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Yeah, heat. Heat. Heat. Good evening everyone. I would like to call this meeting of December 18th, 2025 to order. Roll call, please. Miss Harper. Miss Applegate. here. Dr. Etcharia here,
>> Mr. Gibbons >> here, >> Miss Kenworthy >> here, >> Miss Moian here. >> Welcome everyone participating in tonight's meeting. Whether you're in our live audience, joining us virtually, or serving as one of our valued presenters or participants, we are glad you're
here. A special thank you to our live simultaneous Spanish interpreters for joining us. And we are also live streaming this event this evening. Please note we will take a 15-minute break at approximately 7:20 this evening. Please stand and join us in the pledge of allegiance.
Though we are not anticipating a power loss this evening here at the ed center, um we did feel important to give a quick safety note. Should the power go out in this room, emergency lights will come on. We have an amazing police force with us and our R1 will help to escort you
out of the building down the stairs. Please do not try to take the elevators. Um also, don't panic. We'll get you out. No problem. um and it probably won't happen. Um but to ensure we are completing the consent agenda this evening, I am recommending amending the agenda by moving the
consent agenda to be the first item of business so that we can complete that action. Is there a motion to amend today's meeting agenda as presented in board docs by moving the consent agenda to the first item of the business this evening? >> I so move to move the consent agenda up
to this portion of the evening. Is there a second? >> I second. >> Is there any discussion? Seeing none, it has been moved and seconded to amend the agenda for tonight's meeting of December 18th, 2025 as presented in board docs by moving the consent agenda to the first item of
business this evening. Roll call, please. Miss Harper. >> Miss Applegate. >> Yes. >> Dr. Etcheria. >> Here. >> Mr. Gibbons. >> Yes. >> Miss Kenworthy. >> Yes. >> Miss Moian. >> Yes. As just approved, we will move forward
with the consent agenda items 6.01 through 6.11 as presented in board docs and as proposed on the consent agenda. As a reminder to our listening public, the board received a preview of these items at our December 3rd study session. Do I have a motion regarding the
approval of consent agenda as presented in board docs? move to consider the agend consent agenda as presented in board docks. >> Is there a second >> to have concerns and have heard concerns from the community in terms of the dollar amount and really the efficacy of continuing with the one-on-one policy
particularly through all grades. And I can also state as a parent who's as a student in sort of the lower elementary grades. um it is not something in our household that we found to be um value added and I've had similar conversations with other parents and teachers that at least with the lower grades it may not
may not make sense. That said, understanding the um impact of just not moving forward with it at this time. I don't think it's something to hold up, but I do think it is something that the board, Superintendent Doran, and the district should revisit in the short term to discuss if it really makes sense to continue spending this money for this
level of technology. Please. >> Uh, thank you, Director Gibbons. I I very much appreciate you raising up the feedback that you've heard from your constituents. Uh, we also heard this feedback in the budget reduction blueprint survey that we had uh that
went communitywide. Um, in many of the comments, a common theme was, "We believe that the district should try to save money through possibly not doing a onetoone program um, in the early grades, especially early elementary, K2, K3." Um, and so it is something that
we've heard and that we are currently contemplating and looking at. Our chief information officer Jill Ibec and our chief academic officer Renee Nikthodes are working together on a project to study not only the cost associated with the 1:1 devices in those early grades
but also a process uh by which we can get more parent input uh educator input obviously um and really make some more intentional decisions about when does it make best sense to start a one-to-one um program in the classroom. Uh so please
know that is um uh in the early stages of being designed as a project and a process to gather more feedback and we'll likely be uh willing and able to discuss it with the board once we have that process in place. Uh so appreciate you bringing it up. I will also say that
the approval of this contract tonight does not necessarily preclude which grade levels we start a onetoone program in. It gives the district the authority to and just basically is an approval of entering into a contract with this vendor. So that the amount of
Chromebooks that we need up to the dollar amount that you see in the contract, but not to exceed um is what we can uh purchase. It also includes the purchases of devices for our employees, not just our students. So um thank you
for that feedback and I appreciate you uh recognizing what you're hearing from the community. Board members, any other comments? >> I just want to thank you so much for uh giving us that update that we're going to be exploring ways in how to take the
community's input moving forward as it regards to technology. I look forward to those conversations. And I would ask Miss Harper, let's make sure we look at the agendas for the next coming months and make sure that there's time to discuss this, please.
Any other comments? Wonderful. The motion has been seconded. U Miss Harper. >> Roll call. Miss Applegate. >> Yes. >> Dr. Etchavaria. >> Yes. >> Mr. Gibbons. >> Yes. >> Miss Kenworthy.
>> Yes. >> Miss Moian. >> Yes. >> Thank you. Every month, the board of education has the pleasure of recognizing students, staff, schools, and community members for their achievements and contributions to our community. This is one of the
best parts of the meeting. We will now move into honors and recognitions. For our first recognition this evening, the board of education would like to recognize Annie Baker, a school psychologist at Lazley Elementary School. Will Miss Baker please join us at the front of the boardroom?
The board is honored to recognize Annie Baker as an Our People, Our Strength, Thrives recognition recipient for December for her quick actions in responding to a car fire that broke out in the school parking. Annie Baker, a psychologist at Lazley Elementary School, was supporting the school
carline when a fire broke out. Miss Baker quickly responded with a fire extinguisher and was able to control the situation until fire crews arrived. Miss Baker showed true bravery in her efforts and principal Lauren LaNel has called her a hero. As stated in the Jefco Thrive strategic plan, our goal is to
foster a collaborative, inclusive team culture with high expectations for staff and student performance, contributing to instructional excellence and extraordinary student experiences. Ms. Baker far exceeded the high expectations we have of our staff in Jeffco. Thank you for your bravery and immediate
response in keeping our kids and community safe. For our next recognition of the evening, the board of education is honored to recognize Thomas Steele from the Westminster Police Department on receiving the Gordon Beasley School Resource Officer of the Year for the
2425 school year. Mr. Beasley, can you please join us at the front of the boardroom? Yep. The board is honored to recognize Officer Thomas Steelely as a aur people, our strength thrives recognition
recipient for December for receiving the Gordon Beasley School Resource Officer of the Year for the 24-25 school year. Officer Steel from the Westminster Police Department is a loyal school resource officer serving Jeffco public schools and the Jeffco Department of
School Safety. In recognition and honor of the late Gordon Beasley, this award symbolizes the embodiment of his values and spirit. It celebrates those who like him go above and beyond to ensure the security and well-being of their communities. As stated in the Jeffco
Thrive strategic plan, our goal is to foster a collaborative, inclusive team culture with high expectations for staff and student performance, contributing to instructional instructional excellence and extraordinary student experiences.
Officer Steel continually goes above and beyond for the students he serves, ensuring they have an extraordinary student experience. On behalf of the board of education, we extend our deepest appreciation to Officer Steele and his dedication to keeping our
students and staff safe. Thank you. For our final recognition of the evening, the board of education is very proud to recognize the Arvvada Police Department School Resource Officer Team. Will members of this team please join us at the front of the boardroom?
The board is honored to recognize the Arvvada Police Department school resource officer team as our community our legacy thrives recognition recipient for December for recently hosting a two session parent academy safety summit. The safety summit focused on drug
awareness and prevention, dating and sexual violence prevention, social media and online safety, and mental health topics, including self harm awareness and suicide prevention. As stated in the Jeffco Thrive strategic plan, our goal is to foster positive, mutually
respectful, and trusting connections with Jeffco families and our community partners to support student success. The Arvvada Police Department SRO team embodies building trust and connections and fostering positive relationships with our Jeep students and families. The board would like to specifically
recognize the following officers. Commander Jason Ammons, Sergeant Dana Gerber, Officer Albano Guerrera, Officer Greg Smith, Officer Kelly Luga, Officer Adrienne Blackwood, Officer Kevin Lewis,
Officer Matthew Ortega, Officer Richard Brown, Officer Nicole Daring. On behalf of the Board of Education, we sincerely thank you for your dedication, partnership, and commitment to Jeffco public schools. All right, we're going to take a brief pause
for those of you who would like to depart along with your guests. Again, we're very um honored to recognize you all tonight. That is yay. All right, we will now turn to our board proclamations. The board publicly recognizes special events and significant significant issues by
issuing proclamations. In the month of December, we are commemorating National Special Education Day, which was December 2nd. National Computer Science Week, which was December 7th through 13th, International Human Rights Day, which was December 10th. National Energy
Conservation Day, which was December 14th. We encourage you to read the Jeffco board proclamations in board docs. Items 3.01 through 3.04 are presented in board docs as proposed proclamations for the month of December. Do I have a motion regarding the
approval of the proclamations? >> I motion to approve items 3.01 through 3.04 on the action proclamation section as published in board docs. >> Do I have a second? >> I second. >> Any discussion? It has been moved and seconded to approve the December proclamations as
presented in board docs. Roll call, please. Miss Harper. >> Miss Applegate. >> Yes. >> Dr. Etcheria. >> Yes. >> Mr. Gibbons. >> Yes. >> Miss Kenworthy. >> Yes. Miss Moinian. Yes. >> Thank you for that. We will now move into the public comment portion of the
meeting. Public comment is an opportunity for the community to share their thoughts with the board. Please note that during public comment, the board does not engage in discussion or respond to individuals. The board will listen to public comment on any topic for up to one hour. If more time is required, we will have a second
public comment session at the end of this meeting. There is a three-minut time limit per individual speaker and a 10-minute time limit per group. Each speaker or group has been given a number. The board invites you to come up in that order. When the person before you completes their comments, you may step up to the podium. We listen with
respect and ask those who address the board to do the same. I will also ask, we typically do not allow um applause after the end of speakers. So, I ask you to please come into covenants with us on that. With that, guest number one, uh, please make your way to the podium.
>> We're speaking as a group. Sand Evergreen. I'm Kim Halligan, Evergreen resident. >> I'm Dan Halligan, Evergreen resident. And I give my time to Kim and Emily. >> Hi, my name is Brett Whitaker, Evergreen resident, and I give my time to Kevin
and Emily. >> Hi, I'm Emily, Evergreen resident. So, our topic is school safety. My husband and I are parents of three beautiful children. One of which is a freshman at Evergreen High School. The two others are very
close behind. In case you've all forgotten, on September 10th, just 99 days ago, Evergreen High School became the scene of a mass shooting that nearly claimed the lives of two critically wounded students, directly endangered many more students and staff, traumatized hundreds, if not thousands
of community members, and ended with the shooter taking his life. Our community nestled in the mountains is devastated, but it feels like no one is caring or paying attention. We are a box on someone's checklist. Since my initial presentation to this board,
many of us in Evergreen have come together and we said what we were going to do. We've united. We have held grassroots meeting, formed dedicated groups of parents, educators, community members, and committed real time and energy to imagining and working towards meaningful change. There are good
invested people who here who share a vision for safer schools and a more connected, resilient community. What has been missing, however, is visible, sustained leadership, attention, and support from our district to match that effort. There is a lack of community
engagement, consistent communication, and little to no transparency when it comes to security and seal initiatives. Instead of traction, we are feeling stagnation. Instead of momentum, we are encountering barriers. Instead of partnerships, it often feels like we are
being managed through a process that was not designed for collaboration or informed parental decisionmaking. We are al also struggling to get responses from the individuals and teams assigned by the district to support Evergreen during this difficult time. Communication has been extremely slow.
It's been very inconsistent and in some cases absent entirely. When we offer recommendations and ask questions or request a forum in which to speak from our informed perspectives, there is often little or no response and no path forward is offered. This makes it
impossible to trust the process that we're so dying to trust, participation meaningfully, or understanding what if any action is being implemented. It is unclear who's listening, what decisions are truly being made, and how or if our mountain community is being included in
those decisions. The structure of the recent EHS sack meeting made this clear. Options were shown for the first time and pushed to an immediate vote. That's not engagement. It's unacceptable. Information should come first. Dialogue should matter. Questions should be
welcomed. Right now, our community and our process is broken. To think that what's happening is due process is absolutely laughable and ridiculous. Material should be shared in advance. Dialogue should be prioritized over speed. Questions should be welcome, not rushed. Right now, the process feels
very, very backwards. Even more concerning is that the core needs we have continued to raise community building, relationship repair, appreciation, and a genuine layered security support are still not being meaningfully addressed. These are not abstract ideas. These are foundational
to whether students feel safe and seen connected at school. It is difficult not to feel discouraged when people closest to the problem are doing the most work. Yet, the institution responsible for the systematic change appear to be slow to respond and reluctant to commit. It's
very unclear on direction. We should not be in a position where a community recovering from a traumatic incident must fight this hard to be heard. But here we are. Do you hear us? because it feels like you don't. Can you tell us that we're being heard?
Can you show us that you do? The district is not asking us what we need. They are telling us what we think we need. We are a community, a tight-knit community. Listen to our feedback. Include us in the conversations. Instead of bringing trauma cons counseling like that provided by Frank D'Angelus to our
community, ask us if we need the support, if the support we have is working. Resilience 1220 is doing an amazing job for our children. You cannot cut and paste from a manual and expect that it's going to fit. And when events are planned, like the
longest table slated for early January, make sure it benefits our community, not those interested in appearances and Instagram post. I am, we are, we are asking directly and very respectfully. More from this district, more clarity,
more resources, more transparency, more urgency, and more authentic, genuine partnerships. We're ready to work. We're ready to collaborate. And we've proven that. Now, what we need is this district to meet us with some the same level of commitment. Our children cannot wait.
They deserve better than what we are currently offering them. They deserve adults that show up and act. And we owe it to the survivors to make sure this change is not an empty promise, but a true reality. It must be visible and it must be lived. And it needs to start now. We will be calling on the board to
take immediate action that is v that is visible. I will now hand it over to Emily who will be tackling our next steps. Thank you. >> Hi, my name is Emily and my daughter is a first grader at Wilmont Elementary. I'm excited to see some of your new faces up here and to get to work with
you on making some serious and real change and seeing real action. On September 10th, my daughter along with everyone in her elementary school reacted instantly to their lockdown drill caused by the active shooter at
Evergreen High School. Not much has been said publicly about Wilmont Elementary in relation to Evergreen High School, but these two schools were built side by side to create a community and that beautiful community has flourished for years and they responded together when
the active shooter arrived at the Evergreen High School. This is one of the many reasons Wilmont did and always will lock down with EHS and vice versa if and when needed. It has now been 99 days since the EHS
school shooting and our students are asking for your help. So Jeffco, we are here to show up for our students and we expect you to be standing at our side and working with us. So, I will begin with our security
needs. There is such a thing as bulletproof windows. I didn't know this, but once I found out, I was very excited and hopeful for the first time in a long time when it comes to school safety. However, after three school shootings in
this one district, schools do not have these window coverings on them, and there has been no offer to get them for EHS or Wilmont. So what I ask you now is if these coverings exist, if you know
what they prevent, then why are they not already on every single window of every single school in Jefferson County? So I want to work with you quickly to get these window covers on all the windows
in Evergreen High School and all the windows in Wilmont. and I hope the rest of our community works hard to get them on their windows before you have to experience a school shooting. The next thing I want to address is an
assessment of risk. This may or may not have already happened with EHS, but as parents and community, we would like to know and understand what was found and what will be done about those items. I understand that many things cannot be
shared due to safety and security. However, we are the ones who are sending our kids to school every day knowing that there's not much stopping this from happening again. So, please communicate to us so we can tell our kids that they
can feel safer. Next is classroom door cleanup. Law enforcement officers acting in accordance with protocol marked each classroom door after clearing out the students. These marks were made with
permanent marker and I want to state first of all that we fully appreciate everything that they did in every minute of this process. However, when the kids returned to school, those markings created a triggering trauma response. The kids who were experiencing this
response asked you guys to clean their doors. The answer was no. Because the process and the rules that help fix this issue are meant for damaged doors, not doors involved in a school shooting. We
need new rules for this issue because when a traumatized child asks for help, the answer is never no. I will be here. Kim will be here. Our community will be here to help you find an answer. And right now, we would like your permission
to go into that school during the holiday and clean it up so that when they get back from winter break, those doors no longer have the mark on there. I would also like to talk about Wilmont receiving um equity safety skills for
for without taking any resources away from EHS. They deserve the same measures available to EHS because they experienced the same trauma that day. They want the window coverings and we're going to help you get them for them. Um,
we need to extend the placement of the response for mass violence worker for another year, not leaving until May of 2027. All of this is going to be in the packets that we left you. And I will
finish by saying that every student deserves safety to learn. Students cannot learn when they are afraid. So we are here to help you make sure that our students and every student in Jefferson County feels safe.
Thank you. Number two. >> Hi, my name is Jill Mark. I'm a counselor at Lakewood High School and I'm um here to talk about the 2018 mill levy. My name is Anna Gazetti. I'm a school counselor at Cardy Middle School, a
member of JCCA and I give my time to Jill Mark. >> My name is Marissa Herszog. I'm a counselor at Bear Creek High School and I give my time to Jill Mark. >> Hi, I'm Stephanie Jones and I'm a social emotional learning specialist at Stony
Creek Elementary and an articulation area coach. >> My name is Victoria Shaw. I'm a social emotional learning coach. >> Bridget Williams, social emotional learning coach. >> Ki Simmons, a social emotional learning
specialist. And I'm not going to take all the time, so I'm going to give it. Yeah, there we go. We'll share together. >> Okay. Hi. Um Jefferson County Counselor Association um is here to bring a significant concern to your attention regarding the interpretation application
of the 2018 mill levy. We with the current budget discussions, particularly those concerning potential cuts to mental health services, which is one of the five key components of the mill levy, we initiate a review to understand precisely how the mill levy funds were
utilized. Our review has surfaced several critical points of confusion between the ballot measure explicit language and the financial information we have received. We approach this as a potential misunderstanding or oversight in documentation that we hope to resolve
collaboratively to ensure com complete public trust and compliance with the voter mandate. Our first concern lies in the apparent confliction between the dedicated nature of the mill levy and the district's accountability.
Through Kora, JCCA asked for a breakdown of how the 2008 mill levy was distributed. This was the response and I quote, "All general purpose mill levy dollars flow into the general fund alongside other funds. We do not code
specific activities to specific funding sources in the general fund. This is consistent with state law and reflects the fact the priorities change over time. The 2018 mill levy is just one small piece of the local collection we
receive and we have no way to know exactly how much we receive from the that piece versus the other pieces. We just receive one combined dollar amount. The problem with this is the interpretation appears to contradict the
no levy ballot language. It explicitly is designated for the following educational purposes. There are five. Mental health, CTE, expanding programs in science and technology, um engineering and math, compensation
and benefits, and updating aged and outdated instructional resources. It also states no revenue from such taxes will be used for the senior district administration. If the ML memo levy was passed with
specific intentions, how can the district's accounting method um uh uh cannot we cannot find where the accounting method is and where that that money goes. If the actual funding the five purposes and not being diverted to
non-mandated general expenses even if the revenue is routed through the general fund, why is the district unable to provide a budget accounting showing where those mill levy investments um are going? The other big concern is that in
the milly it states this that the condition upon spending was being to be reviewed by a citizens financial oversight committee for transparent transparency and accountability. When we cord that to find out who where
this committee was and when they met or who was on the committee and when they met the district reply was and I quote there's not an advisory committee that oversees the mily nor has there ever been. Our key question is given the establishment of this committee was a
core promise to the voters, what immediate steps can be taken to rectify the omission and also what immediate steps can help understand where those dollars went, especially that if they went to the five the only five um areas
that it was supposed to go to. >> Um hi. So in in in agreement with that we want to address how the mental health services in our district are funded. So the their positions are funded by three different methods. Either district
allocation grants or um building based funds that buy up if they need more allocation than they are given or they want to buy more. Um the student services portion of our district is in
coordinates all mental health service positions and programming that is universal for all students. So cells articulation area coaches and counselors are part of how they help those positions. Um this month student
services department um over under student success so student success is our bigger broader reduced the budget for the next school year by approximately $1.1 million. As of now we don't understand or know the full scope
of these reductions. Um the district has yet to fail has failed to share the department level cuts and budget priorities as well as their impact with the board or the community. While student success division the overarching
one was asked to reduce their budget by 2.4% that that was our department took roughly 12% of those reductions of the 2.4 for um
this department houses about 70% of staff that are directly working with students that support mental health needs of our students. As of now, we don't know all the information of what budget cuts have
been made to our department. Um in addition, we're going to be seeing a lot more cuts as well. So, uh, counselor core grants are ending. Um, so that's another cut that will be happening. No fault to the district,
just that a grant will be ending. So, there's another cut. Um, over the past several years, mental health positions, as I was saying, there's al district allocation and then schools buy up and get more if they deem that their school wants more mental
health and their community wants more mental health. Due to the school bud budget being cut, a lot of schools aren't going to be able to use their student-based budgeting to fund those additional positions and which they deemed necessary, but now they won't be
able to do that. Um, which also is creating a situation where stat schools are having to decide do they want a classroom teacher or do they want to support the mental health needs of their students, which we don't feel is fair. The other situation that is happening is
middle school cells have also been instructed that they may use the funds that were previously allocated through the mill as um they could apply for a exception or an exemption and take this
money for their social emotional learning specialists and use it in different funds and not for mental health. And that is part of the mill. So we're asking that that be clarified. Another situation that is also happening is due to the evergreen tragedy and the
response for our department. Our department was the crisis response team that went up there. So in essence from September and October we had really hard time doing any other supports because we were so actively involved in that. We
also have three brand new administration that are learning our whole scope of our department. Um, and with the mill levy override and oversight required by the bill mandate, we are asking that our
department be held harmless for a year or at least given more time to determine the cuts. It was told that cabinet wanted the cuts done by yesterday. Um, but that didn't really give us a really good timeline in terms of November to
determine what needed to be cut and how that was cut. And so we just are really asking for more time so we can be thoughtful about what those cuts look like and while we're reimagining what our district is going our department is going to look like when we have so many
cuts coming down. Thank you. And I I would just like to conclude with the mill levy which the 33 million is all we can touch. The the extra is it goes can go into the general fund but that for six years that's almost $200 million
and have we you know have we got a fifth of that? Probably not. I know it's going to compensation and all that but that mil that we've people walked and talked on that and one of the big components was mental health and that's what brought a huge our cell programs all
that kind of stuff into the district finally and to say we don't know where that money is and we can't find out and we're getting cut 12% doesn't seem right. >> Thank you.
