The time is now 4:49. The board has completed our executive session and will continue with the study portion of this meeting. Please note that we will take a 15-inute break at approximately 6:45 this evening. The first item of study this evening is for the board to receive an update on the 2026 legislative session. Presenting
this update is Aaron Kenworthy from the board of education and guest presenter Mr. Bowich from Bowage and Castle Public Affairs. We have allotted 45 minutes for this update. Please reserve time for the board to ask questions following your remarks. Before I turn it over to our esteemed presenters, Superintendent Dorland, is there anything you'd like to add?
>> Nope. Thank you, President Applegate. Good evening board and thank you Mr. Badage for being here with us. I'm actually going to hand this over to Mr. Badich to do our uh first legislative update. >> Thank you. Good evening. Um just in
terms of administrative issues, um I'm assuming the weekly updates with everything new in green seems to work well. Um I will continue to do that until directed otherwise. Um, as we get more and more bills for this, I may move some bills way down to the bottom with
just their title without a description if I think they really aren't all that important. I will also start to categorize them into students, teachers, other things just to try and make it a little easier. But again, every week anything new will be in green. Um,
really don't have a lot of bills that have been introduced yet. I'm expecting a lot more bills to be introduced this week and then in the next few weeks. There's nothing new on school finance at this point. The legislative joint budget committee has started its figure setting
process for next year. Um I'm very concerned about where they will end up. Um there is a lot of pressure on them to adopt something such as the specific ownership tax change which would save um
estimates are between 180 and $200 million. And if they don't do that, then what? Then what will they do? But all of that will be determined probably in mid-Marchch. We should have a better idea about school finance. Um the next
quarterly revenue estimates will come in on about March 20th and those will be um what the joint budget committee bases its final recommendations upon. Um moving down into some of the specific bills. Um a couple of these I know you'd
like to talk about. House Bill 1028 which is up tomorrow in House Education Committee. Um as you can see um two of our uh Jeffco folks, Representative Garcia who represents a portion of Jeffco and Senator Cutter are sponsors
on this. Um we have had a lot of back and forth with the sponsor on this with some of the staff comments just trying to get more information. One of the things that is out there with this bill is what would be the role of CDE because right now in terms of these um diploma
endorsements um CDE really doesn't have great data on what districts already do. Um I'm expecting a number of amendments uh on this bill to clarify some of these types of questions tomorrow. Um at this point um I'm not aware of any other
school board that has weighed in on this um on this bill. Um, I don't know that, um, I've seen any great concerns with this bill. I think it's just trying to get the language right and that sort of thing. >> Ed, can you talk about how this is
different from the seal of biiteracy that already exists? >> Um, that's a great question, Madame Superintendent, and I'm not sure I can differentiate it that well. Um, oh, go ahead. >> Can I share? >> Yes. Yes.
I think some of my understanding about this is that for um seal of biiteracy which we currently have requires course um engagement course requirements um and testing where the bilingualism uh seal would be for folks who are
native speakers who are able to demonstrate um proficiency with a language without taking coursework. So it gives the opportunity for there to be some recognition for students who are already m multilingual um without having
to demonstrate course coursework in a specific language. That's my understanding. >> And to add on to that um the existing current statute created a seal of biiteracy at the state level but it doesn't prohibit the granting of seals
at the district level. It does not require districts to adopt or grant the state seal. Um, this legislation retains the state seal of biiteracy and creates a new seal of bilingualism. Um, if the districts create their own seal, that could be three different
seals in that district. Um, some districts issue a state seal and no local seal. Some districts may some districts may issue both. And the dis and the legislation doesn't change that. It's Dr. Etcheria. This might be for
you, Superintendent Dorland. Um, so in our district, I know we have certain schools that offer the seal of biiteracy and then other schools do not. I was under the impression this bill was specifically focused on those schools that do not
offer that seal so that kids can test into getting a seal even though they're not at a school that offers the seal. >> My belief is we offer the seal as a district, >> but I'd need to double check on that. >> Let me rephrase that. The charter our
charter schools don't all offer it. >> Oh, that I cannot speak to. I can look into it. So this would from what I was reading this would give those kids an opportunity like at Jefferson Academy to be able to get a seal of biiteracy >> even though and is that am I
understanding it correctly? >> I don't know because I haven't been um I haven't studied or been updated on the charter school pro practice in this space. I'd be happy to share information with the board if that's something the board wants to know more about. Um but it could very well be that it is about
charter schools. I don't know. Okay. I I just when I was reading it, my understanding was this was giving kids in schools that don't have that option the option to get it. So, >> or perhaps like a different pathway to get it. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Thanks.
I >> think that we can follow up with maybe the the bill sponsors or ask a couple of questions to see what the intent is and if it's written in there. And I think there will be some clarifications tomorrow um as amendments
are adopted and we can certainly bring this back to the back to the board as things get clarified. >> And just to clarify, this is bilingualism. So just speaking and listening, not by literacy where we're adding the reading and writing. Correct.
>> That is a good question. >> Again, we'll probably get more clarification tomorrow when they discuss it in committee. Okay. Thank you. Um moving on to u um other bills. Um we've talked about some of these in the past. The optional individualized readiness plan for school. This bill um
frankly a lot of the districts have already come out in support of it. Case Casby Adams 12 Douglas St. Brain. Um there they are getting a bunch of push back from some of the organizations that feel like this could disadvantage schools or districts that have lower
income populations who may not be able to wave out of um some of the requirements. So this bill has um run into some opposition at this point. um the school finance act that was introduced early in the session by um
Jeff Co's uh Senator Chris Kulker um and Senator Barbara Kirkmeer and Representative Hamrik. They wanted to get this one out early and their intent is to get it moving early. So instead of waiting until May 10th or so to finalize school finance, this potentially could be run concurrently with the long bill
in late March or early April, which I know would make all the districts much happier. Um, I don't know. Um, I'm not aware that there are any problems with this one. It's just kind of waiting uh for more information for a few more weeks until they can start moving on
this. Um, then you get into two new bills. Uh, Senate Bill 55, the registry in CDE from Senator Basley, and Senator Basley represents part of Jefferson County. um creates a registry in CDE for those
teachers and staff who have been found to have violated a school district's discipline code or their employer um uh contract or employee contract um this bill anything I mean the the
technical issues with this bill anything that you're asking CDE to do to create something new there will be a fiscal note and that will stall this bill this bill is also O been assigned to the Senate State Affairs Committee, which is generally a committee where bills get sent if they're not supposed to advance.
Now, sometimes there are surprises. Um, I know that Senator Basley originally was wanting to introduce a bill to try and address some of the situations that have occurred both in Jeffco and in other districts. This is not exactly
what we had talked about with him, but this was um his attempt to try and do something. Um, no one has weighed in on this bill yet. Um, it hasn't been scheduled yet. >> Mr. Gibbons, >> I think you you may have just answered my question. Do we know what sort of the
association's view on this bill is at this point? >> Um, >> I don't think we have any concrete anything concrete. Do you know have you heard anything? >> No. I could speculate with all due respect to everybody involved, but a
bill that gets sent to state affairs, people may not be weighing in on it. So, um, again, I'm always surprised, so who knows? Maybe something will happen. Which leads us to the next bill, um, also by Senator Basley, also sent to
state affairs. Um, for those of you who were at our, um, meeting at the capital two weeks ago, and our next one is in two weeks. Our meeting at the capital, Senator Basley discussed this. His original concept was to um have Jeffco become five separate school districts
after the discussion. Um he thought maybe we should just have um directors in Jeffco run in their districts. Um and then he wants to apply this to all school districts that are in excess of
6,500 students. Um this was a surprise to lots of school districts when this bill was introduced. Um it's uh CASBY has come out in opposition to this bill because I think frankly there was no
stakeholding no discussions about this. It was just kind of introduced. Again this bill um has been assigned to the Senate State Affairs Committee. Um >> I'm going to jump in here. Um, on this particular bill, I think my
understanding was that Senator Senator Basley's initial concerns were about um, in Jefferson County representation of mountain communities. Um and his proposed fix was to divide us from one district into five districts, five separate
uh school districts along the our director district boundaries as currently written, which wouldn't actually I think address the main concern that he has about representation um for the mountain communities. Also, um that would require
us to find four more superintendent, elect probably about 20 more school board members, and then also staff um basic functions for, you know, a school district. Um so, the amount of money
that that fix would cost doesn't make to me a lot of logical sense. So, it's um it's not something that we were supportive of when we had those initial conversations. Um although recognizing his concerns about representation and trying to entertain that conversation
led to some idea sharing. Um and I think his concerns were specific to Jeffco. One of my concerns about the bill as written right now is that he's taken an idea and he's applied it to the entire state with the way that this bill is currently written. also it's it's a
turn away from what he had originally planned to run this session and he's created something else again without a lot of stakeholder uh engagement and it has been a surprise um and so for all of those reasons I um am interested in
having a conversation with the board about whether or not this is something we would want to continue to support or um if we have any interest in in having a formalized response to this bill up at the Capitol, we could, you
know, have that conversation. So, if anybody wants to weigh in, now would be a great time. >> So, is there an impression that we are behind or backing this particular bill at the moment? Um, I do not believe that people are
attributing this bill as a Jeffco bill. That while his concept may have come from discussions and his thoughts about his constituents in Evergreen, I don't think the other districts are looking at it as something from Jeffco.
And then I don't know how my fellow board members feel about this, but um it just sounds like it would be it would cost quite a bit of money and you know being stewards of you know of the taxpayer dollar. I'm
going to kind of lean to away from this. Anyone else? Um I'll I'll add my two cents as well. I the the way the bill ended up um going to because my understanding is the way
the bill is now that instead of being voted at large we would vote in our districts. I actually don't think that's a good opportunity for most school districts. I don't think it's a good opportunity for Jeffco. Um, and this is a personal opinion, but as a parent in our
district, when I consider who's going to be making the decisions for my children, I think it's I want to have a say in who's making those decisions. Um, I do recognize Jeffco is a large county. Um, we've we've shared that many times, but
we've also talked about how our size does allow us to do a lot of things. And so, um, that would be that would be my vote. I would be in favor of not supporting this formally. >> Yeah, I think at this time I would also be in favor of not supporting it. Um I
think it would create more problems than it would solve as as currently presented. >> I do want to mention there is one school district um that does function in this way and that's Denver. It's DPS. Um, but I believe they're the only district in
the state that functions this way. And I am again concerned about local control for um, school districts of different sizes. And the application of this kind of a one-sizefits-all across the across the entire state with a threshold of
6,500 students for me doesn't feel um like it's considering the unique situations of all of the school boards. Um, and I I also agree with some of my fellow board members. they don't think that it serves the needs in Jefferson County um specifically and so
uh my position would also be to not be in support of this. Anything else on that one? All right. So, given that conversation, there's two bills left um on here. Mental health
training in concussion education um which I'm not sure if we have any indications from case or CASBY on that one yet. >> That one has pardon me that one has just been introduced so I haven't seen any
positions yet. And similarly um Senate Bill 2668 modifying administration of education assessments um looking at this initially although it
hasn't been assigned a date um in committee yet. This is something that we included language about in our legislative agenda and so I would imagine we would be supportive of this. However, if the conversation hasn't occurred in committee yet, I would want
to see how that conversation goes before we would weigh in on a support for this. So, it's kind of a monitor and stay tuned and then once there's been more conversation at the capital, we can see what direction it's headed in and then see if we weigh in on that one.
So, with the last bill 26-068, um could you maybe explain a little bit what they mean by standardized assessments? >> Sure. Who wants to who wants to do this? Shall I? Superintendent Dorland, do you want to? >> Yeah.
>> Yeah. This would probably mean CAMASS. And so, um, we annually I'm not going to sit here and rattle off all the assessments that we give, but, um, it's every student every year, third g third grade through 9th grade for sure
sometimes and maybe 10th grade with the SAT. I'm looking at PSAT. Um, and for some grade levels, um, it is English language arts, math, and science. Plus, there are schools that are selected
randomly for national assessments like NAPE. It's a different assessment. And so, um, you know, what we talked about when we met with legislators at the capital a couple of weeks ago, just the time, the instructional minutes that our students are actually spending taking
assessments instead of really engaging in learning. And that then on top of the time they're actually taking the assessment um there are um other minutes spent by our educators preparing them for the assessment,
right? Because we don't want students to go into an assessment feeling angst about what's coming. We want them to understand what to expect. Um so teaching them about the assessment um helping them with test taking skills, which you could argue are a good thing for kids to know anyway. Um, but it's
just because it's so at scale, the state also spends millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars on development, redesign, and administration of these assessments. Plus, every single district is spending money to administer these assessments as well through personnel um
expenses. And so, for a long time, we've had a conversation. Um, Front Range superintendent have been advocating along with other Front Range boards of education to really take a closer look at how much testing is really needed for what purpose. And so, um, like
conversations around if the purpose is um, which I believe is appropriate, um, at scale districtwide or statewide um, accountability or maybe accountability is the wrong word. I don't really love that word in the
context of state assessments. Um, uh, checking in on how we're doing, tracking and monitoring our progress over time, finding areas or specific locations where children are struggling so we can target resources and supports. I think those are all very valid reasons for
state assessments. I'm just not sure and I think there are a lot of colleagues of mine and others across the front range who believe that the amount of assessment we do is necessary given that interest. Um other places across the nation do things like sampling, right?
It's not every third grader every year, but it's x% of third graders across the state or x% of third graders in a in a specific in each district. Um, so we've been having this conversation with the state for years. Um, and I guess I would
just say from my expert stance, I'm pleased to see that this is being at least discussed. Um, it's too much testing. Um, and and I think there are other ways. I think we need to clearly define the purpose.
Um, and I think we need to really then back into what's the amount of testing we really need for statistically significant results that can help us target resources where places need the support the most. >> Yeah, I think that's why we included the language that we did in our legislative
agenda. um a reduction in the amount of fiscal and financial resource that goes into supporting testing may be excessive um and not necessary given what we want to try and discern from the results of that testing. And so I um that's why I'm
I'm pretty interested in this, but I also want to hear the conversation that will happen before committee before we make an informed decision about how we would show up in support of this. I think my anticipation is that we will be in support of it, but I would like us to
allow some conversation to happen at the capital first so that we can weigh in and maybe support some stronger arguments and add our own if necessary. >> Um, Director Kenworthy, um, Miss Harper has asked, um, for some clarification
from me as to, um, whether we want to take a formal position. And I know we don't vote in study session, but is everyone comfortable um with formal opposition of Senate Bill 2657 showing up on consent? Would be helpful?
