. All right. And then on to the agenda. Are there, this is, yep. The, it's the approval of the June 24th, 2026 agenda.
Are there any changes to the agenda? Okay. I would take a motion to approve the June 24th, 2026 agenda as presented. Speaker 3: I make a motion to present or to approve the June 24, 26 agenda as presented. Speaker 1: Perfect. May I get a second please? Speaker 4: I second it. Speaker 1: Thank you. Emily, may I get roll call please? Speaker 4: Jensen? Speaker 1: Aye. Speaker 4: Jenkins? Aye. Will you? Aye Hucal. Aye. Kyle? Aye. Speaker 1: You confused us. Yeah, Speaker 4: Go. You've gotta go order. Speaker 1: She's making sure we're paying attention. Wait,
Speaker 4: What is in the wrong order? I know Speaker 1: You just wrote it Speaker 4: Down that way. Speaker 1: That's okay. It works. That's fine. It works. Switch. Speaker 4: Yeah. Speaker 1: And made sure I remembered my name. Is there any public audience? Okay. Alright, onto the consent agenda. Speaker 4: Bullet 0.1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Am I allowed to say the name? I don't know if this is Hiin, it's on the agenda. Okay. Lori Brita is not a permanent sub at high school in the documents that we get. It's Elk Creek Elementary, so that needs to be addressed.
I don't know. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 4: It's on her actual paper. It says Elk Creek Elementary and then Speaker 1: Her, her retirement letter for Speaker 4: Retirement. Oh. But it's really Elk Creek Elementary. Speaker 1: Good catch. Speaker 4: Okay. Okay. Speaker 1: Anything else? I didn't see anything else. Good catch. Okay. Speaker 4: I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda as amended. Speaker 1: Thank you. May I get a second? Speaker 3: A second. Speaker 1: Thank you. Emily, may I get roll call please? It sitting
Speaker 5: Shut up. How old? Speaker 3: Aye. Speaker 5: Aye Speaker 1: Jennifer. Aye Hascal. Speaker 4: Aye. Full you Speaker 1: Aye. See now she's going in order. So no Speaker 6: Order is full. You has, Speaker 1: Well now she's going in order of the seating. Oh, okay. Yeah, I mean Speaker 5: Try again next time I'll, Speaker 1: I'll just keep you doing, Speaker 6: He's Speaker 4: Gonna not do the same order at all. Speaker 1: Alright. Now we've got committee reports and board reports together. So I think it's been a fairly, yeah, it's been a month. So Steve, do you have anything for committee and board reports?
Speaker 6: The committee, we had a finance meeting this week. I think we're gonna get a once over on that so I won't spend too much time on the details. But you know, so what we talked about earlier, if finances there tighten in order and I think we're gonna be pleased with what we're here. And yeah, so the end of the year you're wrapping up and we're on on track to, you know, we're, I don't think we have to worry about running our reserves in through the ground any, anytime soon, which is the dream. So yeah, really happy with everything.
It's a busy time of year for everybody and life is good. Speaker 1: Awesome. Cassie, do you have anything? Speaker 4: No, I'm on break for my committee. Both these, we are not meeting right now so that's kind of nice. I did get an update from them today, however, that CTE, they're making good progress on the CTE with CMC and streamlining all those avenues that I had mentioned before in previous board meetings. Board report. I just hope everybody's having a great summer. Staying safe. I've been seeing kids with meal monkey sack lunches
and it just makes my heart happy that, you know, we still have people out in the community reaching our students and our students were so happy today. They had chips and salsa and a little burrito and tons of fruit and shout out to our meal prep teams and all the volunteers that help with that. Thank you. Speaker 1: Okay, Mangan. Speaker 3: I'm also on break with my committee safety committee. We are not currently meeting until fall. I don't, I don't have any updates for border court, Speaker 1: So just pretty quiet. Speaker 3: It is. I'm and I'm gonna be very thankful for that.
Speaker 1: That's good. Chance Speaker 7: Finance committee, same thing we're gonna hear. I was, I was late at the last one, but thankfully Jason's gonna teach us something Speaker 1: He tries Speaker 7: On that. I did last week. It might have been the last board meeting. The COLA thing really has me upset, you know? Speaker 1: Yes. Speaker 7: I did reach out to Senator Di Roberts and Senator Mark Catlin. We did get a response back. They sent us to the CDE, got a response back from them. Very nice. And it was about eight paragraphs pretty much
saying, wait, the CD don't make policy, you legislatures and legislators do so. But I'm in talks right now with DI and and Catlin to ensure that next year's funding Bill lifts that Speaker 1: Delay, Speaker 7: Delay in our funding and they're reaching re networking and trying to figure out what that looks like and I'll, I'll continue engaging them. Speaker 1: Thank Speaker 7: You. As far as Border port, you know, shout out to firefighters, hot dry year, everybody stays safe. No open flames.
Speaker 1: Secure your chains. Speaker 7: Yeah. But I'm really excited about looking forward to next year. I think. I think we have a great team building on the successes of this last year and the previous year and just, I'm, I'm really excited and I'm really excited to get the message out to the public. So just see what that looks like. Speaker 1: Okay. I don't have any committee reports, That's why I get to listen to all of you guys and get to listen to Kirk and what he's got going on. As far as a board report, I actually had the opportunity with my sons to go during, during the Encourage, nurture Challenge Field Day.
We actually had Special Olympics here and they usually do an event every year with us as well. But they also inform me of this, it's called the Yak committee. So it's the Youth Activation Committee and how to get our schools to become a unified school. So to encourage more of, of our, our athletes or our student body also involving and engaging in a lot of our special needs kids and being able to compete in special things together, like athletics.
A lot of the kids that I met, they had, you know, a flag football team, a swimming team, a basketball team. One of the schools in Colorado Springs had just done a unified prom, things like that. And so I, I got to learn about all the different schools and a lot of 'em are over on the Eastern slope. And I think a lot of it too is because of size and possibly funding, but a lot of the funding too will also come from Special Olympics and grants and stuff like that. So I would definitely be curious to maybe learn more about that and working with our athletic directors and stuff like that, especially at our middle schools
and our high schools and how to get a more unified program together. So it was definitely my boys got to go to, so it was, it was definitely fun, fun to watch them engage. 'cause it wasn't just, it was, there was people from Colorado Springs Littleton and what they were really trying to do was trying to get more involvement in the Western slope because there's only a few schools out of Grand Junction that do this program. So Meeker was there, Craig was there, there was a school from Montrose, a couple other schools from Grand Junction,
and it was held at Mesa University and it was also the day before the summer special Olympic games were being held at Mesa. So it was really, it was really cool to see it was fun and all the different things that they do. So just, just my, my wheels have been turning on that as well. So, but other than that, I mean, summer is definitely upon us and it is a hot dry summer, I think as all of us can attest to. So I know it's the 250th anniversary
of 4th of July, but we can, we can have the glow sticks for fireworks instead. So, but I hope everybody has a safe summer and is enjoying their time out of the classroom. So with that Kirk, it's your turn. Great. Speaker 8: So yeah, I, I think my, my board report is gonna focus on achievement. We do have our embargoed at CMAs and SAT achievement data has come back. So our curriculum team has been working feverishly at
processing that data. And so we can't publicly distribute what those true numbers are. So I can talk in generalities of where it is. And so one of the things that I think we're seeing is that if you can picture kind of, if you remember the old days where you would learn greater than and less than Pac-Man signals with the Yeah. Shark. We're, we're, we've got one of these. And so what's going on is that at our younger grades, we're we are, we are seeing
a gap between where we, where we've been because we are, we have changed our program and what's what's great is is that we are then closing that gap through our old to our older grades. And what's really exciting is that we really got to see the performance at our high schools really close that gap. And so we're really excited about what that looks like at our high schools and our middle schools.
