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[Music] [Music] [Music] Welcome to the work session for the board of education of Gley Evans School
District 6. Miss Lemon, would you please call the role? A nope. This meeting will be called to order first. Now, will you please call the role? Director, present. Pres. present.
Thank you very much. I just want to get right to it, I guess. Um, the first item on our agenda is our calendar review. Just a couple of things remaining before we get to celebrate with our graduates. Um this Tuesday,
room dedication for John Hayfily at the Pter Learning Center, the retirement celebration. Please make every effort to to attend that one where we can celebrate our longtime um educators. And then our last school visit to Jackson Elementary
School. I think those are the ones I would highlight. U Miss Lemon, have you received everyone's RSVPs for which graduations they're attending? Okay. So, if you haven't done so, please let Miss Lemon know which graduations you are
attending. Anything that we missed? Any discussion on the calendar? Okay. Um, we will move on to our board member comments. Miss Sullivan, do you want to start this time? So sweet. I've been
to four different soccer games. Um just Gley West is kind of standing out right now and then I've seen quite a few of the frontier games as well. Dr. Campo Spitzy. Yeah. So, um had a really wonderful time celebrating President former President Michael
Matthews six and a half years of service to the district at his appreciation celebration this last week. Um, that was it was really cool to be able to honor you that way, Michael. Um, things from the district. Uh, one thing I wanted to
highlight, my kindergartener came home, um, last week with a little baby tree. And from the intercom, I learned from the intercom newsletter that the city of Gley government forestry department presented the giving tree to every D6 kindergartener. That's like over a
thousand treats. Um, so the kids were taught um how to take care of trees. They deputized the students as official tree caretakers and every student went home with their very own Black Hill spruce, which I didn't know what kind of tree it was until I read the other com.
Um, so we had fun planting that tree as a family. Um, looking forward to graduations, uh, to museum night for the Fred Charter School of Innovation coming up and the Pter Learning Center um, dedication tomorrow.
And because I am the ambassador uh for Gley West High School, I wanted to give a shout out to their students. Um their future business leaders of America that have presented many times um to um the board uh their students uh they had two outstanding students. So they had their
state competition um this last week and uh Pu was in the top 10 finalists for public speaking and Ray Mundo who goes by Rey ranked fourth place in human resources management and he qualified for the national conference in Anaheim
California this summer. Um really cool. I happened to run into him at a Colorado Rapids game this Saturday. So I got to congratulate him in person um and talk to his family a little bit. Um, let's see. Other quick shoutouts, uh, to two
amazing school counselors. So, Stephanie Mora, who works at Enkheimman, reached out to me, um, in the last month asking if I would meet with a fifth grader at Enkheimman, who was interested in becoming a doctor, and so I got to have lunch with her this last week. Um, and
then Amber Branicki, who's the school counselor at Miker Elementary. Every Friday they do future Friday video interviews. So, they have a couple of fourth grade students that interview parents in the school to talk about what our careers are like. Um, so I got to sit down with a couple of outstanding uh
mountain lions for that interview. So, it's been a fun couple weeks in the district. Mr. Well, I got off the IR and got an opportunity to go out to the Marine Corps Awards, which uh every year Major
Kinsley and uh Gunny Morrison put on a great performance. Uh some of the highlights that I did get, and I don't want to steal any thunder from Mr. Zari, but so far this year, they have done 75
color guard presentations. They are the cadetses are close to $1 million in scholarships. They through the school year they've done 2,000 volunteer hours
including 700 volunteer hours during the holidays. Director Yeah. Do you want me to save you? Yeah. Go ahead. Timothy Longacre for you. Absolutely. No, I mean you you go ahead and recognize Timothy. Also, one of our
student council reps, Timothy Longacre, got the most prestigious scholarship which will pay him $180,000. So, it's amazing. Thank you, Mr. Norwood. Mr. Zari. Yeah,
I agree with Rob. I mean, very impressive event, Marine Corps Awards night. And I' I'd like to recognize Cynthia Kinsley, Major Kinsley's wife, who does such an outstanding job. I had no idea. She organizes the annual Toys for Tots campaign. And I'm not sure
about specific numbers, Mr. Norwood, but I know that they collect and distribute thousands of toys, it seems, and books to kids throughout our community during the holiday season. That was very impressive. and she recognized all the cadetses that participated in that and
other folks in the community who volunteer their time. So again, a fantastic event. I also had the attend uh the opportunity to attend the elementary art show downtown downstairs in the lobby and it was great. Again, hundreds and
hundreds of people seem to pour out for that. lots of kids, many staff members, and I was um I actually got caught up in some of the art. Um there are some pieces down there that I that I encourage you to take a look at.
Actually, all of them, but some of them are like these three-dimensional pictures on a two-dimensional space. And these these things just pop out of the texture of the paper. And and it just surprises me. It's those are done by some of our
youngest students in the community. Very impressive. I also had the opportunity to go to the Hades Town production and several of the other board members had encouraged me to do so as well as a superintendent and I agree it was a
wonderful production actually. Um I can't overemphasize this enough. It's it was a professional level show in a professional level theater. no problems with sound that I could detect. No problems with lighting. That is extremely difficult to
do to put something on like that. So, bravo to everyone involved in that production. Uh, coming up soon, I believe it's on May 1st, is a Gley Central High School Gayla. So, I'm looking forward to that as well. And finally, I attended for the very first
time in my career that I can remember the Special Olympics event at Northridge uh High School um athletic fields out there, the District 6 Stadium. And I just uh it was really great to see all our young athletes out there uh parading
along the track, but more importantly, hundreds and hundreds of their fellow students in the stands cheering cheering our athletes on. uh schools cheering on not just their own school athletes but
athletes from other schools at that event. It was just a really cool thing and I want to say that I put on a lot of big events in my time and that was a big event. So, anybody who was associated
with that, the organizing of that and the facilitation of it, very impressive work. I just really am thankful that we're in a district that does those types of things. And again, uh I was happy to see all the supporters in our
community come out to to acknowledge Michael's work and service on the board. That's all I have. President Match. Thank you, Mr. Matthews. Well, I don't have a lot to add. I'll just say uh thank you uh for uh for
everyone in the district for that for that ceremony. Uh thank you guys for your kind words. Um that was uh very meaningful for me and for my family. And so uh just thank you. Thank you for being there and for for supporting um
these last six and a half years. Vice President Ben. Uh, I've been traveling abroad, couple near-death experiences, but I made it back to some time for Michael's reception. Um, that was that was about all I got out of the last couple weeks, uh, as far as constructive school board work. But, uh,
it was it was really great to see the support that turned out and, uh, looking forward to closing up the year and the, uh, graduation marathon coming right up. Um, one event that I attended was the refugee quarterly community consultation
meeting which is um when various entities that help support refugee resettlement um give they give a report to the community. So, Lutheran Family Services is our resettlement agency here in Gley and um a woman from the state
refugee program as well comes and just um provides some numbers and some resettlement data. Um so they are one of the um nonprofits that has been impacted by some cuts in federal funding and as
well you may know that refugee refugee resettlement is currently on a pause until such time as the president decides to resume it. So, a lot of the conversation was just around how can we continue to support newcomers to our community, help them to integrate um
what are some of the biggest needs, which sounds like transportation, um receiving um maybe driver's ed for for folks, um housing, um and continued immigration, um legal legal advice. So
that was that was great to always that there's always the Gley Police Department, the um library system, healthcare entities there. And then there was also a benefit concert for the immigrant refugee center um just yesterday and um that was really
beautiful. We had many there were multiple UNCC professors who performed as well as a flute studio um with many different children from around the world and it was great to see the community support um for those members of our community. Thank you all for your
comments. At this time we will receive our curriculum adoption information um grades 9 through 12 English language curriculum. Thank you President Nash. Um, as you all are aware, uh, the curriculum team has
been working on a curriculum adoption for high school, um, language arts and, um, they come forward tonight with with their recommendation for you all. Um I don't know if you all had a chance to
review it. Well, it was on um display for review here in the district, but um they'll give you an overview tonight about the curriculum. And this presentation in the work session will be a little bit more detailed than the one in the business meeting and hopefully a little more conversation will give you a
chance to ask the questions that you might have before you consider adoption during the business meeting. I'm pleased to introduce you. Uh I think Mr. Asmus is going to start. Okay, Mr. Ros start mash members of the board and Dr. Pilch.
Um we are here to just bring to you a little bit information on our our new high school curriculum 9 through2 English language arts curriculum um that you'll be voted on later tonight. Really what brought us here is that our current 9 through 12 English program called
springboard was sold. And so with that uh we no longer have access to the platform to the workbooks and to the curriculum. And so that sent us into a full process to adopt a brand new curriculum for this year. Our charge u or the charge was to select and adopt a rigorous curriculum
um that offered opportunities for all of our learners to be successful whether that be a multilingual learner, a special education student or um or just anyone. And so we we wanted something high level at grade level but all students could access. Lisa McGee, our
English language arts coordinator, led a group of 9th through 12th grade English teachers as well as school administrators, u multilingual teachers, gifted and talented teachers, special education teachers. They all came together to um to look at a few sets of curriculum and then Dr. Negan Anders
came in to help with the final consensus to get down to one. And so um so Lisa and Degan will walk us through the process used to recommend the curriculum. we can go deeper with and ask ask more questions now as we go through and then we'll present another presentation at the board meeting and and then um hopefully you can vote on
that. So with that I'll turn it over to Dr. Negan. Uh thank you Mr. Osman. So, uh, just like Anthony alluded to, uh, we really started this process by focusing in on ensuring alignment with our district goals and to make sure that we're meeting state standards as
outlined in 2020 Colorado academic standards for reading, writing, and communicating. Also ensuring that we're promoting equity and access. Uh, so making sure that all students get to engage in highquality ELA instruction. and to support rigorous and personalized learning, making sure, as Anthony talked
about, that all students have access to grade level content. And they also have a resource that helps support them to meet their needs, to provide them with what they need when they need it. Uh, also, uh, you get to see here just
what a incredible group of educators representing all five of our high schools, uh, that were part of this committee, including teachers and administrators. And also like we talked about, we also had specialists for special education, gifted and talented as well as specialists for multilingual
learners to make sure that we had great representation in eyes with different expertise to help with the selection process. Uh before uh we bring to you the recommendation, we'll talk through the process. And so the first part and most of you are familiar with this
process. It'll look very familiar if you've heard us come before you um in the past around a curriculum adoption. So we start with ed reports which is a third party wellrespected uh reviewer of highquality instructional materials and that helps us narrow our focus to only
the highest quality that meets their expectations. Uh then as you saw we selected committee members and then ordered samples from just narrowed down to five different resources. In November uh the committee came together and created a philosophy statement with Lisa's support and they also took
feedback uh a survey was sent to across all of our ELA and co-teers to get their feedback on what's critical for their needs to be able to best meet students needs. And so that was incorporated into the philosophy statement as well. Uh when the committee came together, they engaged in a data review where they
looked at ED reports for each one of those fives to see how they scored in each one of the different areas that they were evaluated through their process. They then uh jumped into the AIM rubric, which you are familiar with. That is our process. It's our rubric. And so they really looked into it line
by line to make sure they had internalized it and make sure there if there were any issues or things that need to be added that they were able to do that to make sure that it really meets the needs of our students here in Gley and our educators. Um they began the material
review using the rubric and then they also had samples. So they were able to take those samples of each of the curricula and then start piloting in classrooms with our students so they could see how students responded to the text and the different lesson plans that were inside of it as well. In January and February, uh they
continued the material review with the AIM rubric and then they continued to uh pilot those lessons inside of classrooms. Once that was done, um they reviewed the AIM scores for all the resources and then narrowed it down to three finalists. With those three
finalists, we then brought into vendors in so they could go deeper into the resources, ask the vendors questions and get some feedback if there's something missing or something like that that they weren't able to see in just our paper review and review of their online materials. Uh the committee then really
narrowed in on a few things that we talked about earlier around these musthaves that they had to have as part of a curricular resource to really meet our needs. because the resources were so good, all of them were such high quality, we really had to focus in on the needs of our community and our
students. And so these are the committee's list of absolute musthaves um that they really were going to zero in on to make a final decision on this. And so I won't read them all to you uh but you can see uh what they talked
about. And then the next piece you can look at. So one of the three finalists was eliminated uh which was study sync and that was eliminated because it lacked a lot of support especially for new teachers and so they really believed it wasn't something novice or young
teachers could really benefit from that it would take a lot of work where these other two had much more substantial support for our educators. Um, so that one was easily eliminated. And then if we go to the next one, our final two were into literature in my perspectives.
