I would like to call this 09/30/2025 meeting to order. Before we begin with our agenda, I wanna take a moment to acknowledge the overwhelming outpouring of support our evergreen community has received since the devastating tragedy on 09/10/2025. We've seen firsthand the incredible compassion from our first responders, neighboring school districts, and countless individuals and businesses from across the county, state, and nation. The way our community has come together to embrace one another in this time of
need has been a powerful testament to our collective strength. We've all witnessed the immense resilience of our brave students, staff, and parents as they navigate unimaginable grief, while also moving forward with the tasks of daily life. As your board of education, we want to reaffirm our commitment to standing with you in the difficult days and weeks ahead. We recognize that this is challenging to balance healing with the critical work of moving our district forward. The work we are here to do tonight is an important part of that process.
By continuing to manage the essential business of our district, we're building a stronger foundation for our community's future. We can and we will hold space for both, healing with our evergreen community and ensuring the right work gets done. With that, we will begin our meeting. Roll call, please. Miss Harper. Miss Applegate? Here. Miss Kenworthy? Here. Miss Parker? Here. Miss Reid? Here. Doctor Varda. I would like to thank our live simultaneous Spanish interpreters for joining us this evening, and we are also live streaming our meeting.
Please stand and join me in the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Is there a motion to approve today's meeting agenda? I move to approve today's agenda as presented in board docs. Is there a second? Second. Any discussion? It has been moved and seconded to approve the agenda for today's meeting of 09/30/2025
as presented in board docs. Roll call, please, miss Harper. Miss Applegate? Yes. Miss Kenworthy? Yes. Miss Parker? Yes. Miss Reed? Yes. Doctor Varda? The agenda is approved. Please note that we are anticipating taking a fifteen minute break at approximately 06:20PM. The first agenda item of the evening is for thirty minutes of board dialogue on the recent events of our Evergreen community. Each board member, if they choose, will have five minutes to share their individual thoughts. Board members, the time is now yours. Is there anyone who would like to start?
I can start. Thank you. First, I wanna thank you for the words that you said to to open with, president Parker. And I I just want Evergreen to know that we are absolutely there for them. They have never been far from my thoughts. I have, intimate knowledge of the road ahead and absolute confidence that this community has the strength and the grace and the fortitude and the unity to navigate this very,
very difficult path. And, certainly, whatever I can do personally, I'm there. And and my hope is that they feel that around them all the time. And that's pretty much all I have to say. I similarly wanna lift up, as I think all of us do, that we are entirely with and behind the Evergreen community and our entire community. This this reached every corner of our district and our state and, quite frankly, parts
of the nation. And so, I wanna say thank you to the Evergreen community who reached out and responded in that day and let kids into their homes. I want to say thank you to the staff and the school leadership who did exactly what they needed to do in time of true crisis, and thank you to our first responders who went without fear for our kids. We are not that different as people, and I believe that our opportunity now to
come together is more important than it ever is. And so we can be united as a community who wants to move forward and hold space for the grief and hold space for the sadness and the fear and connect to strengthen each other and support each other. There will be time for discussion and for action, and the road ahead thank you for your comments, president Parker. It's not easy, or short, and the path of grief is long and complicated.
But I hope that now we can connect and feel the love of our community and feel the love for each other as humans and as people and remind ourselves that we are not alone. And I just want to also, thank all of our support services and our leadership here at the district because there has been a tremendous amount of effort put into making sure that our community and our students and our staff have supports. And so, those are available, and thank you for acting so quickly to put those in place. Thank you, fellow directors, for your comments.
What I wanna say is I think the evergreen community response to this tragedy should be a model for our entire nation right now. But witnessing the unfurling of thoughtful and supportive resources for students, parents, and staff has been an education and community care for all of us. From businesses in the faith community and the recreational organizations and community groups, they've held space for one another to process, and it is not a surprise that that tight knit community is holding one another with great strength right now. That community has supported those who are most impacted by violence and leaned into listening
to one another in order to meet real needs of students and staff who are in the school. And they've shown up for one another and asked challenging questions of institutional leadership and through it all have honored and lifted up student voice and student leadership. The process to create a pathway to return to learning was thoughtful and informed by the unique needs of the impacted community and allowed for flexibility for for for families to honor what they could and could not take on in that moment. Though I wish with all my heart that that disruption had not been experienced, it
is my strong hope that that community was remembered not because of the violence they experienced, but for the response that they've exhibited, following. So may we learn from their example, may we take real action on local, state, and national levels so that other communities don't have to experience similar pain. And may we remember one another and hold one another with grace as we move forward. This is not gonna heal overnight. It's a process. And I I'm also healing, and we all are healing, and we continue to be
here for our community when they need us. I just wanna add to my comments, from the beginning of the meeting, how much I appreciate the support and the advice we've gotten from the National Mass Violence Center. Honestly, I don't know how we could have figured out the right way to move forward. It there was no doubt that everybody on the school board wanted to do something, and we wanted to do it right away. And this group that NMVC was so helpful in walking us through the the different
scenarios. And unfortunately, they've had a lot of experience, and they were drawing on that experience as they, explained things to us. I attended the two parent information sessions that they put on up in Evergreen, and I hope that the parents that were there felt that they got their questions answered and that they knew where to go to get information and they knew where there were, resources for support. I also wanna thank, the victim advocate department from the Jeffco Sheriff's Office because they
gave us some good information on how to find out, ways to communicate our support to the students who are still in the hospital. And, one of the things I appreciated from them was this idea that while we're looking for information and answers quickly, we want them right now that it's very important that an investigation is thorough and has the time to find as much information as they can, and that will help us go forward.
We want to avoid these. Obviously, we don't want any repeat of it. I my heart is broken for the family of those families up in Evergreen. I have a daughter who lives in Evergreen, so her family is there. So anyway, I just, wanted to make sure that there's no question that that we are thinking of you. You're in our in our hearts. And, please feel free. You can email us. You can call. You can do anything that you feel would help you. You can give us your concerns, give us your thoughts, your suggestions, and your criticism.
We understand that you're hurting right now, and everything you're feeling is valid, and we wanna hear it. So, with that, I know that we will be reaching out and continuing our efforts in Evergreen area. Thank you. Okay. Any other comments that anyone wants to make at this time? Okay. Then I want to thank each of you for sharing your remarks, and your service to the entirety of the GEFCO community is both recognized and appreciated.
We'll now shift to the rest of the agenda for this evening. On 09/03/2025, the Board held a study session that included the following topics: a report on GEFCO Center programming monitoring Report 2.3 a review of the proposed end statement on sustainability a presentation on the new bus electrification pilot and an update on the budget reduction blueprint. I encourage you to watch the recording of the study session to learn more about these topics.
You can also visit our Board page on the GEFCO Public Schools website, where you will find a host of information and links to both Board docs and our live stream platforms. The first item of study tonight is for the Board to receive a report from Brenna Copeland, Chief Financial Officer, on the interim district wide financial condition through the 2025 school year. As a reminder to the board and the listening public, consistent with statutory requirements, the district prepares and publishes quarterly financial reports that are an interim and unaudited financial statement.
Reports are posted publicly on the financial transparency website. Before I turn the time over to miss Copeland, superintendent Dolan, is there anything you'd like to add? Thank you, president Parker. Good evening. Welcome to our guests. Thank you for being here. Looking forward to you all just introducing yourselves and getting started. Before you do so, I just wanna highlight for the board and remind our listening public that, we have been, for the last four years, talking with our board about, using some fund balance to cover some ongoing costs, in particular as we have done
what I believe has been the right work in increasing compensation for our employees, much deserved, and well earned compensation to help our employees to be more competitive in the front range with their peer colleagues in other districts. That has been a big part of what we have invested in over the last four years. In addition to that, we have invested in other important aspects that serve students, especially as COVID funds and ESSER funds ran out. We continued to, invest in items like maintaining substitute pay at pandemic levels, which has
been the right work to do as well. We have also, continued investments in some intervention tools, that I see regularly, students using in classrooms, to help them, have adaptive tools to support times in the day where they can be pushed and, really work toward grade level, in both math and literacy. And those were, programs we started with ESSER funds that we have continued to invest in. So those are just two examples of of ongoing and continued ESSER funds, ongoing and
continued investments, once our ESSER funds ran out. Right? And so here we are, and you're gonna hear this fourth quarter report, from miss Copeland and team. And I I wanna just also remind the board and express a lot of gratitude for the board's effort and support of using what what had grown to be a large fund balance, thanks in part to the ESSER funds, multiple rounds of ESSER funds that allowed us to offset some ongoing expenses for a period of time. But the board did make a decision to take some of our fund balance and
invest in an important facility at Fletcher Miller to support our neediest special education students and their families. I was just over there at a game at the 5 Star Stadium the other night and saw the progress on the building, and I think it's one of my most exciting aspects of what, we're doing recently, that the adaptive, facility, is going to be amazing for our Fletcher Miller students. And so I just wanna acknowledge that we have, as a district, invested, our fund
balance in ways over time that support our students and our employees, and that those have been really good and the right investments. And we have acknowledged all along the way that as we do that work, we are headed toward, a period of time where we have used too much of our fund balance, and we need to level set and begin to get our expenses in line with our revenue. And we have come to that point in time.
I think this fourth quarter report that miss Copeland is going to present and share with you, it's the interim financial report. It's not the audited, and final, but it is, the story of the last four and a half years of investments related to many of the things I just talked about and more. And and I again will say while we have to tell that story, it is in no way meant to, indicate that those were not the right investments. They were the right investments. They continue to be the right investments.
And we are gonna have to have this conversation around reducing our expenditures to get in line with our, revenue, and we're going to do that work. But in the meantime, it's important for us to take a look at what happened last year because it does tell the story that we are at the end of that runway that we have been talking about. So, miss Copeland. Great. And, also with me tonight is, Shawnene Rosario, immediately to my right. She's our executive director of finance planning and analysis. And then, further to the right is Stephanie Novello, our executive director of accounting and
finance. So thank you to these folks who are gonna help this evening. Right now, we are simply better together with our core q four report. A couple of quick comments. The q four is always special. And this year, we actually had it ready, believe it or not, much earlier than we usually do. And that was because I feel like there was some extra, expectation and suspense around how were we gonna end last year financially. And I think this was top of mind for the board when you adopted the budget for 2526 as well.
What is 2425 really gonna look like? So I do wanna acknowledge that the team worked especially hard. It's really hard to churn this out this fast. We had it published, like, September 7. And that being said, our last expense was probably recorded September 2, because that's how many adjustments it takes to to process the year end. And I think our last revenue receipt was probably towards the August, and all those things still apply to the prior year. So there's quite a bit of moving pieces, which does mean that the numbers will
probably shift when you go look at our audit. Right? They're we work together with the auditors to clarify all our remaining entries, etcetera. So this is very much, a draft. Okay. We've seen this slide before. I'm not gonna spend too much time on it. I wanna get to the general fund, and before I talk in detail, I wanna note, that the bar chart is showing actually think that's probably confusing, because transfers are real expenses.
And when we talk about the budget and we talk about the use of fund balance, we always include transfers, right? So why would they not be here? I can't think of a good reason why they wouldn't be here, so they shall be there in the future, unless my team is able to convince me otherwise. And I think a good illustration, potentially, of how this might be a potentially of how this might be a smidge misleading to present at net of transfers, is I did get a question the other night in one of our community meetings about why am I saying that we used, dollars 45,000,000 in fund balance when in fact we
produced $4,000,000 in fund balance. And I was like, where are you getting that? Because everything I've looked at says otherwise. And it may be graphs like this that are confusing. Anytime we state something net of transfers it might be confusing to the public. So we will we will stop doing that. So in summary, in the general fund, actual revenue is just a teensy bit higher, less than, a half a percent higher than the revised budget. So revenue came in at $9.86, and that is the full revenue. It's not net of anything.
Actual expense is higher than the revised budget to the tune of about 13,000,000, and that adjusts slightly once you bring all the transfers in. But that variance is about 11.2% roughly of our full budget, and that's within a a target range that we forecasted we might hit. You know, when we switched budget methodology to this budget figure is simply an estimated actual spend, it's not the full approval of what our schools and departments can do
each year, but it bakes in these expectations around turnover savings and vacancy savings and underspends. And those end up being a whole bunch of assumptions and expectations, to manage very tightly. And so what you're seeing is that it's hard to do, and we will always be wrong. The budget number will always be either too high or too low. And I think the team felt some, honestly, just pressure to make sure it was not too high. And so they did that. So the expense that we budgeted was not too high.
It was, in fact, a little bit lower than actuals. So you can see that. And I'm gonna talk a little bit more about the reasons in the coming slides because I think they explain it just a little bit better. So first we're gonna look at expenses by program. Now this is a distinction, that I hope our public is starting to embrace, because it really is the best way to think about what's closest to students. So we have general instruction at the top, which is in fact closest to students. That's includes a lot of core instruction.
In this presentation, we have special education instruction instruction next, in part because that is also front and center with our students every day. These are quote unquote departmental expenses, but that's meaningless. They are folks working with students. They are special educators. They are physical therapists. They are, speech language pathologists, etcetera, that are really providing critical services to our students. Instructional support is the third item listed, and that includes, some, believe it or not,
special education expenses, perhaps counterintuitive. But that does include some of our counselors, our psych, our social work, our nurses, our clinic aids. It also has our digital teacher librarians, our instructional coaches. Most of our gen ed paraprofessionals are actually up in general instruction, right, because they're there in the classroom and that's sort of general instruction. But within instructional support, we start to see a handful of, special ed paras depending on where they are deployed.
So again, instructional support is very, very close to students, and covers some of those functions which might not best be characterized as purely SPED or purely gen ed instruction or excuse me, general instruction. The next category is school administration, now by its very title. It's clear that this is administration in the school building, so that is the principal, the assistant principal, it includes the front office staff, So our campus secretaries, our financial secretaries, our principal secretaries, we have three different job names that go with that role.
