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[Music] good afternoon welcome to the work session for the board of education for bil Ev school district 6 um today is
the 10th day of February it's 4:00 and we will call the meeting to order M lemon will you call the rooll force please director aari pres director Bentley pres director Campos spitzy present director Mash present director Matthews present director Norwood present director Sullivan present all board members present thank you Miss lemon um first on our agenda is our calendar review Community engagement so everybody open up on our on our fancy new software hopefully you
can find that also miss lemon has provided a hard copy for us um but we have uh this week we have uh Capital student day casby student day at the capital Mr oari is going down uh for that with our uh with a couple of our students and then on the 20th the annual chamber dinner we have a school visit um making up a school visit to James Madison on the 21st um
another our second board meeting of the month on the 24th on the 25th at gy Central uh is the cultural assembly um then also that night on the 25th is the gy Evans Elementary Coral Festival um have another Well we have casby for a couple of days winter legislative conference on the third we have a a school visit to Bella Romero um just got an invitation I think today the
uh Sunny Mell am I saying that correctly yes okay uh Sunny Mell uh W County Distinguished Citizen Award uh we have a board uh work session on the 10th of March that's our first meeting of March and then success Foundation Breakfast early the next morning and then later that week we have negotiations and I wanted to get us all the way to negotiations just so that that's on your mind make sure that's uh on your calendar do we is
everybody planning to attend negotiations everybody okay sweet president Matthews if I could just remind the board to um sign up for a pre-negotiation interview um all right that we'd appreciate that we need to release that to everybody else involved but we gave the board priority on those times thank you so please sign up for that um all right any questions any additions
on that okay well we're now to board member comments and reports and we'll start with Miss sullan um let's see trying to think what it was there was something I needed to bring up if if it comes to mind I will but I did attend the um all School band that was over at West last week and that was your middle school high school that was really good they kids were actually very talented so that was enjoyable
to see and I'm actually looking forward then to that uh the coral Festival as well Coral cuse my Festival but um the Arts are good it's important for the kids so it gives them a good Outlet I think for stress relief to get away from some of the things that they do so it was enjoyable that was the only thing I waed to Dr Campos spitzy yeah um I enjoyed attending our um success Foundation um uh
success in six Awards and I believe we had about 170 plus nominees and 10 people got awarded um not just teachers but also support staff and um it's a a wonderful event um both Dr Jen and uh President Michael Matthews did a really great job um I got teed with Michael's speech um just acknowledging the hard work uh that that our teachers and our support staff do every day so so
that was really great and the following day actually got to join Michael again um gy West had their Hall of Fame induction and um it's one of the schools I am Lia on to um so we got to recognize lots of student athletes of wrestlers um and teachers who dedicated basically their entire careers um uh to students at gy West so was a pretty special occasion and while I didn't get to attend the career Readiness conference I got
to read about it in the gy Tribune and it sounds like it was a really great event with over 200 kids registering I believe they were all Juniors from all our different high schools um who got to go to ases for um they got to pick three out of 15 workshops and it sounded like that was really productive um and then on Saturday uh UNCC and D6 hosted their um I believe it's like uh Pathways to success um conference that they do with um sophomores and juniors or Juniors and
seniors from the AVID program um and just um excited about that partnership that we have with UNC thank you Dr kampos spitzy Mr nor I have been out of town off and on working for the last five weeks so I've been a little bit disconnected so um it's good to get back to cold weather not really but um did get a chance to go out last week and watch North Ridge and Roosevelt play basketball
and found out that they were playing so got a chance to sneak out there and watch that and I do want to say not it's on the calendar it has to be but Northridge and Central play this Friday Valentine's Day for anybody that doesn't have plans for Valentine's Day they're at Northridge this Friday so thanks Mr noan Mr Bentley uh same deal I've been working a lot like Rob has um traveling back in here between here and Utah a lot but I have been attending a lot of wrestling tournaments and DS it's the end
of the season I have a senior so uh a lot of my spare times been going there they uh I think I read in the newspaper today that 120 Weld County kids uh qualified for the state tournament which I don't know the breakdown between D6 and Windsor and Eaton but um there there was a lot they they broke it down by the school so pretty excited for the state tournament this this Thursday um at the ball Arena Thursday Friday and Saturday and uh just had a conversation with uh Diane Groves the other day about my some work we're doing
in my business and it just kind of got me pumped up for negotiations again so excited to get that going that is great to hear that was not always the case Mr aari thank you president Matthews so last week was a fairly busy week for me um on February 5th I attended another meeting with a student wellness policy committee uh for the district and then on February 6th I went to the casby day at the Capal we'll be doing that again this Thursday except with students we have one
of them in the work session with us Abby looking forward to that trip and then on the 7th I did attend the career Readiness conference so I'd just like to report out a little bit on each one of those um with the student wellness policy meeting they focused on the district schol three in their in our wellness policy the district will provide opportunities for students to engage in physical activity the student wellness folks in our school district take
these uh take these um charges if you will the Call very seriously and uh several PE teachers reported out on their insights as to how the district is successfully achieving this and in fact district 6 is above the state rating above the state average for the amount of time students spend in physical education classes especially at the secondary level uh the uh committee
meeting also had a couple collaborative reports one from the TR one of the transportation planners in gy who reported out that the city is making concerted efforts to improve safety at intersections around our schools so students can safely walk or bik to school and there was a report from the University of Northern Colorado's active schools Institute didn't know that existed which provides supports for our schools
at no cost to help our schools Implement various evidence-based priorities to help make our physical education classes more effective and that was an impressive presentation by them the casby day at the capital i attended that along with President Matthews and uh and uh Mr fall was down there as well we did get um a short little briefing from Anne barcus our lobus at the capital and Mr who
updated us on the current status of House Bill 1448 which as you may recall changed the funding formula for our schools a new formula which benefits school districts with High student need and as you may recall it past will suffice to say The Joint budget committee is looking at how that bill will be funded moving forward and there are some challenges right now if you have any questions about that I'm sure president Matthews Mr fall and Dr pelch
can give you more information as we go through that and finally I agree with Dr Campo spitzy the career Readiness conference was exceptional I I was there I I attended the lunch and there were about 200 to 300 students there and I spoke to many of them walking around uh from table to table and they had a lot of positive comments several of them are looking forward to Landing internships this summer and uh they know it's competitive
process and they're going after that and several of them already have solidified their plans their plans on what they intend to do after high school including four seniors I talk to as a small group who all want to become welders mrle and uh they they're very proud of their skills already having participated in our CTE programs so look forward to them com through your door new that's good news that's all I have president
thank you thank you Mr aori Vice President MH um yes the success in six um celebration is one of my favorite events and um I had a couple of of friends who were nominated and they just really expressed how special it is to have their efforts recognized in that way um and I I think it was said a number of times that we acknowledge that they are all just superb um so yeah that was a lot of fun um I think I missed that
we could have attend the career um fair but my son did and he also um found it very helpful and really the a keynote speaker engaging um so I I appreciate that opportunity that was was created for them um and then I wanted to congratulate the women's swim and dive team who recently competed um it's you know a one of the combined teams through gy West but has um swimmers and divers from across the district um I'm not
exactly sure how the swimmers did but um hope kale who is a sophomore greatly Central took 10th in 5A State diving so that's pretty amazing congratulations to her um not a not a lot to add again success in six Awards I I agree Miss Mash that is always one of the best events of the year just to for teachers to be recognized in that way and to
uh and to feel special it's um cannot thank the success Foundation enough for not just for that but for what they do in in the district they'll be here tonight so we'll get a chance to to thank them in in person but they do such an excellent job for our district uh such a great partner um again to get to go to uh to gy West the next night and again have have teachers be honored uh not just for for one year's worth of work or for a few years worth of work but but for
careers worth of work and um that that was a great event as as well to to hear and to see some of the um some of just the Legends at at gy West U be be honored uh that night um casby day at the capital that was um that was disheartening um well I mean just to to hear how much they um how the Gap there is that they're trying to make up and and to
know what that probably will mean for us I think we have a um to get them to implement 1448 will be will be a challenge and that's something that this District worked on even before I know we've worked on it for as long as I've been on this board um I remember going to the capital in 2018 I think to to argue for for a student centered funding formula but I think it's you know this district has been advocating for that since
2013 and barcus told us and so um to have that pass and then perhaps not be funded would be uh would be a setback for sure for us um but it was great to get to to engage with legislators and and um yeah it was uh it was a it was a good day it just was not what not what we wanted to hear and U also that later that day got to go to Council of student reps and always always enjoy uh hearing their opinions they
got to they got to weigh in on another number of things Mr aari was there uh no sorry uh Mr asmus two a names um uh and Mr Andrews another a a name we're both there to to get their their input and we we're so glad uh to have that organization that really can give us good feedback from a student perspective on on what we want to do and so U with that I'll close and we'll move on to next
agenda item which is our legislative update so Mr fall please take one m and guys this is uh Miss Abigail toar she goes by Abby uh she's on our Council of student Representatives she does a lot
for our district and she is going to the capital on our behalf with Mr fall and Mr aari on on Thursday so I invited her to come and be a part of this discussion as well so thank you president Matthews and members of the board Dr pilch uh and Abby of course um uh my name is Nate fall I'm in house legal counsel for the school district we are going to do a legislative update today um we'll talk a little bit about our board priorities if there's been any changes with those we'll talk a little bit about casby's student day of the capital and then
we'll get into a few proposed bills um so I just have this priorities list um you do have a copy electronic copy of this as well um please feel free to comment or add as you see fit um I'm not sure if there's been any changes since the last time we met um for this board around um legislation that you may have been reading about that I haven't shared any information with you or anything that you have been thinking about or concerned about
okay so just know that there may be a financial literacy bill that may get introduced at some point um I know that there's been a draft floating around but I haven't um heard that it's going to be introduced yet we know that there is kind of this cell phone ban bill that's in place essentially all it does is it requires us to create a policy which we've already done um so it won't have any major impact on our operations and then of course with the federal government and how we're going to be getting funding I think is just
a question that we'll continue to look at uh as the days pass so getting into the casby student da the capital um and Abby this is mainly for you or Miss toar I should say uh the um these are kind of your legislators that are in the gy Evans Community these are senators and representatives so we have um Senator Scott brigh who's in District 133 of course Senator Kirk me who's been with us for a long time she serves
District 3023 and then Senator Bri Byron Pelton uh is under District 1 and then for Representatives we have Ryan Gonzalez uh who recently took over Mary young seat for District 50 we have dusy Johnson in 63 she's new Ryan armagost representative armagost in District 64 and representative Carlos Baron is in District 48 so we actually have a quite a few newcomers um that are representing this community this year so it's really important that we get our voices out um
and we tell them what's important to us so they just understand who they're serving um as they're kind of getting into legislation this year so um what to expect when we're at the casby of the capital um just know that uh we'll have Miss Annette Overton who's the assistant superintendent human resources of course Doran nari who's one of our board directors and then Miss Amy lemon who's the secretary to the Board of Education we'll be writing with the students down uh we'll have a legislative presentation at the beginning with just kind of an
overview of the work and then we'll go to House and Senate proceedings uh I think what you'll be most surprised about uh Abby is that the House and Senate proceedings are very informal uh there's a lot of people moving around and talking and talking over each other there's somebody who's standing in front of a microphone talking and nobody's listening to that person it's very strange to see it play out people are having sidebar arguments uh it just it's just amazing to watch kind of laws get made because it just seems so chaotic uh
so I just wanted to prepare you for that um and certainly I have reached out um Senator brigh um May step out of the senate floor when we're there to come meet with you and um hear from you and certainly if you have questions I would I would bring them for the the legislators because they're really really excited to meet you um there will be a legislative debrief that we'll have uh at casby I think it's at the Nights of Columbus and then we can are but are not required to go to the house education committee I may testify um just depending on what Bill are in front of the house