And you can see how the committee ranked those out in terms of which one really met the mark. Uh, as you look at how they scored each one of those on this, I will point out that into literature, the piece where it says easy to navigate for teachers. uh when they first saw it, it
looked a little challenging, but in their conversations, they realized with professional development that there wouldn't be a challenge in really being able to navigate the platform. And so that's a critical piece to is making sure that we have that intensive support for our teachers as they implement it.
And so, uh, our committee is recommending to you this evening into literature as the final selection, uh, for this adoption. And to take a deeper dive into the resource, I'm going to turn it over to Lisa McGee, our uh K12
coordinator for ELA and AV. Hello. All right. So, once the committee made their final selection, then I was able to work with a HM rep and um one of the desires that the committee had communicated to us was that they really
wanted a strong implementation support. So the professional development that occurs at the beginning and midyear. Um and so I have worked with the HMH um representative and we've come up with a three-year plan. Um the first year
includes two on-site implementation trainings where HMH coaches will actually come and facilitate the training with our teachers to help us unpack the new units and understand how to best use the resources. HMH is also providing six 2-hour virtual training
sessions um which if we decide that there's a need to use those then we'll pull together a committee of teachers either from a specific school that might be asking for the additional support or if as a district we're seeing a need we'll pull those teachers and work with the um GA representatives as well to
make sure that we're leveraging the virtual trainings um as best as possible. In person is always better but virtual is better than nothing. Um so we have those in our back pocket as needed. Over the summer uh we will have a onehour leadership virtual session with
our principles so that they get a highle overview of the system um the platform and the resource itself so that they can support their teachers as they implement their first year with this resource. And then each building during the first year will receive a coachly license which is
tied directly to the platform. And so as teachers are navigating the platform, if they're running into any issues or questions, each building will be able to directly chat or contact um support that will get them their answers as quick as possible. Uh during year two, we wanted
to make sure that we were really differentiating the support that we're providing teachers. And so during August that welcome back um curriculum day, we want to continue to offer the year one initial implementation support for our new to district or new to resource teachers, but we want to give the
opportunity to our experienced teachers to really dig into the needs that they have after implementing the resource for one year. So we'll differentiate theirs so that we have offerings for our new and our experienced teachers. Year three, we want to mimic that. Um, but we
want to start to leverage our teacher leaders. And so, we have just one on-site implementation training, which will be that foundational training for our new new teachers. Um, and then we'll work with our teacher leaders so that they are actually um stepping into the leadership role and facilitating the PD
um in different breakout sessions that uh they have identified that they need to support. And once we're through the initial first three years of implementation, then that's where we will really leverage our teacher leaders. And so during the uh the following welcome back days, we'll have
our teachers facil facilitate the professional development sessions for our new teachers as well as experienced. Um so I'm very proud of this package. I think that this speaks to the need that our committee has asked for and I think it will ensure that we have um just a
quality implementation of the new resource. Okay. Uh one of the pieces that our committee was really excited about and this is tied to the platform. It's writable um and the potential it has to give students timely and
meaningful feedback and then they can immediately turn around and apply it to their writing. So it tightens that feedback loop for our teachers, which we're hearing a lot. The more we ask our our students to write, the more feedback our teachers need to give. And so Writable comes alongside our teachers
and that teachers can tailor what type of feedback the program is giving students. And then rather than going in and correcting everything, it just coaches the students so that they're able to identify it in the writing. So, we're excited and believe that this will improve our student confidence as well
as um just our writing levels across all grade levels. Uh the great thing about it is it is more than just an extension of like a Google Docs. It actually goes in and supports the entire writing process. So, it starts with the planning, the drafting, the revising, and the feedback. And the teachers are
able to see real time the progress within the writing cycle for each student. Plus, they're able to strategically group students in the platform so that students can share their work and give targeted feedback to each other that then they can go back into their writing. So, we're really prioritizing the revision process and
writing and making sure that we're honing in on those fine skills. Uh, the other core piece of writable is that it is aligned directly with the content within the resource. So, as students are reading um the grade level text, they
are able to get in and respond to writing questions or writing prompts within Writable. And so, it might be that they're responding to a short story or they are writing a full essay within the platform, but every time they go into the platform, it will give them feedback and help them revise their
writing and thinking. Um, so we're really excited about that. The other thing is that it is available in both English and Spanish. Um, which we hope will help us reach all of our students in our district. And then
HMH really speaks to how using both into literature and writable has helped other districts move their second language learners. And so this study comes from Houston County School District in Houston County, Georgia. And despite statewide declines, Houston County EL
students using both HMH into literature and writable showed significant growth and resilience in writing skills. Across Georgia, the percentage of English learners who reached a developing or higher writing level dropped from 23.6%
in 2021 to 12.8% in 2023. And this is on their access their WEDA assessment. In contrast, students in Houston County using both writable and into literature saw significant growth. So 20% were at or above developing level in 2021 and
jumped to 34% in 2022. Also, the average achievement level of EL students in the school district remained higher than the state average at 18% in 2023. So, we believe that this resource is not only going to help all of our students specific specifically, we hope to see it
support our multilingual students as well. During the evaluation process, um there was a ton of opportunity to gather feedback from our educators. And so, highlighted on this slide is just some of that um the feedback from our committee highlighting the strengths of
the resource. So, I'll give you just a minute to look that over. Okay, thank you. Uh, when compared to previous curriculum resources, the strengths of into literature offer a promising glimpse into how this resource would
better support our students, empower our teachers, and overall just increase instructional practices in our school district. Um so this ties back to some of those priorities that the committee used uh when they were selecting the resource. So ease of use as we have talked to other school districts and
schools um and our teachers who have piloted lessons in the platform in their classroom. Teachers are saying that it's easy to navigate the resource and easy to make connections between both the printed materials and the digital platform. Um, we also were really
impressed by the ability to differentiate and scaffold within both the printed and digital platform. Um, it will pull our students reading levels and then teachers can go in and actually tag what support students might need. So, as they're pushing out um different
activities or questions, the program itself will modify so that it's accessible to all students. And then teachers have the opportunity to go in at any time and either increase or decrease those scaffolding levels so that we're constantly evaluating what our students able to do to meet grade
level standards. Lisa, will you explain what scaffolding means, please? Yes. So, um, we start our instruction at grade level all the time. And so that's the text and the prompts and the thinking that we're putting in front of our students. As our students are working through maybe learning a language or
working through some other skill deficits, then the scaffolds are going to be what we put in front of students that will allow them to access the content so that they can still go through the thinking process and they're able to produce their thinking so that the teacher can evaluate. So they're the
supports that students are receiving. So just want to throw out there um one bullet that was on one of the previous slides is HMH. So the publisher HMH um just bought NWBA which is our nationally normed common assessment that we u have our students do three times a year. And
so there's a direct connection then between the skills and especially the bands the skills bands inside of NWA and the curriculum that we have here. So so we should be able to look at what the students are able to do on our NWA common assessment and apply those skills to this curriculum. So it's a great
connection. Yeah. when they shared that during the vendor presentation, all of our committee, they were just like, "Oh my gosh, um it would be nice to have NWA really support the the work that our educators and students are doing in the classroom." So, that's a huge benefit of choosing to go with into literature. Um
we still have the opportunity for consumables and then our committee was really impressed with the diversity of the different types of text being offered within the curriculum as well as the variety in authors.
So, uh, the total cost for this adoption covering high school students in English classes 9 through 12 for a 7-year period amounts to 1,82,3547. This package includes all teacher materials, not only for our English teachers, but for our co-teers
as well. That was um a desire from all of our buildings was to make sure that our co-teers had access to the materials. And so that is built in. Uh we have student consumables for seven years included as well as the digital licenses for both teachers and students.
Um I am very excited that we have included the ability to go onetoone student to novel. So every student will have a copy of the novel that they are able to carry with them and access at any point. So that is a huge celebration um for me. And then the coachley license
is um also included for that first year as our teachers learn to navigate the platform. We'll keep one license for every building so that they have access to that on demand support. Um and then this also includes the professional learning package with the HMH coaching
and virtual professional development offerings as well. So I'll leave this up here in case you have any questions. Um, but the group as a former English teacher, eighth grade English teacher, and I know what Dr. Pel was as well, to get all of those people
in one room and be able to come up with one curriculum, it's just amazing. So, kudos to both of you for getting um all of those people down to just one curriculum. What questions do you all have? So, we're going to implement this starting next year. Yeah. And so the first year,
what we've seen on how this is going to roll out, we're going to have these sessions with our educators through that first year and then we continue with that professional development through the second and third. Yeah. So you'll see heavy on coaching from HMH the first
year, but then you'll see more of a transition into our teacher leaders that will lead those in future years, which goes right along with what we're hearing from teachers is that they want to be the experts during PD anyway. And so after that first year, you'll see more and more of our teachers that will lead the work. Excellent. Thanks. Um, so one
said the pilot uh period continued from January to February. Did it start in August? Like I was just trying to figure out how long the pilot period was. No. Yeah. So our our committee started meeting in November. We spent a lot of time on the foundational documents like the philosophy statement and really
internalizing the aim rubric. So we didn't start actually piloting resources until that January time period. Okay. I wanted to express appreciation for that. Um so I was trying to figure out, you know, I wanted to know something about the two curriculums without going
through everything committee went through. So I used chat GPT and I went on the Reddit education community. Um, and somebody on Reddit had actually posed the exact question of my perspectives versus into literature. Um, so it was fun to read the 34
comments. And one of the comments of those 34 comments was, "Our district spent two years piloting these two different curriculums. Biggest waste of my life." And so I just thought that was um a little comical. Um, but I I think
you know some piloting is obviously definitely appropriate. It sounds like for that district is how like they went overboard on the pilot. I had a question about the differentiation, but I think you answered it in another slide. It it means you can do like accelerated learners and English learners like where
um people are landing there. And so this curriculum like really celebrated the opportunity for the extensions as well. And that was something that we haven't always seen in previous curricular resources. And so it was really great to see how we could level up um the writing opportunity or the reading or the level
of um questioning within um a specific activity. And we could also provide those scaffolds to support students who need it. Yeah. No, that's pretty cool. And yeah, for my very peripheral research, I I liked HMH better, too. So, I'm glad we all
um and uh the last question, the student consumables, that's like workbooks and stuff that like Okay. So every year they'll have access to that. Cool. And with the on-site implementation trainings, I'm imagining like it's like a team of trainers they send over. Yep. So they'll send their HMH coaches and
they'll come out um and it will likely be on that August curriculum day for our teachers. So yes, they will be there to facilitate. Thank you. Yeah, my apologies. I'm going to go backwards on this one. Um can you clarify um the old curriculum um what
you mean by it was sold because hadn't we prepaid for a certain amount number of years. So did we actually lose that money then? It was actually at the end of its contract. Okay. And so we our plan would be to use it and probably just purchase and we do this sometimes in other curriculum. We just purchase the rights to use the platform. But this
um it sold it and uh it just changed so much that we just did not feel comfortable with using that anymore. We did not have the right access to that. the workbooks. Um the best option was just to go with the new one. This was the first curriculum we adopted after we passed the first mill levy override. High school and middle school language
curriculum was the first we adopted. So it was our oldest curriculum in the system. So then what are we doing for sixth through 8th if this is you adopted that last year? Oh my goodness. Okay. I'm trying to remember. We're in our first year of implementation of EL education. And so it will it's the same
curriculum uh provider that we purchased for elementary literacy is the same provider at middle level that we have. So K8 will be EL and then now we have HMH for and DL did not have an option yet for 912. Okay. Thank you. So side
licenses seven years quick question. As um seniors graduate and you get nth graders coming up does this include the new workbooks? Yes, every year. Yes, the consumables will be replenished for every student every year.
The piece that won't be replenished will be the novels. And so schools when they receive the novels, they'll actually catalog them in the library and then we'll check them out through the library. So it'll function just like any other library book, but we won't replenish the novels yeartoear. This will be a onetime purchase for the
novels. Well, thank you very much. Always appreciate seeing the entire process. And um I think that that the cost for seven years looked fairly similar to what I remember some of our other curricula costing. So hopefully that's
not jumping up a lot with inflation and things like that. But um obviously enormous enormously important piece of we need to have good curriculum and have all of the updates and the the digital content as well. So thank you very much.
