Speaker 1: You guys are good? Yep. Speaker 2: Yes sir. Speaker 1: Alright. I am gonna go ahead and call the regular board meeting for February 12th, 2025 to order at 5 34. If we would all please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to allegiance Speaker 3: To flag 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. Speaker 1: For if we could all remain standing for a brief moment of silence please. Thank you very much. On to the agenda.
Are there any changes to the agenda? Speaker 2: There are none, Speaker 1: No changes to the agenda. May I have a motion to approve? To approve the agenda as presented? Speaker 2: I make a motion to approve the agenda as presented. Speaker 1: May I have a second? Speaker 2: I I will. Second. Thank you Sharon, Eliza. Aye. Speaker 1: Aye. As Speaker 2: Aye. Jenkins. Aye. Aye. Speaker 1: All right. Onto our next order of business is our public comment. Normally, if everyone remembers, we limited that to 10 people as a respect for the time of the board and the work we have to do.
So tonight we've, I've discussed it with the board and everyone is all right extending that. So we'll have up to 15 people speaking this evening, so I hope it doesn't throw everybody's times off. Everyone will still be allotted that three minutes and I'm gonna read some quick welcoming notes 'cause there's some people I take in the audience that might not have spoke before, so let me just do that for everybody. I can grab that Speaker 2: Sheet. It should be in your, Speaker 1: Is it? Speaker 2: Sorry. Speaker 1: That's fine. Speaker 2: My badge. Speaker 1: Where's our shorter one, Sharon? Oh, Speaker 2: You got it? Speaker 1: No, I sure don't. Speaker 2: Okay, and I don't think I have the shorter version. I just have it in. I'm glad.
Speaker 1: Alright. The board's meeting time is dedicated to a 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, which we have our, it's down Speaker 2: Here on the bottom. Speaker 4: No, it's great right Speaker 2: Here. Okay. Speaker 1: 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 outta respect for the individual students
and staff that we ask those conversations to be held in executive session. Insights are needed and welcome and the board encourages you to meet with the most appropriate person among the district's. Many leaders and I will do my best to help keep that flow going for everybody and respect your time and the people. Speaker 2: Alright. Speaker 1: Our first person today speaking will be Tina Bowling. Thank you. I will share that with everybody. Speaker 4: Thank you. Speaker 2: You Speaker 1: Ready? I am. Speaker 4: Good evening. For those of you that don't know me,
my name is Tina Bolen. I am the mother of a 2023 rifle high school graduate and two class of 20, 25 seniors that are here with me tonight. We have been part of the RE two family for 10 years and the time that I have been here, I have been part of multiple committees, boosters clubs, sat on the little league board, started the adopted, adopted senior project in 2020. That is still going strong and have been a team mom on rifle high school's, football, baseball, cheer and dance teams. To say that we are ingrained and invested in this community would be an understatement. On January 23rd, I received a text from one
of my daughters letting me know that a teacher of theirs had been placed on leave due to having her teacher's license expire, and I have a few questions about that. I don't like to come and speak unprepared, so I've done a lot of homework in the past couple of weeks. I have searched teacher's licenses against the public teacher search website for the Colorado and found multiple teachers in the district that do not have licenses that are still teaching in their classrooms daily. I called the state and asked them if there is a difference between the status of an expired license. For example, one teacher is taking classes and getting things moving in the right direction. One has turned in hours to the state
but hasn't had time to process everything. Maybe a teacher is waiting on administration from the district to verify ours. Any reason at all that one expired license would be acceptable while another is not? They confirmed any expired license is an expired license in their eyes, there is not a difference between any of them. My first question to you is, if there is not a difference in the eyes of the state, why is there a difference in the eyes of the district? As of last night, Garfield re two had 21 open teacher positions listed on their website for the 25 26 school year. I think we would all agree that it is hard to find qualified teachers. There's not only a teacher shortage nationwide,
but there is a teacher shortage here in our own district. The teacher that was placed on leave currently has an active license as of January 30th, 2025. My second question is if the license has been reinstated, why is she not back in the classroom teaching? It does not make sense to me why we would let an 18-year-old VE 18 year veteran and a well qualified teacher go midyear. My children and their peers have almost completed week three of no in-class instruction. Currently they have a substitute teacher in their classroom that was a 2024 re graduate without any form formal
college education. My third question is how is this a better choice for our teacher? This sub asked one of my daughters to leave school grounds during class to pick them up Starbucks. I was not notified that my child had left the school without my permission by the request of her sub first Starbucks run until later in the day. That brings me to my next question. What is the district's accountability and liability? Had she got hurt when her teacher had her leave to pick up Starbucks? The only employee of the board is the superintendent. The superintendent. Then employees, everyone else. Speaker 2: Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Speaker 1: All right. Our next speaker will be Kelly Wright,
Speaker 5: Members of the school board. My name is Kelly Wright, a 2019 graduate from Rifle High School. I had the great honor of having Kim Vanderveer as my teacher for multiple classes in high school. A teacher I'll never forget and made a lifelong impact on me. Let me lay a foundation for you. I met Kim in 2008 when I was just seven years old. She was my neighbor before she was ever my teacher, but her education surpasses the classroom when I was young. She would take my brother and I to the library in the summer and watch us while my parents were at work. She would stay late after I got outta cheer practice just so she could take me home.
Since we lived 13 miles out of town, she laid the foundation for me as an avid reader and a high achieving student. Kim is not only an educator but a mentor to me and hundreds of her students over the years. She would stretch her neck, neck out to help any student that comes her way, whether that be tutoring, violin lessons, peer support or guidance. As I entered high school, I spent mornings, lunch free periods and afternoons in our classroom because she was my person. She supported me when I had no one else. She encouraged me to be the best student she knew I could be because of her. I signed up to be an international baccalaureate student,
which opened doors for me that I'd never thought was possible. She saved me from the trenches of my life more than once and gave me hope when I had none. There were days when I did not want to be on this earth, but Kim saved me, not just me, but so many of her students. She's a safe place for kids to come to when they're struggling in school and with things outside of school. She takes the time out of her day to be the one teacher these kids know they can come to and confide in. She surpasses the expectation of any educator. She's a shining light, a beacon of hope, strength, and endurance.
She would spend countless hours of her free time and off periods with these kids talking to these kids as if they were her own because they were. Her. Love and passion for teaching is like nothing I've ever seen in a teacher. There are far more teachers who do just the bare minimum. They just do their job or less than what's required of them. Yet they face no consequences to single out. An exceptional teacher who does her job in so much more would be wrong. Kim deserves the world and then some. She's cherished by the students that cross her path and have the honor and privilege of being one of her students.
It would be wise to really consider her and the choices that you make. Thank you. Speaker 2: Thank you. Speaker 1: All right. Max Berry, Speaker 6: Members of the board, thank you for allowing me to speak tonight. My name is Max Berry and I've spent my whole life in this school district and all the time I've spent around teachers in and out of school. There are only three that stick out to me as a pinnacle of being a an exceptional teacher and what that means. They're kind, compassionate, committed, virtuous, and above all intelligent. These three not only changed the trajectory of my life, but every kid that needed help or guidance. One's my own mother, Trisha Rebury,
who's done more than many will ever know. Another is Kyle Michelson. Truly the most humble and loving man I've ever been mentored by. The last is Kim vanderveer, who helped me rediscover my own kindness and success because I had Kim vanderveer. I lacked Mo No before I had Ms. Vanderveer. I lacked Motivat motivation and had poor grades. I made straw, small strides my junior year, but prior to that I held a 2.1 GPA. After becoming a student of hers, my GPA jumped to a 3.5. Not only that, but I learned how to form my own interpretations and opinions. I learned how to respectfully and politely communicate that opinion with others that didn't agree. I wish I'd been able to tell her how much she meant
to me all those years ago, but I struggle with communicating that kind of emotion and gratitude. She may or may not remember this, but every so often when I look at her and see the light in her eyes, I tell her, gosh, Ms. Vandy, you really should have kids soon. That may seem like bad advice or whatever, but it's an affectionate anecdote. That was my way of telling her how positively influential she is, how kind, loving, responsible and fair she is. Any interaction with her is a blessing, and if I could take the pain she feels every day, I would do it in a heartbeat because I feel indebted to her
and I have such a pure love for her and Ray, even now, six years later, one degree in countless teachers, we hire teachers with temp licenses that shouldn't be in front of a classroom, and it's a shame to think in a time when we need teachers and good ones that a qualified teacher held a license for 18 years would be dismissed, is abhorrent. If she's dismissed, our children and community will suffer a great disservice and I would see that as educational oppression. Taking someone of value out of our schools is a direct attack on our children's minds and hearts. In 1953, Joseph McCarthy made a mistake by accusing the US army of being soft on communism
and the army at that time was loved and supported for their contributions to the war. His persecution of them was his downfall and he drank himself to death. At 48 while in office, he was confronted by a soft-spoken lawyer named Joseph Welch. His words still ring today as he asked. Have you know decency, sir, at long last, have you no decency, so everyone in attendance, I'd like to ask you if you have you forsaken your own convictions and commitment to the youth of our district? Can you live with yourself? Knowing you didn't stick up for this woman Speaker 2: I Speaker 6: I'd like to call for a public informal apology on her behalf. It's egregious the injustice she's suffering.
Thank you for your time in your ear. I hope that you'll make the righteous decision and keep this teacher for as long as you can. Thank you. Thank you. Speaker 2: McKenna Macklin. Speaker 5: Hello, my name is McKenna Macklin and I am a teacher here at Highland Elementary. I was a student at Rifle High School and had both Mr. And Mrs. Vanderveer. While I was there I learned English literature first under Mr. Vanderveer and then under Mrs. Vanderveer, who at the time I knew by her maiden name. Mrs. Vanderveer is one of the three teachers I had as a student that I can attribute to me becoming a teacher today,
her Mrs. Grimley and my mother, Mrs. Macklin. I was not always the greatest of students, but Ms. Vandy always found a way to be patient with me. She held me to high expectations, never let me forget that I was worthy of being an IB student even though I didn't always feel like one and always managed to gimme a second chance when I needed it. Mrs. Vander is an amazing English teacher, not only to myself but also to my younger brother and hundreds of other rifle high school students both past and present. She works hard to build relationships with those who walk
through her doors, which we all know as teachers and people. That is the first step to earning respect and trust. She makes sure to give students chances that they deserve and even a few that they didn't deserve all while shaking her head and calling them turkeys, which was her performed term of endearment. It truly hurts my heart to see her being treated this way. I know that a teaching license is a mandatory requirement for the teachers across the country. However, I also know that when my teaching license expired last year, Mr. Hills and the people at the district office stepped up
to help me take care of it and get re-certified. I spent two months trying to figure out how to get into my account just so I could reapply and emailing and calling anyone I could thought who could help and worrying every single day that I would end up in the same position of being asked to leave. Instead, I was given all the help I could have asked for. It makes me worried that not everybody in the district is willing to spend the time and effort in order to help teachers in bad situations. All over the country, teachers are burnt out and exhausted by the lack of help substitute teachers and supplies.
There is always a teacher who has given up. There is always a position open that we cannot fill, and yet today I am speaking for the job of somebody who actively wants to teach. Seeing as many other teachers in the district have gotten the support necessary to renew their license. I'm curious as to why Ms. Vandy did not get the assistance that she had previously asked for. As a teacher who understands the importance of consistent help for our future leaders and for myself and as a previous student who saw my own potential because of Mrs. Vandy, I have to ask you the board, what happened.
Thank you. Speaker 7: Walter Johnston. Speaker 2: Walter, Speaker 7: Walter Johnston, Walter, Cody, or right ahead. Thank you for the opportunity to address the board today. I have a deep respect for what you do and some of you have had the ability to vote for over the past few years. I've heard testimony personally from students about Kim Vanderveer to testify about her passion for students. I've pinned her friend for the last 16 years and I'm here to advocate for her today. She's desperately needed in our community. The future of our youth depends on strong female
leadership and role models. My past and I'm, I'm here to talk about my past and the teachers that I had when I was a high school student. You may not know to look at me, but I was a student and a youth at risk. I had a nihilistic attitude. I penchant for self-destruction. I had a couple of teachers that steered me straight know this. Now that I'm a Christian, I am a married man of 17 years. I have two students at home that are gonna be high school students and I want him to be their teacher. Teachers and their influence in this community is far outweighs any sort of financial consideration
that the school district could make. I don't even really know else what to say except for what my wife had written down for me, which is students seek out Kim because they desperately need teachers who see them as whole people worthy of compassion, time and understanding. Kim offers these non-tangible qualities while also maintaining high expectations because she believes in the students, the students flourish. Our school district is probably underfunded and I understand sometimes hard decisions need to be made. However, saving money by firing a beloved teacher, it's not a good strategy. Not only does it cause some students
to lose faith in our system, but the district could lose out financially and if the action result in a wrongful termination lawsuit, I yield the rest of my time. Thank you. Thank Speaker 8: You. Walter. Thank next speaker will be Speaker 7: Ashley Stall. Speaker 2: She's she on Zoom. Speaker 8: Zoom, Speaker 2: Look down. Hello, Speaker 8: Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Ashley. Awesome. Hi everyone. I am Ashley Stall. You all know me behind now, but for the record, I am the executive director of PFLAG of the Roaring Fort Valley and Conclusive and I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you tonight about the proposed policy requiring
parental notification for students who changed their name or pronouns at school. At the last meeting, we heard deeply personal stories from transgender students and community members, but after those stories were shared, a comment was made that revealed an important misunderstanding, one that I want to address directly. It was suggested that being transgender is inherently tied to mental health struggles. The truth is transgender youth are not at a higher risk of depression or suicide because of who they are. They're at higher risk because of how they're treated at home, at school and in society. When young people are supported, they thrive.
When they're rejected or forced into environments where they don't feel safe, they suffer. The data backs this up. The Trevor Project's 2023 survey found that trans youth who had even one affirming adult in their lives were 40% less likely to attempt suicide. Those in gender affirming schools had significantly lower rates of suicide attempts than those in non affirming schools. That's the difference supports makes. I understand why this policy is being proposed. I'm a parent too. I want to know what's going on in my child's life. I want her to trust me. I want her to come to me when she's struggling so I can support her, but if a child is afraid
to come out at home, forcing that conversation before they're ready won't strengthen families, it will push kids into isolation. That's what makes this policy so dangerous. It won't actually result in more parents being informed. Instead, students will hide if they know that telling a teacher means being outed at home, they won't say anything at all. They'll suffer in silence unsupported at home and at school. That is the unintended consequence of this policy and it puts students at greater risk. I also need to push back on something said at the last meeting, a community member compared inform compared informing parents about students' gender identity
to informing about their child committing various crimes. Let's be clear, being transgender is not a crime and schools don't call home when students start dating. When a freshman is seeing a senior. We don't report when a student changes their religion or joins a political club. There are many aspects of a young person's life that schools do not police because students, especially teenagers, deserve some agency over their own identities. This should be no different. Schools should be places where students feel safe to learn and grow. For many trans students, school is the only place where they feel safe being themselves. We should not take that away.
Instead of enforcing policies that make kids afraid to be honest about who they are, let's work on creating an environment where they feel safe enough to come out to their families when they're ready. I urge you not to move forward with the proposed changes to this policy. Thank you so much for your time and have a great day. Thank you. Thanks, Speaker 2: Ashley. Speaker 8: Our next speaker will be McKenzie Bowen. Speaker 4: Good evening. First, I wanna thank you for listening to me read this letter. Recently, my favorite teacher, Ms. Vanderveer, was put on administrative leave on Thursday, January 23rd. I went up to Ms. Van's classroom to sit with her and get some classwork done
as I didn't have a class at the time. To my surprise, when I walked into her classroom, I was watching her gather all of her things and say goodbye to every single one of her junior students. This was hands down one of the hardest things I had to watch. I watched her students scramble around to figure out what had happened to their teacher and then be expected to resume their normal school day. Within minutes, half the school knew what had happened and by the time I got to my senior English class, everyone was wondering where their teacher had gone and if she was coming back. I met Ms. Vandy when I was a freshman. I would come sit in her advisory with one of my friends. Ever since the first day I met her, she has been nothing but nice to me. She will open her heart to anyone and everyone.
At the beginning of my sophomore year, I was going through some stuff with being in foster care and without a doubt Vandy was always there to listen or give advice. At the same time, I was also going through a big court case and again, she was there to support me. We connected through having the same things happen to us when we were younger. Through the past two years of high school, she has always listened whenever I needed someone to talk to, no matter what she was doing or what was happening in her life while she was supporting me and everything I went to went through, I was always there to help her When she needed anything or was struggling with her ms. I got the privilege of being her student aid during the first semester. This opened my eyes a lot
and created a stronger bond between us. Going into second semester. I was no longer her student aide, but most days I found myself in her classroom. Anyways, I found comfort in her present. I only have four classes at at the high school and technically only one class with Ms. Mandy yet I spent half of my days in her room while processing. The reason for Ms. Mandy's leave, I realized that it was unfair. Students were told that it was due to her teaching license, yet multiple teachers at Rifle High School do not have a teaching license. I see this as Ms. Veer being singled out. I can say that on behalf of many students at Rifle High School, we would just like our teacher back in the
classroom where she belongs. Thank Speaker 2: You. Thank you. Thank you. Speaker 4: Aaliyah. Boen, Good evening. I'm here today to support a teacher that has always supported me and many other students at Rifle High School. I've known about the Van Ofer since I was in seventh grade. My brother would come home every day after school and explain to me how cool his teachers were and how excited he was for me to meet them and have them window. On game days, you would see Miss Vandiver hyping all of her athletes up cheering them on and giving them pep talks as they would leave to get ready for their game. She would come to as many games as she could. I always heard her cheering over everyone else at during football and soccer games. When soccer made playoffs this year, she and hosted games at home.
She would take her class down to watch the games and support the athletes. She didn't only support kids through games and cheering on the athletes though she also had Thursday journals. For those of you who don't know what a Thursday Journal is, it's a free write where you can write about anything you want to. Most students use this to write about things that are going on in their life ranging from silly high school drama to really big personal problems. No matter what you wrote about, she was there to support you and help you in any possible way she could. She was a safe space and a trusted adult to many students, A safe space that they no longer have and a trusted adult that they no longer have. Ms. Vandeveer cared about every single one of her students in a way that I've never seen from any other adult at this. At the high school, she beats every person
who walks into her room with a smile and asked them how they're doing no matter what she has going on in her own personal life. That simple gesture that she does is enough to make a student feel loved, safe, and cared about, and a school that is full of judgmental people. Ms. Vanderveer was an English teacher, but she also took the time to teach us about the real world. The first week of English, she taught us about resumes and how us create our own so we would have one ready when we would graduate, she had to start writing our college essays, which she then graded and gave us advice on so we were ready. Before applying to colleges, she had us watch videos and take notes on scholarship interviews and then practice interviews so we would be prepared and look professional.
When we had her first on the days where colleges in Colorado were having free application days, she let us take the time to apply to schools and research the schools we were interested in. Within the first few months of my senior year, I had a lot of struggles with people talking about me and it made me dread going to school every single day in a way that I've never dreaded school, which made me and my parents look into online schooling for the rest of my senior year. I took my problems to the van Bes as I knew they would listen and give me advice. They talked to me and into staying into in person and helped me learn that no matter what you do in life, there will always be somebody talking about you. They taught me that. Yeah, I cannot let other people's opinions and words control how I live. 'cause at the end of the day, it's my life not theirs. To my understanding and what I've been told, Ms.
Vanderveer was put on administrative leave to due to a teaching license issue on January 23rd, 2025. I would like it to be noted that I have not learned a single thing in senior English since that day and all of my classwork has been made through a AI generator. After learning this, I looked up online and I saw that many teachers in Rifle High School do not have a valid teaching license. Ms. Vandeveer was placed on administrative leave due to that, and that is not fair to her at all. I think that you guys should be looking at the teachers who are bad to us, ones that don't care about what they actually teach and are just there for the money. The ones that care more about if you're eating or drinking something other than water in class than what they should be teaching and the ones that care more about the students sending five seconds
answer, quick text message in math curriculum. At the end of the day, the students at Rifle High School just want to teach your back are safe space back and our trusted adult back. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Brooklyn Barkman. She's online. Zoom. Brooklyn, are you there? Speaker 2: Should we come off? She may be away from her Speaker 1: Phone LL she's there. We'll circle back. Okay, I'll, I'll move on. So Lomi Gonzalez, Speaker 2: Can we circle back? I'm waiting for a Latina mom that's been read in Spanish also. Can you guys do that? Yeah, Speaker 1: Yeah. I'm okay. We can do that. Speaker 2: No, we'll come back. Yeah, we'll come back to you. Yeah, Speaker 1: I mean, I'm broken. Lose, lose Gala, this ve
Speaker 2: Yeah. Also online. Speaker 1: How do you spell that? LUZ. Speaker 9: Hello? Can you hear me? Speaker 1: G-A-L-A-V-I-Z. Yes, we can hear you Go right ahead. Speaker 9: Awesome. Thank you. For those of you who do not know me, my name is Luis Gavis. I am a community member, former student at Rifle Middle School and high School. I'm a former teacher at Highland Elementary and a resident of Garfield County. I am seeking guidance regarding what students and families can expect under the new presidential administration. Given the rumors going around on social media
that ICE will be attempting to enter schools in Colorado. As a concerned community community member, I am reaching out to gain answers and tangible actions that will ensure the safety of our students and their families. I am worried about the protection of our students, particularly those who are part of the immigrant populations. As a former teacher, I am reaching out to gain clarity for those close friends who are scared to come forward. Given the recent I ICE rates happening in our country. I am here today to ask that you have compassion
for the students in your care who may, who may be too scared to speak up given their personal immigration status or that of their family members. These are trying and difficult times for our Latino community and I ask that you protect the students in your care. Although I have read the statement provided to families and parents from the school district, I am simply needing more concrete answers from the school mem school board members due to the fact that they have been found to say one thing and do another in the past. I want to ensure that I can take the statements mentioned
here and report them back to my community. I ask that you please provide responses to the following questions. Does Garfield R two School district ask for information on family's immigration status? Will Garfield Re two school district coordinate with immigration and customs enforcement? Will Garfield Re two school district share information and parent records with ice? If so, under what circumstances? What specific actions can you provide to ensure that students in Garfield Re two school district feel safe to attend school every day?
And will Garfield Re two school district allow ICE to enter your facilities? If so, under what circumstances? I strongly believe that it is Garfield E two school district responsibility to provide a quality education to all students regardless of their I immigration status. I hope that Garfield RE two District can take a stand to support our students and their families. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Aiden. Aiden Piat, what is it? Pt. Pt. Speaker 6: My name is Aiden PT and I'm speaking about Ms. Vandy.