education committee that day so any questions on that excited yes okay um it went so well last year that we figured we could just keep doing this because I know that um the students got a lot out of it so um without any other questions we can move on to proposed legislation uh Mr fall I will tell you that I have coffee with representative Gonzalez here two Saturdays ago and so I know he would welcome a reach out as
well um as as well as senator brigh they both have indicated um that they would be happy if they're available to to meet with our students who are down there that day okay and with you all and not not that this is any public comment to US Representative Gonzalez but I did send him a an email out of the blue so we'll see if he gets back to me but um that's good to hear Nate would you like me to reach out to him sure yeah because I can let him know that you guys are coming or I can give you his cell phone number if you'd like it I've shared it with Nate yeah yeah and Ryan armagost as
well too okay great yeah I also sent uh representative armagost an email out of the blue so he's like who is this guy um so the first proposed legislation is Senate bill 25077 this is modifications to Kora so this has been a bill that has been attempted to be introduced over the last few years there are a lot of stakeholders who are interested in the Colorado open records act uh of course school districts and local government agencies are having
a difficult time responding to all of these open records requests in a timely manner and so representative Kathy Kip uh has been working very diligently to get all the stakeholders on the same page for a modification to the Colorado opens records act uh at this point I would say we should support this bill um it does give us some extended deadline so it goes from 3 days to 5 days to respond to an open records request uh it gives us um we get
an additional 10 days if it's uh meets certain requirements um it we wouldn't be able to release certain student information right now we do release certain student information if it is requested it would expand that so I think in a lot of ways this bill really does help us it's not perfect uh but it never really will be perfect given all the stakeholders that are interested in open records mainly news agencies so they've created some other carve outs for news agencies that they don't get that same extension um but they have to prove that they are kind of working
for a news agency so that'll be interesting but by and large I think we'll just kind of address each one as if it were um needed to be completed by that three-day deadline and then hopefully we we have a couple extra days that'll help us out a lot so but n currently they don't even have to put their real name on the open records request did I understand that right yes from yeah so and that question comes up a lot when we get open records requests here is they go well who is it and why are they requesting it and
my answer is always it doesn't matter the open records requ the open records act doesn't contemplate who's making the request so yeah there was the the guy who was signing Batman Batman yeah for all his open records requests uh and they had to respond to them and fulfill them even though it was Batman requesting the records so um I don't know if this bill will change that aspect as much I think it will give us the opportunity to kind of learn more but I usually reach out to requesters anyway ways just to get a better
understanding of what they want and just to kind of negotiate timing because that's always the biggest issue for us is getting it done in 3 days the next bill is Cate bill 2563 this is Library resource decision standards for public schools uh I put a position of amender oppos just know that today um at the Senate education committee they did uh review this bill with a strike below that casby proposed an amendment and essentially rewrote the bill
uh that Amendment passed so at this point I would say we should support the bill because casby's amendments uh address all of the concerns that we originally having uh with this Library resource bill I think ultimately it comes down to local control I think that we have a robust book review process in fact I would say we probably have one of the best book review processes in the State uh and then we don't need the state to tell us how to do that um and so I think that was the biggest issue that we were having that casby was
having and so this amended bill um just really requires that we have a process in place much like the cell phone band bill so um I would more or less say we're in a position of support now for this amendment amended version and I can share a copy of that with you I'm not sure if this link uh is to that amended Bill uh the next bill I'm sorry do we have any questions okay uh the next bill is Sate Bill 2564 this is safe to tell Handle With Care notice uh I have a
recommended position of just monitor or amend so this bill's a little interesting and I'm just going to read word for word from this uh the bill requires safe to tell and notify schools when a student experiences an adverse childhood event uh through a quote Handle With Care notice law enforcement must report incidents to safe to tell who then notifies school with only the student's name without incident detail so we receive these students with this kind of Handle With Care notice and then we kind of take this information and we share with
school staff who are on a need to know basis so they know that this child has suffered some kind of trauma uh and they need to be handled with care um there have been studies on this uh that have shown that it is pretty effective um I don't know what other states did this my concern with this bill is it doesn't really give us guidance on what should be our response with these students who come with Handle With Care notices and if we have any kind of immunity for not properly handling with
care of these particular students um maybe I'm getting into the weeds too much um but that I know is a position that also case and casby have been looking at with this bill uh by and large I don't think it's worth the fight but I think a little more direction for what schools should do with this information would be really helpful and then the last bill we have here is house bill 25152 this is Tech accessibility life ability contractor uh this
passed the third reading of the house today so it's on to the Senate uh this was a bill that I did testify for last week um showing some support with st brain Valley School District and this is just for that uh accessibility that we've been talking about for the last two years this requires contractors to indemnify the district if there is uh an issue with their software that subjects the district to a complaint so let's say we're working with software vendor X
they have software that's not accessible and somebody sues the district because of that inaccessible software then we could go after the vendor for damages um of course we would need to make that decision if we actually want to go after vendors but this gives us added protection uh when working with vendors because I can tell you right now it's very very hard to find vendors that are fully in compliance right now I know many are working on it um we are working on it but um just know that this gives us added protections and this is um absolutely a bill that we should support can
I go back to um the one before this they Handle With Care yes I'm just curious I've never been an educator or a building administrator but when big events happen like I have the feeling that principles and assistant principles are made aware somehow well I think this is outside agencies so not necessarily we we might or might not know if something happens in the community with the student fortunately we have really good relationships with g police department and Evans Police Department so
we're made aware of many many things but there's not a requirement right now for them to notify us and so I think that's what this is trying to get at is that they would be required to notify safe to tell then safe to tell will be required to notify us um I'm quite frankly my first direction is I think we should be handling all kids with care so why does it go through state to T just directly to that school I mean I post for confidentiality I
don't know way do you have any information safe to tell easier line and they're routinely they get the safety tow reports directly and so it just is it can track that that information is definitely getting to the school yeah saf to to cont trct that it gets to us yeah and and so what the way safe to tow works is I get an email automatically populates in my email box automatically populates in WS automatically popul and the principles if they're if it you know if
it's the kind of topic that goes to a principal and then safe to tell tracks whether or not I've responded whether Wade has responded whether the principal has and if you don't respond then they ping you again in your email box so it's a system I would guess that's why so how many notifications do you get then on students I guess per month in our schools oh we get a safety tell almost every day I mean we've got 34 yeah
I mean safy t gets used for a lot of things and anybody can use it like you can use it for anything like you know Miss sponsor was mean to me when I called her on Tuesday to ask about my payroll and she told me I needed to call payroll instead of her in finance why did Miss sponsor not solve my payroll problem in all seriousness you can report something to saf tell for any reason this is kind of
use it in reverse though right yeah this is the police this would require um the police or or um yeah law enforcement to report to safe to tell then safe to tell report to usually it's internal and it gets to you guys and you guys take it external this is usually it's internal and then and it goes out to safe to tell and then safe to tell sends it back to us or out to out to law enforcement or boths seems like a good idea I I just know managing my group of people sure would' be nice to know when somebody had an issue you know like I
don't need to know what the issue is but like if you had a domestic dispute and you're you're uptight I'll handle you hair different I'll be a little more sensitive than normal boss on a normal day just going in and use my hammer right so I see the I see the value I just I really worried that especially in large systems where they don't have really close relationships with their police local police department yeah we're really fortunate here we have really good relationships if a significant event happens with one of our students the police are going to let no they just are but but I've worked
in systems where that isn't the case that we wouldn't be informed necessarily yeah I just would have to see the the details it seems like it as long as it's just information I just would want it be more of a burden on us than than just an asset so would a position of support be I don't know I I I need to read it more I I'll look into it and just I like the theory I just don't know about the details sure let's stay with monitor for for now yeah and I'm with Kyle there
I I like the idea um you know a kiddo I I know you don't get the details but let's say there was a domestic dispute and this is like a fourth grader who had you know parents a parent got hauled out like I think I don't know as as Educators it'd be nice to to know that this child might act out and instead of like you said handling them with a hammer as hopefully our educators are not always hammers but um to to
be more sensitive it just seems like a good idea um but if if we're already hearing that information for most of our students yeah and but but I mean there there's a we are an impacted Community where there's a lot of information out there does it violate some sort of privacy I guess no they wouldn't tell they wouldn't tell us what the issue was with the student we already have we already have a need to know a right to know on a need to no
[Music] basis Mr fall um I Abby has basketball practice uh pretty pretty quickly I told we'd get her out of here um in the next 10 minutes can you y can you go through what's happening with 1448 and um Can are you prepared to explain that like what the what's happened recently and and what needs to happen for that to be funded yeah and I can um just quick caveat to that previous conversation I agree with you all I think it is
a really good idea so let let the lawyer ruin a nice bill because of immunity issues right so um just know that I think it is a wonderful bill as well um my brain just thinks differently sometimes so um with school Finance we know that there's still a lot of conversations around the school Finance act with 1448 last year 1448 was the bill that changed the school Finance act it added uh different categories for funding and it um essentially made
the atrisk measure much stronger than in previous years so we're just having a lot of conversations right now around whether or not it's going to be implemented this year or if it'll be fully implemented or if they're going to go back to the old formula um there's just a lot of questions right now um around whether or not there's going to be enough money uh to fully fund the school Finance act with the funding formula that we have um and then of course I think it's worthwhile to share that no matter what happens next year the
budget's going to be tight we're going to be looking at Cuts we're going to be looking at um ways to make our money work with what we have um so um what I do know and and I did hear this from Senator Kirk Meer is that they probably won't have any answers until the budget forecast comes out in March um but it just seems that optimism around implementing the new school Finance Act is becoming com less and less now um and
so it's it is I think it's been a little bit challenging I'm not sure if Miss sponsor Dr pilch has anything else to add to that I'll just add that this the The Stance of the superintendent is um that we worked this out and that the superintendent that were opposed this that came around to supporting it in the end um really feel like they they came around to agreement and made a deal with with the legislators to to support this and that they believe that the legislature
needs to find a way to fully implement this and that if they're not able to do so that they need to find a way to track the dollars that they do not like they did with the budget stabilization Factor uh so that we know what we being shorted in school Finance um but I think I think the superintendent feel strongly and I feel strongly that you know an agreement was made around funding and that an agreement
needs to be fulfilled um if it if there's any way that it absolutely can be so there's a there's a piece around a clerical error that was made that they're hanging their hat on right now those the folks who are saying that it just can't happen and around $135 million um over the last three years that was not transferred to huh 20 years over 20 years that was not transferred to um to the to the finance formula
and now um they're they are saying that has to be transferred and and so that if that's transferred and has to be funded then that triggers the 95% that that it can't be funded at the 95% and so um what what what folks are saying is that this is a clerical error that should not be the thing that causes this to not not be funded um so the speaker who really was the Prime AR sponsor
of this um last year and who primarily pushed this through last year is saying um this is a clerical error it is there legislation that can be run um and passed to stop the clerical error from being the thing that stops this Mary Megan what else would you add I would say that from the CFO my colleagues across the street I would hear hear a similar message I would say that message is starting to unravel a little bit in that we've
all come together we've all agreed on this new formula so let's fund it let's move forward starting to unravel just a little bit so we'll see where it goes but um that was the consensus I was hearing too that we need to figure out how to make this work and it seems like I don't know if it was intentional or not but the the proposed fix was put in like a technical cleanup type Bill and once the legislators started reading that
they said that's more than a technical cleanup so I think that maybe just the way it was presented maybe you didn't sit right with them and so hopefully they can have some more conversations and figure out this technical error will not be the trigger to stop the new formula and the governor's solution to solving this is to eliminate enrollment averaging and so we currently have a system that allows for averaging of years to count
