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Good afternoon. On behalf of the board of education, welcome to tonight's meeting. We welcome all attendees, those joining us live in the audience and those connecting with us virtually. We also wish to express our appreciation to the live simultaneous Spanish interpreters for facilitating access
this evening. Please note that we will be taking a break at approximately 6:40 p.m. The board approved tonight's agenda at the beginning of the executive session. So, we will move forward with our first item of study. Tonight, the board will receive the FY 2627 budget development update. This
will be presented by Brena Copelan, CFO, Brian Sammons, director of budget, and Shannine Rosario, executive director of finance, planning, and analysis. We have allotted 75 minutes for this presentation. Please reserve time for the board questions following your remarks. And before I turn it over to
our esteemed presenters, Superintendent Dorland, is there anything you would like to add? >> Thank you, President Applegate. Uh thank you to our presenters for the work you've put into tonight's content for board study. uh want to just uh let you all know and thanks to Kristen, she made copies of this presentation for each of
you uh just in case you want to take some notes as you're listening and learning about some of the content here. I know um it's school finance isn't the easiest and most straightforward topic that we study. So, I just thought that might be helpful for board members. Um just want to highlight for you the agenda a little bit tonight. We're going
to look at the March economic forecast. I will emphasize that the um that our revenue forecast is still very draft. Uh there are still quite a few things going on down at the state capital and depending upon what happens there in the next couple of weeks, those numbers
might change and shift. So this is definitely draft and um uh so that's that's what we're going to be going through is is the March forecast. Then how that might impact district revenue and our forecast there. We're going to set some context um around department
budgets. Study department budgets. You studied um school budgets last time. So, you're going to look at department budgets this time. Uh we have tried to answer some questions that were asked by board members related to department budgets this evening. So, we'll have a chance to talk about those what we think
are some answers that we've gotten to. And then we're going to look at our capital budget um and just look at some um impacts on how historically we've spent some funds in our capital needs uh area and then what that looks like going forward a little bit and finally talk about next steps as we head into May and
the important proposed budget presentation um is what we then prepare for. So, that's just a lay of the land um and a little bit of context around the revenue portion of this presentation still being pretty draft uh and will likely change a
bit in the next few weeks. With that, I'm going to hand it over to Miss Copeland. >> Great. Good afternoon, board members. Uh thank you, Superintendent. You just walked through my topics for today. Um so, I'm going to go straight to our
illustration here. And as a reminder, um March and April are two foundational presentations. In neither of them do we ever present like a full picture. And I I know that the board um based on your lens and altitude, you're often thinking, well, what's the big picture?
That's coming next in May. Um and and we can't yet get there because the pieces are still in development. But this this foundational element will focus on both that revenue and departmental piece of the expenditure pie. So, I did a couple um double checks
today because I know that there's things underway as we speak. I also think Ed had updated you over the weekend about some of the progress down at the legislature around the long bill, etc. Um so, this is the overall timeline to
reorient. Uh the governor does come out with a high level budget in November. Um there's hearings then. Um sometimes they address a current year supplemental in January. Um usually it's well it can go either way, positive, negative. Um
there's figure setting by the JBC in February and March and then the long bill um gets drafted and introduced which it has been introduced. Um, I believe it went through its second reading in the House today and um,
there'll be another reading and probably a little more time in the House before it moves over to Senate and then it moves over to reconciliation. Ed had mentioned some of those items in his update to you. Um, he also mentioned that the school finance act had yet to be scheduled in Senate Education. It has
been scheduled now. It is scheduled for um April 20th, which is not exactly super soon um in the education committee and of course it'll have additional steps to move through by the end of the session. So I
wanted to provide that context um and there's some explanatory text here on the left for folks um who want to understand what these pieces are. So on March 19th, not long before we drafted this presentation,
um OSPB and Ledge Council came out with um what they call their March forecast. They do that on a quarterly basis. Um OSPB provided this revenue. So what you see to the right is just revenue. It's not the expense side of the equation.
this revenue forecast. Um they noted a couple of updates since December. Um one is that the FY26 total revenue is a little bit further below the Taber cap. So that means current year revenue is
coming in a little bit further below I think what they thought. And so they have to this the state will need to think through what to do, right? Same as you guys would if your revenue came in low. Luckily, our revenue is actually more predictable than the state um in a
lot of ways. Uh there's also some updates around the inflation figure. As a reminder, what you see listed up there for FY2627, that is the applied inflation rate that relates to Tabor and budget growth and
for us things like PPR base growth. Um, but that's also an actual it's an actual inflation from January to December of last year. So the January to December of 2025 actual observed um MSA inflation
becomes the factor applied to the 2627 budget. So that is not an attempt to say in 2627 consumers are going to be facing 2.3%. Consumers already faced it. now it becomes part of the budget and the Taber cap and all the different
moving pieces. Um they also updated their forecast for outyear inflation noting that inflation does seem to be trending up. Um so 2.9 and 2.6 six are now those outyear and again imagine that those are lagged
based on prior calendar year actuals right so what folks are starting to see in prices right now January February March is going to drive that factor as applied to 2728 okay
uh this is sort of a new slide for us we've never gone into this level of detail, but um in trying to decipher two very different forecasts that in my opinion um depicted a a different financial reality for this state, Brian
and I decided we'll just present them both and let you guys decide. Um so OSPB provided a forecast and an important component part of their forecast is they moved down the minimum reserves for the
state. Okay. And what does that really mean? The state has a tighter policy than the than we do on what their target reserves should be. And in so far as any given year pulls their reserves down, they actually need to show replenishment
of reserves as a true expenditure, right? So you always think of that money necessary to get reserves back up to the target as part of the puzzle that you're solving. um by just moving the threshold down. Obviously, the picture looks
better, right? Um it's a clever move. Uh so they noted that um the current year will end quote unquote almost even. Now that doesn't mean it's actually even. It means it's spending down reserves
and yet at the end of the year they imagine that we will be right at this new threshold of 13% reserves. Okay. So evens may be a misleading word but um they also believe uh in some stronger
indicators around the economy and overall tax collections. These go hand inand as you know a lot of the tax revenue to the state is income tax and when people have jobs they tend to pay more income income tax. So this economy piece matters a lot for that forecast.
Um they note a potential $21 million shortfall under the proposed new reserve guideline for FY27 and under their stronger economic forecast. Um and they believe they're able to do all the
things that need doing um potentially and this is not the same as the long bill by the way. This is just a forecast using existing requirements um that they don't think it would trigger pausing the new formula. the new formula of the school finance act, right?
Ledge council meanwhile uh sustained the current 15% minimum reserves which is actually the current law. So they did not presuppose that things change um and noted that therefore FY26 ends um about
a billion short of our reserve requirement as a state. Um they suggest that the economy may be facing more risk and therefore uh there may be lower tax revenue collections. All of which in uh their opinion results in a potential
forecasted um difference between income expense and available resources of around 800 million to 1.5 billion for next year. Right? And so again, as these things come out and you're hearing from different sources, it kind of depends what news outlet you read or which
summary you read. Um those fourth bullets are very different, right? Um the ledge council believed that the draw on the state ed fund would be sufficient enough to trigger the pause in the implementation of the new
formula. And just as a quick reminder, what is that we're talking about? The new formula provides additional funding based on student need across three types of need. Special education, multilingual learners, and at risk. Of those three,
um the first two are actually new factors in the formula altogether. At risk has always been a factor. Um but this uh phased in implementation is an acknowledgement that the new formula costs more for the state than the old
formula. And so the way things work during a phase in is you get a base amount of funding according to the old formula and then you get some percentage of what increment additional you would get in the new formula. So that's what we mean by 30%. we would get 30% of any
additional amount that we would otherwise get through the new formula next year. That's a lot of words, but I just wanted to remind us what that phase in schedule looks like. Um, and when we do our revenue scenarios in a few slides, you'll see in hard
numbers, how much does phase in matter or not to Jeffco? And the answer is simply not a big not much um to be honest. Okay. So then in summary, what what do we want you to take away from this section in the midst of the
ambiguity and multi-perspectives? Um there really are some different outlooks for next year. Um we did try and highlight that we're not necessarily picking one or the other. So, our revenue scenarios that we will present to you kind of imagine some version of
one or the other coming true, so to speak. Um, does create some uncertainty. Uh, the joint budget committee decided to go with the OSPB forecast. Um, but important variables are going to continue to change.
>> Just I'd add on to this real quick. There is conversation around because they chose the rosier sort of picture um at the state budget perspective to sort of um then create budgets downstream. Uh
there are questions about does depending upon what happens in the next 6 months does that possibly mean a midear recision which means they adjust our revenue in midyear like in January. um that has not that has happened in my
um long lifetime and career in public ed in the state of Colorado, but it has not happened for a very long time. I don't know the last year that happened. It might be something Ed might be able to answer for us. Um so it hasn't happened in a long time and they they're they are talking about because they chose the
Rosier scenario. Is there is that a possibility? So, it is just something I think the board needs to consider as you move into the proposed budget and the then approved budget in June. Thank you, Superintendent Derlin. Miss Copeland, do you mind if I pause and just make sure because this is um a lot and I think
it's really important and explains why we're kind of in flux on our revenue which has a massive impact on our budget and our budget decisions. So, board any questions, thoughts? Okay. Directoria,
thank you. So, just to clarify, the budget perspectives that you're giving us is not necessarily the lowest that we might receive or the highest, but somewhere in the middle. >> Um, excellent. You're the you're we're
creating demand for the next section. So, in the next section, we're going to give you three revenue scenarios from the district perspective. And when Brian's presenting them, he'll be sure to note um one or two places where if if you know this came true, this is what
would happen. If this came true, this is what would happen. So you're kind of getting an all of the above. Okay. >> All right. Thank you, Miss Copeland. >> All right. Good afternoon, everyone. Um just as Miss Copeland said we're go
right into the district revenue forecast. Okay. So, what drives district district revenue? Make sure I get this the right level here. Um, the visual on this slide is meant to show the main drivers impacting revenue for the district. On the left, you'll see the factors that
push revenue up. Things like the CPI adjustments, the total program into the 2018 mill override, special education enrollment increases, um, the small fee increases identified through the BRB process, and the continued implementation of the new school finance formula. On the right, you see the
factors that pull revenue down. These are mainly driven by enrollment declines which directly reduce the funding count along with decreases in at risk counts, the elimination of the ascent program, and lower interest revenue for the district. The key point in this illustration is that while there are
items pushing revenue upward, those increases are fully offset in some cases more than offset by the enrollment driven declines. Okay. So, um, our enrollment trends and projections based on the updated enrollment trend trends, the school leader with school leader inputs, we are
now expecting enrollment to decline by approximately 1,700 students from the current year into FY2627. This projection also reflects the end of the ascent program and free horizon monastery uh, school transitioning to a charter school. long-term forecasts
continue to show gradual enrollment declines across the district. >> I just want to make the point the biggest challenge to our revenue side of the budget right now is declining enrollment. Um we were down about 1,400
kids 13-400 kids this year. Um and next year our projections are about 1,700 fewer students. Um, and it is so anything the state might even try to give on an increase in revenue is pretty quickly offset by the decline in enrollment. And it's just a real
challenge that's been facing the district for a decade now. >> And is it that the students are going to charter schools or is it that uh they're just simply graduating? >> Um, it's interesting that you ask. So
when you look at a gra a a bar graph of our grade levels, kindergarten's really low and 12th grade looks really high. Um and so through the demographic studies that we can get you all access to if you have interest, especially for newer board members, um what we have learned through the state demographer and our
partners at Flow Analytics who did some regional analysis and district-wide analysis for us is that there are fewer babies being born and so we just have fewer kids to serve. The other thing to help answer your question um director Moanian is the
purple bar. Um purple on each of those stack bar charts re represents the total charter enrollment. Um and so back in 21-22 total charter enrollment was close to 9,000 kiddos. You see a little bit of a bump up in 2425. That was actually
when um a charter school took over one of I think that was the year maybe it was the year prior a charter took over one of our schools at our request. That was the Cole Creek Canyon conversion to charter. Um and then you see a little bit of a bump up forecast for next year and that is the free horizon monastery
conversion to charter. But by and large the charter enrollment has been relatively steady um once you kind of back out some of these new schools coming online. So, it's not that the existing charters are necessarily
attracting away um increased enrollment from the district, but their enrollment is steady. So, that purple is kind of another part of the answer to your question. >> Miss Harper, would it be possible in our weekly update to have a link to the um state demographers report? I can help
find it, too. But I it was they we ask our state demographer to come every year and it's it's kind of scary fascinating what's happening across the whole state as well as Jeffco. >> Please can you just tell me how immigration might play into this as
well? >> Um it's a little hard to tell to be perfectly honest. Um immigration has not impacted Jeffco quite as much as some of our neighboring districts. There was a year um where overall district enrollment did go up a bit but by a bit
I mean it was about a maybe plus 400 kids that was fully offset by the trending declines. So the trending declines reflect quite a bit of um families moving out. So, um, and even if some families are moving in, uh, as you
can tell from the graph, again, there was a bump in, I want to say it was like 24 25, um, and it was enough to mitigate our an otherwise larger decline.
So, please continue. >> Okay. Thank you. All right. Okay, so now we're going to go into the three revenue scenarios that Miss Copeland outlined we were talking through earlier. Um, so all these scenarios reflect the same enrollment decline assumptions that we just went
through and assume no new general purpose meal override revenue. So scenario one um is if OSPB's outlook comes to fruition um it continues the phase and implementation of new school finance formula um which is a three-year
funding count averaging and a 30% implementation percent. Scenario two um is a fledge council's forecast comes true um which pauses the implementation resulting in a four-year funded count averaging and a 15% implementation percent. Scenario three is if they have
a maybe a midyear next year uh April tax collection hasn't come in it's just as they thought um is where we pause the implementation of the scenar pause pause implementation same as scenario two and then reintroduce a 1% budget stabilization factor just kind of gives
scale of what 1% budget stabiliz factor could do to the district. Okay, so under scenario one, total revenue declines about $1 million from the FY2526 revised budget. Scenario two results in a $2 million decline in the revised bud
from in from the revised budget. Scenario 3 has a significantly larger impact, reducing revenue by approximately $10 million from the FI2526 revised budget revenue. These scenarios frame the range of outcomes the district is planning within as we move towards the proposed budget.
>> Mr. Sammons, Is it is it fair to assume that since we know scenario two is about a decrease of $2 million that the budget stabilization factor would have an $8 million effect? Okay. >> Yes. A 1%.
>> Thank you. >> Okay. So we've been providing this slide over the last few years to provide the details on the other assumptions that we have within by eats by scenario. Um so you can see here the enrollment demographic assumptions are roughly the
same for every scenario except for the implementation of the new formula. Bless you. Um so with the new formula changing to a 15% implementation rate in scenario 2 and scenario three um the funding count does um increase a little
bit but then the new formula implementation percent goes from you know 30% to 15 to 15 and then the budget was action factor is 1%. We've highlighted the differences in blue here. >> I just want to jump in for a second. So we've talked a lot about fiveyear
averaging, fouryear averaging, threeyear averaging. This table helps contextualize how much does averaging matter. Um the reason that our revenue is actually um only a million dollars
lower in scenario two. Remember scenario two is where we're we're only getting the 15% of the um phase in of the new school finance. Right? In scenario two, um that adjustment up to our funded
count um more than almost more than offsets the weighted funding. So weighted funding again provides additional funding for student need. Um so the need profile so to speak in Jeffco is not so significant that um this
movement up or down or phase in or or not um it's not super material. So it when we when we think about what what impacts our funding um the funded count averaging impacts it a lot um and phasing and the need-based funding
impacts it a little bit more but not by much in the current formula. So I just wanted to say that a slightly different way. Hopefully it helps. >> Thank you Miss Copelan. Um so okay here's are here are the other detailed
um remaining drivers that are within the scenarios. Um although these assumptions are consistent across all scenarios they are important drivers of the revenue forecast and um they do remain preliminary at this moment. Okay. So a frequently asked question
that we have is how accurate has the district revenue and enrollment projections been over over time. Historically both revenue and enrollment projections have been within about 1% of the actual results. So this chart shows the district's fund account projections compared to the
actual fund counts over the last four years which excludes charters. So this is just the district's fund account. For each year we are comparing what was a forecast at the time of the budget was built to what ultimately materialized at the state finalized funding account. As you can see the actric act actual
district fund accounts have been within 0.5% of the forecasted district counts each of the last four years. Okay. So this chart takes the same concept from the prior slide and applies it to the total general fund revenue for each of the last three years. It
compares the revenue assumed into the adop I'm sorry compares revenue and the adopted or the amended budget because one year we had to go back and get amended budget when we consolidated the funds uh to what the district actually received at year end for 2526 the actual
revenue is coming in around projection of the revised budget. You can kind of see we're kind of tracking that right now. Um so what this graph is showing the actual revenue has consistently landed within about 1.2% 2% of the budget each of these years. And >> I just I just want to actually jump in
and say this 1.2 a couple things if Thank you, Brian. The 1.2% adopted um budget to actual basically is um pretty impressive. So I just want to say thank you to this team uh because on a budget
of our size I think like some people recommend that you try to get within 4 to 6% budget to actual um so we are um tightly budgeted
meaning pretty certain that what we budget we're going to spend. So that's one thing. The other thing just for especially our newer board members, these three bars, the the darker red, the red, and then the orange, they represent the three really critical
points in time of board action on our budgets. So the red, the adopted or amended happens in June. If there are decisions made over the course of the summer, for example, that need to make that budget amended when we
start school in August or September, that's where amended comes in. Okay. So, you're getting ready uh for fiscal year 27 to do to adopt the adopted budget, right? That's what happens in June. You'll recall that in January we brought
you a revised budget. So, we short up some things cuz we saw spending halfway through and we revised some things and you adopted the revised budget which is the red um right here in in 2526. That's that middle bar. And you can see
remember we talked about what was happening on our revenue side, what was happening on our expenditure side, and we had to um we revised. Then you you're you actually have like what actually happened. That's why there's hash marks or lines on that 26 cuz we don't know
yet. But so I just want to share with you how these bar graphs relate to your board action over the course of a fiscal year from June 30th from July 1 to June 30.
That's helpful context for me to think about it in terms of the cycle. Thank you. Um speakers, may I ask you to also speak up a little bit? Thank you. Yes.
Okay. So, that was the revenue section. Uh we're now moving into context setting. Context setting really relates to the expenditure side of the equation and more specifically departmental expenditures which is today's focus. So, we heard a question um what
percentage of department FTEE staffing is assigned to schools? Um we did some manual work to try and sort that out and we came up with 75% of departmental FTEES are either working in schools or transporting students to schools. So,
threearters of the FTE in the departmental budgets are really located primarily. There's actually a whole bunch that are located often in schools, but we're not counting them in the 75%. So, more specifically, we got some
questions about in these different programs where our employees and these are programs, not actual departments, right? There's not a department of general instruction or a department of instructional support. These are programs defined by CDE and our different teams all contribute
in different ways and you might have a single team spanning multiple programs. So the best example is information technology. Um a good amount of what our IT team does um is characterized as
instructional support because they are supporting our students and using technology for learning etc. They're buying software that is used for learning etc. But then some of what they do is classified. I think there's a little bit in ops. Is that right? And
then there's also some in general administration. So that one team is showing up in at least three if not four. They might have a little bit in just straight up general instruction. I can't quite remember. Yeah, it's not staff. It's like it might
be the mo boards that show up. Anyway, my point is simply a single team can show up in multiple programs. So don't mistake these programs for like the teams that you guys interact with. Okay. Um so working our way down. Um again
this this pie chart is very consistent with the statement on the prior slide. Whether it's in schools or instructional support deployed in schools or transportation to schools, you see threequarters of the pie of FTE funded out of departments um are in schools or
transporting to schools. So that's green, blue, orange. Um one quarter of the pie is either in the ed center or coil. If you haven't been to Coille before, Quail actually has four or five buildings, right? Um it has the transportation center. It you've
probably gone to the wrong one. You also probably went in the wrong way on the one-way street. These are common mistakes. Did that on my first day. It was so great. Um and we also have some food services uh
workers, our safety and security team, right? So when it says Ed Center or Quail um safety and security is a great example. their dispatch is there but 100% of what dispatch is doing every day though located in quail is benefiting our students. So even a a person's
location does is not a perfect proxy for how important their work is to students. Um so I just wanted to stress that location is kind of a thing but it's also a little bit of a red herring sometimes in terms of how important it is um to students.
So you can see um in terms of these locations within the general instruction program um about 11% of FTE are are in one way shape or form located in the ed center or quail could be either um which
amounts to 47 people within the special education instruction program 9% of FTE are generally located in Edin Quailo again want to say they spend quite a bit of time in the field that is
actually 103 people. So 9% equals 103 people. Um obviously the sped instruction overall is a bigger spend right if 9% equals 103 in terms of a headcount etc. you guys are tracking
instructional support about 42% of the FTE or you could describe it as 220 the number the count um are located in either the Ed Center or Quail and I do think a fair amount of that is in Quail but some of it's here um
operations and maintenance you see 34% versus um the 247 FTE we get to school administration um this is pretty clear that that would be 100% in schools. But I want to be
clear, there's not just 16 total FTE in school administration. We all know that each school budget funds the principal. Um the other thing that ends up I think in this program is the financial secretaries and APS, right?
I was going to get to that in a second, but I was going to say in the school budget, the principal, financial secretary, the AP, those are all school administration. So, this is not the same thing as administrators in terms of an association. This is a CDE
classification of what is your function in the building? What are you doing? Um, when it comes to these 16, thanks Brian was reminding me, he was one step ahead of me. um that we have a handful of school budgets that are departments
just to keep it real. Um and that is Fletcher Miller, Sebeski, and Outdoor Labs. You guys probably remember that from the school presentation where we said there are a handful of schools that are budgeted as departments. Any who uh
transportation 100% of transportation is trans sorry is transportation pardon me uh 288 and then we have general admin um where uh 100% of FTE funded in this program are located
either in the ed center or quail um and that represents 222 total FTE. So again, kind of balancing out and just contextualizing some of these FTE counts for purposes of um what does this all
mean? I use often just because it's simple and rounded the number approximately 10,000 FTE in the districtrun budget. Is that right? Am I close? I use 10,000. It might be rounded up slightly, but it helps me do math in my
head. So for example, what's the 222 general administration FTE located in either the ED center or quail is 200ish which out of 10,000 is 2%. Right. Yeah.