I just need some thumbs up, thumbs down. Um okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. All right. Thank you. I did want to say as to 26068, I I agree
with what Director Kenworthy suggested. I think it is something that we I certainly support it in spirit right now, but until we have a better idea of how it's written and what how exactly it's going to function, I think it would be premature for this board to weigh in. >> I'm also very interested in what sorts of amendments will be um suggested by
other perspectives um so that we're informed on the whole conversation before we weigh in. >> Yeah. And one question I actually do have just about process in general. You know, knowing how quickly things can change at the capital. You know, a a great bill may in our view may may be
less great in a day and vice versa. So, in general, how what are ways that we can better manage how we offer or withdraw support for legislation given the infrequency with which we meet, but the rapid pace at which legislation develops?
>> What an awesome question. And I don't have a good answer for you, but I do know I mean we we do get our weekly legislative updates, which is a way for us to stay aware of what's happening on a week-by-eek basis. If we were to need to address something, um then we would
need to talk through what what a process might look like on that. We have done it before um where we've had um I don't remember did we have like an a 30 minute publicly noticed meeting via zoom or teams meeting where we had a
short conversation and then took a position. So, we have done that in the past, >> especially if um as we get later in the session and there's a a quick turnaround needed. Um that's our best opportunity is to call call a meeting for the next
day, have the discussion, but notice it properly. Mr. about it. >> Um, the other thing that has occurred on occasion if Jeffco has been in an amend position or in an opposed position about one particular section of a bill and if
that section has been removed, I have then let the superintendent and the board chair know that what we were concerned about is no longer in the bill while our official position is still in opposition. I'm going to let all the Jeffco legislators know that what we
were concerned about is no longer in the bill so long as I keep the superintendent and the board chair and um and can keep the full board aware of those types of things. >> So, in some circumstances, we can also let Ed know that we would be willing to
support this if X Y and Z happened or didn't happen. um so that he's got a little more flexibility in um communicating with our legislators in real time. All right. If there are are there any other questions or any other pieces of legislation you're aware of that you
wanted to bring up for us to either talk about now or at our next gathering? >> Excellent. Thanks y'all. Thanks for participating. Appreciate you. Um, we will have our next meeting at the capital I think in two weeks. Two weeks from today.
>> Y looking forward to it. Thank you. >> On on that note, I just do want to let the full board know. I think I've told Aaron and Michelle, but and for your information as well as other board members, I am unable to attend that meeting. I don't know what the conflict is, but they told me I have a conflict
that day and I said that's okay. I think um Aaron and Michelle let me know that I was off the hook um and that it would they'd be okay without me there. You guys are in good hands with Ed and um love the fact that our board is leading forward um on some of these legislative issues. So, thank you so much for that.
And yeah, >> absolutely. And thank you, Mr. Bowitch, for coming and joining us tonight. And thank you, Director Kenworthy, for leading this effort. All right, the board will now receive updates on Jeffco's property disposition process and property surplus
recommendations. This information is presented by Mr. Jeff Gatlin, our chief operating officer, and Mr. Greg Evadikian, our operations project manager. Um, I'm very excited for this. I know you guys have been doing a lot of work here and I think there's a lot in our community that are eager to hear next steps. Um, so gentlemen, we have
allotted 60 minutes for this presentation. We ask that you do reserve some time at the end of that 60 minutes for board questions. Before I turn it over to Mr. Gatlin and Mr. Abdikian, is there anything you'd like to add? Superintendent Dorland? I just want I want to thank um both Greg and Jeff for
the work that's gone into this. Um I also want to thank the board for we've we worked with each of you um on this topic prior to bringing it to the full board here this evening. And so hope that you will recognize some of the
feedback that you all gave us in um in some of what uh these guys are going to present this evening. It's a very complicated process. I think the way that we have been leading it forward just for new board members to know is
that we we started slow to go fast knowing that this would be complicated knowing that there are a lot of stakeholders who care deeply about our properties and have tight historical connections as well as neighborhood implications. So we've really I think
this is an incredible example of uh a continuous improvement process where we started, we revised, we learned, we revised again. Um, and now this is the latest iteration of us coming to you uh
applying lessons learned and asking for uh what we need from you tonight is really uh clear direction that you're comfortable with us moving forward with this proposed change or not. Um, if you if you aren't comfortable, we need to know that as well. And we need some some
suggestions on what you'd like us to revise or tweak, adjust in order to be able to move forward with the budget situation that we're in now and the delay of uh or I guess delay. What's the word
that Well, people are not caught up to me. In fact, I don't think I'm caught up to myself right now with the fact that the board has um cut the cap transfer in half, right? Um and that we are only contributing 15 million this year to the
capital reserve. Um this becomes an even more important conversation because what we're about to talk about is how do we really begin to sell properties um in a way that doesn't take us 24 to 36 months um in order to be able to contribute to our cap reserve. some really essential
and very necessary one-time funds that we need to maintain um warm, safe, dry, and modern environments for our students. So, it's an important conversation. I appreciate the revisions that they've made recently in that interest. And I'm going to hand it over to Chief Operating Officer Jeff Gallen.
>> Thank you. Thank you, Superintendent Doran. Uh good evening, directors. Appreciate the time uh this evening to chat about disposition. Uh I wanted to introduce uh Greg Evadikian who is a uh project manager in the operations office and uh he'll we'll really kind of tag
team this presentation. Uh I will focus on kind of the process and some updates that we want to recommend and really would love to get feedback from the board uh around that and then Mr. Avidikian will will go through surplus recommendations on sites that uh have
not yet been surplused by the board, but the board would take formal action on at the regular meeting next week. They would each be their own individual consent item and they'd show up in the consent agenda. Um and so that would be the next step if the board was was comfortable approving uh the surplus
recommendations based on the information you hear tonight. And so really the purpose uh of of the time tonight as it relates to property disposition and the process is really to recommend ways to improve uh and expedite the process based on lessons learned and to help uh
generate capital revenue like Superintendent Dorland mentioned. And then as it relates to uh surplus recommendations, uh you'll be provided information that you need so you can make uh the vote uh the appropriate vote that you seem appropriate uh at the meeting next week.
So to echo what Superintendent Dorland mentioned, a couple things that we're that we're asking uh that we need from the board tonight is first a commitment to the evaluation criteria that we use when we uh put properties through our processes. And really we we refer to
those as our guiding principles and also uh just approval of the the process uh recommendations and the direction that we want to that we want to move this to make sure that the board is supportive of the proposed changes. And so we'll start with uh reviewing
just the disposition process and evaluation criteria. I know some of this will be review but we just want to make sure that we're that we're going through it. Highlight some lessons learned and then really get into those process changes for consideration. We'll pause at that point in the presentation and take questions and
really have a have a a targeted conversation around the process and then I'll turn it over to Mr. Evdiki and he'll go through uh the surplus property information and then questions after that portion as well. And so just quick background uh the the
BOE the board directed staff to create a process for disposition of property uh that was uh really that followed our our rafts process uh and we worked with the real estate partner who were still working with JLL uh and a community engagement partner to create a framework
and a process for the work and if you remember uh the result was this and uh this is the process that we've been using when we have in working with our uh broker and bringing properties to market. Uh and we're going to try to get
to a more simplified version of this, but I just wanted to to to show this as a as a frame of reference. Not going to go through all of these items. Uh but just it's a bit complicated, a lot of steps. And again, as we're trying to seek efficiencies, you'll see kind of a before and after of where we started and
trying to get to something that uh that we feel like we could be more efficient with this at. I do want to talk about uh the evaluation criteria really those guiding principles when a property is going through our regular process. Um and
really we have five main uh criteria you know being a collaborative partner that there's financial capacity uh and benefit that it enhances the neighborhood quality uh that there's neighborhood compatibility and design and that there's strategic planning. Um
and so really those are what we've rooted decision-making in uh when we are reviewing proposals that come through our process. And this is really important uh because this is really what we what we stand on and say when we look at proposals we're looking for as much
alignment to these as we can and and really that is what differentiates differentiates a more favorable proposal uh than others. Our municipal interest process. So if a municipality were to express interest in a property, this is the process that we
would follow. Little less complicated, but we're actually going to make uh some suggestions to to simplify this a bit still. Um and it has its own set of evaluation criteria or guiding principles that are a little bit different knowing that working with the
municipality there might be more of a focus on community public benefit, those types of things. So the criteria are aligned a little bit more tightly to that mutual benefit, zero cost to the district, network effects, adequate compensation, and just a high quality
project. So really those are the main uh criteria that we use and our guiding principles that we use when we're evaluating a property that's going through our municipal process. So, some lessons learned. You know, we hear market value a lot and
I I believe that maybe some board members have seen this slide uh before and and our new members maybe have not, but uh market value is the amount a real a real buyer is willing to pay for a property. Uh sales prices vary greatly on a per acre basis and against
appraised values. And then even when we solicit offers to create competitive market conditions, we still experience disparities in value. Um it it fluctuates. It's different on a property bypropy basis. Um the appraised values and market values vary greatly based on
the land's underlying zoning and use restrictions. Depending on what the propertyy's zoned for or what you can or can't do on the property really impacts its value. Um, reszoning a property adds risk uh that lengthens or jeopardizes a
sale process timeline and community benefit uh has value that we need to consider. And this was just an example that we had provided the board previously to show uh the six properties that have either sold
or were under contract with and just the the range of values that we've received for the properties uh that we that they were either sold or they're under contract for and the pricing as it relates to uh a couple of the values where we see more alignment in our appraisals. just to give you an idea of
that of that fluctuation. So, why why seek efficiency? Superintendent Dorland touched on this for a moment uh uh introducing this, but the current process takes a considerable amount of time. The table at the bottom really shows uh properties that have gone through the process and you know,
our first two properties that went through this process, Allenale and Zurgger, uh were surplused by the board in March of 2023. Um we haven't received the funds yet. They're still going through the entitlement process, the improvement uh the approval process for the municipalities and we're
anticipating receiving funds uh you know for Allenale potentially June 2026 and Zurg potentially September. So and those are estimates that these are dynamic processes things things happen but that's what we're what we're estimating
right now. But you can see a three-year period from surplus to uh receiving funds for a development uh reuse um proposal. So like Superintendent Dorland mentioned, timely monetization of these properties will contribute to the
capital reserve fund at a time of reduced general fund transfer. We know that this could help supplement uh the capital fund uh in a time where we where we need it. Um, and then just as a reminder, each site costs roughly $150,000 to hold and maintain from the
um us maintaining the ground. So, the insurance that we hold on the property to uh keeping our safety security systems running, all of those types of things. >> I'm just going to say reduced general fund transfer was what I was looking for. >> Okay. Yep, that was it. >> Thanks for trying to save me.
>> I got you. Yeah. So, kind of getting into the the recommendations, the the first the first recommendation um that we want to propose is really specific to the municipal process. So,
we're still we're still planning on having two distinct processes. Uh the the the regular process where, you know, a municipality were to tell us they're not interested and we would work with our broker uh through the regular process, but we'd have a separate municipal process. So this really uh
these this particular set of of three recommendations applies to the municipal process. Um first is establishing uh clear timelines. Uh currently the municipalities aren't provided clear timelines throughout the process. It's a little bit loose. Uh it's not clearly
defined. So we want to propose something along the lines of uh a defined window to indicate formal interest possibly 30 to 60 days. a second defined window to explore feasibility, maybe 120 to 180 days. Uh, and with the caveat, and I
know that the board has expressed an interest in this in the past, that if we're working in good faith that we be flexible with our municipalities, but we also want to make sure that we don't prolong things and then find out we don't have a deal and then we have to start over at at step one. So, that's
that's the nuance that we're trying to balance with that. So, we feel like we can put some things into place to help with that. um updating the valuation method. I think this is a really important one. Uh currently, uh we receive and we're required to receive per policy uh a
member appraisal institute appraisal, an MAI appraisal, and that really is what we have for valuation when a property goes through the municipal process. Uh so we want to include a full marketbased valuation performed by our broker to
pair with uh the appraisal. So, we have not only an idea from a pure appraisal standpoint, but through like a market perspective, a market lens about the value that that property uh might be worth. Um, and then providing the municipality that pricing uh and working
with the board uh in consultation with our broker and legal adviserss to say here's what we're seeing in the appraisal. Here's what we're seeing uh in that market valuation and here is the the price that we're comfortable with with the municipality. So having a conversation like that with the board uh
could be appropriate in executive session where we're getting direction from the board. Uh no formal action would be taken but we would be able to understand um and hopefully clearly uh uh provide better clarity with our municipality around a value based on a
couple different factors. Now so that's the first recommendation. The second one pivoting now back to our regular process. So, I apologize kind of going back and forth through our two processes. Uh, the regular process uh was the the very first flowchart that I
showed you that maybe was a little bit overwhelming. Um, is we feel like we can eliminate the pre-qualification portion of that process and go right into a call for offers phase and have our uh broker vet proposals as they come in. But going
through a pre-qualification and then vetting those, working those through our committee and then moving to call for offers, uh, it actually it actually created some complications in the first in the first few rounds of doing this that that we think are unnecessary. And I think we can get more proposals that
come in through our regular process uh, by doing this. So something that we we feel like uh is maybe lowhanging fruit and certainly aligns to best practice uh as far as how our broker uh typically operates these processes too.
A couple other uh recommendations, you know, having the board vote to surplus all the remaining vacant properties. You're going to hear about those properties from Mr. Avdikian here in a moment. Um, and that would allow us to work with our broker to work with the municipalities to figure out what
properties we want to move through the process and when. Uh, but it would it would allow us to do that with uh and really overcome this initial process step. It also doesn't mean that because the board votes to surplus a property that we have to move it through the
process. It would just allow us to if we wanted to. and then uh marketing properties through both traditional channels via our broker JLL but also to our nonprofit and philanthropic communities via our community engagement partner. Some of that work uh is already starting with
them and then I know something that's important uh to the board around community engagement uh broadening that streamlining this when appropriate possibly combining sites for information sessions. We're looking at even doing our information sessions a little bit
differently than how we've done in the past. Engaging more online feedback opportunities, work with our uh partners to conduct in-person office hours type sessions. Really just make sure that we're providing different ways for our community to get answers and to
understand how our process works and have access to information. uh and then also be more direct with communities about what projects are likely to be proposed about what is largely prohibited by municipal code things like homeless shelters uh and or what has been heard in previous engagements. You
know, part of of our community engagement, at least our experience has been starts with um strong feelings in some of these areas that we feel like we could get ahead of a little bit more um uh a little bit better next time that that we go through these. So that would be one
thing that we've learned that we feel like we could do a better job of. And so as a reminder, this was what our regular process looked like before and what it could look like after some of these changes might be something like this. Again, this is with uh board
input, board feedback, and making sure you're comfortable with this. Uh there might be a few tweaks to to some of the language, some of the steps, but this I think very very much simplifies uh compared to what we've had in the past. Uh and then our municipal process.