enrollment rather than to use actual enrollment um of the of the previous year or the existing year so the governor's office is saying let's eliminate that averaging then we then that will generate additional dollars in the state because we won't be funding as many students um which is which would be very um detrimental to rural districts because rural districts if they even lose an average of 10 students in one r District those are significant dollars so
it's very complex and um very contentious and so the conversation that um our lobbyist and I had on Friday was what if what if we did a carve out for rurals and just said okay let's let's not eliminate averaging in rurals but just at a certain cut point that that's where you average and you don't or you you you average in this size of District but you don't average in these size of District districts what if we did
something like that um in combination with um putting grants back into the formula and not giving any state grants because even the 80 million of state grants doesn't get you there we're still you know we're trying to get to 100 a shortage of 135 million and so 80 million state grants is only partway there so could you do some combination thereof with some elimination of averaging the elimination of state grants um and you know we're not sure
I mean we benefit from state grants but we also would benefit greatly from having those dollars just in the formula so and then on top of this is what will happen with federal dollars which we don't know can you clarify so so this was passed as a law right MH but there's a trigger in there that if it if it cannot be funded at 95% there's a there's a hold to where would not fund it any in
any year if it couldn't be funded at 95% then if the funding isn't there for 95% of it to be funded they would freeze it that year and that was part of the deal that was made and go back to the old formula well or just or could go back to the old formula or it could freeze with funding from the previous year which right now the funding from the previous year is the old formula and so we would have reached the 95% except that they found
this $135 million it had not been transferred over 20 years yeah is that right correct so they transferred it all this year and now there's a hole so we can't fund it and I don't know what an was talking about about the three-year thing I don't know what that is then um just there's different buckets of errors that they were okay so there's like three different buckets that they were looking at so there's something else that's threeyear thing so what can Abby
tell our legislators to fully fund the finance formula that was passed last year yes the kids are here now the kids are here now in your district and the kids look like you and live like you and are you they are here now and that's what they need to understand and that we've already we've been fighting this fight at least in our district since 2013 and you will be long gone and graduated by the time it's even fully funded it is 6 years before it's fully funded the way it's written right now
and if they wait another year you're going to be a senior right but Nate Nate will be there to help see the guy there that just beer to him always um 443 you going to make it to basketball oh yeah I'll make it okay and it's really important you tell representative Gonzalez you go to Northridge yeah he graduated from oh I'll just like
switch sides I have a swe I'm KK I'm getting now see you Thurs no she doesn't everyone conf me conf now to community engagement and so
I'm not sure what we have on this Dr bch do you have something special we do have something special um we thought it would be good to have um to have Mr Reyes share a little bit about the work that we did when we we had our community engagement meeting and then talk a little bit about what what some of our future plans are right Mr Rey all right all right thank you I did not remember that it's all right that's good is that what we normally mean when we say community Eng
no it isn't this is a community this real Community engagement well welcome Mr Reyes we're glad you're here you may recall that back in November we had our parent uh leaon our parent Advocates invite parents in for a session um and or a couple of sessions we we had a couple of really good meetings uh where we listen
to parents uh Dave Dave and his staff did a wonderful job helping to bring those meetings together and to facilitate those meetings and we learned from our families and so we want to share a little bit about that and a little bit about what we have coming next perfect um thank you president board Matthews uh other members of the board Dr pills for giving me this opportunity to talk a little bit more about our um listening sessions so this is all tied into our
i230 plan strengthening part Partnerships more specifically and uh strengthening relationships with parents and families okay but before I go any further I don't think I introduced myself right um I know Dr pilch told you I'm David Reyes so I Am David Reyes I've been uh working in the district since 2015 in various roles um there's a picture top far left hand side of me sitting in Onion Field it's funny because I have a 2-year-old and a four-year-old and I show them that picture quite often and they're like oh my gosh Dad D like why are you sitting
in the heat with socks on and I'm like that's a good question you need to ask granny about that right uh but my family are we're migratory workers um top right hand side uh that's me um not knowing a lick of English um I did start school here in east memorial back way way back in the day um ended up moving over to Windsor uh my mom had gotten a job at Kodak and so um I moved over to Windsor I think he was in first grade
so um finished my educational career there um that's me with a actual shirt and tie which and a suit so um that's me my parents always uh used these two phrases and honestly the first one it took me a long time to figure out what that meant he my dad would always say and I came up with this own uh with my own uh definition of EAS stop doubting yourself work hard and make it happen he would always tell me that when I was sitting in front of books um
with a shovel in the backyard trying to figure things out right Familia take care of your of your family it's what family does right and so that's my why that's definitely my why of why I I I truly enjoy doing those Family Partnership pieces because of my own lived experience uh my work in the district for the past uh 15 years um just trying to support all families in our district and giveing them the access and resources that they need um so we like
Dr pilch mentioned back in November we we hosted our first listening s session and this was really cool because this was like a a districtwide listening session right and so there's a little bit of a difference between um uh a listening session and and also um uh going to families and just getting information right so a listening session we gather information about people's lived experiences because that that is super important to know kind of like uh Mr was saying like if you know uh what a coworker is
going through you're not going to you're you're going to approach them differently right you're not going to come in with a hammer and uh approach approach it the same way um it's designed to provide a platform for groups to express their thoughts and ideas about uh specific topics and it's an opportunity to co-create Solutions alongside with families uh we've been doing listening sessions for uh over the past two years at 11 different schools um and uh this is kind of the
the procedure of what we go through so we start the uh listening session with a grounding and a purpose um so that everybody is aware of why we're there and what we're trying to accomplish and we also do what's called a k so kosimo is a Spanish word uh for koned and to get to know right people uh that are in the in the room and so the reason we start off listening sessions with gonos Mentos is it kind of it was interesting our first one that we did with Dr pilch
there was a lot of families that came in and they they already had their agenda of what they wanted to talk about like what issues they wanted to talk through and so when we did the Kono it was an opportunity for uh folks to know each other uh within that room and so we asked them you know the place of birth why they're in gy um and and um what schools their kids go to and we gave folks an opportunity to stand up and start sharing their Kono and they were able to build connections with other people across
the room does that make sense and so that kind of brought the level down a little bit and um let people know that yes we are here to support your students and we have the best interest um um to do that so after we did the K we were able to break up into smaller groups by language preferences because it's super important that families anyone in attendance can express their um thoughts in their native language right cuz it's sometimes hard to um um be grouped
in with other folks that don't speak the same language as you do because you you tend to be more a little bit more reserved right and so we had administrators we had our parent family advocates um providing those interpretation uh services with those uh Spanish speaking families so we ask three simple questions that's all we ask families right and the first one what are your hopes and dreams for your student and to be honest with you this was this was a little bit difficult because there are some families that were there that have
never been asked that question what are your hopes and dreams of your student especially from an administrator or a parent family Advocate because that turns the focus to their child right and so those are some of the themes academic opportunities which I'll read a few uh uh a little bit of tidbits on on on those uh themes so under academic opportunities uh prepare for the future success at all levels and have access to wide range
of opportunities for students to be well-rounded and College and Career ready right so as a district that's one of our goals we want every student to be College and Career ready and by that particular theme our parents want the same thing too so how do we begin to work a little bit more closely together to make sure that dream becomes a reality right we have so many different programs with CTE uh with pre-collegiate programs within the district that are family might not know about for whatever
reason right and so by having these uh questions we we can begin to work together and figure out how to get that information out to families in a way that's going to be effective the second one confidence um many many parents hope for their children to develop qualities like confidence resilience courage and love for learning there is emphasis on becoming strong self-aware individuals who can overcome challenges and thrive in life right that's exact what we want too so families are saying the same thing too and one of the things
that was really neat to hear from the administrators and folks that were facilitating the small groups is that families have the same goals and vision of that particular student that's super powerful right super powerful because sometimes um uh and I'll be the first one to to admit that um sometimes we're trying to chase after these kids after a kid that might not be attending for whatever reason and one of the things that we might say it's like oh my gosh what kind of
support does the student have at home right what does that look like and this gives us an opportunity to dig in a little bit Community um parents hope for a school environment that is inclusive where their children feel seen and accepted and valued I think that's just human nature right we want to be seen accepted and valued in everything that we do these are our parents talking right safety um parents want their children to feel safe free
uh from violence bullying and discrimination breaking this one got me the breaking the cycle oh so help me here breaking the cycle and building a better future some responses highlight the desire to break negative Cycles such as poverty violence and bullying so that children have a chance to do better to build a better life parents Express a hope that CH that their children will become positive Community focused individuals who make a difference in the world right and the reason this hits me so
hard is with my dad my dad has a third grade education we talk about um generational trauma when it comes to education when I was a principal assistant principal at grea Central High School I called my dad and I said hey Dad I got the assistant principal job let's go check it out he wouldn't go in he wouldn't go in because of the experiences that he had when he was in school right and I told him I'm like Dad I'm the boss come in so my goal is to help break
that generational cycle that some of our families some of their uh uh relatives have gone through when it comes to the education system because I always say it's not the person at the front desk that made that that created these um the the trauma right give our folks a chance that are working currently with our students to build those relationships and support the students so that they can achieve their dreams right so before I retire I'm I'm definitely going to bring my dad into a building so that he can see what a school looks like right
and so that that's again that's my why sorry uh what is the welcoming School look like communication relationships connectedness caring culture and valued communication information the value of open transparent communication between staff teachers students and parents this includes being heard and validated and receiving support when needed to understand what their students are learning and how families can support the students and the school
families want to help they just don't know how right and so the school the 11 schools I've been able to work with is I talk to them about um leveraging families and their expertise when it comes to child rearing right a lot of our families have a lot of expertise when it comes to raising their own kids so how can we leverage that knowledge and work together to provide them the academic needs that they they they might be looking for and it could be as super simple as making it a quick two-minute video of a math uh uh objective
that that they're trying to learn in school and sharing that spreading that out with families super important super impactful relationships is another big thing caring culture I also wanted to talk about office staff and administrators who are approachable visible and accessible and a culture where every intention is positive and welcoming even when addressing concerns or escalated students or parents encouraging parents to feel valued and included by providing volunteer opportunities and creating multiple opportunities for parents to
engage with the school Community again we we are hearing families do want to be engaged and and so we will start to leverage um those families to figure out what that looks like because we can sit here and assume and guess of what an engaging Community looks like but we can't do it without the help of families cuz they're the ones that are going to be able to tell us like hey this this hard thing is the thing that's
going to make it engaging right question number three what can schools do better to meet your students need talked about communication Safety and Security comprehensive academic and emotional support um communication they they you know families talked about um um receiving information in their native language um so I think we've been doing a really good job of trying to um um uh provide that for families and so
later on during the um Board of Education Gathering we'll talk a little bit about of what that platform is and what we decided to um identify as a districtwide platform to uh support that communication need um Safety and Security is another another big piece increase uh campus uh security through cameras SRO in campus monitors increased support uh staff Staffing for special education counselors camp monitors and recess AIDS I I think we already do
that we just need to provide an opportunity for families to learn exactly what that looks like does that make sense and um so that takes me to my next Slide the next steps so when we do these listening sessions we we we want to I always recommend to groups that that we want to focus on things that can we can change immediately right so for example that Safety and Security piece um it's really easy to to bring Wade and his team in to the next meeting to talk to let them