Number three. Hello, I'm Robera Ponus and I reside in Golden. Um and my topic is the um student travel policy and out of building coaches.
So I'm um I've lived in Jeffco since 1967 when my husband and I took teaching jobs with Jeffco. I worked as a Jeffco administrator for 20 years serving under five different superintendent. I know
policy. I know coaching. I come from a family of coaches and have experienced the good, the bad, and the painfully ugly with my family, both teacher coaches and out of
building coaches for some 60 years. Next year will be my first year where I have no family member who is coached. So kudos to the board for the newly revised student travel policy JJH
that acknowledges that coaches including out of building coaches can and often do encourage their student athletes to attend overnight camps that are not sponsored by the district and as such according to the second section of the
policy JJH district policies do not apply. by and yet an out of building volleyball coach at Arvvada West was terminated last week. The reason given was that she
failed to get district approval for nine volleyball athletes to attend a summer volleyball camp at UNC the summer of 2025. It was not a district sponsored camp. It
was a private camp. The coach was not required to get approval according to JJH. Clearly, it was a misuse of the policy to justify a non-renewal.
In contrast, the same coach got approval during volleyball season this year when the team went to a tournament in Arizona. It was on the volleyball schedule. It was one of their matchas. Um,
this whole incident kind of prompted me to bring to the board two issues regarding Jeffco coaches and I'm running out of time especially out of building coaches that have been percolating uh with me for some time but I'm going to bring those up later and in out of out
of this uh venue uh with the with the board um I think Jeff Cole coaches deserve a fair and honest application of policy and that's what I'm asking for tonight. Thank you so much and welcome to the new board members and I have to say you tr
you all are truly volunteers and um and serve um with great sacrifice and I appreciate that. >> Thank you. Is there number four? Welcome. Please state your name.
So, if I may clarify, um, we were part of the power outage earlier. I signed up for an individual speaking of three minutes, but I couldn't email in um and I have a player also that'd like to speak. So, I requested at check-in if I
could be extended to the 10 minutes. So, I'm prepared either way. So, I'm I'm not sure what's going to be honored right now. So, let me know. >> If you speak as a group, you may have 10 minutes. >> Okay. Thank you very much. So, um, now
will you introd introduce all of ourselves? Okay. Yes, please. Thank you. >> All right. I'm Deborah Ponis Ericson and I reside in Golden, Colorado. >> I'm Olivia Smith and I reside in Arvvada, Colorado. >> I'm Remy Ericson and I reside in Golden,
Colorado. >> I'm Blakeley Ericson. I reside in Golden, Colorado. I'm Piper Thido and I reside in Arvvada, Colorado. Good evening and thank you for allowing me to speak. My name is Deborah Ponis
Ericson and as I said I'm from Golden, Colorado. I'm a proud Jefferson County native and a graduate of Arvvada West High School and a longtime coach in Jeffco serving our student athletes for over 20 years in both volleyball and tennis.
After playing and coaching at multiple levels from youth to collegiate and even professional volleyball, I returned to Arata West, my alma mater, to lead the volleyball program. Over the past five years, our staff built a culture of excellence, achieving milestones that
hadn't reached in two decades, advancing to regionals, beating top competitors, and raising expectations for what our athletes could accomplish both on and off the court. That's why I was stunned to be terminated recently, just days
after what I was believed a successful season. I was told the decision was based on a violation of policy JJH related to a summer volleyball camp that occurred 5 months earlier. The process and timing of this decision has left me
hurt, confused, and deeply concerned. I was not given an opportunity to ask questions, explain or in any fair or explain or participate in any fair or transparent review. I'm here tonight to
respectfully ask the board to look into whether the policy JJH was applied correctly given it was a private summer camp that was not district sponsored. I also ask that you examine how Jeff go treats more broadly the population of
out of building coaches that are at will designation. Out of building coaches carry significant responsibility directly mentoring student athletes yet we often get no due process or recourse when accusations arise. Many of us devote
hundreds of hours while being paid very little because we care deeply about these kids and their growth. I love this district and I believe in its mission. My request is simply for fairness, transparency, and a clearer
process that allows coaches to be heard before life changing decisions are made. I would like for you to read to read to you policy JJH and this is under the second page at the very bottom. Private non-district
sponsored student travel employees sometimes elect to arrange travel experiences for students wholly independent students wholly independent of Jeffco shuts such trips are considered private travel and are in no
way sponsored by the district and Jeffco policies do not apply. Jeffco is not responsible for any aspects of the trip including without limitation contracting, transportation, lodging, activities, trip interruption or cancellation, supervision, chaperones,
discipline, medical issues, travel warnings, emergencies and any other issues related to such travel. JCO employees must not notify participants and parents that this travel is private and not district sponsored. The adoption
date of this policy was December 16, 2024. Thank you for your time and service and commitment to the students and families of Jefferson County. Hello and good evening. My name is Olivia and I am a current student at Arvvada West High School. I am standing
here tonight to speak about Coach Deb Ericson and the positive influence she has she has had on me. I have played volleyball for our West for the past three seasons, including this past season at the varsity level. I have had I have been playing volleyball since I was eight years old. And in addition to playing at our West, I also play on a
national club team. Over the years, I have had many different coaches, each of whom have impacted me not only as a player, but also as a person. Coach Deb, however, stands out. Coach Deb has helped me lead our has helped lead our VA West volleyball to regionals for the past two seasons, an accomplishment that
had not been achieved in over 18 years. She has not only built a competitive program, but she has also worked hard to create a strong sense of community among players, coaches, and parents. At every practice and game, Coach Deb was there to guide and mentor us, helping us grow,
not only as athletes, but as young adults. I know my skills, abilities, and understanding of the game have improved significant s significantly over the past few seasons, and coach Deb has been a major part of that growth. Because of her leadership, I am not only a better
player, but a better person. She has had a lasting and positive influence on my life. Thank you for your time. >> Thank you all. Is there a number five? >> Welcome. Please state your name and you'll have three minutes.
>> Thank you. Nate Nathan Fennel Conifer. Um I came to you guys in October. I wasn't able to make November. I came with an idea for a community sponsored um watch program. Currently, we are not allowed to volunteer because we do not have children in the schools. I'm an
educator, active shooter training, first AC CPR, work in Jeffco. I don't know why I'm not allowed to volunteer, but for some reason, I'm not. So, I presented with you to you guys an idea of volunteer program that do a net positive
into your account. And I present a list of volunteers from Conifer to present to the board with all of our contact information. Please reach out. We're here and ready to help. There's no reason to say no. >> Thank you. Thank you.
Is there number six? >> Welcome. Please say your name. You have three minutes. >> Hello all. My name is Jenna Coffin and I'm a junior at Evergreen High School. I am here today to continue to advocate for people not only in Jeffco, but everywhere. Being a survivor of a school
shooting gives me the obligation and responsibility to protect so many more kids so that they never have to experience the horrible trauma that I did. The biggest person I'm advocating for today is my little sister, Lexi. Lexi is a third grader at Rston Elementary. She loves school so much
that directly after school, she comes home and teaches all of her dolls and stuffed animals what she learned that day. She loves to play school and be the teacher. She was just like me. I loved school so much because I was always reassured it was a safe place and it was
a place that I thrived. It was a place of stability. And then on September 10th, 2025, that all changed. I now hate going to school. I don't feel safe anymore. I have anxiety that I never used to have, and it has completely changed me. Now, I know that not all
kids love school, but that doesn't matter. All kids need to be protected. How are you not only going to protect my favorite person in the world, but all the other kids in this district so that they don't have the experience that I had? Are you just going to keep letting this go on until this is just a normal
occurrence for all students? Us kids are your greatest asset. Ever wonder why Jeff and schools enrollment is declining? Maybe part of it is because parents don't feel safe sending their kids to your schools. Without us, there would be no Jeffco schools. If this is the case, then why aren't you
listening to us? I myself have emailed all of the prior board members, including Tracy, including Tracy Dorland twice, and I've gotten no response. All I'm asking for is a short meeting to partner with you all to brainstorm solutions. My goal is to help the future
generation of kids have the best school experience that they can, and that starts with promising all kids that they will be safe and holding up to that promise. Why don't we take this tragic event and learn from it? Jeffco is now known for being the school district in Colorado with the most school shootings. There
have been three in Jeffco. Coline 26 years ago, Deer Creek Deer Creek in 2010, and now Evergreen High School this year. Let's take our bad reputation and create a safety model that all districts want to follow. Let's put in preventative measures such as metal
detectors, personality behavior specialists, and increase security. Sandy Hook, for example, after their tragedy, created the Sandy Hook Promise. And now almost 13 million people have signed up and made a promise to keep students safe and schools happy. Let's
become role models, not bad examples. I hope we can work together and make a positive impact. Thank you for your time. Thank you. I would appreciate if we refrain from clapping after speakers. Right. Number seven.
Is there a I see I see discussions. >> I'm not number seven, but I was late. I signed up, but I was late with my mom. >> Let us We will absolutely give you a chance, but let us get through the numbers first. Thank you so much. Is there a seven? If not, we'll move to
eight. >> I'm not sure if >> Okay, hang on. We'll we'll go through the numbers. Is there a number eight? >> Okay. All right. Do we have a list or know the numbers? How many speakers we have signed up?
We do have a list. It looks like only guests through number six signed in. So we can go ahead with those who do not have a number assigned. >> Um Mr. Stephano, if you would um pause so we can let the woman who stood up first and we'll go to you.
Thank you. Welcome. Please state your name. You have three minutes. >> Laurel Hlip from Evergreen, Colorado. Thank you so much for uh allowing me to speak. Um, I hold a PhD in developmental psychology and I'm an instructor of psychology at CU Denver where I teach
many of our former Jeffco students. But most importantly, I am a parent of a student on September 10th was in the band room at EHS and directly shot at. But the physical safety of my child is not what I want to discuss today. It is
their psychological safety and that of their friends and of the staff um and faculty at IHS and for all of those uh in the surrounding elementary, middle, and high schools who are directedly affected emotionally by these events.
And this goes even further as it impacts the mental health of students across the district who reached out to our students to give love and support knowing that it could have been them. In my child's freshman year of high school, they had a mental health crisis, and it was their counselors and their teachers who helped
to put a safety plan together to keep them safe. Who were these staff members who helped her and taught others at the school to continue to help them? It is the individuals in the Department of Student Services, the social emotional coaches and specialists who you heard from tonight, where 12% of their
department was cut. As already discussed, the funds for that department was strengthened by the funds for the mental health voted for in the 2018 mill levy, which I wholeheartedly supported. I reiterate what our staff stated that the district needs to be transparent and
share how the mill levies are being used. These individuals provide both preventative and crisis care, being first responders when a child or staff member tragically dies due to accident, sickness, or taking their own life, and also unfortunately when an entire school
community and district is rocked by a school shooting. Many of these students will sit in my classroom after they graduate and will not only deal with academic rigor, but also the ups and downs of life, the transitions to new environment, and the dealing of other horrific events such as we saw at Brown University. who will teach them those
necessary skills, the skills that my child learned her freshman year and helped her through the tragedy she experienced her senior year. I don't know because you're laying off and displacing many of them. And finally, I don't know if I can support and rally others to future mill levies when there
is an administration here that doesn't care about the voices of their constituents who voted to create mental health and psychological safety for their students and staff. This district is going back on their word. We need to
continue to strengthen emotional and social skills for our students, not just academic rigor. There is a whole person, physical, cognitive, and emotional that we need to
be focused on. Thank you very much. >> Thank you, Mr. Dphano. Good evening board members. Sorry I forgot to check in. So um I wanted to share something with you and the
community. Um, as many of you know, I was board president during the Coline shooting, and I am happy to see people coming to and students to talk about and express their concerns and their hopes
for improving school safety because it's important. I also want you to know the hundreds of school districts and thousands of schools that Jeff Public Schools has
helped since Coline going through these difficult events. Um that's not why I came to speak though. Um, on behalf of the Jefferson County Administrators Association, I want to begin by welcoming our new
members of the board of education, Director Gibbons, Director Moanian, and Director Dr. Echavaria. Um, congratulations on your re recent election, and thank you for stepping forward to serve schools, our students,
and our community. We know this role requires significant time, energy, and commitment and are very grateful for your willingness to lead. I also want to share our appreciation for the
opportunity to continue working alongside Director Michelle Appagate and Director Aaron Keworthy. Um, we value the relationships built over time and look forward to continued collaboration.
This is a critical moment in the history of Jeffco public schools. It has never been more important for all of us board members, educators, families, and community partners to come together and work in the best interests
of our children. JCAA is hopeful for the spirit of collaboration and mutual support as we navigate the challenges and opportunities ahead and we stand ready
to support your leadership. We also want to express our support for the difficult but necessary budget reduction work currently underway. These decisions are never easy and we appreciate the care and thought being
given to long-term sustainability. Along those lines, we are encouraged by the opportunity to join conversations with the partnership for fiscal sustainability and to engage our community in exploring
funding solutions such as local revenue options like a mill levy override. mily override the Jeep students can count on and need and can count on in the years ahead. We wish you a happy
holiday and thanks for stepping up for helping Jico schools and students. Take care. >> Thank you. Is there anyone else who signed up for public comment? Please welcome. Please state your name. You have three minutes. Hi, my name is Karen
Newton. I'm from Arvvada. I'm a graduate from Jefferson County Schools, as was my husband. My kids went there and now my grandkids. I'm a proud member of Jefferson County. That's one reason I'm here to speak tonight because I'm very concerned about what's going on in Jefferson County. And this is just one
example. My husband was a longtime teacher here, 32 years before he died. He coached various places. I coached various places and he ended up at Arvvada West when he moved from Drake with the ninth graders.
When he came over, he was by himself. As my kids grew, they said, "I want to go coach. I want to go play with dad." So, they did. The program was struggling. Was going downhill really quick. When my girls got the chance to play varsity, they both quit. They said,
"Can't do it. Don't want to play for her." My husband got to the point where he had to leave and went to coach at Rston Valley. That's where he met De Ponis Ericson. He followed her over to Arvvada West before he had to stop because he was ill and eventually passed
away. I've been involved with her as a volunteer. I keep her I'm her board pre boosters president. So, I know a lot about the ins and outs of the program. I have watched her build a program that was at the very bottom, not only in
wins, but in morals. And I watched kids be screamed at night after night. Lost the love of volleyball. There's so much more to a game than a win or a loss. And Deb knows that. She was a great coach. She brought that program back
from nothing. She helped initiate the boys program which is now flourishing. Fun to watch. If you've never seen them, go watch them. They're great. But she instilled in those girls. She would take a loss if it meant that they learned something over a win where they didn't
learn learn something. In this day where teachers, good teachers are so hard to find. Good coaches are so hard to find. I would appreciate your getting involved and helping her get some answers to why
she was let go and if that if that wasn't a fair decision that it would be relooked at. But honor these coaches. They make pennies on the dollar. Pennies on the dollar. She was a good coach and our rat is going to suffer the loss. So
work with these administrators. They got a hard job. I know it because I've been in education. My husband caught taught at Drake Arvvada Middle and our and Arvvada West. I know what it's all about. I appreciate your time because you're volunteering, too. I've been
there for a charter school. Not easy here in Jefferson County, a flourishing charter school. So, thank you for your attention to this matter. Don't let a good one get away. You want to hold on to her because she's a good coach. Thank you.
>> Thank you. Is anyone else that signed up for public comment? Okay. Well, thank you for those that have participated. Your voices mean a lot to us and we do listen and so thank you for for sharing your perspective with us.
We are now going to move into the study session section of our evening. Um, our first item of study this evening, the board will review the district-wide financial condition through the first quarter of the 2526 school year. Presenting this evening is Brena Copelan, chief financial officer, and
Shaen Rosario, executive director of finance, planning, and analysis. We have allotted 45 minutes for this presentation. Welcome ladies. Please do include time at the end of your presentation for questions from the board
while they're getting settled. And before I turn this over to the presenters, Superintendent Dorland, is there anything you would like to add? >> Yeah, thank you um President Applegate. Um just in light of some of our public comment and um some of the challenging
conversations that many central um department leaders had this week with impacted employees based on decisions that were made related to our department budgets. I just want to acknowledge
this is extremely difficult. Um and I'm talking about the budget reduction blueprint now. Um it's extremely difficult and I could argue that um everything we are doing um and every
person in our system who's doing it is worthwhile and um and it's just uh it's an extreme challenge when our revenue um does not match
what we need to do for our students. And you know, my hope is to continue, as our board has in the past, advocating at the state level um for quality funding for public education in the state of Colorado, which is a real challenge not just for Jeffco, but for many districts.
Um, and so I just want to acknowledge how difficult it is. Um, and how challenging this week has been and and express gratitude to the employees who were gracious as part of the conversations they had to have with managers this week and to our managers who I know with our um, HR team who also
deserves some gratitude, took this very seriously and tried to deliver those conversations in a very kind and thoughtful way and always offer support to impacted employees. And I'm starting off with that um ahead of our first quarter report because
um while we know that every decision we make can possibly impact a human and we never want to forget the human aspect of what we're doing, um I believe that what we're going to see here as a preview in the first quarter financial report is
the reason why it's necessary. Um, and I just want to acknowledge that while these things might be necessary, they are not easy. Um, but we are headed toward what I would say is a midyear budget that we'll be presenting next month. Um, and asking the board to
revise the budget to use even more of our fund balance than what was approved in June. And so that's just a bit of a preview. Um, and I, um, I'm going to hand it over here in a minute for the for these, um, district leaders, uh,
who've worked hard on this presentation to begin sharing with you how we're tracking and monitoring our spending. Um, so that we know as we get further and further into the year just how much fund balance we will be using. Um, but I just want to acknowledge that it is difficult. Um, and there's nothing that
we're doing that's not worthwhile. And at the same time, um, we have a situation where we've run out of choices and we have to make some decisions about how to get our, um, finances back to a stable position. So, with that, I'm going to hand it over to Chief Financial Officer Brena Copeland and let her begin
to kind of share this preview with the first quarter with you. Great. Good evening, board members. Our first quarter financial report covers the time period from July 1st to September 30th. That's approximately three months. It is an unodudited financial report. Colorado
state statute requires that the district prepare and present this report on a quarterly basis to the board um and make it publicly available which we do on our financial transparency website. This report contains actuals um in terms of
our revenue and our expenditures. Um it does not necessarily include forecasts. That's not the point of the quarterly report. it's sort of focused in a factual presentation of what has happened. Um, in the slides that follow, you'll see a so-called benchmark
percentage. I want to be clear that that's not a particularly sophisticated notion of a benchmark. It's simply looking at um for the expense or the revenue that's being contemplated approximately what percentage of that had been spent on average at this point
in the year in prior years. Right? So, it's really just saying what's our usual spending um patterns as a district. The first quarter um is unusual compared to the rest of our quarters because it spans um July, August, and September.
July and August are the last two months of many of our 10-month paid over 12-month employees, meaning it's the last two months of their contract for services they've already rendered. Um, so for example, if you're a new teacher to Jeffco and you start August 16th, um,
you will continue to receive pay for your school year worked all the way through August 15th of the following year. So that first two months um, of the school year, those payrolls reflect prior year um, rates of pay, right? And
so it it means that this first quarter expenditures are often a little bit lower than other quarters throughout the year. Um the other thing that's happening in the summer is not nearly as much activity in our schools and so other types of spending categories also
look unusual in the first quarter. It's probably not a good quarter to trend off of. Um, we work pretty hard to prepare the revised budget really based on October and November data because then that gives us at least one or two more
months of real spending. Um, so please bear that in mind uh when you're looking at these figures. So this is our general fund. Um, I'm going to walk us through how the graph is set up just to make sure everyone
kind of understands. Uh the big orange bars are total year budgeted revenue and expense for the general funds. You can see the adopted budget has 982 million in budgeted revenue and the budgeted
expense in the general fund is 1 billion22 million. Okay. And that's what those they aren't adjusted. That's not a quarter only representation. That's a full year representation. That's why the bar is so tall. Um the green is the current year actual.