Thank you. Thanks guys. Our next item will be legislative updates with Mr. We were talking today. It's been a very very active legislative season and it it continues to be. Thank you, President Nash and members of
the board. Um, my name is Nate Fall. I'm in House Legal Counsel for the school district. we are talking about current legislation. Um certainly if you do have any questions or if there's something that I've missed, please let me know and I will do my best to get that information to you as soon as I
can. Um just off the top, the legislature is going to adjourn on May 7th. So that's only a few weeks away um two weeks I believe from today. So not a whole lot of time, but they are pushing every single bill forward imaginable.
So, uh, this really is kind of the biggest part of the year in terms of, um, getting bills to put get pushed forward or getting bills to die in committee, um, ideally. So, I did I do have a spelling error under 1 C, but we do need to prioritize political capital
with an A on any remaining bills. That must have been a political capital spell checker with an O. Um, so just know that really where we focus our energy right now is super important. And again, we only have a few weeks left. So if there is anything that we really want to focus
on and have our lobbyists and Barkcus focus on and prioritize for us, now is the time to do it. We'll get started just on financial uh on our board priorities. Just so you know, the financial literacy bill did it is in action since the last board
meeting. It did pass the House today on its third reading. So, it is moved to the Senate. Um, with the newest amendments that have been adopted, I would say that this bill is now granting broad discretion to LEAs or local education authorizers or or school
districts uh to use curriculum that they've already adopted in so far as that curriculum aligns with what the financial literacy law is in Colorado. So, there's already a law about financial literacy curriculum in Colorado. It's just not required that students take it. Um, and so if we
already have classes that are in alignment with that law, we can use that law or we can use those classes to be in compliance with the law. This will apply to all students starting uh September 1st, 2026. So this upcoming school year we won't need to worry about, but we will need to have something ready the
following year. Uh the there were some amendments are also adopted creating some grant programs particularly for some of the smaller school districts to implement financial literacy courses. I'm not sure if we would necessarily qualify. Uh but of course if there's grant money available and we think we
might qualify, we would certainly throw our hat in the hopper and see what we can do. So that's where we're at with the financial literacy bill. It's probably going to pass and it probably will be a requirement. Uh I don't anticipate that. Well, we'll just see on
how much change will need to be made. Does does that impact CDE at not CDE but the standards at all? They did not change the standards. No. So standards are the same. Yeah. And um in the version I did share an electronic version and so you can see I I linked in
the most recent version of the bill. Um and Mr. Rosari. And so to answer your question, I I think the the state will develop the state board of education will develop its own standards on financial literacy. But again, if there's already a course
that we already have that is in alignment with the law, I'm I'm guessing that the state board wouldn't stray from those statutory standards. So, I'm guessing we would be in alignment if that's the case. But yeah, thank you for that question.
Um, anything else? Moving on to uh House Bill 251135. That's the phone man bill as I've been calling it, communication devices in schools. Governor Pulse did sign that bill last week. It is law. Uh we already have a policy that has restrictions on
the use of cell phones during school hours. Our policy is more robust than what the state requires. So we're good to go. Uh I generally just as a matter of principle don't like uh laws that tell us to do things that we're already doing. Just so you know, which both of
these laws do unnecessary. Both of these pieces of legislation do the financial literacy and the cell phone ban. People think because I'm a lawyer I like laws. That's not the case. Okay? So, just so you all know, I'm not like in defense of all laws, but okay. Anyways, I don't
need to defend myself. Um, and then from the federal administration, I did add two more executive orders that came in last week from uh President Trump. That was restoring equality of opportunity and mediocracy and re reinstating comments in school discipline policies.
Uh again, you can um go in and those uh that's the actual language from those executive orders, but just know that those two April 23rd orders are kind of saying the same thing around disperate impact. So whether or not we have a policy that may be neutral on its face, if it's disproportionately impacting one
group um typically at least by this administration uh on the basis of race that we would need to um that OCR is directed to no longer look at disperate impact essentially is what this is kind of calling for. There's going to be addition additional guidance coming from
the US Department of Education and the Department of Justice. So, we will again see. Uh, I was in a meeting last week with Attorney General Phil Weiser and I'll just say it made me feel a little bit better because I've been having conversations with this board and essentially not providing you with a
whole lot of information because we don't really know what's coming and what next steps are. And attorney Philiser, I don't want to put words in his mouth, but they're also kind of in the same camp that we're just not totally sure exactly what to do yet. So, um I felt better just in my own uh abilities when
I heard that. But just know that there's a lot coming. There's a lot we're reviewing and determining, but really we're not making any changes because at least we don't have any guidance that requires us to make any changes if that makes sense. Um but again, I'll continue to
update you and just so you know that the state did not sign that certification letter. Uh we got some additional information back from uh Susanna Cordova who is our we call her the secretary of education commissioner of education um with additional information essentially
saying that she's going to sign or not sign the certification on behalf of all districts uh and gave some kind of reasonings why which we talked about at the last meeting. So we still haven't signed anything as as a district yet. Uh uh Commissioner Cord Cordova did give us
the opportunity to sign the certification letter or sign a different letter. Um and ultimately we just decided to not sign anything because I I at least I thought that was the best approach. Any questions on that? All right. So and then the last um
kind of board priority that we had been discussing over the course of this legislative session was House Bill 251278. that is modifications to the accountability system that also passed third reading today in the House and that is now moved on to the Senate. So
just so you know this bill has created a more kind of holistic approach to how um schools are rated. It created kind of these post-secondary readiness indicators, these PWR indicators uh that I would argue that district 6 really benefits from because we do have such a
focus on um career readiness uh as well as all the certification programs that we have in our school district. And those will go to providing us with a better rating essentially. Um I I kind of also explained in my narrative here
just kind of what this bill is also doing. It has been heavily amended, but for the most part, the spirit of what the accountability committee recommended is now integrated in this bill. Um, and I believe that this is something that we should be supporting at this
point. There were some changes in in terms of amendments. they they were this they were going to have this accountability dashboard that was going to be available to make it transparent for folks to be able to go on to the website and click through and they're getting rid of that and that's going to save about half a million dollars. So
there was some kind of technical changes that they made to to make up some of the revenue um that this bill ultimately would cost if they were going to roll it forward. So, I would say again that the spirit of the committee's recommendations uh are in alignment with this bill and uh we stand to benefit
based on all the great work that we do in this district for supporting students beyond just post-secary readiness. There is a summary in here. Uh again, um I do recommend that you look into that. Uh for other proposed legislation,
this is on page three. We had talked at the last meeting, Senate Bill 25284. This is that youth services engagement on school campuses. Uh it did pass the Senate second reading with amendments today. So it's on for its third reading. This bill was amended. Um some of those
amendments came, I believe, through CASBY. Well, actually I I know for a fact CASBY is still in opposition, but now it's not requiring these organizations to actually come on campus during instructional hours. What it's doing is it's requiring that school districts create a policy that would
allow these organizations to communicate with students. And so how would these organizations communicate with these students? It doesn't have to occur during school days. In fact, the amendment specifies that communication cannot occur during instructional time.
Um I I we already do this. Uh again, we already have a process for which uh outside organizations can communicate with their school communities. Um I don't see a point in having a law tell us what we're already doing. I also
think it opens the door to unnecessary liability. I think if you heard the comments on this bill originally, they uh one of the panelists just read through, you know, 20 organizations and basically just said by this law, you'd have to allow all these folks in. and
you know they use very very polarizing groups right to kind of make a point and I think that that doesn't go away with this bill. Um so just know that I still recommend that we oppose this bill. Um of course I'm always open to um this board. I don't believe we've actually
taken a firm position on it yet. Just basically it's letting them use our list serve. Like even if it's not during instructional hours, like any organization can have access to like all our families emails and just send out like promotional information for their
organization. Yeah. So we would have to and we already have kind of a non-curricular distribution policy that's out there. And so we would we would be able to use these kind of time, place, and manner restrictions on, you know, would they be able to get emails or would they just be able to post it on
the school's website or would we only have handouts that we could give or leave it at the front office and they could come take handouts, you know, would we create an area where these organizations could have their materials out there? Um, so we would have to kind of develop these time place and manner
restrictions. And so yeah, I you know and I think my recommendation would not be to release emails so that they could kind of share that in that manner, right? But you know, would we then be restricting one organization over another? And so again, we're kind of creating liability in that regard. Um
and so I I just find this bill to be a little bit frustrating. I think it's made with the right intention. It's backed by the scouts. I mean, that's really the group that that wants this. Um, and I think we all most school districts have a good relationship with the scouts, but
you know, it doesn't say scouts, right? Like it's not like that is who is the that it's limited to that organization. And like you said, that definition is pretty broad. I mean, I like my instinct is to oppose it because I can only see
this becoming a problem. Yeah, I I would tend to agree and yeah, I left that definition of what youth organizations, youth service organizations are defined as, and it is a very broad um statement. I was on the CASBY's legislative resolution committee call on Friday and all the school district, you know,
members of that group all had similar concerns. Um, and so they're staking in a position of opposition as well, just because it just feels like it's going to be a burden for schools and school districts to manage these requests.
I don't know if anybody else feels strongly does it look like this will pass? I'm sorry. And I mean, do you do you have a sense of where where this is? So I think I my take is that there's an opportunity to
kill the bill and once it goes to the house and it'll probably go to the House comm education committee first and that would be our best opportunity to get some changes in there or to try to make sure that the bill doesn't pass.
Besides scouts, who were some of the other organizations? Um let me see here. I know I know that this is a big scouts bill, but I I probably shouldn't just call out scouts because I know that I'm sure there's other organizations that Well, I think originally it was just the scouts that
were supporting it, but when you consider all the organizations that could have access, then it becomes much broader than the scouts. Yes. Um, uh, why Colorado Alliance of YMCA's is in support. Colorado Children's Alliance, which I'm actually not sure what that
organization is, they're in support. and scouting Colorado. Yeah. How does um what is the current status of like military recruiters or college recruiters
um communicating with students in our schools? How does that happen? Military recruiters is a whole separate requirement and that's a that's a federal requirement where we do need to open our um students up for recruitment to military. And so we have a very
specific process an opt- in opt out for I believe it's juniors, high school juniors to get or receive that information. And so that that's we have policy language specifically addressing military recruiters. Um I don't know if that answered your question. Yeah, it
does. And then how about for colleges and universities? because would this sort of bill impact them in any way, shape or form like private colleges or religious colleges, things along those lines? That's a good question. Um, I
don't know specifically about all colleges. I know for the ones we have partnerships with, we have we're in we're actually even developing opt-in optouts for sharing information with Ames, for example. Um, and so students can not opt out of us sharing with Ames
and then when they graduate, Ames will send them a letter of acceptance and they're automatically accepted into AS. But that's through this partnership that we have with sharing information and so they can opt in or opt out of sharing that through our school counseling office. So, college visits are scheduled
and and students are notified um via systems within the school of when those recruiters will be there and students can sign up to go meet with recruiters during the school day. And this bill, regardless of whether it passes or doesn't pass, won't have an impact on
our current see it having an impact on that. Okay. No. And and I mean I guess if you read what a nonprofit organization is broadly, it could be considered a university. Um but I I think it's really
for those organizations like Scouts and um Colorado Children's Alliance and YMCA. So that that's a good question, Doran, because now I'm curious. I'm on my sixth kid who is now a senior and every year of the senior year, every single one of the kids just gets spammed
with massive flyers and um tons of stuff comes in the mail and how are they getting on that list because they haven't contacted those 55 60 colleges that we're getting information for that's that's specifically addressed to that student. Yeah, I don't know. I mean
I my guess is through direct the release of directory information that these orgs will reach out and say give me a list of all students who have not opted out and then we just by law share it with them. Um so I don't yeah I don't know and it's same thing with when you Google
something on your phone all of a sudden you're getting an email about it like two days later you know I just I don't know how that information ultimately gets shared. Um, you know, our our goal with any vendor or anybody we're working with is always student privacy first. And so we always want to make sure that they're not going to be selling student
information or releasing student information. Um, so yeah, we're we do our best to kind of be gatekeepers for that. Would this change that our ability to be gatekeepers? Do you foresee?