uh talk to families about what Safety and Security looks like in our in our district and also give families the opportunity to ask any clarification uh uh questions that they may have right we do a good job of sending all that information out but we don't really um uh provide an opportunity for that two-way communication where families are able to ask questions is that Mak sense um so it's super important to do that so then we start building that trust that confidence and that s uh uh
sense of belonging so when families see that um you know yes you're taking the time to come in and do these listening sessions the next session this is what we're going to be doing we need your help to develop this piece right so for example over at merer elementary um a lot of families were were were wondering how they can support their students in math and what the the uh School ended up doing is creating this quick two-minute video of this math lesson and they were able to do it in uh in a classroom with the teacher um and they were able
to distribute that out to families and it was pretty cool because fam said thank you for providing that it was super helpful to be able to sit at home and watch that either on the computer or my phone um but I also got to see what what the classroom looks like right and I was able to watch that video over and over and over and over again until I got it and I could help my student with that particular math piece does that make sense it's pretty powerful when you start um showing F that return of investment you know they spend uh this
time to to talk with us about their hopes and dreams and what a welcoming uh School looks like and what we could do better better um let's grab that lowest hanging fruit show them that we're listening so that we can keep getting them engaged in uh support I love pictures the these are a couple pictures of that listening session back in November over at link library and um we had over uh 5050 nearly 60 folks
that attended um a lot of uh Spanish-speaking folks that were there as well that we provided interpretation services and um Child Care uh that child care was that room was popping it was it was a it was a good time I went in there a few times uh this is over at at at Heath Middle School and so they um actually did some listening uh circles targeted to their uh uh ml uh students and families
uh their newcomer students and families and they're also planning on developing one for um the whole school and it gives them an opportunity for students and families to hear about their hopes and dreams because um not a lot of times have you have you been able to hear your own parent about what their hopes and dreams are for you with education and then also on the other side families get to hear the students hopes and dreams um so that that's been pretty powerful um this is over at the left one's
over at Maplewood Elementary um and then over at Meer on the right hand side and so the picture on the left- hand side is a picture of the kosimo um this is a little bit more controlled and in what it looks like uh folks are more a little bit more interactive um and then over here is Bella on the left-and side and I think uh that's the old Madison before we got into the new building um again it's it's very powerful to hear the
voices of our families um and to also keep uh families or uh staff involved these two are at Maplewood so this is really neat what they heard from families is they wanted to learn a lot of families wanted to learn English and so uh M uh Maplewood ended up leveraging 21 uh 21c um to provide that English class after school um that was on Tuesdays and Thursday evenings and so see families um here uh engaged in the English class
and then we actually started bringing in um the students that were part of 21c um they would come in after they were done with uh programming they would come in and they would do some English activities with their parents and just see that beautiful thing happen um we also did our Spanish for Family Partnership class over there at uh Maplewood on uh Tuesday evenings and what we ended up doing there is the last 20 minutes of uh both the English and the Spanish class we combined both of those classes both of those students together so the folks learning English
could practice their English skills the folks learning Spanish could practice their Spanish skills and it was pretty powerful because you saw more conversations in the hallways at drop off or pickup or during parent teacher conferences of folks that like attended those um classes just continuing to practice and have those open conversations that was a lot I'm just super I'm honestly super passionate just excited about um the opportunity
that we get to um have here in district 6 when it comes to Family Partnership and to be honest with you I I get to work with other folks um throughout the state that that do similar work and they they do get jealous of of what we're doing here in district 6 Anthony was with me uh over in grany a couple weeks ago and um I I let them know about our superintendent um uh listening sessions and they're like oh my God they're on their phones sending emails to their superintendent saying that gy is doing
it we need to do it too so thank you Dr Phils for everything you do so you you may have said this already but how often do we conduct these around the district and do we do check backs with people yes so at the building level they're held on a monthly basis they're a little bit more regular um and with Dr pilch we'll we'll we've had two of them already in the fall and then we have another one that's going to be scheduled in the spring okay yep and just to build
upon what uh the themes that we found um during the first uh listening session and do we check back with those parents later on just to see yep we leverage our parent family advocates or our student Advocates at the building um just to follow up and check in with with families and the same parents that were invited in the fall will be invited in the spring yep and we'll be encouraged to bring at least another parent with them yep yeah and I think it's key that we there is definitely a reach around and and follow up with families that
have have attended whether it's a simple thank you um or or just checking in with families are there any other questions what's the most important thing you learned listening to our families that's a great question um honestly they they the biggest thing I learned is that they Trust our schools um just with the sheer attendance
and the vulnerability that they had when engaging in these conversations shows the trust that they have in our schools any other question any other questions yes ma'am this isn't maybe related to your um listening sessions per se but um um I had a family recently who was experiencing some instability around their house can you tell me what the family center has available to help in
that way yeah so that's um also another aspect of my job is to work with the mckenny vento program um and that's with families experiencing housing instability and so we are able to leverage some funds to get them in temporary housing which is a hotel and we also have folks that connect them to local shelters um to get them into more permanent housing um just this morning I I went over to America's best uh Hotel um to help out a family with a week
stay and got them connected to the gy family house um so they'll be working with that shelter to find housing so Dave what if they are in housing but say they struggling with paying rent or paying utilities then what do we have resources we connect them to different resources like United Way um the GU Lupa shelter um also has some rental assistance and uh utility assistance um so when mcken vent like truly kicks in they have to be evicted they can't be in the process
of being evct going through the eviction process they have to be literally homeless um Living Without Shelter so um I was looking at the numbers yesterday and we just had 700 um students within our district that have been identified as experiencing some some housing um uh issues and uh I I'm anticipating that we're going to hit about a thousand and truly goes back to parents feeling safe that they can reach out to someone in
the school to talk about a housing um issue that they might be going through do do you feel like that information is widely known within our schools and with our administration because I was so proud and pleased to be able to tell them hey your school has a food bank your your school has um laundry and and things all those options but I didn't know to tell them ask about housing assistance yes yes yes no I've been in this role this is
my fourth year and I can sit here and and confidently say yes okay I assume I'm sorry does the schools who do tend to have maybe a higher population of of folks with higher needs you know hopefully they really do yeah keep the breast of all those opportunities uh just glad to hear you guys are connected with the family house one thing I never brought up but I'm on I'm the vice president of that board and um just one thing we need to be aware of is the nonprofit world is changing very
rapidly with all the federal pauses and and relooking and so as much as it affects here it's affecting all of the organizations you might be able to refer to just because they're all waiting and seeing just uh fun funding wise they're on I mean they're like hey we got enough money for this next month I don't know about the rest of the year you know stuff that we've had for you know grants federal grants that have been going on for decades basically now they're all all in Jeopardy so yeah to be aware of that's superent in the conversation I had um with the gy family
house this morning now they're um accepting applications on certain days of the week certain times of the of the day so that's something new that I that was just more to help them be streamline their efficiencies so but they uh yeah they've seen a rising need since Co and it's a big deal and they only take basically homeless people with children so families yeah perfect well thank you thank you Mr
Reyes thanks for being here thank you thanks Mr Reyes thank you all right we're to briefing the work session so Mr aari you start us off well thank you president Matthews um I'm looking forward to getting down to the capital again with the students that we're taking down there uh again uh that event is run very well and it's very educational at least is for me and I do look forward to talking to our
legislators and and letting them know of the good things that we do here in district 6 but I found that quite a few of them already know that and it's pretty evident out there and I'd like to thank Mr fall for all his support uh it's invaluable when I'm down there at the capital and it will be for our kids as far as far the listening sessions it's really great to be briefed on that I really appreciate Mr Ray's work and uh these questions that they've come up with
you know what are your hopes and dreams for your student it's a fantastic question and I do like that line seeing accepted and valued I know as I've looked around the schools that we have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of Staff members who do that every day and as long as we take it seriously I think we'll continue to serve our students better so thank you thank you m Mr aari Mr Bentley yeah just like to say thanks
T Nate um glad to see a couple more greedy guys down in uh the state capital um this time around I said guys but I literally meant men Ryan and Scott so um Barbara is always great and we have you know Scott a great advocate for public education down there I think so excited to see what he can help us with um and then just as always thanks T Nate for keeping us updated and uh doing a great job job of staying on top of that I think he likes it a little bit more than a normal person should
but that's a everybody's got their Vice so I'm happy that's his um other than that I'm just uh excited thanks thank Mr Rees for for that work that's that's good work and I'm I'm glad to see that going on in the in the district so super important with our demographics Mr nor I think we're fortunate with Council ra fall he keeps us updated on a lot of the things that go on in the state so we're very fortunate to have him on our staff and Mr Reyes it's nice to know that
we have somebody that's engaging with our community keeping in touch with our schools and our kids it's uh as a former teacher that's invaluable I just can't tell you that how important that is to our families Dr campus spitzy yeah I'll Echo what Doran already said that it seems like they they like to talk about district 6 as a bright spot in our in our state and um I uh was at the capital earlier today and Scott brigh gave us a
shout out in district 6 I was there for UNC but I ended up getting a bunch of shout outs for district 6 more than um and so yes thank you Nate for keeping us a breast of all the things that are so rapidly changing and I'm crossing my fingers that um that they do find room in that budget for our school Finance act to change so um and this as far as the community engagement through the listening sessions that's just
excellent I just am so grateful that that is happening that people are able to express themselves in their native languages um and I loved uh that Mr Reay has pointed out that their hopes and dreams for their children are the same hopes and dreams we have for them as students that's really cool thank you Mr fall for um always having the engagement of getting us updated on the bills but um I really want to thank you dear for bringing in uh Mr Reyes because it was nice to
hear that we have another aspect of an Avenue that we support our families in our students That's goes beyond just the educational realm um it's kind of shocking to hear that we have that many families that are struggling for housing and it's kind of kind of sad but it's it makes me feel good that we have you know some support for them out there so thank you for bringing that to our to light we need to hear those other things besides just the academic side vice president man
yeah thank you Mr fall for the updates and um glad to know that we have you and and Miss barus keeping close tabs on on that and yeah I think the family center is just such an amazing asset to our district and to our families and um it's great to get Peak into what that important work is that they're doing yeah thank you Mr fall thanks to David Rez uh I I do think we've we've suspected that we
like he said we suspected that we had about a thousand students that are struggling with homelessness in in some form or fashion for for some time it is great and um great fruit of his work that that we've identified more of those that people as he said people feel safe to tell us that uh that they had confidence in in the school school system and so we are identifying more of those and and potentially can help more of those and
that's the kind of thing a new funding formula helps so uh to the degree we have opportunities to to advocate for that I would encourage you guys to to make the most of those opportunities uh thank you all for your time and Dr pilch appreciate again you bringing uh this to us tonight and our work session is adjurned
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good evening welcome to the Board of Education meeting for gy Evans school district 6 today is February 10th 2025 this meeting will now come to order please stand and join us for the pledge of allegiance to our flaged of aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible
with and justice for all Miss lemon will you call the RO Force please director Zari pres director Bentley present director Campo spitzy pres director Mash present director Matthews present director Norwood present director Sullivan present all board members present thank you Miss lemon well again welcome we are so glad that you're joining us tonight uh whether you are here with us in person or joining us online uh thank you for uh being invested in our school district
and so uh just a few announcements before we get started uh number one our high school seniors um the gy Dream Team and gearup uh and District Six staff tomorrow are offering a free F Student Financial Aid assistance uh it's at the Boys and Girls Club a teen center from 5: to 7: it really is for help filling out the the FAFSA I think and so if you have not filled out the FAFSA if you um