Again, this was the original one um proposed. It's streamlined a little bit. Uh there were a few efficiencies that we were able to to get in that, but uh you know, definitely uh we think we can go through a little bit quicker. And then so next steps with the board,
uh agreement and approval of the process. Just make sure you all are comfortable there. There isn't formal board action on this, but we want to have a conversation tonight. if you have recommendations, we can work those into the process. Uh, and then we would ultimately finalize and publish that
process uh to our website. Make sure that that's what uh is kind of um uh earmarked as the new as the new way of doing it. As I mentioned, at the next uh regular meeting on February 12th, uh you would vote to s to either approve or not
approve the surplus recommendations, and you can do that on a per property basis. Uh and then we would begin working with our broker uh on the schedule to release properties through the process. And so uh that was kind of quick uh a lot there, but I do want to pause and give
the board an opportunity to ask any questions that you might have. Board members, >> Director Kenworthy, >> I just want to say how grateful I am um for the thoughtful and and care and consideration that's gone
into this process from the beginning. I mean, this was some of the earliest conversation we had was the development of this process um after we joined the board. Um and we've designed and adjusted worked with municipal and community partners to to balance this
process to meet the needs both of the district and of our um surrounding community. So um I just want to I just want to lift up that I hope our community appreciates the ongoing updates. Um and the inclination to broaden community engagement process um as stated in one of the recommendations
is something that I we have heard a lot and I think that we're being attentive to that and also trying to um engage in a way that is meaningful for the community and not just information sharing from the district. So um I wanted to
just say how much I appreciate how responsive uh you Mr. Gatlin and your team have been to community um feedback throughout this process over the last two years. Um looking at the streamlined
process, I feel that we we crawled a bit at the beginning and then we walked a little bit and now we're able to pick up and maybe maybe jog forward um and expedite this project so that so that we can move on and care for the buildings that will continue to be under our care. Um and to
put the um financial resource into our capital asset, you know, capital asset, what do we call it? Our >> capital >> capital reserve. Yeah. Um so that so that we can move move forward and pick up other projects that we need
to um attend to with our attention. So I am just I'm grateful. It's been a difficult walk through not just through the property disposition but also the closure of schools. This has been a huge undertaking for this district and I'm I'm actually pretty excited that we've
learned a lot. We've been responsive and we're looking towards um a potential finish line for this particular project so that we can start to work on some other stuff. Thank you so much for your care, consideration, and um stewardship of this process.
>> I have a few questions. >> Yeah, >> none of you were surprised. Um I just want to be really clear when we talk about the municipal process and the regular process. Note the regular process starts with notification to our municipal partners.
>> We are saying that we are giving them 30 to 60 days before we engage anything else just to signal that like hey I'm interested. >> And then we're giving them another set of timelines to do get votes necessary from city council to do the research. Is that what is that correct?
>> That's right. what what we've learned from our municipalities is that it it can take them a bit of time to put to put this together. And so we want to we want to be flexible with that. Um I think we also have some municipalities right now that are watching this conversation um that will be watching
the board vote next week and are are ready to go engaging their communities around some ideas. And so I think that's also going to help where we probably didn't have that in place quite the same way that we do now. But that's exactly right what you described. That would be
the first step to explore that first. And like I said earlier, you know, we we want to balance the we don't want this to drag out and realize, oh, we don't have a deal here and it's a year later, a year and a half later, and now we have to go through a process that could result in, you know, another lengthy
period of time. So really trying to balance that. We also feel like um some of the the time constraints that we've mentioned are doable for our municipalities as well. >> I appreciate that. I I really want to avoid what we've had happen, which is
>> I I think the given timelines are really important. Um I want to avoid maybe uh interest from the community is different necessarily than what the city originally thinks. >> And so I I know this will help us do that. I also really appreciate that we
are adding a I'm going to look because I wrote it out. Um that we are going to add the market valuation into the municipal process because I think it will give this board confidence and hopefully our community confidence that we're making the right decision as fidiciaries for the district. Yeah.
>> Um I am excited to see that we took out the pre-qualification process, but I just want to confirm um we feel like we are going to be able to quickly identify if a bidder might not actually be able to >> Yeah. >> participate. Okay.
>> Yep. >> I assumed as such, but I I just wanted to ask it out. Okay. >> You know, and one other thing I I forgot to mention too was we um we did bring these recommendations to the property disposition advisory committee. So they uh they previewed these as well and actually gave us some good feedback. One
of one of the main points of feedback they gave us was you know be flexible with the municipality. Don't make the dates so rigid that uh if if if we are working good good faith that we just say stop we're done we're we're moving to the other other process and um so that's
definitely something that um that we want to support and make sense. >> That's wonderful. Any other questions? Okay. Please continue. Okay. Okay. Good evening board. As uh as Jeff mentioned, I'm going to
just walk you through our recommendation um for surplus of property. And that is part of the recommendation on this process streamlining and and to Jeff's previous point. You know, the real um rationale here is that we have a pretty dynamic marketplace out there when it
comes to property. probably could put that up as another lesson learned. Um although it sometimes goes without saying, right, that real estate is extremely dynamic. And so the the core rationale here is that um requesting the board to vote surplus on these nine
properties that we're going to share with you tonight will give us greater flexibility to be responsive to, you know, that market to inbound interest that our broker comes to us with about specific properties. uh a specific reuse proposer who's out there looking for a specific property that we may be able to
meet the need of. Um and again just flexibility with our municipal partners as well who we know some of them are already, you know, working on plans for um some of these properties. And so just a reminder, you know, we set some criteria for surplusing properties and and we surplus these properties in
accordance with um district policy. Um we look at these three criteria when we come to to make this recommendation and those are that students affected by the closure of the building have been successfully accommodated that we have operational
schools within three and a half miles that have adequate space for more students if ever needed and that long-term enrollment projections don't indicate significant growth you know growth that would exceed capacity um in those impacted areas. And so we are confident and we'll share the data with
you on each of these properties that those criteria have been met for all of these properties and therefore they are candidates for surplus as we don't have a foreseeable long-term need for them moving forward. >> Mr. Travadikian, may I um quickly add
something? I want to confirm because we surplus something does not mean it is a done deal. Can you please confirm that for our listening public? >> That is correct. Yes. And I was going to >> preface that with the next property. Um, so great transition. A surplus vote simply means that the
board is designating that there is not a future use that we foresee for the property and that Mr. Gatlin and I are then free to explore the sale or lease of those properties. Before we did that, we would
of course return to the board and the board is the ultimate approver of any long-term lease or sale. So, there's still another layer of board approval that's required to be met before any kind of transaction can occur. The surplus vote simply allows us to begin
the process of exploring possible uses of lease or sale. >> For the listening public, I would just say run this back and listen to that two or three more times. That's good. Thank you. >> I would also add too that like Mr. Abd
said that ultimately you're you're the authority in in approving the transaction, but even before we put properties into the process, we'll inform the board uh just so you have awareness about what we're thinking, what what what we're packaging and what we're planning on moving forward with.
So you'll know even ahead of those properties going into uh the pro process. Okay. So, we will divide these properties up here by sort of geographic location in in the county going north to south um just for organization's sake.
And so, we'll start with North Arvvada and Westminster. And the first property we have to recommend for surplus is Wit Elementary. And as you may be aware, um Wit Elementary, we do currently have a lease in place with uh AC's facility school.
we have no intention of ending that lease of discontinuing our relationship with that with that user. Um and again that underscores that this surplus recommendation does not mean that our immediate intent is to explore sale of any or all of these properties. It is a
way to give us greater flexibility if for example that that lease were to come to an end or that lesser expressed interest in purchasing the property as a longerterm investment in the site. So again a vote on surplus doesn't mean
that we're signaling any change of use based on what's currently happening there. Simply freeing uh the school district up to make decisions that we could bring to the board if the situation there changes. And so for each of these properties, you
know, we're going to go through these slides that are are all built as a template. And so for the first one, I'll just walk you through these in a little more detail and then we can move a little more quickly through the next ones. But I just want to make sure everybody's clear on, you know, what data we're looking at here when we
examine each property. And so WID is in the Stanley Lake articulation area. We have site acreage size. We have some description of surroundings. Um, we've listed out the articulation area elementary schools for each of these. So, you can see the four elementaryaries
that are in the Stanley Lake articulation there. Uh, Lucas Elementary School was the receiving school for WIT when it closed. And you have some information about the current zoning, um, and RTD access. And so being in Westminster, um most of our property in
Westminster is owned PUD, planned unit development, which means that uh any kind of planned development can go on that site subject to review by the city of Westminster and compatibility with their master plan. Um and that's all, you know, if it ever comes to that, that
is all a process that plays out with the city of Westminster. As far as some details on the building, we share for each building year of construction, square footage, classrooms, and capacity, our FCI score, which a reminder there, lower is better.
So that is a ratio of what it would cost to rebuild that school, the vacancy date, and then as I mentioned earlier, current use. So we do have an active lease um with the ACES facility school at the WIT
site. There are no plans to change that lease. at this time and we uh anticipate continuing to work with ACES. And then for each property, you'll see um this data on utilization and capacity both in the articulation area, which is
the top section of this table, and within a 3 and a half mile radius. And so you'll see that this varies for different articulation areas and their size and density of schools. In the case of Stanley Lake, we have four elementaryaries in the area, 1,945
seats, of which 1375 are occupied. So that gives us 570 excess seats within the articulation for a 70.7% utilization rate. Because of the relative uh geographic position of the wit school, um there are actually only two of those
schools within the articulation area that fall within that three and a half miles, Lucas and Seer. And there we have 964 seats currently serving 650 students this school year with an excess of 314 seats for a utilization of 67.4%.
So every one of our enrollment data slides will look just like this and you'll see that there are some differences from articulation to articulation. Um but they will all tell you where we sit in terms of utilization currently. And then we'll have long-term enrollment projections for each of these
articulation areas. So in the Stanley Lake articulation um and these this data is all from our uh enrollment planning reports that our planning team puts together. Um by 2030 we anticipate a decline of 308 students
across K12 and the Stanley Lake articulation area which represents a decline of 8.7% of their total enrolled students. So we don't anticipate needing any additional capacity. Um we actually anticipate a reduction in students. However, we also
just look at with our planning team what possibilities for future expansion exist in the articulation area within three and a half miles of the site. And so at Lucas there's space for uh approximately two classroom addition and at Seer we could accommodate a four classroom
addition if it was ever needed. At this time there's no no anticipation that that would be needed. So, moving on, uh, Moore Middle School is also in Westminster, just barely. It is across the street from the city of Arvvada, so it is right on the border.
Um, and it falls in the Pomona articulation area. As I'm sure everyone here knows, um, the Moore Middle School program was incorporated into the Pomona Junior Senior High School, serving grades 612 school years ago. Um, and again, the
zoning at Moore is PUB. Here's some data on the building. And again, it was vacant as of that Pomona consolidation in June of 2024, and we don't have current use at Moore Middle School.
Since more is a middle school, we break the enrollment analysis out by middle grades for that articulation area. So looking at grades 6, 7, 8. Um, and so the middle school that would be the boundary middle school for those students is now
Pomona Junior Senior. At Pomona, we have 900 seats of middle grade capacity. We currently have 387 students in those seats, which leaves us in excess of 513 seats. Expanding that radius out to middle grades within three and a half miles, you additionally have Mandandalay
Middle School in North Arvada. And you can see that those utilizations are fairly low. Within the Pomona articulation, we anticipate a decline of 321 students over the next 5 years. Um, which represents a decline of 13.9% of
enrollment in the Pomona articulation. So, we don't anticipate needing additional seats, especially based on the capacity we have at Pomona 612. However, there is space according to our planning team at North Arvvada Middle School and Mandalay for at least a four classroom addition
though there's not need for it. Moving to Central Arvvada and again I'll say it again, Fitz Morris Elementary does currently have active programs by surplusing uh that property. there is no intent
there to discontinue that programming or those relationships simply freeing up uh the use of that property if someone was to express interest. So again we have some information about
Fitz Morris which is in the Arvvada articulation. The boundary elementary was Fremont, the receiving boundary elementary. And the zoning there is RN6, which in our VA means uh residential neighborhood 6, single family, 6,000 foot lot, single
family detached. And then we just have some data on the building. And as I mentioned, we do have Apex leasing space within that for child programming um and recreation programming. We also have GED next who is a district GED partner providing GED
supports also leasing space and we have internal user there with um JTS this year. Um and so we do have a bit of use at Fitz Morris and again we anticipate continuing that use um until until their
parties no longer desire to be involved in that use. And so for the Arvvada articulation, you can see the four Arvvada elementary schools. So we're at about 78.2% utilization this school year. When we expand out, you can see the density of
elementary schools in this area of Arvvada. Um so you have quite a few. And when we look at everything within three and a half miles, we're sitting at about 73% utilization with in excess of a,57 elementary seats.
We anticipate a decline of enrollment in the Arvvada articulation of 506 students or 18.9% over the next 5 years and so we don't see a need for additional seats in that area. However, um both Serest and Swanson
Elementary which are within three and a half miles of Fitz Morris do have uh space on their sites for a fourclassroom addition. Additionally, in the Arvvada area, and you'll see this on each slide, for Arvvada, um for elementary grades, Campbell Elementary is currently serving
as a prek center, and Campbell could also be um modified or or adjusted to reopen serving preK and elementary grades if it was ever needed. However, based on those demographic data, um we certainly wouldn't anticipate that.
Peek Elementary also in the Arvvada articulation. Same um Arvvada Elementary schools in the articulation area there. The new boundary school for Peek was Serest Elementary
and the current zoning in Arvvada is RN 7.5 which is um residential single family detached 7500 foot lot. So slightly larger lot, residential, single family detached.
Some information on the PE building and again it's been vacant since June of 2023 and we don't have any current use there. So you'll see the same utilization because it's the Arvvada articulation area and a very similar um list of
schools within that 3 and a half mile radius. um 1,086 excess elementary seats within 3 and a half miles and a utilization rate of about 73.8%. Same uh growth. This is still the Arvvada articulation. So that same
decline in enrollment is anticipated. Arvvada K8 is the next building that we're recommending for surplus. Again, it is also in the Arvvada articulation area. So, you've got um the same elementary schools there. And you also have North Arvvada Middle being the
middle school um serving that articulation area since the consolidation of K8 into North Arvvada Middle. And so those are the boundary schools, Lawrence and North Arvvada. And the zoning there is RN6, that residential neighborhood, 6,000 square
foot. Our Vatican is a fairly large building at 115,000 square ft and it is a fairly old building with a 1952 original construction date and again vacant since June of 24 when the students were received by North
Arvvada Middle School and Lawrence Elementary. We do have a temporary current use at the Arvvada K8. Um the Jefferson County Public Library, who's a great partner of ours, is renovating their Arvvada library located in Oldtown. Um they have about a six to
eightmonth construction timeline there to renovate that library. And um so we are hosting them as a temporary library site serving Oldtown Arvvada and the surrounding areas. Um but that use is temporary and so that
use will be discontinued uh in the coming months. Yeah. >> Um, so the way that the that Arvvada Vat K8 is being used currently, is the public able to go in and do they have access to the entire building or is it just a small portion of the building?