And we assume, we really believe that that's going to change as we continue to see the implementation of our new programs for ELA and math. And as our instructors get more and more proficient at those, we're gonna see that more and more. As we predicted that the first couple years of implementation, we're gonna see what's called an implementation dip. And so there is going to be a dip in what it is because they had to learn new skills and those, and those are happening. And as we saw them get more
and more proficient in the second year of implementation math, we're, we're seeing more and more improvement. And so we're excited about that. So we feel like it's right on track for where we're expecting things to be. And we really excited to see how all the data is gonna come together for our school performance frameworks, especially at the secondary level. So we're very excited to be able to report out in August when we get all our official data and are able to, to release those un un embargoed data
back from, from the state in in that respect. We're seeing it both in ELA and math and we see that, we believe that we're gonna continue to see us closing that gap compared to the state. And so I think as the earlier conversation that we were having is that one of the things that I think we as a district have been very proud about is that we continue to show growth in our students. Meaning that if you use the old analogy of the race, what's been hard is that when you're running a hundred meter race, many
of our students because of life circumstances start a race behind the starting line that many of their colleagues or their peers on the front range or children who come from more resources when they start at the starting line, our population starts behind that starting line. And the, when the, when the gun goes off, they have to run the same, they have to run a greater distance. And one of the things that I think we're most proud about is that we're closing that distance for that
and we keep seeing that distance year to year getting shorter and shorter every year in that, that the race that they're having to run. And so I think that has to deal with the amazing educators that we have, that they're getting more scientific in what they're doing for our kids and they're that we're doing it. And so we now are able to do a more apples to apples comparison in what we do. And to be transparent, we are still not
at a a, a one-to-one comparison with our peers across the state, but we are closing that gap. And I think when we look, especially at our secondary, I am, I think you're gonna be really proud of how close that number is. Excellent when that comes out. So we're excited to be able to share that when it becomes un embargoed. So that, that is my report. As you know, our assistant superintendent is not here. She's visiting her, her son, and Honduras. So she will be back.
And so we will get her back next week. And then as a reminder, the July 4th holiday, I am taking vacation, so I will be, be gone the first week of July with my wife. So good for you. That'll, that'll be it. But that's all I have for report. Speaker 1: Awesome. Thank you. All right, governance discussion items. Wayfinder pres presentation K through five program I think Simone, that is you. Yes, welcome. Hi Speaker 9: Guys. Thanks for the time to talk to you about
our counseling team who has been working diligently to strengthen themselves as a collective group. And with permission from the author of this letter, I wanna share some of the why behind their efforts to pursue programming that would help us develop graduate profile skills in our students. This is written from the lens of one person with I, I'm going to change it to we, because once the counseling team heard this letter, there were a lot of tears in the room
and a lot of collective thinking around this. Why I would argue they're all in agreement. I am passionate about developing a comprehensive system that will help us support skill development and all kids kids. We worry that we spend so much time focusing on emergencies, reacting to incidents and discipline that we fail to recognize the holistic support of all students and what they deserve. We have priorities for each month and the concepts that we wanna cover
and skills that we want our students to develop. How great would it be to be able to say that elementary is focusing on kindness and what it means to be kind all at the same time while middle schools are focusing on something else? Then when students move through our educational system, we know what skill development happened in the years prior so that we could build upon a foundation already laid. It would present a cohesive picture of what is happening to develop the character of our students. ICAP is another direct connection to this concept
because this is where students develop their understanding of who they are as an individual. Common programming will help us develop self-awareness of what students like dislike, what their skills and abilities are. It would help them develop awareness skills to be able to see a future that fits them. It's an investment investment into their understanding of potential in a career possibility of finding courses that align to those careers
and sharing out with a collection of evidence and examples to market themselves in the real world. We'll be giving them something else to see as a future while, all while also teaching them healthy coping skills. I wanted to share that. And as you can see, this was a rather lengthy letter that was written to the counseling team by one of their own to get them thinking about the collective efficacy that they needed to come together and develop to support the kids. And that was how Wayfinder came to be.
So this staff and I would argue all staff once the graduate profile was released, had been asking for concrete direct instruction to help support the portrait of a graduate. Wayfinder is programming that can allow us to do that. On the second page of the presentation, you'll see what we heard, what Wayfinder heard from Garfield RE two was that we wanted a consistent program for all schools.
We still wanted to honor autonomy, which is what the counseling team is referring to. We realized that what happens at the elementary level can be built off of at the middle school level, but it won't look the same. It can be built off of at the high school level as well. And we wanted to ensure it was aligned to graduate profile skills. Our counseling team has undergone a lot of professional development in the past two years as members of the counseling core grant and the support we've gotten from the state. One of the pieces of PD was understanding the difference
between a program and tools. And I think ultimately what this team realized is they all have a bunch of different tools that they're using, but nowhere is there a solidified program that's teaching the kids the skills we want them to develop for their future. So we found with the help of CDE and our counseling core program, we found three programs that are out there that could help us develop our graduate profile skills. And the final lap with all three of them was to align
what the programs had to offer to our graduate profile and the tightest alignment was with wayfinder. You'll see on the next page of the presentation that in all four areas of our graduate profile, Wayfinder has direct connections. So their vocabulary might be a little bit different to start and I'm gonna get to that in the next slide or two. Their vocabulary might be a little bit different, but it's absolutely a direct alignment to the skills
that we're seeing listed on our graduate profile. If you would be nice enough to go to the next slide, it's also a direct connection to our strategic plan, reinforcing student success, student wellness, and college and career readiness. Our counselors would argue that it's providing a level of staff wellness as well because we are giving back to our staff what they've been asking for to support our students in the graduate profile skill acquisition, which is starting to come to the surface
in the next year of our strategic plan. You'll remember our community collaboratively created that strategic plan and these are the things they asked for. They want us to be able to give them information about how our students are progressing with the graduate profile. So over the Speaker 10: Past, the past year and a half or so, our elementaries have been working on feedback for families Speaker 9: With how their Speaker 10: Students are developing
with the graduate profile. That's what this is Speaker 9: That I'm handing you. And this is the final version that will be shared with families for the next school year. It'll be a slow rollout. We'll start with families. Thanks. We'll start with the families self-evaluating, well evaluating their child in quarter one. We want them to have a reflection with where they think their kids are. You'll notice there are no grade levels on here because at any point in time, at any grade level,
a student could slide up or down this scale. These are parts of our kids that change with changing life circumstance that change when they change grade levels and have to work with new kids at a middle school. That might change when they move into our community and have never attended any of our schools before. So the measures on here are meant to be flexible, but our hope would be by the time our students leave us in fifth grade, they're pretty solid in all of these areas.
Our teachers have struggled with not having a concrete way to teach these skills to our kids. Wayfinder. Theresa, if you would please go back to the slide that looks like this. Wayfinder again aligns and our first year would be spent learning the programming of the Wayfinder skills as they're designed, learning how to use all the lessons, the components of the lessons. Year two, Wayfinder will create
graduate profile lessons for us. So they'll take potentially the skill of being driven under strong and determined and here are lessons for kindergarten through 12th grade of how you can emphasize the character trait of being driven with all your students. So we're excited about that potential. And in year one, this would absolutely just be our five elementary schools working through the program and the door will always be open for our middle and high schools to jump on board if and when they're ready.
Our hope is that they will, they have already hinted, which is an insurmountable test just to get that elementary counselors to agree to something was an insurmountable task. And then to hear that middle school and high school are interested in it, they wanna see what it's gonna bring and what it has to offer. That's pretty exciting. So while we're excited for year one, we're even more excited for year two. And then Theresa, if you'd go to the RTI framework, this program offers supports that have been very lacking for our counselors is they work to help students
with academic achievement and learning behaviors. They struggle with tier two resources. So when they have small groups of kids that they can support, what do they do with them? Wayfinder has that embedded for all of their scaffolds in the programming. And same with tier three. If I have one student who is a, a high flying behavior kid who we just can't seem to keep in class, what are some things we can try through Wayfinder program to help support this kid
with the counselor's intervention. So they're excited about that too because that's a first for them in their roles. Any questions yet? Speaker 3: Yes. Okay. You seem very, very passionate about this and I love it, but I still don't understand the importance. I'm missing the nexus between like why is this important for us? Looking at some of the description of criteria here, and this sounds silly but I'm gonna say it anyways. Please tell me how this directly relates to education. Being actively able to actively seek and value different perspectives, adopts a plan
and behaviors in which we reach workable solutions. Like that's what I'm trying to figure out is like how does this really fit into us creating students, but by the time that they graduate are able to compete in our society? Speaker 9: Sure. Theresa, for my sake, would you go back to that slide with the graduate profile on it? Sorry, I Speaker 3: Just, the graduate It's okay. I just don't, I just don't understand Speaker 9: The rubric. Thank you. Okay. Yep. No, it's okay. It's a great question and I, you know, we've had parents ask a lot of questions about it too. And what we found is that when we sit
and talk through it, there's one question that I found all parents respond to so far in a positive way. I wish I could read that from far away, but I can't look for one, steal yours back, who out there wouldn't want their child to go out in the real world and have been taught how to independently define challenging problems and being able to solve them with processes. These are things we teach at school through what we do in our classrooms every single day.