All those folks are part of school administration. It is not just one type of employee. I think that's sometimes a little bit confusing to folks. And you can see the expenses there. General admin, starts to encompass some of what folks sometimes refer to as central, although to be clear, some of it is very dispersed. And so, for example, a big chunk of this is information technology, and it would be really difficult to say that only the central office uses Google or Microsoft or
one of those licenses that we buy on behalf of the whole district. In fact, it's distributed throughout. But there are components of general admin that are very much a quote unquote central service to a school. Operations and maintenance includes safety and security, for example, which again is pretty close to a student, when our when our campus supervisors are in campuses and our patrol officers are visiting campuses, etcetera. It also has our custodial staff, many of whom are fully staffed all day in
school buildings. So there's lots of different categories. It's got our facility maintenance, field maintenance, it's our utilities that we have to pay for each of those buildings, etcetera. So I want again, I'm spending a little more time talking about the categories because these are categories that are in our our budget tools, and it might help as I'm talking about these variances to understand where the variances in service of students or not. And and the essential, response is yes, very much so. So you do see that the one area where we had a little bit of
an underspend is instructional support and, to a lesser extent, transfers. I'll talk about transfers a little bit later. Our biggest overspends on a percentage basis of the line item were special education instruction, and transportation. Now transportation is a much smaller budget, so on a dollar basis that overspend is not nearly as large. But the special education, overspend that you see up there is about $14,000,000 And so, on the previous slide when I was talking a little bit about total expenses coming
in higher, than the budget as an estimate, that, you know, you could say a chunk of that is there. But I want to remind folks, please don't oversimplify. There's never just one thing that contributes to the whole. And so in some sense, every dollar over is proportionately split between the uses of the dollar, right, in any in any areas of the of the district. It's not this sort of last in, last out or first in, first out. Each dollar really is spent across all our things, and so we don't want to
point fingers at one specific area or what have you. So I'm gonna talk a little bit more about SPED in the coming slides, and I will also link us back to a conversation the board had in April about this very thing, because we did forecast this to you all. So this is again the same expenses, inclusive of transfers reported by account. Now this is another moment I'm gonna take, just to explain, like, how is it we characterize things? And so salaries and benefits is pretty intuitive, and it's remarkable, right, that this district
spends, dollars $857,000,000, dollars employing individuals in Jefferson County. We are by far the largest employer in the county. The federal government and their various groups, are not as big as we are. And so, we are a major driver of economics in this county, and I feel really proud of the fact that our, our focus is always on our people, and that's what we delivered most importantly for our students.
Purchased services is $88,000,000 Now, I think what's in purchased services? There's a whole smattering of array of things. On a on a big dollar amount basis, a big chunk of that is actually utilities. And so we spend about $22,000,000 in utilities each year. And those in our current classification, qualify as purchased services. In truth, CDE would permit us to call some of those materials and supplies, specifically the gas purchases we make natural gas.
We've historically called them purchase services, but I think when we go to our new chart of accounts to just help clarify a little bit better, we're going to switch to that other categorization. The biggest other area of purchase services on behalf of our students is relating to special education. And so you're starting to see if the purchase services line is over by 20% and, special education is over by 14%, and on a dollar basis, the overages actually are pretty darn close. We're triangulating now into what, where was the biggest overspend for the district.
And so it's really important again. When it's a purchase service, that does not mean it's a consultant. That does not mean it's someone in this building. Most of what's in that line is professionals serving our students, primarily students with unique needs, sometimes in ways that we can't do. For example, sometimes, the the group of professionals working with an individual student determine that the district as a whole can't best meet the needs of the student, and often that's in response to parent input. And that student may be placed in a private provider, for services.
And so we call that placement out of district now. The district very much stays in touch with the student, and folks on our team keep checking in with the student, and we update the IEP, and we make sure they have access to all the services they need. We don't sort of abdicate responsibility, but they do receive primary services elsewhere, and I am gonna talk about that in just a second. So I wanted to clarify some of that around purchase services. And the other biggest category is actually software. So software as a service, you might have heard that, in general.
When you're kind of renewing Microsoft, it's no longer a download, it's a service. And, and so, just about all of our student software that students use every day, their curricular licenses, all those things are shifting out of supplies and materials and into some purchased services because we actually think of curriculum as software as a service. Right? So some of these former distinctions about, well, where are the textbooks? Well, if there's no textbook, chances are the curricular resource may actually be in purchased
services. So hope that helps. So I mentioned I was gonna refer back to April. This is almost identical to the slide we presented in April, except for the part where I say back in April. We noted that the SPED department expected to go over budget, by at least $11,000,000 we also noted that the contributing factors included enrollment, so that is we had more students to serve. So obviously as you're serving more students, with IEPs, your costs are gonna go up
because you hire the people and you contract for the services necessary. Staffing rates had risen. Vacancies were down. That's a good thing. But it also means the vacancies we forecasted were higher than the actual vacancies. And then third party costs, the purchase services. So on this slide, I noted that, rising costs per student for external vendors and service providers, For example, our placement out of district, which abbreviates to POUD, or staff
augmentation. Staff augmentation can sometimes look like contracting for a very specialized, credential, to support unique students in disparate locations. So again this was what we presented then. That $11,000,000 of course became the $14,000,000 that you saw in the final result, but back in April, based on data, kinda honestly all we had was data through February. This was our best guess. One more note about purchase services, and I spent a little bit of time with
mister Pilaro kinda talking through this and making sure we kind of explain and put a face to some of these things that can feel very what is that? It feels like a big bucket of things. So on the right, you can see I've listed in that yellow box or maybe you can see it. You probably can't because the font is tiny. But in the yellow box are our top five largest contracted service providers. I'm just gonna read off the names super quick. AMN Healthcare, Community Rehab Associates, The Stepping Stones Group, I'm gonna mess that name up,
ACOR Healthcare Services and ProCare Therapy. Just by name, you you get a sense for what these folks are doing. It is very much, direct to student service, right, and important to meeting the needs of our students. Contracted services, came in at about 6,800,000.0. And again, that, those are just the top 5 and some dollar amounts, but I wanted you to have a little bit more, like, depth of understanding of what it is what it is we're buying.
Placement out of district services, totaled about 11,400,000.0. Our top five placement out of district providers are some names you probably have heard at times from our parents. Spectra Autism Center, Evoke Behavioral Health, Firefly Autism House, Joshua School, Seven Dimensions Behavioral Health. Now had I gone to the top six, you would have also seen one of our new partners, which is the ACES program that's leasing our WIT facility, so they are actually number six in terms of placement out of district.
These service the cost of the per student services, have more than doubled in about three years. And, it's important to note that parents are often strong advocates for these placements. The cost per student averages to about five or six times, the revenue per student that we get. So I just want to note, it's the right thing to do and it's obviously a consensus decision around that IUP, to make some of these placements. And, some of these students are absolutely thriving.
That's amazing, and that is the goal. From a financial lens, it is, expensive. So, one final note, back when I was on the program layout of things, I'm just gonna go back super fast and then I'm gonna hand it off. When I was talking through these categories, I noted that some of the expenses in instructional support can include things like OTPT, and counselors, and social workers.
Those are folks, nurses, who are working with some of our students with IEPs and, disabilities. It's counterintuitive to me that that would be outside of the the line that's called SPED instruction. Believe it or not, this is consistent, I think, with the way that CDE defines some of their programs. They have one program called SPED instruction, and that's focused more on, like, what we would call learning specialists. And then they have this other program that can include a mix of gen ed and SPED that's called instructional support.
I find that confusing. I'm hoping as we transition, we'll find a slightly different way to report this so that it's more clear what the total comprehensive costs are to service our students with disabilities. I feel like that's a point of advocacy that this board has taken up in the past, and it's probably data and information you would like to have, and I would like to give it to you. Right now, it would be an oversimplification and not quite right to say that we spend a 111,000,000.
So I just wanna note that. Okay. And with that, I'm gonna pass it on. Great. Thank you. Nice to see you all. Capital reserve fund. So our actual revenue is higher than budget. We are, we started doing something different with a few of these funds. You can see in the revenue columns, we now have that kind of hatched area. The hatched area is representing what is being transferred from the general fund. So, clearly, in the cap reserve fund, the primary source of revenue is the transfer from the general fund. So when we see that the revenue in cap reserve fund is higher than the
budget, it's really attributed primarily to the interest income, but we also had proceeds that came in from sale of some of our schools, higher than what we had anticipated. So that's in the solid part of the revenue at the bottom of those columns. So it's just a different way so that you can see the difference between what's be the revenue that's being contributed by the general fund and the actual revenue coming into the fund. Overall, this was a decrease compared to prior year. Last year, we did other significant contributions to the cap reserve fund that weren't replicated this year. For expenses, we underspent, in the cap reserve fund lower than what we expected in
budget. It is really difficult at times to time the capital expense to to make sure that it lines up with the actual fiscal year when they run their capital programs more on a calendar year. So we were under on that, and we also had some anticipated expenses that we thought were gonna come through that didn't. Fletcher Miller, while it's on track and doing wonderfully, the way we estimated the total overall project budget. So it's just a timing difference for that fund. Grants fund. So with grants fund, we anticipated that the actual revenue was gonna be lower than last year, and a lot of this is attributed to that we no longer have
those ESSA related grant funds. We are still less than what we budgeted, both revenue and expense in the grant fund, and a lot of that is because when we budget the grant fund, we're budgeting at the maximum anticipated level for grants for the district, and sometimes either that we don't get the grants that we were hoping to get and or we just aren't spending at the same level as we anticipated. And many of our grants are reimbursement grants, so we can't receive the revenue or bill for the revenue until we have the expenses, so it's driven off of those. So that's why both of those are less than budget but still, on track.
Food services fund. Our actual revenue is on track, and again, in this fund, you can see the top portion is gonna represent the transfer from the drug neural fund, and the bottom portion is going to relate to, the fund the revenue that comes straight to this fund. The primary source of revenue in this fund is from the federal and state reimbursements. And then our expenses are higher than we anticipated, or higher than last year and, which is result and higher than revenue, which is resulting in a decrease in fund balance, and I think we've already talked about that at a couple board meetings, at
looking at the, how we're gonna better align our revenue and expense going forward. And I do believe Beth and team in food services is already implementing plans to decrease the expenses, across food services across the district. Campus activity fund. The actual revenue is lower than the revised budget and, prior year, and then we see some expenses that are a little bit higher than or they're on track a little bit higher than last year. We do have a change in accounting practice that is specific to our concurrent enrollment of students, so some of this is just being represented differently from an accounting perspective
this year compared to last year. It's not that something drastically different is going on in the campus activity fund. And, again, we can see the top portion of those columns is what is being transferred from the general fund into the campus activity fund. So the primary source of a campus activity fund is really the funds that are coming in from the parents into the schools to support, the activities within the school. Yep. I do wanna clarify, the difference between 21,000,000 in revenue and 25,000,000 in revenue is
not 4 and a half million in expected fines around Chromebooks. The Chromebooks fines are just one piece of a puzzle that would explain the difference between the actual revenue and the actual the budgeted revenue. Thanks. Thank you. And our insurance reserve fund. So again, you can see the primary source of revenue into the insurance reserve fund is from transfers from the general fund. Down at the bottom of that bar, you can see little bitty, solid, which is really represents the interest income in this fund, and that's, really the primary that's the
driver of why this fund is higher than budget. It's on track. And similar to last year, this this fund is really where we pay all of our claims and and, our property liability insurance, casualty insurance, cyber insurance, and workers' compensation. So all of these are set, are self insured policies that we pay through this fund. And it's it's on track and it's a little bit, over budget, but we also saw an increase in the in the interest revenue, and the overall impact to the
fund balance was was negligible. So it's still sustaining itself. And childcare funds. So on this one, as a reminder, we're not showing prior year because prior year, part of the activities that were in this fund are now centralized within the general fund, so we're just focusing on this year for revenue and expense. The actual revenue is slightly higher than the revised budget, which is sorry. I'm looking at that. We did go through, and we we originally this is right. Sorry.
I apologize. Earlier in this year, we had some capital that was coded into this ex this fund. And when we did our revised budget, we anticipated this this fund was gonna need additional funding from the general fund. Since then, Stephanie and her team have evaluated that capital expense, and we'd and it was due to the fund merger. We were we had to correct the accounting around that. Therefore, we were able to go back and decrease the transfer from the general fund into here because it was no longer needed to kick to cover that capital expense. There's a lot of accounting language in there. I'm just trying to explain why the transfer into this fund was adjusted down compared
to the revised budget because it was no longer needed to be transferred in there. We are seeing that still this fund, you can see the expenses are greater than the revenue, so there will be some additional, adjustments within this fund to try to line up revenue and expense going forward. And, Brenna, you get employee benefit fund. Great. So this is the, last individual fund before we get to a summary. So we're almost done, and, get your questions ready. I can't wait. Okay. Alright, so actual revenue at just over $30,000,000 is slightly higher than the revised budget,
not not a big difference. The actual expense is significantly higher than the revised budget, due to higher claim. And it says claim losses. I want to be clear that that's kind of insurance speak. Claims into this fund, which is our self insured employee benefits fund, represent provider expenses. I don't consider really a provider expense a loss. That's kind of jargony to me. I think of the healthcare services, be it medical, dental, or vision, I think of
those as, yeah, it's a claim, but it's a service, right? We're paying for a healthcare service, on behalf of our employees. Now, why were they higher? Higher than anticipated numbers of employees and dependents enrolled in the plan. So when you're trying to estimate an aggregate total number and you're multiplying by per employee, etcetera, it's important to get that employee count right. In the way that plans were priced, there was a little bit of an incentive
to join our self insured plan for the past couple years because it was, in some levels priced lower than Kaiser. That price is ultimately just an estimate of claims costs. We had quite a few folks join the plan, and so enrollment kept increasing, faster than we were able to kind of identify and adjust to. Second, prescription drug costs certainly increased over time. But probably the most important variable was that overall cost per person or cost per
covered employee, were just higher than what had been forecast. Now the forecast for this fund depends heavily on data and information we get from our third party. And it was provided to us in about February in advance of the 2425 fiscal year. And you can imagine that at that moment, there's some unknowns, there's emerging patterns in
the 2324 year. Healthcare costs were rising quite a bit. They hadn't stopped rising. You know, when you have this line and it's going And you're like, when is it gonna stop going up at that rate? Because that rate seems unreasonable. Sometimes the actuarial models, you know, aren't perfect, but it is important for humans to apply judgment. And I think, as I was looking at the trending actuals in, like, October, November 2425, and I had a little bit of a freak out moment, I'm not gonna lie, I said, you know, these trending actuals look so much higher than what we
thought they were gonna be. What happened? And I and I believe it comes down to you have to be really thoughtful consumers of estimates that are provided to you. And, I pride myself in being like a good, thoughtful consumer of data. And my question to our partner in this was, why are we using a 6% national growth rate when statewide and in GEFCO healthcare costs have been rising at 13% for the past twenty four months?
And the answer was, Well, the national is a better forecast. And I said, Why? And and so we had some dialogue back and forth, and I insisted that for the current year we apply the Colorado and the local growth rate, to forecast because I'm not convinced that the national I feel like you can have different patterns of expense across the country. And actuarial people can disagree, but I wanna say that, this is a troubling variance because it is material. It's material to the fund.