Um so when we really think about like what what are the different ways to characterize the work happening in different locations and what it means to the overall organization and therefore what we might realize or achieve in terms of um budgetary savings
by making changes. I think these numbers matter in terms of some of what we're about to walk through. So this is again um in response to questions not only from the board but others really trying to say to the best of our knowledge and this is not perfect because our data systems really don't support us doing
this any other way than manually. Um this is our best guess. Okay. This is a little bit of context about how we've approached departmental budgeting in the past. I'm going to focus more on the current year when we
were um FY2627 is so unique because we really started preparing the budget um approximately one minute after we passed the 2526 budget because we started some really in-depth
planning and analysis um that led straight into August conversations, September conversations, October conversations. So we have been working on these departmental budgets um really quite literally since before the year started before the current year started
which is well in advance of a year of the budget we're discussing. So, um there was a lot of engagement and one thing I want to mention is that um there were moments this past fall where I think department said why is it we're
having to identify our budget reductions before schools and understandably personnel had the same question. Why why why now? Um and why isn't why aren't schools doing this too? Um, we did that
because we wanted um schools to have the best possible line of sight into these departmental reductions. We also wanted um our highquality staff um who are working in some of these departments potentially in positions
that were cut to have as much time as possible to find a placement in schools if they have um skills that can be deployed well in schools. But most importantly, it was really the sequence has to be the sequence. We have to kind of figure out um what are we able to do in departments and therefore what are we
able to allocate to schools and what do we need to set different targets at. So this was um it was hard and I will say December was an especially hard month because though there was quite a bit of input from lots of different groups at different moments in times that the the actual impacted employees were all
notified the week before Christmas. Um that was not a great Christmas gift, but what we did say at the time was um this is the full extent of what we're planning for 2627 setting targets to meet needs for FY27.
So this slide I think came out or made its debut um in Augustish and this was taking um what we called the recurring needs and the recurring needs were all derived from the current year budget.
Um when we adopted it, the current year budget had a had a deficit spend of 40 million. And when we adopted it, we said to folks, hey, we want to give you a heads up. um five million ex dollars roughly in expense have been moved over to one-time
sources and out of the general fund, but they're coming back. Okay, it's stuff we got to stuff we got to keep doing. So, we're going to foreshadow that there's this additional 5 million coming back and coming back in the 26 27 year. So, we went to set the targets for our our
um budgetary reduction process. We went ahead and factored that 5 million in. It wasn't yet a deficit spend forecast. By the time you made it to your revised budget, um the deficit grew both because revenue went down and actual spending
was trending higher. But I want to be clear that 5 million was still hanging out over here in the grants fund. It had not come back in yet. That was just an adjustment based on actual spends at the at the revised budget. So anyway, that's how we got to it was the sort of
lightish blue and very dark navy blue um in the current year's adopted budget that drove that $45 million target and we had to set a target. What we knew in the budget reduction blueprint process was we had no real way to forecast revenue.
What we can plan for and change on a year-over-year basis is expense. So BRB was not defined as reach this specific use of fund balance because the use of fund balance depends on both
revenue and expense. BRB was defined as how do we reduce expenditures that is the thing we control. We can't control revenue. So it was always um targeted. That being said, the green was um a
recognition and realization, I think, by the district leadership and the board members who were working with us that summer that we can't solve for the whole 60 by reducing spending. We're going to have to go ahead and tag some of it to a future TBD revenue source. And when we
um put this slide out, it said what it says right up there, which is um seek at least 15 million in new annual revenue for capital uses. Capital uses was has been in this slide since day one. Not everyone read that phrase. Um but that was always part of
the original framing of this work was the idea that we would ask for at least that much towards capital to replace the deferred contribution to the capital reserve fund. So sorry for taking an extra minute. I know this is old news but I think it's really important
context. So again, last fall um we identified an overall dollar um amount of reductions equivalent to about 26 million. And we did vary targets based on proximity to
classroom instruction. Closer to classroom, smaller percentage of one's budget um to reduce. further from the classroom, larger percentage of one's budget to reduce. The reality is we don't spend a lot of money far from
the classroom. So even cutting something small by 8 or 11% doesn't get us very far. This is another way to look at um what we've reported on a few times about what came out of that planning process around
departmental budgets. Now you see the programs as columns. These programs on that other slide, you know, where the different rows and we were talking through how teams show up in more than one place. Also true here. Um and so and this is also colorcoded so
you can clearly see um across the different accounts which are salary and benefits, service accounts, materials and supplies, capital outlay and transfers. It's kind of its own world. Um what were the percentage reductions lined up with these programs? Again,
these programs are not spec specific departments. sped is probably the closest, but it's still not just the one thing. Um, and they show you that we did what the board at the time directed us to do, which is
vary our reductions based on proximity to classroom with the steepest and deepest cuts in the general administration program, reflecting an 11% reduction to salaries and benefits, a 27% reduction to service
accounts, 9% reduction to materials and supplies, and an overall 15% reduction in this program. um a request was made. Is there a way to kind of visualize these different scales um of reductions? And so um thank you
very much to the budget team who can build stuff like this. I'd like to think of it as the frayed flag, but that's probably not the right is that what it's called in Excel? No. Okay. I think it's beautiful. Um, and it does kind of help
you visually scale um these different reductions, right? And so, let me just read a little bit left to right to make sure we're all tracking on what these numbers mean. Um, again, thinking about that 45 million reduction, um, about twothirds of it,
uh, were departmental reductions and about onethirdish were school reductions. And then you see this one little tail unidentified right we've been transparent at various points that we didn't we were unable to get to the full 45
um within departments you see again scaled um of the program general admin they had the steepest c cuts it was 15% of general admin as a program which by the way is not a single department um
and so that's the biggest chunk right so we're kind scaling these visually so you can just see again um sped instruction was a 2% reduction so it's a smaller um sliver than some of these other slivers. So hopefully that helps as we're
communicating with the public in a very transparent way about the sincere and effective efforts to differentiate these cuts. One one of the things I want to highlight that I appreciate about this, first of all, thank you to Director Kenworthy who sort of drew this on a
back of a napkin, so to speak. Um, and said, I think this is helpful to show people how the pit bits and pieces that they're experiencing in the difficult decisions that we're having to make around reductions actually relate back to the whole. And the other thing I think is interesting if you just look
down that right hand column is the dollar amount being listed I think really does help one understand how much can you get from this turnup right so you'll see in sped instruction
um you know 1.6 6 million was a 2% reduction. In general admin, 15% was 8.4. And so, um, it's just that general administration is much smaller
than the sped instruction budget. And so even a larger amount um doesn't get you as much um from the turnip because there's just not as much being spent in that category. Um and we've we were trying really hard to to
tell that story if you can't tell. Um but it's just complicated because it's a really big budget with lots of moving parts. I think the other um point I want to make, I'm going to go back just for a second because this this will come up a
little bit later, so I want to foreshadow it before I hand it back to Brian. Um a lot of our general administration expenses um factor into what's called an admin fee. So, our charter schools um pay two two parts of
a fee to us. um an admin fee which covers portions of Tracy and I and other senior leaders in the district. Um and so anytime we cut from these administrative functions, we're also cutting our revenue because the charters are no longer paying a share of that.
Right? So charters pay about 11% of my salary, 11% of Tracy's salary, etc. So when we make these reductions to certain parts of our cost structure um we are also making an offsetting reduction to
our revenue. So we don't realize the full dollar savings so to speak. The net benefit is not a dollar. Um in the purchase service realm um charters purchase certain services. So they um purchase within financial services they purchase payroll services. So, even
though I'm cutting um a payroll FTE, which I'm not sure is the right decision, but I'm doing it anyway. Um uh 11% of that FTE is funded through charters who will no longer be paying for it. So, we are not realizing a net
benefit of a 1.0 FTE when we cut our purchase services. Um and that applies across IT, HR, finance, multiple parts of the organization. Um, so I think it's it's another way to remember the context
of of what's happening here. Um, our teams serve all 75,000 students, um, not just the district-run students. And so what we're staffing and supporting in terms of some of these business functions and operations functions and IT functions should be thought of as per
75,000 students as opposed to just the district-run tally. Okay. So with that we'll now turn to the impacts within the just the departmental budgets themselves. Okay. So this side summarizes the FT impact of the budget reduction blueprint
within the department budgets only um separate from the schoolbased reductions you saw last month. Departmental BRB decisions reflect a net reduction of 141 FTEES for FY2627. You can see on the table how those
reductions are distributed across bargaining units with JCAA positions reduced at a higher rate relative to their overall share of department staff compared to JCA and JESPA. Please note as of de December 2025 90 of these FTEES
were vacant and also hourly staff positions budgeted as dollar amounts were not identified to be reduced during the BRB process. Okay. So this table breaks down the departmental FD reductions by bargaining group and by program area. You know the theme here. We're trying to get the
program areas throughout the retire process. Um, it illustrates how reductions span general instruction, instructional support, operations, and general administration. The 33.4 FTE reduction in general administration results in just under a 13% reduction.
Okay, so here's another question we had from the board last presentation. What percent of department BRB reduction FTEES work at a school location? Just over half of the departmental FT reductions are school-based positions.
So of the 141 departmental FT reductions, 53% are located in schools with the remaining 47% in central locations. This reflects the reality that a significant share of departmental staff even when budgeted centrally are deployed directly in schools. For context, about 75% of all departmental
staff are deployed in schools or support student transportation. If reductions were applied proportionally across where staff work, a much larger share of reductions would have been school-based. The fact that school-based reductions are meaningfully lower than the overall share of staff's working in schools reflect an intentional effort to protect
schoolbased services to the greatest extent possible. while recognizing that some school impacts was unavoid unavoidable given how department staffing supports schools. Okay. So then this slide provides additional detail on where the reductions occurred within the program
areas broken down by school or central located support. You can see that the highest number of budget FTEEs reduced 27.4 Four are located in the ed center quell location and the joint administration program. But there are reductions across majority
of the programs and within locations and operational support. That's weird. Okay. Um so working through BRB process we identified some small increases in some areas to um sustain current operations
for FI2627 departments will require approximately 2.3 million to align budgets with actual staffing levels and sped and transportation and anticipated utility cost increase. These increase reflect rising cost pressures rather than
program expansion. In FI25 and FI26, um certain expenditures were temporarily covered by the IDA significant disproportionality grant. Beginning in 2627, approximately $2 million in expenses equaling around 25 FTEEs will transition back to the
general fund, creating additional budget pressure. Okay. So, the departmental programs preliminary budgets. This table summarizes how we'll arrive at the 2627 primary departmental budgets by program. It reflects the midyear revised budget
adjustments made during the 2526 um revised budget approval. the departmental reductions identified through BRB process and then preliminary adjustments for the critical ads and temporary grant to general fund shifts needed to sustain operations. Taken together these components add
together to produce the total preliminary department budgets shown on this slide. As a reminder, no compensation assumptions are included at this stage. Looking across the table, two patterns stand out. Special education instruction is the only program area showing a net budget
increase. In contrast, general administration shows both the largest dollar reduction and the largest percent reduction across the departmental budgets. So, I just want to flag um for the board um I suspect that this slide will cause certain people to make certain
statements that might be misleading. For example, you might look at this and say, "Oh, so you're not really cutting um 26.8 million, right? because you added some at midyear and you're adding some on a year-over-year basis. That is not
true. Okay, the 26.8 in reductions are not in the same places really as where we're making ads by and large with the one exception being special education instruction. Um, a little bit in instructional support, but that's actually related to special
education Paris. So none of this undoes the reality. When we tell you that we have identified 141 departmental FTE budgeted positions that are going away, those are going away. None of them are reinstated by these
preliminary adjustments. I want to be really clear because I know the questions coming and I know the false statement is also coming. I mean, I'll just be honest with you and we can highlight some of this we did at midyear around some of the sped investments that
we are making um in the interest of students. I would just say in particular preliminary what we know is that our speech language needs of students have increased and so we have increased services for our speech language students. Um we also know that we have
some paraprofessional expenses in the special ed arena that we're investing in. Um and we know there are rising costs related to outofd district placements for students who we do not have the internal resources to serve. Those three categories alone are making up a large portion of what we're seeing
here in terms of when we look now not looking backwards but looking forwards into next year. We just need to be upfront and say these are expenses that are being driven by student need and we need to build it in. And that's what this is.
I think superintendent Doran could have presented the next slide here. Um so as we noted in the previous slides uh special education instruction um program area was showing a net budget increase. Uh special education spending continued to rise due to several structural factors. First the district continues to
see growth in the IEP enrollment along with more students requiring higher intense services and compliance support. Second, service demand has shifted towards higher cost models, including speech, language, and indirect services that require additional staffing capacity. Staffing costs are also increasing, driven by higher pair
educational pay rates, increased staffing needs to meet the service requirements, and fewer vacancies. Finally, the district is experiencing more out of district placements along with higher tuition rates charged by the private providers. Taking together these pressures pressures explain why the federal education instruction shows a
net increase when majority of the overall um programs had a net reduction. And I just want to say I think the um the pay rates for our para educators um being moved over the last four or five years has been really positive and it's
causing this um fewer vacancies. when we um were just coming out of the pandemic, it was quite nearly impossible for us to find special education para educators. Um and I think we've done the right work in investing in our employees and their pay and it has attracted people to the
role. Um and we're we're proud of that. But then it's adding double pressure on the budget and it's just an area of investment that we need to continue to focus on. >> Okay. Now I'm going turn over to Mr. Rosario for the capital budget. Thank you.
Uh thanks for having me this afternoon. All right. Capital budget. For the most part, we're going to talk about the uses for capital budget um and the expenditures, but I wanted to start off with this comparative slide that you've seen previously. It's just a refresher that's really specific to sources of
funding. uh the green portion of each of the so each of those bars are our local districts surrounding districts. The green part of the bar represents the total program uh sources that they receive per student. Then we have the
blue section which is specific to general um general mill levy overrides for each of those districts and those funds go specifically to the general fund to help fund it within the general fund. and then highlighting the light uh the light blue portion of each of those
bars. So you can see for Boulder, Cherry Creek, Denver, and Pter Valley that represents the um special purpose mill levy that they've passed within their district that is specific to capital construction technology and maintenance. And so they are able to generate
additional funds through that special purpose mill to fund capital construction within their district uh for their districts specific to Denver. And you can see this off to the right. They have $1,277 per student of funding. That's the
equivalent of hund00 million in annual proceeds that they receive to fund capital construction and technology maintenance. So that is really giving them a competitive advantage over DEFCO that they have that funding source to fund those um those projects on an ongoing basis. This is a recurring
revenue annually that they can use to invest within their capital needs. Looking at our historical spend for capital renewal, we have four categories that we'll highlight over the next few slides. The first is facility improvements. That's really to maintain
and repair our core systems throughout the district in our facilities. We also have had new construction to build new schools or substantially add on to existing facilities. technology is multi-year investments in student staff technology and other is our capital
purchases such as vehicles but also our regular payments on lease financing for capital needs. Yeah, I just want to jump in real quick. Um, Miss Rosario, and thank you for your patience, but I want to highlight sometimes when our community sees this bullet of new
construction, there are questions that immediately come related to you have declining enrollment, you've closed 21 schools, why are you building new things? Typically speaking, the new construction in Jeffco over the last at least bond program and I and definitely
moving forward one one part of it has been new construction for the purpose of CTE. So Warren Techch South um has been a new facility that has been built which serves students from across the district and we do have um high demand for the
programs at Warren Techch. The other thing I would say is the majority of our new construction um both in recent years as well as going forward is really about building replacement for our aging facilities. We have many schools that are just um beyond the age that we
really want them to be and they no longer serve as a modern learning facility for our schools and so much of that um new construction is about building replacement. >> Yeah. Thank you.
So showing this in a graphic format and referenced on the previous slide. Uh over the 14 year previous years, Jeffco has invested a total of 1.5 billion total um averaging 108 million annually. Note that these numbers are adjusted for
inflation. So when you see the amounts listed for prior years, those amounts have been adjusted um so that we're looking at present- day values across the board as a comparison and then coming up with the average of 108 million annually over the last uh 14
years. Uh the 108 is broke there's 67 million on average that's being used to uh invest within our facility improvements. That's the maintenance of the core systems and then 34 million on average per year for new construction. Another way to think about how what is
our spending benchmark is a common industry metric for annual capital renewal is looking at our replacement costs for our um facilities across the district. It's a low estimate but we estimate that our replacement cost is 5.5 billion. Take 2% of that. that is
going to give us that the this industry standard is really that we would want to invest 110 million per year in capital renewal um expenses and maintenance of our facilities which is pretty much in line with what we have been spending over the last 14 years.
Looking forward to next year's budget we have this graphic. So in the green bar, that's our current year forecast for FY2526. Looking at the beginning fund balances, the sources that we have this year, the uses that we're projected to spend in an ending fund balance. The next column
over is our preliminary budget showing the transfer in from the general fund of 30 million. uh estimated sale from s sur surplus properties of 10 million and estimated interest and fees and loo revenue to the fund of two million for a total sources into this fund of 42
million next year. Then in working in conjunction with our facilities teams and and technology leads uh what do we expect that we will be needing to use as and this is really looking at the priorities. This isn't all the investments we need to make in the
district. It's just looking at our high priority needs across the district. We're estimating about 61.6 million, which will leave an ending fund balance of around 61 million. We're also projecting this out for the next couple years, keeping the sourc's assumptions
consistent over the next couple years and then inflating that uses amount by inflation year-over-year to keep it around the 60 to 65 million. We um used the 30 million transfer into the capital reserve fund and that's based on the historic average that we
had seen prior to um investing in the or having the bond program starting in 2018. Specific call out of the types of expenses within the capital budget that I showed on the previous slide. It's very sim similar to what you saw a couple slides ago, looking at the
regular facility improvements, prioritizing replacement, repair of the core sets of um building improvements across the district and looking at the highest priority projects. We do we will cons continue to spend a little bit of capital towards the Fletcher Miller
project for FY2627 as we um go through the decommissioning of the old building. Then within technology, we continue to have the ERP project. We also will have um an investment in security cameras, trying to start a program and in a renewal
cycle for security cameras in our school buildings and then our continued payment for lease financings for what we built with Three Creeks K8 and a portion of the Arfat Aqua Aquatics Center. I I just want to highlight this idea of these cameras and replacement cycles.
We've been talking in the safety and security space around um that historically speaking, the district really has not had a a systemwide effort or refresh cycle for some capital needs related to safety and security,
including um handheld radios, uh camera, safety and security cameras. Um we are working on inventorying kind of what what's out there and where. um creating a standard. And then you'll see here, this is just the very beginning with the
limited funds that we have in this account of an opportunity to begin starting to target where we know we might have some gaps. Um and making sure that we can provide some centralized support. Um feeling like that's an important investment for us to have a
systemwide overview. Um and so that's thank you for starting that. Um, and it's just the beginning of something that I'm hoping can become a much more systemic practice for the district. >> All right. So then looking at the multi-year capital spending projection
in a different way, we can see the prior years in the orange bars on how um the total spend and then in 25 starting in FY25 and going forward, the solid portion of those bars is the projected spend and then the hatch mark above
there is um indicating the part that would be in uh deferred maintenance because we wouldn't be meeting that benchmark target um going forward. And so, and we also have inflated, as I noted on the previous slide, the 60 million from this year, adjusting it
annually to keep up with that spend. And now I'll hand it over to Miss Copeland. Go there. So, just to note a handful of things that we're still either monitoring or have yet to resolve that inform may
um one compensation agreements while JESPA is in a multi-year agreement inclusive of compensation terms. JCA and the district are currently negotiating compensation terms. Um the capital reserve transfer. The district will need to decide how much to
transfer from the general fund to the capital reserve fund. Um, as part of funding the necessary capital improvements that Miss Rosario just described, the economic and cost pressures. We're going to continue to monitor our
inflation trends, specific cost increases, items like fuel, um, some of our utility rates. Uh, I just saw the notice about the drought pricing on water. Just a heads up, we um pay a lot of water bills in this district over the
summer. And so it may very well be by the time we come back to you in May that we need um to do a little bit more adjustment around utilities in addition to what Mr. Sammons already spoke of. So again, we continue to fine-tune um until we bring the May budget, the May
proposed budget. we our cuto off so to speak is sort of the third week in April. So we're pretty darn close to it at this point in terms of when we have to produce the figures um so that we can get you the materials in a timely manner. Um
and just to note by the way um if our cuto off is the third week in April we probably aren't going to be done with negotiations. What we'll bring to you in May um is a couple different versions of scenarios,
but I want to stress one point. Um by law, we have to propose a budget. We can't propose three budgets. Um the term is defined in statute. So, we are going to propose a budget. However, we're also going to illustrate some of these other
scenarios. Um, one such scenario would be a a somewhat matched or nearly balanced revenue and expense picture for next year. Another scenario um will be a use of fund balance of what we're
calling moderate level. And then another scenario would be a use of fund balance to match recurring needs. So again, at a high level, we'll describe three scenarios, but you will still receive one proposed budget.
Okay. And with that, I'm going to pause for additional closing questions. First, thank you. I know this is um please don't take the long faces up here as a reflection of the presentation. Please take them as an understanding of
the presentation and the very serious situation that we're in. Um, with that board members, I know it's a lot questions. See, flipping. All right. Dr. Etcher. Okay. Sorry, I was writing them down as
we were going through. Um, quick question. Who determines the state minimum reserves? So the um OSPB forecast, who deter determines if we approve the 13% minimum?
>> The legislature. It has to be legislated. >> Okay. So no voters on that one. Okay. Sorry, I had questions. Um mostly towards the end here. I had a lot
of other questions. the um $30 million that you're talking about in capital reserves. Sorry. Okay. So, for the current year, we only transferred 15 million.