I met her my freshman year and I didn't even have a class with her. I ended up wandering into that hallway with some of my friends that were of the junior class and she didn't even ask any questions. She welcomed me in there and she even made me read the book that they were reading and that's my first memory of Miss Vandy and it just grew from there. My sophomore year I had her for creative writing and that's when I really got close with her, spending my lunch hours with her and just as much time as I really could at school. She was my safe place. If I ever had a problem, I would go into her office and she would calm me down. She was the one that taught me how to react without yelling or being aggressive and to stop and listen to people first,
and that's a skill I still use today and it's really helpful. She taught me how to manage my anger and stuff that gets me upset really quickly and any hard day I've had at school, she's been there to help. She's always helped everybody. I've been in there for lunches a few times when some kids haven't had anything to eat and Miss Mandy's given up her food for them, or she'll have ramen in her cupboard for anybody that's hungry or doesn't have anything to eat, which I feel like as a teacher is going really above and beyond. If you're having a bad day and an episode in class, her office is always open
and then that way you could talk and you're not in front of everybody else, and I just feel like she really went above and beyond with teaching. She went there every day treating us as her own, not just some students. I've had teachers who could care whether or not I passed or learned anything in that class, and Ms. Vandy always cared if I was interested, if I was struggling and even changing the way she teaches so it better fits people in the classroom that don't learn like everybody else. And I feel like without her, I'm not getting a quality, quality education in that class at all. We are currently writing a graphic novel, which
we were currently learning about when Miss Vandy left, which we are not prepared for. Most of the kids are either doing bare minimum work or work that they're getting from online, and I feel like most of us are gonna get a good grade, but are we, are we really gonna learn anything they promised in an email to our parents that we would still be getting a quality education, but I feel like I haven't had that in three weeks. The book that we were reading to learn how to make graphic novels, we were less than halfway done with and we're expected to write a full book, a full graphic novel strip now with less than half the knowledge we need. And I just feel like no matter what our grade is,
we're not gonna have learned anything. Thank you. Speaker 10: Thanks Aiden. Jordan Abbott. Speaker 4: I wrote this letter on the behalf of my junior English teacher, Mrs. Vanderveer. In the amount of time I've known Mrs. Vandy, she has been a great and fair teacher. Not only academically but socially I've observed. Not only is she just nice to her students, but she connects with each and every one of her students in a loving and unique way. So each student could honestly say they have a loving student teacher relationship with her. When I say loving relationship, I mean she worries about and loves us. Me. For instance, a couple months ago in September, I lost my childhood dog
that I've had since I was about four. I was heartbroken and was having a really hard time. She approached me gently and asked me if I was okay, and I explained to her what was going on and she listened. She listened patiently and multiple times during class would check up on me, but still maintain relationships with her other students. She was also there for me after my other childhood childhood dog died that I've had since I was two. She also cares about her students academically. She's very good about keeping her students on task and regularly encouraging them to show their best work and that she'll be available at certain times to help work on grades because she only
wants to see us succeed. She made herself available almost 24 7 and as her student, I believe she's a great teacher and I mean that literally. She teaches really well. I understand everything she teaches and if someone doesn't understand, she elaborates, but elaborates well and that student will understand. And I physically observed this many times. She has a very understandable and well structured teaching style. She's very organized and having an organized teacher helps students out so much. Mrs. Vandy has never once lost her. Cool. She's patient, kind and humble. Humble and respects us as students. She doesn't see herself as better just because she's older. I respect her because she is my teacher
and I also respect her because she respects me as her student. As said earlier, she is a patient loving person who only wants to see a student succeed and she was bettering her students. I was most definitely succeeding in her class due to her encouraging me nonstop. She's also a fair teacher. She will give you the grade you deserve, but will speak to you and work something out with you to help raise your grade. She also encourages students to work to the best of their ability because she knows they have the potential to do so. She does not favor anybody and she's not rude to anybody. I'm extremely disappointed and hurt for her. I'm disappointed by the fact that she was treated this way very disrespectfully
and that this was done in the middle of the day and class. Yes, she may not have been fired in the room physic physically in front of us students, but it still happened in front of us students because they, we could all see the change in behavior and my class was the next class after she was told to leave. So I just didn't have a teacher and everybody was talking about it. Just because it wasn't physically done in front of us doesn't mean we wouldn't know. We are observant and we know these things. We can see change in behavior, we pick up on things like that. So the fact that it done that it was done in the hallway does not mean anything. My heart goes out to Mrs.
Vandy because she was inappropriately and unfairly fired and it is agreed by many students that it was extremely unprofessional. Thank you. Thank Speaker 10: You. Speaker 1: Hattie Berry. Speaker 11: I would like to transfer my time to Tate Brown, who is also present this evening and also is a graduate of Speaker 2: High school. Yep. Alright. Doing that though. Yeah. Tate? Yes. Okay. Tate Brown. Tate Brown. Speaker 12: Good evening. My name is Tate Brown. I live in Rifle. I'm a graduate of RHS and a former student of Kim Vander Ri. Like many others. I'm here tonight to express my concern about how our district
and the current RHS administration treats some of its most talented and longstanding educators. I see a little use in taking much time to go over how knowledgeable, compassionate, and overall incredible of an educator Kim is. As so many folks here tonight will and have told you as well as Shirley, the phone book size stack of letters that Tina Boland has collected for you on this topic. What happened to Kim is especially saddening to everyone I know, I still know who has passed through her classroom because we know this could not have happened to someone less deserving than the educator. We all agree is among the best we ever had the pleasure
to learn from in or out of K 12. But regardless of those personal feelings, this situation is wholly inappropriate professionally and antithetical to the values of community and education. Regardless of who would happen to admin's, actions have consequences for students. Changing teachers in the middle of a school year is incredibly disruptive to learning environment and student performance and should be avoided whenever possible. Despite this, instead of working to resolve what is effectively a clerical error, administration chose to immediately tell students and parents that Kim would not be back and has sought to continue with her dismissal even as her license has already been reinstated for anyone to see
with the Colorado Department of Education's online search, this effort to remove a teacher comes while the state faces a shortfall of over 1400 teachers. RHS has job listings posted for seven open teaching positions, and then the additional, as many as Tina said earlier, for the rest of the district, how does any portion of our administration defend actively driving out a teacher with a spotless teaching record ever? Much less. Now, professionally, there's no defending how been handled this removal. There is no excuse for removing a teacher in front of their students, much less giving them what amounts to a perp walk through the building.
Teachers fired for actual crimes rarely get that kind of humiliating treatment. At best, it is an indication that admin is at best, it is an indication that admin is incapable of seeing past their own nos for the consequences of their actions. And at worst, it is a cowardly show of force by an admin staff that would rather threaten their teachers with humiliation and technical fouls, then actually work with their institutional knowledge to maintain a quality learning environment. All that is to say, I think this school board needs to have a serious discussion with the administration members involved in this incident about supporting teachers
and being good members of the community. I can't claim to know the motivations behind admin's actions. It could be any number of things including petty social things or concerns over budgets and saving money. But at the end of it all, I am confident that the reason is not a good faith decision based on the wellbeing of RE two students and their education. Kim vanderveer should be in the classroom providing a world class English literature education to rifle students. Speaker 2: That's Speaker 12: All I got. Speaker 2: Sal Tovar. Speaker 13: Hello, my name is Salvador Tovar. I just want to preface this by saying I know you guys are hearing a lot of great things about Kim Vanderveer
and are thinking that, oh, sure, any student would say this about any teacher that happened to get let go. But that's, that's not the case here. Kim is a very special personality and getting a lot of graduates to come back to speak on her behalf. Our very busy schedules. I just wanna say that Kim is a once in a lifetime educator and a champion of the community. I've been fortunate enough to have been enrolled in two classes taught by Kim from 2013 through 2015. She has inspired many young adults and even the misfit children that many teachers,
many teachers struggle to help even participate in class. I was one of those misfit children. I I was a 2.5 GPA student that didn't care to try in school yet Kim motivated me and she showed me what I couldn't see in myself. She brought out the creativity in all of her students as well as the ability to think deeper for ourselves. She made an IB student out of me a misfit 2.5 GPA kid. I believe the district is doing a massive disservice to the upbringing of the community by deciding to part ways with one of the most influential members of the community.
Kim has a loving heart and she always goes above and beyond for her students. I believe it would be in the district's best interest to work to resolve the situation and give educators who teach and inspire others from their heart, such as Kim, The best opportunity to succeed in this district because there are not many teachers, much less hearts like hers anymore. Thank you. Speaker 10: And Speaker 13: I also want to say, I think the board should re consider capping the public comment to 10 speakers, which I know tonight you guys are doing 15 speakers
because a couple years ago, there's a couple of you on the board right now that there were some real touchy subjects that were very important to you. And I know it would've not felt great if they had told you that, you know, only a certain amount of people could speak even when those public comments ran two plus hours long. It's still important to hear community input, so thank you. Thank you sir. Thank God bless Speaker 1: Brooklyn Barkman. She's Speaker 2: Back on nine. Try again. Speaker 14: Can you hear me now? Speaker 1: We can hear you. Go ahead.
Speaker 14: Yay. I first wanna echo what Sal just said. I think that that is really important just to kind of acknowledge that sometimes it's hard for parents to get to these meetings, you know, especially having kids in school, usually a lot of us, it, it is difficult and I can appreciate trying to be effective with your time, but I do think that the community input is effective. All that to say though, I just wanted to comment because at the last school board meeting, I, you know,
had wanted to talk about KSE and everything and it was, it was great and I loved their presentation. I thought all of that went really well and the public comment was very insightful. I guess I, it was, it definitely got me thinking it was very provoking and I've been chewing on it for the last couple weeks in what I think is the right thing and what makes sense. And I just wanna say, first off, I do not envy the position that you guys are in and the slightest it is challenging. No matter what you do, someone's gonna be upset. But I really think that if we truly are considering the best
interest of the student, I think that the change is appropriate because, you know, I think it would be hard. I think it'd be really hard. I've tried to wonder like how I would respond in this kind of a situation with my own children. And I think I, I would have a difficult time at first. I know I would, but only 'cause I care for them. And it would, it would be I think, confusing and difficult to navigate. And more than anything I would want our community to support that. I would want to know first and foremost. And even if it's a difficult conversation,
I do think I would be very loving and receptive. But, you know, just to have a community and know that there's resources or, you know, I mean, we heard a lot of public comment from, you know, representatives for parents of those children, from people who talked about their parents and how that support meant the world. And I think that to take away the opportunity for a family to kind of rally together is wrong. And also I, I don't see how it really benefits the student because then we're asking them to hide and have a very divisive personality,
somebody else at school versus somebody else at home. And truly, if the school is required to report that to the parent, that's not, not, I mean, there's nothing in the policies that says the school is required to acknowledge what mom and dad say, which, you know, that's a topic of conversation on my mind at some other point in time. But, but to truly it, that's not what it says. It says that the school will acknowledge the student's needs in that moment and then to include the parents as well so that way we can work together. This needs to be a together time where, you know, we
as the parents are working with the other people who are for lack of, you know, at our, you know, illustration. 40 hours a week basically. I mean this is a, a job for these kids. Thank Speaker 1: You Brooklyn. We appreciate your comments. That was your time. Speaker 14: Thank you. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Omi Gonzalez. Wanna introduce? Introduce Alma. Alma. Speaker 4: So this message will be translated in Spanish. Okay. My name is Salomi Gonzalez. I have three children in the RE two school district.
Good evening. Members of the school board. I want to bring, I want to begin by thinking each of you for your dedication to making decisions that pur pur prioritize the best interest of our children. As a parent, it is comforting to know that you are standing up for what is what truly matters to our children. Wellbeing and education. I stand before you today to address a concern that feels that I feel is critical. As a parent, we have the fundamental right to raise
and guide our children. It is our responsibility, not the schools or the government to make decisions regarding what is best for our kids. When children as young as four years are encouraged to make decisions about their identity, such as changing their name, it is raise serious concerns. At such a young age, children do not have the maturity or understanding to compromise what such decision means for their future. This is not about love or support.
This is about protecting or children from influence that are not in their best interest. When we see those type of actions being encouraged, it is our duty as parents to recognize the red flags. We must remain vigilant in making such, in make and making sure that no one not even well-intended people manipulate and in control our children at an age where they cannot fully understand the or consequences of their choices.
Parents have the fundamental right to guide their children upbringing and educating. Schools should focus on teaching academic skills like reading and problem solving, not making personal parental decisions in our children. Allowing students to change their names or identity without parental consent is wrong under undermines our roles as parents. Schools are there to educate, not parent. Once again, thank you for your thoughtfulness decision making.
I urge you to continue advocating for policies that prioritize the rights of parents and protect the wellbeing of our children. Thank you. Speaker 15: Thank Speaker 2: You, thank you. Speaker 1: All right, onto the consent agenda. Could I get approval of the board minutes for, or the January 22nd, 2025 board minutes? Speaker 16: I make a motion to approve the consent agenda from the January 22nd, 2025 Speaker 2: Board minutes. Speaker 1: Could I get a second please? I'll second. Speaker 2: Sharon Zo Aye. Aye.
Ville Aye. Jenkins. Aye. Jensen. Aye. Jones's right there Speaker 1: Onto the consent agenda. Are there any changes required of the consent agenda? Speaker 2: There are no changes. Speaker 1: Anyone else see any changes they wanted to Okay. Speaker 2: Move to approve the consent agenda as presented. Can I get a second? Speaker 1: Second. Thank you Speaker 2: Mic. Aye, Speaker 1: Aye. Speaker 2: Aye, aye, aye. Aye. Sorry, Sergeant. Speaker 1: All right. We're not doing that. We're not.
Speaker 2: Okay, Speaker 1: Thank you. Speaker 2: Did I say something? Excuse me, did I say something? We left. I know. No. Alright, Speaker 1: We're gonna move on to our governance discussion items in our first item of business today is the Highland Elementary data updates with Highland Elementary and Rich Hill and his teeny. Speaker 2: Wow, that really did clear out the room. Get up with them Speaker 1: Guys. Bring up as many chairs as you need or you wanna stand Speaker 2: Where standing Speaker 1: It's a little more intimidating.
High energy, Speaker 2: But that's really good. Right? So this is Speaker 17: Our leadership tribe from Highland. I'll have everybody introduce themselves when they read their part or talk to you about their part. So we're kind of dividing and conquering this. Most of you heard my voice a lot in the cafeteria. Sit a little bit and let these folks share some great things that we have going on here. Highland. So Speaker 18: I'm Nancy Elder, assistant Princip here in, I'm Jay Baba, instructional coach with a, Speaker 17: I'm Justin Anki, Speaker 19: I'm instructional coach, Dean of students and GT coordinator.
Speaker 20: I'm Carrie Ton and I'm the counselor. Oh, now I'm Rich House. Speaker 17: Okay, Speaker 20: Well I'm actually gonna go slightly rogue for just a minute. Rich is like, oh God, but I, this is my almost 20th year here at Highland. So I want to share a little of my history before we dive right into the data. So Highland opened in 2003. I was hired as a second grade teacher fresh out of college in 2005. And so I was here right as Highland was in the beginning of its journey. I thought in this very room
with all the other educators, as Dr. Gary Pat came in and said, you guys, this is unacceptable. Your scores are so bad that we are getting a new curriculum. We're sending letters to family saying you can choose to go to other school schools because the school school is not performing. So I got to be in here for that. Fast forward a few years, we had Mr. Dillon, Allen Dillon come in, change our systems, change our thinking, get us some new programming and we got to sit in this very room and rip those letters up
because we now we're performing at a much better place. That was fantastic Rich and I got to send it in this room and celebrate with our staff in 2018 because we got the Distinguished Governor's Improvement Award through the state for our SPF. So just to hear that journey of we were at the bottom of the bottom, like turn around, here we come. This has not been an easy school for us to gain any of those sort of academic progress that we get. So we are so proud of ourselves.
Covid gave us a little bit of a road speed bump, but we are working our way up and I just want you guys to know that through all of that, the teachers never stopped working incredibly hard. I am so proud of every staff member here. We work on systems, we work on programs, we work on some of those things that improve student outcomes and learning, but it is never ever an issue of teachers not pouring their heart and souls into any and everything we ask them to do. So as we share data today, know that we own everything
that happens here, but our teachers work so incredibly hard and we're really proud of them. So ask away. We make no excuses. We are never okay with what's happening. We want the best for our kids, the best for our parents, and the best for our community. But we are proud of the blood, sweat and tears that happens every single day in this building with our educators. Woo. So I get talk about C mask. So I did actually attach a new copy because the original did not have the district average,
which I just thought was a great comparison as we look at C math. So you will notice that in ELA and math, we are not performing at the state average in any grade level or any subject. Some celebration though is our fifth grade ELA and fifth grade math for the last two years has outperformed the district and is very close to performing with the state. So that is huge. It takes us a while to get our kids where we need to get them, but we are getting them there and we are very proud of that.
We definitely have some concerns when it comes to math. That has been something I have been very worried about. I also can own that because I am the math coach here, but I am beyond excited about the program you guys approved last year. Eureka. It has been incredible. And although I don't know what this year's going to bring, I have a hundred percent confidence that we are going to start making some big gains in our math scores. Speaker 1: Were you part of the pilot last year? Yeah, but not Eureka. You were Speaker 20: Do I did. Our school piloted all three.
Speaker 1: Okay. You guys were involved in all three. Yeah. Speaker 20: And our teachers love it. Our kids love it. We are seeing some great things happening, so, so thank you for saying yes to that because we are very excited where that's gonna take us. Do you guys have any questions as you kind of look, you said district average, that's all our schools in our district. Yes. Fourth, fifth or third. Fourth and fifth. Speaker 1: So why is fifth grade such an outlier? What's going on with fifth grade that they're, you know, when, I mean, you know, obviously they were, they were your fourth graders in 22, 23, right?
You know, let's just look at math for those guys. Math as fourth graders in 22, 23, they were at a 10%. Yep. And now they've jumped up to 26%. So definitely a celebration. What, what, what happened last year? We weren't using, were they using Eureka last year? The fourth grade They were using different pilot. Yeah. So what, what's making this fifth grade class and how do we sprinkle all that magic down, down a little lower? Right. Speaker 20: That's a great question. And the same question we've been asking. Speaker 1: It stands out, doesn't it? It is like the easy one. Yeah. And Speaker 20: I think part of that too is when we think about learning,
it's not a one year journey. So yes, fifth grade got some amazing scores, but there's a lot that goes into that. And getting those kids ready for that independence, ready for that application. Fifth grade is not really foundational math anymore. We're really pushing into that like algebra and algebra thinking and its fractions and decimals. And so everything that makes a fifth grader successful happens in those primary grades. So we get to see some of that magic in fifth grade. But there's a lot of work that happened before that. We also have fantastic fifth grade teachers who
we have some consistency in that grade level. So they're passionate, they're compartmentalized. So in fifth grade we have just a math teacher, just a writing teacher, and just a reading teacher. So they know their content deeply and they're very passionate about it. They work hard. Speaker 1: Do you think your ELA group has had some more turnover? You know, as far as your teaching group, that core group there, have they moved around a little bit or Speaker 20: Are you speaking like just specifically fifth grade or? Speaker 1: No, I'm just curious when she said the math group has been together a little bit longer. Yeah. Speaker 20: Is Speaker 1: That true in our ELA or English
Speaker 20: In that grade is true in fifth grade that they've been consistent. Yeah. ELA with fifth grade. I mean like Lance was just speaking about, you know, foundations and they need to build that foundation. When we think about our population, I think time is a huge factor in that, is that they just need a little bit more time to practice with those foundational skills. And about fifth grade is, it's like, oh, it's starting. We're getting it, it's clicking. The other thing, we have some found fabulous interventions happening in ELA and this year is the first year we were able to back off
of interventions a little bit in fourth and fifth grade because of all the work that's happening in our primary grades that by the this year our scores were showing us, we don't need to pull them individually as much that they can stay in their tier one, tier one classes more often. ELA, as you guys know, we're working through a pilot right now. So our tier one that we've previously been using is not working and it's just not showing us the data that we want. So we're very excited to bring, hopefully here in April, a recommendation for a new tier one also
that will help help some of those K three scores as well. Speaker 1: Is the pilot for all of English language are third, fourth, and fifth. Speaker 20: It's for kinder through fifth. Kinder through fifth, yes. And are you guys doing all three again? No. So we did learn through our math pilot last year that as a coach and in a building when they were trying to do all three, it was really hard to see the vertical alignment. So as a coach, trying to learn all three and then trying to see how it progresses through the grades was difficult. So we chose in the ELA pilot to partner with schools.
So there's three pilots, two schools are doing each. And we tried to partner schools with differing demographics so we could see what it looks like on both ends of the valley with different groups of students. So our school, we're only focused on inter reading and we have every grade, but first grade is piloting and then we're partnered with Catherine Senior and they're piloting some first grade and then some other grades as well. Speaker 17: And as we're looking at this data, this is specific C CMASS data, right? So third grade's, my first chance at this fourth grade is my
second round, my fifth grade is my third round. And we're a little more dialed in as future leaders on what to expect as well. And I would highly encourage anyone here or anyone watching or listening, go check, take this test than see how, how we knew as a 51-year-old born in small town North Dakota. Boy, I have had pleasure of witnessing this through the years and we ask a whole lot of kids on this state test Speaker 19: And if I could read it, reiterate what they said. I think programs are amazing, but the people behind the program in the classroom is
where the magic really happens. And we have topnotch people doing that. So that's, that's the cool thing. Speaker 7: So Rich, you touched on one thing where third grade is their first chance at this test. So I bring something I was looking at and it's ELA, then I looked down at demographics and realized almost half of your student body are ELL. But I'm looking at that 25% in 20, 20 in 22, 23 at EL, a third and then ELA fourth and 23, 24, 18%. Is that, or do you attribute that to programming?
Or do you attribute that to, what do you, I know you guys look at the data, so what do you, what are you guys looking at that? Speaker 17: That's a great question. I don't know that I have the answer for that specifically. There's so many things that go into it. And CMAs is also a few days of testing. So you don't know what's happening in a kid's life during that span of time either. So we sometimes we look at it and we're like, yeah, okay, that's what we're expecting. Other times you don't get that. So I don't have a, Speaker 20: We do know that they did underperform our in-house assessment. So iReady, that fourth grade group was performing better
until CMAs and then they came out with some lower scores. So we also know that during that time, one of our teachers was not even here. She had a family emergency and had to leave. Not that that's an excuse, right? Right. It's just part of the story. But even if it was a little higher, it's still not where we want to be. Speaker 7: What, when do you guys start running your i-Ready? Do you run it year round? Yeah. What, when is the trait, what is the data telling you? Speaker 17: Our predictors have been close in the past. Is that what you're asking? Yeah. Except for this outlier that we're talking about too.
Speaker 7: Yeah. You know, minus outliers. But what, what is your predictions? Speaker 20: We just did some work with Simone and we are, our first thing is how are we comparing to the district, right? Because comparing ourselves to the district is a little different than to the whole state just because of where we're located and our demographics. And we are, with the exception of one grade level, we are in the middle, if not at the top of performance for i-Ready right now. So I mean I'm, I'm hopeful that we're gonna be seeing even more growth next year on our CMAs course.
Speaker 1: You know, as we look at that, not to overwhelm us with data, we all like it. It would be kind of nice to see as we're getting more and more of the i-Ready data coming out of pilot just to see, you know, I mean obviously we wanna see that trend go up and if there's little wins in there we could celebrate. I think we'd all like to see 'em a little Speaker 7: Bit. Speaking to Rich's point, Simone, I would like to take i-Ready test. I would, I mean we, we really don't know what we're talking about. Oh, we, none of us have ever sat through one. We don't understand how it's, no, we did.