We've effectively underpriced premiums for that year, because the premium is simply an estimate of costs, and costs came in so much higher. And that doesn't help anyone. It doesn't. It feels like a nice thing, because we say it's gonna cost less. But if it costs more, absorbing that over time is actually more painful. So it's always best to make the cost estimate as close as we possibly can. So, just one more note about self insured. I think there's sometimes questions about why would we self insure, why would we do
these things, what are what are the component parts. It is when the employer assumes the quote unquote financial risk of the cost of providing health care benefits to employees. Any employer our size, should absolutely consider strongly consider being self insured. We have enough scale of the number of people that we are insuring that we don't need an insurance provider to, like, level it out for us. An insurance provider, such as Kaiser, is over time gonna charge us a premium and
a rate that reflects actual costs, but they're just gonna advance the money in a given year and then charge us for it in the next year. We don't need someone to do that for us as a service. We have the capital on hand. We we it's cheaper to do it ourselves, basically, over time. And I know that can feel like, how is that true? Again, absorbing that risk comes with a cost when the insurer does it for us. When we do it for ourselves, we end up actually paying less over time.
So that is why we self insure. We self insure not only in medical plans for our employees, we self insure for our workers' comp program, we self insure for a substantive portion of our property insurance given how high our deductibles are. There's lots of ways in which we use our balance sheet and the fact that we are a $1,400,000,000 organization. We have the capital, it's the right thing to do, it's the less expensive thing to do to use that to run these programs. A couple key definitions: premium revenue, we talk about it as premium revenue.
That's the amount collected both through payroll deductions and the employer contribution. So premium revenue comes from us. Why do we even call it revenue? It's just an expense that's reported in the general fund, Right? Shows up as benefits expense and then pops over into the employee benefits fund for our self insured plan to then pay the claims. Right? So that's what's happening. I already talked about claims cost, etcetera, etcetera. I think everything else on here, I've already covered.
So I do I did wanna say to the board, I do not wanna see a financial outcome like the one we had last year. We have taken steps to ensure that doesn't happen this year. I was disappointed with that outcome. And, over time, we will build it back up. The program does need to balance itself over time. Right? And so, for example, medical needs to balance itself over time, dental needs to balance itself over time, etcetera. You run each program to to balance itself over time.
And and I we will always be thoughtful about how we set premiums, which are just an estimate of claims costs, and process the information given to us with a critical eye to ensure that that we're using the best guess we can come up with. So and this was just the summary of all the different funds at once, which makes it all the more fun. Brenna, can you address this $4,000,000 general fund revenue to expense?
Yes. And this slide doesn't do it, so that's a bummer. I just want you to reiterate that because I think it was a fair question that we were asked the other night. And I'd I'd really like for the board to understand why that keeps coming up and why people might be confused. Yeah. And I will say thank you. It doesn't come up, in our budget presentations because we always include transfers as a budget expense. We never take it out. On this slide right here, you see total year to date actual expense of $1,030,000,000
Unfortunately, this deck is asking you to do math in your head, to then compare that to total revenue of $982,000,000 can someone do that on their phones so that I don't do the wrong number, please? Thank you. So one of my teammates is gonna give us the exact number, but it's the difference between those two that is the ultimate use of fund balance. So it has to be expense inclusive of transfers, which is the 1,030,000,000 number, netted
against the total revenue of 985. It's about 45. It's about 45. That was what I had said before, but, you know, it's late in the day and I hadn't had coffee in a while. So 45,000,000 is the approximate rounded use of reserves towards prior year actual expenses. Now, we will talk more in the future, but I do want to hint at, that future conversation, which is if last year's actuals trended in that way, and we
planned and approved to basically do much of the same stuff this year, plus or minus one or two things, then this year's actuals will likely trend towards that same thing. So whereas we adopted, a combined revenue forecast and expense budget for this year that suggested we might use about $39,000,000 and this one was about $38,000,000 You know, that $39,000,000 might also increase by $7,000,000 to about 46,000,000.
I'm doing that right. So again, between last year's 45 and this year's potential 46, that's not an official forecast yet. It's just extrapolating from last year's actuals into the current year. That that is where the kind of analysis starting point will be for our forecast, because you always benchmark off prior year actuals. So does that help? So now I I just need your I I have to ask this question. I hope you don't mind, Mary. Is that okay if I ask this question? On slide 16 then, where it says total revenue, $9.86 on general fund line, and then total expense, $9.82.
And it says that both include transfers in and out. It's wrong. Yep. I need to adjust it. Okay. Thank you. I am actually feeling somewhat justified in my mathematics skills right now. You're doing wonderfully. Do you, do you wanna come work in financial services? Can you just explain what when you adjust it? Because what what we'll do just so the board knows and everybody who's listening, what we'll do is we'll adjust it and then repost it. Yeah. Yeah. It'll be revised. Zero three zero. Yeah. We're Okay. Two will be one zero three zero.
Okay. For total revenue, will be $1.00 $3.00. Yep. For total expense. Oh, total expense. Yes. Yeah. And we will stay the same. Your expense will be that. Okay. We will and we'll add the transfer line to the table, and we'll go ahead and have it updated in the bar chart. I do think given the the public's, right and need for accurate information about last year, Though from a GASB accounting perspective, there's a reason you think of transfers as slightly different than everything else, nonetheless, that's not the point.
No one wants that. What they do want to know is how much did we actually spend. Yeah. When you do correct that, expense column, will that change the ending fund balance column? No. That ending fund balance is correct. Miss Rosario, is the revenue listed here, I'm sorry, is $9.86. And I believe in our bar chart, it's $9.85. Is that rounding? Just rounding. Yes. That might be helpful to have at least the same. I mean, I know I ask a lot of you. 100%. We'll do it.
Questions other than the, very astute questions that have already been shared. Thank you for the questions slash suggestions. Okay. Doctor. Apopka. First, I wanna really thank you all for taking the time to walk through each of these categories. For the rest of the board, when we had our partnership for fiscal sustainability, I still can't say that right, this came up that people really didn't understand what these were. And it was a really big moment, I think, for Berna and Tracy and I
of, like, oh, we see this all the time. We hear this all the time. And it's really confusing even to me a lot of times who sits through all of these wonderful presentations. So thank you for taking the time to walk through it. I think that's really, really helpful. And I also want to thank you for moving this up to the beginning of the session when we're all a little bit fresher. So thank you for that, in the agenda. I really appreciate it. I had two quick questions, and I this is, as much maybe for our listening public who may or may not be listening.
It looks like it's a pretty big increase in expense from '24 to '25. And I know costs went up, and I know we kinda walked through different fund balances. Is it really a combination of all the things we talked about that got us from '24 to '25, or is there something people might not see in these charts and tables? That's a great question. There's one thing people may not see, and that is the fund consolidation. So between these two years, we brought in transportation, excuse me? Yes, Thank you. Pre k aspect of childcare and IT.
Now IT is was not as much of a net increase because it was showing up as a purchase service, and then it was showing up. But the net increase in activity that had not previously been reported was around $27,000,000 So of the 100 ish million I'm rounding probably not correctly but, you know, about a quarter of it was related to an accounting change. The rest is a legitimate year over year increase. And that's a that's a chunky one.
Mhmm. And, we gave, fairly substantial increases. So if you'll recall, the COLA was about 5.25 ish. It might have been five, one of those numbers. And then there was 2%. And for our Jespa employees, 1% of that actually was COLA and the other 1% was a stipend. But for everyone else, the 2% was called a one time stipend split between two different payments. So that's 7% overall. And so when you see, you know, the $100,000,000 net of about a quarter, so
$75,000,000 so $75,000,000 not dissimilar to that increase, right? Now that's oversimplifying. There were a lot of other moving pieces because we were adjusting programming a little bit year over year, and we were stopping doing some things and starting doing some things. And, so I don't need to get down into the weeds. But that those are the big changes. Great. And then, and this one, I think I know the answer, but I'm gonna ask it anyway. I know we did make some significant changes to our SAE programs with respect to
the childcare fund. Do we know yet if those are making the improvements we were hoping they would make, or is it really too soon in the first quarter to have any idea? It's a little too soon. That's what I thought. Okay. Yeah. In the first quarter today. That's true. The September payroll run is one of our first stabilized pay runs, and so much of our costs revolve around that. And so it takes a full week to load the payroll journal entry into our financials from the human capital module, which is something we will fix with our new
ERP. But in that process, it then takes another couple weeks to figure out what do we actually spend. And by that point, you know, we're into late October. Perfect. But a big part of did we drive a real change in expense and or revenue, there's no way to know until that gets in there. Perfect. Thank you guys for all your work on this. Appreciate it. Director Applegate, I just wanted to add to your first comment about having understanding of all those categories. We did redo the report that goes along with this presentation that's attached in BoardDocs and on our transparency site, and it has a lot of those definitions now really
laid out. So it's a way you can point, the consistent with how we define those things. Thank you. That's very, very helpful. On, slide four I should say thank you as well. This is, this is I'm always amazed by this, honestly. I could never do it. On slide four, you talked about operation operations and maintenance including, safety. Does that include the half payments toward SROs that we are now paying?
So last year's actuals would not have included our contribution. Just this year. This year's budget does. If you'll recall, in the spring, we talked about that as a quote unquote ad. Yes. Right? A change in what we were actually doing year over year. So Okay. Thank you. I totally forgot about that. I I just wanna ask if, you know, as I talk to people about, things like, you know, we have this overspend in SPED, but aren't there, like, a number of things that are required in order to comply with, federal federal federal regulations for
those students that are not funded fully? Like, so you can't really like, we have to spend it. What so if it's not something that people can look at and say, well, you should be cutting sped because we really just can't. Like, we have things that we have to comply with. Is that an accurate statement? Almost 98%, yes. You know, with my truth hat on, I would say there's always a level of judgment in everything. Right? Right. And judgment applies to what is it that students with disabilities need and what do
students in gen ed need. There's not act there's no, like, formula. Right? It it's not black and white. And so, so it's a yes, and. There absolutely is an additional cost to meeting the needs of students with disabilities. And there's lots of precedent and lots of of law and and just rule around what that looks like. So Well, and I would say that, if we're going to I would prefer to on the side of taking care of the students.
So I appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah. And and director Reed, I wanna be clear. I I also wanna on the side of taking care of the students. I think one area where we wanna partner with, special education, and they're very open to this, is, negotiated rates. So when we're working with an external service provider, there's one approach of receive the bill, pay the bill. There's another approach of, service provider, you've doubled your rates in three years. Could we have a conversation about that?
So again it's a yes and. Provide things that are necessary and be thoughtful about what it costs and make sure that, you know, we're we're only paying what we should be. So Thank you. And thanks everybody up here for asking some of the questions that I also had. Love it when that happens. I wanna go to slide five, where you were talking about purchased services and ask, is it fair or accurate to say that external contractor cost are dispersed across both programs and accounts? They don't sit in their own bucket.
That that's not how we account for them. Is that accurate? Say say it just one more time. I'm sorry. External contractor costs are dispersed or spread out across both program when we look at it by program and when we look at it by account. That if there's no one Ah, I think case that we're looking at. Mostly yes. What I would say is purchase services show up in every single one of our programs. Right. I think that's what you're saying. Mhmm. Purchase services do only show up in purchase services when we divide it out that
way. Okay. I think we're saying the same thing. That's all I had. Thanks. Thank you for this. And I have three questions. On slide seven, for the, place out of district, I know that's extremely expensive. Does the, state, when it's funding our per pupil, their formula, do they have a category or a tier for out of district placement students? So within tier b, which is, a differentiated tier, differentiated based on student, right?
So each student who qualifies for Tier B funding gets a slightly different level of Tier B funding, so to speak, and aggregated into groups. So yes, those kids are often kids, with more needs that qualify for higher levels of Tier B funding. However, inclusive of that funding and inclusive of the base per pupil, We are spending five to six times what we receive. So they don't track the the fact that they were placed out of district as
much as just what their disability is or what their level Correct. Okay. Okay. They don't preconceive as to whether the district can meet the needs of the student or not? And there's no way to report to them how many students we have placed out of district and get any adjustment or anything like that? In short, no. Okay. Then on Slide 15, I was Can I jump in on the last question you just asked? Because I actually think it there there might be something you're contemplating in the question,
which is would it be beneficial for us given how exorbitant the expenses have gotten per student to have a conversation with the Department of Education to say, hey. Listen. As districts, we are bearing the burden of this, and, of course, we're going to because we know students need the services that they're receiving in these programs. But because there's something you could do across the state to help us manage these costs. I think that's actually a really helpful conversation, not only with our current providers through
our, purchasing team, but also maybe at the state level to talk about, like, a a collaborative purchasing model. And I have a meeting coming up with some front range superintendents, and I think we could all have a really helpful conversation about that, and just kinda compare notes on it because it is becoming a bit, unbearable in terms of the cost, and the increases over time. So I'm going to just take that away as an idea. Thank you. Okay. Then on Slide 15 with the benefits, currently, we're going to have a government shutdown
because the Democrats are saying this big, beautiful bill that went into effect is going to cost or cause health care premiums to skyrocket for everybody. So do we contemplate the fallout from that projection, that fear? What do you think? This is exciting. So, here here's what I would suggest. Over time, insurance pools, so pools of people that are insured, can vary.
Right? And and from a policy lens, what you're trying to do is have a large pool of people insured at any given time. Right? Because that helps even out things. I was speaking a little bit to that. Our pool of insured people is pretty large and pretty stable, and provider costs are not what would drive the cost increases you're talking about. What you're talking about is who's in the pool. Okay? So, our pool of people is fairly stable, and we kinda know how much health
care they consume year over year. So even though both things can be true, costs to ensure a smaller pool of people, which is what they're talking about, can go up a lot when certain people select out, right? That's what you're always trying to avoid is, healthy people selecting out, right? That was why we had quote unquote mandatory coverage for a while, was trying to get everyone into the pool to lower the cost for all. But but that's a little different than what we're talking about because I don't think what's being contemplated in policy necessarily, is straight up driving up the provider rates we're
paying today in Colorado. Okay. That's helpful. And then the last question I have, when we were talking about interest rates and, I think it was on Slide 12. But in general, interest rates have remained high. We know the president has been asking for them to be decreased really fast and so forth. But it's good for us if we've got money in some vehicle that's making money for us.