>> Correct. >> And 15 million was deferred. >> Correct. And next year there is a proposal to possibly defer the other 30 million or part of the 30 million.
>> We're we're not making a proposal at this time. This chart is designed to illustrate next year's capital budget as if we're providing the full 30 million which has historically been the transfer in. >> We will have to make a decision. Okay.
how much to transfer. >> Okay. Is there a recommendation on how low that capital reserve fund goes? >> Uh
um I'll I'll be honest. Um, part of the reason BRB always included a plus 15 minimum and we phrased it very intentionally as at least 15 um is because we need to spend this money and
that is too low. 16 is too low. >> Okay? >> Right? And so um in in the effort to at least have an additional 15 to replace what wasn't contributed in the current year.
>> Um but by no means to signal the full extent of the need. The full extent of the need is greater than 15. Um I our recommendation would be that we need to ask for additional dedicated capital revenue and and that's kind of been out there for a while. Um,
in terms of planning and budgeting, the the key thing that we work to support Jeff and his teams around is what are the uses, right? Realizing that um, sources is more in your hands and in the hands of voters. Um, what what we are
trying to present primarily here is our best estimate of the most critical uses. Does that help? >> Yeah, thank you. Um on the next page of 43, slide 43, you talked about
um the district paying leases for Three Creeks and a portion of the Arvvada Aquatic Center. And I remember at the capital assets um advisory committee, you mentioned that if we pass another deficit budget that our
um credit ratings will go down. Would that impact our lease amounts for these two facilities? >> No, these are already set, but it will impact future financing. >> Okay, thank you. That's it. Thank you.
>> Thank you. Other directors, Director Kenworthy. >> Thank you for slide 26. Just thank you so much. um my visual learning style
really appreciates this um breakout. Um and thank you for uplifting that um the chart the context of the charter fees. That's also incredibly helpful and not something I considered when I drew on a napkin. Um
I'm I'm I'm just really grateful for that. Um slide 38 is my other question. Um, is this data for current fiscal year or previous fiscal year? Do you know?
Current. Okay, great. And then, um, the part that's general purpose MLOS's. My understanding is that as it stands, our cap for a general purpose MLO is 28% of our total program. Is that accurate?
>> Almost. Oh, so close. It's just a nitpicky slight tweak to what you just said. Um, the standard limit is 25%. We have a 5-year period of time, not
coincidentally, the same five years that the new school finance formula is phasing in. These things are connected. um where for districts who are negatively impacted by components of the new school finance formula and we are one um we have the opportunity to ask
for an extended limit. So if we go and ask and we say will you approve up to this limit of 28% which is a figure computed for us by the state um and the voters say yes then that becomes our limit. if we don't go ask or
if the voters say no, it reverts to the 25. >> Thank you for that clarification. That's I think exactly what I needed. Um, understanding that other districts have also had adjustments made based on the
fin the funding formula. Um, and so there are a lot of districts in Colorado that are very spread apart >> um, in those amounts. Um, and it's also good to know that there's a time limit on it, five years. Um,
I also want to just uh mention that as a county, we are not at the top of our MLO collections right now. While several of the other districts that are listed here are reflecting that they've cap they've
topped out at their MLO um percentages. And that is one of the reasons that we need to take a look at some um measures because we have some potential that we're not um currently picking up potential funds that we're not picking
up right now. >> I think the one thing I want to just add there um one of the virtues of defining um an MLO based as a percentage of our total program in a district like Jeffco where our enrollment is declining. it.
Part of the reason we show this on a per student basis is we would be asking v voters only to approve money based on our enrollment. And if our enrollment is going down, that amount might go down. Right? So, I want to just stress that this idea of defining one thing as a
percentage of another thing actually ensures that we're only collecting for the students we're serving. Um, so it creates this situation hopefully where voters are assured um, we're not asking for more than we need because it's really a per student or um, amount so to
speak because they move together. >> Yeah, I appreciate that clarification. Thank you, >> other directors. Director Gibbons. Uh first I do want to appreciate you know the work that went into getting us some of these answers in terms of FTEES
and how departmental budgets kind of play out at the school level. Also I too think that slide 26 is beautiful sort of a cross between Shagal and Mandrean. Um I wanted to get some clarification or at least understand on slide 28. you know,
I was hearing that kind of the biggest movement was it, you know, in terms of um reductions, you know, was being felt by JCAA. But I just, if I understand this correctly though, that's if you look at it as a percent of
spending, but not necessarily number of FTEEs. Am I looking at that correctly? >> Um, almost. Um, it is actually a percent of FTEES. So JCA is cutting 8% of their FTEES
while uh you know and they're not doing it. I should say the departmental budgets are reducing 8.2% of their total budgeted JCAA FTEES and 3% of their total budgeted JCAA JCEA and 3% of
JESPA. the that's the blue the blue those percentages in the blue are um what percentage of FTE is being reduced. When you go over to the green um the denominator changes and so the denominator over on the green side is of
the total FTE reductions what percentage are in each group. So it it it's sort of a nuanced way to look at it. I believe that um you know the vantage point of a financial budget and plan is you only
ever compare something to itself particularly if things aren't equally sized and so the number of JCAA staff is already smaller than the other one. So when you just look at counts or you look at amount of total uh reduction, it's not as applicable as what is
proportionate, right? And that that blue column, the the year-over-year percent change in FTE is designed to show proportionally um how much by group we're cut. >> Well, right. And so I guess proportionally, yes, we're cutting more
from say JCAA. >> Yep. But in terms of just u and I realize it's not necessarily apples to apples but in terms of just the absolute number of FTEES it still is is a larger number that
would be affected is coming from Jespa. >> That's true in terms of the just straight count >> right I just I just wanted to make sure I understood the nuance of of how that was being >> calculated and explained earlier. Of course.
>> Um, I think that's all the questions I have right now. >> Director Moanian, >> I have more of a comment than anything because this is a lot to digest, but I really appreciate the amount of effort and work that went into this to take such a deep dive into the intricate
little details and parts of this. I'm sure I'm going to have questions and send emails in the coming days, but I just want to uplift the amount of work that I can tell went into this to try to answer a lot of the questions that we've been asking for for a while now. So, thank you.
I'll echo my thank you. Um, I do have a few questions. If we could go to slide 21, please. And some of this I think you said we were just going fast and so I just want to I want to clarify. Thank you for this slide. I think this is tremendously
helpful um in telling the story. And so for the non the person with a non-education background when we look at the that general administration, can you give me some like is that like our HR partners? Is that our like what what is in that bucket because 200
people is a lot of people and I want to understand what's in it. Um so the finance team by and large is in that bucket. Um I have about 70ish people now and that includes student
data um privacy and reporting. So Jeremy Felker and his team um I think they represent about 12 are now a part of my division. So that may make the numbers look a little bigger than they used to. Um HR is in that number. Uh legal is in
that number. comms is in that number. Um, a little bit of the IT team, some of the IT team is in that number. Those are the major chunks. Um, superintendent, you know, but you're really getting down to some
pretty small counts. Um, so it's fair to say like the people who are keeping this district running when we think about payroll, when we think about budgeting, when we think about accounting, when we think about those things are in this bucket.
>> Okay. >> Um, when we think about the school administration and the 16 because as you mentioned, they're not principles, they're not APS, they're not, you know, the secretaries. We mentioned some of our schools.
What are what are what else is in that one? >> Yep. And so, forgive me if I misled you there. Um, I I wanted to contextualize 16 by noting that most principles, APS, and secretaries are paid out of school budgets. Um, and what I didn't explain
very clearly, so thank you for giving me a second bite at the apple, is that this number actually represents the principal's APS and secretaries in Fletcher Miller, Sebeski, and our outdoor lab schools that are departments. They aren't budgeted
through SBB. Thank you for the clarification. Um, okay. Thank you for that one. If we jump to slide 33, and this is truly just we went through it fast, and I I just need like a 30
seconds more on this slide. Help me understand the $2 million alignment to budgeted FTE to actual staffing. >> Cool. I'm going to flip to this one to help you. >> Which which slide number is that? >> This is 35. >> Perfect. Thank you. So, this takes the
full 4.3 million um which is a combo of um moving our budget to better aligned to actuals um as well as bringing some things back in from the grants fund. Right. >> Point me to the 4.3.
>> Um the the total dollar figure is in that. >> I can't I got you. >> Okay. >> If I had a pointer, I would be pointing. Okay. So, for example, um the 1.4 and
the 1.9, I think we've we've talked a little bit about these things. Special education instruction is some FTE. Instructional support is also special education para educators. >> Um not all of the special education expenses show up in the line called special education. I know I've said that
before. >> Um these individuals are staffed and planned to meet student needs. So, when our counts are going up and our special educators are working on IEPs and doing planning and allocations and trying to
figure out how many staff we need to meet the IEP needs, they aren't stopping to say, "Well, wait, what was budgeted?" >> So, it's it's fair to say we are increasing staffing in these groups because there is a direct, in fact,
often legal need to provide services to some of these students. and we've already done so which is why the budget is playing catch-up. Great. >> The budget is just increasing the these actual counts aren't.
>> Thank you. Um staying on this slide, if we look at the transfers line. >> Yep. >> You know, we see that we transferred in and out. Can you just help remind me? >> Yep. >> Um about why we're seeing I mean I recognize that it's it's effectively the same, but for me and the listening public, if you could help.
>> It's not the same. So, I'm so glad you asked. And Brian, correct me um if I stumble here just a smidge. Um at midyear, we needed to do an emergency adjustment transfer, which I think all of it went into all of it went into our
bene our employee benefits, which has nothing to do with either um transfers that were actually reduced. So again, these are not offsetting things. They're all in one line, but they're very different things. So, the midyear added 2.5 million into the transfer into
employee benefits. Um, and the BRB reductions are by and large to food and nutrition services. You'll recall they're actually 2627 is the second year of a two-year plan um that food nutrition services identified and has been implementing to reduce their
overall expense. The second part of that reduction was largely felt in the insurance reserve fund. I do want to preview one tiny little thing which is um given some of some of the data we're seeing and that we continue to monitor in the next two weeks um it's possible
that a small portion of that may need to be reinstated simply because of factors beyond our control. Thank you. All right, last one. Slide 44. Um, and really this ties back to um, even the
slide before where we show the the increase and decrease over the last couple years in the average. I've had the question asked of me, well, you say it's an average of 100 million, but we don't actually spend 100 million every year. And what I've tried to explain, and I would love to know if I'm correct
in this, is that capital is lumpy and we don't always know when a heater will go out or we need a new AC. And we are doing a lot of work with the district and with Mr. Gatlin's team and and Shane, I know you're heavily involved in this and
trying to plan that. Um, but the fact that it is lumpy and those years when we spent a lot were bond years and we were catching up a little bit on some of the deferred maintenance we needed to do already. And so I think it's really important for even though we see this
lumpiness, avoiding deferred maintenance is something that I think is really important for us to stay on top of. And so yes, there are years where it's well under um but I don't want that to be our norm. >> Yeah. And I also I mentioned this um in
a presentation recently to the CAC and I do believe it's posted on the website. Um the the old way of funding capital also incentivizes a certain amount of lumpiness. So issuing debt in large
amounts of money and then spending it quickly because the IRS says you have to spend it within the first 3 years of issuance. Um yeah, it creates a bottleneck of sorts, but actually at our scale it doesn't have to be that lumpy.
We can afford both types of investments, the primary and the secondary spend, the ongoing improvements and the replacement new construction um in predictable levels. Right. I think a little bit about that escalator analogy of um teach
that that JCA uses about the steps, right? If we were actually doing replacement on a regular schedule and not creating these bottlenecks, it actually can be predictable. You can fund a fair amount of either half of or
more of a a decent replacement in just a predictable manner. Um and so the the the prospect of um investing a taxpayer dollar into capital expenses um that are predictable, that are based on need,
that are based on historic averages um and really taring improvements, but also keeping an eye on that new construction. I mean, as you saw in our budget line, new construction is not zero in any of the coming years. Um nor do I think it ever should be. um no
matter the situation of the district. So I think excuse me that was what I wanted to say. >> Great. I just want I didn't Yeah, I want to add >> on slide 42 I do want to call attention for board members and um others who who
might be interested um that um when you look at the transfers in you know 15 million last year because the board made a decision to defer 15. We're assuming the full 30 million which has been typical practice for this district historically
in the out years. You'll also see in the second line on sources the sale of surplus property. So um when I'm out and about talking to community groups and parents and staff and others, I often get this question, why do you need
capital funds when you've closed all these schools? why don't you just sell these buildings and use the funds from the sale of the the proceeds of the buildings to take care of these capital needs that you're talking about? You can see our assumption and this is now based
off of multiple years of experience with the surplus of these buildings. really were thinking uh in in a middle ground sort of reasonable expectation once we sell all the buildings that we have closed, we're probably going to be pulling in I'm going to give a number
that's wrong, but it's a general thinking and based on historical sales that we've now seen 50 million. And so you can see we've put 10 million in the outy years as revenue or sources for capital needs. And so I want everyone to
understand we are selling properties. We are putting those funds into our cap reserve account per policy to support um the estimated 108 million a year that we typically spend on properties. When you think about um well first of all Denver
who's getting a h 100red million annually um that would do it right. Um, when you think about going forward, if you can imagine 60 million annually coming in from a special purpose Milwaukee override, 10 million over the next, say, 5 years,
four to 5 years added on to that, you're at 70, right? You're getting closer to that 100 million. And so, you're not having these big ups and downs. The risk of the big ups and downs, and we're seeing some of it now, is that we do have schools that are aging facilities.
They need to be replaced. We have a lot of really nice buildings on the west side, not as many on the east side of of our district. And we are having some critical system failures that are impacting our ability at times to operate on a daily basis for kids. So
that's the challenge. But if you can contemplate 60 on that sources annually over time and even increasing with inflation, um you could imagine us getting closer to the 100 million. Not quite there, but much it looks much better, especially when you contemplate that we're selling properties and
putting that money towards this, too. >> Thank you. It's a great clarification. And I want to remind our listening public that we did surplus all of the remaining properties. And so, I know Mr. Gatlin and his team are working through that. So, again, so much gratitude. I know this was a huge lift. This is a
huge deck and really responsive to the questions we asked. So, we appreciate it. Thank you. All right, next we are going to keep rolling. Our board will receive an update on the cell phone policy as there are multiple presenters this evening. Please come join us. Um, as you get
seated, we will ask you all to introduce yourself. Um, we have aotted 40 minutes for this update. Please do reserve time for the board questions following your remarks. And, um, personally, I'm really excited for this presentation. And I think this is um something the board
takes very seriously and I know that a lot of our parents and community members do as well. And so before I turn that over to our esteemed presenters, Superintendent Derlin, is there anything you would like to add? >> Thanks, President Applegate. I just I want to say welcome to our um large
group of folks who are here to talk about this important topic. Um I really appreciate the staff who are here late and who've been putting in lots of time, energy, and effort. both um staff here at the ed center who are working on this and our school-based staff. Thank you so much. And I want to give a special
welcome to our students who are here. I will say that um we have a lot of student voice involved. That's one been one of our goals is to increase student voice in a lot of our district-wide projects and make sure that what we're doing is aligned with some thinking from our students and giving them voice and input into these projects. This one has
been hot, right? These these the students who have participated with us have been very helpful not just in expressing strong opinions and thoughts and giving us strong advice. I would say
they have schooled us on a deeper and better understanding of what technology means to our young adults. And I don't I have woken up to the fact that I didn't understand that um before you all and your peers started coming and talking
with us about this project and I just want to emphasize how much in Jeffco we care and respect about the voices of our students. What they have to say matters. And so I want to thank you both for being part of this and you can pass this
along to your friends um and neighbors who may have also joined you but couldn't be here tonight. And just please know that we've heard you um and I hope you see some of your feedback reflected in either the final product. Um but I also want you to know I think
you've had an impact on our thinking about what um cell phones mean to the young people um in our schools today. Um, and so not everybody agrees about this one, just so you guys know. Um, in terms of where we're going to land and, uh, but it has been incredible work. Um,
and I just really thank the students who've lended their voice to it. So, thank you. >> Thank you, Superintendent Dorland. >> All right. Um, so we we'll start with introductions. Um, I'm Lisa Ru. I'm chief of staff. I'm going to be leaving the leading this presentation tonight. And then, uh, Becky, do you want to do a
quick introduction of yourself? >> Becky. Becky Shy, manager of edtech student technology services. >> Sean McDermad, director of student technology services. >> I'm Reagan Hmons. I go to Pomona. >> I'm Gio Ortega. I go to Brady High
School. >> Scott Schaefer, parent of students at Wheatidge and Maple Grove. Michelle DeAndrea Austin, principal at Bell Middle School. >> Jill Ibec, chief information officer here to support student technology
services and TDPAC. >> And I just want to say uh Sarah and Gavin were also planning to join us um from JSLB, but had some other commitments they're doing tonight. And I'm especially going to miss Gavin because he was my antagonist, a primary antagonist throughout this whole
process, and I really enjoyed uh the constant debates. So, um, and I also want to say apologies to Gio. I have his name up here as Gia. So, um, that we'll make sure that's corrected. And, um, Gio was also even giving me feedback on the on the policy a few minutes ago. So, um
it's a constant thing and really appreciate um as Superintendent Dorland said, our kids were really and the adults um at this table can attest to the fact that they were the ones who consistently showed up at every single meeting as the adult participation
dwindled each meeting. So, uh we consistently had a group of um five to 10 JSLB students who showed up uh for this work. I'm going to go through the next um the slides 3 through 20 very quickly um because this is all
information that I have presented to you all before and I want to make sure we get u time for you all to ask questions. So as you know we started this work um in the 2425 school year. We reviewed school-based policies. So while we haven't had a district policy we had
many of our schools have policies and we studied those. Um, and then this year we've been working with representatives of DAC, TDPAC, and especially JSLB and the school leadership principles advisory committee to revise our district policy JSA and create JSAR to reflect Jeff's cell phone policy in
accordance with Colorado law by July 1st. Um, so today we're going to just do a really speedy review of the research we did last year. We're going to provide an update on our committee work. We're going to review stakeholder feedback um for our listening public and the board.
Um you probably saw in your board docs there are 410 comments. Those have all been provided to you and only redacted um the names of people if they were put in there. Um and then we're going to review the timeline for board approval. I do want to mention that this is uh one
of two presentations you're going to receive. So you'll receive the presentation tonight and then next week or sorry next month we will be looking at the sense maker uh data which is really fascinating. We got a preview of it. Um we'll be looking at that together. So, national context, as we
all know, the cell phones and young people um issue is um is hot right now. People are I I just saw some actual Colorado polling results that banning cell phones is like one of the the the things that adults in the in our state
are really hyped up about. Um and so, um it's something that is getting a lot of attention right now. Um there's, you know, a lot of research going on. And I actually recently heard there's going to now be some research on, you know, all these policies have been put in place in various places and how effective are
they? Are they getting at what um they were intended to do. So I think we're going to see a ton of research on this um over the next decade or so and it's going to be really interesting. Our own research as we looked um at the various policies in place in Jeff Co secondary
schools and we also looked at a K8 they shared their policies for review. We studied studied intended and unintended outcomes, consistency in application, perceptions, discipline data. This is all available um in board docs and the
June 12th, 2025 um board agenda item for anybody who wants to look at it. But overall, you know, teachers, and I think this is not exclusive to Jeffco, I'm hearing about this everywhere that teachers strongly support clear and enforceable cell phone policies. Um and
both teachers and students emphasize the need for consistent enforcement across classrooms and uh and staff and that's a huge challenge. Um sustain communication so that when we look at you know when and how we're communicating about cell phone policies. It's typically like at
the beginning of the year but we're not doing a great job of keeping those at the top of the forefront for our parents especially and sometimes our students too. Parents want more information about the purpose and expectation of our policies and students want guidance, not just rules on how to use phones
productive, like productively for learning. So, they don't just want to be told not to use them, they want to also be taught how to use them productively. A really important part of what the work that we did last year was um to identify these guard rails, the emphasis on school-based context and autonomy with
um foundational baseline district standards. So, you know, the way in which uh we're a very large district with many sites and um school-based autonomy and the ability to adapt for context really matters culturally um to our schools. Um we need to make sure we
have exemptions for medical and special needs. Um students access to communicate with employers, doctors, and law enforcement especially as they get older is really important. We need to think about differentiating for um for age and level. uh we need to balance digital
digital literacy and cell phone use restrictions. Um and also for our our teachers and and we see this a lot in the feedback that we just received is that our our teachers primarily do not want to be the cell phone enforcers. That's not what they signed up for. Um
and we need to keep that in mind. And then uh we something that we have also learned and learned last year too is just the alignment among our district teams on the various initiatives around dig digital things and um you know phone digital literacy guidance like we need
we need just need to keep working really collaboratively on that. So our current landscape as you all know uh there's a law that requires districts to have a policy in place by July 1st 2026. We have decided that we are um we're revising our current policy JSA to be
inclusive of cell to be inclusive of cell phone policy and we're creating JSAR to provide our schools with some guidelines. Um and they will build their own policies. Many of our schools have already done so. So they may adjust the policies that they already have. JSA is
um student use of personal devices. So, our IT team and um our um our chief information officer were really helpful in identifying how we could adjust a policy we already had rather than start from scratch. So, here's what we've done over four meetings. We first met in
October. Um we reviewed the the work that we did last year to study this. Um we received feedback on current policy JSA and just started to discuss what an outline of JSAR would look like. um we you know heard at the meeting uh people
were uh concerned about perpetuating um inconsistent application among schools. So there were a lot of questions like why can't we just have one policy that that we instate in in every single school and we we had a lot of discussion about that the burden on schools to
create their own policies um guidelines versus directives. So those were some areas of concern. Um and and I will and then um we based on their on feedback we started to revise policy JSA and draft
JSAR. I will say where we were and where we are now are um two completely different places I think um and these folks can can talk about that a little bit more. But really um we we we got to a very complex place and folks were like this is too complex. We need to get more
simple. Um our students had a lot of uh feedback for us and continue to have feedback which is really helpful. Um and there there have been questions about the resources districts will provide to schools. What are students rights? So one of the things that I've learned a lot through this process is that we
while we have um a lot of policies and we have handbooks and those kinds of things. students really don't understand their rights related to their cell phones um and sometimes their personal property and we need to do a better job of helping them understand those things. We had a meeting in January where we
were really focused on how we were going to get feedback. So next week you're or next month you're going to hear about the Sensemaker tool which is a really interesting way of getting feedback. We tested that in this meeting. We reviewed um the form that we were going to put out and we put those things out on
January 21st and have um received a lot of feedback which we will uh go through a little bit today and then the sensemaker stuff in in um in May. So then we had a meeting a few weeks ago in March. Uh we reviewed the policy and regulation revisions that we have. So
we've continued to revise and revise and revise. Those are all reflected in the uh policies that draft policies that are posted in your board docs. Um we previewed the sensemaker findings and uh we prepared for this meeting today. So there were some areas of concern um that
are now reflected in the policy school responsibility versus district responsibility. Um we had a big conversation about what does off and away mean? Um, and why, um, you know, why why do you need to take the time to press the button on the side of your
phone to turn your phone off? Um, that was something Reagan um, specifically pushed me on and we we could talk about tonight, but a really really good question. And then clarifying a distinction between personal cell phones and personal computing devices. those um you know there there are uh there's
differences like if if a student brings their own laptop to school and that was something that our IT team pushed a little they had reviewed this with our digital teacher librarians and our edtech team just wanted to make sure that there was really clear distinctions between um students cell phones and
their personal computing devices which I think we've struck the right balance now so here's who we heard from um in the 410 responses you And uh see we heard um you know a lot from parents, from teachers and then other other folks. Um
and this could double count because you could be two two things um not just one uh which many of our uh folks in our district are. And so the overall sentiment was that um the community is largely aligned on the importance of addressing cell phone use but divi
divided on how far and how fast to go which is I think we've even had some discussion. the board is also maybe um not all on the same page about that and I think it's just really normal. It's where we are in this debate. So, three highle patterns emerged. Um there's a
strong basis support for a district-wide policy, significant demand for clarity and enforcability and tensions between safety communication and distraction reduction. So, 22% of the comments explicitly expressed support for the direction of the policy. However, even
supportive comments frequently included suggested revisions or implementation concerns. And we went through all of those and definitely made um changes and we're going to talk about that um here in a second. And then 2% of comments were clearly oppositional or characterize the draft as an overreach.