You know, like for us to even speak on, I think we need to know what it is. Speaker 20: I test the basic Speaker 7: Skills. Yeah, I had the Iowa, Iowa basis test. Speaker 20: I did that. I did too. Speaker 7: The Speaker 20: Number, Speaker 7: The number two pen. Speaker 17: Well, and with everything we do here, it's about a positive attitude and your very best effort in whatever you do. And that's gonna equal success, right? So we haven't seen it yet on these scores. However, we are confident we can get there Speaker 20: And we have done it before. I mean our growth has been phenomenal and we're, we are getting back to those same systems and those same routines that kind of, we, we struggled
to get back to when Covid hit. And this has been our first year that we're like, yes, we have all the systems back in place that we used to have and we feel really confident about where we're going. Speaker 1: It definitely, scores aren't the end all be all, but it is nice to see it in this format, you know, and I really appreciate how you did the colors. You know, you can kinda see where we're hitting that green and where we're gonna try to grow to the green. So I appreciate that. Speaker 7: We Speaker 20: Like our colors here at Tyler. Well, while we're speaking data, I'm actually gonna bring your attention down here to this bottom graph. This is additional ELA data and this is where we can look at our kinder
through second graders because we don't have CMAs data. So we will really focus on with our kinder through our second graders as i-Ready and doubles, I wanted to just kind of highlight a couple of things that are going really well. Yeah, our kindergarten has grown 27% since the beginning of the year. To give you a little bit of the story, in the past we have given our doubles assessment to our kindergartners, like the first week of school, which is terrifying for a four and 5-year-old. So as a district team, we decided to wait
and not give them that assessment until the end of September so we could let them, you know, come to school and learn a thing or two and learn how to sit on the floor and what is it even like to be here before we're asking them to do a timed assessment. So this 20% was from the, actually the end of September and then 47% the end of December. So it's huge growth. You heard Rich say earlier that our kinders right now in February are reading better than we have seen historically. In February. We have 16 students in kindergarten
that we're pushing into a first grade intervention time. It's still during their time we're just giving them first grade materials. Let me rephrase that, which is, I'm not sure. At the end of last year we had 16 students. So what we are seeing out of between our pilot and our intervention systems have gotten tighter outta kindergarten. We are ecstatic to see what the end of the year brings there. I'd also like to bring your attention to fourth grade. So as you're well aware, these fourth grade babies are the ones that did kindergarten and mask and then were separated. First grade was also not a normal year for them.
They missed a ton of their foundations and you will see that they are performing the highest at midyear. As a school, we set a goal of 65% of our students would be scoring green or blue by the end of the year. And fourth grade is the closest. They're already approaching 62%. And we attribute that to those really tight interventions. We've put a lot of focus on that group because they are that group of kids that miss so much and we have phenomenal teachers. So Speaker 19: Just real quick talking about teachers, we're talking about our paraprofessionals that do a lot
of those interventions and do that work. So that's pretty amazing. So I'm gonna, I get to go over demographics, so I'll try to be quick. If you guys have any questions, please ask Rich. So our student count is about 465 of that. Our minorities is about 72% of our school. One of our big FO focuses is the ELL students, which we sit about 48%. Our SPED students are 16, which you guys got to meet the awesome faculty that supports them. Our average class size is 23. And you also found out that our highest one now is 26.
In that third grade, Our literacy, literacy instructional time, we did redo our schedule a little bit this year to extend that time. So we have about 210 minutes daily total. So 90 minutes of that is that tier one whole group. 30 minutes is around the 95% core instruction, 25 minutes of K three interventions. And then about 65 minutes is the average about writing through the grades. We're also proud that we do these specials, these electives. We have art library, pe, music, special to me, science,
social studies, student wellness. I was a music teacher forever. And how our students get to rotate through them over the four day week. And that's just a whole magical thing that we get schedules next up and they know it and it's just great. And the students get to partake in all of those things. Math, instructional time. One of the things that we're also proud of is this year that we made sure that all students have some kind of intervention around math. So that's 30 minutes. And then there's the 60 minutes whole group, tier one Speaker 1: Has, has Highland always been about 465 kids?
Has that been a pretty consistent for pretty close a long time. I didn't know if it had spiked up, lowered down, but yeah, Speaker 17: Pretty, pretty close. We, we went down for a while and now we've climbed back up. There was a year when we had a hundred future leaders in one grade level. That's as big as we got in the grade level once upon a time. But yeah, I believe us in Cactus Valley are similar as far as numbers go, Speaker 20: I'd say at that, except for prior to Grand Mesa opening, we were much bigger than that. Like when I started, we had six second grade teachers that I taught with. So in sixth, first grade, yeah, we were massive. I'm like we were breaking that cafeteria lot.
Cafeteria small. Speaker 21: So I'm gonna move down to the student attendance and discipline. So our attendance rate is 95%, which is about at the district average. And then our discipline data is actually something that I think that we can be really proud of. It's something that we've really focused on. This year, student wellness committee asked us to decrease discipline by 10% and we are really knocking it out of the park where our discipline referrals are down 66% from where they were last at this time last year. So 34 fewer discipline referrals.
So we're at 18 for the school year. We've had two students serve a half day of in school suspension and we've had zero students serve out school suspension. Speaker 7: So talk to me about decreased discipline from the outside. It sounds like well just let that go. Speaker 21: No, Speaker 7: Right. So explain though to us what you're doing instead. So Speaker 21: What, so the student wellness committee that we have here and I, we sat down and we looked at all of our discipline data from last year. We looked at where our hotspots were, where were they happening, where there groups of students
where discipline was happening more often. Were there combinations of maybe students that weren't really working right together that we needed to make sure, you know, we're we're separated and then we focused in on some systems to make sure that we were, we focused in on some systems to make sure we were proven that we were preventing discipline. If a student does get a discipline referral, then we have a plan for them after. So we are making sure that our students that do have disciplinary referrals, they have check-ins that we're making sure that we're meeting their needs,
we're communicating with parents, we're communicating with staff members, you know, just so that we can make sure that they're feeling fully supported. In October and November we really focused on decreasing our discipline numbers. So we had different student based campaigns, we did kindness and we did generosity. And I think flipping that mindset from October fatigue to being kind and being positive was really helpful. Not only for our kids but for our teachers. Like our, our teachers went into October with a positive mindset
and really trying to pick out the good that kids were doing instead of getting fatigued, which you'll hear a lot in education about, you know, when teachers get fatigued in October. And so we really focused on preventing and then the postvention is just as important as the prevention that we've been doing. And then making sure that our teachers have systems in place to correct and deal with behavior inside the classroom in a way that's supportive and that is gonna correct the behavior instead of escalate it to the point where they need to go to the office.
So we've really been making sure all of our systems and our tiers of support are solidly in place. Speaker 16: You said communication with parents and working with parents, you feel like a percentage wise of parents on board would a hundred percent or 90%? Speaker 17: As far as discipline goes? Speaker 16: Yes. Discipline goes, yeah. Speaker 17: I think we're just trying to be really transparent and honest about what expectations are here and how we're supporting. I know in the classroom it was hard for me to make calls home to parents until I became a dean of students. And then that's just what we do all the time.
So it's supporting our educators, our big kids in that as well. And that we're all parents here. And you don't love hearing negative things about your kids, but you need to hear positive and the areas for growth. So we just try to be open about that. I think as a parent, sometimes we get defensive right away, however, I mean there's conversations and Lance and I have talked, she may have had one today where you're talking to a parent and starts off very elevated and sad and upset and then it's laughing and then insist and it's that, right? So it's just putting ourselves in their shoes
and being honest and open with them. And really what Carrie did a great job of explaining is it's consistency around what expectations are. What are expectations in the hallway for first graders and fifth graders or in the lunchroom, same kind of thing. So it's being really consistent with that so kids know what the expectations are and that creates a safe and welcoming environment Speaker 16: As well. Well I'm just, I asked that question about communication with parents as far as, I mean we see your newsletter that you send out, you know, and just communicating with parents and setting an expectation for them to set with their kids
and I just didn't know how that was being Speaker 17: Received. Speaker 21: Yeah, well and I think sometimes parents' responses surprise you. It's like, oh that's the, that's the only consequence they're gonna get. Well they're in kindergarten, this is a learning moment. We're trying to, you know, like we're trying to teach them, you know, we want them to learn and grow. And so I think for the most part the response from parents has been not necessarily combative, it's been really supportive and trying to help their kids. Speaker 19: Yeah. And I also think what Carrie was talking about preventative, I mean look in the data.
Where are those hot times where where can refocus our energy and her and her team just do an amazing job being preventative. Like that's gonna definitely take at least half 75% of what we've seen in the past and just being thoughtful about it. I mean, we got really good people, so just do. Speaker 20: And for the most part, I feel like we always talk about, as a parent, I would want to hear from the teacher before I hear from like admin or a dean. And so our teachers have worked really hard on being that first line of communication. And so when I call a parent, it's never a surprise.
They're like, oh yeah, miss so and so's been telling me that we've been struggling with that. And that just changes the conversation so much. So again, I'm really proud of our teachers and they're doing a lot of that communicating. Speaker 17: We're in the relationship business, no doubt. Right? So the stronger those relationships, the better off we are in these areas. Speaker 1: Do you feel your teachers have also been very receptive to the discipline side of it? And are they finding life is easier if everyone's on the same page of consistency? Yeah, Speaker 20: We've worked for two years now with Kevin Dill and he is just changed our school.
I mean, we use the same language, we have the same expectations and he doesn't just help us with that. He teaches us how to do those corrections, how to support kids, how to handle ourselves when we're just just feeling frustrated or fatigued. So Speaker 17: Kevin's one of our consultants that Speaker 20: We had, I was gonna ask Speaker 17: Number of years, he's Speaker 20: Behavior specialist, Speaker 17: Right? And Kevin, we brought Lan and I into my office and told us some things that we needed to hear, you know, and so we started making some changes and our kids deserve them.
Speaker 1: And he's He's specifically for your school Speaker 20: Or his district? Yeah. Speaker 1: Oh, district, right? This guy. Okay. I thought I heard the name before, Speaker 20: But we just, we just like, he's a, if he's a rifle, we're like, you gotta come to Highlands. Like, he's like, okay, we bought a lot of his books. Yes, he likes you guys. I'll be there. Signed copies and everything. Yeah. Speaker 17: Book titled of yours. But Speaker 20: It was great. Speaker 17: So the last section we have here is our staff, our Tribe success data. And you guys can look through that. We do have 11 non-traditional certified staff
and 26 certified open positions. We spoke in the cafeteria about the one that we had a mid-year. We also have four classified positions that have been unfilled and those are in the special ed realm. So we do start off every day short staffed and we do have permanent subs, which is fabulous. We're just trying to fill those positions to best meet needs kid meet kids' needs our turnover rate, 86% retention rate. And every single person that we moved into a teaching role, whether it was a grade level
or mild to moderate needs for special ed, were Highland tribe members in the past who stepped up to take on these roles, which we feel like speaks volumes to what we have going on in our building. Is Speaker 20: There any Highland alum up there? I wish I could say I don't think we were open. We were back in day they only had one room, right? That's right. Speaker 17: And the last part there is just the, I'm very satisfied with my job. We have that data. Speaker 20: How Speaker 1: Many liaisons, family liaisons do you have at this school? Speaker 17: We have one. She is getting some support
from some other buildings. 'cause she may be the busiest lady around and she, I spoke to about her in the cafeteria a bit about the businesses and that Okay. Good connection that we have. She has been amazing. She came in, Angela came in as a paraeducator years ago and just the confidence that she's gained in every position that she's stepped into, she's just elevated her game and she's great for us in that building. Speaker 20: Yeah, even decorating this room and the cafeteria, she had moms in here blowing up balloons and doing, I mean she is, she's, she's very connected
and people love her and she is doing great things for our community and our school. Yeah, Speaker 17: She makes about half of the calls with me that I need to Speaker 1: Yeah, that's why I was wondering how how thin she potentially would be stretched, you know, in the school, Speaker 7: What Speaker 20: She have half the time she has some kid next to her that needs support with a parent with like, I mean she well on the phone. Well yeah, she, as we're like, we need you to translate this for us. So she's amazing. Speaker 7: I definitely like thumbing through the SPF and seeing green. Yeah, Speaker 17: You like that too.
Speaker 7: 7.1. That's really nice. It's, it's, it's great that you guys are aware of the places that you need to work on and you're making steps. I'm looking forward to what this ELA pilot program finds. So far everybody's spoke. Even the ones that piloted Eureka last year, really like, not Eureka, but they piloted the other ones really like the Eureka. So hopefully we get the same luck with ELA. Yep. Speaker 2: Did you have any questions? Speaker 7: Any questions? Speaker 22: I, I will, I I have no questions
because my kids went here so I can honestly attest to everything that they have said. My kids always felt welcome. There was some times where Gunner would actually go and eat with Rich at lunch because that's where he felt comfortable. So, and I did always appreciate the partnership and the communication and usually it was so fathom like, alright, so something happened today. Perfect. What was it? So, and I do also have to say for my younger son, last year being told that he was about ready to be put on a,
a reading plan, knowing 90% of it was because he was not doing his part. But then to later at graduation, be getting the president's award for reading accomplishment was huge. So Speaker 1: He's here. Speaker 22: He was. Yep. So I do have to commend you guys for everything you do. And I, as a parent where I'm sure you guys saw me coming in, we were like, here she comes again. I, I never felt that, I always felt very welcome. So thank you.
Speaker 7: How many times were you in the school? Speaker 22: You know, let's not talk about that. You know, I, I volunteered a lot here. No, Speaker 17: Thank you for saying that. Speaker 7: I'm still kind of salty though about Mr. Banky leaving Cactus Valley. Speaker 20: We are not, you know what the Speaker 19: Cool thing is about that is like looking around the room, there was Rich Hills at one time. Lisa Pierce at one time, Simone Richardson at one time. I got to learn from a lot of really cool people. Speaker 2: Roy Moore, it counts. Speaker 19: Yeah. Roy Moore. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm lucky to be where I am and I'm lucky to be where I was Both best of both. Cool. Well thank you guys.
Speaker 2: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you guys. Thank you. Good job. Take five. Speaker 1: We're gonna go ahead and take a five minute break. We'll throw that on the timer and then we will circle back. Okay. And then we'll get going on our next topic, which is the Garfield R two audit. Get started back up here. We're gonna start with our audit, our Garfield R two audit. Take it away. Is this one on, this one will be a presentation or I mean over Zoom. I, Speaker 2: Yes, yes. Drum roll please. Speaker 1: I have all the other stuff. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 8: All right. Yeah, I guess I'll just, I'll start.
My name's Mike Dooley and I'm a CPA with McMahon and Associates and I kind of worked directly on the, the audit with re two with Jason and this whole team. And Paul's the manager on the, or sorry, the partner on the engagement and kind of just helped supervise all of my work and my team's work. And I just figured I'd bring you through kind of everything that we did, what an audit entails, and then kind of the final result, which is the financial statements and the letter that we
provided to the board. Yep. And yeah, Paul and I were open for questions. Paul's just kind of help helping support me on trying to get better at presenting stuff like this. So I'm pretty excited about it. So first and foremost, this is kind of a snapshot view of the, of the audit binder. You can see that we have over 400 work papers in this binder to support what we call an unmodified or a clean opinion. All these work papers, you know, we have everything from
internal controls documented to basically every bank statement that you all have. Different interviews that we do with various departments, so on and so forth. But you know, management, they're asserting like you have X amount of dollars in the bank account. We go in there and we ask the bank, Hey, does this cash really exist? They may say, Hey, we expect to have $20,000 received after the year end. We make sure that it is in fact received. So those are the types of tests that we're doing.
We look at payroll, the different fixed assets you all have, and even grant funding, grant spending, and different expenses. So that's kind of the overview of what I guess an audit entails. But it's something that's gonna be required by the state of Colorado for all public schools and the Colorado Department of Education. And it's also required in many, many other fields, whether it's required
by the SEC federal or state levels. But it's, it's pretty common in in depth I guess, look at what is happening on your financial statements. So that kind of brings me to the financial report that we prepared for y'all. And I'll just kind of take you through it. Here's a table of contents that'll bring you through the different sections of it. But first and foremost, we'll take a look at the management discussion and, or sorry, the auditor's opinion. Like I said, this is a clean opinion. It is what we call an audit language and unmodified opinion.
And that's basically stating that your material, your financial statements are materially correct and for financial statement users, they won't be swayed one way or another if maybe one number is off a thousand dollars. So it's good quality information and it's supported by all those work papers that I showed you before. Speaker 23: Good job guys. Speaker 8: Scrolling down, you'll see the management discussion and analysis. So if you're not maybe a super heavy financial statement
user, this is probably the best place to get an idea of what's in the financial statements. It gives you a really good synopsis or snapshot of what I guess the district's performances financially. And it kind of outlines changes year over year. So you can see the current assets year over year, the liabilities, and then your ending that position right here, we're looking at governmental activities year over year, and that's kind of a more longer term view, which I'll expand on a little bit here and just a moment.
But I think I'd encourage you to just read this section of the report if, yeah, I guess if you're not a super heavy user, otherwise it's maybe a little bit more boring than, than you might like. Rolling down. Here's the financial statements themselves. This is the statement of net position. And like I said, this is a long-term look at all of your assets and liabilities. Probably the biggest contributing factor to a negative net position is long-term liabilities related to pension and OP e.
And then also it's kind of taking into account different capital assets that are depreciated over time. So when looking at it from that perspective, net position is actually negative. But if you look at it on a more kind of one year outlook, it, it looks quite a bit different, which I'll show you here in a second. But you can think of this as a full accrual statement and that's what any normal business would use for their financial statements. The other financial statement that I'll show you in a moment is a modified accrual.
You can just look at that as cash basis. So still on a full accrual basis we have the statement of activities. This shows all the different revenues coming in for, for various, sorry, I just got, there we go. This shows all the different revenues coming in and the different expenditures going out. And then all the revenues are right here. And here's the expenditures by governmental activities. Now moving down, this is what I was talking about with modified accrual, you can see that the fund balance is a little bit different than the net
position because it doesn't have those long-term liabilities. And the fund balance actually for the general fund looks fairly healthy. But right here it's saying, you know, you have $38 million in cash, your expected liabilities for the next year or $6 million and kind of so on and so forth. This page CC four is a reconciliation between the government-wide financial statements and the fund financial statements. And here is the statement of revenues
and expenditures for each fund. So you can see that there's transfers that happen in order to help out the capital park projects fund. And I'd say probably, yeah, biggest line item looks like direct instruction as it relates to your expenditures. A lot of your revenues coming in is from property taxes and state sourced funding, but you also had about $7 million in federal source, probably grant revenue at the end of the day. Here's another reconciliation between
the government wide financial statement and yeah, the, the statement of revenues and expenditures. Next, moving down is the notes to the financial statements. This kind of gives you A really good detailed look at maybe specific items. It gives a really good detailed summary of what the entity is. So what Garfield school district is, goes into different accounting policies. A little bit further down here explains the difference between modified accrual and full accrual.
Here's the accounting policies I was mentioning. Even further down it goes into, I guess, notes specific to financial statement accounts and particularly material items will be kind of listed out in larger tables. So let me get, get down there. So here's a detail of what your deposits look like that are in investments. Here's the different receivables that are available here. We have a schedule of capital assets and the different depreciation expense by governmental activity. Further down we talk about spits.
These are information, kind of technology agreements that you have and what you can expect to pay in future years for related to those, A lot of detail on individual, I guess debt or bond issuances that you're still pain and a lot of information on the long-term debt. Speaker 2: A lot. Speaker 8: So, oh, what happened? So yeah, you can see that the notes, they're, they're quite in depth.
It starts going into different pension and opep related liabilities. That's probably the most complex estimate associated with the financial statements. And right now here's the net liability of of the para and that's what causes that statement of net position to be. So to become negative. Scrolling down, I'm just gonna go into the next section. We have the budget to actual schedule for the general fund
and we have the budget to actual, for the grant fund and continuing to move down. We have more pension liability schedules that show you kind of a 10 year history of what this has looked like for the district. And this one for oped is only eight years just because it wasn't implemented until, or that's just as far back as the implementation goes. Additional notes that are required for oppe imp, and let's see, some of the supplementary information is those same schedules we looked at earlier.
So schedules of revenues and expenditures, but this time maybe on a, on a specific fund. So this is the debt service fund and capital projects fund. And then on the very first page on page C, maybe three or four, you saw maybe a consolidated row of funds. And these are those two broken out. They're the non-major governmental funds and the activity associated with it and budget actual for each of those. So it's pretty in depth. There's a lot going on here. Kind of moving further down in Section F, you'll see this auditor integrity report.
So the Colorado Department of Education requires a pipeline, a data pipeline where your finance team is uploading data and basically it's in, it's ensuring the integrity of the audit and that we are auditing the same numbers that your school district has. And so at the end of it all, after all the entries have been made for the audit. We agree this to the audit report presented here and it agrees to your financial system. And that's, oh sorry.
And that's ultimately what's gets transmitted to the state. Okay. Further down, we have the single audit. So we issue an opinion, it was a clean opinion on modified opinion for the single audit this year. But we do an evaluation of internal control and then also the expenditures associated with within that. There was one minor finding as it related to the single audit associated with reporting, but Jason and his team fulfilled the, the
reporting requirements thereafter. And yeah, it was submitted just recently. Here's a schedule of the total federal expenditures. It looks like total expenditures was 5.7 million and that's just a federal fund. So there would be more maybe state specific grant funding that you might, might have. And yeah, that, that kind of encompasses the financial statements. The other portion of the, of the audit that we prepare is a, a letter to the governing board.
And this, I guess I look at is like, kind of like the report card of how the, the finance team's doing, how the school's doing in general. And for us we think it, it's doing really well. We didn't have any issues performing the audit. The team was super responsive. There's no uncorrected misstatements, there was no disagreements with management. Some of the recommendations that we have just in include tax credits, just you might be eligible for certain tax credits as it relates to electric vehicles.
If that's something the district wants to pursue, we can, we can help you with that. A new reporting standard that might be, that will be effective in the upcoming year. Some information on that. And then there was one i, I guess internal control thing that, that we wanna identify is that has to do with activity funds. So when we find maybe weaknesses or areas of improvement as it relates to internal control, kind of audit standards require us to report those to you. And that's detailed there.
But besides that, that's, that's kind of the gist of it. And now I guess we can just open it to question and answer and I can pull open anything else if I need to. Speaker 1: It's pretty exciting work you guys are involved in. Speaker 2: Yeah, Speaker 8: Exhilarating, exhilarating. Speaker 2: I don't, Speaker 24: I don't know how they contain themselves. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: You know, obviously it's good to hear that there were no major findings that the team worked with you and then found some internal things
with our activity funds. But ultimately, I guess what you're saying, our finance looks good and no major issues. Am I, do I have the gist of it? Speaker 8: Yeah, like I, I, I would agree with that statement. I, I don't know what you think Paul. Speaker 25: Well, we're auditors, we don't say anything nice. But, but yeah, that's correct. You know, there's always little stuff to work on but, but your team really is a high functioning team and we have, sometimes we have those letters and they're eight, nine pages. So yeah, you can definitely look at it that way.
Speaker 1: And once again, Paul, you know, I've seen you for three years now, I guess where you think we have been to where we are now, major improvements. Speaker 25: Yeah. District has really made major improvements and honestly I'm sure we're like you guys, we like the finance to work in the background and it's a support structure for the teachers and the principals and for student achievement. And, and that's the good news that it is working that way.