Who out there wouldn't want their child to leave school. Being able to respectfully work with all peers. We have to teach that in the classroom. That's, that's what we do. We work with kids. Kids work together. There is no better way to learn. We have to teach them how who out there wouldn't want their kid to set meaningful goals and take initiative to achieve 'em. We teach them that in school. Okay, that's what this is about and that's what this program can help us foster. Speaker 3: That helped me put it together. Like I can see the joy that this is bringing you and the excitement.
So it has value to me already, but I, I needed, I needed to understand why are we kind of in the question could be from the community is why are we deviating from math? Speaker 9: This is the work we do collaboratively with kids. When we teach kids math, we teach them how to problem solve and don't give up just 'cause you got it wrong. Go back and let's, let's persevere. Let's figure it out. I'm not gonna tell you the answer. You're gonna figure it out. Speaker 3: That's what I wanted to hear. Speaker 9: We have to take our kids and, and sit 'em in a group to work together and little Billy Bob's sitting there like this
and he's mad and he doesn't wanna work. We're not gonna ignore that behavior because we can't send him out in the world and expect him to work with others that way. We have to teach it. Thank Speaker 8: You. And and the other thing that I think that we've, we've found is that part of the conversation that society and the greater community has and and what the RE two community had was that when the strategic planning process went on for the district, one of the things that the, the previous board did was went to the community
and said, what do you want a graduate to look like? Okay. And what are the skills that you would like them to have beyond reading and writing and arithmetic? Okay. And one of the things that we find is that lots of people with outside of the education sector say that yes, we want people to read, yes, we want them to write, but there also is durable skills that are critical that we want kids to have in order for them
to be employable. And so those are what is the portrait of a graduate. Okay. And so part of it is that we know as, as, as Simone's talking about is that those are things that we need kids to have in order to be successful. Okay. And we know that they are woven in it. You can't do them without be, you can't do the, the standards without being able to problem solve. You can't be able to do them without having interpersonal skills to do that with it.
And so part of it is that we've, we've run into this, this wall in education that says if we don't help support the durable skills or the portrait of a graduate skills and all we do is focus on those, those basic skills of reading and writing, they aren't gonna be successful Okay. When they leave our borders. And so what we're trying to balance is saying, if we give them how do you read, how do you do math? Then the question is how do you implement
that in the real world? And that's this balance that we're, we're, we're looking at to doing that. And so starting in elementary, one of the things that we found is as we've tried to implement this portrait of a graduate, the struggle that our staff had was saying, we have the programs to help us do traditional components we don't have for these skills. Can you give us something that will help Okay with that, that's what I need. And so that's what they were, were clamoring for is give us something that did that.
And part of I think what our curriculum team and and jump in here, if I misrepresent was struggling with, was finding something that didn't go outside of the norms of our community. And what this team with the help of the state was able to do was find a provider who was able to find something that we felt comfortable in that said this fit and could be tailored to our portrait of a graduate fit, our cultural norms fit our portrait of a graduate
that we felt comfortable moving forward with. And what was excited is there was a lot of overlap because in the meantime, we were also looking at if we're gonna go forward with these skills, how do we communicate those to parents of what we're doing? And that's what Simone is showing here, is that this is gonna be something that your elementary parents are gonna start seeing is that these are not just skills that they're gonna be doing nilly willy, they're actually gonna get feedback about where their children are on these portrait skills.
Because we will have people doing direct instruction towards those skills to do that in a, in a way. Okay. Is that a fair? Speaker 9: Very fair. Very fair. Yes. And sorry, I'm not trying to be difficult. I just, I love your question. Really wanted to understand the why behind something fair. Speaker 7: This paper description of success criteria, is this from the, from the state or is this what you guys came up with as a group? The one you gave us? It's Speaker 9: From, so the, the tra under the trait columns, that's all from the commu, the work the community did when we lifted
our strategic plan. It's also from the work our high school students did when we lifted our strategic plan the first time. After that first year, we worked with the company that helped us lift our strategic plan. CEI. You may remember Alex Carter and some of his associates and collaboratively around the state of Colorado school districts are trying to come up with ways to measure these things. So this is very much Garfield re two elementary thinking. And it was done with collaboration with CEI as well
as all six schools counselors. And then we were lucky enough, Kirk had gone through some of this work before in his previous work and he shared some of the work that his organization had completed. And so it gave us another lens on it. So it's a collaboration of a whole lot of time, again, a year and a half coming together, them practicing some things, liking some of it, not liking some of it. And this is the final product for us to lift next year in the classroom, what it might look like. And our counselors will come together
before school starts to map this out, it comes back to this counselor letter. They'll, they'll actually map out a scope and sequence. So let's say quarter two, all elementary schools want, or I'm gonna go to quarter three when CMAs testing happens. All elementary schools wanna focus on strong and determined because they know that kids have to persevere through that long test in third, fourth, and fifth grade. So in that quarter, they're gonna be teaching driven, confident and resilient as character traits.
What do those words mean? And how can you show it in the work that you do? How can you practice it every day? So that when it comes down to the hard stuff, they have a, they have some background to fall back on and they can, they can ask each other questions. The teacher can say, tell me what you can do to be more resilient. That vocabulary can start coming to the surface of the work we're doing in our schools. So kids are more aware of it right now. I think most elementary schools will tell you that the graduate profile
or posters hanging on the wall, they, they, I know they refer to strong and determined, empowered individuals, community connected. The words underneath there that are the meat of it aren't the words that are necessarily bringing brought forward. And they, they need to be, the lessons in the classroom are about 20 minutes a day. And what's that? Speaker 4: It's a day that's like every day the kids are gonna have this class. Speaker 9: Yeah. Yeah. And I would say it's more, it is more, it's set up more to be kind of like a morning meeting. So if I'm covering, and right now I'm making this up
'cause I think every school will look a little different. If I'm gonna cover the concept of being confident, we're gonna refresh our memory of what confident means. How do you know if someone's confident, what does it look like? What does it feel like? What does it sound like? What do we need to be confident about today? Look at our schedule. What might you have to have confidence to get through today? A lot of discussion. And then some, like sometimes they hear a story about someone who's been confident at the really primary levels. There are puppets they use. So it's interactive and it's not more than 20 minutes a day.
If schools want, they can do it once a week. They can spread it out. It's, it's really, that's where the school's gonna have some autonomy they wanted, they didn't want us to dictate, here's how you have to lay it out. Some counselors still wanna teach it on the weekly rotations during specials. Some schools want their homerooms to teach it. So the, the manner of which it's presented will look a little different to, depending on the building you're in, but they'll all be doing the same stuff. Speaker 4: How are we measuring growth from this
other than the rubric? Like how are we as a board gonna see how this is affecting our students? Speaker 9: So we were doing this last year as well, this past school year. The rubric looked a little different, but it was this, this same concept. And we built a dashboard, a graduate profile dashboard where we can see how every grade level, at every school, every grade level across the district where their strengths, what grade levels are struggling the most, and which skills. And when the counselors sit down to organize their scope and sequence for next year,
they'll use some of that information. But our hope is that next year that can be very visible and at the forefront of a lot of what's shared with the public too. Speaker 11: Okay. Speaker 8: I think what what is really exciting about this is because a lot of, a lot of it to your measurement question, Cassie, is that in a lot of places there has been no tool for it. Right? It's really been kind of just like something we do. It's been part of just we need to do this. It Speaker 1: Looks different. It's very, for each teacher, each grade, each classroom.