So, there are, make no mistake, people in our district who are against any sort of cell phone restriction. Um and you see that in the comments um as well. So here's the largest tension that we see in the feedback lies between those
advocating for a full day zero exception model at every grade level and those prioritizing emergency communication and instructional flexibility. The second largest tension lie is between policy language and con and confidence in consistent enforcement. So there are
people who are saying you can have a policy all day long but if you're not enforcing it or it's not enforcable then we have an issue other tensions monitoring wearables. So our our principles at this point said to us um
look like smartwatches and earbuds like are we are we teaching instructing students or are we monitoring where like are what what's the priority here because it it's really like practically difficult um to to consistently try to
monitor these things. Um stronger phone restrictions versus teacher capacity to enforce throughout the day. parent communication with students during the day versus maintaining instructional focus. Students ability to contact parents during emergencies versus dra staff directed emergency safety
protocols. And then district-wide consistency of rules versus school level flexibility and autonomy. Um, you know, more prescriptive language versus allowing professional judgment. Um, and clear consequences and enforcement expectations versus avoiding excessive
discipline. So, these are all these are all very real tensions and maybe you've experienced them in your own um life or with your with your children as well. So, I'll just take a sec if you guys want to take a second and this is just a snippet. You may have read some of these things yourself too.
Okay. Um, so community feedback themes. We're going to go through some of these. I we have the top 10 and then we're going to go through the ones that were most pronounced. So instructional use and classroom expectations. You know, what qualifies as instructional use? Who decides what it when a device can be
used? How will use misuse be prevented? Um does this create inconsistency classroom to classroom? and teachers were especially focused on this question. Medical IEPs and 504 accommodations, there's just really strong community support for inclusive
accommodations um with a request for procedural clarity. So, um we're going to talk about that a little bit later, too. And there's meaning a meaningful constituency that believe this draft does not that our drafts right now do not go far enough. They want phone-free entire school days at every single
level. They want that to include lunch, hallways, and passing periods. and um they want out of sight, out of mind standards with no discretionary gaps. Um so uh you know, one thing I will just say is that what we presenting tonight, our schools have authority to implement
stricter rules and are set forth by by us. We they we we set a standard and they can do more enforcement and consistency continues to be a challenge that everyone is bringing up um and rightfully so. uh safety and emergency communication as well um in terms of
when students would be able to access their phone um and I think it's especially coming up here in Jeffco given the um the year that we have had. So, there's also questions about operational logistics, like where if they're off and away, where are they? How are they being collected? What's the
confiscation process? How do students retrieve them at the end of the day? And what authority does the district have in terms of searches? Um, and these are all important questions um and things that we need to continue to think about and respond and be responsive to. So, I'm
just going to go through um you know the the requested edit and then how it's reflected in the policy. So, ban phones all day including lunch passing periods. So, this now applies for we had something a little bit less strict for grades six through we have tightened
that up. So, it really is um off and away for grades K through 8. Um clarify instructional expectations. We have added to JSA section two definitions. emergency communication. Um, we have
added that to JSA section 9. Um, that was what Gio was giving me some feedback on. So, um, I would probably make just a few more more tweaks there to make that a little bit more clear. And then, um, add clarify consequences and enforcement
structures. So, we have that in JSA section, um, 7, consequences of non-compliance. medical IEP is in um is in JSAR in the policy exception and then um we have not like specific storage
requirements clear desire for concrete operational models that will be more in like the in the implementation guidance and so um it's not something um it's it's it's mentioned in the school level policy expectations in terms of um that schools need to communicate with parents
about how they are storing like what that looks like um so it is reflected. It's just not very it's maybe not as specific as people are going to want to see. So our next steps um many schools already have policies and practices in place. Um as I said um and so
implementation will build upon the work that's already underway in many of our schools. Uh based on feedback from school leaders and staff, we anticipate that the most significant implementation challenge will continue to be at the high school level uh where devices device use has historically been more flexible and expectations can vary um
across classrooms. So to support successful implementation, the district will provide resources, guidance, and technical assistance to schools that need additional support with addition with particular attention to our high schools um as they work to establish expectations
um or reinforce expectations. And then successful implementation will depend on strong partnerships with families. I I cannot state that strongly enough like you know the um our families are putting these devices in the hands of our students and they are bringing them to
school. Um what you're going to hear next week from our sense maker tool is um and so I'll slight spoiler alert. Our children do not have very many um models in their life that are showing them how to how to use cell phones in the way
that we are then saying we want them to to use them or not use them. And that is um that is something that I think our parents are recognizing and hoping that they may be able to send maybe we can do it differently at school but we have to remember kids aren't always at school.
So this has to be a partnership given the rapid pace of technological change. This board and boards that come after you will have to continually revisit this policy to ensure that expectations remain clear most import most
importantly relevant because who knows what you know how things change. Um, so be need something we need to keep an eye on. And then we will, um, you know, this is one part of what our schools and our families are hoping for around social media and digital well-being. And we
just need to continue to work with our IT friends um, to continue to address not just this one issue, but the the several issues that we have. So, I'm excited that that in May you guys are going to hear more about this digital generation gap between the digital
natives um our students and digital immigrants, myself, um included. And it's it's really really fascinating. I think um I'm hoping this will sort of bust a lot of myths about what we think
about how our kids are using their devices and how they're actually using them. And um so I it's been eye- openening, emotional, all the whole gamut um for me and I think for for some of us um who got to see uh a preview of this. So I'm excited for you guys to see
that in May. I just here's a list of like the things we've done um you know in April that you you have just received our draft policy regulation. our friends in on our legal team have also are also publishing this in our legal memo that um just declares to we well I feel like
we have declared to the whole community um that we are looking at this policy um it will be officially in our board policy um updates and then um you will see the sense maker and uh presentation we'll do and we can do some Q&A in May
and I'm um we are hoping that you will adopt um a the policy along with the regulation um in May. All right, with that I'm sure you have lots of questions for other people than me.
Well, first a a huge thank you. I know this has been a lot of um effort, a lot of meetings and I'm sure um I know all of us are receiving lots of comments in our email inboxes. Um so I'm really excited for this
conversation. So I would love to start. Anybody want to go first? Okay, >> Director Monian, >> maybe you you mentioned this and maybe I just kind of missed it because we went through it um so so uh quickly. Is there anywhere that myself or the public can
go to take a look at this draft as it's being put together? >> Yes. So, there is a whole website um that has been up since January 21st um that that shared the policy and the for feedback form. the the um it's still up
and then it's also in board docs today. >> Is that the the link I'm seeing on slide 20? >> Um yes, the slide. Yes, I put on all as many slides as I could follow this work on Jeff Co's website. Yes, it is there.
Other questions, comments? >> Director Gibbons. Yeah. So, I've I've been reviewing the draft and um this is kind of my wheelhouse um in terms of looking at at how things are written and finding the holes in them. Um I am concerned that
there's, you know, this I understand it provides a floor, not a ceiling. Um, but I'm concerned that some of the language, for example, I'm on page seven of uh draft JSAR or page seven of the of the PDF has both JSA and JSAR. And you
know, I see this language that appears, you know, use may be permitted in accordance with the school sitebased expectations, provided such use, yada yada yada. Um, and I'm concerned that language such as this starts to introduce ambiguities. it starts to in,
you know, as much as I support school-based discretion on a lot of things, this starts to go against some of the concerns around uniform policies and clear guidance. Um, and you know, I'm wondering if there's maybe better ways to where the language
that's specific to K8, K5, 6 through8 or 9 through 12 is sort of more limited and then that there's better explanation of exceptions or acceptable uses outside of that because I'm worried that we're just not we're we're providing a a floor with a really clear
trap door that lets people get underneath it um with that language. So, I think that one of the we to to piggyback on what Lisa had talked about as far as we did have a much
stricter a much more tightened language around this uh policy at one point. And when you start looking at the gamut of schools that we have and trying to put one policy in place that will work for
all of them because it the facilities even just the the facilities the way buildings are built the expectations of facilities the kinds of students you've got at those facilities. Um that was one of the reasons why we we talked about having to loosen that up and giving
schools a lot more autonomy around that. Most schools, I would venture to say, if not 90 over 90% of schools already have a policy, and most of them are are way stricter than what this policy is is um indicating, but giving the schools the
autonomy to do that was important because they already have policies in place as well. Well, so you know along those lines, why not have stricter language and then state that buildings that have a demonstrated need to vary to, you know,
get out of this that should have some sort of variance can say why and then we can give it to them because I'm concerned when it's written in this way then buildings can just decide to opt in or opt out. Or the other thing I'm concerned about, you know, I've gone on school visits, one of the schools I
visited was was a pilot school. They talked about how amazing it worked, how incredibly transformative it was in their building and they had a pretty strict clear policy and but they also talked about some of the challenges that they did work through in terms of working with parents in the
community. And in my conversations for them, one of the things that they wanted and appreciated was if they have strong support of a policy, it sort of makes it easier for them to deal with their community. and in some respects, you
know, direct some of the frustration to this body, which I'm certainly happy to deal with. But when we leave it open like this, I'm just worried that it's it's just going to create more headaches and place more pressure on buildings than is needed. Um whereas a stricter
policy that provides clear guidance and then we can allow exceptions when there's a clear demonstrated need to me makes a lot more sense. I I appreciate that and I think it does come down to enforcability um at the district level and our acknowledgement that schools is
where enforce enforcement happens. But um director given I would be if you want to present some language on this that you would like to see um in here um and and with your board colleagues more than happy to look at it and also run it by um our principal advisory committee to understand um you know to try to get
their feedback on it. And then just something to you know talk about how right teachers have acknowledged I think this comment actually just went to that right that enforcement is going to happen at the building and classroom level and that presents challenges
practically speaking I don't see a way around that but I'm wondering if there are thoughts in terms of ways whether it's just policy language or other things that we can make sure that teachers and buildings are at least receiving better support for that enforcement aspect. I mean, nobody in this building is going
to be able to do something about a kid taking their phone out at the wrong time. So, how can we better support an unavoidable burden um at least in the initial phases as cultures are changing around the policy? >> I I can say um that I that there are the
the reality is it takes work at the school level. I think Wheatidge High School is a great example. they've spent, you know, hours with their staff norming um and getting to a place where they're all um you know, they're they've a they've made agreements amongst
themselves. They're working towards it. So, I think that um it it it does take work um some and we can we can provide potentially the resources we we will provide the resources to support um as
our schools as our schools need that. Um, and I don't know that there's any way to get around um the work that has to be be put in for the consistency to apply. And I will say I think the great news is a lot of schools have had policies for a
long time and they're just getting better and better at it. Um, so it's just something that is happening over time too. >> Dr. Okay. Um, thank you so much for presenting this information. I appreciate it. Um, this
is a generation that is this is a new thing and this generation is I've heard statistics, you know, watching people's experiences more than having their own experiences. So, I feel like this gives
students a chance to have their own experiences in school and not be pulled into all these different directions in their head where even just the ding on their on their watch is a distraction. Even if their cell phone is um put away
in their in their backpack, if they're getting the text message, it comes through on their watches now. So, I have a few questions. Um, and I think you might have mentioned this maybe at a meeting before, but maybe I don't remember it, but is there anywhere on
your website where you share specific academic achievement related to the bell-to-bell bands? So I I would love for the students to talk about the dist the distraction and maybe how or or you know their the
policies that they are that have um been in place for them. I would say um and happy to uh we cited research for sure in our first cycle of this and I think the research is very inconclusive at this point. Um but if you have research
that you would like us to share and put up on the websites we're happy to. Um, but I don't know that there has I think there has there have been some some research that has cited it might have an impact, but it's there's nothing that
that is like solidly in that camp. But I'd love for the students to talk to your question. Um, I want to say that with the part that the watches are a distraction. I think all of the electronics that are put in front of a student is a
distraction if they don't have the self-control. So, it's not necessarily a teacher training thing, but I think it could be a student training thing where you show kids how to use it correctly,
if that makes sense. So, are you talking about like teaching students to put on to turn off their notifications on their watches? >> Yes and no. Just teaching them the self-control to for
any object, whether it's their phone or like a toy, like you don't need to have it all the time. Just teaching students more self-control at home. I have a question. You were saying that it limits them from creating new
experiences by seeing other people's experiences. Uh, can you clarify what you mean by that? >> No. I was reading some research that was talking about how students now spend more time watching other people's experiences like on reals on Tik Tok and
Instagram reels than they do having their own experiences. Um, just personally, I'm not really that much of a creative person as much as I wish I was. And looking at these videos of other people doing these things, it
inspires me and actually gives me the creativity to go do something. And the experiences, it's not it's you can build your own experience off of watching people. It just depends on what you do that time rather than you don't have to follow it
also what someone does. You're not always going to have the same experience. It's like if you get a sandwich, it's not always going to taste the same. Um yeah. >> Can I get some anecdotal data? >> Oh, yes. Thank you. Um
just to answer your question as far as research as far as um students engagement and and uh whether or not they're improving in their academics etc. Um at Bell we had a very strict policy. Then the pandemic happened and
everything fell apart and the year after two years after we things sort of just started to level out again. Um we needed to really reorm. We really needed to uh revisit this. get student
voice in, get parent voice in, get teacher voice in, and re reestablish this policy that we had before. Um, and I can tell you that once we did that and once we reormed and we put the work in up front, it was less of
a battle. It really I I had bad PTSD from previous battles. Um, but it really has it shifted pretty significantly. And I can tell you that our MAP scores and our CAMAS scores absolutely showed a difference. The teachers were not
fighting with the kids as much with the with about the cell phones. They there was very clear expectations once you put the work in upfront. Um you really and you have a very clear policy about what happens if the pol the phone is out the
first time then the second time etc. We very clear policy around that. We follow that with consistency. Um, we stopped having problems with phones for the most part and even wearables. Wearables aren't as big of a problem, at least at the middle school. I I think at the high
school might be a little different, but um we just aren't having seeing the problems that we used to see as long as you you know the leadership matters, getting the input from your community because your each community is different. Um giving students that
opportunity to give input. Um, and you know, students are a lot more responsible than I think we give them credit for. So, >> thank you. Um, my next question is, um, when you were doing your research, did you find that students are more at risk
during an emergency situation if they have their earbuds in or they're distracted by their phones? We did not study that. Uh, if I if I'm fine to answer this, I can personally say off of people I know
and experiences I've had um with um earbuds in and using their phone like during some times like when it's uh personal work time, it actually helps them focus because they can relax and go into almost kind of a calm mind state.
So, it helps them work just off of personal experience. >> Yes. Thank you. Um, and my son would say the same thing. My concern is if there's suddenly something like an active shooter situation and you are in that state of mind, is it going to take you
the extra few seconds to realize what's happening and put you in danger? Um, I think it's not really going to put you in danger, but it's more of just it's going to make you like overthink it more and just worry about it because
you're in that calm state of mind and then all of a sudden this danger is happening in the school and you're more of like in a fight orflight mind uh like mindset. >> Okay. Thank you. And my last question kind of uh echoes what Director Gibbons
was saying uh to a degree. having uh the the floor as he said it. I'm wondering if this might create equity issues where certain schools or certain groups of students are given more freedoms than other groups of
students um because of implicit bias and other systematic reasons. >> Yeah, I mean I think that that schools will vary. I mean we have a high school now that has basically a belt belt. We have some high schools now that have bell-to-bell bands and we have others
that allow flexible use. And so I think um we could look at it now and I I guess it's how you define equity. Yeah. I'm just wondering the demographics of the schools that have the bell to bell vans. Are certain groups of students being more punished
harshly because of their demographics? >> You mean for infractions? >> Yes. And also are the policies more harsh in certain areas? Is this going to create an equity issue? >> I I don't know that. So the the policy
if you're talking discipline that's with consistent with the and it says this in policy the discipline matrix which is consistent across all Jeffco schools. So you shouldn't be able to be suspended at any school for a cell phone infraction.
Um so like how you know the violations and that should should actually be dealt with. Uh we need to I mean we studied it a little bit in the first round. We looked at discipline data. We would need to keep doing that. Um but that is actually that does span all the schools
and it doesn't change. A school cannot have stricter discipline uh related to to the policy because the discipline matrix is a districtwide discipline matrix. >> Right. but they can have a stricter policy and I'm wondering if those stricter policies will are negatively
impacting our students of color more than none. >> Okay. I I don't know the answer. >> Director Kenworthy, anything to add? >> Uh I want to thank you for spending this time. I don't envy um the task at all.
Thank you so much for doing this is a really heavy lift um with a lot of variables. I also want to say thank you for honoring and valuing student input. Um I think we have a lot to learn from them and I am really grateful that they
felt safe enough to be honest with you and to push back and to challenge that is something that I think is um just exceptional um in the process. I hope that the students are feeling that they were heard. Um, which would be one
of my questions. Do you for student who's with us, Reagan, do you feel that student input was valued or and that you were heard? Yeah, I do think that we were heard and I feel like some
were heard more than others, but I think all of our input was very useful in any way, shape, or form, whether it was it was used or not. I think we all feel very heard. I do.
>> I appreciate that. Um, and I just want to give an extra kudos to the adults in the group for making space. um for youth to participate in that way. It's not a norm I think in our culture and I'm grateful um for you extending yourselves that
way. My only other question is about um the use of pouches. Do we have any schools in our district that are doing that currently? I I think there's the use of the thing. Actually, you can talk about this
because it's happening at your child's school. >> Oh, the the pouch. Yeah. The cell phone pouches. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh so so my daughter goes to Wheat Ridge High and they have cell phone pouches on the doors. And so when you go in, you have the pouch that's assigned to your seat
that for that class. And so you put it in and then attendance is tracked by whose phones are in the pouch, right? Okay. And so that's actually how they know who's there and who's not. And so the phones are there. Uh and so she just has it in and it's just it's the norm and everyone does it and it's not a big
deal. Um so it it seemed like it's pretty effective >> as long as I would say, you know, everyone does it. >> They're not locked in the pouch. No, >> just loc just location. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, that's helpful. Um I'm I think I'm
more concerned about locked pouches. um the kind that you would see at a a musical a music show or you know those those types of things. I would be concerned about anything that would increase costs for compliance in our
schools. Uh that's something I I would want to avoid given our current budget situation. So thank you. >> I can I I can just we looked into them. We actually did because again the PTSD um around around enforcement um and for
my school it would have been about $20,000. It was very expensive. Um and I mean we're looking at about I think at that time we were looking about 730 740 pouches. Um and so we clearly said no.
uh although we talked to our PTA about it, they were actually willing to raise the money for it because they were very much so in favor of of the cell phone policy. So um but it was very very expensive and so we just again I think that frontloading the very clear
expectations with teachers with um kids and getting everybody's input and voice uh and then really being very consistent especially upfront. It's like for us it it it really comes down to leadership at each school. Um but for us it really has
become it's not I don't have PTSD anymore. >> I'm glad to hear that. Uh thank you all for your time. Appreciate it. >> Um oh go ahead Dr. Gib. >> I did have a quick question. I heard the comment that when you know you went back
to stricter enforcement that you saw test scores going up and I'm wondering if there's been any data gathered whether it's about test scores or disciplinary events or other things to look at and see if there's any correlations between performance discipline and the strictness of a cell phone policy.