How much do you revise and monitor and consider interest changes? We do a lot. And so I want to give a shout out to, Alan, who is a manager on Shonene's team, who prepares a monthly report for me, that's very specific to the treasury functions. So how much cash do we have on hand? How much are we earning on that cash? What's happening? I will say that the Q4 report as advertised online, the full the full thing, includes a page where we provide a year over year comparison to the weighted average
yield of investment earnings we're getting as a district. And if you open that up, you will see that we're earning about a point less ish. So whereas, let's say, it was 5.25% last year as of June 30, it's now 4.25%. So though the Fed was sort of slow to really some of that starts to get priced in before they do it, etcetera, etcetera. So we were actually, as of the end of last fiscal year, already earning less interest than we were before. Now on the forecasting side, Brian and I spent a lot of time thinking about
what's a fair forecast. And Alan this year, gave us a great month by month, and he brought in the FOMCs, like, forecasts, and it was amazing. I love it. So yes, we did develop what appears to actually be a pretty on spot on forecast for the current year's interest revenue based on what's trending right now. Okay. Thank you. I think that's it. Thank you very much for the presentation. Our next item of study is to receive and discuss a monitoring report on board end 1.1,
which states: every student will demonstrate significant and appropriate academic growth using a body of evidence that includes classroom and standardized summative assessments. Additionally, the report will offer board members training on assessment literacy. Before we turn this over to Doctor. Coleman, Chief of Schools, and Doctor. Eaton, Executive Director of Assessment and Research, is there anything you'd like to add, Superintendent Dolan? Yes. There's a lot, there are a lot of things and aspects of this monitoring report
that I think we should all be really proud of. I I received, a message from Commissioner Cordova after results came out just expressing pride in the fact that GEFCO for the last three years has been over the fiftieth percentile in growth, in both English language arts and math, which means that our students are growing more than a year's time, in a year's time. And that that was a that was a moment of pride for me and just
a testament to all the incredible work that our teachers, our principals, our support staff are doing in our schools. And I just wanna highlight that I do really believe that the strategies and efforts that have been put in place through GEFCO Thrives, in particular related to a culture of instructional excellence, are working. And I think there's evidence in this monitoring report that that they're working and that we are moving forward with, improved student academic achievement in GEFCO.
In particular, I know Renee and her team are proud of the work that they've been leading around academic monitoring, which is really, how our teachers are engaging in instructional practice that pays attention to how students are engaging with the content in the classroom and responding, in the moment to students who need support, who need advanced, challenges, and to catch their misconceptions early on and redirect so that students aren't just sitting and
struggling, but really moving forward with their, academic learning. And I know, that, our community superintendents have been on the ground with our principals really thinking about how do we do this work in a way that's meaningful and manageable for our educators. So I'm really grateful for their leadership as well. I would also just say that, there are there are continued areas where we need to focus and where we're not, making the progress that we wanna make. And I think that that in particular has to do with our subgroups of students,
and that's something that we're we're constantly thinking about and trying to figure out how how better to close those gaps. And then finally, I do wanna just emphasize that for four and a half years now, we have been doing some pretty intensive, high quality instructional materials work. And just not only what you see in the data in this report, but also, the many school visits and classroom visits that I conduct on an annual basis over the last couple of years feels very different than when I first started.
We have a lot more consistency from classroom to classroom, building to building, I think thereby guaranteeing that every student, is being exposed to grade level and standards based content, with a guarantee that some of the assignments they're doing, the interim assessments they're taking are in place, and that teachers actually on a daily basis have a tool that they can use to know what they're teaching. And what I've seen with the teachers that I've, both observed in classrooms and then
had opportunities to speak with after my classroom observations is that teachers are starting to figure out that, that art of teaching component alongside a curriculum resource. I know that that has been some feedback that we've received, you know, academic freedom, I I need where where where am I in my teaching if I'm just using this program or this curriculum or this instructional material? And I think our teachers, based on the conversations I've been having and the observations I've been making, are finding ways to allow the art of teaching and who they
are as a teacher to really come through, even though we're all using a similar curriculum. While I do see more consistencies, which I think is a benefit to our students and we're seeing it in the student achievement data, I also see a lot of differences in how teachers are delivering the material and I'm really happy to see that. So I'm really proud of this monitoring report. It's very similar in format to what you all have received over the last four years or so, and I know the team here is excited to share with you,
but just have to give, so much credibility to the teaching and learning team and the school leadership team for all of the work that both of your teams have done, doctor Coleman and, miss Nikathodes, to support come together as a team. Because I don't know if you guys know this, but in a lot of districts, the teaching and learning or curriculum team, is often not on the same page as the school leadership or principal supervisor team. And so I think it's I think it's fitting that you're here together.
And by the way, doctor Eaton, welcome, because you have done an incredible job also with your team helping our principals and school leaders understand data and how to utilize it in a way that really leverages the goals in their UIPs and helping their teachers. So thank you to your team as well. But oftentimes these teams are not on the same page. And what gets caught in the middle of the these two teams not being on the same page are our school principals and our teachers. And so I think these results that you're seeing in in here really is also a testament to the collaboration that the commitment of these two teams.
And really proud of that work and happy for you both to be here sharing and for doctor Eaton to join you. And thank you, doctor Eaton, for all that you do to put into all these monitoring reports as well, because you really are the leader of most of these, especially when they're heavy on data. So thank you for that. And with that, I think I'm handing it over to doctor Coleman. Is that right? You're welcome. Thank you. Turn it on. Just turn the tap. Wait. There you go. Can you hear me now? Hi. Thank you so much, Tracy, and board. I think this is my first time having a a monitoring report for you for
you all to tonight, so take it a little easy on me. But, thank you all for take taking the time. And I wanna say thank you to our chief academic officer for sitting here, with me as well. This this is a partnership, and so having you here really, really means a lot. And thank you to doctor Eaton. So, we'll we'll get started. Yes. We're excited to talk through our report this evening, and I'm gonna turn it over to doctor Eaton to kinda go over this slide with you. So this is our assessment literacy foundational slide. We sometimes get questions from our parents about what are these tests that our students
take, and what what are they for? So what we've provided on this slide is links to one pagers that give you some detail about what the what the assessments are for, what their purpose is, who takes the test, when they take the test, how you get results. So this is a nice, resource for our parents. It's actually on our public website for anyone who might have questions about why do we give these tests and what do we do with them. So each of these links goes to each of a state test or a district test and tries to give that background of why these are important and how they
would be used. On the other side of the slide is just some updates about some, resources we're giving to our educators that help them use assessments in a more meaningful way. So in the school and student progress monitoring dashboards this year, we added some new analytics. So we added off track to graduation warning that we've produced out of my team that really gives us sort of a preview of these students might be off track. Are you paying attention? Are you intervening if needed? And then we also have a under and over performing expected achievement, which is really
helpful when you look at that as an educator and say, this student overperformed the expectation. What did we do for this student? What do we need to sustain? Or this student underperformed. How might we want to intervene for that student? So those are some new analytics we provided this year. And then that goes with some of the, materials we have always given on the PMD, which is those weekly DNF reports to really help see how students might need some support, those daily absences updated, to understand our chronic absenteeism challenges, and then finally,
the state and district performance trends. So that's some of the work we've been doing around assessment literacy, this year. Thank you, doctor Eaton. Our next slide just goes over an overview of our presentation and the flow of the monitoring report that you that you have as well. Our board ends 1.1, just states that every student will demonstrate significant and appropriate academic growth, using a body of evidence that includes classroom and standardized summative assessments. And next, we have our interpretation. And just our interpretation is, students demonstrate appropriate academic growth from year to year on
state state assessments. And just for each, every student will demonstrate appropriate growth from year to year on annual state assessments as well as between the beginning of the year and midyear assessments and midyear to end of the year assessments. Average growth is measured at the fiftieth percentile. Further students in ninth grade will be on track to graduate by earning at least six credits toward graduation requirements. And you can find all of the measures in the report, but tonight we will highlight our CMAS, SAT PSAT, and our MAP data.
So I wanted to stop and kind of go over the the context that, in addition to our state test, CMAST and SAT, you know, as a district, we administer two interim district wide interim assessments, MAP and DIBELS each year. And these assessments help us to monitor student achievement throughout the year. And these results inform our progress toward our strategic plan goals. Our district unified plan, DUIP, including third grade reading as well as fifth and eighth grade mathematics and high school success indicators.
I wanna first begin by going over some highlights, some bright some celebration and bright spots. In 2025, CMASS results for grades, three through six continued, an upward trend showing improvement from the prior year. Looking over a longer stretch of time, ever grade level improved compared to 2023, which signals not just a a single year gain, but also sustained growth. Most notably, all grades have now met or exceeded their pre pandemic, performance, in math,
and that's an important milestone that really reflects both student effort and our school level focus on mathematics instruction. Reading outcomes also show, a similar story of progress, with some variation across grades from from 24 to 25, grades five through seven, posted gains, while all all grade levels except grade four improve when compared to 2023. In addition, grades three, five, and six, have now surpassed their pre pandemic performance, in
English language arts. And this, positive positive trajectory really highlights, our recovery in reading achievement, while also pointing to areas such as grade four, that will require continued attention, and support. I think that together, these, results illustrate momentum, across our subjects. They also show evidence of resilience, among students and our and our educators and clear
signals about where to concentrate resources as we think about moving forward. I wanna highlight, what shifts did we make, in 2425. And I think it's important to just outline that this year, our academic, monitoring and mathematics is built around a few key strategies, that all connect back to improving our student learning. I wanna first talk about our elementary, professional learning. Like all, all I'm teachers are engaging in the five, practices.
This works to help our teachers plan and guide math discussions, that bring student thinking to the surface as well so that every child has the chance to make sense of math in meaningful ways. We have our math learning walks. Each, one of our schools will both host our I'm schools will both host and visit another school for two learning walks, two two learning walk opportunities. And these walks allow our schools, to learn from one another, share best practices, and
build a consistent vision of strong, math instruction across the district. In addition, we have our, our focus in middle and high schools and the emphasis on building mathematical communicate, communities. The goal is to create classrooms where students feel confident, as mathematicians and where dialogue and problem solving, drive deeper understanding of the content. We also have our interim assessments. Cohort one, of the math interim assessments in grades five through eight, gives us real
time checkpoints on our students' growth. It also these assessments provide timely information so teachers can adjust instruction and make sure that students stay on track. Also wanna highlight, our instructional coaching, and our coaches are tying it all together through classroom center coaching. This model connects the POC work with observations and feedback, ensuring that teacher collaboration, professional learning, and student data are all aligned to support stronger outcomes for our students.
I highlight this because I think that together these efforts create a system, where teachers are supported, where students are challenged and progress is continually continuously monitored in ways that both build trust and results for our students. As we continue talking about the shifts that we made in 2425, wanna talk about the foundational skills internalization, and sound wall, implementation. And through district coaching and professional learning, our principals, our instructional coaches, and educators deepen,
their understanding of phonics instruction and embedded sound walls, as a key support for our early readers. And these sessions were among the most widely attended and demonstrated, immediate classroom impact. We also have our HMA structured literacy pathway, and educators across grade levels receive support in implementing HMA structured literacy pathway through structured coaching, vendor training, and planning and guidance.
And through that planning and guidance, we are ensuring consistent instructional rollout aligned with the with science of reading principles. Also, our tiered support and coaching cycles, in PLCs. Across the model for, tiered instruction support, empowered teachers through exemplar lesson studies, academic academic monitoring practices and feedback cycles within our collaborative PLCs. Secondary, getting started sessions, with HQIM. The getting started the getting started sessions for cohort one secondary schools were intentionally designed
as more than orientation. And by that, I mean, these as, these sessions established trust, and communicate a shared expectations around unit and lesson design, enabling teachers not just to use high quality instructional materials, but to leverage their design to enhance student engagement and ownership. Additionally, our coaching learning sessions, we have five session PL series for elementary and secondary coaches built to, deepen their instructional leadership capacity as well as our coaches learn to
internalize, best practices in unit design, shifting the cognitive load, interactive reading and annotation, as well as instructional scaffolding, planning for access and challenge. And our coaches went on to use these learnings and these shared slide decks to communicate and model expectations across all of our schools. Hey, Drew. Can I just jump in for one second? I wanna highlight when I'm talking to teachers, the structured literacy pathway comes up often. So this is where we're really leaning into the HMH is our reading our literacy
program at the elementary level for most schools. There are a few exceptions. And this is where we've really leaned in to provide the phonics component, for that that program and the teachers. I saw it today in a class in a couple of classrooms, and I could see the we've done OG training for our teachers as well, which is, you know, structured science of reading. And I could see teachers using the materials but applying this OG training that they had received in their years prior. I think they're, sometimes overwhelmed by all the materials because it's a lot of materials
to organize, but I think they're also appreciative of it. And when I see the kids using the materials, I think, especially at the younger grades, k two, really high levels of engagement. I'm highlighting this too for you guys. As you go into your school visits, you may wanna see some of these things. So structured literacy is definitely something that is, much more in place than it was even the year before last. I would say the, the teachers tell me all the time how much they love the, learning walks, and I think they're doing those cross school.
Right? So one school gets to go to another school and watch teachers in their classroom and then talk about what they're doing with, illustrative math and then learn from teachers not only in their own building who go with them, but also the teachers in the neighboring school. I know our teachers love that. Yeah. And our coaches are often telling me which one of these session cohorts they're in, and they are really appreciative of being able to focus in on one of these areas and then bring that work back to help the teachers in their building. So trying hard.
We know professional learning in a scale and scope of our size and meeting all teachers' needs is really hard, but we're trying really hard, to be responsive to the feedback that I know Renee and, Drew's team both get from teachers related to professional learning. And that's some positive feedback, so feeling good about some of those things. Alright. Doctor. Eaton? Okay. So, I'm gonna walk you through just a little bit of data. And this is actually summarized this is the detail of what doctor Coleman summarized on slide eight. So this is showing CMAST math, our performance over three years for met and exceeded
percentages in grades three through eight. And what you can see here is the change the the two year change and the three year change. So green is denoting we improved, and the red or, pink is showing that there was a decline. So you can see that that's a very positive picture across most of the grade levels, with seventh grade going down just a bit in the one year change. And then if you look at the next graph or the next chart, it all it shows English language arts the same exact information. You can see that we're seeing more greens than pinks, and that in the most
recent year, we had this minus one percentage point in grade three and some sustaining the improvement in grade eight and a slight, and sustaining actually the decline in grade four. So then if we move to this next chart, it's a graph that is a different view of the CMASS over time. This is the scale score. This is the main scale score, and we've aggregated it across grades three through eight for math. And what this is showing is really our post pandemic performance. So what you see is that dip after the pandemic, and we're seeing the steady
improvement in our aggregated, performance in math over all the grade levels and really showing that we've exceeded the prior pre pandemic performance in math on the aggregate. And then we had that same chart for ELA. And what we're seeing there in our mean score is also that that movement up. We did see a slight decrease in '25, but it was point three. So that's not really that significant. But we are seeing that we have, on the aggregate, exceeded that, pre pandemic performance.
