Good afternoon. I would like to call this meeting of 01/07/2026 to order. Roll call, please, miss Harper. Miss Applegate? Here. Doctor Echeverria? Here. Mister Gibbons? Here. Miss Kenworthy? Here. Miss Molinean? Here. On behalf of the Board of Education, happy new year. We welcome all attendees, those joining us live in the audience and those connecting virtually. We also wish to express our appreciation to the live simultaneous Spanish interpreters for facilitating access this evening. Please stand and join us this evening in the pledge of allegiance. Is there a motion to approve today's meeting agenda?
I move to approve today's agenda. Is there a second? I second. It has been moved and seconded to approve the agenda for today's meeting of 01/07/2026 as presented. Roll call, please, miss Harper. Miss Applegate? Yes. Doctor Echeverria? Here. Mister Gibbons? Yes. Miss Kenworthy? Yes. Miss Moenian? Yes. Please note that we will take a ten minute break at approximately 06:10 this evening. Our first study item is to review the fiscal year twenty twenty five twenty six revised budget presented by Brenna Copeland, our chief financial officer, and Brian Sammons, our director of budgets.
Come on down. You're the next contestant. Thank you for being here. And presenters, we have allotted forty five minutes for this presentation. Please reserve ten minutes of your presentation time for board questions following your presentation. And before I turn it over to our presenters, superintendent Dorland, is there anything you would like to add? Thank you, president Applegate. I'm gonna hand it right over, and just really appreciate the presentation being first on your the board's agenda tonight because it is, an indication of the of a lot of the rationale around why we're doing, the work of the budget reduction blueprint.
And so looking forward to the the, our esteemed colleagues, to present to you tonight. And I think we can then reference back to this presentation throughout the rest of the night. I think you'll see a lot of connections between this presentation and some additional, materials that you're gonna study this evening. So thanks very much, miss Copeland. I'm handing it to you. Great. Good evening board members. I'm gonna dive right in. Oh, I am Brenna Copeland. I'm the chief financial officer here. So our agenda tonight, we're gonna talk a little bit about the budgeting timeline, then
we're gonna talk about the revised budget and, the specific general fund adjustments incorporated therein. We are going to provide a preliminary high level, multi year projection. And we're gonna talk about some of what's happening in other funds beyond the general fund, and then do a quick preview of the resolutions that will be part of your, voting agenda item next week, just so you can see the text in those and ask any questions you might have about those resolutions. So this is our timeline and I want to note that within those top four
bullets where we're talking about the board, appropriation approvals, The adopted budget was approved, I think it was like June, I don't know, tenth ish, fifteenth ish. I don't know. Sometime in June. And that's this budget that we're operating under. We did not need an amended budget, so we did not do that. We're currently at the revised budget. There really shouldn't be any more substantive changes except for occasionally, you're asked to approve a supplemental appropriation. Those are typically tied to unexpected funds showing up, so a grant or something.
And you will see sometimes those supplemental appropriations for grants on the monthly agendas, and that's just so once the money is received, we can make sure to go ahead and spend it for its intended use. The other thing I wanted to note is of some of our key, both compliance and reporting deliverables and actions. Last month, you all certified, the mill levy collection, which is an important step. You are a taxing authority, that we passed on December 15, and, went ahead and
forwarded it to the two tax assessors or collectors. The other thing I wanted to point out is just below that, you see the annual comprehensive financial report. You are going to receive that next week. That will give you, in-depth view into last year's financials. This would be the audited financials as opposed to the unaudited fourth quarter report you received a couple months ago, maybe a month ago. No. It was several months ago. Sorry. And the auditor will be here to present. And so I just wanted to flag that as happening next week.
And I had brought my example, but you will also get a printed copy. It's very exciting. It's a beautiful audit. Okay. That is our time line. And so tonight, we are not voting, but we are presenting this revised budget. And it's really based on inputs from a few different things, and Brian and I will be handing off to talk through these things. Enrollment counts and student demographics, those are things that change and evolve, largely in October. And so that that updates our revenue for the year for the budget. Expense wise, once we have folks hired and we're looking at actual payrolls and actual
average salaries, we use average salaries to budget, etcetera. Once we look at all that and we can tell, did we did we get the turnover savings we expected or not? What what is our vacancy looking like? All those types of things drive actuals for expenses, that then in turn drive updates for the budget. A handful of budget changes, and then the forecast drives some of what we're talking about tonight, which is trend analysis and also whether or not we think we might get supplemental funding from the state. At the present moment, we do not anticipate that.
With that, I'm gonna hand it over to mister Sammons. Hello. Good afternoon, everybody. So I'm gonna start off here talking about the, district managed schools. We did see a larger enrollment decrease than anticipated last year anticipated for this year. While the original projection was a decline of about 900 students, the the actual reduction was closer to 1,500. This decrease does negatively negatively impact the 2526 revised budget revenue forecast. Hey, Brian. Just for the benefit of our new board members, can you give an estimate about how much we get in generally per pupil so that they understand the impact of
that differential of 15? Yes. You're with me versus nine? Sure will. So, the the 900 to 1,500 students, you can see here on the next slide we have. So we had our adopted budget versus revised budget enrollment. So we had our membership projected to be about 63, 300 students, came in closer to sixty two five hundred. Right? That's that 800 student difference that we had there. That's about $11,000 for total program per pupil that we would have as a difference there. But there's so many other factors because we have the averaging.
Right? So the averaging, you see about three lines down. The five year average was a decrease about 300 students. Right? So the the averaging kind of absorbs a little bit of the decrease that we had in our actual membership. Okay. So we've been showing this slide, this table, over since the proposed budget, trying to show that we are being as transparent as possible. What are our factors coming into the total program? So you can see here, like I just mentioned, the 63,000, for membership actual FTE FTE count. So we do have FTEs here also. So you may hear FTEs in another, form that's also an HR term.
So a full time equivalent position, but you also have full time equivalent, enrollment. Right? So you can part time enrollment in the district. So, the state translates your enrollment into a full time equivalent that we just received funding on. Then the averages come into place on top of that. Right? So we have the five year and four year averaging here because last this current year, they changed and started incorporating both time periods into your averaging for the total program. So they made a really complicated formula even more complicated. Okay? So, so this decrease in our actual enrollment was an impact about 300 students who
are averaging. Also, you can see here our at risk count did decline also about 800 students, which is just under a 1% decrease. This also impacts our total program because it's one of the factors for total program. Our ELL count, as the state calls it, did decrease about a 100 students. I have it on here because it is a pretty precise number that we have here from the state. Our SPED count did decrease from our projections about 600 students. Now looking more into this, we determined that we have to submit our SPED count during October count, which is a different formula base than what we normally submit within
December. We will still submit a December count, which will fund our categoricals for next year. But now when we submit in October, they calculate it to an FTE count. So that was about the 600 student decline that we're anticipating here. Now knowing this is our new base that we have, this will be our new forecast it'll be more accurate moving forward also. Pre k counts are increasing from our projections about 200, but this is not included in the total program that we have. It's just kinda just showing how our enrollment trends were were looking. Okay. So how did this impact the total, total program?
So because of the enrollment, the at risk counts, and the SPED counts, FTE dropped more than projections. Total program funding for the district, just a just our district managed, facilities, decreased $5,000,000 or around 7%. This $5,000,000 decline did activate the hold harmless provision that's under the New School Finance Act. It is only a $100,000 here, but I do wanna make sure that we are showing and being transparent as possible of how we get to the total program dollar amount that we are having. Okay. So the $5,000,000 reduction in the district's total program funding was partially offset by a
very small amount of an increase in the mill levy abatement, which results in the 26 general fund revenue being approximately $4,000,000 lower than the adopted budget. So here, I'm gonna turn it over to Brenna Forte to add. Great. So one thing I wanted to note is we, often debate projections, right, as part of the budget process. And this past spring, I believe, there was some question about some of these enrollment assumptions, that the team had come up with, and the total program figure that we
had estimated. The state meanwhile had put out a different number in, some spreadsheet that they had. As you can see, all of our enrollment, our forecasts were, optimistic. Meaning the actuals came in lower, counts came in lower, funded count is lower. We projected an at risk decline, it declined more, etcetera. I just want to point that out because we often have questions about how accurate are forecasts, how optimistic versus pessimistic are they. We had an optimistic forecast of sorts.
It included some declines, but our declines exceeded that forecast. And so the total program is in fact lower than what we had budgeted, and obviously, the number that CDE had put out was fully inaccurate. On this slide I just wanted to highlight one more time that though we call it total program, it's 74% of our revenue. A really important part of our revenue is our local mill levy overrides. So that's the green, there's two greens up here, but that's, most of the green
right there, which which is $141,000,000 and you can also see it in the table listed as 100 and yeah, 141, and as part of the revised budget. You know, those are funds that our voters give us, that we're very grateful for, that are essential to do the work and the business of the district. And then you can see the rest of the categories. But I wanted to make sure to highlight, those overrides and that in general total program, which is the stuff, that we get prescribed by the school finance formula, is only three quarters of the pie. Right? And so whenever we're talking about year over year revenue, we always have to talk
about the whole pie and what's happening in each of these buckets. So our budgeting methodology here in GEFCO, is that we want the budget to be our best guess of estimated total spend after factoring in vacancy, turnover, and underspends. And so we do a lot of analysis. Now this is still a relatively new approach for GEFCO. We phased it in over one revised budget and one adopted budget. And last year was the first full year, where we were operating under this methodology.
So we're now in the second year. You're going to see tonight, of course, that we're adding some expenditures to the budget midyear. Last year we added some expenditures to the budget midyear. You know, I think we should try to keep with this methodology. My recommendation is for at least like a three year period to sort of get it to settle. And then we need to decide as an organization and, what makes the most sense given the tradeoffs, Right? When you budget this way, there's really a decent chance you're gonna undershoot or overshoot, but we've been trying pretty hard not to overshoot, and so we have undershot a
little bit. But do we want, as a district, to tweak this over time is really the question. I don't I don't think Brian and I are gonna come to you in May with a different methodology. Absolutely not. But we just wanna be aware of the fact that that shift, has impacted whether or not the district is spending more than its budget. And when the ACFR comes out next week, you will see that we did overspend our budget last year, which you already knew from the fourth quarter. We did not overspend our appropriation. So we did not break any budgeting law.
And given this methodology, we should sort of expect that that's gonna happen from time to time. Yep. I wrote down some questions. Can you just share some of the details on that slide on the underspend? What were those funds intended for? And then if we're not spending them, does it impact student achievement? Okay. You were talking about this next slide that, The one you were just on. At the very bottom, it says staff turnover savings and underspends. I just want more information on what the underspends. Ah, okay. So every year, folks budget managers, in an attempt to not overspend their budget, will
manage conservatively, particularly on supplies and materials. And they may get to the end of the year with a little bit of extra. Now some other folks end up buying what they need to buy, and it costs more. We try and pattern out, can we forecast which departments or areas of the organization have a predictable underspend or which don't? It's not always it's not always material amounts. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. But again, we're just looking at trends over time to try and say, what is predictable? Now the other reality is sometimes it's just a timing issue.
So curriculum will say, We need to buy this set of books or materials or what have you. And it's more a matter of when it's received for what year it hits. So they're they're going to order in the spring. Did we get it and receive it by May? Well, then it hits basically that year. Did we get it and receive it in July? Well, then it hits in that year. Those are two different fiscal years. Right? And you've budgeted. So sometimes an underspend isn't even an intentional thing. It's more of a an accounting thing, reflecting when something shows up. I just wanna add on to that really quick.
Just I would just say also much of the underspend in a lot of budgets is has been typically related to staffing and vacancies. We make some assumptions in the budget around what we might expect to have related to vacancies and try to offset it a little bit as we do the budgeting. But I will just say one of the, and you're gonna hear about this in a minute, but I would, like, sort of give the the headline, spoiler alert, that one of the things that's happened, over time in the last eighteen to twenty four
months, I would say, is that we have much fewer vacancies in staffing. We're filling more of our positions that are budgeted, and so we're spending more money. Right? And so on one hand, it's like, okay. We need some more money to spend because we're spending more money, and we have more people in the positions that we've planned for. On the other hand, those people are serving kids, and we want those positions staffed. So it's a bit of a catch-twenty two in terms of, like, good news and bad news. So we've sort of underestimated some of the or overestimated maybe some of the vacancy
savings in some categories, which you're going to see a little bit more about as well. I mean, 85% of our budget is people. Right? And so any kind of movement with staffing has a big impact on over under. So you mentioned that the current methodology that we're using, as an approach towards our budget, you guys don't anticipate changing that. But I'm just wondering if down the line, as we're developing the new budget, if we can take a look at some other options and methodologies? I don't know how you guys feel about that or if there's an opportunity for
that. Absolutely. We can bring you some options. Okay. So the midyear adjustments to expenditures, the table at the right I think does a really good job of summarizing some of the key categories. And what you'll see is we have about five areas, where we need to add budget. But then we also have some offsets available from underspends. And so we don't actually need to add the full 13,900,000 to the district wide budget, because we have these areas where, based on a lot of analysis, we really
feel confident that we're not gonna spend that. And so, again, the current methodology is the budget needs to reflect our best guess of an actual spend. And so to get there, we are recommending only 5,600,000.0 in overall, budgetary increases for the district. Just so you know, 5,600,000.0 is one half of 1%, and and that's sort of the scale that we're talking about for this midyear adjustment. For these specific line items, I'm happy to provide a little bit of context and,
we're gonna provide a memo as part of your, item on the agenda next week, because I think, the memo will have a little more detail. We just weren't able to get it ready. We had to post this presentation prior to winter break, and, meanwhile we kind of at the same time, got a request for more details. So we are working on that. That will be available next week. It isn't quite ready yet. But, oh, yep. I had a few questions about this slide too. So just to clarify, the four district costs are expected to increase 14,000,000 between now
and the end of the school year or the August, I guess, right, or July? Certain line items will increase by that much, but other line items will decrease. So is it just the ones asterisk? I was trying to figure that out. Yeah. No. It's all of them. All of those will increase by a sum total of 13.9. Okay. Other areas of the district are not going to spend their full budget. And so the the net change to the district's overall budget, which is what you all approve, you don't really approve at departmental level, is 5,600,000.0.
So the budget you're asked to approve next week increases expense by 5,600,000. Okay. So my question is, there's like, the very first one, SPED educator paras, with the decreased enrollment Mhmm. Because you said we decreased considerably Mhmm. With that population, wouldn't there be a decrease in spending and personnel? So I I gave the teaser for the memo. I'm happy there's some language in that, draft version, but I really do need to
make sure that mister Pilaro and I are on the same page before I fully answer that. And I would ask, let's let Brenna and mister Sammons get through, and then we'll we'll have time for questions. Cool. Come back. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate it. Okay. Now I'm handing it back to Brian. Alright. Thank you, miss Copeland. So okay. So this slide here highlights how the midyear adjustments impact the general fund expense categories. And so here in a couple more slides, you'll see the program side. Right? So we show the account side and the program side, which are two sides of
the same coin, but this is the expense that we call it the account side. So you can see the overall net increase of the $5,600,000 or roughly 1% of our overall expense budget, with the largest growth percent being in the transfer expense category of 7%. So with this 7% increase, the right revised budget is including a 2,500,000 increase in the total transfers, but this is for a new transfer to the benefits fund to cover delayed and the claim cost. There's gonna be more details about the benefit funds and the revised budget upcoming, on
slide 18. So we'll have more about that here in a second. Okay. So here's the general fund summary, by program. Every year we try to have both by count and program for the expense budget, and we try to include at least one summary table. So here, you can see the summary table brings all the revised budget adjustments into one view. The revenue decreased to $4,200,000 from 9,982,000,000 to 978,000,000, while the total budget expenditures increased to 5,600,000.0. This was 1,222,000,000 to 1,027,000,000.
I'm gonna practice that more and more. The adjustments, did increase the anticipated use of fund balance from 39,000,000 to 49,000,000 for f y twenty six, something we definitely wanna highlight here. Okay. So with that use of fund balance, previously in the f y '26 adopted by the presentation, we included this slide to illustrate the financial planning requirements outlined in statute. When a budget relies on a fund balance and that reliance continues in the multiyear forecast, the district is required to present a high level plan to address it within
the budget resolution. Because the FY '26 adopted budget included ongoing plan deficit, the board approved the stated plan as part of the 2526 resolution authorizing the use of a portion of the beginning fund balance. That's where the resolute that's where that part is in is in that resolution. So now we're gonna go to a multiyear outlook, and I'm gonna turn it over to Brenda. We're keeping it hopping back and forth here. Okay. So this is a multiyear outlook where you see see the revised budget in the blue columns. That's what, we're proposing and that you will be asked to adopt next week.
Then you see '26, 27, 27, 28. Now this is just a summary version. When we go through the budgeting process this spring, we'll go through a lot more slides to explain how are these forecasts built, what are the underlying assumptions, all those types of things. At the moment, we are just simply using the same assumptions that we walked through in May, largely for the out years with one exception. We've adjusted to reflect our actual enrollment and then trended from that, and we've adjusted to reflect our actual expenditures and then trended from that.
But all the rest of the assumptions are materially the same, both in concept and application, because it's important to keep those in place until we articulate a new set of assumptions to guide multi years for you all. So with that apples to apples comparison, the one other change is this budget reduction blueprint. So last May or June, we didn't have a specific figure for, an estimated reduction in expenditures for twenty six, six-twenty seven.
The work we have done this fall, is far enough along that it's appropriate at this revised budget to go ahead and add that one other difference, right? So that's the one piece of sort of apples and oranges compared to what we had in May around, big ticket items. And so, with the 2526 revised budget and projecting a $45,000,000 expense reduction, but excluding any new MLO revenue, the preliminary multiyear shows a substantially improved outlook. So you're kind of moving in two directions at once.
The current year, we're using a little more fund balance than originally planned. But given that we've put in place, what we hope will save around $45,000,000 next year now looks better than it did when we presented it six months ago. So you might be asking, will we hit the 45? I would mention that we have a presentation coming up just after this around the budget reduction blueprint, so please feel free to bring that up at that time. And then you might be asking, how reliable is that $983,000,000 projected total revenue for
next year? That's a great question. It does reflect this year's lower actual enrollment and a trend in kind of cohort based enrollment. You know, we presented our overall enrollment forecast back in, I think it was November, And a lot goes into that. Seanine and I came and presented. This reflects the updated forecast. That updated forecast reflects the 1,500 kids we lost instead of 900, and it moves that through the system. So it does increase a little bit next year's reduction too.
Okay? And those are the types of trends that we have updated. So it does not reflect any shenanigans at the state legislature this spring. So, until such time as we know what those might look like, the September should be thought of, in my opinion, this is just my opinion, as optimistic. Revised budget general fund preliminary multiyear reserves. Again, this is, materially improved from what the multiyear reserves look like when this year's budget was originally adopted.
Right? So we're in a better spot in comparison to that. And, you know, it's it's lean. So the the kind of punchline is by 2728, given all the things on the previous slide, we would have approximately 40,000,000 in unassigned reserves, which is just below the board policy 4% of unassigned reserves. We would have approximately 46,000,000 in assigned reserves. Those are reserves that are tagged to a purpose. And then we would have about 30,000,000 in, TABOR reserves.
There's reasons that those numbers look a tiny bit different every year, but those are unspendable. Right? So they're not really available to you or to any of us, to use. So but with that budget reduction blueprint, this picture has improved substantially. Why is it not there we go. Okay. Now we're gonna talk through other funds. President Applegate, do you want me to pause for any questions? Or Okay. Board members, would you like to ask some questions now on the previous slides? Yes, please. Doctor Echeverria. Okay. Okay. I was curious.
I don't know what this means, JCA staffing budget alignment. Can you share what that means? Yes. Sorry. Yes. I will. I'm trying to get there. Oh, there we go. So majority of our JCA positions, we budget on averages, as Brenda mentioned earlier. So, and within the averages, we also include a turnover and vacancy savings amount for the entire district. So, after all the analysis we've been doing and the trending we have, right, it takes about the contract start in the month. The first paycheck is, like, the month of September, so October, November. So we have, like, three months of the new contract negotiated contract amounts.
We're noticing the trending was our budget was low by about 1 half million dollars. So to right size the budget to the trending expenses that we're seeing for the district, we need to increase it by about 1 half million dollars for the district, which is essentially just lowering down our turnover savings assumptions. So that is all classroom teachers or who does that encompass? That encompass I mean, classroom teachers and any JCE staff that would be working in this building because there's quite a bit that we would have in the building also that are also in schools other times too, but encompasses all the JCE staff.
So anyone covered by the contract? That's right. Including special educators, all types of different educators. Thank you. Thank you. So I'm assuming this is gonna come out in the memo, but if there's a decrease in enrollment, wouldn't there be a decrease in staffing as well? Nope. That's not what this is. This is just simply of the positions we had already budgeted Mhmm. And that we did staff, how much are we paying those humans? And how many folks retired and how many new folks came in? And when a person retires, typically they're higher on our steps and they're generally, higher
compensated. And when we, you know, bring someone in, there's a sometimes they're lower on the steps, which is to say somewhere between step one and step nine, and the that salary is lower. So the same position turns over and instead of paying whatever it was, we're now paying less. And so we try and estimate that. And every year when we bargain, we talk about what we think a step, which is sort of year over year automatic increase is going to cost. And we did estimate that it would cost about, I don't know, 50% of the
value of a step. And based on what we're seeing in actuals and turnover, etcetera, we think it was just a little bit more. This is like a tiny variance on our estimated average salary. Okay. Thank you. And then based on these increases, do we have any data on how this impacts students and student achievement? No. That that that's not really what your financial services team does. But, I do know that that I I want I really wanna clarify.
No one's plan or program has changed. What has changed is how much it actually costs to do the plan we set out to do. Does that help? Yes. And then, sorry, one more thing back to slide 12. I'm curious about the Aetna claims. I was wondering if they happen before or after the fiscal year, and then what is considered late? Like, where do we have late fees? And then is there anything that in the contract that limits, like, the time frame when people can make claims so that we don't pay late fees?
These are great questions. I'm gonna take those and answer them when I get to slide 18. Thank you. And then, shall I So are there any other That's it. Thank you. Board member questions? I have really quick ones. The hold harmless was only one year, correct, by the state? It's it's it's ongoing. I in the I think it's two years. In the November presentation in the appendix, we listed out all the years that's in there. It does change every year, so next year, it'll be the same whole provision, and then it changes slightly whenever they start changing in the years of averaging.
Thank you. But if you go back to that, you will see that table. Table. Thank you. On Slide eight, we say a mill levy abatement. What is an abatement? In the certification you all approved last night, which I have printed over there, you certified point two mill abatements abatements. That is a figure we get from the assessor. The assessor says, based on the taxes that we kind of forgave or didn't collect or whatnot, here's how much more you as the taxing authority can collect to try to make yourself whole.
Got it. Thank you. So it's not something we determine. We don't compute it. It is on top of, you know, what we would otherwise mill. And and again, it's a very small figure, and it's not something we control. Got it. Thank you. I'd also like to add, we always go to the lowest lower end of that. We don't wanna overestimate our abatements, right? So we always go back to one of our lower years as our projection because we have no idea what amount would actually be. So this year was just higher than our normally low years. Just to make sure we don't we never overestimate that. Thank you. Slide 11.