Where I, I think the one nice thing that I'm, I'm liking about this so far is it's gonna create that consistency across the board so that it's not, you know, oh well again, at this school, they're teaching it this way and it's this teacher that says this and, and which, which too can, when you have sometimes when you have teachers kind of go off a script, is where sometimes we can kind of get into trouble with some of these things where I think if we have got a curriculum, we have got a clear model and we've got clear expectations that are given
to the counselors, moved on to the teachers and the classrooms, I think that will definitely help create that consistency. And I think from, from just what I'm, what I saw what I'm hearing, success may not be very measurable the first year. It's gonna be more measurable as we see this progress and we start seeing how our elementary students are progressing into middle school and transferring how they're dealing with that change in relationships and all the things. And then transferring from middle school
into high school too, right. And being employed. Speaker 4: Well I, I mean, don't get me wrong, okay, don't get me wrong. Just hear me out. These type of programs is a lot of what parents come to us. Like what are, why are we wasting classroom time on this? What are we doing? Why is a counselor teaching a class? Why isn't this just everyday language in a classroom when they're learning a lesson? Why, if we're doing this, why aren't we learning cursive? Our kids can't even sign a document. Speaker 7: Yeah. I love that one. Speaker 4: You know, like it's all this,
we're trying to give them life tools, but we can't teach 'em to write cursive. So Speaker 9: I I Speaker 4: I just Speaker 9: Hear that often as well. And I, I'm sure you and empathize with it and I all, I can say up until now, all I could say is, let me learn more again, because every school is doing something different. Right. And not every school even had authentic programming for this. An example might be one school might be teaching the word integrity. Great concept, great character trait.
It's not on here. Which doesn't mean it's a bad thing. We want this common vocabulary so that when kids move up to middle school, kids move up to high school. Yeah. They have an understanding of this common vocabulary. So, and I would argue even what, even if this isn't brought forward, our schools are doing something anyway, right? So why not have them do something that's authentic to the graduate profile, vetted to be aligned to the graduate profile and,
and can provide consistency K 12 should our secondary schools decide to go that way. Speaker 7: I think sometimes the role of, I guess, educational counselors is overlooked in the mass, you know, is public sphere. I think if, and I probably was guilty of it when I first came on the board. I think what we're seeing overall as, as our culture moves into the future is that whether we like it or not, our kids are coming to school less prepared to learn fact. Yeah. We then are left to
scramble and figure it out as a whole. I mean I, I like, I like the consistency that this oper that this is gonna provide the district with the common language. I like that. And then the counselors being able to build upon that, hopefully in middle school and, and secondary, it's just, it's, it's, it's hard for people to understand how much our culture and society has changed in the last 30 years to the, you know, and it's not that the,
the kiddos we have now are less than or different. It is just a different, it's just a different subset. Right. And they're just reacting different and things are different. They have all sorts of things to take their attention and we have to figure it out. So I, I mean overall I like the common language and I like, I really like that factor of it. Speaker 1: And I, and I think too, looking at this pyramid too, you know, one thing that we did talk about in our goal setting was reaching that, that middle group too. I mean you've got your high achievers that are gonna be high achievers, they're gonna be high achievers whether they've got the
support from the teacher or not. 'cause they'll find it. And then you've got the students that will need help and will be given that attention. Well what do they do with that 15% that's in the middle? Hmm. And I think this will help bridge that as well. I mean let's definitely, let's, let's keep hearing what the plan is. I am curious to see how this will tie into our curriculum as well. 'cause of course, like Cassie says, we can go over this stuff but we can't even teach our kids cursive. And of course the one other thing
that I get all the time is too, well that's not how we did it when I was in school. Yeah. I know. My teacher also slapped my hand with my Yeah. And, and yeah. Kids aren't, I mean, you know, I'll hear too all the time. Kids aren't as tough as we were. Speaker 7: Well, well, Speaker 4: And I think, I think the biggest thing is, is communicating this, right? Because I hear a lot of the times, well yeah we're doing SEL but it's like hidden. The agenda is hidden the agenda. Like it's on the newsletter but it's buried in the newsletter. I don't even know. My kid comes home and complains about this class that they have to sit in when
it's like stuff they learned when they were in kindergarten. Like it's like you hear these things and you get sick of hearing the things. Three, Speaker 7: I have three fingers up so I don't Speaker 9: Forget, forget thing. One chance you mentioned that education has changed so much and our student population has changed so much. I would argue a counselor's role has changed even more. Next year will be the first year that all, all of our counselors at all 10 schools have set a goal around academic achievement and have set a goal
around learning behavior. That's pretty cool. Because ultimately that's their job or those things, attendance also. Those are their three. That's the world they should live in. And I think people, when they hear the word counselor, they think of calling someone into an office and rubbing their back and soothing them and yeah, that no emergencies happen, but that is not the crux of their job. So that, that's a big paradigm shift. And back to the pyramid when, when the friends who have already set goals over the course of the past year
had to do small groups around helping students who were on reading plans improve their reading so that they can come off a reading plan. Counselors are like, I don't know what to do with these six second graders that I need to spend time and talk to them about these tier two intervention supports. And Wayfinder will help them with that. That's how they're supporting academic achievement. And then the last finger I might have forgotten. Communication. Appearance. Yes. Therea, will you please go to, I saw your finger go there is Spanish.
Everything is Spanish translated. And then there is a plethora. On the next slide you'll see a plethora of how we are going to connect with families. But Speaker 7: I, so I, I wanna emphasize Spanish translation. It's very important. But we need to make sure we're getting through to every parent. Not just it's in English and Spanish. Like that's, that's a demographic we're talking about that ex we need to figure out how do we explain it in a way that makes sense to them and really 'cause it makes sense to me.
I think a couple things on this rubric, the very objective things on it. I mean you asked 10 people what driven looks like in a what a driven characteristic looks like in a student. You're gonna come up with 10 similar answers. Answers. You're gonna look at what self-aware, same thing. Same thing. The subjective terms. I want to make sure we are very aware of what our goal is there and and, and communicate that to parents. Speaker 9: So the top row under the orange, you'll see, I left it written out as a list for you.
This is a place where we can turn the sub, we can minimize the subjectivity because those are literal things that you can see students doing and we're hoping that helps. And each one of those, when we're done tonight, that will go back to written out like you see in the other rows. Each one of those has those descriptors that will be focusing on in the schools. Is that what you you're referring to? Yeah. Okay. Speaker 7: We did just, we need to be very, yeah, we need to be very focused and communicate that to
what our end goal is. Speaker 9: I agree to Speaker 7: All parents. Speaker 9: Agreed. We're also hoping that after first quarter and all the elementary schools, when the parents complete this for their children, it heightens their awareness to all of that too. So Wayfinder has a lot of family support built in. Family nights will happen at the elementary schools and there are a plethora of resources. Families will actually have access to the Wayfinder online portal so that they can see what their kids are doing in school. They can see how concepts are taught.
They can, let's say your child is argumentative, parents can go into Wayfinder and, and look up how they can help support their argumentative child to try and turn their disposition around Speaker 1: Inquisitive. Not necessarily argumentative. I'm just kidding. Speaker 9: So we're, we're hoping that because of the supports that are already built in, if, if we can elevate those, it will help with a lot of that. Ensuring parents are aware and, and we don't call it social emotional learning for reading for a reason.
It's really not anymore. It is all about building character traits that are important for us to be successful in life. Speaker 7: I'm a big fan of the family nights. They're pretty fun. Speaker 3: Simone, you said that there are three counseling goals, academic achievement, attendance, and what was the third one? Speaker 9: Learning behaviors. Thank Speaker 3: You. Thank you. I missed it. Speaker 9: And again, our counselors don't set goals around attendance because our attendance program is so strong in Garfield that they, they, for them it would be a tier three support. One or two kids that might need individual support. Otherwise we don't set school wide goals
for the counselors around that Speaker 7: Because we're awesome at attendance. Speaker 9: We are. Yep, we are. So really with all y'all's blessing, this is, this is a way that we would be excited to, to bring literal graduate profile skill skills into our elementary schools as a program of support sharing all along the way and making sure all 10 schools are aware of what's happening at the elementary level as the year goes on. Speaker 5: What's the cost? Speaker 1: It's Speaker 9: Covered isn't, it's about 57,000 for the all the schools
and it's coming outta the Counselor Corps grant. Speaker 3: Is that per year or one time fee? Speaker 9: It's per, each school's about 6,000 for a site license Speaker 1: Per year. Okay. Speaker 3: So how do we fund that after the grant expires? Speaker 9: More grants. Speaker 1: Yay. Because Simone's awesome with Grant. She is. And Simone, I just, and and again I apologize, I wanna make sure I wrote 'em down correctly 'cause Cassie's copying off me. The the three goals was learning behaviors, academic success and attendance for the counselors. Correct. Okay, thank you.