It's, you know, it should work smooth. It shouldn't take up a lot of your time and it should be there to support the rest of your organization to achieve the goals you have. Yeah, Speaker 24: No, I just, no questions. Just really appreciate having worked with these guys. Yeah, Kathy and, and Jeff and Jacob, Jason and we have a, a great group of guys, great team and I, you know, they've educated me so much and it's been very transparent and way over my head, so thank you. Speaker 2: Well Speaker 1: The transparency is, is one of the big things, right? When we start looking at all these numbers and unfortunately you hear so many bad stories of districts
or the positions they're, they're in unfortunately. And it is nice to know that we've got a solid team that's really came up from the ashes, like a Phoenix and, and this is where we are today from when I first started on the board. So, Speaker 24: And when I say it's over my head, it's been And you're six down a lot. Speaker 26: Yeah. Speaker 1: You're like six, seven. Speaker 24: No, but it's been, it's been great, great learning experience and very easier to have them tell me what's going on and how to understand it. And so appreciate it very much. It's great to hear that we are doing so well. Speaker 1: Yeah. So yeah, within that, are you guys,
as a finance team, are you involved in helping or being on committees with other districts to pass some of your, your knowledge onto other districts to help out in other areas? So we're all, this is Speaker 26: Shock. Not a lot people. Speaker 1: I don't believe it. We Speaker 26: Can get on some if you want. We, we, we meet with, in fact, gosh, I think I just scheduled it. We, we meet with the other financial leaders from basically the western slope. Get together and, and meet with the CDE and, and talk about better processes, things
that are happening teaching. I teach us, we, yeah, we hosted that a while back and there'll be another one in hmm, up. So that's our main connection. And then we communicate with the CV quite a bit too. Speaker 1: Alright, well thank you very much guys for staying with us late and presenting that to us and we appreciate your feedback For sure. Thank you. Yeah, Speaker 26: Thank you. Thank you. Thank Speaker 1: You guys. Yeah, really good, really good to hear man. We're, we're, we're, that's really good to hear.
I'm glad we're not dealing with that. I put that word in five years. Yeah, I'll take, I'll take that. Well let's us focus then. You know, you guys are doing that in the back and then let's let's the rest of the team that'll have that worry. Everybody's getting paid on time. You know, we're, we're, we know where our money's going. So I just think it really is that base that really the bottom of our pyramid, you know, it's solid. It's good. Okay. I don't, don't need to blow your guys' on your horn for you guys. I know we need to negotiate salary. I know these guys come up and be like, so, alright, so next up we're gonna
bring those same guys up and we're gonna talk about that economic forecast. Speaker 26: Yes. As soon as the auditor said finance shouldn't take up much of your time, we're gonna take up a little more of your time. We'll try to make it quick though. It's good to see y'all. How you doing? Good Speaker 1: To see you. Speaker 26: Well we just started on this. I do. Hold on. Yes sir. Remember our first meeting here? Yeah. It was right after we got, right after we got elected. Yeah. And you started the financial forecast with an anecdote about, Speaker 27: Oh remember that? Your story, your story. And I thought to myself, what,
Speaker 26: What have I gotten myself? Did somebody get the cane and yank him off the stage? Yep. Well, before we get started, I, do you wanna reiterate what Paul said about the team? I you have treasures in finance, I promise you. They're, they're a good crew. So I'm glad he set us up with, with some positivity. 'cause now we're about to descend in the darkest science. Yeah, the economic forecast then we'll we're not gonna cover the audit. Paul and Mike did a good job of that.
But we thought we'd maybe start a discussion about the bonds and the debt. We'll see how that goes. And then we've got our cash flow projections now that you've seen the audit, we've got our starting fund balance as well as our, what, what a governmental entity gets is net income. And like I said, we'll try to get you outta here pretty quickly. I'll start with the, no, this is mine. Sorry. Oh sorry, go ahead. We didn't coordinate right? Yep. So in the economic forecast, the, the color that came to mind when I was talking to Jason was gray.
And since it's a forecast, I'd say it's fair to partly cloudy since it's not a CA, the revenue is, is pretty steady. In September they told us they thought it'd be negative by about one per 1.8% more expenditures than revenues is what they're, they're saying in September or were, they've knocked that down to 1.2%. So they're basically expecting to break even this year in regard to the legislation, stuff like
that we have coming down that that is a good sign or good news. And then in 25, 26 they're expecting about an 8% turnaround, which I take that more with more of a grain of salt since, you know, I gotta give the economist credit too because they've gotta walk that line where they never alarm anybody with, with what they say. But you may have noticed that there's some risk with the new executive administration we have in Washington. There's some unpredictability there. So they punted on that.
But they also said in there that the growth is expected to decelerate this year. So how we experience a 6.7% net income in the state in 25 26 after being negative with the deceleration will be interesting. I would take note of that word if, if I were us, Mr. Lynch will walk you through the, generally if I tell my wife our, our income is expected to decelerate, she doesn't expect growth, there's some contradiction. That's not the term I use for growth. But if, yeah, if we'll go to the next slide.
This is just economic forecast in school finance this year we had an increase of 17 million. Next school year is anticipated to be 83 million. Write that number down, circle it. 'cause we'll come back in probably a couple months and this will change dramatically. This is, a lot of this is based on the new formulas and some of the things that are gonna happen in March. This is the projected increase revenue mostly due to large local share growth. Student enrollment is pretty much flat in Colorado. There's a couple of places, if you read the economic forecast that are growing rapidly,
but they're being offset by other places that are, that are decreasing at the same rate. This is about what's happening to our district 0.01 change. We're, we're within like five or six of last year. So this is, you'd like to see growth across the state. Growth means more students, more PPR, more revenue. But you know, just with increasing prices, we're just not seeing a lot of growth in student aged families. So Speaker 1: Do you blame little that just on, on a, on a housing crisis that Colorado's in
Speaker 26: Or if you look at the economic forecast, one of the major contributors is very expensive housing. It's just tough to, if if you're the, when I was, when I was the age that was having a child that was school aged, I, I couldn't have bought a house here. But you almost need to have bought 20 years ago and that means you're past the kindergarten people. So, and again, I'd give the same advice I gave at the, at the believe meeting as go out there and make babies.
Come on Colorado, you can do Speaker 1: Well and you, you look at rifle itself, you know, and you know, you look over there with the trailer park that's getting ready to go over there on 13, that's a hundred and some odd homes that, you know, they're not there yet but they're going to be in the next year. You look how fast, right over by the Brendan Theater they've put up, I mean three apartment buildings, like there was nothing and now there's three sitting there. So I see a pretty big influx still coming in, you know, of rifle. So it's, you know, maybe we'll see a decrease. But I think Speaker 26: We're due for the demographer's report this year.
Next year Is that right? This year. And, and we should see what that projected growth looks like And the last report was pretty accurate. Yeah. It expected us to be fairly flat. So hopefully that means we can put a lot of stock in the demographer's report, which will take into account that growth that we think we see. Speaker 1: How often do we see that report? I'm not, Speaker 28: Well the last official demographer report came about five years ago. We're right sitting on five years of master's facility plan. Oh, but John is putting, it's tied to that. It's tied to the master facility. It's tied, that's where the demographer came in and did the official work.
Okay. And we're getting ready to launch another new master's facility plan. So that'll come in that work. Speaker 1: We see that in the next year then the, Speaker 28: The, that piece of it. Yes. Okay. Speaker 1: Okay. Thank you. Speaker 26: The next slide I think is, is your, is your audit results and we'll we will roll through those although Paul, Paul covered 'em. If you go to the next slide please scroll down just a Yeah, yeah, keep going. Sorry, it's right there. Keep this number in mind. This is how much the general fund balance went up
for 24 25. So that's kind of our starting number of the ca of the cash flows. We'll go over after we talk a second about the bonds, but that is the only number you've gotta see from the audit after Paul and Mike presented. So if we could go to the next slide, just in general, the revenues and expenditures in the audit came in very close to the adjusted what the adjusted budgets and things you guys put forward in in June. That's, that's what it says. He, he scrolled past this pretty fast. I almost jumped up in waved to show you we're gonna talk about it on
page 43 of the audit. There's a list of the district bonds and when we had an opportunity meet with board member BI thought this Monday we talked about maybe it's time to start to think about some strategy with the bonds in the future. And so in the next few slides, Jeff will show you where we're at, when those are retired, what, what, what are some things to do because we, we need to have a five year vision and, and that's a big part of it. Most of the bonds will be paid off in 2029. The other debt that runs to 40 43 is our 20 year obligation with JCI.
So that's what that is. So that that piece will run on. But by 2029 the bulk of our bonds will be retiring. So I'll let Jeff explain that. Which that's the $8 million or so that we talk about when we're setting the mills in December. And part of the reason we thought we covered this tonight is, you know, in addition to our meeting with you Scott, you all have had questions about the bonds. When are they gonna be paid off? Stuff like this. This would be a good place to start. 'cause as we're moving into next year,
it probably makes sense to talk about a, an override strategy. Not necessarily, you know, I'm not talking about going out for a vote or anything, but at least talking about this, this is paid off in, in 2029. So we now have eight mills that are no longer being assessed. So that would be probably the best time to talk to the community and all of the stakeholders about whether an override makes sense and what it looks like.
I would argue it probably wouldn't be all bonds this time. We might want to split it between. And, and this has been, these have been proposals the district's done in the past. I think last time though the capital did not pass even though the, the payroll and, and the salaries and benefits initiative did. But, but something similar in a new issue where you split it between an override that's for ongoing costs like salaries and benefits. So we can give raises and then another portion of it would go to
capital improvements that we identify in the five year plan that I think is coming up as well. Is that right captain? The five year facilities plan it's coming Speaker 28: Up. Yes. That's on the, that's on the capital projects approval list. Yes. Speaker 26: So, so this, this kind of helps us look at that with, with what we have available or will have available in, in mine. So if we could go to the next slide and then I'm gonna shut up. But this is again where we've got a pretty big payment in 29, but this is where the debt service fund is fully
paid off or serviced. The rest of these payments represent the remaining debt we have, but that's in the general fund that's not actually in the debt service fund. And like I say, there's no pressure for questions or discussion, but this was kind of what we thought we'd talk about since, since Paul and Mike were gonna go through the rest of the audit. This is something you all have said you might be interested in. Alright, so Speaker 1: Let me just to clarify. Yeah, so once we hit 2029 then the next, I mean I I mean obviously our expenditures are going down
and your question then to go to the community and stakeholders is, can we keep that money we were bringing in before versus turning it back to them? We might, we might ask them to keep that money to use if we did. Is that money that we can use in facilities? Is it benefits only Speaker 26: Facilities? Speaker 1: Only Speaker 26: Facilities? That question. Okay. Yeah. The, the use of the funds is based on the way you write the ballot initiative. So you put what you're going to use the money
for in the initiative and then you're bound to spend it for that if it passes, but that you choose what you're going to put the money into beforehand. So yes, you do get to allocate and decide where you want to spend it. And I'm really glad you asked the question. A lot of the bigger districts, Denver Littleton, when they have this situation when they're getting ready to, to pay off their previous mill levy overrides, part of the way they approach the community is we really won't be asking or assessing a tax increase.
It'll be the same mills. Or if we wanted to talk about less mills, we could, we could say it essentially affect is effectively a tax decrease from what we were assessing prior. So districts try to sell things for initiatives that way. They say we're not increasing taxes, this is really what you've been paying all along. Can I, can I ask a question? You had some people skeptical about that as you might imagine, but, but it's one way. And then the other thing that we've got, this was one
of the things I found when I first got here. We've got about an $11 million balance in the bond fund. So it means that in prior years we over collected, we assessed too many mills, but that 11 million is about a year and a half of our debt service. So we've got a couple options there. We could pay off the debt a year early and not assess mills that year and then go to the community. Or we could use the balance to reduce the assessments for two or three years, you know, cut it up in half
or a third and that would reduce your mills by at least a couple with our current assessed values. So we've got a couple of things hopefully that make it a little easier, you know, a little sugar to go down with no levy medicine when, when we do get to that point. So we've got a couple options and, and thanks for asking. That was something I wanted to bring up. Speaker 1: We'll work on it that that's Speaker 26: A lot. Well, and this is really why we're talking about it now is there's no rush. We've got a few years yet, but when you're going out for a mill levy override particularly want
to some substance like this, you wanna give people a little time to get used to the idea. So that's all we got there. Unless y'all want to talk more. Yeah. And there'll be strategic options coming up over the next few years and that's why we want plenty of time to start thinking what is, what do we want do with this? How do we Speaker 1: Want, I think that's, we definitely need to get ahead of it. Speaker 26: So we wanted to put a bug in your ear and start thinking about it and offer to start helping strategize that next slide and the next one after that.
So we're gonna show you now the, the next three years, anytime you project out into the future, the further you go, the more it becomes art, not science for sure. We're gonna look out a wa if you're familiar with that acronym, A wild guess. So we're gonna look out and show you kind of what, based on the audit we just got, what we're spending this year, what we're projecting, what it would look like to go into the future. The main thing that's affecting us is the esser funds are, are done. Those are, those are fully expended. The, the, the increase we're expecting in 25, 26 is about 3.6.
That's dependent on what happens in March. But what we're, what we're gonna show you is an increase of 3% growth in revenue, 3% growth in in expenditures over the next three years. And see what that would do to the fund balance over time. Like I said, we'll find out if the new school formula kicks in and that would change some of this stuff. But next slide. So as Jason mentioned, just, just so you know, 26 is based on what numbers the state has published for what we expect our res revenue to be.
That's based on the new legislation and formula that they passed during the special session. And the reason we kept it with 3% is, is as I mentioned, once you get, or as Jason mentioned, once you get too far out, you're, you're really guessing we've got a pretty good idea of 25 and 26. The state's about to end their fiscal year just like we are. So those numbers feel pretty good or solid, but at any rate, it's no longer a sea of blood. We've got, we've got rivers bordered by black.
So that's, that's a good thing. The big thing you want to keep about the keep in mind about the fund balance, it's, it's, it's a single point in time. It's a good time because it's June 30th. So we've basically collected all of our property taxes. It's the biggest balance we're gonna have during the year. And it's a pretty good reflection of resources we have available for existing obligations. And that's really what we're trying to show with this schedule is barring any major changes, what do our resources look like
through the next several years? Escalating it by slightly more than inflation. If you take out all of the things that make inflation real, the base inflation, we're assuming about 3%. We know our, our salaries are gonna be two. So that's the biggest increase we're assuming there. We will see changes in our benefits. That's usually in May, right? They they're moving it up. Well, the benefits, oh, they're moving it up. We're talking Speaker 28: About benefits on the next board meeting. Speaker 26: And I'm sorry, CS is gonna have their, their proposal.
Yes. But then Willis Towers Watson usually comes in like the end of April, early May. Is that right? They give us their premiums right around that. Speaker 28: Oh, we've already received them. Speaker 2: We Speaker 26: Took your advice, we moved it all up. Well then I better just stop. So we already know if those are different than what is, everything's coming faster. We'll come in. No, we'll find out in a couple weeks. We'll know here in a few weeks. Okay. They should be fairly close. That extra 1% certainly wouldn't be even a 5% in just benefits. So I think, you know, three percent's, conservative
and, and imperfect. But the best thing to do with this is keep it simple. It's really about ins and outs of revenue. And if we, it's a 2% increase is what's assumed in here. We'll certainly discuss or revisit that if you all would like, but that's kind of what we're assuming here. And if you go out to 28, we're still solvent. So I'm feeling pretty good about that. In fact, this is the first schedule we've put up with our estimates that the $8 million in the last year
is covered and we still have almost another seven left. So as Paul mentioned and Mike, things are, our fund balance is healthy and it's going in the right direction. So Speaker 2: Yeah, Speaker 26: Just for clarification, that's audited. That's, that's the numbers we just got. This is, this is the budget you just passed and this is what we're starting to work on for next year. And this is, this is the, the, the artful guessing, Speaker 2: Can you stop it from going, Speaker 26: It depends on the amount of revenue growth we get that
that one is usually fairly steady historically. And then the real question is can, can your expenses, can you tighten expenses to match and start to, and start to reduce the reduction in, in fund balance. Speaker 2: Yes. Speaker 26: And I put that all on Kathy. Yes, Speaker 2: We can do it. Speaker 26: We can do that. Do it. I'm with Speaker 2: Them. Okay. Speaker 26: No, overall I, I won't use the word stability, but I will say that financially we,
we are in better shape than a lot of districts right now. We're not in a bad place. For sure. If you'd like to stay after the meeting, Jeff wants to explain the difference between accrual basis and modified accrual basis. And I'll be happy to do that most exciting section and then we can dive into the pension notes if you'd like to do that. The pension liability notes, which I'll be honest, I haven't read. They're unreadable. Anyway, that's all. It's good to see y'all, man. You Speaker 1: Thanks guys. Thank you. Speaker 2: Functioning team. I function Speaker 1: Control Speaker 29: Payroll.
Speaker 1: Jason, what's the percentage of our budget that is benefits and payroll? 82% or am I low on that? Speaker 27: Benefits between 80 and 85? Yeah. Okay. Way up there. Sorry. I was thinking the difference between medical benefits. Speaker 1: Sorry. No, no, that's alright. No, I was just thinking as we look at controlling costs and stuff, and I appreciate what, you know, secretary are doing and, and the controlling all that. But it's like the biggest portion is No, you're right. Is our people. I'm trying to figure that out. Yeah. Yep. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. I'm gonna, Speaker 29: Thank Speaker 1: You.
Gotta figure ways to make everybody healthy so, you know, so, or benefits, wish you could. All right, next step is 6.3. We're gonna go to our strategic plan. Family engagement. Speaker 29: I was gonna say, forgive me, I'm gonna be bouncing back and forth a little bit. Michael's going Speaker 1: To do you want, you want Speaker 29: Take over and then I'm gonna double Speaker 27: Back in Speaker 1: Soon as she's done after Speaker 27: This. Are we okay? Yep, we're good. Oh, okay. Speaker 29: I'm gonna stand, I'm sitting all this. So here Michael, let me, let me take take care of that for you. I'll just move that for you now. So thank you for,
for another Family Community partnership presentation. And Michael, if you wanna go ahead. So there we go. Just, I know there's quite a few slides in there. I'm gonna try to go through them pretty quickly 'cause a lot of this is review. So just a review of the strategic priority around improving communications and collaboration with our school communities with special attention to our diverse communities. Go. And again, really our pri one of our primary metrics is that percent
of favorable responses from families. We're currently in our family survey window probably another week 'cause it's been a little anemic on responses. So I'm gonna try again. We tried some different stuff this year with not only sending out the emails, but we actually sent postcards home with a QR code for every family member. I'm hoping that you guys saw those. Did you? And, and that was, we got two. It was this. Yeah. Yep. Okay. I do have questions about, okay, I'll wait. You bet.
And then I just wanna share, share a couple of events that keep going that. So what you're gonna see is just a whole bunch of pictures from a whole bunch of events that have happened over the first six months of the school year that involve us going to the community, community coming to our schools. Everything from Veteran's Day assemblies, bonfires, emergency responders in our schools, kids doing great performances, whoa, kids, kids cleaning up in the community.
We've got our screen majors presentation that Rifle Middle school put on a couple of weeks ago. And then they're doing the, the second one on February 20th. So just a whole lot of community events that have been going on. And these are just a few that are coming up in the next couple of weeks that are highly community involved. So you've got the Grand Mesa daddy daughter dance across the valley. Daddy's bringing their little girls to Grand Mesa. You've got the rifle high school evening of music, you've got Rifle High School and Coleridge High School doing their competitive Make a
Wish Foundation event. And then Riverside's Family Fun Night fundraiser. That's just in the next two weeks. I've seen a lot of those. It's, it's a busy time in the school district. So a couple of just updates on where we are on our initiatives. So the first one was to talk about our school community, our school accountability committees. And though it seems like it might be a little like a given that our schools were, were highly engaged with providing our school accountability committee, but we heard from our principals is that maybe it just felt like it was another thing.
So we kind of gave them some permission and put some guard or put 'em, put some guardrails up and said, look, use the things that you already have your parents at, use your school, your PTAs, use your booster clubs to be able to share that same school accountability information to your parents that are actively involved. And guess what, one more word, a hundred percent already. We asked them to make sure that they, they hit, hit that three times and every building said they have at least gotten to that, if not more.
We've got one that's finishing up this week, but, and then there's still some meetings to go. So they're on it, they figured it out. They're getting that information incorporated into those parent groups that are already active within their buildings. So that's a huge win. That is that for three years. The sec, I'm gonna jump to initiative four because that was kind of an add in with a, with a distinct timeline because of human resources issues, because of just communication platforms popping up all over the district. It became imperative that we found a two-way communication platform to support all of our buildings.
And over the course of four months, I think four months, go ahead Michael. We have launched a collaboration pro, a collaborative process for the platform with teachers and administrators from across the district. Got it approved Wamsley launched on February 3rd. Trade Twain trained 24 staff members in January at the strategic planning day on from teachers that wanted to start playing with it. I've trained two where we've trained teachers at Coral Rays and Catherine Senior, they're already working and posting, we're doing Riverside Middle
School's gonna launch in the fourth quarter. 'cause they want pilot. We're gonna be doing coaches at Riverside and Rifle High School full rollout in August. It is. And quite honestly, I'm, I'm a little overwhelmed because I did not expect the level of interest from teachers across the district. They want to go, they want to do it. I figured it'd be a little bit of a slow roll, but they wanna go. That's awesome. And so I, what I'm gonna show you though, now, I'm gonna go back for a second. I want, I do wanna show you something real quick from the platform.
What was the name of the Square? Oh, parents Square. Square. It is, it's really unique. Parents Square. So I want to show you, so Moms Lee Elementary launched on February 3rd. And this is what I think is one of the coolest things. So this is a schoolwide post. The school knows. So they, they've got 749 parents or guardians that are in the system, right? So that's mom's, dads, stepmom and stepdads. Whoever is custody and legit, this is the post, they can click on this, see immediately how many people got the emails,
how many people got the test, how many people are using the app, and then like, figure out exactly who doesn't have an email, who doesn't have a text message. But the most important thing for me is how many people didn't get connected with at all. And out of 749, 47, 47 are not getting connected with at all. And they know exactly who it is. And they're now starting a week in starting to make those connections of, Hey, you have a landline in with us. Can we get a a cell phone number? Do you have a cell phone number?
We need a good email address for you. Can you download the app? Right. So we're, they're already making those connections. And of those 47, those aren't the primary contacts. They're already working those right now. Those are like dads or grandmas or aunts, most of them that are custody or Elizabeth. So this is just, yeah, it's, it's just really cool. We could get that information before and Speaker 27: You can, sorry, I, you can see on the lease you mentioned there other night who viewed it Speaker 7: Like so you not Yeah.
Not just how many emails, how many times has that, has that been opened? Right. 'cause that's always been one question we've had with like mailers and Sure. Emails, newsletters. Well how much, how much traction do we really get? Well this gives you the real time metrics Speaker 29: Absolutely. Speaker 7: Of what it is. So I think that's really neat. Yeah, Speaker 29: That's awesome. So I just wanted, and it's in a really nice dashboard format and so I just wanted to, to show that to you now that we actually have data, Speaker 1: Because originally you thought there there'd be a little
bit of pushback just because they were into their own platforms and whatnot. So it's nice to hear that they're really buying into it. Speaker 29: I, yeah, I did. And actually one of the schools that told me, no, we've got a veteran staff, we're just gonna wait till August. A couple other teachers already got in. This was my favorite. This was my favorite direct message correspondence so far. Teacher says direct messages. A parent, Hey, Johnny's not feeling well today. Parent says, Johnny needs to suck it up. There you go.
Teacher says, no, no really? Johnny's really sick parent's. Like, oh, okay. But in, I mean, just instantaneous communication between the parent and the, the teacher via text message. You don't have to have the app. Everything comes as a text or an email. The app makes it a little more robust, but you don't need it. The other really cool thing is if my settings are in Spanish and the teacher is in English, it comes from the teacher in English, it comes to me in Spanish. I put my answer in Spanish, it comes to the teacher in English. Oh, that's okay. It's, it comes with a disclaimer.