>> We do not have a district research project going on around that right now. So I think Michelle um was giving some anecdotal data about Bell um but we we we're have been looking at the
discipline um tracking that happens in our system. It's still we only debuted these cell phone infractions in December of 20 4. And so we're still seeing inconsistent tracking. Um, and so there
there are things that we we need to look at, but we have not started a district research pro project on that. Um, I want to echo my appreciation. This is sticky and icky and all those things and I am um not looking forward to this vote. I'm
not going to lie, Mr. Ru. But um I really do appreciate it. One of my I I cannot agree with more more with the clear expectations and I think we have those in the policy now for K through 8 where I get nervous again is is what I think you're hearing
reflected from some of my fellow board members is it feels like we are still relying on our amazing solid leadership at the principal level which is great and I want to make sure we're backing you up in a way that you don't feel like
it's you against 700 parents right um at the high school level it's more than that. And so I'm also um so I I'm looking at it. I I totally understand we have to give the flexibility. Um and I don't quite know how we crack that nut. I think y'all are really trying to do
that. Um I am often in the minority I think on this board when I say that I do think we need to make sure we aren't just taking things away but helping kids to understand. Um, I can only speak for myself on this
board, but in our family, my husband and I are probably the two worst people of pulling our phones out all the time, checking emails, checking work, checking this, checking that. And so, we talk a lot and our kids call us out on,
oh, dinner time, no phones at the dinner table. So, I I also wholly agree parents have a role to play here, too, right? We can't expect our schools to teach everything. And so I I say this all to say that I I am struggling with this because I want to make sure that our
students um can use technology in a way that they will use it at work. I am constantly using my cell phone for work. Um I have a child right now with a fever and grandma texted me and said, "Hey, where's your thermometer? Where are the
meds?" I'm grateful I had my phone to be able to answer that question so that I could be here and not have to leave. And so I do think there are spaces where we need to say yes, you are going to use your phone in your professional career or in college.
Um, I had the luxury of meeting with um, President Johnson at Mines a couple weeks ago and I asked him about this and he said when he and so the generation in college now has not really had all of these kind of strict cell phone policies, right? And his his assessment
to me was, you know, 20% of kids are distracted by it, 30% are using it to take notes and the other half really kind of have them put away. And so what I what I think we are on the road to
doing what I hope we are on the road to doing is not putting more tasks on our principles and teachers. I think we are all really concerned about that. Um how do we not make them we want them to be teachers not disciplinarians and I fully support that we are not suspending based
on this. So I I appreciate that recommendation and that that standard set up. Um, I am I think this is something we're going to have to revisit as a board regularly because it is going to change and I think we're going to learn a lot
in its inception. I am worried that parents will choice to schools and make school choice decisions based on policies and flexibility which I don't love. Um, and so I I really want to I think I'm just rambling now so I'm going to stop because we're over time. I want
to say how much I appreciate this work because it is incredibly difficult. Um I appreciate our opportunity to review the comments and look at the policy um and provide feedback. Um and I know that what we will put out will be great and
will likely need revision quickly. I think this to your point um we're not going to be able to make everyone happy with this. I'm really excited for you guys to hear the presentation next week because this is really about behavior and it's about figuring out how to um
speak to each other in a way that we all and that we understand and we can help direct behavior. Um because you know a policy again we use like the speed limit thing. It's yes, we can have a policy all day long, but I and and I think that we need to continue to look at it like
you said, not just for is it relevant, but how's it going in schools, like have we been too harsh, not harsh enough, like you know, strict enough. And so I think it yeah, it's it's it's going to need continuous work. It's definitely not perfect at all, >> but I do wholly appreciate the effort,
the time, the student voice, and the respect that has been put towards it. All right. Thank you guys so much for taking the time with us tonight. Okay, we're going to keep cruising. Next, the board will receive monitoring report 1.4, which states, "Every student
will develop life skills and a continuous learning mindset to succeed in life after graduation." This will be presented by Dr. Dr. Drew Coleman, our chief of schools, Miss Renee Nicotis, our chief academic officer, Heather Waldrin, director of post-secary workforce readiness, Carolyn Frzy, our
principal at Ryvada High School, and Mr. Greg Manor, principal at Conifer High School. Thank you all for being here and for your patience as we're a little behind on time tonight. Um, please note um that we may have um some folks have to depart early because of time
constraints. So, if there's any questions for there, we will be collected um for those. So before I turn it over to our presenters, Superintendent Derlin, is there anything you'd like to add? >> Yes, please. Thank you, uh, President Applegate. Thank you. Welcome to our
presenters. Uh, I'm going to say that every time I um make a post on my LinkedIn or Instagram or talk with my family or neighbors at a barbecue
or chat with my friends about monitoring reports, I immediately lose anyone I'm talking to and nobody reads my post. Um, but I have a post ready to go about this one. Um,
because I will just say there are several things that I'm incredibly proud of um, in my tenure as superintendent in Jeffco. One of which we talked about at the April board meeting and that is the rebuild and opening of Fletcher Miller School, which I'll just keep talking about because it makes me happy to talk
about. Um, this monitoring report is another highlight for me in my five years. Um, and I say that because it is just incredible evidence of the work that our central teams, our central educators, our educators on the ground
in our high schools and middle schools as this has all come together over the last 5 years. our chief academic officer, our chief of schools, our community superintendent, our educators in the buildings, in the classrooms with kids and our principles and everybody who wraps around our kids to support
them has had a hand in. And there is a tremendous amount of really good news in this monitoring report. It is in my mind when um director Muenian um and uh director Avaria often ask how does this
impact student achievement, right? How do we know it's working? Another question that people ask often, many of you ask. Um, it's this is the kind of data that is evidence that whatever it is, whatever recipe of ingredients we've
put together with Jeffco Thrives, um, it's working like it's baking something delicious uh, for a lot of kids, different than we had been before, and that feels really good. So, I just want to give all the credit to our schools and the people sitting in front of you
who do the work. Um, but just want to express and want to express to the board how proud I am of this monitoring report and I don't know. We'll have to come up with a different name for it. Um, because it is people I don't want people to glaze over. I don't want people to glaze over on this one. This one's
really special. So, um, thank you, Miss Nicotus. I think I'm going to hand it to you first. >> Yes. Good evening, uh, members of the board. Superintendent Dorland. Uh, my name is Renee Nicthotus. Work as the chief academic officer here in Jeffco. And you can see I'm joined by several colleagues. So, I'll give them a moment
to introduce themselves before we begin. Uh, Drew Coleman, chief of schools. Very nice to be here tonight. >> Everybody, Heather Waldrin, director of postsecary workforce readiness. Thank you for having us. >> Hello. Caroline Frzy, principal at Arvvada High School.
>> And Greg Maner, principal at Conifer High School. Thank you. >> Okay. Um our presentation this evening uh includes a review of board ends 1.4 uh which guides this monitoring report. Uh the interpretation of the board ends that shapes our work and measurements.
We'll also share the current context to set the stage for the progress that we're going to share with you tonight. Uh we'll highlight key areas where we're on track and we're celebrating successes. And then finally, we'll discuss uh remaining challenges that will continue to inform our work as we move forward.
Okay. So, monitoring report uh for boards 1.4 focuses on our commitment that every student will develop the life skills and continuous learning mindset necessary to succeed after graduation. The scope of tonight's report is for the 2425 school year.
The progress towards the board ends 1.4 4 is measured through multiple metrics providing a comprehensive view of student success after graduation and you can see those listed on the slide. Uh key indicators include graduation rates, dropout rates and student re-engagement efforts. Postsecary workforce readiness
is assessed using measures like PSAT, SAT, CTE, AP, IB, concurrent enrollment and workbased learning WBL. Uh we also have additional measures of readiness um and achievement which include the seal of biiteracy, the seal
of climate literacy and STEM endorsement and of course the work for uh through our Jeffco transition services. Uh we also um as you can see I have a couple of our principles here that will be sharing some anecdotal evidence of progress um based on the work that's
happening at their schools. So >> thank you so much Renee. Um we're going to make a small pivot in our our presentation tonight. um one of our principal has to leave a little bit early tonight and so we're going to uh allow them to go first and just share with you all um and then we'll come come
back and go through our report but I want to turn it over to uh our principal of Arvvada High School uh to speak with us. >> Hello. Um I'm excited to be here tonight to talk about some of the exciting changes and growth that we're seeing at
our VA. Um, this is my third year as principal at Arvvada and it's been really fun to see see the momentum kind of taking place and and changes happening. Um, last year we had a seven 7%
increase in our four-year graduation rate, which was really huge for us. Um, and a big celebration of the work that we've done, but I think that really comes through many different avenues. Um, we adopted curriculum for math. We have
adopted curriculum for our ELA. Uh, we have really prioritized our nth grade success. So, we have a dedicated teacher teaching a seminar class. Um, where we have kind of drawn from some of our tools. We have an empowerment program at Arvvada, which is an alternative school
where they go and they they learn some social emotional and executive functioning skills. And so we've drawn from that coursework that they're doing empowerment and we're implementing it with our ninth graders uh with the rationale of why wait until they are off
track. Let's give them the skills as incoming freshmen to support them. um this year at semester and granted you know it was only a few months of school we saw a 21% increase in our on-track rate for our freshmen and I vote on track as that one of those half credits
had to be an English credit um and so super excited about that super excited to see how that is going to end this year we saw increases in semester um pass rates for our nth grade ELA algebra 1 and geography which are all required and gatekeeping courses for graduation
So excited to see the momentum picking up for um not only for our kids from last year who graduated but every class that's coming after them. Um we are continuing with our seminar class next year. We worked with Heather's team who
is amazing and has been great thought partners with us in this work. Um and we have created an ACE success pathway. Um, so students are getting CTE credit starting in their freshman year, building those skills, the workforce readiness, really starting to have those
conversations. Um, this spring they're going to do reverse um, career fair. So they're going to go and interview like businesses and figure out what they like and most importantly what they don't like. Um, and for next year we are prioritizing a ninth grade success team.
Um, so my assistant principal and master scheduler is doing the hard work of figuring out how to not only give everybody a plan time with their PLC, but also a 9th grade dedicated plan time so we can have some student success
talks within the school day. Uh, so that's that's just one thing, one one small thing we've been working on. Um, I think the other really exciting thing we have happening at Arvvada is our career hub. I have the most amazing careerhub
counselor, uh, Janet Asera, and, uh, we both came into Arvvada at the same time and she hit the ground running and has our hub up and humming and doing amazing things for our kids. We have um every
Thursday responsive scheduling where teachers can pull kids for intervention acceleration and Janet uses that uh Thursday time chunks to pull them for uh junior achievement. She has guest speakers come in. Um they're able to get
some little snippets of what different careers are. So she set a goal for the 2425 school year to reach 50% of our student body. and she disagrees with the district data. So, I'm going to go with her number even though it's lower than what the district reports. She met with
89% of our student body last year and I know it's going to be higher this year, which is really exciting because at 89% is higher than our average daily attendance. So, she was grabbing kids who weren't going to class but who were coming to see her. And so, just trying to think how do we leverage that back
into now go to class. Um just today she took some of our juniors to participate in the Jeffco workforce summer internship interviewing. Um she took nine juniors. They created resumeéumés. She brought in some amazing Jeffco folks
from Career Links to help them prep for the interviews so they got feedback on mock interviews. Uh and I was telling Heather before we came in here, one of my students came to me um while I was doing lunch duty today and he was like, "You know what, miss? I don't know why anybody thinks interviewing is hard.
It's not hard. You just have to like know what to say. I was like, "Well, what does that mean? How do you know what to say?" And he's like, "Well, you got to research the job and you need to know what they're looking for." And he was just cracking me up. And and his big takeaway from today, which I loved, was
even if he doesn't get one of these internships, he knows how to interview. And so his whole attitude was like, "No problem. I'm going to get a job." So that was really cool. Um, we've partnered with the chamber of Arvvada's chambers of commerce to school
partnerships and um, our community partners to have more collaboration. And so on April 27th, we'll be going to the the ribbon cutting. Every Chamber of Commerce will be coming for a ribbon cutting and celebrating that partnership.
We do career or college visits. Our students were able to tour um, Google. They have gone to the Denver Center for Performing Arts and they got to participate in the tech rehearsal for I forget the play that was happening so my
bad. But they got to go and really be part of that tech rehearsal. Um and then we had an MSU hospitality um tour as well where our students got to do some hands-on learning and they made pizzas which was very exciting for them. Uh so
it's a it's a great program. It's a program that uh in the midst of really big budget decisions this spring um I came to my staff and and there were there were options. Um this has been a grant-f funded position this year. Uh we
were very fortunate that CDE funded it fully for us for another year. Um, but that funding is going away. And so we had to make a priority as a staff and our staff overwhelmingly voted to keep our careerhub counselor in a counselor position in particular um
because they've seen the support that Janet does not only for post-secary workforce readiness, but the mental health support that goes along with that. So, how she's supporting kids with the unknown and how they're grappling with that and how they are working through these really challenging, scary
life choices at 17, 18, 16, you know, they're they're the weight of it um is is heavy on them. And having her in a central location that they can access and she has a counseling background has been um paramount to the work and our
staff believes in it. So, we prioritized that position and um we'll be moving forward with it next year. Last, uh we're really working uh I I was here when our kiddos came and spoke to you about, you know, our concurrent enrollment options across the board and
Arvvada is up there with six. Um and so we're really working hard again with Heather's team to figure out how do we get our teachers certified to teach these classes. And so super excited. Next year um we will be able to offer concurrent enrollment um college
composition one and two. And we will also be able to offer college algebra which I just think are huge. Um even if students aren't sure they want to go to college, if we can get them in those classes, they have that in their back pocket. So if they choose to go back to college five years after high school,
they already have some of their prerexs. And so we're going to continue to build and work with Heather's team and um Jen Edgar on how do we get more teachers across the line? Who's really close? What other things can we option like offer? I and I just you know working
with her team and our teachers has been really really amazing because we're able to kind of see where can we flex. So maybe we don't have the requirements for this but we do for this and would kids want to do this and so we're building that up. Um but it
definitely is a challenge recruiting teachers who have those um capabilities and um it's also a challenge to convince our students that you can do this and so those are those are some hurdles that we
still have ahead of us. >> Great. Thanks Caroline and thank you for allowing us to take a field trip to come see your careerhub coordinator and Janet is truly remarkable. Um really really u honored to be here tonight. Thank you very much for taking the time and and
I'd like to echo and and what Superintendent Dorland said um and thanking her for her initiative and and recognizing the need for our flexibility and adaption, being able to adapt to the changing needs of our our new
generation. This is essential work and I really uh see it as a north star for everything we do at Conifer. Um, I have branded it that way to our teachers and we're beginning to make significant headway into them recognizing that
everything we do is based upon their readiness and their information and the choices that they make uh when they leave us. And so it's it been has felt wonderful to have the leadership around this initiative because um it without it
um we are we are losing students based on relevance. we are we're losing students um who who feel like they can experience these same things learn wrote knowledge online versus the experiences that we can provide them in a rich environment like this and so um you know
there are so many facets to this and so I also want to recognize Heather and her team the bureaucracy that goes along with uh making sure that all of these programs function smoothly is really quite daunting and so without the the
support and and having a network uh that really starts from the top, it it would be impossible to achieve. And so um it really is uh feels like a a very supported collaborative effort throughout the district and and that's wonderful as a principal who really also
sees this as a north star. Um so three things I want to touch just real quickly on that we're we're emphasizing at Conifer. We've always had a fairly robust AP program. Um, and recognizing that that college credits are so important for for students to be able to achieve, um, we have expanded that and
we have, uh, pushed into, uh, greater equity and access policies into recruiting students into these classes. Um, as well as branding all of everything I'm going to talk about to parents. I think that is an essential part of what we we really have to tackle
right now. Even though we have a robust system, getting it to our students is not as simple as offer it and they will come. And so I I have been taking every opportunity to talk to parents, back to school nights, um barbecues. We we
really pushed hard within our registration process to ensure that the the branding around what we're doing, these opportunities are presented appropriately and students see themselves within the choices that they're making and and the opportunities
they take at Conifer. So, um we our our scores in AP follow the district trend. We we gave more tests last year and our our pass rate also increased which felt absolutely incredible. Um and we are mining the credentials of of all of our
staff. Um we have literally exploited now I think everyone but one who is now offering concurrent enrollment. And sometimes it's it's logistical things just like AP biology can be offered one semester as AP biology and another semester as college 101 biology. So that
those are some things that we've really pushed in to ensure that students are getting all of those opportunities. Um, Conifer also sends more students per capita to Warren Tech um than any other school, which I'm incredibly proud of. So, that's that's a piece where their
branding has has led us uh to really recognize that that we need to follow suit. Um, another place that we've really focused for a number of years now is our CTE pathways. um our our industry credentials have have certainly helped
us uh tremendously fund the programs that we are um that we are currently offering and maintaining all the tech and all of the different pieces that go into offering CTE classes. And so um Heather's work around um the CEP money and redistri distributing those funds is
essential that the schools um can maintain uh the programs that they that they that we currently offer. Um we we're offering just wanted to touch on since we are conifer we're up in the mountains this year. Um one of the CT pathways that we expanded this year is uh we're offering fish and wildlife
management and natural resource management as semester semester. Um obviously catering to our population is essential with those. Um and so we're seeing great um student response from those classes and and looking forward to expanding them as well. Um, and then
lastly, our our work-based learning expansion efforts are are broad. Um, as you know, work-based learning is not necessarily just an internship. Um, we're really pressing in and trying to infiltrate the core. And that is a a
real important piece that that I think we we need to address um with specificity. Uh it's it's one thing our electives do a great job, our CTE classes, our AP classes, but um infiltrating the core and and connecting
students to um you know that that ultimate question we always hear maybe mostly in math, which is why when am I ever going to have to use this or need this? Every kid should have an answer to that and and my teachers are are keenly aware of that. And so we're really trying to infiltrate the core in in
connecting industry and and um career trees and and lots of different ways that they can expand and build relevance in those classes. Um I hosted a a pathway steering committee. That's what we've we've called it. Um pathways essentially saying um how are we how are
we delivering this to students in terms of what we have to offer and then where else can we immediately make easy gains. And so the work of our pathway steering committee this year is to greenlight over 50 items next year that's spread
across all of our um different departments but greenlighted 50 different ways that that we can um expand our work-based learning and our learning about uh work which is also important obviously um into all subject areas. So expansion with our workbased
learning as as it's traditionally thought of with students earning credit has expanded over the last three years. Uh 20 we had 22 students earning a semester credit and 2223 and we're up to 82 and 2425. So very proud that we are
some of our branding is working. Um students are starting to take advantage of that. Um, we are also opening a career center which is a partnership with the Wooden Hawk Foundation up at in Conifer. Um, really really exciting work
and we're really stealing um, Caroline's work that they've done down at Arvvada and Janet's work there. So, so that is also another indicator that the district communication lines are open, resources are open now and people are talking and that that only came to me because of the
leadership when we were out at Lone Rock and Caroline was able to present and so we took that opportunity and so it's just a great example of of how we're all working together in this. So, um I I just want to close in saying thank you for prioritizing this again and just
recognizing how important this is and this work um really really should be lifted up and and something to be truly proud of. So, thank you. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you. to our principal. I know Greg and uh has to step out. Um so so thank
you for >> Thank you so much. It's really a tremendous effort and we really appreciate it. >> Um I am I'm really proud tonight to be able to share this data with you all tonight. Um you know it's it's really
encouraging data that we have to share about our students and our system. Um Jeffco has reached its highest four-year graduation rate in 16 years. Um and that's something to really really be proud of. And this reflects the um
focused work of our educators, of our leaders, um our students and our families. Um and what is especially meaningful is how broadly this success is being experienced. uh 15 of our comprehensive high schools and five of
our charter schools um graduated 90% or more of their students. And this tells us that this progress isn't isolated and it's happening across our entire district. Um and when we look beneath the percentages that you see on the
screen, um the impact becomes even more real. a 2.1% percentage increase um in our graduation rate uh represents 155 additional students walking across the stage with a diploma. Uh that's 155 more
young people with expanded opportunities for their future. Um at the same time we're we are seeing progress on the other side um of that equation where Jeffco has achieved its lowest dropout rate in six years uh a point4 percentage
point decrease which translates to 135 fewer students leaving our system without a diploma. And so that is just great news to share that. Really excited to share with us tonight. When you take all this together, this tells a very
powerful story um that more students are staying, more students are succeeding, and more of our students are graduating here in Jeffco. And this is a result of the intentional work um that is happening across our district by our leaders um strengthening our
instructional practices uh building supportive environments and ensuring that all of our students feel a sense of belonging um and purpose and our superintendent talks a lot about academic belonging and this data shows that we are seeing that in our student
um and we know that there's still more work ahead um but tonight is a moment to really recognize um the real progress and to thank our educators and our leaders across Jeffco who are making this possible each and every day.