>> No, the the Arvvada library worked with our facilities teams to kind of cordon off >> um a section of the library that's for public use. >> Okay. Excellent. So there's kind of like a one in one out. >> Correct. Yeah. They have a a portion of the building with controlled access
>> but not access to the whole thing. >> Correct. >> Thank you. >> Yep. >> And I should mention that the lease agreement with the library covers operational costs for the library's use of the building. So we are not incur there's no district cost incurred. Um
the library is actually covering the cost of operating the facility for the time that they're using it. And so we're going to look because K8 serves elementary through middle grades, we'll look on this slide just at the um elementary enrollment data. So again, it's going to be the same data for the
other Arvvada articulation elementaryaries in terms of utilization. A slightly different group of schools within that 3 and a half mile radius. Um, so you've got 3,830 elementary seats within that radius,
3,60 students in them, 770 excess, so just shy of 80% utilization. And then for middle grades, um, North Arvvada Middle is the receiving school and the Boundary Middle School where we have a capacity of 756 students
with 503 currently enrolled. So a utilization of 66 and a half%. And if we expand that radius out, you also capture Oberon and Everett middle schools where we have 588 excess middle school seats for utilization in that zone, that three
and a half mile circle of 73.9%. And again the same uh the same decline of 56 students are almost 19% in our VATA articulation and North Arvvada Middle School has
adequate site area for an addition of at least four classrooms if it was ever needed though again we don't anticipate any such need at this time. Moving on to Wheatidge, we have two properties that we'll share
with you in Wheatidge. The first one of those is Colar Strand Elementary. And so Colar Strand um is now served by Prospect Valley. And we have our list of Wheatidge Articulation Area Elementary there. And the zoning there is R1, which is
Wheat Ridge Wheat Ridg's residential uh single family detached zone. And then just some data on the building at Colar Strand. Again, it's vacant since June of 2023 and we don't have any current use there.
Here we have all of the Wheatidge articulation area schools. And you'll notice that that list is the same for those within a three and a half mile radius because they are all of the Wheat Ridge um elementaryaries are within that radius and there are no other schools outside of the articulation due to Colar
Strand's kind of unique location um pretty centrally located within Wheat Ridge. And so we currently have 96 excess seats in that articulation area for an elementary utilization of 95 and a half%. And we'll talk a little bit about that
because I know that looks a bit different from the other slides. We do anticipate a enrollment decline in the Wheat Ridge articulation area of 143 students or 4% over the next 5 years and those forecasts do include development that is planned within that articulation
area and we'll talk a little bit more about that. I have a dedicated slide for that to talk about. um within a three and a half mile radius of Colar Strand. We do have space to expand at Stober Peak at Pennington and at Stevens
Elementary. Though again, um the forecast data would not indicate that there's a need for it even though we are at that 95% utilization at this time. Wilmore Davis is our other Wheatidge elementary school that we're asking to consider for surplus.
Again, you have the same list of area uh elementary schools in the articulation. The receiving school was Stevens Elementary for Wilmore Davis and the zoning there is R2 which is a slightly higher density single family detached zoning in the city of
Wheatidge. And I will mention that um Stevens does have the lowest uh current utilization rate within that Wheat Ridge boundary. So even though it's uh 95% in the aggregate, um Stevens
is sitting closer to 81% utilization. So we have students somewhat um unevenly distributed within the Wheat Ridge articulation. Some some information on the Wilmore Davis building there. It's one of the older ones, 1955.
Uh, a little bit of a higher FCI reflecting that age. And again, vacant since June of 23. No current use there. And so you can see because of Wilmore's uh location being closer to the Jefferson articulation and some more um elementaryaries beyond the Wheat Ridge
articulation boundary. Um, you know, when you consider the 3 and a half mile radius there for Wilmore Davis, you've got 529 empty seats um within that 3 and a half mile radius for utilization of 84.8%.
Same projections there. you know, still anticipate a decline of 4% and the same um uh capacity for expansion on those other sites at those other elementarymentaries. Now, Wheatidge, we have some additional
considerations um that we wanted to bring to you just knowing that um you know at first glance you do look at that and say that's pretty high you know utilization actually that seems about where it should be. Does that make us nervous to reduce, you know, potentially have a longer term reduction in the
number of seats that could be made available? One thing to consider about the city of Wheatidge is that, you know, Wheatidge is one of our most built out cities um within our district, meaning there is very little open area left in Wheatidge that is not protected park or open space. And the city of Wheatidge is in
fact looking to increase their open space footprint uh and park footprint with their park master plan. And so we we really anticipate very little growth coming from new development within the city of Wheatidge. There are two active developments that
we we're are tracking or have been tracking. You know, one of those that you probably see on I7 is the new Lutheran Hospital and Clear Creek Crossing. Um Clear Creek Crossing is residentially fully built out at this point. Um it's important to note that part of the um design of the Clear Creek
Crossing was really focused on one and two-bedroom units um of apartments and town homes. And so we saw from all of the development in Clear Creek Crossing 37 students who uh enrolled at Jeffco schools within the Wheatidge articulation. And of course
those students, not all of them uh chose to go to their boundary schools within that articulation, but we did receive 37 um from, you know, close to 500 units there. The Lutheran Legacy Campus is probably the last large development within the city of Wheatidge that they will ever
see um as that campus is redeveloped. And it's currently in the planning stages. It's projected to be about a decade from now until it's fully built out um because it is a large redevelopment site. Um however most of the initial planning shows that those are to be multif family units. Um there
will be a mixed kind of offering of different types of housing under the currently proposed plans. Um the currently proposed plans show about 350 single family homes. Uh we typically see a you know about 75 students per home
coming out of single family home development um in the county over the last 10 years or so that we have to look at. um using larger developments like Candelis uh Sulttera as examples of what single family development uh produces.
And so that would put us and this is you know this is all subject that that plan is not fully approved um or defined yet but doing that calculus it puts us over seven years 263 students hitting across grades K through 12. And we do see
typically a pretty broad distribution of students when they arrive uh in this type of new development. And so take taken in that context, you know, we don't actually anticipate um the that development having that huge of an impact on enrollment because of the
variety of housing on offer and the number of single family homes. Stevens is the boundary elementary for that uh redevelopment. And as I mentioned earlier, Stevens of the elementaryaries in that articulation area, Stevens actually does have the lowest current utilization.
The other important point to consider here too is that Wheat Ridge Elementary Schools receive a high amount of choice in and so managing choice is a is another way that we can manage um any enrollment pressure in that articulation area. Um,
so those are just some considerations to contextualize that utilization in the context of, you know, asking to make a surplus recommendation. >> And Greg, I also assume that these are variables that are factored in to our projections on slide 64.
>> That's correct. >> Where it predicts a decline of 4% over the next five years. Correct. >> That includes consider I we want to make sure for our board and our listening public that people understand these types of developments are considered in
the enrollment projections and even with that we're we're projecting a decline of 4% over the next 5 years. >> Yes, that's a good point, Superintendent. And um you know if you were to back out the Lutheran legacy redevelopment from that it would be an
even higher decline. But you know that would be just hypotheticals. But our all of that to say our forecasts take into account development that we know of. And then moving to the city of Lakewood uh we have two schools that we're recommending for surplus within
Lakewood. First we have Mohome. Mohome's in the Jefferson articulation area. Um so the articulation elementaryaries are Lmberg and Edgewater. The new boundary school for Mo. The receiving school was Lumbberg
and it is zoned within um Lakewood as R2 which is two family and small lot residential. And there's quite a diverse uh array of housing in the area of Mohome. Again, Mo Home's a fairly older building. 1954
construction originally, fairly high FCI. It's been vacant since June of 23, and we don't have any current use there. And so, looking within the Jefferson articulation, we have 972 seats of capacity to 739 students currently
there. Puts us at about a 76% utilization. expanding to the three and a half mile radius, we have about 898 vacant seats. Uh so a 72.2% utilization when you expand to that 3 and a half mile radius.
And then in the Jefferson area, we also anticipate a continued enrollment decline. Uh we anticipate a decline of 247 students or 16.9% within the Jefferson articulation area over the next 5 years. So there wouldn't be need for additional
capacity. Uh however we do have space for additions as shown here at Lumber Edgewater and Iber. Then finally we have Green Mountain Elementary. Green Mountain is in the Green Mountain articulation. And so you see the four
Green Mountain Articulation Elementary Schools listed there. Foothills was the receiving school for Green Mountain. And Green Mountain is zoned for a plan development R16, which is Lakewood's um small lot, single family, detached
residential. And Green Mountain's also been vacant since June of 23 with no current use. And so then we look at the Green Mountain Elementary uh I'm sorry, the Green Mountain Articulation Elementary Schools where we have about 263 excess
seats currently. We have about an 86% utilization within the articulation area. And when we expand out to that 3 and a half mile radius, you have about 867 excess seats currently or 78.4% 4%
utilization within that three and a half mile radius. And again, um, Green Mountain anticipates a decline by 45 students or 1.3% over the next 5 years. And again, this is um this also factors in the fact
that there is development occurring um on the south side of Green Mountain um south of the Sulttera development. Um and so there are homes that have been built and continue to be built there. And so this uh forecast does take that
into account. Even with that housing coming online, we still believe there's you know there is a net uh decline in students in the articulation and then again you have um capacity for additions at schools within three and a
half miles there. So, those are the full recommendations and I'm sure you have some questions and so we'd love to give you a little time. >> Board members, >> director Kenworthy, go for it. >> Not a whole lot of questions. There's a whole lot of information. Um, and I
appreciate the transparency for our various communities who will obviously have questions. this will be something we can refer folks to when they are wondering about, you know, how much thought has gone into this decision and declining enrollment rates. I mean, it's going to all be really informative as
people have those questions. Um, I want to just double check that for all of the sites as listed when you mentioned that there's um room for classroom expansion, what that means is that there's a reasonable footprint currently existing at the site for classroom expansion, but there are no
plans currently. Um, if there were to be some sort of miraculous turnaround in enrollment in the future, and we're talking like 10 years away, 15 years away from now, if that's even possible, um, that there would be possibility to
make to do additions >> given the um, GA gas, electricity, water capacity at the site. >> That's correct. >> Yeah. Okay. That's one of the things I wanted to ask about. And then my other question is with all of this information
that's been collected, um my hope is or my I'm making an assumption here that this is all going to get added into the capital master plan so that we have this um sort of retroactive data as we move forward with the capital master plan so that it helps
to inform like future decisions in this vein as well. also that we have this archived and saved there so that we know like all of the numbers as we start if we ever have to look forward towards another project similar to this.
>> Yep. And the capital plan, you know, we've used the same data sets for all of our analysis. Um and so all of that's taken into consideration. Um the utilizations are, you know, obviously a big component of that as well. Yeah, I
think it's a wealth of information and I think as we move forward with surplus and with conversations with our municipalities, this will be an excellent um document to return to to help inform conversations with community members who might not have any of these questions right now but will in the
coming months. Yeah. Thank you. >> Other questions? Okay, Director Monian. >> All right, so I have a few questions. Uh and I just for clarification if we go back to slide 75 as an example um when we're saying that we have excess seats
we're in the top column we're identifying those receiving schools that have some excess seats and then the bottom column is total seats that are still available. I just want to make sure I'm understanding that correctly. >> So the yeah the excess number of seats
you're talking about the shaded green here. >> Yes. >> Yeah. So on the top on each of these slides, the top is the schools within that articulation area. >> The bottom is uh basically drawing a three and a half mile radius uh circle around the site to capture
>> okay, >> you know, schools that we believe represent a reasonable uh distance. >> So essentially when we're looking at the bottom column, we're tallying up the available seats at all of those schools that are listed in that. >> Correct. >> Very good. And then I think one other
question. Um, so with the schools that we currently have a lease with, if we choose to push forward with surplusing that property, what happens to that existing lease? >> Essentially nothing. Um, the surplus doesn't impact police, doesn't impact
um, our operations with that partner. Um the surplus does open up two possibilities that we you know which is why we're bringing them up which is one the current uh lesser uh I'm sorry lei says
we're interested in potentially purchasing this building and at that point we could say great let's let's talk about what it would mean to market this building and allow you to make an offer on it. Um, it could also be that they want to
secure their their operation on that site and enter into a longer duration lease. Um, leases of more than 10 years do require board action. Um, they are currently on short-term leases that do not require uh board action or approval. And so that could also open up the
possibility that any of those entities uh says, "Hey, we would we would like to actually expand our operation here and enshrine ourselves with a longerterm lease." And it would give us the opportunity to then, you know, negotiate terms on a longerterm lease that potentially were favorable to the to the
district and bring more money into our cap reserve and to bring that to the board for consideration. And currently when we have a property that's being leased, is there a cost to the district to keep it leased as it is
or do the does the lease at least help us offset the costs of maintenance of that property? >> That's a great question. Yeah. So, our our leases at a minimum um with our nonprofit partners and partners who provide community benefit such as Apex, right, they at a minimum cover our
expenses of maintaining, serving the building. Um and for other uses, you know, our leases actually generate profit um that does go into the cap reserve along with any other revenue generated through property disposition. >> All right. Um so with these properties
that are leased, um let's say that we push forward with surplusing um and that property or the current occupant says we want to expand our footprint here. um or maybe they don't. I think that's the
question I'm trying to ask. If they if they're electing to not continue to ex to have their footprint there, what does that mean in terms of somebody else being able to come in and that current lei being there already? So if the if the current leie was no
longer interested in continuing their lease, um well, if the property is surplus, then what that does mean is at that point we could pivot to marketing the property um on our on our general disposition. You know, not we'd notify the municipality per our process and
then enter into the um disposition process and potentially market that property for sale. Um, my only question is more of a clarification. All of our municipalities for these have current zoning, but that
does not preclude them from modifying or changing zoning if they see fit based on future asks of community or partners. Is that correct? >> Correct. any zoning change, you know, would be have to be brought about by
whoever was seeking that change. So, you know, the way that plays out for us typically in these transactions is if somebody is buying it for a redevelopment, then they are seeking to change the use and they have to go through the municipalities process on that change versus, you know, the the
counter to that would be a reuser who's going to use the property um under what's allowable by that current zoning. you know, those residential zonings, the R75 and R six and the different ones that our municipalities have, a lot of them allow um other uses, you know,
including um you know, a lot of them allow healthcare under that or church or school or daycare. So, there's a number of allowable uses where there doesn't have to be a zoning change. Um and typically the changes come when somebody's seeking to do something
drastically different with that property than what's on it currently. >> Perfect. Thank you. Um, I also want to echo just a huge amount of gratitude. This is a lot of of work and a lot of data as director Kenworthy identified and um, we really appreciate it. I'm
really excited to get these surplused. Um, and I also really appreciate the identification out to our philanthropic partners in our communities, not just kind of the market avenue. So, I'm um really optimistic and I think this is something our community has asked us for
and so I just really really appreciate the work. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> All right, the time is now 6:20 and I would like to call for a 15 minute break. Heat. Hey, Heat.