if you have a senior or if you have kids in college you need to fill out that fafs set and if you do need help uh we do have some help available it's tomorrow night at our boys and girls club teen center uh also we are we're looking for some help with curriculum and we do this with every Curriculum by the way sometimes you hear on if you if you listen to the news you would think that that no one ever has any input into curriculum that school districts choose well that not true uh it has never it's not been true the entire time I've
been on the board every curriculum we choose uh we give our community a month to examine so right now we are we are up upgrading our let's see language arts curriculum uh it's high school I think English language arts materials for our high school students yes um and so that material has been it is in our lobby at this building and in The District administration building it has been there since February 5th it'll be there until March 5th and we would love for people just to come and look um we have an entire process process that we go
through when we choose a curriculum it is first uh chosen by a a team of people that include our our high school English teachers it includes some of our special te specials teachers GT teachers um English language teachers and so they choose that that curriculum they have an entire rubric that they use then it goes to our community community will get to look at that for the next next month Community can come and present their comments to us at our at our next board meeting um and then at some point we
we will make a final decision on that curriculum and so that's the curriculum process we're just doing that for high school English curriculum right now and would' love your your feedback So for anybody listening please come to uh The District administration building sometime in the next month and and check out the new curriculum and that that's all I've got for us tonight and we'll move on in our agenda next on our agenda is our superintendent honor roll so Dr pelch I'll give it to you thank you president Matthews and and I just have a couple
of things uh listed in our agenda tonight I have U Miss Jessica Wickham who is a first grade teacher at Maplewood Elementary and I'm honored to recognize her for being recognized as a Colorado Council of international reading Association Award winner she is also a past president with the CCI um she is being recognized for being an outstanding teacher in one of her in as one of the teachers in her
first years in the teaching of literacy and she will receive this award at the annual Colorado uh Council of international reading Association literacy conference in Denver on February 6th she's not able to be with us tonight but congratulations to miss witcom and since she is not able to be here tonight I'd like to recognize some folks who are going to be here tonight with us um for their outstanding work and leadership in district 6 and that is our success Foundation uh we many of us
were able to attend the success in six Awards here in District Six uh between our last board meeting and this board meeting and it was a lovely lovely night and uh hundreds of of Educators were were nominated and only a handful get to be picked and recognized that night and it was it was such a great event and I'm I'm so grateful to all that this is Success Foundation does for district 6 and so grateful to Julie Hill and her board and all that you all do for
us here and and for especially for honoring our Educators last week it was just a beautiful evening and I know that President Matthews and I we we get to be on the stage we get to to shake the hands and and hug and and congratulate the honores and so we get a special place in the ceremony where we get to see closeup and personal how how honored each of those Educators feel that evening and and then we get to see the guests in the audience from from the state view we get to see the
family members and friends and colleagues as folks are recognized that night for being nominated and and then the winners of course so thank you for that evening it was lovely and this morning I got to be with the students who serve on the success Foundation Junior board so these are these are high school students from across the district that serve on the the junior board for the success foundation and what a delightful morning what a great way to start my day uh so
I I was tasked with going in to talk about communication uh with with the students and it really turned out to be a conversation around communication and Leadership and I just talked for a little bit and then I opened it up to them to ask questions their questions were so intelligent so thoughtful uh and so wise and here we were on a Monday morning at 7:45 and they were engaged and Brilliant and I think they would have stayed much longer they would have I mean they they they had to be
cut off and stopped from asking their questions and what a lovely audience and uh what a joyful way for me to start my day as superintendent of schools and I'm so grateful to dilia Halley and Julie Hill for inviting me there to be with with those students and and grateful to the students this morning who welcomed me and and honored The District in the way that they did so thank you um congratulations and and thank you for being such a wonderful part of District 6 thank you president Matthews thank you Dr pilch next on our
agenda tonight is the approval of the agenda and we'll need a motion to do that I move that the Board of Education of gy Evan school district 6 approves the agenda as presented second thank you both is there any discussion on the agenda I don't see any so miss lemon will you give us a vote please director Zari I director Bentley I director Campos spitzy I director Mash I director Matthews I director Norwood hi
director Sullivan hi motion carries 7-0 thank you Miss lemon next on our agenda is our gy Central High School best buddies and the Arc of w County Film Festival and so I'd like to invite those representatives to come forward and make their presentation at this time thank you all for being here tonight thank you my name is Mary gany and I'm the Intensive functional learning teacher at gley Central and
also the best buddies adviser and we want to invite you to come see what amazing things our students with disabilities can do by the film festival that we're hosting and I'm going to hand it over to our uh best buddies officers um good evening um I'm a junior at and the vi president of best buddies and I'm here to talk about best buddies that g Central this year best buddies has been working to grow the club and create even more opportunities for inclusion best buddies is all
about fostering a one-on-one friendships and bringing people of all abilities together this year we've connected through unified PE where students work as a team and fun and engaging activities and we've hosted game days that bring everyone together to build friendships and have fun seeing these connections grow has been incredible and we're excited to see for what's ahead as we continue to expand we hope to create even more ways for students to feel a sense of belonging thank you for your time and supporting inclusion at gy Central we're so excited for the future of best buddies yay um I'm Emy
a senior at gy Central and the president of best buddies this year I'm excited to invite you all to a very special event that embodies the values of inclusion and Community our upcoming film festival at gy Central High School in collaboration with The Arc of w County being a part of this wonderful process last year and the year before I was able to truly exper experience and appreciate the creativity of our community and the shared passion we all have for inclusion this Film Festival is truly one of my favorite events that best buddies takes pardon I could not
be more excited to see the new innovation and the videos that our community have put together this year and to share them with the rest of our community we would love for each of you to attend and to see firsthand how our students are using storytelling to promote a more inclusive community your presence would mean a lot to us and we hope you will join us in celebration of these incredible films hello I am Gabby loose and I am a junior and I am the events coordinator for best buddies on March 27th we will be hosting two screenings one at 10:00 a.m. and another at 1:00 p.m. in
the gy central Auditorium um the festival will showcase two or Showcase short films all under three minutes centered around our theme we are all in this together this theme highlights acceptance inclusion and belonging core values that we strive to uphold in our school and our community um thank you we hope to see you all there thank you well thank you guys
we have um always enjoy hearing from our our best buddies and um in the ark next on our agenda is our Council of student Representatives report and as always we are joined uh here with by Mr Timothy longer and Sarah Vegas they are our Council of student Representatives that sit with us at each board meeting but we also each board meeting here from a different group uh count representatives from from a different School each board meeting and
so tonight I think we have representatives from Union Colony and so uh invite you guys to come forward now good evening my name is Brandon Ramirez and I'm a senior at Union Colony Preparatory I'm a representative for the Council of student representatives and I have been attending Union Colony for 6 years I have learned a lot to love about the school being a smaller
School a person can get to know every person in their grade level I remember leaving the school to do online due to co but the year after I returned and was welcomed by all the friends I knew it was nice to know that I would be returning as if I never left another thing I like about this school is the amount of clubs you can join currently I'm a part of Key Club mock trial and student council Within These clubs I am able to be with friends and help out with volunteering in Key Club with mock
we are able to learn about working as a team and create an argument about a court case and how to act it out we learn how the court system works and we compete against other schools I also want to talk about the class of 2025 will be the first class of to have graduates who have been a part of Union Colony since kindergarten we have students to have started at un Colony since the very beginning of Us opening and graduating this year
un Colony also introduces students to college classes through as this gives students a chance to be in a college setting and to learn how college classes work this helps prepare students who want to be who want to pursue a degree staying on the top of of ases classes un Colony allows students to participate in the ascent program this allows students who have graduated to take a full year free college classes the year after they graduate many of these students can continue
to purs pursue a degree at ases or can earn credits to transfer to a 4-year University I know many students have been who have benefited from this program and how much of a financial aid truly is this doesn't prevent a student from wanting to head to a 4-year University right after they graduate from Union Colony but is just one of the options provided now I want to hand over the mic to my friend and member of CSR Garrett Esq to allow him to tell his personal experience with Union Colony
and what he thinks makes it great good afternoon board members my name is Garrett escu and I'm a student at Union Colony and what I think makes in in Connie great is how we are a small smaller school and how that kind of helps students get to know each other better and the reason why I was to that is um like Brandon said with all the clubs we have and all the opportunities
that give students to get to know each other and learn more about the small school we are and another thing is some new exciting opportunities for our high school students is our introduction of three new Pathways for graduation each to help design or each help to let students meet their own goals and our first pathway is the UC core
pathway which we require students to complete 46 semester classes along with four years of advisory and our second option is the congruent core pathway where students take between six to 10 as semester classes along with 36 to 40 Union Colony semester classes including four years of advisory and finally our associate degree pathway designed for student students who want to challenge
themselves further by earning their associates degree when they graduate this pathway requires 31 Union Colony semester classes and 19 as semester classes with four years of advisory each of these Pathways provides a unique opportunity for students to reach their own independent goals whether it be college or start a career right after
they graduate thank you for your time thank you Garrett I think we might have uh some questions for you Mr Longacre has one thank you president Matthews um I just wanted to give some shout outs to Union Colony I appreciate that their school is especially focused on fostering leadership through Hands-On activities from the sounds of it very nice to also hear that both of you are involved in those events and activities
that your school holds and it really sounds nice with the the special activities that you provide when it comes to earning college credits and degrees sounds like your school is very strong in that pathway so I hope to see both of you try and Achieve goals in those Pathways and go for what your school offers you because it sounds like a great experience and a great school to go to thank you Mr Longacre Miss mesh well thank you for your presentation and um two questions I guess I was just curious if you know how many students are in
the high school for Union Colony just for kind of ballpark I don't know and then um maybe you maybe shared how long have you all been at Union Colony yeah uh so I know an estimate of how many students are there there's roughly around 400 at our school and I've been at Union Colony since uh 7th grade and now I'm a junior so that's roughly five years
I first started attending Union Colony at fifth grade but since covid happened I missed a year so that's around six years I've been attending Union Colony okay thanks for sharing that it's fun to hear you know that it's been it's been a good fit for you and and you've moved all the way through and then did you you said this is the year that students who start in kindergarten will have graduated yes yeah wow that's great thank you I don't see any
more questions for you guys I I'll just say thank you for for your service to the Council of student Representatives um and thank you thank you guys as well this is this is truly a valuable Organization for our district for those that that don't know uh they often they meet together about twice a month I think and uh every other week something something like that they provide a lot of valuable feedback uh to our administrators uh on different District policies uh a couple coup of them are going to the capital
on on Thursday to meet with representatives and to advocate for for different things for our district and so you guys are a great voice in our district and we we appreciate all of you very much and thank you guys for being here tonight thank you Mr Allen too for being our faculty sponsor next on our agenda is our success Foundation update and so I like to invite Miss Julie Hill and Mr John shettler looks like coming to the podium thank you thank you guys for for being here and I'll hand
it over to you for your update thank you uh yes I'm John shutler I currently serve as president of the success Foundation board of directors a a position I enjoy very very much and uh we usually start most of our meetings with just sort of a repeating of what our mission and vision are so if you don't mind I'll though it's posted I'll read that our mission is to build a strong and healthy Community by bringing resources together in support of prek
through 12 education and our vision is which we've just recently revamped because we felt we weren't kind of uh up to the times our vision is to enhance the success of District students and Educators by encouraging enriching and investing in strategic initiatives and if I could just sort of list off our board members can you like click that for me forward I don't I don't want to in case I forget somebody's name so our current board members are Terry balinsky Kathy hwi Darla