See I attention, I had academic goals, learning behaviors I had as number three. Oh, I had a model. Well, three, I think that's just the three goals. Three equally important. Yes. So Speaker 8: I, I just really wanted to re reiterate with the board is that this is one of our major steps in trying to implement the portrait of a graduate with all students. And that really stemmed from the community's push of looking at what are skills that are not
coming out of core curriculum. And those are really come from what your community said kids don't have. And this is what business is saying. And I think all of you knowing the conversation we had, you all know this. It's what happens when a senior walks out and people say, well kids can't do this. I can't write this is, this is the skills Speaker 1: I've never had. Terrible. Speaker 9: KA give it time Speaker 1: Is terrible. I'm not joking you, I am like, I am like baffled by this. Like Speaker 8: But these are the, these are the other skills Cassie,
that are really, that for sure employers are saying here is the problem. And it is across the board that we're seeing it, it we're seeing it for those who are college bound. We are seeing it for those people who are going into the trades, we are seeing it. Those people who are going into the service industry. And one of the things that we know is that we've got to get them these skills because society is saying this is what we need. What it means is it's the value of our diploma
as an re two student. Yeah. And so the only way that we're seeing it become valuable is finding these soft skills, durable skills. They come by a lot of different names, but we call 'em portrait of a graduate skills. And it's what we're putting into place and it's by backwards designing it. It's what we want high schoolers to have when they leave at the 12th grade year. In order to do that, we have backwards designed it to say it's gotta start at elementary schools.
So part of what's going on is that it is, we really need it to start where we know there's the most capability to get that going. And that's really happening at the elementary school. We are gonna work our way through. So we broke those skills down and we can start it at the elementary school. And that's why this is happening here. It's being brought forward to that. It's coming from your constituents. It was, this is not some other thing. These were the skills that were brought forward from our community
that said this is what they need. We found a partner who can give us the direct instruction to help support our teachers in it. So this is then gonna help parents understand it so that the route that we're going about it is they're gonna do a self-assessment so that they can learn these things and move into the point where then eventually by the time they get to high school, we're going to have an ability. And that was where my comment was is that we're actually gonna have an ability to gauge are we moving kids on these skills so
that we can have a diploma that is valuable to employers so they can say, I have an ability to say an re two diploma is worth because these kids can do these durable skills, these portrait of a graduate skills. So that's, that's the vision of where we're working at. But it's gotta start with the littles and it's gotta move through our system through that. And so this was something you all started before our time. We're just trying to actualize it in that process.
And luckily we have outside funds to start moving that through with the counselor core grant instead of taking away from the other areas that was working. Speaker 7: So as a being business owner, I, most of these are things that I could say the vast majority of young, young adults lack problem solving independent thinkers. You, you find the ones that don't. Of course. But there's, I mean there's definitely, you can see why bottom line is this is stuff that our counselors are already doing in a way
that they feel necessary at their time. This is, this is bringing it all like into a, into a housing of sorts with some, with some guardrails and stuff like that. Let's, let's attack it this way, here's some autonomy, but this is what we're gonna focus on. So I can appreciate that. And my only question, and I don't, I I I support it, but my only thing with it, Kirk, is this is one question I had with it was a couple weeks ago, I was presented with a document of all the things that public education has been asked to do from 1920 to present. You got it. Is this something we're volun My question was,
is this something we're volunteering that we're just gonna take this upon ourselves and add that to the list? That was where I was gonna have the, the stronger debate. Okay. Yep. Like I'm, I'm, I'm not sure we're at the point where we want to bite off anymore. Yeah. But with the counselors doing something like this, bring 'em all into, you know, a road of sorts. Like That's fine. That's great. Love it. Speaker 8: To answer your question, I I believe it's in the buckets of things that we need to do in order for kids to be successful. Yeah, I agree. Because one of the things that I believe
that this falls into is what we look at in is the work around, especially at the secondary level of things like icap when we're saying, do you know what you're going to do when you leave here? Is it, is it a four year? Is it a two year? Is it a trade or are you going right into the workforce? It ties into that, that work. And so I do believe it is work that we're already doing. And to your point, we may have already committed to that years ago.
And am I willing to give it up? No. Because I think it's valuable to our constituents because they already said it to us. So I think it's worthwhile and I know that it's gonna be help them be successful in our core mission. So I'm willing to hold onto it because we can't, we can't just release it. Yeah, that's I fine. So that's, that's why I'm willing to hold onto it. Speaker 1: And, and I think, I think these are skills that have always been taught at some level.
I think as from when I was in school on how this was taught, these were skills that were taught to us in a different manner. The student has changed. So the teacher needs to adapt and teach it in a way that they can appreciate it now. And I think the hard part with the littles, with the graduate profile is it seems so big and so far away that I think this kind of helps bring it to their level.
That's my, I mean, and, and I think one thing that we've, we've echoed up here, I think the biggest thing is to make sure that we, we communicate to the parents exactly what is going on. 'cause because Speaker 7: There's nothing, I mean most of these are Speaker 1: Great Yeah. Speaker 7: Leaders, Speaker 1: You know, and Yeah. And, and I hear we're getting too touchy feely. No, no, no. I don't see that. I mean, I don't, I I I truly don't. That I don't, as Speaker 4: Long as we're sticking to the, what did I write down here? You know, just focusing on the character, responsibility, life skills, that aspect.
And we're not getting into the weeds. I support it 110%. I do hear those voices in my back. Well we're doing this, but what about cursive? What about learning a second language? Why aren't we teaching our kids Spanish? Like I hear those, those voices in the background saying, well, we're doing this, why can't we do this? And Speaker 1: If our students have these skills, like they'll be able to learn other adaptive skills. Like a second language, Speaker 7: One thing unsafe for cursive. I write cursive and I've heard that and it's one of my favorites.
Okay. Know, you know what else we don't do? We don't ride on stone tablets anymore. Right, right. We don't ride horses in the battle. I mean, stuff changes. Right. And we just need to, yeah. So Speaker 4: I feel like it's the universal language though for Speaker 7: Oh yeah, it is. Just for signing a check. I couldn't write you a sentence in cursive right now. If you paid me Speaker 3: Somewhere Speaker 4: The other day, oh, you have to sign your passport. You have to sign your, like a business for an I nine. You have to have two forms of identification. And it's amazing to me how many
social security cards are not signed or passports aren't signed correctly and not necessarily a passport. I've only seen two that weren't done correctly. But the social security card is supposed to have a signature, it is comical to watch a 17 to a 19-year-old try to figure out how to sign that stinking thing. And I'm sitting there going, can you just write your name? Like, just write I, you can print it out. You don't have to sign it. But like, I mean they, they're like, what? I have to sign it Speaker 7: Like in another 10 years they're just gonna make a mark,
Speaker 4: Just come up with something like a scribble line. Speaker 7: Yeah. Speaker 4: You kind Speaker 3: To sum some of this up. I guess from my perspective, after, after like digging how I feel about this, it's that I, one, I do have some worries that this is open-ended enough that it allows some of our teachers to kind of choose their own definition of what these character traits should look like in students. And I think what, and I don't speak for the board, but I can say that I, I feel like maybe some
of the concern is, is how does that get translated from, from classroom to classroom in making sure that these are rigid standards, not subjective standards about how a teacher believes a child's character should look. That's one. Two, I, I think that there is some frustration just globally, and again, I'm not speaking for the board in full, but I feel like what I'm hearing is that a lot of this stuff used to be taught at home
and it is very frustrating. Not that schools didn't supplement, but it feels like every year a district is asked to do more of the parenting and all of the education with very limited support at home. So it's some, it sometimes can feel a little overwhelming. I don't even sit in the classroom. I know that you guys feel it. I don't know if that's an accurate representation. But when we have to teach character, not that we shouldn't, but when we have to teach character, it takes away from, from other core learning potentially.
I think that maybe is the argument that's going on in my head. Speaker 9: Fair. That's very fair. And I don't know how our educators will get through a day without addressing these things anymore. I don't think they can. Speaker 3: I don't think they can either. Dad. It is. And Speaker 7: I think Speaker 1: Teach the parents is Speaker 3: I my position, Speaker 7: I think you sum of that pretty well. The fact of the matter is this gives us some, gives you guys a tool. We have to have it. The frustration with me is that we have to have Speaker 1: It is that we have to have it. Speaker 7: That's, and and that's, that's frustrating to me.