Even though it's early in the presentation, maybe my brain isn't quite engaged. I'm looking at the capital outlay line where it says that it's 5% in the adopted expense. In the revised, it's five, but it's a 12% decrease. Thank you. That is not a 12% decrease. It's the point six, which is, you know, still only $600,000. Actually, that probably is close to 12. So it's a small adjustment, but it's such a tiny, tiny line. It's a 600,000 is actually probably 5%, but it or 12%.
It just rounds out. It makes the five and the five look the same. It's probably going from, like, 5.3 to 4.8 or something like that. Thank you. Is that that's right. Yeah. Okay. Thank you for that. And you answered my other questions, so thank you. Carry on. Alright. So let's talk about the benefits fund. And while I'm talking, I'm gonna attempt to answer the questions, that doctor Echeverria, pardon me, provided yes, ma'am. Absolutely. I just wanna go backwards one second and clarify some of the, salary pieces.
You bet. I I wanna say that we have been for four years now, Brenda and I, four cycles of this, working really hard to get as close as possible to budget to actuals. Because we kept saying and this is also part of why we changed our methodology. Study the methodology, if the board is so interested, and looking at different types of methodologies, which I think Brenna and I would be happy to do Mhmm. It's a good idea. The board wants my opinion. I think it's a good idea to study some different methodologies and pros and cons
of each, and then you guys can give us some, direction on which one you want us to shift into or continue using. Part of what we were struggling with with our previous methodology is that we would do an estimated budget that was pretty estimated, and then we would say we're gonna use fund balance, and we would come in under budget. Right? And so then the fund balance would grow. And we we ended up having a very healthy fund balance. It was over it was about $220,000,000 Well, we're not going to have that anymore,
because we're now we've shifted our methodology and we've maxed out our budget. And we have intentionally made decisions to utilize our fund balance and take it down to what we think is more of an appropriate level. Now we're there, and we're having to make reductions in order to try to stave off and stay there, and not sort of fall off the cliff. Right? One of the things that I think is really helpful about, just being able to look at things in a salary account to the level that Brenna and Brian are, showing you tonight is that the good news is we are adjusting, to what we
a new salary schedule, which we've put in place, and some decent increases that we've given our employees over the last four years, which we're very happy to do. So I just wanna make it really clear. We are pleased that we are paying our employees more, that we are more competitive in the marketplace than we were four or five years ago. We are pleased about that. And it's showing up in our budget, right? And we're still trying to dial in. Two years after running this new salary schedule, two years in, we're still trying to dial in what is the right amount of vacancy savings when you have higher salaried
people retiring, newer people coming in making less money. There's a savings there, right? And so we're trying to track and monitor that. This is really our second round with that, right? And so this 1,200,000.0 that you're seeing in this adjustment is actually us trying to get that right, right? So we can be transparent about it, so we can talk to our associations about it, so we can be clear with the board about it. And I just want you to know that, because of the way things have gone, over the last twelve months and the reaction, I think, to some of the transparency
that Brenda's been trying to bring around salary and vacancy and all the things, I I want to make it very clear. We are happy to be paying our employees more. It has been a priority of mine and a priority of our board prior to this one, to invest in our people. We believe they are our strength and we have done that. What we are seeing go on in this budget right now is adjustments because we are paying them more and we have to show that, right?
So we still have to be transparent about that. And because we're paying them more, some of our lowest wage earners and positions that had a lot of vacancy in them are now more filled, right? Because people want those jobs now. And that is all good. That is all good news. And I think oftentimes, sometimes we get caught up in when Brenna is presenting and I'm talking about the budget or the board's talking about the budget. People feel like we're saying Thing's not good, like this investment in our employees because it's causing our budget to
go over. And we have to be responsible. And we have to make sure that if our budget's going over, we're taking care of it and trying to get it to a level place, which is the work we're doing. But I just wanna be really clear. The investment in our employees is something I care about. It's something we should do, and it's something that we should be working on a mill levy override for in November so that we can continue to maintain some market competition for our employees, and make sure that we can continue to take care of them. So, that's sort of what you're seeing going on here. And it's and it's challenging when you look at it from a financial view, but
it's a really good thing when you think about it in terms of our culture and taking care of our employees. So I just need to make sure we're balanced in that message. Great. Can you tell me what percent are benefits of of those figures? Mhmm. A rule of thumb we use, is that approximately 30% or 30 and a half, actually it's even more specific than that, but, of a person's salary on average is then paid out in benefits. And the biggest portion of that by far, is PERA.
PERA and Medicare. Those two make up about 23% of a person's salary. And we have no control over what that rate is. Okeydokey. Benefits fund. Wonderful. So what you see in this slide is revenue on the left, adopted budget, revised budget. Appropriation on the right, adopted budget, revised budget. In the adopted budget, were we we were budgeting 40,100,000.0. Ah, I no, I'm with it. I'm with it. I got it. Sorry. Just give me a second.
We were estimating a level of participation in our surest plan, which is our self insured plan, administered by UnitedHealthcare, that was more commensurate with participation in our prior plan, which was Aetna. Aetna, I'm gonna round. Aetna had approximately 2,500 numbers, it might have been 2,300 whatever. When we rolled over to Surest, which is new and different, and we kinda let
the numbers settle, they settled closer to about 1,500. Some folks, took advantage of open enrollment to switch back to Kaiser. I don't necessarily think it was because they didn't like Surest. The other thing that was happening simultaneous to this is, claims in general and overall health care costs within our self insured plan were growing faster than claims and costs within our Kaiser plan, if you're familiar with the health care industry. Kaiser generally operates more efficiently than sort of an open market approach.
Right? And so that wasn't initially true. There was like this moment where our self insured plan or Aetna plan seemed a little bit more affordable for certain segments. But these things bear out over time and it bore out over time. And so, again, I think this movement from last year's self insured plan to this year's self insured plan is probably price sensitivity. Right? The surest plan is now a little bit more expensive than Kaiser, and there's some employees who, you know, want to be in the less expensive plan.
No problem. Right? It doesn't mean it's a bad plan. It does mean that not as much revenue is coming in. Revenue into this fund is simply it's it's one of two things. One, it's what we collect as the employee share. The bigger majority of revenue into this fund is the employer contribution, and that's perfectly adjusted to match the enrollment. So when we have 1,500 folks in something, the employer is contributing into this fund out of the general fund it shows up as an expense in the general fund, right? Yeah.
Into this fund and that's kind of revenue but this is just all interfund, okay? That revenue is lower because the subscriber count is lower. However, our run out claims, which are three months and they are time limited by the plan and it's a standard and a lot of those terms are set, by ACA. I think that's the right legislation, and compliance with them often dictates how we set those terms. And so, it may be that one or two of your very specific questions about
the setup of the plan would be best addressed by our HR team, but I do want to assure you that we provide that three month run out. It's it is both, I think, appropriate and somewhat standard and it's not that we're seeing late, right? What we're seeing is that when you insure 2,500 people it costs more than 1,500 people and so there isn't enough revenue into this fund to cover that group for that first three months.
So the 2 and a half million coming in is a supplemental contribution from the general fund to cover this run out, this moment in time where the monthly coming in is lower, because we actually have fewer subscribers than we planned, it's fine, and fewer subscribers than were covered previously in our prior plan. It's a lot of detail. I just want to be clear, and and, you know, this is an area we've been trying to fine tune and I feel like this is I feel like I'm
the bad guy always in this conversation, because I did, you know, push to make sure that we priced these plans according to our best possible estimate of costs. And, I was not a popular person in the spring for that and unfortunately I do think even with the nudge up in actuarial assumptions, it was not quite enough. And even on a per employee basis for the 1,500 folks, actual costs related to
their health care, are coming in a little bit higher than even the adjusted we did, you know, and we're doing the best we can. I do want to also just briefly mention that we are in the middle of an RFP for a benefits advisor. Benefits advisor does, as one of the many things they do for us, provide actuarial analysis that helps drive our estimate of claims. Given that, I really don't want to speak very specifically about any of that because that we're in the process.
Does that help? Okay. Anything I missed? Great. So I think I'm gonna keep it keep everyone guessing. I'm gonna hand it back to Brian. Alright. That was the last handoff I do believe. Until you asked really particular questions. That was good. That was very I don't know yeah, I would be able to do that one right there. Okay. So the next fund we're going to cover here is the, insurance reserve fund, not to be confused with the benefits fund. Right? So the benefits fund is our self insured plan. This is actually like, our risk fund.
We call it the risk fund. It's another way of of looking at it. So for this fund, we increased the budget revenue by $1,200,000, for the investment earnings during the beginning of the year. We just forgot to budget that, honestly, and we knew it was coming in. So for the coming in. So for the revised budget, we added it back. So when we added back the revenue, that they were going to receive either way, it wasn't like we increased it. We increased the expense budget by $1,200,000 to cover any anticipated, claim increases. And then we also increased, the the appropriated reserves by 2,500,000.0
to cover any potential timing differences in insurance claim payments. Right? So we talked earlier. Sometimes payments come early, some come later. Sometimes the timings happen really, really quickly, and sometimes they don't. And so here we appropriate the reserves, to just ensure we have enough appropriation just because the timing of a claim comes in, unexpectedly. Okay. So the next fund we have here is the school age enrichment fund or SAE. This fund appropriation, is decreasing the appropriated reserves. The reason it's decreasing is due to the beginning fund balance. So for the funds, we only can appropriate the amount of available funds they have.
And so, during the adopted budget, we thought this fund would have, more, beginning fund balance, but actually came in with the ACFAR, $1,400,000 less than that, based on an accounting adjustment, just an accounting adjustment that will be covered, I'm assuming, next week. So, really, this is just an accounting adjustment here, but we did need to decrease the appropriation. And we wanna be transparent as possible of what you're signing next week of why we're decreasing that appropriation. But it does not decrease any of their budget expenses nor their revenue. Sorry. I'm struggling with the okay. Oh. Oh. Sorry. Did not mean to do that.
Sorry. Struggling with this today. Oh, one more back. Okay. The grants fund. The grants fund here, we're presenting, a $1,600,000 increase in revenue expense and appropriation. This is a fund that you do appropriate increases for on a monthly basis, and so we're just representing the increases here in the revised budget. So it will be part of the appropriation next week for the signature. Okay. And then we do have a very, very small adjustment, for the food nutrition's fund, property management fund, childcare fund, it's, central service fund.
And I mean thousand dollars here and there, but we try to be precise and as transparent as possible on what you will be signing. So they will change by a very small amount. And the reason they did this is that the final JCA agreed co increases came in after the presentation and the signed documentation. So we just moved from appropriated reserves to a budgetary expense, and we're talking thousand dollars here or there, just to make sure that we have the exact amounts in the budgets because we use the revised budgets to build up the base for the next year for all funds. Okay. These are tiny dollar amounts, and you have a memo attached to the resolution next
week that'll show the individual increases for every single fund, and these will be in there. But it was really worth worth it going through every single dollar amount because they were so small. Okay. So this kind of goes into the, a preview for next week's resolutions. I thought this would be something new we could have, plus we do have a new resolution that we are adding for next week. So alright. So the adoption of the appropriation. This resolution adopts the district's annual budget and establish legal spending authority across all funds. It confirms the board's approval, appropriates expenditures, and the transfer line, includes the assigned reserves
and ensures the transparency by making the budget publicly available for everyone. The use of fund balance, which I mentioned earlier. This resolution adopts the district's annual, legal spending authority at wait. Sorry. That's not the right one. I apologize. Use of the fund balance for every single fund. So when we have a use of fund balance within a fund, we have to establish what that use of fund balance is and what the use of fund balance is used for, and this is statutorily required. So, again, this provides transparency as posted for the district, and it had it includes the, plan resolution for the overspend for the district.
And then we have the the new interfund borrowing resolution. This resolution authorizes temporary interfund borrowing to manage short term cash flow needs without external financing. It ensures the compliance with the Colorado law, requires repayments within three months of the budget year, and limits borrowing amounts to protect the fund integrity. So we will have this also of, for next week's resolutions. Okay. And that is the end of our presentation. Board members, additional questions? Doctor. Achaburiya, go ahead. Okay. I'm curious more about the inner fund borrowing. I think, I have some questions about that after the public comment in December where,
the SELs were wondering where the money was. So I feel like when we're taking money from different funds and paying other funds, it kind of becomes messy. So I'm I'd really like to hear what the pros and cons are, regarding that from maybe the financial committee. And, you don't have to address it now, but if you have time to follow-up with that. Sure. I do wanna clarify this is cash basis only. So all we are doing is meeting the established budget. So the general fund is not borrowing from any other fund Okay.
In the budget. On a cash basis, the general fund is running out of money in February because we haven't started our local tax collections. So just to meet its own expenditures given the fluctuation in our cash balance, which is a graph with every quarterly report, we hit our lowest point in February. And so this is just cash flow. It's not an actual expense. So there's not money coming from somewhere, going anywhere. This is just we don't have enough money in the bank to do payroll legally,
because of those highs and lows. It's not even if we got the same amount of money in revenue every month, we'd be fine. But our expenses are pretty much the same every month, but our revenue is depressed in the first seven months, seven or eight months of the fiscal year, and then it, boop, pops right back up, and then it levels out. Right? So that that's all we're addressing with this. Does That make sense? Yeah. That makes sense. Thank you. I guess I'm a little bit concerned or, nervous about, pulling the money from the
reserves again. I know to me, I would love to see, what a neutral budget would look like. And, you know, that's asking a lot, but it it doesn't sit well with me to continue pulling money out of an emergency savings account that we need in case there might be an emergency. So Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of where I am feeling in this particular space.
Thank you. Gotcha. Yeah. Thanks. Director Monahan. So if we could go back to slide eight. And I'm kinda looking at this pie, and it talks about our total program. It talks about the local mill levy override. Are the numbers in terms of our revenue that's coming in, is it broken down any further than that with regards to the mill levy that we have? I'm so sorry. Could you say it just one more time? Is it broken down as to the mill levy? Like, in terms of the because there's the $20.18 mill levy. Correct me if I'm wrong. Mhmm. So when that money comes in, are we tracking in some way how that money
is being spent and in order to make sure that we're meeting the needs or the requirements of that mill levy? So I'm just I'm looking at the pie on slide eight. Right. And it looks like a very, sort of, like, 10,000 foot overview of this. And I'm just wondering if it is broken down a little bit further or a little bit more detailed somewhere else. There's kind of a technical answer, and then there's, like, a pragmatic answer to your question. A technical answer is the remittance we get from the tax assessor is not broken
out, because that's just not how taxes are assessed. You know, when you get your tax bill, you see all the bills together. Right? It's not broken out one by one. You don't get to pick which one you're paying, so to speak. And so uncollectibles, you know, we sort of distribute pro rata across them. We have to estimate how much we think that one is producing in terms of when you certify the mills, how many mills we need to collect the appropriate amount of voter authorized dollars. But again, the cash receipt the district gets is one big old number and it's
not broken out for us. So the technical answer is, you know, we know that we're getting some money for that mill. Right? And we don't know exactly how much. So that's on the receipt side. When it comes to expenditures, the amount of clarity and transparency about how we spend money, whether it's an override or a PPR, is in the bazillion amounts of detail that we provide about actual expense, budget expense, etcetera. So every single financial presentation we give is highlighting whether or not we've honored this
promise or this promise or this promise, right? And so I believe the the departmental budgeting processes we've used in the past, it looks a little different this year for next year, but the start stop continues, have been public documentation of where are we adding budget, where are we subtracting budget. We went through the closure process, we were exceptionally transparent about what are the actual positions that are being cut by virtue of the fact that we're closing schools, etcetera. So which is to say, the ballot language of each of each override that's passed,
and I'm the least familiar with the one the furthest away, right, so I could not quote the 1998 ballot language. We are 100% tracking in terms of how are we as a Any other questions? Thank you all so much. We appreciate it. And thank you guys for the really good questions.
So next on the agenda this evening, the board will receive an update on the budget reduction blueprint. While everyone's gathering, we have forty five minutes for this presentation. Please reserve ten minutes for the board questions following your remarks. And before I turn it over to our presenters, superintendent Dorlet, would you like to make any remarks as we kick off the presentation? Thank you very much, President Applegate. I actually have the first part of this presentation, so I'm gonna kick us off while everybody gets settled in. And I'll just sort of, highlight I don't know who's got the, slide advancer.
Did you notice how? That was pretty good. Yeah. The clicker. Otherwise known as the clicker. But maybe, mister Gatlin, you can click for me. Let's just look at the agenda first, and then we'll let everybody introduce themselves, and then I'll continue. For this study session agenda on the budget reduction blueprint, the board will be looking at the department reductions, previewing our school, reduction targets, and also talking a little bit about how in addition to the reduction targets, we are supporting our schools through anticipated enrollment impacts, whether they have an increase in enrollment or decrease, and then also talking
about next steps for our schools so you so the board understands where our schools are headed. We also will be reviewing the partnership for fiscal sustainability and their upcoming work, which begins, I believe, tomorrow evening. So with that, I'm gonna stop for a minute and just let our, colleagues introduce themselves. Let's start with you, doctor Coleman. Good afternoon, doctor Coleman, chief of schools. Good evening. Jeff Gatlin, chief operating officer. Hello, everyone. Matt Palerio, chief of student success. Lisa Ridley, chief of staff. Hi. I'm Brenda Copeland. I'm the chief financial officer. Great. Thank you. Welcome.
Happy to be presenting with you all this evening. This slide is not new to the board. We've been reviewing the board's roles and responsibilities, throughout this whole process, but really to to make sure that we're aligning with your executive limitations. You'll see the numbers there to support, protecting our district assets and safeguarding the long term financial health of GEFCO. Oversight and and progress toward the budget deficit resolution that the board adopted in June. When the board adopted the deficit budget in June, they, also had to, by statute,
adopt a a resolution to define how we were going to, clean up that deficit spend, which is the work that we're engaged in now. We also have the board observing the processes that we're, engaging in with different groups and representing constituent questions here at the board table, so that we can be accountable to our public interests. We had the board, conducting discussions to support, not only the reductions, but also how that then impacts the adoption, of your budget coming up for fiscal year twenty seven,
which will be important. And then we can go to the next slide, please. Our role has been to lead the development of this process and the comprehensive plan to reduce expenditures, to evaluate trade offs, and identify cost saving opportunities, to engage staff, family, and stakeholders in the development and refinement of these options and to support departments and schools in managing their budgets to their reduction targets. We also have started the implementation of the reductions, which started in December with our central, department reductions, and we are, on the forefront here of supporting our impacted staff.
Just as a reminder to everyone, the district recommended, when we started this process, to reduce about 45,000,000 as a reduction target and then increase 15,000,000 in revenue, at least 15,000,000 so that that then equals our $60,000,000 deficit that we have, ongoing at this point in time. So let's talk about our department reductions. At this point, I think I'm handing it over, to our our friends, to to Brenna, and she can kick us off with let me let me talk a little
bit about this slide, and then I'll hand it to you, Brenna. I wanna say that none of this is easy. And there is not one thing that we are doing as a district that is not worthwhile. Everything we do is in the interest of students, and every individual doing what they do on a daily basis has positive impact for students in GEFCO. And so, this is not easy, but it is necessary for us to maintain financial well-being for our district in the future. In addition, we do face continued rising personnel costs, including compensation increases.
And as I mentioned before, stating that out loud doesn't mean it's a bad thing. We want to continue investing in our people and making sure that our compensation can, help our employees, maintain a quality of life, here in GEFCO. We know also that we are facing declining enrollment. I've been looking at some numbers with Brenna, and I think since 2016, this district has seen a decline of 12,000 students. And you can see from the presentation earlier this today around the budget that, we far exceeded the projected decline that we expected even just this year.
And that has a real toll. It takes a real toll on our revenue side of things. We need to make purposeful decisions to sustain student support, and and we did that with pandemic relief funds for several years through the pandemic, and then those funds are gone. And we have strategically decided to continue some of those those programs, because they're good for kids. But, again, the funding has dried up. We have not maximized local revenue, like other neighboring districts have, which is putting the pressure on us in terms of keeping up with salaries, making sure that our employees
have competitive salaries with neighboring districts, and other programming for students. We are two to three thousand dollars per pupil behind, districts like Boulder, Denver, and Cherry Creek. And those districts also, for all of their previous mill levy overrides, have tied them to inflation where GEFCO has not. So the $10,000,000 that we may have passed in 2001 is worth $10,000,000 today. For another district, it's worth $10,000,000 plus inflation compounding year over year over year. And so we're just having a really difficult time keeping up.
And the state of Colorado has chronically underfunded k 12 education period. Hard stop. And we need to do everything we can to advocate for the state of Colorado to pay attention to the adequacy studies that have been done and to actually fund k 12. And we are struggling as a system to keep up partly because the state is underfunding public education in this in Colorado. So as we move through this moment, we acknowledge, that we need to do this work. But more importantly and most importantly, we have to acknowledge that there is a human
impact to these decisions. And we got through that in December, and it was not easy for that to be the last thing we had to do with our central department teams right before winter break. But I I do believe that our HR team supported our department leaders in the human side of this and making sure that we were supporting people as much as possible in the moment, and we will continue. We are committed to continuing to support our employees as we go through the next six months and hopefully help all of them find a new professional home in GEFCO. Given all of the attrition and turnover that we normally have on an annual basis,
we're hopeful that any employee who wants to stay here, can find a new home to be in GEFCO. So I just feel like that's an important frame because what we're about to talk about is difficult. It's not what any of us wanna be talking about or implementing right now, but it is essential and necessary for us related to our ability to maintain the investments we've made in programming, in our employees, and our ability to, balance that with being responsible financial stewards of taxpayer funds.
Miss Copeland. Thank you. Alright. So, yet a tenth way to look at this year's budget. This time, we're taking this year's general fund budget and splitting it, approximately, between total school allocations and total departmental allocation. So what does that really mean? That just means who has decision rights over the money. It does not mean where is the money spent. Departments spend a whole lot of money in schools. My colleague, mister Polaro, spends maybe too much money in no.
No. The right amount of money in schools. And so I just wanna be clear, what who has decision rights is not aligned to does the budget benefit students or not. Okay? And and and so, yeah, we have, you know, the operations of our budget, the decision rights, all the things, the processes, that's we have to align this budget reduction process to those realities. It's just the practical. And yet I've I am empathetic with the public who's like, wait, what? Is this central? Is this not?
Is this departmental? Is this school? I just wanna clarify, you know, we are talking more in detail about departmental reductions. They do have impacts to employees working in schools. Okay. So, just super clear there. This is a graphic we've used at times. It's sort of a heat map, kind of not, where we're trying to show, that this process for our departments has followed a set of values and guiding principles that said, please prioritize cuts further from the classroom.
And so, again, since many of our departments are supporting activities in schools, you know, how you interpret that is really important. And so what you're seeing is that within our departments, general instruction across the whole and there are many departments who can who have expenses in general instruction, technology, student success, others, maybe not student success. It's cutting about negative 2%. And then you track all the way over to general admin, which is the furthest to the right, and these are kinda approximately organized proximity to kids.