This is a translated message. Yeah. But you pretty much get the gist. Wow. And it's just so far Wamsley has just been over the top. They're, they're digging it. That's awesome. And what's also really nice about it is they're developing some systems, some protocols, they're gonna help me train in August. The rest of the buildings, these are the things that we found useful. And they, and then other schools can help or can modify that a little bit as well. So that's been really cool. Awesome. Yeah. Oh, I, I didn't share it. There you go. Thank you. So that's obviously taken a lot of time. Yeah.
And a lot of effort. But, so the third initiative is just data collection. We're, we're looking at trying to look at volunteer volunteers in our buildings, looking at community service projects. And so I did not put these in here, but just some high level early data that, that I'm just gonna share. As of the end of January, based on our school guard, school gate guardian data, we had seven little over 7,500 log visitors into our buildings. Parents, visitors, support providers. It's a lot of people. 7,500 people
logged into our school gate guardian system. Wow. We had a hundred. And that Speaker 22: Doesn't include people like going to events either. Correct. Speaker 29: Okay. Yeah, that's just during the school day, logging in to the school gate guardian system based on school gate guardian data. We've had 131 volunteer days or, or volunteer instances. That's not tight by any stretch because guessing some people didn't get logged in as a volunteer or some people might have been logged in as a volunteer because, and they
were just having lunch with their kid. We are tightening up those visitor log in, we're getting people in now we have to tighten up the reason. Okay. But we know that they're in the buildings. Just a couple other really cool things. Riverside had 54 volunteers for their harvest days celebration. It's huge. 54 community people in there volunteering. And they weren't just, they weren't just community people. They were high school students. They were a whole lot of people going to visit Wam. This one blew me away. Wamsley's really good about keeping their check-ins for events.
They had 231 parents in for Thanksgiving lunch. Wow. Try to manage that. Speaker 7: That's Speaker 29: Awesome. That was amazing. And Highland Elementary Student Council has logged 23 hours of community service directly to the Vet Veterans Home Valley. Valley Home or the Animal Shelter Valley Journey Home Journey. Thank you. And extended table. That's awesome. So yeah, it's pretty good. Oh, the other thing I just wanted to add is we're also seeing really good participation in our PTAs. And it might not sound like a lot,
but most of our PTAs are sitting in about 12 or 15 folks. And so they're able to share the wealth. It's not just one or two people shouldering the, the burden of a, a parent teacher association. So Yeah. Speaker 7: That's great. Yeah. Finally, yeah, here for a while I knew that like there's a couple facilities that had one or two people. Yeah. Speaker 29: That's hard. Speaker 7: It's hard. Yeah, Speaker 29: You bet. Okay. And the last one is, was our second initiative, which was High Impact Family Practices, being able to facilitate those leadership conversations and provide professional development around high impact strategies.
And one of the things I'm pretty happy about, there's, you're, you're sometimes you're rocking and sometimes you're rolling, right? So this is, this is one of those things where success is not a straight line. We got a little bit of success here and there in pockets. So here's where we're really rocking Eureka Math that we're doing math nights. We've got PA people making positive phone calls home around math. We've got really good traction around our math programs. And that was one of the things, areas that we said something you're already doing, let's really get some fair engagement around the new math program.
Student goals. So you heard from Cactus Valley Elementary about their grow to green. Kelly brought some professional development at our Believe meetings. And that coupled with all of the work that our curriculum directors are doing, we've got a couple of other schools now looking at that student goals. And how do we get not only work with our students around goals, but then bringing the parents into that conversation as well. And so that's really encouraging. That's where we're rocking. Well, maybe we're rolling a little bit. We talked about maybe doing some parent engagement around i-Ready Pro and icap.
And the fact of the matter, the, the principal said that that might be a place for the middle schools and the high schools to direct their, their parent engagement energy. We're just not quite there yet. Again, curriculum's doing so much work around icap, the curricula or the, the counselors are doing so much work around icap, they need to finish their work so that we can really develop the parent communication components of that out. So we're that, we gotta kind of coast on that a little bit and let these other other things kind of flush themselves out. So we might have been a little ahead of ourselves there. The last thing that I just wanna share,
go the other way backwards. Yeah. We rolled. Keep going. Did I put that, that slide get in there twice. Oh, that's a little different. Yeah. Nope, keep, keep going because we already covered that. The last thing I just wanna share, and I think many of you might have heard this already, is independently Simone and I kind of had this, this brainchild of how do we ensure that the information we're putting out around student success is what people not only want to know, but also need to know. And so I can't, was coming at it from a reporting perspective.
How are we informing our community and potential residents of our valley that our kids really we're setting our kids up for, for success? And of course, Simone's coming at it from the standpoint of, of report cards and what do parents need and what do our teachers need to be providing. And so the two of us are going to launch a student success opportunity conversation beginning in March with all of our stakeholders. We're gonna invite all of our stakeholders to come and participate. And what we really wanna do is figure out what information do parents in the community need to know
that our students are being successful. CMAs is a part of it, but nobody, it's not the end all right? What are the other things that our community wants to know that our graduates are going to be suited for the workforce, locally suited for college. If that's where they want to go, that they're prepared, what data do we need to report to illustrate that? And how does our business community know that when we put out a set of graduates, they're ready to come in their workforce and be ready to, to take on whatever challenges they have for 'em.
And so that's kind of the work that, that we're gonna start doing in March. Coming Speaker 7: Right up. Speaker 29: It's, so do you wanna talk about Speaker 7: The other two? 'cause then we plan Speaker 29: Three meetings total. Yeah. There's three meetings. So two stakeholders and then one specifically around businesses. Speaker 7: So as far as getting that message out, it's something that we've always talked about. I think the reason CMAs scores, I guess resonate so deeply. 'cause there's a baseline and there's something to compare it to. We have that, you know, the the state average. Sure. Is there any other metrics that we could produce that would also give the same baseline to where,
because I, I've heard a lot of parents, you, you hear that's, that's the main thing. Well, we're not even, we're not even a state average. We're not even a state average. Well, let's find some metrics where we are and advertise, you know, and, and really push those. And I, I don't know what those may be Simone and Heather, Theresa. But I think that, I think the fact that you can compare those two is, is the reason that that's so integral. Speaker 29: Well, and we Right CMAs, we have, we're taking CMAs and, and that is something that is, that is that, that there are so many websites that, that bring all of that information together. And, and parents, when they move into a community, they use
that as the metric on whether they wanna move into the community. And that's part of the work that we're gonna do is what is it that's gonna make, well, there's lots of different metrics that we could use, but what's gonna resonate? Speaker 7: So this is the second meeting in a row that we've been to an elementary school that has been in the green on their SPF. Right? It might be a metric that we can point forward and, and not, not hone in. I mean, cmma s scores are what CMS scores are, right? They're, they're important in their own right. But it, it might be something that we're, the SPF framework gives us a lot better, more complete picture.
And if we can start molding that message around that. Speaker 1: Theresa, when you guys are doing this student success conversations, what does that event look like? Is it like, like a round table type thing you guys are wanting to do? Or like, what are you thinking that looks like, you Speaker 29: Know, we've got, we've got it all planned out. I don't know, Simone, you wanna talk a little bit about that? Sure. Speaker 30: So we're crafting it to kind of mimic what happened with the strategic plan and we hope we get as big a crowd. If not there, we'll do some conversation. The first meeting will be mostly about the graduate profile. We're not looking for them to tell us what they want us
to report on. We're looking for how they want us to report out on their student success with the graduate profile. And then the second meeting will more be about the academic part of achievement. And we're gonna have some conversations around report cards and some collaborative group work at all the meetings. And then we're gonna put a bunch of report cards out on the table and say, what, what on these is valuable to you as a parent? To what level do you want
to hear about your students' academic achievement? And then the last meeting we'll pull in businesses because we really, our hope and dream is to see that graduate profile everywhere in our three communities. And so we wanna pull them in to start to, to start to have conversations about how we can connect the work that we're doing with our students to be connected to the work that they're doing in their businesses. So that graduate profile can be front and center with conversations they're having with their employees even. So we're pretty excited.
Speaker 16: Okay. So I know in our communication meeting we talked about even possibly bringing in students. Is that not happening anymore? Speaker 30: Yes. We want that to happen too. We haven't organized that meeting yet. We're gonna get these through these three big ones and then tackle the student one next. But part of that is we, we have a plan for how we might get student input on how they're doing and, and hopefully we can get Jacob to work with some of our high schools on giving us feedback to that plan and maybe even starting to practice measuring
what they think their success level is with the graduate profile. So we are working on that one too. Speaker 7: I, I think Speaker 29: I was just gonna say, and I would add that Jacob's work with the student councils we've talked about kind of dovetailing on the work that he's doing for the mini career fair and really trying to engage those high school students to help us recruit for that meeting. Because if it comes from us, that's one thing. But if a high school kid goes to their boss at Sonic or Walmart or Grand River or something and says, Hey, we'd like you to come to this meeting.
I think that's pretty powerful and, and another level of engagement. Plus it's great for our kids to be out there and engaging with the community as well. I'm sorry father, I didn't Nope. Speaker 22: I I do think in that third meeting where it is the businesses, I think it kind of just stems along. I think it would be good to have students there as well just because I mean, if we're gonna tie in those first two meetings and with the business partners, I think that would be important for the students to hear. Speaker 31: Well, yeah. And, and that was, it was a great idea that was presented
because one of the big pieces of success we saw, we took, yes, we had organized the initiative of this mini career fair, but as we got students involved in driving the work that it takes to pull that event off, we saw what, what was a big revelation in that they wanted to continue to do that work. So the thought of getting, instead of us going out and recruiting businesses to come, if we can work with the students to go out and whether it's their own, you know, their own bosses
or whatever, or just other places of employment, they're building a relationship and there's gonna be a desire for them to want to attend meeting. Because I talked to you, I gave you a flyer, you said you'd come now as a kid, I want to know if you actually came. And, and then that they're gonna be in a mind space to really engage cooperatively and not be seen as just students versus businesses, but seen as a vital member of a team. Speaker 30: And we're trying to paint the picture. We, we have historically gone and asked for, and we're trying to paint the picture of, look
what we do for you. Like this is, we are trying to breed your next employees to be the best they can be for you. And we're trying to paint that picture with them. Yep. Same for parents, really. Speaker 31: One of the other things that I'll mention is Heather and, and Simone and I went up to, we're, we're all part of a district network collaborative across the state. And Roger and Jason and Devon and Simone are all gonna go up to, well, RE three J. But we went to Summit
and we saw something that really hit home. They have student groups, they call 'em Stitch teams and they're students that are taking action on initiatives in their strategic plan. Like the kids are driving the, the kids aren't just giving feedback on what the adults should do for them. They're the ones that are driving some of what this should look like. And that was a big revelation to me of like, you know, that is the next step. Not just kids giving us feedback on what they think we should be doing for them. Because I think that's where we often start,
but it is how do we organize them to buy into the initiatives and then drive the work. You know, that, that, that becomes way more successful and impactful. So that's some of where we're hoping to go with all this. Speaker 29: And this is just one of the many places we found where the strategic plan initiatives kind of overlap and, and can really synergize and, and create something. Hopefully that's, that's pretty powerful. Speaker 24: Well, and based on that and talking about engagement with the community and all these different aspects, it's, it's more than like
when I first got on the board, we were talking about that community engagement plan and what are we gonna do and are we gonna do anything with it? And where, where kind of do we stand with cce? CESO Speaker 29: Oh, cso. Yeah. Yep. I think that the board has wanted to kind of take a, a little bit of a step back from that while we're in the middle of the superintendent search. This is certainly work that we can do that will help support that. I'm, I'm, I'm hopeful that after we kind of get the superintendent search kind of under our belts, maybe
that's something we can reengage with. 'cause I think it's, it's again, it, it, it dovetails. I hate, I hate to keep using that word, but we heard tonight about potential funding strategies and that would be imperative as part of any sort of medium term, long term funding mechanism. So Speaker 24: Kinda what I'm thinking when you're talking about all these different aspects of communication for different things that were, you know, different goals that we have. Yeah. Different. That would be something to revisit. Speaker 29: I appreciate the question a lot.
Speaker 16: Yes. Mailers. How many did we send out Speaker 29: Every parent in the district. Okay. So I think it was about, well yeah, Speaker 16: So I got one and my husband got one. Speaker 29: Yep. Yeah. Yep. Speaker 16: Because And the same address. Yep. Speaker 29: Because each one is tied to a unique QR code. Oh, okay. And so, so then Speaker 16: Do we have a report? My, I had questions when I got it and I was looking at it, I was like, so how many do we snap? Yep. And then how many use the code? Is there a way to track to see how many actually use the code? Speaker 29: Yep. I don't have that data because remember that's an Aspen business group thing. Third party. I don't get that information until we're done.
Speaker 16: Okay. Oh, okay. So that came directly from Aspen Business Group. Okay. And that was part of our fee with them. Speaker 29: We, we paid for the printing and the, and the mailing on that. Whether we, so we started with, as we discussed last year, we needed to look at something maybe a little bit different, a different attack. Because emails, I Speaker 16: Think mailers are great. Speaker 29: Yeah. We've Speaker 24: Gotten stagnant. Speaker 29: Yep. Emails just kind of gotten stagnant. So Russell and I talked a lot about do we go with a text campaign? Do we go with a mailer campaign? What we knew is that we had good addresses
for everybody, just about everybody. And so we thought we would start there because the cost, the cost for the text would be just a little bit more can then doing the mailers. And so just because of the software involved. Okay. And so we thought we would start here. That's good. Yeah. And, and see what happened. And like I said, then it took some strategizing around ensuring that the, there were unique QR codes for everybody. Because one of the things that he wants to be able to look at and we need to be able to look at for in around the data is what school did they come from?
Are there, are there trends across grade levels in a school? He wants to be able to tie them as closely as they can to, to their, to their teacher, to their building. We never get to see that. But if there are questions from the building, we can bring them back to Aspen Business Group and they can pull all of that. The anonymity is really important for us on this part. And, and they keep all of that data. We don't, we don't have that. Speaker 16: My other question is, is this something that we could eventually go into Parents Square and send in Parents Square? Speaker 29: Yes. But you wouldn't have that unique code.
So all of the emails that go out are unique. So chances is unique from yours, which is unique from, from fathoms. And that's, that's important so that you continue, I mean that's why you continue to get reminders. If you don't fill them out, they're unique to you. Once you create a generic code, you kind of lose that ability to say this wasn't contaminated by somebody from outside by having unique codes. You know, that only Gari two parents took them and you know exactly which parents took them.
They do. I don't. Speaker 22: Okay. Yeah. 'cause I was gonna say makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah. 'cause with the unique QR codes are, is it still anonymous? Oh yeah. Okay. 'cause that was gonna be my Speaker 29: Question. He knows. I don't know. Speaker 1: You know, we've always talked about getting that participation and surveys up and I'm really curious as you guys have looked at, or you know, those guys to go this route if it changes that I think I like mailers. I think they, I Speaker 22: Think they work. I'm surprised they were cheaper than the text. Yeah, Speaker 29: That's pretty good. I I I didn't say by a lot, but they were a little, yeah.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine we probably Speaker 29: How they were, they were transparency. Speaker 1: How many, how many would you guesstimate we sent out though? What? Speaker 29: Oh. Sent Speaker 1: 7,600 parents. Right. You mentioned, Speaker 29: Well remember that, that some parents have multiple kids. Some parents have multiple, multiple kids. Oh wow. So I think we sent, I think the invoice was for about 4,800. Speaker 16: Okay. Those Speaker 1: Cards. So that thought would be a lot higher man too. So just like ca did, did, did Cassie get one for every one of her kids in school? No, Speaker 16: Just one home.
Okay. No, my survey was like elementary and high school. Okay. So, but Speaker 29: She got one and her husband got one. Yeah. Well Speaker 1: It's really cool. Yeah. I love it. Speaker 29: And our, I know our schools have been pushing it on social and, and there's, there's stuff and it's just, it's just, it's hard. We're, we're trying to get to a, a threshold of about 900 families and we're not quite there yet. So. We'll, we'll keep pushing. Speaker 1: Yeah. That's all I can do. Speaker 16: Is the survey still open? Yeah. Yes. Another week. Is there any way Speaker 1: If you, if you lost your card, you could request a new one Speaker 16: Hypothetically.
Okay. You hypothetically Speaker 29: You should also be getting emails at your, at email address that we have for you in the Garfield two schools. Speaker 16: Hypothetically. Speaker 29: I can make sure I Speaker 16: May have ignored those. Yeah. Chance There's also there, I've seen them too in, in newsletters and stuff too. That's Speaker 29: Hypothetically I can, Speaker 16: My husband did for me. Speaker 29: You get a new coat. Speaker 1: That's not a true survey. Kevin Speaker 16: Jerry did his and he goes, don't forget to do this survey. Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. As long as you didn't do yours and was like, okay.
And then I scanned my thing, I think I scanned my thing or I went on. That's Speaker 29: Good to hear. Speaker 16: Yeah. The school app. I'm, I mean it wasn't all bad. My questions, I just curious like Speaker 29: Good questions. Speaker 16: There was another one I was gonna ask about it, but when, oh, when are we expecting the data? I mean, even though it's still open, the survey's open. When is after we Speaker 29: Tend, we tend tend to get it about a week after the survey close. But we need to get to that threshold of statistical significance and we're still a couple of hundred responses out. So, and what Speaker 1: Percentage is that? Speaker 16: Can you do a reel or something?
Like a or a, a video on social media or something? A TikTok kind of, what was that? Girl reels are going crazy. Reels are crazy. Thurman Speaker 1: Thurman have Lexi Thurman make a reel Speaker 16: About the parent survey. About the parent survey. Speaker 29: Could do that. Speaker 16: Check your Speaker 29: Email. The unfortunate thing is that there, there's no way for us to be able to then do a link to it. Right? Yeah. But maybe Speaker 16: Directing them to their email. Yeah. Go, Speaker 29: Go check. Go check your spam Speaker 16: Filter email blast. Oh, check your trash bag. Speaker 29: Everybody is, everybody who has not taken it is continuing
to get a reminder every other day. Speaker 16: I know. I quit getting mine. Speaker 29: Right when you scanned your QR code, you stopped getting the reminders. It's amazing. Speaker 16: Me. I did. Speaker 1: I like that. That's a really good way to think about it. As soon as you do this, we'll stop bothering you. Speaker 16: That's right. Maybe that should be in the real, maybe that Speaker 29: Should, maybe that should be in the real. Speaker 16: Thank you very much. You wanna stop Speaker 1: Hearing from us? It's great to hear the work you guys are doing. Yeah. And starting to see some success with especially some of those things that you've been talking about since I've known you. And now you can kind of put a little check mark through it. So that's awesome. Good job. Onto the next Yep.
Onto the next letter. Okay. Thank you. I'm sorry. Alright, we're gonna go to number 6.0. We're gonna move, we're gonna move on to 6.4 Student achievement secondary horizon and iReady data. I'm gonna sit down. Okay. You look tired, Jacob. I'm bit, you needed a Starbucks or you asked the bank Really good buddy. Fantastic. Let's see it. Speaker 31: So sorry that this didn't come with the other data set. When we talk about iReady for elementary and middle schools,
and the reason, the reason that is, is In the high school setting, so this is a data presentation primarily about high school based data in the high school setting. Well, right now in the elementaries and the middle schools when it comes to iReady, we're running that testing window right before Christmas break. They like to run that test window with our kiddos right before Christmas break, go into Christmas break, get the data back post Christmas, and really work with it in the high school setting. You've got, you've got high stakes finals that are running right before Christmas
break at the end of the semester. And then kids are coming back after Christmas break, new schedules, changes, they've gotta acclimate themselves. So the high schools wanted to run the, this testing window at the end of January when they felt like everybody had stabilized themselves. So that's why we, we weren't, we don't have kind of matching testing windows. So this is all tied. If you go to the, okay, it's all good. This is all tied back to the strategic plan, right? We've got a goal of closing the gap between us
and the state when it comes to our student achievement. Okay. And so that's, that's been our strategic plan goal. This is one of the big initiatives that we are working on that we think is gonna have an impact in that regard. When it comes to the Horizon platform, let me just give you a little bit of history of where this initiative was born. Last year. We put together a, a group with stakeholders from both high schools. And our, our real goal was to go out and find a platform that does for us
what iReady does for CMAs at the elementary middle school level. We didn't have anything that, that, that does that for us at the high school level. For the PSAT and the SAT, we were for two reasons, I think one, the SAT and the PSAT has not, had not transitioned until last year to a digital based format. It was all paper and pencil test. So to kind of replicate that process, we were giving some paper and pencil type of test so
that the kids could get used to the format. But if you know anything about trying to input large amounts of data from a paper and pencil test into some kind of a digital platform and be able to move that data around and understand what that data's telling you and how to help support your kids, it's almost impossible. You can get some very high level generic data, but the amount of time that you have to spend inputting paper and pencil results on a test for, you know, thousand plus kids, over a thousand kids, it, it is tough.
And so, but that's not just that, that was kind of everybody. Well, once the, once the SAT moved to this digital format last year, we wanted, we said prime opportunity, right? Who's out there that can give us what iReady gives us for CMAs? What we found is nobody out there is doing that. This was the only company that we could find that, that jumped on board or tried to, tried to jump the gun and create three assessments. So our big goal was can we get three practice assessments
and can we get some kind of a data dashboard that will take all of that information, break it out for us in ways that we can really use it and work with it. This is the only company that we found. I have a sneaky suspicion that now that SAT has transitioned that more and more of these companies will pop up. But this is the first one I think really that's out there in the marketplace. And so we wanted to jump on board and take an opportunity. We don't have anything to compare it against right now. And as we go through all of this data, know that this is the first year we have it. And so I'm gonna say that we are
cautiously optimistic about what it tells us. It's really hard to draw some very fine new, very fine tuned conclusions from what the data's telling us. We don't have anything to compare it to just yet. So really we're just in that first initial phase. So when you go to kind of some of the strengths and weaknesses that we're seeing, one of the biggest strengths is, is is the fact that we have an assessment that that looks, feels, and acts like what the kids are gonna see when they take the PSAT and the SAT. And they're getting to practice that now twice
before they take the SAT and then they're gonna be able to practice it again after they take the P-S-A-T-S-A-T so we can get some end of the year data to see what, what that cycle looks like from them. I, I'll, I'll give you, I'll give you a personal story here of why that is important and, and you hear practice makes, you know, practice will makes perfect or practice improves your performance when it's game time. Way back when, when I took, when I took the SATI took, I took the SATI got a, I got a score. I had never practiced the SAT before.