I mean, I I it's possible. I mean, I think if we're if we're opening the door for organizations to contact students, I think that it just makes it harder to control that, you know, just logically speaking. that would give anyone I can only
anyone would have that right at that point with the passage of this bill if they can indicate that they're they promote civic education leadership creatiness or um similar opportunities which it's pretty broad pretty pretty
easy to do that I I would recommend that we oppose this Nate just as a parent of five kids that I mean the amount of information I get just from the school district. Um when when you start saying, "Well, we're going to have these other
organizations coming uh and I'm going to get information from from them as well." Just the ability to wade through everything is is really difficult. Um and I think we our own ability to communicate with our parents is um is
hurt when we allow other people to use the school system to communicate with our parents. Yep. Yeah. my my takeaway and you know I'm I'm such a stickler for furbra student you know student information and that's because families give us a lot of information and they trust us with that
information and so we have a duty to protect it and and not just a duty moral duty but a legal duty to protect that information and so the more we open the door to that just the more concerned I get from kind of a legal liability perspective
so any other questions or comments? Thank you for all that. The next one is uh House Bill 231300, workers compensation benefits, proof of entitlement. We haven't discussed this bill. Um it has come out fairly recently. It'll be heard um on the Senate floor
tomorrow. This is really an employer employee type bill. Um certainly uh expands rights under the workers compensation law. Uh I think what's concerning about this bill is uh it
allows for physician selection. Um and currently the district and our in when working with our insurance we carefully select providers uh and that employees are kind of required by law to select one of those four providers. This bill would allow employees to select any
level one or level two physician within a 70mi radius. Um just any of them. Um, and this really just from a business perspective could substantially increase costs not only for things like mileage reimbursement, paid travel time. That is
something we currently pay for is I think it's called like windshield. I forget what the word is, but essentially from the minute you get in your car and drive to your physician's office to the minute you get back, we pay for all of that time for travel. So, a 70 mile radius is a pretty large um I think that would take you all the way down to
Highlands Ranch um which we know that um travel just there and back could take some time. Um but I think also losing quality control over medical providers um we've had providers in the past that we've had to work with insurance to remove just because of their treatment
of employees, right? Um, and I think that by allowing kind of folks to choose any provider that they want to, this could create a kind of a cottage industry of of providers who provide higher impairment ratings um or recommend um unnecessary treatments and
this could drive up costs. So again, this is just really from a financial business perspective. Um, I will say that the vast majority of employer groups in the state are um very opposed to this bill. very very very much opposed. This is not a school district
specific bill. This is just a statewide um employer employee bill. There is one element of this bill that we would support and that's that um right now as it's written once once a physician is selected for you, you can't change uh even if it's not really working out. And this bill would give you a one-time
physician change if you would like that. Um we know that sometimes patient doctor relationships don't work out. Um and so giving them that opportunity would be beneficial to those employees. Um but we just think that this this bill as it's written is going to increase costs
significantly and then again just through speculation and um we can just anticipate that it will lead to more claims or claims that'll get dragged on for longer and things of that nature. So Nate, where does this come from? uh was there was there some sort of a problem
somewhere in the state with employees getting access to appropriate medical care when they were injured in the on the job? So, um, what I understand, I don't know if this came from one specific place, but there were, um, in the panelists for this committee, there were, um, just they brought forth a
number of injured employers who kind of gave their stories about how they were forced to be with one provider, it wasn't working out for them, they weren't getting the treatment that they needed, but they were still stuck with this one provider, right? Um, or that they were required to choose from these select physicians, but it wasn't their
physician, and so they wanted to have their physician because they thought they would get better treatment from that individual. So, I don't know if this is brought by one particular group. Um, but it was I I think it's just brought more from the
um injured workers and the attorneys who work for them or kind of the folks who may be behind this. And I can see I'm curious if um like the healthcare industry if their lobbyists have uh weighed in on it. Like my gut is this sounds
terrible as a medical provider. I would hate to do workers comp personally. Um, so I I'm interested. I I would assume most doctors who don't work in workers comp would not want to do this.
So, uh, Advent Health is in opposition. Um, every major school district, uh, AFSCME is in support of it. I'm not sure what that is. Uh it's a it looks like an advocacy council or a union uh American Federation of State, County, and
Municipal Employees. So it's a a labor union um of government employees. Government employees. Yep. So yeah, I mean, you know, Colorado Ready Mixed Concrete Association is in opposition. Colorado Telecommunications
Association is in opposition. City of Colorado Springs, City of Fort Collins, City of Thornon, all the cities are in opposition. Colorado Ambulatory Surgery Center Association's in opposition. Who's in support here? Colorado Education Association is in
support. Colorado Livestock Association's in opposition. Rural Schools Alliance is in opposition. Doesn't sound like there's any healthcare group represented, which is really just interesting. I had not heard of this until until this update. It's it's been on our it's been on our
radar. Um but just kind of nothing was happening and then all of a sudden, you know, here we are with two weeks left. Um you don't have two weeks. It's a week from when somebody chose me, for example, um my I actually don't have any openings for the next 3 months. So my medical assistant right now, if I have a
follow-up for any patient, it's she has to send a message to herself for when my schedule will open up in a month to get them an appointment. I mean, it would drag the process on forever, you know, because at least primary care doctors, there's a shortage of
physicians, right? So, our schedules are so full. There's I think workers comp doctors, they have availability to see somebody in a more, you know, a better timeline. And I I would say it's our and our insurance's perspective that that
those physicians are best suited for workers comp claims because it's it's procedural, you know, like there's a process to follow and they are experts in that kind of area and they kind of understand what's needed and so just for efficiency sake it's also really beneficial too. So um yeah, I've been
through the workers comp claim four or five times. the process. There's no lack of options or or there's not like a shortage of or a like a there's not like a hole that that that they're not getting taken care of. They're they're actually on the opposite end. They're
they're getting extra good care, extra good. And then there is you're right, there is there is a group of physicians and doctors and hospitals and and places that are especially, you know, already trained and in tune with with how the process works. sounds like just
a, you know, a soup sandwich in the making, you know what I mean? And um they uh you know, employees have have the tendency to just go to the highest costing place because they think that's automatically going to be the best,
which doesn't technically all I mean, you don't need to go to Cherry Hills to to get a a worker comp claim for a broken toe, right? Like it can it can be handled here. So, it's I I'm I'm always fighting to get my guys to not go to the emergency room for, you know, the sniffle, right? And
it's that's hard. I can't imagine what something like this would would open up Pandora's box. Yeah, I I would agree with that. And and I think you know and I say we meaning the school district and our insure pinnacle strongly believe that the physicians that we have available are
capable and and do provide good care. Like I said there's I've never seen a lap where I'm like oh it's a loophole for me. No, it's it's the opposite. It's it's always in the employees favor. So I think that quality control is is super important. Um just from a
business perspective. Sounds to me like we want to hold on on oppose Nate. Okay. No one. All right. Um the next bill, Senate Bill 25276. This is that uh protect civil rights immigration status. We had talked about this bill at the last meeting. Um,
it has been amended, but I think again kind of the spirit remains where it it creates kind of restrictions for what schools can ask or require in terms of information from families about um place of birth, immigration status um and that we would
be restricted from allowing federal immigration officials from you entering our facilities without a valid judicial warrant. Um the only issue that I really still see is this civil penalty uh which could go against an employee for up to 50,000
$50,000 per violation. The law is pretty specific that it's for intentional violations. Uh they did strike the language about removal of qualified immunity. So uh employees are assumed to be immune from suit now, which is good.
Um but still they could be subject to a fairly hefty penalty. Employers as well could also be subject to the same penalty of up to $50,000. Uh again just for intentional violations. I think that this is a much more watered down version um of the
previous bill. I don't like having our employees potentially being on the hook for anything. Um but I think that there is still some added protection especially with that qualified immunity provision um looped back in there. So, um, we were in a position of monitor amend at the
last meeting and I recommend we kind of stay there. All right. So, House Bill 20 1023. This is the House joint resolution bill uh requiring the general assembly or authorizing the general assembly's committee to retain legal counsel to
file a lawsuit in district court. And so the intention of this is that they would sue the state legislature would st sue essentially uh how to explain this. I'm
having a hard time wrapping my mind around this. So the state legislature would be would have standing to sue essentially the state of Colorado for a law that is unconstitutional. meaning that federal law, US law requires kind
of this representative democracy, right? Where we vote for representatives who then vote for things like taxes. Taber gets rid of that. Taber just brings that power to the voters directly. So, we kind of lose that representative
democracy. And so this lawsuit's essentially arguing that by removing those essential legislative powers, Taber is unconstitutional. Um, and so this resolution would need to go through both houses. It just needs a simple majority to pass. And then ultimately this would
give uh the Colorado General Assembly's Committee on Legal Services the right to obtain legal counsel to then bring a lawsuit. Are you all still following? I'm making sense. I'm so sorry.
Not your fault. So, and and you know, we we know that Democrats currently hold a majority in both chambers. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to pass. I think that there are many factors at play uh including just that folks in Colorado like Taber. Um and so that doesn't mean that every Democrat is going to vote uh for this bill. I will
also say that there was a fairly similar case already brought in 2011, Kerr versus Hickinlooper, that essentially argued pretty much the same thing. um and that was rejected by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. So, I'm not confident that even if this bill were to
go through that it would be a successful legal challenge. Um I did highlight on the next page kind of the primary issues for what would be what would make this a successful lawsuit. uh they would have to establish standing meaning that the
the the state legislature has standing to bring a lawsuit that they are suffering from some legal harm and therefore can bring a lawsuit. Uh they'd have to overcome this constitutional argument that was already decided by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals that Taber violates this guarantee clause, this
representative democracy clause. Uh it would have to overcome legal precedence. Again, that curve versus Hickinlooper case uh argued very much the same thing. So they'd have to be presenting some new arguments or presenting some new evidence that would make this different
um you know to distinguish it. And then of course they'd have to garner enough public support for this. Uh again this has come in front of the voters several times um and the voters of Colorado seem to support Taber and so you know even if
this were to go to a lawsuit it's difficult to know what public perception might be about it. So, that's a very I feel pretty bad crappy summary of what this is. I'd be happy to answer your questions or try to answer your questions about
it. It has gone to the House reading of the whole, so it did make it through committee. Um, and that was today. So, I'm actually not sure what the outcome of that was. Nate, is Taber part of the state constitution? It is. I think most people don't understand
Taber. I think that's I think my my take is that's probably true. Um I think people don't understand what significance it has on our ability to fund public education and other and other public needs. Yeah.
Okay. School finance. School finance. So I didn't put very many notes down there. Uh just know that it is moving forward. Uh this is something that we are supporting. It is now assigned to the House Education Committee who will be hearing that on Wednesday. Uh Dr. Pilch
will be going down to testify. Again, I don't know if we have any other board directors who are volunteering or being volunttoled to go down to testify in front of our Senate Education Committee. Uh of course, uh I'm always happy to go and testify, but they way rather hear
from you all than a lawyer. I mean, truly, they don't really want to hear from you all that much. Um there is a fiscal note. This is the the third rendition, the most recent version of the fiscal notes attached, so you can go in there and read it. There are amendments that are still being introduced and those will be heard by
the Senate Education Committee. I think the biggest one that's being dealt with, at least was dealt with in the House, had to do with this uh at risk supplemental funding um and how that flows through to charters. And so that's being dealt with um through amendments.