You see that general administration, which is furthest from the classroom, is cutting 15%. So I think in that nutshell, we are hopefully delivering on the guiding principles that were provided to us, in developing this plan. So we have shared information at various points in time, and I know that sometimes folks are like, why are numbers moving? And it looks a little different. You know, this is why are there approximates even still? There are approximates even still because, it just is the nature of running a big district. But approximately a 139 budgeted FTE positions, have been planned to be reduced from to
be so through retirement. Approximately 50 employees receive notification that their position will be discontinued for the 2627 school year. Reductions, including final FTE numbers, will be completed with the adoption of the budget. So these are still preliminary until such time as we present a full budget. Now that doesn't mean that 50 people who heard their job was discontinued are gonna hear something different. That's not what that means. That just means additional things are going to happen and change in the coming months. For example, our schools are gonna go through their budget process, And so then these
numbers will change and we'll bring a new summary once that process is kind of to a point where we can say, alright, now we have some proposed budgets from schools and we can share information about what that means for our budgeted positions, that will be this spring and that is always part of our budgeting process. You can go back to look, I think it's generally March or April, I can't remember which one, where Brian and I will present on what we're seeing in the school budgets and how that impacts our budgets for FTEs. Okay? So that will still happen.
This takes the 139 figure and breaks it out into some decimals that are quite specific, across our departments to look at FTE reductions. I'm gonna let folks I'm not gonna read this to anyone. I will note a couple of highlights. One, there there is one department that has, an addition instead of a reduction, and that is safety and security. There will you will also, in your memo for the revised budget next week, have additional detail that this number is consistent with what Brian and I just showed you
as an increase for safety and security, which was one of the lines on the overall expense increase. But I do just wanna note that. I don't think there's any other highlights here. And with that, my colleagues are actually gonna talk to you more specifically about the figures that you just saw, which will be much more enriching than hearing me talk about them. So with that, mister Pilaro. Okay. Well, to our new new board members, welcome. And I think it's important for you to know that the division of student success makes up four departments. So that's gifted and talented, special education, student services, and health services.
And then for all board members, I think it's important for you to know that. In our decision making process, we anchored back to the core guiding principles for this process, which was keeping reductions furthest from the classroom as possible and ensuring that our decisions resulted in long term fiscal sustainability. I'd also say that student success is very unique, so there were some additional principles that were applied. So for example, we prioritize preserving essential services for kids, services that are essential for safety, mental health, and well-being, as well as as instruction and also legal.
We have a lot of, work that we do, especially within the special education health service realm, realm that is mandated by law that we have to provide. And then we also took into consideration, student outcomes, programs that we know are making a difference for kids, and, of course, the staff input that we received. And so through this process, we tried to find the right balance between preserving indirect support, and I'll talk about what that means to me here in a couple of minutes, and maximizing the direct impact for kids. And where reductions were necessary, we focused on scaling back some indirect supports, identifying areas
where student needs could be, continue to be met through existing, service models and using attrition only when it wouldn't jeopardize the student experience. So I'll talk a little bit about some of our vacancies and how that plays into it. So with that said, starting with special education, we reduced approximately 21 and a half FTE. These reductions, we made will change but not eliminate some centralized coordination, specialized coaching, and staff supports. Direct services to kids were not impacted, and compliance can be maintained within the special
education area. As you look at this overview, we made some adjustments to align staffing to current enrollment through our existing allocation model, which is something that we do on an annual basis around this time where we're right sizing based on the number of students with disabilities in the school. So some of that is tied in here, and we're still doing that process. That process plays out, through the first round of choice enrollment, which I think closes, this coming Friday. And I can answer questions about why that is, if you have any. We also then made some targeted reductions in specific roles, such as some gifted and
talented, center paraprofessionals and some early childhood special education. Where possible, we absorb some of that through some vacancies, and then we used existing resources effectively to meet the needs of our kids, where necessary. So I'm gonna give you an example of our preschool itinerant staffing model. So we have currently approximately around 12 FTE that we allocate that are itinerant staff in these paraeducator positions, which included about three positions that we've had a really hard time filling this year.
In fact, we've not been able to fill them, which has forced us to find other ways to meet those students' needs. So in partnership with our early learning office, we have found ways to use our current staff to meet those needs, in addition to the support that early learning department provides in our preschools. And we found that to be successful and we've determined that we can live without that additional three, FTEs. So that's an example of where attrition, is not gonna impact the student experience that we were able to absorb some of these, reductions. We also reduced some centralized supports for coordination, principal coaching, and programming, as well as
certain consultant contracted services. But that said, even with these reductions, we'll continue to provide these indirect supports through existing leadership structures. Centralized support will change, we have found ways to shift some of that work. So, for example, our principal cohort facilitation, for center based, programs and professional learning, We're able to absorb that with our assistant directors who will now be offer making those offerings. So we no longer have the need for that dedicated administrative support for that work solely, if that makes sense.
Oh, I do have a clicker. Thank you. So moving into student services, we reduced about 7.4 FTE, which will result in less centralized support, consultation, and coaching for staff. And with regards to student services, I wanna be clear that we are not reducing direct mental health services to kids, but we are shifting, our delivery of indirect support to adults with regards to coaching support. And I also wanna say that we believe coaching is incredibly value to the people
who do those roles, and we want and will continue to provide a coaching function within student services. It will just look different in terms of size, than we currently do it. So as part of this shift, some of our cell coach positions were reduced, and those staff will be offered a reassignment to a school school based social emotional, learning specialist position through our annual spring staffing process. For context, the district currently has 9.2
FTE dedicated to sell coaching. That makes up about 14 people because most of those people are in a dual role where they're a social emotional learning specialist and a social emotional learning specialist coach. So the coaching portion of their, position, has been impacted for some. This change will reduce that total by 3.7 FTE with one of that 3.7 FTE being repurposed to be a counselor coach, because that's an area of need and
support that we identified, through our program evaluation. So this adjustment, in our opinion, allows us to better support school based mental health teams while maintaining a balanced sustainable model of centralized and site based support. We also make yearly rightsizing adjustments based on enrollment and title one status, at a small number of elementary schools. It says three up there, which is correct. So those three schools will have a slight reduction in their cell support, but they will maintain the minimum allocation that all elementary schools receive, which is point five.
So for, schools that have, a title one status who are at a certain enrollment threshold, they receive an additional, allocation on top of that minimum point five. So those schools' enrollments have shifted to where they're now being right sized to the appropriate amount, which is that point five piece. With regards to additional departmental reductions, we reduced some centralized supports, for CPI training, MTSS behavior systems, substance use prevention, restorative practices, and mater some materials and purchase service cost
costs. Through this approach, we were able to protect student facing mental health services, which was a priority, while adjusting how some centralized support such as coaching, consultation, and indirect supports will be provided. I think I have one more here. Yep. I sure do. So, this is a combined slide with, gifted and talented and health services. So, between these two departments, we reduced about 6.2 FTE. These result, reductions will result in less centralized consultation and support for schools, but services
to students will continue through our existing service models. All of these reductions occurred primarily through attrition, including some social emotional learning counseling support, which is entirely separate from student services, some resource teacher support, and a small number of district nursing roles that, previously provided consultation and expertise to schools. So these were areas where we could responsibly, scale back centrally central support while continuing to meet the needs of our kids. So despite some shifts in assignments, health, and gifted services remain in place.
Schools will continue to be supported in meeting student needs through their school based staff and our existing service models. I think that is. Mister Palerio, if I may, board members, would you all prefer to ask questions as we kinda go through in sections, or would you prefer to wait till the end? Would anyone like to is that alright? Here's mine. Since we're kinda hitting it in clumps, I think it might be very helpful. Doctor doctor Ornan? Anyone? Doctor Kenworthy. I just wanna thank you for, your comments and the clarity on how you're presenting this. Is it I just wanna double check to make sure I heard you correctly that
no programs have been eliminated in whole. Is that accurate? Which programs? Like, social emotional learning Right. And those pieces. Social emotional learning is still The resources that we allocate to schools out of the student success budget or one of these departmental budgets will not eliminate any program. That said, we have, like, center based programs where we look at enrollment every single year and make a determination around this time whether or not that program will continue into the future. So those are some unknowns that I don't know yet, but we will still offer
center based programming. Alright. And that would be the only area where I'd say I don't know yet. Know yet. Okay. That's helpful. Thank you. And then am I also correct am I correct in understanding that these positions, the FTEs that you've presented to us, have already been informed? That's correct for the most part. Okay. And the only exception to that is with, whatever changes will come as a result of the special education choice one enrollment process. But that is typical year to year. But as a part of this process, all of the reductions, folks who've been impacted
have been informed. Wonderful. Thank you. That's helpful. Director Morinian? Or So on slide 13, I think it's the second to last bullet, it mentions reduced centralized supports for crisis prevention, MTSS, restorative practices. I just wanna get an understanding of what does this exactly mean, if you could give me a little bit more information. Yeah. So, Crisis Prevention Institute training. So that is the vendor or the program that we use to, offer a trainer
of trainer model for our de escalation and physical intervention that some of our staff are, offered. And so we currently have, three individuals who do that work, and our data indicates that we need less than three, and I believe it's 2.4 is what we will have after this, reduction process. And I can give you exact numbers, but that's off the top of my head. With regards to our MTSS behavior systems, so we had a contract in the amount
of, I think, $30,000 ish with an external consultant who is working with our MTSS coordinator and social emotional learning coordinator, to help build out our MTSS system. That is something that we have eliminated as a part of this, reduction that we will do in house. With regards to the substance use and prevention work, so we have one FTE, it's a coordinator level role, who is responsible for sort of the prevention but also the
intervention for students who have substance use or abuse needs. And we have shifted that work to the responsibility of our registered nurses that are that serve all of our schools. And then with regards to restorative practices, we have one reduction in, a restorative practices specialist, but we have a specialist and a coordinator who will continue that work for the district. Does that answer your question? Yes. So and then just to be clear, and I think you might have said this,
but, again, I just wanna circle back and make sure I'm understanding correctly. With these, reductions that are in in the works in the plans, this should not impact students. Students should still have access to their social emotional learning, all of the mental health supports, and things like that. That is accurate. The resources that we allocate directly to kids remain in place. Very good. Thank you for confirming that. Mister Givens. Yeah, kind of, I guess, a comment and an observation and something I would like people to take into account as we're going through these cuts. First and foremost, I wanted to state I appreciate how incredibly difficult this must be
for all of you to say nothing of those who have lost their positions. And I appreciate and have noticed the instinct to say, but it's going to be okay. And I don't agree. It's not. And that does not mean you're not doing a really good job at a difficult task. It does not mean that you have not applied the methodology you have to the best of your ability. But to say it's okay is not okay. As a parent, I have had experiences where my child could not get SEL services he needed. That's nobody's fault. Nobody in here can control the revenue.
I appreciate the superintendent mentioning our state's problem with k through 12 funding. We're one of the bottom in the nation in per capita funding. And it makes it harder for us to solve that problem if we sit there and say that these cuts are gonna be okay. And I believe that we will have a better chance of rebuilding community trust of saying, you know what? This is not okay. It's incredibly difficult, but our hands are tied in terms of our funding, And we're gonna do the best we can to minimize impact to students and then to say
to our community, and all of us need to work together to solve what's the real problem here, which is funding. So I I don't say that I really do appreciate your instinct to comfort and assuage. I believe you that you're going to work hard and are working hard to minimize student impacts. But I can't support saying it's gonna be okay. Yeah. I I appreciate those comments, and it was not my intent to leave you with the impression that I'm saying it's okay. I what I wanted to leave you with is that we preserved the the services that are student facing that we found to be essential.
And there will be an impact that is felt without a doubt. And so I apologize if those were the words that I used. Well, I don't need you to apologize because you're not doing anything wrong. Yep. What I want us to do is change how we're talking about this, and I want us to change our conversation in particular outside of this room. And I have seen firsthand, I worked for years with the state workforce, and it was a similar thing there. Public services are underfunded across the state, and our workers do such a good job of filling in the gaps. Mhmm. The public doesn't understand the problem.
And we can keep doing that, and I know everybody will keep doing that, but we need to be more frank with the community, with the taxpayers about what's actually happening and the fact that we've been doing less with more for decades and decades in this state and in this district. So I don't need your apology. You're doing a really good job at a really hard job. Yeah. It's about how we talk about it honestly with our taxpayers, our communities, our employees. I appreciate that and I agree. Thank you. Can I just jump by? I think, thank you so much for that push.
I think it's I think it's the right push. I think, Matt, Matt and team, everybody here has tried really hard to, as Brenna mentioned, keep the reductions that their department can control as far away from classrooms as possible. And they've done a good good job of that. That being said, there's still impacts, for sure, and I appreciate the push to, like, just name them. Thank you for that push. I wanna also be honest related to what director Gibbons and director Mullenian have both
raised. Once once we're done with these department reductions and our schools begin their process, what we've done really good job at is keeping things as far away from kids as possible. Our schools will not be able to have the same success with Because everything a school does is an impact directly for students. And so while we have preserved the allocation, methodology for, cells and learning specialists and
all of the things from Matt's department that go into a school building and work in a school building day to day with kids, our schools are about to make reductions. They are smaller than the reductions we've asked our departments to make, intentionally. But they there will be schools that are currently, for example, buying up a cell that are getting the point five from that, they're adding a point five from their SPB, and they may not be able to do that anymore. There may be a school that has a point five instructional coach and they make it a one point o. They may not be able to do that anymore. It's gonna be instructional coaching.
It's gonna be health aid positions, social emotional learning specialists. On top of that, we're gonna have enrollment impacts. And so classroom teacher positions will be impacted when enrollment goes down in certain grade levels. And it is hard. It is very difficult, and that we have to do the work. We cannot bring to the board another $30.40, $50,000,000 deficit budget in June. And so, so thank you for the push, but I do wanna also acknowledge that while this team has done a great job of taking every effort they can make
and keeping it from classrooms, once our schools begin this process and they get their budgets on Monday, it's going to begin to be more impactful to the student facing supports and the student facing services. And it is difficult. And and we're not the only district dealing with it to the state point. Adams twelve did it last year. We're doing it this year. Even Boulder, who has $3,000 more per student, is having a hard time keeping up with the investments that they've made because the state is not showing up to invest
in our kids. And so I do want to acknowledge also that while we're talking about department reductions right now, our schools are about to. And we have that in our presentation coming, and I do wanna make sure you know what's about to come with our school process. So but I I appreciate the push. Any mister Gibbons? So I had another question. I think this is probably best for for miss Copeland on I appreciate the differentiation between, you know, the decision making authority around dollars as opposed to where they're actually spent. I think it would be really helpful if we could start it doesn't have to
be to the penny, but if we could start getting some better breakdowns of showing where the dollars are going. Because what I often will hear from community members is concerns. They'll they'll look at whatever it is they're looking at and they have a perception that, you know, these hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent here in the Ed Center on God knows what, and they don't appreciate how much of that although the decision making authority may be here, how much of those dollars actually go to the to the schools. So to the extent we can start getting at least rough figures to really show,
and and explain where those dollars go, I think that would be really helpful, for all of us in our conversations with the community. Thank you for that. We will, in the spring budget process, do our very best to highlight some approximate percentages, like this department spends approximately 90% in schools, what have you. The the exciting answer to that question is that when we do transition to the new state chart of accounts and Workday, so that the new ERP system and the new chart of accounts, we will be able to answer more specifically that question because
we will have what I fondly refer to as location codes. So excited. Where every expense can be tagged to a location. We do not have that in our financial accounting and reporting, and that is the singular biggest hurdle, for us to be able to fulfill that request in with the most integrity. And I will give you approximates. Thank you. This this chart of accounts issue, just for new board members, has been a massive, massive barrier for us being able to be transparent about where the dollars are going.
When I showed up in April 2021, I was floored that they were not that Jeffco had was not aligned to the state chart of accounts. We knew that we were gonna be needing to move into a new ERP because our system was so old. And so the work that Brenna's team has done to shift into the new chart of accounts, we'll be able to I think it's gonna be showing up next year ish by the end of the year. But it it's and I it's Second district that I've done this work in with a shift to the chart of accounts, and it is a multiyear, process, and I we're working on it.
And I do think it will make a to just reiterate, it will make a huge difference and our us being able to show where the dollars are being spent and where the services are going based on how those dollars are spent. Thank you. I do have one quick question for mister Palermo. And superintendent Dorland framed it really nicely because the there is more change coming, and the schools, I believe we live in a space where parents have come to expect all of the wonderful things that we're doing to the effect that everything is really important. And there will be cuts to sales because a lot of schools do buy up
from their portion, I believe. Or there could be. There won't necessarily be. There could be. Yes. There will be cuts to a lot of things. Are we planning to change our allocation, or are you considering changing the allocation with any of that in mind? For the 2627 school year, there won't be any adjusted, staffing allocations specific to student services and sales. That said, we're always looking at, you know, through a lens of continuous improvement and how can we be more efficient and effective with our resources. And, so that conversation is always ongoing.
But right now, we have no intention of making any adjustments, in those areas. Thank you. Alright. Please. Oh, is there another one? Just one last it's more of a comment than a question. So over the last couple of months, we've heard from students. We've heard from parents. We've heard from other community members about the concern of how are we gonna prevent the next tragedy. How are we gonna make sure that schools are safe? And I see, so far in this presentation on slide 11, we're gonna add, it looks like we're gonna add two security positions, more information to come on that specifically.
So I don't wanna speak out of turn on that, but, you know, that's what the number looks like at the moment on this slide. All of this being said, security physical safety and security is important. But I think that the work that our cells do is very, very important in preventing the next tragedy. Alright. Thank you for the pause on that. I knew there would be a lot of questions for that section, so I appreciate that. Please continue, and we won't You're welcome. We won't break it up going forward to save on our time. I think I'm passing to superintendent Doralyn. Oh, you're happy to meet. Mhmm. That's what they're talking about.
They're looking at me like I'm like, what are you what are you talking to me about? Thank you. Now let me catch up. This was a riveting conversation. District leadership. Am I on slide 15? Okay. Thank you. Yeah. So we, we in the district leadership budget, which sort of spans what used to be the deputy superintendent's office and the superintendent's office, we have, two FTE that we'll be reducing. We, you know, anticipate that cross department decision making, strategic coordination may have some impact,
but we are working as a cabinet team right now to rearrange some of our meeting structures, to be to streamline, given the fact that we will be reducing the deputy superintendent position. Right now, we have, Dwight Jones, who is working with us in an interim capacity and pretty much part time, to just kinda shore up and get us ready to go as a cabinet team just to basically, operate without a deputy superintendent. I will say that so I have colleagues both locally and nationally who say to
me, you're gonna run the district that size without a deputy superintendent. And I say I have an amazing and fabulous cabinet team, and, we're gonna come together and figure out some meeting structures and ways to work together so that we can be okay without a deputy superintendent. The other position that will be eliminated then because we don't have a deputy superintendent is an executive assistant position. And so we will be reducing those two, positions. And now I'm handing it to operations. Yep. Thank you. So in operations, when we we say operations loosely, I just wanted to to remind
the board of the the the departments that were impacted when we say operations in this. Specifically, we have a facilities management department, a building maintenance department, custodial services, site maintenance, and environmental services. And when we looked at oops. There we go. Sorry about that. When we look at, our FTE reductions, there were there were 29 FTE equivalent reductions with, 24 vacancies. Majority of those, approximately 18 of those, were in our custodial services department. And it was important that, that there's a there are certain cleaning standards, that we
that we live within that are purely formulaic around staffing per square footage. And we're maintaining our current level of our cleaning standard, but it it there will be some trade offs. And I think it's worth noting that, that that custodial square footage per FTE will increase, but some of our more essential level one health cleanings will continue. And this really impacts our, our night custodial staff, mainly. I think I think all all of all of the impact is around our night
staff. So things like, restrooms, locker rooms, health clinics, drinking fountains, all of that remains, in place. The, you know, the the lunchroom cleaning, all those things are happening during the day, and we're not reducing any of our day custodians or our facility managers, as we call them. And things that where where we might see the impact though is are things like vacuuming, dusting, cleaning desks, cleaning windows, those types of things. I think it's worth calling out, where we are expecting to see, some potential impact
in a reduction of, the 18, 18 FTE, equivalents. It's also worth noting that at 18 FTEs, we have about 442 staff, custodial staff in the district too. So as far as a percentage of that, that gives you an idea of how that how that relates to the larger context. We are reducing positions in our, building maintenance and site maintenance. And when I say building maintenance, I'm talking about our HVAC, our electrical, plumbing, structural,
preventative maintenance, painting, roofing, electronics, locksmiths, glazers, those positions. So we are we are eliminating and reducing positions in that area, And we're really focusing on maintaining and preserving critical building function when we're looking at doing that. And then lastly, our site maintenance team. We reduced, positions in our site maintenance. Our goal with productions in site maintenance, that's our team and our crew that does all of our snow removal, was to make sure we are still adequately staffed for
all but some, and and we are. So when we have a snow event, we still have a plan in place to to to remove the snow at all of our sites like like we typically do. Where we might see an impact though is, you know, it's a those staff members will work an eight hour shift. It could start at midnight. If we have a snow event, it could start at two in the morning, and then they're required to take time off before they can work their next shift. So there might be some cleanup efforts or, you know, when when snow events roll into a weekend and we might need to, you know, hit a school that's having
a weekend event, those are the types of things that we might see impacted, by this. But ultimately three positions, out three FTE equivalents out of 48 in that department, to give you an idea of of how that, how that relates to that that department size. And then one area I did want to call out is, you know, you mentioned reducing costs for purchased services. Site maintenance was a really good example of of having to make hard decisions, like Superintendent Orland mentioned. We're reducing a purchase service for seal coating that we do for our parking lots
and our and our througways. And so, you know, that when you're looking at a trade off, that was a decision that we made to preserve things like our snow routes. But knowing that, reducing, purchase services in an area like that is gonna lead to potential deferred maintenance and and increased costs down the road. So, I just wanted to call that out as well. I could stop there, or I could do food nutrition service two. Please go ahead. Okay. So in food nutrition services, our FTE reduction was 18.18,
and we had, approximately 15 FTE equivalent vacancies, that we were able to assist with those reductions. And really the biggest impact in food nutrition services is going to be our meal options decreasing slightly. We're gonna be serving fewer options, across all of our schools, but still multiple options for students to choose from. And we'll still, we'll still be able to satisfy any special special dietary requests that
students, have, need, or or make. So those won't go away either. And then just a few other things that, I just wanted to point out that we did. We we reorganized the more of the central function of our food service department that's not out in the schools, for some budgetary, savings. We had floating manager positions. So if a if a kitchen manager was out sick, we had a a floating kitchen manager that would fill in that role. We actually reduced those positions. There were nine of those positions, and we actually created a lead, kitchen staff worker
position. So if the manager was out, the lead could assume that role and get a higher higher pay rate while they were working in that role. And so that ended up, really helping in a in a couple ways. Certainly, there was a budgetary impact, but we were creating a pathway for growth for our staff, which, which we felt like was a good a good win win. Hourly and lead worker positions, are are adjusted, and they're adjusted regularly in FNS, in food nutrition services. So I I do wanna call that, and that's kind of the the caveat at the bottom of this slide is, like Miss Copeland mentioned earlier, this number right now
is a snapshot of where we are in time. But Food Nutrition Services regularly makes adjustments to their meals per labor hour, their meal equivalents, how those tie together to calculate a staffing level, and they'll adjust. So if they see participation increase at a school and it's sustained long enough, they might make an adjustment to hours or or vice versa. If there's a decrease, they'll make adjustments. So I just want to call it that that, may shift a little bit as we move forward too. And, and then we also, we're reducing, hours, you know, just hours in general, for
staff because we are reducing options. So we might have had a a seven hour, kitchen worker position that's being reduced to six. So it wasn't a reduction of a position, but it was a reduction in hours that impacted, staff and impacted a person. And then, there were a few other purchase service items that were included in that that, that we're reducing as well to to help hit our target. So I'll pause there for operations and food nutrition services if you have any questions. Board members, any questions?