Francis Diana Gamboa Neil Kingman Eric noi Brent Kramer William natis parent Sarah Potter myself and it's actually Kelly Henderson instead of zyman now but yes we're very happy to serve District Six and uh enjoy every bit of work that we come across and I'll let Julie provide some details on what we've been working on thank you John and thank you for having us here tonight it's always fun to come and Report what we've been doing the last year um some of these you have heard
about for a while but um good news I'm going to start with our Smart Lab project in 2024 um installation um was complete so that was a uh a huge accomplishment for the district there are 21 smart Labs now in our um elementary middle and K8 schools in 2024 the success Foundation invested almost um $870,000 for that project and then the total amount um of the project raised um from our community Grant funders um people that believe in our
children was $4.2 Million for smart Labs so really excited that that is a um a districtwide project it's um accessible to all of our students I would like to give a shout out to um back in July 1st I think July 1st is when um the direction of smart Labs um fell under assistant superintendent Anthony osmus and his team Jenny Schilling and Jordan carlberg and they've just done a tremendous job in aligning um Smart Lab learning with our uh career exploration and development and I'm really we're really excited to see where smart labs are
going so um those will be in place from years to come and I know now the district will have some um mil mevy overy dollars are are working to sustain those labs but just really excited to have that project complete another project you've heard a lot about the last few years is our school food pantry so I think Danielle Bach was here um there she is this is a dream of Danielle several years ago and I think it's finally come to fruition so yes very exciting there are now 34 School food pantries in our schools that is at um they're at all School sites including
our charter schools and we've had some tremendous support in this year for our school food pantries so the weld trust was a big funer of initial equipment needs but this last year um and I'm going to shout out to our marketing people in the world um we had a donor that gave $150,000 to our school food pantries at the end of the year unsolicited um we did not know who this donor was they are not in our database and it was simply because I think the stories that are being told the impact that a project like
this is making and um so we are very grateful for that type of support I'm a little embarrassed when I don't know who a donor is but um also very grateful to receive that type of support and I think that will really help um as we work to sustain those pantries but Danielle and her team do a wonderful job um I know one thing our funders have really um been excited about is the um now there were packaging and storing and sending food home from our kitchens that previously had to go to to waste or reclaiming that food um so great job to
to your team I think they just an amazing project and again nobody gives us money if they don't believe in what is going on so I think that's the good news they believe in in what's happening in District Six schools so this year we um partnered with the district on a couple of new projects one was athletic support um back in the spring the district started to Pilot some Athletics After School athletics programming at the fourth and fifth grade level and um great timing for us then in August we found out about the first first ever us Sports giving
day and it's a Statewide initiative uh where they are trying to increase Athletics participation to 63% in the state of Colorado so we had the opportunity to um because we live in W County and because we have the weld trust and they were part of this initiative um some of the funding raised on that day was matched 3 to one so um for 2024 we have raised a little over $530,000 um we have helped to support equipment and coaching stiens for those fourth and fifth grade programs and and uh working again with Anthony and his
team on building capacity at the middle and high school level and really trying to um determine what are those barriers why why are children not participating and can we provide some resources that would help remove those barriers the other program that we just started um supporting this year was music we learned that um there particularly around instruments there's a lot of need um many of our students may be sharing instruments or they need to be repaired replaced and so this is a very exciting project to this was from
the um Bull with the buroughs activity um Mr aari was there a couple of weeks ago really fun um Kathy aari has been a wonderful um partner on this mic music Pro program but um the the burough is did a fundraiser for us at the bowling alley and um several of our students got to get up there and have a little jam session with them but um at this point we have donated $175,000 to this initiative um our goal over the next couple of years is to try to help get the district to a one instrument to one student ratio in grade 6 through through 12 um
to optim optimize that music education um we did we still continue to have support for the uh curent technical education center uh received a nice gift this year from Chevron um primarily to support student kits needed um in the CT programs at the CT Center our Dean John W Halley opportunity fund grows the need for and and requests for this that funding continues to grow so this year
um we did give a little over $55,000 and students are able to apply um to that fund for um as up to $500 for a variety of things so we we've helped fund um children our students going to conferences um driver education training music instruments a variety of things out of that program but it's great that we have the opportunity to support them um we we never want financial reasons to be or we do not want barriers to be in place Financial barriers to be in place
we want everybody to go do what they they want and need to do we this has been um since the beginning we have given um Innovative learning grants to teachers and staff we did switch from a one cycle per year um grants to two cycles per year that seems to be going well um particularly after the pandemic our applications plummeted and so we thought we would try two cycles per the year and so in the fall we did see a tremendous uptick and app applications we went from N9 the previous
year to 31 in the fall um we've already awarded 15 this year for a little over $20,000 and then our second cycle is open right now that we will award for next school year and then we get um quite a few directed gifts and grants to a variety of different programs and again that was a little over half a million dollars this last year um going for things like our internship program um variety of the individual schools um just if anyone it
I I remember when I first started with the success Foundation I may have told this story someone called me and said if I wanted to give money to District Six who would I call and they were talking to me and I said well you're you got the right number but we we do get a lot of calls now that um people are looking to give to a variety of projects or schools and we're able to accept that and direct them wherever it the donor requests and as Dr pilch mentioned our favorite event of the year is the success in six Awards we hosted it on January 30th at ases um growing we may
at some point have to find a bigger venue but um this year we had 148 nominees for our five different categories and almost 400 attendees and I think the thing I love most about that event and I told Dr PCH this that night it you see the love for that our staff has for one another and I think that's just a culture um that's been built here and and we feel really bad because there's 148 very deserving people and probably more than that that weren't nominated we'd love to give them all something amazing but um they're all very deserving but they're just happy to
be there together happy to celebrate one another and we will continue to host that event year-over year so thank you for being there it was a really fun fun time and I always one of my favorites coming up is our breakfast um I this is our 15th annual believe it or not but that will be on Tuesday March 11th we will be back at Northridge High School this year um last couple of years we've gone out to new locations with gy West and twion but we will be back at Northridge and Aaron Allen thank you for
hosting us um I know this year also we've never really done it at Northridge we've done it at the other schools but we'll be providing um offering tours to our community so that they can see um you know Bond work that's been done at Northridge as well there's new learning spaces there so um looking forward to being at Northridge and that's it I do appreciate you mentioning our Junior board we have a great group um as Dr pilch mentioned we met this morning but uh one of their projects has been our school food pantry program as well in the fall they held
a food drive and collected quite a bit of food for all of our pantries and raised some money that they were able to support um holiday meal bags for Prairie Heights Middle School that's a school they've adopted but great group of young people and um really yeah working with them on some leadership skills and um philanthropy and it's always fun to yes get your day started with that group because they're they're full of energy so even early in the morning but thank you happy to answer any questions and once again we're just very grateful and proud to be the foundation for a great EV in school
district 6 thank you Julie thank you John um I I bet we do have a few coming for you I have one just to start us off tell us can you tell us a little bit more about the Innovative learning grants uh that you give out how do you how do you apply for those what do those go toward sure thank you for that question yes um I figure everybody knows about these things but our Innovative learning grant program um we award up to $2,500 per project um we will give more depending on the situation but it is an online
application that is out in the world right now our board members should be sharing that with all of our schools um and it's really um we've tried to open it up it used to be more specific but really it's um a project that supports any of our Colorado academic standards so um we used to require two now it's just one um so really opening up to a variety of of projects that um our staff or teachers want to implement in their classrooms I think overall our teachers tend to do a wonderful job and starting it in one maybe one classroom and then
they spread it out to a whole grade level or a whole school so um we really see those dollars going a long way thank you Mr longer has a question thank you again president Matthews um just quick thing just a bit of word of recognition I really want to thank you for those food pantries those have especially helped me as a student get week by week for sometimes when it gets rough at home so I really appreciate just being able to have especially really good food available at my school when it's desperately need especially for the students in our
school that I know really need that opportunity to go in and get extra food after the school day is done when they can't go out of school and go grocery shopping so it's nice to have an opportunity like that within our school community and additionally the North High School band has definitely seen a bit of a profit from what you've done to help us bring more in instruments into the band I think we actually got a brand new susf phone from the success Foundation that was a lot of money but a massive help to the marching band so just that money is definitely pushing us forward as a band and putting us
more into the community this year we actually got the highest rating as a band in a recent CBA Festival so it was very nice and I guarantee if it weren't for you it help we wouldn't have been able to achieve such things with these new instruments that you're providing us and the opportunities you're giving us to our students it's really going to push us farther as a group thank you thank you Mr aari yeah a lot of just echoing what others have said and I appreciated
the words of Tim Timothy over there um what I what I have found with the success Foundation that I appreciate most is you know we we look at funding programs and that's what we do but the success Foundation channels that money into funding individuals on the ground uh that John and de D hafley opportunity fund is I've seen it in action directly impacts our kids and uh and their lives changes their lives and the Innovative
learning grants for teachers to to do some just as it says Innovative learning projects inside their classrooms and finally uh to be a place where people in our community I know there are quite a few that would like to donate uh to the schools and it gives us a place uh for them to go and for that uh for those funds to be sheltered in a safe way and uh to be given out in a prudent way throughout our district so
thank you for everything you do thank you Mr aari Dr campus spitzy um so I also wanted to thank you I know the smart Labs were are a big deal I me I got to be at some of the um like openings of of some of our smart Labs but now I have a kindergartener who loves her Smart Lab and I always get to hear when her specials was in the Smart Lab and so it's become even more for me as
a mom um and as a parent and then I wanted to thank you for um pointing out that we can give to the success foundation for directed purposes um I know sometimes schools will do fundraisers through Chipotle or whatnot and um my husband does not like doing those because he's like most of the money stays with Chipotle if you want to give to the school just give to the school um and so I was like how do I do that and you just answered that question so thank you Dr Campo spitzy
um m i I have a question for you I've been I've heard a few reports now from you and it seems like every year just the total goes up in terms of the money that the success Foundation is able to raise and and distribute to our district in some way and do you have any idea like how much that has gone up just say in the in the last eight years or or so I
do I'm a numbers person so um when I started um I started with the success foundation and you have to remember the success Foundation was new so I don't take credit for this it was a natural progression it's also um speaks to the work that you all are doing but in 2016 um or 2015 I believe the total revenues were $187,000 um for the year and in 2024 we raised over a little over $3 billion that that is some amazing growth and and I didn't know what those
numbers were exactly that that's amazing that you know what those numbers are exactly but again it it we were new and I think I give a lot of credit to our Founders as well they got the right people involved and um I will go back to fundraising is telling a story and I think we can tell a very good story and so um I always tell everybody my job is easy because we just get to go tell the good things of district 6 and um I believe our community believes in in our students and believes in the work that's happening and um that's why we've grown too well I I think that's true too you
you have a fantastic board uh this is a fantastic district and that is the work of a lot of people right that uh but I also want to thank you because that that takes uh leadership and and vision to to grow the success foundation in the giving that much uh that is that is truly remarkable work and and you're one of the great leaders I know you're not are you in the district or yeah it's it's a little we think of you as in the district but you're also outside the district and um yeah I just want
to recognize you that's that is tremendous work this H so thank you thank you next on our agenda tonight is our superintendent's report so Dr pilch I'll give it back to you thank you president Matthews it is my honor to introduce to you some new folks that who are in the room tonight and the first couple of these individuals you already approved them on your agenda
last month but they weren't able to be with us the first of whom is Mr Jeremy Hayden um who is our new coordinator for restorative practices and prevention so Jeremy welcome and congratulations you all may recognize Jeremy he uh was previously the engagement specialist at Franklin and Heath Middle Schools those of you who were with us on our visit to Franklin you remember Jeremy assisting us there in that visit uh Jeremy has also served as the head football coach at Northridge High School and I'm very