And just know that um we do benefit from that kind of separate at risk appropriation that'll stay in place next year. It'll be then reduced by 50% during the 2627 fiscal year and then it'll go away in its entirety during the 2728 fiscal year. Um I don't know if you
have anything to add on school finance. No, lots of people are still working really hard. I think we're it's been a very busy legislative season. Very busy. Did the one about um data requirements that were school
specific? Did that die? That was uh I think I was just reading that amendment. I think it was like amendment 11 or something. I don't know. Um I don't know either. That you started out saying that we needed to prioritize political capital. Do you have a
recommendation on which of these bills is most impactful to us and how should we prioritize our political capital and time with lobbyists or lobbyist time with legislators? You know, I think well I you know I
think one area of political capital that we want to continue focusing on is the school finance act. I think of everything that that's probably the most important place that we should be spending our our attention. I mean, I think the systems of accountability bill is another good one that we would um certainly put our weight behind to
support that bill and those amendments that were made. Um, you know, I think personally I I do think that the workers compensation bill is significant. Um, but again, if that's something that we just want to continue to monitor, then the youth service organization bill is
something that, you know, we could take a stronger position on. Um, I'm just not sure if our testimony will add anything else than what's already been said in a lot of ways, especially of groups that are in opposition to that bill. Kind of like
the workers compensation bill as well, right? Um, so I think to answer your question, school finance is probably our our most important thing and accountability and accountability. Yeah. And there's you said two weeks left in session about a week and a half. Next Wednesday. Yeah. A week a week from
Wednesday is the last day. May 7th is Yep. Do you do you feel optimistic that the school finance act will make it through the Senate? Mhm. Yes. Okay, good. We are optimistic. Anything
else? Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Paul. There's a We have a lot of questions. There's a lot to unpack there. Um well, as we do have a reception to get to, we'll go ahead and close with our debrief. Um Mr. Matthew, to go first.
Um nothing much. Just thank you. Thank you everyone for the work and bringing us new English curriculum. Hard to believe we're second round of uh stuff. Looks like they did a great job. And thank you, Mr. Fall, always for keeping us updated.
Mr. Well, it's always great to know the system works and in regards to the curriculum, it seems to be uh going well and I appreciate your work on behalf of all the curriculum folks. Okay, I know how much time that takes and uh Nate for
keeping us updated and even though you are a lawyer, we know that you do like laws and you follow them. So, that's really a positive thing. So, thank you, Mr. Null. I do appreciate uh everything that uh counselor fall does. Amazes me
that his his wealth of knowledge. And as far as the curriculum goes, it's kind of like athletes showing up to play football on the football field. The field's ready for them. There's a whole lot of work that goes into it um to get there. So, appreciate all the work on the curriculum.
Yep. Um likewise, just uh wanted to give you guys kudos uh for being so thorough on choosing um the new curriculum for our 9th through 12th graders. Excited about seeing AI used in a positive way for our teachers and um the graphs on
English language learners was really exciting too. So um and then Mr. Fall always thank you for helping us understand what's going on at the capital with an O. [Music] So, not much more to add. Thank you for
your thoughtful presentation. Um, I can tell that there was a lot of effort and work put in by a lot of people and uh, Mr. Fall, you had me up until the table and then I'm lost at that point. So, wow.
I'll explain it to you. Yeah. Okay. I'm going ask you questions, Mr. Be. Yeah, same. Thank you guys for all your hard work. Um, I'm in agreeance with NATO. I hate laws for the sake of making laws. Also, I'm not a fan of government employee supported laws most
of the time, especially when the entire private sector is going to be funding it and and against it. So, um, it always seems like a red flag to me. It's not a it's not a uh all for one or nothing, but it's always a something to pay attention to. So, thank you for
pointing that out and bring it to our attention. Thank you very much for all of your work on the curriculum as well as um the legislative update. Uh Mr. Fall, I was wondering if we can take it as like a pat on the back that we're already doing all the things that they want to put into law. We're like, "Yeah, we already
thought of it." Um all right. Thank you very much. This meeting is adjourned. Um please join us back for our business meeting at 6 p.m. [Music] Heat. Heat. Part: 2
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Good evening and welcome to the business meeting for the board of education of Gley Evans School District 6 on April 28th, 2025. This meeting will now come to order. Please join us for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge algiance to the flag of the
United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Miss Lemon, will you please call the role? Director Ozari, present. Director
Bentley, present. Director Campos Spitzy, present. Director Mash, present. Director Matthews, present. Director Norwood, present. Director Sullivan present. All board members present. And I would also like to welcome our council of student representatives that are sitting with us tonight. We have Timothy
Longer who serves as president from Northridge High School and Sarah Venegas, member of the CSR from Early College Academy. Thanks for being here. Um, tonight is another great night for celebrations and for gratefulness. Um this evening we will be receiving a
gift from one of our community partners um whose one of their um core foundation points is to be local and to provide um not only their services to the community but also to to utilize local businesses as they as they do business in the
community. And that was a point that I made that I learned tonight. So I'm very um grateful that we have community partners such as them. Um, I also wanted to thank the community members who came out to celebrate President Michael Matthews. Uh, we had a great time just
recalling all of the wonderful times these last six and a half years and also um and also the steady leadership that he provided through some of those more difficult times. So, thank you all for supporting him through his tenure as board president.
And um when I asked him for some advice on how he is such a fantastic public speaker, he said that he always speaks from a place of gratitude and just speaks from the heart. So that is what I will also endeavor to do as I take over
the reigns. Um another thank you to our community for our mill levy override. This evening we will be refreshing our K our 9th through 12th grade English language um curriculum and that was the very first curriculum that we were able to refresh um seven years ago when our
mil levy override was originally passed. Much of our curriculum was 12 to 20 years old when we began the refresh process. And now, thank you to those extra dollars from our community, we've been able to refresh every subject at every grade level. Um, and now we're back to the beginning. Um, so that our
students can have the most up-to-date, the best um, datadriven education possible. Want to just encourage all of our students who may be taking AP exams this next couple of weeks. they have been working very hard. I know there's
extra study sessions going on. Um so all of you just take a deep breath and um and try to focus on all that you've been working and learning hard. Um and now I will turn it over to Dr. Pilch for her superintendent's honor
role. Thank you, President Mash. Um good evening, Board of Education and President Mash. I have um a group I'm going to honor tonight in my superintendent's honor roll. I am going to honor the Gley West High School student council. Um and I I I'm going to
ask them to come up to the podium um and let you see them. So come on up, guys, all of you. I'm going to let you introduce yourselves here in just a minute, but I want to first talk about why you're getting honored. Okay. So, uh, the Gley West High School Student Council, they have been recognized as a
2025 National Gold Council of Excellence by the National Association of Student Councils. Uh, they've been recognized for their exemplary record of leadership, service, and activities that improve the school and the community. Um, the program is supported by its
parent organization, the National Association of Secondary School Principles. Um the Gley West High School Student Council is student driven. Um their project was called the Gley West High School Student Council Student Driven Change. Um and it has earned them
the national recognition as again as a national gold council of excellence, proving that when young people are given the chance to lead, they turn their vision into real world impact. Um a student council must meet a variety of criteria to earn the National Gold
Council of Excellence Award. In addition to basic requirements such as written constitution, regular meetings, and a democratic election process, the councils must have demonstrated successful sponsorship and participation in its activities such as leadership,
development, and service to the school and the community. Um, we've got their sponsors with them tonight, Lee Samford and Zachary Armstrong. Thank you for supporting the student council. I bet you had something to do with this honor. And um I understand I'm going to bring the award up and then we're going to ask
to hear from them to get this. I should have had a friend. You want to speak first? Yeah. you first introduce yourself and then have everybody say who they are here. Okay. Okay. Um good evening. I'm Madison
Vela. I'm a senior at Gilly West and I'm student council vice president. Um I just wanted to talk about some of the impactful things that we have done um this year. Uh we have done a dodgeball tournament where we hosted a food drive for the Weld County Food Bank. our annual Spartan Choice Awards where we
honor students beyond academics and athletics. We partnered with book trust to read with students at Sha Shasheen this year and our middle school leadership day where we hosted districts sixth, seventh, and eighth graders to host workshops on various aspects of leadership. Thank you all for joining us
in this celebration. Hello all, I am Reundo Ruveno Campes Jr. I am a junior and I am the student council treasurer and one thanks from me for all of you for honoring us and allowing us to continue doing the work in our community. Thank you.
Hello, my name is Kate. I am a junior at Girly West and I'm the vice president-elect for the 2025 2026 school year. Hi, my name is Mackenzie Malti and I'm a 9th grade representative. Hi, my name is Cody Gizick. I'm
currently sitting as the communications liaison as a as a junior and next year I'll be the president. Hi, I'm Cam Cooney and I am one of the junior representatives. Thank you and congratulations. Thank you for being here. Our next item is to
approve the agenda. This is an action item. Will require a motion. Move that the board of education of Green Leav School District 6 approves the agenda as presented. Second. Thank you both. Is there any discussion on the motion? Seeing none, Miss Lemon, will you call
the vote? Director Ozari, I. Director Bentley, hi. Director Campos Spitzy, I. Director Mash, I. Director Matthews, I. Director Norwood, I. Director Sullivan, Motion carries 70. We are on to our special items this evening. And the first is our project
teacher find recognition. I'll give this over to Dr. Pilch. Thank you, President Mash. I would like to welcome uh Mrs. Zanette Overton, assistant superintendent of human resources to the podium. uh to lead tonight's presentation. Good evening. I would invite our um
director of human resources, Dr. Matt Thompson, to come up as well. He's been participating in this work. And we're excited to talk to you again tonight about project teacher find and what all the students that we had and the interviews. So, I'll turn it over to Dr.
Thompson. Thank you, Dr. Pilch, President Mash board, and our members of our council of student representatives. Uh in 1988, uh UNC and district 6, uh created a
unique opportunity for students, uh which provides for a scholarship for us to be able to grow our own. Uh this is uh for us to be able to uh identify and uh recruit and train
district 6 students uh to become future teachers. Uh we are pleased to announce that this year we have uh three recipients of this award uh who are identified by our school counselors and then a team that's
made up of district 6 uh staff and UNCC uh staff that help identify who receives this scholarship. Uh it is a renewable scholarship in the amount of $2,500 and is going to be awarded to three students uh two of them who are
here this evening. And so I have a little information I'd just like to share about each of these three. So first we're honored to recognize Sky Escabedo who's a graduating senior from Northridge High School for her outstanding commitment to
pursuing a career in education. These are a few words that were said about her. It says, "Though she initially considered the medical field, Sky shared that becoming a teacher wasn't one of the first things that came to mind when looking at a future career option until fairly
recently. However, through the challenges and growth that she's experienced during high school, she came to a powerful realization. The people that make the biggest impact are none others than those who teach. Motivated by a deep desire to make a meaningful difference
in the lives of others, Sky discovered that education was her true calling. Her compassion, resilience, and natural leadership have already left a lasting mark on her school community. Lauren Gorman, who Sky student council adviser,
shared, "Sky consistently demonstrates a genuine concern for others and possesses the remarkable ability to positively influence those around her. Uh with clarity of purpose and a heart for service, Sky is poised to become an inspiring educator and a force for
positive change in the lives of future students. So congratulations. Next, we're proud to recognize Jilliana Ut, who's a graduating senior, also from Northridge High School, whose journey toward a career in education is deeply rooted in personal resilience and a
desire to give back. Juliana shared that growing up, home was in constant chaos, being a battleground of tension, neglect, and uncertainty. But school became her sanctuary, a place where she could think, breathe, escape, and just
be a kid. It was within the safety of the classroom that she found comfort and connection. And now she's determined to offer that same support for her future students. She said, "I want every student to feel like school is a place they can depend on, a place where they
are safe to learn, grow, and explore." her teachers uh made a lasting impact on her life and she now aspires to become a person who makes a difference by offering more than just education but a genuine connection. Uh Jilliana student council
and theater adviser Lauren Gorman described her as this. A student whose enthusiasm for learning and passion for teaching are evident in the care and effort she puts into every task. With heartfelt purpose
and a remarkable sense of empathy, Gilana is ready to create the kind of classroom that uplifts, empowers, and transforms lives. Congratulations And I'm going to share a little bit about Kayla Kimizuka, who's our third
recipient who's not here this evening. Uh she's a senior from Early College Academy. Uh her passion for teaching runs deep. Uh and it's a family tradition as she shared about her experiences. Uh really talked a lot about her family. She said, "Education's
in my blood. I had a rough childhood and home was not always a great place for me, but having a safe place at school was always an option. It's a safe haven that has shaped her future. And today, she's determined to become the kind of teacher who offers not only education, but
stability, encouragement, and connection. She said, "I want kids to be able to have a safe place and a trusted adult outside of the home." Her dedication is evident in her academic and extracurricular efforts. She works on in the summer with college for kids
which is with Ames Community College and is already making an impact on young learners. Uh her political science professor Kenneth Howell said this of Kayla. Kayla is an extremely inquisitive student regularly asking questions that go beyond the surface uh and into real
world understanding. With a heart for social studies and a calling rooted in compassion, Kayla is on her way to becoming a truly remarkable educator. So if you join me in congratulating these students for their accomplishments and their commitment to a profession and
[Applause] [Laughter] education closer together. Thank you. [Applause] [Laughter] Congratulations and please come back and
apply for IT district 6 when you are teachers. We would love to have you back. Our second special item is to welcome Aloe Fiber. They will be presenting a check for $24,000. Every new residential customer
who signed up for Aloe service from November through December 2024 was presented with the opportunity to select a school to receive a $50 donation from Aloe and then Aloe matched those dollars. So, we would like to say thank you to each individual $50 donor as well
as Aloe for doubling that impact. And yes, if you'd like to come forward. Well, good evening, doctor, Miss President, board of directors, uh, staff here at District 6, community members. It is my honor as the PR and events
coordinator for Colorado to uh present this check to uh district 6 tonight for $24,000 through our all for education program that we ran the last half of 2024 and the first couple of months of 2025. As you mentioned earlier, Aloe is thrilled to continue to love on local,
continue to uh continue to love on our teachers, our staff, and most importantly our students here in District 6. So, uh, through this donation of general use funds, we hope that you will be able to use this, uh, to something really great, which we know you will do. Uh, thank you for, uh, the residents of our fine community here in
Gley Evans. Uh, the last couple years, I know that we've kicked up a lot of dust, uh, throughout our construction process, but, uh, it's going to be great. Uh, I like to think of it as kind of a kitchen or bathroom remodel. Uh, when you're in the midst of it, it's a little messy, a little dirty, a little sawdust getting kicked up, and it's not always very
convenient. But at the end of that construction project in your home, uh, a couple of months later, maybe even a couple of weeks later, you won't really remember all the messiness that went on. Uh, I like to think of that as the same way that we like to, uh, think of our construction process. So, kicked up a little dirt. Uh, Gley is now going to be
fiberproofed for the future uh, for our students, for our residents, for our business owners uh, here in the Gley Evans area. And we're just uh, so thrilled once again tonight to present this check for $24,000 through our ALO for education program uh, to the district. So, thank you, Mr. President, thank you, Dr. Pilch, board of
directors, and thank you for the continued leadership you continue to provide for this outstanding school [Applause] district. And for those like me that have a little grain in their beer, possibly that remember Ed McMahon from Publishers Clearing House, we have one of these cool big checks uh that we get
to present. This one won't be able to go to the bank. I gave that to Teresa earlier, but uh congratulations once again and we're going to snag a quick photo. All right. He's in the corner. [Applause] Thank you.