No? Alright. Thank you so much. Okay. Good afternoon. I'll be going over the school leadership budget. With school leadership, school leadership is comprised of our community superintendents and our, office of discipline. And so what you'll see, we have a reduction of seven FTE, that will that will be achieved through a combination of, reductions and cost savings. As a result of the seven FTE, reduction, we are going to experience, some operational
impacts or expected, including a slower response time, to unfill substitute requests for some of our schools, and also, a longer time line for certain team initiatives, due to reduced staffing and leadership capacity. We have two positions that will be reduced, including the elimination of the school leadership substitute teacher function. We also reduce, related to expenditures related to professional learning, and different materials, to minimize
the impact to our schools. When you think of the school leadership, we really wanted to ensure that our principals, had continuity and, the service that they are being provided and and the support that they are receiving from their community superintendent. I think it's it's important to outline that we have no community superintendent's roles were reduced, as a result of of this reduction, our articulation areas are remaining the same. Our community superintendents are able to have the same number of schools that they are supporting.
So there's continuity with our principals, being able to have the same, community superintendent to support them. Schools will continue to receive, consistent service levels, and principals will maintain, the same support that they are receiving from their community superintendent right now. Doctor Echeverria. Is the school leadership substitute teacher function, is that, like, a permanent sub in each building that's going away? What is that? No. So, in addition to our, regular district subs, under school leadership, we had substitutes that
were sitting with school leadership so that in the event that a school, did not have a substitute position that was filled, there were some substitutes that sit with school leadership. And so we were able to, send out a substitute to fill a position if for some reason it was not filled through the general general way. And so there's just one function that we won't have going into next year. And I believe this was a function that started in the pandemic when we were having such a hard time with last minute quarantines, and the subsystem wasn't as efficient
as we needed it to be. And we were really, like, hand delivering substitutes on a daily basis based on who was quarantined next. So, the since the pandemic has resolved and we're not doing that kind of, like, last minute thing as much, doctor Coleman was able to work with HR and Yeah. And and, hopefully, that'll be okay. We will monitor that. Yeah. You know? We will monitor that. Thank you, doctor Coleman. Thank you. Okay. I'm gonna round this out, here with productions and strategy and communications. So, I'll just talk a little bit about the strategic initiatives team.
It is a function we are just, eliminating. When I get to the district in 2022, the district's project management office sat in IT. Jill Ibeck, Tracy Dolan, and I sat down and really talked about where we were headed as a district with our strategic plan and realized, as you all may know in your own own organizations, that we really needed an organization of the size needed an enterprise, project management office, to be able to help, basically be an engine behind
the strategic plan. And so this office spearheaded, the closure of 21 schools over two years. They helped, the complex process of rolling out high quality curriculum and materials across the district. They leaned in on everything from, when we had the cybersecurity event that you might all remember or some of you may remember from, Halloween a couple of years ago. They leaned in on that. We also leaned in on the, Evergreen High School incident. So these are highly skilled folks who know the organization, can navigate it quickly, can
jump start superpower, get something unstuck to keep things moving in the organization, which has been incredibly important, for us to be able to accomplish what we laid out to do in our strategic plan. They have also spent the last several years training the organization on things like, collaboration and how to, and training people on how to do project management in their own departments. So they they've been doing things like that. And, of course, they've been monitoring and tracking our strategic plan to ensure that we
stay, on on time and and having progress with that. One of the things that our office has done has raised almost a million dollars from outside funders for things like high school reimagined, magic of middle school. And as you all know who have worked with funders, funders offer require a match of some kind, so that you to see that you have skin in the game. So we've used our budget to start projects, bridge projects. As as it's been mentioned here, we have a run a very lean central office
in GEFCO. And so when you wanna start something, you can't just task people who already basically have their entire day filled with something else, that can't stop. And so we have used this team and the power of this team to raise money in order to, start some of the the initiatives that have been really important for this district. So, we are maintaining a an executive director of strategy who will continue to run our strategic plan, serve as a high level thought partner for our cabinet team, and
for, directors and executive directors in the organization. We are also cutting our, our, budget for, contracted services. We don't have a big budget for contracted services, but it has helped us in in a pinch when there are, that there for example, we need more community engagement than, we have the ability to provide through our family community engagement team. Or there are other things, that are needed to look into our research, of a a big problem or issue that the district has encountered.
And, so we we use the funding for that. So we'll be reducing reducing those things. So it does mean, and we are in a period of the organization where we are highly focused on our ERP. It is our largest, cross functional project at the moment. And, several, there there basically are four positions that are being eliminated, and a couple of people, whose positions are going away have, been able to apply for positions on the ERP team. So that's been advantageous for that project since they know the organization so well and,
are able to navigate it. Additionally, we have cut one FTE out of our comms team. This is, I've I've worked in and across in and around comms teams, in school districts for over twenty years, and Jeff co runs a very lean comms team. And as you all know, the pressure on communications just grows with the number of incidents, threats, and just call for, communication that what people expect from communications from our schools, from our district just grows.
And so, we are currently working to, to navigate that in terms of how we meet the expectations for for communication while trying to while doing our best also to run a leaner team. So that those are the, those are the cuts, and strategy and communications. Great. So, this is the timeline that, we've seen before, for the department funded personnel impacts, and you can see, that they were notified that week of the December 15, anybody who was in a position that was impacted.
And and now we're doing some internal hiring activities or moving into internal hiring activities as of February. As I mentioned before, school budgets were being delivered on Monday and principals will begin their planning with support from their HR partner, their budget analyst, doing their work with, collaborative teams within their schools with their staff and community. And then by early February, mid February, school budgets will be mostly complete, and we'll be starting these HR processes, to support people who wanna stay in GEFCO and helping
them find a new position. You'll see in June 2026, the reduct the reductions are effective then, so people have at least a runway through June, to figure out a new spot in Jeffco or a new spot for them elsewhere. I would say also, as an aside, that if an individual's pay extends beyond June because of their payroll calendar, they will continue to receive their full pay for the for the time worked through June. I just want I think that's confusing for some employees when we've gotten that question. Wanna make it clear that payroll will continue and people will be compensated for their
time through June regardless of what pay structure and pay calendar they're on. Amanda Parazio was hoping to be here with us this evening, but she had a family emergency, and so she's not here. So I'm gonna talk to you all about supporting our impacted staff. As we, learned a lot through the Roth school closures and supporting impacted staff through that, we're taking some lessons learned from that process and paying them forward, which has been, just great for us to be able to lean on that experience. We will align every step we take with our negotiated agreements with JCEA and JESPA.
We know that, our employees will want to have access to resources, from our HR team, and our partners, also at the GEFCO Business and Workforce Center have been, side by side with us and wanting to support. So that's great. Because there are if somebody doesn't want to find a position in GEFCO, there are other places hiring in GEFCO. And we wanna make sure that our employees know not only what's available to them here, but also outside, GEFCO Public Schools. And then you can see the list of things that we're gonna be offering and
planning to offer for all impacted employees. Our goal is, again, to manage as many reductions as possible through attrition, which you've you can see in just the numbers from the central department, reductions and how many actual people were impacted versus positions. And impacted staff are encouraged and supported to apply for open roles across the district, and they may be placed into open positions for which they're qualified. And so I wanna make sure and this was a suggestion. Thank you very much to our association, colleagues who joined the partnership meetings this fall.
Because they said, you know, you keep saying we wanna use attrition to help people find a new role and a new place in GEFCO. That's great, and we believe you. But could you at least share with people what some of that attrition is so that they know, oh, it's actually quite large. Right? And so this is data from the Department of Education that we report every year, and we really do believe given this information and these numbers that we're gonna be able to help the impacted individuals find a spot. So every year, we have about 600 to 700 teachers hired or transferred, 658 paraprofessionals,
and instructional support staff, we have a 181 individuals and positions. Office administrative support, usually we have about 95 that we hire or transfer. In the crafts, trades, and service staff, 307. And administrators, around about 15. So there are, naturally each year opportunities for people to find roles. And thanks for that recommendation to share that data. I think it does, bring a little bit of peace of mind that there will be positions available. Great. Hi. School reductions. These are just a few slides, to provide a little bit of context.
So every year, our 145 ish school principals receive their, budget allocations for the following year and, engage in a collaborative discussion with their school accountability committees, their instructional leadership teams, etcetera, to make decisions. I'll be honest. It doesn't start when we send the allocation. It started a couple months ago. If not, it's an ongoing year round process. I've met with principals before who've said, you know, I have the same PTA meeting every October, and we always talk about this. And so I just wanna assure you no one is at square one, when it
comes to this budgeting process. And, we're following the same timeline that's so important, because it has cascading and ripple effects for hiring, all those numbers that the superintendent just shared. That's a lot. It's a lot to process. And to process all of that, you know, we we kinda need to stick to the timelines we've established over the years. So, school budgeting is no different. It'll be on the same timeline. Whew. You really gotta use some thumb strength. Okay. So our SVB reduction ranges, are between about one and a half percent and four
and a half percent. I've presented this slide before, so I'm not gonna spend a ton of time on it. The average reduction is around two and a half percent. Overall, SBB allocations will be reduced by approximately 14,000,000. We're still honing in on that exact number. It depends on a lot of different things, and we're still trying to calibrate to make sure schools, can afford minimum staffing. And so, again, these are the types of reductions that schools might appreciate, based on the based on the BRB process, and schools budgets depend on multiple factors.
So enrollment might be increasing, enrollment might be decreasing, the student demographics might be changing in some way, shape, or form. The final budget at a school will reflect a mix of decreases and increases. And so, again, we are adjusting up some of the base per pupil allocations on a dollar for dollar basis so that schools can afford compensation increases already given and or expected. We do that every year. That's part of a process. So while, yes, these are real reductions, then there's also gonna be an increase, then
there's something that's either a decrease or an increase behind that relating to enrollment. So it is complicated, but we're happy to spend more time on that in the spring as we're talking about these school budgets. Just, a histogram that I think provides additional context. Most schools, 85% of schools, will experience a budget reduction no long no larger than 3%. So again, I I think that is important context to this distribution, this count of schools and and how large is their BRB reduction.
We've already talked through some of these dates. I just want to mention the January, February, March individual notification. We do actually reduce positions in some way, shape, or form every year, and so we are following the same timelines and same processes. And so that is not new, But, again, important to follow kind of the way the system has been set up. Alright. I think the next piece is just a highlight that we are continuing to work with the Partnership for Fiscal Sustainability. We have a meeting tomorrow night, and I'm very excited about that meeting, where educators,
families, community leaders, partners, association colleagues will also be there. And they are we're gonna begin trying to shape, a mill levy override, ballot measure for the board's consideration this summer. And the timeline for the board consideration on something like that will be, like, August. So we have between now and August to do some planning. I've been working with Michelle and Erin quite a bit on what it what does the board wanna play what role does the board wanna play as we lead up into August, and we're really just excited to begin. We feel like there is, of the partnership group from last fall, a lot of
momentum and interest in in continuing this conversation and really getting, some more ideas generated around what a November 2026 initiative could look like to generate some revenue. So looking forward to that. Thank you all. Board members, additional questions? Director Kenworthy. I wanna thank you all. I know it's been really difficult work, and now we're gonna be supporting our school leaders in doing similar difficult work. And I I just wanna reiterate, that even though our our resources reduce, the magnitude of the work that we need to do doesn't reduce. And so there will be people who are picking up additional duties or additional responsibilities,
taking more on when we're already doing, a whole lot already. And so I wanna I wanna lift up the this is not sustainable, but we all recognize that, and that's why we have to advocate one for, local revenue measures and then also advocate it at our our state level with our legislators because we're not the only district facing these kinds of difficult challenges, but we are a large district who's faced the magnitude of the of the, reductions that we're doing is equivalent
to multiple small school districts' whole entire budgets. And so this is incredibly difficult work, and it is not sustainable. I wanna I wanna lift that up because I also know that people who remain in their positions and will be picking up additional responsibilities and taking on more duties or having to attend to more emergency type of things, it's not sustainable. This is hard, and it's why we have to advocate so hard in the state of Colorado to increase our school funding. That said, I appreciate the thoughtfulness that's gone into this process, especially recognizing that these
are human beings and that they deserve support as we navigate forward. And the impacts are going to be seen, and they're gonna be felt, and we're gonna really hear about it once it's at the school level. I imagine we'll have a lot more people at public comment in the next couple of months. But I think that we're here to support. We understand that this is hard, and nobody wants to do reductions ever. And this we've reached a critical moment in Colorado's education funding, and this is this is what happens. So hopefully, our community will, see that and wanna support the educators in their communities
and come on board with us to try and resolve this unsustainable situation. Other directors. Doctor Echeverria. Can you tell me what the, decline in enrollment has been since 2020? Off the top of my head, it's probably closer to 10,000. I know that the superintendent shared a 12,000 figure that would go back all the way to 2016. It might be slightly larger because sometimes the numbers that are in my head aren't always the most current. So maybe it's, like, ten five or so, but I'm happy to get that for you afterwards. Okay. Thank you. And then, I remember when the student, based budgeting came into play, I was on
I was on the school accountability committee at my at my daughter's school. And we were really excited because we were transitioning into a GT center school. And so we were able to really focus those dollars on what those kiddos needed in terms of, you know, support with executive functioning, those kinds of things. And I know there's other schools, you know, that have different needs, dual language schools like Foster and so on. So I guess I'm curious because we are addressing schools, soon.
I'm just wondering, like, I I appreciate everything in the blueprint, but I'm also curious if we have really looked at the impact and the expected changes and outcomes for students. And I understand this is all very, like, dollars financial, but in the end, it comes down to our students. So, I yeah. I'm happy to I'm happy to jump in. I think it's a great question. Like, have we anticipated the let me let me reframe what I think you're asking.
Have we anticipated the possible impact, in particular at schools who might have special populations and needs? I think it's a great question. Is am I on track with what you're asking? Yeah. That because we are reducing, at the school level, and it looks like, what, about 30% of the our budget. Right? Is that what it No. Total? No? 30% of school budgets? So almost all budgets will be reduced by varying amounts. Okay. So smaller amounts at smaller schools with higher at risk and larger amounts with larger
schools. I see. Sorry. Yeah. So it's, like, two and a half percent on average with some being at up to four and a half, some being as low as one and a half. Okay. In terms of the the reduction targets. But I to answer your question around, like, what what do we expect the impacts to be? There's definitely gonna be impacts. I mean, there there's no share of coding that. What we have done with doctor Coleman's team on the front end so there's, like, a two part answer. Right? One part answer is let's anticipate what we think so we don't go do something
and give a school a target that there's just no way they can hit it. On the other side, it's like, let's track and monitor what actually happened. So we've done both. We're doing both. The first part was with doctor Coleman's team. Community superintendents know their schools very well. They're talking to their principals on a regular basis. They know their budgets because they've been with them for multiple years. And so we did some dry runs with some of these targets with our community superintendents to just say, give us a sense of, like, if you were the principal at a few of your schools, what would this look like? Is this even doable?
What kind of impacts is this gonna have? And their response to us and doctor Coleman, jump in here if you'd like to. But their response to us was, this is definitely an impact. Like, yes. This is gonna not be, the best, situation, and we need to do it. And we're gonna help our principals through it. So we have some sense that the targets we've given these schools alongside the work that Brenna's team has done to adjust the PPR so they can afford the basics. Right? The classroom teachers they need, the principal they need, the office staff that they need. We know that they can afford some of those minimums and and and then make
some reductions and and and get through it. I won't say be okay, but I will say get through it. And we've done enough of that pressure testing with doctor Coleman's team that I think we know we're we what we've put out to schools is what we're gonna ask them to try to hit. We are also tracking and monitoring as the community supes, the HR partners, and the budget analysts meet with principals and work through the budgets and principals make final decisions with their school communities and staff, we're tracking what are the impacts by school. So that I've asked for a report on, you know, school by school, what's happening.
And so the we're working. We have meetings coming up to try to figure out how to get that done across all of our sites, but it is something that I feel is important for me to know, as superintendent and then to be able to share with the board. And to miss Copeland's point, she she comes regularly to say, here's where what our school budgeting process has resulted in at a high level for the board to see, and gives you some details and analysis around that. Doctor Coleman, do you wanna add anything, or are you okay? Thank you for that. Additionally, with what director Kenworthy just said, because of the anticipation that the school communities
are going to be feeling this. I think it would be really helpful maybe in the next month or two for us as a board to have community meetings, to maybe lessen the impact at some of the full board meetings for public comment and really allow our, our areas to to talk to us and and raise concerns so we can listen. Well done. That's part of our topics for later. Good flag. Any other questions, Doctor.
Echevarria? Doctor. Mowinian? Doctor. Kim? I I do have, I guess, a quick question and a comment. I would be really interested to understand, when I look at slide 11 and kind of the reductions, I would be interested to understand kind of the levels. And I know this is challenging because some of them are very small reductions, and we wanna protect privacy. But for example, are they managers? Are they executive directors? Or are they more individual contributors? That would be incredibly helpful to understand. I can rattle it off right now verbally by, like, employee group, if that's helpful.
I wanna just preface this by saying I'm I'm happy to do this. I I asked for this data, anticipating this question tonight. I asked for it from HR this this this evening. It's changing. If it's easier to provide it in update, that's absolutely fine as well. I would support it as an update. Okay. That's helpful. Thank you. But thank you for your willingness. No. I I really appreciate that. Target right now just until everything's settling. I appreciate thank you for that. And then I I think I heard it, but I wanna circle back. It is gonna be hard. There there will be impacts.
And I I think we have said this for a long time and, and it's here. Right? So now we're really feeling it. If schools, especially some of our smaller schools, are struggling to hit the threshold, it sounds like you've pressure tested. But, doctor Coleman, can you just confirm that you are gonna be there to support and just really help our principals get through it? Yes. We are. We are working directly with our principals. Principals are working directly with finance. So we are in this together, and we are really wanting to make sure that principals know that we have that they have our support and that so we're supporting
them along along the way. 100%. I really appreciate that confirmation. GEFCO is doing amazing things, and I wanna state that. We really, really are, and you all are doing amazing things, and our teachers are doing amazing things, and our principals are doing amazing things, and our staff and our our, you know, our workers and our cafeterias all the way out to our folks plowing, who that makes such a difference, and you'd be amazed how many emails I get about plowing for snow. So appreciate that. And 3% to schools on average is still significant. Right? And so in the I was always told good, bad, good.
We're doing awesome things, and we have to figure out revenue. And so I just wanna echo I wanna lift up what all of the directors have said tonight. Keeping kids first is crucial, and this is not gonna be easy. So I just wanna I wanna end with that. I really wanna appreciate the effort, and I wanna put out to all of our principals that we know that the coming weeks and months are gonna be really, really hard. And so just thank you for all this effort, and I would welcome anyone to come work with us on how we fix it. Thank you guys so much. And with that, the time is 06:57.
We're gonna take a quick ten minute break, and we'll be right back. Welcome back. Next this evening, the board will receive an annual update from the Jefferson County Education Association leadership. Presenters, we have allotted sixty minutes for this presentation. Please reserve ten minutes at the end for board questions following your remarks. Welcome. Thank you for your patience tonight. I know we're running behind, so thank you for staying late. And before I turn it over to our presenters, once you do go, please introduce yourselves. And then superintendent Dorland, is there anything you'd like to add? I just wanna say thank you, president Applegate. Did I say president Parker earlier this evening?
It's just it's that alliteration. Thank you, president Applegate. I I just want to welcome you guys. Thank you for being here. All right. I'm, JCA Vice President, Dale Munholland. I'm a social studies teacher at Pomona High School. I am here tonight in place of Brooke Williams, whose son, had a basketball game tonight. It was her first game that she was able to make. Unfortunately, she texted in Ralston Valley or, Dakota Ridge, lost, but she was very happy that she got to go. So I'm here in her place. Thank you to the Board of Education for allowing us to be here today.
Superintendent Dorland, thank you very much for allowing us this time. There is a QR code you can scan if you would like to follow along, with the presentation, but it'll be displayed as well. I'm not gonna in in the interest of time, I'm not gonna introduce have everybody introduce themselves. Those are the members of the board, most of whom are here tonight. Are the pitchers we have our names and pictures on our on our website you can go to and and find. If you have any questions, problem, concerns, conundrums at any time, you can reach out to any of us and we would be more than happy to, help you in
any way that we can. The the topics that we're going to discuss tonight, are the State of GEFCO report, findings from our most recent bargaining survey that we take every year of our membership to determine what what our members' wants and needs are for the upcoming bargaining year. We're gonna have a update from EMOTE, our, ethnic and minority, organization action team. We're gonna have an update about the Colorado Gives, JCA Excellent Fund and the scholarships
that we give. We're gonna have a an update on a CEA, initiative for this year, the cut the roads campaign and a board resolution proposal. We're gonna hear about our professional practices and our new educator supports. We have a some questions about central position reductions which, we did hear about just before this. And then at the very end, there will be time for questions and discussion. So this is the, the original GEFCO state, re report of GEFCO.
We began this I've done this every year since we started. I think we started this in 2015. I think it was the first time we were able to come and do this and, we started off calling it the State of GEFCO report from JCA. At this time, I am going to turn it over to our bargaining chair, Michelle Malas. Thank you, Dale. And thank you, directors and superintendent Dorland, for having us this evening, and welcome to the new members of the board as well. My name is Michelle Malis. I am the bargaining chair for JCEA, and I'm gonna go over some data that
we collect every year, from all of our members as part of our, bargaining. We send out a survey to them and and get feedback on issues that matter to them and then concerns that they would like us to work on. I would like to give a little context for our survey results this year, because this year is not a full reopener, So the scope of our questions was, was more narrow, and it was developed the questions were developed based on our one to one conversations with members during building visits and also during summer organizing done by our organizing action team. So we could get a pulse on both what is going well and also where
we have room for improvement. So as you can see, the top three issues that came to the you know, in our survey that we found were compensation, workload plan time, and student behavior support. We also gathered some data on sped workload because that is an issue that we're continuing to work on and equity issues. So I would like to start with the compensation, and I'd like to acknowledge that we have made a lot of progress, in recent years, on our salary schedule, but this wasn't envisioned as a one and done piece of work. It was meant to be ongoing so that we could remain competitive in the metro
market. And even with the gains that we've made, we still fall between sixth and seventh in overall compensation in the Metro Region, and we really don't wanna fall further behind. So some of the things that our members would like to see is, us to continue working on and finish salary schedule work, which means equalizing that lane six. That lane six is a smaller jump than the other lanes, and it's something that we've, it was envisioned as part of this process, and it it got stalled out, so they would like to see that work done. And also addressing the lack of equity with, administrator lanes versus, educator lanes.
So we learned at the bargaining table last year that when administrators reach the top end of their pay band, they are given a bonus equal to what a step would be. And that is not something that's happening for our educators or education support professionals, and that's work that we would like to continue doing, so that we can show the our those employees that they are valued within the district. So when it came out that everybody got a 4% pay raise, that's why people were so angry because some people did get that, but not everybody. And so I think that that's, maybe an area that we could continue working on.
As we've always said, a budget is a statement of values, and so we would like to get that language in there to mirror that. Another thing that they that they said they like to see is that steps and lanes should be just treated as ongoing. They're part of the contract language. Why are we bargaining them every year? So that came up changing the, payout timelines for unused general leave time. So right now, our members can be paid out after twenty years. They would like to see that either move down, so fewer years, and also could they get paid out, for unused time in that year. So that's work that we're still continuing to do.