Karen, now oh, yeah. Go ahead. Sorry. Yeah. Don't do fast there. I just wanted if I could just jump in for a moment. May I have the clicker? I just wanna call your attention. You probably noticed, but if I go back to the check mark that you see here for math just to see what that looks like. And then when you go to ELA, it's different. There is a lot of data within our system that is telling us that the work we've done in math, implementing a core resource k 12, is making a real
difference for kids. And this, I believe, is a really nice illustration of that. We don't have the same consistency with resources in ELA yet, but we're working towards that. Mhmm. I just wanted to point that out. Yeah. It's a great point and something that, doctor Eaton and I have talked about. I think it would be helpful for you to highlight some of that data that we've talked about in terms of that middle level ELA when you get there. K. Thanks. So turning to academic growth, which is also showing, the same kind of information. But we what you see here is the academic growth data for grades four through
11, so it includes both CMS and PSAT SAT. And just a reminder that this, measure is the is measured in percentiles, which is normed across the state, and fiftieth is typical. So when you see a fiftieth, that's typical growth, that's what we're striving for, or above. Obviously, we would love to grow more than fiftieth. So green is coded as 50 or above, and the yellow is less than 50. So what you're seeing here is English language arts or reading writing in the first column and math in the second. And you can really see the predominant green, which is what we wanna see in
most areas. We see that fifth grade math is at forty eighth percentile, and then that middle school ELA, we're seeing that is below the fiftieth. So it's kind of reinforcing this idea of consistency across resources in middle school for reading and writing. And then if we move to the next slide, this is showing the scale score, the mean scale score for PSAT and SAT. You see that gray, column? That's when the test changed. So you see this we graded out. We put a big dotted line there.
It means that you really can't reliably trend that data, but we're still showing it to to give you an idea of what happened in 2023. And then when you look at the changes in 2024 to 2025, you're seeing some ups and some downs. So we have that in the scale score, for ninth, tenth, and eleventh grade in PSAT and SAT. And then if we move into the next slide, what we're seeing there is our map reading growth. And what this gives us that we haven't seen in CMASS is our primary grades.
So when you see that amazing growth in grades one, two, three, we don't get that in our CMASS reporting. But what that shows us in reading is very strong growth for our primary grades in reading, which speaks to all the work we're doing in grade in early literacy. And then if and you're seeing, again, the middle school look in reading. So that yellow growth when you're looking at grades the middle grades there. And so then moving to math, what you see there is, again, some strong performance
in the early grades and high school in that, little bit of a dip in the sixth and seventh grade. Thank you, doctor Eaton. And so when you look at our data and you think about what are we how are we on track? What is what is actually working, and what is one of the the levers that's, we're seeing these increases in our data is one, we wanna talk about the calibration of school and district leadership around effective in instructional practices. So one of the things is our calibration and really as a system looking at
what do we consider to be effective instruction and also ensuring a consistent vision and shared language for teaching and learning and what do we expect to see in our schools and how we can continue to, work together, is one. Also, building a culture of trust and collaboration between school leadership and district leadership. That's our community superintendents, principals, and how they are supporting schools and really fostering that partnership that focuses on supporting teachers and students rather than, looking at what is wrong,
but how can we grow and become better together. The third thing is to continue to enhance our collective leader efficacy, so that leaders at every level throughout the system feel confident in their ability to improve instruction and be, a lever to support teachers and supporting student outcomes. Also, to provide schools with instructional feedback that is explicit, that is actionable, and grounded in evidence, helping teachers really refine their practice on how they can become better instructional
leaders, in real time. Also, identifying district wide trends in instruction, that target our resources strategically and address needs with precision in how we support our schools, but also, to promote continuous improvement toward our shared goals, shared district goals, ensuring that every, effort contributes to a Meaningful, measurable progress for our students. What are some of our challenges? All work this year is centered on a set of strategic priorities that aim to
strengthen student success. These include closing the achievement gap so that every student has access to high quality instruction and the support needed to meet those grade level expectation. Prioritizing strong attendance because consistent school engagement is a foundation for learning for learning and long term achievement. Focusing on the fifth to sixth grade transition and the middle school experience to ensure students, enter adolescence prepared for academic and social success. Also, challenges, right sizing and refocusing, our elementary summer literacy program so that it is
targeted, so that it is effective and aligned with the needs of the students who will benefit most, from that work, and aligning the instructional core and strengthening school leadership focus to one, ensure teaching, learning, and leadership work in concert, toward improved outcome for all students. I wanna highlight that at the elementary level, our our use implementation of high quality instruction materials are a cornerstone for the growth that we're seeing, that we're demonstrating and seeing in our early literacy grades.
They ensure that every student has has access to rigorous, standard aligned content while also freeing our teachers to focus on instruction, tailored to meet the needs of our students. As we think about our challenges and as we continue to move forward, the result is for us to continue to be more consistent, to have engaging learning experiences that that build, the skills of our students and our teachers, to deepen the understanding of our teachers and students and help close those achievement gaps from day one.
I think that these priorities work together, to create a stronger pathways for student growth, to address system inequities, and to ensure that resources are directed toward, the highest impact areas. Now we'll be open for questions. Thank you. Questions? Doctor. Reed? I sent this in earlier. And as I've looked at this again and listened to you present, I I think I might have some theories on it. But one of the things that I keep running into very tenaciously is teachers in
some schools feeling very much like the data is going to be used punitively, that learning walks will be punitive in some way. So they get really uptight about having people in their classrooms. And it's not all schools. There are schools where teachers are excited to have people in there. They're excited to be out looking at other teachers and and other schools where, they don't feel that way. And I would say one of the places that I see that a lot is in title schools. Mhmm. I think there's a sense of, you know, as we talk about closing achievement gaps,
and I think perhaps, and I wish I'd paid closer attention, that it's also possible that some of this is also coming from our middle school teachers and teachers where our data is not looking great. I think it is natural for teachers, because of who they are, to beat themselves up about that and therefore automatically assume everyone else is doing the same. Plus, there are members of the public that are more than happy to beat people
up for, you know, that I've said this before that look at that data. Look at that. Fix that. You know? And I'm wondering, not necessarily for an immediate answer right now, but are there ways that we can better close the loop for teachers after we've gotten this information back or that after we've done learning walks to to really help them see this is not punitive. This is just data that tells us we have we have work to do, not
you have work to do, but we do. And and how are we going to help you do that? Like I said, especially in those areas where, you know, you've chosen to teach kids that that are dealing with a lot of things that get in the way of their education. Do you know what I'm saying? Mhmm. So so I'm just wondering, how can we do that better? We keep talking about trust in the district, And we've talked about building trust between
the district and school leadership. How are we bringing our teachers into that and helping to foster trust with them? Thank you. Thank you for that. Uh-huh. Go ahead. You wanna go you wanna go first? Okay. I think that one, I I do want to acknowledge that anytime you're having, in individuals come into your classroom, I think there's always a sense of, a feeling. And I think sometimes that we, as educators, are probably harder on ourselves than than others. I think one of the things that that we are intentionally trying to do, is
we are reminding our principals and asking our principals to continue to, remind their teachers that we are coming to be a support, and we're learning together. I think that you hit on one of the things is, you know, trust is built over time, and and as we continue to do our instructional walks, it is really being intentional in setting those norms so that our teachers understand that this is really a support, and we have to lead by example.
And so one of the things is as we give feedback to principals, and thinking about how can we continue to be of of support is ensuring that our community superintendents are working directly with principals in how are we messaging this, how are we relaying this back, how are we showing support so that, our teachers are feeling supported and not feeling that they are being, you know, if they're feeling, attacked or any other way, but just really being intentional in what support looks like.
And I think one is always messaging, hey. This is support, but then the action as well. And so that's one thing that we are doing. And, you know, as I work with community superintendents, thank you for uplifting this, for, you know, acknowledging that it's not everywhere, but in some places that teachers do feel feel that way. And I think that not only is that building trust, but trust is action. Right? And we have to continue to just remind teachers that we are here in support of you just like, I'm here in support of, the entire district.
You wanna add anything to to that, Renee? I I think, I think you addressed most of what I would what I would say, but I can share with you too that, we've thought about this a lot. I think anyone who's been a teacher, working in a classroom understands how it feels when your boss comes in, like this, and is watching everything you do and writing things down. It's unnerving. It's unnerving now. So we I I believe we do understand the sentiment. We have a letter for at least for the Leadership Learning Walks. There's quite a few different Learning Walks occurring in our schools, but we have a
letter that we ask the principal to send for the leadership learning walks to the entire staff before we come to the school to say this is not evaluative. This is about us talking about how we understand effective instruction together to build our capacity around instructional leadership. So that's one thing we do. We write thank you notes to the teachers after we leave to let them know of something great that we saw in their classroom at the end of the learning walks. When we have our debrief and talk about, what we saw, we never talk about specific teachers. We talk about trends across classrooms, and we talk about glows for the school and
the strengths. And at the end, we one of the questions I always ask the leaders are, what are you gonna celebrate with your staff after this walk? What did you hear that you wanna bring back and celebrate with your staff? And so that's always something that we, make sure that we kind of stamp at the end. And we always pose the question, what do you need from us centrally? You have lots of central folks and other leaders in the room. What do you need from us? What's working? What's not? So it's an opportunity for us to hear on the ground too, how's it going with these new resources? So it's so much more about the support and building leadership capacity of of principals,
with us, than it is about any individual teacher. And I I think what you said about closing the loop is really where, we need to focus our energy and and making sure that we're ensuring that that cycle, that loop is closed and there's that positive feedback provided and that people don't feel like it's in any way evaluative, because it shouldn't be. I'm just curious. So if you go into a classroom and you do see something that needs improvement, how do you address it? The way we talked about it is, we have a debrief protocol where we sit in a circle. The school team just listens, and we say, okay.
Close. Let's all share with the school team things that we saw that we really wanna lift up and celebrate because this is what they said they were working on. The principal usually usually will lead a presentation to say these are our goals. These are the things we've been working on in professional learning. These are the things I would hope that you would see in classrooms as a result of our work. So when we come back, we share out as a group, while while the school team listens, what are some things that we saw that we wanna celebrate that that the principal said we might see in classrooms? So we just talk about it globally and people just kind of name things out loud. And then we do another round of, here's opportunities for growth for the school.
What are some things that you saw that the the school might think about taking action on or have some professional learning around or some next steps, to follow-up? And so it's just it's named, like, we noticed that, if the school leader said, we are focused on greeting students at the door as a part of, creating, sense of belonging for students, we might say one trend that we saw was, you know, three out of the five classrooms that we went to, there were staff at the door to greet the students. We noticed two others, you know, got hung up on this or that.
So it's really kind of global trend type of data, if that if that helps and makes sense. It's not specific yet. Yeah. And I would the only thing that I would add to to that is after we talk about those global trends, we spend time thinking where can we support. And so the question is, how can we lean in to to provide the that support? And sometimes the community superintendent is our actual already working with the principal on on what they're focused on. But we really lean into where can we provide support and how can we help
you with whatever the issue may may be. Thank you. And then my other question is, I can you refresh my memory? How long have our middle school teachers been working with our new literacy materials for them? We had nine pilot schools last year. This year, we have about six more. So we've got a just a handful of schools that are not, piloting ELA, materials this year at the middle level. So we can, basically, what we're seeing is is something very similar to what happened
with our elementary schools, which was we weren't seeing tremendous growth as they first began to implement the materials. But as they've increasingly become comfortable and sort of evened out with each other, as cohorts, we saw tremendous improvement. So that is something that we could potentially anticipate there. We should. Yeah. I I I'm gonna follow-up on that. Were you done? Oh, you almost look like you're gonna keep going. In the so I have several questions about the report.
In the past, and maybe doctor Eaton can help me with this. I think in the appendices, we could see the cohorts and their trends, and it's not in this report. Is it in a am I I'm wondering, am I remembering a different report? Because I remember being able to link in. And I had I remember having questions that that what you just said isn't always true, actually, that some of the early cohorts weren't doing as well as some of the later cohorts. And the response was primarily they were in these title one schools that don't trend
that way was kind of that. But so where is all the cohort data especially aligned to the different curriculum adoptions and the years in which they were adopted? It's just missing. We can provide that in the monitoring report 1.3, which is around quicker, materials and and implementation. It's coming up soon, actually, in October, so we can provide some of that. But I've looked at, some of that data. We did have a question from a community member around that. And, yes, that initial cohort, that cohort one for our elementary literacy materials were chosen because they were some of our most struggling schools that we felt like needed materials,
with a lot more urgency. So they weren't it's not just because they were title schools. It it was because they were the most struggling at the time, and we felt like we needed to start there. And we have seen growth in those schools. Unfortunately, I don't know if you're thinking of the same, message that we got via email from a community member asking about that cohort. We have seen growth in many of those schools, but when you start looking year to year, you're not talking about the same students. We also had COVID that happened right after we adopted those materials very first year.
So it really interrupted implementation. So there's quite a bit more to that story than than than with Meet the Eye, but I'm happy to share more, in October when we present the other monitoring report. Yeah. And sorry. I didn't mean to make you explain that again. I just I'm really missing that the data aren't here, especially when they were in past reports. So it seems, in fact, we used to have a lot of appendices because I just remember linking to them and going to dig in. Okay. And similarly and I know and I went so I went back to last year's
report, and I've been looking, comparing them. And, also, we don't have any breakout by demographics. There's no breakout by school, areas of the district. And I know that we talked about this last year. The slide deck from last year I don't know if y'all remember this because it I think doctor Cameron did it. There were, like, these little people with the little lines that showed the differences in all the demographics. I have the slide right here. I mean, that wasn't in the report, but there were other details in the report that you could link to.
And so I know last year we asked for that, and now we have less of it. It's not even last year at least was included in the presentation. So we have, like, nothing that tells us how this looks across our district. It's just all at the highest level. So I'm concerned about that. I'm concerned that it's been taken out, and that we just don't have it at all because I I don't really don't know how we're supposed to understand this data without that kind of level of detail. I I wonder what you think about that.
For our subgroups and how they're being represented in the data? Just yeah. There's no subgrouping in the data at all. I don't know what you we'd call them subgroups. I think this is feedback that we can take back and, get the board some more data and desegregate it. And then, doctor Eaton, I'll let you jump in. Yeah. We have all that data and we actually have the little people data as well. I think when doctor Kim prepared this, she prepared this before she left. And I think she decided to make it a little different than prior years. But all that data is readily available, and we could get it to you in
a Friday update actually if it's first Yeah. Yeah. We're happy to Honestly, my concern is just that we this was the exact conversation last year. Exact. We'll get that to you. We'll include it. We'll make sure to include it in future reports. And it's just not. So I'm just that's really my concern. Here we are again. And then kind of also along those lines, I was just I was really looking at the, challenges. And one of the challenges that comes up no matter how we look at data across our district or any district in the whole country, right, is that, there's always
a gap, in in these demographics. And it's it's just everywhere. And every year, I'm like, when are we gonna start doing something? You know, when are we gonna flood our title one schools with resources? When are you know, when are we gonna incentivize those teachers so that they stay there and are tenured for a very long time in those schools? You know, like, when are we gonna do radical things? So I went back and I was like, what did we say last year? And I do have to say, again, if the two sections in the report on challenges is verbatim exactly the same. We have in 2024 and 2025, the exact same five, I think, challenges.