So that would be what we just talked about July, August, September. The gray is the prior year same time period actual. So it helps you benchmark against two things. One, you're looking at how do our actuals compare to the
full year's budget. And rough rule of thumb, you would expect that they're approximately 24%. I don't say 25 because it's not even um but that's not true in every fund. And then you're also comparing to prior year, meaning how
should our spending look? And just by context, um the budget that was adopted for the current year has spending levels that are not that different than the prior year, right? So we wouldn't really expect to see huge differences between the green and the gray. So again, green
is current year actual, gray is prior year actual. Sorry for taking an extra minute or two, but I wanted to make sure um everyone unders because it's little teeny tiny legends up there. So, so actual revenue is trending with the adopted budget, which seems strange
because there's only 164 million and some of you might be wondering how are we going to get to 982. Um, and again, a big portion of our revenue is from local tax receipts and the local property tax does not start
collecting and being remitted back to the district until March, right? And so we get almost no, we get a little bit of specific ownership tax, but we get almost no local tax receipts until basically the last quarter of the year.
The only money that's coming in right now is our state equalization payments. So those are those state state share of the total program of the district. So even though it looks short, um 164 is still somewhat on track, mostly on track
to get to 982 by the end of the year. And it also is somewhat on track with the prior year. actual expense is generally tracking with the adopted budget with the caveat that Q1 expenses are not a good
predictor of the full year expenses because of that skewing of what payroll are we actually reflecting um in terms of the first three months. So again, we'll be bringing forward some analysis shortly um that will suggest something
slightly different. And so I just want to flag that again the Q1 is not a great um trend basis. Okay. Um analysis indicates that some purchase services have been initiated earlier than expected. We did see a
couple spikes. Um we're looking into timing. Again, folks buy things at different times and um sometimes pay there's like a timing of payment issue, etc. So we're still researching a little bit of that. um sped tuition, which would be tuition paid to outside
entities, is trending higher than anticipated um both in comparison to the adopted budget and compared to our prior year. So again, that's tuition paid to an outside entity for a student um who has
been placed into that school through our um special education services division, student services division. This is instead of bar charts numbers um the full picture of our general fund expenditures in this slide we're looking at program types. So program types are
set out by the Colorado Department of Education. Uh we don't necessarily define them. You can see that um general instruction which is that key category where most of our teachers show up and and most of our teachers are on their prior year contract. uh you see that
we're trending at about 23% of budget or $ 109 million uh for the Q1 special education instruction um is trending a little bit higher. So again that points to a little bit of a question mark um that we have explored further in preparing the revised budget for
January. Um instructional support actually also includes some of our special education services which um is further confusing um but and it includes some of our mental health supports which you've heard about this evening. my team is
working on um a more detailed description of which position is funded in which program um so that both the public and the board and anyone else who's interested um can understand where these different positions are basically
captured when we do this required state reporting. Uh you can see the rest of the categories there. Again, um most things trending pretty much on what would be considered benchmark, but you can also see in the prior year there was some
variance um compared to the prior year budget and those didn't necessarily hold for the entire year. This is our general fund expenditures by account type. So a different way of classifying our expenditures. Um both
are required. uh by the Colorado Department of Education. This shows that our salary and benefits budget of $863 million. Um we've spent about $27 million in the first quarter. Purchase services had a budget of 83
million and again we've spent about 25 which is 30%. So that is one of those areas that as soon as we processed these numbers we started to take a look at uh materials and supply capital outlay transfers um you know are listed there as well.
Finally this takes both ways of stating the data. So stating the data by program type. Program type is listed across the top or excuse me program type is listed on the rows um top to bottom. So starting with general instruction and
ending with transportation and then um the account types salary and benefits, purchase services, materials and supplies etc are moving through the columns and showing it both ways further disagregates the data so that you can
see um what is it we're paying that the what is the account within the program. the program is more of the purpose, right? Um because we present some of our excuse me, our budget reduction blueprint data this way, we disagregate
by both the program type and um the account type. Um we wanted to present this first quarter this way as well. This is new. We haven't always done it this way, but we felt it synced up best with some of the other financial reports we're releasing right now.
Um, okay. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Miss Rosario, and we are going to hold time for questions at the end. Thank you. >> All right. Thank you. Uh, moving on to the capital reserve fund. So, this is
the fund that we use to fund most of our capital projects across the district. Uh the graph for the rest of these funds is going to be very similar to the one Miss Copelan introduced in the beginning with revenue being on the left and then the expense being on the right. In this
fund, we budgeted 31 million of revenue. The uh 15 million of that revenue is a transfer from the general fund to support the capital projects. For this particular year, we had about 11.3 million that's budgeted in that revenue due to sale proceeds for um some of our
surplus properties. We did have our Vivian um property closed last week and we have Emery property slated to close next week I believe and so uh for Q2 we will see that actual revenue grow to see that those are coming in but those obviously aren't going to be spread
equally over the year. So that's part of why that first um section that green column of revenue is lower because it's really representing just transfer from the general fund and interest income in this fund. Um and then the timing around the property proceeds will um come in as
they go throughout the year. Uh in the capital reserve fund, our actual expense are aligned with our budget benchmark, keeping in mind that capital spending is highest in the summer months when the kids are not in the school and we're able to get in the schools and do a lot of the um capital projects. During the winter months, we do a lot of the
preparation that the RFP process and selecting the vendors for those capital projects that'll start in the spring. Here is another look at the capital reserve fund. We did a graphic similar to this in the budget presentation for this year
to try to help aggregate some of the um capital sources and uses into categories um to help clarify how the funds are being used. The column in orange is our prior year preliminary actuals uh showing our beginning fund balances, the
sources from last year, uh the uses, and then the ending fund balance. When we budgeted this year, which is this the third column over the first green column, the adopted budget, we projected that we would have a beginning funding balance of a hundred million. We anticipated sources that we saw on the
previous slide of 31 million and expenditures of 60 million. That's broken out across facility improvement, new construction, technology, and other expenses. And then we had projected an ending fund balance of 71 million. As a
first quarter, we have spent 17.5 million, which is that middle column. And then this is the one exception of a fund that we are presenting a forecast. So that final column is just looking at where are we at with um the anticipated sources and the timing of our capital
projects. So we can see that our expenses anticipated for this year are 57.2 2 million slightly less than the 60 originally budgeted which would give us an ending fund balance in the cap reserve fund of 83.6 million is our
projection at this moment. Grants fund. So our grants are budgeted um at our maximum anticipated awards knowing that grants are awarded throughout the year. This is our maximum um assumption around that uh which was 59.4 million. our actual receipts in the
first quarter are lower, but that's also because many of our grants require us to spend the money first and then seek reimbursement after the fact. So, the first quarter is not the greatest to to look at the activity because we're still catching up with some of the activity and getting um re requesting those
reimbursements within this fund food services fund. The actual revenue is trending below the adopted budget. Uh this includes this includes that the budget for FY26 did anticipate a greater transfer from
the general fund to support food services. Um but this also is the primary revenue source within this fund is due to federal and state reimbursements around kids receiving meals. Again, if it's the first quarter and then the timing of the school year could be impacting some of that um
revenue. So we'll just monitor that as we go throughout the year. Additionally, um if we look at expenses, we are we do see expenses are trending slightly lower than um the benchmark and some of that is attributed to we have taken some some steps to reduce spending in u many of
our food service areas across the district to try to balance this fund better and that was part of an initiative that was started last year within this fund campus activity fund. So these are funded activities like trips, yearbooks, fees, outdoor labs and other activities.
We do see that the actual revenue in the first quarter um is higher than anticipated, but again it's revenue that we're receiving at the beginning of the year and that we will be spending throughout the year as the year ramps up and the activities increase for the kids within the school
insurance reserve fund. this uh this fund the revenue is all hatched because that's representing the transfer from the general fund. The primary source of revenue within this fund is all funded through um transfer from the general fund. And then a a minor piece of it is
interest income. Um the insurance this insurance reserve fund is our self- insurance fund that covers our property and general liability expenses. So, we have the transfer from the general fund and then we pay out our property and general liability claims and um
premiums, excuse me, premiums from this fund um to our to our um external partners. Uh this fund absorbs all the claims. So, we're self-insured up to a certain amount and then um then we can go to external carriers if it exceeds that amount, but we still have um
significant amount of claims that we pay out of this self-insured um reserved fund. child care fund. This is school age enrichment only. So before school care and after school care. Uh the the revenue is trending in line with adopted budget. There were some adjustments to
some of the tuitions that were charged for this year. So we can see that um reflected here. Additionally, the expense within this fund is trending below the budget benchmark. Uh and part of this is intentional staffing decreases that they took within those sites. And then we also are seeing a
high vacancy for paras that are supporting the program and that's contributing to the expenses being lower than the um budgeted or the benchmark that we anticipated for this fund. Uh the employee benefit fund. So this is our self-insured employee benefit fund.
The revenue that is shown on here is either the amount that we're in collecting from the employees to cover um expenses within the self-insured benefit fund or the employer contribution. So we take those funds or those um those yeah those funds in here
as revenue and then we pay out the claims directly from here. So we pay the claims the medical, pharmaceutical and other health related claims out through this fund. in the long run it should um benefit us but we're seeing that this is a little off track than compared to what
we anticipated through the budget process. One of the reasons this is off track is we anticipated approximately a thousand more employees to enroll in this program. So when we added up that those employees and calculated the amount of premiums that were going to come into the fund it was a lot larger
than what we're seeing so far. Um, additionally, we are seeing some claims that are because these are all timing of claims, we're paying the claims as they come in. We're seeing that the claims are coming in in the first quarter are really related to medical expenses in the prior year. So, there's still a timing difference that we need to make
up for. Um, and then the only other note I would have on here is that with that decrease of approximately a thousand employees from this fund, we did see an increase in employees enrolling in our Kaiser fund. the Kaiser um premiums are paid through the general fund. So that's
just a shift in expense um out of this fund and into the general fund. That's it. All the other funds. Thank you board members. Any questions? Oh, y'all are stuck with me. All right. I just have a few. Um,
I'm going to jump us back to slide three really quick. I just want to make sure I really understand the hash marks because this is an important piece. So, if there is a hash mark, that is revenue that has been put there or expense. I guess the expense part is the part that's wrong. It is typically revenue put there from a
transfer from our general fund. >> And on this slide, it's the transfer from the general fund showing as an expense, >> okay, >> to the general fund. And then on all the other funds, it shows as a revenue. >> Perfect. Thank you. Um I'm going to jump
us down to slide eight. Um I was happy and a little surprised to see this number presented. Are we are we actively deferring maintenance because this was a fund that we did not transfer the full amount that had been done in the past.
So, uh, as you'll recall, when we budgeted to spend 60 million out of this fund, um, while simultaneously only transferring 15 million, >> um, we acknowledge two things. One, uh,
the transfer was obviously not ex supporting the full expenditure, the full planned expenditure in the fund. And two, the 60 million figure does not align to our historic average expenditure. Um, you're going to receive a presentation a little bit later
tonight. Um, and I work very closely with Mr. Gatlin on those figures where you're going to hear that, um, on average we spend about 105 million per year. You know, again, averaged over time. It it can be lumpy.
>> Um, and so there's deferral in two ways. There's the fact that 60 million is lower than 105. And then on the revenue side, we did not we're not putting in as much revenue as we're spending. And so we're deferring a contribution, which is a deferred
revenue to this fund. And we're actually deferring expenditures as well. Both things are happening. Um the way we're able to do that is we have built up quite a bit of fund balance. And right at the end of the year when the board approved the budget for the current year, they also finalized a confirmation
that we were not going to spend approximately 60 million on what had many many years ago, seven years ago, um been imagined or envisioned as two new schools in two parts of the district that might have been growing over that time period. But the board said, "Nope,
you know, we just never saw that growth. It didn't materialize. That seven or eight year old projection didn't happen." And so the board freed up that money that had been sitting in this capital reserve fund to go towards our regular ongoing maintenance. So again, it's the fund balance that we are
spending in the current year and that we may spend again next year in order to just sustain the 60 million in spending. >> Thank you. That's very helpful. >> Can I I'll just add I do um I do think this projected spend might be a little
low as well just given that we have many things on the list. So, I appreciate your question. Um, and in particular, just to close a loop from um, some comments made tonight around Evergreen, we do know that the doors need to be
replaced. Um, we have because of the the turnaround of getting, you can imagine, replacing doors across an entire high school is quite a project and it takes time to get the right materials, scope it out, cost it out, bid it out, all
those things. Um we for those new board members who are here tonight um are aware that some of the doors had markings on them. We did um cover those with um sort of school pride posters. Um and so that's that's the best we could
do to get the kids back in school at the time. Um but we have on our plans to replace these doors. My estimate in my I if I can look at the numbers in my head, I think it's 1.5 million is sort of a general guesstimate that our operations
team and facilities and construction team have for the cost of replacing the doors. Um so that is in scope for something we're going to do for Evergreen. We have not yet identified the funding source for that. Um it's something that um Miss Copeland, Mr.
Gatlin and I are talking about and so you can imagine just adding another 1.5 million. I don't think that's currently contemplated in these numbers based on correct a conversation I had today. So I just want you to know that we are sort of paying really close attention to what we're spending also because we know we
have some um additional investments that we're looking at related to safety measures and replacement and upgrades at Evergreen High School in particular. >> Thank you. This may be out of out of bounds for for new superintendent, but do we have a time frame on those door
replacements? >> I'm Mr. Avadikian is here. I'm thinking we were thinking summer um because I think it's just taking us a while to get things scoped and I don't know how long the actual project takes and we don't want to close school down while we're doing a month's work worth of door work
in the building. But if you have something to add, please do. >> Yeah, we actually have a pretty timely update from literally today. So, You're correct in that uh a full door replacement in the building would have to be a summer project uh due to the amount of disruption that it would cause
um and the lead times. However, we also have brought in a um painter who is experienced with refinishing and the school community wanted to see um a proof of concept of a door refinished. Um and we believe after seeing the proof
of concept today and Mr. Streo is also here um and could potentially tell us a little bit more when when we go on about capital um later, but uh we believe that we'd actually be able to begin the process of refinishing those doors at least as a as a short-term and
potentially um long-term solution to that which without involving replacement. So, more to come on that, but we've been actively looking at a number of solutions. >> Yeah, thank you. I appreciate I appreciate it. just we're trying um and I do anticipate that the cost of some of
those um refinish uh refinish projects and or replacement will come from this and add to this this budget over time. >> Director Kenworthy, >> I just want to add um for our new board members, we walked the building after
the event and were able to see what had been impacted. Um, and I think the refinishing option is a great option. Um, because of the cost and because of the disruption,
um, I can it makes sense to me that the summer would be a good time to do that. And I'm glad to hear that there's, um, that was a huge topic of conversation when we walked the building. We were very, very aware of um, the psychological impacts for people who would have to be back in the building.
um what their environment and the presentation um what impact that would have and there was a lot of conversation. So I just wanted to mention that here as well um since it came up. >> Thank you. I have one last question for y'all. Um if we jump to slide 13,
Director Muinian, thank you so much. Um, so I'm just curious with the the idea to refinish the doors. Um, do we have a timeline on that? Maybe it was mentioned and I missed it. >> So I think we're going to get a presentation on this after this. So let's let these ladies go and then we will >> Thank you.
>> get them up here because I I think that's a great question. >> Um, okay. Slide 13. It looks like so I guess my question is we made some significant changes to the child care um organization last year and the way we structured it looks like those are
working. Am I being overly optimistic in looking at these numbers or would you agree with that? >> That is what it looks like. Um I want to caveat that this is Q1 and um the majority of before and afterare um activity is coming. So again, the just
in case you aren't familiar with our pay periods, for example, the 9:30 paycheck is covering, and that's that last one. It's covering August 16th through September 15th. So we really only have one month of current activity on the
current school year reflected here. And so um while I am hopeful director Applegate that we are going to see um all the plans manifest um I do think it's preliminary to infer that. >> So a little optimistic. Okay. I
appreciate it. Um any other questions? Oh please direct I want to do I just want to make a couple of other points because I think it's helpful both for um you guys as well as our new board members. Um if you just look at slide four um one of the things that is a bit
concerning um as we just look at that slide is the special education instruction at 26%. Um you know when you look over at the lefth hand column on the adopted budget it's a hund00 million. So a percent of that is quite a bit of money right and
it's first quarter. So you know at first quarter we like to see things at 21 to 23 22%. Because we know that the spending in the spring is usually much greater uh in second semester than it is in first
quarter in first semester period. So, that's a concern. And I just want to highlight that um we also know from going through a fine tooth comb on all the budgets and trying to help our budget managers meet all of their reduction targets that a couple of areas
where we're um overspending is in special education. and in particular um in our um some support services and staffing that we provide for special education students and in our placement out of district. Obviously two areas where we want to spend we have to spend
to support our students but we are seeing um overspend in those areas and it's showing up here again. You'll also see it on slide five um where you can just look at purchase services. And I know everybody likes to look at purchase services and think that I am like approving with a magic wand contractors
and consultants all over the place. That is not the case. We do have some contractors and consultants. That being said, it is not the majority of our purchase services. The majority of our purchase services is placement out of district and other contracted services
for shorting staffage shortages staffing shortages mostly in special education arena. And so you'll see that purchase services here another large number 83.7 million and it's at 30% spent and we're just in the first quarter. So, those are
just indications to me that we are continuing to see the patterns and trends that we've seen over the last several years in our special ed or student services budgets. Um, obviously they're it their dollars going to serve students who have needs and we're keeping a close eye on it, but it is
another indication that I think we're going to be spending more than what was allocated in the June budget. I just want to highlight that in terms of how to read the tables um and how I'm looking at the tables because I think it could be helpful for you all to think see it through through my lens
question. I'll pause there and just see if there are questions or other board members. I have questions but I will defer. Director Monian. >> So obviously making sure that our students have the support that they need for the education that they are entitled to is important. Uh, I'm just wondering
since we're kind of, it sounds like we're projected to spend more than what we anticipated we would need to spend on this line item. I'm just wondering if there was anticipate anticipated funding that we were supposed to receive or anticipating that maybe did not materialize.
No. No. I mean, it's really the cost of doing business at this point in time. A couple of things that we are doing. I've um been talking with front range superintendent and have had a conversation with our um color department of education commissioner
commissioner Cordova about thinking about co-op co-oping contracting with private providers. So the the majority of our placement out of district is with private settings where um schools that um operate not as public entities can
provide the specialized and unique services that our special needs students um have. Um those rates have gone up by 3 to 500%. 300 200 they've gone up by quite a bit um over the last three years. So the
cost of providing the services and what we're paying to out of district providers is increased greatly. In addition, we're seeing greater numbers of students who need those placements. And so we're digging into it. Um at some point we're more than happy to share more and I think maybe even in the
midyear um it would be good for Mr. Polo to be part of the presentation and to share a little bit about some of these areas where we're seeing increased costs. But we're trying um to maybe collaborate with other districts and do something around a statewide cooperative so that we can try to lock in some rates
um at that maybe could even just cost contain. Um at the same time for these private providers the cost of serving students with these severe needs is high. Um and so working a little bit with the state and other districts on that. The other thing we're doing is
just working with our procurement team to see if we alone as Jeffco can also renegotiate some of our contracts and try to get some of the costs down. So, we're trying a few a few strategies and we're happy to bring back more information about some of these areas where we're looking like the spending is
um exceeding the budget when we do the midyear for you. Yeah, you're welcome. Thank you for the question, >> Dr. Buria. So, I have a another question to follow up on that. Um, is the cost of using the outside contractors the same
as if we were able to bring somebody inhouse? Can you explain that to me? >> You know, we have also in addition to um increasing the number of students who we are sending out of district, uh we have done some work over the last decade and I can't remember when we started
Sebeski. Mr. Mr. Polo can tell us more about that, but we have done some work to house some of our to provide these programs in house and because of our size and scale and scope in Jeffco, we've been successful at that. We have um Sebeski is a school that serves um students with a effective needs. Um and
then we have programs like Fletcher Miller. By the way, I was at Fletcher Miller this morning and I'll talk about that later. It was really awesome. Um but Fletcher Miller serves um significant support needs students. Um and so we have done some of that work. I will say that those programs even when
we run them internally is also very costly. Um and so we we I have had um some conversations with state leaders also just about how the strain of um the cost of providing special education services and districts are going to do
it. We're going to serve our students. We're going to do what we need to do to serve our students. But we in by no way, shape or form receive the funding to do so in ways that I think are fair and equitable. not only for our special education students but the other students who then aren't receiving those
funds related to their education. It's just a real challenge and it's not just a real challenge in Jeffco real challenge across the state, real challenge across the nation. >> Mr. Given. >> Yeah, just to clarify. So that 300 to
500% cost increase is relative to the current arrangement with the current service providers we're using. It's not it's I just want to understand that a little better and if we have any ideas of of what's driving the cost increase. Um I mean that that's just a shocking number to me.