Speaker 9: We're, we're moving into year four of our strategic plan, if you can even believe it. Holy cow. Right. And this is the first biggest leap we've taken with the graduate profile. I would argue it's probably a little overdue, but we're excited that we can finally do something. Speaker 1: And I think the counselor core grant allowed us to do that. Speaker 9: Me too. I'm really proud of that group. Speaker 1: So, 'cause I don't think we would've had the, I mean, looking at the finances of it too. There's, Jason, correct me if I'm wrong, I don't think we would've had the finances to do Speaker 3: It.
He found 304,000. Speaker 1: Yeah, I know. Can we bring up cola Speaker 9: A year? That's a year. Yeah, Speaker 1: A year. Sorry. Yeah. Speaker 3: That's pretty cool. Thank you for your hard work on this. Yeah, Speaker 9: You're welcome. Thank you. You relay Speaker 3: Very much. Appreciation is welcome for the hard work. Speaker 9: So we neglected to have like a formal vote on this one, but can you just gimme a thumb up? Speaker 7: Do we need to vote on it? I mean, do we have, do we need a formal, Speaker 9: I don't know. Are Speaker 1: We Speaker 4: Supposed like to purchase it or you have Speaker 1: To have a, it's already been, Speaker 7: It's within the grant. And you've approved Speaker 1: The grant. The grant, yeah. Oh, Speaker 7: So well then Speaker 1: We don't have to do anything,
but you want our approval, Simone? I think this is great work. Emily. Roll call. Frankly, this time point at the people Speaker 9: You guys, thanks a ton. Speaker 1: Thank you Simone. Joking, appreciate Speaker 12: We do it. However you Speaker 1: Thank you Simone. Thank you. Thank you Simone. She's got a good next. It's like they're passing the mic. Jason, it's you. It's fun with finance, fun Speaker 12: With find. I hope everyone's having a good summer. It was nice to hear everybody talk about quiet board
meetings and finance Speaker 1: And then finance. Just Speaker 12: A little bit of credit. When we present the financials, this is generally the crowd that we get. Speaker 1: Hey, it's starting to become consistent. So you're, Speaker 12: You're welcome for that. Tonight on our agenda, I'm basically gonna show you kind of where the revenues are at this point in time, actually about a week ago, 10 days ago. Show you where we think they're headed. And what you're gonna notice if you look close is they're very, very similar to what we presented last month. Most of this presentation is almost identical to last month. There's about two little changes. I'll point those out.
They're small amounts. I'll explain why they're changes and then we'll talk about the proposed final budgets. Let you see those. And then finally we will walk through the resolutions because I know Chance will be mad at me when we have to re later because that's, those are three pages with a lot of big numbers on, there's some good news at each stage of this that I don't wanna blow past. So I'm gonna head on up to one of these screens. And this is kind of where we were, where we are through June the 15th.
I was just explaining to Megan that I kind of geeked out because I've built some, some formulas and spreadsheets that let us run the financials to any date. So we can, I could just show you June if you wanted. I can show you September through January 8th. And so you get to see these kinda live. This is, this is about as close as I could present, making sure that we included payroll in it. But as I was explaining to her, there's lots of changes that happen fast and one of the things Steve asked, he said, so is this pretty close?
You don't expect a lot of change. Well, today we got in four and a half million dollars, Speaker 1: So, so there's some change. So Speaker 12: There's some change. Yesterday we got in $600,000 worth of grant. So in the last 24, 24 hours we got in $5.1 million. Different funds Speaker 1: We got in though. Went up. Yes, Speaker 12: It went up. Yeah. So these, this number's actually three, 280,000 left instead of 3.2 left. So there are changes. They do happen fast. The other thing that happens is sometimes if you look at a certain day and you look at the financials and then a week later you go back
and look at that exact day, they've changed because we have to move things around. We move things into grants, we transfer things between funds, cancel out old pos, things that happen. So it, it's pretty fluid. But I want you guys to have the most UpToDate picture. This is the picture I look at when I'm looking at 'em. This is where we were in revenues nine days ago. Like I said, this number's now about a million that's left in our, in our budget. So we got in 3 million in the general fund. Don't expect any like super dramatic changes at this point. We're, we're down to about $900,000 million left.
We've got a check coming in from the BOCES left as the bulk of it. And then there'll be some little things that come in revenue wise. But otherwise we're getting very close to the end. On the next screen you'll see are expenses. The reason I wanted to run it out through June 15th is, so you could see the last payroll of the year. So the last payroll of the year is N and this is what's left in the budget. Those are good numbers. A lot of money left. We talked about coming in under budget and payroll and that's where we are. There's still some payroll that has to be moved back next month. It's called an accrual. It gets shoved back into the year before.
So we'll see some adjustments in that. But I'm, I'm still very optimistic about, about the payroll numbers. And when you look at the big checks that still have to go out, those are both, one of 'em is both. BOCES is a big check that goes out. It's about million. Which one? The BOCES check that we're waiting to send. Yep. 900 million. It, Speaker 13: It will be under a million but it'll be eight to Speaker 12: 9,000. Okay. We'll talk about that too in a second. But this is the expenses as to where they were nine days ago. So the next slide shows our projections,
what we're projecting. Now, keep in mind this was $3 million ago. So we're saying where do we think we're gonna end up? What adjustments do we need to make? None of this has changed since last month. We still think we're gonna come in revenue wise around this 71 3 number with these changes. Just a little bit of change in specific ownership tax. And then our federal sources, just that'll, that'll be included actually in the sage check that we're, I think we're gonna come in just a little bit over budget on that. So there's our revenues, our expenses.
I think that's exactly what I presented. I I think I may have trued up the final payroll numbers that we knew. I'm only giving us credit for about 75% of the payroll savings in our projections because of the accrual that'll come back. Notice that we don't really have any big expense changes. I've told you now, Kathy will not let me project any savings on those because she's conservative. Great news, this is good news. Number one, when the year started, we were at about 2.2 million as a deficit. We're projecting closer to 1.2 million.
So almost a million dollars under budget. That is still deficit spending. But if you compare it to the last two years, our deficit every year has gone down from one, it was originally gonna be two four. We got it down to I think one eight or one six and it was supposed to be two two and it was supposed to be. So here we are, we are trending in the right direction. If you remember our February meeting, I said I really like savings in budget because they double count, they carry over. If you didn't spend it this year, it becomes part of next year's fund balance. It's a double count piece.
So every dollar that we save is one less dollar that we take out of fund budget or fund balance and one more dollar that's there for next year. So those are my favorite types of savings. On the next screen, this is the proposed budgets for next year. This is almost identical to what we presented a month ago. The only change in the general fund is that since last month we've had one personnel meeting. Sped what had a needed a a para because of student count change projection for next year.
So we added one basically PCN and that also adjust your benefits piece. So those two pieces just barely went up. Everything else is what we projected for you last month. Here's good, good news. Number two, right now we're projecting deficit spending of 500,000. Yes. That's after two years of 2.4, you know, 2.2 and the actual actual deficit spending of 1.8. What looks like 1.2 and 500. We, I've told you
before, my theory of finance is it's all momentum and we are trending in the right direction. When I show you the actual fund balance in a second I'll explain how I think we got here and what we did with that fund balance. This is the, the food budget. Mary's budget, I was extremely conservative on her revenues. We do have a slightly smaller student count and so I was anticipating less reimbursement and revenue for a number of meals she would serve if you take those students out. But I didn't give her credit on the expense side. So this is conservative, you know, low revenue,
high expense budgeting. I suspect she'll blow this outta the water she always seems to do. So this is your grants. The whole grant team sat down, we sat down with Simone. How many grants, what do we have next year? What do we think? We're shoring up and we think we're gonna bring in around $2.1 million in grants. This stuff down here has to equal the exact same amount we have to spend what we get in grants. Otherwise you have to give it back most of the time. This is really a guess because most of the grant budgets won't be finalized until October. Some of them November. So I'm allocating this
and the salary benefit purchase services and supplies based on how it fit last year. So this number will probably, these expense numbers will probably be trued up around January because we just don't have those budgets Speaker 1: Yet. And I'm assuming those grant budgets are also based on, so the grants that fund different monies, different years Speaker 12: Could Speaker 1: Be yes. So, okay. Yes. Some of them that's taken into account. Speaker 12: Absolutely. So when we sat down as a team, we said, which grants do we know are returning? How much are those? Which grants have we applied for
that we think are in the pipeline? How much are those? And we tried to actually, I mean that's a pretty specific number. We tried to actually calculate what that would be. I'm certain that a grant will get denied or another grant will get received and this will tweak a little bit over the year. So, but that's, just know these numbers here are, do we have anything in there for the best grant? Yes, but the best grant will come in in the state funds. It'll be in the 10 fund. Okay. Not necessarily in in the grant fund. Yes. Alright. Speaker 1: If we get it, Speaker 12: These are the assumptions for creating those. This is the first year the team sat down
and actually went through every single PCN and tried to price those and tried to price 'em next year at their raise. Yes. PCN Thank you. Personnel control number. Every position in the district is unique. So when you get a job, I know you're sitting in as a counselor and I know what that counselor's pay range should be and I know what their benefits should be and so on and so forth. So we have PCN so that you don't ever accidentally hire two people for the same job. It's, it's a control mechanism for personnel. We went over all these, everybody went
through all the vacancies, tried to price everything that we could in there. It's the first time that we've ever gotten it down that granular. Emily and Jamie and Heather and Kathy and everybody worked on that. Very hard. If we turn out to be awful on anything by January, I think we can blame Emily. So welcome to your first board meeting. Speaker 1: Emily, welcome to your first meeting. Speaker 12: I put benefits in as a 13% growth. We uploaded benefits into the system yesterday and there's still about 150 entries to make.