There's a couple of edited words here and there. It's the exact same language. We're gonna do the learning walks. We're gonna everything that we're saying we're gonna do this year, we said we were gonna do last year. Focus on attendance. And so, obviously, it's the same problem. The problems persist. That's that's clear. That story is there. What I'm worried about is that the solution is exactly the same as 2024. I mean, we didn't even update the language in it. The slides are the same. And I I'm not I'm not offended by using templates, especially for data analysis.
That's, great news. We can understand it better when we can see it. But I just don't know as a district, what are we doing that's so radically different from last year to make any of these challenges better? And I just I don't know what they are. So Thanks for that feedback. We'll give it some thought and be ready to provide you some feedback, you know, about all that. Well, you want me to go? Yeah. One, I would say thank you for for the feedback.
You know, as I think about, what we're doing to address the challenges and, like, one, yes, the achievement gap, it it does persist. And I think it's a a national, a national thing that we're all facing in in public education. I will say I do believe that what we're doing, to really close the achievement gap are, the research based strategies that that are being used, not only here but across The United States. We can always go back and go back to the drawing board and say, hey.
What can we do differently? But I I I believe that we're on the right track, and, this some of this change will take some time, as we work with our different schools with, in in different demographics. I think change will take time. Not making any excuses for it, but I do think the strategies that we have provided and that we've used from last year to this year are the right strategies to to use. And I believe that we will see change, but it but it will take take time. And it takes, a willingness to do things differently.
And not everyone's always willing to do things differently. I think I've spoken before. I was a title one principal, a turnaround principal. It can be done, but it requires persistent and consistent effort for people to change what they've been doing because if they continue doing what they've been doing, we all know the results will be the same. And change management is a significant challenge for us here and we're working through. And they are the strategies that we chose have chosen are the right strategies. I do believe we'll get there, but this is an ongoing challenge that, as Drew
said, many, many school districts face. Is it okay if I build on that too just really quickly? That is an area where, disaggregated data would help because we could look at it and say you know, if we could say, yes. You know, these were the the challenges and these were the things that we were working on last year. And when we look at these, we see growth. They remain our challenges, but we see growth that would be great. If we look at them and we don't see growth, then we definitely wanna know, well, then what are we doing differently.
So Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks for being here. It's good to As a I've as a teacher from a long time ago, those achievement gaps have been around for thirty years. And if anybody's found a magic fix to it, they would probably share those answers. I think we have some good news in the district around, at the high school level, around engagement, in our CTE programs that's promising when addressing some achievement gap numbers,
especially around graduation rates. But I I do, know that it takes time, and it's taken a really long time for those gaps have they've existed for a long time. It's gonna take a long time to address them. I have two questions. The first is, can you describe a sound wall? Yes. We can. I thought you might ask that. I made some notes as he was going through that. In the in the past, if you've been in, early, ed classrooms, you might have seen word walls arranged with, like, these high frequency words. We've called them sight words.
And they're typically organized alphabetically. A sound wall is different in that it's organized by the sound the way the sounds are produced in the mouth. So it orients a student to how the sound, feels when they produce it and how it looks in their mouth. So it's just orienting students to the sounds and how they're produced with the mouth rather than alphabetical list of sight words. Cool. And I'm on that's what I was wondering. I mean, that's what I was imagining, but I'm also wondering, how are teachers maybe
supported in making that switch or making those adjustments in their classroom? Our teaching and learning team provides support around that, especially when they're implementing structured literacy. It is a key component of the structured literacy work, and we have got just a few schools left that aren't engaging in that yet. But it is professional learning and part of this, resource within HMH, that provides that that support and guidance. Great. Is there any is there any chance that that's a strategy they would use in maybe English language learner classes at higher level grades? Potentially. That's a good question. I'll have to ask about that.
I hadn't thought about it in higher levels, for English language learners, but potentially I'll look into that. Cool. My other question when we're looking at, you know, things that we've done that have had impacts on academic success, I just wanna lift up one thing. What slide is it? Maybe 19. It is that there might be a role for increased academic parent engagement so that they feel better equipped to support their students, especially if their students are struggling. I think a lot of times parents don't know how to approach or how to
support, in some academic struggles. And so if there is some parent engagement built in, that could potentially have a really positive impact on supporting students, especially ones who are maybe on read plans or a little bit behind, in the ELA in the ELA area. So I just wanted to share that idea. One of the things that we're doing this year is I think many of you know we're rolling out a dyslexia screener for kindergarten through third grade, so all students will be screened for dyslexia in December. We're yeah. We're pretty excited about this. And then in January, once we have those results from December, we are having a
district wide training day. We're bringing all of our K3 educators in and discussing the results and then providing, coaching and, just kind of almost a script for how do you then share this information with families. How do you really talk about this? You don't just send a letter home and say, your students are showing signs up. No. We really want this to be a very intentional effort of communicating with families in a sensitive, and impactful and helpful way, and so we're providing that training too. So that's one example. Of parent engagement. I also would imagine that sort of engagement around academics would lead to some other
trust and relationship building that goes on, that we need to engage, across GEFCO. So anyway, I think it has lots of good reasons. Director Kenworthy. I do also think it's important to note that, Tara's team is piloting an academic partnerships model that, we're starting small because there's a lot going on and people can only do so much. But we are, I think, starting I think it's sixth grade and kindergarten. I'm not for sure. We can get more information on the details with a few schools where they're actually
bringing families in at the front end of, a transition year, a really important transition year, kindergarten and sixth, and having conversations with them about their students', like, assessment data that we already have and just sort of helping families understand where their student is beginning and giving them some strategies to help them at home to continue the progress. So we can get you some more information about that, but it's kind of this revisioning of, like, maybe we should do back to school night differently. Maybe we should do parent teacher conferences a little differently, especially in these, like, key
transition years. So we can I'll I'll just ask Lisa to maybe take a note and get some information for you guys about that too. I appreciate it. Thanks for letting me know that some of that work was happening. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you guys for being here. We appreciate it. This is, this is always really, one of my favorite, monitoring reports, so thank you. I wanna go first, I also wanna lift up that how awesome it is that we're screening for dyslexia. That's a huge win. It's a huge win, so thank you for that. I wanna go to slide 16. I it's it's kinda striking to me when you look at the data how we
see these kind of I mean, doctor Eaton, I know they're more than just green boxes, but a lot of green boxes. And then we get to our PSAT and our SAT, and it's a little bit more of a mixed bag in results. And so what should we and maybe what should the public kind of take from this? And how are we taking this data and thinking about the high school level? So what I would say about the scale score we're talking about three points on a scale score or five points on a scale score. So you're going to see some fluctuation there that might not be so significantly statistically
significant. And what we think about in the SATPSAT is that the scale increases. So it's on a continuous scale and it increases each year. So when you look diagonally, you'll see our students are improving that way. Growth is really important for our, secondary students. So we also look at that growth piece knowing that if we're growing students at a high rate, fiftieth or greater, they're moving academically, into where we want them to go. I think SAT is a very important test for our high schools because they understand
that it's a gateway to scholarships and graduation, college and those sorts of things. So, what I guess I would say is these numbers are so small in the scale score change that I'm not so concerned. I do see a plus eight, a plus four, but we really should look over time at that. And I I think also the test has changed. So that's also a challenge because we usually, we look at multiple years to see a trend. And in this case, we have two years of the same test. It was a different format, and it's significant change in the format.
So our students are not being asked the same kinds of things. So it's a recalibration of how our students take the test and how we interpret the test. Do we have other ways? I mean, I know we have CMAS and we have, you know, DIBELS and we have a lot of other things for our earlier grades. Do we have other ways we're evaluating our secondary kiddos? We do. And in our district unified improvement plan, we talk about other measures as well. MAP is given for ninth and tenth grade, so we do have that. We also have a lot of grades in the secondary. They they have their own way of, looking at it by course.
And then we look at other measures. We look at our our, concurrent enrollment, we look at our AP and our IB. So there's a lot of different measures for post secondary workforce readiness that we look at, and also credits earned. That's important to us in our metrics for our, strategic plan to make sure we're on track to graduate. We look at the demonstrations, you have to have a reading, writing demonstration and a math demonstration to graduate from high school. So all of those things, there's actually more data, more rich data, I think, at secondary in some ways when you look at all the different pieces.
And we have monitoring report coming up looking at some of that post secondary workforce, readiness measure metrics that are so important at that grade level. That's great. It's it's helpful, as a parent of a kiddo who graduated last year and hated taking the SAT and thought it was garbage in his language. I I worry that that's our only measure, so I'm glad to hear we're really thinking about it because he struggled with the test and it I don't know that it was a reflection of his comprehension in the grade, so I appreciate that. And I just want to lift up in the actual report that we have 10
schools that achieved high growth, in ELA and nine schools that achieved high growth in math, which is pretty awesome. And I hope we get the chance to do where we bring them in like we did last year and give them their cool banners and really recognize it because, that's huge. And I just want to make sure we celebrate all these schools. Thank you for the presentation. I have two questions, and I think, Doctor. Eaton, maybe you're the right one for it. I want to compare Slide 11 with Slide 18. And on Slide 11, it was so exciting to see sixth grade, their improvement on
math and the CMASS. And I know that that's an area when I first started visiting middle schools, the principals were telling me, oh, the first couple of weeks in school, couple of months, whatever, they're just trying to get them all using the same terms and back in the same path. So I do think that this means our illustrative math is not causing a problem in sixth grade like it did before. But anyway, so sixth grade math on CMASS looked great. If we look on Slide 18, which is the map stuff for sixth grade, it's
not so good. And so I'm wondering, how we would interpret that sixth grade really rocked it in CMAS but didn't seem to be so good in MAP. So the MAP that you're seeing on the slide on is it you said 18 is growth. So that's academic growth data. And the other slide is achievement on CMAS. So there's gonna be a little bit difference there because growth is normed and achievement is a criterion referenced test. So I would compare that with Slide 15 because that is also growth.
So that's looking at academic growth on CMASS and comparing academic growth on MAP. So I think Slide 15 and Slide 18 would be a a comparison there. And I think what you're seeing in MAP is, the MAP is a little bit different in growth and there's a difference in the test and difference in timing. So the end of your MAP assessment is given after CMAS. And we have heard about fatigue and test fatigue because they're taking those tests back to back. So this is the test that they take after CMAS.
And then the other piece is that our CMAS has constructive response, whereas our MAP test does not. So there's a little bit difference in the way that kids are tested and students are tested. And actually, CMASS is, I think, more challenging when you have to actually construct a response based on a mathematical concept. So I'm pleased to see that the growth is higher in CMASS because I think it's more comprehensive in the way that it's testing instead of a multiple choice over here. But it's a good thing to look at for us to look at about the two different tests. Yes, because I've always been highlighting MAP as much more helpful and, you know, useful
and timely. And, and then this one looked like, maybe it's not so great. But thank you for that explanation. And then the other thing I wanted to ask you, since we're a really big district, we have a lot of students and I know some of the districts in, Colorado have 100 students or whatever. What is the significance, statistical significance of going from a 48 to a 49 or a 47 to a 48? Does it is it different for small districts and big districts? And how do we fall in there? Yes. Student counts matter.
So when you have very large numbers, you're going to get statistical significance much easier. So when we see a district our size, a one point or two point gain does mean more than if you're talking about a school with a 100 kids. So and and it's also harder to move because we're sort of regressing to the mean in some ways. And so as a district, you some schools go up and some schools go down every year, different schools, and the district kind of stays the same. So seeing that progress is very helpful. You'll see in our district unified improvement plan session next week that we're seeing that
steady gain in our, district performance framework. And that's a really positive thing when you see that. It looks like small points, but that's really helpful in a district this size. So I think that's a really observant piece that you should really think about. And you see huge fluctuations in the smaller counts. And the last thing is, I don't know if I've said this at one of the board meetings yet, but, I'm working with some kiddos in my Casa work right now who I'm just trying to get them to school, the 14 and 17 year olds. And I mean, it's just it's so, so hard.
And the 14 year old told me, I think it was the end of last year, she got this award for her from her school. And I thought, that's great. I'm so excited. And her award was because her aunt had sent in a notice, an official notice that she wasn't going to be taking the CMAST test. And that got a letter of commendation or whatever because she brought in this note. So I'm just wondering too, what is performance or the, I don't know, the the
participation, thank you, in in, GEFCO? So our participation rates are quite high in the metro district area. We are, very serious about all kids should have a chance to show what they know and have the state test to see if they're meeting grade level expectations. Of course, parents always have the opportunity to opt out if they think that their student, for some reason, shouldn't take the test, But we we don't necessarily promote it. And if that's a school in our district, I'd love to hear a little more about that. Yeah. Actually, I I need to clarify it was not a JEFCO school.
Okay? It's not JEFCO. That that's a relief because we do, we do support schools in saying that this test is important and that it is a part of our accountability. And we also support parents. If they don't wanna take the test, they shouldn't have to have their student take the test. Okay. Well, thank you very much. This was very helpful. Lots of good news. Excited about that. And, it is now 06:53, and we will take a fifteen minute break. Hi. I'm Mary Parker, a proud GEFCO school board member. Do you ever wonder what a school board does?
We're a group of elected volunteers who help set the direction for our district. From shaping policies to approving budgets, we ensure that every student in our community has access to a quality education. It's our job to listen to families, students, and educators to make informed decisions that benefit everyone in our school community. For more information about the work of our board, including our meeting schedule on how to connect with us, please visit jeffcopublicschools.0rg/board. As a school board, we're responsible for overseeing the district's budget.
Every dollar matters when it comes to providing the best education possible. We carefully allocate funds to support teachers, maintain facilities, and improve student programs. It's our job to ensure financial transparency and accountability, while balancing the needs of students, staff, and taxpayers. As members of your GEFCO school board, we help set the vision for our district's future. We work closely with Superintendent Dorland and her staff to ensure that our goals align with our community values and the needs of our students. Whether it's improving academic achievement or enhancing school safety, we're committed to GEFCO's mission of
providing a world class education that prepares all GEFCO students for bright and successful futures as local and global citizens. Community engagement is at the heart of what we do. As a school board, we represent the voices of JEFCO families, students, and all of our community members. We hold public meetings, we listen to concerns, and we encourage everyone to share their thoughts and opinions about the district. Your feedback helps us to make better decisions for our schools and shape our district's future. As a school board, we are committed to ensuring equity in education.
That means making sure every student, no matter their background, has the resources and support they need to thrive. We develop policies and strategies to close achievement gaps, support diverse learning needs, and create an environment of safety, belonging, respect, inclusivity, and encouragement in every school. And we are back. Our next item of study will be to receive information about recommended updates to enrollment policy JFBA and regulation JFBA are by Jeremy Felker, Executive Director of Student Data Privacy
and Reporting and Mackenzie Nickham, Director of Enrollment Services. Before I turn the time over to our presenters, is there anything you would like to say? Superintendent Dorland. Thank you. This is actually gonna be a policy that we ask the board to approve next week or October, at your October regular meeting. So we're, anxious for you to study it. There are, I wouldn't say huge changes to what we're thinking about, but some that are, important for the board to be aware of and for our families to be aware of. So when they come, choose their school, they they know exactly, how the process works.