Finally, we get a lot of comments on how the COLA should reflect actual increases of living, especially when taking into consideration the increases in insurance. And, I I do wanna thank what I heard earlier, superintendent Dolan, what you said earlier about saying that, yes, we have a budget issue, and that some of that was compensation, but that money was really important that we believe in that work, that we wanna remain competitive. And I think that's an important message that we need to get out there because right now I think that sometimes people are getting the first part of the message
and not the second. So it it's demoralizing. Some of our educators have told us that in their buildings, the principal said, we have to, you know, reduce staff because you guys got a raise. And so I I think that that's maybe a misunderstanding and that that is a communication that's not making its way down into all of the buildings and that we just need to reiterate that and within our communities too, that we it's really important for us to remain competitive and and and also that it's it's not our fault that there's a statewide underfunding of our schools, that it's unfair to put that on
educators, that they should bear the burden for national and state level, budget shortfalls. And I did include a link on this slide. I don't know if you can see it on the bottom or not, but Colorado continues to have the highest, pay gap penalty in the nation. Right now, we're at 38.5%, and, this is something that we need to address at a state level. So I look forward to partnering with the district and what we can do, and with our legislators to fix this pay gap. So that's compensation. Oh, I guess I need to do this, don't I?
Okay. There we go. So, the second issue that comes up pretty frequently, so no surprise this year, workload and time management. And I and I want to talk about the questions we ask. So we specifically asked, if things are working great in your school, why is that? And if not, what would help? Because we believe that there are schools that are getting this right, and that should be celebrated and shared across the district as a way to maintain our educators and prevent burnout. So some things that we heard that were good is when there's great leadership in the building that the teachers were happy, you know, they had positive feedback.
So principals that respected their planned time reduced paperwork and meetings when possible, They trusted educators to manage their own time and their PLCs. They would provide sub coverage for that paperwork and PLCs. So those things were really helpful. So when you trust a licensed professional to do the lot of times they're gonna go above and beyond, and they're gonna do extra. When they feel that their time is being filled up by stuff that they don't think is the right work, then that leads to burnout. And so when we have buildings getting it right, can we share that across the district to to help the other buildings that aren't experiencing that?
So so that that was the good. Some areas that we still struggle with, elementary, just their schedule, they don't have a late start. We're we're really struggling to find plan time for them. IEP and five zero four meetings, those are just, you know, it seems to be exponentially growing each year. Some of my teachers say they go to, you know, five to seven of them a week, and it really cuts into their ability to PLC with, their colleagues. So there is a clear difference between the buildings getting it right and wrong, how can we, you know, better structure that so that all buildings are getting that. And the communication and flexibility with staff, so using collaborative meetings as intended to support
our educators. So there you know, we continue to struggle, I think, across the nation with, mission creep. We're being, required to do more, but we have less time to to do that. And, you know, so we have these great new ideas, but I don't think as much thought is given into when how are teachers gonna have enough time to plan for new curriculum, for new ideas, etcetera. And so, you know, just taking that into account. So that, was plan time. The last area that came up was student behavior support. So no surprise, that this was also, an issue that's come up the last couple
of years. So the good, our staff, or the survey reported that they felt that they and their students were having access to mental health supports. And again, I wanna thank the district for taking that into account with our EAP. That is huge, our employees do use it, they appreciate that. And, you know, providing enough, counseling and, SELs within the building to help our students, that is important work. Also showed us that, over half of our schools now, or our respondents said they did have a PNI manual, which is prevention and intervention manual.
However, another half said they didn't even know what it was. So this is work that we still need to continue doing, and what our educators wanna see, the they told us that they're still having consistent daily disruptions in the classroom. This is partly inadequate staffing, inconsistent response to behaviors, especially ongoing and escalating behaviors. They are really struggling, and it can be a dangerous situation for our teachers. They don't they they feel kind of unprotected. So what they would like to see is enforceable discipline escalation after repeated behaviors, more accountability and response timelines, violence protocols and reentry plans, And I know we're in a
budget reduction, so this is a tough thing. But, like, they'd like to see staffing increases, paras, mental health interventionists. So I know that that's a tough thing when, yes, we need this for our students. What how are we gonna find the dollars for that? Another thing that kinda came up in the comments was a district wide cell phone policy. So I don't know if that's something we're contemplating as a district. I think if, you know, we've read that anxious generation and and other, you know, literature, it shows us that this is not maybe in service of our students. So that might be something that we would wanna think about. Also educators say they need more training, support, and consistency to help foster a safe
learning environment, not just for them, for their students as well. Everybody deserves the right to it, a safe space to learn. So in addition, we've been doing some ongoing work. We settled an MOU on benefits, which was great. In December, we're doing work now on an MLOMOU, so the Millevy override, and we'll be presenting about that tomorrow. And then, I know SPED is doing their work, as well on their language, so this is also ongoing work, that we're proud of working with the district on. So I'm gonna turn it over to Richard. I guess you might want the clicker.
Hand that down. Do I get the power of the clicker? Nice. Alright. So the much much anticipated time of year, I'm Richard Sanchez, and I am our organizing action team chair for JCEA, and here to tell us to tell you about our bargaining dates. They kinda messed me up a little bit, I'm not gonna lie. Here we go. So no, you're fine. Our bargaining dates for this, bargaining seasons are February 5, the nineteenth, and twenty sixth, March, and the nineteenth, April, and twenty third, and the infamous May 4 date.
Things get a little crazy on that day, it seems. And then May 13, and hopefully there is no need for the nineteenth, and we're done on the thirteenth. And then, so for bargaining, we will be delivering our letter of intent to bargain per article four to Tracy Dorland, Amanda Perazio, and Jennifer Kimson. JCA is finalizing which articles to bring to the table. JCEA has, yet has has not yet heard what articles the district is being bringing
forward. Mutuals at this time are article 13 leaves, article 17 compensation structures, article 18, special education, and post incident response language, compensation, including finishing appendix b and language, cleanup. I'd like to pass the clicker and the mic over to the amazing Stephen Kelly. Good evening. Again, thanks for having us and listening. Over the next, four slides, I'm going to share with you, Emote's position in Emote
being the ethnic minority outreach and action team, of which I'm the chair, Emote's concerns about the current state of the implementation of article 22, which is the equity language, in the negotiated agreement. After agreeing to article 22 nearly four years ago, only about a third of the 13 initiatives called for had been started. In section 22, which is titled equity in the school district, subsections twenty two one one through one six, outlawing the formation of the Equity Accountability Committee, which has been
the focus of Emote's work for the last several years. And so those subsections call for that formation. After two years of no movement on this front, the EAC began formal meetings two years ago. Since then, the EAC have worked on three of the six initiatives in this section, twenty two one one, one two, and one four. However, there has been no work on twenty two one three, a district wide equity review and report, and no attempt to fulfill the agreements of twenty two one five, which calls for the EAC and the superintendent to submit written reports twice a year
on the progress of the EAC, nor has there been work started on twenty two one six, which calls for the EAC to host community conversations twice a year. And then I just included additional information that we wanted to share as notes. There's been a significant decrease in family community involvement in the EAC since its inception with no clear direction for reengaging families. And one of the work groups established by the EAC lost its disc district representative in May, and no replacement has been appointed thus far. 22.
Let me just make sure. Twenty two two is the staffing and classroom section. Of the six agreements in this section, only one, subsection b, has been started. And that agreement was to provide training, including but not limited to the bias training, to district and school administrators and school based hiring communities. There's been no progress towards fulfilling agreement a, implementing programs to attract, recruit, and retain district staff and administrators that more closely reflect the makeup of the student body of the district. No movement on agreement c, creating a safe space for BIPOC educators to meet and
support one another. No movement on agreement d, creating a mentorship program for BIPOC educators. No movement on agreement e, implementing programs to support current BIPOC educators in pursuing leadership and administrative positions. And finally, Emote would argue that there has been minimal movement on agreement f, providing all educators with the necessary understanding to create an inclusive environment through, for all employees. And then the final note here is in the last two years, only five of 145 schools or 3% have received module one of a four module course on implicit
bias. At this rate, it will take fifty eight years just to complete module one. This continues twenty two two. Of the 14 district level staff who were trained as facilitators in the bias training, only four remain in roles that would allow them to do this work, and there's been a lack of transparency about why this happened nor how this issue is to be addressed. Imote is asking the district to work with EAC to consider options other than principals who volunteer their schools for these trainings. In just one JCA area represented representative council, more than 30 schools and central based
staff expressed a need for bias training at their schools or in their offices, but were apprehensive that their school administrators would seek out and facilitate these trainings. It's been brought to the attention of Emote that the last department to receive the bias training, were SPED providers. And it's our understanding that this was done at the direction of this Colorado Department of Education because the district was out of compliance with CDE guidelines for disproportionately serving indigenous students. It's our position that it is critical for whole buildings who may be disproportionately referring marginalized students for services to receive their training, not just certain teams.
Back one. Twenty two three is the section on equity ombuds program. It's the opinion of Emote that the program continues to be mismanaged. As recently as last month, the link on the district web page that is supposed to take users to a reporting form, for ombuds assist assistance instead took them to an unrelated page with no opportunity to directly contact the ombuds. There is also concern that the EAC has not received the regular reports called for from the ombuds on its work in the district.
In the our initial notes, their district used to have an equity team that was eliminated. Equity liaison positions had been reduced to a single person, and this single equity liaison used to be housed in Susan's student services, but has been relocated to teaching and learning where the role has no clear expectations or outcomes, and it's unclear what role this position is to have in the district equity work. EMOT has asked for this clarification and is yet to be given that information. The next three slides are data gathered from the aforementioned bargaining survey.
And so the this is data that, that comes directly from the questions that were asked about equity, of JCA members. 52% this is the colors educators of color's experience. 52 feel safe at school and district. 34% feel safe at the school only. And so there's a 34% gap in the district support, and then 11 do not feel safe at all. And then there's a list of required, requested Maybe there should be required. Improvements, requiring, you know, hiring, recruiting a diverse workforce, having ongoing anti racist training, cultural
responsive, understanding micro aggressions, retention, that, mentorship with BIPOC educators, representation, authors' histories authors' histories of color in curriculum, diverse libraries, educators of color visible to students, systemic anti race anti racism expectations with consequences, reporting with re without retaliation, and challenging that school to prison pipeline, that the contract would protect disproportionate assignments, parent targeting, dismissal for raising biased
concerns, and leadership more BIPOC in administration and cabinet, and don't hire during don't only hire during the crisis, then direct action, addressing racism head on, consequences for hostile environments, and then better support, better ESL materials prior towards prioritize home languages, improve translation, and understand poverty's impact. It would be our position that some of these requested improvements could be addressed by simply, meeting the agreements of article 22.
This next slide shows data from the questions that went to LGBTQ plus educators' experience in the district. Forty six percent feel safe at school in district and forty one percent feel safe at school only. So there's a 41% gap in the district support there, and 11% report that they did not feel safe. Again, requested improvements, zero tolerance statements, supporting student pronouns regardless of parents, pushback against hostile groups. There's some visibility that at Pride events, rainbow merchandise, safe space badges, and more general
neutral bathrooms, training, again, annual anti bias education, LGBTQ plus inclusive classroom strategies, acknowledging political climate fears, and protection from safe to tell misuse, and finally, affinity spaces, which brings up a point which I meant to make on this slide here. No. I think it is this one. Just to be as, transparent and as up to date as possible, I I met
yesterday with Tara Pena and, Brendan Kavanaugh and Chris Gleeson, to begin to have some well, continue to have conversations, a little bit more advanced conversations about addressing some of these issues. And and so I I just wanna make sure that I'm giving you the most
up to date position there. And then finally, these are the critical themes across both of those groups, that there's this building versus district gap. There's strong principal support, but weak district backing. Again, that 41% gap and 34%, gap. The nothing response, the most common answer to the question on the questionnaire, what does the district do right, was nothing.
The political climate, and parent groups, and, again, that's safe to tell misuse creating fear. And then the isolation created, both groups need community concerns I mean, community connections in affinity spaces. And then the need for explicit action, wanting active protection and celebration, not just absence of discrimination. Again, the retention, and then the idea of intersectionality, that some face multiple forms of discrimination, race and gender, and orientation. And then I included a key quote here. Listen and implement our ideas, acknowledge and address discrimination head on.
Finally, marginalized groups experienced significantly lower safety rates with strong building level support undermined by weak or absent district level backing. It seems to me and emote that we have a belonging problem. With that, I will pass the clicker to the lovely Elizabeth Kantner. Thanks. My name is Elizabeth Kantner. I'm the JCA treasurer. I'm here to give a report on some of the supports that we provide our
educators. JCA believes strongly in building our community from within. One of the ways we do this is by maintaining and awarding scholarships for recent GEFCO graduates and for current teachers. During this past GEFCO Gives Day, we raised 8,147 from 131 donors for the excellence fund. That's the fund that we use, to provide these scholarships. We also have two other scholarships that we oversee that were that money was entrusted to us, to help give out these scholarships.
Every year, we award five new student recipients continuing scholarships, so every year that they're in school. And we give two teachers a scholarship for their continuing education. I am now handing this over to Whitney Newman. Right? Oh, that's right. Just that. Oh, okay. I'm just gonna use this. Thank you. Alright. My name is Whitney Newman. I am chair of the political action team for JCA, and I teach third grade Elk Creek Elementary. So whether our kids come from the plains, the mountains, or the cities, and whether
families have been here for generations or recently arrived, every student in Colorado deserves a fully funded public school where they can learn, grow, and thrive. But for more than thirty years, certain politicians and corporate interests have kept an artificial revenue cap in place that ties public education funding up in ropes so tightly that our schools cannot grow or keep up with student needs. They use divisive and distracting tactics to shift attention away from the state's chronic underfunding and instead blame teachers, scapegoat community of color, and pit working class people against each
other. They do this to avoid updating a broken funding system that harms all of our kids. This arbitrary cap prevents Colorado from using the money our state already collects, leaving every student underfunded by about $4,000 each year and creating a $4,000,000,000 shortfall in the neighborhood schools that we all depend on. So tonight, I have a call to action. Let's cut those ropes and free the funding our students deserve. Join educators, families, community members across Colorado in calling on our GEFCO legislators and legislators
across the state to refer a ballot measure to the twenty twenty six ballot to free up money that Colorado already collects for k 12 schools. Urge your lawmakers to give voters a chance to secure the resources our kids need to thrive by getting involved, and we have three ways you can do that. We have a postcard campaign that's sitting at your table right now that we've already, we've already started back in December. And our goal, is to have, in GEFCO, over a thousand postcards delivered to our
GEFCO legislators on January 29. That's when our lobby day is. So a group of educators, take time off and we go to the Capitol and we lobby our legislators and talk to them about funding. And our day is on the twenty ninth, and that's when we're going to deliver all of these postcards. And so I know these are geared towards teachers, but we've had community members already just tell a little story on the back about how funding affects them as a community member or their students or their kids. The other way, that you can get involved is by passing a board resolution, which
is linked here in the slides. And why this is so important is because when you publicly announce and show that you support public education across the state, that builds power. And so that's, board resolution that boards across the state are getting from educators, and Gunnison has already passed their their board resolution. And there's others that are gonna be passing it in February, like Pooter, Littleton. So that's something I would love to work on with you to pass next month. And then lastly, we have a liaison, educator liaison team program, and Tina and Peter
might not know about it yet, but you will soon. Tina and Peter. I said Tina and Peter. Oh, I thought Okay. Tina and Peter. And so what this is is we started it last year where educators volunteer to build relationships with you, keep in touch with you throughout the year, to talk about, education in GEFCO and across the state. So those are the educators right now that are assigned to you, and some of them have already reached out and met with some of you, And that's something we, wanna keep as a collaboration.
And that's all I have, so I'm gonna pass it down to Colin. Alright. Good evening, members of the Board and Superintendent Dolan. Wonderful to see you all again as always. And for, the members of the Board who I haven't met individually, wonderful to meet you. My name is Colin Ferraro. I am an English teacher at Wheat Ridge High School, and, I've been working in GEFCO for the last six years now. I'm also the chair of the early career educator action team here for, JCEA. And I will also be speaking on behalf of Monica Keegan who is the head
of the Professional Practices Action Team because she couldn't be here tonight. Now the good news is that I've been serving on the same committee that Monica is going to be talking about here for the last three years. So I have a pretty deep knowledge of what the Professional Growth Funds is what's going on with it, and I'm happy to give you some info. So just so we're all on the same page, in case anybody is unaware of what the Professional Growth Funds Committee is, it's essentially a committee where teachers in the district who are looking to develop their practice are able to apply for funds that
we then disperse to them so they can pursue, professional development opportunities around the state. So say, for example, there's a band teacher who wants to go to a music sort of conference. Thank you. I almost said festival. They would apply to that. Right? We would review their application, and then we would say, yeah. Go for it. Right? Now the cool thing about this is that, Jennifer Kimson has done a really good job over the last three years of just getting this program exposed. Right? I remember the first year that I was working on this committee with Jennifer.
We hardly passed $20,000 that we dispersed to educators across the district. Last year, we were able to get $29,000 out to around 80 educators, and this year, it has exploded in popularity. As of November 2025, which is just the halfway mark of the year, we've awarded over $35,000 to 66 applicants, and we still have half the year to go. So we have done a great job together, give props to Jennifer, seriously, of getting that program known to our educators, and it looks like our educators are taking advantage
of the program as they should. I myself have done the same thing. It's an awesome opportunity. So we're doing some great work over on Professional Growth Funds and the Professional Practice Team. And once again, I just want to express my deep gratitude towards Jennifer for all the work that she's done for this in particular. Now on the other end, on the Early Career Educator Action Team piece, I just wanna say, as always, induction was a huge success. I've had the pleasure of working with the induction team, Lianne Kalupa, and her whole team for the last couple years, and, it always just goes so seamless.
For any of the board members who haven't been to an induction event, consider this an informal invite on behalf of me. The Induction event is one of the only opportunities that we get to be able to meet new educators to our district, new educators to the profession face to face and the atmosphere is always electric. So, if you haven't had a chance I would highly recommend coming and stopping by. It's a great time. The other thing that we're doing over the Early Career Educator Action Team piece is offering other PD to new educators that doesn't always get covered during the induction process.
Right? There is so much knowledge that a teacher needs to know about how their job works that just can't feasibly be covered in a two year induction process. So we are kinda aiming to fill those gaps. One of the most popular offerings we have at JCEA is something I like to call pizza parties and pay raises. It's where I teach educators how the salary schedule works and how to get across it efficiently so they can, provide for themselves and their families. Right? It's been an awesome opportunity and we're gonna continue to do it over the next couple years. And finally the last thing I'd like to talk about is just a little bit
of a call for help to be honest with you. So in order to paint the picture appropriately I just want to spend a brief moment talking about my career in this profession. So I started working in January 2020. I'm homegrown, alright. Started at Wheat Ridge, still at Wheat Ridge today, but January 2020 was two months before the pandemic hit. So my entire first like three years of working as a professional teacher were marred by the pandemic, right? And there was a lot going on, not just the pandemic, but as a new
educator you're up against a whole lot of things that teaching programs don't really prepare you for, right? It's like, how do I learn how to grade the most efficiently so I don't have to spend hours doing it at home, especially for an English teacher who has to grade, like, capstone papers. Right? It's also the point of trying to figure out what you're doing day to day. Because when I started working, I didn't have a curriculum that I could pull from, and I couldn't talk to my colleague because I was at home. Right? So whenever, you know, right around 2021, people my colleagues at work would start asking me if they, you know, they assumed that I wanted a community space where I
could just talk about teacher stuff and have a place where I feel like I belong. So, you know, my colleagues in the department, they would be like, Hey, Collin, do you wanna go to this after school? And I would always have to deny them. No. I gotta figure out what I'm doing on Monday. No. I gotta grade all these these papers. Right? It's really tough in those first three years as a teacher because you have to figure out how to make it sustainable for yourself. And because of that, it's incredibly difficult to perform outreach for early educators in particular. Right? We have tried various things over on our end for JCEA.
You know, we've tried happy hours. We've tried mentor programs, and it's still it's difficult to engage and perform outreach for early career educators because they gotta focus on proving themselves as a teacher first. And for me, that's what came first. I was basically just calling the teacher. I wasn't calling the human. And so, we're looking for those opportunities. If anyone on the board has any thoughts as to how we can better engage, outreach, and activate our early career educators, we know that homegrown talent is the, best
talent to have and cultivate here in the district. So if you have any thoughts, I would love to collaborate. That's all for me. Thank you guys so much. I'm gonna pass this over to Emma Hartman. Hello, board and superintendent Dornan. My name is Emma Hartman, sheher. I am the community organizing action team chair and also music educator at Sierra Elementary. I received those professional growth funds to attend Colorado Music Educators Association conference at the end of the month, so thank you so much. Wish it was a festival. It's a conference. I'm bringing Grub Club to your attention tonight.
We know that a hungry student cannot focus well during a math test or any class. And while our schools provide vital nutrition during the week, like breakfast and lunch and snack, the hunger gap on weekends remain remains a barrier to equity and achievement. So the JCA Grub Club is our educator led solution providing bags of nutritious food for students to take home on Fridays. To sustain and grow this mission, we need your help and the community's help in three ways. By donating, there are flyers that are different forever articulation area.
There's even one here at the Ed Center that I saw down at the welcome desk, which is awesome to see that they already have it posted. It could be a hygiene item that they are bringing in. It could be mac and cheese. It could be trail mix. Something specific for that articulation area. There's also a QR code on it, which I found that's been really successful for my population that might not might find it easier on the grocery run to just be able to, like, I would rather just pull this from my bank account instead of do a specific item on my Costco run. So on there, you can share that.
And it's also easy for families who, are don't have a student in school right now that it could be going to, like, Engage GEFCO or things like that where they don't have a student in the building, and then they can still donate via the QR code. We also need lots of volunteers to help us. We need your hands as well. We have lots of sorting and packing to do on March, so look for an email from me in your inboxes.
We could really use some help. Many hands make light work on that day when all of the food from the schools and the hygiene items from the schools come to the JCA office. And then just spread the words, amongst your, community groups. And by bridging this gap in the weekends, we can ensure students come back to school on Monday ready to learn. You can find more information on the JCA website. Passing it along to Ange. Good evening, board members. Yes, thank you. My name is Ange Anderson.
I am a social studies teacher and I serve as the JCA secretary. Before the break, the district announced the cuts, which you heard about earlier. And we had requested information on which which departments would be experiencing those cuts. And especially for our new board members, when we're looking at the department cuts, it's essential at the district level. That includes folks like our nurses, our CLDE educators, our GT educators, our curriculum specialists,
many of the folks in who are doing instructional technology support for educators. Those are all people who are in our bargaining unit. So they are people who are going to be impacted by some of these cuts. We've received lots of questions from our members, but we have not gotten much information from the district side so that we can answer the questions, support members who may be going through displacement. And we submitted a CORA request to receive the information, and we're told due to extenuating circumstances, we will respond to your request by Wednesday, January 14.
So the information we learned tonight is is out there. We will definitely be referencing the budget presentation from tonight. But, we have concerns about the lack of transparency and collaboration that have occurred in the process. It doesn't make us feel like equal partners. It makes us feel like we're an afterthought. And the other thing that we just would encourage you to remember is that the budget is ultimately your responsibility.