We won't know exactly what plans everybody chose and how that turned out for probably another month. So this is my best guess to hold that healthcare benefits piece. State share with the cola. Pause. Put that in there for you. Chance Speaker 1: You didn't highlight it. Speaker 12: The interest is based on, you know, we think we're gonna see a fund balance reduction of 1.2 million because of deficit spending. So I tried to adjust our interest, assuming at all points in time we have about 1,000,002 less. But this is, this is how we, this is how we come up with our cost estimates.
Those are the, those are the assumptions that we make and the processes that we make. And so if you ever wanna come help finance, we could sure use your help in may. 'cause this is really busy and takes a lot of, lot of work. You guys are doing a pretty good job. It's a problem with this job is you get to find out, so this is the budgets for the other three funds, the activity fund. Remember these are student fees. We're trying to guess how many kids are gonna come in and pay for supplies, pay for football fees, track fees, all those things. I basically just grow it at the rate that it seems that it's been growing.
I did the same thing with the expenses. So I, how many I, I actually grew it a little bit aggressively because now that Kathy got success funds, it seems like we're seeing an uptick in the number of people that come pay student fees. These are not tax dollars. I mean they belong to the taxpayers 'cause they're parents. But we, we are a custodian of this account and we hold that account and we account for it and we track for it, but it, it's not like we can pay for books out of that. That's for, that's for those specific accounts. Debt service fund, this is what pays off the bond. We pay about 9 million bucks a year on that bond.
And so in December we'll certify the mills and that'll give us our revenue and then we'll calculate the bond payment and they take that. This is also money that we really don't touch it just self-regulate to pay the bond. Just like these self-regulate to pay for student activities. Finally, we have John's budget capital projects. John's wrapping up the roof on Rifle Middle School. I met with him last Wednesday. We think that's his final project. There's some debate, should it be in this year or next year? Because I think, and we talked to two accountants about this and an auditor, we think that he,
they're gonna say it needs to be in this year. So all I carried forward with John next year is his capital projects budget. The 1.2 for the revenue and for the expenses. Could find out that I don't think we'll make the final payment till June if they push that back over, we'll have to give John enough fund over here to pay for it next year. Take, we'll steal it from this year to go to next year. So that, that right there is usually what John's budget looks like when the year starts. So any questions about budget? Alright, before, oh yeah, let's go to the fund balance. So I think we even skip that. I think I talked about that.
So this is what the fund balance looks like. If you go back over the last few years, the blue is what we budgeted this year and the grays where we're trending. So pretty good. The thing that I want to talk about is back here, the board met and talked about giving raises for recruitment and retention. And we gave a 4% on the base, which I think you remember I passed out, I was sitting in a chair and passed out because that put us at a, that 4% is about $2.4 million, 2.6 million somewhere in there that put us in the hole. And so we knew we were deficit spending
to help pay teachers and to help recruit. And that, that was the goal of the board. And I think Chance asked me, how are you gonna manage that? And I said, well you've given us a heck of a management task. Like we have to manage this deficit. That's what we have to do. And we have to educate on, if you think about it, we get about 2 million bucks a year extra over last year and raises with steps is 1.2. So if you're going to eliminate that deficit about, the best you can do is about 800,000 a year. So the best you can do is be on a three year track to try
to get us back to balanced. Well, we're pretty close. We've, we we're pretty close. Especially if you think about how many times we got kicked in the teeth with different things increasing in benefit cost and production in state share and some other things. And cola being frozen. So this right here shows the three year plan. It shows good momentum. And if people ask, what did you do with your fund balance? I think we can very honestly say we shove that into salaries and benefits. That's what we did. We went from this level
to this level in a responsible way so that we didn't just spiral off the cliff. So I I I I'm proud of that. I I verbalized that three years ago. I don't think anybody heard me, but I was like, this is the plan. Speaker 7: No, I remember that meeting. Yep. 'cause you, you laid out with that how you were going at the time. You and Jeff were talking about how you were gonna manage it and you brought up the fact of the $2 million, give or take increase a year. Yeah. So I remember this is, this is what you, what you said you'd Speaker 12: Do and the only way to do it was hold costs constant.
And so if you'll indulge me for two minutes Speaker 1: And go, Speaker 12: The reason the costs we're held constant. I think we need to acknowledge this is Kathy's last week with the district Speaker 1: Last. Oh, Kathy. Kathy. Speaker 12: And because no one in the history of mankind has done more for school finance than Kathy. I snuck into the budget. None of you noticed enough money to build her a 40 foot statue at the bottom. It's gonna say district spending ends on March 30th. And I'm gonna talk to Newcastle about putting it on the roundabout. Speaker 1: Exceed every day go to silk so in the middle
Speaker 12: Silk can have it. Yeah, it's in the middle. But we don't have a statue in New Castle. So, Speaker 1: Okay, Speaker 12: So Kathy, thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Have Speaker 12: A happy retirement. Speaker 1: See Emily, we pick on her just as much if it's her last board meeting as it's your first, it's Speaker 12: Your first you. I wanna walk you through the resolutions. 'cause these are always just a little bit confusing. We have three resolutions anytime. So in order for us to spend money, it has to be authorized by the board. So you guys tell us how much we're allowed to spend in each fund. That's the most we're allowed to spend Notice you don't tell us how much revenue we're supposed to get.
We can get all the revenue we want. That's, that's okay if we go over in any of the funds, the board has to authorize u excess use over the appropriated amount. Our student fee account, which we predicted it's not, it's almost impossible to budget, actually went over about $32,000 this year. Which means the football team may have raised 20 and spent 24. They, they have their own little fund balances. Every single little student account. So the student account overspent by about 30,000 from what we thought they would spend. I put in an extra 50 just in case there's a lot
of summer camps and a lot of spending. I didn't wanna have to come back and say we need another thousand. So what we're asking is to up the amount we're allowed to spend in the activity fund this year by $82,782. That's what that's about. That doesn't mean their deficit spending or anything, it's just they, we set the spending level on the next appropriation and resolution. This is where you're saying how much we're allowed to spend in each fund next year. So if, if student activity goes over 1 4 0 9 1 7 3, we'd have to come back and ask to spend more than that.
So this is the budget that I just presented. That's the total before you freak out at $90 million, which makes me freak out. I think last year was 88 million. So we're, we're, we're growing at about that $2 million pace. So this is the total amount that the board would allow to be spent in each of the funds. That's what that one's for. And then the last one, if any budget is set to go into deficit spending, the board has to authorize that deficit spending. So the general fund, like I said, about just over $500,000 would be deficit food service.