proud of how he has turned that program around there at Northridge High School in his time uh he also has served as a a teacher um here in the community and and we're just thrilled to have him here in district 6 in this position and then also here tonight with us is uh Miss Jasmine overshiner our new coordinator for threat assessments uh Jasmine comes to us having been a social worker here in the district most recently at winegrad K8 school she also has a
background as a case worker in child protection with Weld County Department of Human Resources um Human Services excuse me um and previously was in South Dakota where she worked with um the Children's Home Society so welcome Jasmine to your new position they both have already hit the ground running here with our Safety and Security team so welcome to both of you and then a new hire for you to consider tonight is Mr Sean scribbick um as director of K12 athletic and
activities here in the district and Sean has been here with us uh as he said in his interview gy is his home uh district 6 is his home he is currently serving as the assistant principal and athletic director at gley Central High School he has big shoes to fill over there uh it's a big job to fill and yet we're very excited to have him in this new role in district 6 I say it's new because it's now a K12 role it has has previously been just a high school and middle school
role and it has been halime um as you heard tonight about the the expansion of the the elementary Athletic program that the success Foundation is supporting as well as some significant donors here in our community we are expanding our athletic and activity program down to the elementary level and so this is going to require work uh K12 throughout the system and sea is just the person for that work Sean's background is also um that as a science teacher and he's also been a coach in in
various roles so I hope you will approve him tonight on Your Personal Agenda welcome Sean um I do have a few other announcements I want to share with you uh several of you mentioned the career in college readiness conferences last Friday I am so so very proud of the work that went on this past Friday um at this career in college readiness conference and I want to give a big shout out to Nelson Rodriguez and the other folks who were in charge of this conference it
had hundreds of students at this conference that was held out at Ames Community College um but our career in tech ed staff they were all there the leaders as well as the teachers and the support staff several of our District staff LED workshops some of our administrators some of our our support staff LED workshops for the students uh um as Mr oari said with the students he spoke with that day students were very engaged very excited to be there uh the kids really really showed up and it was really a quality day for the students
and just so proud of not only our students and how they showed up but so proud of our staff and how they showed up really a quality event we had visitors there from the pter school district and the Thompson School District coming to see uh what that event was all about and to learn from us and I I will just tell you that a decade ago just as a decade ago we weren't raising $3 million a decade ago folks in pter and Thompson weren't saying let's go to gy Evan School District to
see what the career in college readiness fair is all about uh so uh just so proud of our team and the work that they they are doing here and then this past Saturday again just a real Pride point I got to be a part just a small part my part was very small the morning of um the Avid our advancement via individual determination Pathways to success uh program at UNCC we partner with UNCC and they offer uh a part of a day
for high school sophomores and or sophomores and juniors about 300 students were there um they come in in the morning again they showed up on a Saturday morning several parents came with their students um I get to welcome them and then they have the director of alumni Services greet them he tells his story he is an immigrant um and he is a college graduate and now the director of of um recruitment there at UNCC he tells his story to KCK it off and then they have the opportunity to select from workshops they
get to have have lunch there on campus and tour the campus and really get courted to to see themselves as a college student and hopefully a student right here in our community at UNCC and again just a really great day uh with with college students and so it was just a lot of fun and super proud of of our teachers who were there with the students and and of our District staff who were there to to lead the day for the students and and for everybody give up a Saturday to do that um and then
I just want to close with this that you may have seen uh in the paper on Saturday Sunday morning uh a story about the possible Redevelopment of downtown uh the city and the county are involved in and district 6 has a small part in that it could involve some some rebuilding of this building here our our old flooded building here um we did have a meeting this morning president Matthews Miss mash and I with the
the developer um to hear more about that that possibility that proposal we will come to the board of education at the next board meeting in the work session uh with the the developer to discuss that proposal more in depth with the full board um and then we we're happy to have even more conversation with each of you about that um so we can learn more about that possibility it's it's still in the development stages we're not completely sure where it's going it it there's a lot of moving Parts the county
and the city are really big players in this uh we're we're a small a very small player in it but we're excited that we've been invited to be considered in it uh it's a it's a significant opportunity for district 6 and we look forward to learning more so more to come on that um as soon as our next board meeting thank you president Matthews that's all I have this evening thank you Dr pilch yeah that that is an exciting opportunity and uh one we look forward to hearing more about out uh next on our agenda is innovation 2030
update strengthening Partnerships goal one family Partnerships I see Mr osmus uh coming up so I will give it to you Mr osus thank you well they're making their way to the podium I I hate to put any press pressure on Mr Ras but um you know my husband watches all of our board meetings it's his it's his excitement Monday evening TV and he had watched our
work session and he texted me during the dinner break and he said that David Ray is this one cool dude so no pressure Mr Reyes as you come to the podium tonight but I just wanted you to know that you have Mr pill's approval I also gave him some advice I said Mr Reyes don't blow it so we're good but good evening president Matthews members of the board uh Dr pilch and our Council of student reps uh I'm Anthony assistant superintendent of secondary and K
schools and post secary Readiness joined tonight by Mr Brian lamos director of multilingual and family Partnerships the David Reyes our assistant director of the family center and cultural excellence and Marc is and Baria Marcia our district Titan specialist we're excited today to give you an update on the work district 6 is doing around strengthening Partnerships with parents and families our work as always is grounded in our mission where we're engaging students in a personalized well-rounded and excellent education preparing
them to be College and Career ready and in our vision where district 6 engages empowers and inspires today's students in partnership with families and communities to succeed in tomorrow's World strengthening Partnerships is exciting work and is found in our Innovation 2030 strategic plan our district 6 strategic plan has four Focus areas student learning and achievement strengthening Partnerships climate and culture and
operational and organizational Effectiveness and family Partnerships is found in the strengthening Partnerships Focus area our first goal in this area is to strengthen relationships with parents and families there are two objectives under this school the first develop and Implement a comprehensive districtwide Family Partnership plan that will be utilized in every District Six school and to develop velop and Implement staff training to partner with families
to fulfill the district-wide Family Partnership plan and there are three outcomes that we monitor first schools will include and Implement a family engagement goal or strategy in the annual Improvement plan for their school Otherwise Known sometimes as the uip second families will indicate they are satisfied with the climate of their school is indicated on the annual parent survey which is happening right now and third school-based staff will be trained in in effective and effectively creating family
Partnerships and will use those strategies to support the student learning and achievement and so to talk more about our work um in strengthening Partnerships is Mr David Rees thank you Anthony and thank you again uh Mr Matthews and rest of the uh board holy cow Dr Pilon you got me a little nervous it it reminds me of uh when I was working
over at gy Central as an assistant principal and and I left and Mr scrii would always be texting me what would David Rees do in any type of situation so um thank you thank you but um to get back on topic so we develop an action team which consisted of uh multiple community members administrators parent Advocates parents uh members supported with the revision and um the continued Drive of the Family Partnership work so um as you
see on the slide deck um all of those members that were on the action team a big thank you um to that group to uh keep us going uh with this Family Partnership plan um so some of the action steps that we've taken to strengthen Family Partnership include identifying the districtwide communication system for families and all stakeholders last spring I had the opportunity to come up in front of the board and talked about the task force uh mission of identifying one communication method to best meet the
needs of students and families and staff the task force we engage in five different me meetings throughout the semester exploring different platforms that met the criteria created by the team which includes messaging function so is the app AA able to uh translate multiple different languages um training are they available to provide training for not only staff members but also um uh families um we also looked into
uh technology we're always aware of of security issues when it comes to um student and family data so we wanted to make sure that the that the app provided enough security and also um the ease of the ease of use um there was a running joke within that that that communication task force that it should not take more than four clicks um to be able to have communication between schools uh and families so uh we we as a task force we re recommended blooms for the district-wide communication platform which will be F fully utilized in
the fall 2025 so a big thank you to all those folks that supported many many many evening events uh we spent digging into different platforms and um going through the vetting process of each platform we continue to provide uh support for the parent family advocates throughout the district um with ongoing professional development which includes high impact strategies of Family Partnership um we leverage the uh national
standards for family engagement uh partnership model and we also provide culture proficiency training um that was done at the beginning of this uh school year by Dr asset Mariam basically uh uh providing staff our parent family advocates the tools to uh just be nice to folks right and uh the the nicer we are to our families the more open they're going to be at listening um to all of us we continue with voice visit trainings um voice visits are are home
visits uh voice visits are intended to create positive relationships uh with families and students so that we can provide the best possible experience with education visits can happen in the home coffee shops sporting events we've had uh visits at on the city bus um in doctor's offices as well and so they can happen anywhere we've actually had Dr pilch engage in voice visits um along with alongside with our parent family advocates over the past two years uh with the intentions of just listening and building relationships so I personally
want to thank you Dr pills for engaging in those uh voice visits throughout the last few years uh two years um it's truly changed lives and made a difference to uh families just given them the confidence to uh engage genuinely with with staff members so thank you um Spanish or Family Partnership uh we continue to provide this uh uh high impact strategy to uh d staff members um basic Spanish has allowed staff to
be more confident when engaging in conversation with the Spanish speaking family um as to date we have 145 D6 staff members that have engaged in Spanish for Family Partnership it's a six- week class they meet for an hour and a half a week and um they're actually given homework um um throughout the six week session and they also utilize dual lingo dual lingo uh to extend the learning out of classroom time um to this
day I still have staff when I walk into the buildings that have participated in Spanish for Family Partnership saying hey Mr Reay is I I'm on level I don't know 452 right and Anthony over here he's on um he has a 230 day streak of uh using dual linguo so I I continue to to I encourage him to speak Spanish with me and he just doesn't feel comfortable right so Anthony okay Manana Manana he said Manana so I'm
going to I'm going to hold him to that but um in all seriousness uh Anthony and I had a conversation about his experience uh learning Spanish that he's he just doesn't feel comfortable yet to fully engage right and we had a conversation maybe that's what our multilingual Learners feel right when they're in classroom they just don't quite have that confidence to to uh to fully engage in experience the English language so um unia Anthony okay
um So currently we have 22 staff members we have a session going on every Tuesday night over at D6 Online Academy um and we have um I think we're tomorrow will be week two and a special thank you to Jessica Cooney Erica McNichol and the rest of the group who helped launch that uh Spanish for Family Partnership it's been so impactful um within our school district um so we also uh started a family engagement Series
so the family engagement series provides families with learning opportunities to attend events that provide valuable information on topics such as attendance Infinite Campus open enrollment career pathway CTE post secondary planning and concurrent enrollment listening sessions help build authentic relationships between staff and family fostering trust and open communication engag and informed families are more likely to be involved with with their child's education leading to better student outcomes and stronger sense of community within
the district um like I talked uh during the work session uh you know we have so many great things happening in our school district um Anthony and a bunch of us have been able to get together and provide these opport learning opportunities for families to be able to ask followup questions and really dig into what does uh open enrollment mean what does Infinite Campus look like how do I access that so um thank you Anthony for supporting
with those family engagement series um and next I'd like to introduce Maria maras our title and specialist thank you David and thank you board for having me here today um so I'll just again uming how amazing the food pantries have been for our district uh so again like we have like 34 pantries throughout the district that are being serviced by nutritional services and families are allowed to go in and get one or two bags of food here is a perfect example of what Bella Romero is doing and putting the hours
of when they're available for families to go ahead and go in and these are servic by again parent family advocates counselors nurses and School administration and making sure uh that these are available for our families throughout the district and a perfect example of this was done in one of our um buildings was through Jill Barnes a principal of shashin Elementary helping a family from one of her parent groups and making sure she had access to the pantry even on the weekend so we really are working around and making sure that we're strengthening our Partnerships with families by making sure