>> Can it just a tiny bit? >> Yeah. Will you jump in? Yeah, that'd be great. Thanks. >> Um so quite a few of our placement out of districts are in facility schools and the state actually sets the rate um that we pay. Um some are in private
institutions where the the it's not a facility school and the state doesn't set the rate. Um I think the increase is a little bit closer to 200% um maybe 250%. I think our overall costs have gone up um in this category quite a bit
but it's through a mix of there has actually been um an enrollment increase meaning more students are placed out of district and the rates have gone up. Um, but I would say about 60 to 70% of what we're paying is according to a state rate schedule. Um, so when our
superintendent is talking about, you know, connecting with CDE and the state commissioner, that's our, um, mechanism basically to try and talk about these rates and figure out if there's any room to give. Um, and I think a 200%ish
increase um, is not necessarily completely out of whack with how much health care costs have gone up. And a lot of what's provided in some of these facilities is healthcare type services over what's probably close to like a five or six year period pre- pandemic to
current day. So >> to circle back to Dr. Maria's question. I'm just wondering, have we received or do we have any information on if it would be more coste effective to for the district itself to hire staff to provide
these services or is it more cost-effective to contract with external providers? >> Yeah, it's a great question and it's one that we've been grappling with. So, when we bring back the midyear again, I'll have Mr. Polero share the work we've done in that space and sort of what they
know today and and if the board wants us to take some additional steps um to learn more after you hear what we already have um we're happy to have that conversation. I'll just need Mr. Polo here to be a sense maker for all of us and to have a a bit of time to prepare
uh for that type of conversation. But I think it fits perfectly in with the midyear budget conversation. So, we'll have him um connect with Miss Copeland and include um some information about why these costs are so high, what we've done to sort of consider internal services versus external and other
strategies that we're thinking about. >> I I would appreciate that. I I would also be interested in if we could look across the board at other um consultants or services provided, maybe some of our larger ones. Does that extend into that too? You know, I know we have some
amazing, talented, brilliant people that work for Jeffco. And so I think that analysis, and again, I don't know exactly what the sizes of those contracts are, so it may not be worth it, but I I would be curious just to look a little bit broader than just
special education. Um, and I do have Superintendent Dorland, you mentioned the like 21 20% is where we strive to be. If we look back at slide four, there's a couple other areas that are in the 26%. Are you do you have similar concerns or do you feel like those will
even out recognizing this is not a forecast? I can already see um Mr. Zario smiling at me. Just just curious where you all are thinking. >> Yeah, I mean I think we're going to as I mentioned in in January the revised budget is going to be showing that we
are going to use more of our reserves than we contemplated in June. Um, and so the fact that we're seeing many of these categories at 26%, I mean, our operations and maintenance is another area we may want to highlight to talk about why. Um, and uh, the reason I know
a lot of this at this point in time is because it's right on the heels of our budget reduction blueprint for central department budgets and we're very aware of where we're seeing some of these overages and and we're taking some steps to try to even this year um, minimize
some of those expenses. But um uh in particular then you know we uh are making some reductions so that we can be more in line going into the 27 year. And then Miss Copeland my last question I promise um does the full report I
looked through it but not in detail. Does the full report break out the purchase services because I I believe what Superintendent Dora said is really important. There's a lot of things in that. Utilities live somewhere in there too I believe which are obviously things we must have. um as we now know after
this week, crucially important to schools. Um but is that broken out somewhere in the report where we could reference? >> No, the the resource I mentioned is something we're developing um to put on the website for public use. Um uh you
are one of our few readers of the full report. I would encourage the rest of the board to look at the full report and the public um this is just a summary presentation. The actual financial report is the 30some page document. But anyway, um the resource we're developing
to describe more about what's in um what positions are paid whereby program and what's in some of these accounts um is going to be separate. >> Thank you. Anything else, Mr. Gibbons? Yeah, I did want to um echo what Director Applegate stated earlier, which
I would also want to learn more and support really any opportunity where we can look at doing things in house. If it's able to be more cost-effective than something that we're not doing in house, we should. Um and also even if you know if all things are equal on the cost side, I think just in
general being mindful of when and how dependent we are on outside entities is something to always be mindful of. We'll we'll go ahead and do some purchase services sort of education in the midyear as well as sort of these areas where we see some overage um and
try to um get you guys more line of sight into that in a public setting. I know we've done some of that um uh with the previous board, but I think doing that in a public setting where we can all have a good dialogue about it will be really helpful. So, if we could just remember that, Miss Copeland, it would
be helpful. Yeah, I think timing wise um you have to post your study session content in the next day or two. Um so whether it's a question of whether it's in that study session or the regular meeting, but we will um make sure to develop the content you're asking for
and um get it to you prior to your vote. >> I'm just going to say we can't do it for the study session. There's just no way, especially with all of the weather things we've been dealing with. So, we'll shoot for the public session. And I would honestly advise the board that the public session is the better spot for it to be anyway so that our
listening public is more likely to be tuned in and listening to the conversation and hearing the information. So, we'll just give ourselves that break and work toward that. And then if and then if we get what we get and you guys have more questions and want us to come back in February and talk more, we can.
>> Good. All right. Thank you so much. We appreciate your presentation. The time is now 6:55 and I'd like to call for a 15-minute break. Heat. Heat. N. Down down down down. Hey. Hey. Hey.
Heat. Heat. I need to down. Down. Heat. Heat. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey, hey, hey. Heat. Heat. N. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. N.
Down down down down down down down down down. Heat. Heat. N. Hey, hey, hey. Heat. Hey, heat. Hey, heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. N. Down
down down down down down down down down down down down down down. Heat. Heat. Heat. Hey, Heat. Heat. Heat. N. Heat. Heat. N. Down down down down down down down.
Heat. Hey, Heat. Hey. Heat. Heat. N. Heat. Heat. N. Heat. Heat. Yeah, down. Yeah, heat. Heat.
Heat. N. Heat. Heat. N. Heat. Hey, Heat. Heat. Heat. Welcome back. The board will now review and discuss priorities for the upcoming 2026 legislative session. Leading this discussion is Mr. Ed Bowich, our legislative partner for Baich and Castle
Public Affairs and Director Kenworthy from the Board of Education. We have allotted 30 minutes for this discussion. Before I turn it over for discussion, would you like to add anything, Superintendent Darland? Just welcome Mr. Bowage. It's good to see you and it's exciting to see Director Kenworthy
sitting next to you to help uh guide and lead this discussion. Thank you to Director Kenworthy for taking taking on that leadership role. Well, you are welcome. Um, good evening, my fellow board members. Um, I'm going to invite you to open your weekly
update. Um, so that you can see our legislative agenda from last year as we move into our discussion. But while you're doing that, I just wanted to say I'm happy to be on this side of the dis with Mr. Bowitch to discuss our legislative agenda. Um, our legislative session is coming fast and quick. It
opens up in January on the 14th. And I want to remind you that we will be there to meet with our electeds on Thursday, January 22nd, Thursday, February 19th, Thursday, March 19th, and Friday, April 10th in the morning. And that should be
on your board calendar. Um, so legislative agenda is a document that we hand out to our electeds that sort of has our thoughts, positions, considerations
um for them to to know as they're moving in towards either introducing legislation or figuring out what what it is that they're going to support. Um, so I want you as we look at this to consider your audience. your audiences
are elected state senators and representatives um and we are fellow electeds with them. It means that they are inundated by similar documents from a wide variety of stakeholders. Um
and so my understanding is that these documents are given similar attention that sometimes resumes receive. It's a quick and fast and also there for reference if they need it along with Mr. Bowic who is
also there for reference and for clarification. Um, so right now what we have is about a one page, one and a half pages front and back of a a legislative agenda, which I think maybe needs to be we need to try
and keep ourselves to one page front and back otherwise I think there's no chance that it's going to get even read or skimmed. Um, so we I think we want to try to keep it short and sweet. And then I also want to let you know that from a conversation I had with Mr. about it and
with Kristen and Lisa um to address some of the um experiences that we had last session. Our weekly update is also going to include specific asks and conversations between district staff and external folks who are engaged in the legislative session um for increased
transparency into how our district is is participating in some of the discussion at the um at the capital during the legislative session. Um, I think not because we're going to be engaged also in those conversations, but it's good for us to know what is the district being asked to weigh in on, what are
they considering. Um, I think that's just helpful information for us to have. And so I saw that that already has happened in our weekly update. Um, there was some preliminary information listed there about questions that are being asked as people are starting to consider
legislation that they want to present in the session. Um, anyway, that's all that I really wanted to share with you. I'm going to finally ask, Madame President, for permission to receive language and updates from our board members by January 3rd so that a final draft of our
agenda can be prepared and presented at our January study session for an approval action. >> Yes, I agree with that. >> Thank you. >> Um, before we hand it over to Mr. about it. If I may, Director Kenworthy, >> typically what we do and and Director Kenworthy did a really like amazing job
of pointing you to last year's we will typically bring Mr. Badich will typically come present to us quite a bit during the session. He's our lobbyist for a lack of better word. Um and he he is um a resource to all of us. So I want you all to know that. Additionally, we
as a board approve what we believe to be important to the district so that as director Kenworthy said, our legislators know it's important to us. We do act as a board in that capacity. Um, and I think that's a really important thing that we we do this together. So, I just wanted to add
that coloring. Back to you, Director Kenworthy. >> Thank you. Well, now I'm going to hand it over to our lobbyist, Mr. about it um to share with us a little bit about how he operates and what to expect from this upcoming session. >> Thank you, Madame Chair. Um thank you,
director, for sitting with me. It's always nice to have company here. Can be very lonely at this table sometimes. Um and congratulations to the new board members. Um I have represented Jeffco for a number of years and I'm proud to represent the Jefferson County um school
district. Um, typically during the session once bills start to get introduced, what I have done in the past is send the board members to their Jeffco emails a weekly legislative update. I try not to keep it any longer than three pages. Each week, anything
that is new for that week, I put in green so you can scan down and see if there are new bills introduced or if a bill has moved from one house to another. I try where I can to put in any positions taken by case and CASBY. If the school board weighs in officially on
a bill, I list that as well. Um, as bills are disposed of, either if they're killed or sent to the governor, I move them all down the page down to the bottom. I can do that again this year, I can start it, and if anybody wants me to do anything differently, I work at your
pleasure. Um, years ago, I would send a 50page report, which was a download every week. didn't seem like that would get a lot of audience, but that's what that bill that board wanted. Um, you will also get periodic updates from Bowage and Castle. That's our general
email update. For example, tomorrow we're going to get the update on the state revenues, the quarterly revenue estimates. It's a very important meeting tomorrow because they will have the updated projections of local property tax revenues. Um, in September they thought local property tax revenues
would be down because of some changes in the assessment rates that the state made in August 2024. But there is hope, cross our fingers, that maybe the property taxes are going to show a slight increase, which would really help the rest of the state budget because that would show more local
support for K12. We need less backill at that point and so on. But I will send an email out. I have all of your five email addresses in the system now. You'll get that from Bowage and Castle um tomorrow. Um in terms of and then as um Madame
Chair said, I do come out regularly during the session and can answer any questions. Um and if anybody has any other questions or you'd like to meet for coffee and just talk, just let me know because I'm happy to do that. Um in terms of 2026,
um there are a couple of things that I know are going to be coming. There's a bill coming from Adams 12 on streamline streamlining state regulations related to child care. Right now, districts are under both the Colorado Department of Early Childhood and the Colorado
Department of Education for oversight for some of these programs. Let's see if we can make it work better. So, that bill um will be coming. There's also a bill coming from Disability Law Colorado with the downsizing of the federal US Department of Education. in Disability
Law Colorado wants to put in some of the requirements that typically have been overseen by the US Department of Education into the state. Um, taking existing federal regulations that dictate the 504 protections for students in K12 and putting them in at the state level. That one has already gotten a lot
of push back. Um, but we still haven't seen a bill draft on that. >> Mr. Bowage, can I interrupt you? >> Yeah. >> Do you know if they plan a funding mechanism for that? I am not aware of any funding mechanism at this point. >> Thank you. >> Um any bill that requires new funding is
going to have a very tough time getting through this year. Um CASBY is working on a bill regarding residential treatment homes. You may remember a few years ago there was a home that opened in North Glenn very near a school. Um these were for people with offenses um
that involved children. The state then closed it. Um the city of North Glenn and um certain school districts want to put those protections into statute. Um that one will be a big fight. Um there uh case is working on a couple of
different things. Last session there was there's been a lot of debate over enrollment averaging in the last few years. Um right now we are this year fiscal year 2526 is the last scheduled year of four-year enrollment averaging. we move to
three-year averaging next year depending on certain conditions. Um there was a suggestion made last year that instead of enrollment averaging we look at a different type of a formula a smoothing factor for districts that are in decline. So that case has been organizing that and we'll come back with
recommendations in January. In addition, case has been working on something regarding um at risk students and charter schools and if that formula should be modified. Again, that will be unveiled in January. >> Yeah.
>> Um I just want to say based on my conversations with uh front-range superintendent um and I've got I think I went to one of those smoothing effect meetings very early on when they first started, but I haven't been connected to them recently. We are strong advocates that they
maintain four-year averaging like cards stop. And so that's what the superintendent believe is the best solution. I also think that's going to be really hard given that the state has to find money to try to balance the budget. And so I'm very curious what is
going to come out of case on this smoothing effect. Um and I and we'll be running some numbers and we can share with the board what would it look like to do this smoothing effect model versus a four-year average versus a three-year average. So, I think that that can help the board decide where it wants to um
land its advocacy. And I mean, like I said, superintendent like just keep the four-year averaging, but at the same time, if the state can't do that, you like what's your fallback position kind of a question. Um, but I think given how strong my colleagues are on that issue, I believe their boards probably are as
well. Um, and so something for you to maybe connect with your board colleagues if you ever talk to them in other districts. Um, one final bit of um, financial information has to do with the specific
ownership taxes. Um, the local taxes that the districts collect are overwhelmingly property taxes. Um, there is however a portion of the specific ownership taxes that each district collects. Those are added to the property taxes that constitutes the
local share. Once the local share is determined for each district, the state comes in and applies the backfill, the state general fund. Um, if districts collect more local share, that obviously decreases the need for state backfill. Um, it was brought to the attention of
the joint budget committee that some of the specific ownership taxes have not been included in the school finance calculations. And if the state were to recognize all of the specific ownership taxes, which are the fees that you pay for your auto registration, if the state
were to recognize all of those statewide, the state could save $219 million. Well, if you're a budget committee and you're facing an $800 million shortfall and somebody comes in and says, "I can save you $200 million if you make this change." That gets a lot of attention.
Now having said that, that would be a cut for those districts of $219 million. It wouldn't affect all districts. It would affect those districts with male levy overrides like Jeffco. The districts, the 80 or so districts that don't have me levy overrides would not
be affected by this. But it has a lot of discussions to to continue on this one before it would be considered. But it certainly is something that the joint budget committee will look at, I'm sure, given the magnitude of the state funding shortfall. >> And I'll just say that we're um that
would be a big challenge for us and it would be a big challenge for all districts um that have these even larger malevy overrides than we do. So it's going to be very unpopular with district leaders and hopefully boards of education. Um >> Yeah.
>> So good luck. >> Yeah. Who is who is pushing that one? Mr. Bowich, >> that was raised by the joint budget committee staff. So, at this point, it is just one of the options the joint budget committee could consider to balance the overall state budget. Um,
what is concerning is that they could do that and still claim to not reinstate the negative factor. But that concludes my over in informational overview and happy to respond to questions.
>> Board, any questions, comments you'd like to bring up, Mr. Gibbons? >> Well, yes. So, um, being new to this role, I am learning about some of the different challenges the district faces. And one of the challenges that I had some awareness of before stepping into this
role, but I'm certainly certainly learning more about it, is instances where the district is unable to get information from other government agencies, whether that's other school districts, law enforcement, prosecutor's offices, or other entities that would allow this district to make better
decisions. Decisions that in some instances would improve safety. And so I do not take this to be a a simple issue that we can fully flesh out this evening, but I think that we need to have discussions about possible policy changes at the state level to have more robust reporting requirements or
different types of requirements for um other agencies to be more communicative with peer agencies about issues that directly impact safety. Yeah, >> I would support that as well. Any
other thoughts, comments? Um, the only other thing I would ask for as a watch list item is I know CA has shared with us that they are considering a funding a state level funding mechanism for schools as well. Um, and so I would just ask that we follow that.
>> Yeah. Um to that point, um you may have read that there is a group of organizations led by the Bell Policy Center that is trying to get a graduated income tax on the statewide ballot for November. Um it
was their first effort was rejected by the title board. The second one was approved by the title board. We certainly expect it to be challenged at the title board and if it is upheld um not the challenge but if the original title board hearing is upheld and it moves forward I would expect a challenge
at the Supreme Court as well. But the fact that it was upheld at the title board and approved by the title board was significant in my mind. Um they still have to go out and get the signatures if they get that far in every state senate district across the state
which is a very tall order. Um, but that would provide two to three billion dollars of new revenue that is outside of Taber if ultimately approved. >> Was that billion with a B? >> Billion with a B outside of Taber. Um,
the way they have structured it and that's led by former Jeffco legislator Chris Degree Kennedy who many of you probably know. Um, I know that Bell Policy Center has been talking with CEA and I don't know if CA is part of that coalition or working on a different um,
measure. >> Director Henworthy. >> Um, my understanding is that one of the other mechanisms is to remove the Taber cap and it sounds like that's that's a different approach. >> Yeah. um then that's the one that I think that CA may be
um supporting. But I think there's a lot of both and conversation here um as well as being strategic with how many things we place on the ballot in front of our electorate. >> Yeah. And there are a number of other ballot measures that are proposed for
next year that would either divert state revenues to certain programs or cut income taxes. So next year the voters will have a full choice I imagine. >> All right. Any other questions for Mr. Bowage? Superintendent Derland. >> I just want to put one other issue on
the table that I've uh that's on the board's legislative agenda from last year and I would be remiss and not doing uh my job as representative of our school leaders if I don't bring it up. And that is some revisions to the requirement of every teacher being
evaluated every year. Um I feel strongly that that needs to be revised and our principles um would have and our teachers as well would have you know we always have this question about what can be taken off the plate. Um I I really do
think we need to go back into every three years. Um if a teacher is struggling they can always be put on evaluation um on an off year. Uh but I do think that and I've and I've some legislators have said to me that they're interested in this. Um and I just want to advocate
that it would be a huge uh pressure relief for our school leaders and our teachers if some of that was um eased up and I and I think there are some legislators thinking about that. So if the board is interested in that, it could be an interesting thing to include once again on your platform.
>> Thank you, Superintendent Derlin. >> And that would be exactly the type of bill I would highlight. if it gets introduced. Yeah. Yeah. >> Um I also wanted to remind our board members that um our Jeff Co sheriff has
mentioned working on some legislation around um timelines for disclosing information from social I think from social media folks. And so that's other legislation
that I would we may want to um support once it's introduced and it doesn't have to be part of our legislative agenda, but that's just another thing to be on the lookout for because that's a local effort to address some of the
complications that that um our sheriff experienced in response to the Evergreen shooting. >> Mr. Gibbons, >> I wanted to say two things. First, I wanted to just state on the record I agree with Superintendent Dorland's statement about changing the timeline on teacher evaluations. I think that makes
a lot of sense. Two, I I think you know, director Kenworthy's comment made me think that is it perhaps worth on our legislative agenda differentiating between items that the board is actively supporting that is things we want to actively advance and then other items such as that one which after some discussion we may want to support if it
comes up but not necessarily or maybe necessarily put it put our full weight behind it. So my understanding is that for our initial legislative agenda that we're giving at the beginning of the legislative session that we remain open to language that says we support um
efforts to increase revenue for public education at that sort of level and that leaves us available then to weigh in as legislation is introduced. Um, and we can often take a position that is either fully support this or support with
amendments or we don't support it. Um, and those can be conversations, but usually we get to that point once the legislation has been actively introduced. Right now, a lot of our conversation has been around things we've heard are going to be introduced. But until they actually are active and we have the language that we can look
through, um it's hard for us to take any of those positions in our initial legislative agenda other than sort of broad um language similar to what's in the in the document from last year. >> Is that Did I do
>> Yeah. >> Anything else? >> Any other Oh, any other questions from the board? >> Thank you, Mr. Badich. Thank you. Oh, I'm sorry. Yep. So, I'm curious about the streamline streamlining the child care bill. Is
that um streamlining it with state requirements versus the district requirements? And does that include some cost savings to the district if it was passed? Um at this point the concept is to try
and get um the child care solely overseen by the department of education in the state. Right now you have dual um oversight from the department of early childhood and the department of education and sometimes um those don't always they're not always
consistent. So if we can give it all to the Department of Education, there would hopefully be a bunch of administrative efficiencies, some savings, but it's more just the administrative side of things. That's the intent from Adams 12.