Our next item is our superintendence report. So give it back to Dr. Pilch. Thank you, President Mash. Uh first I'd like to uh do some introductions as a part of my superintendent superintendent report, excuse me. And these are the individuals
you see on your personnel report tonight who we have recommended for our latest administrative hirings. So first I'd like to introduce to you Ally Blog. Ally stand up. Um who we are recommending is the assistant principal at Winterrad K8.
Ally is the current dean at Winterrad. Uh she was a seventh grade math teacher at McAlliff. She also was a CLLD teacher or culturally linguistic diverse teacher at Bella Romero. Before that, um before that she was at the Holio School
District um teaching 2 grade and 7 through 12 English language learners. Ally, congratulations and I look forward to having you join our district leadership team as an assistant principal. I also want to introduce to you Caitlyn Fuio. Fuia, Miss Caitlyn. Hello.
Welcome. So, we are recommending Caitlyn as the assistant principal at Shasheen Elementary School. Um, Caitlyn helped open Twinton Academy of Pre-Engineering. She has been the project lead the way or the pre-engineering coordinator at
Twinton since 2022. So, this is going to be a big loss for that team over there. Uh, prior to that, she was a sixth grade teacher at Montford Elementary School. And before that, she taught in Milbourne School District in Illinois where oh, she was a special education pair
professional. So, Caitlyn, congratulations. And I look forward to welcoming you as an assistant principal at Shasheen Elementary. [Applause] as part of our restructure. Um, we eliminated some positions here in the district office as a part of our budget
cuts. And so, uh, we eliminated a coordinator position upon the retirement of the of our elementary literacy coordinator. And so, we created a new position of K12 English language arts and AVID coordinator. And that is who
you've heard from once tonight and we'll hear from her again, Miss Lisa McGee. Uh, we are recommending her for this position. She has served this year just serving secondary schools with English language arts, AVID and international balorate. So she's going to take the
whole K12 work um and keep AVID. And then uh Lisa was an instructional coach and the international balorate and AVID coordinator at Brentwood Middle School uh for three years and then prior to that she was an English teacher here in district 6 and um at the high school
level at Agri Central High School. So welcome Lisa. Congratulations and thank you for being willing to take on this [Applause] challenge. And then finally, I'm excited to introduce to you Miss Brianna Tanner. And we're recommending Brianna for
assistant principal at Gley West High School. Brianna has been serving this year as the dean of students at Gley West. Um she was prior to that she was a teacher at Gley West High School. Um and then prior to that she was an instructor at Early College Academy. Um before
district 6 she taught in Weld 4. Um she also taught at Berth High School um and at Frontier Academy and then Weldon Valley High School. So she comes to us with over 15 years of experience and we're excited to have her um as the new assistant principal at Gley West.
Welcome Brianna. And then and then finally Mrs. Mash, I'd like to recognize um some of our students who you all probably read about in the e-week bulletin this past week. Uh but 13 students across District 6 um and from the District 6 Career
Technical Education Center competed at the State Skills USA competition in Pueblo. Um and out of those 13 students, we had three students who placed. uh Musab Aiden from Gley West High School who's in the cyber security program and
his teammate Connor Roberts from Northridge High School uh in cyber security. They both placed third uh for their work in cyber security. And then I also want to recognize Ariana Munos from Girly West who placed third in Cosmo for nails um at the state skills USA
competition. So, uh, lots to celebrate here in district 6 and really proud of those students coming out of the career and technical education center and and already placing at a statewide conference. So, congratulations. Thank you, Mrs. Mash. Our next item is our innovation
2030 update climate and culture goal 2 systems of support. And I see Mr. Tuttle and Mr. Gribble. Yeah, I'm a little taller. Good evening, President Mash, Dr. Pilch,
and members of the school board. Thank you for the opportunity. It's a privilege to be able to share with you an update around the climate and culture. Um, goal two and then inclusive in that is the systems of support that you've heard of recently within the negotiations update. With me tonight, I
have two people, Mr. Tom Gribble, who is our executive director of student services, as well as Deb Hec, who is our lead school counselor. Within this work, it aligns directly with our school mission and vision. And then we think about our
values. It aligns directly with those three that we've kind of bolded in the font here within our four focus areas. Obviously, we're are focused tonight on the bottom left corner, climate and culture. And within that, we're going to
spend our time specifically thinking about our goal number two. How we support the social and emotional physical well-being of students and staff. Within that goal, we have two objectives. The first one focuses on
supporting our students, ensuring a sense of belonging, providing support for learning so all students are career and college ready. The second objective focus on staff supporting the social and emotional learning practices as well as
improving staff social and emotional wellness. We have three outcomes that we're using to measure our progress along these goals. The first is at the school level knowing that each school designs a plan to support the social and emotional learning in their school.
Knowing that this focus looks different building to building. The second is that our students will respond positively that their well-being is supported at their school. The third is that the staff will respond positively that their
well-being is supported in their workplace. Let me turn it over to Tom Gribble to share with you some of the actions that we've been taking. Thank you, Wes. So, I'm going to highlight some of the actions that I've taken since the last time this information was shared to the board. Um,
we're continuing to implement the approved curriculum that includes digital citizenship, bully prevention, social, emotional, and behavioral competencies as well as providing professional development to staff to support students in those four competency areas that is
self-management, social awareness, self-efficacy, and emotional regulation as well as trauma-informed practices and sto restorative practices. and continue to update and communicate current district and community resources to staff to support students wellness as
well as their own. Providing training to district leaders to support adult wellness in the buildings and continue to administer the panorama survey um and specifically regarding the adult well-being survey. Wes mentioned one of the outcomes is
specific to schools and you'll see here that um our goal is having 100% of schools having that action step in that UIP um document and you can see for the second year in a row we have 100% of our schools um doing that and this outcome
illustrates the commitment from each school to meeting the social emotional and physical well-being of students and staff. I'm gonna turn it over to our lead school counselor, Deb Hec, to talk about our student outcomes. Okay. Good evening. Um, our goal for
outcome student data is that by 2026, district level data will show students at or above the 60% favorable on all four social emotional learning competencies as measured by the annual student survey.
uh the four compet competencies that are measured. The first is self-management. Um an example of a question that might be asked about self-management is um during the past 30 days when you were working independently, how often did you
stay focused? Another question, how often did you remain calm when someone was bothering or saying bad things? These questions are rated individually and then averaged for a percentage favorable for each category. Social
awareness um how well we take perspectives of others and empathy. A question that was asked there is during the past 30 days to what extent were you able to disagree with others without starting an argument? Self-efficacy
specifically about achieving academic outcomes. Uh, one of the questions is how sure are you that you can complete all the work assigned to you in your class? And when complicated ideas are discussed in class, how sure are you
that you can understand them? And emotional regulation being able to regulate our emotions. Um, once a question example is once you are upset, how often can you get yourself to relax? um when things go wrong for you, how
calm are you able to stay? So, let's look at the survey data we have from fall of this year and spring as well as past years. So, our outcome student data, this is from our grades three through five. There's a lot of colors on here.
So, that first um set of colors, the blue and red, that is our fall of 20 22 23 and then red is spring. And then the 23 24 we have yellow in the spring and I'm sorry yellow in the fall and green
in the spring. And then this year's data is orange in the fall and teal in the spring. And what you'll notice is patterns of improvement from each fall to spring. This improvement can be correlated to the strong culture and
climate and student wellness work that is done through our multi-tered system of support process. The fall data clearly informs our staff where students um area of needs are. I often am getting text messages and uh emails from school
counselors in October when is the panorama data coming in? They're so excited to see it. I'm really be able to look at where they can have some specific tiered interventions. Um an example that comes to mind is one of our K8 schools. The counselor worked with the mental health team and the principal
and they really dove into that data and found that there was a need for some uh emotional regulation. There was a group of students who had very low favorable percentages and were able to do several different um tier 2 intervention small groups. um they were able to in that
group to teach what emotional regulation is, even get into some of the brain science of how it works and then teach them very specific skills of what to use. And then the most important part is they got to practice those skills. That's how we learn new skills. So in that small group, they were able to
practice school skills and then bring back um what they've used outside of school as well. So that's just one example of how schools use that information. While we have met and exceeded the 60% favorable for self-awareness and self-management,
we'll continue to use our SEAL curriculum as tier 1 and our datadriven tier 2 interventions to support self-efficacy and emotional regulation. And then moving on to our grades 6 through 12. They again have the the fall
and spring with the colors for 22 23 the the blue and then the red and then we have the next year of yellow and green and this year is orange and teal. What is positive is that we do see a lot of grow growth when students are with us.
um the responses. It's important to remember these responses to the survey are individ individual questions that are then um averaged together. So, for example, you can see our self-efficacy. We're not quite at that 60% that we
would like to be. However, when we get into the questions, we can see I'm give you a couple examples. Um, one question is, "How confident are you that you can complete all work that is assigned to you in class?" And our students responded 56% positively. Um, which is
close to our 60% goal. However, when we ask when complicated ideas in class, how confident are you you can understand? And that was 42%. So, when those are average, that's where we see that closer to 40 to 50%. Um, so that gives our
staff a lot of information of that our students feel confident in completing work, but we need to support them in that rigor and having that academic confidence that they can do the work when it's complicated and it's hard. Um, another question that had a
significant increase in positive percentage is during the last 30 days, how often did you pay attention and resist distractions? Uh, this question went from 50% favorable in the spring of
last year to 74% favorable this fall. Um, and there was a slight um, decrease between fall and spring, but still a 21% increase in students saying that they were able to pay attention. And I
think about our new cell phone policy as being a possible effect in that and that students are there and just how we have changed the climate with this cell phone policy can make that much of an of an increase. Um, we also know our students
612 continue to show consistency in their responses for need and this illustrates a continued need for support in their social, emotional and physical wellbe well-being among our adolescents. I am going to turn it back over to
Tom outcome. Thank you. So, our third and final outcome is a focus on staff well-being. Our goal is 90% of district staff that completed the survey uh respond favorably that their well-being is supported in the
workplace. So you'll see here the results for the last three years that includes sitebased staff, operations staff there in the middle and then teaching staff on the right hand side. So I mentioned the goal is 90% of our staff are responding favorably to these
results. Um so while the staff well-being survey results are lower than the 90% um but what we have found that these results compared at a national level aren't what we thought. So to be at the
60th percentile, meaning that 60% of other districts that take this test score lower than us, this isn't too bad, right? This is actually kind of more impressive than we had thought because when we look at the 68, 69, 68, like we aren't meeting our
90% goal. Um but when we compare this nationally, we are actually doing we're doing much better. Some of the questions that um we want to highlight are are uh these three. Um during the past week, how often did you feel excited at work? And you can see how the three groups
responded there. Um the next two are real bright spots, I believe. How much does your work matter to you and how meaningful for you is the work that you do? And to have that kind of um response and how favorable those are, that really
tells you that the people who work in district 6 care about their work and that work matters to them. One of the questions um or while the panorama survey provides us a lot of useful information, our committee believed that there was not a question
specific to our goal. Meaning we don't ask in the panorama survey are is your well-being supported in your workplace. While we have a lot of other information, we don't ask this question. So we added it to the survey this year.