So with that, I will hand it over to mister Felker. Welcome. Thank you for this opportunity where we could, update you on recommended updates for policy JFBA and regulation JFBA R. We are in our eighth year entering our eighth year of enrolled GEFCO. And as part of every year, we we take feedback from families and staff in regards to what are the issues, what are the inequities, and we review policy to determine the the changes and the tweaks we need to policy to provide a better
experience, a better process for our families. And so this is part of that review process, that we are we review annually. And so with those recommended updates, it's my privilege to hand it off to Mackenzie, and I just wanna thank her and her team for supporting GEFCO families and staff in processing almost 7,000 support requests this year during round one and round two as well as start of school. Thank you. So we are requesting that these are reviewed for vote at the next meeting.
I think it says November 13 here. It might be on the October agenda according to the previous update, but to take effect for the 2627 enrollment cycle, which actually opens in December 2025. So that is why there is the timeline that there is. So some of you have seen the next few slides, are very, very similar ones, but we wanted to start with just an overview, very quickly of how the lottery process works. The changes we're talking about are to the priority structure, and so it is more
of kind of the buckets that we put applicants into in terms of the priorities they receive. But before you can think about that, you really kind of have to have an overview of how the lottery itself, works. So we're gonna run through that part here first. So when a family applies through Enroll GEFCO, at this point, any enrollment request is actually submitted through Enroll GEFCO. So whether it's a current year enrollment, future year enrollment, admin transfer, they've moved, any change in school, happens through Enroll GEFCO.
So it's very nice. It's a one stop shop for families if they're looking to enroll or change schools. It all happens in the same place. That's including summer school, part time enrollment at JVA, Warren Tech, pretty much every program including GEFCO Reads, so their programming as well. So this is really for a future year. So once an application is submitted, the first thing we look at is, is that student guaranteed enrollment? There are two types of students that are guaranteed, and they are students that are currently enrolled at the school, and then k 12 students that have applied to go
back or to go to their designated neighborhood school, whether they're attending there right now or not. After that, if they are not guaranteed, we assign them a priority, and those are outlined in the policy, and that is what we are going to be looking at tonight. And then just as a note, some of our charter or option schools may have different priority structures than what we're going to look at tonight and those are outlined in their approved, documents. And then each application is assigned a random lottery number at the time the app is submitted. So that is all system generated.
Schools don't have any part in that piece. At the end of round one, school staff input their available seats, in each grade and program. So some of our schools have multiple programs, such as, like, a GT center or their IB program. So they tell us how many choice seats they have available, and they utilize a wide variety of factors to calculate that availability, including how many neighborhood students they have coming, the number of families that have said they were leaving, and the staffing, their building size.
Right? All of those things factor into that. District staff run the lottery process for all schools. So there's always this misconception that schools can they don't touch it. So that process is all managed centrally, and those applications that are received are placed in order by priority group first and then by that random lottery number they were assigned when they applied. And then that first batch of offers that goes out, so those initial results, those are sent centrally as well.
So that ensures that all families, basically, get those notifications at the same time. The batch takes a minute. So that's why I said basically. They're all in the same day within a few hours of each other. They get those offer notifications or those wait list notifications on the same day. Hopefully. There it goes. So just kind of an example so you can see it visually. In this case there are four third grade students, that apply to the same school. You can see for each applicant they have a priority group and then those random lottery numbers, which I know look a little crazy, but that's how we ensure that
nobody ends up with the same number and we can put them in order all the time. And then the school has said we have one choice seat available. Right? So there is only one spot open and one of these four students is going to get an offer. When we run the lottery process, you can see they shuffled order a little bit. So we had two applicants at the priority group one, so they went in order from then random lottery number from smallest to biggest, which is why applicant b got the offer and not applicant a.
And then applicant D, was priority group three and then priority four. So in this example, since there was only one seat available, that first, right, applicant B, got the offer, and then all three of the other students were notified that they were on the waitlist. Families can see where they are on the waitlist at any time, throughout the window, so they can actually check that status all the way up until the August if and they are still wait listed up until that point. But schools will continue to send offers all the way through the August as they
have space open up. Once those results are sent to families, families have three days to accept that offer. They do expire automatically, so that way schools can move on, right, to the next family. If you don't respond, we're gonna give that seat to the next person in line. Only one full time offer can be accepted per student. So we limit the number of schools families can apply to to three, for k 12. If they were to get an offer from all three schools that they applied to, they can only take one. Right? Their student can only attend one school, and once they accept that we automatically decline
those other two. And then accepting an offer does not remove the student from the waitlist at another school. So if a family got an offer from their second choice, we don't capture what their order is in any way, but let's say they got an offer from their second choice school, they can stay on the wait list at the first choice, and still take the seat at that school that they got an offer. Yes. Yes. That's a big panic moment. Yes. That was early feedback on in the original rollout?
They do get a pop up that asks if they want to stay on the wait list, just so we can clear if they don't want that seat, we want them to remove it, so that, right, the wait list is an accurate reflection of who actually wants a seat. That helps our schools and other families, But you can stay there. It's only if they get multiple offers at the same time. So through the lottery process, you could get really lucky and get an offer from three different schools. And so you can only take one. Yep. And we don't let those others stay because otherwise they get really click happy and
then they call us. So it doesn't automatically decline the wait list. Right. It automatically Decline any other any other And that came from historically when schools ran their own lotteries. We had parents that sat on multiple offers throughout the summer, and so other other students did not have that opportunity to attend that school. And we don't have any option for the parents to say this is my first choice, second choice, third choice. Is that something that they do anywhere that you know of? It's a different so DPS does, but they actually run now I'm blanking on what
it's called. Enrollment zones. No. They run a different lottery structure where it's actually a match. So then those parent input priorities factor into how they match families up with schools, and they only get one offer, and they can't right? They have to re enter the process and decline that if they decide they don't want that spot. So they do run a completely different structure where then their rank priority factors in to their formula versus ours is more of or I equate it to, like, a
raffle. You're putting your ticket in the bucket, and then you can have your you know, put it in multiple and see where you end up, basically. And they don't impact each other versus that system. Those do impact your placement in those other schools. And in review of those, systems, we received feedback from parents as well as, system administrators that, a Choice rank system has its drawbacks as well. And so there's not always a benefit in shifting to a Choice rank system.
Mhmm. The other thing we found is families change their mind. So if they apply on the first day of the window in December, even by the time results go out at the January, they may have visited or gone to a sporting event or for play, and their choices may have changed. And so, that's something I remind our principals a lot is you don't know what their preferences are, and it may have drastically changed from when they first applied until now. So that gives you the chance. They're still on your wait list because they want to be there. So get put that ball in their court and send that offer and let them
respond. I was just gonna say one other I wonder if this has come up for you all, that I find have found confusing personally. Like, you're when you're on a wait list and you go to check and you've dropped. And I think it's I understand it now, but I'll I'll tell you, it took a few back and forths with the enrolled GEFCO team for me to understand. Just asking, like, why are we dropping? Why are we why do we keep dropping? I mean, I understand that the prioritized, folks come into the system. Right? And then they get put above you. But it's super it it's super confusing when you're like, okay. Now we're just two, and now we're 14.
Like, you really can drop. And throughout the window I I'll go back to this slide just because it's easier to see. Mhmm. New applicants come in all the way through round two. They're placed at the bottom of their priority group, right? So in the order they apply, but if you were to get, in this scenario, a new priority group one, they would bump three and four down. So it's they only move down with a student when a student with a higher priority applies. Can I can I ask a clarifying question on that? I'm sorry. We're not waiting. We're just peppering you guys with questions. I I was under the impression that it didn't matter what day you applied in
that cycle. In round one. So we take every application from December this year, it's December 2 through January 9, and all of those go in the lottery process. After that, the time starts to right. So if you apply in February, it looks a little different than if you apply in August. I literally got this question last night from a parent. So thank you. And one of the feedbacks that we did receive early on was parents wanting transparency in where they were in the waiting list. So even though it's all it's not always comfortable to explain that to parents on
that movement, we're very transparent in the process. Many school districts, and including early on when we had choice enrollment, the schools did not share that information. And so parents were often left in the dark. So that was feedback we had early on and to improve the process for parents. While we're asking questions in the middle, what about, parents who wanna get in a GT program? They they have to apply, and how do they fit in in the enrollment? So GT centers are managed separately from their regular education classrooms.
They actually have to qualify through the GT department. There's an application process that they go through, to qualify for a GT center, and then that allows them to apply to the GT centers either at their current school, if they already attend there, or at any other school. That lottery and that structure looks almost identical to the k 12 structure. The only difference is they grant priority to students that are already attending the school and then go in the same order for everybody else. But the lottery, everything else looks exactly the same.
It's just they have to prequalify. Okay. They were good questions before we dug into this, so it is all good. So current policy, you can see that it's on my left. I don't know if it's on in the pink side of the screen. And then we are making two recommended, updates to the current priority structure. And really it is removing, the line at the end for both of those. And so this is for sibling priority. Currently siblings, they get priority if they have a student at the school and that
student will be there next year. So if you have a fifth grader that is matriculating out and an incoming kindergartner, you would not get sibling priority because the fifth grader would not be attending the school the next year. The recommended change is basically to grant them that extra year of priority. So if they have a student that's currently attending the school and then one that would be coming in the future year, they're already part of the school community, they get that one additional year of priority. If they it impacts, it's interesting, our elementary is more so even though the gap
is higher, and our high schools. We don't see it as much at the middle school level. I'm not sure I understood this exactly. And I know I've had complaints from parents who who have a child, you know, in a middle school, and they think their elementary school, student is gonna get go there as well. So explain to me again if if this family has a a child in the middle of the middle school, so they'll be there next year, they don't have it would still get priority. As long as they're gonna be in the school that next year.
That's the piece we're removing. So regardless, as long as they have a student that is currently attending that school, whether they will be there the next year or not, they would get sibling priority. So let's say you had an eighth grader who's not gonna be at that middle school next year. Your fifth grader could still go there because you're already a part of that community even though the eighth grader won't actually be there next year. So we we made it easier or or the parents would be happier. Okay. And it's just one year. Right? I think sometimes parents think, well, but it's in it it's just one additional, basically,
year of that sibling priority. And then, so the preschool structure was out of alignment with k 12, and I know this text is really small, so I'm sorry. But the current preschool structure is on the green, and then we are actually making, recommending updates to align it better with the k 12 priority structure. And then, I don't know if you can see it, but we actually used to still separate child of staff in preschool. So where the staff member lived mattered, which we did in our k 12 structure
in year one, but we got rid of it a long time ago. It had not been updated in the preschool structure. And so those are the two big changes is really adjusting so siblings, GEFCO siblings, get top priority. There is an additional layer for preschool because no one is guaranteed enrollment for preschool. So the priority one is students that live in the attendance boundary. Right? So that designated area for the neighborhood school, with siblings, and then Jeffco resident with siblings. So that is why it looks a little bit different.
Once they get to kindergarten, those students that live in the boundary are guaranteed a seat, but we don't guarantee anyone a seat for preschool. We just don't have enough spots to be able to serve that. Quick quick question. Sorry. Norma Anderson and Campbell do not have boundaries. Right. So that's the or, which is really hard. But so students applying to an early learning center, which is Anderson and Campbell, would get that priority if their neighborhood school doesn't have a preschool. So if I live in a neighborhood that doesn't have my school doesn't have preschool,
right, then I would get priority to Campbell or Anderson. I have a question about number three, students who are the child of a staff member. Yep. What what was the previous, priority? They were, attendance to 10 it was three, but it was GEFCO resident and staff member. Actually, it was four. Sorry. GEFCO resident and staff member, and then there was an out of GEFCO resident with a staff member. So we're combining the two, and then it we did move it so that it is in direct alignment.
Oops. I went too far. Sorry. With k 12. So k 12, it's siblings and then children of staff. Preschool would then be siblings and then children of staff. K. And just a reminder, if you're a staff member but you live in the articulation area, you're up on that higher priority. And we award students the highest they would qualify for. So if they were a staff member's child but also had a sibling, the sibling's gonna be the highest, and so they would still get the sibling priority. Sometimes people are like, can I count both? If you get whichever one is gonna put you in the higher bucket.
Okay. I think we're good. These are updates to JFBAR, which is the regulation. So JFBAR outlines exceptions to those two priority structures we just looked at. This one is specific to Warren Tech. We they redid this last year, but they've we did not outline child of staff. So it is adding in the child of staff structure along with to align with k 12. They do not honor sibling priority because most of their programs are one year.
Right? And so there really is no because you are in that program for one year, even if you're continuing to year two, it is still a one year program. So it is alignment with that k 12 just because siblings do not apply, so the highest would be you're a staff member at Warren Tech and then going through. The other updates to this is for priority two, adding some more specific language around what currently attending a GEFCO school means. We have some students that attend GEFCO for one class, and they would not qualify for that priority bump for Warren Tech.
So making sure that we've outlined what that looks like, and then they have to be a current GEFCO student and enrolled for the next year. Right? So you'd have to be a tenth grader at one of our schools and then be enrolled or an eleventh and enrolled for eleventh or twelfth. Quick question. Outlining it at that down below. Down below, if I read that the way that it is with that strikethrough, so Warren Tech staff used to be in that group, but it didn't make sense. So we're fixing that and putting it up above.
Okay. Well, it's just the way that it's phrased. Students Oh, I I didn't get the strike through all the way through. It should be students currently attending Clear Creek, Gilpin, or Platte Canyon high schools will be placed in priority group two. So we have a contract with those schools. So we're gonna take out the and or student's file. Okay. The whole site. Sorry. Excuse me. That is my fault. And I think it's in the red line. Correct? I just did not get it there. There was one more Warren Tech update, and it is because of, licensure or certificates that students can earn. So applicants for forensic science and criminal justice get priority to complete the other program,
because that does lead to the completion certificate for them. If they only do one, they can't do, get that certificate. And then we currently have, an exception for Manning, where they are granting the one extra year of sibling priority. If we change JFBA, they would no longer need this, so that would just be removed from the regulation. And that is it. I left you with the Any other questions? Yeah. Go ahead. So, this has come up before, and it came up again on my latest, walk
through of Edgewater Elementary School. Mhmm. And and that is the whole issue with, students having a neighborhood school. Because if Edgewater is their neighborhood school, but the parents want them educated exclusively in English, It causes a real problem, but they may not be able to get into, Lumbergh. Yes. Lumbergh. And so are we doing anything to help with that?