that these are available for them another thing that we're doing throughout the district to strengthen Partnerships has been through our listening sessions that we've had uh with our families thanks to Dr pilch um the first one that we had was with our t one schools at the link library then we had another one for all schools at mikro elementary and we've also been having um Affinity groups for our black families at the district office and Link Library so during this listening senss uh we
usually uh start them off with a but what our Focus really is is about answering these questions with our families and getting input of what they think so the first question is uh what are your hopes and dreams for your students a lot of the families um let us know that they want a comprehensive vision for their students future as well as balancing academic goals with personal development emotional wellbeing safety and a strong sense of community and values the second question we asked them has been what does a welcoming School look like to you a lot of the families highlighted the importance of
creating a supportive safe and engaging environment where families feel connected valued and actively involved in the school community and usually the last question that we ask them has been what could schools do better to better meet your and your students needs they offered a need for a desire for more personalized and inclusive approach to education where communication is key and families are partners and schools provide a robust support for both academic and emotional support so we're hoping to continue some of these
sessions and answer and work with them try to answer the concerns that they might have as well as Center uh our meetings around Safety and Security because that's one of the things that they emphasized in our first meeting as well as continue to working with them and creating a welcoming School environment and this has all led to uh strengthening our Partnerships and seeing an increase in M vento identification so I just did want to give you guys a big uh like a brief overview of what the minan event to act so that is a federal law
that guarantees educational rights for homeless children and youth and by strengthening our Partnerships we've been able to identify more families um throughout the years through our parent family advocates through those counselors at the schools that have been identifying these families um Again by doing all these things at the schools and we've also been able to increase Community referrals with our parent family advocates and the relationships that they have built with their families in the buildings they work with as well as increasing our family Voice through the param survey and the attendance events
um the attendance at the events that we've hosted for our families throughout the district um now I'll hand it off to um Brian to let us know a bit more about the outcomes good evening uh Mr chair and members of the board my name is Brian lamos I'm the director of multilingual Learners programs for the district and also family engagement which also includes a family center so I get the privilege of working with Mia and David the David Ray is so I
just um it's amazing just how this journey has come I remember when Dr pill first came on and we really took intentional work around our multilingual Learners and a key piece of that was engaging our parents and I remember the Welcome Center being right over here where Communications is at and then developing and creating a plan that decided to move it to the family center which is uh just amazing amazing work on the next three slides um I just want to go over some outcome data so the first
slide that I want to talk about is um basically by 2025 85% of our family surveyed will indicate satisfaction within School climate section of the annual uh Panorama parent survey as you can see in 2021 and 2022 we were at 74% uh 77% 2223 and 76% last year so we've had overall about a uh right around about a 75% satisfaction rating which is pretty good
when we met with the Consultants from Panorama this last year or just most recently with Jenny Jensen and I and David Reyes they told us that's actually really really good now we're trying to get to the 85% but we're well on our way and putting some things in place as you heard in the work session the other thing that sticks out is that the window is open right now and as of today we've had over 3,000 uh respondents to our survey which is another great indic indicator because it means that parents are feeling very very valued in their
responses and having voice with us the window closes on February 21st so we're we're uh expecting definitely more respondents coming in the next slide shows um our 2025 90% of schools will have a family engagement goal or strategy within the unified Improvement plan as you can see we're we've been well on our way and we met our goal so that's great So currently we started at 33 % 2122 and right now we have met the
goal with 93% of our um schools having uh plan a strategy within the unified Improvement plan which is pretty awesome and we'll continue through our Equity teams to help support them to make sure that they're getting the support they need in order to get to that 100% by 2027 90% of school sites will be trained in creating a Family Partnership uh support that will um excuse me sites will be trained in uh creating family
Partnerships to support student learning we're on our way right now we're at 55% we're a little bit shorter than 90% but we have a lot of things happening that are in place such as our voice visits empathy interviews and so forth really to get people trained up and we have a Consolidated plan with CDE a framework that we're looking at and how we're going to train those folks in those buildings so we are definitely well on our way and we really believe that um this work will happen for us so we have a couple more years to meet that goal and we're going to be
very intentional on how we help support buildings to do that from not only District level but also the building level and lastly I'm going to talk about the next steps the next phase of our family engagement implementation plan right now we have 13 schools that are fully implementing the family engagement implementation plan and we're looking for five more schools this next year and our goal is to eventually get all schools to really buy into that framework and to get the proper training so that they're doing empathy visits
or uh empathy voice visits listening sessions and a lot of other training that's going to be very very intentional to engage their parents into the schools and getting them there to be involved but more importantly they have feel like they have voice and then onboarding all 21c sites with the co-creation of a Family Partnership plan that is one of the prongs that we have uh there's instructional prong there's Community connections then also the family engagement for all our 21c sites we have 11 of those sites and so we're well
on our way to meeting with those parent Advocates those principles to say what is the intentional plan to really Implement a Family Partnership plan at those sites and then lastly supporting schools with the family engagement action steps and the uips and to make sure we get to that 100% by 2526 Anthony and I'll just close by saying this is very intentional work and um I think we're seeing a lot of great benefit from this too just from the
the input that we're getting um from our community and so with that we take any questions that you might have first thank you all for for that update and Mr oari will'll start us off with questions just a couple so the family engagement implementation plan is that something that our goal is to to be completed at every school in the district because right now on the slide it was five correct is that yeah are you looking you want talk you five more looking for five more yeah uh looking for
five more and um the goal is to have it implemented at every site here in our school district okay and then the next question just kind of follows up on that one and that is how are parents notified about the surveys that we give them and uh okay have those have has there been an increase in respondents uh since we've started those yeah and I can answer that I have I still have two students in the in the system so I'm getting emails right now and
and um we looked at the number the number per School percentage per school today and we're actually put another push out to families and so it's just very important to us to get that feedback from families and so we'll we'll do another push this week so that we can increase that and and we know sometimes we just hear from people who are not happy and we want to make sure that we say like just even if you even if you think that it's going well we want to know we just want to hear from you and I'm sorry one other followup those surveys are both in English and espanol I would
presume correct okay thank you thank you Mr oari and and I'll add go ahead the answer to your question is yes we have got more respondents from the family survey just English and Spanish and I I believe there's also Karen um that's the documents translated into um so talk about talking about the increase in responses um so if I can go back to uh this particular slide here um
so we saw an increase from 21 to 22 school year and then we saw just a tiny bit of a dip but that dip includes uh a little bit over a thousand more uh responses that we had uh received from the previous year uh which is a little over 4,000 responses so we're all we're well on our way um to receive more responses this time around so we also leverage our uh parent family advocates to get that information out um make it just like a little friendly competition
within uh the parent family Advocate world uh but they they do know the importance of uh getting uh a family voice from as many folks as we can Dr Kus spitzy so yeah I also have an email right now sent by principal Allison Ferguson at 10:27 in the morning please complete Meer parent survey so we we get them I wanted to thank you for using the word intentional um I think I was a
little bit nervous over the summer when there was a restructuring um around this work uh that it would continue and I was assured by um Dr pilch that it would and when I hear that listening sessions are still happening voice visits are still happening empathy interviews are still happening um and that our goals are still you know lofty and wonderful and we're really strategically trying to meet them it just makes me so happy to hear that thank you thank
you Dr kampas spitzy Miss Sullivan so I want to thank all of you guys for the work you do but uh Mr Reyes you were you left the room upstairs after the work session when you did your presentation and um you didn't get a a chance to hear but everybody up there was very much impressed uh the engagement that you have and the intentionality behind what you are doing your passion does come through and the community building that you're doing within the parents is so crucial and
you're taking the U building outside of the academics which is what's going to help bring our the success with our family so thank you very much I don't have a question I just wanted to deeply compliment you for the work you're doing thank you Miss Sullivan Miss benegas thank you um I just really wanted to voice my appreciation that teachers are wanting to learn Spanish and those Basics within that language I think it's so very very helpful I remember in elementary school when I would have to translate between my
teacher and my parents because of that barrier therefore learning those basics in Spanish helps break that barrier in order for teachers to effectively communicate with parents about important information about their own students um you mentioned teachers lose that confidence a little bit especially when they're barely getting into the basics of Spanish but even if they have those little Basics just the hells the how are use the basic communication it's also very helpful because those parents probably know nothing so if you know a little bit more than them it's definitely still helpful so just knowing a
little bit is better than knowing none so I really just wanted to voice my appreciation of teachers learning and wanting to break that barrier so thank you so much thank you I have another or another question and it's it's about the the training that our sites receive on um engaging our our our parents and I I think started off somewhere around 20% now we're at 55% we're trying to get to
90% And we gave ourselves kind of a long Runway uh with that and so just tell us a little bit more about how um how long it takes to train our our staff on this I mean what kind of work is that I mean it just is it seems like it's very intentional work and and it takes a long time to to get it done so I just I would love just to hear a little bit more about it yeah and um I've learned the hard way to start with folks that are ready um to engage in Family Partnership especially with the voice
visits because I think uh home visits are kind of scary on both ends on on on staff end and also um on fam's ends but uh that's why we intentionally change the name to voice visits because it's not so threatening and we change the focus to uh be uh relationship building so we start with folks that are ready and then we ALS we let them talk about it within uh uh staff meetings with in the building to about their experiences with voice visits and what that
does is it creates excitement to do another round of uh voice visit training within each individual building I've been to buildings probably four different times to uh uh train the entire staff um but slow and steady is uh my my focus all right thank you yeah and I I don't see any other questions for you guys but I will just Echo Miss Sullivan's thanks and and all of our boards thanks for
for this very intentional work um Mr Reyes your your story about uh your father reminded uh I think all of us just just how intimidating schools can be for for people if you don't um we didn't all have great experiences in schools and even if we did have great experiences in schools and even if we know schools very well sometimes uh we have an incredibly professional staff and uh they know a lot about education and it can just be an intimidating place to go into and so thank you guys
for your work and reaching out to our families and welcoming them inviting them into to our schools and making schools a safe place safe places thank you next on our agenda is our public participation and I do not believe we have any public participants tonight is that correct Miss lemon okay no public participations uh participants tonight and so we'll move on to our consent
agenda and we'll need a motion I move that I move that the Board of Education AG Greely Evans school district 6 approves the items as presented on the consent agenda and authorizes the officers to sign any and all contracts second thank you both any discussion on the agenda I on seeing so miss lemon will you give us a vote please director Zari I director Bentley I director Campo spitzy hi director mesh I director Matthews hi director Norwood hi director Sullivan I motion carries 70 thank you
Miss lemon finally tonight is our second read of 2025 2026 and 2026 2027 calendars and this is a second read so it is an action item that will need a motion I move that the board of educations AG greed Le EV school district 6 approves the 2025 2026 school year calendar and 2026 2027 school year calendar as presented second thank you both this
is a second read so we discussed this at length two weeks ago and um I don't see any questions from board members nobody's coming to make any additional presentations to us so I will just say I want to say though thank you to all the people that participate in this this is this is a very difficult job everything that we do is done by committees uh I've said this before but you can't even make the five children in the Matthews House hold happy uh this committee can't there there I with
23,000 students in this district there is no way to make everybody happy everybody's going to have uh some problem with the calendar so it is it's very important work and uh we very much appreciate the the group that does this and so with that Miss lemon will you give us a vote please director Zari I director Bentley hi director Campos spitsy hi director Mash hi director Matthews hi director wood hi director Sullivan hi motion carries 70 thank you Miss lemon well that's all
that we have tonight thank you guys for joining us this meeting is adjourned
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