Um and as a result here are the um the the number of responders for operation staff, sitebased staff and teachers and staff. Um and you can see the percentages there and again our goal was 90% and this is the first um time we've
asked this question um because we added this question here at the end. It's not in the bank of other panorama questions. So there's no normative data to for us to compare this to. But um uh Tammy Brandon, our director of student and
staff support um shared this information with us regarding the 2024 teacher and learning condition survey. So this is a uh an annual or sorry every other year optional statewide survey and the results of that um survey with quite a
few teachers um completing this was 88%. So I think that's that paints a little different picture than let's say the 60% favorable that teachers have. So, this is one thing that our committee will be looking at as far as do we continue with this question or do we consider some of
those questions that were in the the teacher and learning condition survey. And so, we're excited about uh our next steps that is to continue to implement the curriculum and monitor the impact that has on our panorama data, merge um the multiple district wellness
websites into one useful and powerful resource. um create and provide training to district leaders and like we did last year uh start the school year off with a district-wide professional development um for all certified and schoolbased staff around supporting students in
their learning. Well, thank you so much for letting us share this presentation with you guys and we'll entertain any questions if you have any. Thank you very much. We have a few questions. Mr. Aari.
Yeah, this is a a question that I'm sure some folks would ask. Uh there's actually two. The first question is how young what what are the youngest students in the district that we survey? So we have our Panorama survey starts at
third grade and it's third grade through 12th grade. Okay. So then a follow-up question to that is how confident are we that the students at the youngest levels actually understand what the question means.
It is normed to other elementary school students. So in that sense we have some sense of comparability. um we do not define it for them in the survey because the minute you start defining terms and defining the questions you end up tainting the survey
for it. So we do ask them to complete it on their own. We do give them time to do that there at the school. Do we uh offer any sort of assistance uh prior to the survey and educating students about what these words mean? Again, I'm talking
about the youngest students because some of these words are higher order than the words. So, there are occasions that they will go ahead and preempt some of that as far as just kind of orienting the to some of the types of questions that they'll be encountering, not trying to persuade them to answer it one way or
another, but to explain some of the concepts, some of the terms that are in it. You're exactly right that some of the terms are higher order thinking as you alluded to. Yeah. Thank you. Um, Dr. Campos Spitzy.
Um, just to piggyback off of Director Ozari's question, um, the three the third grade through fifth grade survey, is it the same as the 6th through 12th? It they're the same items. The the secondary one adds one additional question to it. Okay. But the questions
are like the third graders are asking answering. Yep. Um because I have I forget if this came up last time we talked about the panorama survey and I forget it if it came from the CSR rep, but that they remember the question, you know, they've been asked the same questions year after year and um and
that they kind of just choose the same answers like they don't change their answers like they it's almost like they've memorized the question and don't necessarily like critically think about it. Yeah. When they've taken it 20 times, not 20 times. It's just given once a year. So you're right. by the time they start in third grade and
through 12th grade, they do have what nine opportunities to answer that same question. Um but um we've kept it that way. So we have the normative ability to be able to compare it against the nation. That makes sense. Um another question. So you know the four areas
that are surveyed, one is self-management and another one is emotional regulation. They sound really similar. like what are the nuances that differentiate those two outcomes? So self-management is looking at their
um management of academic behavior management with other people too whereas the emotional regulation is looking at those moments when um for a brain place where like maybe we flipped our lid a little bit like how do we get back into a place of regulation. The
self-management is more looking at those academics, behavior, and mental well-being. Does that make sense? That's that helps. Um I did want to point out the positive uh 90% um ratings
uh when we interview when we um surveyed our staff, you know, the teaching staff, 92% of the time they can they they felt excited to be at work in the past week. 98% answered um that their work matters to them and 96% felt that their work was
meaningful. Um it does feel discordant with the 60% you know my well-being is supported in my workplace. Um I think it speaks nationally to the teacher shortage and um the importance of educator pipeline work uh that we highlighted even tonight with project
teacher find. um the the teachers that come into this come into it for the right reasons. Um but sometimes the support can be difficult. Um or just
dealing with behaviors which we hear a lot about as a school board um that the behaviors in the classroom over the last 10 years have really changed and um not in a positive direction. Um, so I have a
question for you guys as experts. Besides what our teachers are doing to help our students with social social and emotional learning, what would you tell parents of, you know, elementary school students, middle school students, high school students?
what can they be doing at home um that might improve our outcome so that students do feel more self-efficacy and more emotional regulation which were are two lower outcomes. I think that's a great question. I think um these like I talked about these
skills aren't something you just practice in one place. It goes with you outside of that office or out of that classroom. um all of our social emotional learning like our SecondStep program has parent links that go home. Uh I know schools use that a lot to um
to help work with parents and more we can work on it together the the better it is. Um also our our mental health staff and um admin are very open and communicative with parents. So to be able to have those conversations, I
think just keeping that open line of communication is our best um our our best choice for that really. Yeah, Mr. Bentley, uh Brenda kind of stole my fire, but I
also wanted to point out that same graph of the outcome data for the staff. Um how much does your work matter to you and how meaningful is the work you do to you? Um it it just kind of conf confirms uh the biggest difference I noticed from when I was in high school to when I go through the schools now. Um you know I
just remember it being like really authoritarian and we were scared to see the principles and now you know the little kids and the high schoolers alike running up and high-fiving and you know really have a good relationship with their with their administrators and teachers all all together. Um, I told the story once, but I was
waiting for an Uber one day and I had a I didn't even know how to about you, about the driver thing, but she had a master's degree in in education. And so I got in, I asked her, you know, what's what's up with that? And she said, I I made more money the first full year driving an Uber than I did as with a
master's degree teaching. and uh kind of highlights a problem in our society that's a little bit out of our control, but but it also just reinforces the fact that the teachers that are doing this really are doing it out of love and kindness and and for the right reasons.
And it shows um you know, from me, an outsider, I guess, in public education. You know, I'm basically a parent that decided to run for the school board. But to to go into a school and just see the amount of love and and the outpouring of support that on a day-to-day basis and then just just to see the data
confirming that the teachers really do enjoy and care about what they're doing. It's makes me pretty happy as a as a parent and as as a board member to to see that data. So, thank you guys for keeping track of that and excited to see improving on it and working to support the teachers.
Mr. Matthews, thank you, President Match. um when when you guys look at the student data on on this and when I look at it, I sometimes can't can't um can't analyze it very well. Just just
only looking at this data every every once in a while. So, I'm curious as you analyze the data, what when you look at our especially our student data, what what encourages you the most? What did you see in the data that you maybe didn't expect to see and it was a good
surprise? What what concerns you the most in our student data? Yeah, just it's a thinking question. One of the celebrations was one that she shared that 20% increase on ability to control the distractions. I mean, that's
a huge increase um in students abilities to do that. So, that's a a celebration of where our system is at. and and and as she alluded to, one of the factors there is the implementation of our cell phone policy that has contributed to that. So I think that's definitely one
of the positives. Um I'll share another while you're thinking you can add to this Deb. Um but uh another example of a school. So um some of our elementary schools, they have their whole specialist team take on the the area that the students are struggling with.
So, one of my elementary schools takes on and so their specialist team created an announcement. It was around self-management and kids ability to manage when they're not getting their way. When somebody around them is having a problem, they they can't control themselves. So, they started teaching
the strategies in specials at the elementary level. They started weekly announcements that was teaching the strategy schoolwide. So, this became a schoolwide focus on how do we control our emotions? And so that's another example of a school identifying, hey, this is an area that our students are
struggling with and what can we do about it and let's go after it in in one way. Anything to add there? Um, I too looking at it, it can be overwhelming of where to look. I mean, you start looking at the individual questions and then the
national norms. I mean, and three hours later I'm like, what did I just look at? Um, so I think what's really great about it is that we have a team in each school that looks at it together, that collaboration. So our PBIS teams are looking at that like where can we retach
some things. It's not just in isolation. So um I that's what's exciting to me is that it's Panorama gives us this information but then we have interventions that we can look at other data too. We can I forgot to mention the small group that this K8 school did.
They they surveyed in spring and saw an increase a pretty significant increase in their panorama results, but they also looked at other outcome data too like discipline referrals talking about behavior like um attendance. They had some increase in attendance for students too. So that's the exciting part for me
is how this these tiered interventions then go to student outcome data as far as like the grades and our graduation rates how that is all um connected to to where this starts. Yes. So the only thing I would add to
that is you talked about the questions being the same over and over again kind of rinse and repeat maybe but what's not rinse and repeat is the free response opportunities that students have and so they tell their story. So inside of that too much for a presentation like this for tonight but um lots of celebrations
in there and then if there's little red flags we communicate with our our you know mental health staff right away to follow up with those issues. So that's, you know, beyond the the bar graphs and things of that nature and those little trends, we read the stories inside of that and that's that's where where some
real real data, I think, comes up. Not seeing any other questions. I was just curious um can students take this survey in their first language? Looking to Jenny, it's available in English and
Spanish. Okay. Mhm. So then students who speak other languages, we have to wait until they have a proficiency. Yeah. Okay. And we would do the same accommodations that we would use with anything else for students that would need that. So if a student needs something to be read to them, we would
be able to read it to them. Okay. So we can do it with an interpreter. Okay. Great. Well, thank you very much for that presentation. Our next item is public participation, but we do not have any
speakers this evening. Moving on to our consent agenda. We need to approve our consent agenda. That will require a motion. I move that the board of education of Gley Evans School District 6 approves items as presented on the consent agenda and authorizes the agents to sign the officers to sign any and all contracts.
Second. Is there any discussion on the consent agenda? Seeing none, Miss Lemon would give us a vote, please. Director Zari, I. Director Bentley, I Director Campos Spitzy, I. Director Mash, I. Director Matthews, I. Director Norwood, I. Director Sullivan,
I. Motion carries 70. Our next item of business is to cancel our board of education meeting on June 23rd, 2025. And this requires a motion. I move that the board of education agre school district 6 cancel the board
meeting of education. the council the board of education meeting scheduled June 23rd, 2025. Second. Thank you both. Miss Sullivan, I see that you had a comment. I'm sorry. Which item was that? Um I was actually going to ask you said
that you uh follow up if there's any um issues with um the comments that are put in. If it's an anonymous survey, how do you know what students put um their concerns in? I apologize. I think I missed that. Miss
Sullivan had a question for you. Do we need to handle the Do we Yeah. motion on the floor, Mr. Fall. Do we need to handle the motion before we go back to a question? I I didn't realize that Miss Sullivan had a question for Mr. Tuttle. And then
we have a motion on the floor. My bad. Was the motion to approve the consent agenda? Yes. We passed that. We're on the cancel the meeting. Cancel the meeting. Yeah. We have a second. So we need to handle that first, right? Yeah, I would finish the motion and then Yeah.
Okay. All right. Um so for cancelling the meeting um we believe that we will be able to finish our business regarding the budget um with the first meeting in June. Is there any other um conversation
about cancing that meeting? All right, Miss Lemon, would you give us a vote, please? Director Zari, I. Director Bentley, hi. Director Campos Spitzy. I, Director Mash, I. Director Matthews, hi. Director Norwood, hi. Director Sullivan, I. Motion carries 70.