And it's also helpful when we can see the full language of some of these bills. It definitely can take a different turn once we can get into the language. So, okay. All right. Thank you, Mr. Badich. Thank you, Director Kenworthy. Look forward to
seeing you regularly, Mr. Bodich. All right. For our next item of study, I'm very excited to um have our capital asset advisory committee come join us for an update and dialogue on recent planned capital investments within the district as well as the ongoing work of
the capital asset advisory committee or the CAC. We welcome you all to come join us at the table. Make sure we have enough seats. All right, welcome everybody. Um, we have reserved uh 30 minutes for this update. Please do save some time for us
at the end of your presentations for questions. Um, before I turn it over to our presenters, we would ask you to please introduce yourselves when we do. Is there anything you'd like to add, Superintendent Doran? >> Uh, thank you, President Applegate. I want to thank our committee members in particular for the time that they spend
uh serving on this very important committee um overseeing some of our capital assets and helping us make decisions with important input uh both from uh community members as well as sometimes subject matter experts in the industry. Um and that's very helpful for
the committee. Um I also want to say it's very nice to see you all again. It's nice to bookend my day with you. Uh, I was with these committee members and actually everyone at the table. Mark, I don't think you were there. You were there. I'm sorry. I saw you and I remember you. I promise. Um, I uh I just
want to say that I I did start my day with uh everyone at this table, including Mark, especially Mark um at Fletcher Miller uh in the new building that we are building for our students, our Fletcher Miller students are our Fletcher Miller Mustangs. And it was a
really special morning. Uh so it's nice to see you guys here this evening. And with that, Mr. Gatlin, I'm going to let you kick us off. >> Great. Thank you very much. Uh, and first, I did want to introduce uh, everyone that's at the table here with me. Uh, first to my left, uh, Mr. Greg
Avdikian, who is our, uh, operations uh, and strategy project manager, uh, Mark Streo, who is our director of uh, construction and facilities. And then we are we are very uh appreciative to be joined by three of our CAC members uh
who we're excited that you'll be able to hear from tonight. We have uh Mr. Eric Luger on the end, uh Miss Heather Gasper in the middle, and Tom Murray uh closest to me. And you'll have a little bit of time with them in a moment. Um but we really appreciate them taking time to
join us at the table this evening. Let me see here. Oops. Here we go. So, the the uh topics that we wanted to chat with the board about tonight were just reviewing capital investments in our facilities and um this is a bit of a higher level
presentation, but we're happy to answer uh answer any questions that you have. Uh discuss capital projects and planning and and kind of what are the types of projects that we're investing in our facilities right now and and how do we determine what those projects are? uh talk about the capital budget uses. You
heard from uh uh Miss uh Copelan and Miss Rosario earlier about uh the capital reserve fund and maybe some of the sources related to that. We're going to focus mostly on the uses of our capital reserve and and then like I said
earlier uh get an update from our CAC members that are joining us up here at the table. So looking at just capital investments in facilities in general and where we are, uh we're concluding our 2018 capital improvement program, uh which was essentially our 2018 bond
program, uh that totaled uh about $778 million in capital investments. And I know Miss Copelan mentioned this this earlier. The uh the initial uh capital improvement budget was was about $836 million, but the board voted in June of
2025 to really reallocate $58.8 million of that um just into our capital fund um based on us not needing uh two new school builds that were initially contemplated when that program was developed. uh majority of our final
projects that we have in the program are in closeout and are mostly just related to uh furniture, fixtures, and equipment projects. So, we're just, you know, I'm I'm anxious to say we're done. Uh we're close out. Um we're not done until those are all closed out, but we're we're very
close. Uh and so since then the the focus uh of our capital programs and I wanted to just call out that we previously had referred to them as mini programs. Um there there was just some confusion around the naming convention with that. So we're just calling them
our capital programs. Uh our 2024 25 capital program consisted of about $10 million in investments. And this was coming off the tail end of the 2018 CIP where we had seen considerable investments out of that program in our
facilities. So that's why this number uh was a little bit less. And then 2526 the the current year program we are planning for about $23 million in investments uh in our facilities. >> Jump in Mr. Streo.
>> All right. >> Well, good evening everybody. Um, as we talk about the capital programs and kind of the planning, of course, as is as is typical, the priorities for the capital planning is largely determined uh with input from our facilities team, our
maintenance teams, um, data informed through our work order system, and of course, uh, deficiencies that we are aware of. So, that's just a little bit of of how what goes into the planning. The slides that you see in front of you are are taken from the report that we
provide for the capital asset advisory committee monthly. Um and they just showcase some examples of the type of work that is being done. These are all current um uh capital program year. Uh you see things like districtwide paving uh districtwide mechanical uh upgrades
to things such as chillers and boilers um and then roofing. those major infrastructure pieces. My computer won't control that one. Okay, so just a little bit more detail. Um Jeff mentioned the 2425 capital
program investments. Um some of the types of things, mechanical systems, HVAC upgrades, boiler uh replacements, chiller installations. Uh always a focus on safety and security. uh site and structural work, things such as paving, roofing, uh retaining walls, that type
of thing. And then there's always a small project allocation. Uh think about items like bleacher replacement, playground replacement. Um and not to repeat, but right about that $10 million figure. And the link there will take you to the complete list of of uh projects
that were included in that program. Um also a report that is provided to the uh advisory committee leg. Hey okay uh 2526 capital program. Of course this is what is currently
ongoing. Uh as of right now we are looking at 45 uh projects in this program. um all of which fall into the categories of major infrastructure uh safety and compliance uh technology. We're looking at some things like uh uh door access,
card system access, um some necessary upgrades in the district. And then one thing to call out that is a little bit different in this report is we are now establishing uh both estimating and program contingency as line items in the reporting. Um and as Mr. Allen pointed
out uh right at $23 million right now. Uh there again the link can be uh will link you to the reports that are provided to the capital asset advisory committee. Um also a little bit of an aster there. This is this is individual kind of carved out separate from a
maintenance budget that exists within our central department um that covers existing repairs for for smaller items things that don't qualify as capital improvements. So >> Mr. can I interrupt you? Do we have a dollar threshold that separates what's
considered capital versus not? >> That is an excellent question. We have some guidance for a dollar threshold. It's more about the um the duration of the asset and how long it's going to serve the district.
>> Thank you. Sorry for interrupting. >> And so I I did want to just highlight uh the uses of capital funds over time. And this is uh a slide taken from some of our previous financial presentations that the board has received. They really
show what has what has our capital spending looked like over the last 13 years. And you see that uh as as far back as that first bar 2012 is that thank you 2012. Uh quite quite a bit below our historical
average of around a hundred million 105 million dollars annually. And and this is this is a typical a typical life cycle that you'll see school districts live where uh you're you're living you're living in uh a a capital investment world where you're deferring
maintenance. We pass the 2018 bond the CIP and then our investments spike and then they come back down when we complete those projects. And so you know we are we are projecting uh the the you know next year uh to come down below
that threshold considerably. I'll get to that here in a moment. Uh but you can see uh historically uh and these numbers just adjusted for inflation uh you know what what those totals have been and what the different categories are that we spend. Uh majority of that though you
know almost on average just under hund00 million is in facility improvements and facility construction and replacement. And so to to tie into you know we that has been our historical spin and there's
a few different ways we can calculate what should we be spending in capital every year and uh I know Miss Copelan has also mentioned uh you know a certain metric calculating you 2% of our replacement value of our facilities which also backs into about hund00 million is what we should be spending
annually in facilities which is nice that it matches to a 13-year trend to show that is what we have been spending in our facilities. But when we look at uh last year and uh the forecast for this year as far as our
uses, you can see that uh for 2425 capital related activity um was 65.3 in total and about 54.8 was in facility improvements and new construction. And then for forecasted for this year uh
we're at a total of activity of 57.2 million. 40.6 six is being forecasted in facility improvements and new construction. And so that does and and Miss Copeland talked about this earlier uh talked about deferring maintenance when we're falling below that hund00 million threshold. We are deferring
maintenance in our facilities. And so you this this just illustrates uh we are starting to fall below that. We saw that last chart that showed investments above when we were in the middle of our 2018 CIP and we're starting to fall below that. And uh as Miss Copeland also
mentioned, this is requiring us to use a capital reserve fund balance in order to um even fund at this level right now. And so with that, uh I do want to turn it over to our CAC members and I'm going
to have Mr. Avdikian introduce. >> Hi. Yeah, good evening. So, um I would just again we're very gracious for our CAC members coming especially in this extraordinary week of wind and uh public safety power outages um as we adjust to a new normal. I know this has impacted
us all. So, thank you for coming out in light of all the challenges and spending some time with us. Um, I'd love to have uh Tom, Heather, and Eric each of you just first introduce yourselves and talk about your connection to CAC, and then um we can move into each of you um
sharing what you prepared to bring and present to the board tonight. >> All right. Um I'm Tom Murray. Um I'm an unusual member of the khaken that I've been
working on this for since probably the late 90s. Um 1990s that's how old I am. Um got onto the CAC I think back in the
back when we deferred a lot of maintenance for a while and we a couple other things happened that were pretty tough. One of them was we lost a bond issue. And planning is great, but losing
is awful and things got into pretty bad repair and we were able to show people some of that. Um, and I just stayed with it. Um my my family is
always dedicated to the schools. It's probably the most important asset that we have in our county. And um so anyway, that's how I got involved and I've been doing that ever since,
watching over um bond issues and visiting with people in the uh public and trying to make sure that we had proper capitalization for the school district. And
it's going to be a tough tough go. So, we'll talk about that later, but that's how I got started. >> It's a lot of microphones. >> You may want to make sure one of them is off. We're getting a little bit of a echo. All right. I'm Heather Gasper. I have
been a member. >> Miss Gasper, can you like eat the microphone? Yeah. Thank you. >> Hello. Heather Gasper. been a member of the CAC since um 2021. Feel like a newbie member here compared to some of my colleagues.
And uh I became involved I've lived in Jeff Co since 2008. I'm raising my two children here and I'm a commercial real estate attorney. So, I thought that this would be a good fit for that skill set
and my expertise. Um, I was definitely, you know, it's a it's a huge learning curve to learn all the acronyms and um the way that things work, but just generally um have have really enjoyed learning and
and communicating to my community about how decisions are made at the CAC. So, I'm Eric Luger, proud dad of twins uh that are freshman at Evergreen High School. Um
my background is in aviation. I'm a retired Army aviator and after I retired I went into the aviation industry to include uh executive positions. I've
been on boards of directors um through that experience uh started with the CAC in 23. So I've seen a lot of these updates that we are have discussed in the presentation.
Um, I went to school in uh St. Louis County public schools and uh so kindergarten I was it was 1950. Most of these schools were built in the
20s and the 30s and they were dingy. They were not upgraded. Uh they were a very poor learning environment in some respects for that reason. That's part of the reason why I got uh accepted to be
on the CAC is so that I could help the school district with the improvements that that create an educational environment for the students that's pleasing that helps them to focus on
their studies and um get from one class to the next class because the the hallways are wide enough and so on and so forth. my experience with the CAC and in reviewing what we've done with uh improvements and maintenance over the
past few years uh has been exemplary. I think um I think we're we're uh on the verge of uh maybe the best school district in Colorado.
All right. They they've asked us to maybe a lot of years would a lot of you are pretty new to this position. Um I looked on the internet and
roughly got 85,000 students and you know that and maybe 10,000 employees. Um, it's a pretty big organization and that's a pretty big responsibility that y'all have taken on. I think next year you're going to spend
a billion dollars roughly and the capital assets of the district are somewhere around 5.3 billion. It's a lot to take care of. Um, my brother is a aviator as well and a
couple rare times in my life I got to fly with him. And I think that I I always kind of wanted to say to him, you know, it's only just you and me. And maybe you ought to show me the gauges that I ought to watch just in
case you vapor lock. and uh we have to do something to deal with that. And so that's what I was going to the things that over those years have concerned me and have concerned the CAC the most I
think are backlogs in capital needs. And right now priority one backlog is about $50 million. And those are all things that you're going to want to
watch pretty carefully because those are all things that it says directly on the statement on the sheet. Those could shut down a school and make it unusable. And so then you got a lot of other problems when that happens. So almost
all of those all of that backlog is HVAC and uh roofs. So, I guess if if there was one thing that I'd say, watch for
watch for leaks and watch for kids that you know are hot and cold. Um, that part is pretty simple, but it's uh it's a big responsibility to make sure you allocate enough to deal with that in
5.3 billion worth of assets. Um, I'll be honest with you. I looked at the plan that was on your budget page and my own personal opinion, not not an opinion of anybody but me, is that if you
execute that plan over three years, it will be like arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Um, your fund balance is scheduled to go to four million dollars from hund00 million.
Um, I don't I personally don't see how you can do this without additional funds in in capital spending. And that's just taking care of what you
have now. And there are a lot of other things that will get scheduled to get done because they need to be done for educational reasons and other important reasons. But
um if I had any advice, I would say focus on those things that can really harm you in that in that time. But you're going to have to probably, in my opinion, find a way to
find some capital funds for this school district. And it was pretty easy in the days in a way, except losing a bond issue will really hurt you. But it was pretty easy when when the school district was growing.
Right now, that's not the case. And so it's a much more difficult uh equation. And um I think that's the reason for this this group is to keep a
a little history, understand kind of where we've been and to help all we can in communicating because you're going to you're going to have honestly you're going to have to plan. You're gonna have to sell it to
probably 150 to 200 million voters, some some or I mean thousand, I'm sorry, a million voters in Jefferson County. You have to identify them. You have to know what they're thinking. And it's a it's not an
easy sale, but you have to break it down in such a way that that they understand it. And but people in Jefferson County, I found, are pretty good as long as you prove to them you got a plan, you know where you got know where you want to go,
you got a budget, and it's well allocated, and you got somebody watching over it. And so those are the things that I would say come to my mind that as that would be important if I was sitting in your seat
and trying to take in what you're trying to take in which is a lot. So um that that's probably it for now. Move on.
Well, I think I'd like to talk a little bit just about communication between this committee and the board. We've got Michelle who attends our meetings and is a great conduit for us. Um, but I this
is such a this is such an important piece of the whole program um within the district that I just would like to really acknowledge that we want to have a two-way conversation with the board that
we want to be available to you to discuss questions, highle ideas um and just be available to make your lives easier. here when you're going to be having some, you know, turbulent waters
to navigate in these these next couple of years. You know, we're coming off of um a period of, you know, where we've had funding and I feel that we're really, as
reflected by the rest of the members, you know, we we really are kind of going to be triaging at this point in many ways. So, I'd like to just offer our assistance and open dialogue with
you. Um, for me, I again I mentioned this I'll be going into my sixth year. I still feel very much like I'm learning a lot. So, um, fleas really any, you know, anything
that you'd like to discuss, talk about, high level, detailed. We've got members that have been around for, you know, a long time and and everything in between. So,
that's my main message. Um, it's really one of the I think really important missions of being a member of this com committee is to be able to communicate with the public about the decision- making and
about the reality of um the numbers that we're up against. So, I think that's been that's that's just an important component of a citizen being a a part of this committee and why I was interested
in it. Um yeah, there's just there's a lot of community perceptions on what should be, you know, what schools getting what improvements. Um how we're disposing of our of our
property is the decision being made. uh that was made in order to to get rid of some of our properties. That's been a a huge topic and will continue to be a topic that we'll
bring up and bring to your attention as uh the months go on in conjunction with the property disposition committee. And with that, I'll probably leave it to Eric.
>> Thank you. >> Welcome, new board members. Nobody said that yet. Um, I'd like to buttress what um Tom was saying about maintenance, so I'll do it thusly. Um, I was also
trained as an aircraft maintenance officer, and we have three levels of maintenance on aircraft. We have what's called on condition and I can illustrate that very simply by saying you don't change the alternator on your car until
it quits. Right? And then we have preventive which is the daily inspection of the aircraft, the pre-flight process of inspecting it etc etc. and then uh
periodically very largecale maintenance procedures that literally take the aircraft completely apart for inspection. The last is predictive. Um, and I asked this question of Mark's predecessor in one of the meetings, I
don't know, a year and a half ago to find that we are doing a good job of predicting in a sense when something like the big ticket items are going to need to be replaced in an in in in
budgeting in advance of that. And I would encourage the board to encourage us to continue that process. Um I think that that serves the student the students very well because again that
that that educational environment that they're in as long as they're warm or they're cool or whatever the case may be, the roof doesn't leak, etc. uh is very important in terms of how we
budget. Um I'm also on the budget reduction committee and we've talked about how we don't want the educational opportunity to be the focal point of budget reduction but rather it's going
to be perhaps other cost cutting emphasis. The other part that we talked about is standing up a um mille committee which I've volunteered to be on beginning in January
and I'm very anxious to um help with that as much as I possibly can. I do have a business background in accounting and uh etc at the executive level of of aviation.
Uh so just encouragement to keep the focus on ensuring that that educational environment is is continuing. >> Great. Thank you uh for all all of those
words and insights. And uh we do want to turn it over now to questions the board might have or if you would like to to dialogue more, ask questions with our CAC members who again we appreciate being up here with us. >> Board members, >> Director Kenworthy,
>> last Thank you all for being here. Thanks. Um I don't even know what it looks like outside right now, so I'll find out when we are finally done with this meeting. But I appreciate you being here tonight. Um, Mr. Luger, I want to lift up what you were mentioning before about um, paying
attention to on condition, preventative, and predictive. That was you? Yeah. Yeah. Um, considerations because I I also wrote down in my notes then I put a star down and I put emergency as an additional
uh, expenditure. But it occurs to me and I just wanted to say it out loud for all of us that you get to emergency considerations when you have maybe not been attending to the preventative and the predictive care. Is that accurate in your
understanding? >> Yes. >> Yeah. >> Um and and I've been involved with another school district down in Texas and every every time a large project emerged, it was an emergency. They
hadn't planned ahead for anything and they had to borrow from this pot of money to pay for it because it was critical like boilers and Yeah. >> Yeah. Um I appreciate you framing the
work of the CAC and the work of the um management of our assets in that in that manner. That was very direct and crystal clear for me. So I just wanted to say thank you for that. Um, and I also agree that we need to raise
money and capital to take care of our assets. Is um also helpful to have the number 5.3 billion in assets. That's probably not a number I would have been able to say before this presentation. Uh, we do need to take care of it. And beyond HVAC and roofs, there's there's a
lot of things within classrooms, right, that are going to end up being deferred that are annoyances for our educators and for our students. Um, and those start to erode the learning environment. And so we do desperately need to
increase our revenue um with an MLO or with other and with all sorts of other creative ideas because those types of impacts in a classroom absolutely impact how well our staff is
able to work with our students and how much our students are able to focus on the learning in front of them. So, I wanted to just lift that up that it is incredibly important and we do need to increase our um revenue so that we can adequately cover what we already have in
backlog. Thank you so much for your clarity in your comments this evening. directors. Director um thank you to Tom and Heather and Eric for explaining that and also our staff
here. Um, one of the things or perspectives I think to keep in mind that's important is um, I specifically came from the Sheridan Green community and what we saw in our neighborhood was a lot of money being invested at our school over a million dollars and then
the next year it was shut down. Um, so I think going into those communities, specifically the ones who saw these um these renovations being done and then the next year learning that their
schools were being um shut down. I think going into those communities, talking to the families in those communities, um reaching out to those neighborhoods specifically can really possibly elevate this cause. I do know um there was a lot of there's just a lot of misinformation
I think um in those specific communities and I think it was like 21 schools. So I think um those would be good people that can come over and be allies if we can get our communication you know very uh
clear on what we need for our schools. Thank you >> Director Mooneyian. might be a good time to revisit the question you asked earlier of Mr. Gatlin. So, I might um prep you to ask that now.
>> So, earlier it was um brought up that we're taking a look at some improvements with regards to Evergreen High School. Uh so, if you could just kind of walk us through what you guys have been looking into, what are the options, the timelines, that would be lovely. >> Yeah, thank you for uh teing that one
up. Um and so, uh you know, in dealing with the the tragedy that we experienced at Evergreen High School, um we've really taken um really a a a short-term, a medium-term, and a long-term approach as specifically
as it relates to the doors. you know, the doors became a very serious issue with us taking a trauma-informed approach and how we could be sensitive to what the school and the school community needed, but also knowing that, um, we wanted to get our school back and
our school community back together, uh, when it was appropriate. And so, uh, having said that, the initial the initial response, the the short-term response was, uh, uh, as Superintendent Dorland mentioned earlier, you know, to to cover markings that were that were made in response, uh, uh, to clearing
the facility in and Sharpie marker uh, to cover those with posters with Evergreen High School branded posters. So, that we knew that and we knew we knew all along that was going to be a short-term solution. That wasn't the long-term solution. And we started to explore um the long the long-term solution of potential door replacement.