And, we would encourage you to not let decisions be made for you, that you take those principles that you ran on, and that you be part of these conversations, and that you ensure that these cuts are staying away from our students and our educators, and that we have as much as we can to teach our kids every day when they're with us. So I am going to pass it back to Dale to finish up, and thank you for having us.
Alright. And that concludes our presentation today. So, again, thank you all to all of you for allowing us this time to come, do this presentation, this annual presentation that we do every January. And at this time, we would entertain any questions or comments. Thank you all. May I have. Board members. Doctor. Echeverria. Thank you. Thanks for being here tonight. I appreciate it. I have two questions. One of them kind of prompted by my freshman at Stanley Lake. So I'll start with that one because it's fun. How do you see changes in technology like AI impacting how parents and students can
access the public education system in the next five years? Could I ask for a clarification? What do you mean about or by the term access to public education system? So, things how how is AI impacting kids accessing education? And they talked about the cell phone bans and stuff too. But I know, for example, my son and my daughter, who's in college, they were having a big debate. It lasted, like, three days over winter break, regarding are we even gonna need to
know how to write in five years? So things like that. How is it going to impact, these kiddos who kind of are maybe believing that they don't need to know how to write in five years. Does anyone wanna take this? Because I could. I think at the elementary level, we have guidance by the district that we follow, and AI is still a very experimental thing. And so when you're using AI as an educator, you have to be very cautious about how you're using it. And I'm not sure that I know in at the elementary level, kids are not
using AI in my building because we because of privacy rights. So that's what I would say at the elementary level is, we're not quite using it for our students. I'm going to jump in quick and then you. Is that all right? I think that we need to contemplate it as a tool and that you need to know how to use that tool in order for it to be net positive. I think if we're relying on it with to do everything without the other skills there, that it can lead, to deficits, learning deficits.
I it's it's interesting that I talk to my students a lot about, because and again, like, I went through school before any of this was I'm like a a dinosaur in terms of all of that, but, there are things like spelling, things like vocabulary acquisition. The number one way to improve that is reading and the way the process information is writing. And the data would show that even handwriting, there's there's a brain connection that happens with that that's far more powerful than anything you would do on a computer. And so I think that we need to not, you know, throw out all of
that because, oh, we have AI, why would I have to you know, thinking it's this being creative, that's part of being a human. And and we need to be nurturing that part of our students as well. And that that this is a tool that they can use when needed, but the ideas, should come from them and that and that some of that comes from the old fashioned, a, being bored and having to invent things on their own, b, reading a book, you know, where they have to struggle through, that they that they're learning that stick to itiveness and, vocab acquisition, etcetera, and then the process of of handwriting
something out. Sometimes an idea comes to you that you're not gonna get from typing. I noticed that I'm I teach Spanish, and, I have them handwrite basically everything, you know, in my class, and I get much better results from that. They can look up words if they want to, separately, but when they're in the classroom in front of me, so I think that I think that we have to be cautious about how we're moving forward with it, because I think that there can be, positive aspects. You know, it can do so much so much quicker than what we can do,
but it shouldn't replace. Something that gives me a little bit of hope maybe, my niece is a junior going into education. And we were hanging out early fall and before she went back to school. And she was watching some video on social media, and then she was digging into it, and she found out it was created by AI. And it was like an interview with Adam Sandler. And she was so angry. And so, the folks that our future students our future educators who are in college now, they're already having to deal with this. So, hopefully, they're going to be able to come in and teach us some things
that will help us as well as be able to talk to their own students. Over the break, I think I watched The Martian five times. It was, like, on repeat. And this was one of the things that I brought up with kids that are college age and they were home over the break, and we were talking about how, he was a doctor and he knew all of these things. And he went to books to get information and got some support, but, really, he did it all himself. And, like, there is gonna come a time, and I think it's a point of pride, at least my kids think that it's a point of pride that you can
do it yourself, you know, that that's your real creative thing that came out. And maybe it's not in everything, but I think that if we keep pushing that narrative that you should take pride in your education, that your education is for you. Right? It's for you to to navigate the world. Right? So what what do you want to make of your life? Right? That's a lot of the conversation I have with my high school students. So Thank you so much.
Can I ask my or are you gonna answer too? No, please. Okay. I was gonna ask my serious question next. Since I'm new, in the past, what do you see as the as two of the most impactful changes that the JCEA and the board have made together working together to improve student achievement? I I would say one of them. One of those the things that that we did together was, redoing the the salary schedule. Teachers teach because they love teaching.
Students learn because of the teachers that are in their classroom. And by redoing the salary schedule, it gave incentives to teachers to stay in GEFCO, good quality teachers to stay in GEFCO because now they can reach the top of the pay scale much quicker than they could have in the past. Never in my lifetime did I ever think that I or any other teacher in this district would be making 6 figures ever. I thought that was a pipe dream. Now it's possible. And so we're able to retain really good quality, experienced teachers in the classroom.
And I think that it that impact bleeds over into the classroom because, you know, kids gotta have the teacher in the classroom. And if they don't have that quality teacher, then their achievement levels definitely begin, you know, to to fall off. So I think that would be one of the things that I would say that we did to improve student achievement in the district is restructuring the pay schedule so we can retain those teachers. And, again, I'm thinking of it through negotiations, but one of the things I'm proudest
of is the article 10, which talks about collaboration. And so, I think that the way that we restructured our school collaboration teams to mirror what was happening at the district level has been really powerful, that we have these buckets of decision makers that include educators, and administrators and counselors, etcetera, on, so the OLT is, organizational. So you're looking at things like schedules, etcetera, testing timelines. And then you've got the ALT, which looks at academics, so planning PDs, and then
PBST, which is student behavior. So you have these groups where you're having a lot of voices across the school that can help, make decisions, and those educators feel empowered that, you know, they can talk from their experience of what they're seeing in their classrooms, and they can bring that to to a come to a maybe a better process or, strategy to help our students. So to me, that's that's been very powerful. Other directors? Please go ahead. I have four questions. So first and foremost, I wanna thank all of you for coming out here this evening to speak with us.
And, so my first question is there was a concern, relayed on one of the slides about, behavioral issues and how it presents a concern regarding safety. And so I just kinda wanna know and this is to anyone, including superintendent Dorland. I don't know if maybe you can answer this. But I'm curious to understand, you know, what's the district doing to help the schools standardize the discipline in holding students accountable? Or is this solely just at the at the school level? Okay. So what I'm seeing from feedback from our educators is that within the schools, there's
a a huge difference between maybe how certain administrations are gonna deal with escalating student behaviors. And, even in the in the schools where they're trying to get it right, they they have told me that they feel pushed back from the district, that they are not allowed to address certain behaviors. And and again, like, I I understand there's this friction between we don't wanna be suspending kids, you know, having them out of class, but then there's also peace with safety. And, you know, if if teachers and other students don't feel safe in the classroom, then what do we do? And so I think that sometimes in the schools, they're feeling like, help, we are
on fire here. We need help with this. And that's when when you're up at the end, you don't maybe feel what that's like every day to be in that classroom. And so I think that there's a different spin on that where where the priority is different. And so, what I'm hearing from and what what we're seeing is that when we're having a situation, especially with maybe a particular student again and again and again and again in a classroom that's not being addressed, or then the rest of the students
in the classroom are not having access to their education because it's the priority of the one student over the many when they're being sent to back to the class. We also hear that, there are schools that are trying to use restorative justice practices, but I don't think they're always being implemented with fidelity. I think there's a big misunderstanding of what that means. So they talk about how they feel, but then there's no there's also meant to be a consequence with that, and that piece of it is what's missing. And as an example, I, you know, I know I'm not in the old school where this has happened, where a kid that has used highly inappropriate language, threatened other
students, and comes back to the class with a sucker and a pat on the back. And this happened over and over and over again with the same student. And Other kids in the class didn't feel safe. And so it felt like, where's our support? What do we do so that all the students have the access to the education without dis disruptions? And so my position currently in the district is through collaboration. We have me in a space where I'm going in and I'm doing building visits and working with educators and supporting them, and then working with some of our district
folks to share concerns and problem solve, and even supporting administrators and, interpreting contract things and whatever. So, what it what we're when it's working right, what we're seeing is that schools have put together a prevention and intervention manual that, it has if this behavior happens, these are the consequences, and it is followed. In the best cases of that, we see huge engagement from the social emotional specialists,
mental health teams, sometimes a dean. But there is that prevention piece is part of it. Right? It's not just the consequence part. It's also the prevention part. So there are some really great examples of schools that are doing an amazing job, and then we have schools where our educators really don't feel safe. So we have the spectrum. And that manual, from what I recall on the presentation, there are some schools, some educators that haven't even heard of it. So what can the district, what can the board do in terms of making sure
that that manual is available, that everyone has an awareness around it, if if that's a thing that's gonna help? I am not sure, but I will think about it. I know that principals know that they're supposed to do it. It's in the contract. Mhmm. It's something we bargained. And there's a district PNI manual, but then schools are supposed to take that district model and make it use those guidelines to personalize it for their school. And so, maybe that's something community superintendents could help support with, but certainly something I'm
willing to think about and have more conversations on. Thank you. I look forward to it. Thank you. Three more questions. In the presentation, I think it was in the section with emote, there was some statistics that were shared about safety, folks feeling safe at school. I'm just curious. Do you have any information on how safety was defined in regards to those surveys? I mean, and perhaps someone from the bargaining team. I'm not familiar with the exact language, so you may It just said, do you feel safe in your workplace?
It wasn't defined any more. We figured when they would give us the comments, when they would have time to respond, they could respond with specific examples. We just said, do you feel safe when you go to your workspace? Thank you. And then I was curious to understand in terms of all employees here in Jefferson County, what is the training or is there a training that's currently offered to all staff regarding equity and discrimination and there's nothing? There is that, the beginning last year, the bias training, And so that was the
number five out of 145 schools over the last two years. That rate, it would take fifty eight years just to get through the Module one. That's the training. That's one of the trainings is the contract language doesn't limit it to that, but that was where we chose to begin. Got it. Thank you. And then my last question is there was a link for the oh goodness. What was it? The resolution. Yes. The res yes. The resolution. Is that supposed to be clickable to is it supposed to take me somewhere?
It does. Okay. Because it wasn't working for me. Mine didn't work either. Oh, my lord. Okay. Could you I was this is gonna be something I asked. Would it be possible to send either myself or even Kristen or Erin just a copy, and we'll circulate it? Thank you so much. Appreciate it. I'm gonna kick myself if I don't go back to the discipline, question that you asked because I we just went through stories. I was reading through the stories that educators had left. And a common theme that I saw in those stories is parent involvement with discipline
that's occurring in the school. And I don't know what that looks like, but that was a common thread that showed up that we would like to have more parent involvement in some way, shape, or form when their student reaches that level of we don't have any answers. What does that look like? Some things that I'm not suggesting this, but some things that were said were, like, reverse suspensions, like, where the parent has to come or something like that. I don't know what the exactly this was just that's the one thing that's coming
out in my head. But, like, that would that came up a lot was parent and, like, community involvement with the suspension. So Other Board members? Yes, a couple of things. First off, I appreciate you starting off with the survey data. As somebody who's worked in the labor movement, that's not always shared in that way. So I wanna applaud and encourage that kind of transparency, particularly for bargaining surveys especially. Along those lines, I also wanna encourage sort of more sort of getting educator feedback,
aggregating it, and communicating it to the district, to this board. Again, from my own experience in public sector labor unions, that can be a really helpful way, in particular, to get ideas to the top that otherwise wouldn't filter up despite the best efforts of principals. To that end, where you're identifying problems and, you know, themes of issues you're seeing across buildings, if you could also identify those buildings where it's working well, I think that would be hugely beneficial. And then in terms of this, I did just wanna ask on this educator liaison,
if I want people to pick pick up my house, does that mean I call Amy? Is that how that works? Or If Amy is listening, she's a great person to call for that. Okay. All right. Just wondering. I was feeling left out. Just to respond to, like, what's working well, that was a question that we did ask on the survey this year, like, what's working well. Yeah. We can disaggregate that, and and I'm sure we'll share that during bargaining. Well, and if if you're able to, if you see particular problems where you're maybe not hearing what's working well, maybe affirmatively asking people like, okay, we're seeing this is
an issue we're seeing in many places. Because you may have people who they're not mentioning it, it's working well, and that's why they're not mentioning it. But that could I just I think that could be incredibly useful to help identify best practices and and solutions that otherwise would not be readily apparent to to others. Director Kenworthy. Okay. I have a lot. I'm just I'm gonna let you all know. But I I have numbered them, and we'll go through them fast. I have them in order. The first thing I wanna bring up also, by the way, I love it when y'all come. Thank you for coming and spending time with us. My first question is about the survey questions.
Are they I'm I think I'm understanding that they are not always the same from year to year. You do the the survey every year, but it's not the same questions. Yeah. We change it every year, and we do that based on is it a full reopener year, in which case we have to ask about the whole contract. If we know we're only gonna be bringing a couple of issues, we'll narrow that down. And a lot of times, we do that based on what are we hearing, you know, with our people that are out in buildings. If nobody is talking about, you know, article five, you know, then maybe we don't really need to ask much about that.
But if we keep hearing this one concern over over that has to do with article nine, we better ask some questions about that because it's it's clearly a a hot topic. Okay. So this this activity is more to figure out what the hot topics are, the hot buttons, not to track trends over time or see if things are getting better or worse for comparison from year to year? Some well, because sometimes we'll say, hey. We've made these improvements in Article 10 collaboration. How is collaboration working at your school? And so, you know, so those will be questions that we ask, maybe not in
the same way every year, you know, because it kinda depends on, you know, what's coming up that year. But but we do try to come back and circle back, especially, like, when we reopen every, you know, three to four years, that would be a question that would come up again, like, okay, this is a question about that article. Let's see, you know, where were we at four years ago? Where are we at now? So Okay. We also dig into the TLCC data, which is every other year, and there is a lot of consistency there. Okay. And so that helps.
And then this year, one reason we asked about the what's working well is we know that with the budget challenges, money is gonna be a hard conversation. So looking for solutions that already exist that might be pretty cost neutral was a big part of what we were thinking about this year. Yeah. And to encourage maintaining the things that are working. Right? Okay. Thank you for that. My next question or I don't know, wondering. The question about payouts of unused leave, I think I heard you say something about
wanting to do it at the end of each year. Is that what I heard? Yeah. So we've been working on, leaves language for a number of years now. And, I mean, again, there's a cost associated. So sometimes we have to look at, you know, where do we put our dollars. But something that's come up year over year is that, right now, they have to wait until they've put twenty years into the district to get any payout for that time. And so, one suggestion was moving that timeline down, you know, to year 15 or year 12, etcetera.
That was one thing that's come up that our members ask for. Another thing is, so our leave time that we get throughout the year, would there be because, we did a whole we did research on this. There was a joint district and bargaining team that did work on this as like a straw design group last year, and we looked at nine districts that we were most competitive with in this region. And five of the nine did a payout system where you could basically sell back some of your time to the district as sort of a year end bonus situation. And, a lot of times there are guardrails set up around that like, you know,
you had to not take more than three days by the January or something. And the idea is that it was to reward people for, not using overusing their time maybe and being thoughtful about that knowing that they might be paid out for it. So that is a solution that we were looking for and part of it was to manage, like, how, you know, how are people using their sick and personal time. And then part of it was a big a huge part of it was how can we, do something for our early edgy earlier educator teachers because, you know, the
pay is is quite low because the idea, of course, with the teacher salary is that it's deferred compensation. You know, you're not gonna get paid much at the beginning knowing that that's gonna go up over time. But when you're at those first couple of years, it's really hard. It's really hard. I remember my first year, I think I had, like, $400 left over at the end of paying my bills. And I'm like, how am I gonna live on $400 for a month and stuff? So yeah. So, that was if if we knew that we could give them some kind of a little bonus at the end, that would be a huge thing because we know that they also take part time jobs, etcetera, and that would help ease the burden.
So that was part of the problem we were trying to solve. That context is really helpful because what I wrote in my notes was I don't wanna incentivize our staff to not use their break. They deserve the breaks that they deserve Of course. In an effort to earn a bonus. That's something I'm concerned about. I'll just add something on the other end of that. A lot of teachers who are at the end of their careers, have a lot a lot of them have a lot of time saved up. I have almost a thousand hours, you know, banked. When I retire in a couple of years, I'm gonna get paid six sixty hours.
And what we've noticed has happened with teachers who were in that position, they start burning a lot of sub days, you know, burning down their their time. And so that's a lot of time that's missed, a lot of contact time that's missed in the classroom between teachers and the students because now there's a substitute in there. Then there's increased pressure on the subsystem, you know, when this happens. And, it's fairly predictable. It happens on Fridays, happens on Mondays, you know, that these teachers are out.
And and, you know, I so I think this was something else to, you know, on the other end of that, looking to try to alleviate that. Right. That's I I appreciate it. Thank you for that. My third thing, I just wanna say that we are required to have a cell phone policy by this summer. So that is some work that we will have to pick up, and that's because of, legislation last year. There will be a presentation about where that process is and the schools and staff who've been involved in that design and development next week.
If you're interested, tune in. Alright. My next question is about bargaining. Last year, at the towards the end of the bargaining, there were board members at the table. It wasn't a majority of the board members. It was, just for reasons. But I am wondering if that is a practice that we should continue. I mean, I I do think it is important for you, especially because you're ultimately the ones making the decisions. You're the ones that have to ratify the agreement.
That's down to you. So I think the more knowledge you have about the process, the better. I think it's also an opportunity. I I noticed that when you were at the table, you didn't participate much, but it but if you had questions or concerns, that would be a great time to maybe raise those so that we could address them. Because a lot of times there has been, I feel like, a disconnect where maybe you guys didn't know exactly, like, why is everybody so angry? We're not sure what's going on. And when you're in the room, then you have the context for, you know, what
people are excited about or what they're upset about. So, yeah, I think it's important for you to be in the room when you can. I I will say I found it incredibly informative, in ways that were not similar to when I sat at home and tried to watch either the feed or the recording of sessions. So I'm I'm just curious about that conversation and if that's a practice to continue. I thought it went well, but I know that there's mixed reviews about that, so just wanted to ask. No. I think it's powerful. And I think it's, you know, the more knowledge that we all have, the better,
you know? So Alright. Thanks. My next item, number five. This is about the obvious amount of work that needs to go into our anti bias, implementation and our support of educators of color. And I I wrote down in my notes that GEFCO requires uncommon growth in anti bias implementation because even with training, that doesn't always equal application. Right? And so we have to get past the training into application and actual cultural change.
That's what the point is of spending time doing training and so we've got to do the training to get to where we need to be after that training. And so this is something I feel is an urgent conversation that we need to have, but I also know that, Superintendent Dorland and I will be there on the fourteenth to meet with you. And so I'm looking forward to those ongoing conversations. Thank you for the detail. And I had my my reading material here with me tonight. So I was making notes.
And, the other thing I wanna say there is just that I I'm really supportive of affinity spaces. I think it's incredibly important. And my question then, I guess, is is that something that you want the district to facilitate? Or is is that something that you want someone else to facilitate? Or how, like, how would we get that started? I don't think I should start an affinity group for a group that I'm not identifying with or that I'm not a part of. No. I I I think I see it we see it as a a joint effort
between, JCEA and the district in that, you know, maybe the district, supports us by providing a place, you know, giving us access to the educators that we need to reach out to. But, certainly, it it as a partnership, with the district as we do that work as part of the other work. Yeah. I appreciate that. That's helpful. I was just kind of curious and wondering what what would be the obstacles to starting that. Alright. That was I'm halfway through.
Y'all doing great. Number six, the political action team. My questions first of all, I'm going to let you know I will be there on the twenty ninth, at the Capitol with y'all, and that I am supportive. I did get to read the resolution, and I'm supportive of it. So I just wanted to say that also. And then my question is, is the political action team in the habit of picking kind of one sole project per year, or is there more of a both and approach if there are multiple things, that are being worked on?
We do a lot. And and as my role I'm also a year round organizer with CEA, so I bring a lot of that work into Pat, which is the Cut the Ropes campaign. So it depends on the year too. Like, we did the, the budget stabilization factor was something we've done in the past. This year's Cut the Ropes. But not only that, we have the liaison program to keep communication back and forth around state issues because we know state issues also and money, trickles down to the
bargaining, and to our local. We also do, interviews for legislators, when their seats are up. Sometimes we get into the primaries. Most of the time we don't. We also, we walk. So we organize for initiatives. We organize for, board members. Sometimes we walk for, legislators, GEFCO legislators. Yeah. I wanna dial into this year. This year. This coming year, November 2026, is the intent to put full force, effort into just
one project, or is there opportunity to work on multiple initiatives Mhmm. This this coming election? Yeah. I mean, we always jump on the different initiatives when it, when it comes to public education. So we have the Virginia campaign. We're working with we're keeping collaboration with board members this year. We're doing roundtables. Those are the biggest things our focus are right now. And a lot of what we do at the state level is led by CEA, unless it's something that we take to CEA and then force them to do in
the rest of the state. But I sit also on the CEA board and the NEA board. So I'm in a lot of different spaces. But, we have groups inside of the CEA structure who choose, like, which ballot things we're going to get involved with, if it's something we're going to introduce working with community partners. So to cut the ropes is to lead to well, this one is pushing, our legislators to put something on the ballot to refer a measure around funding.
Sometimes we are doing petitions around funding. So right now, I don't know of anything else. We're anticipating potentially having to fight another, school choice bill. Yeah. We're working on the state insurance. Thank you. We're working on the state insurance with the lobbying. That won't be in November. That'll be at during the legislative session. And And then maybe local initiatives. Are those open? Like, talk to us. Yeah. Yeah. Like like an MLO or a bond conversation. That's where that's what I'm bringing this around to is Okay.
Yeah. Yeah. We're already talking about those kind of things. Yeah. I literally just put that down. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It is. Yeah. That's what I was try that's what I was getting to. And that I just wanted to have a conversation, because Yeah. That's why it's so important to have an MOU pass for the for the MOU. We're working on an MOU right now with the district for MLO participation and language and and what that would look like. So, we've already had one meeting. We're hoping to have some language done that would direct that work and our participation
in that work, hopefully, by the February. Alright. And we are a democratic organization. So once we get some mill language, we will have to take that to our membership to make sure they support that language. And then as far as the funding side of it goes, we will have to present that to CEA. We can't commit funds without CEA's approval. So there are other steps in that too. Great. That context is incredibly helpful. I would add one quick thing, having gone through a lot of these. In the past, it's been us and Jespa who have done a lot of the
work knocking on doors and and all that for, for Mill and Bond. And one of the sources of frustration that has recurred over and over and over and over over the last several decades that I've done this is lack of lack of people from this building showing up with us to knock on doors. In twenty seven years that I've done this, I have walked with one person, one
administrator from this building in twenty seven years. So that would be another thing that we we we would have to discuss. Yeah. Okay. I thank you for speaking that in the room. I appreciate it. That was that question. I'm gonna move on to number seven for board members, is to let you know that it is worth going to induction. I went to one last year and had an excellent experience, not just talking to incoming teachers, but also the range of resources, and community partners that are there is amazing to be able to make those connections.
I wanted to give a shout out to that. Number eight, I wanted to suggest you a grading party. If people are saying no to getting together because they have to grade, then have a grading party. Where people can help one another grade stuff maybe or have a rubric, whatever. But and then pizza. I don't know. Don't yeah. Were you thinking pizza? Yeah. That's what I was thinking. So have a grading party. I also had an idea about asynchronous and then also some sort of, meet up with another new teacher kind of a thing, maybe within the same school or at a closed school, just to make some additional professional connections outside of the building.