Because at Edgewater, they have five English only students, and it's very difficult. And and they have asked on a number of occasions, can we just make this an attendance zone? And then you you get priority if you want English only. Even if you live in what would be the Edgewater area, you automatically get to go to Lumbergh. It are we working on that? Or I was gonna say, do do you wanna take that one? So, we definitely have looked into the attendance zone issue when we've or, idea.
We've explored it also with the a district like DPS that has that. The challenge become it becomes very hard to project how many students are going to be there in the fall, which makes the budgeting process for schools harder. What we do, and Mackenzie and Jeremy can correct me if I'm wrong, is we work really, really closely with Edgewater and Lumbergh. Edgewater is at their attendance area is actually a walk only school. They don't have, they don't have buses because it's their boundary is is all within the walk zone.
So, basically, if we they work really closely with Lumbergh on a student by student basis, to provide them with a a place at at Lumbergh if that's what the parents are are willing and wanting to do. We have definitely had some discussions about, Edgewater becoming an option school, and that comes with some of its own challenges as well for for Edgewater. And so it it it was part of the discussion we were having in the
spring, that hasn't gone anywhere, necessarily, but we have continued to let them know that they that we're open to having it. And there are some challenges logistically that come come along with it. When you no longer have an attendance boundary, first of all, you we would have to widen. Like, that means that, we would anticipate all like, the we know that some kids would our kids would continue to go to Edgewater, but, like, Lumbergh would be the
home attendance boundary for all the the kids. Well, Lumbergh can't hold necessarily all the kids. And over time, you know, not having an attendance boundary can also hurt your enrollment. So, it's just it it's a complicated situation that we continue to discuss. We we felt pretty good about, the principal's, ability to work with each other and with our community superintendents on this particular issue that you're speaking to. There is also a priority built in in j F b a dash r right
now that does grant families that live in the Edgewater area and want to attend Lumbergh for all English, an additional priority as well as vice versa. So if they want to go to dual language and go to Edgewater, we did build that in. It hasn't made a huge impact, but we are trying to do some things, and it's an ongoing conversation. And I Paula, if you're interested in talking with the community superintendent to just share what you're hearing from constituents and make sure they're getting what they need, I'd we'd
be happy to get you in touch with Mindy Fear who's so serves that our tech area. Okay. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you. So for our final item this evening, it will be a discussion on district policies related to library materials. In the 2025 legislative session, new legislation was passed that Senate Bill 63 also outlines
specific Senate Bill 63 also outlines specific steps that must be followed whenever a challenge or reconsideration is requested. On August 1, district staff posted draft policy language for public feedback. The Board then received an update on that draft at our August 21 study session. Since then, adjustments have been made based on the feedback we received from stakeholders. Tonight, the Board will review and discuss the updated policy language with the intent of taking a formal vote at our regular meeting on October 16.
Before I turn this over to the members of the board to the members of the board to anyway, do our presenters? Can you explain that? Because this was just pulled off consent. Oh, okay. Right? So the idea is that you all may have some either questions for us or discussion, you want to have them on yourselves. We Oh, yeah. I see. So we just ask questions of you. Okay. Superintendent Dorland, is there anything else I can like? Say we I think you're very familiar with why we're doing this given the new, statute of the past. And we've had lots of conversations about this topic, and I'll let miss Tolleson take
it from here, get the show on the road. Okay. Okay. Thank you. And and there's not much of a show other than our our offer to so this the slide deck that's in with the materials is the same one you saw when when we presented in August. As you recall that this has had been on for public comment, and we've received some public feedback and largely made adjustments that align to it. And we can talk about any of those if it'd be helpful. But otherwise, this was, going to be on consent on September 11. Even before that meeting was canceled, we had become aware that I think at least
one board member wanted to pull it for more robust thinking or discussion. And so we're really here around that being pulled from consent. And one of my questions, I may have been one of the I may have been that board member, was just how how did we go through the process of getting comments? I know I'm sure we all got at least one email from someone who was like, how are you gonna vote on it when you haven't even seen what the comments are? So I would just love for you to explain maybe to our public, the process they all went through, when you looked at the comments, and and how you considered
them. Yep. Absolutely. So when we post policies for public comment and we're continuing to talk right now, how do we make that more transparent? How do we get it out more? You'll see in the future it's going to be going out more in our community updates and team GEFCO brief in addition to already going to our associations and going to you. And when those come in they come into, you know, legal at GEFCO, the the mystery email box. But so in this case they were shared both with, Renee and her team and with us at legal and when we made adjustments and corresponded generally back to the
members of the public that we're asking. And one of the things you'll see, I know there's a lot of attachments, but you'll see one labeled feedback on library policies and it sort of tells in one column, hey. Here's what that feedback was. And in the second column, what did what did we do about it? Either if we didn't make an adjustment, it'll say why. Like, somebody asked, hey. Why doesn't this give more details on who's on the committee and how long do they serve and what's their job and how often do they meet? They said, well, those kinds of operational details don't typically go in policy. Or some of the things they wanted, where are the rubrics or things that are
robustly built out in, this nicathodus space. Again, doesn't go into policy, but they made one suggestion. They said, why do only parents get to appeal for lack of a better term? We said, oh, let's make that adjustment. And so now it's kind of a hate to talk about it insides. Right? But that either the DTL who selected the material or the parent, if they're unhappy with what happened at the school or the committee level, they both have the same right to take it up. So that's one example you'll see in there. There. Another example of, feedback we received was, why does it have to be a parent
of a child at the school, that's and that is actually in the legislation, the new legislation. So we don't have any, you know, leeway on that one. Right. So we're we're not able to make that. Yeah. And we had several requests that just didn't align with the statute that guided the work that we did. Right? Overall though, I I felt most of the feedback was very reasonable and we tried to accommodate, most requests as best we could. When we had the presentation last time, I had asked if we could see the rubric, and the response is we'll have to clean that up before we can share
it publicly. And then I asked, could we post it to the public, but I still don't have it. I don't think I don't think any of us have it. Not just Yeah. It's not, shared in the materials here. We can get that to you in a Friday update, but after speaking with the library services team, they were hesitant to play post it publicly. It is their intellectual property, so I think that was some of the hesitation, but happy to share it with you all internally so you can see what the rubric, has on it and how decisions get made with them. What do you mean it's their IP? Isn't it the district's IP? They've worked together to develop it and to post it publicly.
It's not something that they want to post publicly for public consumption. I I will tell you, I like, I'm hesitant. I think the rubric is the heart and soul of this. How what criteria we're using as the guidance to all these policies, all these processes and steps revolves around the rubric. Which was created in collaboration with all of our DTLs. Yeah. But that it's not public is is really Yes. I agree. How can it be policy if we don't publish it? It's not in policy. It is a tool that was just built by the DTLs together to use in
decision making so that it was consistent and equitable across the different review committees. But it doesn't then require that everybody follow it. If we don't have it in policy, it's people some DTLs could follow it and some wouldn't? No. They would all need to follow it. That is an agreement that they all have. I can I can go back to the team and just tell them we're we're gonna post it, but Can we just clarify the question? I think it's a a really important question that, director of art is asking. And can you just repeat it and talk about the rubric and what you believe
the what rubric you're talking about and what it does and what the district is doing with it? Can you just explain your question one more time? Yeah. Last time, it was explained to us that that's the that's the guidance. That's the what what the folks reviewing all of this are using to make the decisions about the the books, being there or not. And I don't know what's in the rubric because we've never seen it. So, I mean, understanding the criteria and the definitions of those criteria, because then we're
gonna get a a a wide variety of people who are going to then make those decisions. So I'll I'll tell you what's in my mind about it since I don't know. Like, let's say it says in the rubric, if there's explicit materials, it has to go to you know, then that's the criteria for decision making. And then I'm wondering, is there a definition for explicit materials? Because me and Aaron and I might have very, very different, Gotcha. You know, thinking about explicit materials. So what where is this rubric that we use to grade, like, the same way
we grade papers and stuff? You know? And how are people using it, interpreting it? Where are the definitions and then things like that? Thank you. If you look, I believe it's here. Is it a rubric to determine what books we select for the libraries, or is it a rubric that's part of the of the, review process or the challenge process? The rubric that they use is what we're using to select books that are appropriate for different levels within our libraries. That includes two professional reviews, age limits, just try it.
Is that that rubric rubric is not public? I know. I just feel like that is, like, the thing that everyone needs to know is what what is that? I'll get it for you. I I'm really I'm not trying to be difficult. I'm just thinking, like, that is the thing that we all need to swarm around and and look at and see if that makes sense. I will yes. I absolutely will get that for you. I'm sorry we don't have it this evening. Is there a different rubric for reviews? I would have to look and see. I do not believe so, but they do have terms that they look at. Does it fit the age group? Does it meet the two professional reviews requirement?
Is there obscenity and language in it that would be controversial in any way? And some of those things are defined in policy. Can I just summarize what I'm feeling from the group right now? I think there seems to be this whether it's in policy or not, and I don't know that it needs to be, but but this lack of transparency and clarity around what's driving that the book got there in the first place. And, honestly, if people could just see that, they might be less concerned about the book being there in the first place, or they might be more concerned about the
book being there in the first place. But either way, it does feel a little bit like it's at the core, I think, Danielle Root, of, like, this whole issue with what Danielle said. Know what's on it. Yeah. Yeah. And I, I just wanna note that it's gonna take Renee a minute to work with some, high quality, dedicated educators who care deeply about their work and are this is a hard topic and issue for them. And so I just think we gotta give Renee a minute.
We'll get you guys the rubric, but I I I think this bigger question that Danielle is asking and I feel the other board members nodding their head around is that should probably be a public document. And I don't understand why it's not. So, we'll work on that. In the meantime, we'll get it to you on a Friday update, but I think it's a very fair question Yeah. That we need to grapple with. So thank you. May I add, if if the DTLs and the people who did put a lot of effort into this feel it should be protected, I would ask, is there a way we could I know we can't copyright it, but is there a way we
can show ownership of that work product that might make them feel more comfortable? Yeah. And I do agree, superintendent Dolan, you correctly identified the head nodding. I think I think it will ease parent concerns if they can see what I understand. Absolutely. I did ask for it before, and they were very reluctant to release it because of the work that they've done around it. So there's there's there's nothing strange on it. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised when you see it. It's pretty, everyday. Good afternoon. Can I follow-up on something?
So just separating them, maybe to ask Julie. This concept of IP and ownership, I just think, like, at the university, we always joke because, like, a a professor will make a syllabus and then try to, go to the Tech Transfer Hours and, like, claim it as theirs. And the answer always is. It was to me when I submitted invention disclosures is, no. We own it because you work for us. As an employer, I own everything my employees create, and I give them lots of credit, and we celebrate their input.
But this concept of people owning the thing in the district. So I'm I'm separating it from the the comma. I'm wondering, can or at a later date, can we understand that better? I don't mean to put you on the spot. No. No. And I you stated it right. I mean, if it's in the course and scope of employment and done on the clock, it's technically the intellectual property of the district. Now it may still be that people are, like, want it handled with care because they don't want it being duplicated and floated in a lot of spaces. People have that professional pride in the work. And and one of the things we do, I mean, some things are as simple
as, hey, it lives on the intranet because it's a living, breathing operational document that's not meant to be sort of in this public facing space. It's going to be subject to CORA probably, right, at most of the time. So so yeah. I mean, I think it's pretty much as you've experienced in your work. Yeah. I just I don't understand that we have a process where a parent can challenge something but cannot know how that challenge is being evaluated. That just does not make any sense at all.
I agree. And this rubric doesn't decide whether a book necessarily goes through a challenge or not. They're just considerations for people for things to look for. I mean, I might decide whether or not to challenge something if I can look at that. Because I could look at it maybe and go, well, I can challenge this, but, you know, I look at this and and it's gonna meet all of these criteria, so I don't even need to waste my time. Or I might even at least feel better if I could see very clearly, okay. Yeah. I consider this particular part of it controversial.
But when I look at unbalance, all of the things that go into this consideration, then then maybe I can live with I I think about I I taught a book that had 500 pages, and five pages of it is an adolescent boy talking about the fact that he masturbates. It does not describe it in detail, but he it's funny. You all of the boys are going through it, and it's this amusing thing. And my students identify with it, and they think it's hysterically funny. And it is five pages in 500.
If I could look at all of the other things and go, you know, they took all this other stuff into account. Maybe I can look at those five pages. I don't know. I just think it it would be really helpful. And and I just don't think it makes any sense at all to tell the public you can't know what our criteria are. It it's just not it it doesn't make sense. You'll get it. I'll make sure you get it. I'm just gonna throw in the transparency thing is really important, and I do wanna honor our DTLs and the work that they've done. But I also think this might actually alleviate some of the concerns that they are
fielding, because it's because the process is transparent. K. Thank you. Okay. And I I think too, since we didn't have the September 11 meeting, there may be people who want to make public comment on it. So I think the more we can have available, like that rubric, if it's available by then in October, the easier it will be for us to vote on it. Sounds fair. Okay. So we'll wait until then? Anything else, Rob? I'll tell you, I know there's something else.
But I think I think, Director Reid, you might have asked it in an email and I'm remembering it. You said, why I figured it out. I asked it last time and then I was like, I looked at it and went, oh, I did it again. One is instructional material and the other's library books. Right. Sorry. Okay. Well, but what your question and and it was a good one. Why is one tied oop. Why is one tied, to you've got to be a parent of a child in the school and the other one is broader? And the simple answer is parent of a child in school. That one comes straight from the statute.
The challenge to instructional resources, honestly, we just simply didn't change. I mean, it's now stand alone in in a different way, but it's the same as it currently exists. So if you look in BoardDocs right now, you'll see a provision regarding challenge to instructional resources and it basically is, you know, resident or parent or I don't know the language right in front of me. So it's just broader. And if you guys said we want them to match, we can make that adjustment. Well, let's stick to being legal under the this latest legislation, and then we'll see
if we want to do anything more. I just wanna clarify. Our policy includes that any challenged book would remain on the shelf until a decision's been decided, and that is part of the statute Yes. That was passed. Yes. That is not an internal decision. That's right. To make. Okay. One change you'll see that the statute is the time between challenges. Right? The early draft, it said, if it's been challenged in the last sixty months, you don't do it over. Because the legislation had said twenty four months or more. We did get a couple of comments of, like, that is a heck of a
long time. I mean, world and attitude can evolve, and so we changed that to thirty six months. So three years instead of five. Okay. Thank you very much. And this brings us to the end of today's agenda. Thank you to the presenters who participated in this study session. The Board will have another study session on Wednesday, 10/08/2025, at 04:30 p. M. Here in the Ed Center. In addition, the Board will be having our regular Board meeting on Thursday, 10/16/2025, starting
at four p. M. Here at the Ed Center. Public comment will be available on 10/16/2025, for those who wish to address the Board. Please see our website for information on signing up for public comment. Thank you again to all who participated this evening, and good night.