We didn't have that opportunity. I took it, I, I remember very distinctly that I ran out of time. Like I knew I could have done better because I knew I ran out of time. It's like I did not answer all of the questions and I was, I was frustrated. And so what did I do in that time? I could go back and say I took it the next month. I was able to take it in the next month. I improved my score by 220 points. Wow. Just because I had practiced it one time and was like, oh, I get this and now I can do it again. Right. I think that we're gonna see a big growth just
because kids are practicing the test more. Yeah. And so then over time the goal is to say, okay, how can they, they'll they'll hit that kind of mark where they know what to expect, they're ready and it, and it won't have the same kind of impact that it had initially. And then we've gotta dive into, okay, what are the gaps in the learning gaps? So as you look at those challenges that you're gonna see here, I think those are gonna iron themselves out over time. I think the strengths are really gonna give us a, a big positive boost. Again, cautiously optimistic. 'cause I don't have anything compare to, we just don't know. So
Speaker 16: Mine, so yeah. My one question in this strengths and challenges is do we know how the questions compare to the PSATs, right? Speaker 31: Like the style of question? Speaker 16: Yes. Are the questions comparable? Are they like really different or Speaker 31: Just the, just the, are they aligned feedback? I mean the company itself is selling itself as yes, we are giving you content that you are gonna see and it's gonna be close the big, again, I'm cautiously optimistic because,
and this is the big thing that we're gonna find out. Okay, are you just a used car salesman or are we getting a product? Are you selling us what you, what you really said. Right. And so we just don't know. That's where it'll be interesting to see. I didn't Speaker 16: Know if some of our teachers like really knew what kind of questions were on the PSAT. Yeah. And then kind of looked at Horizon and like kind of did the comparison Speaker 31: And, and they, and they, and they did. I think that some of the, some of the issues, the more the, not necessarily the content of what they're seeing, but I think a little bit more of the issues are related to
just some technology aspects of things. Oh, okay. And I think from a, from a startup, you know, this is, I think this is a newer company that it's not like they've been around a long time doing this. That's where you can see where I say shout out to some of our teams. 'cause they're recognizing things that just don't make sense to them. And they're, and they're working with the company itself and saying, Hey, these don't make sense. In a couple of instances it is. Well, they explain it and then it makes sense. But in a couple of instances, they've gone in and dug in and they've found some, they've just found some algorithmic errors
and some glitches just in the way that the data, not the overall data, but some aspects of the data are getting reported. It's like, that shouldn't be that way. It, it, it, that doesn't make sense to me. And they're like, you know what, that doesn't make sense to us either. And then they go and look in their programming and they're like, you know what? Something was off or thank and, and they've given shout outs to our people and thank them for, you know, investing in really trying to use this as a, as a positive tool for, for our Speaker 7: Kids. What is, what is the, what's the cost? What and what's that look like? Speaker 31: The Yeah, the cost of this.
We, we did a three year commitment and we did a commitment for, we used Esser funding to be able to, to launch this. This was one of the big initiatives that we wanted to run with our esser funding. And so we did a three year commitment. That commitment is for three diagnostics each year for three years, as well as supplementary lesson materials that go along with what they're seeing. So like iReady has supplementary lessons to help support kind of kind of intervention type of stuff to help support kids. So the cost overall 25 KA year for three years and
Speaker 7: That gives nine, 10 junior, Speaker 31: Yep. Nine Yep. 9, 10, 11 a total of nine assessments. Speaker 7: Beginning of year, mid year, end of year. Speaker 31: End of year for, yep. For this year and the next two Speaker 7: Years. And then lessons to supplement that. Yep. Speaker 31: That's right. Speaker 7: What, do you have any ideas after the three years is up? I mean, does something, are you feeling good about it? I know it's, Speaker 31: Ah, that's what I don't Yeah, it is really early and that's why I mentioned earlier, I, my my guess is you're gonna see some other companies pop up.
Yeah. And so it'll be, it'll be a little bit of an arms race I think in year three to say, okay, is what we're getting here Sure. What we want to continue on with? Or do we, you know, that that'll be a good time to really see what else is out there in test the waters. So we kinda, again, this is the only thing we could find. And so I think it was worthy for us to get on board because of just some of the practical applications of it. But it gives us, I think it gives us a leg up. And when we go through the next cycle, Speaker 7: Could that 25,000 be found in your, you guys get a budget, right?
That 25,000 be found in your budget Speaker 31: That's at the end of three years. Oh yeah. That's a, that those are moves that we make that we, we sit and we talk about and we make it and, and we need something. And we can't, we can't go for doing something for three years, whether it be the best thing and then not do anything. So yeah, those are the, those are the moves that we're tasked with of saying, okay, this is an important thing. Yes, we use the Esther fund to launch it, but we need to make moves over the next three years budget wise within the curriculum budget to say, how can we potentially support
this and forth this moving forward? So yeah. Good questions. Speaker 1: Look at the numbers. Speaker 31: Okay. Yeah, let's look at the numbers again, cautiously optimistic because I can't really say what this means. Like I think it looks good. Yeah. In some places we're going up and there are some things that I'm not, I'm not so happy about. But again, I I'm not really a hundred percent sure. Yeah. So, but, but here we go. And so in the PS A nine, these are the first, these are just overall scores from, and this is just beginning of the year to middle of the year. And then I'll show you how that compares to last year's SAT data.
A couple of things to make sure you take note of in case you're comparing nine to 10 to 11, it's not as easy comparing in, in cohorting it's not as easy because if you were to look at the bottom, the average score, like the, the range on these tests is different. So notice that on the PS a T nine, the range is a two 40 to a 1440. But then if you were to go to the PS a T 10, the range is three 20 to 1520. And then the SAT range is 400 to 1600. Speaker 7: This is a dumb question. Why doesn't it start at zero? What, Speaker 31: Why Speaker 7: Doesn't it start at zero?
Speaker 31: They're gonna get, i I think the, the old wive's tale is that you get at least 240 points writing your name correctly. And so nobody gets the A zero. I, I don't know. I, and, and to be honest, I'm not a, it doesn't make sense to me to have different school ranges, but Speaker 7: Oh, I, I get, Speaker 31: I don't, I've always wonder names. So Jacob, Speaker 1: Does every ninth grader took this horizon at the beginning of the year? Didn't matter if they just showed up or, Speaker 31: Yeah, that's right. Okay. That's right. And there's a, there's a set window. So if a kid showed up in the middle of the year,
they wouldn't have taken it to the beginning of the year. They don't go back. They don't start day one and take a horizon assessment if you came after the window, it is similar to, to iReady. There's like a window when you take it and then they close the window. So you can't just, you can't just take it, you know, all throughout the quarter. So, but Speaker 7: She would take it the next greatest marketing idea. Oh boy Theresa, we have the parents, we have make a competition between the kids and the parents taking the psat Speaker 31: Could be, Speaker 7: I'm serious. And right. I mean, Speaker 31: I, I'll circle back to that. Gimme a chance to circle back to
that at the end of the presentation. 'cause I got a great place to embed that in. So I will, I will, I will circle back to that and, and maybe throw some validity to your idea here in a little bit. So you can see PS a T nine overall score from beginning of the year, middle of the year, jumped 68 points at 10th grade jumped just shy of a hundred points, 95 points, or actually that is, yeah. 90, Yeah. Nine five. And then in the SATA jump of 33 points,
the, then I broke it down for you specifically in ELA and math, because that's, that's the next thing we wanna look at. Okay. So you look at the overall score, but then you look at ELA and math, and this is where I added in, what were the 2324 PSAT scores for our ninth, 10th, and 11th graders in these areas. And so the average scores that we had, so you can see PS A nine from beginning of the year jumped a lot. They've still got some growth to do. If they're gonna hit, if they're gonna hit the t, the, you know, if they're gonna overcome the scores
that we got last year, if they continue to make that rate of growth, they're, they're definitely gonna knock it outta the park. Okay. The SAT 10 and ELA, you're seeing that they're already surpassed what, what they're scoring and then the SAT, there's some decline. If we hold that little bit of decline in ELA in the 11th grade, we'll still overcome the scores that we had. Again, how well does this translate to the SAT? I don't know. We just don't know. And that'll be, again, a chance to really hold their feet to the fire because they are marketing themselves as this is gonna help support you get better
scores on the SAT. Okay. Well let's prove it. Let's, and let's see how long this test, how long it, it mirrors, it mirrors the SAT if I'm not mistaken. It's two hours now. The SAT used to be lot longer. Speaker 1: It was like all day or something. Speaker 31: Yeah. It used to be a lot longer because they went to a digital format. They, they've consolidated quite a bit. It goes a lot faster. Maybe two and a half. But it, it ain't the four hour marathon that you're, that, that we were used to seeing. That's good. In math, you can see it, it math in the ninth graders, slight decline,
but still somewhat near what we were scoring on the SAT last year. 10th graders in math, a good jump and now ahead of the game and in 11th grade math, a good jump. And they're ahead of the game. So again, cautiously optimistic if this really is good. I mean, this is good. This is good news for us. Yeah. And this is good news for us trying to reach our goals, but, Speaker 1: And it's gotta feel good for the students, you know, that took that and got a 4 56, they circled back and Speaker 31: Yeah. And whether or not, whether or not, and that, and I'll get to that point, Sue, as we talk about actions.
No, it's, it is a great point because whether or not the scores themselves are representative of what they're gonna get on the SAT, just the mere fact that they took a test, they took a follow-up test and they saw growth, or they saw improvement, or maybe they didn't see growth or improvement, it's gonna change their learning behaviors. Right? Right. Maybe it's gonna motivate them to want to grow even more or to read something else. Or maybe it's gonna kick their butt into gear
and be like, you know what, maybe I should try harder the next couple of months. It, it really does. And that goes to some of the actions. One of the biggest actions, and Theresa kind of alluded to it in her presentation, that I think is important, is that goal setting our schools are working on. That's one of the biggest advantages to this, is it's got a good dashboard for the, for overall, for the schools, but for the kids themselves. The kids themselves get a dashboard where they're seeing scores that look like, that look like these meters, like what you're seeing. They're seeing some areas of strength within it because they break it down into the different
domains that are assessed. So it's not just a score. And I don't know what aspect of ELA or what aspect of math, just like the SAT is broken down into different domains. They do the same thing and they've broken it down into different domains. And so the kids are now able to start setting goals around, in specific goals around different domains. And the schools are working on what that looks like and really trying to build those systems in this year. That's one of the big steps. Again, some of the other actions that we're taking, really looking at it from a long-term, you know, it, one, we are making sure that we're capturing this so
that we can have some more longitudinal data and, and really we're trying to capture it in a way that, and, and hold onto it in a way that we're prepared to look at it. And how does this measure up to the SAT the utilization of the lessons? We're, we're just trying to, we're trying to figure that out right now. I think that if you, if you were to go back to the beginning, one of the things that our teachers have identified that they're not a hundred percent happy with is, is the, the way that they're giving these supplementary lessons
and in iReady the, and some of them have been exposed to what iReady lessons look like. It's very digitally engaging and fun. I don't know, the kids get a lot out of it. This one still kind of blah. And that's some of the feedback that we've got. And so that might be an area too to, to look at, you know, maybe we hold onto the diagnostic, but we find something else to supplement and support it. You would think oftentimes you would want to go hand in hand because usually they're gonna try and make it correlate these lessons to specifically to what they're, what they're assessing for on the, on the
diagnostic assessment. So that's the ideal state. But, you know, we, we've gotta see what that looks like in our initial feedback from the teachers and the students at the lessons. Not always hitting the mark, although we are given them a, a good go to try and, and see what kind of impact those can have on our scores as well. And then really starting to have some interventions that have purpose, like really understanding why we're putting kids into interventions. Having really strong data as to why we're putting kids into classes like a foundations of algebra class or a Read 180 class. Now we've got some really strong data
and we can, can move them in and out of classes based on the data that we're getting. That's our, that's our really hope. Our big hope. So those are some of the actions. We're trying to figure out how that data really blends into the interventions that we're providing. That's, that's the horizon piece of it. I added just this one anecdotal slide because that's huge. Had to mention it because this, this makes me super optimistic more than anything. I addressed this when we were at Riverside. The Riverside and Rifle Middle School have bought into this concept that if you can really, really laser focus in on ELA in reading
over time, that will support your math scores. And they poured a lot of time in, not that they've, not that they have neglected math, but they are laser focused and very intensive in supporting their kids in, in, in reading and their ELA scores and the growth that they are seeing knocked it out the park. I mean, 120 to 130% growth, that was in math. That this is in ELA, that's in E this is in EL this is in ELA. The national average is just under 70% growth from BOY to MOY.
And both, not one, both middle schools were hitting it. And they, in kudos to them because they, they came to us and they wanted to really invest in this, invest in the iReady lessons. And that was an expense. And we said, well, you have got to, you have got to prove to us. 'cause iReady kept telling us like, if you do these lessons and you do them 30 minutes a week, if you do 'em, if you, if you will be faithful to it, you'll see the growth that you want to see. And so we, they said they would,
we created an implementation plan. They have held to that, that you heard Riverside talk about their hashtag you know, consistency and the expectations that they hold their teachers to. The data's come back at, at the middle of the year. Both schools are holding their, you know, their teachers are holding themselves to a high level of expectation, all right. And getting their kids to do iReady lessons in math and ELA 30 minutes a week. And now the numbers are pouring in and the growth is just off the charts right now for them. And the next step, just like I said, okay, iReady,
are you the new salesman or not? Because is this gonna translate over to cmass? They're really, really hopeful. And so I think it, I think it's really positive time to circle back to the great idea, one of the biggest, biggest impact is they've been having fun with it. They, they decided not to approach it as much as a chore as they've been trying to do celebrations and different things and activities. And so that might be an activity that I pitch to them to incentivize the kids to see, have a competition with your parents. Let's see, can you beat your parents on an i-Ready
assessment and we'll incentivize that or something. Can your parents be something along those lines that they, and they have both reported that that has been a huge help that's in, in trying to create a fun atmosphere and incentivizing, you know, kids to do well and to spend that time and teachers to dedicate that time. And so it's been a good thing at both schools and I, and I just had to put that in there 'cause I know we talked about it and so That's great. Okay. That's what I got questions Speaker 1: Yeah. As we went. Yeah, we always do Speaker 31: Then. Okay. Speaker 1: I, I, I really like those numbers
and just once again, it, as we look at our, our board data discussion sheets for schools, you know, it, it'd be kind of, you know, I mean, I know as we get there, we kind of needs, need to see some of that too. Yeah. Speaker 31: Is they, because it's just awesome. I think they started, you know, because we've already done, we've already hit both high schools and I think, I know Coleridge added some horizon data from the beginning of the year. And so it'll be nice to see them get some more longitudinal data and I think year over year, you're gonna start to see them build that Speaker 1: Into, yeah, that's, that's cool. Thank you very much. Oh, sorry. Quick,
Speaker 7: Quick point of clarification. Let's go back to your first slide. Yeah. Speaker 31: The, the goal or the strengths and the challenges Speaker 7: Goal for your goal. So there were some issues with the first rollout and there was some mis like Yeah, yeah. Right. So I'm just clarifying we were at 29.4% that number. So I'm taking that number to mean 29.4% of our, of, of are at or above grade level. Is that correct? Speaker 31: On, on average in ELA and math? Correct.
Speaker 7: So how did you, did you just average the numbers? Speaker 31: How did we Yeah. Speaker 7: How did that number come to be? Speaker 31: Yeah, we average, we averaged, we averaged the percent of students that were Speaker 7: On or above, Speaker 31: Well, it's not, it's not on or above. Right. It is. How do they, how do they measure it? 'cause it that's iReady is grade level right? Is meeting or exceeding the benchmark, the proficiency benchmark Gotcha. Is how, is how they, is how they record it in CMAs and P-S-A-T-S-A-T. And so 29.4% of our students were meeting
or exceeding the benchmark. We took the number in ELA as an average of three through 11. And then we took the number in math three through 11. We averaged those two together. And that's how you got the 29.4% overall. Speaker 7: Okay. I just wanted to be clear. Awesome. Okay. Speaker 1: Okay. Thank you you so much. Speaker 31: Thank you for not taking a break and letting me go. I appreciate that. Speaker 7: I I, I kept seeing you over there yelling, like, man, poor guy. Speaker 1: All right. Moving on to our next topic, 6.5 culture
of safety protocols and procedures. This will be led by our leadership team. You Speaker 28: Bet. So we wanted, and you heard a little bit from public audience tonight in regards to some questions ultimately around a topic that has really gotten our community a buzz and a lot of questions and fear. Right? And so tonight, Lisa and I wanna share some information about our policies and our procedures that are built into the system for all students, for all students in Garfield R two.
And we're committed as we always have been, but we're committed to keeping that safe learning environment for all students at all times. Right. And that is ultimately when the concerns arose, it gave us an opportunity to reflect on what we already have in our system that we would continue to practice on a consistent basis, as well as go back and reflect with our administrators if something new was to come into the system. IE in this particular case, the questions that are asked are about ice. So we are gonna go over some of those policies,
but ultimately we publish a letter to all staff and students that went out on January 22nd. And at that time, that's where we put the policies that are relevant to all students in our district, put it out there to our community and our staff so that they were aware that there are things in place that do already promote a culture of safety for any visitor or any outside entity that comes into a school building that's not educational. We also administered conversations across the schools about how to handle any situation that impacts our students.
And then we reviewed protocols that already were in place so that we could provide consistency for everybody. So we're gonna talk about some of those policies and then we'll go from there. Speaker 22: First and foremost, we, we don't release personal information without an, without parent permission, a consent form from parents or through a legal obligation. Like we would have to receive a subpoena in order to release information about a student. That does happen. We, and when it does happen, we notify parents that we have received a subpoena and,
and sometimes they, they, they may be be the ones that are requesting the record for a court case, a divorce, whatever that might be. But we run those through our legal team as well. We have gotten some subpoenas that are not signed by a judge or they are missing the date. And so we make sure all of that is in order before we would ever release that information to anyone. We have a policy that talks about, oh, where am I? Well, it's not policy A law in Colorado is we are not allowed to ask immigration status as a public school.
So we don't have that information in power school or anywhere. That is not something that someone could, in a data breach get their get information from. So it is, it, it's not there. So we can't let it new Speaker 1: Student shows up. We don't know, we don't, don't ask any questions like that. Speaker 22: Not relevant. Well, we may ask your primary language so that we know about the ELL supports and different things that we can put into place there to be supportive, but we're not asking that, that particular question. Yep. So it's, it's not written down. Yep.
In the United States, every child has a right to a free education. Yep. And so that's what we do. Okay. I think that's all my part with the, Speaker 28: Did you wanna go over jr? Speaker 22: Yeah. That's the one where it says we, the student request information has the JRA and the JRC. That student information has to be requested by a parent or go through legal in order for it to happen. And then of course the ferpa Family Education Rights and Privacy Act protects all that confidential information as well. So if we are given a subpoena
and we have to run it through legal, how long is that process? Well, it depends which of our lawyers we use. And some of them we can put pressure on and they will get it quite quickly. Okay. We've had that happen in custody. Things like at the end of the day, a parent shows up, they're not supposed to go with the parent. We call legal right there, say, here's the paperwork they've given us, what is your advice? And we can get answers quite quickly that way. Okay. Speaker 1: But it can go for a while. So it, Speaker 22: It could go for a while. We wouldn't release any information until we had an answer.
Speaker 16: The J-R-A-J-R-C policy was last re revised March 13th, 2018. How current is that to the state? And is that something we need to review? Speaker 22: Let us take a peek at CSB and Speaker 32: Yeah, if it hasn't changed, more than likely it hasn't come forward. We haven't had any changes. Speaker 28: It wasn't Cassie on the list of policies that we were to revise this year per CS B if we wanted to look at that as a Speaker 16: Previous years from 2018 to, Speaker 28: It's Speaker 22: An easy look up. I can have the answer by the, probably by the time she's done with the next section. Okay. Yeah.
Speaker 16: I'm just curious if we should look into it Speaker 28: And if there's any policy that you guys wanted to ever go back and review or that you wanted to bring forward. Like we have around student fees, for example, that that was a third reading, I think two board meetings ago. That policy hadn't been reviewed in years, but that's something that the district realized that we needed to take a look at because we were out of date. Yeah. Speaker 16: I'm just, did you say JJA For sure. Slash JRC Speaker 2: Student records release of information working on it. Page four 15. Okay. I know there were a bunch of js.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Speaker 28: That's a good question. Speaker 2: Yep, I got it. Speaker 28: Okay. You know my, the second piece that would be important and would hopefully answer some questions of our community is we have a policy ki called Visitors to Schools. And I would say that we have pretty strict policy on any visiting visitor access to protect our students. So ultimately, parents and guardians of current students could come into the building. Of course other family members of current students that are approved by the students, parents and guardians can come into the school board members,
other staff members, administrators, et cetera. When that happens is ultimately the, the goal is, is that we're not disrupting any educational day. Right? And so typically those visitors, when they come in, they have to scan in. So we use the school gate guardian system as you all are aware, or if we're district employees, we have badges of which we would present to the front office at that time. Once that we are actually scanned in a district employee, typically our secretaries or our front office administrators, if they're there in house, then would guide them
as to where they wanna go. So you heard tonight, I think even at Highland examples of, we have parents that might be coming in for lunches. We often have sometimes parents that are dropping things off for the kids if they need to go passed into the school for something like we do have special events, we do hold assemblies, et cetera. You will have district personnel guide you to where you're going to go. So if you're going to a gym, then they'll guide you to where that gym is, the library, et cetera. And those are all special events that you're really not gonna be wandering the halls looking for where the, the designation that you need to go.
That just really would be out of the realm of normalcy to begin with. The other thing that a lot of times too is if there are authorized, whether they be parents or whatnot, sometimes we'll call the students down to the office. Now if that was a law enforcement agent or something like that, then that's a different story. That's not a typical normal sort of procedure of, unless they are presented, unless we are presented with subpoenas, et cetera, of which we would double check those before we ever release a child or ever call a child down.
And so ultimately, I would say when there's unauthorized people on property, whether the kids report that or parents report that, or we have suspicion of people that are on our district properties that don't belong there, then that really is a partnership and a collaboration with our local law enforcement. And then they come and we've got our SROs at the high schools obviously, but we can call upon them at any of the school locations. I think you guys have been privy to that when we've utilized them or other officers where we can just call dispatch and give them, you know, the heads up as to why we are
feeling uncomfortable. And so that policy, I would say really, like I said, our, our whole goal is to keep an uninterrupted educational day and keep a safe environment at all times for our kids. It Speaker 22: And for other family members that are coming in to sign in to see the kids with parents' permission, those are updated through the power school through Okay. Speaker 28: And we deal with calls, you know, sometimes the administrators will call the district office and ask the following questions of a parent
or a grandparent or an aunt. An uncle will show up and ask to see the child or ask to do lunch with the child or whatnot. If they're not in PowerSchool, then we'll call the family immediately and we'll call the mom or dad, whoever the caretakers are at the parental guardians, and then double check that those are allowable visitors. Gotcha. Speaker 1: And if nobody answers, that person's not moving forward after that. Both parents are at work, they don't have their phones on. Nobody answers the phone that visitor's not coming. Speaker 28: You bet. That's a tough conversation, especially when, you know, and a lot of times the kids, if they,
if they were in the office, would be able to identify, you know, those people. But we don't know that as the adults that are, you know, caretaking. And so therefore those are hard conversations to say, you know what, come back in 20 minutes. Or you can call, you know, mom or dad and see if we can kind collaborate that way. But it really, it becomes a part of who is the custodial guardian or parent in charge of the child in order to make sure that everything is kosher. Speaker 7: So Lisa policy K also, I'm looking at, it was last revised February 9th, 2011. Speaker 22: Okay. Cas B was correct.
The 2018 was the last update for the JRA policy. And I'll look at K one, KI, KIKI. Speaker 28: Yeah. It says 2011 was the last one revised. Speaker 22: It just seems like so long ago it was really a long Right, Speaker 28: Right. But I really, if there's no reason to really change any particular practices for visitors and schools, I think that's why CSB wouldn't necessarily recommend. Nor would we as a district recommend that we revise that policy, unless there are other things that Garfield re two says, this is what we would also like
to consider to change the policy and revise and put our own language on top of this. But this is the minimal requirement that the district must uphold per 2011 to today to date. Speaker 1: So once again, from the Colorado Association of Schools School Speaker 22: Board. Speaker 28: Absolutely. Speaker 22: And the K policy had a revised version in two in 2020. So we'll probably wanna look at what the, the differences were and see if, and go back probably to the minutes that perhaps that board did not want to update at the time to match.