Again, I think I was way too conservative on Mary, but she's got plenty of fund balance to cover that. And the student activity fund was small. It just trended out to be a $5,762. So this authorizes use of fund balance to manage those. If we end up coming in under budget, we don't have to do that. So those are the three, sorry that those have to be read. Speaker 14: Is the the date not correct on that? Yeah. Speaker 12: Oh Speaker 1: It is correct on this one. Okay. Speaker 12: Okay. Yeah. Check the date on the
above the signature line. Make sure I got it right. Speaker 1: Lemme double check because Speaker 12: We, I use Speaker 1: Old. Nope. Yeah, the resolution of this one needs to be and then it, I mean I figured I could write it in on this one but, okay. Speaker 5: Perfect. Okay. Thank you for catching that. Yeah, that'll be today. So Speaker 7: June 24. Speaker 5: Any other questions? Any ideas for the statue? Legos there? Expensive Speaker 3: Morgan pose and Legos. Speaker 7: Thank you Jason. Speaker 5: Thanks guys. Thank you. Thank you. Speaker 3: So since you didn't get the second or approve any of the motions, I think you should read Speaker 1: These Jason while we
read 'em and approve them. Can we get a corrected printout of this one with the date? Sure. With the corrected date so Cassie and I can sign it. Speaker 5: I think it's the each job to do all that reading. Speaker 3: He hasn't done much else around here so might as well. Speaker 5: No, Speaker 1: Ouch. Alright. Speaker 7: Rough crowd. Speaker 5: He's always saying Speaker 7: All I'm gonna start with, am I ready? Speaker 1: Yep, go for it. Okay, I'm start. We'll go ahead and do the governance action items. Is Speaker 7: That Speaker 1: Next? Yep. Okay. So the supplemental appropriation resolution. Alright. Speaker 7: Be it resolved by the Board of Education of Garfield School District number re
two in Garfield County. That the amount shown in the following schedule be a supplemental appropriation to the Pupil Activity Fund as specified in the June revised budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1st, 2025 and ending June 30th, 2026. The funds available in these accounts are sufficient to allow for this one time expenditure. Student activity funds, student activity funds $82,782. Total supplemental $82,782 adopted this day.
24th day of June, 2026. Speaker 5: Perfect. Speaker 1: May I get a second? Speaker 5: I'll second that. Speaker 1: Thank you. Okay, next. Oh sorry. Roll call. Wow, Emily. Yes, that's, that's normal. Yes. However I got it. Yes. Speaker 5: Okay, good. You good? Okay. Bull, you aye pass. Aye Kyle Aye. Jenkins. Aye. Jensen a letter. Speaker 7: Great job. Hold on. You show a resilient Speaker 1: And adaptability.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Speaker 7: All right, so that one's up. Another appropriation resolution. Be it resolved by the Board of Education, Garfield School District number re two in Garfield County. That the amount shown in the following schedule be appropriated to each fund as specified in the fiscal year 26 to 2027. Proposed budget for the fiscal year, beginning July 1st, 2026 and ending June 30th, 2027. General Fund $73,951,305 Special revenue funds, food service, special revenue fund, $2,609,732.
Governmental designated purpose Grants fund, $2,098,839 Pupil activity special fund expenditures $1,409,173 Bond redemption fund $9,079,080. Capital Project funds Capital Reserve Capital project fund, 1,200,000. Total appropriation of $90,348,129. Adopted this 24th day of June, 2026. Speaker 1: Thank you. I apologize,
I think I did that wrong the first time. May I get a motion to approve the appropriation resolution as read? Speaker 4: I make a motion to approve the appropriation resolution was read. Speaker 1: Thank you. May I get a second? Speaker 5: I'll second. Speaker 1: Thank you. Emily, may I get roll call Speaker 4: You? Aye. Aye Kyle Aye. Jenkin. Aye Speaker 5: Jen. Speaker 1: Aye. Speaker 4: Do we Speaker 1: Need to redo? I'm gonna redo. We Chance did read the supplemental appropriation resolution. May I get a motion to approve it as read? Speaker 4: I make a motion to approve the supplemental
appropriation resolution as read. Speaker 1: Thank you. May I get a second? Speaker 5: Second. Speaker 1: Emily May get roll call again on that one. Speaker 4: Both you. Aye. Aye. Kyle Aye. Jenkins? Speaker 1: Aye. Aye. Jensen. Aye. Speaker 7: What is going on? Speaker 5: Okay, Speaker 7: I think we're going with that one. Speaker 1: You know, we just need, yeah, you just need Speaker 7: Last resolution. Yes. Authorizing the use of of a portion of beginning fund balance as authorized by Colorado statutes. Whereas CRS 22 dash 44 dash zero five states, the budget duly adopted pursuant
to this article shall not provide for expenditures, enter fund, transfers or reserves in excess of available revenues and beginning fund balance. Whereas the Board of Education may authorize the use of a portion of the beginning fund balance in the budget stating the amount to be used, the purpose for which the expenditure is needed, and the district's plans to plan to ensure the use of the beginning fund balance will not lead to an ongoing deficit. Whereas the Board of Education has determined the beginning fund balance balances in the general fund and capital projects fund are sufficient to allow for the one-time expenditures.
And these actions will not lead to an ongoing deficit. Now therefore be it resolved in accordance with CRS 22 dash 44 dash zero five. The Board of Education authorizes the use of a portion of the fiscal year 20 25, 20 26 beginning fund balance for the planned use of one time expenditures from the following funds. General Fund $507,885 Food Service Fund $323,213 Student Activity Fund, 5,760 $62
Speaker 5: Be Speaker 7: It further results, the use of this portion of these beginning fund balances for the purposes set forth above will not lead to ongoing deficits in the funds adopted this 24th day of June, 2026. Speaker 1: In the last paragraph, in accordance with CRS 22 dash 44 dash 1 0 5, the Board of Education authorizes the use of a portion of the fiscal year 2026 to 2027 beginning fund. I think yours had 25 26. Yes it does. Speaker 5: Okay. Speaker 1: So the fiscal year 2026.
2027 beginning fund balance for the planned use of one time expenditures from the following funds. May I get a motion to approve the resolution as amended? Speaker 3: I'll make a motion to approve the resolution as amended. Speaker 1: Thank you. May I get a second? Speaker 5: I second. Speaker 1: Thank you. Emily, may I get roll call? Speaker 5: Aye. Al Aye. Aye. Aye. Jenkins. Aye. Speaker 1: Jensen. Aye. Third time's a charm. Thank you. Thank you. Alright. All right. Are there any future requests? I think it's probably pretty quiet
since we're okay. Five Speaker 5: Minutes. Speaker 1: Alright. If you guys wanna take a minute and complete out the meeting debrief. Ashley's an overachiever. She already did hers. Thank you Kathy. Speaker 5: My pleasure. Kathy, Speaker 1: Enjoy retirement. Yes. Enjoy Speaker 5: Retirement. Thank you. Oh wait, you're doing that extra year, you're gonna come back, right? Speaker 1: No. Oh, Speaker 5: She'll be here Monday. She's doing an extra day. I will be here Monday. Speaker 1: An extra day. We'll take an extra day. Not an extra year. Yes. Okay. Speaker 5: Thank you. Speaker 7: Thank you Kathy. You're Speaker 5: Welcome. Bye Jason. Thank you guys. Bye.
Speaker 1: Thanks Jason. Speaker 5: You Speaker 7: Are right. You just come and ask for money and it runs off. Speaker 1: Ah, it's like my kids. Speaker 5: Okay. Speaker 7: Be home by nine. Speaker 1: Don't forget where you Speaker 5: Live's. Speaker 1: What? My mom said me all the time. Alright. Alright with that, Speaker 5: Sorry. Speaker 1: That's okay. With that, we have now got executive session, so I'll now entertain a motion to enter executive session as stated on the agenda. Speaker 7: I'll make a motion to enter executive session
as stated on the agenda. Speaker 1: Can I get you to read it please? Speaker 5: Okay. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Speaker 7: I make a make a motion to enter into executive session pursuant to section 24 dash six dash 4 0 2 4 F and I or no, Speaker 5: I-I-I-C-R-S Speaker 7: To discuss personnel matters involving the superintendent's evaluation. Speaker 1: Thank you. Chance? Do I have a second? Speaker 5: I second that. Speaker 1: Thank you, Cassie. Is there any discussion on the motion? Hearing none. Let's take roll call please. Emily,
Speaker 5: Full you Aye. Haskell. Aye. Aye. Aye. Jenkins? Aye. Jensen? Speaker 1: Aye. Alright, the motion carries and the board will now enter executive session. Kirk, we would like to invite you to executive session. Speaker 5: Thank you. Speaker 7: Yeah, that's Speaker 5: Okay. Speaker 1: Yeah, he doesn't have to. What Speaker 5: Would've happened if he would've said no? Okay. Speaker 7: Now you guys got this.