And um we also uh we needed a number at the time uh because we're also applying for a grant uh to cover that cost. And so I do want to make sure that that's understood and then that's still happening. Um and so that that was our best estimate at that point in time of
what the cost would be. It might it might come in under that. uh we're anticipating it not coming in over that uh if we do a full door replacement. That's the long-term approach. But we also knew that the posters might not last. Uh you know, they the longevity of a poster in a high school on a door we
were concerned about. Um so we were exploring different options around um a vinyl option, a branded vinyl option, uh painting the doors. Uh and I'm we've actually been engaged with uh a contractor uh looking at we it started
with with painting the doors. We were actually working with the school community and with uh the the leadership team at the school around painting the doors uh that evergreen uh blue I believe it was. Uh and so Mr. Streo. Actually, he and I, while we were touring Fletcher Miller this morning,
had a a side conference because the the contractor who was going to be helping us out was going up to the site to do a proof of concept of that. And he actually proposed that he might be able to do some finishing work to the doors um that could restore the door to the
previous state. And that's what we're exploring right now. And so we're looking at could we could we do some refinish work that could get the doors back to what they looked like prior. if that happens, um that's the long-term solution also. Uh and so so we're in the
middle of working with him to understand what our options are and what's going to work on all the doors, what's going to work on some of the doors. We need we want a uniform approach. Um and uh Mr. Streo, correct me if I'm wrong on timing, but we were actually looking to to potentially start some of that work
over winter break. >> That's correct. >> So uh I do want the board to know that this is something we've been working on actively for a while. Um and it's um there's just been these different these different approaches around the immediate response knowing that we might
need a middle solution and the long-term response. And what we're finding is the middle solution could turn into the long-term response. It would be uh it would be very very economically advant advantageous for us to do that approach compared to the you know the million
dollar $ 1.5 million number for the door replacement. So, that's where we are right now to see uh what can what progress can be made. Uh we weren't expecting all of the doors to be refinished over the break, but if they, you know, looking at doing a big uh a big chunk of the doors over winter
break, possibly the next batch over spring break, uh trying to just continue to make progress um and just trying to get that school back and their doors back in a place that that's comfortable for them. So, I hope that's that's helpful. givens >> to to that end though and with this
issue to what extent has sort of the expediency with with which things can be done been considered as you're weighing all these options because I I I'm aware of right the immense challenges right just how many doors there are in a high school but I also I just can't fathom
walking to school every day and seeing marks that would remind people of that and so I I think that that expediency really needs to be taken into account and a short-term solution if it can be you know done like that needs to really be looked at
>> and that and that that that's a that's a good point and you know the marks aren't visible right now I just want to make sure that's understood too we still have posters up um but certainly the posters can be a reminder as well and so um we are we are trying to look for you know
what's something that can be done quickly what's something can be done um you know at scale in a short period of time and so we are we are anxious to see what kind of progress can be made over winter break and then um and then what's left and then kind of coming up with a game plan knowing that we have to do
this work outside and around of the school schedule and that's a complicating factor in this as well. >> Director Monian. So, just to kind of follow up on Director Gibbons um approach to his question. Um and I I appreciate the challenges that you guys
are facing with regards to these doors. And I just want to thank you guys for thinking so creatively on how can we approach and address this situation. What makes sense from a financial perspective, but also to to really get to the heart of the matter and address it for the students. But I'm just kind
of wondering listening here, are are we able to expedite that process? because it'd be great if we can get most of the doors done over the holiday break. Um, but I'm hearing that maybe there's some challenges with when school is in session. So, I just want to understand that a little bit better and how we can
address it. I mean, I think maybe Mark can talk more about like the project planning and weekend work or other things that might be possible, but um I know that I know that you all are trying to explore how quickly we can get things fixed. And so I'll let Mark jump in with
the details I think that are hot off the press from today. >> So the contractor we're working with was actually introduced to us um through the Evergreen Legacy Foundation, which we are eternally grateful to them for their support. Um the owner of the company is
also an Evergreen alum. So he is very vested in that community which to me carries a lot of weight um for his sense of urgency to to get this done. Um so the conversations that I've had with him um initial meeting with him was
November it was just before Thanksgiving the end of November um have evolved and we've been looking at at the process about can we paint it and what is the decision-m at the school level and what is their preference and you know is the
paint going to be a a trigger point just like the marks were potentially and so I think where we've landed now is that and that's part of the that's part the time that's gone into this um is that decision-making process. Um I will I will know a little bit more about the
project planning and the timeline um the availability of his crew after tomorrow. Uh we were emailing just earlier this evening that I'm going to meet him at the school tomorrow. Um he was there today um to provide uh what we're calling a proof of concept door so that we can take a look at what that finished
product will look like. Um, a little bit of of what I'm weighing is the long-term impact because the painting quite honestly can happen very very quickly. There is there is a chance that the painting could be accomplished nearly 100% over winter break if we
decide to go that route. Um, I have concerns over durability of the of the paint and what is that going to look like in a matter of a couple months down the road um in terms of touching up and and things like that. So he is now exploring the option of the refinishing and and and that's what we're going to
do um tomorrow. So that's kind of what's weighed into the the project planning phase. I do intend to talk to him about the size of his crew and the after hours work and and the weekend work. Um what I do know right now is that he has a team of 10 willing to work through that
holiday break um and if necessary expand into the um spring break period of time. Thank you. I I really appreciate that response and if there's anything that we can do to remove barriers or support in that work, please let us know. >> Thank you,
>> Director Kenworthy. I I have one other question just reflecting on um some things that we heard at public comment earlier this evening and I wanted to ask out of curiosity mostly. Um it's my understanding that we do have bulletproof proof glass in the district.
Um, but I'm curious about the scope of that and also interest in public interest in providing coverage just for all of the windows in one school. What would that be like? And then all of the schools in the district.
I'm curious what you have to say. Yeah, anytime that we talk about the ballistic film for the windows, I I always want to put kind of a cautionary statement out there that there there is no such thing as bulletproof film. Um
we do have um an 8 mil uh 3M product on every entry vestibule in the entire district. Um that is a shatterresistant um film. It is designed as a time barrier to prevent entry into a building. um we have that at the entry points of
all the doors and we are currently working through what is our desired state districtwide. Um I think that kind of that holistic approach is the way to go with with a project like that. Um but again it it's it's a resistance. It's
it's not a ballistic uh grade of class. Does that answer your question? Yeah, I think I think that's helpful to know that we do have some measures in place, but that we want to try and manage expectations, right, from the products that we're using um as we communicate
with the public when they're asking questions. So, I appreciate the context and the description of the product we're using. Thank you. >> Any other questions? >> Well, further along those lines, right, that's existing products we have. Are
there products that we just don't have at all that have been looked at that that people are aware of? And again, I've worked in facilities where that are, you know, heavily protected in that way. And I just off the top of my I don't think it's something that's likely practical or cost-effective or easy to implement in a school. But I think it is
important for everybody to be able to speak with the community and understand the extent to which that's actually the case. You know, and and not knowing to me, even though I've been in buildings like that and worked in buildings like that, um not being able to say to the people that have suffered this tragedy or other families that are afraid of
suffering themselves to me not okay. like that we should at least be able to have an answer of saying, okay, this is this is what would be required or what's possible and why this is why it maybe isn't possible. >> So, yeah, I think that that speaks to that desired state for and we're kind of bridging into a little bit of safety and
security measures, but as it relates to the building specifically with with the window film. Um, to answer your question, I attended a conference last weekend, it feels like a month and a half ago. um where we we we looked specifically at all of these window
films and there there are some other products out there. Um 8 mil is really the educational standard that we're we're looking at right now. Um and so the question for me is to how far do we expand that? Do we go to every single entry door? Do we go to every window
below seven feet? Um what's the what's the just right stopping point for that? Um, our team has been working on inventorying the the current state in our district. We do have some buildings that have it on every entry point. The vast majority of
them, well, all buildings have it at the main entry point uh in the door glass. >> Um, I think it's a great question. All of these comments and questions are really um I think part of conversations
we have had as an internal team and in particular I think we might be sort of leaning into the next agenda item. Yeah, we'll represent >> a little bit. And I just want to say that um historically Jeffco has not necessarily had
um sort of a district-wide standard around certain things. And it's not just safety um building safety things. It's other items. And the the goal with our new
strategic capital master master master capital plan master strategic capital plan um is to make sure that we are establishing some standards. Um deciding and assessing where are we against those standards? Where do we where are we
there? Great check. Where are we not? Um what would it cost to get us there? How do we raise that money? Right? which is also then this conversation that we were having around making sure you can tell your story. You know, what do you need? What are you going to do with the funds?
How are you going to be accountable to it? And who's going to oversee and help hold the district accountable. So, I think that that's we can also continue this conversation as we talk about the strategic capital master plan. >> Yep. I'll I'll wrap us up. I just want to say thank you to our volunteers. Um
it's been an incredible opportunity to serve with you all for the last two years on the CAC. Um, I want to reiterate that these all are these are experts. I learn so much every time I go to a meeting and um I'm grateful for the history and that you all have dedicated
so much time to this because it really does matter. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for that. Um, and Mr. Murray, I don't think everyone anyone has ever told me we're rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, but I very much appreciate that statement. Um, so much
of this work is not sexy. It is. its heaters, it's HVAC, its roofs, it's the things that don't look pretty, but it really keeps our students safe, warm, and dry. And so, um, for that, I'm very grateful. The other thing I will say,
um, is that to our staff, thank you so much because, um, that week after the tragedy, we did get to go tour and this is a compliment, but Mark and Jeff, Mr. Stila, Mr. Gotland did not sit there in jackets and ties
and it was evident that they hadn't slept much and it was evident that they had been at that building for a whole week almost non-stop. And so, thank you for that. I know we said it before, but we'll keep saying it because it really does matter. Um, and Mr. Murray, we
actually have over 440,000 active voters in our amazing county now. And so, we have to convince all of them to help us to help us raise money. Um, but it it is uh this committee really is a conduit into the community in a way
that we can't be. And so I really appreciate the message of having that dialogue and that two-way conversation, especially as we enter some really challenging times. I know we can do it. Um, but this committee makes such an impact in that. So, just thank you so
much for being here and thank you for coming on a a late school night um with potentially bad winds out there. Um, we appreciate it. Thank you. It's >> our pleasure. >> All right. We are going to welcome our
friends on the strategic capital master plan to come join us. And Mr. Gatlin, are you staying with us at the table? Of course, Mr. Stillo. Um, so for our next item of study tonight, the board will receive an update on the strategic capital master plan, including the
development of this plan. We have allotted 45 minutes for the update and please reserve some time at the end for board questions as folks are getting settled in. Um, Superintendent Dorland, would you like to add any comments? >> I'd like to welcome our guests, which
will get introduced here in a minute and I want them to just get started. It's getting late and so want to keep the the momentum going for you guys here and for our guests. So, Mr. Gatlin, um, I'm not going to say much. I'm gonna say your name and hope you're ready. >> Perfect. I'm ready. Um, thank you. It's
uh double double duty night tonight. Um, and I I do want to introduce um our partners at the table who I'm really excited are going to be able to provide an update to the board tonight on the development of our strategic capital master plan. Um, and we have Nate Conramer from Perkins Eastman and Doug
Ibernathy from RT Architects. And before I turn it over to them though, I did want to to start with a little bit of a of a brief history and and why a strategic capital master plan uh and looking at kind of our last cycle of this. And in in 2016, our last facility
master plan uh was created and it provided the critical data and recommend recommendations. It informed the 2018 uh CIP or the 2018 uh bond program. And so in 2018, uh, voters approved the bond and it provided significant upgrades to
our facilities. Um, and after that passed in about 2022 to 2024, uh, we had our regional opportunities for thriving schools where uh, it was a response to the board of ed's request
for a comprehensive plan to ensure thriving schools and extraordinary student experiences. and that resulted in closures and consolidation of 21 schools over two years. Uh and the the point that you made earlier um is is part of that story is that investments
were made in facilities in some of in those facilities uh that we ended up closing and we know that that uh certainly is uh a frustration frustration to our communities and something we want to avoid moving forward and that's why I am excited about the approach that we're taking
with the development of this new plan. Uh so in 2024 and and this is when we started the work and certainly we'll live beyond that uh we're developing this new plan uh that will create long-term a long-term roadmap for capital investments and and I do want to
point out that what I think is the game changer is that this will consider important inputs to help ensure investments are aligned to critical needs in a future state. And as Mr. Murray said have a plan and know where you want to go. Um we're really
confident this this is going to provide that and really ensure that this is our roadmap um in an environment that uh is different than what we've experienced in the past where we have declining enrollment um that we're not we're not
really expecting the change. Um, so we are going to have to make decisions about facilities down the road. And we want to make sure that we're maximizing and making strategic investments in our facilities and not uh investing dollars into facilities that um uh that we might end up having to consolidate or close
down the road. We're not having those conversations now. Um, but I don't know, Superintendent Dorne, if there's anything you wanted to add to that, but >> yeah, I appreciate that and um, thank you for starting with the history. I arrived in the spring of 2021, so right smack dab in the middle of this thing.
Um, and by six to seven months into, you know, my first year, uh, Miss Copeland and I realized that we had, um, a small schools declining enrollment issue. At
that point, late 2021, we did stop investments in small schools. and I just picked a number and said any school under 250, pause, pause the investment. Um, and
then the board directed us after a very difficult last minute closure to do this more comprehensively. And so we continued that pause of of investments of capital funds into schools. And I will say we did strategically then the
money we saved on the schools the small schools that we did not invest in and unfortunately it was too late for some of the schools that had already received their investments. Um and and those schools you know benefited from those investments. There were kids in those buildings when the investments were put
in. Things like secured vestibules benefited kids for two to maybe three years. Um, so I'm not I'm I'm not going to admit that we would regret or not do those investments again because there were students in those buildings that benefited for a minute or two or three
depending upon when it was scheduled in the CIP program. Um, I am proud of the fact that we paused that the board pretty quickly gave us direction to comprehensively consider consolidation. um and that we did save millions of
dollars that would have been post late 2021 invested in small schools that would have then been closed as well. So we we and and um something we also didn't capture is that we repurposed we regrouped revised
and repurposed that funding probably plus some into the receiving schools. Um, and so we had, for example, Prospect Valley is a good example. We had just built a new school. We knew that if we consolidated schools into that building,
we might need an additional wing. We built the wing. Um, we had uh not Prospect Valley, but who got the music room? Come on, Mark. >> I can't remember. We had a school where music um and one other class was out in
a mobile. we built um an addition onto the school so that the music room could come in and have a proper space and be designed specifically for music. So while I I do agree that the district and we we tried to be public and responsible for the investments we made in closed schools, we owned that. We explained
that that was um you know not necessarily the best move that we've ever made, but the kids who were there at the time benefited and we've now re revised our plan and we are going to be investing in the receiving schools. So, a lot of noise in that like 2021 to 2024
period when we were stopping, revising, reinvesting, closing, consolidating. Um, and I know that was really, really difficult for our community. I know there's a lot of misunderstanding and a lot of um frustration that still exists out there. Um, I get that. Um, it is
also one of the reasons why when Jeff came to be our COO, he and I had a conversation around we don't want the district to not have a really comprehensive plan that not only thinks about what are the facility needs, right, of our of all the buildings um,
but what is the demographics saying about the buildings we actually need before we then start investing in them. And so that's what our partners are here to help us think through and they have been amazing and I'm so excited for you to meet them. So >> perfect. So we'll turn it over to them
and they can go through and provide you an update and then there'll be time at the end if you have questions. There's the clicker for you. How's that? All right. Uh nice to be here with you all. Good to see some familiar faces and great to meet the the
new board members. So, um again, my name is Nate Connie Kramer. We'll jump in here. Um want to get right to it. So, just a quick overview of everything. We'll get to we'll quickly touch on just at a high level um sort of the project uh coming to be, what the project goals
were, sort of what's guiding the work. um really digging into some of the data that is informing uh the process that we've been working on and then those deliverables that we're talking about in terms of how to you know formulate the plan and guide the district forward. Uh so starting from the top just quick
introductions say for another time made Connie Kramer uh great to be here with you all. My background is as an educator in K12 facility management and um yeah been working with Perkins Eastman um for a while now on mostly uh K12 planning
projects. I'll let Doug go from there. >> Yeah. So Doug Abernathy I'm a principal at RTA architects and um distinct we've been working with Perkins when Eastman for about five years but we have some other partners as you can you can see on the screen here. So Floy analytics has
been doing work with the district for a number of years um also and then ERS is also providing resources for the district over the last I don't know how many years but quite a few years. Our other partner is GH FIPS is a local general contractor that's been around
for about 75 years and I personally worked with GPS FIPS for about 20 plus years and they're providing some of the cost information for our team as we move through this process. >> Great. So we won't spend too much time just on who we are. Uh Perkinsman though
is a design and planning firm specialized in K12 um uh design and planning working mostly with um urban and large school districts. Um and Doug if you want to touch. >> Yeah. So RTA Architects start we're celebrating our 50th anniversary as a
firm here in Colorado. We worked with over 50 school districts across the state of Colorado. also very um familiar with this district which I've been working with for almost 20 years myself but uh districts all the way across the district and provide that local context and perspective as we work work through
this process. Um, so as I mentioned, and don't worry, I'm not going to go through each one of these uh logos here, but we work with large districts. Um, and I I do think it's important to point out, and we'll get to this, but some of the challenges that Jeffco is facing, especially as it
relates to declining enrollment, um, you know, are really common across and things that we're seeing across the nation with districts that we're working with, um, Boston, Milwaukee, you know, Oakland, it really across the boards, you have declining birth rates. um people sort of leaving the urban
environment and and really seeing that show up at the at the public school level. Um so just at the top wanting to talk about kind of the goals that we um sort of discussed with the project team from the start and have laid out um that's guiding the work. So wanting to
make sure that you know this project does have a comprehensive look um and and takes in a lot of that data. We know there's been some great work that the district has been doing recently. Um even as Doug mentioned Flo's boundary study um from a couple years ago and just the really in-depth um analysis
they did of the district at that point. So really happy to have them on the team as part of um you know keeping that work moving forward as well as some of the other work that different departments within Jeffco are doing. So really trying to make sure that this um project sort of builds on all that and takes it
into consideration rather than um you know potentially being redundant or repeating anything. Um second piece is just making sure that the tools we build are dynamic. Um we absolutely will you know deliver a final report but we like to pride ourselves on not just providing
a report that will eventually gather dust on a shelf but really providing tools that the district can use for years to come um that are userfriendly and easy to update. We are not software developers. So the tools and things that we build are you know as easy to update as a spreadsheet. And just making sure
that you know every year that new data can be put in and that the tools and sort of processes that we lay out can remain relevant and aren't just you know set as a point in time piece. Um and lastly just um as uh folks have been mentioning here is just really making
sure that this is a roadmap for the future. Um so where the district is going in terms of you know what um trends are telling us but also unknowns and knowing that you know um this is a time of sort of it's hard to predict what's going to happen. We'll just say
that. So um you know as we keep that in mind knowing that there might be times of constraint um with um budget shortfalls but may there may be times of abundance in the future as well and making sure that these tools are relevant in both of those times. Um so
uh guiding principles just laying out at the beginning of the project really making sure that the work we do is grounded in this um first and foremost um student experience has been something that uh the district team has really driven home as you know really the foundational piece for us is making sure
that everything um that we are doing can be tied back to how is this making student experiences better um and really being able to check the work that we're doing against that. Um so making sure that that is always at um the base of the work. Maximizing impact is another
big one. So um you know understanding that there are varying needs across the district. Um some schools may have greater needs especially from a capital investment sense uh than others and how do you make sure that you are finding where those dollars are going to have the greatest impact whether that be on
the number of students or the schools that need it the most. Um even if it doesn't mean that every school is getting sort of the same amount of investment. Um and then lastly again you know staying forward looking building for the future making investments going back to the earlier conversation but um
you know that are well informed and are going to continue supporting the district and its communities um for years to come. This is just a highle overview of kind of the project schedule. So most of these items we'll be touching on. I'm not going to go one by one but just um
you know some of the engagement, the data analysis work and some of the pieces we're putting together. Um I I just want to say happy to jump back to any of these slides or stop and pause for questions as needed. Uh so just starting to look at some of the data. You know, when we started off
the project, the first thing on that project schedule page um was just some of the um departmental interviews and and sort of leadership engagement. So um when we started the project we met with leaders from sort of each key department within the district um to understand you
know what their pain points were what they were working on um what opportunities might exist as well as you know uh the sort of steering committee and cabinet uh team uh and the CAC and other sort of advisory committees to make sure that we were getting that input um early on to help guide where
things were going. I'll let Doug take it from here. >> Yes. So, one of the the foundational pieces that we looked at was what we would call educational adequacy. And it's really looking at what is going to be needed for the future of learning in buildings. And so, we we look at this
from a qualitative standpoint by collecting data around these categories that you see on the right. And so we had 14 staff in the field for about five weeks visiting all the schools in the district and assessing this data in all
of these categories in order to provide a score for each of the schools. So we can look at these things from a data driven perspective when we're looking at these schools. So this is one of the foundational pieces that we use that but you'll see that there are multiple components that we'll look at through
this process that will help inform this process. So when we look at educational adequacy, we're looking at a variety of different spaces from community spaces to educational spaces to uh the appearance of the building. And those those data
points all come together in those different categories to provide the score to to provide some perspective. As I mentioned before, it identifies both insufficient data that we're that we have in buildings, but also the strengths of the buildings and the investments that have been made by the
district over the course of these last 13 years, and those show up in the scores throughout this process. uh another uh key piece, so as Doug mentioned, as we'll get to, just sort of layering data and having different ways
to evaluate facilities and and understand, you know, how well they're serving students and educators, um was uh facility condition surveys that we rolled out with school leaders and facility managers that are specific to those schools. So, we understand that a
lot of times as you roll out um facility condition index, which we'll get to a little bit later, or educational adequacy, some folks might say, well, that says my school is, you know, excellent and really great and I know that I'm having troubles with XYZ, or maybe the lived experience can be a little different. And it is not to say,
you know, at least our our understanding and our approach is that neither one is definitively right and the other one is wrong. It is that there are, you know, multiple truths simultaneously. Um, and it's important to try to factor both of those in. So, we saw this as sort of an additional pane of glass to look through
as we're starting to evaluate these facilities is making sure that we get the input from the people who are in these buildings day in and day out. Um, so this was a web tool that we built. Um, there's a little demo video that uh won't play here, but basically allowed them to explore their school. Um, you
know, provide feedback on a number of building conditions, whether it be HVAC, uh, you know, sort of water intrusion, which were two of the lower scoring items, but safety and security. um you know the exterior of the building, general interiors, etc. um and not only sort of rank those uh categories but
also leave uh location specific commentary. So if they wanted to point out a specific area on on the site where they you know have maybe some chronic challenges or things that are working especially well um we have all of that information that data sort of um geollocated so that it can be continued
to be referenced. Um, as I mentioned, you know, we take all of these sort of different data points that we're looking at and start to layer them. Um, so that we can see, you know, what what the sort of takeaways are and consistent challenges maybe that show up when you're looking at facility condition
index, educational adequacy, surveys, um, general engagement from the community, maintenance records, work order history, etc. So, a lot of pieces um that we pull together and see what those through lines are. Um and something I'll mention a little bit later but uh that is also sort of a
foundational um belief of our project is that you know as much as we love digging into data and you know seeing what we can learn from it we also don't think that it is the sole driver of what we are doing we like to highlight the importance of being data informed and
not data driven. Um and really seeing like where the data will point us and how do we then you know talk to the folks those experts in the room um you know the community context the lived experiences to really make that well wellinformed and well-rounded decision
um so from there just jumping into sort of our analysis of existing conditions hopefully nothing here is um too surprising for you to see I know it's um points that have been discussed tonight even but just to highlight you know key detail details as we sort of go through
the work. Um knowing that Jeffco is experiencing systemic enrollment decline despite having a really high capture rate um of the students within the district. So it's not that you know students are going elsewhere necessarily, but just that there are fewer students um sort of in the in the
mix. Um aging buildings um is another one. you know, with half of the district's portfolio being built before 1980, at least from an original construction year, um we know that a lot has changed um with education and teaching and learning. Um and it's really important for those spaces to
sort of grow and and adapt uh with them. So, it is hard to do modern teaching and learning in a space that has not been updated. Uh and then lastly, uh building condition and utilization imbalance imbalances knowing that, you know, conditions vary widely across the district. in some schools um may be sort
of doing better in certain regards than others. Um and trying to look at what are the sort of trends and details that could help help tell us why. Uh so um just to touch on a few sort of highlevel takeaways that really stood out to us um that we think are you know
important considerations. One was going back to the point of smaller schools, knowing that smaller schools um are often uh you know more challenging from a a resource standpoint to operate and provide the same level of opportunities to those students um comes at a higher cost. Um and so you know it is striking
that balance. We know that um there is also having too many students in a school and like trying to find that perfect middle ground um which I think is a a challenge and and a pursuit of every district we've ever worked with. But understanding that there's a large number of the schools in Jeffco that are
under 400 students. You'll see that the majority of those on the lower end are elementary schools. Um we also have done some digging into just where students are going to school in terms of where they live. So knowing that Colorado is a you know a choice state um and and seeing how that shows up from an
attendance perspective. So what you're seeing here is um every articulation area on the vertical axis um and sort of where the students um are going to school who who live um in that articulation area. Are they going to their zoned attendance area school or
not? So in the red is the students who are choicing out of their zone school uh and in the blue is students who are going to their zoned school. Some of these um you know stand out more than others. You'll see, as we kind of would expect, some of the articulation areas that are further west in the mountain uh
areas have higher sort of um capture rates for their attendance area students. So, you'll see, you know, with um Golden and and Conifer and Evergreen, just higher capture rates there. Um and then, you know, some of the other ones um you look at Bear Creek and Arvvada
just a little more um sort of on on a different balance. Yeah, go ahead. So, so let's pause here for just a second because there's been some feedback from both the CAC on this and even board members about this when we showed this data. So, I think some of the perspective that you can share, some of
the folks at the table can share related to this I think is important before we move on from this slide. >> I know you're looking at me. Um, this slide totally derailed the kek for like 20 minutes.