So we'll go, we'll go on a little scavenge also Speaker 16: Reviewed in 2011. Speaker 22: Yep. Yep. Absolutely. One of the things we put into the, into the family letter that we put out and that we say all the time to people is get your PowerSchool updated. We are encouraging that all the time, but particularly right now, we need to make sure we have those emergency contacts so that we can get ahold of parents if somebody arrives to have lunch with them or for whatever reason, we're also encouraging parents to make sure they have designated trusted individuals
who can pick up their, their children in case of an emergency. We ask for that stuff all the time. Lots of people put tons and tons of information in there so that everybody's getting that from their families and they know that we'll just keep going down that list until we get a hold of somebody in an emergency kind of situation. But it's, it's so important to not block the school. Everything we do comes through electronic communication at this point. Your text messages, you block us, you're not gonna get the call if we go on lockdown. Yeah, don't do it.
I mean, you've got to, you gotta give us some trust in that place that it will come to help you in the end if we can get ahold Speaker 16: Of you. Is this something that maybe we do try to push parents square out a little sooner to get that communication moved forward in that aspect where it's coming in as a text message communication? Speaker 7: I think, I think a lot of it has to do with a building's like a building's readiness. Speaker 16: Yeah. Some Speaker 29: Of, some buildings aren't, are not quite ready
to make the launch because they've already adopted a school wide platform. Right. Highland would be one of 'em. They, they're Remind building and they're using Remind to, to, to extract that from them in the middle of the school year probably. But PowerSchool also goes to school Messenger. And so we're, we're kind of working two platforms at the moment. And so I send text messages through School Messenger all the time if we have, if they have opted in and have a good text message, or sorry, a good cell phone number. So regardless of what platform we're using, the fact that the, their data is updated in PowerSchool is still the
foundational database for just about everything else that we do in the district. Okay. Speaker 17: And for us here, this is year 12 for me, the first time in 12 years that we've had a hundred percent update updates done. Our office tribe members that have just, Speaker 22: Yes, 100%. Awesome. That's great. Speaker 16: That's awesome. Yeah, Speaker 22: It can be done. Speaker 28: And then the last piece is really is, is how, how our culture of safety supports families. Right? And so these, I guess are un again, unprecedented times as far as then what do we do?
And we felt like our family resource center as really the epicenter of where we could gather community resources. We could educate our liaisons because they are bilingual and they are trusted. You heard a lot about the liaison in this building. She is absolutely, I would say cherished by every member of the Highland tribe as well as extended members of the district. But she and the other angels that are in these buildings that serve as our liaisons, they really needed to be equipped with factual information of what we know.
And so we brought those women together with Amanda Vaughn and her team over there. They are prepared to answer questions, they are prepared. Our building administrators or other secretaries can steer those families to one door so that we have one center of information instead of lots and lots of people trying to give mixed messaging and trying to give mixed messages. So if there are families that are really truly in that place, as we are working through our, our one door and our family liaisons for that work,
and then that is at that point of where we can answer questions as well as provide information of which we've gathered from the state, from other districts. I think that this is something that the entire state of Colorado and all 178 districts are looking at. I would say that the more we have visited, the more we have searched, the more we have talked and collaborated with our, our, our district cohorts across the state. Everybody is very similar in this regard. And so the resources I think are matching. There is not anything that I think that we are doing that is special or independent of another district,
but it's important that we all have factual based information for people that are scared and don't really know where to go and what to do. I don't know if we have an answer, but we can provide them information. Speaker 1: Thank you. So I might have a question then. Yes. So when we were, so when we sent out our letter, you know, I saw at the bottom it's got all of these policies outlined. Everybody should know that those policies are found on our website, should be able to just type those nu letters into the search bar and,
and find those policies. But I guess one of the questions, you know, from one, I can't remember her name, right, Lou Loose Lou, you know, she had sent us an email and I was just looking through her questions to make sure everything, I mean, we're touching a lot of that stuff. 'cause I know she's a important community member and gonna pass a lot of this information over to, but what happens if for whatever reason law enforcement does show up at our school and has the proper paperwork, I guess what, what does that look like? I I I I'm sure we've had that for, I don't know,
breakins other issues or, you know, violence, you know, other, other causes not, not this one particular. What, what would that look like? I'm just curious. Let's say somebody shows up at Rifle High School Speaker 22: With a warrant or a subpoena. Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, you know, or I think Speaker 28: It's our responsibility to follow the law. And I think that ultimately I feel like our partnerships with our local, you know, with our local PDs, they've always been very transparent about what they are there to do. But we have asked them to give us the paperwork in collaboration with, we're not gonna just turn over information.
We don't even do it with our local law enforcement over issues of which we, you know, whether they be the vandalism and whatnot, they need to produce the paperwork in which we need as a school district to accept in order to work in collaboration. So I would say that we're under obligation to follow the law, but I do believe that, you know, we need to make sure that we've asked for the appropriate paperwork and we verify and vet that paperwork through legal and then we work together to go forward. Because once there are certain issues that are beyond a school district and they become a law enforcement issue, then
we're obligated to follow the law. Speaker 22: We would call parents. Yeah, Speaker 28: You bet. Speaker 22: That's, Speaker 1: Yeah. Somebody shows up with something with a kid's name on it. We're Speaker 28: Absolutely, Speaker 22: We're verifying We've also are getting a hold of everybody, anybody on that emergency Speaker 28: List? Yes. We've asked our administrators absolutely. That if anybody comes with paperwork or not, that the obligation, our first obligation is to contact the family and let them know what's going on as we would in any case, when any kiddo is, is uncomfortable for any other reason. Yeah, I mean we've talked a lot about family partnerships
and family collaborations are absolutely necessary. And I would say in this case, it's really about making sure that all parties involved know what is going on. Speaker 1: You know, I know when some of these issues first started, some of the things that were being said was, you know, these, you know, immigration and customs enforcement agents coming, just walking into schools and things like that. That's not possible at our schools. Our schools are, they're locked down. Our only entrance is through the front door regardless. And then also the fact that, you know, anybody prowling
around our buildings is gonna, we're gonna stop that regardless. So I just thought that was kind of important. Some of those falsehoods that for us, you know, nobody can get into our schools anyway unless they're coming through the front door. Speaker 22: It's a safety thing, right? Speaker 1: Yeah. For the safety, just from the, all the other things we've worked on and our safety protocols, those doors are locked solid. So we're not gonna be surprised by somebody showing up in our schools. Speaker 22: What else Speaker 1: You guys have any questions on? Speaker 22: It's pretty straightforward. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm just going through Lou's email as well with her questions because I just wanna make sure that we've answered all of 'em. Yeah,
Speaker 28: Yeah. We were taking notes quick and I didn't have the letter in front of us. So. Yeah. Speaker 22: And, and her second question was, will Garfield our E two school district to coordinate with with ice? And I think that also ties into the fact that we don't collect immigration status, so we're not gonna, Speaker 1: There's nothing to coordinate. Speaker 22: No, there's nothing to co to Speaker 28: Coordinate with. We wouldn't to give them any information at all Speaker 22: Yeah. From Speaker 28: The start. Speaker 22: So, okay. And Speaker 2: Yeah, Speaker 22: I think that's, and that's pretty much it. And I think as far as the school district,
I think we've done everything that we can do. And I think we are doing everything that we can do. I, I would encourage if there is somebody that doesn't feel safe to come to school, that they need to reach out to the family liaison or an administrator at the building or at the district office. Absolutely. Or Amanda. Yeah. One door. One door. There's Speaker 1: Resources to go, go Speaker 28: Through that. And again, it's, it's kind of what we try to tell the kids, right? If you see something, say something, if you, you know, if you're feeling something, then share that. We can only do better with what we know.
And so what we're trying to do is stay in the lane of facts, but it doesn't necessarily take away from what people are feeling. And so what we wanna do is try to be as supportive as we possibly can with facts. And so if you're uncomfortable, then you need to reach out. It's the only way that we know what's actually going on. Speaker 1: You, you know, when I did the CASB event, and I'll tell that story really quick about Grand Island, Nebraska, they did have immigration raids at a, I believe it was a food processing plant. And their superintendent spoke during that meeting
and he, where he felt they failed the most was that emergency contact when something external happened and a parent wasn't able to be there to pick up their, their son or daughter. They didn't, they didn't feel they had that, that set up very well where they had other people to call. One of the other topics he said is how he supported the, how the school did so great. The schools, the district itself did so great at, you know, teacher stepping up, everyone stepping up to try to help out. But he did tell at the end, he did have a conversation
after the dust had settled down a little bit with the, I guess the head honcho that was running that operation for immigration. And that at that time, totally different time than now. And I totally understand that. But that, that official said, they, there was never ever an intention to go into a school. It was more about the operation that was happening at a food processing plant. And unfortunately, you know, there were definitely families that were caught up in that. But that was something that CASB did put on and I participated in and it was, it was eyeopening.
I know it was a shock for their community for sure. Nobody's expecting that. So I think what Garfield already two is trying to do is in those cases, to be sure we have the resources to get students to the people that, that need to come pick them up to offer the support we can offer through some of our resources. And, and we're putting those that out there we're, we're, we're letting everybody know. So, Speaker 28: And again, I think it would be of note too, Lisa just whispered to me that, I mean, through One Door and through Amanda Vaughn and the network of partnerships that we do have
in other situations, like with our SAR group with attendance and whatnot, is that DHS is also, you know, coming up with their plan as a backup partner as to what do you do in, in cases like that of where families have been, you know, separated. And then how could they too be as part of that partnership of which then are gonna help those families Speaker 1: Who are all of our partners. I know it's a lot, but I mean, you said DHS Speaker 28: Well we've got Mine Springs, we've got Aspen Hope, we've got obviously our local law enforcement. We've got Valley settlement, the Valley Settlement project.
Speaker 22: Amanda would answer that question way better than we Speaker 1: Could. I know we've got a ton of them there and Speaker 22: There's so many, remember the meeting at KSE when they just kept coming up and talking Yep. About all of the the different resources. You brought 'em all in that day. Speaker 1: Oh yeah. Yep. That was good. Speaker 22: Okay. County commissioners. Speaker 28: Oh yeah. Okay. Yeah. Speaker 1: Anybody any more conversation on that? Speaker 7: No, I think you pretty much covered it. I did want to clarify one of her question when we, we talked on it, but FERPA mandates kinda what we can
and cannot release and that's pretty much nothing. So all this stuff that we're doing is backed up by judicial precedent and the Supreme Court, Skyler, you know, it, it's 1982, so that's 42 years it's there. I mean we, I just want families to understand that no administrator knows the immigration status of a student and or parent. That's none of our, none of our business in the eyes of the federal government. Speaker 1: Yep. Yep. Okay.
Thank you. I mean, any questions that the community has, I mean, I say send them to administrators at the building or district office and we'll do the best we can to answer any questions. But the big, one of the big things we'd like to emphasize is just be sure your power school is for everybody. For everybody, every student that we have in our district. Be updated just in case you're, you have an emergency of some sort and we need to get ahold of someone to come pick you up for any reason. So thank you on that. Okay, moving on. Governance items third, reading and approval for policies. RUA js JS E
one policy dash one. Sorry, that, Speaker 7: Wanna try that again? Speaker 1: Not really. My, my brain is starting Speaker 2: To go, Speaker 1: Which is always one of the things when we go back to talking about how long we'd like public comment to go, you know, it's now nine 30 and it gets to be a struggle to read and, and put it together. My tongue's like get stuck. I, Speaker 2: I'd Speaker 7: Like to speak on that in, in meeting debrief. Yeah. Speaker 1: Okay. We can talk about, okay, let's get through our, okay. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 7: While we have brain.
Speaker 1: Where were we with this one? Speaker 22: I don't think there were any, Speaker 2: Was reading js. Thank you. Speaker 7: This is Speaker 2: Roger's responsible use policy Speaker 22: Page 422 of our packet. Speaker 2: There you go. Just Speaker 22: Throwing that out there. Speaker 2: Tell you what it's Yes. Kevin and Ana have been waiting in the wing. Yes. I think we need, oh yeah, yeah. I think we need to change. It's, Speaker 22: No, Speaker 2: Hey, Speaker 7: Let's, let's change all the shalls Speaker 1: To Will. Any conversation on this one? Speaker 7: No, I think we've had it. Speaker 22: Yeah. Speaker 2: Solid. Speaker 1: There's
Speaker 2: A lot of I will, yeah, I think we should go to, I shall Speaker 22: You can throw something at her now if Speaker 2: You'd like. Speaker 22: Start over on the three. Speaker 2: Yeah. It's just a new, Speaker 1: Alright, so if we've discussed it, the guys did a lot of great work on it. Yes. We had a great presentation on it. I will entertain a motion if somebody wants to throw one out there. Speaker 7: I would like to make a motion to approve policy J ash js. Did I say the star? Speaker 2: No, you say star. I'll explain that to you. That's moving right? Speaker 32: I've got that answer for Speaker 2: You. Okay. You can go ahead
Speaker 7: To approve policy js as amended Speaker 2: Present JS and JSE Speaker 7: JS and JSE? Yes. Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Dash, Speaker 22: Dash one Speaker 2: Yes. Speaker 7: Dash one. Speaker 1: Can I get a second? I'll Speaker 22: Second to Speaker 2: That. Okay, Theo. Aye. Let Speaker 1: Aye Speaker 2: ASCO Aye. Jenkins. Speaker 7: Aye. Speaker 22: Aye. Speaker 2: So Speaker 32: Cassie, what that was on that start is that CS B used as the national index when they used get the letters, they get it from the national index instead of like a state
and what the star means is specific to Colorado and it's really like with attorneys and stuff. So they said it, it doesn't matter. And some of the policies that even came through that we've changed before didn't even have the star where the original one did. So that they've sent to us and it looks like it got removed on our final one. We did take it off because there was changes that we pretty much made for our own district. So we did. Right. Okay. Speaker 16: Thank you. We're getting that information. Speaker 1: Okay. We're gonna go into our second reading for a CA name changes.
Speaker 28: Can we just take five minutes 'cause Yes. Okay. Five minutes. Okay. Five minutes. And congratulations. Tech team. Yeah, thanks guys. We Speaker 32: Should have done that policy like way long ago. Speaker 28: Can, Speaker 1: Can we, let's get back from the short break and get back to business. Business as usual. All right, we're back. Okay. So this is our second reading for the A CA. Name changes. And we're just gonna go through this just so everybody knows. No policy goes into, I got this too. Action until we do three readings and
Speaker 32: Have it and then approve Speaker 1: It. Approve it. So I'll kind of open it up to any conversation. Obviously we heard some public comment about this. Again, I think there's even some of us that are doing a little more research over the next weekend kind of concerning this to meet some community members who have brought some concerns. So once again, the board was very open to to meeting with people and you know, some of us couldn't make those, but the rest of us did, which is awesome. So just so everyone knows, you know, people reached out
to us and we were opening that line of communication and building that bridge to everybody. So this is just our second reading, just so we're all in the loop of where we are. We always need at least the rereads to put anything into play. Speaker 7: I'd like to point out the fact that it was mentioned in during public comment that we were making changes to a policy. There's no need to make changes. And I'd like to point out that this came from CASB as state law. State law mandates that we have a policy
addressing this issue. It's not us changing a current one. It's a brand new policy that state law has mandated. We put in effect, okay, the outlying comes from CASB, but that's where this policy came from. It wasn't, it was never in gar. It was not. He didn't make it. No, Speaker 1: He didn't make it. He did not. What else on that? Anything else? Speaker 7: No, and I mean Speaker 1: That's a good clarifying point. Really good clarifying point. 'cause that is kind of how it was brought up a little bit. What else was brought up on that
Speaker 24: Plan? Okay, well I have a, just a quick outline or something that I've written out just so I don't forget anything that I just wanted to put out there for everybody for consideration. First of all, I would like to thank everybody who has commented on the policy and given their input. We really appreciate it. It's not easy to do. Sometimes we do have an engaged community and parents and by and large we want to, you know, want to be a part of their child's education, their children's education. And I do feel the same way. With that being said, I do feel we need
to take all possibilities into account when we write this policy so that the wellbeing of all students is considered. So after the first reading, I spent quite a while researching what other districts in Colorado have done so far. And the majority have not even adopted the policy yet. They're still hanging out probably as long as they can or whatever. But it was, it was interesting to see that of those that had a vast majority of those adopted, the wording from CSB that we got kind of verbatim, it was just a, here here we are,
parents may be notified if appropriate, if the child wanted a name changed at school for the districts that I found that did say the parents will be notified. So it was about a 75, 20 5% split there when I could find policy written. Believe I didn't check all of the policy, all of the districts, but lot of work. I check well over a hundred of 'em. Wow. Speaker 7: What demographics of the ones that adopted the policies verbatim? Speaker 24: I what demographics? Like Speaker 7: What, what, what school districts? Speaker 24: Woodland Park, Greeley, two of 'em in northern Colorado.
Northeastern Colorado. Those are the ones that did the will. Speaker 1: Oh, that Speaker 7: Same did the will? Yeah. What And then the ones that voted for or voted to keep it as is and just stopped it all over, Speaker 24: All over Speaker 7: The state. All over the Speaker 24: State, yeah. Not necessarily one pocket or anything else. So, So after doing that and, and talking to people, I really felt all that we should not lock the district into one specific action if and when this does come up, we need to have another option in case they're extenuating
circumstances where the wellbeing and safety of the student could be at risk. And I don't think it's ever good to have just one option in this policy for each and every situation. So my opinion is that we need to consider the opinion of our legal counsel and that of our counselors and write a policy that we recognize that the safety and the wellbeing of the student is paramount and there needs to be an option to work with the student, the staff and professionals if necessary to determine whether or not a parent should be notified. And one of the things that we've seen is the, the one from Pueblo that maybe kind of compromises the two
kind of comes into the middle and says, well we will, you know, we want to involve the parent, we want to do these things. But if we can find that there are some issues that may come up where the, the child is in danger or could be Let's, let's take a look at that in more depth. Speaker 7: So who decides danger? Speaker 22: Yeah, what's Speaker 24: The difference? Well, they go to the, the staff, the the student. The student brings it up obviously, but the staff at the school, Pueblo has some other resources that we probably don't have. But then you get in counselors involved and then you even can go outside the school with maybe
outside professionals that do that. Speaker 22: So their counselor Speaker 24: And help out with that help guide. Speaker 22: So, so are are there counselors at the school? Like counselors, mental health clinicians, or are they guidance counselors? Speaker 24: More like a guidance counselor who might have a good relationship with that student already. Okay. And then that's when that, that that policy that was written and brings in outside resources. Resources, yeah. And then they decide, they try to work with a, with everybody and see if it is, it is okay to do that.
Speaker 7: I I understand consultation. The, the reasoning. I don't agree on any given time. My kids say they might hate me for something. Lisa do you had, did you ever get numbers from the last meeting? Yes. What do we have for what, what, how many kids are we looking at? Five. Five kids out of 4 40, 800, 5 0.001 quick math that's less than two hundreds of a percentage point. I have an issue eroding in my mind, eroding a right for that number.
Now it doesn't say that I don't, that they're not valid. It doesn't say that they're not worthy. I'm looking at family as a whole and judging off and going off the last public comment where Ashley was in person every time the letters that were read, the people that the kiddos were nervous about bringing their parents in the loop. Every but the ones that she read, all the parents kind of fell in line and, and and accepted it
and they're living their best life. Of course there's gonna be examples of extremes, but I don't think, first of all it's a scope of work for our counselors and that's not what I told what I was told the scope of work for our counselors ever was. So I I don't think that we should put that on em. That's, that's my thing. Speaker 24: The other, and, and we all saw this too, but the other thing I was going off of was that what Brent K said and in that side Speaker 7: Sure. Yeah. Sidebar. I I, I get it and I, like I said, I I understand why, but again, it's just that I,
I can't believe we're in the day of age where we, the school district is talking about if they getting the parents involved when it comes to have to do with their children. That shouldn't be an if ever. I mean we're talking, we, we just talked last time about ICE and the number one thing was communicating, talking, communication, communication, communication, communication. Except this, and I have an issue with that. I'm not comfortable with that. I do think that if there is a child kiddo at risk, we are lucky enough to live in an area where there are outside resources like P flag where that they can utilize.
I don't, I don't think that's the purview of the school district. Speaker 16: What is our current procedure of going about this, these kids that came forward, do their parents know? Speaker 22: That was the question that I asked was how many transgender children do, are, are, do you know for sure with parent knowledge? Do we have in the district? And that was the five, right? That every single one of 'em volunteered that Oh yeah. The parents know. Okay. Speaker 16: And supported or Speaker 22: I did not ask that you did not ask and they did not volunteer.
Speaker 16: What is our procedure? So say this, were to happen without this policy. What has been our procedure beforehand? Do we know? Speaker 22: Yeah, Speaker 7: I mean in uncharted territory, huh? Yeah. Speaker 22: We, we have guided when people have called on this that to continue them to talk. Get them. Yep, go Speaker 28: Ahead. Well it's to get the kids to us. So when, when a when a kiddo might come forward with information and they are ultimately debating on can I tell my family, can I not tell my family?
I mean ultimately it's not our judgment call to, I would say diagnose a child in any regard, but it's always to get to the root of the issue as best we can. These are little humans that have complex minds as well, but we're trying to get them to Yes, because family support is kind of where, unless we believe that they're in some kind of physical harm, which I do believe that's what legal has, has put out there as part of the recommendation is to take into consideration if we really do believe that a student would be endangered based on information
that they've come forward with. And that's a completely different determination. But if a child is just struggling internally but not endangered, I believe that that's been the coaching advice that we've given from the district office is to try to coach them. TS Speaker 7: If the kid isn't, if the kid is in possible danger, there are issues at home. How, what does that look like? Like what is like, is is it known in the school? Is the, is it known? Like does it,
I I guess I don't know how to put it into words. Like is it, is a situation, are people aware of the situation? If a kiddo has a rough home life and this might not be good, Speaker 22: We track our DHS reports for any time a stu student reports that they've been hurt by anyone, whether it be a school employee or a, a relative of some sort. We track all of that and then keep track of like, oh my goodness, the sister said, the brother said, and then there was another, another case. And so now we, we are even more concerned
and we think that DHS we believe, and I can't imagine they wouldn't, they are also tracking too. 'cause they don't pick up the case the first time necessarily that we call unless it's of in an Speaker 28: Imminent, Speaker 22: Imminent, imminent danger. Thank you. All 10 to 10. So unless they were right, they, they'll pick it up then. And we call police. If we, if there's bruises or any report of anything sexual that goes on, that's an automatic police call as well as the DHS call so that we get that evidence, make sure
that they are the ones running all of that kind of investigation and picking up the cases that they need. Speaker 24: And I get you track the Speaker 22: Point where ice track and we would know, Speaker 24: And you're talking about notifying, that's what we've been talking about with ice and all that kind of stuff. But we're talking about more on the law enforcement and legal side than we are on the motion non-legal side. Speaker 7: Actually, in my opinion, there's nothing more legal than your own children. Speaker 22: And Speaker 7: I mean, that's as close to me as an entity as you're ever gonna get. Speaker 24: I'm not disagreeing with you. I, I, I, I get, you know, so I, but I am, I'm advocating I guess just to say
let's give ourselves another avenue in case that happens. You like Speaker 7: The wording may I want to be, may you Speaker 24: Like the word, I like the wording May and I but there's other compromises that you can make. Speaker 7: I wanna be clear too that the state law does say that, you know, kiddos can do that after the age of 12. Okay. We follow that. But it is it, they do not say that we can't notify children or notify parents. So as a, as a district that has, has a history of trying to get parental buy-in, we're trying to get buy-in on surveys, family surveys.