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Hey, Heat. Welcome back. Next, the board will receive monitoring report 1.1, which states, "Every student will demonstrate significant and appropriate academic growth using a body of evidence that includes classroom and standardized summitive assessments. Presenting this
report is Renee Nicode, chief epidemic officer, and Dr. Carol Eaton, executive director of assessment and research. Presenters, we have allotted 60 minutes for this report. We ask that you please include time for the board questions. And before I turn it over to our presenters, Superintendent Derlin, is there anything you'd like to add?
>> Yes. Thank you, President Applegate. Welcome um Miss Nicode and Dr. Eaton. Happy to have you here this evening and thank you for the effort that you've put into this monitoring report. Uh I think this is uh you know the monitoring report that really summarizes our
progress uh related to the Jeffco Thrive goals um in our learners, our future, right? all about how are we doing uh with our core mission of uh helping every student achieve their biggest dreams uh given a strong academic
foundation. So really excited for the board to see um the progress that we've been making um especially given that uh as we've all talked about the 2025 calendar year was an incredibly challenging um year for Jeffco public
schools and even amidst those challenges we have stayed focused our our educators our school leaders our our academic team members who serve in the central services departments who support our schools have all stayed focused on um
our students and their progress academically. So really excited for us to share this report with you and also to be honest about some areas where we still need to grow um and continue to focus. So thanks very much and look forward to the conversation this evening uh led by Miss Nick Thodis. Thank you.
>> Good evening members of the board and superintendent Dorland. are here tonight to review um our midyear data for board monitoring report 1.1 that's focused on academic growth between August 2025 and December 2025 and I'm Renee Nicotus chief academic officer and I'm joined by
my colleague >> Carol Eaton executive director and instructional uh assess and research we have a new name assessment and research >> so all the hard questions about data and assessment good Dr. eaten. Thanks for being here, Carol. Okay. Um,
we'll start with an overview of our report tonight. Um, we'll start with the board's interpretation and its connection to our Jeffco Thrive's goals. Um, and really the bulk of the report in this presentation is a deep dive into our mid-year data uh from our Dibbles assessment, our MAP assessment, nth
grade credits, and graduation rates. And then finally, we'll discuss some bright spots, what's on track, and then the challenges that we still face. So, Bordens 1.1 focuses on significant and appropriate academic growth for every student and our interpretation uh
specifies appropriate growth against our annual um across our annual state assessments and more immediately for this report uh between our beginning of the year and our mid-year assessments with the 50th percentile being our average growth target. We're also
monitoring uh ninth graders to ensure they're on track for graduation by earning at least six credits toward their goal um at the end of their freshman year. Uh so this report is contextualized within the Jeffco thrives goals specifically focusing on those key grade
level benchmarks of third grade reading, fifth and eighth grade math and then our freshman and our senior success to drive high school graduation. Then this next slide is just really a snapshot around those uh benchmark or those uh performance indicators that we're tracking. So, right now at
midyear, we've got uh in reading, 59% of our third graders scoring uh performing at high, average, or high on the winter map assessment. Uh in math, 48% of our fifth graders, and 50% of our eighth graders scored um at those same
performance levels. Our 9th grade on track metric is is strong at 87% based on a minimum of earned earning three credits at this point in the school year. And then lastly, we have 87% and 84% of our seniors meeting at least one
post-secary uh readiness measure in uh reading, writing, communicating, and math respectively. So the data that we're presenting comes from four key areas. Uh we have our Dibbles 8s which is our K3 uh literacy assessment. Uh MAP assessments for
grades uh 1 through 10 um in math for reading and then in math grades 3 through 10 credits earned by our ninth graders and the graduation demonstrations for our 12th graders. And I want to emphasize this is mid-year data which really helps us kind of benchmark are we on track to meet our
end of year goals. So if we uh looking clo more closely at the assessment data uh focusing first on the dibbles 8 results this section specifically monitors our third grade reading goal and research has shown that
74 uh 74% of students who are poor readers at the end of third grade will continue to be poor readers by 9th grade and in general have a higher risk of academic failure and school dropout which makes this a very um it's just a key key priority benchmark. mark for us
to be tracking. So to provide context for the board, the Dibbles 8 assessment is a skills skills-based reading assessment given three times a year to students in kindergarten through third grade. It's also Jevco's designated readact assessment. The data is monitored across these four
levels that you see here on this slide. And we also use uh Leura for Spanish language assessment in our dual language schools. So looking at the combined K3 data, we do have u cost for celebration between beginning of year to middle of the year.
We've seen a significant 11 uh percentage point increase um from 54% to 65% and the number of students performing at or above benchmark. And then conversely uh the number of students who are below or well below
benchmark has dropped from 46% to 35% which is the the trend that we want to see. And then when we break the data down by grade level the positive trend continues in every single grade K through three.
Um we see um increases in the number of students at or above benchmark. And this progress has really led us to the question we've been discussing here at midyear with our instructional leaders. And that is how are we also using our intervention time to support those students that are below and well below
uh to accelerate the progress that we're seeing for them. >> Renee, can I jump in? >> Yeah. >> I just want to highlight something that you've been sharing and Dr. Eaton has been sharing with me and with our board over the last several years, which is I
think evident in the data on this slide. the sooner we catch kids that aren't moving towards grade level, the greater chance we have of actually getting them to grade level. And I think you see that data for sure in this kindergarten data versus the third grade data for example.
So we have over the especially for our new board members over the last I would say three to four years really focused in on at kindergarten and first making sure that we're paying close attention to students who are behind earlier on um in their school in their school year so
that the sooner we get them into an intervention or some type of tier 2 um kind of practice uh the faster they're going to get to grade level. Um, and I just think it's interesting that that data is playing out in this slide as well. >> Yeah, I mean this this assessment is
what we use what the state requires that all districts adopt a readact assessment that they use as their diagnostic and screener to identify students for a read plan. So students scoring below um and well below um well really well below are typically identified um having a
significant reading deficiency and and will be put on a read plan. um our very well-intentioned teachers over the years um have been hesitant to put students on a read plan right away, especially at early ages like in kindergarten um
thinking that let's we'll work with them before we um label them and catch them up. But what we found over time is that wasn't happening. We weren't catching them up. And what research tells us is the sooner we can identify that there might be a gap in their literacy skills and close that gap before it grows um
the more quickly we're able to get them on track. Okay, so moving to our uh second major assessment overview of the midyear map results. Uh this data allows us to monitor progress across three of our key Jeffco Thrive's goals. third grade
reading and fifth and eighth grade math. Just a little bit about the MAP assessment. It's adapt it's an adaptive test that's administered again three times a year for both reading and math. And we test all students in grade uh in grades 1 through 10. And then the data for this assessment is categorized like
you see on the chart on on the right into uh five performance levels um from low to high. So on this slide you'll see uh our beginning to middle of the year performance for elementary students and again the data is categorized into
those five performance levels. Um and it really starts at the top from high to high average low and then um or low average and then low. You can see we have a if you look at the end counts at the bottom of each graph it shows how many students were tested.
And so within all of our assessments, we really have a healthy uh number of students that we're testing to give us um pretty good uh representation of progress for most of our students. The overall trend in our elementary schools and is showing positive academic movement um with a noticeable percentage
of students uh shifting from the lower bands to the higher bands. This slide is showing beginning of middle of the year um achievement for middle school. Um and as you can see in these graphs, they look a little bit different. uh middle school continues to
be an area of challenge for us as a district and um one in which we are placing a lot of resources um doing some professional learning and focusing in on the magic of middle school and how we bring that magic to the entire student experience, academics, enrichment and
all of the things that are happening at middle school. But it does uh remain an area of challenge for us as we look at the academic growth. This then is a graph showing our beginning of middle beginning to middle of the year high school map achievement.
Uh we have the high school data specifically for grades nine and 10. So you see a slightly lower end count of the number of students that were tested. Um, and then you could see the the achievement uh changing in reading with the very high the high category that
dark green getting larger um and the lighter green getting larger and the red and the yellow shrinking which was again what we want to see. And then you can see on the right what it looks like for math. Not quite as much growth there. Um but we are still seeing good gains
especially in um map growth which you'll see here. uh this chart the the last three graphs were achievement. So students scoring credit right around that grade level expectation. So are they performing at grade level? And this is showing growth.
Um and what we look at for growth again at that 50th percentile is our target for what we consider to be typical average what we would expect growth. Any students that are performing above the 50th percentile. Um, and you can see there we've got some really strong uh
growth gains. Any any student performing above that is what we we talk about it as gap closing growth. So if they've got learning gaps when they're um growing at a more accelerated rate than we would expect, they're closing those gaps and approaching grade level much more
quickly, which is what we would expect and want for our students that may not be performing at grade level. So sometimes when you look at uh achievement data, you might worry that there's not as many students at grade level. And what we do then is correlate that with what are we seeing about uh
from growth u for those same students and if they're growing a lot pretty soon they're going to catch up to that grade level expectation where they need to be. So we're very excited to be seeing um this kind of growth u for our reading here at midyear. This next chart shows MAP, I'm sorry,
math map growth. Um, and again, strong gains above the 50th percentile. And you can see here if you look at sixth, seventh, and eighth, slightly uh not as much at eth, but slightly lower growth than we see at the other grade levels again at the middle level. So, you know,
we're having lots of conversations about what do we do here to really support our middle school uh schoolers achievement. >> Sorry, can I just ask a question? Are these showing the strands as well? >> So like >> like geometry and algebra.
>> No. Is it showing like third grade 2023 24 is now fourth grade for 24 25 and now fifth grade for 25 26. >> Yeah. If you look at diagonally. >> Yes. So is it showing each grade level strand? >> Yes. >> As it Okay.
>> If you go diagonally across the chart if I'm following your question. Yeah. Okay, so this next section or the next metric for uh 1.1 focuses on the high school credits earned and this helps us to monitor our freshman success as well as our our 12th graders and the progress
of our seniors towards graduation. This chart details uh the first semester credit progress across all of our high school grade levels uh providing a clear picture at each grade level for how many students are meeting the credit benchmarks they need to remain on track. Now, we're tracking nth grade
specifically because there's a lot of research out there that tells us that once nth graders get off track, it's very hard to get them back on track. And when we talk about high school reimagined, um there's not a lot of high school reimagined opportunities available to students that are trying to make up graduation requirements and uh
recover credit. And so we're watching uh the nth grade very closely and intervening as quickly as we can when we realize that those students are not on track. Uh moving beyond credits, um this next section shows uh the mid-year graduation demonstration. And this is a critical
metric for seniors to remain on track for graduation. And these are nonreditbased measures like ACT, SAT, things like that that they also have to meet in order to be um to graduate. So this is our 12th grade graduation
demonstrations for reading, writing, and communicating. So 87% of our students as of January have met their graduation demonstration requirement for reading, writing, communicating. And then in math, 82% of our 12th graders have met um both reading,
writing, and communicating and math. So we do have several areas of celebration which are highlighted on this slide. On MAP we saw high growth at 65th percentile and above in 29 of our schools for reading and then we had 10 schools for math show that type of
growth. Our K3 dibbles data is a major win uh with students meeting or exceeding benchmark increasing by nine percentage points. And then um this year we launched our Dibbles dyslexia screener. Yeah, we're ahead of the state with
that. Um and our results at midyear um we actually have the the 6% of our students on that dyslexia screening assessment. 6% are in that range where they might have have um not symptoms but
could have a reading deficiency like dyslexia. we're not diagnosing, but we are saying that they are demonstrating behaviors within their literacy development that could be an indicator. Um, and so 6% of our students came out there at that rate. Can't get my
sentence out. Um, compared to 15% nationally, what the research says is across the nation about 15% of students are typically falling into this range where only 6% of our Jeffco kids were, which is which is good news. And we've been working with our teachers about how to have these conversations with families. Uh I think a lot of schools
are meeting with parents um this month during conferences to talk through what this means and also share what interventions they're able to provide to their students um if they're experiencing those reading difficulties. Now this slide shows the schools that demonstrated that really high fall to
winter map reading growth and map math growth. And the ones that are in bold are schools that showed that high growth in both content areas, both reading and math. So it's a huge celebration and a and a testament to their dedication and their hard work. And then you'll see on this slide we
have uh broken it down by the different um growth areas. So with a median growth percentile percentile of 50 to 54th we have 17 schools in reading and 25 in math scoring in that range. We have 72 schools within the 55th to 64 for
reading and 53 in math. and then above again 65 29 and 10 and then you have a full school list available there as well. So to bring this data to light uh I also wanted to share just a little a qual little bit of qualitative data with you that we received. Um this is an email
from a teacher at Dunston Middle School. Um, and this teachers uh speaking directly to the success that they're seeing, mentioning they've never seen their mid-year ELA map data this strong in ELA, uh, which they have attributed to their team effectively implementing at the new strategies we've been working on, as well as the curricular resources,
um, at the middle school level. So, that was fun to see. So, um, okay. So, the things that are on track, the work that we're continuing to do that's supporting the success that we're seeing and that we believe will sustain it and grow more success is um
our learning walks. um those remain on track where each month we're going to this year we're focused on middle schools. And so we're going uh twice a month to a middle school um walking classrooms with the principles uh within the articulation area and um supporting that school with their next steps and then talking with leaders um about the
things that they're seeing um and that connect across their schools. We're also uh continuing to focus on implementation of high-quality instructional materials and the successful uh support after the dyslexia screener launch uh for students and
schools. So all of those initiatives uh remain on track challenges. Despite our successes, we are facing some some key challenges that we are working to address primarily and ensuring a strong foundation at the elementary school from PK through 5 and making sure students at the elementary
are mastering those key skills and concepts they need before they metriculate onto middle school. Um, and intensifying our focus on closing gaps for our students experiencing poverty, our students with disabilities and multilingual learners. Uh, we have we still have uh work to do in those areas
despite um some initial successes. other focus areas um that continue to be challenges. I've talked about the middle school, but we are working to enhance the middle school experience by improving student transitions from fifth to sixth grade. Um one of the interesting data points that we've seen
over time is um that that drop between fifth and sixth grade that we're seeing at our traditional middle schools. We're not seeing that same type of drop in our K8 configurations. And so we we we have a hunch that there's something around that fifth to sixth grade transition that's happening
for our students that we need to to focus on and improve. Uh so we've had a lot of conversation or research project around what is an effective transition. Um and we've been supporting our leaders to develop plans for that for next year across all of our middle schools. And then we're also working to address the chronic absenteeism. We have a a
district-wide absenteeism rate for chronic um at 26% which is high. Um and so part of our work around high school reimagine is focusing on engaging our learners in relevant um career focused experiences at the high school level. Um and I do believe this will lead to um
increased engagement for our students and hopefully less absenteeism. So uh that concludes our monitoring report and we're open to any questions you might have. >> Board of directors Dr. Etcher Varia please.