I also want to take a moment to highlight um who is experiencing this progress because that matters just as much as our overall gains. And we are seeing meaningful um improvement among our student groups who have historically
um faced the greatest barriers. And if you look at some of the data points for for students with IEPs, four-year graduation rate increased by two and a half points with completion rates up by one and a half points. Uh for our multilingual learners, we saw some of
the most significant gains. Uh graduation rates increased by 6.6 six uh points and completion rates by 6.8 points. Um and when you look at our atrisisk students, our graduation rates improve by three and a half points with
completion rates up three points. Um and for our students of color, our graduation rates increased by 4.2 points alongside a 4.1 increase in completion rates. Um, and these gains matter deeply because they
reflect our progress toward a more equitable system. Uh, one where more students, regardless of their background or their need, are being supported to um, persist and succeed in our schools. Um, and this tells us the work that is
happening in our schools. And as our principles were were speaking tonight, it really speaks about the work that is happening um in our schools around access, belonging, um and targeted support. Um and it's really making a difference and we're seeing in our graduation rates. Um and while we know
that as we talk more that gap still exists. Um this is meaningful movement in the right direction when it comes to what we're doing for our students. So this is just great day to celebrate. Heather,
>> thank you. I get to celebrate some additional data. So, I will share with you all some of the other college and career metrics uh that we have here within Jeffco. Uh so, starting with our AP performance. Uh so, AP is our advanced placement scores. And so, those of you that may be familiar with AP would know that a score of three or
higher means that the student qualifies generally for college credit. Uh two or higher means they're prepared. um it may meet our PWR graduation demos, but we really look at that score of three or higher as qualifying for college credit. Uh what we're incredibly excited to see is that we've continued over the last five years to have an increase in the
total number of tests taken, total number of unique students that are taking those exams and the percentage of students that are passing those exams. So oftentimes when you increase the number of students that might be taking one of these exams, you might not see a jump in the pass rate as well. But to see both of those things happening at
the same time really speaks to the preparedness that we're offering to students and the the ways that we're pulling more students into those experiences across our schools. Um so really calling out the 18% increase in that score of three or higher since 2021
shows a a significant jump in that area. I just want to like uh shout out our AP teachers who, you know, are uh trained to teach these courses and it's really evidence this that they're offering more
of these opportunities to our students. So, we're we're dealing not only with barriers to access, right, and and removing those, with an increase of from 9,000 to about 11,000 students um over the last 5 years taking these uh uh
classes. And then the incredible work our teachers are doing in the quality instruction they're providing through the coursework. Um to have a 15.6% 6% in 2021 of students receiving receiving a score of one all the way down to single
digits of 4% only um is incredible. It's incredible evidence that our teachers are really doing um amazing work in these courses with our students. >> Yeah. And I what I what I might add to that as well is when you see something like 4.4% for a score of one sometimes
it would cons make us wonder are we stopping students from accessing the program? But what we see in the data here is that we're not. we're actually bringing more students into these programs while seeing that same success rate. We are working on um for each data point that I share with you all this evening
in this space, we will look at um some subgroup breakdown data um in the areas that we have that data. Um we'll be able to you you'll see differences and we'll talk a little bit more about that as we go through this. Um but when we look at our pass rates that three or higher score across different student groups
once again similar to what uh Dr. Dr. Coleman would sharing we see the same gap closing data that we would um saw in our graduation rates. So while we still do have gaps in these areas, we don't want to to brush over the fact that we do still have gaps in some of these areas. We're seeing that our students of
color, for example, uh in 2020 to 2021 had a 53.5% pass rate on AP exams. Um and that's moved to 73.5%. So a 20 percentage increase in our students that are finding success in these programs. Uh this is this is evidence really that
we're moving in the right direction in this work. Um and we're continue to see those that incremental gain year-over-year showing that we're on the right trajectory. So when we talk about our college credit, the other area that a lot of our students earn college credit is through our concurrent enrollment program. And
so we heard from our principles tonight about some of the targeted work we're doing to grow these opportunities for students. Um this is an area that we're excited it continues to grow at a rate that we are not even anticipating some years. Um because of the targeted work
that we're doing to identify teachers to promote those programs for students. Uh we've moved to being able to offer last year alone we offered 48,000 or 48,742 credits for our students. And these were credits earned. So students pass the course, it is on their transcript, it's
ready to be to move into whatever it is that they do at next. Um something that we've had in the past um is that we relied on that student enrollment count was dduplicated by semester. So we partnered with our community colleges. They would send that data back to us.
They look at their semester enrollments and that was the data that we would have. We were able to over the last couple of years we've had to really shift our system so that we can track this data better internally which will allow us to progress monitor that better going forward right at the school level and district level. It took some transitions. We had to build the system.
We had to test the system. We had to get everybody on track. But for last year for the first time we have that system set up in a in a different way. Um so we were able to start to track. So when you see that 5,416 in parenthesis there that's actually our full dduplicated
individual student count. So over 5,000 individual students, that could mean that student earned 10 credits, but they're only going to be counted once in that number. Um whereas that 8,886 is um to give you the trend, right? So
that would be if we dduplicate across each semester so you can see how that compares to prior years. So anytime we shift our data tracking systems, we want to make sure that we can maintain that comparison wherever possible. By moving to an internal tracking system, we're able to now start to look
at our subgroup data. So I don't have trend data for you in this space because this is the first year that we had that internal system built out where we were able to track that internally. Um but so what we do have is a district comparison when we look at our students that have earned concurrent enrollment credit. Uh so for example, just kind of give an
idea of what this graph this table's showing us um 35.9% of our Jeffco students identify as a student of color. 29% of our students that earned concurrent enrollment credit last year identify as a student of color. Um so again, not that there are
no gaps in the space, but this allows us to start to identify where those gaps are and how we may be able to close them. Um this data I do like to call out is is similar to but different from what we look at when we talk about board monitoring report 1.2, which is where we address where are the opportunities and how are students enrolling. So both of
those pieces of data allow us to compare across. The encouraging component with this data is when I went back and I look at 1.2 um that percent of earning concurrent enrollment credit is very is almost identical to the percent of students enrolling in concurrent enrollment credit. Right? So our pass
rates are are strong in that space. Okay. One of the other spaces that we've been talking a lot about in Jeffco around career readiness and our career pathways is our CTE pathways. And so these are those um career programs that our students engage in. And a key area that we really keep an eye on is what we
call our our CTE student status. So we look at how many of our students are enrolling in a CTE pathway. How many of them are what we call participating, meaning they've taken one credit or two semesters worth of something, which means they might be interested. They're they're trying a second course in this space. Um but where we really see the
greatest impact with CTE students is when they get to that concentrator status, right? So that's two credits or more. They've taken four semesters worth of course work. They found something they're excited about is what that really means, right? They found some relevance, something they they are engaging in um semester after semester and they're continuing with that work.
Um so we track this concentrator data pretty closely so we can see are we catching students into the right programs. We saw a significant increase in the number of students that met that concentrator status last year. This is something we've been watching kind of a bubble start to to move up over the last
couple of years with the work that we've been doing around high school reimagine. the conversations we're having with our school leaders about the importance of this work, we're starting to see it reach students. So, we had last year 11.7% of our high school students concentrated in a CTE pathway. Um, when we go, you
can start to see that trend data. Then when we look at the participant data at 35.6% compared to 27.1 the year prior, we can see that there's still a bubble there that we anticipate to continue to move up. Once again, looking at how does this data compare to our overall uh district
uh subgroup population. And so when we look at our students of color, again, 35.9% of our DEFCO students identify as a student of color. 36% of our students that enroll in a CTE program identify as a student of color. 35.1%
participate in a CT of our um CT participants would identify as a student of color. And 31.2% of our concentrators would identify as a student of color. This allows us to start to see are we losing students at disproportionate rates compared to our overall um and are there gaps that we might need to close
in different areas. In general, what we see is that it we have some areas that need a little bit more support and and clear focus and we have other areas that that we are maybe meeting students needs. One of the key metrics that we track
with CTE concentration is this idea of graduation rates. And so this is a something that's tracked nationally, right? So it's part of our federal Perkins metrics where we look at our students that are concentrating in a CTE program. How well are they meeting graduation rates? How much are they graduating on time? Um and we see that
overall, and we see this in national trend data as well, overall students graduate at higher rates, right? So in Jeffco, our graduation rate for our students that concentrated in a CTE program is 96.2%. Which is pretty phenomenal. I've heard uh Superintendent Dorland talk about that's that's getting pretty close to
that 100% number that that we have as a you know as a goal. Um what's even more exciting though about this data is when we look at our subgroup data breakdowns. And so we see for example our at risk students in 2425 that concentrated in a CTE pathway graduated at 93.8%.
Um in comparison with our district graduation rate at 72.6%. And so this really does speak to the conversations that we've been having um at the table today as well as throughout the the last few years, which is when students find relevance when they see a future that they're excited about, they
engage differently, right? When they know why they're working through something, they'll put in the work and they'll figure out how to get there. Within these programs, um we also really focus on, so there was the college credit piece that we talked about. We focus on other key metrics that are
considered part of our um college and career readiness. Um, this will be starting to be talked about a lot more at the state level with the passage of new legislation. They've been referring to the big three quite a bit, which is transferable college credit, workbased learning, and industry credentials. So, we're also going to be starting to frame our outcomes around those same big
three. And so, our work-based learning data, um, we focus in on our students that are in those CTE pathways. So, going back, our our students that are doing this concentration level work, we want those students to have aligned work-based learning experiences. And that that has been one of the key focuses that we've had in our workbased
learning initiative is that if the student finds something they're interested in, let's get them out there to really test it and try it on. Where we've gotten to the space that almost half of our CTE concentrators have an aligned in-depth work-based learning experience. When I say in-depth, that means it's going beyond an industry
speaker. These are students that are having an internship or being employed within their pathway or they're having an industry partner that's coming in and bringing a project into their classroom. For example, in a hospitality class, students might be working on a burger of the month menu item, right? That they're
working really closely with that um local restaurant in order to have that true experience. Once again, showing our subgroup data breakdown. We're excited to start to be able to track this data a little bit more closely by subgroups so we can start to have that trend data and understand if these gaps are closing
like we see in other spaces. Um so but just to to kind of look at this data together um when we look at our students that are considered at risk in Jeffco 30.7% of our overall students are considered at risk. of our students that are having those in-depth work-based learning experiences as a part of their
pathway, uh 26.3% of our students are um considered at risk. And last but not least, um one of the other key metrics that we look at within our career readiness programs are our industry certifications. And so this data, this is incredible. Every time I
look at this, I get really excited as well because these are certifications that are approved by the workforce development um commission. They're not just um education related certifications. These are certifications that set students up for high wage, high demand careers.
In fact, the state changes the list every single year when they look at data to see whether or not those certifications still align to high wage, high demand careers, which means our teachers continuously have to pivot their programs. They're looking for alignment. Um, there's times that we may see fluctuations in this data year-toear
because our teachers will sometimes have to realign their programs to make sure that they're aligned to the to those high wage, high demand opportunities, but these certifications mean our students can walk out and enter into those careers right after high school. Um, we've seen a four times increase in
the past five years. So, that data is correct. We had 468 total students earn a certification in 2020 2021 and that has moved to just under 2,000 students last year. Um this is work that that we're incredibly excited about. And the
reason we show the breakout of Warren Techch and home high schools here is because I think a lot of our folks associate this type of work with our warrant programs which is correct. A lot of our warrant programs offer these opportunities. Students have great success in those programs. the growth that we've seen is because of the work um that we've added at our home high
school pathways. And last but not least, this is um once again a space that we are working on some data systems. And when we talk about our challenges, our PWR data progress monitoring systems is going to be one of those challenges that we talk about. So we have ethnicity breakdown data for our certifications. This has
not been data that we've had well um incorporated into our existing data dashboards. It is a current project that we are working on is to make sure that our schools all have access to school level data to track outcomes both overall and by subgroups. I will tell you that what we use this data for here
is to be able to identify where those gaps are allow us to think about where do we need a target as far as programs and schools to make sure that if those opportunities don't exist, we find a way to get those programs up and running. Uh, so we know that there are key certifications that align to
different pathways and we can start to look at, you know, at Arvvada High School and making sure that we have graphic design certifications within their pathways, making sure we have serve safe certifications in their culinary programs and so it allows us to have that targeted approach. Right, we have already heard from our
schools, so I'm going to hand it over. >> Thank you, Heather. Uh so yes, I'm uh pleased to report we're we're on track with a lot of things and celebrating some s significant success um of those record graduation rates um with our
four-year on-time graduation rate reading reaching 86.7% which has been the highest in 16 years as you heard Dr. Coleman's uh talk about um while also decreasing uh the rate of dropouts. We're closing achievement gaps and specifically we're seeing um key
student groups where these gaps are closing uh closing including a 6.6 percentage point increase for our multilingual learners and a 4.2 percentage point increase for students of color uh with graduation. We're also uh maintaining college and career readiness momentum for concurrent
enrollment. Over 5,000 of our students have participated in concurrent enrollment classes, earning more than 48,000 college credits um saving um 8.5 million um in tuition savings for our families. CTE success um our concentrator students within our CTE
programs continue to graduate at exceptionally high rates um significantly outpacing the overall district rates. And then industry credentials, the total number of students earning industry certifications is up, reaching over 1,800 students in
2024 and 25. So, we're really proud of these. Um, and and I do believe we're we're on the right track. Um, and but despite these overall gains, we do have um some challenges that lie ahead. Um, I think one of the biggest ones is is continuing to focus on closing uh the disproportionate gaps in outcome
outcomes across our student groups. I'll let Drew uh talk through some of our additional challenges. >> Oh, Heather gonna go. >> All right. Switch things up. Heather >> will go first and then I will hand and then I will hand off to Drew in a
moment. Um so I as as Rene was mentioning, our disproportionate gaps are something that we do want to continue to focus in on. Um as far as both within our graduation rates, but also within those college and career readiness metrics that I was just sharing with you all. Um, we also have have focused in on data systems within
this area. So, our progress monitoring dashboards in the past had not included some of the college and career readiness metrics that I was sharing with you all this evening. And we have an active project to build that out for our schools. As college and career readiness starts to be incorporated into high school performance frameworks um and
different funding models, we want to make sure that we have a clear understanding of where our strengths and gaps are across each school um within within the system and that we can progress monitor and help close any gaps that we may see. Along with that, as I was mentioning earlier, there's a direct
connection between board monitoring report 1.2 which talks about access and and opportunities and 1.4 which talks about outcomes. And so we are working on continuing to identify as as both of our principal shared this evening, identify where are those greatest opportunities within each of our schools to increase
that access and how do we have targeted incremental focus for each year to say this is this is the space that we could really grow. This is our opportunity. Let's leverage that. Let's build that out for this year and then we can look at how is that and we'll move into the next piece. Um but increasing those
equitable opportunities is a key focus area as well. And I'll go into our last challenge is just our ongoing efforts to support alternative educational options for our non-traditional high school students. So, as we work with our AEC's and work through academic programming,
uh we're still continuing to ensure that um we're doing all that we can to ensure that all of our students, regardless of what school that they are attending, um has a access. And so those are the challenges that we have for you all uh this this evening. And I think we are
now open for questions. >> Thank you so much. Uh board members, Director Kenworthy. >> So I I think I read on one of the slides the CDE does not provide graduation data for students of color. Is that accurate?
I think it was on the bottom of one of the first early slides. >> Oh, >> 14. Awesome. >> Thank you. Jeremy Felker, student data privacy and reporting. Um, unfortunately CDE doesn't provide the numerator and
denominator to determine subgroups. So, in order to calculate students of color, we would need to have those um numerators and denominators to calculate that. >> Thank you. I I find that to be really interesting because uh as Heather
mentioned, without data, we can't really identify our challenges or inform our approach um to addressing those challenges. So that it's a that is a conversation I'd love to have outside of our meeting tonight.
>> We we can certainly give CDE feedback to say we'd like to have that data in a way that we can have a comparison. Yeah, I I think that's a I think that's a important conversation. Um I want to just lift up overall because I don't want to take a lot of
time. We we are moving in a positive direction. Th this information is positive over the last five years. Um and I it makes me wonder um about targeting demographics to focus on in the next three to five years like what
what is our you know 2.0 you know, like what is what is our next thing and how will we address it? And you don't have to answer that right now, but I'm, you know, I'm just I'm really grateful um that we are moving in a positive direction. We're seeing these increases. We're seeing students um have more
agency and engagement in their academic outcome and um I really really value it. I also wanted to just say to our Arvvada um principal that it is not a small project to set up
a 9th grade learning community. It does take a lot of coordination and effort. Um and those efforts are databacked and they have a very real impact on student success. So, thank you for picking up that work. I think it's incredibly valuable. Um and I have a special place in my heart for 9th grade
success. Not just because I have a ninth grader next year, but um that's the work I did as a teacher teaching nth graders. Um and I my last thing I think is that um we mentioned that careerhub counselor also being a mental health support and I
think that underscores that mental health is truly responsibility of all of our school staff even if it's not expressly attached to their job description as a main priority that all of our staff are working to support mental health. Um, and anyway, I'm just
really grateful for the time. Thank you so much. >> Anything else? Director. >> Okay. I hope my questions are quick. This should be a yes or no. Are AP tests digital or paperbased?
>> They Yeah, Caroline said yes. >> Digital. The majority of our AP exams have moved to a digital platform. There are a few that are still kind of in transition, but for the most part, they're they've moved to a digital platform. >> And then for our students who need accommodations,
do they have the opportunity to take the paper pencil version? Are they given their accommodations as they are high school students that they wouldn't necessarily get in a college setting? >> I know that our students are getting accommodations for their AP exams. Um,
and I am looking to Carol Eaton, who I believe is in the back, and I know her team really does support a lot of our testing. >> Come on up, Dr. Eaton. >> An assessment. >> Hi there, Carol Eaton, executive director in Instructional Data Services. Um, we do have accommodations. They are online, so they're they have to submit
to be approved of these accommodations, but they do provide those to our students who need them when they apply for them online. Okay, my last question. Um, on the CTE slides, I didn't see any reference to our GT population. Do we have data on
that? >> I believe we do have data on that and or that we could pull it. And so, yeah, I would I think that we had um we were trying to stay somewhat consistent with some of these subgroups that we were reporting throughout the report um and really
focusing in on some of those areas that we knew that we had historical gaps. Um but I could pull the GT. Are we thinking about the >> No, thank you. I was just curious because yeah, you have the GT here for AP classes, >> but I'm assuming there are some also in
the CTE track. >> Yes, absolutely. Yep. And so that's data I could pull if that's something that you'd be interested in seeing. >> Yeah, thank you. >> Absolutely. >> I would just add that we're really working hard to create data systems that report all this data in a succinct way. We're still working to get them all in
the same database and all in the same format. So that's a work in progress and we're excited about that and we know it's the right work. Just takes a little bit of time. >> Board director Monian, I caught you off guard there, didn't I? So looking at this slide deck, I I just
want to say as the, you know, new person, new board member, um just very proud to see these numbers and I think everybody should feel a sense of pride in the work that's been done um across the organization to bridge gaps to, you
know, raise these numbers of graduation rates as well as in CTE. The one thing that I take away is that we need to expand our CTE program. So, I look forward to doing that very important work. Thank you. >> Awesome. Um, well, I want to especially,
um, I mean, Principal Frzy, like the work you're doing at Arvvada is incredible and so just thank you. Um, thank you. Thank you for that. It is no small feat and to have numbers and turnaround like that is also like
amazing. Um this I don't get emotional at monitoring reports for the reasons Superintendent Dorland mentioned earlier. Um I did on this one like when people ask us why we do this work um it's for stuff
like this. So well done. It's it is something to be proud of. It's something that um tells me we are doing the right work. And so just great great appreciation for all you do. All right. Thank you guys so much for taking
the time and staying late with us. Um board, I would ask that maybe we shorten our break to catch up on time. How would y'all feel about a five minute break? And then maybe if you're brought food or have snacks, feel free to bring it up and we'll uh for those of you who are waiting to present, we'll give us
five minutes and we'll we'll get back at it. Okay. Thank you. Heat. Heat. Down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down
Heat. Heat. N. Heat. Heat. N. Hey. Hey. Hey. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. N. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. N. Heat. Heat. N. Heat. Heat. N.
Heat. Heat. N. Hey. Hey. Hey. Heat. Heat. N. Heat. Heat. N. Heat. Heat. Welcome back. Next, the board will receive an update on the ERP project from Brian Hansen, our ERP project
manager, Brena Copeland, our chief financial officer, and Jill Ibeck, our chief information officer, and Amanda Parazzio, our chief human resources officer. Oo, that is a mouthful. Um, we have allotted 30 minutes for your presentation. Please allow time at the end for board questions. Thank you for
being here and staying late with us. And before I turn it over, Superintendent Dorland, anything you would like to add? >> Great. Thank you, President Applegate, I want to just introduce you to the Project Horizon leadership team. uh they are working very diligently themselves,
but I would also just say they are doing incredible work supporting a lot of people who are implementing and working on configuring this thing to get it to a place where we can um go live uh over
the course of the next 12 months. Um, and I I really need to shout out the people who are doing that configuration work. Um, from HR, finance, IT. Did I miss a department? >> And our operations team, >> payroll deserves a shout out.
>> Payroll in particular. Um, this is like uh a job on top of their day job. And um, I just want to say thank you genuinely to everybody who is working so hard on this project. Our current enterprise resource planning tool is
extremely outdated and not nearly sophisticated enough for what a billion dollar or north of a billion dollar organization really needs. And by the way, that is not um meant to be any disrespect for people who have implemented the current Peopleoft system. They have been doing that work
for years and I respect them and appreciate them as well. Um, but our organization really deserves a modern ERP and so this is going to be a gamecher for us. I want to make sure the board actually carves out some time as we go into next year to get continue to receive updates about this project
because as we go live and as we continue to configure this thing, there are implications in terms of our operations and there will be change management needs related to like all employees because when we change processes and
procedures related to things like payroll um or things like hiring um or things like time reporting. It does impact every single employee in Jeffco. And so there's going to be some impacts that are coming, but the team's working really hard to be thoughtful about it.
Um we will have change management um systems and structures in place and we'll make sure the board receives regular updates. So with all that and a huge amount of appreciation for the work this team is doing as well as the people who are working with them on this incredible project, I'm going to hand it over to Mr. Hansen.
>> All right. Hi everybody. Uh, thanks for having us here tonight. Uh, let me see. I've got a clicker. All right. So, uh, so we'll start off with just some background on the ERP system and what it is, uh, to kind of regground the conversation and bring our new board members up to speed. Uh, then we'll dive
into the why behind why we're making the change. Uh, Tracy obviously gave us a little bit of a preview of that and then we'll give an update on the current project status and then we'll provide an overview of some of the change management activities that she mentioned. Uh, how we're supporting the people's side of this massive change. So first we'll ground this in our work
through the Jeffco Thrive strategic plan. Uh this project aligns with major initiative number two on our thrive strategic plan is associated with modernizing our business processes uh and systems. Uh modernizing our business processes and systems underscores our strategic plan by making the district efficient and effective with school
operations allowing our school and central leaders and educators to focus more on teaching and less on administrative tasks. Okay. So what is an ERP? Uh we throw acronyms around a lot. So 101 kind of starts with making sure I'm defining my acronyms. Uh ERP is an enterprise
resource planning system. Uh this is a system that we use for our HR, finance, operations. Uh as we mentioned, our payrolls run through this. Um a lot of employees will know this as ESS or employee self-service. That's how they generally interact with it. Other people will know it asoft. Umoft is uh the
system that the district has been using for over 25 years. This is our project objective. Uh so this is what our our team assembled early in this project and made sure that we had uh really a a guiding light essentially to to guide this project by. So it's to thoughtfully implement a
modern ERP platform that empowers our people, streamlines our processes and modernizes our technology. Uh, and the goal is accurate real-time data through user-friendly interfaces and helps us give the agility and insight needed to support a sustainable operation and our student outcomes.