And then where my number nine, what is what was the start date for Grub Club? It was back in December. The start date was December 9, and then that drop off date, number '13, '14, or March. Okay. It's when it ends. Great. So that brings me to number 10, which I have been thinking about for two years now, is that I would like to invite my fellow board members into a friendly competition between us and our articulation areas to participate and see which articulation area
in which district has the highest participation. Is that something possible to track? Is that something that we can Hold on. What's the definition of participation? I mean, just like people people donating and and Dollars or numbers of donations? Sorry. Engineers kind of I want to aggregate it altogether. Number number of participants? Yeah. Maybe it's maybe it's number of participants. If they use their specific QR code for their articulation area, if they just go to, like, a the general QR code and they don't go to the second click
of their artic area, then it just goes to a general. But Okay. So I've asked for this competition after you already set up your structure, which is problematic. I understand. So I'm I'm I'm going to I'm just going to limit it to, actual items donated, not dollars this year because there is an opportunity for dollars to get missed, and go into a different pot. So just items. So encourage your articulation areas to participate in Grub Club. It's on. And I don't know what the reward is. Like, bragging rights maybe. But, anyway, game on.
That's it. And I'm done. Thanks. Thank you, director Kenworthy. I get to wrap us up. Thank you for being here. The work that you all do is is tremendous, and the fact that you're here 08:30 on a school night, is not missed. And so I know you have I know you have for different purposes, albeit for different purposes. I will I will be quick. There are a few questions I have, and I appreciate the questions that my fellow directors have asked because they've been very good and numbered. In the survey response at the very beginning, you mentioned that teachers or educators would
like to see training around I'm I'm saying safety. I know that's not right, but it was like, what type of training and I can get to that page. What type of training would be beneficial that would help with I'm getting to this slide. More training, support, and consistency to help foster a safe learning environment. What type of training is included in that? So I think, first of all, having every school that has a PNI manual and is trained on it. For example, in my school, I our PBST was supposed to do it, and they
didn't realize that that really had to be done. They didn't feel like doing it at that time. You know? So I was like, no. It's actually in the contract. You have to do it. And then they weren't really sure where so I think they needed a little a little bit of of assistance in that. And I know that we had an example, an exemplar shared with us, which I know was, created and it's escaping my her name right now. She did a really great job with it though and, sharing that with the schools. But I think just knowing that there's a resource there, they don't have to create the wheel themselves. There's something there that they can just take and tweak for their particular population.
But the school that because even if they have them, some of them haven't been trained on it. They're and you have new teachers and new administrators that come in that they aren't aware that that training needs to be ongoing. De escalation practices would be really, really helpful as well. And and then helping understand, like, if a situation happens where a student is violent, what do I do as a teacher legally? Like, what what what are my steps? Because a lot of times our teachers don't know, and they're afraid of intervening because I I can't touch, you know, I I I'm afraid I don't wanna get sued,
but then also if this kid is being violent, they're gonna hurt themselves and others. So what do we do? And so I think that that kind of training would be really helpful in helping teachers, educators understand, you know, the legality behind it, you know, what are the to dos, who do they call. And, yeah, I would say that would be really important. Thank you. That's helpful. Mister Kelly, thank you for the very, thorough report out on the emote group. It's it's it's great to see the numbers, and it is very helpful for us to hear it. You mentioned a few times that there was safe to tell misuse.
Can you give me an example of of what that looks like or what what folks are worried about? Again, that's information that was taken from the bargaining survey, so I would defer to someone from the bargaining team, who was more familiar with the language. Perfect. Thank you. So from what and anybody that had gone through this can jump in, but, where a particular educator was targeted through the safe to tell based on either race or, gender identity or sexual orientation, etcetera. And so maybe if there is a teacher that identifies as gay and there is
a safe to tell that was made about them that was inaccurate, that was used as a way to hurt them. That is my understanding of the situation. K. Thank you. Can you say more about hurt them? Like, what personnel action was taken? Yeah. For them to be called out, for them to maybe be put on leave, an accusation was made that never happened. So I that is my understanding of of how that misuse is. I can do some more digging into that to see if if I go through the comments again, if I find something more specific.
But, you know, when, like, false allegations are made, it's a way to then get that teacher maybe in trouble, cause problems for them, make them feel uncomfortable, call them out. That that's my understanding of how it was you've misused. Yeah. I I would say my understanding also is that it it's a draw off of negative attention Mhmm. That can be a distraction for educators. And so understanding where there's unfounded accusations, and having a way to respond to it
so that people know what the response is and not be wondering if Right. How it will be handled. So That's that's where I'm kind of going, director Kenworthy, is I'd like to make sure and I'm sure there is, but, I would be curious for more follow-up on that just to understand it better, and how we can make sure folks know what our process is around safe to tell and how it's vetted in that. And if it's being misused, what happens then? Yeah. And it's a that's what I'd like to know. Alright. I will add that to my list. And then last question.
I was gonna raise that my link didn't work. So thank you for sending that. Actually, that might be my last question. I do appreciate oh, I did have one more. Grub Club. Can kids volunteer with us? Can our kids volunteer with us? Yes. High schoolers and then middle schoolers with adult supervision. K. And we do encourage it. Like, I reach out to educators in our district that, like, run national honor societies, things like that where we they need volunteer hours, and they are welcome more than welcome to come join us.
If they're a rising sixth grader but have good track record of volunteer experience. Okay. We love it. Excellent. Thank you. Yes. Again, just really appreciate you all. This is truly helpful. We really value your input and your willingness to come talk with us. So thank you so much. Yep. Thank you for having us. We appreciate the opportunity. Have a good evening. All right, board. I'm going to keep us rolling since we are running running late. The next study item this evening for the board is to receive updated language regarding board policy GPO seven presented by miss Tolleson, our chief legal counsel.
Miss Tolleson, we have allotted twenty minutes, and we'll try to be we'll try to be expeditious because we are not getting any of our goals tonight. Bowditch here. I is he scheduled after me? Because I'm wondering if He is. Are you are you offering to, switch? Alright. We're gonna mister Bowditch, come on up. You're the next contestant tonight. And and director Ken Riddey. I apologize. We're gonna switcheroo a little bit, to allow our guests to get out at a reasonable time this evening. So now we will actually review and discuss priorities for the upcoming legislative session.
Leading this discussion with mister Bowditch, our legislative partner from Bowditch and Castle Public Affairs, is director Kenworthy from the Board of Education. Presenters, we have allotted thirty minutes. For this presentation sorry, guys. I'm getting punchy. It's late. Before we begin, superintendent Durlan, is there anything you'd like to add? I'm gonna hand it right over to you guys. Thanks. I got it. Thanks for doing this, and I did a bunch of work. Let me go back to my my notes I did today. I wasn't fully prepared because we're going out of order.
Alright. So to start off this conversation, I wanna ask the board about, which perspective we like to use to approach this conversation. I just take a moment to think. As a board, do we wanna approach our legislative agenda with a GEFCO first lens or a public education first lens or a student first lens or a state first lens or, you know, how do we want to approach this? So what lens would you like to take?
I know what mine is, but I'm going to withhold my opinion until after you all go. Well, I'd like just a better understanding of what differences you may think there are between those because I'm not convinced that there are meaningful differences between those views, at least in terms of how I think about policy and public education. Sure. Sometimes policy that gets presented, has different impacts on large districts, like GEFCO, versus small districts. So when we are faced with something like that, are we going to think about it, GEFCO first?
Does the impact about how it hits GEFCO? Or are we going to prioritize how it impacts the entire state? Or that's kind that's kind of what I'm trying to understand, is, how we what our priority is for outcomes. So that's a pretty clear difference. But say, for example, talking about it through like a student first lens or some of those other like that I can understand, right, because we have interests that are it's sometimes adverse interests of small districts. But I don't understand how what a student first lens might mean and how that
might be different from some other lens. It's hard for me to think of an example right now, but this I we don't have to have an answer totally, but this is gonna be something that'll come up as bills get introduced, and we, are making decisions about whether or not we're going to support or support with amendments. So it's just something I wanted to plant in our brains. Yeah. I think for me, what I would really love to see is that we maintain funding, for education, spending by the state, not just per pupil, but make education whole
across the entire state. That's that's my preference. I I feel like when we look at it per pupil, we look at, reductions. And rather than looking at it per pupil, let's look at it as let's fund this education system as a whole. Thank you. Yeah. Helpful. I wanna level set us and make sure that we understand, and I know you've we've covered this a little bit, but now we're kinda getting into the meat potatoes. So we as a board can choose to publicly support or not or stay neutral
or request amendments, which mister Bowditch is, expert at working for us at the capital. And sometimes they can be a little different. Right? And so we as a board do have to vote if the board is going to support that. And there's been times in the past where we've not all agreed which ways to go. And so, I appreciate the question, director Kenmoreby, because I think what you're getting is that could lead us, especially on some of these, to different outcomes if we're focused
on and I think about school funding. Right? Yeah. The funding bill last year was really different for big districts than it was for rural districts. And yeah. So please. Yes. And Yes. I think having worked with multiple boards over several districts, and then, of course, doing this now, this is the fifth round with GEFCO. When I first arrived in in '21, the the board did not necessarily have a legislative platform. I think we're calling it here priorities.
Either way either way, same thing. Right? I actually have been working with the board for five years so that they start this so that the board, it's the second largest school district in the state of Colorado. I believe this board, should have a platform going into the session to state proactively prior to Phil's being introduced. We care about these things. Right? These are the things we care about this year, and we're taking a stance on these items, and we care about these things in these ways for GEFCO students, for GEFCO for all students.
I don't I don't know what the frame is in terms of that. It's a good question. What I what I believed what I believe Erin has worked on, is that. And I've I've actually emailed with her today and suggested a few other things. And they aren't things that necessarily well, I care about them, of course, and I have opinions about them. But I am also talking about some things some things here and some other things with front range superintendents. And we are, as a group, going back to our boards of ed and saying, where do we stand? Right? And I I'm I'm trying really hard to stay connected and aligned with where our
board wants us to go because I believe that as elected officials and as a board, you all should be setting the tone and the agenda for our legislative interests. That's just I think that's your role. And I wanna make sure I'm meeting your expectations when I'm serving as an advocate for what we think is best for GEFCO at the state level. So I that's helpful for me too. I think it's helpful for GEFCO to start the session, give Ed direction, and say, these are the things we care about. As you talk to legislators on a daily, please make sure they know this is
GEFCO's platform. And he will send this out and he will communicate with them. It is also helpful for me when I'm in the political sphere of other superintendents and other state level work that I do to know where our board stands on certain issues at the start of the session. Then when the session unfolds, inevitably, there will be bills, like, specific bills that come. And that's where I think we can work with Ed as they come up to say support, not support or support with amendments. And say, we might suggest that you change it in this way because we think
that would be better for GEFCO or Jeff better for kids. So I I have some interest in you all getting on the same page around what your platform is or your priorities at the start of the session. What are the things you really care about? And that signals this is what we're gonna be paying attention to. This just gives Ed direction around what does he communicate to our legislators so they're really clear. GEFCO school board cares about these things this this season. It's also helpful for me because then I know if something comes up, I know where we stand.
Instead of just putting myself out there and then maybe or maybe not being aligned with what our board is gonna provide a direction. And I don't wanna get crosswise where I've already gone off to the races with some thoughts about these things. And then all of a sudden, two months later, you guys are talking about it and you have a different direction. And that's happened, and I'd really like to try to avoid that. So I'm holding myself back from putting myself out there around advocacy, which is work that I should be doing. It's part of my role and responsibility. But I am holding myself back because I wanna make sure I'm aligned with the
board's direction. So I think there's two things going on. One is, what are your stance what are your important issues going in? You know you care about these things and you and that you care about them in these ways. Then the second is, as these bills come up, for you guys to talk about those and align or not align or have a majority that gives direction. Correct? Yeah. That's that's where I'm thank you. That's where I'm headed. I wanted to plant the idea just because, throughout the session at any time, feel free to reach out to Ed and myself. I'm just gonna say that because I know that you said it before. Ed or myself with thoughts or questions throughout the session.
And remember when you're out and about, to be clear about your role as a board member versus your role as an individual, when people are asking you about things, no one person speaks for the board as a whole. If the board passes a resolution or takes a vote to support something, then we can say that this is the board's position. But lacking that, we would need to say it's my personal opinion or speaking for myself, and it's not the opinion of the board just to be real clear. I think that's just something I didn't fully understand until the second year I was
working on legislative agenda things, so I wanted to bring that up. And then, in order to prepare for this conversation and the document that you have in front of you, I surveyed some other Colorado districts and their legislative agendas that are out as well as CASB. And so our legislative agenda is a compass, not a map with directions. We give a bearing in our agenda. And then once bills are introduced, we can consider positions of support like like was mentioned earlier. And so we need to get our bearings, and it's kind of a can you live with this? I don't wanna get into semantics about any of this today.
If you have semantic changes or suggestions, we can do that. You can send those to Kristen, and Kristen can send those to me, and we can work through it. We still we'll present a we'll have a final draft to vote on, at our meeting next week. So there is time to do that, but we don't wanna do that today. We wanna stay focused on a conceptual level. So I'm gonna just dive right into this. The intro, I think, is pretty straightforward. And then we'll I did want to make a distinction. I think I appreciate understanding what the superintendent looks how to stay aligned.
Your earlier question on the lens, to me, it's not about policy positions, it's more about how do we deal with particular policy proposals that come up where there may be ambiguities or maybe it sort of fits into what this platform might be, but not entirely. And so to the extent, I don't know, my instinct would be to deal with that on a bill by bill basis if possible. But I would ask that if in your role at the capital, if there are times, particularly as the session gets sort of near the end and there's a lot of eleventh hour bills, if you wanted more guidance to be able to respond to
things more quickly because there may be something that comes out of nowhere to let us know. And my own experience having also worked adjacent to the legislative session is it's usually the end where those things start to come up. And my hope is that our process as a board and our positions and how we want to address things will also kind of coalesce and tighten up between now and then. So maybe just, I don't know, kind of punt on the lens question because I think it's going to be kind of case by case. Yeah. I think, as we consider our what our bearing is, it's gonna be helpful just
to keep that in mind, as we work through the items that are on here. So the introduction, I think, is pretty straightforward, and we don't need to get semantic. Again, if you have changes or suggestions on that, I would ask you to send them to Kristen. And now we can get into the actual meat of this. So state financial priorities, we've listed seven items here. Commit to take action on adequacy studies I'm just going to do short and sweet pieces. Commit to take action on adequacy studies, ensure no voucher programs, protect and increase teacher
pay and benefits, and include consideration of areas or avenues to increase state and local revenue was in there, prevent reimplementation of the yes factor or a similar mechanism, keep this is a question for Mr. Bowditch four year averaging in place. I know the governor has proposed a three year averaging, practice. And I'm wondering what your thoughts are on our language around four or three.
Thank you. That's a that's an excellent question. And I'm trying to remember on the fly here where we ended up because I think we went to three this year with the school finance act. No. We didn't. We're at four. Okay. That's right. And we have certain triggers that are in place. Oh, go ahead. Yeah. That's right. We have certain triggers in place, and the triggers have not been met at this point. So the triggers would mean if the state education fund doesn't grow as much and where the balance is and things like that. So I think we're still good with this language.
Thank you, and thank you. That's helpful. I wanted to make sure we're putting accurate things in here. So keep before you're averaging in place. CASB also includes language until full implementation of the new funding formula. That's a caveat that they have in theirs, and I didn't put it in ours, just to keep it open. Yeah. I mean, if my recollection is correct, and, mister Bowditch, tell me if you if you think I'm accurate here. What they what they were basically doing is contemplating a phase in of this new funding formula. It's student driven student factor driven.
So it's, like, it's weighted student factors. So if you have a SPED student, there's more funding for a SPED student than a general ed student, for example. And my understanding was that they were basically taking the money from the averaging and shifting it into the cost of the new formula over time. And so it's sort of six or one half dozen of the other. And I'm not sure what I think we're asking them to do is both. Right? Like, both implement the new formula in the timeline that has been outlined and maintain the four year averaging until the formula is completely in place.
And so I think that could be a decent thing to add. And especially if that's where CASB is, you might wanna align with CASB, given this then it's like a state lens. Yeah. Yeah. Any thoughts about that, align with CASB? Or does anybody have any strong feelings? I'm happy to add it in. I don't have strong feelings. No strong feelings. About that. All right. Then I'm going to lean towards adding it in because it does align with, wording that other entities are using, and it'll be familiar for our legislators. The next one's avoiding new, and avoiding reliance on existing grant programs.
And then the last one is adopt the school finance act twenty one days prior to the end of session, which means by by April 22. I did the math. Yeah. Right? Yeah. But it's that's the pie in the sky, y'all. I think that's because of the budget constraints. But we need to keep asking for it because there are really good reasons why. And trying to force, some prioritization of the education bill and, and the conversation, I think, is important. Is there anything in those state financial priorities that anybody has questions about or wants to talk about or get more clarity on?
Do we so there are there are other things that are evolving and emerging at the state, and we may want to so and that we just heard from our CEA partners. Right? Insurance is one. There's another one. I forgot. But do we do we want to I guess my question is, do we want to wade into those waters now and kind of identify that there may be some key provisions that we're interested in and flag it, or would we rather stay quiet? To the board. I I would recommend that the that you all at least discuss this, statewide health
insurance pooling effort that CEA is spearheading, that we are in an MOU right now with JCEA to explore. I don't think the thing, whatever it's gonna look like, works without at least one of the two largest in the state. I have committed with our bargaining team to to being interested and exploring this. I would love if somebody else managed all the things that Brenda talked about around health insurance today with the self funded stuff and the advisers that we have to
hire and they run the actuarials and show us the projections. I mean, it is a nightmare administratively. It's also every year putting administration against the associations because we're we're struggling all everybody to afford health care. And there's just nothing we can do about it as in. There's a 150, 140 school districts all going through the same thing all at once. And so I don't know if it's gonna save any money. Honestly, I think there could be maybe a little bit of hope for some cost containment. Yeah. Because I don't know you're gonna save money, period, in health insurance ever, but at
least in right now in The United States. But I do think it could help us cost contain, and I do think there's power in numbers. So it's a it's a it's an active exploration, and I think it's something you might wanna just put in here because there is a bill that's being drafted. So I have additional language after we emailed today that I wrote, that we could add to our state priorities, which is increase student and staff emotional and physical safety and support mechanisms because that also covers, counseling, money for safety and security, background checks, the sheriff's bill, and, and also I think we could we could throw in there
affordability for our educators, which leaves it open for that safe And the sheriff's bill was the other one I was thinking of. Yeah. And so I have this other item that we could add in that's very broad, but it opens us to the conversations about these two things that have been brought up. I'd be super supportive. I would support the language that's even more specific to this health insurance. To insurance, yes. And also, especially if we can look at the language, if the Board can get behind it and then if we're able to start since there already are people working
towards it to really start working with with other stakeholders sooner rather than later. Okay. So I also wrote this language, improve educator affordability factors to make it possible for educational district employees to live where they serve, including considering health insurance pooling. Does that sound good? Which and it also would leave room for other proposals regarding housing supports. Those are going that's going to be a conversation this year, and increased compensation tax credits and other items could fall under that language. I think, director Kenworthy, I think we could also ask our CEA or JCEA colleagues
who are on the working groups doing this work with CEA around the insurance pooling to give us the language they've been using Okay. In terms of the project. So I'd be happy to take that back and have our, team collaborate with JCEA. If the board were to advocate for this and their legislative priorities, what would you what language are you using? Is that helpful? Yeah. That's helpful. Yeah. Yeah. Just so that we're leaving enough space for the whole conversation and not being directive about what exactly they need to do.
Yeah. So I when we have language like that, I'll add it in. Alright. Can we look at federal financial priorities next? This would be going out to our federal legislators, so locally, Representative Brittany Patterson, and then our state senators, Bennett and Hickenlooper. So on here we've got fully fund idea, increase and maintain CTE funding, and is there anything else for our federal legislators to consider? I didn't add it to our document, but I wrote an item about preserving the federal Department of Education and mitigating delayed funding and disrupted services that harm students.
Because the Department of Education can only be completely dismantled through a vote of Congress. So if we talk to our congressional representatives and ask them to not do that, we could put that on our legislative agenda. I would support that. Other board members? I see head nods. I support I Alright. Alright. I will add that language as well to Federal. Is there anything else, federal priority wise, that you wanna see? I think we also have additional considerations that has language that attends to both federal and state. I don't know how far in the weeds we wanna get into this tonight, probably
not. But something about, ensuring that DHS actually follows its sensitive locations policy Oh, okay. Which it has been going back and forth on. Do you want to write up some language and maybe send it to Kristin so that I can add it in? So DHS purportedly has a sensitive locations policy where they say they will not conduct law enforcement activities, in particular ICE raids around sensitive locations, particularly churches and schools. But they've not been doing that. And it's not been an issue here, but it has been an issue in the
state. A Douglas County teacher was arrested by ICE. On campus? Yes. No, it was it was, I think, in November. So yeah, it's and I've had people raise it to me in the community as concerns of like what can be done. So Yeah, I'm open to that addition. That's an existing policy the DHS has. They're just choosing Yeah. They're just choosing not to follow their own policy. Okay. Can I bring up one more thing? Yeah. Go ahead. Just to bring up one more thing. We I've talked to some of you, not all of you.
I think Erin and Michelle mostly just because of what we've gone through over the last twelve months in GEFCO, and I've talked to Ed at length about and we've talked to some legislators, GEFCO legislators, about, the fact that some states have legislation around the requirements to, report, adult sexual misconduct or grooming behaviors to the state department for
a flag on an individual's license or investigation into and then possible the the state decides what they would like to do with the license depending upon what's been reported. We have that process in the state of Colorado. We take it very seriously. Anytime we have any indication that somebody has behaved inappropriately, physically or sexually with a student, we take obvious personnel action, swiftly, and we very swiftly also inform the color department of education licensing unit, which is sort of the current mechanism for districts to
then know when they're hiring somebody there's a flag on this person's license. Right? I believe that other states do a better job of encouraging and requiring, frankly, whether it's through policy or just practice, district to district information sharing about employees. We are not good at that in the state of Colorado, and I think it's a real problem. And I'm sick and tired of it, and I would really like to see somebody take this on, at the state at the legislative level to just and I don't
think it has to have a fiscal note. I I don't think it has to have be a huge burden on school districts. I think it needs to basically state that districts need to have a policy related to reporting of misconduct by employees to to the state department and the sharing of investigation information investigative information from school district to school district, when those types of investigations occur. I just think it's it's too much of a passing the torch, kind of situation,
and all school districts are dealing with it, not just us. And so that's an interest of mine based on everything that Julie and I and our HR team have dealt with in the last twelve months, and we're getting better at it. We've done at scale training with our employees. I think that's why we are finding issues in our schools. I'm proud of the fact that we are doing this work. I will continue to do it, but I think it's something that could be powerful coming from GEFCO given that we have had circumstances and challenges recently. So that's a suggestion from from me.
I would I'm absolutely willing to add it if the board is amenable, and I would put it under our additional considerations, which is where I've put things that we that apply to both state and and federal folks so that we were ask we're asking for that sort of oversight both at the state and the federal level. Does that sound Yeah. I would I would agree with that. I also am curious, are there any repercussions for districts that don't notify the CDE to have that flag put on licenses? I've never seen any action taken.