>> Thank you. Um, thank you so much for sharing this with us. It's exciting to see the data. Um, do you have any research? You mentioned the research with third graders um, who
if kids aren't reading in third grade, it's very unlikely they'll be reading by 12th grade. And I've heard that statistic my whole life. Is there has there been any further research done on this
kindergarten group and if kids are reading in kindergarten are they reading in third grade with the project? >> So we did a year and a half research study and one of the f focuses was third grade success. So students who started
on a read plan sometime in K3 and exited a read plan by K3 by third grade. So, we did examine how students were progressing over that time. And we did find that students that were placed on a plan at an earlier grade level tended to come off a plan sooner and students that
were placed on the plan later were tended not to come off a plan in third grade by third grade. So, we are finding that early intervention matters and that we are seeing more success when students have faster intervention sooner.
>> Thank you. And then for our district-run preschools, how are we funneling that information up to the kindergarten teachers? Are we looking at like they they're using TS Gold, right? >> That's right. >> So, how are they using that data and
bringing it into the kindergarten? >> Uh, we've been talking a lot about how do we bring our preschool and kindergarten teachers together for that transition conversation? It happens uh already in our schools that have preschool classrooms within them. I think there's a greater challenge when and there's when there's not a preschool
located within the elementary school and not all of the preschool students at an elementary school attend that school. So, we have some just I think some logistical challenges around making that happen consistency consistently, but it's on our list of this is something we need to make happen. Um through our data dashboard work, it's also on our on our
list of dashboards we'd like to have up and running where that TS Gold data is more visible to kindergarten teachers as the students come in. Uh and then we have the KA assessment that all kindergarteners are given as well that does assess some of those um similar characteristics that we'd be looking for
as they're coming in from preschool to kinder. >> Yeah, that makes sense. So I guess my question is are we looking at being able to put them on a read plan if we see those TS Gold scores come through as soon as they as soon as we get going in August?
>> Not not right away. Um we're we we do want to give students a chance um to get into school and get going. Um a lot of we've we've said by October, but there are some schools that have waited until January to start the read plan with kindergarteners just given them a lot of
front loading at that first semester benchmark. I don't know that we want to go too much earlier than that. Um, you know, there's a lot of work happening around oral language and phonological awareness at the preschool level, especially now that we have a a high quality curricular resource in place.
So, that's more consistently being provided to our preschoolers. Um, yeah, I don't think we'd want to go too much earlier than we are right now. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Can I just jump in because I want to and this is like my thing. um with I think I
just as a person who spent a lot of time in early literacy work with families and students, I do think it's a balance between like remember the days when we had like you were supposed to be a DRA 4 by the
end of kindergarten, right? Um, it's a it's a balance between what we're talking about now, which is the sooner we provide the resources and instruction that a student needs to read on grade level, the better, for sure. And there
are also um children develop at different paces um over time. And so I I want to make it really clear especially because I know we have teachers who are talking with families about some of this data right
now. Um that if like if you look at slide um I don't see slide numbers. Uh oh, >> they should be on >> if you look at the dibbles 8 beginning to middle um K3 slide
uh those students in you know uh just take third grade in the in the yellow 15% or 13% slide 11 thank you um yeah those students that are in yellow at 11% and even the students who are at
in the 20% red at middle of year it doesn't mean they're not reading, right? It does mean that they're not reading at grade level. Um but just they're reading, they're just not where they need to be. And um on and you can see in this data, the sooner we c catch
that and give them the right instruction, the quicker they will catch up. Um, but I do want to make it clear that just because a student isn't necessarily um above grade level or on grade level right now at middle of year, that doesn't mean they're not going to get
there. Um, and I would say especially at that preschool and kindergarten stage, um, so much of what happens at home prior to the students even getting to us in preschool matters. Um the curriculum that we're implementing at preschool I think is a gamecher for giving our
preschool teachers the tools for the foundational pieces of literacy that need to be in place before reading even begins. Sort of this like reading and writing float on a sea of language and our kids need to be using that language before we then can expect them to move into the printed word. And so I just
want to be really clear that we our goal is to make sure all of our kids are in the green and the blue. Um, no doubt, especially by third grade. Um, but I I don't know a third grader that I can think of who I taught or um worked with as an interventionist that didn't read
better in fifth grade than they did in third grade, no matter which category they were in at the beginning, middle, or end of third grade. And so, um, it's not that they're not going to read on grade level ever. it just this the sooner we catch that they're struggling and give them the right dose of
intervention um the better. And that's that's a tricky balance too because you also want to make sure that they're developmentally ready for what we're trying to ask them to do. And and kids do develop at different um paces uh especially the younger they are. One of
the things that begins to happen after third grade is that reading to learn um learning to read to reading to learn shift and there's um there's less time and focus on learning to read instruction at the upper grades. And so it just becomes harder for the students
to get the kind of instruction they need which is that why it's so important at least for those foundational skills um of decoding um to be in place so that they can move into the more challenging aspects. So yeah, it's not like they won't ever, but by third grade, if they are poor
decoders, I should say, it becomes really challenging to to try to catch them up. And we know what happens when a student continues to fail at something or struggles with something. There's avoidance. There's, you know, I'm not a good reader. There's all all of that
that starts to happen, too. So, okay, sorry, last thing. Um, actually, maybe two things. Did you guys see the same dip? You were talking about the dip between fifth and sixth grade. Did you see the same dip
when kids were staying in elementary school through sixth grade and you're not seeing it when they stay in through 8th grade? That's so interesting. Um, okay. As a board, um I would like to advocate that we have some sort of academic
update at every single meeting just because I think this is really important and I'm wondering if we can somehow um choose like because I know as a teacher I was always progress monitoring my class. So I knew where my kids were at all. Like every single week we do our
end of unit test. I'd know where my kids were. So, some way to just like maybe choose like two or three really big goals that we just want to get an update on at every meeting, even if it's just like one slide, like, hey, here's where the kids are this month. And I know you
don't do testing every single month, but I'm just wondering if there's a way that we can sort of incorporate that into our board meetings so we have a clear picture of where academically our kids are going. I don't know if that makes sense. >> I know it's a big ask. I I would be
happy to in my superintendent report on a monthly basis include an update on what our academic leadership team is focusing on that month related to our goals in Jeffco Thrives. Um so the goals in Jeffco Thrives really are what um was
presented this evening around third grade reading, fifth and eighth grade math, nth grade credits, and 12th grade graduation. mostly because those are researchbased uh related to um graduation >> and key performance indicators for success.
>> Yeah. So I'm but I'm happy you know there's a lot that goes into so this is the you the board also receives this type of monitoring report in September >> um when we have endofear data from the year before and we give sort of a year
uh a full year summary report to the board um in September. this what we're doing today is the middle of year, right? Because we get the midyear data in and then we're able to give this more robust report. Um, but I'd be happy to include in my superintendent update on a
monthly basis just some information for the board about what our academic leadership team is up to, what data they're looking at. Um, underneath all of this, these highle goals is a lot of work. um including work that you'll see in other monitoring reports that come to
you related to like exclusionary discipline practices. If kids aren't in school, they can't learn. Um uh what are we doing around cultures of belonging? Um what are we doing in relation to professional learning for educators and
expansion of highquality instructional materials so teachers have what they need to provide the instruction. So, I'm happy to include some more academic updates in my monthly report for the board if that's helpful. >> I my hesitant You're speaking my language. I'm so glad you asked for it.
I could talk all day about it. Um I'm just not sure we would have every month um data. It will vary by school if they're using curriculum based assessments. I'm just not we don't have those same systemic assessments that we collect every single month outside of
these three times a year. So, it just would have been harder, I think, to come up with something every month. >> And I understand that and that's fair. Um, I was thinking more along the lines of if we're looking at third grade reading, okay, by September, you know,
where do we want the kids by, you know, or if we're looking at kindergarten, how many letters can you recognize? How many letter sounds can you recognize when you come in the next month, the next month? Because I know teachers are doing that anyways. Like that's that's what they're doing. And so it would just be kind of interesting to see kind of those updates
and if we're getting those updates kind of on a monthly basis and it can really help us shift that goal to okay by the end of the year this is where they're at and it's not just like two you know we're not we're we're only getting information it sounds like three times a
year. I'd love to get it more. It's all I'm saying. And we have done a pilot for some interim assessments for math based on our resource because all of our schools are using the same K12 um math resource uh illustrative math. And this year we did a pilot with some of our
about 20 of our schools to use interim assessments uh throughout the year so we would have uh more benchmark or more touch points within our data. Uh feedback from schools has been it was there were parts of it that were successful, parts have been not as much. So right now we're looking at revising that process based on their feedback. Um
but this is something we've been talking about for EA ELA as well. Challenge there is that we have five different resources in use uh across our system to for ELA instruction. So again it's based on the assessments that we have and who has access to those and how we're able
to provide more consistent points. >> Yeah, thank you so much and thank you for including that extra information for us on a weekly basis or monthly basis. That's awesome. Thank you. >> Thank you. other board members. Mr. Gibbons,
>> um I was a little surprised to hear that number on chronic absenteeism and I'm wondering just if we could have just more illumination on what we think is going on there and just possible solutions because that's a very high number. >> Yeah. Um we've tried a couple of different things that, you know, immediately would come to mind. um
trying to incentivize um schools with uh awards and recognitions and schools have put together plans to really um focus in on um absenteeism and the importance of attending school. You know, it really seemed to um start right around the time of uh post-pandemic
um when n this is a national trend that schools are seeing um a real uptick in chronic absism. Then I think the national percentage is 27. So we're slightly below that. I don't know if you have anything that you could add around that, but it's an ongoing challenge. Um, I do believe a lot of it is around how
are we creating those relevant learning experiences, college and career connected to what's coming next for our students. So, I do believe our high school reimagine work is going to have an impact there. Uh, student engagement. I mean, there's a variety of factors and part of the conversations we need to be having is identifying what are those
root causes that we can kind of look at trends over time and then start to work together to develop potentially more impactful interventions. But it it's a it's a tough nut to crack. >> Kenworthy, do you want to add based on what the DAC has done? >> I do. Yeah. Thank you. Um I think it was last year or the year before we tasked
the district accountability committee with having an additional side project where they researched and discussed chronic absenteeism and did sort of a deep dive and learning. And there's um the information that they produce, the questions that they ask are available um
in previous DACK resources. And that might be an interesting place to start because that conversation has happened with some of our community um engaged folks. And it was it was probably one of the best
um conversations that I've ever seen our deck have around chronic absenteeism and um the multiple perspectives that were brought up. So I think we can probably ask um Tara or maybe Greece for some of that DAC information because they did
have a report out um and it was I think it was it was helpful. It was also there was also a um attendance pilot that was run in the Alama area. Um and I think some of that data capturing was kind of picked up by the district and is going
to be used even though the pilot is over in the Alama area. Um they they gathered some interesting information for around tracking chronic absenteeism when it starts and how it starts to impact academics um based on
longevity of time periods and and that kind of thing. So they did a really nice study um from within our district. So there's also some good information there as well. And I'll defer to whatever else you want to share. Yeah, I I would just reiterate that that was a really great
conversation with DAC and we can share those slides with you all. It had a lot of data in there about what it looks like as a district and then we did have some follow-up conversations with the pilot um that happened in the Alama area to understand how it was used, what could be sustained, what would be most
important to follow up on. So, we did have those meetings at the central office to see how we can produce some of that work without having a full-time FTE dedicated to that work. Well, and so then along those lines, you know, during a school visit, I was, you know, hearing about actually this challenge particularly with freshmen. Um, and it
wasn't just about absenteeism. It was also about engagement for freshmen who were there. >> And the belief, and I don't know, maybe some of the DACA data and some of these other things have it, but the belief was that students felt they had a pretty big cushion in terms of the amount of credits required to graduate versus how many how much time they have to get
them. You know, there's a pretty big window there. and that that was they felt that they could just kind of slack especially early on and they would still have time to make it up. Now without opening the can of worms that is graduation requirements I don't know if there's ways to think about
you know promoting engagement and in a way that's um I don't know trying to address that problem early on because this was you know raised with me is like one is just a really big challenge that they were having specifically with nth graders um that that they related to that issue. So
>> yeah, you know, um we've had some conversations about that. I was speaking with a principal yesterday about credit recovery and he said that they don't offer credit recovery during the school year for that reason that ninth graders would say, you know, he'd say, "You're failing this class." Um they would say, "Well, I can just take credit recovery.
I'll take the credit recovery class, which easier anyway." And so they've stopped offering it and and we've been talking about that as a team centrally about just doing it during the summer and what the impact of that might be on some in some places. But I thought that was really interesting. I hadn't thought about that before. How are we
deincentivizing descentivizing some of our students um inadvertently? >> Well, yeah, because I could see that say a lower credit requirement offers some flexibility in certain ways. it's really beneficial, but if we don't have other ways to deal with the deincentivization that it causes, um, you know, it might
might be something to look at. So, >> it's an ongoing conversation. Uh, right now we have two of our schools, Lakewood High School and Wheatidge High School, um, and involved through a grant opportunity with the Center for High School Success, which is a a system and structure to really focus on nth grade
success. And it focuses on ninth grade uh, team. So, you have teachers that only teach ninth graders. They have data protocols. They have an a system for interventions. It's a really nice uh framework for addressing some of these issues. Um and they are seeing improvements in their ninth graders on
tracker as a result of this partnership. And we're looking at uh reapplying for the next round of this grant opportunity to provide this to more of our schools. Uh and then you know the framework itself is something that we could probably sustain even after grant dollars are are expired. So,
>> Director Mormonian, >> so just to piggyback off of what Director Gibbons was asking in terms of um addressing the chronic absenteeism, I'm just wondering is there any data or information that's shared where maybe we have gone to the students themselves and
collected their perspectives on why it is that they're not coming to school. Do we have that information? >> I don't have it directly. Someone else do. I guess what I would say about that is we've we've done quite a bit of work with our schools to engage students. We have an annual survey that I'm sure
we'll be presenting to you sometime in the near future um of our students, but we've also worked with students to help beyond the survey quantitative data to dig a little deeper to you get a statistic and what does that mean? So, a lot of our schools and we've shared these best practices at some of our
level meetings and some of our all leadership meetings where principles have done interviews with student groups um asking about how do we how are you not engaged or not in that way but just saying what what engages you at school? What what makes you want to come to school? And we've had some really
powerful um examples of best practices that have been shared across our middle schools, I can think of in our high schools around what's worked in some areas. So I think that's starting to spread and scale to some of our other schools when they see that engaging beyond an annual survey and really
talking to students on a some of them have advisory boards of students. They meet with them monthly. So that how powerful that can be to engage students at that level and really understand what they're thinking and what they're needing. >> I mean it can certainly be helpful to identify what is it that makes students
want to get out of bed and come to school in the morning. But it might also be helpful to ask the other question which is what are some of the things that are making you not want to get out of bed and come to school in the morning. Um and then I just had a question about the instructional materials that we're utilizing. How
often are we updating or changing those materials? That has been the bulk of our work within teaching and learning over the last I would say five to six years. um our we have a cycle for adoption um review and adoption um that's aligned
with the state cycle. So whenever the state goes through um the standards review it's a six-year window that the state engages in by content area. So for let's say for English language arts um over a six-year period of time uh broken into two-year increments they review
one-third of the standards each of those two years and within the six-year window they will have revised all the standards and at that point they communicate with districts to say we've updated the standards please make sure you have two years to make sure you have resources curriculum aligned to these new standards um for your instructors. And
so that's usually when we go through our adoption and review for curricular resources whenever there's a change in standards. Sometimes we've had to update materials because something goes out of print. Um so but it is um well aligned with the cycle that the state um goes through to revise standards.