All right, I'm going to pass it off to Jill next. I'll let you take that over microphone there. All right, thank you Brian. Um, so why change systems? Now uh one thing to note is that any organization that is using the Oracle
peopleoft product will have a force change by Oracle. Um so what that means is Oracle Peopleoft as a product does have a shelf life that will expire soon. Um as mentioned we've been using our current system uhoft for over 25 years.
Uh I think we've done a really good job here at Jeffco uh extending and maintaining that system. Um, in fact, we've done such a good job of extending the system, um, we have created, uh, bolt-ons for systemic gaps and we've customized code to be able to meet
Jeffco's needs. That said, uh, maintaining this existing highly custom, excuse me, customized code is becoming increasingly difficult, meaning that the support for Peopleoft and the skill set for Peopleoft is aging out with the
product. It also limits our uh ability to upgrade meaning that because peopleoft has a shelf life there are no new features being released by the vendor. Um Jeffco uh chooses and wants to leverage new technologies such as AI and workflow.
All right. Consolidation of systems and functions. So as we think about consolidating our systems, we look forward to a more seamless and consistent end user experience. We look forward to more accurate and trustworthy data and reporting. I will
say that the team working very hard on this project is doing a fantastic job of following indust industry best practice. Um so what that means is they're working to uh govern and organize our data in a more uh organized manner uh for lack of
a better term. And what that is going to yield for us is better reporting and business intelligence. We also will have improved supportability as ma uh mentioned that talent for peopleoft is aging out and so what we look forward to with our new
system is a more modern skill set that's more of a commodity in the market with regard to process improvement. We look forward to optimizing business processes. You already heard about employee self-service or ESS or manager self-service also uh acronym there is
MSS um which will have a robust mobile app behind both of those functions uh which is not there today. We also have an opportunity to reset expectations and standards. Uh as mentioned the team is doing a great job of sticking to industry best practice um
which will result in uh good standards and we are looking forward to increasing efficiency and reducing manual workarounds through systemic consolidation. Okay. So for our procurement review and this is how we selected our new products
and so we we did select the system which is listed here called workday. Uh we are under contract as of May 25 with workday for our new ERP platform and Accenture is our implementation partner. They are working through guiding us um through
this implementation. Um they are experts with workday um in particular in our industry and education. Um with our work orders and facilities management system uh we did anticipate needing an alternate system to replace this
customuilt application that we have inoft. As mentioned we did a really good job of extending uh but we want to try to use the system out of the box. And so what that means is we anticipated that we would have to go to RFP for this functionality. Um and
so what we found is that workday does not have this facilities management functionality that we need and an RFP uh alternate RFP was placed and facilities management express or FMX was contracted in December of 2025. So that will also
be a new system uh that is being implemented in parallel with our workday product. Okay, speaking of timeline, um what you can see here is at a really high level, we have three phases of this project. Uh
phase one is our HR payroll phase, um which just wrapped up the configuration phase. Um as uh Superintendent Doran mentioned, we've had people working really hard on configuration, moving us into a test phase. Um and the team is working, uh really really hard and doing
a great job. So very proud of the team. Um phase two is our finance phase. Uh just a little bit behind phase one. Um puts finance in a configuration phase until June of 26. They will move into a test phase in July. And uh phase three
is what we're calling our budget phase. And this phase will install what's called the adaptive planning module that will replace an plan which is our current budgeting tool. Okay. I think Brena, that's you. >> Great.
Um, so thinking a little bit about the cost of this project, this is a close to three-year project. Um, and we estimate that all told it'll be about 26 million. And this chart uh breaks that out between uh money for our team uh a mix
of project staff and then supplemental money towards folks who are either being trained or who are working overtime um to do project- based work. The middle column is money towards the software license itself over that three-year
period that we're implementing it. Um and then also some related new systems such as FMX. Um, contracted services is primarily our implementation partner, but also some support around project management and data conversion. Um, some very important
help we're getting in that third column. That's pretty essential. To put this in context, the 26 million uh, which will install over a three-year period, a system to support all 75,000 students since our charters are going to be supported by this system as well. Um,
it's coming in at a cost of about $340 per student. Um, or on a per year basis about $110 to $115 per student. We talk about the folks working on the project while they do their day jobs. um
within phase 1 HR. That means that 17 business leads, 10 technical leads, and 20 subject matter experts are all putting extraordinary time and effort into this work. And you can see they're blue colorcoded, or maybe you can, maybe you can't. Blue is kind of hard to pick
out. Um because they're doing this project work in addition to other duties. In phase two finance, we have 11 business leads, 10 technical leads, and eight subject matter experts. Um, honestly, the only reason those numbers are a little bit smaller is that we have some vacancies, and so we have some
folks double dipping on roles. So, the same human is trying to spread across more than one thing. Um, and again, those are all our staff who are doing their day jobs as well as the project- based work. In our project leadership, we have four executive sponsors. You've
got three of us here tonight. Um, our fourth partner in crime is Jeff Gatlin. We have two program project managers of which Brian uh seated to my right is one um one true project manager. Actually, that's you. It's the other two are
anyway. I'm going to leave that there. The the one project manager is a contractor. We have two programmer project managers who are staff. So, that's an important distinction there. And we have two project coordinators who are staff. Um the project coordinator
within finance is actually uh someone who was previously in a role supporting our treasury management and is now supporting this project. The change management lead is also a contractor and then we have one training lead that's a um dedicated to the project. So that
helps you get a sense for who are we paying for etc to to pull this whole thing off and how many folks are doing this in addition to their day job. I like this graphic because it's really oriented towards the functions that
occur and are hosted so to speak in the system. Um, we do talk a lot about ESS, the employee facing piece, um, that enables you to enroll in benefits or enables you to fill out your W4 or to track your leave balances or all those
different types of things. And we have a lot of vendor facing things, school-f facing things, um, all these different elements of the business make up um, not just the work of implementing the project, but the work that is conducted in ERP. So while it says functional
leads, yes, these are leads. These are different work efforts and work streams and people behind each of these boxes. But this also helps you understand what's the scale and scope of what we're doing here. Uh we've touched on this so I'm going to keep going. This is my favorite slide in
the whole thing. Um, so because when we really talk about why, um, and Jill shared a lot of the reasons upfront, but what we're already seeing is some early impact that we're very excited about in terms of redesigning our chart of accounts. Um, this implementation of a
chart of accounts more aligned to CDE. It's going to make so many things so much easier, including answering board member questions. Um, because we're going to introduce this next line, leveraging cost centers. So cost centers are a new dimension to our coding that
basically say who has budgetary responsibility for something which is separate and distinct from what department are they working in and also what location are they working in and kind of teasing those things apart. um are we use a field in the current chart
of accounts called depth ID and sometimes it's a location and sometimes it's a department and so how do you get both pieces of information right it's it's either one or it's the other and you can't and that's the only field we have so it's very frustrating um this
new chart of accounts is already um clearly going to solve um some of our and I would say that's probably true for HR too um talent acquisition is going to be redesigned to streamline and improve the candidate experience. I think we are all
wowed by the demos um of what it could look like to apply to a job and onboard to your job uh using this system. Payroll is redesigning workflows to reduce manual effort and improving data visibility
and we are um using the system to basically host well over time we'll use it to host training but our training courses um many of which have already been completed some of which were like um what do we call the virtual learning
when it's at the same time synchronous synchronous virtual learning uh for folks and Um in that learning process a lot of which occurred in December for finance but I think it was back in like September for HR um we further
identified processes to improve. So it's like learning about the system capabilities then identified new opportunities to then streamline process and strengthen the implementation. So I think that was exciting. That's me. >> Oh bummer. Okay. I know she likes
talking so much. Speaking of process improvements and continuing along the same lines of um celebrating using numbers, um we in education like to uh use a lot of numbers to celebrate. And so um some of the things that we'd like to quantify for you to just demonstrate
the progress that we've made already. First of all, we have um our teams have been working to configure workday modules. So just in the HCM and payroll suite, they've already configured 11 modules and 12 modules in the finance suite. Um testing as um Brian I think or
Brena described in the um nope it was Jill described it um is currently underway for HCM and payroll. They have had already run over almost 3,200 total test scripts and they continue to run
test scripts daily um throughout um the remainder of our testing and then finance will begin their testing phase and we will continue running um similar scripts throughout um that phase of testing as well. Um >> Amanda, >> yes please. >> Can you explain HCM please?
>> Yes. HCM is uh human capital management. So um HR operations if you will. um all of the behind the-scenes things that go into um how much you make and how you advance on the pace in the salary schedules and um all of the the
behindthe-scenes things that um that run HR if you will. It's very exciting for some. Oh, I have this I have the clicker. Um, additionally, um, we have identified multiple alignment opportunities. And
so, a business process is, um, essentially the steps that it takes in order to, uh, complete a task. Um, enrolling in benefits is a business process. And so, um, as our team, uh, initially, um, came up with the all of the different business processes
processes that we currently run, they identified within HCM and payroll, um, 148 opportunities to improve our business processes. And you can see that they had to prioritize them. um both what what is high priority for go live
and also what has the most impact the most positive impact certainly on our employees both those who are working in the system and those who are um impacted by the system because they are doing the self-service if you will and so um 83 of those 148 were identified as high
priority high impact so those certainly were the ones that were focused on first finance also did a similar process where they identified their business process processes. They identified 131 total opportunities, 62 of which are high
priority and high impact um that we are hoping to be able to implement with go live um on those two different timelines. Is it still me? >> Yep. >> Thank you. Oh, um at the very beginning, Superintendent Dorland talked about uh
organizational change management. So we have an entire process of change management that we is currently underway. Um because we know that this is going to mean significant change to the way in which people operate daily. Whether it is a an employee who is in
the system all day long working on it um or an employee who's in the system on and off such as a financial secretary in a school or it's an employee who is um using it for requests for vacation leave and they're requesting their um they're
signing up for benefits. So they're in it but they're not maybe in it every single day or all day long. And so, um, this organizational change management that we're working toward, um, really does support the people side of the change and it actively engages people as we begin to shift mindsets and then, um,
drive our new ways of working, um, which will then lead us into, uh, training, which is the next section after change management, but I'm going to let Brian keep going on change management. >> There you go. >> Okay. Um so we're going to go through a
high level overview of uh what our change man management efforts look like. Uh so in addition to the wide reach of the employees we have on the project team which we kind of identified earlier uh we'll have other channels to make sure we're communicating updates clearly to the employees to hear their feedback and input to help inform our project
team uh and to help identify their needs. So we'll take a look at each one of these in step uh in just a moment here. Uh so change ambassadors. So, our change ambassador network is a kind of a cross-section of district employees, um, who are helping us tell the story of the project, uh, listening to their peers,
uh, and giving the project team feedback on what we need to learn, uh, or what we need to learn and, uh, educate our teams on and where we need to lean in. Uh, so it's kind of a structured communication back and forth, which is some key high influence members or highly connected members of uh, the district. So that's a
lot of uh we have front office secretaries in schools uh who are fantastic because they they know everything that's going on in the schools. They have a great connection to our financial leaders on this side because they'll interface with our SAS team at the district. Uh so they're kind of a nerve center that we're really tapping into to understand what's going
on in schools and how we can help support them. Uh so we're leveraging them a lot and again other peer networks. Uh so we have community superintendents who are helping out. We have other trainers who are helping out. Uh we have obviously a cross-section of folks who are here uh in the building at the ed center. Um
yeah uh so let's see so we have about 45 teammates who are change ambassadors right now. This is for phase one. Uh so this is for our HR and payroll. So across the district that includes labor relations, charter schools, association members, uh school-based secretaries,
principles, school leadership, and central staff. Uh for the involvement, we're uh asking them for input on training and communications to get feedback on communications that we're sending out. Uh participating in testing and helping with training prepare uh preparation as appropriate. Um and then
again just asking them to be the people who are helping us tell the story of the project as well to kind of make sure there's a a kind of a uniform uh bit of information that's going out so we're not uh leaving a void where people are kind of filling their worries. Uh right now we're meeting with them uh one to two hours per month uh as we get closer
uh to deployable maybe more frequently and again they are some of them volunteering to help out with testing and training which is fantastic. Uh one of the other things we're doing is road shows. Uh these are uh essentially showand tells. So these aren't these aren't quite training which
we're we're being clear about. Uh these are demos of workday that we're going around to different employee groups. Um and we're showing them some of the basic workday functionality as it applies to them, showing some of the basic tasks and ease of use, how to navigate. We're taking questions. We're developing FAQs
to help their uh their peers uh and help themselves as we get closer to go live. Um and then again, we're using this to inform our training and some of our other change management communications. Um so right now again, we're starting with HR. transition to finance once finance design is complete and again
finance is just trailing the HR phase by about three months. So everything we're doing now we'll see HR finance do in in about three months. Um some of the other things we're doing uh so we do have uh as part of these road shows uh we are communicating what go live is going to start to look like. We're still
developing our go live cutover plan, but as we go further in, we'll start telling uh everybody what that'll start looking like uh and how that will impact them in terms of where we're timing their training, where we're going to start showing up to help with support and what those support streams look like.
Uh so these are some of the road shows that we have right now. Uh so we actually have those TBDs are now filled in. Uh so those are not in the slide we submitted last week and that's fine. Uh but we are basically going around and you can see the subsection of people that we are starting to present to. Um
and the one I want to highlight uh in the middle there is the workday train the trainer. Uh so May 4th to May 8th is where we are taking about 20 employees who uh whose supervisors have either recommended them or they have volunteered as well um to help again be
some of the uh peers who go to their networks and go and help train them for the change that's coming. Um, and so we're excited to have them May 4th to the 8th. And again, there's schoolbased staff. It's similar to the change ambassadors uh cross-section that we looked at before. Okay. And this is back to
so in an effort to ensure that we are um getting real-time feedback um from our um labor relations partners. So our associations in JCA, JCE, JCAA and JESPA, our project team is meeting weekly with our labor relations team um
to review decisions, change impacts and ensure alignment with our collective bargaining agreements. And certainly we are also providing updates in our monthly meeting with Jespa and JCA. um specifically um JESPA more frequently because oftentimes this is more
impactful to our hourly employees who are potentially um submitting their um time each time they clock in and clock out if you will. Um uh some of the things that we're reviewing with them are the change impacts um trying to help them understand the scale and the change
that the actual employee is going to experience um at in their day-to-day work as well as their um annual experience. again with things like benefits enrollment. Um certainly we wanted to ensure alignment with the collective bargaining agreements. Some of the configurations have been done
because of language that we've agreed to in our collective uh bargaining agreements. Um we also are discussing training and educational needs to ensure that our associations are providing feedback about what they believe employees need. Um and that they themselves are having an opportunity to
attend some of the road shows and some of the demonstrations that so that they too can ask questions and provide that feedback. And then of course we will continue to um uh have those ongoing conversations um with our associations to make sure that we are prepared for um
anything that our employee any questions our employees might have any um direction our associations might want to provide to us or give to us as far as requests or um other uh bargaining type agreements that we might need to make in the future.
And then finally my final slide is around training. So as you can imagine um we want to have a strategic approach to training which is why we have identified a training lead um who will be uh coordinating training and a train the trainer model throughout the
district. Um we of course also are going to want to provide differentiated training. A financial secretary needs very different training than a um a typical you know day-to-day employee who is um teaching in the classroom or who is um serving lunch to students. Each
one of those employees is going to need potentially a different type of training and a different level of training. And so some of those types of trainings that we'll offer are um knowledge transfer for administrators, manager self-service or manager training is going to be a little bit different than um enduser
employee training. Um there will be instructor-led training for managers and supervisors and also self-paced on demand like um Brena said, either synchronous or asynchronous learning as well. And then of course for things that um are less frequently done like
benefits enrollment, that's just top of mind for me right now. Um there will be uh learning journeys. There will be journeys inside of workday that will walk an employee through click here, click there, make sure you complete all of the steps in this particular process
um at a very self-paced uh manner so that employees can do a lot of this work without actually needing uh additional support. they will be um it will increase the self-service that they're able to access. You're the last one.
>> Great. So, we do in terms of next steps with the board, we expect to be coming back in August uh with a project update. Uh presuming, of course, you'd like to hear from us. Um, and that would be prior to our fall deployment. The 2627
budget that you will be presented uh with a proposed version uh next month will include expenses attributable to this uh project. And those expenses will show up in the capital reserve fund. Um, and you were already given a preview of
that line uh this evening when Miss Rosario was presenting and it showed up as the technology and other line. So, with that, I want to open it up for any questions. >> Board members, in uh the absence of
President Applegate, I'll be calling on you. Anybody have any questions, Director Moren? >> So, I'm looking at slide eight, and I I appreciate this timeline. Um, in at what point in this timeline that
I'm looking at does the training take place? Maybe you guys mentioned it on a different slide and I missed it. It's basically throughout because it's already starting. >> Oh, okay. So, before we deploy this, we're going to make sure everybody's comfortable, everybody's been trained, and we're all on the same page.
>> Yep. >> Love that. All right. Thank you. >> Anyone? This is a huge undertaking and we've been talking about it since um I joined the board. I'm excited
for the streamlining of processes um and also the the impact it will have on just how how we operate. Um I'm really grateful for the work that you're doing. You this presentation also was incredibly thorough. I think you maybe
trying to make sure we didn't have a lot of questions. Um we are looking forward to the update um the next one which is you said in August. Yes. Um
yeah I do you have a general sense of um how our teacher community and staff community are feeling about this? Are they excited? Are they um anxious? I don't know. I think Amanda and I both have a couple perspectives.
Um, it's the full gamut. So, it's everything from I don't even know what the word workday means, nor do I think it means anything to me. So, just fully in the dark to um very excited, maybe in the middle to
apprehensive, right? and and um that change ambassador network is really helping us identify which pieces of the work are going to be most noticeable or potentially
that might land in the wrong way, right? Um for our end users and for the bulk of the organization, right? Our functional areas are already so deeply embedded they're they're like making it happen. But then just in terms of how people perceive it, um we're really glad that
we set that network up because it's already a very valuable feedback loop in terms of some pivots we want to make and how we describe things and how we um structure things and explain the rationale for things. So would you add >> the only thing I would say is that the
apprehension comes from the unknown, right? People are just um they're curious and they are um cautiously optimistic. I would say um just as they anticipate what might be and um how it might affect them both in um really
positive ways and also in ways that they just don't know yet. So, >> oh director, >> I just thought of something as we were talking. Um I like workday. My husband's company uses workday, so I've done
benefits through workday and I think it's fairly seamless process. My question is a lot of school districts um when they are when they have their applications posted, most of the school districts use the same system and I'm not sure it's I'm blanking what that
system is right now except for DPS. They have a totally different system when they're accepting job applications. My question is because so many of the school districts are using the same program right now, like I can log in and
I can apply and it saves my resume and I can apply to Adamine or I can apply to Cherry Creek or I can apply to any of these districts and it's it saves my information and I know workday does that too, but are you seeing that the other
districts are also transitioning over so that when people are applying for jobs across the state that that workday resume stays uploaded and they can apply to different districts. >> I don't know yet. I I'm guessing the other system that you're talking about
is Applat and um there there are several districts that use it. However, they use it separate from their enterprise resource planning system. So, it has to be a um a system that is configured um to that system. And so one of the things that we talked about when we first
decided to implement Workday was that we wanted to have one system of truth. And so our goal was to not have multiple systems that were having to be configured back to Workday. And so um an example is Douglas County. Douglas County uses Workday and has for several
years. I think it's 8 8 to 10 years they've been using it. And um I mean their application system is within Workday. It's pretty userfriendly as I understand it. I don't know. Oh, I haven't applied, but I just just for all transparency purposes, but I do know that they that they use the workday
system, and it seems um it seems like it does work. I would have to ask um and I'm c certainly happy to if um if that same um if your same resume would work in multiple workday systems or even your same login. Certainly, if you were using it as an employee versus an external
applicant, um it might be a different um uh login, but I'm I'm certainly happy to inquire. It's a good question. And I I can't tell you which other school districts use Workday in the state of Colorado. Um but I'm sure there are a few. Jill
might be able to tell you. >> Um Amanda already mentioned Douglas County. Um, but what's interesting, and I'm just going to go outside of Colorado for a minute, is that there is a lot of momentum going with especially the larger school districts. And so just a couple weeks ago, I was able to sit in
and do um a conversation with some of the folks that are on RFP for Clark County, Nevada, which is 500,000 students. And so um there's a lot of momentum shifting toward the medium and larger size school districts, which is good for us. It's good for us because
that momentum opens up a community profile for us to be able to lean on one another. Um, and your question is a great one that would go to a community like that. That's something that we could work with other school districts on through, you know, as uh workday gets
more popular. I imagine your CTE applications will get easier because a lot of people in tech already use workday. You guys will get all the tech people. I think that's all of our questions. Thank you so much for incredibly
thorough and thoughtful presentation. Thanks. I got to Oh, yeah. do that. >> Next, the board will receive an update on the 2026 legislative session. Presenting this update is Aaron
Kinworthy from the board of education and guest presenter Ed Bowish from Bowish and Castle Public Affairs who is joining virtually. We have allotted 30 minutes for this update. Please reserve time for board questions following your remarks before I turn the time over to our presenters. Superintendent Dorland, is there
anything you would like to add? >> Thank you, Director Gibbons. No. Director Kenworthy, Mr. Bow. >> Thank you. >> Good evening, my fellow board members. And Mr. Bowich, how you doing out there, Ed?
>> Good evening. I am appreciative that you guys let me participate remotely tonight. I am doing fine on this day 85 of the legislative session. Um, I'm happy to jump right in. Um, Director Kenworthy, if you'd like.