Technically, the duty by statute belongs to, quote, unquote, the superintendent. So, and CDE, if if the superintendent had a license, I suppose, technically, it would be a violation of the licensing act. I have never seen them take action regarding a failure to file a report. Madam chair, just as an example, some of the research that I looked into, about other states, this is from a state that passed this. Applicants must provide written authorization releasing current and former employers from liability for disclosure of
employment information. In addition, an applicant must provide a written statement indicating whether the applicant has ever been investigated, discharged, disciplined, or had a license revoked for sexual misconduct. That's not obviously going to apply if we pass a law here and somebody is in another state. But if somebody is coming from another district in Colorado, this would provide some additional level of information. The the just the initial thought I have hearing that language and dealing with similar laws and other areas in my own line of work, I don't hear that language
placing an affirmative duty on the district. It places a duty on the employee to report it, and it releases employers from liability for offering the information, but does not create an affirmative duty on the employer to provide the information. And I think that's the one so I think that's the right direction. But and, you know, in light of recent events, like there's you know, it's a very particular instance where a particular district, for reasons of their own, chose not to affirmatively share data. And that's I see it in a lot of industries where I have these things
in my line of work where there's a reporting requirement on the employee's part, but there's not a mechanism or affirmative reporting requirement on the employer's application, the hiring entity doesn't have a way to verify it, and the former entity that has the information isn't obligated to share it. And I think that's the piece here that is missing. Alright. So I I think I see support for this. Yes. Okay. Great.
Then we will add that on here as well. And if anybody has ideas for specific language, please send it to Kristen so that we can include it. What idea for federal priorities Yeah. Extending the ACA subsidies? I think that would help cost containment with regards to rising health care costs that we're all facing and will be facing. I can I can go with that? Yeah. Will you send us some language to put? Thank you. Just putting some notes down here so I don't forget anything. Alright. Under additional considerations, we have enhanced federal nutrition programs, at the federal level and then
also fully fund Healthy School Meals, which is here in Colorado. And if there's anything that I'm missing in that piece that somebody wants to add, overall, our kids need to eat. It's an imperative. They can't learn when they're hungry. And no unfunded mandates or partially funded mandates, please. You want we can add that in there. You don't have to. That's me being tired. But okay. It is explicit on some other, districts Yeah. Around the state. Yeah. Yeah. Some people's some people's legislative agenda is short, sweet, to the point, and then some
other districts have written, like, whole manuals. So we need to be somewhere in between, like, in between, probably closer to short and sweet. So that that does bring me to if there's extraneous language in here that is taking up space that we could live with letting go of. That is also something that you could send things to strike. I do wonder about, under state financials where we're talking about protecting and increasing total per pupil spending to get to the national average. We have three bullet points there, and I'm wondering if it's if we need to
keep that in there, or if our legislators are aware that we're at the bottom. When mister Bowditch and, director Kenworthy do need edits on this? Because I'm I'm happy to look through it. Aside from a cursory review, I have not been able to dig directly into the language. So if you could give us a deadline, that'd be incredibly helpful. So we need to post it twenty four hours before our meeting, and then I would need some time to just run through it for proofreading and making sure I've
include we've included everything. So our meeting's on the fifteenth, then I would say the twelfth. Monday? Yeah. Monday, please. Alright. Our other thing under additional considerations is an accountability redesign. This might actually this might need to move just to the state priorities. And there's several bullet points under that, but the two that I'm really wanting to emphasize are minimizing test time and maximizing learning using sampling rather than every student every
year standardized testing. And the other one is remove every educator every year requirements from SB one ninety one to allow two to three year windows for formal eval for nonprobationary teachers, with a caveat that nonprobationary teachers can still be put onto a special what would you call it? Special plan or special evaluation? Yeah. Any thoughts on that language or anything else under there?
I I support the the concept around it, around the redesign. Mhmm. I think it's something we've heard from our educators Yeah. In multiple rounds of of discussions and negotiations. So I think the devil will be in the details of that bill and the language. I think so too. So we'd have to pay attention and see where how people are amending it or what's in the in the fine print when it whenever it gets whenever something like that gets presented. Do have you we haven't heard anything yet about somebody working on this. There's there's always some work on it.
Yeah. Yeah. There's always some work on it. Okay. Alright. The only other thing that's not on here explicitly that I wanted to bring up is, the social media timeline bill that the sheriff is writing, asking for social media footprint information to be turned over in an expedited manner, to expedite investigations. This is particularly tied to the shooting in Evergreen. And I think that we can be supportive of that, but I wanted to bring it to you before I added it on here, and see if there's any other
conversation that we wanna have about it. I support it. Alright. The other option too, we can add language into our agenda, but also I think we can be ready with a statement of support the moment that it gets introduced on the floor so that we can be sort of the first first supporter when it when it when it drops to be ready with something to send out. Do you know, are the county sheriffs bringing that bill, the County Sheriffs Association?
I'm not sure the mechanism of it. Yeah. Mar Maranelli. Maranelli. Thank you. She came to the, Latino initiative, and she addressed us there. And I'm pretty sure she's the one who's spearheading that. She is. Mhmm. Yeah. A 100%. She's working on it. I just don't know if she's working on it solo along with legislators or if she's working through a professional organization to bring it to the floor. I'm not sure which avenue, they are using. But whenever it shows up, I think we can have language ready to support in an immediate sense, just to signal our strong support.
And this would just be just for clarification, this would just be in circumstances, events where something has happened that triggers the need for an investigation into an individual. Correct? Yes. K. That's my understanding of the bill. It's right now, there's a holdup with, like, Facebook and Instagram and stuff, and they don't have to give you an IP address. So if somebody's posting anonymously, they can't get access to who's posting. So this would kind of free up that process so that it goes right through. And you're like, okay, this IP address matches this address. Let's go to this house and find out.
Yeah. In order there were multiple waiting periods that our sheriff had to go through because they don't you don't get all of the information, the IP, what it's located to. You have to work through it in layers, and each layer had a statutory, like, thirty day wait limit. So they would get some piece of information and have to file for the next layer and we which could take as long as thirty days. The idea is to shorten the amount of days, that that the companies have to turn over that information in the state of Colorado. Yeah. She wants the fast turnaround because fast turnaround, if you have even a report before
an incident, if there's multiple reports of of an issue, there could be some preventative benefit. Yeah. So we can add we'll add should we add that explicitly and then be ready with language when the bill hits the floor? Okay. Yes. Alright. So we've got lots of stuff on there. Is there anything else anywhere that anybody wants to add or ask about including? I can try to look into this. And Mr. Bodditch, you may have your own connections as well. But I do think it would be wise of us to look at what we
already talked about it with the health insurance, but what our associations are working on. And to the extent that there's something that we also agree with that we can get behind, I think it's worth doing and maybe things that haven't otherwise come to our radar. I would also I don't think, we need to get in the weeds now, but I would love to hear more from the superintendent and district leadership on other items that aren't on this yet that maybe aren't occurring to us. So Yeah. I think once bills start getting introduced, and I talked to two of our two of the legislators today on the phone, and they said the first day they anticipate
there'll be about a 100 bills that will drop on day one. I'm planning to be there on day one. And I'm also planning to go each time we have a meeting scheduled. I'm planning to go two to three days ahead of time so that I can see where we are at the current moment. The legislator suggested that our meetings will be most useful if we bring to them specific bills that we want to discuss, and what our concerns are about it. If we wanted amendments, what the what the language in that would be. So I'm gonna go and do reconnaissance, in the days leading up to when we
have our meetings scheduled. Thank you, Erin, for those efforts. Just wanna extend the appreciation. I'm excited. I know mister Bowditch sends us updates regularly, but I'm I wanna spend more time out there and and watch the process, and make sure that our voice is being heard and that we're engaged in the process. I think some of the other years, it's gone so fast. It goes really fast. And it's been hard for me to catch the train ahead of time, but I'm see I'm I'm at the station, and I feel ready to go this year. So I'm excited about it.
I wanna echo, director Mowonian's appreciation for the work that you're doing because it is a lot, and I really wanna encourage us. There are, days at the Capitol coming up for us, and I don't know, mister Bowditch, if you wanted to take just a quick second to explain to all of us what your expectations of us are and so we know what to expect if we choose to attend. That would be incredibly helpful. Yep. Thank you, madam chair. So this year, we have four scheduled meetings with the legislative delegation at the Capitol. They're all from eight to 9AM.
The first one is January 22, so two weeks from tomorrow. We will meet in the basement in one of the hearing rooms. One of our members has reserved it, and it is just a chance to sit down and chat with the superintendent, the school board members, and the legislative delegation. Now, legislators, as you know, get lots of invitations. We hope to get a good group out, but more than anything, we hope to have a robust discussion with those who are able to attend. There will be some who come in for parts of it and then go upstairs,
or they drop their kids off, and obviously, life happens. But it's just a chance to talk about anything, about bills. They will have questions about what they're hearing about GEFCO schools. It can be discussions on specific bills. I think it is an official public meeting. It should be, since, obviously, all the board members are invited. I'm I don't believe we have ever taken a position at one of those events, and I'm not sure that's a good idea because everybody would want to pitch their bill there on the spot. It's better if you consider those at alternative alternate sites.
But it's a great opportunity to discuss. If and certainly, if you wanted to, we could also, in a future meeting, invite other people. If a legislator not from our delegation had a particularly important bill that you wanted to hear directly from, we could look at that. But right now, we have them with the board, the superintendent, and the legislative delegation. Thank you. And, sorry. I'll grab this back. You were not allowed to bring any coffee or anything into the meeting rooms except water, bottled water. I'm not gonna stop you, but those are the rules. No.
Because they don't want you to bring the fanciest coffee and persuade or influence people with fancy gifts. I think that's why. Yeah. I am going to suggest that at those meetings that we, as a board, prioritize, bills that we're listening to in this order, the first one being budget, finance, and appropriation, considered bills, then the education bills, then labor bills, and then other, just so that we can make sure that we're getting towards the things that are highest in
our priorities. And I think the funding and the budget is probably our top concern. And then along with the education committee, and labor also, that's gonna include our unions and their interests. So that that keeps us kind of dialed in when we have these meetings throughout the session. The first meeting that we have, I think is mostly gonna be going over our legislative agenda. There won't be a whole lot of movement yet, but our meetings in February and March, especially in March, are going to be it's only an hour, but we're gonna
have a lot of things that we wanna get clear get clarity on and maybe encourage, so just to set up expectations. The first one, there's not gonna be a whole lot, But then the the rest of them, there will be a lot of of conversation for us to have. That's it. That's it. Thank you for being here with us, mister Bowditch. I appreciate you taking the time and being patient and waiting. Thank you. Thank you, mister Bowditch.
Thank you, director Kenworthy. Yep. Thank you all. Board members, I would like to entertain a motion to amend our agenda. We have three items left on the agenda, two of which I believe could be tabled, the GPO7 policy discussion as well as our dialogue. I believe both of those things could be set in and done either through our retreat or through our meeting next month. And so I would just, I would love to entertain a motion to modify our
agenda, to table those two items and move straight to our consent agenda preview. I second. I think you have to move. Oh, I have to move. Right. Go for it. I move to amend our agenda to table the last two items on our agenda, to a future meeting. I second. Roll call, please, Ms. Harper. Miss Applegate? Yes. Doctor. Echeverria? Yes. Mister Gibbons? Yes. Miss Kenworthy? Yes. Miss Moenian? Yes. Thank you for that. And with that, superintendent Durlan, I would love to turn it over to you for the consent agenda preview Quickly for you guys because I know it's been a long
meeting. I do wanna just before I start this, though, I wanna say thank you for the robust conversation and the thoughtful questions that the board has asked tonight, and just really appreciate, how thoughtful you all have been this evening and, the collaborative and important dialogue. So thank you for that. I wanna just review for January in your consent agenda next week. These are the items that you'll be seeing. If there are any changes to this, which sometimes there are, we will make sure you're alerted to that. But you will have information about, as normal, on every consent agenda item, that I've
ever seen, employment, administrative appointments, and resignations and terminations, which keeps our employee, you know, ins and outs going forward, supplemental funds notification, which is usually grants, if we have any, for January. You'll have approval of minutes from, the board meetings, from December 18 and January 7, tonight's meeting. I'm assuming Kristen feels like she can get those done in a week. We will not have approval of policy updates to GP o seven because we'll study that in February or March or whenever the board feels like it could get to
it and decides to take it up. You will be approving or considering approval of the revised budget. And again, that will be, all of the things that Brenna previewed with you tonight, including, information that you saw this evening in addition to additional memo about some of the areas of overspend that we talked about. And so you'll have some additional materials within that, item. And then the legislative agenda that we'll make revision Erin will make revisions based on the conversation tonight, and we're happy to help you, director Kenworthy, in whatever way we can. I've already reached out to, JCEA to see if we can get you some language
to consider. And then you're gonna have a contract amendment, with, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, which is our literacy curriculum. It's a $4,200,000 contract, extension that amendment, that basically allows us to cover the cost of, investment in resources and materials for the next two years. And then you'll also have the charter school contracts. Let me just explain that really quickly. And I know, Director Mawhinney, and you had had a question about that earlier, so I'm gonna jump in there if that's okay, unless you feel like asking.
Okay. So let me just explain really quick what this is. Back in November, the Board of Education prior to this board, considered the renewals of current charter schools that were up for renewal. So every three to five years, depends upon the charter school, a charter school comes to the board and we review their performance, we review their programming, as a staff, and then we put together a recommendation that DAC is part of this as well, and And we recommend to the board whether or not, we believe that this charter
school or that charter school should be should have a renewed contract. In November, the Board of Education did make a decision to renew the contracts of three charter schools for these, these three schools that you're gonna see. Once the renewal decision is made by the board of education, we are then authorized as staff to work with our legal team. You see, Doctor Adeko has just joined us. Hello, Doctor Adeko. Tayo Adeko is our executive director who supports executive director, who supports charter schools, and
she she oversees all of our authorizing of our charter schools and really makes sure that we are good partners with them and understand what's going on in our schools. She led this whole process along with, Doctor. Coleman, and so the the charter schools have been renewed. What you are approving, next week is the contracts that go along with those approvals. The contract is where we talk with the charter schools about all of the flexibilities that come with being a charter. They can buy in, for example, to things like our professional learning, they can buy in support from our finance team or our HR team.
They can also opt out of services that we provide, and they can opt in and out of certain district policies, state laws, and, I think those are pretty much it. Yeah. And so we go through a whole litany of things that we look at to say, are you in? Are you out? And we clearly articulate what they're buying into, what costs are associated, and then what policies they're gonna align to. If they tell us we're not aligning to this policy, then we Tayo and others
on our team make sure that whatever they're doing instead is actually acceptable or they're actually doing it. So for example, service to English language learners. If they opt out of receiving those services from the district, Doctor. Adeaca goes in and makes sure that they still are serving those students. Right? That it's not just they're saying, No, thank you. We just aren't gonna serve them. And so that's the whole process. So we now have worked through the contracting, and what you're gonna see on the consent agenda is the contracts. Director Moenian had asked a question about the competency based diploma at New America School. And I'm glad that I paused to find more information because I learned some things.
And in their renewal application, New America School, just so you guys know, they serve about 63 students. So it's a very small school population. They serve a very niche, group of students who are over age and under credit and at risk of dropping out. And so, they in their application for renewal, they did include, what other New America campuses do. So New America School has multiple campuses, and other New America Schools participate in, like,
a New America school, credit what is it called? Competency based pathway. And it's it does end up in a competency based diploma, so that answers your question. It does end up there. But they the program really takes about five to 10 students who are way over age and way under credit. They have to meet certain stipulations to even qualify to go down this pathway. And then they put them on a specialized pathway that New America School, like, charter management organization, the the mothership of all the campuses, has created and other campuses are
running. So when they went through the renewal process, our team reviewed, that section of their application. We have notes about this aligns to the general guidelines from the state of Colorado around a competency based diploma and graduation guidelines, but it does not align to j k F. I believe it is. I K F. I K F, which is our policy on graduation requirements. So they they are gonna be doing grad requirements differently than what we do in GEFCO, but our team reviewed it and it does still align to the state level
requirements for graduation. We have other, charter schools who do a little bit different things for graduation as well. Jefferson Academy, for example, has additional requirements they've added on for their students. And so this is a different way for kids to, try to find a completion rate towards graduation. I know there were questions that were coming out of our AECs and our staff from our AECs asking about, well, if they have this competency based diploma, why can't we have a competency based diploma? And are we gonna lose a bunch of our kids to this opportunity for them
to have a competency based diploma at New America School. I would say, based on what I learned today, that is not going to be a problem. Doctor Coleman is gonna be following up with our AEC staff to make sure they understand everything that I've shared with you and that we're transparent about that. But because it is for their current students who have to meet these stringent requirements of being way over age ish and way under credit, like, they're just they're really trying to get them through a and most of these students are working full time. We're about to lose them to the workforce, but we want to get them that
diploma, and that's what New America School is running. And it's it's a program that the New America School charter management organization has already established. So that's the story about the competency based diploma. I will tell you that we did have a good conversation with an AEC staff member today, in my superintendent JCEA meeting, and I think there's interest in exploring a competency based diploma as part of our AEC landscape work, where we're looking at our AECs and how do we support them to be the best they can be for students. What doctor Coleman and I both expressed in the meeting today was if we're gonna
do that, that's great. Obviously, the board needs to be updated about that along the way, and we would wanna do that alongside and with our teachers. Because they know best, sort of, what are the standards, what are the requirements, how do we create a competency based program that's not just a watered down diploma factory, but that really is when our kids get through it, we feel confident that they're ready, and have met the the requirements, that and the high standards of what GEFCO Public Schools is all about. So we've had all these conversations. I guess what I would say is when the board approved the renewal, in doing
so, they also approved this flexibility, for five to 10 students that might be identified at at New America School to go through this competency based program. And doctor Coleman I've I've asked doctor Coleman to make sure he follows up with staff members who've been asking us about that, and I wanna make sure that you all have that information before you move into next week and have to make a decision. We're also happy to talk more about this if board members have additional questions. Can I have one, please? For our new board members, New America School is one of my charter schools, and I've I've visited.
Just so that you're aware, the other campuses are located in other school districts. So that's why they have the program and they've been running it because there are other, what do you call it? Grant The the grant yeah. The authorizers thank you. The authorizers have already said yes to this, so they're asking us to also participate in that. Yes. Yes. And I would also just say so it's a built model that they can just take from the shelf of their organization. I would also just say that this is inherently the ideal of what a charter
school is all about. So for a board to say there are no flexibilities with our graduation requirements policy for any charter school sort of flies in the face of the spirit of the charter school law, which could be tricky down the line if anybody were to appeal that decision. Because inherent in the charter school world is the opportunity to do things a bit differently, especially for different populations of students. And so I just wanna put that out there as sort of, like, that is
kind of, like, the spirit of what the charter movement is about. And I do believe that our board made the right decision. I know that we had experts reviewing it. I think we're gonna obviously be monitoring and paying attention. In addition to that, the important part for you to know too is the contract and the well, the approval of the the authorization decision in November for New America School, but not for the other two, was conditional, which means you are reauthorized for a shorter period of time.
So for the other two charter schools who are very high performing, they had a five year renewal. For New America School, we had a three year renewal. So they will be coming back to the board in three years with conditions around graduation rate because they have very low graduation rates. And so it would also be very tricky for us to say to them, you have such low graduation rates, do something about it, but you can't have any flexibilities with our policy. I mean, it would just be very it would be like talking out of both sides of our mouth. So they're trying something new. We've given them a shorter authorization period where then they have to come back to
the board and present some of their results related to the conditions that are now going to be showing up in the pot in the contract that we have with them. That's helpful. Thank you for providing that information and explanation because I had a couple of emails and concerns, and so I'm glad that we kind of have this opportunity to listen and and get the information that we need. So thank you. May I take us back to the HMH contract? I'm sorry. I just wanna make sure I understand because I know we've approved contracts at various points for HMH because we've kind of, layered it in over different curriculum rollouts.
So this contract would be for the next two years for all cohorts, or are we still just in two cohorts? Everybody's been implementing HMH now for multiple years, which is why you're seeing our data go up and up and up because our teachers are doing a really good job with it. Okay. So what we approved in the spring was for this current year, and then this contract is for 06/07/1978. Twenty six twenty seven, twenty seven twenty eight. Okay. Thank you. Board members, any other questions on the consent agenda? Yeah.
I'm still struggling with the pulling from our emergency funds. I would like to maybe pull that off consent agenda so I can have a little bit of time to talk with miss Copeland this week about it, to really look at the neutral option possibility. So we could certainly pull it off consent, but we may need to vote on it based on the timing. We may need to make Yeah. The budget? Yes. The revised budget. I just wanted to ask her a few more questions in regards to getting us
to neutral. She she mentioned that, and I just wanted to have some time to talk with her. I'm happy to get you connected with her this week. I think you and I might have some time coming up, and so you can join me. She can join me and you in our update meeting, which could be helpful. Let me just be let me be clear. Right now, the board has approved 39,000,000. Did I say that right? 29 and 39? The board has approved a certain amount of fund balance to be spent this school year. We are adding another 10 to that based on reduced revenue and increased expenditure.
If the board were to not approve this budget, at the midyear, then I would be, in two weeks, cutting $10,000,000 from our budget, which means I'm I'm basically laying off people and giving them two weeks' notice. The work we're doing with Budget Reduction Blueprint is getting us to closer to a neutral budget. It's not going to get us all the way, which we've talked about forty five and fifteen. And so but we're I'm happy to talk to you to to have her talk
more about that with you in the interim. I would also just say that I think, this is an important enough agenda item, Kristen and Lisa, that I would actually have this separate, I think is a good point, Yeah. To have this pulled off of consent and have it as a separate action item for the board so that you don't have to pull it to discuss it, and it's highlighted for public to see that you've done this. There is a statutory requirement that the board adopt a mid year revision by the January.
Did I say that right, Julie? Yes. Yes. So the board is obligated by statute to adopt something by the January. And I just don't think operationally, and we have and I know that you guys are new, but we have over the course of this year tried to minimize our expenses as much as possible and not spend as much as possible, and this is where it's landing. So we'll get it put into an action item, and then that also allows you to talk publicly about it. Thank you. Yeah. I think If we have an update meeting coming up, we'll get miss Copeland to
join us for that. I think for that action item, I don't know that Brennan would you like Brennan to present anything? No. Okay. I I'll I'll have some conversations with her. I just had some questions Yeah. Absolutely. Regarding using that, the reserves. So I so and I think she can probably help explain it to me. And we'll make sure whatever comes out of that conversation we share with the whole board. Yeah. And I I appreciate your question about the presentation because the presentation is, like, long, and we've already gone through it. And so not doing the whole presentation again, but at least pulling it, having it
there for our public and for you and allowing you to have dialogue with me and miss Copeland before you make a vote could be very helpful. So what we could do is we'll I like the idea of pulling it off as its own action. What we'll do is there'll be a motion to approve it. And then once there's a second, we would open it up for dialogue, and we could invite Ms. Copeland and Superintendent Dolan, and we could have questions. We could talk about it because I think from the public standpoint, even talking about what you learn is really helpful. Okay. Thank you.
Appreciate it. Thank you. Anything else? Wonderful. With that, we are adjourned. The next meeting of the board will be Thursday, 01/15/2026. We will stand adjourned. Good night.