We're trying to get buy-in from the community on everything. But we're literally talking about a situation of maybe we don't tell a parent. Speaker 22: And it, Speaker 7: It's, it's like, it's, it's just hypocritical in my, in my view and that, and that's all Speaker 22: I'm saying and Speaker 7: Saying one thing to another. Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 22: And what I took out of public comment from the last meeting and then some of it today as well as, as reading the policy is the biggest thing with the public comment, the last meeting was that the kids were afraid to, the child was afraid to come out, the child was afraid
to make it public, make it known. The policy states that they are to be called this name by their teachers, by their peers. That to me is making it public. And my concern was also was brought up by another parent and it kind of makes sense. I didn't think of it this way, but We're allowing the child to be one person at school and then allowing, and then there's somebody different at home. I don't think with anybody's mental state, regardless of
what it is, what's going on to, to pretend to be something you're not at one place versus something you want to be at another is confusing anyway. So to me, if we can help the child again to help the child and help the family, because it, it doesn't just affect the child, it affects the family. And so we need to, that's why that was my biggest suggestion on changing May to will was because it doesn't just affect the child, it affects the whole family. And again, with the scope of work within our counselors,
I don't believe that that is in the scope of work of our counselors. I believe that's where the outside help comes in. The outside entities comes in with the help of our schools and the counselors and the administrators. Speaker 24: Yeah. And I agree with that. I don't think the counselors are going to go go that far with everything on the mental side or anything else you wanna call it. Yeah. You know, but a lot of these aren't also mental health issues. They Yeah. But you know, as an example, Pueblo policy says that if the circumstances exist, the team,
the school team will contact the Department of intervention, student support services in the district. And even DHS work with the student to develop a plan for notifying the parent, the student's parents. If again, Speaker 1: So I guess Speaker 24: If it's at, you know, if it'ss safe, what, Speaker 1: What Pueblo saying, the way you're interpreting, I'm thinking we're gonna call all these other people. We got a big thing working and the parents over here until we, I don't have a clue and I, I, but I, I get it. You know, we want to, you know, get to the right people. And so I, I get it.
But that's, that's kind of where I feel Pueblo's gonna go is like, we're gonna call these people, we're gonna have an intervention, we're gonna bring the kid in. And there's a lot of things happening and the parents are in the, in the dark. And I know the goal I know for us is always to get to yes and stuff. And we've always kind of talked what does that timeframe look like, like how long? My fear is, you know, I don't, I want our teachers to be trusted adults. I don't know that we want 'em all keeping secrets. And I guess that's where I'm just, my concern is like, if we're like, well, we're keeping a secret between me and you, I, I just worry about that a little bit. There's
Speaker 7: A, yeah. And, and that's part of it. There's a whole apparatus in, in motion. Speaker 1: Yeah. I'd be emotionally very Speaker 7: Emotional with the Speaker 1: Kid that was telling Speaker 7: Me something. And you know, the, the parents are unaware. They're oblivious to it. You know, I, I, I, Speaker 24: Here's what you hope, you hope it doesn't ever happen, right? Sure, yeah. Speaker 1: You want the parent. Speaker 7: I, I, I hope that if, if a parent were, was presented with that, that they would do the right thing and Okay, cool. You know, you are still my Speaker 24: Child. Right. They support them. Yes. You know, but you get that, just like Brent said, you get that one instance where that one child is harmed in
some way. Well then what do you do? Speaker 1: Yeah. I think, would it be any different though, if any kid came in, they're like, I'm scared of my parent, or I'm scared to tell. I mean, we would, it wouldn't be us anymore. If somebody said they were scared of their parent, we'd be out if they were, like, if it wasn't, you know, this topic, if it was a different topic for whatever it was, I don't wanna tell my parents this, or I'm scared we'd be out. Like we wouldn't, we'd be out. We would contact DHS and to me, I'm not, Speaker 7: I'm assuming again that that's outside of our scope of work. Here's dhs, here's our partners, Speaker 1: You guys have, Speaker 7: And here, and we, and just tell us where we need to be.
Am I right, Lisa? Speaker 22: Yes. And there's more, because it never anything, nothing is ever really that, that, right. Speaker 7: Nothing's ever simple. Right. You're Speaker 22: Right. Yeah. Exactly. So there's always gonna be that exception to, to that piece of it. I think it's the, the professional judgment that you're counting on to make, to know when that is. So for when we, when somebody, anytime anybody has said this child wants to go by a different name, when that first started coming, they called us and then we called legal. And that, that's what I would always say is get more opinion. Right. On what is best?
What does everybody know about this family? Do we know that this is a, that the child's gonna go home and be safe? Right. Or is this really something that they've, we've already reported like four or five times. Yeah. I mean, that to me would say, make the phone call to the district office. They talk to the superintendent, superintendent talks through it. If they still have concerns, call the board president and get another opinion on where, what should we do with this one particular child? But I, I, I think those are the things you wanna put in place.
It's not like putting you interventions and calling people in. It's just like, how, what, is this the time? Is this the time that we're gonna put a kid in danger? We don't Speaker 1: Want that. Speaker 22: If we don't or if we do 'cause it, it could be different every time. Speaker 1: And I think one of the things that I think, you know, we talk about timelines. I don't think that we're saying that a kid comes in, they, that this conversation just began today. It was the first time I heard it. I'm calling your parents. I don't think that's, I don't think that's the route. I think, you know, they have, I don't know what
that looks like, but I'm just saying, I don't know that that happens. Right. Maybe there's a procedure thing that we can put with the policy. Speaker 28: It's a, it's a complex situation. Very complex. Right. And I feel like over the course of the last five years, we've done a lot of talking to get as much story as we possibly can in order to make informed decisions. Right? And so, as this kiddo would come in with that story, then it becomes, okay, so who have you talked to? What is it? I mean, that's the, there's, there are, there are probing questions from district, you know,
from school staff in order to collaborate with that kiddo to just get to the story. Where did you know, how, how long have you been struggling with this? Whatever the complexity is. They might be depressed, they might have anxiety, they might, there's protocols around when they have the suicidal tendencies, then those, those, those trigger different screeners of which then at least are, are they suicidal in the moment? Are they suicidal? Has this, how deep is the, how deep does this go? There's no screener for this, right? There's nothing that says, okay, oh my gosh, bring
that kiddo in and let's, but I do think these are complex stories that Speaker 22: I add on to that with the idea that I don't think kids are gonna come in and say, I'm transgender. Help me. That's not what it, how it's gonna go. I don't even think people, it, it takes a long time to realize something like that about yourself. And these children are confused and they need to be pointed in a direction, right? Like, who are they gonna ask for help? Yeah. And who's the best person to ask a child for a child to ask for help?
Speaker 16: The parents. The parent. A parent. Speaker 22: The one that rocked the, Speaker 16: So my question is like, it goes back to this. I mean, we're a public school district, right? Who, who enrolls the child in the school district who is like, it's required that somebody enrolls the kid and just like a student can't just walk in and enroll themselves. Can they, like, they have to have a legal, we Speaker 22: Had a 19-year-old show up once that thought he wanted. Well, we did trust that. Speaker 7: You never know. Speaker 16: But yeah, what I keep going back to
and what somebody asked me is like, if I sign my kid up for this and to be in this, I need to know everything that's going on with them. At the same time I get protecting the kid. If my parents are gonna beat the ever living tar out of me, we need to have some sort of procedure maybe attached to that, that says if these words were used or whatever, whatever that might look like, these are the steps we take. And we still do our due diligence to notify whoever enrolled the child in our school district,
notify and be transparent with them what's going on with their child. Speaker 7: I do have, that's the way I do, I guess I take a little, a little bit of issue with, with assuming, I guess it's hard to grasp the complexities of this issue, but I don't think assuming and putting a generalized label on all parents that it's gonna be the worst ever to justify an action is the right course. Yeah. I mean, I mean we, we know that most,
most parents try to do the right thing. Most of 'em try to go to work, try, you know, they're just living their life trying to get through. And I would say the lion's share of them, if approached with something like this would be figure, would take the steps necessary, try to figure it out with their child. That being said, you're always gonna have the one, two, 3%, in this case, two hundreds of a percent that might not fit. Right. And, and I think we're, it's a hard thing to, to,
to craft policies for everybody when everybody's so different. And so I just, that, that's why I rely on, I guess the, the principles and, and I mean the family unit was integral to, you know, is is still integral to the United States. And I, I don't, I I, I don't think I'll ever be comfortable with going against that. Speaker 16: Well, I think what we're at, where we're gonna be at tonight. So Speaker 7: What, what, what I, I can't pull it up on my phone. What is the, Speaker 16: It says well Speaker 7: Will be, came on. Go back down. Okay. Right there.
Speaker 16: Oh, wait, this is, hang on, hang on. That Speaker 7: One. Let, let's leave this as is. And you guys are going to go this weekend, correct? Yep, that's right. And for the record, I've, I've, I've spoken with Ashley in private, you know, I, I, she, she's great and we've had this conversation. We, I I respect where she's at advocating for these kiddos. Speaker 16: Absolutely. Speaker 7: So I think it's important to listen to all stakeholders and, and, and, but with, we also have to realize though that the majority of stakeholders or the
99.9%, so Speaker 16: Well, and it's not that we're disrespecting a child. No. It says we're going to use their chosen name over their legal name. If they want that, we're gonna do it. We're gonna apply that and grant them that. It's not that we're trying to disrespect the kid. They're still, I mean, we are supporting the kid in that we're supporting them in getting their guardian to support, trying to get their guardian to support them as well. Full support system from all areas to support the kid in what they're going through.
It's not like the public comment tonight from the lady from New Castle that commented last week. Brooklyn. Brooklyn. Brooklyn. Brooklyn. Brooklyn. Yeah. Like she said, I mean, she would want to know. She doesn't agree with it, but she, if it were the case, she would want to know so she could support her kid. I mean, and I think that that is the majority, the 99% of parents that would do that. Speaker 24: And I would agree with you. I'm just worried about that outlier. Where we, what are we doing to that child? And then even what are we doing to pigeonhole the district
into one choice and one choice only, which I understand. Or one action. I understand one action only. I I, yeah. But Speaker 16: That's where we have those key words. And maybe it doesn't even have to be in this policy, it's in another policy for caring for a student. I mean, I would have to look in other policy, but there's key words or key phrases where we immediately notify authorities. Speaker 24: I think it ha wouldn't it have to be written into this policy though, based on the Speaker 16: Situation? No, because that would be going hand in hand you would note that policy to this policy as a reference. That that's a reference. And it would be in another policy
that says, if these key phrases were notified, you would notify these authorities first before the parent. Or you notify these authorities at the same time as the parent. Speaker 24: Yeah. There's certain protocols for innovations protocols that just automatically, you just kick it Speaker 16: Yeah. Through boxes and not necessarily have it d hs Speaker 22: Report. Have we We Speaker 16: Have that in this Speaker 22: Talk with the DHS report though. That's what I mean, we're al you listen for those key words, you know, like, Hey, what, how'd you get that on your face? Oh, my dad hit me. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Now we, we we're paying attention in a different way, right?
Stairs. Yeah. I, I, I'm in trouble. My dad's gonna kill me. How many of 'em say that? Like all of them. I mean these kids and, but there are some that start crying, shaking. There is a physical reaction that you go, you said it and now I'm gonna call. 'cause I can't take the chance as a human being that I put a kid in any kind of danger. Sure. Right. I'm, I'm calling if you think you should call DHS you call, is there So, so DHS Yes.
So we do work hand in hand with, with DHS. Have we also looked at what like Aspen Hope Center Mine Springs does in situations like this? Like what are, So keep going. Yeah. I was like, you've with mine Springs. Like we had a, a very in depth conversation just in our SAR meetings from attendance with the director of Mine Springs. And as the director, he has one person above him and he has to get permission from that director
for anybody to that want any child that wants to take advantage of the 12 or older, I get to choose if I need mental health or not. He has to get permission from the one guy above him before they will do that. Before they will say, we're gonna service this child without permission. So everybody in that organization below, like everybody except the top dog, has to ask someone else to say, is this the situation where this child can ask for mental health help without a parent permission? So it is a very elaborate kind of system to say, yeah,
this one, this one needs it. Right. And I don't know what the criteria is, but that's probably something we could find to say what, how, how does the top dog then make that decision? Yeah. Right, Speaker 28: Right. What's the basis of which, yes. Speaker 22: Because it, yeah, it, it, the whole 12 thing making their own dec and that just, they're not allowed to vote until they're 18. They can't drink till they're 21. They can't drive till they're 16. But yet we're gonna let a, a child at the age of 12 make permanent decisions regarding, I think
that might be a misconception. Okay. We, I it's you, the 12 or older law is you can ask for mental health help. Okay. Even if your parent doesn't agree, but it doesn't say that you can make your name change without a parent agreement. That law is just about mental health. We kind of tend to overly it. Okay. And so it's that it doesn't apply to this particular thing. Okay. And that, and the mental health health has a lot of criteria Yeah. That go with it. It has to be a clinician, it has to be da.
Yeah. Because that was, that was one concern that I have heard over and over. Yes. And over. Well, and, and I think we have been guilty of over applying it as well. Yeah. Like we think it's all ev every 12-year-old gets to know like, I'm gonna go buy a car and get a job. And, and and, and they're not. It's just mental health. They're not gonna go to school, right? No. Yes you are. Nice try. Yeah. Nice try there kiddo. Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 1: Alright, well once again a good discussion for a second reading, but I'm gonna go ahead and end that discussion for now.
We'll get some more research and then we'll come back. What was I gonna talk on in the meeting? Debrief. There's a meeting debrief. Does anybody have anything they'd like to break down? You brought something up. I can, Speaker 28: Do you wanna do future board agenda items before we Speaker 1: Yep, go ahead. Yep, please. Yep. Speaker 28: JCI, John Oldham had kind of I think sprinkled the last time that we were together that they are ready to come forward. So Jeff and Jason have tried to explain to the best of their abilities what that JCI note actually looks like and the impact that it has on our overall budget.
Yep. And we felt that it was important for JCI to really come forward and talk about the scope of the project, what is left to do on the project. And then again really I would say reiterate the savings that were supposed to reap from this benefit. Yeah. And ultimately you saw as the projections for the budget over the next course of years of where that actually will play itself out. 'cause I think that the final note on J C'S 2043. And so I think that's an important conversation with JCI themselves. So they are keyed up to, to come forward.
And then I had cash flows. But I feel like Jeff did that. But I will confirm if he wants to talk deeper on cash flows. Maybe that was a sprinkle, I don't know. But I have cash flows kind of listed so I'll confirm with our team. But for sure JCI will be here. We also have cs. They are ready and they will be ready. I mean our job is we're gonna, we're gonna come through with some Valentine's Day love on these benefit options and have something to potentially present to the board. But that is our goal. 'cause we meet this Friday all day long and hopefully are going to come back
or come out with a presentation to bring to you in regards to our benefit pro benefit packages. Ooh. Yeah. It's what time? 10. 10. Okay. I can read it but I can't 'cause my eyes are to go blurry. Yeah. We also talked about grants and the district obligations. So right now we've got some grants that we've applied for and that we put push submit on. But I do think that it's, IM important. There are certain timelines, even though we get grants, like the best grant, we don't actually have to spend the money in the first year of which it's rewarded.
But we have like up to three years to make the spending. But there is obligations. Some of these are not just, we got the best grant. So Yahoo for us, the district has an obligation as well. And I want us to be clear on grants that we're pushing submissions on. And if there is a district obligation that you are very well aware of what that means. And that does tie back to John Oldman capital projects and things like that in particular to two right now. One is the best grant that was just submitted on Monday afternoon. And the second one that they're going for is the federal mineral release grant. And that is really the purpose of both of going that,
you know what we're asking or what we're after, it's all around safety. It's around those security camera pieces. And that's, so the initiatives have been talked about, but now when it comes down to brass tacks, I think it's important for you to know what would we do and that you're clear on what we're committing ourselves to if we get the awards on the grants themselves. And then that's all I got. D, D, well D is on my us through us. Oh that's right. Yeah. That's our board report. I always just put D like I always just as a note to myself if there's anything for DAC to report,
because we do have, last time we did the superintendent search with dak. So we didn't really meet in the traditional sense. We're gonna go back next week I believe, and we'll have the DAC meeting in which we're talking about the policies, the bullying policy, and then the policy kb. So if they have anything to report then we'll we'll embed that in Lisa and I'S assistant sup and SUP report. And so I just kind of earmarked them for sure. So I don't forget. And then Brit, you and I can decide if we wanna bring forward or if the DAC has vetted through the bullying policy,
the J-I-C-D-E policy. And that might be a first, a first read on that one and you and I can kind of look through what's left. Yeah. Speaker 1: Wouldn't mind seeing if there's a couple other policies we need to start working through. Speaker 28: Yeah, there's still a few left in my CSB staff of which we didn't get to, we haven't gotten to yet. So we can decide where we want to go with. Speaker 32: Had a whole bunch 2020, some come through today. Speaker 22: Oh, super. Really? From who? Speaker 32: PC and all that. They came back in there. Several that have Speaker 22: To be changed. All Title IX has rolled back to 2020 Speaker 28: Standards and there's Speaker 1: Like 20 of them. Speaker 28: Okay. Well then we'll go through those next week. You guys, we can kind of, I think when we do the,
when we do the board agenda update chance and Bri and, Speaker 32: But we still have few on the other Speaker 28: That we get. Okay. Sharon can guide us on those. Thank God Speaker 22: For Sharon. Speaker 1: Lisa, I got your invites for graduation. Can you send something for D? Yeah. This next week. I don't, I don't just this Speaker 22: This deck or, or any Speaker 1: Like all the d Yeah. I, I don't think I Speaker 22: Ds to all the board. Speaker 1: Well, at least to me, I mean I was just meant for this next one. Speaker 22: I, I think I get it. 'cause I'm still on the original document. I believe so. Okay. And those have all been noticed. I believe all of deck meetings have been noticed. Yes. Okay. Speaker 28: Okay. And we're at the district office,
so there is no shine the light. So we can start at five 30 if, if we don't have to start at 4 45 just because there's nobody on on deck for that. And so, Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 28: That's what, that's what I know. Okay. Unless you have anything else? Speaker 1: Anybody? Nope. I don't think so. Good. Not Speaker 22: For, Speaker 1: Okay. Okay. I'm gonna debrief. Meeting. Debrief. You got anything? Speaker 22: I, I think Chance and I were kind of on the same page as far as public comment because I or public audience. Yeah. See, thank you. You're welcome. Thank you.
And, and yes, I think definitely hearing from our stakeholders is very, very important. And we definitely, that was a hard policy to change because we wanted to make sure that we incorporated everybody into that. So there was a lot of input into that. There was including from d so, but I think the important thing to also understand with the public audience is, especially if we get something where we end up getting a lot of people like we did with our favorite topic covid and masks, that it, it let us know if we needed
to have a special meeting for that topic specifically. Speaker 1: Yeah. It's tough even having five people, you know, it, it's 15 minutes and, and a little bit beyond. It just doesn't seem like much, but it does push you a little later. Speaker 22: Well, and today was the first time we'd had, well I think the last meeting we had 11. Yeah. And Speaker 1: I really do appreciate everybody coming and, and speaking, speaking what they said, you know, Speaker 22: And especially Speaker 7: Students too. Yeah. The students. That was great. I wish we had more students go, but I would like to point out the fact that everybody left right after public comment and we're here to do work right there.
People cannot overlook the fact that there is stuff that has to get done. And while I do enjoy hearing from people and I take it, you know, take it into council if a need arises, we can make a special meeting. Yeah. Speaker 16: Yeah. Speaker 1: I think fifteen's kind of always gotta be that cutoff. If we get to 16, we go back to 10 and we, we try to look at, we might need to do, do a new avenue. It just, yeah. It just makes it tough, Speaker 7: You know, we can adjust things but Speaker 1: Yep. But I mean, I appreciate everybody tonight, you know, allowing, you know, when we discussed it, everybody was good with letting everybody speak, so that was good.
Speaker 16: I almost feel like we should let the school present before when we do the agenda, have the school present before public audience so the public audience can see how great the schools are doing that. I mean, you have an audience of parents and stakeholders here. That's I think, right? I people stay for that. I know. Speaker 28: It's really, I had called Rich other day and I had said our public audience is filling and I said, so please let your staff go because you might not even present tonight as a group until almost seven o'clock because Catherine Senior, I remember watching the clock
for them and that leadership team, you know, obviously kind of like similar to Rich's, there was six or seven of them and it was seven. It was 10 after seven when they all sat down Yeah. At KSE to present. And so that was another full house. And so that one, I wasn't as prepared as this one. We kind of knew the public audience was coming in for the last five or six days. And so I, I kind of prepped him tonight and I said, let 'em go, tell 'em to go home because Speaker 16: I mean, I don't know if we could change the agenda. Our agenda's not set. You guys set the agenda before we post it. So why couldn't we flip flop public audience
and school highlight Speaker 32: It is in a policy. What, how we run the meeting. Speaker 16: It is change policy. Speaker 32: It is Speaker 1: As far as the items listed. Speaker 28: Right. So I guess we could amend, could we amend that Sharon? Speaker 32: Yeah. And I think that you could at the beginning of the meeting change it to say, say that we'd to amend that'd to that You're all willing to change it. Speaker 7: I think we should do that. I, I think I I instead, I think that'd be great Speaker 1: If we have a big, if we have a 20 people, we'll just say, yeah, we'll do it at Speaker 28: The end of the meeting and next time you won't have to worry because it's not at a school and we don't have a school presentation. But we're not done with the schools yet either. Still
Speaker 1: Have. Yeah. I sure like I sure wish more people would stick around and see kind of our core that we're really trying to drive that academic Well and I'm sure a lot of people go on and watch it though. There Speaker 16: Are, don't forget Speaker 1: That. Don't forget that they Speaker 16: Do you, I mean there are people that are, that are online with us. Oh yeah. Now, you know. So listen Speaker 1: To this. Listen. Speaker 16: Yeah. Alright. That was all I had. Thank you. I do appreciate. Wait, one thing fathom. I'm trying to do my secretarial. Speaker 22: Oh yes. Speaker 16: Yes. Fathom. You have oh shoot. Board meeting report for this meeting. For the newsletter. Board report.
Speaker 22: Oh, I do. Yes, it's mine. I thought it was yours. Speaker 16: You were on the 26th. Okay, Speaker 1: I'm next. Speaker 22: Alright. Speaker 1: Okay. Thank you for doing that. Speaker 22: We need help with that. I'll remember. Speaker 1: We need help with that. We gotta get that to there. Times Treasurer has, I mean I feel kind of worthless over there. Speaker 22: There. When do you need that? By Friday. By noon. Speaker 16: Look it up on Casby Speaker 22: Ish. Up on Speaker 16: Ca. You don't have anything formal. Think supposed to be. Love Speaker 29: To have it by end of day Thursday. Speaker 1: I am on your check to get a hard check. Speaker 29: 10 o'clock. Really? 'cause Chelsea's. Speaker 22: Okay, perfect. Yeah, Speaker 29: That's on Friday. Speaker 22: Okay. That's day Speaker 29: Thursday if you can.
Alright. By 10 o'clock Friday. Speaker 22: Rich, thank you for sticking around too. Speaker 16: Thank Speaker 1: You. All right, I'm gonna go ahead and call this meeting at ten twenty one.