Great. Thank you. And Miss Sullivan has a question for Mr. Tuttle regarding the panorama survey. I I think that you could not go back if that was already if you already took a vote on that. It didn't require a vote. It was just a pres. So, I think it'd be open for
discussion if you want to qu have a conversation about it. Okay. Do you need me to restate that question? No, I think it's a good question. Um, so Taylor, the survey is anonymous in the sense that the kids' names are not attached, but there is demographical information around like what grade
level, gender, some of those types of things. So, we can identify the group of students that that student might be a part of and be able to target some of those skills for those students. But it is anonymous in the sense that they don't we don't have their name. We don't know exactly which students, but we've got enough information to be able to
strategize to be able to meet those needs. All right, our next item of business is the curriculum adoption. I'll give this over to Dr. Pelch. Thank you, President Mash. Uh, you heard a a pretty thorough report of this
proposed curriculum adoption during the work session um by the same individuals who are coming to the podium now. And so I'll pass this to Assistant Superintendent Anthony Osmus. And joining him are Dr. Dean Andrews and Miss Lisa McGee.
Thank you very much. Good evening, President Mash Mash, members of the board, Dr. Pilch, and our members from the Council of Student Reps. So, it um it's an honor to bring tonight to you the recommendation for a new high school English language arts curriculum. So, what brings us here tonight is our
current language arts curriculum, springboard is at the end of its contract life and was sold and as a result um we've really have no platform next year, no textbooks uh and no student workbooks. So, it gives us a great opportunity to look for a new
curriculum. So the charge was to select and and adopt a rigorous curriculum that offers grade level instruction and differentiated supports for all students to interact at a high level. Lisa McGee, our English language arts coordinator, led a group of 9 through 12 English
teachers, multi-ingual teachers, gifted and talented teachers, and special education teachers to come to this recommendation. And then Dr. Degan Andrews facilitated the facilitated the final consensus conversation. So Lisa and Dean Andrews
will walk us through the process used to recommend this curriculum tonight. Yep. Uh thank you Mr. Osmus. With the recent sale and taking apart a springboard, our previous curriculum, we needed to find a new resource to ensure every student has the opportunity to
achieve high levels of standards mastery. Throughout this process, our team remained focused on three key priorities. First, ensuring alignment with District 6 goals and 2020 Colorado academic standards. It's critical that our new materials support our district's priorities of evidence-based reading and
writing, career, and college readiness, and meet the state's expectations for reading, writing, and communication. Second, promoting equity and access. We prioritize resources to provide all students, regardless of background, with the tools and opportunities they need to
succeed. Finally, supporting rigorous and personalized learning. Our new materials will empower teachers to challenge students while offering offering personalized pathways to prepare them for success in college, careers, and beyond. This adoption is about providing every student with the
resources they need to thrive while supporting our educators in delivering exceptional instruction. This slide showcases the dedicated members of the 912 English language arts committee who have collaborated extensively, exchanged
ideas, and meticulously assessed resources to select the highest quality materials, ensuring they effectively address the diverse needs of all students within District 6. As we present our curriculum recommendations, it's essential to
outline the critical musthaves identified by our committee. Student consumables were a high priority. Teachers emphasize the need for materials that students can write in and interact with directly. A strong digital platform was also non-negotiable. It
needs to be accessible, intuitive, and supportive of both in-person and digital instruction. Teachers wanted clear built-in differentiation resources that support a range of learners. The committee also prioritized a diverse range of texts and authors to reflect
and engage our students varied backgrounds and prepare them for college level work. CLLL and special education supports needed to be fully integrated, not add-ons or afterthoughts. We also look for platforms that provide meaningful data and reporting tools to help guide
instruction and interventions. And finally, the resource had to be easy to navigate. These priorities guided the final stages of our selection process and helped ensure that the curriculum we choose is not only high quality, but also a good fit for our district's
unique needs. To determine the final recommendation, the committee was guided through a decision-making process and reached consensus. This chart is a representative of the committee's conversation. Ultimately, the committee identified into literature as the best
curricular resource for our students, staff, and system based on these essential criteria. To take a deeper dive into the resource, I will turn it over to Lisa McGee, our K12 ELA and AVID coordinator. Thank you and good evening. One of the
core components of the digital platform our committee was specifically excited about was writable and its potential to give students timely, meaningful feedback they can immediately implement in their writing, ultimately building confidence in their writing ski and
increasing writing skills across grade levels. Writable is more than just a place for students to type their essays. It's a full writing workspace. It walks students through every part of the writing process, planning, drafting, revising, and taking feedback. It also
allows teachers to strategically group students so that they can share the writing with their peers and they can track the progression of every student through the writing process. Another great strength is that Writable is fully integrated into into literature, which means students are
responding to texts they're reading in class. Everything from short stories to highinterest essays. And for our multilingual learners, many of those texts are also available in English and Spanish, helping us reach every learner. In a study from Houston County
School District in Houston County, Georgia, despite a statewide decline, Houston County EL students using both HM into literature with Writable showed significant growth and resilience in writing skills. Across Georgia, the percentage of English language learners
who reached a developing or higher level dropped from 23.6% in 2021 to 12.8% in 2023. In contrast, students in Houston County using in literature and writable saw significant growth. 20% were at or
above the developing level in 2021 and jumped to 34% in 2022. The average achievement level of ELEL students also remained higher in the state than the state average at 18% in 2023. We believe our students who are
learning English stand to benefit significantly from the adoption and we are anxious to put tools like Writable to work. During the evaluation process, we were also able to gain additional insights into the strengths the committee identified in HMH into
literature curriculum. And here you can see some of the comments that were provided. When compared to previous curriculum in our system, the strengths of into literature offer a promising glimpse into how this resource will better support our students, empower our teachers, and strengthen our overall
instruction. Into literature is known for its intuitive, teacher-friendly design. Teachers using the resource often report that its platform and materials are easy to navigate and implement, especially for new or less experienced educators. The new
curriculum includes embedded supports for English language learners, students with disabilities, and varying reading levels. These are built directly into the lessons and resources. The curriculum also continues to provide consumables uh for our students to
engage with annotate text and build ownership of their learning. Into literature features a wide range of diverse authors, contemporary voices, and engaging media to reflect the lived experiences of today's students. The platform also offers strong formative
and summitative assessment tools with real-time data reporting to guide instruction. These systems are more seamlessly integrated than those found in previous curriculum and tie into existing assessments like NWA and SAT. Pending board approval tonight, the
total cost for the literacy adoption covering high school students in English 912 for a 7-year period amounts to 1,82,3547. This comprehensive package encompasses all essential components of the program, including teacher manuals for not only
our English teachers, but our co-teers, student consumables for seven years, digital licenses for both teachers and students for seven years, as well as the purchase of enough core novels for every building to be onetoone student to novel. We are pleased to announce that the funding for this initiative will be
sourced from the mill levy override. We express our greatest or deepest gratitude to the voters and their invaluable support in passing this crucial funding measure which this allows us to further enhance the educational experience for our
students. We know that into literature is going to support our students in accomplishing high levels of growth and achievement and we are grateful for your support. Thank you very much for that presentation. Are there any comments from board
members? U Mr. Aari? Well, we didn't make up a motion, but I think we could talk about it first and then we can do our motion before we vote on it. So, Mr. Ozari. Yeah, just uh if Mr. Osmus can just uh speak to a question that was asked
during the work session on the end of the contract with springboard and how that ties into the advent of establishing a new curriculum. Yeah, I think President Mash mentioned before that this is one of the first curriculums that we purchased with the
MLO. Um it is now at the end of its contract and we would like to continue as we do sometimes even after contract but this was purchased by a new company and they made enough changes that we just no longer have access either a don't have access to the platform or the workbooks or we just don't feel like
it's rigorous enough for our students at this time and so therefore um we just we are moving ahead with a new curriculum that allows more rigor and more supports for our students. President Mash, if I may, um, we this was up for adoption regardless. Uh,
however, considering the budget cuts we have, had we been able to extend our current curriculum, we probably would have put this purchase on hold for at least another year as we work through the budget situation that we're facing with the state right now. But um because we were in a situation where the
contract was ending and they did not have a renewal for a year for us, we were forced to go ahead and move forward on this. But uh sevenyear is a typical uh cycle for curriculum adoption. Thank you for that input. Um Mr. Longre,
thank you very much. President Matt, I just really wanted to comment on the experiences and the opportunities is going to grant students. I do find it very valuable to start bringing AI into the fray, especially when we have a lot of students that are taking classes that
are mixed with as AP classes, things like that. Especially in the high school area, having AI helping with these very complicated essays that a lot of us work on, especially multi multi-page ones that she will actually tell you about. being able to have an AI there at all times compared to something like
Grammarly. An AI, especially on this level, just having more personal writing like commentary and helping you more on a personal level is going to be more valuable to actually teaching our students to write properly rather than what things like Grammarly naturally teach our students to do, which is just
click a button and it rewrites everything for you. So, I think it's very valuable to have a teacher like substitute around as much as possible because as we all know, teachers can't be home with our students. So, I think this is a very valuable thing to bring
on for all of our students. Miss Venegas, thank you, President Mash. I just kind of wanted to add on to what um Timothy Longacre was kind of saying. um helping with the help of AI offers that positive
instant feedback as you guys were mentioning. It offers that feedback of revising that sometimes maybe teachers and tutors might miss or not um catch at first sight. So it um allows that quicker feedback
especially on those smaller points where you might not think about oh I need to change this I need to improve this where sometimes tutors and tutors and teachers might not catch as well because they have to revise billions of students not just you personally. Um, so as Timothy has mentioned, uh, in my higher level
college English class, we have already been introduced to the idea of using AI in order to help us with our grammar and, um, help the clarity of our paper, not necessarily rewriting our paper, not necessarily telling us what to write and how to write it. It's simply giving us
the understanding of this is the feedback we're giving you. improve this part how you wish to do, not improve it exactly with these words, which is what can be misunderstood when using AI for your writing. Um, but in this sense, it's just for that clarity and
organization within your papers, which can be very helpful extremely for like what Timothy had mentioned, those college level classes where you have to write those 20 plus page papers where it just takes so much more time to revise where AI can help quicken that.
um organization. Thank you, Mr. Matthews. Thank you, President Mash. Um I'm just looking at the committee that you you guys put together, and it's a very impressive group of of names in our school district, administrators and teachers alike. And I just I know this
is their recommendation for uh for this curriculum. I know uh it's very easy to see why they as a group chose this curriculum. Was there any disagreement on on the committee or was this pretty much a unanimous decision? It took a little bit of time as we
looked at the must haves to go through the process to really illuminate what the advantages into literature had. We really started with three highquality resources and so it really came down to those must haves to meet the unique needs of our community. Thank you.
Miss Sullivan. Well, I appreciate the comments from the um student representatives because you guys had some really good um solid points and it's good to hear from your aspect of it. I guess that kind of triggered a question for me then. Um, is AI available when they're doing their
assessments or is that a component that's turned off so that you're getting their true writing skills to make sure that they're writing it and not the computer? And just to be clear, AI doesn't write it for you, but it would just give you feedback. And so, it will look at your writing and it will ask you questions um to interact with your text
a little bit more and give you give you areas that you might want to go back and improve, but it's just to help you with the learning process, but once you take assessments, then it's no longer there with you. Any other comments? All right, we need a motion to
accept and adopt this curriculum. I move I move that the board of education of Gley Evans School District 6 approves the adoption of grades 912 English language arts curriculum as presented. Second. Thank you. Thank you both. Um, I
will just add my comment and that is that I like teacher friendly. I like we have the student voice. Um, and also the opportunity to really be able to measure the progress and where students need additional um, assistance and scaffolding. Um, it's not always super
useful to have a program that we can't measure. It's an efficacy. So, thank you for your diligent um, work on this. And Miss Lemon, will you give us a vote, please? Director Zari, I. Director Bentley, I. Director Campus Fitzy I. Director Mash I. Director Matthews I.
Director Norwood I. Director Sullivan I. Motion carries 70. Well, thank you for joining us this evening. That is all the business we have and we will see you in May. This business or this meeting is adjourned. [Music]
[Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music]