Renie had to like pull us back clawing away. Um, it's it is a this is one of the best slides I've ever seen that explains how choice affects our schools. Um, and some of the observation that the CAC made, and I don't want to speak for them
because they are far smarter than I am, is it's pretty evident when you look at some of the schools with a really high capture rate that a lot of the high schools, this is the whole Arctic, but bigger, newer high schools tends to trend in a higher capture rate. Um, as
as do just general articulation areas that have gotten um improvement. What is not in here and is maybe a bit unfair I think and Superintendent Derland please feel free to jump in. You know this data way better than I do is some of these areas have a lot of competing schools nearby. So it's a really interesting
dynamic and one of the things that we really appreciate you all doing is really digging into the why. But this one we just had to sit with for a very long time and I think it's a really really powerful slide. I don't know if you wanted me to add anything else Mr. Abernathy.
>> No no that's that's perfect. Actually, one of the things that you was asked by the CAC was to do some additional investigation around this data so that we could even dig a little bit deeper into this data based on that capital investment based on where new schools
some of that the proximity to other schools. Uh like you said, they've talked about the high schools. So there's some additional digging that we're actually going to do into this data that we can bring back, share with the CAC, share with the board to provide some additional perspective as you weigh
longer terms uh decision making. I think some of that data will really be helpful as you consider options in the future. I want to ask a real quick question. These numbers are are these from last year? Is this last year? What would be
fascinating to me is to see this graph over like the last five years. >> Um side by side um so I'm just wondering what year is this? >> I believe this is 2425. >> Okay, great. Thank you.
>> I have one additional request when you're doing this. Um, in addition to looking at how many schools are nearby, I'm curious about the border schools, schools that border other districts, um, as well. So, that'd be information I
would be curious to see. Thank you. >> Sure, we can probably capture some of that. We need some cooperation from our friends adjacent, but I think we can probably capture some of that data also. We have I mean we when we were going through Roughs we had school by school choice in choice out data that showed
where kids who were choicing in were coming from and if they were choicing out of that boundary area where they were going. That was fascinating. We did that school by school. I think we still pull those reports and then the state also helps us understand in-n-out data
district to district. So happy to get you guys some of that information in a in a weekly update if you're interested in digging in. >> Dr. Etcheria, are you talking about maybe the schools that are on the boundary of two different articulation areas or two different district areas? >> Two different districts. Um, my specific I'm in the very corner, so I border
Adams 12 on one side and Boulder Valley School District on the other. So, I'm curious how many of our kids were losing to either of those districts. Thank you. >> Yeah. Um, thank you. Please continue >> u and knowing that you know trying to
understand why and how families choose schools is also really complicated um and was a big component of you know the boundary study of the work that Flo did um with GBSM doing a lot of engagement on that work as well and that's something we're sort of revisiting as we
dig into this data too um and so in addition to some of the Rough's data um we are looking back at you know just understanding even from school closure is like how did families decide what schools to go to from there? Um so you know we can see where we know where the
students went but trying to look at some of the related data with proximity to those schools um any other sort of conditions or like is it enrollment size is it other sort of um program data or any other sort of through lines that we
see um not necessarily to I don't I don't know that there will be a crystal clear answer that will explain it all but start to see you know how could this help inform um decision- making and and what to expect moving forward so that you can support those families accordingly.
>> Sorry. And your perspective is that you're noticing these numbers are directly attributed to how nice and big and updated the school is. >> I would say it's too early for me to comment on exactly yeah what's driving
these. >> All right. Thanks. >> But yeah, those are some >> I'm going to say one more question then let's let them continue. Mr. Given. Well, and also again looking at this data, I'm not sure how granular you can get in terms of, you know, this seems to be looking at it from the school perspective of how many students are staying within the boundary, how many
students are going out, but is there also a way to look at it from the student perspect perspective in terms of >> how far are students traveling? >> Um, things like that because there might be some other interesting trends >> in terms of how looking how students move as opposed to how schools attract.
>> Absolutely. Miss Harper, would it be possible in our weekly update to pull and maybe if not this week, maybe after the holidays to pull the flow analytics study because there is a lot of information in that and I think I could use the update but I I think our new board members would appreciate it. Thank
you so much. >> It's really really good. >> 900 pages. Yeah. >> All right, let's let's continue and then we'll come back to questions. Um but yeah, just on that, um transportation is definitely a big piece as well and understanding, you know, how far on average students are traveling to get to
their school. And you can look at that by school level from where students are coming from. There's a lot of different ways to sort of dig into it. Um so just another key point, you know, is just looking at the open seats that exist across the district, how those are those are showing up at the at the school type
um component. So, seeing that, you know, elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, all have um a a sizable amount of open seats totaling up to 23,000 uh across the district approximately. Um and so, as we dig into um evaluation
components, so jumping back, I know we've been speaking about FCI and EA. Uh I do think sometimes it's helpful to regground in what exactly those are. Um, so facility condition index is really sort of an industry standard way to look at the condition of a building by sort
of putting the cost of the total cost of needed repairs over the current replacement value of the building. Um, and then having this sort of score that is applied. So you'll notice that a lower score is better um the ratio is is sort of smaller. Um, so lower FCI is
what you are aiming for for a better building condition. And then EA as sort of Doug detailed is really about like less so on the you know sort of physical technical assets in the building and saying what condition are they in and more so how well is a building supporting teaching and learning. Um we
know that some old buildings were designed really well and do a really excellent job of supporting teaching and learning and um they may have a lot of uh you know sort of natural light access in the classrooms and be welldesigned and organized in a way that you know supports operations from a human
perspective throughout the building and on the you know on the flip side there are newer buildings um that have been designed and I'm not speaking about Jeffco in particular but that we've seen you know even the last 1015 years that don't do a great job of supporting actual day-to-day operations in teaching
and learning and maybe they just look really nice. So I think having those different evaluation evaluative metrics to sort of again layer on top of one another but yeah go ahead. >> Yeah. So just a little bit about that data that you can see here. So this is FCI data across the district and you can
see that we have a we have a significant portion of the district that is in fair or good position or in good condition across it and then a relatively a smaller portion of that that is in the poor based on the FCI score like Nate was just talking about. But I think it's
also interesting to look at the graphic on the right which is is it geollocated based on the school location. And so you can see that diversity of where investment has occurred and and also um based on the age and the age of the buildings across the district and where
those needs have been addressed. Uh because as as Jeff has said like the needs are always greater than the dollars available and so you select those things appropriately based on that. And so if we go back to educational adequacy foundationally, we
we've looked at these, but the one that we didn't really talk about initially was safety and security. And safety and security is really embedded into all of these different categories. And so there's a questions that actually occur in all of these categories, but then there's also some very specific things.
You talked about secure entries previously, but there's other measures that we talk about related to safety and security that we apply across it. So we not only have a safety and security focus from the district that we're addressing, but it also shows up in educational adequacy and each of these
categories. And it's addressed differently depending on the category as we work through these things. And so if you look at this, and I've learned this basically from Nate and Patrick over the last four years, a box and whiskers uh graph that you show here. And so you can
see the majority of the data, the median data, the average data shows up in the box. And then the outliers on both ends are shown in the highest value and the lowest value um with the whiskers on both ends. And so you can see the
diversity of buildings across the district based on the assets and the inventory that you're going to see a large spectrum. But you can also see when you look at these where we have pretty high scores from a classroom perspective across the district and that
band is narrower. When we start to talk about the diversity of the buildings across the district, you can see an extended learning. Newer buildings are going to have those sort of spaces. Older buildings or some of the buildings that are relatively new that were economic probably don't have the extended learning environments to
support modern learning the way that's necessary. Also, we look at building organization and you can see some buildings I you I have say often because I've been doing this long enough, architects did some crazy things in the 70s and 80s. We don't do those things anymore. Um, and so we see a real
diversity of organization of buildings and that affects how students get around in the buildings, how staff can be efficient. Those all affect the ability to deliver highquality instruction. And so you see the wide range of of scores that we have that we're going to take into account as we look at this data as
we move forward. >> I just want to touch on extended learning quickly because I know that's not um necessarily a common term used everywhere. So what extended learning is and actually this picture I guess sort of is helpful but it's basically that space where you might be doing pull out
informal instruction outside of a classroom uh maybe with smaller groups of students um and have that intentionally designed rather than maybe a table and chairs that are in the hallway um and depending on who you ask could create like a you know fire marshall uh warning is going to come and
say get that table out of here. Um so all joking aside like some districts this is a really high priority others it is not. Um I do think this is the one category of the eight that we have found there is the most sort of um >> variance. Yeah. So it it is um the other
categories I would say are really um foundational consistently across the boards. Um whereas extended learning it really depends. Um so just wanted to add that. When you see middle schoolers and high schoolers sitting on the floor in the hallway, that's usually a pretty good indication that there's not an
appropriate extended learning environment in a building. >> And so, yeah, agreed. Um, and this is just an example of how we can layer that data. Um, so even just looking at these two metrics that we wanted to pull out as examples using FCI and EA, which are
um, generally very informative. Um, you can see in the upper left where you have good FCI and excellent EA scores. Um, which might, you know, indicate buildings that are really doing a great job of supporting the students and and staff that are in that building. Um, and some that are, you know, in different
areas where if you have um decent FCI and poor EA, maybe those are schools that despite being in relatively good condition, you know, could use some um some improvements that would actually just help from an educational operational standpoint. So that is not to say like some schools this this
should not be the sole vision of what schools are should receive sort of investment and what shouldn't but what types of investments are going to be most impactful at these different schools and how do you determine you know what needs are going to be well suited. Uh so I promise we're getting into that process part here. Yeah. Can I
just jump in and say one of the things that we have not done yet as is um you guys mentioned the for example that some schools feel like or some districts say extended learning is really important. Um we may put that lower on the priority
list than say safety >> or organization or presence. And so districts then weight these things and can sort of look across their portfolio of school buildings to say then where do people where do schools land and then
who needs what most which then can drive and prioritize sort of what your investment of capital funds should look like. Um, and so I just want to say um, for our partners that we're working with, I really appreciate like their design and development and ideas around a framework that we can then take and
use for years to come. Uh, which I think will be really helpful in our planning purposes. So, >> thank you so much for flagging. Yeah, absolutely. Yes. And I'm glad you touched on it. I'm sorry that I forgot to, but even the scores, if you look at the pie chart there, showing that, you know, the majority of of Jeffco schools
are in sort of that good or excellent um range, which is great. Um, now these scores are based on sort of our standard templated weights um for these categories. And um to Superintendent Dorwin's point, like if you want to adjust those weights to better
represent, you know, the values of the district, everything that we are doing is dynamic. Um and so even if and when those those things shift and change, you can update the scores accordingly so that you feel confident in how those buildings are um showing up from an evaluative standpoint. Um another key
point uh from a data perspective, so a lot that we're pulling in here, right? And it's um a lot to look at. What we really want to do is make sure that we're running it by the folks again who know these buildings um and who are honestly the best connections to the school communities and who people
generally look to to help them understand what's going on at their school um and at a larger level. So, you know, what we're in the process of of pulling together is a principal dashboard that will have, you know, a lot of these key data points pulled together for their school. So this is um
bell middle that's showing here and basically what it would show is enrollment utilization facility condition index educational adequacy original year of construction square footage like all of these things as well as you know uh the different classrooms and how they're programmed at the school
so that we can say not only here's what we're looking at making sure that you're aware of sort of what's in that data analysis component but also giving them the opportunity to provide feedback. So, um, this was another sort of video that I was going to show. Um, but there is a comment feature at the bottom that
allows them to say, you know, comments, questions, any concerns um that may come up over the data that's listed so that we can make sure that no one is feeling like they're caught off guard by something that doesn't reflect their experience in the building and that we can connect with them early to make sure
that as the district starts to use the tools we're putting together um to plan and make decisions with that they're able to sort of um share the information. Uh I'll let Doug speak to the engagement component. >> So budget labs when budget labs were
going on across the district, we actually set up a table and participated and had uh participants actually go through and rank different categories, excuse me, related uh to the EA data and the key um the key components that we
talked about. Safety and security was not one of those because it's embedded fund fundamentally from a district perspective in those things. But we had feedback that we got um during those budget lab meetings and then we actually shared that information with the CAC when we met with them last month. But we
got a we got a um collect data from a a wide um group of people or cross-section including students and and community members that attended those meetings. So it was very helpful for us to get that data. And then these are some of the key things the the categories that we talked
about and you can see uh quality uh quality indoor air environments temperature modern classrooms were the things that uh came to the top as they rank these as a bean exercise. So go ahead >> Mr. Abernathy I just want to add because this came up also at CAC I've seen this
presentation this is my third time guys so forgive me. Um this was surveyed of the 70 people that attended the budget labs. So this is not a s I just it's yeah so it's a very small subset of people that were highly motivated to attend and I think that's an important
clarification to put >> that that is that is correct. It was a small subsection of folks that participated in this >> absolutely >> we can absolutely do larger or in different ways to collect similar data across the district.
So moving into sort of what we're doing with everything that we just talked about, right? Like all this data that we're pulling together, how does that transition into, you know, sort of the the planning process? Um, so with that process, the framework that we're pulling together really is something that will be scaled. And that was on an
earlier slide. I don't think I mentioned it, but we want this tool to be something that the district can use to make broad decisions based on district-wide strategy down to that individual school level and understanding the needs at that school. Um, so you'll see that sort of scaled here on um, uh, this sort of onion
graph. I need to think of a better name for it. Um, but that's what I see. Uh, so I promise I'll dig into each one of these, but at the top um, so at that most outer layer um, is sort of high level needs identification. This is actually some data that's pulled from um, the FCA summary of findings from
2425 uh, that Mark and his team pulled together. But as it was mentioned earlier by one of the CAC members knowing that you know HVAC um has the highest cost it is generally the most expensive um you know sort of section in a building from an asset perspective um
and it it is where those pri high priority items live. So knowing that you know mechanical systems um from a district-wide perspective uh have a high cost associated with them. Sorry I'm moving quickly here. Um so on the second level down would be
sort of these project categories. Um so we're looking at sort of these example uh strategy groups and project types. So these are three big buckets that we're thinking of as sort of strategy groups. um where you know as you're working through the framework these can help to point directions of what schools might
be good candidates for what types of projects whether that be an improvement in the building um capacity increase or you know a potential consolidation measure and you'll see some of the projects listed under each category are repeated with like building replacement knowing that there's lots of different
approaches um that could fit here and this is just one example of how this is laid out and I think it's also important to mention that you the the way we're thinking about this would be a dynamic function of how schools end up here. So again, if the district is looking to invest, adjusting, you know, the tools that
we're putting together to make sure that you're seeing who's, you know, who's best fit for a targeted capital investment, maybe where you are, you know, upgrading mechanical system to a major capital investment, um, or a building addition or something of that nature that just, you know, could be a
larger dollar item. um and really looking at a lot of different data points to help derive that. So um there are some sort of an example scenarios laid out at the top there um as to what could you know for example lead a school into one of these groups. Um from there
we'd be looking at prioritizing schools within those sort of strategy groups. So um using different metrics at a more intentional and like detailed scale um to say how do you prioritize schools? So if you have 30 schools in a group for
targeted capital investments, how do you know what school would be, you know, sort of where where you're going to have that greatest impact like we talked about at the top? Um and again, we would foresee these sort of things being dynamic. So there's an example clip on the right um just where you would have
maybe a slider to say I think um educational adequacy is really important. So schools that are lacking and have lower educational adequacy scores should be higher, you know, stronger candidates to receive a targeted capital investment that could help improve that score. Or maybe it's utilization or enrollment. And you can,
you know, sort of toggle all these weights um is how we're thinking about it from a process standpoint is like selecting, you know, sort of the inputs that you think should guide um the sort of uh outputs from this process and having that to um qualitatively evaluate
afterwards. Uh I'll touch on the last one and then happy to jump back. I know there's a lot on each of these slides. So lastly, that school level um data point. Uh please don't try to read the words on this slide too. It is uh not intended for that. So apologies uh for how many words
there are, but the intent is that there is sort of a a school level project list, right? And that those projects can be prioritized as well. So really getting down to that granular granular level to say that I think maybe safety and security projects should be the highest priority out of sight. So seeing
those float up to the top having those dollar amounts and how having them be able to be sort of adjusted for escalation factors based on year understanding you know if we were to move on these projects in 2026 what would that cost look like? and if we waited five years, how would that cost
change and understanding um some of those components or and simultaneously you know the cost of not doing anything and understanding the differences and how that changes year-over-year. So what we see at that as that school level option would be you know multiffactor but taking in some of that asset data
known deficiencies um for each school and pulling all that information in as well as you know if you are looking at larger investments or you wanted to see what would new construction for a school in this area cost having some of that data um available as well.