>> So it sounds like it's about every six to eight years >> roughly six years. Yeah. And in terms of teacher uh educator feedback, um are they satisfied with this uh turnover of the materials that they are using or would they like to see
the um I guess the the curriculum be updated more frequently? What is their feedback? >> Um I don't I don't want to speak for all educators. I don't imagine they'd want to see them updated more frequently. It's it's quite um it's quite a big challenge to
implement new resources. Um and our teachers have um struggled in some places to do that recently um through adoptions. Quite honestly, we've had to work um with our teachers pretty intensively on listening to their feedback and supporting them through the challenge. It's it's typical um when you
adopt a new resource that change is hard and something I've taught for a really long time and I didn't have to think about a lot. I suddenly have got to go through and read through this and really understand this new resource and the pedagogical approach and um it's just it just requires a much uh bigger time investment. So I don't imagine most of
them would say I want a new resource um more frequently um as we've been implementing uh math and ELA science and social studies um across most of our grade levels over the past few years. Um we and we seek out teacher feedback pretty consistently and regularly um
just to kind of see how it's going and what they need. And when we receive that feedback from our teachers, um, is kind of our response and our approach to just simply coach them to push through it or do we take that feedback and say, well, wait a
second, change for the sake of change may not necessarily be a good thing. How is our approach? >> Yeah, I mean, it's typically to try to understand more. What is the need? Is it a supplemental need that they feel like there's a a gap, which any resource that we purchase is going to have? It's not there's no perfect resource that's going
to meet every child's need. Typically, the resources we purchase have much more material in them that a teacher could ever use and they're designed intentionally to be used that way so that interventionists, our learning specialists, our GT teachers can all also pull from those resources so that
you have a coherent approach to learning for students regardless of of who's supporting them. Um, I lost my train of thought. I'm talking so long, but there is no perfect resource. So, I'd want to understand what is it about your current resource that's not meeting the needs that you have as an instructor. Um, and
then guide them so toward the things that that could help. Is it professional learning? Um, is it someone to support their planning? Is it PLC work with a collaborative team? Um, do you need an intervention to go above and beyond what it's providing you? So, I'd want to understand more and that's typically what we try to do. Um, and then we point
them in the direction of things. We have approved lists that we bring to you when we're adopting new things for district-wide use. um core materials that that we say you can also choose from these things if your current resource isn't meeting your need and we'll support you in implementing. So those are typically the range of
responses we give. Does that answer your question? Okay. Okay. >> Right. Dr. Kenworthy. >> I am excited to ask this question um and hear the answer. My just clarifying, we
adopted the IM curriculum first and then HMH. No. Or did we do HM? >> I nodded my head. No, too soon. If you mean HMH at middle school, it came after IM. At elementary, it was implemented before I am. Ah, see that's that's why I
wanted to ask the question because it made me wonder when we were looking at the um beginning of year middle of year data and seeing the differences between reading and math growth um and I was wondering where are we in the
implementation arc for both of those um curricular resources. Yeah. And so for to see that the reading was implemented in elementary school before the IM >> totally tracks with what we're seeing on the in growth data. Would you agree?
>> Yes, absolutely. >> Okay. And we've seen such tremendous gains in across all student groups as well and particularly with our students uh in our with our students of uh that have disabilities really strong gains um in that area within the IM curriculum. And you know we've had a lot of conversations about what might be
driving that but it's been a great trend to see. >> Yeah. And so then in middle school it was IM and then HMH. Yes. Also. >> Yes. Most of our middle schools this year middle school has been all about curriculum implementation. Most of them are implementing ELA resources in sixth,
seventh, and eighth grade. All of them are implementing sixth and seventh uh twig science materials moving into eighth grade next year. And some of them are implementing eighth grade I civics. So that's that's really that's been the
bulk of their work this year. And just to lift up, we're using those curricular materials, but there's no specific testing around the science um data or social studies data similar to the reading and the math. >> Yeah, we have 11th grade science for for
>> we have eighth grade science in CMS and we also have a math test in science at every level. So fifth grade math, eighth grade science and we have a a high school available. it's available not that not as many schools choose to to take it but
>> okay that's that's helpful and I know social studies um background in social studies they know their assessment of that is not at all standardized in the same way nationally that the other core subjects are um well I I just want to say um from
beginning to where we are now thank you for for implementing um high quality curricular materials across the county I think we're seeing that it's making a difference. And we'll continue to see that over time as our um students
and our staff get used to the the way that those curriculums get used and um build from year to year. Um I think they're going to have a huge impact and I remember how scared I was when we started and I asked you um do we have a whole curricular math and it took me a minute to wrap my head around the answer
being no. But um I know that you're working on it and I think we're seeing some really good results from it. So, thank you and thank you for clarifying the order because I think it helps um contextualize the results that we see in the differences between reading and math scores. So, thank you.
>> Yeah, of course. Um I I our schools um the mindset around this has uh shifted significantly. I hear more and more that our teachers are so grateful for the resources and how they are finding after they've at least that first year under your belt that it does get easier. they
do get their weekends back because they're not building out, you know, their own materials or searching for things. And that's really the intent behind it is to really calibrate us. So grade level instruction is consistent consistently happening across classrooms and it should save teachers time ultimately uh once they get over that
learning hump. So we're starting to see that which is is really encouraging and it's because they've they committed to it. >> One more question about I civics. Um you said eighth grade I civics. Do are do we have any civics education that happens? Government I think happens
in high school, right? There's a half credit of government. Do we have any curricular resources for that or is it something we're looking at? >> Yes, it is something that we're looking at right now in uh partnership with the same group that um has helped us build out ISIV which has been a really nice collaborative partnership along with
alongside our Jeffco teachers to build that that curricular resource out. any any timelines about when we might see >> I'd have to I don't want to I don't want to misspe but I'll um I'll get back to you on that. I'll let you know. Yeah. >> All right. Yeah. Thank you. >> In the next I would say in the next two years. I know they're working on it now.
So >> thank you. Appreciate it. >> I also just want to echo my appreciation. This is um it's exciting to see the growth. Um it's really exciting to see those bands especially in our youngest learners. Um, and I I do
want to reiterate um a great appreciation for preschool curriculum. Um, that was one of the things that I was most excited to be a part of and in the first half of my board service and I know as someone who had a kindergarter at that time, um, it does make a difference. Um, can we go to slides 17
and 18? These are the median growth tables and I just want to make sure I'm understanding them. >> Favorite slides. >> They're really exciting. Um and so when we talk about median growth. So what does the number like if we just take first grade 44 47 64 what do those
numbers represent? >> So those numbers are percentiles. So when you think about it it's comparing all the students and it's lining them up. So 50 would be the middle. If you're at the 44th percentile, that means you're um your growth is um as high as
40 44% are scoring lower than you and the rest are scoring higher than you. So it's kind of that wherever you are in the percentile, you're being ranked. >> Okay. And we're ranked against >> the national norms for MAP across the country. >> When we look at an increase and and
recognizing um I think Dr. Bura mentioned it earlier, right? First grade moves on to second grade moves on to third grade. So, you kind of do have to look. >> But even still, it it looks like we are improving year-over-year. And I don't want to say it's how we're teaching our
kiddos, but we are seeing growth in how we are teaching our kiddos is how I'm reading this. Is that accurate? >> Absolutely. Absolutely. But, you know, when you start to look at that diagonal line, >> you know, almost every single grade level, significant growth gains. Yeah. That's really encouraging.
>> I also want to just lift up this is and I think this has been said in an earlier presentation, but we are back to pre- pandemic levels in a lot of this. Is that accurate? >> Yes. So, we were saying >> we're beyond
>> Yeah. Okay. Okay. Um and then when we when we see so the the charts as we see there's there's kind of great movement in K through three, right? And then in third grade and the other grades we we it gets a little bit more nuanced. >> Is that expected? Is that pretty
typical? >> It is typical at least from Jeffco. It is typical. Yeah. >> Perfect. Um and I do want to just echo I I'm also interested in um what Dr. Ataria brought up around how to carry over that data for our preschoolers. I know you guys are working on it, but I
think that is an interesting as a parent of kids who went to our standalone preschools and I think our standalone preschools are amazing. Um, that's that's a great I'd never thought about that. So, thank you for raising that. >> Um, and again, this is one of my favorite monitoring reports. I have a
few. Remind me, Superintendent Dorland, I know there's a point where we look at some of like how this is split more amongst some of our maybe more impacted student groups. That is a later report, right? This is since this is midyear, this is just kind of an update. >> Yes. But you also have um in the actual
report in the appendix there are links where you can really see that breakdown within >> I looked for it and I missed it in the appendix. So thank you. Okay. That's what I was hoping for. Yeah. >> All right. >> Thank you guys so much. Thank you for taking the time tonight. We really appreciate you. >> Thank you. >> All right. We will move on to our
consent agenda preview. So, next this evening, Superintendent Dorland will provide a preview of items anticipated to appear on the consent agenda in the upcoming February 12th, 2026 board meeting. Superintendent Dorland, the time is now yours. >> Thank you, President Applegate. Um,
board, you'll see in the attachment the preview of consent agenda items for next week. Um, we'll start off with the typical things that come your way, including employment, um, administrative appointments and resignations,
terminations, supplemental funds notifications, approval of minutes for the board meeting in January, and acceptance of the monitoring report 1.1, which is what you just studied here this evening with um, Renee and Carol. Um,
there will also be a contract renewal. Oh, you'll have a vote um based and a decision to make based on your executive session this evening. Um and then there'll be a contract renewal for a few things. One is Red Rocks Community
College Ascent, uh which is basically an agreement with Red Rocks Community College not to exceed 700,000 for tuition and related costs associated with post-secary programs. It basically keeps us in line with the Colorado Concurrent Enrollment Program. It allows our high school students free of cost to
them to receive college credit for some of the concurrent enrollment courses that they are enrolled in. We while we give the these funds to Red Rocks Community College to afford those credits for our students, we also receive funds from the state of Colorado
still uh to for each of those students. And so um it's a bit of an offset. Just want you to know that. But that is the contract uh with Red Rocks Community College. We also have a tax increment revenue agreement with Wheatidge Urban Renewal Authority. President Applegate is our representative on that group. So
I don't know, President Applegate, is there anything you'd like to share there? >> Yes. So this one is really um so the Wheatidge Urban Renewal Authority, and we have several municipalities that have these type of organizations. Um Director Kenworthy sits on the the board for Lakewood. Um they effectively have a
25-year length to them. And so because their city council didn't approve this one until recently, they're hoping to restart that 25-year clock. Um it's basically a TIFF agreement for those of you who are fascinated by tax law. Um but this is really they've just asked us to amend the date to reflect when the
city council voted. And so I attended this meeting last night and reviewed the resolution if anyone wants to talk about it more. >> Great. Thank you. Um, we have the policy GBEC and KF waiver that's coming your way. This is an annual waiver that is
requested of the board. Um, it is a limited waiver of district policy to allow for the consumption of alcoholic beverages at the Miles for Smiles charity race to benefit the Two Angels Foundation. Um, the Two Angels
Foundation um is uh in intended um to support uh children with special needs in Colorado to live their lives to the fullest. So, it's a really special event. They often ask us for the every year they ask us for this waiver. Um you
can see in the details they they provide beer is um beer is donated and then anybody of course 21 or older um is eligible for two beverages during the event. Uh it's a really nice event. and I've been there on a Saturday morning to
see it in person and um it's a beautiful spot out there at the North Area Athletic Complex and so there's a consideration for the board to wave that policy around no alcoholic beverages on district property. Um the next piece is
NWA uh for assessment tools. It's a contract not to exceed 550,000. This is uh exactly what you studied this evening. Data from our MAP assessment. NWA is the company that develops administers that helps us administer
that assessment um annually. Uh property surplus vote. You also studied that this evening. These are the properties that we went through with Mr. Avdikian this evening. Um and so it's a it's a list of properties that we're asking you to consider surplusing. Again, I just want
to remind the board and the listening public that just because a property is surplus does not mean we're selling it. Um, it just gives the district the flexibility to move in that direction when it deems appropriate and obviously would be coming to the board to let you
know of that um occurrence if we were to take that step with any of these properties. >> And Superintendent Dorland, a quick question on that. I believe Mr. Abdikian said that on the actual consent agenda, these would each be their own item. Is that still the plan or are we going to
see it lumped in as one? Do we know? >> They'll each be their own. >> Perfect. Thank you. Thank you, Lisa. Um, we have another contract. We have two contract approvals for some mechanical work to be done at the schools that are listed here. You can see. Um and so this
is actually the these are the actual contracts that you'd be approving after we have gone through our request for proposal process for the work to be that's contemplated here in these agenda items. Um and then another uh contract
approval for some construction um related to asphalt, sidewalks, curb, gutters um at various schools. And finally some moisture control work that we need to do at two of our high schools. Um, and you can see the the vendors that have been selected through
the competitive bidding process and the dollar amounts in those um those contracts. If you have questions about these, please re please let me know and I'm happy to have um Jeff Gatlin's team um make sure that you get the information you feel you need in order to make decisions about approval of
these on the consent agenda. One other piece before I stop and then I'm happy to pause for questions or comments. Um I will not be in attendance at next week's meeting. It's rare. It maybe happens one maybe two times a
year. Um but we will have um Dr. Coleman who's here this evening uh be with you all at uh next week's meeting sitting in the superintendent seat. Thank you Dr. Coleman for sitting in with me. I will be at the AASA National Conference which
is the National Conference of Superintendent. Um, so it'll be a good opportunity for me to network with uh other superintendents across the nation as well as share about our amazing and incredible work here in Jeffco. I'm happy and proud to represent Jeffco at
that conference. It's a very large conference and um it's actually the one maybe two one of two conferences I'll be attending this year. So thank you for um your flexibility and thank you Dr. Coleman. Um he'll enjoy the evening with you next week and I'm sorry to miss it.