>> No. Yes, please just jump right in. That's helpful. >> Okay. So yes, so today is day 85. The state's budget bill is being debated today and tomorrow in the House of Representatives. You have the long bill that provides funding for all the
various programs. And then if if the budget committee recommends any statutory changes, that can't be in the long bill. Those have to be in accompanying bills. So they call those the orbital bills, bills that travel along with the long bill and make it
balance. Um this year there are 62 orbital bills with all of the budget changes that the joint budget committee is making. Uh for school finance um we avoided the most significant reductions
um in the long bill. Um there was no reinstatement of the BS factor. there was no use or change in the specific ownership tax revenues. So, school finance um will be funded in compliance
with amendment 23. We will get the inflationary rate of 2.3% and then each district will be funded based on its enrollment change. We will transition to 30% of the new school finance act funding and move to a
three-year enrollment average. So these are all things that we knew were coming and nothing has changed per statute. Um before I talk about some of the JBC orbital bills, I wanted to add one other thing that is percolating out there and
that is the speaker of the house is planning to introduce a bill for the conversion of Pinnacle Assurance, the state's workers compensation uh company. Um, as part of that, Pinnacle, it would be up to the Pinnacle board to determine
if they want to um, uh, convert to a private entity. And as part of that, there would be certain revenues that would flow back to the state. And of most interest to us, the speaker has a draft bill that says $100 million would
flow back into the state education fund. Now, that money wouldn't be available for immediate use. it wouldn't go into school finance next year, but it would help prop up the state education fund. And that's a very important thing for the long-term health of school finance.
Um, to put it another way, if the state education fund um gets too low, if the balance gets too low, that's when we get serious about discussions on things like specific ownership tax or modifying enrollment averaging. So, it's important
um from that standpoint. Any questions on school finance? Before I get a little bit I want to mention the joint budget committee orbital bills. Um but happy to talk any answer anything about school finance. >> Board members any questions?
>> No questions. >> No. Superintendent Dorland has one. >> Might be help. I think it might be helpful for all of us to hear Ed. Given the rosier picture uh that they chose um in terms of the two forecasts, is
there discussion about a midyear a possibility of a midear recision and how nervous are people about that right now down there? >> Um thank you. So yes, that's a good point. So there are two groups of economists. You've got the governor's economist, you've got the legislative economists. They both get the same data.
They came to different conclusions and these are reasonable professional disagreements. Um, in part they were looking at data on who has paid their taxes yet this year and this was as of March 1st. Who has paid their taxes as
of March 1st? And are those people who pay their taxes, you might say early, are they more likely to be people who get refunds or are they just a cross-section of the taxpaying public? Based on that disagreement, the
governor's office had a forecast showed a 750 $750 million shortfall and the legislative economist had a shortfall of 1.2 billion. The joint budget committee chose to go with the less bad forecast
and they get to choose which forecast to use. They went with the governor's office forecast. They also, as part of their budget balancing, lowered the state's reserve from 15% down to 13%. So then you have to look and say, well,
what happens if what happens if the legislative forecast that turns out to be correct or there's some other thing that causes state revenues to slow down and we get to January? Well, we will know that we'll get
forecasts on June 20th, September 20th, then we'll get a budget request on November 1st, then we'll have a new governor elected. Then we'll get more forecasts on December 20th. So, it's a little too early to say what's going to
happen. Um, I'm pleased that they didn't go further into the reserve, that it just went from 15 to 13% as a budget bal budget balancing measure. Had they gone lower than that, I'd be more worried. But, it's really going to be up to a new
governor and whomever is on the joint budget committee next year to determine what to do based on the available revenues. That's a lot to process. Yeah. >> Yes. >> Yeah. Thank you. Um, if there are no other questions about
budget, and I don't have any, I think I need to process everything that you just shared. And it sounds like we won't have any solid information until after this is debated in both houses. Do we have a or or what is a timeline for when we
might feel like this is what it's going to look like? Guess I did have a question. >> Well, in terms of school finance for Jeffco or the overall budget, >> I think I'm asking about the overall budget and then and then Jeffco. >> So, I would say with the overall budget,
it it is scheduled to be in the House this week. It's likely they're going to pass it on third reading on Friday and then ship it over to the Senate and then the Senate will take three or four days and then they'll make a few changes. But there really aren't that many changes that are adopted once the long bill gets
introduced in the House and the Senate. So this week in the House, next week in the Senate, the following week will be in conference committee and sent off to the governor. And then the governor has 10 days to decide what to do with it. But there really aren't too many
questions about what goes goes on. There aren't too many changes with the long bill once it's been introduced. >> Well, that's >> now of the or Oh, go ahead. >> I was going to say that sounds like a good setup for the orbital bills, but go ahead and finish what you were going to say.
>> Orbital bills. So, any bill that that requires a statutory change has to go through a separate bill. So for example, there were a number of orbit there are a number of orbital bills that are traveling along with the loan bill that affect education. So while school
finance isn't going to get cut, you know, the the specific ownership tax and the BS factor and those things, the orbital bills do reduce funding in K12 education. So, for example, House Bill 1352
reduces a uh the Reed Act evaluation to go from every year to every other year. That saves 300 3/4 of a million dollars. Um there's a bill to reduce the state assessment in social studies. So, that
eliminates the social studies assessment in elementary school, maintains it middle school. That saves $300,000. There's a science teacher professional development program in House Bill 1354 that'll save a million and a half by by
ending that earlier than it otherwise would have. There are, I think, about nine bills in that are orbital bills um that just reduce funding and reduce these grant programs that may be worthy
grant programs, but frankly, a lot of people have agreed with what Jeffco has always said. Before you go after school finance, look at some of these grant programs in CDE. So Jeffco impact given all the orbital
bills and your view of what's been proposed how many how impacted will we be? >> I don't think um I don't think we'll be too terribly impacted. I mean some of the grants we would have been the
beneficiaries of these are ending but to keep it out of school finance is exactly the right choice. >> I agree. I was glad to hear that they didn't do the SOT or the BS factor. >> Um, agreed. And I would just say to make
a link between this conversation and the earlier study item of budget development update. Um, I think you know, Brena presented three different scenarios in terms of the revenue picture. what Ed is sharing uh ticks and ties to the
assumptions that I know Brena has made in the presentation from earlier today for the board. And if you remember, there's three different options. One is like we might lose a million in revenue. Um we might lose 2 million and then if they were to implement like a 1% on the
BS factor, which they haven't done yet, it would be the 10 million. Um, and what Ed's not talking about in his conversation here with the board that Brena presented and has, as I mentioned before earlier tonight, the biggest impact on our revenue picture is
declining enrollment. And so I think what Ed's saying tracks with what I know Brena has assumed in the scenarios that she presented to you tonight. So hopefully it stays pretty stable without a negative factor.
I'm I would be surprised. Yeah, I would be surprised if there are any major changes at this point. >> Awesome. Thank you for that. Uh so shall we move on into some other fun education legislation?
>> Sounds good. >> Go ahead. Um so a couple of updates and I will list all the orbital bills on this week's um report so you can see all those. Um a couple of updates. I know that um the social media duty and report
and search warrants, House Bill 1255 by Representative Story and Senator Cutter. Um that bill had a lengthy hearing. There were a lot of families, students, parents from Evergreen who came down to the capital late that night. Um the Jeffco board did take a position on
that. That bill really has stalled on second reading. So it passed committee. Some of the committee votes even said, "Look, we'll vote for it today, but the bill needs more work." The governor's office is not as keen on this bill at this point. Um there's still a lot of time left in the session if they want to
move this forward, but that bill has been on second reading for a few weeks now. That's 1255. Um, another bill I wanted to mention, Senate Bill 23, the school finance act that Senator Kulker um introduced at the beginning of the session. Um, that bill
has been scheduled for April 20th. So hopefully once it gets once it gets heard in his Senate Education Committee, it can pretty quickly move through the Senate and then over to the House and we can get some closure on that. Um there
has been a little discussion by some folks about potentially raising the mill levy cap. So mill levy override caps for years the cap was 25% of your total program is what you could raise outside
of your total program as a mill levy override. um when 1448 came in um because many districts were losing money with a shift away from the cost of living factor, you could capture what you would have lost through an
additional override. So now there's not one consistent cap. It's more district specific. But there has been some discussion about increasing that. Um I think that discussion has died down in the last few days. um that doesn't seem to be front and center the way it was
last week. In part, that was going to be a response had the legislature done a BS factor or a specific ownership tax change, but I think that's unlikely to end up in the school finance act when it gets heard on April 20th.
>> It was an interesting idea. Um, but I was curious about whether or not that was still being discussed and it sounds like maybe we just put that idea in our back pocket for the next time we're having discussions about >> the state budget.
>> Um, I wanted to ask the the earlier bill that also addressed social media um, warrant turnover time. It was the one that allowed 72 hours. Um and the governor had signaled that he was more
supportive of that one. Where is that? And uh is that having an impact on the story cutter bill conversation? >> I think yes. And I don't remember the number to that one right away, but I can
find it very easily. Um, and I know that that bill that had longer timelines and had different language um was the one preferred by the governor and that one has passed um the legislature. I don't
know if it's been signed by the governor yet, but in some ways that's part of the holdup. Um that that bill has already been passed and so this bill search warrant Senate Bill 11 and the governor
has signed that one um by um senators Friselle Roberts and Representatives Baser and Caldwell. So yes, that one um if there is a search warrant, there has to be an acknowledgement of search warrant within eight hours of the
retreat and then the operator must comply within 72 hours after receiving the search warrant under certain conditions. And the governor has signed that one which kind of puts the uh puts
the um the 1255 in kind of a tough spot. Yeah, I would agree that I think that helps explain why they're kind of sitting in limbo a little bit right now. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Great. That's good to know.
>> Another major bill I wanted to talk about is Senate Bill 135, the um state public K12 education funding. So, this bill would raise the state's Taber revenue caps, allow the state to retain more revenue, and dedicate some of that
revenue to K12 education. This bill passed the Senate Finance Committee, its pending Senate Appropriations Committee. There are more discussions about how to better focus this bill um onto K12 education. Um right now the bill
requires that of the increased funding an additional 200 million would go into a so-called positive factor um that would be used each year for K12 education. I think there are more and more people saying if this is going to
be submitted to the voters more money needs to be very clearly marked for education in order for voters to understand what they're voting for and the benefits of what they'd get if they passed it. Hey Ed, on that piece I think we have some time tomorrow where we're going to
an information session about that bill. Are you there with us? >> Yes. >> One of the things that I will just share related to case's perspective on this bill and just some conversations that I've had with
colleagues, front-range colleagues, um is lack of clarity. I mean, you just said 200 million to K12. I've heard 90. I don't know if there's an escalation that happens uh over time that gets to the 200. Um and and still the distance
between even 200 million to K12 and what the adequacy studies said we need like really need which is you know a lot more than that. Um I I don't remember the exact number, Ed, but um so I just there are many unanswered questions. Number
one is a concern that case is having with this bill. The second concern is if we're going to go to the voters and we're going to ask them to fund K12 and they've voted in, it better be worth our while in terms of the outcome of
what districts receive from that bill or from that ballot measure. Otherwise, we're going to be dealing with the marijuana money all over again. Um, you know, people still ask, "Whatever happened to all the marijuana money?" Well, we never got marijuana money. and the marijuana bill was passed on the
backs of K12 and then the money didn't come to fruition and so now the whole state thinks they've funded K12 when they really haven't. So, there's some serious concerns, at least from the case perspective, about what is it really
going to do? And if it's really going to help K12, great. Let's all get behind it. But if it's not really going to help K12, but just use us as the fuel to drive it over the line, then, you know, case is just saying we're not going to
be okay with that. So, I think we'll learn more tomorrow, which I'm looking forward to. >> Yeah. All right. Um, are there any other bills? I'm looking now at our list from our legislative update. Um, pending consideration by the governor. Um, and
I'm curious about the optional individualized readiness plan for school. Um, we had a lively conversation at our last legislative check-in about this bill uh between Rep. Garcia and Senator Kulker. It was fascinating to
listen to their two perspectives and it looks like now it's in front of the governor. Do you have any idea about his potential support for that or not? >> I don't know. I have not heard and I don't believe the governor's office ever
weighed in officially on that bill. Um so I don't know um where um where things end up with the governor. >> And he has 10 days. Is that accurate? Yeah. >> Yes. 10 days from the day he gets it,
which is often times about a week after the legislature finishes it. >> Okay. All right. We can look Well, I'll look into that. Um, >> yeah, it did pass the Senate with one no vote, so very strong support. The House
was um strong support as well, but we'll see. >> Okay. Yeah, it would be interesting to see what our our governor decides to do with that. Um, board members, are there any other questions or legislation that you wanted to ask about or follow up on?
No. No. I'm seeing I'm seeing headshakes. Say no. Our next legislative check-in is this Friday at 8 a.m. Uh, I will be there. Ward members, are any of you planning on being there with me?
>> I'm hoping to be there. >> Thank you. >> I'll know when I'm there. >> Yeah. Okay. And I am not planning to join because we have stuff going on in district that day. Um unless you if the board feels they need me, I'm happy to try to rearrange. But we had assumed
that you guys would be okay. The last couple times have gone well and really appreciate you Aaron taking the lead um on this important work and helps me stay focused here back at the ranch. So thank you. >> Yeah, you're welcome. I'm glad to do it.
Um, I appreciate the support. Um, and I also wanted to say thank you to Kristen for including our uh the case bill tracker link in our last weekly update. I thought that was really helpful um to
kind of have that next to what we've received from Ed. Um it it just gave a nice breadth of information. So, uh, if you all have any questions or concerns, feel free to reach out. And I'm going to say we're done. Unless Mr. Bowage, do
you have anything else you want to add? >> Uh, good to see everybody tonight. >> Yeah, good to see you, too. Hang in there. It's almost done. >> Thanks. >> Said bye. >> Bye. >> Thank you, Director Kenworthy. >> All right. Next up, um, Superintendent
Dorland will provide us a preview of the items anticipated to appear in the consent agenda at the upcoming April 16th, 2026 board meeting. Superintendent Dorland, the time is yours. >> Great. So, we look forward to um preparing the consent agenda for the board next week. You'll see some of the
typical monthly items at the top of the list here. um administrative, employment, appointments, resignations, terminations, any supplemental funds notifications for April. You'll be approving minutes from your March and April meetings. Um you'll
be accepting monitoring reports 1.1 and 3.2 and 3.4. Um approval of the 2627 board calendar. Um and so that might be something you want to take a close look at if there's anything you want to discuss on that. Um
and uh we did just so you know when you make that uh we are going to approve an amendment to this year's board calendar um because we changed your meetings uh in May due to graduations and so that's just an approval of a change for this year. Um you're going to have a couple
of contract awards. Uh, one is for a fire alarm, the fire alarm systems at both Mount Sky, Mount Blue Sky and Windy Peaks that need to be updated. You will also have a district-wide flooring contract, particularly flooring for
Westwoods and Mandandalay Middle School, just for new board members. DW stands for districtwide. We often will bundle different schools together that need similar work to sort of leverage economies of scale in the bidding process and hopefully save some funds by
ordering materials all at once or hiring the contractors all at once. So that's that's their um they're going to be there for you for the Westwoods Elementary School and Mandandalay Middle School. Uh and then you have a couple of food nutrition services actually several food nutrition services contracts. This
is typical in the spring where we have a lot of food nutrition services contracts coming in for board approval uh in order for us to be prepared with making sure we have food ready for the next school year um and that we're just ready to go
with the vendors who provide um lots of the different food for us. Um yeah, so that is and then you can see May the preview of your agenda items where you'll have a study session on the 6th and you will also have a regular meeting
on the 11th. I would like to note that the um board Michelle and Aaron and I met at our leadership meeting today. Um we are going to have a special public um comment section on the 6th simply for
the charter application that the board is going to be considering in May. So the board can hear early on in the process um people's comments related to the charter application. Um so that'll just be a different structure. Usually during study sessions, we don't have any
public comment, but we feel that it's important for the community to have um uh more time with the board to talk to you earlier than the night you're going to vote and make a decision. Um so that is a bit of a change in terms of your normal meeting structure on the 6th, but those are the dates
and the topics. Thank you, Superintendent Dorland. Questions, comments? Okay, appreciate that. Okay, we are going to move into our final item of study this evening which
is our committee reports. This is an opportunity for us to share the work about our um advisory committees. We have 25 minutes for these reports. Um so the time is ours. Would anyone like to go? Dr. Ataria.
I had the opportunity to attend um the capital assets advisory committee on March 19th uh where Miss Copelan pre presented on the difference between a special purpose mill levy or bond to increase the revenue for capital needs.
Um it was followed by an activity where Perkins and Eastman um worked through a prioritization activity for what
they believe uh capital asset needs might be coming our way such as new schools, high school reimagined, those types of things. And then um for the Jeffo Schools Foundation, this is an opportunity for the listening public.
They are seeking corporate engagement from any new companies that might be able to help with uh meet fundraising goals. Please feel free to contact Courtney Jensen. Also, uh Jeffco Schools Foundation is in the process of hiring a developing development and marketing
specialist. So, please spread the word um that they are looking for a qualified individual for that position. Thank you. >> Thank you. Anyone else? >> Dr. Director Kinworthy? >> Uh I had an unfortunate uh phone problem
on the night of the DAC meeting. Uh so I had to miss the meeting. I do have their agenda. Um they discussed the DUIP uh which is the district unified improvement plan. Um they talked about legal responsibilities regarding charter
school review. Um and then they talked about their SAC training or the school accountability school accountability committee training. Um focusing in on providing that through director districts next year. Um and I'm sure it
was a lovely conversation. I did have a phone call earlier today with the chair of DAC just to give some late guidance to um the charter subcommittee uh group that is reviewing information
right now um to give them just an idea of um where to lean in and where to lean back. Um I'm sure they'll do a fantastic job and I'm looking forward to hearing from them about that. Uh, and then the EAC. The only thing I have to share, Drew, do you still have that slide
of the community conversation? Probably not. No. Okay. on April 28th atraton Middle School at 5:30 there's going to be a community conversation um held by the EAC uh meant to engage our community and
conversations about belonging um and also allow families to connect and meet meet each other um and have meaningful conversation. So it'll be small group conversation um facilitation style and I I'm really excited to see how how it goes and hopeful that we'll continue
this and do some more of it. that comes out of the article 22 work regarding um equity inclusion stuff. So those are my two updates. >> Thank you. >> Director Gibbons,
>> I'll be brief. Um director attended the last CAC meeting which allowed me to go to the legislative day for was there saw director Kinworthy and director Applegate and um nothing else to say about it that we did not just exhaustively cover and Mr. about it just
report. So we'll save our time and pass the mic. >> So unfortunately I had to join the FAC meeting virtually uh this past month. Uh but we talked about uh the budget and as well as looking ahead to uh the MLO
information. Uh also on Monday I did I had a chance to attend the partnership for fiscal responsibility. So they got to take a look at the polling data information and um they also had some really meaningful conversations and presentations around CTE as well as our
um surplusing of our properties. So looking forward to seeing what comes out of that that group. Um I had the chance to attend a TDPAC meeting which I was really excited about. Um walked through a really
interesting experiment. I'm going to call it an experiment. It was really an exercise on um they put a scenario up on the screen and then they had everybody in the room migrate to whether you thought it was an appropriate use of screen time or not an appropriate use of screen time.
And it was fascinating because um our amazing staff was running it and um it was the first one was very intentionally vague, right? And so I was like, can we ask questions? and everybody had gone to a place and then I'm the obnoxious board member who's
like, "Well, are they on a read plan? How long have they been on the screen? Are they interacting on a game? Are they getting differentiated learning?" And everyone started to shift. Um, and Jill didn't make me stop, so I was I was following directions. But what really
became evident to me is there's this stigma of screen time, right, without understanding what our kids are using it for. And so if you just said show a picture of a young child watching a screen with headphones on, the immediate response was negative. But when they
said, well, she's an advanced reader and the teachers differentiating the class and this is an op, you know, like once you got into what was going on, there was a lot more acceptance of it. So it was fascinating. Um, and then as you went up in age, the questions got more interesting. And so it was excellent.
And I know they're going to come talk to us more about it. But when we're hearing so much from families on take screen time away from kids, I think there's this misunderstanding of how our teachers are actually using it as a tool in the classroom to differentiate and help kids meet their reading plans or
grade level activities. And so, um, that was an a really interesting takeaway for me. So, and then cell phone policy, always fascinating. Um, I'm really excited for y'all to hear the stories that come in from the students. It's going to be um it's really interesting. So,
all right. I appreciate that. Um and I do just want to share I will not be in attendance at the board meeting next week. I have a previous commitment um that I was not able to move. So, um Director Kenworthy will be your fearless leader and uh I know you'll be in good
hands. So, um but I'm sorry I won't be here with you. So with that, um the board has noticed a second executive session to discuss negotiations. This portion of the meeting is closed to the public. Seeing that the executive session is the last item on the agenda,
thank you to those who have participated in tonight's study session. And the next meeting of the board is a regular meeting on Thursday, April 6th. For those departing, thank you and good night. >> Sorry. Thank you. determine
positions relative to matters that may be subject to negotiations with JCA developing strategy for and receiving reports on the progress of such negotiations and in structuring negotiation negotiators. Um, is there a motion of the board of education to convene an executive
session pursuant to CRS25-6-42 subp parts 4E? >> I move to convene an executive session pursuant to CRS 25-66-42 PNS 4E to determine positions relative to matters that may be subject to
negotiations with JCA developing strategy and before and receiving reports on the progress of such negotiations and instructing negotiators. >> Is there a second? >> I second. Any discussion? It has been moved and seconded that the board of education will convene into
executive session. Roll call, please. Miss Harper. >> Miss Applelegate. >> Yes. >> Dr. Edaria. >> Yes. >> Mr. Gibbons. >> Yes. >> Miss Kenworthy. >> Yes. >> Miss Moian. >> Yes. >> Thank you. This portion of the meeting is now closed to the public. We will reconvene at approximately 9:30 to
formally close the meeting. Down down down down down down down down down down down down down. Heat. Heat.