So before I go into like an example, any questions on the last few slides? I know there was a lot there and >> director. >> Yeah, I just um looking through all of the information presented here and I know we're close towards the end. Uh makes me imagine
how things might have gone differently had we had a tool in operation like this prior to 2015, something like that. um how differently investments would have been made, decisions would have been made. Um and
so this is just such powerful information that I'm excited to have this kind of data, this level of ability to zoom out and zoom in so that we can make the most informed decisions about how we invest
in our in our buildings and ultimately our student experience. Um, I that's all I wanted to say because it was just it's just at the forefront of my mind looking through all of this. Thank you. >> Sure. >> Any other questions, board members? Mr. Given?
>> Yeah, I've got a couple questions. One, you know, there's an earlier slide where you just talked about the amount of open seats. >> Yeah. Um, and I'm just wanted to >> my my assumption, but I wanted to check it out is that that that's a function of declining enrollment relative to the capital needs that were expected in
prior years and decades. >> Um, yes, I would say generally speaking, sorry, did you? >> Um, yeah, the open seats would be tied to the declining enrollment, just having, you know, um, fewer students in each building and sort of tying to that.
I don't know, Jeff, if you >> Okay. And then the other question I had was earlier when you're talking about some of the survey data, there was a comment made that um safety and security does not show up in there because it was embedded. And I don't know if you could just explain a little more what you meant by that. It sounds like there's kind of an assumption being made again
about what the community's thinking or or about existing >> polic. Well, specifically at the budget labs, um we did not ask a question at the budget lab with those 70 folks that participated because we just saw safety and security as foundational for
district across it. If we would have included it, probably would have had the most votes, but we didn't because we suspected that that would be the highest vote getter. And so, we took that one out because we knew that the district was going to invest in safety and security no matter what. And so we
wanted to get a cross-section of their opinion on these other categories. >> So, and I'm happy to elaborate on sort of what the the ask was, but basically there are I think 10 um categories here of just like building features and what
sort of matters most in a school. Um so to Doug's point, we didn't want people and you only of the 10, I think you had a limited amount of beans that you got to use to vote. Um, so we didn't want people to feel like they were stuck between that because again to Doug's point, we know it's a high priority for
the district of safety and security and it's harder to sort of get down to that greater level of detail with trying to choose between some of the others. >> Are there other ways though perhaps where it could be looked at in that double detail? Because although I think it is obviously a huge priority for
people, >> I do think there's a lot of diversity in terms of what it means for people. >> Yeah. And and that's a concern I have is that there's some people we heard from earlier tonight where it is very much about capital. They're talking about bulletproof glass, right? There's other people who aren't thinking about facilities. They're thinking about seal
>> or they're thinking about individuals who were in the buildings that are armed. And not all that's in your arena and I get that. >> But I think the board, you know, really could benefit from really understanding what people expect from safety and security, how much of that they want to be at the capital side
versus in other arenas. And you may not be able to answer that question for us, but I think we need to be asking that question um and figuring out ways to answer it as fully as we can. >> Just jumping back >> just just to speak to that too because I was participated in the budget lab um
materials creation and was there with uh with our teams. Um, you know, we did we did tailor the in-person activity, you know, given that we were in the wake of the Evergreen uh incident for the reasons that Doug outlined. We did also have an online survey that was part of
the online budget labs which was our stop gap when we had to scale back our budget lab engagement. And we had, I believe in the end, you know, close to a thousand uh responses on that survey. And we did include the full range of the those educational assessment categories
including you know uh respondents to that survey did have the chance to rank or you know comment on or identify safety and security as priority there. So that's another data set that we could certainly also make um available but that will be incorporated you know into
our final product um with a much bigger sample size than the inperson folks. So just to just to clarify that you know we did do some additional data collection as part of that budget lab um activity around that. >> Yeah. Thank you Greg. Online surveys.
Yeah. Um and that is to be clear. Yeah. The the graph you saw was purely based on the in-person activity. Um so just a couple last quick slides here. This is an example from um a different project with another district that we worked with. So not at all um saying
that this is would exactly what would be sort of applied um through Jeffco but just a a midpoint step of the process that we had developed for you know another uh district that would help them sort of sort schools into these different groups where they may be candidates um for some of these sort of
interventions. Um they were also looking at potential programmatic investments um or building and program um addition school closures you know sort of the full um range of strategies. This was uh a little video demonstrating how you could kind of select a school from a
drop down and see how it sorts into a different category based on what those thresholds are. Um so you know each box again sorry for the tiny text um but sort of has a different threshold that would land a school into each one of those groups. Um and for that project
those those thresholds were dynamic. So if the district decided to adjust what their definition of you know that the low threshold for enrollment or utilization would be that they were able to do that. Um I would just touch before
I move on on from a software perspective again just ringing the bell like we're we're this will all be spreadsheets that is easy to update. I do want to be clear that we're not like pulling together something that is going to be so nice but unusable. Like we are very big on making sure that um you know the tools
that we're putting together are pragmatic, easy to use and easy to update. Um so just finally um in terms of what we intend to include in that sort of final report, the key components is all the details of that planning process. Sort of laying that out, individual school profile so you can
understand sort of um what we learned about each school at that level. um what their you know sort of um projects could look like and then some just general recommendations um and options for the district as we've had all these conversations and sort of turned over
all these stones that we think could help the district continue to improve its practices and and operations going forward. I think that is our last slide. Um just one more sorry. So yes, next steps are finalizing that framework um those sight specific project list
getting the cost estimates associated um getting that all pulled into sort of the the final deliverables um being the dynamic planning tool as well as the report uh and then some uh continued engagement in the new year obviously with the principal dashboard getting uh looking forward to hearing the feedback
on that um and sort of other stakeholder engagement. >> Thank you. >> Thank you >> board members. Any questions? Dr. Ed Bura, >> I don't have any questions. I just wanted to thank echo um Director
Kensworthy's um thank you for this. This is uh really important information and data that I think that we can utilize to help um move forward in planning with the district. Um, and I also just wanted to mention when
we were talking about safety, um, I know from experience in the classroom, every single classroom I was ever teaching in, I had an exit strategy. And the worst years I had was when there was only a door, no windows, and the second worst was when I was in the mobile that had
walls that were that thin. Um, so I think just keeping in mind maybe like talking with teachers because teachers are the ones who walk into those classrooms and look and say, "Oh, that window is going to be an issue if there's a lockdown because we won't be able to keep the kids hidden and things
like that." that. So, I think um I know it sounds like you guys have already collected a lot of this data and you've already talked with a lot of teachers on this, but I know as a teacher I always had an exit strategy and I always was very um aware of where I could put my
kids that they would always be out of sight from a window. So, thank you so much. I appreciate it. >> Thank you. >> Any others? >> All right. Well, thank you all so much. Wonderful. We really appreciate it and look forward to the continued work.
>> Thank you. >> All right, y'all. We are right on schedule. We're going to keep going on this very late evening um board meeting. All right, so now we're going to turn to our leadership reports. So, this is where first the board will hear from Superintendent Dorland and then we will follow that
with reports from the board. Superintendent Dorland. >> Hi. Thank you, President Applegate. I had my first uh another first in my career this week, a wind day, right? Or now two uh or now three. Um weather
events that impact school operations are among the most challenging situations that a superintendent faces with their team. Deciding whether to hold school is truly a lose-lose proposition. and this particular event um or this particular
week's events uh were unique in their complexity. I do want to thank Excel Energy's emergency management office and all of our partners who engaged in the interest of Jefferson County and our school district including our board as well as our governor, Governor Polus and
Commissioner Susana Cordova who were helping us through this being the second largest school district in the state. um knowing that we had many students um at risk of losing learning time was a challenge for all of us and um I did get outreach and support from many people
state leaders as well as Excel. So, thank you to those people. Um, and thank you to the cabinet team who were up with with me um hours and hours in the evening just trying to figure out what was the best solution and how could we minimize the impact as much as possible
given the interconnectedness of our operations is so challenging. So, appreciate that. Um, turning to our meeting tonight, I want to mark the occasion of the first regular board meeting for our new board members. um as
well as President Applegate and first vice president Kenworthy in their new officer roles. Congratulations to you all. Um we also had the opportunity to spend time together last week at the Color Association of School Boards uh convening in Colorado Springs, which is
always a valuable experience. It was great to just get to spend time with you all and get to know you a little bit better as well as do do some work um together. Um and I know you're going to share probably some highlights in your reports. Uh for me, the time spent with the board last week focused on our
budget realities, both during our orientation session and in the CASBY pre-conference budgeting workshop, it was very valuable. We are in the midst of very challenging budget reductions that are necessary to stabilize our district's financial future. We have
talked in this boardroom for the past five years about the approaching financial cliff and now it's here. Um and we are grappling with it but we are also dealing with it. Um this week central services employees employees who
are whose positions are either fully or partially funded by district um central department budgets. Um if their positions were impacted they were notified. On a human level these are incredibly difficult conversations
because every one of our employees adds value to this organization. Our sincere hope is that positions opening this spring may be a strong fit for some of the employees or hopefully all of the employees whose roles are ending on June 30th, 2026 and that they will be
selected for those opportunities and choose to remain in Jeffco. We will be um strategically managing our staffing timelines to support internal candidates with any positions they may be interested in. Um, I want to acknowledge our cabinet team and their leadership
teams for their courage and commitment in leading this difficult work. And I want to publicly thank our human resources team for the thoughtful support they are providing to our impa impacted employees and I know that they will continue to provide. I'll share a
brief update on my activities. Since our last board meeting, I had the honor of hosting. This was really fun. I hosted a celebratory lunch for 45 teachers whose classrooms I visited this semester. Following each of the classroom visits, I held a 20 minute virtual one-on-one
conversation with every teacher. And so bringing them together um ahead of Thanksgiving to connect with peers from across the district was truly meaningful and I was able to share back with them what I heard patterns and trends from the conversations that we had. And I just also want to thank the principles
whose schools I visited um and for their efforts to release the teachers to come to the lunchon with the superintendent. Um I know that that's something they had to coordinate and I appreciate that they did that. Um uh in the in February the board will receive an update on our high
school reimagined work, which I'm very excited for you to hear about. In December and for the fourth time in three years, we held a grant-f funed retreat for our secondary principles to accelerate the work around two critical projects, high school reimagined and the
magic of middle school. It was without question the strongest retreat yet. One survey response from a participant, one of our middle or high school principles, captured it well. This is big transformative work. There is no doubt in my mind that we wouldn't be this far
in actualizing the vision without these retreats. Barriers have been broken down and collaboration between schools is remarkable. This thought was a really nice quote from one of our leaders. Um, today I want to just share that I this is my last day. Well, no, tomorrow's the
last day of the semester, but today um I started at Fletcher Miller touring the new building which has been intentionally designed to serve our Miller Mustangs, students who have unique needs both cognitively and physically. The building is a tribute to
the love we have for our most vulnerable students. It really is remarkable. We'll need to get the board members over there, all of you, at some point. Um, I'm incredibly inspired and I cannot wait for the students and staff to move into the school next spring. Also, I
ended my day today with the Drake Orchestra Club performance here in the boardroom. A perfect example of the extraordinary experiences that help our students thrive. So, thank you to the Drake team and the Drake students for coming to perform. This has been an extraordinary semester marked by both
the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. I want to take a moment to recognize the ongoing recovery at Evergreen High School and to thank their leadership for the strength and care they continue to show their community. I wish everyone in Jeffco a safe and
restful winter break. >> Thank you. And now board members, we typically get to give our board reports and there is no magic to this. So, is there anyone who would like to go first? Director Kenworthy. >> I'll go first. Um, so thank you for your
report and all that you've done in this last semester in particular. Um, so I want to lead with a culture of gratitude in a time of transition. I also want to lift up the Drake Middle School students who played music for us. It's one of the only times I've sat in this chair and
been able to sit back and breathe and relax a little bit, close my eyes, and just listen and be present um in a way that I usually don't get to when I'm sitting up here. Um so it was beautiful gift. I also want
to extend my gratitude to our staff and educators who have endured this last week before holiday break. It's usually, you know, it's a time and this week in particular has been a very unique and interesting week to have right before we
go on winter break. Um, I also want to thank our union partners um, Jespa for promising conversation at our study session. JCA um for sharing 37 postcards of gratitude
which included 11 invitations to visit schools of only one is in my actual director district. Uh and then I also attended a roundt at Patterson Elementary
two nights ago. I don't know what day is it. Um, but it was an it was a good conversation. Um, where there was some storytelling and there were some questions and dialogue. Um, and so I encourage my fellow board members if you get the invit if you get the invitation
to accept it. It was a fantastic conversation. Um, what else did I have on my notes here? Oh, that round table lifted up the need for our district to engage in antibbias training, recruiting educators of color
from diverse lived experiences. Um, taking a look at our prek supports and CTE pathways. That was just a couple of the things that came up. So, I've got a couple questions. Not going to ask them now. That's for another time. Um, and I also wanted to thank JCAA for the
holiday party. I actually got to wear a holiday sweater this year and I was glad I got to participate in that way. Um, as for CASBY, I just wanted to share some of the sessions that I went to. Um, one was about strategic budgeting that we
all attended. Um, and we had lots of great conversations with our um, newest board members about budget and at both the state level and at the Jeffco level. I also went to some breakouts about subsidized educator housing best practices was fascinating. Um, also to
see that there were some Denver schoolboard members in that conversation as well who were curious. So, um, some of our smaller rural districts have been able to to try that out and to see that there were some of our larger districts who were curious about it was interesting. Um I also attended a
fabulous session um that was about governing as a team of leaders aligning vision, trust and action. And I have the slides from that. I'd love to share that with all of you at some point. And then um beyond that, the time connecting with Jeffco leaders, with our Jeffco leadership, and also with leaders beyond
who are in other school districts is always really refreshing to know that we're not alone, to know that we're facing similar issues um and that we all have a a bit of wisdom to share as we face the budgeting um difficulties here
in the state of Colorado. Um, so I I always appreciate that perspective building when I attend CASBY. Um, finally, I just want to say thank you to my family. I have been out and about an awful lot recently and um,
for their patience with me and their support, for my engagement in this work. I am eternally grateful. It's a it's a gift to get to sit here and to get to serve our community in this way and I cannot do it without the support of
other people in my life and I want to acknowledge them and that'll be my last gratitude note for the evening. Thanks. >> Thank you director Kenworthy. Who's next? Dr. Ataria. >> Thank you. Um,
so some of the stuff that uh I worked on this week or this month I guess or in the past two is it been only two weeks? It feels like a whole year. Um, I responded to several email communications. Uh, one of the things that came up frequently was the A West
volleyball coach who was here tonight. Um, I did receive several emails on her behalf. Uh, I received several emails uh about Slater Elementary as well. Um, so responded to some of those. We also had emails about the wind day. Um, I do hope
that that didn't uh cause too many issues for people who were planning on doing some last minute shopping without children yesterday. Um, I also met uh in person with a one of our coaches is who
was here tonight. Um, and just regarding the budget concerns at the CASBY conference, I was, it was just an amazing experience. My first CASBY um, conference. It was an
opportunity to really look at our board governance, our legal um, stuff, our budget discussions. Um, and the keynotes every single day were amazing and inspiring and uplifting. So, that was such a great opportunity. It was also an
wonderful opportunity to network with um other district uh board leaders um from across the state. That was so wonderful. Um this month I'm excited. I've scheduled uh school visits in District
1. So I'll be visiting uh several schools uh in the next month, I think. Thank you, Kristen, for um scheduling all those for me. Uh, one thing I was wanted to bring up
was, well, two things. I'm interested in committee assignments. Um, I'm excited to start working on the committee work and curious when we might have some guidance on that. Um, additionally, I do know that Superintendent Dorland's contract is approaching renewal, and I
would like to propose that the board begin preliminary discussions regarding the contract renewal process and the development of an evaluation plan. Um, I think that initiating this work in advance will support that clarity and
um, transparency that our community is seeking. So again, um I also wish that everybody has a peaceful and restful uh break. So thank you so much. >> Thank you.
>> All right, Mr. Gibbons. >> Well, first and foremost, I'm happy to report that I can successfully find the boardroom, the bathroom, and the water fountain without asking for directions, which was my number one priority. Um
Casby was excellent. Um it was uh took some doing on my part to make it fit into my schedule. Um directors Applegate and Kenworthy assured me it was worth my while and it absolutely was. I was actually surprised by how productive it was both in
learning and kind of getting what I thought was a very thorough crash course in the budget and and other kind of pressing issues facing the district. um and of course the opportunity for us to all connect and then also I had a number of very productive conversations with other board members and district executives from other parts of the
state. Um so I was quite pleased with the experience. Um I too have been getting inundated with constituent emails um and I'm sort of starting to get a better feel for some concerns that I see that are kind of more prevalent than others. Um, I
also I've I've been educating myself about policies relevant to some of the issues people are raising. I also, you know, there's a been a lot of talk, it was an issue in this last election cycle where we talked a lot about trust, transparency, um, better communication.
And one thing that I want to say that I think is important is I have seen a lot of ways in which Superintendent Doran and her team are really working hard and making really good decisions and using really good methods to arrive at those decisions. I'm also starting to piece
together ways where I think we don't communicate about that in the ways that we could. and that the challenge that I took on when I ran for this and the challenge I think the community has given us of rebuilding that trust which I think is essential for other things we
want and need to do is a much more achievable challenge than I might have thought a month ago. So we'll still take hard work on all of our parts but I think it is a challenge that we can meet
and that is all for now. Director Monian. >> So, I definitely appreciate all of the thought and conversations that have been had about with regards to the wind and so I have also seen many emails about
the wind and the closures and I understand how that can, you know, throw things off in terms of, you know, just logistics and whatnot. But there is a lot of thought and planning that goes into these decisions. It's not just made on a whim. So, um, and I'm glad that we
aired on the side of caution given the information that we had at the time that we were making these decisions because oftentimes there is a lot of planning into making these decisions. So, um, one thing I wanted to kind of talk about
is we were at CASBY last week, which was a great experience, and I'm glad that I got to go and have this experience and, um, get a crash course in the budget. Um, and we are, you know, kind of grappling with the budget cuts and what that's all going to kind of look like.
But I think based on what we heard here tonight and some emails that I've been receiving, we really need to think about how we're looking at the budget and how we are evaluating safety and security at our schools. there's the physical aspect of
safety, but I think what we're hearing from parents, right, and students is that they are looking at the psychological component of that as well, the social components of that as well. And so I hope that as we are grappling with this very
important work that we can take that messaging on board as well. That's all for me. >> Thank you. Well, I have the great privilege and honor to welcome our three new board members um elected to serve in our Jeffco public schools. This is a unique
and challenging seat and a really really um one of the most worthwhile things I feel like I've ever done with my time. Um and I'm excited to continue to serve with my continuing board colleague. And I'm also grateful for those that came before us um and all that they did to
serve our kids, our schools, and our communities. and I'm really excited to pick that ball up with this board and keep it going. It's been a really difficult time for Jeffco. Um, in addition to healing from tragedy this week, school leaders received or last week received reduced
budgets and they're tasked with making some really hard decisions for the year ahead. And several of our team members at all levels of the district were made aware that their employment employment may not continue past the end of this year. To guide the changes that have to be
made months of the head, principles and school leaders are sending out budget reduction community surveys to our families. And if anyone is still listening at this late hour and you have not gotten it, I encourage you to reach out to your principal to um get that survey. But most importantly, we cannot do this
work alone. Um I and I believe this board is committed to working together. We are committed to working with the district and we are committed to working with our community. And I believe it takes all three for us to move forward. And with our combined teamwork, I don't
know however many of you remember um all the Power Rangers shows of the early days and Captain Planets, but our powers combined, right? I know that we can work together to solve what is no doubt one of the greatest challenges we're going to face and that we can chart a path forward staying aligned to our values, a
thriving districts where all students can achieve their biggest dreams and really provide a world-class education that can prepare all Jeffco students for bright and successful futures as local and global citizens. I want to end um in gratitude and recognition that this time of year is
not easy for everyone and that it has been a difficult semester in so many ways. And so I I think I do this every year, but Colorado does offer a mental health line. You can dial 988 and get free and confidential human support. And I encourage people who are struggling to use it.
And I want to end by just thanking my family and my husband. Um I couldn't do this without him especially, but really um the fact that my kids understand that there's calls that I have to take and they're in the background for most of them. So I apologize to you all for
always hearing that. Um, but I do want to wish all of our community, our families, our educators, staff, principles, and all of our district staff just a safe and happy holiday. And we appreciate you, and I really am excited for 2026. And this brings us to the end of today's
agenda on time. Thank you to everyone who participated this evening. Our next regularly scheduled meeting of the board is a study session on January 7th here at the Ed Center. And with that, we stand adjourned. Good night.