I do want to give one other plug uh about next week's meeting and I I shared this with directors Kenworthy and Applegate uh earlier today. We have our high school reimagine presentation that is coming to the board uh as a study
item. No action to be taken by you, but um it is I I previewed it this week with the team. Um you'll have the opportunity to hear from principles as well as folks who are doing the work here on our team supporting schools with it. Um it's an
incredible it's incredibly impactful work. I'm very disappointed to not be here for the presentation. I plan to reach out to all of the presenters to just let them know how proud I am of the work and I'm really excited for you guys to hear about how far we've come with
our efforts to make high school relevant and meaningful to career. um and career pathways for high school students. It's really exciting. So, I'm going to miss that one next week. Um but yeah, that's not on consent. The these are the things that are on consent.
>> Board members, any questions? All right. I continue to find this really helpful >> to review the consent. Yeah. And again, we reserve the right to possibly adjust or tweak because sometimes things come and we're like, "Oh, shoot. We got to get this on, too." So, just know um that that that it may change, but at least
we've reviewed the majority of things for you. And if you have questions about these things, please always feel free to reach out and we'll get you some answers. >> Thank you. All right. The final item of this evening's agenda is committee reports. Um to provide some more focus, we are utilizing this time
um for of board dialogue with individual board reports on our advisory committee work. we typically haven't been able to do this and it's an opportunity to share um how your committees are going, things you're thinking about um things we need
to be maybe providing to our committees and so um we have allotted 30 minutes for this but the time is now ours for open discussion so I'm happy to have does anyone want to start? Yeah, go ahead.
Okay. Um, I wasn't able to attend the capital asset advisory committee last month because I had a school visit, but I am looking forward to attending my first meeting on February 19th. Um, I did have a chance to meet with the Jeffco Schools Foundation. Uh, I met with Courtney Jensen, who's their
executive director. Um, the foundation works to ensure equitable, excellent, and engaging educational opportunities for every Jeffco student. They provide scholarships, grants, uh school-based supports to teachers uh in partnership with different community organizations.
Uh one thing I want to mention to the board is that they are they have requested assistance in promoting their SIP and support galla on March 5th at the social capital in Arvvada and all members are encouraged to attend. Um
they're going to have students there presenting things like how to fly drones and it sounds really fun. Um, so if board members can spread the word on that and help our foundation thrive, that would be awesome. Thank you.
>> That's great. Thank you. The foundation is um really impactful in our Jeffco thrives initiatives and they've done a lot for that. So I I do appreciate their work and Courtney's work. So thank you. >> Anyone else? Director Kenworthy. Oh, sorry,
>> Mr. Given. since I was able to attend the capital asset advisory committee meeting um a couple weeks ago. Just great committee, nothing uh groundbreaking to report, although I was uh particularly impressed by um multiple examples of the ingenuity that the
operations team has has shown in any number of issues that come up. You know, things that they thought they could fix or upgrade that were discontinued decades ago and things like that. So, um, it was very, uh, informative and a very impressive group of people and a great asset for the district, the committee itself. That is
>> shout out to Barry and Mark who help run that committee. They're always, um, they always blow my mind. >> Director Kenworthy. >> Yeah. Um, thank you. I'm glad that we're um, kind of turning this time into
committee reports. I think it's something we've been missing and I'm glad that we have the time for it. I am currently liazisoning to two of our committees. The first one I'll talk about is DAC, our district accountability committee. I attended their January 20th meeting and there was
a lot of really interesting things that happened. One is that Superintendent Dorland came and did a fireside chat with an actual fireside image behind image. Image, not an actual fire. No, no open flames.
>> Yeah. Yeah. and it was facilitated by um one of our district facilitators, Trace FAST. And I think that was one of the most valuable hours um in terms of community conversation that I've witnessed in a while. There were a lot of good questions that were asked and
and a lot of um sensemaking and meaning making for those engaged folks who were in the room. That's one of our largest advisory committees and um I thought the conversation went well. We then had a conversation um or we attempted a conversation about their bylaws. Every
uh two years they are supposed to review their bylaws and of an 11-page document. We got to the second paragraph on the first page before we realized that we needed to table it and there needed to be some more research done before we could have that conversation. So that's
that will that will occur at a later date. Um they also presented Ree results from their SAC survey. This is a survey that they send out to all of the school accountability committees across the
district. Um and it's run by our family and school and community partnership subcommittee. Um Eevee Hudac is the person who sits as the chair of that subcommittee right now. And um I think they facilitated an amazing group discussion. And I anticipate that some of the results from this may come to us
the next time the deck comes to present. So I don't want to steal all of their thunder, but um they had a robust conversation. They're constantly trying to figure out how they continue to support um the school level accountability committees
as as part of their work is the DAC. And um I think often my experience with the DAC SAC experience has been that there's a lot of theory behind it, but often the reality of how it operates doesn't always
translate. Um and so I'm having good conversations with some of the folks on the executive team about how we get the DAC to be sort of a two-way highway for information to flow information to flow up to the board if there's concerns that need to reach our level. not all concerns that come through the deck are
going to be things that we need to address. Um, and then things that we're working on, how does that information flow down through the DACK and out into the schools into the school accountability committees. Um, and so I I want I just want to say that um,
Terrapena and members of the executive committee have done amazing work in the last four years to update and be thoughtful and intentional about how that committee operates. and there's still a lot of work to do and still a lot of conversation to be had. Um, but I
I feel like it continues to move in a positive direction and so I'm excited that I'm still there. I started as a member of the deck, now I'm the liazison in my third year as a liaison. Um, I've learned a lot there and um, I find it to be a fascinating body of engaged
community members, educators, administrators, um, union representatives, PTA representatives. Um, and I think it might be time for me to make space and allow other people to engage
with that group. However, I'm committed to remaining the um liaison through the end of this school year and then hopefully we can pick that conversation up um after the school year concludes. Anything else? >> Can I ask a question on that? Yeah. In years past, the DAC has asked us for
projects. You mentioned it um earlier on the um absenteeism rates. Do are we needing to develop not needing to but is there a need for us to um identify more um activities we'd like them to focus on?
>> Sure. So they have four main functions that they absolutely have to do for like standing assignments that they do every year. It's um looking at the budget. They look at our district um unified improvement plan. They also um look at
charter applications and renewals and they also have the family community school partnership committee. Those are kind of their four assigned buckets by statute. And then we have in the past given them additional assignments. So two years ago I do think we assigned
them to do some research and a conversation about chronic absenteeism. They're open to having other assignments. I think they really enjoyed that. But I also found it to be incredibly enlightening. Um, it's a good group of folks who are spending a lot of their evening time away from their
families to engage in these conversations and they want to do things that are impactful and useful. Um, and so yes, I think they want some more assignments and we probably need a little bit more of an on-ramp to discuss
amongst ourselves what type of work we would want to assign to the DAC. that they are open to receiving that. I also think sometimes the assigning of of those projects is probably better at the beginning of a school year or even possibly the end of a school year
because of the because of the way that the committee turns over um and just the the cycle of work that they have to do. They usually start the beginning of the year and they're running right into the DUIP >> um work. So, I think if we can think about it and maybe assign them something
at the end of this school year in the spring, >> um that gives us a nice on-ramp and then gives them plenty of time to plan through their meetings. I mean, they they meet eight times a year really. That's it. They don't meet usually during December. So, um if we want to think about what would be a reasonable
ask of them and then try to decide on something in the spring, that would be a good idea. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. Can I just jump in and let you know a couple of areas where we have actually gone and worked with them to get some feedback on things that eventually will come to the board where they have been helpful as well um is the
cell phone policy work that Lisa is leading with several others. That policy is coming to you this spring and the DAC is an amazing group to be able to go to to get input on things where especially our community has multiple perspectives um because they're they're a really
representative group. So that's been um good work. And then uh I also was able to spend time with them last month uh related to budget reductions and possible future revenue generation measures. So um and they were really
thoughtful in that conversation as well. It's just an amazing group to go to and get like all different perspectives at one time. Um and so they are informing we've leveraged that that group to inform some of the work we're doing on the board's behalf that's going to end up coming to you as well. So there's a
couple of examples where they've been very helpful as well. Yeah. And I want to lift up having this time where we can report out on what's happening with those advisory committees I think is a huge way to honor the commitment and the and the time and the effort that our volunteers put into the work that
they're doing in all of our advisory committees. And I think this has been part sort of a missing piece right where we can bring their concerns to our fellow board members who are not liaison to those committees and also be able to have the conversations that send information back their way. So it's a
good way to close the communication loop um that we've been trying to find for a while. Um that's everything for DAC. The other group that I am working with is the EAC, the Equity Accountability Committee. Um,
if you're unfamiliar with why this group exists, we have in the teacher contract, there's article 22, which I would encourage our board members to take a look at and read around equity work that um was negotiated, the language was negotiated and put into practice. It's
been in existence for about three years now. And right now the group is looking at holding some community conversation, a community conversation in April um to talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion in our schools. Um and also to
just start to engage community members in that conversation as well. So it's not just being held, you know, in a small group meeting because that's not really going to ever address equity, inclusion, and diversity if we have a small group of people in a committee about it. We have to have that con conversation with the community. So,
that's one of the things that they're picking up to do in April, and we'll make sure you get the dates. I'll make sure Kristen has it and gets it to you. Um, and then the other thing that they spent a lot of time talking about was um running a antibbias training, which is work that started previously but got
stalled out a little bit last year. Um I think um it was very clear, Superintendent Dorland was at that meeting as well that the district is very supportive of that work moving forward and also wants to empower the EAC to pick it up and run and move
forward um working together of course to deliver the antibbias training um in alignment with what is outlined in article 22. After we can fulfill some of the things that are contractually obligated in article 22, then we can
start to look at other extension projects beyond what is outlined in the in the agreement. So I thought it was an excellent convers uh meeting. I did not participate very much. It was my first time there. So I was just trying to observe and get up to speed. I took a
lot of notes. I've met with um Bill Dea Cruz, our comm our ombbudsman for the district and we had a lovely conversation earlier this week um just to help me figure out my role there as a liaison member. Um
this is one of the things that we can talk about I think at our retreat but I had to navigate this moving from the DAC being a member of the DACK to being a board member liaison. Those are two different ways to show up in a community. And I'm trying to also figure
out what that looks like on the EAC. What are the expectations of me as a board member? Am I a participating member of this group or am I there in a strictly liaison role? And Bill and I had a lovely conversation about that. Um, so I'm excited to start that work as
well and pick up where um, Director Reid left off. And and to be honest, Director Reid was at the last meeting as a community member. Um, so she is hoping to continue to participate in that work even though her time as a board member has concluded. Those are all my reports
for my EAC and DAC folks. Yeah. Thank you, >> Director Moian. So, I attended my first FAC meeting last month. Um, it went well. They received a presentation about the uh proposed uh budget and what we're kind of looking
at. Um, I did not hear any conversations other than just receiving the information and some various questions that they had. So, nothing really to report back in terms of anything that was shared. Um, but I was at um the partnership for fiscal sustainability.
That's a mouthful last last night and that was very interesting. Um I wonder though if that group is ever going to have some polling data or information that might be helpful. Uh and unfortunately I I wasn't part of the first meeting so I don't know if that
was something that was presented but I don't know for some of the other board members who maybe were at that if you could share. >> Superintendent Erland. Do you want to address that or would you like Yep. Um well I'll let you correct me. So there is there is a discussion right now on
polling. Um the district has currently been going through an RFP process to look at different pollsters and companies that can do that work and considering the right questions, the right approach um those type of things. We are hoping to get it done, get a poll out in the
near future soon um and recognizing that there may be a need even for a second poll once we get data back from the first. Um that data is planned to be shared with the partnership and and others. And so, um, that polling data, I think I'm really excited to see it. I think it's going to be really helpful
for us in shaping step two. >> Yeah. To add on to what, uh, President Applegate has shared, we are that, you know, November comes fast and furious. And so, and there are a lot of different taxing authorities and issues both at
the state level and then locally with our different municipalities, the county, US, um, metro districts, um, those kinds of things. And so we are looking at and we are also in the midst of um really trying to keep our belt
tight around budget and expenses. And so we there may be opportunities for us to partner with others in our community who are polling on other issues um and to be able to get some initial polling data from an outside poll that is a little
broader than just Jeffco public schools but might have JPS questions included on it. we would likely be sharing that data with the partnership group um when and if we can get get that done and we're working actively to try to get that done sooner rather than later with other
partners. Um from there we may have to do additional polling that's more targeted related to what we specifically might want to do in Jeffco and so kind of taking it one step at a time. I guess my hope would be that we might be able to have some polling data in late March.
By late March, early April. I'm just saying that out loud because I don't think we've really gotten to that. But I'm hoping we could by the April meeting with the partnership get them some information that comes from a poll. >> And do we have any polling that might
have been done in recent years like in 20? We have polling that was done in 20 like this time in 2024. Um, and we can go back to that and but it's really out I would say it's very outdated. Um, and
the the vibe and the feel of the group and the momentum that we have right now is very different than where we were in 2024. It looks like Lisa wants to jump in and add something. >> I just want to say that the polling done in 2024 was done by a private entity. we
don't own it and we don't actually have it. I know that's a common confusion. Every time we talk about this, we get a kora for a poll that we don't have. So, there were some outside groups that um who were interested in potentially funding a campaign uh for in in 2024 if
the polling looked good and those people that that those groups or people commissioned a poll. Um but we don't own that or have it. >> I see. Thank you. >> Um I will just give my update for TDPAC.
Um we're getting pretty into the cell phone policy which is exciting. We have some meetings coming up on that. Um and I'm really excited for TDPAC because they're just really diving into um our new ERP system which is going to make a really
big impact for our accounting and our human resources teams and the way we operate as a district. Um, and I'm pretty excited to get into some of the other topics like AI and and that, but we have not had a full meeting. We've just been focusing on the cell phone
policy today. So, um, wonderful. Thank you guys. This is helpful. I think it's nice to hear because I'll be honest, for two years I was on the CAC and I really didn't know what was going on in the other committees. So, it is refreshing to just get that that flavor.
So, appreciate that. All right, that brings us to the end of today's agenda. Thank you to the presenters who participated in this study session and thank you for all of our support. Our next reg regular meeting of the board is Thursday, February 12th, 2026. And with that, we stand adjourned. Good night.
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